Assessing The Importance Of Ratios Example For Free - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 18 Words: 5455 Downloads: 9 Date added: 2017/06/26 Category Finance Essay Type Analytical essay Did you like this example? Price earnings ratio (P/E ratio) is the ratio between market price per equity share and earnings per share. Earnings per share is calculated by dividing the net profit after taxes and preference dividend by the total number of equity shares. Earnings per share (EPS) is the portion of a companys profit allocated to each outstanding share of common stock. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Assessing The Importance Of Ratios Example For Free" essay for you Create order Note that EPS can be from the last four quarters (trailing P/E) or the sum of the last two actual quarters and the estimates of the next two quarters, but it is important to note that the P/E ratio is a measure of investors expectations as to future earnings and not for current earnings. In many cases, the ratio of a stock price to earnings per share or the price which must be paid for each pound of the firms earnings is used as basis for comparing the investment characteristics of different shares. A share price on its own tells us little or nothing about its investment value. Two companies with identical prospects, assets and aggregate equity value may have different share prices quite simply because one firm has fewer shares outstanding than the other. This may be the result of a company having fewer shares issued at a higher price than the other or it may mean that a company paid out fewer dividends in order to finance its past growth through retentions, while the other company p aid out higher dividends and raised capital by issuing more shares to fund its investment programmes. In other words, two identical companies can have different prices as a result of the number of shares outstanding. Since EPS and share prices can be affected by the number of shares outstanding P/E will neutralize the impact of these differences. By dividing the stock price by earnings per share a simple way has been found of standardizing share prices that otherwise cannot be meaningfully compared. For example, the Barclays PLC which is a major global financial services provider is currently trading (Po) at 315p a share and the Earnings per share expected in the next four quarters (E1) are 34.99p per share. The P/E ratio for the stock of Barclays PLC will be equal to 9 times (315p/34.99p). In our case, which Barclays PLC is currently trading at a multiple (P/E) of 9 times, the interpretation is that an investor is willing to pay 9 pounds for each pound of current earnings. ) a) ii) In order to identify and briefly discuss the theoretical determinants of P/E ratio the Gordon growth model will be utilized. The Gordon growth model, named after its inventor Myron Gordon, makes the dividend valuation model easier to use by combining it with additional assumptions, which will be given later in our discussion. Shares are valued on the basis of the payoffs which they are expected to generate for investors. In principle the value of the payoff expected from holding a share is simply the present value of the cash flows anticipated by investors. What investors expect to get out of any share they hold are dividends (Dt) and the proceeds (PN) from the sale of the share at the end of the planned holding period (N). The present value of the expected cash flows (the dividends expected and the proceeds from the sale) is determined by using a discount rate which is equivalent to the rate of return which investors can earn on investments in other shares of similar risk (r). The value of the share (Po) may be determined by using a model of the following nature: A simple valuation equation can also be developed for the shares of a firm that retains some of its earnings to finance investment as long as its assets, earnings and dividends can be expected to grow at a constant rate (g). This produces the following model, referred as the Gordon Model (see Gordon, 1959).- where D1 = D0 (1+g) This model suggests that the price of share is a function of the dividend expected in the next period (D1), the rate of growth of dividends (g) and the discount rate (r). By specifying the dividend, in terms of earnings per share (E1), the retention ratio (b) and the payout ratio (1-b) the above model can be demonstrated as below: Some insights into why price-earnings ratios can be expected to vary from firm to firm can be derived form a consideration of the previous model. This particular model suggests that the prospective P/E ratio will be higher the lower t he discount rate (r), the greater the expected rate of growth (g), and the lower the retention ratio (b). In the case that the expected growth rate (g) is the same as the historical growth the prospective P/E ratio can be adjusted to obtain a ratio based on the last reported earnings: At first sight it is evident that there is an inverse relationship between the P/E ratio and the retention ratio (b), but this cannot be true since firms can not influence their P/E ratios by manipulating their retention ratios. Stockholders will pay more per pound of earnings the greater the proportion of earnings paid out in dividends all else being equal, but any reduction in retention will lead to a fall in investment, which will lead to a decrease in the expected rate of growth of dividends. The constant growth model has become the most widely employed theoretical model because of its simplicity. The simplicity of the constant growth model is a reflection of the assumptions on which the mode l is based, and the awareness of these assumptions is essential for the recognition of its weaknesses and strengths. It is assumed that: all investment is financed from retentions and a constant proportion of earnings is retained in each time period; the rate of return on the firms investments is constant over time, as the rate of return on existing assets; and the cash flow produced from investments is constant in perpetuity. QUESTION 2 a) iii) The differences in P/E ratios reported in the financial press cannot all be explained by the determinants of the P/E ratios identified by the valuation models. For example, one of the reasons for those differences can be the differences in the accounting methods employed by firms. The valuation models are based on an idealised notion of expected earnings per share; the firms expected cash flows minus an allowance for depreciation, calculated on an economic basis, while observed P/E ratios, reflect more pragmatic definitions of earnings. It is well known that differences in accounting methods have a significant impact on earnings per share but do not have any impact on share prices (the market sees through the effect of accounting differences). Generally, differences in earnings per share arise from differences in accounting methods which lead in differences in reported P/E ratios. Those firms employing depreciation policies with high charges have lower reported earnings per share ( since depreciation is charged against revenues as an operating expense) and higher price earnings ratios than firms using straight line depreciation. Another factor that might influence the value of the companys reported P/E ratio is transitory changes in earnings. Beaver and Morse (1978) at a later study realised that the observed spread of P/E can be explained by the difference between equilibrium and actual earnings. Changes in earnings which are of temporary nature will not lead to proportionate change in the share price but to higher P/E ratio if negative transitory earnings occur and lower P/E ratio if positive transitory earnings occur. As a result, firms with low earnings will have high P/E ratios, without being growth firms at all. QUESTION 2 b) The sample of shares chosen to discuss and explain the possible reasons for the differences in the reported price-earnings ratio belong to the banks operating in the United Kingdom. It is important to choose companies that are in the same industry since this is the only way that P/E ratio analysis can have any significant comparable meaning. The data gathered are presented in the table below: BANK SHARE PRICE EPS P/E HSBC 662.7p 63.43p 10.4 times Royal Bank of Scotland Group 44.66p 3.4p 13.1 times Lloyds Banking Group 62.88p 6.10p 10.3 times Barclays 315p 34.99p 9 times Price earnings ratios were calculated based on the companies current share price and the estimated earnings per share for year 2011. P/E ratios calculated this way are known as forward price earnings ratios. Forward P/E ratios can give investors a more meaningful result than do trailing P/E ratios that are calculated by dividing the current share price by the trailing earnings per share for the last 12 months. Trailing P/E ratio is a historic measure while forward P/E is more useful and informative. After all, it is the future that counts; you are paying what the company will do in the future rather than what the company did in the past. Another reason that forward P/E ratios are used in this case is that the P/E for Lloyds could not be calculated by using EPS of the past 12 months because the firm had a bad year. Lloyds suffered a loss of 0.5p per share and calculation of P/E based on this figure would give a meaningless result. The figures presented at the table above suggest that the market has more confidence in the ability of RBS to continue increasing its earnings, but at the other side it believes the outlook for Barclays is unpromising. A high P/E ratio indicates that investors are paying more for each unit of earnings, so the stock is more expensive compared to those stock with low P/E ratios. The P/E ratio is co mmonly used to assess the level of confidence investors have in a company. It represents the markets view of the companys growth potential. A high price-earnings ratio indicates that investors have a high level of confidence in a companys future prospects. As we can see from the table presented, RBS has the highest price-earnings ratio, indicating that investors of the Banking sector have a high level of confidence in the companys growth potential prospects, it might equally be considered to be overvalued depending on prevailing market circumstances. RBS has a P/E ratio of about 13, implying that investors are currently willing to pay  £13 for every pound of earnings RBS generates. Similarly, Barclays P/E ratio of around 9 implies that investors are currently willing to pay 9 pounds for each pound Barclay makes. For a different perspective, try flipping the P/E ratio to an E/P ratio, commonly referred to as the earning yield. Like