Ulrich Beck

Sociology http://soc. sagepub. com Beck's Sociology of Risk: A Critical Assessment Anthony Elliott Sociology 2002; 36; 293 DOI: 10. 1177/0038038502036002004 The online version of this article can be found at: http://soc. sagepub. com/cgi/content/abstract/36/2/293 Published by: http://www. sagepublications. com On behalf of: British Sociological Association Additional services and information for Sociology can be found at: Email Alerts: http://soc. sagepub. com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://soc. sagepub. com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www. agepub. com/journalsReprints. nav Permissions: http://www. sagepub. com/journalsPermissions. nav Citations (this article cites 6 articles hosted on the SAGE Journals Online and HighWire Press platforms): http://soc. sagepub. com/cgi/content/refs/36/2/293 Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 022761 Elliott 13/5/2002 9:49 am Page 293 Risk Society Sociology Copyright  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd ®Volume 36(2): 293–315 [0038-0385(200205)36:2;293–315;022761] SAGE Publications London,Thousand Oaks, New Delhi Beck’s Sociology of Risk: A Critical Assessment s Anthony Elliott University of the West of England AB ST RAC T The German sociologist Ulrich Beck has elaborated a highly original formulation of the theory of risk and re? exive modernization, a formulation that has had a signi? cant impact upon recent sociological theorizing and research. This article examines Beck’s sociology of risk in the context of his broader social theory of re? xivity, advanced modernization and individualization. The article argues that Beck’s work is constrained by several sociological weaknesses: namely, a dependence upon objectivistic and instrumental models of the social construction of risk and uncertainty in social relations, and a failure to adequately de? ne the relations between institutional dynamism on the one hand and self-referentiality and critical re? ection on the other. As a contribution to the reformulation and further development of Beck’s approach to sociological theory, the article seeks to uggest other ways in which the link between risk and re? exivity might be pursued. These include a focus upon (1) the intermixing of re? exivity and re? ection in social relations; (2) contemporary ideologies of domination and power; and (3) a dialectical notion of modernity and postmodernization. K E Y WORDS domination / modernity / postmodernity / re? exivity / risk / social theory A s competent re? ective agents, we are aware of the many ways in which a generalized ‘climate of risk’ presses in on our daily activities.In our dayto-day lives, we are sensitive to the cluster of risks that affect our relations with the self, with others, and with the broader culture. We are specialists in carving out ways of coping and managing risk, whether this be through active engagement, resigned acceptance or confused denial. From dietary concerns to 293 Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 022761 Elliott 294 13/5/2002 Sociology 9:49 am Volume 36 s Page 294 Number 2 sMay 2002 prospective stock market gains and losses to polluted air, the contemporary risk climate is one of proliferation, multiplication, specialism, counterfactual guesswork, and, above all, anxiety. Adequate consideration and calculation of risktaking, risk-management and risk-detection can never be fully complete, however, since there are always unforeseen and unintended aspects of risk environments. This is especially true at the level of global hazards, where the array of industrial, technological, chemical and nuclear dangers that confront us grows, and at an alarming rate.Indeed the Germa n sociologist, Ulrich Beck (1996a), de? nes the current situation as that of ‘world risk society’. The rise of risk society, Beck argues, is bound up with the new electronic global economy – a world in which we live on the edge of high technological innovation and scienti? c development, but where no one fully understands the possible global risks and dangers we face. My aim in this article is to explore some of the issues that concern the relation between risk and society by focusing on the work of Beck.A profoundly innovative and imaginative social theorist, Beck has developed powerful analyses of the ways in which the rise of the risk society is transforming social reproduction, nature and ecology, intimate relationships, politics and democracy. 1 It is necessary to state at the outset that I am not seeking in this article to provide a general introduction to Beck’s work as a whole. Rather, I shall offer a short exposition of Beck’s risk society thesis, in conjunction with his analysis of re? exivity and its role in social practices and modern institutions. The econd, more extensive half of the article is then critical and reconstructive in character. I try to identify several questionable social-theoretic assumptions contained in Beck’s risk society thesis, as well as limitations concerning his analysis of re? exivity, social reproduction and the dynamics of modernity. In making this critique, I shall try to point, in a limited and provisional manner, to some of the ways in which I believe that the themes of risk and social re? exivity can be reformulated and, in turn, further developed in contemporary sociological analysis.Outline of the Theory Let me begin by outlining the central planks of Beck’s social theory. These can be divided into three major themes: (1) the risk society thesis; (2) re? exive modernization; and (3) individualization. The Risk Society Thesis From his highly in? uential 1986 volume Ris k Society through to Democracy without Enemies (1998) and World Risk Society (1999b), Beck has consistently argued that the notion of risk is becoming increasingly central to our global society. 2 As Beck (1991: 22–3) writes: Downloaded from http://soc. agepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 022761 Elliott 13/5/2002 9:49 am Page 295 Beck’s sociology of risk Elliott [T]he historically unprecedented possibility, brought about by our own decisions, of the destruction of all life on this planet †¦ distinguishes our epoch not only from the early phase of the Industrial Revolution but also from all other cultures and social forms, no matter how diverse and contradictory.If a ? re breaks out, the ? re brigade comes; if a traf? c accident occurs, the insurance pays. This interplay between before and after, between security in the here-and-now and security i n the future because one took precautions even for the worst imaginable case, has been revoked in the age of nuclear, chemical and genetic technology. In their brilliant perfection, nuclear power plants have suspended the principle of insurance not only in the economic but also in the medical, psychological, cultural, and religious sense.The ‘residual risk society’ is an uninsured society, in which protection, paradoxically, decreases as the threat increases. For Beck, modernity is a world that introduces global risk parameters that previous generations have not had to face. Precisely because of the failure of modern social institutions to control the risks they have created, such as the ecological crisis, risk rebounds as a largely defensive attempt to avoid new problems and dangers. Beck contends that it is necessary to separate the notion of risk from hazard or danger.The hazards of pre-industrial society – famines, plagues, natural disasters – may or m ay not come close to the destructive potential of technoscience in the contemporary era. Yet for Beck this really is not a key consideration in any event, since he does not wish to suggest that daily life in today’s risk society is intrinsically more hazardous than in the pre-modern world. What he does suggest, however, is that no notion of risk is to be found in traditional culture: pre-industrial hazards or dangers, no matter how potentially catastrophic, were experienced as pre-given.They came from some ‘other’ – gods, nature or demons. With the beginning of societal attempts to control, and particularly with the idea of steering towards a future of predictable security, the consequences of risk become a political issue. This last point is crucial. It is societal intervention – in the form of decision-making – that transforms incalculable hazards into calculable risks. ‘Risks’, writes Beck (1997: 30), ‘always depend on d ecisions – that is, they presuppose decisions’.The idea of ‘risk society’ is thus bound up with the development of instrumental rational control, which the process of modernization promotes in all spheres of life – from individual risk of accidents and illnesses to export risks and risks of war. In support of the contention that protection from danger decreases as the threat increases in the contemporary era, Beck (1994) discusses, among many other examples, the case of a lead crystal factory in the former Federal Republic of Germany. The factory in question – Altenstadt in the Upper Palatinate – was prosecuted in the 1980s for polluting the atmosphere.Many residents in the area had, for some considerable time, suffered from skin rashes, nausea and headaches, and blame was squarely attributed to the white dust emitted from the factory’s smokestacks. Due to the visibility of the pollution, the case for damages against the factory was imagined, by many people, to be watertight. Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 295 022761 Elliott 296 13/5/2002 Sociology 9:49 am Volume 36 s Page 296Number 2 s May 2002 However, because there were three other glass factories in the area, the presiding judge offered to drop the charges in return for a nominal ? ne, on the grounds that individual liability for emitting dangerous pollutants and toxins could not be established. ‘Welcome to the real-life travesty of the hazard technocracy! ’ writes Beck, underlining the denial of risks within our cultural and political structures. Such denial for Beck is deeply layered within institutions, and he calls this ‘organized irresponsibility’ – a concept to which we will return.The age of nuclear, chemical and genetic technology, according to Beck, unleashes a destruction of the calculus of risks by which modern societies have developed a consensus on progress. Insurance has been the key to sustaining this consensus, functioning as a kind of security pact against industrially produced dangers and hazards. 3 In particular, two kinds of insurance are associated with modernization: the private insurance company and public insurance, linked above all with the welfare state.Yet the changing nature of risk in an age of globalization, argues Beck, fractures the calculating of risks for purposes of insurance. Individually and collectively, we do not fully know or understand many of the risks that we currently face, let alone can we attempt to calculate them accurately in terms of probability, compensation and accountability. In this connection, Beck emphasizes the following: s s s s risks today threaten irreparable global damage which cannot be limited, and hus the notion of monetary compensation is rendered obsolescent; in the case of the wors t possible nuclear or chemical accident, any security monitoring of damages fails; accidents, now reconstituted as ‘events’ without beginning or end, break apart delimitations in space and time; notions of accountability collapse. Re? exive Modernization Beck develops his critique of modernity through an examination of the presuppositions of the sociology of modernization. Many mainstream sociological theories remain marked, in his view, by a confusion of modernity with industrial society – seen in either positive or negative terms.This is true for functionalists and Marxists alike, especially in terms of their preoccupation with industrial achievement, adaptation, differentiation and rationalization. Indeed, Beck ? nds an ideology of progress concealed within dominant social theories that equate modernization with linear rationalization. From Marx through Parsons to Luhmann, modern society is constantly changing, expanding and transforming itself; it is clear th at industrialism results in the using up of resources that are essential to the reproduction of society.But the most striking limitation of social theories that equate modernity with industrial society, according to Beck, lies in their lack of comprehension of the manner in which dangers to societal preservation and renewal in? ltrate the institutions, organizations and subsystems of modern society itself. Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 022761 Elliott 13/5/2002 :49 am Page 297 Beck’s sociology of risk Elliott In contrast to this grand consensus on modernization, Beck argues that we are between industrial society and advanced modernity, between simple modernization and re? exive modernization. As Beck (1996b: 28) develops these distinctions: In view of these two stages and their sequence, the concept of ‘re? exive moder nization’ may be introduced. This precisely does not mean re? ection (as the adjective ‘re? exive’ seems to suggest), but above all self-confrontation.The transition from the industrial to the risk epoch of modernity occurs unintentionally, unseen, compulsively, in the course of a dynamic of modernization which has made itself autonomous, on the pattern of latent side-effects. One can almost say that the constellations of risk society are created because the self-evident truths of industrial society (the consensus on progress, the abstraction from ecological consequences and hazards) dominate the thinking and behaviour of human beings and institutions. Risk society is not an option which could be chosen or rejected in the course of political debate.It arises through the automatic operation of autonomous modernization processes which are blind and deaf to consequences and dangers. In total, and latently, these produce hazards which call into question – inde ed abolish – the basis of industrial society. It is the autonomous, compulsive dynamic of advanced or re? exive modernization that, according to Beck, propels modern men and women into ‘self-confrontation’ with the consequences of risk that cannot adequately be addressed, measured, controlled or overcome, at least according to the standards of industrial society.Modernity’s blindness to the risks and dangers produced by modernization – all of which happens automatically and unre? ectingly, according to Beck – leads to societal self-confrontation: that is, the questioning of divisions between centres of political activity and the decision-making capacity of society itself. Society, in effect, seeks to reclaim ‘the political’ from its modernist relegation to the institutional sphere, and this, says Beck, is achieved primarily through sub-political means – that is, locating the politics of risk at the heart of forms of social and cultural life. Within the horizon of the opposition between old routine and new awareness of consequences and dangers’, writes Beck, ‘society becomes self-critical’ (1999b: 81). The prospects for arresting the dark sides of industrial progress and advanced modernization through re? exivity are routinely short-circuited, according to Beck, by the insidious in? uence of ‘organized irresponsibility’. Irresponsibility, as Beck uses the term, refers to a political contradiction of the self-jeopardization and self-endangerment of risk society.This is a contradiction between an emerging public awareness of risks produced by and within the social-institutional system on the one hand, and the lack of attribution of systemic risks to this system on the other. There is, in Beck’s reckoning, a constant denial of the suicidal tendency of risk society – ‘the system of organized irresponsibility’ – which manifests itself in, s ay, technically orientated legal procedures designed to satisfy rigorous causal proof of individual liability and guilt. This self-created dead end, in which culpability is passed off on to individualsDownloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 297 022761 Elliott 298 13/5/2002 Sociology 9:49 am Volume 36 s Page 298 Number 2 s May 2002 and thus collectively denied, is maintained through political ideologies of industrial fatalism: faith in progress, dependence on rationality and the rule of expert opinion. Individualization The arrival of advanced modernization is not wholly about risk; it is also about an expansion of choice.For if risks are an attempt to make the incalculable calculable, then risk-monitoring presupposes agency, choice, calculation and responsibility. In the process of re? exive modernization, Beck argues, more and more areas o f life are released or disembedded from the hold of tradition. That is to say, people living in the modernized societies of today develop an increasing engagement with both the intimate and more public aspects of their lives, aspects that were previously governed by tradition or taken-forgranted norms.This set of developments is what Beck calls ‘individualization’, and its operation is governed by a dialectic of disintegration and reinvention. For example, the disappearance of tradition and the disintegration of previously existing social forms – ? xed gender roles, in? exible class locations, masculinist work models – forces people into making decisions about their own lives and future courses of action.As traditional ways of doing things become problematic, people must choose paths for a more rewarding life – all of which requires planning and rationalization, deliberation and engagement. An active engagement with the self, with the body, with rel ationships and marriage, with gender norms, and with work: this is the subjective backdrop of the risk society. The idea of individualization is the basis upon which Beck constructs his vision of a ‘new modernity’, of novel personal experimentation and cultural innovation against a social backdrop of risks, dangers, hazards, re? xivity, globalization. Yet the unleashing of experimentation and choice which individualization brings is certainly not without its problems. According to Beck, there are progressive and regressive elements to individualization; although, in analytical terms, these are extremely hard to disentangle. In personal terms, the gains of today’s individualization might be tomorrow’s limitation, as advantage and progress turn into their opposite. A signal example of this is offered in The Normal Chaos of Love (1995), where Beck and Beck-Gernsheim re? ct on the role of technological innovation in medicine, and of how this impacts upon conte mporary family life. Technological advancements in diagnostic and genetic testing on the unborn, they argue, create new parental possibilities, primarily in the realm of health monitoring. However, the very capacity for medical intervention is one that quickly turns into an obligation on parents to use such technologies in order to secure a sound genetic starting point for their offspring.Individualization is seen here as a paradoxical compulsion, at once leading people into a much more engaged relationship with science and technology than used to be the case, and enforcing a set of obligations and responsibilities that few in society have thought through in terms of broad Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 022761 Elliott 13/5/2002 9:49 am Page 299 Beck’s sociology of risk Elliott moral and ethical implications.It is perhaps lit tle wonder therefore that Beck (1997: 96), echoing Sartre, contends that ‘people are condemned to individualization’. Critique Beck has elaborated a highly original formulation of the theory of risk, a formulation which links with, but in many ways is more sophisticated in its detail and application than, other sociological approaches to the analysis of risk environments in contemporary society (among other contributions, see Douglas and Wildavsky (1982), Castell (1991), Giddens (1990, 1991), Luhmann (1993) and Adam (1998)).Beck’s sociology of risk has clearly been of increasing interest to sociologists concerned with understanding the complex temporal and spatial ? gurations of invisible hazards and dangers including global warming, chemical and petrochemical pollution, the effects of genetically modi? ed organisms and culturally induced diseases such as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) (see Lash et al. , 1996; Adam, 1998). In what follows, there are three core areas around which I shall develop a critique of the work of Beck: (1) risk, re? xivity, re? ection; (2) power and domination; and (3) tradition, modernity and postmodernization. Risk, Re? exivity, Re? ection Let me begin with Beck’s discussion of the ‘risk society’, which, according to him, currently dominates socio-political frames thanks to the twin forces of re? exivity and globalization. There are, I believe, many respects in which Beck’s vision of Risikogesellschaft, especially its rebounding in personal experience as risk-laden discourses and practices, is to be welcomed.In the wake of the Chernobyl disaster and widespread environmental pollution, and with ever more destructive weapons as well as human-made biological, chemical and technological hazards, it is surely the case that thinking in terms of risk has become central to the way in which human agents and modern institutions organize the social world. Indeed, in a world that could litera lly destroy itself, risk-managing and risk-monitoring increasingly in? uences both the constitution and calculation of social action.As mentioned previously, it is this focus on the concrete, objective physical-biological-technical risk settings of modernity which recommends Beck’s analysis as a useful corrective to the often obsessive abstraction and textual deconstruction that characterizes much recent social theory. However, one still might wonder whether Beck’s theory does not overemphasize, in a certain sense, the phenomena and relevance of risk. From a social-historical perspective it is plausible to ask, for instance, whether life in society has become more risky? In ‘From Regulation to Risk’, Bryan S. Turner (1994: 180–1) captures the problem well:Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 299 022761 E lliott 300 13/5/2002 Sociology 9:49 am Volume 36 s Page 300 Number 2 s May 2002 [A] serious criticism of Beck’s arguments would be to suggest that risk has not changed so profoundly and signi? cantly over the last three centuries. For example, were the epidemics of syphilis and bubonic plague in earlier periods any different from the modern environment illnesses to which Beck draws our attention?That is, do Beck’s criteria of risk, such as their impersonal and unobservable nature, really stand up to historical scrutiny? The devastating plagues of earlier centuries were certainly global, democratic and general. Peasants and aristocrats died equally horrible deaths. In addition, with the spread of capitalist colonialism, it is clearly the case that in previous centuries many aboriginal peoples such as those of North America and Australia were engulfed by environmental, medical and political catastrophes which wiped out entire populations.If we take a broader view of the notion of risk as entailing at least a strong cultural element whereby risk is seen to be a necessary part of the human condition, then we could argue that the profound uncertainties about life, which occasionally overwhelmed earlier civilizations, were not unlike the anxieties of our own ? n-de-siecle civilizations. Extending Turner’s critique, it might also be asked whether risk assessment is the ultimate worry in the plight of individuals in contemporary culture?Is it right to see the means-ended rationality of risk, and thus the economistic language of preference, assessment and choice, as spreading into personal and intimate spheres of life (such as marriage, friendship and child-rearing) in such a determinate and uni? ed way? And does the concept