Current and Future Relevance of Development Anthropology

What does happiness mean? Ask this question to different individuals and surely you will obtain varying answers. There could be related or similar answers, but no two individuals will have the identical definition of happiness, unless of course, they had a prior discussion on the matter and took time to set parameters on how they would define the term. It is just like saying that one’s definition of happiness can be as unique as one’s fingerprint. Why is this so?As human beings, each of us has his/her own purpose in life. We may have the same basic needs to keep us alive. but each of us has his/her own desires and aspirations as we go on living These are our goals in life. Up to what extent we are able to reach our goals becomes the basis of fulfillment, which in turn is the parameter of a person’s definition of happiness.There are more than 101 ways to define happiness because human beings as individual living organisms vary. Each one of us has a certain uniquen ess which sets us apart from other members of the Animal Kingdom.Similarly, development is a term which is as subjective as the word happiness. Probably because both terms involve the satisfaction of humans’ needs and wants. This is why there are numerous bases for the achievement of both. But unlike the meaning of happiness which is taken more on an individual context,   a discourse on the meaning of development is much more complex because it involves not just one human being but a community, or even a whole nation.The meaning of development depends on various paradigms. Defining it quantitatively in terms of economic growth has become inadequate which makes it even more difficult to give a concrete meaning of the word. Thus, different schools of thoughts and various disciplines have their own arguments on how to properly define the term while trying not to overlook how the term itself is being perceived by the objects or targets of the development process.The various dis courses on and practices of development have paved the way for the rise and growth of development anthropology. (Escobar 1991)Development anthropology is defined as:The application of anthropological perspectives to the multidisciplinary branch of development studies. It takes international development and international aid as primary objects. In this branch of anthropology, the term development refers to the social action made voluntary by different agents (institutions, business, enterprise, states, independent volunteers) who are trying to modify the economic, technical, political or/and social life of a given place in the world, especially in developing nations. (Wikipedia)Development anthropology which takes off from the conventional or traditional view of development is what is being espoused by scholars such as Escobar. The traditional view of development is development according to how Western societies view it which is much more about modernization of local cultures and the adoption of Westernized lifestyle. In the paper, â€Å"Anthropology and the Development Encounter: The Making and Marketing of Development Anthropologyâ€Å", Escobar presented and discussed this view and as conclusion, called for a revision on the practice of development anthropology, specifically in the utilization of development models which he referred to as â€Å"recycled combination of the traditional growth models.†Development anthropology, for all its claim to relevance to local problems, to cultural sensitivity, and to access to interpretive holistic methods, has done no more than recycle, and dress in more localized fabrics, the discourses of modernization and development. Can the good intentions of development anthropologists be preserved and their activities be reoriented significantly in ways that undermine, rather than reinforce, these paradigms? (1991: 677)It is this view that made him towards the end of the article pose the question: Is there a future relev ance for development anthropology? Escobar went on further to conclude that:Anthropological studies of development will of course continue to be important, but they would take a different form. Anthropologists could examine how communities in the Third World are progressively constituted through the political technologies of development, and could elucidate the larger cultural and economic projects that such technologies deploy with them. First, however, it will be necessary to renew our way of listening to the voices of different groups of people in the Third World, without making them into signs of a need for development, and to renew our awareness of the suffering caused by human institutions and actions, development or otherwise.Finally, anthropologists may contribute through this type of work to a collective practice of re-envisioning ways of organizing societies and economies, ways of relating to nature and to one another that have a better chance for life. In the process, we may discover other ways of caring and of healing the ravages brought about by development in the Third World. Some grassroots social movements seem to be pointing the way. (ibid: 678)Escobar emphasizes that it should be the people themselves who should decide on the course of the development process based on what he called â€Å"local realities†. The idea should come from within and not from the perception of outsiders who usually consider the lack of modernization as the take-off point for the development process.In his paper â€Å"Anthropology and Development: Evil Twin or Moral Narrative?†Ã‚   Gow (2002) pointed out the weakness of the localization of development as being espoused by Escobar due to the current trend of globalization. He explains that â€Å". . . the present effects and future implications of globalization (however much contested), surely demonstrate once and for all the limitations of what is now ambiguously termed localization. Certain human needs and human rights can be taken as universal, the basis for a moral narrative in this new millennium of development.† The moral narrative that Gow is referring to is the dilemma of anthropologists (the writers) in   defining development in terms of the vision of a good society.   To quote:By framing the values of development in moral terms, rather than say economic terms (the market) or political terms (democracy), these writers not only escape from the tyranny of ideology, academic discipline, and political fashion; they also elevate the general tone of development discourse, for what they are proposing is a vision of the â€Å"good society†. (ibid: 310)I believe that the current and future relevance of development anthropology depend on whether it follows the path being suggested by Gow, that is, elevating the meaning of development in terms of   the moral vision of a good society.   In this age of satellite technology, when even the remotest places on Earth co uld have access to communication facilities and the mass media, the preservation of local culture is becoming a serious concern.People are influenced by modernization as they are exposed to various forms of technology, and many of them especially the younger generation aspire to leave and prefer to settle for a much modern lifestyle in cities. More than ever, development anthropology is relevant in order to direct the correct path of development wherein the living condition of the poor is alleviated to the point wherein they will have enough basic needs and services while at the same time retaining their cultural identity and who they are as a people is never lost or forgotten.The role of development anthropology therefore should be focused on determining the people’s vision of a good society, and from there the design of a suitable development framework and the conceptualization of strategies that could guide institutions in coming up with the right formula for development. This way, Escobar’s grassroots involvement is compromised while being open to the trend of globalization. An example would be to consider the willingness to commercialize the production of exotic handicrafts which are originally for sole domestic consumption. If the people look at this as a way to alleviate their economic condition while promoting their culture, then the development anthropologist should see this from a positive perspective and not as a sign of moral degradation.Development anthropologists have focused on four themes in performing their role which defines their current and future relevance to humanity.An increasingly focused sense of the anthropological contribution defined in terms of what anthropologists say about culture and social relationsOpposition to the marginalization of indigenous peoples and their knowledgeCynicism about the aims and practices of developmentThe emergence of critical views of development and the development processLIST OF REFERENCES Escobar, Arturo. (1991) ‘Anthropology and the Development Encounter: The Making and Marketing of Development Anthropology.’ American Ethnologist [online] 18 (4) 658-682. Available from http://www.jstor.org/stable/645446 [22 May 2009]Gow, David D. (2002)’Anthropology and Development: Evil Twin or Moral Narrative?’ Human Organization 61 (4) 299-313Wikipedia (n. d.) ‘Development Anthropology.’ Available from http://enwikipedia.org/wiki/Development_anthropology [30 May 2009)

Legalizing Medical Marijuana

Marijuana has been one of the many abused substances in the world especially in the United States of America. It has been argued as one of the many existing substances which has caused lives to go astray and even to the point of taking away innocent lives. There have been heinous crimes committed which have been linked by the authorities to the abuse of marijuana by the suspects. But even with these apparent ‘hindrances’ to the acceptance of marijuana as a substance which also has its uses, it has been observed in the scientific community that there are medical benefits with the use of marijuana (Sydney, Stephen, et al., p. 722). Apparently, it can be said that there is a tension between the democratic ethos that permeates popular American thought and the republican constitutional foundations that impede the realization of the medical use of marijuana. As far as the democratic ethos is concerned, it can be seen that there is the acceptance of marijuana in the medical field precisely because marijuana can be used as a drug which has the â€Å"potential for use in decreasing the rejection of organ transplants or in slowing the growth of tumors (Dell and Snyder, p. 630).† It has also been found that marijuana can stimulate the appetite of individuals who do not eat well, can serve as an analgesic and an anesthesia among many others (Dell and Snyder, p. 630). With these things, there is the argument that, indeed, marijuana has its own positive effects on the body of the individual and that it can greatly help in the development of a medicine out of marijuana. However, the republican constitutional foundations would argue that the use of marijuana can open the way to substance abuse. Since marijuana is classified as an addictive substance which is prohibited by the laws of the land, the republican constitutional foundations would very well block any efforts in legalizing marijuana purely out of its medical purposes and benefits. That is because the republican constitutional foundations are inclined to promote the laws as they are written or as they have been conceived. The arguments that can be proposed by the republican constitutional foundations can be summarized into the idea that anything that is against the law or anything that is proscribed by the law should not be justified before the law. Doing so would defeat the very purpose in which these laws have been conceived and institutionalized in the first place. Indeed, it should be noted that certain laws have been created in order to promote the interest of the public inasmuch as the welfare of the public is not harmed in the process. With marijuana, it can be argued from the republican standpoint that marijuana use is basically prohibited by the law. Any efforts to circumvent the law should be stopped, which goes without saying that any efforts to turn the prohibited substance, marijuana, into a substance which is accepted by the society if not by the law would very well undermine the spirit and the letter of the law. The tension between the democratic ethos and the republican constitutional foundations, then, rests on the part where marijuana has its perceived medical uses. From the perspective of the democratic ethos, it can be said that marijuana, as discovered by the scientific community, as its medical values although to a certain extent the abuse of the substance would also lead to dire consequences to the health of individuals. On the other hand, the followers of the republican constitutional foundation will argue that marijuana is essentially a prohibited substance although they may agree that substances with medicinal value should also be looked into by the government. To mitigate the tension is paramount in order to close the gap between the two contending sides and bring about a favorable result. In order to do so, it can be proposed that regulatory policies should be enforced by the government in terms of the use of marijuana for medical purposes. As for the part where the abuse of the substance is involved, the legal prohibitions against the abuse of marijuana can nevertheless still be retained without compromising the medicinal uses of the substance. By establishing both a regulatory body on the medical facilities which will utilize marijuana and by putting up stringent measures on banning and sanctioning the offenders who abuse marijuana, a compromise can be attained without putting down the guards of both the democratic and republican sides. It should be noted that even from a democratic or a republican standpoint, issues concerning the larger population can still be mitigated to a point where a solution is crafted regardless of one’s political positions. The issue of marijuana being legalized as a substance used for medical reasons can be met if both republican and democratic sides would agree on two things. One is that the medical value of marijuana is there and cannot be discredited. Two is that, though marijuana abuse is present, marijuana can be regulated within the medical facilities which will adopt the substance in the medical practice of treating patients. In general, the viability of marijuana as a medicine is already established. Substance abuse pertaining to marijuana is already determined both by the legal enforcers as well as the medical field. By not withholding the potential use of marijuana in the broader medical field without abandoning the ever present need to proscribe and to sanction the abuse of marijuana, the middle ground can be established. Works Cited Sidney, Stephen, et al. â€Å"Marijuana Use and Cancer Incidence.† Cancer Causes & Control 8.5 (1997): 722. Dell, Deena D., and Judith A. Snyder. â€Å"Marijuana: Pro and Con.† The American Journal of Nursing 77.4 (1977): 630.

