American Studies ( Term Paper)

College Term Paper

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American Studies

3^rd Dec. 2012

Women and Nature Place in Patriarchal Society

Women and nature are treated as objects in the existing patriarchal society. The critics who study the relationship between women and nature are called ecofeminists. Ecofeminists assert that there is a connection between the destruction of nature by humans and the oppression of women by men that arises from political theories and social practices in which both women and nature are treated as objects to be owned or controlled. Ecofeminists aim to establish a central role for women in the pursuit of an environmentally sound and socially just society. They have been divided, however, over how to conceive of the relationship between nature and women, which they hold is more intimate and more spiritual than the relationship between nature and men. Whereas cultural ecofeminists argue that the relationship is inherent in women's reproductive and nurturing roles, social ecofeminists, while acknowledging the relationship's immediacy, claim that it arises from social and cultural hierarchies that confine women primarily to the private sphere.

            Ecofeminists believe that patriarchy and male domination is harmful to women, as well as the environment. There is a link between a male's desire to dominate unruly women and wilderness. Men feel as though they must tame and conquer both in order to have complete power. Ecofeminists say that it is this desire that destroys both women and the Earth.

Ecofeminists believe that women have a central role in preserving nature because woman understand and are one with nature. There is a deep connection that men cannot understand between the Earth and women, hence the terms Mother Nature or Mother Earth. Women need to use their superior insight to reveal how humans can live in harmony with each other and with nature.

Literature and Spiritual Quest Paramhansa Yogananda

Quest of Divinity in Autobiography of a Yogi: A Term Paper

              One of the preeminent spiritual figures, Paramhansa Yogananda's book Autobiography of a Yogi is about the quest of divinity. It is a long search especially for the study of the nature of God and religious belief. The book talks about two types of quest: linear and vertical. Spiritual quest always brings about a change in the character; either physical or mental transformations. It is reflected through inner thought, i.e. sense of achievement. When a person travels in time and space he is reflected with experiences.

            There will be the caller, receiver and message from the receiver. While the receiver (quester) receives the message then the caller is disappeared. While the receiver creates the message, the receiver does not exit but the message lies. It does not die. The receiver receives the message through different ways: experiences, calling, sounds, dreams, etc. Yogananda's quest is based on experiences. The beginning of the spiritual quest varies in different ages. To Yogananda, spiritual quest begins in childhood. He writes openly about his intense desire, even in childhood, to know what lay behind all the experiences of life and death. As a child he asked, "What is behind the darkness of closed eyes? (9)"

            He remembers the power of his will even in the childhood. While his sister had a boil on arm he said to his sister, "By the power of will in me, I say that tomorrow I shall have a fairly large boil in this exact place on my arm; and your boil shall swell to twice its present size! (10)" The next morning he found with a stalwart boil on the indicated spot and the dimensions of his sister's boil had double.

            When Yogananda was 11, his mother passed away. This incident greately intensified his personal search of god. He states "I loved Mother as my dearest friend on earth. Her solacing black eyes had been my refuge in the trifling tragedies of childhood.(13)"  Later Yogananda states that in a spiritual vision God, in the aspect of Divine Mother, told him, "It is I who have watched over thee, life after life, in the tenderness of many mothers. See in My gaze the two black eyes, the lost beautiful eyes, thou seekest! (13)."

            His quest of divinity continues even in the student life. During his high school life Yogananda longed to dedicate his life to god. With three friends he attempted to run away from home and find his long sought guru amid the Himalayan mountains. But it was not until after his graduation from high school, which he had promised his father he would finish, that Yogananda was to meet the great sage Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri. He then spent the better part of ten years under his guru's strict discipline.

Every knowledge is received under the direction of guru. When Yogananda meets his guru and gets some speeches from him, he praises his guru in this way.

Discipline had not been unknown to me: at home Father was strict, Ananta often severe. But Sri Yukteswar’s training cannot be described as other than drastic. A perfectionist, my guru was hypercritical of his disciples, whether in matters of moment or in the subtle nuances of behavior. (118)

            During his stay with his guru Sri Yukteswar for ten years Yogananda receives a lot of knowledge on spiritual quest. He is so much impressed with his guru. His methodology of giving speech and the way of convincing is very simple and vivid. In his book Autobiography of a Yogi under the topic "Years in My Master's Hermitage", Yogananda states,

In Master’s life I fully discovered the cleavage between spiritual realism and the obscure mysticism that spuriously passes as a counterpart. My guru was reluctant to discuss the superphysical realms. His only “marvelous” aura was one of perfect simplicity. In conversation he avoided startling references; in action he was freely expressive. Others talked of miracles but could manifest nothing; Sri Yukteswar seldom mentioned the subtle laws but secretly operated them at will. (120)

            Yogananda is not impressed only by Sri Yukteswar guru. He is 

WHAT IS GLOBALIZATION?

