The Physics of a Diesel Engine Essay - 921 Words

The Physics of a Diesel Engine The world we live in is surrounded by diesel engines. They are on the freeways, railways, airways, and are one of the leading electricity producers in the world. They are also becoming more popular in automobiles. These engines are efficient and reliable and they are getting very sophisticated. However, the physics behind these engines has not changed. By way of definition, courtesy of Diesel Engine Engineering: [a] diesel engine is an internal combustion engine in which the chemical energy of fuel is transformed into thermal energy of the cylinder charge, in consequence of the self-ignition and combustion of fuel in the engine cylinder after compression of the air charge in the cylinder (p1†¦show more content†¦The piston then travels down pulling in fresh air, (third stroke), after the piston bottoms again it travels up compressing the fresh air, (fourth stroke). The fuel is then injected and one cycle is completed in 720 degrees or two full rotations of the crankshaft. The disadvantage of two-stroke engines is their dependency on a blower to force air into the chamber and their inefficiency. A four-stroke engine does not have an expansion stroke every 360 degrees but it is more efficient because it has more time to completely burn the fuel injected into the cylinder. There are mechanical and fundamental differences between the two-stroke and four-stroke engines but the physics remain the same. They both rely upon the compressed air to ignite the pressurized fuel and the resulting expansion for their power. At first glance it may look like the explosion in the chamber does the work but upon further inspection you can see the physics involved. There are two questions I would like to address. The first question is what is the physics behind the compressed air raising the temperature upwards of 900 degrees. The second question is what is the physics behind the rapid expansion of the ignited air fuel mixture. The physics behind the temperature increase of compressed air begins with a fresh charge of air. The air fills the combustion chamber when the cylinder is at bottom dead center. As theShow MoreRelatedThe Stroke Combustion Cycle ( Ice ) Revolutionized The Way The Man Think And Moves1352 Words   |  6 PagesInternal Combustion Engines (ICE) revolutionized the way the Man think and Moves. Internal Combustion Engines are also significantly more efficient than the well-known steam engine. Today it has better power than electric batteries and motors, and offers similar overall efficiency. Small, lightweight ICE made personal transportation possible. It transformed how we built cities and did business. 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Something more familiar to you, like Newton Laws of Physics, takes a look at the big picture of physical motion and how it effects the world around us. â€Å"Thermodynamics is a branch of physics which deals with the energy and work of a system.† Without the knowledge of thermodynamics, everyday life would be much different. Thermodynamics were used to designed and manufacturedRead MoreUse Of Diesohol As A Substitute For Diesel1670 Words   |  7 PagesIn our world today diesel engines have become a substantial part of the society, being used in buses, trucks, locomotives, tractors, and so on. Scientist has been seeking ways of improving the efficiency of diesel engines by developing and testing alternative fuels. Recent studies explore the use of diesohol as a substitute to diesel. Diesohol are classified as â€Å"a mixture of diesel fuel and anhydrous alcohol blended using a chemical emulsifier,† (Environmental Protection Agency, 2003).However a majorRead MoreThe Use Of Port Injection Gasoline With Direct Injection Diesel Fuel2774 Words   |  12 Pagestremendous potential to be used in CI engines effectively based on the RCCI concept. Operating a CI engine in the RCCI mode has become possible as the result of new fuel system technology and engine controls. The high octane number fuel used in the literature is often gasoline or ethanol. The U.S. Department of Energy has devoted significant resources to its national laboratories to investigate the practical applications of port-injection gasoline with direct-injection diesel fuel, as seen in recent publicationsRead MoreIs Mechanical Engineering Beng At Liverpool John Moores University?1753 Words   |  8 PagesLJMU with University of Liverpool. 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The Features Of A Relational Database - 1585 Words

P1 - Explain the features of a relational database. This is to be shown as a report or presentation and must discuss the following. †¢ Features: entities; attributes; relationships; †¢ Entities: primary keys, foreign keys; referential integrity; attributes; †¢ Attributes: field properties e.g. data types, size, validation rules †¢ Relationships: one-to-many; one-to-one; many-to-many Relational database – This is a database that contains more than one table of which are linked using key fields. An example could be a library database which could have the ability to have 3 tables. To further this example one table could be Customers so when somebody joins the library a record is generated with their details on such as their name, address†¦show more content†¦You are able to produce restrictions which assures that only acceptable or appropriate data is inputted into the database. Queries – This is what makes the concept of searching for the data you require easily. 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Ulrich Beck Free Essays

string(39) " matter how diverse and contradictory\." Sociology http://soc. sagepub. com Beck’s Sociology of Risk: A Critical Assessment Anthony Elliott Sociology 2002; 36; 293 DOI: 10. We will write a custom essay sample on Ulrich Beck or any similar topic only for you Order Now 1177/0038038502036002004 The online version of this article can be found at: http://soc. sagepub. com/cgi/content/abstract/36/2/293 Published by: http://www. sagepublications. com On behalf of: British Sociological Association Additional services and information for Sociology can be found at: Email Alerts: http://soc. sagepub. com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://soc. sagepub. com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www. agepub. com/journalsReprints. nav Permissions: http://www. sagepub. com/journalsPermissions. nav Citations (this article cites 6 articles hosted on the SAGE Journals Online and HighWire Press platforms): http://soc. sagepub. com/cgi/content/refs/36/2/293 Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 022761 Elliott 13/5/2002 9:49 am Page 293 Risk Society Sociology Copyright  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd ® Volume 36(2): 293–315 [0038-0385(200205)36:2;293–315;022761] SAGE Publications London,Thousand Oaks, New Delhi Beck’s Sociology of Risk: A Critical Assessment s Anthony Elliott University of the West of England AB ST RAC T The German sociologist Ulrich Beck has elaborated a highly original formulation of the theory of risk and re? exive modernization, a formulation that has had a signi? cant impact upon recent sociological theorizing and research. This article examines Beck’s sociology of risk in the context of his broader social theory of re? xivity, advanced modernization and individualization. The article argues that Beck’s work is constrained by several sociological weaknesses: namely, a dependence upon objectivistic and instrumental models of the social construction of risk and uncertainty in social relations, and a failure to adequately de? ne the relations between institutional dynamism on the one hand and self-referentiality and critical re? ection on the other. As a contribution to the reformulation and further development of Beck’s approach to sociological theory, the article seeks to uggest other ways in which the link between risk and re? exivity might be pursued. These include a focus upon (1) the intermixing of re? exivity and re? ection in social relations; (2) contemporary ideologies of domination and power; and (3) a dialectical notion of modernity and postmodernization. K E Y WORDS domination / modernity / postmodernity / re? exivity / risk / social theory A s competent re? ective agents, we are aware of the many ways in which a generalized ‘climate of risk’ presses in on our daily activities. In our dayto-day lives, we are sensitive to the cluster of risks that affect our relations with the self, with others, and with the broader culture. We are specialists in carving out ways of coping and managing risk, whether this be through active engagement, resigned acceptance or confused denial. From dietary concerns to 293 Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 022761 Elliott 294 13/5/2002 Sociology 9:49 am Volume 36 s Page 294 Number 2 s May 2002 prospective stock market gains and losses to polluted air, the contemporary risk climate is one of proliferation, multiplication, specialism, counterfactual guesswork, and, above all, anxiety. Adequate consideration and calculation of risktaking, risk-management and risk-detection can never be fully complete, however, since there are always unforeseen and unintended aspects of risk environments. This is especially true at the level of global hazards, where the array of industrial, technological, chemical and nuclear dangers that confront us grows, and at an alarming rate. Indeed the German sociologist, Ulrich Beck (1996a), de? nes the current situation as that of ‘world risk society’. The rise of risk society, Beck argues, is bound up with the new electronic global economy – a world in which we live on the edge of high technological innovation and scienti? c development, but where no one fully understands the possible global risks and dangers we face. My aim in this article is to explore some of the issues that concern the relation between risk and society by focusing on the work of Beck. A profoundly innovative and imaginative social theorist, Beck has developed powerful analyses of the ways in which the rise of the risk society is transforming social reproduction, nature and ecology, intimate relationships, politics and democracy. 1 It is necessary to state at the outset that I am not seeking in this article to provide a general introduction to Beck’s work as a whole. Rather, I shall offer a short exposition of Beck’s risk society thesis, in conjunction with his analysis of re? exivity and its role in social practices and modern institutions. The econd, more extensive half of the article is then critical and reconstructive in character. I try to identify several questionable social-theoretic assumptions contained in Beck’s risk society thesis, as well as limitations concerning his analysis of re? exivity, social reproduction and the dynamics of modernity. In making this critique, I shall try to point, in a limited and provisional manner, to some of the ways in which I believe that the themes of risk and social re? exivity can be reformulated and, in turn, further developed in contemporary sociological analysis. Outline of the Theory Let me begin by outlining the central planks of Beck’s social theory. These can be divided into three major themes: (1) the risk society thesis; (2) re? exive modernization; and (3) individualization. The Risk Society Thesis From his highly in? uential 1986 volume Risk Society through to Democracy without Enemies (1998) and World Risk Society (1999b), Beck has consistently argued that the notion of risk is becoming increasingly central to our global society. 