Fashion marketing Essay Example for Free

Fashion marketing Essay Fashion marketing over the years has changed considerably. This has been due to number reasons which include culture, lifestyles, technology and the media. A case student of a student will be used. Culture is a link between three components: what people think, what they do, and the  material products they produce but also has the property of shaping behaviour and  consciousness within a human society   (Hofstede, 2001) Fashion marketing and culture are closely linked.  People who are members of the same culture, most of the times have an unwritten code  between them for many sectors of their life social and private. Eskimos are a great example  of such unusual habits, which offer their wife to their visitor during the first night and they  simply mean Thank you with this gesture. Moreover, people around the world use different  movements of their face, hands and body to express their feelings and a foreign student might  feel embarrassed, annoyed or shocked when encounters incidents like the one mentioned  above or ones that are totally new and beyond his expectations. Read more: Fashion essay A Student may face  difficulties to adapt to the climate of the new country as well, which might be too warm or  too cold for the standards of his home town. Additionally, the food most probably will be  different and this may make him feel sick or enthusiast about this. The most important aspect  of a foreign students life will be the educational system and fashion, which may differ from  the relationship between teacher and student, to the way the courses are being taught and  gaining employment in the fashion industry due to different cultural norms and values. The  general   rule of thumb at this point is that, after a period of time, the culture abroad may  now come the normal way of living . The feelings, that have arisen from this whole  situation of encountering a new culture, are distinctly different to what had been witnessed in  Bulgaria. The most efficient way for a foreigner, student or traveller, before come into  contact with another culture is to be prepared about the variation among cultures and fashion  trends. One must notice that if a stranger meets another culture, but put aside any egoistic  feelings that might have, which do not let him understand the different lifestyles among  people, will only gain from this interaction. Nowadays, that many countries become multi-  cultural, it is important for the locals and the foreigners to try cooperating with each other in  order both of them to live smoothly together. (Hofstede, 2001) The term fashion holistically covers a plethora of different trends and styles. It has been  observed in the UK that many people dress to impress and others dress for attention purposes.  Youngsters in the UK are becoming more and more fashionable and are becoming conscious  of new trends and styles. People in the UK always strive to look their best which is  painstakingly different to what it is like in Bulgaria where they seem reasonably content with  whatever they wear. Whether people in the UK dress smartly, wearing the latest designer  labels that cost a fortune or whether they wear black Gothic clothes and cover their faces in  thick make up, they take pride in their appearance which seems like a cultural norm in the  UK.   (Connor, 1997)

Globalisation Of Culture Global Culture Cultural Studies Essay

Globalisation Of Culture Global Culture Cultural Studies Essay Thus, globalization is often constructed as an impersonal and inevitable force in order to justify certain policies or behaviors, however praiseworthy some of them might be. In a broader historical sense, Mazlish (1993:6-7) and Robertson (1992:68-71) cogently argue that not only capitalism or advocacy movements but also Christianity, Islam, and Marxism have made global claims and harbored global pretensions. The start of globalization is also a contested issue (Held et al. 1999). World-system theorists maintain that the expansion of European capitalism in the 16th century marks the start of globalization (Wallerstein 1974; see also Waters 1995:2-4). Robertson (1992:179) argues that globalization took off between 1875 and 1925 with the time-zoning of the world and the establishment of the international dateline; the near-global adoption of the Gregorian calendar and the adjustable seven-day week; and the establishment of international telegraphic and signaling codes. term globalization was first used around 1960 in its world-wide sense as opposed to its much older meanings of the global as something sphericalor universal. It is far from a uniform and inexorable trend. Rather, globalization is a fragmented, incomplete, discontinuous, contingent, and in many ways contradictory and puzzling process (Guidry, Kennedy, and Zald 1999; Held et al. 1999:43proponents of the feeble thesis focus almost exclusively on the economic and financial aspects of globalization to the detriment of political, social and cultural ones. The literature offers and discuss evidence in support of political and cultural globalization that is, on the whole, qu ite persuasive. (Castells 1996:66-147) The anthropologist Jonathan Friedman (1994:210-211) asserts that globalization is the product of cultural fragmentation as much as it is the result of modernist homogeneity, and that what appears as disorganization and often real disorder is not any the less systemic and systematic. At the ideological and cultural level, globalization has been observed as a symptom of late imperial culture as Aijaz Ahmad calls it as the most recent and highest stage of imperialism (Ahmad: 2002). Does Globalisation Produce Convergence? A second contested issue in the literature on globalization has to do with its consequences as to the convergence of societies towards a uniform pattern of economic, political, and even cultural organization. Most famously expressed in modernization theory, the spread of markets and technology is predicted to cause societies to converge from their preindustrial past, although total homogeneity is deemed unlikely. The critique of the presumed convergent consequences of globalization. Political scientist Robert Cox (1996:28, 30 n. 1) writes that the social and ethical content of the economy may be organized differently in various parts of the world. Historian Bruce Mazlish (1993:4) argues that no single global history is anticipated. So It should be noted that some sociologists reject the very terms of the convergence debate by arguing that globalization homogenizes without destroying the local and the particularistic. For example, Viviana Zelizer (1999) argues that the economyà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ differentiates and proliferates culturally in much the same way as other spheres of social life do, without losing national and even international connectedness. Thus, globalization is not seen as precluding or contradicting diversity. Like Zelizer, Robertson (1995:34-35) sees the global as the linking of localities. A final aspect of the convergence controversy has to do with the impact of globalization on inequality across and within countries. The evidence unambiguously indicates that there is today more inequality across countries than ten, twenty, fifty or even one hundred years ago. Stunningly, the gap in per capita income between rich and developing countries has grown five-fold between 1870 and 1990 (Pritchett 1997; Temple 1999). There are, however, several noteworthy developing countries that have managed to close half or more of the gap since 1960, e.g. South Korea, Taiwan, and Ireland. Very few developing countries, however, have consistently grown faster than the most advanced ones since 1980. Thus, development levels appear not to be converging as a result of globalization. By contrast to cross-national UNDERSTANDING CULTURE: What is culture? Culture is itself is diacritical rather than a substantive concept. In Frederick Jamesons words, culture is not a substance or a phenomenon in its own right, it is an objective mirage that arises out of the relationship between atleast two groups.No group has a culture all by itself: culture is the nimbus percieved by one group when it comes into contact with and observes another one. In a globalise economy culture is deemed as a matter of choice as much as of inheritance, and thus as a potentially less oppressive, and hence less politicising, category of identification than colour or ethnicity, class or gender. (See, Bennette, 1993:3-4) CULTURE AND GLOBALISATION: Global Culture When we talk about globalisation, we are in a sense talking about unity of the states across the globe. How this unity is brought up? Then how does it link the states together? What are the major contributors in this unification process? Along with a myriad of intellectuals I will also sum- up with an answer, global- culture. However, it is one of the measures required for the unification process. One set of theorists, who are pro-global- culture say, that the global culture is making the world closer and more united. The people of the world are combining their differences and being more cooperative towards one and other. This process of emerging global culture can be seen in times of need when everyone has pulled together to strive for peace and freedom. Although, there exists a wide range of religions of which people are becoming tolerant, forming a homogenised society. On the other hand there are also philosophers who scorn global culture for the reason, that the local culture and morality are all at stake. If we say that the global culture is the