The Emancipation Of Serfs

The Emancipation Of Serfs From the mid-nineteenth century the pace of change in Russia rapidly accelerated. The decade following the Crimean warrior saw the most dramatic social and institutional upheaval that the empire had ever undergone. Central to the so-called Great Reforms of the period was the abolition of serfdom. The statute of 1861 set the 22 million serfs owned by private landlords free from personal bondage. The fundamental relationship upon which the economic, social and politic structure of the empire had been based was to be dismantled. In 1861 serfdom, the system, which tied the Russian peasants irrevocably to their landlords, was abolished at the Tsars imperial command. Four years later, slavery in the USA was similarly declared unlawful by presidential order. Tsar Alexander II (1855-81) shared with his father, Nicholas I, a conviction that American slavery was inhumane. This is not as hypocritical as it might first appear. The serfdom that had operated in Russia since the middle of the seventeenth century was technically not slavery. The landowner did not own the serf. This contrasted with the system in the USA where the Negro slaves were chattels; that is, they were regarded in law as the disposable property of their masters. In Russia the traditional relationship between lord and serf was based on land. It was because he lived on his land that the serf was bound to the lord. The Russian system dated back to 1649 and the introduction of a legal code, which had granted total authority to the landowner to control the life and work of the peasant serfs who lived on his land. Since this included the power to deny the serf the right to move elsewhere, the difference between slavery and serfdom in practice was so fine as to be indistinguishable. The purpose behind the granting of such powers to the Russian dvoriane (nobility of landowners) in 1649 had been to make the nobles dependent on, and therefore loyal to, the tsar. They were to express that loyalty in practical form by serving the tsar as military officers or public officials. In this way the Romanov emperors built up Russias civil bureaucracy and the armed services as bodies of public servants who had a vested interest in maintaining the tsarist state. The serfs made up just over a third of the population and formed half of the peasantry. They were most heavily concentrated in the central and western provinces of Russia. Reasons for The Emancipation Edict of 1861 In a number of respects serfdom was not dissimilar to the feudalism that had operated in many parts of pre-modern Europe. However, long before the 19th century, the feudal system had been abandoned in Western Europe as it moved into the commercial and industrial age. Imperial Russia underwent no such transition. It remained economically and socially backward. Nearly all Russians acknowledged this. Some, known as slavophiles, rejoiced, claiming that holy Russia was a unique God-inspired nation that had nothing to learn from the corrupt nations to the west. But many Russians, of all ranks and classes, had come to accept that reform of some kind was unavoidable if their nation was to progress. It became convenient to use serfdom to explain all Russias current weaknesses: it was responsible for military incompetence, food shortages, over population, civil disorder, and industrial backwardness. These were oversimplified explanations but theyre some truth in all of them: serfdom was symptomatic of the underlying difficulties that held Russia back from progress. It was, therefore, a particularly easy target for the intelligentsia, those intellectuals who in their writings argued for the liberalizing of Russian society, beginning with the emancipation of the exploited peasants. Nikolai Miliutin, who participated in bringing about the reform, believed that it was necessary to end serfdom to increase agricultural productivity and thereby increase the capital required for industrialization. His friend the legal historian and westernizer Constantine Kavelin, who had good connections with reform-minded relatives of the tsar, maintained that serfdom was the chief cause of poverty in Russia. Although historians have debated to what extent serfdom retarded economic development, what is crucial is that Alexander II and other important figures such as Samarin, Nikolai Miliutin, and Kavelin believed that ending serfdom would strengthen the Russian economy and thereby the country as a whole. As often happened in Russian history, it was war that forced the issue. The Russian state had entered the Crimean War in 1854 with high hopes of victory. Two years later it suffered a heavy defeat at the hands of the Allied armies of France, Britain and Turkey. The shock to Russia was profound. The nation had always prided itself on its martial strength. Now it had been humiliated. In 1856, the Slavophile Yuri Samarin wrote: We were defeated (in the Crimean war) not by external forces of the western alliance but by our own internal weaknessà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦Now, when Europe welcomes peace and rest desired for so long we must deal with what we have neglectedà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦At the head of the contemporary domestic questions which must be dealt with, the problem of serfdom stands as a threat to the future and an obstacle in the present to significant improvement in any way  [1]   Defeat in the Crimean war was a profound shock to Russians, and one, which compelled a complete reappraisal of the empire and of its place in the world. It revealed what many had long suspected, that profound disorder was undermining the empires capacity to sustain its role as a European great power. It demonstrated