Total War and Society between 1789 and 1945 Dissertation

Total War and Society between 1789 and 1945 - Dissertation Example The above mentioned are some of the major wars and revolutions which have affected the society and economy of different nations of the world since 1789, this study has been narrowed down to focus on British society; the most studied events were the French Revolution, the First World War, and the Second World War, and thus the in-depth literature pertains to these three events. Therefore this paper will discuss the major aspects in detail and the minor events roughly, and further conclude with the claim that war has major aspects on society and is largely responsible for changes in a nation overall. The above mentioned are some of the major wars and revolutions which have affected the society and economy of different nations of the world since 1789, this study has been narrowed down to focus on British society; the most studied events were the French Revolution, the First World War, and the Second World War, and thus the in-depth literature pertains to these three events. Therefore th is paper will discuss the major aspects in detail and the minor events roughly, and further conclude with the claim that war has major aspects on society and is largely responsible for changes in a nation overall. Historians around the world, who have worked on the study of the French Revolution, might disagree on the causes and time of the occurrence of the event, but they essentially agree on the fact that this event had effects that were wide enough to extend farther than the frontiers of France. Some effects are very profound and easy to identify, but many impacts are relatively less obvious and thus difficult to recognize.   The French Revolution began with the order of Louis XVI to the State General for money which would finance his bankrupt Government, and this broke the seal of the long accumulated grievance against the monarch power and led to uprising in the form of massive revolution,   which lasted for only 12 years and was an internal rebellion in France, but it had far-reaching throughout the world. The effects of the revolution were as widespread as the initiation of the matriculation system to the political shift from absolutism theory to republicanism.   The French revol ution challenged the power balance in Europe, and also led to widespread bloodshed in the United Kingdom, Prussia, Spain, Russia, and Sardinia etc. the revolution also spread the French culture throughout Europe, including the UK, where the French fashion penetrated the British roots and is regarded as the ruler of contemporary fashion today. The revolution also led to the occurrence of the Congress of Vienna which led to the abolishment of slavery throughout Europe, this had massive social effects, as caliber was being given importance over class and status.  Ã‚  

Health and Promotion Policies and Promotion Essay

Health and Promotion Policies and Promotion - Essay Example The type of iron that is being used to fortify the soy sauce is called sodium iron ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid or NaFeEDTA. NafeEDTA is considered to be the most suitable form of iron because of its chemical stability and its effectiveness in foods that may need to be stored for lengthy period of times (Hurrell 2001). Also, NaFeEDTA does not change the taste or colour of the sauce. Soy sauce is consumed by roughly seventy percent of the Chinese population, which makes it an excellent food choice (2002). NaFeEDTA fortified soy sauce was first placed on the Chinese markets in 2002. As of 2003, the fortification programme has been funded by the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, also known as GAIN (2005). The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition implemented a five year programme in the year 2004 that would develop a countrywide plan to manufacture, market, educate and supply the iron fortified soy sauce to China. ‘The goals of the programme include: annual yield of iron-fortified soy sauce in the amount of one million and eight hundred thousand tons, which accounts for thirty to fifty percent of the total soy sauce production in China; proper quality control system is to be established in all of the iron fortified soy sauce producers; the programme is to cover three hundred and sixty million Chinese residents, including one hundred and twenty-nine in high risk populations; and the reduction of the prevalence of anemia by thirty percent in the high risk populations (2005).’ GAIN’s nutritional plan also includes a programme to make the problem of iron deficiency known to the population.