a yield on a bond, this number shows a companys annual earnings as a proportion of its market value. Buying one share of RBS at 44.66p, with EPS 3.4p equates to an earnings yield of 7.6% (3.4p divided by 44.66p). For Barclays, the earning yield is 11.1%, because each share, currently trading at 315p is expected to generate a 34.99p in earnings per share. In long run, Barclays investors theoretically should earn a better rate of return than RBS investors for each pound invested. Yet the true outcomes could be different. The question that arises is whether the difference in P/E ratios alone makes one company a better investment than the other. Fundamental problems exist with the P/E ratio. First, the share price (P) doesnt consider debt since it is the equity price of a business. That is fine with companies without debt, like Google or Microsoft but not for the companies chosen. For instance, business with a market cap of  £5 billion, with  £1 million of net debt on the balance sheet, has an enterprise value of  £6 billio n. If this company earns  £500 million in profit in a given year, the P/E ratio will be 10; but in reality, investors should see 12. The logic embodied in the conventional wisdom that high P/E ratios are good and low P/E ratios bad, is given by the dividend growth rate equation at which dividends (D) is expressed in terms of EPS (E) and retention ratio (b). The firms required rate of return r, can be given as follows: where i is the firms expected rate of return on future investments. From this equation is obvious that for any given r and b, the smaller the fraction [E1/P0] is, the larger i must be. Since [E1/P0] is the inverse of the P/E ratio, a small [E1/P0] corresponds to a high P/E ratio. Therefore, all else being equal, the higher the P/E ratio, the higher must be the expected rate of return on future investments; or, more simply, a high P/E ratio such as RBSs corresponds to good future investment opportunities, while Barclays with the lowest P/E ratio doesnt corres pond to good future investment opportunities. Remember the P/E ratios are calculated based on estimated (average) earnings per share. But actual values almost never equal the average. A firm can have a very high P/E ratio during a bad year and a very low during a good year, yet in both cases, the firm may not have changed fundamentally. A high P/E ratio of 13.1 times for RBS is the result of low earnings (3.4p) rather than high expected rate of return on future investment. Note that RBS with the smallest share value (44.66), has a P/E ratio that is the highest due to very low EPS, the smallest of all companies. The conventional wisdom about P/E ratio can be altered also by the possibility that earnings are not reflecting the actual outcome. For example, a land sold would create large profits due to the large difference between its historic cost listed on its balance sheet and the current market value. Or, the firm recognizing a bad debt that has existed for several years. Another possibility that can alter the conclusions about P/E ratios is changes in the firms accounting procedures. For example, a change of how the firm estimates its inventory, from the First-in-First-out basis (FIFO) to the Last-in-First-out basis (LIFO), lead to a decrease of the firms reported earnings in times of inflation. A change in the measure of earnings can cause a change in the P/E ratio that really indicates nothing new about the value of the firm. It can also be suggested that risk will influence the P/E ratio to the direction of influence needs careful consideration. Responsible for differences between the reported P/E ratios is also the expected growth and the way it depends in part on the level of investment and in part on the profitability of the investment. Specifically, one can conclude that a lot more information is needed than just the P/E ratio to estimate the value of a share of stock. QUESTION 3: Rights Issues QUESTION 3) a) i) Almost all quoted companies in UK that wish to raise money do so by means of a right issue. A right issue offers existing stockholders the right to buy new shares in proportion to their existing holdings. Rights issues allow stockholders to maintain their interest or proportionate share, in the ownership of the company, by ensuring that new shareholders are not brought in the company to the disadvantage of existing shareholders. Existing shareholders can exercise or sell their rights to other investors who would like to subscribe to the issue. Specifically, RBS wish to raise  £12 billion of new equity capital and will do so by means of a rights issue. RBS shareholders are invited to subscribe to the right issue with an entitlement of 11 new shares for every existing 18 shares they hold at an issue price (PS) of 200p. The subscription price the price of the new shares is pitched below the current market price of 372.5p (P0). The discount offered as an inducement to shareholde rs to subscribe to the new issue is equal to approximate 46.31% (d). The 200p subscription price is calculated as given below: Once RBS decided on the level of funds (F) to be raised and the subscription price (PS), the number of new shares (ÃÆ'Ã… ½Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ N) to be issued can be calculated quite easily:  £ 12 bil /  £ 2 =  £ 6 billion of shares And once the number of new shares to be issued is known, the number of shares [N(R)] which an investor must hold to be granted one right can be calculated: The number of shares outstanding prior to the right issue (N0) must also be calculated in order to determine the ex-rights price. The determination is given below: The ex-rights price will be a weighted average of the pre-issue price and the subscription price: the weights being given by the ratios of the number of pre-issue shares to the total number shares outstanding following the issue: So,  £3.07 The market value of a right [V(R)] depends on the difference between the subscription price (PS) and the expected price of the share following the new issue (PX).  £1.07 QUESTION 3 a) ii) Rights issues are made at a discount, partly to make them look attractive and plus encourage stakeholders to subscribe, and partly against the risk of a fall in the market price during the offer period. Whether to invest in the rights or to sell them is the best choice for an investor will be analyzed furthermore. Assuming that a shareholder owns 900 shares of RBS, through the rights issue he can buy 550 shares at 200p (11 new shares for every 18 existing). Wealth Effects: the initial wealth with 900 shares at value P0 =  £3.72 is: Initial Wealth = 900 *  £3.725 Invest in the rights: This will happen only if the shareholder has the resources to acquire the additional shares and believes this is the best way to invest his money. Moreover a shareholder may invest in the rights because there are bi stamp or duty brokers commissions payable, and the desire to maintain ones existing share of voting power. Value of new investment =  £3,352.5 +  £1,100 =  £4,45 2.5 The value of investment at the ex-rights price will be: Value of investment at PX = (900+550 shares) *  £3.07 =  £4,452.5 Thus, the impact on the shareholders wealth will be  £0. Sell the rights This will happen if the shareholder wants to maintain his existing investment in the company in value terms. In the beginning the shareholder will lose from the fall of the share but he will cover from the loss through selling the rights. If the shareholder sells the rights, the value of his share at the ex-rights price will be: Value of shares at PX = 900 shares *  £3.07 =  £2,763 The declines in the shareholders wealth will be: Decline in shareholders wealth =  £3,352.5 - £2,763 =  £ 589.5 The amount that the shareholder will acquire from the sale of the right at VR =  £1.07 will be: Value from sale of the right = 550 shares *  £1.07 =  £589.5 Thus, the impact on the shareholders wealth will be  £0 From the above analysis i t is obvious that the shareholder wealth remains unchanged after the rights issue ether if e invests in the rights or sells the rights. The wealth of the shareholder will change only when the new issue leads to the re-appraisal of the firms value. This happens because issue of new shares at a discount leads to the fall in the value of existing shares thereby offsetting the value of the right. QUESTION 3) c) The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) announced a rights issue in order to raise  £12 billion, which is considered the largest UK equity issue at that time. Under the terms of the rights issue, 11 new shares will be offered to existing shareholders for every 18 shares they hold. The subscription price is pitched well below the current market price of 372.5p. The discount offered as and inducement to shareholders to subscribe to the new issue is equal to 46.13%, well above the conventional level o f 15 to 20 per cent. The discount is pitched at this level in order to assure that the subscription price of 200p [372.5 (1-1.46310)] will remain below the market price over the offered period. The size of the typical discount drifted upward since the stock market at that time became more volatile and because of the size of funds needed to be raised. At first sight it might appear that the rights issue mentioned above is an attractive proposition for shareholders. The right issue allows th e shareholders to increase their holdings of shares in the company at a discounted price, but a closer look at the mechanics of a rights issue reveals that it leaves the wealth of the shareholder unchanged, because the value of the existing shares falls, and this fall offsets the gains provided by the subscription. If the market price of the shares of RBS remains sufficiently above the subscription price of 200p the issue is likely to be successful, otherwise underwriters guarantee to take up any shares which the shareholders decline to acquire. Specifically, in the case of RBS, the bank agreed with its lead banks that fees would be 1.75 per cent of the proceeds of the average issue. These investment banks that lead the issue will only absorb some of the risk since most of it is passed onto the sub-underwriters of other merchant banks and institutional investors such as insurance companies for a fee of 1%. The question that arises is whether the company will be obtaining value fo r money for the underwriters fee of 1.75 per cent of the proceeds of the issue. In later study, Marsh (1980) found out that underwriting is highly profitable on an ex post basis. In 671 rights issues, only 35 led to losses with an average loss of 4.2%. In the case of RBS, the underwriters were left with unsold shares