European Collective Identity

European Journal of Social Theory http://est. sagepub. com/ A Theory of Collective Identity Making Sense of the Debate on a ‘European Identity' Klaus Eder European Journal of Social Theory 2009 12: 427 DOI: 10. 1177/1368431009345050 The online version of this article can be found at: http://est. sagepub. com/content/12/4/427 Published by: http://www. sagepublications. com Additional services and information for European Journal of Social Theory can be found at: Email Alerts: http://est. sagepub. com/cgi/alertsSubscriptions: http://est. sagepub. com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www. sagepub. com/journalsReprints. nav Permissions: http://www. sagepub. com/journalsPermissions. nav Citations: http://est. sagepub. com/content/12/4/427. refs. html >> Version of Record – Nov 10, 2009 What is This? Downloaded from est. sagepub. com at Sage Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012 European Journal of Social Theory 12(4): 427–447 Copyright  © 2009 Sage Publications: Los Ange les, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DCA Theory of Collective Identity Making Sense of the Debate on a ‘European Identity’ Klaus Eder H U M B O L D T U N I V E R S I T Y, B E R L I N Abstract This article argues for a robust notion of collective identity which is not reduced to a psychological conception of identity. In the ? rst part, the debate on the concept of identity raised by several authors is taken up critically with the intention of defending a strong sociological conception of identity which by de? nition is a collective identity.The basic assumption is that collective identities are narrative constructions which permit the control of the boundaries of a network of actors. This theory is then applied to the case of Europe, showing how identity markers are used to control the boundaries of a common space of communication. These markers are bound to stories which those within such a space of communication share. Stories that hold in their narrative structures social relations provide projects of control. National identities are based on strong and exclusive stories.Europeanization (among other parallel processes at the global level) opens this space of boundary constructions and offers opportunities for national as well as subnational as well as transnational stories competing with each other to shape European identity projects. The EU – this is the hypothesis – provides a case in which different sites offer competing opportunities to continue old stories, to start new stories or to import old stories from other sites, thus creating a narrative network on top of the network of social relations that bind the people in Europe together.European identity is therefore to be conceived as a narrative network embedded in an emerging network of social relations among the people living in Europe. Key words  ¦ collective identity  ¦ European identity  ¦ narrative analysis  ¦ network analysis  ¦ sociological theory www. sagepublications. com DOI: 10. 1177/1368431009345050 Downloaded from est. sagepub. com at Sage Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012 428 European Journal of Social Theory 12(4) Identity: A Contested Concept Collective identity has been at the centre of attention in societies that were formed in the course of the making of the nation-state.The nation, however, has not been an exclusive focus. Collective identity can equally refer to cities, to regions, or to groups such as political parties or even social movements. For some time, collective identity has also been an issue with regard to Europe where public debate is increasingly concerned with the problem of a European identity that is seen as lacking or as necessary. But why do societies, groups and even a union of nationstates such as the EU need an identity? For a person, an identity allows them to be recognized as something particular vis-a-vis others.But why do groups, up to the nation and even transnational phenomena such as the EU, need an identity? The argument in the following is that the distinction between the identity of persons and the identity of groups and societies is an empirical one. Persons and societies are cases of identities. Persons have an identity by positioning themselves relative to other persons and by giving to these relations a meaning that is ? xed in time. An identity guarantees being a person in the ? ux of time.The same holds for groups: a group has an identity if it succeeds in de? ning itself vis-a-vis other groups by attributing meaning to itself that is stable over time. Identity as an analytical concept covers all these cases: identity emerges by linking past social relations with those in the present. In some cases, even future social relations are included; in this case, identity is linked to ideas of salvation or fate that include future social relations in our present existence. All these ‘constructions’ emerge within a speci? type of social relations in the present and allow an interruption of the permanent change of social relations, thus creating an identity in which persons, groups or societies can see themselves and be seen by others as being ‘identical’ over time. Everyday common sense in our society uses the concept of identity in a different way; it sees identity is something that a person or a group has. Contrary to this common sense, sociological sense sees the person or the group as a special case of identity that has emerged in a highly particular type of social relations: persons are transformed into individuals in social relations which are de? ed as relations between ‘free and equal people’. This is the modernist form of social relations of transforming persons into something that has an identity, i. e. individuals. This modernist form of social relations also transforms groups into something that has a collective identity, i. e. into nations. In the historical move from subjects to indiv iduals and from kingdoms to nations, we can observe a shift in the construction of identity. Identity is reconstructed since it refers to a different type of social relations.In such social relations, identity becomes a particular preoccupation of ‘individuals’ or ‘nations’, as the permanent work on identity repair and identity con? rmation shows. As an analytical concept, identity denotes something that holds across all these cases, providing stable meaning in the ? ux of social relations. Since identity in this sociological usage refers to social relations, any kind of identity is by de? nition social. Individuals and nations in the society we live in constitute the two Downloaded from est. sagepub. com at Sage Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012Eder A Theory of Collective Identity poles of identity constructions. 1 In-between, we have a series of social forms such as couples, families, associations, classes, regions, or ethnic groups which can be seen as intermediate cases of identity. The two poles of identity constructions are not ? xed, since changing social relations might produce forms of identity beyond the nation, an issue that is at the core of the debate of European identity and that makes this debate theoretically important. 2 In the following, a theoretically robust notion of collective identity will e presented. This task is carried out in the next section in a critique of the critical statements on the concept of collective identity that have arisen in the past decade. It consists of recuperating it from the fragments of the deconstruction of this concept in recent theorizing. The constructive argument in this recuperation effort is based on two assumptions. The ? rst is that that processes of identity construction vary with the complexity of social relations. The second assumption is that processes of identity construction have a ‘narrative structure’.These two theoretical moves then help to reassess the ongoing debate on the identity of Europeans or of a ‘European identity’ which preoccupies elites, sometimes people and which keeps active a rather signi? cant part of the public debate and increasingly scienti? c debate on ‘Europe’. In an oft-cited paper, Brubaker and Cooper (Brubaker and Cooper, 2000) made a strong attack on the concept of identity in the social sciences following this lead. They make three strong arguments. Their ? rst criticism has been that reputed authors using the term do not really need it. They use identity only as the marker of an intention (to be culturally sensitive). Identity is not related to the social analysis that has been presented elsewhere in their work. A second criticism of Brubaker and Cooper is that the notion of collective identity necessarily implies some notion of primordialism. Assuming that collective identity denotes something beyond shared values or norms, then there must be something more substantial than this to justify its use. The constructivist position starting with a non-essentialist position ends up in essentialist notions of collective identity.Constructivism produces outcomes that contradict its basic premises of ? uidity and multiplicity. A third criticism is that we already assume a groupist social ontology which forecloses the analytical grip of the diversity of patterns of non-groupist social forms; we exclude by de? nition the possibility of non-groupist social life, the possibility of living social relations without claiming an identity. Yet the solutions which Brubaker and Cooper offer do not resolve the problems addressed by them. The ? rst argument forces us to specify the added value of using the notion of collective identity as an analytical category.This is an obvious postulate. Categorical ornamenting or fashionable category-dropping should be avoided. We should either propose a strict sociological notion or leave the concept to psychologists who interpret identity as a phenomenon of the human mind. My proposal is that we can make a strong sociological concept out of it as long as we do not confuse it with psychological notions. The second argument that some substantialism is implicit in constructivist accounts of collective identity implies that substantialism is in some sense ‘bad’. Downloaded from est. sagepub. om at Sage Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012 429 430 European Journal of Social Theory 12(4) The implicit answer of Brubaker et al. is that we should assume a world in which the social no longer needs an overarching naturalizing symbolism. However, there are social situations in which primordialism does pop up. Thus, the theoretical answer should be to identify situations in which constructions of collective identity vary between primordialism and arti? cialism. The third argument against the ‘groupist ontology’ raises the issue of the mechanism through which social actors relate to each other.Collective i dentities are, the argument says, ‘groupist ontologies’ which in fact they are. They are symbolic forms through which a world of social relations is mirrored. These ontologies exist and have a structure and are the result of social processes that can be reconstructed. Doing away with such ‘ontologies’ is missing the object of a theory of collective identities. Groupist ontologies become the more important, the more social interaction is mediated by cultural techniques that establish sociality without the presence of the other.Such forms of indirect sociality need a social rationalization that invokes the social. Therefore, we have to assume that there is something that they have in common beyond the co-presence of the others. The theoretical assumption that follows is that the idea of collective identity emerges when cultural techniques (such as bureaucratic formula, written texts, computer interfaces) serve as interrupts of social interaction and generate indirect social interaction. To act beyond natural bonds, i. e. through cultural techniques, means to generate an abstraction of social experience.The argument then is that there is an increasing need for such collective identities in complex societies when indirect social relations increase in number. To forestall the macro-theoretical argument: The more a human society is differentiated, the more it needs a collective identity. The central hypothesis that derives from this assumption is that collective identities vary with the structure of the system of indirect social relations. The theory does not assume that collective identity is unitary, coherent. This is only one way of organizing the social bond among people.Collective identity can also be fuzzy, multiple. It is the variation of identities which requires explanation. The theory proposed explains this variation as being contingent on the structure of social relations among people. In other words, the network structure linkin g a people shapes the construction of the identity of that network which then is used to reproduce this network structure. 4 Thus, collective identity constructions are a central building block of social relations. Therefore, we should not give up the concept of collective identity, but make better use of it.Collective Identity Construction as Projects of Control: Adding Narrative Structure to Evolutionary Process The functionalist argument implicit in evolutionary theory tells us that it is necessary to create bonds which oblige people to pay taxes, to send their kids to schools, or to die for their country. On a more abstract level, it says that I accept that things are done to me by others which I accept only by those with whom I Downloaded from est. sagepub. com at Sage Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012 Eder A Theory of Collective Identity have a special social relation, a sense of some community.This common factor obliges people to accept the social norms imposed upon them. 5 The argument that collective identities are collective rationalizations of social relations points to the trans-psychological character of collective identities. The link between identity and reality is to be constructed independent of psychological assumptions about human needs or motivations for collective identity. The psychological grounding may even turn out to be a variable that varies with the form of collective identities. This happens when groups turn toward outside references for a collective identity.As Pierre Nora argues: ‘Moins la memoire est vecu de l’interieur, plus elle a besoin de supports exterieurs et de reperes tangibles d’une existence qui ne vit plus qu’a travers eux’ (Nora, 1984: xxv). Collective identities are social constructions which use psychological needs and motives to provide an answer to the questions ‘who do I belong to? ’ or ‘who do we belong to? ’ Collective identities make use of such ps ychic references in speci? c social constellations. This happens regularly in social relations bound to concrete social interaction.It also happens in social relations that transgress the realm of social interaction such as constructions of national identity and produce situations of ‘effervescence collective’, as Durkheim described it. The more indirect social relations are, the more important become social carriers such as texts or songs or buildings which store collective identities. To the extent that collective identities are linked primarily to individuals in concrete interaction situations, emotional ties such as the sense of pride and shame become important mechanisms for reproducing collective identities.To the extent that collective identities are linked to objects as their