Core Values-Nestle Essays

Core Values-Nestle Essays Core Values-Nestle Paper Core Values-Nestle Paper Core Values and Intercultural Management Sep 29,2007 00:00 by admin Core Values and Intercultural Management Case Study: Nestle In 2001, Nestle was the largest and most diversified food company in the world, with nearly 500 factories in more than 100 countries. In fact, over the period 1867–2000 it surpassed other food manufacturers and purchasers of agricultural raw materials in scale of operations. Over 230,000 people worldwide work in Nestles factories, research laboratories and offices. In 1999 Nestle generated a total income of 4,007 million Swiss francs. This case study is based on a series of interviews with prominent Nestle managers engaged in strengthening Nestles core values. Niels Christiansen, Vice President, Public Affairs of Nestle SA, explains that even though 98 per cent of Nestle operations are outside Switzerland, the company still originated in Switzerland. The corporate headquarters is located in Switzerland. Hence some Swiss cultural values are an integral part of Nestle core values. Many Swiss values are embedded in the Nestle General Management and Leadership Principles and the Nestle Corporate Business Principles. These Principles reflect not only Nestles basic corporate values, but some of the Swissness of the company as well. What has been described as the Swissness of the company refers to the pragmatic and resultsoriented nature of the Principles. The Nestle General Management and Leadership Principles are presented in our case study on communications and intercultural management (see Chapter 2). The box on page 87 reproduces the Nestle Corporate Business Principles. NESTLE CORPORATE BUSINESS PRINCIPLES Nestle is committed to the following business principles in all countries taking into account local legislation, culture and religious practice: Nestles business objective, and that of management and employees at all levels, is to manufacture and market the companys products in such a way as to create value that can be sustained over the long term for customers, shareholders, employees, business partners and the large number of national economies in which Nestle operates. Nestle does not favour short-term profit at the expense of successful long-term business development, but recognizes the need to generate profit each year in order to maintain the support of the financial markets, and to finance investments. Nestle believes that, as a general rule, legislation is the most effective safeguard of ethical conduct, although in certain areas, additional guidance to management and employees, in the form of voluntary business principles, is beneficial in order to ensure that the highest standards are met throughout the organization. Nestle is conscious of the fact that the success of a corporation is a reflection of the professionalism, conduct and ethical values of its management and employees, therefore recruitment of the right people and ongoing training and development are crucial. Nestle recognizes that consumers have a legitimate interest in the company behind the Nestle brands, and the way in which the Nestle company operates. Although core values can be propagated across a multicultural corporation in a variety of ways, Nestle adopts certain approaches that are characteristic of it. These approaches have been used consistently and for a considerable length of time, even though the companys various Principles have been written down only recently. One important approach is careful and meticulous selection of personnel. This approach has been enshrined in the Nestle Corporate Business Principles. Potential employees are assessed as to whether they possess the attributes that would enable them to fit into the Nestle way of life. An assessment is also made of whether they can achieve complete integration into Nestle culture over time. Nestles selection process has been so effective that most of its employees have pursued a lifetime career, spanning at least 30 years with the company. This lifetime association with Nestle enables employees to completely imbibe and operationalize the Nestle core values. Additionally, new recruits are given extensive coaching as well as training, to ensure that they fully understand Nestles core values. Both the Nestle Management and Leadership Principles document and the Nestle Corporate Business Principles document contain personal messages from the CEO. The CEO, as well as all senior managers, make it clear that they expect all employees to subscribe to and implement the company core values. Of course, members of the top management echelon also live the core values themselves so that they serve as role models. Nestle uses extensively another means to propagate its core values: its international management cadre. Members of this cadre go from country to country working as managers in different Nestle branches. These international management cadre managers ensure that the Nestle core values are institutionalized at all Nestle locations. They occupy a significant proportion of the key positions at all Nestle branches, and can therefore exert a tremendous amount of influence. All managers of Nestle, irrespective of ethnic origin or geographic location, are part of the Nestle culture and share the same core values. Additionally, by rotation, they spend some time at the Nestle headquarters in Vevey, Switzerland. During the initial stages of their career, Nestle employees (from all over the world) attend residential training programmes at Vevey, which are of approximately one months duration. These programmes reinforce the core values which Nestle employees have already assimilated. They also make Nestle employees realize that regardless of where they are from, they all share these core values. Although Nestles core values are the glue that holds together all its managers distributed across more than 100 countries, the company is also sensitive to local cultures. Brabeck, CEO of Nestle, has remarked, Since Nestles activities in Switzerland, its country of origin, account for less than 2 per cent of its global turnover, Nestle learned very early to respect the social, political and cultural traditions of all countries in which the products are produced and sold, and to be a highly decentralized people and products oriented company rather than a systems oriented company. The interesting question that presents itself is, how does Nestle manage the dialectic between having well-entrenched core values, and respecting national cultures? Vietnam is a country in which Nestle has established a branch only recently (in 1996). It is a challenging country in which to start operations. In the first instance, it is a communist country with a state controlled market. Additionally, the cultural ethos and ambience of Vietnam are quite unique. When Nestle started its branch in