Sunday, January 26, 2020

Analysis of the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) Success

Analysis of the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) Success Sports, Leisure and Coaching Law Examine the success or otherwise of the WADA Code with regard to the regulation of the use of drugs and doping in sport It is submitted that the World Anti-doping Agency (WADA) has achieved a reasonable measure of success in the pursuit of its mandate to establish a drug free sports world. WADA, both in its structure and in its execution of its policies, is not presented as a perfect mechanism in this respect. There are also well articulated contrary philosophical positions concerning whether sport, particularly at a professional level, ought to be regulated for substance use at all. That question is beyond the scope of this paper. In the present review, WADA is presumed to be acting at all times as a legitimate agency to advance the broad public interest in safe and drug free sport. A brief definition and over view of WADA’s structure shall assist in the appreciation of the points made in support of the opening statement above. WADA was founded in 1999 at the instigation of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and its member bodies in the wake of a number of well publicised doping scandals (Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson’s positive steroid test in the 1988 Olympics; the Festiva cycling team arrest at the 1998 Tour de France are two examples), WADA is the supreme authority with respect to both the establishment of proper test procedures and the determination of what substances will be the subject of athletic sanction when detected (Lerner, 2006; WADA, 2007). The WADA Code outlines the broad goals of the agency. The Code is the primary regulatory instrument employed to forge an international consensus concerning anti-doping practices in sport. The Code is the structure that binds sports governing bodies, national Olympic committees, and independent sports leagues to the enforcement of the WADA rules concerning doping tests procedures, both in-competition and out of competition, in conformity with the annual WADA Prohibited List of restricted substances and those subject to therapeutic exemption (WADA Code, 2) This background information is emphasised because it confirms one important yardstick by which to measure WADA success the critical mass that WADA has achieved since 1999 in assembling a broad membership of the world sports community that supports the anti-doping mandate, and the corresponding elevation of various doping issues and the inherent dangers of substance abuse in the public consciousness. This success, while somewhat intangible, is arguably as important as any specific drug testing programme or the successful pursuit of sanctions for doping violations. On a related basis, breaches of the WADA Code by athletes are now generally publicly perceived as more than mere transgressions – drug cheating and its ‘win at all costs’ mentality tend to create a negative image of the offender in the eyes of the fan. One example is drawn from the otherwise staid confines of international cricket; Australian star Shane Warne’s use of a banned diuretic was widely described as ‘†¦ the single biggest disappointment’ in the 2003 World Cup. (Mangan, p. 228) The WADA Code has been held to be in conformity with the generally accepted principles of international law in most respects (WADA Code, 2007, 2). The WADA Code provides for a strict liability regime concerning the presence of a prohibited substance in an athlete, the automatic disqualification of the offender from the subject event, and the imposition of a suspension; all such measures have been deemed to accord with fundamental international law principles, primarily due to the various provisions that permit an aggrieved athlete to apply for a hearing to seek an appropriate remedy by way of arbitration. (Kaufmann-Koehler, 2003, 3) The legal issues generated by the prevalence of doping in sport must be understood from several distinct perspectives. The first is the subsisting importance of the national or state criminal law regarding the possession, use or distribution of illegal substances. The fact that a stimulant such as cocaine is used by an athlete to enhance performance does not exclude the possible intervention of the state criminal law authorities upon its detection in the athlete’s system.