Global Capitalism and its Discontent

Global Capitalism and its Discontent Introduction At the inner core of the ideologies of free market, there is an associative mode linked to Adams Smith. The mode predominantly points out the profit-propelled market forces, which shape economies efficiently in a manner that permits the realization of plausible outcomes.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on Global Capitalism and its Discontent specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More From the conceptualizations of Smith’s model, these free market forces orient economies in a way that ensures maximum efficiencies and effectiveness to sustain the growth of economies. In the sphere of the modern economic arguments, a considerable achievement rests on the capacity to demonstrate the logical contexts, conditions and the sense under which the conclusions reached by Adams Smith are valid and correct. In the economic theory, people argue that in the situations of imperfect information flow coupled with incomplete mark ets, a situation more common in the developing countries, hard works that are invisible also end up as imperfect. However, a government and international trade organizations and institutions introduced by market failures can deploy some interventions to bridge the inefficiencies. Globalization, as a concept widely acclaimed by the World Bank, is one of the concepts that people believe to narrow the gap of inefficiencies in production capacities of less endowed nations. It fosters the transfer of human capital while not negating the free global movement of skills. Consequently, people have formulated many of the World Bank’s policies to achieve the mentioned goals of globalization. However, with the advancement of the arguments by anti-globalists about the capacity of globalization to introduce inconsistencies and discontents, over the last decade, the World Bank has considered an alteration of some of its policies and practices in relation to drumming up the support for globa lization. By appreciating such changes, the paper unveils some reasons why the World Bank reformulated its development policies and practices in the last decade.Advertising Looking for essay on international relations? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Why the World Bank reformulated its development policies and practices in the last decade Reformulation of development policies and practices by the World Bank over the last decade was not only anticipation but also a necessity. In the book Globalization and Its Discontents, Stiglitz’s reflects his 1993 personal experiences while serving the capacity of the chairperson of the Bill Clintons’ council of advisors coupled with his experiences as the chief economist of the World Bank as from 1997. According to Stiglitz, IMF and other international institutions work without paying much attention to the poor nations while formulating their policies (2002, p.26). S omewhat paramount to note is that policies formulated by such international institutions were mainly framed in such a way that they would foster the breakdown of world nations demarcations in terms of flow of human capital, technology and trade. Unfortunately, as Hass posits, these goals are not precisely achieved since globalization results in the placement of an obligation for nations to conduct an abridgement of their social legislations (2009, p.79). Often, this obligation gives rise to domestic protests. The trade policy debate during campaigns in the US may perhaps exemplify the magnitude of such protests especially in times of economic distress. Through the conceptualization of such a case under study, Stiglitz, (2002) claims about â€Å"†¦The IMF, WTO, and the World Bank’s lack of transparency and accountability†¦Without government oversight, they reach decisions without public debate† (p.57). With other criticisms and conflicts of globalization intro duced and discussed by O’Brien and Marc (2010) and Ravenhill (2010), a clear indication of the reasons why World Bank reformulated its policies and practices over the last decade surfaces. After the collapse of the infamous Washington DC conference, termed by Stiglitz (2002) as a conspiracy meeting aimed at engineering ways of running worldwide reforms in economic sectors (p.98), the World Bank considered sponsoring an online debate about globalization. People defined the subject under discussion as â€Å"the most common core sense of economic globalization† (Stiglitz 2002, p.98). This means that the core aim of globalization is to foster integration of the world economies into a single whole. During the Aspen Institute’s Conference, the president of the World Bank, Mr. Wolfensohn, informed the audience that â€Å"Globalization is a practical methodology for empowering the poor to improve their lives (Stiglitz 2002, p.98).Advertising We will write a cus tom essay sample on Global Capitalism and its Discontent specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More The query on the capacity of globalization to achieve this noble role has, in return, immensely contributed to the alteration of the World Bank’s policies and practices. However, arguably, the change of the World Bank policies and practices in relation to globalization results from the repercussions of globalization as a worldwide trend. Proponents of globalization argue that global institutions, such as the World Bank, have been capacitated by advents of globalization to extend their services to not only their member states as stipulated by their charter, but also the global economy that is integrated. Nevertheless, Ravenhill reckons that â€Å"concrete reality lies behind that grand abstraction, not real individual workers, peasants, or small businessmen, but rather giant fictitious individuals, the transnational corporations† (2010, p.1 08). It is perhaps then significant to consider now some of the consequences of globalization that have made the World Bank to reconsider its policies and practices over the last decade. In the advancement of the arguments in the next sections, people consider globalization as part of World Bank and other international organization policies. Ability of nations As argued by critics, â€Å"Globalization has, over the years, been undercutting nations’ abilities to comprehend social and environmental costs in terms of prices† (Sklair 2002, p.77). Economic integration, as guided by principles of free markets in this context, may appear to produce lowering of standards of competition. However, as Stubbs and Underhill (2005, p.37) clarify, â€Å"The most competitive advantage in the arena of the international trade remains a reserve for those nations that conduct the poorest merging of social and environmental costs with prices†. The most conspicuous consequence of thi s is that a big portion of the world production moves to the nations that carry out the poorest tasks of counting costs. In a different perspective, this gives rise to contrasting impacts on domestic politics of a nation especially in those nations that are industrialized. On one hand, enhanced productivity improves the wellbeing of citizens. On the other hand, unemployment emerges. This constitutes to a paradox that requires interventions especially in the era of globalization.Advertising Looking for essay on international relations? