Saturday, August 31, 2019

In Every Cloud there is a Silver Lining

There I was weeping tirelessly for hours on end, almost creating a miniature pond on the ground. My months of preparations had gone to waste. All my plans and decisions I had hoped to undertake ruined. I had planned out my great voyage to the head chief for months. Each and every step I was to take was already decided. But according to my tradition I had to get permission from my mother before leaving. Then it all happened without even listening to all I had to say I heard ‘NO'. A word I feel no man can define and a word that should never exist in anyone's dictionary. There I was foolishly weeping when my motive was to show how much better our lives would be without these traditions yet following them my self. I was to do what I believe was my destiny. I was to do what I believed god created me to do. 1000's of 1000's of years of tradition had been followed in my community. Tradition that I believed was pointless, insensitive, meaningless and inappropriate to follow. Without anyone's consent again I set out to break and change these traditions for our betterment. I packed my bags and headed straight for Chief Souza, the man who is believed to be our god. The man with endless power at his fingertips, what he said happened and he was the only man who could fulfill my destiny. Getting to his home was the least of my worries. I simply had to walk for a short 2 1/2 hours down the sandy graveled road leading straight to his village and his home. I set off without any delays and a short while later I found my self and the grand gate and luxurious village of Chief Souza. My body pushing itself towards the door and with one final deep gulp of air and pushed open the doors. Then I realized I had already achieved a lot and am much closer to achieving my ‘destiny'. Without wasting any time in greetings and worthless talk on my health and family with the Chief I got straight down to the point. I shared a piece of my mind with the Chief not leaving any detail or feeling behind. I never feared his immense power and now in front of him certainly I would not. Step by step telling Chief Souza exactly what my motive is and the reason behind my decision to fight against my tradition. Finally completing my argument against our tradition I looked eye to eye with the Chief. He stared at me as if I had gone crazy and just then I realized what a mess I had got myself into. I realized what a dim-witted person I was to barge into the most superior man's house in the entire community and blast him about how shallow our tradition is. But then again I believed it was my destiny and this is the backbone in my life. This is why I lived. Then something struck me, something hard and heavy and within seconds I dropped to the ground like a stick. Upon awakening I found a rope around my neck and a sack over my head. Despite not being able to see anything I knew the Chief had found my words as an insult to his community and ordered for me to be hung. It hurt really badly as I never even had the chance to question my community on what they found wrong with my words. What was wrong if I had my own opinion about the community and our tradition? It was too late I felt the plank beneath my feet, currently keeping me up, being pulled till I had nothing to balance on. My life had come to an end but my soul would not rest until I accomplished my goal. My mother cried and cried endless for days, wondering ‘Where had I gone wrong in education my son? Why, why, why did he not listen to me? ‘ Everyday each member of the community considers ‘What did he say wrong? He shared his feelings something no one has the courage to do. ‘ Each member of the community started looking at life from a different perspective a perspective in which they can live their lives how they wanted to and not by what their tradition, our tradition, my tradition said. My community members finally realized what I was trying to project. Within a couple of days, I gained my biggest victory our tradition was altered and every member of our community was free to live life their way! Then it became clear to me, if I had not sacrificed my life for the betterment of my community the changes done to our tradition now would never have happened. So even in a dark cloud like the death of a community member came, there really is a silver lining in it. Now my soul will rest in peace!

Friday, August 30, 2019

Dream Come To True

Each one of us have their own dreams who want to achieve it. There is no easy thing in this world. We should work hard for it. But sometimes faith is trying to fool us, no matter how hard a person try he/she can also feel failures in it. But, this doesn't mean we should stop of dreaming. For me, I keep on dreaming for my future and actually I have a lot of dreams that I want to achieve like finding my collegiate and to have a good career in the dear future.To have an own car and support my brother in their education so that the burdens of my parents will be lessen. By the time comes, when I can build my own family. I can give my children a better food, shelter, cloth and the most important is education. To be honest, there's still none these dreams that I have mention comes true but I don't loose hope on it. I'm still young and there is still a long way to walk. As long as I have faith to God and work hard in order to achieve my dreams and one day my dreams can comes true.When I was a kid I have a dream of becoming a soldier for our country but as I grew old I realize that I just want to become a successful businessman or have a good career in the field of Multimedia Arts. Back in my elementary days, I have a dream of becoming a varsity player when I reach high school. Fortunately, In first year after finish the tryout I was one of those few selected to become varsity player although I was just a reserved player I was very grateful because there are only 3 first year player that have been selected.Dreams need a full support from friends and relative. A dreams can come true if it is in your destiny. Only God knows what is best for us. Failure makes a person more stronger and better. And if one day, a dream came true in our lives, we are blessed by the Lord and keep continue dreaming. Everyone, and anyone can dream, even a four year old who can barely talk still has the slightest idea of what they want in life. The truth is you can dream all day long about someth ing so illusory, but it takes a special type of person to make a dream come true.Education is piece of you that can never be taken away, no one can take what's inside of you. Furthering your education is a course of action that WILL take you far in life, affairs, and personal relationships. A teacher can only give you the tools and fundamentals, but to achieve goals past school is a thing of its own. Kids now a day's only care about getting out of school, but what they don’t understand is that school is the birthplace of your dreams.With a college degree you could easily make a living as a nurse, or physical therapy assistant, and other amazing opportunities will come your way. Today's world is cut- throat, with 3. 1 million Americans unemployed, it is crucial that we further our education in order to set aside a high-quality job. Education is the only thing that's going to help me pursue my dreams. It can change the course of mind, spare you of the bumps and bruises of life, and turn wrong situations around. Everyone has a dream, but it take strength, perseverance, and education to make them come true. Dream Come to True Each one of us have their own dreams who want to achieve it. There is no easy thing in this world. We should work hard for it. But sometimes faith is trying to fool us, no matter how hard a person try he/she can also feel failures in it. But, this doesn't mean we should stop of dreaming. For me, I keep on dreaming for my future and actually I have a lot of dreams that I want to achieve like finding my collegiate and to have a good career in the dear future.To have an own car and support my brother in their education so that the burdens of my parents will be lessen. By the time comes, when I can build my own family. I can give my children a better food, shelter, cloth and the most important is education. To be honest, there's still none these dreams that I have mention comes true but I don't loose hope on it. I'm still young and there is still a long way to walk. As long as I have faith to God and work hard in order to achieve my dreams and one day my dreams can comes true.When I was a kid I have a dream of becoming a soldier for our country but as I grew old I realize that I just want to become a successful businessman or have a good career in the field of Multimedia Arts. Back in my elementary days, I have a dream of becoming a varsity player when I reach high school. Fortunately, In first year after finish the tryout I was one of those few selected to become varsity player although I was just a reserved player I was very grateful because there are only 3 first year player that have been selected.Dreams need a full support from friends and relative. A dreams can come true if it is in your destiny. Only God knows what is best for us. Failure makes a person more stronger and better. And if one day, a dream came true in our lives, we are blessed by the Lord and keep continue dreaming. Everyone, and anyone can dream, even a four year old who can barely talk still has the slightest idea of what they want in life. The truth is you can dream all day long about someth ing so illusory, but it takes a special type of person to make a dream come true.Education is piece of you that can never be taken away, no one can take what's inside of you. Furthering your education is a course of action that WILL take you far in life, affairs, and personal relationships. A teacher can only give you the tools and fundamentals, but to achieve goals past school is a thing of its own. Kids now a day's only care about getting out of school, but what they don’t understand is that school is the birthplace of your dreams.With a college degree you could easily make a living as a nurse, or physical therapy assistant, and other amazing opportunities will come your way. Today's world is cut- throat, with 3. 1 million Americans unemployed, it is crucial that we further our education in order to set aside a high-quality job. Education is the only thing that's going to help me pursue my dreams. It can change the course of mind, spare you of the bumps and bruises of life, and turn wrong situations around. Everyone has a dream, but it take strength, perseverance, and education to make them come true.

Thursday, August 29, 2019

Case Study of Gillette Company-Free-Samples-

This paper aims to discuss the Gillette Company which launched the first blade system in 1998. The Company embraced technology and it introduced the five-blade system to outdo its competitors (Nye, 2016). However, the three-blade system was the significant element of the Gillette Company. Also, the three-blade system was introduced to minimize the irritation which was caused by the three-blade system when shaving. Therefore, the Gillette has its pros and cons in the marketing strategies as discussed in this paper. To begin with the pros, The Gillette embraced a new technology to improve the designs in the market. Through the strategy of embracing new technology Gillette would maintain its customers. The Gillette employed the strategy for success by launching the five-blade system to reduce the irritation caused to the customers when using the product (Dhebar, 2016). The marketing plan for the Gillette became more aggressive when they launched the new products. Therefore, the Gillette made a high profit and tried to outdo its key competitors in the market. On the other hand, the Gillette has cons in the marketing strategies as outlined in this paper. Due to the new technology, the Company was obliged to retrain the staff for them to understand the technology (Barrow& Stowers, 2013). At the same time the Gillette minimized the loyalty for the customers hence the market share declined.   Also, the aggressive marketing rollout strategy caused the Gillette to incur costs in advertising the products. Also, the Gillette received criticism due to the campaigns held when marketing the products (Stowell, Stowell,Grogan & Grogan, 2017). The launching of the Fusion Razor was a significant failure for the Gillette. In conclusion, the Gillette has employed good marketing strategies to help in attracting and maintaining the customers hence increase their satisfaction. Despite the marketing strategies, the Gillette has experienced challenges. However, there are many clients who are satisfied with it Barrow, C., & Stowers, D. (2013).  U.S. Patent No. D674,547. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Dhebar, A. (2016). Razor-and-Blades pricing revisited.  Business Horizons,  59(3), 303-310. Nye, J. V. (2016). What do we really know about durable goods monopolies? The Coase conjecture in economics and its relevance for the safety razor industry. In  The Elgar Companion to Ronald H. Coase  (pp. 222-234). Edward Elgar Publishing. Stowell, D. P., Stowell, D. P., Grogan, C. D., & Grogan, C. D. (2017). The Best Deal GiIlette Could Get? Procter & Gamble's Acquisition of Gillette.  Kellogg School of Management Cases, 1-18.

Wednesday, August 28, 2019

Real world negotiation Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Real world negotiation - Assignment Example At the same time, he walked towards the exit threatening to leave. Afraid to lose a sale, Chris called him back and requested him to be patient. Josh offered Chris R.200 for the shoes. However, after much bargaining, the two were approaching an agreement at R.300 for the black shoes. Josh changed his mind almost immediately, claiming that he liked the grey shoes more and would buy them if Chris offered him a free water-bottle. Chris sold him the grey pair of shoes along with the water-bottle for R.300. The â€Å"lowball/ highball† tactic is used to make the other party move towards the resistance point. The tactic is used majorly in business negotiations, where the purchasing party quotes an extremely low price to induce the seller to lower the opening offer. In the above situation, Josh’s asking price was R.200, which was much lower than the seller’s price of R.500. Eventually, the tactic paid off since Josh eventually convinced Chris to sell the shoes to him at R.300.Therefore, this situation fulfills the lowball/highball tactic of negotiation. In this case, an emotional ploy is used to force the other party into bending their will towards the intimidator’s likeness (Ghauri, Pervez and Usunier 90).When used in any negotiation, the intimidator will feign an emotion such as anger to make the other party do what they want out of fear/panic. In this situation, Josh dropped the shoes and threatened to leave the store. The act of anger intimidated Chris, forcing him to call Josh back for a better negotiation. The intimidation tactic worked perfectly for Josh. The â€Å"aggressive behaviour† tactic is used to force the other party to make concessions to reach an agreement (Ghauri, Pervez and Usunier 91). Josh uses this tactic when he notifies Chris that he does not want to waste time, and also when he asks him to explain the high price of R. 500. In this case, the tactic was not helpful as Chris does not bother explaining how he obtained his

Tuesday, August 27, 2019

Program of Study and the Professional Development Plan Essay

Program of Study and the Professional Development Plan - Essay Example Education and Professional Background My name is Juan and I will start my program of study and Professional Development plan by providing some background information about myself. Ever since I was a child, I knew I wanted to be a nurse. I wanted to participate in enabling the sick regain their health. However, my journey toward a professional started when I joined the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez to pursue Bachelor of Science in Nursing with Minor in Physics. I knew I wanted to become a surgical nurse and that is why I choose to do some units in physics since I knew I needed to learn how different surgical equipment work. While pursuing my Bachelor’s degree I was working at Medical Center of Mayaguez, in Puerto Rico. I supported registered nursing staff with direct patient care. This increased my passion in nursing and I knew I had made the right choice. After graduating, I worked as a registered nurse for the United States Army from 1998 to 2003. As an army nurse, I wa s involved in caring for medical-surgical patients. Working within the army was challenging but interesting and helped me sharpen my skills. I am currently a CV-ICU Nurse at Emory University Hospital since 2003. This position has helped me master skills in areas such as patient care of the immediate post-operatory CABG, cardiac valve replacement, or repair, dissecting aortic aneurysm repair, esophagogastrectomies, pneumonectomies, and other variety of surgical procedures. I have also participated in managing access/monitoring central lines (pulmonary artery catheters, arterial lines, etc.), lumbar drainage device, Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) machine, Ventricular Assist Device (VAD), Intra-Aortic Balloon Pump, and Continuous Renal Replacement Therapy (CRRT). In addition to the above achievements, I hold certifications such as Emory Lifesaver Award awarded in 2011 and Army Nurse Recognition Ribbon, which I was awarded in 1999. As demonstrate above, I have worked in dive rse settings. This has enabled me to be flexible in addition to exposing me to different situation in my field. My expertise areas in nursing include post-operatory CABG, pneumonectomies, lumbar drainage, and monitoring patients after heart relater operation. Being exposed to different challenges has helped me understand different concepts regarding nursing and increased my desire to advance my studies in nursing. I have realized that a bachelor’s degree is not enough for me achieve my goals. Professional Goals The field of medicine and health sciences is dynamic. It is thus crucial for professional in this field to be armed with up to date skills. Being a profession in this field, I have realized the importance of being equipped with relevant skills. My personal goal is to be the best that I possibly can. Professionally, I want to obtain a master’s degree in Nursing and become a Family Nurse Practitioner. This is because I want to interact and care for patients across different ages. Additionally, I want to expose myself to different working environment such as community as well as hospital environment. I want to be able to diagnose and treat patients independently. Just like the University vision and mission proposes, my aim of pursuing the Masters is to get equipped with appropriate skills to enable me change the society positively. With my current degree status, I lack the relevant

