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Article Review Essay Conducting their study as the transitional funding attached to the peace process in Northern Ireland is reaching its end, the authors examine the role of aid in conflict resolution particularly with regards to intangible outcomes such as identity formation. The idea behind this funding is that it reduces economic disparities between the conflicting groups and that the economic growth started by this funding will continue into the future. These funds come from the International Fund for Ireland (IFI), which addressed unemployment and poverty in Republican / Loyalist communities; the Peace I funds, which promoted social inclusion, cross-community contact, and economic development; and the Peace II funds (ended in 2006), which had similar goals to Peace I but targeted local, grassroots (nongovernmental) organizations. The authors also consider the role of external agencies as they intervene in ethnopolitical conflict and the importance of community development in the peace process. The authors are careful to note that economic aid is not a magic cure for conflict as this aid, if improperly administered, can at times heighten underlying conflicts. Indeed, in Northern Ireland, the approach has had mixed results. In designing their study, the authors took both a qualitative and quantitative approach. For the qualitative portion, the authors interviewed 98 community leaders, civil servants, and development officers from Belfast, Londonderry/Derry, and the Border region (Northern Ireland). These interviews consisted of semi-structured questions, including those attached to the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale: â€Å"What are your best wishes and hopes for your personal future? What are your worst fears and worries about your personal future? What are your best wishes and hopes for the future of your country? What are your worst fears and worries about the future of your country? † (page 166). The quantitative data was drawn from the summer 2006 Northern Ireland Public Opining Survey. The sample consisted of 1,023 adults representative of Northern Ireland’s adult population. The study as a whole was designed to look at the respondents hopes and fears about Northern Ireland’s future. Through the inclusion of qualitative data, the authors hoped to demarginalize voices that are often not heard in the official discourses of the peace process. This study yielded numerous tantalizing findings. First, the authors found that more Nationalists than Unionists imagine a future where conflicting groups are able to perceive a sense of shared community. Second, the authors found differences based on gender: more females than males saw the opportunity for building new relationships amongst communities in the future. Third, the authors found two common fears / concerns that extend across religions, genders, and ages: the fear that violence in changing the social fabric of Northern Ireland and the belief that politicians are disingenuous and not interested in serving the needs of their constituency. Fourth, the authors found that more Nationalists than Unionists saw the modernization of the economy and the political structure as means by which to support the peace process. Finally, the authors found that younger adults were more concerned about the potential failure of the peace process and the economy than older adults The authors consider numerous theories about identity formation. In designing their study, they took into consideration geographic differences in identity formation: i. e. Londonderry/Derry vs. Belfast and urban vs. rural locations. They also consider how the Irish view immigration and the infiltration of outside values. In general, this article is not convincing. Its primary strength is the detailed background to the conflicts in Northern Ireland, with a focus on the economic causes and effects of this conflict. This strength does not mitigate the effects of the article’s numerous weaknesses. First, the authors do not explicitly state their hypothesis. While exploratory studies such as this one can potentially reveal valuable information, the authors nowhere state the reasons behind the study. When questions such as identity formation are being explored, the readers need to know the authors’ relationship to the issue. For example, are the authors somehow involved in this ethnopolitical conflict? Or, are they looking at it from the perspective of an outsider? If they are outsiders, does their perspective have a bearing on how the respondents answer their questions? Second, the authors explicitly state that they wish to demarginalize those voices that are not typically heard in the official peace process discourse. However, in selecting the respondents for the qualitative portion of the study, the authors chose community leaders, civil servants, and development officers. It would seem that these are precisely the voices that are heard in the official discourse. Readers are left to wonder why the authors did not include a more representative sample of the population of Northern Ireland for this portion of the study. Third, this does not seem to be a study that was designed specifically to answer certain questions. As noted, the authors nowhere state a hypothesis. For the reader, it appears that the quantitative and qualitative data seems to have been mixed together ad hoc. In other words, the study does not seem to be designed to fit a specific question. Rather, the authors appear to have attempted to answer questions based on the information they had at hand. Fourth, as the basis for this study was largely to examine economic role of the peace process, it seems like a gross oversight that the authors did not provide data on their respondents’ demographics. In the discussion section, the authors indicate that they collected background demographic information (political party, religious views, age, gender, socioeconomic status) on the respondents, but this information was not included in the results section and does not appear to have been considered in any significant way. Finally, the analysis of the qualitative data seems a bit lacking. It would perhaps have been stronger to indentify the common themes and subthemes of the responses, rather than using the responses as illustrative examples. Because of these specific weakness as well as the authors’ failure to mention the limitations of their study and to provide specific recommendations for how their results can be used to generate future studies and/or to impact the peace process, this article is not convincing.