of less than 5 per cent since 95.11 percent of the shares offered had been taken by the investors. The remaining 299.4m shares were sold at profit by the underwriters, at a price of 230p a share, raising an additional  £688.6m (299.4 m shares times  £2.3p) As Merret, Howe and Newbould (1967) comment in one of their first studies, the underwriting charges in the case of rights issues seems somewhat excessive for the minimal risks actually borne bye the underwriters. To incorporate the effects of risk mentioned above the underwriting contract should be viewed as a put option (Marsh 1980). RBS, the issuing firm is in the same position as an investor holding a put op tion, while the underwriter of the right issue is considered as the writer of a put option. The potential losses or gains of the underwriter are equal to the potential gains and losses of the issuing firm. Marsh found that the cost of underwriting produced an average excess return to the underwriters of 0.7 percent and only in 14% out of 539 underwritten issues the value of the put option element of the underwriting agreement appears to be greater than the fees charged. It seems logical to conclude that underwriting fees are used to compensate for other services provided by the merchant banks, for which explicit charge is not being made. Underwriting cannot be considered too expensive if this is the case. The profit and loss associated with an underwriting agreement as a function of the share price are illustrated in the figures below: (a) PROFIT LOSS FOR RBS (b) PROFIT LOSS FOR UNDERWRITERS UNDERWRITING FEE (+) profit QUESTION 3) d) Alex Porter of Collins Stewart views that investors should take up the rights offered by RBS because buying shares at 200p is incredibly cheap since the 2009 estimated earnings per share of 37p and a price-earnings of 9 indicate that the price of share will be raised to 333p (374p x 9). RBS rights issue seems as an attractive proposition for shareholders since they are given the right to subscribe to additional shares at a discount above the conventional level of 15% to 20%. On the other hand, RBS has employed a large price discount (46.31%) and faces the risk of the dilution of earnings, dividends and assets. The lower the subscription price the larger the number of shares that must be sold in order to raise the fund required by the company. In the case of RBS, 6 billion shares must be issued in order to raise  £12 bil of equity capital. There is a fear that the increased claims of the firms earnings, dividends and assets will lead the stock market to react adversely to this dil ution. An adverse reaction implies that the investors are unable to differentiate between nominal and real changes and that the stock market is inefficient. The fall in earnings per share, as more shares have to be issued to raise the funds required, will be matched by the fall in share price. The fall in share price will be compensated by the increase in the number of shares, leaving the earnings yield of the stockholders overall stake in the company unchanged. As a conclusion I believe that Porters statement is misleading and creates a misunderstanding, since it implies a share price of 333p which is far greater than the expected ex-rights price of 307p calculated. The belief that the price of share will have a future value of 333p is very optimistic since the financial crisis of 2007 is considered by most economists the worst financial crisis since the great Depression to the 1930s. There is a fear that the European banking system may collapse as did large financial institutio ns in the United States. Specifically, S P no longer considers the UK banking sector to be one of the lowest risk and secure banking systems because of the countrys weak economic environment, the reputational damage experienced by the banking industry, and high dependence on state support programs. The risk profile of UK banks is affected by anticipated system-wide, domestic non-performing and impaired loans that will remain high throughout 2009 and 2010, linked to high levels of household and corporate debt. The uncertainty surrounding the banking industry must be taken into consideration in analyzing the statement of Porter which is in my opinion very optimistic. One, before deciding buying RBS shares offered at 200p, should consider whether RBS will remain in the following years, structurally strong, and a business that will continue making profits under the conditions discussed above. QUESTION 4: Options QUESTION 4) a) An option gives the holder the right to buy or sell on asset by a certain date for a certain price. The option that gives the holder the right to buy is called call option and the one that gives the holder the right to sell is called put option. The price in the contract is known as the exercise or strike price (x), and the date in the contract is known as the expiration, expiry or maturity date. The fact that distinguishes options from other contracts (futures of forwards) is that the holder does not have to exercise the right that the option gives him. For an option contract an investor must pay an up-front price, known as the option premium (c). In the specific question we are asked to explain why call option traded on Marks Spencer shares are trading in November than those trading in September. There are many factors that influence stock option prices, and the most important are given below: The current stock price (S0) The strike price (x) The time to expiratio n (T) The volatility of the stock price (ÃÆ' Ãƒâ€ Ã¢â‚¬â„¢) The risk-free rate (r) The dividends expected during the life of the option Specifically in order to give an adequate answer to the question involved, we will discuss what happens to the call option prices of Marks Spencer when one of these factors changes (the time to expiration) while the others remain fixed. Options are referred to as in the money, at the money or out of the money. A call option is in the money when sk, at the money when s=k, and out of the money when sk. Clearly the option will be exercised when it is in the money and the payoff will be the amount by which the stock price exceeds the strike price (s-x0), which is called the intrinsic value of an option. As the stock price increases, than call option becomes more valuable. Therefore the longer the time that a call has to run to maturity, the greater the scope for the price to rise above the exercise price. The probability to notice bi g variation between the share price at expiration and the strike price is higher, the longer the maturity period of the option. Another important element is that in call options there is a limit to what can be lost which is the call premium while the gains are unlimited. In other words, gains and losses are not symmetrically distributed for a call option. Although European call options usually become more valuable as the time to expiration increases, this is not always the case. Consider two European call options on a stock: one with an expiration date in one month, the other with expiration date in two months. If a very large dividend is expected in six weeks, this expected dividend will cause the stock price to decline, so that the short-life option could be worth more than the long-life option. QUESTION 4) b) A straddle is an option strategy that involves taking a position in both calls and puts on the same stock. Specifically, in a straddle, an investor buys a call and a put option which have the same exercise price and expiration date. When the share price at the time of expiration (ST) is greater than the strike price (x), the call option is exercised. The put option is exercised when the strike price (x) is greater than the stock price (ST). The exercise price of 210p has a call premium in November equal to 24.5 (C0) and a put premium equal to 22 (P0). The amount paid from the investor for this specific combination called straddle will be equal to: C0 + P0 = 24.5 + 22 = 46.5 The profit pattern is shown in the following table: Action ST CFTfrom Call CFTfrom Pull P/L CF0+CFT Exercise Put 130 0 (210-130)-46.5 33.5 Exercise Put 163.5 0 (210-163.5)-46.5 0 Exercise Neither 210 0 0 (46.5) Exercise Call 256.5 (256.5-210)-46.5 0 0 Exercise Call 290 (290-210)-46.5 0 33.5 Long Straddle ST This specific long straddle strategy will yield a profit if ST is above the upper breakeven point of 256.5 and below the lower breakeven point of 163.5. Between the two breakeven points (16.5, 256.5) the specific strategy will yield loss with a maximum value of 46.5. An investor might consider worthwhile to invest in a straddle if he believes that there are likely to be big movements in the stock price, and these beliefs must be different from most of the other investors. A straddle seems a natural trading strategy in the case that a big move is expected in the companys stock price because there is a takeover bid for the company or the outcome of a major lawsuit involving the company is about to be announced. In other words, someone may take a long straddle position if he thinks the market is highly volatile, but does not know in which direction it is going to move. This position is a limited risk a purchaser of a stradd le may lose the cost of both options but there is an unlimited profit potential. In contrast, a short straddle position is highly risky because the potential loss is unlimited, while profitability is limited to the premium gained by the initial sale of the options since short straddle is a strategy that involves a simultaneously sell of a put and call option. QUESTION 4) c) A zero sum game is one where for every winner you must also have a loser. In other words for every person who turns a profit someone else must suffer a corresponding loss. Financial markets offer many examples of zero sum games. For example the writer of an option can only gain what the holder loses and vise-versa. Specifically, the profit of the writer is a mirror image of the holders loss. This situation is given in the following diagram: Profit graph for a call writer and investor X When the share price at expiration (ST) is lower than the exercise price (x), the call option will not be exercised by the investor. The investor of the particular option will suffer a loss equal to the call premium (-c). This particular loss will be the profit to the writer of the call option (+c). On the other hand, if the exercise price (x) is not above the share price at expiration the profit of the investor [ST (x+c)] will be the loss of the writer [(x+c)-ST]. All the above are summ arized below: Share price Investor Writer Both PL STX -C0 +C0 Æ STX ST-(X+C) [-ST+(X+C)] Æ

Inclusive Schooling Supports All Children With...

