Oxford University Press's Blog, page 134

Harlequin’s tricky name

I am picking up where I left off last week. In the post for August 26, 2020, I discussed some words that surround Harlequin on a dictionary page. He ended up among harlots, harangues, and the harrowing of hell. I also touched on the possible origin of some European words for “war,” and in a rather unexpected form war will return to us later. How could Arlecchino, this buffoon, a combination of naivete and shrewdness, stupidity and common sense, Columbine’s lover, a servant always in trouble for one reason or another, end up in such ungainly surroundings?

Full of tricks and pranks. (Image by Gerd Altmann via Pixabay)

Perhaps today most of us remember Harlequin from Leoncavallo’s opera, but he was known to Thomas Nashe, an important literary figure of the Elizabethan period, in 1590. In Padua, he entertained Italian spectators almost a century earlier. He soon migrated to France and retained his character as a wit and jester. It was from there that he made his way to England. His appearance has not changed over time: a close-fitting suit of triangular patchwork, a black mask concealing his face, and a soft black hat with its brim tilted up in the manner of a visor. Instead of a sword, he wields a baton (a bâton, if you prefer). He is immediately recognizable. Unlike Leoncavallo’s character, he never sings or speaks (and some mimes achieved greatness while impersonating him). It follows that he came to the theater world not from commedia dell’arte, with its famed art of improvisation, but from pantomime.

However, here we are mainly interested in Harlequin’s name, which has been discussed for a very long time. At least one thing is clear. Although Harlequin reached England from Italy via France, his old name must have begun with an h. The reason for this conclusion is not far to seek. Italian lost initial h very long ago. The English had no need to add it and would not have done so. After all, when they began to speak about Arlecchino, they did not turn him into Harlecchino! It follows that the original name was not Italian (or French, for that matter) but Germanic. Really? Really.

At least seventeen (!) etymons, or sources, of the mysterious name have been proposed (the number comes from a German dissertation that gives a survey of old scholarship). Only one of them hoped (and failed) to uncover an ancient buffoon at the beginning of the story. Rather, the gates of hell open before us in our search. It would be tedious to go over all the existing conjectures, but some are worth mentioning, because we keep running into them in later publications by amateurs. People are fond of offering etymologies before consulting the works of their predecessors and end up reinventing the wheel, often a broken and discarded wheel.

Long ago, those interested in our subject remembered that a nimble demon in Dante’s Inferno (xxi, 118) was called Alichino. The two names are close, and it is much more probable that Alichino is a garbled variant of Harlequin, rather than the other way around. I began my short survey with a devil, because that is where we will eventually end up. The infernal origin of Harlequin may sound almost fanciful to those who have not followed the development of this character, but as early as 1844, the great and incomparable Jacob Grimm, the founder of Germanic philology, a student of language, medieval literature, medieval laws, and myths, suggested that Harlequin is an alteration of Germanic hellequin “little hell” (-quin, like its other form –kin, would be a diminutive suffix). This etymology had at least one learned supporter in 1913, but both the form and the meaning (little hell?) Grimm reconstructed carry little conviction. Though my experience has taught me that Jacob Grimm was almost always right, his etymology of Harlequin won’t stand. I may add that Grimm offered his hypothesis without developing it (as was his wont). Anyway, he looked for the clue in the right direction.

Dante’s Alichino, a distant scion of our hero. (Image by Gustave Doré via Wikimedia)

With some regularity the ghost of King Charles Quint appears in the studies of Harlequin. Charles V (1500-1558), Holy Roman Emperor, was a famous personality, a great fighter and traveler. Unfortunately, he also happens to be the father of Philip II, a notoriously cruel and narrow-minded monarch. Charles seems to have had the nickname Arlequin, “as he delighted in meddling, like Harlequin, in the affairs of others.” At one time, Max Müller, a renowned scholar of language and Indo–European antiquities, found this source of Harlequin’s name worth mentioning, while Walter W. Skeat called the connection a product of popular (that is, folk) etymology and was right. Indeed, the nickname only proves that in the sixteenth century, the word Harlequin was known far and wide. It says nothing about its origin.

Erlkönig, the king of the elves. (Image by Carl Gustav Carus via Wikimedia)

An even greater temptation is the existence of Erlkönig, remembered from Goethe’s ballad and Schubert’s song. In it, a man rides through the forest, apparently, late at night, with a child who believes he hears and sees the king of that forest calling him, inviting him, promising him rich presents and the love of his daughters. The distracted father tries to explain to his son that it is only the wind or the mist, that there is no forest king. He flogs the horse, hurries, and finally reaches home, to find the child dead in his arms. The source of this plot is the Danish ballad Elveskud (that is, Elve-skud “Elf-shot”), one of many tales about the vindictive elves destroying people. The Danish text reached the German poet and philosopher Johann G. Herder in the form Ellerkonge (an assimilated form of Elverkonge), which he misunderstood as “Alder-King.” The mistranslation was perpetuated by Goethe. In the oldest version of the story, an elf-daughter keeps tempting the rider, not the rider’s son. There is nothing for Harlequin to do in this enchanted forest, but, curiously, we keep running into fear-inspiring creatures the moment we begin to chase Harlequin. Divine and demonic names often sound alike across the entire Eurasian continent and even across the whole world. The Turkic (and broader: Siberian) Erlik-khan, a demon of death, has been cited in connection with Harlequin, but, knowing nothing about that tradition, I’d rather not go so far afield.