carriers, these objects become carriers of generalized emotions that are built into the object, into images or texts. Such generalized emotions are embodied in what can be called ‘nar ratives’. This argument thus takes seriously the emotional aspect of identity constructions. There is something in the social relations that goes beyond the sense of shared interests and reciprocal solidarity. But this does not imply a return to a psychological notion of a sense of identity or of identi? cation. It rather leads us to think social relations in terms of hared meanings, i. e. narratives that people share ‘emphatically’ with each other. This sense of narrative sharing has to do with the sense of being part of a particular ‘we’. This can be called the ‘narrative bond’ that emerges in some social relations (but not in all of our social relations). Thus, a collective identity is a metaphor for a speci? c type of social relations that are embedded in the last instance in a narrative network that is as dynamic as the stories are that are produced and reproduced in ongoing social communication mediated by these social relations (E der, 2007). Collective identities are analyzed as narrative networks that emerge in evolutionary processes; the path of development of such networks is prescribed by the structure of the narratives at play. The proposed theory argues that in complex societies, strong collective identities will emerge and that the narratives people share to live in this complex world will remain the basic building blocks of identities. The difference from the traditional world is that everybody lives through and with an increasing number of narratives that mediate social relations. ThisDownloaded from est. sagepub. com at Sage Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012 431 432 European Journal of Social Theory 12(4) also increases the contingency of the developmental path prescribed by narrative networks. National identity constructions are the last instance of a collective identity with a clear path prescription, the making of nation-states. National identities do what collective identities do in general: they are stories that combine a series of events in texts, songs and images which some people recognize as being part of their particular we, i. . as a collective identity. In addition, national identity constructions have succeeded in imposing themselves as a hegemonic identity in a territorially bounded political community. This exclusiveness is built into a story which links people de? ned as citizens of a political community. This story is transmitted to and learned by new generations, practised in national rituals and objecti? ed in songs (anthems) and images (? ags). Counter-stories exist in those political communities in which two hegemonic stories compete (such as Belgium or Canada).Yet even in these cases, the two stories are often aligned in one national story, told in different languages. This national solution is increasingly contested. Narratives appear which tell different stories about who we are. The problem is the co-existence of many hegemonic stories. This creates not only a practical problem but also a theoretical problem: How to conceive the narrative network underlying a political community in a situation where we have many narratives ? oating around and referring to it? The case in point is Europe. 7 Making Sense of a ‘European identity’From Identi? cation with Europe to European Identity Constructions Research on collective identity construction in Europe is dominated by some variants of the social identity paradigm. Social identity theory claims that identi? cations have group-speci? c effects in terms of distance and proximity. This paradigm is useful because it allows us to use existing survey data which measure the degree to which people start to be ‘proud’ of their ‘institutions’ (at least to trust them) and ‘identify’ with Europe (conceived in political or cultural terms) (Kohli, 2000).Another way is to emphasize symbols of state power, such as a ? ag, a hymn, a representative bu ilding, or the memory of a successful political act such as the act of uni? cation which can be represented in a ? ag (with 15 stars) which are made the object of ‘knowledge’ or ‘identi? cation’ with Europe. Taking such indicators at face value requires assuming that strong identi? cations and good knowledge imply strong identities. 8 But it is a long way from identi? cations to identities and there is no necessary parallelism between strong identi? cations and strong identities.A collective identity is different from what is measured when we look at the degree of identi? cation with a prede? ned set of symbols. Such research tells us about the feedback effect on the individual level in the process of collective identity construction. It tells us nothing about the Downloaded from est. sagepub. com at Sage Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012 Eder A Theory of Collective Identity mechanisms of identity construction that might provoke such feedback effects. Suc h research does not make theoretical sense of collective identity construction in Europe. 9The substantive result of the research on identi? cation with symbolic representations of European political institutions is that they continuously show a weak sense of belonging with regard to Europe, much less than exists in the nationstate. The political community as a legal space with rights and duties does not provoke identi? cation, which means that they lack meaning beyond national culture. 10 Since the basis of strong identi? cation with political symbols is dependent upon the culture within which they make sense, research has turned to cultural symbols in order to ? d something that is worth identifying with in Europe. This search was guided by the theoretical expectation that what makes national symbols worthy of identi? cation also holds for European symbols. Some people looked for this meaning in some kind of republican idea of Europe. Others were searching for it in some kind of c ultural idea of Europe. Interestingly enough, this debate reproduces the classic debate on the making of a nation over a republican conception of the nation and a cultural conception of the nation (Brubaker, 1992; Giesen, 2001).While searching for a European identity in terms of identi? cation with Europe, the space of communication in the EU expands. Something is happening that does not show up in the surveys. The problem is therefore to ? gure out how this expanding space is ? lled with new symbols that provide a sense of the limitations of that space. This sense of limitation is not necessarily linked to the symbolic representations of the European political institutions or of a particular European culture. 11 This sense is rather emerging in the course of constructing increasingly dense networks of social elations in Europe that need a collective identity as a project of their control. The proposal is to look not at political or cultural symbols but at stories that emerge in the making of a network of social relations among those living in Europe. There are at least three ways of telling such stories in Europe which are not reducible to the national tool-kit for constructing collective identities. There is a story based on a successful process of uni? cation, i. e. the story of the European integration process as a successful economic and political project, which is the basis of a European citizenship narrative.This is the story of the making of a rich, yet socially responsible continent, the story of an economic yet social Europe. There is another story that emerges from the memory of a murderous past of Europe. The space of communication based on shared memory is a potential source of strong feelings. Stories telling a shared past constitute boundaries with high emotional value. There is ? nally a story that relates to Europe as an experiment in hybrid collective identities, not as a ‘melting pot’, but as a ‘diversity pot’, whic h is a story in the making.The three stories, the story of a successful common market as a citizenship narrative, the cultural story of a shared past and the story of a ‘new’ social bond of diversity emerging in Europe might produce present-day feedback effects in the mind of Europeans – but to do so they ? rst have to have emerged as stories. Downloaded from est. sagepub. com at Sage Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012 433 434 European Journal of Social Theory 12(4) What binds Europeans into a network of social relations at the European level does not show up in established research.It only provides some indications of individual resonance to what is asked in the questionnaires which themselves rely on the model of the old European nation-states. Collective identity remains hidden in the black box of aggregated individual responses. Their answers are like remote effects of processes working behind the backs of these individuals. To excavate more systematically t he symbolic forms in which emerging identi? cations with Europe make sense and grow is the task ahead. From Normative Claims to the Analytical Description ofCollective Identities in Europe A second strand of research on a European identity which is based on a normative approach does not fare any better than the socio-psychological approach. The basic argument is that a democratic Europe needs a people conscious of itself as a people. This argument has been formulated as the ‘demos’-problem. A demos is the constituent of a democratic polity (the ‘people’), and as such it needs a collective identity that goes beyond the idea of a people as just a bunch of private interests.Democracy in Europe needs a people with an idea about themselves that links them beyond private egoistic interests. Ideally the bond should be so strong that it accepts redistributive measures by political institutions. This bond could even be conceived as something that motivates people to die for the political community they live in. 12 To die for a symbolic bond is simply a mode of sharing which mobilizes the strongest possible emotions. With such a normative standard in mind, collective identities are classi? ble as varying between the poles of being weak and being strong in terms of emotional attachment to a good thing. We could translate this normative argument into the conceptual framework of the theory proposed above and provide a sociological instead of a normative argument. Arguing that European collective identity is so far a weak identity simply says that the story of the common market does not suf? ce to control the boundaries of a space of communication linking free and equal individuals into a political community.It is argued that ‘Europe’ needs a different story than that of exchanging goods through the medium of money (i. e. the Euro). Euro coins provide a story for delimiting a common symbolic space which involves people in their being r ational individuals seeking their own advantages. It needs more, a story which tells people that they are citizens of a political community. And maybe it even needs a still stronger identity since it must generate a sense of a particular responsibility and recognition of the other European itizens which goes beyond recognizing them as co-citizens. This argument, however, has always troubled normative democratic theory since it produces a further problem that is hard to tackle within classic political theory: that those following universalizable rules for each other need a special sense to connect to some (those who are members of community) and less to others (those who are not members of the political community). This special sense is no longer based on universalistic arguments, but on narrative images. Downloaded from est. agepub. com at Sage Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012 Eder A Theory of Collective Identity The normative debate helped to denounce the idea of a common market as a mode of living together; it gave power to political institutions which started to engage in fostering and making a European identity. What this identity ? nally implies remained rather imprecise: beyond the acceptance of political institutions, this debate produced more dissent than consensus on what a European identity should look like. The debate therefore remains inconclusive.Rather than taking this debate as an explanation of identity construction, it can be taken as a series of events in the process of identity constructions that is going on within and outside these normative debates which are used to construct a particular narrative as a special (even chosen) people. Normative arguments are a part of narratives; they are embedded in narrative clauses that convey meaning to argumentative debates (Eder, in press). Normative debates are therefore an important part of the process of identity construction, part of an ongoing story that is produced in arguing about Europe.The Reference Object of a European Collective Identity Making theoretical sense of collective identities that have emerged and are continuing to crystallize in the course of European integration is a sociological programme directed at and against socio-psychological and normative approaches to European identity. Sociological approaches tell us whether, how and to what extent identity markers emerge in social processes that are situated in time and space. Normative discourses on collective identity are part of collective identities, explicit justi? ations of the boundaries of a network of social relations. Normative conceptions of a European identity are therefore part of the phenomenon that needs an explanation. The same holds for social-psychological approaches. To ? nd another starting point to analyze ongoing processes of identity construction in Europe is to take Europe as an empty signi? er. It could mean anything ranging from the identi? cation with a culture to a geographical uni ty ranging from the Atlantic to the Urals or to a unity that coincides with the legal realm of the European Union or to a unity that is de? ed by membership in the Council of Europe. We could take such ‘ideas’ as proxies for a Europe to be taken as a reference object of collective identity. Thus we could talk about a cultural Europe, a geographical Europe, a Europe of Human Rights, and a political Europe. Thus Europe is decomposed into a series of ‘Europes’ (in the plural) speci? ed by an adjective. Nevertheless, the problem of the construction of the thing to which a European identity refers remains. Collective identities refer to a space of communication, the boundaries of which vary with what is communicated.This is an implication of the theoretical assumption that collective identities are constructed through stories. Stories that link people vary with the communicative network which they constitute. Thus, the reference object of collective identities i s a network of communication with boundaries which are identi? ed and controlled by an identity. Networks of communication generate identities as a project of control of their boundaries (White, 1992). Downloaded from est. sagepub. com at Sage Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012 435 436 European Journal of Social Theory 12(4)The boundaries of Europe could be de? ned – following the national model – by political boundaries. In that case the legally de? ned space of the European Union is the referent for a collective identity. Legal de? nitions are grounded in stories that link people in that space in a particular way, mainly as citizens in that network. This network develops social relations as connections between citizens that can vary from dense to loose relationships. The trend is so far toward increasing density, measured by the increasing number of legal regulations that impinge upon the life of European citizens.This legal de? nition of a network of social relatio ns corresponds to attempts to de? ne a political control project: linking the citizens in a political identity and thus controlling the boundaries of a legal space. This very speci? c condition (legal rules as based on stories that bind) generates political identities as a project of control of the boundaries of the European political community. The story of this project is the European citizenship story which competes necessarily with the national citizenship story.National citizenship is the result of a long process of historical concept formation in which national identity emerged, integrating social and cultural differences under a new concept: citizenship (Somers, 1995). This same concept is now used to make a European identity: inventing the European citizen as the narrative core of a European identity. 