Oxford University Press's Blog, page 100

Which is better: school integration or separate, Black-controlled schools?

This summer journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones shocked Americans when she decided to decline tenure at the University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill in favor of an endowed chair at historically Black Howard University. The choice is unexpected because Ms Hannah-Jones, who identifies as Black, has spent her career arguing for school integration as an essential strategy to equalize educational opportunities for students of color.

Ms Hannah-Jones writes, “Since the second grade when I began being bused into white schools, I have been fighting against people who did not think a Black girl like me belonged, people who tried to control what I did, how I spoke how I looked, the work I produced.”

But now, after the Board of Trustees at UNC attempted to block her tenure appointment for political reasons, Ms Hannah-Jones has accepted a position at one of the nation’s leading historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).

Ms. Hannah-Jones explains, “For too long, Black Americans have been taught that success is defined by gaining entry to and succeeding in historically white institutions. I have done that, and now I am honored and grateful to join the long legacy of Black Americans who have defined success by working to build up their own.”

Many Americans wonder: is it hypocritical for a Black integrationist to leave a predominantly white university to work at an historically Black one?

An historical perspective helps shed light on this important question. I have traced debates within northern Black communities over the question of which would better serve the larger civil rights movement, racially integrated schools or separate, Black-controlled ones. These debates stretch back to the nation’s earliest, tax-supported schools in Boston in the 1840s and forward to the present day.

School integration seeks to break down the sinister effects of residential segregation created by decades of redlining, housing discrimination, white flight, gentrification, and discriminatory zoning by deliberately engineering diverse schools, typically by busing students out of their racially homogenous neighborhoods. Separation requires these very plans to be dismantled so that Black parents can have control over local, majority Black schools in their immediate neighborhoods. Although it is not impossible, it is challenging to pursue both strategies at the same time.

To date, neither has been entirely successful, yet both ideals—integration and separation—reappear with each new generation of students, parents, educators, and leaders who insist that quality public schools will improve Black students’ life chances, empower Black communities, and begin to redress larger racial inequalities in American society.

For this reason, historians are not surprised by Ms Hannah-Jones’ decision to abandon a majority white university for an historically Black one. The logic at the heart of this dilemma echoes back across the generations, including her frustration with high levels of racial discrimination at a predominantly white school and her powerful belief that a separate, Black-controlled one offers a more nurturing and supportive environment in which to succeed so that she can do more to advance the larger Black freedom struggle.

A meticulous historical analysis of school board records, court cases, the Black press, and civil rights organizations shows that either school integration or separation dominated the political discourse of northern Black educational activists in the US during particular historical eras. For example, school integration dominated between 1840 and 1900, but separation was more pronounced between 1900 and 1940, at which point school integration rose to prominence again alongside the wartime Black civil rights movement, before being subsumed by the Black Power movement in 1966. By 1975, African Americans remained committed to school integration as a strategy, but they modified this approach to include many of the features we associate with separate schools such as a critical mass of Black students, more Black teachers and administrators, and a curriculum and pedagogy that reflected Black students’ lived experiences.

Crispus Attucks Day commemoration with Doolittle Elementary School students (H. A. Martin Photography; Chicago Urban League Records)

During each historical era where either integration or separation dominated, a chorus of dissent, debate, and counter-narratives pushed Black communities to consider a fuller range of educational reform. This dynamic tension did not undermine Black educational activism, but made it smarter, more flexible, and more effective. The major improvements to racial equality in US public schools come from the important work of school integrationists and the vital work of those who advocated separate, Black-controlled schools.

In other words, the debate over school integration versus separation has a long and venerable tradition in African American communities, and because Americans have failed to equalize schools by 2021, this debate is still very much with us.

While the Black civil rights movement achieved so many righteous victories, it also suffered terrible defeats. The failure to equalize public education for Black students is among the most troubling of these losses. American public schools are becoming more segregated by race and socioeconomic class each year, which correlates directly with unequal educational opportunities and outcomes. Many of the nation’s most segregated schools today can be found not in the South, but in the supposedly progressive North.

Unlike public transportation, parks, restaurants, movie theaters, and even hospitals, which were successfully desegregated, schools are intended to offer a route out of poverty and serve as an equalizing mechanism in a deeply unequal social order. In the United States, access to a quality public school provides every child, no matter the status of his or her birth, with a shot at achieving the American Dream. Thus, equalizing access to public education represents one of the most pressing, unfinished agendas of the Black civil rights movement and a crucial site of analysis for historians.

School integration can help equalize educational opportunity and advance the civic function of public education in a democracy. But it is not a simple undertaking, and Black educational activists have long disagreed over whether integration is the best strategy to achieve a structural vision of educational equality and redistributive justice. Meaningful school integration requires a frank reckoning with how institutionalized racism has long discriminated against Black students and parents in ways that harm Black students and create vastly unequal educational opportunities.

Mixing Black and white students inside of formerly white schools is not a viable model for effective school integration. Generations of Black educational activists have supported separate schools as institutions that nurture the intellectual and emotional growth of Black youth while empowering Black communities. The argument for separate schools has always contained within it a vital critique of majority white schools as hegemonic institutions that fail to meet the needs of Black students and, consequently, fail to meet the larger purpose of public education in a democracy.

Ms Hannah-Jones’ decision to support school integration while working at an historically Black one is not hypocritical, but smart and reasonable given that she faced overt racial hostility and discrimination at the UNC. She used the opportunity to call for specific reforms that would make predominantly white universities like UNC truly welcoming places for scholars of color.

It’s not Ms Hannah-Jones’ responsibility to fix the systemic racism her very existence uncovered at the University of North Carolina. As she puts it, “The burden of working for racial justice is laid on the very people bearing the brunt of the injustice, and not the powerful people who maintain it. I say to you: I refuse.”

As she should. History shows us that for school integration to work well it must be more than not racist, it must be explicitly anti-racist.

If we want to make all schools welcoming places for people of color, we should take note of the features that work so well in separate, Black-controlled schools, including hiring and retaining more faculty and administrators of color, reforming hiring and promotion processes like tenure, affirming diverse Black histories and cultures, and treating Black faculty and students with dignity and respect. These are the very reforms Ms Hannah-Jones asks for at UNC. It remains to be seen whether predominantly white institutions like UNC will listen.

