In the very beginning of this nation’s history, Americans were under the power of England’s monarchy. The Americans were able to overthrow the shackles of bondage and created a Constitution that declares its steadfast belief in the ideals of freedom, equality and the pursuit of happiness. But immediately after the Declaration of Independence and even after the Constitution was signed and accepted by leaders of the new government, not every American citizen is treated fairly.
And a good example would be the Negroes and other minorities such as Asians and more so their women. The book of Alexis de Tocqueville entitled, Democracy in America[1], is an examination of the functional aspects of democracy in America. Tocqueville’s observations concerning the practice of democracy in America during that time were not just on society under American democracy, but on its comparison with societies under European aristocratic and democratic systems. The purpose of Tocqueville is writing this book is not to highlight the democratic model as it exists in America but to actually shed light on the failings of democracy in France.
While Tocqueville was able to provide numerous insights and predictions concerning the future of democracy in America, one of the key insights remains his view on the coexistence of slavery and democratic principles and practices in the United States.In understanding this in the context of the direction that the United States has taken, one of the main premises of Tocqueville must first be considered. The main premise of Tocqueville is that balance of property determined the balance of political power: industriousness was a dominant ethic, and middling values began taking root. The passion to amass great fortunes of the inhabitants of America, according to Tocqueville, had begun to erode old-world ethics and social arrangements.
It must be remembered also at this point that it was the South that practiced slavery and produced a landed aristocratic class and a web of patronage and dependence.The slavery that Tocqueville witnessed was merely a result of the freedom that men enjoyed in America during the early years. In America, there was a vast expanse of land for explorers and commoners to own and any and all who arrived could own their own land and cultivate an independent life in contrast to the social and economic structure in Europe during that time where power was concentrated in the few elite. Tocqueville, who came from an aristocratic family in Europe, presented an interesting insight on the origin of slavery as caused by not merely the desire to be rich but also pride.
Tocqueville said, “The pride of origin, which is natural to the English, is singularly augmented by the personal pride which democratic liberty fosters amongst the Americans: the white citizen of the United States is proud of his race, and proud of himself (Tocqueville, Chapter XVIII).” This, Tocqueville states, is the reason why the South is hesitant to abolish slavery: “The Americans of the Southern States have two powerful passions which will always keep them aloof; the first is the fear of being assimilated to the negroes, their former slaves; and the second the dread of sinking below the whites, their neighbors (Tocqueville, Chapter XVIII).”Since the assimilation of power was based on the property controlled under the democracy, then the situation of the South as one where there existed a landed aristocratic class and a web of patronage and dependence would necessarily result in the cultivation of slavery as a means of amassing wealth. As such, it is necessary to examine just how democracy is currently being practiced in the United States.
In order to understand this, it is important to first determine what the foundations of current American democracy are. A democratic system is often mistakenly characterized as the rule of the majority. While there is usually a large group of middle class individuals that comprise this democratic system, it does not necessarily mean that the majority rule. This only means that the majority usually elects the representative to office but the hallmark of any democracy is still the protection of the rights of the minority.
The democratic system also has a feature that is unlike other systems in that there is a system of checks and balances to ensure its stability. An example of this would be the separation of powers in the United States government where the three (3) different bodies, the legislative, the judiciary, and the executive branch, are all considered as co-equals. While this was apparent during the time of Tocqueville, it did not exist to the extent that it does in the present.As Tocqueville so aptly pointed out, “The nations of our time cannot prevent the conditions of men from becoming equal, but it depends upon themselves whether the principle of equality is to lead them to servitude or freedom, to knowledge or barbarism, to prosperity or wretchedness.
This leads to another important foundation of any democratic system which is the protection of civil rights. The civil rights such as the Bill of Rights or the First ten (10) amendments of the United States Constitution are prime examples of such civil liberties. These are essential in the preservation of the democracy because they act as further checks and balances against the party who is in power. It prevents the democratic government from being used to oppress the rights of the people.
These observations of Tocqueville on the coexistence of slavery and democracy in America reveal Tocqueville’s personal criticism of slavery as an “abomination” and the direction he envisions the United States Democracy as taking. Despite being from an aristocratic family, Tocqueville held a firm belief that to enslave another human being was the worst thing you could do to him. Tocqueville theorized that the continued coexistence of slavery and democracy in the United States would eventually lead to the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of the slaves.Whatever may be the efforts of the Americans of the South to maintain slavery, they will not always succeed.