that the army, reputedly the strongest in Europe, could not defend a fortified base in its homeland against troops dispatched from thousands of miles away. It is said that Nicholas I on his deathbed acknowledged the tacit condemnation of his system, enjoying his son to take action to remedy the disorder in the command. The shortcomings of Russias military performance were due not least to the backward stare of her industry and communications and the precarious condition of her finances. She was unable either to manufacture new rifles to match those her adversaries possessed or to purchase them abroad. Much of what was available, including food and weapons, never reached the battlefield over the muddy tracks and dusty post-roads, which connected the southern extremity with the heartlands of the empire. The Emancipation Of Serfs Alexander II was the tsar liberator, the ruler who finally freed the serfs in 1861. He also instituted other important reforms, especially in local government, the judiciary, and the military. Mindful of Russian weakness displayed during the Crimean war and faced with serious economic problems, he hoped the reforms would strengthen Russia without weakening autocracy. Fulfilling such a combined goal however was an almost impossible task, even if Alexander II had been a stronger and more visionary leader than he was. Although the reforms helped modernize Russia, the climate that bred them also fostered discontentment and discord. Reactionaries, conservatives, liberals, radicals, and government officials battled against each other and among themselves. The keystone of the reforms was the emancipation of the serfs, which, by releasing roughly half the peasants from personal bondage while guaranteeing them land, cleared the way in principle for them to become small property owners and full citizens, able to participate without handicap in political life and in the market economy. In practice the emancipation edict stopped well short of doing that. We have seen that the provisions regarding land disappointed most peasants, leaving them with an abiding grievance. Furthermore, though no longer enserfed, they remained segregated in so-called village societies, usually the old village commune, which contained only peasants as members; priests, schoolteachers, medical orderlies and other people who happened to live in the village were excluded from membership. Peasants were bound to these village societies, which held their pass books, until they had paid in full for the land that they were allocated, in a redemption operation scheduled to take forty-nine years; during that time they could not mobilize their resources by selling their allotments or using them as a collateral to raise loans. They were subject to a legal system distinct from that introduced for the rest of the population, they were tried in segregated volost courts, and they were still liable to corporal punishment and to mutual responsibility. The volosti or cantons, the higher-level administrative unit encompassing several villages and perhaps a small town, likewise admitted peasants only to its assembly and its courts. Nikolai Miliutin, who participated in bringing about the reform, believed that it was necessary to end serfdom to increase agricultural productivity and thereby increase the capital required for industrialization. His friend the legal historian and westernizer Constantine Kavelin, who had good connections with reform-minded relatives of the tsar, maintained that serfdom was the chief cause of poverty in Russia. Although historians have debated to what extent serfdom retarded economic development, what is crucial is that Alexander II and other important figures such as Samarin, Nikolai Miliutin, and Kavelin believed that ending serfdom would strengthen the Russian economy and thereby the country as a whole. 2On February 19, 1861, Alexander II signed the legislation into law. The new law was a political compromise between the interests of the nobles and those of the peasants and their supporters, and the government was unsure of the response of either side. The nearly 400 pages of statutes and annexes that made up the new law were terribly complex, but the emancipation provisions can be summed up as follows: The right of bondage over serfs was abolished forever (except in some outlying areas of the empire such as the Caucasus, where separate emancipation legislation came later. New arrangements regarding gentry-peasant relations and landholding were to be worked out in stages during the next few decades. Peasants who had previously farmed gentry land, as opposed to household serfs, were eventually to receive land, the exact amount to be determined by combinations of negotiation, government maximum and minimum norms for each province and the use of mediators. Most of this new land was to go to peasant communes, not directly to individual peasants. Landowners were to be compensated for their loss of lands by a combination of government notes and peasant payments. Peasants, unless they chose a free and miniscule beggars allotment, were obliged to repay the government with annual redemption payments spread over a 49 year period. Significance of The Emancipation Edict of 1861 Emancipation proved the first in a series of measures that Alexander produced as a part of a programme that included legal and administrative reform and the extension of press and university freedoms. But behind all these reforms lay an ulterior motive. Alexander II was not being liberal for its own sake. According to official records kept by the Ministry of the Interior (equivalent to the Home Office in Britain) there had been 712 peasant uprisings in Russia between 1826 and 1854. By granting some of the measures that