Steady-State Economics and Environmental Philosophy Research Paper

Steady-State Economics and Environmental Philosophy - Research Paper Example According to an article â€Å"CASSE proposes the establishment of a steady state economy with stabilized population and per capita consumption.† (U.S. Fed News Service) To begin let’s examine the significance the environment has on a state’s economy. Why is it important that the two thrive together to produce a stabilized economy, The environment and the economy rarely have traveled together on the same path. Gains in the economy come at the sacrifice of the environment. Protection of our natural resources hamstrings business development. Or so the argument goes. But what if by protecting special lands, cleaning up environmental problems and growing responsibly, we actually increase jobs, stop the population migration, and revitalize our communities? (DiBerardinis) According to an article published for Environmental Law the state of the environment plays a very significant role in the advancement or the downslide of the economy, The warning of "global environment al crisis" is being sounded more and more frequently by scientists, politicians, and other observers. The doomsday predictors of the 1960s, like ecologists Paul Ehrlich(1) and Rachel Carson,(2) have been joined by an ever-growing chorus of doomsayers in the 1990s.(3) Rachel Carson's concerns regarding pesticides were prominent in the early 1960s; today, concerns about the potential myriad of ecological effects from global warming predominate. Loss of biodiversity from habitat destruction, pollution, and other threats is also a major present concern.(4) The proliferation of environmental alarms has, as expected, been accompanied by claims of critics that the alarms are overstated.(5) Besides denying the existence or magnitude of environmental threats, these critics question the priorities of the leading environmental advocates and their focus on government regulation, rather than the market, to address those priorities.(6) Underlying the debate over whether humans' demands on the Ear th have exceeded its ecological carrying capacity is a debate over the propriety of economic growth, the primary goal for rich and poor countries and for most international institutions.(7) The doomsayers generally see humans' unbridled pursuit of economic growth as a major root of all or most environmental evils; their critics generally see growth as providing a solution to environmental problems.(8) While this debate has continued, there has been increasing consensus behind the concept of "sustainable development," which became a global future through its adoption by the United Nations-sponsored Brundtland Commission in a 1987 report entitled Our Common Future.(9) That report defined sustainable development vaguely as development that "meet[s] the needs and aspirations of the present without compromising the ability to meet those of the future."(10) Although that concept has helped raise the prominence of environmental protection on national and global policy agendas, it has not u nseated economic growth as the primary public policy objective. (Wenig) The impact of the environment is crucial to the survival of a state’s economy. There are many ways to help ensure the environment’s safety. There are organizations that rise up to protect natural habitat from extinction. There are organi

Death Penalty Essay Example for Free

Death Penalty Essay Roy Brown is a conservative who believes in individual rights and the right to life. He believes there is no deeper violation of a citizen’s right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness than the government killing them when they’re actually innocent. With the use of the death penalty, mistakes are highly inescapable (Brown 1). More than one hundred and forty death row inmates had been set free after evidence was revealed proving they were wrongfully condemned and this often happened decades after they were sentenced to die. Sometimes the mistake was not caught and a few innocents have been put to death. Brown states that the death penalty is also somewhat bad for the victim’s families. The families are brought along to this drawn out legal process and appear in many court sessions reliving the tragedy as it is impossible to make capital punishment quick (Brown 1). Another negative about the death penalty is its cost. Legal expenses alone make each death penalty case much more expensive than a case where a criminal is sentenced to life without the likelihood of parole (Brown 2). Brown values human life and believes that everyone should die a natural death. The same principles that motivate him to oppose abortion also motivate him to oppose the death penalty. All life is valuable and the only way that the citizens can be sure an innocent person is never executed is by ending the death penalty completely (Brown 2). Roy Brown has a type of bias with his opposition of the death penalty. He is a Catholic so his religious views get in the way of his perspective on the use of capital punishment. Catholics believe that the fundamental respect for human life includes even those guilty of crimes. So Brown, as a Catholic, grew up disliking the death penalty as he has been taught in his religion to love human life. So his view with Catholicism might blur out how he truly views the use of the death penalty without religion involved. Brown, Roy. Why Conservatives Should Oppose the Death Penalty. The Daily Caller. The Daily Caller, 16 Apr. 2013. Web. 26 Sept. 2013.

Social interaction and the development of infants

Social interaction and the development of infants In the first two years of an infants life, they undergo many changes that allow them to develop into a fully functioning human being. These developments are controlled by internal and external factors. Social interaction is an exceedingly influential external factor, which can help to form many aspects of development. For example, infants in the first two years of their lives are learning to differentiate between social stimuli, for example recognising mothers face and voice. This is mastered by the infant in a relatively small time scale after birth (Mills Melhuish, 1974). The child can then use this new learned ability to interact with its caregivers, even without understanding the social meaning of their actions, for example when a child smiles, the child is not aware of what a smile means in our society, but when the caregiver sees this sign of emotion, they cannot help but to smile back, and positively reinforces that learned action to the child. To see how important social int eraction is for the development of a child in the first two years of its life, it is important to observe key areas of behaviour such as attachment to others, the childs temperament and their language acquisition. One of the most researched areas of development in children is attachment and how we form them. Attachment, as defined by Ainsworth and Bell 1970, is an affectional tie that once person forms between himself and another specific one. This is the first strong social connection that infants have to another human being/s. Research by Shaffer and Emerson, conducted in 1964, and suggested that there are three stages in the development of primary attachments; the asocial stage, the stage of indiscriminate attachment and the stage of specific attachment. The asocial stage, which spans from birth to six weeks, is when the infant uses signals to interact with its environment, for example crying, babbling, and smiling and so forth, which is not aimed specifically to anyone. The second stage of indiscriminate attachment, the infant has learnt that if it cries it will receive attention, but is still not aimed at a particular individual and the child can be comforted by anyone. This stage lasts u ntil around seven months after birth. The last stage, specific attachment, can be observed between seven and eleven months, and is suggests that the infant will start to form specific attachments to caregivers, a bond is then made, and will no longer accept comfort from others. Bowlby (1988) described that the need for social attachment between the infant and its caregiver is because the infant needs to actively seek to attain or maintain proximity to another individual that is more attuned to their surroundings and can provide for the infants needs (attachment behaviour). There have been three key theories to try and explain why we form attachments, and if it is important for children to form social bonds in the early stages of life. The psychoanalytical theory proposes that feeding and the production of food is the main reason why we form attachments. Based on Freuds psychosexual stages, this theory focuses on the oral stage (the first of the stages), and suggests that the child gets pleasure from attaining food through sucking behaviour (Miller, 1993). Erikson in his stage theory (1950, 1968) states that the first year of life is where the infant establishes trust between themselves and a caregiver, who in return provides nutrition and comfort. Without this trust, the child does not know whether they will be provided with the vital source of support that the child needs to survive. There are two main learning theories, the first being the early learning theory. The psychoanalytical theory is closely linked to this theory, as they both suggest that being provided with food is the main reason why we attach. This theory revolves around the secondary drive hypothesis by Dollard and Miller (1950), which explains that infants attach to the mother to gain access to important things that are needed for survival, things that they cannot provide for themselves for example food and warmth, all of which soothe the childs cries. This social interaction between the mother and the child then allows for the infant to associate this with the caregiver, and the bond is strengthened. However, this hypothesis disagrees with research conducted by Shaffer and Emerson (1964), which found that the infant can become attached to more than one caregiver, who is not necessarily the sole provider to the physiological needs of the child. The second learning theory for attachment is the social learning theory devised by Hay and Vespo, (1988). The theory states that the child does not automatically become attached to the mother, or caregivers, but that the caregivers has to interact with the child and show them affection, for the child to feel a connection with them, from which they can then form a relationship together. Another theory of attachment is Ethological theory, which states that there is an evolutionary role in the reasoning of why we as humans attach. The theory suggests that mothers before birth are already biologically predisposed to become attached to their offspring, and therefore ensures that they survive, and the species can continue. Research to support this theory was mainly collected by Bowlby (1969, 1980), who suggests that attachment is monotropic; focused on only one caregiver, namely the mother. However, research by Ainsworth (1979) disagrees with Bowlbys theory of monotropy, and suggests that infants form more than one attachment to many different caregivers. This is supported by Shaffer and Emersons study, which displayed attachments to other close family members for example grandparents and fathers. It has also been found that siblings can also be important in contributing to the social development of infants (Adler, 1964). These three theories suggest that attachment between the infant and its caregiver is formed relatively easily, but comparatively, if a child has little to no access to social interaction in the first two years of their life, it can be particularly harmful to the childs development. This can be explained by the social stimulation hypothesis which can be observed in research collected in the 1940s, which showed the children growing up in institutions had a low staff to child ratio and so rarely had any interaction with a caregiver. Children were also segregated from each other, and so were cut off from all forms of social stimulation. At first the infants acted no different from those brought up in normal family homes where the children are given lots of attention and interaction, but after six months there was a noticeable difference; the childrens behaviour changes and the children were completely avoidant of any social activities (negative working model of the self) and see that the y are not getting noticed by others (negative working model of others), (Goldfarb, 1943). This research implies that children need constant social interaction to develop properly. Bowlby (1953), after studying institutional care after the Second World War, saw that the care that the children were receiving was more physical, and not for their emotional needs. He developed the maternal deprivation hypothesis; suggested that infants should experience a warm, intimate and continuous relationship with his mother. Conversely, infants in institutions in which there are a much higher staff to infant ratio generally interact normally with their caregivers and develop well throughout life and suffer fewer effects (Tizard and Rees, 1975). Language is another element of develop in the first two years that is strongly influenced by social interaction. There are three main theories that discuss what influences our language acquisition. The learning/empiricist perspective explains that children learn their language by listening to their parents speech and imitating it (Bandura, 1971) and by positive reinforcement when the infant says something grammatically correct (Skinner 1957). Research by Weisman and Snow (2001) found that if caregivers expose their children to more advanced words earlier on in life, then the childs language will be more developed than other children of the same age group. However, it has been argued that children cannot learn syntax this way, as seen by Baron (1992), when children are just learning new sentences; they create statements that adults do not say and therefore could not have imitated. Chomsky (1959, 1968) disagrees with the learning perspective and suggests a more biological/nativist approach and not a social implication. He suggests that language is too complicated for it to just be learned from caregivers, instead that children born with an innate language acquisition device (LAD) in the brain which processes verbal input. Slobin (1985) thinks that we have an inborn language-making capacity (LMC) instead of an LAD. Both of these systems supposedly enable infants to combine vocabulary that has been collected in the brain, enables them to understand what it means, and then can use this knowledge to create sentences. Lenneberg (1967), combined the two theories of Chomsky and Slobin, and suggests the sensitive-period hypothesis, which states that the best time to learn a language is before adolescence; after this period has been reached language becomes very difficult to learn. For example, a case study of 14 year old Genie (Curtiss, 1977), who until this age was ke pt locked away with little to no social interaction, and was beaten by her father if she made any noise. When Genie was discovered, she had not had access to language and so could not speak. When she was taught language, she was able to conjure up sentences quite easily, however she was unable to acquire the rules of syntax, which young children learn early on in life without being taught to, supporting Baron (1992) theory. However, Moerk (1989) suggests that language development cannot be explained using LAD or LMC because the researchers themselves do not understand how they work, and how the information received in the brain is processed and understood. The interactionist perspective suggests that both empiricist (social) and nativists (biological) perspective both contribute to learning acquisition (Tomasello, 1995). A third factor for development that is influenced by social interaction in childhood is temperament. A definition of temperament as described by Hartup and Van Lieshout (1995) is a substrate for personality development, consisting of simple, basic styles that emerge early and that are tied closely to distinctive modes of emotional expression. Thomas and Chess (1977, 1989) reported three main type of temperamental styles; Easy infants; happy, easily comforted, Slow to warm up infants; fussy and are less adaptive, and Difficult infants; negative, extreme reactions for example long periods of continuous crying. Hartup and Van Lieshout (1995), suggests that temperament has social implications for the way in which an infant relates to other people for example difficult infants are more likely to develop behavioural problems as they get older. A way to try and combat this behaviour is for caregivers to provide more stimulating challenges for the child and try to promote the children to act in a more pro-active manner (Smith, Cowie and Blades, 1998). Thus suggesting that although temperament can continue throughout life, using social techniques can reduce aspects of temperamental behaviour as the child develops. In conclusion, attachment to caregivers, language acquisition and a childs temperament are all influenced by social interaction, and can be seen that the lack of it can lead to developmental abnormalities in children. For infants to develop healthily in the first two years of their life, it appears that they need high amounts of cognitive stimulation, feelings of security from those that care for them, and encouragement for behaviour, so that the child can positively attribute their actions and use these social cues, for example smiling and babbling, to develop all the key skills that they will need as they grow up.

