The Development Of A Child - 899 Words

Modern society depends on highly educated and knowledgeable individuals to fulfill its most crucial tasks. Governments around the world mandate that their citizens receive some form of education. In the United States, children are required to receive a general education. Societies throughout history have improved the way they educate their citizens, and continue to improve today. As one observes the development of a child, he or she may discover that there are many factors that influence this development. For years, researchers have studied the process of learning and how it takes place. Many discoveries have been made on this topic, and they continue to come. Scientists have located methods that can both improve and harm an individual’s education. Findings like these cause many to wonder how small differences in educational types can produce such drastic differences in one’s intellect. People of all ages participate in activities that stimulate their interest. Small children may enjoy coloring or playing in a sandbox, while teenagers and adults favor other actions. There are countless amounts of activities in which individuals can participate, but some are more beneficial than others. For example, music is an activity that is known for stimulating cognitive abilities. People unknowingly utilize music to assist in building their intelligence on a daily basis. Someone may listen to his or her favorite song while exercising or practicing for athleticShow MoreRelatedThe Child And Child Development Essay2146 Words   |  9 Pagesalways come natural to the child so the caregiver or teacher has to help the child be able to do task that will be necessary to grow (Fogel, 2014). The child’s development can be categorized into five different domains: physical (fine and gross motor), social-emotional, cognitive, communicative/language and adaptive. One way to examine these developmental domains is to observe the child while he or she is interacting with other children or alone. By observing the child caregiver or teacher can determineRead MoreChild Development1167 Words   |  5 Pageslearning experiences (Montessori, 1977). Factor generating an amazing child Law of Will A child’s development of will has been regarded as one of the laws of development as per Montessori’s observations. She herself has clearly indicated how she observed this development of a child’s will. When a child does any action just by himself, without having any form of assistance, this clearly signifies the fact the child is consciously making decisions. In this regard therefore, the will shouldRead MoreThe Development Of Child Development1986 Words   |  8 PagesAs children grow older they go through a process known as child development which is defined as the discipline dedicated to the understanding of all characteristics of human development from birth to adolescence. I reflected on each of the eight chapters that we covered in class and will use that information to apply it to my neighbor Sebastian. Sebastian is a 7 year old child who lives next door to me and I have taken care of him since he was four months old. I have had the opportunity to apply Read MoreChild Development924 Words   |  4 PagesThe Parents’ Role in Creating a Safe Environment for Child Development A sweet, innocent, newborn baby is taken home by the parents for the very first time, which means that it is now the parents’ vital responsibility to create a secure home for their child. Since children’s learning foundation is built in the home from the time they are born, it is important for parent’s to create a safe learning environment as their child grows and develops. Parents can create a safe learning environment in theRead MoreChild Development2033 Words   |  9 Pagesplaced end to end and lined with child size chairs sat in front of built-in cabinets that stored the teacher’s supplies and children’s rest mats. Underneath a set of these cabinets were hooks for the children to hang their jackets and backpacks on. The philosophy of the school states: â€Å"The purpose of the KidsFirst Program is to extend the ministry of and help accomplish the purpose of First Baptist Church of Arab by providing care, education, and development for each c hild enrolled to his/her greatestRead MoreThe Development Of The Child1766 Words   |  8 Pagesimmediately and directly have impact on the child s development. It includes the family, school, neighborhood, religious institutions and peers. It was developed to explain how these elements influence the development of the child (Mancini Roberto, 2009). The second system is mesosystem that describes the interconnections existing between the microsystems. Interactions between the family of the child and the teachers, the relationship between the peers of the child and the family. Exosystem