Ethnographic Methods Free Essays

Examine the advantages and disadvantages of using ethnographic methods for sociological research I am going to look at the advantages and disadvantages of using ethnographic methods for sociological research. Ethnography is in-depth research into people’s lives through the use of primary data such as Observations and Interviews, and also secondary data such as diaries, and official documents. The first method of research I am going to look at is a primary research method that is unstructured interviews. We will write a custom essay sample on Ethnographic Methods or any similar topic only for you Order Now There are a few advantages to unstructured interviews such as; if a researcher is going to conduct and unstructured interview then the participant is more likely to discuss sensitive information with them, this is because they may feel that the interviewer is sympathetic and understanding and so are more likely to open up towards them. Another advantage is that it allows people to explain their answers further if they need to, for example with questionnaires the person answering may not be able to explain why they put that answer, and so their point is not put across as they would like to have been. There are also some disadvantages to unstructured interviews such as it takes time and can cost a lot of money; although this method is very effective at finding out detailed information about a person and their life, it can take a lot of time to conduct an interview and even longer as it is unstructured so the interviewer can ask as many questions as they like; it could cost quite a lot as you might need to hire an office to do so, and if you need to interview a lot of people over a few days the cost could rise very quickly. Also interview bias is another disadvantage; this means that the interviewer can ask questions that can influence the answer, which then affects the outcome of the results. Interviewer bias can be illustrated through the use of leading questions for example â€Å"Do you get on well with your boss? † this question can make the interviewee question their relationship with their boss, and subtly raises the prospect that maybe they don’t get on with their boss. Another method of primary research covert observation, this involves the researcher joining the group that they are studying, and in covert observation the researcher does not tell them or allow them to find out their true identity. There are some advantages to covert observation such as it has high validity, as the researcher gets first-hand information about the people they are studying. This is a major advantage to covert observation because if this was done by someone else it may not be on the exact same topic and so not all the information they need is there. Another advantage of this method is that it avoids the observer effect, which is that people change their behaviour when they know they are being observed, and this would not show a true reflection of what they are really like. Some disadvantages to covert observation is that the participants are unaware of the experiment and so this is an ethical issue, as some people may not have wanted to be a part of the experiment, and if they find out that they are they could try and sue the researcher. Another disadvantage of this method is that the researcher could become influenced by the group and when writing their findings down it could be in favour or prejudiced against the group. How to cite Ethnographic Methods, Essay examples

