Answer the following question based on the information given below.
The table below shows the overview of World Economic Outlook projections released by the IMF (International Monetary Fund) for the period 2006-11. The percentage change is calculated on Economic Output (EO) for that region.
Which region has the second highest simple annual average percentage change in the given period including the percentage growth in 2006 over the previous year?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
The table below shows the overview of World Economic Outlook projections released by the IMF (International Monetary Fund) for the period 2006-11. The percentage change is calculated on Economic Output (EO) for that region.
Q.
If the Economic Output of the United States in 2006 is twice that of 1 Marks Mexico in 2006, by what percentage is the Economic Output of the United States in 2008 more than that of Mexico in 2008?
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Answer the following question based on the information given below.
The table below shows the overview of World Economic Outlook projections released by the IMF (International Monetary Fund) for the period 2006-11. The percentage change is calculated on Economic Output (EO) for that region.
Q.
What is the numerical difference between percentage increase in the world Output in 2009 to the average percentage increase in Output per region in 2009?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
The table below shows the overview of World Economic Outlook projections released by the IMF (International Monetary Fund) for the period 2006-11. The percentage change is calculated on Economic Output (EO) for that region.
Q.
The Economic Output of the Middle East and CIS countries was the same in 2005. The Economic Output of the CIS countries in 2008 was what percentage of that of the Middle East in 2008?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
The table below shows the overview of World Economic Outlook projections released by the IMF (International Monetary Fund) for the period 2006-11. The percentage change is calculated on Economic Output (EO) for that region.
Q.
If the Economic Output of the CIS countries was the same in 2007 1 Marks as well as in 2011, what was the ratio of the Economic Output of the CIS countries in 2006 to their Economic Output in 2010?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Pappu and his five friends visited ‘Heart Rock Cafe’ on New-year’s eve. Cocktails are priced according to the cost of ingredients used. Further there is an extra service charge of Rs. 50 per glass of cocktail served.
The per bottle (1000 ml) cost of Vodka, Rum, Tequila, Brandy, Juice and Cola is Rs. 1,500, Rs.750, Rs. 2,200, Rs. 500, Rs. 300 and Rs. 100 respectively.
Table 1 shows the break up (by volume) of each drink, for eg - 27 units of Blue Hawaii contains 3 units of Vodka and 7 units of Rum.
Table 2 shows the number of glasses of different cocktails consumed by each friend e.g. - Mathews consumed 3 glasses of Blue Hawaii.
Analyze the following table and answer the subsequent questions.
Q.
How much money was spent on Tequila (excluding the service charges)?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Pappu and his five friends visited ‘Heart Rock Cafe’ on New-year’s eve. Cocktails are priced according to the cost of ingredients used. Further there is an extra service charge of Rs. 50 per glass of cocktail served.
The per bottle (1000 ml) cost of Vodka, Rum, Tequila, Brandy, Juice and Cola is Rs. 1,500, Rs.750, Rs. 2,200, Rs. 500, Rs. 300 and Rs. 100 respectively.
Table 1 shows the break up (by volume) of each drink, for eg - 27 units of Blue Hawaii contains 3 units of Vodka and 7 units of Rum.
Table 2 shows the number of glasses of different cocktails consumed by each friend e.g. - Mathews consumed 3 glasses of Blue Hawaii.
Analyze the following table and answer the subsequent questions.
Q.
If Vodka, Rum, Tequila and Brandy fall under the category of ‘Liquor’, which of the following cocktails has the highest concentration of liquor?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Pappu and his five friends visited ‘Heart Rock Cafe’ on New-year’s eve. Cocktails are priced according to the cost of ingredients used. Further there is an extra service charge of Rs. 50 per glass of cocktail served.
The per bottle (1000 ml) cost of Vodka, Rum, Tequila, Brandy, Juice and Cola is Rs. 1,500, Rs.750, Rs. 2,200, Rs. 500, Rs. 300 and Rs. 100 respectively.
Table 1 shows the break up (by volume) of each drink, for eg - 27 units of Blue Hawaii contains 3 units of Vodka and 7 units of Rum.
Table 2 shows the number of glasses of different cocktails consumed by each friend e.g. - Mathews consumed 3 glasses of Blue Hawaii.
Analyze the following table and answer the subsequent questions.
Q.
Who among the following consumed maximum amount of Vodka?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Pappu and his five friends visited ‘Heart Rock Cafe’ on New-year’s eve. Cocktails are priced according to the cost of ingredients used. Further there is an extra service charge of Rs. 50 per glass of cocktail served.
The per bottle (1000 ml) cost of Vodka, Rum, Tequila, Brandy, Juice and Cola is Rs. 1,500, Rs.750, Rs. 2,200, Rs. 500, Rs. 300 and Rs. 100 respectively.
Table 1 shows the break up (by volume) of each drink, for eg - 27 units of Blue Hawaii contains 3 units of Vodka and 7 units of Rum.
Table 2 shows the number of glasses of different cocktails consumed by each friend e.g. - Mathews consumed 3 glasses of Blue Hawaii.
Analyze the following table and answer the subsequent questions.
Q.
If each of Pappu’s friends paid their respective bills, how much did Pappu shell out?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Pappu and his five friends visited ‘Heart Rock Cafe’ on New-year’s eve. Cocktails are priced according to the cost of ingredients used. Further there is an extra service charge of Rs. 50 per glass of cocktail served.
The per bottle (1000 ml) cost of Vodka, Rum, Tequila, Brandy, Juice and Cola is Rs. 1,500, Rs.750, Rs. 2,200, Rs. 500, Rs. 300 and Rs. 100 respectively.
Table 1 shows the break up (by volume) of each drink, for eg - 27 units of Blue Hawaii contains 3 units of Vodka and 7 units of Rum.
Table 2 shows the number of glasses of different cocktails consumed by each friend e.g. - Mathews consumed 3 glasses of Blue Hawaii.
Analyze the following table and answer the subsequent questions.
Q.
Who among the group is suffering from diabetes, if it is known that he would consume minimum sugar? (Assume that sugar is present only in Cola)
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Table 1 shows the number of high net worth individuals (HNWI), very high net worth individuals (VHNWI) and ultra high net worth individuals (UHNWI) in six countries for the year 2015. All values are in millions.
HNWI have assets worth atleast 1 million US $., VHNWI have assets worth atleast 5 million US $ and UHNWI have assets worth atleast 30 million US $.
Table 2 shows the population distribution across the globe for the same year.
Table 1:
Table 2:
Based on the given data, answer the subsequent questions.
. Q.
If the countries in table 1 were to be ranked according to their total 1 Marks population with the country having the highest and least population ranked first and sixth respectively, which of the top three countries would have the least UHNWI to HNWI ratio?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Table 1 shows the number of high net worth individuals (HNWI), very high net worth individuals (VHNWI) and ultra high net worth individuals (UHNWI) in six countries for the year 2015. All values are in millions.
HNWI have assets worth atleast 1 million US $., VHNWI have assets worth atleast 5 million US $ and UHNWI have assets worth atleast 30 million US $.
Table 2 shows the population distribution across the globe for the same year.
Table 1:
Table 2:
Based on the given data, answer the subsequent questions.
. Q.
Which country in table 1 has got the highest percentage of VHNWI (but not UHNWI) with respect to its total population? (Assume the total population across globe is 5 .95 billion)
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Table 1 shows the number of high net worth individuals (HNWI), very high net worth individuals (VHNWI) and ultra high net worth individuals (UHNWI) in six countries for the year 2015. All values are in millions.
HNWI have assets worth atleast 1 million US $., VHNWI have assets worth atleast 5 million US $ and UHNWI have assets worth atleast 30 million US $.
Table 2 shows the population distribution across the globe for the same year.
Table 1:
Table 2:
Based on the given data, answer the subsequent questions.
. Q.
In USA, if the total number of HNWI who are neither VHNWI nor UHNWI is 0.667 % of its population, what is the percentage of HNWI in Russia?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
Table 1 shows the number of high net worth individuals (HNWI), very high net worth individuals (VHNWI) and ultra high net worth individuals (UHNWI) in six countries for the year 2015. All values are in millions.
HNWI have assets worth atleast 1 million US $., VHNWI have assets worth atleast 5 million US $ and UHNWI have assets worth atleast 30 million US $.
Table 2 shows the population distribution across the globe for the same year.
Table 1:
Table 2:
Based on the given data, answer the subsequent questions.
. Q.
Assuming that no individual has personal assets over 50 million US $, what is the maximum possible per capita asset of India, if HNWI contributes to 35% of all the assets? (Use data from previous question if required)
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
The table below is the data that the team selectors of Cricket India used to select the players for a particular tournament. The table gives the total runs scored by senior and junior cricket players in their last 10 matches. In the table, the 60 players are divided in to 18 groups based on their total score in their last 10 matches. The table also gives the total score of the players scoring maximum and minimum runs in their last 10 matches in their respective groups. Senior players are those who played more than 100 matches. Junior players are those who played less than 50 matches.
Q.
The percentage of junior players that scored a total of 297 or below is
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
The table below is the data that the team selectors of Cricket India used to select the players for a particular tournament. The table gives the total runs scored by senior and junior cricket players in their last 10 matches. In the table, the 60 players are divided in to 18 groups based on their total score in their last 10 matches. The table also gives the total score of the players scoring maximum and minimum runs in their last 10 matches in their respective groups. Senior players are those who played more than 100 matches. Junior players are those who played less than 50 matches.