Slavery, which is now confined to a single tract of the civilized earth, which is attacked by Christianity as unjust, and by political economy as prejudicial; and which is now contrasted with democratic liberties and the information of our age, cannot survive. By the choice of the master, or by the will of the slave, it will cease; and in either case great calamities may be expected to ensue. If liberty be refused to the negroes of the South, they will in the end seize it for themselves by force; if it be given, they will abuse it ere long. (Tocqueville, Chapter XVIII) This section from clearly shows one of the predictions that Tocqueville is known for and that was the end of slavery in the democratic system of the United States.
Democracy in America clearly highlights the observations of Tocqueville regarding the issue of slavery and its existence in democracy as something that was borne out of the democratic system as an offshoot of the pride and desire to amass great fortunes and also the view that the “abomination” of slavery was something that would never last in that system. As the general elections draw near, the foundations of a democratic system become all the more evident. The right of the people to vote and to choose who they will elect as president is one of the important foundations of a representative democratic system. Without these foundations in place, there would be no way to ensure that the rights of the people are protected.
The right to select a representative ensures that everyone has a chance to be heard. In the wise words of Abraham Lincoln, Democracy is the government of the people, by the people and for the people.In view of Tocqueville and the relevance of these teachings, it must be remembered today that there is nothing more sacred to a democracy than the protection of Civil Rights. The right to be heard and the right to speak freely is an important aspect of every government that is accorded such a primacy in the hierarchy of rights.
The reason for this is that every government is primarily established for the benefit of the people and when that government, for one reason or another, fails in its solemn obligation the citizens have these Civil Rights to try to rectify the situation.Over the years, many have died to protect this right. Influential people such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King have felt passionately about this and in recent decades, social groups have become more vocal. These movements and sacrifices are now apparent in Affirmative Action which exists today.
America has to be rudely awakened by the Civil Rights Movement to realize that there is still much work to be done with regards to racism in this country. When Martin Luther King, Jr. died, the nation was ready for a major change. Ending segregation in the South and improving the status of the Negro race is now the correct thing to do.
It was the late John F. Kennedy, the first U.S. President since Abraham Lincoln who signed another landmark law, a directive that will improve the lives of all African-Americans in this country.
As the United States continues to grow in population size, the impact that the minorities have on the future of America will no longer be a minor one, to say the least. Without any effective action, these minorities will not be able to take advantage of the opportunities that America has to offer. Affirmative action was supposed to be the future of a great America. An America as envisioned by the forefathers who declared that no person shall be denied the right to life, liberty or property just on the basis of the color of his skin.
Any effective action with regard to improving society should not be about segregating people or creating a different class. It should instead focus on creating opportunities for those who have none and building relationships that will ensure that America can remains as the great country that it has been and is for ages to come.This is how Tocqueville has influenced American Democracy. Over the years, there has been an evolution from slavery into a more progressive form of Democracy that does not discriminate.
As the first minority President, Barack Obama, prepares to lead the United States, it remains to be seen whether or not further progress will be made and how the principle of equality, as Tocqueville envisioned it will be made manifest.[1] De la démocratie en Amérique, literal translation of its title is Of the Democracy in America, but the common translation of the title is Democracy in America
Effects Of Technology On The Accounting Profession
Technological innovations over the past 30 to 40 years have greatly enhanced accounting and finance activities, procedures, and policies. Although technology is certainly not new to accounting, recent advances have altered all aspects of the accounting function, including: economic measurement, financial reporting, managerial planning and control, and auditing. The role of technology and computers within the organization also has changed.
Local area (LAN) and wide area (WAN) network activities, including the Internet and the many forms of Electronic Commerce and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), in addition to Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and other applications, have transformed the way accounting is done, calling into question the importance of traditionally valued accounting functions and skills (Lewis, 2003). Technology will be an integral component and vehicle for that change, serving as a knowledge-based repository. Intranet and Web-based software and applications will be the foundation for this technology.Technology allows many more highly diverse, geographically dispersed, intellectually specialized talents to be capitalized as resources of an information-age organization.
Network systems provide a common language and database for communications, capturing critical factual data about external environments, and helping individuals find knowledge sources and solve problems. As soon as a firm takes its first steps from data to information, its decision processes and management structure are transformed. As professional service firms, accounting practices are in the forefront of this nowledge management. Accountants exploit their personal knowledge and training, codify that knowledge into explicit knowledge to be shared by other members of their firms, and use that collective knowledge to provide value-added services to clients.
