Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Photography Essays Bernd and Hilla Becher

Photography Essays Bernd and Hilla Becher Distinguish what you consider to be the inheritance of the craftsman Bernd and Hilla Becher for the significance of the photographic picture. ‘The present day picture taker is the architect’s most noteworthy publicist’; that is, in the event that one considers design photography a stupid replicating gadget, and an unadulterated record that educates the spectator just of the structure and its functionality.â However dull a progression of photos delineating just water towers may appear, Bernd and Hilla Becher devoted a lot of thoughtfulness regarding capturing such symbols of post-war Germany thus made a chronicled document.â along these lines, the Bechers’ living inheritance is ‘a story of socio-notable reality dependent on photography’s potential to hold some indexical hint of its subject’, yet as referenced by Mack, the Bechers are among those photographic artists who are likewise ‘involved in some degree of development or manufacture, unmistakable from the pragmatist and target position which is typically ascribed to [photography]’.â Their photography and lessons speak to when photography was winning genuine thought by the European workmanship scene as are unquestionably significant and compelling, yet maybe the most directed inquiry toward pose of their work is the specific idea of its impact on different specialists, on the idea of the photographic picture, and on the scene of Germany of which the mines and storehouses they shot were an imperative part. Similarly as a memorable content is the subject of the author’s translation of the truth of the occasions, a photo is the result of the photographer’s decision and control of an image.â It is plain that the Bechers were not endeavoring to compliment planners or endorse of the structure and capacity of the structures they captured, as is regularly the situation in the exemplary comprehension of engineering photography.â Although it can't be denied that their numerous pictures, similar to those of August Sander, make a social archive for posterity’s purpose, the photos are not the slightest bit a nostalgic beholding back to the past or a consolation of German identity.â The innovation delineated in the Bechers’ typological successions, frequently in a condition of crumbling or deserting, could be said to speak to a period of otherworldly destitution and the ‘erosion of acquired social and good values’.â considering this proposal, Bernd a nd Hilla Becher appeared to try to record their subjects in a clinical, target way; staying entranced with yet shedding the past with the expectation that ‘the unburied mechanical wellsprings of Modernist symbolism be purified and removed from us, in case [they]†¦ attack the brains of another generation’.â Therefore, in contrast to August Sander, the Bechers are increasingly keen on giving us passing (as opposed to Sanders life investigation of the classes of Germany); the photos can be supposed to be looking forward to a superior future in particular if the watcher deciphers it so. Shouldnt these photographs at that point, intrigued by death to the point of necrophilia, be documented and forgotten?â Rather, it ought to be said that the photographs broaden our comprehension of the photographic picture, unequivocally in light of the fact that they fill in as an obvious token of a past away from which the world has moved.â As much as it was careful for German craftsmen to deny history in the quick post-war period, Bernd and Hilla Becher decided to show it, with distinctively functionalist trustworthiness and truth.â Viewing the photos, we realize that the profoundly abusive chance to which the structures have a place has passed thus see our position favourably.â Photography is the artistic expression that is most intently practically identical to our existence; regardless of whether they intended to or not, the Bechers have made craftsmanship through which we see history with a clearness that can't be increased through memory or other fine arts. Photography has consistently been related with some idea of removing and maintaining the past in control that it isn't overlooked, in spite of the fact that not really so as to recognize or genuine the occasions therein.â A broad assortment of in an exposed fashion honest design pictures, for example, the Bechers’, could be supposed to be a method of safeguarding the structures and what they speak to, as opposed to a method of banishing them to ‘the registers of the dead’ all together that society pushes ahead (or if nothing else away from the fake movement of industrialisation).â Preservation, truly, and as critical to the restoration of German way of life just like the protection of Auschwitz.â Indeed, the Bechers were intensely engaged with the German mechanical conservation development that began during the 1950s and brought about various symbols of the country’s monetary and social history being recorded and their destruction prevented.â The in tensity of the Bechers workmanship, and in this way part of their rendering of photography as a significant structure, is unmistakable in that the photos were convincing to such an extent that they turned into a piece of a development which changed (or kept up) Germany’s scene. It can likewise be said that, in safeguarding the winding apparatus, the system workers’ houses and storehouses in their specialty, the Bechers’ ‘industrial archaeology’ was an examination concerning explicit communities.â Despite claims that their subjects are totally confined from their condition, the photos are regularly dated and their areas archived, and along these lines offer a relevant token of a particular existence for each comparative however fundamentally extraordinary picture.  From there, a watcher can set aside some effort to examine the stilled rawness of the structures, their quiet watch, while staying mindful of their specific presence inside individual social orders. While this is a huge piece of the Bechers’ typological studies’ heritage, their method of demonstrating structures is unquestionably not anthropocentric.â Never do they intentionally utilize the human structure to legitimize or enhance their modern subjects.â Indeed, it is the very nonattendance of the human structure that makes these photos so intriguing in light of the fact that really ‘the workmanship of men is wherever visible’ and the assortment stands somewhat as a declaration to humankind’s boundless resourcefulness and inventiveness.â The Bechers’ interest with metal and all that goes with its creation couldn't be an all the more impressive articulation about that which is strange to human carnal presence, however similarly it is a remark on the degrees to which mechanical individuals are compelled to go in view of their dependence on the laws of nature. Not legitimately intrigued by the human structure, however in any case a result of the human psyche and expertise, the Bechers’ workmanship shows humankind’s hailing endeavor to ace nature, to reign it in and use it or, undoubtedly, to ‘make nature in the picture of their own desires’.â Such a fight can just end in disappointment as, with water towers for example, the very capacity of the structures advise us that we are completely dependent on the earth’s assets; just when we join our comprehension of powers, for example, gravity with our longing to stay alive are we ready to make advancements that serve us while complying with nature’s laws.â In so saying, it is fascinating to take note of that the static picture of the photo helps one to remember the forswearing of evolution.â The Bechers help the watcher see, through their practically thorough assortment of comparable pictures, the contrasts between the people self and the structures in the photographs.â The most pointed differentiation being the manner by which each capitulates to the procedures of evolution.â Whilst we proceed onward from war, from old thoughts regarding craftsmanship, from monetary top to financial trough, these structures remain particularly the same.â This turns out to be a piece of the removing procedure that appears to make the Bechers’ work so significant; the photographic picture is unchangeable, verifiable truth that will consistently stay in the past while we proceed onward ourselves.â The photos come to deny the ‘progress’ they initially represented, thus reaffirm our place in the present and, all the more critically, propose our continuation into a future that will be unique. The Bechers’ work has gotten a lot of consideration; in any event, winning a renowned prize for sculpture.â The confining of the shot structures, the uniform lighting utilized and the subjects’ obvious opportunity from their noticeable condition permits a balance, which carries the structures nearer to sculptural treatment than the two-dimensional reportage that is regularly the part of the photographic image.â As Klaus Bussmann states in first experience with the Bechers’ Industrial Faã §ades; ‘in these photos the capacity of the engineering doesn't rise up out of its form’.â Unlike the craft of the Neue Sachlichkeit, the Bechers’ photography doesn't commend the ‘dynamic and sensational usefulness of the mechanical machine’; to be sure it doesn't contribute them with any importance at all.â We contribute them with significance and recollections †yet the Bechers were apparently intrigued by their deadness, their stat ic spot in history and their examination with the dynamic quality of human presence. The Bechers’ work had a striking effect on the craftsmanship world, and the effect of their inheritance is incompletely because of the way where they decided to show their photos when their work was exhibited.â If there is a contention that portrays the photographic picture as a tasteless record of what we would all be able to see as it exists or existed in nature, at that point the Bechers’ typological develops deny this.â Seen in gatherings; one structure in contrast with twelve others of nearly (however distinctly not) indistinguishable appearance, the subjects of the photos are reproduced once again, and out of nowhere become some different option from their p

Saturday, August 22, 2020

Decision Making Process Paper Free Essays

Dynamic Process Paper MGT/230 June 26, 2011 Abstract The dynamic procedure has six phases. These stages comprise of recognizing and diagnosing the issue, creating elective arrangements, assessing options, settling on the decision, actualizing the choice, and assess the choice. Deciding to return to class and what school to go to was an issue that I had that should have been made sense of. We will compose a custom paper test on Dynamic Process Paper or on the other hand any comparative subject just for you Request Now I didn't utilize the dynamic procedure; in the event that I had I don't know whether my choice would have been the equivalent. Choosing to return to class was something I contemplated for a couple of months however finding a way to do so was something that lone took an hour to do. The dynamic procedure has six phases yet I may have just made three of those strides in my procedure. The dynamic stages are to distinguish and analyze the issue, create elective arrangements, assess choices, settle on the decision, execute the choice, and assess the choice (Management, 2011). To distinguish and analyze the issues intends to perceive an issue or something he of she needs to do that exist and fathom it. Create elective arrangements can be separate into two classifications, which are instant arrangements and uniquely crafted arrangements. Instant arrangements are arrangements you have attempted previously or guidance from others with comparable issues, and hand crafted arrangements are arrangements intended for a particular arrangement. Assess choices implies choosing which arrangement will be ideal and which arrangement will fit the issue that you have. Subsequent to thinking about all the arrangement, you should settle on a decision. When you have settled on your decision, actualize the choice. Execute the choice way to make a move. Start the arrangement to tackle your concern. The last stage is to assess the choice by gathering data on how well the choice is functioning. These are the six phases of the dynamic procedure. My concern was choosing progressing back to class and which school to join in. My means were to consider what might be ideal and my family with respect to me to return to class, which school to go to, and apply to that school. My family was engaged with y process since I needed their contribution on everything that I did. My initial step was to talk about the thought progressing back to class, which to my family was not an issue since they accepted that I had so much information that I expected to accomplish something with it, yet I was reluctant as a result of my kids. My subsequent advance was to choose which school to join in. The decision was between University of Phoenix and Gaston Community College. I decision these two schools in light of the fact t hat my stepmother goes to Phoenix and she exhorted me it would be a decent chance. Gaston Community College was a proposal my beau had in light of the fact that it was near where I lived however the main issue was my youngsters were not in childcare, so who might have the option to watch them and I was in school. Another issue was they didn't offer any online projects that year in my field. My choice was simple since I thought of my youngsters first. The last advance I took was applying to University of Phoenix. I didn't make indistinguishable strides from the dynamic procedure contains however I may have taken a couple. I identified that I had an issue, thought of arrangements, settle on a decision and executed my choice. The dynamic procedure has six stages, yet I just utilized four of those means in my procedure. On the off chance that I had utilized the dynamic procedure my choice might be unique. In the event that I had contemplated everything about my life, for instance, my youngsters going to class this year, I may have picked the junior college since it would have been advantageous at that point. Likewise on the off chance that I had found a way to converse with childcares about placing my most youthful youngster in one, I would not need to stress over finding a sitter when I went to class. The dynamic procedure would have caused me to pose inquiries about what I needed and what I could do. The procedure additionally would have permitted me to assess my choice and decide whether a junior college would have been correct. My concern was returning to class and which school to join in. I might not have followed the dynamic procedure yet I do trust I have settled on the correct decision. The dynamic procedure has six phases: distinguish and analyze the issue, create elective arrangements, assess choices, settle on the decision, actualize the choice, and assess the choice. The dynamic procedure can be extremely compelling if one somehow happened to utilize it. Reference Bateman, T. S. , and Snell, S. A (2011). The board: Leading Collaborating in a Competitive World (ninth e. d. ). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Irwin. Step by step instructions to refer to Decision Making Process Paper, Essays

