Principles of Marketing Essay

The course content includes a study of the relationship between marketing and society, nature and functions of marketing, marketing management processes, marketing tools, the markets, and the consumers. Course Objectives The main goal of the course is to provide an overview of the basic principles underlying modern marketing theory and practice. It will provide participants with an understanding of the analysis that is necessary for taking marketing decisions, and the wide range of factors (and interactions of those factors) that need to be considered in the design of a marketing program. Students should come away with this course with an understanding of the marketing system and its role within the Malaysian economy and within an individual firm by studying how products and services are planned, priced, promoted, and distributed in order to satisfy consumers’ wants. Learning Outcomes Upon completion of the course, students should be able to: ? define and apply knowledge of the key marketing concepts. ? explain how marketing decisions are influenced by environment, trends and developments. ? discuss the factors influencing consumer behavior. Please dress decently and appropriately (according to university’s dress codes) when attending classes. ? Group projects ; Assignments There will be group projects and assignments. For group project, work together with your group members and at the end of the project your group members will assess your contribution to the project. You are expected to do a group presentation before submission of written copy during the semester. Assignments will be uploaded in UNIEC. In class assignments must be submitted on the specified date otherwise you may be penalized for late submission. If you encounter any problem to submit assignments on the specific date, you are required to inform the lecturer within 2 days of the specified date. For any type written assignments given, the format of the paper should be as follows: ? A cover page with your details – Name, Student ID and Sections ( as registered in CMS) ? Font: Time New Roman , size 12 with 1. 5 spacing ? Include a reference page for every assignment that you submitted. ? Forums Students are required to participate in ALL 3 forums posted by the Course Leader and marks will be assigned based on the quality of the discussion. ? Accessing/ Checking UNIEC Virtual It is utmost important for students to access and check their UNIEC Virtual for any updates and information pertaining to the course regularly throughout the semester. Ignorance is NO EXCUSE. Examination Format Final examination will be a three hours-examination. The exam will evaluate your level of understanding and knowledge acquired in this course. The question formats may consist of multiple choice, true-false, short essays, and case-based problems. Week Topics Covered Overview 1 2 3 4 Topic 1: Marketing: Managing Profitable Customer Relationship Topic 2: The Marketing Environment and the Marketing Information Topic 3: Consumer Markets and Consumer Buyer Behavior Topics/Activities Remarks/ Deadlines Introduction. Class activities: – Getting to know. – Overview of course plan. Marketing: Managing Profitable Customer Relationship ? Definitions of marketing ? Basic concepts of marketing ? Evolutions of marketing ? Relationship marketing ? Marketing strategy and the marketing mix ? Marketing Challenges in the future Read. The Marketing Environment and Marketing Information ? Company’s Microenvironments ? Company’s Macroenvironments ? Marketing research process Read: Forum 1 ? Kotler: Chapter 3 ; 4 ? Real Marketing 4. 2 ‘Tracking consumers on the Web: Smart targeting or a little creepy’. p 151 Class activities: ? Discuss reading materials Topic 2 ? Discuss ‘Prius: Leading a Wave of Hybrids’ case Consumer Markets and Business Market ? Consumer Buying Behavior ? Consumer Decision-making Process ? Factors Affecting Consumer Buying Behavior ? The Organizational Market ? The Organizational Buying Process.

An Assesment of the Role of the Auditor in Fighting Corruption in an Organization Essay

CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Introduction Reliable accounting and financial reporting issued by auditors help organisations in allocating resources from the society in an efficient manner. Although the primary goal of an organisation is profit making and to allocate limited capital resources to the production of goods and services for which society’s demand is great, a highly complex phenomenon which is corruption poses a threat to those goals and services. However, most organisations spend huge sums of money adopting strategies to fight corruption (Whittington et al., 2004). 2.2 History of Auditing The word â€Å"Audit† originated from the Latin word ‘auditus’ which means, ‘a hearing’. In the earlier days, whenever there was suspected corruption in a business organization, the owner of the business would appoint a person to check the accounts and require hearing the explanations given by the person responsible for keeping the accounts and funds. In those days, the audit was done to find out whether the payments and receipts were properly accounted or not accounted for (http://www.eHow.com). During the advent of the Industrial Revolution, from 1750 to 1850, auditing evolved into a field of fraud detection and financial accountability. Until then, Auditing existed primarily as a method to maintain governmental accountancy and record-keeping. The incidence of the revolution resulted in businesses expanding thereby resulting in increased job positions between owners to customers. Resultantly, management was hired to operate businesses in the owners’ absences, and owners found an increasing need to monitor their financial activities both for accuracy and fraud prevention. (http://www.eHow.com). In the early 20th century, the reporting practice of auditors, which involved submitting reports of their duties and findings, was standardized as the â€Å"Independent Auditor’s Report.† The increase in demand for auditors led to the development of the testing process for accuracy and fraud prevention. Auditors developed a way to strategically selecting key cases as representative of the company’s performance. This was an affordable alternative to examining every case in detail, required less time and a good tool for reducing fraud (http://www.eHow.com). 2.3 Overview of Auditing â€Å"Auditing is a systematic examination of the books and records of a business or the organization in order to ascertain or verify and to report upon the facts regarding the financial operation and the result thereof† (Montgomery, 2010,p.6). Again, Loughran (2010, p.5), defines auditing as, the process of investigating information that is prepared by someone else to determine whether the information is fairly stated. On the other hand, Arens et al. (2006, p.7), defines auditing as the accumulation of evidence about information to determine and report on the degree of correspondence between the information and established criteria. â€Å"Auditing is a systematic process of objectively obtaining and evaluating evidence regarding assertions about economic actions and events to ascertain the degree of correspondence between the assertions and established criteria and communicating the results to interested users†(Robertson et al., 2002,p.7).According to Knechel (2001,p.4 2), â€Å"auditing is the process of providing assurance about the reliability of the information contained in the financial statements prepared in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.† 2.4 Types of Audit There are various ways in which the work performed by the auditor has been classified or categorized. Each classification or type of audit is unique in that, each type of audit has its own perspective, objective and business organisation. Irrespective of the type of audit being conducted, the basic processes, guidelines and standards are basically the same. However, Hall (2005) classifies the types of audits that auditors perform into four; 2.4.1 Internal Audit The Institute of Internal Auditors defines internal audit as an independent function established within an organisation to examine and evaluate the audit activities as a service to the organisation. Internal audits are conducted by auditors who work for the organization (Ibid). 2.4.2 Information Technology Audit This is associated with auditors who use technical skills and knowledge to  audit through the computer system, or provide audit services where processes or data, or both, are embedded in technologies. Hence, IT audit involves the auditing of information technology, computer system and the like. IT audit allows auditors to audit through the database and computer (Ibid). 2.4.3 Fraud Audit This is the newest area of auditing, arising out of both rampant employee theft of assets and major financial frauds. In such audits, materiality is irrelevant, and the primary goal is an investigation of anomalies not to give assurance. Hence, fraud audit aims at gathering evidence of fraud and where sufficient evidence exist, fraud audit leads to conviction (Ibid). 2.4.4 Financial Audit Also referred to as external audits, this involves auditors who work independent of the organisation being audited. The audit objective is to give an opinion on the financial statements (Ibid). 2.5 Types of Auditors There are a number of different types of auditors; however, they can be classified under four headings: external auditors, internal auditors, government auditors, and forensic auditors. One important requirement of each type of auditor is independence, in some manner, from the entity being audited (Robertson et al., 2002). 2.5.1 External Auditors External Auditors are often referred to as independent auditors or certified public accountants (CPAs). Such auditors are called â€Å"external† because they are not employed by the entity being audited. However, external auditors audit financial statements for publicly traded and private companies, partnerships, municipalities, individuals, and other type of entities. An external auditor may practice as a sole proprietor or as a member of a CPA firm (Robertson et al., 2002). On the other hand, Boynton et al. (2001), describes external auditors as independent having education, training, and thus by virtue of their experience, external auditors are qualified to perform each of the types of activities being the operational audit activity, the audit compliance, and the financial statements audit activity. Operational audit activity has to do with obtaining and evaluating evidence  about the efficiency and effectiveness of an entity’s operating activities in relation to specified objectives. Furthermore, compliance audit activity has to do with obtaining and evaluating evidence to determine whether certain financial or operating activities of an entity conform to specified rules, or regulations (Boynton et al., 2001).Finally, the financial statements audit activity has to do with obtaining and evaluating evidence about an entity’s financial statements for the purpose of expressing an opinion on whether the financial statements are presented fairly in conformity with established criteria-usually Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (Boynton et al.,2001). 2.5.2 Internal Auditors Internal auditors are auditors employed by individual companies, partnerships, government agencies, individuals, and other entities (Messier et al., 2008). Additionally, internal auditors are also employed extensively by government and nonprofit organisations with the principal goal of investigating and appraising the activities with which the various organisational units of the company are carrying out their assigned functions (Whittington et al., 2004). However, in addition to the provision of consulting services to the organisation, internal auditors pay much attention to the study of internal control. Again, internal auditors are primarily involved with compliance and operational audit activities. With the operational audit activity having to do with the obtaining and evaluating evidence about the efficiency and effectiveness of an entity’s operating activities in relation to specified objectives (Boynton et al., 2001).Furthermore, the compliance audit activity having to d o with the obtaining and evaluating evidence to determine whether certain financial or operating activities of an entity conform to specified conditions, rules, or regulations (Boynton et al., 2001). 2.5.3 Government Auditors Government auditors are employed by federal, state, and local agencies. They generally can be considered a subset of the broader category of internal auditors. At the federal level, two agencies use auditors extensively: the Government Accountability Office and the Internal Revenue Service. The Internal Revenue Agents have their responsibility of enforcing tax laws as defined by congress of parliament and interoperated by the courts. However,  the government auditors engage in a wide range of audit activities, including financial statements audit activity, the compliance audit activity and the operational audit activity (Messier et al., 2008). Financial statements audit activity has to do with the obtaining and evaluating evidence about an entity’s financial statements for the purpose of expressing an opinion on whether they are presented fairly in conformity with established criteria-usually Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. The compliance audit activity having to d o with the obtaining and evaluating evidence to determine whether certain financial or operating activities of an entity conform to specified conditions, rules, or regulations. Finally, the operational audit activity having to do with the obtaining and evaluating evidence about the efficiency and effectiveness of an entity’s operating activities in relation to specified objectives (Boynton et al., 2001). 2.5.4 Forensic Auditors Forensic auditors are employed by corporations, government agencies, public accounting firms, and consulting and investigative services firms. They are trained in detecting, investigating, and deterring fraud and corruption (Boynton et al., 2001). 2.6 Roles of the Auditor The role of both the internal and external auditor in the business and economic life of the society is very important. Modern business enterprises are quite large and mostly in corporate form wherein shareholders do not necessarily engage in the running of the management team to run the business on behalf of the shareholders. As a result, management is required to prepare and submit accounts of their stewardship to reflect the true financial position of the entity’s activities (Yiadom, 2009).  ¬The Role of the Auditor in the Internal Control Internal control is broadly defined as a process, executed by an entity’s board of directors, management, and other personnel, designed to provide reasonable assurance regarding the achievement of objectives in the following internal control categories: 1.Effectiveness and efficiency of operations. 2.Reliability of financial reporting. 3.Compliance with laws and regulations. Management is responsible for internal control. Managers establish policies and processes to help the organization achieve specific objectives in each of these categories. Auditors perform audits to evaluate whether the policies and processes are designed and operating effectively and provide recommendations for improvement (Messier et al., 2008).  ¬The Role of the Auditor in Corporate Governance Corporate governance is a combination of processes and organizational structures implemented by the Board of Directors to inform, direct, manage, and monitor the organization’s resources, strategies and policies towards the achievement of the organizations objectives. The internal auditor is often considered one of the â€Å"four pillars† of corporate governance, the other pillars being the Board of Directors, management, and the external auditor(Business web (online) 2006 http://www.allbusiness.com). A primary focus area of internal auditing as it relates to corporate governance is helping the Audit Committee of the Board of Directors (or equivalent) perform its responsibilities effectively. This may include reporting critical internal control problems, informing the Committee privately on the capabilities of key managers, suggesting questions or topics for the Audit Committee’s meeting agendas, and coordinating with the external auditor(Business web (online) 2006 http://www.allbusiness.com).  ¬Role of the Auditor in Risk Management Auditing professional standards require the function of the auditor to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the organization’s risk management processes. Risk management relates to how an organization sets objectives, then identifies, analyzes, and responds to those risks that could potentially impact its ability to realize its objectives. Management performs risk assessment activities as part of the ordinary course of business in each of these categories. Examples include: strategic planning, marketing planning, capital planning, budgeting, hedging, incentive payout structure, and credit/lending practices. Sarbanes-Oxley regulations also  require extensive risk assessment of financial reporting processes (Business web (online) 2006 http://www.allbusiness.com). Corporate legal counsel often prepares comprehensive assessments of the current and potential litigation a company faces. Internal auditors may evaluate each of these activities, or focus on the processes used by management to report and monitor the risks identified. For example, internal auditors can advise management regarding the reporting of forward-looking operating measures to the Board, to help identify emerging risks (Business web (online) 2006 http://www.allbusiness.com). In larger organizations, major strategic initiatives are implemented to achieve objectives and drive changes. As a member of senior management, the Chief Audit Executive may participate in status updates on these major initiatives. This places the Chief Audit Executive in the position to report on many of the major risks the organization faces to the Audit Committee, or ensure management’s reporting is effective for that purpose (Business web (online) 2006 http://www.allbusiness.com). 2.7 Overview of Corruption Although there is no universal or comprehensive definition as to what constitutes corrupt behaviour, most definitions share a common emphasis upon the abuse of public power or position for personal advantage (Boadi, 2002 vol.4 no.2).The Oxford Unabridged Dictionary defines corruption as â€Å"perversion or destruction of integrity in the discharge of public duties by bribery or favour.† Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines it as â€Å"inducement to wrong by improper or unlawful means (as bribery).† A succinct definition of corruption used by the World Bank is â€Å"the abuse of public office for private gain.†Corruption is a complex multi-faceted social phenomenon with innumerable manifestations. It takes place as an outcome of deficiencies in the existing public administration apparatuses and systems as well as cultural, economic, political and social factors. Differences of opinion still exist as to the meaning of the term corruption. This is primarily because individuals look at corruption from their own vantage points influenced by surrounding environment (Khan, 2004). Coherently, Swain& Dininio (2000), explains corruption as the abuse of public office for private gain. It encompasses unilateral abuses by government officials such as embezzlement and nepotism, as well as abuses linking public and private  actors such as bribery extortion, influence peddling, and fraud. 2.8 Corruptive Issues in an Organisation Corruptive issues arise in an organization where both employers and employees embark on any act classified as corruption (Balkaran, 2000). 2.8.1 Causes of Corruption  Khan (2004), defines corruption as a phenomenon that takes place due to the presence of a number of factors. An understanding of such factors requires, among other things, a kind of general framework for a clearer understanding of the causes of corruption, especially from a broader perspective. However, Goudie & Strange (2000), explained that the genesis of corruption can be looked at from three levels being the international, the national and the individual institutional level. Competitiveness of international markets provides multinational companies of various sizes with an incentive to offer bribes to gain an advantage over competitors. At the national level basic development strategy of any government moulds opportunities and incentives for corruption. At the same level three relationships – between the government and the civil service, between the government and the judiciary and between the government and the civil society – also affect the nature and discussions of corruption. Three areas of government activity – customs administration, business regulation and management of foreign aid – act as sources of corruption at the level of individual institutions (Goudie & Strange, 2000). 2.8.2 Forms of Corruption Corruption takes many forms; acceptance of money and other rewards for awarding contracts, violation of procedures to advance personal interests, kickbacks from developmental programmes or multi-national corporations, pay-offs for legislative support, diversion of public resources for private use, overlooking illegal activities, intervening in the justice process, nepotism, common theft, overpricing, establishing non-existing projects and tax collection and tax assessment frauds (Khan, 2004). 2.9 The Auditor’s Role in Fighting Corruption in an Organisation â€Å"Auditors are the first set of gatekeepers in fighting corruption in an organisation† (Harding,2000,p.12). Auditors ensure that transactions are valid, at arms-length, captured, and properly recorded according to established  standards which contributes to the fight of corruption. Secondly, As professionals with a duty to protect the public interest, auditors are bound by rigorous codes of professional and personal ethics calling for the highest levels of integrity and objectivity. Again, with key strategic positions within an enterprise or organization; whether in an internal position or as an external position, mean that auditors very often have access to highly privileged and confidential information (Harding, 2000). Furthermore, as Balkaran (2000), puts it, the auditor helps in fighting corruption in an organisation through the performance of the respective functions on the bases of national and international standards of practice which have clear guidelines identifying, for instance, indicators of fraud and other irregularities, and reporting these to the highest levels of authorit y. Scaling down to the types of auditors, Balkaran (2000), outlines that, the revised response of internal auditing, places more responsibility on internal auditors in helping to fight corruption. After all, as the eyes and ears of management, they are there year-round, understand the operations of a business, and are bound by even more in-depth standards of performance and conduct. Moreover, the work of the internal auditor is often relied upon by the external (independent) auditors and therefore subject to more stringent requirements.