synonym of the common culture, then there are wide range of opinion on it. Wight uses the term common culture so loosely that it is unclear whether he has in mind a deep, historic sense of culture, or the more superficial agreed rules that compose a contractual society. (James 1993: 277-8) Alan James, System or society?, Review of International Studies 19: 3, 1993. I argue that to certain extent global culture is a common culture among the people of the world. Further, Appadurai, Arjun in Difference in global cultural economy talks about five dimensions of the global culture 1) ethnoscape, 2) technoscape, 3)medioscape, 4) finanscape and 5) ideoscape. Origin of Global Culture: To get through the idea of the origin of the global culture, I am at consensus with Barry Buzan, the way he differentiates the origin of the global culture by the way of Vanguardist and Syncretist accounts. Vanguardist account emphasizes the centrality of Europe in the expansion story and projects a rather one-way view of cultural transmission from the West to the rest of the world. The Syncretist account puts more emphasis on the interplay of civilizations during the expansion process, and takes a more fluid and interactive view of cultural transmission generally. (Buzan:3 ) Buzan says, that before working through these two accounts and their consequences, it helps to keep in mind that prior to them there are two models of expansion by which a global international society could have evolved from the late classical world. In that world there were several centres of civilization whose degree of contact with each other ranged from quite intense (the Islamic world with both Christendom and the Hindu world) through fairly thin (Christendom and China) to more or less absent (the civilizations of Eurasia and those of Meso-America and the Andean highlands). From that starting point, one way of reaching a global-scale international society would have been for the various civilizational cores of the classical world to expand into increased contact with each other, so requiring that they develop rules of the game to mediate their relations in a polycentric international society. In such a case, global international society would have developed on the basis of cultu ral diversity, perhaps along the lines shown by the Indian Ocean trading system before the European arrival. The other way would have been the takeover of the whole system by one civilizational core, the imposition of one culture on the others, and the absorption of all the others into its particular rules, norms and institutions. This monocentric model is close to most historical accounts of what actually happened. (Buzan: 3) . In Vanguardist terms, the development of a global interstate society has been almost entirely a function of the expansion of the West. From the sixteenth century onwards, the rise of European power quickly crushed the two civilizational areas in the Americas and eroded, and eventually overwhelmed, the four in Eurasia. By the end of the nineteenth century virtually the whole of the international system was recreated in the image of Europe, as in the Americas and Australia; or directly subordinated to Europe, as in the African and Asian colonies; or desperatel y trying to catch up with Europe in order to avoid being colonized, as in the few most resilient parts of the classical world: the Ottoman empire, Japan and China. The triumph of European power meant not only that a sharp and permanent rise in the level of interaction took place, but also that western values and institutions-the so-called standard of civilization-dominated the whole system in imperial fashion. This mixture of coercion and copying runs in close parallel to Kenneth Waltzs idea that anarchy generates like units through processes of socialisation and competition. (Waltz 1979:74-79) Looking at this process in Wendtian terms.(Wendt 1999: 247-50) outsiders might emulate the core because of direct coercion, or by calculation or consent. Whatever the mechanisms and whatever the rationales, the effect is one of a sub-global Vanguard remaking the world in its own political image. This account rests on a sharp distinction between West and non-West, and less sharp differentiations among the different cultures and civilizations within the non-West. It has parallels with other stories of expanding imperial cultures where westernization is a similar process to Sinification, Romanization, Russification, Islamization and suchlike. In explaining the breakout of one culture to dominate others, a Vanguardist account inevitably puts a lot of emphasis on cultural difference generally, and on the exceptionalism of the Vanguard culture in particular. As in much nineteenth-century European imperial discourse, exceptionalism easily drifts not only into a ranking of cultures from superior to inferior (civilized, barbarian, savage) but also into a racist ranking of peoples as superior and inferior. (Hobson 2004: 219-42) Because it rests on differences of both culture and power. (Buzan:6) Robert ONeill and John Vincent also noted the unequal relations between the West and the Third World and the consequent regional diversity of international society, with some Third World unity around non-alignment, development, and the elimination of colonialism and racism. (O Neill 1990: 283-5) The challenges to the West come in two forms. The first is that non-western powers manage to reduce inequality by developing, and then use their new power both to assert different cultural values and to resist the solidarist western values of human rights, democracy and the liberal market. The West has lost the dominance of the second phase, and its prospect is one of continued relative decline as countries like China, India and Iran acquire the elements of modernity, and the corresponding power, that the West has made available. Its only hope is that the homogenizing effects of capitalist development will reduce cultural difference at the same time as they redistribute power. But if culture is viewed in essentialist terms as more or less fixed, then in terms of the instability hypothesis the move to a multicultural foundation and a redistribution of power spells permanent trouble and weakness for international society. (Buzan: 7) The second type of challenge comes not from opposition combined with strength, but from weakness, whether oppositional or not. Part of the legacy of decolonization is an array of weak and failed polities that are unable to play their part in the game of states. Somalia, Haiti, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan and other notional states represent holes in the fabric of international society. Their levels of internal disorder make it difficult to pursue the western agenda within them, and provide bases for criminals and terrorists acting against the West. (Buzan: 7) The Syncretist account is based on the idea that it is the normal condition of human affairs for cultural ideas to flow between areas of civilization. Cultures thus evolve not only in response to their own internal dynamics, but also because of encounters with other cultures, even remote ones. The Syncretist account challenges the strong Vanguardist distinction between West and non-West, and its corollaries of w estern exceptionalism and superiority. (Buzan: 11) Rather than European international society emerging pristine out of a unique and self-contained European civilization, in the Syncretist account the development phase in Europe involves very significant interaction with the other civilizations of Eurasia and North Africa. As Wight notes, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the crusades brought Europe into close contact with the Islamic world, adding to the contact already created by the earlier Islamic occupation of Spain, the two episodes together serving as the channel for the acculturation of medieval Christendom. (Wight: 52). Almost at the same time, the Mongol conquest of much of Eurasia brought Europe into contact with China and enabled increased transmission of ideas. The rise of the Ottoman empire from the late thirteenth century, and its conquest of Constantinople in 1453, meant that a rising Europe was neighbour to, and in regular contact with, a hostile and powerf ul non-European culture. Given that classical Greece is sometimes used as a comparator for Europe in discussions of the relationship between culture and international society, it is a nice irony that the Ottoman modifier to the story of a pristine European development runs in close parallel to the way in which the Persian empire shared a system with the city states of classical Greece, initially as the greater power, and then as the victim of Greek expansion. (Wight: 46-109). To sum up: the Syncretist view is that culture and international society are both malleable. They can and do change; cross-cultural interactions are the normal condition of international society, and flow in many directions. The Syncretist account suggests that for two reasons there is less cultural difference between the West and the rest of the world than the Vanguardist account supposes. First, the emergence of European international society was not a pristine process but took place during a long period of s ustained cultural interaction with the other civilizations of Eurasia and North Africa. (Buzan: 19) This outcome envisages the triumph of the Vanguardist process. Either the Vanguard displaces and replaces other cultures, or it converts the rest of the world to its own standard of civilization, creating a universal culture based on a widespread acceptance of Western values, practices and institutions. We