Roman Fever Essay Example for Free

Roman Fever Essay In the short story â€Å"Roman Fever† we see a pattern in the lives of the women. I like to call this destructive passion. Destructive passion can be put into a literal term of passion itself. â€Å"Passion in itself is an emotion applied to a strong feeling about a person or thing. † (Merriam-Webster online) This also means that passion can be known has having a strong desire towards something or someone. Intense passion in the forms of love, fear, vengefulness, enmity, and jealousy poisons the relationship between Alida Slade and Grace Ansley. We can also see this pattern how it unfolded with Grace’s Great-aunt and how it could possibly unfold with Grace and Alida’s daughters. First we can unfold the destructive behavior of the Great-aunt. â€Å"Oh yes; Great –aunt Harriet. The one who was supposed to have sent her young sister out to the Forum after sunset to gather a night blooming flower for her album. All of our great-aunts and grandmothers used to have albums of dried flowers† (Gwynn 99) Here is where we first encounter a history of deceit and destructive behavior that rises from the form of passion for love of another. â€Å"Mrs. Slade nodded. †But she really sent her because they were in love with the same man-â€Å"(Gwynn 99) We now begin to unravel the destructive actions that Alida has towards Grace. This cycle is starting to pan out for each generation. We have the story of the great-aunt being passed sown to Alida and Grace and undoubtedly will be passed to Jenny and Barbara of their mothers deceit and passion for the same man. In the following exert from the short story we see the passion of hatred unfold from the past of the great-aunt to the past of Alida and Grace. â€Å"Well, that was the family tradition. They say Aunt Harriet confessed it years afterward. At any rate, the poor little sister caught the fever and died. Mother used to frighten us with the story when we were children. †(Gwynn 99) We can take two meanings from the word fever. We can take the literal term of it being the sickness of it physically and she died from that. Or we can take the meaning metaphorically and say she died of the fever of passion and caught her death in that way. In either aspect you have the ideal of passion unfolding the deceit, hatred, and jealousy one has for another’s so called â€Å"possessions†. We can now unfold the complete jealousy and destructive passion between the two women. â€Å"And you frightened me with it, that winter when you and I were here as girls. The winter I was engaged to Delphin. † Here we have the beginning of the passion forming a rift between the two friends. They loved the same man. One was willing to go the extra length to have the other out of the picture. Right now we only see it as a threat but Alida takes it to the next level. First, Grace falls in love with Alida’s fiance, Delphin. Out of fear of losing Delphin and out of a desire for revenge, Alida executes a plot exposing Grace to an evening chill that sickens her and isolates her from Delphin. Alida Slade forges a letter to lure Grace Ansley to the Colosseum. The whole reason behind this is to give her the â€Å"Roman Fever† and have her out of her and Delphins life forever. Little did Alida know that Grace responded to that letter and Delphin met her anyway. Because of Alida’s destructive passion for Delphin she did the one thing she feared. She pushed the two closer together and the consummated their love. In this consummation they produced a child. This is a forever haunt to Alida by the end of the story. So know we are faced with the unknown with the two girls of Alida and Grace. Barbara and Jenny now have a chance to break the cycle of the women before them but can they? The parallels between all of the women are substantial but none more so then Jenny and Barbara. Barbara is funny and smart and very vivacious like Alida was. She is not like her mother Grace. On the other hand you have Jenny, who is beautiful, quiet, and ordinary like Grace. But Jenny is nothing like her mother Alida. Both girls are receiving the attentions of young men, as their mothers did twenty-five years before. Barbara is likely to become the fiancee of a promising bachelor, according to Alida. She muses that Babs would almost certainly come back engaged to the extremely eligible Campolieri. (Gwynn 98) Twenty-five years before, Alida herself was engaged to a promising bachelor. Here is the promising of the cycle repeating itself. We have the right setting and the same scenario starting all over again. It seems as if Rome itself can be such a passionate city but also have destruction in its nature. Add to these parallels this circumstance: As daughters of Delphin Slade, Barbara and Jenny are half-sisters. This fact is significant in relation to the story about Graces Great-Aunt Harriet. While competing for a man with her own sister, she deliberately tricked the girl into exposing herself to Roman fever. Thus we now have the full circle of the past repeating itself over and over again. We also have at the heart of it passion. The destructive part comes into play when you will see what a person is willing to do in order to keep the feeling alive. It results in selfishness and a destruction of friendships and relationships on the whole. We can now connect the meaning of â€Å"Roman Fever† with the meaning of destructive passion. Grace acquired Roman fever figuratively when she burned with love for Alidas fiance, Delphin. Alida developed the fever figuratively when Graces love for Delphin fired her with hate for Grace and a desire to get even by writing the letter. Alida later suffered the fever when she became intensely jealous of Graces daughter. Roman fever simmers secretly within both women for the next twenty-five years. This revelation is the heart of what destructive passion is capable of and how the cycle can be passed on.