Featured image by Neonbrand via Unsplash

From the rise to the maturation of the platform economy

Today, digital platform firms are among the most valuable and powerful firms in the world. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the movement of social and economic activity online, embedding platforms further into our lives. Consider social media, which saw monthly visits surge by 3% at Facebook, 36% at Twitter, 43% at Instagram, and 576% at TikTok between 2019 and 2020. In 2021, despite the pandemic, mega-platform firms Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft saw their aggregate profits rise by 24% and their combined market capitalization nearly doubled to $7.511 trillion, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Technical developments, from the personal computer through to the smartphone, connected billions of people to the Internet, facilitating the rise of the platform business model. Platforms position themselves as the critical go-betweens of a vast array of social and economic activities, leveraging the strength of network effects and of winner-take-most characteristics to grow. As intermediaries, platforms differ from traditional businesses by “reconfiguring the way that transactions are completed, but not necessarily the end product” (Kenney et al., 2021).

Platform power over their ecosystem is reinforced by the terms and conditions that platforms impose and unilaterally change at will. Take, for instance, the Amazon Services Business Solutions Agreement which states that, “[Sellers] grant [Amazon] a royalty-free, non-exclusive, worldwide right and license for the duration of [their] original and derivative intellectual property rights” for Amazon or their affiliates to use any users’ materials. Sellers, pushed to compete on Amazon for access to their massive consumer base are forced to relinquish proprietary information to Amazon, who also acts as a competitor, thereby signing away an important competitive advantage.

As platforms continue to grow increasingly dominant, little research has depicted their pervasiveness and the extent of their power. To address this gap in the literature, in The Platform Economy Matures, we show that platforms have become pervasive across service industries and show that they are amassing power that extends across traditional industrial boundaries. We document the extent of platform presence across industries by recognizing that platforms intermediate transactions, rather than simply selling goods and services. This provides a new way of understanding the spread of platforms and suggests that platforms are present in a far broader range of sectors than previously shown. We estimate that in 70% of service industries, which represent over 5.2 million establishments, platforms serve as intermediaries.

As intermediaries, platforms are in a perfect position to extract value from other businesses operating in their ecosystem and to use this to subsidize expansion into new markets or ventures. Their scale and scope allows them to generate and use data and customer access to further expand their reach, capturing new, adjacent markets with minimal risk. For example, Amazon, with its privileged access to what is being bought and sold on the platform, has visibility into particularly lucrative market segments informing it on when to enter with its own products or when to favor particular firms in search results—an outcome that allows it to destroy businesses that are dependent upon it. This process has been termed the “Amazon Effect.” The enormous mass of data allows it to dramatically decrease the cost and risk of introducing new services, such as launching Amazon Prime or entering logistics and warehousing. Amazon has become all the more powerful as it subsumes ever more segments in the supply chain.

These power dynamics are not only true of the mega-platforms, but also for sectoral platforms. To illustrate, individuals turn to Airbnb to find accommodation but also experiences when traveling. Uber, too, began transporting people and has expanded into food delivery.

Platforms are vital infrastructure, gatekeepers, and ad hoc regulators. This poses critical questions regarding antitrust, entrepreneurship, innovation, and inequality. Is the necessary tradeoff for quick and accessible goods and services the unregulated power for platforms that provide them? Do the benefits of platforms today outweigh the long-term social and economic costs—surveillance capitalism, weakened power of labor and platform-dependent businesses, and more? The growing recognition of the effects of platform power has prompted various measures and proposals by governments around the world with calls echoed in the United States by leading politicians, academics, and civil society groups. Effective regulation will require a “regulatory response predicated upon understanding the mechanisms that platforms use to reorganize industries” rather than simple reactive responses characteristic of traditional competition policy.

How to chide according to rule, or the thin edge of the wedge

Fifteen years ago, I mentioned the verb chide in a post but have never returned to it. Chide remains a word “of unknown origin,” even though the Online Etymological Dictionary mentions the hypothesis suggested in my 2008 An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology. Perhaps it might be interesting to some of our readers to know the history of research into the etymology of this verb.

Two circumstances should be noted. First, verbs meaning “to chastise” often originate in low slang and thieves’ cant or are borrowed from equally vituperative but more eloquent neighbors. Second, though Old English cīdan has a long vowel, its root (cīd) resembles verbs and nouns like dig, bug, cog, and so forth, some of which are sound-imitative or sound-symbolic and do not have an ascertainable etymology. The Old English noun gecīd means “strife, altercation,” and we cannot know whether the verb was derived from the noun or the noun was a back formation on the verb. Nor does the solution matter for discovering the origin of the root. As a curiosity, the modern verb to kid (as in you are kidding) may be mentioned. It is a relatively modern word taken over from slang and has nothing to do with cīdan, but the similarity is curious. Perhaps cīd is also a word devoid of “respectable” ancestry.

In cīd, k- became ch– before ī (the same change would have occurred before a short front vowel), and ī turned into a modern diphthong by another regular change (the Great Vowel Shift). As far as the etymology is concerned, verbs going all the way from German schelten “to scold” (and perhaps—only perhaps—related to scold) and Dutch kijven “to quarrel” to Finnish kidata and kittistä “to creak, shriek; press together,” with Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin verbs beginning with k thrown in for good measure, have been cited as possible sources or analogs of chide.

Chiding an employee. (Image by Sebastian Herrmann.)

The modern Finnish etymological dictionaries call kittistä onomatopoeic, though the complex kit hardly renders any noise. In the world of sound imitation, strict rules are few. For instance, English thud, with its open vowel, makes us think of a noise produced by a heavy blow. Yet Old English had þyddan “to thrust, push,” a verb with a high vowel. Greek kudádzo and Old Russian kuditi “to scold” (stress on the second syllable) are close to cīd-, but they cannot be its regular cognates because they begin with k (by the First, or Germanic, Consonant Shift, their Germanic “relative” should have begun with h: compare Latin quod and Old English hwæt “what”), while the borrowing from either Greek, let alone Russian, is most unlikely.

One may also remember the undoubtedly sound-imitative verbs English tickle, German kitzeln, Latin titillare (the same meaning: cf. English titillate), and quite a few others bearing some resemblance to Old English cīd. In the past, lexicographers cited many such look-alikes, so that the entry chide in old dictionaries, regardless of whether their authors knew the Old English source of the modern form, consists mainly of long lists taking us nowhere. They only list many verbs sounding like chide and meaning about everything from “strike” to “creak” and “tickle.” Even Walter W. Skeat, in the first edition of his English etymological dictionary, mentioned a few verbs that might be close to chide. This is, apparently, a road nowhere. Therefore, such lists gradually disappeared from dictionaries and chide acquired the status of an isolated verb of unknown origin.

