The conceptual framework of feminism

The conceptual framework of feminism The conceptual framework of feminism, as a reactionary ideology, basically consists of power, woman, rights, and equality. The same can be said of African feminism, which has on its priority list such goals as self-determination, which have economic overtones sewn on a materialistic metaphysic. African womanism, despite its pretensions to seeking co-operation or its advocacy for interdependency between men and women, uses a model of conscientisation of women that is foreign to Africa, and runs the risks of obscurantism, vulgarism, inauthenticity, and irrelevance. To put it cryptically, African womanism cant want and cant not want men at the same time. Although gender has made tremendous strides in conscientising women about their plight vis-Ã  -vis male-dominance, its future in Africa demands that it re-position itself appropriately. At least it must re-think three theories, that is, the labour theory, economic theory, and social theory. Africas contemporary socio-political scene depicts theoretical and practical confusion of gender with feminism or, for that matter, gender with broad emancipatory movements, such as African womanism, which nonetheless use gender theory as an intellectual tool for critical analysis for the supposedly discriminatory social, religious and political organisational structures. Feminist thinkers loathe these structures because they see in them deliberate mechanisms for oppressing or marginalising women. This oppression of women characterises the present economic inegalitarianism in a male-dominated status quo. Consequently, it is argued that these male-founded and male-dominated structures can only be changed so as to render them balanced or equitable if and only if revolutionary measures are employed. The usual elements of such arguers form a class of people called feminist ideologues. Feminist ideologues are those people, male and female, minority or majority in one country, who share th e ideas or beliefs or attitudes of male-dominance over women. They tend to look at society in one way; they are certainly unhappy, dissatisfied and critical of what they see around them as compared to what they would like to see. The rational justification of their discontent and critical attitude is quite another thing. Insofar as feminism comprises people, who share one set of ideas or Where is the Foundation of African Gender? beliefs or attitudes as a group or community and who are (radically) organised, feminism is an ideology,1 which is posited to displace the prevailing male-dominated ideology. It is the core of an ideology or the ideological core, which is the most difficult part to change because it is the worldview of the people. The ideological core consists of the core ideas, core beliefs, or core attitudes of a people. By implication, if the core ideas, beliefs, or attitudes are purged out then the peoples practical reality is annihilated. The revolutionary spirit is germane to any feminist ideologue because he or she believes that lasting and effective change must be moral and intellectual. These detested moral and intellectual values are in-built in society so that their removal or reduction calls for a drastic revolutionary overhaul of the whole social fabric. This drastic revolutionary overhaul of society must be no less than a critique of the prevailing ideology because it purports to subjec t to intellectual scrutiny, and eventually refute or reject prevailing ideas, beliefs, or attitudes, which are rationally unjustified or prejudicial to the position of women in society. And then feminist ideology purports to create its own better ideas, beliefs, or attitudes. In other words, feminist ideology creates its own counter-consciousness, and eventually its own counterculture. This counterculture comprises a new set of beliefs and a new style of life that is intended or hoped to challenge and eventually expose the inadequacy of the prevailing culture. Only when the ideological core of the prevailing culture is removed and replaced by a new ideological core can lasting and effective change occur. Any change less than that involving the ideological core is superficial or transitory. In a nutshell, feminism challenges the prevailing status quo and develops a counter-ideology that questions the prevailing status quo and then attempts to modify it. Feminism advocates change rather than order. It criticises the regime in power and existing social and economic arrangements. It advances schemes for restructuring and reordering society. It generates political movements in the form of womens movements in order to gain enough power and influence to effect the changes it advocates. Feminism is an ideology of action for it motivates people to demand changes in their lifestyles and to modify the existing social, religious, political, and economic relations. It also mobilises its followers and adherents to preserve what they value.2 Ultimately, feminism is political and revolutionary. The revolutionary tinge of feminism has historically at times sanctioned the use of violence,3 which has not precluded bloodshed. Gender thinking adopts this feminist stance, with little or no modification or retouching and with few or no disclaimers, so that it is conventional gender thinking to posit men as the perpetrators of female-oppression and discrimination in a society which is viewed as male-dominated, a society in which this sad scenario is ingrained in the fabric of the prevailing political regimes, and where the social, religious, political and economic relations and structures are arranged so as to embrace and promote inequality between men and women. The result is that the gender paradigm centrally addresses the problems of equality and liberty rights, more or less zeroing on a variant of welfare-state ideology. Gender thinkers see no need to take caution in distinguishing gender-ism from feminism. Feminism is taken for granted as the appropriate seed and vehicle of gender. In contemporary literary circles, the philosophical presuppositions of gender thinking and practice are not put to a litmus test because testing gender implies testing feminism, which, in any case, has withstood many a crucial test as evidenced by its record of persistence and triumph especially in Europe, Great Britain, America, Canada, and Australia. This being the case, the cogency of popular gender-isms can only be tested, or critiqued, against cross-cultural objectivity. This paper argues that the lack of demarcation between gender and feminism leads to confusion of western feminism with gender. By grounding itself in feminist ideology, gender inherits most of the weaknesses and shortfalls of western feminism. Gender finds its impetus and modes of expression in western feminism. Therefore, Africa needs to rethink a specific gender, which is appropriate to the African situation in this new millennium. Conceptual analysis of gender and feminism becomes a problem for a start because there is a plethora of such offers on the contemporary intellectual and political scenes. Below, only extant literature is reviewed on the question of gender and feminism in Malawi and elsewhere in Africa. In the case of Malawi, only a few representative papers are considered. Any other contributions outside these papers are nonetheless worthwhile but very likely to be implicitly implicated and/or critiqued in one or more of the representative papers. The choice of the papers is free and deliberate: social philosophy, education, religion, and environment, i.e., unarguably, some of the hottest beds of gender debates and activism. At this juncture, it should be appreciated that African intellectuals have for some time tried to conceptualise gender and feminism in their own situation. As far as philosophical writing is concerned in Malawi, Hermes Chidammodzi was 116 Where is the Foundation of African Gender? the first to notice and then critique this confusion between gender and feminism in the mid-nineties. Feminism is a consecration of the moral and intellectual and hence universal values of equality purportedly denied of women by the dominance of males over women and the sacrosanct ideologies developed in society to legitimatise and perpetuate male-dominance. Thus conceived, feminism as a western reactionary and sacrosanct ideology is not African in origin and development so that the contemporary gender idiom is not a full theoretical framework and expression of the paradigm of African gender. This construing of gender invokes three important thoughts: (1) Gender does not mean and is not women. (2) Gender emerges in a specific situation depicting inegalitarianism embedded in social structures where one sex (male or female) is on the losing side. (3) Gender is a social construct of sets of behaviours, dispositions, ideas, beliefs, values, and attitudes of man and woman. (4) Gender has a strong materialistic tendency, for it grounds womens qualities or modes of action in womens daily li ves in a spatio-temporal-specific resource base presumably conditioned by a sexual division of labour. Insofar as it is situationally embedded in the societys power relations, gender is a reaction to constructed, i.e. real or imagined, male- dominance and female subordination. Gender thus conceived becomes an outgrowth from feminism. 