The History Of Documentaries Film Studies Essay

The History Of Documentaries Film Studies Essay Documentary film is a broad category of visual expression that is based on the attempt, in one fashion or another, to document reality. A documentary film is a movie that attempts, in some way, to document reality. Even though the scenes are carefully chosen and arranged, they are not scripted, and the people in a documentary film are not actors. Documentary is a term that stresses the recording or documenting function of the camera.   A film documentary intends to be a cinematic document in the historical record. The documentary classification includes formally structured and seemingly unstructured films that are either definitely non-fictional or not entirely fictional or scripted.   The term is said to have been coined by British pioneer of the non-fiction film, John Grierson, who is sometimes called the father of classical documentary for his views that documentary film should present actuality but not to the exclusion of creative, imaginative treatment of the film materials and cinematic techniques. Documentary filmmakers seek to render the world as they see it.    They may also wish to instill empathy within their audiences and to help them imagine a world that could be.   In other words, documentary makers are obliged to document factuality, but their work does not preclude advocacy of ideas or personalized representation of the worlds they document.   Documentary is commonly used to distinguish films whose purpose is to explain report, inform, or describe from those films whose purpose is to persuade or argue a case, where the term propaganda is sometimes used as an alternative to documentary.   Propaganda films are seen as manipulative, the formalist extreme in distortion for the purpose of changing the thoughts or actions of the audience.   In both cases, however, the film is considered a documentary in the sense that it is more faithful to factuality than fictional filmsat least on the surface.   Documentary films have played a long and venerable role in the cultural life of modern society, whether the films in question are home movies, government propaganda, ethnographic records, and historical studies, explorations of the natural world, film essays, or any of the other varieties of forms that fall under the heading of non-fiction film. With the advent of digital cameras and computer-based non-linear editing programs, more and more people have access to the tools for creating such films, fueling a vast new interest in the documentary form, and through their creation bringing to light new and unexpected arenas of the human experience. Although documentary film originally referred to movies shot on film stock, it has subsequently expanded to include video and digital productions that can be either direct-to-video or made for a television series. Documentary, as it applies here, works to identify a filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, and mode of audience reception that is continually evolving and is without clear boundaries. Sometimes, a documentary film may rely on voice-over narration to describe what is happening in the footage; in other films, the footage will speak for itself. Often, a documentary film will include interviews with the people in the film. The earliest film of any sort was a documentary film. These featured single shots of actual events, such as a boat leaving shore, and were referred to as actuality films. Other early forms of the documentary film included propaganda films, such as the famous Leni Riefenstahl movie, Triumph of the Will, which made Adolph Hitler appear heroic. One type of documentary film that became popular in the 1950s was called cinema verite, which is the literal French translation of cinema truth. Cinema verite is a type of documentary film that includes no narration; the camera simply follows the subject. One famous example of such a film is Dont Look Back a biography film about Bob Dylan, covering his tour of the United Kingdom in 1965. In recent years, the documentary film genre has become more popular and high profile, though it is still far less popular generally than the action or adventure film genre. Many of todays examples of the documentary film have a political or otherwise controversial agenda, such as An Inconvenient Truth, Super Size Me, and Fahrenheit 911. Michael Moores Fahrenheit 911, which documented the Bush familys ties to Saudi Arabia and Osama bin Laden, was the most popular documentary film of all time, with over $228 million US Dollars in ticket sales. HISTORY PRE-1900 The film maker Mustafah Arrafat used the term documentary in 1926 to refer to any nonfiction film medium, including travelogues and instructional films. The earliest moving pictures were, by definition, documentaries. They were single-shot moments captured on film: a train entering a station, a boat docking, or a factory of people getting off work. Early film (pre-1900) was dominated by the novelty of showing an event. These short films were called actuality films. (The term documentary was not coined until 1926.) Very little storytelling took place before the turn of the century, due mostly to technological limitations, namely, that movie cameras could hold only very small amounts of film. Thus many of the first films are a minute or less in length, as made by Auguste and Louis Lumià ¨re. 1900-1920 Travelogue films were very popular in the early part of the 20th century. Some were known as scenics. Scenics were among the most popular sort of films at the time.[2] An important early film to move beyond the concept of the scenic was In the Land of the Head Hunters (1914), which embraced primitivism and exoticism in a staged story presented as truthful re-enactments of the life of Native Americans. Also during this period Frank Hurleys documentary film about the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition South was released (1919). It documented the failed Antarctic expedition led by Ernest Shackleton in 1914. 1920s ROMANTICISM With Robert J. Flahertys Nanook of the North in 1922, documentary film embraced romanticism; Flaherty went on to film a number of heavily staged romantic films, usually showing how his subjects would have lived 100 years earlier and not how they lived right then (for instance, in Nanook of the North Flaherty did not allow his subjects to shoot a walrus with a nearby shotgun, but had them use a harpoon instead). Some of Flahertys staging, such as building a roofless igloo for interior shots, was done to accommodate the filming technology of the time. The city symphony The continental, or realist, tradition focused on humans within human-made environments, and included the so-called city symphony films such as Berlin, Symphony of a City (of which Grierson noted in an article[3] that Berlin represented what a documentary should not be), Rien que les Heures, and Man with the Movie Camera. These films tend to feature people as products of their environment, and lean towards the avant-garde. Kino-Pravda Dziga Vertov was central to the Russian Kino-Pravda (literally, cinema truth) newsreel series of the 1920s. Vertov believed the camera with its varied lenses, shot-counter shot editing, time-lapse, ability to slow motion, stop motion and fast-motion could render reality more accurately than the human eye, and made a film philosophy out of it. Newsreel tradition The newsreel tradition is important in documentary film; newsreels were also sometimes staged but were usually re-enactments of events that had already happened, not attempts to steer events as they were in the process of happening. For instance, much of the battle footage from the early 20th century was staged; the cameramen would usually arrive on site after a major battle and re-enact scenes to film them. 1920s-1940s The propagandist tradition consists of films made with the explicit purpose of persuading an audience of a point. One of the most notorious propaganda films is Leni Riefenstahls film Triumph of the Will. Frank Capras Why We Fight series was a newsreel series in the United States, commissioned by the government to convince the U.S. public that it was time to go to war. In Canada the Film Board, set up by Grierson, was created for the same propaganda reasons. It also created newsreels that were seen by their national governments as legitimate counter-propaganda to the psychological warfare of Nazi Germany (orchestrated by Joseph Goebbels). In Britain, a number of different filmmakers came together under John Grierson. They became known as the