of risk actually capture what is new and different in the contemporary social condition? I shall not pursue these general questions, important though they are, here. Instead, the issue I want to raise concerns the multiple ways in which risk is perceived, approached, engaged with or disengaged from, in contemporary culture.Beck’s approach, however suggestive it may be, is at best a signpost which points to speci? c kinds of probabilities, avoidances and unanticipated consequences, but which is limited in its grasp of the social structuring of the perception of risk. The American social theorist Jeffrey C. Alexander (1996: 135) has argued that Beck’s ‘unproblematic understanding of the perception of risk is utilitarian and objectivist’. Alexander takes Beck to task for adopting a rationalistic and instrumental-calculative model of risk in microsocial and macrosocial worlds; to which it can be added that such a model has deep af? ities with neo-classical economics and rational-choice theory, and thus necessarily shares the conceptual and political limitations of these standpoints also. Beck has also been criticized by others for his cognitive realism, moral proceduralism and lack of attention to aesthetic and hermeneutical subjectivity (Lash and Urry, 1994); failure to acknowledge the embodied nature of the self (Turner, 1994; Petersen, 1996); and neglect of the psychodynamic and affective dimensions of subjectivity and intersubjective relations (Elliott, 1996; Hollway and Jefferson, 1997).In a social-theoretical frame of reference, what these criticisms imply is that Beck’s theory cannot grasp the hermeneutical, aesthetic, psychological and culturally bounded forms of subjectivity and intersubjectivity in and through Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 022761 Elliott 13/5/2002 9:50 am Page 301 Beck’s sociology of risk Elliott which risk is constructed and perceived.To study risk-management and riskavoidance strategies, in the light of these criticisms, requires attention to forms of meaning-making within socio-symbolically inscribed institutional ? elds, a problem to which I return in a subsequent section when looking at Beck’s analysis of tradition, modernity and postmodernity. In raising the issue of the construction and reconstruction of risk – in particular, its active interpretation and reconstruction – one might reference numerous studies of socio-political attitudes relating to the conceptualization and confrontation of risk, danger and hazard.The anthropologist Mary Douglas (1986, 1992), for example, argues that advanced industrial risks are primarily constructed through the rhetoric of purity and pollution. For Douglas, what is most pressing in the social-theoretic analysis of risk is an understanding of how human agents ignore many of the potential threats of daily life and instead concentrate only on selected aspects. Interestingly, Beck fails to discuss in any detail Douglas’s anthropology of risk. This would seem peculiar not only sin ce Douglas’s path-breaking analyses of risk appear to have laid much of the thematic groundwork for Beck’s sociological theory, but also because her work is highly relevant to the critique of contemporary ideologies of risk – that is, the social forms in which risk and uncertainty are differentiated across and within social formations, as well as peculiarly individuated. My purpose in underscoring these various limitations of Beck’s theory is not to engage in some exercise of conceptual clari? cation.My concern rather is to stress the sociologically questionable assumptions concerning risk in Beck’s work, and to tease out the more complex, nuanced forms of risk perception that might fall within the scope of such an approach. To call into question Beck’s notion of risk is, of course, also to raise important issues about the location of re? exivity between self and societal reproduction. Now it is the failure of simple, industrial society to c ontrol the risks it has created, which, for Beck, generates a more intensive and extensive sense of risk in re? xive, advanced modernity. In this sense, the rise of objective, physical, global risks propels social re? exivity. But again one might wish to question the generalizations Beck makes about human agents, modern institutions and culture becoming more re? exive or self-confronting. Much of Beck’s work has been concerned to emphasize the degree of re? exive institutional dynamism involved in the restructuring of personal, social and political life, from the reforging of intimate relationships to the reinvention of politics.But there are disturbing dimensions here as well, which the spread of cultural, ethnic, racial and gendered con? ict has shown only too well, and often in ways in which one would be hard pressed to ? nd forms of personal or social re? exive activity. No doubt Beck would deny – as he has done in his more recent writings – that the renewal of traditions and the rise of cultural con? icts are counterexamples to the thesis of re? exive modernization. For we need to be particularly careful, Beck contends, not to confuse re? exivity (self-dissolution) with re? ction (knowledge). As Beck (1994b: 176–7) develops this distinction: Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 301 022761 Elliott 302 13/5/2002 Sociology 9:50 am Volume 36 s Page 302 Number 2 s May 2002 †¦ the ‘re? exivity’ of modernity and modernization in my sense does not mean re? ection on modernity, self-relatedness, the self-referentiality of modernity, nor does it mean the self-justi? ation or self-criticism of modernity in the sense of classical sociology; rather (? rst of all), modernization undercuts modernization, unintended and unseen, and therefore also re? ection-free, with the force of autonomized modernization. †¦ [R]e? exivity of modernity can lead to re? ection on the self-dissolution and self-endangerment of industrial society, but it need not do so. Thus, re? exivity does not imply a kind of hyper-Enlightenment culture, where agents and institutions re? ect on modernity, but rather an unintended self-modi? ation of forms of life driven by the impact of autonomized processes of modernization. Re? exivity, on this account, is de? ned as much by ‘re? ex’ as it is by ‘re? ection’. ‘It is possible to detect’, write Lash et al. (1996) of Beck’s recent sociology, ‘a move towards seeing re? exive modernization as in most part propelled by blind social processes – a shift, crudely, from where risk society produces re? ection which in turn produces re? exivity and critique, to one where risk society automatically produces re? exivity, and then – perhaps – re? ection’.Without wishing t o deny the interest of this radical conception of re? exivity as self-dissolution, it still seems to me that Beck’s contention that contemporary societies are propelled toward self-confrontation, split between re? ex and re? ection, remains dubious. In what sense, for instance, can one claim that re? ection-free forms of societal self-dissolution exist independently of the re? ective capacities of human agents? For what, exactly, is being dissolved, if not the forms of life and social practices through which institutions are structured?How might the analytical terms of re? exivity, that is social re? exes (nonknowledge) and re? ection (knowledge), be reconciled? It may be thought that these dif? culties can be overcome by insisting, along with Beck, on re? exivity in the strong sense – as the unseen, the unwilled, the unintended; in short, institutional dynamism. But such an account of blind social processes is surely incompatible with, and in fact renders incoherent, concepts of re? ection, referentiality, re? exivity.Alternatively, a weaker version of the argument might be developed, one that sees only partial and contextual interactions of selfdissolution and re? ection. Yet such an account, again, would seem to cut the analytical ground from under itself, since there is no adequate basis for showing how practices of re? exivity vary in their complex articulations of re? ex and re? ection or repetition and creativity. Power and Domination I now want to consider Beck’s theory in relation to sociological understandings of power and domination. According to Beck, re? xive modernization combats many of the distinctive characteristics of power, turning set social divisions into active negotiated relationships. Traditional political con? icts, centred around class, race and gender, are increasingly superseded by new, globalized risk con? icts. ‘Risks’, writes Beck (1992: 35), ‘display an equalizing effect’. Everyone Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 022761 Elliott 13/5/2002 9:50 am Page 303 Beck’s sociology of risk Elliott ow is threatened by risk of global proportions and repercussions; not even the rich and powerful can escape the new dangers and hazards of, say, global warming or nuclear war. And it is from this universalized perspective that Beck argues political power and domination is shedding the skin of its classical forms and reinventing itself in a new global idiom. The problematic nature of Beck’s writings on this reinvention of political power and its role in social life, however, becomes increasingly evident when considering his analysis of social inequalities and cultural divisions.Take, for example, his re? ections on class. Re? exive modernization, says Beck, does not result in the self-destruction of class antagonis ms, but rather in selfmodi? cation. He writes (1997: 26): Re? exive modernization disembeds and re-embeds the cultural prerequisites of social classes with forms of individualization of social inequality. That means †¦ that the disappearance of social classes and the abolition of social inequality no longer coincide. Instead, the blurring of social classes (in perception) runs in tandem with an exacerbation of social inequality, which now does not follow large identi? ble groups in the lifeworld, but is instead fragmented across (life) phases, space and time. The present-day individualizing forces of social inequality, according to Beck, erode class-consciousness (personal dif? culties and grievances no longer culminate into group or collective causes) and also, to some considerable degree, class-in-itself (contemporary social problems are increasingly suffered alone). In short, class as a community of fate or destiny declines steeply. With class solidarities replaced by brittl e and uncertain forms of individual self-management, Beck ? ds evidence for a ‘rule-altering rationalization’ of class relationships in new business and management practices, as well as industrial relations reforms. He contends that new blendings of economics and democracy are discernible in the rise of political civil rights within the workplace, a blend which opens the possibility of a post-capitalistic world – a ‘classless capitalism of capital’, in which ‘the antagonism between labour and capital will collapse’. There is considerable plausibility in the suggestion that class patterns and divisions have been altered by rapid social and political changes in recent years.These include changes in employment and the occupational structure, the expansion of the service industries, rising unemployment, lower retirement ages, as well as a growing individualization in the West together with an accompanying stress upon lifestyle, consumption a nd choice. However, while it might be the case that developments associated with re? exive modernization and the risk society are affecting social inequalities, it is surely implausible to suggest, as Beck does, that this involves the trans? guration of class as such. Why, as Scott Lash (Beck et al. , 1994: 211) asks, do we ? nd re? xivity in some sectors of socio-economic life and not others? Against the backdrop of new communication technologies and advances in knowledge transfer, vast gaps in the sociocultural conditions of the wealthy and the poor drastically affect the ways in which individuals are drawn into the