know that replacement did not and will not happen, so this outcome now rests on the success of westernization. The degree of cultural unity necessary to stabilize international society would come from the success of westernization, and would go a long way towards mitigating the contradiction between hegemonic practice and the legitimating principle of sovereign equality in present-day international society. This outcome would eliminate OHagans tension as to whether international society represents the values of a dominant culture or a neutral mode of communication across cultures. This outcome envisages the triumph of cultural mixing and adaptation. It is therefore in principle not wedded to any particular set of values, practices and institutions, but is normatively open, allowing these to emerge in the syncretic process. In practice, since the Syncretist account largely accepts the monocentric model, the actual homogenization would reflect the considerable success that the West has already had in projecting onto other cultures many of its values, practices and institutions: sovereignty, diplomacy, nationalism, the market and so on. The expectation here is also that international society will be strong and fairly uniform at the global level, but not exclusively based on western values. Rather, some mixture will emerge as western power wanes and the power and influence of non-western cultures rise. Here too we can find those who think that homogenization will result from the global operation of capitalism, though in this version the undoubted cultural carrying capacity of the global market will work both ways, with the West being as transformed as transforming by the cultural flows across the planet. There is plenty of Syncretist evidence to point to here, from the popularity of Asian food, fashion and film, and This outcome envisages the partial failure of both the Vanguardist project and the process of Syncretism. Such failure might occur for various reasons. The West might lose power before it can convert the rest. Political and cultural resistance in the non-West might be strong, particularly against the more recent and more liberal elements of Western international society. Global- culture and Religion Whether societies are becoming less or more secular? is another point of debate, but in the present context, to a certain extent, the societies are becoming secular . Religion became a categorical model for the ordering of the national society and their relations during nineteenth and early twentieth century. So it became an aspect of International law. The argument I want to raise here is there is a distinction between the culture and the religion? Some equate, culture with the civilisation and inturn, civilisation with the religion; which is not true practically. During seventies and eightees there were church and state conflict prevailing, in the same way as today we think of global culture and the religion. Here comes the issue of diffusion of the religion, and then its global- foci. I agree the way Robertson differentiates between the world and worldliness, on the similer terms as Max Weber does. (Robertson: 143) The major consequences of globalisation have been (1) the transmogrification of traditional religions and belief systems; (2) the beginning of the disintegration of the traditional social fabrics and shared norms by the invasion of consumerism, cyber- culture, newfangled religions, social fads, and changing work ethics and work rhythms; (3) the fast spreading anomie (in the Durkhemian sense) forcing an ever increasing number of individuals to fall back upon for moral and social support the easily accessible pretentious religious banalities; and (4) attributing to religion the creation and acceleration of extremist, fundamentalist, and terrorist tendencies in the third world countries, which are intended to destabilise them, and strike at the root of their civilisation, and multicultural and pluralist nature. (Radhakrishnan: 1403) The nature and functions of religion in society have been Under speculation and discourse for several centuries; the approaches to the understanding of religion philosophical, theological, anthropological, sociological and the related dimensions of religious ideas have been very old; and the nexus between religion and society has been very close, with wide, complex, intricate and elaborate ramifications: The role of religion in giving spiritual and moral sustenance to individuals, the related regulation of social life and moral order, creating and regulating cultural forms, and the inte- gration of society. One may go with the French sociologist Emile Durkheims postulate (endorsed by, among others, the English anthropologist A R Radcliffe-Brown) that the main role (or function) of religion [is] to celebrate and sustain the norms upon which the integration of society depends [Geertz 1968: 402]. While on religion and globalisation, it is important to know whether globalisation unites or divides religions; results in newfangled religions; and has a direct nexus with fundamentalism and religion-linked terrorism. It is also important to ascertain whether for its new imperialist project globalisation has been exploiting different religious forms; whether fundamentalism and religion-inspired terrorism have increased since the advent of globalisation; and whether religions, far from being belief sys- tems in their traditional sense, have spawned new dimensions which are far removed from the spiritual and religious realms. (Radhakrishnan : 1406) Challenges to the global culture: For Transnational corporations, However there are signs evidencing that the national culture no longer affects companies, when they enter other markets, because new global rules are becoming more important instead. Instances of Global- culture: To my way of thinking and after reading so many scholars, I come up with the following instances, which evidence the emergence of the global culture. People are having a shared belief of freedom, and safety across the globe. All do have some common issues like Human Rights, environment protection, Freedoms, technology- savvy practices, feminist issues, health- issues and all other who make the whole world unified in claiming them. Global culture is also emerging slowly in parts of the world. For example, Europe used to have different forms of money and now they have switched to one shared currency, the euro-dollar. Although there are many different form of money throughout the world, someday that might change. The world is shrinking. The things which were common to one particular country or region are now accessible to the world at large. Like Italian, Chinese, Mexican And Indian food. The world commercial market has given rise to the trans- national corporations. Although arranged marriage persists in many cultures today, as modernization proceeds and many areas become part of the global economy, parental influences on marriage continue to decline. Young people who work for wages rather than on the familys land no longer depend as highly on their parents resources. As Western popular culture-including motion pictures, television, music, and fashion-spreads around the world, many young people are drawn to Western notions of love, romance, and individual choice. In some places, such as Japan, people combine modern Western and older cultural practices. For instance, parents and computer matchmaking services help find prospective mates, and the individuals can accept or reject the proposed match. Since its inception in the 1950s, rock music has moved from the margins of American popular music to become the center of a multi-billion-dollar global industry. Closely connected with youth culture, rock music and musicians have helped to establish new fashions, forms of language, attitudes, and political views. However, rock music is no longer limited to an audience of teenagers, since many current listeners formed their musical tastes during the golden age of rock and roll. Similarly, while rock has historically encouraged new creative expressions, the innovations of Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and Jimi Hendrix have defined a tradition to which successive generations of musicians have repeatedly turned for inspiration. Natural resources are conserved for their biological, economic, and recreational values, as well as their natural beauty and importance to local cultures. For example, tropical rain forests are protected for their important role in both global ecology and the economic livelihood of the local culture; a coral reef may be protected for its recreational value for scuba divers; and a scenic river may be protected for its natural beauty. The same is the case with conservation of Water, the whole world collectively is in favour of water conservation policies. Cultural exchanges, across the world, for example, the spread of islam or Christianity has been seen in last few years as increasing. Internationalisation of the Media like radio, television, newspaper and internet are linking together the world at large. Apperception of Western culture as an attribute of the world today, as an outcome of the global expansion of industrial capitalism, which for the first time integrated the world into a global system centered in Europe. Major constituent of Western culture have ceased to be ethnic and have become internationalized as intrinsic constituent of a world shaped by the development of the West. Even the idea of art as a self-sufficient activity based on aesthetics, is also a product of Westernisation. The traditional art of other cultures, as well as that of the West from