Vietnam, it had to embed and institutionalize its core values there from scratch. Nestles initial step was to translate the two documents, Nestle Management and Leadership Principles, and Nestle Corporate Business Principles, into Vietnamese. During translation, it was found that some concepts could not be translated literally. Literal translations would lead to some loss of intended meaning. Hence, some of the concepts were elucidated using Vietnamese metaphors and symbols. For example, recourse was made to the metaphor of the family. The sort of relationship that Nestle expects from employees was compared to the sort of relationship that exists between family members. The importance of teamwork and team spirit was likewise advocated by reference to family values. Thus, a document was created especially for Nestle Vietnam that encapsulated the Nestle core values in the local idiom. This document is given to every employee who joins the branch. Before employees can join Nestle Vietnam, they have to satisfy the recruitment criteria. This includes whether the prospective employees can understand and appreciate the core values of Nestle, and align themselves with these core values. Individuals who will be unable to operationalize Nestle core values, because of either their background or their personality, are screened out. The background of a prospective employee is thoroughly checked. This is to ascertain what kinds of influence have conditioned him or her. At Nestle branches that have been in existence for some time, considerable autonomy is given to line managers in the matter of recruitment. In start-up branches like Nestle Vietnam, however, the HR department and top management are very closely involved in the recruitment process. They admit into their fold only those individuals who can subscribe to Nestle core values. Nestle believes that if employees are deficient in technical skills, but have the appropriate attitudes and values, they can be trained and learn those skills. On the other hand, values are more difficult to change. If prospective employees have attitudes incompatible with Nestles core values, then no amount of coaching can successfully bring them in line with Nestles expectations. One of the core values of Nestle is that its employees should have intercultural competencies and be able to interact effectively with people from all over the world. Hence, as part of the recruitment process at Nestle Vietnam, prospective employees attitudes to foreigners are assessed. Also assessed is how they view people from other parts of Vietnam. Preference is given to prospective employees who are tolerant and liberal thinking, and have experience of associating with people from diverse backgrounds. Sometimes it transpires that prospective employees would not like to work with foreigners from other parts of Asia, such as Malaysians, Japanese or Taiwanese. They do not mind working with Europeans, however. In such cases, Nestle Vietnam tries to ascertain whether the prejudice emanates from ignorance or from a deep-rooted emotion. If it is the former, training and coaching can eradicate the prejudice, as can first-hand experience of working with Malaysian, Japanese or Taiwanese managers. This is particularly true of young recruits who are perceived as being malleable. They are very receptive to being guided by a coach or mentor, much more so than in the case of their European counterparts. Thien Luong Van My, currently Issues Manager Public Affairs at Nestle headquarters in Vevey, Switzerland, and Country Head of Nestle Vietnam for the period 1996–2000, comments: They really enjoy this coaching like from an elder brother to a younger brother or sister. They really like to be guided not only about how they should work, but about how they should behave as well. And we pay a lot of importance to our newly joined recruits patterns of interaction. We observe them closely. And the elder brother recommends to his younger sibling how he can improve himself. This system appears to be working for us. We started in 1996 with three employees. I had a driver and a secretary. Today, there are 300 employees with Nestle Vietnam, all of whom are committed to Nestles core values. The core value of team spirit had to be nurtured with special effort at Nestle Vietnam in its early years. It is the experience of Nestle Vietnam that the Vietnamese are a fairly individualistic people. They may be loyal to a small group of people who are usually family members. Nestle Vietnam was in its crucial initial six years when headed by Thien, who is Vietnamese and grew up there. He therefore positioned himself as the patriarch of the company, somebody who could be considered an uncle or elder brother. He then capitalized on his position to encourage team spirit. He also ensured that team spirit was propagated in a manner appropriate to the Vietnamese culture. For instance, a practice integral to Vietnamese culture is showing respect and deference to elders. At Nestle Vietnam, a few units are headed by individuals who are younger than a few of their subordinates. A careful watch is kept on these individuals, to ascertain whether they treat those subordinates who are older than them with respect and regard. Nestle Vietnam has tried to design approaches for institutionalizing the Principles that comprise the Nestle core values. For example, consider the Nestle Corporate Business Principle regarding protection of the environment: Nestle integrates environmental policies, programs, and practices into each business as an element of management in all its functions, develops, designs and operates facilities and conducts its activities taking into consideration the efficient use of energy and materials, the sustainable use of renewable resources, the minimization of adverse environmental impact and waste generation, and the safe and responsible disposal of residual wastes, applies Nestle internal standards suitable to local conditions in those regions where specific environmental legislation is not yet in place, improves environmental protection relevant to its activities on a continuous basis, provides appropriate information, communication and training to build internal and external understanding about its environmental commitment and action. Nestle Vietnam has had to work very hard to inculcate the value of conducting business in an environmentally sound manner amongst its employees. Many of the non-management staff come from rustic backgrounds with no higher education. Hence, courses are organized regularly so that these staff members can be educated on how to conduct themselves in an environmentally friendly fashion. When any staff members deviate from the Nestle standards for hygiene and environmental protection, their lapse is pointed out to them. Newly joined staff members have to be told that trash should not be littered anywhere, but should