Adam Smith v. Karl Marx Essay - 2236 Words

Adam Smith v. Karl Marx Being reared in the typical capitalist community in the United States, it is much easier for me to relate to the thoughts of Adam Smith. This is not to say that I do not agree with some of the precepts of pure Communism, but like the old adage says, Communism looks good on paper, but in practice, it is completely ineffective. Historically, this form of government does not tend to succeed because of many factors. Some of these include basic economic differences, individualism, and technology and how it advances or serves as a detriment to the state. My stance is clear: I believe that Adam Smith has the more credible stance. Beginning with the economic side of the discussion Smith takes a Western approach in†¦show more content†¦In the Constitution under which we live as Capitalist says that each citizen has the right to personal property, Communism goes against everything that the American society is based on, which in my opinion is wrong and unjust. †¦Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments of labor, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex (Marx 31). From this quote he takes away the freedom of expression that we live under in the United States. Marx makes everyone out to be the same with no one having special abilities or personalities. In my opinion Marx and Communism are wrong by saying that everyone is the same and no one is any different than the next. Being a Christian I believe that everyone is different and special, the lack of diversity in the population makes it difficult for progress to advance and to stay ahead of the competition. In Adams idea of society each person can do whatever they want to advance themselves and each person can pursue happiness in whatever fashion they believe to be the best. Technology creates new and better ways to do things which allow society to grow and become more advanced. In the Communist Manifesto Marx says , that when the bourgeoisie upgrade their technology they in turn create less jobs.Show MoreRelatedEssay on Capitalism: Karl Marx vs Adam Smith1048 Words   |  5 PagesMarx v. Smith on Capitalism Capitalism, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, is â€Å"the means in which production are privately owned and production is guided and income is disputed largely through the operation of markets†. Capitalism saw the emergence after the feudal system of Western Europe can do a halt. Many economists, even today, dispute the simple beginnings of capitalism. Some theories range from religious reasons, such as the rise of Protestant Reformation in the 1500s, to the enclosureRead MoreDivision of Labor1397 Words   |  6 Pages(Borgatta Montgomery and Rhonda 2000). Some of these classical sociological thinkers expressed their own ideas of division of labor, such as Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and Emile Durkheim. The ideas of these three great thinkers had some similarities, but also differed in many ways. Adam Smith felt division of labor was necessary and vital for economic prosperity, while Karl Marx felt it was the worst thing that had occurred in the world. Both of these thi nkers made strong arguments for their ideas, and expressRead MoreCold War: Capatalism v. Communism873 Words   |  4 Pagesâ€Å"Capitalism v. Communism† During the Cold War, Europe was split between communist countries and non-communist countries. 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Growing up in a world dominated by mercantilism, Adam Smith set out to challenge the fundamentals of mercantilism and prove toRead MoreMarxist Approach to History and Politics2584 Words   |  11 PagesTheory of Value, Class Antagonisms and the Means of Production are all terms which are central to the revolutionary ideals of Karl Marx and are still widely used and referred to in contemporary political thought.   However, when considering how one can assess the Marxist paradigm on history and politics, there must be an understanding of the circumstances in which Karl Marx, one of the greatest political thinkers of the 19th century, was faced with. As many great political thinkers before and afte rRead MoreA Comparison of the Economic Theories of Adam Smith and Karl Marx2203 Words   |  9 Pages There is perhaps not a more famous ongoing dialectic argument in the field of political economy than the one between Adam Smith and Karl Marx in regards to capitalism. The two thinkers, although coming to radically different conclusions about the outcomes of the capitalist system for all parties involved, agree on a surprising number of ideas such as labor being the source of commodities’ value, as well as the fact that the division of labor increases productivity. However, their different conceptionsRead MoreBus 309 Week 5 Chapters 4 and 5 Quiz1958 Words   |  8 Pagesoutsourced, most economists believe †¢ Question 10 5 out of 5 points Which of the following accurately reflects the concept of Marxism? †¢ Question 11 5 out of 5 points For employees who are paid handsomely for their efforts, Marx said their work would ultimately prove to be †¢ Question 12 5 out of 5 points One of the key features of capitalism is †¢ Question 13 5 out of 5 points Rather than strong work ethic, a common attitude is: Read MoreKarl Marxs Influence on Sociology and Political Thought Essays2587 Words   |  11 PagesThere can be no doubt over the wide-ranging influence of Karl Marx’s theories on sociology and political thought. His concept of communism overcoming the socioeconomic pitfalls of capitalism has not been a theory that has seen the light of day in the way that he may have hypothesised. There have been many throughout history that have misrepresented Marx’s writing, which begs the question, if pure communism in the original Marxist sense is at all possible given that humanity appears to have an innateRead MoreLeadership Hinges On The Metaphor Of The Bus, And Driver1040 Words   |  5 Pagesequilibrium when there is a dynamic working balance among its interdependent parts (Davis Newstrom, 1985). Each subsystem will adjust to any change in the other subsystems and will continue to do so until an equilibrium is retained. 2. Evidence: Karl Marx, the father of Social Conflict Theory, believed within every society there are conflicts; conflict is the driving force of social change.(Calhoun, Gerteis, Moody, Pfaff, Virk, 2012) 3. Conflict does not necessary mean violence, rather tension,Read MoreThe Classical/Modernist Approach Was Appropriate to the Time in Which It Was Developed but It Is No Longer Suitable to the Needs of Contemporary Organisations and Change2435 Words   |  10 Pagesfrom a sense of knowledge. Therefore, managers should only have this control (Burnes, Cooper and West, 2003). Key academics who underpin the classical approach and who have developed the theory into a management control system are F.W Taylor, Adam Smith, Karl Marx and Henri Fayol. An understanding of their key ideas and influences are described below. F.W. Taylor, an academic in the classical approach school of thought was an influential figure in the scientific management approach (Parker and Ritson

Mexicans, Chicanos, Mexican Americans - 2395 Words

Mexicans, Chicanos, Mexican-Americans, Indigenous, and more are just a few of the terms used to refer to people of Mexican descent. Many Hispanics attempt to enter the United States in search of a better life and to have an enjoyable way of life. However, living in constant fear of being deported and consistently being judged simply because of one’s color, or the inability to communicate in English; that does not sound like the American dream. Typically, people have real reasons to emigrate to the United States, and it is in great part due to necessity. Most people have families they leave behind because they need money in order to survive and have food on the table every day, they see the United States as the solution to their problem. On another note, the 1960’s movements emerged during the Civil Rights era, in order to earn justice and rights for Mexican-Americans in the United States. After years of being ignored, Mexicans decided to take a stand through the help of activists, hoping to attain victories for the Chicano community. Overall, after constant oppression, Chicanos fought back all the harsh treatment through the Chicano Movement arguing for a broad section of issues; however, nowadays many racial problems continue to exist, such as SB 1070 and HB 2281, which were polemical bills classified as racial attacks; they were directly aimed towards Mexicans. The Chicano Movement arose during the Civil Rights era; it was a cultural and political movement, in order toShow MoreRelatedChicano Studies : Mexican American Families2154 Words   |  9 PagesDennise Nungaray Nungaray 1 December. 14,2016 Chicano studies Mexican American families The Hispanic population has grown significantly over years. This ethnicity has been a culture that has dominated the U.S. Nearly, 16 percent of Mexican Americans make up the U.S. population. The Hispanic culture has had an influence in life itself. This varies from expanding its religion, foods and customs. However, Mexican American has influenced other cultures but still remains at the bottom of theRead More The Chicano Movement: Struggles, Goals, and Accomplishments Essay examples1537 Words   |  7 PagesIn American history, civil rights movements have played a major role for many ethnics in the United States and have shape American society to what it is today. The impact of civil rights movements is tremendous and to an extent, they accomplish the objectives that the groups of people set out to achieve. 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Leadership and Ohio State University free essay sample

