Differential Association Theory Essay

1. Differential Association theory would explain the burglar’s behavior by first looking at their social structure. Their social structure can affect everything; it can influence their close relationships, open them up to objective opportunities and could be seen as the main attribute that affects their learning process in behavior. A. Most of the people in these interviews are poor, young males with similar social structures. Growing up on the streets and in bad neighborhoods can influence the interactions that each of these people will have. These interactions can result in definitions favorable to crime because these people are beginning to surround themselves and interact with people who are already doing illegal actions. (Hagan, p.89). In the article it gave an example of how a group of friends may be doing coke and once it runs out someone in the group, that has developed their own belief in what’s right and what’s wrong, suggests doing burglary in order to get some money for more coke. A new person within the group may feel pressure in continuing in order to maintain their status and relationship with the members in the group. Here they are learning new attitudes and accepting new values that are favorable to crime (Hagan, p. 89). The behavior being learned is that burglary can help with any immediate needs and together they rebel against the law. The new member may now start to change what they believe is right and wrong and could begin acting in more frequent illegal actions. These burglars have the belief that burglary is okay because it is a matter of â€Å"day to day survival†. This shows that they have their own interpretation on what they think is right and wrong which is a learned definition favorable to crime. In the interview Wild Will proved this theory by describing that when he is in need of money he thinks to himself, â€Å"How do I know how to get money quick and easy?† He at one point had to have learned that an immediate fix to a bump in the road, which is justified in his mind, is to perform a burglary. Larry Harris would agree when he says that it is just something you have to do to get by. Neither of these men views burglary as something wrong but as something you do in order to survive. B. When it comes to the techniques that people learn in committing crime several burglars said that it is something that you just get better at over time. Wild Will stated that when he goes to rob a house he likes to stake out the house and call it in order to see if someone is home. This may have been a technique he had picked up from  someone else that he went and did a burglary with. Several participants in the interview confessed that if they had a friend that had a burglary set up that they would be willing to do it with them if given the offer. This is an incident where you could say that a person may have the opportunity to learned new strategies and techniques that have worked for someone else in the past. Another technique that gets learned on the streets is the ability to maintain and develop status. One of the participants shared that it is mandatory to be perceived as â€Å"hip†. People on the streets learn through interactions with each other what it takes to be hip and be seen as someone with high status. 95% of the participants confessed that they spend the money that they steal on things that give them the image of â€Å"high-living†. During the interview several things were revealed as things to do in order to gain that high status. These burglars can learn these techniques such as doing drugs, having sexual partners, the right styles and brands, and a car and car accessories, as things to pursue in order to gain that respected status in the street culture. C. It is already made clear that these burglars live in poor neighborhoods and are living on the streets which give them more objective opportunity than someone that is in a nicer well off neighborhood. Due to their neighborhood, it exposes these burglars to people that are promoters to committing crime (Hagan, p.90). Most of these men have also admitted that they are â€Å"too lazy† to maintain a real job so sources of income are limited within the household. Because of this most of these participants say that they are acting on illegal action, like burglaries, in order to gain money for food and clothing for their family. As for subjective opportunities not everyone would look at something as an opportunity to commit a crime but Larry William says it best in his interview when he is describing what he does when he is in need for money, â€Å"There it is! There’s the house†. He automatically looks for a target and sees it as an opportunity to immediately fix his problem whereas another person wouldn’t think of that as an option. Another subjective opportunity that these burglars have is the fact that their social bonds are also partaking in these acts and so they have multiple opportunities in performing a burglary when they are present with more opportunities given by their friends.

