Earlier 19th century fashion styles and their cultural and historical Essay

Earlier 19th century fashion styles and their cultural and historical significance at the time - Essay Example As Lynch and Strauss point out, it becomes evident from history that the concept of beauty is not set by women but by the mainstream society and also that the mainstream society redefines the same from time to time. In other words, it can be said that the evolution in society and social thought is well expressed in fashion too (12). To begin with, in the ancient times, the most important factor of consideration while selecting a partner was health. While men had to engage in hunting in order to support their families, women had to be able to meet birth needs. That means, in the ancient times when survival was of utmost concern and the sick had little chance of survival, large muscles made a man beautiful and wide hips and large breasts made a woman attractive. As Hyland states, until the social economic development of Greece during the fifth century B.C, there was no clear concept of beauty. However, as painting and sculpture developed, beauty was attributed to certain essential features (45). To illustrate, Plato considered beauty as a result of symmetry and harmony which creates a golden proportion. The ideal face had to have a width which is two-thirds of its length. In addition to this attraction towards symmetry, in the Greek and Roman culture, one can see an affinity towards blond hair. However, one can see that during the Middle Ages, woman had to face a lot of hardships in the name of fashion. To illustrate, in Europe, the period saw woman as predators who posed a carnal challenge, and this situation was created mainly by religion. So, women were restrained from even wearing jewelry, and this restraint almost solely came from clerics. As a result, married women had to conceal their hair in order to avoid arousing desires in others; though virgins were allowed to expose their hair. However, blond hair was something to be frightened as it directly meant an invitation to

Peter Berger's heretical imperative Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Peter Berger's heretical imperative - Essay Example According to Berger, pluralism presents the crisis into which modernity has exposed religion (Woodhead Heelas & Martin, 2001). Berger focuses on modernity and its implications on religion. The contemporary society is characterized by plurality of institutions, consciousness and choices, which yield uncertainty. According to Berger, pluralism is â€Å"a situation in which there is competition in the institutional ordering of comprehensive meanings of everyday life† (Oldmeadow, 2010, p.33). Because of uncertainty, there are unsteady, inconsistent and erratic plausibility structures, particularly those of religion. Berger argues that religion becomes a matter of choice, which he best refers to as a â€Å"heretical imperative† (heresy). According to Peter Berger, there are three contemporary responses to the crisis that modernity thrusts religion into, which include deduction, reduction as well as induction. Berger denounces deduction, which entails the reaffirmation of inf luence of a sacred ritual against secular authority (Esposito, Fasching & Lewis, 2011). He also rejects reductionism, which reinterprets a sacred ritual on the basis of secular authority. In rejecting the two responses, Berger supports the third approach, which is induction. His belief is that the crisis facing religion is a product of the sterile antithesis of neo-orthodoxy and secularism (Woodhead Heelas & Martin, 2001). He believes that by shunning both deductive and reductive approaches and adopting inductive approach, the crisis can be triumphed. Berger explores the relationship between human religion and world-building. The society is presented as dialectic because it is considered as a human invention. Man cannot exist without society and without man, society cannot exist. This exhibits the dialectic nature of the society. Berger argues that pluralism undermines stable belief (Berger, 1979). Pluralism is the cause of secularisation. According to Berger, the basic dialectic pr ocess of society entails three steps. These include externalisation, objectivation as well as internalisation. The three moments are crucial for effective comprehension of empirical dimension society. Externalisation refers to â€Å"the ongoing outpouring of human being into the world, both in the physical and the mental activity of men† (Berger, 1979, p. 4). Objectivation refers to the achievement by the products of man’s activity of an authenticity that faces its initial makers. Internalisation on the other hand, refers to men’s manipulation of reality, in which they change the reality into structures of objective and subjective consciousness. Externalisation is a prerequisite for anthropology. It deals with the biological development of man, where he interacts with extra-organic surrounding of both physical human worlds. Human being must create his own world. As such, the world-building activity does not qualify as a biological superfluous occurrence, but a d irect product of man’s biological composure. Man creates his own world through biological means. This human world is characterized by uncertainty unlike animals’ world. Because humanly established structures tend to be unstable, man creates culture to ensure stable structure that cannot be attained biologically. However, culture needs to be progressively changed by man. The instability of cultural structures posses a significant challenge to man’