This was a natural outcome: the stricter our method of discovery, the less guesswork we find in our authoritative works. Only once have I come across a new tentative congener of chide in a reliable modern dictionary. Icelandic kiða “to rub, scratch, move with short steps” has been known since the seventeenth century and is as isolated in Scandinavian as chide is in English. The senses of kiða (the corresponding noun is kið) and Old English cīd do not match, and, even if the words in question are related, nothing follows from this fact about their origin.

A wooden wedge. The prototype devoutly to be wished? (Image by beprop.)

The reason I ventured to step into this etymological quagmire is that I think I have found a word with the same root as Old English cīd. In Middle High German (this term covers the history of the German language roughly between the thirteenth and the middle of the fifteenth century), the word kîdel “wedge” turned up (î designates a long vowel, the same as in Old English cīd). It was, most probably, an ancient word, and its reflex (continuation) still exists in modern dialects as Keidel, a doublet of the much better-known German noun Keil “wedge.”

The weakest link in my reconstruction is the attempt to trace the meaning of the root in kîdel to something like “cudgel,” though, as noted, the recorded sense is “wedge.” In many languages, the word for “wedge” is of obscure origin (as is typical of technical terms) and seems to refer to pricking, but just the root of Keidel probably means “to break up.” Meanings in this group of words fluctuate widely. Old English cycgel “cudgel” (German Keule) seems to be related to German Kugel “bullet.” The family name Keidel also exists, but its origin is disputable and therefore sheds no light on the common noun. If I am right, the original meaning of Old English gecīd was in the beginning not “strife” but “attacking an opponent with a stick; an exchange of blows,” while cīdan could be glossed “to brandish sticks.” If so, “scold, reprove” is a later figurative use of the same.

A somewhat more severe form of chiding! (Image by pxfuel.)

Rather close semantic parallels are not wanting. One of them is English rebuke, ultimately from Old French rebuschier. The verb buschier meant “beat, strike,” properly “cut down wood,” for busche designated “log.” The development was from “beat back” (note the prefix re-!) to “reprove.” English chicane and chicanery are of course also borrowings from French. The great French lexicographer Émile Littré traced chicane to a Persian word for a club or bat used in polo, via Medieval Latin and Medieval Greek. This idea has not been endorsed but never rebuffed. If trounce is related to truncheon, we have one more analog of the process suggested above. Given this sequence of events, chide will emerge as a Germanic word. Discussing the origin of its root would take me too far afield. In this post, I only tried to find a slot for chide in the welter of lookalikes in various languages.

Perhaps someone is reading this essay in Kent, GB. There is a famous village there called Chiddingstone, formerly Chidingstone  (“all on one side”; this phrase often occurs in English idioms); near the church, a certain stone is (or was) popularly known as Chiding Stone. “The village tradition is that on it the priests used to chide the people, whence the name.” (Notes and Queries, Series 7, Vol. 7, 1889, 445-46.) But more probably, the stone owes its origin to a proper name. (See also a rather detailed entry on Chiddingstone in Wikipedia.) Was Mr Chiding or Mr Chidda related to his German double Herr Keidel? Does the stone still exist? Stones are rather permanent fixtures. If someone from Kent sends us a photo or a drawing of it, we’ll post it in this blog with appreciation and gratitude.

Featured image by Nigel Chadwick via Wikimedia Commons

The three greatest myths of the Fall of Tenochtitlán

13 August 2021 marks the moment, exactly five hundred years ago, when Spanish conquistadors won the battle for Tenochtitlán, completing their astonishing conquest of the Aztec Empire, initiating the three-century colonial era of New Spain. At least, that is the summary of the event that has since predominated. In recent decades, scholars have developed increasingly informed and complex understandings of the so-called Conquest, and opinions in Mexico itself have become ever more varied and sophisticated. And yet, wherever in the world the Conquest of Mexico is referenced, the essential précis and meaning of what happened on 13 August continues to correlate closely to the opening sentence above.

That sentence, however, is highly misleading. In fact, I would argue that it is plain wrong. Its distortions are many, but I shall here outline three that are arguably the most common misconceptions or myths surrounding 13 August 1521.

Myth one: all of the attackers were Spanish

Consider this stunning fact: during the siege of Tenochtitlán, less than 1% of the attackers were Spaniards. It takes a huge leap of imagination, and an equally large dose of prejudice against Indigenous Mexicans, to see the siege as simply Spanish—and therefore the surrender of the city’s resisting residents on 13 August as a Spanish accomplishment (either glorious or shameful).

That non-Spanish 99+% of attackers was highly varied, including African and African-descended soldiers, Taínos and other Indigenous Caribbean support personnel enslaved by Spaniards, Totonacs and other Mesoamericans. But the majority were Nahuas, most famously long-term opponents of the Aztecs such as the Tlaxcalteca, and most of the attackers were Nahuas who were Aztec subjects; indeed, if we classify as “Aztec” anyone from the three city-states that controlled the empire (sometimes called the Triple Alliance), then a significant percentage of the attackers were Aztec.

That percentage varied over the months of the siege. For example, when, during one intense battle at the city’s edge at the end of June, the empire’s defenders killed over a dozen Spaniards and captured 68 of them (roughly 10% of the company at that moment), executing them atop the Templo Mayor, tens of thousands of opposing Aztecs (or, to avoid confusion, ex-Aztecs) returned to their families and fields in and around Tetzcoco, Chalco, Cholula, and dozens of other hometowns. But the defenders were also battling starvation, smallpox and other diseases, and the crippling misery of seeing family members of all ages dying cruel deaths—all while the attackers rampaged house-to-house across the island. So, in July 1521, when the defenders were forced to retreat to the Tlatelolco district of the island—with the attackers entering the great market square there on 1 August —those Nahuas (ex-Aztecs included) returned in droves to participate in the siege’s destructive climax.

The point here is not to diminish the impact of the Spanish invasion; prior to the start of the siege, Spaniards had spent much of their two years in Mexico inflicting massacres, slave-raids, and other forms of family-destroying violence upon the Indigenous population, creating the massive disruption that led to the siege. But the siege itself—like the war—was a Mexican tragedy, not a Spanish military action against the Aztec Empire.

