Collective Memory in Homiletics

Collective Memory in Homiletics Chapter Six Theological markers for the use of collective memory in homiletics 6.1 The Bible and remembering. The debate about memory in contemporary theological disciplines has yet to reach the level of intensity evident within history and sociology and their associated applied studies, but there is nevertheless evidence of a growing interest in the topic. Scholars well known for their work on social approaches to memory are increasingly cited by theologians, or are themselves offering ways into a theological extension of their works. In biblical studies, for example, the American Sociologist, Barry Schartz, presented a keynote address at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in 2003 (published in Kirk and Thatcher, 2005); and from this side of the Atlantic, Jan Assmanns work on cultural memory provides a way into mnemonic devices in a ground-breaking study of Marks Gospel from the perspective of the performative oral culture in which it arose (Horsley, Draper and Foley, 2006). Such publications are the beginnings of what is likely to become a major area of interest and d ebate in theology and biblical studies. As exciting as that prospect is, this chapter concerns itself with one small and closely delineated area where social memory theory and theology in practice are, it is argued, closely related, namely collective memory and preaching. If, as it is being argued in this thesis, the practice of Christian preaching in contemporary European society must consciously address the mechanisms of collective memory and the issues raised by the decay of that memory, what are the theological resources available to support that task? This chapter seeks to answer that question within a theological discourse that views use of the Bible as the primary step in such ongoing resourcing. Just as Christian preaching in order to be Christian preaching cannot be seen in isolation from the biblical text, so this chapter will argue that a theological understanding of Christian tradition as memory cannot be isolated from an understanding of social memory work present in those same biblical texts. Consequently, this chapter seeks to establish that memory and remembrance, understood as fundamental components of a life-creating faith, are evidenced in the biblical texts themselves. It will be argued that our forebears in the continuing traditio n of Abrahams faith were conscious users of the social dimensions of memory. Establishing this point is key to the whole thesis, since it indicates that the homiletic theory advocated here is more than a knee-jerk response to the social amnesia indentified as being so destructive of Christian social memory. In straightforward terms, memory work will be established as a core component of Scripture and, therefore, a core component of preaching that seeks to use those same Scriptures for the remembering of Christ. That theological resourcing of the tasks of Christian collective memory will be established through an examination of some key concepts developed in the work of the Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann. Brueggemanns work is a good place to begin because he writes as a Christian preacher as well as a biblical scholar. The fact that he has also addressed memory issues very directly in his recent work adds a third justification for the focus of the analysis that follows. After the examination of some of Brueggemanns ideas, consideration will be given to the mechanisms of collective memory with particular regard to issues of boundary and development, and how these things are evidenced in Scripture. From New Testament evidence the focus will shift to worship and God as the ultimate referent of Christian memory. 6.2 Imagination as interpretative tool in the works of Walter Brueggemann. The American Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann delivered the 1988-9 Lyman Beecher Lectures on Preaching with the title Finally Comes the Poet: Daring Speech for Proclamation. The somewhat enigmatic quality of the title is typical of Brueggemanns style, and his published papers have included many similar aphorisms (for example At Risk with the Text, An Imaginative Or, The Shrill Voice of the Wounded Party, all in The Word Militant: Preaching a Decentering Word (2007); and Together in the Spirit–Beyond Seductive Quarrels, Reading as Wounded and as Haunted, and Texts That Linger, Not Yet Overcome in Deep Memory, Exuberant Hope: Contested Truth in a Post-Christian World (2000)) but arguably this particular title signifies more than presentational style. Finally Comes the Poet is Brueggemanns echo of a line from a poem entitled Passage to India in the Walt Whitman collection Leaves of Grass (1871): After the seas are all crossd, (as they seem already crossd,) After the great captains and engineers have accomplishd their work, After the noble inventors, after the scientists, the chemist, the geologist, ethnologist, Finally shall come the poet worthy that name, The true son of God shall come singing his songs. The poem has its origin in reflections on the grand technological achievements of Whitmans era, exemplified in the Suez canal and the American transcontinental railway. Its reference to great and new achievements as but a growth out of the past indeed fits well with Brueggemanns insistence that the old texts of Scripture when imaginatively interpreted are productive