28 The history of feminism is marked by two goals: equality and rights. Pioneer American feminists like Susan Anthony and Elizabeth Stanton had to battle it out with men for their right to vote as equals with men by dint of creation. In the days of old, liberalism provided the initial momentum toward the release of women from social bondage. To womens disappointment, many a revolution (like the American Revolution in 1776 and the French Revolution in 1789) and nationalism did not specifically rescue them from subjugation by men. Social inequalities continued to prevail in the new and independent states. Britain, America and the Continent of Europe clearly illustrate the sluggish pace of women liberation progress; Switzerland is the last European democracy to grant women suffrage in 1971. Despite the universality of female subordination and male domination, the African womans situation is bound to make her suspicious of western feminist discourse, which is mostly the experience of the twentieth century middle-class woman in an industrial sexual division of labour. For the western woman of that era it was only natural for her to cry for balance of power. The feminist fight was a fight for power. She made lots of gains; her emancipatory efforts bore her more equality with men, more rights, and easier access to resources, increase in opportunities or incentives, especially in the public sphere. The yardstick was always her more privileged male counterpart in the already privileged middle-class. In labour, this historicity of western feminism has led to the misconception that women were solely fighting for the soft or top jobs such as company executive, manager, prime minister, parliamentarian, physician, news editor, professor, pilot; surprisingly, the women never zealously fought for rough jobs such as undertaker, trench-digger, dockyard worker, heavy industrial worker, soldier,30 or night-guards. In its counter-critique, western feminism penetrated the rough jobs; eventually, the west saw more women engineers, women soldiers, and policewomen, thus virtually transforming western society into a unisex club. In the inter-war period, and much more vehemently after W.W.II, feminist thinkers zeroed on marriage as the champion of female subordination, and so they strongly argued that the demolition of the marriage institution would automatically lead to total women liberation. It was then a normal spectacle for a woman feminist to be decidedly non-married, although she could be attached and have children. Domesticity, child rearing, or whatever family life stands for, was looked upon as an impediment to women involvement and participation in public life, especially to public employment. The feminist propaganda so narrowly construed was reduced to a feminist fight for space and time in the public spheres of life especially the workplace, which was supposed as a predominantly male ter ritory. Two concepts dominated and still dominate the western conceptual framework. Western gender categories dismally fail to provide a gender conceptual framework for the African woman. For instance, the category of power cannot be used to conceptualise gender in Africa. To argue that a certain normative concept like power has a gender meaning is to claim that its social usage, at least in part, is not what it ought to be for reasons that have to do with gender To claim further that the usage does not command universality and objectivity, due to considerations of differing hermeneutics, i.e. interpretation as grounded in historicity and context is not to advocate gender scepticism. Although the empirical realities of women world-wide are different, this paper argues for the abandonment of gender exclusivity in the face of equally competing, urgent and appealing discourses of, say, ethnicity, racism, and class. In western traditional masculinist literature, power is viewed as repressive, poured from a leviathan above to his subjects below. The subjects are said to need the powerful leviathan because without him, they lack security, peace and well-being. In that western literary world, power is evidently and firmly associated with the male and masculinity, like virility, thus evoking the physicality of power. The correlate of man, woman, is therefore powerless. So when feminists wrote about power over our bodies and power of our lives they were using the very same concept of power, which pervaded traditional masculinist discourses on power. They affirmed the male conceptualisation of power rather than providing an alternative. It comes to us as no surprise that contemporary gender thinkers mimic the same masculinist notion of power in theorising gender. They are not wary of historical, social and political situation of knowledge-claims.32 Trapped in their own ideological cocoon, the western feminist women still think that western rationality is the only rationality; that western science is superior to other forms of rationality (if any), so that in regard to, say, family planning strategy, African women have to be helped by their more scientific counterparts from the west. African women, so claim the western women, need to be conscientised because it is feared that the African women have internalised the oppression or suffering and therefore are in desperate need of awareness campaigns by women animators from the west. The western feminists already fall prey to the yet another ideology of dominance they vehemently fight in their own backyard. Western feminists are totally oblivious to the reality of subject-object relations in research; the reality the helper and the helped are equals as they each experience the other from the viewpoint of their own situations and background knowledge and cultures. Each one (the helper and the helped) is the object of experience of the other so that objectivity is somehow tainted with subjectivity. 31 Oshadi Mangena argues likewise that if one is attentive to differences of ethnic origin, sexual orientation and class, the notion of gender disintegrates into fragments and cannot anymore be employed as a useful category. See K. Lennon and M. Witford, Knowing the difference: feminist perspectives in epistemology, London: Routeldge and Kegan Paul, 1994, pp. 275-282. 32 Annette Fitzsimons and Susan Strickland, Ibid. pp. 124; 265. 129 Nordic Journal of African Studies That the helper enjoys the exclusive right to the objectification of knowledge of the Other is an ingrained feature of western cross-cultural research, after all the helper has scientific skills or rational advantage over the helped, and this ontological arrangement make the helped redundant in the objectification of knowledge of the Other. The only danger though is that the consequent helpers knowledge is partial or fragmentary. The implication is that western feminists cannot emancipate the supposedly un-conscientised African women. 2.2.2 Woman Just as the concept of human, as narrowly presented in western literature, fails to command objectivity, the same literature fails to define woman. Woman is amenable to many different things; it is shrouded by ambiguities about its ontological status. It can evoke intrinsic characteristics, like caring and love, but this smacks of essentialism, which does not have many adherents in gender mainstreams. It can also evoke familial relationships as the non-male member. Both of these evocations partially conceive woman for they are normative since they are descriptive of a set of social facts or relations. As such, woman has no characterizable content and hence the challenge from postmodernist thought that woman is not descriptively adequate since, it is observed, woman is cross-culturally different. According to postmodernists, woman imposes unity over empirical reality.33 Postmodernism rejects the Enlightenment and the humanist presumptions of wonders of reason. The Enlightenment is rejected because of its veneration of masculine reason at the expense of sensuality; humanism is rejected because of its appeals to universal subjectivity or the human condition. Instead of seeking sameness postmodernism celebrates difference, partiality and multiplicity. It detests the search for coherence and hankering after the right (or Platonic or Kantian) solution. Postmodernist feminism equally opposes a hermeneutic parochialism of the present over the past or vice versaof searching for a single given goal, a single representation of reality. This new brand of feminism transcends the historicist recognition of the inevitable peculiarity and contextuality of human thought and practice and hence it advocates the continuity of dialogue between interlocutors, between text and interpreter, and between subject and object, with no advantage, marked goal or reality. This postmodernist re-orientation of feminism is a deliberate step away from essentialism and universalism: marginalisation and exclusion of the Other.34 It puts emphasis on particularity and multiplicity with due attention to difference, diversity and locale. But postmodernists also impose a tough demand on gender thinkers: why should the absence of facts for 33 See Alessandra Tanesini, Ibid. pp. 211-212. 34 See Susan Strickland, Ibid. pp. 266-7. 