Difference Between Gift Exchange and Market Transactions

Difference Between Gift Exchange and Market Transactions What is the difference between gift exchange and market transactions, and how do they both relate to gender relations? Introduction Karl Polanyi (1968), in his critique of the principles that underlie the formalist approach to economic analysis, attempted to define the tools by which the economies of ‘traditional’ societies could be analysed. Central to the substantivists’ claims was the understanding that the introduction of money destroyed indigenous social relations by introducing the notion of ‘equivalencies of value’ where none had previously existed. In this approach, the substantivists were following the legacy of Marcel Mauss,[1] who, in his seminal The Gift (1954), had argued that in contemporary and archaic societies as widespread as North America, Polynesia and Ancient Rome the assumptions of economic analysis, as used in explaining market transactions, were not relevant as these societies were gift economies. In this essay, I will first examine what Mauss meant by the term gift economies, before providing a contemporary example from the work of Usula Sharma (1984) who demonstrates how a gift exchange may be instrumental in the subordination of women. In the second section, I then look at market transactions and, by drawing on the work of Maria Mies (1998), I reveal the gendered nature of the market. In the conclusion, I problematise the division between ‘gift’ and ‘market’ economies, suggesting that both are weberian ‘ideal types’ and that neither is fully adequate to account for the complexity of both market transactions and gift exchanges, as both are deeply embedded in social relations and thus in relations of power. Gender and Gift Exchange Marcel Mauss argued that in contemporary western society we make a distinction between gift exchange and market transactions, and that in the west we presume the former to be free of obligations (Douglas in Mauss, 2000: vii). However, Mauss argued that the gift in fact entails an obligation to reciprocate[2] and thus creates ties between individuals and/ or groups. For Mauss, this form of economy differs from the ‘disinterested’ and ‘self-interested’ exchange of modern societies (Mauss, 2000: 75-6) and he believed that all economies were originally gift economies: ‘[t]he system that we propose to call the system of ‘total services’, from clan to clan [†¦] constitutes the most ancient system of economy and law [] forms the base from which the morality of the exchange-thorough-gift has flowed’ (Mauss, 2000: 70). An example of gift exchange is that of Northern India, and the Dowry system as described by Ursula Sharma (1984), compl ete with mutual obligations and the creation of lasting ties. Sharma describes a marriage system whereby the family of the bride must pay a dowry to the family of the groom, creating lasting ties between the two families, premised on the ability of the brides’ family to give: when they arrange the marriage of a son, parents do not just look forward to the dowry they will receive at the wedding. They look forward to the bride’s family’s general capacity to give (Sharma, 1984: 64). Although, if asked, most participants would describe the dowry as ‘freely given’ in fact behind the scenes ‘explicit bargaining’ takes place (Sharma, 1984: 64). In a society sharply divided, not only by gender but also by age and caste, control over what is given and what happens to these gifts once received is subject to division along lines of gender and age. Senior women in the household are responsible for ‘seeing that obligations are met and proper relations maintained’ (Sharma, 1984: 65), but when the gifts are of cash, then it is the senior men who are most in control (Sharma, 1984: 66). The ties created by the dowry may have severe consequences for the dis-empowered bride: ‘[d]owry favours and is favoured by a cultural ethos in which brides can be viewed as objects to be passed from one social group to another’, further, ‘in India the rapid inflation of dowries [†¦] has led to a situation in which brides are more controlled by than controllers of property’ (Sharma, 1984: 73). Finally, ‘dowry deaths’ may occur when the grooms’ family is disappointed with her dowry and hope to negotiate a better one for a second marriage (Sharma, 1984: 71). However, her powerlessness is eased by time, as she moves to being a ‘dowry-taker’ on the marriage of her sons (Sharma, 1984: 72). Thus, we can see that in the gift exchange lasting relationships are created, and that these relations are differentiated according to age and gender. Gender and Market Transactions In this section I examine the ‘market transaction’ through the work of Maria Mies (1998), revealing the gendered nature of the supposedly ‘disinterested’ market. In a market transaction, rather than the exchange of gifts which then creates lasting ties between people, it is presumed that in the exchange of commodities only a relationship between things is created: ‘the transactors are strangers in a state of reciprocal independence which persists after the transaction’ (Thomas, 1991: 14). Such an understanding is supported by our ‘common sense’ understandings of the different spheres of exchange: for example, Paul Bohannan (1968), in his discussion of the ‘spheres of exchange’ among the Tiv of Northern Nigeria, identifies a similar division in Tiv ideology between the ‘gift’ and ‘markets’. The former representing the formation and continuation of social relationships, while the later ‘cal ls up no long-term personal relationship, and which is therefore to be exploited to as great a degree as possible’ (Bohannan, 1968: 300); in this set of relationships, all items have an exchange equivalent. After all, when I exchange cash for a commodity I do not feel myself to be tied into a reciprocal relationship with the shopkeeper. However, Mies argues that rather than the formally free, atomistic individuals, engaged in disinterested exchange (Polanyi, 1968) of theoretical liberalism, and therefore of much economic thought, instead we find that actors are no less entwined in power relations than in the gift economies outlined above. Indeed, she argues that ‘the exploitative sexual division is the social paradigm upon which the international division of labour is built up’ (Mies, 1998: 4, emphasis added). First, many have debated the way in which the public sphere is