Introduction to Racism - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 4 Words: 1338 Downloads: 3 Date added: 2019/02/05 Category Society Essay Level High school Tags: Racism Essay Did you like this example? The word racism is something strong that can be known by people from an early age. Moreover, those who are â€Å"high class† and learn racism from mentors such as their family members then they tease others so maybe one raised this way and it’s pass down. Although there can be others that just learn this kind of behaviors such as their peers and may think it’s entertaining so that may also be how some turn out to be racist. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Introduction to Racism" essay for you Create order In other words, some people may find it fun to tease those who look different from their heritage, but what most do not see is that not one single race is perfect. Also, when saying a hurtful racist word towards one individual is not just referring to that one person, but the whole race and that can just cause pain towards the people. In the article, â€Å"Racism and Mental Health: Are Schools Hostile Learning Environments for Students of Color?† by Amy Masko who explains how the racism can first come to be known for people and how it can really affect them the people who are victimized by racism. For instance, in the article it says, â€Å" racism that many children and youth of color face in their schooling is an environmental stressor that can lead to depression, anxiety, rage, and other mental distress†(Masko 62). In addition, one word can really hurt people sometimes in can even scar them for a long period and that can even change their lives. Being young most kids do not see the bad things in each other sometimes they dont even get taught and can be an issue while growing up because one may never know why racism is a bad thing. Moreover, why should racism still continue if one knows that every race is always going to be around they can not be avoided and just because one specific race does not like another race then deal with it because the more people like one another the more satisfied life would be. When will it be a complete end against people who are racist? Therefore, when asked by anyone there is no real responses because it does continue on. In the article, â€Å"Is American Repeating the Mistakes of 1968?† author, Julian E. Zelizer brings up the history on how horrible it must have been, but refers what goes on in the present moment. As one can see how society is living in the past and if this continues how will that affect the future? Will there ever be a solution? For example in the article, Zelizer writes, â€Å"In July 1967, during the aftermath of the devastating race riots in Detroit, Michigan, and Newark, New Jersey- each of which started after incidents of police brutality against African Americans.† Now if one takes a moment to look back and witness the horrific that a race suffered and those who are not victims imagine living a life where half of the daily lives are targeted from always being for having a different skin color and not being able to pass around through the city calmly that must be irritating to do the daily task. Although not every race will always get along and sometimes it’s not the race the reason why they do not get along sometimes it could be because how a person acts. Even though if one is unique by being strange with someone else finds that uncomfortable, and they don’t like that one person the other person they do not need to say racial words. Also, when a person does anything bad it doesn’t prove that their whole people are the same way. Next, if people focus on the history that went on, but at the same time see the present and notice how from each race there are those who achieved the good life has to offer and have proven with a su ccessful career that shows how people do not give up. This just proves that every race has it’s good and bad people, but everyone is different. Finally, there may be one day when racism could finish it’s possible because all people may find the right solution to this problem. There should not be any physical attack against any person and especially because one looks different it should be resolved. In the article â€Å"Police Brutality and Black Health: Setting the Agenda for Public Health Scholars† author Sirry Alang concentrates on the blacks who just have bad luck with the law enforcement they are so much hate towards them it may have to do with the color of their skin. But it just goes down many times that it does not stop. The author goes on explaining the way blacks are just targeted in wrong reasons and how society does not do anything because it just goes on and on. He still goes down into details on how the blacks have many obstacles in their lives and the comparison with other race. Also, he talks about society has a big impact on this race that makes it difficult for them to do what they need to get a thing done. Although this race is humans sometimes they just do not get treated that way and every other race should have empathy and thin k how they would feel. Not one person on Earth deserves to be treated like if they were animals. For instance, Alang writes, â€Å"Blacks are significantly more likely to experience police brutality than are Whites, and whiteness affords protection against police use of force†(662). This proves right here how there are issues that are not fair there are ones who get treated worse and others who get treated better. Although no one is perfect and everyone feels weak at one point there needs to be a kindness to help make everyone come together. Overall, there have been many horrible events that took place in America. While the time passes if racism does not continue then maybe life will be back to normal. In addition, if there are changes maybe all Americans might get along and that can prevent from violence occurring. Also, every race goes through some tough time just like stress, pain, feeling sick, and working hard to earn money. If all humans show signs of peacefulness and no longer being rude or disrespectful with one another instead have manners it can be a relief because this can end fights, arrests, and even deaths. Although everyone is not the same that does not mean that it’s okay to be racist and many have families to prove that. Nevertheless, th e law can convert were racism was no longer allowed if anyone disobeyed that then that person has to be disciplined and that can help out victims by making their lives simpler. Meanwhile, having solutions on those who have what it takes in order to make it big to get good benefits because everyone has a purpose and a dream to accomplish. So there needs to be an understatement on all race because all do not think same and some do crimes, but they should be treated fairly. Also, if all the history was forgotten that can be a solution right there because step by step it can end racism for good. Although no one was born to always get along with everyone, by just showing manners or not talking to the people they do not like it makes things much better. In addition, I am a Hispanic and I have been victimized by racist individuals because of my accent and my family not having a lot of money. So, I would really like to see a change in order for more people and their families do not go through the same thing I did. In conclusion, the positive with racism being extinct that will not only help society but the future children as well and grandchildren generations will learn the right way of how to treat each human that looks different from their families.

Tension in the Twenties Essay - 649 Words

Tension in the Twenties All major societies throughout our worlds history have experienced periods of major change. Tension inevitably arises as a result of the new environments in which the people live. Our country is no exception, especially through the era known as the Roaring Twenties. Just being another decade on the timeline was not good enough for the 1920s. When its brief turn came, it had to be the biggest, the loudest, and the brightest. A calamity gave it birth, and a calamity ended it. As a result of World War I, major economic, social, and political alterations were born; yet more importantly, the tension that arouse due to these results would change America forever. One of the most important factors that led†¦show more content†¦Many of the new creations had become so common, that it became rare not to have them. This idea is expressed in Sinclair Lewiss Babbitt, in which he writes, These standard advertised wares --toothpastes, socks, tires, cameras, instantaneous hot-water he aters#8212;were his symbols and proofs of excellence#8230; [DOC A]. It is shown here that people also became ranked on not only how much money they had, but their attitude towards these advancements. Tension between the old and new not only occurred on an economic level, but as well as a religious level. As people began to turn more and more towards science to answer their questions, unbelievable amounts of strain arouse. One of these great conflicts was the Scopes Monkey Trial, also known as The Worlds Most Famous Trial. There were basically two conflicts present within this trial: that of the fundamentalists and the Darwinists, and that between the accepted beliefs of the time, and the new ones that challenged them. The standard belief was to accept what society and the Bible dictated. The difference in mentalities between the prosecutor, William Jennings Bryan and the defense attorney, Clarence Darrow, is seen when Bryan states that he himself believe[s] everything in the Bible should be accepted as it is given there, and that some of the Bible is given illustratively [DOC C]. Another importantShow MoreRelatedEssay on 1920s Dbq823 Words   |  4 Pagespave the way to the modern era. A struggle between old ideas of conservatism and new liberal movements surfaced during the â€Å"roaring twenties†. The new movements that began rearing their heads during this time period consisted of liberal political ideas, the advancements of rights for the common man and woman, and reforms to our social culture. One reason that tension was created during this time period was because of many discrepancies that dealt with political issues. 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The play was written in 1945 due to the divide at that time between Capitalists and Socialists. Given the fact that J. B. Priestley was a socialist (felt that everyone should have equal amounts of money), he was criticizing the ways of capitalists (they felt that you got what you earned). The play is set in 1912, a time just before a lot of dramatic incidentsRead MoreEssay on In-just by e. e. cummings1495 Words   |  6 Pagesmanner of child-like exuberance for springtime revelry, and the lull in tempo that is attributed to the measured awareness or ambivalent feelings felt towards the â€Å" goat-footed balloonMan.† The poem’s rapid and then measured tempo creates an artistic tension that coincides with the speaker’s account of a remembered spring. 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The Rwandan Genocide claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of lives over the course of 100 days because of racial tensions between the Hutus and the Tutsis. Over twenty years later, the two tribes live together, but it is an uneasy peace. Tensions between the Hutus and the Tutsis can be traced back to the end of the First World War. Rwanda was placed under the control of Belgium because of a League of Nations mandate. Within theRead MoreU.s. Congress Declared War Against Mexico Essay1681 Words   |  7 PagesMexican- American war of eighteen-forty six and ended with the tragedy of the US civil war. However, previous to the Mexican-American war these debatable topics provoke the thought of war. By Eighteen-forty Six, the debates on these topics caused tensions to amplify until finally on May thirteenth, war was officially declared against Mexico from the united states. Even with the declaration of war against Mexico, Mexico itself never declared war against the United States. 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Blood and Organism Physiology Paper Free Essays

Organism Physiology Paper Greg Jenkins BIO/101 August 2, 2012 Jimmie Cave Organism Physiology Paper Organisms Overview This research is about an organism diagram that the writer has found for reasons while doing his investigation. The writer has selected to center his findings on human being aimed for his research paper. The writer has elected a illustration that will describe exactly how the organism in the figure has progressed physiologically to become suitable to its environs. We will write a custom essay sample on Blood and Organism Physiology Paper or any similar topic only for you Order Now Human Diagram The Human Figure The whole human form is an organism. There are numerous structures in the human format. An organ is comprised into double or additional materials pack into one functioning component that completes a precise purpose. Each organ has a precise part in the human body for improvement and a human being condition. The tissues in the body are significant because they labor together scientifically to vigorous sustain and keep the individual alive. Main organ methods The chief organ structure is mainly the cardiovascular system, gastrointestinal system, endcannabinoid system, endocrine system, integumentary system, immune system, lymphatic system, musculoskeletal system, nervous system, reproductive system, Respiratory system, urinary system, and the vestibular system. †¢Circulatory system: pushing and directing plasma and commencing the body and lungs with the central part of the human which is the heart, and blood vessels. †¢Digestive System: ingestion and dispensation nourishment with salivary glands, throat, abdominal, liver, gallbladder, pancreas, your guts, rectum, and anus. . Endocannabinoid system: neuromodulator lipids and receptors intricate in a diversity of functional procedures containing your desire for food, feeling of pain-sensation, humor, motorized way of knowledge, synaptic flexibility, and remembrance. †¢Endocrine system: contains the way the body receives messages inside the body by hormones made through the en docrine glands such as the hypothalamus, pituitary or pituitary gland, pineal body or pineal gland, thyroid, parathyroid, and adrenals or adrenal glands †¢Integumentary system: is consistency of the human outside, physical being †¢Immune system: battle off infection; Lymphatic system: relocation of lymph amongst materials and the plasma flow, †¢Musculoskeletal system: muscles are accountable for association and the bones offer structural provision and security with skeletons, tendon, muscles, and ligaments. †¢Nervous system: gathering, transporting and dispensation data to the brain, vertebral, central nerves. †¢Reproductive system: the sexual role organs; in the woman; and man are very different, but plays a big part in human reproductions †¢Respiratory system: is the system of which a human needs to breath, the pharynx, larynx, trachea, bronchi, lungs, and diaphragm. Urinary system: is the human way to exit out and balance the defecation of waist. â⠂¬ ¢Vestibular system: adds to our equilibrium and our sense of three-dimensional coordination. (â€Å"How Many Are There†, 2011). The structure of the human system is a group of organs that help each other to sustain the human purposes. Materials cannot achieve these tasks alone; the organs are what support the materials to achieve its purposes. The chief organs through the body are the heart and the blood container. Conferring to Simon (2010), an entity is contingent on the matching of all its organ organisms for existence. For example, nutrients that are captivated from the gastrointestinal region are dispersed all through the body by the cardiovascular system. But the heart that drives blood over the cardiovascular system needs nutrients engrossed from nourishment by the gastrointestinal area and also oxygen (O2) gained from midair by the respirational system. Evolved physiologically Every entity is an exposed system, which means around unceasing interchange of substances and vitality with its environments. Organisms needs familiarize with its surroundings in demand to live. This is exactly how the body functions with an exposed system: Eating, breathing, excrete, urinate, perspire and give off heat. Conferring to Simon (2010), Nutrients and oxygen must go in all existing cell, and carbon dioxide and all waste material got to be empty out. All existing organisms can adjust and react to its background. The most imperative body purpose is to preserve its honesty. Homeostasis, which accurately means â€Å"sturdy state,† is the inclination to uphold comparatively persistent situations in the center surroundings even after the outward environs changes (Simon, 2010). Variations do happen in the environment but are usually reasonable to the assortment that is acceptable for all living cells. References Picture- How many are there. (2011). Retrieved from http://howmanyarethere. net/how-many-organs-are-in-the-human-body/ How many are there. (2011). Retrieved from http://howmanyarethere. net/how-many-organs-are-in-the-human-body/ Simon, E. j. (2010). Campbell Essential Biology with Physiology (3rd ed. ). : Pearson Education. How to cite Blood and Organism Physiology Paper, Papers