Behavior approaches and identification of leader relationships and group processes were researched and tested in the Michigan Leadership Studies of the 1950s and 1960s. The Michigan Leadership Studies which began in the 1950s and indicated that leaders could be classified as either employee centered or job centered. The Michigan Leadership Studies identified three critical characteristics of effective leaders: task-oriented behavior, relationship-oriented behavior, and participative leadership. A coherent statement or set of ideas that explains observed facts or phenomena, or which sets out the laws and principles of something known or observed; a hypothesis confirmed by observation, experiment. taxonomies The science or the technique used to make a classification. A different perspective to trait theory for leadership is to consider what leaders actually do as opposed to their underlying characteristics. By the late 1940s researchers became less concerned with identifying individual traits of leadership and started to be more interested in leadership behaviours. We will write a custom essay sample on Leadership and Ohio State University or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page A number of models and theories have been developed to explore this. One approach focusing on the behavior of the leader is the style approach. This approach focuses on what leaders do and how they act (Northouse, 2007, p. 69). This approach indicates that leadership is composed of two general kinds of behaviors: task-oriented behaviour and relationship-oriented behaviours (McCaffery, 2004, p. 64). Task-oriented behaviours facilitate goal accomplishment and help group members to achieve their objectives. Relationships-oriented behaviours help subordinates feel comfortable with themselves, with each other, and with the situation in which they find themselves. The central purpose of the style approach is to explain how leaders combine these two kinds of behaviors to influence subordinates in their efforts to reach a goal (Northouse, 2007, p. 69). Many studies have been conducted to investigate the style approach: for example, The Ohio State University Study, The University of Michigan Study and Blake and Moutons Leadership Grid. Adair (1983), Likert (1967) and Mintzberg (1973) have advocated this approach. A series of studies on leadership were done in Michigan University, starting in the 1950s. Under the general direction of Rensis Likert, the focus of the Michigan studies was to determine the principles and methods of leadership that led to productivity and job satisfaction. Two types of leadership behaviours were identified: employee orientation (stress the human-relations aspect, employees are viewed as human beings with personal needs) production orientation (stress on the technical and production aspects of the job, employees viewed as the means of getting the work done). Leaders with an employee orientation showed genuine concern for interpersonal relations. Those with a production orientation focused on the task or technical aspects of the job. The conclusion of the Michigan studies was that an employee orientation and general instead of close supervision yielded better results. Likert eventually developed four systems of management based on these studies; he advocated System 4 (the participative-group system, which was the most participatory set of leader behaviors) as resulting in the most positive outcomes (Encyclopedia of Management, 2009). Some of the first studies were conducted at Ohio State University in the late 1940s, based on the findings of Stogdills (1948) work. A series of studies at the University indicated that two clusters of behaviours had an important role in successful leadership. Those dimensions are: Initiating Structure (organizing work, organizing and defining relationships or roles, establishing well-defined patterns of organisation, channels of communication, and ways of getting jobs done. ) Consideration (building friendship, mutual trust, respect and camaraderie) (Northouse, 2007, p. 70-71). Initiating structure behaviours were essentially task behaviours and consideration behaviours were relationship behaviours. The Ohio State University studies viewed these two behaviours as distinct and independent. Many studies have been done to determine which style of leadership is most effective in a particular context. However, the results have indicated that it depends on the context. Some research has shown that being high on both behaviours is the best form of leadership (Northouse, 2007, p. 71). Leadership research was conducted at Ohio State and the University of Michigan at about the same time during the mid-1940s to mid-1950s. These studies were not based on prior autocratic and democratic leadership styles, but rather sought to determine the behavior of effective leaders. LO 2. Describe similarities and differences between the University of Michigan and Ohio State University leadership models. The University of Michigan and Ohio State University leadership models are similar because they are both based on the same two distinct leadership behaviors, although the models use different names for the two behaviors. The models are different because the University of Michigan model identifies two leadership styles based on either job- or employee-centered behavior. The Ohio State University model states that a leader uses high or low structure and consideration, resulting in four leadership style combinations of these two behaviors. A. University of Michigan: Job-Centered and Employee-Centered Behavior The University of Michigan Leadership Model identifies two leadership styles: job-centered and employee centered. 1. Job-Centered Leadership Style The job-centered style has scales measuring two job-oriented behaviors of goal emphasis and work facilitation. Job-centered behavior refers to the extent to which the leader takes charge to get the job done. 2. Employee-Centered Leadership Style The employee-centered style has scales measuring two employee-oriented behaviors of supportive leadership and interaction facilitation. Employee-centered behavior refers to the extent to which the leader focuses on meeting the human needs of employees while developing relationships. B. Ohio State University: Initiating Structure and Consideration Behavior In the attempt to measure leadership styles, researchers at Ohio State University developed an instrument known as the Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire (LBDQ). Respondents to the questionnaire perceived their leader’s behavior toward them on two distinct dimensions or leadership types, which they eventually called initiating structure and consideration. ? Initiating structure behavior. The initiating structure leadership style is essentially the same as the job-centered leadership style; it focuses on getting the task done. Consideration behavior. The consideration leadership style is essentially the same as the employee-centered leadership style; it focuses on meeting people’s needs and developing relationships. Because a leader can be high or low on initiating structure and/or consideration, four leadership styles are developed. The Ohio State University Leadership Model identifies four leadership styles: low structure and high consideration, high structure and high consideration, low structure and low consideration, and high structure and low consideration. C. Difference Between Leadership Models—and Their Contributions The Ohio State and University of Michigan leadership models are different in that the University of Michigan places the two leadership behaviors at opposite ends of the same continuum, making it one-dimensional. The Ohio State University model considers the two behaviors independent of one another, making it two-dimensional; thus this model has four leadership styles. Research efforts to determine the one best leadership style have been weak and inconsistent for most criteria of leadership effectiveness. In other words, there is no one best leadership style in all situations; this is the first contribution, because it has helped lead researchers to the next paradigm—that of contingency leadership theory. Thus, the contribution of the behavioral leadership paradigm was to identify two generic dimensions of leadership behavior that continue to have importance in accounting for leader effectiveness today. Although there is no one best leadership style in all situations, there has been a consistent finding that employees are more satisfied with a leader who is high in consideration. Prior to the two university leadership studies, many organizations had focused on getting the job done with little, if any, concern for meeting employee needs. So, along with other behavioral theory research, there was a shift to place more emphasis on the human side of the organization to increase productivity; this is a second contribution. Another important research finding was that most leadership functions can be carried out by someone besides the designated leader of a group. Thus, due to behavioral leadership research, more organizations began training managers to use participative leadership styles. In fact, Rensis Likert proposed three types of leadership behavior: job-centered behavior, employee-centered behavior, and participative leadership. Thus, as a third contribution of these leadership models, Likert can be credited as being the first to identify the participative leadership style that is commonly used today.

Legal Marijuana an Example by

Legal Marijuana by Expert Jayjay1 | 07 Dec 2016 An often arising social question that has come up throughout the 20th century and continues to crop up today is the issue of legalizing marijuana. While the general approach to dealing with this issue is to consider the harmful effects of the drug, including harmful social effects, there are many reasons that approach is inappropriate. What follows will briefly discuss the know effects of marijuana and consider why that knowledge has absolutely no bearing on the issue. Although this question really has no bearing at all on the issue of legalizing marijuana, it is generally the focus of those who oppose marijuana use and thus, will be the focus of this essay. Need essay sample on "Legal Marijuana" topic? We will write a custom essay sample specifically for you Proceed The question is, "How dangerous is marijuana to users?" In general, this essay will address four issues: 1) Why is marijuana use a legal issue while tobacco and alcohol use are not; 2) Is marijuana a harmful drug; 3) If now, why the concern over marijuana use; and 4) What are the drug effects of marijuana? This analysis will demonstrate that a research-based argument against marijuana use is groundless and has no bearing on the issue. Although marijuana is the most widely used illegal drug in the US, this topic is probably best addressed to legislators. Clearly, that effort is fruitless since it is already well known that marijuana is less harmful (in fact, not harmful) than tobacco and alcohol, both of which are legal. We shall conclude by pointing out that the matter of legal marijuana is merely a social issue that cannot be resolved rationally. Even though marijuana has been associated with some health hazards, it is not a harmful drug! Arguments to the contrary have been filled with contradictions, not so much because the drug doesn't have some undesirable health consequences, but because those consequences are often exaggerated. The active ingredient in marijuana is THC, tetrahydrocannabinol. THC acts at receptors in the brain involved with coordination, memory, thought and perception. The drug is thought to affect neural centers connected with motivation and stress and might also affect ovulation and decrease sperm production. It can affect blood pressure and therefore might pose a problem to inpiduals with blood pressure concerns, and it might trigger anxiety and depression, and irony since the drug is often used to avoid depressed states and often causes elation. Other undesirable effects have been noted throughout this report, but a rational review of the generaly effects of marijuana clearly demonstrate that alcohol and tobacco cause far more family, social and health problems than marijuana, and yet alcohol and tobacco are legal and there is no effort to alter the situation. Why, then, is so much effort addressed to keeping marijuana illegal. In the 1980s, the federal government briefly resorted to spraying marijuana plants with paraquat in an effort to stop people from smoking it. This government action should have been viewed as a crime and the government officials who suggested it and put it in place should have been put in jail and perhaps even executed if anyone died from the action. Over the many thousand year history of known marijuana use, that had never been one single death attributed to the drug until it was sprayed with paraquat. Today, that remains the case. While there are no known deaths associated with marijuana use throughout history, many automobile accidents are connected with inpiduals driving under the influence of the drug. This is not unexpected since marijuana alters perception. Paraquat is a safe herbicide when used properly, but toxic doses are fatal even with 'aggressive' medical intervention. Statistics regarding how many people have died from automobile and other accidents that have occurred while drivers were under the influence of the drug have not been kept. A number of confusing statements regarding marijuana come out over time. For example, U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona stated that marijuana has three to five times more tar and carbon monoxide than tobacco and in Britain, the British Lung Foundation reported that the drug has more cancer causing agents than tobacco. The irony is, despite this claim, there are no reported cases of cancer arising from marijuana use. During the 1960s, the US government sprayed marijuana fields in South America with paraquat in and effort to deter marijuana use by Americans. A similar program was pursued in the late 1970s and again in 1988. On July 14, 1988, the Washington Post reported, "The Drug Enforcement Administration plans to resume limited spraying of paraquat and other marijuana-killing herbicades...as part of a stepped-up federal effort to eradicate the nation's...cannabis crop." While the effort was to eradicate the available crop at the time, this would only be a temporary solution, if any at all, to an ongoing situation and it certainly would not be a beneficial act. No matter how paraquat or marijuana is viewed, the paraquat approach constituted creating a solution worse than the perceived problem! This seems irrational and emotional. Review of public policy throughout the country shows an irrational approach to creating legistion regarding the legalization of the drug. For example, the previously noted claim that marijuana has more cancer causing agents than tobacco (Zenit, 2003) while no cases of cancer have ever been associated with marijuana use. Is the research flawed or is the danger merely overstated, or perhaps both? While the government warned the public that sprayed marijuana was unsafe, the act still constituted exposing smokers to a dangerous drug without adequate cause. Over the past few thousand years, there are no known deaths attributed to marijuana, so spraying the drug with paraquat rendered it a health hazard, a risk far greater than anything posed by marijuana itself. Today, new fears about a link between marijuana use and psychiatric disorders are giving rise to fears about marijuana use. (Radecki, 2003) Some studies have found a link between marijuana use and schizophrenia. While these studies may be accurate, their message is still a cry in the dark. Certainly, there is a connection between some psychiatric conditions and marijuana use. The drug is known to cause some minor paranoia, but many drug studies related to marijuana use are flawed, and the cry about a connection between marijuana use and psychiatric disorders appears to be overblown. It seems that we will never stop exaggerating the dangers of a drug that, to date, does not seem to have harmed anyone! Not only are researchers claiming a link between marijuana use and psychiatric conditions, but some claim that the medical value of marijuana is exaggerated. (Voth, 2003) One must wonder is this is yet another red herring or is that substance to the claim. Clearly, the medical value of marijuana has been established, so what is the basis for this new claim. Will the drug ever be judged for its true value and as impartially as researchers try to approach other drug and non-drug studies? Fears about the drug seem to have moved the British to reverse some marijuana laws, but again, we must wonder are the fears exaggerated? With such a widespread use of the drug, where are all schizophrenic inpiduals who have been affected by marijuana? Where are all the other inpiduals who have suffered the ill-effects some few (so far) researchers are claiming to be associated with the drugs? Are these fears just another cry in the dark or are they valid. The using public must wonder, but so far, few even know, and the common public use has not given many to have cause for concern about. Marijuana became illegal as a result of the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 when Harry Anslinger with the help of William Randolph Hearst brought the issue before Congress after two years of secret planning. It was a time that had seen failed attempts to make alcohol illegal during prohibition in the 1920s. The effort against alcohol failed and no efforts have been made to revive those efforts. Why, then, are we still trying to prohit the use of marijuana and exaggerating its dangers? Clearly, virtually any drug has some undesirable effects, but the continued efforts to distort the dangers of marijuana use do not serve anyone well. It seems clear that despite research findings that marijuana is a 'dangerous drug' and clear evidence that actually does have some undesirable effects, the actual 'dangers' of marijuana are exaggerated. Even table salt and refined sugar pose dangers and, indeed, both claim more lives each year than marijuana has ever claimed. Therefore, exaggerating the dangers of marijuana use serves no purpose outside of fear tactics. Perhaps this is the message that our legislators should address and focus on rather than continuing to make criminals out of inpiduals who realize that claims of marijuana dangers are exaggerated and who, therefore, are going to continue to use the drug anyway. References: Alarm Bells: Addiction to cannabis on the rise in the UK The Observer (London) Monday, Jun 14, 2004, Page 7. Edwards, C. E., 2006. Historical Perspective on marijuana-use Public Policy, accessed 04-14-2008. Isikoff, Michael, 1988. Paraquat Spraying to Resume At Suspected Marijuana Fields; Opponents Threaten to Block DEA Plan in Court. Washington Post, July 14, 1988. Radecki, Thomas E. Website site page: Marijuana, listing of research Voth, Eric A., 2003. A Peak Into Pandoras Box: The Medical Excuse Marijuana Controversy. Journal of Addictive Diseases, 22, 27-46. We misled public over downgrading cannabis - Clarke. The London Times by Rosemary Bennett, Deputy Political Editor, January 05, 2006. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,17129-1970798,00.html