13 To indicate the difference, some adjectives have been used to mark the difference of European and national identity such as the idea of cosmopolitan citizenship.Yet there is no way to avoid national citizenship stories from adopting cosmopolitanism as one of their elements. Cosmopolitanism ? ts just as well into the story of national as well as European citizenship. This story, since its beginning, has exclusively been tied to nationally de? ned networks of social actors. Thus there is an inherent dif? culty with constructions of a collective identity based on the citizenship story. This citizenship story is enriched by reference to the Common Market and to a Social Europe.Both are connected like two sides of the one coin and their combination often serves as a possible particularity of Europe that distinguishes it from the rest of the world. This object is integrated into the European citizenship story: the story of a successful process of European integration which transformed foes into friends, which transformed war into wealth and freedom (i. e. , the ‘four freedoms’). It is further supported by de? ning the role of this EUEurope in th e outer world, i. e. to de? ne Europe as an actor with a clear role in the world. 14A second reference object is European culture, mainly de? ned as its traditions. The substance of this European culture is itself contested. Europe is rather a battle? eld of cultural images that confronts the cultural traditions that have shaped Europe. This is the particular ‘cultural heritage’ of Europe. It ? nds it in its ‘values’ which are opposed to the values cherished in other cultures. These Others are, however, shifting objects: the non-European world is projected on some particular Others, sometimes on the ‘East’, sometimes on the ‘Orient’, sometimes on ‘America’.Distinguishing a European culture from such Others is a strategy for the foundation of a story about a European Self, i. e. a collective identity. Downloaded from est. sagepub. com at Sage Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012 Eder A Theory of Collective Identity The d if? culties with such a reference object which is taken as unique, clear and well-bounded lead to a third reference object based on the assumption that a European Self has never existed.Europe has many different cultures that have co-existed for centuries; this refers not only to the different national cultures that come together in Europe; it also refers to the Arab and Jewish and other Eastern cultures that have had and still have a strong impact on what we consider to be part of Europe, which are equally inside and outside of a European culture. And, ? nally, Europe has added the cultures of the Others in the course of migration movements over past decades which again cannot be assimilated without having an impact on Europe’s culture.Thus, reducing the reference object of a European culture to its ‘values’ or ‘cultural heritage’ is a simpli? cation which does not take into account the contradictory cultural orientations and the contestations about their ‘Europeanness’ in present-day Europe. What kind of story can be told about this diversity of a European culture? We can imagine a story about the many cultures and the forms in which they have encountered each other and shaped the course of cultural change in Europe.There are stories in Europe, in Southern Europe, stories about the co-existence of Arab and Norman culture, of Jewish and Christian culture, of Mongols and ‘gypsies’ in Europe. These stories often tell terrible tales which does not mean that the end of the story is hell. Thus it seems to be an open story, which can be continued and which is fostered in a Europe where these different cultures again clash – yet under different conditions from the past. Which collective identity is mobilized depends on the story that is chosen to identify the boundaries of a network of social relations that bind ‘Europeans’, i. . those living in Europe and ? ghting for its cultural orient ation, to each other. The three basic stories, the story of a common market and a Social Europe embedded in the story of a European citizenship, the story of a unique European culture, and the story of a hybrid Europe are incompatible. They will not coincide in terms of constructing a clear boundary; rather, they construct different boundaries. They tell about different ‘Europes’ (in the plural). Thus, European identity emerges as something with varying boundaries, depending upon which story we tell.Whether there is an overall story connecting these stories and transforming them into one ‘European story’ depends upon a series of restrictive conditions. According to the theoretical model presented above, this has to do, ? rst, with the evolution of networks of social relations in Europe, and then with the structural properties of these different stories which determine their narrative connectivity. The question could be answered in the positive to the extent that Europe develops social relations in which the economic, legal and cultural boundaries coincide, as was the case in national societies. 5 Such homogeneity of the economic, cultural and the political dimension is not given in the European context. Europe is characterized by the non-coincidence of these different boundaries. Taking Europe as a unique culture disembedded from its political institutional framework goes beyond the national model yet keeps the assumption of a homogeneous culture. Taking Europe as a hybrid form of social relations gives up even the assumption of clear cultural boundaries of a Europe in search of its identity. Downloaded from est. sagepub. com at Sage Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012 437 438 European Journal of Social Theory 12(4)Looking at European identity as a project of control of a European society, the assumption resulting from the ‘evolutionary’ part of the theory presented above is that in a European society being more than any other society in need of a collective identity, we have to expect emergent patterns of constructing a collective identity in the context of culturally non-congruent multiple networks of social relations. Whether there will be a story of the three stories thus becomes a new issue for research. The ? rst observation is that the multiplicity of networks of social relations evolving in Europe allows more stories to ? w within these networks. Since such systems are composed of loosely coupled partial networks, the narrative mediation of the loose coupling of a diversity of networks of social relations becomes the focal problem of these networks of social relations. Since coupling is – as the theory claims – mediated by narrative meaning, the issue of how stories can link such networks of social relations and generate an identity of these networks is the key problem. Since social relations in such systems are held together by a multiplicity of stories, the solution of one he gemonic story no longer works.Europe is confronted with coordinating at least three hegemonic stories. In the following, these three model stories for constructing a collective identity for Europe are discussed more systematically. The idea is to distinguish three formal network structures of social relations on which projects of de? ning an identity for Europe are built. These will be distinguished as supranational, postnational, and transnational identity constructions of Europe. Three stories can be related to these model identities. They are used to make sense of these constructions and provide the collective resonance that can absorb ? ating identi? cations in Europe. Supranational identity constructions make use of the plot of the ‘Jean Monnet success story’. Postnational identity constructions follow the plot of ‘And they will live in peace together forever’. Transnational identity constructions ? nally work with the plot of a ‘broker Europeâ⠂¬â„¢. 16 These three stories provide narratives with which different models of networks of social relations, i. e. different types of societies, can be produced and reproduced. These elements are organized in a speci? c sequence which gives narrative meaning to these elements.Thus identities can be analyzed as being more than a series of identi? cations with a market, a polity or a culture; they can be analyzed as a speci? c sequential pattern of organizing such identi? cations into a coherent whole which is a story. Models of Collective Identities in Europe The ? rst model story links national stories directly to a supranational story. National stories become part of a network of stories which has a ‘star structure’: national stories are linked to a centre which constitutes the connection between national stories via this centre, without direct links between the units of this narrative network.It is only via the centre that the national identities are integrated into a higher one. This does not require direct links between the Downloaded from est. sagepub. com at Sage Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012 Eder A Theory of Collective Identity national stories. The meaning of national stories is dependent upon their relationship to the centre: the closer to the centre, the more it provides elements of an emerging European story; the further from the centre, the more such elements become irrelevant. Thus there is permanent struggle going on in which the link to the emerging story is contested.This particular network structure can be called a supranational story since it relies on the emergence of a distinct story of something that is decoupled from national stories. This supranational story is the becoming story of Europe which so far has only a brief history (60 years). It can be extended by adding precursors, either in the twenties of the last century, or in the course of the nineteenth century. Sites for constructing such a centre-oriented network are especially Brussels and Strasbourg. The Council of Europe is trying to tell such a supranational story, de? ing the boundaries of Europe in a larger perspective than a more closed EU story does. Rituals of enacting this EU story are European summits, European days, giving meaning to Europe’s ? ag and anthem. A case for such a supranational story is the story of Jean Monnet as the founding father of United Europe, which can have a more ef? ciency-oriented version, a version tending towards some idea of moral and political excellence of European politics, or a version of a common European culture that is defended and kept by European institutions. Also counter-narratives add to this supranational story.The critique of an Empire Europe, mobilizations against Fortress Europe or the general critique of Brussels as a site of arrogance of power contribute to the making of a supranational story of Europe. The second model story is based on a particular mode of linking national s tories. National stories are networked through direct links which do not crystallize around a centre. European identity appears as a network of national networks. This emerging network minimizes the distances between the parts of the network (maximizing its geodetic distances) and follows the pattern of a ‘clique structure’.This clique network structure produces postnational identity as its control project. Postnational identity is the added value of merging national stories into shared stories. The distances between the national stories in Europe vary, yet their interaction forces them to position themselves in relation to other national stories without ending up in isolation from some or all of these other stories. The story that is told about Europe is then a story in which the relations between national stories and their actors are at stake.Winners and losers, heroes and perpetrators of the recent past and of the present are related, change position and try to ? nd a new position in an emerging European script. Germans and Austrians are repositioned as well as Poles or Hungarians; Italians and French have to struggle to position their heroes in this emerging postnational script. Euro-scepticism and Euro-af? rmativism spread across the national heroes. Euroscepticism is no longer connected only to the English and af? rmativism is no longer the domain of the Germans.The emerging story turns into a postnational story where national actors try to relate their proper stories to those of the others by looking for a position in a postnational plot in Europe. Downloaded from est. sagepub. com at Sage Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012 439 440 European Journal of Social Theory 12(4) Sites for staging this star-structured network are WWII rituals and Holocaust rituals where a European story is enacted. European ? lm rituals or European soccer games provide an analogous opportunity to de? ne a social relation between Europeans that makes narrative sense beyond the nation.A case for such a postnational identity is retelling the story of the winners of WWII by including the losers. Another case is the Holocaust, a traumatic story linking victims and perpetrators across nations. It also appears in counternarratives of a Eurosceptic Europe which mobilizes the losers of Europeanization across national boundaries in Europe in favour of the nation as the exclusive site for solidarity. 