Myth two: the Spanish Conquest ended with the Fall of Tenochtitlán

Let us upend the assertion that the Conquest ended on 13 August and was followed by the colonial period. Instead, the Spanish conquest and the subsequent colonization began on 13 August . At the moment when Cuauhtémoc, the last Aztec emperor or huey tlahtoani of Tenochtitlán, surrendered to Spanish captains, the empire was fragmented and in disarray, with two city-states, Tetzcoco and Tlaxcala, poised to consolidate regional power; Mexico was very far from being under the control of the one thousand Spaniards present at the end of the siege. The Aztec Empire was partially destroyed from within in 1520-21, then partially resurrected by the Tetzcoca and other ex-Aztecs, before slowly transmuting over decades into New Spain.

Likewise, the invasion wars were far from over. For another 26 years after Tenochtitlán’s siege, military campaigns were fought in and adjacent to the former Aztec Empire by Spanish conquistadors, who continued to be outnumbered by Nahua and other Mesoamericans fighting alongside them. If we must assign specific dates here, I would argue that “the conquest period” was 1517-1547 and “the colonial period” was 1547-1821.

Myth three: the Conquest was an “astonishing” achievement

I deliberately included the adjective “astonishing” in the opening sentence, to reflect the persistence across five centuries of the conquistador claim that their “conquest” was an astounding achievement. In accounts designed specifically to be self-promotional, veterans of the war marveled at their own against-all-odds triumph, a spin further embellished by royal chroniclers, whose task was specifically to promote the glory of imperial Spain. How did they explain it all?

“The siege of Tenochtitlán was a vicious dénouement to a war filled with cruelty and suffering. After five hundred years, it is time to stop that violence from continuing to resonate through how we view the Aztecs and other Indigenous American cultures.”

By an intertwined trio of “facts”: God was on the side of Spanish Christians; Spaniards were an indomitable people “in the habit of winning” (as Cortés put it); and the individual conquistador writing (or being written about) was driven to superhuman feats by his deep loyalty to the Crown. Underpinning those “facts” was a prejudicial view of Indigenous cultures in general and of the Aztecs in particular. Condemning the Aztecs as duplicitous, blood-thirsty barbarians was crucial to justifying the violence of the invasion war—a smear tactic that was also applied to Nahua allies, whom the Spaniards blamed for the brutality of the siege. But emphasizing the fearsome militarism of the Aztecs also served that primary Spanish propaganda goal—the promotion of “the Conquest” as an extraordinary accomplishment.

While the Spaniards’ own explanations for the fall of the Aztec Empire have receded in time, the negative depiction of the Aztecs has persisted; more than that, it has flourished. The popular image of the Aztecs worldwide, perpetuated in online media, textbooks, video games, and film, is that of the skull rack and the rituals of “human sacrifice” (itself a phrase laden with the baggage of racist colonialism). Yet Aztec civilization was as rich and deep as that of any Europeans in the 15th and 16th centuries, no more militaristic or bloody (and arguably less so).

The siege of Tenochtitlán was a vicious dénouement to a war filled with cruelty and suffering. After five hundred years, it is time to stop that violence from continuing to resonate through how we view the Aztecs and other Indigenous American cultures.

To learn more about the latest scholarship on the fall of the Aztec Empire, join Matthew Restall, Stefan Rinke, and Camilla Townsend for a roundtable discussion 11 August. Register for the event now.

Feature image by Max Letek on Unsplash  

Inspiring women in jazz, with Nikki Iles

Nikki Iles is a prominent British jazz pianist and composer, and edits the “Nikki Iles Jazz Series” for OUP, alongside a busy freelance, composing, and teaching career. We were excited to be able to talk to her about her experiences as a performer and composer, and on inspiring women in the jazz scene today.

How did you come to be a jazz musician, and what music inspired you in these early years?

As a teenager, I took clarinet and piano lessons at the Royal Academy of Music on Saturdays. I always particularly loved the chamber groups and small group music-making, so in some ways, it’s no surprise that I ended up in the jazz world! My dad was a semi-pro jazz drummer and I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by the music of Oscar Peterson, Nat Cole, Frank Sinatra, Ella and George Shearing as I grew up. I loved the deep swing feel of Oscar Peterson’s Night Train album, Frank Sinatra’s effortless phrasing on the Sinatra Basie album and the first musician with whom I really felt a deep affinity—Bill Evans on the recording Live at the Village Vanguard.

How did you come to be a composer?

Writing has always seemed the most natural extension of my music making as an improviser, almost improvisation with hindsight! In the early nineties I was teaching and playing in all sorts of musical situations and by this time had met the musicians that were kindred spirits. I didn’t work with any other women writers and at that time worked with only one other female player—a great drummer called Caroline Boaden.

Were you ever conscious of the gender imbalance in the fields of both jazz and composition when you chose to pursue this as a career?

It’s strange—it never crossed my mind or presented any barriers to me (that I know of!), which seems ridiculous with the awareness we now have regarding this real imbalance. I was lucky to have surrounded myself with musicians where music was the only thing that mattered, and I never felt marginalised. I think I would have been telling a very different story if I was working in a touring big band or involved in the gladiatorial cutting contests of some jam sessions or the kind of “school of hard knocks” that can exist on the band stand.

There weren’t many women players around when I started out, but the British singer, Norma Winstone, the composer Carla Bley, and pianists Joanne Brackeen and Geri Allen were all significant figures for me.  It’s interesting as I find myself moving into a new chapter—writing for Jazz Orchestra—that I’ve never seen a British woman tour, leading her own big band playing of all her own compositions and arrangements, which seems ridiculous in this day and age. It’s music I love, so as well as enjoying the infinite possibilities with 19 musicians, I also need to be visible in order to encourage other women to feel they can too! The American writer Maria Schneider has been a great source of inspiration, bringing the big band sound into the 21st century with her unique and evocative music.

Can you talk a little about your concert with the Royal Academy of Music Big Band, “Celebrating Women in Jazz”?

My goal was to put together a concert of great writers with individual voices, who happen to be women. The music spanned from 1946 to a piece I finished a week before the concert! Mary Lou Williams’ Scorpio was written for Duke Ellington’s Orchestra. Duke thought it was too modern, and it still sounds modern today! Williams was way ahead of her time, but sadly in a massive minority as a Black female big band composer and arranger. Carla Bley was self-taught as a composer and her sound world is indefinable. Christine Jenson (sister of the trumpeter Ingrid Jenson) is a more contemporary writer and writes with more world music influences.

From your experience as an educator, how do you think we can continue to encourage young women and girls to become jazz musicians and composers?