Q.
Which of the following statements is true?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
The table below is the data that the team selectors of Cricket India used to select the players for a particular tournament. The table gives the total runs scored by senior and junior cricket players in their last 10 matches. In the table, the 60 players are divided in to 18 groups based on their total score in their last 10 matches. The table also gives the total score of the players scoring maximum and minimum runs in their last 10 matches in their respective groups. Senior players are those who played more than 100 matches. Junior players are those who played less than 50 matches.
Q.
The percentage of players who scored between 251 and 300 runs (both values inclusive) is at least:
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
The table below is the data that the team selectors of Cricket India used to select the players for a particular tournament. The table gives the total runs scored by senior and junior cricket players in their last 10 matches. In the table, the 60 players are divided in to 18 groups based on their total score in their last 10 matches. The table also gives the total score of the players scoring maximum and minimum runs in their last 10 matches in their respective groups. Senior players are those who played more than 100 matches. Junior players are those who played less than 50 matches.
Q.
Which of the following statements is true?
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
The table below is the data that the team selectors of Cricket India used to select the players for a particular tournament. The table gives the total runs scored by senior and junior cricket players in their last 10 matches. In the table, the 60 players are divided in to 18 groups based on their total score in their last 10 matches. The table also gives the total score of the players scoring maximum and minimum runs in their last 10 matches in their respective groups. Senior players are those who played more than 100 matches. Junior players are those who played less than 50 matches.
Q.
Which of the following statements is false?
The passage given below is followed by a set of questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.
My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.
I give Pirrip as my father's family name, on the authority of his tombstone and my sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith. As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father's, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription, "Also Georgiana Wife of the Above," I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly. To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine, who gave up trying to get a living, exceedingly early in that universal struggle, I am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence.
Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dikes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip.
"Hold your noise!" cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from among the graves at the side of the church porch. "Keep still, you little devil, or I'll cut your throat!"
A fearful man, all in coarse gray, with a great iron on his leg. A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared, and growled; and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin.
"Oh! Don't cut my throat, sir," I pleaded in terror. "Pray don't do it, sir."
"Tell us your name!" said the man. "Quick!"
"Pip, sir."
"Once more," said the man, staring at me. "Give it mouth!"
"Pip. Pip, sir."
"Show us where you live," said the man. "Pint out the place!"
I pointed to where our village lay, on the flat in-shore among the alder- trees and pollards, a mile or more from the church.
The man, after looking at me for a moment, turned me upside down, and emptied my pockets. There was nothing in them but a piece of bread. When the church came to itself, for he was so sudden and strong that he made it go head over heels before me, and I saw the steeple under my feet, when the church came to itself, I say, I was seated on a high tombstone, trembling while he ate the bread ravenously.
"You young dog," said the man, licking his lips, "what fat cheeks you ha' got."
I believe they were fat, though I was at that time undersized for my years, and not strong.
"Darn me if I couldn't eat em," said the man, with a threatening shake of his head, "and if I han't half a mind to't!"
I earnestly expressed my hope that he wouldn't, and held tighter to the tombstone on which he had put me; partly, to keep myself upon it; partly, to keep myself from crying.
"Now lookee here!" said the man. "Where's your mother?"
"There, sir!" said I.
He started, made a short run, and stopped and looked over his shoulder. "There, sir!" I timidly explained. "Also Georgiana. That's my mother."
"Oh!" said he, coming back. "And is that your father alonger your mother?" "Yes, sir," said I; "him too; late of this parish."
"Ha!" he muttered then, considering. "Who d'ye live with, supposin' you're kindly let to live, which I han't made up my mind about?"
"My sister, sir, Mrs. Joe Gargery, wife of Joe Gargery, the blacksmith, sir." "Blacksmith, eh?" said he. And looked down at his leg.
After darkly looking at his leg and me several times, he came closer to my tombstone, took me by both arms, and tilted me back as far as he could hold me; so that his eyes looked most powerfully down into mine, and mine looked most helplessly up into his.
"Now lookee here," he said, "the question being whether you're to be let to live. You know what a file is?"
"Yes, sir."
"And you know what wittles is?"
"Yes, sir."
After each question he tilted me over a little more, so as to give me a greater sense of helplessness and danger.
"You get me a file." He tilted me again. "And you get me wittles." He tilted me again. "You bring 'em both to me." He tilted me again. "Or I'll have your heart and liver out." He tilted me again.
I was dreadfully frightened, and so giddy that I clung to him with both hands, and said, "If you would kindly please to let me keep upright, sir, perhaps I shouldn't be sick, and perhaps I could attend more." He gave me a most tremendous dip and roll, so that the church jumped over its own weathercock. Then, he held me by the arms, in an upright position on the top of the stone, and went on in these fearful terms: "You bring me, to-morrow morning early, that file and them wittles.
You bring the lot to me, at that old Battery over yonder. You do it, and you never dare to say a word or dare to make a sign concerning your having seen such a person as me, or any person sumever, and you shall be let to live. You fail, or you go from my words in any partickler, no matter how small it is, and your heart and your liver shall be tore out, roasted, and ate. Now, I ain't alone, as you may think I am. There's a young man hid with me, in comparison with whom I am an Angel. That young man hears the words I speak. That young man has a secret way pecooliar to himself, of getting at a boy, and at his heart, and at his liver.
It is in wain for a boy to attempt to hide himself from that young man.
A boy may lock his door, may be warm in bed, may tuck himself up, may draw the clothes over his head, may think himself comfortable and safe, but that young man will softly creep and creep his way to him and tear him open. I am a keeping that young man from harming of you at the present moment, with great difficulty. I find it wery hard to hold that young man off of your inside. Now, what do you say?"
I said that I would get him the file, and I would get him what broken bits of food I could, and I would come to him at the Battery, early in the morning. "Say Lord strike you dead if you don't!" said the man.
I said so, and he took me down.
"Now," he pursued, "you remember what you've undertook, and you remember that young man, and you get home!"
"Goo-good night, sir," I faltered.
"Much of that!" said he, glancing about him over the cold wet flat. "I wish I was a frog. Or a eel!"
At the same time, he hugged his shuddering body in both his arms, clasping himself, as if to hold himself together, and limped towards the low church wall. As I saw him go, picking his way among the nettles, and among the brambles that bound the green mounds, he looked in my
young eyes as if he were eluding the hands of the dead people, stretching up cautiously out of their graves, to get a twist upon his ankle and pull him in.
When he came to the low church wall, he got over it, like a man whose legs were numbed and stiff, and then turned round to look for me. When I saw him turning, I set my face towards home, and made the best use of my legs. But presently I looked over my shoulder, and saw him going on again towards the river, still hugging himself in both arms, and picking his way with his sore feet among the great stones dropped into the marshes here and there, for stepping-places when the rains were heavy or the tide was in.
The marshes were just a long black horizontal line then, as I stopped to look after him; and the river was just another horizontal line, not nearly so broad nor yet so black; and the sky was just a row of long angry red lines and dense black lines intermixed. On the edge of the river I could faintly make out the only two black things in all the prospect that seemed to be standing upright; one of these was the beacon by which the sailors steered, like an unhooped cask upon a pole, an ugly thing when you were near it; the other, a gibbet, with some chains hanging to it which had once held a pirate. The man was limping on towards this latter, as if he were the pirate come to life, and come down, and going back to hook himself up again. It gave me a terrible turn when I thought so; and as I saw the cattle lifting their heads to gaze after him, I wondered whether they thought so too. I looked all round for the horrible young man, and could see no signs of him. But now I was frightened again, and ran home without stopping.
Q.
Where was Pip's village located?
The passage given below is followed by a set of questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.
My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.
I give Pirrip as my father's family name, on the authority of his tombstone and my sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith. As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father's, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription, "Also Georgiana Wife of the Above," I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly. To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine, who gave up trying to get a living, exceedingly early in that universal struggle, I am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence.
Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dikes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip.
"Hold your noise!" cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from among the graves at the side of the church porch. "Keep still, you little devil, or I'll cut your throat!"
A fearful man, all in coarse gray, with a great iron on his leg. A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared, and growled; and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin.
"Oh! Don't cut my throat, sir," I pleaded in terror. "Pray don't do it, sir."
"Tell us your name!" said the man. "Quick!"
"Pip, sir."
"Once more," said the man, staring at me. "Give it mouth!"
"Pip. Pip, sir."
"Show us where you live," said the man. "Pint out the place!"
I pointed to where our village lay, on the flat in-shore among the alder- trees and pollards, a mile or more from the church.
The man, after looking at me for a moment, turned me upside down, and emptied my pockets. There was nothing in them but a piece of bread. When the church came to itself, for he was so sudden and strong that he made it go head over heels before me, and I saw the steeple under my feet, when the church came to itself, I say, I was seated on a high tombstone, trembling while he ate the bread ravenously.
"You young dog," said the man, licking his lips, "what fat cheeks you ha' got."
I believe they were fat, though I was at that time undersized for my years, and not strong.
"Darn me if I couldn't eat em," said the man, with a threatening shake of his head, "and if I han't half a mind to't!"