1.0 Introduction In Australia, educators and schools must accept all children as they have the right to learn alongside same age peers within a mainstream education, no matter their diversity. Inclusive schooling supports all children with disabilities and learning disorders and allows children to learn. Inclusive education recognises and complies with a range of different government acts. These include Equal Opportunity Act (1984) and Disability Discrimination Act (1992), which protect the rights of all children. In 1970 students with disabilities began to attend mainstream education as researched proved that having children with special needs segregated was not how they deserve to be educated as they have the same rights as every other student (Konza, 2008, p.39). A series of documents and policies were put in place, offering students with disabilities the education they were entitled to and making inclusive education a part of Australian education. These documents include the National Disability S trategy, the National Quality Framework, the Early Years Learning Framework of Australia, the Australian Curriculum, and the Australian Professional Standards for Educators. This report looks at these policies and different services, which have been implemented in Western Australia. This report builds an awareness of the views the community, parents and educators of children with special needs have on inclusive education and what recommendations educators can implement inShow MoreRelatedPolicies and Legislation Related To Inclusive Education Could Influence Society993 Words   |  4 PagesBriefly discuss how you believe policies and legislation related to Inclusive Education influence attitudes toward the way society accepts difference. As I have eagerly anticipated meeting my practical classes in the last three years, I take with me the knowledge that I will find a class that is full of unique individuals. 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Feminism in the Late 20th Century Free Essays

string(53) " of identification with nature in the Western sense\." Chapter 4: A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist- Feminism in the Late 20th Century* DONNA HARAWAY History of Consciousness Program, University of California, at Santa Cruz 1. AN IRONIC DREAM OF A COMMON LANGUAGE FOR WOMEN IN THE INTEGRATED CIRCUIT This chapter is an effort to build an ironic political myth faithful to feminism, socialism, and materialism. Perhaps more faithful as blasphemy is faithful, than as reverent worship and identification. We will write a custom essay sample on Feminism in the Late 20th Century or any similar topic only for you Order Now Blasphemy has always seemed to require taking things very seriously. I know no better stance to adopt from within the secular-religious, evangelical traditions of United States politics, including the politics of socialist-feminism. Blasphemy protects one from the moral majority within, while still insisting on the need for community. Blas- phemy is not apostasy. Irony is about contradictions that do not resolve into larger wholes, even dialectically, about the tension of holding incompatible things together because both or all are necessary and true. Irony is about hu- mor and serious play. It is also a rhetorical strategy and a political method, one I would like to see more honoured within socialist-feminism. At the center of my ironic faith, my blasphemy, is the image of the cyborg. A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. Social reality is lived social relations, our most important political construction, a world-changing fiction. The international women’s movements have constructed â€Å"women’s experience†, as well as uncovered or discovered this crucial collective ob- ject. This experience is a fiction and fact of the most crucial, political kind. Liberation rests on the construction of the consciousness, the imaginative ap- prehension, of oppression, and so of possibility. The cyborg is a matter of fiction and lived experience that changes what counts as women’s experience in the late 20th century. This is a struggle over life and death, but the boundary between science fiction and social reality is an optical illusion. Contemporary science fiction is full of cyborgs—creatures simultaneously animal and machine, who populate worlds ambiguously natural and crafted. Modern medicine is also full of cyborgs, of couplings between organism and machine, each conceived as coded devices, in an intimacy and with a power that was not generated in the history of sexuality. Cyborg â€Å"sex† restores some of the lovely replicative baroque of ferns and invertebrates (such nice * Originally published as Manifesto for cyborgs: science, technology, and socialist feminism in the 1980s. Socialist Review, no. 80 (1985): 65–108. Reprinted with permission of the author. 117 J. Weiss et al. eds. ), The International Handbook of Virtual Learning Environments, 117–158. o C 2006 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands. organic prophylactics against heterosexism). Cyborg replication is uncou- pled from organic reproduction. Modern production seems like a dream of cyborg colonization work, a dream that makes the nightmare of Taylorism seem idyllic. And modern war is a cyborg orgy, coded by C3I, command- control-communication-intelligence, an $84 billion item in 1984s US defence budget. I am making an argument for the cyborg as a fiction mapping our so- cial and bodily reality and as an imaginative resource suggesting some very fruitful couplings. Michael Foucault’s biopolitics is a flaccid pre-monition of cyborg politics, a very open field. By the late 20th century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized, and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs. This cyborg is our ontology; it gives us our politics. The cyborg is a condensed image of both imagination and material reality, the two joined cen- ters structuring any possibility of historical transformation. In the traditions of â€Å"Western† science and politics—the tradition of racist, male-dominant capitalism; the tradition of progress; the tradition of the appropriation of nature as resource for the productions of culture; the tradition of reproduction of the self from the reflections of the other— the relation between organism and machine has been a border war. The stakes in the border war have been the territories of production, reproduction, and imagination. This chapter is an argument for pleasure in the confusion of boundaries and for responsibility in their construction. It is also an effort to contribute to socialist-feminist culture and theory in a post-modernist, nonnaturalist mode and in the utopian tradi- tion of imagining a world without gender, which is perhaps a world without genesis, but maybe also a world without end. The cyborg incarnation is outside salvation history. Nor does it mark time on an oral symbiotic utopia or post- oedipal apocalypse. As Zoe Sofoulis argues in her unpublished manuscript on Jacques Lacan, Melanie Klein, and nuclear culture, Lacklein, the most terrible and perhaps the most promising monsters in cyborg worlds are embodied in non-oedipal narratives with a different logic of repression, which we need to understand for our survival. The cyborg is a creature in a post-gender world; it has no truck with bisexu- ality, preoedipal symbiosis, unalienated labor, or other seductions to organic wholeness through a final appropriation of all the powers of the parts into a higher unity. In a sense, the cyborg has no origin story in the Western sense—a â€Å"final† irony since the cyborg is also the awful apocalyptictelosof the â€Å"West’s† escalating dominations of abstract individuation, an ultimate self untied at last from all dependency, a man in space. An origin story in the â€Å"Western†, hu- manist sense depends on the myth of original unity, fullness, bliss, and terror, represented by the phallic mother from whom all humans must separate, the task of individual development and of history, the twin potent myths inscribed most powerfully for us in psychoanalysis and Marxism. Hilary Klein (1989) has argued that both Marxism and psychoanalysis, in their concepts of labor and of individuation and gender formation, depend on the plot of original 118 unity out of which difference must be produced and enlisted in a drama of escalating domination of woman/nature. The cyborg skips the step of original unity, of identification with nature in the Western sense. You read "Feminism in the Late 20th Century" in category "Essay examples" This is an illegitimate promise that might lead to subversion of its teleology as star wars. The cyborg is resolutely committed to partiality, irony, intimacy, and per- versity. It is oppositional, utopian, and completely without innocence. No longer structured by the polarity of public and private, the cyborg defines a technologicalpolisbased partly on a revolution of social relations in theoikos, the household. Nature and culture are reworked; the one can no longer be the resource for appropriation or incorporation by the other. The relationships for forming wholes from parts, including those of polarity and hierarchical dom- ination, are at issue in the cyborg world. Unlike the hopes of Frankenstein’s monster, the cyborg does not expect its father to save it through a restoration of the garden; that is, through the fabrication of a heterosexual mate, through its completion in a finished whole, a city and