2 As Beck (1991: 22–3) writes: Downloaded from http://soc. agepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 022761 Elliott 13/5/2002 9:49 am Page 295 Beck’s sociology of risk Elliott [T]he historically unprecedented possibility, brought about by our own decisions, of the destruction of all life on this planet †¦ distinguishes our epoch not only from the early phase of the Indus trial Revolution but also from all other cultures and social forms, no matter how diverse and contradictory. You read "Ulrich Beck" in category "Papers" If a ? re breaks out, the ? re brigade comes; if a traf? c accident occurs, the insurance pays. This interplay between before and after, between security in the here-and-now and security in the future because one took precautions even for the worst imaginable case, has been revoked in the age of nuclear, chemical and genetic technology. In their brilliant perfection, nuclear power plants have suspended the principle of insurance not only in the economic but also in the medical, psychological, cultural, and religious sense. The ‘residual risk society’ is an uninsured society, in which protection, paradoxically, decreases as the threat increases. For Beck, modernity is a world that introduces global risk parameters that previous generations have not had to face. Precisely because of the failure of modern social institutions to control the risks they have created, such as the ecological crisis, risk rebounds as a largely defensive attempt to avoid new problems and dangers. Beck contends that it is necessary to separate the notion of risk from hazard or danger. The hazards of pre-industrial society – famines, plagues, natural disasters – may or may not come close to the destructive potential of technoscience in the contemporary era. Yet for Beck this really is not a key consideration in any event, since he does not wish to suggest that daily life in today’s risk society is intrinsically more hazardous than in the pre-modern world. What he does suggest, however, is that no notion of risk is to be found in traditional culture: pre-industrial hazards or dangers, no matter how potentially catastrophic, were experienced as pre-given. They came from some ‘other’ – gods, nature or demons. With the beginning of societal attempts to control, and particularly with the idea of steering towards a future of predictable security, the consequences of risk become a political issue. This last point is crucial. It is societal intervention – in the form of decision-making – that transforms incalculable hazards into calculable risks. ‘Risks’, writes Beck (1997: 30), ‘always depend on decisions – that is, they presuppose decisions’. The idea of ‘risk society’ is thus bound up with the development of instrumental rational control, which the process of modernization promotes in all spheres of life – from individual risk of accidents and illnesses to export risks and risks of war. In support of the contention that protection from danger decreases as the threat increases in the contemporary era, Beck (1994) discusses, among many other examples, the case of a lead crystal factory in the former Federal Republic of Germany. The factory in question – Altenstadt in the Upper Palatinate – was prosecuted in the 1980s for polluting the atmosphere. Many residents in the area had, for some considerable time, suffered from skin rashes, nausea and headaches, and blame was squarely attributed to the white dust emitted from the factory’s smokestacks. Due to the visibility of the pollution, the case for damages against the factory was imagined, by many people, to be watertight. Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 295 022761 Elliott 296 13/5/2002 Sociology 9:49 am Volume 36 s Page 296 Number 2 s May 2002 However, because there were three other glass factories in the area, the presiding judge offered to drop the charges in return for a nominal ? ne, on the grounds that individual liability for emitting dangerous pollutants and toxins could not be established. ‘Welcome to the real-life travesty of the hazard technocracy! ’ writes Beck, underlining the denial of risks within our cultural and political structures. Such denial for Beck is deeply layered within institutions, and he calls this ‘organized irresponsibility’ – a concept to which we will return. The age of nuclear, chemical and genetic technology, according to Beck, unleashes a destruction of the calculus of risks by which modern societies have developed a consensus on progress. Insurance has been the key to sustaining this consensus, functioning as a kind of security pact against industrially produced dangers and hazards. 3 In particular, two kinds of insurance are associated with modernization: the private insurance company and public insurance, linked above all with the welfare state. Yet the changing nature of risk in an age of globalization, argues Beck, fractures the calculating of risks for purposes of insurance. Individually and collectively, we do not fully know or understand many of the risks that we currently face, let alone can we attempt to calculate them accurately in terms of probability, compensation and accountability. In this connection, Beck emphasizes the following: s s s s risks today threaten irreparable global damage which cannot be limited, and hus the notion of monetary compensation is rendered obsolescent; in the case of the worst possible nuclear or chemical accident, any security monitoring of damages fails; accidents, now reconstituted as ‘events’ without beginning or end, break apart delimitations in space and time; notions of accountability collapse. Re? exive Modernization Beck develops his critique of modernity through an examination of the presuppositions of the sociology of modernization. Many mainstream sociological th eories remain marked, in his view, by a confusion of modernity with industrial society – seen in either positive or negative terms. This is true for functionalists and Marxists alike, especially in terms of their preoccupation with industrial achievement, adaptation, differentiation and rationalization. Indeed, Beck ? nds an ideology of progress concealed within dominant social theories that equate modernization with linear rationalization. From Marx through Parsons to Luhmann, modern society is constantly changing, expanding and transforming itself; it is clear that industrialism results in the using up of resources that are essential to the reproduction of society. But the most striking limitation of social theories that equate modernity with industrial society, according to Beck, lies in their lack of comprehension of the manner in which dangers to societal preservation and renewal in? ltrate the institutions, organizations and subsystems of modern society itself. Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 022761 Elliott 13/5/2002 :49 am Page 297 Beck’s sociology of risk Elliott In contrast to this grand consensus on modernization, Beck argues that we are between industrial society and advanced modernity, between simple modernization and re? exive modernization. As Beck (1996b: 28) develops these distinctions: In view of these two stages and their sequence, the concept of ‘re? exive modernization’ may be introduced. This precisely does not mean re? ection (as the adjective ‘re? exive’ seems to suggest), but above all self-confrontation. The transition from the industrial to the risk epoch of modernity occurs unintentionally, unseen, compulsively, in the course of a dynamic of modernization which has made itself autonomous, on the pattern of latent side-effects. One can almost say that the constellations of risk society are created because the self-evident truths of industrial society (the consensus on progress, the abstraction from ecological consequences and hazards) dominate the thinking and behaviour of human beings and institutions. Risk society is not an option which could be chosen or rejected in the course of political debate. It arises through the automatic operation of autonomous modernization processes which are blind and deaf to consequences and dangers. In total, and latently, these produce hazards which call into question – indeed abolish – the basis of industrial society. It is the autonomous, compulsive dynamic of advanced or re? exive modernization that, according to Beck, propels modern men and women into ‘self-confrontation’ with the consequences of risk that cannot adequately be addressed, measured, controlled or overcome, at least according to the standards of industrial society. Modernity’s blindness to the risks and dangers produced by modernization – all of which happens automatically and unre? ectingly, according to Beck – leads to societal self-confrontation: that is, the questioning of divisions between centres of political activity and the decision-making capacity of society itself. Society, in effect, seeks to reclaim ‘the political’ from its modernist relegation to the institutional sphere, and this, says Beck, is achieved primarily through sub-political means – that is, locating the politics of risk at the heart of forms of social and cultural life. Within the horizon of the opposition between old routine and new awareness of consequences and dangers’, writes Beck, ‘society becomes self-critical’ (1999b: 81). The prospects for arresting the dark sides of industrial progress and advanced modernization through re? exivity are routinely short-circuited, according to Beck, by the insidious in? uence of ‘organized irresponsibility’. Irresponsibility, as Beck uses the term, refers to a political contradiction of the self-jeopardization and self-endangerment of risk society. This is a contradiction between an emerging public awareness of risks produced by and within the social-institutional system on the one hand, and the lack of attribution of systemic risks to this system on the other. There is, in Beck’s reckoning, a constant denial of the suicidal tendency of risk society – ‘the system of organized irresponsibility’ – which manifests itself in, say, technically orientated legal procedures designed to satisfy rigorous causal proof of individual liability and guilt. This self-created dead end, in which culpability is passed off on to individuals Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 297 022761 Elliott 298 13/5/2002 Sociology 9:49 am Volume 36 s Page 298 Number 2 s May 2002 and thus collectively denied, is maintained through political ideologies of industrial fatalism: faith in progress, dependence on rationality and the rule of expert opinion. Individualization The arrival of advanced modernization is not wholly about risk; it is also about an expansion of choice. For if risks are an attempt to make the incalculable calculable, then risk-monitoring presupposes agency, choice, calculation and responsibility. In the process of re? exive modernization, Beck argues, more and more areas of life are released or disembedded from the hold of tradition. That is to say, people living in the modernized societies of today develop an increasing engagement with both the intimate and more public aspects of their lives, aspects that were previously governed by tradition or taken-forgranted norms. This set of developments is what Beck calls ‘individualization’, and its operation is governed by a dialectic of disintegration and reinvention. For example, the disappearance of tradition and the disintegration of previously existing social forms – ? xed gender roles, in? exible class locations, masculinist work models – forces people into making decisions about their own lives and future courses of action. As traditional ways of doing things become problematic, people must choose paths for a more rewarding life – all of which requires planning and rationalization, deliberation and engagement. An active engagement with the self, with the body, with relationships and marriage, with gender norms, and with work: this is the subjective backdrop of the risk society. The idea of individualization is the basis upon which Beck constructs his vision of a ‘new modernity’, of novel personal experimentation and cultural innovation against a social backdrop of risks, dangers, hazards, re? xivity, globalization. Yet the unleashing of experimentation and choice which individualization brings is certainly not without its problems. According to Beck, there are progressive and regressive elements to individualization; although, in analytical terms, these are extremely hard to disentangle. In personal terms, the gains of today’s individualization might be tomorrow’s limit ation, as advantage and progress turn into their opposite. A signal example of this is offered in The Normal Chaos of Love (1995), where Beck and Beck-Gernsheim re? ct on the role of technological innovation in medicine, and of how this impacts upon contemporary family life. Technological advancements in diagnostic and genetic testing on the unborn, they argue, create new parental possibilities, primarily in the realm of health monitoring. However, the very capacity for medical intervention is one that quickly turns into an obligation on parents to use such technologies in order to secure a sound genetic starting point for their offspring. Individualization is seen here as a paradoxical compulsion, at once leading people into a much more engaged relationship with science and technology than used to be the case, and enforcing a set of obligations and responsibilities that few in society have thought through in terms of broad Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 022761 Elliott 13/5/2002 9:49 am Page 299 Beck’s sociology of risk Elliott moral and ethical implications. It is perhaps little wonder therefore that Beck (1997: 96), echoing Sartre, contends that ‘people are condemned to individualization’. Critique Beck has elaborated a highly original formulation of the theory of risk, a formulation which links with, but in many ways is more sophisticated in its detail and application than, other sociological approaches to the analysis of risk environments in contemporary society (among other contributions, see Douglas and Wildavsky (1982), Castell (1991), Giddens (1990, 1991), Luhmann (1993) and Adam (1998)). Beck’s sociology of risk has clearly been of increasing interest to sociologists concerned with understanding the complex temporal and spatial ? gurations of invisible