of new ways of seeing and living in the present (2000: 6): but there is, perhaps, a more playful and a yet more profound echo at work than simple topical reiteration. Whitman began Leaves of Grass as a conscious response to Ralph Waldo Emersons call in 1845 for the United States to have its own indigenous and unique poetry. The poems, despite being full of traditional biblical cadences, were to prove controversial since they used an innovative verse form with frequent colloquial language and some of them exalted the body and sexual love. Whitman worked on the volume throughout his life; the first edition of 1855 contained just 12 poems, but that grew to nearer 300 by the so-called deathbed edition of 1891-2. In other words, Whitmans work represents an ongoing creative enterprise that in its imaginative expansion and re-working sought to offer a new perspective on experience in an authentically American idiom of English. In that sense the poet comes last, as it were, to take imagination to shores far beyond those to be reached by rail or sea. As the poem concludes: For we are bound where mariner has not yet dare to go, And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all. O my brave soul! O farther farther sail! O daring joy, but safe! are they not all the seas of God? O farther, farther, farther sail! Imagination that goes beyond the immediately obvious; creativity that constructs alternative ways of giving an account of reality and interpretive language that profoundly resonates with the contemporary are themes that figure prominently in Brueggemanns work. In his Introduction to the Old Testament: The Canon and Christian Imagination, he writes: The tradition that became Scripture is not merely descriptive of a commonsense world; it dares, by artistic sensibility and risk-taking rhetoric, to posit, characterize, and vouch for a world beyond the common sense. (2003a: 9) This interpretive imagination that enables ancient texts to speak with forceful authority to the contemporary believer is at the heart of Brueggemanns hermeneutic. His conviction is that engagement with the biblical texts can be creative of real alternatives to the prevailing and destructive dominant worldviews. His insistence on not what the text meant but what it means (2007: 83) presents a striking challenge to biblical methodologies that dwell on historical understandings of the text. In Brueggemanns work, both historical and redactive analysis are but steps towards this more fundamentally purposeful interpretation. His work is, therefore, of particular importance to this study since it so clearly demonstrates ways in which the biblical text can be interpreted anew so as to offer a fresh and challenging voice amidst the clamour of contemporary society. It is hardly surprising then that Whitmans poetic fresh voice provides Brueggemann with the teasing frontispiece to his lectures on preaching as a poetic construal of an alternative world (1989: 6). Nor is it surprising that in the years since his Lyman Beecher lectures, beyond his major studies (for example, First and Second Samuel (1990); Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (1997); and Deuteronomy (2001)) Brueggemann has written extensively about the preaching task (for example, in works such as Cadences of Home: Preaching among Exiles (1997); Deep Memory, Exuberant Hope: Contested Truth in a Post-Christian World (2000); The Word Militant: Preaching a Decentering Word (2007)). His is an approach to Scripture that is essentially homiletical since, whilst remaining academically rigorous, it always looks to how the text resonates with contemporary existence. Indeed, Brueggemann asserts that the key hermeneutical event in contemporary interpretation is the event of preaching (2007: 92). 6.3 Imaginative remembering as a way into the text. In his use of tradition Brueggemanns method is presentist in just the way that collective memory theory suggests. He writes that remembering is itself shot through with imaginative freedom to extrapolate and move beyond whatever there may have been of happening (2003a: 7). Accordingly, his determination is to make the interface of ancient text and contemporary community more poignant and palpable (2003a: xi). In this he is following an understanding of how classic texts work in the life of faith that has an ancient pedigree and is exemplified in contemporary scholarship by David Tracy: I will understand not merely something that was of interest back then, as a period piece, whose use, although valid then, is now spent. Rather I will grasp something of genuine here and now, in this time and place. I will then recognize that all interpretation of classic texts heightens my consciousness of my own finitude, my own radically historical reality. I can never repeat the classics to understand them. I must interpret them. Only then, as Kierkegaard insisted, do I really repeat them. (Tracy, 1981: 103) In this understanding, interpretation, even when it appears novel (as long as that novelty is in an appropriate measure consistent with the tradition), is a legitimate extension of the tradition as represented by the text. Hence, for Brueggemann, what he terms imaginative remembering (2003a: 8) is both a way of understanding the formation of the text and an essential way into the text now. He writes of the Old Testament: What parents have related to their children as normative tradition (that became canonized by long