Clytemnestra front and center Essay Example For Students

Clytemnestra front and center Essay It began casually enough. Guthrie Theater artistic director Garland Wright asked company member Isabell Monk a question he poses each year to his actors: What roles would you like to play in the coming season? Monk, who has spent eight of the past 12 seasons at the Guthrie, had an immediate answer: Clytemnestra in Sophocles Electra, a work she had appeared in Off Broadway a few years before as a member of the chorus. Her choice surprised me, says Wright. I wanted to do a piece for her, and Clytemnestra certainly doesnt carry that play. But after studying a number of other Greek tragedies involving the character of Clytemnestra, Wrights interest was piqued. Together they made the woman and her story as complicated as I felt they needed to be. You began to understand the sense of justice out of which these terrible events arose. From his simple exchange with Monk an ambitious design began to take shape: a fabricated trilogy by the three Greek tragic playwrights whose work survivesa kind of alternate reading of the Oresteia with Clytemnestra instead of Orestes at its convergence point. In Wrights words, this triptych would bring together Euripidess Iphigeneia at Aulis, the play of the child-killer; Aeschyluss Agamemnon, the play of the husband-killer; and Sophocless Electra, the play of the mother-killer. (Following a similar hybrid approach, Ariane Mnouchkine also highlighted Clytemnestra in her celebrated version of the Oresteia by preceding the trilogy with Iphigenie a Aulis.) I threw this idea back at Isabell and her eyes lit up for a moment, Wright recalls, and then she panicked. We decided to go ahead. While the Clytemnestra trilogy was conceived as a showcase for a specific actress, it had another point of originas a project for and about the company. If the play doesnt serve any function in regard to the company, says Wright, Im rarely prone to undertake it. Every year, in fact, the ensemble gathers in a loft in the warehouse district of Minneapolis for a pre-season lab, which functions both as a voice and movement clinic and a summit at which issues confronting the company are put on the table. Last year the chief topic of discussion was the four-play cycle of Shakespeares history plays the Guthrie had presented the previous summer. It had been an enormous experience and we spent over a week analyzing it, Wright says. The male actors came away with an unqualified sense of fulfillment. But not the women. Shakespeares history plays chronicle a society where men struggle with men for power, and women find themselves on the periphery. One actress recalls that on marathon days they w ould literally wait around seven hours to go on stage for six minutes. The Clytemnestra plays provided two ways of dealing with the troublesome gender issue, Wright notes. First, they allowed the men to support the womena worthwhile opportunity for the males. These plays are all shouldered by women and thats a rarity in the classical repertory. If there were no other reason for doing this project, that would be reason enough. These plays provide extraordinary roles for women. Although they are the artifacts of a society that denied women respect and the most basic freedomswhere to be a woman was to be nothingthe authors of three Clytemnestra plays each created women of energy and purpose who face whatever circumstance puts before them, act decisively and, as Monk says, take responsibility for their actions. They are women whoregardless of their crimes and the moral judgments a modern audience may place upon themdemand respect. The other benefit was that as the men in the company outnumber the women, says Wright, there would have to be a mixed chorus, wi th women playing men and men playing women. Tangible ghosts EssayNo longer the wise matriarch People dont understand why I asked to play Clytemnestra in Electra, Isabell Monk confides. I didnt care that she wasnt the major force in the play. I wanted to explore this woman. Ive never really gotten a chance to play a woman who wasnt a mother or grandmother or somebodys auntthe kind of person who can give advice to those whose lives are caught in the conflict. With Clytemnestra she has finally found herself at the heart of the conflict; no longer the wise matriarch who holds the world in balance, but one who cuts a fiery path through it. The plays demand you become a firestorm, a hurricane, a force of nature. Clytemnestra, the only character to appear in each play, reveals herself in three distinct guises. Each time I change costumes, Monk remarks, I feel like Im getting ready to play a different character. In the first play, Euripidess Iphigeneia, she is the joyous mother who arrives at Aulis on a cart piled with wedding gifts, resplendent in flowing ochre robes, her hair luxuriantly braided and banded with gold. This Clytemnestra is a proud yet vulnerable woman, passionately in love with her husband and thrilled to be escorting her daughter Iphigeneia to a noble marriage. This Clytemnestra is neither the husband-killer of legend nor the earth mother in some terrible guise, says Wright. Shes a loving woman who could have been a good mother. And with Isabell you keenly feel the loss of these impulses in the plays that follow. Aeschyluss Agamemnon, which takes up the story 10 years later, presents an iron-willed Clytemnestra who is no ones victim. She is the tyrant queen: imperious, calculating and defiant, moving majestically through the play with its images of fire, blood, cold, darkness and slavery, a creature securely in her element. In Sophocless Electra, the third and final play in the Guthrie trilogy, Clytemnestra is a woman living in fear and struggling to hold onto her power, haunted not so much by the past as by the future. At the end of the play, her body is unceremoniously dumped at the front of the stage, where she lies wrapped in coarse cloth, a blood-stained chrysalis with all her transformations behind her. But not even in death is Clytemnestras passion entirely spent. As the lights dim for the final time her voice reverberates through the darkness of the theatre, calling upon all women to awake to the cries of a mother betrayed by her husband, hated by her daughter, killed by her son.Arise you furies, you womenand kill my shame. Her plea (heard only on the days when the trilogy is performed in its entirety) is taken from Aeschyluss The Eumenides, in which the ghost of Clytemnestra calls on the Furies to seek out and punish those who wronged her. But here the speech acquires a new meaning. Monk herself hears it as a call for empowerment, for women to stand up, take charge of their lives and cease being willing victims.