In Old French, the word that interests us was spelled as harlequin and hellequin (both with minor variations). It survived in some French dialects as the name of the evil will of the wisp. In Dorset, England, harlican is or was an abusive term for a troublesome youngster. Its occurrence in Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure was noticed long ago. (In Joseph Wright’s English Dialect Dictionary, no other examples of this word appear.) It follows that the variation ll ~ rl in Harlequin’s name should be taken for granted. Above, I promised to dispense with quite a few guesses. Among those are the derivations of Harlequin from the proper names of some known characters and (this is an especially wild guess) from the name of the French town of Arles (remember Charles Bizet’s suite L’Arlezienne? Or perhaps Van Gogh’s Ladies of Arles? I grew up listening to the first and looking at the second).

Ladies of Arles by Vincent van Gogh. (Image via Wikimedia)

As early as 1850, it was clear to the best-informed people that “harlequinades would seem rather to be derived from the wanton pranks of sprites than the coarse gambols of buffoons.” Very true, except that the pranks were not wanton and that they were not exactly pranks.

To be concluded.

Featured image: a scene from Leoncavallo’s opera Pagliacci in The Victrola book of the opera, via Pixabay.

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What the Home Intelligence unit revealed about British morale during the Blitz

During the Second World War, the morale of the British public was clandestinely monitored by Home Intelligence, a unit of the government’s Ministry of Information that kept a close watch on the nation’s reaction to events. Intelligence from a wide range of sources and every region of the United Kingdom was collected and analysed by a small team of officials, based at the Senate House of the University of London. The team compiled regular reports on the state of popular morale. The reports covering the Blitz, which began with the mass bombing of London on 7 September 1940 and continued until May 1941, provide a unique window into the mindset of the British at a momentous time in their history.

The story of the Home Intelligence unit during this period is reminiscent of an Evelyn Waugh novel. It’s the tale of a group of unorthodox wartime civil servants, headed firstly by Mary Adams (a pre-war television producer) and then by Stephen Taylor (a neuropsychiatrist), who analysed the data and compiled the reports. One of the unit’s chief sources was the social research organization, Mass Observation, run by Tom Harrisson, a self-taught anthropologist and buccaneering self-publicist who had taken part in expeditions to the South Seas and made friends with cannibals. In retrospect, the unit was a bold and imaginative exercise in bridging the gap between government and people. Yet in articulating popular complaints against the authorities, it made enemies in Whitehall who tried to curtail its activities. Thankfully, Home Intelligence survived the assaults of bureaucrats who did not understand the value of its work, or did not wish to understand it, and bequeathed us a collection of reports that read like the collective diary of a nation.

The Home Intelligence reports offer important insights on the attitudes and behaviour of the British people during the Blitz. The experiences of the bombing naturally feature heavily in the reports. The mass bombing of urban areas posed, or so it was thought, the greatest of all threats to morale and the unit reported in detail on the complex reaction of civilians and the many complaints levelled at the inefficiency of local authorities, the lack of provision for the homeless, the poor quality of air-raid shelters, and the absence of anti-aircraft fire.

As Home Intelligence discovered, however, reactions to the Blitz depended on a range of factors such as the resilience of individuals, the pattern and intensity of the raids, and the size and topography of the cities attacked. Special reports on the bombing of Coventry, Clydebank, Hull, Barrow-in-Furness, Plymouth, Merseyside, and Portsmouth showed how the impact of the Blitz could vary from place to place.

The bombing was not the only factor determining morale over this period and there was no subject of public concern that the unit failed to investigate. These ranged from food rationing, coal shortages, and children’s nurseries, to anti-war feeling, anti-Semitism, and attitudes towards foreign countries. The military fortunes of the British overseas in the wider war were also closely monitored as the pendulum swung between victory and defeat. There is, moreover, a touch of the quirky: it was reported in April 1941, for example, that the public was eager for guidance as to whether it was unpatriotic for housewives to pickle eggs.

In some respects, the British were more united than they ever had been before and had a new sense of purpose and personal participation in the work of the country. Yet in other respects the British were full of grumbles and grievances. There were many signs of resentment against the privileges, real or imagined, of the wealthy, and in factories, mines, and shipyards the class divide was deeply entrenched. Class was only one source of discontent. For all its solidarity, the home front was riddled with petty rivalries, disputes, and tensions between civilians and servicemen, shopkeepers and customers, evacuees and locals, adults and adolescents, non-Jews and Jews, natives and foreigners.