dominated by men, but Mies argues that it is in fact the unpaid work of the housewife, of caring and nurturing within the domestic sphere (Mies, 1998: ix), or ‘women’s work’, that allows men to be free to enter the public realm (Mies, 1998: 31). Next, Mies argues that the ‘housewifization’ of labour[3] not only naturalizes women’s restriction to the private realm, but also means that her paid wor k is considered ‘only supplementary’ to that of her husband (Mies, 1998: ix): ‘[t]he process of proletarianization of the men was, therefore, accompanied by a process of housewifization of women’ (Mies, 1998: 69). Finally, Mies argues that third world women are valued by capitalism as producers due to their ‘nimble fingers’ and as they are ‘considered to be the most docile, manipulable labour force’ (Mies, 1998: 117): in short, due to ascribed gender stereotypes. The symbolic hierarchy of gender thus has material effects as women are placed in an economically vulnerable position and are concentrated in low paid, part-time employment: women and their children are the most economically disadvantaged group across the globe. Further, women are locked into an international division of labour whereby the ‘third world women produce not what they need, but what others [first world women] can buy’ (Mies, 1998: 118, original emp hasis). Thomson echoes this argument: ‘[e]veryone is now tied up in a historical network of global relations [] we are all caught up in international relations of production and appropriation which stretch across the spaces separating us’ (Thomas, 1991: 8-9) and this international relation of production is gendered. Conclusion Nicholas Thomas rejects Mauss’ argument that the economies of Melanesia and Polynesia can be regarded as ‘gift economies’, which are thus opposed to the market economies of Europe. He argues that this division misses the way that these ‘traditional’ economies are in fact deeply entangled with the global capitalist trade (Thomas, 1991: 4): ‘a wider range of evidence from indigenous Oceanic societies suggests that there is a broad continuum between systems in which it is possible to substitute only people for people, or food for food, and those in which a wide range of expansive conversions are permitted’ (Thomas, 1991: 4). Divisions, such as Mauss makes, between ‘gift exchange’ and ‘market transactions’ are part of the reification of difference between ‘us’ and ‘them’ (Thomas, 1991: 34), further, ‘the grand polarities almost always turn out to be implausible’ (Thomas, 1991: 2 7). Thomas argues that by scrutinising our concepts via the lens of gender we can reveal the theoretical flaws or weaknesses that we might otherwise miss (Thomas, 1991: 2) For Polanyi, the economic sphere as defined by the discipline of economics is based on a conflation of two distinct meanings: the ‘substantive’ and ‘formal’. ‘The formal meaning of economic derives from the logical character of the means-ends relationship [†¦] it refers to a definite situation of choice’ (Polanyi, 1968: 122), whereas in the substantive definition ‘the economy here is embodied in institutions that cause individual choices to give rise to interdependent movements that constitute the economic process’ (Polanyi, 1968: 125). In short, formal economics is based on the notion of formally free individuals, making rational economic decisions and which create no lasting ties, whereas substantive economics views all economies, whether regarded as gift economies or those based on market transaction, as embedded in social relations. Thomas concurs: ‘[e]xchange is always, in the first instance, a political process, o ne in which wider relationships are expressed’ (Thomas, 1991: 7) for exchange relationships are always differentiated by power (Thomas, 1991: 22), by race, class, gender and age. Thomas would not have us abandon the distinction between gift and commodity entirely (Thomas, 1991: 29), perhaps it would be better to view them as points along a continuum, with each ‘ideal’ type at the opposing ends but the majority of actual cases lying somewhere in between; further it is necessary that we recognise the coexistence of both types (Thomas, 1991: 33). Whether or not the introduction of money destroyed indigenous social relations, by introducing the ‘equivalencies of value’, as the substantavists claimed, the ties that are created by contemporary commodity exchange may be less evident, but Maria Mies reminds us that nonetheless the global division of labour links third world producers to first world consumers in an asymmetrical power relationship that makes a lie of the supposed disinterestedness of market transactions. Bibliography Bohannan, Paul (1968) ‘Some Principles of Exchange and Investment among the Tiv’, Economic Anthropology: Readings in Theory and Analysis, LeClair Schneider (Eds.), London: Holt, Rinehart Winston, pp 122 – 143. Levi-Strauss, Claude (1969 [1949]) ‘Nature and Culture’ ‘The Problem of Incest’, The Elementary Structure of Kinship, London: Eyre Spottiswoode, pp. 3-25. Mauss, Marcel (2000 [1954]) The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, New York: W. W. Norton. Mies, Maria (1998 [1986]) Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour, London: Zed Books. Polanyi, Karl (1968 [1957]) ‘The Economy as Instituted Process’, in Economic Anthropology: Readings in Theory and Analysis, LeClair Schneider (Eds.), London: Holt, Rinehart Winston, Inc. pp 122 – 143. Sharma, Ursula (1984) ‘Dowry in North India: Its Consequences for Women’, Women and Property: Women as Property, Hirschon, R. (Ed.), London: Croom Helm, pp. 62-74. Thomas, Nicholas (1991) ‘Introduction’ and ‘Objects, Exchange, Anthropology’ in Entangled Objects: Exchange, Materialism and Colonialism in the Pacific, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, pp. 1-34. 1 Footnotes [1] As well as that of Bronislaw Malinowski, who in his influential (1922) Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea, (London: Routledge) closely described the Kula exchange of the Trobriand Islanders. [2] Levi Straus, following Mauss, argued that the exchange of women (exogamy) provided the basis for ties between different groups (Levi Strauss, 1969: 14) via the incest taboo (Levi Strauss, 1969: 9-10) and thus provided the basis for culture (Levi Strauss, 1969: 24-5). [3] The defining of women as homemakers, and then relying on this definition to characterise their work outside of the home (Mies, 1998).