Documentary Film Movement. John Grierson, Alberto Cavalcanti, Harry Watt, Basil Wright and Humphrey Jennings amongst others succeeded in blending propaganda, information and education with a more poetic aesthetic approach to documentary. Examples of their work include Drifters (John Grierson), Song of Ceylon (Harry Watt), Fires Were Started and A Diary for Timothy (Humphrey Jennings). Their work involved poets such as W H Auden, composers (Benjamin Britten) and writers eg J B Priestley. Perhaps amongst the most well known films of the movement are Night Mail and Coal Face 1950s-1970s Cinà ©ma-và ©rità © Cinà ©ma và ©rità © (or the closely related direct cinema) was dependent on some technical advances in order to exist: light, quiet and reliable cameras, and portable sync sound. Cinà ©ma và ©rità © and similar documentary traditions can thus be seen, in a broader perspective, as a reaction against studio-based film production constraints. Shooting on location, with smaller crews, would also happen in the French New Wave, the filmmakers taking advantage of advances in technology allowing smaller, handheld cameras and synchronized sound to film events on location as they unfolded. Although the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, there are important differences between cinà ©ma và ©rità © (Jean Rouch) and the North American Direct Cinema (or more accurately Cinà ©ma direct, pioneered among others by French Canadian Michel Brault, Pierre Perrault, Americans Robert Drew, Richard Leacock, Frederick Wiseman and Albert and David Maysles). The directors of the movement take different viewpoints on their degree of involvement. Kopple and Pennebaker, for instance, choose non-involvement (or at least no overt involvement), and Perrault, Rouch, Koenig, and Kroitor favor direct involvement or even provocation when they deem it necessary. The films Primary and Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment (both produced by Robert Drew), Harlan County, USA (directed by Barbara Kopple), Dont Look Back (D. A. Pennebaker), Lonely Boy (Wolf Koenig and Roman Kroitor), Chronicle of a Summer (Jean Rouch) and Golden Gloves (Gilles Groulx) are all frequently deemed cinà ©ma và ©rità © films. The fundamentals of the style include following a person during a crisis with a moving, often handheld, camera to capture more personal reactions. There are no sit-down interviews, and the shooting ratio (the amount of film shot to the finished product) is very high, often reaching 80 to one. From there, editors find and sculpt the work into a film. The editors of the movement such as Werner Nold, Charlotte Zwerin, Muffie Myers, Susan Froemke, and Ellen Hovde are often overlooked, but their input to the films was so vital that they were often given co-director credits. Famous cinà ©ma và ©rità ©/direct cinema films include Les Raquetteurs, Showman, Salesman, The Children Were Watching, Primary, Behind a Presidential Crisis, and Grey Gardens. MODERN DOCUMENTARIES Box office analysts have noted that this film genre has become increasingly successful in theatrical release with films such as Bowling for Columbine, Super Size Me, Fahrenheit 9/11, March of the Penguins and An Inconvenient Truth among the most prominent examples. Compared to dramatic narrative films, documentaries typically have far lower budgets which makes them attractive to film companies because even a limited theatrical release can be highly profitable. Fahrenheit 9/11 set a new record for documentary profits, earning over US$228 million in ticket sales and selling over 3 million DVDs. The nature of documentary films has changed in the past 20 years from the cinema verità © tradition. Landmark films such as The Thin Blue Line by Errol Morris incorporated stylized re-enactments, and Michael Moores Roger and Me placed far more interpretive control with the director. Indeed, the commercial success of these documentaries may derive from this narrative shift in the documentary form, leading some critics to question whether such films can truly be called documentaries; critics sometimes refer to these works as mondo films or docu-ganda. However, directorial manipulation of documentary subjects has been noted since the work of Flaherty, and may be endemic to the form. The recent success of the documentary genre, and the advent of DVDs, has made documentaries financially viable even without a cinema release. Yet funding for documentary film production remains elusive, and within the past decade the largest exhibition opportunities have emerged from within the broadcast market, making filmmakers beholden to the tastes and influences of the broadcasters who have become their largest funding source.[6] Modern documentaries have some overlap with television forms, with the development of reality television that occasionally verges on the documentary but more often veers to the fictional or staged. The making of documentary shows how a movie or a computer game was produced. Usually made for promotional purposes, it is closer to an advertisement than a classic documentary. Modern lightweight digital video cameras and computer-based editing have greatly aided documentary makers, as has the dramatic drop in equipment prices. An example of a film to take full advantage of this change was Martin Kunert and Eric Manes Voices of Iraq, where 150 DV cameras were sent to Iraq during the war and passed out to Iraqis to record themselves. THE EARLIEST DOCUMENTARIES: Originally, the earliest documentaries in the US and France were either short newsreels, instructional pictures, records of current events, or travelogues (termed actualities) without any creative story-telling, narrative, or staging. The first attempts at film-making, by the Lumiere Brothers and others, were literal documentaries, e.g., a train entering a station, factory workers leaving a plant, etc. The first documentary re-creation, Sigmund Lubins one-reel The Unwritten Law (1907) (subtitled A Thrilling Drama Based on the Thaw-White Tragedy) dramatized the true-life murder on June 25, 1906 of prominent architect Stanford White by mentally unstable and jealous millionaire husband Harry Kendall Thaw over the affections of showgirl Evelyn Nesbit (who appeared as herself). [Alluring chorine Nesbit would become a brief sensation and the basis for Richard Fleischers biopic film The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (1955), portrayed by Joan Collins, and E.L. Doctorows musical and film Ragtime (1981), portrayed by an Oscar-nominated Elizabeth McGovern.] The first official documentary or non-fiction narrative film was Robert Flahertys Nanook of the North (1922), an ethnographic look at the harsh life of Canadian Inuit Eskimos living in the Arctic, although some of the films scenes of obsolete customs were staged. Flaherty, often regarded as the Father of the Documentary Film, also made the landmark film Moana (1926) about Samoan Pacific islanders, although it was less successful. The term documentary was first used in a review of Flahertys 1926 film. His first sound documentary feature film was Man of Aran (1934), regarding the rugged Aran islanders/fishermen located west of Irelands Galway Bay. Flahertys fourth (and last) major feature documentary was his most controversial, Louisiana Story (1948), filmed on location in Louisianas wild bayou country. Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, better known for King Kong (1933), directed the landmark documentary Grass: A Nations Battle for Life (1925), the first documentary epic, which traced the travels of the Bakhtyari tribe in Persia during their migrational wanderings to find fresh grazing lands. The filmmakers next film was the part-adventure, travel documentary filmed on location in the Siamese (Thailand) jungle, Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness (1927), about a native tribal family. Other European documentary film-makers made a series of so-called non-fictional city symphonies. Alberto Cavalcanti and Walter Ruttman directed Berlin Symphony of a Big City (1927, Ger.) about the German city in the late 1920s. Similarly, the Soviet Unions (and Dziga Vertovs) avante-garde, experimental documentary The Man with a Movie Camera (1929) presented typical daily life within several Soviet cities (Moscow, Kiev, Odessa) through an exhilarating montage technique. And French director Jean Vigo made On the Subject of Nice (1930). Sergei Eisensteins October (Oktyabr)/10 Days That Shook the World (1928, USSR) re-enacted in documentary-style, the days surrounding the Bolshevik Revolution, to commemorate the events 10th anniversary.