the intelligentsia had called for, while in fact tightening control over the peasants, Alexander intended to lessen the social and political threat to the established system that those figures frighteningly represented. Above all, he hoped that an emancipated peasantry, thankful for the gifts that a bountiful tsar had given them, would provide physically fitter and morally worthier recruits for Russias armies, the symbol and guarantee of Russias greatness as a nation. There is a sense in which the details of Emancipation were less significant than the fact of the reform itself. Whatever its shortcomings, emancipation was the prelude to the most sustained programme of reform that imperial Russia had yet experienced (see the Timeline). There is also the irony that such a sweeping move could not have been introduced except by a ruler with absolute powers; it could not have been done in a democracy. The only comparable social change of such magnitude was President Lincolns freeing of the Negro slaves in 1865. But, as a modern Russian historian (Alexander Chubarov, The Fragile Empire, New York, 1999, p.75) has provocatively pointed out: the [Russian] emancipation was carried out on an infinitely larger scale, and was achieved without civil war and without devastation or armed coercion. Yet when that achievement has been duly noted and credited, hindsight suggests that emancipation was essentially a failure. It raised expectations and dashed them. Russia gave promise of entering a new dawn but then retreated into darkness. This tends to suggest that Alexander II and his government deliberately set out to betray the peasants. This was certainly the argument used by radical critics of the regime. It is important to consider, however, that land reform always takes time to work. It can never be a quick fix. Alexanders prime motive in introducing emancipation was undoubtedly the desire to produce results that were beneficial to his regime. But this is not to suggest that he was insincere in his wish to elevate the condition of the peasants. Where he can be faulted is in his failure to push reform far enough. The fact is that Alexander II suffered from the besetting dilemma that afflicted all the reforming tsars from Peter the Great onwards how to achieve reform without damaging the interests of the privileged classes that made up imperial Russia. It was a question that was never satisfactorily answered because it was never properly faced. Whenever their plans did not work out or became difficult to achieve, the Romanovs abandoned reform and resorted to coercion and repression. Emancipation was intended to give Russia economic and social stability and thus prepare the way for its industrial and commercial growth. But it ended in failure. It both frightened the privileged classes and disappointed the progressives. It went too far for those slavophiles in the court who wanted Russia to cling to its old ways and avoid the corruption that came with western modernity. It did not go far enough for those progressives who believed that a major social transformation was needed in Russia. There is a larger historical perspective. It is suggested by many historians that, for at least a century before its collapse in the Revolution of 1917, imperial Russia had been in institutional crisis; the tsarist system had been unable to find workable solutions to the problems that faced it. If it was to modernize itself, that is to say if it was to develop its agriculture and industry to the point where it could sustain its growing population and compete on equal terms with its European and Asian neighbors and international competitors, it would need to modify its existing institutions. This it proved unable or unwilling to do. Therein lies the tragedy of Emancipation. It is an outstanding example of tsarist ineptitude. Its introduction held out the possibility that Russia could build on this fundamentally progressive measure and modify its agricultural economy in such a manner as to cater for its vast population, which doubled to 125 million during the second half of the 19th century. But the chance was lost. So reduced was the peasant as an agricultural worker by 1900 that only half of his meagre income came from farming. He had to sustain himself by laboring. So much for Alexander IIs claim that he viewed the task of improving the condition of the peasants as a sacred inheritance to which he was honor bound. Immediate impact of The Emancipation Edict of 1861 The immediate impact of the statute was much less dramatic than this longer-term picture might suggest, not least because of the economic terms and administrative arrangements under which the peasants were set free. These terms preserved, if in milder form, many of the obstacles to economic growth and social change characteristic of the pre-reform era. The principle of the statute was that the serfs would be emancipated with their household plots and an allotment of land, but that they should pay for this land. The amount of land made available to them to purchase should be approximately equivalent to the allotments they had been allowed to till for their own subsistence under serfdom. The government would compensate the nobility immediately and the peasantry would repay the government would compensate the nobility immediately and the peasantry would repay the government with redemption dues spread over a period of forty-nine years. In practice the peasantry allotments were significa ntly smaller than those they had used before emancipation; the cut offs withheld by landlords were particularly large in the fertile black-earth regions and were a source of intense and lasting bitterness. The price the peasants paid was artificially inflated to compensate the