project of re? exive modernization. These Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 303 022761 Elliott 304 13/5/2002 Sociology 9:50 am Volume 36 s Page 304 Number 2 s May 2002 ensions are especially evident today in new social d ivisions between the ‘information rich’ and ‘information poor’, and of the forces and demands of such symbolic participation within the public sphere. What Beck fails to adequately consider is that individualization (while undoubtedly facilitating unprecedented forms of personal and social experimentation) may directly contribute to, and advance the proliferation of, class inequalities and economic exclusions. That is to say, Beck fails to give suf? cient sociological weight to the possibility that individualization may actually embody systematically asymmetrical relations of class power.Taken from a broader view of the ideals of equal opportunity and social progress, Beck’s arguments about the relationship between advanced levels of re? exivity and the emergence of a new sub-politics do not adequately stand up to scrutiny. The general, tendential assertions he advances about business and organizational restructuring assume what needs to be demonstra ted – namely, that these new organizational forms spell the demise of social class, as well as the viability of class analysis. Moreover, it seems implausible to point to ‘subpolitics’, de? ned by Beck only in very general terms, as symptomatic of a new socio-political agenda.When, for example, have the shifting boundaries between the political and economic spheres not played a primary role in the unfolding of relations between labour and capital? Is decision-making and consciousness really focused on a post-capitalistic rationalization of rights, duties, interests and decisions? A good deal of recent research shows, on the contrary, that income inequality between and within nations continues to escalate (Braun, 1991; Lemert, 1997); that class (together with structures of power and domination) continues to profoundly shape possible life chances and material nterests (Westergaard, 1995); and that the many different de? nitions of class as a concept, encompassing t he marginal, the excluded as well as the new underclass or new poor, are important in social analysis for comprehending the persistence of patterns of social inequality (Crompton, 1996). These dif? culties would suggest that Beck’s theory of risk requires reformulation in various ways.Without wishing to deny that the risk-generating propensity of the social system has rapidly increased in recent years due to the impact of globalization and techno-science, it seems to me misleading to contend that social division in multinational capitalist societies is fully trans? gured into a new logic of risk, as if the latter disconnects the former from its institutionalized biases and processes. The more urgent theoretical task, I suggest, is to develop methods of analysis for explicating how patterns of power and domination feed into, and are reconstituted by, the socio-symbolic structuring of risk.Here I shall restrict myself to noting three interrelated forces, which indicate, in a ge neral way, the contours of how a politics of risk is undergoing transformation. The ? rst development is that of the privatization of risk. Underpinned by new trans-national spatializations of economic relations as well as the deregulation of the government of political life (Giddens, 1990; Hirst and Thompson, 1996; Bauman, 1998), the individual is increasingly viewed today as an active Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. om by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 022761 Elliott 13/5/2002 9:50 am Page 305 Beck’s sociology of risk Elliott agent in the risk-monitoring of collectively produced dangers; risk-information, risk-detection and risk-management is more and more constructed and designed as a matter of private responsibility and personal security. By and large, human agents confront socially produced risks individually.Risk is desocialized; risk-exposure and risk-avoi dance is a matter of individual responsibility and navigation. This is, of course, partly what Beck means by the individualization of risk. However, the relations between individualized or privatized risk, material inequalities and the development of global poverty are more systematic and complex than Beck’s theory seems to recognize. In the post-war period, the shift from Keynesian to monetarist economic policies has been a key factor in the erosion of the management of risk through welfare security.The impact of globalization, transnational corporations and governmental deregulation is vital to the social production of the privatization of risk, all of which undoubtedly has a polarizing effect on distributions of wealth and income. It has also become evident – and this is crucial – that one must be able to deploy certain educational resources, symbolic goods, cultural and media capabilities, as well as cognitive and affective aptitudes, in order to count as a ‘player’ in the privatization of risk-detection and risk-management.People who cannot deploy such resources and capabilities, often the result of various material and class inequalities, are likely to ? nd themselves further disadvantaged and marginalized in a new world order of re? exive modernization. The second, related development concerns the commodi? cation of risk. Millions of dollars are made through product development, advertising, and market research in the new industries of risk, which construct new problems and market new solutions for risk-? ghting individual agents. As risk is simultaneously proliferated and rendered potentially manageable’, writes Nikolas Rose (1996: 342), ‘the private market for â€Å"security† extends: not merely personal pension schemes and private health insurance, but burglar alarms, devices that monitor sleeping children, home testing kits for cholesterol levels and much more. Protection against risk through an investment in security becomes part of the responsibilities of each active individual, if they are not to feel guilt at failing to protect themselves and their loved ones against future misfortunes’.In other words, the typical means for insuring against risk today is through market-promoted processes. However the fundamental point here, and this is something that Beck fails to develop in a systematic manner, is that such ‘insurance’ is of a radically imaginary kind (with all the misrecognition and illusion that the Lacanian-Althusserian theorization of the duplicate mirror-structure of ideology implies), given that one cannot really buy one’s way out of the collective dangers that confront us as individuals and societies. How does one, for example, buy a way out from the dangers of global warming?The commodi? cation of risk has become a kind of safe house for myths, fantasies, ? ction and lies. The third development concerns the instrumentalization of iden tities in terms of lifestyle, consumption and choice. Beck touches on this issue through the individualization strand of his argument. Yet because he sees individualiza- Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 305 022761 Elliott 306 13/5/2002 Sociology 9:50 am Volume 36 s Page 306 Number 2 s May 2002 ion as an active process transforming risk society, he pays almost no attention to the kinds of affective ‘investments’, often destructive and pathological, unleashed by an instrumentalization of identities and social relations. Of core importance here is the ‘culture of narcissism’ (Lasch, 1980) which pervades contemporary Western life, and plays a powerful role in the instrumental affective investments in individuals which a risk society unleashes. Joel Kovel (1988) writes of ‘the de-sociation of the narcissist ic character’, a character lacking in depth of emotional attachment to others and communities.Unable to sustain a sense of personal purpose or social project, the narcissistic character, writes Kovel, rarely moves beyond instrumentality in dealing with other people. Such instrumental emotional investments may well be increasingly central to the management of many risk codes in contemporary culture. Consider the ways in which some parents fashion a narcissistic relation with their own children as a kind of imaginary risk-insurance (involving anxieties and insecurities over old age, mortality and the like), rather than relating to their offspring as independent individuals in their own right.Also in risks relating to the home, personal comfort as well as safety, hygiene, health and domesticity, the veneer-like quality of pathological narcissism can be found. Some analytical caution is, of course, necessary here, primarily because the work on narcissistic culture of Lasch and Se nnett, among others, has been criticized in terms of over-generalization (Giddens, 1991: 174–80). Accordingly, it may be more plausible to suggest that narcissistic forms of identity are a tendency within contemporary cultural relations of risk management, and not a wholesale social trend.Beck’s writings, I am suggesting, are less than satisfying on issues of power and domination because he fails to analyse in suf? cient depth the psychological, sociological and political forces by means of which the self-risk dialectic takes its varying forms. To develop a more nuanced interpretative and critical approach, I have suggested, the sociological task is to analyse privatization, commodi? cation and instrumentalization as channels of risk management. Tradition, Modernity, Postmodernity The limitations in the concept of re? xivity I have highlighted are, in turn, connected to further ambiguities concerning the nature of social reproduction in contemporary culture. The produc tion and reproduction of contemporary social life is viewed by Beck as a process of ‘detraditionalization’. The development of re? exive modernization, says Beck, is accompanied by an irreversible decline in the role of tradition; the re? exivity of modernity and modernization means that traditional forms of life are increasingly exposed to public scrutiny and debate. That the dynamics of social re? xivity undercut pre-existing traditions is emphasized by Beck via a range of social-theoretical terms. He speaks of ‘the age of side-effects’, of individualization, and of a sub-politics beyond left and right – a world in which people can and must come to terms with the opportunities and dangers of new technologies, markets, experts, systems and Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 022761 Elliott 13/5/2002 9:5 0 am Page 307 Beck’s sociology of risk Elliott nvironments. Beck thus argues that the contemporary age is one characterized by increased levels of referentiality, ambivalence, ? exibility, openness and social alternatives. It might be noted that certain parallels can be identi? ed between the thesis of detraditionalization and arguments advanced in classical social theory. Many classical social theorists believed that the development of the modern era spelled the end of tradition. ‘All that is solid melts into air’, said Marx of the power of the capitalist mode of production to tear apart traditional forms of social life.That the dynamics of capitalism undercut its own foundations meant for Marx a society that was continually transforming and constantly revolutionizing itself. Somewhat similar arguments about the decline of tradition can be found in the writings of Max Weber. The development of industrial society for Weber was inextricably intertwined with the ri se of the bureaucratic state. Weber saw in this bureaucratic rationalization of action, and associated demand for technical ef? ciency, a new social logic destructive of the traditional texture of society.The views of Marx and Weber, among others, thus advanced a general binary opposition of ‘the traditional’ and ‘the modern’. For proponents of the thesis of detraditionalization, such as Beck, the self-referentiality and social re? exivity of