What Is the Deep Web?

Andres Becerra Espinoza Ms. Mary Glenn English 10th Grade March, 21 2013 What is the Deep Web Surface Web and its Benefits There is a big influence of technology on our daily life. Electronic devices, multimedia and computers are things we have to deal with everyday. The Internet, especially, is becoming more and more important for nearly everybody as it is one of the newest and most forward-looking media and surely -â€Å"the†- medium of the future. (Markus Temmel, Martina Theuermann, Eva Ukowitz, and Tanja Vogrin 2001)The future is here, and we live it every day by waking up and grabbing the device that is nearest to us, looking at the screen and confirming that this will be a nice day. All of this is only possible because of the Internet. According to the Freesoft Encyclopedia this untouchable (maybe touchable with touchscreen devices) interactive multimedia library has made human life easier and faster for the last 18 years. It was created in 1969 by the Defense Department with the purpose of wartime digital communication. It was called the DARPA Internet Program.But the Internet as we know it now was reformed, modified,and commercialized in early 1990, and the World Wide Web (WWW) was introduced. (Brent Baccala, Kyle Hourihan, 2012) It takes about five seconds to find anything on the web. It is as easy as typing some label words, pressing the enter key, or -cliking the â€Å"search† button-, and a couple million options will appear on the screen. This process has become more simple over time and new microphone and voice recognition software enables disabled people to dictate to their Internet connected device, what is that they want to see, hear, or read.Introduction to the Deep Web But is the search engine showing all of the results available? This is a question that is rarely posed, but I found the answer, and it is: No. According to Luisiana State University, when you use a search engine like Google or Yahoo! , the information you get back is sometimes referred to as the â€Å"Surface Web† or the â€Å"Visible Web. † However, there's a lot more information out there – There are millions of web pages that Google and Yahoo can't find. That's the Deep Web.For example, a Google search will not pick up all information in the Library of Congress web pages. To find those web pages you would have to go to the Library of Congress home page and perform a search there. So, why can't you find those pages with your Google search? ; Search engines like Google cannot fid Deep Web pages because they are within specialized databases. Typical search engines simply aren't allowed to access them. The Deep Web is made up of valuable material, like the information within the Library of Congress web pages. In January 2006, Marcus P.Zillman wrote -the Deep Web covers somewhere in the vicinity of 900 billion pages of information located through the World Wide Web in various files and formats that the current search engin es on the Internet either cannot find or have difficulty accessing. The current search engines find about 8 billion pages-. (Louisiana State University, 2008) The Deep Web (also called Deepnet, the invisible Web, DarkNet, Undernet or the hidden Web) refers to World Wide Web content that is not part of the Surface Web, which is indexed by standard search engines.Mike Bergman, credited with coining the phrase, has said that searching on the Internet today can be compared to dragging a net across the surface of the ocean: a great deal may be caught in the net, but there is a wealth of information that is deep and therefore missed. Most of the Web’s information is buried far down on dynamically generated sites, and standard search engines do not find it. Traditional search engines cannot â€Å"see† or retrieve content in the Deep Web – those pages do not exist until they are created dynamically as the result of a specific search.The Deep Web is several orders of mag nitude larger than the surface So basically, the Deep Web is mainly made up of pieces of information that are not appearing in a typical Internet search because they are for private database use and are not open for the public eye. But that is not all, Deep Web also have content of its own, with servers that take advantage of the invisibility of this web pages compared to the surface web. In the Deep Web they find true freedom to post whatever they feel like posting without the restraints of any law. Deep Web ContentOffering anonymity and freedom, the Deep Web has transformed over the years into a deep, almost inhospitable, little-explored information repository that can host anything from the most innocent content to the most ruthless and unthinkable. Within the Deep Web are private intranets protected with passwords, as well as documents in formats that cannot be indexed, encyclopedias, dictionaries, and journals. (Pablo Albarracin, Christopher Holloway, 2012) But that is not all; Satnam Narang, Manager of Symantec Security Response, says that because the Deep Web is hidden from view, it is an especially attractive place for shady activities.Many cybercriminals gather in places like private forums with restricted access. Many users are already familiar with the Internet's dark side: how to download music illegally, where to see the latest movies for free, or how to order prescription drugs for a little extra money. But the Deep Web goes farther. Almost unimaginably farther. Child pornography, arms trafficking, drugs, hired assassins, prostitutes, and terrorism. all make the Deep Web the largest black market to ever exist. On the Deep Web you can find sites that sell stolen credit cards, teams that will clone credit cards through ATMs, people selling cocaine, and more,† says Dmitry Bestuzhev, director of Kaspersky Lab's team of analysts. Of course, not all uses of the Deep Web sites are â€Å"evil. † It has also been very helpful to citizens who find their personal liberties threatened, or who are being watched by government agencies. WikiLeaks is an example of one of the uses of the Deep Web. When it was first launched, and for a long time, before it became public, the WikiLeaks site operated in the Deep Web.Even today, if someone wants to blow the whistle or upload information to WikiLeaks, it is possible to publish it on the Deep Web. The diversity of things that can be found on the Deeo Web is illustated by its enormity. Michael K Bergman, an American academic and entrepreneur, is one of the foremost authorities on this other Internet. In the late nineties he undertook research to try to gauge its scale. â€Å"I remember saying to my staff, ‘It's probably two or three times bigger than the regular web,†Ã¢â‚¬Ëœ he remembers. â€Å"But the vastness of the deep web (†¦ ) completely took my breath away.We kept turning over rocks and discovering things. † In 2001 he published a paper on the Deep Web that is still regularly cited today. â€Å"The Deep Web is currently 400 to 550 times larger than the commonly defined world wide web,† he wrote. â€Å"The Deep Web is the fastest growing category of new information on the Internet †¦ The value of Deep Web content is immeasurable †¦ Internet searches are searching only 0. 