(see Ulrich, below) In practice, the apparent acceptance of WADA styled enforcement in sports as excluding the intervention of the state is an interesting phenomenon. The effectiveness of WADA has created the undeniable impression that ‘sport crime’, in the sense of prohibited substances and a violation of the WADA ‘play clean’ mandate is an administrative sanction issue for the particular sport league or governing body, not a matter for the criminal law. A state criminal investigation may create an opportunity for WADA to intervene, or alternatively, to seek the production of search and seizure results from the state authority; the German police investigation into Tour de France cyclist Jan Ulrich and the 2007 Spanish criminal inquiry regarding doping products and public safety are examples (WADA Code, 3). Once in receipt of such evidence, WADA have successfully instituted proceedings pursuant to the Code against athletes targeted by state authorities; challenges to prohibit this approach by way of injunction have failed (Balco, 2006, 1). Distinct legal issues are engaged at three different points on the continuum mandated by WADA anti-doping procedures the testing, the analysis of the test results, and the appropriate sanction to be imposed. This continuum has created a definable body of administrative law that has mirrored the emergence of a global administrative law trend wherever private international bodies such as WADA possess authority. (Kingsbury, 2005, 16) Notwithstanding the attacks that have commonly been advanced against the process, a further indicator of over all WADA success is the perception of transparency concerning its practices and the corresponding heightening of confidence that WADA and its constituent organisations adhere to their own Code. Prior to the institution of the WADA Code, a common tactic for an athlete who was subject to sanction as a result of a positive doping test was to seek a civil injunction. In an era of less than standardised practices, such injunctions were routinely granted, as courts often stated that they would not see an athlete deprived of their ability to earn income on the basis of flawed testing or administrative procedures. (See Reynoldsv. IAAF, 1994) The Court for Arbitration in Sport (CAS) is now the primary vehicle for the determination of all international WADA related proceedings; most national and affiliated sports organisations have established similar arbitration mechanisms. (Pound, 2006, 113) A recent example of the reluctance of national (or supranational) courts to interfere in WADA-based proceedings is revealed in the Meca-Medina decision. Meca-Medina was an European Court application seeking to declare the IOC rules governing doping control (as propounded in the WADA Code) to be incompatible with European Community rules (EC Articles 82, 83) that regulate competition and freedom to provide services. (Meca-Medina, 2006, para 1, 4) The appellants were long distance elite level swimmers who had tested positive for a prohibited substance, (nandrolone) in post-event testing and each was subsequently suspended from competition for 4 years. The appellants had appealed the suspension to the CAS and each was unsuccessful before the arbitrator regarding the merits; the suspensions were reduced to 2 years. The European Court held that the economic interests of the appellants were secondary to the legitimacy of the anti-doping initiatives and the absence of any procedural irregularity on the part of the sport organisations involved. (Meca-Medina, para 58, 60) The CAS was founded in 1984 as an arm of the IOC. It is an unquestioned high level repository of sports administrative law expertise (over 200 cases per year with arbitrators drawn from over 80 countries; alleged WADA Code violations are a significant percentage of the case load). As with civil law arbitrations, the CAS acquires its jurisdiction by the mutual consent of the involved parties, where all decisions are final and binding (subject to extremely limited rights of review). (Lerner, 81) It is submitted that the definable body of sports law generated in CAS anti-doping proceedings is a further hallmark of WADA’s continued legitimacy and success. The primary focus of WADA’s anti-doping efforts is directed towards individual athletes; the Code extends to all persons involved in athlete support – coaches, trainers and medical personnel. The long and intricate machinations of the United States criminal investigation into the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative is an example where support persons were implicated in the supply of steroids to Olympic champion sprinter Tim Montgomery and American baseball record holder Barry Bonds. (Balco, 2006, 1) The range of cases heard by the CAS reflects the breadth of the sporting world itself. The CAS has been called upon to consider reduced competition bans where extenuating circumstances are urged by the athlete (Lukin, 2007, 3); a request for relief from the