usage and has long been regarded as normative) is a world of meaning that has as its key character YHWH, the God of Israel, who operates in the narratives and songs of Israel that are taken as reliable renderings of reality. Given all kinds of critical restraints and awarenesses, one can only allow that such retellings are a disciplined, emancipated act of imagination. (2003a: 8) This retelling is, in Brueggemanns methodology, a necessary extension of the memory work evident in the Old Testament texts with which he works, since those texts are themselves a sustained memory that has been filtered through many generations of the interpretative process, with many interpreters imposing certain theological intentionalities on the memory that continues to be reformulated. (2003a: 4) Brueggemann is at pains to assert the force of this continuity right up to the present time. The preacher, in his understanding, does not stand as a remote and objective commentator on the text, nor as a skill-laden technician who applies ancient wisdom to contemporary life, but is rather in her or his labours at one with and contributing to the ongoing flow of a living stream of tradition: All the forces of imaginative articulation and ideological passion and the hiddenness of divine inspiration have continued to operate in the ongoing interpretive task of synagogue and church until the present day. (2003a: 12) This ongoing process of memory work that makes faith possible for the next generation Brueggemann terms traditioning (2003a: 9). Although he does not use the language of collective memory theory in his writings, it is clear that he is alert to the mechanisms it suggests. For example, he points out that each version of retelling has as its intention the notion that it should be the final retelling that presents the newly interpreted or understood correct version. As that retelling comes to prominence and wide use, however, it is itself subject to further retelling that will eventually be productive of a fresher version that will displace the earlier version, partly or wholly (2003a: 9). It is not hard to see in this process what Halbwachs described as new memories created by the pressure of current needs and relationships and the forgetting of other memories that no longer have a supporting social framework. For Brueggemann, this process of retelling and discarding works to reinforce his demand that an exegetical and homiletical use of the text that is creative and imaginative is both legitimate and advantageous. The exegete or the homiletician can use the traces of earlier memories in the ongoing task of traditioning. Brueggemann writes: The complexity of the text evident on any careful reading is due to the happy reality that as new acts of traditioning overcome and partly displace older materials, the older material is retained alongside newer tradition. That retention is a happy one, because it very often happens that a still later traditionalist returns to and finds useful older, discarded material thought to be beyond use. (2003a: 9) Brueggemanns usage also echoes Halbwachs contention (see section 3.3) that changes in religious collective memory are often strengthened by an appeal to the recovery of ancient memory that has somehow been forgotten. What marks the difference between the two approaches is that Brueggemann sees this reclamation as necessary for a creative and imaginative handling of tradition rather than simply a way of socially legitimizing what might otherwise seem to be corrosive of the tradition. In collective memory theory as delineated by Halbwachs, change and development in Christian religious memory is seen as inimical to faith, whereas Brueggemann believes that variations over time are not only conducive to faith but are required if the text is to retain its power to change perceptions in every age. In acknowledging this process, Brueggemann also acknowledges that the memory held is far from being a straightforward and simple storage of information, or, as he terms it, an innocent act of repo rtage (2003a: 9). Far from seeing the social construction of memory as a denial of faith, Brueggemann uses that constructionism as a way to advance a socially responsible close engagement with the biblical text. This bears on the subject of this study in two very direct ways. 6.4 Living tradition as a field of artistic endeavour. First, it is important to acknowledge that although Brueggemanns hermeneutical method is an expression of impatience with biblical scholarship that dwells on historical, redactional and textual issues to the exclusion of social concerns; it is also more than that. His conviction is that the logic of modernity with its passion for linear, objective, and systematized thinking, and its insistence on only working with the given facts, has too often effectively silenced the Bible even in the churches (2003a: 28). He writes: Our technical way of thinking reduces mystery to problem, transforms assurance into certitude, revises quality into quantity, and so takes the categories of biblical faith and represents them in manageable shapes. (1989: 2) His is a style of engagement with the biblical text that goes beyond historical and technical categories (though readily employing those tools when needed) to imaginative and rhetorical aspects embedded in the text so as to focus not on the cognitive outcomes of the text (though there finally are cognitive outcomes) but on