130 Where is the Foundation of African Gender? description of woman precludes the claim for the notion of woman, even where the possession of the notion may not warrant the description or analysis of the same? Even the points of convergence of feminism and postmodernism are not adequate grounds for their formulation of their purported common aims because their concept-lingualities are different. For example, their meanings of a concept like difference are different. In postmodernism, difference is acknowledged as typical of human experience worldwide; it is at the same time evaded as a threat to dominant perspectives of understanding or interpreting reality. It is consistent within postmodernism to demonstrate that woman was all along acknowledged as different but was included in universal humanity in name only by the dominating men. Feminists believe that the dominant ideology in world history is the root cause of the subjection of women by men. In Rousseaus language of right, the emancipation of western woman, albeit noticeably incomplete as we enter the third millennium, began as late as mid nineteenth century. However, feminism does not argue for the mere acknowledgement of difference; womens experience and perspectives should be noticed and heard along with dominant male experience and perspectives. Feminists complain bitterly that that the dominant perspectives are exclusive of women because they are ideological and hence false, since they are interested and distorted. Feminists are not content with their inclusion in or numerical addition to universal humanity as read in liberal or Marxist theories. Whereas postmodernism stops at the recognition of difference, feminism posits difference as a challenge, a paradigm of its critical dialogue with its situation, past, present and future. The concept woman is thrown into serious doubt because the notion of gender itself is slowly moulding due to its exclusiveness. What is being advocated instead of gender is a multiplicity of identities; for instance, if one widens ones horizon, one cannot fail to realise that differences of ethnic origin and class, sexual orientation (gays and lesbians), should be priority items on the liberation agenda. In spite of its usefulness in certain emancipatory projects, woman as a gender category stands to question now because it has dawned on contemporary gender thinkers that woman is essentially embedded in misogynist literature and that it is conducive to, and promotes, exclusionary practices. In short, a feminist survey of western languages shows that the meaning of some words, such as power, woman, human, reason, depicts gender bias against women; the words are not universal. The concept-lingual sources of western rightist discourses, like feminism, are liberalism or Marxism in their vicious attack of their respective archrivals, authoritarianism, and capitalism. Ironically, Karl Marx did not directly address the specific situation of women. He presumed that his communism would provide liberation for women just as it would for all the exploited masses and underprivileged minorities, male and female. 131 Nordic Journal of African Studies Friedrich Engels (Marxs lifetime friend, economic guardian, co-author, and Marxs editor) also narrowly attributed women subjugation to property relationships of the conjugal family only in capitalist societies; he remained mute on the reality of their enslavement in non-capitalist societies including communism and matriarchal societies. Marxism and capitalism cannot be plausible concept-lingual sources for the gender movement in the new millennium since both of them are ideologies of conflict: they pit man against man; the state exploits the proletariat-worker in the former, whereas the capitalist boss exploits the labourer in the latter. The importance of authentic concepts of gender needs to be stressed. More importantly, the crucial concept of power needs to be unambiguously stipulated in contemporary gender thought and practice. The feminism of the 1970s and 1980s correctly revealed that the concepts that are presented to us as universal and trans-historically valid actually embody male biases. For example, normative concepts such as reason, science and knowledge fail to pass the gender universalisation test, so to say. Even if these normative concepts embody ideals and express values, they nonetheless prescribe and evaluate behaviour in male-perspectives and so the values they express and ideals they embody are far from universal. Normative concepts function as descriptions of the endorsements of a specific society, and are faithful to past usage. Hence the complaint that feminism has taken the experience, i.e. marginalisation, of white middle class women to be representative of all women. The glaring weakness of these normative concepts is that they leave little or no room for disagreement or difference within a situation like a community. Conformity is the order of the day since they are treated as truth-conditions, instead of being emendations of current thought and action. These contemporary feminists fear that these values and ideals are codifications of norms regulating masculinity, where the womans normal is locus of the domesticity of the family, i.e. the private sphere of life. What current gender thought needs is the evolution of ongoing social practice. It should engage in evaluation of these concepts and influence the evolution of social practice in regard to concept-usage. 3. GENDER AND FEMINISM: THE AFRICAN SCENARIO The argument that African women cannot identify with doctrinaire western feminism comes with cogent force because the knowledge and experience of African women have been ignored or marginalised by a feminism that reflects only the perspectives of white western middle-class women; that it indulges in false universalism and lacks critical awareness of its situation are simple inferences drawn from the argument. Its conception of woman remains problematic and therefore vacuous because its woman is intended to deny self-evident differences between woman and woman in situation and experience, 132 Where is the Foundation of African Gender? privilege and power. It is apologetic of the peculiarities of woman since it misconceives them as functional and not as formal differences (from man). As a result, its content and purpose are not based on actual commonalties between women but on the experience and interests of some women who have the position and ability to impose upon other women their own idiosyncrasies, terms and definitions, i.e. what they mean for themselves and others. For instance, when western feminism seeks to balance or reverse the social scales, it employs conceptual polarities such as nature-culture, strong-weak, reason-intuition, public-private, male-female-neuter sexual division of labour. To explain the position of women, it says women are closer to nature; they are more intuitive; they are more private or secretive, etc, not knowing that it simply endorses masculinist (and hence exploitable) viewpoints about woman. Indeed feminism lacks a critical awareness of its situation. Feminism is not in dialogue with its context, past and present, and therefore cannot be used to forge emendations to any society, which cries for transformation of social relations. Feminism is engaged in a monologue, which mistakes its own ventriloquism for effectiveness since it is falsely generalising and insufficiently attentive to historical and cultural diversity. Another unwelcome feature of western feminism is that, although it borrows critical tools from other emancipatory theories like Reformation, liberalism and Marxism, it does not put itself forward to challenging other forms of subordination like slavery, colonialism, racism, and their accompanying prejudices and complexes, which affect women as well. Its exclusiveness to the western middle-class womans experience undermines its universality and objectivity, and therefore puts to serious doubt its relevance to the African woman of the same era.35 Worse still, its silence could easily be interpreted as its assent to slavery, colonialism and racism, experiences that western middle-class men caused on both African women and men. Though not unique, the situation of the African feminist and that of the Western feminist would not replicate. An African woman generally finds herself in a social setting where power might not be the paradigm of interpersonal life. Jobs are just as hard to get for a female as they are for her male counterpart. In a marital situation, for example, she may dispense with the battle of balancing it out with her allegedly dominant male partner in terms of sexual division of labour, involving child-care and domestic chores due to the scenario of dependency, a creation of the extended family. Dependants fill in as auxiliary or surrogate mothers or fathers and as unofficial maids or cooks, etc. Even if dependants were not around, hiring domestic staff would be more affordable in her society than it would be in the west. As is well known, in the west, it is almost impossible to hire domestic staff. 