nobility for the dues in labor and cash, which they were losing. However unattractive the peasants found the terms of land redemption, they were compelled to transfer from the initial status of temporarily obligated tenants to outrights purchasers if their landlords insisted. On the other hand, where it suited the nobility to retain landownership, they could, until 1881, refuse to embark upon redemption at all. Negative Impacts on the serfs As was to be expected, the reaction to the emancipation manifesto was mixed. Many of the emancipated serfs were confused about the complex new statutes and disbelieving or disappointed when told they would have to make payments (for half a century) for land they received. Many peasants believed that the fault with evil officials and nobles who were frustrating the tsars real intentions. They thought that as soon as he overcame these troublemakers, new, more favorable, legislation would be forthcoming. Before the year was over, nobles reported more than 1000 disturbances, most of which required to quell. In the summer of 1861, alexander felt it necessary to admonish a delegation of peasants: There will be no emancipation expect the one I have granted you. Obey the law and statutes! Work and toil! Obey the authorities and noble landowners! The following selection is from the first edition of the Englishmans first-hand observations and reflections. 3It might be reasonably supposed that the serfs received with boundless gratitude and delight the manifestoà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦in reality the manifesto created among the peasantry a feeling of disappointment rather than delight. To understand this strange fact we must endeavor to place ourselves at the peasants point of view. In the first place it must be remarked that all vague rhetorical phrases about free labor, human dignity, national progress, and the like, which may be readily produce among educated men a certain amount of temporary enthusiasm, fall on the ears of the Russian peasant like drops of rain on a granite mark. Collectively the former serfs received less land than their pre-emancipation allotments. More than one-fourth of them received allotments insufficient to maintain their households-former serfs of polish landowners, especially after polish rebellion of 1863, and imperial and state peasants came off better. Overall the noble serf owners kept roughly two-fifth of their lands, whereas the ex-serfs, greatly outnumbering them, received the rest. And the peasants eventually paid more for their land than it was worth and received land less suitable than that retained by the owners. The economic impact on the peasantry of the settlement and the powers entrusted to the post-emancipation commune is, as we shall see, a matter of fierce controversy. Clearly, the phasing out of traditional dues removed the spectre of increased production being creamed off by the landlord, while peasant security was increased by the opportunity to buy the land. Peasants on crown lands and state peasants, liberated by the statutes of 1863 and 1866 on broadly similar terms to those of private serfs, were able to buy rather more land on better terms. Yet the peasantry as a whole remained in a position of extreme economic and political weakness. Advantaged households might briefly establish a privileged position within their own commune and rent land from the nobility on their behalf. But the containing practice of periodic communal redistribution of land, the heavy impositions of state, the vulnerability of even the most successful household to the vagaries of the climate-all provided major obstacles to the emergence of study yeomen. Most significant was the process by which peasants continued to divide the land of large households to set up new families in their own homes and merged plots which old age and death had rendered unviable. The overwhelming majority of peasants remained middle peasants who, despite gradual integration into the market and a slow rise in literacy, remained in large measure set apart form and subordinate to the world outside. The other Great Reforms of 1860s, affecting the judicial system, the press, and the universities, had little effect on the peasantry. They did gain a minority voice on the new local government bodies (zemstva) set up in 1864, but they tended to view them as an additional burden rather that as a vehicle for pursuit of their own interests. For the most part, their political leverage was still restricted to local instances of illegal resistance and spectre of mass disturbances. Amidst the dislocation of Crimean war and the uncertainty, which followed it, rural unrest had made a significant impact on government policy. Peasant protest had reached a level, which led Soviet historians to identify the period as Russian first revolutionary situation. Acute disappointments at being made to pay for the land they considered their own sparked widespread-an in places violent- protest between March and May 1861. But swift and drastic actions by the government succeeded in crushing resistance. Although below the surface tension remained high in the countryside at once refle cted in and fed by repeated rumors of an imminent real Emancipation the number of disturbances trailed off. Yet in the midst of these economic and cultural changes, the peasants gained no new outlets for their political aspirations. Other hand the Zemstvos (which had limited functions and powers), they had no institutions through which they could express their grievances and seek solutions to them. Even as they were beginning from below to bridge the gap between themselves and the empires elites, there was no sign of a civic nation, which they could join. For such a system to