03% †¦ of the [total web] pages available. † (Andy Beckett, 2009) The First Five Levels of the Deep Web Deep Web is also divided by sectors or levels in which content variates.Each level down represents a deeper type of information and is also harder to reach. In some cases, you need an invitation from someone who has permission or an account on a web page. This becomes constant since level 4. Level 1 Web – Surface Web; Reddit Webpage (social news website), Digg Webpage (social news website), Temp Email Services, Newgrounds (animations and games), Vampire Freaks (online community for the Gothic–industrial subculture), Fore ign Social Networks, Human Intel Tasks, Web Hosting, MYSQDL Databases College Campuses.Level 2, Web – Bergie Web; FTP Servers, Google Locked Results, Honeypots (traps set to detect, deflect, or in some manner counteract attempts at unauthorized use of information systems), Loaded Web Servers, Jailbait Pornography, Most of the Internet, 4chan (blogging webpage) , Freehive (weapon blog), Let Me Watch This (online free movie site), Streams Videos, Bunny Tube (pornography website).Level 3 Web – Deep Web; â€Å"On The Vanilla† Sources, Heavy Jailbait Pornography, Light Child Pornography, Gore, Celebrity Scandals, Gossiping Websites, Hackers, Virus Information, FOIE Archives, Suicides, Raid Information, Computer Security, XSS Worm Scripting, FTP Servers (Specific) , Mathematic Research, Supercomputing, Visual Processing, Virtual Reality (Specific) Tor Required After This Pont. Eliza Data Information, Hacking Groups FTP, Node Transfers, Data Analysis, Post Date Generat ion, Microsoft Data Secure Networks, Assembly Programmer's Guild, Shell Networking, AI Terrorisists, Cosmologists/MIT.Level 4 Web – Charter Web; Hard Candy (Child Pornography), Onion IB , Hiden Wiki, Candycane, Banned Videos, Banned Movies, Banned Books, Questionable Visual Material, Worldwide Personal Records, â€Å"Line od Blood† Locations, Assasination Box, Headhunters, Bounty Hunters, Illegal Games Hunters, Rare Animal Trade, Hard Drugs Trade, Human Trafficking, Corporate Exchange, Multi Billion Dollar Deals, Most of the Black Market†¦ Closed Shell System Required After This PontTesla Experiment Plans, Hardcore Rape Child Pornography, Necrophillia Child Pornography, Group Child Pornography, WWII Experiment Successes, Josef Mengele Successes, Location of Atlantis, Crystaline Power Metrics, Gandolium Gallium, Garnet Quantum Electronic Processors, Broder's Engine Plans, Paradigm Recalescence, Forward Derivatal Supercomputation, AI in a Box, CAIMEO (AI Superintell igence), The Law of 13's, Geometric Algorthymic Shortcuts, Assasination Networks, Nephilism ProtocolsLevel 5 Web – Marianas Web; Very Little People Know What Is Hidden Under This Level. Polymeric Falcigol Derivation and Quantum Computation knowledge is required to enter this level. Bitcoins, Deep Web Currency According to the Bitcoin official website, bitcoin is one of the first implementations of a concept called crypto-currency, which was first described in 1998 by Wei Dai on the cypherpunks mailing list.Building upon the notion that money is any object, or any sort of record, accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts in a given country or socio-economic context, Bitcoin is designed around the idea of using cryptography to control the creation and transfer of money, rather than relying on central authorities. (Bitcoin Project 2009–2012) Bitcoins fit perfectly on the Deep Web requirements. They ensure the users anonimity and are also a stable c urrency that has been out there for about fourteen years. Bitcoin Prize is not well stablished and variates violently.A bitcoin is equivalent to approximately 14 US Dollars. But it can go as high as 54 US Dollars. Deep Web And The Law According to Chloe Spencer, the Government is very aware of the existence of the ‘Deep Web’. However, due to the intricacy of its design, they seem to be struggling to tackle the large amount of crime concealed within the dark net. An anonymous administrator of Silk Road (online illegal drug store) released a statement last year regarding the FBI’s promise to crack down on the trading of illegal products online.It said: â€Å"We will be diverting even more effort into countering their attacks and making the site as resilient as possible, I’m sure this news will scare some off but, should we win the fight, a new era will be born. Even if we lose, the genie is out of the bottle and they are fighting a losing war already. † Conclusion Ever since the first time I heard about the Deep Web, I got deeply interested and started my research on the topic. I found out and downloaded the required software, double checked that my proxy settings were well configurated. And got into my first Deep Web onion website, which was the hidden wiki.There I found plenty of information that seemed interesting, and that site provided with links too. So the first thing I looked up for was leaked cellphone technology information. Everything about the Deep Web seem to be found, I read about the precautions that needed to be done, and followed as well as I could. But that was not enough. Some day I was wandering around some links, and reading random information, when this link appeared, I had my guard down. And the link redirected me to a hardcore gore site. Those images were horrid. Since then, I have never got into the Deep Web again.It is full of great things, but it is really not worth it. I think that if international go vernments looked after the people who upload and fill the Internet with all of that morbid information. Deep Web could be a more user-friendly experience. Deep Web is not a place for everyone to be, people need to know what they can end up finding, that is the reason I liked this topic for my research paper, I would not like any of my classmates to see what I saw. Thankfully it was not something as disgusting as child pornography. But I prefer keeping my restrictions by now