Mclibel Case Study Essays - Public Relations, Communication

Mclibel Case Study As organizations seeks ways to increase profits by filtering into international markets, many turn to the field of public relations as a way of reaching cross-cultural markets. Factors such as values, cultural differences, language barriers, beliefs, etcin order to successfully promote an organizations products and services. Public relations practitioners have the responsibility to be the mediator between the organizations and public(s). According to Murphy and Dee (1992), Public relations makes organizations more effective by building relationships with stakeholders in the environment that have the potential to constrain or enhance the mission of the organization. This role also involves disseminating and seeking information to the public. This information/feedback provides the public relations practitioners and the organizations with insight as how the publics perceive the organization. When the organizations forget/ignore the importance of public relations practitioners role in the organizational structure, this may often result in dissatisfactions among the organizations publics and often react in a way that may harm to the organization. This conflict is characterized as activism, which when not dealt correctly, can end in harsh consequences such as tarnished reputation or decrease in profits. 1. McDonalds perspective in identifying their key publics in the Mclibel case. Its very important to correctly identify and characterize the relevant key publics. Dewy(1982) first propounded a public is a group whose members face a similar problem, recognize that problem exists, and organizes something to do about it. Grunig and Hunt(1984) assert that there are three stages in the evolutions of publics. In the first stage, the public does not recognize the problem. In latent stages, the public moves to the aware stage when it recognizes the problem. The final stage is the active stage recognizes the problem and organizes something to do about it. According to J.E. Grunig and Hunt (1984) the idea is to communicate with an aware public before it actively opposes an organization, thus becoming an activist public. London Greenpeace is an activist group with 3.3 million members in over 22 countries that use highly visible actions to draw media attention to environmental problems. The London Greenpeace group, a division of Greenpeace, is an independent group of activists that has no involvement in any political party. This group meets weekly to share concern for the oppression in our lives and the destruction of our environment. Anderson (1992) cited that weaknesses in most case studies of activism is that similar case studies should be conducted that examine activism from the perspective of both the organizations and of the activists groups, which is applicable to this study of the McLibel case. In my research, I came across must more literature and disseminated information from the small activist group of London Greenpeace versus the large multi-national corporation of McDonald's. This study also points to the need of more studies that examine the special problems of international communicatio n. The actions of a McDonald's triggered activist conflict not only in London, but in other different countries as well. If public relations practitioners are to assess issues successfully and identify publics that are likely to become active on those issues, they must look beyond the confines of their own culture and beyond the borders of their own country, Anderson (1992). Greenpeace, being an extreme organization, has to manage or maintain its public image as a group that will not compromise on environmental issues, Murphy and Dee (1992). The organization fits Grunig's (1989) description of a high involvement, information seeking public which believe in collective intervention in organizational decision making. This public seeks to change the direction of environmental decline versus a substitution for lost resources. Strategies of conflict used by Greenpeace, extreme actions, unilateral demands and its intolerance for compromisation. This model emphasizes winning at the expense of the other in which both Greenpeace and McDonald's exemplified through its actions. This method includes communication through manipulation of the issues to slant arguments in its own favor, the use of flamboyant symbols to depict choices in absolute terms, and the refusal to cede any points as pointed by Murphy and Dee (1992). Greenpeace used flamboyant symbols in celebrating the second anniversary of the trial by inviting the media and the public to celebrate by eating a cake in the shape of