hazards and dangers including global warming, chemical and petrochemical pollution, the effects of genetically modi? ed organisms and culturally induced diseases such as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) (see Lash et al. , 1996; Adam, 1998). In what follows, there are three core areas around which I shall develop a critique of the work of Beck: (1) risk, re? xivity, re? ection; (2) power and domination; and (3) tradition, modernity and postmodernization. Risk, Re? exivity, Re? ection Let me begin with Beck’s discussion of the ‘risk society’, which, according to him, currently dominates socio-political frames thanks to the twin forces of re? exivity and globalization. There are, I believe, many respects in which Beck’s vision of Risikogesellschaft, especially its rebounding in pers onal experience as risk-laden discourses and practices, is to be welcomed. In the wake of the Chernobyl disaster and widespread environmental pollution, and with ever more destructive weapons as well as human-made biological, chemical and technological hazards, it is surely the case that thinking in terms of risk has become central to the way in which human agents and modern institutions organize the social world. Indeed, in a world that could literally destroy itself, risk-managing and risk-monitoring increasingly in? uences both the constitution and calculation of social action. As mentioned previously, it is this focus on the concrete, objective physical-biological-technical risk settings of modernity which recommends Beck’s analysis as a useful corrective to the often obsessive abstraction and textual deconstruction that characterizes much recent social theory. However, one still might wonder whether Beck’s theory does not overemphasize, in a certain sense, the phenomena and relevance of risk. From a social-historical perspective it is plausible to ask, for instance, whether life in society has become more risky? In ‘From Regulation to Risk’, Bryan S. Turner (1994: 180–1) captures the problem well: Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 299 022761 Elliott 300 13/5/2002 Sociology 9:49 am Volume 36 s Page 300 Number 2 s May 2002 [A] serious criticism of Beck’s arguments would be to suggest that risk has not changed so profoundly and signi? cantly over the last three centuries. For example, were the epidemics of syphilis and bubonic plague in earlier periods any different from the modern environment illnesses to which Beck draws our attention? That is, do Beck’s criteria of risk, such as their impersonal and unobservable nature, really stand up to historical scrutiny? The devastating plagues of earlier centuries were certainly global, democratic and general. Peasants and aristocrats died equally horrible deaths. In addition, with the spread of capitalist colonialism, it is clearly the case that in previous centuries many aboriginal peoples such as those of North America and Australia were engulfed by environmental, medical and political catastrophes which wiped out entire populations. If we take a broader view of the notion of risk as entailing at least a strong cultural element whereby risk is seen to be a necessary part of the human condition, then we could argue that the profound uncertainties about life, which occasionally overwhelmed earlier civilizations, were not unlike the anxieties of our own ? n-de-siecle civilizations. Extending Turner’s critique, it might also be asked whether risk assessment is the ultimate worry in the plight of individuals in contemporary culture? Is it right to see the means-ended rationality of risk, and thus the economistic language of preference, assessment and choice, as spreading into personal and intimate spheres of life (such as marriage, friendship and child-rearing) in such a determinate and uni? ed way? And does the concept of risk actually capture what is new and different in the contemporary social condition? I shall not pursue these general questions, important though they are, here. Instead, the issue I want to raise concerns the multiple ways in which risk is perceived, approached, engaged with or disengaged from, in contemporary culture. Beck’s approach, however suggestive it may be, is at best a signpost which points to speci? c kinds of probabilities, avoidances and unanticipated consequences, but which is limited in its grasp of the social structuring of the perception of risk. The American social theorist Jeffrey C. Alexander (1996: 135) has argued that Beck’s ‘unproblematic understanding of the perception of risk is utilitarian and objectivist’. Alexander takes Beck to task for adopting a rationalistic and instrumental-calculative model of risk in microsocial and macrosocial worlds; to which it can be added that such a model has deep af? ities with neo-classical economics and rational-choice theory, and thus necessarily shares the conceptual and political limitations of these standpoints also. Beck has also been criticized by others for his cognitive realism, moral proceduralism and lack of attention to aesthetic and hermeneutical subjectivity (Lash and Urry, 1994); failure to acknowle dge the embodied nature of the self (Turner, 1994; Petersen, 1996); and neglect of the psychodynamic and affective dimensions of subjectivity and intersubjective relations (Elliott, 1996; Hollway and Jefferson, 1997). In a social-theoretical frame of reference, what these criticisms imply is that Beck’s theory cannot grasp the hermeneutical, aesthetic, psychological and culturally bounded forms of subjectivity and intersubjectivity in and through Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 022761 Elliott 13/5/2002 9:50 am Page 301 Beck’s sociology of risk Elliott which risk is constructed and perceived. To study risk-management and riskavoidance strategies, in the light of these criticisms, requires attention to forms of meaning-making within socio-symbolically inscribed institutional ? elds, a problem to which I return in a subsequent section when looking at Beck’s analysis of tradition, modernity and postmodernity. In raising the issue of the construction and reconstruction of risk – in particular, its active interpretation and reconstruction – one might reference numerous studies of socio-political attitudes relating to the conceptualization and confrontation of risk, danger and hazard. The anthropologist Mary Douglas (1986, 1992), for example, argues that advanced industrial risks are primarily constructed through the rhetoric of purity and pollution. For Douglas, what is most pressing in the social-theoretic analysis of risk is an understanding of how human agents ignore many of the potential threats of daily life and instead concentrate only on selected aspects. Interestingly, Beck fails to discuss in any detail Douglas’s anthropology of risk. This would seem peculiar not only since Douglas’s path-breaking analyses of risk appear to have laid much of the thematic groundwork for Beck’s sociological theory, but also because her work is highly relevant to the critique of contemporary ideologies of risk – that is, the social forms in which risk and uncertainty are differentiated across and within social formations, as well as peculiarly individuated. My purpose in underscoring these various limitations of Beck’s theory is not to eng age in some exercise of conceptual clari? cation. My concern rather is to stress the sociologically questionable assumptions concerning risk in Beck’s work, and to tease out the more complex, nuanced forms of risk perception that might fall within the scope of such an approach. To call into question Beck’s notion of risk is, of course, also to raise important issues about the location of re? exivity between self and societal reproduction. Now it is the failure of simple, industrial society to control the risks it has created, which, for Beck, generates a more intensive and extensive sense of risk in re? xive, advanced modernity. In this sense, the rise of objective, physical, global risks propels social re? exivity. But again one might wish to question the generalizations Beck makes about human agents, modern institutions and culture becoming more re? exive or self-confronting. Much of Beck’s work has been concerned to emphasize the degree of re? exive institutional dynamism involved in the restructuring of pers onal, social and political life, from the reforging of intimate relationships to the reinvention of politics. But there are disturbing dimensions here as well, which the spread of cultural, ethnic, racial and gendered con? ict has shown only too well, and often in ways in which one would be hard pressed to ? nd forms of personal or social re? exive activity. No doubt Beck would deny – as he has done in his more recent writings – that the renewal of traditions and the rise of cultural con? icts are counterexamples to the thesis of re? exive modernization. For we need to be particularly careful, Beck contends, not to confuse re? exivity (self-dissolution) with re? ction (knowledge). As Beck (1994b: 176–7) develops this distinction: Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 301 022761 Elliott 302 13/5/2002 Sociology 9:50 am Volume 36 s Page 302 Number 2 s May 2002 †¦ the ‘re? exivity’ of modernity and modernization in my sense does not mean re? ection on modernity, self-relatedness, the self-referentiality of modernity, nor does it mean the self-justi? ation or self-criticism of modernity in the sense of classical sociology; rather (? rst of all), modernization undercuts modernization, unintended and unseen, and therefore also re? ection-free, with the force of autonomized modernization. †¦ [R]e? exivity of modernity can lead to re? ection on the self-dissolution and self-endangerment of industrial society, but it need not do so. Thus, re? exivity does not imply a kind of hyper-Enlightenment culture, where agents and institutions re? ect on modernity, but rather an unintended self-modi? ation of forms of life driven by the impact of autonomized processes of modernization. Re? exivity, on this account, is de? ned as much by ‘re? ex’ as it is by ‘re? ection’. ‘It is possible to detect’, write Lash et al. (1996) of Beck’s recent sociology, Ã¢â‚¬Ë œa move towards seeing re? exive modernization as in most part propelled by blind social processes – a shift, crudely, from where risk society produces re? ection which in turn produces re? exivity and critique, to one where risk society automatically produces re? exivity, and then – perhaps – re? ection’. Without wishing to deny the interest of this radical conception of re? exivity as self-dissolution, it still seems to me that Beck’s contention that contemporary societies are propelled toward self-confrontation, split between re? ex and re? ection, remains dubious. In what sense, for instance, can one claim that re? ection-free forms of societal self-dissolution exist independently of the re? ective capacities of human agents? For what, exactly, is being dissolved, if not the forms of life and social practices through which institutions are structured? How might the analytical terms of re? exivity, that is social re? exes (nonknowledge) and re? ection (knowledge), be reconciled? It may be thought that these dif? culties can be overcome by insisting, along with Beck, on re? exivity in the strong sense – as the unseen, the unwilled, the unintended; in short, institutional dynamism. But such an account of blind social processes is surely incompatible with, and in fact renders incoherent, concepts of re? ection, referentiality, re? exivity. Alternatively, a weaker version of the argument might be developed, one that sees only partial and contextual interactions of selfdissolution and re? ection. Yet such an account, again, would seem to cut the analytical ground from under itself, since there is no adequate basis for showing how practices of re? exivity vary in their complex articulations of re? ex and re? ection or repetition and creativity. Power and Domination I now want to consider Beck’s theory in relation to sociological understandings of power and domination. According to Beck, re? xive modernization combats many of the distinctive characteristics of power, turning set social divisions into active negotiated relationships. Traditional political con? icts, centred around class, race and gender, are increasingly superseded by new, globalized risk con? icts. ‘Risks’, writes Beck (1992: 35), ‘display an equalizing effect’. Everyone Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Men on on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 022761 Elliott 13/5/2002 9:50 am Page 303 Beck’s sociology of risk Elliott ow is threatened by risk of global proportions and repercussions; not even the rich and powerful can escape the new dangers and hazards of, say, global warming or nuclear war. And it is from this universalized perspective that Beck argues political power and domination is shedding the skin of its classical forms and reinventing itself in a new global idiom. The