The Role of Investment Bankers Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

The Role of Investment Bankers - Essay Example As far as the role of investment banker is concerned, it encompasses three major activities: origination, risk bearing, and distribution. Origination requires decisions about the type (e.g., debt, equity), quantity, price, timing, and other features of the new securities issue and the determination of the method of distribution. Risk bearing comes into play when the issue is a firm-commitment offering, in which the underwriter buys the securities from the issuer at a fixed price and resells them to the public. It is by far the most common form of underwriting. If the price of the securities falls before they can be resold, the underwriter will suffer a loss, thus the risk associated with this activity. Occasionally, underwriters suffer substantial losses due to abrupt declines in some underwritten offerings. The investment bankers have been the subject of more industry analysis than has the overall broker-dealer industry. Pugel and White ( 210-14) studied the investment-banking industry using the structure-conduct-performance paradigm in a consideration of allowing commercial bank affiliates to underwrite corporate securities. Rogowski and Sorensen Investment banking has always been a highly profitable but risky business for securities firms. Before Rule 415 was enacted, underwriting was very profitable, especially for the leading firms. Some of the profits were the result of entry barriers into the ranks of the top underwriters. But with Rule 415, the profitability of underwriting traditional corporate issues has declined. Now, the high-profit lines are not quite as profitable, although, there are always opportunities for securities firms, because of the ever-changing market conditions. For example, the opening of Eastern Europe may provide an area in which the ability of Wall Street firms to develop new products might be put to good use. As the Eastern European countries introduce more market-oriented approaches to economic management, there may be a need for unique securities instruments that would be compatible with the types of ownership that will emerge in these countries. (Mandelker, 683-94) The riskier economic environment and the importance of innovations and diversifications for securities firms call for a new regulatory approach. The central focus of federal securities regulation has been to provide investors with sufficient material information to make informed investment decisions, to prohibit fraud in connection with the sale of securities, and to provide a safe and sound securities industry environment. (Dale, 3-13) The broad regulatory charge of protecting investors and maintaining fair and orderly markets grew out of the stock market crash of 1929 and the fraud, securities price manipulation, and other practices that took place before the crash. In the current, more volatile environment for securities firms, regulators must be more responsive to the needs of the regulated firms. Important new financial instruments have helped securities firms manage the increasing risks they face, and the regulators should facilitate the development of these instruments. Entry into the basic

Intercultural Paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Intercultural Paper - Essay Example This culture simply identifies itself with codes of conduct that promote love and respect with the main aim of maintaining modesty and purity. Institutions lead to the establishment of norms that support individual survival in a social setting. Stability and functionality of society depend upon roles and responsibilities that are created and defined by different institutions. However many societies may differ, they all have institutions that influence the culture or rather the way of life of individuals. Religious institutions for instance control behaviour and determine the actions of individuals. The religious institution that defines the Hindu culture comprises of various religious practices of which people are expected to abide by. Being the most dominant religion in India, the religion emphasizes with humility, respect, purity and modesty. There are various religious practices that promote these four doctrines. For instance, touching people’s feet is considered a sign of respect. Touch the feet of individuals who are considered to be holy is considered a sign of humility (WordPress, n.d). Hindus also consider i t a tradition to offer gifts to priests and gurus as a sign of appreciating the spiritual blessings they receive. Religious institutions in the Hindu Culture consider purity to be of great essence. Purity takes three forms: purity of body, purity of thoughts and purity of deeds. In their daily activities, Hindus protect this purity through following their religious codes of ethics and living wisely (Sharma, 2002). Religious offerings are usually given to deities from time to time. These offerings are usually in the form of food or flowers. Sniffing of offerings is not allowed based on the belief that sniffing is meant for the gods. All items that are intended to be offered for offerings are cleaned and covered as a sign of purity. Their temples and shrines are

Principal Intern Essay Example for Free

Principal Intern Essay As I embarked into this higher education path I wanted nothing more than to be an administrator of an Elementary or Middle School in Texas. I was able to even envision myself in the school district I currently work in working in school administration at one of the schools I have taught at. I was fortunate on my internship year to have the position of being the instructional technology facilitator and was able to help more in depth with the administrators of my campus and learn the in and outs of the administration side of the school. Looking at all of this and having experienced it I am now thinking I am leaning towards more working towards becoming a department head or maybe the head of a academic department for the district. I am hoping the first step to this will be to become the department head for fifth grade on my campus and then moving towards becoming the English Language Arts and Reading department head. Eventually over time I hope to move into a more Reading Specialist position for a campus or even possibly a district. My ultimate goal is to move into the administration building and become a curriculum director for a district. As a leader I hope to accomplish many things to my employee’s and staff like being stronger leaders in the classrooms, stronger teachers, and being able to empower students for long term success. I have always wanted since I entered education to see the end result of my students to be a positive one and love to see the academic growth my students show over the course of a school