17 The third model story can be identi? ed which describes Europe as a site in which cultural differences cut across national differences, thus creating a different structure of cleavages among the people in Europe.This third model is based on networks of groups interacting across national borders and creating a unity out of an increasing diversity of national and non-national elements. This network structure differs from the others in the sense that it does not provide direct interactive links between its parts, yet produces an ordered network of social re lations. It is a network integrated by the structural equivalence of the positions of groups of actors. Indigenous and immigrant and migrating people are related to each other as claiming or occupying structurally equivalent positions in an emerging European society.Such a transnational story fosters the narrative of hybridity, the equal participation in a diversity of cultures in Europe. Sites for such transnational relations fostering hybrid collective identities are particular places in Europe where hybridity has been lived for some time. Cases are the commemoration of hybrid cultures in Southern Spain, Southern Italy, Sicily and Turkey or Europe or the commemoration of Europe’s Abrahamic past fostered by the re-entry of the Islamic and the Jewish story into Europe’s Christian story.Stories of hybrid Europe are narrated as model cases for a Europe where distinct religious traditions succeeded in living together in peace and reciprocal enrichment. The Jewish story is seen as an instance of brokerage between Europe and the Other of Europe in a way similar to the Islamic story which can be seen as a bridge between Europe and the Other of Europe. There exist also counter-narratives of a transnational Europe which is ‘tribal Europe’, the idea of a Europe based on primordial ties that precede concrete interaction ties and which claim structural equivalence on the basis of some constructed common origin.Such hybrid constructions reposition Europe and its Other in a way that transgresses the basic assumptions of the ? rst two models. The ? rst two models still assume a core substance de? ning Europe that is realized in social relations of communication and understanding. The third model provides a model story in which cleavages and unbridgeable differences undermine the search for a coherent ‘good story’, for the simple story plot of a good Europe. Yet there is still a story to tell, i. e. the story of the art of living toget her. This art requires competent re? xive actors, engaging in demanding performances which do not presuppose understanding but take understanding as a rare and happy moment in a series of permanent misunderstandings. Downloaded from est. sagepub. com at Sage Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012 Eder A Theory of Collective Identity Transnational identity as a project of control of networks of social relations that engage in permanent crossovers is embedded in a story which makes itself the object of a story: it is re? exive storytelling. It combines many and different stories and mixes them in an unforeseeable way.Europe provides a site for such re? exive storytelling which is increasingly used for hybrid constructions: a European Islam, a European Jewry, a European Christianity, a European secularism and universalism which emerge from the encounter and hybridization of traditions and cultures inside and outside Europe. Europe in this sense is an experimental site for a collective ide ntity that differs in all respects from historical experience. European Identity as a Case of Transnational Identity Construction Europe has more than one story.At the same time, this society has developed a discourse about itself in which it thematizes itself stating that it has so many stories that bind and separate. Thus, European society is an ideal case for studying the link between increasing complexity and the search for narrative bonds. How are these stories combined? Is there a story of the stories, a meta-story to tell in Europe? A meta-story that might gain hegemonic status as the national story did in the modern nation-state. This question cannot be answered in an af? rmative way.The answer has to be decomposed into the sequential ordering of these stories and their points of contact. We have to look at the temporal dimension of the use of this tool-kit in which some boundaries of what constitutes Europe have been left aside, while others have gained in prominence and ol der ones have been reframed. We have to deal with a dynamic process that accompanies the construction of Europe as a political community from its beginning. The creation of a narrative network is a process exhibiting sequential patterns and generating constraints on reproducing the social relations created so far.In this sense, collective identity is a process of creating a space of social relations which never ends. Yet it is possible for the analytical observer to block the future of such processes in a thought experiment and describe in which sense the future to come can be ? xed. The idea of the nation has succeeded in blocking the future of collective identity construction for a long time. The temptation to ? x it forever has ended in a series of national civil wars and ethnic cleansings which undermined this process of telling one story with a ? xed end.The process of creating a collective identity in Europe in the same vein would end up in two analogous bottlenecks: the ? rst is that it would be premature to block the process of organizing social relations in terms of one collective identity because there are many collective identities that are used to structure an unsettled space of social relations; the second is that blocking the future might in principle be counter-productive since it would create high identitarian con? icts over which boundary has to be recognized and which not. Downloaded from est. sagepub. com at Sage Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012 41 442 European Journal of Social Theory 12(4) When we block the making of a European story, then we see something that is more arti? cial than any of those that have managed to provide the narrative network for social relations such as ideas of ‘nation’, ‘empire’, ‘lineage’ or ‘caste’. Terms such as hybrid identity are fashionable and point to the temporary and unstable mix of different stories controlling the boundaries of a space of communicat ion. Europe has a moving boundary which depends on the story we mobilize. To give precedence to the political story is an unwarranted move.Political identities compete with other stories. The emerging competition of political and cultural stories in the debate on the link between politics and religion is an indicator of a moving link. The link between the economic story and the cultural story is equally dynamic as the ? ghts about a neo-liberal economy and social economy show (Boltanski and Chiapello, 1999). A European narrative is a dynamic combination of different stories that will produce a dynamic form of collective identity, i. e. favour a permanent process of constructing and reconstructing a European identity.To reduce it to a neoliberal or a cosmopolitan or a traumatic identity misses the emergent property of their parallel existence. This is still a highly abstract conclusion yet it points to the basically temporal character of identity constructions which vary in terms of their openness toward the future. Collective identities emerging from such processes are increasingly multidimensional and multilayered. Stories by which identities are constructed do not simply co-exist but rather in? uence each other and produce emergent properties through multiple forms of recombination.Evolutionary theory proposes ‘recombination’ as a result of processes of generating new elements (stories) and their selection in the course of building up social relations among human beings. It, however, has nothing to say on how such recombination works. This is an open space that is to be ? lled. Theoretically speaking, we have to expect structural restrictions and opportunities for stories to combine or to separate. Instead of identifying ‘collective identities’ as entities, we should see identities as evolutionary products of processes in which stories are combined and recombined.Europe is an ideal case for such a theoretical perspective: Europe pro duces stories about itself in the permanent confrontation with stories about the Other which again produces effects in the Other who produces his own stories by looking at the ? rst as the Other (the case in point is the reciprocal storytelling that takes place between Europe and Turkey or Europe and Russia). Such reciprocal storytelling produces shifting identities in which permanent identity mutation takes place. These processes can be halted by political identities with the risk of entering into identitarian struggles with cultural identities.They can be halted by cultural identities with the risk of entering into con? ict with political identities. And economic identities can try to block the future while provoking political and cultural identities. What could emerge is a story of con? icting stories, a re? exive meta-story in which we tell each other about the futile attempts to block the future. But this is mere speculation. Downloaded from est. sagepub. com at Sage Publicatio ns (UK) on April 26, 2012 Eder A Theory of Collective Identity ConclusionThe debate on European collective identity so far has not been able to establish a systematic link between the forms of collective identity constructions and the networks of social relations in which this process is embedded. Thus, theorizing European identity has lost its empirical foundation. This loss has been compensated for in two ways: by a thin theoretical strategy which is to reduce the issue of collective identity to the issue of the extent of identi? cation with Europe, or by a thick theoretical strategy which uses nation-building as the model for collective identity construction in Europe.The thin strategy does not tackle collective identity constructions since identi? cations are elements of collective identity construction, but not its organizing core. The thick strategy assumes that Europe will develop in a way analogous to the national story, which is an unwarranted assumption. Variations in publ ic pride or identi? cation with Europe as measured in surveys indicate the resonance of a people to stories that serve for identity construction. A collective identity might produce identi? cations, and thick identities produce a lot of strong identi? cations. But collective identity is not the result of identi? ations, it is rather the object to which identi? cations refer. The explanation of the construction of collective identity must therefore be sought independent of the identi? cations that it produces. The proposal made in this article has been to analyze the construction of collective identities in Europe by looking at the sites where debates on its identity take place. The market has been mainly devalued and even denounced as a site for a collective identity, in spite of the fact that the success story of the Common Market would have offered a good institutional starting point. 8 The central debate on a European identity focuses on a politically de? ned collective identity, such as the discourse on constitutional patriotism in Europe or on a secular legal culture in Europe such as the one represented in the Council of Europe. However, the cultural symbols mobilized by this Council are universal values that not only the people in Europe share. This reduces boundary controlling effects and undermines the construction of a strong collective identity. Another variant is the claim that an ethical self-understanding is binding those living in the EU together (Kantner, 2006). 9 These arguments are not explanations of processes of identity constructions, but elements in stories providing projects of control of the boundaries of ‘Europe’. Thus, we have several sites in which stories circulate that compete for hegemony in the process of collective identity construction in Europe. Its social basis is a society that constitutes itself in overlapping circles. These networks no longer coincide as they do in the national situation. Thus, the social embe dding of identity constructions poses a new theoretical problem: the idea of a society that consists of partially overlapping networks of people.Each of these networks has its own stories that compete to represent each of these networks. This produces a dynamic of identity construction which needs analytical description and theoretical explanation. Analytically we have to understand the complex interplay of many stories circulating in partially overlapping networks. And we have to identify Downloaded from est. sagepub. com at Sage Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012 443 444 European Journal of Social Theory 12(4) when and where stories can be linked with other stories, by identifying the structural restrictions and opportunities for the connectivity of stories.Thus, we can take seriously the idea of Europe as a multilayered society of partially overlapping networks in which a plurality of stories is circulating and a new story of stories can be created and narrated. For the time bei ng, we have to reckon with a plurality of projects of collective identities in Europe which vary in their combination in time. This plurality might turn out to be an advantage: instead of imposing a hegemonic ‘grand narrative’, Europe can live with a diversity of stories that need only one property: to offer nodes as docking stations for other stories.Thus storytelling in Europe will be an open process, capable of taking up new stories without assimilating them. The only criterion that counts is: to be able to continue to tell a story. Identity is a contested concept – this was the observation at the beginning. The end of the theoretical story is the observation that Europe is a space with contested stories and that it is through contestation that stories that bind can be told. In this space the links between stories will multiply and connect many other stories that so far nobody considered to be part of Europe.The emergence of a new society in Europe and the tem porary blocking of its future in terms of constructing a plurality of European collective identities form the phenomenon that we have to understand. This makes the analysis of a ‘European identity’ a demanding theoretical, methodological and empirical task. The conclusions to be drawn from the foregoing discussion are recipes for further research. For the moment I see four such proposals for organizing research on collective identity in the context of Europe and for generalizing from this context to some model of collective identity beyond the nation: †¢ †¢ †¢ Identifying sites and stories of the narrative network that emerges in Europe. Identifying the story structure organizing this narrative network. Describing this narrative network as a project of control of social relations (and its boundaries) in Europe. Explaining the turning points in the evolution of the narrative network by the social relations between people, regions, civil society organizatio ns, economic organizations and ? nally nation-states that emerge in the course of Europeanization. By applying these proposals we do not need psychological assumptions such as a minimum of ‘identi? ations with Europe’ in order to see ‘identity’ in Europe and explain its emergence and evolution. If there is a collective identity, then identi? cation will come – more or less, depending on social structures that develop in the emerging society in Europe. Notes 1 I leave aside the idea of humankind as an identity construction beyond the nation since it leads to the other pole of the identity of individuals. Humankind is the sum of such individuals. Whether the idea of cosmopolitan identity goes beyond this aggregate notion of individual identity has to be seen. Downloaded from est. agepub. com at Sage Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012 Eder A Theory of Collective Identity 2 Forms of identity beyond the individual are another theme which is raised in the context of debates on ‘subjectivity’. 3 The authors cite Tilly (1995), Somers (1994, 1995) and Calhoun (1994). 4 This also implies an argument against psychological theories that see collective identity as something that people need to identify with. I rather take a Durkheimian view seeing collective identity as a social fact imposed upon us and forcing u