Women Heed Stroke Warnings Better Than Men :: Essays Papers

Women Heed Stroke Warnings Better Than Men I read an article from the American Psychological Association Monitor. The article deals with women and the fact that studies show they heed stroke warnings better than men do. A stroke awareness program in central Illinois significantly increased public knowledge of stroke warning signs, but more among women than men, a team of medical researchers found. According to the article, the study’s lead researcher, psychologist Wayne Dornan, PhD, believes the key to women’s better performance can be found in the results of a two-year-old study, which found women fear motor impairments from stroke more than death and men fear death more than any deleterious consequence of stroke. In the more recent study, Dornan and his colleagues evaluated people’s understanding of the risk factors for stroke among residents of the twin cities of Bloomington and Normal in central Illinois before and after they implemented a five-month intensive stroke-awareness campaign. Overall, the number of people who knew at least one stroke warning sign—including weakness or numbness on one side of the body, difficulty speaking or understanding simple statements, and sudden blurred or decreased vision increased from 57 percent to 78 percent. But most of that increase could be accounted for by a rise in women’s awareness 67 percent to 81 percent. Men’s awareness barely increased at all apparently, more than half were unable to name a single stroke warning sign before and after the awareness campaign, the researchers found. The researchers obtained their data by surveying a random sample of more than 1,314 of the 100,000 residents of the twin cities before the campaign and 1,216 residents afterwards. Dornan said in the article that new time-sensitive pharmaceutical treatments for stroke have made it more imperative than ever that people recognize the symptoms of stroke and seek immediate treatment,. And another new study, noted by Doman published in an issue of Stroke suggests that the number of strokes in the United States is dramatically higher than previously estimated: 700,000 annually as opposed to the earlier estimate of 500,000.

