Concept of Kinship in Africa Essay

The subject of â€Å"traditional family patterns in Africa† is so broad that it cannot be adequately addressed by many scholars. The cultural and physical diversity added with the dramatic social changes of the last three decades on the continent makes the family pattern situation so variegated as to defy any sweeping generalizations. This difficulty in generalization bone of diversity was already apparent to many early scholars of the African traditional family. This essay will briefly explore traditional African family patterns explaining the concept of kinship in Africa, the differences and similarities between patrilineal and matrilineal families systems. Kinship is the web of relationships woven by family and marriage. Traditional relations of kinship have affected the lives of African people and ethnic groups by determining what land they could farm, whom they could marry, and their status in their communities. Although different cultures have recognized various kinds of kinship, traditional kinship generally means much more than blood ties of a family or household. It includes a network of responsibilities, privileges, and support in which individuals and families are expected to fill certain roles. In modern Africa social and economic changes have begun to loosen the ties of traditional kinship, especially in the cities. But these ties still play a large part in the everyday lives of many Africans (coser: 1974). The basis of kinship, in Africa as elsewhere, is descent from an ancestor. The most widespread descent group is known as the clan, which can be either patrilineal or matrilineal. The members of the former type of clan comprise all those who are born from a single founding ancestor through the male line only; those of the latter comprise all those born from a single founding ancestor or ancestress through the female line only. Patriliny is far more common in Africa than matriliny, which is limited mainly to parts of Zambia and Malawi, in central Africa, and to Ghana and Ivory Coast, in western Africa. Regardless of the means of descent, authority in the family and elsewhere is always formally held by men; therefore, men have domestic authority in both patrilineal and matrilineal families (formal matriarchy is unknown in Africa). Clans, which are rarely corporate units in Africa, are clusters of kin who claim a single common ancestry but can rarely, if ever, trace the actual links of descent. Usually clans are exogamous units and may recognize various ritual prohibitions, such as taboos on certain foods, which give them a sense of unity and of distinctiveness from others (Bell & Vogel: 1960). According to stephens (1982) Clans are typically segmented into constituent groups, with each group recognizing a founding ancestor more recent than the clan founder; these are known in the literature as lineages, one of the criteria for a lineage being that its members—patrilineal or matrilineal—can trace actual kinship links between themselves. Lineages may themselves be segmented into smaller units, the smallest typically being the group around which a domestic family is established. Such a family (if patrilineal) includes the husband and his children, all members of the small lineage, and his wife, who by the rule of exogamy must come from another clan Almost every African society has some form of descent group, however transitory, as the basis of its social organization. The recognition of these variations of ancestral descent is an effective way of constructing local groups that can last for several—often for many—generations and in which the close-knit ties of kinship provide powerful links through the notion of common â€Å"blood. By claiming exclusive ancestry, such a group can claim exclusive rights to clan and lineage property. Marriages between their members, by the rule of exogamy, cement them into larger communities and societies, each possessing its own sense of common ethnic and cultural â€Å"belonging. † Although these traditional forms of family and kinship are lessening in importance, with the continuing need for urban and industrialized labor and the consequent increase in labor migration, the strength of kin groups remains great. They are well suited to traditional forms of production and exchange where these are found (which is still the case among the majority of African peoples), and they provide a sense of personal identity and security that is of high emotive value (Bell & Vogel: 1960). Kinship and marriage are closely linked in several ways. On one level, kinship rules may determine marriage partners. In this respect, North African and sub-Saharan societies differ widely. North African peoples encourage marriage within a group, often a kinship group. Traditionally, the ideal marriage is between cousins, including the children of two brothers. Among the Bedouin, for example, a boy has the right to marry his father’s brother’s daughter. Although she can refuse the cousin’s proposal, she needs his permission to marry someone else (Barnes: 1951). Most lineage groups in sub-Saharan Africa, in contrast, favor marriage outside the group. As a result, kinship is not limited strictly to lineage. An individual has important ties with two different kin groups, the mother’s and the father’s. Such ties often extend outside the village or community, offering certain advantages. If a community suffers from drought, war, disease, food shortages, or other disasters, for example, its members may go to live with kin in other areas. Marriage and kinship are also linked by customs governing the transfer of property between and within kin groups. The most common form of such transfer in Africa is called bridewealth. This is a gift from the groom or his family to the bride’s family, often in livestock but sometimes in money or other forms of wealth. Some hunter-gatherer societies follow the custom of bride service, which involves the groom moving to the home of his wife’s family and hunting or working for his parents-in-law (Stephens:1982). Traditional African kinship is a cooperative relationship between household members and members of the larger lineage group. It involves a set of social obligations and expectations that ensures that no one faces tragedy alone. In societies without welfare services provided by a central government, kinship provides a â€Å"safety net† for individuals—orphans, widows, the elderly, the disabled, and divorced women—who lack an immediate household to care for them. Although kinship relations have grown weaker—especially in the cities—they continue to serve this function. For example, African kinfolk may support women and children while their husbands are away, perhaps by helping paying school fees or other expenses. Extended ties of kinship remain a vital part of life in contemporary Africa. Descent rules define socially recognized kin groups by tracing connections through chains of parent-child ties. A society may focus exclusively on connections traced through the male parent (patrilineal) or through the female parent (matrilineal). When descent is patrilineal, the descent group is composed of people of either sex whose fathers belong to the group. Siblings belong to the descent group of their father, but their mother belongs to a different descent group, the group to which her father belongs. Therefore, a man’s children will belong to his descent group, but a woman’s children will not belong to her descent group. Analogously, if descent is matrilineal, siblings belong to the mother’s group but their father does not. A woman’s children will belong to her descent group, but a man’s children will not belong to his (Schapera: 1971). Matrilineal is a system in which descent is traced through the mother and maternal ancestors. Matrilineal is also a societal system in which one belongs to one’s matriline or mother’s lineage, which can involve the inheritance of property and/or titles. Matrilineal descent, which traces lineage through mothers, exists in many African societies based on farming, especially in central Africa. Among the Bemba people of Zambia, mothers own the fields and pass them on to their daughters. Among the Bemba people of Northern Zambia, marriage is matrilocal. â€Å"That is to say a man goes to live in his wife’s village, at any rate for the first years of his married life. This is also true of marriage among other Zambian tribes like the Bisa, Lala, Lamba, Chewa, Kaonde, and many others. Among the Chewa of Eastern Zambia, the custom of man living with his wife’s parents temporarily or permanently was known as Ukamwini (Barnes: 1951). Societies with matrilineal social organization are not necessarily ruled by women. Some peoples who trace descent through women give political authority to men. In certain cultures men traditionally go to live with their mothers’ brothers, while women move to their husbands’ villages. Thus the men remain together, while the women through whom they trace descent are spread among the population. Because the men generally remain in the community, they have greater authority. Power and authority in matrilineal societies ultimately lies in the woman and her brother. As such children at an early age learn that their father has little authority or responsibility for them. The father knows that his children are not his ultimate responsibility but his sister’s children. Meanwhile the man and her married sister do not live in one locality, as they must maintain their marriages. Some scholars have suggested that this arrangement might be fraught with potential social problems and conflict (Bell & Vogel: 1960). More so than a patrilineal household where all the people charged with authority over the children potentially live in one household. Overall, there are two forms of social groups that from the basis of Bemba marriage and traditional