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More A migration from menial tasks also takes place following the global transfer of human capital permitted by globalization. Clash of cultures arises coupled with the emergence of nationalism euphoria that advocates for exclusions. Advocates of globalization including the World Bank have then looked for ways of addressing this challenge. Perhaps based on these predicaments, the World Bank, over the last decade, has altered its policies and practices to incorporate and establish a central concern for multiculturalism tolerance. Anti-globalists argue that globalization, as highly advocated for by the World Bank, serves as a sure catalyst of global production efficiency reduction. It becomes necessary to alter practices and policies of the World Bank especially by bearing in mind that â€Å"As uncounted, externalized costs increase, the positive correlation between GDP growth and welfare disappears, or even becomes negative† (Stubbs Underhill 2005, p.37). In high wage nations such as the United States, standards-lowering competition, which is a key component of globalization, produces income disparities. With the easy flow of human capital fostered by globalization, people anticipate in a global bidding of the labor. Since free market principles advocate for a reduction of production costs to maximize their profits, it is likely for unemployment levels to rise especially upon the embracement of other components of globalization such as overseas contracting. However, nations have the chief obligation of providing employment opportunities to their citizens. The World Bank, consequently, finds it necessary to control the porosity of the national boundaries as various nations endeavor to increase their productivity and global spread. One of the subtle ways of accomplishing this precisely is through alteration of policies and practices of international bodies that fund and praise globalization such as the World Bank. The World Bank recognizes this fact. Over the last decade, it has aligned its policies to foster comparative advantage to all nations. Its focus has been in the advancement of financial aid to poor nations in the endeavor to bridge and reduce the gap between the developed world and the developing world. Open capital and trade quality With regard to the constructs of competitive advantage upheld by globalization proponents, â€Å"†¦free trade and capital mobility amplifies specialization pressures† (Stubbs Underhill 2005, p.98). Interpreted differently, this implies the creation of a narrow range of ways of earning livelihood. Perhaps, as an example, if the main economic activity in America would be livestock farming with respect to the voices of competitive advantage, then every American would be a cowboy or a shepherd only contributing towards this effort in the global market. Any concerned person would import anything else consumed in America in exchange with mutton, leather and beef among other animal products. A more robust interpretation of competitive advantage is that those Americans who may wish to indulge in other careers such as piloting, manufacturing and other chores need to migrate into other nations that specialize in these activities. While this may not have been the actual interpretation or meaning of specialization as a key constituent of globalization policies on the ground, international systems give rise to the emergence of paradoxes. With this in mind, the World Bank appreciates that while the prosperity and success of nations are akin to the flourishing of globalization, a dielectric that works counter to the globalization process surfaces thereby deterring the initially intended aspirations of the process. The altered practices and policies within the last decade have an evident proactive shaping to neutralize this dielectric. Additionally, the success of the new 21st century phase of globalization predominantly rests on the capacity to bridge the gap between political and economic stalemates, which more often than not, are incongruent. This means that the established challenges also need a matching set of policies and practices. The World Bank has a noble role to respond to these sets of demands. According to Stiglitz (2002), there was an evident unfair pushing through of the process of globalization in that liberalization policies were based on rapid implementation and enactment, following wrong order and, more importantly, through the deployment of inappropriate and inadequate economic analysis models (p.145). From this argument, instances of social conflict, general frustrations and destitution arising henceforth, require a collective mechanism tantamount to and reflected by the experienced variations in the policies and practices of the World Bank over the last decade. Sequencing and speed emphasis Success of economic liberalization is dependent on the sequence and the speed of advancement of reforms. Stiglitz (2002) argues that, in the endea vor to achieve success in the process of economic liberalization, it is critical for the concerned parties to implement reforms at the right pace following the right sequence (pp.73-78). This means that in case of a rapid opening of capital accounts, the chances are that conspicuous dislocations are eminent. However, it is essential to note that the debate on pace and sequence in policy discussions is not a new thing in the economic profession. In his book, Wealth of Nations, Adams Smith had argued about the issue of pace and sequence of policies as hard, which often required political interventions (Manfred Ravi 2010, p.49). The World Bank stood an excellent chance in the front line, as it was immensely interested in the understanding of issues related to sequencing and speed of policy discussions. Upon conducting numerous studies in 1980’s, the members present reached some various recommendations. One of the recommendations was that liberalization of trade was essentially worth realizing in a buttressed and gradual process that required extensive foreign aid. In relation to sequencing, the reform agenda needs to embrace the demands of the nations experiencing large fiscal imbalances and escalated inflations (Stiglitz 2006, p.87). They placed appropriate strategies on high demand to ensure that in cases where the reform agenda produced unemployment, they maintained the consequences minimal. In addition, they recommended that financial reforms required some regulatory agencies for their cute performance. Finally, in the last sequence order, they recommended capital accounts that they needed to liberalize as the process summed up. However, they placed a precondition on this last proposition: liberalization of capital accounts was only necessary when an economy had established strong foundations for its export sector. Even though these recommendations never satisfied all economists, they have been critical constituents of propellers of the alterations of the World Bank’s development policies and practices. Conclusion With the stringent concerns of globalization, the World Bank recognizes the various drawbacks introduced by the policies that multinational organizations cringed on to enhance their profitability and global presence in the years proceeding the last decade. As argued in this paper, the World Bank, consequently, adopts