Fashion Essay

Fashion cannot survive without the media. Its success as both an art form and a commercial enterprise depends upon attention in the media. The media have played a vital role in shaping fashion into the complex cultural phenomenon it has become. Photography, and later film and television, have medialised fashion. Fashion has become an intrinsic part of today’s visual culture, and vice versa. Fashion magazines, glossies and women’s journals cannot exist without fashion, but fashion also cannot exist without these magazines. This chapter looks at visual culture and the ways in which fashion is ‘fashioned’ by the media. The first half of the chapter gives a theoretical background to understanding contemporary visual culture. The second half of the chapter provides an introduction to the many ways that media theory can be used to analyse and understand fashion. Visual culture Since the invention of photography, film, television, video, CD-Rom and the Internet, we have rapidly shifted from a written culture to a visual culture: ‘We live in a culture of images, a society of the spectacle, a world of semblances and simulacra’ (Mitchell 1994: 5). Contemporary visual culture is both ubiquitous and complex. The image no longer stands by itself, but is informed by multimedia; it is usually integrated with text and music. A fashion photograph comes with a caption or an accompanying text. A fashion show doesn’t work without music or a choreography of moving bodies. Apart from their multimedia aspect, images also circulate in a global media society in which all kinds of genres and media are mixed. Precisely because this visual culture is so dominant on the one hand and so complex on the other, we need theoretical tools in order to be able to understand images, including images of fashion. To do justice to the complexity of visual culture, it is necessary to pose questions on the basis of an interdisciplinary framework: questions about significance and ideology; identity and visual pleasure; technology and economy. Theoretical insight creates media literacy. We can thus acquire an attitude towards the media we use every day that has aptly been described by Laura Mulvey as ‘passionate detachment’ (1989: 26). Before supplying a number of analytical instruments in the second half of this chapter, I would first like to place visual culture within the framework of postmodernism. I Theoretical framework Postmodernity Although the term ‘postmodernism’ is often described as vague and indeterminate, there are definite ways in which it can be characterised. Here I make a distinction between a) postmodernity, b) postmodern philosophy and c) postmodernism as a movement in art and culture (Van den Braembussche 2000). First of all, postmodernity. Postmodernity refers to the age we are currently living in, particularly the information society that has arisen since the sixties. It is a question, then, of an historical period in which we live. The information society can be characterised as ‘postcolonial’: after the Second World War, the colonies in the Third World achieved independence at a fast rate. This society is also ‘postindustrial’: heavy industry has been replaced by the exchange of services. From the sixties onwards, these services have increasingly been characterised by information technology, set in motion by the advent of the computer. Science and technolo gy are indispensable and give shape to our society. While the industrial society still functioned largely around property (who has control of the means of production?), the information society is mainly about access (‘xs4all’: ‘access for all’) – access to information, that is to say, to knowledge. Postmodernity means a networked society in which everything and everyone is connected with each other via mass media such as television and the Internet. Another characteristic is globalisation. Globalisation has taken place with the media (you can watch CNN and MTV all over the world) and with capital (you can use cash machines anywhere in the world). And with fashion. Benetton’s multi-racial campaigns show the more benign face of globalisation, but, to be fair, they have also drawn attention to the more dismal effects of globalisation. Applying the characteristics of postmodernity to fashion, we get the following picture. In the past, fashion was dependent on fabrics like silk, cotton and cashmere – as well as inspiration – that the West imported from its colonies. In the seventies the Hippies came alongwith their renewed interest in non-Western clothing. With the deconstructivist fashion of Japanese designers like Yamamoto in the eighties, the first non-Western designers broke open the closed, elitist fashion world. Now they have been succeeded by other designers such as Hussein Chalayan, Xuly Bà «t and Alexander Herchovitch. With the Fashion Weeks i n India and Africa, fashion has become globalised. When we look at the  fashion industry, the picture is even clearer. Whereas the Dutch fashion industry was originally established here in Holland itself- in Enschede for example – it has now largely moved to low-wage countries in Asia or the former East Block. Look at the label in your sweater or trousers and most likely you’ll find ‘Made in Taiwan’ or something similar. Globalisation results in cheap clothing and enormous profits in the West, but also in protests against exploitation, such as against the Nikes made by small children in Pakistan. These abuses signalled the start of the No Logo and anti-globalisation movements. Postmodern philosophy Secondly, postmodern philosophy. Two notions are important here: ‘the end of the Grand Narratives’ and ‘the death of the traditional subject’. These words suggest that Western culture is going through a crisis. According to the postmodern philosopher Jean-Franà §ois Lyotard, Western culture is no longer able to tell any ‘Grand Narratives’, by which he is referring to the end of ideology. This implies that ideologies (‘isms’ like Marxism or Feminism, but also religions such as Christianity) can no longer provide modern man with a meaningful frame of reference. Ideology finds itself in a crisis of legitimatisation, no longer able to announce the truth or to proclaim a future utopia. This does not mean, of course, that everyone has given up their beliefs; on the contrary, we are actually seeing a return to ideology and religion. But, Lyotard argues, nobody can impose that belief or that ideology on others as the one and only truth. People who still try to inflict any kind of truth upon others are called fundamentalists nowadays. The end of the Grand Narratives is not just a negative process. For most people it is liberating to be freed from a one-sided, enforced truth. What’s more, it has led to a blossoming of‘small narratives’ in postmodern culture. Now that there is no one dominant truth, many people have the right and freedom to tell their stories, including those who previously had few opportunities to do so, such as women, workers, blacks, young people. You see the same development in art: there is no longer one dominant movement but a multitude of directions. And we see the same pluralism in fashion. No longer a ‘Grand Narrative’ dictated by a single fashion king, or even by just one city, but a multitude of perspectives coming from many designers, in various cities and different parts of the world. The end of the Grand Narrative also has consequences for the view of human subjectivity. The traditional notion of the individual is that he (it was almost always a he) represents an autonomous and coherent entity, endowed with reason. It was mainly psychoanalysis that put an end to this notion. According to Freud, the human being is not at all governed by his reason, but rather by his unconscious. And it was Marx who claimed that it is our class that determines who we are. We may think we are individuals, but in fact we are defined by our class, ethnicity, age, sexual preference, religion, nationality and so on – the list is endless. In fact, then, we are not really an autonomous and coherent entity. This is why postmodernism no longer refers to an ‘individual’ but to a ‘subject’. A subject, moreover, that is split, fragmented, splintered. As a piece of graffiti in Paris in the eighties put it, ‘God is dead. Marx is dead. And I don’t feel so good either†™. A more positive way of formulating this idea of fragmented subjectivity is by analogy with the network society: the subject, the self, always stands in relation to an other. Instead of being autonomous we are all incorporated in a fabric of complex and mobile relations. Our identity is to be found, as it were, on a node of communication cir cuits. The postmodern subject is thus characterised by a dynamic and a diversity that were alien to the traditional individual. This change in the position of the human being has had the same effect as the end of the Grand Narratives: many more people can now make a claim to subjectivity who were previously excluded, such as blacks, women and homosexuals. This can also be witnessed by the recognition of art and culture produced by women, people of colour, and artists from the so called ‘Third World’. This development has resulted in a much greater freedom in the formation of human identity. Just look at pop culture, where someone like Madonna assumes a different image with the regularity of a clock. Today you can play with your identity by gender bending, for example. Or by crossings with other ethnic cultures, such as Surinamese or Dutch Muslims who borrow elements from the American black hip-hop subculture. Fashion is an important component of the play with identity. I n earlier days it was your gender and your class that determined what you had to wear, and there were strict rules that were not so easy to transgress. These rules now only apply to the Queen. Everyone else stands in  front of the wardrobe each morning to determine which clothes match his or her mood: baroque, gothic, sexy, or maybe businesslike today after all? Postmodernism Thirdly, the term postmodernism as applied to art and culture. A crucial characteristic of postmodernism is the fading distinction between high and low culture. Over the course of the twentieth century the traditional notion of culture has been freed from its connection with elitist art. Scholars nowadays employ a broad notion of culture, based on Raymond Williams’s famous expression ‘culture as a whole way of life’ (1958). Here it concerns a view of culture as a practice within a social and historical context. The rigid distinction between high and low culture is no longer tenable. In any case, it was always largely based on the controversy between word and image in Western culture, where the word is seen as the expression of the superiority of the mind and the image as expressing emotion and the baser desires of the body. The shift from a textual to a visual culture means the image is no longer viewed in purely negative terms but is valued for all its positive powers and the experiences it evokes. Moreover, ‘high’ culture and ‘low’ culture cannot be unequivocally linked to particular disciplines (read: literature versus television). Every art form has its low cultural expression. Just think of the portraits of the gypsy boy with a tear running down his face or pulp romantic novels. ‘High’ is stepping off its pedestal: haute couture is influenced by street culture. ‘Low’ is upgraded and receives attention in newspaper art supplements or is exhibited in the museum. Advertising phot os from Benetton, computer art by Micha Klein and fashion photos by Inez van Lamsweerde have all been shown in Dutch museums. Dà ©mocratisation and commercialisation are also crucial to the discussion of ‘high’ and ‘low’. Increased prosperity and dissemination via the media have brought art and fashion to within almost everyone’s reach. The enormous numbers of visitors to major exhibitions testify to this, as does the ‘festivalisation’ of big cities. Culture is ‘in’ and is eagerly consumed in large quantities. Moreover, commerciality is no longer associated exclusively with low culture; it has penetrated high culture, as can be deduced from the weekly  top ten lists for literature, the piles of CDs of music by Bach and Mozart in the local supermarket, Audi’s sponsoring of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, or Karl Lagerfeld’s designs at H&M. Another postmodern feature is inter- textuality, which amounts to the idea that a text always refers to other texts. Every text is a web of quotations, borrowed words and references. This term d oes not, of course, simply represent a narrow view of text; images likewise ceaselessly refer to each other. Advertising spots refer to videoclips, which borrow from television series, which in their turn quote films, which are themselves based on a novel. And that novel refers again to a play by Shakespeare, and so on and so on. It’s an endless game. Madonna’s video clip ‘Material Girl’ refers for example to Marilyn Monroe’s song ‘Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend’ in the film ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’. In an advertisement forEstee Lauder perfume, the model walks through a digital field of flowers that is identical to the one Madonna walks through in hervideoclip ‘Love Profusion’. Nicole Kidman, in the commercial for Chanel No. 5, does a perfect repeat of her role in ‘Moulin Rouge’. Some directors, such as Baz Luhr- man or Quentin Tarantino, have made inter- textuality their trademark. A l arge part of the visual pleasure in contemporary culture is based on recognition: the more references you can place, the more clever you feel as viewer. Some theorists, such as Frederic Jameson, call the postmodern form of intertextuality a ‘pastiche’. A pastiche is a textual or visual quotation which merely repeats; sheer quoting is the name of the game. The reference has no deeper meaning because all historical connections are abandoned. This can also be found in fashion. If you look at a John Galliano creation you can recognise myriad quotations: from other cultures (ethnic prints), from other times (nineteenth century silhouette), from street culture (‘bag lady’ with shopping cart and plastic bags) and even from the circus (clown-like make-up). Everything is thrown into a big pile while elements are wrenched from their historical time and geographical context. A term often used in this connection is ‘bricolage’, which literally means making do. We’ve become a ‘cut & paste’ culture, where everyone can tinker about and scramble together their clothes and even their identity. Postmodern culture is thus characterised by pastiche and bricolage. It’s not always an easy matter to indicate the significance of this cultural phenomenon, but it does  make fashion playful and flexible, wi thout it being compelled into an overruling ‘Grand Narrative’. A final characteristic of postmodernism that I would like to discuss is the transition from representation to simulation. We have already seen that postmodern pastiche – quoting, borrowing and referring – does not necessarily have any deeper meaning. This is because postmodern culture no longer represents, but simulates. This process is dependent upon the role of media technology. 