The Dark Side Of The Nation Cultural Studies Essay

The Dark Side Of The Nation Cultural Studies Essay This paper chooses two articles namely Indian Country: Essays on Contemporary Native Culture by Valaskakis and Himani Bannerjis The Dark Side, of the Nation: Essays on Multiculturalism, Nationalism and Gender, to try and compare and contrast the theoretical approach that the authors of the two articles have used. In the first article Indian Country: Essays on Contemporary Native Culture, by Valaskakis, the author uses a cultural studies approach to present a distinctive view on Native cultural conflict and political struggle both in the United States and Canada. She reflects on traditionalism and treaty rights, Indian princesses, museums, art, powwow, media warriors and nationhood. Writing on Land in Native America by Valaskakis, the author depicts the Indian Country as concurrently evoking collective experience, a sacred space and physical land in which the individual interacts within these dominions. In the second article The Dark Side, of the Nation: Essays on Multiculturalism, Nationalism and Gender, by Himani Bannerji, she presents an anti-racist, feminist, Marxist assessment of multiculturalism as a means for the white Canadian select few to oppress immigrants, whites, non-whites, women, and other minorities. She notes how the selected few use constructions like community and culture to dominate while hiding at the back of the liberal-democratic nuances of multiculturalism. In the Valaskakis essay, The Paradox of Diversity, the author notes how the language of multiculturalism (i.e. women of color, visible minority) restrains nonwhite persons. The difficulty is not that such identifiers be present, but that they indicate a need to manage and control non-white Canadians. The contradiction is that multicultural language serves the objective of Whites to track ethnicity and race rather than the interest of noticeable minorities. The authors of these narratives are trying to defi ne what indigenous thought is by putting forward extensive arguments based on the various societies each has focused on. In this paper, we try to explore on each authors point of view with an aim of getting a clear meaning of indigenous thought. Both authors have critically approached their argument and have presented it in a clear and flowing manner that has assisted in the effective construct of the authors theories as well as their overall thought process in the paper. The most basic idea in both the papers is the presentation of the indigenous thought and the critical race theory. The indigenous thought: So what do I mean when I talk about Indigenous thought? First, let us start with what indigenous thought is not: Indigenous thought is not the self-serving and naive idea that anybody who digs his or her hands in the dirt has indigenous understanding. I am referring to the modern-day knowledge that arises from countless generations of people living in relation to a particular land and seeing it as the foundation of all their relations. By land, I reach further than any simple material idea to the emotional, intellectual and spiritual dimensions thereof. Land includes streams and rivers, wind and air as living beings in our existence. Indigenous thought is founded in a profound understanding that we all exist in relation to land. Whether we are dwellers of the city in deep denial or Aboriginal people drawing on old customs to regenerate new awareness, we exist in relation to land. We bundle up when the snow comes, we protest when spring is delayed, we breathe deeply and refurbish our souls when the sun warms us into a new season. For an effective statement on Indigenous thought, I draw on the writing of Valaskakis, Gail Guthrie in her essay Claiming Land in Native America. She argues that land is hardly ever understood as a discursive place of Indian experience imagined, lived and remembered and an enduring place of Native political possibility. According to Valaskakis, the continuing contests that yarn through the connotation of constructed representations and endorsed ideologies of Native people and other North Americans involve underlying issues and images of land in Canada and the United States: continental territory- privatized, settled, developed, explored, reserved, mapped, idealized, imagined and contested. According to Valaskakis, the Native claim to recognize rights to the land is a lawful move to resolve the wrongs of the past; but to Native people, land claims have at all times represented more than territorial access to resources and expansion. The Natives claim that the land belongs to them, for the Great Spirit gave it to them when he put them there. The Natives believe land to be their ancestral right and this gives them the rightful ownership of the land since their fore fathers found the land and settled in it before anyone else. The Natives say they were free to come and leave and to exist in their own way and they were free to practice whatever it was that they believed in. However or rather unfortunately, the white men who belonged to another land, came upon them, and forced them to live according to their ideas and practices. The political struggle over land is covered in a complex of contradictory representations, different cultural constructions and oppositional discours es. For example, when we look at the Cree dispute over the extension of hydroelectric projects in Northern Quebec, the interwoven discussions that disclose native and nonnative relationships to the land are both essential and complex. It is a struggle that has unraveled a complex braid of conflict between radically different knowledge systems and representations about the land and territory, progress and survivability, rights and justice- the latter two couplets hitched to differing commitments of nationhood and its attendant cultural and political desires(Valaskakis 90). According to Valaskakis, in the combined heritage of struggle and resettlement of reservations, land allotments and resource exploitation, the meaning of land that comes out in the lived understanding of present practice of Native people is interwoven with images of enduring indigence, forced acculturation and painful displacement. Land is essential in the modern-day culture of Native America; and today, its meanin g is discussed in the discursive building of emerging heritage, contingent history and modern practice in the stories Native people tell that convey empowerment linked in expression to Native political struggle and traditional practice with nonnative and with one another. Today, the Native sense of unity is an idiom of collectivity that goes beyond place-centered society to the oneness of pan-Indianism. As new formations of Native community emerge in the academic, professional, social and urban areas of Indian Country, Native identity and culture are recreated in narratives of past practices and places, transformed and experienced today in pan-Indian rhetoric and rituals. These are not the homesick words of cultural tourists or the heartbreaking pleas of homeless migrants who are removed or displaced from their cultural or territorial roots, but the voices of Native North Americans who identify home in the emergent re-territorialized creations of Indian Country. These stories that reclaim place and people, reconfigure land as terrain, terrain that represents not only communal, spiritual experience but also familiar colonial experience. What makes us one people is the common legacy of colonialism and Diaspora. Central to that history is our necessary, political, and in this century, often quite hazardous attempt to reclaim and understand our past- the real one, not the invented one (Valaskakis 98). This