Category: Essay Examples
Essay examples are of great value for students who want to complete their assignments timely and efficiently. If you are a student in the university, your first stop in the quest for research paper examples will be the campus library where you can get to view the sample essays of lecturers and other professionals in diverse fields plus those of fellow students who preceded you in the campus.
Browse Essay Examples:
Many college departments maintain libraries of previous student work, including essays, which current students can examine. This collection of free essay examples is our attempt to provide high quality samples of different types of essays on a variety of topics for your study and inspiration.
In its simplest form, cultural diffusion is the borrowing of cultural elements from one culture by another. Aspects of material culture include clothing styles, musical structures, medicine, and agricultural practices, whereas normative traits such as ideas, behavioral patterns, religion, language, and values are another component of culture. Borrowing …
Cultural imperialism refers to the practice by which one society forwards or imposes its cultural beliefs, values, normative practices, and symbols on another society. Generally, cultural imperialism involves a power relationship, because only those groups enjoying economic, military, or spatial dominance have the ability to inflict their systems …
Cultural lag occurs when the proliferation of technological and material advancement outpaces the normative dimensions of a civilization’s blueprint for social existence. When technology advances more quickly than the social expectations and considerations surrounding new innovations, cultural lag is present. Although technological development and knowledge for knowledge’s sake …
Cultural relativism is a methodological concept rooted in social theory. The term indicates that a society’s beliefs, values, normative practices, and products must be evaluated and understood according to the cultural context from which they emerge. No society should be evaluated with reference to some set of universal …
The notion of “cultural values” brings together two powerful social science concepts to produce a concept that is seductive yet slippery and contentious. It is seductive in that it purports to explain or interpret human behavior, especially differences in behavior between groups, through an emphasis on how human …
A culture of dependency is defined as a type of culture that relies upon, and comes to expect, state benefits and other support to maintain it. Overall the usage is best related to the neoconservative supply-side view of welfare in the 1990s. The argument of a culture of …
The culture of poverty, originally termed the subculture of poverty, is a concept that first appeared in 1959 in the work of North American anthropologist Oscar Lewis. As the name implies, this theory focuses attention on the cultural aspects of poverty. The theory holds that adaptation to the …
The term culture shock was first introduced in the 1950s by anthropologist Kalvero Oberg, who defined it as an illness or disease. Later studies focused on cognitive, behavioral, phenomenological, and psychosociological explanations. In general, culture shock is a consequence of immersion in a culture that is distinctly different …
The phrase culture wars refers to the conflicts between individuals or groups who see themselves as either preserving or, in some measure, changing fundamental cultural understandings and practices. These conflicts play out in the political arena and in the battle for public opinion. The earliest use of the …
The current account deficit is broader than the generally well-known trade deficit because it includes the deficit (or surplus) on investments and both personal (think foreigners sending money home) and government (think foreign aid or military assistance) transfer payments. A current account is the difference between exports and …
Cyberspace is an invisible realm occupied by electronically mediated communication. Coined by science fiction writer William Gibson as a tool to describe a global computer network, the term cyberspace closely identifies with the age of the information revolution. Derived from the Greek verb Kubernao (to steer), the term …
In this essay, debt service is defined as the repayment of principal and interest on loans to sovereign entities such as cities and nation-states. This restriction of the definition facilitates a focus on social issues precipitated or aggravated by the repayment of such obligations. Most commonly, governments fund …
Decriminalization broadly refers to the removal or reduction of criminal penalties from particular substances or activities. Although the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably, decriminalization and legalization are not the same thing. Legalization implies complete removal of governmental control, whereas acts or substances that are decriminalized are still …
Deforestation is the clearing and destruction of forests. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that deforestation accounts for the loss of 13 million hectares of forests annually. At this rate, nearly all of the world’s tropical rain forests will be depleted by the …
Deindustrialization is a term that describes the decline in manufacturing (or goods producing) employment occurring in the United States and other industrialized countries since the 1970s. Indeed, between the late 1970s and 2000s, the share of workers employed in goods-producing industries declined from approximately one third to one …
Deinstitutionalization—the movement of mentally disabled people from mental institutions into a community- or family-based environment—is a concept that transformed in a generation from a solution to a problem. Introduced in the early 1960s as a way to reduce societal reliance on state institutions, the policy itself became a …
Originating from the Latin word demens, meaning “without a mind,” the term dementia historically designated social and intellectual deterioration associated with old age. However, beginning in the late 19th century, the medical characterization of dementia increased in specificity with the rise of biological sciences and the advent of …
Demilitarization refers to the dismantling or deconstruction of militarism. Militarism is the influence of the military as an institution and of the preparations to use military force on the overall social organization of society. Demilitarization can be seen as taking place along several dimensions, which may or may …
Democracy is an ancient Greek word meaning the rule (kratos) of the people (demos). It refers primarily to a form of government in which political decisions are made by a majority of the citizens (direct democracy) or their elected representatives (representative democracy). Democracy also signifies a country, society, …
Prior to the 20th century, many social scientists believed that at some point the carrying capacity of the earth would be outstripped by the needs of the rapidly growing human population. However, during the 20th century, data became available that led social scientists to abandon the idea that …