Athenian definition of democracy Essay -- essays research papers fc

Discuss the Athenian definition of democracy. Is the city state the only kind of state in which true democracy can exist? What happens to democracy when it is applied to a society with a large dispersed population? What are other examples of democratic societies besides Athens? Compare and contrast Athenian democracy with American democracy. Is the United States a democracy in the classical sense of the word? The ancient Greek word "demokratia" was ambiguous. It met literally "people power". But who were the people to whom the power of the long? Was it all the people -all duly qualified citizens? Or only some of the people -- the masses? The Greek word demos could mean either. There is a theory that the word demokratia was claimed by democracy's enemies, members of the rich and aristocratic elite who did not like being outvoted by the common herd, their social and economic inferiors. If this theory is right, democracy must originally have meant something like "mob rule" or "dictatorship of the proletariat". By the fourth century B.C.E. there were hundreds of Greek democracies. Greece was not a single political entity it was a collection of about 1500 separate poleis or cities scattered around the Mediterranean and black sea shores. The cities that were not democracies were either oligarchies or monarchies (often times called tyrannies). Of the democracies, the oldest, the most stable, the most long-lived, and the most radical, was Athens. The origin of the Athenian democracy of the fifth and for centuries can be traced back to Solon. Solon was a poet and a wise statesmen but not a Democrat. His constitutional reform package laid the basis on which an aristocrat called Cleisthenes could pioneer democracy. Cleisthenes championed a radical political reform movement which in 508 -507 ushered in the Athenian democratic constitution. Under this political system Athens successfully resisted the Persian onslaughts that victory in turn encourage the poorest Athenian's to demand a greater say in the ruling of their city. In the late 460's a radicalization of power shifted the balance decisively to the poorest sections of society. This was the democratic Athens that laid the foundations of Western rational and critical thought. &nb... ...laves and women were excluded today every resident of the United States can qualify for citizenship. Bibliography Martin, Thomas. R. Ancient Greece: From Prehistoric to Hellenistic Times. New York & London, Yale University, 2000. McEvedy, Colin. The New Penguin Atlas of Ancient History. London, England, Penguin Books, 1967. - - - The New Penguin Atlas of Medieval History. London, England, Penguin Books, no publication No publication date. Oliphant, Margaret. The Atlas of the Ancient World., London, Ebury Press, 1992. Scholastic Inc. Scholastic Atlas of the World. U.S.A., Miles Kelly, 2001. Further information about the Greeks and Athens can be found at the following sites: http://thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/world/greece/greece/html. http://www.stoa.org.demos http://www.fordham.edu.halsall/ancient/asbook.html http://www.newton.mec.edu/oakhill/sixth%20grade.web/resources/geography/geoslide/geopix.html http://www,culture.gr/ http://www.pbs.org/empires/thegreeks/educational/lesson#1.html http://www.members.home.net/georgefrank/war/athens.html#democracy http://www.members.home.net/georgefrank/war/sparta.html#Monarchy

About Chinese Festival Essay

Do you know the most famous Festival of China? Have you ever heard about that Korea has conflict with China in the traditional cultural field? In order to call on people to realize the importance of Chinese own traditional culture and Cultural Identity, the research paper writes about Chinese Traditional culture, and make a questionnaire about ten questions to investigate people. By introducing the festivals and asking the questions, it tends to accomplish the goal that makes more and more young people know â€Å"What is Dragon Boat Festival?† â€Å"Dragon Boat Festival belongs to China† â€Å"Why the traditional culture is important?† As what mentioned above, there is a conflict about Dragon Boat Festival between China and Korea. Korea supplied Dragon Boat Festival to be its own World Culture Heritage successfully. It shows that the young generation needs to improve the cultural identity and Chinese government needs to pay more attention about the part of traditional culture. Chinese government should be awake to make more useful policies to disseminate Chinese own traditional culture and cherish it. In Culture field, enhancing the national cohesion is an important strategic task. This research report will present the survey about Chinese Traditional Culture and the further questions. Literature Review †¢ Background and history The origin of Dragon Boat Festival centers around a scholarly government official named Qu Yuan. He was a good and respected man, but because of the misdeeds of jealous rivals he eventually fell into disfavor in the emperor’s court. Unable to regain the respect of the emperor, in his sorrow Qu Yuan threw himself into the Mi Luo River. He drowned on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month in 277 BC. Since ancient times, Chinese people threw into the water dumpling made of glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo or reed leaves on the day. Therefore, the fish would eat the rice rather than the hero Qu Yuan. This later on turned into the custom of eating Zong zi, and Dragon Boat racing. Nowadays, the young people in China always celebrate the festivals which are from western; they are not interested in the festivals from their own country. This is a social problem that needs to be solved. In order to pass on the traditional culture in different forms, the government  needs to do a lot of works from many different ways. †¢ Purpose of research 1. In order to make everyone know the Chinese Traditional Festivals. 