I earnestly expressed my hope that he wouldn't, and held tighter to the tombstone on which he had put me; partly, to keep myself upon it; partly, to keep myself from crying.
"Now lookee here!" said the man. "Where's your mother?"
"There, sir!" said I.
He started, made a short run, and stopped and looked over his shoulder. "There, sir!" I timidly explained. "Also Georgiana. That's my mother."
"Oh!" said he, coming back. "And is that your father alonger your mother?" "Yes, sir," said I; "him too; late of this parish."
"Ha!" he muttered then, considering. "Who d'ye live with, supposin' you're kindly let to live, which I han't made up my mind about?"
"My sister, sir, Mrs. Joe Gargery, wife of Joe Gargery, the blacksmith, sir." "Blacksmith, eh?" said he. And looked down at his leg.
After darkly looking at his leg and me several times, he came closer to my tombstone, took me by both arms, and tilted me back as far as he could hold me; so that his eyes looked most powerfully down into mine, and mine looked most helplessly up into his.
"Now lookee here," he said, "the question being whether you're to be let to live. You know what a file is?"
"Yes, sir."
"And you know what wittles is?"
"Yes, sir."
After each question he tilted me over a little more, so as to give me a greater sense of helplessness and danger.
"You get me a file." He tilted me again. "And you get me wittles." He tilted me again. "You bring 'em both to me." He tilted me again. "Or I'll have your heart and liver out." He tilted me again.
I was dreadfully frightened, and so giddy that I clung to him with both hands, and said, "If you would kindly please to let me keep upright, sir, perhaps I shouldn't be sick, and perhaps I could attend more." He gave me a most tremendous dip and roll, so that the church jumped over its own weathercock. Then, he held me by the arms, in an upright position on the top of the stone, and went on in these fearful terms: "You bring me, to-morrow morning early, that file and them wittles.
You bring the lot to me, at that old Battery over yonder. You do it, and you never dare to say a word or dare to make a sign concerning your having seen such a person as me, or any person sumever, and you shall be let to live. You fail, or you go from my words in any partickler, no matter how small it is, and your heart and your liver shall be tore out, roasted, and ate. Now, I ain't alone, as you may think I am. There's a young man hid with me, in comparison with whom I am an Angel. That young man hears the words I speak. That young man has a secret way pecooliar to himself, of getting at a boy, and at his heart, and at his liver.
It is in wain for a boy to attempt to hide himself from that young man.
A boy may lock his door, may be warm in bed, may tuck himself up, may draw the clothes over his head, may think himself comfortable and safe, but that young man will softly creep and creep his way to him and tear him open. I am a keeping that young man from harming of you at the present moment, with great difficulty. I find it wery hard to hold that young man off of your inside. Now, what do you say?"
I said that I would get him the file, and I would get him what broken bits of food I could, and I would come to him at the Battery, early in the morning. "Say Lord strike you dead if you don't!" said the man.
I said so, and he took me down.
"Now," he pursued, "you remember what you've undertook, and you remember that young man, and you get home!"
"Goo-good night, sir," I faltered.
"Much of that!" said he, glancing about him over the cold wet flat. "I wish I was a frog. Or a eel!"
At the same time, he hugged his shuddering body in both his arms, clasping himself, as if to hold himself together, and limped towards the low church wall. As I saw him go, picking his way among the nettles, and among the brambles that bound the green mounds, he looked in my
young eyes as if he were eluding the hands of the dead people, stretching up cautiously out of their graves, to get a twist upon his ankle and pull him in.
When he came to the low church wall, he got over it, like a man whose legs were numbed and stiff, and then turned round to look for me. When I saw him turning, I set my face towards home, and made the best use of my legs. But presently I looked over my shoulder, and saw him going on again towards the river, still hugging himself in both arms, and picking his way with his sore feet among the great stones dropped into the marshes here and there, for stepping-places when the rains were heavy or the tide was in.
The marshes were just a long black horizontal line then, as I stopped to look after him; and the river was just another horizontal line, not nearly so broad nor yet so black; and the sky was just a row of long angry red lines and dense black lines intermixed. On the edge of the river I could faintly make out the only two black things in all the prospect that seemed to be standing upright; one of these was the beacon by which the sailors steered, like an unhooped cask upon a pole, an ugly thing when you were near it; the other, a gibbet, with some chains hanging to it which had once held a pirate. The man was limping on towards this latter, as if he were the pirate come to life, and come down, and going back to hook himself up again. It gave me a terrible turn when I thought so; and as I saw the cattle lifting their heads to gaze after him, I wondered whether they thought so too. I looked all round for the horrible young man, and could see no signs of him. But now I was frightened again, and ran home without stopping.
Q.
From the passage what can we infer to be the status of the man
The passage given below is followed by a set of questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.
My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.
I give Pirrip as my father's family name, on the authority of his tombstone and my sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith. As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father's, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription, "Also Georgiana Wife of the Above," I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly. To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine, who gave up trying to get a living, exceedingly early in that universal struggle, I am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence.
Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dikes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip.
"Hold your noise!" cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from among the graves at the side of the church porch. "Keep still, you little devil, or I'll cut your throat!"
A fearful man, all in coarse gray, with a great iron on his leg. A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared, and growled; and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin.
"Oh! Don't cut my throat, sir," I pleaded in terror. "Pray don't do it, sir."
"Tell us your name!" said the man. "Quick!"
"Pip, sir."
"Once more," said the man, staring at me. "Give it mouth!"
"Pip. Pip, sir."
"Show us where you live," said the man. "Pint out the place!"
I pointed to where our village lay, on the flat in-shore among the alder- trees and pollards, a mile or more from the church.
The man, after looking at me for a moment, turned me upside down, and emptied my pockets. There was nothing in them but a piece of bread. When the church came to itself, for he was so sudden and strong that he made it go head over heels before me, and I saw the steeple under my feet, when the church came to itself, I say, I was seated on a high tombstone, trembling while he ate the bread ravenously.
"You young dog," said the man, licking his lips, "what fat cheeks you ha' got."
I believe they were fat, though I was at that time undersized for my years, and not strong.
"Darn me if I couldn't eat em," said the man, with a threatening shake of his head, "and if I han't half a mind to't!"
I earnestly expressed my hope that he wouldn't, and held tighter to the tombstone on which he had put me; partly, to keep myself upon it; partly, to keep myself from crying.
"Now lookee here!" said the man. "Where's your mother?"
"There, sir!" said I.
He started, made a short run, and stopped and looked over his shoulder. "There, sir!" I timidly explained. "Also Georgiana. That's my mother."
"Oh!" said he, coming back. "And is that your father alonger your mother?" "Yes, sir," said I; "him too; late of this parish."
"Ha!" he muttered then, considering. "Who d'ye live with, supposin' you're kindly let to live, which I han't made up my mind about?"
"My sister, sir, Mrs. Joe Gargery, wife of Joe Gargery, the blacksmith, sir." "Blacksmith, eh?" said he. And looked down at his leg.
After darkly looking at his leg and me several times, he came closer to my tombstone, took me by both arms, and tilted me back as far as he could hold me; so that his eyes looked most powerfully down into mine, and mine looked most helplessly up into his.
"Now lookee here," he said, "the question being whether you're to be let to live. You know what a file is?"
"Yes, sir."
"And you know what wittles is?"
"Yes, sir."
After each question he tilted me over a little more, so as to give me a greater sense of helplessness and danger.
"You get me a file." He tilted me again. "And you get me wittles." He tilted me again. "You bring 'em both to me." He tilted me again. "Or I'll have your heart and liver out." He tilted me again.
I was dreadfully frightened, and so giddy that I clung to him with both hands, and said, "If you would kindly please to let me keep upright, sir, perhaps I shouldn't be sick, and perhaps I could attend more." He gave me a most tremendous dip and roll, so that the church jumped over its own weathercock. Then, he held me by the arms, in an upright position on the top of the stone, and went on in these fearful terms: "You bring me, to-morrow morning early, that file and them wittles.
You bring the lot to me, at that old Battery over yonder. You do it, and you never dare to say a word or dare to make a sign concerning your having seen such a person as me, or any person sumever, and you shall be let to live. You fail, or you go from my words in any partickler, no matter how small it is, and your heart and your liver shall be tore out, roasted, and ate. Now, I ain't alone, as you may think I am. There's a young man hid with me, in comparison with whom I am an Angel. That young man hears the words I speak. That young man has a secret way pecooliar to himself, of getting at a boy, and at his heart, and at his liver.
It is in wain for a boy to attempt to hide himself from that young man.
A boy may lock his door, may be warm in bed, may tuck himself up, may draw the clothes over his head, may think himself comfortable and safe, but that young man will softly creep and creep his way to him and tear him open. I am a keeping that young man from harming of you at the present moment, with great difficulty. I find it wery hard to hold that young man off of your inside. Now, what do you say?"
I said that I would get him the file, and I would get him what broken bits of food I could, and I would come to him at the Battery, early in the morning. "Say Lord strike you dead if you don't!" said the man.
I said so, and he took me down.
"Now," he pursued, "you remember what you've undertook, and you remember that young man, and you get home!"
"Goo-good night, sir," I faltered.
"Much of that!" said he, glancing about him over the cold wet flat. "I wish I was a frog. Or a eel!"