cosmos. The cyborg does not dream of community on the model of the organic family, this time without the oedipal project. The cyborg would not recognize the Garden of Eden; it is not made of mud and cannot dream of returning to dust. Perhaps that is why I want to see if cyborgs can subvert the apocalypse of returning to nuclear dust in the manic compulsion to name the Enemy. Cyborgs are not reverent; they do not remember the cosmos. They are wary of holism, but needy for connection—they seem to have a natural feel for united front politics, but without the vanguard party. The main trouble with cyborgs, of course, is that they are the illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism, not to mention state socialism. But illegitimate offspring are often exceedingly unfaithful to their origins. Their fathers, after all, are inessential. I want to signal three crucial boundary breakdowns that make the following politicalfictional (political-scientific) analysis possible. By the late 20th cen- tury in United States scientific culture, the boundary between human and ani- mal is thoroughly breached. The last beachheads of uniqueness have been pol- luted if not turned into amusement parks—language, tool use, social behavior, mental events, nothing really convincingly settles the separation of human and animal. And many people no longer feel the need for such a separation; indeed, many branches of feminist culture affirm the pleasure of connection of human and other living creatures. Movements for animal rights are not irrational de- nials of human uniqueness; they are a clear-sighted recognition of connection across the discredited breach of nature and culture. Biology and evolutionary theory over the last two centuries have simultaneously produced modern or- ganisms as objects of knowledge and reduced the line between humans and animals to a faint trace re-etched in ideological struggle or professional dis- putes between life and social science. Within this framework, teaching modern Christian creationism should be fought as a form of child abuse. Biological-determinist ideology is only one position opened up in scien- tific culture for arguing the meanings of human animality. There is much 119 room for radical political people to contest the meanings of the breached boundary. 1 The cyborg appears in myth precisely where the boundary be- tween human and animal is transgressed. Far from signaling a walling off of people from other living beings, cyborgs signal disturbingly and plea- surably tight coupling. Bestiality has a new status in this cycle of marriage exchange. The second leaky distinction is between animal-human (organism) and machine. Precybernetic machines could be haunted; there was always the spectre of the ghost in the machine. This dualism structured the dialogue between materialism and idealism that was settled by a dialectical progeny, called spirit or history, according to taste. But basically machines were not self- moving, self-designing, autonomous. They could not achieve man’s dream, only mock it. They were not man, an author himself, but only a caricature of that masculinist reproductive dream. To think they were otherwise was paranoid. Now we are not so sure. Late 20th-century machines have made thoroughly ambiguous the difference between natural and artificial, mind and body, self-developing and externally designed, and many other distinctions that used to apply to organisms and machines. Our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert. Technological determination is only one ideological space opened up by the reconceptions of machine and organism as coded texts through which we engage in the play of writing and reading the world. â€Å"Textualization† of everything in post-structuralist, post-modernist theory has been damned by Marxists and socialist-feminists for its utopian disregard for the lived relations of domination that ground the â€Å"play† of arbitrary reading. 3 It is certainly true that post-modernist strategies, like my cyborg myth, subvert myriad organic wholes (for example, the poem, the primitive culture, the biol ogical organ- ism). In short, the certainty of what counts as nature— a source of insight and promise of innocence—is undermined, probably fatally. The transcendent authorization of interpretation is lost, and with it the ontology grounding â€Å"Western† epistemology. But the alternative is not cynicism or faithlessness, that is, some version of abstract existence, like the accounts of technologi- cal determinism destroying â€Å"man† by the â€Å"machine† or â€Å"meaningful political action† by the â€Å"text†. Who cyborgs will be is a radical question; the answers are a matter of survival. Both chimpanzees and artifacts have politics, so why shouldn’t we? (de Waal, 1982; Winner, 1980). The third distinction is a subset of the second: The boundary between physical and nonphysical is very imprecise for us. Pop physics books on the consequences of quantum theory and the indeterminacy principle are a kind of popular scientific equivalent to Harlequin romances as a marker of radical change in American white heterosexuality: They get it wrong, but they are on the right subject. Modern machines are quintessentially microelectronic devices: They are everywhere and they are invisible. Modern machinery is an irreverent upstart god, mocking the Father’s ubiquity and spirituality. The 120 silicon chip is a surface for writing; it is etched in molecular scales disturbed only by atomic noise, the ultimate interference for nuclear scores. Writing, power, and technology are old partners in Western stories of the origin of civilization, but miniaturization has changed our experience of mechanism. Miniaturization has turned out to be about power; small is not so much beau- tiful as pre-eminently dangerous, as in cruise missiles. Contrast the TV sets of the 1950s or the news cameras of the 1970s with the TV wrist bands or hand-sized video cameras now advertised. Our best machines are made of sunshine; they are all light and clean because they are nothing but sig- nals, electromagnetic waves, a section of a spectrum, and these machines are eminently portable, mobile—a matter of immense human pain in Detroit and Singapore. People are nowhere near so fluid, being both material and opaque. Cyborgs are ether, quintessence. The ubiquity and invisibility of cyborgs is precisely why these sunshine- belt machines are so deadly. They are as hard to see politically as materially. They are about consciousness— or its simulation. 4 They are floating signifiers moving in pickup trucks across Europe, blocked more effectively by the witch- weavings of the displaced and so unnatural Greenham women, who read the cyborg webs of power so very well, than by the militant labor of older mas- culinist politics, whose natural constituency needs defence jobs. Ultimately the â€Å"hardest† science is about the realm of greatest boundary confusion, the realm of pure number, pure spirit, C3I, cryptography, and the preservation of potent secrets. The new machines are so clean and light. Their engineers are sun-worshippers mediating a new scientific revolution associated with the night dream of post-industrial society. The diseases evoked by these clean machines are â€Å"no more† than the minuscule coding changes of an antigen in the immune system, â€Å"no more† than the experience of stress. The nimble fin- gers of â€Å"Oriental† women, the old fascination of little Anglo-Saxon Victorian girls with doll’s houses, women’s enforced attention to the small take on quite new dimensions in this world. There might be a cyborg Alice taking account of these new dimensions. Ironically, it might be the unnatural cyborg women making chips in Asia and spiral dancing in Santa Rita jail5 whose constructed unities will guide effective oppositional strategies. So my cyborg myth is about transgressed boundaries, potent fusions, and dangerous possibilities which progressive people might explore as one part of needed political work. One of my premises is that most American so- cialists and feminists see deepened dualisms of mind and body, animal and machine, idealism and materialism in the social practices, symbolic formula- tions, and physical artifacts associated with â€Å"high technology† and scientific culture. FromOne-Dimensional Man(Marcuse, 1964) toThe Death of Nature (Merchant, 1980), the analytic resources developed by progressives have in- sisted on the necessary domination of technics and recalled us to an imag- ined organic body to integrate our resistance. Another of my premises is that the need for unity of people trying to resist worldwide intensification of 121 domination has never been more acute. But a slightly perverse shift of per- spective might better enable us to contest for meanings, as well as for other forms of power and pleasure in technologically mediated societies. From one perspective, a cyborg world is about the final imposition of a grid of control on the planet, about the final abstraction embodied in a Star Wars apocalypse waged in the name of defence, about the final appropri- ation of women’s bodies in a masculinist orgy of war (Sofia, 1984). From another perspective, a cyborg world might be about lived social and bodily realities in which people are not afraid of their joint kinship with animals and machines, not afraid of permanently partial identities and contradictory stand- points. The political struggle is to see from both perspectives at once because each