advanced modernity also necessarily implies that traditional beliefs and practices begin to break down. However, the thesis of detraditionalization is not premised upon the broad contrast between ‘the traditional’ and ‘the modern’ that we can discern in much classical social theory. On the contrary, Beck ? nds the relation between tradition and modernity at once complex and puzzling.If tradition remains an important aspect of advanced modernity, it is because tradition becomes re? exive; tradi tions are invented, reinvented and restructured in conditions of the late modern age. So far I think that there is much that is interesting and important in this general orientation of Beck to understanding the construction of the present, past and future. In particular, I think the stress placed upon the re? exive construction of tradition, and indeed all social reproduction, is especially signi? cant – even though I shall go on to argue that this general theoretical framework requires more speci? ation and elaboration. I want, however, to focus on a speci? c issue raised by Beck’s social theory, and ask, has the development of society toward advanced modernization been accompanied by a decline in the in? uence of tradition and traditional understandings of the past? Must we assume, as Beck seems to, that the social construction of tradition is always permeated by a pervasive re? exivity? At issue here, I suggest, is the question of how the concept of re? exivity shou ld be related to traditional, modern and postmodern cultural forms. I shall further suggest that the concept of re? xivity, as elaborated by Beck, fails to comprehend the different modernist and postmodernist ? gurations that may be implicit within social practices and symbolic forms of the contemporary age. In order to develop this line of argumentation, let us consider in some more detail the multiplicity of world traditions, communities and cultures as they impact upon current social practices and life-strategies. I believe that Beck is Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 07 022761 Elliott 308 13/5/2002 Sociology 9:50 am Volume 36 s Page 308 Number 2 s May 2002 right to emphasize the degree to which modernity and advanced modernization processes have assaulted traditions, uprooted local communities and broken apart unique regional, e thnic and sub-national cultures. At the level of economic analysis, an argument can plausibly be sustained that the erratic nature of the world capitalist economy produces high levels of unpredictability and uncertainty in social life and cultural relations, all of which Beck analyses in terms of danger, risk and hazard.It is worth noting, however, that Beck’s emphasis on increasing levels of risk, ambivalence and uncertainty is at odds with much recent research in sociology and social theory that emphasizes the regularization and standardization of daily life in the advanced societies. George Ritzer’s The McDonaldization of Society (1993) is a signal example. Drawing Weber’s theory of social rationalization and the Frankfurt School’s account of the administered society into a re? ctive encounter, Ritzer examines the application of managerial techniques such as Fordism and Taylorism to the fast food industry as symptomatic of the in? ltration of instrumen tal rationality into all aspects of cultural life. McDonaldization, as Ritzer develops the term, is the emergence of social logics in which risk and unpredictability are written out of social space. The point about such a conception of the standardization of everyday life, whatever its conceptual and sociological shortcomings, is that it clearly contradicts Beck’s stress on increasing risk and uncertainty, the concept of re? xive individualization, and the notion that detraditionalization produces more ambivalence, more anxiety, and more openness. Of course, Beck insists that re? exive modernization does not mark a complete break from tradition; rather re? exivity signals the revising, or reinvention, of tradition. However, the resurgence and persistence of ethnicity and nationality as a primary basis for the elaboration of traditional beliefs and practices throughout the world is surely problematic for those who, like Beck, advance the general thesis of social re? exivity.Ce rtainly, the thesis would appear challenged by widespread and recently revitalized patterns of racism, sexism and nationalism which have taken hold in many parts of the world, and indeed many serious controversies over race, ethnicity and nationalism involve a reversion to what might be called traditionalist battles over traditional culture – witness the rise of various religious fundamentalisms in the United States, the Middle East and parts of Africa and Asia. These political and theoretical ambivalences have their roots in a number of analytical dif? ulties, speci? cally Beck’s diagnosis of simple and advanced modernity. Beck furnishes only the barest social-historical sketch of simple modernity as a distinctive period in the spheres of science, industry, morality and law. He underscores the continuing importance and impact of simple industrial society for a range of advanced, re? exive determinations (for example politically, economically, technologically and envir onmentally), yet the precise relations of such overlapping are not established or demonstrated in any detail.Exactly how we have moved into the age of re? exive modernization, although often stated and repeated, is not altogether clear. Beck’s main line of explanation seems to focus on the side-effects of modernization as undercutting the Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 022761 Elliott 13/5/2002 9:50 am Page 309 Beck’s sociology of risk Elliott foundations of modernity. But, again, the dynamics of simple and re? xive modernization, together with their social-historical periodization, remain opaque. In addition, it is not always clear how Beck is intending to draw certain conceptual distinctions between ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ instantiations of respectively simple and advanced modernist socio- symbolic figurations. Rejecting outright any crude opposition between traditional and modern societies, Beck relates a tale of the proliferation of re? exive biographies and practices, lives and institutions, in which creative possibilities develop and new forms of risk and hazard take shape.Yet social advancement is far from inevitable: Beck speaks of counter-modernities. The question that needs to be asked here, however, is whether it is analytically useful for social theory to construct the contemporary age as characterized by interacting tropes of industrial society and re? exive modernization on the one side, and a range of countermodernities on the other. Viewed from the frame of postmodern social theory, and in particular the sociology of postmodernity (see Bauman, 1992a), Beck’s argument concerning the circularity of the relationship between risk, re? xivity and social knowledge appears in a more problematic, and perhaps ultimately inadequate, light. For postmodern so cial theorists and cultural analysts diagnose the malaise of present-day society not only as the result of re? exively applied knowledge to complex techno-scienti? c social environments, but as infused by a more general and pervasive sense of cultural disorientation. The most prominent anxieties that underpin postmodern dynamics of social regulation and systemic reproduction include a general loss of belief in the engine of progress, as well as feelings of out-of-placeness and loss of direction.Such anxieties or dispositions are accorded central signi? cance in the writings of a number of French theorists – notably, Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, Baudrillard, and Deleuze and Guattari – and also in the work of sociologists and social scientists interested in the rami? cations of post-structuralism, semiotics and deconstruction for the analysis of contemporary society (Lash and Urry, 1987; Harvey, 1989; Poster, 1990; Best and Kellner, 1991; Smart, 1992, 1993; Bauman, 1992a, 2000; Elliott, 1996).Postmodern anxieties or dispositions are, broadly speaking, cast as part of a broader cultural reaction to universal modernism’s construction of the social world, which privileges rationalism, positivism and techno-scienti? c planning. Premised upon a vigorous philosophical denunciation of humanism, abstract reason, and the Enlightenment legacy, postmodern theory rejects the metanarratives of modernity (that is, totalistic theoretical constructions, allegedly of universal application) and instead embraces fragmentation, discontinuity and ambiguity as symptomatic of current cultural conditions.To express the implications of these theoretical departures more directly in terms of the current discussion, if the social world in which we live in the 21st century is signi? cantly different from that of the simple modernization, this is so because of both socio-political and epistemological developments. It is not only re? ection on the globalization of risk tha t has eroded faith in humanly engineered progress. Postmodern contributions stress that the plurality of Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. om by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 309 022761 Elliott 310 13/5/2002 Sociology 9:50 am Volume 36 s Page 310 Number 2 s May 2002 heterogeneous claims to knowledge carries radical consequences for the unity and coherence of social systems. Bluntly stated, a number of core issues are identi? ed by postmodern analysts in this connection: s s s The crisis of representation, instabilities of meaning, and fracturing of knowledge claims;The failure of the modernist project to ground epistemology in secure foundations; The wholesale transmutation in modes of representation within social life itself. Postmodernization in this context spells the problematization of the relationship between signi? er and referent, representation and reality, a re lationship made all the more complex by the computerization of information and knowledge (Poster, 1990). What I am describing as a broadly postmodern sociological viewpoint highlights the de? iency of placing ‘risk’ (or any other sociological variable) as the central paradox of modernity. For at a minimum, a far wider range of sources would appear to condition our current cultural malaise. What is signi? cant about these theoretical sightings, or glimpses, of the contours of postmodernity as a social system are that they lend themselves to global horizons and de? nitions more adequately than the so-called universalism of Beck’s sociology of risk.Against a theoretical backdrop of the break with foundationalism, the dispersion of language games, coupled with the recognition that history has no overall teleology, it is surely implausible to stretch the notion of risk as a basis for interpretation of phenomena from, say, an increase in worldwide divorce rates through to the collapse of insurance as a principle for the regulation of collective life. Certainly, there may exist some family resemblance in trends surrounding new personal, social and political agendas.Yet the seeds of personal transformation and social dislocation are likely to be a good deal more complex, multiple, discontinuous. This is why the change of mood – intellectual, social, cultural, psychological, political and economic – analysed by postmodern theorists has more far-reaching consequences for sociological analysis and research into modernity and postmodernization than does the work of Beck. In Beck’s sociology, the advent of advanced modernization is related to the changing social and technological dimensions of just one institutional sector: that of risk and its calculation.The key problem of re? exive modernization is one of living with a high degree of risk in a world where traditional safety nets (the welfare state, traditional nuclear family, etc . ) are being eroded or dismantled. But what is