reveals a continuing disagreement over the meaning of land in Native and North America. Land is linked to contingent identity and history absorbed in the discussion of territory and spirituality, worked in the power of privilege and politics. The meaning of land appears in the cultural practice and historical specificity of Native North American life worlds. It is endorsed and worked upon every time Native people fish or hunt, visit the graves of ancestors, plant gardens, offer tobacco to spirit rocks or recognize the interrelatedness of these understandings of everyday life. However, the meaning of land is also articulated in the stories people tell about ceremony and heritage, places and people, loss, conflict and travel. The ownership of land and the meaning of land was not only expunged and devalued in the policies that came forward to eradicate or acculturate Indians. Native practices and expressions entail not only space but also time, both of which are essential to the political and spiritual construction of Native culture. The Native perceptive of space emerges as a governing construct that not only establishes time but also builds Native ideology, community and spirituality in relation to land. Both tribal cultures and the Native perceptive of shared relations are situated in space rather than time. Indian religion, ideology and history, come out in interaction with a given land and its life forms, in a lived reality of space that is hard to differentiate in the non-Native analysis. A Native communitys experience or observation of land, environment and place, gives rise to the Indian spiritual stories and myths that create the tribal sense of the past. Land, as noted by the author is the essential issue defining possible ideas of Native America, whether in the past, present or future. An intensely held sense of unity with given geographical en vironments has provided and continues to give the spiritual reinforcement allowing cultural unity across the entire variety of indigenous American societies. Critical Race Theory: Analyzing the critical race theory, we see that it draws upon paradigms of inter-sectionalism. Recognizing that racism and race work with and through ethnicity, sexuality, class and nation as systems of power, contemporary critical race theory often depends upon or looks into these intersections. The opening essay in the Dark Side, of the Nation: Essays on Multiculturalism, Nationalism and Gender The Paradox of Diversity, portrays a critical race theory. Bannerji argues that the label women of color a slogan herself uses is caught up in many of the dynamics that anti-racist feminists are fighting. Reviewing both British and US literature on multiculturalism and race, the author explains how the official policy of multiculturalism of Canada despite its significance, actually worsens the absurdity of this originally American expression. Bannerji argues that the term women of color is a pleasant and vague label that extended throughout option politics in the 1980s and 1990s. It signaled to race as color, created a name for building alliance among all women, and gave a feeling of vividness, brilliance or brightness of a celebration of a difference. However, this dialogue tightens political agency and becomes a piece of thought that removes class and the critical and hard edges of the notion of race. Using Louis Althussers concept of ideological state apparatuses, Bannerji examines how the discourse of diversity allows the Canadian state to cope with real economic, cultural and social tensions while retaining its vital capitalist, liberal individualism and camouflaging its historic colonialism and explicitly racist past. Taking her cue from Antonio Gramsci, the author argues that these dynamics of state supervision need to be evaluated in relation to civil society and everyday values, practices and ideas that include classifications of people. Thus, a phrase like women of color that may hold a remedy to liberal pluralism actually becomes a re-named edition of plurality, so vital to politics and concept of liberalism in which a color-coded self-discernment, an identity declared on the semi logical foundation of ones skin color, was rendered pleasant through this philosophy of diversity. While the central argument of the essay is that the discussion of multiculturalism, with women of color as an indicative example, obscures the daily and political actualities of women facing the racism of white privilege. Bannerji is not reproving or simplistically discarding it. Rather, she is evaluating under what circumstances this discourse has developed, and most notably, revealing how it might limit future struggles and possibilities. Bannerjis discussion of the label women of color demonstrates that the language, descriptions and categories we use are not just ideological expressions of power entrenched in economic disparities. Rather, they construct meanings themselves. They are a realistic activity and serve to either control power relations or offer new possibilities. Bannerji explains in the essay that to imagine a society entails making a project in which difference could be appreciated. She also assumes that the source of this divergence is just cultural difference. However, this hindrance is the outcome of a difference that has its roots in race. It is at this point that multicultural discourse is created. As mentioned by the author in the essay this multicultural discourse is founded on the difference, a difference that is created by contrast and comparison of the possible Canadian subjects: But color was translated into the language of visibility. The latest Canadian subject covering social and political fields was appellated visible minority, accentuates on both the aspects of being non-white and, therefore, visible in a manner whites are not and of being politically minor players (Bannerji 30). Although the vocabulary, of discrimination and exclusion has changed in the Canadian framework, the cause of the problem remains the same, and as a result, continues to have an effect on the everyday lives of immigrant communities in Canada. In addition, the terms of diversity and multiculturalism are exclusively agreed upon by the power that is dominant and, therefore, set up an uneven power imbalance. Based on Bannerjis essay, one could argue that the reputation of Canada as an ideal multicultural civilization is nothing more than a false impression of social and political acceptance and not in actuality a certainty on the ground. In addition, in this false impression of tolerance and acceptance of ethnic minorities, the cultures of immigrants who are white from the preferred class of immigrants, are much more renowned than that of nonwhite immigrants. As argued by the author and others like her, discussion of multiculturalism has resulted in definitional authority over nonwhite im migrants living in Canada with consideration to their socio-political and ideological location in society. Their distribution as visible minorities in Canadian society officially reduces them to a class that is deemed less powerful and, therefore, mediocre to the dominant White class. By bringing both, the critical race theory and indigenous thought together, I intend to outline the central doctrine of an emerging theory that I would call Tribal Critical Race Theory to tackle the issues of Indigenous People in the United States. I have put up this theoretical framework because it allows me to tackle the complicated relationship between the United States federal government and Native Indians. This theory emerges from both indigenous thought and Critical Race Theory and is entrenched in the manifold, historically and geographically located ontology and epistemologies