reveals both dominations and possibilities unimaginable from the other vantage point. Single vision produces worse illusions than double vision or many-headed monsters. Cyborg unities are monstrous and illegitimate; in our present political circumstances, we could hardly hope for more potent myths for resistance and recoupling. I like to imagine LAG, the Livermore Action Group, as a kind of cyborg society, dedicated to realistically converting the laboratories that most fiercely embody and spew out the tools of technological apocalypse, and committed to building a political form that actually manages to hold together witches, engineers, elders, perverts, Christians, mothers, and Leninists long enough to disarm the state. Fission Impossible is the name of the affinity group in my town. (Affinity: Related not by blood but by choice, the appeal of one chemical nuclear group for another, avidity. )6 2. FRACTURED IDENTITIES It has become difficult to name one’s feminism by a single adjective—or even to insist in every circumstance upon the noun. Consciousness of exclusion through naming is acute. Identities seem contradictory, partial, and strategic. With the hard-won recognition of their social and historical constitution, gen- der, race, and class cannot provide the basis for belief in â€Å"essential† unity. There is nothing about being â€Å"female† that naturally binds women. There is not even such a state as â€Å"being† female, itself a highly complex category constructed in contested sexual scientific discourses and other social prac- tices. Gender, race, or class-consciousness is an achievement forced on us by the terrible historical experience of the contradictory social realities of patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism. And who counts as â€Å"us† in my own rhetoric? Which identities are available to ground such a potent political myth called â€Å"us†, and what could motivate enlistment in this collectivity? Painful fragmentation among feminists (not to mention among women) along every possible fault line has made the concept of woman elusive, an excuse for the matrix of women’s dominations of each other. For me—and for many who share a similar historical location in white, professional middle-class, female, 122 radical, North American, mid-adult bodies—the sources of a crisis in political identity are legion. The recent history for much of the US left and US femi- nism has been a response to this kind of crisis by endless splitting and searches for a new essential unity. But there has also been a growing recognition of another response through coalition—affinity, not identity. 7 Chela Sandoval (n. d. , 1984), from a consideration of specific historical mo- ments in the formation of the new political voice called women of color, has theorized a hopeful model of political identity called â€Å"oppositional conscious- ness†, born of the skills for reading webs of power by those refused stable membership in the social categories of race, sex, or class. Women of color†, a name contested at its origins by those whom it would incorporate, as well as a historical consciousness marking systematic breakdown of all the signs of Man in â€Å"Western† traditions, constructs a kind of post-modernist identity out of otherness, difference, and specificity. This post-modernist identity is fully political, whatever might be said abut other possible post-modernisms. Sandoval’s oppositional consciousness is about contradictory locations and heterochronic calendars, not about relativisms and pluralisms. Sandoval emphasizes the lack of any essential criterion for identifying who is a woman of color. She notes that the definition of a group has been by conscious appropriation of negation. For example, a Chicana or US black woman has not been able to speak as a woman or as a black person or as a Chicano. Thus, she was at the bottom of a cascade of negative identities, left out of even the privileged oppressed authorial categories called â€Å"women and blacks†, who claimed to make the important revolutions. The category â€Å"woman† negated all non-white women; â€Å"black† negated all non-black people, as well as all black women. But there was also no â€Å"she†, no singularity, but a sea of differences among US women who have affirmed their historical identity as US women of color. This identity marks out a self-consciously constructed space that cannot affirm the capacity to act on the basis of natural identification, but only on the basis of conscious coalition, of affinity, of political kinship. Unlike the â€Å"woman† of some streams of the white women’s movement in the United States, there is no naturalization of the matrix, or at least this is what Sandoval argues is uniquely available through the power of oppositional consciousness. Sandoval’s argument has to be seen as one potent formulation for feminists out of the worldwide development of anti-colonialist discourse; that is to say, discourse dissolving the â€Å"West† and its highest product—the one who is not animal, barbarian, or woman; man, that is, the author of a cosmos called history. As orientalism is deconstructed politically and semiotically, the identities of the occident destabilize, including those of feminists. 9 Sandoval argues that â€Å"women of colour† have a chance to build an effective unity that does not replicate the imperializing, totalizing revolutionary subjects of previous Marxisms and feminisms which had not faced the consequences of the disorderly polyphony emerging from decolonization. 123 Katie King has emphasized the limits of identification and the politi- cal/poetic mechanics of identification built into reading â€Å"the poem†, that generative core of cultural feminism. King criticizes the persistent tendency among contemporary feminists from different â€Å"moments† or â€Å"conversations† in feminist practice to taxonomize the women’s movement to make one’s own political tendencies appear to be the telos of the whole. These taxonomies tend to remake feminist history so that it appears to be an ideological strug- gle among coherent types persisting over time, especially those typical units called radical, liberal, and socialist-feminist. Literally, all other feminisms are either incorporated or marginalized, usually by building an explicit ontol- ogy and epistemology. 0 Taxonomies of feminism produce epistemologies to police deviation from official women’s experience. And of course, â€Å"women’s culture†, like women of color, is consciously created by mechanisms inducing affinity. The rituals of poetry, music, and certain forms of academic practice have been pre-eminent. The politics of race and cul ture in the US women’s movements are intimately interwoven. The common achievement of King and Sandoval is learning how to craft a poetic/political unity without relying on a logic of appropriation, incorporation, and taxonomic identification. The theoretical and practical struggle against unity-through-domination or unity-throughincorporation ironically not only undermines the justifications for patriarchy, colonialism, humanism, positivism, essentialism, scientism, and other unlamented -isms, but all claims for an organic or natural stand- point. I think that radical and socialist/Marxist-feminisms have also under- mined their/our own epistemological strategies and that this is a crucially valuable step in imagining possible unities. It remains to be seen whether all â€Å"epistemologies† as Western political people have known them fail us in the task to build effective affinities. It is important to note that the effort to construct revolutionary standpoints, epistemologies as achievements of people committed to changing the world, has been part of the process showing the limits of identification. The acid tools of post-modernist theory and the constructive tools of ontological discourse about revolutionary subjects might be seen as ironic allies in dissolving West- ern selves in the interests of survival. We are excruciatingly conscious of what it means to have a historically constituted body. But with the loss of innocence in our origin, there is no expulsion from the Garden either. Our politics lose the indulgence of guilt with the naivet ? e of innocence. But what would an- other political myth for socialist-feminism look like? What kind of politics could embrace partial, contradictory, permanently unclosed constructions of personal and collective selves and still be faithful, effective—and, ironically, socialist-feminist? I do not know of any other time in history when there was greater need for political unity to confront effectively the dominations of â€Å"race†, â€Å"gender†, â€Å"sexuality†, and â€Å"class†. I also do not know of any other time when the kind of unity we might help build could have been possible. None of â€Å"us† have 124 any longer the symbolic or material capability of dictating the shape of reality to any of â€Å"them†. Or at least â€Å"we† cannot claim innocence from practicing such dominations. White women, including socialist-feminists, discovered the non-innocence of the category â€Å"woman†. That consciousness changes the geography of all previous categories; it denatures them as heat denatures a fragile protein. Cyborg feminists have to argue that â€Å"we† do not want any more natural matrix of unity and that no construction is whole. Innocence, and the corollary insistence on victimhood as the only ground for nsight, has done enough damage. But the constructed revolutionary subject must give late 