A comparison between Jean Rhys and Una Marson Essay Example for Free

A comparison between Jean Rhys and Una Marson Essay Poetry (1289) , The Tempest (71) , Prospero (66) , Caliban (36) , Jean Rhys (6) ? Exile in the Works of Jean Rhys and Una Marson. In Jonathan Miller’s 1970 production of Shakespeare’s â€Å"The Tempest† the character of Caliban was cast as black, therefore reigniting the link between the Prospero/Caliban paradigm as the colonizer/colonized. It was not a new idea, indeed Shakespeare himself envisaged the play set on an island in the Antilles and the play would have had great appeal at the time when new territories were being discovered, conquered, plundered and providing seemingly inexhaustible revenue for the colonisers. What is particularly interesting, however, is how powerful the play later becomes for discourse on colonialism. This trope of Caliban is used by George Lamming in â€Å"The Pleasures of Exile† where he likens Prospero in his relationship with Caliban, to the first slave-traders who used physical force and then their culture to subjugate the African and the Carib, overcoming any rebellion with a self righteous determinism. In â€Å"The Pleasures of Exile† Lamming sees Caliban as: â€Å"Man and other than man. Caliban is his convert, colonized by language, and excluded by language. It is precisely this gift of language, this attempt at transformation which has brought about the pleasure and the paradox of Caliban’s exile. Exiled from his gods, exiled from his nature, exiled from his own name! Yet Prospero is afraid of Caliban. He is afraid because he knows that his encounter with Caliban is, largely, his encounter with himself.† 1 The Prospero/Caliban paradigm is a very relevant symbol for the colonizer/colonized situation of the West Indies but it nevertheless remains a paternalistic position. Where does that leave women of the Caribbean? It could be argued that the Caribbean woman has been even further marginalized. That in making Caliban the model of the Caribbean man it is therefore providing him with a voice. Yet nowhere in the Tempest is there a female counterpart, rendering the Caribbean woman invisible as well as silent and ignoring an essential part of their historical culture. Another issue raised here, is that Caribbean literature has for many years been male dominated. Just as the colonizer sought to ignore and marginalize their savage ‘Other’ so the Caribbean male has ignored their female counterpart. Opal Palmer Adisa, in exploring this issue, believes that it is â€Å"out of this patriarchal structure, designed to make her an object, part of the landscape to be used and discarded as seen fit by the colonizer, that the Caribbean woman has emerged.†2 It was out of such a ‘patriarchal structure’ that Jean Rhys and Una Marson emerged. The writing of both women revise and expand theme and personae, subverting a colonial and patriarchal culture. Both women â€Å"may exist in different ethnological and ontological realms but they both exist in worlds which have, at one time or another, attempted to censure, silence or ignore the ideals and interests of women†3 Like many of their male Caribbean counterparts to succeed them, their writing was greatly influenced by voyaging into the colonial metropolis and living in exile. In this essay I will discuss the importance of that journey in seeking to find a voice, an identity, and even a language to challenge established notions of Self, gender and race within the colonial structure. But essential to their experience is their struggle. Naipaul recognised, in Rhys, the themes of â€Å"isolation, an absence of society or community, the sense of things falling apart, depende nce, loss†.4 This could also be said of Marson. Jean Rhys was born Ella Gwendoline Rees Williams on 24th August 1890, in Roseau, Dominica to a Creole mother of Scottish descent and a Welsh father who was a doctor. Rhys left Dominica in 1907, aged sixteen and continued her education in a Cambridge girls’ school and then at the Academy of Dramatic Art which she left after two terms. Rhys experienced feelings of alienation and isolation at both these institutions and these feelings were to stay with her for much of her life. Upon pursuing a career as a chorus girl under a variety of names Rhys embarked on an affair with a man twenty years older than herself and which lasted two years. It is broadly accepted that this early period of her London life formed the structure for Voyage In The Dark, and like all of Rhys’s novels, explores homelessness, dislocation, the marginal and the migrant. The character of Anna, like most of her female protagonists exists in the demimonde of city life, living on the wrong side of respecta bility. What Rhys does effectively in this novel is to centralize the marginalized, those subjects â€Å"who belong nowhere, between cultures, between histories.†5 Una Marson was born in rural Jamaica in 1905. Her father was a well respected Baptist minister and as a result of his standing within the community Marson had the opportunity to be educated on a scholarship at Hampton High School, a boarding school for mainly white, middle class girls. After finding employment as a stenographer, Marson went on to edit the ‘Jamaican Critic’, an established literary publication, and from 1928-1921, her own magazine ‘The Cosmopolitan’. Having established herself as a poet, playwright and women’s activist Marson made the decision to travel to Britain. Her achievements in London were impressive; a social activist within the League of Coloured Peoples which led to her taking a post as secretary to the deposed Emperor Haile Selassie and later she was appointed as a BBC commentator. In reality, however, Marson, like Rhys found the voyage into the Metropolis very difficult. Facing blatant racial discrimination like ‘so many West Indian women migrants of the 1950s, Una found herself blocked at every turn. She complained and cried; she felt lonely and humiliated,’. 6 In spite of many literary and social connections she remained an isolated and marginal figure. Her poetry displays the uncertainty of cultural belonging where her language ties her to colonialism yet also provides her with a powerful tool with which to challenge it. In placing Rhys alongside Marson as pioneering female writers, it is important to explore the notion of nationality, of being Caribbean and to question the grounds upon which such ideas are constructed. Both women were writing at the same time, having been born and educated in the British colonies. Both these writers, whose lives span the twentieth century, are situated at the crossroads of the colonial and post-colonial, the modern and post modern, where the threat of fascism and war result in anti colonial struggles and eventual decolonisation across the world. Their voyages from the colonies into the metropolitan centre generate similar experiences. What is clear with both is that by journeying into the metropolis, as women, they occupy a double marginal position within an already marginalized community. Their journey can be seen as an exploration of displacement where, according to Edward W. Said, the intellectual exile exists ‘in a median state, neither completely at one with the new setting nor fully disencumbered of the old, beset with half involvements and half attachments, nostalgic and sentimental at one level, an adept mimic or a secret outcast on the other.’7 Rhys and Marson, having left the Caribbean are asking us to consider what it means to write from the margins. Within their work, both women challenge notions of women’s place within society and women’s place as a colonized subject in the metropolitan centre. The protagonist, Anna Morgan, in Voyage in the Dark, reflects Rhys’s own multi indeterminate, multi conflicted identity. Anna, like Rhys is a white descendent of British colonists and slave traders who occupy a precarious position of being â€Å"inbetween†. Hated by the Blacks for their part in oppressing the slaves and continuing to cling on to that superior social position, they are also regarded by the ‘mother country’ as the last vestiges of a degenerate part of their own history best forgotten. Moreover, 1930s England, still under the shadow of Victorian moral dicta, continued to judge harshly a young woman without wealth, family, social position and with an odd accent. Throughout the novel Anna is identified with characters who are â€Å"usually objectified and silenced in canonical works: the chorus girl, the mannequin, the demimondaine.†8 Much has been made of her reading of Zola’s Nana and indeed there are many parallels between the two characters. Anna, like Nana becomes a prostitute and in the first version of Voyage in the Dark Anna like Nana dies very young. There is of course the obvious anagram of her name but, as Elaine Savory highlights, some interesting revisions by Rhys. Whereas Zola, in Nana, creates a character who brings about the downfall of upper class men not through power but â€Å"with only the unsophisticated currency of youth and raw female sexuality†9 Rhys, in Anna, creates a character who is herself destroyed by men. â€Å"In Rhys’s version the men who use her youth and beauty are for the most part evidently cowardly or downright disreputable: Anna herself begins as naively trusting, passes through a stage of self destructive hopelessness and passivity and ends, in Rhys’s preferred, unpublished version, by dying from a botched abortion.†10 If we are to see Walter Jeffries as the original European, existing in a world viewed certainly by himself as principally ordered and reasonable then Rhys is, through this character, highlighting the degenerate aspect of using power to commodify and even destroy, thereby subverting the colonizer’s position in relation to the colonized. Through the character of Anna, Rhys explores those oppositions of â€Å"Self† and â€Å"Other†, male and female, black and white. Even though she outwardly resembles the white European, enabling her, unlike Marson, to blend visually within London, her association with the Caribbean sets her apart as between black and white cultures and as an exotic â€Å"Other†. This ambiguity of Anna’s position results in â€Å"slippage†. Anna and her family would have been regarded in the West Indies as the white colonizers. In England and in her relationship with Jeffries she becomes the colonized â€Å"Other†. In being read as the colonized subject Anna is continually having to adapt her world view and sense of identity to the perspective being imposed on her. A good example of this is the chorus girls’s renaming her as the â€Å"Hottentot† aligning her more with the black African and demonstrating the homogenizing of the colonized peoples b y the colonizers. This is similar to Spivak’s belief that ‘so intimate a thing as personal and human identity might be determined by the politics of imperialism.’11 Interestingly, â€Å"Hottentot† is the former name for the Nama, a nomadic tribe of Southern Africa. A somewhat apt comparison which reflects Anna’s own nomadic existence as she moves from town to town as a chorus girl and from one bed sit to another. The term â€Å"Hottentot† developed into a derogatory term during the Victorian era and became synonymous firstly with wide hipped, big bottomed African women with oversized genitals and then with the sexuality of a prostitute. Jeffries is fully aware of the implications of the name â€Å"Hottentot†. In response to hearing Anna’s renaming he says, â€Å"I hope you call them something worse back.†12 Elaine Savory makes a strong connection between Anna’s renaming and her relationship with Jeffries, her eventual seducer. Whilst â€Å"not looking at Anna’s body in an obvious way, eventually the transaction between them is understood fully on his side to be a promise of sexual excitement from a white woman whom he perceives as having an extra thrill presumably from association with racist constructions of black females in his culture.