Prohibited Substance list on the basis that the particular substance will aid in the health of the athlete (Brockman, (2004), 1); where an alleged tampering with a out of competition urine sample test procedure was challenged (Boyer, 2004, 1). A recent decision of the CAS that highlights the CAS interpretation of the strict liability rules of the WADA Code is that of Zach Lund, the American skeleton racer disqualified from participation in the 2006 Winter Olympics due to a positive test for a prohibited masking agent, finasteride. (Lund, 2006, 1,2) The uncontested evidence before the CAS was that Lund had finasteride in his system due to his long term use of a hair restorative product. The CAS held that Lund was â€Å"open and honest† in his description of his failure to take all appropriate measures to educate himself as to the risks.(Lund, p.8) It is submitted that in a traditional civil injunction proceeding, the absence of intent to gain a competitive advantage might be determinative of the issue, given that a berth in an Olympic Games was at stake. However, consistent with the ‘new age’ of anti-doping attitudes, the CAS held that ‘†¦the burden on the athlete to establish no fault or negligence is extremely high†¦Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ (Lund, p.9) The arbitrator ruled that Lund was banned from Olympic competition in 2006. In a 2006 arbitration conducted by the international basketball body, FIBA, a similar imposition of the WADA Code mandated and exacting strict liability standard was imposed for the inadvertent use of a hair restorative (Kurtoglu, 2006, 1), where FIBA upheld a two year competition ban. Other fact situations that highlight the primacy of the WADA Code in modern sport are contained in the newspaper articles excerpted below.( e.g. Gatlin; Ferdinand; Chambers) In its eight years of existence, WADA has successfully impressed its anti-doping will upon the international sport community. The rules developed and disseminated by WADA have created cohesion and significant consistency in the manner that doping cases are conducted world-wide. As noted in the opening paragraph above, the intangibles associated with WADA’s heightened promotion of the ethical, health and competition issues inextricably linked to performance enhancing substances are WADA’s greatest achievement. Bibliography American Arbitration Association (2006) â€Å"Sports Arbitration including Olympic Athlete Disputes† http://www.adr.org/About (Accessed March 21, 2007) Athletics: Prize-Money Row Bars Chambers from NIA Grand Prix.(2006) Birmingham Post (England) 17 Feb. 2006: 36 â€Å"Balco case trial date pushed back† (March 17, 2006) BBC News http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/athletics/4357145.stm (Accessed March 21, 2007) Gatlin Faces Threat of a Life Ban from Athletics(2006) South Wales Echo (Cardiff) 31 July 2006: 10 Haley, James (2003) At Issue: Performance Enhancing Drugs (San Diego: Greenhaven Press) Kingsbury, Benedict, Nico Krisch and Richard B. Stewart (2005) The Emergence of Global Administrative Law Law and Contemporary Problems 68.3-4: 15 Lerner, K. Lee (ed.) (2006) World of Sports Science (New York: Thomson Gale) Manjumdar, Boria, and J. A. Mangan, eds. (2004) Cricketing Cultures in Conflict: World Cup 2003. New York: Routledge, Mottram, David R., ed. (2003) Drugs in Sport New York: Routledge Pound, Richard W. (2006) Inside Dope (Toronto: Wiley) Rio Deserved a Longer Ban (2004) The Evening Standard (London, England): 104 Kaufmann-Koehler, Gabrielle â€Å"Summary Opinion re: Conformity of the WADA Code† (2003) http://www.wada-ama.org/rtecontent/document/prof_kaufmann_kohler.pdf (Accessed March 21, 2007) World Anti-doping Agency, 2007 (WADA) http://www.wada-ama.org/en (Accessed March 21, 2007) World Anti-doping Agency Code http://www.wada-ama.org/en/dynamic.ch2?pageCategory.id=267 (Accessed March 21, 2007) World Anti-doping Agency Prohibited List http://www.wada-ama.org/en/prohibitedlist.ch2 (Accessed March 21, 2007) Table of Cases Bouyer v. UCI WADA CAS 2004/A/769, Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport v Lukin; WADA third party (January 31, 2007) SDRCC DT-06-0050 IPC v. WADA Brockman CAS 2004/A/717, Meca-Medina and Majcen v Commission (Case C-519/04 P) (see also T-313/02 Re: initial opinions) Reynoldsv. IAAF, 23F.3d1110, (6thCir. 1994), (cert. denied 63USLW 3348). WADA v. USADA, USBSF Lund CAS OG 06/001, WADA v. FIBA Kurtoglu FIBA AC 2005-6 (Note: all WADA related case law may be accessed through the portals at the main WADA website)

Saturday, January 18, 2020

Personal work planning Essay

