Political science Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 12

Political science - Essay Example This paper assesses the success and shortcomings of the Oslo process from the Israeli point of view. This will help to learn lessons, which can be adopted in future political processes between Israeli and Palestine. In order to assess the success and shortcomings of the Oslo process from the Israeli point of view, it is important to consider the national goals of Israel. According to Brom (92), the national goal of Israel is to have full Israel sovereignty over all parts of the historical land of Israel. Basing on this, it can be argued that the Oslo process failed, since it contradicted the main national goal of the Israelis. This process then, according to Israelis, was flawed. It was quite clear that in order for the Oslo process to ensure an agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians, the territory of the historical land of Israelis had to be divided between the Palestinians and Israelis. In addition, the national vision of Israelis to ensure the existence of Israel as a democratic nation state of the Jewish people. Therefore, Israel expected that any political process with Palestinians would be based on their principle of two states for two peoples (Brom 93). However, this vision is considered unrealistic, and today, Israel is far away from achieving this vision. Nonetheless, the Oslo process failed in ending the status quo. Today, Israel is still pushing towards the achievement of a bi-national state, as it still retains the West Bank, and continues to expand its settlement enterprise. The Oslo process did not ensure the security of Israel. During the process, Israel had to take security risks. For instance, when Palestinian labourers were allowed to work Israel, this was a security risk to Israel (Brom 95). It is also believed that the Oslo process encouraged the Palestinians to embrace violence and resist the occupation of Israeli through armed protests. Therefore, the Oslo process gave the

It Pays to Be Bilingual :: Argumentative Essay

It Pays to Be Bilingual Hoy en dà ­a es casi necesario ser bilingue si se desea tener à ©xito. Desde California a Washington, de Pensilvania a Florida, uno puede oà ­r muchas personas hablando espaà ±ol. Los Latinos como una gran parte de la sociedad ya no es una cosa del pasado, pero una realidad. Los Hispano Parlantes no se centralizan solamente en las ciudades mà ¡s grandes de Estados Unidos, sino en los pueblos pequeà ±os tambià ©n. Con una mirada de la poblacià ³n total en los Estados Unidos, unos trabajos tà ­picos y el estudio afuera, se puede ver que ser bilingue, especialmente con inglà ©s y espaà ±ol es un recurso con mucho valor. Spanish can be heard clear across the United States because Latin Americans are no longer living only in large cities, but in small towns as well. If you can read and understand this, you are at a great advantage in today’s job market. If you can’t, pay close attention to the reasons you should consider learning Spanish, and allow me to translate my thesis statement for you. By observing the population at large in the United States, some of the typical jobs and study abroad, one can see that being bilingual, especially with English and Spanish is a very marketable resource. By observing the population at large in the United States, one can see that "Caucasian" is not the only ethnic background being represented. In fact, "the United States is the fourth largest Spanish-speaking country in the world" (Olivares). In the past twenty years there has been an increase in the number of Spanish speakers needed in the US. "In 2000, 32.8 million Latinos resided in the United States, representing 12.0 percent of the total U.S. population" (Therrien et al.). As the Hispanic population grows we need to do our part by learning the second language of the US. By taking a look at journals and newspapers, one can see that Spanish is slowly and surely working its way in as a part of the culture. Companies are trying to foster an interest in Spanish among the native English speakers and to communicate to those Spanish-speakers who can’t understand English. The companies are evaluating the language situation of the population at large to decide how to go about speaki ng to everyone. For instance, the most recent ""Got Milk" advertisement features Marc Anthony, a Latin singer and artist. He has gained popularity not only in the Latin Market, but popularity here as well, after having released one of his discs in English.