Monday, August 26, 2019

Ebola Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Ebola - Essay Example Such an observation allows the authors to focus on the magnitude of risks associated with the eventual adoption of the measures that may be suggested to mitigate the possibilities of an outbreak in the region. The authors proceed to further mention of the cases that have been diagnosed within the American soil. The preparedness of the city is further weighed against that of regions such as texas, which have already registered possible outbreaks of the disease. The authors are keen to outline that the prospective address of the disease from findings its way to the communities in New York remains best considered under the description of collective efforts. In an effort that remains related towards the harmonization of the medical facilities in the city, the authors seek to consolidate the respective outfits of healthcare that are related to the city and harmonize them towards developing a steady outfit that aims at addressing the virus. In that effect, the authors propose the possible avenues upon which the detection and subsequent control of an outbreak may be considered. Their work does not place into consideration the possible effects that may be related to animals vectors. The focus is oriented on the human patients that traffic into New York from the various infected areas. Such allows for the description of their proposals as being narrowed on the control of human to human transmissions. Additionally, the prospective process of EVD detection has been mentioned intensely in their work. It is further argued that the adoption of a functional detection systems remains the ideal path upon which the address of the ailment is considered. The authors proceed to make references to experiences registered in the address of the disease in other regions. Their attention is oriented on the plight of eighty-eight patients that were being screened of the disease, with the aim of gathering the required experience

Sunday, August 25, 2019

History of East Africa Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

History of East Africa - Essay Example Slavery is defined as a condition whereby a person, known as a slave is under the control of another. Slavery almost always occurs for the purpose of securing labor. History dictates that those who become slaves had different ethnicity, nationality, religion, sex or race than the dominant group, typically taken prisoner as a result of war. Capture meant death or slavery if one paid no ransom. Social entities characterized with poverty, overpopulation, and cultural and technological lag are frequently exported as slaves to more developed nations.The nature of the slavery differed greatly across the continent. There were large plantations toiled by slaves in Egypt, Sudan and Zanzibar, but this was not a typical use of slaves in Africa as a whole. Slaves were protected and incorporated into the slave-owning family while in others, slaves were brutally abused, and even used for human sacrifices.The practice of slavery and slave trade existed in Africa long before the Europeans arrived (B eck. 2004). Slaves were regarded as investment of local chiefs, kings, merchants and dependent royal subjects for personal gains and revenue as well as performing administrative or military duties. Prior to the European conquest, slavery was a tool in building and strengthening states. In the period of the European colonization, slave trade changed dramatically causing internal divisions among African societies (Amber. 2004). The Oyo-Dahomey Wars, local/regional conflicts among the Asante, and internal division within the Congo kingdoms helped the Europeans acquire slaves in exchange for textiles, guns and ammunitions to expand their territories. The Europeans benefited from this by shipping off the slaves to the plantations of the Americas. As a result the African societies experienced a drastic change depopulating skilled craftsmen and increased wars among tribes (Cooper. 1980). Families were torn apart and children that were left behind became vulnerable to being captured by riva l tribesman (Amber. 2004). The slave trade as a result expanded because of the participation of African rulers and merchants (Beachey. 1976) in the international exchange economy, involving the exports of humans. Africans were manipulated and used by Europeans through the domination of Africa's natural resources (Cooper. 1980). In the beginning of European involvement in Africa, they were initially interested in trading with Africans for their gold, slaves, ivory, and other resources. Europeans began trading in Africa in the 15th century, mainly getting gold and slaves. When they reached the eastern coast of Africa, their prime interest shifted to controlling and securing trade routes to India. For a few centuries, European involvement in Africa was mostly contained to the coastal regions. In the East, the Omanis gained nominal control of the islands, but until the reign of Sayyid (1804-56) they took little interest in them (Nwulia. p13-14. 1975). Sayyid recognized the commercial value of East Africa and increasingly turned his attention to Zanzibar and Pemba, where he permanently relocated his court into (Encyclopedia Britannica Online. 2006). He brought many Arabs with him, and they gained control of Zanzibar's fertile soil, forcing most of the Hadimu to migrate to the eastern part of the island. The Hadimu were obliged to work on the clove plantations. Sayyid controlled much of the East where Zanzibar became the main center of ivory and slave trade (Cooper.1980). Some of them were used on the clove plantations while others were exported to other parts overseas. With Zanzibar's trade being administered by Omanis' who organized caravans into the interior of

Human resource Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words - 1

Human resource - Essay Example The limitations of this report would be the non-availability of the minute details of Google’s HR policies on account of sensitivity of the information. Our research, thus, would purely be based on available information. Let us begin by gathering a basic understanding about Human Resource Management (HRM). â€Å"The field of HRM is not one that exists in isolation. Rather, its part of a larger field of management. Reinforcing many new philosophies like that of work force diversity, downsizing, reengineering, total quality management (TQM), outsourcing and supporting this effort has made HRM an even more vital component of the management team. Similarly, the strategic nature of HRM continues to gain acceptance as more organizations look to ensure that they have the right number of the right people at the right time and in the right place.† (Sadarrudin, 2001) â€Å"The review of the HRM models emphasizes a number of differences between the ‘new’ HRM and traditional personnel management. These include: strategic planning, focus on the psychological contract, importance of learning in the workplace, focus on the individual (unitarism), importance of leadership and proactiveness, a focus on line managers and an attention to measuring HR performance outcomes.† (Bratton and Gold, 2003) â€Å"Co-founders Larry Page, president of Products, and Sergey Brin, president of Technology, brought Google to life in September 1998. Since then, the company has grown to more than 10,000 employees worldwide, with a management team that represents some of the most experienced technology professionals in the industry. Eric Schmidt joined Google as chairman and chief executive officer in 2001.† (Google, 2009) Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin named the search engine they built "Google," a play on the word "googol," the mathematical term for a 1 followed by 100 zeros. (Page and Brin, 1998). The name reflects the immense volume of

Saturday, August 24, 2019

CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS - Essay Example Conceptual Graphs (CG) were central versions of conceptual structures that were meant to be psychologically sensible, semantically triggered, logically solid, and computationally efficient (Sowa, 1984). Thus, conceptual graphs provided a visual representation of logic derived from linguistic networks of AI and other graphs. Sowa’s book provided a structure for future researchers to build upon in the scope cognitive science and the significance of reasoning laying down the foundations of AI. The CG provided a mathematical notation of knowledge helping to logically represent cognitive linguistics. Reasoning plays a significant role in weighing out different operators so as to manipulate it. The various principles of CG representation require the presence of psychologically sensible operations for perception, reasoning, and linguistic comprehension. Sowa (1984) has explained how reasoning works in computational systems as memory structures are organized in a way so as to employ the reasoning processes. CG again, visualize the graphic logical structure, in this case allowing for deductions to be made in a realistic manner. In trying to break down any cognitive issue, conceptual analysis lends itself to the inference of logical conclusions. Conceptual analysis and especially, cognitive graphs have helped process natural languages, where the mapping and visualization is done and in a systematic logical way thereby building the cognitive capacities of computational systems. Using the foundational structures of conceptual analysis along with other philosophical concepts, Sowa (1984) analyzes languages in terms of semantics, syntax, linguistics, and human language abilities. By delving deep into the development of linguistic capacities, he attempted to analyze the language perspective. Sowa (1984) also gives brief references to Augmented Transition Networks (ATNs) a graphical structure used in defining languages. However, no deep discussion is

Friday, August 23, 2019

Monetary Theory and Policy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Monetary Theory and Policy - Essay Example Currently, there is evidence that changes in the unemployment levels may be either good news or bad news in the Wall Street depending on the circumstances of these changes and the market trends. Importantly, it is worthy to understand the market factors that impacts on employment levels. Besides, whether the market is at expansion or contraction stage is crucial while determining the response of the stock market. On this note, the decrease of the unemployment rates within a country can be good or bad news depending on the market trends. Traditional economic theories have derived a relationship between economic development and the unemployment levels within a country. The argument is that high unemployment levels within a country indicates a slow economic growth and may depict a weak economy. On the other hand, low unemployment rates indicate economic developing and a stronger economy. The implication is that low unemployment rates is good news for the economy and the society must anticipate development in future. However, a number of instances have shown a complete different image of the stock market. As observed, an announcement of low unemployment rates in the US comes before the announcement of a drop in the stock prices in the Wall Street. For instance, in 2015, the US labor department has recorded an increase of 800, 000 jobs in February, which was followed by a 3%, fall in the Dow Jones Industrial average (Cogley 1-2). This situation has raised a controversy as more analysts point this to an anomalous change in the stock price market. This has led to the idea that the decrease in the unemployment rate is a bad omen that indicates a higher level of inflation in future of the economy. This is against the traditional theories that perceived employment as a positive economic factor that can drive market growth. More contemporary theories of economy have shown that there are times when good

Thursday, August 22, 2019

Poetry and Strong Human Spirit Essay Example for Free

Poetry and Strong Human Spirit Essay Success is the journey not the destination. â€Å"A strong human spirit essential for an imaginative journey. † Imaginative journeys take us from the reality now to unreal existences that can exist in our minds. A strong human spirit is essential for an imaginative journey to flow through our mind. The success is the journey that is being taken not the destination. This can be expressed through the poems â€Å"Frost at Midnight and Kubla Khan,† by Sammuel Taylor Coleridge and â€Å"Still I Rise† by Maya Angelou that see the journey as the success not the outcome and that their strong human spirit allowed them to go on the journey. In the poem â€Å"Still I Rise† by Maya Angelou the poet expresses her journey through being discriminated in America because of her race. Her journey is much more successful then the destination because as she went on the journey and experienced heartfelt times, along the way she taught the discriminators she can still get back up even if they hurt her many times. The poet uses repetition to do this. â€Å"Still I’ll Rise. She also uses similes to convey her connection with nature along this journey as she uses the concept of natural resources and by using oil, gold and diamond to show contradictions that people think she is wealthy but really they are the spoilt ones. â€Å"Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells pumping in our living room. † She uses rhetorical questions to intensify the poem and to touch the responders. This portrays how she is successful in trying to express what she believes in to others while on the journey. In the poem â€Å"still I’ll rise† the poet has a strong human spirit that is essential for her journey. For her to write this poem as a form of protest it needed a strong human spirit. Her whole poem is based on freedom which is expressed every time she gets hurt and then rises again. Her use of metaphors empathise how strong her spirit is when she gets discriminated but still has hope to keep going. â€Å"Just like hopes springing high† and â€Å"you may shoot me with your words. † Her use of rhetorical questions and repetition allow people to think about it and understand it properly through her words and her strong spirit. â€Å"Does my sassiness upset you?  Why are you beset with gloom? † Her strong human spirit allowed her to achieve the freedom that she wanted. In the poem â€Å"Kubla Khan† by Samuel Taylor Coleridge the poet takes us through his mind on an imaginative journey. His journey had no destination at all but the success was there all along through his connection and love with nature. The poet uses a lot of alliteration to describe this place and assonance to describe how beautiful this image of nature is and how the success of the journey is created through the beauty of nature. Measureless to man† and â€Å"twice five miles of fertile ground. † The use of a simile describes the place as being old but still in good condition ‘Forests as ancient as hills’ and the river as being scary and holy. He does this through the use of an oxymoron as he puts two of these words together and they contradict â€Å"A savage place? As holy and enchanted†. This is the success of the journey as it is still alive but really old. He describes a women’s music with alliteration â€Å"A Damsel with a dulcimer† â€Å"Loud and Long† â€Å"Deep Delight. By including this he has achieved success all through the journey as he celebrates. In the poem â€Å"Kubla khan† by Samuel Taylor Coleridge a strong human spirit was essential for this imaginative journey. His use of assonance and alliteration to describe how beautiful the image of nature is and how the strong human spirit can take us on an imaginative journey. â€Å"Sunless Sea. † By the poet using his imagination he has made this place that feels like paradise with his strong spirit. He needed a strong human spirit to imagine a place that feels like paradise. All through the journey he describes his strong connections with the natural environment and because of his strong human spirit he was able to imagine the nature and environment using metaphors as extraordinary with the river springing up viciously to become a fountain. â€Å"As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing. † The poem â€Å"Frost at midnight† by Samuel Taylor Coleridge his imaginative journey is the success not the destination. As the poet goes on this journey into his past and then he goes into another dream as well this expresses that imaginative journey is a success because his not reaching no destination. The poet begins with a metaphor which connects with nature and God, â€Å"The frost performs its secret ministry,† so the success of the journey has already started with the nature and God. This concept relates to the journey of the poet back into his childhood as he in the quiet cottage and looks at the film in the blue flame which fluttered on the grate is contrasted with him in the past looking at the bars at school to watch a fluttering stranger. This is the success of the start of his imaginative journey and that there is no destination. He then while sitting at school goes into another dream about his birth place and the church tower where the bell would ring so sweetly expresses the success of his journey when he was younger in the country side he was more connected to nature where in the city the only connection was the â€Å"lovely star and sky†. The poem â€Å"Frost at midnight† by Samuel Taylor Coleridge expresses a strong human spirit that is essential for an imaginative journey. The use of the simile â€Å"inaudible as dreams† which describes the quietness which gives him the strong human spirit to the imaginative journey. He also uses assonance to describe how the solitude or quietness his inmates have left him is disturbing him. â€Å"Have left me to solitude to suit abtruser musings†. The looking at the blue flame gave him the strong human spirit to begin his imaginative journey. The relationship between father and son is also giving the poet the strong human spirit because he doesn’t want his son to grow up like him in the city but to be raised in the country so his is more connected to nature.