be put into garbage bins. On one occasion, a newly joined member of the cleaning staff was asked to clean the warehouse adjacent to a Nestle factory. He was asked to do this on a Sunday when there were no senior managers at the factory site. While cleaning, he threw some discarded paints and oil into the drainage system. It was entirely a spontaneous act. Fortunately, a manager came to know about this occurrence the following day, and the drainage system was stopped before it discharged its contents into a river flowing nearby. If the paints and oil had found their way into the river, a major catastrophe would have resulted. After this incident, Nestle Vietnam provided even more stringent instructions about hygiene and environment protection to its entire staff. Another core value that had to be addressed explicitly by Nestle Vietnam was one termed Conflict of Interest in the Nestle Corporate Business Principles document. This core value stated that Nestle requires its management and employees to avoid personal activities and financial interests that could conflict, or appear to conflict, with their jobs. In Vietnam, it is customary for people to hold more than one job. They might work for half a day at a primary job, and then be employed elsewhere, in a job that is in some way competitive with the primary job. Nestle Vietnam has had to adopt a firm stance here. Thien and the other expatriate Nestle employees who set up Nestle Vietnam were succeeded by Vietnamese managers in early 2001. This has contributed to institutionalizing the Nestle core values at the branch. It also signifies that the branch has assimilated the Nestle core values. In fact, the job success of Thien and his expatriate colleagues is being evaluated in terms of the performance of their successors. Inferences Fostering of uniform core values in a global corporation is a key to successful intercultural management The challenge of intercultural management for organizations lies in the appropriate juxtaposition of corporate culture and ethnic cultures. This is the challenge that Nestle, with its many, many branches located all around the globe, had to grapple with constantly. Ultimately, however, corporate culture transcends ethnic culture. In other words, corporate culture, which is governed by the organizations core values, is superordinate to other cultures such as ethnic culture. This has been the mode of functioning of all the organizations profiled in this book: Nestle, Credit Suisse, BMW, International Committee of the Red Cross, IBM, ICAS and so on. These companies have not specifically articulated that this is their mode of functioning. It may not even be recognized as a conscious strategy by the top management echelons. Certainly, the key players in the individual companies are not aware that this is a mode of functioning shared by high-performance transnational organizations. Nonetheless, we record in this book that this is the case. The core values of an organization determine the nature of its corporate culture. The corporate culture can influence the mind-sets of its employees, which in turn will have been shaped by a wide variety of factors. For individual employees, one of these factors is definitely their ethnic culture. When an organization has branches in different locations and cultures, it is inevitable that those branches are affected by local cultures in more ways than one. In the first instance, the products and services offered by the organization must find a resonance in the local culture. Otherwise there would be no market for those products and services. Thus, Nestle offers many food products that are culture-specific in that they reflect the food preferences of the local consumers. One of Nestles food products is Maggi instant noodles. These noodles are available in a wide variety of cultures, and offer a feature that is appreciated in all these cultures they can be prepared in a matter of minutes. However, the noodles are concocted differently in different cultures. In Switzerland, for instance, the noodles are sold with a cheese garnish. In India, Maggi masala noodles are a runaway success. Maggi masala noodles have a pungent, spicy flavour, which might not find favour in Switzerland. Likewise, Maggi noodles as sold in Switzerland would be too bland for the average Indian. Local cultures can impact on organizations in more complex ways, however. They can influence (though not determine) corporate culture. This happens when a significant number of employees of an organization hail from a specific ethnic culture. The corporate culture of Nestle has a certain Swissness about it, as observed by Hans Johr, Assistant Vice-President at Nestle headquarters. This is to be expected, since Nestle originated in Switzerland, and is headquartered in that country. However, the fact that Vietnamese personnel staff Nestle Vietnam signifies that elements of Vietnamese culture that are venerable are incorporated into Nestle Vietnam. This enables the Vietnamese workforce to be productive and happy. For instance, the notion of projecting the CEO of Nestle Vietnam as a father figure, who can then engage in team building by encouraging employees to think of each other as siblings, was an approach that reflected Vietnamese culture. This is a case where the dialectic between corporate culture and ethnic culture has been managed successfully. This in fact is an objective of intercultural management: to harmonize the juxtaposition of corporate cultures and ethnic cultures. However, there may be individual employees whose cultural backgrounds give rise to values that conflict with the core values of an organization. The resulting dissonance can be resolved satisfactorily by the employees either leaving the organization, or modifying their values. In other words, the core values of an organization are superordinate. The International Committee of the Red Cross faces the dilemma of dealing continuously with conflicts between corporate culture and ethnic culture. For example, in Afghanistan they are determined not to uphold conventional local attitudes to the treatment of women. If this entails having to enact a more diminished role in Afghanistan, then so be it. The dialectic between corporate culture and ethnic culture has been described by Nestle as follows: The Companys business practices are designed to promote a sense of identification among all employees all over the world, and apply a number of common rules, while at the same time adapting the expression of these rules to local customs and traditions (Nestle Corporate Business Principles). This of course is easier said than done. However, it must be emphasized that high-performance companies have strong cultures with well-defined core values. These core values are capable of adaptation to local customs, traditions and cultures. They cannot be supplanted by the values of other cultures.