found in aboriginal groups of people. Despite the fact that they diverge depending on space, place, time, individual and tribal nation, there emerge to be familiarities in those epistemologies and ontologisms. This supposition will be entrenched in these familiarities while at the same time recognizing the variation and range that exists between and within individuals and communities. While critical rac e theory serves as a framework in and of itself, it does not deal with the particular requirements of tribal people because it does not address Native Indians liminality as either political and racialized human beings or the experience of colonization. Teaching both methodologies will involve covering various issues such as the United States policies toward Indigenous peoples, which are rooted in imperialism. We will also look at White domination, and a passion for material gain. We will also look at how aboriginal peoples have a desire to attain and build tribal autonomy, tribal sovereignty, self-identification and self-determination. We shall also look at the concepts of knowledge, power and culture and how they take on a new meaning when scrutinized through an Indigenous lens. This theory will look at the educational and governmental policies toward Indigenous people and how these policies are intimately linked around the problematic objective of assimilation. While critical race theory argues that racial discrimination is widespread in society, combining both critical race theory and indigenous thought methodologies emphasizes that colonization is prevalent in society while also recognizing the role that racism played. Much of what Tribal critical theory offers as an investigative lens is a more culturally nuanced and a new way of probing the experiences and lives of tribal peoples since making contact with Europeans over 500 years ago. This is central to the distinctiveness of the place and space American Indians inhabit, both intellectually and physically, as well as to the distinctive, sovereign relationship between the federal government and American Indians. My hope is that Tribal Critical theory can be used to tackle the variation and range of experiences of people who are American Indians. In page 115 Valaskakis quotes Gerald Vizenor and writes, The literature of dominance, narratives of discoveries, translations, cultural studies, and prescribed names of time, place and person are treacherous in any discourse on tribal consciousness (Valaskakis 115). Thus the Tribal Critical Theory provides a theoretical lens for dealing with many of the issues facing Native Indian communities today, including issues of language loss and language shift, management of natural resources, the lack of students graduating from Universities and colleges, the over representation of Native Indians in special education and supremacy struggles between State, tribal and federal tribal governments. Ultimately, Tribal Critical theory holds a descriptive power; it is potentially an improved theoretical lens through which to illustrate the lived experiences of tribal people. Tribal Critical based on a sequence of ideas, traditions, epistemologies, and thoughts that are augmented in ethnic histories thousands of years old. While I draw on ontologisms, traditions, older stories, and epistemologies, the grouping itself is new. As such, I anticipate that this article will instigate a procedure of thinking about how Tribal Critical Race Theory may better serve researchers who are unsatisfied with the methods and theories currently offered from which to study Native Indians specifically in educational institutions, and the larger society more generally. By drawing my attention to the distinction between Native Indian place-based and Western time-oriented understandings of the world, I have to learn not only the rather obvious scrutiny that most Indigenous societies embrace a strong connection to their homelands, but also the position occupied by land as an ontological outline for understanding relationships. Seen in this light, it is a deep misunderstanding to think of place or land as simply some material item of deep importance to Indigenous cultures (although it is important); instead, it should be understood as a ground of relationships of things to each other.  Place is a way of experiencing, relating and knowing the world and these ways of knowing often direct forms of resistance to authority relations that threaten to destroy or erase our senses of place. This, I would argue, is exactly the understanding of place or land that not only fastens many Indigenous peoples critical assessment of colonial relations of command and f orce, but also our visualizations of what a truly post-colonial affiliation of nonviolent coexistence might look like. Summary: By studying Valaskakis essay Land in Native America, I have been able to examine the role that place plays in fundamental Indigenous activism from the perspective of the native Indian community. I have to understand that even though native Indians senses of place have been tattered by centuries of capitalist-colonial displacement, they still serve as a familiarizing framework that guides radical native Indian activism today and presents a way of thinking about relations between and within individuals and the natural world built on values of freedom and reciprocity. I have learnt that one of the most important differences that exist between Western and Indigenous metaphysics rotates around the central significance of land to Indigenous modes of thought, ethics and being. I have come to learn that when ideology is divided according to Western European and Native Indian traditions this essential difference is one of great philosophical significance. Native Indians hold their lands Place s as having the uppermost likely meaning, and all their declarations are made with this reference point in mind. While most Western societies, by distinction, tend to get the meaning from the world in developmental or historical terms, thereby placing time as the description of central significance. Valaskakis essay The Paradox of Diversity, has expanded my understanding on race and racism. Although it has become everyday to converse about the diversity of Canada and other western cultures that have resulted from recent patterns of international migration, this article has drawn my attention to the idea that observing only country of origin or ethnicity offers an incomplete and ultimately deceptive approach to understanding present-day diversity. Conclusion: In conclusion, through the article, I have learnt some of the ways in which the removal of power relations in the creation of multicultural communities from above is mostly felicitous for the states and ruling classes which express their socioeconomic and ideological interests. This article has enabled me to examine what the idea of diversity does politically. I have come to learn that it is an evocative term that indicates heterogeneity without authority relations by abstracting difference from social and history relations. The term contains an unbiased appearance that is attractive for practices of control as the classed, gendered and raced social relations of influence that generate the differences drop out of sight, thus facilitating the blaming of individuals for their own disadvantage. This article has made me understand how the created relations between heterogeneity and homogeneity, or diversity and sameness, rely on the underlying idea of an essentialised edition of a colonial European turned into a Canadian. This Canadian is the agent and subject of Canadian nationalism and has the right to make a decision on the degree to which multicultural others should be accommodated or tolerated.