2. Disseminating Traditional Culture. 3. To call on the people to realize the importance of the Traditional Culture. 4. To make government pay more attention about this part. 5. To prevent the loss of traditional culture †¢ Inclusion- Exclusion Criteria The inclusion criteria are liberal, including newspapers, journal articles, conference papers, unpublished manuscripts, books, book chapters. The resources that do not mentioned issues related to Chinese Traditional Festivals or the importance of the traditional culture are excluded. †¢ Literature Search Upon entering the keywords Chinese Traditional Festivals and the importance of culture, there are many databases in library. And there are few books as well. Table 1 includes a listing and summary of each of them. Table 1: comparison Table of literature review Author(s) Page Number Methodology Type Purpose and summary Shaorong Huang 19 quantitative Article To examine Chinese Traditional Festivals. China is a country with an ancient oriental civilization. Its long history and fine tradition have provided it with the most fertile soil for the growth of the traditional festivals. Zhang Zhiyuan 13 quantitative Article This article presents a brief account of traditional Chinese festival customs. The Chinese traditional festival customs reflect traditional ethics and moral principles. The ancient Chinese paid great attention to worshipping Heaven and ancestors. To make people know the traditional culture. Kent, Dave 24 quantitative Article This article presents a brief account of traditional Chinese festival customs. The Chinese traditional festival customs reflect traditional ethics and moral principles. The ancient Chinese paid great attention to worshipping Heaven and ancestors. Liu Lian 43 quantitative Article The article focuses on the Dragon Boat Festival, a world intangible cultural heritage, which is celebrated by all Chinese on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese lunar calendar. The two most important activities during the festival are presented which are the dragon boat racing and the eating of rice dumplings, but also include burning Chinese herbs and drinking realgar liquor. The origin of the festival, which was a way for people to avoid the back luck associated with the date, is discussed. Wong, Fanny 31 quantitative Article The article presents information on the history of dragon boat racing in China. The dragon boat race is a growing water sport. Dirlik, Arif 22 quantitative Article This article reflects on the existence of the different culture of Chinese. He added that culture can be understood in its material aspect which leads inevitably to the privilege of having difference as a condition of cultural existence Methodology The method of this research is quantitative, and most of information in the research is subjective. The populations are befitting for this research is better from different counties. Different countries, genders, ages, and identities could supply different view of points to the questions, which the research asks. It is best that the participants from different counties, so that the research could study more further about the different perspectives from different counties’ people. And it will be best if the participants are interesting in Chinese traditional culture that could be very helpful to the results. Actually, the participants are almost the students from University Massachusetts of Lowell. Most of them are males, and all of them are between 18-25 years old. As the limitation, the sampling of survey is not very wide, and the samples of this research are all students from University Massachusetts of Lowell. Half of them are randomly select from Email. And few of the samples are researcher asked to review and answer the questionnaire. Contend of questionnaire The content of questionnaire includes much information. And it can be classified into three parts. The first part is to ask about basic information of participants, such as age, gender, nationality. It intends to analyze the feedbacks from different aspects of ages, genders, nationalities. The second part is to ask some simple questions about China to the participants, and it intends to differentiate whether the participants know the situation and background well or not. It could help researcher get clearly information from participants. The last part is to ask some further questions about Chinese traditional culture, like â€Å"Have you ever heard of the event about Dragon Boat Festival happened between China  and Korea?† â€Å"Which policy do you think is best to protect the traditional culture?