1963 Amsterdam (NED) In 2003 the magazine American Photo put together a list of the 25 best photographers in the world. That list contained one Dutch name: Inez van Lamsweerde. Both an artist and a fashion photographer, she has ignored the dividing line between art, fashion and commercial work from the very beginning. And successfully. Her work is shown in many glossies such as The Face, Vogue and Arena Homme Plus (editorials and advertising campaigns) as well as in international museums and galleries. Her signature is clearly recognisable in both areas. Inez van Lamsweerde once said in an interview that she was obsessed with beauty. It’s always people she photographs – or recreates, to be precise. Her digitally altered creatures are alienating. Too smooth, too clone-like, too impersonal to be fully human. She often bases her work on ideal female images from the mass media and the body culture in connection with gene technology, surgery and bodybuilding, the manipulation of the body, identi ty and sex. In the series ‘Final Fantasy’ (1993) three-year-old girls posed coquettishly in satin underwear but with the mouths of adult men superimposed on their faces. The cloyingly sweet eroticised tot turns out to be a child demon. The series ‘The Forest’ V995†²) shows mWd-manneted passwe men vjWV women’s hands, and the women in ‘Thank You Thighmaster’ (1993) are really mutants who resemble mannequins, without body hair and with a neutral skin surface where nipples and genitals are supposed to be. The camera doesn’t lie? You certainly hope it does. Many models in Van Lamsweerde’s fashion photos are hyperstylised, exaggerated stereotypes, perfectly beautiful, without irregularities and without individual features. They move in a hyperrealistic setting in which the whole effect sometimes suggests the work of Guy Bourdin (for example, see the series ‘Invisible Words’ in Blvd 2,1994). But her oeuvre is more versatile than that of the old master, so it is also less likely to be  related to a certain time period. Inez van Lamsweerde graduated from Amsterdam’s Rietveld Academy in 1990. That same year she got her first photography assignment, the results of which appeared in Modus. In 1992 she received the Dutch Photography Prize as well as the European Kodak Prize (gold in the categories Fashion and People/Portraits). Since the early nineties she has been working almost entirely with her husband, Vinoodh Matadin. Today Van Lamsweerde and Matadin live and work chiefly in New York. The most recent developments in their work suggest a preference for less reconstructed photographs. In 2002 they took nine black-and-white photos of the members of the theatre group ‘Mug met de Gouden Tand’ (Mosquito with the Gold Tooth). In 2003 they produced a nude calendar for Vogue. All without digital effects. Literature: Hainley. Bruce. ‘Inez van Lamsweerde’, Art- Forum, October 2004. Inez van Lamsweerde ‘Photographs’.Deichtor- hallen Hamburg: Schirmer/Mosel. 1999. Jonkers. Gert. ‘Inez en Vinoodh’, Volkskrant Magazine, 22 February 2003. Kauw op het lijf. Rotterdam: Nederlands Foto Instituut. 1998. Schutte, Xandra. ‘Perverse onschuld’, De Groene Amsterdamer, 10 September 1997. Terreehorst. Pauline. Modus: Over mensen mode en het leven. Amsterdam: De Balie. 1990. Illustration: Inez van Lamsweerde. Devorah and Mienke. 1993 In the old conception of art, with Plato or Kant for example, a work of art refers to something deeper or higher beyond reality. Every work of art is unique and hence irreplaceable. As early as the 1930s Walter Benjamin argued that the role of the work of art was changing because of reproductive technologies. With the invention of photography and film (and later television and the Internet), any image can be reproduced infinitely. A copy of Rembrandt’s ‘The Night- watch’ always remains a copy of a famous, original painting, whereas a copy of Man Ray’s photograph of Kiki as a violin has no original. In the age of mechanical reproduction the distinction between original and copy therefore disappears, and with it what Benjamin calls art’s ‘aura’, namely that which makes a work of art unique and original. For fashion, reproductive technology initially meant an  enormous stimulus, since images of designs could be disseminated via the mediums of magazines and television. But in fashion, too, the copy has now overtaken the original design. A day after the fashion shows in Paris or Milan, the photos are already on the Internet and six weeks later H&M can sell replicas in their shops. In Pop Art, Andy Warhol played with the idea of the copy by producing silk-screened images of cans of Campbell soup or icons like Marilyn Monroe. Another example of the loss of aura is the disappointment all of us may feel when visiting Da Vinci’s ‘Mona Lisa’ or Vermeer’s ‘Girl with the Pearl Earring’ in the museum. We’ve already seen so many reproductions in books, films, on mugs, towels, with moustache and beard, or as a doll, that the original is hardly a match for these. Only if you actually succeed in experiencing the painting in the silence of the museum (but can you ever with all those tourists around you?), you may still find the original aura. In the seventies, Jean Baudrillard went a step further than Benjamin by claiming that not only art but also reality is changing under the onslaught of the media. He argues that the ubiquity of the media turns reality into a simulacrum, a copy of a copy. The simulacrum abolishes the difference between ‘being’ and ‘appearing’. Think of someone pretending to be sick – this person actually starts to display signs of sickness, so that it is no longer clear what is real and what is fake. It’s the same with postmodernism: our culture is so thoroughly ‘medialised’ that our experience is determined by the media. Media do not reflect reality, but construct it. Or to put it differently: media do not represent reality, but simulate it. We all know this phenomenon from our own experience. When we’re on holiday in Greece, for example, we exclaim that the sea is as blue as on the postcard. Our experience is determined by an image, in this case the postcard. If we’re on safari in Kenya, it seems as though we’ve landed in a National Geographic TV programme. And when we say to our beloved ‘I love you’ we can’t help feeling we’re acting in a soap. Umberto Eco therefore says that we are assuming a permanent ironic attitude in postmodern times. We can no longer innocently say ‘I love you’, because we’ve already seen and heard it a hundred thousand times on TV. The words have lost their meaning as well as their authenticity. But what we can do, according to Eco, is say it with irony: ‘As Ridge in â€Å"The Bold and the Beautiful† would say, I love you’. While reality shows on television try to simulate life as much as  possible, life itself has become one big reality show, in which being and appearance can no longer be separated. In art and in fashion we can see a longing for authenticity, as a nostalgic reaction to the culture of simulacra. People want something ‘real’ again in a postmodern culture in which the dividing line between real and unreal has become wafer-thin. The question, however, is whether such authenticity is still possible. Such is the power of the simulacrum that the media have created. Now that I have given an outline of postmodernism as a frame within which fashion functions, it is time to look more closely at instruments that can be used to analyse images. These analytical methods all come from poststructuralism, the theory underlying postmodernism. II Analysis The semiotic sign Poststructuralism was informed in the sixties by semiotics, psychoanalysis and Marxism. Poststructuralism is also referred to as ‘the linguistic turn’, since language formed the model for the development of these theories. De Saussure’s writings on semiotics helped to develop a structuralist analysis of the ‘grammar’ of any system, whether a myth, advertisement, film, fashion or novel, as in the work of the anthropologist Là ©vi-Strauss, the early Barthes or the film semiotician Metz (Sim 1998). The central idea that language is paradigmatic for meaning is followed by virtually all postmodern philosophers. According to the psychoanalytical theories of Lacan, even the unconscious is structured like a language. Although some philosophers pointed out that language and signification are fundamentally unstable, as in the deconstructionism of Derrida, or in Lyotard’s postmodern loss of ‘Grand Narratives’, text remains the central focus in poststructuralism. Everything in fact is interpreted as ‘text’, including image, music or fashion. While semiotics initially concentrated on literature, scholars soon started focussing on the field of popular culture, such as architecture, fashion, music, sport, women’s magazines or the video clip – to mention a few examples at random. Semiotics is the theory of ‘signs’ (from the Greek ‘semeion’, meaning sign). A sign is the smallest element that carries a meaning. Language is the system of signs that we are most familiar with, but traffic signs or, as Barthes has shown, fashion are also sign systems. A  sign consists of a signifier (in French, signifiant), the material carrier of meaning, and the signified (in French, signifià ©), the content to which reference is made. The letters and sound of the word ‘dress’ form the signifiers, which refer to the content of a concrete dress. Signifier and signified, form and content, together create meaning. The relationship between signifier and signified is almost always arbitrary; there is, after all, no reason why something is called a dress in English, a ‘jurk’ in Dutch, and a ‘japon’ in French. A sign always refers to something in reality. The first meaning of a sign is denotative; it is the meaningyou can look up in the dictionary. But things seldom have just one meaning; most signs have many secondary meanings. These are called connotations. In that case, the denotative sign, the signifier and the signified form a new entity, a new signifier for a new connotative sign, as in the following diag ram: SIGNIFIER| SIGNIFIED| CONNOTATION| SIGNIFIER| SIGNIFIER| DENOTATION| A well-known example is the red rose. At the denotative level it is simply a flower with leaves and thorns. In order to become a sign of love, the denotative meaning of the flower must become in its turn a signifier. The sign then forms the basis for a connotative, second meaning: love. Why? Because it is agreed upon in our culture that the rose, especially the red rose, symbolises love. An Amnesty International poster adds a third meaning to this well-known symbol by surrounding the thorns with barbed wire and placing the words ‘violence ceases where love begins’ halfway up the stem. The flower thus becomes a symbol of love and non-violence, while the thorns stand for violence. (Please read the table from the bottom up). SIGNIFIER: red rose as love| SIGNIFIED: thorns with barbed wire love| SECOND CONNOTATION: love is the reverse of violence| SIGNIFIER: red rose| SIGNIFIER: red rose| FIRSTCONNOTATION: My love for you| SIGNIFIER:rose| SIGNIFIER: Flower with thorns and lea ves| DENOTATION: Flower of the species Rosa| The multimedia image is an extremely complicated sign and can convey meaning in many ways. A still image, such as a fashion or advertising photograph, has the following signifiers: * perspective (camera position: angle, distance) * framing * photographic aspects such as exposure, rough grain, colour or black and white * composition or ‘mise-en-scene’ of what is depicted: setting, costume, make-up, attitude and actions of the model, etc. * text: caption or legend A moving image, such as film, television commercials, video clip or fashion show, has, all of the above aspects, plus even more signifiers: * movement of the models or actors; choreography * camera movement (pan, tilt, dolly, tracking) * editing * sound (dialogue, added sounds like creaking door) * music Any analysis requires us to briefly check all these elements, since they influence the meaning. Only then can you determine the denotation and the connotations. A close- up has a different effect than a long shot. Camera movements direct the viewer’s gaze. Quick editing evokes tension. Music creates atmosphere, as does lighting. This type of formal analysis soon reveals that the image is never simply a copy or a reflection of reality, even though what the camera records is real. Yet so many technological and aesthetic choices enter into the registration that reality is always moulded and constructed. The aim of analysis is to make this construction transparent. Digital images A formal analysis can be deepened even further by using the semiotics of C.S. Peirce, an American who developed his theories at the same time in the early twentieth century as De Saussure in Switzerland, without their being aware of each other. Peirce’s semiotics is used more often for analysing images because he focuses less on text than De Saussure does. Peirce argues that there are three sorts of relationships between the signifier and the signified: iconic, indexical and symbolic. An iconic relationship means that there is a similarity or resemblance between the signifier and the signified. An example of an iconic relationship is the portrait: the image (the signifier) resembles that which is portrayed (the signified). An indexical relationship presumes an actual connection between signifier and signified. A classic example is smoke as the signifier of fire, or the footprint in the sand as the signifier of the presence of a man on an ‘uninhabited’ island. The symbolic relationship corresponds to what De Saussure calls the arbitrary relation between signifier and signified: the red rose is a convention, based on an agreement. Yet this remains a moot point, because the rose has an iconic relation to the female sex organ. It is this resemblance that has probably led to the rose becoming a symbol for love. All three relationships apply to the mechanically reproducible image, like the photograph or film. An image is always iconic since that which is depicted shows a resemblance to the signifiers: every photograph is a portrait of a person or an object. Something that is photographed or filmed is also always indexical: there is a facturelationship, since the camera records reality-with the camera you prove that you’ve been somewhere (‘I was here’; the visual proof that tourists bring home as their trophy). Finally, the image, like language, has symbolic meanings, which are created through an interplay of the many audiovi sual signifiers mentioned above. Digital technology has put the indexi- cal relation under strain, because we can no longer know with certainty whether an image is analogue, and thus standing in a factual relation to reality, or digital, made in the computer without an existential relation to reality. Digital images thus create confusion. In semiotic terms: they maintain the iconic relation, for they look just like photographs and display a similarity between signifier and signified. But digital images are no longer indexical. This is what happens in Diesel’s ‘Save Yourself’ photo series. We see tiny models who look like people (iconic relation), but all the same seem unreal. Their skin is too smooth, the postures too rigid, the eyes too glassy. We suspect soon enough that the image has been digitally manipulated, which disturbs the indexical relation – these are not actual shots of real people. The tension between the iconic and the indexical relationship draws attention to the tension between real and unreal. And this creates a symbolic meaning. Together with the text, the photographs comment ironically on our culture’s obsession with remaining foreveryoung. Sometimes the digital manipulation is immediately clear, as in this picture of Kate Moss as a cyborg: a cybernetic organism. Because this is clearly an impossible image of a half human / half machine figure, we don’t get confused about the indexical status of the photograph. Its  symbolic meaning is immediately apparent, which here too represents a comment on the artificial ideal of beauty. It is typical of digital photography to create images of people that are like cyborgs, since many art and fashion photographs in today’s visual culture explore the fluid borders between man, machine and mannequin. Looking and being looked at I: the voyeuristic gaze Fashion is deeply involved with eroticism and sexuality. To analyse this we can turn to psychoanalysis, which determines how we shape our desires. The most classic model for desire is the Oedipus complex, which regulates how the child focuses its love of the parent onto the other sex and projects feelings of rivalry onto the parent of the same sex. This is more complicated for girls because they at first experience love for the mother and later have to convert this into love for the father, while the boy can continue his love for the mother without interruption. The Oedipus complex is particularly applicable in stories, in both literature and film, but in the fashion world it actually plays no crucial