New media Essay

New media has transformed the way we receive and produce content. New media such as the internet is making it easier for people to get their opinions across which creates content and allows a two-way dialogue. New media and technologies such social media networks change the way a person perceives the world. In the past decades, old style media was the only form of media used to receive content and sharing content was not as easy like it is nowadays. Internet can be easily accessed, with the transformation process still continuing it is now easy for the public to create and upload content which form discussions. Habermas’ conception of the public sphere (Scannell 2000). Habermas defined the idea of the public sphere as a social space in which all participants spoke as equals, made rational arguments, felt free to question authority and traditional political assumptions. New media is broadcasted though digital media and online sites such as Facebook and the internet. Content is shared and created through social media by uploading or publishing content such as images, videos and text. New media allows individuals to receive and share content. The rapid development of computer science leads to the emergence of brand-new type media which is transforming the world and the way how people perceive the world. Interactivity which distinguishes new media from their traditional counterparts endows them with capability to transform the mode of communication. Based on the powerful computer science and technologies, new media quickly engulf the whole world. Rather than evolving from traditional media and extending to new fields traditional media fail to reach, new media are completely another tool with totally different structure and mechanism against which they function. They make it possible to construct a three-dimension world resembling exactly what human beings actually live and give people a realistic feeling after stepping in. This capacity leads to a new mode of cultural representation, simulation. The implications are more than just to imitate and reveal true, but also include creating truth  creating a reality that cannot exist in the actual world. The interactivity closely associated with new media enables them the transform the conventional communication mode as well. The one-way information flow in traditional media changes into the two-way dialogue, then into â€Å"group discussion†. Virtual communities and social networks take shape. There, communication participants are no longer persons in conventional sense, but reduce into roles. A single person can have various roles to present in different spaces created by new media. An example of the two – way dialogue is the â€Å"BUST THE BUDGET† on the sbs site and through social media such as twitter people who attended the rally were able to connect and present their opinions to sbs. Online social networking communities are transforming the way we are experiencing television/network channel content. Social media connects people from local to global. Online communities talk everything that excites, entertains, energies or anything that creates an emotional bonding with certain kind of stuff. Social sites like Twitter and Facebook are the platforms where communities share information, ideas and insights. To conclude, media quickly to engulf the whole world. Rather than evolving from traditional media and extending to new fields traditional media fail to reach, new media are completely another tool with totally different structure and mechanism against which they function. They make it possible to construct a three-dimension world resembling exactly what human beings actually live and give people a realistic feeling after stepping in. This capacity leads to a new mode of cultural representation, simulation. The implications are more than just to imitate and reveal true, but also include creating truth creating a reality that cannot exist in the actual world. The interactivity closely associated with new media enables them the transform the conventional communication mode as well. The one-way information flow in traditional media changes into the two-way dialogue, then into â€Å"group discussion†. Virtual communities and social networks take shape. There, communication participants are no longer persons in conventional sense, but reduce into roles. A single person can have various roles to present in different spaces created by new media. Cultural representation and  communication are no longer what they used to be in face of the powerful engine. This is what â€Å"new† in â€Å"New Media† exactly means transformations. Reference: Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the Media – John B. Thompson – 2014. Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the Media – John B. Thompson The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere – J.Habermas – 2014. http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/07/06/anti-budget-rallies-held-around-country-0 Meikle, Graham & Young, Sherman (2012) Ch 3 ‘From Broadcast to Social Media’ in Media Flew, Terry (2008) â€Å"Approaches to new media† from New media Van Dyke, N., Soule, S. A., & Taylor, V. A. (2005). The targets of social movements: Beyond a focus on the state. Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, 25, 27-51. Howley, K. (2007). Community media and the public sphere. Media studies: Key issues and debates, 342-360. Scannell, P. (Ed.). (1991). Broadcast talk (Vol. 5). Sage. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-06/storify-bust-the-budget-protests/5575378

How have cultures from the ‘west’ been represented in the ‘east’ Essay

Fundamentally the term culture means to cultivate but on other hand this word also contains some other meanings and definitions as well. Number of writers and author worked and surveyed on the actual definition of culture and in year 1952 Alfred Kroeber and Clyde has presented approximately 164 defamations of this word â€Å"culture†. If we focus these definitions and research work by our well-known authors then we can came to know the fact that culture is simply the critical review of concepts and definitions that people have. Along with this the fact has also been revealed that culture can be presented and illustrated with three different approaches like the taste in fine arts and humanities is one of the significant ways of defining one’s culture or perspective. Similarly values, goals and attitudes are also used in illustrating the cultural values. (Bryan 1963) Beside above mentioned points the human knowledge , belief and the attitudes are also used in promoting culture as these things has the power and capacity to define the thoughts and ideas of people. Later after finding numerous definition of culture in twentieth century this word emerges out with new concepts as the focus point of anthropology, which means that culture is a word that is actually composed of all the actions and thoughts that is performed by human anywhere in the world and all these behaviors does not have any sort of relation with the genetics. In West, this word has its own meaning as they have their own approaches and thoughts regarding this term, as according to them culture basically defines two things that include the human experience, imaginations and incidents which occurs with them and later they present those things according to their art and used their power of creativity as well. (Alan Bryan 1963) Similarly they illustrated the meaning of culture by presenting the idea that in this entire world there are number of people who have their own way and manners of living and with their own ideas, experience and conditions they define their own meaning of culture as the way of defining culture varies from place to place and from people to people as well. But later after the World War 2 numerous authors reformed the definition of culture and the style they had presented it was also changed and among those authors albeit played a significnat role as in this era his work and ideas are still followed and apprectiated. Besides these above mentioned definition when we go though numerous research paper and studies of different authors from all over the world we came to know the fact that number of artist were born in west side and presented beautiful and unique work that portrayed their thoughts regarding culture and numerous other things. Among these beautiful and talented artist Hansen is a significant name. This man was born in year 1960 in West area where the natural beauty, purity and environment was so attractive that form the early stage this boy started visioning, drawing and portraying his cultural beauty in a marvelous manner. Hansen completed his educational career and returned to homeland in 1990, but during his early days of schooling this young boy started painting in year 1969, after that he went abroad to study mechanical design as well. Later he came back to America and served this country as a technical drawing specialist. Ms Georgian was the lady who impressed Hansen and he want himself to work and serve the idea of culture through his talent and skills of painting and drawing. He has developed his own unique sense of styling which reflects his philosophical mind as well. As time passes this young boy’s skills in promoting culture were notified by numerous people and his professional career started in which he designed numerous spectacular designs in the boating industry. The concept of portraying culture in such manner was so much appreciated by people that the technique of introducing abstract and cubist was later adopted by the artist of East as well. Beside Hansen’s work numerous other artist work and thought are adopted by the people of East. Christians also played a vital role in promoting cultural values and portraying them in such a manner that it was appreciated by the entire world. And among there marvelous work the oldest and the most symbolic thing is the cross sign which is known as the sign of Christian’s faith. The idea of presenting cross sign has played a significant role in numerous other cultures as well. People from different region especially from east side have adopted it as well and defines their own meaning of this symbol. If we go through to the detail and deep knowledge of this cross then we came to know numerous facts regarding it as it was revealed that through ages and centuries people are using and following this cross sign to protect themselves from illness, to have good fortune, and to show their respect to their religion and numerous other things as well. After the great success of promoting culture is such manner numerous other artists has developed countless version of its, which include X-Shaped St. Andrews cross and the T-shaped teau-cross as well. Beside this, the people of Greek have used this symbol in order to represent the four cardinal directions as well or we can say that they tried to represent the four basic elements which include earth, wind, water and fire. Other than this, the people of India have used this symbol as well in order to show the four main directions of heavens. Similarly, the people of Africa has designed cross roads and there concept of it is that these crossroads are places where the world of living and dead meet. In addition with this, numerous Eastern artists used this shaped to promote their cultural jewelry as well. Along with above mentioned things, Eastern people have also discovered new and interesting things in Japan by following the writings of Shakespeare as they had focused the plays of him and started studying the canonical values of his theater and implement the thoughts and ideas in order to promote the cultural things. Similarly, the people of Japan also have a great history in promoting cultural things through different and unique ideas such as the monster is one of the significant thing that Japanese promotes in their culture which was actually the creation of human imagination which resemble numerous things at different points like people, other animals or well –known objects as well. (Kuncaraningrat 1985) The artist of West promote their cultural values and things by numerous ways and among them music is the major source. With the help of unique and different musical instruments they define their thoughts and ideas regarding their culture. All sort of music either rock, pop or slow all were used to promote culture. In addition with these the artist of West also launched numerous sort of games that have music like Krongcong is one of the famous and well-known musical game that was designed in a manner that the music lovers start playing them and the main focus of promoting culture with the help of music will also go on with such innovative discoveries. Similarly along with music, dance is another thing that is used in order to promote culture of West, as it is the best approach of reflecting and showing the diversification of different ethical groups that compose the entire West portion of the world. This technique of promoting culture was adopted by the artist of East as well, as this gave great opportunity to show the traditional and cultural values of one’s states. The people of West also use the source of drama and theaters in order to promote their cultural values, and this technique really works as people form all over the world came to watch such sort of drama that promotes culture and things regarding traditional values. Along with this the people of East represent the culture of West in their region by using the traditional arts things which includes paintings, sculpture and numerous sort of architecture as well. Not only this they also used literature and poetry in order to present the idea and thoughts regarding the culture and traditional values of West. For people who loved food the Eastern group facilitate them by provding and presenting the Western dishes, along with this the more powerful and source that the Eastern people used in order to represent the culture of West in the media, as there is a great number of cinemas within East and these cinemas has played a significant role in spreading every bite of cultural things and cover all the traditional values of the entire West. In previous days, this source did not work as much but at the beginning of year 1980 this platform reaches the peak and concurred the highest level as well. Beside this cinema’s role numerous Eastern artists have played a significant role in order to promote and represent the culture and traditions of West within their country and this medium of representing the culture is very much appreciated by all as in this every age group can find its own interesting things to go for. Other than this, radio network which was formed in year 1945 also played a significant role, especially after 2006 numerous radio channels are launched using Digital Audio Broadcasting and Hybrid system that are also facilitating in promoting the cultural values all over the East. But all these above mentioned approaches had a positive result till political issues do not arise. In early days if we go through the detail representation techniques of promoting and showing culture of West in East we came to know that its result is very much effective as long as it was concerned as the homogenous population things towards mass production. This multiculturalism has worked for a long time in order to show the Western European society. The people of French also liked and welcomed this sort of representation and wrote numerous theories on it and named such things as a class struggle which highlighted the real charm, beauty as well as the weakness, along with this such representation also include ethics, religion and race issues but this thought of promoting culture is no more seen due to numerous political issues. Adams 2006) As now people have the idea that political, cultural, social and economical dialogue projects are addressed but should not be exclusively shown in Muslim countries, beside this according to the political rules the training programs, information of technologies and other things should not be shown and promoted on other side rather than West as this cause great trouble to the citizens of the west. Beside this the global conflict is also one of the major reason of promoting culture and traditional things in such a way, as the people of other country did not have the actual idea or right to promote each other cultural values as by this they often show our cultural things in a wrong manner and this cause big issues. According to a survey and research numerous authors wrote things about politicians idea that they have an idea that assimilation model can’t work longer because he people who are from different state are not like us and they have different skin color, they have other religion whose rules are not applicable on us, as we are not of same group, culture, and we does not have same social and traditional values. Similarly the political rules that are governing West also have the idea that we people are from different type of population and thats why we cant work on same issue with hand in hand as these people are living in a territory which has no political representation and they wants to copy our theories and approaches by promoting our cultural and traditional values. (Adams 2006) In a nut shell, we can conclude our paper that the idea of presenting and promoting culture and traditional values of each other provide us great benefit as by this we can come to know the real concepts and ideas of each other, and this thing also facilitate us in getting new approaches as well but this concept that arises in this era that by doing so we people can face numerous difficulties and political issues is not good for both the citizens of West as well as East so we should cover up such issues and focus on the growth and development of cultural as well as other things which is a great need for all of us.