At the same time, he hugged his shuddering body in both his arms, clasping himself, as if to hold himself together, and limped towards the low church wall. As I saw him go, picking his way among the nettles, and among the brambles that bound the green mounds, he looked in my
young eyes as if he were eluding the hands of the dead people, stretching up cautiously out of their graves, to get a twist upon his ankle and pull him in.
When he came to the low church wall, he got over it, like a man whose legs were numbed and stiff, and then turned round to look for me. When I saw him turning, I set my face towards home, and made the best use of my legs. But presently I looked over my shoulder, and saw him going on again towards the river, still hugging himself in both arms, and picking his way with his sore feet among the great stones dropped into the marshes here and there, for stepping-places when the rains were heavy or the tide was in.
The marshes were just a long black horizontal line then, as I stopped to look after him; and the river was just another horizontal line, not nearly so broad nor yet so black; and the sky was just a row of long angry red lines and dense black lines intermixed. On the edge of the river I could faintly make out the only two black things in all the prospect that seemed to be standing upright; one of these was the beacon by which the sailors steered, like an unhooped cask upon a pole, an ugly thing when you were near it; the other, a gibbet, with some chains hanging to it which had once held a pirate. The man was limping on towards this latter, as if he were the pirate come to life, and come down, and going back to hook himself up again. It gave me a terrible turn when I thought so; and as I saw the cattle lifting their heads to gaze after him, I wondered whether they thought so too. I looked all round for the horrible young man, and could see no signs of him. But now I was frightened again, and ran home without stopping.
Q.
Which of the following cannot be inferred from the passage?
The passage given below is followed by a set of questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.
My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.
I give Pirrip as my father's family name, on the authority of his tombstone and my sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith. As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father's, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription, "Also Georgiana Wife of the Above," I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly. To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine, who gave up trying to get a living, exceedingly early in that universal struggle, I am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence.
Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dikes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip.
"Hold your noise!" cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from among the graves at the side of the church porch. "Keep still, you little devil, or I'll cut your throat!"
A fearful man, all in coarse gray, with a great iron on his leg. A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared, and growled; and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin.
"Oh! Don't cut my throat, sir," I pleaded in terror. "Pray don't do it, sir."
"Tell us your name!" said the man. "Quick!"
"Pip, sir."
"Once more," said the man, staring at me. "Give it mouth!"
"Pip. Pip, sir."
"Show us where you live," said the man. "Pint out the place!"
I pointed to where our village lay, on the flat in-shore among the alder- trees and pollards, a mile or more from the church.
The man, after looking at me for a moment, turned me upside down, and emptied my pockets. There was nothing in them but a piece of bread. When the church came to itself, for he was so sudden and strong that he made it go head over heels before me, and I saw the steeple under my feet, when the church came to itself, I say, I was seated on a high tombstone, trembling while he ate the bread ravenously.
"You young dog," said the man, licking his lips, "what fat cheeks you ha' got."
I believe they were fat, though I was at that time undersized for my years, and not strong.
"Darn me if I couldn't eat em," said the man, with a threatening shake of his head, "and if I han't half a mind to't!"
I earnestly expressed my hope that he wouldn't, and held tighter to the tombstone on which he had put me; partly, to keep myself upon it; partly, to keep myself from crying.
"Now lookee here!" said the man. "Where's your mother?"
"There, sir!" said I.
He started, made a short run, and stopped and looked over his shoulder. "There, sir!" I timidly explained. "Also Georgiana. That's my mother."
"Oh!" said he, coming back. "And is that your father alonger your mother?" "Yes, sir," said I; "him too; late of this parish."
"Ha!" he muttered then, considering. "Who d'ye live with, supposin' you're kindly let to live, which I han't made up my mind about?"
"My sister, sir, Mrs. Joe Gargery, wife of Joe Gargery, the blacksmith, sir." "Blacksmith, eh?" said he. And looked down at his leg.
After darkly looking at his leg and me several times, he came closer to my tombstone, took me by both arms, and tilted me back as far as he could hold me; so that his eyes looked most powerfully down into mine, and mine looked most helplessly up into his.
"Now lookee here," he said, "the question being whether you're to be let to live. You know what a file is?"
"Yes, sir."
"And you know what wittles is?"
"Yes, sir."
After each question he tilted me over a little more, so as to give me a greater sense of helplessness and danger.
"You get me a file." He tilted me again. "And you get me wittles." He tilted me again. "You bring 'em both to me." He tilted me again. "Or I'll have your heart and liver out." He tilted me again.
I was dreadfully frightened, and so giddy that I clung to him with both hands, and said, "If you would kindly please to let me keep upright, sir, perhaps I shouldn't be sick, and perhaps I could attend more." He gave me a most tremendous dip and roll, so that the church jumped over its own weathercock. Then, he held me by the arms, in an upright position on the top of the stone, and went on in these fearful terms: "You bring me, to-morrow morning early, that file and them wittles.
You bring the lot to me, at that old Battery over yonder. You do it, and you never dare to say a word or dare to make a sign concerning your having seen such a person as me, or any person sumever, and you shall be let to live. You fail, or you go from my words in any partickler, no matter how small it is, and your heart and your liver shall be tore out, roasted, and ate. Now, I ain't alone, as you may think I am. There's a young man hid with me, in comparison with whom I am an Angel. That young man hears the words I speak. That young man has a secret way pecooliar to himself, of getting at a boy, and at his heart, and at his liver.
It is in wain for a boy to attempt to hide himself from that young man.
A boy may lock his door, may be warm in bed, may tuck himself up, may draw the clothes over his head, may think himself comfortable and safe, but that young man will softly creep and creep his way to him and tear him open. I am a keeping that young man from harming of you at the present moment, with great difficulty. I find it wery hard to hold that young man off of your inside. Now, what do you say?"
I said that I would get him the file, and I would get him what broken bits of food I could, and I would come to him at the Battery, early in the morning. "Say Lord strike you dead if you don't!" said the man.
I said so, and he took me down.
"Now," he pursued, "you remember what you've undertook, and you remember that young man, and you get home!"
"Goo-good night, sir," I faltered.
"Much of that!" said he, glancing about him over the cold wet flat. "I wish I was a frog. Or a eel!"
At the same time, he hugged his shuddering body in both his arms, clasping himself, as if to hold himself together, and limped towards the low church wall. As I saw him go, picking his way among the nettles, and among the brambles that bound the green mounds, he looked in my
young eyes as if he were eluding the hands of the dead people, stretching up cautiously out of their graves, to get a twist upon his ankle and pull him in.
When he came to the low church wall, he got over it, like a man whose legs were numbed and stiff, and then turned round to look for me. When I saw him turning, I set my face towards home, and made the best use of my legs. But presently I looked over my shoulder, and saw him going on again towards the river, still hugging himself in both arms, and picking his way with his sore feet among the great stones dropped into the marshes here and there, for stepping-places when the rains were heavy or the tide was in.
The marshes were just a long black horizontal line then, as I stopped to look after him; and the river was just another horizontal line, not nearly so broad nor yet so black; and the sky was just a row of long angry red lines and dense black lines intermixed. On the edge of the river I could faintly make out the only two black things in all the prospect that seemed to be standing upright; one of these was the beacon by which the sailors steered, like an unhooped cask upon a pole, an ugly thing when you were near it; the other, a gibbet, with some chains hanging to it which had once held a pirate. The man was limping on towards this latter, as if he were the pirate come to life, and come down, and going back to hook himself up again. It gave me a terrible turn when I thought so; and as I saw the cattle lifting their heads to gaze after him, I wondered whether they thought so too. I looked all round for the horrible young man, and could see no signs of him. But now I was frightened again, and ran home without stopping.
Q.
The synonym for the word “lair” is:
The passage given below is followed by a set of questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.
Not many Britons watch “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” these days. The quiz show, which routinely drew more than 15m viewers in the late 1990s, now attracts fewer than 5m. While “Millionaire” is fading in the country that invented it, though, it is thriving elsewhere. This week Sushil Kumar won the top prize on the Indian version of the programme. Cote d'Ivoire is to make a series. Afghanistan is getting a second one. In all, 84 different versions of the show have been made, shown in 117 countries.
Hollywood may create the world's best TV dramas, but Britain dominates the global trade in unscripted programmes—quiz shows, singing competitions and other forms of reality television. “Britain's Got Talent”, a format created in 2006, has mutated into 44 national versions, including “China's Got Talent” and “Das Supertalent”. There are 22 different versions of “Wife Swap” and 32 of “Masterchef. In the first half of this year, Britain supplied 43% of global entertainment formats—more than any other country.
London crawls with programme scouts. If a show is a hit in Britain—or even if it performs unusually well in its time slot—phones start ringing in
production companies' offices. Foreign broadcasters, hungry for proven fare, may hire the producers of a British show to make a version for them.
Or they may buy a “bible” that tells them how to clone it for themselves.
“The risk of putting prime-time entertainment on your schedule has been outsourced to the UK,” says Tony Cohen, chief executive of FremantleMedia, which makes “Got Talent”, “Idol” and “X Factor”.
Like financial services, television production took off in London as a result of government action. In the early 1990s broadcasters were told to commission at least one-quarter of their programmes from independent producers. In 2004 trade regulations ensured that most rights to television shows are retained by those who make them, not those who broadcast them. Production companies began aggressively hawking their wares overseas.
