Comparing and Contrasting Anglo-Saxon, Medieval, and...

centerbAnalysis of Early Civilizations Through Literature/b/centerbrbrA culture that evolves and changes through time is a healthy culture indeed. From the early pagan warriors to the artisans of the Renaissance, the European world dramatically reformed. The literature of each era indicates the profound cultural innovations. The Anglo-Saxons arguably most important literary piece, Beowulf, is a story of a brave warrior who fights Grendel. Grendel is described as, A powerful monster, living down/ In the darknessÂ…(lines 1-2). This affray demonstrates the timeless battle of good versus evil. The universal struggle is maintained in the Medieval plight for an ideal of perfect chivalry. Knights were guarded with utmost respect and†¦show more content†¦(93, Malory). The two former eras show a people who deeply appreciate battle and the pursuit of heroic deeds, not great knowledge or understanding of the elements around them as seen in the Renaissance and some later periods. Th e Renaissance was a highly progressive time of advancements in the arts, literature, science, and education. This ‘rebirth was much more modern than that of the English Anglo-Saxon period, although warfare and battles were still prevalent. Military innovations- primary cannons, new infantry tactics, and the royal standing armies combined to reduce the traditional dominance of the mounted feudal Knights. Knights were no longer important, as now there were armies. The Renaissance, Anglo-Saxon period, and Medieval times each contained elements of violence and battle, although each era progressed and changed in their individual respective ways.brbrAlong with the roles leadership