Perform research on the topic of personal work planning. In your own words, explain the importance of creating and maintaining personal work plans. If you are not working, but are part of an association or know of an organisation, please answer the question accordingly. A work plan is an outline of a set of goals and processes by which a person can accomplish those goals, offering the reader a better understanding of the scope of the project. Through work plans, you break down a process into small, achievable tasks and identify the things you want to accomplish. Creating a work plan can make people understand their job objectives, goals, and help to achieve goals and tasks efficiently. Maintaining work plan can help people solve problems more easily, work efficiently. Source: http://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Work-PlanFor a period of 2 weeks keep a personal paper-based or electronic (e.g. personal digital assistant) journal related to your job role. At the end of each day, make entries to answer the following questions: What were the most important activities that needed to be achieved today? tag the order number on the dry clean items check every order if match with the order ticket write the price of each dry clean item on the order ticket record every order including item description, numbers of items, and price place the cleaned items to the order bag the finished orders customer services: pick up dry clean items and drop off cash collect record the order which has been pick up answer incoming phones How do these relate to my job description, responsibilities and accountabilities? Job descriptions: Shop assistant in Dry Cleaners. Tag and bag the dry clean items. Check the dry clean items accordingly with order ticket. Record the orders including drop off and pick up. Customer services and answering phones.My job activities are the activities and responsibilities according to my job descriptions. When I am doing my job,  my accountabilities are being concentrate, being careful not to make mistake, always smile to customers, being efficient. How do these related to the overall objectives and goals of the organisation? The overall objective and goals of the organisation: effectively and efficiently dry clean services My major job responsibilities and accountabilities are doing my job effectively and efficiently so these are related to the objectives and goals of the organisation. What measures of success apply to these activities? Job finished time Feedback from the manager and customers Was my time used effectively to contribute to the achievement of these tasks and activities? Why or why not? Yes, I do multi tasks when I am working. Use the personal work journal you created in question 2 of this assessment. write a short report reflection on how effective you are at personal work planning and organising. ( 1 page maximum) Introduction I am a shop assistant in Dry Cleaners. The shop provides same day services, and delivery service. I usually finish job by 3pm every day. The job activities, description, responsibilities.  My work start to tag dry cleaning items, checking orders, record the orders. At the same time, serve customer when customer come into the shop. When one order been done, bag the order. If the phone rings, answer the phone. The job activities I achieved are according to my job descriptions and responsibilities. I understand clearly what are the responsibilities, and things should be done every day. When I am doing my job, my accountabilities are being concentrate, being careful not to make mistake, always smile to customers, being efficient. The organisations goals and objective is providing effectively and efficiently dry clean services. When I am working, I always be multi-tasks, working efficiently and effectively. Every day we finish cleaning clothes around 2pm. My job finishes by 3pm. Conclusion I understand my job clearly and planning the procedures of my job activities. Through the job finish time, I can know I have done my job efficiently. Through the feedback of my manager, I know I have done my job effectively. Based on your what you’ve learned from this chapter, design a number of recommendations and strategies, that you can implement in your personal work planning and organising to improve any areas of your work performance and the management of your individual time. Indicate how each of these recommendations and strategies will enhance your capability to plan and organise work. (1 page Maximum) Record customers contact details: we can contact with them if we have any problems of the dry clean items or inform them to pick up when the order is ready. Clean up the finished and unpick up orders customer left for long time : More spaces in the shop Put doonas and blankets in order: I can find the order easier when customers come to pick up.