Friday, August 21, 2020

Things You Shouldnt Do

Things You Shouldn’t Do Im not sure anybody has mentioned her, so allow me. Everybody, meet Winnie. Hi Winnie! Ever since Ben Jones left weve been looking for somebody to take over his job and while nobody permanent has been decided upon, Winnie has agreed to take over for now and help all of bloggers maintain our sanity. Among Winnies many responsibilities is making sure all of the technical aspects of blogging are maintained and taken care of. She can change all of our banner pictures, update our biographies, update the spam filter, yadda yadda yadda, and she also cooks! Pretty much without Winnie the bloggers would be wandering around in a confused daze, wondering why spam was destroying our masterpieces and trying to figure out how to work the Internet. Today we all got an e-mail from Winnie mentioning a brand new feature for the MIT bloggers: Locker Space! Were not talking about your typical high school lockers though, were talking about fancy, high tech, new-fangled athena lockers. Whats an athena locker? Well, every student at MIT is assigned server space so that they can build websites, share files with people online, and do back up their computers files. This webspace is what the bloggers use to host their pictures, which works fine. The downside is that with all the blog pictures our space tends to fill up, so a solution was devised. Student groups and organizations on campus can apply for locker space, separate webspace for their organization, and Winnie got us locker space so we can move all of our pictures out of our athena accounts and free up some room for other important things. I decided to just bite the bullet, move everything over, update all my entries, and be done with it. Step one, copy the files. Easy. Step two, change all the internal links on all of my entries. Seemingly difficult, except that I found an awesome feature of MovableType. Turns out, you can do a search/replace of all your entries at the same time, as well as rebuild and re-publish your entries in bulk. Internal links changed, easy. Step three, delete all of the pictures out of my web space. I CTR+Ad inside my admissions blog folder and then deleted all the files, but realized that I hadnt actually deleted the folder. I navigated up the folder hierarchy and deleted the admissions blog folder. Then I went over to check on the new locker space with all of my pictures. Empty. Um. Oh God. Frantically go back to original web space. Empty. Oh God. I clicked back and forth between the two several times before realizing a) what had happened and b) the gravity of it. Turns out that I CTRL+Ad the new locker space and deleted all of those files, before hitting BACK instead of UP and then proceeded to delete all of the original pictures. I panicked. Every picture in every entry was officially gone. I have no backups, I have no caches, they were just gone. G-O-N-E. I began thinking of how I would explain this to everybody, but instead I quick e-mailed the SysAdmins here and they kindly directed me to a backup folder that is refreshed every evening. Now, thankfully, all of the files are properly restored and working. All of the entries should be picture-filled and happy now, and sooner or later I will begin blogging again. This semester is incredibly busy for me, busier than Ive seen at MIT. Im building robots, making videos, learning controls, manipulating thermal fluids, and watching movies during pretty much every hour of every day. Im currently running on 3 hours of sleep and will probably go to bed early tonight. Things Id like to blog about in the future? Toy Fair 2009 Famous People I Accidentally Meet Student Cohesion Wall Scrawlings Well see how many of those I get to, but theyd all make good entries. Until later then, bye all!

Things You Shouldnt Do

Things You Shouldn’t Do Im not sure anybody has mentioned her, so allow me. Everybody, meet Winnie. Hi Winnie! Ever since Ben Jones left weve been looking for somebody to take over his job and while nobody permanent has been decided upon, Winnie has agreed to take over for now and help all of bloggers maintain our sanity. Among Winnies many responsibilities is making sure all of the technical aspects of blogging are maintained and taken care of. She can change all of our banner pictures, update our biographies, update the spam filter, yadda yadda yadda, and she also cooks! Pretty much without Winnie the bloggers would be wandering around in a confused daze, wondering why spam was destroying our masterpieces and trying to figure out how to work the Internet. Today we all got an e-mail from Winnie mentioning a brand new feature for the MIT bloggers: Locker Space! Were not talking about your typical high school lockers though, were talking about fancy, high tech, new-fangled athena lockers. Whats an athena locker? Well, every student at MIT is assigned server space so that they can build websites, share files with people online, and do back up their computers files. This webspace is what the bloggers use to host their pictures, which works fine. The downside is that with all the blog pictures our space tends to fill up, so a solution was devised. Student groups and organizations on campus can apply for locker space, separate webspace for their organization, and Winnie got us locker space so we can move all of our pictures out of our athena accounts and free up some room for other important things. I decided to just bite the bullet, move everything over, update all my entries, and be done with it. Step one, copy the files. Easy. Step two, change all the internal links on all of my entries. Seemingly difficult, except that I found an awesome feature of MovableType. Turns out, you can do a search/replace of all your entries at the same time, as well as rebuild and re-publish your entries in bulk. Internal links changed, easy. Step three, delete all of the pictures out of my web space. I CTR+Ad inside my admissions blog folder and then deleted all the files, but realized that I hadnt actually deleted the folder. I navigated up the folder hierarchy and deleted the admissions blog folder. Then I went over to check on the new locker space with all of my pictures. Empty. Um. Oh God. Frantically go back to original web space. Empty. Oh God. I clicked back and forth between the two several times before realizing a) what had happened and b) the gravity of it. Turns out that I CTRL+Ad the new locker space and deleted all of those files, before hitting BACK instead of UP and then proceeded to delete all of the original pictures. I panicked. Every picture in every entry was officially gone. I have no backups, I have no caches, they were just gone. G-O-N-E. I began thinking of how I would explain this to everybody, but instead I quick e-mailed the SysAdmins here and they kindly directed me to a backup folder that is refreshed every evening. Now, thankfully, all of the files are properly restored and working. All of the entries should be picture-filled and happy now, and sooner or later I will begin blogging again. This semester is incredibly busy for me, busier than Ive seen at MIT. Im building robots, making videos, learning controls, manipulating thermal fluids, and watching movies during pretty much every hour of every day. Im currently running on 3 hours of sleep and will probably go to bed early tonight. Things Id like to blog about in the future? Toy Fair 2009 Famous People I Accidentally Meet Student Cohesion Wall Scrawlings Well see how many of those I get to, but theyd all make good entries. Until later then, bye all!

Sunday, May 24, 2020

Was The Civil War Inevitable - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 2 Words: 568 Downloads: 5 Date added: 2019/05/18 Category History Essay Level High school Tags: Civil War Essay War Essay Did you like this example? The Civil War was and is one of the most outstanding events in the history of the United States. It was a military conflict that occurred in the United States, between 1861 and 1865 (when Abraham Lincoln is elected president). Where the North States fought against the Confederate States of America, composed of the countries of the South, which were just conforming. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Was The Civil War Inevitable?" essay for you Create order The struggle took place because the States of the South wanted their independence, while those of the North wanted to remain united. This war changed many things, not only in the United States but also throughout the world. We could say that this was an event that they could avoid, but was it really? The answer may vary depending on which point of view you see it. For me the Civil War could have been inevitable, although as I mentioned before depending on the point of view I also know that it could easily have been avoided. But as they say after doing something there is no turning back. The main causes of the Civil War were differences in opinions on the subject of slavery. Years before the war, a great effort was made to completely abolish the slavery of black people. Although, it was never possible to reach an agreement. While in the south slaves were considered property, in the north the more progressive ideas of Europe and North America had entered into a strong anti-slavery sentiment. In addition, the educational level in the Southerners was lower and they were less connected with the ideas of Europe or the thinkers of the north. The defense of slavery became an element of unity for the southern elite. Although this was a war within the same nation (United States) the regions that fought (North and South) were very different in culture and in the economic activities that they developed. In the case of the citizens who populated the states of the union (North), they were ruled by foundations of the bourgeoisie and democracy. In addition, they were engaged in trade, industrial activity, manufacturing that advanced with technology, livestock and agriculture. Unlike them, the states of the confederation (South) had an aristocratic culture. As for its main economic activity, it relied on the collection of agricultural products such as tobacco, sugar cane and cotton. All this was cultivated thanks to the work of the slaves. Another cause of this war was when Abraham Lincoln was elected as president of the United States in the year 1960, for those who were in favor of slavery meant a call to war. This was because Lincoln was part of the Republican party and his tendency was completely against slavery. As a result, 11 southern slave states established their own government the Confederate States of America. The Union declared this action illegal and this eventually led to the outbreak of the American Civil War. Civil war was inevitable due to the long problem of slavery. To all the tension that there was in the south as well as in the north. Although many commitments were used to prolong peace between the two regions, they did not help. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 was the greatest compromise that caused a great effect, creating enough sectionalism to make war inevitable. Was civil war inevitable? The answer is no because to some extent, the emergence of the conflict between the North and the South had to happen sooner or later.