Challenges of Teachers in Decision Making Essay

1.1 STATEMENT OF PURPOSE The purpose of this study is to investigate the extent to which teachers participate in Decision-making at Government Secondary school Omala, Omala L.G.A. argues that purposeful planning depends on effective decision-making. Teachers and educational managers make decisions on a daily basis. These decisions may influence pupils, teachers and the future of the school. Dawn of new Education system has seen a proliferation of Educational policy and legislation specifying and advocating full participation by stakeholders in the governance and management of schools. The education policy documents continuously refer to the democratisation of schools and the education system as a whole. The documents that have made this call, include the National Education Policy Investigation Report, A policy framework for education and training, the White Paper on Education and Training which all culminated in Kogi State Schools that is currently the driving force behind the operation of all schools in Kogi State. The report of task Team on Education Management Development suggested that, in line with similar trends in several other States, has placed Kogi State schools firmly on the road to a school based system of management where schools will increasingly come to manage themselves. The report suggests further that effective self-management must be accompanied by an internal devolution of power within the school and greater participation of all decision-making processes. The work on self-managing schools is strongly influencing later developments that devolution of power to school must be m atched by an empowerment of people within the school. In this research, it has been suggested that the notion of participative approaches, which has become enriched in the â€Å"folklore† of education management, is the most appropriate way to run schools, it has become closely associated with school effectiveness and improvement. 1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM It is important to look closely at the Secondary school education system with the view of determining how decisions are taken at school. Prior to the introduction of Teachers participation in decision making, teachers did not have a say in decisions that affected them in their daily lives. The problem which is the main focus in this research is to determine to what extent the teachers participate in decision-making in secondary schools at Government Secondary School Omala, Omala Local government Area of Kogi State, in order to ensure their satisfaction as well as the achievement of the schools’ goals. 1.3 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY âž ¢ To determine what is the current situation regarding participative decision-making at Government Secondary School Omala, Omala Local government Area of Kogi State. âž ¢ To determine what effect the implementation of current participative decision-making has on secondary schools at Government Secondary School Omala,OmalaLocal government Area of Kogi State âž ¢ To determine how participative decision-making affects teachers’ morale. âž ¢ To determine what changes are desirable to teachers in the management approach. 1.4 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY This study is a focused case study of teacher participation in decision-making at Government Secondary School Omala, Omala Local government Area of Kogi State. 1.5 DEFINITION OF CONCEPTS 1.5.1 Decision – making: Decision-making can be seen as the process of consciously choosing the most suitable way of action to solve or handle a particular problem after various alternatives have been considered to achieve the set goals or objectives. 1.5.2 School Management Team: Is a group of teachers who are involved in the task of leading and managing schools Example; Head of Department (HOD), deputy principal and principal. CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 INTRODUCTION The Decision-making is a continual management function which plays an important part in the management process and which is vital to all the cyclical management functions. Some scholars like Kruger and Van (1996:19) argue that when the principal allows teachers to participate in certain aspects of the management of the school, she/he gives an opportunity to teachers to experience responsibility. By so doing, the principal does not relinquish his/her authority but his/her authority is enhanced. Pretorius (2010) believes that clinical leadership increases a position relationship between principals and teachers. Therefore, teachers become committed to teaching, because they are participating in decisions that affect them. According to Professor Aturata (2008), in the light of trend towards the decentralized school Management in Kogi State, research indicates that teachers need to be empowered to participate fully in decision-making. Also argues that the concept of educator empowerment in decision-making needs to be closely studied in terms of its effect on educator participation in decision-making at school.Professor Soyinka : states that an effective schooling can only occur when both the principal and teachers are involved in the decision-making process. Non-involvement of teachers in decision-making may result in conflict, as there is no consultation between principal and educators on policy matters and operational procedures at school. However probable only one way to democratize schools. To practice democracy means learning to be responsible for freedom, to make long term strategic decisions and most importantly, to accept the fact that democracy is possible when all participants in the educational process share it. Sule Maitama et al. (2009) cite the following from the educational system, â€Å"The government’s effective educational programmes depend on a process of consultation and negotiation among those vitally affected†. So the policies adopted will reflect their values and goals, thus increasing the prospect of wholehearted support. 2.2 DECISION-MAKING Decision-making has never been easy and it is especially challenging for the educational managers of today. The Decisions can be made by the Principal as an individual or in a group where the entire staff or a select group of staff members will be present. The two contexts of decision-making differ significantly. Educational managers should evaluate the nature of the problems and decisions to be made and then decide if participative or group decision-making is called for. Decision-making can be seen as a process of consciously. Choosing the most suitable way of action to solve or handle a particular problem after various alternatives have been considered to achieve the set goals and objectives. This implies that decision-making must be converted into action. The decision-making process involves a series of complex interactions of events. These interactions constitute the following stages, namely: (i) Study the existing situation carefully. (ii) Recognize and define the problem. (iii) Examine the detailed make-up of the problem in the existing situation. (iv) Decide on the criteria for resolving the problem. (v) Develop a plan for action. (vi) Initiate the plan of action. 2.3 MODELS FOR DECISION-MAKING 2.3.1 The classical model: The classical decision theory assumes that decisions should be completely rational. This model employs an optimsing strategy by seeking the best possible alternative to maximize the achievement of goals and objectives. According to the classical model, the decision-making process is a series of sequential steps as follows: (i) A problem is identified. (ii) Goals and objectives are established. (iii) All the possible alternatives are generated. (iv) The consequences of each alternative are considered. (v) All the alternatives are evaluated in terms of the goals and objectives. (vi) The best alternative is selected, that is, the one that maximizes the goals and Objectives. (vii) Finally, the decision is implemented and evaluated. 2.3.2 The administrative model Hoy and Miskel (2006:317) say that this is the strategy of satisficing in an attempt to provide a more accurate description of the way administrators both do and should make organisational decisions. This model rests upon the basic assumption that: The decision-making Process is a cycle of events that includes identification and diagnosis of a difficulty, the reflective development of a plan to alleviate the difficulty, the initiation of the plan, and the appraisal of its success.† This model relies on both experience and theory to guide decision-making. 2.4 PARTICIPATIVE APPROACH TO DECISION-MAKING AT SCHOOL Since participative management has become popular, an increasing number of decisions have been made by groups rather than individuals. In the group decision-making process, decisions are the product of interpersonal decision-making processes and group dynamics. According to Merry Parker people who have been allowed a voice in decisions that affect them are more likely to be accepted and adhere to the decisions and quality of a decision refers to the extent to which the decision is ultimately successful in meeting the goals and objectives of the decision makers. 2.4.1 Collegial model of management:The collegial model includes all those theories which emphasise that power and decision-making should be shared among some or all members of the organization. These approaches range from a restricted collegiality where the leader shares power with a limited number of senior colleagues to a pure collegiality where all members have an equal voice in determining policy. Collegial models assume that Organizations determine policy and make decisions through a process of discussion leading to consensus. Power is shared among some or all members of the organization who are thought to have a mutual understanding about the objectives of the schools. 2.4.2 Application of collegiality in a secondary school situation: The introduction of the collegial model in secondary schools has been slower than in higher education. The tradition of all powerful heads with authority over staff and accountable to external bodies has stifled several attempts to develop participative models on management. The formal position is that heads alone are responsible for the organization and management of schools. This consideration has acted as a brake on some heads that wish to share their power and as a convenient justification for those reluctant to share power. In large schools, there is a need for sub-units like committees in order for staff to have formal representation on decision-making bodies, and there is the assumption that staff has formal representation on such bodies. Research was conducted by different researchers at different schools in Kogi state, where the principal was committed in collegiality and introduced several participative elem ents, Several collegial features were found in the school. Staff had ample formal representation within the decision-making structure and decisions were usually reached by consensus. Despite his good intentions, the principal recognized that the school was not collegial. 2.4.3 Advantages of collegiality There are three main advantages of collegiality: †¢ The evidence that teachers wish to participate more fully in the management of their schools. T †¢ The quality of decision-making is likely to be better when staff participates in the process as it increases the experience and expertise brought in to solve the problem. †¢ Staff participation is important as it usually has the responsibility of implementing any changes. Collegiality does not require confrontation or conforming behaviours, but allows for open discussion and consensus. It employs personal power, not positional power. Positional power is temporally set aside, since the group member communicates and co-operates in the spirit of caring for one another and the vision of the organization. It changes interaction from those that arouse distrust and disrespect to those that are based on mutual trust, support and feeling of personal worth. With collaboration, people do not try to defeat one another and the organisation, but work with colleagues towards success. 2.4.4 Limitations of collegiality: The main limitations of collegiality are: †¢ It is so normative, it hides reality. †¢ Decision-making is slow and cumbersome. Meetings are often lengthy with issues often ending unresolved. Time and patience needs to be invested, and this is usually after hours when staff is tired as noted †¢ There is no guarantee of unanimity of outcomes after participation and debate. It is unrealistic to assume that consensus can be reached as the model undermines the significance of conflict. †¢ Tension that exists between different styles of management, as positional authority often surpasses the authority of expertise in reality. †¢ The accountability of leaders to external bodies or councils often leads to conflict as it is difficult to defend policies that have emerged but do not enjoy the support of the leader, and difficult to establish who is responsible for policy. There is also the possibility of conflict between internal and external bodies. †¢ Staff participation needs to be an adequate level for collegiality to be effective. When staff attitudes are not supportive, it will fail. .†¢ The heads play a vital role and collegiality depends ultimately on them. If they so choose, they can limit the scope of collegiality as diminishing their power, and perhaps ultimately their identity). The quality of management depends on personal and professional qualities of those that lead and manage . 2.4.5 Collegial relationship The building of effective teams is a major responsibility of the other senior staff. Effective teams are necessary for the continued growth, development and day-to-day management of an organization. The School Management Team (SMT) should create the environment where people feel they want to give extra discretionary effort. The school needs to develop a sense of identity. The sense of direction, belonging and identity are central to every team and participants enter a group with many highly developed perspectives and talents. Through collegiality, the team learns how to respect, appreciate and foster the individual identities of group members. Building a collegial group composed of diverse talents and perspectives which require a special sensitivity to each person feel like a value and appreciated contributor. The group should develop a sense of mutual and share responsibility. Team members cannot work towards a desired outcome until they have formed a sense of team spirit and learne d to trust and support one another .The trust is the foundation upon which school effectiveness is built. An effective work culture cannot develop unless trust exists within the organization. Trust allows a rich culture to develop, and allows individuals to achieve their full potential. Trust develops as people expose themselves, share and take risks together. Trust tends to reduce fear of dependency on others and eliminates the potentially negative effects of conflicts. The trust is also fundamental cement that bonds an organization together, facilitating good communication rectifying badly timed actions, making goal attainment possible and creating the conditions for organizational success. Effective collegial relations develop within the organization only when all levels within an organization have opportunities to come together at the beginning of the project. The principal is expected to ensure that a collegial relation prevails within the school. 2.4.6 Collaboration power sharing: According to Dludla (2001: 27), collaborative power arises as staff members learn to make most of their collective capacity to run the day-to-day affairs of their school and solve problems. If teachers are involved in the running of the school, they are challenged in a number of ways, such as learning new ways of doing things and even values and attitudes. Lack of involvement results in fear and uncertainty which induce reluctance to change even if the fruits of change may be somehow desired. Collaborative power is of utmost significance if the school must succeed. He further comments that this form of power is unlimited because it enhances the productivity of the school on behalf of the students. His other view is that whereas top-down leadership may have a role in managing a school, a principal as collaborative leader has to find the right balance between the top-down and bottom-up so that the school meets it challenges. But participation and power sharing does not mean that a scho ol needs to get together every time a decision is made. The main objective in participative decision-making is to reach consensus. Staff needs to be educated in the consensus-based management process. This education will corporate an understanding that each individual cannot unilaterally determine the solution to decisions but can contribute to consensus being reached. It would also need to develop an understanding that shared participation leads to shared responsibility. Principals need to know that the principal who shares power with teachers is still a leader. This principal is a more effective instructional leader because empowered teachers are more likely to maximize their potential. 