Free Essays on Financial Management

Table of Content NPV Method †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ 03 Payback Method †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. 05 Average Accounting Return †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. 06 Internal rate of return †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ 07 Answer # 2 †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ 09 Answer #1 a) NPV Method Technique for analyzing capital investment projects are known as Net Present Value (NPV). A project’s net present value is the amount by which the project is expected to increase the wealth of the firm’s current shareholders. Net present value techniques involve projections of future volume and value increases and calculations of present value based on the cost of investing ones capital in the given periods of time. A dollar today is worth more than a dollar in the future, because inflation erodes the buying power of the future money, while money available today can be invested and grow. The Discount Rate is the rate of return which could be obtained if the initial outlay were invested on the money market. Since the discount rate reflects the future value of money, it typically has two components: an adjustment for inflation, and a risk-adjusted return on the use of the money. Since market forces typically incorporate inflation adjustments into investment returns and borrowing costs, often the discount rate is keyed to a standard reference rate. Some Advantages and disadvantages are:- Advantages:- It will give the correct decision advice assuming a perfect capital market. It also gives correct ranking for mutually exclusive projects unlike the IRR. NPV gives an absolute value NPV allows for the timing of the cash flows Disadvantages: Calculating NPV is difficult, in part, because it isn't clear what discount rate should be used, nor is it clear how to project future changes in the discount rate.. NPV, of all the 4 methods of Investment appraisal, requires the decision criteria to be specif... Free Essays on Financial Management Free Essays on Financial Management Table of Content NPV Method †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ 03 Payback Method †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. 05 Average Accounting Return †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. 06 Internal rate of return †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ 07 Answer # 2 †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ 09 Answer #1 a) NPV Method Technique for analyzing capital investment projects are known as Net Present Value (NPV). A project’s net present value is the amount by which the project is expected to increase the wealth of the firm’s current shareholders. Net present value techniques involve projections of future volume and value increases and calculations of present value based on the cost of investing ones capital in the given periods of time. A dollar today is worth more than a dollar in the future, because inflation erodes the buying power of the future money, while money available today can be invested and grow. The Discount Rate is the rate of return which could be obtained if the initial outlay were invested on the money market. Since the discount rate reflects the future value of money, it typically has two components: an adjustment for inflation, and a risk-adjusted return on the use of the money. Since market forces typically incorporate inflation adjustments into investment returns and borrowing costs, often the discount rate is keyed to a standard reference rate. Some Advantages and disadvantages are:- Advantages:- It will give the correct decision advice assuming a perfect capital market. It also gives correct ranking for mutually exclusive projects unlike the IRR. NPV gives an absolute value NPV allows for the timing of the cash flows Disadvantages: Calculating NPV is difficult, in part, because it isn't clear what discount rate should be used, nor is it clear how to project future changes in the discount rate.. NPV, of all the 4 methods of Investment appraisal, requires the decision criteria to be specif...

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Rise of the modern presidncy form T. roosevelt to fdr essays The modern presidency began to rise in about 1900 with Theodore Roosevelt. He began a theme of the 20th century of more federal power within the government and more power of the president in particular. Theodore Roosevelt was president from 1901-1909. Both government and presidency increased during his term. You can see this by the way he regulated big business. He appealed directly to the nation, increasing presidential power, since progressivism had support of America. Roosevelt had engagement in world affairs on his mind and tried to create a more stable world. The panama canal was built while he was in office. He thought it was the responsibility of a civilized nation to help stabilize others. Taft took over for the next four years and somewhat decreased both presidential strength and federal power. There was less land regulation and he chose to have much less control of congress than he could have. It was his personal opinion that it crossed over the checks and balances system of our government. Taft stepped back from foreign affairs also with much less engagement. Woodrow Wilson was in office for two terms, from 1913-1921. Americas support for progressivism allows Wilson to act as leader of government and nation increasing the role of the president. He also increased the federal governments power by putting into effect the federal reserve system. He wanted to stay out of war at first and was even using lines for his reelection with peacekeeping intentions. This comes from the strong American public opinion to stay out of the war and world affairs. He did although end up going to war and failed as a leader when he couldnt get the allied nations support. He did create the league of nations. Harding and Coolidge both decrease the effects of government and the presidency but it does not go back to zero. They serve from 1921-1929 and take a much more isolationalist approach to foreign affairs because it was now the...

Firearm and Tort Litigation Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Firearm and Tort Litigation - Research Paper Example The right to keep and bear arms is afforded by the Second Amendment, and is given Constitutional Protection since it enjoys the first-tier level of scrutiny (Equal Protection, 2011). Any attempt to infringe this right, as was the case in Bloomberg (City of New York v. Beretta U.S.A. Corp), should be considered a repealing of the Second Amendment, and, hence, unlawful. Suing the arms suppliers and stores is a direct act of this infringement (Burch, 2006); making it difficult to purchase arms by levying a hefty permit fee in the state (O’Connor, 2011) is an indirect, yet equally unlawful act against the Constitution and civil rights of the citizens. Both acts aim to discourage the public from practicing their legal right of bearing arms, and the argument that this could somehow prevent the rampant criminal activities (Burch, 2006) is but weak; the infringement of social rights under Constitutional protection is itself a criminal activity, and to suppress one such act with anothe r is a destabilization of the legal framework (Burch, 2006). The need to protect this right by Law and through the involvement of the Court is well-founded and justifiable.

Personality disorder and depression Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

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Marketing Anthropology Essay Example for Free