earlier eons, was a different type of creation, determined by functions of a religious, representational, or commemorative nature. Is a Global Culture in the Making? Perhaps the most popular and controversial of the debates about globalization has to do with the rise of a global culture. Actually, there are only a few scholars who maintain that a global culture is in the making. The idea goes back to Marshall McLuhans slippery concept of the global village (McLuhan 1964) The global culture driven by symbols, images, and the aesthetic of the lifestyle and the self-image-has spread throughout the world and is having some momentous effects, including the standardization of tastes and desires, and even , anthropologist Arjun Appadurai (1996:4, 21) argues that individuals and groups seek to annex the global into their own practices of the modern, and that consumption of the mass media worldwide provokes resistance, irony, selectivity, and, in general, agency. Some of the most persuasive arguments against the idea of the emergence of a global culture come from anthropologist Clifford Geertz. He observes that the world is growing both more global and more divided, more thoroughly interconnected and more intricately partitioned at the same time [à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦] Whatever it is that defines identity in borderless capitalism. And the global village it is not deep going agreements on deep going matters, but something more like the recurrence of familiar divisions, persisting arguments, standing threats, the notion that whatever else may happen, the order of difference must be somehow maintain (Geertz 1998:107-110). Like Geertz, sociologist Anthony Smith is skeptical, and notes an interesting initial problem with the concept of global culture: Can we speak of culture in the singular? If by culture is meant a collective mode of life, or a repertoire of beliefs, styles, values and symbols, then we can only speak of cultures, never just culture; fo r a collective mode of life [à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦] presupposes different modes and repertoires in a universe of modes and repertoires. Hence, the idea of a global culture is a practical impossibility, except in interplanetary terms (Smith 1990: 171). However, I argue that this notion is wrong, and the global culture is not only in existence, but it is flourishing as well. LOCAL versus GLOBAL Local culture and social structure are now shaped by large and powerful commercial interests in ways that earlier anthropologists could not have imagined. Early anthropologists thought of societies and their cultures as fully independent systems. But today, many nations are multicultural societies, composed of numerous smaller subcultures. Cultures also cross national boundaries. Some people fear a loss of cultural diversity as U.S. media companies become dominant. Such companies tend to bundle their products so that a blockbuster movie is promoted by selling soundtracks, books, video games, and other. However, the under- developed countries companies do not have such a control, even any sort of control over the market. On the one hand, as world beat became a more visible feature of the international popular musical landscape in the late 1980s and early 1990s, popular music scholars began to analyze its economic and cultural implications. Most analyses focused on the inequalities characterizing the bilateral relationships between north and south and accused the industry of exploiting Third World cultural resources. Others were concerned about the potentially disastrous consequences of homogenization and westernization upon folk cultures being swept up in and transformed by what has been called global culture flows. The most trenchant critics also charged the world music industry with racism, for ignoring the harsh realities of economic and political subordination experienced by Third World peoples of color, and instead constructing images of cultural authenticity in order to satisfy the desires of northern whites safely to consume exotic otherness. More optimistic observers, for example, have sugges ted that the powerful forces of cultural and economic hegemony are being resisted by culturally and technologically savvy Third World musicians who are taking control of the production of their own music, revitalizing local musical traditions by modernizing them. Furthermore, the international popular musical landscape, so long dominated by U.S. and European pop and rock, has unquestionably been diversified and enriched by the increased circulation of musics from multiple locations around the globe. To better understand the national and global linkages, Some observers would argue that it is inappropriate to distinguish Afro-Brazilian from Brazilian music, since black expressive cultures have contributed so profoundly to what is understood to be national culture. Perhaps no other artistic field in Brazil has been so deeply influenced by black cultures than popular music. Nevertheless, it is useful and necessary to identify distinct styles and movements in Brazilian popular music that are associated particularly with black urban communities. The past 20 years have seen the proliferation of Afro-Brazilian social, political, and cultural movements that explicitly reject the traditional belief in a unitary national culture. Yet, for the most part, contemporary Afro-Brazilian musical countercultures continue to be racially inclusive. An increasingly globalized world economy has intensified the influx of African and diasporic musical cultures, particularly from the United States and Ja maica, to major Brazilian cities. These forms of music and their attendant cultural styles, modes of dress, and dance steps have been widely appropriated and transformed by young urban Brazilians. Several broad currents in contemporary Afro-Brazilian music may be identified: contemporary samba, soul/funk/hip-hop, reggae, axà © music, and mangue beat. (See, Encarta) Another example of globalised music culture Samba emerged in the 20th century as the preeminent national music of Brazil. Modern urban samba was developed in the predominantly black favelas (shantytowns) on the morros (hills) of Rio de Janeiro, and now globalised. In addition to music, there are plethora of dancing style,

Google And Yahoo Search Engine

Google And Yahoo Search Engine Web search engines are keys to the immense treasure of information. Dependency on the search engines is increasing drastically for both personal and professional use. It has become essential for the users to understand the differences between the search engines in order to attain a higher satisfaction. There is a great assortment of search engines which offer various options to the web user. Thus, it is significant to evaluate and compare search engines in the quest of a single search engine that would satisfy all the needs of the user. The main problem is facing by people, which search engine is very useful for finding reliable, relevant and fresh results. There are plenty of search engine are available for searching but, this dissertation will cover which technology are running behind Google and Yahoo!! search engine. Google and Yahoo! have their own algorithm for indexing the website. Introduction of Search Engine: In simple words a Search engine is software that searches through a database of web pages or web resources for a piece of information, keywords, concepts etcà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ There are many types of Different Search Engine available in Market. for example msn, Google, Yahoo!, ask etcà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ C:UsersJIMIT DOSHIDesktopnew dwnlddifferent-types-of-search-engines_4823.gif.jpg Figure: 1 Different Search Engine To define the concepts more descriptively we can say that Search engine is a computer program that searches for documents containing words or phrases of interest to users .The search engine itself is a virtually powerful workstation-class machine that searches a database of information collected from the Internet. Primarily software program called robots or spiders that crawl through all the files on the Internet and download them into a searchable database .These works as indexes to the literature available on the network. In the context of the Internet, Search engines usually refer to the World Wide Web and not other protocols or areas. Search engine is helpful for identifying sources, establishing notability, checking facts, and discussing what names to use for different things. There are a number of search engines available on the web. Most of the Search engines provide website reviews and homepage services in addition to keyword searches. But, in this present study two most popular search engines have been studied in terms of its available web resources with reference to Physics-India in Google and Yahoo!. Introduction of Google Google is one type of web search engine. When user wants to find something around the world using internet at that time Google comes into the picture. Google Search is the most-used search engine on the World Wide Web. So Google provide the entire information base on keyword which is put by the user in to search box of Google search engine. When user entry any keyword for search Google display all the related result of the keyword. Introduction of Yahoo! Yahoo! is one of the best known and most popular Internet portals. Originally a subject directory of sites, it now is a search engine, directory, and portal. To go to the Yahoo!! portal and main starting point, use www.Yahoo!.com. For direct access to the search engine, usesearch.yahoo.com and for the directory use www.dir.yahoo.com. This review primarily coves the search engine features. Use the table of contents on the left to navigate this review. Literature review and proposed overview: Search engine technology has had to scale dramatically to keep up with the growth of the web. In 1994, one of the first web search engines, the World Wide Web Worm (WWWW) [McBryan 94] had an index of 110,000 web pages and web accessible documents. As of November, 1997, the top search engines claim to index from 2 million (WebCrawler) to 100 million web documents (from Search Engine Watch). It is foreseeable that by the year 2000, a comprehensive index of the Web will contain over a billion documents. At the same time, the number of queries search engines handle has grown incredibly too. [1] In March and April 1994, the World Wide Web Worm received an average of about 1500 queries per day. In November 1997, AltaVista claimed it handled roughly 20 million queries per day. With the increasing number of users on the web, and automated systems which query search engines, it is likely that top search engines will handle hundreds of millions of queries per day by the year 2000. The goal of our system is to address many of the problems, both in quality and scalability, introduced by scaling search engine technology to such extraordinary numbers.