Friday, January 10, 2020

Afterthoughts on Material Civilization and Capitalism

Frenand Braudel’s â€Å"Afterthoughts on Material Civilization and Capitalism† offers very sharp insight on the birth and the growth of capitalism in the history of material civilization. His theory has been used as a theoretical tool explaining the globalization of modern capitalism. Yet, the value of his book is more than its utility in globalization studies. In this book, he criticizes the European point of view on the history of material civilization and extends his scope to non-European economy.Especially, he portrays economic history as a spontaneous, slowing evolution with long term equilibriums and disequilibriums, ignoring the history of economics as the successive transitions of big events such as the stages of slavery, feudalism, and capitalism. He thinks that the preindustrial economy is also characterized by the coexistence of inflexibility, inertia and slow motion. www. rpi. edu/~kime2/ehtm/myissues/braudel. htm Braudel notes that the exchanges from Europe across Siberia to China â€Å"formed a system of interdependence.† Moreover, â€Å"at the beginning of the sixteenth century, Russia's principal foreign market was Turkey† which Braudel also classifies as a separate â€Å"world-economy† â€Å"reminiscent of Russia. † Braudel terms the Turkish economy â€Å"a fortress,† but also a â€Å"source of wealth† and a â€Å"crossroads of trade, providing the Turkish Empire with the lifeblood that made it mighty. † The Turkish economy was not any more isolated from the rest of the world than the Russian economy: A long French report on the Levant trade confirms this impression: â€Å"[French] ships carry more goods to Constantinople than to all other ports in the Levant.The surplus funds are transferred to other ports by means of bills of exchange which the French merchants of Smyrna, Aleppo and [Port] Said provide for the Pashas. † Braudel then asserts that European trade in the Turkis h empire was minimal and â€Å"merely passed quickly through [because] money, the sinews of western trade, usually only made fleeting appearances in the Turkish Empire†: as part went to the sultan's treasury, part oiled the wheels of top-level trade, and â€Å"the rest drained away in massive quantities to the Indian Ocean.† In that case, Braudel should have asked what intermediary role the Turkish economy played between Europe and India. Then too, Braudel notes that caravan routes ran from Gibraltar to India and China â€Å"the whole movement-in-space which made up the Ottoman economy,† which â€Å"owed its suppleness and vigour to the tireless convoys which converged from every direction. † Far from having a self-contained â€Å"fortress† economy, then, the Ottoman empire drew its lifeblood from being a crossroads between other economies, none of which were independent of each other.Of course, the Turks tried to maintain their power, derive maxim um benefits from their intermediary position, and bar others from sharing in it as best they could. Turkish merchants, not content with their intermediary role at home, also â€Å"invaded Venice, Ferrara, Ancona, even Pesaro, Naples and the fairs of the Mezzogiorno† in Italy and â€Å"were soon found all over Europe, in Leipzig fairs, using the credit facilities provided by Amsterdam, and even in Russia or indeed Siberia as we have already seen. † The Turkish empire hardly sounds like a dosed economyBraudel calls Asia the â€Å"greatest of all world-economies,† which â€Å"taken as a whole, consisted of three gigantic world-economies,† Islam, India, and China. He even allows that â€Å"between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, it is perhaps permissible to talk of a single world-economy embracing all three. † Toward the end of this period he observes that the center of this single economy became stabilized in the East Indies (beyond the bounda ries of these three economies) in a network of maritime traffic comparable to that of the Mediterranean or the Atlantic coasts of Europe.Of India he writes that for centuries it had been â€Å"subject to a money economy, partly through her links with the Mediterranean world. † Gold and silver were â€Å"the indispensable mechanisms which made the whole great machine function, from its peasant base to the summit of society and the business world. † Braudel suggests that the foundation of Europe's trade with India was the low wages of the â€Å"foreign proletariat† there, which produced the cheap exports exchanged for the inflow of precious metals to India.As â€Å"a historian of the Mediterranean,† Braudel declares himself â€Å"astonished,† to find that Red Sea trade in the late eighteenth century was still the same â€Å"vital channel† in the outflow of Spanish-American silver to India and beyond as in the sixteenth century. He might have n oted how American silver reached this economy not only via the Red Sea and the Levant, but also around the South African cape, and with the Manila galleons. Braudel did observe that the â€Å"influx of precious metal was vital to the movements of the most active sector of the Indian, and no doubt Chinese economy.