Management Law Engineering Firms in Australia

Question: Describe about the Management Law for Engineering Firms in Australia. Answer: 1. For the given question, AECOM Australia Pty Ltd, otherwise known as AECOM, has been selected. (a) AECOM has been included in the top 100 Engineering Firms in Australia (Casey, 2012). AECOM has formulated three major strategies which are focused towards the regulatory compliance. AECOM strategies include leveraging on the competitive strengths of the company; leveraging on the leadership position which the company has in its core markets; and leveraging on the relationships with the clients across its major geographies. AECOM has created an integrated delivery system which has better capabilities to build, operate, design and finance the infrastructure assets across the globe. By such integration, as well as providing a broader range of services, the company delivers maximum value to its customers, at competitive costs (AECOM, 2016). These strategies of the company have been stated clearly in the Annual Report of the company for the year 2015 (AECOM, 2016). Further, the homepage of the website of AECOM clearly states that the company works towards building and delivering a better world (AECOM, 2016). The words stated on the homepage cover that the company plans to transform the community by improving lives and powering growth through building, operating, designing and financing infrastructure assets across the globe. So, the strategies of the company have been thoroughly advertised for the world to see. Even the investor page of the company mentions the same strategies, so that the potential investors can clearly understand the importance of such strategies for the company (AECOM, 2016). (b) These strategies of AECOM majorly contribute to the compliance of regulations as specified with respect to the competition provisions stated in the Competition and Consumer Act, 2010 (Cth). The first strategy of the company is to leverage on the competitive strength of the company. The main objective of the Act includes the promotion of competition, free trading, as well as, protection of the consumers, and this has to be done so as to enhance the wellbeing of the Australians. The first strategy of AECOM clearly lines up with the objectives of this Act. The second strategy of the company is to leverage on the leadership position which the company has in its core markets. Being in a leadership position, AECOM has the capability to influence as well as motivate its competitors to follow the objectives of the Act, as is done by the company. In order to compete with the leader of this segment, the other companies are bound to follow the strategies of the leader, which is AECOM in this case. This helps in attainment of the objectives of this Act. The last strategy of the company is to leverage on the relationships with the clients across its major geographies. By establishing better relationships, the consumers are protected. And again, the objectives of the act are fulfilled. (c) The Competition and Consumer Act, 2010, before January 1, 2011, was known as the Trade Practices Act, 1974 (TPA). The company had its share of the contravention of the Trade Practices Act, in the case of Rivercity Motorway Finance Pty Lt (Administrators Appointed) (Receivers and Managers Appointed) v AECOM Australia Pty Ltd (No 2) [2014] FCA 713 (Jade, 2016). In this case, proceedings were brought against AECOM for contravention of the TPA section 52. This Section of the TPA dealt with the misleading and deceptive conduct of a corporation and prohibited a corporation from indulging in such conduct, during the course of trade and commerce (Australasian Legal Information Institute, 2016). This section is now covered in the Section 18 of the Australian Consumer Law, which is contained in the Schedule 2 of the Competition and Consumer Act, 2010 (Australasian Legal Information Institute, 2016). This case establishes that AECOM has had a history of contravening the Competition and Consumer Act. So, certain recommendations are stated here which could improve the AECOMs management activity in competition law compliance. Firstly, the company should strictly adhere to its strategies as they promote the compliance of the objectives of the Act. Secondly, the company should ensure that there are no incidences of contravention of this Act. Further, the management of the company should ensure that such cases are not repeated in future, where AECOM is held liable for any kind of misleading or deceptive conduct. Misleading and deceptive conduct is specifically prohibited in the Competition and Consumer Act and such violations could hamper the strategies of the company. A violating company would not be able to sustain its leadership position in the market and this would mean financial loss for the company. This would also reduce the competitive strength of the company, as a contravening company has a bad public image, which results in a loss of clients. Also, such incidents would hamper any relationship with the client. So, it is recommended to AECOM to ensure that it follows the provisions of the Competition and Consumer Act, both in letter and in spirit. Further, it should ensure that the incidents of contravention of the Act are not repeated. Lastly, the company should keep on working on the strategies it has made, as they ensure a proper compliance of the regulatory legislation. 2. Memorandum To: The Board of Directors of Bungee World Ltd From: Manager- Safety Operations at Bungee World Ltd Date: September 26, 2016 Subject: Negligence action against Bungee World Ltd Through this memorandum, the grounds for a successful negligence case against Bungee World Ltd (BW) as well as the resulting consequences have been analyzed. In order to resolve the damage caused by the potential public relations problem, certain recommendations are also provided. To understand this case, the basic concept of negligence has to be clarified. When a person owes a duty of care to another person but fails to fulfill such duty, and as a result of such failure, the other person incurs a loss or injury, it is the case of negligence. Negligence is covered under the Law of Tort in Australia and is considered as a civil wrong. To establish a case of negligence, the presence of duty of care is essential. Further, there should be a breach of this duty of care and most importantly, the breach must result in an injury which cannot be considered as insignificant. A breaching party is considered as negligent only when the foreseeability of the risk can be established. Further, such risk has to be relevant and not insignificant. If a risk is considered as remote, the damages are not provided under the Civil Liability Act, 2002 (NSW). The concept of duty of care was established in the case of Donoghue v Stevenson [1932] AC 562, where the lady was successfully able to establish, that the manufacturer of the ginger beer owed a duty of care towards the lady, and had failed to fulfill such duty (LawGovPol, 2014). In the case of Djemal v Bexley Health Authority 1995 QBD, the judges held that a standard of skill and care is expected in the AE departments and hence, a breach of such duty was established in this case (Sixth Form Law, 2008). The Section 5R of the Civil Liability Act, 2002, acts as a defense to the breaching party, as this section contains the provisions regarding the standard of contributory negligence (Australasian Legal Information Institute, 2016). As per this section, to determine the negligence of the breaching party, it has to be determined whether the person, who was injured or suffered a loss, has contributed towards such negligence, by failing to take the necessary precautions to ensure that no harm was caused. So, a person owes a duty to himself, and this duty is in the nature of care. When the aggrieved party fails to ensure this duty of care, the party is held in contributory negligence and is denied any relief in form of remedies. As per the sections contained in the Division 5 of the Civil Liability Act, 2002, no liability occurs when harm is suffered as a result of an obvious risk relating to a dangerous recreational activity. And so, a breaching party cannot be held liable in negligence, for such harm caused to the aggrieved party (Section 5 L) (Australasian Legal Information Institute, 2016). Further, section 5M of this act, states that the breaching party is not liable for a breach of duty of care, when there was adequate risk warning given to the aggrieved party who was engaged in such a recreational activity (Australasian Legal Information Institute, 2016). This section also provides that the breaching party does not have to establish that the aggrieved party understood or received such a warning. The voluntary assumption of a risk includes the knowledge and the consent (Hobart Community Legal Services, 2013). People who are engaged in recreational or dangerous activities are assumed to have the knowledge about the risk related to such activity and hence, they cannot hold the provider of such activities liable in negligence. In the given case, BW was the provider of the recreational activity of Bungee jumping for a fee of $50. The undertakers of this activity are required to sign the form which clearly states the warning, and that BW could not be held liable for the resulting death or injury, as a result of indulging in the activity of bungee jumping. So, in this case, Loki would not be successful in bringing claims against BW, as the sections of the Civil Liability Act, 2002, clearly prohibit Loki from holding BW liable for the injury caused, as a result of undertaking the activity. Also, Loki did not receive any physical injury and claims to have suffered a nervous shock. So, the injury here is too remote. And this the reason Loki would fail in his claims. Even though Loki would fail in his claims, but this incident would cause potentially damaging public relations problem. So, it is recommended to the Board to formulate a crisis management team which could deal with the damages caused by such incidents. Also, such team should ensure that no incidents of this nature occur in the future. Further, BW should change the steel structure that broke down due to corrosion caused by the sea moisture. Also, BW should properly advertise the changed structure, so that the future clients can be ensured about the safety and integrity of the structure. 3. A set of 10 minimum employment entitlements have been provided to the employees working in Australia and are as known as the National Employment Standards or NES (Fair Work Ombudsman, 2016). The NES along with the national minimum wages form these minimum entitlements for the people working in the country. Any enterprise agreement, award, registered agreement, or employment contract, cannot present such conditions which are less than the NES or the national minimum wage. The NES cannot be excluded in any circumstances. The 10 minimum entitlements as stated by the NES include the rights of every new employee to receive the Fair Work Information Statement; the notice for redundancy pay as well as notice of termination; a right to be able to request for flexible working arrangements; the maximum standard of a working week should have 38 hours, for the full time employees, along with the necessary additional hours; long service leave; the parental as well as adoption leave of 12 months, which would be unpaid and an availability of the right to request for an additional 12 months for this leave; a total of four week paid leave on annualized pro rata basis; an entitlement to public holidays and such entitlement has to be paid as per the ordinary hours of these days; the entitlement to attain community service leave for the jury services or such activities which deal with the situations of natural disasters or emergency and only the jury leave is paid under this entitlement; the entitlement to attain ten days personal/carers leave for each year on pro rata basis which is paid leave, as well as, two days compassionate leave for every permissible occasion which is also paid, and lastly the two days carers leave for every permissible occasion which would be unpaid (The Australian Workers Union, 2016). All such employees who are covered in the national workplace relations system are also covered by the NES, irrespective of any enterprise agreement, award, registered agreement or employment contract. Casual employees are also eligible to the NES entitlements, but only when they relate to the community service leave, the unpaid carers leave, the Fair Work Information Statement or the unpaid compassionate leave (Fair Work Ombudsman, 2016). As a head of the human resources at an Australian engineering company, I would have to ensure that the company does not contravene with these standards. In order to do so, the human resource policy of the company would have to be drafted in such a way that the 10 minimum entitlements, as stated in the NES are not contravened. Also, the policy would have to follow the criteria mentioned in these standards. 4. The unconscionable conduct is covered under three sections of the Australian Consumer Law (ACL). Section 20 of the ACL contains the provisions regarding the unconscionable conduct, as per the unwritten law; Section 21 deals with the unconscionable conduct which affects the consumers; and Section 22 deals with the unconscionable conduct which affects the small business (Hobart Community Legal Services, 2013). Section 21 prohibits a person from engaging in unconscionable conduct during the supply of goods or services, in the course of trade or commerce. This section acts as a protection to the consumers (Australian Competition Law, 2014). Section 3 of ACL defines a consumer as a person who acquires particular goods or services where the amount paid or payable for such goods or series does not exceed $40,000. A person is not considered as a consumer, if such goods or services are re-supplied, or used in the course of trade or commerce (Australian Government, 2012). The protection under Section 21 is provided for such goods or services which have been ordinarily acquired for household use, consumption, domestic or personal use. Section 21(2) mentions the considerations which the court may regard for deciding the conduct as unconscionable. These include the bargaining strength of the parties; the compliance of conditions by the consumer; whether or not the consumer understood the documents drawn during the transaction; the presence of unfair tactics or undue influence against the consumer; and the circumstances and the price at which such consumer could have attained the services or goods from a third party (Hobart Community Legal Services, 2013). As per Chapter 4 of the ACL, in case a contravention of the sections occurs, the liability for a corporation is having a criminal conviction recorded, as well as, a fine of $1.1 million. For an individual, the liability is same for recording the criminal conviction, but the amount of fine is stated as $220,000. The Chapter 5 of the ACL, contains the enforcement, remedies, and penalties for breach of the sections of ACL (Australian Consumer Law, 2013). In the present case, Rebecca was a customer of Dave as she purchased the filter which amounted to $2000, as per the limits stated in Section 3 of ACL. Dave used his bargaining strength and induced Rebecca to make the purchase. Hence, he was in contravention of Section 21 of the ACL. So, it is advisable to Rebecca to take legal action against Dave and attain relief in form of remedy as stated under the Chapter 5 of the ACL. Here, Dave would also have a criminal conviction recorded against him, as well as, would be liable to a fine of $220,000, as per Chapter 4 of the ACL. References AECOM. (2016). 2015 Annual Report. Retrieved on 26/09/16 from: https://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9NjA3MzQ0fENoaWxkSUQ9MzIwMTg2fFR5cGU9MQ==t=1 AECOM. (2016). AECOM. Retrieved on 26/09/16 from: https://www.aecom.com/ AECOM. (2016). Investors. Retrieved on 26/09/16 from: https://investors.aecom.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=131318p=irol-irhome_ga=1.152482617.1254965090.1474866736 Australasian Legal Information Institute. (2016). Civil Liability Act 2002 - Sect 5R. Retrieved on 26/09/16 from: https://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/cla2002161/s5r.html Australasian Legal Information Institute. (2016). Civil Liability Act 2002 - Sect 5M. Retrieved on 26/09/16 from: https://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/cla2002161/s5m.html Australasian Legal Information Institute. (2016). Civil Liability Act 2002 - Sect 5L. Retrieved on 26/09/16 from: https://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/cla2002161/s5l.html Australasian Legal Information Institute. (2016). Competition And Consumer Act 2010 - Schedule 2: The Australian Consumer Law. Retrieved on 26/09/16 from: https://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/caca2010265/sch2.html Australasian Legal Information Institute. (2016). Trade Practices Act 1974 No. 51, 1974 - Sect 52. Retrieved on 26/09/16 from: https://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/num_act/tpa1974149/s52.html Australian Competition Law. (2014). Section 21: Unconscionable conduct in connection with goods or services. Retrieved on 26/09/16 from: https://www.australiancompetitionlaw.org/legislation/provisions/acl21.html Australian Consumer Law. (2013). The Australian Consumer Law: A framework overview. Retrieved on 26/09/16 from: https://consumerlaw.gov.au/files/2015/06/ACL_framework_overview.pdf Australian Government. (2012). Competition and Consumer Act 2010. Retrieved on 26/09/16 from: https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2013C00004/Html/Volume_3#_Toc344911605 Casey, M. (2012). List of Top Engineering firms in Australia. Retrieved on 26/09/16 from: https://au.gradconnection.com/forums/thread/engineering-environment-mining-construction-geology/list-of-top-engineering-firms-in-australia/?page=last Fair Work Ombudsman. (2016). Fair Work Information Statement. Retrieved on 26/09/16 from: https://www.fairwork.gov.au/ArticleDocuments/724/Fair-Work-Information-Statement.pdf.aspx Fair Work Ombudsman. (2016). National Employment Standards. Retrieved on 26/09/16 from: https://www.fairwork.gov.au/employee-entitlements/national-employment-standards Hobart Community Legal Services. (2013). Defences to the Tort of Negligence. Retrieved on 26/09/16 from: https://www.hobartlegal.org.au/tasmanian-law-handbook/accidents-and-insurance/negligence/defences-tort-negligence Hobart Community Legal Services. (2013). Unconscionable Conduct under the ACL. Retrieved on 26/09/16 from: https://www.hobartlegal.org.au/tasmanian-law-handbook/consumers-money-and-debts/australian-consumer-law/unconscionable-conduct Jade. (2016). Rivercity Motorway Finance Pty Ltd (Administrators Appointed) (Receivers and Managers Appointed) v AECOM Australia Pty Ltd (No 2)[2014] FCA 713. Retrieved on 26/09/16 from: https://jade.io/article/338864 LawGovPol. (2014). Case Study: Donoghue V. Stevenson (1932). Retrieved on 26/09/16 from: https://lawgovpol.com/case-study-donoghue-v-stevenson-1932/ Sixth Form Law. (2008). Cases - tort - negligence - breach of duty of care. Retrieved on 26/09/16 from: https://sixthformlaw.info/02_cases/mod3a/aqa/_cases_tort_2breach.htm The Australian Workers Union. (2016). National Employment Standards. Retrieved on 26/09/16 from: https://www.awu.net.au/national-employment-standards

