Amanda Knox : An American Girl From Seattle

Amanda Knox is an American student who was studying abroad in Italy when was accused and convicted of murdering her roommate, Meredith Kercher, and was found innocent of the crimes after serving four years in an Italian prison. The scrutiny surrounding this case is one of media influence and how it set her fate. Knox was not able to get a fair trial in Italy because of the negative image the media painted of her. With no concrete evidence, people believed she was guilty because of the horrible and twisted opinions of her in the media.

Marxism is a theory that analyses social hierarchy and class struggle though the proletariats (lower class) and the

Marxism is a philosophy, a world view, a system of social and economic analysis , and it became political doctrine. In understanding Marxism it is important to understand the time in which Marxist ideology developed, which was during the culmination of the Enlightenment, the middle and late 1800s, when America still had slaves, women did not have the right to vote anywhere, women had very few rights at all in most places, the poor were extremely bad off in Europe, imperialism and colonialism were the order of the day, the world truly was dominated by a handful of extremely wealthy men and science was being more widely embraced by average citizens throughout Western Civilisation than ever

Marxism (1895–1900) is the economic and political theory and practice originated by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels that holds that actions and human institutions are economically determined, that the class struggle is the basic agency of historical change, and that capitalism will ultimately be superseded by communism. They include the notion of economic determinism that political and social structures are determined by the economic conditions of people. Marxism calls for a classless society where all means of production are commonly owned, a system to be reached as an inevitable result

Marx 's conflict theory has a very distinct ideology, it is stated that it mainly focuses on the causes and effect of class conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The Bourgeoisie represented the members of a higher society which held onto the majority of the wealth and means also known as the owners of the way of manufacture and the capitalistic. While the proletariat class was constructed by individuals who belong to the working class or the poor. While they would focus on the economical, societal, and governmental implications of the rise of the capitalist economy in Europe. With the rise of the capitalist economy, it was theorized that the bourgeoisie,

Both Sociological theories take very different viewpoints on most general societal subjects such as family for instance. At its most basic platform Marxists see the stereotypical nuclear family as a tool for the ruling class. Early on Marx realized the ability to pass down property through generations was a brilliantly useful mechanism for controlling wealth and capital. Marxists see the family as a potential assembly line of workers: the head of the household being the proprietor and ‘CEO’ whilst the children are being prepared to receive their inheritance and maintain their family’s wealth and capital status.

Civil law is predicated upon the original Roman Law code wherein the person was presumed guilty until proven innocent. Countries such as Italy practice this code of law and the most recent case that symbolizes this type of law is the Amanda Knox case. Knox was interrogated for over 24 hours without a lawyer and presumed guilty until proven innocent, which runs contrary to the common law practiced in America. This is why the case caused outrage in America, which didn't understand the civil law practiced in Italy and how a suspect can be deemed guilty until proven innocent, which dictates that the defendant can be incarcerated until the person goes to trial.

The justice system’s failure to prosecute police brutality is a hot topic since most riots and acts of public violence surround this issue. One of the obstacles with prosecuting police brutality is a lack of evidence. As stated by Andrew Walter in an overview of police brutality, the failure to prove police brutality cases “stems from...difficulty in

Amanda Knox was a 20 year old from Seattle, Washington who moved to Perugia, Italy for college. She was a smart girl. She seemed to me to be very open with her life and sexuality. Her openness was later used against her by police, prosecutors, and media. The media gave her sexual nicknames, a few being: “… the promiscuous American she-devil…”, and “Foxy Knoxy” (HB xiii-xiv).

Marxism is a theory based on “a materialist interpretation of historical development and a dialectical view of social transformation” (Wikipedia, 2017) by philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxism focuses on social contradictions and the struggle between socioeconomic classes, which are proletariat, who are the poor people and the working class; and bourgeoisie, the rich people that control the means of production. Marxist theory states that the only way to eliminate the differences between both classes is a violent revolution that will lead to a communist society.

This nickname was perpetuated further by references to her as merely “Foxy” (Mansey, 2007; Parry, 2007), indicating a level of intertextuality and an assumption that the reader already had knowledge of her background. This strategy is frequently employed by the media for female criminals (Boyle, 2005) and serves to ‘demystify, erode public confidence [and] reduce humanity’ of the subject (Conboy, 2006). The end result was that Knox’s sexualised image became synonymous with her guilt and deviance.

Karl Marx developed his theory on class division by suggesting that all societies have two major classes, a ruling class and a subject class. The ruling class owned a means of production such as land or capital, whereas the subject class did not. Marx argued that this leads to the ruling class exploiting the subject class. The ruling class use a superstructure of the legal and political systems to justify its position and prevent protests by the subject class. In capitalist societies the main classes are the bourgeoisie (capitalist) and the proletariat (working class). In these societies the bourgeoisie exploits the working class through wage labour. The capitalists pay wages to the workers, but make a profit because they pay the workers less than the value of what they produce. Capitalism is the newest type of class society but it will also be the last. Eventually it will be replaced by a communist society in which the means of production

Marxism tries to explain things by look at the world differently, the purpose is to look at the existence of a world or of forces beyond the natural world around us, and the society we live in. It looks for concrete, scientific, logical explanations of the world. The Marxist theory developed when Karl Marx and his friend Frederich Engels wrote The Communist Manifesto in 1848, focuses on class in societies, Marxism attempts to change the world while other philosophies look to merely understand it. Marx wanted to better understand how so many people could be in poverty in a world where there is so much wealth. His answer was simple: capitalism.

The Marxist's perspective is dominantly based on economic factors and over emphasizes them; money is assumed to be everything within society and social life. In my view, something is clearly missing here such as values and other social factors. Assuming that money is everything within society leads to assumptions that those owning the productive and therefore economic resources are given the power and use it to control those without to maintain their hegemony. Further factors that can form and shape society like gender, ethnicity, age, culture etc. are not taken into consideration and neglected. Hence the Marxist perspective focuses on having versus not having, earning versus not earning and powerful versus powerless.

Marxism is the theory of Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels, it’s based on the economical and social system. Marxism emphasizes on the importance of class struggle in society. They thought that economic processes and class struggles laid the groundwork for every important era and movement in history, and would lead to the downfall of the upper class and the rise of an egalitarian communist society. Under capitalism, the working class or “the people,” own only their capacity to work; they have the ability only to sell their own labor. According to Marx a class is defined by the relations of its members to the means of production. The worker is alienated because he has no control over the labor or product which he produces. The