Thursday, May 14, 2020

Cheating Is A Word - 1496 Words

Cheating is a word that no one wants to have attached to their name, because it comes attached with a load of negative stigma. What exactly is the definition of cheating? According to Oxford Dictionaries, the definition of the word â€Å"cheat† is as follows: â€Å"Act dishonestly or unfairly in order to gain an advantage, especially in a game or examination.† As one can adhere through this definition, when someone cheats they are acting in a dishonest way that deprives others of the truth. There are many types of cheating, but one thing that they all have in common is that it is nothing one should aspire to. In this essay we will discuss cheating in the classroom, ways that students cheat, and how I will utilize this knowledge to avoid cheating in the future. Academic dishonesty happens when students cheat in any way, shape, or form that does not represent their true knowledge or work. The Center for Student Rights and Responsibilities at SDSU (San Diego State Universi ty) defines cheating in the classroom as follows: â€Å"Cheating is defined as the act of obtaining or attempting to obtain credit for academic work by the use of dishonest, deceptive, or fraud- ulent means.† They give many examples of cheating on their website including working with others on something that will be graded without permission of the instructor, submitting work that was used for another class, and obtaining a copy of any course material without the permission of the instructor. It is important to be wellShow MoreRelatedCheating And The Word Cheating843 Words   |  4 Pagesyou hear the word cheating? The word cheating has two meanings. Mostly cheating can be done in schools and in relationships. People always use this word in a negative way. It has a big effect on people. The word cheating in school is defined as taking someone’s work and making it your own. In relationships the word cheating is defined as having another relationship with another person . Every one of us has cheated once in life. Nobody wants to fail, so people decide to cheat. Cheating leads us to regretRead MorePlagiarism : What Is Plagiarism?1583 Words   |  7 PagesPlagiarism? Plagiarism is using someone else’s work, words, production, researches and ideas without the approval or the acknowledgment of the writer or producer, and claiming the credit for himself. Many reasons and factors are attributed for the use of plagiarism and could be cultural, historical, linguistic, environmental and educational background. Plagiarism is a form of an academic dishonesty, academic misconduct, and a digital cheating. It is declared to be an unacceptable legal act and institutionalRead MoreWhy Students Cheat : Cheating1469 Words   |  6 PagesWhy Students Cheat Cheating by students no matter their grade level has been a prevalent problem among schools for several years. One discouraging fact for academic institutions is that cheating has only gotten worse not better. Cheating can be carried out in a plethora of ways, such as copying off of other students during a test, copying another students homework, using a cell phone to either text answers or look them up, using crib notes or even copy and pasting whole written works and tryingRead MoreCheating on College Examinations980 Words   |  4 Pagesï » ¿Name Professor Course Date Cheating on College Exams Introduction Any form of cheating is a form of dishonesty. It is an act of accomplishing something in an unethical behavior. Cheating is used in any kinds of exams, especially college exams. Does it really happen? Sure it does. We argue that many college students cheat during examinations because of several reasons. They can be nervous that is why they cheat, it can also be a reason of time management wherein some college students also workRead MoreIt Is An Interesting Sight To See The Renouncing Of A Cheater.1317 Words   |  6 PagesIt is an interesting sight to see the renouncing of a cheater. Over the years, people catch students and professional athletes alike in the act of cheating. Forever, these students and athletes stand in disgrace and regret. According to Roger Alton in â€Å"A gold standard to cheating†, â€Å"the best cheats think outside the box† (1). Once, as Alton emphasizes, in the sport of fencing, â€Å"Boris Onischenko†¦ wired his epà ©e to trigger the e lectronic scoring with his hand and register a hit at will† (1). HoweverRead MoreEssay about Cheating in Academics Is an Acceptable Thing to Do751 Words   |  4 Pagesstudents choose to cheat to get good grades. Whenever, the word â€Å"cheating† is mentioned, people always assume it is a negative act to do. But what exactly is cheating? According to the article â€Å"Cheating† by D’Arcy Lyness, PhD, the definition of cheating is â€Å"when a person misleads, deceives, or acts dishonestly on purpose.† In other words, cheating in academics means students deceive the teachers. People believe under any circumstances, cheating in academic is an unacceptable act that needs to be avoidedRead MoreWe Must Work to Stop Plagiarism Essay878 Words   |  4 PagesIntroduction Plagiarism has become a widespread problem in our society. Plagiarism is categorized as the using of ideas, words, concepts, or beliefs of others, without giving them credit for originating them. It seems as if everyone is looking for the quick and easy way of completing tasks by borrowing from their predecessors. Borrowing ideas or words from those who have come before us and have gained knowledge on a particular subject is what education is all about, however, when someone does borrowRead MoreDefinition of Cheating Essay716 Words   |  3 PagesMerrium-Websters’ on-line dictionary defines the word â€Å"cheat† simply as ‘using trickery to escape observation.’ The word cheat dates back to as early as 1590 and is a transitive verb (a verb that requires both a direct subject and one or more objects). Other definitions of the word cheat include: to deceive or mislead somebody, especially for personal advantage, to break the rules in a game, examination , or contest, in an attempt to gain an unfair advantage, and to have a sexual relationshipRead MoreWhy Should Students From A Respected University Cheat?1014 Words   |  5 PagesWhenever a cheating scandal pops up in the news, a majority of the people always wonder why. Why would students from a respected university cheat? Who should we put the blame on? A lot of people are quick to assume that it is the student s personal morals, which causes them to cheat. I realized why a lot of student’s cheat, and how certain articles that I read, proposed we fix the cheating issue. The main goal is to prevent future cheating, and you start preventing cheating by looking at what theRead MoreCheating Has Been Prominent Forever966 Words   |  4 PagesCheating has been prominent forever. Scandals related to cheating are in the news most of the time. Especially from prestigious institutions. It has been a way for people to get by in society with certain things instead of working hard. It has been a way for people in many educational institutions to get by with hard work. Cheating by definition is an act of dishonesty to gain advantage in examination and to avoid something undesirable by luck or skill. Cheating is very much frowned upon in nearly

Wednesday, May 6, 2020

How Does Humanity Still Afford The Time - 1422 Words

It has come to a rather distressing point where humanity takes much of its resources for granted. Recognizing the talents of people from the past has become a scarcity in today’s world. There are not many who truly take the time to appreciate what these people have done to enhance everyone’s lives. Many strive to justify their actions by stating how engrossed they are in their work. However, if that is the case, then how does humanity still afford the time to use the technological apparatus available to them? The answer is simple: one cares more about what is invented than about who humbly stands behind the innovation. As a highly advanced society, humanity should emerge from its dark waters of ignorance and pay some respect to those who made possible all that there is today. This, of course, includes the many men and women who spent practically their entire lives putting forth great ideas into action. One person who is a great quintessence of this is Aristotle. Despite living in a time when not many means were available, he effectively constructed a definition that allows humanity to fully comprehend tragic heroes of drama. Using Aristotle’s criteria, one can identify Sophocles’s antagonist, Creon, as a tragic hero. Creon complies with Aristotle’s definition of a tragic hero by possessing high status in his society and being neither all benign nor all evil. He fulfills the first of these requirements by being the king of Thebes. After his nephews Eteocles and Polyneices,Show MoreRelatedDeath By The Human Stupidity1446 Words   |  6 Pagesto breath, and the water more dangerous to drink. There are health issues arising, and species dying off. All of this is occurring because of the human race’s negative pull on the environment. Humanity isn’t totally to blame, as the effects of these actions were not known in the beginning, but it is known how negatively these actions effect the environment. this is why it is n ecessary to do something about it. Without drastic change in the way the human race interacts with the world, this trend willRead MoreThe New Affordable Care Act1654 Words   |  7 Pagesthe many people that qualified for the new health care program are very pleased because they were uninsured, those who can afford his or her own health care will have to pay the consequences for this action. Not every person in this country is eligible for this new health care system; either they do not qualify because they make too much for being eligible, or they can afford their own private health care insurance that they are satisfied with. Either way, those who do not benefit from this ObamacareRead MoreAnalysis Of Primo Levi s The Gray Zone 1489 Words   |  6 PagesPrimo Levi’s book, Survival in Auschwitz, examines how a select few managed to survive the inhumane and brutal treatment of the Jews in Auschwitz. The well-known Italian Holocaust survivor, Primo Levi was only 24-years-old, when he was captured and taken to a detention camp in Fossoli, before spending eleven months in Auschwitz. He, like so many other innocent Jews, was sent to die in the death camp but with a little bit luck and resourcefulness, he survived. In his essay, â€Å"The Gray Zone† Levi,Read MoreBenefits Of Subsidizing Stem Classes1208 Words   |  5 Pagesrepublic was to flourish and endu re, it required, above all, an education’ (Singletary 10). Subsidizing STEM classes is a bad idea because lack interest will occur, many jobs will be at stake, and Arts would be too expensive. In the â€Å"Education: Does College Still Matter† short passage, Tabarrok thought it would be best that the people who choose STEM degrees, should have subsidized taxes. â€Å"There is little justification for subsidizing sociology, dance, and English majors† (Tabarrok 5). This would notRead MoreCase 6.4 Drug Dilemmas Essay1420 Words   |  6 Pagescompanies increase their profits more and more each year because many people assume that it does cost a lot of money for research and development. Where in reality, they are only spending about 15% of their profit margins on research and development alone. A huge percentage of these drugs are actually tested in other countries where people are more willing to do trials with these drugs because they cannot afford them. 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Tuesday, May 5, 2020