Wednesday, August 21, 2019

What is a Membrane Essay Example for Free

What is a Membrane Essay 1. What is a membrane? Membrane is any delicate sheet that separates one region from another blocking or permitting (selectively or completely) the passage of substances. The skin, for example, can be considered a membrane that separates the exterior from the interior of the body; cellophane, used in chemical laboratories to separate solutions, acts as a membrane too. 2. Concerning their permeability how are membranes classified? Membranes can be classified as impermeable, permeable, semipermeable or selectively permeable. An impermeable membrane is that through which no substance can pass. Semipermeable membranes are those that let only solvents, like water, to pass through it. Permeable membranes are those that let solvent and solutes, like ions and molecules, to pass across it. There are also selectively permeablemembranes, i.e., membranes that besides allowing the passage of solvent, let only some specific solutes to pass while blocking others. 3. What is diffusion?  Diffusion is the spreading of substance molecules from a region where the substance is more concentrated to another region where it is less concentrated. For example, during the boiling of water in a kitchen gaseous water particles tend to uniformly spread in the air by diffusion. 4. What is meant by concentration gradient? Is it correct to refer to â€Å"concentration gradient of water†? Concentration gradient is the difference of concentration of a substance between two regions. Concentration is a term used to designate the quantity of a solute divided by the total quantity of the solution. Since water in general is the solvent in this situation it is not correct to refer to â€Å"concentration of water† in a given solution. 5. What is the difference between osmosis and diffusion?  Osmosis is the phenomenon of movement of solvent particles (in general, water) from a region of lower solute concentration to a region of higher solute concentration. Diffusion, on the other hand, is the movement of solutes from a region of higher solute concentration to a region of lower solute concentration. 6. What is osmotic pressure?  Osmotic pressure is the pressure created in an aqueous solution by a region of lower solute concentration upon a region of higher solute concentration forcing the passage of water from that to this more concentrated region. 7.Can solutions with the same concentration of different solutes have different osmotic pressures? The osmotic pressure of a solution does not depend on the nature of the solute, it depends only on the quantity of molecules (particles) in relation to the total solution volume. Solutions with same concentration of particles even containing different solutes exert the same osmotic pressure. 8. How are solutions classified according to their comparative tonicity? Comparative to another, a solution can be hypotonic (or hyposmotic), isotonic (or isosmotic) or hypertonic (or hyperosmotic). When a solution is less concentrated than another the adjective hypotonic is given and the more concentrated is called hypertonic. When two compared solutions have the same concentration both receive the adjective isotonic. So this classification makes sense only for comparison of solutions. 9.Concerning permeability what type of membrane is the cell membrane?The cell membrane is a selectively permeable membrane, i.e., it allows the passage of water and some selected solutes. 10.What are the basic constituents of the cell membrane?  The cell membrane is formed of lipids, proteins and carbohydrates. The membrane lipids are phospholipids, a special type of lipid to which one extremity a phosphate group is bound thus assigning electrical charge to this region of the molecule. Since phospholipids have one electrically charged extremity and a long neutral organic chain they can organize themselves in two layers of associated molecules: the hydrophilic portion (polar) of each layer faces outwards in contact with water (a polar molecule too) of the extracellular and the intracellular space and the hydrophobic chains (non polar) face inwards isolated from the water. Because this type of membrane is made of two phospolipid layers it is also called a bilipid membrane. Membrane proteins are embedded and dispersed in the compact bilipid structure. Carbohydrates appear in the outer surface of the membrane associated to some of those proteins under the form of glycoproteins or bound to phospholipids forming glycolipids. The membrane carbohydrates form the glycocalix of the membrane.

Tuesday, August 20, 2019

Cultuur en Opvoeding

Cultuur en Opvoeding Interculturele Pedagogiek Extra opdracht Beoordeling Cultuur en opvoeding Cultuur en Opvoeding. Een recensie over het boek van Lotty Eldering. De discussie over het multiculturele karakter van de Nederlandse samenleving keert herhaaldelijk terug. Eà ©n van de redenen hiervoor is de toename van immigranten en vluchtelingen uit niet-westerse landen naar Nederland. Prof. dr. Lotty Eldering, emeritus hoogleraar Interculturele Pedagogiek aan de Universiteit Leiden, heeft vijfentwintig jaar lang onderzoek gedaan onder allochtone gezinnen. Naar aanleiding van dit onderzoek heeft ze begin 2002 een overzichtwerk geschreven, waarin aandacht wordt besteed aan zowel de huidige (opvoedings-)situatie van allochtone ouders en kinderen, als hun voorgeschiedenis en de daarbij behorende cultuur als hun verdere leefsituatie. Dit boek heet Cultuur en Opvoeding. Interculturele pedagogiek vanuit ecologisch perspectief. Niet eerder was er een studieboek verschenen over het onderwerp interculturele pedagogiek. Lotty Eldering is een van de eerste schrijfsters die zulk grondige informatie verschafte over de nieuw bevolkingsgroepen die in Nederland binnenkomen. Het doel van dit boek is het bij te dragen aan het tot stand komen van een beter inzicht in de culturele orià «ntatie en sociale positie van allochtone ouders en jeugdigen. Daarnaast is het de bedoeling de culturele sensitiviteit, ten opzicht van deze mensen, van haar lezers te vergroten. Het boek is bestemd voor een groot publiek, namelijk studenten en docenten die zich willen verdiepen in de opvoeding en leefwijze van allochtone jongeren, praktijkwerkers, onderzoekers en anderen die behoefte hebben aan kennis en inzicht van cultuur op de opvoeding. Daarnaast is het ook handig als naslagwerk te gebruiken. In Cultuur en opvoeding wordt de manier van opvoeden van allochtonen in Nederland duidelijk besproken, zodat je er een goed beeld van kan vormen. Telkens wordt hierbij ook gesproken over de islamitische en de hindoestaanse manier van opvoeden. De religie en tradities van deze groepen worden hierbij ook behandeld om een beeld te krijgen hoe zich dit in de Nederlandse samenleving inpast. Ook wordt hier een vergelijking gemaakt met de Nederlandse gewoontes en de christelijke opvoeding. Nederland wordt hier gezien als multiculturele samenleving, door toename van het aantal immigranten en vluchtelingen die afkomstig zijn uit niet-westerse samenlevingen. Wat hier allemaal bij komt kijken wordt beschreven te samen met de waarden en normen in Nederland. Eldering schrijft vanuit een ecologisch perspectief. Dit perspectief gaat er van uit dat de sociale en culturele context van het gezin, de omgeving, grote invloed heeft op de opvoeding en ontwikkeling van het kind. Tot nu toe is het ecologisch raamwerk voornamelijk gebruikt bij het bestuderen van een stereoculturele omgeving en niet, zoals Eldering doet, bij het bestuderen van kinderen die opgroeien in een multiculturele samenleving. Eldering beschrijft kritisch het ecologische model en het developmental niche model (ontwikkelingsgebieden) van respectievelijk Bronfenbrenner Harkness en Super. Cultuur en opvoeding geeft de informatie erg beschrijvend weer. Het leven van allochtonen in Nederland wordt beschreven en geÃÆ' ¯llustreerd aan de hand van voorbeelden in aparte kaders. Door het boek loopt over het algemeen een goed volgbare rode draad die de lezer langs al die aspecten leidt. De indeling van het boek verloopt op een logische manier, van het grote algemene (wat zijn allochtonen, waar komen ze vandaan) naar het meer uitgewerkte (hoe wordt er opgevoed, welk risico- en probleemgedrag komen er voor). Doordat de voorgeschiedenis en de cultuur in de landen van herkomst, van de allochtonen gezinnen die in dit boek worden behandeld, eerst toe te lichten kom je tot een beter beeld van deze gezinnen. Ook verklaard dit veel van wat er in de rest van het boek volgt. Deze twee punten hebben namelijk nog steeds invloed op zowel de opvoeding als de andere dagelijkse dingen in de allochtone gezinnen wanneer deze in Nederland wonen. Na een voorwoord van de schrijfster zelf, volgt een inleiding over de interculturele pedagogiek en het gebruik van dit boek. Hierin worden drie theoretische perspectieven, namelijk het ecologische model (invloed omgeving op de opvoedingssituatie), historisch en vergelijkend en acculturatie (dichterbij elkaar komen van mensen uit verschillende culturen) en cultuurverschillen, genoemd die gebruikt zijn in dit boek als richtlijnen. In hoofdstuk 2 worden de identificatiecriteria, herkomst en migratie van allochtonen in Nederland beschreven. De meeste aandacht gaat hier uit naar de (Creoolse en Hindoestaanse) Surinamers, de Marokkanen en de Turken. In hoofdstuk 3 gaat het om het theoretische kader. Hier worden de integratie, het multiculturalisme, het ecologische raamwerk (met hierin het ecologische model van Bronfenbrenner en de devolopment niche van Harkness en Super), de cultuur en de risicofactoren (zowel in het algemeen als speciaal voor allochtone jongeren) beschreven. De religie staat centraal in het volgende hoofdstuk. Hier worden de Islam en het HindoeÃÆ' ¯sme verder uitgewerkt, van het ontstaan tot de komst van dit geloof in Nederland. In hoofdstuk 5 draait het om de maatschappelijke participatie en de culturele orià «ntatie van de allochtonen hier in Nederland. Hier komen onder andere de sociale positie, taal en de banden met het land van herkomst aan bod. In hoofdstuk 6 gaat het boek vervolgens verder met de crossculturele verschillen in opvoeding. Hier wordt het socialisatiemodel van Kagità §ibasi en visies op kinderen en hun ontwikkelingen behandeld en de punten opvoeding, leren en identiteit worden nader uitgelegd. In hoofdstuk 7 gaat Eldering daarop door, want hier staat de opvoeding van allochtonen gezinnen centraal. Dit is geschreven vanuit de allochtonen gezinnen (Marokkaans, Turks, Surinaams) zelf. De adolescentie is het onderwerp van hoofdstuk 8. Hier gaat het over relaties (met ouders en leeftijdsgenoten), vrije tijd en vriende n, school en werk, seksualiteit en huwelijk. In het laatste hoofdstuk wordt tot besluit de risicofactoren en het probleemgedrag behandeld. Hier gaat het over wat een belangrijke basis is wat een jongere nodig heeft, welke risicofactoren er zijn en met welke psychosociale problemen ze te maken kunnen hebben. De manier van schrijven, de indeling van het boek en de vele voorbeelden, van zowel tekst als illustraties, maken dit boek tot een leerzaam boek die ook prettig is om te lezen. Wel mist er zo nu en dan wat structuur. Wat tussen hoofdstuk 6 en hoofdstuk 7 wel duidelijk is, is tussen andere hoofdstukken sporadisch. Tussen hoofdstuk   6 en 7 is een duidelijk verband, er wordt in het eerste hoofdstuk een achtergrond geschetst voor de tweede. Vrijwel alles waar aan gedacht wordt bij het denken aan allochtone mensen in Nederland, komen aan de orde. Aspecten die hier worden bedoeld zijn bijvoorbeeld religie, manier van opvoeden, sociale positie en andere cultureel specifieke dingen. Het is een interessant boek voor diegene die geÃÆ' ¯nteresseerd zijn in cultuurverschillen hier in Nederland. Alles bij elkaar maakt dit informatieve boek compleet.

Monday, August 19, 2019

TV Violence :: essays research papers

The average American child watches an average of three to four hours of television daily. Over a year’s time that add up to about 12,000 violent acts witnessed on television (Television†¦Children). After a child has witnessed a violent program, they tend to act different. Parents need to be able to distinguish between dramatic or imaginative play and imitation. During dramatic play children create new and varied roles which represent different experiences in their lives. However, during imitative play children simply repeat stereotyped roles from the screen, often repeating scripts or sound bites from the television. In drama play language may be made up, use codes, and special names. Numerous studies have been done in the last thirty years about the problems with viewing programs that contain violence. The majority of research done has been on television/cartoon violence; focusing on how viewing violence causes aggressive behavior in the viewer (The Effects†¦Violence). One study, done by Athena Huston, Ph.D., used 100 preschool children. Half of them were males and the other half females. The little children were observed before and after they viewed violent and non-violent shows. The group that viewed the violence were more likely to hit out at their playmates, argue, disobey class rules, and were less willing to wait for things and turns than the group that viewed non-violent material (Violence and Television). It seems that children who view large amounts of violence on television are likely to become desensitized to all kinds of violence-televised or real, and more likely to behave in aggressive or harmful ways towards others (Violence on Television). Ch ildren become physiologically aroused and express impulses during and after seeing it on television. For example, the Power Rangers, Batman, and many other cartoons show fighting is good. The characters â€Å"beat up† the bad guys and get praised for doing so. While the child is watching he/she sometimes acts out what is being seen. No one dies in these shows, however, the wrong idea about fighting and violence is being taught to our kids (Television Violence). A study investigated the effects of the â€Å"Mighty Morphin Power Rangers† on aggression. It found that young children in a group who watched a televised episode committed seven times more aggressive acts in a two minute play period than did a control group (Television†¦Children:Boyatizis,1995). As children grow they are able to distinguish between fantasy and reality. This usually happens around the age of seven or eight.

Fallacious Arguments In the Declaration of Independence Essay -- essay

Fallacious Arguments in the Declaration of Independence The Declaration of Independence is among the most profoundly interpreted and fiercely discussed documents in modern history. Most likely because of its rhetorical style and numerous fallacious arguments that are found. The colonists’ use of persuasion to influence by using repetition to achieve their means. The Declaration of Independence is what 56 colonists saw as a logical course of action. What you must ask yourself is: What was considered logical in 1776? The rhetorical style uses persuasive ideals in the use of language. For example, in the first sentence of the second paragraph, the parallel structure and repetition of the word â€Å"that† enable the writers to articulate with excessive clarity their fundamental beliefs. The second paragraph is similar to the concluding paragraph because it also relies on parallel structure and repetition of â€Å"that† when declaring the colonies free and independent states. Also,the repetition of "He is,"which is the only phrase other than "He has" in the list of â€Å"complaints† shows present tense. In this case present tense leads to urgency to the need for a revolution. Which tells the audience that the only other option is, desolation, and tyranny. There is also negative diction about the actions of the British king(George III) that carry to the emotional appeal. Finally,the prime of the last line effectiv...