A Christmas to Remember Essay

When I was younger, there were two things that I looked forward to each year: Christmas, and the thoughts of getting the most popular toy topped the list; spending time with my grandfather was a close second. When I was six, in December of 1990, I found out that I was going to spend Christmas at my grandparents’ house. It was everything I could possibly hope for. Little did I know at the time, it was going to be a Christmas I would never forget, and that would change me forever. Christmas, for me, meant the pretty presents, wrapped in shiny paper with huge bows on them, which sat under the tree. It meant the Christmas tree, so beautifully decorated. It meant the splendid Christmas meal made of turkey, ham, vegetables and my mom’s apple pie. But most of all, the holidays meant the shiny new presents that I would be receiving I would sit around for weeks, trying to come up with a Christmas list good enough to rival what I knew my friends would be getting as well. That year I had to have a Gameboy, and the Super Mario World game that went along with it. I realize, now, that I was very spoiled, but I didn’t care. The holidays were a time about me, and only me. And this Christmas was going to be the best one of all, spent with my grandpa. A lot of young kids are intimidated by their grandparents, whether it be the typical â€Å"old person smell,† the inability to relate to young people, or just the fact that they are boring. Not me though, I had the coolest grandfather in the world. He used to dress up like in different costumes just because he felt like it. The two of us always went out hunting or fishing or sometimes just to sit out on their pond and talk. Some girls are â€Å"Daddy’s girls,† but I was a â€Å"Granddaddy’s girl.† I had never spent Christmas with my grandparents before and could only imagine just how wonderful it could be there. Early in December, my mom told me that we were going to be spending my entire holiday break in Arkansas with my grandparents. In hindsight, I should have known that something was wrong for both my parents to take a month off of work but I wasn’t thinking about that. I wasn’t thinking about anything but my grandpa! The end of school came and went, and in no time we were in the car driving  from Dallas, Texas to Magnolia, Arkansas. I watched out the window as we left the flat lands of Texas and entered the small hills of Arkansas. There was even snow on the ground! Upon arriving to the house, I could sense something was different. The atmosphere of the house wasn’t quite as joyful and boisterous as usual. My grandfather wasn’t his usual self; he was trying to be the energetic man we all knew, but it just wasn’t the same. Even when my aunts, uncles and cousins got to town, things were still very hushed. My cousins and I all knew something was wrong, we just couldn’t quite figure out what it was. I constantly heard the hushed whispers of my mom with my grandma and my two uncles. Within a couple days everything came to light. In the middle of the night a few weeks before Christmas, the lights were turned on and my grandfather was taken to the hospital. Even in my groggy state, I knew that things were going to change a lot in the next few days. At the hospital I was informed that my grandfather was not expected to live much longer. He had been diagnosed with colon cancer before I was born and had been in remission, but it was back and it was spreading uncontrollably. The next few days were hard on all of us. We were in and out of the hospital. I forgot that it was even Christmas time. I think my whole family did. My grandpa was constantly in surgery to try to remove the infected cancerous parts. All of this taking a toll on his body, he was put into ICU. Christmas was now only a couple days away, and being in ICU meant that there was no hope to spend the holiday with him. Christmas day was the most disheartening experience of it all. On Christmas morning, we didn’t even want to open presents. It didn’t seem right to have something so joyous while he was hanging on for life in a cold stark hospital bed, but we did anyways. I got the Gameboy that I had wanted so badly, only I could have cared less about getting the toy that I had been so excited about only weeks earlier. Rather than cooking at home we went to the hospital and ate in the cafeteria. Reflecting back, I think it was hardest on my grandmother. They had spent nearly 50 Christmases together and for the first time, she was getting a glimpse of what it would be like to spend the rest without him. The next morning, my grandfather passed away. The complications of his cancer, along with his age, had been too much on him and his body just gave out. I am thankful that I got to spend the last Christmas with the man that I loved so much. There isn’t a Christmas that goes by that I don’t think about my grandfather, and all of the experiences I have shared with him. Christmas in Arkansas has become a tradition in our family. That year Christmas stopped being about pretty bows and wrapping paper, and started being about memory. I learned that memory is a way of holding on to the things you love, and the things you wish to never lose. In a world changes way too fast, the best we can do is wish each other Merry Christmas and learn that life does, in fact, move on.

Impact of HESI Specialty Exams Dissertation Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

Impact of HESI Specialty Exams - Dissertation Example These two theories were used as the basis for formulating a model for constructing Critical Thinking Test objects that were used in this study. This same model was used for the previously concluded eight studies that were carried out to study the effectiveness of E2 in predicting the success of NCLEX-RN (Zweighaft, 2013).The E2 and the HESI Specialty Exam produced by the Elsevier, and the Ninth Validity Study Questionnaire, which was a design of the researcher, were used for data collection. The E2 is always administered during the final semester or quarter of the nursing curriculum. Its blueprint is a reflection of what is there in the NCLEX-RN plan. The HESI Specialty Exams always come at the end of the nursing curriculum. The study mainly used the HESI exams with testing units that are greater than 300. The questionnaire, which had 19 multiple-choice with open fields for comments, was used mainly to gather information from the deans and the directors of the respective schools rega rding their policies on E2 and HESI Specialty exams. It also asked questions about the outcomes of the NCLEX-RN (Zweighaft, 2013). This study made use of Non-Experimental design. All user and none user schools were enumerated and a Random Number generator was used. Deans and directors from 97 schools of nursing were invited. Stratification of random samples of the schools was done based on the three levels, Baccalaureate, Associate degree and diploma. A sample of 3790students from 63 randomly selected schools participated in this study and power analysis indicated that this was a good sample.The study found out that the E2 are highly accurate in predicting the success of NCLEX-RN. The students who took part in Specialty Exams also showed higher means in their E2 scores than those who did not take the Specialty Exams. This was determined using the Welch-Satterthwaite’s test (Zweighaft, 2013). Since the data obtained in this ninth study are consistent with those of the previous studies, it shows that E2 scores can be good predictors of the success of the NCLEX-RN.