year. I think that being able to show teachers and staff how to be and become strong leaders in the classrooms will help to majorly accomplish this goal. For me a leader is someone who listens and empowers its learners to learn in a way that fits their own personal needs and not necessarily the needs of the teacher themselves. I also think that using these techniques it will help teachers to become stronger educators in life and in the long run. Helping teachers, just like students, create a solid foundation is a great way to start them in the right direction and therefore it will be easier for them to lead themselves one day. And finally I would love to see in teachers, like I do with my students, long term success over the course of a year, two years and even ten years as they grow academically with the students. In Texas we are constantly changing the way things are being tested and handled. Being able to be a leader that is open to those changes will help me to accomplish my goals to the best of my ability while creating successful teachers and students. Reflective Practice In the beginning of these courses reflective writing did not seem to be an influential part of my learning process as a student myself. In my own classroom I did not use much reflective writing for my students because I saw it as time that I could be using on something else related to the content. Throughout the courses related to my master’s degree through Lamar University I have had to reflect in every course on what I learned throughout the class. At first I was skeptical about the reflective writing but as the course progressed I realized that by writing reflectively I was able to take the course material and transpose it into my own words. This helped me to have a clear understanding of what I learned and make it my own. One of the meaningful things that I feel I should have walked away from these courses is that the best way to become a leader is to create ownership for the staff, and I relate that to reflective writing. In my reflective writing I am walking away with a sense of ownership from my courses, and this helps to realize the main facts of what the course was about. Reflective writing now has a new meaning to me; it is now more of me creating my own ownership to the material presented in the course. I have even now find myself using reflective writing more and more in my own classroom and finding it a useful tool to assess what the students are walking away from my lessons with. To me reflective writing is a great tool to check students understanding of what was taught and what was learned. Reflective writing has had a significant influence on my practice currently in my classroom. Instead of using traditional quizzes and test I find myself using more reflective writings in my own classroom. It is a great form of writing to use to allow the students to use their own words to explain what they have learned in the classroom. In my future I plan on using reflective writing more and more in a leadership role for my staff to obtain information on how well the school is operating and working as a team. I feel that if my current principal used more reflective writing in our faculty meetings then he would have a better understanding of what is going on inside the campus. When I am a principal with my own campus I plan on using reflective writing responses in order to check if my staff walked away from staff developments with what was intended for them to learn and to also make sure that the training was effective or not to use on our campus. I would also like to implement a feedback process that involves reflective writing, which will allow staff to respond to any procedures implemented on campus that might need to be adjusted. By using this reflective writing process in the future I can make sure that my staff walks away with the knowledge they need in staff developments and in-services. This will prove to be an effective form of feedback for me and reflection on what skills they acquired. In Examining what we do to Improve our Schools Tool 8.1 the CARE Model: Planning Tool uses four steps to address change for the future the final step Evaluate allows the staff to reflective on the prior steps they have created (Harris). In this process the staff or administrator is to take steps into identifying and solving problems they are facing on campus. The first three steps are steps on how to implement and strategize the problem at hand. The fourth step in the CARE Model is to ‘identify the best ways to evaluate the implemented recommendations’ which is a way for the person(s) making the decisions can reflect on what they have created. In the same book Tool 8.2 (Harris) provides a list of reflective type questions to be answered to examine school improvement. These are great questions to guide someone’s reflection or at the very least jump start their reflection process so they have a starting point. An example of one of the questions asked in Tool 8.2 is ‘What am I doing to sustain improvement?’ These types of questions allow me as a future administrator to use for myself and others to reflect upon what we are doing as a team to create positive school improvement. Competency Development DOMAIN I School Community Leadership Competency 001- The principal knows how to shape campus culture by facilitating the development, articulation, implementation, and stewardship of a vision of learning that is shared and supported by the school community. In this competency I learned many things on how to create a vision for my campus and how to make it happen. I found it is not only important to make your school have a vision or just a common goal but the process of getting to that vision is equally important. Competency 001 is the foundation for that solid house you want to build, without the foundation a house will eventually fall and break, just like a school would without a solid foundation. As a leader of my campus it is my duty to look into creating a climate that promotes higher level thinking and teaching. When I do obtain my own campus I will be using this competency to ensure that higher expectations are required. It is not just enough to create higher standards and expect people to follow them it is equally important to create them in such a way that they can become obtained. In order to make these goals and visions obtainable and reachable it is important not to just let one person make these decisions, but to allow all stakeholders to have a say in the creation and implementation of them. I found throughout all of my courses that the most important factoring in leading your staff and students in any direction is the ownership that they have in the school. It is important that all stakeholders have a clear understanding that each party involved was and is clearly represented. I know that I feel