family. First, there is the local unit of matrilocal marriage consisting of a man, his wife, his married daughters and their husbands and children, second, the matrilineal descent group which consists of maternal relatives and ancestors traced back to several generations. These constitute the core of the Bemba traditional African family around which the social organization of the raditional society revolves. â€Å"Both form the basis of the political structure of the tribe since the matrilocal extended family is the nucleus of the Bemba village although many other elements may be added to it, and succession to all political offices is fixed by the rule of matrilineal descent (Yizenge: 1988). A larger proportion of Zambian families are matrilineal than are patrilineal in organization. Within the country’s nine provinces, most households in the four provinces of Central, Northwestern, Luapula, and Copperbelt are matrilineal. The Namwanga and the Ngoni in the Eastern province, the Lozi in the Western, and the ILA in the Southern province are patrilineal. These groups are also patrilocal. That is, after marriage, the couple lives in the husband’s family house or close to his father’s household. Daily activities such as eating and educating the young are seldom conducted in the privacy of one’s house. Zambian villages have a central place governing the village. This place is called Insaka or Nsaka. In the matrilineal villages, the Insakas are located at the village center (Yizenge: 1988). This matrilineal descent pattern is in contrast to the more common modern pattern of patrilineal descent from which a Family name is usually derived. Patrilineal descent emphasizes the male side of the family, tracing relationships through the generations from fathers to their children. Patrilineal descent is common among pastoral societies. Because Islam arose among pastoral people in Arabia in the A. D. 600s, Islamic law tends to reflect patrilineal practices. For example, male children are favored over females in inheriting a father’s property. This and other aspects of patrilineal social organization can be found among the ARABS, BERBERS, and other Islamic peoples of North Africa. Many other pastoral groups, including the Nuer of SUDAN and the ZULU and Swazi of southern Africa, are patrilineal (Schapera: 1971). One feature of social life in Africa’s patrilineal societies is the close relationship between a man andhissister’s son—his nephew. Anthropologists call this relationship the avunculate, and in African cultures it may require the uncle to give his best cattle to his nephew or to accept teasing from the nephew. A brother might also be expected to support his sister’s children or to participate in the rituals that mark the stages of their lives. In southern Africa, where the avunculate is common, a boy’s uncle on his mother’s side may be called his â€Å"male mother† in recognition of this special link. In some groups the opposite relationship occurs, with a boy’s father’s sister—his aunt—seen as an authority figure called the â€Å"female father. † The Tsonga (Thonga) of Mozambique and the Nama of Namibia are some of the best examples of groups that practice the avunculate, although neither group follows the custom as closely as it did in the past. In patrilineal cultures when a marriage occurs the wife becomes part of her husband’s family, and if you have family names in such a culture, it becomes natural for the wife to take her husband’s family name. There may be a sense in such cultures that both the husband and wife are really part of each other’s families now, but since descent is reckoned by the male line, there is a greater sense that the wife is part of the husband’s family rather than visa versa (Yizenge: 1988). These are the reasons that the custom exists sociologically, but the origins of the custom tended to be obscured in the minds of many. When radical feminism came along, it wanted to radically tinker with the sexual status quo, to smash traditional gender roles, and even to call into question the institution of the nuclear family. (I’m talking about radical feminism, mind you, not moderate feminism that merely wanted better treatment for women. ) Doing away with the historical naming conventions would serve those goals (as well as making it harder to keep track of who is related to whom, thus undermining the family), and so not taking the husband’s name became a symbol of defiance against traditional values. Though there are some differences in these two societies matrilineal and patrilineal, there are some similarities which both societies perform as families. A Zambian family, like families elsewhere, can be thought of as a group. The most important duties of this group are to reproduce, nurture, and educate the young to become productive members of the family and the society at large. This training process is also referred to as socialization. The head of the Zambian family can either be the father or a maternal uncle. If it is a maternal uncle, the mother, more than the father, plays a crucial role in decision making within the family. These matrilineal families are very common in Zambia. In matrilineal families, the authority and power to make decisions rests with the mother and her relatives. In some family types, the father is the decision maker. These patterns of authority and power are passed from one generation to the next in Zambia (Coser: 1974). The stable satisfaction of sex needs is the Primary and essential function of family in these societies. Sex instinct is the natural urge of human being. The satisfaction of this need requires that both male and female should live together as life partners. It is the family where the husband and wife can satisfy their sex instincts easily and comfortably. Without family the satisfaction of sex need is almost socially quite impossible. A family not only satisfies but also provides the appropriate mechanism through marriage to regulate sexual behaviour of husband and wife (Coser: 1974) Reproduction or procreation is another essential function of family in both matrilineal and patrilineal familities. The family along with regulating the sexual behaviour in relation to the satisfaction of sexual needs secures a legitimate basis for procreation. Since the inception of family, it has been performing this fundamental function. This function of family contributes to the continuity of family and ultimately perpetuates the human race as a whole. Protection and care of the children is another essential function of family. It is regarded as an institution par excellence for the production and rearing of children. It is true that no other institution can take required care of the child like family. The child at birth is complete helpless and cannot survive at all without the help of the family. It is the family which provides care, protection, security (Physical, mental) and fulfils all other needs to make him fit in the society. Family is one of the primary agents of socialization. Family members teach the child the norms, value morals, beliefs and ideals of society. In the family the children first learn what is good and bad, what is right and wrong. They develop specific habits, traits of character, attitudes and values. The senior members of the family pass the family culture to the new generation thought socialization process. Thus, family acts an instrument of culture transmission. In both societies childhood is the socialization of the child in readiness for adulthood. This is sexual differentiation in socialization in which girls will become acceptable mothers and wives and boys husbands and fathers. Children are expected to help in minor household tasks. Boys herd goats, cows, and livestock. They also perform light duties for relatives. Girls at an early age are taught a wide range of household and agricultural duties including cooking, cultivation and tending children. â€Å"Girls, in distinction to boys, seldom have time to play games (Stephens: 1982). Family makes a provision of a home or a common habitation for its embers. Here both husband and if live together for procreation, protection and care of the children. It is a place of multifarious activities. All the members of the family depend on home for comfort, protection and peace. It is that institution which provides the mental or the emotional satisfaction. Members of the family exchange their love , sympathy and affection among themselves. Fostering is common in both societies. When couples fail to have children, they often become foster parents. It is also very common among siblings to foster care; that is, children are fostered by aunts and uncles. A survey of households in Kitwe, the second largest city in Zambia, found that about 14 percent of all children aged fourteen and younger, and nearly 18 percent of children aged to ten to fourteen years were not living with their parents (Ahmed 1996). The estimates of the extent of fostering in other African countries, such as Ghana, are much higher. Often fostered children are considered and treated as though they are biological offspring. When families are forced to adopt children following some misfortune, foster children may become victims of abuse and neglect. This chapter only focused on the matrilineal and patrilineal African traditional family patterns because they seem representative of the broad patterns that exists on the continent. It must be emphasized, however, that these were traditional patterns as far back as late 1800s up to as late as 1960s. The dramatic social changes in Africa during the last three decades of political independence from European colonialism have obviously affected the traditional family. And from our explanation it can be seen that the society some one belongs to dictate his or her life this is because each society has its norms and believes.