Nice Wood Developing a Competitive Edge Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Nice Wood Developing a Competitive Edge - Essay Example The nature of the Nice Wood Product business is that in the lumber industry where operations include picking, cutting and curing wood. Their products are composed predominantly of standard types and different grades of lumber that complies with the following specifications: 2x4s and 2x6s used in framing as well as plywood and particle board. Likewise, current technological breakthroughs have been reported to automate several phases in the firm’s operating cycle, including the picking, cutting, and curing phases. The new technological applications provided opportunities for New Wood to facilitate the processes (including cutting wood in a variety of standards; new types of kilns accelerating the curing process and lading technology was noted to significantly enable the processed wood to be placed in containers) and thereby, potentially increase their chances to be more competitive in the international market. C. Core Competencies The core competencies noted for Nice Wood were t heir â€Å"established client base and strong relationships throughout the industry† (Case facts, n.d., p. 1). Further, it was also disclosed that â€Å"the company is a close-knit operation and senior management values the skills and loyalty of its workers† (Case facts, n.d., p. 1). These facts indicate the Nice Wood Products possess a team of highly skills workers who could have potentially manifested loyalty and a low turnover. Further, their consistent delivery of high quality products has gained strong relationships with loyal clients who are to stay with them amidst the financial and economic challenges. D. Description of Product The product, wood processed lumber, is classified as industrial goods, where these are used to create or make other products. Likewise, these products could be further categorized into the raw materials subcategory. As raw materials, these â€Å"are graded according to quality so that there is some assurance of consistency within each g rade. There is, however, little difference between offerings within a grade. Consequently, sales negotiations focus on price, delivery, and credit terms. This negotiation plus the fact that raw materials are ordinarily sold in large quantities make personal selling the principal marketing approach for these goods† (eNotes, 2012, par. 19). E. Key Milestones The key milestones that Nice Wood

Dennett's Darwinian theory of human creativity Essay

Dennett's Darwinian theory of human creativity - Essay Example It is a mere efficiency-enhancer, a composer’s aid to assist him over the barriers of composition that is confronted by any creator. It is a modern extension of the ancient search vehicles. This is because it facilitated itself into an entire composer, combining quite a number of generate-and-test procedures as its competence grew (Dennett). According to Dennett, Deep Blue is used as example of an artificial chess player developed by IBM. Deep Blue beat Kasparov that dominated chess game for a very long period of time. This is because Deep Blue designs better chess games compared to any game designed by Garry Kasparov, the reigning World Chess Champion. Dennett uses these examples to indicate that no matter how Darwinian or anti-Darwinian may view their assertions and experiments to be true, they are not. Dennett also uses these examples to characterize a mutual suspicion between Darwinians and anti-Darwinians that deforms the empirical examination of creativity (Dennett). This was because Darwinians suspected their opponents of longing after a skyhook, an amazing gift of masterminds whose authority lacks putrefaction into mechanical operations, regardless of how complicated and informed by initial procedures of R and D. Anti-Darwinians on the other hand, suspected their opponents of desiring after an account of creative procedures that so reduces the Finder, Author, Creator, that it disappears, at best a mere provisional locus of mindless discrepancy application. When looking at Dennetts Darwinian Theory of human creativity, it is apparent that the above examples are related significantly with this theory. While Darwin’s theory states that â€Å"In order to make a perfect and beautiful machine, it is not requisite to know how to make it.† Dennetts Darwinian Theory of human creativity disputes this theory by stating that it is requisite to know how to make a machine in order to

Domestic and Nominated Subcontractor Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Domestic and Nominated Subcontractor - Essay Example Domestic Subcontractor Domestic subcontractor is one whose selection and appointment is completely taken care by the main contractor. The employer plays no part in the selection or the appointment process except for giving consent to the selection and appointment if it is required under the contractual agreement between the employer and main contractor1. Roles and Responsibilities of Employer The roles and responsibilities of an employer with respect to a domestic subcontractor are very limited. The complete responsibility of a domestic subcontractor lies on the main contractor. The employer will play no role in the selection and appointment of a domestic subcontractor, until and unless it is required by the terms and conditions in the agreement. The employer shall be responsible for the subcontractor only if it is stated with a particular condition in the contract. Nominated Subcontractor As per the FIDIC 1999 red book, the definition of a nominated subcontractor is as follows: â₠¬Å"Nominated Subcontractor† means a subcontractor: a) Who is stated in the contract as being a nominated subcontractor, b) Whom the engineer, under the clause 13 [Variations and adjustments] instructs the contractor to employ as a subcontractor2. Nominated subcontractor is one where the employer approves, selects or nominates a contractor to carry out a specific task or a subcontract. In order to understand the roles and responsibilities of the employer with respect to a nominated subcontractor, it is first necessary to understand the reasons behind using such a system. There are numerous benefits associated with nominating a subcontractor for an employer. One of the main benefits is that the process of nominated subcontractor gives the employer certain control over the selection of suppliers or subcontractors. This control over the choice and the required performance from the subcontractor ensures certain level of quality for the employer. This privilege is without having to be directly involved with the subcontractor. The choice of subcontractor is entirely rested with the employer even though the main contractor needs to approve the subcontractor. Another benefit is that the employer need not get into any contractual agreement with the subcontractor. This is because the nominated subcontractor will enter into a contract with main contractor and not the employee directly. Hence, the employer will not have any contractual arrangements with the nominated subcontracts. Also there are other reasons that might be responsible for the nomination of a subcontractor such as the proven track record of nominated subcontractor, low pricing or high quality or even certain combination of the two, long term relationship between the employer and subcontractor, etc. The employer can also have a say in the terms and conditions of the subcontractor such as pricing and scope of work. One of the specific situations, where nominated subcontractors are used is when there is a need for a subcontractor to start working prior to the appointment of a main contractor. Such a situation would arise when a specialist task takes more time to complete than the actual construction programme. Hence, in such situations it becomes very beneficial to use a nominated subcontractor. Roles and Responsibilities of Employer Following are the roles and res

Buddism Versus Christianity Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Buddism Versus Christianity - Essay Example It is a monotheistic group of practices and beliefs founded on the Old Testament and the teachings of Jesus as embodied in the New Testament, highlighting the role of Jesus as the Savior. In Christianity, it is believed that Christ Jesus came to the world to die for the sins of mankind. This salvation is free to anyone who believes in Jesus and accepting all that He did on the cross. God’s Holiness, forgiveness of sin, propitiatory atonement, and the free gift of salvation that came through faith in Christ Jesus are the fundamental ideas that are involved in Christ’s saving role, are all foreign to Buddhism. In Buddhist religion on the other hand, Karma and Karma doctrines are the cornerstones. Buddhism is a religion that believes in fate. Karma is defined as an important metaphysical perception that is concerned with action and its consequences. This law explains the problem of suffering, the predestination of some religions, the mystery of the fate and the clear inequ ality of all mankind. Karma essentially explains that one’s past genetic inheritance, the previous experiences, plus the current choice and experience explain where and what one is today. According to Christianity, suffering is a reality that is comprehensible and it is because of sin and the fallen nature of man. Christians believe that suffering is not a mystery and most of these suffering are due to the mankind’s own injustices to one another. Christianity argues that instead of blaming the past, present and trusting the future for some mysterious Karma, God has wonderful plans for each and every person and knew us even before we were born. Buddhists do not accept the theory of transmigration of a permanent soul, whether it emanated from a heavenly essence or created by God. Buddhists believe in loving kindness (maitre or metta in pali) and compassion (karuna) to all the living creatures including animals. Buddhists strictly forbids killing an animal or eating meat for any reason and they recommend vegetarian. Buddhism teaches that if a person behaves badly, they can be reborn as animals. They do not believe in the idea of sin or the origin of sin. People are taught that everyone is fundamentally good and if they try more, they might make it to nirvana. Christians on the other hand, believe that sin exist in the world and is in human nature. They believe that the sin nature is due to the man’s rebellion towards God by being disobedient and this has been passed on through generations. Christians believe that the only way is through the salvation of Jesus Christ. Buddhism was founded by Gautama Buddha. Buddhism sees no problem in following more than one path. It is a dharmic religion and is usually practiced alongside other religions. They believe that the first central figure is Buddha. They do not believe in the supreme God. They believe in deities that are enlightened. They are striving to stop the process of rebirth and believe that t he soul is expected to lose all form, conscience and self in order to achieve Nirvana. Its branches are Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana. Geographical distribution and predominance of Buddhists are Began in North eastern India. It is also very popular in Sri Lanka, many parts of East Asia and South East Asia. Christianity is an Abrahamic religion and views all non-Abrahamic religions as paganism. Christianity was founded by The Lord Jesus Christ It

How soccer can help children Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

How soccer can help children - Essay Example This paper examines how soccer can change lives of the people. Charles Miller, an Englishman, brought Futebol (soccer in Portuguese), to Brazil in 1885 (Muller, 1998). Soccer is a ‘way of life’ for millions of Brazilians. The Brazilian soccer style reflects its culture and demonstrates its ‘foot ability’. The people here dance samba and use creativity and swing to promote various rhythms. It is very easy to play, has simple rules, does not require any equipment, and can be played on synthetic grass. The soccer ball can be made of socks, oranges or soda lids. People with various attributes can play soccer hence a large number of people can participate. Soccer was considered the only way to achieve economic success so rich people who play soccer become role models for others to follow. Despite the soccer being a part of the local culture, it was not initially used in schools. This paper will show how soccer should be used as a means of liberation, knowledge and development. It will examine how soccer should help children to have a better life, both physically and mentally. It will also show how associations maintained by former soccer players help children in Brazil by giving them a new direction in life. The accurate date of the sprouting of the game soccer is something that nobody can affirm with certainty. An action to kick some object always was present in the history of the humanity, either with a rock, a fruit and sometimes a skull. But the most likely story is this sport originated in China, around 2600 B.C. during the Han Dynasty, where Chinese military used to exercise by trying to kick a leather ball filled with hair on the inside of two poles fixed which were on the ground measuring 12 – 16 inches apart the "TsuChu". Soccer is one of the worlds most popular sports. People spend hours near their TV screens, watching their favorite players score. The profit from soccer is enormous,

Prior Knowledge That Is Required before Using the Toaster Essay

Prior Knowledge That Is Required before Using the Toaster - Essay Example The memo is summed up in one page and also contains the name of the group members. A toaster is an electronic gadget that allows you to cook, bake, and boil your food. It is important to have a toaster in your house but before buying a toaster one should decide on whether to buy a basic toaster or a toaster oven. A toaster oven can do more cooking than the ordinary toaster so if you do a lot of cooking then the toaster oven is ideal for you. If you want to cook for a crowd of people then a toaster oven will most likely suit you more than the normal oven. A toaster oven is not very different from the normal oven that is found in most of the kitchens. However, it should be known that not all cooking can be done using the toaster oven and so some cooking should be done using the normal oven or cooker (David 8). When you buy a toaster you are given a short wire cord to prevent the chances of tripping in the event where someone becomes tangled with the wire. However, longer cords are available but should be used with a lot of care. When one uses a longer cord, it is advisable that one checks the marked electrical rating and make sure that it is twice that of the toaster oven. The appliance always has a polarized plug and so this makes it safe especially for fitting it to a polarized end. If you try to fix it and it does not fit then contact a qualified electrician and never try to force it (David 34). A toaster makes toasting much easier and faster than before. The toaster also has an easy to clean interior that wipes the interior of the toaster clean at once. The toaster is also big enough to let you bake an entire meal once without having to split the number of cooking. Baking: this is the function that can be used the same way that you would use your normal kitchen. When baking using the toaster, remember to prepare what you want to bake then preheat the toaster for five to ten minutes.  Ã‚  