Sunday, August 18, 2019

Papa John’s International, Inc. Essays -- Strategic Case Analysis

Introduction Papa John’s International, Inc., is headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky it is the world’s largest pizza chain and considered paramount in the pizza industry. Papa John’s domestic pizzas are made exclusively from a proprietary blend of wheat flour, cheese made from 100% real mozzarella, fresh-packed pizza sauce made from vine-ripened tomatoes (not from concentrate) and a proprietary mix of savory spices, and a choice of high-quality meat (100% beef, pork and chicken with no fillers) and vegetable toppings. However, international ingredients vary to meet customs and tastes. (http://ir.papajohns.com/) The company operates approximately 3,400 domestic and international pizza restaurants. They have five segments of their business: domestic restaurants, domestic commissaries, domestic franchises, international operations, and variable interest entities. (Barney & Hesterly, 2010) They have company-owned restaurants in mature and developed markets, but have recently experienced a measurable decrease in their domestic franchising sales because these franchisees are not strategically located in the more heavily concentrated markets like their company owned restaurants. To further develop the Papa John franchisees, they are working on various economic systems to provide royalty and local marketing relief for struggling franchisees, by providing financing to assist existing and/or new businesses, and educating lenders and banking institutions on the Papa John’s business models and goals. Papa John’s has currently started repurchasing about 1 million shares of its common stock at an average price of $22.52 per share, the company’s board of directors recently extended a repurchase plan through the end of 2010. Papa John’s... ... end-user customers, so as to capture additional market presence. Dominos has recently changed their pizza ingredient and their pricing structure they could become a major threat to Papa John’s customer base because they have always prided themselves on using high-quality ingredients. Dominos is now making attempting to grab up some Papa John’s domestic market share. Works Cited Form 10-K Annual Report Filed Feb 24, 2009, http://ir.papajohns.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1104659-09-11825 (Retrieved 2/11/10) Thursday, February 11, 2010, 2:43pm EST | Modified: Thursday, February 11, 2010, 3:04pm, Papa John’s cooks up heart-shaped pizza promo http://louisville.bizjournals.com/louisville/stories/2010/02/08/daily41.html?ana=yfcpc (Retrieved 2/11/10) http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/22/news/companies/papa_johns_pizza_schnatter.fortune/index.htm (retrieved 2/12/10)

Saturday, August 17, 2019

Iron deficiency Essay

Iron deficiency is a decrease in the number of red blood cells in the blood due to a lack of iron. Iron deficiency anemia is the most common form of anemia in children. You get iron through certain foods, and your body reuses iron from old red blood cells. Iron deficiency (too little iron) may be caused by; an iron poor diet (this is the most common cause) the body not being able to absorb iron very well. Lilly is a 4-year old Caucasian female she suffers from a disorder called Iron Deficiency anemia disorder. This occurs when there is not enough iron in the body. The reason Lily has Iron Deficiency disorder is because of her diet. Iron is the major component of hemoglobin and is essential for its proper function. Hemoglobin is a part of the red blood cells; it carries oxygen throughout the body without enough iron the body produces less and not as many red blood cells form. Lily is a picky eater and only drinking fruit punch and eating starchy foods is a contributing factor to her condition. Some of the symptoms to Iron Deficiency Anemia are blue-tinged or very pale whites of the eyes, blood in stool, pale skin color, and weakness. Lily shows signs of some of these. Even though Lily’s mother is single and on a low budget, there are things, she can do to prevent this. There are iron supplements that can be taken by mouth or given by injection into a muscle or vein. The most important thing in preventing this disorder or or correcting it is to eat iron rich foods such as raisins, meats, (especially liver), fish, poultry, eggs, soup beans, and whole grain bread. Prognosis with change in supplements or iron rich diet most cases the blood counts will return to normal within a couple of months. Davon is a 5-year-old African American whose mother carries the sickle cell trait. Sickle Cell disease is an inherited blood disorder that affects red blood cells. The sickle cell gene causes the body to produce abnormal hemoglobin. In sickle cell disease, the hemoglobin clumps together, causing red blood cells to become stiff and develop C-shaped (sickle) form. These sickled red blood cells can block blood vessels, reducing blood flow to many parts of the body. This process can result in tissue and organ damage.. Hemoglobin and Iron; each red blood cell contains about 280 million hemoglobin molecules. Hemoglobin is the most important component of red blood cells. It is composed of protein (globulin) and a molecule (heme) which binds to iron. You can understand Darvon’s mothers concern since about 70,000-100,000 Americans- mostly African Americans have Sickle cell disease. About 2 million Americans have sickle cell trait. Sickle cell is inherited and people at risk for inheriting the gene for sickle cell descend from people who are or were originally from Africa or parts of India and the Mediterranean. Blood test can determine whether an individual has sickle cell trait or sickle cell disease. Prevention and lifestyle changes general precautions to prevent and reduce the severity of long-term complications of sickle cell disease, several precautions may be helpful. Have regular physical examinations every 3-6 months. Have periotic and careful eye examinations. Have sufficient rest, warmth, and increase fluid intake. These are critical precautions for reducing oxygen loss and the risk of dehydration. Avoid crowds that increase the risk for infection. Spencer suffers from a condition called Thrombocytopenia. Thrombocytopenia is a condition in which there is a deficient number of circulating platelets. Platelets are parts of the blood that help blood to clot. Thrombocytopenia often divided into three major causes of low platelets: Low production of platelets in the marrow increased breakdown of platelets in the bloodstream and an increased breakdown of platelets in the spleen or liver. Spencer has noticed over the last several weeks an increase in ecchymosis, which is the passage of blood from ruptured blood vessels into subcutaneous tissue marked by a purple discoloration of the skin or bruising. Some of the causes of Thrombocytopenia are accidental eye injury, anorexia nervosa, cirrhosis and liver disease. Treatment depends on the cause of the condition. In some cases, a transfusion of platelets may be required to stop or prevent bleeding Prevention would depend on the specific cause.

Friday, August 16, 2019

Perceptual Errors

1) Prototypes:- Usually according to the group or profession you belong to, you are assumed to have certain characteristics, whether you have them or not. In our organisation, we have a team manager who has an impression of being unapproachable and unfriendly, only because of his position. Due to this reason none of the employees approach him for help, even though it might hurt productivity. Since a few colleagues and myself have a habit of observing people’s behaviour, we knew all this fear is baseless. We didn’t hesitate in asking him for help and he was very pleasant and found solutions to our problems and made us very comfortable while he was at it. So, in my opinion to reduce this kind of a perceptual error, its advisable to remember principle on similarity. Wherein, its not necessary that people from similar background are similar in nature. We should always see a person as a separate individual. 2) Horn Effect:- According to this effect/error, when a person is found to have an undesirable trait, he is automatically assumed that all his traits must be undesirable, which may or may not be true. To explain with an example, I have a colleague in my office who is precise and sticks to the point when having a conversation with a customer. Once one such matter was escalated considering that he sounded rude to the customer. And though he was cleared after been given some advice, because of that one event he is always considered to be deficient in other necessary traits, where he actually is pretty good. Inspite of his being very disciplined, it was assumed that he was late in his project, when the fact was the opposite! In such a case, I think the person has to make an effort to clear such a generality. Also the appraiser should take into consideration all the facts of the person’s behaviour and progress, rather than assuming that he will be wrong always. 3) Hallo Effect:- This effect is similar to horn effect, the only difference being that here the person is assumed to have all positive traits because of one desired trait. We have just such an example in our team, where one of the executives had scored the best in the first quarter. This led to a general assumption that she is good at all necessary statistics, which was not the case. This employee has a habit of coming later from breaks, of not going by rules and generally escaping slights due to favouritism. This also affects the morale of the people who work hard but their effort is not recognised. But when she was given the responsibility of helping with the KRO’s of the few newer executives, she couldn’t handle it and this led to waste of time and overall poor performance. This could have been avoided if there was unbiasedness and proper checking done related to the statistics of the person rather than assuming she would be good at everything. 4) Primacy Effect:- This is an error in perception when a person tends to base somebody’s judgement depending on the first impression of that person. For instance, in our organisation we have a new team leader join in to handle our team. Now since this guy was a little timid initially and because it was a new rols and place for him, most of the people in the office didn’t take him seriously. To add to it some of his mannerisms were a little girlish, which led to most of the office crowd calling him ‘gay’. Presently, after knowing him more, even if people are not pulling his leg about being gay, he still not given his due respect. Anything that goes beyond his control in terms of disciplinary issues, he is blamed for saying that he doesn’t have a proper hold on his team! I think the best way to reduce such an error in an organisation would be to observe the person in question over a period of time, unbiasedly, and then form an opinion about him. Its not necessary that first impressions are always the last impressions. 5) Recency Effect:- This is an effect where you form an opinion on a person based on what was last observed about him or what was the last thing he spoke which stood out, in a positive or a negative way. In my office, we have a team leader who is highly work-oriented and keeps to himself. I had an impression that he never talks to anyone other than work, which is a good thing, but I always founds it a little too technical or unfeeling. But recently I had to change my opinion. The same person had supported me to get holidays because of my bad health, when I’d not even asked for any support. Though he still is the same, but that last gesture of his changed my entire opinion of him. Ideally, here is a case of both primacy error and then recency error. Though not all effects could be errors, necessarily. The vital thing is we should not judge others based on one single point be it initial impression or latest impression. We need to keep our minds open about the person. 6) Selective Perception:- We tend to perceive things according to our beliefs or interests in this kind of a perceptual error. We may note only that what we like, to suit our own needs. For instance, there is a colleague of mine who never used to talk to me before. But since I’ve started my MBA, she’s been talking and asking me all sort of information about it. It is a topic of her interest. But she wouldn’t talk on any other matter. Here I feel, she perceives selectively, only according to what she wants. In an organisation, it is better for anyone to avoid such an error, because you loose out on lot of potential growth, of self and others. We need to notice and make use of all talents of an employee. 7) Contrast Effect:- We need to be very alert when making decisions that we are not making that decision based on anything observed in contrast to the situation or the person that we are observing. Because such an error could make us go wrong when selecting right people. I can explain this error by mistake that I’d done where I was supposed to monitor the two new members who was supposed to join the team. Now from both these girls one appeared very childish and rather loud as compared to the other one who was a quiet soul and who looked professional and competent. And I formed my opinion that the louder character was not very mature in handling some KRO’s and achieving them consistently. Which later I realised, was a completely wrong opinion of her. She not only was quite disciplined and organised, she was more lively and kept things light when work became too serious. The other girl, was rather in her own world and least motivated. Effect like this when you have two contrasts in front of you could be difficult to detect, but if you observe each person and compare their performance and behaviour to the standard norm, you would be more accurate. 8) Projection Error:- This is a kind of error when you project your attributes and traits or emotions onto others. Here the person maybe completely different from you, but because we may not have noticed that we might assume the other person also to be like us. We have a member in our team who always talks about team bonding and team strength. I too believe that a team is strong and succeeds more often if it works together towards the same goal. I did an error of assuming that this person will also think the same and share the responsibilities and duties of a project equally. All the work was delegated accordingly and everyone was expected to do their bit. But to my surprise that person was all talks and no show! He not only did pass on thatr work to another member of the team, his ways also brought discontent amongnst the members and divided the group further. I realised that I’d thought of him being like me and giving his 100% to whatever he does. But that was not the case sadly. If I would have recognised that earlier I would’ve corrected myself and given him work accordingly.