the artistic processes that operate in the text and generate an imagined world within the text. Such artistic attentiveness takes seriously the exact placement and performance of words and phrases, of sounds and repetitions that give rise to an alternate sense of reality. (2007: 76) In terms of homiletic theory this emphasis on artistic attentiveness calls to mind the work of R.E.C. Browne (1976) (see sections 2.3 and 5.2.3 above) and the suggestion he first voiced in the 1950s that preaching is an artistic activity requiring similar processes of social understanding and interaction as those necessary to the production of music, poetry or painting (Browne, 1976: 18). Indeed Brueggemann is arguably more in sympathy with the approach of Browne than with his American New Homiletic colleagues. The inductive methodology of New Homiletics beginnings all too easily with human experience, and, according to Brueggemann, its effort to induce from understandings of human experience connections to the biblical text is the wrong starting point. He cites what he perceives to be an increasing inclination amongst seminarians who prefer for preaching some idea, some cause, some experience, some anything rather than the text. A community without its appropriate text clearly will have no power or energy or courage for mission; it will be endlessly quarrelsome because it depends on ideology and has no agreed-upon arena where it adjudicates its conflicts. (2007: 42) With the New Homileticians Brueggemann is determined to connect the text and the world, but since his homiletic conceives the text as always challenging and critiquing commonplace understandings of experience and reality, those commonplace understandings cannot be the interpreters beginning. Interestingly, the word relevance is a term he studiously avoids in his consideration of how preaching properly works. Indeed, in a recent article he asserts the text is not directly addressed to us, and we should not work too hard at making it immediately relevant (2007: 39). As an alternative he uses the term resonates as a way of indicating that the preachers task is to enable a word to be heard that comes from outside our closed system of reality (2007: 4). Preaching, he insists, must always be subversive (2000: 6) and he means that literally: it offers a version of faith lived in reality that gets under the dominant versions and opens new ways of existing. He writes: My theme is alternative, sub-version to version, the sermon a moment of alternative imagination, the preacher exposed as point man, point woman, to make up out of nothing more than our memory and our hope and our faith a radical option to the normalcy of deathliness. (2000: 9) So, far from being a simple preservation mechanism, traditioning, in Brueggemanns methodology, becomes a creative activity in which each generation of faith reworks the tradition so as to maintain its liveliness: We now know (or we think we know) that human transformation (the way people change) does not happen through didacticism or through excessive certitude but through the playful entertainment of another scripting of reality that may subvert the old given text and its interpretation and lead to the embrace of an alternative text and its redescription of reality. (2007: 26) This is a radical understanding of faiths collective memory in that it lays the emphasis on traditions continuity being found in the telling and retelling which is properly productive of changes and shifts in traditions content. Here, the maintenance of a living tradition is clearly paramount; but processes of that maintenance are acknowledged as continually bringing to birth new ways of understanding how that tradition is experienced as living. The ways collective memories change are an aspect of how tradition functions effectively rather than being seen as a threat to the preservation of tradition. Brueggemanns traditioning works towards the creation of world-views in the anthropological sense; it is an insistence on an epistemology that shuns a too strident and dominating objectivism. As he puts it: Reality is not fixed and settled it cannot be described objectively. We do not simply respond to a world that is here, but we engage in constituting that world by our participation, or action, and our speech. As participants in the constitutive act, we do not describe what is there, but we evoke what is not fully there until we act or speak. (1988: 12) In this Brueggemann offers an understanding of the preachers task that is akin to David Buttricks phenomenological approach (Buttrick, 1987) in that it calls forth a sermonic language that can construe the world in new ways. Thus Brueggemanns definition of imagination is: The God-given, emancipated capacity to picture (or image) reality — God, world, self — in alternative ways outside conventional, commonly accepted givens. Imagination is attentiveness to what is otherwise, other than our taken-for-granted world. (2001: 27) This imaginative ability allows new insights and understandings to develop from within tradition. Processes of displacement and forgetting may indeed be at work in this, as collective memory theory suggests; but that does not necessarily mean that previous memories are just abandoned. Rather, imagination enables a reviewing incorporation of new perspectives that are beyond the easy conventions previously assumed. 