After the Blitz wound down, Stephen Taylor reflected on the nation’s character traits. The British, he opined, were pragmatic, full of common sense, and had a stability of temperament—albeit with “a slightly gloomy tinge.” But they also had a tendency towards self-righteous indignation when things went wrong, a propensity to regard all officialdom as inefficient, and a distrust of excessive enthusiasm, combined with a masochistic delight in “knowing the worst.”

Delving deeper into the national psyche, Taylor judged that the British were fundamentally unimaginative and despite their perilous position “the possibility of defeat is neither imagined, nor imaginable”. In fact, he surmised that it would be impossible to defeat them “by any means other than extermination” and in a strange way “the public, as a whole, is happier since the war than it was in the peace.”

Image: Chris Lawton via Unsplash

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Gottfried Leibniz: the last universal genius

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a German seventeenth-century philosopher, an incredible logician, and one of the most important contributors to the philosophy of metaphysics, philosophical theology, mathematics, and ethics. His metaphysical career spanned over thirty years, and he was an inspiration to other contemporary philosophers from the Enlightenment period.

Born in 1646 in Leipzig, Germany, Leibniz’s theories in metaphysics changed philosophy. One of his signature doctrines and particularly prominent theory, which disputed many others at the time, is about substance, monads, and pre-established harmony. He argues that the universe, and therefore humans, consist of only God and monads. Monads are ‘soul-like’ immaterial entities which exist as a substance in themselves. Monads cannot be broken down into smaller parts. Therefore, Leibniz argued, mind and body must be made of the same substance. He did maintain that though, according to his theory, the mind and body are separate from each other, they casually interact with each other.

His metaphysical work in philosophy dealt with significant issues, posing theories and explanations for the problem of evil, the problem of free will, and the nature of space and time. The problem of evil and metaphysics absorbed his attention throughout his career; the significance he attributed to the topic can be seen through the extent of his writing, which spanned the course of his lifetime. As well as having written many short pieces, he wrote two important books dedicated to the problem of evil: The Philosopher’s Confession (1672) and Theodicy (1709), the only full-length book that he wrote in his career, which he completed just seven years before his death in 1716.

In the period that Leibniz lived in, evil was not necessarily considered an argument for atheism, but rather an argument for a form of theism that was unorthodox. Thus, many contemporary philosophers argued, it was not the case that God could not exist because evil did, but that there could not be an omniscient God whilst evil existed. Leibniz’s philosophical stance on God was that out of an infinite number of possible worlds that exist in the universe, God chose the best possible one with the simplest of laws; that we exist in a world of harmonious order. God must have a rational basis, so therefore a person, Leibniz suggested, is able to act freely.

Leibniz was a monumental mathematician who changed the field of mathematics when he invented the first, early calculating machine. He also created the modern-day mathematical notation for the differential and integral calculus, and invented binary code which he explained in his 1703 essay, “Explanation of the Binary Arithmetic.” This two-point number system is used to write computer programmes and data processors, meaning that Leibniz’s invention was pivotal to how we live now, over 300 years later.

He was, and still is, credited as being the father of calculus. However, to this day an argument exists about whether it was Leibniz or Newton who invented it. In a drawn-out letter exchange between Newton and Leibniz, the German philosopher realised that he needed to describe his methods more clearly to prove his independent theory of calculus was original. Despite this, Newton made it clear that he believed Leibniz had stolen his methods.

Leibniz was an exceptional polymath. His pivotal theories in metaphysical philosophy, logic, ethics, mathematics, as well as his philosophical writing on the problem of evil, truth, and free will and the nature of space and time, categorise him as the last ‘universal genius’.

Feature image by Maxime Valcarce via  Unsplash

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Campus activists show us how to end gender-based violence

Protest and resistance thrive proudly on many university campuses. In recent history, students and faculty have organized to protest the Vietnam war in the United States, recognize the occupation of Tiananmen Square in China, resist capitalism in France, and react to many other injustices. More recently, activism to decolonise SOAS in the United Kingdom, to challenge ongoing racism at the University of Missouri, and to push back against tuition hikes in Montréal, Canada, have resulted in meaningful policy changes, signaling the effectiveness of raising collective voices in the service of change. Activism on campuses has been especially fruitful when students and faculty coalesce in opposition to sexual harassment. Sara Ahmed’s campaign against such harassment at Goldsmith’s in London is an especially vivid example of what happens when principled feminist actors take strong stands against repressive systems.

Stories of opposition to harassment rarely make international news, but quieter work is instructive nonetheless. Case in point: the work advanced by a group of academic faculty and university staffat the University of Glasgow. Recognizing the problem of sexual violence at her university, criminology professor Michelle Burman and colleagues formed a whole-university approach to addressing it, highlighting the importance of building sustainable coalitions that center the expertise of faculty and community grassroots workers alike.