Discrimination in Gtan Torino Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Discrimination in Gtan Torino - Essay Example The 2008 film Gtan Torino, which stares Clint Eastwood exhibits a high level of cultural diversity. However, Walt Kowalski, who is the main character and protagonist in the movie, shows high level of resistance to the abundant cultural diversity. He is filled with stereotypes and prejudice on the cultural units he desists. Kowalski lives a rather miserable life, as he is haunted by memories of the people he killed in the war in Korea, when he was in the military. His wife also dies, he is not in good terms with his children and family, and does not get along with the neighbours. Therefore, his is a solitary life, which he lives with his dog.   Kowalski is an angry veteran, who hates and despises Koreans. He also hates and despises his neighbours, who are Hmongs. He treats them in an ill manner, abuses them, and considers them barbaric and uncivilized.   Stereotyping, which is a form of discriminating is wrong, and most of the time, does not depict the true picture of the person o r group being discriminated against. Stereotypes are false perceptions about a group of people, which outsiders hold about them. Nonetheless, unless one interacts with certain people, and learns their way living and doing things, then holding any type of stereotypes about them is wrong. In this film, Kowalski has various stereotypes about most Asian ethnic groups. For instance, he believed that all Chinese people cooked and fed on dogs as a meal. Nonetheless, his neighbours were Hmongs.... In this film, Kowalski has various stereotypes about most Asian ethnic groups. For instance, he believed that all Chinese people cooked and fed on dogs as a meal. Nonetheless, his neighbours were Hmongs, who are an Asian ethnic group from parts of China, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. Kowalski therefore, despises his neighbours, and thinks they too cook and eat dogs. However, when he finally establishes a close relationship with them, he realizes that they prepare and eat good and decent meals, just like him. This therefore, proves his stereotype against them wrong. Discrimination against a certain group of people based on their race might make one to miss special opportunities of exploring and getting in touch with human diversity. One might fail to see the good side of the people whom they discriminate against. This is because; those who discriminate against others are less likely to associate with them, as they regard them to be less important. Therefore, discrimination is wrong, si nce it denies one the opportunity to experience and benefit from a different cultural group. In this film, Kowalski is a lonely old man, who does not have company, as even his own children do not like being around him, and even plan to take him to a retirement village. Nonetheless, when Kowalski gets in close association with his neighbours, through the young Sue and Thao, he begins to learn many positive facts about the Hmong people, which he never imagined, as he had belittled the Hmongs and other Asian ethnic groups. Although one might consider their ethnic group as superior, compared to others, there might be many factors, which the other groups that are perceived less powerful, have, that

Product Liability Case Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Product Liability Case - Research Paper Example However, she was subsequently diagnosed shoulder chondrolysis that caused her shoulder socket and ball to fuse, severely restricting shoulder motion. As a result, she filed a product liability suit against I-Flow Corp, which manufactured the â€Å"PainBuster† device. In this case, she asserted that the device had not received FDA approval for use in such cases, arguing the product’s manufacturer was liable for the sale of this product despite not giving adequate warning and was, therefore, unreasonably dangerous (Moylan, 2015). There is no mention of the insurance company in the article, which might be explained by the fact the case was initially thrown out and the insurance company was not needed. The Courts of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit found that, for medical devices, negligence of instruction was grounds for product liability, stating that this finding was not in contravention of the Medical Device Amendments of 1976 or the underlying intent of the US Congress in making these amendments to the Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act (Moylan, 2015). The suspected reason for Christina’s disorder was a â€Å"pain pump† that her doctors used to directly administer painkillers to her shoulder joint following the surgical procedure. Normally, this device is used to deliver different types of pain medications to the surgery site quickly and directly. However, the procedure involved in using the device has been linked to development of chondrolysis, which is a debilitating condition of the joints. This disorder causes the depletion of cartilage that separates and connects bones and, as a result, the joints become fused and lose all mobility. In majority of cases, the discov ery and diagnosis of this condition happens too late for any effective treatment or cure (Moylan, 2015). Before submitting her product liability case to court, Christina requested the court to instruct the jury on the negligence theory per se.