The Lost Symbol Chapter 127-128

CHAPTER 127 The breeze felt cold outside CIA headquarters in Langley. Nola Kaye was shivering as she followed sys-sec Rick Parrish across the agency's moonlit central courtyard. Where is Rick taking me? The crisis of the Masonic video had been averted, thank God, but Nola still felt uneasy. The redacted file on the CIA director's partition remained a mystery, and it was nagging at her. She and Sato would debrief in the morning, and Nola wanted all the facts. Finally, she had called Rick Parrish and demanded his help. Now, as she followed Rick to some unknown location outside, Nola could not push the bizarre phrases from her memory: Secret location underground where the . . . somewhere in Washington, D.C., the coordinates . . . uncovered an ancient portal that led . . . warning the pyramid holds dangerous . . . decipher this engraved symbolon to unveil . . . â€Å"You and I agree,† Parrish said as they walked, â€Å"that the hacker who spidered those keywords was definitely searching for information about the Masonic Pyramid.† Obviously, Nola thought. â€Å"It turns out, though, the hacker stumbled onto a facet of the Masonic mystery I don't think he expected.† â€Å"What do you mean?† â€Å"Nola, you know how the CIA director sponsors an internal discussion forum for Agency employees to share their ideas about all kinds of things?† â€Å"Of course.† The forums provided Agency personnel a safe place to chat online about various topics and gave the director a kind of virtual gateway to his staff. â€Å"The director's forums are hosted on his private partition, and yet in order to provide access to employees of all clearance levels, they're located outside the director's classified firewall.† â€Å"What are you getting at?† she demanded as they rounded a corner near the Agency cafeteria. â€Å"In a word . . .† Parrish pointed into the darkness. â€Å"That.† Nola glanced up. Across the plaza in front of them was a massive metal sculpture glimmering in the moonlight. In an agency that boasted over five hundred pieces of original art, this sculpture–titled Kryptos–was by far the most famous. Greek for â€Å"hidden,† Kryptos was the work of American artist James Sanborn and had become something of a legend here at the CIA. The work consisted of a massive S-shaped panel of copper, set on its edge like a curling metal wall. Engraved into the expansive surface of the wall were nearly two thousand letters . . . organized into a baffling code. As if this were not enigmatic enough, positioned carefully in the area around the encrypted S-wall were numerous other sculptural elements–granite slabs at odd angles, a compass rose, a magnetic lodestone, and even a message in Morse code that referenced â€Å"lucid memory† and â€Å"shadow forces.† Most fans believed that these pieces were clues that would reveal how to decipher the sculpture. Kryptos was art . . . but it was also an enigma. Attempting to decipher its encoded secret had become an obsession for cryptologists both inside and outside the CIA. Finally, a few years back, a portion of the code had been broken, and it became national news. Although much of Kryptos's code remained unsolved to this day, the sections that had been deciphered were so bizarre that they made the sculpture only more mysterious. It referenced secret underground locations, portals that led into ancient tombs, longitudes and latitudes . . . Nola could still recall bits and pieces of the deciphered sections: The information was gathered and transmitted underground to an unknown location . . . It was totally invisible . . . hows that possible . . . they used the earths magnetic field . . . Nola had never paid much attention to the sculpture or cared if it was ever fully deciphered. At the moment, however, she wanted answers. â€Å"Why are you showing me Kryptos?† Parrish gave her a conspiratorial smile and dramatically extracted a folded sheet of paper from his pocket. â€Å"Voila, the mysterious redacted document you were so concerned about. I accessed the complete text.† Nola jumped. â€Å"You snooped the director's classified partition?† â€Å"No. That's what I was getting at earlier. Have a look.† He handed her the file. Nola seized the page and unfolded it. When she saw the standard Agency headers at the top of the page, she cocked her head in surprise. This document was not classified. Not even close. EMPLOYEE DISCUSSION BOARD: KRYPTOS COMPRESSED STORAGE: THREAD #2456282.5 Nola found herself looking at a series of postings that had been compressed into a single page for more efficient storage. â€Å"Your keyword document,† Rick said, â€Å"is some cipher-punks rambling about Kryptos.† Nola scanned down the document until she spotted a sentence containing a familiar set of keywords. Jim, the sculpture says it was transmitted to a secret location UNDERGROUND where the info was hidden. â€Å"This text is from the director's online Kryptos forum,† Rick explained. â€Å"The forum's been going for years. There are literally thousands of postings. I'm not surprised one of them happened to contain all the keywords.† Nola kept scanning down until she spotted another posting containing keywords. Even though Mark said the code's lat/long headings point somewhere in WASHINGTON, D.C., the coordinates he used were off by one degree–Kryptos basically points back to itself. Parrish walked over to the statue and ran his palm across the cryptic sea of letters. â€Å"A lot of this code has yet to be deciphered, and there are plenty of people who think the message might actually relate to ancient Masonic secrets.† Nola now recalled murmurs of a Masonic/Kryptos link, but she tended to ignore the lunatic fringe. Then again, looking around at the various pieces of the sculpture arranged around the plaza, she realized that it was a code in pieces–a symbolon–just like the Masonic Pyramid. Odd. For a moment, Nola could almost see Kryptos as a modern Masonic Pyramid–a code in many pieces, made of different materials, each playing a role. â€Å"Do you think there's any way Kryptos and the Masonic Pyramid might be hiding the same secret?† â€Å"Who knows?† Parrish shot Kryptos a frustrated look. â€Å"I doubt we'll ever know the whole message. That is, unless someone can convince the director to unlock his safe and sneak a peek at the solution.† Nola nodded. It was all coming back to her now. When Kryptos was installed, it arrived with a sealed envelope containing a complete decryption of the sculpture's codes. The sealed solution was entrusted to then – CIA director William Webster, who locked it in his office safe. The document was allegedly still there, having been transferred from director to director over the years. Strangely, Nola's thoughts of William Webster sparked her memory, bringing back yet another portion of Kryptos's deciphered text: IT'S BURIED OUT THERE SOMEWHERE. WHO KNOWS THE EXACT LOCATION? ONLY WW. Although nobody knew exactly what was buried out there, most people believed the WW was a reference to William Webster. Nola had heard whispers once that it referred in fact to a man named William Whiston–a Royal Society theologian–although she had never bothered to give it much thought. Rick was talking again. â€Å"I've got to admit, I'm not really into artists, but I think this guy Sanborn's a serious genius. I was just looking online at his Cyrillic Projector project? It shines giant Russian letters from a KGB document on mind control. Freaky.† Nola was no longer listening. She was examining the paper, where she had found the third key phrase in another posting. Right, that whole section is verbatim from some famous archaeologist's diary, telling about the moment he dug down and uncovered an ANCIENT PORTAL that led to the tomb of Tutankhamen. The archaeologist who was quoted on Kryptos, Nola knew, was in fact famed Egyptologist Howard Carter. The next posting referenced him by name. I just skimmed the rest of Carter's field notes online, and it sounds like he found a clay tablet warning the PYRAMID holds dangerous consequences for anyone who disturbs the peace of the pharaoh. A curse! Should we be worried? 🙂 Nola scowled. â€Å"Rick, for God's sake, this idiot's pyramid reference isn't even right. Tutankhamen wasn't buried in a pyramid. He was buried in the Valley of the Kings. Don't cryptologists watch the Discovery Channel?† Parrish shrugged. â€Å"Techies.† Nola now saw the final key phrase. Guys, you know I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but Jim and Dave had better decipher this ENGRAVED SYMBOLON to unveil its final secret before the world ends in 2012 . . . Ciao. â€Å"Anyhow,† Parrish said, â€Å"I figured you'd want to know about the Kryptos forum before you accused the CIA director of harboring classified documentation about an ancient Masonic legend. Somehow, I doubt a man as powerful as the CIA director has time for that sort of thing.† Nola pictured the Masonic video and its images of all the influential men participating in an ancient rite. If Rick had any idea . . . In the end, she knew, whatever Kryptos ultimately revealed, the message definitely had mystical undertones. She gazed up at the gleaming piece of art–a three-dimensional code standing silently at the heart of one of the nation's premier intelligence agencies–and she wondered if it would ever give up its final secret. As she and Rick headed back inside, Nola had to smile. It's buried out there somewhere. CHAPTER 128 This is crazy. Blindfolded, Robert Langdon could see nothing as the Escalade sped southward along the deserted streets. On the seat beside him, Peter Solomon remained silent. Where is he taking me? Langdon's curiosity was a mix of intrigue and apprehension, his imagination in overdrive as it tried desperately to put the pieces together. Peter had not wavered from his claim. The Lost Word? Buried at the bottom of a staircase that's covered by a massive, engraved stone? It all seemed impossible. The stone's alleged engraving was still lodged in Langdon's memory . . . and yet the seven symbols, as far as he could tell, made no sense together at all. The Stonemason's Square: the symbol of honesty and being â€Å"true.† The letters Au: the scientific abbreviation for the element gold. The Sigma: the Greek letter S, the mathematical symbol for the sum of all parts. The Pyramid: the Egyptian symbol of man reaching heavenward. The Delta: the Greek letter D, the mathematical symbol for change. Mercury: as depicted by its most ancient alchemical symbol. The Ouroboros: the symbol of wholeness and at-one-ment. Solomon still insisted these seven symbols were a â€Å"message.† But if this was true, then it was a message Langdon had no idea how to read. The Escalade slowed suddenly and turned sharply right, onto a different surface, as if into a driveway or access road. Langdon perked up, listening intently for clues as to their whereabouts. They'd been driving for less than ten minutes, and although Langdon had tried to follow in his mind, he had lost his bearings quickly. For all he knew, they were now pulling back into the House of the Temple. The Escalade came to a stop, and Langdon heard the window roll down. â€Å"Agent Simkins, CIA,† their driver announced. â€Å"I believe you're expecting us.† â€Å"Yes, sir,† a sharp military voice replied. â€Å"Director Sato phoned ahead. One moment while I move the security barricade.† Langdon listened with rising confusion, now sensing they were entering a military base. As the car began moving again, along an unusually smooth stretch of pavement, he turned his head blindly toward Solomon. â€Å"Where are we, Peter?† he demanded. â€Å"Do not remove your blindfold.† Peter's voice was stern. The vehicle continued a short distance and again slowed to a stop. Simkins killed the engine. More voices. Military. Someone asked for Simkins's identification. The agent got out and spoke to the men in hushed tones. Langdon's door was suddenly being opened, and powerful hands assisted him out of the car. The air felt cold. It was windy. Solomon was beside him. â€Å"Robert, just let Agent Simkins lead you inside.† Langdon heard metal keys in a lock . . . and then the creak of a heavy iron door swinging open. It sounded like an ancient bulkhead. Where the hell are they taking me?! Simkins's hands guided Langdon in the direction of the metal door. They stepped over a threshold. â€Å"Straight ahead, Professor.† It was suddenly quiet. Dead. Deserted. The air inside smelled sterile and processed. Simkins and Solomon flanked Langdon now, guiding him blindly down a reverberating corridor. The floor felt like stone beneath his loafers. Behind them, the metal door slammed loudly, and Langdon jumped. The locks turned. He was sweating now beneath his blindfold. He wanted only to tear it off. They stopped walking now. Simkins let go of Langdon's arm, and there was a series of electronic beeps followed by an unexpected rumble in front of them, which Langdon imagined had to be a security door sliding open automatically. â€Å"Mr. Solomon, you and Mr. Langdon continue on alone. I'll wait for you here,† Simkins said. â€Å"Take my flashlight.† â€Å"Thank you,† Solomon said. â€Å"We won't be long.† Flashlight?! Langdon's heart was pounding wildly now. Peter took Langdon's arm in his own and inched forward. â€Å"Walk with me, Robert.† They moved slowly together across another threshold, and the security door rumbled shut behind them. Peter stopped short. â€Å"Is something wrong?† Langdon was suddenly feeling queasy and off balance. â€Å"I think I just need to take off this blindfold.† â€Å"Not yet, we're almost there.† â€Å"Almost where?† Langdon felt a growing heaviness in the pit of his stomach. â€Å"I told you–I'm taking you to see the staircase that descends to the Lost Word.† â€Å"Peter, this isn't funny!† â€Å"It's not meant to be. It's meant to open your mind, Robert. It's meant to remind you that there are mysteries in this world that even you have yet to lay eyes upon. And before I take one more step with you, I want you to do something for me. I want you to believe . . . just for an instant . . . believe in the legend. Believe that you are about to peer down a winding staircase that plunges hundreds of feet to one of humankind's greatest lost treasures.† Langdon felt dizzy. As much as he wanted to believe his dear friend, he could not. â€Å"Is it much farther?† His velvet hoodwink was drenched in sweat. â€Å"No. Only a few more steps, actually. Through one last door. I'll open it now.† Solomon let go of him for a moment, and as he did so, Langdon swayed, feeling light-headed. Unsteady, he reached out for stability, and Peter was quickly back at his side. The sound of a heavy automatic door rumbled in front of them. Peter took Langdon's arm and they moved forward again. â€Å"This way.† They inched across another threshold, and the door slid closed behind them. Silence. Cold. Langdon immediately sensed that this place, whatever it was, had nothing to do with the world on the other side of the security doors. The air was dank and chilly, like a tomb. The acoustics felt dull and cramped. He felt an irrational bout of claustrophobia settling in. â€Å"A few more steps.† Solomon guided him blindly around a corner and positioned him precisely. Finally, he said, â€Å"Take off your blindfold.† Langdon seized the velvet hoodwink and tore it from his face. He looked all around to find out where he was, but he was still blind. He rubbed his eyes. Nothing. â€Å"Peter, it's pitch-black!† â€Å"Yes, I know. Reach in front of you. There's a railing. Grasp it.† Langdon groped in the darkness and found an iron railing. â€Å"Now watch.† He could hear Peter fumbling with something, and suddenly a blazing flashlight beam pierced the darkness. It was pointed at the floor, and before Langdon could take in his surroundings, Solomon directed the flashlight out over the railing and pointed the beam straight down. Langdon was suddenly staring into a bottomless shaft . . . an endless winding staircase that plunged deep into the earth. My God! His knees nearly buckled, and he gripped the railing for support. The staircase was a traditional square spiral, and he could see at least thirty landings descending into the earth before the flashlight faded to nothing. I can't even see the bottom! â€Å"Peter . . .† he stammered. â€Å"What is this place!† â€Å"I'll take you to the bottom of the staircase in a moment, but before I do, you need to see something else.† Too overwhelmed to protest, Langdon let Peter guide him away from the stairwell and across the strange little chamber. Peter kept the flashlight trained on the worn stone floor beneath their feet, and Langdon could get no real sense of the space around them . . . except that it was small. A tiny stone chamber. They arrived quickly at the room's opposite wall, in which was embedded a rectangle of glass. Langdon thought it might be a window into a room beyond, and yet from where he stood, he saw only darkness on the other side. â€Å"Go ahead,† Peter said. â€Å"Have a look.† â€Å"What's in there?† Langdon flashed for an instant on the Chamber of Reflection beneath the Capitol Building, and how he had believed, for a moment, that it might contain a portal to some giant underground cavern. â€Å"Just look, Robert.† Solomon inched him forward. â€Å"And brace yourself, because the sight will shock you.† Having no idea what to expect, Langdon moved toward the glass. As he neared the portal, Peter turned out the flashlight, plunging the tiny chamber into total darkness. As his eyes adjusted, Langdon groped in front of him, his hands finding the wall, finding the glass, his face moving closer to the transparent portal. Still only darkness beyond. He leaned closer . . . pressing his face to the glass. Then he saw it. The wave of shock and disorientation that tore through Langdon's body reached down inside and spun his internal compass upside down. He nearly fell backward as his mind strained to accept the utterly unanticipated sight that was before him. In his wildest dreams, Robert Langdon would never have guessed what lay on the other side of this glass. The vision was a glorious sight. There in the darkness, a brilliant white light shone like a gleaming jewel. Langdon now understood it all–the barricade on the access road . . . the guards at the main entrance . . . the heavy metal door outside . . . the automatic doors that rumbled open and closed . . . the heaviness in his stomach . . . the lightness in his head . . . and now this tiny stone chamber. â€Å"Robert,† Peter whispered behind him, â€Å"sometimes a change of perspective is all it takes to see the light.† Speechless, Langdon stared out through the window. His gaze traveled into the darkness of the night, traversing more than a mile of empty space, dropping lower . . . lower . . . through the darkness . . . until it came to rest atop the brilliantly illuminated, stark white dome of the U.S. Capitol Building. Langdon had never seen the Capitol from this perspective–hovering 555 feet in the air atop America's great Egyptian obelisk. Tonight, for the first time in his life, he had ridden the elevator up to the tiny viewing chamber . . . at the pinnacle of the Washington Monument.