is anotherRead MoreChild : Child Development And Crime2388 Words   |  10 PagesChild Development and Crime Imagine you are part of a daycare. It is recess. You see kids running and playing with each other, dogs barking for attention, and some parents taking photos to capture the peaceful moment in time. You then notice a little boy sitting alone, far from the other children. He has bruises on his face and worn out clothing, just like every other day. His expression, always devoid of joy, is filled with fear and tears. And then you realize why- he is being abused. AccordingRead MorePhysical Development And Child Development929 Words   |  4 PagesPhysical development may be the first thing that parents noticed when their child starts to develop, because it is the more physical and bigger movements for a child and baby to make. Physical development itself is ‘comprising changes in body size (growth) and proportions, the order and acquisition of motor skills, and perceptual and motor capacities’ (Doherty and Hughes, 2009, p.8). This is why parents see physical development firs t, it is not just the movements that the children achieve it is alsoRead MoreChild Development And Childhood Development1564 Words   |  7 PagesChild Development 2 to 5 Years By creating a decent understanding of parenting strategies and childhood development, this will help parents understand and comprehend exactly what to expect and how to provide what their child needs during each developmental stage of their life. All parents can benefit, also those who work with children can benefit greatly by increasing their knowledge, awareness and understanding of overall childhood development. The stage of child development I have chosen to discussRead MoreThe Development Of A Child s Development1297 Words   |  6 Pagesoutline those areas where you hope your learning and development will occur. (300 words) As I begin studying the Professional Experience module, my aims and aspirations for this module are to develop knowledge and understanding on how to carry out observations, as well as gaining more understanding of the role of observations in a child’s development. I aim to gain more understanding on how to use observations to evaluate the child’s development, by linking theory to practice, and I aspire to develop

Study On Currency Risks Handled By Indian Firm Finance Essay - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 10 Words: 3000 Downloads: 6 Date added: 2017/06/26 Category Finance Essay Type Cause and effect essay Did you like this example? The objective of this project is to examine how the impacts of currency exchange risks are dealt by the Indian Firms. Currency Exchange Risk in Global Market is a burning issue for any firm or corporate involved in business overseas. In this scenario, India is of course the one country where we have a lot of scope to focus on as far as the study of currency risk in business is concerned. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Study On Currency Risks Handled By Indian Firm Finance Essay" essay for you Create order If we see the world wide scenario, the financial sector is facing a lot of adjustment problems in the rapid changes in the economic financial environment. Now Indian financial system cannot be indifferent to this universal phenomenon. I would like to take the example of the Indian IT giants with special emphasis on TCS, in this exploratory paper to see how the currency swings affected the business of TCS in last couple of years and would try to provide some supportive data to show the same. It is very interesting to see how the companies like TCS uses different derivative instruments to keep the sustainability of its performance in the financial market by hedging the financial risks, specially related to the volatility of the money market and foreign currency exchange rates. How Companies use Derivatives for Hedging Risk Management Hedging Hedging, in simple words, says controlling or reducing risk. This controlling or reducing risk is done by taking a position in th e futures market that is opposite to the one in the physical market with an objective to reduce or limit risks associated with price changes. A simple example will help us understand it better. A wheat farmer can sell wheat futures to protect the value of his crop prior to harvest. If there is a fall in price, the loss in the cash market position will be countered by a gain in futures position. 