Misconceptions In Curtis Keims Mistaking Africa - 1993 Words

There are many misconceptions that have been universally accepted mentioned in Curtis Keim’s book Mistaking Africa, many of which are based on biased and incorrect accounts and are extremely offensive. Three important myths are that Africa is a land of cannibals, it is backward and very uncivilized, and that it is one country where everyone and the climate are the same all over. These will be explained, refuted, and the detriment to the people of Africa will be discussed. Through outdated travel writings, general myths, and false truths many had come to believe the stereotype that many people in Africa practice cannibalism in the past. There is not much, if any, evidence of this but despite this misconception is still believed by some†¦show more content†¦This claim came to symbolize extreme dissimilarity, the more different one was the more likely to be accused of a cannibal or something as horrible this tactic was used by both the Westerners and Africans but mostly the Europeans. There is clearly not substantial evidence for this claim that Africans are or at least were cannibals and yet people widely believed this in the past. Even some modern writers proclaim that cannibalism occurred a lot in pre-colonial Africa. This was due to heavy reliance on nineteenth Century biased accounts of Africa that people used instead of going there to see and listen to oral accounts from the source. These scholars were only in Africa for a short time and could not speak the native language in most cases but their accounts were taken as fact. Also, some of these accounts were outright lies used to sell books or papers as it would be beneficial to write about false accounts like seeing cannibalism so their books were more interesting. An example of this is the Mondague that were written about in scholars’ depictions of Africa when they went during the 1800s. They described them as baby eaters, which was a Voodoo misconception. The problem with this is that the Mondague did not exist, which was discovered when modern scholars did some research outside relying onShow MoreRelatedThe Challenges Of Stereotypes Within Africa1513 Words   |  7 PagesThe Challenges of Stereotypes within Africa Between America and other European nations, stereotypes and misrepresentations have ultimately plagued the continent of Africa. To every side there is often another story, yet unfortunately for the many countries of Africa, they are ultimately victimized and suffer through further oppression. According to Curtis Keim’s book Mistaking Africa, Keim suggests that Africa is essentially under the public microscope, it tends to be scrutinized, and compared to

Quotes From the Novel Great Expectations

We can learn a bit more about the life and experiences of Charles Dickens by reading his semi-autobiographical novel, Great Expectations. Of course, the facts are immersed in fiction, which is part of what makes the novel such a masterpiece. The novel follows life and misadventures of Pip, the orphaned protagonist from his encounter with an escaped convict as a child to  his eventual happy ever after with the woman he loves. The novel has been popular since its original serialized publication in 1860. Great Expectations Quotes Now, I return to this young fellow. And the communication I have got to make is, that he has great expectations.Take another glass of wine, and excuse my mentioning that society as a body does not expect one to be so strictly conscientious in emptying ones glass, as to turn it bottom upwards with the rim on ones nose.Mrs. Joe was a very clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite art of making her cleanliness more uncomfortable and unacceptable than dirt itself.It was understood that nothing of a tender nature could possibly be confided to old Barley, by reason of his being totally unequal to the consideration of any subject more psychological than gout, rum, and pursers stores.That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would neve r have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.I never had one hours happiness in her society, and yet my mind all round the four-and-twenty hours was harping on the happiness of having her with me unto death.So now, as an infallible way of making little ease great ease, I began to contract a quantity of debt.It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. Theres no better rule.Some medical beast had revived tar-water in those days as a fine medicine, and Mrs. Joe always kept a supply of it in the cupboard; having a belief in its virtues correspondent to its nastiness. At the best of times, so much of this elixir was administered to me as a choice restorative, that I was conscious of going about, smelling like a new fence.We spent as much money as we could, and got as little for it as people could make up thei r minds to give us. We were always more or less miserable, and most of our acquaintance were in the same condition. There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the best of my belief, our case was in the last aspect a rather common one.All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretenses did I cheat myself. Surely a curious thing. That I should innocently take a bad half-crown of somebody elses manufacture, is reasonable enough; but that I should knowingly reckon the spurious coin of my own make, as good money!In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of the earth, overlying our hard hearts.So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people who m we most despise.I was always treated as if I had insisted on being born, in opposition to the dictates of reason, religion, and morality, and against the dissuading arguments of my best friends.And could I look upon her without compassion, seeing her punishment in the ruin she was, in her profound unfitness for this earth on which she was placed, in the vanity of sorrow which had become a master mania, like the vanity of penitence, the vanity of remorse, the vanity of unworthiness, and other monstrous vanities that have been curses in this world? Source All Quotes - Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