† Each of this kind of question gives four options, and it intends to get the different perspectives about Chinese traditional culture. Types of question There are three types of questions in the questionnaire, and the first one is demographic question. It asks the participants about the gender, age, and nationality. The second type of question is open question. It asks the participants for their own view of point to the questions, which are relevant to Chinese traditional culture. The third type of question is closed question. It gives four or more options for participants to choose one, which could express their own opinion appropriately. The reactions of respondents are almost about that the participants who come from foreign counties cannot clearly comprehend the meaning or effect of the cultural problem of China and some background history. And most of the participants show their interest of Chinese traditional foods. Actually, besides the participants who are Chinese, the other people are hardly to answer some further questions about policy of protecting culture, as they lack the background knowledge about China and Chinese society. There were some grammar mistakes in the question and option of the questionnaire. According to the questionnaire is not only for Chinese students to answer, it is better to add some background make everyone understand more clearly. Data collection procedures The procedure of collecting data is better to prepared well. The first step is to organize the questions and options clearly, making sure that is easy to understand and answer. The second step is that no matter the way researcher choose to survey, preparing enough questionnaires for backup, avoiding the situation that there is no more questionnaire for participant. The third step is to survey. Give the questionnaire to participants by Email and printout. The fourth step is to wait for the participants to give the questionnaires back. The sixth step is to calculate the total participants and analyze the responses of questionnaires. Justification

Vegetarians vs Meat-eaters Which is better - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 2 Words: 535 Downloads: 6 Date added: 2019/07/01 Category Health Essay Level High school Topics: Vegetarian Essay Did you like this example? Diet plays an important role in dictating a persons health. Everybody should choose his/her diet carefully if they are aiming for better health. There are many diets to stay healthy, one of which can be a vegetarian diet, where a person restrains himself from eating meat and starts to depend mostly on vegetables fruits. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Vegetarians vs Meat-eaters: Which is better" essay for you Create order Another diet can be a carnivore diet, where meat is a large constituent of a persons daily food intake. In spite of the latter seeming more nutritional due to all the protein a person can get from it, the former is proven to be better. A vegetarian diet can improve health more than a carnivore diet can do. First of all, vegetarians, on average, weigh less than meat-eaters. This can be due to meat-eaters consuming less carbohydrates in their diet when compared to vegetarians. If truth be told, BMIs for both men and women on high carbohydrate diets were found to be significantly lower than those on low carbohydrate diets. {1}. On the contrary, a high protein and low fiber diet is proven to have a positive correlation with an increased BMI{2}. Moreover, Turner-McGrievy et al randomized controlled trial (2007) {3} , which enrolled participants in vegetarian omnivorous diets for 6 months, found an almost double weight loss for those who were on the vegetarian diet than those on the omnivorous diet ( -7.5% and -3.2% respectively). Furthermore, a vegetarian diet develops stronger immunity against a variety of diseases. These diseases can vary from chronic diseases, such as chronic hypertension, to acute diseases , like developing a brain stroke. On the other hand, animal-based foods have higher cholesterol due to the animal fat within the food, thus increasing the blood cholesterol level of meat-eaters. Therefore, a meat-eater is more likely to develop cardiovascular diseases. As a matter of fact, Timothy J. Ley Key et al (1999) study {4} found out that meat-eaters have 8% more cholesterol than vegetarians. Moreover, the meat-eaters had 20% higher LDL:HDL ratio than vegetarians. And according to First Aid Basic Sciences: General Principles {5}, In large arteries, LDL can get trapped and oxidized in the vessel intima. Oxidation of LDL renders it recognizable by macrophages, resulting in endocytosis and formation of foam cells, which initiates atherosclerosis. Finally, a vegetarian diet contains a much higher nutritional value than a carnivore diet. Indeed, a carnivore diet has higher protein content, but a vegetarian diet still contains lots of nutrients that are both essential to the human body and absent in animal based foods. For example, vitamin C cant be found in food from animals, but it can be obtained from citric fruits like lemon or orange. Another example can be dietary fibers, where they are absent in animal based food, but present in almost all leaves and vegetables. In fact, a study (Nezami BG et al, 2015) found out that high saturated fat diets , including red meat which contains animal fats, increases the prevalence of constipation by 31 % due to low dietary fibers. In conclusion, its highly recommended to start considering a vegetarian diet instead of a carnivore diet in order to achieve the goal of better health. This is due to a variety of reasons, like developing stronger defense against diseases, losing weight, and increasing the assimilation of essential nutrients.