role, and so I won’t be going into it any further here. More relevant to fashion is the eroticism of looking. According to Freud, any desire or sexuality begins with looking, or what he calls scopophilia (literally the love of looking). The desiring gaze often leads to touch and ultimately to sexual activities. Although it has a rather dirty sound to it, scopophilia is a quite ordinary part of the sexual drive. Film theorists were quick to claim that the medium of cinema is in fact based on scopophilia: in the darkness of the movie theatre we are voyeurs permitted to look at the screen for as long as we like. There is always something erotic in watching films, in contrast to television which does not offer the same voyeuristic conditions since the light is on in the living room, the screen is much smaller and there are all sorts of distr actions. Laura Mulvey (1975) was the first theorist to draw attention to the vital role of gender in visual pleasure. The active and passive side of scopophilia (voyeurism and exhibitionism respectively) are relegated to strict roles of men and women. As John Berger, in his famous book Ways of Seeing, had already argued, ‘men act and women appear’, or rather, men look and women are looked at. According to Mulvey, this works as follows in classical cinema. The male character is watching a woman, with the camera  filming what the man sees (a so- called ‘point of view shot’). The spectator in the movie theatre thus looks at the woman through the eyes of the male character. The female body is moreover ‘cut up’ into fragments by framing and editing: a piece of leg, a breast, the buttocks or the face. The female body is thus depicted in a fragmented way. We can therefore say that there’s a threefold gaze that collapses into each other: the male charac ter, the camera and the spectator. Mulvey argues that the film spectator always adopts a structurally male position. It is important to realise that the filmic means, such as camera operation, framing, editing and often music as well, objectify the woman’s body into a spectacle. In Mulvey’s words, the woman is signified as ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’. At the same time the filmic means privilege the male character so that he can actively look, speak and act. Mulvey takes her analysis even further with the help of psychoanalysis. The voyeuristic gaze upon the female body arouses desire and therefore creates tension for both the male character and the spectator. Moreover, the woman’s body is disturbing because of its intrinsic difference from the male body. Freud would say the female body is ‘castrated’, but we can put it somewhat more neutrally: the female body is ‘different’. In a society dominated by men, women are the sign of sexual difference. In most cultures, it is (still?) the case that the woman-as-other, namely as other than man, endows sexual difference with meaning. Otherness, strangeness, difference always instils fear. The otherness of women incites fear in men at an unconscious level and this fear needs to be exorcised through culture, in film or art. According to Mulvey, this happens in cinematic stories in two ways. Firstly, through sadism where the female body is controlled and inserted into the social order. Sadism mainly accompanies a story and acquires form in the narrative structure. The erotic gaze frequently results in violence or rape. Nor is it accidental that in the classic Hollywood film the femme fatale is killed off at the end of the movie. No happy end for any woman who is sexually active. Only in the nineties is she allowed to live on at the end, like Catherine Trammell in ‘Basic Instinct’, or in television series like ‘Sex and the City’. The second way of exorcising the fear evoked by the female body is through fetishism. In that case the female star is turned into an image of perfect  beauty that diverts attention from her difference, her otherness. The camera fetishises the woman’s body by lingering endlessly on the spectacle of female beauty. At such moments the film narrativ e comes momentarily to a hold. Although Mulvey’s analysis dates from the seventies, her insights are still of considerable relevance for fashion today. The spectacle of fashion shows is almost totally constructed around looking at fetishised female bodies. Models have taken the place of film stars as the fetishised image of perfected femininity. Many fashion reportages make use in one way or another of the sexu- alised play of looking and being looked at. However, some things have changed since the time of Mulvey’s analysis. Feminist criticism has indeed counteracted women’s passivity in recent decades, and now we often see a more active and playful role for the female model. Not only is the woman less passive, but both fashion and other popular visual genres such as video clips have turned the male body into the object of the voyeuristic gaze. Now the male body too is being fragmented, objectified and eroticised. This is happening not only in fashion reportages but also on the catwalk. It may be interesting for students of fashion to take a closer look at how the male body is visualised, how passive or active the male model is, and how the gaze is supported by filmic or other means. Ethnicity also plays a role in the game of looking and being looked at. Stuart Hall (1997) and Jan Nederveen Pieterse (1992) have produced an extensive historical analysis of the way that coloured and black people are depicted in Western culture. Stereotypes are abundant, as in the image of the exotic black woman as Venus or the black man as sexually threatening. There are still very few black models in the fashion world. Again, it may be useful for students of fashion to analyse how ethnicity is visualised because of this long history of stereotyping. Does exoticising the model, for example, emphasise ethnicity? Or does it involve an actual denial of ethnic difference? This happens for example in fashion photos of Naomi Campbell with straight golden hair, or wearing blue contact lenses. Here, the black model has to conform to the white norm of ideal beauty. Looking and being looked at II: the narcissistic gaze So far I have been talking about looking at the other, but psychoanalysis also has something to say about looking at yourself. As a baby you are hardly conscious of yourself, because that self, or in psychoanalytical terminology the ego, still has to be constructed. A primary  moment in ego formation is what Jacques Lacan has called the mirror phase. A second important moment is the aforementioned Oedipus complex in which language plays a major role. The mirror phase, however, precedes language and takes place in the Imaginary, the realm of images. When you’re between six and eighteen months, and so still a baby, you’re usually held in your mother’s arms in front of the mirror. In identifying with its mirror image, the child learns to recognise itself in the mirror and to distinguish itself from the mother. This identification is important for the construction of the child’s own identity. For Lacan, it is crucial that this identification is based on the mirror image. He argues that the mirror image is always an idealisation, because the child projects an ideal image of itself. In the mirror the child sees itself as a unity, while it still experiences its own body as a formless mass with no control over its limbs. Th e recognition of the self in the mirror image is in fact a ‘misrecognition’. The child is actually identifying with the image of itself as other, namely as a more ideal self that he or she hopes to become in the future. Just check how you look at yourself in the mirror at home: in fact you always look at yourself through the eyes of the other. According to Lacan, this is in a certain sense man’s tragedy: we build our identity on an ideal image that we can never live up to. In his eyes, then, we are always doomed to failure at an existential level. We can take the mirror very literally (it is striking how often mirrors feature in films, videoclips, advertisements and fashion photos), but we can also interpret the process more metaphorically. For instance, the child sees an ideal image of itself reflected in the eyes of its adoring parents who put him or her on a pedestal: for your parents you’re always the most beautiful child in the world. And rightly so. When we’re older we see that ideal image reflected in the eyes of our beloved. We need that ideal image in order to be able to form and sustain our ego. It’s a healthy narcissistic gaze that is necessary for our identity. That ego is never ‘finished’, however; it has to be nurtured and shaped time and time again. And this is helped by internalising ideal images. The analysis of the mirror phase has been applied to many phenomena within visual culture. The film hero or heroine functions as the ideal image with which we identify ourselves. In the fashion world it’s the models. In fact you could designate visual culture as a whole in this way: pop stars, models and actors all  offer us opportunities for identifying with ideal images. Fan culture is largely based on this narcissistic identification. There’s another side to it, of course. In a culture in which youth, fitness and beauty are becoming more and more important, the ideal image becomes ever more unattainable. Many people are no longer able to recognise themselves in that prescribed ideal image and are extremely dissatisfied with their appearance. That then leads to frustration and drastic measures like plastic surgery, or to ailments like anorexia and bulimia. In that case the narcissistic gaze in the mirror falls short of expectations. Looking and being looked at III: the panoptical gaze So far we have mainly been concerned with analysing the desiring gaze: the voyeuristic look at the other (the desire to ‘possess’ the other) and the narcissistic look at oneself (the desire to ‘be’ the other). It is also possible to make a more sociological analysis of the play of looks in society. This brings us to the historian Michel Foucault, who has made a thorough analysis of how power works. Instead of seeing power as something that the one has and the other lacks, he argues that in modern culture power circulates in a continual play of negotiation, conflict and confrontation, resistance and contradictions. Changes regarding power are reflected in language. Whereas you were a victim in earlier days, now you’re an expert of experience. In this way you give yourself a certain power, namely the power of experience, even if that experience is unpleasant. One way of shaping power in our modern culture is by means of surveillance, or what Foucault calls the ‘panoptical’ gaze. He derived this from the architecture of eighteenth-century prisons which had a central tower in a circular building with cells. A central authority, out of sight within the tower, could observe every prisoner in every cell. The prisoners were also unable to see each other. The panoptical gaze means that a large group of people can be put under constant guard and scrutiny, while they cannot look back. In this way, says Foucault, they are disciplined to behave properly. Today the role of surveillance and monitoring has been taken over by cameras. Everyone knows there are security cameras ‘guarding our and your property’ in the street, in stations and supermarkets, in buses and trams and in museums. The knowledge that we are constantly and everywhere being watched by an  anonymous technology perhaps gives us a feeling of security (or the illusion of security). What is more important is that the panoptical gaze disciplines us to be orderly citizens. A large degree of discipline emanates from constant observation. Just as with Lacan’s mirror phase, we can interpret the panoptical gaze more metaphorically. It is not only security cameras that are creating a panopticum, but also the ubiquitousness of media such as television and the Inte rnet. Crime watch programmes show us images from surveillance videos in order to catch ‘villains’, while reality programmes reveal how our fellow citizens commit traffic offences. Satellites orbiting in space keep a permanent eye on us. Mobile telephones are normally equipped with GPS (Global Positioning System) and always know where we are to be found. When I was on holiday in Italy, my mobile phone sent me messages like ‘you are now in Pisa, where you can visit the Leaning Tower’ or ‘you are now in Piazza Signoria in Florence; did you know that Michelangelo’s David†¦Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ and so on. For a moment I was that little girl again who knows that God is always watching over her. But divine omnipresence has now been replaced by an anonymous, panoptical gaze. Our surfing behaviour on the Internet and our purchasing behaviour in the supermarket are registered in the same way. We can bring these three ways of seeing together. With the voyeuristic gaze we discipline the other; we all know that secret look which we use to approve or disapprove of someone at a glance. With the narcissistic gaze we discipline ourselves, through the wish to fulfil an ideal image. By internalising the panoptical gaze we discipline our social behaviour, as well as our bodies. Fashion plays an important role in this complicated play of gazes. You only have to wander around any school playground or look around you in the street to realise how fashion determines whether someone belongs or not, what the ideal images are, and how groups keep an eye on each other, disciplining each other as to ‘correct’ clothing. Through clothing I can make myself sexually attractive for the voyeuristic gaze of the other. Or I can subject the other to my voyeuristic gaze if I find their body and clothes attractive. I can use clothing to construct my own identity and emanate a particular ideal image. But fashion is more than just clothing. Fashion also dictates a specific ideal of beauty. That beauty myth determines how we discipline our bodies, for example by subjecting them to diets, fitness, beauty treatments such as waxing, depilation, bleaching and  even to plastic surgery. In short, fashion ultimately affects the body too. We see an example of that in the di gital photo series ‘Electrum corpus’ by Christophe Luxerau, which shows us how fashion is literally engraved on the skin: the logo has become our skin. Bibliography On postmodernism: Baudrillard,Jean.5/w «/ai/ow5. New York: Semiotext(e), 1983. Braembussche, A.A. van den. Denken over kunst:Een inleiding in dekunstfilosofie. 3rd, revised ed. Bussum: Coutinho, 2000. Docherty, Thomas, ed .Postmodernism: A reader. 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The essay can be downloaded from www.annekesmelik.nl (> publications > articles) On visual culture and ethnicity: Dyer, Richard. White. London: Routledge, 1997. Gaines, Jane. ‘White privilege and looking relations: race and gender in feminist film theory’, Screen 29, no. 4 (1988): 12-27 hooks, bell. Black looks: Race and representation. Boston: South End Press, 1992. Nederveen Pieterse,Jan. White on black: Images of blacks and Africa in Western popular culture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992. Ross, Karen. Black and white media: Black images in popular film and television. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996. Shohat, Ella and Robert Stam. UnthinkingEurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the media. London: Routledge, 1994. Williams, P. and L. Chrisman, eds. Colonial discourse and post colonial theory. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. Young, Lola. Fear of the dark. ’Race’, gender and sexuality in the cinema. London: Routledge, 1996. On new media: Bolter, Jay and Robert Grusin. 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A selection, 1-7. New York: Norton, 1977 (1949)- Barthes, Roland. Le systà ¨me de la mode. Paris: Seuil, 1967 R. Barthes & M. Ward, Thefashion system. Berkeley [etc.] (University of California Press) 1990 Bruzzi, Stella and Pamela Church Gibson. Fashion cultures: Theories, explanations, and analysis. London: Routledge, 2000. Klein, Naomi. No logo. London: Flamingo, 2001.