Student activists at the university from a broad swath of groups– including Amnesty International, the feminist societies, and a group dedicated to student mental health– forged an alliance to respond to the deficits in policy and practice that upheld rape culture at their university. Faculty joined their efforts, amplifying the impact of their public campaign to end violence, known as Let’s Talk. Recognizing the limits of their knowledge and expertise, the coalition (also formed of representatives from neighboring Glasgow Caledonian University), forged a strong partnership with the staff of Rape Crisis Scotland.

The coalition pursued three areas of focus: research and evaluation; prevention, response and support; and analysis and messaging. At every turn, the work of the group was characterized by collaboration, by developing jointly defined goals and mileposts, and by enacting shared strategies to advance the work. The group’s persistence led it to obtain grant funding, implement multi-tier training for all faculty and staff, and create a partner-led video to raise awareness of the problem on their campuses. Not everything went perfectly: A policy designed to require the universities to safeguard all vulnerable children and adults in its care stalled. When the universities finally adopted a policy it was considered tokenistic by activists, especially the students.

Scholars know more than enough about the scope of the problem of sexual violence on university campuses. We know much less about how we work to change this present reality and how we can transform university campuses. Who feels passionately about ending sexual violence on campuses, and what do they do about it? How do campus activists, whether students, faculty, or staff, come together to theorize and enact cultural transformation? How do such collaborations provide new ways of thinking, acting, and responding to the threats posed by rape culture? How does the act of collaborative transformation change both campuses and those who engage in it?

Collaboration happens meaningfully among coalitions of faculty, staff, and student activists, particularly when they work together with specialist community organisations. Together, these coalitions endeavour to engage in deep culture change, often in the face of institutional and bureaucratic barriers, and often at great risk to the careers of those involved. Student activists are equally resolute, and often feel the backlash keenly from their peers.

Efforts that seek to transform, rather than reform, cultures and institutions, hold as their goal the uprooting of the myriad entrenched conditions that foster tolerance of violence. Such work not only sets ambitious goals of the eradication of gender-based violence, but also centers the complex and lengthy processes required to engage in truly meaningful collaboration which can themselves be transformative for individuals, groups and institutions.

This focus on process rather than just outcomes rejects the notion of commodified solutions, such as video-based seminars often offered by private companies. These kinds of things allow institutions to say that they are doing something to end gender-based violence. However, activists—steeped in relationships with and familiar with the strengths and values of the community—can do a better job. Their work shares a long connection with feminist change efforts around the globe, which have generated a myriad of successful localised collaborations, campaigns and services to challenge women’s oppression and men’s domination.  It’s important for people and groups to take the initiative to act against gender-based violence, instead of waiting for national or institutional leaders to turn their attention to its harms.

Those who would wish to see progressive transformations in universities are responding not only to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, but also to forces of increasing marketisation and bureaucratisation, to struggles over the nature, purpose and value of higher education and, in some countries, the rolling back of gains made in terms of gender equality. In Hungary, women’s studies as an academic discipline is under attack while in the United States, the Department of Education has recently weakened the legal protections of sexual assault survivors. We are at a time of tremendous change for higher education.  Now, more than ever, it is vital we work to transform our institutions into more equitable environments where gender-based violence is no longer tolerated and where all students, staff, and faculty can live free of its harms.

Featured image by Miguel Bruna on Unsplash.

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Rebuilding better: designing the future of cities and governance

In city and town meetings throughout the United States, “we need to rebuild better” has become a common refrain from progressive political leaders to communicate their response to COVID-19 and the subsequent demands for racial justice. It is shorthand for the urgency of economic recovery while acknowledging the reality of structural inequities. The pandemic’s indiscriminate destruction of life and livelihood has exposed blemishes of intolerance that have been artfully swept under the rug for decades and has mainstreamed the notion that returning to what was normal is insufficient.

City governments and other public serving organizations are being challenged to not only facilitate an economic recovery, but to do so in such a way that realigns the values of the organizations themselves. Prioritizing equity in the delivery of goods and services, questioning how decisions get made and by whom, and cultivating welcoming work cultures have become real and immediate transformational tasks. And still, there is no clear path towards accomplishing them. When public sector organizations seek to transform, they typically default to trimming the fat, to removing inefficiencies for better operation. But there is a growing realization that more efficient organizations do not necessarily equal more equitable organizations. In fact, an over-reliance on data driven decision-making or other technical solutions may in fact exacerbate structural inequities, ingrained power structures, and dehumanizing work cultures.

In February 2020, we published our book Meaningful Inefficiencies: Civic Design in an Age of Digital Expediency. The book profiles civic designers, or people within public sector and other public serving organizations, who are typically working against dominant organizational cultures to craft human systems guided by relationships and care. We tell stories of people from small news organizations seeking to transform the interface between audience and newsroom, and people from municipal governments who are deliberately deprioritizing a focus on streamlining service delivery by designing inefficiencies into systems as a means of shifting focus to the time and labor-intensive work of building relational trust with historically marginalized communities. In February, we understood these practices as fringe, as subtle acts of resistance inside of organizations. But as we write this blog post in August 2020, the active pursuit of a values-based transformation in public serving organizations has been mainstreamed.