The Concept Of Governmentality

The Concept Of Governmentality The concept of governmentality is a neologism used by Michel Foucault in his work on modern forms of political power. It is a term that combines government and rationality, suggesting a form of political analysis that focuses on the forms of knowledge that make objects visible and available for governing. In Foucaults terms, governmentality refers to a distinctive modality for exercising power, one which is not reducible to the state. Governmentality is understood to work at a distance by seeking to shape the conduct of conduct. This in turn implies that governmentality refers to a wide range of points of application, including fields of action not ordinarily thought of as political, such as medicine, education, religion, or popular culture. Governmentality is a notion that develops Foucaults distinctive approach to the analysis of power relations. His work not only relocates power, dispersing it away from sovereign actions of centralised state agencies. It rethinks the type of action through which power is exercised (see Brown 2006b). In fundamental respects, the significance of the notion of governmentality for social theory turns on the interpretation of just what sort of theory of action this notion presupposes. The next two sections explore just where this significance lies. Lemke (2002) argues that Foucaults work on governmentality provides a means of understanding the relationships between knowledge, strategies of power and technologies of the self that can usefully augment narratives of neoliberalism. From this perspective, neoliberalism is understood as a political rationality that tries to render the social domain economic and to link a reduction in (welfare) state services and security systems to the increasing call for personal responsibility and self-care' (Lemke 2001, 203). On this understanding, governmentality is a concept that augments the political-economy approaches outlined in the previous section. For example, Ongs (1999) account of the distinctive forms of governmentality deployed by post-developmental states revolves around the assumption that various regulatory regimes manipulate cultural discourses to selectively make people into certain sorts of economic subjects consistent with the objectives of particular national strategies of acc umulation. Jessop (2007, 40) has also argued that the convergence between Marxism and governmentality studies follows from the mutually supportive emphases of the two approaches: while Marx seeks to explain the why of capital accumulation and state power, Foucaults analyses of disciplinarity and governmentality try to explain the how of economic exploitation and political domination. This formulation acknowledges Foucaults own observation that he was concerned with the how of power, but assumes that this descriptive focus merely augments the explanatory project of Marxist political-economy. What is covered over here is a fundamental philosophical difference between these two approaches: the concept of governmentality implies an analysis that focuses on the description of practices instead of causes and explanations. The Marxist and Foucauldian approaches are not necessarily as easily reconciled as it might appear. There are two main areas of difference between these approaches: their respective understandings of the state and of discourse (Traub-Werner 2007, 1444-1446). Political-economy approaches assume fairly static models of the state and the market, and view their relationship in terms of contradictory movements of de-regulation and re-regulation; they also assume that discourse is a representational concept, and focus upon how discourses are theorized differentially materialised in particular contexts. In contrast, governmentality refers to modalities of power that stretch far beyond the state; and discourse is not a representational system so much as a distinctive concept of action, referring to the combination of technologies, means of representation and fields of possibility. Despite the underlying philosophical differences between governmentality and Marxist political economy, Foucaults notion has become an important reference point in recent debates about neoliberalization (Larner 2003, Barnett 2005). If there is such a thing as a neoliberal project, then it is assumed that it must work by seeking to bring into existence lots of neoliberal subjects (cf. Barnett et al 2008). Work on this topic assumes that extending the range of activities that are commodified, commercialized and marketized necessarily implies that peoples subjectivities need to be re-tooled and re-worked as active consumers, entrepreneurial subjects, or empowered participants (e.g. Bondi 2005, GÃ ¶kariksel and Mitchell 2005, Mitchell 2003, Mitchell 2006, Sparke 2006a, Walkerdine 2005). In this interpretation, the dispersal of power implied by the notion of governmentality is re-centred around a sovereign conception of state action, now able to reach out all the more effectively into a ll sorts of arenas in order to secure the conditions of its own (il)legitimacy. The reduction of governmentality to a mechanism of subjectification marks the point at which Foucaults historical, genealogical approach to issues of subject formation is subordinated to presentist functionalism of theories of neoliberalization. This reduction follows from the ambivalence around subject-formation in the formalized models of governmentality that have developed Foucaults ideas. Roses (1999) analysis of advanced liberal governmentality argues that forms of social government, of which the classical Keynsian welfare state stands as the exemplar, are being supplanted by the de-socialisation of modes of governing. The rationalities of advanced liberal welfare reform take the ethical reconstruction of the welfare recipient as their central problem (ibid. 263). They seek to govern people by regulating the choices made by autonomous actors in the context of their everyday, ordinary commitments to friends, family and community. This rationality is visible in the proliferation o f the registers