Religion Perspective - 993 Words

Religion Perspective When I was a child, I was a devout Catholic. I went to church every week and prayed before I went to bed. It wasnt until I was a teenager when I started to question the faith. I started reading more and more about religion, and why I pray and go to church every Sunday, Christianity in particular. I soon realized that it was fabricated by man, but with good intentions. One major problem I had is that it stifles the intellectual mind and has a particular definite way of looking at things. Historically, religion has caused more bad than good. For example, the longest struggle of religious war I have ever studied, the crusades was a fanatical war. The crusades was not just aimed to retake the holy land from the†¦show more content†¦There are countless other deities who came before Christ that exhibit the same fate, such as Mithra and Osiris. The flood from Noahs ark is actually an update from the ancient Mesopotamian heroic epic of Gilgamesh. Its the exact same story and detail s but different main characters. One thing I have seen peculiar is that the place where good people go, the heavens, are always the sky, and the bad people, the underworld or hell, is always underground. I do not even believe that the modern religions have any original ideas anymore. Faith is still very important for people. I see faith and religion as exactly the same meaning but with a small difference. Faith helps people by giving them a false sense of hope in this complicated world. People in wars usually have faith so they can believe they are protected by spirits higher above. Even if its false hope, at least it make them calm in bad situations. Unfortunate and people under bad situations have much more faith because they do not have much that they can do or get support from. I do not have the answers to religion, but neither does anyone else. I can tolerate other peoples beliefs but once it becomes a problem in society, I am against it. I do believe that there is a spiritual being out there but is not influencing on human life or natural disasters. I have yet to understand this world and its strange occurrences. Even though I am against the notion of religion, I want to be provedShow MoreRelatedThe Role Of Religion And Sociological Perspective923 Words   |  4 PagesThe Role of Religion in Sociological Perspective Religion is a system of beliefs that many of us may not understand in detail. However, the intention of this paper is to describe the role of religion in my personal life, and to briefly explain the functionalist perspective, the symbolic interactionism perspective, types of religious groups, and religion in the United States with the sole purpose to understand religion concepts in a sociological perspective and my personal point of viewRead MoreEssay Religion from a Hinduism Perspective2458 Words   |  10 PagesReligion from a Hinduism Perspective Religion in many areas and aspects is probably a topic as commonly discussed as weather is, on a global scale. Regardless of where a person may live, the culture they are in will discuss it and ultimately be influenced by it. Within these cultures are families with their own religious history, which very well might be the main contributor of religious continuity. For it is evident that in some ninety-nine per cent of cases the religion which an individualRead MoreSociological Perspectives on Religion Essay example991 Words   |  4 Pagesâ€Å"Religion is a ritualized system of beliefs and practices related to things defined as sacred by an organized community of believers.† (Basirico et.al. 379). Religion is an important element in the society because it influences the way individuals act and think. It has shaped the relationship and bonding among families as well as influenced the decision made in economics and politics. Religion in general has contributed to shape a so ciety and a government structure which will influence the way theRead MoreDurkheim s Sociological Perspective On Religion1733 Words   |  7 Pagesapproach to religion. Several central aspects of Durkheim’s approach are defined, including the concepts of religion, clan, and totem. The Totemic Principle and how it can be applied to religion is also discussed. Supporting evidence for Durkheim is offered through Eliade, while dissension is offered by Malinowski. This work concludes with an example of Durkheim’s ideas applied to the story of Lame Deer. Background Any discussion of Durkheim’s views on religion from a sociological perspective shouldRead MoreReligion Is The Best Perspective Of Morality And Ethical Decisions947 Words   |  4 Pagesthe eyes of many, religion plays a significant variable in the choice we make. The circumstances and actions seen as acceptable are based off of a set of divine commandments taught to the people. Religion is very influential in what laws are adapted in countries. Rather we think so or not, law and religion go hand and hand in many ways. Our morals let us decide what is right or wrong, and many moral beliefs are based on that adapted set of commands taught to us in a specific religion. These morals areRead More A Farewell to Arms Essay: Changing Perspective of Religion682 Words   |  3 PagesChanging Perspective of Religion in A Farewell to Arms In Ernest Hemingways A Farewell to Arms, the main character, Lieutenant Fredric Henry, undergoes a dramatic change in perspective over the course of the novel. It is most interesting to see how the Lieutenants views on religion change as he becomes more involved in the war.    