problematic nature of Beck’s writings on this reinvention of political power and its role in social life, however, becomes increasingly evident when considering his analysis of social inequalities and cultural divisions. Take, for example, his re? ections on class. Re? exive modernization, says Beck, does not result in the self-destruction of class antagonisms, but rather in selfmodi? cation. He writes (1997: 26): Re? exive modernization disembeds and re-embeds the cultural prerequisites of social classes with forms of individualization of social inequality. That means †¦ that the disappearance of social classes and the abolition of social inequality no longer coincide. Instead, the blurring of social classes (in perception) runs in tandem with an exacerbation of social inequality, which now does not follow large identi? ble groups in the lifeworld, but is instead fragmented across (life) phases, space and time. The present-day individualizing forces of social inequality, according to Beck, erode class-consciousness (personal dif? culties and grievances no longer culminate into group or collective causes) and also, to some considerable degree, class-in-itself (contemporary social problems are in creasingly suffered alone). In short, class as a community of fate or destiny declines steeply. With class solidarities replaced by brittle and uncertain forms of individual self-management, Beck ? ds evidence for a ‘rule-altering rationalization’ of class relationships in new business and management practices, as well as industrial relations reforms. He contends that new blendings of economics and democracy are discernible in the rise of political civil rights within the workplace, a blend which opens the possibility of a post-capitalistic world – a ‘classless capitalism of capital’, in which ‘the antagonism between labour and capital will collapse’. There is considerable plausibility in the suggestion that class patterns and divisions have been altered by rapid social and political changes in recent years. These include changes in employment and the occupational structure, the expansion of the service industries, rising unemployment, lower retirement ages, as well as a growing individualization in the West together with an accompanying stress upon lifestyle, consumption and choice. However, while it might be the case that developments associated with re? exive modernization and the risk society are affecting social inequalities, it is surely implausible to suggest, as Beck does, that this involves the trans? guration of class as such. Why, as Scott Lash (Beck et al. , 1994: 211) asks, do we ? nd re? xivity in some sectors of socio-economic life and not others? Against the backdrop of new communication technologies and advances in knowledge transfer, vast gaps in the sociocultural conditions of the wealthy and the poor drastically affect the ways in which individuals are drawn into the project of re? exive modernization. These Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on S eptember 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 303 022761 Elliott 304 13/5/2002 Sociology 9:50 am Volume 36 s Page 304 Number 2 s May 2002 ensions are especially evident today in new social divisions between the ‘information rich’ and ‘information poor’, and of the forces and demands of such symbolic participation within the public sphere. What Beck fails to adequately consider is that individualization (while undoubtedly facilitating unprecedented forms of personal and social experimentation) may directly contribute to, and advance the proliferation of, class inequalities and economic exclusions. That is to say, Beck fails to give suf? cient sociological weight to the possibility that individualization may actually embody systematically asymmetrical relations of class power. Taken from a broader view of the ideals of equal opportunity and social progress, Beck’s arguments about the relationship between advanced levels of re? exivity and the emergence of a new sub-politics do not adequately stand up to scrutiny. The general, tendential assertions he advances about business and organizational restructuring assume what needs to be demonstrated – namely, that these new organizational forms spell the demise of social class, as well as the viability of class analysis. Moreover, it seems implausible to point to ‘subpolitics’, de? ned by Beck only in very general terms, as symptomatic of a new socio-political agenda. When, for example, have the shifting boundaries between the political and economic spheres not played a primary role in the unfolding of relations between labour and capital? Is decision-making and consciousness really focused on a post-capitalistic rationalization of rights, duties, interests and decisions? A good deal of recent research shows, on the contrary, that income inequality between and within nations continues to escalate (Braun, 1991; Lemert, 1997); that class (together with structures of power and domination) continues to profoundly shape possible life chances and material nterests (Westergaard, 1995); and that the many different de? nitions of class as a concept, encompassing the marginal, the excluded as well as the new underclass or new poor, are important in social analysis for comprehending the persistence of patterns of social inequality (Crompton, 1996). These dif? culties would suggest that Beck’s theory of risk requires reformulation in various ways. Without wishing to deny that the risk-generating propensity of the social system has rapidly increased in recent years due to the impact of globalization and techno-science, it seems to me misleading to contend that social division in multinational capitalist societies is fully trans? gured into a new logic of risk, as if the latter disconnects the former from its institutionalized biases and processes. The more urgent theoretical task, I suggest, is to develop methods of analysis for explicating how patterns of power and domination feed into, and are reconstituted by, the socio-symbolic structuring of risk. Here I shall restrict myself to noting three interrelated forces, which indicate, in a general way, the contours of how a politics of risk is undergoing transformation. The ? rst development is that of the privatization of risk. Underpinned by new trans-national spatializations of economic relations as well as the deregulation of the government of political life (Giddens, 1990; Hirst and Thompson, 1996; Bauman, 1998), the individual is increasingly viewed today as an active Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. om by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 022761 Elliott 13/5/2002 9:50 am Page 305 Beck’s sociology of risk Elliott agent in the risk-monitoring of collectively produced dangers; risk-information, risk-detection and risk-management is more and more constructed and designed as a matter of private responsibility and personal security. By and large, human agents confron t socially produced risks individually. Risk is desocialized; risk-exposure and risk-avoidance is a matter of individual responsibility and navigation. This is, of course, partly what Beck means by the individualization of risk. However, the relations between individualized or privatized risk, material inequalities and the development of global poverty are more systematic and complex than Beck’s theory seems to recognize. In the post-war period, the shift from Keynesian to monetarist economic policies has been a key factor in the erosion of the management of risk through welfare security. The impact of globalization, transnational corporations and governmental deregulation is vital to the social production of the privatization of risk, all of which undoubtedly has a polarizing effect on distributions of wealth and income. It has also become evident – and this is crucial – that one must be able to deploy certain educational resources, symbolic goods, cultural and media capabilities, as well as cognitive and affective aptitudes, in order to count as a ‘player’ in the privatization of risk-detection and risk-management. People who cannot deploy such resources and capabilities, often the result of various material and class inequalities, are likely to ? nd themselves further disadvantaged and marginalized in a new world order of re? exive modernization. The second, related development concerns the commodi? cation of risk. Millions of dollars are made through product development, advertising, and market research in the new industries of risk, which construct new problems and market new solutions for risk-? ghting individual agents. As risk is simultaneously proliferated and rendered potentially manageable’, writes Nikolas Rose (1996: 342), ‘the private market for â€Å"security† extends: not merely personal pension schemes and private health insurance, but burglar alarms, devices that monitor sleeping children, home testing kits for cholesterol levels and much more. Protection against risk through an investment in security becomes part of the responsibilities of each active individ ual, if they are not to feel guilt at failing to protect themselves and their loved ones against future misfortunes’. In other words, the typical means for insuring against risk today is through market-promoted processes. However the fundamental point here, and this is something that Beck fails to develop in a systematic manner, is that such ‘insurance’ is of a radically imaginary kind (with all the misrecognition and illusion that the Lacanian-Althusserian theorization of the duplicate mirror-structure of ideology implies), given that one cannot really buy one’s way out of the collective dangers that confront us as individuals and societies. How does one, for example, buy a way out from the dangers of global warming? The commodi? cation of risk has become a kind of safe house for myths, fantasies, ? ction and lies. The third development concerns the instrumentalization of identities in terms of lifestyle, consumption and choice. Beck touches on this issue through the individualization strand of his argument. Yet because he sees individualiza- Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 305 022761 Elliott 306 13/5/2002 Sociology 9:50 am Volume 36 s Page 306 Number 2 s May 2002 ion as an active process transforming risk society, he pays almost no attention to the kinds of affective ‘investments’, often destructive and pathological, unleashed by an instrumentalization of identities and social relations. Of core importance here is the ‘culture of narcissism’ (Lasch, 1980) which pervades contemporary Western life, and plays a powerful ro le in the instrumental affective investments in individuals which a risk society unleashes. Joel Kovel (1988) writes of ‘the de-sociation of the narcissistic character’, a character lacking in depth of emotional attachment to others and communities. Unable to sustain a sense of personal purpose or social project, the narcissistic character, writes Kovel, rarely moves beyond instrumentality in dealing with other people. Such instrumental emotional investments may well be increasingly central to the management of many risk codes in contemporary culture. Consider the ways in which some parents fashion a narcissistic relation with their own children as a kind of imaginary risk-insurance (involving anxieties and insecurities over old age, mortality and the like), rather than relating to their offspring as independent individuals in their own right. Also in risks relating to the home, personal comfort as well as safety, hygiene, health and domesticity, the veneer-like quality of pathological narcissism can be found. Some analytical caution is, of course, necessary here, primarily because the work on narcissistic culture of Lasch and Sennett, among others, has been criticized in terms of over-generalization (Giddens, 1991: 174–80). Accordingly, it may be more plausible to suggest that narcissistic forms of identity are a tendency within contemporary cultural relations of risk management, and not a wholesale social trend. Beck’s writings, I am suggesting, are less than satisfying on issues of power and domination because he fails to analyse in suf? cient depth the psychological, sociological and political forces by means of which the self-risk dialectic takes its varying forms. To develop a more nuanced interpretative and critical approach, I have suggested, the sociological task is to analyse privatization, commodi? cation and instrumentalization as channels of risk management. Tradition, Modernity, Postmodernity The limitations in the concept of re? xivity I have highlighted are, in turn, connected to further ambiguities concerning the nature of social reproduction in contemporary culture. The production and reproduction of contemporary social life is viewed by Beck as a process of ‘detraditionalization’. The development of re? exive modernization, says Beck, is accompanied by an irreversible decline in the role of tradition; the re? exivity