Thursday, August 15, 2019

Homeland Security Essay

Outline I. Topic: The United States Homeland Security and The War on Terrorism II. Thesis Statement: Homeland Security plays a major role in the war on terror. Topic Sentences 1. The Homeland Security Act of 2002 reduces the vulnerability of the United States to terrorism. 2. The Department of Homeland Security was created for the war on terror. 3. The role of the Homeland Security Committee. 4. The history of the United States on foreign policy. 5. How terrorists communicate what they want to accomplish. 6. The study of Foreign Intelligence. 7. The Increasing Need for Domestic Intelligence. 8. How security benefits from intelligence. 9. The United States is strengthening our Nuclear Security. 10. How the U.S. is fighting the war on terror. 11. Conclusion The Homeland Security Act Created by President George W. Bush after the 9/11 attacks the United States Department of Homeland Security is the largest federal government reorganization since the Department of Defense was created via the National Security Act of 1947. The new department assumed a large number of services, offices and other organizations previously conducted in other departments, such as the Customs Service, Coast Guard, and U.S. Secret Service. The Department of Homeland Security was created for the war on terror The primary mission of the Department is to prevent terrorist attacks within the  United States. Homeland Security reduces the vulnerability of the United States to terrorism. It also minimizes the damage, and assists in the recovery, from terrorist attacks that do occur within the United States. The role of the Homeland Security Committee Homeland Security Committee States that The Committee on Homeland Security was created by the U.S. House of Representatives in 2002 in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. The Committee was first formed as a select, non-permanent Committee, to provide Congressional oversight over the development of the Department of Homeland Security. The Committee was made permanent when it was designated as a Standing Committee of the House on January 4, 2005, the first day of the 109th Congress. The Committee will be made up of 21 Democratic Members of Congress there is currently one vacancy, led by Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS), and 13 Republican Members of Congress, led by Ranking Member Peter T. King (R-NY). Frances Townsend currently heads the committee. Trudeau states that â€Å"President George W. Bush said We’re under attack because we love freedom, is why we’re under attack. And our enemy hates freedom. They hate and we love. We differ from our enemy because we love. We not only love our freedoms and love our values, we love life itself. Our enemy hates innocent life.† (2002) The history of the United States on Foreign Policy Because of its role as a major world superpower, the United States must carefully consider its national foreign policy goals. Although they may be carried out very differently from administration to administration, the primary goals of American foreign policy are most effective when they remain constant over time. Historically, the United States has pursued a number of foreign policy goals, but one goal has been and continues to be a primary goal of every generation is national security. The Realists point to several factors that demonstrate the importance of national security. They begin by declaring that humans are naturally aggressive and instinctively fight one another. This human tendency reveals the inevitable nature of war. The Cold War which was a period of strong change starting in 1945 led  America into a geopolitical mindset for the first time in American history. This period made national security and military affairs the center of focus for America. This gave way to the idea of national security being a strong focal point of the American agenda. It made it equally as important as anything else did on the agenda. Also the United States was now a state of mobilization. The armed forces would now and always be at a striking force. All of the changes were something new to the people of America but it was an idea that was not only accepted it was expected. The same rings true with 9/11 in relation to the role of America. Our sole focus is national security and to put our military at a point of being called upon any second. The United States has embraced the idea that things have changed and are willing to do whatever possible to prevent future events of this magnitude. Another characteristic that the Cold War Period and 9/11 hold in common is that both were a pervasive political and military competition that dominated international politics. On September 11, 2001 terrorism became a reality! There is no way for the United States to prevent future attacks on Americans without working as a coalition force with the other nations to identify, track, and eliminate terrorist networks around the world. One of the main problems with fighting a war on terrorism is that the nations of the world have become accustomed to working alone as individuals vice working together. The United States will need to change its approach in order to conquer the worldwide threat of terrorism. The way to defeat terrorism at home and around the world is to form an international counter-terrorist task force. In order to prevent future acts of terrorism on the United States and around the globe, the free-nations of the world will have to come together and form a large task force to counter against the terrorist threat. The main problem with forming a world wide counter-terrorist headquarters is that there is no one single definition of terrorism. Each country has a definition of the word â€Å"terrorism† based on the political stance that the country takes on use of force. The United Nations must first come up with a clear definition of terrorism in order to facilitate the creation of an international counter-terrorist organization. How Terrorists communicate what they want to accomplish Terrorists kill for a reason. The reason is to communicate a message that will instill fear in the enemy government and demoralize it. The strategy of terrorists is to provoke the government into repressive measures in the hope that this will cause a revolt. The Study of Foreign Intelligence The study of foreign intelligence has demonstrated that the purpose of intelligence is to acquire information necessary to apply governmental power with greater precision and that as the need for application of government power increases, so does the need for intelligence. Domestically, terrorist threats to homeland security will be countered by government power used by various domestic security agencies, and the newly created domestic intelligence programs will enable them to apply their powers with greater force and precision. As technological capabilities inevitably grow threats to homeland security will increase in the future, and the need for domestic intelligence will increase. The Increasing Need for Domestic Intelligence Homeland security will require greater levels of domestic intelligence in the future. Foreign intelligence has indicated that the purpose of intelligence both foreign and domestic is to facilitate precise application of governmental power. Countering terrorism has increased the need to collect domestic intelligence, but threats to domestic security will increase even more in the future due to growth in technological capacities. As the use of power increases to counter these threats, domestic intelligence capabilities must also increase so that the power is applied effectively. American officials created a permanent intelligence community to warn policymakers of threats to national security. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had such a detrimental effect on American perceptions of security that after World War II ended, policymakers decided to create for the first time in the nation’s history a permanent bureaucracy intended to prevent any future surprise attacks or other strategic surprises. Historically, intelligence capabilities had been organized to provide targeted military information to commanders because losing wars held such disastrous consequences. The United States was the last major power to get into the intelligence analysis business. It was thought that it wasn’t  necessary because two great oceans protected America from foreign dangers. Marrin states that The attack on Pearl Harbor and subsequent American involvement in World War II changed the United States’ need for and use of intelligence. During World War II, the United States increased its overseas presence, and this necessitated the creation of a global intelligence capability commensurate with the United States’ expanded global role. After World War II ended, American political leaders decided that the United States needed an intelligence agency capable of integrating disparate pieces of information distributed throughout the military and other government agencies to prevent another Pearl Harbor. As a result, in 1947 the Central Intelligence Agency was created to prevent future surprise attacks by focusing on threats to national security. (2003) How security benefits from Intelligence The primary security benefit of intelligence is that it enables power to be applied with greater precision and with less collateral damage. The role of intelligence is the collection and analysis of information to find out who the terrorists are and what they are up to. Knowledge can make the application of power more effective, but knowledge alone is powerless. The benefit of foreign intelligence is easiest to illustrate in the application of military power. Foreign intelligence can also assist in the application of economic and political power. The United States is strengthening our Nuclear Security In the 1990’s we were warn of potential terrorists obtaining and using of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) whether chemical, biological, and nuclear. Chemicals weapons are available to terrorist through homebrew or rogue states. Nuclear terrorism is our biggest worry. Nuclear weapons are more difficult for terrorists to handle. Henderson (2004) states that With so many nuclear warheads being stored under conditions of uncertain security in the former Soviet Union, it is possible terrorists might be able to buy or steal a ready made nuclear weapon. But nuclear  warheads have safety interlocks, and it has been proposed that the weapons be fitted with devices that would allow them to be remotely destroyed or disabled if terrorists obtain them. U.S. agencies since the 1900s have sought closer coordination between U.S. and former Soviet Scientists and engineers in order to secure the nuclear stockpiles. How the U.S. is fighting the war on terror We have worked with a number of states around the world to expose plotting Al Qaeda cells. The United States has implemented broad-sweeping, even controversial, steps such as the Patriot Act in an attempt to improve our domestic security. There are three tools that can be used on terrorists. The criminal law and legal system is used to prosecute terrorist suspects. The military can be used to destroy terrorist’s infrastructures. Diplomatic efforts can be used in the hopes that nations can work together to prevent the movement of terrorists around the world. Conclusion After 9/11 the Department of Homeland Security was organized. The primary mission of the Department is to prevent terrorist attacks within the United States. Homeland Security reduces the vulnerability of the United States to terrorism. It also minimizes the damage, and assists in the recovery, from terrorist attacks that do occur within the United States. Intelligence has been used to collect and analysis information to find out who the terrorists are and what they are up to. It is best to see that the United States is taking the proper steps to fight terrorism. Reference: Henderson, H. (2004) Global terrorism, New York, NY: Facts on file, Inc. Homeland Security Retrieved November 25, 2009 http://homeland.house.gov/about/index.asp Marrin, S. (2003) Homeland Security Intelligence Retrieved November 25, 2009 http://www.homelandsecurity.org/journal/Articles/marrin.html Homeland Security Retrieved November 24, 2009 http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/homeland-security/ Trudeau, G. (2008) The war in quotes p.20 Retrieved November 27, 2009 http://www.ontheissues.org/Celeb/George_W__Bush_Homeland_Security.htm