Protect Our Mother Nature

PROTECT OUR MOTHER NATURE Repeatedly in history, conceptions of nature have served as ideological justifications for political theory. The most obvious example is the Hobbesian state of nature against which even the most oppressive government appears perfectly legitimate. Whereas in most cases of political theory, nature looks like an incompetent savage or unreliable tramp, some anarchist lines of argument instead offer versions of nature as infinite, loving, or otherwise better than the artifices to which it is implicitly opposed.Whether for or against nature, depictions of the natural world in political theory consider it in cultural units of meaning, a combination of icons and stereotypes that change not only our understanding of nature, but also of the units of meaning being referenced. In the early twentieth century journal Mother Earth, a construction of nature comes together, in a publication interested mostly in anarchist and feminist goals, that worshipped nature as a huge, consuming, feminine super being.Certain traits in the construction of nature in this journal form an account of nature as a particular type of femininity to be admired, a move laden both with direct strategic value and creeping implications for the idealizations of womanhood. In order to establish the desirability of the journal’s goal of a world without artificial systems of control, the opposition of nature and artifice is a crucial first step. While it may seem tempting to define these terms, this neglects the primary function of both as catchalls with nebulous referents and amorphous structure defined only by their opposition to one another.The process of dividing the categories begins in the very first issue of the publication, in the foundational article †Mother Earth†. The article mythologizes that â€Å"Man issued from the womb of Mother Earth †¦ out of his efforts there arose the dreary doctrine that he was not related to the Earth, that she was but a temporary resting place for his scornful feet and that she held nothing for him but temptation to degrade himself. † This creation story of the present political situation clearly opposes the natural, which was original, to the artificial, which is only an egoistic and recent edifice.Nature as mother, of course, means artifice must be opposed, and thus becomes child, making the entirety of the anarchist argument parallel to motherly chastisement. In the same issue, â€Å"Without Government† bemoans government solutions as inevitably late and insubstantial, suggesting an analogy with illness where â€Å"the symptom of the disease was hidden† and only on its appearance would the government act. In this metaphor, artificial solutions to the world’s problems are only attacks on a flurry of symptoms as they slowly manifest themselves in increasingly visible ways, thus the profound animosity the journal expresses towards ‘Comstockery’.Regulation of sexuality becomes a direct example of the child trying to limit what mother had given to her children. Volume three number five offers an analogy for group resistance of bees on a tree branch, â€Å"it is only needful that one bee spread its wings, rise and fly, and after it the second, the third, the tenth, the hundredth, for the immobile hanging mass to become a freely flying swarm of bees. † The writing makes humans already bees in a thoroughly naturalized world upon which systems of domination such as the state and religion have only been imposed in a superficial sense.All we need to do, in this account, is realize the situation, and spread our wingsto fly back into an expansive and beautiful nature. This fetishization of nature provides a clear contrast between the world of that which the anarchafeminist politics of the publication oppose and the ‘real’ world of nature that underlies and surrounds the injustices of artificial living. The question then bec omes, in order to prove the insufficiency and downright failures of artifice by comparison, what is the character of nature? To begin with, nature is big.In the first issue’s article â€Å"Mother Earth†, the history of the world seems laid out in a quasi-mythical tale. â€Å"Earth was but one of a myriad of stars floating in infinite space. † The whole of the universe, with which nature remains implicitly identified, exceeds our abilities to measure, let alone comprehend – a myriad in infinity. Even in this cosmic understanding, that which is natural and surrounded is still itself huge. In an article in the first issue called â€Å"Try Love†, the argument concludes, â€Å"Let us be broad and big. Let us not overlook vital things, because of the bulk of trifles confronting us. The natural is large; problems from artifice can be numerous, but each is only of trifling size – thousands of children surrounding one huge mother. Beyond being large to begin with, the maniacal focus in the publication on freeing nature and being freed into nature also revolves around a hope for future growth. As if ‘we’ were already failing to be â€Å"broad and big† enough, â€Å"The Tragedy of Women’s Emancipation† proclaims: â€Å"Salvation lies in an energetic march onwards towards a brighter and clearer future. We are in need of unhampered growth out of old traditions and habits† as if nature and life in nature knew no limits.The image is of not just a sprouting weed, but a whole forest growing out of a street. This rhetorical strategy of associating the concept of nature so crucial to driving the arguments of the journal with hugeness seems strangely sympathetic with and to industrializing urges of the time. The conflict between the temptations of big machines with big outputs and direct material gain versus little anarchic communities with little to offer but some vague sense of satisfaction can finally be resolved in an anarchy run by a big nature figure, a loving cow mother replaces the cruel leviathan father.This solution gives all the benefits and reassurance of something so-big-it-must-work and avoids all the downfalls readers would consider so endemic to ‘modernization’ . Beyond simple scale, nature is inescapable. While a big nature appeals to childlike demand for an oversized mother who will ensure safety and grant all desires, the journal also shows nature as generally inevitable. Relying on one of many references to scientific certainty, â€Å"Liberty†, in the second volume, issue number three, reminds us: â€Å"the natural law of a social organism is as certain as, though less known than, the force of gravity.Like the latter it antedates, and is independent of, our knowledge of its existence, or of the law of its operation. † The natural law, suggesting the order inherent in ‘free’ ways of life, does not even need to be pro ven preferable to artificial laws so long as it is inevitable, the rhetoric suggests. No matter how much one tries to fight it, they can only impede the natural order of things, but never change it. Indeed, this sentiment, in argument form, makes up the bulk of the rest of the article. The natural law not only frames what is and is not tyranny, but even ‘proves’ the futility of passing any laws through the government.And men, brought up in law-abiding communities in the deepest respect for the law, will, under the changed conditions of life, not merely condone the infliction of a penalty in excess of that provided by law, but will themselves assist, virtuously satisfied with their conduct because the society of which they form a part has decided that horse-stealing shall be so punished. On the other hand, there are numerous laws on the statute books, still unrepealed and unenforceable because the acts treated of are no longer held to be offences against morality.In othe r words, the morals of a people can be regulated only by themselves. The trick is very simple, if a law is natural there is no reason to legislate about it, and if it is not natural no one will obey it. The rhetorical construction of nature as unavoidable already renders artifice more than avoidable – it is always already avoided. Rhetorical implications become argument: it would be impossible to describe any part of government’s power as belonging to government itself, because people only act based on nature. The closest government comes to legislation in this model is to prescribe behavior people already exhibit.The gist of this construction of nature is most clear in the case of a poem in volume three, number two entitled â€Å"The King†. In it, a dead king rots in nature, covered in lizards and â€Å"vile spineless things†, literally consumed by the overpowering feminine in his afterlife. â€Å"Faith lit his pathway with her loveliness; / Fair Hopeâ €™s voice called him from his barren fen; Love vainly strove to lure him with her grace. † As a feminine entity, nature is here the omnipresent mother, she tracks down her children and is always there for them to return to.Inescapable nature not only sets up a comparison in which government and artifice can never win, but simultaneously constructs the role of a feminine presence that is ineradicable and impossible to resist. The good mother must be always present and forever accepting of even her most lost children. Also, nature has youthful beauty. In the first issue of Mother Earth, the flagship article explains the history of nature in terms that make Earth unmistakably a young mother, â€Å"she renewed herself, the good mother, and came again each Spring, radiant with youthful beauty, beckoning her children to come to her bosom and partake of her bounty. Nature’s youth not only implies a relative trait against which all human-made construction can never appear more – almost sexually – attractive. The attempt to make nature look nice is nowhere so transparent as in this attempt to cast it as actually young and beautiful. Indeed, even its temporary failings can be excused by Earth’s renewal each spring. If some part of nature is dangerous or undesirable, it will soon be corrected in the regular course of the seasons. In volume five, number six, â€Å"The Esthetic Side of Jewtown† explains,Life is too strenuous in Jewtown to preserve the bloom of youth. Among the younger ones there are some who are very beautiful beneath their coating of filth, with the clove skin and large, soft, black eyes. They give themselves a coquettish appearance. The truly horrid part of life in the Ghetto, we learn, is that it covers or takes away the natural beauty of women. Artifice cannot destroy nature, because nature is big and inescapable, but it can blemish its beauty temporarily.This identification of nature with youth and beauty combined with the opposition of nature and the state sell anarchism almost exactly the way one might sell diet soda: government is actually too ugly to appreciate, gorgeous young women prefer anarchy. In classic advertising style, Mother Earth also describes nature as saturated with love. In the first issue, when describing a budding relationship crushed by the coldness of artifice and modern living, â€Å"The Tragedy of Women’s Emancipation† explains that â€Å"poetry and the enthusiasm of love cover their blushing faces before the pure beauty of the lady. Her admirer] silences the voice of his nature and remains correct. † The article condemns his correctitude as exactly the basic problem of modern living – its disconnect from love and contact. Tragically, the beauty of the lady, just as that of the kindly mother Earth, has been tainted to block the â€Å"poetry† and â€Å"enthusiasm of love† the article considers natural. In contrast to t he authentic state of love the various ‘systems’ of which anarchism complains give us poor simulations of affection: marriage and the nuclear family.In volume 3, number five, the article â€Å"Light and Shadows in the Life of an Avant-Gard†, we learn The poor women, thousands of them, abused, insulted, and outraged by their precious husbands, must continue a life of degradation. They have no money to join the colony in Reno. No relief for them. The poor women, the slaves of the slaves, must go on prostituting themselves. They must continue to bear children in hate, in conflict, in physical horror. The marriage institution and the â€Å"sanctity of the home† are only for those who have not the money to buy themselves free from both, even as the chattel slave from his master.Nature offers real love, civilization offers a slavery titled love. These stark terms