...In Ethics, The Heart of Leadership, Michael Keeley argues against transformational leadership. He believes that the only to prevent harm done to the minorities by the majorities is “to keep majorities from uniting around a common interest – the reverse of what transformational leaders are supposed to do” (Ethics, 124). In general, I agree with Keeley. He attributes this idea to James Madison, although other scholars have disagreed about Madison’s true options. I will not enter the dispute about Madison’s ideas and opinions; that would be an exercise in history. Rather, I will discuss the content of the argument: whether transformational leadership harms minorities. Other issues, such as the effectiveness of transformational leadership and other ethical implications of the leadership types are beyond the scope of this paper and will not be discussed. To clearly present the issue, I will first define the two types of leadership. The definition of transactional leadership is quite intuitive. This type describes the interaction between leader and follower as a transaction. This is akin to the factor market studied in economics; a follower agrees to serve the leader in return for some sort of incentive. This could be a wage if it is in business, or perhaps just a feeling of accomplishment in a volunteer situation. Transformational leadership, which has been researched for the last 25 years, runs much deeper than the previous type. With transformational leadership, “the...
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...How far were Mao's agricultural policies responsible for the scale of the Great Famine in China, 1958-1962? Mao's agricultural policies were extreme, unpopular and carelessly thought through which made them largely responsible for the scale of the Great Famine. These policies included bad agronomical theories of Lysenkoism and 'Sparrowcide', as well as Collectivisation and the agricultural policies from the Great Leap Forward. Chinese researchers were told that the Soviets 'had discovered and invented everything,' which meant that they looked up to the USSR believing that their actions and ideas i.e. Lysenkoism, a Soviet theory, would also benefit China. There were also other contributions which can be argued to have caused the huge scale of the famine such as the effects of the Anti-rightist campaigns in 1957, Party corruption, USSR grain repayments along with terrible weather conditions and the situation in Tibet. Collectivisation from 1953-57, was the first agricultural policy taken on by Mao which was unsupported by the peasants in the countryside who were the majority of the population. The whole aim for Collectivisation was to massively increase grain production at a relatively quick pace, but the difficulties of implementation only led to a 3.8% increase overall of crop production, and only a tiny 1% in the last year in 1957. These disappointing figures represent how Mao failed to understand the peasants which were a vital factor towards why millions were unwilling...
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...life basically begins when her feet were bound and she became part of a concubine of a warlord. This is not unusual for Yu-fang’s time because women were shown no dignity and suffered many pains. To make matters worse Yu-fang’s father has been the one to arrange this type of lifestyle for his daughter even at a young age Yu-fang’s feet had been bound, which began at age two. The bounding of the feet was a Chinese tradition. “Bound feet” becomes Yu-fang’s greatest asset. “The sight of women teetering on bound feet was supposed to have an erotic effect on men, partly because her vulnerability induced feelings of protectiveness to the onlooker”(Chang, 24). Women walking on bound feet in the Chinese culture were called “three-inch golden lilies” which meant that a woman walked “like a tender young willow shoot in a spring breeze”(Chang, 24). The bounding of the feet had...
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...It has been more than seventy years since the Nanking atrocity of 1937-38. This event is better known as the “Rape of Nanking” or “Nanking Massacre” (Wakabayashi). Even today, there is no healthy dialogue between the countries of China and Japan in regards to the atrocity that occurred there so long ago. The last time that there were any concessions made in regards to the atrocities in China were during and after World War II. Much of the historiography has been limited due the amount of silence that has been present throughout the world. Because of this, research about the atrocity had just recently begun to surface. Due to this fact, there are many factors that are brought into question when looking specifically at a historical event, especially one that is tied to such brutal emotion. The authors I have chosen each attempt to explain why there has been such a delay in Nanking’s historiography and at the same time attempt to explain what actually occurred there in 1937-38. I selected three books for this paper. The first is The Nanking Atrocity 1937-38 by Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi. The book was released on the 70th anniversary of the fall of the Chinese city of Nanking to the Japanese army. The perspective offered is by majority non-American with the exception being two contributors. Wakabayashi discusses what lies at the core of bitter disputes over history, wartime victimization, and postwar restitution that hinder healthy Sino-Japanese relations to this day. The Nanking...
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...“Making” Capitalism Erin MacDonald CHN: 388W February 18th, 2014 About two pages into the section titled Smashing the Four Olds of Gao Yuan’s book Born Red, I came across two sentences that really caught my attention. This part of the section highlighted a conversation between a group of Red Guards who had gone into a small town and came across some peasants selling various home-grown vegetables out of wheelbarrows on the street. These Red Guards proceeded to ask each other “Aren’t they [the peasants] making capitalism?” (pg. 87) At first glance, I attributed the odd wording of the sentence to be an example of what I would call “Chinglish” which can be described as a poor translation from a Chinese word or phrase into English. However, as I read down the page a bit more, I came across another instance of this odd phrasing where the Red Guards referred to those peasants as “making” capitalism; they had approached a man selling eggplants from the man’s own garden and proceeded to ask him directly, “Who allowed you to make capitalism?” (pg. 87) I surmised at this point that Gao Yuan had not merely translated his choice of words poorly but had in fact used the phrasing “making capitalism” intentionally. Gao Yuan’s deliberate description of the peasants to be “making” capitalism made me question whether or not there was any significance behind his particular choice of words. What did the Red Guards mean by saying that those peasants were “making” capitalism? Can capitalism...
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