2.2. Derivatives Derivatives are those financial instruments whose values depend on the value of not only the underlying financial instruments but on any underlying asset. We can take the same example of the wheat farmer. Here, the wheat farmer can protect itself of any fall in price by entering into a contract with the merchant. Some of the derivative instruments are: Futures, Swap, Options, and Forwards. To summarize, Hedging can be defined as a method where one can reduce the financial exposure faced in an underlying asset due to volatility in prices by taking an opposite position in the derivatives market in order to off-set the losses in the cash market by a corresponding gain in the derivatives market. This above definition captures the basic essence of derivatives hedging. Now having understood the basic meaning of hedging and derivatives, we would now see how corporate use these derivative instruments for hedging. 2.3. Foreign Exchange Risks The most common corporate uses of derivatives is for hedging foreign-currency risk, or foreign exchange risk, which is the risk that a change in currency exchange rates adversely impacts business results. Lets consider an example with Infosys Technologies, a multi-national IT company which even exports soft wares to other countries, and mainly to US. Lets make an assumption that Infosys Technologies exports software worth 1000 Crores to US in 2006-07 when the price of per US Dollar was at Rs. 40 (assumption). When the rupee per dollar exchange rate increases from Rs. 40, Rs. 42, Rs. 44, it takes more rupees to buy one dollar, meaning the rupee is depreciating or weakening. As the rupee depreciates, the softwares which Infosys exports would translate into greater sales in rupee terms. This demonstrates how a weakening rupee is not all that bad: it can boost export sales of Indian companies. Now lets illustrate a simple hedge that a company like Infosys Technologies might us e to minimize the effects of any Rupee / USD exchange rates, Infosys purchases 2000 foreign-exchange futures contracts against the Rupee / USD exchange rate. The value of the futures contracts will not, in practice, correspond exactly on a 1:1 basis with a change in the current exchange rate (that is, the futures rate wont change exactly with the spot rate), but we will assume that it does anyway. Each futures contract has a value equal to the gain above the Rs. 40 Rupee/USD rate. (Only because Infosys took this side of the futures position, somebody the counter-party will take the opposite position.) Of course, its not a free lunch: If the strategy of Infosys goes against it, that is, if the dollar were to weaken instead, then the increased export sales are mitigated (partially offset) by losses on the futures contract. 2.4. Hedging Interest Rate Risks Companies can hedge interest-rate risks in various ways. Consider a company that expects to sell a division in one year and at that time to receive a cash wind-fall that it wants to park in a good risk-free investment or a company had an unexpected profit, if the company strongly believes that interest rates will drop between now and then, it could purchase (or take a long position on) a treasury futures contract. The company is effectively locking in the future interest rate. Fair Value Hedges The Company [XYZ] had two interest rate swaps outstanding at January 1, 2008 designated as a hedge of the fair value of a portion of fixed-rate bonds. The change in fair value of the swaps exactly offsets the change in fair value of the hedged debt, with no net impact on earnings. XYZ Company uses an interest rate swap. Before it entered into the swap, it was paying a variable interest rate on some of its bonds. (For example, a common arrangement would be to pay LIBOR plus something a nd to reset the rate every six months.) Now lets look at the impact of the swap, the swap requires XYZ to pay a fixed rate of interest while receiving floating-rate payments. The received floating-rate payments are used to pay the pre-existing floating-rate debt. XYZ is then left only with the floating-rate debt, and has. Therefore, managed to convert a variable-rate obligation into a fixed-rate obligation with the addition of a derivative. Here we can call this as a perfect hedge: The variable-rate coupons that XYZ received compensates for the companys variable-rate obligation. 2.5. Commodity or Product Input Hedge Companies that depend heavily on raw-material inputs or commodities are sensitive, sometimes significantly, to the price change of the inputs. Airlines, for example, consume lots of jet fuel. Historically, most airlines have given a great deal of consideration to hedging against crude-oil price increases although they need to be very careful and a great forecasting before going for such a strategy because the strategy itself would cost them a lot. As we reviewed here three of the most popular types of corporate hedging with derivatives. There are many other derivative uses, and new types are being invented. The derivatives that are reviewed are not generally speculative for the company. They help protect the company from unanticipated events: adverse foreign-exchange or interest-rate movements, and