†13 Franz Fanon, in his book Black Skin, White Masks perceives these complex colonial relations as being in a state of flux rather than fixed or static. In his introduction to Fanon’s text, Homi Bhabha highlights this point, stating that the ‘familiar alignment of colonial subjects†¦Black/White, Self/Other†¦is disturbed†¦and the traditional grounds of racial identity are dispersed.’14 So it is in the relationship between Jeffries and Anna. In transposing the colonizer’s stereotypical images of a black woman onto Anna he is disrupting and dispersing those ‘traditional grounds of racial identity’. Moreover, Anna is subconsciously enacting a mediated performance, aware of her impact upon him and the implications of her actions, in an attempt to adhere to his preconceptions of her. The relationship cannot be sustained on these fundamentally unstable preconceptions. Anna, both as a female and racial â€Å"Other† is penetrated by Jeffries and with the exchange of money is commodified. Without independent means Anna becomes that purchasable girl who is at the mercy of and eventually becomes dependent upon the upper middle class Jeffries. The relationship between these two characters reflects Rhys’s own location in the world where the West Indies was at the time still a commodity of the British Empire. In another analysis of the colonial stereotype, Homi Bhabha challenges the ‘limiting and traditional reliance of the stereotype as offering, at any one time, a secure point of identification on the part of the individual,’15 in this case Jeffries and Hester. Bhabha does not argue that the colonizer’s stereotyping of the colonized ‘Other’ is as a result of his security in his own identity or conception of himself but more to do with the colonizer’s own identity and authority which is in fact destabilized by contradictory responses to the Other. In order to maintain a powerful position it is important, according to Bhabha, for the colonizer to identify the colonized with the image he has already fixed in his mind. This image can be ambiguous as the colonized subject can be simultaneously familiar under the penetrable gaze of the all seeing, all powerful colonial gaze and be incomprehensible like the ‘inscrutable Oriental’. The coloni zed can be â€Å"both savage†¦and yet the most obedient and dignified of servants†¦; he is the embodiment of rampant sexuality and yet innocent as a child; he is mystical, primitive, simpleminded and yet the most worldly and accomplished liar , and the manipulator of social forces.†16 In short, for Bhabha, the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized is riddled with contradictions and inconsistencies which, when imposed upon the colonized ‘Other’, cause a crisis of identity. So it is with Anna. Jeffries upon first meeting with the very young Anna can see that she is as ‘innocent as a child’ and is ‘most obedient’ sexually, but by her association with the Caribbean and the Hottentot as I have previously explored, she is subsequently attributed with being ‘the embodiment of rampant sexuality’ resulting in his taking of her virginity, abandoning her to prostitution but also leading to as Veronica Clegg observes ‘a loss of temporal referents’17 Anna’s stepmother, Hester, also attempts to impose an identity upon Anna which not only conflicts with Anna’s own sense of identity but is also based around stereotypical perceptions. . Hester, whose ‘voice represents a repressive English colonial law’18 believes that Anna’s father’s troubles resulted from his having lost ‘touch with everybody in England’19 and that these severing of ties with the Imperial motherland is a signal to her that ‘he was failing’,20 losing his identity, reduced to the level of the black inhabitants of the island. This idea of contamination and racial reduction is explored by Paul B. Rich who explains that there was a belief in the early twentieth century that white people in the tropics risked ‘in the absence of continual cultural contacts with their temperate northern culture, being reduced to the level of those black races with whom they had made their â€Å"unnatural home†Ã¢ €˜.21 In Hester’s eyes this apparent loss of identity is also experienced by Anna. She continually criticizes her speech, her relationship with Francine the black servant, and also insinuates degenerative behaviour on the part of her family, particularly Uncle Bo. Hester’s views reflect the growing disapproval in England at that time, of relationships between white people and the black population in the West Indies. Inter-racial relationships were discouraged for fear of contamination of the white ‘Self’. In voicing her disapproval of Anna’s friendship with Francine along with her continual use of the racist and derogatory term â€Å"nigger†, Hester is alluding to the fact that, in her opinion, Anna, especially through her speech, has indeed been contaminated and reduced racially and that Anna’s association with Francine thwarts her attempts to reconnect her with the colonizer’s ‘cultural contacts’. Hester rails that she finds it ‘impossible to get you [Anna] away from the servants. That awful sing-song voice you had! Exactly like a nigger you talked†¦and still do. Exactly like that dreadful girl Francine. When you were jabbering away together in the pantry I never could tell which of you was speaking.’22 Hester’s constant criticism only serves to undermine Anna’s real identity and dislocate her further from the Caribbean world she once inhabited and the alienating London world she is now experiencing. Her accent sets her apart, drifting between two worlds. Anna’s difficulties in negotiating these two worlds is a result of the ‘return of the diasporic’ to the metropolitan centre where ‘the perplexity of the living is most acutely experienced.’23 This can certainly be seen in her response to the weather which, according to Bhabha, invokes ‘the most changeable and imminent signs of national difference’24 The novel opens with; â€Å"It was as if a curtain had fallen, hiding everything I had ever known. It was almost like being born again. The colours were different, the smells different, the feeling things gave you right down inside yourself was different. Not just the difference between heat and cold; light, darkness; purple, grey. But a difference in the way I was frightened and the way I was happy. I didn’t like London at first. I couldn’t get used to the cold.†25 And later upon arriving in England with Hester she describes it as being ‘divided into squares like pocket-handkerchiefs; a small tidy look it had, everywhere fenced off from everywhere else’ 26and then in London where the ‘dark houses all alike frowning down one after another’27 Throughout the novel Anna continually experiences feelings of being enclosed. Many of the bedsits are restricting and box-like. On one occasion she remarks that ‘this damned room’s getting smaller and smaller†¦And about the rows of houses outside gimcrack, rotten-looking and all exactly alike’.28 The many small rooms between which Anna moves emphasize her disempowerment through enclosed spaces. These spaces, in turn, serve as metaphors for the consequences in voyaging into the metropolitan centre. She is at once shut inside these small monotonous rooms and shut out from that world which has sought to colonize her. It is perhaps ironic that the further she mo ves into the centre of the city, ending up as she does on Bird Street, just off Oxford Street , the more she is shut out and marginalized by that imperialist society. Her memories of the West Indies are in sharp contrast to her impressions of England. The images of home are always warm, vivid and exotic, ‘Thinking of the walls of the Old Estate House, still standing, with moss on them. That was the garden. One ruined room for roses, one for orchids, one for ferns. And the honeysuckle all along the steep flight of steps’.29 When comparing the two worlds she remarks to herself that ‘the colours are red, purple, blue , gold, all shades of green. The colours here are black, grey, dim-green, pale blue, the white of people’s faces – like woodlice’. 30 Her memory of home is experienced sensuously as she recalls the sights and smells: â€Å"Market Street smelt of the wind but the narrow street smelt of niggers and wood smoke and salt fishcakes fried in lard’ and the sound of the black women as they call out, â€Å"salt fishcakes, all sweet an’ charmin’, all sweet an’ charmin’.'†31 Anna attempts to convey this richness to Jeffries. His failure to appreciate the beauty she describes merely underlines the differences between the two. He expresses a preference for cold places remarking that ‘The tropics would be altogether too lush’.32 Jeffries’s reaction to the West Indies in fact reflects the colonizer’s view that the ‘ruined room for roses’ and ‘orchids’ portray a disorder, a garden of Eden complete with its implications of moral decay and as Bhabha states, a ‘tropical chaos that was deemed despotic and ungovernable and therefore worthy of the civilizing mission.’33 Anna’s association with this world sets her up, in Walter’s eyes, as a figure representing a secret depravity promising forbidden desires. Anna, like the West Indies is something to be overpowered, enslaved and colonized, where the colonizer seeks to strip their identity and impose their own beliefs and desires. It is significant, therefore, that following this scene Anna loses her virginity to Jeffries and recalls the memory of the mulatto slave girl, Maillotte Boyd, aged 18, whose record Anna once found on ‘an old slave list at Constance’.34 Like Maillotte Boyd, Anna is now merely a commodity and Jeffries has no intention of ever seeing her as an equal. Her purity, in his eyes isn’t worth preserving as he already considers her the contaminated ‘Other’. By his actions he succeeds in maintaining that patriarchal imperialism which relies on institutional forms of racial and national separateness. Anna, as a twentieth century white Creole, is no freer than the nineteenth century mulatto slave. Just as Maillotte Boyd is, as racially mixed, suspended between two races, so Anna as a white Creole is suspended between two cultures, leaving her dislocated. Anna’s voyage into the imperialist metropolis leads to boundaries and codes of behaviour, language and dress being constantly imposed upon her. She is aware for example of the importance of clothes as a means of controlling her social standing and also her standing as a woman. Through her dress Anna almost becomes that elegant white lady, mimicking London’s female high society. For Jeffries, Anna represents the ‘menace of mimicry’, which , according to Bhabha is ‘a difference which is almost nothing but not quite’ and which turns ‘to menace- a difference that is total but not quite.’35 This mimicry serves to empower Anna as it ultimately destabilises the essentialism of colonialist ideology, resulting in Jeffries imposing upon Anna the identity of the West Indian ‘Other’ This in turn leads to feelings of loss, alienation and dislocation, a rejection of being white and a desire to be black. ‘I always wanted to be black. I was happy because Francine was there†¦.Being black is warm and gay, being white is cold and sad.’36 Anna’s association with Hester meant that she ‘hated being white. Being white and getting like Hester, †¦old and sad and everything.’37 Yet the warmth she expresses in her memories of Francine are always tempered by her realisation that Francine disliked her ‘because I [Anna] was white.’38 Her feelings of being between cultures and feeling dislocated are never fully resolved. Anna’s voyage in the dark, reflects Rhys’s own sense of exile and marginality as a white West Indian woman. Teresa O’Connor remarks that ‘Rhys, herself caught between places, cultures, classes and races, never able to identify clearly with one or the other, gives the same marginality to her heroines, so that they reflect the unique experience of dislocation of the white Creole woman.’39 The language used to express feelings of exile and loneliness, destitution and dislocation is both sparse and economic. It is neither decorative nor contrived, devoid of sentiment or without seeking sympathy. In commenting upon an essay written by Rhys discussing gender politics, Gregg writes that ‘It is important to note her [Rhys’s] belief that writing has a subversive potential. Resistance†¦can be carried out through writing that exposes and opposes the political and social arrangements.’40 Helen Carr, in her exploration of Rhys’s language believes that: â€Å"Rhys in her fictions unpicks and mocks the language by which the powerful keep control, while at the same time shifting, bending, re-inventing ways of using language to open up fresh possibilities of being.