But this pursuit is in no way straight forward. It is expensive. It often runs counter to common sense practices of incorporating technological efficiencies into antiquated organizational practices. And as a result, beyond initial platitudes, it is politically difficult to execute. Unlike past waves of public sector innovation, it cannot be addressed by a small batch of design thinking workshops, or by developing a new app. Cultural sensitivity training is not enough, and quotas for increasing diversity fall short of addressing structural processes that perpetuate inequality in the workplace. What is necessary is not just changing the appearance of work; it is necessary to change the logics that guide work. There is real need for meaningful inefficiencies, which are systems deliberately designed with slack in order to hold space for a diversity of stakeholders. Like a well-designed game, these systems have clear goals and room to play, so that people can explore, discover, and build mutual power. Meaningfully inefficient programs and processes not only make engaging experiences, they also serve as the foundation for trust-building and relationship formation necessary for communities and organizations to thrive and care for the issues that matter to them.

This is exemplified in the current debates around the smart city. The shuttering this April of Google’s Sidewalk Labs initiative in Toronto is instructive. The single provider model of a smart city, where Google transformed an industrial area of Toronto’s waterfront into a completely digitized, responsive, and smart environment, was an impressive vision of future urbanism. Its highly efficient infrastructure, near complete social connectivity, usable interfaces for information access, was a compelling representation of a smart city. Sidewalk Labs even held design workshops to involve members of the surrounding community to help shape outcomes. But as Shannon Mattern suggests, these workshops were largely performative, and the well-funded operation overlooked the relational work necessary to distribute a sense of ownership in the process and build trust with those who had every reason to believe that their participation would not translate into having any real impact. Without an opportunity to be heard and have impact on the outcomes, it is not surprising that, within the social restructuring prompted by the pandemic, this model of a future, smart city, would prove not to be desirable. The logics driving the vision of the future city were focused on optimizing for efficiency around understanding human behavior and were largely absent of values that would lead to a city built on trusting relationships and systems of caring for civic issues.

Cities, when they work well, have long been meaningful inefficiencies. Urbanists like Jane Jacobs and William Whyte located the real energy in the city in the disorganized spaces of New York sidewalks, where serendipitous encounters and unpredictable flows were important factors in the logic of the urban system. And yet, since the beginning of professional planning in the early 20th century, the impulse has been to remove those inefficiencies by installing highways, strip malls, corporate office parks, and now networks of sensors to monitor everything from air quality to traffic and crime. This drive for enhanced efficiency, often veiled (or not) forms of racist control of urban environments, is once again primed for scrutiny. The future of the city will need enhanced efficiencies. Mobility and communication, education and resilience to shocks, require them. But as we now know, it will also require meaningful inefficiencies that offer opportunities to build relationships. For people to trust in the potential outcomes of the systems they occupy, for people to trust that everyone is not only invited, but heard, will necessitate the deliberate design of inefficiencies that prioritize encounters over flows. This is a paradigm shift for public serving organizations. And as we stare down what may be a long road to “building back better,” we’re optimistic that the historic appetite for change can be harnessed for this transformation.

Featured image: photo by Julius Jansson via  Unsplash

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Generations science is bunk

The ideas of generations and generational differences are ubiquitous. Millennials are characterized as job-hoppers; Baby Boomers are painted as selfish and materialistic. Media accounts blame generations for everything from changes in red meat consumption to the declining popularity of high-heeled shoes, doorbells, and paper napkins. Generations are likewise accused of disrupting normative ways of life and social institutions; these ideas are alluded to and supported by leaders, including politicians.

Considering public policy, references to generations and generational differences can be seen on various fronts, for example, stand alone think tanks exist to promote generation-specific policy issues. Regarding organizational policy, generations “gurus” and management consulting firms exist to help organizations develop policies to manage differences between workers of different generations. Airport bookstore shelves are lined with popular management literature describing how to deal with members of various generations at work. Relatedly, the National Academies were recently commissioned to produce a consensus study of generational issues in workforce management and employment policies and practices.

Although these observations are interesting, the most fascinating thing about generations is that they are completely made up—they do not exist objectively and there is weak evidence that they impact human behavior in the ways that we commonly assume that they do. Generations are social constructions that reflect a distillation of a variety of complex processes that we observe on a day-to-day basis through social interactions—aging, changing cultures, various contemporary contextual factors—into simple to understand terms. Thus, generations serve a sensemaking function; they are a relevant marker that allows us to make comparisons between people in a straightforward, if not overgeneralized, way. New generation labels are invented on a regular basis (“the COVID-19 generation” or “”) and certain qualities are assumed to follow from characterizations of people into one generation versus another. Importantly, these labels are neither universal, nor agreed upon, in that there is actually a great deal of variability in the age ranges that define different generations, labels used to described them, and the defining characteristics purported to give rise to generations. As such, it is perhaps not surprising that people have a remarkably difficult time identifying which generation they belong to. Any point of comparison, especially those used to make distinctions between people, is ripe for scrutiny. considered holistically, the evidence for generations just does not stack up.