3.1 TRADITION VERSUS MODERNITY: SOCIO-POLITICS IN CONTEMPORARY AFRICA Transformation is a rare occurrence in Africa. Perhaps devolution, rather than evolution or revolution, is the modus operandi for social transformation in Africa. The interface of the past and the present may not be conducive to the development of radical gender even among urban or elite women. Past attitudes and values tend to phase out far too slowly under the weight of new attitudes and values. The usual conceptualisation of woman both among the rural and urban folk might have more conservative undertones than radical gender theorists wish. In Malawi, for instance, even after the legal repeal of the indecent dress code, the woman in trousers or mini-skirt risks categorisation as a champion or promoter of moral turpitude. The continuing scenario of stripping off mini-skirted city women by vendors is testimonial enough of these slow-dying conservative undertones even in the urban or modernised areas of Malawi. Radical gender might be undaunted by this current negative public recepti on of trousers and mini-skirts in Malawi, dismissing it as a primary reaction of a bunch of male savages. Time alone will heal this negative attitude; gender activists console themselves. At this stage though, these attitudes should be of great concern because it is not unusual for radical gender women lobbyists to experience opposition and disapproval from fellow women. Another reality that might prevent replication of western gender in Africa is the social history of Africa. It is difficult to identify the dominant ideology for African societies outside Africas recent experience of slave trade, colonialism, and nationalism. However, anthropology and archaeology, which pretend to dig deeper into Africas past, and re-construct the Antique Africa antedating the three recent experiences of Africa, reveal to us that there are matrilineal and patrilineal societies in Africa. In the patrilineal societies, for example, Ngoni, Tumbuka, Sena, Ngonde in Malawi, males are dominant. However, broadly speaking, in matrilineal societies women are more powerful than men, an issue that is accentuated by the husbands settling in their wives villages upon marriage. One would expect that in a setting where land is the most valuable property, due to reliance on agriculture, a landowner would command a lot of power and influence. Husbands, as co-opted landowners, will in principle and practice have less power and influence than their wives. Therefore, if the western genders power paradigm is anything to go by, the matrilineal society depicts a reversal of the western gender model. In Malawi, Chewa, Yao, Manganja and Lomwe societies are largely matrilineal in principle. The Tonga of the northern shore of Lake Malawi can be included in gender-wise peculiar ethnic groups although the Tonga are bi-lineal. In these ethnic groups, one must distinguish the formal from informal power structures and modes of social organisation; in the formal power setting, that is the traditional chieftaincy, chiefs hold only symbolic power since what they execute in public is largely the consensus, or the communis sensus, of the ruling 134 Where is the Foundation of African Gender? Unlike feminist scholarship in the West, feminist theory and scholarship in Africa have formed neither a neatly delineated field, nor one firmly rooted in theoretically-inflected politics. With the consolidation of Western feminisms between 1960 and the early 1980s and the growth of the so-called second wave, clear political and intellectual traditions were formed around radical, liberal and Marxist/socialist feminisms. Subsequent feminisms drew on or deviated from these positions to engage increasingly with theories and politics emerging in the nineties. African theories and womens movements have taken very different paths. In certain ways, African theories and womens movements have been closely linked to politics, although this politic

Chapter 2 Principles of Management

Fundamentals of Social Responsibility: Corporate Social Responsibility: The managerial obligation to take action that protects and improves both the welfare of society as a whole and the interests of the organization. Davis Model of Corporate Social Responsibility: Keith Davis: A generally accepted model of corporate social responsibility. List of 5 propositions that describe why and how business should adhere to obligation to take action that protects and improves the welfare of society as well as of the organization.Davis model: Proposition 1: Social responsibility arises from social power: Business has power over society and can influence minority and environmental pollution issues. Proposition 2: Business should operate a 2 way system: Inputs from society and open disclosure to the public. Proposition 3: Social costs and benefits shall be considered prior to proceeding: Profits are not the only factors involved.Proposition 4: Social costs shall be passed on to the consumer: Busin ess can bot be expected to foot the bill for social activities; the cost must be passed along to the consumer as well. Proposition 5: Business has a responsibility for some social problems outside their normal area of operation: Business should help solve social problems, if they can. Performance of Social Responsibility Activities by Business: Perform all legally required social responsibility activities. Consider voluntarily performing social responsibility activities beyond those legally required.Inform all relevant individuals of the extent to which the organization will become involved in performing social responsibility activities. Performing Required Social Responsibility Activities: Federal Legislation requires that business perform certain social responsibility activities. Environmental Protection Agency(EPA): Enforces socially responsible environmental standards. Equal pay act of 1963: Equal pay for equal work. Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972: Highway Safety Act o f 1978 Clean Air/ Act Amendment of 1990.Voluntarily Performing Social Responsibility Activities: Assessing the positive and negative outcomes of performing social responsibility activities over both the short and long term, and the performing only those activities that maximize management system success while making a desirable contribution to the welfare of society. Social Responsiveness: The degree of effectiveness and efficiency an organization displays in pursuing its social responsibilities. Determining Whether a Social Responsibility Exists: Determine which specific social obligation are implied by specific business situations.Ex: tobacco execs need to consider reducing harm to public while increasing revenues. Social Responsiveness and Decision Making: Socially responsible organizations are both effective and efficient in meeting its social responsibilities without wasting organizational resources in the process. Approaches to meeting Social Responsibilities: Two types of pro posed approaches: Lipson S. Prakash Sethi Lipson's Approach: Incorporate social goals into the annual planning process. Seeks comparative industry norms of social programs.Presents reports to all stakeholders on social responsibility progress. Experiments with different approaches for measuring social performance. Attempts to measure the cost of social programs as well as the return on social program investments. S Prakash Sethi's Approach: Social obligation approach: Business has economic purpose and social responsibility is covered by legislature. Social responsibility approach: Business has both economic and societal goals. Social responsiveness approach: Business has both economic and societal goals but anticipates future impact of business practices.Planning Social Responsibility Activities: Determining how the organization will achieve its social responsibility objectives. Converting Organizational Policies on Social Responsibility into Action: Phase 1: Recognition, by top man agement, that the organization has some social obligation. Phase 2: Technical staff give input to top management for implementation. Phase 3: Complete employee acceptance of strategy and responsibility for implementation. Controlling Social Responsibility Activities:Managers assess or measure what is occurring in the organization and, if necessary, change these occurrences in some way to make them conform to plans. Areas of Measurement: Economic function area: Measure of economic contribution the organization is making to society such as fair wages, worker, safety, etc.. Quality of life area: Whether the organization is upholding or improving the general quality of life such as producing high quality items, preserving the natural environment, etc.. Social investment area: Assisting community organizations to solve social problemes such as education, charities, etc..Problem solving area: Dealing with social problems such as long-rang community problems. Social Audit: The process of m easuring the present social responsibility activities of an organization to assess its performance in this area. How society can help business meet social obligations: Set rules that are clear and consistent: Keep the rules technically feasible. Make sure the rules are economically feasible. Make the rules prospective, not retro-active. Make the rules goal setting, not procedure prescribing. Definition of Ethics:The capacity to reflect on values in the corporate decision-making process, to determining how these values and decisions affect various stake holder groups, and to establish how mangers can use these observations in day to day company management.. Why Ethics is a vital part of management practices: Productivity: If employees are treated ethically they will be loyal and productive. Stakeholder Relations: A positive public image is good for business. Government Regulation: If organization behave ethically, there is less pressure on regulation and corporate over-sight.Code of ethics: A formal statement that acts as a guide for the ethics of how people within a particular organization should act and make decisions. Creating an ethical workplace: The golden rule: Do unto others†¦ The Utilitarian principles: Greatest good for greatest number. Kant's categorical imperative: Universal rule of behavior; fairness. The professional ethics: Assume you are being judged by peers. The T. V. Test: Would you be comfortable saying it in front of national T. V.? The legal test: Is it legal? The four way test: Is it rightful?Is it fair? Will it build good will? Will it be beneficial. Sarbanes-Oxley Reform Standards Passed in 2002 to prevent future deception in publically owned companies. Focuses on promoting ethical conduct. Areas covered include maintaining GAAP, evaluating executive compensation, monitoring fundamental business strategies, understanding and mitigating major risk, and ensuring company structure and process that enhance integrity and reputation. Sup ports whistle-blowing to discourage deceptive management practices. Consequences: Significant fines and jail time.