[2] With the explosive growth of World-Wide-Web (WWW), publishing document on Internet has become more popular.But how to locate what we need in the ocean of information is an increasingly important and urgent problem. To simplify the problem of getting relevant results based on the search query, the Internet search engines were created that allowed searching a lot of information from the World-Wide-Web in the form of Web pages [3]. Search engines are among the most successful application on the Web today. They act as a system for searching the information available on the Web by automatically searching the contents of other systems and creating a database of the results [4]. The most famous search engines include AltaVista, Infoseek, Google, and MSN. They provide good searching ability by indexing more pages on the Web and maintaining the updated indices in their databases. Despite so many search engines are available to help user in finding the information of their interest, searching on the Web is not an easy task. The problem is due to the vast amount of data on the Web and its rapid updating and growth[5]. History of Search Engine The first Web search engine was Wandex, developed by the World Wide Web Wanderer in 1993. Another very early search engine, Aliweb, also appeared in 1993 and still runs today. One of the first engines to later become a major commercial endeavor was Lycos, which started at Carnegie Mellon University as a research project in 1994. Soon after, many search engines appeared and vied for popularity. These included WebCrawler, Hotbot, Excite, Info seek, Inktomi, and AltaVista. In some ways they competed with popular directories such as Yahoo!!. Later, the directories integrated or added on search engine technology for greater functionality. In 2002, Yahoo!! Acquired Inktomi and in 2003, Yahoo!! Acquired Overture, which owned AlltheWeb and AltaVista. In 2004, Yahoo!! Launched its own search engine based on the combined technologies of its acquisitions and providing a service that gave pre-eminence to the Web search engine over the directory. Before the advent of the Web, there were search engines for other protocols or uses, such as the Archie search engine for anonymous FTP sites and the Veronica search engine for the Gopher protocol. Recent additions to the list of search engines include a9.com, AlltheWeb, Ask Jeeves, Clusty, Gigablast, Ez2Find, Teoma, WiseNut, GoHook, Walhello, Kartoo, Snap and Mamma . Market Cover of different Search Engine :C:UsersJIMIT DOSHIDesktopnew dwnlduse of search engine chart.gif Figure: 2 search engine market As per above figure: 2 Google and Yahoo! cover most of the market of the world. Both have more popularity then other search engine. Google beat the Yahoo! at some level History of Google Search Engine: Google was co-founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were doing their Ph. D. at Stanford University in 1998 and was officially launched in the fall of 1999. This is a straightforward engine that does not support advanced search syntax making it very easy to use and retrieves pages ranked on the basis of number of sites linking to them and how often they are visited, indicating their popularity (ibid). It claims that 97% of the users find what they are looking for. C:UsersJIMIT DOSHIDesktopnew dwnldgoogle snapshot.png Figure:3 Google home page overview Its success was based in part on the concept of link popularity and PageRank. How many other web sites and web pages link to a given page is taken into consideration with PageRank, on the premise that good or desirable pages are linked to more than others. The PageRank of linking pages and the number of links on these pages contribute to the PageRank of the linked page. This makes it possible for Google to order its results by how many web sites link to each found page. Googles minimalist user interface was very popular with users, and has since spawned a number of imitators. Google has been estimated to run over one million servers in data centers around the world, and process over one billion search requests and about twenty-four petabytes of user-generated data every day Instead of ranking pages, this technology uses an algorithm that follows links on a webpage to find other pages that link back to the first one and so on from page to page. Features: Google includes the following most important features: Cached page archives. Result clustered by indention. Result displayed option, from 10-100. Google Search Supports: Implied Boolean (+)sign, (-) sign. Double quotes () for phrases. Stop words. Other Search Options Available with Google: I m Feeling Lucky (goes directly to top ranked site in query) Google scout (bring up list of related sites) Uncle Sam (Searches govt. and Milsites) Search within results option Field searching with link only. History of Yahoo! Search Engine: Yahoo! was co-founded by Stanford University Graduate students Jerry Yang and David Filo in January of 1994.Yahoo! is a subject Directory and also a commercial portal compiled by human. It is oldest as well as largest directory on the web. C:UsersJIMIT DOSHIDesktopnew dwnldsnapshot of yahoo.gif Figure: 4 Yahoo! search engine Yahoo! allows the user to put a search query, its strength lies in the categories and each that can lead a user step-by-step to the desired subject category. Structure: Yahoo! is hierarchically organized with subject catalogue or directory of the web which is browseable and searchable. Links to various services are accomplished in two ways such as by users submissions and through robots that retrieve new links from known pages. Yahoo! indexes web pages, UseNet and e-mail address. Features: Topic and region specific Yahoo! Automatic truncation. No case sensitivity. The syntax that Yahoo! follows for searching is fairly standard among all search engines. Search Option: Users can browse Yahoo!! Simply by clicking on the various categories listed on each page, or can search Yahoo!! By entering a word into the search box that appears on every page in the directory. Again one can combine the two strategies and can browse and then search or search and then browse. Other Search Options: Yahoo!! News User may combine any of the query syntax as long as the syntax is combined in the proper order, which is +, -, t: , and *. If Yahoo! does not find any matching entries, pertaining to a query, in its main database, the query will automatically be transferred to the Inktomi database, a search engine that automatically crawls the text of the entire web. Inktomi database contains results for literally millions of individual web pages. Yahoo! thus looks for information in: Yahoo!! Categories. Websites listed in Yahoo!. WebPages indexed by Inktomi. Working of Google Search Engine: google_search_strategy1_thumb.png Figure: 5 how work Google search engine Google Search (or Google Web Search) is a web search engine owned by Google Inc. Google Search is the most-used search engine on the World Wide Web, receiving several hundred million queries each day through its various services. The order of search results on Googles search-results pages is based, in part, on a priority rank called a PageRank. Google Search provides many options for customized search, using Boolean operators such as: exclusion (-xx), alternatives (xx OR yy), and wildcards (x * x). The main purpose of Google Search is to hunt for text in Web pages, as opposed to other data, such as with Google Image Search. Google Search provides at least 22 special features beyond the original word-search capability. These include synonyms, weather forecasts, time zones, stock quotes, maps, earthquake data, movie showtimes, airports, home listings, and sports scores. There are special features for dates, including range, prices, temperatures, money/unit conversions, calculation, package tracking, patents, area codes and language translation of displayed pages. Data about the frequency of use of search terms on Google (available through Google Adwords, Google Trends, and Google Insights for Search) have been shown to correlate with flu outbreaks and unemployment levels and provide the information faster than traditional reporting methods and government surveys. PageRank Googles rise to success was in large part due to a patented algorithm called