Early in the novel, we are introduced to the Abruzzi. The Abruzzi is a town in Switzerland, of which Henrys friend, the priest, is very fond. His fatherRead MoreCandide: an Analysis of Voltaires Perspective on Organized Religion.1537 Words   |  7 Pagesin good light, as demonstrated by the various characters in Candide. There are few portrayals of religious characters in a positive tone. This essay will discuss and analyze Voltaire’s view on religion and how he expresses his discontent and negative impression. This essay will discuss the theme of religion as portrayed in the novel and will further reinforce Voltaire’s view on certain aspects with other primary and secondary sources. Religious intolerance was a  subject Voltaire  dealt withRead MoreGod s Resemblance From The Perspective Of Religion And Politics1137 Words   |  5 Pages God’s resemblance to Marx From the perspective of Religion and politics, the image of Karl Marx and God comparison on page 13 of Persepolis seems to prove that Satarpi’s faith had been politicized, her faith was shaken and she seemed to doubt if her innocent relationship with God, and her childhood dream of being a prophet would solve the problems of equality she had, after being enlightened by a comic book entitled Dialectic Materialism, of which she had read, Satarpi begun to lean towardsRead MorePSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION AND MENTAL HEALTH: SACRAMENT OF PENANCE IN PERSPECTIVE3120 Words   |  13 PagesPSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION AND MENTAL HEALTH: SACRAMENT OF PENANCE IN PERSPECTIVE BY OKOJIE EHINOMHEN PETER epo4escriva@yahoo.com January, 2014 INTRODUCTION Between psychology and religion, any connection? For one who considers religion as having no manifest behaviour, the answer cannot be in the affirmative. As far as can be chronicled of man’s history, religion has always occupied and influenced human behaviour. Through history, we find scholars who at one point or the other made allusionRead MoreSpiritual Perspectives on Healing of Three Non-Mainstream Religions and Christianity897 Words   |  4 PagesStates is often referred to as the Great Melting Pot, a metaphor that connotes the blending of many cultures, languages and religions to form a single national identity† (U.S. Department of State, 2010). In this paper, three non-mainstream religions, Vodun, Rastafari and Taosim, are going to be discussed and compared to Christinaity in regards to their spiritual perspectives of healing, their critical components to healing and what health care providers should know when caring for people of these

Business Studeis Market Analysis Free Essays

Business Studies- Market Analysis Homework â€Å"Thorough market analysis is essential for a company like Samsung in order to achieve its market objectives. † Discuss (18marks) Market analysis – The process of gathering, analyzing and interpreting information about a market, about a product or service to be offered for sale in that market, and about the past – present and potential customers for the product or service; research into the characteristics, spending habits, location and needs of your business’s target market, the industry as a whole, and the particular competitors the business may face. One reason why market analysis is essential for a company like Samsung to achieve its marketing objectives, is that market analysis acts as a sales booster, as it builds direct relations with consumers – therefore knowing their demands, by Samsung knowing what the customers want and need they are able to optimise their profit, which may be a marketing objective, if quality market analysis were to be taken out by Samsung then specific products could be put on the market, such as their new Smart Tv’s or their Galaxy S3 smartphone, from these products it is clear Samsung take great care in their customer’s needs via creating slightly niche products, helping them to gain the competitive advantage over rival companies such as pioneer, LG, or Apple in the telecommunications industry. We will write a custom essay sample on Business Studeis Market Analysis or any similar topic only for you Order Now In doing so Samsung would build a customer base, and if sales were to increase more intensive research could be carried out as to ascertain more ideas from customers for future products. Furthermore it is essential that Samsung meet their customer’s demands, this is so that the company can become more efficient, by doing so, waste can be eradicated and inadequacy also. Therefore costs can be lowered within Samsung, increasing the amount of profit that can be made, with the eradication of waste this also lowers marketing costs, as the amount of products needed to be marketed is lowered. Here it is therefore evident market analysis is essential as this allows Samsung to save money, optimising their profit margins. The success of the company in the case of meeting customer needs and becoming more efficient, relies mainly on that of market analysis which contributes to objectives in these areas being met. In addition, on the other hand market analysis is not always essential when achieving market objectives, this is clear as, in the case of Samsung their market and competitors are rapidly changing frequently, so therefore market analysis would be pointless and time would be wasted, time = money, thus meaning money would be lost on research which wouldn’t be useful in the long term for Samsung but merely the short term. This would therefore make it hard for Samsung to achieve its objectives. Samsung’s market is constantly changing and the demand for new products is constant. Not only is the market rapidly changing but competitors also – as stated, for example Samsung’s competitors mimic and undercut