Marketing Anthropology Essay Anthropology and marketing (together with consumer research) were once described as ‘linchpin disciplines in parallel intellectual domains’ (Sherry 1985a: 10). To judge from the prevalent literature, however, this view is not shared by many anthropologists, who tend to look at markets (for example, Carrier 1997) and exchange rather than at marketing per se (Lien 1997 is the obvious exception here). For their part, marketers, always open to new ideas, have over the decades made – albeit eclectic (de Groot 1980:131) – use of the work of anthropologists such as Claude Levi-Strauss and Mary Douglas whose aims in promulgating their ideas on binary oppositions, totemism and grid and group were at the time far removed from the endeavour of marketing both as a discipline and as practice. Can anthropology really be of use to marketing? Can the discipline in effect market itself as an effective potential contributor to solving the problems faced by marketers? There is no reason why not. After all, it is anthropologists who point out that there is more than one market and that these markets, like the Free Market beloved by economists, are all socio-cultural constructions. In this respect, what they have to say about the social costs of markets, as well as about the non-market social institutions upon which markets depends and the social contexts that shape them (cf. Carruthers and Babb 2000:219-222), is extremely pertinent to marketers anxious to come up with definitive answers as to why certain people buy certain products and how to persuade the rest of the world to do so. At the same time, however, there are reasons why anthropology probably cannot be of direct use to marketing. In particular, as we shall see in the following discussion of marketing practices in a Japanese advertising agency, anthropology suffers from the fact that its conclusions are based on long-term immersion in a socio-cultural ‘field’ and that its methodology is frequently unscientific, subjective and imprecise. As part of their persuasive strategy, on the other hand, proponents of marketing need to present their discipline as objective, scientific, speedy and producing the necessary results. How they actually go about obtaining such results, however, and whether they really are as objective and scientific as they claim to their clients, are moot points. This paper focuses, by means of a case study, on how marketing is actually practised in a large advertising agency in Japan and has four main aims. Firstly, it outlines the organisational structure of the agency to show how marketing acts as a social mechanism to back up inter-firm ties based primarily on tenuous personal relationships. Secondly, it reveals how these same interpersonal relations can affect the construction of apparently ‘objective’ marketing strategies. Thirdly, it focuses on the problem of how all marketing campaigns are obliged to shift from ‘scientific’ to ‘artistic’ criteria as statistical data, information and analysis are converted into 1 linguistic and visual images for public consumption. Finally, it will make a few tentative comments on the relations between anthropology and marketing, with a view to developing a comparative theory of advertising as a marketing system, based on the cultural relativity of a specific marketing practice in a Japanese advertising agency (cf. Arnould 1995:110). The Discipline, Organisation and Practice of Marketing The Marketing Division is the engine room of the Japanese advertising agency in which I conducted my research in 1990. At the time, this agency handled more than 600 accounts a year, their value varying from several million to a few thousand dollars. The Marketing Division was almost invariably involved in some way in the ad campaigns, cultural and sporting events, merchandising opportunities, special promotions, POP constructions, and various other activities that the agency carried out on behalf of its clients. Exceptions were those accounts involving media placement or certain kinds of work expressly requested by a client – like, for example, the organisation of a national sales force meeting for a car manufacturer. Even here, however, there was often information that could be usefully relayed back to the Marketing Division (the number and regional distribution of the manufacturer’s sales representatives, as well as possible advance information on new products and/or services to be offered in the coming year). Marketing Discipline As Marianne Lien (1997:11) points out, marketing is both a discipline and a practice. The main aims as a discipline of the Marketing Division were (and, of course, still are): firstly, to acquire as much information as possible from consumers about their clients’ products and services; secondly, to acquire as much information as possible, too, from clients about their own products and services; and, thirdly, to use strategically both kinds of information acquired to develop new accounts. Marketing thus provided those working in the Marketing Division with the dispassionate data that account executives needed in their personal networking with (potential) clients whom they cajoled, persuaded, impressed and pleaded with to part with (more) money. Marketing Organisation In order to achieve the three overall objectives outlined above, the agency established a certain set of organisational features to enable marketing practice to take place. Firstly, the Marketing Division, which consisted of almost 90 members, was structured into three separate, but interlocking, sub-divisions. These consisted of Computer Systems; Market Development and Merchandising; and Marketing. The last was itself sub-divided into three departments, each of which was broken down into three or four sections. 1 Each section consisted of from six to a dozen members, led by a Section Leader, under whom they worked in teams of two to three on an account. These teams were not fixed. Thus one member, A, might work with another, B, under the Section Leader (SL) on a contact lens advertising campaign, but find herself assigned to worked with C under SL on an airline company’s business class service account, and with D under SL on a computer manufacturer’s consumer survey. In this respect, the daily life of members of the Marketing Note that, unlike the Marketing department in Viking foods discussed by Lien. Department was similar to that of product managers described by Lien (1997:69), being characterised by ‘frequent shifts from one activity to another, a wide network of communications, and a considerable amount of time spent in meetings or talking on the telephone’. Secondly, tasks (or accounts) were allocated formally through the hierarchical divisional structure – by departments first, then by sections – according to their existing responsibilities and perceived suitability for the job in hand. Each SL then distributed these tasks to individual members on the basis of their current overall workloads. At the same time, however, there was an informal allocation of accounts involving individuals. Each SL or DL could take on a job directly from account executives handling particular accounts on behalf of their clients. Here, prior experiences and personal contacts were important influences on AEs’ decisions as to whether to go through formal or informal channels of recruitment. The account executive in charge of the NFC contact lens campaign described in my book (Moeran 1996), for example, went directly to a particular SL in the Marketing Department because of some smart work that the latter had done for the AE on a different account some months previously. Mutual respect had been established and the contact lens campaign provided both parties with an opportunity to assess and, in the event, positively validate their working relationship. There were certain organisational advantages to the ways in which accounts were distributed in the manner described here. Firstly, by freely permitting interpersonal relations between account executives and marketers, the Agency ensured that there was competitiveness at each structural level of department and section. Such competition was felt to be healthy for the Agency as a whole, and to encourage its continued growth. Secondly, by assigning individual members of each section in the Marketing Department to working in different combinations of people on different tasks, the Agency ensured that each member of the Marketing Department received training in a wide variety of marketing problems and was obliged to interact fully with fellow section members, thereby promoting a sense of cooperation, cohesion and mutual understanding. This in itself meant that each section developed the broadest possible shared knowledge of marketing issues, because of the knowledge gained by individual members and the interaction among them. Marketing Practice Accounts were won by the Agency primarily through the liaison work conducted with a (potential) client by an account executive (who might be a very senior manager or junior ‘salesman’ recruited only a few years earlier). Once an agreement was made between Agency and client – and such an agreement might be limited to the Agency’s participation in a competitive presentation, the outcome of which might lead to an account being established – the AE concerned would put together an account team. An account team consists of the AE in charge (possibly with assistants); the Marketing Team (generally of 2 persons under a Marketing Director [MD], but sometimes much larger, depending on the size of the account and the work to be done); the Creative Team (consisting of Creative Director [CD], Copywriter, and Art Director [AD] as a minimum, but usually including two ADs – one for print-, the other for TV-related work); and Media Planner/Buyer(s). The job of the account team is to carry out successfully the task set by the client, and to this end meets initially for an orientation meeting in which the issues and problems relayed by the client to the AE are explained and discussed to all members. 2 Prior to this, however, the AE provides the marketing team with all the information and data that he has been able to extract from the client (a lot of it highly confidential to the company concerned). The marketing team, therefore, tends to come prepared and to have certain quite specific questions regarding the nature of the statistics provided, the target market, retail outlets, and so on. If it has done its homework properly – which is not always the case, given the number of different accounts on which the team’s members are working and the pressure of work that they are under – the marketing team may well have several pertinent suggestions for further research. It is on the basis of these discussions that the AE then asks the MD to carry out such research as is thought necessary for the matter in hand. In the meantime, the creative team is asked to mull over the issues generally and to think of possible ways of coping ‘creatively’ (that is, linguistically and visually) with the client’s marketing problems. Back in the Marketing Department, the MD will tell his subordinates to carry out specific tasks, such as a consumer survey to find out who precisely makes use of a particular product and why. This kind of task is fairly mechanical in its general form, since the Agency does this sort of work for dozens of clients every year, but has to be tailored to the present client’s particular situation, needs and expectations. The MD will therefore discuss his subordinate’s proposal, make some suggestions to ensure that all points are overed (and that may well include some additional questions to elicit further information from the target audience that has taken on importance during their discussion), and then give them permission to have the work carried out. All surveys of this kind are subcontracted by the Agency to marketing firms and research organisations of one sort or another. This means that the marketing team’s members are rarely involved in direct face-to-face contact or interaction with the consumers of the products that they wish to advertise,3 except when small ‘focus group’ interviews take place (usually in one of the Agency’s buildings). The informal nature of such groups, the different kinds of insights that they can yield, and the need to spot and pursue particular comments mean that members of the marketing team should be present to listen to and, as warranted, direct the discussion so that the Agency’s particular objectives are achieved. In general, however, the only evidence of consumers in the Agency is indirect, through reports, statistics, figures, data analyses and other information that, paradoxically, are always seen to be insufficient or ‘incomplete’ (cf. Lien 1997:112). Once the results of the survey are returned, the marketers enter them into their computers (since all such information is stored and can be used to generate comparative data for other accounts as and when required). They can make use of particular programmes to sort and analyse such data, but ultimately they need to be able to present their results in readily comprehensible form to other members of the account team. Here again, the MD tends to ensure that the information presented at the next meeting is to the point and properly hierarchised in terms of importance. This leads to the marketing team’s putting forward things like: a positioning statement, slogan, purchasing decision The Media Planners do not usually participate in these early meetings since their task is primarily to provide information of suitable media, and slots therein, for the finished campaign to be placed in. 3 A similar point is made by Lien (1997. 11) in her study of Viking Foods. Focus Groups usually consist of about half a dozen people who represent by age, gender, socio-economic grouping and so on the type of target audience being addressed, and who have agreed to talk about (their attitudes towards) a particular product or product range – usually in exchange for some gift or money. Interviews are carried out in a small meeting room (that may have a one-way mirror to enable outside observation) and tend to last between one and two hours. 