PageRank that helps rank web pages that match a given search string. When Google was a Stanford research project, it was nicknamed BackRub because the technology checks backlinks to determine a sites importance. Previous keyword-based methods of ranking search results, used by many search engines that were once more popular than Google, would rank pages by how often the search terms occurred in the page, or how strongly associated the search terms were within each resulting page. The PageRank algorithm instead analyzes human-generated links assuming that web pages linked from many important pages are themselves likely to be important. The algorithm computes a recursive score for pages, based on the weighted sum of the PageRanks of the pages linking to them. PageRank is thought to correlate well with human concepts of importance. In addition to PageRank, Search Results: The exact percentage of the total of web pages that Google indexes is not known, as it is very difficult to accurately calculate. Google presents a two-line summary and also a preview of each search result, which includes a link to a cached (stored), usually older version of the page. Googles cache link in its search results provides a way of retrieving information from websites that have recently gone down and a way of retrieving data more quickly than by clicking the direct link. This feature is still available, but many users are not aware of this because it has been moved to the previews of the search results presented next to these. Non-index able data: Despite its immense index, there is also a considerable amount of data available in online databases which are accessible by means of queries but not by links. This so-called invisible or deep Web is minimally covered by Google and other search engines. The deep Web contains library catalogs, official legislative documents of governments, phone books, and other content which is dynamically prepared to respond to a query. Google Optimization: Since Google is the most popular search engine, many webmasters have become eager to influence their websites Google rankings. An industry of consultants has arisen to help websites increase their rankings on Google and on other search engines. This field, called search engine optimization, attempts to discern patterns in search engine listings, and then develop a methodology for improving rankings to draw more searchers to their clients sites. Search engine optimization encompasses both on page factors and Off Page Optimization factors (like anchor text and PageRank). The general idea is to affect Googles relevance algorithm by incorporating the keywords being targeted in various places on page, in particular the title element and the body copy (note: the higher up in the page, presumably the better its keyword prominence and thus the ranking). Too many occurrences of the keyword, however, cause the page to look suspect to Googles spam checking algorithms. Google has published guidelines for website owners who would like to raise their rankings when using legitimate optimization consultants. Functionality: Google search consists of a series of localized websites. The largest of those, the Google.com site, is the top most-visited website in the world. Some of its features include a definition link for most searches including dictionary words, the number of results you got on your search, links to other searches (e.g. for words that Google believes to be misspelled, it provides a link to the search results using its proposed spelling), and many more. Search Syntax: Googles search engine normally accepts queries as a simple text, and breaks up the users text into a sequence of search terms, which will usually be words that are to occur in the results, but one can also use Boolean operators, such as: quotations marks () for a phrase, a prefix such as + , - for qualified term or one of several advanced operators, such as site:. The WebPages of Google Search Basics describe each of these additional queries and options . Query expansion: Google applies query expansion to the submitted search query, transforming it into the query that will actually be used to retrieve results. As with page ranking, the exact details of the algorithm Google uses are deliberately obscure, but certainly the following transformations are among those that occur: Term reordering: in information retrieval this is a standard technique to reduce the work involved in retrieving results. Stemming is used to increase search quality by keeping small syntactic variants of search terms. There is a limited facility to fix possible misspellings in queries. Working of Yahoo! Search Engine: Yahoo!! Search is a web search engine, owned by Yahoo!! Inc. and was as of 2009, the 2nd largest search directory on the web. Yahoo!! Search, originally referred to as Yahoo!! provided Search interface, would send queries to a searchable index of pages supplemented with its directory of sites. Yahoo! does not use Web Crawling for retrieving the results. It uses Inktomi for getting results of keywords which are not found by the Yahoo! In 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced a deal in which Bing would power Yahoo!! Search. Search Technology Acquisition: Seeking to provide its own search engine results, Yahoo!! acquired their own search technology. In 2002, they bought Inktomi, a behind the scenes or search engine provider, whose results are shown on other companies websites and powered Yahoo!! in its earlier days. They purchased Overture Services Inc., which owned the AlltheWeb and AltaVista search engines. Initially, even though Yahoo!! owned multiple search engines, they didnt use them on the main Yahoo!.com website, but kept using Googles search engine for its results. In 2003, Yahoo!! Search became its own web crawler-based search engine, with a reinvented crawler called Yahoo!! Slurp. Yahoo!! Search combined the capabilities of all the search engine companies they had acquired, with its existing research, and put them into a single search engine. The new search engine results were included in all of Yahoo!!s sites that had a web search function. Yahoo!! also started to sell the search engine results to other companies, to show on their own web sites. In 2007, Yahoo!! Search was updated with a more modern appearance in line with the redesigned Yahoo!! home page. In addition, Search Assisst was added; which provides real-time query suggestions and related concepts as they are typed. In 2008, Yahoo!! Search announced the introduction of a new service called Build Your Own Search Service, or BOSS. This service opens the doors for developers to use Yahoo!!s system for indexing information and images and create their own custom search engine. Study of Web Resources of Google Search Engine: Below Table gives a description of Web resources on Physics India retrieved through the Google Search out of 100 links. The following figure shows the Graphical representation of Web resources. Result: The analysis of the data available with the below table shows that most of the Web resources under the search term Physics India retrieves the pointer pages (links to websites on the same subject) and achieves 67% among all the other kinds of resources. Secondly, relates to the journal articles by 26% of retrieved output. And the lowest percentage of search results deals with research news, news clips, databases and conference papers .Above table shows the graphical representation of the retrieved output through Google. Table of Web resources v/s. frequency of their occurrence per search Figure: 6 number of Google search result Figure: 7 Google web resources versus frequency distribution for Google Study of Web Resources of Yahoo! Search Engine: Below Table shows the ratio of Web resources on Physics India retrieved through the Yahoo! Search. The Figure provides the graphical representation of the frequency of occurrence of various kinds of Web resources. Result: The analysis and interpretation of the data available in the table reflects that most of the retrieved results provides pointer pages with a percentage of 27% and second comes the web directories as 18% and it provides lowest percentage of retrieval rates of Journal articles. Table of Web resources v/s. frequency of their occurrence per search Figure: 8 number of search of Yahoo! Figure: 9 Yahoo! web resources vs frequency distribution. Study of Domains of Google Search Engine: Similar to the above classification of domains and the frequency of occurrence of the sources, the Table shows the major domains and the frequency of occurrence of the resources on those things. Figure: 10 Serial number of search of Google Result: The data from the above table reflects that most of the resources on the physics are available in commercial domains and secondly on organizational domains of India. And very lowest percentage indicates to the government sites. Figure provides the graphical representation of the frequency of occurrences Study of Domains of Yahoo! Search Engine: Similar to the above classification of domains and the frequency of occurrence of the sources, the Table 6.4 shows the major domains and the frequency of occurrence of the resources on those things. Figure: 11 serial number of search of Yahoo! Result: The data from the above table reflects that most of the resources on the physics are available in commercial domains and secondly on organizational domains of India. And very lowest percentage indicates to the government sites. Figure provides the graphical representation of the frequency of occurrences. Figure: 12 domain frequency of Yahoo! Study of File Formats of Google Search