SHOULD ABORTION BE OPPOSED OR NOT essays

SHOULD ABORTION BE OPPOSED OR NOT essays We, human beings, are social animals, which can not live alone. We all must live in a group because each of us depends on each other. Not only that, living in a group, you need to have rules and regulations in order to keep social stabilities and orders. There are many kinds of rules and regulations, some result in physical punishment and some result in social punishment in the form of peer disapproval. Where do they come from? In fact, they came from the decisions made by the majority of people in the society. There are some actions that result in various punishments and an example of this kind of punishment is abortion. The meaning of abortion is very obvious, abortion is the ending of a pregnancy before birth, and it causes the embryo or fetus to die. Abortion has been a topic of argument for very long time. People disagree on two basic questions. The first question is whether the law should permit a woman to have an abortion or not and, if is so, in what circumstance. The other is whether the law should protect the unborn. Arguments against abortion are generally based on humanity, on the belief that an abortion is the iniquitous killing of an unborn child. The groups of people who are against abortion believe that the life begins as soon as the egg is fertilized with the sperm. Therefore, it is like murdering an innocent life in a mothers womb. They think that the human embryos should have the right to live and experience this wonderful world. Arguments for abortion, many people would allow abortion in only some circumstances. Some of the approval, a womans life or health is endangered by the pregnancy for example if the woman has serious heart attack; doctor will not allow her to deliver the baby. Other find abortion permissible like when the medical tests are predicted that the child will has short life or born with a serious physical problem. Some people thi ...

Desert Biome Is the Driest

Desert Biome Is the Driest The desert biome is a dry, terrestrial biome. It consists of habitats that receive very little rainfall each year, generally less than 50 centimeters. The desert biome covers about one-fifth of the Earths surface and includes regions at a variety of latitudes and elevations. The desert biome is divided into four basic types of deserts- arid deserts, semi-arid deserts, coastal deserts, and cold deserts. Each of these types of deserts is characterized by different physical characteristics such as aridity, climate, location, and temperature. Daily Temperature Fluctuations   Although deserts are highly varied, there are some general characteristics that can be described. The fluctuation in the temperature throughout a day in a desert is far more extreme than the daily temperature fluctuations in more humid climates. The reason for this is that in damper climates, humidity in the air buffers the daytime and nighttime temperatures. But in deserts, the dry air heats up considerably during the day and cools off quickly at night. The low atmospheric humidity in deserts also means there is often a lack of cloud cover to hold the warmth. How Rainfall in the Desert Is Different Rainfall in deserts is also unique. When it does rain in arid regions, precipitation often comes in short bursts that are separated by long periods of drought. The rain that falls evaporates quickly- in some hot arid deserts, rain sometimes evaporates before it hits the ground. The soils in deserts are often coarse in texture. They are also rocky and dry with good drainage. Desert soils experience little weathering. The plants that grow in deserts are shaped by the arid conditions in which they live. Most desert-dwelling plants are low-growing in stature and have tough leaves that are well-suited to conserve water. Desert plants include vegetation such as yuccas, agaves, brittlebushes, lack sage, prickly pear cacti, and saguaro cactus. Key Characteristics The following are the key characteristics of the desert biome: little rainfall (less than 50 centimeters per year)temperatures vary greatly between day and nighthigh evaporation ratescoarse-textured soilsdrought-resistant vegetation Classification The desert biome is classified within the following habitat hierarchy: Biomes of the World Desert Biome The desert biome is divided into the following habitats: Arid deserts s of coastal deserts include the Atacama Desert of Chile and the Namib Desert of Namibia. Cold deserts - Cold deserts are deserts that have low temperatures and long winters. Cold deserts occur in the Arctic, Antarctic, and above the treelines of mountain ranges. Many areas of the tundra biome can also be considered cold deserts. Cold deserts often have more precipitation than other types of deserts. An example of a cold desert is the Gobi Desert in China and Mongolia. Animals of the Desert Biome Some of the animals that inhabit the desert biome include: Desert kangaroo rat (Dipodomys deserti) - The desert kangaroo rat is a species of kangaroo rat that inhabits the deserts of southwestern North America including the Sonoran Desert, Mojave Desert, and the Great Basin Desert. Desert kangaroo rats survive on a diet that consists primarily of seeds.Coyote (Canis latrans) - The coyote is a canid that inhabits a wide range throughout North America, Central America, and Mexico. Coyotes inhabit deserts, grasslands, and scrublands throughout their range. They are carnivores that feed on a variety of small animal prey such as rabbits, rodents, lizards, deer, elk, birds, and snakes.Greater Roadrunner (Geococcyx californianus) - The greater roadrunner is a year-round resident of the southwestern United States and Mexico. Greater roadrunners are fast on their feet, they can outpace a human and use that speed and their sturdy bill to catch their prey which includes lizards, small mammals, and birds. The species inhabits deserts and scrublands as w ell as open grasslands. Sonoran Desert Toad (Incilius alvarius) - The Sonoran desert toad that inhabits semi-deserts, scrublands, and grasslands in southern Arizona at elevations below 5,800 feet. The Sonoran desert toad is one of the largest toads native to North America, growing to lengths of 7 inches or more. The species is nocturnal and is most active during the monsoonal season. In drier periods of the year, Sonoran desert toads remain underground in rodent burrows and other holes.MeerkatPronghornRattlesnakeBanded Gila MonsterCactus wrenJavelinaThorny devil