Miscommunication: Phonology and Message

Sometimes it is not easy to transmit the intended meaning to a person during a communication process. Miscommunication is a phenomenon that people experience almost every day. It is even used for marketing or present in comedy shows. Miscommunication can arise through various incidences, for example in an intercultural communication, where people have different conventions, or when a word is ambiguous and the context unclear. Sometimes people also do not listen because they think the aspect is not relevant to them.One of the most frequent types of miscommunication are those based on slips of the tongue or slips of the ear. When people do not understand words, sentences or whole passages, the brain tries to fill the gap with known structures. Consequently, misunderstandings arise. In the following we want to concentrate on miscommunication that emerges through the transmission of the message in the auditory channel. There are various aspects that can lead to miscommunication through m istakes in the transmission of a message.These aspects, like the difference of hearing and listening, the exchange of letters or problems with the intonation etc. , are going to be dealt with in this paper. First of all we are going to present how a message is transmitted in communication and which phonological aspects play a role. Then miscommunication is going to be treated. We want to show how miscommunication can arise and afterwards analyse some misunderstandings and show how they could have come up. 2. Phonetics and phonology – the transmission of a message Communication always takes place between two or more people who are trying to get a message across.During this communication process, different aspects are important. As we talk about oral communication, which is about the transmission of sounds, phonetics and phonology play a role. They are a main aspect in the transmission of a message. Phonology means †die Entstehung, Ubertragung und Wahrnehmung, also die ma terielle Seite der Sprachlauteâ€Å" (Grasegger 2004: 7) whereas phonetics â€Å"untersucht die Funktion und die Eigenschaft von Sprachlauten als Elemente eines Sprachsystems, also die funktionelle Seite† (Grasegger 2004: 7).In the following we want to concentrate on the transmission of the sounds or the message. We want to have a look at the phonological aspects and prosodic aspects that play a role in the transmission process. But first of all, we are going to present Shannon and Weavers communication model. 2. 1. A communication model The process of communication can be presented as a model. One, the prototypical model, was developed by Shannon and Weaver in 1949. They reduce communication simply to the process of transmitting information (Chandler o.A. : 1). This model consists of five elements, an information source producing a message, a transmitter encoding the message into signals, a channel, a receiver decoding the message and a destination where the message arrives (Chandler o. A. : 2). Thus, a sender and a receiver always exist in a communication process. The sender is the information source who intends to transmit the message by his mouth (transmitter) through a channel. Here the message is transmitted through sound waves and maybe also body language.The ear receives the sound waves (receiver) and the listener decodes the message by interpreting verbal and non-verbal information and constructing a reality of what the meaning could be (www. worldtrans. org : 1). As sender and receiver do not share the same feelings, experiences, perceptions and ideas, the message can be interpreted differently by the receiver (ebd. ). Consequently, miscommunication can arise. Regarding the Shannon and Weaver model, some possibilities where miscommunication might emerge are in the channel, where noise is a dysfunctional factor (Chandler o. A. 2), on the listener’s side or during the process of encoding a message on the speaker’s side. However, t here are other aspects that have to be considered in communication. We also need to know how the speaker succeeds in producing a sound and how the listener reconstructs the message. At this point phones and suprasegmental features play a role. When the speaker wants to encode a message, he takes a phoneme as a basis and produces a phone that is transmitted through the channel. According to Grasegger 2004 the speaker disposes of a creative function, a sending and listening function in his brain.The sending function in the brain thinks of a message that reaches the speech-organs through nerves. There the sound is produced by tongue, breath, palate etc. (Grasegger 2004: 17-31). The sound passes the channel through sound waves and reaches the ear of the listener. The task of the listener is now to reconstruct the message, which means recognizing the individual words, extracting their syntactic relationships, determining the semantic structure of the utterance and its relation to the dis course context as well as recognizing emotions (Cuttler/Dahan/Donselaar 1997: 142).However, few cues are available to signal where one word ends and the next one begins. To understand the message, the listener has to find the individual word boundaries (Cuttler/Dahan/Donselaar 1997: 143). The brain decodes and reconstructs the message. The sounds, the â€Å"Signifikat† (Grasegger 2004: 11), stand for a special concept, the significant (Grasegger 2004: 11). In the following we are going to concentrate on this phonological and prosodic part the of communication process. 2. 2. Phonological elements of communicationAs already mentioned, phonological elements are important in the transmission of a message since phonemes are a unit of linguistic and perceptual processing (Clark/Yallop 1996: 318). During a communication process, the speaker produces sounds. These sounds are not transmitted individually but in bigger units. The smallest and primary unit of production and perception i s the syllable. It can be described as â€Å"symbiosis of consonant and vowel which acts as the effective vehicle for the transmission of linguistic information† (Clark/Yallop 1996: 318).Phonemes never have a meaning themselves. Their primary function is their distinctive function, the differentiation of meanings of speech units like words. If a sound has a distinctive function can be proved by replacing it by another sound. That means that a sound has a distinctive function when you take the example ‘Kanne’ and replace the [k] by a [t] so that the meaning changes (Grasegger 2004: 81). The articulation is not important when it does not have a distinctive function. Such words that differ only in one phoneme are called minimal pairs.By changing this phoneme, the word gets a different meaning (Grasegger 2004: 83). Thus, miscommunication can easily arise at this point since if the listener does not hear a part of a word or sentence, his brain replaces this gap (Clark /Yallop 1996: 318). Another aspect that is important during the transmission of sounds is that two words with two different meanings can sound similar and have to be understood in the context (Bu? mann 2002: 284). Thus, the role of sound in communication is the transmission of a meaning. However, a single sound does not convey a meaning, but a combination of sounds.The sounds (signifikat) stand for a meaning or concept (significant) that the listener has to decode. But if some sounds are replaced during processing in the brain and these sounds form a minimal pair the meaning can be changed. Later on we want to deal with some examples how miscommunication can arise because some sounds are replaces or their position in a word is changed. 2. 3. Prosodic elements of communication As we have seen, not only phones, the smallest segments of sounds, are important for the transmission or reconstruction of a message, but also uprasegmental features, phonetic expressions that include more than one segment. These are pitch, volume and duration which are linked to bigger units like syllables, words, phrases and sentences (Grasegger 2004: 63). However, prosody is normally used as a synonym for suprasegmental features such as pitch, tempo, loudness and pause (Cuttler/Dahan/Donselaar 1997: 143), although Grasegger defines prosody as the linguistic function of suprasegmental features which is to differentiate meaning on the level of words, phrases or sentences, or to structure an utterance rhythmically (Grasegger 2004: 63).So it is rhythm and intonation what helps differentiating meaning (Clark/Yallop 1996: 322). According to Cuttler/Dahan/Donselaar 1997, â€Å"the prosodic structure of an utterance exercises effects on the timing, amplitude and frequency spectrum of the utterance and these are dimensions of sound itself; any utterance, indeed any part of an utterance corresponding to any linguistic component to a phonetic segment even must have a certain duration, a certain amplitude and a certain fundamental frequency† (Cutler/Dahan/Donselaar 1997: 142).Consequently, if a speaker intends to emphasize a segment, frequency, pitch, intensity and duration, or one of these parameters, have to differ from the accentuation of other segments so that the listener is able to understand the difference in meaning or rhythm, since languages like English are â€Å"perceived in the durational interplay of prominent (or ‘stressed’) syllables and weaker or less prominent ones† (Clark/Yallop 1996: 323). However, few cues are available to signal where one word ends and the next begins. Elements that structure sentences etc. hythmically and determine their meaning are for example quality and accentuation. The speaker could change the meaning of an element by changing the duration, called quantity. That means, that for instance long vocals convey a different meaning than short vocals (Staat; Stadt) (Grasegger 2004: 72). The accentuation helps def ining word boundaries. An accent is the stress or emphasize of a syllable, a word or a sentence to emphasize it (Grasegger 2004: 73). Stressed syllables normally have a higher frequency, a higher volume and a longer duration than non-stressed syllables (ebd. . Its function is to structure an utterance so that the listener has the possibility to differentiate meaning by distinguishing different positions of stress like ancora and ankora in the Italian language (vgl. Grasegger 2004: 74). A â€Å"Satzakzent† (Grasegger 2004: 75) emphasizes words in a sentence and thus has a contrasting function. In the sentence ‘Peter searches a book’ , for example, the speaker can emphasize different units such as the book, Peter, or searches to make clear who he is talking about, what Peter does or what he is searching for.This kind of stress in a sentence is related to intonation. Intonation is another prosodic element that can be defined as â€Å"Verlauf der Sprechmelodie inner halb einer lautsprachlichen Au? erung† (Grasegger 2004: 76). It is the „Form der Tonhohenbewegungen im Verhaltnis zur mittleren Sprechstimmlage eines Sprechersâ€Å" (ebd. ). During a unit of intonation, the pitch rises or falls. The boundaries of a unit are defined by different phonetic elements like the distension of a syllable at the end of a unit or a linguistic pause, an interruption that has a structuring function (Grasegger 2004: 76).Thus, the characteristic of intonation is structuring an utterance as well as its distinctive function since the difference in pitch conveys meaning. A rising intonation at the end of a sentence normally is a question whereas falling intonation a statement. A demand or an order is expressed by â€Å"steil abfallender Intonation† (Grasegger 2004: 77). So the content and meaning of a sentence depends on the position of the accent and the rise or fall of pitch. Moreover, syntax and prosody are closely related so that the supraseg mental features may be influenced by the position in the syntactic structure.So we have, for instance, longer pauses before major syntactic boundaries (Cutler/Dahan/Donselaar 1997: 162). Furthermore, intonation (pitch, volume etc. ) show the emotional condition of the speaker and thus have an expressive function. A question, for example, can also indicate doubts or surprise of a speaker. (Grasegger 2004: 77). So prosodic elements that are important for the differentiation of meaning or structure the sentence through a certain rhythm so that they influence the accentuation of a message and the understanding of the listener are pitch, volume, duration and pauses.They help identifying words (Cutler/Dahan/Donselaar 1997: 148). Prosodic problems can lead to serious reductions of the understanding, what is going to be treated later on. 3. Miscommunication – Problems in the auditory channel After looking at the communication process and the transmission of a message through the audi tory channel, we now want to have a look at the emergence of miscommunication. In the following we are going to treat some aspects that can influence the transmission of sounds in a negative way so that the message is not transmitted correctly.Miscommunication can be caused either by the speaker or by the listener. That means by slips of the tongue or slips of the ear, because the receiver did not listen or on account of channel problems. However, we first want to deal with the difference of hearing and listening. 