Educational Policy Implementation - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 12 Words: 3712 Downloads: 10 Date added: 2018/12/15 Category Education Essay Type Case study Level High school Topics: School Essay Did you like this example? Methodology The purpose of this qualitative case study is to explore restorative justice policy implementation at one school in Dochas School District by examining the perspectives of school-site staff who are positioned as street level bureaucrats. The study will include document analysis and interviews. According to Creswell (2013), a case study is a qualitative approach in which the investigator a real-life contemporary who studies a bounded system over time through detailed data collection reporting a case description and emergent themes. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Educational Policy Implementation" essay for you Create order The use of a case study is appropriate because it aims to clarify the boundaries between the phenomenon and the current contextual circumstances of the policy shift from zero tolerance to restorative justice. The research questions that will frame this study are: 1) What are the perspectives of street level bureaucrats of the implementation of restorative justice? 2) How do street level bureaucrats understandings of restorative justice compare to central administrations understandings of restorative justice as related through official district documents? Qualitative research, according to Creswell, involves an inquiry process of understanding based on the methods of inquiry that explore a social or human problem. The researcher builds a complex, holistic picture, analyzes words, reports detailed views of informants, and conducts the study in a natural setting (1998, p. 15). A case must represent specificity rather than generality, and it is by this distinction that a ?bounded case or system exists (Stake, 2008, p. 121). This case study employs qualitative methods where the focus is to explore a case, a bounded group of teachers, counselors, and security guards within a bounded system, a particular school within the Dochas School District. Yin claims that the case study method is best applied when research addresses descriptive questions and aims to answer those questions using a first-hand understanding of people and events (2002). A qualitative case study design supports the investigation of street level bureaucrats perspectives using interviews and document analysis. This comprehensive design strategy is an empirical inquiry that explores a case by addressing the how and why questions regarding the phenomenon of interest (Yazan, 2005). This case study serves the purpose of exploring the how and why following a district mandated policy change and the experiences of street level bureaucrats regarding that change. The study will take place at Meitheal Middle School within the Dochas School District. This district is one of the largest in Southern California. Meitheal Middle School is located in an urban area of the district. The participants will be site-level employees who are positioned as street level bureaucrats at Meitheal Middle School. The phenomenon being studied is the street level bureaucrats perspectives on the policy change from zero tolerance to restorative justice at their school site. Data Collection Method Data collection procedures within the Middle School in the Dochas School District in which this is one of the largest across the California State will be simply through sampling of the information regarding the issue of street level bureaucrats. For such large states sampling is the best method of data collection in which the person making the study can have an easy time compiling the whole data for analysis. This phenomena being carried out in this study on the street level bureaucrats is one that concerns the issue of perspectives of the people across the California state. Within data collection and data analysis procedures in any study like this, the researcher has t take position at the end of the day after sampling out the whole study. The information collected helps him or her make up a report on the findings of the whole study he or she has collected. Reliability of the study and validity of the given research can all be measured through the issue of making sure all the people interviewed during the data collection are trustworthy in what information they are giving on street level bureaucrats across the state of California. Research Design Maxwell (2012) describes the issue of the qualitative research on the street level bureaucrats as one that can be studied on the aspect of interviews and other qualitative research methodologies. This type of research perceives that the study can use the aspect of data collection using the qualitative analysis. This qualitative research can include the given application of the theoretical frameworks that entail in the study of the street level bureaucrats (Yin, 2014). This study will be a case study explore the consequences of the newly implemented discipline approach, restorative justice, on the school site staff at one middle school. The study methods like the qualitative analysis has to provide eight school site employees an opportunity to express, through interview, their experiences with the implementation of restorative justice at their school site. The qualitative research analysis and design methods to be used gives meaning to the archived documents surrounding the restorative justice policy implementation. The narrative methods employed in this study will allow for the exploration of a single critical case (Yin, 2011), e.g., employees from one school site who have experienced the effects of restorative justice implementation. The purpose for selecting the case study method is that it has the advantage of simplifying