There are at least three fronts upon which the idea of generations falls apart when subject to closer scrutiny. Specifically, there exists no credible scientific evidence that generations exist as demonstrable units of study, that people can be classified into generational groups in a valid, reliable way, and that differences exist between such groups. Any one of these issues in and of itself would raise questions about various ideas associated with generations. However, the coexistence of all three issues is particularly damning to the concept of generations. Thus, despite their ubiquity, policy makers, organizational researchers, and managers should be extremely cautious about adopting ideas about generations and generational differences into their work. Although seemingly benign on the surface, policy decisions involving generations could run afoul of legal protections. For example, recent age discrimination complaints under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act have focused on organizational policies around generations as evidence for age discrimination.

With the evidence for generations lacking, how should we approach an understanding of age in the workplace, especially for developing policies around age at work? An alternative approach, better suited to understand the complexities of age and aging in workplaces, is the lifespan perspective. This approach conceives of aging as a continuous, lifelong process rather than splitting it into distinct groups to represent generations. In contrast to the static view of generational thinking, the lifespan perspective suggests that people’s developmental paths can change at any age, and that various shared and idiosyncratic influences impact development.

This perspective is well-suited for understanding aging in the workplace, because it adopts an individualized perspective rather than categorizing people into arbitrary generational groups. As such, the lifespan perspective represents an ideal framework for developing age-based policies in the workplace and beyond. In summary, the science of generations doesn’t support their existence and influence. Policy makers should avoid building policies around the misguided notions of generations and generational differences.

Featured Image Credit: by Edward Eyer via Pexels

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Six of the best Italian comedies

An astonishing array of Italy’s finest films are comedies. Some of the most memorable performances by actors like Marcello Mastroianni, Sophia Loren, Giancarlo Giannini, and Roberto Benigni have been in comic roles. The humor in these comedies harks back to the commedia dell’arte street performers of the Italian Renaissance and, before that, to the Roman plays of Plautus and Terrence. At the dawn of cinema, stock figures like the wily servant, the braggart soldier, or the pompous cuckold moved from the streets and theatres to the screen, where they continue to delight film audiences today. Italians still like to root for the trickster who outsmarts his social betters or the hapless underdog trying to get by. They are also endlessly amused by regional caricatures—with their local accents and peculiarly provincial traits—reminders that Italy is still a harlequin patchwork of niche cultures.

Six great comedies perpetuate this grand tradition, inviting us to laugh along with Italy at the human flaws and duplicitous behavior that bind us all together.

1. Big Deal on Madonna Street (I soliti ignoti), 1958

The English-language trailer announces “the crime of the century!” Then the soundtrack of ominous violins shifts to a mischievous medley of brass, and the exclamation point becomes a question mark. “The crime of the century?” Like the film itself, this preview turns the heist genre on its head. A motley crew of aspiring would-be thieves decides to rob a neighborhood pawn shop. They case the joint, assemble their tools, and plan a daring midnight raid across the roof and through the window, all under the supervision of a retired safecracker. The result is predictably, deliciously disastrous.

Mario Monicelli’s parody of heist films ushered in the era of commedia all’italiana. This “comedy Italian style” featured time-tested ingredients of commedia dell’arte—local types, regional accents, feats of startling ineptitude—brilliantly interpreted by talents like Mastroianni, Vittorio Gassmann, and Totò. But there was also something unpredictable in Monicelli’s Big Deal, a dark strain of cynicism that runs throughout the film and through many of the comedies that followed in its wake. Instead of a conventionally happy ending, the conclusion is more bittersweet, even catastrophic for many in the group.

2. Divorce Italian Style (Divorzio all’italiana), 1961

We see this in the ambivalent humor of Pietro Germi’s celebrated satire on love and matrimony in southern Italy. The film’s premise is based on an article of the Sicilian penal code that was still in effect when Germi began directing. In a land where divorce was illegal, this relic of feudal law allowed anyone to kill an unfaithful spouse and receive a relatively light sentence. This gives Cefalù, a world-weary aristocrat played by Mastroianni, the solution to his problem: how to get rid of his wife so he can marry a pretty young cousin. Cefalù talks to his image in the mirror, admiring his elegant moustache but lamenting the bulge of his belly. That’s when his cloying spouse arrives with the afternoon tea, adding extra spoons of sugar. “Would you give me a little sip?” she asks, a little too sweetly, then abruptly turns into a screaming scold. Cefalù begins to daydream about her death. We see his fantasies enacted as mock murder scenes: she’s drowned in a pot of boiling soap, buried in quicksand, launched by rocket into orbit. So when the real murder takes place, we’re not sure how to take it, as comedy or tragedy. There’s no doubt, though, about Germi’s view of Sicilian justice. The outrageously high-blown rhetoric of Cefalù’s attorney in the final courtroom scene makes an operatic mockery of it all.