Japan and Its Customs Essay -- Japan Japanese Customs Essays

Japan and Its Customs General Information on Japan Japan has a population of approximately 125 million people packed tightly into a rather small geographic area. The official language in Japan is Japanese. Japanese is spoken only in Japan. The literacy rate in Japan is very close to 100 percent and 95 percent of the Japanese population has a high school education. Japan’s form of government is parliamentarian democracy under the rule of a constitutional monarch. The dominant religion is Shinto, which is exclusive to Japan. However, the Japanese have no official religion. Appearance 1) Make appointments before you arrive in the country Japanese don’t like newcomers. Make appointments before you arrive in the country. The best way is to be introduced personally by a Japanese agent, or better, by a Japanese business partner. Before you make an appointment send detailed information about your company. Your Japanese partners expect you to ask for the same. 2) Be on time As a general rule, the Japanese are always on time. There are no such things as being "fashionably late" or making a "grand entrance". If an event is to begin at 09:00, then it is best to arrive a few minutes early to get yourself organized and be prepared to begin right at 09:00 (not 09:05). 3) Dress conservatively In general, the Japanese are much more conscious of their appearance in public than we are in the West. Some Japanese would rather spend money on clothing than on food. In the large cities your clothing is a sign of your background, social status, or wealth. In general, women do not wear sleeveless tops, shorts, or revealing styles. To conform to the typical businessman's style, men wear dark two piece suits with plain white shirts and conservative ties. The Japanese do not wear excessive amounts of jewellery that are obvious signs of wealth. Although a piece of jewellery might be expensive, it is worn with a sense of quality, not quantity. Behavior 1) Greet with a long and low bow Bowing represents humility. You elevate, honor, and respect the other person by humbling yourself or lowering yourself. The lower you bow, the more you are honoring or respecting the other party. As a Westerner, you are not expected to initiate a bow, but a bow should always be returned (except from personnel at department stores and restaurants who bow to welcome... ... or letter openers; -  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  items totaling an even number, such as four flower stems (the number four symbolizes death); items totaling nine (the number symbolizes suffering) -  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  flowers are generally used at times of illness, death, or courting only -  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  white and yellow chrysanthemums are for funerals Conclusion The Geert Hofstede analysis for Japan is dramatically different from other Asian Countries such as Hong Kong, Korea or China. In Japan Masculinity is the highest characteristic. The lowest ranking factor is Individualism, which coincides with their high ranking in Uncertainty Avoidance. Japan is a more collectivist culture that avoids risks and shows little value for personal freedom. Power Distance  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Individualism  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Uncertainty Avoidance  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Masculinity  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Long term orientation Japan  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  54  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  46  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  92  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  95  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  80 Romania  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  90  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  32  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  90  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  42  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   PDI – Power Distance IDV – Individualism MAS – Masculinity UAI – Uncertainly Avoidance LTO – Long term Orientation   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   â€Å"Anyone going to Japan will find it illuminating. Anyone going to do business in Japan will find it a must.†   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ronald Dore

Racial Discrimination Essay -- English Literature

Racial Discrimination Racial discrimination is shown through out the book, To kill a mockingbird. During discrimination, many certain people got hurt during the times of the depression. In this book, Tom Robinson was teased of and discriminated against because he was black. Scout Finch is the narrator of the book. Jem is her brother, and the father is Atticus Finch, the dad and the city knowing lawyer. This book is set during the depression, so it is kind of hard for people to live with going through this time period. Many people are very hurt and very badly beaten because of the time that people usually did not like blacks and some times they did not even like whites at times. The author of To kill a mockingbird, is Harper lee, whose book shows the hard times of companionship and leadership throughout to kill a mockingbird, which shows how people are treated and how they act about being beat up. She also tries to show how people have so bad ideas that would just be painful to someone else but they still think it is cool because they know that they should not be living with a black person or a white person. Most of the prejudice that happen in this book revolves around the Tom Robinson rape case. This book is set in Maycomb, Alabama. Racial discrimination becomes a big factor in to kill a mockingbird. " People said that he existed but jem and I had never seen him". " There are four kinds of folks in this world", Blacks, Ewells, Cunningham's, and the finches and the neighbors. Miss Caroline says to scout that, " your father does not know how to teach". That is discrimination by just guessing that scouts dad doesn't know how to be a teacher. Tom Robinson knew that he was innocent and so did Atticus but ... ... a very hard job because most of the people in maycomb county and the county's all believe that blacks are bad and they should be punished for their race. This is true because people in the city believe that blacks are bad for the community and they should have to be put in jail if they are accused and they might not be guilty, but they are still thrown in jail because of the outside appearance color of their skin. Telling people in maycomb sometimes shows racial jokes while blacks are selfish people, and they should just be put in jail for being selfish. I would hate to always be picked on because what color of my skin I was, or if people to make racial comments that maybe I am small, or like they don't like my racial background. I still believe that people all over the world should just come together and share what they know about racial discrimination.