Tell Me What You Eat, and I’ll Tell You Who You Are Free Essays

Shady Bahsoun Amst 276 December 8,2009 Research Paper #2 â€Å"Tell me what you eat, and I’ll tell you who you are† â€Å"Tell me what you eat, and I’ll tell you who you are† once said French lawyer and gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. With the growth of food import/export around the world and the opportunities of expansion in foreign coutries: Could Brillat-Savarin’s statement still be possible today or has it completely lost ground? Food is one of the fields in which globalization has faced and is facing very strong and persistent resistance across the globe.How do firms work past this? With climate, flora and tastes changing from one region to another, our blue planet houses a plethora of different grains, which are first cultivated, to be later eaten by humans and animals. We will write a custom essay sample on Tell Me What You Eat, and I’ll Tell You Who You Are or any similar topic only for you Order Now This being said, we can take the example of the Far East, China, and Japan. In that part of the world, rice is the central ingredient in almost everything agricultural. This old and historical tradition has not faded over time. Figures by the UNCTAD, Secretariat from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations show that consumption of rice in China has gone from 50 million metric ton in 1961 to 160 millions metric ton in 2002. Same increasing trend applies to the other countries of the Far East, India and South East Asia (â€Å"UNCTAD Infocomm Market information in the commodities area†). The new agro-industrial advancements have made this leap possible. William Marling emphasizes on the fact that babies raised in different cultures develop a sensibility to what they are given to eat.After the common â€Å"milk-stage† cultures distinguish from one another and serve their children with the central cultural nutriment: Japanese children â€Å"are encouraged to focus on the texture and mouth feel of rice [†¦]† in the United States â€Å"infants off the bottle [are fed] applesauce, strained plums or apricots† (Marling, 2006, p. 89-90). Thus children who late r grow up are impregnated with their traditional childhood food preferences, they may lean more towards a sugary or salty cuisine, fat/nonfat, sweet/sour. This is, until this very day, the major reason for which big food corporations cannot simply transpose products from one market to another and expect them to fare equally well. The differences actually go beyond simply food, why do Japanese people not eat parboiled rice? Because the eating utensils they use do not correspond to this type of rice, it is like trying to eat soup with a fork. Exporting American parboiled rice to Japan and other chopsticks-using countries will inevitably fail.My first experience eating a whole meal with my hands was in an Ethiopian restaurant in New York City: Food is served with a type of soft pita named â€Å"Injera†. One may guess that food that requires either chopsticks or the western fork-knife dyad are not the most successful in Ethiopia. If what we eat and how we eat it is so much different from one corner of earth to another, how come some food corporations are posted in rich countries as well as extremely poor ones, in sour eating culture s as well as sugar eating ones? the list of divergences is extremely long.It would be wrong to say that big multinational corporations have been successful directly after starting business in new countries. Helmut Maucher was the chief executive of Nestle – number one corporation in the food industry – for several years; He was one of the few who really understood what was needed in order to achieve market penetration: adaptation. In an old interview â€Å"NESTLE SHOWS HOW TO GOBBLE MARKETS The world’s No. 1 food company wrote the book on global expansion: Think long term, adapt products to cultures, and expect to lose big while building market share. The chief executive insists on how important it is to analyze and understand a market before launching any product; and if the product does not seem to fit the target market at first, Maucher said he was ready to accept losses on the short-term if it has the potential to lead to future sales (Tully, 1989). How may a product fail if not correctly remodeled? â€Å"Campbell’s canned soups mostly vegetable and beef combinations packed in extra-large cans did not catch on in soup-loving Brazil.A postmortem study s howed that most Brazilian housewives felt they were not fulfilling their roles if they served soup that they could not call their own† (Smith, 2007). Globalization faces a tough resistance in the field of food not only because of incompatible tastes (although it is one major reason) but also because of cultural aspects, how it is eaten, how it looks, if the marketing strategy suits the target well â€Å"Foreign food companies took a beating in China until they learned that the Chinese believe in â€Å"cooling† and â€Å"warming† foods† (Marling, 2006, p. 4). Smith shows us that Brazilian women were reluctant to buy Campbell’s canned soups because it alters the role they play in the kitchen. They do not like the idea that the soup is already made, they want to feel they were part of the process. â€Å"[instead,]Brazilian housewives had no problems using dehydrated competitive products, such as Knorr and Maggi† (Smith, 2007) because those products only did part of the job, housewives did not feel useless. Another big food chain, which underwent strategical restructuration, is KFC, Kentucky Fried Chicken.KFC was exported to China in 1987 right when China was starting to loosen the grip it had over its economy. The owner of KFC is Yum brands who also owns other franchises like Pizza Hut: â€Å"Yum has discovered it cannot rely on a foreign brand name for growth and must instead adapt to local tastes and lifestyles. So KFC has given a Chinese twist to its menu by adding dishes similar to the food that tens of millions of Chinese grab from street stalls or small restaurants on their way to work every day† (Shen, 2008).This could be considered as a concession: If you want your firm to establish itself on any foreign territory some sacrifices should be expected, you have to please the local clientele and try to minimize cultural shock. In this case, KFC had to add local or at least local-inspired products to its menu. In a nutshell when people do business out of a good as complex as food where thousands of variables and criteria intervene it is imperative to know that any new product/brand introduced on a foreign market with no consideration for the taste, customs, mentality or even color signification is very likely going to fail.Corporations have to invest resources into R;D, psychological reporting, on-site assessment and experimenting to know if what they have to offer stands any chance of surviving. Hence globalization in this highly competitive sector is presented with many obstacles it will have to dismantle over time if it wants to succeed.References Marling, W. H. (2006). How â€Å"American† is globalization? Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins U. P. Tully, Shawn (16 Jan 1989). Nestle shows how to gobble markets. Fortune, Retrieved Dec 9 2008, from http://money. cnn. om/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1989/01/16/71522/index. htm Smith, Jo Ann (2007). Developing global marketing strategy. Retrieved December 10, 2008, from http://www. web-articles. info/e/a/title/Developing-global-marketing-strategy/ UNCTAD Infocomm Market information in the commodities area. Retrieved December 9, 2008, from UNCTAD InfoComm Web site: http://unctad. org/infocomm/anglais/rice/market. htm Shen, Samuel (2008, May, 5). Kentucky Fried Chicken banks on China. International Herald Tribune, from http://www. iht. com/articles/2008/05/05/business/kfc. php How to cite Tell Me What You Eat, and I’ll Tell You Who You Are, Papers

Outline and assess the view that the role of education system is to justify and reproduce social inequalities free essay sample