2.4.7 Teacher empowerment: Good relations are essential for effective change and it is important that relations with teachers, who have the responsibility to implement these changes, Teachers need to have a sense of empowerment and need to be encouraged to participate in the changes. Empowering involves releasing the potential of individuals, allowing them to flourish and grow, to release their capacity for infinite improvement and teacher as a critical factor in student education. The conviction is that developing teachers as classroom instructors and giving them a greater voice in the decisions that affect the school will make teaching more effective. Teachers are empowered in a number of ways, one of which is staff development. Needless to say, for teachers to be successful educators during transformation, they need to undergo some kind of development and training. 2.4.8 Open information system The effectiveness of communication between group and individuals is crucial in this regard and claims that under present day conditions, information has to be shared much more widely. In the context of the school, changes with regard to National and State policy documents, the school procedures, role and resource allocation are all aspects of change that need to be communicated to the necessary constituencies. This may be done through regular meetings, workshops, and rotation of policy documents to members of staff. These are important procedures to enhance open communication system where people can express their feelings freely. By working together in this way, the principles of transparency, accountability and trust are promoted. In collegial group, flexible patterns of communication are used so that all members feel free to participate equally and at will. Minority opinions are encouraged and understood. Individuals know and understand one another, and are sensitive to each other’s ideas and reactions. There is a level of trust and mutual respect that results in members dealing candidly with one another without fear of harmful effects. Resistance to change flourishes where there is poor communication, little or no active participation and involvement in decisions and where tensions are allowed to simmer unchecked. To overcome such resistance, it is necessary that there be open lines of communication participation and involvement of all stakeholders, an atmosphere of facilitation, support, negotiation and agreement. 2.5 WHO SHOULD PARTICIPATE IN DECISION-MAKING AT SCHOOL? According to Van der Bank (2007:150), participative decision-making does not mean that all staff members must participate in all decisions. There are two criteria, which could be used to determine which staff members should participate in which decisions. The first of these criteria is ‘relevancy’ and the second has to do with ‘expertise’. ‘Relevancy’-refers to the interest a specific person has concerning the problem and the subsequent decision. ‘Expertise’-refers to the extent to which participants to decision-making are qualified by means of training and experience. 2.6 STEPS FOR EFFECTIVE PARTICIPATIVE DECISION-MAKING There are nine steps in an effective participative decision-making process which comprised the following: (i) Identify the problem (ii) Clarify the problem (iii) Analyze the cause (iv) Search for alternative solutions (v) Select alternatives (vi) Plan for implementation (vii) Clarify the contract (viii) Develop an action plan (ix) Provide evaluation and accountability 2.7 THEORY ON PARTICIPATIVE DECISION-MAKING According to Nzimande (2001:06), the assumption that individuals have expectations about outcomes that may manifest as a result of what they do, underlies the expectancy theory. This means that individuals are regarded as thinking and reasoning beings that are to participate in future events, so as the teachers at school. This is the anticipation of the greater performance and the greater outcome. This is the strength of an individual’s preference for an outcome. If teachers are motivated through rewards, they may be good participators in decision-making at school. The guidelines on participative decision-making at schools are: †¢ .Participation is more appropriate when the principal does not possess enough information to solve a problem. †¢ Participation of teachers is more appropriate when the nature and dimensions of the problems are not clear. †¢ Participation is more appropriate when decisions are important and relevant to teacher. 2.8 ADVANTAGES OF PARTICIPATIVE DECISION-MAKING AT SCHOOL †¢ Groups provide a larger sum of knowledge than would be accessible to individual members, thus leading to informed decisions. †¢ Participation in decision-making increases the acceptance of decisions, which improves the motivation to implement the decision. †¢ Groups are willing to take greater risks than individuals, which leads to aggressive solutions to problems. 2.9 BENEFITS OF PARTICIPATIVE DECISION-MAKING AT SCHOOL This research has indicated that participative decision-making results in a number of benefits for example: †¢ Increased decision quality †¢ Decision creativity †¢ Decision acceptance †¢ Decision understanding †¢ Decision judgment †¢ Participation results in teacher satisfaction with the profession of teaching. †¢ Teachers prefer principals who involve them in decisions-making. †¢ Teachers neither nor want to be involved in every decision-making; in fact too much involvement can be as detrimental as too little . 2.10 POSSIBLE CONSEQUENCES IF TEACHERS DO NOT PARTICIPATE IN DECISION-MAKING AT SCHOOL There are some problems that teachers face when they not involved in decision-making at school, namely: †¢ Behavior changes †¢ Psychological withdrawal †¢ Influence on mental health for example stress, burnout, etc. CHAPTER THREE: 3.0 EARLIER METHOD OF DECISION MAKING IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS In the olden days, it was deemed necessary to instruct the conquered people in the doctrines of the Homes, and transform them into loyal subjects. They began re-educating the native adults and providing instruction to the children and youth, indoctrinating and educating them in the rudiments of social life to use them to benefit the School. One piece of information that is never controversial in educational discourse is the pattern of initial recruitment into schools in Nigeria. Several studies: Wise (1956); Ikejiani, Hansen, Okeke & Anowi (196†²;), Fafunwa (1979) and Taiwo (1981), for instance, show that in southern Nigerian, often the first pupils in the secondary schools were drawn from groups who were to some extent marginal or subordinate within the traditional status hierarchies. In Northern Nigeria, however there were numerous cases according to Hisket (1975) and Ibrahim (1979) where member of the traditional elite’s were the first to be recruited. The initial scho ols in northern Nigeria for instance were â€Å"Native administration† in the sense that they were supported from local kinds and were very much the concern of the ‘Native Authority’ â€Å"Indeed in northern Nigeria the emirs being the heads of the Native Authori ty bui l t these schools† (Wise 1956, p. 43) Ibrahim (1979) asser ts that in Kano State, the f ragmentary data that exist suggest that the students in governments schools at the initial period of western education in 1903 were disproportionately drawn from high socio-political elite’s of Kano citizens. Even within the immerse growth in educational opportunities that has occurred, it can be observed that the low socio-economic status people in northern Nigeria are still largely under represented within the upper reaches of northern educational system and attempts to increase proportional representation of lower status grouping conceived in terms of traditional criteria of status have been only moderately successful. In gross terms, it is possible to point to variant patterns of response to the introduction of secondary education in the country. Unlike in southern Nigeria, where the most usual result of the introduction of secondary education is a process of status reserved, in northern Nigeria, the process of status reinforcement is assumed to ensure a guaranteed degree of continuity in the recruitment of dominant groups. Of course, concepts derived in terms of this may do injustice to empirical realities since in practice the emergent pattern of social differentiation in the less developed world represents a complex inter-weaving between traditional and emergent concepts of status. This theory may seven further be argued to be largely an academic exercise as the emergence of a modern type of urban centre has largely eroded the traditional criteria of status and authority in Africa. Influence of Commissions and Educational Laws on Secondar y Education The early, schools functioned with scarcely any involvement by the colonial government and as such there were no reasonable attempts to co-ordinate education system organized by the various missions. In this regard, there was no novelty as such in educational practice, all missions owned common allegiance to Christianity and they operated curriculum centered on English, Religion, and Arithmetic commonly called 3Rs. This system however changed in early 1880s particularly by the Education Ordinance of 1882 when colonial government assumed a measure of control of mission education. Significant improvement was made when the Ordinance No. 3 of 1887 was enacted to consolidate and amend the laws relating to the promotion of education in the colony of Lagos. Concerning secondary education, in 1879 there were three secondary schools namely the CMS Grammar school, built in 1859. Wesleyan Boys High School built in 1976 and St. Gregory’s School 1879. The trend of the secondar y school from 1897 to 1992 was a gradual increase in enrolment from 172 to 206. With the amalgamation of Southern and Northern Protectorates. Lord Lugard proposed three types of secondary education with the aim of adapting the needs of education of the children in both protectorates to the man-power needs. The schools are the provincial schools, the rural and the non-government schools. The provinces, and located three to four kilometers away from the residential areas under a British Headmaster. The Resident and the paramount chiefs in the areas where these schools were located were to assist in the supervision of the schools. The entrants were between 12-14 years of age. The rural school were meant for rural children who ultimately would remain in rural environments The rural school policy was not accepted particularly by people in the Southern provinces and a grammar school â€Å"policy was not accepted particularly by people in the Southern provinces and a grammar school policy was favored initially in the main urban areas. CHAPTER FOUR: 4.0 DATA ANALYSIS INTRODUCTION The purpose of this study is to investigate through the perceptions of staff, the extent to which teachers participate in decision-making at Government secondary schools Omala, and as necessary, to make practical recommendations as to whom in the management arrangements of the secondary schools may be modified or enhanced to promote teacher participation in decision-making more effectively. 4.1 Data analysis entails bringing order, structure and meaning to the mass of time consuming, creative and fascinating process. Analysis of data about individual interviews was done through identifying common themes from the respondents’ description of their experiences. Irrelevant information was separated from the relevant information in the interviews. The relevant information was broken into phrases or sentences, which reflect a single, specific thought. The phrases or sentences were further be grouped into categories that reflect various aspects of meanings. The various meanings identified will be used to develop description as seen by the respondents. 4.2 Analysis of quantitative information: The researcher used descriptive statistics to analyse quantitative data. Descriptive statistics is a mathematical technique for organizing, summarising and displaying a set of numerical data. 5.0 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS. This Research serves as a mechanism to identify and evaluate management practices that are consistent with the current call for a participative mode of education management and governance. The research questions form the essentials and the value of this study. The structure of the research provides the reader with what to expect in the ensuing assignment. This research has reviewed about participative management and the transformation role of the principal. The approach described requires an involvement and commitment from staff in order to bring about effective change. Also suggests that a collegial model is difficult to implement even when staff is committed to it. The school management functions remain dominantly in the hands of the principals and School Management Team (SMT). The extent of teacher involvement in management of the school is limited to the classroom. Principals do not motivate staff to be united. Team -work in schools is regarded as poor. Involving teachers in decision- making allows staff and management to work as a team. When teachers are involved in decision-making, they tend to own decisions, by ensuring the implementation of those decisions. A staff perception to the way in which participative management operates currently at Government secondary schools Omola is that teachers are not adequately involved in decision-making in schools. Teachers in this study accept the responsibility of becoming the role players in managerial decision-making. CONCLUSIVELY, The principal should promote an atmosphere of trust by displaying fair treatment and proper management skills to the teachers. It is important for the principal to model attitude behaviour on the principles of democracy. Fair treatment of teachers is a prerequisite for building an atmosphere of trust and accountability. In the climate of transformation, it becomes imperative for a principal to display proper management skills so that his/her credibility as a leader is not brought into disrepute. Recommendations to teachers: †¢ Teachers should take positive steps to become partners in managing their schools Teachers must not be complacent, but be active participants in terms of self – education and managing school affairs beyond the boundaries of the classroom. However, it becomes necessary for teachers to respect the positional power of the principal, which grants him / her authority to make certain decisions unilaterally. This requires involvement and commitment from staff in order to bring about effective change. Assess the principals’ understanding of their role REFERENCES âž ¢ Kogi Education Congress 1994. A Policy Framework for Education and Training Education desk.Omala Town:Omala L.G.A. in promoting teacher participation in decision-making within these schools. âž ¢ Adeyinka, A.A. (1971): The development of grammar school education in the Westernstates of Nigeria 1908 – 1968. Unpublished M.Ed. Dissertation Submitted toUniversity of Ibadan. Ibadan âž ¢ Fafunwa, A. B. (1974): History of education in Nigeria. London. George Allen And Unwin Ltd. Federal Republic of Nigeria (1981). National Policy on Education. Lagos: NERC. âž ¢ Ibrahim, Y.Y. (1979): Oral and socialization process: A socio-folkloric Perspective of initiation from childhood to adulthood Hausa Community. Unpublished Ph. D. Thesis submitted to Bayero University Kano. âž ¢ Ikojani, O. (Ed ): Nigerian education. Bristol; Western Printing Ltd. Taiwo. C.O. (1981): The Nigerian education system. Past Present and Future: France and London: Buller tanner Ltd. âž ¢ Wise, C.W (1956): History of education in British West Africa. Toronto: Longman Green & Co.