Skepticism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Skepticism - Essay Example In addition, some people decide to moral because they respond to moral choices and dilemmas in the manner they have witnessed or seen their friends, parents, and role respond. Therefore, some of the time some people chose what is moral because they have learned that doing that sort of thing is right and good. People are moral because our reinforcement comes from instinct for self-preservation; briefly, self-interest is the cause of being moral. On the other hand, some people choose to be immoral due to the fact they desire to attain certain things for less efforts. For instance, a person may decide to steal in order to get money because they know working is tedious - so stealing is an easier way of obtaining money than working. Â  Morality is about both obeying the set rules and evaluating the consequences. There are certain rules and regulations that set out by society that must be respected in order to live in harmony with other people, therefore people will tend to be moral by ob eying the set standards in society. People maintain their moral status because they assess the result of their actions. For instance, a person is fond of telling lies and s/he will think of what happens when the truth will finally be realized (Kurtz 56). Therefore, people will choose to be moral in order to live harmoniously and avoid harming oneself. For instance, Descartes was skeptical about everything he did in that his life was characterized by constant thinking and questioning. He doubted everything, and it is only through this he claimed search for true knowledge. Descartes doubted his own existence in order to establish reflective thinking and questioning. Socially, Descartes relation with the society was not that of an outgoing person. He spent most of his time improving his previous writings or coming up with new ideas. The Discourse on method is one of his notable publications among others. In his work, Structure of the Meditations, Descartes gives preeminence to meditati on as one of the best ways to find what is true (Descartes 45). For somebody to suggest meditation, it means that he has meditated before. Meditation, according to him, is focused on ignoring every truth and belief of this world. At the end, he was able to establish true knowledge of what is right and wrong in society. Every person develops his own original position on which he or she decided principles of justice behind the veil of ignorance (Sinnott-Armstrong 79-82). The basis of this strategy is that no one knows his/her place or social status in society nor does anyone know his/her fate in the distribution of social goods since all are under the veil of ignorance. The veil of ignorance limits people from knowing what justice entails. Putting in mind everybody is morally upright, it will be rational to consider all the social primary goods, which includes opportunity and liberty, wealth and income and the grounds of self-respect. With this in mind, these will form the basis of th e policy whereby programs put in place will ensure that all these things are distributed equally; unless under special and justifiable circumstances, unequal distribution of these goods is to the benefit of the least favored. In addition, person will be entitled to have an equal right to all the goods available. The office in charge will be transparent and fair to all under conditions to ensure

Strategic Information Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4000 words

Strategic Information Management - Essay Example The following paper describes the various e-business strategies that can be employed for effectiveness approach to promote business online and opportunities offered by e-commerce systems to enable organizations to enjoy more effective supply chain management. However, with the advancement of technology that is taking place and the incremental amount of businesses going online, many business organizations are also interested in starting online operations as well. The new emerging companies are interested in going online and making the business a click and effective business. With access to the internet, the companies exposed to larger target market. They would be able to sell their products to the target market outside of the political and state boundaries of their local region. This will significantly impact the operations of the business, which will expand and can then go global in the long run. However, in order to be able to start a business or a retail option online, the new comp anies will have to brand itself and its products to stand out from the competition. In this regard, the new companies can use their current image of the business and leverage it to build the same high class and high quality product oriented approach and effective supply chain management for the online business. 2. E-Commerce - its Effectiveness to Promote Business Online "E-Commerce is defined as selling goods and services over the Internet, both businesses to consumer (B2C), consumer to consumer (C2C), and business to business (B2B), the latter is sometimes also referred to as e-business". 2.1 The death of Distance Distance was, in the pre modern world, a variable of the greatest marketing significance. As the real estate maxim has it, the three rules of real estate valuation are location, location, location. In global marketing, strategies and practice reflected the importance of distance. The most important variable impacting trade behavior, for example is the distance. The primary trading partners of every county are the proximate neighbors: for the United States they are Canada and Mexico, for Canada and Mexico it is the United States. For France it is Germany, and for Germany it is France, and so on around the world. There has always been a positive correlation between trade and proximity. However, the internet is totally independent of distance. Electrons traveling at the speed of light get to anywhere in the world in the same time and at the same cost. An e-mail send, does not make a difference in time or cost whether the mail is addressed to next door neighbor or to someone halfway aro und the world. The same thing is true of a Web site: The location of the site does not affect the cost or speed of access. For the first time in history, the world has become