†41 Una Marson, another Caribbean to voyage into the metropolis, also experienced loneliness, isolation and a struggle with the complexity of identity. Like Rhys, Marson fought with these feelings throughout her life, resulting in long periods of depression. Her belief in women’s need for pride in their cultural heritage established Marson as ‘the earliest female poet of significance to emerge in West Indian literature’.42 She not only ‘challenged received notions of women’s place in society’ but also raised questions about ‘the relationship of the colonized subject to â€Å"the mother country†Ã¢â‚¬â„¢43 There was a considerable amount of poetry emerging out of the West Indies around this time but most of it was dismissed as being ‘not truly West Indian’,44 the reason for this being partly because many of the writers were English but also because many of the styles used by these writers mimicked colonial forms. Many of Marson’s early poetry reflects this mimicry showing a reliance upon the Romantics of the English poetic tradition, particularly Shelley, Wordsworth and Byron. The poem Spring in England reveals this indebtedness to the Romantics, including as it does a stanza where, having observed the arrival of Spring in London, the poet asks: Daffodils that Wordsworth praised?’ Wait for the Spring,’ the birds replied. I waited for Spring, and lo they came, Clearly there are echoes of Wordsworth’s Daffodils throughout the stanza, reflecting the drive by colonialism through education to eradicate the West Indian selfhood. Yet for Marson this harnessing of English culture not only posed few problems but indeed was, I would argue, a necessary step in her voyage of self discovery. As seen with Rhys, mimicry was a subversive threat to colonial ideology, especially through language. Homi Bhabha’s notion of mimicry seeks to explore those ambivalences of such destabilizing colonial and post-colonial exchanges. â€Å"The menace of mimicry is its double vision which in disclosing the ambivalence of colonial discourse also disrupts its authority. †¦The ambivalence of colonial authority repeatedly turns from mimicry – a difference which is almost nothing but not quite – to menace – a difference that is almost total but not quite. And in that other scene of colonial power, where history turns to farce and presence to a ‘part’ can be seen the twin figures of narcissism and paranoia that repeat furiously, uncontrollably.†46 Bhabha’s essay in recognising the power, the play and the dynamics between the colonizer and the colonized offers an alternative to the pessimistic view held by V.S. Naipaul who believed that West Indian culture was doomed to mimicry, unable to create anything ‘original’. Marson’s mimicry of the Romantics could be seen as a preparation to enter the colonizer’s metropolis, and to attempt to assimilate into the colonizer’s world. In making that voyage to the metropolis, Una Marson succeeds in taking that step from ‘the copy’ to the ‘original’. By remaining in Jamaica Marson risked remaining in an environment too rigidly ingrained by colonial prescriptions. Una Marson’s voyage into ‘the heart of the Empire’, however, resulted in intense disappointment. For the first time, Marson experienced open racism and according to Jarrett-McCauley ‘The truth was that Una dreaded going out because people stared at her, men were curious but their gaze insulted her, even small children with short dimpled legs called her â€Å"Nigger†Ã¢â‚¬ ¦She was a black foreigner seen only as strange and unwanted. This was the ‘Fact of Blackness’ which Fanon was to analyse in Black Skins, White Masks(1952), that inescapable, heightening level of consciousness which comes from â€Å"being dissected by white eyes†.’ 47 Unlike Rhys, Marson was finding it impossible to blend visually within London. Consciousness of her colour made Marson conscious of her marginality. This consciousness led her seriously to question the values of the ‘mother country’. Marson’s work moved from mimicry to anti-patriarchal discourse, seen in her poem Politeness where she responds to the William Blake poem Little Black Boy with: The poem demonstrates Marson’s growing resentment at being alienated by the colonial power. There is an uncertainty in her desire to both belong and to challenge, echoing Rhys in her sense of cultural unbelonging. Those anti-patriarchal feelings are present once more in her poem Nigger where she communicates the anger she feels at being abused and marginalized as the racial ‘Other’. She retorts to this abuse furiously with: My people’s flesh and now you still Add fierce insult to vilest injury.48 In its repetition of the shocking term ‘Nigger’, Marson is confronting the white colonialist’s use of the word to exert power over and oppress the colonized. The violence of its use reflects the violence of their shared history where ‘Of those who drove the Negroes / To their death in days of slavery,’ regard ‘Coloured folk as†¦low and base.’49 In highlighting this history of violence, oppression and slavery, Marson is attempting to invert this oppression and dislodge the notion of white supremacy, whilst attempting to negotiate a position from West Indian to African and in doing so, fashion an identity. By writing the poem in the first person singular and moving from ‘They’ to ‘You’ when addressing the white colonizers, Marson succeeds in centralizing herself and reversing the binary system of ‘Self’ and ‘Other’. Nigger marks Marson’s sharpened perspective on issues such as racism and identity. Her voyage into the metropolitan centre triggers those ’emergent identifications and new social movements†¦[being]†¦played out’.50 It was a time in Marson’s life where she was made to feel inadequate, lonely and humiliated but it also roused her to ‘resist the corrosive force of her oppressive world.’51 Nigger reveals this sense of belonging and not belonging felt by Marson, of being part of the empire but never part of the Motherland, yet it simultaneously challenges the very essentialism in which the colonial Self is rooted. Moreover, the hostility she experiences in many ways acknowledges the success of Marson’s performance as a hybrid. Marson’s frustration and anger was compounded by the fact that in being middle class and educated she possibly saw herself as ‘a notch above the poor, black working class women from the old communities in Cardiff, Liverpool and London’52 Marson explores this question of how middle class West Indians negotiate being educated and yet marginalized and even considered inferior in her play London Calling. The play, based on the experiences of colonial students in London charts the story of a group of expatriates who, upon being invited to the house of an aristocratic English family, dress up in outlandish native costume and speak in ‘broken’ English. The play, a comedy, takes a light hearted look at the stereotypical images held by the British, at the same time countering the myth of black inferiority. There is, in the play, a curious twist as the students from Novoko are presented as black versions of the British in their dress and behaviour, ‘mimic men’ and yet they themselves attempt to ‘mimic’ their own folk culture. They are eventually discovered by one of the family, Larkspur, who then proposes marriage to Rita, one of the Novokans. The play ends with Rita declining Larkspur’s proposal in favour of Alton, another Novokan. This rejection of Larkspur places Rita in a powerful position. Rita is no longer the undesirable ‘Other’, she has resisted the oppressive world of the colonialists and placed herself as the centralised ‘Self’. Rita is Marson’s fantasy where the black woman is recognised as beautiful and an equal. Marson’s activities in the League of Coloured Nations gave her purpose, direction and the opportunity to advance her political education whilst introducing her to the Pan – African movement ‘a sort of boomerang from the horrors of slavery and colonialism, to which Una, like many of her generation, was being steadily drawn.’53 Marson’s work around this time reflects a desire to reclaim and restore that ‘Other’ cultural tradition, a difficult task as the Caribbean was not an homogeneous agency and it was not easy to establish a pre-colonial culture. The ethnic mix was large and hybrid making the notion of ‘Caribbeanness’ less easy to define. The Pan-African movement provided links with an alternative body to European colonialism and offered Marson a platform to renegotiate and redefine her idea of ‘Caribbeaness’ and race, an option not offered to Rhys. Having established a sense of being a black person in a white imperialist centre, she now needed to make sense of being a black woman within this paternalistic centre. The poem Little Brown Girl attempts just this, constructing a dialogue of sorts between a white Londoner, whose gender is unclear, and a little brown girl. The poem begins with a series of questions put to the child: The questioning of the little brown girl’s presence in London suggests a linguistic imperialism. It may be construed as the speaker challenging her right to be in the city, establishing her as the nameless, black ‘Other’. Her feeling of difference is emphasized in the repetition of the word ‘white’ on the final line of the second stanza. The third stanza plays out an interesting reversal in notions of blackness. The speaker asks why she has left the ‘little sunlit land / where we sometimes go / to rest and get brown’54 alluding to the desire of white skinned people to tan which for the white colonialist signifies wealth, for the black ‘Other’ being inferior and uneducated. From here there is a subtle shift of speaker and London is seen through the eyes of the little brown girl. Her perception of the city is distinctly unattractive where ‘There are no laughing faces, / people frown if one really laughs’ and: If the poem began with the strangeness of the brown girl to the white gaze, here it teases out those feelings of alienation felt by the little brown girl at being in such a cold, drab place, so different from her own home. Once more Marson creates a reversal in the stereotype as she seeks to objectify white people observing that ‘the folks are all white -/ White, white, white, / And they all seem the same.’55 In homogenizing the colonizers, the hybridity of the West Indians are then celebrated in the many varied skin tones of ‘black and bronze and brown’ which are themselves homogenized by the label ‘Black’. The vibrancy, colour and friendliness of ‘back home’ where the folks are ‘Parading the city’ wearing ‘Bright attractive bandanas’ contrasts with the previous stanza of the dour images of London. The dialogue is handed back to the white speaker who attempts to establish the origins of the little black girl but succeeds in once more re-establishing the homogeneic white gaze indicated in the speaker’s inability to distinguish between many distinct nations : More than anything the poem conveys that sense of isolation felt by the little brown girl in the city. She never answers the white speaker directly and is positioned in the middle of the poem, again centralizing the colonized. In asking the question ‘Would you like to be white/Little brown girl?’ there is a sense of the colonizer attempting to manipulate and dominate the colonized, to Europeanise, ultimately leading to mimicry. Yet the questioner responds himself with ‘I don’t think you would / For you toss your head / As though you are proud / To be brown’. 