Disease in the News Critical Appraisal

There has been a rise in the number of cases of HIV/AIDS in men who have sex with men in the US. Trends suggest that between the years 2001 to 2004, the number of HIV/AIDS cases is rising in African American and Hispanic populations compared to the White population. The survival rates after 3 years were the lowest for men belonging to the African American and the Hispanic community compared to the White community. Since, the year 1999, there has been a rise in the number of cases of HIV/AIDS especially in men who have sex with other men.The article is a thoroughly peer-reviewed journal suggesting that the information is current, evidence-based, validated and researched carefully. The authors of the article include Hall, H. I. , Byers, R. H. , Ling, Q. , and Espinoza, L. They work for the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, which is a unit of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Atlanta, US. The journal has given the details including the contact address and the email ID of the authors thus permitting clearance of queries and doubts. The authors are well versed and experienced in the field of HIV/AIDS.Hall and Byers have completed their PhD, Ling has done MS, and Espinoza has completed DDS. The authors are from various groups, and hence they would express the problems of these groups in their work. Each of the authors has played a different role in bringing out the journal. The writing, origin of the study, designing of the study, review and the interpretation has been done by Hall. Major contributions of the writings and modeling of the data has been done by Byers. Ling has performed analysis of the data and the data progression details.Espinoza has done the interpretation and discussion of the data. As this study was just about collecting data and not performing a clinical trial, it did not involve following a protocol. The article has been broken into various subtopics including abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, conclusion and references. Credential web sites such as Pub med and the CDC have also cited the article. The article is about the diagnosis of HIV in the male homosexual population, and determining the rate at which the disease progresses.The researchers are interested on working with this topic as highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) has seemed effective in delaying the symptoms of the disease and the development of fatal outcomes from the disease. In the 1990’s, there was a reduction in the mortality rates arising from AIDS, due to development of HAART. This therapy is able to reduce the viral load. Since the year 1999, there has been a rise in the number of cases of HIV/AIDS due to the increase in homosexual men amongst certain segments of the population.Another indicator of the trend of men having sex with other men was the rise in the number of cases of syphilis in the male homosexual population. The cases of HIV/AIDS were especially high in men below the age of 30 years. In o ther parts of the world, the results obtained from similar studies were different. For example, in the UK, it was found that the high incidences of HIV/AIDS were observed in men who had sex with men between the ages of 25 to 44. The incidences of HIV/AIDS increased in higher numbers in the African-American and Latin populations compared to the Whites.It was about 10 and 3 times higher. Before this study was conducted, HIV/AIDS was not detected in a high proportion of the study model. The Whites were more aware of their HIV status compared to the Hispanics and the African-American population. This suggests that the Whites are more likely to start HAART faster and develop better outcomes with the disease. The data was collected for this study by the HIV surveillance system in place. Several statistical methods such as Poisson regression was utilized to determine the HIV diagnosis rates.The study demonstrated that higher rates of HIV/AIDS were observed in homosexual men belonging to Af rican-American and Hispanic background compared to other segments of the population. Besides, the survival rates after 3 years was also lower the same populations. HIV progressed faster in Hispanics and African population. The article talks about a specific population, namely the homosexual men. The geographical area of this study was limited to the United States. However, the results of the study were compared to other countries such as the United Kingdom.The various ethnic groups that were studied included Hispanics, African-American and Whites. The CDC performed the study. The article does make claims of the treatment. In this case, it is HAART to treat HIV/AIDS. HAART plays a major role in reducing the mortality and morbidity from HIV. The study picks up some evidence available from 1996-1999 in which HAART was utilized to reduce the transmission of HIV infection. This may be in the fact that HAART helps to reduce the viral load in infected people.The article speaks of the ongoi ng emphasis given to the Governments Healthy People 2010 policy, and the need to reduce the transmission of HIV infection. The article also aims to reduce the transmission of HIV/AIDS in the homosexual male population especially. There are various strategies suggested for treatment including prevention, early diagnosis, HAART therapy, etc. The article has used about 48 current and relevant journals written by authors whose credentials are also good. The user can access the abstract of the references by clicking on the link provided. References: Espinoza, L., Hall, H. I., Campsmith, M. L. et al (2005), â€Å"Trends in HIV/AIDS Diagnoses — 33 States, 2001—2004,† CDC MMWR, 54(45), 1149-1153. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5445a1.htm Hall, H. I., Byers, R. H., Ling, Q. et al (2007), â€Å"Racial/Ethnic and Age Disparities in HIV Prevalence and Disease Progression Among Men Who Have Sex With Men in the United States.† AJPH, 97(6), 1060-1066. http://www.ajph.org/cgi/content/full/97/6/1060

Deception Point Page 92

Through the darkness, a staccato burst from the nose of the chopper sent a torrent of bullets chewing across the Goya's fiberglass deck, slashing a line across the stern. Rachel dove for cover too late and felt the searing slash of a bullet graze her arm. She hit the ground hard, then rolled, scrambling to get behind the bulbous transparent dome of the Triton submersible. A thundering of rotors exploded overhead as the chopper swooped past the ship. The noise evaporated with an eerie hiss as the chopper rocketed out over the ocean and began a wide bank for a second pass. Lying trembling on the deck, Rachel held her arm and looked back at Tolland and Corky. Apparently having lunged to cover behind a storage structure, the two men were now staggering to their feet, their eyes scanning the skies in terror. Rachel pulled herself to her knees. The entire world suddenly seemed to be moving in slow motion. Crouched behind the transparent curvature of the Triton sub, Rachel looked in panic toward their only means of escape-the Coast Guard helicopter. Xavia was already climbing into the chopper's cabin, frantically waving for everyone to get aboard. Rachel could see the pilot lunging into the cockpit, wildly throwing switches and levers. The blades began to turn†¦ ever so slowly. Too slowly. Hurry! Rachel felt herself standing now, preparing to run, wondering if she could make it across the deck before the attackers made another pass. Behind her, she heard Corky and Tolland dashing toward her and the waiting helicopter. Yes! Hurry! Then she saw it. A hundred yards out, up in the sky, materializing out of empty darkness, a pencil-thin beam of red light slanted across the night, searching the Goya's deck. Then, finding its mark, the beam came to a stop on the side of the waiting Coast Guard chopper. The image took only an instant to register. In that horrific moment, Rachel felt all the action on the deck of the Goya blur into a collage of shapes and sounds. Tolland and Corky dashing toward her-Xavia motioning wildly in the helicopter-the stark red laser slicing across the night sky. It was too late. Rachel spun back toward Corky and Tolland, who were running full speed now toward the helicopter. She lunged outward into their path, arms outstretched trying to stop them. The collision felt like a train wreck as the three of them crashed to the deck in a tangle of arms and legs. In the distance, a flash of white light appeared. Rachel watched in disbelief and horror as a perfectly straight line of exhaust fire followed the path of the laser beam directly toward the helicopter. When the Hellfire missile slammed into the fuselage, the helicopter exploded apart like a toy. The concussion wave of heat and noise thundered across the deck as flaming shrapnel rained down. The helicopter's flaming skeleton lurched backward on its shattered tail, teetered a moment, and then fell off the back of the ship, crashing into the ocean in a hissing cloud of steam. Rachel closed her eyes, unable to breathe. She could hear the flaming wreckage gurgling and sputtering as it sank, being dragged away from the Goya by the heavy currents. In the chaos, Michael Tolland's voice was yelling. Rachel felt his powerful hands trying to pull her to her feet. But she could not move. The Coast Guard pilot and Xavia are dead. We're next. 111 The weather on the Milne Ice Shelf had settled, and the habisphere was quiet. Even so, NASA administrator Lawrence Ekstrom had not even tried to sleep. He had spent the hours alone, pacing the dome, staring into the extraction pit, running his hands over the grooves in the giant charred rock. Finally, he'd made up his mind. Now he sat at the videophone in the habisphere's PSC tank and looked into the weary eyes of the President of the United States. Zach Herney was wearing a bathrobe and did not look at all amused. Ekstrom knew he would be significantly less amused when he learned what Ekstrom had to tell him. When Ekstrom finished talking, Herney had an uncomfortable look on his face-as if he thought he must still be too asleep to have understood correctly. â€Å"Hold on,† Herney said. â€Å"We must have a bad connection. Did you just tell me that NASA intercepted this meteorite's coordinates from an emergency radio transmission-and then pretended that PODS found the meteorite?† Ekstrom was silent, alone in the dark, willing his body to awake from this nightmare. The silence clearly did not sit well with the President. â€Å"For Christ's sake, Larry, tell me this isn't true!† Ekstrom's mouth went dry. â€Å"The meteorite was found, Mr. President. That is all that's relevant here.† â€Å"I said tell me this is not true!† The hush swelled to a dull roar in Ekstrom's ears. I had to tell him, Ekstrom told himself. It's going to get worse before it gets better. â€Å"Mr. President, the PODS failure was killing you in the polls, sir. When we intercepted a radio transmission that mentioned a large meteorite lodged in the ice, we saw a chance to get back in the fight.† Herney sounded stunned. â€Å"By faking a PODS discovery?† â€Å"PODS was going to be up and running soon, but not soon enough for the election. The polls were slipping, and Sexton was slamming NASA, so†¦ â€Å" â€Å"Are you insane! You lied to me, Larry!† â€Å"The opportunity was staring us in the face, sir. I decided to take it. We intercepted the radio transmission of the Canadian who made the meteorite discovery. He died in a storm. Nobody else knew the meteorite was there. PODS was orbiting in the area. NASA needed a victory. We had the coordinates.† â€Å"Why are you telling me this now?† â€Å"I thought you should know.† â€Å"Do you know what Sexton would do with this information if he found out?† Ekstrom preferred not to think about it. â€Å"He'd tell the world that NASA and the White House lied to the American people! And you know what, he'd be right!† â€Å"You did not lie, sir, I did. And I will step down if-â€Å" â€Å"Larry, you're missing the point. I've tried to run this presidency on truth and decency! Goddamn it! Tonight was clean. Dignified. Now I find out I lied to the world?† â€Å"Only a small lie, sir.† â€Å"There's no such thing, Larry,† Herney said, steaming. Ekstrom felt the tiny room closing in around him. There was so much more to tell the President, but Ekstrom could see it should wait until morning. â€Å"I'm sorry to have woken you, sir. I just thought you should know.† Across town, Sedgewick Sexton took another hit of cognac and paced his apartment with rising irritation. Where the hell is Gabrielle? 112 Gabrielle Ashe sat in the darkness at Senator Sexton's desk and gave his computer a despondent scowl. Invalid Password – Access Denied She had tried several other passwords that seemed likely possibilities, but none had worked. After searching the office for any unlocked drawers or stray clues, Gabrielle had all but given up. She was about to leave when she spotted something odd, shimmering on Sexton's desk calendar. Someone had outlined the date of the election in a red, white, and blue glitter pen. Certainly not the senator. Gabrielle pulled the calendar closer. Emblazoned across the date was a frilly, glittering exclamation: POTUS! Sexton's ebullient secretary had apparently glitterpainted some more positive thinking for him for election day. The acronym POTUS was the U.S. Secret Service's code name for President of the United States. On election day, if all went well, Sexton would become the new POTUS. Preparing to leave, Gabrielle realigned the calendar on his desk and stood up. She paused suddenly, glancing back at the computer screen. Enter Password:_ She looked again at the calendar.