Engine: While carrying out the study we found that there are two main file formats on which almost all of the resources on Physics are available on the web retrieved through Google and Yahoo!. Thus Table indicates the file formats and the frequency of the resources on that and Figure shows the graphical representation of the frequency distribution. Figure: 13 file format and frequency distribution of Google Result: Above data indicates that maximum resources on physics retrieved through the Google are available in PDF (Portable Document Format). Study of File Formats of Yahoo! Search Engine: Table indicates the file formats and the frequency of the resources on that and Figure shows the graphical representation of the frequency distribution. Figure: 14 Yahoo! search serial number Figure: 15 Yahoo! search engine frequency Result: Here from the above data it is clear that most of the web resources on Physics India retrieved through Yahoo! search is on HTML format. Comparison of Google and Yahoo! Search Engine: Title g1.jpg yahoo-logo_2.gif Rating Rating: 3.9/5 (232 votes) Rating: 3.6/5 (200 votes) Mail Yes (unlimited storage) Yes (unlimited storage) Stock price $677.14 (17th Aug 12) $16.03.4 (17th Aug12) Search Yes Yes Slogan Don`t be evil Do you Yahoo!? Website www.Google.com www.search.Yahoo!.com Founded 1998 1995 About Google is an American public corporation, which is specialize in search engine, and today it is worlds no. 1 search engine. Yahoo! is an American public corporation and the internet service provider for news, emails, Yahoo! directory, search engine etc Founder Google was co-founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were doing their Ph D at Stanford University Yahoo!! was founded by Stanford University graduate students Jerry Yang and David Filo in January of 1994 CEO Larry Page Marissa Mayer Industry Internet, Computer Software Internet, Computer Software Search Engine Ranking No. 1 in US (with market share of 58.5% in Oct07 as per comScore research) No. 2 in US (with market share of 23% in Oct07 as per comScore research) User generated video Yes (Google Video and YouTube) No Products Google AdWords, Google Search engine, Youtube video service, Google forum, Gmail, Orkut, Google earth, Google labs etc. Google maps, Picasa, Google books, Google Scholar, Google Docs Yahoo!! mail, Yahoo!! directory, Yahoo!! answers, Yahoo!! search, Yahoo!! messenger, Yahoo!! 360 °, Yahoo!! sports, Yahoo!! finance, Flickr, Yahoo!! Cricket, Yahoo!! News Site No Yes ( Hot Jobs) Headquarters Mountain view, California, USA 701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale, California, USA Table: 1 Google Yahoo! Comparison (A.) Similarities of Google and Yahoo! Search Engine Several similarities of Google and Yahoo! Search engines are found after visiting both websites and testing with a query. First of all, both search engines give great advantages for users; they provide optional tips or techniques to help users search efficiently. Some similar tips are found. The first technique is using specific and unique words to describe what we are looking for. If the keywords are more general or ambiguous words, the large number of irrelevant feedback documents will be retrieved. Another technique is using quotation marks around keywords so that the searchers can find the exact words and narrow the number of search results. There are several techniques to narrow the search results, including (1) limiting sites/domain as .com, .edu, or .gov, (2) specifying types of files to .htm/.html, .pdf, .doc, and .txt, (3) using operator (-) before the word that we do not need it appears in the search results, (4) using operator (+) before the word that we do need it in the search results, and (5) using Boolean operators like AND, OR, and NOT to specify searching terms. The other techniques are using additional options to get more relevant search results. For instance, users can specify updated files, countries, languages, and number of results per page. These techniques from both search engines are very helpful for users to retrieve more precise results. For example, giving the query like swine flu + unt , both search engines returned many web pages about swine flu with the word unt, which is the University of North Texas. This can reduce not only the time process the search engines, but also the time to fine the best precise search results. The second similarity of these search engines is that they provide many categories for the search results, such as web, images, videos, shopping, news, and sports. With selecting a specific category like images, a user can retrieve only images on the webs. Users can also define specific type of file like .pdf, .doc, and .jpg, which helps users to get more precise and reduce time process. Third, when typing the keywords, Yahoo! suggests the full key words as well as Google. This helps users to select the full query as fast as possible. Suggesting the full keyword is a smart task for both search engines because it is an Artificial Intelligent part, which tries to guess users what the next word of the query is. For example, when typing swine, both search engines suggested the word flu as the next word. Next, the search results of both engines are quite similar patterns, which show the title in the first line, the brief description of webpage in the next several lines, and the URL or webpage s address. This snippet for each web result is enough information that a user can quickly scan and move to find information from other web pages in the ranked results. Last but not least, after submitted a query, both search engines immediately returned the relevant results, along with the large total number of websites retrieved. This shows the ability and efficiency of both search engines. Obviously, with these advance tips for both search engines provided on their web interface, they become the most top-two popular use over the others in the world. These are the great search engines that people use to find enormous information on the Internet since they provide the ways to retrieve more relevant search results. (B.)Contrast between Google and Yahoo! Search Engine Interface, Design, and Layout : The most obvious difference between these two Web sites is about the Interface, Layout, and Design of the pages. Google offers a very Clean and simplistic interface, whereas Yahoo!!s is busy and cluttered. Simple design should always be used to avoid complexity and confusion to the user. When a user is not required excessive text and images, they will feel more at ease and comfortable while using your Web site. Ultimately, a simplified interface means that the Web site will be accessible to all types of people with different skill levels, thus increasing the potential for a significant user return. Another key aspect of Design and usability is defining or understanding the purpose of the Website. Due to the simplistic nature of the Google Web site, it is quickly apparent to the user that the

Religious Symbols and Symbolism in Faulkners Light in August Essay

Religious Symbolism in Light in August  Ã‚  Ã‚   William Faulkner’s, "Light in August" has many references to Christianity. He employs a great deal of religious symbolism in all of his characters. These parallels seem very intentional, even though, Faulkner himself says he did not do it purposely. The Christ story is one of the most popular stories invented and it seems right that at some point someone is going to write similar to it. William Faulkner says he did not put the Christian parallels in intentionally. Many critics argue that there is no religious symbolism in this novel and that other critics are looking too deep into the novel. After reading Faulkners’ novel, it is hard not to make some connections to Christianity. The most obvious of his ties to the Catholic background and knowledge is in his writing of "Light in August". William Faulkner was born in New Albany. His family was a mixture of Presbyterians and Baptists. As an adult, he became a communicant of the Episcopal Church in Oxford, but he rarely attended services there. In response to a question on Faulkner’s Christianity, he said: "I have the sort of provincial Christian background I feel that I’m a good Christian—whether it would please anybody else’s standard I don’t know" (203). According to Amy Dooley (who is the research assistant of the Center of Faulkner Studies Southeast Missouri State University), Faulkner spoke about religion being something a Southerner absorbs as part of the culture, and he can’t stop using it. He said it doesn’t matter if he believes it or not. It appears as if Faulkner uses Christianity in his writing to aid his themes of human suffering, renewal of rebirth, human continuity, and death. The most significant example of Fau... ...that is never specified either. Christmas might have Negro blood in him so he could be black or he might be white. This gives him a character, which does not fit in with the other people; he is different. This is similar to Jesus Christ in that there was something different about him to separate him from the other people. That fact and the fact that his initials are the same as Jesus’ can lead a person to believe that William Faulkner did this intentionally. If one looks at Joe Christmas’ personality and his entire life and death, one will see that there are no parallels. If Faulkner says he did not put the parallels in intentionally, then it seems only ironic that there are some. In conclusion, Joe is a character in William Faulkner’s novel, "Light in August", and nothing more. Works Cited: Faulkner, William. Light in August. 1932. New York: Vintage, 1987.