Professional Regulation and Criminal Liability Paper Essay

The principle of the Hippocratic Oath is one of the oldest binding documents in history. The oath states: I will use those dietary regimens which will benefit my patients according to my greatest ability and judgment, and I will do no harm or injustice to them. I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan; and similarly I will not give a woman a pessary to cause an abortion. In purity and according to divine law will I carry out my life and my art. I will not use the knife, even upon those suffering from stones, but I will leave this to those who are trained in this craft. Into whatever homes I go, I will enter them for the benefit of the sick, avoiding any voluntary act of impropriety or corruption, including the seduction of women or men, whether they are free men or slaves. Whatever I see or hear in the lives of my patients, whether in connection with my professional practice or not, which ought not to be spoken of outside, I will keep secret, as considering all such things to be private. So long as I maintain this Oath faithfully and without corruption, may it be granted to me to partake of life fully and the practice of my art, gaining the respect of all men for all time. However, should I transgress this Oath and violate it, may the opposite be my fate. (U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2014) Medical Board of California The Medical Board of California is the agency responsible for regulating physicians, surgeons and other allied health professions. The members of the board are appointed by the Governor of the state and have a four year term legislature. It is the responsibility of the members of the board to meet as one deliberating body. In addition, the board members are required to learn about policies and statutes of both licensing and enforcement functions. California Licensure Physician Statute There is no single physician licensure statute in the state of California. Instead, physician licensure rules have been interspersed within the California code. Physicians wishing to practice medicine in California are required to obtain a full medical license issued by the state. Furthermore, there are no administrative regulations or state statue for granting a  special or limited license to practice in the state remotely via telemedicine. The California licensure does not allow for license reciprocity between any states but allows physicians for consultative services without having to receive a full medical licensure. Moreover, licensed physicians in the military in any of the states, either a military physician officer or a civilian contract employee, are allowed to care for fellow military members without having to receive additional licensure. In the event of an emergency situation, a physician is allowed to administer care regardless if the physician is licensed in that part icular state. A physical examination is required by the California Medical Board Licensure to allow administration or prescription of medication over the internet. Investigative Role The investigative team consists of physicians that are a critical component to the board as they base its disciplinary actions on the opinions of physicians and not board staff. Physicians play a distinct role in the investigations. The board receives and reviews incoming complaints in the Central Complaint Unit (CCU). The physicians determine if there is a need for formal investigation by board investigative staff or if the complaint is largely resolved by a preliminary review of the medical records and the accompanying physician narrative statement. Medical experts are asked to review case materials and must clearly articulate whether the physician’s care under review fell below the standard. They must give their opinion if there is a potential violation of the Medical Practice Act. Business and Professions Code Section 2050-2079 According to the Federation of State Medical Boards, the 10th Amendment police power grants states the right to regulate the practice of medicine. Section 2052 of the Business and Professions Code states that any person who practices or attempts to practice, or who advertises or holds himself or herself out as practicing, any system or mode of treating the sick or afflicted in this state, or who diagnoses, treats, operates for, or prescribes for any ailment, blemish, deformity, disease, disfigurement, disorder, injury, or other physical or mental condition of any person, without having at the time of so doing a valid, unrevoked, or unsuspended  certificate as provided in this chapter or without being authorized to perform the act pursuant to a certificate obtained in accordance with some other provision of law is guilty of a public offense, punishable by a fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars ($10,000), by imprisonment pursuant to subdivision of Section 1170 of the Penal Code, b y imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, or by both the fine and either imprisonment (California Business and Professions Code, 2014). Civil Complaint Process The two major categories of incoming complaints to the Medical Care Board of California by the consumers are quality of care and personal conduct. All complaints require physician review and all complaints which are not closed by CCU staff are referred to one of the board’s district offices for formal investigation. According to the Medical Board, each district office is staffed with a supervising investigator, five investigators, a deputy attorney general, an investigator assistant, clerical support staff and one or more medical consultants (The Medical Board of California, 2014). Risk Management & Quality Assurance It is important that physicians are credentialed and are given privileges in any health care organization prior to practicing medicine. Physicians must receive training and education in risk management and review of federal and state regulations mandates. A successful risk management strategy is to improve the quality of patient care and reduce the probability of an adverse outcome or a medical malpractice claim. Its objective is to reduce the risk to patients and liability to the physician. Furthermore, the foundation for risk management is the standard of care. Tracking the quality of care of physicians must include Ongoing Professional Practice Evaluations (OPPE) and a peer review committee within an organization. Criminal Prosecution for Malpractice Physicians are in a unique position in regard to the law by the nature of their work. A physician may face a charge of criminal negligence, manslaughter, or second-degree murder if a patient in his care suffers severe or lethal injuries. â€Å"Negligence law offers plaintiffs the legal framework upon which to build their civil suit. A plaintiff in a medical  malpractice action must satisfy four elements-duty, breach, causation and damage- in order to prevail. In a negligence case, the wrongdoer’s actions are compared to what would be expected of a reasonable and prudent person in the same or similar circumstance† (Monico, Kulkarni, & Calise, 2013). The practice of medicine is full of uncertainties. In some cases, bad outcome is the result of physician negligence. The patient and/or his family may institute a civil suit for malpractice if they believe that the bad outcome was a result of the physician’s actions. It is very rare that a prosecutor decides the fact s of a case warrant a charge of criminal malpractice. The prosecutors must see a repetitive negligent behavior that constitutes to a pattern that can be documented before criminal charges can be filed. Conclusion The medical profession has many dedicated people who give themselves and sacrifices for the sake of saving lives. Physicians practice their profession according to the Hippocratic Oath. Furthermore, the have learned the rules and regulations mandated by the Federal and State government in health care delivery. Quality of health care is an important objective of CMS. Physicians are required to adhere to the standards of quality care and the delivery of it. When physicians get in trouble with the law, they have to face various criminal and civil charges based on the severity of their case. In the current trend, doctors commit white-collar crimes when they take kickbacks, order questionable procedures, overbill patients and insurance companies, and bill for services they did not provide. The Medical Board of California ensures safety and protection of health care consumers through proper licensing and regulation of physicians by means of various objective enforcement of the Medical Practice Act. References California Business and Professions Code. (2014). Business and Professions Code Section 2050-2079. Retrieved from http://www.liginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=bpc&group Medical Board of California. (2013). Guide to the Laws Governing the Practice of Medicine by Physicians and Surgeons. Retrieved from http://www.mbc.ca.gov/about_laws/laws/_guide.pdf Monico, E., Kulkarni, R., & Calise, A. (2013). The Criminal Prosecution of Medical Negligence. Retrieved from http://www.ispub.com/IJLHE/5/1/5237 The Medical Board of California. (2014). Laws and Regulations. Retrieved from http://www.mbc.ca.gov/about_us/laws/ U.S. National Library of Medicine. (2014). The Hippocratic Oath. Retrieved from http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/greek/greek_oath.html