4 2 4 odel (high/low involvement; think/feel product relationship), product message concept, and creative frame. One of the main objectives of this initial – and, if properly done, only – round of research is to discover the balance between what are terms product, user and end benefits, since it is these factors that determine the way in which an ad campaign should be presented and, therefore, how the creative team should visualise the marketing problems analysed and ensuing suggestions from the marketing team. It is here that we come to the crux of marketing as practised in an advertising agency (whether in Japan or elsewhere). Creative people tend to be suspicious of marketing people and vice-versa. This is primarily because marketers believe that they work rationally and that the creative frames that they produce are founded on objective data and analyses. Creative people, on the other hand, believe that their work should be ‘inspired’, and that such inspiration can take the place at the expense of the data and analyses provided for their consideration. As a result, when it comes to producing creative work for an ad campaign, copywriters and creative directors tend not to pay strict attention to what the marketing team has told them. For example, attracted by the idea of a particular celebrity or filming location, they may come up with ideas that in no way meet the pragmatic demands of a particular ad campaign that may require emphasis on product benefits that are irrelevant to the chosen location or celebrity suggested for endorsement. This does not always happen, of course. A good and professional creative team – and such teams are not infrequent – will follow the marketing team’s instructions. In such cases, their success is based on a creative interpretation of the data and analyses provided. Agency-Client Interaction If there is some indecision and argument among different elements of the account team – and it is the presiding account executive’s job to ensure that marketers and creatives do not come to blows over their disagreements – they almost invariably band together when meeting and presenting their plans to the client. Such meetings can take place several, even more than a dozen, times during the course of an account team’s preparations for an ad campaign. At most of them the MD will be present, until such time as it is clear that the client has accepted the Agency’s campaign strategy and the creative team has to fine-tune the objectives outlined therein. Very often, therefore, the marketing team will not stay on a particular account long enough to learn of its finished result, although a good AE will keep his MD abreast of creative developments and show him the (near) finalised campaign prior to the client’s final approval. But marketers do not get involved in the production side of a campaign (studio photography, television commercial filming, and so on) – unless one of those concerned knows what is going on when, happens to be nearby at the time, and drops in to see how things are going. In other words, the marketing team’s job is to see a project through until accepted by the client. It will then dissolve and its members will be assigned to new accounts. Advertising Campaigns: A Case Study To illustrate in more detail particular examples of marketing practice in the Agency, let me cite as a case study the preparation of contact lens campaign in Japan. This example is illuminating because it reveals a number of typical problems faced by an advertising agency in the formulation and execution of campaigns on behalf of its clients. These include the interface between marketing and creative people within an agency and the interpretation of marketing analysis and data; the 5 transposition of marketing analysis into ‘creative’ (i. e. linguistic, visual and design) ideas; the interface between agency and client in the ‘selling’ of a campaign proposal; and the problems of having to appeal to more than one ‘consumer’ target. When the Nihon Fibre Corporation asked the Agency to prepare an advertising campaign for its new Ikon Breath O2 oxygen-passing GCL hard contact lenses in early 1990, it provided a considerable amount of product information with which to help and guide those concerned. This information included the following facts: firstly, with a differential coefficient (DK factor) of 150, Ikon Breath O2 had the highest rate of oxygen permeation of all lenses currently manufactured and marketed in Japan. As a result, secondly, Ikon Breath O2 was the first lens authorized for continuous wear by Japan’s Ministry of Health. Thirdly, the lens was particularly flexible, dirt and water resistant, durable, and of extremely high quality. The client asked the Agency to confirm that the targeted market consisted of young people and to create a campaign that would help NFC capture initially a minimum three per cent share of the market, rising to ten per cent over three years. The Agency immediately formed an account team, consisting of eight members all told. Their first step was to arrange for the marketing team to carry out its own consumer research before proceeding further. A detailed survey – of 500 men and women – was worked out in consultation with the account executive and the client, and was executed by a market research company subcontracted by the Agency. Results confirmed that the targeted audience for the Ikon Breath O2 advertising campaign should be young people, but particularly young women, between the ages of 18 and 27 years, since it was they who were most likely to wear contact lenses. At the same time, however, the survey also revealed that there was little brand loyalty among contact lens wearers so that, with effective advertising, it should be possible to persuade users to shift from their current brand to Ikon Breath O2 lenses. It also showed that young women were not overly concerned with price provided that lenses were safe and comfortable to wear, which meant that Ikon Breath O2’s comparatively high price in itself should not prove a major obstacle to brand switching or sales. On a less positive note, however, the account team also discovered that users were primarily concerned with comfort and were not interested in the technology that went into the manufacture of contact lenses (thereby obviating the apparent advantage of Ikon Breath O2’s high DK factor of which NFC was so proud); and that, because almost all contact lens users consulted medical specialists prior to purchase, the advertising campaign would have to address a second audience consisting mainly of middle-aged men. All in all, therefore, Ikon Breath O2 lenses had an advantage in being of superb quality, approved by medical experts and recognized, together with other GCL lenses, as being the safest for one’s eyes. Its disadvantages were that NFC had no ‘name’ in the contact lens market and that users knew very little about GCL lenses or contact lenses in general. This meant that the advertising campaign had to be backed up by point of purchase sales promotion (in the form of a brochure) to ensure that the product survived. Moreover, it was clear that Ikon Breath O2’s technical advantage (the DK 150 factor) would not last long because rival companies would soon be able to make lenses with a differential coefficient that surpassed that developed by NFC. 5 On this occasion, because the advertising budget was comparatively small, the media buyer was not brought in until later stages in the campaign’s preparations. The AE in charge of the NFC account interacted individually with the media buyer and presented the latter’s suggestions to the account team as a whole. 6 As a result of intense discussions following this survey, the account team moved slowly towards what it thought should be as the campaign’s overall ‘tone and manner’. Ideally, advertisements should be information-oriented: the campaign needed to put across a number of points about the special product benefits that differentiated it from similar lenses on the market (in particular, its flexibility and high rate of oxygen-permeation). Practically, however – as the marketing team had to emphasize time and time again – the campaign needed to stress the functional and emotional benefits that users would obtain from wearing Ikon Breath O2 lenses (for example, continuous wear, safety, release from anxiety and so on). This meant that the advertising itself should be emotional (and information left to the promotional brochure) and stress the end benefits to consumers, rather than the lenses’ product benefits. Because the marketing team had concluded that the product’s end benefits should be stressed, copywriter and art director opted for user imagery rather than product characteristics when thinking of ideas for copy and visuals. However, they were thwarted in their endeavours by a number of problems. Firstly, advertising industry self-policing regulations prohibited the use of certain words and images (for example, the notion of ‘safety’, plus a visual of someone asleep while wearing contact lenses), and insisted on the inclusion in all advertising of a warning that the Ikon Breath O2 lens was a medical product that should be purchased through a medical specialist. This constriction meant that the creative team’s could not use the idea of ‘continuous wear’ because, even though so certified by Japan’s Ministry of Health, opticians and doctors were generally of the opinion that Ikon Breath O2 lenses were bound to affect individual wearers in different ways. NFC was terrified of antagonizing the medical world which would often be recommending its product, so the product manager concerned refused to permit the use of any word or visual connected with ‘continuous wear’. Thus, to the account team’s collective dismay, the product’s end benefit to consumers could not be effectively advertised. Secondly, precisely because Ikon Breath O2 lenses had to be recommended by medical specialists, NFC’s advertising campaign needed to address the latter as well as young women users. In other words, the campaign’s tone and manner had to appeal to two totally different segments of the market, while at the same time satisfying those employed in the client company. This caused the creative team immense difficulties, especially because – thirdly – the product manager of NFC’s contact lens manufacturing division was convinced that the high differential coefficient set Ikon Breath O2 lenses apart from all other contact lenses on the market and would appeal to members of the medical profession. So he insisted on emphasizing what he saw as the unique technological qualities of the product. In other words, not only did he relegate young women who were expected to buy the product to secondary importance; he ignored the marketing team’s recommendation that user benefit be stressed. Instead, for a long time he insisted on the creative team’s focussing on product benefit, even though the DK factor was only a marginal and temporary advantage to NFC. As a result of these two sets of disagreements, the copywriter came up with two different key ideas. The first was based on the product’s characteristics, and thus supported the manufacturer’s (but went against his own marketing team’s) product benefit point of view, with the phrase ‘corneal physiology’ (kakumaku seiri). The second also stressed a feature of the product, but managed to emphasize the user benefits that young women could gain from wearing lenses that were both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ (yawarakai). The former headline was the only way to break brand parity and make Ikon Breath O2 temporarily distinct from all other lenses on the market (the product manager liked the distinction; the marketing team disliked the temporary nature of that distinction). At this stage in the negotiations, the account executive in charge felt obliged to tow an obsequious line, but needed to appease his marketing team and ensure that the creative team came up with something else if at all possible, since 7 corneal physiology gave Ikon Breath O2 lenses only a temporary advantage. As a result, the copywriter introduced the word ‘serious’ (majime) into discussions – on the grounds that NFC was a ‘serious’ (majime) manufacturer (it was, after all, a well-known and respected Japanese corporation) which had developed a product that, by a process of assimilation, could also be regarded as ‘serious’; moreover, by a further rubbing-off process, as the marketing team agreed, such ‘seriousness’ could be attributed to users who decided to buy and wear Ikon Breath O2 lenses. In this way, both the distinction between product benefit and user benefit might be overcome. The copywriter’s last idea was the one that broke the deadlock (and it was at certain moments an extremely tense deadlock) between the account team as a whole and members of NFC’s contact lens manufacturing division. After a series of meetings in which copywriter and designer desperately tried to convince the client that the idea of softness and hardness was not a product characteristic, but an image designed to support the benefits to consumers wearing Ikon Breath O2 lenses, the product manager accepted the account team’s proposals in principle, provided that ‘serious’ was used as a back-up selling point. Soft hard’ (yawaraka hard) was adopted as the key headline phrase for the campaign as a whole. It can be seen that the marketing team’s analysis of how NFC should successfully enter the contact lens market met two stumbling blocks during the early stages of preparation for the advertising campaign. The first was within the account team itself, where the copywriter in particular tended to opt for the manufacturer’s approach by emphasising the product benefit of Ikon Breath O2. The second was when the Agency’s account team had to persuade the client to accept its analysis and campaign proposal. But the next major problem facing the account team was how to convert this linguistic rendering of market analysis into visual terms. What sort of visual image would adequately fulfil the marketing aims of the campaign and make the campaign as a whole – including television commercial and promotional materials – readily recognizable to the targeted audience? It was almost immediately accepted by the account team that the safest way to achieve this important aim was to use a celebrity or personality (talent in Japanese) to endorse the product. Here there was little argument, because it is generally recognized in the advertising industry