various changes in its development policies and practices to improve and redefine such institutions coupled with incentives extended to help in inculcating the spirit of efficiency and fair competition in the global fronts. The reasons why this is necessary are that destitution, corruption and abuse are critical elements for curtailing the success of policies that aid in hiking the productivity of nations. By providing hindrances to the spreading of such drawbacks of national productivity, globalization ends ups as a fair process. Therefore, industrialized nations acquire the ability to dismantle th e hindrances of the growth of their productivity. The main agenda and objective of the World Bank is to shield bureaucrats, corrupt politicians, and xenophobic autocrats from running the economies of nations if the nations of the world are to move coherently in a homogeneous way with the calls of globalization. References Hass, P., 2009. Controversies in Globalization. Washington, DC: CQ Press. Manfred, S., Ravi., 2010. Neoliberalism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. O’Brien, R., Marc, W., 2010. Global Political Economy. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Ravenhill, J., 2010. Global Political Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sklair, L., 2002. Globalization: Capitalism and its Alternatives. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stiglitz, J., 2002. Globalization and its Discontents. London: Penguin books. Stiglitz, J., 2006. Making Globalization Work. London: Penguin books. Stubbs, R., Underhill, G., 2005. Political Economy and the Chang ing Global Order. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ducts and Dukes Lead the Way

Ducts and Dukes Lead the Way Ducts and Dukes Lead the Way Ducts and Dukes Lead the Way By Mark Nichol The Latin verb ducere, meaning â€Å"lead,† is the basis of many English words pertaining to action, development, and movement. This post lists and defines these words. To abduct (literally, â€Å"lead away†) is to kidnap or seize someone; one who does so is an abductor, and the action is called abduction. Abduce is a synonym for the medical sense of the word; abduce and abduct both describe drawing a body part away from another. (Abductor is used as a noun in this sense as well.) To adduce (literally, â€Å"lead to†), by contrast, is to draw a body part toward the axis of a limb or the center of the body. It also means â€Å"provide an example, proof, or reason to support a proposition.† (Abduction and adductor are the noun forms, and abducent and adducent are the adjectives.) A duct is a channel or a conduit; aqueduct literally means â€Å"water channel.† (Duct tape, sometimes, as a result of a mishearing, called â€Å"duck tape,† is so named because it was developed for repairing ducts.) Something that is ductile is capable of being beaten thin, bent, or pulled (as in the case of certain metals), of being formed anew (as in the case of other malleable materials), or of being easily influenced or lead (as in the case of people). To conduct is to lead to a particular result, though conduce is sometimes used for this meaning. Something that leads is a conductor, as in the case of a substance that carries heat or another form of energy or a person who is the head of an orchestra or an official on a train. The act is conducting in the sense of carrying energy is called conduction. To deduce is to figure out by reasoning or to trace; a deduction is the result. Deduct is synonymous with deduce, but it also means â€Å"subtract.† Induce and introduce both mean â€Å"lead into,† but the former pertains to influence, persuasion, or persuasion, or to forming or producing. (In the sense of producing an electrical current, the verb form is induct.) Introduction, by contrast, refers to the act of presenting, especially for the first time, or to inserting or instituting something. To produce is to develop; something produced is a product, although produce is employed to refer to fruits and vegetables; production is distinguished from product in that it refers to the creation of goods or of artistic works. To reduce is to diminish the amount of something, and to seduce is to literally lead away or astray, either in a physical, sexual sense or in the figurative sense of â€Å"persuade.† Less common words derived from ducere include circumduction (â€Å"circular movement of an extremity or limb†), subduction (â€Å"movement of the edge of one tectonic plate below another†), traduction (â€Å"defamation,† although it also has senses pertaining to logic and rhetoric), and transduction (â€Å"transfer of energy or information†). Words that may not be immediately apparent as belonging in the ducere family include educate (literally, â€Å"lead out†); someone who educates, or teaches or trains, is an educator, and the act of teaching or training is education. (The adjectival form is educational.) Another is douche, which came to English from French by way of an Italian word for â€Å"spray† and as both a noun and a verb refers to vaginal cleansing. Duke, meanwhile, stems from the Latin word for â€Å"leader† and referred originally to a prince and later to a high-ranking nobleman. The adjectival form is ducal, the domain of a duke is a dukedom, and the wife of a duke is a duchess. (The verb and noun dock may also derive from ducere, although it may have a Germanic origin.) Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Vocabulary category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:"Because Of" and "Due To" 50 Idioms About Arms, Hands, and Fingers40 Words Beginning with "Para-"

The Requisite Factors to Successful Team Buildup Research Paper

The Requisite Factors to Successful Team Buildup - Research Paper Example The goal of teams should be to share knowledge and other pertinent information in a free manner, to learn from each other, to assist each other in the completion of mutual jobs, to assist each other in the breaking of bottlenecks that are unexpected when they occur, to flexibly shift workloads and to share the resources at their disposal. All these expectations can be summed up by simply saying that collaboration yields the best results in teams. Team members should be in a position to say that they â€Å"swim and sink† together, desire for the success of each other and consider their goals as being common (Bayazit & Mannix, 2003). The starting point in order to achieve the set objectives is the support from the executive. The most senior educator ´s policy is the one that is reflected in the everyday performance by the teams. Research has shown that teams usually perform to the best of their abilities following their executives ´ investment in support of social relationsh ips, the creation of gift culture, demonstration of collaborative behaviour within themselves and in the interaction with employees (Shadur, 1999). Interaction perhaps is the most crucial as employees will view it as a gift in itself and will treasure it hence acting as a motivator. The investment in signature relationships among employees and subordinates can be in a variety of ways equally effective and unique to the setup they are being invested in. For example, having a single staffroom where teachers have cubicles can assist in the creation of a community sense compared to having individual offices for teachers.