Giving girls confidence early on is key. Girls (me too at this stage) are less likely to take risks or throw themselves into something without a clear outcome or preparation—all things which are key as an improviser. Providing a safe and fun environment to do all of this without recrimination is a great start. Apart from my work in the schools and colleges, during lockdown I have been delighted to be approached by several young women aged from 19 to 35 to mentor them in composition through this time. We could see a real wave of women composers coming through—I hope so!

A world without relative clauses

When I was struggling with relative clauses in the fourth or fifth grade, trying to diagram them with the help of J. Martyn Walsh’s Plain English Handbook, I wondered why they were even necessary. All those whos and whiches and whats and thats. Where did the relative clause begin and the main clause end? Why did the teacher sometimes call them adjective clauses? Should I use that or which or who? And what was the story with restrictive and non-restrictive?

If you had asked me then to imagine a world without relative clauses, I would have said “Fine. Who needs them?” But it turns out that relative clauses are supremely useful and not that hard to understand.

Take a look at the fairly mundane paragraph that follows:

Harry put down his coffee, which he had just finished. The stray dog which had appeared the night before needed to go out. As they walked to the park, which was only a block away, the dog stopped at a tree which stood on a neighbor’s lawn. The neighbor, who always seemed irritated about something, scowled and told them, “Get off my lawn.” Harry retrieved the plastic bag which he had remembered to bring and took care of business.

There are a bunch of relative clauses, six by my count. Without them, the paragraph is even more mundane, a series of short sentences and repeated noun phrases.

Harry put down his coffee. He had just finished his coffee. The stray dog needed to go out. The stray dog had appeared the night before. As they walked to the park, the dog stopped at a tree. The park was only a block away. The tree stood on a neighbor’s lawn. The neighbor scowled and shouted, “Get off my lawn.” The neighbor always seemed irritated about something. Harry retrieved the plastic bag and took care of business. He had remembered to bring the plastic bag.

You can punch it up, I imagine, maybe shifting the order of things and adding some conjunctions. But getting rid of the relative clauses alerts us to why they are so useful: they allow us to combine simpler sentences into more complex ones in which some information is more prominent and other information less so.

In a sentence with a relative clause, one clause modifies a noun phrase in the other. That’s why they are sometimes called adjective clauses. The modifying sentence undergoes a slight mutation to make it less repetitive and to signal the connection, then you glue them together.

To combine the simple sentences Harry put down his coffee and He had just finished his coffee, first you replace his coffee with which in the second sentence, then you move which to the front of that sentence and use it to glue the two together:

Harry put down his coffee. He had just finished his coffee.

Harry put down the coffee, which he had just finished.

The which introduces the relative clause and points to the missing direct object of finished.  

The second example is similar but slightly more complicated. Here you replace the stray dog in the second sentence with which (you could have chosen that or even who if you are a dog lover). The which is already at the front, so you don’t even need to move it there. Then you plop the whole clause after the stray dog in the first sentence to make the new complex sentence:

The stray dog needed to go out. The stray dog had appeared the night before.

The stray dog which had appeared the night before needed to go out.

Notice that relative clauses can be added to direct objects (his coffee) or subjects (the stray dog) or any noun phrase. What’s more, a sentence can have more than one relative clause—any number really. We can combine all three of the following sentences into one.

As they walked to the park, the dog stopped at a tree. The park was only a block away. The tree stood on a neighbor’s lawn.

Replacing the park and the tree with which you get two relative clauses: which was only a block away and which was located on a neighbor’s lawn. Since the park and the tree are already at the front of their sentences, they do not need to be moved when you replace them with which, and you just position the relative clauses after the nouns they go with.

As they walked to the park, which was only a block away, the dog stopped at a tree which stood on a neighbor’s lawn.

By now you probably get the idea. Relative clauses didn’t come to me immediately. But I finally made my peace with them, even coming to love relative infinitives, like something with which to write, free relatives like whatever you decide is fine with me, and sentence-modifying relatives like Everything turned out perfectly, which I hadn’t expected.

Featured image: “Empty Turkish coffee cup” by Arne Krueger. CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

What everyone needs to know about 2021 thus far

The year 2020 posed myriad challenges for everyone and now that we have reached the mid-way point of 2021, it is clear that, although the crises are not yet fully averted, the year thus far has already boasted some encouraging events.

Politics

In January, the 46th president was inaugurated into office and since then, President Joe Biden and his administration have signed a multitude of historic executive orders, such as re-joining the Paris Climate Agreement and the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan.

Read more about the global responsibilities for environmental protection and how global conferences, conventions, and treaties, like the Paris Climate Agreement contribute.

Chapter four: “Environmental Protection and the Global Community” in Environmental Protection: What Everyone Needs to Know® 

Afghanistan has seen longstanding conflict that featured at various points most of the world’s major powers. Afghanistan and the fate of its people has been inextricably linked to the US military presence for many years, thus the impending withdrawal of US troops by September this year has sparked conflicting opinions on what the impact of this will be on the nation.

Read more on the significance of US military presence and the recent withdrawal on this complicated nation.

Chapter 10: “Peace or More War?” from Afghanistan: What Everyone Needs to Know®(Image by Jon Tyson)COVID-19 vaccines: looking forward from the pandemic

One of the most encouraging events of the year thus far is the COVID-19 vaccine roll-out! The approved vaccines began to be administered to millions of adults worldwide and the effort is well underway to vaccinate the global population to tackle the virus which devastated the world over in 2020.

Despite the challenges of increasing vaccine hesitancy among the public, vaccines remain one of society’s most important and influential tools for promoting public health and tackling the pandemic. Successful vaccination programmes and high vaccine uptake gives hope to the reopening of pre-pandemic society.

Read more about how we might look forward from the pandemic, thanks to the vaccines.

Chapter nine: “On the Horizon” in Vaccines: What Everyone Needs to Know®

While we celebrate the success of the vaccines, we can reflect on the impact the trauma of the pandemic has had on us thus far. It is important to give trauma survivors an opportunity to emotionally process the event and to look forward from it.

Learn more about the impact of the pandemic and different ways we may need to support others in our recovery from the effects of the pandemic in the chapters below.

Chapter two: “What help is available to those who have experienced trauma?” in PTSD: What Everyone Needs to Know®Chapter seven: “Afterword in the Face of the COVID-19 Pandemic” in PTSD: What Everyone Needs to Know®(Image by Torstensimon)Climate change

As we begin to pour effort into key issues beyond the pandemic, climate change is an issue of focus, demonstrated by the recent G7 summit in Cornwall, UK. This saw government officials from around the world meeting to bring some focus back on how we can all approach the mitigation of climate change on our earth.