3. 1. Hearing and Listening One aspect through which miscommunication can arise is the difference between listening and hearing. People hear or perceive sounds the sender is trying to transmit. However, we have to listen and reflect to understand the message.Hearing can be defined as attending to the sounds which come to the receiver at certain frequencies and intensities. Thus, the receiver cannot influence hearing but avoid listening since this is a higher cognitive proc ess under the receiver’s control (Truax 2000: 20). There are three levels of listening attention. One of them is ‘listening in search’ which is listening at its most active. It involves a conscious search of the environment for cues. Detail is of the greatest importance for this kind of listening.The listener needs the ability to focus on one sound to the exclusion. That means that in a noisy environment, the listener has to focus on the sound the speaker is producing and not on the background noises. The second level is ‘listening in readiness’. This depends on associations being built up over time so that the sounds are familiar to the listener. Consequently, they can be identified even by background processing in the brain. So, for example a mother does not wake up when trains are passing by but when she hears her baby crying.The last form of listening attention is ‘background listening’. That means that people are aware of sounds tha t are not important for getting the message so that they do not listen. One reason for this is that they are usual occurrences and therefore expected and predictable so that people do not listen to them actively (Truax 2000: 19-22). The more of these sounds are perceived, the more miscommunication is possible since an increase in the noise level means more psychological tress, greater fatigue and consequently an increase in performance errors on account of the extra load of information processing when the brain has to shut out noise (Truax 2000: 19). Thus, miscommunication can arise involuntarily when people do not distinguish between hearing and listening or lack the skill of listening in readiness, for example. If somebody lacks that skill, he cannot distinguish between important or less important sounds so that an overload of sounds is possible. So people maybe do not hear a letter, a word or a sentence. Slips of the ear can also happen when you lack concentration.However, it is also possible to tune somebody out because you do not like the person or since you are bored or tired (Myres/Myres 1992: 139). Another problem that can arise in communication is that immediately after people have listened to a person talking, they tend to remember only about half of what they heard, no matter how hard they thought they were listening (Myres/Myres 1992: 138). Furthermore, the association one has to a sound can differ. That means that the listener does not associate the same meaning to a sound as the speaker does.So a reason for the loss of information or the understanding of wrong information are for instance highly redundant and basically uninteresting sounds that are perceived and do not encourage sensitive listening since they seem irrelevant for the listener. This can described as a listener- based and interactional- related problem. Consequently, problems can arise when the listener concentrates on background noises, when he thinks sounds are redundant or when h e lacks concentration or listening skills. There are also problems on the phonological and prosodic level that lead to miscommunication with which we want to deal later.The problems or types of miscommunication mentioned above are listener based, the last one is based on an interactional and a listener problem. However, miscommunication can also emerge through problems in the channel, during the interaction or on the sender’s side at which we want to have a look now. 3. 2. Channel- based and interactional- related miscommunication The main channel- based problem that influences the communication process negatively is noise. If there is too much noise in the background, the listener often perceives only bits of what the sender is talking about.Consequently, the brain tries to restore the missing segments by top-down contextual prediction (Clark/Yallop 1996: 318). What kind of misunderstanding arises, that means if it is based on prosodic or phonological aspects, depends on the missing segments. Another problem that may arise, is the overlap of turns meaning that for example two people are talking at the same time caused by problems in turn taking. Thus, the speaker A cannot concentrate on the sounds the other speaker (speaker B) is producing and does not understand passages of his speech. This can be categorized as channel and interactional-related miscommunication.To avoid misunderstandings or miscommunication it is necessary that sender and receiver establish a common ground. The speaker wants to know if he has succeeded in transmitting the message and waits for evidence that the listener has to give by asking a question or using continuing contributions like ‘yes’, ‘uhuh’ or ‘I see’. If miscommunication arises at this point, it can be categorized as an interactional problem. 3. 3. Sender and receiver related miscommunication Miscommunication is always a problem that arises either on the speaker’s side or o n the listener’s side.If there are channel problems, the misunderstanding comes up at the listener’s side. However, the sender’s pronunciation can also be a reason for miscommunication, for example when he stutters, does not pronounce the word correctly or clearly and does not stress correctly etc. Regarding these kind of problems, we distinguish between two categories of problems, prosodic and phonological ones. 3. 3. 1 Prosodic problems Prosodic problems are â€Å"Abweichungen in der Realisierung segmentubergreifender bzw. suprasegmentaler Eigenschaften lautsprachlicher Au? erungenâ€Å" (Grasegger 2004: 78).That includes problems or dysfunctions of pitch, volume and intonation that influence the intonation of a sentence and consequently its meaning. Prosodic problems influence the perception negatively and lead to incomprehensibility. Problems that can lead to misunderstandings are stuttering and variations in pitch and accentuation (Grasegger 2004: 78-79). Miscommunication can arise when people do not detect the right word boundary. For example, when a word is spread over a strong and a following weak syllable, listeners tend to divide the former syllable at the onset of the second strong syllable.Englishmen often tend to insert boundaries before strong syllables or leave boundaries between weak syllables out (Cutler/Dahan/Donselaar 1997:146). The reason why such miscommunication emerges is that strong syllables often signal the onset of lexical words (ebd. ). But the â€Å"strong weak distinction is primarily based on a segmental property, vowel quality, rather than on a stress distinction (Cutler/Dahan/Donselaar 1997: 148). However, not every language makes the same distinctions between strong and weak syllables (ebd. ). Whereas the rhythm of English sentences in stress-timed, French sentences are syllable-timed.As the segmentation procedures are part of the â€Å"processing repertoire† (Cutler/Dahan/Donselaar 1997: 148) of the listener, an Englishman and a Frenchman talking can produce miscommunication by applying their strategies to detect word boundaries (vgl. Cutler/Dahan/Donselaar 1997: 148). Furthermore, miscommunication can arise when a listener does not perceive the stress of some words, it is possible that he does not interpret the meaning correctly, for example in the vocal quality distinction (Cutler/Dahan/Donselaar 1997: 155).If the receiver does not get the sentence accents or the intonation, he probably does not know if it was a question or an order or, taking the sentence ’Er ist nicht einmal gekommen’ (vgl Grasegger 2004: 78), if he did not come or if he came several times. A misunderstanding can also come up when the speaker does not stress correctly. Usually, the listener who does not get the right words does not ask but adds the rest of the sentence so that a misunderstanding can arise. 3. 3. 2 Phonological problems Phonological problems are phonetic deviations on the word level.That does not include the pronunciations, the phonetics, but the wrong choice and order of elements a word, for example. We distinguish between paradigmatic problems and syntagmatic problems. Paradigmatic problems include the choice of the wrong elements, syntagmatic ones the wrong sequence or order of elements. The latter could be that people understand ‘papel’ instead of ‘apple’. An example for a paradigmatic problem understanding the word ‘Jacoc’ instead of ‘Jacob’ (Grasegger 2004: 123). Additionally, there are four different types of phonological problems: elision, addition, metathesis, substitution.Elision means that the speaker leaves out segments of a word or a whole syllable. In general one omits syllables that are not stressed. An example for an elision is saying and/or understanding nana instead of banana. Normally consonants are left out, in general the last consonant of a word like street which becomes stree. Addition means that the speaker or listener adds a consonant or a vocal so that apple becomes papple, zebra zebera or Tablett Tablette (Fromkin 1980: 35-36). It is also possible that you have an elision and an addition in a word or that you double a syllable.A metathesis is a problem in sequencing so that the speaker exchanges syllables or puts them the other way round. So Blatt is Balt or ‘fork’ ‘frok’. The last type of phonological problems, the substitution, means that the speaker has the same number of syllables but replaces one syllable by a different one. It is often replaced by another syllable that sounds similar like ‘Jacoc’ and ‘Jacob’. It is also possible to leave something out and replace a syllable or a letter (Grasegger 2004: 123-127; Fromkin 1980: 47).The first segments in a word and the first syllables are more likely to be affected by speech errors since they are more focused on during speech production (Fromkin 1 980: 48). According to Clark/ Yallop 1996, errors on the level of a syllable are detected far more readily than segment errors (Clark/Yallop 1996: 319). When the listener does not perceive one syllable, the brain tries to replace the missing syllable by a segment that could fit (vgl. Clark/Yallop 1996: 318). However, these processing in the brain might fail, especially when the words sound similar.Another aspect that can lead to miscommunication are these homophones. They are a type of lexical ambiguity, â€Å"homonyme Ausdrucke verfugen uber identische Aussprache bei unterschiedlicher Orthographie und Bedeutung† (Bu? mann 2002: 284) like ‚their’ and ‚they’re’. Consequently, misunderstandings can easily come up when for example the context is unclear and the word the speaker used sound similar but has a different meaning. This kind of miscommunication can also be categorized as message-related miscommunication.These problems can be listener-ba sed so that not the speaker changes elements of a word but the listener understands the wrong elements, for example because there were also channel problems or he did not listen or sender-based because of slips of the tongue, for example. 