work, however, the peasants would have needed a sufficient amount of land or unrestricted opportunities to make money in non-agricultural employment. Neither desideratum was attained. While maximum and minimum norms were established for different zones, they were not always realized or adequate in all cases even when they were realized. The peasants often lost land, particularly in black earth region- in sartov and Samara more than 40 per cent of what they had previously worked. In such provinces, they were often forced by economic circumstances if not by law to continue working for their masters (otrabotka replacing barshchina in technical terms). In less fertile regions near the center and in the north, it is true, they often gained land, but here the obrok form of payment had long been more profitable for the landlords than labor services, and therefore land was not as important to the erstwhile masters as cash. Alternative View on The Emancipation Edict of 1861 The following selection is from the memoirs of Prince Peter Kropotkin, a student in the corps of pages in 1861 when a statute abolishing serfdom was enacted. I was in Nikolskoye in August 1861, and again in the summer of 1862, and I was struck with the quiet, intelligent way in which the peasants had accepted the new conditions. They knew perfectly well how difficult it would be to pay the redemption tax for the land, which was in reality an indemnity to the nobles in lieu of the obligations of serfdom. But they so much valued the abolition of their personal enslavement that they accepted the ruinous charges not without murmuring, but as a hard necessity the moment that personal freedom was obtainedà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ When I saw our Nikolskoye peasants, fifteen months after liberation, I could not but admire them. Their inborn good nature and softness remained with them, but all traces of servility had disappeared. They talked to their masters as equals talk to equals, as if they never had stood in different relations. Besides, such men came out from among them as could make a stand for their rights

Freud?s view of civilization Essay -- essays research papers

Freud’s view of civilization emerges from his understanding of the struggle between Eros and Death. Freud expresses the existence of two contrary instincts, Eros and Death, via starting from the speculations on the beginning of life and biological parallels. While Eros preserves the living substance and joins it into larger units, such as societies, Death dissolves these units and brings them back to their primeval state. The death drives appear to be regressive, striving for a return to a less differentiated, less organized state of tensionlessness. In contrast, Eros (which embraces sexual and life-preserving instincts) is progressive in seeking ever more differentiated forms of organized life and even the widening of differences in it as between the organism and its surroundings. Freud explains the life as concurrent or mutually opposing action of, and therefore balance between Eros and death instincts. Beside this, civilization works with Eros in order to combine individuals to form families, then families to form nations and then great unity of mankind. Actually, the founding of families aroused from the permanent need of male for genital satisfaction. As a result of this, the male wanted his sex object, the female near him, while also the female did not want to leave from her children and had to stay with the stronger male. After that, the sons discovered that a union could be stronger than a single individual by overpowering their father. Because of that, the sons imposed some restrictions to work to each other in order to preserve the new state. Therefore, there are two foundations of the communal life of the human beings: the power of love between man and woman, and woman and her child, and the compulsion to work created by external necessity. The first one of these foundations is the result of Eros and the other is the result of the death instinct, which serves for Eros to co mbine individuals. However, in most cases death distinct opposes to civilization because of the results of death instinct. Because the death instinct directs towards the external world and it occurs as an instinct of aggressiveness and destructiveness. In this way the instinct enters the service of Eros, such that the organism destroys other things instead of destroying itself. However, restriction of these instincts directed towards other things speeds up the process of destr... ...ion. However, difference between male and female is not about strength and endurance, but about the reproductive differences and the ability to nurse of female. Because of these differences, destiny of female in society was designated by the anatomy of female in the past, but this is no longer valid and nor should it be. If we look at the probable criticisms of Gerda Lerner of about the Alphonso Lingis article, Lust, we can see the main difference between them, which is the point of view about woman. Lingis mentions about woman while he is mentioning about prostitutes in Bangkok. This means that like Freud, Lingis sees woman as sex object. Furthermore, he degrades women by saying that travesties in the stage of Calypso are women than women. He does not consider the reproductive property of women and therefore he exhibits the tendency towards men. Gerda Lerner might criticize this point of view of Lingis. Other than that, these two writers do not exhibits big differences since their point of views are different. Gerda Lerner approaches to the topic historically and deal with the subordination of women. On the other hand, Lingis mentions about the representation of self and desire.