56 Marson, here, signals a move away from being a ‘mimic man’ seeking to challenge that whole Eurocentric paternalistic world and centralise the black women, the most marginalized figure in society. The themes central to Little Brown Girl’s themes echo Rhys’s own negative reactions to London seen in the opening page of Voyage in the Dark. Like Rhys, Marson succeeds in capturing that colour and warmth of the West Indies contrasting greatly with the misery of London, experienced by both and which reinforce that racial and national separateness. Those differences prove for both to be irreconcilable, making it impossible for both Rhys and Marson to integrate, leaving both women dislocated from the metropolis. Little Black Girl serves as a useful reminder that many immigrants were women. This encounter between the city and a woman (in Marson’s case, a black woman) echoes Anna’s encounter in Voyage in the Dark albeit as a prostitute. Both walk the streets of the city and as women-as-walkers encounter the metropolis, negotiating its spaces. Denise deCaires Narian suggests that certainly Marson could be considered as a flaneuse.57 Neither Rhys nor Marson, however have the confident panache of the flaneuse and neither fulfil the requirements of flanerie originally set out by Baudelaire. The flaneur, he asserted, saw the ‘crowd as his domain, †¦ His passion and his profession is to merge with the crowd’.58 The flaneur and therefore the flaneuse is engaged in strolling and looking but most importantly merging ‘with the crowd’. For Marson this is impossible as she is a black woman in a white city. Moreover, Baudelaire expands upon the idea of the flaneur as having ‘the ability to be away from home and yet to feel at home anywhere, to be at the centre of the world, and yet to be unseen of the world’.59 Again this is problematic for both Marson and Rhys as their wanderings around the metropolis seek only to reinforce those feelings of ‘Otherness’, isolation and marginality. For Marson these feelings of alienation gained her the reputation of being a ‘true loner who didn’t exactly seek out company’60 leading to a ‘heightened level of bodily consciousness’ which comes from ‘being dissected by white eyes’.61 In her struggle with being marginalized as a black women always at the mercy of the white metropolitan gaze, Marson was always aware of that Europeanised sense of beauty being white. This idea of beauty was so entrenched, even within the black community that they themselves set beauty against the paleness of their own skin. The importance of popularly disseminated images is tackled in Cinema Eyes where a black mother in addressing her daughter attempts to challenge the idea that ‘Europeans still provide the aesthetic reference point’.62 The speaker urges her eighteen year old daughter to avoid the cinema fearing that it might reinforce the idea that white is beautiful causing the girl to lose sight of her own beauty: By growing up with a ‘cinema mind’ the mother has allowed herself to be at the mercy of those tools used by the colonizer to marginalize and indoctrinate, promoting their own superiority. Once again the ‘mimic man’ re-emerges when black women reject their own in seeking an ‘ideal man’. ‘No kinky haired man for me, / No black face, no black children for me.’63 This rather melodramatic narrative within the poem tells of the mother’s ‘fair’ husband shooting her first suitor whom she had initially rejected for being too dark, and then committing suicide. The shooting scene, a re enactment of a gun fight in a western, presents the cinema as a racist and degenerate institution. By the end of the poem, the speaker acknowledges her mistake in rejecting the first lover and finds a sense of self, previously denied by the saturation of cinematic images. In shaking off the colonizer’s indoctrination, which seeks to marginalize her, she addresses the question posed by Franz Fanon which is ‘to what extent authentic love will remain unattainable before one has purged oneself of that feeling of inferiority?’64 Black invisibility in the cinema results in white ideology being forced upon a black body and essentially commodifying it and it is this which Marson seeks to deconstruct. Another poem which tackles the reconstruction of female identity is Black is Fancy, where the speaker compares her reflection in the mirror with a picture ‘Of a beautiful white lady’.65 The mirror serves to reclaim the idea of black as being beautiful and a rediscovery of self: The speaker eventually removes the picture of the white woman suggesting that black worth and beauty can only really exist in the absence of white colonialism. The poem ends in a victory of sorts as she declares that John, her lover has rejected the pale skin in favour of ‘His black ivory girl’.66 Kinky Haired Blues represents Marson’s quest for a more effective and authentic poetic voice in its use of African American speech.. The poem explores the rhythms and musical influences found in Harlem and gathering momentum about this time. Kinky Haired Blues like Cinema Eyes and Black is Fancy criticizes the oppressive beauty regime of white colonialism which seeks to disfigure and marginalize the black woman. The poem opens with the speaker attempting to find a beauty shop: The speaker seeks to Europeanise her black features in an attempt to make herself more attractive. Male indifference experienced in the metropolis forces the speaker to see herself as an aberration, thrusting her onto the margins of a society which is continually projecting the idea that ‘white ‘is ‘right’. The beauty shop contains all the trappings of the colonizer’s idea of beauty, ‘ironed hair’ and ‘bleached skin’. Yet she is caught between being left to ‘die on de shelf’ 67 if she doesn’t change herself, or eradicating her ethnic features and therefore her inner self if she does. By using blues within the poetry she is able to communicate this misery felt within her, that male perceptions of beauty projected by the colonizers dictate that she must distort her own natural beauty in order to fit in and conform. The poem highlights the struggle Marson experiences in trying to preserve her selfhood against such oppressive cultural forces. Marson defiantly attempts to stand against this patriarchal order. She proudly announces that ‘I like me black face / And me kinky hair.’ Inspite of this brave stand Marson eventually succumbs and admits that she is ‘gwine press me hair / And bleach me skin.’ She, like Rhys can only resist internally to the colonialist’s ideals imposed on them. As writers voyaging into the metropolis both Rhys and Marson share in their writing a pervasive sense of isolation where, from the location of London, their particular voices and concerns are, at the time, not recognised. Both writers, from this isolated position on the periphery of the centre. explore issues of womanhood, race and identity,. Marson’s experiences bring about an acute awareness of her difference and ‘Otherness’ as a Black woman. Her work is a defiant voice against this marginalisation and isolation. She was, as Jarrett MaCauley claims ‘the first Black feminist to speak out against racism and sexism in Britain.’68 She was a pioneer in a growing literary culture which was to become the new postcolonial order. Rhys, by contrast, a white West Indian from Dominica was experiencing a declining white minority status against a growing black population, itself an isolating factor both at home and within the metropolis. Kenneth Ramchard suggests that the work of white West Indian writers is characterized by a sense of embattlement: â€Å"Adapted from Fanon we might use the phrase ‘terrified consciousness’ to suggest the White minority’s sensations of shock and disorientation as a smouldering Black population is released into an awareness of power.†69 It is this ‘terrified consciousness’ which contributes to the struggle experienced by Anna in Voyage in the Dark . Located simultaneously both inside and outside West Indian socio cultural history, her journey to the ‘mother country’ seeks only to exacerbate these feelings of ‘in-betweenness’ and to suffer feelings of dislocation and alienation. Both writers, therefore, in their voyage into the metropolis endure different kinds of anxieties in their sense of ‘unbelonging’ to either or both cultural worlds. Both use their writing to speak for the marginal, the hegemonic, the dispossessed, the colonized silenced female voice situated as they were within the cold, oppressive, hierarchical colonial metropolis attempting to impose an oppressive identity upon the exiled women. 1 George Lamming The Pleasures of Exile (London: Alison, 1960) p15 2 Palmer Adisa De Language Reflect Dem Ethos† in ‘The Winds of Change: The Transforming Voices of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars’ ed. By Adele S. Newson and Linda Strong Leek. (New York: Peter Lang 1998 p23) 3 ‘The Winds of Change: The Transforming Voices of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars’ ed By Adele S. Newson and Linda Strong-Leek. (New York: Peter Lang 1998 p6) 4 V.S. Naipaul New York Review of Books 1992. Quoted in Helen Carr Jean Rhys (Plymouth: Northcote House Publishers Ltd., 1996) p15 5 Helen Carr Jean Rhys (Plymouth: Northcote House Publishers Ltd., 1996) p. xiv 6 Delia Jarrett-MaCauley The Life of Una Marson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998) p51 7 Edward W. Said Representations of the Intellectual (London: Vintage 1994) p49 8 Molly Hite The Other Side of the Story: Structures and Strategies of Contemporary Feminist Narrative Quoted in Joy Castro ‘Jean Rhys’ in The Review of Contemporary Fiction Vol. 20, 2000. www.highbeam.com/library/doc.3.asp p6.Accessed 1 December 2005. 11 Gayatri Spivak ‘Three Women’s Text and a Critique of Imperialism’ in Henry Louis Jr. Gates Race, Writing and Difference (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987) p269 12Jean Rhys Voyage in the Dark (London: Penguin Books 1969) 13 Elaine Savoury Jean Rhys (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998) p 95 14 Homi Bhabha ‘Remembering Fanon’, forward to Franz Fanon ‘s Black Skin, White Masks (London: Pluto, 1986) p ix 15 Homi Bhabha ‘The Other Question’ Location of Culture (London: Routledge 1994)p69 17 Veronica Marie Gregg Jean Rhys’s Historical Imagination: Reading and Writing the Creole (North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 1995) p115 18 Sue Thomas The Worlding of Jean Rhys ( Westport: Greenwood Press 1999) p106 19 Jean Rhys Voyage in the Dark p53 21 Paul B. Rich Race and Empire in British Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) p19 24 Homi Bhabha â€Å"DissemInation: Time, Narrative and the margins of the Modern Nation† The Location of Culture p319 33 Homi Bhabha The Location of Culture p319 35 Homi Bhabha Location of Culture p85 39 Teresa O’Connor The Meaning of the West Indian Experience for Jean Rhys (PhD dissertation, New York University, 1985)cited in Caribbean Woman Writers; Essays from the first International Conference. p19 40 Taken from Rhys’s non fictional analysis of Gender Politics. Veronica Gregg, Jean Rhys’s Historical Imagination p47 41 Helen Carr Jean Rhys, (Plymouth: Northcote House Publishers Ltd, 1996) p 77 42 Lloyd W. Brown, West Indian Poetry (London: Heineman, 1978) p 38 43 Denise deCaires Contemporary Caribbean Women’s Poetry: Making style (London: Routledge, 2002) p 2 45 Una Marson The Moth and the Star, (Kingston, Jamaica: Published by the Author, 1937) p24 46 Homi Bhabha The Location of Culture, (London: Routledge, 1994) pp85-92 47 Delia Jarrett-MaCauley The Life of Una Marson pp 49, 50 48 The Routledge Reader in Caribbean Literature ed. Alison Donnell and Sarah Lawson Welsh (London: Routledge, 1996) p140-141 50 Homi Bhabha Location of Culture p 320 51 Jarrett-MaCauley The Life of Una Marson p51 54 Una Marson ‘Little Brown Girl’, The Moth and the Star. (Jamaica: The Gleaner. 1937) p11 57 deCaires Narain puts forward an interesting link between Marson and Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners highlighting external identity in her book Contemporary Caribbean Women’s Poetry p 21 58 Baudelaire The Painter and the Modern Life cited in Keith Tester The Flaneur (New York: Routledge, 1994), p 2 62 Laurence A. Brainer An Introduction to West Indian Poetry (Cambridge: CUP, 1998), p154 63 Una Marson ‘Cinema Eyes’ The Moth and the Star. (Jamaica: The Gleaner.1937) p87 64 Franz Fanon Black Skins, White Masks (London: Pluto, 1986), p4 65 Una Marson ‘Black is Fancy’ The Moth and the Star p75 67 Una Marson ‘Kinky Hair Blues’ The Moth and the Star p91 69 Kenneth Ramchard The West Indian Novel and its Background (London: Faber, 1870), p225 A comparison between Jean Rhys and Una Marson. (2017, Oct 17).