† According to one historian, the â€Å"series of interconnected regional markets dispersed and overlapping around the globe† were really a â€Å"world market for silver. † Perhaps as much Spanish-American silver crossed the Pacific to Asia, where it competed with Japanese silver, as crossed the Atlantic. Like exchanges elsewhere, trade in the Far East was based on goods, precious metals and credit instruments. European merchants could apply to the moneylenders in Japan or in India . . . and to every local source of precious metals afforded them by the Far East trade.Thus they used Chinese gold . . . silver from Japanese mines . . . Japanese gold coins . . . Japanese copper exports . . . gold produced in Sumatra and Malacca . . . [and] the gold and silver coins which the Levant trade continued to pour into Arabia (especially Mocha), Persia and north-west India. . . . [The Dutch East India Company] even made use of the silver which the Acapulco galleon regularly brought to Manila. (Dennis O. Flynn, 1991). Temporary shortages of silver had an impact on Asia that may have helped bring down China's Ming dynasty.Prior to 1630, the inflow of silver from Spanish America and Japan promoted the monetization of the Chinese economy. The abrupt decline in silver production during the world recession after 1630 caused economic turmoil and bankrupted the Ming government, making it an easier prey to the Manchus in 1644. One scholar argues that it was no coincidence that the British monarchy was overthrown in 1640, and the Turkish government nearly fell at about the same time. (Jack A. Goldstone, 1991) Moreover, Braudel also finds a de facto globa l if not a world economy beyond the monetary sphere.â€Å"Long-term control of the European world-economy evidently called for the capture of its long-distance trade, and therefore of American and Asian products. † Braudel wrote: Who could fail to be surprised that wheat grown at the Cape, in South Africa, was shipped to Amsterdam? . . . Or that sugar from China, Bengal, sometimes Siam, and, after 1637, Java, was alternately in demand or out of it in Amsterdam, depending on whether the price could compete in Europe with that of sugar from Brazil or the West Indies? When the market in the mother country was closed, sugar from the warehouses in Batavia was offered for sale in Persia, Surat, or Japan.Nothing better demonstrates how Holland in the Golden Age was already living on a world scale, engaged in a process of constant partition and exploitation of the globe. . . . One world-economy (Asia) . . . [and] another (Europe) . . . were constantly acting on one another, like two unequally laden trays on a scale: it only took an extra weight on one side to throw the whole construction out of balance. Few historians have tried to determine whether and how cycles coincided across the supposed boundaries of these economies, yet such evidence could reveal much about whether they formed a single world economy.Braudel himself offers only a few indications of simultaneity across the boundaries of his world-economies. He devotes a special section to conjunctures, considers fifty-year cycles, as well as others that are twice as long and more; of these he writes â€Å"four successive secular cycles can be identified, as far as Europe is concerned. † On the one hand Braudel claims that â€Å"the world-economy is the greatest possible vibrating surface. . . . It is the world-economy at all events which creates the uniformity of prices over a huge area, as an arterial system distributes blood throughout a living organism.† Yet, on the other hand, Braudel ob serves that â€Å"the influence of the world-economy centered in Europe must very soon have exceeded even the most ambitious frontiers ever attributed to it. . . . The really curious thing is that the rhythms of the European conjuncture transcend the strict boundaries of their own world-economy. † Furthermore, â€Å"Prices in Muscovy, in so far as they are known, lined up with those of the West in the sixteenth century, probably by the intermediary of American bullion, which here as elsewhere acted as a ‘transmission belt'.† Similarly, Ottoman prices followed the European pattern for the same reasons. Braudel then demonstrated how such exchange transcended the economic boundaries he describes since the system extends throughout the global economy. Indeed, he observes â€Å"knock-on effects† as far away as Macao, even beyond the Manila galleon route. He also remarks that â€Å"historians (Wallerstein included) have tended to underestimate this type of exch ange. † Yet, Braudel underestimates this exchange as well.After reproducing a graph of the yearly fluctuations of Russia's exports and its wade balance between 1742 and 1785, he only observes â€Å"two short lived drops in the [trade balance] surplus, in 1772 and 1782, probably as a result of arms purchases. † The graph also shows a third big drop in 1762-63. All three coincide with a sharp drop on the graph of Russian exports, whatever may have happened to imports of arms or anything else. These three short periods occurred in Russia in the same years as three world economic recessions, which Braudel discusses at some length in another chapter without making the connection.In still another chapter, Braudel reproduces a graph of Britain's trade balance with its North American colonies between 1745 and 1776 that shows sharp declines in British imports, and lesser declines of exports in the same years, 1761-63 and 1772-73. But again Braudel does not look for connections b etween these recessions. This omission is curious since about the first of these recessions he writes that â€Å"with the currency shortage, the crisis spread, leaving a trail of bankruptcies; it reached not only Amsterdam but Berlin, Hamburg, Altona, Bremen, Leipzig, Stockholm and hit hard in London.