How I Made Money From My Online Casino Experience Essay

Blog 11 - How I made money from my online casino experience For most, gambling is somewhat of older person’s thing to do, but for me matters were a touch different. Being in the UK I was able to start gambling the moment I turned 18 and that is exactly what I did. I was pretty much hooked from the get go too, as I tried my hand at sports betting to start with. When I finally got the gambling ball rolling, it was sports betting that I invested my time into, as I saw my cash as â€Å"throwaway funds† at the time. Largely as sports betting is really hit or miss most of the time, I enjoyed wagering on boxing, golf, MMA, football, and more, but it just wasn’t delivering the returns I was hoping for. Following that, I ventured out into the realm casino gaming and everything changed. Shortly after being bit by the gambling bug I started going out to land based casinos, trying my hand at blackjack at every available opportunity. Deep down I think I’d always had a passion for card games, as I was now able to transport this interest into a real money making venture. Being honest, I found things tough to get started, as the dealers appeared to have my number at every turn. But when I started to play online things started to change, as I found momentum coming my way in spades. What gave me a leg up in the online domain and really allowed me to press on were the bonuses that I was provided with. The very first casino online bonus I got my hands on was a no deposit casino offer, when IShow MoreRelatedOnline Gaming And Its Effect On The World Of Online Casino Gaming1731 Words   |  7 Pages Blog 13 – How Guts has become one of the biggest online casinos in the world If you want to be a true major player within the world of online casino gaming you need to know how to deliver a consistent product offering. Sadly, while this seems simple enough on paper, so many online casinos fall short in such regard. 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Getting started in the world of online casino gaming is going to take courage and plenty of patience. The landscape is by no means the same as it was 15 years ago, as the increased level of choice has actually made it somewhat intimidating to new players. All the games, all the rules, and most importantly all the bonuses can work to putRead MoreArticle 39 : The Gamblers Guide For Finding The Best Online Casino2011 Words   |  9 Pagesfinding the best online casino It is estimated that all that is required to launch an online casino is a website and  £40,000 in start-up funds. While this will be a big figure to most, from a nationally accessible company standpoint it is actually quite a poultry figure. This low-end cost goes a long way in explaining why there are over 3,000 active online casinos in operation. Gamblers these days have plenty of choice when it comes to deciding where to gamble away their money. 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Citizenship Debate - 939 Words

Citizenship Debate Part II Purpose and Audience 2. I do not think Chavez expected her audience to agree with her position as it was posted in the politically conservative section of the Wall Street Journal. Before I read the political background section of Linda Chavez, I had thought the author to be liberal. But after reading the excerpt I the beginning of the publication, I noticed that she was a Hispanic Conservative. I could tell that Linda Chavez did not expect her audience to agree with her when she stated that â€Å"Repealing birthright citizenship is a terrible idea.† Most conservatives wish to dismiss birthright citizenship, but in this passage she explains the significance of it, and what it would do to the future of the nation.†¦show more content†¦Will hopes to correct the first sentence of the fourteenth amendment in the U.S Constitution to prevent misinterpretation of the fourteenth amendment. 3. Will’s audience in this essay is congress and the people of America. As he pushes for reform, he points out many suggestions towards the ultimate goal of altering the first sentence in the fourteenth amendment. Graglia’s points are directed towards the people questioning the wording fourteenth amendment. These authors both breakdown the true meaning behind some of the words and phrases in the fourteenth amendment through examples from people in the 19th century, such as the Indians. 6. I believe Will he ends this way to show help the audience better understand the urgency of the situation in California with illegal immigrants, and childbirth. I don’t believe this strategy is effective because I feel it is misplaced. When you read an essay it typically starts with a fact/hook to get the reader’s attention. What I think he should have done was end in a rhetorical question leaving the audience guessing if they can stand up to reform the fourteenth amendment. Style and Structure pg. 602-603 3. Will’s opinion toward those who disagree with his argument is unknown, to me. Most of his essay is not even from his own opinion. It is very hard to tell what his opinion is towards those who disagree because his thoughts and feelings aren’t prevalentShow MoreRelatedCitizenship Is A Large Debate Today Essay733 Words   |  3 Pages Sean Allin Professor Jefferson CULF 1320 3/31/16 Citizenship is a large debate today. Even presidents in the upcoming debate key on citizenship. But today is not the only time in our history that citizenship has been talked about. Whether it be to acknowledge African Americans as citizens or only 3/5ths of a person, citizenship has been a debatable point for many years. The debate of citizenship doesn’t just stop at race. Women, to an extent, have not always been treated as citizens as well. TheRead MoreRhetorical Citizenship1611 Words   |  7 PagesWhat is Rhetorical Citizenship? 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People can root for whichever side they want without committingRead MoreReview and Discussion of the Article The Future of Corporate Social Responsibility by Duane Windsor728 Words   |  3 Pages225-256. Duane Windsor, via the aforementioned article regarding the future of social responsibility, purports â€Å"there are three emerging alternatives or competitors to responsibility: (1) an economic conception of responsibility; (2) global corporate citizenship; and (3) stakeholder management practices (pg. 225).† Windsor first provides a historical reflection of social responsibility beginning in the Progressive Era through the twentieth century and concludes with predictions for the future of corporateRead MoreA State, Political Economy And Governance2250 Words   |  9 Pages 6104: STATE, POLITICAL ECONOMY AND GOVERNANCE Assignment Encountering state and citizenship in daily life By Rohit Singh M.A. Previous socw 10965 WHAT IS STATE The word nation is derived from the Latin word ‘stare’(to endure) and more specifically from â€Å"status†(a standing or condition). But this is a very old concept so, its relation in present context need to be answered. Max Weber s,[7][8][9][10][11] which describes the state as a compulsory political organization with a centralizedRead MoreGood Journalism and Citizenship1505 Words   |  7 PagesJustice Douglas wrote in New York Times Co. v. United States that â€Å"[o]pen debate and discussion of public issues are vital to our national health. On public questions there should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open debate. Although debate and discussion are vital to the Republic, maybe society should rethink about how â€Å"uninhibited, robust, and wide-open† those debates really are. Society today tends to think of debates as two opposing ideas battling each other out in order to ascertain whichRead MoreAnalysis Of The Movie 12 Angry Man Essay1192 Wor ds   |  5 PagesDuring the the deliberation, every jury voted guilty except one: Juror Eight was only person who voted not guilty. Juror Eight came into the room with uncertainty. Then uncertainty sparked much debate about a verdict in the room . Overall Juror Eight and Juror Nine illustrate key traits of good citizenship while enforcing the equality to pursue justice: uncertainty, curiosity, and reasoning. The Bill of Rights was first introduced to United States of America after the American Revolution. The BillRead MoreEssay about Corruption in Politics2511 Words   |  11 Pagesobservation that the debate on corporate citizenship has only paid limited attention to the actual notion of citizenship. The authors first discuss the nature and role of metaphors for business and of the contestable nature of the political concept of citizenship, then asking if corporations can be considered citizens in terms of (a) legal and political status or as (b) participants in civic processes. The authors ultimately refute the notion of corporations having citizenship by virtue of legalRead MoreAristotle And Plato : Definition Of A Good Citizen1965 Words   |  8 PagesPlato had two different conceptions of the state, justice, and politics. They both lived in Greece but had different points of views on the natural of all citizens and how citizens were capable of being perfect in the state. Surpri singly, the same debates that guided Plato and Aristotle’s work remain with us today. What is a good citizen? What makes a good man? Justice? Society? Moreover, the question is why they had different views on the same perspective that has helped shaped many governmental rulesRead MoreEvery citizen can get involved in politics.800 Words   |  4 Pageslocal politicians would be anxious to have a crew of young volunteers to help with some simple tasks and one can learn more about the campaigns as they serve. The American Legion has a several programs whose purpose is to promote well-informed citizenship. Every year about twenty thousand high school boys and girls from the all around the United States take part in the Boys State and Girls State. They run mock state governments in almost every state in the nation. Then representatives from each state

An Sociological And Psychological Aspects Of The...