American Women and Community

Prior to Aug. 26, 1920 women in the United States could not participate in the democratic process. Following the Civil War, American women wanted to have more input into the decisions that would impact their lives. In order for women to gain suffrage groups across the nation had to gather together and create a unified effort for change. The Seneca Falls Convention of 1848, the first formal conference for woman’s suffrage, challenged America to a revolution that would endure for more than seven decades before women actually were granted the right to vote.Convened by Elizabeth Stanton and Lucretia Mott, the conventions aim was to empower women and invoke change through suffrage for women. Since the Civil War women had begun to feel the need to represent themselves and be able to participate in the decision making process which would affect their daily lives. â€Å"The catalyst for this gathering was the World Anti-Slavery Convention held in 1840 in London and attended by an Ame rican delegation which included a number of women. In attendance were Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who were forced to sit in ther galleries as observers because they were women.This poor treatment did not rest well with these women of progressive thoughts, and it was decided that they would hold their own convention to discuss social, civil and religious rights of women, (, 2008,  ¶ 3). † The community of women who gathered in 1848 faced their first challenge in 1869 when the 15th amendment, which extended the right to vote to African-American men, was introduced and passed. â€Å"During the civil war, women’s suffrage was eclipsed by the war effort and movement for the abolition of slavery. While annual conventions were held on a regular basis, there was much discussion but little action.Activists such as slave-born Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Stanton and Susan B Anthony lectured and petitioned the government for the emancipation of slaves with the belie f that, once the war was over, women and slaves alike would be granted the same rights as white men. At the end of the war, however, the government saw the suffrage of women and that of the Negro as two separate issues and it was decided that the Negro vote could produce the immediate political gain, particularly in the South, that the women’s vote could not, (, 2008,  ¶ 6). †Some women felt that they should support the 15th amendment as a victory which would bring women one step closer to voting. This faction of women’s suffrage supporters believed that after black men gained the right to vote there would be no barriers preventing women from gaining that right as well. Yet another faction felt that they could not endorse the amendment until they had been granted the right themselves. Two groups emerged, the National Woman Suffrage Association and Woman’s Suffrage Association. Both groups worked toward suffrage as well as securing property rights for mar ried women and other institutional changes.Following the Civil War, women’s study groups flourished. These groups gave women access to education and an intellectual forum. By the early twentieth century communication was also more effective and women across the nation had more experiences and were generally better prepared to organize themselves, (Bauer, 1999). However, this was also a quiet time for the suffrage movement. It was not until 1914 when a younger generation of women began to hold street presentations, parades and other activism stunts to gain attention. In 1915 the National Woman’s Party formed and began to campaign against the party in power, (Bauer).At this time women were being arrested for their action and in jail some were mistreated. The mistreatment of women gained much attention creating public sympathy for the suffragists. Although World War I slowed the progression of suffrage by 1919 women the 19th amendment was officially passed. By Aug. 26, 19 20 then President Woodrow Wilson ratified the amendment allowing women to enter the polls for the first time in the United States. References (2008). The History of Women’s Suffrage. History . Retrieved from www. history. com Bauer, H. (1999). The Priviledge for Which We Struggled. Minnesota: Minnesota Historical Society Press.