complex concepts and allows investigators to retain the holistic and meaningful characteristics of real-life events (Yin, 2011). The process of research involves emerging questions and procedures, data typically collected in the participants setting, data analysis inductively building from particulars to general themes, and the researcher making interpretations of the meaning of the data (Creswell, 200,7 p. 4). Bounding is a key part of a case study. Stake (1998) has described the value of a case study for explanatory purposes as, The more the object of study is a specific, unique, bounded system, the greater the usefulness of epistemological rationales (p. 445). Identification of the features that are within the system being studied are necessary for recognition of the findings among scholars. Setting Before the research resumes in the district and schools there will be the introduction of the participants in this study in which the issue of trust will be solved for the research to be valid. One of the reasons as to why I selected the site is that it has a large population and great in the education on street level bureaucracy. Dochas School has the ability to give the best results in this research and any given aspect of the study has to be included within the school. According to Maxwell (2012), the issue of complexities and generalization od events within the given research has to be accounted for in order to eliminate some of the challenges one may face in conducting the research. This study will be conducted at Meitheal Middle School (pseudonym), a public school in the Dochas School District (pseudonym) serving grades 6-8. Dochas School District is among the largest in Southern California. There are 83 middle schools, 96 high schools and 451 elementary schools in the district. As shown in Table 1, the demographics of the district are 74% Latino, 8.4% African American, 9.8% White, 6.0% Asian, 0.4% Pacific Islander and 0.2% American Indian/Alaskan Native. The student population of Meitheal Middle school is 1,090. As shown in Table 2, the demographics of Meitheal Middle school are 92% Hispanic, 2.7% African American, 2.8% White, 1.1% Asian, 0.4% Pacific Islander, 0.1% American Indian/Alaskan Native. These details matter a lot within the field of research and study since it gives the readers the understanding they need to know how the study went down. The Dochas School District has a stated goal of fully implementing Restorative Justice at all school sites by the year 2019. Training is regarded as one of the components within the implementation of the research across the globe so that the participants can be well versed with the issue of the street level bureaucrats in the chosen state. Central office personnel have carefully mapped the implementation process by creating a five-year initiative choosing large groups of school sites for training and implementation each year. Therefore, the middle school selected for this study is one that has participated in one of the first phases of the implementation. The school will be selected for this study based on location and accessibility. Table 1 Dochas School District and Meitheal Middle School Demographics 2016-2017 Ethnicity Dochas School District Meitheal Middle School Latino 74% 92.1% African American 8.4% 2.7% White 9.8% 2.8% Asian 6.0% 1.1% Pacific Islander 0.4% 0.4% American Indian/Alaskan Native 0.2% 0.1% SOURCE: Dochas School District Fingertip Facts 2015-2016 and California Department of Education School Accountability Report Card 2015-2016 Participants The study will use a purposive sample of teachers, counselors and security guards from Meitheal Middle School. Purposive sample is one of the non-profitability samples in which a research uses the characteristics of the given population where it can be known as the judgmental sample (Yin, 2014). The use of one school site lent itself to the use of a purposefully chosen sample of school site employees (4 teachers, 2 counselor and 2 security guard) giving the flexibility of offering multiple perspectives and providing insight to the research questions and, aiding in the discovery of the answers to these questions. Purposeful sampling is used for identification and selection of information-rich cases related to the phenomenon of interest (Palinkas, 2013). Creswell (2013) states that researchers select participants and sites for their study which will provide a purposeful understanding of the research problem, and central phenomenon in the study (p.156). The research problem according t o this study is realizing the issue of street level bureaucrats across the given state of California. The following sections introduce the different participants in the study, how their perspectives will contribute to my research objectives, and how they were selected. Teachers Teachers have some of the roles as SLBs and in the implementation of RJ and this make them to be positioned very well within the site of the research that is the school. Teachers are the front line employees in the implementation of RJ in the Dochas School District. Although the district has mandated the implementation of restorative discipline strategies, teachers at Meitheal Middle School make their discretion daily about whether to use the mandated strategies. Although school site administration delivers directives, the classroom is a isolated space where teachers choose what will best serve the students or themselves daily. In order to understand the experiences of Restorative Justice Implementation at Meitheal Middle School four teachers will be invited to participate in the study. These participants will be chosen based on their whether they were employed by the school before, during and after the implementation process while also taking their availability into consideration . This sample selection is not only purposeful, but also a convenience sample. Counselors Counselors have specific roles in the participation of the SLBs and implementing the RJ since the research needs them to do that. One counselor will also be invited to participate in the study. Selection criteria will include employment at Meitheal Middle School before, during and after the implementation of Restorative Justice as well as availability participate in the interview process. Security Guards Security guards in the