Organisational Behaviour in an Engineering Company Case Study

Organisational Behaviour in an Engineering Company - Case Study Example In 2009, Ronald retired and Christine took over as Managing Director. The company had gone through rough weather with an impact on profits though there had been no reduction of staff. Markets had stagnated and certain conditions had reduced the need for new grain silos. Christine’s vision was one of economic survival through expansion and diversification based on the existing competencies of the company. Existing resources may be made available for diversification projects without an increase in the outlay of the company. An understanding of Christine from the standpoint of Maslow’s model brings out the fact that she is keen to prove her capabilities. Recognition from colleagues and her peer group, she is keen to show her individual ability to manage new important projects without consulting employees who can add value to her decisions. She tries to get involved in projects that will bring her into the limelight and feed her need for prestige and status. She is at the Ego stage of the hierarchy. This is the reason she prefers to take independent decisions and shares information on a piecemeal basis. She has adopted a Directive style of leadership with the expectation that output will be produced on the strength of her communication. She derives power from her status of leader and expects staff behaviour to mould itself on the strength of monetary incentives that she introduces to enthuse the staff. There has been a shared sense of pride in the objective of the company. This is brought out by, Dobson’s statement of pride in producing silos for farmers of the country. Dobson is upset that nobody asked about his willingness to manage a new challenge since he is used to being involved in key decisions about the company. Dobson is conscious of his seniority and is used to being consulted as brought out in the comment about his age and  experience with the company.  

English Terrorism Law Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

English Terrorism Law - Essay Example Such a form of terrorism is called State Terrorism. It would not be wrong to say that 'terrorism' and 'terrorist' are both relative terms. Their meanings differ from people to people, society to society. Therefore it's not surprising that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter! 'On one point, at least, everyone agrees: terrorism is a pejorative term. It is a word with intrinsically negative connotations that is generally applied to one's enemies and opponents, or to those with whom one disagrees and would otherwise prefer to ignore. 'What is called terrorism , thus seems to depend on one's point of view. Use of the term implies a moral judgment; and if one party can successfully attach the label terrorist to its opponent, then it has indirectly persuaded others to adopt its moral viewpoint.' Hence the decision to call someone or label some organization terrorist' becomes almost unavoidably subjective, depending largely on whether one sympathizes with or opposes the person/group/cause concerned. If one identifies with the victim of the violence, for example, then the act is terrorism. If, however, one identifies with the perpetrator, the violent act is regarded in a more sympathetic, if not positive (or, at the worst, an ambivalent) light; and it is not ter rorism.' [3] The English Legal System: In the United Kingdom; England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Irelands have their own distinct legal system. Among these states there is a considerable difference in laws and their implementation. There are two kinds of laws. The Common laws which has not been clearly defined and is based on customs and traditions is used unless superseded by legislation. On the other hand there is the equity law which consists of a body of rules applied by the courts. The British legal system is not based on Roman law unlike the laws of certain other European countries [17]. However, due to its membership of the European Union, the European Community Law applies to economic and social judgements in the UK. The rulings are usually given by the European Court. There is a lot of literature on the subject of the relationship between EU Law and National Law.A group of competent law makers claim that the EU law is the supreme law of the land. The European law is based on the premise of 'We the People!' How ever, others argue that to evaluate the performance of national courts, adherence to the national constitution is to be strictly observed. [5] The Head of the judiciary in England and Wales is the Lord Chancellor. He has the authority to make all appointments for the magistrates and to the crowns except the highest which is made by the Prime Minister. There are two kinds of courts; criminal courts and civil courts [24]. The Home Secretary is responsible for the criminal justice system in England and Wales. Lastly there are the tribunals, which work in conjunction with courts. 'They are normally