Read more about the impact of climate change on our world and understand why discussions such as these are so important.

Chapter three: “Projected Climate Impact” in Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know® (Image by Marcus Spiske)Olympics and Paralympics

Despite some scrutiny, the Olympic games are well underway now in Tokyo and the Paralympic games are still scheduled for late August, as planned.

Chapter seven: “The Olympic and Paralympic Games” from Women in Sport: What Everyone Needs to Know®

Many people have scrutinised the decision to hold the games from an ethical standpoint and questioned whether it was safe to allow athletes or spectators to travel to Japan from around the world and risk spread of the COVID-19 virus. Though the games are currently held with no spectators at any event, there are still concerns about the safety of the games in a nation that’s reportedly trailing behind other nations in its vaccination efforts.

Learn more about the ethics of sports in:

Chapter one: “The Moral Significance in Sport” from Ethics in Sport: What Everyone Needs to Know®(Image by Braden Collum)

Featured image by Kellie Sikkema via Unsplash

Fiddling while Rome burns: climate change and international relations

It is Wednesday morning, my wife and kids have left for work and school and I am sitting in my home office, which has a beautiful view of the Gudenå river valley. I have the whole day to myself, no teaching, no meetings, no administrative drudgery. I am currently working on three books and it is one of those bright mornings that are perfect for writing. What’s not to like?

A lot as it turns out. It was the same yesterday and the day before that. I can hardly remember what my office at Aarhus University is like. COVID-19 has gotten in the way of my going there. I am unsure what precisely is getting on my nerves. Is it the peace and quiet, the freedom to finally concentrate on my work? If so, it is very unflattering and slightly disconcerting.

Maybe it is the sensation that the world is unravelling around me while I am doing nothing? Adding insult to injury, two of the books I am working on concern European state-formation in the period AD 1000-1800. So, here I am fiddling while Rome burns, buried in a long gone past, which most people will find to be of antiquarian interest only. However, the third manuscript on my desk means that I am unable to keep the world fully at bay. It is the eighth edition of an International Relations textbook, co-authored with my friend and colleague Georg Sørensen.

When I studied International Relations (IR) more than twenty years ago, we read what must have been the first edition of this book. To be honest, I don’t remember what I thought of it back then. But when Georg asked me to join the team in 2016—which then also included the late Canadian political scientist Robert Jackson—I was thrilled; this being the kind of work that forces one to stay updated with current international affairs, a remedy against the siren song of history.

We have given the new edition a major overhaul, restructuring the book to put more emphasis on how theory meets the real world, bringing in a lot of new material. For instance, we have added a section on climate change as well as an entirely new chapter on whether chaos or order is brewing in the world.

Anthropocentric (human-made) climate change is not a new thing; it is a product of the greenhouse gasses that have been released into the atmosphere by humans since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The evidence that temperatures have been rising since the 1880s—with an upswing in recent decades—is today undisputed, and there is a scientific consensus that this warming is mainly due to human activities in the form of large-scale emissions of particular carbon dioxide.

“Global warming is accelerating and… this has led some IR scholars to proclaim that the climate has emerged as a third major issue area of global politics, alongside security and economics.”

But global warming is accelerating, and it is increasingly causing instability, especially in poor countries. This is likely to worsen drastically as temperatures rise further. As Bill McGuire chillingly put it sixteen years ago in the first edition of his book Global Catastrophes, “The struggle for food and water will lead to economic migration on a biblical scale, dwarfing anything seen today, bringing instability and conflict to many parts of the world.”

This has led some IR scholars to proclaim that the climate has emerged as a third major issue area of global politics, alongside security and economics. Others go even further. A new body of “green theory” has been developed, which urges us to put nature and long-term ecological interests before people and short-term human interests.

Present levels of anthropocentric global warming are mainly a consequence of emissions in the Global North since industrialization. But the negative effects are mainly felt by countries in the Global South. Add to this that any adequate response to climate change will have to limit emissions not just inside, but also outside of the Global North. China is today the biggest emitter, and other middle-income countries, such as Brazil, are also among big emitters. So, an adequate response that reverses or significantly slows down global warming requires a grand global bargain, which commits all countries and distributes the costs of cutting emissions in a fair or at least tolerable way.

In the eighth edition of our textbook, we use IR theories to discuss the prospects for such an effective international reaction. Our new section lays out the need for an ambitious global agreement but also discusses the obstacles, including the difficulty of free-riding, international cooperation in the shadow of anarchy, and the fact that interests do not necessarily align (for instance, between net oil producers and net oil importers). We note that there have been prior successes—the stellar example is the robust international response to the depletion of the ozone layer that began in the 1980s—and that emissions have in fact been cut in some places, including the EU-countries. It is also clear that political actors around the globe are dawning to the terrible consequences of climate change, and that civil society groups and scientific communities are denouncing inaction.

There is thus plenty of push for radical change, and there are many examples of vigorous international cooperation to mitigate environmental problems that cross borders. But the challenges facing an effective international response are also formidable. The fact remains that “any global agreement will have to be chiseled out in the context of states with different interests and power.” There is a big risk that the difficulty of cooperation under anarchy will mean that responses keep being delayed and inadequate. Here, too, we might be fiddling while Rome burns.

“There is plenty of push for radical change… [but] any global agreement will have to be chiseled out in the context of states with different interests and power.”

It would not be the first time that humanity faces environmental catastrophe. Evidence is mounting that earlier climatic changes have had harmful effects on human societies. For instance, a volcanic eruption on Sumatra 74,000 years ago seems to have caused a volcanic winter that “may have come within a hair’s breadth of making the human race extinct.” DNA evidence indicates a form of bottleneck effect occurring around this time as only a few thousand humans—perhaps confined to a certain area in Africa—seem to have survived to spread their genes. Closer to our own time, there is some evidence that a short spell of cold and aridity 4,200 years ago caused the collapse of a number of classical civilizations across large parts of Eurasia, including most famously the disappearance of the Indus Valley Civilization in India. Recently, much has been written about the catastrophic year AD 536, which arguably left an echo in the old Scandinavian notion of the “Fimbulwinter,” three successive winters that precedes the end of the world, as well as the Little Ice Age that began around AD 1300 and made life tough for human communities on both sides of the Atlantic. Climate change is thus not a new thing for humanity. But this time we will not be sleepwalking into an environmental catastrophe not of our own making; we will enter this terrain knowingly and knowing that we could have changed course. That prospect is quite disheartening, but the fact that we are in the know is of course also what makes effective responses possible.