Performance Management Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Performance Management - Research Paper Example The key behaviors that are important for the better job performance are: Effective communication: For retail sales associates, it is necessary to convey complete information and express facts and thoughts in a clear manner. Listen and understand actively to every situation in order to respond creatively. It is essential to adjust communication style according to customers and situations. Create good relationships with customers so that they do not feel reluctant to repeat the store anytime. Inclusiveness: Interact suitably with team, business partners, employees, community and customers without considering individual traits. Make a personal commitment to build an ever welcoming and friendly environment in the store. Ethical and tidy appearance: To gain the customers’ trust, create an environment that respects an individual and their perceptions. Treat and welcome customers with respect and dignity and demonstrate the importance of customers’ need by resolving their issues related to product or store. Tidy appearance is as importance as ethics. Untidiness in representatives’ appearance or store can cause customers to avoid enter in the store. Behaviorally-Anchored Rating Scales (BARS): This evaluation scale appraises the employees on various performance dimensions. BARS involve six or seven performance measurements that are anchored by a multi-point scale. For example, rating specific job performance with different employees’ behavior like poor, normal, or outstanding behaviors, that are relevant to specific job (Kane, Bernardin and Wiatrowski, 2013). Behavior Observation Scale (BOS): This scale enlists the behaviors that are required to perform a specific job successfully. These behaviors are measured based on the rate of recurrences of behaviors. It relates the job performance with the behavior by identifying frequency of employee engagement in

What is the Difference Between AC and DC :: electricity electric current

What is Current. First off, what is current. Current is expressed in a unit called Amps. Amps are a measurement of how many electrons pass per second. That is to say, a wire with 40 coulombs passing any point in a 2 seconds would be said to have 20 Amps of current (40 Coulombs (a unit of charge given as 6.24x1018 electrons) / time in seconds or in this case, 2 seconds. The Amp is also known as Coulombs per second) Another trick about current is that it is measured in the movement of the positive charge. Literally that is to say the current moves in oppostion to the electrons. This is because originally it was thought that the positive charge is what moved, both are viable, but in reality a positive charge is generally fixed since within an atom the electrons are migratory, while the protons and neutrons tend to be stationary. What is AC/DC? AC and DC literally stand for Alternating Current and Direct Current. Direct Current is very convenient and is used in many modern day utilities. For a circuit with DC the current is constanly in one direction, while the voltage remains constant. This makes for a simplistic circuit, for example a flashlight, The batteries are a source of electrochemical DC power and . However AC is called Alternating Current because the voltage changes from negative to positive a given number of times a second, this is also described as the frequency of the power. An example of this would be a motor ran by a hand crank. The inversing of charges creates a sinusoidal graph which looks something like figure 1 (given in radians). This makes for an unsteady power source and can often times be warped from the sinusoidal shape. So the main difference between AC and DC is the way the energy is transmitted. Why are we using Alternationg Current today? There are a few reason although mainly it was due to the technology of the late 1800's and early 1900's. Nikola Tesla being one of the leading scientists for Alternating Current, created a way to run engines and also convert AC Volts and Amps. He came up with this while he was supposedly in a park in Budhapest. He sat down and drew out the basic diagram of a motor run by a magnetic flux.

Is Any Body Out There? Essay

‘The machine is not an it to be animated, worshipped, and dominated. The machine is us, our processes, an aspect of our embodiment. ’ (Haraway, 1991: 180) My paper starts with the recognition that Information, Communications and Telecommunication technologies (ICTs) are certain to play a central role in defining who we are, how we think and how we relate to one another. The guiding principle for my work, is that although change is an inevitable result of the conjunction between people and technology, the nature and extent of human intervention profoundly influences its shape and character. What I believe to be important changes in the nature of the body, subjectivity and identity are the key concerns of this paper. I want to explore these terms and the debates surrounding them with particular reference to developments in ICTs. Rather than focus on more esoteric examples of technological development, I will restrict my discussion to the Internet and computer games. My theoretical touchstones for this discussion are feminism and postmodernism, primarily because they have both been implicated and implicit in discussions of cyberculture and the possibility of social change that it represents. Postmodernism, that most polysemic of terms, seems nevertheless to be discussed along a continuum between the utopian and dystopian, particularly when considering the possibilities for social change. Whichever reading is made of the term, notions of profoundly fragmented subjectivities and identities appear almost as constants. This seems particularly apparent in feminist responses to postmodernism. Feminists have broadly read postmodernism as either a threat to feminist social criticism or an opportunity for the questioning and contestation of notions of gender and sexuality (presenting the possibility of re-inscription of the body in post-gender terms). Baudrillarian postmodernism sees the collapse of our referential universe, including its hierarchies and inequalities, as offering little hope for social criticism and change. This is a problematic position for much feminist thought, because of feminism’s identification of clear oppressive structures that can only be changed by unified social action by women. For Baudrillard, the descent into a mediated hyperreality offers us only the politics of refusal (to act) and the pleasures of the spectacle. In a short article, published in Liberation, he suggests that developments in media technologies have resulted only in ‘panic and resentment’, transforming us into ‘free radicals searching for our molecules in a scanty cyberspace’ (Baudrillard, 1995: 2). Here we have a clear sense of our corporeal bodies exchanged for atomised virtual bodies in what we might think