unexpected increases in input costs. The investor on the other side of the derivative transaction is the speculator. However, in no case are these derivatives free. Even if, for exam ple, the company is surprised with a good-news event like a favorable interest-rate move, the company (because it had to pay for the derivatives) receives less on a net basis than it would have without the hedge. Warren Buffetts stand is famous: he has attacked all derivatives, saying he and his company view them as time bombs, both for the parties that deal in them and the economic system. Foreign Exchange Risk Management Firms dealing with multiple currencies face risk in terms of unanticipated gain/loss on account of sudden/unanticipated changes in exchange rates, quantified in terms of exposures. Exposure is defined as a contracted, projected or contingent cash flow whose magnitude is not certain at the moment and depends on the value of the foreign exchange rates. The process of identifying risks faced by the firm and implementing the process of protection from these risks by financial or operational hedging is defined as foreign exchange risk management. My paper limi ts its scope to hedging only the foreign exchange risks faced by firms like TCS. 3.1. Kinds of Foreign Exchange Exposure Risk management techniques vary with the type of exposure (accounting or economic) and term of exposure. Accounting exposure, also called translation exposure, results from the need to restate foreign subsidiaries financial statements into the parents reporting currency and is the sensitivity of net income to the variation in the exchange rate between a foreign subsidiary and its parent. Economic exposure is the extent to which a firms market value, in any particular currency, is sensitive to unexpected changes in foreign currency. Currency fluctuations affect the value of the firms operating cash flows, income statement, and competitive position, hence market share and stock price. Currency fluctuations also affect a firms balance sheet by changing the value of the firms assets and liabilities, accounts payable, accounts receivables, inventory, loans in foreign currency, investments (CDs) in foreign banks; this type of economic exposure is called balance sheet exposure. Transactio n Exposure is a form of short term economic exposure due to fixed price contracting in an atmosphere of exchange-rate volatility. The most common definition of the measure of exchange-rate exposure is the sensitivity of the value of the firm, proxied by the firms stock return, to an unanticipated change in an exchange rate. This is calculated by using the partial derivative function where the dependant variable is the firms value and the independent variable is the exchange rate (Adler and Dumas, 1984). 3.2. Necessity of managing foreign exchange risk A key assumption in the concept of foreign exchange risk is that exchange rate changes are not predictable and that this is determined by how efficient the markets for foreign exchange are. Research in the area of efficiency of foreign exchange markets has thus far been able to establish only a weak form of the efficient market hypothesis conclusively which implies that successive changes in exchange rates cannot be predicted by analyzing the historical sequence of exchange rates.(Soenen,1979). However, when the efficient market theory is applied to the foreign exchange market under floating exchange rates there is some evidence to suggest that the present prices properly reflect all available information (Giddy and Dufey, 1992). This implies that exchange rates react to new information in an immediate and unbiased fashion, so that no one party can make a profit by this information and in any case, information on direction of the rates arrives randomly so exchange rates also fluctu ate randomly. It implies that foreign exchange risk management cannot be done away with by employing resources to predict exchange rate changes. 3.3. Foreign Exchange Risk Management Framework Once a firm recognizes its exposure, it then has to deploy resources in managing it. A heuristic for firms to manage this risk effectively is presented below which can be modified to suit firm-specific needs i.e. some or all the following tools could be used. Forecasts: After determining its exposure, the first step for a firm is to develop a forecast on the market trends and what the main direction/trend is going to be on the foreign exchange rates. The period for forecasts is typically 6 months. It is important to base the forecasts on valid assumptions. Along with identifying trends, a probability should be estimated for the forecast coming true as well as how much the change would be. Risk Estimation: Based on the forecast, a measure of the Value at Risk (the actual profit or loss for a move in rates according