As if all of this were not bad enough, the acceleration of climate change is taking place in a global situation that is fraught with challenges and risks in many other respects. Nondemocratic countries such as Russia and China are challenging the international order built by western democracies after 1945 and 1989; the main sponsor of this order, the US, is looking inward, and has been in thrall to a populist demagogue for four wild years. Popular dissatisfaction with liberal democracy is growing in many other places, probably in parts a result of the way globalization has produced winners and losers across the industrialized heartlands. Migration and artificial intelligence are adding new and alarming challenges, which require ambitious international responses, today rather than tomorrow.

“We often forget just how much has changed for the better in the last 75 years and that international relations—warts and all—is no longer the jungle it used to be.”

So, things are certainly not looking rosy out there. For the new edition of Introduction to International Relations we have written a new chapter on the big question: “World Order or World Chaos?” The chapter singles out a number of forces that are tearing international cooperation apart. But we still come down on the side of order, at least in a long-term historical perspective. Those who only look at the troubles of the world based on a snapshot often overlook how much international relations have improved since 1945. Today’s international order is much stronger than anything we find back in time and it is a very far cry from the “thin” order, centred on state sovereignty, that existed prior to the Second World War. We often forget just how much has changed for the better in the last 75 years and that international relations—warts and all—is no longer the jungle it used to be. This is also the main reason that there is room for some optimism with respect to climate change: in many areas, we today have robust international cooperation of the kind that seemed inconceivable just a couple of generations ago.

We wrote the first draft of the chaos or order chapter during the first COVID-19 lockdown in spring 2020 and therefore had to decide whether to write about a scenario with a second Trump administration or a new Biden administration. We chose the latter, and as the US presidential election on 3 November 2020 approached, this created one of those personal embarrassments: I had to keep telling myself that if Donald Trump won, the least of my worries would be the need to redraft the chapter. Well, it turned out we didn’t have to—and the world should be a saner place as well, even if there are still plenty of problems left.

So, lots of interesting stuff to work on. Only a pity that I have too much time on my hands. My wife and children are back home, proof that the world still exists outside of my hideaway and that I have managed to fritter away an entire working day by writing about the things I should be writing about. This is what self-isolation does to you, I guess. In the new chapter on world order, we quote Dickens: it is the best of times and the worst of times…

Etymology gleanings for July 2021: tending my flock

In July, I have received several letters that did not need extended replies and answered them privately. As usual, my thanks for encouragement, disagreement, and abuse. Being noticed is the only reward a journalist (blogger) can hope for, while making mistakes is human and being unable to satisfy everybody’s curiosity should be expected. Also, I received a request for the article I once published on Gothic liugan and will send it to our correspondent as soon as I receive his email address (send to blog@oup.com). The offprint is in my office.

The only question requiring a detailed answer concerns the origin of English flock (as in a flock of gulls) and flock “a tuft of wool.” The student who looked up those words in a dictionary was surprised to discover that flock1 and flock2 are not related and that the origin of the first is unknown. I am unable to unravel this knot, but I can perhaps explain how the problem originated and venture a precarious hypothesis.

It may be best to begin with the English verb flow. The verb has been known since the earliest period (Old English flōwan). It is, almost certainly, native, which means that, if it has cognates outside Germanic (ideally, in Greek and Latin), those forms should begin with p (by the Germanic, or First, Consonant Shift, as in father ~ pater), and indeed, we find Latin pluo, pluere “to rain”; the meanings do not accord too well but they are close enough (all over Eurasia, some words for “rain” are etymological cruxes). But surprisingly, Latin also has fluere “to flow,” a much better semantic match. How could that happen?

Some dictionaries state unhesitatingly that because of the f ~ f correspondence fluere and flōwan are unrelated but suggest that the meaning of flōwan was influenced by its Latin near-homonym. Perhaps so, but why should such a common verb have been influenced by a foreign lookalike? Several excellent works have been written on this subject, and it appears that we cannot go beyond the idea that pl– and fl– in some mysterious way suggest the idea of a stream (or, to put it in a less scholarly way, flow and pluo reveal their meanings by their form, like, for instance, screech, thud, or bow–wow). If flōwan and fluere are indeed not related, that is, do not go back to a common Proto-Indo-European form, then they are products of sound imitation or of the mysterious factor known as sound symbolism.

Historically speaking, all of these are flocks. (Top: Fort Rucker, Centre: Birmingham Museum, Bottom: RedCharlie)

A look at the fl- section in a moderate-sized English dictionary will show a surprising number of words of highly questionable or even undiscovered etymology. Here are some of them: flabbergast, flap, flag (in all its meanings), flake, flap, flare, flash, flat (“level”), flatter (verb), flaunt, flaw, flay, flea, fleck, fleer, flews (“the chaps of a hound”), flibbertigibbet (many senses; compare Shakespeare’s demon Flibbertigibbet in King Lear), flick, flimsy, fling, flint, flip, flirt, flog, flop, floozy, flounce, flounder (verb), fluke (only the fish name has an established etymology), flummox, flump, flurry, flush, fluster, and flutter. I have left out many rare, obsolete, and dialectal words, as well as English words borrowed from French (and other Romance languages), Scandinavian, and Dutch, where their origin is also unknown. Reference to fl-, characteristic of words imitative of striking or beating is common, but flare, flash, and quite a few others do not belong there. To be sure, some ties within the group seem to be obvious (flash and flush, for example). On the other hand, flap resembles clap and slap, to say nothing of rap and tap. I have once written in detail only about the word flatter and know how complicated its etymology is. A quick look at flash and flummox will reinforce anybody’s conviction that each word in the fl-set poses a host of problems.

In this context, two English words are of special interest: flock “group” and flock “tuft.” The first has exited since the Old English period and was then used only of an assemblage of people. The same holds for Old Icelandic (Old Norse) flokkr. In Middle Low German, vlocke also existed, but it is absent from Modern Dutch. It appears that the English-Scandinavian word was, among others, a military and legal term, something like detachment. From Icelandic sources we learn that in law five men made a flokkr; some other glosses on flokkr are “host” (of angels), “company; crowd; band,” and “troop.” The word looks like folk (Dutch volk, German Volk), with o an l transposed, but no rule can account for such a verbal joke (metathesis?), though the ancient Germanic word first probably also meant “troop.” In English, sheep and goats began to wander in flocks in the Middle period, while the phrase flock of geese first turned up only in Shakespeare.