Importance of Work-Life Balance Apps for Employees and Employers

Question: What Is the Importance of Work-Life Balance Apps for Employees and Employers? Answer: Introduction Technology has helped to improve human life in various aspects like studies, work, and health and leisure activities. People can live longer, healthier lives because of technological advancements. It has changed the way people access information, plan activities, communicate with one another and complete their personal and professional tasks. Technology has been recently introduced in the aspect of work-life balance of the human beings. It has made the workplace more flexible and organized and additionally has given workers a chance to balance their personal life with their work life without affecting the quality and productivity of their work. It has also given access to global market information to workers without having them moved from their work location. This has helped the organizations to increase the quality of their work and save a lot of time. The purpose of this report is to get an insight into a number of applications that enable the employees and employers to achieve balance in their professional and personal life. The features of certain apps have been discussed along with how the employees can use these apps to maximize their productivity. The report also contains the implication of technology in attaining this balance for both workers and their bosses. The importance of work-life balance has also been discussed (Rampton, 2015). The importance of work-life balance apps for employees and employers Due to technological advancement, every aspect of human life is directly or indirectly dependent on technology. In the hectic routine of work, people seek the assistance of technology to attain balance in their personal and professional life. Every industry is growing at a very fast pace and this speed demands the employees to work around the clock in order to maximize productivity. In this process, the companies tend to forget the importance of leisure time in the life of workers. In the recent times several applications have been developed using technology to help the organization and its employees to create a balance in their work life and their personal life (Kehl, 2012). Some of these applications have been discussed below along with their features and benefits. Instapaper Instapaper is an application used to save and retain the articles for reading those offline in order to use your free time to read them, rather than reading them during work. This helps to not get distracted during the workday in reading irrelevant content. As the application allows you to read the content offline, the articles can be accessed while commuting. It also provides an option to strip away clutter and allows you to personalize the content on the basis of your taste and preferences. As one reads, the content can be highlighted, quotes can be saved and the articles can be narrated from text to speech. The content can also be organized according to date, length and popularity. The basic version of the application is free to download (Dishman, 2015). A paid version gives access to unlimited highlights, full-text search for articles in your account, and unlimited speed reading and is available for $3 per month or $30 per year. Headspace Headspace is a meditation app that can be used to practice mind relaxation techniques. The app has been developed to provide the users with a step by step meditation guide in order to provide mindful awareness and burst stress. Once the application is downloaded, a 10-minute foundational meditation course is provided access to. The application also provides the feature of a personalized development track data. Headspace can also be used to relieve stress that is piling up from work, relationships, happiness and mental health (Eyl, 2015). The app also has a buddy feature where a person can constantly use the support of his friends to stay positive and encouraged. The app is free of cost on iOS and android and can be renewed by paying $13 per month or $95 annually. BreakFree BreakFree is an app used to track an individuals smart phone addiction and assists in breaking it by making a record of the amount of time an individual spends on it. The main purpose of the app is to provide guidance to control the usage of phone and gives information about the purpose an individual is using the phone or by sending an alert if the individual has been using the phone for too long. For instance, if someone is using the phone for over an hour or is spending too much time on a particular app, it will send a reminder to the individual about putting the phone away. The app also records an addiction score which allows the user to figure out if they are getting better or worse with their addiction (Messinger, 2015). This app is available on both iOS and Android free of cost. Cozi Family Organizer The Cozi Family Organizer is designed to stay on top of ones schedule, and also of everyone in your family. This app enables the user to monitor where everyone should be and how to avoid overlapping of everyones schedule. A color-coded calendar can be designed which allows the addition and editing of several appointments, setting up of reminders and get a view of the schedule of the entire family at once (Miller, 2016). This app can be used by families to coordinate their grocery lists, their shopping trips and click and share photographs in order to create family memories. It helps to keep the family members in touch with each other in the midst of everybodys busy schedules. This app is also available for free on iOS and Android. Toggl Toggl is a very famous work related application that allows its users to stay on top of their working hours by analyzing and recording the time spent by an individual on a number of different projects. The time tracker sheet in the app records task times and provides analyses on how an individual has spent his/her day (Prokopets, 2014). The app can be used on both mobile devices and desktop. The timer recorder can be synced to the cloud and all the data that has been collected can be secured under the name of one account. The application takes the help of third party apps, like Trello to record and manage the details of the users everyday schedule Be Focused Be Focused allows the workers to introduce quick breaks throughout their workday in the middle of their tasks. The purpose behind these breaks is to re-energize the mind and increase overall productivity of the employees. It also helps to keep the employees motivated and focused. The workers can set the duration of the breaks along with their frequency on a particular workday. It helps the employees to remain flexible in making their time-table for the workday. The app rings an alarm whenever the time for taking a break arrives, even if the app is running in the background (Sheridan, 2016). The user can see the record about how many breaks have been taken already and how many are remaining while working on one particular project. The app is available for free on iOS and the pro version is available for $1.99. Way of Life Way of Life is an application that helps the users to develop and maintain good habits. It keeps the user updated with their daily goals that include professional work, fitness goals, eating healthy and any other positive habit that the user might want to retain. The app uses different color schemes to recognize, record and eventually makes modifications in the users habits. This way the user can observe how successful or unsuccessful the user has been in adopting new healthy habits. The app also allows the user to additionally set reminders for workdays, weekends and any other particular days of the week to stay on the right track of living a good life (Gausepohl, 2016). This app is available for free on iOS and is available on Android with the name Habit. Any.do Any.do is an app designed to create a to-do list for both personal and professional life of the user. It keeps a record of the users to-do list and syncs it in the cloud which allows the user to view it on the tablet, desktop, browser and smart phones. The app also allows the user to group similar tasks together and coordinate the tasks with family, co-workers and friends. By staying on the schedule, the worker can return home with free mind. The user can also add notes, subtasks and files with reference to each task in order to stay extra organized. Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock Sufficient amount of sleep is a critical part of the work-life balance. If the employee is rest deprived, he/she cannot give their best in their professional and personal life. The Sleep Cycle alarm clock is an intelligent timer that records and analyzes the sleeping patterns of the user and wakes them up during the lightest part of their sleep cycle -- the optimal time to awaken for feeling well-rested and relaxed. Since you move differently depending on whether you're in a deep or light sleep, the app monitors movements using sound or vibration analysis in order to determine the best time to wake you (Management, 2017). The app also provides detailed statistics on your sleeping patterns, stores data online, and gives you the option to compare your sleep quality with people from around the world. You can enter notes to see how things like stress, caffeine, and exercise affect your quality of sleep. Connect Connect is a location based messaging application that helps the user to stay in touch with their social media friends. The app enlightens the user about the connections that are around the user location and hence help the user to set up a meeting with these people. Also, the app allows the user to identify the social media connections that live nearby and allows the user to check in while being at a particular location in order to let the friends know about their whereabouts. Connect helps the user to share real time location, text and make calls with their surrounding connections. Building and maintaining relationships is a critical part to work-life balance. With Connect, you may be more likely to meet with friends in person as opposed to chatting online or on the phone. The implication of work-life balance The key feature in every work-life balance application is that it has the ability to encourage time management. Everybody wishes to have some extra hours in their day in order to complete all their activities. The work-balance apps virtually add additional hours in a 24-hour day by inculcating the habit of time management in the workers. Andrew Chen, an investor in San Francisco, used to feel that reaching zero in ones mail inbox was folklore. The entrepreneur started using the app named Streak to clear his emails on a daily basis. Additionally, he uses Esper, a digital time manager app to maximize his daily productivity. These apps gather the users data, analyze it and organize it in a way that allows the user to cover more tasks using the app than without using the app. Since these apps make the users feel that they are somehow squeezing more hours in their day, they have managed to build a large customer base. The HR and managers of some organization also encourages the use of som e of these apps to increase the employees productivity and hence increase the productivity of the business too (Heathfield, 2016). The ideal time management app not only keeps the track of the way employees are spending their time, but also focus on how the employees are using their time. These apps enable the employers to prioritize tasks for the organization and then enable the employees to work on these important tasks by keeping a track of the time left with them to complete a particular task. This way the leaders can clarify how they expect the employees to plan their activities and provides opportunity to the employees to complete these tasks on priority. The managers can keep a track of the activities of each employee using these technological work-life applications. However, the management should not let these apps give less importance to face to face discussions. Even though these apps can be used to track the development of a particular project, yet the apps should not replace the relevant discussions regarding that project. The work-life apps should not just be used by managers to enable the employees, but also let them empower the employees. This implies that the employees should be made aware about the time and activities that are being tracked by the employer. The employees should not feel that their privacy is being intruded by the managers while using these apps. Additionally, some employers prefer apps that allow different levels of oversight (Kehl, 2012). For example, ATracker, which is used by a number of medical clinics, lets healthcare providers decide what information they want to track, for instance the time spent on an operation or with a patient, but the hospitals can let the doctors decide when and whether to generate reports from that data and send them to administrators, founder Jian Yan said. Therefore, the work-life apps should empower the employees to review the data generated by these apps before actually sending the information to the employers. This increases the confidence of the employee and helps them to explain the flaws in their workday routine if any. The employers should also ask for the employees feedback on how beneficial they find the work-life balance apps. These apps are to be used as a support system by the organization to increase the productivity of their employees and business as a whole. But these apps should not become a threat to its employees. It should motivate the employees to give their best rather than distracting them with constant fear of being watched by their employers. Additionally, since there are a number of different apps available in the market, the organization should be flexible enough to switch to another kind of app if the employee feedback suggests so (Miller, 2016). Conclusion To conclude, I would say, technology has definitely made the life of human beings simpler. Due to increase in the work pressure every day, it has become very important for the organizations to use work-life balance apps in their daily tasks. The employers can benefit from these apps to increase the productivity of the employees and business. The employees on the other hand can use these apps to relieve themselves from the extra work pressure and attain balance between their personal life and work. However, people should not depend completely on these applications. They should be used as a support system by the organizations and not a way to dominate the employees. References Dishman, L., 2015. Why managers and employess have wildly different ideas about work life balance, Available at: https://www.fastcompany.com/3041908/the-surprising-gap-between-work-life-balance-beliefs-and-reality Eyl, E., 2015. How Organizational Culture Affects Work-Life Balance, Available at: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/eryc-eyl/how-organizational-cultur_b_8469314.html Gausepohl, S., 2016. 6 Ways to Improve Your Work-Life Balance Today, Available at: https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/5244-improve-work-life-balance-today.html Heathfield, S., 2016. Work-Life Balance: Employers Assist Employee Work-Life Balance with Flexible Policies, Available at: https://www.thebalance.com/work-life-balance-1918292 Kehl, T., 2012. 12 Key Strategies to Achieving a Work-Life Balance, Available at: https://www.industryweek.com/leadership/12-key-strategies-achieving-work-life-balance Management, A. H., 2017. Work Life Balance, Available at: https://www.adarehrm.ie/human-resource-management/health-and-well-being/work-life-balance Messinger, L., 2015. Do time management apps really make people more productive?, Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/aug/18/time-management-apps-work-life-balance-productivity Miller, B., 2016. How to Improve Work/Life Balance for Employees, Available at: https://www.lifehack.org/275194/14-smart-apps-improve-your-worklife-balance Prokopets, E., 2014. 14 Smart Apps To Improve Your Work/Life Balance, Available at: https://www.lifehack.org/275194/14-smart-apps-improve-your-worklife-balance Rampton, J., 2015. How Work Life Balance Can Keep Your Employees Happy and Your Business Healthy, Available at: https://www.inc.com/john-rampton/how-work-life-balance-can-keep-your-employees-happy-and-your-business-healthy.html Sheridan, K., 2016. 10 iPhone, Android Apps To Master Work-Life Balance, Available at: https://www.informationweek.com/mobile/mobile-applications/10-iphone-android-apps-to-master-work-life-balance/d/d-id/1325816