of opposition function to set up an understanding of a loving motherly nature that makes it obviousl y superior to the uncaring childlike cruelties that comprise the artificial world. As is often thought, nature is also connected with freedom. It is quite arbitrary to say that those things to which a life in ‘nature’ is conducive represent the content of freedom. For instance, in nature one is not free to vote or go to work, and yet this is considered irrelevant to questions of liberty.In volume two, number three, of Mother Earth, the article â€Å"Liberty† proclaims that â€Å"whatever may be the form of social institutions, if it does no more than to declare and enforce well-known rules of natural justice, then I am free. † The simplistic opposition between the compromises of ‘artificial’ life and the freedom of nature is best exemplified in the pithy quote â€Å"Liberty escaped into the wilderness† from the journal’s founding article. This unbounded freedom seems excessively unrealistic as a description of a mother, and yet i t is precisely the freedom that mothers lacked that the journal constructs nature as having in spades.At the same time, the infinite youth, beauty, and inescapable freedom in and of nature primarily complement its fundamentally orderly state. Perhaps in one of the most bizarre fixations of anarchist literature, the journal seems careful to point out the extreme orderliness of life in anarchy. In this kind of reconciliation of total freedom and total justice one can actually see the neurosis of liberalism tentatively suggest what it most wishes simply come true: good freedom and good order. The very first issue, in the rticle â€Å"Without Government† we are told that, there are qualities present in man, which permit the possibilities of social life, organization, and co-operative work without the application of force. Such qualities are solidarity, common action, and love of justice. To-day they are either crippled [sic] or made ineffective through the influence of compulsion ; they can hardly be fully unfolded in a society in which groups, classes, and individuals are placed in hostile, irreconcilable opposition to one anotherAgain, like an orderly housewife, nature maintains a world that works, but without even so much as a broom. Instead, nature works through qualities always already present in people, as natural beings. It is through this sort of argument that anarchism can define government into such a position that it doesn’t even make sense to consider, having already had all its greatest advantages stolen over to the side of nature. Simultaneously, nature’s great assets will be willingly sacrificed to her children in cheerful martyrdom.Like the constructed role of a ‘good mother’, nature â€Å"sees the bleeding feet of her children †¦ hears their moans, and she is ever calling to them that she is theirs† beginning in the founding article of Mother Earth. The article continues to encourage the exploitation of nature because nature is asking for it, here with increasingly vivid maternal imagery. Mother Earth keeps sources of vast wealth hidden within the folds of her ample bosom, extended her inviting and hospitable arms to all those who came to her from arbitrary and despotic lands–Mother Earth ready to give herself alike to all her children.But soon she was seized by the few, stripped of her freedom, fenced in, a prey to those who were endowed with cunning and unscrupulous shrewdness. The rapaciousness of artifice and modern civilization becomes its primary characteristic when put in the terms of a kindly mother fallen prey to vicious quasi-Oedipal domination. Here, again, the journal’s construction of nature as feminine serves the direct political function of discrediting political opponents such as the state, capitalism, and religion.However, the indirect effect of such a construction may be more historically significant, as the natural world becomes increasingly femini zed in particular ways. It is impossible to simply associate nature with feminine, because there is too much to each category. Here the generality is retained on the term of nature – to the degree that it’s distinction from artifice can be kept plausible – and specificity is given to the feminine. Mothers should, in this account, sacrifice everything to their children, no matter how abusive they may be to her.Indeed, every praised trait of Mother Earth is a thinly veiled suggestion for mothers to fulfill. That Mother Earth is huge, inescapable, free and orderly says, at some level, that all good mothers are this way. Thus we end with a political theory laid out in Mother Earth that various artificial systems are bad because they are inferior to a young, beautiful martyr of an omnipresent loving mother who provides both freedom and order.In conclusion, the journal Mother Earth deployed rhetoric in various forms to craft a particular feminine version of nature tha t explicitly worked to delegitimize particular systems of oppression and implicitly functioned to worship an ideal maternal version of womanhood. The journal’s preoccupation with issues of concern to women, such as marriage, prostitution, birth control, and sexuality coincided with its normalizing urge to encounter (some) people as children of nature who could frolic freely within the limitless provisions of their mother’s great world.However, there are actually two possible roles for a subject here, children or mother herself. Politics and men immediately appear infantilized against the mother of nature, supplying a ready-made excuse and index for predicting their actions as irresponsible yet lovable children, but for many women Mother Earth was not their mother, but to be their role model.Nature was a mother whose private sphere expanded to one large planetary home and material limitations in age and restriction were erased by scientific appeal (and pure fiat) to ren der life in nature simultaneously completely free and problem-free. As a solution to the troubles of political theory, the journal instead invented a superhero character to replace the tired images of a drudging, used up, and insensitive nature with a glossy new young, beautiful cover girl – Mother Earth. Protect Our Mother Nature PROTECT OUR MOTHER NATURE Repeatedly in history, conceptions of nature have served as ideological justifications for political theory. The most obvious example is the Hobbesian state of nature against which even the most oppressive government appears perfectly legitimate. Whereas in most cases of political theory, nature looks like an incompetent savage or unreliable tramp, some anarchist lines of argument instead offer versions of nature as infinite, loving, or otherwise better than the artifices to which it is implicitly opposed.Whether for or against nature, depictions of the natural world in political theory consider it in cultural units of meaning, a combination of icons and stereotypes that change not only our understanding of nature, but also of the units of meaning being referenced. In the early twentieth century journal Mother Earth, a construction of nature comes together, in a publication interested mostly in anarchist and feminist goals, that worshipped nature as a huge, consuming, feminine super being.Certain traits in the construction of nature in this journal form an account of nature as a particular type of femininity to be admired, a move laden both with direct strategic value and creeping implications for the idealizations of womanhood. In order to establish the desirability of the journal’s goal of a world without artificial systems of control, the opposition of nature and artifice is a crucial first step. While it may seem tempting to define these terms, this neglects the primary function of both as catchalls with nebulous referents and amorphous structure defined only by their opposition to one another.The process of dividing the categories begins in the very first issue of the publication, in the foundational article †Mother Earth†. The article mythologizes that â€Å"Man issued from the womb of Mother Earth †¦ out of his efforts there arose the dreary doctrine that he was not related to the Earth, that she was but a temporary resting place for his scornful feet and that she held nothing for him but temptation to degrade himself. † This creation story of the present political situation clearly opposes the natural, which was original, to the artificial, which is only an egoistic and recent edifice.Nature as mother, of course, means artifice must be opposed, and thus becomes child, making the entirety of the anarchist argument parallel to motherly chastisement. In the same issue, â€Å"Without Government† bemoans government solutions as inevitably late and insubstantial, suggesting an analogy with illness where â€Å"the symptom of the disease was hidden† and only on its appearance would the government act. In this metaphor, artificial solutions to the world’s problems are only attacks on a flurry of symptoms as they slowly manifest themselves in increasingly visible ways, thus the profound animosity the journal expresses towards ‘Comstockery’.Regulation of sexuality becomes a direct example of the child trying to limit what mother had given to her children. Volume three number five offers an analogy for group resistance of bees on a tree branch, â€Å"it is only needful that one bee spread its wings, rise and fly, and after it the second, the third, the tenth, the hundredth, for the immobile hanging mass to become a freely flying swarm of bees. † The writing makes humans already bees in a thoroughly naturalized world upon which systems of domination such as the state and religion have only been imposed in a superficial sense.All we need to do, in this account, is realize the situation, and spread our wingsto fly back into an expansive and beautiful nature. This fetishization of nature provides a clear contrast between the world of that which the anarchafeminist politics of the publication oppose and the ‘real’ world of nature that underlies and surrounds the injustices of artificial living. The question then bec omes, in order to prove the insufficiency and downright failures of artifice by comparison, what is the character of nature? To begin with, nature is big.In the first issue’s article â€Å"Mother Earth†, the history of the world seems laid out in a quasi-mythical tale. â€Å"Earth was but one of a myriad of stars floating in infinite space. † The whole of the universe, with which nature remains implicitly identified, exceeds our abilities to measure, let alone comprehend – a myriad in infinity. Even in this cosmic understanding, that which is natural and surrounded is still itself huge. In an article in the first issue called â€Å"Try Love†, the argument concludes, â€Å"Let us be broad and big. Let us not overlook vital things, because of the bulk of trifles confronting us. The natural is large; problems from artifice can be numerous, but each is only of trifling size – thousands of children surrounding one huge mother. Beyond being large to begin with, the maniacal focus in the publication on freeing nature and being freed into nature also revolves around a hope for future growth. As if ‘we’ were already failing to be â€Å"broad and big† enough, â€Å"The Tragedy of Women’s Emancipation† proclaims: â€Å"Salvation lies in an energetic march onwards towards a brighter and clearer future. We are in need of unhampered growth out of old traditions and habits† as if nature and life in nature knew no limits.The image is of not just a sprouting weed, but a whole forest growing out of a street. This rhetorical strategy of associating the concept of nature so crucial to driving the arguments of the journal with hugeness seems strangely sympathetic with and to industrializing urges of the time. The conflict between the temptations of big machines with big outputs and direct material gain versus little anarchic communities with little to offer but some vague sense of satisfaction can finally be resolved in an anarchy run by a big nature figure, a loving cow mother replaces the cruel leviathan father.This solution gives all the benefits and reassurance of something so-big-it-must-work and avoids all the downfalls readers would consider so endemic to ‘modernization’ . Beyond simple scale, nature is inescapable. While a big nature appeals to childlike demand for an oversized mother who will ensure