Application Controls, Monitoring, and Honeypots Essay

Application Controls, Monitoring, and Honeypots - Essay Example In addition to maintaining the rules, someone must respond to the alerts. Sometimes signatures may also match valid activity, meaning that responding to alerts first requires determining whether the alert is the result of an intrusion or unexpected, but valid, system activity. All of these require highly trained personnel to carry out (Skoudis, 2002). The implication here is, and as our company's ICT director confirmed, that current intrusion detection systems are somewhat limited in capacity. This does not mean that current intrusion systems are not effective but only they are not as effective as required. Within the context of the stated, it is commonly held that anomaly detection will ultimately prove more valuable and robust because it has the potential to identify previously unknown intrusions or attacks. It is, thus, that the corporation is currently investigating the implementation of honeypots. Honeypots are new security technologies that, while not a replacement for traditional intrusion detection systems, address some of the weaknesses of intrusion detection systems (Spitzner, 2003). As their only purpose is to be attacked, all traffic to the honeypot can be considered an intrusion or an anomaly of some sort. For this reason there is no need to separate normal traffic from anomalous; this makes any data collected from a honeypot of high value. Added to that, since honeypots have no production value, no resource or person should be communicating with them, and therefore any activity arriving at a honeypot is likely to be a probe, scan, or attack. Their value comes from their potential ability to capture scans, probes, attacks, and other malicious activity (Spitzner, 2003). There are three types of honeypots: low interaction, medium interaction, and high interaction. In order to collect information a honeypot must interact with the attacker, and the level of interaction refers to the degree of interaction the honeypot has with a potential attacker (Spitzner, 2003). A low interaction honeypot provides minimal service, like an open port. A medium interaction honeypot simulates basic interactions like asking for a login and password, but providing no actual service to log into. High interaction honeypots offer a fully functioning service or operating system, which can potentially be compromised (Spitzner, 2003). Honeypots have also been shown to be effective against Internet worms. Laurent Oudot (2006) demonstrated how MSBlast could be detected and captured using Honeyd and some simple scripts. He also showed how worm propagation can be slowed using Honeyd to attract the worms attention and then respond very slowly to its requests. Using scripts, Oudot demonstrated how a honeypot could even launch a counter attack against a worm outbreak, either by isolating services or network segments, or by abusing the same vulnerability the worm used and then trying to kill the worm process. Honeypots do face several important challenges: 1) honeypots are totally unaware of attacks not directed at them, 2) they must avoid being fingerprinted because if an attacker can easily identify honeypots their usefulness will be severely limited, and 3) like so many security technologies, they require configuring and maintaining by a knowledgeable person (Spitzner, 2003). Honeypots, because of their very nature, excel at detection. What makes them most attractive in the area of detection is the fact that they

Greek Mythology Assignment Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Greek Mythology Assignment - Research Paper Example He evidently does not see their humanity and spiritual value, presenting their stories as embroidery on male tales. It is the thesis of this paper that female characters in the Iliad are like trophies, and what they do or say does not affect what happens in any important way. Trophies are awarded for accomplishments and they attest to the competence of the person to whom they were awarded. Trophies are motivators of competition between opponents or groups of opponents. Trophies are useful as launching pads for bragging. Trophies indicate that the trophy holder is a winner, but they give no assessment of how much skill was demonstrated or what the criteria was. Trophies can give a biased picture of the trophy-holder as more than what he/she actually is. Trophies can also become an annoying distraction as they require dusting and polishing, arranging and protecting, all the requirements of object management. Some people buy themselves trophies, so they will look and feel more important and powerful than they really are. Trophies can arouse jealousy in others who have no recognized accomplishments. Trophies come in various levels of quality. Although they usually look elegant, and most often come with a pedestal, some are of a more fragile nature while othe rs last well. Trophies are usually placed in a designated area, such as an enclosed cabinet, a wall of shelves with other trophies, or on a bookcase, and they are kept there in one place, being viewed from a single perspective. These characteristics of trophies, their place and use, apply to the Iliad’s women too. Helen was a top quality trophy. She was intelligent, expressive, self-motivated in spite of tremendous restraints. She was a hated foreigner, inadvertently responsible for the Trojan War and a lot of suffering. She is a captive, possessed object. Being a possessed object was par for the course in the time of the Iliad.

The role of national governments and civil servants with reference to Essay

The role of national governments and civil servants with reference to criteria such as equity, efficiency, democracy and public interest and examine concrete st - Essay Example As to how the government should maintain its sovereignty and obligation, it must ensure equity, efficiency, democracy and public interest such as for instance; it must be able to give its people their right for a quality and standard education, accessible health opportunities and facilities and good governance as a whole which at some point, must be free from corruption. Corruption may involve cash or economic benefits, power or influence, or even less-tangible interests, and occurs in both government and the private sectors, in free-market and closed economies and in democratic and non-democratic governments and societies (United Nations 2008). In today’s global economic setting, much can be said about the role and tasks of the government for we are entirely into a new shift, from traditional to modern way of governance. Sparapani (2008) commented that the main tasks for the government are allocation of resources, redistribution of income, stabilization of economic activity and promotion of growth and employment. This is based on an economic perspective that applies to modern national economy which the bottom line is to ensure equity, efficiency, democracy and public interest first. In this paper, I will try to expound these four areas in governance and relate them to the government of Cyprus, a country, among any others that has a remarkable and unique history and story to tell in the world. The first practical examples will be based on the e-Government, for this is the latest and a remarkable innovation of governance in our era where technology gets a higher correlation with the advancement of an entire country and individuals living in it. In today’s age of breakthrough technology and advanced information technology (IT) and where almost anything can just be possible right at everybody’s doorsteps, it would no longer be impossible for myriad of information to penetrate just right away into everyone’s home. It is

Is there life out there other than us Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Is there life out there other than us - Essay Example We are able to see the process of formation and evolution of various planets, far away from our own home. There is life beyond our earth and possibly they are thriving as much as we are. There could also be beings that make use of an entirely different kind of existence which could be totally not interfering with our existence as a matter of fact even invisible to us. The question of whether there is life elsewhere in all the numerous other planets and the various solar systems that go around the millions of stars in this galaxy and in many other galaxies has always been a fascinating query. Many people have remarked in many ways in the days earlier on. But then, today almost no one among the known scientists of the planet today would say that there is no life elsewhere. Looking closely at the various papers, research works and exploration missions, that was taken up in the recent past have concluded successfully that there is a very high possibility that life exists in more than one form, in more than one location on the planets that abound in outer space1. In our own solar system, there are number of planets, planetoids and their satellites which boast of their own atmosphere. A temperature that is nearly as good as that of the earth. But then, the recent advances in the microbial sciences, have led from one discovery to another. It was spotted that there are millions of new bacterium that could possibly exist in Mars and the kind of harsh climates that they could manage to live with2. On closer introspection, one can find that the living organisms on the planet earth have been subjected to extreme conditions and that they lived through these conditions. In a similar way, conditions at many places in the universe are to the extreme side on temperature, on atmospheric conditions and on planetary material. All these have led to conclude that there is a high possibility for living organisms to exist in multi-various locations on the planetary systems3 that are continuously evolving across the universe. 3. Research Continuing research has revealed that the very definition of a living organism needs to be clearer when it comes to dealing with living organisms in other worlds. The question of 'what is a living organism' seems to have rocked the boat of the researchers in more than one way. Though there still seems to be a great amount of latency in defining the living organism, most people as of date seem to have accepted the fact that many of the so called, non-living organisms or man made objects seem to display tendencies that are similar to living organisms. They all eat, produce energy for their purpose and they also 'exhaust' unwanted or used up or unwanted material. They go through a chemical or nuclear or any other reaction that could sustain them. To date, what was found was that artificial objects do not copulate and reproduce. Current investigations into the existence of living organisms assume that the only difference between the living and non living organism is that they do not have a copulation methodology resulting in

Managing for future Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3250 words

Managing for future - Assignment Example Part I: Analysing the environment Corporate social responsibility Tata steel is one of the firms which were the first to have a fully fledged corporate social responsibility program, not only in India but also around the world. This began with its founder in the early 20th century, who in his own words said that â€Å"In a free enterprise, the community is not just another stakeholder in business but is in fact the very purpose of its existence" (Srivastava, 2012, p. 20). In the current time, Tata Steel Ltd. has a well grounded corporate social responsibility program which includes community development, environmental sustainability, employee relationships etc. This has made Tata to be recognized around the world due to its pioneering in this area (Mahesh, 2001). According to Mahajan (2003), Tata Steel Ltd. today spends between 5 and 7 % of its after tax profits to facilitate corporate social responsibility activities. This is a commendable amount of money to spend in corporate soci al responsibility programs. In this case study, commissioned and selected for studying the topic of CSR by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), it becomes very clear that Tata is one of the firms which have taken corporate social responsibility in a very serious way. ... to identify the impact on the community in which the project is being carried out. This helps in influencing the way Tata Steel Ltd. operates its project especially with regard to the impact on the community and the environment. An evaluation of Tata Steel Ltd’s corporate social responsibility programs indicates its dedication in terms of making sure that its operations don’t affect the community in a negative way. However, there are a number of issues which come up as one looks closer. The first issue is that although Tata Steel Ltd. has invested a lot in corporate social responsibility programs, these programs are mostly directed towards philanthropic programs to the communities. Offering scholarships, healthcare services and other community programs is just a very small part of the problem especially for a big firm like Tata Steel Ltd (Puneet, 2011). Tata steel has activities which are very destructive to the environment and it is necessary for the firm to be able to look beyond just having philanthropic programs. Although Tata Steel Ltd. states clearly in its CSR policies that its CSR goes beyond just philanthropic projects, it does not seem so in practice (Wilson, 2012). It is possible that despite the many corporate social responsibility programs that Tata steel has, the long term effects of its operations will exceed the benefits achieved by the community through Tata’s corporate social responsibility programs. This indicates that there are issues which must be looked at in a very serious way in order to close this gap. Tata must look beyond just having good corporate social responsibility programs and look at the ways in which it can deliver a more practical and useful CSR programs. Environmental