REFLECTION ON TRANSITION ACTIVITIES Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

REFLECTION ON TRANSITION ACTIVITIES - Essay Example The program aims to improve lifestyle of diabetic patients and learn the various perspectives on the management of diabetes more effectively. In this regard, the essay aims to proffer my personal reflection on the specific transition activity focusing on diabetic management. In the process, an examination of the learning modules would provide ample information on areas where evidence contradicts reality. As such, the discourse would reveal how the transition activities have contributed towards the honing of personal and professional skills. An assessment of these skills through the transition activity would enable me to gauge specific areas which need to be improved and enhanced. Finally, the reflection would reveal specific scenarios to support the contentions in the essay. The diabetes management program at Lakeside Medical Center clearly outlined the following learning objectives, to wit: classification of Diabetes Mellitus, Insulin Therapy, Management of Newly Diagnosed, and the Science of Nutrition, among others. I attended four (4) sessions specifically detailed as follows: The first session was learning about â€Å"What is Diabetes (exploring diabetes, lifestyle, etc.). The second session focused on carbohydrates (CARB) awareness including the amount and types of carbohydrates. The third session detailed reading and understanding food labels. Finally, the fourth session discussed possible short term and long term complications of diabetes and understanding medication and health profile. From the modules, I learned that nursing care for diabetes encompasses a combination of glucose monitoring, specialized diet, regular exercise and proper medications. Since diabetes is considered a chronic illness, patients diagnosed with the disease must be made aware that the responsibility and accountability of daily management of one’s illness is the patient himself. The

Case Study - Xerox Essay Example for Free

Case Study Xerox Essay This case describes the visioning process at Xerox Canada. The chairman, CEO and president of Xerox Canada have been meeting with her leadership team since eight oclock in the morning to craft the organizations new vision statement. Three and a half hours into the meeting the team hits a road block. With 30 minutes left in the session, the CEO must decide whether and how to proceed. First let us list what McGarry has done correctly prior to the visioning process meeting: 1. Understanding of the old vision/culture: Here we can say that McGarry has a good insight of the old culture prevailing within the Xerox Canada through her coast to coast traveling in order to meet and learn the concerns of the Xerox Canada employees, during the restructuring period. Her knowledge of the old culture has eased her task of educating the employees about the upcoming new system or culture. (Refer to Mc Garry’s arrival in Canada section) 2. Encourage innovative employees: During the restructuring period McGarry continued to encourage innovative employees and encourage them to impart their ideas to the other members of the group in order to bring out new ideas that would bring changes for the betterment of the Xerox Canada. (Refer to Employees-Inspired-Initiatives section last paragraph). 3. Properly identify the need to call for a visioning process at Xerox? McGarry’s careful evaluation of the situation and her coming to the conclusion that it was necessary to synthesize a vision statement (that would coordinate all of the concepts, initiatives and activities of Xerox Canada) was, I my opinion, a good call. (Refer to The Visioning Process section). 4. Understanding the value of the visioning process and not to impose unilaterally a new vision: McGarry understood the importance of not imposing a new vision. And she went on to gain a common consensus of the group (pre-visioning process meeting activities) before making any changes to the vision of the organization. (Refer to The Visioning Process section). Now let us talk about what, to my point of view McGarry, could have done differently: The half day session McGarry called on June 14, 1994 to craft the organization’s new mission statement, should have been panned over a two day session. In my opinion McGarry definitely under estimated the tasks ahead. As we all know the purpose of identifying the preferred future vision is to gather the strategic planners within the organization (here Mc Garry’s leadership team) around a collective future vision, some of whom (leadership team) will be the core collaborative group and some of whom will be additional stakeholders. The main objective of visioning activity and its process steps is to gather the strategic planning participants (leadership team) around a preferred future vision to help energize them, get their creative juices flowing, get them talking and interacting, and set the tone strategic plan development – a new vision. This was well done during the first three hours. However half a day is insufficient to complete such an activity which is about building a successfully bridge between Xerox’s current state and their preferred future. I strongly believe that this visioning process activity could have been broken into the following sub activities and carried out over the entire day. This activity should have been broken down into the following sequence i) Have participants worked individually or in small group to discuss the Current State of the organization and envisage the Ideal State of the organization. ii) Keeping in mind the first exercise they have completed, have these same groups brainstormed on their preferred future vision. iii) Regroup all teams in order to share the ideas the teams have separately produced during the brainstorming session. The second day should have been broken in the following steps: iv) Discuss with the participants (teams) their insights from what have been shared collectively the previous day. Record any implications for the upcoming vision statement on flip chart and keep these records visible and accessible to the participants as they continue their debriefing session. v) Allow participants, if necessary, to regroup in order to modify/re-align their ideas which resulted from the brainstorming session (previous day). vi) Regroup in order to share any new ideas from the re-alignment session. vii) Select as a team the final vision statement. Here, to my point of view, the key ingredient was time. McGarry should have not expected the visioning process to be completed in such a short time. The old culture is a set of strong beliefs and norms which cannot be altered quickly; McGarry had to be patient in order for the mindset change to take effect within the visioning process.