History and Overview of Levittown Housing Developments

The family that had the greatest impact on postwar housing in the United States was Abraham Levitt and his sons, William and Alfred, who ultimately built more than 140,000 houses and turned a cottage industry into a major manufacturing process. -Kenneth Jackson The Levitt family began and perfected their home construction techniques during World War II with contracts to build housing for the military on the East Coast. Following the war, they began to build subdivisions for returning veterans and their families. Their first major subdivision was in the community of Roslyn on Long Island which consisted of 2,250 homes. After Roslyn, they decided to set their sights on bigger and better things. First Stop: Long Island, NY In 1946 the Levitt company acquired 4,000 acres of potato fields in Hempstead and began to build not just the largest single development by a single builder but what would be the countrys largest housing development ever. The potato fields located 25 miles east of Manhattan on Long Island was named Levittown, and the Levitts began to build a huge suburb. The new development ultimately consisted of 17,400 homes and 82,000 people. The Levitts perfected the art of mass-producing houses by dividing the construction process into 27 different steps from start to finish. The company or its subsidiaries produced lumber, mixed and poured concrete, and even sold appliances. They built as much of the house that they could off-site in carpentry and other shops. The assembly-line production techniques could produce up to 30 of the four-bedroom Cape Cod houses (all the homes in the first Levittown were the same) each day. Through government loan programs (VA and FHA), new homeowners could buy a Levittown home with little or no down payment and since the house included appliances, it provided everything a young family could need. Best of all, the mortgage was often cheaper than renting an apartment in the city (and new tax laws that made mortgage interest deductible made the opportunity too good to pass up). Levittown, Long Island became known as Fertility Valley and The Rabbit Hutch as many of the returning servicemen werent just buying their first home, they were starting their family and having children in such significant numbers that the generation of new babies became known as the Baby Boom. Moving On to Pennsylvania In 1951, the Levitts built their second Levittown in Bucks County, Pennsylvania (just outside of Trenton, New Jersey but also near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) and then in 1955 the Levitts purchased land in Burlington County (also within commuting distance from Philadelphia). The Levitts bought most of Willingboro Township in Burlington County and even had the boundaries adjusted to ensure local control of the newest Levittown (the Pennsylvania Levittown overlapped several jurisdictions, making the Levitt companys development more difficult.) Levittown, New Jersey became widely known due to a famous sociological study of one man -- Dr. Herbert Gans. University of Pennsylvania sociologist Gans and his wife bought one of the first homes available in Levittown, NJ with $100 down in June 1958 and were one of the first 25 families to move in. Gans described Levittown as a working class and lower middle class community and lived there for two years as a participant-observer of the life in Levittown. His book, The Levittowners: Life and Politics in a New Suburban Community was published in 1967. Gans experience in Levittown was a positive one and he supported suburban sprawl since a house in a homogenous community (of almost all whites) is what many people of the era desired and even demanded. He criticized government planning efforts to mix uses or to force dense housing, explaining that builders and homeowners didnt want lower property values due to increased density adjacent commercial development. Gans felt that the market, and not professional planners, should dictate development. It is enlightening to see that in the late 1950s, government agencies such as Willingboro Township were trying to fight developers and citizens alike to build traditional livable communities. A Third Development in New Jersey Levittown, NJ consisted of a total of 12,000 homes, divided into ten neighborhoods. Each neighborhood had an elementary school, a pool, and a playground. The New Jersey version offered three different house types, including both a three and four bedroom model. House prices ranged from $11,500 to $14,500 -- virtually ensuring that most of the residents were of somewhat equal socioeconomic status (Gans found that family composition, and not price, affected the choice of the three or four bedrooms). Within Levittowns curvilinear streets was a single city-wide high school, a library, city hall, and grocery shopping center. At the time of Levittowns development, people still had to travel to the central city (in this case Philadelphia) for department store and major shopping, the people moved to the suburbs but the stores hadnt yet. Sociologist Herbert Gans Defense of Suburbia Gans 450-page monograph, The Levittowners: Life and Politics in a New Suburban Community, sought to answer four questions: What is the origin of a new community?  What is the quality of suburban life?What is the effect of suburbia on behavior?  What is the quality of politics and decision-making? Gans thoroughly devotes himself to answering these questions, with seven chapters devoted to the first, four to the second and third, and four to the fourth. The reader gains a very clear understanding of life in Levittown through the professional observation made by Gans as well as the surveys that he commissioned during and after his time there (the surveys were sent from the University of Pennsylvania and not by Gans but he was upfront and honest with his neighbors about his purpose in Levittown as a researcher). Gans defends Levittown to the critics of suburbia: The critics have argued that long commutation by the father is helping to create a suburban matriarchy with deleterious effects on the children, and that homogeneity, social hyperactivity, and the absence of urban stimuli create depression, boredom, loneliness, and ultimately mental illness. The findings from Levittown suggest just the opposite -- that suburban life has produced more family cohesion and a significant boost in morale through the reduction of boredom and loneliness. (p. 220) They also look at suburbia as outsiders, who approach the community with a tourist perspective. The tourist wants visual interest, cultural diversity, entertainment, esthetic pleasure, variety (preferably exotic), and emotional stimulation. The resident, on the other hand, wants a comfortable, convenient, and socially satisfying place to live... (p. 186) The disappearance of farmland near the big cities is irrelevant now that food is produced on huge industrialized farms, and the destruction of raw land and private upper class golf courses seems a small price to pay for extending the benefits of suburban life to more people. (p. 423) By the year 2000, Gans was the Robert Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. He gave his opinion  about his thoughts on the New Urbanism and suburbia in regard to planners like Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, saying, If people want to live that way, fine, though it is not new urbanism as much as 19th century small town nostalgia. More important Seaside and Celebration [Florida] are not tests of whether it works; both are for affluent people only, and Seaside is a timesharing resort. Ask again in 25 years. Sources Gans, Herbert, The Levittowners: Life and Politics in a New Suburban Community.  1967.Jackson, Kenneth T., Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States.  1985.