Describe communication, evaluate the stages of the communication process and assess the key aspects of each process. Evaluate the importance of successful communication and explain how interference can affect communication by using one of the communication models by looking at the impact communication had on the receiver, explaining factors like Source, Nature, Level, Time, Frequency, Use, Form and Type. Critically evaluate the sociological and psychological aspects of modern communication methods. Describe advantages and disadvantages of the modern communication methods and how the introduction of conferencing, computer, teleworking and other new technologies have affected society both sociologically and psychologically Evaluate the key†¦show more content†¦Thirdly there will be a critical evaluation of the sociological and psychological aspects of modern communication, looking at how the introduction of new communication technology has altered society. The Shannon-Weaver communication model represents communication between a sender and receiver, it was the first model for communication theorised. It is composed of the following stages: sender, encoding, channel, decoding, receiver, and feedback. There is an additional factor that can distort communication, which is noise. In 1948, when Shannon and Weaver s The Mathematical Theory of Communication was published, noise represented interference on a telephone line. Today however, noise is a metaphor for any form of interruption during the communication process. A sender wanting to send a message must first encode it in a meaningful form for the receiver. Encoding is the translation of an idea or concept into a message, it is one of the key stages in the communication process. The sender must be cognisant of the receiver s knowledge and use symbols understandable to the receiver. These symbols may be verbal or non-verbal, examples of which are words and gestures. Improper encoding is a barrier to communication as it will inhibit the decoding of the message and distort the information. An example of poor encoding would be an advertisement using the same message throughout multiple countries in which some words

Alum Synthesis Free Essays

Alum Synthesis: The Chemical Process of Recycling Aluminum Introduction By recycling aluminum cans, the costs and energy savings are dramatically more resourceful and efficient than producing aluminum from what it is naturally found in, bauxite ore. The process of recycling aluminum to produce potassium aluminum sulfate, a common alum, will be done through a serious of chemical reactions. Through this reaction, percent yield will be determined. We will write a custom essay sample on Alum Synthesis or any similar topic only for you Order Now Materials and Methods The mass of a 250 mL beaker is measured, and . 9 to 1. 2 grams of aluminum can pieces are added to the beaker. The mass of the beaker and aluminum pieces is recorded. These two masses are then used to determine the initial mass of aluminum being reacted in this experiment. 50 mL of 1. 4 M KOH is then added to the beaker and placed upon a hot plate under a fume hood to fumigate any escaping gases during the reaction, which should take no longer than 30 minutes. The heat from the hot plate speeds the reaction, and the reaction mixture must be kept no lower than 25 mL by adding distilled water. An aspirator is assembled by using a suction flask, clamp, ring stand, rubber tubing, funnel, and filter paper to filter the reaction mixture once the first reaction is complete. Feature Article –  Free-Radical Bromination The filter paper is then wetted, the vacuum source is turned on, and the mixture is poured through the filter, using 5 mL of distilled water to rinse the beaker. The filter will catch all the dark filtrate from the aluminum can pieces, and the suction flask will contain a clear (transparent) solution. The solution is then transferred to a clean 250 mL beaker, and the suction flask is rinsed with 10 mL distilled water to insure all the remaining solution is transferred to the clean beaker. The beaker is placed in an ice bath to cool the solution, filling the beaker three fourths full with ice and cold water. 0 mL of 6. 0 M sulfuric acid is measured and slowly added to the mixture, using a stirring rod to mix. Heat the mixture on a hot plate if any solids begin to develop in the mixture. Using a 1 L plastic beaker, prepare another ice bath and place the beaker containing the reaction mixture in the ice bath. Once in the ice bath, the alum crystals forming in the mixture will begin to p recipitate. To help the process of crystal formation, use the stir rod to scrape the sides of the beaker and form an alum seed crystal. Reassemble a clean vacuum filter, and filter the crystals onto the filter paper. Get as much of the precipitated crystals out of the beaker and then rinse the beaker twice with 10 mL of 50% ethanol solution to transfer all the crystals to the beaker. Once the alum crystals have dried, measure the mass of a clean 250 mL beaker and then measure the mass of the beaker containing the alum crystals. Results and Discussion The first reaction to begin the alum synthesis process is when aluminum and potassium hydroxide are combined and water and heat are added during the reaction. The result is an ion called â€Å"aluminate† with an excess of hydrogen gas. This type of reaction is a redox (reduction-oxidation) reaction, where the aluminum metal is oxidized to aluminum with an oxidation number of +3 and the hydrogen in potassium hydroxide or in water is reduced from an oxidation number of +1 to zero in hydrogen gas. The balanced chemical equation for this reaction is: 2Als+ 2KOHaq+ 6H2Oliq2KAlOH4aq+ 3 H2g During this reaction, the colorless mixture potassium hydroxide and aluminum pieces turned a dark, ashy gray as heat was applied and the aluminum can pieces dissolved. The heat sped the reaction, and within thirty minutes all the aluminum pieces were dissolved, leaving behind aluminate. In the second reaction, the filtered aluminate solution is mixed with sulfuric acid once the solution has cooled. After stirring for several minutes, crystals began to form. The crystalizing liquid started thickening and appeared to be white. The product of this reaction is aluminum hydroxide, potassium sulfate, and water. The fully balanced chemical equation is: 2 KAl(OH)4(aq) + H2SO4(aq) 2Al(OH)3(s) + 2 H2O(liq) + K2SO4(aq) This equation represents a metathesis (precipitation) reaction where all the elements and groups recombine and a precipitate, aluminum hydroxide, is formed. As more sulfuric was added, the precipitate began to dissolve, thus causing the third reaction. The solution contains aluminum, potassium, and sulfate ions now. The balanced chemical equation is: 2 Al(OH)3(s) + 3 H2SO4(aq) Al2(SO4)3(aq) + 6 H2O(liq) This type of reaction is a metathesis (acid-base) reaction where, once again, the elements and groups recombine themselves. The product of this reaction is aluminum sulfate and water. The solution continued to cool and crystals began to form. The last reaction resulted in a hydrated potassium aluminum sulfate, and crystals of this compound formed slowly. Seed crystals† developed and more alum deposited causing the crystals to expand. The balanced chemical reaction is: Al2(SO4)3(aq) + K2SO4(aq) + 24 H2O(liq) 2 KAl(SO4)2†¢12 H2O(s) This would be considered a combination reaction because the three reactants combined to form one product, hydrated potassium aluminum sulfate. The overall balanced chemical reaction for this experiment is: 2Al(s)+2KOHaq+4H2SO4(aq)+22H2O(liq) 2 KAl(SO4)2†¢12H2O(s) + 3 H2(g) At the start of the experiment, 1. 01 grams of aluminum can pieces were used. After forgoing several reactions, 4. 19 grams of alum were recovered. Theoretically, 17. 76 grams of alum should have been recovered. This gives a percent yield of 24. 0%. Human error was definitely the main factor as to why the percent yield is not anywhere close to 100%. My lab partner and I did have a misunderstanding with one of the steps in the instructions; instead of placing the beaker in an ice bath during reaction three, we thought the directions said to put ice directly into the reaction mixture. This may have caused some error in the cooling process of the mixture, and may have not enabled all the crystals to form properly. We may have also not waited long enough for all the crystals to form. Also, some of the crystals may have gotten lost while being transferred from the beaker, to the aspirator, and then to another beaker to be measured. These factors are reasonable as to why the actual yield of alum that resulted in the experiment were not accurate with the theoretical yield of alum. Conclusion Through a series of reactions, it is understood that aluminum can be chemically reacted to result in the synthesis of alum. The success of the experiment proves the reasoning of the process of recycling aluminum. How to cite Alum Synthesis, Essay examples

Evidence, First Movement Words and Things Essay Example For Students