to the forecast) and the probability of this risk should be ascertained. The risk that a transaction would fail due to market-specific problems4 should be taken int o account. Finally, the Systems Risk that can arise due to inadequacies such as reporting gaps and implementation gaps in the firms exposure management system should be estimated. Benchmarking: Given the exposures and the risk estimates, the firm has to set its limits for handling foreign exchange exposure. The firm also has to decide whether to manage its exposures on a cost centre or profit centre basis. A cost centre approach is a defensive one and the main aim is ensure that cash flows of a firm are not adversely affected beyond a point. A profit centre approach on the other hand is a more aggressive approach where the firm decides to generate a net profit on its exposure over time. Hedging: Based on the limits a firm set for itself to manage exposure, the firms then decides an appropriate hedging strategy. There are various financial instruments available for the firm to choose from: futures, forwards, options and swaps and issue of foreign debt. Hedging strategies and in struments are explored in a section. Stop Loss: The firms risk management decisions are based on forecasts which are but estimates of reasonably unpredictable trends. It is imperative to have stop loss arrangements in order to rescue the firm if the forecasts turn out wrong. For this, there should be certain monitoring systems in place to detect critical levels in the foreign exchange rates for appropriate measure to be taken. Reporting and Review: Risk management policies are typically subjected to review based on periodic reporting. The reports mainly include profit/ loss status on open contracts after marking to market, the actual exchange/ interest rate achieved on each exposure, and profitability vis-Ã  -vis the benchmark and the expected changes in overall exposure due to forecasted exchange/ interest rate movements. The review analyses whether the benchmarks set are valid and effective in controlling the exposures, what the market trends are and finally whether the ove rall strategy is working or needs change. Figure 1: Framework for Risk Management Effect of Currency swings in Indian market Cross-currency volatility is gnawing at the profit margins of almost every tech company. The movement of non-dollar currencies has undone the gains from rupees downward movement against the US dollar. When Indian IT companies were first exposed to the rupee-dollar volatility in 2007 (that time the Indian currency was strengthening against the greenback), they had hedged themselves against the dollar. However, while the rupee movement reversed again, IT companies and their CFOs were caught off guard as other currencies showed unexpected volatility for which they had very little hedges in place. As per the research and news: Indias total trade now accounts for over 40% of its GDP, and this highlights the increasing openness of the Indian economy and its reliance on foreign trade. However, as companies revenues increasingly come from cross-border trad e, they also become more vulnerable to fluctuations and swings in currency rates. There are many such examples amongst the Indian business. A midsize iron ore manufacturer and exporter suffered losses to the tune of $9.5 million due to adverse currency movements and losses of derivative transactions, which caused its profitability to slump to 4.5% as compared with 15% in the previous year. In another example, a mid-size auto component manufacturer suffered exchange losses of $1.2 million in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2009. This was because the company did not have a foreign exchange (forex) strategy in place to proactively counter this risk. It has now started hedging on selective basis by way of plain vanilla forwards as a corrective step. Looking at the cases like these, companies are now stepping up their cross-currency hedges. Example of TCS As per the annual report of TCS in the year 2007-2008, we get the following details, which reflect the derivative instr uments used by TCS to hedge the forex risk. Derivative financial instruments The Company, in accordance with its risk management policies and procedures, enters into foreign currency forward contracts and currency option contracts to manage its exposure in foreign exchange rates. The counter party is generally a bank. These contracts are for a period between one day and eight years. The Company has following outstanding derivative instruments as on March 31, 2008: The following are outstanding Foreign Exchange Forward contracts, which have been designated as Cash Flow Hedges, as on: Â Â March 31,2008 Â Â Â March 31,2007 Â Foreign Currency No. of Contracts Notional amount of forward contracts (million) Fair Value (Rs. In