of modernity and modernization means t hat traditional forms of life are increasingly exposed to public scrutiny and debate. That the dynamics of social re? xivity undercut pre-existing traditions is emphasized by Beck via a range of social-theoretical terms. He speaks of ‘the age of side-effects’, of individualization, and of a sub-politics beyond left and right – a world in which people can and must come to terms with the opportunities and dangers of new technologies, markets, experts, systems and Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 022761 Elliott 13/5/2002 9:50 am Page 307 Beck’s sociology of risk Elliott nvironments. Beck thus argues that the contemporary age is one characterized by increased levels of referentiality, ambivalence, ? exibility, openness and social alternatives. It might be noted that certain parallels can be identi? ed between t he thesis of detraditionalization and arguments advanced in classical social theory. Many classical social theorists believed that the development of the modern era spelled the end of tradition. ‘All that is solid melts into air’, said Marx of the power of the capitalist mode of production to tear apart traditional forms of social life. That the dynamics of capitalism undercut its own foundations meant for Marx a society that was continually transforming and constantly revolutionizing itself. Somewhat similar arguments about the decline of tradition can be found in the writings of Max Weber. The development of industrial society for Weber was inextricably intertwined with the rise of the bureaucratic state. Weber saw in this bureaucratic rationalization of action, and associated demand for technical ef? ciency, a new social logic destructive of the traditional texture of society. The views of Marx and Weber, among others, thus advanced a general binary opposition of ‘the traditional’ and ‘the modern’. For proponents of the thesis of detraditionalization, such as Beck, the self-referentiality and social re? exivity of advanced modernity also necessarily implies that traditional beliefs and practices begin to break down. However, the thesis of detraditionalization is not premised upon the broad contrast between ‘the traditional’ and ‘the modern’ that we can discern in much classical social theory. On the contrary, Beck ? nds the relation between tradition and modernity at once complex and puzzling. If tradition remains an important aspect of advanced modernity, it is because tradition becomes re? exive; traditions are invented, reinvented and restructured in conditions of the late modern age. So far I think that there is much that is interesting and important in this general orientation of Beck to understanding the construction of the present, past and future. In particular, I think the stress placed upon the re? exive construction of tradition, and indeed all social reproduction, is especially signi? cant – even though I shall go on to argue that this general theoretical framework requires more speci? ation and elaboration. I want, however, to focus on a speci? c issue raised by Beck’s social theory, and ask, has the development of society toward advanced modernization been accompanied by a decline in the in? uence of tradition and traditional understandings of the past? Must we assume, as Beck seems to, that the social construction of tradition is always permeat ed by a pervasive re? exivity? At issue here, I suggest, is the question of how the concept of re? exivity should be related to traditional, modern and postmodern cultural forms. I shall further suggest that the concept of re? xivity, as elaborated by Beck, fails to comprehend the different modernist and postmodernist ? gurations that may be implicit within social practices and symbolic forms of the contemporary age. In order to develop this line of argumentation, let us consider in some more detail the multiplicity of world traditions, communities and cultures as they impact upon current social practices and life-strategies. I believe that Beck is Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 07 022761 Elliott 308 13/5/2002 Sociology 9:50 am Volume 36 s Page 308 Number 2 s May 2002 right to emphasize the degree to which modernity and advanced mo dernization processes have assaulted traditions, uprooted local communities and broken apart unique regional, ethnic and sub-national cultures. At the level of economic analysis, an argument can plausibly be sustained that the erratic nature of the world capitalist economy produces high levels of unpredictability and uncertainty in social life and cultural relations, all of which Beck analyses in terms of danger, risk and hazard. It is worth noting, however, that Beck’s emphasis on increasing levels of risk, ambivalence and uncertainty is at odds with much recent research in sociology and social theory that emphasizes the regularization and standardization of daily life in the advanced societies. George Ritzer’s The McDonaldization of Society (1993) is a signal example. Drawing Weber’s theory of social rationalization and the Frankfurt School’s account of the administered society into a re? ctive encounter, Ritzer examines the application of managerial techniques such as Fordism and Taylorism to the fast food industry as symptomatic of the in? ltration of instrumental rationality into all aspects of cultural life. McDonaldization, as Ritzer develops the term, is the emergence of social logics in which risk and unpredictability are written out of social space. The point about such a conception of the standardization of everyday life, whatever its conceptual and sociological shortcom ings, is that it clearly contradicts Beck’s stress on increasing risk and uncertainty, the concept of re? xive individualization, and the notion that detraditionalization produces more ambivalence, more anxiety, and more openness. Of course, Beck insists that re? exive modernization does not mark a complete break from tradition; rather re? exivity signals the revising, or reinvention, of tradition. However, the resurgence and persistence of ethnicity and nationality as a primary basis for the elaboration of traditional beliefs and practices throughout the world is surely problematic for those who, like Beck, advance the general thesis of social re? exivity. Certainly, the thesis would appear challenged by widespread and recently revitalized patterns of racism, sexism and nationalism which have taken hold in many parts of the world, and indeed many serious controversies over race, ethnicity and nationalism involve a reversion to what might be called traditionalist battles over traditional culture – witness the rise of various religious fundamentalisms in the United States, the Middle East and parts of Africa and Asia. These political and theoretical ambivalences have their roots in a number of analytical dif? ulties, speci? cally Beck’s diagnosis of simple and advanced modernity. Beck furnishes only the barest social-historical sketch of simple modernity as a distinctive period in the spheres of science, industry, morality and law. He underscores the continuing importance and impact of simple industrial society for a range of advanced, re? exive determinations (for example politically, economically, technologically and envi ronmentally), yet the precise relations of such overlapping are not established or demonstrated in any detail. Exactly how we have moved into the age of re? exive modernization, although often stated and repeated, is not altogether clear. Beck’s main line of explanation seems to focus on the side-effects of modernization as undercutting the Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. com by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 022761 Elliott 13/5/2002 9:50 am Page 309 Beck’s sociology of risk Elliott foundations of modernity. But, again, the dynamics of simple and re? xive modernization, together with their social-historical periodization, remain opaque. In addition, it is not always clear how Beck is intending to draw certain conceptual distinctions between ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ instantiations of respectively simple and advanced modernist socio-symbolic figurations. Rejecting outright any crude opposition between traditional and modern societies, Beck r elates a tale of the proliferation of re? exive biographies and practices, lives and institutions, in which creative possibilities develop and new forms of risk and hazard take shape. Yet social advancement is far from inevitable: Beck speaks of counter-modernities. The question that needs to be asked here, however, is whether it is analytically useful for social theory to construct the contemporary age as characterized by interacting tropes of industrial society and re? exive modernization on the one side, and a range of countermodernities on the other. Viewed from the frame of postmodern social theory, and in particular the sociology of postmodernity (see Bauman, 1992a), Beck’s argument concerning the circularity of the relationship between risk, re? xivity and social knowledge appears in a more problematic, and perhaps ultimately inadequate, light. For postmodern social theorists and cultural analysts diagnose the malaise of present-day society not only as the result of re? exively applied knowledge to complex techno-scienti? c social environments, but as infused by a more general and pervasive sense of cultural disorientation. The most prominent anxieti es that underpin postmodern dynamics of social regulation and systemic reproduction include a general loss of belief in the engine of progress, as well as feelings of out-of-placeness and loss of direction. Such anxieties or dispositions are accorded central signi? cance in the writings of a number of French theorists – notably, Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, Baudrillard, and Deleuze and Guattari – and also in the work of sociologists and social scientists interested in the rami? cations of post-structuralism, semiotics and deconstruction for the analysis of contemporary society (Lash and Urry, 1987; Harvey, 1989; Poster, 1990; Best and Kellner, 1991; Smart, 1992, 1993; Bauman, 1992a, 2000; Elliott, 1996). Postmodern anxieties or dispositions are, broadly speaking, cast as part of a broader cultural reaction to universal modernism’s construction of the social world, which privileges rationalism, positivism and techno-scienti? c planning. Premised upon a vigorous philosophical denunciation of humanism, abstract reason, and the Enlightenment legacy, postmodern theory rejects the metanarratives of modernity (that is, totalistic theoretical constructions, allegedly of universal application) and instead embraces fragmentation, discontinuity and ambiguity as symptomatic of current cultural conditions. To express the implications of these theoretical departures more directly in terms of the current discussion, if the social world in which we live in the 21st century is signi? cantly different from that of the simple modernization, this is so because of both socio-political and epistemological developments. It is not only re? ection on the globalization of risk that has eroded faith in humanly engineered progress. Postmodern contributions stress that the plurality of Downloaded from http://soc. sagepub. om by Madhu Menon on September 24, 2007  © 2002 BSA Publications Ltd.. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution. 309 022761 Elliott 310 13/5/2002 Sociology 9:50 am Volume 36 s Page 310 Number 2 s May 2002 heterogeneous claims to knowledge carries radical consequences for the unity and coherence of social systems. Bluntly stated, a number of core issues are identi? ed by postmodern analysts in this connection: s s s The crisis of representation, insta bilities of meaning, and fracturing of knowledge claims; The failure of the modernist project to ground epistemology in secure foundations; The wholesale transmutation in modes of representation within social life itself. Postmodernization in this context spells the problematization of the relationship between signi? er and referent, representation and reality, a relationship made all the more complex by the computerization of information and knowledge (Poster, 1990). What I am describing as a broadly postmodern sociological viewpoint highlights the de? iency of placing ‘risk’ (or any other sociological variable) as the central paradox of modernity. For at a minimum, a far wider range of sources would appear to condition our current cultural malaise. What is signi? cant about these theoretical sightings, or glimpses, of the contours of postmodernity as a social system are that they lend themselves to global horizons and de? nitions more adequately than the so-called universalism of Beck’s sociology of risk. Against a theoretical backdrop of the break with foundationalism, the dispersion of language games, coupled with the recognition that history has no overall teleology, it is surely implausible to stretch the notion of risk as a basis for interpretation of phenomena from, say, an increase in worldwide divorce rates through to the collapse of insurance as a principle for the regulation of collective life. Certainly, there may exist some family resemblance in trends surrounding new personal, social and political agendas. Yet the seeds of personal transformation and social dislocation are likely to be a good deal more complex, multiple, discontinuous. This is why the change of mood – intellectual, social, cultural, psychological, political and economic – analysed by postmodern theorists has more far-reaching consequences for sociological analysis and research into modernity and postmodernization than does the work of Beck. In Beck’s sociology, the advent of advanced modernization is related to the changing social and technological dimensions of just one institutional sector: that of risk and its calculation. The key problem of re? exive modernization is one of living with a high degree of risk in a world where traditional safety nets (the welfare state, traditional nuclear family, etc. ) are being eroded or dismantled. But what is How to cite Ulrich Beck, Papers