Note-Taking Method Free Essays

Any assignment that requires you to do research, will require you to take notes. The notetaking method you adopt is purely a personal decision. With the development of technology, there are more different methods used to take notes. We will write a custom essay sample on Note-Taking Method or any similar topic only for you Order Now In term of the media people applys, we can discuss three types of methods: handwriting, electronic note-taking, and copying materials. The handwriting method is a traditional way which takes much time and requires the audience listen to the speaker carefully. When writing the notes word by word on the spot, the audience may get much pressure and feel more tired, it demands them to focus on every words the speaker said, then pick up the points to write down. But th audience may learn more useful information at the same time, the efficiency is much higher. For example, the teacher is giving a lesson in the classroom, he lists some important points, and the students should listen to the teacher carefully, handwriting the notes. Electronic method is a new way coming to the note-taking world with the help of technology, including recording, taking photos, and so on. Pens, notebooks are coming to be replaced by voice recorders, camera, MP3, mobile phone and other electronic products. By this way, what the audience need to do is just recording in the beginning of the lecture, or take photos about some points in the blackboard and the Powerpoint. It reduces the burden of audience, and more convenient. However, it is difficult to require the audience to listen to the speaker carefully, they don’t need to grasp any points, they can do other things at the same time, just remember taking their electronic goods. A company invites an expert to give a lecture to its employees, he talks about some important thesis. The employee may record this speech and take some photos, which is enough for most of them. Copying materials means the audience may do nothing in the lecture, but they copy the speaker’s materials, or other audience’s notes after the lecture. They may choose to just listen to the speaker carefully, or pay litter attention to the whole lecture. This way is gradually adopted by some audience, especially when the lecture is tedious in their mind. There is litter burden for the audience, but also less gains. Because they may lose some important points, and the opportunity to experience with the speaker. From what we have discussed above, we may get a result is: no pains, on gains. We can’t deny the benefits brought by the technology, but we should learn to how to exploit them in right way. I prefer to handwrite notes, because I think it can motivate the audience to listen to the lecture carefully and learn how to pick up points. How to cite Note-Taking Method, Essay examples