The codification, storage, and communication of that knowledge rely heavily on innovative technologies. Although accounting has used technology for decades, the impact of knowledge management on today’s organizations has elevated the role and application of technology to preeminence.Technology is essential to support the creation and dissemination of knowledge within members of global organizations as well as provide essential tools for decision support. This has created a transformation in the tasks done by accountants, the way information is processed, stored, and communicated, and ultimately the skills needed by accounting professionals.
Educators and professionals according to Lewis (2003) have long identified areas such as communication and analytical skills as necessary for success in the accounting profession.With technology’s strong penetration into the profession, other skills and qualities have become essential. Specifically, technological proficiency will be required of all entrants into the profession and will be positively related with professional success. Thus, the generally accepted attributes assumed to lead to professional success (technical proficiency in the field of accounting) must be supplemented to include those attributes required to achieve technological proficiency.
The new post-industrial or information paradigm of wealth creation is profoundly changing the way business is being conducted, making traditional accounting concepts and methods inadequate to service this new model. The choices of the profession are, therefore, either to adapt to the new demands or to become irrelevant. The role of the accountant within the organization will be significantly different from what it has been in the past and other professional bodies have identified several transformative aspects of the accounting profession.One large component of this change will be due to innovative technological applications in the field and in our society in general and others have identified the impact of technology on various aspects of our professional and personal lives.
In 2001, The International Federation of Accountant issued a paper entitled Information Technology for Professional Accountants. The paper states that due to technological advancement accounting profession face many challenges: Information technologies are affecting the way in which organizations are structured, managed and operated. One of the most dramatic developments affecting organizations is the fusion of business and IT strategy. Entities can no longer develop business strategy separate from IT strategy and vice versa.
Accordingly, there is a need for the integration of sound business and information technology planning and the incorporation of effective financial and management controls within new systems.Traditionally, professional accountants have been entrusted with the tasks of evaluating investments in business systems, evaluating business system designs and reporting on potential weaknesses. Increasingly, information technology deployments are supported by extensive organizational restructuring around such technologies. To maintain both the accountancy profession’s credibility and capability in supporting new, strategic information technology initiatives and the public’s trust and confidence, the competence of professional accountants in IT strategy must be preserved and enhanced.
Information technologies are changing the nature and economics of accounting activity. The career plans of professional accountants and related training systems must be based on a realistic view of the changing nature of accounting, the accountancy profession’s changing role in providing services to business, government and the community at large, and the knowledge and skills required for future success as a professional accountant.Some IT skills, such as the ability to use an electronic spreadsheet, are now indispensable, and professional accounting bodies must ensure that candidates possess core IT skills before they qualify as members of those bodies. In addition, since an increasing number of professional accountants are engaged in providing IT-related advisory and evaluative services, it is important that professional accountancy bodies maintain the quality and credibility of these services through both prequalification and post qualification education requirements.
Information technologies are changing the competitive environment in which professional accountants participate. Information technologies are either eliminating some areas of practice that were once the exclusive domain of professional accountants or reducing their economic attractiveness. For example: – Accounting and accounting system developments was once the virtually exclusive domain of professional accountants. Today, inexpensive, easy-to-use and powerful prepackaged ccounting software is reducing the demand for those activities or enabling non-accountants to offer those services.
At the same time, there is an increasing demand for professionals with a combination of business and IT skills to help organizations structure their systems to provide effective and efficient support for their primary objectives and activities. – Tax planning and tax return preparation have traditionally represented important activities for many professional accountants.Today, inexpensive, easy-to-use and powerful prepackaged software is reducing the demand for tax return preparation services. The professional tax planning expertise that was once the exclusive domain of individual practitioners is increasingly being embedded within these same tax packages, reducing the demand for such services as well.
In the past, accountants with internal and external auditing expertise were needed in great numbers to vouch and trace documents, to perform a variety of analyses and to document audit work.Today, the computerization of business records and the availability of computer-assisted auditing tools mean these activities can be performed faster and more thoroughly, again reducing the demand for such activities.Reference:Shaw, L. (2003).
The Impact of Knowledge Management and Technology on the Accounting Profession and Accounting Education: A Cognitive Styles Assessment Study. SUFFOLK University, Accounting Department. December 3, 2005, from http://www. suffolkacct.
org/lshaw/acct865/TechnologyandAccounting. doc
Effects Of The Legacies Of Colonialism On Women’s Work
One of the most notable vestiges of colonialism in third world countries has been its effect on the life of indigenous women in the former colonies. Whole new ways of doing things were transported from Europe and foisted on third world countries by various ways and means. The social and religious tenets of Europe, which the colonial rulers considered superior to what they met in the colonies, were condescendingly imposed on the hapless people of the colonies with long lasting negative consequences.