6.5 Preaching as contested production. Preaching is at heart, according to Bruggemann, about the construel of alternatives. This assertion discloses a second point about how his work has a direct bearing on this study; and that shifts the focus from the nature of tradition to the practice of preaching. If traditioning is fundamentally about epistemology then preaching, as a mechanism of memory maintenance, must itself be productive of this shift in knowing. Consequently, preaching is, in Brueggemanns estimation, always a dangerous, indeed hazardous, activity since it is essentially a process of production understood in its widest creative sense. Like any productive process there is much that can prospectively go wrong in the process itself, let alone in its ultimate consumption as a product whose characteristics are potentially suspect or unwelcome. The dominant worldview in which both preacher and hearer exists is one in which reductionism with its relentless crude simplification of complexities and subtleties holds sway most of the time (1987: 13). In such circumstances preaching that is a creative weaving of the tradition into fresh resonant patterns can come as an unwelcome shock; it appears to put a question mark against more usual didactic, doctrinal or moralizing homiletical styles (2007: 29). That, of course, is precisely Brueggemanns purpose: Preaching is a peculiar, freighted, risky act each time we do it: entrusted with an irascible, elusive, polyvalent subject and flying low under the dominant version with a subversive offer of another version to be embraced by subversives. (2000: 6, italics original) Brueggemann situates preaching in precisely that area of contestation and change related to operative social frameworks that is familiar to collective memory theorists. That Brueggemann applies notions of production and consumption to the text and its exposition might seem strange in that kindred concepts such as commodification and consumerism are things he frequently criticises severely. In doing so he is, perhaps, making the point that the tendency of the dominating economic model to corrupt and distort underscores its seriousness and makes using its terms all the more resonant when applied to preaching. Preaching is to be taken with the utmost seriousness precisely because the world it aims to create offers a profound alternative to the dominating economic worldview. Preaching presents a new choice which challenges the hegemony of the usual way of viewing production and consumption, but the resonance of that choice is such that terms themselves are appropriately used: When the community has thus produced a text, it is the task of the community to consume the text, that is, to take, use, heed, respond, and act upon the text. The entire process of the text, then, is an act of production and consumption whereby a new world is chosen or an old world is defended, or there is transformation of old world to new world. The purpose of using the categories of production and consumption is to suggest that the textual process, especially the interpretative act of preaching, is never a benign, innocent, or straightforward act. Anyone who imagines that he or she is a benign or innocent preacher of the text is engaged in self-deception. Preaching as interpretation is always a daring, dangerous act, in which the interpreter, together with the receivers of the interpretation, is consuming a text and producing a world. (2007: 87) In other words, to facilitate this consumptive production, it is essential that the text be kept in conversation with what the congregation already knows and believes (2007: 100). This conversation is at its most effective when it is clearly opposed to both a false kind of objectivity that assumes the world is a closed, fixed, fated, given and a kind of subjectivity that assumes we are free or able to conjure up private worlds that may exist in a domesticated sphere without accountability to or impingement from the larger public world (2007: 100). Preaching has to keep the conversation going—an inevitable conclusion, given Brueggemanns dynamic understanding of tradition. It is intended that this analysis of Brueggemanns writings will have made plain the numerous points at which his thought provides fruitful links to the subject of this study. However, before moving to an examination of continuity and community in relation to collective memory it is worth reiterating some of the keys issues at a little length. In particular, the relationship between tradition, as represented by the Scriptural texts and contemporary concerns, will be examined further. That in turn will allow some extended discussion of the way in which this tradition is able to generate more than a straightforward replication of itself out of those contemporary concerns. Tradition is seen here as an environment within which the preacher is empowered towards an imaginative and artistic creativity that both sustains and develops that environment. That discussion will provide a conceptual bridge into the consideration of a brief but significant essay contributed by Anthony Thiselton to th e 1981 Doctrine Commission of the Church of Englands report Believing in the Church. Through Thiseltons work, issues of continuity and transmission will be directly addressed. 