Wednesday, August 14, 2019

Listening to Rap: Cultures of Crime, Cultures of Resistance

Listening to Rap: Cultures of Crime, Cultures of Resistance Julian Tanner, University of Toronto Mark Asbridge, Dalhousie University Scot Wortley, University of Toronto This research compares representations of rap music with the self-reported criminal behavior and resistant artirudes of the music's core audience. Our database is a large sample of Toronro high school studenrs (n = 3,393) from which we identify a group of listeners, whose combination of musical likes and dislikes distinguish them as rap univores. We then examine the relationship between their cultural preference for rap music and involvement in a culture of crime and their perceptions of social injustice and inequity. We find thar the rap univores, also known as urban music enthusiasts, report significantly more delinquent behavior and stronger feelings of inequity and injustice than listeners with other musical tastes. However, we also find thar the nature and strengths of those relationships vary according to rhe racial identity of different groups within urban music enthusiasts. Black and white subgroups align themselves with resistance representations while Asians do not; whites and Asians report significant involvement in crime and delinquency, while blacks do not. Finally, we discuss our findings in light of research on media effects and audience reception, youth subcultures and post-subcultural analysis, and the sociology of cultural consumption. Thinking About Rap The emergence and spectacular growth of rap is probably the most important development in popular music since the rise of rock ‘n' roll in the late 1940s. Radio airplay, music video programming and sales figures are obvious testimonies to its popularity and commercial success. This was made particularly evident in October 2003 when, according to the recording industry bible Billboard mzgnzme, all top 10 acts in the United States were rap or hip-hop artists;' and again in 2006, when the Academy award for Best Song went to It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp, a rap song by the group Husde & Flow. Such developments may also signal rap's increasing social acceptance and cultural legitimization (Baumann 2007). However, its reputation and status in the musical field has, hitherto, been a controversial one. Like new music before it (jazz, rock ‘n' roll), rap has been critically reviewed as a corrosive influence on young and impressionable listeners (Best 1990; Tatum 1999; Tanner 2001; Sacco and Kennedy 2002; Alexander 2003). Whether rap has been reviled as much as jazz and rock ‘n' roll once were is a moot point; rather more certain is its pre-eminent role as a problematic contemporary musical genre. Direct correspondence to Julian Tanner, Department of Social Science University of Toronto at Scarborough, 1265Military Trail, Scarborough, Ontario, Canada, MIC 1A4. Telephone: (416) 287-7293. E-mail: Julian. [email  protected] ca. † rh8 Uniiersily of North Carolina Press Social Forces 88121 693-722, December 2009 694 †¢ Social Forces 88(2) In an important study of representations of popular music. Binder (1993) examined how print journalists wrote about rap and heavy metal in the 1980s and 1990s. While both are devalued genres (Roe 1995), she nevertheless contends that they are framed differently: the presumed harmful effects of heavy metal are limited to the listeners themselves, whereas rap is seen as more socially damaging (for a similar distinction, see Rose 1994). The lyrical content of the two genres is established as one source of this differential framing: rap lyrics are found to be more explicit and provocative (greater usage of â€Å"hard† swear words, for example) than heavy metal lyrics. The second factor involves assumptions made (by journalists) about the racial composition of audiences for heavy metal and rap-the former believed to be white suburban youth, the latter urban black youth. According to Binder, rap invites more public concern and censorious complaint than heavy metal because of what was assumed to be its largely black fan base. At the same time, she identifies an important counter frame, one component of which elevates rap (but not heavy metal) to the status of an art form with serious political content. In both the mainstream press (i. e.. The New York Times) and publications targeting a predominately black readership (i. e.. Ebony and/^i), she finds rap lauded for the salutary lessons that it imparts to black youth regarding the realities of urban living; likewise, rap artists are applauded for their importance as role models and mentors to inner-city black youth. Thus, while rap has been framed negatively, as a contributor to an array of social problems, crime and delinquency in particular, it has also been celebrated and championed as an authentic expression of cultural resistance by underdogs against racial exploitation and disadvantage. How these differing representations of rap might resonate with audience members was not part of Binder's research mandate. ^ Furthermore, while she does acknowledge that ournalistic perceptions of the racial composition of the rap audience are not necessarily accurate-that more white suburban youth, even in the 1980s and 1990s, might have been consuming the music than black inner-city youth-this acknowledgment does not alter her enterprise or her argument. At this point in time, when the listening audience for rap music has both expanded and become increasingly diverse, our research concerns how young black, white and Asian rap fans in Toronto, Canada relate to a musical form still viewed primarily in terms of its criminal and resistant meanings. Researching Rap Much of the early work on audiences preoccupied itself with investigating the harmful effects of media exposure, especially the effects of depictions of violence in movies and TV on real life criminal events. Results have generally been inconclusive, with considerable disagreement in the social science research community regarding the influence of the media on those watching the large ot small screen (Curran 1990; Abercrombie and Longhurst 1998; Freedman 2002; Sacco and Kennedy 2002; Alexander 2003; Newman 2004; Savage 2004; Longhurst 2007). Listening to Rap †¢ 695 Listening to popular music has, on occasion, been said to produce similarly negative effects, although these too have proven difficult to verify. For example, in one high profile case in the 1980s, the heavy metal band Judas Priest was accused of producing recorded material (songs) that contained subliminal messaging diat led to the suicides of two fans. This claim was not, however, legally validated because the judge hearing the case remained unconvinced about a causal linkage between the music and the self-destructive behavior of two individuals (Walser 1993). Strong arguments for the ill effects of media consumption rest on the assumption that audiences are easily and direcdy influenced by the media, with frequent analogies made to hypodermic syringes that inject messages into gullible and homogenous audiences (Abercrombie and Longhurst 1998; Alexander 2003; Longhurst 2007). In contesting this view of audience passivity, critics also propose that texts are open to more than one interpretation. Again, TV udiences have been studied more frequently than audiences for popular music, although research on the latter has illustrated how song lyrics are not necessarily construed the same way by adolescents and adults. Research conducted by Prinsky and Rosenbaum (1987) indicates that songs identified by adults as containing deviant content (references to sex, violence, alcohol and drug use, Satanism) were not similarly categorized by adolescents. Evidence that there are diflferent ways of watching television or listening to recorded music has led to an alternative conception of audiences-one more concerned with what audiences do with the media than what the media does to audiences. The development within communications research of the uses and gratifications model (McQuail 1984) is one result, with TV once more the media form most commonly investigated. Nonetheless, a few studies have documented how young people listen to popular music in order to satisfy needs for entertainment and relaxation (among other priorities), and utilize it as an accompaniment to other everyday activities, such as homework and household chores (Roe 1985; Prinsky and Rosenbaum 1987). More recent research has added identity construction as a need that popular music might fill for young listeners (Roe 1999; Gracyk 2001; Laughey 2006). One particular usage emphasized by British cultural Marxists associated with the now defunct Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies has focused attention on how active media audiences counter dominant cultural messages in their consumption of popular culture. In what has, by now, become a familiar story, a series of music-based, post-war youth cultures (Teddy Boys, Mods, Rockers, Skinheads, Punks) in the United Kingdom have been represented as symbolically resisting the dominant normative order (Hall and Jefferson 1976; Hebdige 1979). This argument has, however, relied on a reading of cultural texts and artifacts for its evidentiary base, rather than observations of, or information from, subcultural participants themselves (Cohen 1980; Frith 1985; Tanner 2001; Bennett 2002; Alexander 2003). 696 †¢ Social Forces 8S(2) More recently, the utility of the term subculture for understanding young people's collective involvements in music has been questioned. The focus of this criticism is, once again, the Birmingham school and its conceptualization of subculture. Its critics argue that, nder conditions of post modernity, music audiences have fragmented, and young people are no longer participants in distinctive subcultural groups (Bennett 1999b; Muggleton 2000). Instead of subcultures, they are now involved v^^ith neo tribes and scenes (i. e. , Bennett 1999b; Bennett and Kahn-Harris 2004; Hesmondhalgh 2005; Longhurst 2007; Hodkinson 2008). Post subcultural research has been much less inclined than the Birmingham era researchers to decode and decipher texts, and much more likely to engage in ethnographic studies of music and youth groups (Bennett 2002). However, while there has been occasional work on modes of (female) resistance in the â€Å"tween scene† (Lowe 2004) and â€Å"riot girrrl scene† (Schily 2004), there has been no equivalent research on rap scenes and resistance. Examinations of audience receptions of rap are not numerous and have been of two main kinds: a few studies have explored how young people perceive and evaluate the music, while others have studied the harmful effects of rap by trying to link consumption of the music with various negative consequences. An early study by Kuwahara (1992) finds rap to be more popular with black than white college students, and more popular among males than females. However, reasons for liking the music varied little by race, with both black and white audience members prioritizing the beat over the message. A more recent study by Sullivan (2003) reports few racial differences in liking the music, although black teenagers were more committed to the genre and more likely to view rap as life affirming (Berry 1994) than those from other racial backgrounds. In a small but important study conducted in California, Mahiri and Connor (2003) investigated 41 black middle school students' perceptions of violence and thoughts about rap music. In focus group sessions and personal interviews, informants revealed a strong liking for rap music, valuing the fact that it spoke to their everyday concerns about growing up in a poorly resourced community. They did not, however, like the way that rap music on occasion (mis)represented the experiences of black people in the United States. They challenged the misogyny evident in some rap videos and rejected what they saw as the glamorization of violence. Overall, their critical and nuanced engagement with rap music fitted poorly with depictions of media audiences as easily swayed by popular culture (Sacco 2005). The search for the harmful effects of rap music has yielded no more definitive results than earlier quests for media effects. While some studies report evidence of increased violence, delinquency, substance use, and unsafe sexual activity resulting from young people's exposure to rap music (Wingood et al. 2003; Chen et al. 2006), other researchers have failed to find such a link or have exercised extreme caution when interpreting apparent links. One review of the literature, conducted in the 1990s, could find a total of only nine investigations-all of them Listening to Rap †¢ 697 mall-scale, none involving the general adolescent population-and concluded that there was an even split hetween those that found some sort of an association between exposure to the music and various deviant or undesirable outcomes, and those that could find no connection at all Moreover, in those studies where the music and the wrongdoing were linked, investigators were very circumspect about whether or not they were observing a causal relationship, and if so, which came first, the music or the violent dispositions (Tatum 1999 ). A mote recent investigation conducted in Montreal is illustrative of such interpretative problems. While a preference for rap was found to predict deviant behavior among 348 Frenchspeaking adolescents, causal ordering could not be established, nor an additional possibility ruled out: that other factors might be responsible for both the musical taste and the deviant behavior (Miranda and Claes 2004). The notion that rap is or can be represented as cultural resistance-the counter frame identified by Binder-has become increasingly prominent in the rap literature over the past 20 years (Rose 1994; Krims 2000; Keyes 2002; Quinn 2005). In his influential book. Why White Kids Love Hip Hop: Wankstas, Wiggers, Wannabes, and the new Reality ofRace in America, Kitwana (2005) expounds at length on his emancipatory view of rap's history and development. Kitwana sees hip-hop as a form of protest music, offering its listeners a message ofresistance. He also makes the additional claim that the resistive appeal of hip-hop is not restricted to black youth. Indeed, as the tide of his book suggests, he is patticularly interested in the patronage of rap music by white youth, those young people who might be seen as the contemporary equivalents of Mailer's â€Å"White Negro† or Keys' â€Å"Negro Wannabes. (Keyes 2002:250) In his view, the global diffusion of rap rests on the music's capacity for resonating with the experiences ofthe downtrodden and marginalized in a variety of cultural contexts. Quinn (2005) similarly explains the crossover appeal of gangsta rap in the United States in terms ofthe â€Å"common sensibilities and insecurities shated by post Fordist youth. † She continues: â€Å"many young whites, facing bleak labor market prospects, were also eager for stories about fast money and authentic belonging to ward off a creeping sense of placelessness and dispossession. (Quinn 2005:85-86) Thus, rap's appeal is as much about class as it is about race. Nor is the resistive view of rap restricted to the North American continent. At least one French study-conducted in advance ofthe riots in the fall of 2005 -has noted how French Rap has become the music of choice for young people of visible minority descent who have grown up in the suburban ghettos (Les Cities) of major cities. They have been routinely exposed to police harassment on the streets, subjected to prejudice and discrimination at school, and struggled to find decent housing and appropriate jobs (Bouchier 1999, cited in Miranda and Claes 2004). The idea that popular music might serve as an important reference point for rebellious or resistive adolescents is not a new one. As we have already noted, this is how a British school of subcultural analysis once interpreted the cultural activity of wotking-class youth in the United Kingdom (Hall and Jefferson 1976; Hebdige 698 †¢ Social Forces 88(2) 1979). Some attempt has been made to understand rap fandom in similar terms. Bennett's (1999a) ethnographic study, set in Newcastle, reveals how one group of white rappers translate the racial politics of blacks into the language of class divisions in the United Kingdom. However, for the most part there has been limited application of this kind of analysis to young people's involvement with rap music. Rap scholars who construe the music as an authentic expression of cultural resistance directed against exploitation and disadvantages at school, on the streets, or in the labor market, do so primarily without much input from the young people who make up its listening audience. Because they have not often been canvassed for their views about the music, we do not know to what degree they share in or identify with the message of resistance readily ound in content analysis of the rap idiom (Martinez 1997; Negus 1997; Krims 2000; Stephens and Wright 2000; Bennett 2001; Sullivan 2003; Kubrin 2005; Quinn 2005; Lena 2006). Thus contemporary rap scholarship follows British subcultural theory in gleaning evidence of resistance from the texts, not the audience. Resistance is sought, and found, in the words and music rather than in the activities and ideologies of subcultures or audience members. We can suggest, echoing Alexander's (2003) earlier critique of British cultural studies, that the audience for rap music has been theorized rather more thoroughly than it has been investigated. The Present Study The present study is concerned with three key questions: First, is there a relationship between audiences for rap and representations of the music? Second, as compared to other listening audiences, are serious rap fans participants in cultures of crime and resistance? Third, if such a link is found, what are the sources of variation in their participation in these cultures of crime and resistance? The need to address these questions, as we see it, emerges from several limitations in the existing research on rap. These limitations are as follows: First, there is a significant disjuncture between dominant representations of the music as a source of social harms and evidence unambiguously supportive of this proposition. Second, the case for a resistant view of rap music is usually advanced, as we have already intimated, by examination of the designs and intentions of musical creators, both artists and producers, as well as music critics. We do not know whether or not resistant messages