Outline and assess the view that the role of education system is to justify and reproduce social inequalities (50) The view that the role of educations system is to justify and reproduce social inequalities is one from a Marxist perspective. They believe that capitalism creates inequality and allows those with wealth to keep theirs. Bowles and Gintis argue that there is a very close relationship between education and work. This is called the correspondence principle. Bowles and Gintis argue that in a capitalist society they are known to give children different types of education based on the class than on their actual ability. Meaning that schools will give working class children a different type of education in comparison to middle and upper class children. Consequently allowing the working class to stay where they are on the class system, but they also allow the middle and upper class to stay where they are too. Capitalism reaffirms the idea that the working class are required to be hardworking and obedient therefore not resisting the teachers, as this is what they will be required to do when they enter the workforce. The education system creates a future workforce that have the desired qualities by passing on the hidden curriculum to school children. The hidden curriculum is the things you learn through going to school and the experiences you get there, and not those that you learn in class and through the formal curriculum. The hidden curriculum is there for working class schools to help shape them for the workforce. The hidden curriculum helps create a subservient workforce, meaning that workers will not challenge the system, and have an acceptance of hierarchy. Meaning that when teachers give directions the students will follow them without asking questions, this prepares them for later in life when they are in work. School subjects have very little reference to each other and that there is not much correlation between each subject. Much like the working class children’s future career as their job may be broken down into small, individual tasks. Whereas in more elite and private schools the children are learnt very different skills, and taught a different set of norms and values. Children at these schools are more likely to be taught to be more in command of the situation that they are in. Bowles and Gintis also reject the idea that the education is meritocratic, and providing equal opportunities for everybody. Middle class children will gain high qualifications and receive higher pad jobs because of their ability but also through their large quantities of cultural capital. Whereas working class children may not have the same opportunities to receive cultural capital this creating inequalities within the education system, much like the class system. This is called cultural reproduction. Bourdieu believes that education reproduces the culture and class system. It shows the importance of the upper class culture and therefore reinforces the power those have over the working class. They are allowed to do this by basing the education system off cultural capital, whilst the culture that the working class children are receiving is not on the education system and therefore they lose interest. Bourdieu believes that education has been developed by the bourgeoisie and therefore the working class have never had any real ownership on the education system they are forced to be a part of. However functionalists believe that the education institution is there and built for a reason, that it affects and benefits both the individual and society. Education allows students to learn and create a shared set of norms and values, therefore creating a similar attitude between everyone. Ultimately allowing a whole society to have values of achievement, competition, and equal opportunities created by education. This is confirmed by Durkheim’s, view that the shared norms and values create social solidarity, allowing the whole society to work in harmony. This can create a skilled workforce as everybody knows what is needed from them and is necessary for the future economy. According to functionalist Parson education is part of a meritocracy, being based on a person’s ability. He believes that education is a bridge between the family and society. Parson’s believes that education creates a set of values including competition, equality, and individualism. Within a meritocracy every student is given the same opportunity, and that achievements and rewards are based off an individual’s efforts and abilities, thus creating an achieved status. A functionalist like Parsons could state that this achieved status allows individuals to strive for more and as a result choose to work and have a career. Education allows students to be categorised and shown what skills they are best at. Role allocation, sorts through people according to their ability at different subjects. Davis and Moore stated that the education system was a meritocracy, and that it is based on the individual’s merit and ability, allowing staff to steer them towards the most suitable career for them. This suggests that everybody has an equal opportunity to gain the most important and best paid jobs, as everybody has had the same opportunity. From a functionalist perspective the most important jobs in society are those that require the longest periods in education and that you have spent a long time working your way there. Therefore Davis and Moore could argue that education is the most important factor in growing up as it is what allows people to be steered into a career. Although a functionalist theorist such as Tumin would argue that those in the highest paid jobs are being rewarded for how hard they have worked. This consequently maintains the meritocratic system, as it implies that we will accept inequality if we know that those with the highest wage are doing the most important jobs. Just as we can accept that it is okay for somebody to be on a higher wage as long as they have more talent and drive than what we do. In conclusion it can be argued that the education system is there to justify and reproduce social inequalities that has been created thus allowing students to be no further forward when trying to prosper in a system that does not want them to succeed. However from a functionalist perspective it can be seen that every child has an equal opportunity to succeed and that it creates an opportunity for working class children to move up the class system.