Saturday, April 4, 2020

Terminal Paper Mechanics free essay sample

Edsa Caloocan City TERMINAL PAPER MECHANICS PAPER TYPE 1. For the proposal and final oral stages, the researcher may use short, white bond paper. 2. The template is used for the final paper. (See Appendix B). 3. No colored or textured bond paper should be used. PRINT COLOR 1. Blank ink is required for the text. No colored printout is allowed. Graphs and figures should also use varying shades of black. This so because color distinction may not appear definite once the paper is photocopied. 2. The printout must be clear, intelligible, and neat. ILLUSTRATIONS 1. No unnecessary illustrations are allowed. 2. If consequential, all illustrations and photos should be properly labeled so that readers can understand them without having to rely entirely on the picture. 3. Chapter separator pages are unnecessary. PRINT SIZE 1. The required font is Arial. The required font size throughout the paper is 12. Smaller fonts are allowed for charts and graphs. 2. Chapter titles, major and minor headings, paragraph heading, and table and figure titles are all typed using font size 12. We will write a custom essay sample on Terminal Paper Mechanics or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page . Chapter titles must be in all capital letter formats (AAAA) while major and minor headings, paragraph heading, table and figure titles must be in a title format (Aaaa). 4. Page numbers should also be reformatted in Arial in font size 12. MARGINS AND SPACING 1. For the proposal and final defense papers using plain, short white bond paper, the margins are as follows: Top:1. 00 Bottom:1. 00 Left:1. 50 Right:1. 00 2. For the final paper printed on the paper template, the margins are as follows: Top: 1. 70 Bottom:1. 20 Left:1. 80 Right:1. 20 3. Indentation for paragraphs, reference entries, table of content entries, etc. should be consistent throughout the paper. The suggested tab stop position is 0. 5. 4. Preliminary and end pages use single spacing except title page, approval sheet and recommendation for oral defense. (See Appendix C) 5. Line spacing for the text is 1. 5. 6. Within the text, single spacing is used for block quotations. 7. Two spaces are required between chapter headings, major and minor headings, paragraph headings, table and figure titles. NUMBERING A. Preliminary Pages (See Appendix C) 1. Use lower case Roman numerals for all preliminary pages. 2. The title page bears no number but is designates as page i. 3. A blank page (flyleaf) bearing no number is placed before the title page. 4. The approval sheet or the endorsement sheet bears no number, but is designated as page ii. 5. Preliminary pages do not appear in the Table of Contents. 6. Page numbers appear on the center bottom of the page. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ENTRIES 1. Every bibliographical entry must use APA style of writing. e. g. Document source and Online sources 2. The reference page is an alphabetical list of all sources actually used in the research. The researcher should include only the sources that he/she has cited in the text. 3. If there are two or more sources by the same author, do not repeat his/her name for the entries other than the first. In place of the author’s name, use an unbroken underline of 8 spaces long followed by a period. 4. Should there be more than 10 entries in the reference page, divide these into the following: books, journals, and periodicals, other sources (unpublished theses and dissertations, brochures, Internet sources). (See Appendix D) TABLES AND FIGURES 1. All table titles appear above the table; figure titles go below. . All table title must carry complete information: the table number, description of the subject matter, locale, year the survey was conducted (e. g. Table 12. Mean of Burnout Causes among Teacher respondents of Liceo de Los Banos and Los Banos High School, 2003). 3. Never cut tables. 4. Tables and figures presented in landscape format. Appendix B. Research Paper Template 1 . 0 â€Å" 1. 5 â€Å" 1. 0 â€Å" Appendix C. Sample Preliminary Entries Appendix D. Sample Bibliography Entries Appendix D. Sample Bibliography Entries 1 CHAPTER I THE PROBLEM AND ITS BACKGROUND Introduction Backup refers to producing copies of data used as additional copies in case of a data loss event. Data restoration is the primary purpose of backup. Through the additional copies made during the backup, restoration of data is taken as a strategy in place of the lost data. Backups are typically the last line of defense against data loss and the most convenient to use. Since backup makes copy of data, data storage is also considered. Data storage can be with the use of a device such as CD-ROMs, hard drives and other storage media. Through proper organization of storage space, these data storages can be useful for making backups. . 0† APPROVAL SHEET The Independent Study in Information Technology entitled â€Å" iPad: Integrated Paperless Document Checking with Template-based Editor for Electronic Thesis † prepared and submitted by Cristielle Faith R. Adriano and Jelyn Y. Lopez in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Science in Computer Scie nce is hereby approved and accepted. Mr. Enrico P. Chavez Adviser Mr. Teodoro F. Revano Jr. Ms. Mary V. Acabo PanelistPanelist Mrs. Susan S. Caluya Lead Panelist Accepted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Science in Information Technology (BSIT). Ms. Ma. Gracia Corazon E. SicatMr. Jonathan M. Caballero ICT Project/ Research Coordinator CS Department Chair Dr. Charlemagne G. Lavina Dean, College of Information Technology Education RECOMMENDATION FOR ORAL EXAMINATION The thesis entitled â€Å"iPad: Integrated Paperless Document Checking with Template-based Editor for Electronic Thesis† prepared Cristielle Faith R. Adriano and Jelyn Y. Lopez in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Science in Computer Science has been examined and is recommended for acceptance and approval for oral examination. Mr. Enrico P. Chavez Adviser DEDICATION G. R. H. and J. A. V. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENT Cristielle Faith R. Adriano and Jelyn Y. Lopez ABSTRACT Adriano ,Cristielle Faith R. , Lopez, Jelyn Y. â€Å"A Development of Sales and Inventory System with Online Product Estimates Service for J. O. B. Auto Parts Supply†. Unpublished Thesis. Technological Institute of the Philippines. Arlegui, Manila. May 2009. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Title Approval Sheet Recommendation for Oral Examination Dedication Acknowledgement Table of Contents List of Tables List of Figures CHAPTER I: The Problem and Its Background1 Introduction 1 Background of the Study 1 Theoretical Framework3 Conceptual Framework4 Statement of the Problem6 Hypothesis7 Significance of the Study7 Scope and Limitation of the Study8 Definition of Terms9 CHAPTER II: Related Literature and Studies11 Related Literature11 Related Studies21 Synthesis24 CHAPTER III: Research Methodology26 Research Method26 Research Design28 Respondents of the Study31 Data Gathering Procedure32 Statistical Treatment 33 vii APPENDICES A Letter of Permission B Research Questionnaire C System Prototype D Curriculum Vitae viii LIST OF TABLES Table Number Table Description Page |1 |Respondents Matrix |32 | |2 |Likert’s Scale |35 | |3 |Frequency Result of Respondents |36 | |4 |Frequency Result of IT Office Staff Respondents |37 | |5 |Frequency Result of the Respondent’s Length of Years in the Position |38 | |6 |Frequency Result of the