They are becoming more aggressive, in part because British broadcasters are becoming stingier. PACT, a producers' group, and Oliver & Ohlbaum, a consultancy, estimate that domestic broadcasters spent £1.51 billion ($2.4 billion) on shows from independent outfits in 2008, but only £1.36 billion in 2010. International revenues have soared from £342m to £590m in the same period. Claire Hungate, chief executive of Shed Media, says that 70- 80% of that company's profits now come from intellectual property—that is, selling formats and tapes of shows that have already been broadcast, mostly to other countries.
Alex Mahon, president of Shine Group, points to another reason for British creativity. Many domestic television executives do not prize commercial success. The BBC is funded almost entirely by a licence fee on televisionowning households. Channel 4 is funded by advertising but is publicly owned. At such outfits, success is measured largely in terms of creativity and innovation—putting on the show that everyone talks about. In practice, that means they favour short series. British television churns out a lot of ideas.
Yet the country's status as the world's pre-eminent inventor of unscripted entertainment is not assured. Other countries have learned how to create reality television formats and are selling them hard. In early October programme buyers at MIPCOM, a huge television convention held in France, crowded into a theatre to watch clips of dozens of reality programmes. A Norwegian show followed urban single women as they toured rural villages in search of love. From India came “Crunch”, a show in which the walls of a house gradually closed in on contestants.
Ever-shrinking commissioning budgets at home are a problem, too. The BBC, which provides a showcase for independent productions as well as creating many of its own, will trim its overall budget by 16% in real terms over the next few years. The rather tacky BBC3 will be pruned hard—not a great loss to national culture, maybe, but a problem for producers, since many shows are launched on the channel. Perhaps most dangerously for the independents, ITV, Britain's biggest free-to-air commercial broadcaster, aims to produce more of its own programming.
Meanwhile commissioners' tastes are changing. Programmes like “Wife Swap”, which involve putting people in contrived situations (and are fairly easy to clone), are falling from favour. The vogue is for gritty, fly-on-the- wall documentaries like “One Born Every Minute” and “24 Hours in A&E”. There is a countervailing trend towards what are known as “soft-scripted” shows, which mix acting with real behaviour. “Made in Chelsea” and “The Only Way is Essex” blaze that peculiar trail.
These trends do not greatly threaten the largest production companies. Although they are based in London, their operations are increasingly global. Several have been acquired by media conglomerates like Sony and Time Warner, making them even more so. Producers with operations in many countries have more opportunities to test new shows and refine old ones. FremantleMedia's new talent show, “Hidden Stars”, was created by the firm's Danish production arm. Britain is still the most-watched market—the crucible of reality formats. But preliminary tests may take place elsewhere.
There is, in any case, a way round the problem of British commissioners leaning against conventional reality shows. Producers are turning documentaries and soft-scripted shows into formats, and exporting them. Shine Group's “One Born Every Minute”, which began in 2010 as a documentary about a labour ward in Southampton, has already been sold as a format to America, France, Spain and Sweden. In such cases the producers are selling sophisticated technical and editing skills rather than a brand and a formula. With soft-scripted shows, the trick is in casting.
The companies that produce and export television formats are scattered around London, in odd places like King's Cross and Primrose Hill. They are less rich than financial-services firms and less appealing to politicians than technology companies. But they have a huge influence on how the world entertains itself. And, in a slow-moving economy, Britain will take all the national champions it can get.
Q.
Which of the following cannot be concluded from the passage?
The passage given below is followed by a set of questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.
Not many Britons watch “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” these days. The quiz show, which routinely drew more than 15m viewers in the late 1990s, now attracts fewer than 5m. While “Millionaire” is fading in the country that invented it, though, it is thriving elsewhere. This week Sushil Kumar won the top prize on the Indian version of the programme. Cote d'Ivoire is to make a series. Afghanistan is getting a second one. In all, 84 different versions of the show have been made, shown in 117 countries.
Hollywood may create the world's best TV dramas, but Britain dominates the global trade in unscripted programmes—quiz shows, singing competitions and other forms of reality television. “Britain's Got Talent”, a format created in 2006, has mutated into 44 national versions, including “China's Got Talent” and “Das Supertalent”. There are 22 different versions of “Wife Swap” and 32 of “Masterchef. In the first half of this year, Britain supplied 43% of global entertainment formats—more than any other country.
London crawls with programme scouts. If a show is a hit in Britain—or even if it performs unusually well in its time slot—phones start ringing in
production companies' offices. Foreign broadcasters, hungry for proven fare, may hire the producers of a British show to make a version for them.
Or they may buy a “bible” that tells them how to clone it for themselves.
“The risk of putting prime-time entertainment on your schedule has been outsourced to the UK,” says Tony Cohen, chief executive of FremantleMedia, which makes “Got Talent”, “Idol” and “X Factor”.
Like financial services, television production took off in London as a result of government action. In the early 1990s broadcasters were told to commission at least one-quarter of their programmes from independent producers. In 2004 trade regulations ensured that most rights to television shows are retained by those who make them, not those who broadcast them. Production companies began aggressively hawking their wares overseas.
They are becoming more aggressive, in part because British broadcasters are becoming stingier. PACT, a producers' group, and Oliver & Ohlbaum, a consultancy, estimate that domestic broadcasters spent £1.51 billion ($2.4 billion) on shows from independent outfits in 2008, but only £1.36 billion in 2010. International revenues have soared from £342m to £590m in the same period. Claire Hungate, chief executive of Shed Media, says that 70- 80% of that company's profits now come from intellectual property—that is, selling formats and tapes of shows that have already been broadcast, mostly to other countries.
Alex Mahon, president of Shine Group, points to another reason for British creativity. Many domestic television executives do not prize commercial success. The BBC is funded almost entirely by a licence fee on televisionowning households. Channel 4 is funded by advertising but is publicly owned. At such outfits, success is measured largely in terms of creativity and innovation—putting on the show that everyone talks about. In practice, that means they favour short series. British television churns out a lot of ideas.
Yet the country's status as the world's pre-eminent inventor of unscripted entertainment is not assured. Other countries have learned how to create reality television formats and are selling them hard. In early October programme buyers at MIPCOM, a huge television convention held in France, crowded into a theatre to watch clips of dozens of reality programmes. A Norwegian show followed urban single women as they toured rural villages in search of love. From India came “Crunch”, a show in which the walls of a house gradually closed in on contestants.
Ever-shrinking commissioning budgets at home are a problem, too. The BBC, which provides a showcase for independent productions as well as creating many of its own, will trim its overall budget by 16% in real terms over the next few years. The rather tacky BBC3 will be pruned hard—not a great loss to national culture, maybe, but a problem for producers, since many shows are launched on the channel. Perhaps most dangerously for the independents, ITV, Britain's biggest free-to-air commercial broadcaster, aims to produce more of its own programming.
Meanwhile commissioners' tastes are changing. Programmes like “Wife Swap”, which involve putting people in contrived situations (and are fairly easy to clone), are falling from favour. The vogue is for gritty, fly-on-the- wall documentaries like “One Born Every Minute” and “24 Hours in A&E”. There is a countervailing trend towards what are known as “soft-scripted” shows, which mix acting with real behaviour. “Made in Chelsea” and “The Only Way is Essex” blaze that peculiar trail.
These trends do not greatly threaten the largest production companies. Although they are based in London, their operations are increasingly global. Several have been acquired by media conglomerates like Sony and Time Warner, making them even more so. Producers with operations in many countries have more opportunities to test new shows and refine old ones. FremantleMedia's new talent show, “Hidden Stars”, was created by the firm's Danish production arm. Britain is still the most-watched market—the crucible of reality formats. But preliminary tests may take place elsewhere.
There is, in any case, a way round the problem of British commissioners leaning against conventional reality shows. Producers are turning documentaries and soft-scripted shows into formats, and exporting them. Shine Group's “One Born Every Minute”, which began in 2010 as a documentary about a labour ward in Southampton, has already been sold as a format to America, France, Spain and Sweden. In such cases the producers are selling sophisticated technical and editing skills rather than a brand and a formula. With soft-scripted shows, the trick is in casting.
The companies that produce and export television formats are scattered around London, in odd places like King's Cross and Primrose Hill. They are less rich than financial-services firms and less appealing to politicians than technology companies. But they have a huge influence on how the world entertains itself. And, in a slow-moving economy, Britain will take all the national champions it can get.
Q.
What is the central idea of the passage?
The passage given below is followed by a set of questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.
Not many Britons watch “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” these days. The quiz show, which routinely drew more than 15m viewers in the late 1990s, now attracts fewer than 5m. While “Millionaire” is fading in the country that invented it, though, it is thriving elsewhere. This week Sushil Kumar won the top prize on the Indian version of the programme. Cote d'Ivoire is to make a series. Afghanistan is getting a second one. In all, 84 different versions of the show have been made, shown in 117 countries.
Hollywood may create the world's best TV dramas, but Britain dominates the global trade in unscripted programmes—quiz shows, singing competitions and other forms of reality television. “Britain's Got Talent”, a format created in 2006, has mutated into 44 national versions, including “China's Got Talent” and “Das Supertalent”. There are 22 different versions of “Wife Swap” and 32 of “Masterchef. In the first half of this year, Britain supplied 43% of global entertainment formats—more than any other country.