crores) Â No. of Contract Notional amount of forward contracts (million) Fair Value (Rs. In crores) Â Gain/(Loss) Â Gain/(Loss) U.S.Dollar 14 290 25.21 Â Sterling Pound 3 15 3.91 Â 5 21 0.32 Euro 3 19 11.78 Â Â Â 0.35 The following are outstanding Currency Option contracts, which have been designated as Cash Flow Hedges, as on: Â Â March 31,2008 Â Â Â March 31,2007 Â Foreign Currency No. of Contracts Notional amount of forward contracts (million) Fair Value (Rs. In crores) Â No. of Contract Notional amount of forward contracts (million) Fair Value (Rs. In crores) Â Gain/(Loss) Â Gain/(Loss) U.S.Dollar 67 3871.50 (88.70) Â 27 830.00 32.71 Sterling Pound 7 55.65 (2.23) Â 5 47.50 (1.93) Euro 12 99.25 (38.75) Â 11 76.50 (0.60) Net loss on derivative instruments of Rs.21.83 crores recognized in Hedging Reserve as of March 31, 2008, is expected to be reclassified to the profit and loss account by March 31, 2009 The movement in Hedging Reserve during year ended March 2008, for derivatives designated as Cash Flow Hedges is as follows: Particulars Year ended March 31, 2008 Year ended March 31, 2007 Â (Rs. In crores) (Rs. In crores) Balance at the beginning of the year 73.71 4.42 Gains / (losses) transferred to income statement on occurrence of forecasted hedge transaction 64.91 4.42 Changes in the fair value of effective portion of outstanding cash flow derivatives 174.78 29.64 Net derivative gain/(losses) related to a discontinued cash flow hedge 150.83 44.07 Balance at the end of the year 15.15 73.71 In addition to the above cash flow hedges, the Company has outstanding foreign exchange forward contracts and currency option contracts aggregating Rs. 2167.95 crores (previous year : Rs.2062.61 crores), whose fair value showed a loss of Rs.4.46 crores as on March 31, 2008 (previous year : gain of Rs 6.76 crores), to hedge the future cash flows. Although these contracts are effective as hedges from an economic perspective, they do not qualify for hedge accounting and accordingly these are accounted as derivatives instruments at fair value with changes in fair value recorded in the profit and loss account. Exchange gain of Rs.283.96 crores (previous year gain of Rs.45.13 crores) on foreign exchange forward contracts and currency option contracts have been recognized in the year ended March 31, 2008.

The Social Problem That I Chose For My Final Paper Is Poverty

Daniel DeGroat Social Issue Paper Intro to Sociology 9 December 2015 Poverty in America The social problem that I chose for my final paper is Poverty in America. Poverty is the general scarcity, dearth, or the state of one who lacks a certain amount of material possessions or money. Since the early 1800s, industrialization and immigration has brought poverty of a new kind and on a new scale to American cities. I have chosen the topic of poverty because it is apart of my everyday life and world. Being a city kid from New York, I see homeless and poverty filled streets to the extreme. It has now become a normal lifestyle for millions of people to withstand. Seeing how millions of people are constantly on the streets with a lack luster of money has connected me with these people on a strong level. Poverty in the United States is widespread through out all 50 states. The poverty rate of the United States as of 2014 has risen to 15%. The state with the smallest unemployment rate is North Dakota with only 2.8%. The state with the largest was Nevada 7.8%. Approximately, 49.7 m illion people are living in poverty, which makes every one in six Americans poor. Poverty in America is a lot more common than we acknowledge; nearly half of the people in the U.S. who are poor either do not realize that they are poor or do not label or identify their self as poor or â€Å"lower class.† Isabel V. Sawhill wrote an article in 2008 titled â€Å"Poverty in the United States†. She talks about how povertyShow MoreRelatedPolitical Ideology and Social Problem Analysis1944 Words   |  8 Pages Abramovitz (2003) states, â€Å"To a large extent, the history of social services and social welfare policy consists of the evolving recognition of social needs and the organization of society to meet them† (p. 130). 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A Pinter puzzle still unsolved Essay Example For Students