register and resonate with those who listen to the music. Third, we do not have an accurate gauging of the sociodemographic composition, particularly racial and ethnic, of the audience for rap music. Rap's dominance of the youth market is widely understood as a crossover effect-the original black audience now joined by legions of white fans (Spiegler 1996; Yousman 2003). However, purchasing habits-the usual arbiter for claims about rap's increasing popularity with white consumers-may not be an entirely reliable measure of either rap's popularity or racial and ethnic variations therein (Krims 2000; Quinn 2005). The system devised by the recording industry to gauge record Listening to Rap †¢ 699 sales-Nielson Soundscape-does not gather data on the race, or indeed any other personal characteristic, of purchasers. What it does do is categorize sales in terms of whether they were made in retail stores in high-income locations or in lowincome locations. Record companies, journalists or academics then choose to equate those high-income sales with white suburban youth, and low-income sales with inner-city black youth, but are doing so without any direct measures of the racial background or identity of buyers (Kitwana 2005). Moreover, it has been argued that sales figures â€Å"under represent the taste preferences of the poor. † (Quinn 2005:83) As Rose (1994) explains it, in the black community, particularly in impoverished neighborhoods, many more rap CDs are listened to than bought-a single purchase being passed on from one fan to another. Similarly, homemade tapes and bootleg CDs are often produced and shared within local fan networks. The implications of this point are clear enough: the appropriation of rap music by suburban white teens might not be as extensive as is commonly supposed. Finally, we do not know whether or how the rap audience relates to the dominant frame of the music as a catalyst for crime and delinquency or to the counter frame of the music as an articulator of social inequity. The mainstreaming of rap may have cost the genre its underground or counter-culture status as protest music, or made it less attractive to delinquent rebels. Rap also may play no part in crime or resistance subcultures because, under post modern conditions, young people have become increasingly eclectic and individualized in their musical tastes; the close relationship between musical tastes and lifestyles, implied by subcultural theory, no longer applies. On this formulation, therefore, we would not expect to find strong connections between a preference for rap music and subcultures of crime and subcultures of resistance. On the other hand, reasons for believing that rap music may be a basis for subcultural lifestyles, at least among black youth, are more compelling. At the time that we were conducting our research there was considerable debate, in the local media and among local politicians, about issues involving race and crime-racial profiling and the desirability of collecting race-based crime statistics, for example. Contributing to this debate were findings from another study, confirming what black youths in Canada have always suspected, namely that they are much more likely to be arbitrarily stopped and searched by police officers than are members of other racial and ethnic groups-even when their own self-repotted deviant activity is statistically controlled for (Wordey and Tanner 2005). In addition, contemporaneous research on the media coverage of race and crime in Toronto newspapers carried out by Wortley (2002), found black people disproportionately portrayed in a narrow range of roles and activities (principally those involving crime, sports and entertainment) than members of other racial and ethnic groups; and when featured in crime stories, depicted primarily as offenders. Capricious policing and media misrepresentation may therefore contribute to a sense of injustice among black youth, a sense of injustice that has them gravitating to rap as an emblem of cultural resistance. 00 †¢ Social Forces SS{2) Commercial success and artistic valorization has not diminished rap music's capacity to provoke moral panic. The music is still seen as threatening, dangerous and socially damaging by many political figures and established authority. ‘ Previous research suggests that negative media coverage ofthe cultural preferences and practices of adolescents often intensifies subcultural identifications (Cohen 1973; Fine and Kleinman 1979; Thornton 1995). Rap based moral panics may therefore tighten connections between the music and delinquent lifestyles and/or resistive attitudes and behaviors. The lack of attention paid to rap's consumers renders these questions relatively open ones, the meaning of rap music still to be discovered. Methods Whereas most contemporary research on rap focuses on those who create the music-artists and producers, and those who write about it, music critics-we pose questions about rap's audience. Further, while audience studies usually employ qualitative data-gathering techniques (for example, Morley 1980; Radway 1984; Shively 1992), we use the methods of survey research. We are more concerned with how audience members interact with the music than with the issue of cause and effect. We are interested in how music might be used as a resource in their everyday lives (Willis 1990; DeNora 2000), how it might contribute to identity formation (Roe 1999) and, especially, how audiences might align themselves with (or distance themselves from) cultures of crime and resistance. Nonetheless, in our analyses, we treat rap fandom as a dependent variable. While there is considerable academic and public debate about whether music produces or is a product of cultural activities, legal or otherwise, existing research has failed to provide a compelling or consistent rationale for any particular causal logic. As we have seen, the idea that exposure to rap music causes crime is not unequivocally supported in the research literature. Research on resistant youth cultures, by contrast, is much more likely to reverse the relationship and see musical style as a result of subcultural activity (Willis 1978; Hebdige 1979). Hebdige, for example, infers that punk rock in the United Kingdom was a cultural response to the subordination of existing working-class youth groups. Laing (1985) has countered that punk the musical genre existed before punk the subculture. In the absence of agreement about the direction of the relationship between musical taste and cultural practices, our decision to operationalize rap appreciation as a dependent variable is made more for pragmatic, heuristic reasons than unassailable theoretical ones. Our strategy is to focus on listening preferences rather than purchasing habits. By asking students to report on and evaluate the music that they like, dislike and in what combinations, we gain a clearer and more detailed picture of where rap is situated in the consumption patterns of groups of students differentiated by, among other factors, their racial identity. Our goals are to: (1. distinguish students with a serious, exclusive taste for rap from more casual fans; (2. to calculate the Listening to Rap †¢ 701 size and racial makeup of rap music's prime audience; and (3. to map relationships between that core audience and resistant and delinquent repertoires. Few surveys of general populations of young people have established any kind of connection between rap and deviancy, net of other factors. We contend that rap's reputation as a corrosive force is validated by that linkage, and that without it that representation becomes more ontestable. A similar logic applies to the relationship between rap and social protest. The claim that the music carries a serious message-that it is an expression of resistant values and perceptions-is substantiated with evidence of a link between the music and a collective sense of inequity, and weakened by its absence. Data The data for this research are drawn from the Toronto Youth Crime and Victimization S tudy, a stratified cross-sectional survey of Toronto adolescents carried out from 1998 through 2000 (Tanner and Wordey 2002). Self-administered questionnaires were completed by 3,393 Toronto students ages 13-18, from 30 Metropolitan Toronto high schools in both die Cadiolic (10 schools) and larger Public School (20 schools) systems. Within each school, one class from each grade, 9 (ages 13 and 14) through 13 (ages 18 and 19), was randomly selected. The overall response rate was 83 percent (83. 4% for Catholic vs. 83. 1% for public schools), and is a conservative estimate as it was based on the number of students enrolled in each class rather than those present the day of the study. Informed consent was given for participation in the study. Surveys were completed during class under the supervision of a member of the research team (and without a teacher present) and took approximately 45 minutes to complete. The survey asked young people about a broad range of topics, including family life, educational experiences, leisure activities, delinquent involvement, victimization experiences and so forth. The survey instrument was designed by members of the research team and evolved out of a series of 11 focus groups with adolescents in Toronto schools. The completed survey was reviewed by a series of institutional ethics boards, including those at the University of Toronto, the Toronto Public School Board and the Catholic School Board. As the survey does not include high school dropouts, institutionalized youth and street youth, it is a school sample and thus any generalizations speak only to the experiences of school-based adolescents. Our sample is ethnically and racially diverse and is representative of the Metropolitan Toronto high school population. Measures Musical Preferences Guided by Bourdieu's work (1984) and Peterson's recasting of musical taste in terms of omnivorous and univorous patterns (1992), we focus our attention on 702 †¢ Social Forces 88(2] how musical choices are combined: if young people liked (or disliked) one style or genre, what other styles or genres did they like or dislike (what Van Eijck 2001 has referred to as â€Å"combinatorial logic†). Indicators of musical taste were derived from the question: â€Å"How much do you like each of the following types of music? Respondents were then asked to evaluate each of 11 contempotary musical genres: Soul, Rhythm and Blues, Jazz, Hip/Hop and Rap, Reggae and Dance Hall, Classical and Opera, Country and New Country, Pop, Alternative (including Punk, Grunge), Heavy Metal (Hard Rock), Ethnic Music (traditional/ cultural), and Techno (Dance). Musical tastes were assessed on a five-point Likert scale that addresses whether respondents liked the musical genre very mu ch, quite a lot, a little bit, not very much or not at all. Unlike previous research that dichotomized musical tastes, focusing exclusively on the musical genres most liked (Peterson and Kern 1996) or disliked (Bryson 1996), we target the level of appreciation (or lack of appreciation) each respondent has for a particular musical genre. For space considerations a detailed overview of the clustering procedure has been omitted but is available upon request. We employed a two-stage cluster analysis (hierarchical agglomerative and ^-means) procedure to derive groupings of adolescent musical tastes. Cluster analysis assembles respondents based on their common responses to questions/ measures, and is useful for identifying relatively homogenous groups, groups that are highly intetnally homogenous (members are similar to one another) and highly externally heterogeneous (members are not like members of other clusters) (Aldenderfer and Blashfield 1984). Employing cluster analysis techniques, we uncovered seven musical taste clustets. Table 1 outlines the results of our cluster analysis. The largest group (n = 616) was the Club Kids, composed of those who report an above average enjoyment of techno and dance, mainstream pop, and hip-hop and rap. Next were the Urban Music Enthusiasts (n = 605). Members of this group combined a strong appreciation of Rap and Hip Hop with considerable disinterest in most other musical styles. These adolescents are the primary focus ofthe current study. Then there was a fairly large (n = 482) group of youth, the New Traditionalists, who have an above average liking of classical music and opera, jazz, soul, R&B, country music and mainstream pop. The fourth largest (n = 425) group, the Hard Rockers, comprised a sizeable number of heavy metal and hard rock, alternative, punk and grunge fans. Then there was a surprisingly large (n = 384) group of adolescents, the Musical Abstainers, who are only marginally interested in any kind of music. The group we call the Ethnic Culturalists (n = 380) were so described because of a dominant preference for a quite wide range of ethnic music, as well as a greater than average liking for soul and R&B, jazz, classical music and opera, country music techno and dance, and mainstream pop. The smallest group (n = 338), the Musical Omnivores, was composed of those who have an above average appreciation for all 11 musical genres. These clusters vary considerably, not only in the musical Listening to Rap †¢ 703 Q-CM O O U O O U O O U O O -COIOCOCOCNJCJ>COIO † †¢ ^ – T— c3^ h ^ h†¦ c o 3†² UJ CD o .Si i -T— COCOCDCO s m eu rocMincDco -T— CMC3 co co i Q. CL tu . S o .2 U) o tu tpcooin CNJcOCOCOcdcOCMCOM-‘^COCNI co T—CMOCI5 ? CO en (U ro â€Å"o 0} Q. CL ro â€Å"o en CM CM co â€Å"cD t n tu . 2 2 Oi tn -D C to to CZJ eu co CNI co o tD tu. —. _ 2 CD â€Å"O en ! c: o c: 03 sa | ^ sV ndical . 0011 V CL ro o tu . S P o | idd tn tu V p. 704 †¢ Social Forces 8H2) likes and dislikes, but also with respect to sociodemographic, socioeconomic class indicators, and measures of school experience, cultural capital, leisure patterns and subcultural delinquency (Tanner, Asbridge and Wortley 2008). Social Injustice, Property Crime and Violent Crime The sense of injustice that rap is said to speak to often involves the dealings that young people have with the police and courts. Six items in our questionnaire invited respondents to evaluate their perceptions of the equity of the criminal justice system, fairness in the educational system, and more general perceptions of the equality of opportunity in Canada. Some of the questions addressed racebased inequality, while others invoked age, class- and gender-based discrimination. These six items were condensed into a scale and standardized (alpha = . 65) with higher values indicating greater feelings of social injustice. Respondents were also invited to report their participation in illegal activities. Our measures of crime and delinquency covered a spectrum of activities, varied by type and seriousness. Two scales items are constructed based on the following question: â€Å"How many times in the past year have you done any of the following things? Would you say never, once or twice, several times, or many times? † The first scale captures involvement in property crime, including self-reported property damage, theft under $50, breaking into a car, stealing a car, stealing a bike, breaking and entering a home, drug dealing and theft over $50 (alpha = . 6). The second scale measures violent offending and includes carrying a hidden weapon such as a gun or knife in public, using physical force on another person to get money or other things, attacking someone with the idea of seriously hurting him or her, hitting or threatening to hit a parent or teacher, getting into a physical fight with someone, and taking part in a fight where a group of friends were up against another group (alpha = . 81). SES, School Measures and Cultural Capital The impact of students' sociodemographic backgrounds is initially examined in terms of demographic variables-age, gender, Canadian identity (â€Å"Do you think of yourself as Canadian? â€Å"-a measure of perceived inclusion in Canadian society), and race. Socioeconomic status is captured through indicators of parents and family situation, and includes measures of parental educational attainment (whether or not they had attended postsecondary education), family intactness (whether or not respondents grew up in a two-parent household), a measure of subjective social class based on perceptions of family income. Next we include a set of measures related to educational attainment, experiences and expectations: self-reported grades (proportion receiving mostly As), skipping school, suspension from school, educational stream (general or academic stream) and a more evaluative question about the degree of importance that young people attached to education. Listening to Rap †¢ 705 Finally, we include a measure of respondents' own cultural capital activities. While mainly used as an explanation of educational and occupational attainment (DiMaggio 1982; DiMaggio and Mohr 1995; Aschaffenburg and Maas 1997), measures of cultural capital have also been deployed to uncover dispositions, or orientations, towards the arts (Bourdieu 1984; Swartz 1997). We use it here as a further measure ofthe characteristics and lifestyles ofthe audience for rap-its possession bestowing status upon individuals and the music that they listen to, its absence denoting the opposite. Our seven-item cultural capital index comprises both traditional highbrow pursuits-going to the symphony, visiting museums-and the sorts of respectable leisure activities (playing a musical instrument, attending cultural events, going to the library, reading a book for pleasure and hobbies) that contribute to the cultural resources available to young people. The sum of these seven items is standardized and has an alpha of . 