US Criminal Justice System Analysis

US Criminal Justice System Analysis The Criminal Justice System (CJS) consists of three elements, the Police, Courts and Corrections. It is no secret that the CJS has been heavily criticized over the years about its overall effectiveness, some skeptics have gone as far as to say the criminal justice system is not a system at all based on its current operation and fragmentation, it is merely a process. A process that involves the decision and actions taken by an institution, offender, victim, or society that influence the offenders movement into, through, or out of the justice system (Peak, 2010, p.5) Some observers contend the justice systems are a network. Steven Cox and John Wade describe the justice system as a television of radio network whose stations share many programs but each station presents programs the network doesnt air on other stations (Peak, 2010, p.7) Others argue that the justice system comprises a criminal justice nonsystem, a system that deal with criminal behavior not always functioning in harmony and is neither efficient enough to create a credible fear of punishment or fair enough to command respect for its values (Peak, 2010, p.8) Police Officers are the first line of defense in this complex organization of the CJS. They have a wide range of responsibilities and layers which includes apprehending criminals, maintaining public order, preventing and detecting crimes. They are also trained in counter-terrorism, surveillance, child protection, VIP protection, and investigation techniques into major crimes such as fraud, rape, murder or drug trafficking. Community-oriented policing and problem solving (COPPS) is the dominant strategy of policies whose approach to crime detection and prevention provides police officers and supervisors with new tools for addressing problems in the communities. The S.A.R.A process (Scanning, Analysis, Response, Assessment) is a necessary tool that provides officers with a logical step-by-step framework to identify, analyze, respond to, and evaluate crime, fear of crime and neighborhood disorder. When used effectively, these tools are essential in combating crimes in the community, and ensuring a cohesive relationship between officers and residents. Some of the most important and challenging positions in our society are those of police administrator, manager, or supervisor. Henry Mintzberg described three main roles of the Police Chief or Sheriff: the interpersonal, informational, and the decision-maker. The Interpersonal has three components: the figurehead who attends ceremonial functions, civic events, swearing-in ceremonies, the leadership motivates and coordinates workers while achieving the mission, goals and needs within the department and community, the liaison interacts with other organizations and coordinates work assignments. The Informational engages in tasks relating to monitoring/inspecting, dissemination, and spokesman duties. The Decision-Maker serves as an entrepreneur, a disturbance handler and a negotiator (Peak, 2010 pp. 89-91). The Chief of Police or Sheriff is at the top of the Police organizational chart, his effectiveness or lack thereof will determine the success or failure of their agency(s). Law enforcement officers have responsibilities that outweigh many of our challenges as a civilian. These responsibilities are often plagued with deeper issues both personal and professional that negatively affect the ability of officers to effectively perform their duties. For example, there have been several incidents involving the use of force and abuse of authority by officers. Profanity is part of police culture, used in everyday speech (Peak, 2010, p.118). Unfortunately these verbal and psychological abuse tactics are used by some police officers. Therefore, if it is used as a means to communicate on a daily basis, it is surely used in a situation to gain control of a situation when dealing with civilians. This form of intimidation is a way of demeaning someones character, making them defensive and exacerbating a smilingly innocent interaction into a chaotic confrontation. As in the incident involving the videotaped beating of Rodney King by several police officers after he was pulled over for a moving violation. Officers claim he resisted arrest, the videotape proved otherwise. This incident prompted the U.S. Supreme Court to make a ruling on the use of force at arrest it must be objectively reasonable in view of all the facts and circumstances of each particular case, including the severity of the crime at issue, whether the suspect poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others, and whether he is actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight (Peak, 2010, p.117). Two reports that followed the Rodney King beatingthe 1991 report of the Independent Commission to Study the Los Angeles Police Department and the 1992 Los Angeles County Sheriffs Report by James G. Kolt and staffquestioned the effectiveness of existing psychological screening to predict propensity for violence (Scrivner, 1994). Agencies require their officers to be objectively reasonable in their use of force and have adopted the definition by the International Association of Chiefs of Police: In determining the necessity for force and appropriate level of force, officers shall evaluate each situation in light of the known circumstances, including, but not limited to, the seriousness of the crime, the level of the threat or resistance presented by the subject, and the danger to the community (Peak, 2010, p.120). The DRRM (Dynamic Resistance Response Model) which combines a use-of-force continuum with the behaviors of suspects was developed to more accurately reflect the intent of the law and the changing expectations of society (Peak, 2010, p.120) Two publicized contagious shooting incidents have plagued officers in the past years. In 1999, Amadou Diallo, a 22 year old West African street vendor was shot 19 times by four undercover New York police officers who mistook him for a serial rapist. In April 2007, three undercover New York Police officers were indicted for the manslaughter and reckless endangerment for killing Sean Bell in a hail of 50 bullets discharged at him and passengers in his vehicle while unarmed. Officers assumed one of the victims had a weapon (Peak, 2010, pp.120-121). The DRRM model was clearly not utilized in these two incidents, assumptions cost the lives of two innocent civilians at the hands of overzealous police officers. Suicide by cop and vehicle pursuits, are incidents that require split second decisions by police officers as it pertains to the public safety of the community but with dangerous and deadly consequences putting innocent bystanders at risk. Biased-based policing or Racial profiling occurs when the police target someone for investigation on the basis of that persons race, national origin, or ethnicity. This practice has become more controversial toward the end of the 20th century as the potential for abuse by law enforcement came to light. Race or color may be a factor to consider during certain police activity but race or color alone is insufficient for making a stop or arrest (Schott, 2001). With the increase in crime and the need for 24 hour round the clock police presence, police officers are dealing with shift work and sleep deprivation. Both issues can have deadly consequences for both the officer and civilians. An officer suffering from sleep deprivation cannot make judgmental decisions when apprehending a suspect; determine the use of force if a suspect resists arrest, vehicle pursuits or firing a weapon. When a person is deprived of sleep, actual changes occur in the brain that cannot be overcome with willpower, caffeine, or nicotine. The decline in vigilance, judgment, and safety in relation to the increase in hours on the job cannot be trivialized. Community perceptions of fatigue-related risk have changed and now are viewed as absolutely unacceptable, as well as preventable. As a consequence, law enforcement professionals face a greater reactive pressure both politically and legally to rethink and implement proactive strategies to reduce fatigue-related inciden ts (Lindsey, 2007). COURTS The courts were established to try the accused, have a jury of their peers determine their fate based on evidence presented by the prosecution and the defense. The judge is the mediator between both parties; he allows or overrules statements, comments and evidence that could prejudice the jurys opinion. Once the evidence and closing statements have been presented on both sides, the judge instructs the jury to deliberate and return with a verdict of guilt or innocence. Most people would agree that the purpose of our courts is to provide a forum for seeking and through the adversarial system of justice obtaining the truth (Peak, 2010, p.187). An Adversarial system is a system of law which relies on the contest between each advocate representing his or her partys positions and involves an impartial person or group of people, usually a jury or judge, trying to determine the truth of the case. There are many layers of the courts that make up its functionality. The U.S. Supreme Court is the highest and one of the oldest courts in the nation formed in 1790. Composed of 9 justices: one chief justice and eight associate justices. They are appointed by the President and serve their terms for life. Each new term of the Supreme Court begins, by statute, on the first Monday in October (Peak, 2010, pp.187-188). There are 94 U.S. district courts, 89 of which are located within the 50 states (Peak, 2010, p.191). There are three methods used to select judges: partisan elections which are concentrated mostly in the southern states, nonpartisan elections are held in the West and upper Midwest, while legislative and executive appointments in the East and merit selection west of the Mississippi (Peak, 2010, p.206). The pros and cons of each selection method are as follows: Partisan elections: Based on the nominees party affiliation. Pro- The candidates success of being nomination is based on the amount of campaign funds and or endorsements by the particular party. Con-The candidate may not be endorsed by his or her party affiliation, resulting in low campaign funds and lack of support. Non-partisan elections- No party affiliation: Pro- Election is fair across the board without any prejudices associated with a party affiliation; candidate can obtain votes from both parties as well as undecided voters. Con- The lack of affiliation may negatively affect the candidates chance of being elected. Legislative elections and executive appointments: Vacancy filled by the Governor. Pro- The selection is not based on voters party affiliations. Con- The appointment is based on the decision of the Governor to fill a vacancy that has occurred Merit selection (Missouri Bar Plan): involves the creation of a nominating commission; composed of lawyers and laypersons. Pro- The committee presents the most qualified lawyers to the Governor, who chooses one person as judge. The Judge stands uncontested before the voters. Cons- The lawyers and laypersons of the committee decision may be compromised by the lack of qualified candidates and or biased opinions of the candidates party affiliation (Peak, 2010, pp.206-207). With many people rotating in and out of the courtrooms, problems will occur. Several issues plaguing the US court systems include, courthouse violence and how to perform a threat assessment, how problem-solving courts are expanding, the dilemma of delay, the concept of how ADR (alternative dispute resolution) is used, media relations and the courts, gender bias, juveniles being treated as adults, shackles in courts, use of cameras in the courtrooms and plea bargaining (Peak, 2010, p. 224). Courthouse violence occurrences are few and far between but one case can spark concern within the community. Non-targeted courthouse violence is described as violence with no pre-existing intent but evolves from a ruling after court proceedings. Targeted courthouse violence is deemed as the opposite, intent to cause harm and often creates plans to circumvent security measures (Peak, 2010, p.226). In 2004 and early 2005, the Maricopa County Superior Court reevaluated its security policies and put in place, through Administrative Order No. 2004-031, a new policy to tighten court security, which was vigorously opposed by some. This article discusses how a court views court security in terms of the interest groups affected and how they may hinder or help court security, the range and depth of issues encompassed by court security, and, finally, the pressing need for the court to educate the public and other interest groups about critical security concerns (Campbell Reinkensmeyer, 2007). Good threat assessments involve three principles: (1) Targeted violence is the end result of an understandable and often discernible process of thinking and acting. (2) One must distinguish between expressing a threat and posing a threat. (3) Violence is the product of an interaction among the potential attacker, his or her current situation, the target, and the setting. Metal detectors are commonplace in courtrooms to prevent any violence but there are times when violence strikes courthouse personnel and/or individuals outside the courts. As in the case of a federal district court judge in Chicago whose family members were the target of violence based on a contempt of court charge (Peak, 2010, p.225). The backlog of cases within the court system has been an ongoing issue in the past years; it has had a negative effect on the accused violating their Sixth Amendment right of a speedy trial. In certain select federal districts (but only in those districts), the Department of Justice (DOJ) operates fast-track sentencing programs through which it grants deeply below-Guidelines sentences to illegal reentry defendants in exchange for quick guilty pleas (Siegler, 2009). The best-known legislation addressing the problem is the Speedy Trial Act of 1974, amended in 1979. It provides firm time limits: 30 days from the time of arrest to indictment and 70 days from indictment to trial (Peak, 2010, p.230). Although this legislation has a proven track record, it is most effective in less violent cases such as drug trafficking, and petty crimes. Problem-solving courts are proving that they can absorb a sufficient share of the court systems overall caseload to justify their existence. Early evaluations suggest that problem-solving courts can be as expeditious as the traditional courts hearing comparable types of cases (Casey Rottman, 2005). They have been successful in eliminating the backlog of court cases and providing alternatives to jail time such as community service, drug rehabilitation, and mental health assistance. CORRECTIONS Prison or correctional facility is a place of confinement for people who have committed serious crimes. Prison organizational structures have changed considerably to respond to external needs. They were administered by state boards of charities, boards composed if citizens, board of inspectors, state prison commissions, or individual prison keepers. (Peak, 2010, p.256) A Warden is the official in charge of the prison. Correctional officers (COs) preside over the inmates. COs are categorized into 5 types: (1) Rule enforcers, (2) Hard-liners, (3) People workers, (4) Synthetic officers, and (5) Loners. Generally the rule enforcers were most likely to hold bachelor or masters degrees. (Peak, 2010, p.287) There has been debate as to whether COs should be required to have degrees. The state of Florida has incentives for COs with degrees: The Florida Department of Corrections provides $30 extra a month to an officer with an associate degree and $80 extra a month for officers with bachelors degrees or higher (Florida State Board of Community Colleges 1996). The Arizona Department of Corrections provides an educational allowance for Corrections Officer III and above. A Corrections Officer III and above receives a 2.5 percent annual salary increase for an associate degree, a five percent annual salary increase for a bachelors degree, and a 7.5 percent annual salary increase for a masters degree. (Bynum, 2009) Michigan Department of Corrections currently requires new officers to complete at least 15 hours of college as a condition of employment. These courses included two college classes in corrections, two in counseling/human behavior, and one involving legal issues in corrections. The courses were in addition to the basic academy (Bynum, 2009). Correctional Officers endure stressful situations as do police officers in the field. COs deal with heavy workloads, understaffing, overcrowding, inmate contact, lack of participation in decision-making and job danger. (Peak, 2010, p.292) Some COs spend more time at work than at home and often times engage in inappropriate staff-inmate relationships with the integration of female officers working in male prisons. Sexual activity is common in prisons; the ongoing debate is whether condoms should be issued to the inmates. Although sexual activity is not condoned, it still exists. The state of Vermont and several jails including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Washington, DC have condom programs (Peak, 2010, p.308). Sexual risk behaviors such as multiple partners, history of STDs and lack of condom use before incarceration have been reported among males in correctional settings as well as in a national survey of inmates (Bernstein,  Chow,  Ruiz,  Schachter,  Ã‚  et al.  2006). Prisons should adopt the condom program in the efforts to prevent an ongoing epidemic of STDs and HIV within the prison population. The outsourcing or privatization of correctional operations and programs is a great proposal. Creating educational programs for example would benefit inmates who reenter into society an opportunity for job placement and self improvement. Medical, dental and mental health services are beneficial in their overall care. (Peak, 2010, p.317) There are several alternatives to incarceration. Some states have adopted successful programs: The Minneapolis Anti-Violence Initiative (MAVI) is a partnership between the Minneapolis Police Departments Gang Strike Force and the Hennepin County Department of Community Corrections. It targets violent adult and juvenile gang members and provides intensive supervision, joint home visits, and joint neighborhood patrols. It was started in mid-1997. Project One Voice is a partnership between the New Haven (Connecticut) Police Department and adult and juvenile probation and parole agencies begun in 1997 to provide intensive surveillance for high-risk, gang-involved offenders who are on probation, parole, or pretrial release in two New Haven neighborhoods. The Maricopa County Adult Probation Department operates neighborhood-based probation services in the Phoenix area. Each service is a partnership among the probation department, the Phoenix Police Department, and community organizations in the neighborhoods. The three neighborhood probation projects have two goals: (1) to reduce recidivism and (2) to expand the definition of probation to include providing services to the entire community. (Anonymous, 2009) CONCLUSION Merriam-Websters Collegiate Dictionary describes system as a regularly interacting or interdependent group of items forming a unified whole. In my opinion, there is no clear definition of the U.S legal system, each component (police, courts and corrections) play a major role within the system. Their mission and purpose within the organization is clearly defined but they function independently instead of cohesively causing major conflict and discord.