6.6 The presentist use of tradition. Brueggemanns perspective on the preaching task fits well with collective memory theory in that it is essentially presentist in its nature. Indeed, Brueggemanns insistence on what the text means now provides a positive theological and ministerial undergirding of the processes of collective memory. His understanding of imaginative remembering as the core tool of the preachers interpretation re-positions those collective memory processes as purposeful rather than simply inevitable. The preacher as hermeneutikos enters the stream of the ongoing flow of a living tradition and strives to be part of that lively continuity through homiletic activity; what Brueggemann understands as a continuing process of traditioning. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Brueggemann places this dynamic understanding of tradition at the very centre of faithful living. If so fundamental to the practice of faith, then that traditioning must also be essential to Christian mission. As Rowan Williams puts it: The Christian is at once possessed by an authoritative urgency to communicate the good news, and constrained by the awareness of how easily the words of proclamation become godless, powerless to transform. The urgency must often be channelled into listening and waiting, and into the expansion of the Christian imagination itself into something that can cope with the seriousness of the world. It is certainly true that, for any of this to be possible, here must be a real immersion in the Christian tradition itself. (2000: 40) In Brueggemanns thought, preaching becomes a key component of contemporary biblical interpretation in that it makes explicit in a demonstrable way just how tradition works. The essential rootedness of homiletics in a faith tradition becomes its greatest strength. This point needs to be underlined because it is not to be taken as special pleading for preaching as an exceptional kind of communication that must by its nature be allowed an ideological position inappropriate elsewhere. Instead, this is a declaration that the explicit rootedness of preaching exposes the reality of similar, but frequently denied rootedness, in other areas of discourse. Furthermore, that that very rootedness provides a platform for a sometimes radical re-evaluation of realities previously simply assumed—what Brueggemann understands as a construal of alternatives. In terms of collective memory, the recasting of memories becomes not the rather defensive mechanism Halbwachs described in his consideration of religion, but a creative and imaginative weaving of new possibilities out of the warp and weft of what has been inherited. This allows an adjustment of Halbwachs rather positivistic functionalism towards a more phenomenological perspective that is alert to the dynamism inherent in the tradition itself. Some words from Peter Ochs study of Peircean pragmatism in relation to Scripture seem apposite: For the Christian community, the Bible is thus not a sign of some external reality, but a reality itself whose meanings display the doubly dialogic relationships between a particular text and its context within the Bible as a whole, and between the Bible as a whole and the conduct of the community of interpreters. (1998: 309) The denial of an objectivizing distance between the preacher and the text may be justly assumed in the ministry of preaching, but Ochs study and Brueggemanns practice are suggestive of more than that: they point to a kind of knowing and learning only available through tradition. What is being challenged here is the easy assumption that a tradition-free, abstract, universal rationality is superior to such tradition-embedded thinking. Indeed, traditioning considered in the widest terms must put a question mark against the very idea of tradition-free knowing. In considering the influential works of Michael Polanyi (1891-1976), Alasdair MacIntyre (born 1929), and Charles Taylor (born 1931) Bruggemann makes the point that the imagination so crucial to development and change is generated from within tradition (2001: 31). 6.7 The generative nature of Scripture as tradition. Although, as acknowledged earlier, the relationship of tradition and rationality raises large epistemological issues beyond the direct scope of this thesis the subject needs to be broached here since it draws attention to an important aspect of tradition, namely its ability to seed fresh, creative understandings that are generative of new developments whilst retaining congruity with the tradition from which they arose. Colloquial usage of the term tradition makes it synonymous with preservation, but that fails to acknowledge this generative ability. Brueggemann sees generative traditioning at

Life Cycle Assessment Essay

This Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) aims to evaluate the environmental impact of the production of candlesticks. All the different materials and processes required to manufacture candles need to be taken into consideration to determine the impacts on the environment. The most common material used to manufacture candles is paraffin wax. Each candle comes in some type of individual packaging most of the time. Candle wicks are made using various natural fibers, such as reeds, rushes, or cotton. An important refinement in wick technology introduced the plaited wick, which burned more than unplaited wicks. Currently, twisted or plaited cotton makes up most of the wicks. The candlestick is made of steel, or could also be made of metal. The functional unit will be a 125ml candle able to generate up to 25 hours of light. Each steel-made