of empowerment and improvement, in which both subjects participating in welfare or development programmes are geared towards transforming the relationships that subjects have with themselves (Cruickshank 1999, Li 2007). In analyses of advanced liberal governmentality, these shifts in political rationality are the result of the efforts of a diverse set of actors pursuing plural ends. They do not reflect the aims of a singular, coherent neoliberal project pursued through the agency of the state. This emphasis is lost in the functionalist appropriation of governmentality to bolster theories of neoliberalization. This is compounded by the tendency in this work to presume that the description of political rationalities also describes the actual accomplishment of subject-effects. The vocabulary of theorists of neoliberal governmentality theorists is replete with terms such as elicit, promote, foster, attract, guide, encourage and so on: The key feature of the neo-liberal rationality is the congruence it endeavours to achieve between a responsible and moral individual and an economic-rational actor. It aspires to construct prudent subjects whose moral quality is based on the fact that they rationally assess the costs and benefits of a certain sort as opposed to other alternative acts (Lemke 2001, 201). The point to underscore here is the emphasis on a rationality that endeavours and aspires to bring about certain subject-effects. Narratives of the emergence of neoliberal governmentality display little sense of just whether and how governmental programmes seek to get people to comply with projects of rule or identify with subject-positions. This is in large part because the Foucauldian approach to neoliberalism continues to construe governmentality in terms of a politics of subjection (Clarke 2004d, 70-71). Such an assumption leads almost automatically to the conclusion that neoliberalism degrades any residual potential for public action inherent in liberal democracy (e.g. Brown 2003). Equipped with the concept of governmentality, this sort of presentation of neoliberalism is able to avoid any serious consideration of what sort of action can be exercised on subjects through acting on them at a distance. The idea that governmentality is a distinctive mode of political rule which seeks to hail into existence its preferred subjects, which are then only left with the option of resistance, needs to be treated with considerable scepticism. Understood as a mechanism of subjection, governmentality is assumed to work through the operation of norms. However, Foucauldian theory is chronically unable to acknowledge the work of communicative rationalities in making any action-through-norms possible (Hacking 2004). Theories of governmentality consistently fail to adequately specify the looping-effects between knowledge-technologies, practices, and subject-formation which are implied by the idea of governing at a distance (Barnett 2001). This failure leads to the supposition that governmentality works through representational modes of subjectification rather than through the practical ordering of fields of strategic and communicative action. At the very most, the governmentality approach implies a probabilistic relationship between regulatory rationalities of rule and the transformations of subjectivities, mediated by the rules of chance (Agrawal 2005, 161-163). It might even imply a reorientation of analysis towards understanding the assemblage of dispersed, singular acts rather than on psycho-social processes of individual subjection (Barnett et al 2008). The recuperation of governmentality as a theory of subject-formation, modelled on theories of interpellative hailing, overlooks the distinctive modality of action through which the Foucault addresses questions of subjectivity. Whereas liberalism and neoliberalism are understood in political-economy approaches as market ideologies, from the governmentality perspective liberalism (and by extension neoliberalism) should properly refer to a particular problematization of governing, and in particular the problematization of the task of governing free subjects. While a free market ideology might imply a problematization of free subjects, it does not follow that the problematization of free subjects is always and everywhere reducible to the imperatives of free market ideologies. Ong (2006) suggests, for example, a definition of neoliberalism in which long established technologies for administering subjects for self-mastery are only contingently articulated with projects directed at securing profitability. But this clarification still presumes that neoliberalism extends and reproduces itself primarily through a politics of subjection (see also Brown 2006a). It might be better to suppose that the distinctive focus in governmentality studies on modes of problematization should reorient analysis to the forms of what Foucault (1988) once called practices of ethical problematization. This would direct analytical attention to investigating the conditions for individuals to recognize themselves as particular kinds of persons and to reflect upon their conduct to problematize it such that they may work upon and transform themselves in certain ways and towards particular goals (Hodges 2002, 457). Two things follow from this reorientation. Firstly, it presumes that subjectivity is the product of situated rationalities of practice, rather than the representational medium of interpellative recognition (Hacking 2002). Secondly, it implies that the proposition that liberal governme ntality seeks to construct self-regulating subjectivities should not be too easily reduced to the proposition that these subjectivities are normatively self-interested egoists (Du Gay 2005). For example, Isin (2004) argues that the distinctive style of problematizing contemporary subjects of rule is in terms of so many neurotic subjects faced with various risks and hazards. One implication of this style of problematizing subjects is that state agencies continue to be the objects of demands to take responsibility for monitoring such neurotic subjects or securing them