Macbeth Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Macbeth - Essay Example It is under this contemporary socio-political ambience that one has to re-read William Shakespeare’s classic tragedy, Macbeth. Its relevance is in our own socio-political scenario. It shows that though there is enough goodness in the society, the evil forces often dominate. The rulers are more concerned about their self achievements and gains than the collective progress of the society. This leads to the dominance of the evil over the goodness around. But Shakespeare predicts the failure of the evil and final victory for the good. It was the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384BC -322 BC) who defined the dramatic form of Tragedy in his great work â€Å"Poetics†. According to Aristotle, a tragic hero should never be perfect. The fall of a completely virtuous person from a height will create only moral anger among the audience. The fall of a villainous person will only satisfy the moral sense among the audience for the appropriate punishment for the villain .Thus Aristotle in sists that the best tragic hero exists in between such extremes. â€Å"A person who is neither perfect in virtue and justice nor one who falls into misfortune through vice and depravity, but rather one who succumbs through some miscalculation† (Poetics, Chapter 13). According to the Aristotelian standards Shakespeare’s Macbeth falls into one of the best tragic heroes possible. ... Macbeth is a Scottish general who is depicted as a courageous soldier. Macbeth appears in the play first as wounded captain who narrates his courageous acts in the battle field. So the initial impression created is that he is a brave and efficient soldier. Such a man is not, by natural logic prone to commit evil deeds. But this perspective about him gets upset once he interacts with the three witches who prophecies that he is to be the future king. With this prophecy, his physical courage gives away as a mask to the hunger for more and more power and advancement in the power structure. This forces him to commit evil deeds. Just the prediction that he will become the king was enough to trigger these inner self full of ambitions. Ambitions also lead him to self doubts too. Thus the character of Macbeth is a battle field of three strong attributes of his character – Physical strength and courage, ambition for more power, and self doubt. All these attributes are so strong that thr ough out the play they battle with each other for supremacy. Finally his ambitions take over leading to a sense of guilt too. What emerges out is a man of very weak character. Thus Macbeth turns out to be not a Shakespearean villain, but a tragic hero, who perishes by his own doings. The villains of Shakespeare like Edmund in King Lear or Iago in Othello or Richard the third in the play by the same name are mere villains and not tragic heroes, because they have the inner strength to subdue any sort of sense of guilt and self doubt. They are sure characters who knew what they are doing. Macbeth on the other hand is not equipped mentally to face the after effects of the crimes he commits. His courage and strength are more