Poems Explore The Theme Of Death English Literature Essay Essay Example

Poems Explore The Theme Of Death English Literature Essay Essay How make the Writers of Remember , Crabbit Old Woman and Refugee Mother and Child use their verse forms to research the subject of decease? Christina Rossetti s Remember , Phyllis McCormack s Crabbit Old Woman and Chinua Achebe s Refugee Mother and Child all explore the effects of decease and the agony it causes for everyone straight involved. In Rossetti s Remember the poet shows us the hurting and desperation associated with decease. McCormack s Crabbit Old Woman is a supplication for people to see past the typical stereotype of old people as being hopeless and non deserving caring for, when they are approaching decease. Chinua Achebe s Refugee Mother and Child conveys to us the arrant devotedness a female parent feels for her kid whilst cognizing that her clip is limited, and is based on refugees in the Nigerian civil war in the 1960 s. We will write a custom essay sample on Poems Explore The Theme Of Death English Literature Essay specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on Poems Explore The Theme Of Death English Literature Essay specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on Poems Explore The Theme Of Death English Literature Essay specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer In Christina Rossetti s Remember a adult female is first inquiring her spouse to neer bury her even though she is close to decease, but so changes her head and realizes that it is rational for him to bury her and populate his ain life. The first stanza starts with her stating Remember me when I am gone off, in this the adult female addresses her loved one, and even though she uses the imperative it does non experience commanding at all. In making this Rossetti has efficaciously established a sense of understanding towards the adult female. The following line Gone far off into the soundless land ; uses Gone far awayaˆÂ ¦ as a euphemism of decease and with the usage of the word far the euphemism becopmes more powerful due to the fact that distance is added. The other half of the sentence soundless land nowadayss us with a placid image of the hereafter whilst still giving the reader a sense of isolation through the usage of the word soundless . Rossetti uses initial rh yme in keep me by the manus, to clearly demo us what their relationship used to be and to show us with a physical connexion that has been lost because of her decease. The 2nd stanza is similar to the first in the sense that she is seeking to convert her spouse neer to bury her. The concluding stanza gives us a dramatic alteration to the remainder of the verse form. She now tells her spouse that it would be all right to bury me for a piece . This shows us that she is really a caring individual and merely wants what is best for her spouse, and instead have him travel on than linger in hurting for the remainder of his life. As we are now given an image of her lovingness love the verse form ends optimistically. As this is a sonnet it should follow either the Petrachan construction or the Shakespearian construction, Remember does neither, although it is rather similar to the Petrarchan construction. A Petrarchan construction would typically follow the rhyming form of A-B-B-A/A-B-B-A/C-D-E-C-D-E ( the cuts stand foring the alteration in stanza ) , whereas Rossetti s sonnet follows the rhyming construction of A-B-B-A/A-B-B-A/C-D-D-E-C-E. I found that Rossetti normally changes the rhyming form in her sonnets[ 1 ]. This is done deliberately as the significance signifier the eight has now been changed in the six. At first it was a supplication for her spouse non to bury her, and so it changed to her desiring her spouse to bury. This makes the poem really fluid because non merely does the context of the lines alteration, the rhyming form has besides adapted to this alteration in context. The iambic pentameter adds a really smooth beat to the verse form, doing it look as though the adult female is unagitated and non angered, even in decease. Crabbit Old Woman and Remember are likewise in the sense that they both have a voice showing an statement which pleads for recollection. In Crabbit Old Woman we are presented with an old lady whose end is to seek and convert the nurses to see past the typical stereotype of old people as hopeless and non deserving caring for, as she is approaching decease and does non desire to be remembered as such. The rubric of this verse form instantly evokes a sense of decease as old age is frequently associated with it. The first 22 lines are a series of inquiries which are directed towards the nurses, and are seeking to uncover the typical beliefs that the nurses have when caring for the old adult female. The turning point of this verse form occurs at line 23-24 Then open your eyes/ you re non looking at me. This line is the old lady demanding to be acknowledged by the nurses. The original negative onslaught upon the nurses has now changed to positive, happy memories as we are led through her life. In this life narrative the linguistic communication has wholly changed from a colloquial manner to a more poetic manner. This alteration is shown by line 34 with wings on her pess, which is a metaphor for the freedom she one time had, whereas now her freedom is restricted as she can non go forth the infirmary. The remembrances of her life are highly accurate and since we are traveling through her life as she ages it feels as if we are turning the pages of a book At 40 , At 50 . One interesting thing that McCormack has done is that she has kept this portion all in present tense. Making this is a manner of demoing the reader that these memories are kept fresh in her head, and it shows us that she can retrieve it with easiness. The following turning point of the verse form once more induces a temper alteration except this clip it is from positive to negative. The really first line ( line 57 ) of this temper alter entirely sets the tone for the remainder of the verse form. Dark yearss are upon me, this line shows us merely what her life is like now, fearful and cold. The personification of nature in line 67/68 Tis her joke to make/ old age expression like a sap. shows us her ideas and feelings ; that she feels like an imbecile and is at that place to be laughed at. This last portion contains imagery associated with death- crumbles , old carcase and beat-up bosom . This imagination makes the reader recognize what is go oning to the adult female in her old age, and that her decease is inevitable. The concluding thing worth adverting about this verse form is that although the adult female does non desire to decease she accepts that her decease is a blunt fact and asks the nurses one more clip to see past her physical organic structure and look inside and see who she truly is. Similarly, Refugee Mother and Child besides presents a series of blunt fact [ s ] to show the horrors of decease for the refugees in Nigeria. In Chinua Achebe s Refugee Mother and Child we are shown what day-to-day life is like for refugees in the Nigerian civil war ; they are filled with decease and sorrow. This verse form is based on the refugees who were in the civil war in Nigeria in the 1960 s[ 2 ], and although he bases this verse form on merely one of the refugee households, in kernel this was what was go oning to all the refugees. This civil war created 1000000s of refugees which had to fly to the south-east of Nigeria to avoid being killed2. One of the first things Achebe does in this verse form is arousing a sense of spiritual images of fear by mentioning to Madonna and Child . These images suggest the sheer devotedness the refugee female parent feels for her deceasing kid, and it besides attaches non merely a physical love but a religious love every bit good. This fi rst stanza is in complete contrast the 2nd 1 in which we are presented with negative and coarse linguistic communication, which portrays the state of affairs of the refugees. Achebe has efficaciously appealed to three of our senses: touch, odor and sight with combed the rust-colored hair , smell of diarrhea and blown unfastened abdomens respectfully. Achebe uses these vulgar images to seek and do us understand the cruel world of the universe, which is, many guiltless people enduring due to the effects of war. Physical descriptions of the refugees such as exhausted ribs and dried-up undersides are used to once more seek and do us understand the horrors that these people face every twenty-four hours. Stanza 2 starts off with a reasonably long gap sentence which has few verbs. This is deserving adverting because since there are less verbs it implies the deficiency of energy these people have. The female parent is associated with a shade twice in this verse form. This pick of enunciation gives us the feeling that she is close to decease and that even her ain decease is inevitable, non merely her kid s. Last Achebe reminds us of the female parent and kid s old lives, which were normal ( this would hold been before the civil war in Nigeria ) . In making this we are brought closer to them. The concluding simile of the verse form now she did it like seting bantam flowers on a grave brings us back to world and makes us recognize that the kid will decease. All three verse forms deal with the subject of decease frequently in direct and clear ways. Although each of the poet s talk about different facets of decease, they all still complement each other in footings of the concluding results for the characters portrayed in the verse form. Achebe s verse form shows the results of wars and political battles whereas Rossetti s and McCormack s verse forms both trade with decease in a more controlled environment where the cause of decease is non due to the states struggles. The chief difference between all three verse forms is the manner decease is presented. In Remember , although decease is a critical portion of the verse form it besides revolves around emotions of the characters alternatively of merely the coarseness of decease. This is a contrast to Refugee Mother and Child where the coarseness of decease is the chief facet of the verse form. Crabbit Old Woman besides differs to the other verse form as age is an of import feature of the p iece. Refugee Mother and Child and Crabbit Old Woman likewise use physical imagination which Remember does non. This usage of physical imagination makes understanding the poet s message finally easier. In decision these verse forms have given me a greater grasp for the complexness of decease and how it can differ so abundantly from individual to individual.