4. Analysis of miscommunication In the following chapter we are going to analyse some misunderstandings according to the features we have listed above. For the collection of data I used the diary method and searched in the internet. One example is taken from the internet, another one is a situation I experienced during the last weeks.The last example was originally broadcast on television some years ago that I remembered and wrote down. By analysing the examples of miscommunication, we want to come up with some possibilities how the misunderstanding could have emerged. 4. 1. A phonological problem The first misunderstanding is a situation I experienced some weeks ago. It took place on the dance floor during a training unit so that there was much ba ckground noise (people talking and music). The sender arrives and tells that he never wants to do it again with Korten, which is the last name of an absent person.M: Das mache ich nie wieder mit dem Korten! A: Was machst du nicht mehr mit dem Korken? This misunderstanding can be categorized as a phonetical miscommunication. The words Korten and Korken, that means [t] and [k], are a minimal pair since they have a distinctive function and change the meaning of the word. The misunderstanding is based on a paradigmatic problem, the choice of the wrong element, sound, in the word. The listener substituted the letter [t] by the letter[k]. One possibility how the misunderstanding could have arisen is in the channel.On account of music and loud voices in the background, the receiver had to listen in search but could not understand the whole sentence because of the extra load of processing in the brain or a lack of concentration. Probably she only got the first passage of the word and the la st syllable was added through brain processing as Korten and Korken only differ in one sound. Furthermore, the context was missing. M arrived and started the sentence with the word â€Å"das† which normally refers to something that had been said before. In this example a reference was missing because this word was used at the beginning of the communication.Additionally, the person â€Å"Korten† M was talking about was absent so that the listener did not expect M to talk about him in this context. M also used an article to refer to a person what you normally do not do in the German language unless you are speaking a dialect. So we can categorize this miscommunication mainly as acoustic misunderstanding which is based on substitution of a consonant and probably came up on account of a channel problem. 4. 2. Hearing and Listening This example was taken from the internet. It is a telephone call an old woman made to the police because she wanted to know if there was a thund erstorm in Neuss. 1)P (police): Hallo? (2)W(woman): hallo? (3)P: Hallo, hier ist die Polizei (4)W: Hallo, ich kann gar nichts verstehen! (5)P: Ne? Dann mussen Sie mal richtig zuhoren! (6)W: Ich wollte fragen, aah, wo die Nacht das Gewitter war. (7)P: Das†¦war uber Bochum. (8)W: Was?! (9)P: Uber Bochum? (10)W: Saarbrucken? (11)P: Auch (speaks up) (12)W: Wo denn? (13)P: Wo solls denn hin? (14)W: Was? (15)P: Wo das Gewitter denn hin soll? (16)W: Wo das gewesen ist? (17)P: In Deutschland (18)W: Ich hab’ Sie jetzt aber nich verstanden, wirklich nich, sind Sie mir nich bose! (19)P: Ne, bin ich nicht (20)W: Wo war das denn? 21)P: Uberall! (22)W: Uberall? (23)P: Ja, †¦ und das war nass. (24)W: bass (25)P: Nass! (26)W: †¦. Ist denn viel passiert? (27)P: Nein. (28)W: Viel passiert? (29)P: Nein! (30)W: Nein? (31)P: Nein. (32)W: Nein,†¦ Ja, entschuldigen Sie bitte, ich bin 99 Jahre alt und ich hab’ eine Tochter in Dusseldorf, in Neuss wohnen und ich hab’ noch nix gehort. (33)P: Da war nichts. (34)W: Was? (35)P: In Neuss war nichts! (36)W: Da was es? (37)P: Nein! (38)W: Nein? (39)P: Nein, in Neuss kein Gewitter. (40)W: Gewitter? (41)P: Nein! (42)W: War da das Gewitter? (43)P: Nein! (44)W: Nein? Ich hab’ kein Wort verstanden!Ich habe extra an die Polizei gewandt, dass ich Antwort krieg! (45)P (schreit): Ja, da war kein Gewitter! (46)W: Was? Bitter? (47)P: Da war kein Gewitter (48)W: Gewitter? Wo? (49)P (lacht) (50)W: Hier? (51)P: Nein! W legt auf. (source: www. radiopannen. de) In general, this miscommunication seems to be listener and channel- based. However, there are several factors that lead to this miscommunication. Concerning the channel, the woman probably does not hear very well because she is already old. We can suppose this because she always asks ‘was? ’ and says ‘ Ich hab’ kein Wort verstanden’.She was also nervous, because she had not heard of her daughter, what could influence the listening process. In addition to this fact, the telephone connection was bad and crackling in the wire could be heard. Perhaps the woman also lacked the skill or concentration for listening in search. In line 47 and 48 the woman did not listen to the beginning of the sentence and just paid attention when the man was talking about the thunderstorm where she was interested in. Obviously, she applied the wrong strategy, listening in readiness so that she heard what he was saying but only recognized the word ‘Gewitter’.The same can also be supposed for line 35 and 36. Moreover, we also have some misunderstandings that are based on prosodic and phonological problems as in line 39 and 40. Here we have a prosodic problem. The woman did not get that the police officer stressed the word ‘kein’, so that she thought there was a thunderstorm. In line 24 the woman understands ‘bass’ instead of ‘nass’. This is a paradigmatic problem that is ba sed on the substitution of [n] by [b] because they are minimal pairs and the words sound similar.In line 45 and 46 she understands ‘bitter’ instead of Gewitter. Here she is not able to define the right boundary because the stress of ‘bitter’ and ‘Gewitter’ is on the last syllable. Furthermore, we have an elision of the letters [g] and [e] and a substitution. [w] is replaced by [b]. Concerning the misunderstanding in line 9 and 10 where the woman understands Saarbrucken instead of Bochum, we have to guess that this arose because she could not understand the word on account of channel problems and ‘Bochum’ was replaced by another town in brain processing.So we can conclude that this miscommunication is based on various kinds of misunderstandings that are probably mainly influenced by channel problems such as a bad connection and an old person who is hard of hearing and maybe also lacks listening skills. 4. 3. Prosody and homophones T he following example for miscommunication was broadcast on television in 1959. A reporter called Heinz Maegerlein talking about sports pronounced the sentence: Maegerlein: Tausende standen an den Hangen und Pisten which was interpreted by the spectators as: Tausende standen an den Hangen und pissten. vgl. http://de. wikipedia. org/wiki/Heinz_Maegerlein) This misunderstanding can be interpreted as a message-related, listener or speaker-based miscommunication. It is a prosodic and phonological problem. As the words ‘Pisten’ and ‘pissten’ are homophones, the spectators added an ‘s’ to the word so that it also becomes a paradigmatic problem. On account of the words being homophones, the misunderstanding is message- related. That is why the speaker has to put the emphasize on the right syllables and the pauses in the right position. Therefore, we also have a prosodic problem here.Either the speaker must have put a wrong stress on the words or the sp ectators did not get the right intonation. To get the message across correctly, the speaker is not allowed to make a pause after ‘Hangen’ (Tausende standen an den Hangen [†¦] und Pisten) since it would emphasize ‘und Pisten’. Thus, as the words are homophones and therefore intonation very important, it seems that the problem is primarily a prosodic one, since the speaker has to try to get the right meaning across. 5. Conclusion Thus, we can conclude that most of the miscommunication happens on account of problems in the auditory channel.According to Fromkin 1980 about 60% of all misunderstandings are based on slips of the ear and 60% result in nonwords (Fromkin 1980: 6). These misunderstandings can come up on the listener’s side as slip of the ear because he does not listen, he lacks listening skills, does not concentrate, or on account of a mistake in brain processing. As the listener did not get an aspect of the communication, the brain search es words that sound similar. Miscommunication can also arise on account of channel problems like noise, interactional problems or message- related problems like homophones.Furthermore, the communication can be influenced negatively through slips of the tongue produced by the speaker. Consequently, the listener replaces the target segment by other segments of the same level of description so that other words with different meanings or nonwords come up. Parts of words, sentences or syllables can also be left out or the place can be changed. Additionally, problems in prosody can influence the meaning of the sentence as wrong intonation makes the definition of word boundaries more difficult to the listener. .Bibliography Bu? mann, Hadumod (2002): Lexikon der Sprachwissenschaft. Stuttgart: Kroner Verlag. Chandler, Daniel (o. A. ): The Transmission Model of Communication. http://www. aber. ac. uk/media/Documents/short/trans. html. Abgefragt am 25. 10. 2006. Clark, John/Yallop, Colin (1996 ): An introduction to phonetics and phonology. Oxford/Cambridge: Blackwell. Cutler, Anne/Dahan, Delphine/Donselaar van, Wilma (1997): Prosody in the comprehension of spoken language: A literature review. Language and Speech, 40, 141-201. Fromkin, Victoria (1980): Errors in linguistic performance. Slips of the tongue, Ear, Pen and Hand. New York/London: Academic Press. Grasegger, Hans (2004): Phonetik und Phonologie. Idstein: Schulz-Kirchner Verlag. Myres/Myres (1992): The dynamics of human communication. New York: Mc Graw Hill. Truax, Barry (2000): Acoustic communication. Norwood: Ablex Publishing Corporation. A communication model : www. worldtrans. org . Abgerufen am 25. 10. 2006. www. radiopannen. de. Abgerufen am 19. 03. 2007.