that celebrity endorsement is an excellent and readily appreciated linkage device in multi-media campaigns of the kind requested by NFC. Moreover, since television commercials in Japan are more often than not only fifteen seconds long and therefore cannot include any detailed product information, personalities have proved to be attention grabbers in an image-dominated medium and to have a useful, short-term effect on sales because of their popularity in other parts of the entertainment industry. At the same time, not all personalities come across equally well in the rather differing media of television and magazines or newspapers, so that the account team felt obliged to look for someone who was more than a mere pop idol and who could act. It was here that those concerned encountered the most difficulty. The presence of a famous personality was crucial since s/he would be able to attract public attention to a new product and hopefully draw people into retail outlets to buy Ikon Breath O2 lenses. It was agreed right from the start that the personality should be a young woman, in the same age group as the targeted audience, and Japanese. (After all, a ‘blue eyed foreigner’ endorsing Ikon Breath O2 contact lenses would hardly be appropriate for brown-eyed Japanese. ) Just who this woman should be, however, proved problematic. Tennis players (who could indulge in both ‘hard’ activities and ‘soft’ romance) were discarded early on because the professional season was already in full swing at the time the campaign was being prepared. Classical musicians, while romantic and thus ‘soft’, were not seen to be ‘hard’ enough, while the idea of using a Japanese ‘talent’, Miyazawa Rie (everyone on the account team’s favourite at the time), was reluctantly rejected because, even though photographs of her in the nude were at the time causing a 8 minor sensation among Japanese men interested in soft-porn, she was rather inappropriate for a medical product like a contact lens which was aimed at young women. Any personality chosen had to show certain distinct qualities. One of these was a ‘presence’ (sonzaikan) that would attract people’s attention on the page or screen. Another was ‘topicality’ (wadaisei) that stemmed from her professional activities. A third was ‘future potential’ (nobisei), meaning that the celebrity had not yet peaked in her career, but would attract further widespread media attention and so, it was hoped, indirectly promote Ikon Breath O2 lenses and NFC. Most importantly, however, she had to suit the product. In the early stages of the campaign’s preparations, the creative team found itself in a slight quandary. They wanted to choose a celebrity whose personality fitted the ‘soft-hard’ and ‘serious’ ideas and who would then anchor a particular image to Ikon Breath O2 lenses, although it proved difficult to find someone who would fit the product and appeal to all those concerned. Eventually, the woman chosen was an actress, Sekine Miho, who epitomized the kind of modern woman that the creative team was seeking, but who was also about to star in a national television (NHK) drama series that autumn – a series in which she played a starring role as a ‘soft’, romantic character. Although popularity in itself can act as a straightjacket when it comes to celebrity endorsement of a product, in this case it was judged – correctly, it transpired – that Sekine had enough ‘depth’ (fukasa) to bring a special image to Ikon Breath O2 lenses. Once the celebrity had been decided on, the creative team was able to fix the tone and manner, expression and style of the advertising campaign as a whole. Sekine was a ‘high class’ (or ‘one rank up’ in Japanese-English parlance) celebrity who matched NFC’s image of itself as a ‘high class’ (ichiryu) company and who was made to reflect that sense of eliteness in deportment and clothing. At the same time, NFC was a ‘serious’ manufacturer and wanted a serious, rather than frivolous, personality who could then be photographed in soft-focus, serious poses to suit the serious medical product being advertised. This seriousness was expressed further by means of ery slightly tinted black and white photographs which, to the art director’s – but, not initially, the product manager’s – eye made Sekine look even ‘softer’ in appearance and so match the campaign’s headline of yawaraka hard. This softness was further reinforced by the heart-shaped lens cut at the bottom of every print ad, and on the front of the brochure, which the art director m ade green rather than blue – partly to differentiate the Ikon Breath O2 campaign from all other contact lens campaigns run at that time, and partly to appeal to the fad for ‘ecological’ colours then-current among young women in particular. This case study shows that there is an extremely complex relationship linking marketing and creative aspects of any advertising campaign. In this case, market research showed that Ikon Breath O2 lenses were special because of the safety that derived from their technical quality, but that consumers themselves were not interested in technical matters since their major concern was with comfort. Hence the need to focus the advertising campaign on user benefit. Yet the client insisted on stressing product benefit – a stance made more difficult for the creative team because it could not legally use the only real consumer benefit available to it (continuous wear), and so had to find something that would appeal to both manufacturer and direct and indirect ‘consumers’ of the lens in question. In the end, the ideas of ‘soft hard’ and ‘serious’ were adopted as compromise positions for both client and agency, as well as for creative and marketing teams. Concluding Comments Let us in conclusion try to follow two separate lines of thought. One of these is, as promised, the relationship between marketing and anthropology; the other that between advertising and marketing. 9 Although convergence between anthropology, marketing and consumer research may be growing, the evidence suggested by the case study in this paper is that huge differences still exist. Marketing people in the advertising agency in which I studied may be interested in anthropology; they may even have dipped into the work of anthropologists here and there. But their view of the discipline tends to be rather old-fashioned, and they certainly do not have time to go in for the kind of intensive, detail ethnographic nquiry of consumers that anthropologists might encourage. If anthropologists are to make a useful contribution to marketing, therefore, they need to present their material and analyses succinctly and in readily digestible form, since marketing people hate things that are overcomplicated. It is, perhaps, for this rather than any other reason that someone like Mary Douglas (Douglas and Isherwood 1979) has been so favourably received. In the end, marketing people aim to be positivist, science-like (rather than scientific, as such), and rationalist in their ad campaigns. They aspire to measure and predict on the basis of observer categories, if only because this is the simplest way to sell a campaign to a client. In this respect, they are closer to the kind of sociology and anthropology advocated in the 1940s and 50s (which would explain their adoption of Talcott Parsons’s theory of action, for example), than to the present-day ‘interpretive’ trends in the discipline, and thus favour in their practices an outmoded – and among most anthropologists themselves, discredited – form of discourse. So, ‘if anthropologists are kings of the castle, it is a castle most other people have never heard of’ (Chapman and Buckley 1997: 234). As Malcolm Chapman and Peter Buckley wryly observe, we need perhaps to spend some time entirely outside social anthropology in order to be convinced of the truth of this fact. Secondly, as part of this positivist, science-like approach, marketers in the Japanese advertising agency tended to make clear-cut categories that would be easily understood by both their colleagues in other divisions in the Agency and by their clients. These categories tended to present the consumer world as a series of binary oppositions (between individual and group, modern and traditional, idealist and materialist, and so on [cf. Lien 1997: 202-8]) that they then presented as matrix or quadripartite structures (the Agency’s Purchase Decision Model, for example, was structured in terms of think/feel and high/low involvement axes). In this respect, their work could be said to exhibit a basic form of structuralism. One of these oppositions was that made between product benefit and user benefit (with its variant end benefit). As this case study has shown, this is a distinction that lies at the heart of all advertising and needs to be teased out if we are successfully to decode particular advertisements in a manner that goes beyond the work of Barthes (1977), Williamson (1978), Goffman (1979) and others. Thirdly, one of the factors anchoring marketing to the kind of structured thinking characteristic of modernist disciplines, perhaps, is that the creation of meaning in commodities is inextricably bound up with the establishment of a sense of difference between one object and all others of its class. After all, the three tasks of advertising are: to stand out from the surrounding competition to attract people’s attention; to communicate (both rationally and emotionally) what it is intended to communicate; and to predispose people to buy or keep on buying what is advertised. The sole preoccupation of those engaged in the Ikon Breath 02 campaign was to create what they referred to as the ‘parity break’: to set NFC’s contact lenses apart from all other contact lenses on sale in Japan, and from all other products on the market. At the same time, the idea of parity break extended to the style in which the campaign was to be presented (tinted monochrome photo, green logo, and so on). In this respect, the structure of meaning in advertising is akin to that found in the syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes of structural linguistics where particular choices of words and phrases are influenced by the overall structure and availability of meanings in the language in which a speaker is communicating. That the work of LeviStrauss should be known to most marketers, therefore, is hardly surprising. Marketing practice is in many respects an application of the principles of structural anthropology to the selling of products. 10 Fourthly, although those working in marketing and consumer research take it as given that there is one-way flow of activity stemming from the manufacturer and targeted at the end consumer, in fact, as this case study shows, advertising – as well as the marketing that an advertising agency conducts on behalf of a client – always addresses at least two audiences. One of these is, of course, the group of targeted consumers (even though they are somewhat removed from the direct experience of marketers in their work). In this particular case, to complicate the issue further, there were two groups of consumers, since the campaign had to address both young women and middle-aged male opticians. Another audience is the client. As we have seen, the assumed or proven dis/likes of both consumers and advertising client affect the final meaning of the products advertised, and the client in particular had to be satisfied with the Agency’s campaign approach before consumer ‘needs’ could be addressed. At the same time, we should recognise that a third audience exists among different members of the account team within the Agency itself, since each of the three separate parties involved in account servicing, marketing and creative work needed to be satisfied by the arguments of the other two. In this respect, perhaps, we should note that marketing people have spent a lot of time over the decades making use of insights developed in learning behaviour, personality theory and psychoanalysis which they then apply to individual consumers. In the process, however, they have tended to overlook the forms of social organisation of which these individuals are a part (cf. de Groot 1980:44). Yet it is precisely the ways in which individual consumers interact that is crucial to an understanding of consumption and thus of how marketing should address its targeted audience: how networks function, for example, reveals a lot about the vital role of word-of-mouth in marketing successes and failures; how status groups operate and on what grounds can tell marketers a lot about the motivations and practices of their targeted audience. Anthropologists should be able to help by providing sociological analyses of these and other mechanisms pertinent to the marketing endeavour. In particular, their extensive work on ritual and symbolism should be of use in foreign, ‘third world’ markets. Fifthly, most products are made to be sold. As a result, different manufacturers have in mind different kinds of sales strategies, target audiences, and marketing methods that have somehow to be translated into persuasive linguistic and visual images – not only in advertising, but also in packaging and product design. For the most part, producers of the commodities in question find themselves obliged to call on the specialized services of copywriters and art designers who are seen to be more in tune with the consumers than are they themselves. This is how advertising agencies market themselves. But within any agency, the creation of advertising involves an ever-present tension between sales and marketing people, on the one hand, and creative staff, on the other; between the not necessarily compatible demands for the dissemination of product and other market information, on the one hand, and for linguistic and visual images that will attract consumers’ attention and push them into retail outlets to make purchases, on the other. This is not always taken into account by those currently writing about advertising. More interestingly, perhaps, the opposition that is perceived to exist between data and statistical analysis, on the one hand, and the creation of images, on the other, parallels that seen to pertain between a social science like economics or marketing and a more humanities-like discipline such as anthropology. Perhaps the role for an anthropology of marketing is to bridge this great divide.