What do we learn about international strategies for protecting human Essay

What do we learn about international strategies for protecting human rights from an examination of the record of the UN in action on Terrorism - Essay Example Without diminishing this obligation, it is also the duty of the UN to protect human rights in the course of pursuing counter-terrorist activities. For this reason, the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy has been instituted. In the 2005 Madrid Summit, then UN Secretary-General echoed the unanimous observation of international rights experts, both within and outside the UN system, that counter-terrorism measures that have been adopted to that date have all infringed on human rights and fundamental freedoms in one way or another (Foot, 2007). It was therefore determined that in the course of pursuing the counter-terrorism effort, the protection of human rights must be assured. It is the official position of the UN and its member states that these twin pursuits – counter-terrorism and the protection of human rights – are deemed complementary and that they mutually reinforce each other’s goals. The UN has committed to pursue measures to halt the violation of human rights, and to adopt counter-terrorism measures which comply fully with the obligation to protect human rights (UNACT, 2013). ... The UN has committed to pursue measures to halt the violation of human rights, and to adopt counter-terrorism measures which comply fully with the obligation to protect human rights (UNACT, 2013). The commitments provide assurances that the anti-terrorism effort shall be coupled with the observance of human rights, at least in principle. However, the robustness of this observance in practice should be ascertained by an examination of the records pertaining to the records of the committees of the UN Security Council, which are tasked with the implementation of counter-terrorist measures. In order to abide by this commitment to ensure that human rights are respected even and especially during the course of combatting terrorism, the post of Special Rapporteur was created in 2005. The Special Rapporteur shall be concerned with the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while undertaking counter-terrorist activities (UN General Assembly, 4 June 2012). Despite as surances in treaties and the expression of agreement in human rights conventions, there is grave concern, from accounts of victims and investigative journalism reports, that human rights are consistently being violated in the interest of stemming the rise in terrorist activities worldwide. On the one hand, the undue curtailment of human rights is a violation of the UN conventions to which member States are signatories, and should therefore be sanctions. On the other hand, fear of a repetition of attacks such as that of the World Trade Centre appears to justify this resort to violation of the rights of a few to obtain information and prevent the deaths of many. This

Healthcare statistics error type I & type II Assignment

Healthcare statistics error type I & type II - Assignment Example Type II error would however mean scarcity of resources and while it offers no financial benefit in the scenario, it risks inability to offer care services and therefore threatens quality of health. Type I error would therefore be preferred because of it guarantees healthcare objectives while type II error can hinder realization of care objectives (Grove, Burns, and Gray, 2012). The affordable care act’s provision for review of applications for insurance premium increases is one of the policies that push insurance companies to avoid one type of error. With a null hypothesis that proposed premium increment is not excessive against an alternative hypothesis that the proposed value is excessive, an insurance company will avoid type II error. This is because type II error can lead to excessive increment of premium and the consequence is legal actions against an insurance company for breach of law (The United States Department of Health & Human Services, 2015; Grove, Burns, and Gray, 2012). The United States Department of Health & Human Services. (2015). Premiums: Rate review. The United States Department of Health & Human Services. Retrieved from:

Climate Change Effects on Vegetation Distribution Case Study

Climate Change Effects on Vegetation Distribution - Case Study Example The main effect, in this case, is climate change and global warming. This paper explores global warming with the focus on explaining some of the causes of global warming alongside the recent changes in climate recorded on the surface of the earth. Â  The term climate change can sometimes be used to refer to the climatic changes that are brought about due to human activities, rather than those climatic changes that are brought about as part of the natural processes of the earth. These terms have become quite a relevance as far as the environmental policy, and the global warming anthropogenic are concerned. Global warming, in this case, represents the increases in temperature and climate change and deals with global warming, and other aspects including the levels of the greenhouse effect. Â  Arguably, the rate in which energy is received from the sun and the loss rate to space determine a great deal both the climate of the earth and the equilibrium temperature (Bachelet & Lenihan, 2001). As research would have it, the energy is transferred all over the globe by use of ocean current, winds, and other different mechanisms which may affect the climate of other regions. It is worth noting that there are a number of factors that may lead to climate change. Key among them include solar radiation, variation, and orbit of the earth, continental drift, and the greenhouse gas changes concentration. Different climatic alterations in climatic feedbacks can either diminish or amplify the forces that initially. Other parts of the system of climate such as ice caps, an ocean. Within the climate variation context, human factors that are deemed to be affecting the climate are the anthropogenic factors. According to the scientific consensus concerning climate change, the climate is al ways changing and the changes are largely due to human activities.

Timberland †Corporate Social Responsibility Essay Example for Free

Timberland – Corporate Social Responsibility Essay How do Timberlands social responsibility efforts and high ethical standards benefit the company? Timberland’s CSR (Corporate social responsibility) efforts benefit the company in a number of ways: By involving all stakeholders be it consumers, employees or stock holders, Timberland ensures that it is not â€Å"business as usual† but much more towards giving back to the community from which it derives sustenance. By contributing to the local community through PIES (Partners in education and service) and other projects, it ensures that the local community is made to feel like â€Å"part of the family† Timberland is undertaking thirteen different projects with the local community and the employee’s involvement sparks what the management calls a â€Å"revolution† in social justice. Over the past several years, corporate America has been shaken by a series of scandals involving the top management and the whole image of these companies had taken a severe beating. Timberland, by its CSR efforts has ensured that all its stakeholders have a positive approach towards the company and this helps it in its business efforts.       Why is the leader’s personal involvement key? By aligning themselves with the social responsibility efforts, Timberland’s management has ensured that: Their personal involvement ensures that the employees are motivated and â€Å"follow the leader† in their efforts towards CSR By letting employees get a paid leave of 40 hours to contribute towards CSR efforts, the leadership of Timberland is sending a strong message to all the stakeholders about its sincerity and commitment towards the community projects The fact that the leadership was present at the meeting of volunteers to kick off the CSR efforts is a signal that â€Å"everyone is involved†. Timberland is striving to create a brand identity for itself as a caring and ethical company. Towards this, the leadership wants to ensure that it does not fall into the quagmire of profit driven unethical behavior and instead engage themselves with the community at large.