Business Outsourcing Functions Management †Myassignmemthelp.Com

Question: Discuss About The Business Outsourcing Functions Management? Answer: Introduction: Outsourcing is the process in which a company came into contract with another third party company to perform their function that can be done in the company itself. Most of the companies are using this process so that they can make their focus on other core activities of the company that needs more attention (Arias-Aranda, Bustinza and Barrales-Molina, 2011). Outsourcing results in contract between the two companies. The one company pays the other company to perform one of their functions. The process of outsourcing can only be successful if both the companies and the parties get ready to have mutual consent. There are many processes that can be outsourced which are not so important to be conducted in-house. Thus outsourcing those functions helps the company to invest their time and money solely on the activities that provides them large profit. Project objective: The major objective of this project is to analyse the advantages and disadvantages of business outsourcing functions. This is because outsourcing not only provides benefits but can also be harmful for the companies. Understanding the basic advantages and disadvantages from outsourcing helps the company to take better decisions. This study focuses on analysing the factors that support outsource and factors that are negative for outsourcing. Project scope: This study helps in understanding the basic concept of outsourcing and the reasons behind the same. This study can also provide the information about the factors that causes the organization to outsource some of their functions along with its advantages and disadvantages. The scope of the project is that the study can be used by the companies to make their outsourcing decisions by reducing its harmful effects an also allow the readers to analyse the disadvantages before outsourcing. Literature review: Outsourcing has become the major trends in the companies these days. This is the technique that helps the companies to transfer one of their functions to another company. This has helped in generating job opportunities or the people at large scale. Human resource is the major function that has been outsourced in most of the companies these days. This is because it is not the core activity of the organization (Lee and Choi, 2011). There are other functions that can be outsourced such as accounting functions, customer support functions; marketing functions etc. It is required by the company to ensure that the company they are choosing for outsourcing their function should be reliable. The company should contact the prior clients of that outsource company to take the reviews. Making the legal contract is another important requirement in order to have legal relationship with the outsourced firm. This is because legal interaction between the companies binds both the companies with some ob ligations that cannot be breached by them and no company can exploit each other. A company should contact all the companies that outsource the area that the company is looking for. This is to identify the availability of the companies. This information helps the company to bargain with the outsourcing firms. Investigation should be conducted for the outsourcing company so that any flaws of the company can be identified. The contracts should be made with all the clauses that are required (Gewald and Dibbern, 2009). Outsourcing is the tool that is not only about legal contract between the companies, but it also involves trust and information sharing among the companies who came into contract. This relationship can be beneficial for the both the organizations. Some of the advantages of outsourcing the business functions are: (Appendix 1) Reduction of cost: If any company outsource any of the function, they get specialists to work from them. Keeping those specialists becomes costly for them in their own companies because they may not be required every time. Hiring them can be expensive for the firm. Outsourcing firms can be used for the purposes as and when required. This reduces the operating cost of the company (Lin, Pervan and McDermid, 2007). The outsourcing firms are comparatively cheaper as well. The reason behind the low cost of outsourcing organizations is economies of scale. As the outsourcing firm conducts the single operation at high scale thus per unit cost of operations becomes low. Concentration on core activities: every organization has some core activities that directly provide them profit. Outsourcing allows the organization to concentrate on those core activities. The organizations outsource some of the support activities to the specialist third party organizations and provide their full concentration on the major activities and functions. This helped them to improve their core activities so that they can earn more revenue (Kremic, Icmeli Tukel and Rom, 2006). The companies have to divide their time and money to all the activities of the company. If one or more activities can be outsourced than the main activities or functions of the company can be prioritize. Increased flexibility: Removal of the support activity departments from the company results in conversion of fixed cost into variable cost. Flexibility can be increased in the organization such that the services from the outsourcing organization can be availed according to the demand. It is easier to close down the contract then to close down the whole department from the company. It also helps in cist saving because it is not necessary that all the services or the functions of the company are active whole year (Belcourt, 2006). Suppose if the company needs a legal advice from the advisor than it is not necessary for the fir to hire a legal advisor in the company but can contact the legal counsellor at the time of requirement. This saves the money of the company as it needs not to give salary to the legal advisor the whole year. Quality service: As discussed that the outsource firm are specialists in their functions. Thus, outsourcing one of the functions to the third party firm provides quality services to the companies. On the other hand, if the company conduct that operation in their own firm then it requires them to have knowledge about that function along with the person or the employees to handle such functions. It may be possible that they fails to hire such efficient human resource and the function get