from harm. In this section we have seen how the third of the approaches to conceptualising neoliberalism identified by Larner (2000), which appeals to the concept of governmentality, can be more or less easily subsumed into the prevalent political-economy interpretation. The assumption that governmentality is a concept that refers to the inculcation of certain sorts of mentality into subjects is the prevalent interpretation of governmentality in geographys usage of this concept to bolster theories of neoliberalization, not least in the proliferation of work on neoliberal subjects. The marriage of political-economy and governmentality therefore generates a shared space of debate that defines state-of-the-art research into neoliberalization (Barnett 2005). While in the political-economy approach, discourses are treated as expressive of other levels of determination, in the governmentality approach political economic processes recede into the background; whereas political-economy approaches privil ege class relations over other social relations, the governmentality approach reduces the social field to a plane of subjectification. But these differences converge around a shared assumption that reproduction happens: that subjects live out their self-governing subjection as ascribed by governmental rationalities, or subordinate classes live out their regulatory roles as ascribed by hegemonic projects of consent (Clarke 2004c). And so it is that the social is reduced to the repository of a mysterious force of resistance waiting to be activated by the revelatory force of academic demystification. Foucauldian analysis of neoliberal governmentality remains unclear whether either tradition can provide adequate resources for thinking about the practical problems of democracy, rights and social justice. This is not helped by the systematic denigration in both lines of thought of liberalism, a catch-all term used with little discrimination

Beauty by Susan Sontag

â€Å"The privileges of beauty are immense† said Cocteau. To be sure, beauty is a form of power. And deservedly so. What is Lamentable is that it is the only form of power that most women are encouraged to seek. This power is always conceived in relation to men; is not the power to do but the power to attract. †¦. or renounced with out social censure. † – here she states that beauty is a power that us women or men have naturally, we have the power to attract what we want and don’t want. For the Greeks, beauty was a virtue: a kind of excellence. Person then were assumed to be what we now have to call–lamely, enviously–whole person†¦.. beauty would be matched by beauty of the other kind† -here she explains how theirs two types of beauty the â€Å"inside† beauty and the â€Å"outside† beauty. In Susan Sontag informative piece entitled â€Å"Beauty† she discusses her logical thoughts of the beauty of a women an d a men, and of how beauty has changed over the centuries. Susan uses Logical appeals to evoke her philosophy of beauty.She says â€Å"The privileges of beauty are immense† said Cocteau. To be sure, beauty is a form of power. And deservedly so. What is Lamentable is that it is the only form of power that most women are encouraged to seek. This power is always conceived in relation to men; is not the power to do but the power to attract. †¦. or renounced with out social censure. † Here Susan states that beauty is a power that us women or men have naturally, we have the power to attract what we want and don’t want.She as well mentions, â€Å"For the Greeks, beauty was a virtue: a kind of excellence. Person then were assumed to be what we now have to call–lamely, enviously–whole person†¦.. beauty would be matched by beauty of the other kind† Which here she explains how theirs two types of beauty the â€Å"inside† beauty and the â€Å"outside† beauty. Susan is very informative with her logical examples that she makes a clear point in the passage, about beauty has changing through out the centuries but â€Å"inside† beauty and â€Å"outside† beauty remains the same. Beauty by Susan Sontag â€Å"The privileges of beauty are immense† said Cocteau. To be sure, beauty is a form of power. And deservedly so. What is Lamentable is that it is the only form of power that most women are encouraged to seek. This power is always conceived in relation to men; is not the power to do but the power to attract. †¦. or renounced with out social censure. † – here she states that beauty is a power that us women or men have naturally, we have the power to attract what we want and don’t want. For the Greeks, beauty was a virtue: a kind of excellence. Person then were assumed to be what we now have to call–lamely, enviously–whole person†¦.. beauty would be matched by beauty of the other kind† -here she explains how theirs two types of beauty the â€Å"inside† beauty and the â€Å"outside† beauty. In Susan Sontag informative piece entitled â€Å"Beauty† she discusses her logical thoughts of the beauty of a women an d a men, and of how beauty has changed over the centuries. Susan uses Logical appeals to evoke her philosophy of beauty.She says â€Å"The privileges of beauty are immense† said Cocteau. To be sure, beauty is a form of power. And deservedly so. What is Lamentable is that it is the only form of power that most women are encouraged to seek. This power is always conceived in relation to men; is not the power to do but the power to attract. †¦. or renounced with out social censure. † Here Susan states that beauty is a power that us women or men have naturally, we have the power to attract what we want and don’t want.She as well mentions, â€Å"For the Greeks, beauty was a virtue: a kind of excellence. Person then were assumed to be what we now have to call–lamely, enviously–whole person†¦.. beauty would be matched by beauty of the other kind† Which here she explains how theirs two types of beauty the â€Å"inside† beauty and the â€Å"outside† beauty. Susan is very informative with her logical examples that she makes a clear point in the passage, about beauty has changing through out the centuries but â€Å"inside† beauty and â€Å"outside† beauty remains the same.