How Irish History Affected Its Music :: essays research papers

Reilly 1 How Irish History Affects Its Music   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   After seven hundred years of British rule, and many uprisings that ended in failure, Ireland had reached a breakthrough. This breakthrough had an affect on many different people, especially Irish musicians. The series of uprisings and wars that led to the freedom of most of Ireland developed a new form of Irish music; the rebel songs. On Easter Monday of 1916, the first shot of the Easter Uprising was fired. Six members of the Irish Citizen Army shot a policeman on the streets of Dublin in the head. This was the start of a new era, an era where Ireland would be free. Pearse, the Commander in chief of the Irish Citizen Army, and Connolly, the leader of the Dublin division, led the main body of troops through Dublin to the General Post Office. The G.P.A. became the rebels’ headquarters for the six-day battle against the British Army. There were heavy casualties on the British side, but the Irish were still unsuccessful. There statement was made though, and they surrendered on the following Sunday. Two thousand people were arrested that day, and the leaders Reilly 2 were put to death. Even though the original opinion of the people about the uprising wasn’t in favor of it, after the death of the leaders they were outraged. (Coogan,†Troubles† pgs. 19-25) In May of 1918 the remainder of the prisoners were released. The shadow government and the Irish Republican Army were established. Eamon DeVelera was the president of the shadow government, and Michael Collins and Harry Boland, his right hand men, are associated with the IRA’s establishment. The IRA performed many rebellious acts towards the British and any Irish spies that they hired. The British felt that something needed to be done but did not have the troops due to the First World War. To work around this they sent in a hand-picked elite group that were called the Black and Tans. An Irish spy that was giving information to the IRA in return for his life informed them of the Black and Tans addresses. They then went and killed many of them. This led to the British calling a truce. (Coogan,†Troubles†,pgs. 35-42) Michael Collins was chosen to go over to London to negotiate this truce. They came to an agreement that Reilly 3 Ireland, except six northern counties known as Ulster, would become a freestate, but still pledge allegiance to Britain.