Paper about Finance Debt, Derivative, and speculation on financial Essay

Paper about Finance Debt, Derivative, and speculation on financial instruments - Essay Example Debt financing is a tool employed by firms to raise capital and expenditure funds through sale of bonds, notes or bills to investors who may be institutions or individuals. The buyers are promised repayment of the principal plus interest on their investment and as such are creditors to the selling firms. The term ‘debt financing’ may carry some negative look but this tool of financing is really helpful in raising starting business to run operations. Even firms with very healthy balance sheets resort to raising working capital through debts. It is also known as leverage in financial terms. When used well debt financing may help firms take advantage of lower interest rates from financial institutions and as such obtain cheap capital. The firm has therefore obtained capital readily, is repaying at lower interest rates and the repayment is spread over a period of time. If carefully employed debt financing is a sure way to obtain capital and maintain ownership. After the obtaining funds from the lender the only obligation is to repay back with interest. The borrower has the advantage as they invest the funds in their business without any interference. Firms also enjoy the benefits of tax deductions on the borrowed funds as well as the interest hence if carefully invested debt financing is a cheap source of capital. However debt financing may come with negative effects if misused; the borrower is obligate to repay regardless of the macro-economic environment hence it can result in to bankruptcy and legal suits. The borrowed funds also have to be repaid with interest and it affects a company’s credit score. Another financial tool in the world of business involves financial derivatives. This instrument of finance is associated with an indicator of finance or a commodity and through these certain financial risks

Safety Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Safety - Essay Example The first step I will consider as a safety professional is to review the firm’s past safety issues. By knowing the weak areas, I can easily identify the precise place to start implementing new safety measures. It is also important that I ensure direct access to the top manager in the manufacturing plant, since lack of management buy-in may make the safety initiatives not long lasting. I should also have access to every work area and department, and must question employees freely for the purpose of information gathering. Regular status report will be prepared so that I can update supervision on current safety proposals and identify areas that should be improved on (Pradeep 8). Record keeping and documentation will help me to give written evidence provided by the new safety program to show positive results and also to protect the firm incase of a safety inquiry or when a lawsuit is filed. I can also include consultants cite testing to determine employee preservation of safety in formation. According to Janicak, (182), a manufacturing plant needs some OSHA regulations applicable to it as not all the regulations apply. To determine the type of regulation, I will first consider the types of products that are being manufactured by this plant. For example, if the company deals with chemicals, then OSHA regulations dealing with chemicals will be applied, while if the plant does not deal with chemicals, then different regulations will be followed. By clearly reading the regulations from the OSHA website, I will use my knowledge that every type of manufacturing plant has some regulations to follow and thus will reform the old ones and update the newest on a regular basis. To be an effective advocate for safety in an organization, I need to stay firmly in charge by letting all the employees know that I am concerned and doing all I can to create a safety environment (Gail 30). Taking my time as their representative by being close to them and being inquisitive on how they are doing will demonstrate good safety leadership. A good safety leader also shares information with the employees immediately they are available and encourage employees to talk freely about their painful experience in the workplace. Exercise 2 Voluntary Protection Programs OSHA created a VPP to recognize industrial firms that show exemplary health and safety programs, exceeding the least requirement put up by the Code of Federal Regulations. As a safety professional, I would advocate that our manufacturing plant strive to be recognized as a VPP star company. This is for the reason that the firm has a responsibility to train workers, watch their health status, and correct issues related to safety. This will ensure that the workplace and the environment are free of any possible risks or require engineering directions to be implemented, that is, use of protective equipment to limit existing and known hazards. It is also important for continual improvement safety and health traini ng and recognizes excellence in the programs offered by the company. Advantages of a company being involved in VPP Some of the advantages of the company being involved in VPP include: reduced employees’ compensation cost, improved motivation for employees to work safely, resulting in better productivity and quality, recognition in the industry and community, and improvement in existing safety and health programs ( Manuele 235). Disadvantages OSHA has set compliance criteria that

Nationality, immigration and asylum law Coursework

Nationality, immigration and asylum law - Coursework Example At the same time, he suffers serious eye problems to such an extent that if medical facilities are not available he may go blind. To further add his misery, last week, a co-worker has threatened him to report to immigration authorities being stayed illegally. He engulfs with a fear of being deported from UK. UK Border Agency (UKBA) treats the claim of asylum as human rights claim. Insertion of Humanitarian Protection makes Immigration Rules practicable. The asylum application should contain one of the following grounds: a) whether qualifies for asylum under paragraph 334 of the Immigration Rules b) whether the applicant qualifies for Humanitarian Protection under paragraph 339C of the Immigration Rules c) whether the applicant qualifies for discretionary leave on other ECHR grounds d) Is it applicable under article 3 that fall outside the scope of the Immigration Rules on Humanitarian Protection and e) whether the individual circumstances are so compelling that a grant of discretiona ry leave is appropriate which is rare1. Mentioned process in asylum cases should strictly be applied by the incumbents irrespective of the fact that neither ECHR nor Humanitarian Protection has been mentioned specifically by the applicant. The other category of the applicants should seek shelter under the umbrella of Humanitarian Protection or other ECHR. ... In cited cases possibility of seeking assurances from the concerned authorities of the country of return is utmost important under the ECHR and the Immigration Rules. However, a deportee may contact to Asylum Operational Policy Unit via a senior caseworker before being returned to his / her country of origin4. The issues of human rights for the non-UK nationals are crucial in the sense that they have to face language barriers, lack of information on their rights, discourse on migration and asylum make it more complex. As per the practice in vogue, if detainee is detained in prison, custody suites or removal centers requires an independent inspection and investigation5. The lack of awareness about the immigration laws amongst the legal / illegal immigrants put them in knee-deep waters. In a report titled â€Å"Our Hidden Borders† written by Latif and Martynowicz examines in details the current law, policy and practice on the detention of offenders of immigration law and asylum seekers in line with the UK commitments under international human rights law. The findings of investigative report speak for itself about human rights concerns / violations6. The report in question discussed the policies, law and practice that govern the UK Border Agency and the involvement of Police Service of Northern Ireland. Each and every individual since birth has the right of liberty and security. No one shall usurp the rights of others by way of arbitrary arrest or detention. No one can be deprived of his / her liberty provided such grounds exits and in accordance with the prevalent law of the land. It is the right of the detainee to know the cause of arrest at the time of his /

Manegment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

Manegment - Essay Example HRM is a tactical and inclusive way of managing people and the place of work customs and atmosphere. An efficient HRM enables employees to contribute successfully and productively to the overall company course and undertakings of the company’s goals and objectives. In the recent past, HRM has moved from its traditional duties and emphasising more on planning, monitoring, and control (Martocchio 4). There was a time I worked as an attendant in a large motel. I interacted with the HRM department during the recruiting process and attended various training sessions organised by the motel and conducted by the HRM department. In this motel, the HRM handles any issue concerning leave days, off days, payslip problems and even medical cover. When I left the motel, I got an exceptionally strong recommendation letter drafted and authenticated by the HR manager. I had a truly delightful time working in this motel; I got promoted two times, and that can attest to the fact that I had a tremendously positive experience with the HRM. In the future, I look forward to secure employment in the same hotel and probably a chance to work in their HR office. Any HRM team is led by a HR manager who reports to a high authority. The authority could be an operation manager or a general manager depending on the organization’s hierarchy of power. Some human resource managers may report directly to the CEO or directors of the company. All the activities of a HRM department are managed by the departmental manager, but at times, the other managers may help him/her, especially during recruitment, firing, and appraisal of the employee performance (Martocchio 9). I have always been passionate about handling people from different creeds, religions, races, social orientations and backgrounds. I believe that, when I choose this course, it will help me achieve my dreams since it is

Blackboard Student Orientation Essay Example for Free

Blackboard Student Orientation Essay The Blackboard Learning System is the wide-ranging and adaptable electronic-learning software platform built up for educationalists to improve their instruction and learning experience by means of the Internet. Blackboard operates using either Netscape or Internet Explorer. The browser must accommodate both JavaScript and Java. Institutions around the world are now using Blackboard to enhance conventional classroom education and convey superior distance training (Jafari and Sheehan, 2003). The platform has been refined through three years of continual innovation and feedback from its user base. Students can access their courses remotely if they do not have computers at home through their institution’s computer center or at pubic libraries that have a web connection. To access the course, a student must have a university email account. This is usually set up automatically after the student registers for the course in which Blackboard is used. From the orientation, it became clear to me the concept of Blackboard. I know now that the Blackboard Inc. is a company that markets and sells software designed to optimize use of the Internet as a tool for advancing education and learning. It also increases institutions’, faculties’ and students’ right of entry to applicable educational content as well as offer instructive information services. In this way, Blackboard reaches a more extensive base of students, graduates and groups of people. I also learned that Blackboard is an education portal that can pull data from campus information systems (student information system, human resource management system, etc. ) and from the Internet, and unify their presentation to end users following information standards. This way, the Blackboard Learning System positively influences the online education program of educationalists by allowing the customization of their courses using only the needed features that are suitable to their educational needs. The use of the system likewise helps facilitate a shift in the mode of assessment, from summative to formative evaluation. WORK CITED Jafari, A. Sheehan. (2003). Designing Portals: Opportunities and Challenges. Hershey, Pennsylvania: Idea Group, Inc.