Gentrification, the Issue of Today Life

Ever since the 1960s, there has been an influx of high-income populations moving into urban areas from the suburbs. This phenomenon was coined ‘gentrification’ by sociologist Ruth Glass in 1964 to describe â€Å"the movement of upscale (mostly white) setters into rundown (mostly minority) neighborhoods† (Hampson). Proposition 555 has stated that in order to increase government funding and provide citizens a better life with a cleaner environment and safer community, the process of gentrification would require the destruction of some old and unsafe houses. Since then, this policy has received mixed reception from all walks of life.Protagonists, on one side, consider gentrification as the solution to current hard urban issues. Antagonists, on the other side, believe that it causes severe poor-displacement. Debates seem to be endless, yet the whole society is changing due to the great impact of gentrification: luxury condos replacing once deteriorating houses, street s becoming cleaner, and crime rates declining significantly, thus, consolidating my strong support for Proposition 555. To begin with, the first and foremost upside of gentrification is economic improvements in the neighborhood because it boosts up the use of urban land and attracts more business investments.Brooklyn and the Bronx, two of the five boroughs of New York City, are two typical examples. Urban renewal in Brooklyn, also known as ‘brownstoning’, has encouraged a huge wave of investment: $300 million from the city and $3. 5 billion from private investors (Browdie). While the former has been invested in Brooklyn Bridge Park’s construction, the latter has yielded â€Å"7. 8 million square feet of new residential, retail and commercial space, including 26 apartment complexes, four hotels, and a glassy shopping complex† (Browdie).In regards to the Bronx, the gentrifying process has brought to the region a new appearance. The notorious neighborhood, wh ich used to be considered off limits to investors due to commercial waste, crimes, and violence, has become â€Å"a diamond in the rough, being discovered† (Magistro). Today, the Bronx has numerous remarkable attractions like the Bronx Zoo—one of the world’s largest metropolitan zoos, the New York Botanical Garden, Wave Hill, excellent subway service, retail strip malls, and affluent bedroom communities (Magistro).In South Bronx, Majora Carter, a famous urban revitalization strategist says that the removal of Sheridan Expressway and construction of Lafayette Avenue has made this area appeal to stakeholders for parkland, affordable housing and local economic development (Majora Carter: Greening the Ghetto). Once urban land is in use, it signals huge economic improvements, especially in the tourism industry, job developments, and real estate. Recent studies conducted by Rutgers University have found that in New Jersey, historic preservation, part of the state gent rification policies, has significantly profited the state’s tourism.Besides 2,316 jobs created annually in this industry, New Jersey has earned $15 million in state and local taxes, $16 million in GDP, and $432 million for the economy (Listokin and Lahr). Moreover, in restructured neighborhoods, new projects associated with job training have emerged to meet the investors’ demands. For example, the South Bronx community is running the Bronx Ecological Stewardship Training project to â€Å"seed the area with green collar jobs† in the fields of ecological restorations so that its people will be qualified for these well-paying jobs (Majora Carter: Greening the Ghetto).As a result of being employed, a person gains a greater opportunity of sustainable income and will tend to purchase a house to settle into family life. In other words, gentrification is an impetus to the local economy because it stimulates the use of urban lands, opens more job opportunities, and encou rages real estate. Along with economic improvements, a great number of social achievements have been accomplished due to gentrification, especially in community-safety increase. Prior to redevelopment, low-income areas had to cope with a lot of crimes and violence such as gang shootings, drugs dealings and prostitution.However, gentrification has improved the people’s safety significantly. For example, according to Betty Baye, a columnist of The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky, New York was once appalled by a Dominican group of gangsters named Jheri Curls: They traded tons of cocaine and shot anyone complaining about their illegal business. She calls gentrification as â€Å"a new gang in town,† ousting the Jheri Curl from their old stomping grounds. The openings of â€Å"amenities