safety and grant all desires, the journal also shows nature as generally inevitable. Relying on one of many references to scientific certainty, â€Å"Liberty†, in the second volume, issue number three, reminds us: â€Å"the natural law of a social organism is as certain as, though less known than, the force of gravity.Like the latter it antedates, and is independent of, our knowledge of its existence, or of the law of its operation. † The natural law, suggesting the order inherent in ‘free’ ways of life, does not even need to be pro ven preferable to artificial laws so long as it is inevitable, the rhetoric suggests. No matter how much one tries to fight it, they can only impede the natural order of things, but never change it. Indeed, this sentiment, in argument form, makes up the bulk of the rest of the article. The natural law not only frames what is and is not tyranny, but even ‘proves’ the futility of passing any laws through the government.And men, brought up in law-abiding communities in the deepest respect for the law, will, under the changed conditions of life, not merely condone the infliction of a penalty in excess of that provided by law, but will themselves assist, virtuously satisfied with their conduct because the society of which they form a part has decided that horse-stealing shall be so punished. On the other hand, there are numerous laws on the statute books, still unrepealed and unenforceable because the acts treated of are no longer held to be offences against morality.In othe r words, the morals of a people can be regulated only by themselves. The trick is very simple, if a law is natural there is no reason to legislate about it, and if it is not natural no one will obey it. The rhetorical construction of nature as unavoidable already renders artifice more than avoidable – it is always already avoided. Rhetorical implications become argument: it would be impossible to describe any part of government’s power as belonging to government itself, because people only act based on nature. The closest government comes to legislation in this model is to prescribe behavior people already exhibit.The gist of this construction of nature is most clear in the case of a poem in volume three, number two entitled â€Å"The King†. In it, a dead king rots in nature, covered in lizards and â€Å"vile spineless things†, literally consumed by the overpowering feminine in his afterlife. â€Å"Faith lit his pathway with her loveliness; / Fair Hopeâ €™s voice called him from his barren fen; Love vainly strove to lure him with her grace. † As a feminine entity, nature is here the omnipresent mother, she tracks down her children and is always there for them to return to.Inescapable nature not only sets up a comparison in which government and artifice can never win, but simultaneously constructs the role of a feminine presence that is ineradicable and impossible to resist. The good mother must be always present and forever accepting of even her most lost children. Also, nature has youthful beauty. In the first issue of Mother Earth, the flagship article explains the history of nature in terms that make Earth unmistakably a young mother, â€Å"she renewed herself, the good mother, and came again each Spring, radiant with youthful beauty, beckoning her children to come to her bosom and partake of her bounty. Nature’s youth not only implies a relative trait against which all human-made construction can never appear more – almost sexually – attractive. The attempt to make nature look nice is nowhere so transparent as in this attempt to cast it as actually young and beautiful. Indeed, even its temporary failings can be excused by Earth’s renewal each spring. If some part of nature is dangerous or undesirable, it will soon be corrected in the regular course of the seasons. In volume five, number six, â€Å"The Esthetic Side of Jewtown† explains,Life is too strenuous in Jewtown to preserve the bloom of youth. Among the younger ones there are some who are very beautiful beneath their coating of filth, with the clove skin and large, soft, black eyes. They give themselves a coquettish appearance. The truly horrid part of life in the Ghetto, we learn, is that it covers or takes away the natural beauty of women. Artifice cannot destroy nature, because nature is big and inescapable, but it can blemish its beauty temporarily.This identification of nature with youth and beauty combined with the opposition of nature and the state sell anarchism almost exactly the way one might sell diet soda: government is actually too ugly to appreciate, gorgeous young women prefer anarchy. In classic advertising style, Mother Earth also describes nature as saturated with love. In the first issue, when describing a budding relationship crushed by the coldness of artifice and modern living, â€Å"The Tragedy of Women’s Emancipation† explains that â€Å"poetry and the enthusiasm of love cover their blushing faces before the pure beauty of the lady. Her admirer] silences the voice of his nature and remains correct. † The article condemns his correctitude as exactly the basic problem of modern living – its disconnect from love and contact. Tragically, the beauty of the lady, just as that of the kindly mother Earth, has been tainted to block the â€Å"poetry† and â€Å"enthusiasm of love† the article considers natural. In contrast to t he authentic state of love the various ‘systems’ of which anarchism complains give us poor simulations of affection: marriage and the nuclear family.In volume 3, number five, the article â€Å"Light and Shadows in the Life of an Avant-Gard†, we learn The poor women, thousands of them, abused, insulted, and outraged by their precious husbands, must continue a life of degradation. They have no money to join the colony in Reno. No relief for them. The poor women, the slaves of the slaves, must go on prostituting themselves. They must continue to bear children in hate, in conflict, in physical horror. The marriage institution and the â€Å"sanctity of the home† are only for those who have not the money to buy themselves free from both, even as the chattel slave from his master.Nature offers real love, civilization offers a slavery titled love. These stark terms of opposition function to set up an understanding of a loving motherly nature that makes it obviousl y superior to the uncaring childlike cruelties that comprise the artificial world. As is often thought, nature is also connected with freedom. It is quite arbitrary to say that those things to which a life in ‘nature’ is conducive represent the content of freedom. For instance, in nature one is not free to vote or go to work, and yet this is considered irrelevant to questions of liberty.In volume two, number three, of Mother Earth, the article â€Å"Liberty† proclaims that â€Å"whatever may be the form of social institutions, if it does no more than to declare and enforce well-known rules of natural justice, then I am free. † The simplistic opposition between the compromises of ‘artificial’ life and the freedom of nature is best exemplified in the pithy quote â€Å"Liberty escaped into the wilderness† from the journal’s founding article. This unbounded freedom seems excessively unrealistic as a description of a mother, and yet i t is precisely the freedom that mothers lacked that the journal constructs nature as having in spades.At the same time, the infinite youth, beauty, and inescapable freedom in and of nature primarily complement its fundamentally orderly state. Perhaps in one of the most bizarre fixations of anarchist literature, the journal seems careful to point out the extreme orderliness of life in anarchy. In this kind of reconciliation of total freedom and total justice one can actually see the neurosis of liberalism tentatively suggest what it most wishes simply come true: good freedom and good order. The very first issue, in the rticle â€Å"Without Government† we are told that, there are qualities present in man, which permit the possibilities of social life, organization, and co-operative work without the application of force. Such qualities are solidarity, common action, and love of justice. To-day they are either crippled [sic] or made ineffective through the influence of compulsion ; they can hardly be fully unfolded in a society in which groups, classes, and individuals are placed in hostile, irreconcilable opposition to one anotherAgain, like an orderly housewife, nature maintains a world that works, but without even so much as a broom. Instead, nature works through qualities always already present in people, as natural beings. It is through this sort of argument that anarchism can define government into such a position that it doesn’t even make sense to consider, having already had all its greatest advantages stolen over to the side of nature. Simultaneously, nature’s great assets will be willingly sacrificed to her children in cheerful martyrdom.Like the constructed role of a ‘good mother’, nature â€Å"sees the bleeding feet of her children †¦ hears their moans, and she is ever calling to them that she is theirs† beginning in the founding article of Mother Earth. The article continues to encourage the exploitation of nature because nature is asking for it, here with increasingly vivid maternal imagery. Mother Earth keeps sources of vast wealth hidden within the folds of her ample bosom, extended her inviting and hospitable arms to all those who came to her from arbitrary and despotic lands–Mother Earth ready to give herself alike to all her children.But soon she was seized by the few, stripped of her freedom, fenced in, a prey to those who were endowed with cunning and unscrupulous shrewdness. The rapaciousness of artifice and modern civilization becomes its primary characteristic when put in the terms of a kindly mother fallen prey to vicious quasi-Oedipal domination. Here, again, the journal’s construction of nature as feminine serves the direct political function of discrediting political opponents such as the state, capitalism, and religion.However, the indirect effect of such a construction may be more historically significant, as the natural world becomes increasingly femini zed in particular ways. It is impossible to simply associate nature with feminine, because there is too much to each category. Here the generality is retained on the term of nature – to the degree that it’s distinction from artifice can be kept plausible – and specificity is given to the feminine. Mothers should, in this account, sacrifice everything to their children, no matter how abusive they may be to her.Indeed, every praised trait of Mother Earth is a thinly veiled suggestion for mothers to fulfill. That Mother Earth is huge, inescapable, free and orderly says, at some level, that all good mothers are this way. Thus we end with a political theory laid out in Mother Earth that various artificial systems are bad because they are inferior to a young, beautiful martyr of an omnipresent loving mother who provides both freedom and order.In conclusion, the journal Mother Earth deployed rhetoric in various forms to craft a particular feminine version of nature tha t explicitly worked to delegitimize particular systems of oppression and implicitly functioned to worship an ideal maternal version of womanhood. The journal’s preoccupation with issues of concern to women, such as marriage, prostitution, birth control, and sexuality coincided with its normalizing urge to encounter (some) people as children of nature who could frolic freely within the limitless provisions of their mother’s great world.However, there are actually two possible roles for a subject here, children or mother herself. Politics and men immediately appear infantilized against the mother of nature, supplying a ready-made excuse and index for predicting their actions as irresponsible yet lovable children, but for many women Mother Earth was not their mother, but to be their role model.Nature was a mother whose private sphere expanded to one large planetary home and material limitations in age and restriction were erased by scientific appeal (and pure fiat) to ren der life in nature simultaneously completely free and problem-free. As a solution to the troubles of political theory, the journal instead invented a superhero character to replace the tired images of a drudging, used up, and insensitive nature with a glossy new young, beautiful cover girl – Mother Earth.