Subscriber System using Identity-Based Encryption

Subscriber System using Identity-Based Encryption Secure Message Transmission to the Publisher Vivek Sharma INTRODUCTION The major mechanism regarding to the Publish-Subscribe based system are security, confidentiality, scalability and authentication. Publish-Subscribe system can be classified into two groups like as Type based and Content based message transmission. The publish-subscribe system is facing difficulties regarding Authentication just because of their Loose coupling nature. Content based routing face the difficulties in term of event confidentiality and their subscription. Hence, A new way is needed to the transmission of encrypted events to publishers-subscribers without knowing subscriptions between them and authenticate to each-other during transmission of an event. Security is the major facor in the broker less publisher-subscriber systems. To successful subscription, the subscribers should be in clustered form according to their subscription. The proposed approach gives permission to subscribers to manage the credentials in respect of their subscriptions. Credentials are labelled with private keys to the subscriber and Publisher connected with each-every encrypted event and related credentials. By using identity-based encryption, we must ensure that a particular event will decrypt only if a common credential between both publisher-subscriber associated with the particular event and their private key which is generated by the key generator are matched correctly in system and subscribers can check the authenticity of events to the publisher-subscriber system. SCOPE OF PROJECT : The project will provide the high authentication, reliability and scalability to the publish-subscribe system. An authentication and confidentiality will be achieved by the publishers and subscribers system to the particular occurring event by applying the pairing based cryptography and Symmetric encryption. Both publisher-subscriber are assigned with a same private key mechanism differentiate with the other mechanism like as public key infrastructure. So it provides more secure and reliable way to the communication between publisher and subscriber. LITERATURE SURVEY : Title: Cipher text Encryption based on attribute Author Bethencurt , Sahali A. Year: 2007 Description: According to the attribute based encryption based on the cipher text policy, the publisher or encryptor fix the policy to the subscriber, who will decrypt the message. With the help of attribute, the policy can be formed. In previous Cipher text encryption based on attribute, policy is embedded with the cipher text to the transmission. In this proposed method, the access policy is not sent with the cipher text, so it would provide better privacy environment to the encryptor. Title: Public-Key Encryption related Search of particular keyword Author: D. Boneh, P Crcenzo, R Ostrvky Year: 2004 Description: We study the problem of searching on data that is encrypted using a public key system. Consider user Bob who sends email to user Alice encrypted under Alices public key. An email gateway wants to test whether the email contains the keyword urgent so that it could route the email accordingly. Alice, on the other hand does not wish to give the gateway the ability to decrypt all her messages. We define and construct a mechanism that enables Alice to provide a key to the gateway that enables the gateway to test whether the word urgent is a keyword in the email without learning anything else about the email. We refer to this mechanism as Public Key Encryption with keyword Search. As another example, consider a mail server that stores various messages publicly encrypted for Alice by others. Using our mechanism Alice can send the mail server a key that will enable the server to identify all messages containing some specific keyword, but learn nothing else. We define the concep t of public key encryption with keyword search and give several constructions. Title: Identity-Based Encryption from the Weil Pairing.e Scheduling Independent Tasks Author: D. Boneh and M.K. Franklin Year: 2001 Description: We propose a fully functional identity-based encryption scheme (IBE). The scheme has chosen cipher text security in the random oracle model assuming a variant of the computational Die- Hellman problem. Our system is based on bilinear maps between groups. The Weil pairing on elliptic curves is an example of such a map. We give precise dentitions for secure identity based encryption schemes and give several applications for such systems. Title: â€Å"Supporting Publication and Subscription Confidentiality in Pub/Sub Networks Author: M. Ion, G. Russello Year: 2010. Description: The publish/subscribe model over’s a loosely-coupled communication paradigm where applications interact indirectly and asynchronously. Publisher applications generate events that are sent to interested applications through a network of brokers. Subscriber applications express their interest by specifying filters that brokers can use for routing the events. Supporting condentiality of messages being exchanged is still challenging. First of all, it is desirable that any scheme used for protecting the condentiality of both the events and filters should not require the publishers and subscribers to share secret keys. In fact, such a restriction is against the loose-coupling of the model. Moreover, such a scheme should not restrict the expressiveness of filters and should allow the broker to perform event filtering to route the events to the interested parties. Existing solutions do not fully address these issues. In this paper, we provide a novel scheme that supports (i) condentiality for events and filters; (ii) filters can express very complex constraints on events even if brokers are not able to access any information on both events and filters; (iii) and finally it does not require publishers and subscribers to share keys. Title: Efficient Privacy Preserving Content Based Publish Subscribe Systems Author: M. Nabeel, N. Shang, and E. Bertino Year: 2012. Description: Privacy and confidentiality are crucial issues in content-based publish/subscribe (CBPS) networks. We tackle the problem of end-user privacy in CBPS. This problem raises a challenging requirement for handling encrypted data for the purpose of routing based on protected content and encrypted subscription information. We suggest a solution based on a commutative multiple encryption schemes in order to allow brokers to operate in-network matching and content based routing without having access to the content of the packets. This is the first solution that avoids key sharing among end-users and targets an enhanced CBPS model where brokers can also be subscribers at the same time. Title: Encryption-Enforced Access Control in Dynamic Multi-Domain Publish/Subscribe Networks Author: L.I.W. Pesonen, D.M. Eyers, and J. Bacon Year: 2007 Description: This paper extends previous work to present and evaluate a secure multi-domain publish/subscribe infrastructure that supports and enforces engrained access control over the individual attributes of event types. Key refresh allows us to ensure forward and backward security when event brokers join and leave the network. We demonstrate that the time and space overheads can be minimized by careful consideration of encryption techniques, and by the use of caching to decrease unnecessary decryptions. We show that our approach has a smaller overall communication overhead than existing approaches for achieving the same degree of control over security in publish/subscribe networks. Title: Hermes: A Scalable Event-Based Middleware Author: P. Pietzuch Year: 2004 Description: The core functionality of an event-based middleware is extended with three higher-level middleware services that address different requirements in a distributed computing environment. We introduce a novel congestion control service that avoids congestion in the overlay broker network during normal operation and recovery after failure, and therefore enables a resource-efficient deployment of the middleware. The expressiveness of subscriptions in the event-based middleware is enhanced with a composite event service that performs the distributed detection of complex event patterns, thus taking the burden away from clients. Finally, a security service adds access control to Hermes according to a secure publish/subscribe model. This model supports fine-grained access control decisions so that separate trust domains can share the same overlay broker network. Title: Enabling Confidentiality in Content-Based Publish/Subscribe Infrastructures Author: C. Raiciu and D.S. Rosenblum Year: 2006. Description: we focus on answering the following question: Can we implement content-based publish/subscribe while keeping subscriptions and notifications confidential from the forwarding brokers? Our contributions include a systematic analysis of the problem, providing a formal security model and showing that the maximum level of attainable security in this setting is restricted. We focus on enabling provable confidentiality for commonly used applications and subscription languages in CBPS and present a series of practical provably secure protocols, some of which are novel and others adapted from existing work. We have implemented these protocols in SIENA, a popular CBPS system. Evaluation results show that confidential content-based publish/subscribe is practical: A single broker serving 1000 subscribers is able to route more than 100 notifications per second with our solutions. Title: EventGuard: A System Architecture for Securing Publish-Subscribe Networks Author: M. Srivatsa, L. Liu, and A. Iyengar Year: 2011. Description: a framework for building secure wide area pub-sub systems. The EventGuard architecture is comprised of three key components: (1) a suite of security guards that can be seamlessly plugged-into a contentbased pub-sub system, (2) a scalable key management algorithm to enforce access control on subscribers, and (3) a resilient pub-sub network design that is capable of scalable routing, handling message dropping-based DoS attacks and node failures. The design of EventGuard mechanisms aims at providing security guarantees while maintaining the system’s overall simplicity, scalability and performance metrics. We describe an implementation of the EventGuard pub-sub system to show that EventGuard is easily stackable on any content-based pub-sub core. We present detailed experimental results that quantify the overhead of the EventGuard pub-sub system and demonstrate its resilience against various attacks.