My Philosophy of Education Essay -- Teaching Teacher Education Essays

My Philosophy of Education Education. What is education? Education is a field of study dealing with methods of teaching and learning. Many children in the world today are getting some kind of education. Whether it is at home or in a classroom, education is everywhere. Many of the teachers today have a philosopher that they use as a reference to their everyday teaching or use some of their methods to teach their students. In this paper I'm going to express my meaning of education and the different aspects that each and every teacher should follow. I'm going to start with nature of students than follow into with these topics: nature of knowledge, purpose of education, why it is important, things I want to accomplish as a teacher, and the things I want my students to accomplish. Then later on I'm going to talk about my teaching methods, discipline, and curriculum. Children in this day and time are not all alike. They look different, talk different, and even have different customs. Today though we really don't focus on those topics too much. As teachers we look at the intelligence level each student has. Each and every kids has a different level of intelligence so we as teachers need to focus more on those students who are slower than the other students. Now Rousseau said that "every child was born with the same intelligence" and from that quote I would have to disagree. The reason I disagree is because if every child was born with the same intelligence then we wouldn't have students in LD classes. 1 believe the way Plato did. I believe that the children are influenced by their environment. The environment is a big factor in kids lives. It allows them to express their personalities, inner and outer appearances, an... ...you get up to got to school, how will you do your assignments, and how will you stay awake in class. I'm not going to be like some teachers who just rollout the ball and let the students play, I plan to teach step by step skills. Hopefully the school systems will not take out physical education, because that is all the exercise "some students get. As you can see education is very important in my eyes. I plan to let my students know how important it is to me and how important it should be to them. Every year theories either stay the same or they change in a small way. Just like knowledge. My understanding of knowledge, nature of students, purpose of education, and sub-topics, methods and curriculum will probably change also, but who knows. Maybe some new philosopher will make me see education in some other way. I'm willing to increase my knowledge and education.

Teachers as the Foundation of Society Essay -- Teachers, philosophy of

As a young student I believe that an education is the most valuable thing that a person can have. Therefore, I believe that teachers are the soul foundation of our society. The job of the teacher is to educate as well as nurture the students to the best of their ability. Our society as a whole is constantly growing and changing; and this has a strong influence on our education system. Thus forth my philosophy is continuously evolving and growing; and as I continue to learn more about school districts, different children, and the psychology of learning I will continue to adjust my educational philosophy as well. As a teacher I believe that we should give our students the tools that they need to find themselves and grow as individuals. My philosophical beliefs and ideas deal with humanism. Humanism emphasizes self actualization and helps students develop morals and values. If a student is able to find themselves they will develop healthy attitudes towards themselves and others. And as an individual it is important that you know how to maintain relationships and work well with other...

Assess the View That Factors Within Schools Are the Greatest Influence on Social- Class Differences in Educational Achievement Essay

Assess the view that factors within schools are the greatest influence on social- class differences in educational achievement. (20 marks) I am going to be looking at the view that schools and the education system determine how successful each individual student will become; sociologists have very mixed opinions about whether the education system is beneficial to all pupils. There are some sociologists that believe labelling and stereotypes affect the way a student achieves within the education system. To label a student means to attach a meaning or make a presumption about their behaviour, labelling can be detrimental to a student while at school, for example, if a student isn’t focused in one of their lessons and isn’t as successful as they could possibly, the teacher will label the student as distracted and possibly lazy, not doing as much work as they should be; if in meetings teachers discuss this with other teachers it could possibly influence their opinion on the student and realise they are not reaching their full potential. When teachers first meet their pupils they automatically make an assumption about them on how they look and how they carry themselves, if a student comes in to a classroom with a hood on, baggy trousers and with a bad attitude it can be quite easy for a teacher to suggest the student isn’t going to be intelligent or an asset to the class room. Once a teacher sees a student dressed inappropriately for school and carrying themselves in a certain way, it’s almost natural that they begin to question the social class of the student, in this case they would assume the student is working class, and that education isn’t something of a priority to the student. Becker (1971) studied labelling in secondary schools, using interviews of 60 high school teachers; he found that teachers stereotyped students based on their work, conduct and appearance. Teachers saw middle class children as the closest to their stereotype of the ‘Ideal pupil’ and working class did not come close to this ideal. These stereotypes lead to ‘The Halo Effect’ this is the idea that when a middle class student is entered in to the education system they succeed based on their social class, it gives them an instant advantage over all of their peers who may be of a lower class. Differentiation refers to the way teachers categorise students regarding their abilities, their appearance, mannerisms and general behaviour; setting and streaming are other forms of differentiation. Setting is when you organise pupils into sets regarding their ability in that subject, however sometimes if a pupil is good at a majority of their subjects, they will be placed in high sets for all, just because they clearly have the ability is a number of other subject, they are seen as generally intelligent. Ball (1981) believes streaming can have negative conseq uences for pupils, in his study of beachside comprehensive he found that it was in fact phasing out and replaced with mixed ability teaching, which means groups are formed with pupils of high ability’s and low abilities and the aim is that the high ability students will encourage and influence the other students to achieve and become more proactive with their learning. This can have a reverse affect and in some cases students with high abilities underachieve with the disruptive students in the class. As middle class students are seen as the perfect type of student, polite, cooperative, and generally higher achievers, teachers appreciate and warm to this more than the typical working class student. A working class student is seen as talkative, they look scruffy and education isn’t as much of a priority or an enjoyment, it’s something they have to do. Working class pupils require a lot more encouragement and time from teachers to understand basic points and knowle dge that middle class pupils would typically understand easily. The middle class do suffer as well, just because they are seen to come from a good background and supportive parents, that does not necessarily mean they are going to do well in every subject, they can be forgotten about and glide though school years with the assumption they will get the grades they need by the end of the year. The working class do demand a lot more attention and if they do not see success in their work or exam results, they will become frustrated and ‘Resistant anti-school subcultures’ that oppose the values and norms the education system encourages; therefore finding rewards and status within their group of friends. The two subcultures that the education creates are ‘The pro- school subculture’ filled with positivity and rewards, expectations are high and positive stereotypes; If we look at the opposing subculture ‘The Anti- school subculture’ filled with negative stereotypes, labels, low sets and streams and low expectations. These subcultures show two opposite ends of the spectrum, with high achievers and low achievers, however, it’s the ones in the middle who receive the most attention and support, as teachers accept that Pro-school subculture will achieve anyway and ‘the anti-school subculture’ will fail, neither receive a gre at deal of attention or time but are left to their own devices. Overall the education system is the biggest influence on social class differences in education; they have two extremes, the successful ones and the ones who will just go menial jobs or manual labour for the average wage. The education system idolises the middle class as a whole and don’t take people for individuals, the education appears to care more about their reputation and their place in the league tables than they do about their students. The social class of students sets them up for success for failure, assumptions are made as soon as the student walks through the door, every time it’s a parents evening or an event students are always being judged. The education system doesn’t promote equal opportunities for everyone, they know who is going to pass or fail, the ones in-between are the ones they focus on to bring up the percentage of pass rates on the school, not for the good of the student. Ma ny sociologists such as Marxists believe the education system ignores wider problems, they assume all teachers label pupils and that it will have a negative effect upon a pupil.