Leadership Bob Shallenberger and John Cavanagh

Leadership Bob Shallenberger and John Cavanagh Bob and John are exercising leadership in various ways. First of all, they have a vision for their organisation and they have exchanged this purpose with their people. Employees are aware that the company wants to be recognised as the top green builder in the country so they will contribute towards this shared vision.Advertising We will write a custom coursework sample on Leadership: Bob Shallenberger and John Cavanagh specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Also, leadership can be seen through the fact that Shallenberger and Cavanagh have energized their people. They are passionate about their business and have passed on this energy to others in the organisation. This is an action that all leaders have to engage in. Furthermore, leadership has been exercised through the act of working with people well to produce remarkable results at the end. It appears as though they are actually partnering with their employees rather than merely giving th em orders on what to do or how to go about it (Dubrin, 2010). As they attract cool people to work with them, these two entrepreneurs are exercising the role of persuasion. In other words, they have managed to illustrate to the applicants that the company has the potential to provide them with the most conducive workplace environment. It seems as though the would-be employees have seen the supportive environment that they are likely to find here than elsewhere. Also, the leadership role of guiding could be another important factor. If already existing employees are treated with mutual respect rather than being ordered around then they are likely to stick to the company and maybe even spread the word that the firm is a great place to work. This would cause even more cool people to be attracted to it because they would be rest assured that there are going to find what they are really looking for (Dubrin, 2010). Cool people are likely to be keep working for Highland Homes because the ow ners are passionate about what they do. Instead of merely taking a businesslike and boring approach to everything, Shallenberger and Cavanagh believe in doing everything passionately. This inclination is going to rub off on everyone else as the latter will not just be thinking of their workplaces as just any other job.Advertising Looking for coursework on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Additionally, these two business owners have used very creative ways of handling business. For instance, they have the stereo, CD player etc that are typical in all their homes. Cool people are likely to want to work for people who continuously look for creative ways of doing business. Also, as opposed to being highly bossy, the employees of Highland Homes are going to stay on because they will find that their employers are very inspiring. They will be motivated to keep reaching their potential and this will defin itely keep them there (Dubrin, 2010). In order to be the top green residential builder in the US, Shallenberger and Cavanagh may need to cultivate great interpersonal skills within themselves so as to maintain a close association with the team working for them. This will cause them to possess joint accountability and decision making ability. A case in point was Roadway management which spread leadership to lower levels. This ensured that everyone played a part in the success of the firm and eventually contributed towards the realisation of huge profits. Essentially, what this implies is that once responsibilities are shared then the likelihood of attaining common goals is going to increase. They must motivate their people to want to work harder so that Highland Homes can outsmart or outdo their competitors. People who are driven by passion rather than rules are likely to put in more and their results would speak for themselves (Dubrin, 2010). Reference Dubrin, A. J. (2010). Leadersh ip: Research Findings, Practice, Skills (6th ed.). Rochester Institute of Technology

CTVA 2 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

CTVA 2 - Essay Example The number of males portrayed in photos and pictures totaled 121 while the number of females totaled 69. In all, 15 people were identified belonging to different ethnic groups. The number of writers with male names counted 13 while with female names counted 7. Text pages were 67while artwork was visible through some of the photos and pictures also included on 47 pages. Article analysis: Palestine Goes It Alone by Dan Ephron Dan Ephron has written on the possibility of making peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians in the year 2011. Examining the article on the first core concept of media literacy, which states that all media are construction, one perceives this construction by projecting the opposite of what President Mahmoud Abbas intends to achieve; the title of the article also points out, â€Å"Goes it Alone†, doubting the success of the peace talks. First paragraph of the article speaks in favor of the chances of peace realization but the very next paragraph dismi sses such efforts as waste of time, recalling Yasser Arafat’s 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence, which was a one-sided attempt without any concrete result. Different decisions and determining factors are reflected. Till the end of the second paragraph, the writer goes on dwindling between the viewpoints of stakeholders to the peace talks. Here the external reality is presented not in simple words but by presenting the past historical context on failure of talks between the two warring countries, the one still far away from global recognition as an independent country, Palestine, reflecting decisions taken by Yasser Arafat. The writer has deconstructed historical events to forecast failure of any possible peace movement in 2011. Through crafted language techniques and following its own rules, the writer makes a start with, â€Å"ODDS ARE THAT 2011 WON’T†¦Ã¢â‚¬  making a pun by using all capital letters to stress on the conclusion that the writer wants to project. In another line, â€Å"Remember Yasser Arafat’s 1988...Independence?† indicates the uselessness of the efforts of peace talks. The conclusion of the article is already decided as the title suggests, â€Å"Palestine goes it alone,† indicating that no discussions can reach a conclusion until both the warring parties come to the table. As media through this article is conveying a sense of actuality, away from superficiality; one cannot imagine any wonder here that one-sided attempts at peace making will be fruitful. Palestinians while reading the article would have different feelings of remorse while Israelis might marvel at the economic growth achieved by the West Bank, which comes nearer to the 3rd media concept of different people experiencing the same messages differently. Palestinians could experience helplessness from the endless sufferings of their people because of political instability. Lingering of the talks and not reaching their aims, people could feel a sense of harassment over the peace efforts made by the Palestinian political leadership. A small article of hardly half page projects a realistic picture of the political aspects of the problem. Readers worldwide would react on the author’s viewpoint as per their political and geographical attachment with the region and its people. The whole

Company Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Company - Assignment Example The group sales of the company were $70.9 billion in 2014 (Tesco PLC, 2014). However, the overall growth of sales was only 0.3%. The global financial crisis of 2008 has done considerable damages to the grocery and retail industry of the U.K. Tesco had the highest market share of 31.7% in 2007 which had significantly shrunk to 28.7% in 2014 (Wood, 2014). The emergence of competitors like Waitrose, Aldi and Lidl has adversely affected the market share of Tesco as they began to provide heavy discounts to consumers. A slow growth of economy combined with declining disposable income had been driving customers away from Tesco. Originally developed by Kaplan and Norton (1992 cited in Kaplan and Norton, 2001), this approach has soon become an important tool to measure organizational performance. This approach goes beyond the traditional measures of financial performance and includes three other critical performance indicators which can measure the effectiveness of an organizational performance namely customer perspective, internal organizational perspective and innovation and learning perspective (Kaplan and Norton, 2001). Empirical evidence shows that a number of successful transnational companies in diverse industries are using the balanced scorecard approach in order to improve their performance. For instance, Hilton Group in the hospitality industry, Wal-Mart in the retail industry and Toyota in the automobile industry are already using this approach for gaining competitive edge over their rivals (Weygandt, Kimmel and Kieso, 2009). Overall 57% of global companies have adopted this approach based on the value that they add to the business (Balanced Scorecard Institute, 2014). Tesco has been struggling with dwindling sales recently. In the third quarter of 2014, the sales of the company had fallen by 3.7% while the annual profit of the company had fallen by 6% (Wood, 2014). In this scenario there are two options

Back Belts Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Back Belts - Article Example The cause of back injury has not been attributed to any specific wrong doing by a worker. One of the main possibilities can be assumed to be lack of proper safety method such as wearing a back belt or any such support. Manufacturer’s claim: ITA-MED Co, 310 Littlefield Ave, South San Francisco, CA 94080, USA, one of the A manufacturers of back belts and supports claims, their products will reduce pressure, strain and pain in the lower back in addition to help the users adopt easy posture when handling heavy loads and escape injuries. They assure products of higher quality, with more comfort, better look and longer durability based on unique, versatile designs. Their motto is â€Å"Stay healthy with Back Supports from ITA-MED† (Back and Abdominal Supports, 2009). NIOSH Views: NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) is one of the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) within the Dept of Health and Human Services. It was formed to bear the resp onsibility for conducting research and proposing improved measures to prevent injuries and illness related to work. DHHS (NIOSH) Publication No. 94-127. (Back Belts: Do They Prevent Injury?, 1994). In 1994, the NIOSH released a report called DHHS, 1994, a review of the published scientific literature.