A Review of the White Houses Blog on Native Americans Essay

A Review of the White Houses Blog on Native Americans - Essay Example The White House has an official web site, and in it, one can find the blog on Native Americans. The blog is undoubtedly maintained by the government, thus its contents are expected to have been approved by the Palace. Indeed, when I visited the blog thrice on March 18, 20, and 22, I read articles that seemed like press releases by the government. The blog features articles on the protection of rights of Indian tribes in America. Maintained by the government, one can assume that the blog does not contain any taboo themes that can cause damage to the image of the White House. Rather, the blog helps project a reputable image of the President and his governance. The blog contains articles written by different people but most of them are employed under the government. One of the contributors is Milford Wayne Donaldson, the chairman of Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP). On March 20, Donaldson wrote about the plan of the ACHP to adopt UN’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. This will benefit the indigenous people because the declaration gives right to indigenous people to protect their heritage places or sites. This means that if there are propositions to alter a heritage site, authorities will have to consult first with indigenous people before undergoing any action. An earlier post dated March 7 talks about the signing of the President of the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013. Jodie Gillette and Charlie Galbraith (2003) posted this article, complete with a video of the whole program. The video shows the people who attended the signing of the act and the speech of the President as regards the importance of women’s rights. The article also reports relevant information about violence done on Native American women. According to it, a recent study found out that 46% of Native American women suffered from violence such as rape, physical abuse and assault. With the approval of the act, the authors assume that Native American women will be more empowered to take on the challenge to report any violence they encounter. Another post by Jodie Gillette talks about the tribal leaders’ convention held on December 5, 2012. This rather late post was made on March 18 to report on the details of the long-finished convention. One good thing about the post is that it includes links to other posts such as Tribal Law and Order Act, Violence Against Women Act, and others. On one hand, the links help visitors to understand the related issues further. On the other, it helps students and authorities document reports with necessary information surrounding the issue. Clearly, the blog addresses the general public, including Americans and other nationalities who will be visiting the blog. In particular, students engaged in Native American research will benefit greatly from the important information offered in the blog. Native American s also benefit from it as they read about government programs to protect their rights and culture. Moreover, authorities will be kept updated on government actions for Native Americans and tribal people. Overall, the blog promotes the image of the White House as it features the good deeds of the government, especially the president. Specifically, the articles in the blog reflect the concern of the White House for the Native Americans. Given the topics in the blog and the organization it

Module Islam and Modernity - assignment Documentary analysis

Module Islam and Modernity - Documentary analysis - Assignment Example Both the books have successfully drawn the attention of the readers towards the traditionally depraved condition of the Muslim women in Egypt and presented an appeal to the Egyptian intellectual class to initiate an improvement in their status and assign them equality with men in terms of political, social and economic rights. Historical and Political Context The author feels that it is his moral obligation as an author to communicate to the society his liberal views about the emancipation of women in the Egyptian society. Looking at the erstwhile scenario, he feels that the upliftment of the status of the women in society is not only desirable but also essential and integral to the positive growth and development of his future generations. So he considers it high time that his thoughts broke free from the shackles of passive reflection and found concrete expression in his literary works. However the author fears that this honest expression of his sincere views might be termed as â⠂¬Å"heresy† by the religious fanatics. ... t improved in the Western countries owing to the growing impact of technology and diminishing geographical boundaries resulting in a warmer approach towards new innovations and an openness to change. But despite all these formative changes on the global platform, unfortunately, the scenario in the Islamic countries remains the same. These countries seem somewhat immune to the new changes and events prevailing in their surrounding world. The author claims that this could be attributed to the fact that in addition to a hostility to change propagated by tradition, the people in these countries exhibit a kind of intellectual lethargy which inhibits the growth of their minds. This intellectual lethargy dissuades them from pondering over new ideas and persuades them to seek a convenient refuge under the dead and decaying customs and traditions, in order to circumvent the discomfort of speculation. The outcome is that any idea or opinion that seems to be going against the flow of tradition is labelled as â€Å"heresy† or defiance of religion. Going by this logic, the author’s views on woman empowerment can also be classified as heresy. But here the author clarifies that his work is presented as a revolt against not religion, but tradition. It is intended to defy not Islam, but the rigid and stifling traditions that need to be either mended or discarded. Detailed Analysis Having declared at the outset that he does not conform to the Islamic traditions, the author wonders why the Muslims are so keen on sticking to their traditions whichideally should be done away with. They fail to realise that in their attempt to conform to their traditions they are actually working against the laws of Nature- God’s laws of creation- the Law of Change. They seem to undermine the fact that

Walt Disney Co. V. Beijing Publishing Press Essay

Walt Disney Co. V. Beijing Publishing Press - Essay Example Although Beijing Publishing Press had entered into contract with and paid Maxwell which has intellectual property rights from Disney, it violated Disney IPR. The contract details form Disney did not give Maxwell the right to subcontract its intellectual properties to third parties, which means that the contract between Maxwell and Beijing was void. The fact that the contract was illegal makes it void. Disney enjoys copyright protection of its products from the Chinese law. Therefore, any third parties who wish to utilize its intellectual properties must enter into a contract with Disney. In this case, there existed no contract between Disney and Beijing Publishing. Before paying IPR, a party should conduct careful due diligence to assure that it is paying for enforceable IPR. This case illustrates concept in that Beijing Publishing Company had an obligation to carry out proper investigations to ascertain the legality of the contract with Maxwell Company and Children Press. The department of state copyright administration requires companies to conduct an inquiry and implement registration procedures with the relevant authorities before actual use of IPR. Although Beijing Publishing Company had exempted itself in the working agreement with the Children press, where it stated that Children press would bear any responsibilities arising because of non-registration with the copyright authority; it failed to ascertain that Children Press is not an independent legal person and thus had to bear the responsibility. Beijing Company has a lawsuit against Maxwell. The contract between Disney and Maxwell stated, â€Å"Disney Company licenses to Maxwell Comp any exclusive rights to publish and sell within China its publications based on Disney world characters.† The contract expressly states that the license given should not be granted to third parties (Shaffer, Agusti, and Earle 574). Beijing Publishing can sue Maxwell on the ground that it breached the initial contract, which led to it incurring damages. Champagne V. Wines Worth Group Ltd This case involves an Australian company by name Wines Worth Group against French Department of Champagne that sought an injunction to prevent Australians from â€Å"passing off† their wine as produced from France. French Department of Champagne filed on the basis that they own the trademark. A trademark is a distinctive sign used by businesses to speak a message to their consumers to specify the origin of the product and henceforth dictate the target markets. It is a name, word, phrase, logo, or symbol and the owners of

A retail sales presentation Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

A retail sales presentation - Coursework Example He is able to ascertain his customers’ needs and goes direct to providing a solution for these needs through transfer of his confidence about the pens’ benefits to the customer at the same time appealing to the customers’ emotion about how the brother will feel about them concerning the gift and as such the customer is able to make a wise fast decision to purchase it. The sales person is able to recognize when to ask for the order with a strong call for action which will definitely result in more sales closed. Overall, the salesperson handled the sales process very well. He made the customer feel comfortable with him; he understood his needs and had the right solution for those needs. He asked for the sale and closed the deal. Ron Kapra only thinks about sales and not service. His strategy is very short term. Company loyalty is at stake due to the unauthorized disclosure of product launch information. Ron and Bill are not morally upright when they go beyond their company ethics as demonstrated. Ron needs to understand the value of long term relationships with his clients and at this point he doesn’t seem to push on that line. As for Bill, company loyalty should be critical to overall company success. Premature release of company information may result in insurmountable losses especially from competitors. If I was Ron, I would use the launch information to develop a solid strategic plan, scale down on promoting the Laserton I product and wait for a recall of Laserton I as I wait to push Laserton II to the market. After all, the cost of Laserton I will be refunded to the company and they will have more money to purchase more Laserton II stocks. If I was Bill, I would ask for official redress of the matter with Bill and a high level executive and explain my position. If they will not see my point of view, then I will go ahead and down play promotions for Laserton I. I will inform my customers that a good