London crawls with programme scouts. If a show is a hit in Britain—or even if it performs unusually well in its time slot—phones start ringing in
production companies' offices. Foreign broadcasters, hungry for proven fare, may hire the producers of a British show to make a version for them.
Or they may buy a “bible” that tells them how to clone it for themselves.
“The risk of putting prime-time entertainment on your schedule has been outsourced to the UK,” says Tony Cohen, chief executive of FremantleMedia, which makes “Got Talent”, “Idol” and “X Factor”.
Like financial services, television production took off in London as a result of government action. In the early 1990s broadcasters were told to commission at least one-quarter of their programmes from independent producers. In 2004 trade regulations ensured that most rights to television shows are retained by those who make them, not those who broadcast them. Production companies began aggressively hawking their wares overseas.
They are becoming more aggressive, in part because British broadcasters are becoming stingier. PACT, a producers' group, and Oliver & Ohlbaum, a consultancy, estimate that domestic broadcasters spent £1.51 billion ($2.4 billion) on shows from independent outfits in 2008, but only £1.36 billion in 2010. International revenues have soared from £342m to £590m in the same period. Claire Hungate, chief executive of Shed Media, says that 70- 80% of that company's profits now come from intellectual property—that is, selling formats and tapes of shows that have already been broadcast, mostly to other countries.
Alex Mahon, president of Shine Group, points to another reason for British creativity. Many domestic television executives do not prize commercial success. The BBC is funded almost entirely by a licence fee on televisionowning households. Channel 4 is funded by advertising but is publicly owned. At such outfits, success is measured largely in terms of creativity and innovation—putting on the show that everyone talks about. In practice, that means they favour short series. British television churns out a lot of ideas.
Yet the country's status as the world's pre-eminent inventor of unscripted entertainment is not assured. Other countries have learned how to create reality television formats and are selling them hard. In early October programme buyers at MIPCOM, a huge television convention held in France, crowded into a theatre to watch clips of dozens of reality programmes. A Norwegian show followed urban single women as they toured rural villages in search of love. From India came “Crunch”, a show in which the walls of a house gradually closed in on contestants.
Ever-shrinking commissioning budgets at home are a problem, too. The BBC, which provides a showcase for independent productions as well as creating many of its own, will trim its overall budget by 16% in real terms over the next few years. The rather tacky BBC3 will be pruned hard—not a great loss to national culture, maybe, but a problem for producers, since many shows are launched on the channel. Perhaps most dangerously for the independents, ITV, Britain's biggest free-to-air commercial broadcaster, aims to produce more of its own programming.
Meanwhile commissioners' tastes are changing. Programmes like “Wife Swap”, which involve putting people in contrived situations (and are fairly easy to clone), are falling from favour. The vogue is for gritty, fly-on-the- wall documentaries like “One Born Every Minute” and “24 Hours in A&E”. There is a countervailing trend towards what are known as “soft-scripted” shows, which mix acting with real behaviour. “Made in Chelsea” and “The Only Way is Essex” blaze that peculiar trail.
These trends do not greatly threaten the largest production companies. Although they are based in London, their operations are increasingly global. Several have been acquired by media conglomerates like Sony and Time Warner, making them even more so. Producers with operations in many countries have more opportunities to test new shows and refine old ones. FremantleMedia's new talent show, “Hidden Stars”, was created by the firm's Danish production arm. Britain is still the most-watched market—the crucible of reality formats. But preliminary tests may take place elsewhere.
There is, in any case, a way round the problem of British commissioners leaning against conventional reality shows. Producers are turning documentaries and soft-scripted shows into formats, and exporting them. Shine Group's “One Born Every Minute”, which began in 2010 as a documentary about a labour ward in Southampton, has already been sold as a format to America, France, Spain and Sweden. In such cases the producers are selling sophisticated technical and editing skills rather than a brand and a formula. With soft-scripted shows, the trick is in casting.
The companies that produce and export television formats are scattered around London, in odd places like King's Cross and Primrose Hill. They are less rich than financial-services firms and less appealing to politicians than technology companies. But they have a huge influence on how the world entertains itself. And, in a slow-moving economy, Britain will take all the national champions it can get.
Q.
Which of the following is correct?
The passage given below is followed by a set of questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.
Not many Britons watch “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” these days. The quiz show, which routinely drew more than 15m viewers in the late 1990s, now attracts fewer than 5m. While “Millionaire” is fading in the country that invented it, though, it is thriving elsewhere. This week Sushil Kumar won the top prize on the Indian version of the programme. Cote d'Ivoire is to make a series. Afghanistan is getting a second one. In all, 84 different versions of the show have been made, shown in 117 countries.
Hollywood may create the world's best TV dramas, but Britain dominates the global trade in unscripted programmes—quiz shows, singing competitions and other forms of reality television. “Britain's Got Talent”, a format created in 2006, has mutated into 44 national versions, including “China's Got Talent” and “Das Supertalent”. There are 22 different versions of “Wife Swap” and 32 of “Masterchef. In the first half of this year, Britain supplied 43% of global entertainment formats—more than any other country.
London crawls with programme scouts. If a show is a hit in Britain—or even if it performs unusually well in its time slot—phones start ringing in
production companies' offices. Foreign broadcasters, hungry for proven fare, may hire the producers of a British show to make a version for them.
Or they may buy a “bible” that tells them how to clone it for themselves.
“The risk of putting prime-time entertainment on your schedule has been outsourced to the UK,” says Tony Cohen, chief executive of FremantleMedia, which makes “Got Talent”, “Idol” and “X Factor”.
Like financial services, television production took off in London as a result of government action. In the early 1990s broadcasters were told to commission at least one-quarter of their programmes from independent producers. In 2004 trade regulations ensured that most rights to television shows are retained by those who make them, not those who broadcast them. Production companies began aggressively hawking their wares overseas.
They are becoming more aggressive, in part because British broadcasters are becoming stingier. PACT, a producers' group, and Oliver & Ohlbaum, a consultancy, estimate that domestic broadcasters spent £1.51 billion ($2.4 billion) on shows from independent outfits in 2008, but only £1.36 billion in 2010. International revenues have soared from £342m to £590m in the same period. Claire Hungate, chief executive of Shed Media, says that 70- 80% of that company's profits now come from intellectual property—that is, selling formats and tapes of shows that have already been broadcast, mostly to other countries.
Alex Mahon, president of Shine Group, points to another reason for British creativity. Many domestic television executives do not prize commercial success. The BBC is funded almost entirely by a licence fee on televisionowning households. Channel 4 is funded by advertising but is publicly owned. At such outfits, success is measured largely in terms of creativity and innovation—putting on the show that everyone talks about. In practice, that means they favour short series. British television churns out a lot of ideas.
Yet the country's status as the world's pre-eminent inventor of unscripted entertainment is not assured. Other countries have learned how to create reality television formats and are selling them hard. In early October programme buyers at MIPCOM, a huge television convention held in France, crowded into a theatre to watch clips of dozens of reality programmes. A Norwegian show followed urban single women as they toured rural villages in search of love. From India came “Crunch”, a show in which the walls of a house gradually closed in on contestants.
Ever-shrinking commissioning budgets at home are a problem, too. The BBC, which provides a showcase for independent productions as well as creating many of its own, will trim its overall budget by 16% in real terms over the next few years. The rather tacky BBC3 will be pruned hard—not a great loss to national culture, maybe, but a problem for producers, since many shows are launched on the channel. Perhaps most dangerously for the independents, ITV, Britain's biggest free-to-air commercial broadcaster, aims to produce more of its own programming.
Meanwhile commissioners' tastes are changing. Programmes like “Wife Swap”, which involve putting people in contrived situations (and are fairly easy to clone), are falling from favour. The vogue is for gritty, fly-on-the- wall documentaries like “One Born Every Minute” and “24 Hours in A&E”. There is a countervailing trend towards what are known as “soft-scripted” shows, which mix acting with real behaviour. “Made in Chelsea” and “The Only Way is Essex” blaze that peculiar trail.
These trends do not greatly threaten the largest production companies. Although they are based in London, their operations are increasingly global. Several have been acquired by media conglomerates like Sony and Time Warner, making them even more so. Producers with operations in many countries have more opportunities to test new shows and refine old ones. FremantleMedia's new talent show, “Hidden Stars”, was created by the firm's Danish production arm. Britain is still the most-watched market—the crucible of reality formats. But preliminary tests may take place elsewhere.
There is, in any case, a way round the problem of British commissioners leaning against conventional reality shows. Producers are turning documentaries and soft-scripted shows into formats, and exporting them. Shine Group's “One Born Every Minute”, which began in 2010 as a documentary about a labour ward in Southampton, has already been sold as a format to America, France, Spain and Sweden. In such cases the producers are selling sophisticated technical and editing skills rather than a brand and a formula. With soft-scripted shows, the trick is in casting.
The companies that produce and export television formats are scattered around London, in odd places like King's Cross and Primrose Hill. They are less rich than financial-services firms and less appealing to politicians than technology companies. But they have a huge influence on how the world entertains itself. And, in a slow-moving economy, Britain will take all the national champions it can get.
Q.
Which of the following is not true about the production companies of reality shows, as per this passage?
Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow.