Overnight, age old ways of doing things were uprooted and replaced by ill-suited social and work ideologies and religious thoughts. Prior to the advent of colonialism, women in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Oceania had maintained harmonious relationships with their immediate world – their male counterparts, their families and the environment. For instance economic activities in most of the indigenous communities were not sequestered in the same rigid manner between female and male as was the case with Europeans of that time.
Studies on the lives of women in the pre-colonial Yoruba nation of Nigeria show that “their society considered the work the women did complementary to the work of men, and some women achieved impressive status in the economic and social realms of Yoruba life” (Rojas 1). The same was true amongst their pre-colonial counterparts in the Igbo nation as Lord Frederick Lugard, one of Britain’s colonial administrators in Nigeria, described them as “ambitious, courageous, self-reliant, hard-working, and independent. [They] claim full equality with the opposite sex, and would seem indeed to be the dominant partner. (Bookrags). One other way colonialism affected the third world’s woman was that it disorganized the erstwhile ordered view of her work expectations vis-a-vis those of the men folk in a traditional African setting. This fact was vividly articulated by Emecheta, in The Joys of Motherhood, in her story of a native woman, Nnu Ego, who could not reconcile the expectations in her native patriarchal society with the situation she found her husband as a domestic servant in the imposed society of a colonized nation where her husband was made to perform the unmanly duties of washing women underwear.
The arrival of colonial administrators from Europe, with entrenched ideologies of ‘separate spheres’ for both sexes, which were based on the life patterns of an avidly patriarchal Europe, changed the status of women in most of the conquered indigenous communities. As a consequence public policy doctrines and the direction of colonial administration in the colonies were influenced and determined by a male oriented era, thus impacting education, career development and work definitions in like manner.
The legacies left behind by this interplay of the direction of state policy and the colonial administrative preferences regarding women gave women’s work the coloration that persists till this day in former colonies. These same principles have been adopted and perfected by the owners of capital who replaced the colonialists at the advent of capitalism and neo-colonialism. The legacies of patriarchal colonial policies on women’s work
According to Mash “early Victorian gender prescriptions featured men as industrious breadwinners and women as their helpmates, (…) whereby men were figured as competitors in the amoral, economic realm while women were positioned as either decorative trophies or spiritual guardians of men’s immortal souls. ” This line of thinking permeated the structures of social and political behavior and defined the nature of administration in the colonies as Berveley argues:
The fact, however, that the post colonial state would have derived its socio-cultural characteristics from colonialism highlights the ways in which legacies of sexism have influenced contemporary understandings, and corroborates with and legitimates the argument of Linden Lewis (2002) concerning the masculinist nature of the post-colonial state in its orientation and policy.
The same colonial policy of male dominance was implemented in the colonies in Africa where April Gordon argued that “the colonial capitalist economy has been effective in embedding their colonialist values into the colonized society, and dividing labour between men and women in such a way as to give men control over women and their productive resources” (qtd. in Walker ). Colonial educational heritage and women’s work The most important agent of re-socialization used by the colonialists to redefine women work and economic endeavors was colonial education, which emphasized separateness between the sexes in school curriculum and composition.
Narrating the Jamaican colonial experience to show how the colonial administration determined women education and by extension, work, Berveley stated that “The fact that the law aided and abetted separatism and contributed to gender polarization points to ways in which the state understood Jamaican femininity and masculinity, and its use of the law in instructing both sexes in different ways. ” The end result of these colonial educational policies was that women were essentially trained for positions where they would be under the control and direction of men all through their working lives. Women’s work: The legacies of colonialism
The discriminatory practices against women in work places assumed harsher undertones as the latter day owners of capital, who replaced colonialism in much of the third world countries quickly latched on to the enormous exploitative economic potentials presented by products of the colonial educational policy – cheap female labour. For instance, despite the tremendous advances made by all classes of women in acquiring education in diverse fields as the barriers that hitherto determined their career options disappeared in the in the later part of the 20thth century, evidence of discrimination against women still persisted in work places.
According to Berveley “Despite the fact that the graduates of the University of West Indies were 79 per cent female in recent years, the majority of women seem crowded into low-wage jobs, creating a feminization of poverty and social breakdown. This suggests continued strength of ideologies that confer inferiority on women’s intellectual gains and capacities” To capitalise on these opportunities many more factories have sprung up in South East Asia, South America and Africa to harvest these cheap labour for the creation of much capital for the neo-colonialists, and more misery and destitution for exploited women workers.