The Strength of Weak Ties by Granovetter | Review

The Strength of Weak Ties by Granovetter | Review This paper is a critical review of the popular article The Strength of Weak Ties by Mark S. Granovetter (1973). After an introduction to the paper at hand and a summary of the texts main points, a closer look at some of the premises on which the author builds his arguments is taken as well as examining the arguments themselves. Followed by that, the articles major contributions to the field of civic networks and social capital and its importance in this realm especially for the contemporary society are examined. Finally, I will conclude by summing up the points and highlighting the significance of the article. Introduction Mark S. Granovetters article The Strength of Weak Ties (1973) is one of the highly influential and most cited works of our times. By emphasizing a part of social networks which had hitherto been neglected, the author clearly caused a stir (not only) within the scientific community of sociology and social sciences. Granovetter is a contemporary sociologist and professor in the school of humanities and sciences at Stanford University. His main fields of interest are Economic Sociology, Social Stratification and Sociological Theory. Contributing to these realms, he published several articles and books. Here, we will focus on the input he gives through the paper cited above. Summary In his renowned and influential paper The Strength of Weak Ties (1973), Mark Granovetter makes a basic distinction between the respective functions of strong and weak ties and points especially to the importance of the latter. He defines the strength of a tie by the combination of time spent together, the emotional intensity, the intimacy and the reciprocal services (p. 1361) present in a particular relationship. He states that the stronger a tie between two individuals, the higher is the proportion of common friends due to three main factors: the time committed to each of ones friendships, similarities that connect friends and the logic of Heiders cognitive balance theory which serves as explanation why the combination of a positive relationship between person A and person B as well as between A and person C will most probably result in a positive relationship between B and C (1958). Concluding from these statements, he points out that only weak ties connect one group of people (fri ends) and another, as strong ties already imply an overlap between two groups. Relationships that are the only connecting point between two groups are bridges or if a tie is not the only but the shortest connection between members of different groups local bridges (p.1364). According to Granovetter, in the process of diffusion of e.g. new ideas or concepts these bridges play an essential role as they allow for the spread of an idea from one group to another. The author presents a set of studies that demonstrate how new ideas spread (most rapidly) through people with few strong but several weak ties. This seems to be especially so if the idea introduced is rather unconventional and deviating from a certain norm and the spread of which requires a considerable degree of freedom from peer pressure. After clarifying the overall importance of weak ties, Granovetter takes a closer look at their significance on two levels: the individual and the community level. He explains that for the individual, the maintenance of weak ties (e.g. former working colleagues) is crucial as those are usually bridges that provide access to groups of people and to information that one would otherwise not be able to obtain. For the community, on the other hand, bridges are essential in order to prevent pure clique building which would inhibit community cohesion and hinder collective action. Weaknesses of the argumentation Not without any reason is Granovetters The Strength of Weak Ties considered a highly influential and important paper. In contrast to many other sociologists writing about social theories or social capital, Granovetter makes a clear distinction between interpersonal (strong ties) and mere transaction (weak ties) relationships and he adheres with it throughout his argument an important step that many sociological argumentations around social capital lack. There are, however, a number of weaknesses in his argument which I will outline in the following. One of the premises he builds his argument on, is that the proportion of overlapping friendship circles of two individual is related to the strength of these individuals tie. Thus, a weak relationship between two people implies that there are only few common friends or acquaintances. This, however, does not have to be true. Take former class mates as an example: Person A and person B were class mates several years ago, but nowadays they are only in loose contact, they thus have a weak tie. However, each of them does have an approximately equally strong tie to most of the people from the former class. Hence, there is an overlap of acquaintances even though they are only very weakly bonded to each other. Furthermore, a friendship that developed over a longer period of time may remain a very strong one even if the two individuals involved do not see each other frequently anymore. This would then imply that there is a strong tie between the two friends but obviously not very much overlap of their friendship circles where they live. This facet becomes ever more important with new communication technologies evolving, which facilitate keeping contact despite spatial separation, and the general globalization which leads to ever more people changing their location more easily and more frequently. Hence, the definition of the strength of a tie, though quite precise at first sight, does not cover every kind of tie and is thus not completely comprehensive. Another premise Granovetter states is that due to the similarity which friends usually share it is very likely that if person A is a friend of person B and of person C, then B and C do become friends, too. If one always chooses ones friends because they have much in common can be doubted, though. Not without cause is the proverb opposites attract so well known and often used. Often people tend to feel comfortable around someone that is different in his personality and character, this being an anti-pole to ones own weaknesses and strengths. Thus, the similarity that the author implies here rather refers to sharing an interest in or commitment to something, be it in the labour world or common hobbies. However, if A likes B because of their perpetual discussions about politics and A is a friend of C because of their shared passion for soccer, B and C are not necessarily likely to build a deep friendship as well. When writing strong ties lead to overall fragmentation (p.1378), Granovetter clearly underestimates the importance of strong ties. His paper is unique in emphasizing a thitherto neglected part of human interaction. Nevertheless, strong ties build the basis for any kind of trust to evolve, which again is a main component of social capital and community cohesion. A person who does not have any intimate relationships will have a hard time trusting people. Now, one could state that everyone is bonded in at least one strong relationship and hence, this remark is redundant. However, nowadays the number of weak ties people have is increasing steadily as online platforms such as facebook allow for an easy way of handling the climbing number of relationships. Still, these relationships do demand some input to remain present and thus it can be questioned if people still invest in their strong ties or if the number and intensity of friendships is declining in recent years. What one can be sure about, though, is that for community cohesion to evolve and remain, both weak and strong ties are needed, rather that seeing strong ties as a threat to social cohesion. Last, one can question if the generalization of the importance of weak ties is legitimate. It may, very well be the case that they facilitate the spread and diffusion of and thus gives access to information that one could otherwise not obtain. This function (enhancement of diffusion) is, however, one that does not require reliance on the vis-ÃÆ'ÂÂ  -vis one interacts with. Take the example of an old colleague telling a person about a job offer. This widens the job seekers horizon but he does not have to rely on this single job offer. Here, weak ties fulfil their function beautifully. As soon as something is at stake, though, one has to doubt that people would still make extensive usage of weak ties. Here, they would rather rely on someone they know and well enough to be sure that he can be trusted. This holds true not only for interpersonal issues but also in a mere trade relation. Strengths and contributions of the article Nevertheless, one can not possibly question the importance of this article. One major contribution is a solution to the threat of an in-group bias that may occur: As recently found out in a study by Hooghe, Reeskens, Stolle and Tappers, generalized trust, which furthers social cohesion and is a core component of social capital, develops more easily and in greater amplitude within homogenous groups whereas heterogeneity of a group decreases it (2009). These findings bring along some troublesome issues: How can collective action and social cohesion take place in heterogeneous societies? Naturally, heterogeneous groups will divide into subgroups which can lead to fragmentation. With the linkages, the bridges, between these groups, the threat of fragmentation and a resulting lack of participation in public life can be allayed. Furthermore, it clearly gives the basis for several important publications not only in the fields of civic networks and social capital. Richard Floridas The Rise of the Creative Class (2002), for example, explains the crucial importance of the spread of information through weak ties for the facilitation of creativity in the labour sector. This is just a representative of the many contemporary influential theories that build on Granovetters paper. The Strength of Weak Ties contributes to the discussion around the concept of social capital not only by making a clear distinction between different types of ties (as stated above already) but also by showing how weak ties can be a connecting point between leaders and a group and the resulting trust and participation in the leadership and by emphasizing the significance of the spread of information which can ultimately lead to collective action and the involvement of the majority of a society in public matters. Finally, as already shortly mentioned above, Granovetters stress on weak ties does not become outdated by new findings although the publication lays more than 35 years in the past. In contrast, it should acquire even more importance by the introduction of new technologies and online platforms that alleviate the maintenance of a vast number of loose relationships, even bridging great distances. This trend is crucial for understanding nowadays (Western) societies and hence, for many fields of sociology and social sciences. Conclusion Considering the points made above, one can clearly state that the publication is a basic contribution in civic networks theory despite the weaknesses it may have. There are scholars that tend to favour strong ties and disregard the significance of weak ties such as Robert Putnam foremost in his book Bowling Alone (2000). This only makes Granovetters article more important providing an anti-pole to such neglect. Even though there are flaws in the argumentation and the premises on which the approach is built, those are minor ones. Furthermore, Granovetter states himself that his work is a limited, basic one that is a fragment of a theory (p. 1378). He does not claim to offer a comprehensive and elaborated concept that does not need further improvement. As part of a theory and by drawing the attention to an entirely neglected part of human interaction, it paves the way for further research in this direction. Granovetter, hence, managed to contribute greatly to several fields of research and this piece of work will not loose significance in the future as it is the basis further studies and will not be replaced by those.