school are well positioned in giving a good and reliable information in regards to the street level bureaucrats. The final research group includes one security guard from Meitheal Middle School. Selection criteria will include employment at Meitheal Middle School before and after the implementation of Restorative Justice as well as availability to participate in the interview process. Data Collection Procedures Interviews across the research period are important since it is a way of collecting information that will be useful in the study. Data collection will consist of six interviews and document analysis of artifacts surrounding the implementation of Restorative Justice in the Dochas School District. This will include the conducting of six interviews and the collection of district documents pertaining to the implementation of Restorative Justice. According to Creswell (2013), data collection is a series of interrelated activities aimed at gathering good information to answering emerging research questions. I will interview participants and examine collected documents in order to understand the unintended consequences of the implementation of Restorative Justice at one single school site. Interviews Four teachers, 1 counselor and 1security guard will participate in individual interviews. The importance of the use of interview can be best explained by Seidman (2013) when he explains that At the very heart of what it means to be human is ability of people to symbolize their experience through language (p.8). At itss core, interviewing is a quest to understand the lived experience of another human. Each interview will last approximately forty-five minutes and will be audio recorded. Field notes will also be taken during each interview. The interview protocol is semi-structured with open ended questions due to the nature of qualitative case study research. According to Galleta (2013), the semi-structured interview crafts an opening for analysis in order to achieve new understandings of the phenomenon being studied. It also leaves space through the researcher can explore contextual influences evident in the narrative but not explicitly stated. All interviews will take place outside of the participants hours of employment and off school property. Interview questions will specifically address participant experiences with the implementation of Restorative Justice. Documents Documents from the school and district will be collected simultaneously during the collection of other data related to this study. These will possibly include district bulletins regarding implementation timelines and frameworks, schedules specifying administrative and school-site trainings, presentation handouts from these trainings and correspondences sent from the district regarding Restorative Justice. Table 3 Data Collection Procedures Mode of Data Collection How this is Appropriate for the Research Questions Mode of Analysis 6 Semi Structured Individual Interviews Interviews will allow participants to communicate their perspectives Open coding Use of the internet to collect district and school site bulletins, emails and handouts These documents will provide insight into the district and school site administrative intentions behind the policy shift Open coding Data Analysis Procedures The first step in data analysis is the maintenance of accurate data collection procedures and detailed records throughout the process. The ongoing data log will be kept for future use within any other field of research and referencing. Confidentiality will be maintained throughout the study by use of pseudonyms. Audio recorded interviews will be transcribed and pseudonymized. Creswell (2013) purports that researchers may take a direct interpretation to the collected data drawing meaning from it, establishing patterns and putting it back together in more meaningful ways establishing correspondence between two or more categories (p. 199). Coding and data analysis for this study will take place simultaneously with data collections in order to discover emerging themes. This simply means that all the operations in coding and the data analysis will have to take place at the same time to make it possible for the research to be complete within the stated time frame. Open coding and content analysis will be used in this study so that it can work well. Coding is the issue of using computerized units to gain the given meaning within the research. Interviews Teacher, counselor and security guard interviews will be transcribed in order to ensure accuracy. Analysis procedures will include examining verbatim transcriptions of the interviews and identifying relevant statements. After highlighting the transcripts they will be summarized to help identify recurring themes. This coding is helpful in all aspects to help analyze the situation within the research. After open coding is complete I will identify relationships between the open codes and complete a textural description of prevalent themes. I will then write a structural description. According to Moustakas (1994), the Composite Structural Description is a way of understanding how the co-researchers as a group experience what they experience and this is within the coding procedures (p. 142). For this study the structural description will explain how the school site employees as a group at Meitheal Middle School experience the implementation of Restorative Justice. Documents In regards to content analysis, more resources are needed to make sure the study is authentic in all aspects and valid at the same time. The documents and artifacts gathered from the Dochas School District and Meitheal Middle School will undergo the same coding techniques as the above mentioned interviews. In addition, descriptive, interpretive, and pattern codes will be categorized across data in relation to the research questions (Miles Huberman, 2010). Overall analysis Axial coding is the disaggregation of core themes during qualitative data analysis. After the data set and interview transcripts have been analyzed and coded and themes identified axial coding will be used to compare emergent themes. Finally, selective coding will be conducted in order interpret axial codes and indicate one. Selective coding will be the final step in the analysis process allowing for a central theme(s) to