20th-century people pause as well. In the fraying of identities and in the reflexive strategies for constructing them, the possibility opens up for weaving something other than a shroud for the day after the apocalypse that so prophet ically ends salvation history. Both Marxist/socialist-feminisms and radical feminisms have simultane- ously naturalized and denatured the category â€Å"woman† and consciousness of the social lives of â€Å"women†. Perhaps a schematic caricature can highlight both kinds of moves. Marxian-socialism is rooted in an analysis of wage labor which reveals class structure. The consequence of the wage relationship is systematic alienation, as the worker is dissociated from his [sic] product. Ab- straction and illusion rule in knowledge, domination rules in practice. Labor is the pre-eminently privileged category enabling the Marxist to overcome illusion and find that point of view which is necessary for changing the world. Labor is the humanizing activity that makes man; labor is an ontological category permitting the knowledge of a subject, and so the knowledge of subjugation and alienation. In faithful filiation, socialist-feminism is advanced by allying itself with the basic analytic strategies of Marxism. The main achievement of both Marxist- feminists and socialist-feminists was to expand the category of labor to ac- commodate what (some) women did, even when the wage relation was subor- dinated to a more comprehensive view of labor under capitalist patriarchy. In particular, women’s labor in the household and women’s activity as mothers generally (that is, reproduction in the socialist-feminist sense), entered theory on the authority of analogy to the Marxian concept of labor. The unity of women here rests on an epistemology based on the ontological structure of â€Å"labor†. Marxist/socialist-feminism does not â€Å"naturalize† unity; it is a pos- sible achievement based on a possible standpoint rooted in social relations. The essentializing move is in the ontological structure of labor or of its ana- logue, women’s activity. 11 The inheritance of Marxian-humanism, with its pre-eminently Western self, is the difficulty for me. The contribution from these formulations has been the emphasis on the daily responsibility of real women o build unities, rather than to naturalize them. Catherine MacKinnon’s (1982, 1987) version of radical feminism is itself a caricature of the appropriating, incorporating, totalizing tendencies of Western theories of identity grounding action. 12 It is factually and politically wrong to 125 assimilate all of the diverse â€Å"moments† or â€Å"conversations† in recent women’s polit ics named radical feminism to MacKinnon’s version. But the teleological logic of her theory shows how an epistemology and ontology—including their negations—erase or police difference. Only one of the effects of MacKinnon’s theory is the rewriting of the history of the polymorphous field called radical feminism. The major effect is the production of a theory of experience, of women’s identity, that is a kind of apocalypse for all revolutionary standpoints. That is, the totalization built into this tale of radical feminism achieves its end—the unity of women—by enforcing the experience of and testimony to radical non-being. As for the Marxist/socialist-feminist, consciousness is an achievement, not a natural fact. And MacKinnon’s theory eliminates some of the difficulties built into humanist revolutionary subjects, but at the cost of radical reductionism. MacKinnon argues that feminism necessarily adopted a different analyti- cal strategy from Marxism, looking first not at the structure of class, but at the structure of sex/gender and its generative relationship, men’s constitution and appropriation of women sexually. Ironically, MacKinnon’s â€Å"ontology† constructs a non-subject, a non-being. Another’s desire, not the self’s labor, is the origin of â€Å"woman†. She therefore develops a theory of consciousness that enforces what can count as â€Å"women’s† experience—anything that names sexual violation, indeed, sex itself as far as â€Å"women† can be concerned. Fem- inist practice is the construction of this form of consciousness; that is, the self-knowledge of a self-who-is-not. Perversely, sexual appropriation in this feminism still has the epistemolog- ical status of labor; that is to say, the point from which an analysis able to contribute to changing the world must flow. But sexual objectification, not alienation, is the consequence of the structure of sex/ gender. In the realm of knowledge, the result of sexual objectification is illusion and abstraction. However, a woman is not simply alienated from her product, but in a deep sense does not exist as a subject, or even potential subject, since she owes her existence as a woman to sexual appropriation. To be constituted by another’s desire is not the same thing as to be alienated in the violent separation of the laborer from his product. MacKinnon’s radical theory of experience is totalizing in the extreme; it does not so much marginalize as obliterate the authority of any other women’s political speech and action. It is a totalization producing what West- ern patriarchy itself never succeeded in doing—feminists’ consciousness of the non-existence of women, except as products of men’s desire. I think MacKinnon correctly argues that no Marxian version of identity can firmly ground women’s unity. But in solving the problem of the contradictions of any Western revolutionary subject for feminist purposes, she develops an even more authoritarian doctrine of experience. If my complaint about social- ist/Marxian standpoints is their unintended erasure of polyvocal, unassimil- able, radical difference made visible in anti-colonial discourse and practice, 126 How to cite Feminism in the Late 20th Century, Essay examples

Policies to Keep IT Under Control Environmental Issues

Question: Discuss about thePolicies to Keep IT Under Control forEnvironmental Issues. Answer: Introduction There was a time when the meaning of business was to only earn more and more revenues. People at that time used to think very little about the environment and sustainability. However, the scenario has totally changed now-a-days. In twenty-first century, one of the growing concerns is the environmental issues (Middleton 2013). Companies all over the world have come forward to address the issues of the environment. All the companies are developing sustainability strategies to encounter the environmental issues. There is no exception in the opera business. Operas are developing sustainability strategies to make more profit and attract more customers. On the other hand, legal business documents are the base of any organization. Legal documents refer to the legislative and regulatory documents of a business. They are very essential for every company. This study is about the Tiny Opera Company of Australia which runs its business in a rural town in NSW. There are two parts of the report. The first part is about the determination of various legislative and regulatory documents of the company. In the second part, various practice models used by theaters are discusses and the best model for Tiny Opera is suggested. Legislative and Regulatory Documents A business is considered as a separate entity. Thus, a business has some documents which ensure the identity of that business as a human being. Legal documents are the identity of a business as these documents help the smooth running of the organization. Legal documents include the legislative as well as the regulatory documents of a business. These are the kind of documents which include all the necessary description about that particular business like the name of the business, logo of the business, board of directors of the business, descriptions of the operations of the business and many others. Hence, it is very essential for every business to have all these documents (Bala 2014). The necessary documents for Tiny Opera Company have given below in details: The first document is the document for the establishment of Tiny Opera. This will include all the year of establishment, name, logo and others of the company. The second document is the function document of the company. This will include the production, presentation and management of the programs of the opera. This portion will also include the public interest of the company. The document for power includes the different powers of the company like the power of arrangements, the power of engages various agents, the power of contracts and many others. There are some special powers of the company which will be written in that document. The next document is the establishment of the board. This will have all the details of the commencement of the board of directors. This document includes the details of the composition of the boards like the number of the directors, majority number, details of the directors and others. There are certain rules and regulations regarding the membership of the company which will described in the documents for membership. This will include the inclusion and removal of the members of the company. The proceeding document will include the board proceeding of Tiny Opera like the date of the meeting, voting process and others. There will be a separate document for the committees and delegations. This document will have the description of the power of the board members to form committees and resolve committee related issues. On the other