Human Beings In Asiana Flight Samples †MyAssignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about the Human Beings In Asiana Flight. Answer: SHELL model The liveware that is present within the model is the connection between the human beings and the controls that are present within the flight. It consists of the crews that are present in the flight along with the engineers and the maintenance personnel. It also includes the administrative andmanagement people who help the operations of the flight in a controlled manner (Henriksen, Ponte 2017). Liveware is used for the interaction of the people with the others within the aviation industry, which helps in the development of leadership, teamwork and cooperation. It helps in themanagement of the resources that are present within the crew personnel along with themanagement of the resources that are present in the teams. It helps in the operation of the software so that the things can be done in an organized manner and the operation can be effective in nature. It helps in the development of the areas, which needs to be designed and the equipments can be protected (Davies Delaney 2017). Situational awareness It can be defined as the perception of the factors that are present in the environment within a particular space and time, which helps in projecting the status in the foreseeable future. It is therefore, the critical factors in the environment, which can be perceived in a better manner along with understanding the factors when they are integrated with the goals of the aviation crew. It helps the pilots to function in an effective and timely manner. The pilots need to use the sensory organs so that it can help them in building a better environment, which will help in the process of taking care of the flight, which will help in preventing any kind of dangerous situations (Jensen, 2017). The pilots of the Asiana Flight 214 had to comprehend the elements that would be of some help during the flight of the plane, which could have saved the plane from crashing. The pilots had to have a fair understanding of the surroundings of the controls by communicating in an effective manner with the c ontrol room so that the panic that led to the crash could have been avoided on a priority basis. The requirements of situational awareness within the aviation industry are based on three factors such as identification of the things that the aircrew needs to have a perception, understanding those perceptions and projecting it in the real-world environment. The situational awareness needs to be determined with the different classes of aircrafts and the missions that those aircrafts have. The Asiana Flight 214 was a commercial flight plane, which used to ferry the passengers between Seoul in Korea to California in the United States of America. The pilots had enough experience in number of flight hours and knowledge about flying the aircraft, which should have helped them in creating a better environment. The pilots has to communicate in a proper manner with the control rooms so that it would have guided them in flying the airplane in an appropriate manner by combining and interpreting the information that were being sent to them through the control rooms (Flin Maran, 2015). They h ad to analyze the situation in a better manner by availing the options that were present to them instead of losing out the communication between them and the control room. With the help of proper communication between the two pilots and the control centres, the risk of crashing the plane could have been averted. The pilots had to pay attention to the minute details that were being communicated to them by the air traffic control rooms so that the wide range of information that were being passed during the flight could have helped them in avoiding the risky situation (Archer, 2015). The factors that will influence the situational awareness among the aviation crew members are factor of attention of the aircrew that is new in the organization. The Asiana flight crew members had lot of experience in the flight hours but they lacked the method of perceiving and processing the external environment, which led to slow responses when the flight was on air, which led to the accident (Hughes et al., 2014). The third level of situational awareness would have helped the pilots play an important role during the process of decision making, which would have been based on their understanding about the present situation by gathering the information in a better manner so that the decision could have been taken in an accurate manner (Schwartz Hobbs, 2014). Information processing The information that comes from different sources to the aviation crew members needs to be assessed in a proper manner so that the decision that is made after processing the information can be effective in nature (Prince, Price Salas, 2017). The capability to process the information differs among various persons, which are based on health, age, stress along with the level of experience that the pilots have in working in various culture. The capabilities of processing the information help in delegating and designing the tasks so that the requirements can be assigned to the employees in accordance to their capabilities. The case for the pilots who were in charge of the Asiana flight failed to understand the information that was being sent to them. They even mishandled the information, which resulted in the loss of lives of the normal passengers. The pilots did not react in an appropriate manner, which led to the crash of the plane (Schwartz Hobbs, 2014). Situational awareness is linked with processing of the information, as the pilots need to be on all their senses when they receive the information. The information that is available to the pilots is inclusive of the engine and the navigation instruments along with the communication that takes place between the pilots and the air traffic control room. The accuracy with respect to situational awareness depends on the perception of the pilots when compared to the reality of the surrounding environment. If the awareness is less accurate it may lead to complexities within the perception, which may cause hindrances in the processing of the information (Rowley Bryant, 2017). Decision making Most of the accidents that take place in the aviation industry is dependent on the decisions that are taken by the pilots at the particular time of emergency. The approaches that help in making of the decision in an analytic manner needs to be based on the range of options that are provided to the pilots, which helps them in comparing and evaluating the evidences based on the course of action that is of optimal manner (Wagner et al., 2015). The analytical strategies that are taken up the pilots lack the flexibilities, which is required for the work to be done in an appropriate manner. The intuitive strategies that are taken up by the pilots creates degradation when they are under stress, as the long term memory of the pilots may be hampered due to the factors of stress (Stokes Kite, 2017). The pilots of the Asiana flight 214 were not able to make better decisions due to the factor of stress that was in their minds when the flight went off the path. Eight seconds before the flight wa s going to cause an accident, it was revealed that the pilots had increased the speed to 112 knots when it was just 125 feet above the ground. When the flight was three seconds before it was going to take the impact, the power of the engine was at 50 percent and kept on increasing. This showed that the pilots, despite being experienced of more than 9000 hours in flying were not able to communicate the decisions with the control room in an efficient manner. This led to the crashing of the plane (Archer, 2015). Stress It is the reaction that is initiated within the humans whenever a situation arises, which can pose a threat to the intensity level of the operations. The psychological factor is that the stimulus affects the human on a negative manner based on the incident that is taking place in front of the individual. The stresses in the aviation industry can be caused due to various factors such as the environment stress factor, which causes stress to the pilot due to the physical exhaustion of their bodies (Stokes Kite, 2017). The pilots are exposed to constant physical stresses within the cockpit such as the noise from the communication with the radio and the different alarms that may start to warn the pilots about the dangers that may be ahead. Apart from these, the noise of the engines and the lighting conditions may be the cause for the stress among the pilots. The pilots of the Asiana Flight 214 were constantly communicating with the personnel of the air traffic control room, which caused problems for them. The pilots were disturbed with the constant noise that was coming from the radio, which raised their stress level that resulted in the accident (Wagner et al., 2015). When only 1.5 seconds were left for the flight to have an impact on the ground, the pilots did not make any distress calls to the air traffic control room so that the landing could be aborted. Instead, it was heard that the pilots out of fear and stress took their own decision of going around, which proved to be a costly mistake by the pilot, as they did not have much time. Communication The communication has to be effective in nature within the environment of aviation, as it is concerned with the safety of the plane and its passengers. The errors in the communication may lead to the risk of the pilots along with the passengers, as it may cause to the accident of the plane. One of the most risky situations is when there is a gap in the communication between the pilots and the air traffic control room (Archer, 2015). Themismanagement and the confusion among the pilots had led to the crash of the Asiana flight 214 over the factor of maintenance of speed by the pilots of the airliner. There was a gap in the communication network between the pilots, which led to the overall accident of the airline. The performance of the pilots was based on lousy communication within the control systems that were automatic within the airplane, which led to the opportunity for the errors. The pilots of the plane had one of the best experiences in flying hours and had a good record concerning the safety of the flights. The miscommunication between them led to the creation of confusion, which resulted in the breakdown of the plane (Moller Vakilzadian, 2014). Teamwork Teamwork has to be present between the pilots and the controllers so that it can help the airline to be guided in an effective manner when it is in air. The team in an aviation sector is inclusive of the functions that are present in controlling the traffic of the air along with the cooperation among the pilots so that the flight can be guided safely. The functions of the team in controlling the air traffic are of two kinds. The first one is known as transitory, which is inclusive of the pattern of interaction between the aircraft and its controller and the second one is relative that is the functions of the controller are in the same sector and within the same shift timings. The team has to be of different compositions so that it can help in influence the processes of the group along with the outcomes that are based on the performances of the group (Lee, 2013). The Asiana flight 214 lacked the teamwork between the pilots, which led to the disastrous result for the airplane. The pilots did not work as a team, which resulted in a miscommunication with the air traffic control as well. This was seen when the plane was just 1.5 seconds from being impacted on the ground, when the pilots had a conversation about turning the plane around. This could have been avoided if the pilots in the