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From the end of 1789, the motives of the leading revolutionaries grew increasingly radical and repressive, and in the ensuing Terror thousands would yet lose their lives in the name of the Revolution after 1793.

Information Technology Essay Example for Free

Information Technology Essay Write a 200- to 300-word short-answer response to the following: How is information used in the modern enterprise? How does this use affect IT systems? Information technology has become spreading widely throughout our society. We live in a modern world with Internet access from our home, fast food chains, offices, schools and on our mobile devices, such as iPhones, iPods, Blackberries and Android Phones. Nowadays, the use of internet became essential to communicate distantly and the use of social medias for interactions as well as businesses through online marketing or other called as the e-commerce. The rapid advancement of this system has elevated the importance of the IT function. Information technology in the modern enterprise has developed gradually from a back-office component to a most important operational constituent that could improve businesses performances and increases shareholders value. Enterprises such as marketing, sales and finance are now cooperated by information technology. The core success of an organization is information technology because it serves daily operational support and enables enterprise wide change. Since information technology is essential in a modern enterprise it is sometimes serve as a threat in today’s organization. One of the examples is the personal information which can be sending through the use of systems and it can be a threat if this information consolidated from banks and accounts pertaining to financial aspects. In these cases, applying triad could be helpful that is Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability. The protection of the information from disclosure to unauthorized users is confidentiality while integrity refers to protecting information from being modified by unauthorized users. Ensuring that authorized users are able to access the information when needed is availability.

Bowlbys Attachment Theory: Applications in Social Work

Bowlbys Attachment Theory: Applications in Social Work Describe and Evaluate Attachment Theory and Assess Its Value for Social Work. Attachment theory, pioneered by John Bowlby, holds that an individual’s emotional and interpersonal development throughout life can be understood, and is ultimately shaped by and rooted in, a system of attachment behaviours they form and internalize during a critical period in early life. According to Bowlby, attachment behavior in children arises out of an innate, instinctual need for security and stability. (Bowlby, 1969) Though a child can form multiple attachments, there is usually one primary figure they place at the top of their hierarchy. This is usually the child’s mother. But there is nothing intrinsic about the ‘maternal’ relationship per se that establishes its primacy over other attachment relationships. It is simply that mothers are often the most sensitive and responsive caregivers on a consistent basis over the longest period of time. There are important quantitative and qualitative distinctions Bowlby draws to properly describe the attachment relationship. The qualitative distinction has to do with the nature of caregiving. Children form attachments based upon the sensitivity and responsiveness of an adult’s reaction to attachment behaviours. Hence, an adult who feeds a child but who is at the same time insensitive or unresponsive will be a less likely candidate for attachment than an adult who does not feed them but remains sensitive and responsive in their interactions with the child. Even with the qualitative conditions met, the attachment relationship is still based upon their consistent application over an extended period of time. It is not enough to be responsive and sensitive as a caregiver in one instance or another. Healthy attachment relationships are formed with these qualitative conditions properly met over time. The primary attachment figure is usually the most consistent and continually present person who interacts with the child. Furthermore, this quantitative distinction appears to be the more significant of the two in forming attachment relationships because the lack of appropriate caregiver responsiveness has been shown not to sever or invalidate the attachment relationship, but to result in unhealthy and even pathological attachment behaviours. (Ainsworth, 1985) So the need for security and stability on the part of the infant results in attachment behaviours directed most commonly at a parent, usually the mother, who becomes their primary attachment figure. The nature of these behaviours is determined by how the primary attachment figure responds to them. Thus, the attachment relationship reflects the interaction between infant need and parental response. One of the most readily identifiable attachment behaviours is proximity seeking, where the child responds to distressful or frightening stimulus by seeking out their primary attachment figure. It is this security that the infant’s instinctual behaviour is designed to achieve. The role of this security is critical for the formation of a psychological stability that allows proper development to occur. Separation (or the threat of separation) from the caregiver, or inappropriate caregiver responses to attachment behaviour, can result in alarm and anxiety which arrest the development of the child as they seek to reestablish the security that allows them to naturally develop. Bowlby identifies the time period of six months to two years of age as a critical stage where most of the basic attachments, and after which, the fundamental internalizations of an ‘internal working model’ are formed. During this time infants and toddlers begin to display attachment behaviours that spawn relationships with caregivers which will form the basis for how they interact and relate to the rest of the world. Bowlby describes the ‘internal working model’, which develops after the ‘sensitivity period’, as a basis of understanding against which the child relates and responds to everything from the experience and analysis of emotions to the formation and understanding of human relationships and interactions. The ‘internal working model’ is not irrevocably fixed during the critical period, but it is most heavily and initially influenced there. Hence the developmental importance, and impact, of this period on the child is of huge significance to their healthy growth and future well-being. Whereas Bowlby’s model views attachments as the building blocks of an ‘internal working model’ that continues to develop throughout the child’s life, it does not delve deeply into the role of security created by attachment behaviours, and the various kinds of behaviour that can follow from various parental responses. Here, Mary Ainsworth’s addition to attachment theory is similarly pioneering. Ainsworth identifies the role of the primary attachment figure as a ‘secure base’ from which the child is free to explore. (Ainsworth et al., 1978) This exploration is a natural part of the child’s development and will occur uniquely according to the given factors present in the personality and makeup of each child. Such exploration occurs, however, under the conditions of healthy attachment. To identify different types of attachments, Ainsworth conducted an empirical study known as the ‘strange situation’ which yielded three initial classifications of attachment behaviour: secure, resistant, avoidant. Later studies following up on this work added a fourth: disorganized, usually resulting from abusive situations or mentally unsound parental response. Together, these four categories form the commonly accepted classifications of attachment behaviour within the child/caregiver relationship in attachment theory. In the strange situation study, a mother entered a room with her child. After they were left alone and the child began playing with toys a stranger entered the room and began talking with the mother, then approached the child with a toy. The mother left as the stranger engaged the child, then returned. The child was then left alone after which the stranger, then the mother successively returned. Finally, the stranger left and the mother and child were alone together in the room again. The study looked at how the children responded to the presence and absence of their mother and a stranger, in different variations, and how they explored the room and engaged the toys. Securely attached infants explored the room while remaining aware of their attachment figure’s location. They were alarmed by their mother’s departure from the room and comforted by her return. They were also more comfortable and willing to engage the stranger in the presence of their mother, and more comfortable with the stranger’s interaction with their mother absent than those not securely attached. Avoidant insecurely-attached children showed little response upon their mother’s departure or return while resistant insecurely-attached children displayed extreme distress upon their mother’s departure and resistance upon reunion, as if the need for the caregiver had been recognized but not accompanied by a feeling of security in accepting their comforting gestures, po ssibly due to inconsistent parental sensitivity and responsiveness to the child’s needs. Here it is clear that the consistency of parental availability and the manner of parental response are key in determining the foundational framework of how children react to their environment and interact with others. We see with Bowlby