as river views, parks, large rooms and convenience to public transportation [†¦have replaced†¦ grand old buildings that long were the domain of poor folks on rent control, buildings that are being reborn as luxury co-ops and condos,† Baye explains. Sharing her views, researchers from the Department of Sociology, University of Massachusetts Amherst, add that the building of new amenities prevents up to 45 percent of homicides and another 60 percent of robberies (Papachristos, Smith, Scherer, and Fugiero 225). Accordingly, gentrifying the neighborhoods helps lessen crimes, providing their residents with a safer community.In addition to economic and social achievements, gentrification also brings environmental justice to the redeveloped neighborhoods. Prior to renewal, people living around these areas encountered many health problems because of pollution and contamination issues that accumulated for many years. South Bronx, for example, used to be a location for the city’s commercial waste in sewage treatment and the food industry’s byproducts. Carter says a black person has a greater chance of being forced to live in an air-polluted area or within a walking distance of chemical facility in comparison with a white person (Majora Carter: Greening the Ghetto).As a result, diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and asthma have plagued the community for many years and damaged the future generation (Majora Carter: Greening the Ghetto). In other words, in non-gentrified neighborhoods, along with economic and social degradation, environmental injustice also drives these communities into even worse situations. However, once gentrification policies are implemented, the people’s health can greatly improve: air gets cleaner, water turns fresher and the environment becomes healthier and greener.In South Bronx, its inhabitants witnessed the inauguration of Hunts Point Riverside Park, the first waterfront park that the community had had in more than 60 years (Majora Carter: Greening the Ghetto). Therefore, it is understandable that gentrification provides a boost to environmental quality. Advocates of anti-gentrification usually argue that urban renewal is a one-sided benefit—profiting the white while harming the poor. Nonetheless, studies conducted by Lance Freeman, an assistant professor of urban planning at Columbia University, suggest that there is merely a slight connection between urban renewal and displacement (Hampson).He says that in gentrified neighborhoods, the chance of a poor being dislocated is only 0. 5% greater in comparison with a non-gentrified one (Hampson). Freeman believes that â€Å"although higher costs sometimes force poor residents to leave gentrif[ied] neighborhoods, other changes—more jobs, safer streets, better trash pickup—encourage them to stay† (Hampson). Besides coming to the same conclusion, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and Duke University, also show that black householders with high school degrees account for 33% f the total neighborhood income, 13% greater than that of white householders (Kiviat). In conclusion, as urban p lanner Duany says, gentrification has proved to be â€Å"the rising tide that lifts all boats† because it provides an effective solution to the economy, social issues, as well as environmental justice that benefit all social classes. However, there are always two sides of a coin, and the story of gentrification is not an exception. The biggest issue of gentrification, as many antagonists believe, is the poor displacement.It is obvious that as a city is redeveloped and attracts more investors, housing prices will soar, making it difficult for old residents to manage to get by. Research conducted by Newman and Wyly of the Centre for Urban and Community Studies shows that residents of a gentrified city, especially seniors, find it hard to live when housing prices increase while their incomes stay (4). In the long run, this produces â€Å"exclusionary displacement,† â€Å"a process in which neighborhoods become off-limits, forcing lower-income residents to look elsewhere for housing† (1, 2).Adding to the housing burdens, other negative elements such as landlord harassment, evictions, and daily expenses drive former inhabitants out of their neighborhoods. So what is the solution to the problem? To answer this question, it is worthwhile to first acknowledge that gentrification is a natural process, meaning there is no way to stand against it, especially on the poor side. Sadly speaking, gentrification remains a dirty word to some people as it sounds—its origin dates back from the word â€Å"gentry,† meaning a â€Å"noble person. Baye explains that gentrification â€Å"may seem to some as nothing