Climate Change and The Rise in Sea Level Essay -- Environment Environ

"On a recent afternoon, Scott McKenzie watched torrential rains and a murky tide swallow the street outside his dog-grooming salon. Within minutes, much of this stretch of chic South Beach was flooded ankle-deep in a fetid mix of rain and sea. â€Å"Welcome to the new Venice,† McKenzie joked as salt water surged from the sewers." ----- Michael J. Mishak, Associated Press June 7, 2014 at 4:24 PM EDT According to the World Bank Development Report 2013 there has been an increase in global surface temperature of 0.4 to 0.9 Celsius (C) in the past 100 years. This change in temperature largely caused, according to the IPCC, by the release of GHGs through human activities. There are several effects associated to the change in global temperature, mainly affecting ecosystems and populations worldwide. Among these effects or consequences are sea-level rise, drought, floods, loss of mangroves, and the intensification of storms and climate processes such as El Nino and La Nina. Recent studies have focused on sea-level rise and the global effects. Over the past 100 years, sea levels have increased by 10 to 20 centimeters (World Bank, 2003). Moreover, arctic sea-ice has continued to shrink up to 10 percent or more of its total mass and by 40 percent of its thickness. Glaciers and small ice caps are rapidly melting, causing several changes in the flows of rivers and ecosystems, as well as adding to the increase of sea levels. Sea level rise will most likely severely affect unprepared, developing countries and their populations. Concomitantly, developed industrial countries with higher levels of GDP are likely to cope more efficiently with the effects of sea level rise. This paper will focus on the prognosticated socio-economic costs of s... ... Policymakers Wembley, United Kingdom, 24-29 September 2001.    World Development Report 2013. Sustainable Development in a Dynamic World. Trnasforming institutions, growth, and quality of life. A copublication of the World Bank and Oxford University Press. New York, NY 2013.    Entering the 21st. Century – World Development Report 1999/2000. World Bank 2000. Oxford University Press. New York, NY 2000.    1998-1999 World Resources: A Guide to the Global Environment. Environmental Change and Human Health. A Joint Publication by the World Resources Institute, the World Bank, the United Nations Environmental Programme, and the United Nations Development Programme. Oxford University Press, New York, NY 1998. IPCC Report 2003 – Overview of Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability to Climate Change. 1 page 365 – IPCC report 2003 1[1] page 365 – IPCC report 2003