Speech presentation or Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Speech or Presentation Example The purpose of this speech is to enable audience to exactly know about the importance of customers, they hold for any business. After the speech, audience will know basics of why maintaining good relations with customers is important, how customer relationship management can be implemented in brief and how it can benefit an organization. Customers, being the wage payers of employees, are very important for each and every employee of an organization. Especially, people in marketing and sales department should be well aware of their importance. Customers should be treated well, not only when they are making their purchases but also after the time since the post purchase care shown by businesses towards their customers is an important tool to attract customers for being loyal with the organization and repeat their purchase. Existing or Old customers hold key importance for businesses. Studies have proved that the most effective area of revenue generation for businesses is to attract existing customers. But even then most businesses think that once a customer has made the purchase, he or she is bonded with the organization which ultimately results in to the loss of customer base and number of clients or customers for an organization starts shrinking. Customers are very sensitive to organization's behavior with them. There can be many reasons a customer may feel bad about an organization and wishes not to repeat his or her purchase with the organization. They might think that the organization is no more fair or justified with its offering, or organization is unconcerned with the issues and problems they had from their previous purchase, or a competitor of their previous seller has offered a better product or service. Customers, if find an organization trustworthy, are very eager to repeat their purchase with this organization since it reduces their time for decision making their purchase. They had an experience with the organization's product or service and they are confident and satisfied with the organization's offering; these things provide them an ease of mind in their purchase decisions which ultimately transform into repeat purchases. It is always feasible for an organization to work for attracting its existing customers since: "Repeat customers spend 33% more than new customers. Referrals among repeat customers are 107% greater than non-customers. It costs six times more to sell something to a prospect than to sell that same thing to a customer (Laura Lake, 2007)". Before implementing customer relationship management in an organization, management should know, "what is the actual problem with the existing handling of customers that initiated the need for customer relationship management" (Management-crm, 2007) "Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a process companies use to understand their customer

Pacific war Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Pacific war - Essay Example However control of the sea was practicable only after island territories had been secured as bases for air and logistics sustenance. This dictated equity in employment of land and air forces in conjunction with combat ships. This created intense service rivalries primarily between the land and sea force commanders. At the tactical level allotment of forces for operations was on a task force basis and overcame the service biases to an extent. The key personalities involved were of great significance. On one hand we have Douglas MacArthur, who has been referred to as the American Caesar an Army general with impeccable professional reputation. Decorated in the First World War, he had the distinction of being recalled on active service on the outbreak of the Second World War and then placed in command of American forces in the Philippines.2 Overwhelmed by the Japanese in the Philippines, MacArthur was determined to return, an obsession to some extent which dictated some of his strategic proclivities in the years ahead. His reputation as a military commander survived his failure in the Philippines. ... He was considered the fore most authority on submarines in the US Navy. He is credited to have successfully halted the Japanese advance after the initial disaster of the Pearl Harbor and led the counter offensive in the Pacific overcoming the deficiencies in supplies and ships by successive victories in the Battles of the Coral Sea, Midway and the Campaign in the Solomon Islands.3 The US Navy considered Nimitz as their mascot in the Pacific and despite the seniority differential felt that he was the most suited for a joint command with quantitative superiority with the Navy. Victory as is commonly said has many fathers. The controversy of ascribing success of Allied victory in the Pacific to Nimitz or MacArthur is contained in a number of factors as inter service rivalry, lack of unity of command, the concomitant success of the forces under each commander, strategic outlook and the personalities themselves. While each of these issues is important, the strategy ascribed to Nimitz and MacArthur would be a prime consideration which is being discussed along with other factors herein. The Strategic Backdrop With the tide of success having turned in favor of the Allies, at the Quadrant Conference at Quebec in August 1943, it was decided that two lines of approach for subjugation of the Japanese be undertaken. In South West Pacific, General MacArthur was placed in command of the forces to undertake an offensive in Eastern New Guinea to include Wewak, the Admirality Islands and the Bismarck Archipelago, neutralize Rabaul and advance along the New Guinea coast to the Vogelkop peninsula. The second approach was to be through the Central

U choose a topic Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

U choose a topic - Essay Example Advantages and Disadvantages of Specialization in U.S Firms Specialization is incorporating workers to do specific roles and tasks in their daily activities in a business establishment (Morroni 45). This is done with the aim of realizing maximum output hence maximum profits. There are various merits that may accompany specialized job designs if incorporated by United States of America Firms. Specialization saves a lot of time for both the business establishment and the workers. An employee does not waste time because they do not keep moving from one task to another since they are used to one process. As an employee continues to work on one process, they learn to perform their tasks faster, hence saving a lot of time. Specialization is also advantageous since firm will spend less in training. For example, if Firms such as General Motors incorporate specialization employees will be used to performing specific tasks hence they will perfect their skill requiring no training. On disadvant age that might face United State of America firms in the automobile industry is that it results in increased cost for the firms. The firm has to employ many workers to carry out the various specific duties in the business establishment which will result in the firms incurring a lot of operation costs hence reducing their profits. Specialization may also lead to employee demotivation hence reducing the firm’s income. ... is a long chain of command, and as the company grows so does management while a flat organization structure is where there are few levels of management where every level of management controls a huge group of workers (Jain p29). A tradition United States of America firm usually employs the tall organization structure. By analyzing the organization structure of automobile firms such as General Motors, one can see how traditional united States of America firm use tall organization structure. Management in such firms is designed in a way that there is a lot of hierarchies like in the military. There is superior management, which runs down vertically depending on the size of the firm. Characteristics that accompany this structure is that there is minimal relationship between the management of the firm and its workers. This causes problems in the company since employees are not able to relate freely with their supervisors. On the other hand, flat organization structure is applied in Japan ese firms. For example, Honda has put up a plant in Ohio U.S.A where t use non traditional methods of management where employees are allowed to question their managers or supervisors during their daily operations in the firm (384). This organization structure is beneficial to such companies since it allows for innovation since employees are free to do what is best for the company. This model allows for employee motivation of employees since they feel they are part of the organization since they relate to managers and supervisors as team leaders hence they do not have the fear that comes with a management style that represents authority. Culture and Relationship Coordination Japanese firms such as Toyota use relationship and relationship as a coordination mechanism to ensure that the firm

How has your understanding of ethnocentrism shaped your understanding Essay

How has your understanding of ethnocentrism shaped your understanding of the field of Sociology - Essay Example The concept of ethnocentrism arises from the deepest thoughts and understanding of people belonging to one culture about the culture of other people. The distinct ideas, living standards, traditions, moral values and norms of other cultures seem unacceptable and inferior to them. The basic reason of this irrational judgment about other’s culture lies in the fact that people tend to measure and observe cultures from their preset standards of their own. They tend to measure and evaluate every customer and practice of other cultures from their own perspectives about the issues as they learned from their own culture. Hence, observing other’s from the viewpoint of one’s own cultural perspective may define the concept of ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism does not let a person view things and the world around them form other’s point of view. It, hence, acts as a hurdle in the way of understanding others. In today’s globalized environment, ethnocentrism may pose a threat to the peace and collaborative struggles of people working, living or studying together. Ethnocentric approach provides a one-sided view of everything and hence, the judgments made using this approach are narrow-minded and have limited scope.