Among hospitalized patients does end of shift bedside reporting Essay

Among hospitalized patients does end of shift bedside reporting improve clinical communication and maintain patient's safety whan compared to traditional shift hand off - Essay Example munication between units and members of health care teams at various junctures of care like admission from primary care, handover from one nurse to another during nursing shift change and shift from one area of care to another area of care, physician treating to physician covering, etc. For nursing profession, change of shift report is an unique feature and involves transfer of information between nurses for the promotion of patient safety and best pratices (Caruso, 2007). According to Riegel (1985; cited in Caruso, 2007), shift report among nurses "is a system of nurse-to-nurse communication between shift changes intended to transfer essential information for safe, holistic care of patients." Deficiencies in hand-over information can lead to severe consequences like breakdowns in continuity of care, inadequate treatment and harm to the patient (DeJohn, 2009). Thus, hand-over communication is very essential for holistic, timely and effective management of any patient in any health ca re setting. There are several methods of providing hand-off information. Of these, traditional shift hand off is the most commonly employed strategy for transfer of information (DeJohn, 2009). However, some researchers argue that bedside reporting, wherein the hand-off information is provided besides the bed of the patient is a better communication strategy in terms of patient safety and continuum of care (Laws and Amato, 2010). According to Bourne (2000, cited in Caruso, 2007), nurse-to-nurse bedside reporting caused "(a) patient empowerment, (b) patient involvement, and (c) patient becoming an additional resource in diagnosis and treatment." Cahill (1998) reported that in his study, patients expressed that they be included in bedside reporting as their clinical condition improved and that they believed that bedside reporting ensured professional and safe transition of care of patient from one nurse to another. Which of the two types of hand-off communication is better can be

The Habitat and Productivity of the Morel Mushroom Research Paper

The Habitat and Productivity of the Morel Mushroom - Research Paper Example However, our limited understanding of morel productivity, diversity, and ecology hinders such synergistic management. We used genetic, morphological, and ecological data to identify and characterize putative species. Some of these putative species fruited only on burned soils the ?rst spring season following a wild ?re. The other two putative species fruited in non-burned forests, in islands of non-burned soils in burned forests, or the second year following ?re on burned soils. Unbiased landscape-level estimates of genus-level morel productivity (not partitioned by putative species) ranged from 80 to 4350 morels per hectare and from 0.550 to 9.080 kg per ha. Productivity which followed the general trend of wild ?re burned forests, insect-damaged forests and healthy forests management. (Catherine G.Parks) Introduction Morels are species of mushroom called Marcella species. They are edible mushrooms which are highly prized and commercially harvested. In 1992 Oregon, Washington, and Id aho approximately harvested 590 metric tonnes of morels providing harvesters with $ 5.2 million of income (SchlosserW.E.Blatner).Morels often fruit prolifically after fire, tree mortality, or ground disturbance. In montane forests east of the Cascade Range in the Pacific Northwest decades of fire suppression have allowed development of dense, fire-prone stands and also periodic insect epidemics also have caused extensive tree mortality which influence morel crops. (J.K). Â   In east central Ohio, the Morel’s normal growing season is early April to mid May. Further south it will be one to two weeks earlier, to the north a little later. A damp habitat is needed for the Morel’s growth. Too much rain or dry weather is not what the mushroom needs they require normal weather pattern. Temperature plays an important role in the growth of the mushrooms as well, Morel mushroom thrives when daytime temperature are in the 60 and 70 degrees Celsius and nighttime temperatures are n ot lower than 40 degrees Celsius. Identification on the morel There are a list of over 190 kinds of the morel species and subspecific taxa in the genus Morchella. General agreement exists that at least two major groups can be clearly distinguished they include; Black Morel (Morchella elata) Black Morels when cut lengthwise it will be hollow from bottom of stem to top of cap. It looks like a rubber mold prompting comments from non-morel lovers, bottom of the cap is attached to the stem (cap and stock all one piece), cap is full of Ridges and Pits, cap is also longer than the stem which has little bumps both inside and outside, stalk are usually lighter in color. Its ribs darken to gray or black with age. (Kirk P.M (Coord)) Yellow Morel (Morchella esculenta) Yellow Morels also when cut lengthwise are hollow from bottom of stem to top of cap which is attached to the stem, cup is also full of ridges and pits and it is longer than the stem. Its stalk is usually lighter in color (sand, ye llow). Other Morel species are; I. Half-free morels (Morchella semilibera).There cap are usually small in comparison to the stem and may only be a quarter the length of the stem. Cap is also not connected from the bottom to the stem II. Caps or Early morel (Verpa bohemica) and Beefsteak (Gyromitra esculenta).they belongs to False morel and they are poisonous. The poison in false morel is MMH (monmthylhydrazine) whose toxicity may

Teaching and learning support (critical reflection from education in Essay

Teaching and learning support (critical reflection from education in action module) - Essay Example One of the key points was about recognizing that teaching is individual and how important is to reflect and maintain reflection as a tool for doing so as proposed by Biggs (1999). Every teacher has some kind of implicit theory of teaching (Marland 1997). From this perspective this module has provided a new sight to start with a reflection as a theory which proposed by Biggs (2003) that reflection is a theory of teaching to reflect with and context of experiences as the object of reflection seen in action learning paradigm. Different students with different abilities and personality types learn more with varying techniques. Students low in authoritarianism, low in tendency to dichotomize, low in the need for structure, and high in the ability to tolerate frustrations have been found to learn more when the Socratic questions and answer method is used while children of different reasoning skills learn more with the discovery and expository methods. The setting under which teaching and learning takes place has different effects on students with different aptitudes, personalities, and motivations. Those who are high in need affiliation prefer to work with others; those low in affiliation need prefer to work alone. A twin of interest is patience. The teacher’s multi-roles compounded by his exposure to various personalities in the classroom, in the school bureaucracy, and in the community demand his patience. As a teacher I should accept the fact that even while preparing for a teaching career that I must be patient not only with my pupils who is the easiest to bear with but also with my colleagues with whom I get can more knowledge regarding the performance and personality of my students. Through reflection I was able to identify the gaps of teaching and learning process in my teaching session for nursing student. Actually I had the opportunity to evaluate my experience in

Movie review 2 Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

2 - Movie Review Example It represents crime scenes. The director presents this perception when Paul’s wife and daughter are killed and raped respectively, his boss sends him specifically to New York to fight crime (Brian and Winner, 2003). The role race plays in the film is evident when Kersey kills more black muggers with the intent of increasing the number of the white muggers. Race is used to indicate that most for the criminals in the setting were of the black origin and this necessitated the discriminative killing (Brian and Winner, 2003). Gender plays a significant role of indicating that the muggers targeted women in their criminal activities. This is evident from the killing of Kersey’s wife, rape of Kersey’s daughter and the killing of a young woman at the parking garage. In essence, gender is used to show that, women fall victims of the muggers’ criminal activities. Gender is represented as an indicator of the safety loophole. This implies that women needed more safety measures than their male counterparts (Brian and Winner, 2003). Class plays a key role of enhancing criminal activities. It is represented by drug barons who engage in a fierce competition in selling hard drugs such as cocaine. They kill each other’s accomplices. For instance, Zacharias gang competes with brothers Jack and Romero’s gang. This is an elite class but grossly involved in criminal activities. This leaves the society a rotten and unsafe place for peaceful dwelling (Brian and Winner, 2003). The film reflects the political situation of the society. There is no political willingness to solve the problems facing the subjects. The coordination between the police and the Kersey indicates a rotten political set up. The film reflects the aspects of racism in fighting crime and this extends to the broader perspective of a racist political milieu existing tin the society (Brian and Winner,

Responsibility to Protect Dissertation Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 6000 words

Responsibility to Protect - Dissertation Example In his studies about democide (a term has come to be used to refer to the murders committed by governments on individual or groups, including genocides, mass killing and crimes against humanity), Rummel (1986, 1997) illustrated that democides are more threatening than international wars, as he estimated the total number of deaths killed by governments in the 20th century 174 million dead, which is more than the battle-deaths during the same period. Moreover, he found that regimes who committed democide are likely to be dictatorial, such as Communists and Nazis. Figure 1: Democide Compared to War Battle-Dead, adobted from Rummel (1994). The next sections of the introduction will initially define three key crimes that violate human rights the most, namely: war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. Secondly, the struggle of dealing with these crimes, and the evolution of the means used for preventing them will be illustrating. The third section will cover the research question, objectives and structure. The ultimate part will focus on exploring the problem by demonstrating the tension of state sovereignty and the debate of the R2P. War Crimes, Genocide and Crimes against Humanity War crimes refer to the excessive violation of human rights within wars, and a serious breach of international humanitarian law (Clarisse, 2011). There have been several codifications in the international level concerning war crimes, beginning with The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, followed by the Conventions of 12 August 1949 and their Additional Protocols I and II of 1977 and article 8 of the 1998 Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court. Murders, attacks on civilian (either prisoners, free or refugees) and their goods, pillage and rape are all considered war crimes (OHCHR, 2010). Moreover, â€Å"Genocide, crimes against humanity, mistreatment of civilians or combatants during war can all fall under the category of war crimes. Genocide is the most severe of these crimes (BBC, 2009). However, the second concept that must be clarified is genocide, which came from a Polish Jew called Raphael Lemkin in 1944 when he combined a Greek word (genos) meaning group, and a Latin word (cide) which means killing (Rossil, 2003). Genocide can be officially defined with regard to Article II of the 1948 United Nation Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide as: â€Å"any of a number of acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.† (UN, 1948) Other crimes against humanity include â€Å"murder, extermination, enslave ment, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal,

Personal statement explaining a positive criminal background check for

Explaining a positive criminal background check for entering a Nursing program - Personal Statement Example The DWI offense happened in June of 1994 as a misdemeanor that ensued from having a few alcoholic beverages at a wedding reception and using poor judgment concerning driving home. I was placed on 2 years’ probation with community service and finished probation early. I have never driven while intoxicated since this incident and have since encouraged people not to do it either. In August of 1994, I completed a court ordered DWI education program (rehabilitative effort) that focused on learning about the negative consequences of driving while drunk. The experience reinforced the lesson never to drive while intoxicated due to the risks that could be posed on oneself and on others. On March 11, 1997, I was arrested for Driving While License Suspended and I was so surprised because this offense was apparently a mistake by the law enforcement agencies. Their records showed that I did not complete the above DWI Education course which was a compulsory requirement for DWI; and they suspended my license without duly informing me about it until I got pulled over that day. I went to court to clear matters up and they dismissed the case due to "Insufficient Evidence" since I showed proof that I was able to complete the DWI education on time and their records showed that they were at fault. This incident should have been duly noted and recorded and therefore should not even be taken into consideration as a misdemeanor and a behavior characteristic. I am hereby attesting that these narrated incidents are factual and having transpired more than 17 years ago, I believe these isolated incidents, despite one’s immaturity and irresponsible behavior at the time they occurred, should not bear significantly on future potentials and plans to be a registered nurse after pursuing the Nursing Program. I assure the Nursing Board that I have learned the lessons