and Ainsworth the development of a model focused on the earliest stages of interpersonal and emotional development which not only identifies the correlative impact upon the well-being of children in later life, but provides a framework for understanding the causal factors involved in different types of identified behaviours. This is a particularly useful tool in the field of social work where myriad factors often complicate the view of how best to impact a child’s welfare. (Howe et al., 1999) Understanding the developmental aspects that inform healthy behaviour and growth is an important tool in confronting many of the challenges facing social workers today. This is evident in the first example of Howe et al.’s Attachment Theory, Child Maltreatment, and Family Support: A Practice and Assessment Model. His first example is of a woman, Melanie, who was raised by a demanding, abusive, and mentally-unsound mother, who was sexually abused by her father regularly (He died of a heart-attack the evening after he had intercourse with her at the age of fourteen), and who has three children. Her oldest son, Peter, age 7, has exhibited violent behaviour toward other children, demonstrated actions of theft, arson, cruelty toward animals, and has no friends. Her second son, age 3, is quiet and she is unsure about her ability to raise her infant daughter. Howe describes how â€Å"a developmental perspective based on people’s past and present socio-emotional experiences, particularly within close relationships, offers a powerful insight into human personality, styles of caregiving and the character of interpersonal life.† (Howe et al., 1999, p.3) It is this insight that enables an understanding of root causes amidst the fog of developmental complexity that plays into the challenges facing social workers. With attachment theory as a tool, sifting through the fog of factors that form a person’s makeup and identifying the appropriate solution is not an impossible task. Attachment theory provides grounds for a developmental understanding of individuals. As such it is a huge tool for social workers bound by increasing regulations and legalities. For children living in residential homes, the theory can enable an acute understanding of their development in unique situations, as well as create helpful guidelines for parents to foster healthy development of their children. It also enables a reliable assessment of whether or not a child may be in danger, whether parental practices are contributing to the continuing maladjustment of the child, and whether or not it is appropriate to leave them in their current care. Howe et al. also mention attachment theory can help foster parents â€Å"make sense of children who seem intent on rejecting the love offered by their new family.† (Howe et al., 1999, p.4) Understanding the developmental links between the growth of individuals (or lack thereof) and past attachment relationships is a tool useful to virtually every part of social work. In the face of such a powerful tool based on theory, however, there are always criticisms. Much like Bowlby’s criticism of the psychoanalytic theories that dominated the conversation prior to attachment theory (as being too preoccupied with children’s psychology in their world of fantasy), psychoanalytic criticisms of attachment theory stress its preoccupation with attachment realities as myopic. (Steele H, Steele M, 1998) (Cassidy, 1998) Other criticisms, such as Maureen Miner’s Back to the Basics in Attachment to God: Revisiting Theory in Light of Theology, points to the lack of attention to concepts of God during the development of the theories of attachment. There has been â€Å" little attention paid to ways in which God might be different from human attachment figures – most obviously, that God is not a physical being whose form and response to human beings can be observed.† (Miner, 2007) An anthropocentric treatment of God has resulted in a dismissal of theological realities for many people, particularly as it relates to reliance upon and attachments to God. The problem is compounded by the collective inability of individuals to include God in the empirical investigations of attachment theory. Add to this the fact that a majority of people in the world, and indeed many millions in Western countries, and we see the foundations for the explanatory power of attachment theory to begin to show cracks. Miner concludes, however, that the lack of empirical investigation does not preclude attachment theory from accounting for God. Rather, a â€Å"rigorous theological dialogue in the development of psychological theories of attachment to God† opens the door to possibilities of study between â€Å"theologians and psychologists as they investigate how secure (and insecure) attachment relationships with God might operate.† (Miner, 2007) The impact of this criticism on social work is significant as it relates to individuals who may have attachment relationships with concepts of God. However, the explanatory power of attachments that do not involve such concepts do not appear in danger. Miner’s criticism is, in effect, a humbling check on the would-be comprehensive aspirations of attachment theories explanatory power in the field of social work. Taking this criticism into account is imperative in keeping the theory, and social work based upon it, honest. Another important point of concern is the cross-cultural application of attachment theory. In a pluralistic western society, the cross-cultural implications of factoring in attachment theory to social work are very real. While the general consensus is that attachment theory is fundamentally valid across cultures, those analyses suffer from a magnification of Miner’s criticism that a theological conversation is absent, particularly in countries and cultures far more religious and centered on concepts of the divine than the secular West. A great deal of research has been done in different cultures on attachment theory and attachment theorists Prior, Glaser and Kingsley find that: â€Å"Commencing with Ainsworth’s findings in Uganda and Baltimore, US, studies followed in many different cultures, all of which found attachment theory to be applicable across cultures.† (Prior et al., 2006, p.81) Ijzendoorn and Sagi state after exhaustive research: â€Å"the universal validity of attachment theory appears to be confirmed in cross-cultural research.† (Cassidy et al., 1999, p.730) The absence of a theological conversation in Miner’s criticism is focused on a Trinitarian conception of God from a Christian point of view. The UK’s significant Muslim populations only add to the relevance of this criticism. In fact, it can be argued that while Christians exhibit an institutionalized tolerance for secular institutions and concepts (Render unto Caesar†¦), no such allowances will be forthcoming among Muslims. Add to this the factors of discrimination and unequal opportunity that challenge Muslim populations in the West and you see a significant stumbling block for social workers in this kind of environment. It may indeed be unfair to subject Muslim’s to the analysis that they are ‘avoidant’ or ‘resistant’ insecurely attached. The possibilities of a theological conversation may be bleak as well. Interestingly enough, this does not negate attachment theories relevance or importance in social work. Rather, it serves as an important refinement for its use. For example, Susanne Bennet and Loretta Vitals Saks identify its application between students and field instructors in the field of social work. â€Å"A logical extension [of Bowlby’s original hypothesis] is that attachment theory and research can provide a lens for conceptualizing the field supervisor-student supervisee relationship. Specifically, knowledge of internal working models of attachment can increase understanding of the educational process and the dynamics of supervision.† (Bennet Saks, 2006) The idea of the ‘secure base’ forms the foundation of how supervisors ought to manage student growth and education as they explore social work and encounter challenges. Of course, the development of such a relationship would require empirical study, evaluation and development on its own, and the authors caution about the limits of attachment theory as an explanatory tool, but conclude that â€Å"With this warning in mind, attachment theory can enhance an understanding of the supervisory relationship, without the supervisor becoming a parent or therapist to the student, because all adults have internalized models of attachment that influence their relational style, regardless of context. The expectation is that, in an attachment-based approach to supervision, field instructors will find clarity regarding the ideal supervisory relationship and guidance when problems arise. Likewise, when students feel understood in a secure relationship, they will find that supervision of fers a safe environment for learning, facilitating their exploration and professional growth.† (Bennet Saks, 2006) Attachment theory does indeed strike at some fundamental truth at the heart of human development. The truth is, however, that the temptation to run away with it gives rise to the danger of reductionism. In a field as complex and important as social work, the application of theories with such powerful explanatory power is cautioned by careful use and consideration. The field of social work is also an important area of research into the application of attachment theory where attachment theorists themselves may find mutual benefit as well. As long as the disciplines continue independently, however, many interesting developments may be missed. A coordinated approach is not likely any time soon, but stands as a hopeful possibility for the future with incalculable benefits.