Samsung’s promotional offers and match their prices, thus meaning market analysis would not be the best option for them in achieving objectives, this would not allow Samsung to gain the best possible competitive advantage over competitors, but simply aid competitors in gaining the competitive advantage over themselves, the best way for Samsung to complete a market objective associated with profit would be to copy the actions of competitors and also use penetrative pricing to undercut them. Another reason why market analysis may not necessarily be the most effective way in achieving marketing objectives is that when retrieving research the retrieval of secondary research proves to be costly, although cheap it is often useless, and out of date, and in the case of Samsung’s rapidly changing market then the use of secondary data would certainly not be an option for consideration, this therefore results in Samsung basing their research solely on Primary research via that of customer feedback or questionnaires, which is the most costly of the two, however proves most effective when put into action and contributing to marketing objectives. In conclusion, in the short term I believe it is best for Samsung to use market analysis to its full potential to gain the competitive advantage needed, although costly it may pay off in the long run, however in the long run I believe that it will become costly though, as market research would need to be carried out on frequent occas ions in this case of Samsung and therefore would prove too costly for the company, and this money spent could be used elsewhere perhaps on the production of more products. How to cite Business Studeis Market Analysis, Essay examples

The Tourist Gaze Review free essay sample

It should be interesting to anyone with a scholarly involvement in tourism and is likely to become a standard educational reference, because Urry has achieved a useful blend. In addition to some social theory, his book offers perspectives on tourism drawing on a range of social science disciplines, many examples, and brief bits of statistical data (and, a welcome feature in a book on postmodernism, the English is readable). Urry remarks that to be a tourist is one of the characteristics of the â€Å"modern† experience, an idea discussed in more detail by MacCannell(l976). Modernism and postmodernism, by definition, imply rapidly perishable perspectives. Therefore, with 15 years elapsed since the appearance of MacCannell’s now classic study, Urry’s book offers a fresh discussion on the ever-evolving links between tourism and modernism/postmodernism. Urry has identified several aspects of culture and society and has cleverly shown how they are linked with trends in tourism. We will write a custom essay sample on The Tourist Gaze Review or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page The topics are quite diverse, including holiday camps, heritage, packaged tour design, sex tourism, and festivals, each accompanied by statistical snippets. Most of the focus is tourism in England. The book is â€Å"about how, in different societies and especially within different social groups in diverse historical periods, the tourist gaze has changed and developed† (p. 1). A brief overview is presented on theoretical approaches to the study of tourism. This is restricted to approaches for studying social and cultural phenomena associated with tourism: Nothing of the whole tourism system approach (Getz 1986) is included. The book’s title, noted earlier, implies an analogy between the gaze of tourists and Foucault’s (1975) clinical gaze. Foucault’s innovative thinking on a range of topics has led to his ideas and methods being applied to many topics in the social sciences. Urry claims the tourist gaze is socially organized and systematized. He remarks there â€Å"is It varies by society, by social group, and by historno single tourist gaze. . ical period† (p. 1). The scope of Chapter 2, â€Å"Mass Tourism and the Rise and Fall of the Seaside Resort,† is limited to UK resorts, and no more than passing reference is given to the rise of seaside resorts elsewhere, a rise that helps explain the fall of their British counterparts. Chapter 3, â€Å"The Changing Economics of the Tourist Industry,† begins by remarking that â€Å"the relationship between the PUBLICATIONS IN REVIEW 605 tourist gaze and those industries which have been developed to meet that gaze is extremely problematic. † A strength of the chapter is its descriptive examples. Urry emphasizes a good point often overlooked: â€Å"The economics of tourism cannot be understood separately from the analysis of cultural and policy developments† (p. 41). Chapter 4, â€Å"Working Under the Tourist Gaze, † discusses the distinctiveness of businesses providing services. It draws on a large number of references to and examples of service workers and their management. Perhaps it could have been improved by drawing on a wider literature on service management (Hesketh 1986; Lovelock 1988). Chapter 5 deals with â€Å"Cultural Changes and the Restructuring of Tourism. † Here, Urry discusses postmodernism and tourism, using material from several writers and from his own recent book, The End of Organised Capitalism (Lash and Urry 1987). He shows how, in certain ways, tourism has become â€Å"bound up with and partly indistinguishable from all sorts of other social and ultural practices . . . [so that] people are much of the time ‘tourists’ whether they like it or not [and thus] the tourist gaze is intrinsically part of contemporary experience† (p. 82). Urry integrates this idea with material about emerging patterns of class structures in society, applying, in