Changes in recent years to private health insurance Essay

Changes in recent years to private health insurance - Essay Example people reported that they could not afford to purchase a health insurance or the costs of these insurances is too expensive.1 Aiming to encourage more people to acquire a health insurance, the Australian government took the initiative in offer a 30% rebate on the cost of private health insurance premiums for people between the age bracket of 0 – 64; a 35% rebate for people aged 65 to 69; and a 40% rebate will be given to people ages 70 and above.2 The said rebates is claimable either as a reduction on the insurance premium as soon as the payment is made to the private insurer or as a rebate through the individual’s tax return. In line with the new structure set by the Australian government, this study will focus on discussing several issues which will serve as strong evidences that the 1/3 rebate strategy has been ineffective and unsuccessful in increasing the sales of private health insurance as well as maintaining the quality of the overall all health services in the country. The main goal of Australian Federal Government for implementing a 30 – 40% rebate system in private health insurance is to improve the health of Australian citizens through payments and information.3 In line with the said goal, Medicare works with the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing to improve its connection with the health sector. In September 2002, a total of 79.4% of the medical services that was performed in the hospitals was fully paid by the Australian government. This increased to 82.7% in December 2005.4 As a control measure, the local authorities implemented a ‘co-payment agreement’ to those who wishes to avail the medical services in the hospitals. According to Tracy Schrader, â€Å"any transfer of payment for health care from taxation to user-fees only benefits the wealthy.†5 This is primarily because of the fact that wealthy people will have a better access to the health facilities at a much lower costs. On the other hand, people belonging to

Giving back Scholarship Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Giving back - Scholarship Essay Example However, attending to a reputed RN school is not as simple like that. The overall cost of registered nursing education is expensive and one has to be financially prepared prior to entering the nursing profession. In line with this, I believe that the Frank Lanza Scholarship thru Phi Theta Kappa will help me successfully complete my nursing program. I learned that the Frank Lanza Memorial Scholarship recognize students’ outstanding academic and leadership accomplishments whom are currently enrolled in regionally accredited community college programs in registered nursing but in need of financial assistance (Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society, n.p.). Through disbursements of $ 2,500 to each successful applicant of scholarship, my financial problems for completing the registered nursing program would be resolved as the financial aid from the Frank Lanza Memorial Scholarship will help me pay for education fees. In addition, I could focus on achieving academic excellence because of alleviation of problems in studying. After completion of the RN nursing program, I plan to give back by serving my community and by taking an active role to help other students like me who have passion for academic excellence and nursing but are hindered by financial reasons. As a nurse, I could serve my community using the two most important powerful tools in maintaining optimum level of health: education and caring. With the knowledge that I gained upon completion of the nursing program, I could help my community through health education or disseminating information about prevention of diseases and promotion of health and caring for the sick, disabled, and those who are oppressed in the community. Teaching my community on how to be healthy and caring for them are ways on how I can give back to the Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society as a healthy community is also a productive community fostering growth and development. Likewise, I intend to give back to the Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society

20th Century Studio Pottery Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

20th Century Studio Pottery - Essay Example Soft boiled foods could be eaten by toothless children and the elderly, which permitted caregivers to spend more time producing food. In Japan, for example, the introduction of pottery was followed by a population explosion.Ceramics had been developed mush earlier in Europe. Mostly of the archaeologists believe that pottery was developed by the Jomon in Japan around 10,500 BC. The invention of the potter's wheel in Mesopotamia was made 6,000 and 2,400 BC. This leads to the revolution of the pottery production. This was the way to the new ideas for the designs of pottery. Specialized potters were then able to meet the burgeoning needs of the world's first cities.Pottery is a type of ceramic material that contains clay when formed and shaped. Not only for making jars, pottery is also a term used in a technique where involving ceramics, where clay mixed with other minerals and form into different objects, like that of vessels generally made for utilitarian purposes (Wikipedia Encycloped ia, 2006).It is a facility of any size and form or shape that also needs to have studio for the making of the pots or the products. It also needs available raw materials and the molders. Like other manufacturing processes, potery is also a delicate proces. Its production is a process where wet clay body.The pottery products are made of wet clay which are mixed with other minerals. It is then shaped and are dried. ... The industry has embraced the new concepts in constructing new styles and designs. The artistry has flourished that there have been different idea and concepts in making new pottery (Grolier Encyclopedia, 1996). Traditionally, there are different types of clay in different world regions. These different types of clay are called bodies. Before, the potters usually dig their native clayin their own backyards. They use their own clay to produce the pots but now the potters collect different bodies or clay types to form unique pots. Pottery that is fired at temperatures in the 800 to 1200 C range, which does not vitrify in the kiln but remains slightly porous is often called earthenware or terra cotta. A Clay body formulated to be fired at higher temperatures, which is partially vitrified, is called stoneware. Fine earthenware with a white tin glaze is known as faience. Porcelain is a very refined, smooth, white body that, when fired to vitrification, can have translucent qualities. Ceramic technology is used for items such as electronic parts and Space Shuttle tiles (Universal Encyclopedia, 1993). There are two known artist for Pottery. Next to Leach is Hans Cooper. Together with Cooper is his good friend Lucy Rie. Lucy is the one who put on prints and designs on the pots produced by Copper. Their team up resulted into a very unique chemistry. In an interview conducted by Matthew Parkington on Emmanuel Cooper who is an avid fan of Hans Cooper (2001), Emmanuel Copper tried to translate the meaning of the works or products made by H. Copper. Much of the works of H. Cooper according to E. Cooper, by just looking at the works of Hans you would say that it is plain and simple but if you look at the details there's a mystery behind the craft. E. Cooper said

Sleeping Problems of the Elderly Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Sleeping Problems of the Elderly - Assignment Example Sleep pattern assessment of community partner:- ================================== DJ’s Story:- ---------------- DJ has lived all her life in a small town . She is a widow nursing her sweet memories that date back to the days when her husband lived . In her hay days she used to wear the pants in her family consisting of her two kids (both boys) and husband , and now that she has crossed the threshold of 87 years she no longer is the same bright boastful lady ; she has grown peevish , is fussy about the smallest of things and refuses to accept that her three grandsons are incarnations of The Satan himself . Questionnaire :- ============ 1) At what time do you get up in the morning ? 2) At your age you mustn’t probably be busy doing household work when you are awake , so what is it that keeps you busy most of the time ? 3) How often do you talk to the other family members during the course of the day about yourself ? 4) Do you feel bored during the afternoon hours ? 5) At what time do you take your lunch ? 6) Over a period of one week how often do you consider taking a nap after lunch ? 7) At what time do you take your afternoon snacks ?

Group Work Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 1

Group Work - Essay Example The main objective of formation of this group was to assist various individuals within the institute and outside too in organizing various events like seminars, workshops, conferences, concerts, and various other formal and informal gatherings in a professional mode. The true objectives associated with this set up were many but the major ones are listed as below: There are very fewer set ups that offer opportunities to earn and learn simultaneously, and this set up was one of them. Apart from the earn and learn concept, it also allowed the members to associate themselves with various firms that needed events organized and managed, and allowed creating contacts in various industry for sponsorships and other related activities. The rationale for the creating of such a group was the recognized need; as witnessed in the career sections of the newspapers, the demand for event organizing and management individuals was growing rapidly not just in the home town but across the continent. Considering the same aspect, it was realized that having such a set up would provide home grounds for learning and making most of this opportunity, as it was foreseeable that this experience would tremendously contribute as we graduate and move in the jobs market. It was also felt that formation of this group and serving this category is a niche that is lacking in the market today. It was felt that firms hire individuals as event managers or event coordinators and once hired, they perform all the tasks and keep coordinating with the concerned department or to a particular person in the firm, while this hired individual has no command but the role of a coordinator. It was realized that formation of such a group would eventually as sist firms in outsourcing any events to be planned, managed or organized. Our job relates to social work because often charity organizations are involved in organizing various programs and