affected. Outsourcing not only provides benefits to the companies but some of the harmful effects are also faced by the companies because of outsourcing. This is because the whole function is being handover to the different company and it is very important to identify the There are many disadvantages of outsourcing the functions as well. Some of them are discussed below: Loss of jobs: As the company outsource one of its functions that mean the people or the employees who were earlier working on that function has to leave their jobs. This results in bad image of the company as the employees cannot trust the company for job security (Harland, Knight, Lamming and Walker, 2005). This also leads to bad publicity of the company and can increase the employee turnover as the employee cannot fell safe at the company. Quality issues: As far as the companys internal functions are considered, it has been analysed that these functions can be evaluated and monitored by the companys management time to time. But, these functions if outsourced from another company then the company does not have the access to monitor the same frequently. Thus, the contract of outsourcing should be made with the policies that allow the company to monitor the working of the third party timely. Customer resistance: it is very difficult to rely on third party for some kind of work such as customer support. Most of the companies outsource their customer support function to third party (Harland, Knight, Lamming and Walker, 2005). This may lead to issues such as the executive does not understand the foreign access or the language. Customers may resist dealing with the third party and needs specialists to resolve the issue. Loss security: It is the major risk that the company faces in order to outsource the function. This is because outsourcing also requires the company to share some of their private information to the third party company. Sharing of information is a biggest threat to the loss of security. It is required by the company to have legal contract with the security clauses that the company can take any legal action if the third company practice any of the unethical and illegal action by leaking the private information or sharing it to any other competitors. Ethical concerns: it is required by the company to have ethical relationship with the third party company. Even the third party company also has to maintain such ethical relationship with the company. This can be a major risk when a company comes in contract with the outsource firm. Difficult to reverse: If a function of the company is outsourced, it becomes very difficult for the company to establish it back in-house in the company. This is because breaching or breaking the contract from the outsourcing firm requires cost and implementing the process again in the organization also requires large amount of cost (Mani, Barua and Whinston, 2010). Reversing the outsourced process requires the company to invest a lot in hiring, establishing system, training etc. as all the systems and the functions in the organizations are inked with each other thus implementing a new function back to the company results in disturbance to all the other function as well. Outsourcing affects the company in both the positive as well as negative way. It is very difficult to deal with such situations. The companies have to take many initiatives to have secure outsourcing because the thus party that is selected outsource the function can misuse the information provides to them in order to make the function effective and efficient. Outsourcing at the one hand helps the company to reduce its cost on the other hand raise many risks of security. Any information if released or leaked by the third party may results in great harm to the company. Thus making the legal contract is a very important part of this process. Conclusion: It has been concluded from the above discussion that outsourcing is the process used by the company in order to save the cost of extra activities that can be outsourced frim another company which is specialised in the same area. This helps the company to reduce its cost and get efficient work from the specialised people. It also helps the company to have flexibility of using the services. The company can use the service at the time of requirement and pay according to that. there are some other disadvantages of outsourcing functions of business such as focus on the core and major functions of the company, reduction in the overall cost, saving time and energy, etc. along with all these advantages, the company which outsources their functions also have to deal with some of the disadvantages and risks. The major risk is security. This is because the company has to share their internal information with third party thus trust is the major element of outsourcing relationship. Some of the ot her disadvantages that the company faces are ethical issues, legal breaching of the contract, inefficient working of the third party, leak of information, loss of trust by the employees, lack of monitoring etc. References: Arias-Aranda, D., Bustinza, O.F. and Barrales-Molina, V., 2011. Operations flexibility and outsourcing benefits: an empirical study in service firms.The Service Industries Journal,31(11), pp.1849-1870. Lee, J.N. and Choi, B., 2011. Effects of initial and ongoing trust in IT outsourcing: A bilateral perspective.Information Management,48(2), pp.96-105. Gewald, H. and Dibbern, J., 2009. Risks and benefits of business process outsourcing: A study of transaction services in the German banking industry.Information Management,46(4), pp.249-257. Lin, C., Pervan, G. and McDermid, D., 2007. Issues and recommendations in evaluating and managing the benefits of public sector IS/IT outsourcing.Information Technology People,20(2), pp.161-183. Kremic, T., Icmeli Tukel, O. and Rom, W.O., 2006. Outsourcing decision support: a survey of benefits, risks, and decision factors.Supply Chain Management: an international journal,11(6), pp.467-482. Belcourt, M., 2006. OutsourcingThe benefits and the risks.Human resource management review,16(2), pp.269-279. Harland, C., Knight, L., Lamming, R. and Walker, H., 2005. Outsourcing: assessing the risks and benefits for organisations, sectors and nations.International Journal of Operations Production Management,25(9), pp.831-850. Mani, D., Barua, A. and Whinston, A., 2010. An empirical analysis of the impact of information capabilities design on business process outsourcing performance.Mis Quarterly, pp.39-62.