better implementing a plan that I took part in planning or know someone in the plan that had my best interests and the student’s best interests at heart. I found myself spending 23 hours on this competency with my principal and assistant principal. The majority of the time was spent prior to school helping the committees to set up the vision and goals. We then revisited the vision in the middle of the school year to adjust to the changes our campus faces. It was also important that my principal have me sit in on grade level meetings to see if each grade level had a clear understanding of what the vision meant for them and what it looked like in their classrooms and for their students. I would say in this section of the domains I believe that I am walking away with the most mastery because of all of the actual hands on time I got to spend working with my campus vision and missions. Competency 002 The principal knows how to communicate and collaborate with all members of the school community, responds to diverse interests and needs, and mobilizes resources to promote student success. In this section I learned the importance of correctly communicating with all staff, students, and community stakeholders for my campus. Although it was difficult at times to get parents to communicate and participate at school functions I was able to learn a lot about the process of correctly communicating with them. I was able to assist in almost every letter we sent home with students explaining our events. We not only had to have a copy in English but we also had to translate all letters in Spanish as well. Over the course of the year, logging over seven hours, as paper became more and more precious I was able to focus more on call outs over the phone system and also to work on maintaining accurate information on the schools website. I had a bit of the upper hand in comparison to others in these course because I was able to find ways through our website to communicate effectively with the community. In our many multicultural events we held on campus (Hispanic Heritage Art Contest, Black History Writing Contest, Math Night, and Science Night) I was able to have exposure to the positive effect it has on students through multicultural awareness. On this competency I spent around seven hours of internship time (I believe more logged hours were possible). Another wonderful thing I learned during this lesson was how to correctly manage school wide communication that took place on campus. I was very fortunate to have a very supportive principal who was willing to take me under her wing and allow playing a huge role in all activities on the campus. My principal always told me anything you would not say out loud make sure you do not put it in writing. She taught me through example and doing how to effectively write and create e-mails to be sent to the staff. I know now the importance of tone in my writing to ensure the way the e-mail is received it is received correctly. Competency 003 The principal knows how to act with integrity, fairness, and in an ethical and legal manner. One of the most memorable things I will walk away from this course is the question to always ask myself â€Å"Is the decision to the question in the best interest of the child(ren)?† My mentors (principal, assistant principal, counselor, veteran teachers) taught me this valuable lesson that any decision, no matter the size, has to have the student’s best interest at heart. This is a great way to keep you in check to make sure you are being ethical and act with integrity in everyday decisions as a campus administrator. The legal portion of this competency comes with the knowledge of making sure to follow all state guidelines set for by the Texas Education Agency. One of the best ways I found to make sure you are following the rules legally is to ask questions. My internship supervisor, Sherry Gore through my eighteen internship hours, taught me to never be afraid to ask questions or research the answer before making a decision. The way she taught me this was not in a direct manner but more indirectly. By demonstrating to me on topics that she was unfamiliar with how she asked other principals or administrators to solve her problems I learned his valuable lesson. With the ever changing ways of education in the State of Texas, and the Country for that matter, it is important for an administrator to make sure they are up to date with all their knowledge about the laws concerning the education of the children in their school. It is also the responsibility of the principal to make sure their staff knows about any changes in laws and procedures. Making sure the staff knows of these changes it will make the transition to the new ones a smoother one for their campus and thus make the impact less stressful on the children. DOMAIN II Instructional Leadership Competency 004 The principal knows how to facilitate the design and implementation of curricula and strategic plans that enhance teaching and learning; ensure alignment of curriculum, instruction, resources, and assessments; and promote the use of varied assessments to measure student performance. One of the major witnessing to competency 004 was that of how our campus was having year after year to adjust to its ever growing numbers of bilingual and ESL students on our campus. Each year we a faced with the challenge of how to adjust to the growing numbers not only with resources but also with the staffing of these new positions needed. In all campus purchases, technology or academic workbooks, we find ourselves looking as administrators on the campus at what kind of Spanish and ESL supplements were available and how well they will work for our students needs. I found it very interesting in choosing our new reading textbooks in how different the Spanish supplements are for the different adoptions. As a person on the committee, logging over twenty-three internship hours, for our school to help us choose our next adoption it was made very clear to us at the beginning of the process that we needed to make sure we are considering not only the English portion of the textbook but the ESL materials are equally important. I knew going into it that the ESL supplements were important but it never crossed my mind how important it is to our campus. With my campus being one of two bilingual campuses it was important to my principal that our vote was heard at the district level when choosing the newest adoptions. The next step in this was implementing a new reading textbook while adjusting to the new district wide curriculum CSCOPE. It was my principal’s job to make sure that all of her staff was well aware of how to use the materials mandated by the district for our new instructional focus always keeping the students best interests at heart when training the teachers to prepare for our school year