Representation Of Women In Mainstream Film Studies Essay

Representation Of Women In Mainstream Film Studies Essay According to Laura Mulvey women stand in patriarchal culture as signifier for the male other, bound by a symbolic order in which man can live out his fantasies and obsessions through linguistic command by imposing them on the silent image of woman still tied to her place as bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning. This argument can be seen in countless movies across generations and cultures. Mainstream Hindi film industry churned out countless movies where women represented as bearer rather than maker of meaning. However, the film No One Killed Jessica seems to be a departure from this trend. The film is based on the true murder story of Jessica Lal. In a crowded nightclub, Jessica Lal, a model working as a celebrity bartender, refused to serve Manu Sharma and two of his friends. Incensed, Manu Sharma pulls out a gun intending just to give Jessica a scare shoots her dead. More than 300 people were witnessed the event at the exclusive nightclub when Jessica was killed, but nobody came forward to tell the truth in court. The family of Jessica Lal fought legal battle against the rich and powerful for more than a decade and finally got justice. The film, No One Killed Jessica was purposively chosen keeping in view of its commercial success and audience acceptability. Its successful run at the box office implies most of the audience identifies with the films representation of society and individuals. As per general perception through various news media, it had a strong impact on the society regarding the changing image of women. The film can be clearly established on a syntagmatic level; the director (Raj Kumar Gupta), the script (amalgamations of fiction and reality), the directors relationship with his earlier film Aamir (2008). In addition to that, there were snapshots of today in the film in the form of models, fashion, glamour, journalism, sting operations, even stereotypes. All in all the film was a total explosive concoction. The most integral aspect was successful completion of process of making a film as a paradigm in itself.   No One Killed Jessica perhaps one of the rare films where the male gaze is absent, largely because there are no male protagonists, no song and dance sequences, and no overt sexualisation. The female lead is represented in a very masculine form. The film paved the way for newer films to represent women and their everyday issues in a positive light by breaking the existing stereotypes. Bollywood, considered to be among the top three film industries across the world, has time and again successfully adapted to new dimensions to understand and reflect the relatively quick changes in the evolving culture of Indian society. It also reaches Middle East, South Asia, Africa and among South Asian diasporas, world over. This further marks the study of mainstream commercial Hindi film as essential. The study can be taken as a critical base and can be re-examined for upcoming films. Theoretical Framework In mass media, representation is often perceived as the construction of reality in a virtual medium. Such a notion of representation is analogous to the mistaken assumption of a one-to-one correspondence of every word with its referent a language-world isomorphism (Saussure, 1983). Representation in cinema begins with building up of concepts of reality that include human beings, objects, places, cultural identities, and events and extends to the establishment of abstract concepts. In classical aesthetics, Plato identified representation as mimesis i.e. imitation without narration, somewhere close to theatre and differentiated it with the concept of diegesis i.e narration without imitation. Aristotle went further in his seminal work Poetics and suggested that mimesis can never reach the truth because on one hand the audiences are required to feel distant from it so that they can experience catharsis and on the other hand it has to strive hard to imitate reality as close as possible. In fact, Aristotle exclaimed that, Mimesis involves a framing of reality that announces that what is contained within the frame is simply not real. Thus the more real the imitation the more fraudulent it becomes. (Gebauer and Wulf, 1992) The modern aestheticist M. C. Beardsley (1958) proposed a classification of Representation as Depiction (i.e. representation of a type of object), Portrayal (i.e. representation of an individual), and Symbolizing (i.e. representation through a suggested or non-literal meaning). Incorporating all these typifications, representation can be approached from two standpoints. Towing the line of Aristotles interpretation of mimesis, Constructivists tend to believe that cinema is a construction of reality, where reality as an object can be perceived, consumed and witnessed in still as well as moving images and texts but with a catch this perception will always be plagued by cinematic alteration and manipulation and therefore, will always be distinct from reality itself. In other words, our perception of a film will be dependent on our body of knowledge i.e. epistemology, especially our knowledge that this is a film and therefore cannot be real. Thus, Myra Karn is able to portray Jessica Lal because the spectators have agreed to a suspension of disbelief about this fact. However, once this agreement is reached, it immediately leads to a subconscious apprehension that ultimately this is not the complete truth. On the other hand, Realists take an almost opposite viewpoint, best described by Bazins notion that film as a medium is subject to reality by the very incorporation of this capacity of capturing reality in the film-making process itself (Bazin, 1967; pp 21). Bazin went on to establish that there is a style of filmmaking which may be termed as realist which he ascribed to the likes of Jean Renoir, Orson Welles and Italian neorealist Roberto Rossellini all following techniques which render the projected image as close to reality as possible. With time constructivism went on to incorporate structuralism, Barthesian textual analysis, Marxist ideological analysis, Lacanian psychoanalysis, etc. leading to the foundation of cine-semiotics. This led to the birth of feminist film theory which incorporated feminist ideological criticism, cultural studies, psychoanalysis etc. According to Feminist Film Theories, cinema has been an important path on which debates, culture and identity is talked about and even challenged. There have been major theoretical developments and frequent discussions on woman as an object of desire, female spectatorship and cinematic pleasure. Many theorists have contributed to this school of thought. Mulvey in her essay, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1973, printed in 1975), highlights the concept of women as passive role players in films. According to her it baselines the concept of film as visual pleasure. She further stressed that such roles make women as tools of erotic visual effect for male v oyeurism. Mulvey points that in Cinema a womans representation is being a carrier of the meaning rather than making the meaning. Molly Haskell in From Reverence to Rape: The treatment of women in Movies (1974), analyzes how women are portrayed in films, the stereotypes depicted, the extent to which women are projected as passive or active. She also comments upon the amount of screen time given to women. Doane (1987), searches for the type of women representation in the women-oriented films. She insists that women refer to signifier of modernity, rebellious sexuality. According to her, woman as object is single terminology in systems of positioning. Linda Williams (1988) tells us that understanding of spectatorship is a result of representation through three-sided meeting historical and physical subjectivity; contradictory meanings; positions and pleasures. Julia Kristeva (1982) uses the term abject in direct contrast to Lacans object petit a (object of desire) to refer to the spect ators reaction of horror towards a possibly endangered deconstruction in the meaning caused due to the loss of power. Post-structuralist feminist philosopher Judith Butler theorized that gender is different from sex and while the later is biological, gender is actually performative and this performance is driven by rules put in place by strong patriarchal hegemonic structures (Butler, 1999). However, Feminist film theory has also met with strong criticism from various detractors, prominent being Christine Gledhill, who argues for a realist epistemology to underline contemporary feminist film theory (Gledhill, 1984). This follows from the premise that if a feminist film theorist asks the question whether a particular representation in a film is true to womens condition and nature, she has automatically assumed that there is a reality of womens condition and nature (Casebier, 1991; pp 121). In this paper, we attempt to provide a subtextual realism to applied feminist film theory principles using relevant phenomenological theories for example, Benjamins Angel of History and Heideggers Poiesis. Inspired by French Revolutions in 1789, 1830, 1848 and the Paris Commune of 1870, Walter Benjamin interpreted Paul Klees painting, Angelus Novus (1920) in his seminal work, On the Concept of History (1940). The Angel of History, as Benjamin dubbed it, has its face turned towards its past and sees a single catastrophe of revolutionary events, a pile of rubble on its feet even as it is caught up in a storm that drives him towards the future. Benjamin labeled this storm as progress. Further [1973 (1935)], he argued in favor of death of ritual with the birth of camera and mechanical images. Heidegger, M. [(1977) 1954], in The Question Concerning Technology, insisted that the essence of technology is not technological He used the term poiesis to find out forms of authentic production, one where every aspect of production process right from the creator to created is dependent and entangled with each other. As a result, there is a loss of being, individuality and freedom. It brings humanity to a position of servitude. Due to this a person speaks something but thinks absolutely differently. Heidegger takes the example of a fast and free-flowing river The Rhine when the river is controlled by a dam, which is built by humans, leads to curtailment of the rivers freedom. However, it also results in servitude of humanity because now they have to manage the dam as an additional work bound to their lives. Gender representation and Hindi cinema As discussed earlier, construction of reality presupposes the establishment of reality. The basic premise of cinematic suspension of disbelief is the realization that all that appears real on screen is actually a construction of reality. Similarly, to take up the subject of representation of women in Hindi cinema, first we must try to comprehend the existing reality of women, their status in India. Numerous Indian mythologies have given great respect to women, to the extent of calling them Mother Goddess. The contextual reality though is quite different. Unlike many nations, India has a larger male population as compared to females. One of the major reasons is women die even before they can reach adulthood. A large number of them are murdered in their mothers womb. The other important fatal imbalance is the mistreatment of these women. They do not have enough decision-making power and economic independence, face violence in and out of their families, face atrocities like murder, mole station, rape and every possible kind of sexual molestation to the extent that India stands at a miserable 56 rank out of 86 nations in the Social Institutions and Gender Index (OECD SIGI, 2012). This reality of Indian women has found its way straight into the silver screen. Since beginning, women in popular Hindi Cinema have their set roles somebodys daughter, wife, sister or mother. A modern woman has been portrayed to possess a loose character. She can be bar dancer or a college student, who is not at all interested in her career. Rare are the cases when lead female characters are depicted as strong individuals. We hardly witness them to be lawyers, journalists, business magnets, doctors etc. Even if they are portraying these, they are supposed to be holy, cultured, catering to males need and wishes. Even the song and dance sequences demand them to be voluptuous and good dancers. Their maximum achievement in life looks to be a shift from song and dance in discs and pubs to escape in Hindi cinema and do the same around trees. Woman as a maker of meaning: Gender representation in No One Killed Jessica An important precursor to the analysis of No One Killed Jessica is the actual Jessica Lal murder case. Jessica was a professional model who happened to volunteer as a bartender at a socialite gathering and was shot dead by a politicians son for refusing to serve him liquor at 2 am in the night. The case shocked Indian youth and generated a public outcry when the perpetrators were acquitted in a lower court. Subsequently, the media took up the case rigorously and managed to pressurize the higher courts to reopen the case and finally the guilty were put behind bars. No One Killed Jessica starts in a format of a hard-hitting documentary. Later the glamour quotient seeps in reminding us of watching a mainstream commercial Hindi cinema. Still throughout, the film showed touches of serious cinema as well. This movie boasts of two main characters Sabrina Lal (Vidya Balan) and Meera Gaity (Rani Mukherjee). Sabrina is shown to be simple, calm, nerdy, and docile and appears to be contended in her own space. She takes a back-seat in all the aspects of life as compared to her sister (Jessica Lal) and many other female counterparts. She is media shy and far from the glamorous personality of Jessica and Meera. Her usual attire is dull colored loose shirts and straight fit jeans and doesnt use make-up, establishing her as a person who tones down her sexuality. Meera is a fictional character, loosely symbolizing sensational but powerful Indian electronic media of the new millennium. The character is built around the famous journalist from NDTV Barkha Dutt, who had handled the case and is also the inspiration for the coverage of Kargil war and Kandahar hijack episode. Unfortunately, the film completely ignores print media journalists, who were among the first ones to uncover the truth and in fact, the sting operation was done by Harinder Baweja from Tehelka. In the movies credits, there is a caption congratulating Tehelka for their efforts but going by the general Indian film viewing standard, people do not sit back and watch credits. Ramani (2011) implored that the movie goes so far to accommodate the case for electronic media that it excludes and almost totally ignores contribution of main heroes of the story, i.e. the print media. Meera is established from the beginning of her film, first through her voice which delivers a monologue on Delhis inherent complexity and its fascination with power and then her credentials are established through her coverage of important but difficult news assignments like Kargil war and Kandahar hijack incident. From the very beginning, Meeras character is celebrated as a woman of substance, but subliminally, it is established as a transgendered male performance, as if the lines and the role was written for a male character but the sex was changed at the last moment. Thus Meera goes to great lengths to establish her gender performativity as male using tropes like frequent verbal abuse; dominant and emotionally detached frequent physical relationships; absence of family issues etc. Her stance of sitting and drinking tea in the office, her behavior with her colleagues and her maid furthers this establishment. The contrast lies in, the real women journalists who actually went to grea t lengths to solve this case and is comfortable in their gender, e.g. Harinder Baweja frequently wears Saris and flaunts her femininity without any reservations, and is quite humble in her interviews. Professionally, Meera comes out as a hard-hitting reporter. Her character is smart, dynamic, selfish, bitchy, successful, and manipulative. In fact, it seems as if the director of the film has a deliberate intention of creating such contrasting characters on the same platform. The downside of such a contrast is that, when played with the mise-en-scà ¨ne and sequence of events, the film impresses upon the audience that, a successful woman tends to have man-like attributes; at least her perfomative gender should be male. Otherwise she will absolutely fade away in the harsh realities of life. In an establishing scene, while returning from the Kargil war zone, she hurls expletives at a fellow male passenger something that is employed to make her representation adhere to the stereotypes of cool and bitch, as there appears no visible reason for such an outburst. However, we must give due respect to the makers of the film that they have not aimed at creating perfect heroines, although all these characters are seen to reflect certain exciting stereotypes. Jessica Lal, the omnipresent character throughout the film, even after her death, is the actual anchor of the story. Her character evolves as a young model free-spirited and modern an individual who is not scared to pick a fight while protecting her sister (Sabrina) against harassment. However, the stereotyping does not leave her ever. In the scene where she fights the street harassers, one can observe a multitude of gender and class representations. The harassers are on a cheap bicycle and apparently symbolize members of the lower economic class. Whether or not this scene is fictional, it reeks of class irony she was shot dead by a higher economic class male while these fellows were projected to be weak in front of her rage and verbal abuses. Another irony is that the verbal abuses that s he used are themselves misogynist. Further on in the film, her modernity is objectified in pure Kristevan (1982) sense by establishing her vulnerability as a vilified girl who likes to have a nice time, parties hard, drinks heavily and stays out till late. So in the film there are a number of scenes where Jessicas character develops against Sabrina in a contrast of bad vs. good. In one frame, Jessica invites Sabrina to a party which symbolically implies the one where she was shot dead and she is wearing a mini-skirt while Sabrina is in desexualized jeans and an oversized shirt. At the sequence leading to Jessicas murder, there is frequent jump cut between Sabrina sleeping in her bed while Jessica is serving drinks in the party. The dance sequence reeks of voyeuristic male pleasure with head to toe camera movements amplifying a mini-skirt clad female figure montage with extreme close-up shots of drunken men trying to get too close to her the sub-text is clearly pointing out that thi s image of a girl dancing in a short dress is easily approachable. The paradigm in the series of shots and the delicate imagery tend to establish a dangerous line of thought those who try to move away from the patriarchal hegemonies in place will have to face the brunt one day the audience is prepared to see Jessica get the bullet! This moment is the very mimetic driver that will lead the audience to witness the fight for justice and the road to catharsis, the final judgment in favor of justice. But the montage and the mise-en-scene establishing this mimesis subliminally also feed the stereotype of the vulnerability of the female gender. The conflict scene between Jessica and Manu is a more serious effort and focuses on her mid, close-up and extreme close-up shots as well as a good performance by Myra to highlight Jessicas strong personality. The audience senses the danger even more closely as the first gunshot goes off and yet another Jessica is hit in the head. Her fall in slow motion takes its time to ensure that the moment is mimetically established and mourned in the subconscious of the viewers. Phenomenologically, this moment is akin to Benjamins Angel of History where the angel is looking at the past and has no hope for the future. The storm from paradise has ensured that all progress lies in the rubble of history. As with Benjamins catastrophe of the Holocaust, the audience is forced to have a full gaze at the tragedy that unfolds on-screen. Although Meera Gaity operates on similar thoughts of rebellion and modernity, she is shown to have a different end a victorious one! Her male performative attributes have been discussed earlier as well. She uses the f word like her second skin and is abusive in speech just like any of her male colleague journalists. She does not pay any heed to the so-called moral police of the society sleeps out of wedlock, smokes frequently and is at top of her career by climbing certain manipulative ladders. In order to come out in the top league, she is not afraid to pull the right strings and take help of the crooks themselves. Her frequent use of abusive language and behaving very manly recreates the stereotype of women can be successful only when and if she behaves like a man. Her dialogues like when she says screw ethics confirms her revolting personality. She is shown to be rude both to her colleagues (she often call her colleagues bitch), and even to her maid at home. Further Meera confir ms her male performance by saying sentences like, this is the time to give back to those sons of bitches; lets nail the bastard; that bastard should be in jail and not at the next happening party; I think I deserve a much bigger and better story and many more. Despite all this, throughout the film Meera is no less than a hero. In contrast, Sabrinas character is deliberately underplayed. She could have easily been made the hero of the story. However she was shown to be easily dominated first by her sister, then by witnesses, culprit, media and Meera. Perhaps this was done to signify, that the good has to lean on the bad to fight and win over the ugly. That is, after she has literally broken down in her fight for justice for Jessica, Sabrina grabs the hand of Meera to fine the justice against the evil doers. As mentioned in the review of literature, psychologists Yassour Borochowitz, Dalit Buchbinder, Eli (2010) discovered a couple of aspects that explains a female weakness to violence. They said that language is not the base to create a meaning; in fact, it is the crux to create concept of whole world. For example, the language of Sabrina is measured, slow, and subtle; revealing her desexualized personality. Her not going to her sisters parties, her avoidance of drinks, her even stopping Jessica from fight ing against goons who tease her, shying away from media and trusting the witness in vein. All these hint at her contrasting personality and the course of events in the film. Despite these stereotypes, the characters of Meera and Sabrina are very important, especially for Hindi Cinema. Apart from the male mannerisms and extremities of the characters; both of them shown to be strong in their own right (Sabrina to start the battle of justice and Meera to finish it). In fact, Meera is projected to ultimately possess a conscience and in following that she leaves no stone unturned to get justice for Jessicas murder case. There have been very few movies that show women in such revolutionary light. Also it is noteworthy that this movie again shows two female leads and males as supporting cast. It is a breather that we could see Vidya Balan in what she does best (no-glamorously glamorous avatar) after a long time. What was more like a water-drop in the desert is Rani Mukherjees fire-crackling role. Moreover women in this movie are shown to be focused on their respective goals and not just running around the bush to chase for their prince charming and night in the shining armor. No One Killed Jessica is perfect example of globalization, digitization and repercussions. The mixed language used, slang, abusive words, are in a way helper for general audience to relate with the movie and the reality of the story. Moreover, it was Jessica that helped find her wings of freedom. However it was the same globalization and development that made her life so cheap so as to make her loose it just over one drink. This is where her rubble of progress carries her from her past of hope to the future of loss in the effects and counter effects of Justice for Jessica, just like Benjamins concept of Angel of History. Similarly, Heideggers digitization has its own weight in studying the film. The whole movie screams of inter-mixing of technology and perceptions. For example the March for Justice at India Gate could be possible because of mass interconnectivity owing to the SMS/MMS revolution. It brought about the adoption of hacktivism in the movie. The positive side of this technological paradigm is seen as a march of change after people watch and get inspired by the movie Rang De Basanti in a theatre. In a true Heideggerian irony, the movie subtly carries the negativity of Gestell or enframing as well. Over glamorization of digitization resulted in ignoring the essential facts. Print media was ignored and deprived of its due credit. (Ramani, 2011) The movie was biased in its promotion of sting operations and did not care to highlight the negative aspects of such acts. The overt projection of globalization made the urban city image as digital hurdle. Above all, the woman in the film has been given an out of the box characteristics, making them look league apart from the rest. However, the reality is there stereotypes of images have been created and recreated consciously or unconsciously by the makers. The audience perception of the film is of applause, yet they in a way identify their stereotypical perceptions with the created reality in No One Killed Jessica. Conclusion To conclude, there is an obvious difference between the reality and representation. However, presence of stereotypes weakens the boundary of this differences and the line thins further to an extent of creating almost a complete identification with each other. The film commendably made an effort to break the gender stereotypes by projecting the image of women as a maker rather than a bearer of meaning in the mainstream commercial Hindi Cinema. However, many major instances prove that this change is not frequent enough. These efforts may be genuine, yet are not enough to overcome stereotypes. Hence the change is not strong enough to bring about a change in thoughts, outlook, perception, projection as well as representation. What we need is more frequency and refinement in order to break the existing stereotypes that even No One Killed Jessica could not break in totality. Representation is there for sure. A bright future lies ahead for Bollywood an opportunity to resist the natural ins tinct of creating and adhering to negative gender stereotypes with conviction and courage.