candlestick can only hold one candle, and can be used several times. Inputs: †¢Paraffin wax †¢Cotton †¢Metal †¢Materials for packaging Outputs: †¢Gas emissions: when candles burn, paraffin wax emits greenhouse gasses such as carbon dioxide. †¢Depletion of natural resources: paraffin wax is derived from crude oil. Paraffin candles are petroleum products, a non renewable resource. It could increase pollution due to oil spills and the processes needed to extract petroleum. At the same time, the extraction of metal needed for the candlestick causes large volumes of solid waste, requires large amounts of energy, and produces air, soil, and water pollution. †¢Chemicals toxicity: some candles might have lead or zinc in their wick, which release harmful gasses when they burn. Also, scented candles can release toxins from the chemicals used to give them scent. Question 2 of 3 (10 points) Corporate Environmental Management Tools †¢Ecolabelling: Swan eco-label was developed for candles by the Nordic ecolabelling. The main purpose is to reduce the emission and effect of substances harmful to users’ health and the reduction of gases that have and impact on climate change. According to this scheme, 19 out of 28 are environmental requirements, such as description of the candle, description of chemical additives, among others. †¢Design for the Environment: Enabling consumers to quickly identify products that are safer and that can help protect the environment will make them choose a certain product more frequently. If manufacturers start focusing on producing candles that are made from the safest possible ingredients, consumers, producers, and the environment will benefit. †¢Sustainability reports: Keeping track of environmental performance and the capacity of a company to use and maintain resources in a way that prevents depletion, will improve economic, and social performance. If candles can be produced in a more sustainable way, that is, using substitutes sources that are renewable and less harmful, the final product will be more successful in all the areas. Therefore, reporting this information will allow constant improvement of all the processes. †¢Integrated supply chain management: It is important to know which stages in a supply chain are the ones that are being less efficient, and negatively affecting the production of a good, in this case, candlesticks. Determining these processes can enable their improvement to have a more environmentally friendly supply chain. †¢Carbon footprint: As we need metals for producing a candlestick, we depend on large amounts of energy and, if the energy is generated using fossil fuels, it has a large carbon footprint. Measuring carbon footprint allows the whole manufacturing process to be analyzed, realizing which stages have a stronger impact and how can they be improved. †¢Cleaner production: improvement of the machinery used in each stage of production can decrease the environmental impact of producing candles, as it will decrease waste created after different processes. It can also make the processes more efficient, benefiting the company. Development of technology has made these improvements possible. †¢Stakeholder analysis: every single company must consider all the interested parts in a product as they are the ones that decide how successful and efficient a good will is. If the manufacturing of candlesticks is for example affecting the surroundings of a plant, people, that are consumers too , can generate social impacts that will worsen the company’s performance and image. Question 3 of 3 (4 points) Challenges and limitations Candles can be made of different types of wax that have different impacts on the environment. Some of the raw materials that could be used to produce a candle can be less harmful than others. The candleholder life span could vary depending on the quality of the metal that is being used. Therefore, changing the life span of the candlestick. Transition from a â€Å"Cradle to Grave† to a â€Å"Cradle to Cradle† Steel has high scrap metal recycling value. Old metal material can be reused to make new products. Recycling old metal products uses 95% less energy than manufacturing it using new materials. Metal recycling processes require using a lot of energy. If we recycle metal products we only have to use a low percentage of this total energy, decreasing the use of our natural resources and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. To minimize wasteful wrapping of candles, the material used for packaging can reduce the environmental impact by choosing more recyclable materials. Aluminum, for instance, could be used as a base for the candles, or even to manufacture a candleholder, considering it can be easily recycled. Glass, can be recycled too, reused, and even upcycled into new materials or products. Avoiding candles with extra plastic packaging can also decrease the negative impacts on the environment. In addition to packaging decisions, considering the materials used for manufacturing of candles can benefit the producers, consumers and the environment. For example, soy and beeswax candle emit fewer harmful chemicals when burned. Another way to reduce pollution is to buy from local candlemakers. This reduces wasteful packaging, and there is no need to transport raw materials to a farther manufacturing plant, and to consumers at longer geographical distances. Thus, reducing fuel usage and supporting local bus inesses as well.