of academic success. Competency 005 The principal knows how to advocate, nurture, and sustain an instructional program and a campus culture that are conducive to student learning and staff professional growth. All too often there is going to be a change in policy or educational law, and with these changes there is always going to be changes in educational practices that have proven to be effective. The older methods of teaching are not necessarily the best methods to be used to reach the students of 2011. This competency ensures that the principal keep up with the best practices and methods out in the world to use for the success of our students and staff. This includes making sure that the staff is up to date on the latest practices in teaching in new and exciting ways to reach children. I spent close to twenty-one hours working with my principal and instructional facilitators to ensure that our campus had what we needed to implement new teaching practices in our classrooms. This section requires a lot of research into the newest needs of the students and then the needs of the staff to meet those needs. One example of a staff development that I was part of implementing with the principal and instructional facilitators was when we had to move into a new online lesson planning system. This system was completely online and making paper lesson plans not necessary. It was my responsible to make sure the staff was trained in how to use this new system to its full potential. I had to attend training provided by the company ht owned the software as well as district training to show me how to show the staff how to use this new system. It was essential that the staff knew how to implement this program because it was soon to become a mandate by the district to improve district lesson plan sharing throughout the entire district. The essential great thing for the teachers was that of making teachers resources more readily available to district employees across the di strict. Competency 006 The principal knows how to implement a staff evaluation and development system to improve the performance of all staff members, select and implement appropriate models for supervision and staff development, and apply the legal requirements for personnel management. With this area I feel I need a little more practice, and that is my fault in the internship hours and plan. I do however plan on using my current principal to help me to understand the evaluation process of a staff member. With only putting in eight hours into this area of focus I feel that I need to focus more on the PDAS system. I know the system as a teacher but I feel I need to works towards better understanding of the administrator side of the evaluations. I did focus my attention on part of this aspect as determining the needs of the staff and creating a staff development for the staff to grow from. With the help of the assessment specialist on my campus I found that we as a staff needed more focus on how to properly prepare the kids to take tests for a long period of time. We gathered information and tips for the staff to use while preparing the students for their long awaited TAKS tests. We then used a simple evaluation survey at the end of the training to evaluate the effectiveness of the training to meet the needs of the teachers and students. We produced a lot of reflective time for teachers to share their own experiences in the classroom that allowed students to work to their best potential. With the knowledge of the results of the survey we used the knowledge we gained to conduct follow mini-trainings to assess the needs of the staff after they implemented the practices. The reason we conducted the mini-follow ups was because of the survey evaluation at the end of the training said they enjoy the trainings we have but they need further help after we implement the training in our classrooms. Competency 007 The principal knows how to apply organizational, decision-making, and problem solving skills to ensure an effective learning environment. Spending close to eighteen hours working on this competency it clear to see that this competency is an important one in relationship to the effectiveness of a campus. One major thing I learned from my principal was that you need to be organized enough to make sure you put together a quality interview to ensure that you put together a quality staff. I was fortunate enough to be able to sit in the interview process of one of our future teachers. The before part of the process was the preparation in getting ready for the interview, my principal using the Gallup interview process so she must be organized and ready. During the interview quality questions prove to be the most effective in choosing future staff members. Following the interview there is a debriefing with the hiring committee to ensure that the newest staff member would be a good fit for our campus and our students. We then moved onto working with the staff and interviewing them on what needs to be improved on campus. The next step in this process for my principal and I was to look towards the staff and see how well they internalized or resisted change in our continuous improvements implemented at the campus. We had to look at what changes were the best for the students as a whole and the needs of our at risk students.

Dreaming in Cuban Essay Example for Free

Dreaming in Cuban Essay All summer she has lived in her memories . . .. Her past, she fears, is eclipsing her present. In Celias life, it always has. Celia is caught in the folds of time. Her central memory is that of Gustavo Sierra de Armas, the married Spaniard with whom Celia, when she was a very young department store clerk in Havana, had an intense love affair that was truncated by his unannounced departure. For twenty-five years, until the triumph of the revolution, Celia writes to Gustavo on the eleventh day of each month, keeping the un-mailed letters in a satin lined box. I watch the sun rise, burning its collection of memories, she writes to Gustavo and later, Memory is a skilled seducer who hover around the mid-century of life recall the rumors of multiple seductions by the dictator at the presidential palace. For Celia, these rumors become present reality, with Celia as one of the seduced. He does not age, nor does she. In Celias reveries, memory is most often sensualized and is always infused and injected with imagination. Memory is scripted, the script becoming more real than fact. As Celias daughter Felicia will tell her son Ivanito, Imagination, like memory, can transform lies to truths . . . . The matriarch of the novels dreamers, Celia seems engaged in an eternal wait that is never concluded, never satisfied. Her life, like her time, is arrested, moving then in long, elliptical swirls like patterns drawn on the sand by her beloved sea, whose waters