Movie Monsters essays

Movie Monsters essays The cinematic flop, Spiders, has many fictitious attributes about its main character the tarantula. I found that the movies greatest mistake was keeping the spider proportional to its weight. Hollywood seems to be perpetually failing when they create their movie monsters, and succeeded to fail with this movie also. Throughout the movie the tarantula becomes greater and greater in size. Starting out, the spider was consistent with the size found in nature. Each time a new spider was conceived it was many times larger then the last. The second spider was the size of a basket ball and showed the first symptoms of having to large of a body to support with the size of legs it had. After a few more generations the spider was the size of a house. The legs of the tarantulas legs were nowhere near the size needed to support its weight. The next problem our Hollywood creators failed to take into account is its sense organs. More noticeably towards the automobile sized generations, or the house sized generations eyes were incorrect. Both generations eyes were too large for sight purposes. As humans grow from baby to adults their eyes dont stay proportional to the bodys growth. The same law should be taken into account when building the monsters. Instead of eyes the size of basketballs and beach balls, they should be around the size of golf balls or racquetballs. The most entertaining mistake that the creator made was the way the spider moved. The first thing that caught my eye was an early generation spider that was roughly the size of a basket ball running across a pain of glass. In true life the surface of glass is to smooth for a spider its size to walk on. Later in the movie I witnessed the last generation of the spiders crawling on the side of a glass building. Given the size and weight of the spider, it would have no chance to grip the glass, and better yet the glass...