flight could have communicated in a proper manner (Brown, Tompson Zipperer, 2016). Crew resource management The Crew Resource Management (CRM) uses the resources that are available in an effective manner, which helps the personnel of the flight crew to have a safe and efficient experience in flying the airplane. The development of the CRM has been done, as it will help in providing better views to the accidents that have been caused by the airplanes by keeping a record of the cockpit voice and the data of the flight. The information that is gathered from this recordings helps the analysts in investigating the nature and the cause of the accident, which can vary from malfunctioning of the technical parts to the level of mishandling the knowledge that the crews had in the airplane. The Asiana flight also had the same thing where the analysts found from the recorders that the flight was in an unstable condition before landing the San Francisco airport in the US. Swiss cheese model This model is based on the unsafe acts that are committed by the members of the aircrew and are generally of two kinds such as errors and violations. The errors are defined as the physical or the mental activities that fails the individuals in achieving the desired outcomes. These errors are basically of three types, which are based on skills, decisions and perpetual in nature respectively (Stein Heiss, 2015). It can be seen that the errors that are caused by the aircrew members are mostly common during the period when the mishap takes place. The other type is known as violations, which is the ignorance of the rules, which does not occur frequently. The violations are also of two types, which are known as exceptional and routine (Tong, Chau Wong, 2015). The Asiana flight 214, which crashed was due to the result of the physical and mental error of the pilots. The pilots did not communicate in a proper manner between them and with the air traffic control as well in an efficient manner, which led to the fatal crash. Additionally, it can also be said that the knowledge and skills of the pilots regarding the features of the airplane were not known in a proper manner, which led to the mishandling of the control systems. Recommendations Thus, it can be recommended that the pilots of the aircraft had to be given a better training program so that it could have helped them in increasing their knowledge, which would have helped them in avoiding the crash. The pilots needed to have a proper knowledge of the control system s that was present in the aircraft, which could have helped in avoiding the crash. The communication network with the air traffic control room had to be improved in a proper manner so that it could have helped them in flying the aircraft in a safely manner. References Archer, S. K. (2015). Gender, Communication, and Aviation Incidents/Accidents.Journal of Media Critiques [JMC],1(2). Brown, J., Tompson, S., Zipperer, L. (2016). Aviation Contexts and EIK Innovation: Reliability, Teamwork and Sensemaking.Patient Safety: Perspectives on Evidence, Information and Knowledge Transfer, 129. Davies, J. M., Delaney, G. (2017). Can the aviation industry be useful in teaching oncology about safety?.Clinical Oncology. Flin, R., Maran, N. (2015). Basic concepts for crew resource management and non-technical skills.Best Practice Research Clinical Anaesthesiology,29(1), 27-39. Henriksen, L. F., Ponte, S. (2017). Public orchestration, social networks, and transnational environmental governance: Lessons from the aviation industry.Regulation Governance. Hughes, K. M., Benenson, R. S., Krichten, A. E., Clancy, K. D., Ryan, J. P., Hammond, C. (2014). A crew resource management program tailored to trauma resuscitation improves team behavior and communication.Journal of the American College of Surgeons,219(3), 545-551. Jensen, R. S. (2017).Pilot judgment and crew resource management. Routledge. Lee, K. S. (2013).Thesis writing: Multilevel analysis on teamwork in aviation trainings(Doctoral dissertation, Middle Tennessee State University). Moller, D. P., Vakilzadian, H. (2014, June). Wireless communication in aviation through the Internet of Things and RFID. InElectro/Information Technology (EIT), 2014 IEEE International Conference on(pp. 602-607). IEEE. Prince, C., Prince, A., Salas, E. (2017). 30 Improving LOS crew resource management.Engineering Psychology and Cognitive Ergonomics: Volume Five-Aerospace and Transportation Systems, 261. Rowley, C., Bryant, M. R. (2017). Crew Resource Management in Helicopter Air Ambulance Operations: A Literature Review. Schwartz, M. D., Hobbs, C. W. H. (2014). Teaching aviation crew resource management in a pharmacy curriculum.American journal of pharmaceutical education,78(3), 66. Stein, J. E., Heiss, K. (2015, December). The Swiss cheese model of adverse event occurrenceClosing the holes. InSeminars in pediatric surgery(Vol. 24, No. 6, pp. 278-282). WB Saunders. Stokes, A. F., Kite, K. (2017).Flight stress: Stress, fatigue and performance in aviation. Routledge. Tong, P. C., Chau, H. T., Wong, T. T. (2015). A shelf-swiss cheese model for aviation safety. Wagner, M., Sahar, Y., Elbaum, T., Botzer, A., Berliner, E. (2015). Grip Force as a Measure of Stress in Aviation.The International Journal of Aviation Psychology,25(3-4), 157-170.

Sleep Stages and Disorders

Introduction Going by a general overview, sleep can be seen as a long period of loss of consciousness but during which one can awakened from. Sleep is a normal state of bodily behavior change where one enters a period of unconsciousness, the sensory and movement activities are deferred and all voluntary muscular movements suspended.Advertising We will write a custom research paper sample on Sleep Stages and Disorders specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More During sleep, a person is less aware of the external environment and the source of stimuli at this stage is primarily internal. A more elaborate look into understanding sleep take a look at the two aspects of sleep which is the behavior observed during sleeping periods as well as the scientific explanation of the physiological processes involved during sleep. Behavioral perspective looks at sleep as a period characterized by immobility or slight movement, a decrease in eye movements, a decrease in awareness of external stimuli, certain body postures, unconsciousness that is in real sense reversible, and reduced cognition. The physiology of sleep is well understood by looking at the electrical rhythms of human mind recorded during sleep. An understanding of these two aspects of defining sleep helps us to explain the step by step process of sleep (Russo, 2005). The process of sleep follows 5stages each marked by a difference in brain wave patterns. The stage 1 consists of periods during which one switches between sleep and wakefulness. The amount of sleep here is light making it easier to stay in touch with external stimuli. This is the stage which the muscles enter a relaxation state. Being the first stage, it marks the first few minutes after one falls asleep and since it is light, one can be aroused and awakened from time to time by any slight disturbance. It forms 5-10% of the whole sleep period. The second stage marks the first feel of the actual sleep during which one looses total consciousness. Movement of the eyelids cease at this stage and the brain waves slowdown. The heart rate also decreases and is accompanied by a fall in body temperatures. This stage accounts for 40-50% of the total sleep period. Stage 3 is marked by a major slowdown in brain wave movements. This marks the entry into a period of deep sleep during which one cannot easily be awakened. A person awakened at this stage has immediate feels of disorientation and takes sometime to completely adjust to wakefulness. Stage 4 is hard to differentiate from stage 3 and in some cases the two have been combined. It is the stage where brain waves reach very slow movement patterns. At this stage, much of the blood that goes to the brain is now diverted to the muscles and energy lost during various activities begins to be replenished. This stage marks very intense deep period of sleep. This is the stage during which certain sleep disorders like sleepwalking, bedwetting and nightma res are experienced (Billiard Kent, 2003)..Advertising Looking for research paper on psychology? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More The last stage of sleep is known as REM standing for rapid eye movement. This occurs 70-90 minutes from the time one falls asleep and in the total sleep time it makes up 20-25% and occurs for about 4-5 times during the whole sleep period. Most dreams occur at this stage of sleep. REM periods start as short durations but as sleep cycles progress the duration of REM increases. During this stage, the eyeballs increase in movement, the heart rate and breathing rate increases but occur in irregular at irregular intervals, and blood pressure increases. REM also marks a period during which the muscles are temporarily paralyzed making limbs movement impossible. This is considered an important phenomenon since if this was not to happen people would be acting according to their dreams at this stage. The brain waves at this stage are actually very fast and high indicating that the brain is very active. The levels of brain activity are almost as high as those experienced when one is awake. It has been found out that if one is awoken during the REM stage, it is possible to remember their dreams very vividly (Hunt, 2009). The term getting enough sleep does not only refer to being in bed for a long time, it incorporates spending enough amount of time in each of the sleep stages. Each stage of sleep brings with it benefits to the body and therefore sleep as a whole is beneficial. Sleep has been termed as an important period during which restoration of various body resources occur. This is recorded in various areas such as restoration of energy levels. This occurs mainly in stage 4 when various body processes increase and blood is directed to the muscles thus restoring energy lost during work. Sleep is also important in restoration in from of healing wounds. This is shown by the decreases in w hite blood cells reported in cases of sleep deprivation. Related to this is the fact that the immune system is also boosted by getting enough sleep. During the REM stage when the body processes and brain activity are almost as those recorded when one is awake, results in increased metabolism during which the growth hormones are secreted thereby marking the importance of sleep in the growth process. Sleep has been shown to contribute to learning and memory processing. Adequate sleep assists the brain in processing new information taken in and preserving it in the long term memory which improves the cognitive functions. Various studies have shown that sleeping after taking in new information resulted in higher chances of memorizing the facts afterwards.Advertising We will write a custom research paper sample on Sleep Stages and Disorders specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Lack of enough sleep also leads to an impaired memory. Getting enough sleep ensures that one gets enough rest to replenish the nervous system. This ensures that a person has the physical ability to face the day ahead. Getting enough sleep acts as a safety measure that reduces the chances of mishaps. A sleep deprived person may find themselves dozing off during the daytime and during the working hours. This increase the chances of making errors which might result in mistakes that maybe of great consequences such as traffic accidents, tripping and falling, and accidents at work place. The relaxation effect and restoration that is brought about by getting enough sleep means that the person wakes up when in a good mood. Sleep deprivation on the other hand has been associated with irritability, loss of concentration, lack of patience and general low moods. Sleep has been linked to cardiovascular health with studies showing that sleep reduces the chances of elevation of the cardiovascular illnesses. The explanation for this is that sleep disorders r esult in health conditions such as hypertension, stress, and the heart beating unevenly. These factors highly increase the chances of attack by cardiovascular illnesses. After clear understanding of the importance of sleep in the functioning of a person’s body, it should be understood that the amount of sleep needed for normal functioning is different compared to the amount of sleep that a body requires for optimum functioning capacity. This however differs from person to person with some people recording additional benefits from sleeping for longer while others get maximum benefits for getting just enough sleep. There is however no definite formula for determining the exact duration needed for each person to know when they get optimum benefits, but one can always try and evaluate how different sleep duration serves to fulfill their sleep needs. Experts such as National Institute of Health have however come up with a conclusion of the average amount of time that persons in di fferent age groups need per night. During the infant stage of growth, the amount of hours that should be spent on sleep is greater. This sleep duration at this stage occurs in a number of sessions which when added up give the total amount of sleep time in infancy stage. The total sleep time in infancy add up to 14-16 hours per day. The total sleep time the hits a decrease phase as the young baby grows in age. Sleep in infancy stage is different in that a bigger amount of sleep time is spent in REM other than deep sleep. This is the reason the newborns are often switching between wakefulness and sleep. This is important for the rapid growth that takes place in newborns and is facilitated by the REM stage of sleep.Advertising Looking for research paper on psychology? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More As one enters the adult stage of growth, the average sleep time required per night decreases to 7-8 hours, with different sources quoting varying figures but close to this. The amount of sleep needed however varies with some people requiring less hours and other more than 8 hours of sleep. The determinant here is whether the individual had in the recent past been deprived of sleep which requires compensation. Spending less than the required time in sleep is detrimental as it leads to ‘sleep debt’. This has been shown to have adverse effect on human mind and body functioning and can only be resolved by sleeping for longer hours. As one reaches old age, sleep tends to be light and the duration spent in sleep is usually shorter. The shortened duration is as a result of a decrease in the amount time spent on stages III and IV of the sleep time which in average goes down by approximately 10-15%. Although there has been reported an increase in time spent in stage II amongst t he old, the increase is low and not enough to compensate for the time that is lost in stage III and IV. Old people experience difficulties in falling asleep coupled with periods of arousals during sleep which marks the shortening of the total sleep time. This can only be compensated by increasing the amount of time spent in bed or otherwise cases of loss of sleep are reported. These cases are compounded by the various medical conditions that are associated with aging like breathing difficulties during sleep, weakened muscles, and weakened heart function (Smith Segal, 2010). Getting enough sleep is very essential for optimum functioning of both the human mind and the body. A person who doesn’t spend the required amount of sleep time per night is termed as being sleep deprived. While the indicators of sleep deprivation may not be so intense as to be figured outright, the compounded effect that it has on a person’s lifestyle is one that can affect the total body output u ntil the problem is resolved by compensating fro the lost sleep. Sleep deprivation can be caused by several factors which include; sleeping late which means reduced total sleep time, waking up earlier than accustomed for, interruption during sleep which means that certain stages of sleep are interrupted, or failing to sleep completely (Milner Cote, 2008). Sleep deprivation is shown by signs that in most cases are considered to be normal. One should be able to wake up naturally after spending enough time sleeping, however most people need alarm clocks to act as reminders which is a clear sign of sleep deprivation. If you struggle to get out of bed when it’s time to wake up, you are possibly sleep deprived. Simple laziness that is synonymous with afternoon sessions, or feeling sleepy in odd places and times like in meetings or classroom marks the evidence of sleep deprivation. After heavy meals and especially in the afternoons, most people consider taking a nap as a normal rou tine while in the contrary it shows signs of a sleep deprived individual. Another sign of a sleep deprived person is dozing off while in a vehicle, or watching TV as well as falling into deep sleep immediately after getting to bed. Sleep deprivation results in general reduction in functional capability of a person. This emanates from the various effects that are resultant from sleep deprivation. A sleep deprived individual lacks motivation and shows general sluggishness as well as low concentration levels. Lack of enough sleep causes one to be moody and easily angered which in sense leads to an increase in stress levels and inability to make sound decisions and solve problems. Health wise, sleep deficiency weakens the body immune system resulting in frequent attacks by diseases such as colds. One’s safety is put at risk as the impairment in motor skills can result in fatal accidents. Sleep deficiency has been associated with cases of weight gain, diabetes and cardiovascular i llnesses. Normal sleeping is sometimes interrupted resulting in what we term as sleeping disorders. The various disorders associated with sleep occur in various manners; disruptions during sleep, difficulty sleeping in general, and sleeping for longer durations. The most evident and probably the most commonly known disorder of sleep is insomnia. The disorder is characterized by general lack of sleep during the night. It occurs when one is unable to initially fall asleep and maintain continuous sleep durations. It is also reported in other cases as awakening in early morning hours and failure to fall asleep after sleep is interrupted. The diagnostic criteria for insomnia require that the incidents of lack of sleep occur for 3-4 times in a week and continue for a period exceeding one month. Insomnia can be either acute or chronic. The acute type is not persistent for long and is said to result from stressful conditions and disappears soon after the situation normalizes. Chronic insomn ia however is the most common and is often coupled by other conditions such as mental disorders, medication, as well as drug abuse (Lee, 2006). Another sleep disorder that is common today is sleep apnoea. It occurs in two different ways and can therefore be classified as either Obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome (OSAS) or central sleep apnoea (CSA). Obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome is characterized by partial blockage of the airway which results in difficult when breathing during sleep. Some of the common cases of OSAS are when sleep is accompanied by heavy snoring, a feeling of chocking, instances of complete absence of breathing, and physical movements such as jerking and trembling indicating that the airway has been obstructed. It consequently affects the sleep patterns and those who suffer the condition often fail to enter the deep sleep stages of sleep. According to Chowdhuri Badr (2008), Central Sleep Apnoea on the other hand occurs when there is failure in breathing during s leep brought about by the inability to control the ventilatory motor output which normally is responsible fro opening up the airway during breathing. CSA brings about symptoms similar to those of insomniacs coupled with feeling sleepy during the day and awakening during sleep hours. Narcolepsy-cataplexy is a sleep disorder that is marked by frequent sleep attacks especially during the daytime hours. This is often frequent and persists for quite sometime and therefore should not be mistaken from the daytime sleepiness that is as a result of insomnia, interrupted sleep during the previous day, boredom, or due to physical fatigue. The frequent attacks of sleep occur are rapid and one is unable to control falling asleep. It happens for a short duration ranging from seconds to several minutes. A good number of people have been said to suffer from narcolepsy and are aware of the symptoms but most of those who suffer it never seek medical interventions and hence continue to live with the p roblem. The sudden attacks of sleep can in other cases be coupled with a feeling of weak muscles that are unable to support the body, a condition known as cataplexy. When the two sates combine to result in a condition that is referred to as Narcolepsy-cataplexy, the result is an incidence of a total body muscular collapse coupled with some deep sleep lasting for a few minutes and could be confused with epilepsy. The common cause of the condition is said to be a malfunction in the central nervous system which can be kept in control by persistent use of medication (Chou Chuang, 2008). A number of sleep related abnormal behaviors have been related to a sleep disorder known as parasomnia. Parasomnia is a condition associated movements and actions that are unusual during sleep and periods during which one is aroused from sleep either leading to disruption of sleep or not. Several disorders of sleep are categorized under parasomnia. The most common of these is sleepwalking. It is a disor der that is common amongst the children of up to 12 years. Its start is marked by activation of the motor activity when the brain enters a slow wave phase. This is followed by several minutes of abnormal movement around the room or house. There have not been any reported cases of criminal activities that have taken place as a result of sleepwalking. Causes that are said to bring about this condition are lack of enough sleep, exhaustion, prevailing ailment, and certain sedative drugs. Another parasomnia disorder is night terrors. This condition is marked by the person making sharp intense screams in their sleep that are usually combined with a feeling of fear and confusion. Nightmares are said to occur during the phases of slow brain wave movements too. In most cases, patients who are diagnosed with night terrors also experience sleepwalking disorder. Factors said to contribute to night terrors are sleep deprivation, loss of energy, illness, drugs that give a hypnotic feeling, and re lated incidents (Synder, 1987). Another parasomnia related disorder is Rapid Eye Movement sleep disorder (RBD). A person expiring RBD often does action that mimic the dreams they are having usually in the 5th stage of sleep which is the Rapid Eye Movement phase. The abnormal dream actions often end up in injuries to the person or the bed partner. This disorder is mostly experienced amongst the aged population. For this reason a link was discovered that associated the process of neurodegenerative diseases amongst the aged with the occurrence of RBD. Bruxism is a sleep disorder that categorized under the parasomnia disorders of sleep. It is marked by abnormal tooth grinding during sleep. It is common during the adolescent years but cases have been reported of old people with the condition. Bruxism has been associated to prevalence of certain disorders amongst the children e.g. cerebral palsy. Factors that elevate the tooth grinding for person’s suffering from bruxism are appreh ension, tension, stress, and dental related diseases (Chokroverty, 2009). In conclusion, sleep has been a much researched on subject with helpful information being substantiated. This include the process of falling asleep and the importance of each stage, the importance of sleep in mind and body function, and the various disorders that are associated with sleep. People can now be able to make good timing of their sleep hours and get the average amount of sleep time needed for healthy functioning. Sleep has therefore proven an important subject that requires understanding by every person who wants to avoid the common assumptions and seeks to get good sleep for it has been found out that sleep influences every aspect of mind and body function. References Billiard, M. Kent, A. (2003). Sleep: Physiology, Investigations, and Medicine. New York: Springer. Chowdhuri, S. Badr, M. S. (2008). Central Sleep Apnoea. Indian Journal of Medical Research ,131(6). 150-164. Chokroverty, S. (2009). Overview of Sleep Sleep Disorders. Indian Journal of Medical Research, 131(5), 126-140. Chou, Y. Chuang, L. (2008). Hyperlipidaemia in Patients with Sleep-related Breathing Disorders: Prevalence and Risk Factors. Indian Journal of Medical Research 131(7), 121-125. Hunt, B. (2009). Stages of Sleep. Dream Views, 23(12), 11-17. Lee-Chiong, T. (2006). Sleep: A Comprehensive Handbook. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons. Milner, C. Cote, K. (2008). Benefits of Napping. European Sleep Research Society Journal, 18(9), 272-281. Russo, M. (2005). Sleep: Understanding the Basics. e-Medicine Health Journal, 120, Retrieved from https://www.emedicinehealth.com/script/main/hp.asp Smith, M. Segal, R. (2010). How Much Sleep do you Ned? Guide to Healthy Sleep, 12(5), 36. Synder, G. (1987). Sleep Disorders. Professional Sleep Societies Journal, 13(4), 3-6. This research paper on Sleep Stages and Disorders was written and submitted by user Wesley S. to help you with your own studies. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. You can donate your paper here.