It has now become common practice for the maquiladoras of multinational companies to hire only women (particularly young women or minors), because “it is logical in this scheme of things to want to pay $14. 00 a week in Honduras instead of $14. 00 an hour in the United States” (Zwick 1). Women resistance Expectedly these discriminatory practices have not gone unchallenged by women. Historical accounts abound of the resistance mounted by women of all classes and races over the past seventy years to confront these discriminatory colonial legacies which have consigned them to the lower rungs of work and societal ladders.
Some of these instances of resistance have been covert and clandestine, others confrontational. The Aba Women’s Riot of 1929, is perhaps one of the most notable organised resistance of indigenous women to the encroachment of colonialism on their established economic system. “This was touched off by the imposition of direct taxation and the introduction of new local courts and especially of warrant chiefs” (Boehen 79). The riots were solely organised and executed in parts of the Igbo nation of South Eastern Nigeria.
Some more recent and subtle protests have been documented by Pena (103) in his essay Like Turtles on the Line, based on the conduct of women workers in an RCA assembly line in Mexico, “We put the brakes on it all the time. As the engineers would like to say; we withdrew our efficiency. We did … what do we call it? …tortuguisma. We worked at a tortoise’s pace” However, some the protest of the women in these factories took the more dangerous routs of sabotage and disruption of work. It was after this that we decided to fight back any way we could. And so we started very cautiously and deliberately by sabotaging components … It got to the point where the girls competed with each other to see who could come up with the smartest and fastest way of messing things up” (Pena 102 ). With the factory floor as the re-learning locations, women workers learnt to amalgamate their individual strengths towards grinding work to the level of “turtles on the line” in their attempt to pay back exploitative employers.
Another narration by another female worker showed that “from the start, the group was clandestine. Our actions in the factory were invisible until the time we hit with the walkout and sabotage” (qtd. in Pena 103). Other more elaborate female activism have resulted in the enactment of positive discriminatory and protective laws in favour of women in many ‘first world countries’, ostensibly prompting the relocation of the exploitative practices of their multinational companies to third world countries where such laws are yet to take root. Conclusion
The tortuous legacy bequeathed on women by colonialism vividly tells the story of the institution of the machinery of exploitation by colonialism, and which has been taken up in many instances by the capitalist mode of operation. The activism of women which led to affirmative action and protective legislations in many parts of the world has shown as Pena noted that ‘When workers rebel, they challenge the open-ended exploitation capital seeks to impose in its Endemic “haven of productivity” (much like colonialism). The workplace is more than the sum of capitalist imperatives.
The factory is not just a collection of “dead labor – that is machinery and technology” (103). The human dimension of work should be put into consideration to avoid a re-enactment of the slave fields of the American South where women were not even accorded the respectability of womanhood, but were considered instruments of production, along with their male counterparts.
Works Cited
Beverley, Shirley. “No Woman No Cry: Understanding Women’s Incremental Gains and the Transformative Potential of Feminism within Twentieth Century Jamaica” GEM-IWG WP 06-17. (2006) 26 January 2007 < www. genderandmacro. rg>. Boehen A. Adu. African Perspectives on Colonialism. Baltimore. 1987 Bookrags. Ibo Women of Nigeria. 31 January 2007 http://www. bookrags. com/history/ibo-women-of-nigeria/ Emecheta, Buchi. The Joys of Motherhood. New York: George Braziller, 1979. Mash, Jan. “Gender Ideology and Separate Spheres” Gender, Health, Medicine & Sexuality in Victorian England. 28 January 2007. <http://www. vam. ac. uk/collections/periods_styles/19thcentury/gender_health/gender_ideology/index. html>. Pena, Devon. “The Terror of the Machine: Technology, Work, Gender and Ecology on the US-Mexico Border. University of Texas Press. 1997 Rojas, Maria. Women in Pre-Colonial Nigeria. African Post Colonial Litterature in English. 1990. 31 January 2007 <http://www. scholars. nus. edu. sg/post/nigeria/precolwon. html> Walker, Trina. “Colonial Inheritances: The Effects of Colonial Education on Women in Developing Nations, A Case Study in Barbados. ” 27 January 2007 <http://www-mcnair. berkeley. edu/2003journal/Twalker. html> Zwick, Mark and Louise. New Colonialism Emerging: Whither Beijing. Houston Catholic Worker 6. 1995. 31 January 2007 <http://www. cjd. org/paper/beijing1. html>