hand, details of the delegations will be clearly written in this document. The next document is the document for honesty and accountability. It is must to have honesty and ethics in the business operations. All the ethical objectives will be written in this document along with the accountability of the company. There must be a document about the seal of the company. This seal will be used for the purpose of sending business related documents of the company (Freeman 2014). One of the most important documents is the financial documents which will include all the financial details of the company. As per this document, there must be a annual budget of Tiny Opera; all the accounts must be audited on an annual basis and there will be annual reports after the completion of each year. Staffing documents will include all the details of the staffs of the company. This portion will include the recruitment of the staffs for the opera and guidelines to resolve the staff related issues. Documents for authorized officers will include the regulations for the appointment and power of the authorized officers of the company. There will be a document which will include the official name and the logo of Tiny Opera Company. It is the identity proof of the company. At last, there will be a gift document. This document has the rules and regulations about how to treat any gifts, grants, donations and others (Parker and Alemanno 2014). These are legislative and regulatory docu ments that describe the compliance requirement of Tiny Opera. Practice Models There are so many opera theaters all over the world. Most of them are running their theaters in the conventional way. That is, they are only interested in making profits out of their theatres. There is no sign of sustainability in their business operations. They are affecting the environment all the time by using harmful chemicals, harmful probes and many other ways. The reason behind this inconvenience to environment is simply lack of education and training. An educated person will never harm the environment as he/she knows the consequences of doing so. There are some models used by the theaters and performance places which conveyed the true message of environmental sustainability. They are discussed under: There was a three days musical festival named the Falls Festival from 30th December to 1st January at NSW. The power supply of the campaign was from the temporary power generation. The primary motive of the concert was to make people aware about the reduction of fossil oil and financial saving associated with that. This was a successful campaign towards the sustainability. Another pay about the sustainability was the Water Wars. It was a funny, dark, amazing and shocking about the living in fragile planet like earth. The primary purpose of the play was to show the impact of scarcity. This play was an amazing step towards the promotion of sustainability. Another play was organized at Opera Queensland name The Mikado Regional Tour. The primary objective of the play was to discover the effect of the large regional tours as regional touring is one of the greatest challenges of sustainability. Brisbane Entertainment Center arranged a lot of concerts, plays and campaigns to promote sustain ability in this field. The main focus of Brisbane Entertainment Center is to save energy, water and waste. They set target on the monthly basis and evaluate the results to judge the progress. Queensland Theatre Company arranged Energy Audit to reduce the operational cost. This process of Queensland Theater Company contributes to the improvement of sustainability profile of the company (Greener.liveperformance.com.au. 2016). These are some of the best practices adopted by various operas in Australia. They have arranged different kind of campaigns, concerts and plays. However, the motive of all them was same that is to promote sustainability in their respective fields. Sustainability Plans of Tiny Opera As discussed above, sustainability is one of the greatest issues all over the world. Every organization around the globe is developing and adopting different sustainability polices as per the nature of their business. Whatever the policies are, the reason behind is the same that is to promote environmental sustainability. There is no exception in the case off Tiny Opera. They have some wonderful sustainability policies. However, due to some reasons, they have not been fully successful to promote sustainability in the organization and in the outer world. This is the reason; they have appointed a new environment officer for effective policies that will promote sustainability. As per the requirement of the company, three major options have been taken for the purpose of environmental sustainability. They are discussed in details below: The first option is to arrange various educational plays, dramas, musical concerts and others every weekends days. There is no doubt that all these things are for the entertainment, but there will be an inner message of each of them. Environmental sustainability will be promoted through those events. The reason behind setting up these events in weekends is that more people can come to watch these events. As the company is an art and performance company, they do not have to expense much to arrange this kind of programs. Another advantage of these events is that besides the promotion of environmental sustainability, there is a fair chance of increasing the income of the company. Thus, two things can be achieved by one policy. The effectiveness of these kinds of programs is very good as the audio visual effects will create an impact on the spectators. This will help the company to achieve its desired goals in sustainability (Wheeler 2013). The second option is to arrange various types of training and development programs for the employees and workers of the Tiny Opera. One of the greatest reasons for the environmental pollution is the lack of education. Education makes the people know about the fatal consequence of pollution of the environment. On the other hand, there are other advantages of being educated. An educated person knows how to use the resources of the environment more effectively. An educated person can teach others about the adverse effect of environmental pollution. Thus, there is a huge role of education regarding the sustainability of environment. There will be training session for each and every people of Tiny Opera on a regular basis. There will be three classes a week. The topic of the training session will be environmental sustainability, optimal use of the resources and others. There is a moderate amount of cost involved in this process. However, the effectiveness of the program will get the desir ed results (Ahern, Cilliers and Niemel 2014). The third option is to arrange awareness programs in the company about the use of toxic material and hazardous chemicals. Make-up is an integral part of the art industry. The artists need to use different kind of colors and chemical for various role-play. All of the colors and chemicals are not skin friendly. The colors and chemical contains hazardous and toxic material that can cause several skin diseases to the artists. Thus, there will be an awareness programs about the safe use of this kind of colors and chemicals. The program will take place every last weekday. The cost of this program is not high (Chambers, Glasgow and Stange 2013). These are the three options that can be adopted for the environmental sustainability policies of Tiny Opera. There are some costs involved in arranging these programs. However, the gains from these programs are much higher than the profitability. The first option will be helpful to earn more revenues for the opera. On the other hand, more audiences will be attracted; as a result more people will be the part of the environmental sustainability campaign of Tiny Opera. Conclusion In the age of Global warming, environmental sustainability is a light of hope. Environmental sustainability strategies help to encounter the issue of environmental pollution. This is the reason; companies are taking giant steps towards the environmental sustainability. Tiny Opera is one of the companies towards the environmental sustainability. The company has taken effective measures to face the various environmental issues. The company believes in optimal usage of the resources, effective usage of resources, reduction of the uses of toxic and harmful chemicals and others. This is the reasons they have appointed a new environmental officer. The new officer has adopted three wonderful strategies to promote environmental sustainability. Thus, from the whole study, it can be concluded that with the help of effective sustainable strategies, every company can encounter the environmental issues. For this purpose, it is needed to create awareness among the people about the fatal effects of environmental pollution. References Ahern, J., Cilliers, S. and Niemel, J., 2014. The concept of ecosystem services in adaptive urban planning and design: A framework for supporting innovation.Landscape and Urban Planning,125, pp.254-259. Bala, N., 2014. Strengthening corporate governance in India: A review of legislative and regulatory initiatives in 2013. Chambers, D.A., Glasgow, R.E. and Stange, K.C., 2013. The dynamic sustainability framework: addressing the paradox of sustainment amid ongoing change.Implementation Science,8(1), p.1. Freeman, B., 2014. 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