of as life behind the screen. Although Baudrillard has not written specifically of the Internet, he has clearly indicated a belief that media technologies have accelerated the transition form the ‘real’ to the ‘hyperreal’. Baudrillard’s assertion that the ‘Gulf War never happened’ is his most memorable and misconstrued example of media induced hyperreality2. Following Baudrillard, Mark Nunes has suggested that an element of this shift to hyperreality has been the erosion of the realm of representation and the establishment of a mode of simulation. This new mode has produced, in cyberspace, an ‘increasingly real simulation of a comprehensible world’ (Nunes, 1995: 5). In The Ecstasy of Communication (1988), Baudrillard outlined the fate of the ‘real’, with particular reference to our corporeal bodies and their associated subjectivities and identities: â€Å"As soon as behaviour is focused on certain operational screens or terminals, the rest appears as some vast, useless body, which has been both abandoned and condemned. The real itself appears as a large, futile body. † (Baudrillard, 1988) For Baudrillard, the virtual world we are coming to inhabit is far from the global village envisioned by Marshall McLuhan in the late 1960s (McLuhan and Fiore, 1967). The rather comforting term, global village, was grounded in the assumption that ICTs would act as ‘extensions of man’ and serve to expand our knowable world and increase global interdependence. Baudrillard’s cyberspace is a colder, more desolate space, where information has no meaning because it has been dislocated from its referential universe. In an article on global debt, Baudrillard claims that information about debt is meaningless because the debt can never be repaid. However, whilst having no financial meaning, the spectre of debt still has a purpose: â€Å"It has no meaning but that of binding humankind to a destiny of cerebral automation and mental underdevelopment. † (Baudrillard: 2) For Baudrillard, both global debt and global media are so pervasive that they deaden any attempts at social change. There is too much to watch and to worry about to lift our heads from the screens and contemplate progressive social change. This pessimistic postmodernism hardly seems to offer a productive base for the re-definition of identities and subjectivities central to feminist theorising. One of the difficulties with this strand of postmodernism is the seemingly totalising belief in fragmentation and alienation which it asserts, whilst dismissing totalising explanatory categories such as race, gender, ethnicity and class. Such categories of inequality have until recently been seen as both the impediments to progressive social change and the means by which to agitate for such change. Baudrillarian postmodernism seems to sweep away these tools for liberation and domination. As Mark Poster has suggested: â€Å"The postmodern position is limited to an insistence on the constructedness of identity. In the effort to avoid the pitfalls of modern political theory, then, postmodern theory sharply restricts the scope of its ability to define a new political interest. † (Poster, 1995: 2). Anyone interested in progressive social change must surely ask if the transition to a simulated virtual world is really so contingent on a loss of value and meaning? To restate the question: is there anything left beyond Baudrillard’s morose fatalism? Many of those staking their claims on the electronic frontier of the Internet see themselves engaged in the construction of value-laden (and decidedly masculine) virtual worlds predicated on existing notions of subjectivity, identity and wider democratic concerns. Few pioneers of the Internet lack a sense of meaning and purpose. For instance, Mitch Kapor, founder of the US-based Electronic Frontier Foundation3, has little doubt about the guiding principles of the Foundation’s vision of cyberspace: â€Å"Life in cyberspace †¦ at its best is more egalitarian than elitist and more de-centred than hierarchical †¦ In fact, life in cyberspace seems to be shaping up exactly how Thomas Jefferson would have wanted: founded on the primacy of individual liberty and commitment to pluralism, diversity and community. † (Kapor in Nunes, 1995: 7) Kapor’s assessment of cyberspace is deeply contradictory. We are first offered a vision of a de-centred and egalitarian virtual space, then this is overlain with a Western (more accurately, North American) view of democracy based solidly on the primacy of the individual (neat shorthand for capitalist social organisation). Kapor’s vision seems to belie the supposedly fragmented and schizophrenic domain of cyberspace, which Baudrillard puts forward. Citizens of the Internet appear to be taking their cultural and social baggage with them on their journey to the other side of the mirror. Although existing structures of inequality are, I would argue, becoming apparent in cyberspace4, they may be even more heavily contested than they have been in ‘real’ space. The Internet, because of its decentralised structure seems to militate against unified concepts of citizenship and community and presents a heterogeneity of subjectivities and identities. Whilst people may wish to transfer the more stable values of the real into the realm of simulation, such attempts are often contested5. Resistance is more likely because virtuality, almost by definition, reveals the constructed nature of subjectivities and identities. The case of Louise Woodward reveals the jarring effect of juxtaposing contradictory identities and positions. In the domain of cyberspace (enabled by the trans-frontier nature of satellite technology), the reduction of Woodward’s sentence was presented simultaneously with celebrations at the Rigger pub in the English village of Elton. Judging from the Internet discussion group provided by the local Boston newspaper, American opinion was deeply offended by the virtual co-presence of the jubilant villagers and their assumption of Woodward’s innocence. For many contributors to the American discussion, the villagers appeared to be ‘dancing on the grave’ of a dead child. Before the advent of instantaneous cross-cultural communication such juxtapositions would not have been possible. Virtuality offers this co-presence, but the reaction to it in this case, seems to support claims that such cultural encounters are replete with struggle and meaning, rather than free of them. A posting by Katie is typical of the angry and mystified response of many American contributors to the clash of co-present cultural identities. Without a Doubt, Louise Woodward *IS* Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! by Katie, 11/6/97 As I said in other postings†¦ Poor Louise Woodward†¦ she loved eight-month old, innocent Matthew Eappen†¦ so she wrote to her family and friends back in England†¦ she did not see Matty hurt his head she testified teary eyed†¦ but smiled broadly and gave a little laugh when next she was asked if she slammed Matty’s