A Study On The European Identity

A Study On The European Identity Although the concept of collective identity is a post-colonial phenomenon, a few nations would describe themselves under a collective identity before the modern times of the 19th Century. In fact, Europe is historically unique in terms that it has been the people living in the continent of Europe who have persistently described themselves as Europeans since the 17th Century (Pagden, 2002). Indeed, European Union emerged as the most important attempt for creating a supranational entity in the Continent and the best example of a Pan-European common identity as even the words Europe and the European Union are being used as synonyms by millions of people every day. Nevertheless, an uncertainty of a common identity has always been the case for Europeans throughout history and the physical as well as social borders of Europe has never been distinctly known for centuries which are full of wars, tensions, competition and blood. Today, the same problem continues to exist and many believe that it is the major factor blocking the efforts for achieving a fully integrated Europe, as the definition and frontiers of a common European identity is still unknown. Indeed, one of the most important issues of the European integration from a socio-political perspective is the vague concept of a common European identity including prospects of European Union Citizenship. Although a common European identity had been long around for centuries, these are fairly new issues in relevance to the half a century long history of todays European Union. However, I believe how the common European identity is defined is very important for the future steps of the integration process, as nowadays the EU is undergoing transformation towards a political union with an aim to become a global actor in the international political arena. What shall be the elements of a common European identity, how shall it be formulized if it is to become a suc cessful construct which would define Europe correctly to end the efforts that lasted for such a long time? I believe a triumphant common European identity must include the concrete and symbolic realities and it must be rooted to the diversity of cultures which had been created by the long history of Europe (DAppollonia, 2002). Otherwise, if it remains as a form of thin identity suggested by Habermas (2006), the problems and uncertainties of European identity as well as the poorly functioning European Union citizenship is most likely to exist in the Unions foreseeable future. In fact, a common European identity can only be successfully constructed by taking into account all the ambiguities, contradictions and developments in form of a unity in diversity principle which can be applied to the reality of Europe rather than building a shallow and artificial construct as it seems to be today. Theoretically, a united Europe in political terms is made possible if a united Europe in cultural terms is established through formulating a collective common identity which may only be conceived as a coll ection of multiple and complex values created by complicated dynamics of Europes long history. Nevertheless, a united Europe in cultural terms shall not mean a homogenous and strictly ordered European society; rather the European identity shall celebrate Europes long tradition of diversity. Another important question is how should European Union citizenship be defined and what should be the frontiers of cultural implications of such a political formulation. Considering the wide cultural diversity and long history that the individual members of the European Union had share in the European continent, a collective identity may prove to be far too complex to construct, so one may argue that a common European identity is still an illusion. Although Europeans have a successfully formed a common economic and increasingly political union, they are still far away from the desired level of cultural unity and a common identity which seems to be an alarming factor for the next stages of the European integration. Nonetheless, European Union citizenship is an area open to developments and it might be used as a critically important tool by the European Union leaders to accumulate a common European identity, only if it is formulized correctly. The critical point on the debate of Europe an Union citizenship is that the dominant Classical Model of Citizenship is based on the structures of nation-state and that is why this model cannot be applied to the European Union, as it is a whole different level of organization. On the other hand, Post-National citizenship is a modern approach to the issue of European identity and it is suitable to Europe in order to reach its goals of unification and deepening through building a stronger common identity in the 21st Century. This paper is organized in several sections. European identity from a historical perspective is analyzed in the first part; the current status of European identity and the issue of national identities in contrast to the common European identity is discussed in the following part; a new European identity and suggestions for a new formulation is given in the third part; a brief history of European Union efforts and progress on building a common identity is examined in the fourth part; and finally the aspects of European Union Citizenship is discussed in the fifth part of this paper. After all, this paper argues that a common identity in form of a collective European identity is clearly necessary for the Union at this stage of integration, and it is a crucial element for the future of the European integration project especially as our world is getting smaller as well as more fragmented simultaneously due to the complex dynamics of international relations every day at the age of globalization. European Citizenship is very much connected to the issue of European identity and it is the key to achieving such a strong common European identity when it is formulized as a Post-National phenomenon. The Europeans must derive their power from the diversity of their cultures by building a thick identity for Europe rather than a thin identity which consists of merely political rights; yet the Europeans shall not overlook the uniqueness of the Continent and the similarities they share in comparison to the rest of the world emphasized by the Unity in Diversity principle. Today, it is time for the Europeans to unite under one roof in socio-political terms, complete the long standing task of defining the boundaries of the European civilization by establishing a common and collective European identity in order to carry on the progress of the European integration project in a globalized world. Nonetheless, the question of possibilities of the Europeans to achieve such a high level of cultural as well as political unity remains a question and it is subject to a whole different level of research. However, often seen as a regional product of globalization itself, I believe the European integration project cannot progress any further without achieving a common European identity which is more critical than ever today in order to overcome the challenges of globalization in the 21st Century. Identity has always been a problematic concept because it is uncertain, fluid and highly flexible. Identity is the way to define ones self and to differentiate from the others. If taken literally, identity means equal, identical. Identity is not static but dynamic, and it can be defined in different ways in different circumstances. Identity is construct, which cannot be constructed immediately but only in time. It is not a fixed, constant and pre-given entity; while identity formation is heavily dependent on how one is perceived by the others. Identification implies belonging or membership, in turn which implies the exclusion of non-members (Bretherton Vogler,1999: 236).In other words, the sole purpose of identity is to separate self from the others in a sense. Moreover, identities are multiple in nature, or even kaleidoscopic. A person may have a single identity, but it will be made up of many levels of loyalty and identification (Von Benda-Beckmann Verkuyten, 1995: 18). Meanwhile , identities change, because they are based on perceptions, which themselves change over time and environment; as it is possible to identify ones self with more than one thing at a time such as class and gender, or religion and age. Therefore there are various elements of ones identity and these various elements in an identity may well be contradictory (Von Benda-Beckmann Verkuyten, 1995: 12). On the other hand, a collective identity means the attitudes, which all members of that group have in common in their thoughts and behavior; which differentiates them from the other (Munch, 2001: 137). Collective identities can provide existential meaning for people, thus they are primary means of unity in a society which give additional stability especially during periods of upheaval. Collective identities can generate a degree of continuity between individuals and their social environment, and can confer social recognition and approval (Von Benda-Beckmann Verkuyten, 1995: 24). Therefore, collective identities are defined mainly by culture from a historical point of view rather than biological genes, ethnicity, nationalism or simple political rights. Finally, It they are used to construct community and feelings of cohesion and holism, a concept to give the impression that all individuals are equal in the imagined community (Strath, 2002: 387). From the perspective of political scie nce; there are two types of political identities: a civic identity and a cultural identity. The cultural definition of political identity entails a sense of belonging of an individual towards a particular group which can mostly defined by its uniform cultural or ethnic values. On the other hand, the civic definition of political identity involves with the identification of an individual mostly in form of citizenry with a political structure, which includes political institutions, rights, duties and rules (Bruter, 2004: 26). Therefore, a cultural European identity implies a reference to Europe as a continent, a civilization and a cultural entity whereas a civic European identity implies a reference to the political and institutional aspects of European Union identity largely in the form of EU citizenship. Europe has always been more of a mental construct than a geographical or social entity (Lowenthal, 2000: 314). Europe has no natural frontiers both in geographic and sociological terms. Therefore it had never been easy to acquire a singular definition of European identity because the borders of Europe had always been dynamic, and no one knew where Europe started and Europe ended (Pagden, 2002). A European identity is an abstraction and a fiction without essential proportions (Strath, 2002: 387). The concept of a European identity is an idea expressing artificial notions of unity rather than an identity of equality. In this sense, the concept of European identity is inscribed in a long history of political reflection on the concept of Europe. From the perspective of history, Europe has been united as a singular entity in various settings for a number of times in its past such as the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, the Napoleonic Empire, and arguably the Nazi Third Reich. Identity was only conceptualized as a macro-level collective phenomenon by the intellectual elites of Europe; on the other hand, for the rural masses of Europe, identity was a local term associated with the micro-level, rarely the nation and never an incident as large as the continent of Europe (Pagden, 2002). In different period of history, a common European identity had been defined on different basis. In the Middle Ages, Christianity was the main defining characteristic of European identity, whereas in modern times, the emergence of the nation state, periods of nationalism and afterwards democracy and secularism has been the common characteristic of the Europeans. Meanwhile, Christianity lost its dominance yet it arguably remained as one of the important components of European identity. Today, the European Union similar to the continent of Europe can be characterized by overlapping and unclear boundaries. From a geographical perspective, the EU has fuzzy boundaries due to the ongoing enlargement processes since the 1970s (Risse, 2003: 490). Although the geographical borders of Europe are not objectively defined particularly in the east, a state without a geographical relevance to the European continent cannot become a part of the European Union, even if it shares the EUs collective values and norms. Moreover what adds to the uncertainty of Europes borders is that boundaries of the EU may change according to different policy fields such as the Schengen includes the non EU member Norway but at the same time it does not include the EU member state the United Kingdom. Therefore, first of all the lack of solid geographical boundaries weakens efforts of the EU to be seen as a singular entity by its own people (Castano, 2004). On the contrary, diversity shall be the main c haracteristic of European identity from a cultural point of view. Religious and cultural heritages including Roman law, political democracy, parliamentary institutions, Renaissance humanism, rationalism, romanticism characterize the common identity of the Europeans (Smith, 1992). On the other hand, there are undeniable socioeconomic, cultural, national and ethnic differences among the member states of the European Union. Nevertheless, this reality is reflected in the motto of the Union which is unity in diversity from a positive point of view. A collective political culture is an important feature of the common European identity. The Greeks gave Europe the science and philosophy and the Romans gave it the idea of single continent and unity which created Europes strong cultural and political origins. The diverse and multiple cultures of the ancient Europe shared a single identity as they were brought together under a common system of Roman law. The people of Europe also shared a common language, Latin, and after Europe slowly converted to Christianity they acquired a common religion. Christianity has been a crucial part of the European identity and it played a key role to create its internal cohesion and to designate its relationship with the rest of the world. Further references are made to Europes identity besides its heritage of classical Graeco-Roman civilization and Christianity; such as the ideas of the Enlightenment, Science, Reason, Progress, Industrialization, Democracy and Individualization as the core elements of this claimed European legacy (Wintle, 1996: 13-16). Hellenism, Romanticism, welfare society and cross-fertilization of diversity can be added to this list (Garcias, 1993: 7-9), while one may argue that Europes core values include its commitments to an undivided continent, to individual freedom, and to the universalism of humanity (Havel, 1996). However, this unity never reached to the point of sharing a common European culture. A single body of citizenry or a common cultural identity could not be reached even in the peak of Europes history of unity. When the differences within Europe are emphasized, they are often in the form of unity in diversity; religious differences such as Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox Christianity, and linguistic differences including Romance, Germanic and Slavic languages are obvious; yet they are seen as correlated, Catholic-Romance, Protestant-Germanic, Orthodox-Slavic, and essentially are underlying the major ethnic cleavages and conflicts in the history of Europe. Anthony Smith is among the scholars who are skeptical of the possibility of a common European identity because they could not find a common culture across the European continent, and even more critically they claim that Europe lacks of a shared set of myths, experience and symbols; these elements which they find crucial to create po