Burawoy divides sociology into four distinct types — professional, critical, public, and policy — distinguished by audience (academic versus nonacademic) and forms of knowledge (instrumental versus reflexive). Many commentators have noted that these central concepts anchoring his discussion are useful but ambiguous. As feminist sociologists who engage in forms of public sociology, we are concerned about the ambiguities of these concepts. In branding professional sociology as “instrumental academic” research, Burawoy elevates it above all other forms in his typology as the core of the discipline, contrary to his own efforts to challenge this hierarchy of evaluation. Professional sociology, he writes, provides legitimacy, expertise, distinctive problem definitions, relevant bodies of knowledge and techniques for analyzing data. An effective public or policy sociology is not hostile to, but depends upon the professional sociology that lies at the core of our disciplinary field. An implication of his analysis is that “‘good’ research is only done in the sphere of professional sociology” and that this sociology leads the other sociologies: “only professionally oriented, disengaged research is conducted with rigour and is capable of yielding methodological and theoretical innovation”.
Read through a much earlier critique of trends in US sociology that included pleas for critical public engagement, Burawoy’s professional sociology brings to mind the categories of abstracted empiricism and grand theory that C. Wright Mills so trenchantly critiqued and that most feminist theories and methodologies have sought to overcome. In addition, despite his efforts to provincialize US sociology, Burawoy’s 2x2 table can be interpreted as a Parsonian-type model that intends to apply to sociology everywhere while most closely reflecting a particular kind of US sociology. This form of US sociology is formalistically professionalized, especially at the more elite research universities — as distinct from being “professional” — and results in institutionalized practices that are unnecessarily rigid and exclusionary. Rather than using this model to prescribe what sociology should be, McLaughlin and Turcotte usefully argue that it should be turned into empirical, researchable questions that determine the size and influence of each type of sociology within different disciplinary, institutional, and national contexts. As feminist sociologists, we are also concerned about other problems of interpretation in Burawoy’s typology. Burawoy characterizes each ideal type as a division of labour that exists, normatively, in reciprocal interdependence. He suggests that most sociologists concentrate their efforts in one type although he grants that they may simultaneously inhabit more than one of the cells or change from one to another over their careers. While allowing for internal complexity of each type (e.g., professional sociology can be reflexive at times, not just instrumental) and for permeable boundaries between the four types, Burawoy’s model can be interpreted as overly bounded, static, and nonvariable. It does not appear, for example, to adequately account for such multidisciplinary fields as social gerontology or feminist sociology in which the distinctions between professional, critical, policy, and public domains are blurred. In attempting to integrate sociology and legitimate public sociology, Burawoy glosses over the contradictions and tensions between the four types he identifies, particularly vis-a-vis the longstanding methodological feuds between positivism, critical theory, and postpositivism. As feminists aware of sociology’s history of exclusions in the production of knowledge, we are wary of hierarchies that Burawoy’s typology may initiate or reproduce that rest on a narrowly cast US version of professional sociology. In contrast to his concept of professional sociology as an engagement with specific social theories (that are not critical) or with a limited range of methodological approaches to research (that are neither reflexive nor involve publics or policymaking), we suggest looking for a more inclusive definition. A more inclusive definition of professional sociology might, for example, involve particular credentials (a graduate degree in sociology) and the undertaking of specific activities (such as teaching sociology in a university or college and/or engaging in rigorous ethical research and publishing). This definition embraces a diversity of orientations, methods, institutional locations, and public and policy engagements Equally important, however, is the fact that Burawoy’s identification of four distinct forms of sociology is itself questionable. As Ericson notes, sociology is (or perhaps should be) simultaneously professional, critical, public, and policy relevant. Whether or not sociology does or should take these forms simultaneously, and how such research is undertaken, requires discussion and empirical investigation. As part of this process, we describe below our research to provide examples of the simultaneous undertaking of professional, critical, policy, and public sociology.
We also take issue with the Gramscian separation of the distinct spheres of state, economy, and civil society that underlies Burawoy’s discussion. In sharply dividing the subject matter of the cognate fields of political science, economics, and sociology — with their respective attention to the state, market, and civil society — his model ignores the growth of interdisciplinary research in which many of us have long engaged. Interestingly, this division also entirely ignores other disciplines, such as anthropology, for which a parallel debate (the call for more public anthropology) predates by several years Burawoy’s intervention (for example, in Chicago in 1999, the topic of the American Anthropological Association forum was Public Anthropology).
As Calhoun argues, rather than reinforcing disciplinary boundaries and social dichotomies, “we should be arguing that state and market are social”. Burawoy’s model tends to demonize the state (and policy intervention/state reform) as well as the market, while romanticizing civil society (including giving it a progressive spin). This ignores both the multisited institutional locations of sociological research and the complex interplay between fields of power, agency, and social change. Feminist theorizing shows that civil society is a complex concept that consists of both the public and the private spheres structured as male-dominated, with the private often disappearing in discourse on civil society. Burawoy’s focus on civil society can be interpreted as reinvoking the public and private dichotomy of Western societies that has been the subject of so much feminist critique, especially in its argument that family and community life (sites of civil society) cannot be understood as separate from political and economic spheres. Significant feminist theory and research have made a concerted effort to argue for a reconceptualization of these spheres acknowledging their interpenetration, rather than isolation from one another.
Where we are in fundamental agreement with Burawoy is in locating the central questions for assessing the state of sociology in the US, Canada, and elsewhere by asking “sociology for whom?” and “sociology for what?” These questions require reflexivity that positions social theories, research methodologies, and indeed researchers within contexts of power and social location. Burawoy designates critical and public sociology as inherently reflexive in contrast to professional and policy sociology. Defining reflexivity, however, is no simple task. According to Burawoy (2004:1606), reflexive knowledge is communicative action that aspires to a dialogic character, “although mutuality and reciprocity are often difficult to achieve in practice.” Reflexivity involves value discussion concerning the ethical goals for which research may be mobilized and stimulates public discussions about the possible meanings of the good society.
Recent feminist epistemological debates have been particularly fruitful in contributing to and expanding upon critical theory’s understanding of reflexivity. Critical feminist sociological debates, informed especially by engagement with extra-academic communities concerned about social justice for socially marginalized groups, have helped to shape our research.
Q.
Which of the following about Burawoy's hypotheses does the not criticize?
Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow.
Burawoy divides sociology into four distinct types — professional, critical, public, and policy — distinguished by audience (academic versus nonacademic) and forms of knowledge (instrumental versus reflexive). Many commentators have noted that these central concepts anchoring his discussion are useful but ambiguous. As feminist sociologists who engage in forms of public sociology, we are concerned about the ambiguities of these concepts. In branding professional sociology as “instrumental academic” research, Burawoy elevates it above all other forms in his typology as the core of the discipline, contrary to his own efforts to challenge this hierarchy of evaluation. Professional sociology, he writes, provides legitimacy, expertise, distinctive problem definitions, relevant bodies of knowledge and techniques for analyzing data. An effective public or policy sociology is not hostile to, but depends upon the professional sociology that lies at the core of our disciplinary field. An implication of his analysis is that “‘good’ research is only done in the sphere of professional sociology” and that this sociology leads the other sociologies: “only professionally oriented, disengaged research is conducted with rigour and is capable of yielding methodological and theoretical innovation”.
Read through a much earlier critique of trends in US sociology that included pleas for critical public engagement, Burawoy’s professional sociology brings to mind the categories of abstracted empiricism and grand theory that C. Wright Mills so trenchantly critiqued and that most feminist theories and methodologies have sought to overcome. In addition, despite his efforts to provincialize US sociology, Burawoy’s 2x2 table can be interpreted as a Parsonian-type model that intends to apply to sociology everywhere while most closely reflecting a particular kind of US sociology. This form of US sociology is formalistically professionalized, especially at the more elite research universities — as distinct from being “professional” — and results in institutionalized practices that are unnecessarily rigid and exclusionary. Rather than using this model to prescribe what sociology should be, McLaughlin and Turcotte usefully argue that it should be turned into empirical, researchable questions that determine the size and influence of each type of sociology within different disciplinary, institutional, and national contexts. As feminist sociologists, we are also concerned about other problems of interpretation in Burawoy’s typology. Burawoy characterizes each ideal type as a division of labour that exists, normatively, in reciprocal interdependence. He suggests that most sociologists concentrate their efforts in one type although he grants that they may simultaneously inhabit more than one of the cells or change from one to another over their careers. While allowing for internal complexity of each type (e.g., professional sociology can be reflexive at times, not just instrumental) and for permeable boundaries between the four types, Burawoy’s model can be interpreted as overly bounded, static, and nonvariable. It does not appear, for example, to adequately account for such multidisciplinary fields as social gerontology or feminist sociology in which the distinctions between professional, critical, policy, and public domains are blurred. In attempting to integrate sociology and legitimate public sociology, Burawoy glosses over the contradictions and tensions between the four types he identifies, particularly vis-a-vis the longstanding methodological feuds between positivism, critical theory, and postpositivism. As feminists aware of sociology’s history of exclusions in the production of knowledge, we are wary of hierarchies that Burawoy’s typology may initiate or reproduce that rest on a narrowly cast US version of professional sociology. In contrast to his concept of professional sociology as an engagement with specific social theories (that are not critical) or with a limited range of methodological approaches to research (that are neither reflexive nor involve publics or policymaking), we suggest looking for a more inclusive definition. A more inclusive definition of professional sociology might, for example, involve particular credentials (a graduate degree in sociology) and the undertaking of specific activities (such as teaching sociology in a university or college and/or engaging in rigorous ethical research and publishing). This definition embraces a diversity of orientations, methods, institutional locations, and public and policy engagements Equally important, however, is the fact that Burawoy’s identification of four distinct forms of sociology is itself questionable. As Ericson notes, sociology is (or perhaps should be) simultaneously professional, critical, public, and policy relevant. Whether or not sociology does or should take these forms simultaneously, and how such research is undertaken, requires discussion and empirical investigation. As part of this process, we describe below our research to provide examples of the simultaneous undertaking of professional, critical, policy, and public sociology.