The marketing strategies of Heinz Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

The marketing strategies of Heinz - Assignment Example This report is designed to have an insight about an organization that is about to conduct some market research into consumer buying habits for the products and services that this company has for sale. Moreover, this research will address the obstacles in the way of the operations of Heinz and their competitors in order to clarify the current and future market standing of the company. Henry John Heinz, the founder of this company said that he learned from his parents’ idea of business which was, â€Å"Deal with the seller so justly that he will want to sell to you again.† He believed in fair play in the business and this quality of him had made him a successful businessman. He founded Heinz almost 150 years ago. Heinz was formed in Sharpsburg (a suburb of Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania, in 1869 by entrepreneur Henry John Heinz. To this day the company has become a global business dealer in the consumer food industry. Heinz is a $10.7 billion global company. The products of He inz enjoy #1 or #2 market share in more than 50 countries. Every year the company sells 650 million bottles of its iconic Ketchup. Heinz's top 15 power brands are counted as more than two-thirds of its annual sales. There are about 35000 people that are employed by Heinz in almost 50 countries around the globe. Heinz is a liable corporate citizen dedicated to safe practices, environmental stewardship and giving back to the society. The basic task required in this report is to find the appropriate research procedure and outlines its merits and de-merits. Further it is required to analyze the research by proper sampling procedure for accumulating substantial and real results. 4 External or in-house research

Plato, three Socratic Dialogues Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Plato, three Socratic Dialogues - Essay Example Euthyphro is aghast that a wise man like Socrates is being tried for corrupting the young ones and tells him that people do not like others to spread wisdom and are jealous of people who are wise. The two start talking and in the ensuing dialogues Socrates asks Euthyphro to explain the concept of piety. Euthyphro replies that piety is fighting for justice as he is doing by prosecuting his father for a murder. He laments the fact that he is hated for his action by the people although those very people have high regards for Zeus, the king of Gods, even though Zeus had punished his father (Kronos) for devouring his sons! When further pressed for the definition of piety, Euthyphro tells Socrates that whatever is held dear to God is pious and what is not dear to God is impious. He further said that even Gods have enmities and differences. Socrates counters that argument by telling that what may be liked by one God may not necessarily true for another God. Hence difference of opinion may account for the enmities and hatred between Gods and people. He asserts that everyone likes just and honourable things or persons and dislike the opposite. But it is the difference of opinions that brings about enmities and hatred. When Socrates is still not satisfied with the definition of piety, Euthyphro finally says that everything that Gods love is pious and holy and the things or persons they hate is impious and unholy. Socrates confused Euthyphro by questioning whether Gods loved things because they were pious or things were pious because Gods loved them? The dialogues, in the form of questions and answers, between the two are especially relevant even today because they establish the credibility of questions as an important means to reach towards a correct and justified answer. In simple words, the questions make us thinks about the different aspects of the problems and help us to come to a right conclusion. Socrates was a great philosopher who