Romero Brittos Art Form

Romero Brittos Art Form Art is a product or process of arranging items so that they can influence and affect one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect, where the arrangement of these items often has a symbolic significance. In art, creativity and innovations are key attributes and art includes music, painting, sculptures, painting, photography, and literature.Advertising We will write a custom research paper sample on Romero Brittos Art Form specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Those people who are involved in art are called artists and organize their arts in way that will influence people. On the other hand design is a plan or convection for the construction of a system or an object. Arts and design go hand in hand because; Artists cannot be able to perform their work without design. Before starting the artwork, the artist first designs the items, object, or music he or she wants to produce and then starts his work. This paper focuses on a world artist named Romero Britto and his art form. It further focuses on the meanings of his works to him and the influences the artist has to the world (Parker 19). Romero Britto’s Biography: He was born in Recife, Brazil in 1963. At the early age, Romero learned to paint surfaces such as newspapers. At the age of 23, he travelled to Paris where he worked with Matisse and Picasso and combined influences from cubism with pop to create iconic style. This gained him popularity especially through The New York Times that described his work as â€Å"exudes warmth, optimism, and love†. In 1988, Rometo relocated to Miami and became an international artist. During the year 1989, in the campaign of vodka, Warhol, Haring as well as Romero were selected. Since then his pop sensibility has earned him many collaborations, the latest being the FIFA that he created an official poster for the year 2010 World cup. In addition, he has illustrated many books, where Simon, Schuster, and Rizzoli publi sh his books. His popularity has grown tremendously and his work exhibited in galleries and museums in more than 100 countries. In addition, he has created several public art installations. Example of these public art installations are John F. Kennedy Airport (New York) and O2 Done (Berlin). Britto views art as a field of positive change while artists are the agents of this positive change. He collaborates with over 250 charitable organizations which he donates time, arts and resources as well as serving as a benefactor. He also serves in several boards such the St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital.Advertising Looking for research paper on biography? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Rometo Britto Art: Through the popularity of his work, Rometo has been active in the production of his arts. The form of his art compared to other artists is of high quality. In our context, form has the meaning of how art items are viewed as a whole piece of visible items and the unity of these elements. During the artwork, the artist shifts the focus of his work to the interrelationship between art and audience as well as the form of relationship between the painter and the model. There is a comparison of two windows of flowers from Britto and the other from Weinberg. He asserts that Britto’s metal sculpture flower was bright and colorful to be used for both indoors and outdoors exhibition.† like all his work, it is of intellectual content, going for easy emotional appeal, and relies on industrial perfection to achieve its attraction† (Betancournt 41). This is clear evidence that the kind of art works that Brito produced were of high form, a result of creativity and design used. Britto was attractive just the way a new car is and the flower was happy and engaging what is considered as a standard art world treatment of subject. Moreover, Britto’s flower represented the loca l environment. The brightness and colorfulness represented the bright and colorful nature. Looking at this flower could have changed ones perspective towards nature. Brito’s art form focused on bringing meaning that would help the viewer to be optimistic of what is happening in the world (Barbara 14). In another sculptural piece of art called a mother’s love, he intended to bring meaning of how mothers should have great love to their siblings. It comprised of two elephants sculpture, that is, a mother and a child close together, an illustration that there was communication and love between them (Kirchmar 32). In addition, another piece of his art but this time a serigraph called American revival that has one big heart with the United States of America flag colors surrounded by smaller hearts with different colors signified how the Americans should be united. His intention of using the heart was to symbolize love that should bind the people of America to their nation as well as the nation to its people (Rectanus 15). Influence of Britto; According to his biography alongside the meaning of his artwork, Britto is an artist of high caliber. He has been an agent of positive change to the world through his actions. Having the pilferage to speak at the World Economic summit in Davos is an indication of a person who has initiated change to the world.Advertising We will write a custom research paper sample on Romero Brittos Art Form specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More However, the collaborations with various charitable organizations are a sign of being a good role model. Britto has held countless schools and institutional talks, which justifies that his influence is great in the World since no institution or school would allow someone with negative influence to speak to the students (Wales 19). Similarly, through his arts Britto has been able to pass great message of love, peace, unity, as well as enlightenin g the society on different aspects of nature and culture (Rectanus 53). He has produced sculpture with plants and their species, animals and people to pass important information to the people. For the animals, Britto has given the people an insight of how they should treat and love the animals (Ellwood 67). Britto has been called upon to design various places in order to capture the attention or influence people to have a given attitude to those places. Britto was given the role to create new designs for Land Shark Stadium exterior gateways (Horrow and Tagliabue 53). When the stadium became popular, he turned it into a guest place. The invitation by the president of Brazil at the beginning of the year 2011 in Rede Cegonha to participate in making a logo reached 61 million people including children and mothers. If his work had no influence, the president would not have invited him for the project (Betancourt 16). Britto was known to maintain peace and resolve conflicts by internation al programs for negotiation as a benefactor. In nutshell, Britto can be said to be a person of high caliber, great influence as well as a mentor to people who their career aspiration is in arts. His attitude of having his own principles is a challenge to many who find the world as full of impossibilities. Betancourt, Michael. Re-viewing Miami: A Collection of Essays, Criticism, Art Reviews. Miami: Wildside Press, 2004. Print. Biography. Romero Britto. n.d. Web.Advertising Looking for research paper on biography? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Ellwood, Mark. The Rough Road to Miami. London: Rough Guides Ltd, 2002 Print. Horrow, Rick and Tagliabue, Paul. Beyond the Scoreboard: An Insider’s Guide to the Business of Sport. USA: Morgan James Publishing, 2011. Print. Kirchmer, Mathias. High Performance through Process Excellence: From Strategy to Operations. New York: Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 2009. Print Parker, Barbara. Suspicion of Malice. New York: E-Rights/E-Reads, Ltd. Publishers, 2000. Print. Rectanus, mark. Culture Incorporated Museums, Artists, and Corporate Sponsorships. USA: University of Minnesota, 2002 Print. Wales, Jimmy. Rometo Britto’s. USA: PS-Professional Services, 2008. Print

The Lady with the Dog essays

The Lady with the Dog essays The film "The Lady with the Dog" is based on the short story by Anton Chekhov. The story deals with an affair between a Russian man and woman. One of the main characteristics in this story is that the author designs the settings not only to help the audiences understand what is going on in the present, but also to foreshadow what will happen in the future. Dmitri Gurov, who is under forty years old, goes to Yalta which is located in southern Russia to have a vacation alone. He is a married man with three children, a daughter and two sons. In general, he is dismissive of the other sex, referring to them as the "lower race," but he cannot live without them. One day he meets a woman named Anna Sergeyevna who has a white Pomeranian dog. She is also married and comes from St Petersburg to vacation in Yalta alone as well. She has an affair with Dmitry and falls in love with him. After several days, they go back to their respective homes: Dmitry in Moscow and Anna in St. Petersburg. In Mosc ow Dmitry cannot get Anna out of his mind. After a while, he decides to find her in St Petersburg where she lives. He goes to a theater that features an opera titled The geisha hoping to see Anna and finally meet her. When she sees him, she is horrified by the sight of Dmitry standing in front of her. She tells him to leave St, Petersburg and that she will visit him herself in Moscow soon. Then she goes to Moscow regularly every two to three months. They are in love as if they were husband and wife; however, they both know that it is a frivolous affair. One day as they talk about their future, Dmitry tells Anna that they will find a way to live openly. Chekhov uses settings to not only define physically but emotionally, as well. One of the most remarkable settings is the features of the cities where Dmitry and Anna meet. Yalta, where they meet for the first time, is represented as a vacation area located in the "sea front." The warm weather of the Yalt...