Sunday, March 8, 2020

Essay on Freud and Surrealism

Essay on Freud and Surrealism Essay on Freud and Surrealism Essay on Freud and SurrealismDr. Sigmund Freud takes a special place among the psychologists of the 20th century: his works have radically changed the look of contemporary psychology, covered the issues of individual’s inner organization, one’s motives and feelings, conflicts between personal desires and needs to follow public morality, as well as showed the ephemeral nature of individual’s understanding of oneself as a person and the vision of others. As a psychological doctrine, Freudism was aimed at studying the hidden links and foundations of individual’s psychic life basing on the idea of suppression of the whole set of pathological representations (including sexual ones) beyond consciousness and repressing them in the unconscious. The ideas of Viennese psychologist and philosopher couldn’t help having special meaning to the representatives of the Surrealist circle, who sought to introduce Surrealism not as a new aesthetic approach to art, but as a new way of seeing the world: their aim was to reconcile an individual with one’s own subconscious mind first, and then with the outside world as a whole. However, it would be simplistic to think that the surrealists worked under Freud’s prescription or illustrated his ideas. Deeply influenced by the psychoanalytic discoveries of Freud, Surrealism rather was assisted in the formation of invaluable techniques of separation from reality and methods of indulging into the twilight world of instincts and intuition.  Freudianist methodology in the art of 1920’s-1930’sDeeply psychological prism of surrealism, its expression of unconscious fantasies, sexual fears and complexes, the transfer of childhood and personal life experiences to the language of allegory – these internal aspects were considered to be determining quality of Surrealism at its dawn in the 1920-30’s. Back in 1924, Andrà © Breton, the founder of the Surrealist movement, wrot e that the Manifesto of Surrealism basically links roots, aspirations, inner freedom, and creative courage of the new movement with the discoveries of Freud. Indeed, Freudianism provided Surrealism with the brilliant conceptual basis and grounded validation of its ideas, thus filling the key messages of emerging art trends with sophisticated meaning (Eagle 31-55).In particular, the Surrealists could not help but notice that the â€Å"incidental† techniques of early Surrealism and the chaotic Dada movement, such as exquisite corpse, frottage, or dripping (i.e. arbitrary spraying of paint on canvas, fully complied with the Freudian method of free associations used in the study of individual’s inner world. Later, when the principle of illusionist photographing of the unconscious was asserted in the art of Dali, Magritte, Tanguy, and Delvaux, it was impossible not to recall that psychoanalysis developed a technique of documentary reconstruction of dreams (Durozoi 53-57). I nterconnections and similarities were significant, especially considering the fact that psychoanalysis paid utmost attention on the same states of mind that the Surrealists were primarily interested in (dreams, visionary, mental health, child mentality, and psyche of primitive type, i.e., the one that is free from restrictions and prohibitions established by the civilization), and thus, we have to admit the initial parallelism of interests, perspectives, methods and conclusions between Freudianism and Surrealism.Furthermore, following the logic of Freud’s philosophy and the flow of subconscious ideas, the Surrealists put themselves outside the art as a form of reflection over the reality. Thus, in Max Ernst paintings Ubu Imperator (1923) and The Hat Makes the Man (1920), the dry and lifeless imagery shows the illogical combination of people and things. Later, in his Natural History series (1925), Ernst used Surrealist automatist technique where he gave meanings to the random lines arising out of the frottage by finding their similarities with the scenery, fantastic birds and plants, destruction from earthquakes and other natural phenomena. The artist then argued that during the process of creating these collotypes he tried to bring himself to the state of hallucination to imagine order inside chaos. Another influential representative of Dada movement, Francis Picabia used this approach in his early Surrealist works Broderie (1922) and Sunrise (1924). These and other works are obviously a glimpse into the confused and anarchic rebellion of artists against boring and at the same time necessary and inevitable reality, and eventually, against the entire human past and present. On this basis, the notion of the pure nature of the creative unconscious was shaped. The understanding of Surrealism thus receives its groundings in the belief of a higher reality of certain forms previously not taken into account, such as associations manifested in dreams or in the f ree play of thought, etc. (Wintle 167-73)Eventually, Surrealist artists started to pay paramount attention to the Freudian method of dreams analysis, by which a painting was written or sketched immediately after waking up, before recent hallucinations and subliminal images were affected by comprehension, real consciousness. In particular, this method was widely applied by Salvador Dali, who, clearly imitating psychoanalysis and even competing with it, ended up with creating a paranoid-critical method, according to which originally pure images could be placed in the context of chaotic unconscious impulses (Auster 74-75). For instance, his The Birth of Liquid Fears (1932), Nostalgia of the Cannibal (1932) and Atavism at Twilight (1934), as well as many others, obviously conceal the real world from the world, which can be considered ideal. Similarly to the logic of dreams, most often Surrealist paintings reveal either personal desires or secret fears: bleeding ulcers, loss of viscera, faces corroded with cancer, hungry ants, hermaphrodites feeding on excrement, etc. All of whose metaphors they are clearly the symbols of anxiety; the deformation of forms, like in The Persistence of Memory (1931), expresses the reality of pain, death, inhibition, and suppression of desires which destroys life like death itself does. At yet, as Dali puts it, the painting appeared due to the associations he had when looking at Camembert cheese melting in the sun ( Durozoi 117-124).Another typical example of creating Surrealist works can serve a painting Person Throwing a Stone at a Bird (1926) by Joan Miro, which by artist’s own admission, was painted under the influence of hallucinations caused by hunger. In his turn, Yves Tanguy set himself the task of creating works based on childishly naive worldview. Translating abstract metaphysical concepts by means of painting, he created The Furniture of Time (1939) on a regular blue-gray background, revealing the emptiness of alien l andscapes and the helplessness of the small figures through depicting abstract shapes and inadequate forms (Paglia 122-127). In whole, Surrealism becomes committed to the destruction of all other psychic mechanisms, aiming to replace them in the process of resolving any existing fundamental problems of life.Moreover, the adoption of the Freudian position on the absence of fundamental differences between the healthy and the mentally ill led to the recognition of insanity condition as the most favorable to the Surrealist art, as soon as this condition cannot be controlled by reason. Defining of art as a form of insanity, the subject of art as purely personal complexes, and its content as imagery not related to the real world, but rather based on repressed personal aspirations and fantasies, has finally resulted in the denial of the social role of art (Wintle 93-94). Using the analogy drawn by Freud between dreams and art, Surrealist artists were factually putting themselves outside art as a form of reflection of reality.   ConclusionAs a prominent psychiatrist of early 20th century, Freud created the theoretical ground for the emergence of Surrealism, while surrealist artists found sources of inspiration in his theory and attempted to free their subconscious through illogical, surrealistic imagery. Following Freud’s explanations of human nature, Surrealists understood their art as psychic automatism in its true state, the real process of thought on seeing the world. In other words, being a record of thought in the absence of control from the mind and beyond any aesthetic and moral considerations, a work of art could express the direct flow of associations emerging in the unconscious. In this perspective, the unconscious was recognized as the only absolute meaning, life with all its peculiar laws that had emerged long before there were fundamental concepts of good and evil, God and reason. The development of Freudianism served as an additional argument that the significance of the subconscious should not be underestimated or considered as something minor. Due to Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis, Surrealism had the opportunity to insist that it is not a groundless fantasy fiction and the movement of anarchists from art, but a new word in the understanding of man, art, history and thought. Having obtained a solid ideological support, Surrealism further prevailed and largely influenced art around the world up to the mid-20th century, successfully applying such Freudian ideas as the logic of dreams, the denial of separation of ugliness and beauty, good and evil, sublimation of desires, etc. At the same time, these ideas put Surrealists into the opposition to the social role of art, developing a revolutionary and unique form of art without rules.

Friday, February 21, 2020

In media studies, the critique of ideology is deployed to analyze Essay

In media studies, the critique of ideology is deployed to analyze issues of power in highly stratified liberal democracies. Usin - Essay Example In contemporary times, the influence and responsibility of the media is expanding because of the development of information technology, which is producing new forms of mass media. According to McLuhan’s Technological Determinism theory, the media determines social and cultural changes in communication technology. Therefore, nowadays, the role of the media seems more important than ever before, and if it does not function properly then we cannot expect society to progress in an orderly fashion. Also, in order to become a more productive society, press freedom should be safe from harm, and additionally, critique of ideology should be allowed to function because the critique of ideology observes how appropriate the role of media is in providing answers for society. The critique of ideology also makes people judge misinformation and insists on demanding the truth. However, there is another way to communicate with society: through culture. According to Raymond William, culture can refer to high culture, folk culture, or, in terms of industrial societies, mass culture. As he mentions so often, culture contains human thought, art, and mentality. Culture is the most traditional and natural way of communication between people in society. Therefore, it is significant to study about ideology, and furthermore, what the critique of ideology accomplishes in a liberal democracy. Ideology has multiple meanings, as shown in Olivier Reboul’s classification of ideology. In a book called Language and Ideology, Olivier Reboul classifies ideology to the Napoleon meaning, Karl Heinrich Marx meaning, and sociology of knowledge meaning by Karl Mannheim (Reboul, 1994). First of all, for the Napoleon meaning, according to the document that his secretary kept, he defined it as a disturbance that blocks flexible ideas for hypocrites. He also described that it refers to a person who is abstract and an idealist. It is not used all that commonly, so it will just be treated as hi storical meaning. For the Karl Heinrich Marx meaning, Marx defined ideology as false consciousness, using the metaphor of a camera obscurer. False consciousness means only showing a portion of a concept, and this makes people misrepresent the idea; it does not show what the full picture is. This kind of fantasy intimates with religious and moral principles. In this case, the subject who makes an ideology is dominant, and the person who receives the distorted information is weak and receives unfair treatment. Over time, ideology is a system of awareness or notion that is made from the dominating party. The problem with this is that particular information is accepted as common knowledge to the receiver. The Napoleon meaning criticizes the existing rulers while the Marx meaning is trying to remedy society. However, the last ideology’s meaning is completely different from the above two meanings. This ideology comes from the Hungarian-born German sociologist Karl Mannheim, and is called the sociology of knowledge. This idea is based on neutrality and first appeared in the 20th century. He terms ideology as every image that can be seen in a certain group. He emphasized that the composition of a group helps the group to work together. This idea is less controversial than the other two and is a unique cultural idea; however, it’s true that this makes it more open to debate. How does ideology apply to cultural

Wednesday, February 5, 2020

Humanities (General) Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Humanities (General) - Research Paper Example Above all, it helps in gaining a distinctive insight into individual community, in addition to, the wider global perspective of the world’s diverse cultures. This paper presents a study of two cultural events, the Carnival in Rio de Janiero and the Hogbetsotso Festival in Ghana. In addition, it presents how these events are related to what is learned about ideas, culture and the arts in humanities. These cultural events were experienced through watching internet videos (YouTube), which is an available form of media. In this regard, it was possible to see and hear the events. This paper also presents a description of the main cultural event (the Carnival in Rio de Janiero) as it reflects the culture of origin. This entails the ideas, beliefs and practices of the people. It presents the historical accounts of the cultural event and the similarities it has to another selected cultural event (the Hogbetsotso Festival) in a separate part of the world – Ghana. This is, in add ition to, whether the Carnival in Rio de Janiero event is influenced by other cultures or whether it influenced other cultures. Finally, this paper presents a conclusion of its findings. The Carnival in Rio de Janiero is a 4 day cultural event that occurs annually 40 days previous to Easter – which symbolizes the beginning of Lent. However, the set dates for this cultural event alternate annually with regard to the date of Easter. In most cases, this cultural event is commemorated towards the end of February (Camà µes, 2012). I did not attend this event in person but acquired the opportunity to watch the activities via internet video (YouTube). Though, experiencing the event live would have been more appealing as compared to watching a recorded event, I still managed to acquired a brilliant experience considering that the video recordings were most recent and much more professionally