A Rose for Emily: the Metaphor Like the Fallen Monument Essay

Emily Grierson is described as small and fat elderly women. She seems to be angry and confused. She’s always been a lonely person, she never went outside much. She is a very mysterious character. Colonel Sartorisis the former Mayor of Jefferson. His is very generous because after Emily’s father died he does not force her to pay taxes. Tobe is Emily’s servant. He is African American, his voice is rusty for the lack of use. For years he took care of her and her needs. After Emily dies, He leaves and never returns. Judge Stevens is the Mayor of Jefferson. He feels bad for Emily, and he does not nother her with the complaints. He just sprinkles lime on her yard at night. Homer Barron was known as a funny man in the town, He helped with the construction. The townspeople said he was not a man to marry, but he took Emily out on buggy rides on Sunday Afternoons. He is killed by Emily. Part two: 1. The metaphor used in the first paragraph to describe Miss Emily is â€Å"A fallen monument.† 2. The house is personified in the second paragraph by when the author describes it as coquettish. 3. In 1894, Colonel Sartoris told Miss Emily that she did not have to pay taxes because her father had given money to the town. 4. On the next year the new generation of town leaders mailed her tax bills. 5. In the sixth paragraph, Faulkner describes Emily has a short, fat elderly woman with a cane. He describes her as bloated and pale with coals as eyes. 6. At the beginning of Part two, Emily’s father had been dead for about 30 years. 7. The neighbors are complaining about a gruesome odor. Judge Stevens said its probably from a rat or snake her servant killed. 8. Miss Emily told her visitors after the day her father died, that he was still alive. 9. Homer Barron started to date Miss Emily. He was in town for construction. 10. The townspeople thought she was going out of her class dating Homer, but in a way they were happy to see her with someone. 11. Miss Emily purchased a silver toilet with his initials on it and a night gown to convince the townspeople they were getting married. 12. The last tie the townspeople saw Homer Barron was when he is seen entering her house on evening. 13. The men had sprinkled lime around her yard in part two because they intended to get rid of the odor and thought the acids would help if there was something decaying in the yard. 14. In the sealed room that no one has been in forty years, the townspeople find Homer Barron’s decomposing body and the room is frozen in time. 15. Miss Emily poisoned Homer Barron with Arsenic that she bought to â€Å"kill rats.† I believe the author decided to leave a second pillow with a strand of Emily’s hair on it to leave the reader thinking about how the hair got there.

The Level Of Obedience Of Participants - 999 Words

1. Milgram’s experimental aim was to measure the level of obedience of participants if an authority figure orders them to go against their moral conscience. Forty men aged between 20 and 50 were recruited using advertisements about a study of learning and memory from New Haven. In exchange for their participation, they were rewarded $4.50. Participants were introduced to another â€Å"participant† that is Milgram’s associate. They drew lots to determine their roles, but this was manipulated that the associate always received the role as the learner. Two rooms were used: one for the learner and another for the experimenter and teacher, Milgram and the participant. The â€Å"learner†, strapped to a chair with electrodes, had to learn words in pairs†¦show more content†¦2. Due to lack of informed consent, participants were unaware of the risks and consequences, considering there were deceptions in Milgram’s study. The description was misleadin g and participants believed the study was on learning and memory. Though, it may be argued that this was vital as it enabled Milgram to deceive the participants into believing they were delivering real shocks. Regarding protection from harm, participants were exposed to stressful situations and were visibly distressed (Baumrind, 2010). Three participants had uncontrollable seizures and many asked to stop the experiment. In Milgram’s defense, the effects were short-term and participants were debriefed after the experiment, which reduced stress levels (McLeod, 2007). Furthermore, it was unclear whether participants had the right to withdraw as the experimenter gave prods that discouraged withdrawal. Milgram argued that the prods were required in the study and withdrawal was possible, as 35% of participants did (McLeod, 2007). Nevertheless, Milgram’s experiments raised questions on ethics and led to developments of ethical conduct guidelines. 3. As the study explores people’s willingness to cause harm to others, participants may experience short-term