bpo management system Essay Example for Free

bpo management system Essay 1. Introduction 1.1 Purpose This document describes the high level design for the CHART/EORS Intranet Mapping Application and the CHART Internet Mapping Application. The purpose of this design is to show the high-level technical approach to meeting the requirements defined in system requirements specification. This serves to identify the architecture of the system and high-level interactions between major system components. 1.2 Objectives Identify and describe the software architecture for the system. Provide  high-level approaches to various technical challenges. Provide a guide for future development efforts, such as detailed design and coding. 1.3 Scope This high level design encompasses the approach for meeting the requirements as defined in the documents CHART/EORS Intranet Mapping System Requirement Specification and CHART Internet Mapping System Requirement Specification. 2. System Architecture 2.1 Overview The following diagram shows the system architecture used by CHART mapping applications.  The system design utilizes web based multi-tier system architecture. The data storage is managed at the data tier by the databases. The main business logics are hosted in the two applications in the web server. Because mapping is an area that there are many requirements related to client side interactions with the graphic content of the application, application logics are partitioned based on the most appropriate location to execute them. Some are located on the client browsers to provide instantaneous feedback to the user. The general system operation flow involves the following: 1. Data updates from various sources such as the CHART II CORBA events, EORS data inputs, device and event editing modules are stored in the databases. 2. When a mapping application receives a mapping request, it sends the image map generation request to the ArcIMS map server. The ArcIMS server retrieves the map data from the databases and creates a rendering of the map and saves it as a raster image file. The mapping application generates HTML pages embedded with the image and sends it to the browser client. 3. For the CHART Intranet mapping client, the application also generates the dynamic content in VML format, which encodes the device and event information in vector format. This enables the application to update the dynamic data without having to reload the whole map image. This avoids the heavy load on the map server when the application scales up. 4. When the images and VML  data arrives at the client browser, the client displays the map to the user. The user can interact with this data on the client. 2.2 SQL Server and ArcSDE ArcSDE from ESRI allows managing of geographic information in commercial databases such as SQL Server, Oracle, DB2 and Informix. ArcSDE provides functionalities to efficiently store and retrieve spatial information using spatial indexing mechanisms. ArcSDE provides a set of API and administrative utilities that help manage the spatial data storage. For the CHART mapping systems, the combination of ArcSDE and SQL Server manages the spatial information in the relational database. ArcSDE adds spatial functionalities without disrupting standard SQL database capabilities. 2.3 Map Server (ArcIMS) ArcIMS includes a few components that will play important roles in the CHART mapping application. The workhorse component that processes the data and generates maps is the spatial server. Managing the spatial servers is the ArcIMS Application Server, which monitors each spatial server’s activity and brokers map requests to the least busy spatial server. The detailed interaction of a map request is as the following: When the ASP.Net page receives a map request, it parses it and uses the ActiveX Connector object model to construct a map request. The connector then sends the map request in ArcXML format to the Application Server. The Application Server then finds the least busy spatial server and forwards the map request to it. The spatial server performs the query against the ArcSDE database, retrieves the data and renders them into a raster image file. The location of the file is then sent back to the connector and the ASP.Net page writes it back to the client as HTML page with the image embedded in it. 2.4 Web Server (IIS) .Net Framework and ASP.Net The web server hosts and publishes content to the client browser. In the case of the CHART mapping applications, most of the content is dynamic content generated by ASP.Net modules. When IIS recognizes a page being an ASP.Net module (an aspx extension), it passes the request to the .Net Framework to load the module and handle the request. The ASP.Net pages are then loaded into memory and executed. The .Net Framework provides many utilities such as garbage collection, tracing, just-in-time compilation that manages the execution of ASP.Net modules. The ASP.Net page modules are where the CHART mapping application logic is coded. The web server also provides security via the Secured Socket Layer (SSL), allowing interactions between the user’s browser and the web server to be encrypted when necessary. 2.5 Security 2.5.1 Network Level Security Network layer security will be managed by the network security configurations like firewall and RSA secure ID. 2.5.2 Secured Socket Layer (SSL) MDOT has a certificate server to provide digital certificates for the SSL configuration. The server name must remain consistent with the certificate. All links shall use the same server name, otherwise, if the server is referred using an IP address or a local server name, etc., the user will see an alert indicating the certificate is in-consistent with the resource. IIS supports the configuration of one folder in the web application requiring SSL while other portion does not. The session information remains consistent between SSL portion of the web site and the non-SSL portion. 2.5.3 Enterprise User Enters Read-Only View Many of the CHART mapping functionalities are for display and reviewing data, i.e. a read-only view. The design allows enterprise viewers and CHART users to access the read-only portion of the web site without having to input user name and password. This also enables CHART users to reach the viewing area without having to enter their login information again. When system receives a user request to enter the secured area, the system checks whether the current session has been authenticated. If not, system displays login screen. The user shall enter their CHART user name and password. Upon receipt of the user name and password, the system checks it  against the CHART II database’s user tables. If they are authenticated, the system stores the user information in the session. The session will be managed in the server until the configured timeout expires. All subsequent requests from the same user session will inherit the same authorization information for the user. 2.5.4 CHART User Enters Editing Area Other applications, like future versions of CHART II and CHART Lite, can launch the map editing URL via the HTTPS protocol. The user name and password can be sent via https request. The system verifies their authentication information against the CHART II user database using an OLEDB/ODBC connection. If the authentication information is correct, the system will store this information in the session. The user will be redirected to the map page. If the authentication is rejected, the user request will be redirected to the login screen to reenter the authentication information. Associating a CHART user with an op-center/default map view area: Based on CHART II R1B3 database design, users are not associated with an op-center; rather, the user specifies an op-center during logon. In order to display a default map view area based on an op-center, an external application launching the CHART mapping application will also need to pass in the operation center name to initialize the map to the associated extent. Passing user name and password in URL request: The mapping site shall have a module that verifies the user name and password, then forward the page to the map page, hence avoiding showing the password on URL address box. At the current time, without the full integration with CHART II and CHART Lite, the system will expect plain text user name and password. In the future, an encryption/decryption algorithms agreed between the systems can be added to achieve higher security. 2.5.5 EORS Security Currently, the EORS security has not been implemented. EORS functions will be hard-coded with security configuration. 3. Network Configuration The design above depicts CHART network configuration as the Internal network, a Demilitarization Zone (DMZ) network for hosting the web server and connecting out to the external Internet network. There will be two firewalls, one between the Internet and the DMZ network and another one between the DMZ network and the internal network. The map server and database servers are to be hosted in the internal network for maximum security. The initial configuration calls for two physical computers to host the map servers and database servers. In the future, if the system needs to scale up, additional physical servers can be added. The Intranet web server can optionally be hosted on the load-balanced virtual server too. 3.1.1 Map Server Load Balancing The design achieves load balancing by a combination of Windows 2000 Advanced Server Network Load Balancing (NLB) Service and the ArcIMS Application Server. The system utilizes two physical server computers. The two servers are configured with NLB. NLB works on the TCP/IP level. Any incoming traffic from web server to the virtual server IP address is load balanced between the two application servers by NLB. ArcIMS Application Server operates at the application level, monitoring each spatial server’s load and operation. When a spatial server is busy, it directs the map request to idling spatial server(s). Each physical map server hosts one ArcIMS Application Server and two ArcIMS Spatial Server instances. An application server failure forces NLB to direct new connections to the remaining application server. When the failed server is recovered, new client connections should once again be shared between the two servers. The two spatial server instances are â€Å"cross registered† to the application servers. As shown in the diagram, Spatial Server A1 and A2 are registered to Application Server B and A correspondingly. This arrangement ensures that when a spatial server is down, the application server can still  utilize the spatial server from the other server to serve the map request and the application server continue to function. Also, this configuration also allows ArcIMS to load balance at the Spatial Server level as opposed to just the network traffic level, which is what NLB provides. This configuration can withstand an Application Server failure, a Spatial Server failure, a simultaneous Application/Spatial Server failure or hardware failure of one of the physical map servers. Using two map servers with network load balancing should provide high-availability load balanced ArcIMS web site. 3.1.2 Database Load Balancing By running two SQL Server and ArcSDE instances with NLB to balance the load, the system can achieve high availability at the database server layer. The database servers are completely independent and share no hardware components. This type of availability is achievable with the standard edition of SQL Server. The two database servers are setup with Transactional replication. One of the two SQL Servers is configured as the publisher and the other one as a subscriber. All the data modification such as insert, delete and update will be performed on the publisher and changes are replicated to the subscriber. Transactional replication can provide very low latency to Subscribers. Subscribers receiving data using a push subscription usually receive changes from the Publisher within one minute or sooner, provided that the network link and adequate processing resources are available (latency of a few seconds can often be achieved). When the web server and map server requests use the virtual IP address on the load-balanced group of database servers, they are directed to the database server with the least amount of load. If one of the database servers goes down due to hardware failure, NLB detects that this server is down and no longer directs database requests to this machine. The remaining machine handles the database requests and apart from a slight drop in performance the users are unaware that a database server has failed. When the hardware is fixed the offending machine can be brought back online. One limitation exists for this design. It happens when the publisher database is down. In this situation the data updates cannot be committed until the publisher database comes back. But at the same time, all read access from the Internet and Intranet server could still be directed to the secondary server. In the case when the publisher data is going to be down for extended time period, system configuration need to allow system administrator to change the configuration so that the replica will serve as the main database. Compared with clustering solution, this system design provides the maximum database availability and performance benefit. The databases that need to be replicated would include: 1. Background map database. Background map data does not change often. A snapshot replication is sufficient for replicating data updates in one database to the other. 2. CHART/EORS Spatial Database CHART/EORS spatial database stores CHART and EORS device and event information with spatial data. They are dynamically updated throughout the day. Transactional replication will be setup to ensure that data change in one database gets replicated to the other one. 3. SDE metadata. In general, the system can continue to provide access of map and data to both the Internet and Intranet users in the case of failure of any one component in the system. The only exception is that when the publisher database is down, the new data cannot be updated into the system. Users will get delayed information. 