Issues of War Monuments in Estonia

Issues of War Monuments in Estonia Empty Spaces and the Value of Symbols: Estonias War of Monuments from Another Angle * This article is the first published output from British Academy small research grant ref. SG-39197, entitled Public Monuments, Commemoration and the Renegotiation of Collective Identities: Estonia, Sweden and the â€Å"Baltic World† Since the summer of 2004, the new EU member state of Estonia has been in the throes of what is described as a War of Monuments. The events in question began in the town of Lihula in western Estonia, where a veterans group erected a stone tablet commemorating those Estonians who in World War Two donned German uniform and fought on the eastern front against the USSR. Bearing the inscription To Estonian men who fought in 1940 1945 against Bolshevism and for the restoration of Estonian independence, the Lihula stone became the latest of several monuments commemorating a group that most Estonians today regard as freedom fighters. In this case, however, the soldier depicted bore SS insignia. Hardly surprisingly, this fact elicited widespread international condemnation, notably from Russia, the EU and Jewish organisations. The groups behind the monument insisted that the men in question had had no truck with Nazism, and had only enlisted as a last resort in order to obtain access to arms w ith which to repel the Soviet invader. The display of the SS insignia nevertheless disregarded the taboo that surrounds the display of Nazi symbols in todays Europe. Also, while the vast majority of Estonian SS legionnaires did indeed sign up only in 1944 as the Soviet army advanced into their homeland, at least some had previously belonged to auxiliary police battalions which have been implicated in Nazi atrocities.1 Concerned to limit potential damage to Estonias international reputation, the government of the day ordered the removal of the monument. The police operation to carry out this order on 2 September 2004 nevertheless provoked clashes with local residents, while the political fallout from the episode contributed to the fall of Prime Minister Juhan Parts several months later. Critics of the government action argued that if the Lihula monument was to be construed as a glorification of totalitarianism, then the same logic should be applied to Soviet monuments that had been left standing following the restoration of Estonian independence in 1991. Singled out in this regard was the Bronze Soldier on T[otilde]nismgi in central Tallinn—a post-war monument erected on the unmarked grave of Soviet troops who fell during the taking of the city in 1944. For the vast majority of Estonians, the arrival of the Soviet Army signalled the replacement of one brutal occupying regime by another, whic h quickly resumed the arrests, executions and large-scale deportations previously witnessed during the first year of Soviet rule in 1940 41. This remains the dominant perception amongst Estonians today. The leaders of post-Soviet Russia, by contrast, have adhered steadfastly to the Soviet-era view of these events as marking the liberation of Estonia from fascism. The defeat of the Nazis during 1941 45 remains central to Russias self-understanding in the post-Soviet era; its  current leaders emphatically deny that the events of 1940 and 1944 in the Baltic states constituted a Soviet occupation, and refuse to acknowledge the suffering which the inhabitants of these countries experienced at the hands of the Soviet regime. Commentators in Russia have emphasised that they will brook no alternative interpretations of the Soviet Unions role in the events of 1939 45, and have therefore characterised calls for the removal of the T[otilde]nismgi monument as a manifestation of support for fascism. For many of the ethnic Russians who today make up nearly half of Tallinns population, the Bronze Soldier has also remained a locus of identification, providing the site for continued unofficial commemorations on 9 May, which was celebrated as Victory Day during the Soviet period. Red paint was thrown over the monument just prior to 9 May 2005, when several other Soviet war memorials were also attacked across the country, and a German military cemetery desecrated in Narva. The following year, this date again elicited tensions: local Russian youth mounted round-the-clock surveillance at the Bronze Soldier, while an Estonian nationalist counter-demonstration led to scuffles on 9 May (Alas 2006a). The monument was subsequently cordoned off by police pending a decision on its future. This formed the object of vigorous political debate ahead of the March 2007 parliamentary elections. Matters relating to the establishment and upkeep of public monuments in post-Soviet Estonia have for the mo st part fallen to local municipalities. In late 2006, however, new legislation was adopted giving central government the power to override local decision making in this regard. This provision was motivated expressly by a desire to remove the monument and the soldiers remains from the centre of Tallinn to the more peripheral setting of the military cemetery on the citys outskirts (Alas 2006a, 2006b, 2006c; Ranname 2006). The subsequent removal of the monument in late April 2007 provided the occasion for large-scale rioting in central Tallinn. On 9 May 2007 hundreds of people visited the monument at its new location in order to lay flowers. Issues of past or memory politics2 have assumed a growing prominence in recent scholarly work on Estonia and the other Baltic states, with a number of authors also highlighting the apparently divergent views of the past held by Estonians and Estonian Russians, and the obstacles that this poses in terms of societal integration (Hackmann 2003; Budryte 2005; Onken 2003, 2007a, 2007b). Publicly sited monuments are evidently central to any discussion of such issues: as recent events in Estonia have shown, they frequently act as catalysts eliciting both official and unsanctioned expressions of collective identity (Burch 2002a, 2004).3 Thus far, however, surprisingly little attention has been devoted to monuments within the relevant academic literature on Estonia. This article is intended as a contribution in this regard, but it approaches the issue from a slightly different angle. The War of Monuments has focused political and media attention upon two different cases, one involving a settlement that is predominantly ethnica lly Estonian by population (Lihula) and the other a capital city (Tallinn) that is almost equally divided between Estonians and Russians. This article shifts the focus to the overwhelmingly Russian-speaking city of Narva, which today sits on Estonias border with the Russian Federation. In particular, our study examines the local politics surrounding the Swedish Lion monument (see Figure 1), which was erected in the city in November 2000 on the 300th anniversary of the Battle of Narva between Sweden and Russia. The Lion monument relates to a past that is far less immediate than the events of 1940 45, but which, as we demonstrate, is still highly salient to contemporary identity politics within Estonia. How, for instance, was the commemoration of a decisive Swedish victory over Russia framed and debated in a town where ethnic Russians and other Russian-speakers constitute 96% of the population? Equally significantly, todays Lion is depicted as the successor to a similar monument erected in 1936 during the period of Estonias inter-war independence. The reappearance of this symbol could therefore potentially be understood as part of a state-sponsored effort to banish the Soviet past and reconnect with a past Golden Age. Once again, one wonders how this was interpreted by a local population that was established in Narva as a direct consequence of the Soviet takeover and which, by dint of the legal continuity principle, mostly did not obtain the automatic right to Estonian citizenship after 199 1.4 Who then decided to erect the Lion monument, and why? What form did the commemoration of November 2000 take, and what are the main lines of public debate that have surrounded it? The current article will address these questions, and will also seek to link the Narva case to broader conceptual issues of identity politics and post-communist transition, particularly the current debate surrounding the possibilities for the development of a tamed liberal/multicultural nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe.5 Past politics and post-communism The dramatic events that have occurred in Europe over the past two decades have entailed a profound redefinition of collective identities at a variety of scales—national, supranational, regional and local. The end of the Cold War, the demise of the USSR, and the consequent processes of EU and NATO enlargement, all occurring within the overall context of economic globalisation and growing movement of population, have led communities and groups across the continent to revisit existing understandings of who We are and where We are going. Since historical memory is an essential component in the construction of collective identity, this process has necessarily involved renegotiation of the Past as well as debates concerning the Present and Future. Like all forms of identity politics, such memory work is contested, being embedded in complex †¦ power relations that determine what is remembered (or forgotten) by whom, and for what end (Gillis 1994, p. 3). In a similar vein, Graha m et al. (2000, pp. 17 18) remind us that heritage is time-specific and thus its meaning(s) can be altered as texts are re-read in changing times, circumstances and constructs of place and scale. Consequently, it is inevitable that such knowledges are also fields of contestation.6 Publicly sited monuments offer a particularly useful way into researching this phenomenon, since they provide us with a tangible manifestation of some memory work process. The memorial function of such objects can take the form of carefully choreographed gatherings at times of heightened political awareness, or precise moments of commemorative anniversaries. Wreaths might be laid; silence observed; political rallies enacted; pageants performed. Other actions might be characterised more by spontaneity: collective grief at a sudden, tragic event, or an iconoclastic attack on a memorial construed in negative terms. Individuals and groups will attach different, often mutually exclusive meanings to particular monuments. Moreover, such meanings are shifting and contingent: what constitutes an eloquent memorial at one particular moment in time (for instance during an annual commemoration) might become a mute, invisible monument for the rest of the year. In this regard, being ignored is as s ignificant as being noticed.7 Political changes in the present can radically alter the import of a memorial, without any physical change on its part. This reiterates that the context of the monument is intrinsic to meaning. Context, however, can also be physically rendered, as with the shifting of a memorial/monument from some focal point to somewhere more peripheral and less visible. Issues of collective identity have proved especially challenging in those states that have been created or recreated following the collapse of the USSR. These are for the most part configured as classic unitary nation states, and yet in nearly all cases, processes of state and nation building have been effectuated on the basis of societies that are deeply polyethnic or multinational in character (Brubaker 1996; Smith et al. 1998; Smith 1999). Moreover, nearly all of the states in question have painful pasts with which they need to come to terms (Budryte 2005, p. 1). In relation to this region, Paul Gready (2003, p. 6) reminds us that stripped of the fossilising force of Cold War politics, nationalism has become central to political transitions, both as a means and an end. Narratives of history that focus exclusively on the titular nationality and its subjugation and suffering at the hands of former colonial regimes invariably elicit opposition from minority groups, which can easily f rame their own exclusivist narratives of history along the same lines. Indeed, as the Estonian case exemplifies very well, conflicting narratives of the past can be seen as an integral part of the triadic nexus of nationalist politics—the relationship between nationalising states, national minorities and external national homelands—discerned by Rogers Brubaker in his 1996 work Nationalism Reframed (Pettai 2006). In using the past for present purposes, political and intellectual elites in the Baltic and other Central and Eastern European states have also had to take account of the requirements of integration with the European Union, which in the Estonian and Latvian cases especially, has entailed significant changes to the direction of nation-building (Smith 2002a, 2002b, 2003a, 2003b, 2005; Budryte 2005; Kelley 2004; Galbreath 2005). EU-supported state integration strategies launched at the start of the twenty-first century have set the goal of creating integrated multicultural democracies which will enable representatives of the large non-titular, non-citizen population to preserve certain aspects of their distinct culture and heritage as they undergo integration into the polity and the dominant societal culture (Lauristin Heidmets 2002). According to a number of authors writing on the politics of the past and of memory, these efforts to promote an integrated multicultural society necessar ily require all the parties involved to engage with a process of democratising history. Democratisation in this context would imply that history is no longer used extensively for political purposes, alternative readings are allowed to challenge dominant master narratives, a plurality of guardians of memory is tolerated, and that rather than merely stressing the suffering endured by ones own nation, historical narratives recognise that other groups suffered equally, and that the nation in question served as both a bystander and a perpetrator as regards the suffering of others (see Onken 2003, 2007a; Budryte 2005). A significant step in this direction came during 1998, when all three Baltic states established historical commissions.8 Composed of academic experts from home and abroad (in the Estonian case exclusively the latter), these bodies have been called upon to produce an independent assessment of events during the Nazi and Soviet occupations of 1940 91, and have already begun to publish their findings (Onken 2007b). However, developments such as the Estonian War on Monuments and the Baltic Russian dispute over the commemoration held in Moscow to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the end of World War Two (Onken 2007a) underline the extent to which the past is still underpinning conflictual political dynamics in the present. In this regard, Russias increasing reliance on the Soviet past for nation-building purposes and its indiscriminate blanket accusations of fascist tendencies in the Baltic states prompt Baltic politicians to insist that Soviet communism should join Nazism as one of the great evils against which contemporary European values should be defined. As is the case with other aspects of post-communist transition, however, a focus on the state level tells us only so much about the renegotiation of identity in post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe. In this highly complex multi-ethnic environment, the sub-state regional level cannot be disregarded (Batt 2002). A focus on the sub-state level appears especially apposite as far as the study of Estonias public monuments is concerned, for, until now at least, decisions in this area have rested with local rather than with national government. Furthermore, one can point to different political logics that obtain at national and local level. As a result of the citizenship law adopted in the aftermath of independence, ethnic Estonians have constituted a comfortable majority of the national electorate during 1992 2007. The