Linguistics and Media Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Linguistics and Media - Term Paper Example It is the short form or ellipsis of a word or phrase. It is also called initialisms: using the initials of the words and compressing it into short form, such as in the word LOL taking L from ‘laughing’, O from ‘out’, and L from ‘loud’. 2. Abbreviations: 1. f2t? : free to talk 2. cul8r: see you later 3. Ruok? = Are you ok? 4. Xlnt! = excellent 5. 2day: today 6. B4: before 7. thN: then/than The word formation process used here is pseudo-acronym. These appear as acronym or abbreviation but they actually are not and they do not stand for anything. They are used because, when pronounced as intended, they resemble the sounds of other words. They are words or initials used to give the sound of an entire word or phrase. Such as the words given above: Before = b4. B. Frames: In the excerpt, the main structuring frame is the semantic frame, it is a coherent structure of concepts; a word, idea or a concept cannot give meaning unless all elements of the str ucture are present (Gelbukh 307-312). The extract is a pep talk, an encouraging speech that motivates the people and congratulates them on choosing the right option for themselves and their country. The major points of the passage were conveyed in empathic tones, choosing to use ‘we’ rather than ‘I’, it emphasizes the importance of the people and that only by standing together they can overcome obstacles. It constructs a mental state of unity and importance in listeners Attributes and values of the frame: 1. Attributes: The attributes in this frame is the victory that is being celebrated which brings with it a lot of challenges also. 2. Values: The individual instantiation is the phrase â€Å"I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight† - it represents the individual symbolization of the attribute: the victory that comes with challenges, that the individual is hopeful that they can be solved C. Metaphors: A conceptual metaphor refers to understa nding one idea or concept with the help of another idea. An idea or thought is explained in terms of another, they are a way of communication and shape our way of thinking and acting. Conceptual metaphors have become a regular part of our communication. The American public is hungry for a national policy that is coherent and cohesive: The conceptual metaphor in this sentence is â€Å"hungry for† which shows want and need of the American Public and the extent and depth of their need. This expresses the ferocity of their need so that the reader has an acute idea of the profundity of their wish. Last week I was depressed, my spirits sank and I was really low. But my best friend has cheered me up since, and I am feeling up now: The cognitive or conceptual metaphor in this sentence is â€Å"spirits sank and I was really low. I am feeling up now† it is trying to express emotions in terms of directionality. The term low refers to being down, less, dejected, morose, depressed etc.; sank also assumes the same meanings. It shows the direction of his emotions that they are low or have sunk, meaning he is very depressed. Opposing low is up; which has a positive meaning or perception in the human mind, up depicts a state of growth, happiness, acceleration, betterment etc. so saying that I am up now means that I am feeling better or happier now. We launched this campaign not far from here on a beautiful June day. It has been an extraordinary journey. The metaphor is â€Å"it has been an extraordinary journey†; journey is a source domain in this sentence, the word from which we draw the

Identity Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Identity - Essay Example In this variegated world the human beings simply could not avoid the unavoidable and intimate process of socialization that gives way to what is called the individual and collective identity. Thereby, the individual identity is not merely the product of one’s specific self concept, but is rather a concept that is shaped and formed by an array of forces that tend to be economic, legal, social and many a times historical in their ramifications, which scratch and etch the human consciousness and continue to shape, control and define the entity that is called identity. Identity is a notion that happens to be multi-faceted, open and perpetually evolving in its content and scope. As far as I could peek into my childhood days, I could distinctly notice the fact that during the nascent stages of the human life, the development of the individual identity is governed a lot by what an individual thinks about oneself. When I was an infant, my parents where the only outside force that to a large extent shaped my identity (Gielen & Roopnarine 213). The very helplessness and dependence of my child hood state saved me from an early exposure to the multifarious social forces that I had to deal with at a more mature stage. My home and family was the cocoon that not only allowed me to shape my identity in a relatively benign and loving environment, but also protected me from more potent and political outside influences. I was totally oblivious of the fact that in the times to come, forces like ethnicity and color will pervade my inner world and shape my identity in varied ways and forms. Hence, the only god that governed the shaping of my identity was I and my parents. Thereby, I am happy to say that I had quite a happy childhood and this allowed me to develop a positive self concept of myself that shaped an identity that was open, gregarious, happy and confident. The positive reinforcements from my family further ossified this sense of invulnerability and mirth. However, this identity related complacence was not to last forever. As I grew up and my sense of self evolved, I realized that my parents and my family were not only a source love and affection, but also happened to be social individuals who belonged to a specific class, race, ethnicity and culture. It is not that my parents predominantly tried to introduce me to these sometimes hard to acknowledge, but valid facts, but I gradually picked up these facts about my family and hence about myself through eavesdropping into their unsuspecting daily interactions. These socio-economic attributes assigned to my family gradually began to become a part of my identity. Hence, I got a very basic idea of the society and my place in it through this primary socialization with my family (Gielen & Roopnarine 63). Thereby, I could certainly say that my family circumstances largely selected my mother tongue, religion, social class and nationality. It will be true to say that I had a very basic idea about my ide ntity as I entered the mature world. Yet, I was curious to not only test the validity of these identity attributes I inherited, but to practically see as to where I stood in the outside world. In that context I could distinctly identify my young adulthood period