† Regarding the next recession Braudel observes catastrophic harvests in all of Europe in 1771-72 and famine conditions in Norway and Germany. According to Braudel â€Å"capitalism did not wait for the sixteenth century to make its appearance. We may therefore agree with Marx, who wrote (though he later went back on this) that European capitalism – indeed he even says capitalist production – began in thirteenth-century Italy. . . . I do not share Immanuel Wallerstein's fascination with the sixteenth century† as the time the world capitalist system emerged in Europe.Braudel is â€Å"inclined to see the European world-economy as having taken shape very early o n. † Indeed he observes â€Å"European expansion from the eleventh century† when it was â€Å"suddenly covered with towns – more than 3,000 in Germany alone. † â€Å"This age marked Europe's true Renaissance. † Furthermore, â€Å"the merchant cities of the Middle Ages all strained to make profits and were shaped by the strain. † Braudel concludes that â€Å"contemporary capitalism has invented nothing. . . . By at least the twelfth century . . . everything seems to have been there in embryo . . .bills of exchange, credit, minted coins, banks, forward selling, public finance, loans, capitalism, colonialism – as well as social disturbances, a sophisticated labour force, class struggles, social oppression, political atrocities. † Braudel also doubts that capitalism was invented in twelfth- or thirteenth-century Venice. â€Å"Genoa seems always to have been, in every age, the capitalist dry par excellence. † Several other Ita lian cities also had capitalist activities earlier than Venice. In all of them, â€Å"money was constantly being invested and reinvested,† and â€Å"ships were capitalist enterprises virtually from the start.† He further notes that â€Å"It is tempting too to give Antwerp the credit for the first steps in industrial capitalism, which was dearly developing here and in other thriving towns of the Low Countries† in the sixteenth century. Moreover, the term â€Å"capitalism† also seems to apply at the most macro-economic level, for â€Å"if today's cycles do in fact have some resemblance to those of the past . . . there is certain continuity between ancient regime and modern economies: rules similar to those governing our present experience may have operated in the past. â€Å"Braudel, however, also cast doubt on the idea that capitalism was invented in Western Europe and then exported to Asia: Everywhere from Egypt to Japan, we shall find genuine capitalis ts, wholesalers, rentiers of trade, and their thousands of auxiliaries, commission agents, brokers, money-changers, and bankers. As for the techniques, possibilities or guarantees of exchange, any of these groups of merchants would stand comparisons with its western equivalents. Braudel avers that â€Å"the rest of the world . . . went through economic experiences resembling those of Europe.† On the other hand, referring to North and West Africa before the Europeans arrived, he writes that â€Å"once more we can observe the profound identity of action between Islam's imperialism and that of the West. † Braudel wants to â€Å"challenge the traditional image† that describes Asiatic traders as â€Å"high-class peddlars. † Moreover, after Braudel writes of Asians taking turns in a monotonous repetition for a thousand years of shifts in economic dominance, he concludes that: â€Å"For all the changes, however, history followed essentially the same course. â⠂¬  If we asked what changes in or after 1500 as per Wallerstein, the answer would be not much.Braudel quotes a contemporary French sea captain writing from the Ganges River in India: â€Å"The high quality of merchandise made here . . . attracts and always will attract a great number of traders who send vessels to every part of the Indies from the Red Sea to China. Here one can see the assembly of nations of Europe and Asia . . . reach perfect agreement or perfect disunity, depending on the self-interest which alone is their guide. † No Europeans, including their Portuguese vanguard, added anything of their own, only the money they derived from the conquest of America.A standard work on Asian trade notes that â€Å"the Portuguese colonial regime, then, did not introduce a single new element into the commerce of southern Asia. . . . The Portuguese colonial regime, built upon war, coercion, and violence, did not at any point signify a stage of ‘higher