We also take issue with the Gramscian separation of the distinct spheres of state, economy, and civil society that underlies Burawoy’s discussion. In sharply dividing the subject matter of the cognate fields of political science, economics, and sociology — with their respective attention to the state, market, and civil society — his model ignores the growth of interdisciplinary research in which many of us have long engaged. Interestingly, this division also entirely ignores other disciplines, such as anthropology, for which a parallel debate (the call for more public anthropology) predates by several years Burawoy’s intervention (for example, in Chicago in 1999, the topic of the American Anthropological Association forum was Public Anthropology).
As Calhoun argues, rather than reinforcing disciplinary boundaries and social dichotomies, “we should be arguing that state and market are social”. Burawoy’s model tends to demonize the state (and policy intervention/state reform) as well as the market, while romanticizing civil society (including giving it a progressive spin). This ignores both the multisited institutional locations of sociological research and the complex interplay between fields of power, agency, and social change. Feminist theorizing shows that civil society is a complex concept that consists of both the public and the private spheres structured as male-dominated, with the private often disappearing in discourse on civil society. Burawoy’s focus on civil society can be interpreted as reinvoking the public and private dichotomy of Western societies that has been the subject of so much feminist critique, especially in its argument that family and community life (sites of civil society) cannot be understood as separate from political and economic spheres. Significant feminist theory and research have made a concerted effort to argue for a reconceptualization of these spheres acknowledging their interpenetration, rather than isolation from one another.
Where we are in fundamental agreement with Burawoy is in locating the central questions for assessing the state of sociology in the US, Canada, and elsewhere by asking “sociology for whom?” and “sociology for what?” These questions require reflexivity that positions social theories, research methodologies, and indeed researchers within contexts of power and social location. Burawoy designates critical and public sociology as inherently reflexive in contrast to professional and policy sociology. Defining reflexivity, however, is no simple task. According to Burawoy (2004:1606), reflexive knowledge is communicative action that aspires to a dialogic character, “although mutuality and reciprocity are often difficult to achieve in practice.” Reflexivity involves value discussion concerning the ethical goals for which research may be mobilized and stimulates public discussions about the possible meanings of the good society.
Recent feminist epistemological debates have been particularly fruitful in contributing to and expanding upon critical theory’s understanding of reflexivity. Critical feminist sociological debates, informed especially by engagement with extra-academic communities concerned about social justice for socially marginalized groups, have helped to shape our research.
Q.
The passage is likely to be a:
Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow.
Burawoy divides sociology into four distinct types — professional, critical, public, and policy — distinguished by audience (academic versus nonacademic) and forms of knowledge (instrumental versus reflexive). Many commentators have noted that these central concepts anchoring his discussion are useful but ambiguous. As feminist sociologists who engage in forms of public sociology, we are concerned about the ambiguities of these concepts. In branding professional sociology as “instrumental academic” research, Burawoy elevates it above all other forms in his typology as the core of the discipline, contrary to his own efforts to challenge this hierarchy of evaluation. Professional sociology, he writes, provides legitimacy, expertise, distinctive problem definitions, relevant bodies of knowledge and techniques for analyzing data. An effective public or policy sociology is not hostile to, but depends upon the professional sociology that lies at the core of our disciplinary field. An implication of his analysis is that “‘good’ research is only done in the sphere of professional sociology” and that this sociology leads the other sociologies: “only professionally oriented, disengaged research is conducted with rigour and is capable of yielding methodological and theoretical innovation”.
Read through a much earlier critique of trends in US sociology that included pleas for critical public engagement, Burawoy’s professional sociology brings to mind the categories of abstracted empiricism and grand theory that C. Wright Mills so trenchantly critiqued and that most feminist theories and methodologies have sought to overcome. In addition, despite his efforts to provincialize US sociology, Burawoy’s 2x2 table can be interpreted as a Parsonian-type model that intends to apply to sociology everywhere while most closely reflecting a particular kind of US sociology. This form of US sociology is formalistically professionalized, especially at the more elite research universities — as distinct from being “professional” — and results in institutionalized practices that are unnecessarily rigid and exclusionary. Rather than using this model to prescribe what sociology should be, McLaughlin and Turcotte usefully argue that it should be turned into empirical, researchable questions that determine the size and influence of each type of sociology within different disciplinary, institutional, and national contexts. As feminist sociologists, we are also concerned about other problems of interpretation in Burawoy’s typology. Burawoy characterizes each ideal type as a division of labour that exists, normatively, in reciprocal interdependence. He suggests that most sociologists concentrate their efforts in one type although he grants that they may simultaneously inhabit more than one of the cells or change from one to another over their careers. While allowing for internal complexity of each type (e.g., professional sociology can be reflexive at times, not just instrumental) and for permeable boundaries between the four types, Burawoy’s model can be interpreted as overly bounded, static, and nonvariable. It does not appear, for example, to adequately account for such multidisciplinary fields as social gerontology or feminist sociology in which the distinctions between professional, critical, policy, and public domains are blurred. In attempting to integrate sociology and legitimate public sociology, Burawoy glosses over the contradictions and tensions between the four types he identifies, particularly vis-a-vis the longstanding methodological feuds between positivism, critical theory, and postpositivism. As feminists aware of sociology’s history of exclusions in the production of knowledge, we are wary of hierarchies that Burawoy’s typology may initiate or reproduce that rest on a narrowly cast US version of professional sociology. In contrast to his concept of professional sociology as an engagement with specific social theories (that are not critical) or with a limited range of methodological approaches to research (that are neither reflexive nor involve publics or policymaking), we suggest looking for a more inclusive definition. A more inclusive definition of professional sociology might, for example, involve particular credentials (a graduate degree in sociology) and the undertaking of specific activities (such as teaching sociology in a university or college and/or engaging in rigorous ethical research and publishing). This definition embraces a diversity of orientations, methods, institutional locations, and public and policy engagements Equally important, however, is the fact that Burawoy’s identification of four distinct forms of sociology is itself questionable. As Ericson notes, sociology is (or perhaps should be) simultaneously professional, critical, public, and policy relevant. Whether or not sociology does or should take these forms simultaneously, and how such research is undertaken, requires discussion and empirical investigation. As part of this process, we describe below our research to provide examples of the simultaneous undertaking of professional, critical, policy, and public sociology.
We also take issue with the Gramscian separation of the distinct spheres of state, economy, and civil society that underlies Burawoy’s discussion. In sharply dividing the subject matter of the cognate fields of political science, economics, and sociology — with their respective attention to the state, market, and civil society — his model ignores the growth of interdisciplinary research in which many of us have long engaged. Interestingly, this division also entirely ignores other disciplines, such as anthropology, for which a parallel debate (the call for more public anthropology) predates by several years Burawoy’s intervention (for example, in Chicago in 1999, the topic of the American Anthropological Association forum was Public Anthropology).
As Calhoun argues, rather than reinforcing disciplinary boundaries and social dichotomies, “we should be arguing that state and market are social”. Burawoy’s model tends to demonize the state (and policy intervention/state reform) as well as the market, while romanticizing civil society (including giving it a progressive spin). This ignores both the multisited institutional locations of sociological research and the complex interplay between fields of power, agency, and social change. Feminist theorizing shows that civil society is a complex concept that consists of both the public and the private spheres structured as male-dominated, with the private often disappearing in discourse on civil society. Burawoy’s focus on civil society can be interpreted as reinvoking the public and private dichotomy of Western societies that has been the subject of so much feminist critique, especially in its argument that family and community life (sites of civil society) cannot be understood as separate from political and economic spheres. Significant feminist theory and research have made a concerted effort to argue for a reconceptualization of these spheres acknowledging their interpenetration, rather than isolation from one another.
Where we are in fundamental agreement with Burawoy is in locating the central questions for assessing the state of sociology in the US, Canada, and elsewhere by asking “sociology for whom?” and “sociology for what?” These questions require reflexivity that positions social theories, research methodologies, and indeed researchers within contexts of power and social location. Burawoy designates critical and public sociology as inherently reflexive in contrast to professional and policy sociology. Defining reflexivity, however, is no simple task. According to Burawoy (2004:1606), reflexive knowledge is communicative action that aspires to a dialogic character, “although mutuality and reciprocity are often difficult to achieve in practice.” Reflexivity involves value discussion concerning the ethical goals for which research may be mobilized and stimulates public discussions about the possible meanings of the good society.
Recent feminist epistemological debates have been particularly fruitful in contributing to and expanding upon critical theory’s understanding of reflexivity. Critical feminist sociological debates, informed especially by engagement with extra-academic communities concerned about social justice for socially marginalized groups, have helped to shape our research.
Q.
What is the central idea of the passage?