Evidence, First Movement: Words and Things Essay The perfect photoplay leaves no doubts, offers no explanations, starts nothing it cannot fi nish. — Henry Albert Phillips, The Photodrama (1914) The technical structure of the archiving archive also determines the structure of the archivable content even in its very coming into existence and in its relationship to the future. The archivization produces as much as it rec ords the event. — Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever (1998) In the beginning there is a word. That word is â€Å"Hà ¤xan.† Benjamin Christensen’s biblical echo is intentional. From the fi rst frame of Hà ¤xan, Christensen is seeking to dismantle the conventional cinematic image. This is an image of a word. In light of what is to follow, the formal conventions of the silent fi lm by defi nition destabilize any easy relation to the object â€Å"Hà ¤xan†; it exists multiply. Already reaching into his source material, Christensen borrows Italian inquisitor Zacharia Visconti’s categories of language to show us how the word relates to meaning, expressed in the distance between the thing and the thing signifi ed. Visconti designated this â€Å"the language of the voice,† the language proper to humans. Yet, in a silent fi lm there is no obvious voice. Certainly, a printed word occupies the domain of language for Visconti, but for this to be formally consistent the word requires the syntax that would allow the reader to insert her inner voice, the memory of a voice, in order to make this so. â€Å"Hà ¤xan† appears to lack this syntactic force at this opening instant to be properly a statement. â€Å"Hà ¤xan†Ã¢â‚¬â€ the witch— appears to be an impossible object. In Visconti’s schema, this word also appears to speak â€Å"the language of the mind.† This is a language the inquisitor reserves for angels, a language resulting in nonstatements. From the very beginning, there is no claim made about the witch—no question is asked. The witch is simply announced. In an instant, â€Å"Hà ¤xan†Ã¢â‚¬â€ the witch—is there and this is all. â€Å"Hà ¤xan† is si mul ta neously a word, an image, and a thing. Benjamin Christensen mak es every effort to craft a witch that is real to us. It is a grand ambition. Playing with the ontological fl uidity of a cinematic image, the director expresses himself through an image- world that seems entirely of his own creation. â€Å"Hà ¤xan† in the opening moment of the fi lm is a monad, containing the totality of this world in its most basic ele ment. Not just a word, the Word. Visconti reserved this language, â€Å"the language of things† to God alone; yet for scientists and fi lmmakers, it is the language of things that holds the greatest appeal. To the World a Witch Christensen’s fi rst task is to open the world of the witch to the fi lm’s audience. He does this by immediately following the word with a preposition, albeit still denying us the calming language of voice that is proper to us. This preposition, denoting both agency and possession, comes in the form of a face. His face. The commanding, scowling face of the director stares out at the camera. Christensen’s fi lm will make full use of this art of metoposcopy. Dating back to Girolamo Cardano and the Re nais sance, metoposcopy defi ned the operation of reason as the weaving together of images in the mind. In turn, the expression of reasoning was to be found on the face (a protocinematic theory of the relation between image and thought if ever there was one).2 Christensen’s face is one of many revealed; these faces—of the old woman, of the ecstatic nun, of the novice sorceress— will be offered as primary evidence of the power of the witch and the l ogic of demonological thinking. It is telling that Christensen’s face is the fi rst shown, not in order to place his seal of authorship, but as a way to assert to his audience that it is his argument that resides in the foreground. This is no ordinary fi lm. It is not merely entertainment. Hà ¤xan is a thesis.After this dramatic beginning, Christensen provides some immediate reprieve through a scarcely noticeable addendum to the opening title card: â€Å"A pre sen ta tion from a cultural and historical point of view in seven chapters of moving pictures.† Claiming a reassuring authority, Christensen now signals that he intends to enlighten us in the manner of a professor giving a lecture. The technology of the motion picture is not simply a medium here; in the ser vice of Christensen’s thesis, it is a precise, deliberate method. The title cards that follow identify the director, the cinematographer, and turn the audience’s attention toward the list of sou rces for the fi lm distributed as part of the original program (which has been reproduced in the back matter of this volume). Like any respectable scholar, Christensen indexes himself through his sources. Yet his mode of citation is unambiguously rooted in the formal elements of cinema and the image rather than texts, and is ultimately put to different uses from that of the historian or human scientist; this difference will constitute the focus of our own analy sis in this chapter, as we move through his textual materials and the production of his images shot by shot. In short, Christensen makes sure the audience knows that it took three years to research and produce his visual thesis. As with the word and the face, this is stated abruptly for the benefi t of context. More title cards follow, fi lled with an authoritarian, fi rst- person tenor. Lacking any established provenance for a voice- of- God tone that would only later become standard in the Griersonian documentary mode of the 1930s, Christensen takes it upon himself to invent this voice. The common suggestion that Luis Buà ±uel fi rst generated thi s instrumentally impersonal tenor in Land without Bread (Tierra Sin Pan, 1933) is off by a full de cade, ignoring the fact that silent fi lms were anything but silent.3 The director begins in this voice by establishing the witch as a chapter within a much longer constellation of practices, discourses, traditions, and institutions. This is empirically correct, as scholars from Gaston Maspero to Stuart Clark have emphasized in their own studies of the witch.4 Among many others, Richard Kieckhefer has demonstrated how the long history of practical natu ral magic was enfolded into the specifi city of Eu ro pean witchcraft in the late Middle Ages.5 These fi ndings have only taken root in the historical debates on witchcraft since the 1970s, which Christensen anticipates by some fi fty years. It is at this point in Hà ¤xan that Christensen gives us an image of the witch. It is a well- known woodcut that fi rst appeared in Ulrich Molitor’s Von den Unholden oder Hexen (1489), at the dawn of the witch hysteria in Eu rope, depicting two women feeding a boiling cauldron. Many of the ste reo typical visual characteristics of the witch are not yet established: the age of the women is diffi cult to determine and they are far from the withered old crones we see later in Albrecht Dà ¼rer and Hans Baldung Grien.6 Yet they are unmistakably witches. Their boiling brew evaporates into the air, appearing to cause a storm. Drawing on a trope that wo uld instantly signify â€Å"the witch† from Shakespeare’s Macbeth to the pre sent, Christensen introduces the viewer to the subjects of his fi lm via a classic example of the malefi cium that people greatly feared from witches in the early modern period. Christensen carefully limits what we can see of this image, narrowing the visible edges of the shot into a severe vertical line bisecting the screen. The shot is abrupt, barely onscreen for a few seconds before the intertitles return. Our focus is taken to the statement that primitive men â€Å"always† confront the inexplicable with tales of sorcery and evil spirits. This is obvious hyperbole, but not entirely out of step with the evolving scientifi c explanations of the time regarding the origins of human society. Echoing E. B. Tylor’s argument that civilization always begins with the imaginative, superstitious responses of humans to a world they do not yet understand, Christensen then shifts to consider the power of belief.7 Hà ¤xan at this stage appears to be aspiring to Max Mà ¼ller’s dream of presenting an objective, empirical â€Å"science of religion.† 8 Interestingly, the next image takes us to â€Å"imaginary creatures† thought to cause disease and pestilence in ancient Persia. A row of six human– animal hybrids confronts the viewer. Christensen immediately divulges his sources for this claim, citing Rawlinson9 and Maspero10 as authorities that trace the Eu ro p ean belief in witches back to antiquity. Several shots of monstrous hybrid demons, drawn from Maspero, follow. Christensen is operating in a fi rmly rationalist mode here, linking these monsters to â€Å"naà ¯ve notions about the mystery of the universe† held by ancient people. A re- creation of Egyptian astrological notions of the nature of the world immediately follows. This is the fi rst explicit set to appear in Hà ¤xan, depicting (according to Maspero’s information, the intertitle asserts) a world of high mountains, stars dangling from ropes, and a sky supported by strong pillars. A nameless assistant out of frame helpfully draws the viewer’s attention to the im por tant details. As with any Universalist approach, Christensen traverses time quickly in the pre sen ta tion of his thesis. No sooner have we glimpsed this scale model of the Egyptian cosmos than we are catapulted into the folklore of early modern Eu rope. Perhaps the singular feature of the witch craze in Eu rope is bluntly stated when Christensen informs us that the generalized evil spirits of ancient times are transformed into dev ils by the fourteenth century. Cutting from one to another, four iconic images of dev ils par tic u lar to the period fl ash across the screen, the fi lm stock tinted an ominous, rusty red to heighten the effect. These dev ils lived at the earth’s core, Christensen tells us, with the earth believed to be a stationary sphere in space surrounded by layers of air and fi re. Beyond the fi re lay moving celestial bodies, ceaselessly rotating around the earth with the fi xed stars far above and, â€Å"in the tenth crystal sphere,† sits the Almighty and His angel s, keeping the whole celestial system in motion. Intercut title cards offer explanation