head. Poor Louise. Woodward†¦ 27 seconds after the guilty verdict was announced she became hysterical†¦ (aah!how sad, she is just a child, such injustice, cried Geraldo, Gibson, and the like)†¦ her hysterics lasted all of 118 seconds†¦ minutes later she left the courtroom unassisted, composed, and dried eyed. Poor Matthew Eappen†¦ the media decided to focus on poor Louise Woodward. In the realm of cyberspace we become arbiters of the identities and positions paraded before us. Of course, our existing cultural ties have a considerable impact on who we choose to identify with us, but we cannot ignore the co-presence of other identities, which call into question the construction of our own. Texter has identified the Internet as the first stage in the construction of a virtual reality, towards the manufacture of identity without the corporeal body: â€Å"The social construction of the body becomes clear in cyberspace, where every identity is represented [for Baudrillard, simulated], rather than ‘real’. The consensus of cyberspace is a precarious one; identification is entirely contingent, based on a consensual agreement to take one’s word for it. † (Texter, 1996: 3) Texter suggests identity in cyberspace is often about ‘passing off’, offering up a fluid sense of self, projected onto an imaginary virtual body. As a slight corrective, I think it is important not to exaggerate the difference between the creation of real world identities and virtual ones. Judith Butler contends that the constitution of identity (with particular reference to gender) is always something of an unstable and contradictory performance, whether simulated or real: â€Å"Gender ought not to be construed as a stable identity or a locus of agency from which various acts follow, rather, gender is an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space through a stylised repetition of acts. † (Butler in Texter, 1996: 4) Perhaps what the Internet does, by removing the visual cues that partly gender us, is open up possibilities for experimentation and play with existing manifestations of subjectivity. Here, the work of Dona Haraway is particularly important. Haraway’s influential Cyborg Manifesto (1985) has inspired other cyber-feminists, such as Sadie Plant, to foresee a post-gender future where existing boundaries and categories no longer have the profound structuring effects that have resulted in gender inequalities under patriarchy. Haraway’s work marks a profound break with feminist thought that posits a unified category of ‘women’, who can only be liberated by the development of collective consciousness and action. â€Å"There is nothing about being female that naturally binds women. There is not even such a state as ‘being’ female, itself a highly complex category constructed in contested social-scientific discourses and other social practices. † (Haraway in Keen: 1) Haraway’s profoundly anti-essentialist analysis rests on the notion of the cyborg, an entity based on the conjunction between technology and our selves. Haraway contends that we are ‘all cyborgs now’, because of our immersion in, and dependence on, techno-culture. She does not mean to suggest that we are robots in the Science Fiction sense, but that the relationship between people and technology is so intimate, that it is hard to tell where machines and people end and begin. As an example of our close relationship with technology, try to wrestle the TV remote control away from its regular user (who is also often, coincidentally, the male ‘head of the household’). For Haraway, we have come to see our bodies as high-performance machines that must be monitored and added to by technological innovation. Given that the boundaries between the natural and the technological have collapsed, then so have the assumptions that cluster around these terms. For instance, the belief that women are ‘naturally’ passive, submissive and nurturing can no longer be sustained in the era of the cyborg. The cyborg displays a ‘polymorphous perversity (Haraway in Kunzru, 1997: 4), and in conjunction with technology constructs identity, sexuality and gender as it pleases. Haraway has little time for either techno-utopians or the knee-jerk techno-phobia she sees in some feminist thought. She urges women to become part of networks (such as the Internet) that constitute the cyborg world. However, her ideas of connectivity should not be taken to equate with existing concepts of community based on the model of organic family. For her, the cyborg has no fear of ‘partial identities and contradictory standpoints’ (Quoted in Keen: 2). What is not allowable in the cyborg world, is a call to arms around a unified notion of ‘women’ posed against an equally cohesive notion of ‘men’. Butler’s work on the performative nature of gender reaches many of the same conclusions, regarding the category of ‘women’ central to much feminist thought as limiting and exclusive. She argues that feminist theory â€Å"has taken the category of women to be foundational without realising that the category effects a political closure on the kinds of experiences articulable as part of feminist discourse. † (Butler in Nicholson (Ed. ), 1990: 325) Post-structuralist feminism has long attempted to question the essentialising concept of gender in feminist thought, but some writers have been wary of jettisoning gender as a unifying and explanatory category for the nature of women’s oppression. Angela McRobbie, who is by no means hostile to postmodernism or post-structuralism, has expressed the tension poignantly, in a discussion of the nature of identity: â€Å"On the one hand, it is fluid, never completely secured and constantly being remade, reconstructed afresh. On the other hand, it only exists in relation to what it is not, to the other identities which are its other. † (Quoted in Texter, 1995: 18) I broadly accept McRobbie’s argument that any re-definition of identity needs something to define itself against. I would further argue that our existing tools for the construction of identities are drawn from often narrow and predictable paradigms, particularly when commercial considerations become part of the process. In my concluding section I would like to offer an example of how the structuring effects of gender seem to be still very apparent in the more mainstream sectors of cyberspace. Two computer games have secured huge followings in the last couple of years. Both are touted as offering virtual reality experiences (although without the headsets and gloves of experimental virtual reality). Quake and Tomb Raider are available across a variety of computer and video game platforms and both render quite ‘real’ simulated virtual worlds to explore and three-dimensional adversaries to shoot at6. My first example, Quake, presents us with a subjective view of our virtual world. Screen-shot: the view through your eyes. We, as the heavily armed protagonist, are able to freely roam through this world. All we see of our virtual self is the end of