Introduction to Prokaryotes Essay Example for Free

Introduction to Prokaryotes Essay Prokaryotes are single-celled organisms that can survive in extreme environments. Bacteria is the more numerous type of prokaryotes. The group hypothesizes that the samples taken from different environments will all cultivate diverse morphology in fast growing rates in each environment. The aseptic technique was used to cultivate bacteria from different environments. The diversity of morphology and the growing rate of the bacteria was different in each environment. Introduction Prokaryotes are the oldest known life-forms, having existed for the last 3. 5 billion years. Microscopic in size, they are single-celled organisms. Prokaryotic species can survive in extreme habitats that the other life-forms are not capable of inhabiting. Prokaryotes have different shapes, the three most common shapes are spherical (cocci), rod shaped (bacilli), and spiral (spirilla). The prokaryotic cellular structures are unique to their classification. Prokaryotes have an external cell wall and a plasma membrane. The cell wall keeps the shape of the cell, protects the cell, and averts the cells from bursting in a hyposmotic environment. Prokaryotic cells contain a unique material called peptidoglycan (Sadava et al. , 2011). See more: how to write an introduction Also metabolic diversity is among the criteria used in classifying prokaryotes. The term nutrition refers to the means an organism uses to obtain two energy sources: energy and a carbon source. Carbon sources may be either organic, meaning from a living organism, or inorganic, such as carbon dioxide. Prokaryotes split into two lineages known as Archae and Bacteria. The Bacteria are more numerous than the Archae. Bacteria can be endospore-forming bacteria. Bacteria that form endospores are able to survive harsh and severe conditions. Bacteria can also be Enteric Bacteria, they inhabit the intestinal tracts of animals. One species is Escheria coli. Wild-type Escheria strains are able to grow on a variety of carbon and energy sources, such as sugars and amino acids. Some strains of Escheria are pathogenic. The detection of Escheria coli in water is a sign of contamination. Another group of pathogenic enteric bacteria are members of the genus Salmonella. These members are responsible for food poisoning and typhoid. Prokaryotes play very important roles in our environment. They are involved in the cycling of nutrients and elements in a variety of ways. Many prokaryotes are decomposers that metabolize organic compounds in dead organisms. These decompositions processes result in the return of vast quantities of carbon dioxide, inorganic nitrogen, and sulfur to our ecosystems. Other species are important as symbiotic partners with other organisms (Walsh et. al. , 2010). The diversity of the prokaryotic world is huge, and to have a better sense of knowledge of bacteria diversity in different environments an experiment to observe bacteria growth diversity in colder temperature is conducted. The group hypothesizes that the samples taken from different environments will all cultivate diverse morphology in fast growing rates in each environment. The independent variable in the experiment is the temperature control and the dependent variable is the number of colonies. Materials and Methods Seven different environments were chosen to create bacteria from and cultivated on a nutrient-rich media in eight Petri dishes. The bacteria are cultivated on TSA medium, an all-purpose medium used for cultivating all types of bacteria. Sterile water and sterile swabs are used to sample the bacteria from the environment. To make sure that the bacteria was loosened from the environment and stuck on to the swab, the swab was dipped in the sterile water immediately before taking the sample. Carefully opened the Petri dish and swiped the swab across the plate in a â€Å"Z† pattern. Closed the Petri dish and marked it with its corresponding environment. This was repeated seven times each with a different environment. The first environment was the frame of the classroom chalkboard. The second environment was the chair seat of the classroom. The third environment was the bottom of the shoe of one of our group members. The fourth environment was the floor mat inside the doorway of the Biology building. The fifth nvironment was the stair railing handle from the stairwell of the Biology building. The sixth environment was the spacebar on the keyboard of the laboratory computer. The seventh environment was the mouthpiece of the water fountain in the Biology building. To enable us to check whether or not our aseptic technique was effective the eight Petri dish was our control plate that was struck with the sterile water only. These streaks with sterile water represent control treatments. The bacteria was incubated at 37 °C for 2-3 days and then put into the refrigerator for storage. Results Two of the Petri dishes had small bacteria diversity and also a slow growth rate- the chair seat of laboratory environment sample and the water fountain mouthpiece sample (Table 1). Three of the Petri dishes had medium bacteria diversity and regular growth- the frame of the chalkboard, the stair railing handle from the stairwell, and the spacebar of the keyboard (Table 1). The other two Petri dishes had medium bacteria diversity and fast growth rate- the bottom of the shoe and the floor mat inside the doorway of the Biology building (Table 1). The Petri dish with the sterile water streaks had no bacteria growth or diversity indicating our aseptic technique was effective. Discussion The results that were obtained in the experiment did not support the hypothesis that there would be large diversity and fast growing rates in each environment. Every environment sample had its own growth rate and bacteria diversity. The primary reason may be that conditions are rarely optimum. Scientists who study bacteria try to create the optimum environment in the lab: culture medium with the necessary energy source, nutrients, pH, and temperature, in which bacteria grow predictably. Most of the strains used in the classroom either require oxygen for growth or grow better with oxygen. These bacteria will grow better on agar plates, where air readily diffuses into the bacterial colony, or in liquid cultures that are shaken. Since diffusion of oxygen into liquid depends on the surface area, it is important to have a large surface; volume ratio. This means that cultures will grow best in flasks in which the volume of liquid is small relative to the size of the vessel. Also another factor that affects growth is the nutritional medium. Bacteria grow best when optimal amounts of nutrients are provided.