Tuesday, January 28, 2020

Explaining Electoral Volatility In Latin America Politics Essay

Explaining Electoral Volatility In Latin America Politics Essay Abstract Many existing explanations of electoral volatility in Latin America have been tested at the country level, but they are largely untested at the individual party level. In this paper, I apply a hierarchical linear model (HLM) to test various explanations of electoral volatility on data of 128 parties in the lower house elections of 18 Latin American countries from 1978 to 2011. My most important finding pertains to the conditional effect of a partys incumbency status on electoral volatility. First, the results show that the effect of party age on reducing electoral volatility is stronger for incumbent parties. Second, an incumbent party has a lower level of electoral volatility than opposition parties during periods of stronger economic performance. Last, while an irregular alteration of political institutions is hypothesized to increase the level of volatility for all the parties in a country, the effect is more significant for the incumbent party. Explaining Electoral Volatility in Latin America: Evidence at the Party Level Introduction Concerns with party system institutionalization and its consequences in developing countries have grown in the past decade. Extant literature underscores that political parties play an important role in linking diverse social forces with democratic institutions, channeling societal demands, managing sociopolitical conflicts, holding government officials accountable to the electorate, and legitimizing the regime (Dix 1992; Sartori 1968; Schattschneider 1942). In this sense, political parties with stable and consistent support across elections not only ensure their long-term survival, but also help institutionalize the party system. A stable and institutionalized party system fosters more effective programmatic representation (Mainwaring and Zoco 2007, 157) and facilitates the institutionalization of political uncertainty (Przeworski and Sprague 1986). In contrast, a democratic country with a poorly institutionalized party system where electoral volatility is very high tends to produce populist leaders and discourage the incumbent party from making long-term policy commitments (Mainwaring and Scully 1995).  [1]   In comparison to Western Europe and the United States, the level of electoral volatility is exceptionally high in Latin America (Payne et al. 2002). In the 1990s, the overall electoral volatility in this region was about twice that in the developed world (Roberts and Wibbels 1999). Weak partisan identities of voters, rapid voting choice changes, and unpredictable election campaigns are prevalent political characteristics in this region (Baker, Ames, and Renno 2006), but what explains the variation in electoral volatility in Latin America? Previous work on electoral volatility has provided explanations about political institutions, national economic performance, social cleavages, ethnic heterogeneity, and historical factors (Hicken and Kuhonta 2011; Madrid 2005; Mainwaring and Zoco 2007; Roberts and Wibbels 1999; Tavits 2005). These explanations have been tested at the country level, but they are largely untested at the individual party level, even though that is the level at which th e effects of certain relevant explanatory factors are expected to work. Why do some parties have higher levels of electoral volatility than others? Do factors cause electoral volatility at the country level have the same impact on party level volatility? Does the incumbent party enjoy certain advantages that opposition parties do not have to secure electoral stability? This paper aims to address these questions by examining electoral evidence at the party level in Latin America. I generated a value of electoral volatility for each party between elections by performing Morgenstern and Potthoffs (2005) components-of-variance model on an original dataset of lower house electoral results at the district level for 128 parties in 18 Latin American countries from 1978 to 2011. I first demonstrate that the patterns of electoral volatility at the party-level differ from that at the country level. I then apply a hierarchical linear model (HLM) to test country-level, party-level, and cross-level hypotheses regarding why some parties are more electorally volatile th an others. The most important result of this study is that the incumbent parties and opposition parties have different behavioral patterns under certain conditions. Specifically, I find that a better national economic performance helps the incumbent party, rather than every party in the country, to reduce the level of electoral volatility. Moreover, I demonstrate that an irregular institutional change greatly increases the incumbent partys electoral volatility, rather than that of every party in the country. At the party level, I find that the effect of a partys incumbency status is contingent on certain party-specific characteristics. The results show that incumbent parties that were founded in earlier periods are generally less volatile than younger incumbent parties. These findings are robust after controlling for a variety of other explanatory factors that will affect electoral volatility, using a different sample of parties, or adopting a different model specification. In sum, relative to previous work, this study is distinctive in that it uncovers patterns of electoral volatility and provides a better understanding of the dynamics of party politics in new democracies. Why Study Party-level Electoral Volatility? I focus on party volatility in this paper, and I argue that examining electoral volatility at the party level facilitates a better understanding of the patterns of party development. In general, electoral volatility refers to the phenomenon in which voters switch voting choice in consecutive elections. Many previous have used the Pedersen Index  [2]  (Pedersen 1983) to operationalize the level of party system electoral volatility (Birch 2003; Kuenzi and Lambright 2001; Mainwaring 1999; Roberts and Wibbels 1999). However, as Mair (1997, 66) argues, aggregate volatility measurement such as the Pedersen Index explains little about the persistence or decay of political cleavages. Mainwaring et al. (2010) argue that the Pedersen Index fails to distinguish between the volatility caused by vote switches from one party to the other and the volatility caused by the entry and exit of parties from the political system. Morgenstern and Potthoffs (2005, 30) critique is that the Pedersen Index fails to account for the relative electoral movement of individual parties within the system; in other words, the Pedersen Index tells nothing about which party is more volatile than the others. This problematic feature may produce mistaken if not biased inferences. For instance, although the Pedersen Index indicates that Argentinas mean party system institutionalization is lower than that of Brazil and Mexico from the 1980s to the 2000s (Mainwaring and Zoco 2007, 159), it does not indicate that Argentinas electoral volatility is largely a result of the crisis of the Unià ³n Cà ­vica Radical (UCR) instead of the incumbent Partido Justicialista (PJ) (Levitsky 1998, 461). In short, aggregate electoral volatility is likely to mask patterns of party-level electoral volatility. The level of electoral volatility matters for a party because it is an important indicator of a partys long-term survival. Party volatility is also an indicator of party institutionalization (Dalton and Weldon 2007; Mainwaring and Scully 1995). According to Janda (1980, 26-7), an institutionalized party should have stable partisan support because it can secure stable representation by building strong and regular societal ties with the electorate. A more institutionalized party should have a lower level of electoral volatility and a higher probability to survive over time, and it also implies that this party has a stable, routinized organizational structure and/or supporters with strong partisanship (Levitsky 1998). As Randall and Svà ¥sand (2002) contend, a high level of party system institutionalization does not necessarily indicate that all the parties within the system have an equally high level of party institutionalization. In other words, it is not necessarily the case that a high level of country volatility implies that all the parties in this country are equally volatile between elections. Therefore, a more important research question needs to be addressed: Is a partys electoral volatility determined by country-level factors, features of the party, or both? In the next section, I will discuss and propose testable hypotheses for the empirical analyses. Explaining Party Volatility Party volatility considers the degree to which a partys average vote is stable across two consecutive elections. Previous studies about country-level electoral volatility have considered national economic performance, political institutions, and social structural factors as three competing theoretical explanations of electoral volatility. However, some of the tested hypotheses, particularly those regarding economic voting and institutional theories, are actually derived from behavioral patterns of individual parties. Thus, these hypotheses should be tested at a more appropriate level, that is, the party level. Unlike previous studies of electoral volatility that focus on country-level explanations, this paper focuses on explaining party-level volatility, and such a research design facilitates the testing of party-level, country-level, and cross-level hypotheses. In particular, I argue that the behavior of the incumbent party is different from opposition parties. Moreover, I contend that the effect of a partys incumbency status is contingent on certain factors. Next, I will discuss various competing theoretical arguments about party electoral volatility at different analytical levels. Party Age and Incumbency Status Previous studies have discussed how time affects electoral volatility at the country level. Roberts and Wibbels (1999) argue that an older system is likely to have deeper and stronger historical roots in society than younger ones. Therefore, the level of electoral volatility will decrease with the age of a party system. Adopting a similar approach, Mainwaring and Zoco (2007) propose a democratization timing explanation for why some party systems are more stable than others. The authors demonstrate that the level of democratic governance voters have experienced will affect the level of electoral volatility. In other words, what matters for accounting for stabilization of party competition is the timing when democracy began in the country. Voters in democracies that were created in earlier periods had stronger attachments to parties, so that can help forge stable patterns of party competition (Mainwaring and Zoco 2007, 163). In contrast, political elites in new democracies have less in centive to make efforts in party building, since they tend to depend on mass media and modern campaigns to win the elections. While Mainwaring and Zocos thesis sheds light on the relationship between democratic learning and party system stabilization, it ignores the variation of party age within a country. Clearly, old and young parties can exist in both old and new democracies in Latin America.  [3]  However, Mainwaring and Zocos argument might imply that party volatility will be higher in a newly-founded democracy, regardless of how old a party is in this country. To avoid this problematic inference, a more appropriate research strategy is to test Mainwaring and Zocos argument at the party level. Specifically, if Mainwaring and Zocos argument holds at the party level, we may expect that political parties that were founded in earlier periods will have lower levels of electoral volatility, because their supporters have much stronger partisan attachments than the supporters of younger parties. In contrast, younger parties will have higher levels of electoral volatility because the elites of these parties will have less incentive to delve into party building. Accordingly, the following hypothesis is generated: H1: A party that was founded in earlier periods will have a lower level of electoral volatility than a party that was founded later. The second testable hypothesis of this study is about a partys incumbency status. Some scholars argue that institutions such as states and parties might have their own strategic goals and behave as political actors in their own right (Cox and McCubbins 1993). While parties can be different in terms of various characteristics, whether or not a party is the presidents party is a crucial for explaining differences in party behavior. Incumbency advantage generally implies that incumbents are more likely to win an election than the counterpart nonincumbents (Erikson 1971; Mayhew 1974). Cox and Katz (1997) and Levitt and Wolfram (1997) decomposed the concept of incumbent advantage into three elements: (1) direct officeholder effect, such as opportunities for providing constituency services (Fiorina 1977; King 1991) and using legislative resources such as personal staff for performing casework (Cover and Brumberg 1982); (2) the ability of incumbents to scare off high-quality challengers (Kr asno and Green 1988); and (3) the generally higher quality of the incumbents due to their experiences and campaign skills (Fenno 1978). The literature on incumbent advantage provides useful insights for this study. Since presidency is often considered as an extraordinarily important political institution in Latin America (Mainwaring and Shugart 1997), it is expected that the presidents party has advantages that opposition parties do not have. In particular, the incumbent party is more likely to receive access to public funds and more capable in allocating targeted resources to secure its survival (Calvo and Murillo 2004). Although being an incumbent party does not necessarily indicate a higher probability of winning an election in the contemporary Latin American context, it is reasonable to expect that an incumbent party should have a more stable electoral performance than opposition parties. However, an incumbent party in a new democracy might not have a stable electoral performance under certain circumstances. The experience in Latin America suggests that, when a country is governed by a new party, the patterns of electoral competition will become more unstable. In Peru, Alberto Fujimoris self-coup in 1992 and the adoption of a new constitution in 1993 helped to dramatically increase votes for the incumbent Cambio 90 in the 1995 election. However, Fujimoris 40-point plunge in public approval ratings in mid-1997 (Roberts and Wibbels 1999, 586), and the demise of Fujimoris party in the 2000 and 2001 elections, not only suggest a high level of unpopularity of Fujimoris neoliberal structural reforms, but also a high level of fluid electoral preference when a country is governed by a new party. Although the effect of a partys incumbency status on party electoral volatility might not be clear, it is possible that this effect is conditional on other factors. In particular, if party age helps to reduce electoral volatility, it