Control Systems – Rendell Company Report

T6Rendell Company * Divisional controllers report to general managers from 1985 onwards * 7 Distinct business units with their own profits, sales * 1980 corporate controllers responsible for 1) financial accounting 2) internal auditing 3) analysis of capital budget * Reports went directly to top management from divisions * Mr.Hodgkin wanted to play a more active role in establishing budgets and analyasing performance (would personally review budgets and study divisional performance and hired analysts to help) * Divisional managers discussed their budget with top management with divisional controller present * Divisional controllers primary responsibility was to divisional managers as opposed to corporate controllers so Bevins thought he wasn’t getting enough clear info on performance of units * Harrigan: Divisional controllers shouldn’t be â€Å"front office spies† if they want to have good working relationships with managers and help them with the control functi ons * Corporate controllers shouldn’t put divisional controllers in awkward positions regarding more data/opinions on financials. Questions: 1. What is the organizational philosophy of Martex with respect to the controller function? What do you think of it? Should Rendell adopt this philosophy? * Divisional controllers report to corporate controllers Responsible for establishing cost and profit standards and ensure follow through * Not intended to take initiative away from DMs * More formal line relationships as controllers work physically separate from division managers * Set of formal policies, goals, practices that employees (managers) are aware of before beginning in the orgnization * Accounting system controlled by controller division so systems are not tailored to each BU * Divisional managers at Martex like this system because it gives them an unbiased partner with relevant information, controller can do better analysis and there is little argument about cost reports I think this model works for Martex because of the existing culture that has been developed around this model.People in the organization are comfortable with this type of hierarchy. At Rendell the firm culture gives more power to divisional managers and gives them dedicated staff working under them. The feelings towards corporate are more adversarial so any change in the controller function will feel like a corporate spy as opposed to better communication. This philosophy will not work with Rendell’s culture. It will lead to more reliance on informal organization and poorer communication with corporate. 2. Who should the divisional controllers report to in the Rendell Company? Divisional controllers should report to both management and corporate controllers while ensuring DM are aware of this responsibility. 3.What should the relationship be between the corporate controller and the divisional controllers. DC should report to CC to the extent that it ensures corporate directive s are implemented properly without harming DCs and DMs. DCs should communicate that corporate initiatives are being followed/met within their divisions. 4. Would you recommend major changes in the basic responsibilities of either the corporate controller or the divisional controller? Divisional controllers need to play a stronger role as opposed to being a staff like assistant to DMs. However, having them as a direct report to CCs would conflict with the existing culture between DMs and DCs.

Nora s Escape From Henrik Ibsen s A Doll s House Essay

Sarah Tomlinson Ms Davis Honors Modern Literature 7 October 2016 Nora’s Escape Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House follows Nora’s struggles to escape the firm grasp of her domineering husband. Throughout the novel, Nora is depicted as obedient to her husband, Torvald, and never dares to stand up to him. Torvald’s condescension and thinly veiled misogyny continuously confines Nora to her strict 19th century gender role. The title of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House mirrors Nora’s sense of oppression and lack of agency as she struggles to free herself from the strict gender roles of her time period. In Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, Ibsen uses his own experiences, a strong main female character, a sense of confinement, a conservative and dominant leading male character, and an overbearingly misogynistic society to prove that women do not have to adhere to, and can overcome, a strict set of gender roles. Though Henrik Ibsen was born and raised into a strictly conservative society, he befrie nded feminist activists who shaped his own beliefs, which is evident in the plot of A Doll’s House. The Norwegian culture in which Ibsen was raised in teaches that women should always be submissive to the dominant male. Kristen Ørjasà ¦ter, a Norwegian writer, gives insight as to why Henrik Ibsen created his title for the play when she states, â€Å"The American way of calling a woman a doll is not translatable into Norwegian, where a doll is just a toy† (Ørjasà ¦ter). The use of ‘doll’ isShow MoreRelatedAnalysis Of Henrik Ibsen s Ibsen 1459 Words   |  6 PagesHenrik Ibsen is a very common and almost an essential person if you where to judge him by his plays. Ibsen plays are a symbolic representation of how to deal with the reality of social issues. Social issues can be manipulated and used as a powerful political weapon. 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