st-national identity (Smith, 1992: 72-73). Furthermore, Europe lacks of a shared historical and cultural content as which is the largest source of division among Europeans. Other obstacles to a common European identity include linguistic diversity and its tripartite religious division. In fact, a major difference among EU countries is the persistence of linguistic diversity, even though in practical level English has become the dominant language in Europe. Language does not only have an instrumental but also an emotional dimension and peoples sense of nationality is often tied up with their mother tongue (Guibernau, 2001: 192). On the other side of the debate, scholars such as Michael Wintle are more optimistic on the possibility of creating a European identity. Indeed, the existence of the EU identity in the form of converging education standards, educational exchanges, and the organization of a European civil society is already established in most parts of Europe. Wintle argues that a European identity was previously already created during the high Middle Age (Wintle, 1996: 19-22), and it can be easily established today considering the forces of globalization. For now, the major success of the EU in fostering its identity has been limited with the increasing free movement of people across European borders, which has accelerated since the 1985 and formalized in 1990 Schengen accords parallelly correlated with the rising impact of globalization. Increased interaction among peoples of Europe would also encourage cultural exchanges and this could foster a stronger sense of a shared community. Education and hi gh culture shall play a key role in European Unions cultural policy, because these two factors have an important effect on the creation of the EU identity. Education is obviously one of the crucial dimensions in any attempt to develop the future identity of the EU or at least more understanding and convergence among Europeans; high culture unites Europeans against the low culture which separates them. After all, the development of the EU identity will be the outcome of a long process in which bottom-up as well as top-down initiatives are likely to be employed (Guibernau, 2001: 183-184). The idea of Europe as well as the identity of Europeans are constructed over time with processes of contention and bargaining. Gerard Delanty argues that a European Culture is not an entity with cohesion and fixed boundaries, but a floppy concept, with no clear borders and with internal opposition and contradictions, discursively shaped in contentious social bargaining processes (Delanty, 1995; 1999). In other words, the images of Europe do not exist as a natural phenomenon but are discursively shaped by internal as well as external forces (Strath, 2002). A basic step in the process of creating a collective identity is to defining itself in relation to the other. Central to ones identifications are images of others. Likewise any identity, European identity necessarily contains a demarcation from the non-European. This is natural to all distinctions, and they are both inclusive and exclusive. The boundaries of Europe can only be drawn and the identity of Europe can only be realized in the mirror of others. Indeed, Europe does not exist without non-Europe and that non-Europe does not exist without Europe. Many centuries ago, the Europeans defined people living in the north as uncivilized and people living in the south as oriental (Pagden, 2002). Furthermore, the Greeks labeled the non-Greek speaking people as barbarians, even if that word would surely have a different meaning by that time. In nearer times, although the Russians shared many features with a European society including the same religion, it could not reach the formal limits of a Romanized civilization thus perceived as a barbaric empire or the orient, depending on the time. Moreover, European belief of its superiority relied on the common features of European societies such as science and liberal arts. Thus the rest of the world could only be portrayed as actors in relation to Europe, in other words always remained as the other. According to Delanty, Europe has been always invented and reinvented on the basis of division and strategy for the construction of difference from the other starting from Christian identity against Islam in the Middle-Ages, after that in the colonial politics to the New World, and to the ethnic minorities in the contemporary European Union (Delanty, 1995). Therefore, historical experience suggests that the new European identity may be constructed on the other which may be the United States, the East, Islam or the European past itself. Samuel Huntington has argued that religion provides the best common means of historically distinguishing between Europeans and the other, especially in terms of the confrontation between the Judeo-Christian tradition and Islam (Huntington, 1996). However, at the same time, the separation between Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Western variations of Christianity has, for a long time, been crucial in establishing a division between Western and Eastern E urope; partially reinforced in the Cold War, divisions between Catholicism and Protestantism and separation between North and South (Guibernau, 2001). Today, the European Union is frequently argued to be a fortress for the other and the EU is often referred to as a Christian Club, because historically all states on the continent of Europe had Christian societies. The Ottoman Empire was the greatest enemy of European states as well as Christianity in the Middle Ages; which made Islam the primary charactersitic of the other for Europeans from the perspective of history. Today, the accession dialogues of Turkey into the European Union raise wide public opposition in Europe while the European Union officials make constant efforts to prove their allegiance to non-religious, non-ethnic but solely liberal and non discriminatory Copenhagen Criteria independent from historical aspects of the other which has actually been extensively used to define the European identity. Finally, Europe is unique because it has possessed an identity as a cultural space which gave birth to political unions throughout its history. However, it has never succeed ed to constitute a single nation-state or a unified ethnic group. Although the European Union with its single currency and supranational political and legal institutions changed these historical facts to an extent, it is only possible with the means of a common European identity which will carry Europe to the next stage of integration which it always aimed but failed to achieve during its long history. Nevertheless, history has already proved that it will surely be hard to overcome uncertainties of a common European identity at the level of the masses. Over the past millennium, the advancements of European civilization gave rise to the elites living on the continent of Europe who feel increasingly attached to Europe as a whole and shared dreams of a united continent. However, Europe as a realm sharing a common history as well as a common destiny has been largely abandoned by fixed prejudices on often nationalistic and ethnic grounds. National interests and biases at local, national, and global levels have prevented the masses of European people from viewing themselves collectively (Lowenthal, 2000: 315). However, today, forces of globalization, advancements in communications technologies and media transmission of everyday popular culture now promotes the sense of being European among larger segments of society other than the European elites. Although a truly trans-European society is still in its infancy, many of its essential elements are already in place this time largely due to the forces of globalization. Most European states a re increasingly democratic in reality; their economies are for the most part market driven; their popular culture grows more homogeneous as communication technologies expand under the forces of globalization in the 21st Century (Waterman, 1999: 23). Therefore, Europe is at the stage of defining its identity today; however which criteria are being deployed to define Europe, Europeans, Europeanness and their respective boundaries is critically important. A common European identity must be constructed by defining and understanding the historical roots of outstanding features of the European society in relation to the notion of citizenship, which will be discussed in depth in the following parts; developed in the past over the land of Europe. For sure, Europe is being redefined as a result of a complex set of processes, but an important question is what sort of Europe is emerging from them? There is certainly a structured symmetry in the perception of the European Union as the coincidence of a homogenized socio-political space, a unified regulatory space of an EU super-state, a singular European civil society surpassing existing national and regional differences in culture and identity (Hudson, 2000). In some respects there has been progress towards such an ideal of European civil society. For example, the Council of Europe and the European Convention on Human Rights have had an important role in defining acceptable standards across Europe. The issue of European identity and the criteria used to denote Europeans is clearly a critical one for the political and social integrity for the European Union. Europe will exist as an unquestionable political community only when European identity permeates peoples lives and daily existence (Demos 1998). Identity is a key issue which is continuously changing and thats the reason why it is so hard to define especially in a world of f ast changes in the 21st Centurys globalization. The member states of todays enlarged EU have become multi-ethnic and multi-cultural societies with various structural phenomenon ranging from the immigrant community of France to Post-Communist yet ethnic communities of the Central and Eastern European states. As the EU expanded eastwards in the last two rounds of enlargements, the issue of defining a European identity became even more critical for sake of integrity and stability of the Union. One conception of a singular European identity would see it constructed through a process similar to that involved in the creation of national identities in the 19th and the 20th Centuries. Ironically, while the aim was to create those national identities in the past, the challenge that Europeans face today would be to transcend them for the creation of Europeannes. However, the current trends at local European level are quite different from the interests of Europeanists at the supranational level. There are pressures from nation states and their citizens to resist any further transfer of national sovereignty as well as erosion of national identity (Hudson, 2000). In fact, the success of extreme right wing political parties in important European countries such as Austria and France may be seen as a sign of the reappearance of dangerous nationalist and racist ambitions which the peoples of Europe have most probably experienced more than any other continent in the world history. Eric Hobsbawm has proclaimed that nationalism is dead (Hobsbawm, 1990). On the contrary, Llobera argues that national identities are certainly not eternal, but the time of their demise has not yet arrived (Llobera, 2003). In fact, national identities are still dominant in Europe. Recent surveys show that, people in Europe prefer maintaining their national identity and sovereignty, but increasing number of people have accepted European identity in addition to their national identities. Therefore, European nationalism is another important component of a common European identity and it has been a major ideological tool for unifying nation states as well as the Europeans as a whole throughout Europes history. To start with, the European Union, with its both intergovernmental and supranational characteristics represents a far different type of state-organization than a classical nation state. The main distinguishing characteristics of the EU from the nation-state are the absence of a shar ed language, a uniform media, common education system and a central state structure (Shore, 2000: 64). Furthermore, the powers of the EU rely on the sharing of sovereignty of its member states. European unification is a progressive method of limiting individual nation states to practice any kind of harmful nationalism and this is makes up an important part of the European identity. At this point, nationalist Euroskeptics may argue that building a common Europe and an identity for it means destroying nations. However, a general feeling of Europeanness and loyalty to Europe in a cultural sense, does not need to conflict with national identities (Andreani, 1999). A successful construct of European identity must include the concrete and symbolic realities created within time. The European states have not always been nationalist through Europes long history. The definition of nationalism counts on the idea of nation and territory; while the definition of a European nationalism depends on the historical and ideological evolution of the European nation states and aspirations for a post-national Europe. In fact, the aspirations that underlie in the roots of the foundation of the European Union are parallel to European cosmopolitanism in the 18th and the 19th centuries. From the Enlightenment to the beginning of the ECSC after the Second World War; European nationalism found two separate meanings: one as an antinational Pan-European idea of a new united Europe that limits the sovereignty of the nation states, and the other as a pro-national ideology to create or legitimate new nation states (DAppollonia, 2002). Historically, cosmopolitanism reflected intentions for a European unity, and gave rise to anti-national European nationalism. European nationalism was characterized by the will to protect the European interests and its supremacy from non-Europeans as well as protecting Europe from itself by creating a federation. It can be argued that economic development, commercial prosperity, intellectual-supremacy and military power were the factors making Europe homogeneous and created a united European identity beyond national borders to an extent. Some intellectuals as well as economists believe that the nation state is an outdated political and economic entity, and nationalism is merely an expression of old prejudiced and narrow-minded ideas. European nationalism defined itself similar to the nation state through common identity and culture, territory, historical memory building, and economic and political objectives to defend self-interests. The defensive conception of European nationalism o n the other hand had always been a driving factor, yet the pro-nationalist ideologies had been the major cause underlying the wars of modern times. As Europe was divided into aggressive nation states, the idea of Europe had increasingly converged. Although the wars were dividing factors themselves, their interpretations by the Europeanists became powerful unifying factors for Europe. The irony of European nationalism is that it depends on the memory of events that divided rather than united the continent (DAppollonia, 2002). Although it used the same definitions of nation and Europe with the anti-national European nationalism from time to time, it remained limited to the strict logic of the national framework. Transnational solidarities were necessity to establish European unity under either a supranational or an intergovernmental structure. For some intellectuals, European nationalism was the only way to protect the autonomy of nations and the liberty of the individuals. Conceptualizing of the European Union citizenship and creation of the Committee of the Regions in the EU were seen as efforts of the Pro-national European nationalists. These forms of European nationalism rejected the form of narrow nationalism while it showed ambitions to reinforce the intermediary actions between state and individual, between th