Healthy Personality: Ability to Adapt Change and Handle Stress

The road to a healthy personality is like a road itself. It has many curves and blind corners. Ones ability to adapt to this constantly changing road is one of the most important components of a healthy personality. That is, the ability to adapt to a changing world. Another important component is the ability to handle stress. We are just beginning to find out what stress does to our bodies and minds, and most of it is not good. Some other components I will discuss are having a good self-concept and everything that encompasses self . Our world is constantly changing and putting different pressures and demands on us. We have to adapt to many new kinds of stressors resulting from evolution alone. Time is changing constantly and that brings on new situations we need to cope with. When a person can adapt well, they have less stress and in general have a healthier personality. Adapting gives us the means to survive. It provides us with shelter, food, and a competitive edge. Without these things its hard to survive. There are people like this too. Some people, whether it be circumstantial or relative, just do not have what it takes to make it these days. These people usually do not have a healthy personality. It would be hard to even think about what a healthy personality is like. The ability to adapt gives us access to the resources needed for lives essential biological needs, which in turn allows us to think deeper about our state of mind and relationships with others. The way we handle stress and how we react to it plays a big role in the development of a healthy personality. To go out into the world not prepared to handle stress would be like going into war with no ammo in the guns. You would not last very long in either situation. There is no denying the fact that all of have stress to deal with. I'm not going to tell you or anyone else what I'm going through. You don't need to hear it and I don't like hearing it from other people. What it comes down to is how one deals with their individual stressors. Psychological hardiness comes into play here. If you are a psychologically hardy person, stress may be a foreign word to you. On the other hand if you are not a psychologically hardy person you will have a very good idea of what stress is. Psychological hardiness, to me, is the act of actively knowing you have stress and using three simple guidelines to deal with that stress. Those three are commitment, control, and challenge. These three things are very important in stress management. Especially in comparison to other ways of stress management like substance use, withdrawal, or defense mechanisms. While these things temporarily relieve the effects of stress they usually are short lived or have negative consequences attached to them. If you commit yourself to do something you are actively staying involved in that activity. This helps you to set goals and achieve them. Challenge is taking a stressful situation and turning it into a challenge instead of some situation you just have to deal with. When you take on something it doesn't quite seem the same as a stressful situation. The situation may be very stressful, it's all about the attitude one takes on before going into a certain situation. Finally control can aid in stress relief. When people feel that they are in control they have an easier time dealing with whatever situation they are in. If you feel that you are in charge of your life and the decisions you make and the attitudes you take on are your own you will have an easier time dealing with stress. These are not the only ways of dealing with stress. There is Albert Ellis's concept of controlling stressful thoughts. Ellis says that what we think is directly correlated to what we feel. His theory includes concepts like catastrophizing thoughts and irrational beliefs. These things are hard to detect, but I think we all do them. Irrational beliefs and catastrophizing thoughts are negative feelings about situations you feel stress in. An example would be thinking you have to act a certain way to get the approval of others in a social setting, or thinking that there is nothing that you could possibly do in a situation. The main point in dealing with stress that Ellis is trying to make is realizing that we all have these negative thoughts and beliefs. When something happens to us, Ellis called this event the activating event, we have consequences that follow. In between those two events is when the belief or thought will take place. An example would be if you lose your job, activating event, you will have negative consequences. A lot of people would add in a catastrophizing thought like â€Å"that job was everything to me† or â€Å"I'll never find a job as good as that one†. When we do that it makes it easier to look at our failures and concentrate on them instead of trying to fix them. It also makes it easier to become depressed or anxious. People get in the habit of using these beliefs and thoughts over time and have a hard time breaking there habits. My final component to a healthy personality is a collaboration of several different theories. They all have to do with how we perceive ourselves and how we feel about ourselves. Individual theories that will be discussed are self perception, the self concept, self esteem, and ideal self. I feel that all of these things are closely related and tied together very intricately. They are reflected within each other and none could really be complete without the others. Self perception is an ongoing and constantly changing view of what we are. It can be broken down into three major components, they are: the physical self, the social self, and the personal self. The physical self is the bodies we walk around in and the unique features each of them possess. Our physical appearance has an enormous effect on a healthy personality. Some people tower over others and some, like me, wish they had a few more inches. Some people are physically more beautiful than other people, and in turn get more attention for their