Traditional Forms of Dress Essay Example

Traditional Forms of Dress Essay Example Traditional Forms of Dress Paper Traditional Forms of Dress Paper Clothing has long ago ceased to be just a protection from the cold and the sun and has evolved as fast as the human race. Animals show off bright colours to attract others at mating time and the human animal too has found it necessary to flaunt his or her looks. To help us to do this, since we have neither features nor fur, we have clothes as an excellent substitute.  Just like cultivation, clothes have evolved differently in different countries. So each country has its own traditional clothes. Usually clothes start out as being practical and later evolve as fashions. Clothes too develop according to cultures and, especially, religious beliefs. In countries where women are expected to be modest in dress, they cover themselves more. In other cultures there are no rules. In come societies where being practical in order to survive is the main rule, minimum clothing is emphasized for both men and women. But one thing stands out; traditional dress is usually graceful and says a lot about the history and cultures of the people. Most traditional clothes are graceful; at least cultures of the wearers. Most societies in the world want to maintain their cultures. In countries where many cultures prevail because of migrant communities like Singapore, there is fervour to preserve all the cultures when the word culture is mentioned, almost without exception clothes take a leading position. It is common to see clothes of bygone eras being exhibited in museums as examples of culture. Along with dancing, art and language clothes are one of the visible aspects of a culture. If we agree that tradition must be preserved then, traditional clothes must be preserved. The two can be said to be inseparable. Preserving tradition, on the other hand, does not mean that we should always wear them. The tendency today is to adopt clothes from other societies if they are more convenient: for example, the worker in India who has been wearing the white clothing for centuries, when doing outdoor work now finds that jeans, that great American creation is much more convenient. In fact, he probably wonders how his ancestors ever worked in clothes. But this does not in the least mean that he has given up clothes and begun to wear jeans- far from it; out of work he still wears the traditional clothing. So we have a good example of tradition being maintained while being practical about clothes. There are certain occasions when it is more practical to wear clothes from other countries, usually western clothes and it would be simply to insist otherwise. Then, again, as it is important to preserve traditional clothes there are certain other occasions when traditional clothes will be ideal. There are also certain occasions when traditional clothes are a must. There are occasions like weddings and other cultural functions when the graceful traditional clothes will add colour and gaiety to the occasion. In Singapore, it is permissible to wear ones ethnic traditional clothes to even the most formal function, even at the presidential palace. However, it turns out that only the ladies will appear in traditional clothes at such functions. This is no wonder as theirs, all our cultures are truly magnificent whereas, for some inexplicable reason, gentlemens clothes are plain and simple. Men wearing the traditional clothes beside their ladies are likely to appear like servants. Hence, it is common to find ladies adorned in traditional clothes while the gentlemen are in smart tuxedos; so much for preserving traditional clothes. The argument could be: preserving them need not mean wearing them.  Preserving traditions is akin to preserving the soul of a society. They take centuries to evolve and represent milestones in the evolving of a culture. Traditional clothes take the leading position when it comes to maintaining traditions and this is most welcome.

Properties and Functions of Money

Properties and Functions of Money Money is an important feature of virtually every economy. Without money, members of a society must rely on the barter system, or some other exchange program, in order to trade goods and services. Unfortunately, the barter system has an important downside in that it requires a double coincidence of wants. In other words, the two parties engaged in a trade must both want what the other is offering. This feature makes the barter system highly inefficient. For example, a plumber looking to feed his family would have to search out a farmer who needs plumbing work done on his house or farm. If such a farmer were not available, the plumber would have to figure out how to trade his services for something that the farmer wanted so that the farmer would be willing to sell food to the plumber. Luckily, money largely solves this problem. What Is Money? In order to understand much of macroeconomics, its crucial to have a clear definition of what money is. In general, people tend to use the term money as a synonym for wealth (e.g. Warren Buffett has a lot of money), but economists are quick to clarify that the two terms are not, in fact, synonymous. In economics, the term money is used specifically to refer to currency, which is, in most cases, not an individuals only source of wealth or assets. In most economies, this currency is in the form of paper bills and metal coins that the government has created, but technically anything can serve as money as long as it possesses three important properties. The Properties and Functions of Money The item serves as a medium of exchange. In order for an item to be considered money, it must be widely accepted as payment for goods and services. In this way, money creates efficiency because it eliminates uncertainty regarding what is going to be accepted as payment by various businesses.The item serves as a unit of account. In order for an item to be considered money, it must be the unit that prices, bank balances, etc. are reported in. Having a consistent unit of account creates efficiency since it would be pretty confusing to have the price of bread quoted as a number of fish, the price of fish quoted in terms of t-shirts, and so on.The item serves as a store of value. In order for an item to be considered money, it has to (to a reasonable degree) hold its purchasing power over time. This feature of money adds to efficiency because it gives producers and consumers flexibility in the timing of purchases and sales, eliminating the need to immediately trade ones income for goods a nd services. As these properties suggest, money was introduced to societies as a means of making economic transactions simpler and more efficient, and it mostly succeeds in that regard. In some situations, items other than officially designated currency have been used as money in various economies. For example, it used to be somewhat common in countries with unstable governments (and also in prisons) to use cigarettes as money, even though there was no official decree that cigarettes served that function. Instead, they became widely accepted as payment for goods and services and prices began to be quoted in the number of cigarettes rather than in official currency. Because cigarettes have a reasonably long shelf life, they do in fact serve the three functions of money. One important distinction between items that are officially designated as money by a government and items that become money by convention or popular decree is that governments will often pass laws stating what citizens can and cannot do with money. For example, it is illegal in the United States to do anything to money that makes the money unable to be further used as money. In contrast, there are no laws against burning cigarettes, aside from those banning smoking in public places of course.