Care and Management of Asthma

Care and Management of Asthma Asthma is a common incurable disease that affects the small tubes carrying air in and out of the lungs in the airways; it is more common at childhood stage but can also occur at a later age (British Lung Foundation, 2011). The major cause of asthma has not been determined but it is believed that some factors as allergies, exercise and common cold contribute to its development. In the United Kingdom, asthma is being handled primarily by a General Practitioner or nurse. Healthcare can be provided in three major means: Primary, Secondary and Tertiary. They are delivered depending on the severity of an individuals condition. General Practitioners (GPs), Pharmacists, Nurses, Dentists and Optometrists are the main classes of healthcare providers that deliver Primary care. It is the basically the first point of contact for most individuals (National Health Service Choices, 2010). Care distinctively provided in local hospitals is usually on referral from primary care health providers, such t ype of care is basically referred to as Secondary Care. The third aspect of care is the tertiary care which is provided by specialist such as neurologist and cardiologist in a majorly specialised hospital centre for long term treatment. EPIDEMIOLOGICAL OVERVIEW OF ASTHMA Major facts that make Asthma a major health issue in the UK are: In 2008, a total number of 1,204 deaths were recorded from asthma in the UK, out of which 29 were children aged 14 years and under. 1 person every 7 hours or 3 people per day die from asthma 146,000 adults and 36,000 children currently are on treatment for asthma in northern Ireland making it a sum total of 182,000 people (1 in 10)In Northern Ireland 182,000 people (1 in 10) are currently receiving treatment for asthma. This consists of 36,000 children and 146,000 adults. In Scotland 368,000 people are currently receiving treatment for asthma. This consists of 72,000 children and 296,000 adults. In Wales 314,000 people are currently receiving treatment for asthma. This consists of 59,000 children and 256,000 adults (Asthma UK, 2011). the number of adults with asthma in the UK has increased by 400,000 since the last audit of UK asthma in 2001 about 2% of adults consult their GP annually with asthma ASTHMA CARE AND MANAGEMENT AND LOCALITY STUDY OF UK Asthma exists in various forms hence; its heterogeneity has been well established by a variety of studies that have proven the disease risk from early environmental factors and susceptibility genes, inflammation and therapeutic agent response further induces accompanying diseases (Lang et al., 2011). Risk factors associated with asthma are family history of atopic disease, for example Allergic rhinitis Allergic conjunctivitis Male sex, for pre-pubertal asthma, and female sex, for persistence of asthma from childhood to adulthood Bronchiolitis in infancy Parental smoking, including passive smoking Premature birth, especially in extreme-preterm infants who required ventilatory support, with consequent chronic lung disease of prematurity (NHS Choices, 2011) In the UK, asthma is more common among children than in adults and also has an increased rate in women than men (NHS choices, 2010). A condition referred to as acute asthma exacerbation could occur and could sometimes be life-threatening but is mostly rare. Asthma patients are treated with care by GPs and nurses trained for asthma management and such treatments are specific to the symptoms portrayed by each patient. This treatment (Primary care) basically involves: A personal asthma procedural plan concurred with your GP or nurse An annual regular check ensuring proper control of the patients treatment and positive response to the treatment Proper seeking of the patients consent ensuring his/her decision is involved in decision making of his/her treatment Comprehensive detailed information about how to control and manage the patients condition; while a Secondary or Reactive care is enforced in emergency cases to regain control of more high-risk symptoms. In treating asthma, reliever inhalers are given to every patient by the GP; these inhalers serve as immediate relievers and ensure restoration of normal breathing. It functions effectively due to its composition of a short-acting beta2-agonist that works by relaxing the muscles surrounding the narrowed airways (British Medical Journal group, 2011). This further ensures the airways are opened wider, making it easier to breathe again. Salbutamol and terbutaline are common types of this inhaler. They have been proven to be generally safe except when their use is abused although they possess very few side effects. If the asthma is well controlled, then their usage will be minimal; if a patient uses the inhaler for up to three times or more weekly then it is advised that the treatment be reviewed Secondary care and management of asthma is implemented when Patients exhibit a combination of  severe asthma, behavioural and psychosocial features, they hence are at risk of developing near-fatal or fatal asthma. (BTS and SIGN, 2009). Asthma care is dependent on the age of the patients in that children have a different mode of care as compared to adults, a critical look at the adult care is elaborated below. Prior considerations are basically that the patient is registered with his GP, will have to book for an appointment with his GP before visiting (except in emergencies as acute exacerbations), confirmation with the patient of their understanding of the role of treatment, adherence to treatment, inhaler technique, and appropriate elimination of trigger factors as: exercise, drugs foods, emotional factors, weather changes, allergens etc (Shiang et al., 2009) In analyzing the delivery of care to asthma patients in the UK, data from Office for National Statistics shall be addressed. Table 1 below signifies that there was a remarkable decrease in hospital admission in 2000 for asthma; it showed a 45 percent decrease among children between ages 5 and 14 years and a 52 percent decrease among children below 5 years (Office for National Statistics, 2004). TABLE 1 The management of asthma is patient-specific and is delivered by either the GP or asthma nurse; a respiratory nurse specialist works closely with the GP and the patient serving as the best form of encouragement to the patient in the procedural management of his/her asthma condition. The respiratory nurse specialist has a critical role in the management of asthma as elaborated that he/she: Explains the need for various inhalers (ensuring the best is offered to the patient) and provides the patient with information on treatment administered Advices on triggers and how to keep off them Assists the patient in quitting smoking (if applicable) Explicates on how to monitor the condition Provides the action plan of treatment and explains it to the patient. Is always available for assistance both at home and on the phone (NHS Choices, 2006) Nurses are generally recruited into the NHS through the website www.nursebank.co.uk , the Association of Respiratory Nurse Specialists offer courses for development and training of nurses and promote clinical excellence in respiratory care delivery (Association of Respiratory Nurse Specialist, 2010). The selection of a professional nurse in a recruitment procedure is dependent on factors as Years of experience, area of expertise and personal record check. CRITIQUE ON ASTHMA CARE Asthma management involves a wide range of services including primary care, routine follow up, hospital inpatient and outpatient care, proper education and advice of patient, emergency calls and prescribed drugs; these services when combined with the intensity and level of use result to a high cost (Department of Health, 2011). In 2001, England recorded a net ingredient cost of  £442million and around  £33million for inhaled therapy Brocklebank et al (2001). In prescribing drugs, the patient is considered as whether or not to use the drug/device appropriately; the most effective and clinically proven cost effective drug is also reasonably considered. However, restrictions imposed on manufacturers make some inhalers commercially unavailable hence the use of more expensive drugs. The British Thoracic Society (BTS) and Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN) have clinical guidelines on the use of inhalers for asthma (BTS and SIGN, 2009) however; there are inconsistencies or absence of recommendations for inhaler devices from these guidelines. Evidence-based guidelines are currently being prepared by the British Thoracic Society (BTS) and the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN). There are criticisms on the effectiveness of the inhaler which largely depends on technique of administration by patient considering experience, physical ability and education on usage (NHS centre for reviews and Dissemination, 2003) CONCLUSION The role of a nurse in quality care delivery cannot be overruled especially in a health condition as asthma which could be critical and possibly fatal. The initial primary care given to asthma patients and subsequent secondary care has been proven to be appropriate in that the health status of patients is being improved. The incorporation of a respiratory nurse specialist has been a major milestone in achieving a better health status for asthma patients in the United Kingdom. REFERENCES Association of Respiratory Nurse Specialist (2010) professional development Available at: http://www.arns.co.uk/pages/professional%20development.html (Accessed: 11 March 2011). Asthma UK (2011) For Journalists: Key facts and statistics Available at: http://www.asthma.org.uk/news_media/media_resources/for_journalists_key.html (Accessed: 5 March 2011). British Lung Foundation (2011) Asthma, Available at: http://www.lunguk.org/you-and-your-lungs/conditions-and-diseases/asthma (Accessed: 9 March 2011). British Medical Journal group (2011) Asthma in adults Available at: http://bestpractice.bmj.com/best-practice/pdf/patient-summaries/531553.pdf (Accessed: 12 March 2011). British National Formulatory (2010) NICE Technology Appraisal. Available at: http://bnf.org/bnf/extra/current/450034.htm (Accessed: 9 March 2011). British Thoracic Society, Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (2009) British Guideline on the Management of Asthma: A national clinical guideline. Available at: http://www.sign.ac.uk/pdf/sign101.pdf (Accessed: 10 March 2011). Brocklebank, D.,  Ram, F.,  Wright, J.,  Barry, P.,  Cates, C.,  Davies, L.,  Douglas, G.,  Muers, M.,  Smith, D.,  White, J. Comparison of the effectiveness of inhaler devices in asthma and chronic obstructive airways disease: a systematic review of the literature Health Technology Assessment 5 (26) pp. 1-149. Pubmed [Online]. Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11701099 (Accessed: 4 March 2011). Department of Health (2011) Prescription Cost Analysis 2001. Available at: http://www.doh.gov.uk/stats.pca2001.pdf (Accessed: 11 March 2011). Lang M., Erzurum S., C., Kavuru M. (2011) Asthma. Available at: http://www.clevelandclinicmeded.com/medicalpubs/diseasemanagement/allergy/bronchial-asthma/ (Accessed: 12 March 2011). Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Products Agency (2007) vol (1) drug safety update. Available at: http://www.mhra.gov.uk/Publications/Safetyguidance/DrugSafetyUpdate/CON2033216 (Accessed: 12 March 2011). NHS Centre for reviews and dissemination (2003) 8 (1) Inhaler devices for the management of asthma and COPD Available at: http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/crd/EHC/ehc81.pdf (Accessed: 10 March 2011). National Health Service Choices (2010) About the NHS. Available at: http://www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/thenhs/about/Pages/nhsstructure.aspx (Accessed: 5 March, 2010). National Health Service Choices (2010) Acute asthma in adults-management in primary care. Available at: http://healthguides.mapofmedicine.com/choices/map/asthma_in_adults2.html (Accessed: 9 March 2011). National Health Service Choices (2006) The role of your Respiratory Nurse Specialist. Available at: http://www.chelwest.nhs.uk/documents/patientLeaflets/Asthma%20-%20The%20role%20of%20your%20Respiratory%20Nurse%20Specialist.pdf (Accessed: 11 March 2011). Office for National Statistics (2004) Asthma and allergies: Decrease in hospital admissions in 90s. Available at: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/nugget.asp?ID=722Pos=1ColRank=1Rank=192 (Accessed: 8 March 2011). Shiang, C., Mauad, T.,  Senhorini, A., De Araà ºjo, B., Ferreira, D., Da Silva, L ., Dolhnikoff, M., Tsokos, M.,  Rabe, K.,  Pabst, R. (2009) Pulmonary periarterial inflammation in fatal asthma Clinical and Experimental Allergy 39 (10) pp. 1499-1507 Wiley [Online]. Available at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2222.2009.03281.x/abstract (Accessed: 11 March 2011). LEARNING OUTCOME 2 LEADERSHIP IN NURSING AND ASSOCIATED PROFESSIONS A Leader is someone who guides or chairs a group of people or an organisation; it is common practice that a leader portrays some leadership skills to enable him/her be productive and effective. Cook (2001) describes a clinical nursing leader as someone who endlessly gets involved in direct patient care hence improving care by being of positive influence to others. All nurses (from those who provide direct care to the managers) need potent leadership skills. Mahoney (2001) emphasises that anyone (e.g. a nurse) who gives assistance to others or is responsible for other people is considered a leader; however, good leadership is reproducible superior performance targeted towards a long term benefit to everyone called for. John, (2011) has defined a manager as an individual with the sole responsibility to plan and direct the work of a group of people, ensuring proper monitoring and directives are followed. Management in nursing involves regarding leadership functions of administration and making appropriate decisions within organisations that employ nurses. SIMILARITIES BETWEEN LEADERS AND MANAGERS Leaders and managers go hand in hand, none of them tend to possess abilities that make them stand on their own, and there is no unique or particular way of managing people. Some basic similarities between managers and leaders are: People development: An effectual manager and leader have skills and abilities that tend towards the development of the people. Partnership working: the work of both a manager and a leader tend to be of a partnership level (Mather, 2009). Motivators: both leaders and managers are motivators of their subordinates DIFFERENCES BETWEEN LEADERS AND MANAGERS Thinking pattern: A major difference between a leader and manger is in their level of reasoning, Managers think incrementally, whilst leaders think radically; managers always work towards doing things rightly while leaders work in the perspective of doing the right thing (Richard, 1990). Loyalty: Subordinates are mostly subordinate to their leader than to their manager; this applies often because the leader takes credit in times of achievement and allocating merit to subordinates (John, 1990). Competencies: A nursing manager allocates resources and sets timetables while a nursing leader is someone who clarifies the big picture created by the manager and simplifies it, making the hospital/nursing homes vision more understandable to the staff and patients (Kristina R, 2009). Leadership is a very vital issue in the nursing practice because nursing requires knowledgeable, consistent and strong leaders, who inspire and boost peoples moral and support professional nursing practice. Nurses need to be both leaders and managers for some very key reasons as: An Advocate for quality care: a head nurse who serves as either a leader has to stand out in ensuring the needs of both the patients and nursing staff are adequately met, sometimes it will require a robust and bold person to stand before the board in defending these needs. An influential personality: the presence of an influential nurse handling an asthmatic patient will go a long way in guiding the patient in making informed choices; the patient becomes free and open to the nurse when she/he exhibits a high level of positive influence on the patient. CRITIQUE OF NURSING PUBLICATIONS IN RELATION TO LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT IN ASTHMATIC AND GENERAL NURSING CARE A report by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) on the support by Asthma UK on RCNs frontline campaign published on 14th January 2011 is carefully analyzed highlighting the publishers aims of writing, lessons to be learnt, consequences of the article and its impact on positive care delivery. It was rightly stated in this article that about three-quarters of asthma emergency admissions can be avoided if proper care is delivered (Royal college of Nursing, 2011). This implies that the need for proper managerial skills needs to be adapted by the healthcare leaders to manage asthma patients which will ultimately lead to the reduction of emergency care delivery for asthma patients. He went further to stress that specialist nurses are the cohesive source of support and stability for care for asthma patients; this issue is supported by the Relationship theory of leadership (also known as transformational theory) which highlights the connection between the leader and the led (Kendra, 2011). Leaders that possess this trait tend to motivate and stir their followers to ensure maximum productivity is achieved. Focus is geared towards the performance of the group members. When a leader with such trait is employed, the function of the specialist will be balanced on both as a helper of the patient and a confidant to the patient. He also said that the role of a specialist nurse has reduced hospital admissions from 22% to 6%, hence saving the National Health Service billions of pounds annually. The writer concluded by turning down the practise of relieving the specialist nurses of their jobs and employing other nurses and ward clerks to fit into their roles which he said the adverse effects were of greater negative impacts as costing the NHS more finance and damage the lives of the patients already receiving care by the specialist nurses. The lessons from this article cannot be over-emphasized in that there is an immediate need for the employment of more specialist nurses to manage asthmatic patients better and to save the lives of their patients. A similar report by Akinsanya (2009) on the Exacerbations of severe asthma; psychosocial predictors and the impact of a nurse-led clinic stated that the need for alternate management approaches is paramount in caring for people with severe asthma. He also recommended further findings on the social and psychological aspects of asthma management. Recommendations were also made on the holistic approach for long-term management of asthmatic patients (Akinsanya, 2009). This report clearly shows the application of the contingency leadership theory that postulates the influence of variables that relate to the environment on the determination of the specific leadership style fit for a situation (Kendra, 2011); it further implies the need for a paradigm shift on the care for acute asthmatic patients towards need for more nurse specialists. PERSONAL REFLECTIONS ON LEADERSHIP AND MANAGERIAL SKILLS As a major role player in healthcare delivery, nurses have inevitable functions. This Portfolio has given me an in depth understanding in various areas of my practice as: Efficiency: I have learnt that my level of efficiency has a vital impact in saving asthmatic patients lives; it will help ease the huge financial burden on Government by saving extra expenses. Leadership skills: According to the great man theory of leadership (Management Study Guide, 2011a) which denotes that some people are born with inherent leadership skills which become apparent when great needs arise. I have understood that as a nurse, I can lead rightly and manage people if I can nurture the greatness in me. In enhancing my managerial skills, I will give room for creativity in my area of work by combining both human and non-human resources (Management Study Guide, 2011b) to achieve the designed goal. Team work is also a very good point I learnt from this report in that I cannot be an effective leader if I am regarded as the only member of my team succeeding, there has to be a cohesive effort from all. Care delivery: The focus is on the nurses to serve as interlocutors between the GP and patient ensuring the patient adheres to prescriptions and that the nurse is always available for assistance by the patient. CONCLUSION The difference between a leader and manager is quite small and most leaders tend to end up as managers. Asthmatic guidelines need to be reviewed often to improve its managerial aspect of care. Nurses are relevant care deliverers and all need to develop leadership and managerial skills in order to safe guard the healthcare of the United Kingdom.