65. Descriptive statistics and other details on all measures can be found in Appendix A. Analytic Procedure Multivariate logistic regression is employed in four separate analyses. First, a strong preference for Rap and Hip/Hop-being an Urban Music Enthusiast-is regressed on sociodemographic, socioeconomic status and school measures. Next, we regress being an Urban Music Enthusiast on sociodemographic, socioeconomic status and school measures for three racial groups-white, black and Asian/South Asian youth. For each racial group we run four separate models that include baseline measures only, followed by models that add social injustice, property crime and violent crime. All analyses were conducted with the Stata 8. computer program (StataCorp 2001) using the survey commands that account for intra-cluster correlation due to the complex sampling strategy. Results We can quickly confirm the enormous popularity of rap with our respondents. It has the highest average approval rating of any musical genre, with some 33 percent of students saying that they liked it â€Å"very much,† and 21 percent saying that they liked it â€Å"quite a lot. † Rap clearl y appeals to a broad range of young listeners and is, therefore very much part of a common music culture among high school students. But our cluster analysis (Table 1) also isolates a group of students who enjoy rap music and little else. Examining the approval radng for each music genre relative to the cluster means, where scores approaching 1 indicate a strong approval ofthe genre, and scores approaching 5 indicate a strong dislike, demonstrates that Urban Music Enthusiasts have a strong preference for rap and hip-hop, reggae and dance hall; a more moderate liking for soul and R&B, and a below average liking for all other musical genres. We think that our Urban Music Enthusiasts fit the profile of music univores-individuals who appreciate a few musical styles while disliking everything 706 †¢ Social Forces mi) else-as described in the research of Peterson (1992) and Bryson (1997). Bryson links univorous taste among American adults to low status, particular racial and ethnic groups, and regional differences. She also notes that univorous taste, when compared to omnivorous taste, is more likely to be related to what she calls â€Å"subcultural spheres. † (Bryson 1997:147) Our Urban Music Enthusiasts appear to be rap univores who may also be adhering to â€Å"sub-cultural spheres. Of the 605 Urban Music Enthusiasts in our sample, 275 {A6%) are black, 117 (19%) are white, 115 (19%) are Asian or South Asian, and 98 (16%) are from other racial groups. These figures tell us that young black people still comprise the central component of the rap audience; moreover, roughly 57 percent of black youth is Urban Musi c Enthusiasts). At the same time, we observe evidence of a significant racial crossover. White Urban Music Enthusiasts constitute 8. 6 percent of the white students in our sample, while Asian Urban Music Enthusiasts make up 9. 5 percent of all Asian students. The racial composition of the Urban Music Enthusiast taste culture prompts two further questions: Eirst, of the black students surveyed, what factors in addition to race predict their univorous interest in rap? Second, of white and Asian students, what factors encourage their involvement in an essentially black music culture, an involvement that clearly sets them apart from other white and Asian students? Table 2 provides results for Urban Music Enthusiasts membership regressed on sociodemographic, socioeconomic status and school measures, with separate analyses for white, black and Asian/South Asian young people. Paying particular attention to the findings for each racial group, what is common to all three groups of Urban Music Enthusiasts is that, compared to other students in our sample, they are poorly endowed with cultural capital and are not especially good students. Few other background factors have any significant or consistent impact upon a disposition towards Urban Music. For white students, parental SES, family structure and subjective social class, have no bearing upon their musical preferences, whereas school suspension and poor grades are strong predictors. For black students. Urban Music enthusiasm is more common among younger students and those less likely to identify as Canadian. Being a black youth identified as an Urban Music Enthusiast is also strongly related to growing up in a single-parent family and skipping school. For their part, Asian/South Asian youth are something of an anomaly-among them. Urban Music Enthusiasm is positively associated with social class and having well-educated mothers-but like other Urban Music Enthusiasts it is also strongly related to school suspension and skipping school. We are less interested, however, in the sociodemographic and socioeconomic factors that may lead to being an Urban Music Enthusiast than in the relationship between being a Urban Music Enthusiast and representations of rap-either as part of a culture of resistance and/or as a basis for subcultural delinquency. Tables 3 through 5 describe the distribution of being an Urban Music Enthusiast across three racial groups (white, black, Asian/South Asian) as shaped by perceptions Listening to Rap †¢ 707 I i I u (O re (/> CO o (U 1. 76 4. 37 ,01a ‘V— re . r; o — U; c n t – – CO CO cr; – ^ †¢ ^ CD – ^ CO CO CD CM CNl T – CD CN? -â€Å"i^ CO CNJ – . CNj CO r-1 †¢2 . o o CO CO c n 0 5 t-~- M – ,59c ,55c I CO ro ro CNl CD c n r— CO CZ> CO CO CNJ cu CD CO CO CNl CO o CNI m E cn o O) T— †¢T— LO r CO CNl CN LO CD CZ> CM LO †¢Ã‚ «Ã¢â‚¬â€ e n LO CO CD LO CM †¢ ‘o ro CNJ †¢ c n CO CO u o O r-. – CO h ~ T— CO CM -sj- CO CO CO ,41 ro CO u o u CO CO CO ^ – CO LO o ro ro CM LO T – CO T— c u LO c n -. 11 -3. 67 Tl- CNl l CO cp h.. – LO cn CO T— LO CO CO †¢ C35 CNJ CNl C D CO h— CJ) †¢ ^ CO CD LO CNl c n CO LO CNl c n CI3 c n r— CO CD – ^ CO CO ‘ ‘ T-^ CU T— CO CO r l CO CD CO h-^ CO J ro c j o LO LO r~- I— CO CT> CO LO CD CO †¢ o> I— co O5 o> lO Tt lO t^ †¢*†¢ CM t ^ co LO r T co CD csi ro g ‘†¢ co E Q: S o 0 ~ ~ CM †¢ 05 EntlNusi ts Memi nd Vioie Prop iociai Stice t-ratlo _o >, 0 E o. E Q. / fV le 0 S ^^ 0  « †¢rat †¢g CO t-~ - «aO5 CIS co co CM r~. – ^ CM r – i r j co cz> †¢ ^ co co OO m LO co r-.. co †¢ ^ T — en lO CM LO † CO o †¢ †¢ – r— cz; CM r— UO OO T l – I— CD ^ 1 – LO CD T— O ‘ CSI CO CO T T- T-^ OO ^ CO oq – ^ †¢ LO O I— ^† 05 †¢ h – co LO C3 CSl i T-^ c s i T-^ ‘ c s i re re 3 s o: 0 CM LO †¢;* O; CD CD CJ C 3 CO T— CO – ^ co Ti† i^.. OO co T – 1 ^ CM CD O ) OO CD co eu r O r co CD ci> u 3 S ice a Bas iViod _o d) ro .? † 5 ‘S V 3 iO r- co CM CM LO CD CD CM LO †¢ < – CD LO co o LO T^ T-^ T^ cri i~~- c o h – †¢>— c o CM – †¢ – o ^ – CD CM OO h-; oq CO csi T-: csi T-^ ‘†¢ CD †¢s c 0 ?ai ir 1 ? ir _3 s oc 0 CSJ T— I— CD CD c o CN – ^ co OO co i csi CSI C3 co CD T t co O; CD o 3 o u 0 coiSS ? 3 (O re à ‚ «^ CL O) O a; ro .^ re 0) Logi! .†¢^ O fe 5 5 ID ? -O ^Et » {‘iyMA-d3. †¢ 1997. â€Å"What About the Univores? Musical Dislikes and Group-Based Identity Construction Among Americans with Low Levels of Education. † Poetics 25(2-3): 141-56. Chen, Meng-Jinn J. , Brenda Miller, Joel Grube and Elizabeth Waiters. 2006. â€Å"Music, Substance Use and Aggression. † Journal of Studies on Alcohol 67(3):373-81. Cohen, Stanley. 973. Folk Devils and Moral Panics. MacCibbons and Kee. †¢ 1980. Folk Devils and Moral Panics. 2†³Ã¢â‚¬Ëœ Edition. Martin Robertson. Curran, James. 1990. â€Å"The New Revisionism in Mass Communication Research: A Reappraisal. † European Journal of Communication 5 (2): 135-64. DiMaggio, Paul. 1982 â€Å"Cultural Capital and School Success: The Impact of Status Culture Participation on the Grades of U. S. High School Students. † American Sociological Review A7(2):\%9-1Q. DiMaggio, Paul, and John Mohr. 1985. â€Å"C ultural Capital, Educational Attainment and Marital Selection† American Journal of Sociology 90(6):I231-6l. DeNora, Tia. 2000. Music in Everyday Life. Cambridge University Press. Fine, Gary Alan, and Sherryl Kleinman. 1979. â€Å"Rethinking Subculture: An Interactionist Analysis. † American Journal of Sociology 83(l):l-20. Ereedman, Jonathan. 2002. Media Violence and Its Effect on Aggression: Assessing the Scientific Evidence. University of Toronto Press. 718 †¢ Social Forces 88(2] Frith, Simon. 1985. â€Å"The Sociology of Youth. † Pp. 301-68. Sociology: New Directions. Michael Haralabos, editor. Ormskirk: Causeway Press. Gracyk, Theodore. 2001. / Wanna Be Me: Rock Music and the Politics ofIdentity. Temple University Press. Hall, Stuart, and Tony Jefferson. 1976. Resistance through Rituals. Hutchinson. Hehdige, Dick. 1979. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. Routledge. Hesmondhalgh, David 2005. â€Å"Subcultures, Scenes orTribes? None ohe. Ph(ywt! ‘ Journal of Youth Studies 8(l):21-40. Hicks, Jeffrey. 2006. â€Å"How Hip-Hop Destroys the Potential of Black Youth. † Project 21 New Visions Commentary: National Leadership Network of Conservative AfricanAmericans. The National Center for Public Policy Research. Available at: http://www. project21 . org/P21 Index. html. Hodkinson, Paul 2008 â€Å"Youth Cultures: A Critical Outline of Key Debates. Pp. 1-23. Youth Cultures: Scenes, Subcultures and Tribes. Paul Hodkinson and Wolfgang Deicke, editors. Roudedge. Kay-ho, Pih, and Mao KuoRay. 2005. â€Å"Golden Parachutes and Cang Banging: Taiwanese Cangs in Suburban Southern Calihmh. † Journal of Cang Research 12{l):59-72. Keyes, Cheryl L. 2002. Rap Music and Street Consciousness. University of Illinois Press. Kitwana, Bakari. 2005. Why White Kids Love Hip Hop: Wankstas, Wiggers, Wannabes, and the New Reality of Race in America. Basic Civitas Books. Krims, Adam. 2000. Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity. Cambridge University Press. Kuwahara, Yahsue. 1992. â€Å"Power to the People Y'all: Rap Music, Resistance and Black College Students. Humanity and Society l6(l):15-73. Kubrin, Charis E. 2005. â€Å"Cangstas, Thugs, and Hustlas: Identity and the Code of the Street in Rap Music. † Social Problems 52(3):360-78. Laing, Dave. 1985. One Chord Wonders: Power and Meaning in Punk Rock. Open University Press. Laughey, Dan. 2006. Music and Youth Culture. Edinburgh University Press Lena, Jennifer. 2006. â€Å"Social Context and Musical Content of Rap Music, 1979 -1995. † Social Forces %G{)A^^-(>. McQuail, Denis. 1984. â€Å"With the Benefit of Hindsight: Refiections on Uses and Gratifications Research. † Critical Studies in Mass Communication 1(2): 177-93. Middleton, Jason, and Roger Beebe. 002. â€Å"The Racial Politics of Hybridity and ‘NeoEclecticism' in Contemporary Popular Music. † Popular Music 21(2):159-72. Miranda, Dave, and Michel Claes. 2004. â€Å"Rap Music Cenres and Deviant Behaviors in French-Canadian Adolescents. † Journal of Youth and Adolescence 33(2): 113-22. Morley, David. 1980. The â€Å"Nationwide† Audience: The Structure and Decoding. London: British Film Institute. Muggieton, Dave. 2000. Inside Subcultures. Berg Publishing. Listening to Rap  » 7 1 9 Negus, Keith. 1999. Music Genres and Corporate Cultures. Routledge. Newman, Katherine. 2004. Rampage: Social Roots of School Shootings. Basic Boob. Patterson, Orlando. 006. â€Å"The Poverty of the Mind. † The New York Times. Available at: http://www. nytimes. com/2006/03/26/opinion/26patterson. html. Peterson, Richard A. 1992. â€Å"Understanding Audience Segmentation: From Elite and Mass to Omnivore to Univore. † Poetics 2{2):243-58. Peterson, Richard A. , and Roger Kern. 1996. â€Å"Changing Highhrow Taste: From Snob to Omnivore. † American Sociological Review 61 {^):900-07. Prinsky, Leslie E. , and Jill Rosenbaum. 1987: † ‘Leer-ics'or Lyrics: Teenage Impressions of Rock n' Roll. † Youth and Society 18(4):384-97. Quinn, Eithne. 2005. Nuthin'but a â€Å"G† Thang. Columbia University Press. Radway, Janice. 1984. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy and Popular Literature. I† Edition. University of North Carolina Press. Roe, Keith. 1983. Mass Media and Adolescent Schooling: Conflict or Coexistence. Almquist and Wiksell International. _. 1985. â€Å"Swedish Youth and Music: The Listening and Motivations. † Communication Research 12(3):353-62. . 1995. â€Å"Adolescents Use of Socially Devalued Media: Towards a Theory of Media DeWnquency. † Journal of Youth and Adolescence 24(5):6l7-30. _. 1999. â€Å"Music and Identity among European Youth. † Soundscape 2(1):1-15. Rose, Tricia. 1994. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Wesleyan University Press. Sacco, Vince R, and Les W. Kennedy. 2002. The Criminal Event. 3†³Ã¢â‚¬Ëœ Edition. Toronto: Nelson Thomson Learning. . 2005. When Crime Waves. Sage Publications. Savage, Joanne. 2004. â€Å"Does Viewing Violent Media Really Cause Criminal Violence? A Methodological Review. † Aggression and Violent Behavior 10(l):99-128. Schilt, Kristin. 2004. † ‘Riot Grrrl is†¦ ‘: Contestation over Meaning in a Music Scene. † Pp. 115-30. Music Scenes. Bennett, Andy and Richard Peterson, editors. Vanderhilt University Press. Swartz, David. 1997. Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. University of Chicago Press. Shively, Jo Ellen. 992. â€Å"Cowboys and Indians: Perceptions of Western Films among American Indians and Anglos. † American Sociological Review 57(6):725-34. Spiegler, Mark. 1996. â€Å"Marketing Street Culture: Bringing Hip-Hop Style to the Mainstream. † American Demographics 18(l):28-34. Stata Co rp. 2001. Stata StatisticalSoflwarv: Release 8. 0. College Station, TX: Stata Corporation. Stephens, Ronald J. , and Ead Wright III. 2001. â€Å"Beyond Bitches, Niggers, and Ho's: Rap Music and the Sociology of Knowledge. † Race and Society 3(l):23-40. Sullivan, Rachel E. 2003. â€Å"Rap and Race: It's Got a Nice Beat, but What about the MessigeV Journal of Black Studies 33(5):605-22. Surette, Ray. 1992. Media, Crime and CriminalJustice: Tmages and Realities. Brooks/Cole. Tanner, Julian. 1981. â€Å"Pop Music and Peer Croups: A Study of Canadian High School Student's Responses to Pop Music. † Canadian Review ofSociology and Anthropology 18(1):1-13. †¢ 2001. Teenage Troubles: Youth and Deviance in Canada. 2^ Edition. Toronto: Nelson Canada. 720 †¢ Social Forces BH2) Tanner, Julian, Mark Asbridge and Scot Wortley. 2008 â€Å"Our Favourite Melodies: Musical Consumption and Teenage Lifestyles. † British Journal ofSociology 59(1): 117-44. Tanner, Julian, and Scot Wortley. 2002. The Toronto Youth Crime and Victimization Survey: Overview Report. Toronto: Centre of Criminology. Tatum, Becky L. 1999. â€Å"The Link Between Rap Music and Youth Crime and Violence: A Review of the Literature and Issues for Future Research. † Justice Professional ll(3):339-53. Thornton, Sarah. 1995. Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. Polity Press. Tsunokai, Glenn, and Augustine Kposwa. 2002. â€Å"Asian Cangs in the United States: The Current State ofthe Research Literature. † Crime, Law and Social Change 37(l):37-50. Van Eijck, Koen. 200 L â€Å"Social Differentiation in Musical Taste Patterns. Social Eorces 79(3): 1163-85. Walser, Robert. 1993. Runningwith the Devil: Power, Cender, andMadness in Heavy Metal Music. Wesleyan University Press/University Press of New England. Weinstein, Deena. 2000. Heavy Metal: The Music and Its Culture. Da Capo Press. Willis, Paul. 1978. Profane Culture. Routledge and Keegan Paul. . 1990. Common Culture. Open Univer sity Press Wimsatt, William. 1994. We Use Words like ‘Mackadocious,'Bomb the Suburbs. Subway and Elevated Press. Wingood, Cina M. , Ralph DiClemente, Jay Bernhardt, Kathy Harrington, Susan Davies, Alyssa Robillard and Edward Hook. 2003. A Prospective Study of Exposure to Rap Music Videos and African-American Female Adolescents Health. † American Journal ofPublic Health 93(3):437-39. Wortiey, Scot. 2002. â€Å"The Depiction of Race and Crime in the Toronto Print Media. † Pp. 55-82. Marginality and Condemnation: An Introduction to Critical Criminology. Bernard Schissel and Carolyn Brooks, editors. Fernwood Publishing. Wordey, Scot, and Julian Tanner. 2004. â€Å"Social Groups or Criminal Organisations? The Extent and Nature of Youth Gang Activity in Toronto. † Pp. 59-77. Enforcement and Prevention to Civic Engagement: Research on Community Safety. Bruce Kidd and Jim Phillips, editors. Toronto: Centre of Criminology. . 2005. â€Å"Inflammatory Rhetoric? Baseless Accusation? A Response to Gabors Gritique of Racial Profiling Research in CAm. a2i. † Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice 47(3):581-609. Yousman, Bill. 2003. â€Å"Blackophilia and Blackophobia: White Youth, the Gonsumption of Rap Music, and White Supremacy. † Communication Theory 13(4):366-91. Listening to Rap †¢ 721 Appendix A. Descriptive Statistics for all Measures Variables Independent Measures Age Gender Do you identify yourself as Canadian Race Coding Years Male Female Mean/ Cases Percent 3331 1696 1700 2533 16. 62 49. 9 50. 1 74. 8 25. 39. 4 14. 2 11. 5 19. 3 15. 7 31. 5 68. 4 27. 0 73. 0 76. 7 23. 3 3. 26 Yes No White Black Asian South Asian Other 850 1334 Father Received Postsecondary Education Mother Received Postsecondary Education Two-Parent Family 480 391 653 531 1073 2327 Subjective Social Class 1 (poor) to 5 (rich) Z-score Cultural Capital Leisure (index o f frequency of involvement in playing a musical instrument, attending cultural events, volunteering, going to meetings/ belonging to organizations, going to the library, going to the symphony or opera, going to the museum, reading a book for pleasure, and involvement with hobbies, with an a=. O). Have been suspended from school at least once Have skipped school at least once Primarily receive â€Å"A† Grades Educational Stream Education is Important Part of Life Yes No Yes No Yes No 917 2483 2609 791 3032 3325 Yes No Yes No Yes No Educational General 450 2950 2493 907 1092 2308 2642 13. 2 86. 8 73. 3 26. 7 32. 1 7. 9 78. 0 22. 0 71. 8 28. 2 18. 7 81. 3 736 2309 Yes No 905 605 2625 3277 Dependent Measures Yes ~ Urban Music Enthusiasts No Social Injustice (index of amount of agreement or Z-score disagreement regarding the following statements: people from my racial group are more likely to be unfairly stopped and questioned by the police than people from other racial groups; discrimination makes it hard for people from my racial group to find a good job; discrimination makes it difficult for people from my racial group to get good marks in school; students from rich families have an easier time getting ahead than students from poor families; everyone has an equal chance of getting ahead in Canada; it is rare for an innocent person to be wrongly sent to jail, with an a=. 65). continued on the following page 722 †¢ Social Forces 88(2] Appendix A. ontinued Coding Variables Independent Measures Property Crime (index of frequency of involvement Z-score in breaking into cars, minor theft under $50, property damage, stealing bikes, breaking and entering into homes, ste aling cars, major theft over $50, and drug dealing, with an pi=. 86), _ . ^ Violent Crime (index of frequency of carrying a hidden Z-score weapon like a gun or knife in public, using physical force on another person to get money or other things; attacked someone with the idea of seriously hurting that person, hit or threatened to hit a parent or teacher, getting into a physical fight with someone, and taken part in a fight where a group of friends were up against another arouD. with an a=. 81). Mean/ Cases Percent 3344 3288 Copyright of Social Forces is the property of University of North Carolina Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or