but the inevitable circle of life† because many of the upper settlers (mostly white) claim that those gentrified neighborhoods are their â€Å"rightful inheritance,† left for the colored by their predecessors as they fled to the suburbs. Looking negatively at urban renewal, it benefits the white folks; they have money, and th us, have the rights to demand higher services. Looking positively at urban renewal, these folks are doing good things after all, â€Å"for there is nothing more unhealthy for a city than a monoculture of poverty† (Duany).This leaves the only question: Can we gentrify the right way? Fortunately, there are numerous solutions that have been proposed by strategists, urban planners and experts in the field. To solve housing problem, New York has built a shelter system to support displaced residents (Newman and Wyly). Moreover, Duany insists that in order to avoid overpricing, urban renewal needs to be built as a long-term policy, tested and modified many times to fit the particular neighborhood so that it doesn’t negatively affect the community.Carter has come up with a model called the triple bottom line that seems to be a solution for the long run. She explains that her model can produce sustainable development because it â€Å"has the potential to create positive return s from all concerned: developers, government and the community where [the] projects go up† (Majora Carter: Greening the Ghetto). In addition, I propose the use of government power on taxing: The local government can weigh the impact of gentrification through data, statistics and surveys so that it can modify the tax base imposed on every household.No matter what solutions are proposed, there seems to be a general consensus among experts about the role of government: It can act as a peace broker to reconcile any hostility provoked by the misunderstanding between the rich and the poor. In summary, Proposition 555, whose process is to rebuild the old, unsafe towns and cities, is a good process for neighborhood residents who want to have better lives. Although gentrification sometime causes the poor to be displaced due to housing burdens and expenses, its benefits assist in solving urban issues.It provides a stimulus to the economy through the use of urban lands for business purpo ses, a safer society by clearing gang violence and a healthier environment by building public parks. To overcome its downsides, a number of useful and practical ideas have been brought about by many experts, ranging from shelter systems and tax modification to government regulation. The fight in favor of urban renewal, as Carter says, is the fight that â€Å"we have nothing to lose and everything to gain† (Majora Carter: Greening the Ghetto).

Vietnam And North And South Vietnam - 2319 Words

Bunch, Justin Essay 3, Vietnam, Sum 14 Prof. Biggs Ideology, Nation-Building, Dissent and War in North and South Vietnam Char. within Vietnam, invaded by the Chinese, parceled up by the French and later divided by the west again. The United States aiding the South, and the North structured based off of a variation of Communism. Has had in modern times a rough couple hundred years. Before reunification was achieved, many steps had to be followed by both halves in order to become whole once more. Now this doesn’t imply in the least that the North from the outset would win as the South took a more decidedly Western and capitalist approach to nation building and nationalist ideology. Hearts and minds are what would prevail not military might. Ideology In both countries was still very much Vietnamese. In fact this core aspect of Vietnam identity was retained in both cases such as customs and religious occurrences. In the South National ideology borrowed heavily from the west, I.E. capitalism and later Pro US as a strong backer. The North took its ideology from the Communist regimes in both China and more importantly from Russia. The North under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh early on turned from Chinese Ideology to a Russian one. As such its communism was not directly a result of the Mao model but more based off of the Lenin and later Stalinist version of Communism. This ideology used by the North was just a means to an end however. Ho Chi Minhs goal and in turn NorthShow MoreRelatedThe Vietnam War Was An Expensive And Fatal Conflict Between The North And South Vietnam1432 Words   |  6 PagesThe Vietnam War was an expensive and fatal conflict between the North and South Vietnam regions. The communist government from the north and their southern allies, the Viet Cong, were heavily against South Vietnam and their benevolent allies, the United States. 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