3. Marriage Italian Style (Matrimonio all’italiana), 1964

Marital mischief assumes a lighter form in Vittorio De Sica’s Marriage Italian Style. This time Mastroianni is a wealthy businessman who refuses to marry his long-time mistress, Filomena (played by Sophia Loren). Having given him the best years of her life, she tricks him into marriage by pretending to be fatally ill. He sneaks off from the deathbed to telephone his pretty young accountant, not noticing the figure of his new wife standing behind him and very much alive. Her miraculous recovery and the riotous scene that follows is one of the funniest in Italian comedy. While Mastroianni rants, threatening to get his gun, Loren grabs a plate of pasta from the fridge and calmly replies, “It’s in the dresser. Don’t make a mess. I just ironed your shirts.” Her Neapolitan accent adds a touch of class to her composure.

4. Swept Away (Travolti da un insolito destino nell’azzurro mare d’agosto), 1974

The battle of the sexes becomes a more pointed issue of class conflict in Lina Wertmüller’s Swept Away. Here the roles of power and privilege are reversed. Mariangela Melato plays the part of an idly rich woman who lords it over her social inferiors. On board her yacht, she snipes and harasses the hired help (Giancarlo Giannini as a “primitive” southerner). Melato whines about the Communists with her friends or tans herself half naked on the deck while Giannini watches through a half-open hatch in smoldering silence. But when a storm strands them on a deserted island, it’s payback time, time for the macho male to dominate. Like Wertmüller’s earlier satires (The Seduction of Mimi/Mimi metallugico ferito nell’onore, 1971; Love and Anarchy/Film d’amore e d’anarchia, 1972; All Screwed Up/Tutto a posto e niente in ordine, 1973), Swept Away brazenly courted controversy by exploring sexual politics as well as the limits of laughter.

5. Bread and Chocolate (Pane e cioccolata), 1973

Franco Brusati’s title contrasts the basics of life with the luxuries. By the 1970s, Italy’s post-war economic boom had collapsed into the “years of lead.” Unemployed Italians headed north looking for work and a better life. Nino Garofalo (Nino Manfredi) goes to Switzerland. As the opening credits roll, we see him seated against a tree in an idyllic Swiss park while the locals enjoy their picnic lunches and the music of a string orchestra. Nino unwraps a sandwich and takes a bite, crunching down on the hard crust. Immediately, the music stops. People glare. It’s a preview of the problems that await him, the odd man out in a land of blond-haired children and abundance. We’ve seen this kind of misfit in comedy before–Charlie Chaplin’s immigrant, for example—but Manfredi’s performance is distinctively Italian. What might be normal in Rome or Naples is treated here as unsocial, even criminal behavior. He’s arrested for peeing in public and booed in a sports bar when he roots for the Italian team, even though he’s dyed his hair bright yellow. And while many of his adventures are played for laughs, the dark streak of commedia all’italiana clouds moments like the scene when he encounters a family of compatriots living in a chicken coop. The feathers fly and we may laugh, but we also feel the sadness and the shame.

6. The Monster (Il mostro), 1994

Italy’s greatest living comic, Roberto Benigni, understands this duality of comedy more than most. He can play the goofy, loveable clown or the sinister foil, often in the same movie. In Johnny Stecchino (1991) he is both the Mafia assassin and the assassin’s luckless lookalike who gets tangled in a case of mistaken identity. In The Monster, he’s mistaken for a perverted serial killer. Watch the trailer for The Monster, a montage of slapstick sight gags. When a lit cigarette falls into Benigni’s pants, he fumbles with his crotch to put it out. His manic performance is funny enough, but it’s even funnier when the police watch it on surveillance video and decide that he must be the pervert. Like many comic heroes, Benigni’s Loris has a bit of larceny in him. Watch the supermarket scene when he orchestrates a minor heist by slipping produce into all the shoppers’ pockets, bags, and baby carriages. For non-Italians who may not know this early work, The Monster offers insights into Benigni’s most famous film, Life is Beautiful (La vita è bella, 1997), when his funny little guy confronts the monstrosities of the Holocaust and tries to pretend that it’s all a game.

With so much emotional dissonance in Italian comedies, dark and light mixed together, it’s not surprising that the country’s greatest philosopher of humor is Luigi Pirandello. In his 1908 essay On Humor, he theorized that a “perception of the opposite” is the essence of the comic. He likened humor to a shadow following close behind the body of ordinary feeling. What gives Mastroianni, Manfredi, or Benigni their comic vision is an ability to see, and be, both the preposterous self and the shadow in the midst of everyday experience.

Featured Image Credit: by Alex Vasey via Unsplash

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Harlequin’s environment

Marley was dead, to begin with, as all of us know. Likewise, the origin of the word Harlequin is controversial, to begin with. Henry Cecil Wyld’s excellent dictionary, to which I often refer, says that all ideas about the etymology of Harlequin are mere speculations. This is not true and was not quite true even about a century ago, when Wyld’s dictionary was being put together. But before coming to the point, it may be of some interest to have a quick look at the words that surround Harlequin on a dictionary page.