envelop her again and again at critical junctures, cleansing and caressing her, then depositing her once again on shore, amid the folds of time. Three generations of Cuban women dominate this marvelously told story of a family divided by politics and the Castro revolution in Cuba. Celia del Pino is the effective head of the family. She is a loyal follower of Castro who watches the beaches near her small home to protect from a surprise attack from the assumed enemies of the regime. Her daughter Felicia also remains in Cuba, but has no interest in politics and has recurring bouts of insanity but finally dies when she succumbs to a fanatical version of Cuban Santeria religion. Her sister Lourdes immigrates to the United States and exalts in her own version of the American dream becoming a successful owner of a small bakery chain. Lourdes is as bitterly anti-Castro as her mother is pro. Finally we have Pilar, daughter of Lourdes and born the very year that Castro took power. Raised in Brooklyn, but with strong feelings of her Cuban roots, Pillar is a punk artist and later musician. She is caught with a foot in both words, nostalgic for Cuba and her grandmother, but fully rooted in the cultural scene of New York City. There are other members of the del Pino family who play lesser roles and Celia’s late husband, Jorge, plays the most curious role, a bit of magic realism as he spends several years in conversation with Lourdes after he has died. Only gradually does he fade away leaving Lourdes in a position where she can finally pay a visit to her aging and dying mother in Cuba. Dreaming in Cuban is told in segments related by numerous narrative consciousnesses, usually in the third person, from time planes that move backward and forward but follow a general linear chronological direction. What we learn of Lourdes comes primarily from the third-person narrative segments devoted to her and, secondarily, from the reflections of her daughter and her mother in the sequences narrated by or devoted to them. Lourdes has passed into exile, like so many of her contemporaries in 1961, with her husband Rufino Puente and their two-year-old daughter, Pilar. Lourdes has tried to force roots into the northern soil of Brooklyn, and genuinely believes that she has done so. In fact, when they leave Miami in a secondhand Chevy, unable to bear the endless brooding over their wealth, the competition for dishwasher jobs of Rufinos family, which has been ostentatiously prominent in Havana society, it is Lourdes who insists that they move ever northward, in search of the cold. New York City, finally, is cold enough. As enterprising and dynamic as Maria de los Angeles Mina Lopez in Roberto Fernandezs much praised 1988 novel Raining Backwards, Lourdes has founded the Yankee Doodle Bakery, and in time opens a second one. A fighter and a survivor, she has prospered. Lourdes takes pride in her love of order, her practicality. A take charge person who sees right and wrong in uncomplicatedly absolute terms, Lourdes becomes a volunteer auxiliary policewoman on a neighborhood beat, slapping her nightstick over and over into her palm before she goes out on patrol. Always estranged from her distant mother, Celia, who has been sent away to Havana by her own mother, never to see her again, Lourdes feels her parental affinity is with her father, Jorge del Pino, who railed over the years in Cuba at what he termed tropical squalor and who comes to New York to die of cancer. In Cristina Garcias 1992 novel Dreaming in Cuban, Cuba is a pivotal presence. The work examines, through a wealth of female and male characters, with emphasis upon the matrilineal chain, the intense experience of Cuban ness. The island country of Cuba is portrayed from within and without, and the distance from it is measured through the fictive evocation of exile, exile once removed, and inner exile. Different views of Cuba both inspire and result from divergent exiles. I have chosen to approach the topic of Cuba as text and context in the novel through an analysis of three female characters: Lourdes del Pino Puente, a Cuban exile living in Brooklyn; her daughter Pilar, age 13 when the novel opens; and Lourdess mother, Celia del Pino, who has by choice indee insistence remained behind in Cuba, in her seaside home. In Cuba, Lourdes sister Felicia feels this unleapable distance even from her adored son Ivanito, with whom she has a powerful spiritual bond. What is he saying? his mother wonders about him. Each word is a code she must decipher, a foreign language, a streak of gunshot. Even with her boy, to whom she is more closely bound than to any other being save her mother, Felicia is unwillingly but undeniably alone. Between Ivanito and his older twin sistersstiff, unbending adherents to the regimethere is also estrangement based on language as vital posture, the sum and expression of ones stance in the world she inhabits. He will never speak his sisters language, account for his movements like a cow with a dull bell. The novels title, Dreaming in Cuban, suggests an idiom of belonging, a collective, ever imperfect antidote to isolation and estrangement. What Celia terms the morphology of survival† must always take into account the grammar of this culture specific language, Cuban. Lourdes believes herself impervious to any such considerations. Yet the sight of a lone elm set in concrete causes her to wonder if this individual is Dutch elm disease set the last of the dying species. Is it a metaphor for her own exile and separation? There are other signs as well. The New York City rivers along which Lourdes walks and patrols flow gray, absorbing the light, usually unable to return it as reflection, their color and coldness evocative of metal. Breezes from the sluggish river seem to inscribe [Lourdes] skin with metal tips. Gray is also the color of ash. Felicias third husband, falling onto the wires of a carnival ride in Cuba, turns to ash and blows northward, where he had wanted to go. For Lourdess mother, gray is also the color of memory: Memory cannot be confined . . .. Its slate gray, the color of undeveloped film. That memory has been free to follow Lourdes northward, and that she would permit it to do so is a thought she would surely deny. In her daughter Pilars memories, her mothers toucans and cockatoos, released when the revolutionaries took over the Puente hacienda, also flew north in confusiona confusion, which Lourdes emphatically rejects; she abhors all ambiguity. Yet the northern clime has inspired in her inordinate hungers. The first is an erotic appetite for Rufino, which leads her husband to install a bell in his workshop so as to be always available to her and which finally leaves him spent and weary, and the second is a concomitant craving for pecan sticky buns, which brings about a weight gain of 118 pounds. In Rufino, Lourdes is