emerge. Positionality Statement I am a white woman who has taught in schools with a primarily Latinx population. Throughout my career Ive served lower socio-economic students and families and while I definitely experienced the world differently than them due to my race, they were able to relate to my impoverished childhood. I grew up in New York on welfare and experienced many of the same struggles my students faced. Watching my mother struggle to feed us as a single parent or not knowing if we would be able to pay the rent were common stress inducing experiences. I have always been able to build a rapport with families and students based on the common challenges of a low-income upbringing. I have worked in secondary education for fifteen years, spending 9 years in the classroom as an English teacher and 6 years in out-of-classrooms the positions of literacy coach, instructional coach, and dean of students. My time in and out of the classroom has allowed me a fully developed view of the effects of policy implementation and discipline policies on teachers and students. I began teaching in 2003, under No Child Left Behind policy guidelines. The middle school I worked at was taken over that year by the state of California due to poor test scores. The site-administration was removed and the centralized directives poured down on the classroom teachers in an attempt to improve test scores. The district was in a struggle to improve test scores at any means possible and directives often seemed contradictory to one another and counter to the intended goal. While in the classroom I felt constant pressure to adapt to the ever-changing requirements communicated by site administr ation. I decided to deliver the instruction that I believed would most benefit the students while doing my best to avoid reprimand. Many times I found myself disregarding district or school-site policy because I felt the students would suffer if I were to follow it. My awareness of my role of a Street Level Bureaucrat began at this time when I recognized my use of discretion to implement or disregard policy directives. When I left the classroom, it was, I hoped, to make a move toward more autonomy. I believed I would be able to get closer to the school site decision makers and help bring logic to the table. Teachers and students had been suffering due to unclear and conflicting directives and I truly thought the school site administration would be shocked to hear the struggles that were being experienced. What I found was school site administrators were simply following the directives of their farther removed superiors at the district level. There was no site discretion for decisions when it came to large initiatives such as curriculum or discipline. These policies were handed down from one level to the next starting with state policy. The disappointment of this realization was heavy. My time as a dean of students began shortly thereafter and was a learning curve about discipline policies. Zero tolerance was in full effect and the school was suspending students as a regular practice. The pursuit of expulsion for truancy wasnt an uncommon occurrence. I was trained by an Assistant Principal who taught that students were to be removed from school by suspension if they were disrupting the learning of their class. This was 2008 and public education was suffering from huge budget deficits. All but skeletal counseling services were eliminated from schools and any referrals for counseling for troubled students were made to outside nonprofit agencies. Teachers were exhausted and students were being disregarded if they interfered with the districts push toward improved test scores. While working in this capacity I felt that I was doing an enormous disservice to the students who needed the most help, but the schools were unwilling to work with them and I was in anothe r position where my hands were tied. These experiences have led me to the study educational policy implementation with a focus on the shift from zero tolerance to restorative justice in one district. I have seen the damage that faulty implementation can have on teachers and students. I have also seen zero tolerance in effect on a generation of students. Credibility and Trustworthiness The credibility and trustworthiness of this study will be established with the use of multiple data collection procedures (interviews and data analysis) and the use of a variety of participants allowing for the triangulation of the accuracy of collected information. According to Golafshani (2003), the researcher must ensure reliability and validity of the study based on the ability to maintain validity, and trustworthiness. Multiple cycles of open coding and categorization will enhance reliability. Consistent interview procedures and coding procedures will be employed throughout the study. Additionally, collection and analysis of the data will include robust written descriptions meticulously documenting emerging central phenomenon. Tracy (2010) argues that one of the most important means for achieving credibility in qualitative research is thick description. This involves providing enough details to the readers. Timeline Document collection and analysis will take place beginning in September 2017. Participant recruitment and interviews are subject to IRB approval and are therefore projected to begin January 2018. The bulk of data analysis will take place in the spring of 2018. The first draft of the completed dissertation will be submitted for committee review in spring of 2018. Editing and revisions will occur in the summer of 2018 prior to the dissertation defense scheduled for July 2018. Summary This qualitative case study will use narrative methods to analyze the consequences of the implementation of Restorative Justice at Meitheal Middle School. It will include 6 school site member interviews and the collection and analysis of district and school site artifacts. The study will utilize grounded theory coding allowing for themes to emerge from the collected data. Selective coding will provide an opportunity for the researcher to address the research questions. This chapter concludes with a timeline for the data collection and analysis procedures.

Vincent Van Gogh The World s Most Well Known Artists

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