local election law of 1993, however, stipulates that while citizens alone can run for office, all permanent residents have the right to vote, regardless of citizenship status. This has meant that the ethnic composition of the electorate has in some cases been wholly different at municipal level. In this regard, the outright repudiation of the Soviet past displayed by local elites in Lihula stands in marked contrast to trends observable in the capital Tallinn, where Russian-speakers make up almost half the population, and Russian and pro-Russian parties, such as the Centre Party (Keskerakond), have been able to obtain a significant foothold in local politics. This contrast became evident not least in 1995, when the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II brought calls for the removal of the Bronze Soldier. The city council, however, tried instead to imbue this monument with an alternative meaning: a Soviet-era plaque referring to the liberation of Tallinn by the Red Army in 1944 was replaced by one that reads simply to the fallen of World War Two. This step can be read as an effort to inculcate some kind of shared understanding of a highly contentious past within a deeply multi-ethnic setting. What trends, however, can one identify in the more homogeneously Russian pe riphery that is Narva? Estonias new best friend. The rediscovery of Estonias Swedish past The return of the Swedish Lion monument to Narva, as one local newspaper described it (Sommer-Kalda 2000), can be seen in many ways as the culmination of a process of Swedish re-engagement with the eastern Baltic Near Abroad that began in 1990 with the establishment of a Swedish consulate in Tallinn. With considerable financial resources now being made available to support processes of economic and political transition in Estonia, Swedish cultural attach Hans Lepp began to explore how past cultural links might be utilised in the service of what he has termed soft diplomacy.9 Historic ties with Scandinavia have assumed an important place within the discourse of the ruling ethnic Estonian political elite since the 1990s, where they have been used to support the notion of a Return to Europe—or, more broadly, a Return to the Western World following the end of Soviet occupation (Lauristin et al. 1997; Smith 2001, 2003a, 2003b). Within this framework, the period 1561 1710, when Sweden progressively extended its dominion over much of the territory of present-day Estonia and Latvia, is remembered as the Happy Swedish time, which is said to have brought about a considerable improvement in the lot of the Estonian peasantry, before serfdom was returned to its former rigour following entry to the Russian empire. Hans Lepp and his diplomatic colleagues were alive to the possibility of trading on this feeling of goodwill in order to make Sweden Estonias best friend in the Baltic region, with all that this implied in terms of political and economic influence.10 It quickly became apparent, however, that Swedish assistance was most needed in Narva and its surrounding region of Ida-Virumaa. Quite apart from the socio-economic and environmental challenges posed by this largely Russian-populated border region, rising nationalism in neighbouring Russia raised the prospect that the local inhabitants might look eastwards towards Moscow rather than westwards towards Tallinn, with drastic implications for regional stability and security.11 In this specific context history had particular potential as a resource, given the important place of the Battle of Narva of 1700 within the Swedish historical imagination. Although the opening salvo in a disastrous war that saw the Baltic provinces ceded to Russia,12 the first Battle of Narva was nevertheless a remarkable victory by the troops of King Charles XII (often referred to as the Lion of the North) against the numerically superior forces of Peter the Great. In this respect, Eldar Efendiev, who as Mayor of Narva planned the November 2000 commemoration of the battle, claimed in an interview with the authors that Swedes know three dates—the birthday of Gustav Vasa; the birthday of the present King; and the date of the Battle of Narva.13 The significance of the latter event had been seen already in the inter-war period with the installation of a Lion monument on the battlefield site in 1936.14 Already prior to his appointment as cultural attach in 1990, Hans Lepp—then Curator of the art collections at the Swedish Royal Palace in Stockholm—suggested to Efendiev (at that time Head of the Narva Museum) that the restoration of the Lion monument might help to foster closer ties between Narva and Sweden in the present. Lepp subsequently pursued the idea of restoring the Lion with Narva city council in his roles as Swedish cultural attach to Estonia and member of the Swedish Institute. Not surprisingly, however, planning the commemoration of a decisive Swedish victory over Russia was a potentially fraught endeavour in a town where Russian-speakers now made up 96% of the population. Narva: Eastern, Western or in-between? The more essentialising geopolitical discourses of the post-Cold War era would see Narva as sitting on the westward side of the border that divides Western Christianity from Eastern Orthodoxy. Those who discern a Huntingdonian civilisational fault line between Estonia and Russia could point by way of evidence to the presence of two great fortresses—one German, one Russian—on the respective banks of the Narova River that separates Narva from its neighbouring settlement of Ivangorod and which today marks the state border with the Russian Federation. Not unnaturally, however, the citys past is rather more complex. As noted on the current website of the city government, Narva has not merely served as a defensive outpost and site of struggle between competing regional powers, but has also constituted a locus for trade and interaction between West and East, not least during the period when the city belonged to the Hanseatic League.15 From its foundation in the twelfth century to 1558, Narva did indeed constitute the easternmost point of the province of Estland, which was ruled first by the Danes and later by the German Livonian Order. Neighbouring Ivangorod takes its name from Tsar Ivan III, who ordered the construction of a fortress on the western border of his realm following Muscovys annexation of Novgorod in the late fifteenth century. Muscovy subsequently conquered Narva during the mid-sixteenth century Livonian wars, controlling the city from 1558 to 1581. The city then came under Swedish rule for 120 years following the Livonian Wars, a period which is described on the webpage of todays city government as Narvas Golden Age.16 For nearly three and a half centuries, Narva and Ivangorod functioned in effect as a single composite settlement, first under Swedish rule and then later during the tsarist period, when Narva came under the joint jurisdiction of the Estland and Saint Petersburg Gubernii of the Russian Empire. The conjoined status of the two towns persisted after 1917, when the inhabitants of the Narva district voted in a July referendum to join the province of Estland created following the February Revolution.17 After a brief spell of Bolshevik control during late 1918 to early 1919, when Narva functioned as the seat of the abortive Estonian Workers Commune, both towns were incorporated into the Estonian Republic under the terms of the 1920 Treaty of Tartu. It was only after the Soviet occupation in 1945 that the border was redrawn so as to place Ivangorod in the territory of the Russian Republic of the USSR. Although this division was little more than an administrative formality within a Soviet cont ext, the frontier revision set the scene for the establishment of a fully functioning state border between the two towns after 1992. The Narva that emerged from the Soviet period is almost completely unrecognisable from the one that existed prior to World War Two. Previously characterised as the baroque jewel of Northern Europe, the city was quite literally reduced to rubble in 1944 during fierce fighting between German and Soviet forces in eastern Estonia. While at least some historic buildings—notably the castle and the town hall—were restored, the ruins were for the most part demolished and the city entirely remodelled on the Soviet plan. As was the case with Knigsberg (Kaliningrad), Narva was inhabited by both different inhabitants and a different ideology after 1945 (Sezneva 2002, p. 48). The previous residents, having been evacuated by the occupying Nazi regime, were not allowed to return by its Soviet successor, and were replaced by workers from neighbouring Russia, who oversaw a process of Soviet-style industrialisation in the region. Today, Estonians make up less than 5% of the towns inhabit ants. As part of Narvas transformation into a Soviet place, new monuments were erected to commemorate the fallen of the Great Patriotic War and of the brief period of rule by the Estonian Workers Commune.18 All remaining traces of the pre-war Estonian Republic were swept away following the Soviet re-conquest of 1944. The 1936 Swedish Lion monument, which had been erected at the approaches to the city during a visit by the Swedish Crown Prince, was destroyed by artillery fire and the bronze lion removed by German forces during their retreat. This monument did not reappear under Soviet rule. The authorities did, however, restore and maintain objects linked to the citys Russian past, such as the two tsarist-era monuments to Russian soldiers killed in the battles of 1700 and 1704. As the movement for Estonian independence gathered momentum between 1988 and 1991, Narva gained a reputation as a bastion of support for the maintenance of Soviet power. The city government that came to office in December 1989 set itself resolutely against political change, demanding autonomy for north-east Estonia within the context of a renewed Soviet federation and, in August 1991, voicing support for the abortive Moscow coup which precipitated the collapse of the USSR. The Council was promptly dissolved in the aftermath of Estonian independence; yet, remarkably, its former leaders were allowed to stand in new elections, and were returned to power in October 1991, albeit on a turnout of only 30%. As ethnic tensions mounted in Estonia between 1991 and 1993, and Narvas economy went into freefall, local leaders again set themselves in opposition to central government policies that were designed to engineer a decisive political and economic break with the Soviet past. The last stand o f the Soviet-era leadership came in the summer of 1993: with fresh local elections scheduled for the autumn, the city government organised an unofficial referendum on local autonomy, in which it gained a 97% majority in favour on an officially proclaimed 55% turnout of local voters. With the national government standing firm and refusing to acknowledge the legality of the vote, and no support forthcoming from neighbouring Russia, a growing section of the local political elite appeared to accept that intransigent opposition to the new state order was blocking any prospect of achieving much needed economic renewal. These circles now called upon the existing leadership to give up power peacefully, which it did in October 1993 (Smith 2002b). At the time, the referendum of July 1993 was widely regarded as secessionist in intent. Available evidence, however, would seem to suggest that redrawing physical borders was not on the agenda: the aim was rather to tip the overall political balance within Estonia in favour of the Russian-speaking part of the population and, in this way, to bring Estonia as a whole more firmly within the ambit of Russia and the CIS. In this way, the leadership hoped both to retain power and to restore the citys previous economic ties with the East as well as developing new links with the West (Smith 2002b).19 While Soviet constituted the principal identity marker for Estonias Russian-speaking population prior to 1991, this did not preclude the development of a simultaneous strong identification with the specific territory of the Estonian SSR (widely identified in other republics as the Soviet West or the Soviet Abroad), and with the local place of residence. Between 1989 and 1991, the movement to ass ert Estonian sovereignty gained support from a significant minority (perhaps as much as one third) of local Russian-speakers, who could subscribe to a vision of Estonia as an economic bridge between East and West. Such feelings were by no means absent in Narva, where the 1989 census revealed that seven out of 10 residents had actually been born in Estonia (Kirch et al. 1993, p. 177). Even so, the collapse of the USSR inevitably created something of an identity void as far as Estonias Russian-speakers were concerned. Despite perceptions of discrimination, recent survey work has confirmed a growing identification with the Estonian state (Kolst2002; Budryte 2005; Ehin 2007) as well as significant support for EU membership. Most Russians, however, have scarcely been able to identify themselves with any notion of Estonian national community, with local place of residence and ethnicity serving as the prime markers of identity (Ehin 2007). Despite having an obvious cultural affinity with Russia and with the transnational Russian community across the territory of the former Soviet Union, a population raised in the different socio-cultural setting of the Baltic has found it hard to conceive of actually living in Russia or to identify politically with the contemporary Russian state. It is with this complex identity that the post-1993 leadership in Narva has had to reckon. The Estonian law on local elections passed in May 1993 stipulated that non-citizens could vote but not stand for office. This excluded much of the local population from seeking election, including a substantial proportion of the Soviet-era leadership. Ahead of the October 1993 poll in Narva, however, the state was able to co-opt elements of the local political elite through a process of accelerated naturalisation on the grounds of special services rendered to the state. The elections of October 1993 saw a strong turnout by local voters, and brought to power a coalition of locally based parties and interest groups. The city governments elected during the period 1993 2005—a period when the national-level Centre Party attained the dominant position within local politics—were far more ready than their predecessors to embrace the new political economy of post-socialism, and thus better placed to cooperate both with central government and with Western partners within the wid er Baltic Sea area. In this regard, the commemoration of the Battle of Narva and the installation of the Swedish Lion can be understood as an attempt to create a narrative of the citys past capable of underpinning growing ties with Sweden in the present. These ties assumed a particular significance after 1995, when Swedish textile firm Boras Wfveri purchased a 75% stake in Narvas historic Kreenholm Mill, then the citys second-largest employer. According to Raivo Murd, the ethnic Estonian who served as Mayor of Narva from 1993 to 1996, the investment was proof that Narva was finally beginning to shed the Red image that had prevailed under the former political dispensation.20 In a clear sign of its determination to break with the Soviet past, the city government appointed in October 1993 removed Estonias last remaining statue of Lenin, which had remained standing in the central Peters Square in Narva during the first two years of Estonian independence. The subsequent period has seen the installation of new monuments commemorating—inter alia—the victims of Stalinist deportations during the 1940s and key moments in the transition to Estonian independence during 1917 20. The Old Narva Society founded by surviving pre-1944 residents of Narva also put up a number of commemorative plaques marking the sites of churches and other key buildings from the pre-war city. Yet the post-1993 political