Mobile Device Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Mobile Device Management - Essay Example Mobile device management has the capacity to remotely upgrade itself by changing a bit of its system's settings; it ensures security, data transfer, user friendliness and discourages sensitive information theft, fabrication or any other illegal act of company's policy. The most useful and advanced invention of the century is Computer and Information Technology. This technology is something that advances everyday and never becomes idle. Since its invention, computers have helped mankind to do their work with more flexibility, easiness, efficiency and time saving. The two main fastest growing aspects of Computers are Data Communications and Networking. Data communication is used for transferring information whereas networking is the medium through which the information could be transferred. These days, the electronic medium has grown with the new technology and the work pace has fastened its speed to cover time efficiency by lessening down the work load manually (Hossein, 2000, p#159). The information needs a medium to travel from one place to another. ... The modern age use binary signals instead of analog, the binary signals are used universally and known to every system. The binary signals are also known as digital signals, which is easy and flexible for the system to understand and process. Data is transferred through Data transmission and data switching techniques. The data can be sent via coaxial cables, optical fibers, telephone lines, modem, radio, and others. Group of data bytes are usually send to the receiver by the sender in shape of data packets to ensure secure and compact information. Data communication looks after the while process of how the information is being transferred from the sender to the receiver. This technique is of very importance since it holds the root value for the whole cycle. Data communication can be listed further into numerous techniques and holds control of uncountable devices. Such a technique is known as Mobile Device Management. Mobile device management: Mobile device management is a technique driven from data communications. It basically is the set of tools through which distribution of applications, configuration settings and data can be made easy for mobile devices such as mobile phones. As the time passes and technology grows, the enterprise and communications are going mobile. It helps individuals, companies, and even employees to access their work virtually from anywhere in the world without handling the connectivity manually or additional plug-ons. Mobile device management enables to perform security support, policy management, inventory, backup and device locking system and let the other users to choose their own devices. It not only provides efficient productivity, but also enhances flexibility and saves cost.

Investment management Speech or Presentation Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Investment management - Speech or Presentation Example Price of growth stock is higher in ratio with its earning whereas the price of value stock is undervalued than based on strength of its fundamental. Hence, difference can be determined by the P/ E ratios. This can also be measured using the ratio of book value to market value. Growth firms’ BV/MV ratio is lower which refers high growth whereas value firms have higher BV/MV ratio. This ratio also receives impact from dividend paid by firms as growth firms pay less or no dividend and reinvest which provides investors with capital appreciation benefit. Value stock pays higher dividend. Level of cost of equity and rate of return on assets which are component of DDM affects BV/MV ratio. Value stocks have high cost of equity which increases its ratio along with risk. Growth stocks have higher rate of return on assets and or/ high growth that lowers its ratio. Both stocks can be beneficial for investors based on their risk appetite and return needs. Investors looking for continuous stream of income shall be less diverted to growth stocks. Value stocks are invested inn in expectation of correction in their bargain price in future. These ratios can also change with change in dividend strategy; increasing dividend decreases growth would get BV/ MV ratio increased or vice versa. Similarly, correction in price of value stock that increases its price would decrease its BV/MV ratio. Hence, these are time based measures defining investment strategies. A portfolio shall have both stocks in order to get benefit of diversification (Hagin, 2004). MLH company with beta of 0.5 and a dividend yield of 12% p.a. can be declared as value stock as it has higher dividend. Beta of MLH Company determines its price receiving less movement momentum than overall market. Also beta is used in defining required rate of return assets which increases its numerator of DDM leading to relatively higher

Impacts on Social Media Essay Example for Free

Impacts on Social Media Essay As we begin to discuss social media and is impact on mass communications as a whole, we must first define what it is and how it came to be. The Dynamics of Mass Communications defines social media as a set of Internet tools that encourages content sharing and community relationships. Users are able to create online communities by exchanging, distributing and receiving content information. Social media has rapidly integrated itself into our personal and professional lives over the past decade or so. Information is more available to the public today because of social media. The history of social media started with the BBS (Bulletin Board System) in the late 70’s. Most BBSs were involved in illegal or other shady practices like adult content, virus codes, and instructions on hacking and phone hacking, but BBSs were the first type of sites that allowed users to log on to it and interact with one another. This interaction was a lot slower than what individuals are used to in today’s society. Genie was created by a General Electric subsidiary (GEIS) in 1985 and was an early online service. It was a text-based service, and was considered the first viable commercial competition to CompuServe. This specific service was created to make use of time-sharing mainframes after normal US. business hours. Not too long after, America Online (AOL) started as an online service and made great strides with making the Internet more universally accessible within the United States. In 1988, IRC (Internet Relay Chat) was developed and used for file and link sharing and even keeping in touch with others. Readers could classify it as the father of instant messages as we know it today, though it was limiting access to most people. Touching the topic of early social networks, dating sites are sometimes considered the first social networks. Dating sites began to crop up just as soon as people began to get online with the Internet. These sites allowed users to create profiles with a photo and contact other people. Let’s not forget about Classmates.com, but dating sites and Classmates.com rarely  allowed you to keep a friends list and profiles appeared to be severely limited. The actual social networks like Six Degrees and LiveJournal were a tad bit more advanced than what dating sites had to offer. Six Degrees allowed users to create a basically-static profile while LiveJournal was created in 1999 and was a social network built around blogs that were constantly updated that encouraged other users to follow one another and form groups to interact. It wasn’t soon after that social interaction had found its way to online games. World of Warcraft is one the most famous for allowing players to interact both in the game would and on related forum and community sites. Massively multiplayer online role-playing games became popular in the early 2000’s though there were indeed other role-playing and other games prior to that. Additionally, the early 2000’s brought more advanced social networks and social media to the playing field. Some examples that most people are familiar with would be Friendster (2002), YouTube (2005), MySpace (2006), Facebook (2004), Tumblr (2006), Twitter (2006), and Instagram (2010). All these networks took a toll on millions and billions of people around the globe. People are more connected and up to date because of them. Social Media as a whole has brought a lot of positive effects to the world as we know it today. Social Networks started as a place to connect with your friends in an easy, convenient, and free from charge way. Social networks play an important role with social media. It has allowed individuals to connect with old friends from school, co-workers, and even with complete strangers. It has also provided us with the opportunity to build back a lost relationship or even better relationships with whom that are unable to meet us personally, and involve them with our lives and even take input into their personal lives with specific events that are happening with us. We are now able to communicate our thoughts and perceptions over different topics with a large number of audiences. Our voices are heard louder than ever with the help of social media and social networks. For example, with the Trayvon Martin case, people used social media to conduct marches and protests. On social networks, like Instagram, users blocked out their profile picture to show their involvement for wanting justice for that specific case. We have the option to make groups with people who are like minded and share the  related news with them and ask for their opinion or input about the topic. Far as businesses, they are using social media and social networks to promote their own products and there are a number of customized applications that are being made on social platforms, whose main and only purpose is to promote the product or brand given to them. The negative effects of social media seem to be quite questionable. Studies have shown that the extensive use of social media can quite frankly cause addition to the users. Throughout the day, people tend to feel the need to post something on their pages and check other posts as it has become an important part of everyday life. Extreme usage of social media had resulted in isolation of the individual. The level of human interaction has decreased tremendously and people appear to be less active. Individuals would rather check their smart-phones or tablets than actually picking up a book or a newspaper per say. Interpersonal communication has reduced and there aren’t many face to face communications and meetings being held because many people have lost their full ability to converse while being in the same room. Social Media is also affecting the productivity of people. Users are more distracted. Again, I must state that people are so caught up in texting, blogging, updating a status, and posting any and everything that it to the point where they cannot get specific things done. A prime example would be texting while driving or being on a social network while attempting to write a research paper or even complete homework. According to media bistro, the average person spent three hours and seven minutes online each day in 2012. It appears as online media becomes more popular; other media sources become less popular. People are not reading magazines, newspapers, listening to the radio, or watching television as much as they used to. As the popularity of social networks and online video increases, so does our time online. YouTube has more than one billion users that visit their website each month. Seventy two hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. The list just goes on and this also goes for Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Pinterest, Hulu, and Instagram. It seems nowadays that there are social and user-generated sites for just about every activity you can possibly imagine. There are social shopping sites and social financial planning sites. There are even sites to share goals and meet like-minded people. Sites to plan your travels and share them with others. There are so many apps and sites that accommodate the average person for me to say that social media has indeed made life better for people. Social media has become a huge part of millions of lives worldwide. On the other hand, social media has made everyday life harder or horrific for everyday people. Because social media has grown in popularity and mainstream, it can be used by stalkers to track their victims or even find new ones. Social networks make these privacy settings available to users to help prevent stalkers and predators from being able to see their update. In addition to stalkers, we must also consider cyber-bulling. Cyber-bulling has increased over the years and has affected a lot of social network users. These things can make it harder on individuals. One final thing that needs to be discussed is the fact that the people who have degrees to be covering the news face their job being at risk. News stations and news broadcasts are now up with competition against social media and social networks. This is because people use their mobile devices to obtain the news now a days. This is because it is more convenient to access things from your phone than to take time out to turn on the television or go buy a newspaper. This could make everyday life harder for them if they lose their job. Social media has come a long way since the days of BBSs and IRC charts and social media continues to evolve on a daily basis. With major social networks and social media sites making changes and improvements, it’s sure to keep evolving in the coming years. While in many ways social media has allowed us to share everything from the simplest to most sacred events of our lives with more people in real time, it has also taken away from the action of â€Å"living in the moment.† The one thing we can all conclude is that social media is not just a phase, and it most definitely won’t be going away anytime soon or at least until something better comes along. WORS CITED http://www.relevantmagazine.com/life/whole-life/how-social-media-made-me-better-person http://www.digitaltrends.com/features/the-history-of-social-networking/ View as multi-pages