reaching for something beyond him, something he cannot give her; she may well seek in this physical union a reintegration she cannot attain, a reconnection with her remembered life left behind, with the Cuba she knew. The sticky buns, with their impossible forbidden sweetness, may be the closest Lourdes can come in exile to the sensorial bombardment, richly evoked in the pages of Dreaming in Cuban, of her island home. In Cuba, Lourdes sister Felicia feels this unleapable distance even from her adored son Ivanito, with whom she has a powerful spiritual bond. What is he saying? his mother wonders about him. Each word is a code she must decipher, a foreign language, a streak of gunshot. Even with her boy, to whom she is more closely bound than to any other being save her mother, Felicia is unwillingly but undeniably alone. Between Ivanito and his older twin sistersstiff, unbending adherents to the regimethere is also estrangement based on language as vital posture, the sum and expression of ones stance in the world she inhabits. He will never speak his sisters language, account for his movements like a cow with a dull bell. The novels title, Dreaming in Cuban, suggests an idiom of belonging, a collective, ever imperfect antidote to isolation and estrangement. What Celia terms the morphology of survival† must always take into account the grammar of this culture specific language, Cuban. Lourdes believes herself impervious to any such considerations. Yet the sight of a lone elm set in concrete causes her to wonder if this individual is Dutch elm disease set the last of the dying species. Is it a metaphor for her own exile and separation? There are other signs as well. The New York City rivers along which Lourdes walks and patrols flow gray, absorbing the light, usually unable to return it as reflection, their color and coldness evocative of metal. Breezes from the sluggish river seem to inscribe [Lourdes] skin with metal tips. Gray is also the color of ash. Felicias third husband, falling onto the wires of a carnival ride in Cuba, turns to ash and blows northward, where he had wanted to go. For Lourdess mother, gray is also the color of memory: Memory cannot be confined . . .. Its slate gray, the color of undeveloped film. That memory has been free to follow Lourdes northward, and that she would permit it to do so is a thought she would surely deny. In her daughter This is Cristina Garcia’s first novel. She was born in Havana, Cuba in 1958 but grew up in New York City. She attended Barnard College and the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. She has been a correspondent for Time magazine and lives in Los Angeles with her husband Scott Brown. Works Cited 1. DREAMING IN CUBAN, By Cristina Garcia, 245 pages New York: Ballantine Books, 1992. ISBN # 0-345-38143-2

Factors That Affect The Pricing Decision

Factors That Affect The Pricing Decision In Finland, Lukka and Granlund (1996) observed that product cost information had its greatest importance in pricing, tendering and cost reduction decisions. In Italy, Cescon (1999) noted the most important uses of product costs were in cost reduction, pricing, make-or-buy and investment decisions, and its least important role related to decisions about distribution channels. Based on the above quotations, the costs of the product, its inputs including the amount spent on product development, testing, and packaging required to be taken into account when a pricing decision is made. Therefore, product costs are very important to make a pricing decision. In Australia, Joye and Blayney (1990) found that product costs were of major importance in the pricing decisions of the majority of companies. Therefore, cost is a  major factor that will affect pricing decisions. Variances between actual and  budgeted cost are inherent in business. Actual cost may not correspond  with budgeted cost, thus, it is important to have a thorough planning on  how can these cost affect company profit. Profit planning must take into account expected changes in cost. An   increase in cost with no corresponding change in selling price will   greatly affect company profits. Thus, the ability of the enterprise to limit suppliers bargaining power as to control the price of raw materials and production will be greatly influence the pricing decision. A products cost can be classified as fixed or variable costs, according to whether the volume changes. quoted by Dominiak Louderback, 1997. Fixed cost is the cost that  remains the same regardless of the level of production or the level of sales such as property taxes, rent, advertising, insurance, and utilities. Moreover, variable cost is the cost that changes in a directly proportion to changes in production volume such as sales commission, packaging, labeling and shipping costs. In many manufacturing companies, labor costs remain constant over wide ranges of output, so managers can consider labor as a fixed cost for many short-term output decisions. In addition, most overhead costs change only when managers decide to restructure the company, so these costs do not change as output fluctuates from day to day. The only cost that definitely does go up and down with production is the material cost. Hence, the cost of material will increase especially when economic downturn and the price of product will increase eventually. In spite of all, the product cost information was significantly more important when used directly in decision making. This may be because product cost information may be regarded as being more important when it is actually being used in a decision rather than as a guide for possible future decisions. Product cost information may be significantly more important in continuous production process manufacturing than in discrete-part and assembly manufacturing for product mix, output level and product discontinuation decisions because continuous production processes lead to the production of many different products for which a variety of product related decisions will need to be made. DISTRIBUTION(PLACEMENT) Placement under marketing mix involves all company activities that make the product available to the targeted customer, quoted by Kotler and Armstrong, 2004. With this, the easier the targeted customers can get the product, the more success of your company in distributing product. Distribution is getting your product to the consumer. Once you know your market area and have safely processed and packaged your product, you have to place it where your customer can buy it. On a general note, while planning placement strategy under marketing mix analysis, companies consider six different channel decisions including choosing between direct access to customers or involving middlemen, choosing single or multiple channels of distributions, the length of the distribution channel, the types of intermediaries, the