e Issues of War Monuments in Estonia Issues of War Monuments in Estonia Empty Spaces and the Value of Symbols: Estonias War of Monuments from Another Angle * This article is the first published output from British Academy small research grant ref. SG-39197, entitled Public Monuments, Commemoration and the Renegotiation of Collective Identities: Estonia, Sweden and the â€Å"Baltic World† Since the summer of 2004, the new EU member state of Estonia has been in the throes of what is described as a War of Monuments. The events in question began in the town of Lihula in western Estonia, where a veterans group erected a stone tablet commemorating those Estonians who in World War Two donned German uniform and fought on the eastern front against the USSR. Bearing the inscription To Estonian men who fought in 1940 1945 against Bolshevism and for the restoration of Estonian independence, the Lihula stone became the latest of several monuments commemorating a group that most Estonians today regard as freedom fighters. In this case, however, the soldier depicted bore SS insignia. Hardly surprisingly, this fact elicited widespread international condemnation, notably from Russia, the EU and Jewish organisations. The groups behind the monument insisted that the men in question had had no truck with Nazism, and had only enlisted as a last resort in order to obtain access to arms w ith which to repel the Soviet invader. The display of the SS insignia nevertheless disregarded the taboo that surrounds the display of Nazi symbols in todays Europe. Also, while the vast majority of Estonian SS legionnaires did indeed sign up only in 1944 as the Soviet army advanced into their homeland, at least some had previously belonged to auxiliary police battalions which have been implicated in Nazi atrocities.1 Concerned to limit potential damage to Estonias international reputation, the government of the day ordered the removal of the monument. The police operation to carry out this order on 2 September 2004 nevertheless provoked clashes with local residents, while the political fallout from the episode contributed to the fall of Prime Minister Juhan Parts several months later. Critics of the government action argued that if the Lihula monument was to be construed as a glorification of totalitarianism, then the same logic should be applied to Soviet monuments that had been left standing following the restoration of Estonian independence in 1991. Singled out in this regard was the Bronze Soldier on T[otilde]nismgi in central Tallinn—a post-war monument erected on the unmarked grave of Soviet troops who fell during the taking of the city in 1944. For the vast majority of Estonians, the arrival of the Soviet Army signalled the replacement of one brutal occupying regime by another, whic h quickly resumed the arrests, executions and large-scale deportations previously witnessed during the first year of Soviet rule in 1940 41. This remains the dominant perception amongst Estonians today. The leaders of post-Soviet Russia, by contrast, have adhered steadfastly to the Soviet-era view of these events as marking the liberation of Estonia from fascism. The defeat of the Nazis during 1941 45 remains central to Russias self-understanding in the post-Soviet era; its  current leaders emphatically deny that the events of 1940 and 1944 in the Baltic states constituted a Soviet occupation, and refuse to acknowledge the suffering which the inhabitants of these countries experienced at the hands of the Soviet regime. Commentators in Russia have emphasised that they will brook no alternative interpretations of the Soviet Unions role in the events of 1939 45, and have therefore characterised calls for the removal of the T[otilde]nismgi monument as a manifestation of support for fascism. For many of the ethnic Russians who today make up nearly half of Tallinns population, the Bronze Soldier has also remained a locus of identification, providing the site for continued unofficial commemorations on 9 May, which was celebrated as Victory Day during the Soviet period. Red paint was thrown over the monument just prior to 9 May 2005, when several other Soviet war memorials were also attacked across the country, and a German military cemetery desecrated in Narva. The following year, this date again elicited tensions: local Russian youth mounted round-the-clock surveillance at the Bronze Soldier, while an Estonian nationalist counter-demonstration led to scuffles on 9 May (Alas 2006a). The monument was subsequently cordoned off by police pending a decision on its future. This formed the object of vigorous political debate ahead of the March 2007 parliamentary elections. Matters relating to the establishment and upkeep of public monuments in post-Soviet Estonia have for the mo st part fallen to local municipalities. In late 2006, however, new legislation was adopted giving central government the power to override local decision making in this regard. This provision was motivated expressly by a desire to remove the monument and the soldiers remains from the centre of Tallinn to the more peripheral setting of the military cemetery on the citys outskirts (Alas 2006a, 2006b, 2006c; Ranname 2006). The subsequent removal of the monument in late April 2007 provided the occasion for large-scale rioting in central Tallinn. On 9 May 2007 hundreds of people visited the monument at its new location in order to lay flowers. Issues of past or memory politics2 have assumed a growing prominence in recent scholarly work on Estonia and the other Baltic states, with a number of authors also highlighting the apparently divergent views of the past held by Estonians and Estonian Russians, and the obstacles that this poses in terms of societal integration (Hackmann 2003; Budryte 2005; Onken 2003, 2007a, 2007b). Publicly sited monuments are evidently central to any discussion of such issues: as recent events in Estonia have shown, they frequently act as catalysts eliciting both official and unsanctioned expressions of collective identity (Burch 2002a, 2004).3 Thus far, however, surprisingly little attention has been devoted to monuments within the relevant academic literature on Estonia. This article is intended as a contribution in this regard, but it approaches the issue from a slightly different angle. The War of Monuments has focused political and media attention upon two different cases, one involving a settlement that is predominantly ethnica lly Estonian by population (Lihula) and the other a capital city (Tallinn) that is almost equally divided between Estonians and Russians. This article shifts the focus to the overwhelmingly Russian-speaking city of Narva, which today sits on Estonias border with the Russian Federation. In particular, our study examines the local politics surrounding the Swedish Lion monument (see Figure 1), which was erected in the city in November 2000 on the 300th anniversary of the Battle of Narva between Sweden and Russia. The Lion monument relates to a past that is far less immediate than the events of 1940 45, but which, as we demonstrate, is still highly salient to contemporary identity politics within Estonia. How, for instance, was the commemoration of a decisive Swedish victory over Russia framed and debated in a town where ethnic Russians and other Russian-speakers constitute 96% of the population? Equally significantly, todays Lion is depicted as the successor to a similar monument erected in 1936 during the period of Estonias inter-war independence. The reappearance of this symbol could therefore potentially be understood as part of a state-sponsored effort to banish the Soviet past and reconnect with a past Golden Age. Once again, one wonders how this was interpreted by a local population that was established in Narva as a direct consequence of the Soviet takeover and which, by dint of the legal continuity principle, mostly did not obtain the automatic right to Estonian citizenship after 199 1.4 Who then decided to erect the Lion monument, and why? What form did the commemoration of November 2000 take, and what are the main lines of public debate that have surrounded it? The current article will address these questions, and will also seek to link the Narva case to broader conceptual issues of identity politics and post-communist transition, particularly the current debate surrounding the possibilities for the development of a tamed liberal/multicultural nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe.5 Past politics and post-communism The dramatic events that have occurred in Europe over the past two decades have entailed a profound redefinition of collective identities at a variety of scales—national, supranational, regional and local. The end of the Cold War, the demise of the USSR, and the consequent processes of EU and NATO enlargement, all occurring within the overall context of economic globalisation and growing movement of population, have led communities and groups across the continent to revisit existing understandings of who We are and where We are going. Since historical memory is an essential component in the construction of collective identity, this process has necessarily involved renegotiation of the Past as well as debates concerning the Present and Future. Like all forms of identity politics, such memory work is contested, being embedded in complex †¦ power relations that determine what is remembered (or forgotten) by whom, and for what end (Gillis 1994, p. 3). In a similar vein, Graha m et al. (2000, pp. 17 18) remind us that heritage is time-specific and thus its meaning(s) can be altered as texts are re-read in changing times, circumstances and constructs of place and scale. Consequently, it is inevitable that such knowledges are also fields of contestation.6 Publicly sited monuments offer a particularly useful way into researching this phenomenon, since they provide us with a tangible manifestation of some memory work process. The memorial function of such objects can take the form of carefully choreographed gatherings at times of heightened political awareness, or precise moments of commemorative anniversaries. Wreaths might be laid; silence observed; political rallies enacted; pageants performed. Other actions might be characterised more by spontaneity: collective grief at a sudden, tragic event, or an iconoclastic attack on a memorial construed in negative terms. Individuals and groups will attach different, often mutually exclusive meanings to particular monuments. Moreover, such meanings are shifting and contingent: what constitutes an eloquent memorial at one particular moment in time (for instance during an annual commemoration) might become a mute, invisible monument for the rest of the year. In this regard, being ignored is as s ignificant as being noticed.7 Political changes in the present can radically alter the import of a memorial, without any physical change on its part. This reiterates that the context of the monument is intrinsic to meaning. Context, however, can also be physically rendered, as with the shifting of a memorial/monument from some focal point to somewhere more peripheral and less visible. Issues of collective identity have proved especially challenging in those states that have been created or recreated following the collapse of the USSR. These are for the most part configured as classic unitary nation states, and yet in nearly all cases, processes of state and nation building have been effectuated on the basis of societies that are deeply polyethnic or multinational in character (Brubaker 1996; Smith et al. 1998; Smith 1999). Moreover, nearly all of the states in question have painful pasts with which they need to come to terms (Budryte 2005, p. 1). In relation to this region, Paul Gready (2003, p. 6) reminds us that stripped of the fossilising force of Cold War politics, nationalism has become central to political transitions, both as a means and an end. Narratives of history that focus exclusively on the titular nationality and its subjugation and suffering at the hands of former colonial regimes invariably elicit opposition from minority groups, which can easily f rame their own exclusivist narratives of history along the same lines. Indeed, as the Estonian case exemplifies very well, conflicting narratives of the past can be seen as an integral part of the triadic nexus of nationalist politics—the relationship between nationalising states, national minorities and external national homelands—discerned by Rogers Brubaker in his 1996 work Nationalism Reframed (Pettai 2006). In using the past for present purposes, political and intellectual elites in the Baltic and other Central and Eastern European states have also had to take account of the requirements of integration with the European Union, which in the Estonian and Latvian cases especially, has entailed significant changes to the direction of nation-building (Smith 2002a, 2002b, 2003a, 2003b, 2005; Budryte 2005; Kelley 2004; Galbreath 2005). EU-supported state integration strategies launched at the start of the twenty-first century have set the goal of creating integrated multicultural democracies which will enable representatives of the large non-titular, non-citizen population to preserve certain aspects of their distinct culture and heritage as they undergo integration into the polity and the dominant societal culture (Lauristin Heidmets 2002). According to a number of authors writing on the politics of the past and of memory, these efforts to promote an integrated multicultural society necessar ily require all the parties involved to engage with a process of democratising history. Democratisation in this context would imply that history is no longer used extensively for political purposes, alternative readings are allowed to challenge dominant master narratives, a plurality of guardians of memory is tolerated, and that rather than merely stressing the suffering endured by ones own nation, historical narratives recognise that other groups suffered equally, and that the nation in question served as both a bystander and a perpetrator as regards the suffering of others (see Onken 2003, 2007a; Budryte 2005). A significant step in this direction came during 1998, when all three Baltic states established historical commissions.8 Composed of academic experts from home and abroad (in the Estonian case exclusively the latter), these bodies have been called upon to produce an independent assessment of events during the Nazi and Soviet occupations of 1940 91, and have already begun to publish their findings (Onken 2007b). However, developments such as the Estonian War on Monuments and the Baltic Russian dispute over the commemoration held in Moscow to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the end of World War Two (Onken 2007a) underline the extent to which the past is still underpinning conflictual political dynamics in the present. In this regard, Russias increasing reliance on the Soviet past for nation-building purposes and its indiscriminate blanket accusations of fascist tendencies in the Baltic states prompt Baltic politicians to insist that Soviet communism should join Nazism as one of the great evils against which contemporary European values should be defined. As is the case with other aspects of post-communist transition, however, a focus on the state level tells us only so much about the renegotiation of identity in post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe. In this highly complex multi-ethnic environment, the sub-state regional level cannot be disregarded (Batt 2002). A focus on the sub-state level appears especially apposite as far as the study of Estonias public monuments is concerned, for, until now at least, decisions in this area have rested with local rather than with national government. Furthermore, one can point to different political logics that obtain at national and local level. As a result of the citizenship law adopted in the aftermath of independence, ethnic Estonians have constituted a comfortable majority of the national electorate during 1992 2007. The