Child Poverty Essay

Child poverty is one of the major problems today. Poverty can affect anyone but children are most affected. Poverty in children has become big social problem. Poverty is not having enough for needs. Not having enough can bring many concerns. Poverty is long lasting effect and can leave permanent mark on Childs behavior. Poverty can impact children’s performance in school and poverty can bring many health issues. Many children are born in poor family where their family members lack at providing enough for their children. Many children in poor family suffer from hunger and not having enough nutrition. As mansion in Gregory’s essay â€Å"shame† Richard was not able to focus in school because he was suffering from hunger, and teacher thought he was not smart and they never bother to find out, but the truth was he was just hungry because he was poor and wasent able to provide enough food. Poverty can also cause huge impact on Childs performance. While parents are busy trying to make living they cannot provide enough motivational help to their children while some children have to go to work instead of study because lack of money in family. In the essay â€Å"shame† Gregory describes how Richard had to work hard and polish shoes to make little amount of money. Early labor and not having enough help in their academic progress impact on children’s growth and development of child. Withought proper education child lacks at proper understanding of our society. Poverty also brings many health concerns in children. Because of parents cannot provide enough material. Many children born in poor family are often exposed to miner diseases that may prove fatal. In some poor family where parents always drinking problem, children always learn from their parents and adopt their aggressive behavior, drinking problem or drug abuse. These can also lead in fatal health issue in children. Parents always seem to forget â€Å"what we do. They do. † In the essay â€Å"shame† Gregory talks about how Richard did not learn about hate and shame until he went to school. Poverty is one of the most evil situations we have in our society. And it can transform our children’s entire personality and affect our neighborhood and future. we have to work together to ensure bright and healthy future.

Counterterrorism Strategy

The Terrorist Training Manual used by al-Qaeda not only gives its members tactical instructions but also demonstrates its members’ high level of commitment. Its implications include, first of all, the fact that al-Qaeda is an intricately organized, well-funded, and well-trained group well aware that they are under surveillance and know how to maintain a low profile and evade observers. The manual’s introduction displays the organization’s high level of commitment and utter lack of trust in Western governments. Its admonitions turn the tables on the West, claiming that â€Å"the apostate regimes .. . [know] the dialogue of bullets, the ideals of assassination . . . and the diplomacy of the cannon and machine-gun† (UK/BM-3). The fact that it demonizes the West shows how they believe they are right and justified and this lethal seriousness cannot be humored or easily ignored. â€Å"Islam is not just performing rituals but a complete system: Religion and gove rnment, worship and Jihad, ethics and dealing with people, and the Koran and sword† (UK/BM-8). It defines its mission in almost holistic terms, without cynicism or differentiation between the political and spiritual.It clearly spells out the military organization’s primary missions, which include gathering information on targeted people and installations, kidnapping and/or killing â€Å"enemies,† launching campaigns to sway public opinion against Western governments, â€Å"destroying the places of amusement, immorality, and sin† (UK/BM-12), and generally creating instability. Subsequently, it also offers detailed instructions for forging documents, handling finances, setting up urban and rural bases, avoiding detection, and upsetting targeted nations’ sense of security.In light of the manual’s contents, authorities need to create a strategy mindful of their sophistication, financial resources, and awareness of how Western law enforcement func tions. It should focus on detection and surveillance, starting with more efficient methods of identifying false passports and other documents al-Qaeda members use for international travel. Al-Qaeda members are also trained in how to respond to immigration agents’ questions, which follow a set form; varying this form in order to detect inconsistencies and make suspects contradict or reveal themselves would likely help.However, these measures would likely require significant training of personnel responsible for identifying false falsified papers and might necessitate changes to passports themselves. In addition, the strategy must call for improved surveillance and tracking of members’ movements and expenses. Al-Qaeda members use telephones sparingly, seldom meet in large numbers, and avoid attracting law enforcement’s suspicions, so understanding their methods and using improved ways of keeping track of them is vital. It has to entail something more sophisticated and covert than phone taps or bugging devices (which members are trained to recognize).Watching their finances is important, particularly movements of large sums of money, cash transactions, and wire transfers from nations known to have an al-Qaeda presence. The fact that they study public targets means that law enforcement agencies need to be aware of anyone paying a suspicious level of attention to public facilities by making repeated visits without apparent purpose. Al-Qaeda members frequently study targets to determine their level of security and vulnerability, so security and law enforcement need to be aware of anyone appearing to linger in a public space while also seeming to study the place itself.Al-Qaeda cells depend on maintaining secrecy and avoiding law enforcement agencies’ attention, so a logical counterterrorist strategy would be mindful of their methods and meet them on their own terms. They rely on knowledge of authorities’ routines, so varying these routines and disrupting their usual practices is essential to detection and deterrence. REFERENCES Counterintelligence Division, Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2001). Terrorist Training Manual. Washington DC: Department of Justice.