A Pinter puzzle still unsolved Essay The Roundabout Theatre Companys new mounting of Harold Pinters The Homecoming opened in New York last October just a few days after the tragicomic, hothouse confrontation between Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill. Suddenly, this once enigmatic play (routinely referred to in the late 60s as Pinters puzzle) seemed all too clear, almost didactically so. Ruth, the lone woman in the Homecoming, is involuntarily dragged into an all-male household, where three predatory members of the clan proceed to project upon her various male fantasies of womanhood: madonna and whore, earth mother and bitch goddess. In Anita Hills version of this story, only the fantasies were changed: spurned-woman-out-for-revenge, innocent dupe of Thomass political opponents, nut-case whose delusions were so powerful she could successfully negotiate a polygraph test. But the most compelling parallel between life and art was the role played in both by a nerdish character named Teddy: Pinters (as well as the Senate Judicia ry Committees) embodiment of detachment, ineffectuality and moral cowardice. It was as if The Homecoming had transformed before our eyes into one of those disease-of-the-week docudramas culled from the pages of People magazine. Of course, at the same time, it also felt as if Thomass confirmation hearings had been secretly scripted by Harold Pinter. As in: Who put the pubic hair on my Coke can? Is there a more Pinteresque moment anywhere in Pinter? All of the playwrights classic stategies were in evidence: the defamiliarizing of the commonplace, the sexualizing of objects, the verbal power plays, the territorial imperatives. Pinter, weve all been taught, is supposed to be about the weasel under the cocktail cabinet. But here, on the Senate committee, the weasels were very much out in the open: a Hatchetman named Orrin, the smarmy Specter of Arlen, and a Simpson considerably less benign than Bart. The Homecoming had never seemed timelier. And that was precisely the problem. Timeliness and relevance are ultimately impovershing to all great plays (and I believe that The Homecoming will prove to be the most enduringif not endearingof Pinters works). Such plays (we used to call them classics) always by definition transcend the period in which they were created. But thats because they simultaneously speak to and transcend every period, including the one in which theyre revived. Without an aura of strangeness and distance, great plays shrink in stature. They deliver only a quick fix that fades as fast as the headlines they momentarily, if powerfully, evoke. (Literature, as Ezra Pound once reminded us, is news that stays news.) So in approaching Pinters play we might bear in mind Andre Gides famous admonition to his eager admirers: Please, do not understand me too quickly. Where then does the problem lie? With the Roundabouts production? The Zeitgeist? The headlines? The play itself? Arguably, all of the above. But rather than assigning blame, Id prefer to raise a few questions that may help to clarify the nature of my complaint. Is the only problem that the Roundabouts production makes the play seem paaraphrasable, that it enables us all too easily to say what Pinters Puzzle is about (e.g., the objectification of women or something that sounds similarly fashionable)? Put differently: Should an ideal production of The Homecoming be infinitely more ambigous than this one? Not necessarily. For despite all the talk about puzzles and puzzlement, the most distinctive quality of the legendary Peter Hall/Royal Shakespeare Company production of The Homecoming that came to Broadway in 1967 was not its opaqueness or ambiguity, but rather its clarity, its concreteness and specificity. Not specificity of meaning, mind you but of sound and gesture, a palpable physicality which strongly suggested that any search for meaning would ultimately lead one back to the clean, sensuous surface of the production. For me, this was the theatre experience that best illustrated the wisdom of Susan Sontags then immensely influential essay, Against Interpretation. Transparence, wrote Sontag, is the highest, most liberating value in art. . . .Transparence means experiencing the luminousness of the thing in itself, of things being what they are. And in her oft-quoted, aphoristic conclusion to the essay, she maintained, In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art. But Sontags essay and Pinters play were written in the mid-1960s. Clearly, times have changed. Is it possible to ever again view this play the way we did then? The answer to that question is yesyou can go Homecoming again. That at least, was what I concluded after seeing Peter Halls 25th anniversay staging of Pinters play in London last spring. Perhaps the earth didnt move beneath my feet as it seemed to in 1967 when I saw the RSC production of the play in New York. But it convinced me that I hadnt been merely imagining, misremembering or embellishing things all these years. What I remembered deserved to be remebered as one of the three or four most formative experiences of a theatregoing life. In 1967, I was a precocious (maybe precious is the more accurate word) 18-year-old, determined to appear More Sophisticated Than Thou. My principal enthusiasms of the period included Alain Robbe-Grillets and Alain Resnaiss Last Year at Marienbad, Bergmans