local election law of 1993, however, stipulates that while citizens alone can run for office, all permanent residents have the right to vote, regardless of citizenship status. This has meant that the ethnic composition of the electorate has in some cases been wholly different at municipal level. In this regard, the outright repudiation of the Soviet past displayed by local elites in Lihula stands in marked contrast to trends observable in the capital Tallinn, where Russian-speakers make up almost half the population, and Russian and pro-Russian parties, such as the Centre Party (Keskerakond), have been able to obtain a significant foothold in local politics. This contrast became evident not least in 1995, when the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II brought calls for the removal of the Bronze Soldier. The city council, however, tried instead to imbue this monument with an alternative meaning: a Soviet-era plaque referring to the liberation of Tallinn by the Red Army in 1944 was replaced by one that reads simply to the fallen of World War Two. This step can be read as an effort to inculcate some kind of shared understanding of a highly contentious past within a deeply multi-ethnic setting. What trends, however, can one identify in the more homogeneously Russian pe riphery that is Narva? Estonias new best friend. The rediscovery of Estonias Swedish past The return of the Swedish Lion monument to Narva, as one local newspaper described it (Sommer-Kalda 2000), can be seen in many ways as the culmination of a process of Swedish re-engagement with the eastern Baltic Near Abroad that began in 1990 with the establishment of a Swedish consulate in Tallinn. With considerable financial resources now being made available to support processes of economic and political transition in Estonia, Swedish cultural attach Hans Lepp began to explore how past cultural links might be utilised in the service of what he has termed soft diplomacy.9 Historic ties with Scandinavia have assumed an important place within the discourse of the ruling ethnic Estonian political elite since the 1990s, where they have been used to support the notion of a Return to Europe—or, more broadly, a Return to the Western World following the end of Soviet occupation (Lauristin et al. 1997; Smith 2001, 2003a, 2003b). Within this framework, the period 1561 1710, when Sweden progressively extended its dominion over much of the territory of present-day Estonia and Latvia, is remembered as the Happy Swedish time, which is said to have brought about a considerable improvement in the lot of the Estonian peasantry, before serfdom was returned to its former rigour following entry to the Russian empire. Hans Lepp and his diplomatic colleagues were alive to the possibility of trading on this feeling of goodwill in order to make Sweden Estonias best friend in the Baltic region, with all that this implied in terms of political and economic influence.10 It quickly became apparent, however, that Swedish assistance was most needed in Narva and its surrounding region of Ida-Virumaa. Quite apart from the socio-economic and environmental challenges posed by this largely Russian-populated border region, rising nationalism in neighbouring Russia raised the prospect that the local inhabitants might look eastwards towards Moscow rather than westwards towards Tallinn, with drastic implications for regional stability and security.11 In this specific context history had particular potential as a resource, given the important place of the Battle of Narva of 1700 within the Swedish historical imagination. Although the opening salvo in a disastrous war that saw the Baltic provinces ceded to Russia,12 the first Battle of Narva was nevertheless a remarkable victory by the troops of King Charles XII (often referred to as the Lion of the North) against the numerically superior forces of Peter the Great. In this respect, Eldar Efendiev, who as Mayor of Narva planned the November 2000 commemoration of the battle, claimed in an interview with the authors that Swedes know three dates—the birthday of Gustav Vasa; the birthday of the present King; and the date of the Battle of Narva.13 The significance of the latter event had been seen already in the inter-war period with the installation of a Lion monument on the battlefield site in 1936.14 Already prior to his appointment as cultural attach in 1990, Hans Lepp—then Curator of the art collections at the Swedish Royal Palace in Stockholm—suggested to Efendiev (at that time Head of the Narva Museum) that the restoration of the Lion monument might help to foster closer ties between Narva and Sweden in the present. Lepp subsequently pursued the idea of restoring the Lion with Narva city council in his roles as Swedish cultural attach to Estonia and member of the Swedish Institute. Not surprisingly, however, planning the commemoration of a decisive Swedish victory over Russia was a potentially fraught endeavour in a town where Russian-speakers now made up 96% of the population. Narva: Eastern, Western or in-between? The more essentialising geopolitical discourses of the post-Cold War era would see Narva as sitting on the westward side of the border that divides Western Christianity from Eastern Orthodoxy. Those who discern a Huntingdonian civilisational fault line between Estonia and Russia could point by way of evidence to the presence of two great fortresses—one German, one Russian—on the respective banks of the Narova River that separates Narva from its neighbouring settlement of Ivangorod and which today marks the state border with the Russian Federation. Not unnaturally, however, the citys past is rather more complex. As noted on the current website of the city government, Narva has not merely served as a defensive outpost and site of struggle between competing regional powers, but has also constituted a locus for trade and interaction between West and East, not least during the period when the city belonged to the Hanseatic League.15 From its foundation in the twelfth century to 1558, Narva did indeed constitute the easternmost point of the province of Estland, which was ruled first by the Danes and later by the German Livonian Order. Neighbouring Ivangorod takes its name from Tsar Ivan III, who ordered the construction of a fortress on the western border of his realm following Muscovys annexation of Novgorod in the late fifteenth century. Muscovy subsequently conquered Narva during the mid-sixteenth century Livonian wars, controlling the city from 1558 to 1581. The city then came under Swedish rule for 120 years following the Livonian Wars, a period which is described on the webpage of todays city government as Narvas Golden Age.16 For nearly three and a half centuries, Narva and Ivangorod functioned in effect as a single composite settlement, first under Swedish rule and then later during the tsarist period, when Narva came under the joint jurisdiction of the Estland and Saint Petersburg Gubernii of the Russian Empire. The conjoined status of the two towns persisted after 1917, when the inhabitants of the Narva district voted in a July referendum to join the province of Estland created following the February Revolution.17 After a brief spell of Bolshevik control during late 1918 to early 1919, when Narva functioned as the seat of the abortive Estonian Workers Commune, both towns were incorporated into the Estonian Republic under the terms of the 1920 Treaty of Tartu. It was only after the Soviet occupation in 1945 that the border was redrawn so as to place Ivangorod in the territory of the Russian Republic of the USSR. Although this division was little more than an administrative formality within a Soviet cont ext, the frontier revision set the scene for the establishment of a fully functioning state border between the two towns after 1992. The Narva that emerged from the Soviet period is almost completely unrecognisable from the one that existed prior to World War Two. Previously characterised as the baroque jewel of Northern Europe, the city was quite literally reduced to rubble in 1944 during fierce fighting between German and Soviet forces in eastern Estonia. While at least some historic buildings—notably the castle and the town hall—were restored, the ruins were for the most part demolished and the city entirely remodelled on the Soviet plan. As was the case with Knigsberg (Kaliningrad), Narva was inhabited by both different inhabitants and a different ideology after 1945 (Sezneva 2002, p. 48). The previous residents, having been evacuated by the occupying Nazi regime, were not allowed to return by its Soviet successor, and were replaced by workers from neighbouring Russia, who oversaw a process of Soviet-style industrialisation in the region. Today, Estonians make up less than 5% of the towns inhabit ants. As part of Narvas transformation into a Soviet place, new monuments were erected to commemorate the fallen of the Great Patriotic War and of the brief period of rule by the Estonian Workers Commune.18 All remaining traces of the pre-war Estonian Republic were swept away following the Soviet re-conquest of 1944. The 1936 Swedish Lion monument, which had been erected at the approaches to the city during a visit by the Swedish Crown Prince, was destroyed by artillery fire and the bronze lion removed by German forces during their retreat. This monument did not reappear under Soviet rule. The authorities did, however, restore and maintain objects linked to the citys Russian past, such as the two tsarist-era monuments to Russian soldiers killed in the battles of 1700 and 1704. As the movement for Estonian independence gathered momentum between 1988 and 1991, Narva gained a reputation as a bastion of support for the maintenance of Soviet power. The city government that came to office in December 1989 set itself resolutely against political change, demanding autonomy for north-east Estonia within the context of a renewed Soviet federation and, in August 1991, voicing support for the abortive Moscow coup which precipitated the collapse of the USSR. The Council was promptly dissolved in the aftermath of Estonian independence; yet, remarkably, its former leaders were allowed to stand in new elections, and were returned to power in October 1991, albeit on a turnout of only 30%. As ethnic tensions mounted in Estonia between 1991 and 1993, and Narvas economy went into freefall, local leaders again set themselves in opposition to central government policies that were designed to engineer a decisive political and economic break with the Soviet past. The last stand o f the Soviet-era leadership came in the summer of 1993: with fresh local elections scheduled for the autumn, the city government organised an unofficial referendum on local autonomy, in which it gained a 97% majority in favour on an officially proclaimed 55% turnout of local voters. With the national government standing firm and refusing to acknowledge the legality of the vote, and no support forthcoming from neighbouring Russia, a growing section of the local political elite appeared to accept that intransigent opposition to the new state order was blocking any prospect of achieving much needed economic renewal. These circles now called upon the existing leadership to give up power peacefully, which it did in October 1993 (Smith 2002b). At the time, the referendum of July 1993 was widely regarded as secessionist in intent. Available evidence, however, would seem to suggest that redrawing physical borders was not on the agenda: the aim was rather to tip the overall political balance within Estonia in favour of the Russian-speaking part of the population and, in this way, to bring Estonia as a whole more firmly within the ambit of Russia and the CIS. In this way, the leadership hoped both to retain power and to restore the citys previous economic ties with the East as well as developing new links with the West (Smith 2002b).19 While Soviet constituted the principal identity marker for Estonias Russian-speaking population prior to 1991, this did not preclude the development of a simultaneous strong identification with the specific territory of the Estonian SSR (widely identified in other republics as the Soviet West or the Soviet Abroad), and with the local place of residence. Between 1989 and 1991, the movement to ass ert Estonian sovereignty gained support from a significant minority (perhaps as much as one third) of local Russian-speakers, who could subscribe to a vision of Estonia as an economic bridge between East and West. Such feelings were by no means absent in Narva, where the 1989 census revealed that seven out of 10 residents had actually been born in Estonia (Kirch et al. 1993, p. 177). Even so, the collapse of the USSR inevitably created something of an identity void as far as Estonias Russian-speakers were concerned. Despite perceptions of discrimination, recent survey work has confirmed a growing identification with the Estonian state (Kolst2002; Budryte 2005; Ehin 2007) as well as significant support for EU membership. Most Russians, however, have scarcely been able to identify themselves with any notion of Estonian national community, with local place of residence and ethnicity serving as the prime markers of identity (Ehin 2007). Despite having an obvious cultural affinity with Russia and with the transnational Russian community across the territory of the former Soviet Union, a population raised in the different socio-cultural setting of the Baltic has found it hard to conceive of actually living in Russia or to identify politically with the contemporary Russian state. It is with this complex identity that the post-1993 leadership in Narva has had to reckon. The Estonian law on local elections passed in May 1993 stipulated that non-citizens could vote but not stand for office. This excluded much of the local population from seeking election, including a substantial proportion of the Soviet-era leadership. Ahead of the October 1993 poll in Narva, however, the state was able to co-opt elements of the local political elite through a process of accelerated naturalisation on the grounds of special services rendered to the state. The elections of October 1993 saw a strong turnout by local voters, and brought to power a coalition of locally based parties and interest groups. The city governments elected during the period 1993 2005—a period when the national-level Centre Party attained the dominant position within local politics—were far more ready than their predecessors to embrace the new political economy of post-socialism, and thus better placed to cooperate both with central government and with Western partners within the wid er Baltic Sea area. In this regard, the commemoration of the Battle of Narva and the installation of the Swedish Lion can be understood as an attempt to create a narrative of the citys past capable of underpinning growing ties with Sweden in the present. These ties assumed a particular significance after 1995, when Swedish textile firm Boras Wfveri purchased a 75% stake in Narvas historic Kreenholm Mill, then the citys second-largest employer. According to Raivo Murd, the ethnic Estonian who served as Mayor of Narva from 1993 to 1996, the investment was proof that Narva was finally beginning to shed the Red image that had prevailed under the former political dispensation.20 In a clear sign of its determination to break with the Soviet past, the city government appointed in October 1993 removed Estonias last remaining statue of Lenin, which had remained standing in the central Peters Square in Narva during the first two years of Estonian independence. The subsequent period has seen the installation of new monuments commemorating—inter alia—the victims of Stalinist deportations during the 1940s and key moments in the transition to Estonian independence during 1917 20. The Old Narva Society founded by surviving pre-1944 residents of Narva also put up a number of commemorative plaques marking the sites of churches and other key buildings from the pre-war city. Yet the post-1993 political e