then makes sense that the effect should be stronger for the incumbent party. An incumbent party with an older age suggests that it not only has more access to use state resources to enhance its electoral competitiveness, but it also has stronger party organizations and members. Put differently, an older incumbent party might have a lower level of electoral volatility than a young incumbent party. Therefore, I generate the following hypothesis: H2: The effect of party age on reducing electoral volatility is stronger for an incumbent party. Incumbency, National Economy, and Institutional Change Besides the party-level hypotheses, I also test cross-level hypotheses to see whether the effect of a partys incumbency status is contingent on certain country-level factors. The first cross-level explanation concerns the interaction between incumbency and economy. Economic voting theory argues that some citizens will respond to the waxing and waning of the economy by shifting their votes to reward or punish incumbent parties and officeholders (Lewis-Beck 1988). In other words, electoral volatility is driven by voters retrospective evaluations of economic performance of the incumbent government. More specifically, economic hardship can be expected to increase electoral volatility by undermining the loyalties and support for the incumbent party and by increasing the opposition parties votes. By contrast, in a better economic climate, one would expect that people prefer to maintain the status quo by continuing to support the incumbent party so that electoral volatility decreases. The proposition that economic conditions shape election outcomes in democratic countries is robust for studies using individual survey data (Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier 2000). In contrast, analyses of electoral volatility at the country level find inconsistent evidence about economic voting. Remmer (1991; 1993) and Madrid (2005) demonstrate that economic performance has a significant impact on the level of electoral volatility in Latin America. The evidence in advanced democracies also shows that economic performance strongly shapes electoral volatility (Bischoff forthcoming). However, recent analyses of new democracies in post-communist Europe (Epperly 2011) and Africa (Ferree 2010) show that economic voting is not a crucial factor in explaining party system volatility. One possible explanation for these inconsistent findings pertains to the appropriateness of the level of analysis. Specifically, since economic voting theory suggests that national economic performance will affect the extent of vote switches between the incumbent party and opposition parties between elections, it is more appropriate and necessary to test this argument at the party level. If the economic voting argument holds, it is expected that the incumbent party will have a lower electoral volatility than opposition parties when the economic performance is better. Conversely, the incumbent party is expected to have a higher electoral volatility than the opposition parties when the economy is in crisis. Based on the logic of economic voting, I propose the following economic voting hypothesis on party volatility: H3: The incumbent party will have a lower level of electoral volatility than opposition parties when the national economy is better. The second cross-level explanation is about the interaction between incumbency and institutional change. As the literature of rational choice institutionalism indicates, institutions matter because political actors behavior is driven mainly by a strategic calculus facing the limitation and opportunities that particular institutional or organizational settings offer (Hall and Taylor 1996). The stable persistence of political institutions that regulate electoral competition helps political parties to socialize their voters over time, and upholds the legitimacy of a democratic regime. Therefore, a fundamental alteration or an irregular discontinuity in important political institutions is expected to have a shock effect on the competitive equilibrium of elections. Based on evidence from Latin American countries, Roberts and Wibbels (1999) and Madrid (2005) find that the electoral dynamics of a party system is greatly altered by the adoption of a new constitution, a significant enfranchisement, and/or irregular changes in the executive branch such as a presidential self-coup (autogolpe), or a forced resignation of the president. Although these dramatic and irregular alterations of existing institutions are found to increase electoral volatility at the country level, it makes sense that such shocks should also influence party-level electoral volatility. In particular, it is expected that such irregular institutional changes will increase the volatility of the incumbent party to a greater extent. Recent political developments in Latin America suggest that this hypothesis is reasonable. For instance, in Ecuador the adoption of a new constitution in 2008 helped the incumbent Alianza PAIS increase its level of voter support in the 2009 election. In contrast, irregular removal of presidents also leads to higher electoral volatility for incumbent parties, but in a negative direction. The 2009 Honduran coup dà ©tat with the removal of President Manuel Zelaya made his Partido Liberal de Honduras (PLH) suffer a significant loss in the election at the end of the year. Likewise, the resignation of President Alberto Fujimori in Peru in 2000 also led to an electoral fiasco for the governing Cambio 90-Nueva Mayoria. Based on the discussion above, I propose the following hypothesis: H4: The incumbent party will have a higher level of electoral volatility than opposition parties after a shock of an irregular institutional discontinuity. Alternative Explanations of Party Volatility In the empirical analysis, I control for a number of factors that are likely to affect party volatility. At the party level, I control for the size of a party. Party size may influence the stability of electoral performance. The literature of legislators party switching suggests that larger parties in the legislature are more attractive to potential party switchers because they generally have more political influence (Desposato 2006; Heller and Mershon 2008). Therefore, it is possible that a larger party should have a lower level of electoral volatility because it is more attractive to voters who are unwilling to waste their votes on parties with little chance to win the elections. However, it is also possible that smaller parties, especially those with strong regional base, may have low electoral volatility. It is because such parties are able to sustain their survival by securing a small but strong portion of the electorate over time. At the country level, I control for party system fragmentation and ethnic fractionalization. First, according to Pedersen (1983), electoral volatility increases with the number of parties in a system because a greater number of parties suggests that the ideological difference between the parties is small so that voters tend to switch their votes from one party to another between elections. In addition, party system fragmentation will destabilize democratic regimes because it tends to inhibit the construction of inherent legislative majorities (Roberts and Wibbels 1999, 578). Although the hypothesis of party system fragmentation has only been tested at the country level in previous literature (Bartolini and Mair 1990; Birch 2003; Roberts and Wibbels 1999; Tavits 2005), it is possible that a fragmented party system will increase electoral volatility at the party level. Another factor that may explain electoral volatility is social cleavages. Madrid (2005, 3) observes that the theoretical expectation that stronger ethnic cleavages help stabilize party systems (Lipset and Rokkan 1967) presumes that parties will provide quality representation of distinct ethnic groups and establish strong linkages with them. In Latin America, this expectation does not hold since most party systems have been composed principally of catch-all parties that have drawn support from a variety of social groups. Because minority ethnic groups would not feel well-represented under this context, the level of electoral volatility tends to be higher since it is unlikely for them to form strong partisan identities (Birnir and Van Cott 2007; Madrid 2005). In short, it is expected that Latin American parties in a highly ethnically fragmented social context will have higher levels of electoral volatility. Last, following previous studies of country-level electoral volatility (Roberts and Wibbels 1999; Tavits 2005; Madrid 2005), I control for a trend factor of party electoral volatility in the model. In a cross-sectional time-series design, Trend controls for the potential problem of spurious correlation when the values of the dependent variable and the independent variables vary independently but in a consistent direction over time. Measurement and Data The unit of analysis in this research is party-elections-country (e.g. Partido dos Trabalhadores 1994-1998 in Brazil). My conception of the dependent variable requires the collection of legislative electoral returns at the district level across time, differentiated by party or party coalition.  [4]  The data include 128 parties in the lower house elections of 18 Latin American countries from 1978 to 2011 (N=527).  [5]  Most district-level electoral data are compiled from official electoral results on the website of each countrys electoral administrative body.  [6]  For the countries that were democratized later in the 1980s or in the 1990s, only the elections after the first democratic election were included.  [7]  Since Latin American countries have different timing of democratization and term length, the data structure of this analysis is unbalanced. A party is selected for the analyses if the party once obtained more than 5% of votes in any legislative election hel d between 1978 and 2011 in the country. This selection criterion ensures the inclusion of a diversity of parties. To generate the value of party volatility, I adopted Morgenstern and Potthoffs (2005) components-of-variance model on district-level data between two consecutive legislative elections held within the same constituency border.  [8]  One major advantage of this components-of-variance model is that it simultaneously takes into account various features of a partys electoral performance when generating the value of party volatility. Specifically, Morgenstern and Potthoffs model enables the calculation of three components of a partys vote share in a particular election: volatility, district heterogeneity, and local vote. While Morgenstern and his colleagues have used the latter two components for the research about party nationalization (Morgenstern and Swindle 2005; Morgenstern, Swindle, and Castagnola 2009), I focus on the first component, i.e., party electoral volatility, in this paper. The volatility score assigned for each observation is a continuous variable with values that rang e from 0 to à ¢Ã‹â€ Ã… ¾, where higher numbers indicate a higher level of electoral volatility for the party. My primary party-level independent variables are Incumbency, Party age, and Incumbency*Party age. Incumbency is a dichotomous variable, measuring whether a party was the presidents party in two consecutive elections. Following Mainwaring and Zoco (2007), I measure Party age as the natural log of the number of years from the year when the party was officially founded to the year of 2011. The value of this variable does not vary over time, but is constant for all electoral periods for a given party. The interaction term, Incumbency*Party age, examines whether the effect of a partys age on volatility is contingent on a partys incumbency status. To test the economic voting hypothesis, I use two economic indicators: GDP growtht1 and Inflationt1.  [9]  GDP growtht1 is lagged by one year to capture the short term economic impact on volatility. Inflation rate is operationalized as the logged value of the inflation rate for the year before the election year. The logged inflation rate is used to prevent cases of hyperinflation from skewing the results.  [10]  To test whether the effect of the national economy on party volatility is conditional on a partys incumbency status, I include two interaction terms: Incumbency*GDP growtht1 and Incumbency*Inflationt1. In addition, to test whether a shock of institutional alteration will affect the incumbent party to a greater extent, I include two variables: Institutional discontinuity and Incumbency*Institutional discontinuity. I use the index constructed by Roberts and Wibbels (1999) to measure institutional discontinuity. The index ranges from 0 to 3, assigning one point to each of the following types of discontinuities: the adoption of a new constitution; an increase in voter turnout of more than 25 percent due to the enfranchisement of new voters; and an irregular change in executive authority, including a presidential self-coup (autogolpe), a forced resignation of the president, the ouster of the president due to impeachment, or a failed coup dà ©tat attempt when the president was temporarily ousted from the office.  [11]   Finally, I control for several party-level and country-level variables in the model. Party size is measured as the vote share of the party in the previous election.  [12]  Party system fragmentationt1 is measured as the index of the effective number of parties (ENP) (Laakso and Taagepera 1979), lagged by one election.  [13]  Ethnic Fragmentation is measured as Fearons (2003) ethnic fractionalization index. Last, the variable Trend is measured as the number of years since the first election in which a party participated. Estimation Techniques To test the hypotheses about party-level electoral volatility, I employ a hierarchical linear model (HLM) on my three-level data. The three-level model is specified as a level-1 submodel that describes how each party changes over time, a level-2 submodel that describes how these changes differ across parties, and a level-3 model that describes how parties and changes differ across countries. An attractive feature of a multilevel models is its ability to model cross-level interactions in the estimation. Another important advantage of the HLM approach is being able to account for both fixed effects and random effects. In this study, the fixed-effects coefficients and parameters of the HLM estimate a regression line that describes the sample of parties as a whole, while the random-effect parameters reflect variation across parties and variation across countries. Application of the HLM in this study will specify three different levels of analysis: The level-1 submodel represents the rela tionship of time-varying characteristics on party volatility, the level-2 model will incorporate party-level effects that are fixed over time, and level-3 will introduce country-level effects that are fixed over time. I estimate the model using restricted maximum likelihood estimation (REML). In contrast to full MLE estimation, REML takes into account the degrees of freedom consumed by estimation of the fixed effects by eliminating fixed effects from the likelihood fu