whichever weapon we have selected. In Quake we see the virtual world through our own eyes. When we are low on energy we hear our breathing become laboured. When we are killed we view the world from a prone position (our subjectivity seems to survive death) until the text ‘Game Over’ appears. The sound of our breathing and the grunts that emanate from us are decidedly masculine. Quake offers us an uncomplicated masculine gender identity based on the idea of identification with a male protagonist who drives the narrative towards a possible (although not inevitable) resolution. Quake closely conforms to the observations made by Laura Mulvey on the dominance of the male gaze in narrative cinema. Mulvey, writing in the early 1970s, suggested that Hollywood Cinema routinely places the active male at the centre of the narrative and invites us to identify with this character, which through force of personality, brings about narrative resolution. It is somewhat depressing to note that the virtual reality offered by Quake is such an unreconstructed one. The fit with Mulvey is very close: â€Å"As the spectator identifies with the main male protagonist, he projects his look onto that of his like, his screen surrogate, so that the power of the male protagonist as he controls events coincides with the active power of the egoistic look, both giving a satisfying sense of omnipotence. † (Mulvey in Easthope and McGowan, 1992: 163) In Quake identification is aided by the conflation of the male protagonist with our selves, perhaps even intensifying our ‘satisfying omnipotence’. Even if we read Quake ‘against the grain’ in a Barthesian sense (as some of my women friends do), it is hard to argue that this commercial manifestation of virtual reality offers us anything but a very clear, uncomplicated subject position to inhabit. What we do not get with Quake, is much space within the text to contest existing gender categories. My second example, Tomb Raider, offers a much more ambivalent experience. In this game, the main protagonist is a heavily armed female character identified as Lara Croft. Unlike in Quake, Lara is represented on-screen. She is modelled in the Anime style that originated in Japanese ‘graphic novels’ and animations. Lara, as can be seen from the screen shot below, is both attractive and physically powerful. Screen-shot: Lara Croft on-screen A number of my female students raised the issue of Tomb Raider in a discussion on the gendering of video games and said that they regularly played the game and found it an empowering experience (partly because of the novelty of having a female protagonist to identify with). Having played video and computer games since the late 1970s I was interested by the notion of a game that seemed to contradict the usual masculine gendering usually found within this medium. Although Lara does drive the narrative, she is also heavily eroticised. We control her movements and identify with her, but she is also the object of our gaze7. Mulvey suggests that female characters in narrative cinema often halt the narrative flow (Mulvey in Easthope & McGowan, 1992: 163) for moments of ‘erotic contemplation’. Initially, the active narrative role of the protagonist in Tomb Raider seems to defy this, but the game does encourage us to gaze at Lara ‘though male eyes’. We can manipulate our view of the character to see her from a range of angles using movements of the frame that closely resemble cinematic zooms, tracking shots and pans. These features make the game-play rather clumsy but allow us to fetishise the protagonist. As Mulvey comments on narrative cinema: â€Å"[This fetishism] builds up the physical beauty of the object transforming it into something satisfying in itself. † (Ibid. 165) This perhaps explains why, when I first played the game, I spent some time making Lara perform a variety of acrobatic manoeuvres that were far removed from the task of killing adversaries. The ambivalence in Tomb Raider lies in the unusual tension between its basis in the male gaze and its simultaneous identification with an active female protagonist. That my female students felt empowered by, and attracted to, Tomb Raider, suggests it does mark a shift in conceptions of subjectivity and identity. However, this shift is not total and still appears to be rooted in existing gender definitions. Whilst some of the claims of cyber-feminism seem overstated, and rather too willing to claim the existence of a virtual space where traditional dualisms and hierarchies have collapsed, virtuality may offer new sites for contestation and the expression of difference. Indeed, in a recent interview, Dona Haraway has suggested that technology is a value-laden area of contestation rather than a blank screen to be straightforwardly inscribed with new subjectivities and identities: â€Å"Technology is not neutral. We’re inside of what we make, and it’s inside of us. We’re living in a world of connections and it matters which get made and unmade. † (Haraway in Kunzru: 1997: 6) I am conscious of having steered a fairly delicate and cautious course through the hazards and attractions of structuralism, post-structuralism and postmodernism throughout this paper. I recognise that the body is becoming an increasingly contested site of theoretical debates and diverse social and cultural practices. The erosion of subjectivities and identities seems to be closely bound up with the heightened sense of mediation and virtuality that inflects the way we view the world, and equally importantly, how it views us. Postmodernism helps us trace the shifts from unified to fragmented subjectivities and identities, but it is a poor tool for investigating the possibilities of social change and identifiying the barriers to it. I have tried to show how the tools of structuralism still have salience, even when applied to the texts of cyberspace. It would perhaps be convenient to wish away the seemingly intractable hierarchies posited by structuralism, but to do so might also lessen the space for cohesive social criticism and unified political action. This is clearly a tension felt by many feminists and certainly not one I have managed to resolve in this paper. What I hope I have done, is to point out the necessity of retaining some existing explanatory categories, whilst recognising the need for constant reflection on, and reaction to, changing subjectivities and identities both in the ‘real’ world and the emerging virtual world. If Baudrillard is proved right, and we do eventually come to exclusively inhabit a rather hyperreal and schizophrenic virtual world, the need for critical engagement will surely be more vital than ever, however difficult and contradictory such critical practice might prove to be. Notes 1 Much writing on subjectivity and identity in cyberspace uses marginal practices as illustrative examples. I think this focus on what might fairly be called an avant-garde often descends into futurology. The mainstream may not be as exotic, but it is where most of us live, and will live, in the future. 