Comment Cuisiner Son Mari a L’africaine: How-to Manual or Cautionary Tale

De tous les arts, l'art culinaire est celui qui nourrit le mieux son homme. – Pierre Dac Calixthe Beyala was born in Cameroon in 1961. She was very disturbed by the extreme poverty of her surroundings. She went to school in Douala, and she excelled in Mathematics. Calixthe Beyala traveled widely in Africa and Europe before settling in Paris, where she now lives with her daughter. Beyala has published prolifically, and her most recent novel, which came out earlier this year, is called La Plantation.Beyala’s novel Comment cuisiner son mari a l'africaine appeared in the year 2000, published by Albin Michel. It is similar in structure to Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate, where the narrative is interrupted by the recipes which figure in the plot line. In her book, Beyala includes twenty-four of the recipes which her heroine Aissatou prepares to attract her neighbor and compatriot, Souleymane Bolobolo. In this way the book serves as a how-to manual, as its title sugg ests, on how to seduce, marry and keep a husband by cooking for him.The book begins with a prologue in the form of a legend where a woman arrives at the remote home of the recluse, Biloa. She announces that she has dreamed of him since she was a little girl, and that she has always known that they would marry. Biloa protests that he isn't the one she is seeking, repeating â€Å"Ce n'est pas moi†, but the woman tempts him with food so Biloa admits his identity, â€Å"C'est peut-etre moi,† and takes the woman and the basket of food into his house. This, according to the legend, is how Biloa came to be a member of the society of men.This prologue does, indeed, prefigure the struggles of Aissatou, our novel's heroine, who is a une dame-pipi28 caught between her identity as a Parisian and as an African. Fed up with romantic disappointments, she has chosen her neighbor Bolobolo to be her husband, though she hasn't really even met him. Aissatou, who habitually eats only three grated carrots for her dinner, and always takes her tea without sugar in order to maintain her slim figure goes to a marabout for advice on how to seduce Bolobolo, and is provoked by the other women that are also waiting there for advice.According to them, Aissatou's problem is that she is too skinny, and they lament the fact that â€Å"ces filles d'aujourd'hui ne savent meme pas cuisiner†¦.. et ca se veut des femmes. â€Å"29 Aissatou takes this all to heart and armed with the recipes she learned from her mother and grandmother, she attacks her neighbor on the culinary front. She begins by bringing â€Å"beignets aux haricots rouges† to Bolobolo's elderly mother who is suffering from a mental illness, and then continues tempting her neighbor with other exotic and spicy dishes.Aissatou is not unopposed, however, and deals with her rival, Bijou, by again eclipsing her performance in the kitchen. Eventually, Aissatou does seduce Bolobolo, and after his mother's death, t hey do marry. But the story doesn't end here. In an epilogue, the reader gets a glimpse of Aissatou and Bolobolo's marriage twenty years later. Aissatou admits that she cooks to save her marriage, which is constantly imperiled by her husband's infidelity.But, as her mother had told her, â€Å"There comes a time when one must prefer one's marriage to one's husband,† and so Aissatou sacrifices her pride and tends her relationship in the kitchen even though she realizes that her husband is an adulterous coward. The epilogue leaves a bitter taste at the end of such a delicious novel, but it keeps it honest, and doesn't allow it to seem like the simple re-telling of the legend of Biloa. Whereas the themes of food and cooking often serve as expressions of nostalgia in other novels, in Beyala's book, food is a language spoken by the different characters.Aissatou hears her mother's voice prescribing certain dishes to mend a broken heart and other dishes to soothe herself and her fami ly, for as she says, â€Å"Ventre plein n'a point de conscience. â€Å"30Her daughter, however, doesn't initially have the same reaction when feeling low and instead she makes herself a bowl of ‘veritable soupe chinoise en sachet. ‘ This means that prior to her decision to seduce Bolobolo by cooking for him, the only cooking that Aissatou undertakes is nothing more than adding water to a dried powder and heating it up.The fact that the dried powder is identified as ‘real’ and ‘Chinese’ point to the fact that it is really neither. Aissatou is not concerned with her food’s quality or ethnicity, and cares only about its convenience and calorie count. In the course of the novel, Aissatou will give up her proclivity for these ‘inauthentic’ foods and begin to enjoy the foods of West Africa prescribed by her mother and other African characters. In Beyala’s book, African food is imbued with nearly magical qualities. Yes, it does put meat on the bones of those who enjoy it, but it also excites the senses, and inflames the passions of those who eat it.Moreover, the true connoisseurs and sages of African food are all women. Even when Aissatou goes to consult a marabout about her love life, it is the women who actually reveal her ‘diagnosis. ’ Maimouna, who is known as ‘la cheftaine-reine des cuisines† amongst the women at the marabout’s apartment says that Aissatou’s problem is that she is too thin, and that a certain spicy shrimp dish will always attract a man. Once Aissatou decides to begin cooking African food in order to achieve her goal of seducing Bolobolo, she is also able to influence other situations through her cooking.She decides to provoke a macho response in her passive male best friend and prepares a jus de gingembre, a drink formulated to send him into a frenzy of desire, just to see what will happen. When confronted by her angry rival, mademoiselle Bi jou, she cooks a bouillie de mil for her to show that she is civilized and in control of the situation. Later, angered by Bijou's assessment of her relationship with Bolobolo, she also takes revenge on him by putting a laxative in a favorite dish of his. And of course, Aissatou's prime objective, clinched by her pepe-soupe aux poissons, is to arouse an appetite for passion within Bolobolo.Aissatou is speaking through her cooking, revealing her desires and fears, using food to express those things which she cannot explicitly state. In addition to its function as a way to provoke a physical response in the eater, food acts as an important cultural identifier in this novel. Through it we see the transformation of Aissatou from Parisian, back to African and from white, back to black. In other words, she effectuates a reverse migration, and food and cooking are the vehicle that she uses to bring herself back to her roots.Though this migration is easy to track, as she embraces her motherà ¢â‚¬â„¢s attitudes toward food, cooking and even marriage, it is more difficult to find Aissatou’s point of departure. In the beginning, Aissatou’s very racial and ethnic identity is called into question by Beyala’s own publisher’s blurb on the back of the novel itself. It describes her as  « une Parisienne pure black en proie au tourments de l’amour.  »31 But Aissatou claims that her self-imposed exile in France has made her forget the fact that she is black and that she doesn’t know when she became white.She admits that she has become white by imitating the thin, white Parisian women who are, as she is, completely caught up in the constant pursuit of beauty that is calculated to please men. She realizes that she has adopted a foreign mentality when it comes to her own body image and describes herself thus: â€Å"Moi, je suis une negresse blanche et la nourriture est un poison mortel pour la seduction. Je fais chanter mon corps en eplu chant mes fesses, en rapant mes seins, convaincue qu'en martyrisant mon estomac, les divinites de la sensualite s'echapperont de mes pores. 32It is interesting to note the use of the kitchen techniques, which indicate how previously her only cooking projects served to keep her thin. She combines these techniques where she literally scrapes her body until it is thin with words like martyr and divinity, playing into the idea that the denial of food in order to remain thin is a somehow sacred task. This is a long-standing dialectic, where women align divinity and asceticism when that same asceticism really represents a societal imperative to conform to ideals of beauty.This statement is a declaration of success; she has martyred her body in order to be desirable, and therefore white. Though Aissatou admits that she diets constantly and obsessively, like other Parisian women, she also lies about what she eats, just for the sake of being cruel. When asked about her diet by an apparently jealous overweight woman, Aissatou joyfully tells her that she has, since her birth, eaten, â€Å"le coq au vin, arrose d’un bon beaujolais nouveau; les epaules d’agneau aux champignon noirs, le ris de veau a la creme fraiche et le couscous mouton a la tunisienne. 33Of course, it is completely untrue that she ever indulges in such rich food, and certainly doubtful that she ate these traditional French dishes as a child in Cameroon. It is worth noting the inclusion of Tunisian couscous with the list of very traditional French food. Couscous has entered the repertory of French foods and is a common dish, despite its colonial origins. Though one may argue about the ‘authenticity’ of a Parisian â€Å"couscous a la Tunisienne† and how it plays on French ideas of exoticism, it is undeniably a part of French cuisine.This is in contrast to sub-Saharan African cuisine, which is much more difficult to find in the capital. Though you can eat couscous in every arrondissement, you would be hard pressed to find many restaurants that serve food from West Africa or the provisions necessary to make them at home. With this book, Beyala presents a fictionalized cookbook, and if the intrepid home cook should retrace the steps of the heroine, it could even serve as a guide for shopping for the ingredients in the recipes.As mentioned previously, this book’s structure is similar to other popular novels where recipes for the dishes prepared by characters are included, like Frances Mayes’, Under the Tuscan Sun, and Laura Esquivel’s, Like Water for Chocolate. But in these novels, the recipes are most often a part of the narration itself and sometimes are even recounted by one character to another, mimicking the traditional way that cooking recipes are transmitted, orally, from one cook to another, most often mother to daughter.In Beyala’s book, which features African characters who themselves benefited from the oral traditi on of passing down culinary knowledge, Beyala’s chooses to completely disconnect the recipes from the text, placing them on a separate page at the end of the chapter, and printing them like a traditional recipe that could be found in any cookbook or magazine article. Also, Beyala’s book differs from Mayes’ and Esquivel’s because their novels are both set in a time or place that is foreign to the reader.Esquivel’s novel is set during the Mexican revolution, and Mayes’ is set in Italy, and their settings automatically place them in a foreign and/or exotic locale. Despite this fact, the reader can easily recreate the recipes that their characters make, thereby exoticising themselves by their appropriation of the foreign meal. In contrast, Beyala’s book is both more accessible in its setting, and less accessible to the home cook. Comment cuisiner son mari a l’africaine is set in the present-day French capital and is completely reco gnizable in terms of its location and lifestyle.But re-creating the recipes that Aissatou makes is nearly impossible, because many of the ingredients listed in these recipes are not translated or even described. Though it would seem that this cookbook is intended for other immigrant women to use in re-creating dishes from West Africa, the lack of information about ingredients or possible substitutions runs counter to other cookbooks with similar propositions. Therefore, the status of the book as a manual is questionable, since it is not clear that one can even follow the recipes.Beyala’s book may just be using the recipes as other novels use illustrations. They are glimpses of a foreign culture provided by the author in order to pique the interest of the reader, just as an illustration does. Beyala’s location of the text in Paris is key in the novel, because it allows her to set up a cultural dialectic between France and Cameroon. Her heroine must navigate the multicul tural space of the post-colonial capital to assess the compromises and concessions that white and black women make.Aissatou is caught between her Parisian reality where sexual value is based on how thin a woman is, and her memories of her mother's advice which promoted the importance of domesticity and especially culinary satisfaction in the life of a couple. â€Å"Un homme qui vous fait ressentir de telles emotions†¦.. merite le paradis,†34 she would say as she seasoned a dish to please her man. Aissatou imagines the questions that her mother would have asked her if her daughter had come to her after a failed love affair.Her mother would have asked if first, she had satisfied him sexually, second, if she had kept the house well, and third if she had prepared nice dishes for him. As Aissatou begins cooking savory dishes for herself her thin figure fills in with more womanly curves, eliciting pitying looks from some who think that she has let herself go, and approval from others. Race, beauty, food and sex are all locked into an uneasy correlation that she cannot accept. She gives up on the idea of maintaining a French, i. e. thin, ideal of beauty and trades it for the African ideal of sensual pleasure of food as a means to attract men.Interestingly, she does not trade her French beauty regimen for an African one. She even cites the methods that she is unwilling to follow and decides that braiding her hair, massaging herself with shea butter and pretending to be fragile is not for her: â€Å"Rien qu’a y penser, je m’epuise comme si c’etait deja a l’ouvrage. †35 This return to her roots is unquestionably problematical for Aissatou. She is torn between the two worlds constantly. For example, when she sees Bolobolo leaving the apartment building, she is struck by her sudden ‘African’ reaction: â€Å"Si j'etais sa femme, je serais restee a la maison a l'attendre. But just as quickly she asks herself, â₠¬Å"Mais pourquoi dans le partage des roles les femmes doivent-elles garder le foyer, cuisiner, allumer les lampes†¦. jusqu'a ce que mort s'ensuive? †36This is the same reaction that she has when she asks herself if she is capable of using African methods of seduction. Aissatou’s onerous task is to reconcile her African mother’s advice on how to seduce and hold on to a man with her French post-feminist questions about that role. She knows that her mother is right, and that she will be able to seduce this African man by appealing to his sensual desires and African identity.So, she picks at Bolobolo's sensibilities as an African man and critiques him for doing the marketing himself, saying: â€Å"Vous vous etes finalement bien adapte a l'Occident qui voudrait que l'homme soit une femme et l'inverse. †37In this way, she calls attention to the cultural difference in the French and African views on the traditional division of labor and highlights the fact t hat she and Bolobolo share a common culture, though they may be forced to adapt to French practices.Aissatou also seeks to call attention to their shared culture when she uses Bolobolo's mother's condition as an excuse to get involved, which she does with ulterior motives: â€Å"J'ai l'impression que mon discours est en decalage, espace et temps. Je sais que j'ai eu une reaction africaine ou tout le monde se mele des casseroles etrangeres. â€Å"38 This statement is telling because it shows that Aissatou knows that she is acting in bad faith.She knows that she has rejected certain aspects of African seduction and that she is not being honest about her intentions, but she nevertheless goes forward with her culinary seduction of Bolobolo and his mother. When Aissatou brings the beignets to Bolobolo's mother he mentions that she mustn't have anything better to do if she is cooking for others, but Aissatou reminds him: â€Å"Oui, parce que dans ce pays il faut etre vieux ou au chomag e pour se rendre compte qu'il est important que l'on s'occupe des autres,† again setting herself apart from the French and reminding him that they are compatriots.She finally gains access to his house with this plate of food. Once inside, she professes that she loves to cook and he answers that he loves to do dishes, seeming indicating that they are ideally suited for each other, but also indicating that he may be an African man, but he has adapted to a non-African setting. And this is the prime reason that Aissatou cooks, and especially why she cooks African food, to spark Bolobolo's passion for her. Aissatou cooks constantly, and she cooks the most exotic dishes and uses ingredients that she must search for in all the African boutiques of the capital.Her apartment building is infused with the heady aromas of African cuisine, which causes different reactions among her French neighbors. The concierge battles the smells of cooking with the Airwick spray, but the old lady who li ves on the first floor creeps up the steps to hover on the landing while Aissatou is cooking. Aissatou’s cooking, because it is foreign and strange smelling, makes her black in the eyes of the racist concierge and Bolobolo’s metisse girlfriend, Bijou.Aissatou decides to invite Bolobolo and his mother to dinner at her apartment, where she intends to win him over with her prowess in the kitchen, but when she goes downstairs to invite him, another woman is in the apartment with him. Unfazed, she announces that she would be happy to bring dinner down to them to enjoy together. The dinner is a success with Bolobolo but his girlfriend, a lovely metissse named Bijou, doesn't enjoy herself at all: â€Å"Je n'ai jamais aime la cuisine africaine†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ Parait qu'ils mangent des singes, ces Negres! † To which Aissatou responds: â€Å"Du serpent boa egalement†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.C'est excellent, n'est-ce pas†39Again, the food has served to bring together the African s and place them in opposition to a separate group because they share a taste for a dish that others find objectionable. Aissatou even goes further in invoking their taste for boa constrictor, because she knows that Bijou will be disgusted by this prospect. Since Bijou is mulatto and not just French, Aissatou and Bolobolo’s shared food preference places emphasis on the fact that they are from the same country in Africa and therefore share a distinct culture, and should not be lumped in with other ‘people of color. But Aissatou's main goal for her fabulous dinner is achieved after Bijou's departure when Bolobolo starts kissing and caressing Aissatou while she is cleaning up the kitchen. This woman, who previously denied herself any sensual pleasure at all from food, is altered by her dinner with Bolobolo. With her seduction of Bolobolo she acquires a new language, where food metaphors dominate the description of sex and the body. Nicki Hitchcott sees the narrator’ s almost over the top references to food to be a demonstration of cliches on which Western advertising depends. 0But at the same time, this dinner is evocative of the traditional polygamous African family dynamic, where the wife who cooks for the husband is the one who sleeps with him that night. Although Aissatou must still deal with her more powerful rival, Bolobolo's mother, she is eventually successful in seducing and keeping him with her culinary talents. By the end of the novel, Aissatou's transformation is complete. She does experience uneasiness when it comes to her own motives and doubts regarding her role in what Hitchcott calls ‘postnational’ France, but Aissatou settles on using cooking in order to maintain her relationships.She has gone from being a self-described white woman who viewed food as a ‘fatal poison' in the matter of seduction, to using food as a tool to accomplish her goal of seducing Bolobolo. She now sees food as a positive, unifying for ce: â€Å"La nourriture est synonyme de la vie. Aujourd'hui elle constitue une unite plus homogene que la justice. Elle est peut-etre l'unique source de paix et de reconciliation entre les hommes.  »41And in this novel, cooking can also reflect passion, love, comfort, anger and civility.Food and Aissatou's deft manipulation of people through her cooking give her power that she doesn't have otherwise in French society. As Bolobolo’s mother says in the novel, cooking is indeed becoming a rare skill especially in large capital cities like Paris because women are increasingly working outside the home, and don’t have the time or even talent to cook, since they never really learned the skills from their mothers. Even though France may be a center for haute cuisine technique, it suffers the same problems of all modern countries where there has been a redistribution of domestic tasks from inside to outside the home.Women don’t cook as much as they used to, and more a nd more people eat outside the home. Therefore, we must ask ourselves for whom the didactic element of this book is intended. As stated above, it is not descriptive enough to satisfy a food adventurer in search of the exotic and by virtue of the fact that it is written and published in France, it is clearly not intended to be used by African women. Perhaps the reader who would find Beyala’s recipes to be the most accessible are women like herself, immigrant women who might need to be tempted back to the kitchen.When this is considered along with Beyala’s problematical portrayal of marriage, the book appears as an invitation to take up cooking, not as a way to experience the exotic, but as a way to reject the Western ideal of beauty and to appropriate some power within the community. Aissatou returned to this aspect of her African heritage, because she had a specific goal in mind and felt that this would allow her to achieve it. She questions herself, her methods and he r motives all along the way, and ultimately accepts the limitations of â€Å"un bon pepe-soupe† and her husband’s monogamy.Just as she advises her neighbor whose husband has begun to stray from the conjugal bed, she doesn’t reproach Bolobolo and accepts his infidelity, knowing that eventually, he will return to her. She rejected the literal and figurative hunger that she experienced as a ‘negresse blanche† and chose the culinary tools that allow her to make her husband happy, even though she knows that he will sometimes hurt her. Beyala’s heroine fully understands the limitations that she faces in a Paris, and negotiates an identity through her cooking that she can live with.