appearance. Other people are ridiculed for their appearance. How people deal with their physical self has a lot to do with a healthy personality. For example if a young girl really wants to be a model, but is not cut out to be one, the realization that she will not be a model will have a profound effect on her personality. Perhaps she will take on negative attitudes about her body and appearance. Maybe those attitudes will develop into false beliefs that people, including her, are somehow not as valuable unless they are beautiful. You can also look at it from the other end, perhaps a very beautiful young lady develops negative feelings about unattractive people. And those feelings develop into beliefs that she is better than everyone else and the most beautiful person on earth. How we deal with the fact that we are constantly being judged and evaluated on our physical appearance has a profound effect on personality. The social self is the many different masks and roles we play in social and home settings. You might play the role of a sophisticated gentleman at a fancy Christmas party, or the role of a brother, sister, mother, father, or child within a household. How we use these different roles and masks has an effect on our personality. What if you went to fancy Christmas parties in wholly jeans and a t-shirt? You would probably be looked down upon. And if you did that all the time, that is use the wrong social masks in the wrong situation, it would affect your personality negatively. The personal self is the part of you that nobody else knows. It is the constantly changing feeling of being yourself, with always changing emotions, attitudes, and feelings. The personal self includes our names and self concept. Our names do have a small effect on our personality. They can change others perception of us, which can lead to many different things, but for the most part peoples names do not have a profound impact on personality. A self concept is an impression or concept of yourself. It is a collaboration of personal traits you feel are important, and your own impression on how you stack up to these traits. Your self concept can have positive and negative impacts on your personality. If you have a very rigid view on what values you should have and you do not live up to them you could consider yourself not worthy. It can lower your self esteem, which is another closely related concept. Self esteem is approving of yourself. It is respecting yourself as a valuable person. Self esteem is said to form in childhood when parents either show conditional or unconditional love. This can have a profound affect on personality. People with lower self esteem tend to be depressed more and are shown to be more susceptible to suicide. Flip side of the story, people with high self esteem tend to live happier lives with overall healthier personalities. Concepts of how we ought to be is our ideal selves. This is all the traits we think we should be full of. Things like compassion, honesty, or it can be things like physical appearance, height, and hair color. The closer we actually are to what we think we should be correlates to ones self esteem. That is, the closer we are, the higher our self esteem. If we think we are not up to par with ourselves it can lower self esteem. Our concept of self is a very intricate and delicate web of emotions and outside pressures we need to keep tabs on. The concepts in this essay are a lot like car accessaries. You can add new shiny paint to show of its physical appearance and you can add snow tires to adapt to different road conditions in the future. What we do to our vehicles that we have is up to us. We have the innate ability to change our surroundings and ourselves. That is why a lot of these components are related. If we feel like we have low self esteem we can start exercising to feel better, which will in turn allow us to be physically fit. Physical fitness will allow us to feel less stress about being overweight or lazy, and that in turn will allow us to concentrate on adapting to our natural surroundings.

The Differences Between The Developmental Policies

Donaldson examined a similar problem in Guizhou and Yunnan wherein even though poverty reduction was one of the explicit goals of developmental programs in two of China’s most remote provinces, he found that the differences between the developmental policies in Guizhou and Yunnan. Wherein one (Guizhou) saw fairly modest economic growth but greatly reduced poverty, compared to Yunnan which saw strong economic growth but stagnant rates of rural poverty i.e. economic growth did not reduce poverty. This was accomplished, Donaldson argues, based on individual official’s experiences and leadership style. Guizhou focused on micro-level opportunities to â€Å"increase farmers livelihoods by shifting rural labor (through out-of-province migration) and increasing opportunities for farmers to increase their incomes at home, in part by building modest roads linking villages to local markets and promoting local, small-scale industries, such as rural tourism and coal mining.† Donaldson’s findings are evidence to the importance of evaluating and setting the policy agenda with respect to all of the objectives outlined in food policy rather than just focusing on a single aspect, in this case poverty reduction, can hamstring the policy. Ignoring the interdependence of the objectives will ultimately cripple developmental policy as the externalities of narrow-minded policy create a negative feedback loop and thus kicks the developmental can down the road rather than dealing with the root of theShow MoreRelatedInfluenced By Marxism And Imperialism915 Words   |  4 Pagesscholars basically believe that less-developed countries will be unable to develop because the rich world uses them as the equivalent of colonies. The major contention here is that the developing countries of the Global South are hindered in their developmental efforts by their association (economic) with the industrialized countries of the Global North. 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