Sport in the USA and Canada Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Sport in the USA and Canada - Essay Example By doing this, and as well taking into consideration any and all other key and related issues, we will not only be able to gain a more informed and knowledgeable understanding on both countries in terms of sport overall, but as well we will be able to see the similarities and differences that are present in this regards. This is what will be dissertated in the following. In both the United States and Canada sports are looked upon as being of great significance and importance, however one of the most major points that should be pointed out to begin with here is the fact that different sports are looked upon as being more important in each country. While hockey is the predominant sport in Canada, football and basketball are the predominant sports in the United States. Sports are a national pastime in both countries, and as well, professional sports are a sizeable business venture in both cases. In fact, professional sports are one of the largest and most powerful business ventures of all in both cases, particularly so in the United States, where more sports are more largely predominant. ... e United States has fifty states and basically a team from each state, Canada tends to only have a few teams for each sport, and thus this obviously narrows down the influence of Canada in sport overall in comparison to the United States. When we look at particular sports, such as hockey and curling, we automatically think of Canada before the United States, while when we think of baseball and football we tend to think of the United States first, and there is a big question surrounding this - why The answer is quite simple, and it is that the sport simply suits the overall culture of each country; Canada has a consistently colder climate and so sports such as hockey and curling are able to be played for longer durations throughout the year, whereas in the United States, where there is mild weather for most of the year throughout most of the country, they are thus then able to play more fair weather sports, such as baseball, basketball and football, for instance. The role and importance of sport in the United States is incredible, and athletes are actually looked up to by a lot of people more than any other media figure, they are respected that much. In fact, the influence that these athletes have on the lives of today's male and female youth in particular has been analyzed in various different studies, one in particular which was co-authored by a professor and which was conducted by two undergraduate students at the United States Sports Academy. "Athletes at the middle school, high school and junior college level were asked to rate the importance of sports in their lives and the likelihood of advancement in athletics as well as careers in sports. The two survey researchers, their professor and a third undergraduate analyzed the results of the survey and how they

Capacity to contract is a concept meant to protect those who are Essay

Capacity to contract is a concept meant to protect those who are disadvantaged in the society Explain - Essay Example Simply stated, a contract may be valid when made by parties recognized by law to be of legal personality be they natural or artificial persons. When the law forbids or limits a party from performing certain activities, any contractual relationships entered into by them to do so become either void or voidable on the basis of incapacity. In some cases, this incapacity is referred to as incompetence. In some cases however, certain classes of persons are only able to engage in contract only to limited extents as noted by Gaylord and LeRoy (2003). Some persons that are considered in these classes include minors, alien enemies, people who are mentally unsound or insane, bankrupts, drunkards, companies, receivers of companies, and partnerships among others according to the United Kingdom’s law. Such incompetence or incapacity in some cases may be regarded in terms of absence of good faith on the other party’s side. What this means is that all sober and sane adults can contract although their actions are controlled to protect other persons from being subject to exploitations. The intention of this measure is to protect those persons who may not be able to make decisions that are to their best interest according to Barnett (1986) and Barnett (2003). The requirement for capacity however can be challenged in exceptional cases such as when the contact with a person who is not of legal capacity regards necessities of life which include shelter, clothing and food. The argument in this case is that certain goods or services are required for human survival and even those who are incompetent need them. In other cases an incompetent party may enter into a contract with a competent party out of social need (Austen-Baker, 2002) as in the case where a teenager purchases from a business person a tuxedo for their graduation. In general,

Empowerment and Organizational Effectiveness Essay

Empowerment and Organizational Effectiveness - Essay Example According to the paper, Â  human capital offerings in the form of their qualifications, skills, and experiences enhance organizational outcomes. Therefore, employee training, skill enhancement, and other expertise are given priority in strategic activities. With such level of commitment from organization, employees become even more committed and help organization to achieve its objective that results in an effective organization. Competitive markets reveal that all components of effectiveness are efficient in organization . Organization's excellence depends on its capability in achieving objectives by optimal use of its human resource, technology, and equipment. Experts believe that if empowerment results in better job satisfaction, it will also enhance employees' relationship with customers, suppliers, management, supervisor, and other colleagues.Therefore, empowerment directly influences organization's performance and effectiveness. This study discusses that there is a diverse body of literature on empowerment and its influence on organizational and individual performance. The paper explores empowerment background, the concept of empowerment, its strength, and reviews the works of some prominent scholars. Within a decade of its arrival, the trend of employee empowerment has reached to the status of a movement, but some consider it a fad depending on their approach. The core idea behind empowerment is the increased individual employee's motivation through giving authority to the lowest level of organization where an efficient decision can be made. The concept of empowerment has its roots inconsistent motivation, participative decision making, job design, self-management, and social learning theory. The literature on empowerment has both macro and micro perspective. Macro perspective concentrates on organization's structure and policies, on the other hand, micro perspective deals with empowerment as an intrinsic m otivation.

Roles of Multidisciplinary Teams for Chronic Patients Assignment

Roles of Multidisciplinary Teams for Chronic Patients - Assignment Example In respect to this, it is important that it is known that most of the chronic infections are hereditary while other are dependant on the nature of life for example smoking. They can only be treated since cure is not possible. Chronic diseases cut across the board in what is referred to as A to Z. there are numerous categories of chronic diseases starting from Arthritis, Alzheimer's to zoonoses chronic illness that are passed from animals to human, avian flu is an example (Brighton, 2005). Of recent obesity has also added onto the long list of the chronic diseases. The cost of maintaining life in the presence of the chronic illness is seriously expensive and inmost case if one can not afford the cost then they simply succumb. For example in diabetes, there is need to inject insulin on a daily basis for those with the acute form (Brighton, 2005). Since most of the chronic illness cannot be completely be cured, there is extensive support from the health care providers such that the pati ent are given the orientation on how to manage some errands on their own. Before leaving the hospital the patient are given the basics of their condition and how to manage the conditions in the absence of the doctor (Larsen, Pamala, and Ilene, 2009). Cases of chronic illness can most likely lead to the disillusionment of the patient in taking care of themselves, this is because of the constantly recurring illness condition that requires very close monitoring and any complacency may be lethal to ones life. This make the patient to have the feeling that they are not able to enjoy life and get to be depressed and can developed great sense of trauma. In this case the patients require psychological therapies (Lubkin, Ilene, and Pamala, 1988). The trauma that is experienced by the patients can be horizontally be transferred to the heath care givers and even to the close family members in what is referred to as compassion fatigue or burnout. Compassion fatigue is defined as the cost of pro viding care to the patients as one tends to empathize with them to the extent that they themselves get affected (Ackley, & Ladwig, 2010). In the contemporary society, one of the most worrying chronic infection is the oncology cases, the development of cancerous cases is on the rife and this is attributed to the lifestyle that majority of the peoples have opted for. For this purpose, the prevalence and incidence of the cases of chronic infections will be considered. Prevalence of a disease consider finding the rate at which the disease spreads while in incidence, we do considers a snapshot number of the individuals who are victims as at a specific time (Funk, 2001). Characteristics of chronic diseases Chronic diseases have many factors in common; most of the chronic diseases are brought about by the lifestyle led by the individual. The emergence of these illnesses are solely brought by the nature of the life they opt for, for instance, in the over consumption of alcohol is known to o verwork the pancreases and this impairs the performance of the pancreas and may not be in a position of secreting the necessary hormones that are required for the regulation of some important factors like the control of the sugar level in

Ancient Chamorros on the Island of Guam Term Paper

Ancient Chamorros on the Island of Guam - Term Paper Example Accordingly, the Chamorro resistance became increasingly strong with relation to the Spanish colonizers. Many Chamorro leaders, most notably Agualin, was able to effectively organize resistance due in no small part to his ability to orate and present rousing speeches to his supporters (Cunningham 12). The following is an interpretation for a similar such speech to rally Chamorro resistance to the Spanish colonizers on the island. â€Å"For too long we have sat idly by as our way of life, our religion, our women, our territory, and our culture have been under constant assault from this foreign occupier. As was the custom of our people, we originally welcomed this occupier with the open arms of friendship (Flood 8). As was the custom of our people, we were not quick to anger when the occupier insulted our women, insulted, our culture, took our lands, and worked to subvert our culture. However, in this, we have been wrong. I will be the first among you to tell you that I believe our cu lture is superior to that of the occupier; however, these overly friendly and welcoming aspects of our culture have only worked to subvert us. Rather than using our own best judgment as to where we should draw the line of humility and friendship, we have allowed ourselves to be overwhelmed by the occupier and his repression that is forced upon us at seemingly every turn. There are not enough words my people to tell you of all the harmful things that the occupier has done to our way of life. However, I want to draw your attention to some of the most important. The first of these harmful things is the way in which the occupier has pushed his religion upon us. For generations we have respected the teachings of our elders and sought to live by the rules that our religion has laid out for us. However, rather than choosing to leave us alone or even to proselytize to us regarding their beliefs, the occupier has forced many of us to convert to their own gods. Worse still, our children are b eing taken from the arms of their own parents and placed into schools that force them to adopt the beliefs of the occupier – all the while forgetting the beliefs that their ancestors have held for so many years. Of all of the things that the occupier has done to us, of all the ways they have wronged us, the ideological theft of our own flesh and blood is the worst (DeFronzo 17). These young children are our only hope for continued survival into the future. The occupier knows this that is why they are actively working to convert them to their own twisted and warped way of thinking. Their goal is to drive us into extinction. By taking our children, they are taking our culture; by taking our culture, they are ensuring that we will never pose a threat to their conquest ever again. In keeping with the willful disregard that the conqueror has placed on our culture, he is actively disrespecting the sanctify of family and the decision of elder tribe members as he randomly selects fro m our own women those which he will make his wife and/or concubine. What has become of us! What will become of us? Will we stand for this? Will we let the occupier continue to defile our very own women? My people, this must end – we must make it end or we must die in the process. If the theft of our children and our women mean nothing to you, then consider our culture. If the theft of our culture means nothing to you – then consider the theft of our land. Every day the occupier