before Christensen helpfully reveals a working model of this cosmology, in this case drawn from Hartmann Schedel’s Liber Chronicarum,11 slowly pulling back the iris to reveal the medieval universe that he is has described. This moving repre sen ta tion of a terra- centered universe resembles the elaborate wonders found in Baroque wunderkammer meticulously assembled by the German elite at the time. It is an effective use of parallel editing to bring this lecture, delivered in text, to life in a visual manner. Albrecht Durer Quotes EssayWhen documentary was not yet documentary (but then fi ction wasn’t fi ction yet either), when the medium was mute and each fi lm ran only a minute or two, moving pictures hardly amounted to more than a miscellany of visual tidbits, which made no demands on literacy and thus spread easily and rapidly far and wide. The world on the screen exerted a magical attraction but remained anecdotal and predominantly iconic. In terms of public discourse, it was practically inarticulate, other than to reinforce already ste reo typical images or create some new ones; in short, intensely fascinating but apparently ill- adapted to serving intelligent purposes. It is not as though scientists, journalists, and others devoted to making nature speak did not give fi lmmaking a try. In the waning years of the nineteenth century, anthropologists such as Alfred Cort Haddon, Walter Baldwin Spencer, and Frank Gillen were already using the new technology to fashion, with mixed success, proto- ethnographic fi lms. Charles Urban founded the Unseen World series in 1903, merging the technologies of the microscope and the cinematograph to attempt to unlock the secrets of nature at its most minuscule level. Films such as Attack on a China Mission Station (1900), Hunting Big Game in Africa (1907), and With Captain Scott, R.N., to the South Pole (1912) sought to bring the immediacy of news headlines to life onscreen. State- sponsored war propaganda generated during the First World War, including The Battle of the Somme (1916) and With Our Heroes at the Somme (Bei unseren Helden an der Somme, 1917) mutated the desire to see far- off contemporary events throug h visual meaning- making machines that demanded not only attention but belief. The fact that these fi lms nearly always made this demand by staging, as real, reenactments of purportedly real events only added to the early suspicion of cinema’s ability to convey unvarnished, objective facts.31 Even for fi lms not surreptitiously staged, the reliance on actualities of iconic clichà ©s, giving the viewer what they largely expected to see, proved to be a serious prob lem for those who wished to convey the complexity and depth of the world and of nature.32 The issue, widely discussed well before John Grierson’s proclamation of the â€Å"documentary value† of Robert Flaherty’s Moana in 1926, concerns the relation between a fragmentary visual artifact drawn â€Å"from life† and the truth value of any such fragments. Ultimately, this issue hinges on mimesis. What sorts of fi lmmaking practices can felicitously mimic life as such? Grierson’s own elaboration of documentary recognizes this in asserting that the fi lmmaking form is the â€Å"creative treatment of actuality.† Grierson was not the fi rst to conceptualize the matter in this way, as Brian Winston shows that the Polish writer Boleslaw Matuszewski stated the issue in these same terms as early as 1898.33 Crucially, mimesis was not only permissible for writers such as Matuszewski and early documentarians such as Edward Curtis; it was indispensible in the creation of valuable documentary works. Thus, a fi lm such as Curtis’s In the Land of the War Canoes (a.k.a. In the Land of the Headhunters, 1914) adhered to prevailing standards of expressing the real not despite its status as a reenactment but because of it. The truth of Kwakiutl (Kwagu’ł) life is evident through the spirit of Curtis’s expert cinematic expression of what that life is, just as the reality of war was only truly evident to viewers through gaining a sense of the fi ghting as re- created in other wise opposing accounts of the truth in the British and German Somme fi lms.34 Later accounts by fi lm historians positing â€Å"fact† and â€Å"fi ction† as oppositional binaries arising out of the earliest approaches to fi lmmaking were further exemplifi ed by pitting the â€Å"realist† Lumià ¨re against the â€Å"fanciful† Mà ©lià ¨s within a crypto- structuralist origin myth that falsely represented what â€Å"documentary† meant to pre- Griersonian fi lmmakers.35 The â€Å"ahuman† witness of the camera is not enough, as this merely produces a blind sight that cannot, on its own, educate, enlighten, or even fully rec ord the real in any ideal manner. This is not the fi rst time that the gap between witnessing and the real has erupted in Eu ro pean history. As Hà ¤xan demonstrates, the question of evidence occupied inquisitors and theologians long before the invention of cinema. Playing on the fact that, while the traces serving as evidence are quite different, a larger ontological issue binds them across the cent uries, Christensen takes the unique tack of assuming the role of the art historian in this opening section of the fi lm. This is a risky strategy, particularly given the static nature of the materials on display, but it does allow Christensen to shift the locus of the empirical to the materiality of images accepted as historical. Taking up this position in the opening chapter of Hà ¤xan also allows Christensen to have it both ways, in that he can si mul ta neously confront the viewer directly in the manner of an earlier cinema of attractions while also preparing viewers for the â€Å"diegetic absorption† that was coming to dominate the grammar of cinema in the 1920s.36 Given the impossibility of fi lming witches several centuries â€Å" after the fact,† Hà ¤xan creates pre sent- day empirical images from artifacts of the time. Yet this analytic position does not guarantee that the images will be â€Å"brought to life† in any way. To the contrary, the vivisection of the historical image would tend to produce the same outcome that any vivisection would: death or deformity. Thus the risk, quite evident throughout the fi rst chapter of the fi lm, is that the presumed pastness of these images, their â€Å"deadness,† will subvert the appearance of life that distinguishes cinema from ot her visual forms such as photography, painting, and printmaking. How well Christensen is able to elide this deadness is open to debate; undeniably, many viewers experience the opening minutes of the fi lm as a plodding exhibition of â€Å"pictures of pictures.† This reaction notwithstanding, the strategy of â€Å"reimaging† is methodological and intentional, an ac know ledg ment on Christensen’s part that for a very long time â€Å"knowledge† in Eu ro pean terms consists fi rst and foremost of â€Å"recitations of the known.†37 While the opening chapter of Hà ¤xan may test the patience of the viewer, the logic of Christensen’s visual strategy in this section becomes clearer as the fi lm progresses. The director is laying a foundation for what comes next, though he is quite sensitive to the fact that a visual thesis demands a different relation to its sources. Thus, the parade of classic visual works in this opening section provides the ground not only for the arrangement of a thesis but also for the creat ion of new images, constituting its own evidence for what is at stake. Christensen accomplishes this by continually triangulating between paintings and woodcuts, photographs, and cinematic dramatization. This movement between formally distinct media at times more fi rmly aligns Christensen with those who affi rm that â€Å"nonfi ction† is a designation determined by techniques of pre sen ta tion rather than simple content, including art historian Aby Warburg, fi lmmaker Chris Marker (particularly in reference to his famous 1962 â€Å"fi lm of photographs,† La Jetà ©e), and the recent photography of Jeff Wall, Cindy Sherman, and Hiroshi Sugimoto, much more than with his own contemporaries in the cinema of the 1920s.38 There are also echoes in Hà ¤xan of the creative displacements effected through Soviet montage and the use of fragments of found footage to assem ble a singular work, with Esfi r Shub’s fi lm The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (1927) being the most obvious example.39 Hà ¤xan, not having access to archival footage for obvious reasons, nevertheless re- pre sents the documents of the visual archive of the witch in a manner recalling the methods of Shub and other Soviet fi lmmakers such as Dziga Vertov. In formally similar fi lms like Harun Farocki’s As You See (Wie man sieht, 1986) and Images of the World and the Inscription of War (Bilder der Welt und Inschrift des Krieges, 1989), the â€Å"truth† gained by the reproduction of archival images is unlocked only through their mobility in the context of their new use.40 As with Farocki, Christensen does not seek to embellish such visual artifacts in citing them, but rather empties them out, expressing through their pree stablished frame a meaning that was hidden, resisted, or not even in ven ted at the time of their origins. Understood in this way, the disconcerting effect of the opening chapter becomes more plausible, as Hà ¤xan disrupts what the audience can expect from the fi lm. While the medium of expression is undoubtedly modern and allows for these uniquely moving images, the method Christensen deploys helps to cultivate a position that draws authority from an expertise based on the interweaving of the artistic and the scientifi c rather than an ideal â€Å"scientifi c self† premised on the polarization of the two.41