2 What Baudrillard seems to have meant was that the Gulf War never happened for those of us in the West, beyond the simulated hyperreality of ‘surgical strikes’ and Cruise missiles with the ability to wait at traffic lights and avoid innocent civilians on the way to their targets. 3 The use of the term electronic frontier indicates powerful myths of male colonisation, the establishment of laws and the hierarchical regulation of behaviour. 4 According to UNESCO 95% of the world’s computers are located in advanced industrial countries and the ten richest countries have 75% of the world’s telephone lines. Networking and poverty seem to be effectively de-coupled at the moment 5 For example, the on-line group Guerrilla Girls are working against the masculine domination of cyberspace, albeit in a playfully aggressive and ironic manner. 6 Quake can be played across computer networks and has been held responsible for jamming up corporate networks in North America. 7 There are a number of Internet sites devoted to Tomb Raider. All of them contain numerous screen-shots of Lara Croft. On one site there were even a collection of images of Lara sans clothing, suggesting that male identification with Lara is rooted largely in objectification. Select Bibliography Note: Where publication dates are not listed this is because the material is drawn from Internet articles where such dates are absent. Internet addresses are given where known. †¢ Baudrillard, J (1988): ‘The Ecstasy of Communication’, Semiotext(e) (trans. Bernard Schutz & Caroline Schutze) †¢ Baudrillard, J (n. d. ): ‘Global Debt and Parallel Universe’, [WWW document] URL , first published in Liberation, Paris (trans. Francois Debrix). http://www. Ctheory. com/e31_global_debt. html †¢ Baudrillard, J (1994): ‘Plastic Surgery for the Other’, [WWW document] URL , Figures de l’alteritie (trans. Francois Debrix). http://www. Ctheory. com/a33-plastic_surgery. html †¢ Butler, Judith (1990): ‘Gender Trouble, Feminist Theory, and Psychoanalytic Discourse’ in Nicholson (Ed.) op. cit. , pp. 324-41 †¢ Easthope, A and K McGowan (Eds. ) (1992). A Critical and Cultural Theory Reader, Buckingham: Open University Press †¢ Haraway, Dona (1990): ‘A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s’. In Nicholson (Ed. ) op. cit. , pp. 190-234 †¢ Keen, Carolyn (n. d. ): On the Cyborg Manifesto, [WWW document] URL http://www. english. upenn. edu/~jenglish/Courses/keen2. html †¢ Kunzru, Hari (1997): ‘You are Cyborg’ in Wired, Issue 5. 02 †¢ McLuhan, Marshall and Quentin Fiore (1967): The Medium is the Massage. London: Penguin. †¢ Mulvey, Laura (1992): ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’. In Easthope and McGowan (Eds. ), op. cit. , pp 158-67 †¢ Nicholson, Linda J (Ed. ) (1990): Feminism/Postmodernism. London: Routledge †¢ Nunes, Mark (1995): ‘Baudrillard in Cyberspace: Internet, Virtuality, and Postmodernity’, http://www. dc. peachnet. edu/~mnunes/jbnet. html †¢ Pesce, Mark (n. d. ): ‘Proximal or Distal Unity’, Cyberconference Home Page, http://www. hyperreal. com/~mpesce †¢ Poster, Mark (1995): Cyber Democracy: The Internet and the Public Sphere http://www. hotwired. com/wired/3. 11/departments/poster. if. html. †¢ Sawchuk, K A (1995): ‘Post Panoptic Mirrored Worlds’, Ctheory, [WWW document] URL http://www. Ctheory. com/r-post_panoptic_mirrored. html †¢ Steffensen, Jyanni (1996): ‘Decoding Perversity: Queering Cyberspace’, Parallel Gallery and Journal, http://www. va. com. au/parallel/parallel@camtech. com. au †¢ Steinbach, J (n. d. ): ‘Postmodern Technoculture’, http://omni. cc. purdue. edu/~stein/techcult. htm †¢ Texter, W (1996): ‘†I May be Synthetic, but I’m not Stupid†: Technicity, Artifice and Repetition in Cyberville’, http://www. texter. com/Textual/thesis. html December 1997 †¢ E-mail the author: spittle@uce5. u-net. com.

Conjugating Grandir (to Grow) in French

Grandir is just one French verb that means to grow. Its an easier word to remember than  croà ®tre  (to grow), especially if you associate it with the English grand. This is a very useful word to know and youll want to understand how to conjugate it to mean growing or grew. Conjugating the French Verb  Grandir​ Verb conjugations help us transform a verb into a particular tense, such as the past, present, or future. In French, this is done by adding infinitive endings to the verb stem, but theres a catch. Not only does the ending change with each tense, it also changes with each subject pronoun. That means you have more words to memorize, but with a little practice, its not too bad. Luckily,  grandir  is a  regular -IR verb  and it follows a common pattern in the conjugations. For instance, in the  je  and tu  present tense, an -s  is added to the verb stem  grand-. This gives use je grandis and tu grandis, which mean I am growing or you grow respectively. For the future tense of  nous, -irons  is added to create nous grandirons, a simple way of saying we will grow. Subject Present Future Imperfect je grandis grandirai grandissais tu grandis grandiras grandissais il grandit grandira grandissait nous grandissons grandirons grandissions vous grandissez grandirez grandissiez ils grandissent grandiront grandissaient The Present Participle of  Grandir The  present participle  of  grandir  is  grandissant. This is not only a verb, but can become an adjective, gerund, or noun in certain contexts. The Past Participle and Passà © Composà © The  past participle  of grandir  is  grandi and it is used to form the past tense  passà © composà ©. To complete this, you must also conjugate the  auxiliary verb  avoir  to fit the subject pronoun. For instance, I grew is jai grandi and we grew is nous avons grandi. More Simple  Grandir  Conjugations to Learn Those are the most important verb conjugations of  grandir  and should be the priority of your studies. As your French improves, youll find a  use for a few more forms.   In conversation, if you want to imply that the action of growing is somehow questionable, turn to the subjunctive verb mood. Similarly, the conditional verb mood says that the growth is dependent on something else.   If you read much French, you will surely encounter the passà © simple tense of  grandir. It -- along with the imperfect subjunctive  -- is a literary tense and learning (or, at least, recognizing) these will help your reading comprehension. Subject Subjunctive Conditional Pass Simple Imperfect Subjunctive je grandisse grandirais grandis grandisse tu grandisses grandirais grandis grandisses il grandisse grandirait grandit grandt nous grandissions grandirions grandmes grandissions vous grandissiez grandiriez grandtes grandissiez ils grandissent grandiraient grandirent grandissent The imperative verb form is used for short demands and requests. In keeping with this brief statement, simplify it and do not include the subject pronoun: use grandis rather than tu grandis. Imperative (tu) grandis (nous) grandissons (vous) grandissez