particular, certain ideas from Bourdieu (1984). Chapter 6, â€Å"Gazing on History,† deals with the heritage industry, showing how and why â€Å"heritage† is becoming more prominent in tourist destinations in Britain. An excellent discussion is presented around the controversies enerated by The Heritage Industry: Britain in a Climate of Decline (Hewison 1987). The final chapter discusses â€Å"Tourism, Culture and Social Inequality. † Here, Urry advises against contemplating the feasibility of â€Å"the theory of tourist behaviour† (p. 135). What is required instead, he says, is â€Å"a range of concepts and arguments which capture both what is specific to tourism and what is common to tourist and certain non-tourist social practices. The concept of the tourist gaze attempts to do this . . . [by] categorising objects of the gaze in terms of romanti c/collective, historical/modern, uthentic/inauthentic† (p. 135). This chapter has a detailed treatment of visual images in modern cites, mainly Paris. The discussion might have been improved if it had used Schivelbusch’s (1980) material on 19th-century Paris and the links between travel, technology, and urban imagery. The Tourist Gaze provides a number of interesting perspectives that amount to more than an introduction to the sociology of tourism. It covers many topics and examples in its 176 pages, which means most get only superficial treatment. The limited depth also means that certain points are potentially misleading. Moreover, the book sometimes gives the impression of flitting from source to source and from field to field, missing points that deeper and longer research may have revealed. Certain points about New Zealand, for instance, indicate superficial knowledge, to the detriment of the arguments. Discussing facilities for accommodation, meals, drink, and entertainment, the book notes that â€Å"outside the four major cites [of New Zealand] there are almost no such facilities† (p. 46). In fact, according to official surveys conducted by A. G. B. Research, more than 70% of total tourist nights in New Zealand in the 1980s (60 million annually) were spent outside the regions where the four major cites are located, and not all those nights were spent sleeping under the stars and ruminating for entertainment on homemade sandwiches. A number of other points of discussion would have been improved with better references. For instance, the author considers tourism as a form of deviant activity and indicated the need to use a similar analytical approach, but the discussion reveals no familiarity with Cohen and Taylor’s (1978) study where the approach was discussed in detail. The Foucaultian model (the gaze) might have been used more effectively 606 PUBLICATIONS IN REVIEW had its original style been followed. The Tourist Gate’s adaption of the model could be seen as a weak analogy. First, it is likely to be confusing, to some readers at least, because in every chapter, the phrase â€Å"the [sic] tourist gaze† recurs, inevitably tending to convey a stereotyped notion of tourism, despite an introductory point against that implication. Another point is that Foucault’s Birth of the Clinic saw the clinical gaze as about power and scientific knowledge, and Harvey (1987) has discussed a tourist gaze of the same sort. This book cites Harvey’s article, but it does not take up the power issue in the same way. There is also a possibility of using the Foucaultian notion more dramatically, to suggest something about the origins of mass tourism. Foucault’s discussion hinges on an argument that in the 18th century, diagnosis and treatment radically changed because of new ways of looking at symptoms, in clinics-â€Å"gazing† to gain real knowledge, a departure from the abstract diagnostic methods of traditional physicians. The first page of The Tourist Gaze, where this Foucaultian notion is introduced, led this reader to anticipate that Urry would show how a similar radical change occurred in the sociocultural environment to shift the focus or scale of tourism. The anticipation remained unsatisfied by this book. Elsewhere, however, an explanation in the Foucaultian style has been suggested. Traveling for pleasure, as a form of leisure, did not become a social practice, followed by members of a social class, until the middle of the 18th century. Before then, for all but exceptional individuals, traveling was perceived as travail. Why and how did a sociocultural change occur, altering perceptions such that the activity came to be seen as potentially pleasurable? Why, in other words, did travail give way to the beginnings of mass tourism? No satisfactory explanation can be found in the specialist literature, but a plausible argument has been offered by Colin Wilson (1975). He described how, in the 174Os, the best-selling novel Pamela stimulated a cultural change in the leisured classes of English society. The heroine, Pamela, â€Å"made a discovery that living is not necessarily a matter of physical experiences, but that the imagination is also capable of voyages . of daydreams. Today, this sounds banal; in the 1740s it was as startling as discovering that you could fly by flapping your arms† (Wilson 1975:36). The consequence was that the English leisured classes â€Å"learnt the art of long-distance travel† (1975:7); they learned that traveling and visiting places was a potentially pleasurable art. This can be seen as the beginning of tourism as a social (rather than individualistic) phenomenon. It was a perceptual shift in cultural environments, which dramatically changed tourism. 0 0 Neil Leiper: Department of Management Systems, Massey University, Palmenston North, New Zealand.