Persona, Antonionis Blownup, Andy Warhols silkscreens of Marilyn Monroe, the music of the Velvet Underground, the dances of Merce Cunningham and, of course, the essays of Sontag. Was there a place for the theatre in this celestial pantheon? Halls production of The Homecoming went a long way toward persuading me that the theatre might, on occasion, be able to hold its own alongside this cool, brainy, elegant company. The heart of Halls and Pinters strategy seemed to me to lie in Ruths response to the pseudo-philosophical bantering of Lenny and Teddy (e.g., Take a table. Philosophically speaking, what is it?). Lenny prattles on about this business of being and non-being, but Ruth emphasizes the palpability of the here and now. She may or may not speak for Pinter at this moment; but it seems to me that she affirmed (by physically embodying through speech and gesture) the very same values that distinguished this glacially elegant production as a whole: The Renaissance condition EssayLenny: Excuse me, shall I take the  ashtray out of your way? Ruth: Its not in my way. Lenny: It seems to be in the way of  your glass. The glass was about to fall.  Or the ashtray. Im rather worried  about the carpet. Its not me, its my  father. Hes obsessed with order and  clarity. He doesnt like mess. So, as I  dont believe youre smoking at the  moment, Im sure you wont object if I  move the ashtray. (He does so.) Lenny gets a laugh when he suggests that his father is obsessed with order and clarity: but the obsession he describes is evident nonetheless throughout the production. Given the fact that John Burys setting for the Hall production was so uncluttered to begin with, the ashtray and glass assumed an eerie prominence and intensityrather like the remaining pieces in the final moments of a championships chess match. Lenny continues the match as follows: Lenny: And now perhaps Ill relieve  you of your glass. Ruth: I havent quite finished. Lenny: Youve consumed quite  enough, in my opinion. Ruth: No, I havent. Lenny: quite sufficient, in my own  opinion. And then a few lines later: Lenny: Just give me the glass. Ruth: No. (Pause) Lenny: Ill take it, then. Ruth: If you take the glass. . .Ill take  you. Whether it was the moment when Lenny first invades Ruths private space by searching across her body for the ashtray, or the moment when Ruth decides to retaliate by pressing her hand firmly down on top of the glass, the blocking was wo cleanly chiseled that the results were positively sculptural. This was equally true of many other moments in Halls production: the stunning physical tableau at the end (Ruth sitting in the displaced patriarchs chair as he pathetically grovels on the floor, begging her for a kiss) or the scene in which Teddy, Ruths husband, is left holding her empty coat while she slow-dances with one of his brothers and then rolls on and off of the couch with another brother, or the precisely choreographed way in which the elderly uncle Sam collapses, presumably of a heart attack, toward the end of the play. These sequences were always realistic and yet strangely ritualized, as physically palpable as that glass of water, yet mysteriously reverberent, evoking distant ec hos of Lear, Oedipus and Greek tragedy. Ironically, Halls original production arrived at the very moment the American experimental theatre was becoming increasingly committed to a theatre of the body. (And as coincidence will have it, playing concurrently with Roundabouts revival of The Homecoming was a reconstruction at nearby La Mama ETC of Tom OHorgans production of Rochelle Owenss Futz, which also originally played in New York in 1967.) But the physical concreteness of The Homecoming was very different from the sort of physicality that informed the work of OHorgan, the Living Theater, the Open Theater or the Performance Group. The overtly choreographic stylization in a production like Futz was bodily with a vengeance, but it often bordered on group mine. And as a result, ones attention was ultimately deflected away from the body itself and onto what the body represented. In addition, much of this work was so determined to advertise the new freedom presumably offered by the liberated life of the body that it lacked the exacting physical discipline of Halls production. That sort of discipline was presumably at odds with the orgiastic and egalitarian ethos at the heart of so much of the company-created work of the period. So, paradoxically, at least for me, the most palpable and sensual theatre of the body was not to be found in the perpetual motion machines of Tom OHorgan (or for that matter, even in the work of Jerzy Crotowski) but in the unmistakably British collaboration of Harold Pinter, Peter Hall and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Critic Roger Copeland teaches at Oberlin College.