development' econ omically for Asian trade. The traditional commercial structure continued to exist. † Even Wallerstein recognizes â€Å"an uncomfortable blurring of the distinctiveness of the patterns of the European medieval and modern world†: Many of these [previous] historical systems had what we might call proto-capitalist elements.That is, there often was extensive commodity production. There existed producers and traders who sought profit. There was investment of capital. There was wage-labor. There was Weltanschauungen consonant with capitalism. . . . â€Å"Proto-capitalism† was so widespread one might consider it to be a constitutive element of all the redistributive/tributary world-empires the world has known. . . . For they did have the money and energy at their disposition, and we have seen in the modern world how powerful these weapons can be.Wallerstein's proto-capitalism also negates the uniqueness of his â€Å"modern-world-capitalist-system. † He even acknow ledges â€Å"All the empirical work of the past 50 years on these other systems has tended to reveal that they had much more extensive commodification than previously suspected. † (Wallerstein, 586-87, 613, 575) Thus, Europe's incursion into Asia after 1500 succeeded only after about three centuries, when Ottoman, Moghul, and Qing rule was weakened for other reasons. In the global economy, these and other economies competed with each other until Europe won.Historians should concede that there was no dramatic, or even gradual, change to a capitalist economy, and certainly none beginning in Europe in the sixteenth century. In conclusion it is useful to cite an Indian historian who writes that â€Å"the ceaseless quest of modern historians looking for the ‘origins' and roots of capitalism is not much better than the alchemist's search for the philosopher's stone that transforms base metal into gold. † It is better for historians to abandon the chimera of a uniquely capitalist mode of production emerging in western Europe.It is far more accurate and important to recognize that the fall of the East preceded the rise of the West, and even that is only true if we date the rise of the West after 1800. The West and the East were only parts of a single, age-old, world economic system, within which all of these changes took place, then and now. The historian Leopold von Ranke is known for having pleaded for writing history â€Å"as it really was,† but he also wrote that there is no history but world history. (Andre Gunder Frank, 1994) Reference: Gunder Frank, 1994. The World Economic System in Asia before European Hegemony; The Historian, Vol.56 Dennis O. Flynn, 1991. â€Å"Comparing the Tokugawa Shogunate with Hapsburg Spain: Two Silver-based Empires in a Global Setting,† in The Political Economy of Merchant Empires: State Power and World Trade, 1350-1750, ed. James D. Tracy (Cambridge), 332-359. Jack A. Goldstone, 1991. Revolutions and Rebellions in the Early Modern World (Berkeley); William S. Atwell, â€Å"Some Observations on the ‘Seventeenth Century Crisis' in China and Japan,† Journal of Asian Studies 45, no. 2 Wallerstein, â€Å"The West, Capitalism, and the Modern World-System,† 586-87, 613, 575.

Thursday, January 2, 2020

The Roles of Culture, Subculture, and Social Class in...

Principles of Marketing The Roles of Culture, Subculture and Social Class in Consumer Behavior Introduction The depth and variety of global expansion strategies today is accelerating rapidly as companies historically who have been highly effective in marketing, selling and service look to new nations to continue growing sales and profits. The roles of culture, subcultures and social classes serve as the framework for gaining new access into foreign markets. The effect of cultural distances in the areas of cultures, subcultures and social classes has also led all companies to become more agile and market-driven versus being locked into their own processes and procedures (Moon, Park, 18). Global expansion ahs forced companies to recognize the critically important role culture, subculture and social class all play in the context of planning, executing, monitoring and modifying marketing strategies over time. As there is an abundance of research on how these three aspects of a given nation or region affect marketing strategies, often forcing them to become much more sensitive to regional relig ious and moral priorities and considerations (Lu, Rose, Blodgett, 94). Cultural, subculture and social class are also the boundaries of effective services marketing strategies as well, as each of these areas must be considered in creating a unique value proposition that resonates with trust. The ability to create customer loyalty in a foreign nation begins by understanding andShow MoreRelatedFactors that influence consumer buying behavior1747 Words   |  7 Pagesinfluence consumer buying behavior There are a lot of subjects for marketers to understand in order to get more customers purchasing their companies’ products or brands. Consumer buying behavior is one of the studies that marketers need to understand. 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