3.1.3 DMZ Configuration CHART is currently implementing a Demilitarization Zone (DMZ) network to enhance the network security. This entails creating a separate network for the web server computer(s) and separating it from the internal network with a firewall. In an ideal world, the DMZ would have no physical connection to the internal network. This would require two separate map server setups to serve the  Internet and Intranet users. The recommended way to implement is to disallow any access from the DMZ to the internal network, but allow access from the internal network to the DMZ. In other words, allow out-bound connections. On each of the ArcIMS server computers, mount a network drive to a shared drive on the Web server. Each ArcIMS spatial server would write the output raster image files to the location on the web server to be delivered to the Internet client browsers. 4. Database Organization To reduce the dependency and operation interference between the spatial data and the attribute data, the EORS spatial database and CHART spatial database will be created as two SQL Server databases. To reduce the performance overhead when joining data between the spatial and attribute data, the EORS spatial database will reside on the same database server(s) as the EORS database. 5. Technical Challenges 5.1 Map Display Mechanism CHART Intranet mapping application requires that changes in event and device data be reflected on all map clients in a near-real-time fashion (within 5 seconds). To do so via the traditional raster map publishing mechanism will result in all clients retrieving updated map every 5 seconds or at least when event/device status update requires a new map to be generated. When there is large number of users of the system, it will result in a high map server load in a concentrated short time period. To resolve this issue, the project team reviewed various technical approaches and summarizes their advantages and disadvantages as the following: 5.1.1 Raster (JPEG, GIF or PNG) Image This is a popular approach that utilizes the basic image display functionality of web browsers. It utilizes the server processing power efficiently. The disadvantages are that the images have limited client side intelligence, leaving most of the computation concentrated on the server. It’s capability of handling large number of concurrent map requests is limited. Generally, one map server can support 4-8 requests per second. For  CHART’s situation, when an event changes status, if a new map image needs to be generated, it would be about 40 requests per second (200 users at 5 second update interval). Many servers will be required to support the load. With the license fee involved with using GIF format, we will not use GIF for map publishing. Compared with JPG format, PNG graphics do not have the â€Å"bleeding† effect inherent with the JPEG compression algorithm. With the map displaying lines rather than continuous tone images, it is much cleaner. PNG also results in a smaller file, which translates into faster download times for client. The only JPG advantage is server side image generation times. It is recommended to utilize PNG for the Intranet application to produce highest quality images for standardized IE browser while utilizing JPG for the Internet to allow for support of as many browsers as possible. Also, the reduction in image processing time should deliver better web image generation performance. 5.1.2 XML Based Vector Graphics 5.1.2.1 Vector Markup Language (VML) VML is a XML based W3C standard in describing vector graphics. Basically, it encodes the vector coordinates of points, lines and polygons in XML format. The support of VML is included in Internet Explorer 5.0 and later. There is no download needed to display VML encoded vector graphics. It also has built-in support for style sheet and scripting. This makes it possible to modify the display properties and positions of the vector graphics using the JavaScript on the client-side browser. Using this functionality, we can dynamically update the display of devices and events. 5.1.2.2 Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Scalable Vector Graphics is another XML-based W3C standard format for vector graphics. Compared with VML, it requires Java or ActiveX based plug-in to be displayed. Also, based on review of the plug-ins (SVG Viewer by Adobe), there is not as much support for scripting as for VML. 5.1.3 ArcIMS Java Viewer ArcIMS includes a Java Viewer, which provides a Java Applet that can be customized to a certain extent to display vector encoded GIS data on the client side. It requires a download to the client. The Java Viewer reads vector data from ArcIMS feature server encoded using an ESRI proprietary compression format, which makes it difficult to implement special features such as WSMS offsetted road networks because they need to be offset dynamically based on map scale. 5.1.4 MapObjects Java MapObjects Java from ESRI provides a set of Java-based objects for GIS functionalities. It has an extensive set of functionality that can satisfy the requirements. But, it requires a license fee of $100/seat, or comparable server-based licensing. It also requires a download to client machine to run it. 5.1.5 Summary Based on the research above, the project team recommends the following design: Use raster map for background map display (background data with SHA grid map are often large amount of data, suitable for server side processing) Use XML data format to transport the device and event data from server to browser client. Use JavaScript to create and update the VML vector data elements to display the dynamic layers including all the CHART/EORS devices and events. The diagram above illustrates the map display mechanism: 1. Map server reads the spatial data from background database and sends the published map image to the client browser to be displayed as background. 2. Device and event information is broadcasted from the CHART II system in the form of CORBA events. 3. CORBA event listener receives the event broadcast and saves the data into CHART spatial database. 4. CHART/EORS device and event data are published in XML format to the client. Client browser parses the XML into a XML Document Object Model (DOM) using the XML parser. 5. The client browser then iterate through the DOM tree structure and create corresponding VML elements based on the XML device and event data. The VML elements are displayed on the top of the background raster map image. 6. At a pre-configured interval, the browser client retrieves update of device and event data from the IIS server in XML format and update the VML display  based on the updated information. 5.2 Automated Refresh of Device and Event Data CHART/EORS device and event information needs to be updated at a pre-configured interval. They should be updated separate from the background map to reduce the load on the map server. The technical approach to achieve this will be to use a hidden frame to send the request to retrieve updated device and event data and receive the response. The response will package the data in XML file to be parsed into a document object model (DOM) and display the data on map. The request can be to retrieve all data or only retrieve data newer than last retrieval. When the new device/event is received and it requires changing the display of the device/events, the style assignment for the elements can be changed to update the device and event display.   The VML elements will be sent using real-world coordinates (Maryland State Plane 1983). After the data has been retrieved to the client side, the VML map layers can be dynamically projected using the â€Å"local coordinate space†. When user zooms or pan the map, the VML will be projected using the updated coordinates to fit the new map extent without going back to the server to retrieve new data set. 5.3 Inter-Frame Client Script Synchronization The map page has a few frames and the browser loads them asynchronously. Scripts in one frame may call scripts in another frame that may not have been loaded. The approach to resolve this is to add client-side exception handling and verification routine to ensure that the script is called always after the frame is loaded. 5.4 Assigning and Editing Event Location The dynamic nature of VML elements in the browser allows adding and modifying VML elements by scripting. When the user clicks or drags the mouse on the map, client-side script manages the transformation of screen coordinates and real-world map coordinates. The coordinates are sent back to the server’s secured URL where the information is extracted and saved to the database. 5.5 Scalability The CHART mapping application serves not only the Intranet users, but also Internet browser clients. During emergency situations, the load on both the Internet and Intranet servers could get extremely high. The system must be able to scale up to serve large amount of users. The technical approach to solve this issue involves two main facets. As described in the network configuration section, the system will employ network load balancing and allows adding additional hardware in the future. The system should also be able to utilize the caching feature of IIS and ASP.Net to scale up without significantly increase hardware investment. ASP.Net allows caching configuration for individual page modules, such as whether the page is cached and how long it is cached. After the application is deployed, these caching settings can be configured on the web pages. For example, if it is determined that the Internet mapping can be up to 3 seconds late, by setting caching time to 3 seconds, all requests from the Internet will receive a cached response without creating additional load on the map and database server. 5.6 Exception Management and Recovery CHART II keeps its clients updated via a push model using the CORBA Event Service. The Event Service does not guarantee delivery; therefore it is possible for event data to be lost/dropped (although in practice, this is rare). To account for this possibility, the CHART Web Event Listener will refresh its information about the status of devices and traffic events from CHART II at a configurable interval. Also, each time the Event Listener is started, it will retrieve all relevant data from CHART II. Thus, the update model becomes a push model with an occasional pull to be safe. This process will be used to recover from the following situations: 1. The Event Listener was down and did not receive new data from CHART II. 2. CHART II CORBA event(s) occasionally dropped while the Event Listener is up and running. Another likely scenario is that the CHART II server or service(s) restart. After a typical restart, the CORBA Event Service CORBA objects will be  recreated with the same characteristics allowing the Event Listener to continue to automatically receive CHART II CORBA events. As the CHART II services will not be processing events during this time, no events are likely to be missed. Therefore, the Event Listener does not need to do anything special to handle a CHART II server or service(s) restart. Sometimes CHART II maintenance will require that new (and different) Event Service CORBA objects be created. This might happen during a CHART II upgrade, for example. In this case, the Event Listener will need to be restarted so that it can pick up the new objects. Since this type of maintenance does not occur often and the Event Listener restarting is fast, the restart can be handled as part of the CHART II upgrade procedures. 5.7 Integration with ASP Code in EORS and CHART Web Application The CHART Intranet Mapping, replacing the existing EORS mapping application, will still be launched as a separate window by a URL string with a few parameters identifying the district, view type, etc. The impact on EORS web application should be limited to modifying the URL links. The current CHART Internet Mapping site uses â€Å"include† statement to include site navigation pages from upper level CHART web site’s pages. When upgrading Internet Mapping to ASP.Net, â€Å"include† statement is no longer used. Instead, a ServerXMLHTTP request can be formulated to request the text from the included ASP page and merge them into the mapping ASP.Net pages. The limitation of this implementation would be that the ASP.Net application couldn’t share the session and application variables from the ASP application. Currently, there are only a couple of them, such as database connection string. The ASP.Net mapping application will maintain a separate set of application variables. 6. User Interface Design 6.1 Intranet Map Site User Interface Design Here following is a high-level frame structure for the Intranet mapping site: 1. AppFrame is the highest-level frame that includes all the child frames. On the top of the page, there will be the title frame, which will host the  CHART icon. Also inside the title frame will be a group of tabs, such as Traffic, Roadway Weather, Message Sign, etc. 2. ToolsFrame hosts the map navigation and other map related tools. The ToolsFrame will also host menu system that allows the user to bring up data and other detailed information. 3. HiddenFrame will be used to submit and receive information from the server. 4. ContentFrame is further divided to a map frame on the left and a data frame on the right. The user shall be able rearrange the frame boundary to give more space to the map or data area. Data frame will display data as well as legend, layer control and other items when needed. 5. PromptFrame will display the current tool selected and instructions for user activities. Here is a screen shot of the preliminary user interface design: 6.2 Internet Map Site User Interface The overall CHART Internet mapping web site design will stay the same as current web site. The site will stay as part of the overall CHART web site by including the CHART navigation menus into the site. The site will not be using frames; instead, all elements will be laid out as HTML tables. 7. References 1. CHART/EORS Intranet Mapping System Requirement Specification 2. CHART Internet Mapping System Requirement Specification 3. Security and ArcIMS – ESRI White Paper 4. ArcSDE Configuration and Tuning Guide for Microsoft SQL Server – ESRI White Paper 5. ArcIMS 4.0 High-Availability Configuration Testing Using Network Load Balancing –ESRI White Paper 6. Vector Markup Language (VML) Specification – W3C 8. Terms and Glossary ArcXML – ESRI’s map request/response specification in XML format CORBA – Common Object Request Broker Architecture CSS – Cascading Style Sheets DOM – Document Object Model ESRI – Environment System Research Institute GIS – Geographic Information System GML – Geography Markup Language NLB – Network Load Balancing SSL – Secure Socket Layer SVG – Scalable Vector Graphics VML – Vector Markup Language XML – Extensible Markup Language