Debate on Globalization : A Term Paper

            Globalization means the growing economic interdependence of countries worldwide through the increasing volume and variety of cross-border transactions in goods and services. The international capital flows through the more rapid and widespread diffusion of technology. Very few people, groups, or governments oppose globalization in its entirety. Instead, critics of globalization believe aspects of the way globalization operates should be changed. The debate over globalization is about what the best rules are for governing the global economy so that its advantages can grow while its problems can be solved.

            On one side of this debate are those who stress the benefits of removing barriers to international trade and involvements, allowing capital to be allocated more efficiently and giving consumers greater freedom of choice. With free market globalization, investment funds can move unimpeded from where they are plentiful to where they are most needed tariffs make goods produced at low cost from faraway places cheaper to buy. Producers of goods gain by selling to a wider market. More competition keeps seller on their toes and allows ideas and new technology to spread and benefit others.

            On the other side of the debate are critics who see neoliberal policies as producing greater poverty, inequality, social conflict, cultural destruction, and environmental damage. They say that the most developed nations- the united States, Germany, and Japan-succeeded not because of free trade but because of protectionism and subsidies. They argue that the more recently successful economies of South Korea, Taiwan, and China all had strong state-led development strategies that did not follow neoliberalism. These critics think that government encouragement of infant industries- that is, industries that are just beginning to develop- enables a country to become internationally competitive.

            E.J. Hobsbawn is in favour of globalization. He says that the most industrialized countries are now linked with the far remote backward countries through the globalization. He further says that the world has become a village. It is unified as one state. Globalization does not merely unified the world, rather, the economic factors are also been increased. In his essay, The World Unified , he says: "In other words in, say-thirty-five years, the value of the exchanges between the most industrialized economy and the most remote or backward regions of the world had increased about sixfold (53)."

            In his same essay, The World Unified, Hobsbawn compares then and now, and says, not merely the economy and technology even culturally it has made the world as a global village.

We are today more familiar than the men of the mid-nineteenth century with this drawing together of all parts of the globe into a single world. Yet there is a substantial difference between the process as we experience it today and that in the previous century. What is most striking about it in the later twentieth century is an international standardization which goes far beyond the purely economic and technological… What hardly occurred then was the international, and the interlinguistics standardization of culture which today distributes, with at a best a slight time-lag, the same films, popular music styles, television programs and indeed styles of popular living across the world. (55)

Leslie Sklair is also in favour of globalization. He says that economic transnational practices make the world as a village. It helps the consumer. In his essay, Sociology of the Global System, he further explains:

Economic transnational practices are economic practices that transcend national boundaries. These may be entirely contained within the borders of a single country even though their effects are transnational. For example, there may within one country be a consumer demand for a product which is unavailable from domestic supply. The retailer places an order with a supplier who fills the order from a foreign source. (65-66)

            The benefit of the globalization is not limited only in economic and cultural aspects. It also lies on new types of political operations. The great world cities are becoming new type of political center through transnationalization of labour. Saskia Sassen in his essay, Whose City Is It? Globalization and the Formation of New Claims quotes:

Major cities have emerged as a strategic site not only for global capital but

also for the transnationalization of labor and the formation of transnational

identities. In this regard they are a site for new types of political

operations. (73)

            Every aspect has negative as well as positive impact. Similarly, globalization has also negative impact. Some critics argue that the infant industries must have protection. They cannot sustain without free zone trade concept. They must have quota system so that they can survive. The multinational companies have great net work and products so that they can have monopoly. Among those critics one of them is Immanuel Wallerstein. Wallerstein in his essay, The rise And Future Demise Of The World Capitalist System says:

In peripheral countries, the interests of the capitalist landowners lie in an opposite direction from those of the local commercial bourgeoisie. Their interests lie in maintaining an open economy to maximize their profit from world-market trade and in elimination of the commercial bourgeoisie in favor of outside merchants. Thus, in terms of the state, the coalition which strengthened it in core countries is precisely absent. (61)

            In his same essay, Wallerstein says that because of the globalization the gap between the haves and have not is being wider: only the core nations are benefited rather than periphery ones. He says:

"The range of economic activities being far wider in the core than in the periphery, the range of syndical interest groups is far wider there. Thus it has been widely observed that there does not exit in many parts of the world today a proletariat of the kind which exists in, say Europe or North America. (63)

            Because of the globalization now we are facing environmental crisis. Both population growth and economic growth are limited by the capacity of the planet to accommodate them. But we cannot expand the physical limits of the earth. The report of the Club of Rome says:

A rapidly increasing population with an increasing economic growth rate also produces pollutants- heat, carbon dioxide, nuclear waste, and chemical waste, which can seriously impede its own capacity to survive. The rate of outputs of pollutants is increasing exponentially along with population size and economic growth. (Key Ideas 104)

            Hence the globalization has two folds: good and bad. People from remote areas are also benefited by utilizing world class materials as well as the core nations are also benefited by expanding their markets. But on the other hand public consciousness should be raised against the environmental crisis.

Works Cited