numbers of distributors, and which intermediary to use based on the quality and reputation, quoted by Proctor, 2000. Therefore, distribution is important because it affects sales, profits and competitiveness. It can contribute up to fifty percent of the final selling price of some goods. Without distribution even the best product or service will fails. Author Jean-Jacques Lambin believes that a marketer has two roles which are organizing exchange through distribution and organizing communication. Moreover, distribution can be classified by channels, coverage, locations, transportation, logistics and others aspects. Physical distribution or Place must integrate with the other Ps in the marketing mix such as price, product and promotion. For example, the design of product packaging must fit onto a pallet, into a truck and onto a shelf, prices are often determined by distribution channels, and the image of the channel must fit in with the suppliers required positioning. You can see how Coca Cola further integrate the timing of distribution and promotion in the Hall Of Fame later. In fact, they see distribution as one of their core competencies. In addition, geographical pricing is setting different prices for a customer in different parts of the world which is includes shipping costs. Therefore, there will be difference price on the same product in differences country. Although within a country, the same product will be charged to different prices, which may be caused by the urban or metropolitan area, income distribution and others factors. Apart from that, distribution strategy is influenced by the market structure, the firms objectives, its resources and its overall marketing strategy. All these factors are addressed in the section on selecting Distribution Channels. The first strategic decision is distribution intensity which include of intensive, selective and exclusive distribution. Intensive distribution aims to provide saturation coverage of the market by using all available outlets. For many products, total sales are directly linked to the number of outlets used such as cigarettes and beer. Intensive distribution is usually required where customers have a range of acceptable brands to choose from. In other words, if one brand is not available, a customer will simply choose another. The second one is selective distribution which involves a producer using a limited number of outlets in a geographical area to sell products. The producer can choose the most appropriate or best-performing outlets and focus effort on them. Selective distribution works best when consumers are prepared to shop around or they have a preference for a particular brand or price and will search out the outlets that supply. The last one is exclusive distribution which is an extreme form of selective distribution in which only one wholesaler, retailer or distributor is used in a specific geographical area. The next strategic decision clarifies the number of levels within a channel such as agents, distributors, wholesalers, retailers, franchisees, direct marketing and others. In some Japanese markets there are many intermediaries involved. In the marketing channel of distribution in Japan, especially in the retail sector, the number of retailers had been increasing from 1950s to the beginning of 1980s consistently. However, it has begun to decrease in the beginning of 1980s, explained by Hisao Fujimoto. Companies such as Ford, Ferrari, Toyota, and Nissan use specific dealers to make their products available, whereas companies such as Nestle involve a whole chain of wholesaler retailers to reach its customers. In conclusion, distribution is playing a big role in the pricing decision. The business communities should place the product efficiently and effectively, and set a reasonable price for selling. There is some advice for the consumer, that is consumer should shop for the best price as they can find regardless of how long the levels of distribution and how far the place of selling the product from you. ECONOMIC CONDITION Economic environment of the country is an important factor affecting the pricing decisions. Inflationary and deflationary conditions will also affect the pricing decision of a company. Inflation is a rise in the average price level of goods and services in an economy over a period of time. Money loses purchasing power during inflationary periods since each unit of currency buys progressively fewer goods. Consequently, inflation also reflects erosion in the purchasing power of money which is a loss of real value in the internal medium of exchange and unit of account in the economy. Therefore, a company should decrease the price of product when there is an inflation so the consumer will be afford to buy it. On 20 July 1993, Alan Greespan, chairperson of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, testified before a congressional committee. He said: The role of expectations in the inflation process is crucial. Even expectations not validated by economic fundamentals can themselves add appreciably to wage and price pressures for a considerable period, potentially derailing the economy from its growth path. However, deflation is a decrease in average price level of goods and services in an economy over a period of time. While lower prices may seem ideal from a consumers point of view at first, but deflation leads to rising of unemployment and falling in production, a situation from which it is extremely difficult to recover. Therefore, a company should charge a higher price on product when selling it so that it can be able to pay for salary of employees and covered the production cost. On the other hand, the prices are increased in boom period to cover the increasing cost of production and distribution. To meet the changing economic conditions, several pricing decisions are available such as price can be boosted to protect profit against rising costs, price protection system can be linked with the price on delivery to current costs and emphasis can be shifted from sales volume to profit margin and cost reduction. On March 16 alone, five days after the earthquake and tsunami and as the nations nuclear crisis was worsening, United States investors put $700 million into Japanese Exchange Traded Funds, according to the data from Trim Tabs, an investment research organization. That was twice the previous largest daily inflow on record, in 2003. After the earthquake, investors waited for two trading days before acting. But on Wednesday, March 16, after stocks in Tokyo fell by about 10 percent, investors in the United States responded by moving heavily into E.T.F.s. One reason may be that Japanese stocks still have far to go in their recovery. Though the Nikkei 225 index in Tokyo has bounced back from recent lows, it is still down 9.43 percent since before the earthquake.