The word has no pl- correspondence in any non-Germanic language. It is not even clear whether Old English and Old Norse coined the word independently of each other. All attempts to connect this flock with the verb to fly seem to shatter at the fact that initially flock had nothing to do with birds. On the other hand, one may ask why flock, previously used only about people, (suddenly?) began to be applied to goats and sheep and at the end of the sixteenth century, to birds. Didn’t all those senses exist in the remotest past but were current in different rural dialects? It should be remembered that English has the noun flight “act of flying” and flight “act of feeing,” while in German there also are two words Flucht, one of which means “a flock of birds.” I am inclined to think that English flock “group” does have something to do with movement, even though flying and fleeing are hard to connect with it by rule. At least two excellent researchers have the same opinion, but this partial consensus means nothing, because in etymology, riddles are not solved through a plebiscite.

Another flock, taken over from abroad and unrelated? (Image by Wally Hartshorn)

In contrast, the other flock “tuft” has exact cognates in Germanic and outside it and is universally believed to be a borrowing from Old French (all the Romance languages have similar forms). The initial sense seems to have been “a small particle; fragment,” as also follows from German Flocke (Schneeflocke) “snowflake.” English flake surfaced only in Chaucer. Norwegian flak means “patch, flake,” and Swedish (is)flak means “ice floe.” One begins to suspect that Latin floccus and its Germanic lookalikes also refer to something flying or “flighty.” We return to the astounding similarity between English flow and Latin fluere. Another member of the vaguely fluent, flighty, fleeing family of sound-imitative or sound-symbolic words?

As stated at the outset, I am unable to offer an answer to the question that inspired this post, though I am inclined to think that English flock1 and flock2 may be related more closely than it is usually believed, even if the relationship lies in the sphere of imitation and symbolism. Last week (21 July 2021: “The decay of the art of lying”), I referred to Jacob Grimm’s suggestion that even remote homonyms in old languages tend to go back to the same root. Perhaps the case of flock confirms his intuition.

Feature image by Andrea Lightfoot on Unsplash 

Why climate change education needs more empathy

As citizens of this planet, we remain at an impasse when it comes to drastically changing the course of our environmental futures. At the heart of this impasse is climate change and the future of human and more-than-human survival. And yet, a significant key to potentially resolving climate change revolves around how we communicate with and relate to others.

Dismantling knowledge deficit models of education

Advocacy for climate change justice must pivot away from an assumption that people simply lack knowledge about the issues. Or, worse, that people should be shamed for being ignorant. While it may be true that people aren’t often educated about environmental risks caused by human behaviour, deficit educational models nevertheless present an unsustainable path forward.

Information or knowledge deficit models are built on the belief that increasing knowledge can be a primary motivator of social change. Deficit framing arose historically out of an attempt to sway public scepticism toward supporting scientific and technological advances. If people can simply remedy their lack of knowledge, according to this didactic approach, then they will eventually change their behaviour and attitudes.

In environmental education, this tactic has been a common misstep. It’s easy to see why the deficit model has been the primary mode of environmental communication since the 1980s and remains so to this day. There is some linear logic to it—filling educational gaps in knowledge can solve the problem. However, the evidence continually suggests that it doesn’t work.

Shifting attitudes and beliefs about climate change must do more than unilaterally telling social groups, often different from our own sociocultural backgrounds, that they are wrong. This deficit model uses a top-down flow of knowledge and creates an inherent hierarchy between the expert (knowledge holder) and audience (empty container). Rather than perform its intended outcome of motivating social change, the deficit model intensifies polarization and hostility.

As researchers have pointed out for decades, economic status, geographical location, and racial identity affect a person’s or group’s access to education. In other words, education can be significantly inequitable and so can the ways knowledge might be transferred and understood within deficit models. Labelling deficit or lack on any one individual or group only generates more animosity and division because of these systemic sociocultural dynamics.

Regardless, the deficit model remains a primary strategy for climate justice communication and other forms of environmental education in institutional and public contexts. Even if we can agree to move on from this model, where might we go from here?

Activating empathy

Research indicates that people view climate change through political affiliation more than science. Communicating through what politicians now excel at—speaking to perceived values and beliefs more than policy and facts—might be a significant indicator of how to reach people. A way to do this could be by promoting pro-social programs of empathy education that activate shared values.

Professor Pat Dolan, who is the UNESCO Chair in Children, Youth, and Civic Engagement, shows that empathy arises from both static forms (identifying with people) and active forms (acting on the feelings of static empathy to activate change) of engagement. “Empathy isn’t sympathy,” as Dolan says in The Irish Times. “It’s about valuing, respecting and understanding another person’s view.” Without understanding social, cultural, economic, or racial differences, we cannot fully engage in or promote static and active empathy.

Deficit models of education and learning are built upon the Western paradigm of individualism, where individuals alone are responsible for their lack of knowledge. This approach to education isn’t only ineffective and inequitable, it also contributes to creating a civic society rooted in discord and opposition. The culture of deficit is a central reason contentious issues often remain deadlocked.

Empathy education, in contrast, is built on reciprocity and relationships; it’s forged by connection and belonging through relational models. Empathy is ultimately created through social conditions, informing a person’s interactions or the ways people understand and respond to each other.

Research highlights how activating empathy can deter anti-social acts, such as racism, violence, or climate denial, and enable pro-social behaviours. Empathy also increases cooperation and participation on collectively shared issues.

The practice of empathy, which is a product of a social situation as much as an individual’s response to social dynamics, requires establishing relationships across social divides. Empathy education allows people to build on overlapping values and relate to each other. Only through relational learning will we build empathy and overcome divisive communications about climate change and other environmental or social issues.

Finding consensus

When activating empathy rather than deficit, the key ingredient isn’t necessarily absolute agreement. Despite a seeming trend to focus on absolute agreement, whether it’s in politics, social media, professional contexts, or in our own families, what may be more important is remembering how we can build consensus. This leads to finding places of intersection on collectively held pro-social issues.

Building empathy in social and civic contexts relies upon a commitment to consensus more than complete agreement. Empathetic approaches to climate justice might just lead to greater social change as well as a more connected society.

Featured Image Credit by M. Maggs from Pixabay