The Society (Church of England)

The Society, more fully The Society under the patronage of Saint Wilfrid and Saint Hilda and formerly known as The Society of Saint Wilfrid and Saint Hilda, is an independent association of Church of England clergy and lay people which defines itself as "an ecclesial body, led by a Council of Bishops". It is supported by Forward in Faith and administered by its director.

The Society's stated purposes are:

History

Plans for creation of The Society were announced on 24 September 2010 by a group of bishops of the Church of England who do not ordain women to the priesthood. This was in preparation for the new situation that would arise following the ordination of women to the episcopate. Its council of bishops began to meet regularly in 2013. In 2014, its members appointed a bishop's representative for each diocese of the Church of England. Registration began in 2014 of male transitional or permanent deacons and female permanent deacons as "Deacons of The Society" and male priests as "Priests of The Society".

Society

A society is a group of people involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Societies are characterized by patterns of relationships (social relations) between individuals who share a distinctive culture and institutions; a given society may be described as the sum total of such relationships among its constituent members. In the social sciences, a larger society often evinces stratification or dominance patterns in subgroups.

Insofar as it is collaborative, a society can enable its members to benefit in ways that would not otherwise be possible on an individual basis; both individual and social (common) benefits can thus be distinguished, or in many cases found to overlap.

A society can also consist of like-minded people governed by their own norms and values within a dominant, larger society. This is sometimes referred to as a subculture, a term used extensively within criminology.

Getty Images

Getty Images, Inc. is an American stock photo agency, based in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is a supplier of stock images for business and consumers with an archive of 80 million still images and illustrations and more than 50,000 hours of stock film footage. It targets three markets—creative professionals (advertising and graphic design), the media (print and online publishing), and corporate (in-house design, marketing and communication departments).

Getty has distribution offices around the world and capitalizes on the Internet and CD-ROM collections for distribution. As Getty has acquired other older photo agencies and archives, it has digitized their collections, enabling online distribution. Getty Images now operates a large commercial website which allows clients to search and browse for images, purchase usage rights and download images. Costs of images vary according to the chosen resolution and type of rights associated with each image. The company also offers custom photo services for corporate clients.

The Society of the Spectacle

The Society of the Spectacle (French: La société du spectacle) is a 1967 work of philosophy and Marxist critical theory by Guy Debord. In this important text for the Situationist movement, Debord develops and presents the concept of the Spectacle. Debord published a follow-up book Comments on the Society of the Spectacle in 1988.

Summary

The work is a series of 221 short theses. They contain approximately a paragraph each.

Degradation of human life

Debord traces the development of a modern society in which authentic social life has been replaced with its representation: "All that once was directly lived has become mere representation." Debord argues that the history of social life can be understood as "the decline of being into having, and having into merely appearing." This condition, according to Debord, is the "historical moment at which the commodity completes its colonization of social life."

The spectacle is the inverted image of society in which relations between commodities have supplanted relations between people, in which "passive identification with the spectacle supplants genuine activity". "The spectacle is not a collection of images," Debord writes, "rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images."

Reusable shopping bag

A reusable shopping bag, sometimes called bag-for-life in the UK, is a type of shopping bag which can be reused many times; this is an alternative to single-use paper or plastic bags. It is often made from fabric such as canvas, woven synthetic fibers, or a thick plastic that is more durable than disposable plastic bags, allowing multiple use.

Reusable shopping bags are a kind of carrier bag, which are available for sale in supermarkets and apparel shops. Some reusable bags have been found to contain high amounts of lead. Moreover, they require more energy to produce than common plastic shopping bags; one reusable bag requires the same amount of energy as an estimated 28 traditional plastic shopping bags or eight paper bags. "If used once per week, four or five reusable bags will replace 520 plastic bags a year", according to Nick Sterling, research director at Natural Capitalism Solutions. A study commissioned by the United Kingdom Environment Agency in 2005 but never published found that the average cotton bag is used only 51 times before being thrown away. In some cases reusable bags need to be used over 100 times before they’re better for the environment than single-use plastic bags.