MP3 :: essays research papers fc

Executive summary It's only been about three years since a little known extension of an audio compression technique-MPEG-2 Audio Layer-3 or MP3-opened the door to being able to send large volumes of CD-quality music over the Internet by pack the equivalent of several commercial compact disks onto the equivalent of one CD platter (Lange 01). It also initiated the veritable floor of pirating activity by an underground community students and hackers. Hundreds of MP3 Internet sites sprung up overnight. At these sites, everything in music from Mozart to Marilyn Manson is being reproduced (Lange 01). Of course, it's illegal, but it's free, which has a huge appeal. Two men summarize the battle that is still raging over this new technology. On one side there's Val Azzoli, co-CEO of the Atlantic Group, which has numerous popular artists signed to their label; and on the other is the CEO of the website MP3.com, which gives away digitized songs by new artists that no one has heard of yet (Mardesich 96). While this may not sound like much of a threat, what lies at the heart of this conflict is the concern of recording industry that this new technology may chance the balance of power and if allows the shipment of music directly to the consumer (Mardesich 96). The five giant corporations that contr ol 80% of the global music industry-worth roughly $60 billion a year-have taken notice (Wood; D'arcy 42). The following discussion will explore more fully why the record companies, despite their obvious power, are scared. Pros and Cons It is the impressive 12:1 compression ratio of the MP3 that has made it so popular. While 60 or so Mbytes are needed to store a typical song, once it is converted to MP3 format it becomes a single 5 Mbyte file (Lange 01). "The advantages are obvious," commented one executive, "CD-quality sound in a small package" (Lange 01). The drawbacks are all felt by the record companies. Artists are likely to benefit, eventually, if they take advantage of the new technology and deliver their songs to their fans directly via the Internet (Mardesich 96). They'l l no longer have record companies making money off from their work and by eliminating this "middle man" could conceivably earn a great deal more then they do now. However, for the large record labels, this new technology could mean real trouble in the future. Right now, the loss are negligible. For example, Americans spent almost nothing on downloaded music in 1998, but they spent nearly $14 billion on music from stores (Mardesich 96). Nevertheless, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) said that MP3 piracy may have contributed to a

Islam :: essays research papers

The five pillars The Five Pillars of Islam are the structure of Muslim religion. They are the testimony of faith, prayer, giving, fasting during the month of Ramadan, and if you are lucky the pilgrimage to Makkah once in a lifetime. The first pillar, entitled the testament of faith, exploits the Belief in one God, Allah, whom constitutes the very foundation of Islam. Prayer is the next pillar of Islam. Prayers do not take more than five minutes and are required five times daily. In prayer, a person feels inner happiness, peace, and a direct connection between the worshipper and Allah. Giving Zakat, other known as supporting the needy, is the third pillar of Islam. Initially, Zakat was the issue that altered Muhammad’s views of the world and turned him into a political figure. Fasting for the month of Ramadan is the fourth pillar of Islam. Even the Quran states, "O you who believe fasting is prescribed to you as it was prescribed to those before you so that you can learn Taqwa" (Quran 2:183). Ramadan consists of fasting from dawn until sundown while concurrently abstaining from food, drink, and sexual contact. Finally, the pilgrimage to Mecca is the last pillar. Although these conditions seem intense, there are actually many benefits to these submitters. The temptations of the world seem to erase our understanding for religion and g-d. Fasting will remind you of what has been handed down to us. Ramadan can draw one closer to g-d by seclusion from the surrounding world. Ramadan will help achieve a willingness to give to the needy. Now you have been in their shoes and understand how it feels. Understanding discipline is important, since g-d has given us a free will, and the torture of Ramadan is a great reminder of how to view life. In the Quran one can find references to ritual prayer or salat. Holy Qur'an 2:149 "From whencesoever thou startest forth turn thy face in the direction of the Sacred Mosque; that is indeed the truth from thy Lord.

A Philippine Hero

†¦ I. for my part, have done everything possible to avoid it, although at the cost of many rights uselessly sacrificed†¦ My government can not remain indifferent in view of [the] violent and aggressive seizure of its territory by a nation which has arrogated to itself the title champion of oppressed nations. Thus†¦ my government is disposed to open hostilities [if America attacks the Visayas]. Upon their heads be all the blood which may be shed. Emilio Aguinaldo Proclamation, Malolos, January 5, 1899 In Larry Henares' program, some of the panelists -staunch admirers of Aguinaldo- expressed the oft-repeated view that the general failed to achieve greatness in the eyes of Filipinos simply because he lived too long. He didn't die young, in the flower of youth, like Jacinto, or in some twilight of the gods manner, like Bonifacio. He wasn't martyred, like Rizal, and he didn't die, penurious and neglected, like Mabini. He simply lived on, and on, until he became something like an antiquated relict fit for gawking at, but not for reverence. Poor, unheralded man. No one ever made it clear if anyone asked Aguinaldo if that's what he felt. I would think that Aguinaldo was exceedingly fortunate to have lived so long. He outlived many of his friends, but he also outlived all of his enemies. He was reviled during his lifetime -in some cases, because he involved himself in politics and thus made himself fair game- but he lived to see independence day moved to June 12. Isn't having lived long enough to be told of that change an exquisite achievement? And throughout his life, he had the loyalty and devotion of the those who belonged to the League of the Veterans of the Revolution. The things held against him, the sordid Tejeros Convention -one professor of history has pointed out that there were more votes cast than there were actually people to cast them- which led to the eventual execution of Bonifacio, and the assassination of Gen. Antonio Luna which was a great blow to the military viability of the forces of the Republic, may forever bar him from reaching the same exalted place in the affections of the Filipino people. They will always haunt him. But they do not, I think, diminish his greatness at all. The power struggle -a naked coup d'‚tat, some have called it- that led to Bonifacio's downfall does make for sickening reading. And his execution was a poor end for a patriot. But is such indignation over this, warranted? Do people get upset over this because, in reality, they are applying quasi-religious morality to a subject that should be divorced from it? Why should standards befitting religious sainthood be applied to secular heroism? Must you be â€Å"good† (in the way people like Fr. Nudas would define it) to be a hero? A hero for a secular country? When Bonifacio's competence to hold the portfolio of the department of the Interior was questioned by Daniel Tirona, the Supremo, indignant, demanded a retraction. He failed to get it. Furious, he declared the proceedings null and void, and left. NCC Chairman Laurel recounted with pride on Henares' program how his grandfather, Sotero, head of the Batangas delegation at Tejeros, and a Bonifacio supporter, reacted to the uproar that followed. He called for lambanog. He drank, pulled out his gun, and put it on the table. He demanded that, as they had all agreed to earlier, the decision of the majority be respected. Otherwise, mag ubusan na tayo. The majority sided with Aguinaldo. Bonifacio (or, depending on how you see it, Aguinaldo) had thrown down the gauntlet. As Sotero Laurel might have put it then, matira ang matibay. Aguinaldo won, obviously. The thing is, in a revolutionary situation, extreme situations call for extreme measures. You can't dilly-dally and sort things out and massage egos while the enemy tries to kill you all . Every revolution everywhere has been marred with competing factions, many of whom act out of less-than-noble motives. In the end, one group must prevail, one destiny achieved. The Revolution, for good or ill, had its destiny tied to Aguinaldo. While the movement (as Mabini saw it) faltered as a result of the Supremo's liquidation, it made it through. It was suspended after biak-na-bato, resumed again, and gave birth to the proclamation made from a window of a house in Kawit on June 12. The proclamation of the Philippines as a free country. The Republic did not prosper. Was it Aguinaldo's fault? The fault of the Ilustrados? Did it fail because of competing views and interests within it, divisions that exist to this day in our country and in other countries with similar histories? Left to ourselves, they had as good a chance of eventually working them out as any other people on earth. But they weren't left alone. They were subdued with krag rifles and American tactics. Laudably, the Centennial Commission has made it clear that it is the proclamation and not the substance of independence that will be commemorated in 1998. A proclamation whose aspirations have endured. As have its symbols: our flag, our anthem. Aspirations we strove to fulfill in 1946, aspirations every generation tries to fulfill up to the present. Aguinaldo was responsible for that declaration, that flag, that anthem. He gave the nation vessels to contain its soul. We should be able to forgive him for being a flawed man and a poor politician. Again and again, our pantheon of heroes has been besieged by angry mobs, intent on pulling down -or raising up high above the others- the statues of great Filipinos. We, who should, as befits a supposedly democratic and liberal state, find nothing wrong or ignoble in having our heroes stand side-by-side, remain obsessed with establishing heroic hierarchies, as though the leaders we revere were petty princelings subject to Byzantine rules of precedence. Are we a people unworthy of heroes in the first place?