Sociological Theory: Positivistic, Interpretative, And Critical Essay

Sociological Theory: Positivistic, Interpretative, and Critical Comment on the three types of sociological theories, explain and argue, based on your library or Internet research, which type of theory is the most appropriate theory for sociology to adopt. The three general types of sociological theory are positivistic, interpretive and critical theory.In determining which theory is the most appropriate for sociology to adopt,a basic understanding of each theory's strengths and weaknesses is necessary.In defining each of these theories, it is important to determine the ontological basis orthe theory's basis for determining what is knowable; the epistemological basis or the theory's relationship between the knower and the knowable; and, finally, the methodological basis or the theory's method for gathering data and obtaining knowledge. A.POSITIVISTIC 1.Ontology. The positivistic theory is based on an ontology ofbeing a realist.The realistic slant of positivism is also known as determinism.The positivist knows that a reality is "out there" to be defined and categorized.The hard sciences from the time of Newton and Decartes have traditionally relied on the positivistic approach.The positivist hopes to be able to approximate "reality" in a detailed generalization or theory on how reality operates.The theories of a positivist generallytake the form of cause and effect laws describing the outside reality.Robert Merton defined these theorems as "clear verifiable statements of the relationships between specified variables." 2.Epistemology. Positivism relies onan objective epistemology.The observer remains distant and does not interact with the observation or experiment.Values and any other factors that might lead to bias are to be carefully removed so that the cold, monological gaze of science can be used to analyze the data.The positivist is an objectivist. 3.Methodology. The methodology of positivism is experimental and manipulative. The approach is the same as propounded in most junior high science classes:begin with a hypothesis on how "reality" works, then gather data and test the data against the hypothesis.The question propounded initially is tested against empirical data gathered in the experiment under carefully controlled conditions. B.INTERPRETIVE 1.Ontology. The interpretivist ontology is relativism.The... ...late objectivity. This is not the same as objectivism.Each has its own "norms for proceeding with a particular form of inquiry in a rational manner."However, because of the orientation of each theory, the end results will vary. Based upon these difference, critical theory does not seem to be a theory that should be adopted by sociologists.It belongs more in the realm of politics and legislation.Critical theory in that context could take advantage of scientific inquiry by both positivistic and interpretive sociologists to make determinations about social change.If indeed critical theorist are to be involved in sociological study, full disclosure of prejudices and objectives would be needed for any inquiry to be beneficial and trustworthy. Postpositivism remains the best approach for observing the exteriors of society.Coupled with the interpretivist's view of the interior culture, the two theories working hand in hand would be most beneficial for the sociologist in examining society.Utilizing a dual approach would be the most comprehensive and give the scientific inquiry both depth and span in evaluating our societies and creating a useable body of sociological research.