Our friend Harlequin. (Image via Wikipedia)

We’ll skip harmony and begin with harrow, as in harrowing of hell. This verb is an etymological doublet of harry and goes back to Old English; its root is har-, which, as far as Germanic is concerned, means “army, host” (but read on!). Strangely, Old French had a close synonym, so that in English, the twins were possibly confused. However, the origin of the French one is debatable, and we’ll leave it alone. When it comes to Germanic etymology, we may suggest that harrow “rake” has an onomatopoeic (sound-imitative) origin, from the grating sound its teeth make. Another telling example is the Germanic name of the harp. Final consonants alternate in it across languages. Thus, the Old Norse for “harp” was herfi, while the Dutch form is hark: p ~ f ~ k. (German Harfe has f from p: compare English help and German helfen.) The harp has no teeth, but it has strings, so that we may again be dealing with an onomatopoeic word. Although this musical instrument can be the source of wonderful music, the verb harp “to talk again and again on the same subject” arouses no pleasant associations. Plucking a string need not always produce mellifluous sounds.

Scrooge’s ancestor, Harpagon, the famous miser (image via Wikipedia)

Latin harpa “harp” is a borrowing from Germanic. Curiously, Latin had the word harpago “grapping-hook,” from which, via French, English got harpoon “a barbed missile” (hence, of course, the name of Harpagon, the French miser, immortalized by Molière, and the Greek harpies, the merciless snatchers, which figure prominently in the story of the Argonauts). Harpago has a Greek congener. English harp cannot be related to it, because its initial h should correspond to Greek and Latin k, and, in this case, borrowing does not seem likely. If the Greek and the Latin words are not related to Germanic harp ~ hark, it is curious to observe how the names of stringed and toothed metal objects resemble one another across Indo-European. What a leap from an Aeolian harp to a harpoon!

The Old Germanic word for “troop, army” (it was mentioned above) must have sounded approximately like Gothic harjis. Gothic is a fourth-century Germanic language; the New Testament in it was translated from Greek. Harjis is familiar to some modern speakers from the German reflex (continuation) of the same root, namely, Heer “troop, army.” Its Baltic cognates mean “war,” rather than “army,” and here I would like to suggest a most adventurous etymology of Heer, harjis, and the rest. It occurred to me decades ago, but I never tried to publish my ideas, because it would have been unsafe to voice them in a scholarly paper (no journal will risk accepting an article containing such wild fantasies). By contrast, a blog allows the writer a measure of freedom: one can venture an unsafe hypothesis in the hope that it will be discussed, rather than ridiculed and rejected offhand.

An Aeolian harp, a linguistic relative of a harpoon (image by Tim Stuart via Geograph)

What is war, and what should it be called? The concept is only too familiar: human beings have warred ever since they emerged on the surface of the earth. Curiously, in Old Norse, there was no basic word designating this concept: for “war”, speakers used the word ú-friðr “un-peace” (compare German Frieden “peace”); ú in this negative prefix designates a long vowel, and ð has the value of th in English this. Úfriði, almost the same word, meant “attack.”

“Peace,” unlike “war,” tends to refer to harmonious communal living. Latin pax is related to pact. Russian mir “peace” means “community,” and so on. In Indo-European, this usage has been investigated in minute detail. I read the relevant literature while trying to discover the origin of the strange Gothic word for “peace,” which, if my conclusion was correct, meant something like “good fortune” (this conclusion can be found in print). People have warred forever and forever prayed for peace.

Unpeace and peace (image via OUP)

War is indeed the disturbance of peace, and speakers had to invent all kinds of neologisms for it (unless they went the Old Norse way, which, as far as I can judge, they hardly ever did). Curiously, the origin of Latin bellum (compare English bellicose) is unknown, even though many good dictionaries connect it with duel (allegedly, “war” from “a combat between two groups of people,” a rather improbable derivation). Likewise, German Krieg “war,” an isolated word in Germanic, is a mysterious neologism. We only know that the initial meaning of Krieg was “effort; obstinacy,” both senses referring to strong emotions. And here comes my fanciful suggestion.

Numerous kr- ~ cr-formations are onomatopoeic, croak, creak, and crash (German Krach) among them (incidentally, crazy belongs here too). So, it occurred to me that the har– and kr-words, discussed above (harry, harrow, harp, harpoon, etc.), as well as German Krieg, are all sound-imitative, with the semantic base referring to tumult, uproar, noise, and the impression they produce. Some of them were coined in Greek, others in Latin, still others in Germanic—products of ancient word-creating impulses, as Wilhelm Oehl, to whom I have often referred in the past, called them (his German term was elementare Wortschöpfung). Later, such primitive coinages might remain at the initial elementary level (crack, Krach) or develop more sophisticated senses: “strong effort; strife; war.”

What then is the immediate environment of Harlequin in an English dictionary? Well, harry, harrow, harp, and harpoon of course! Harpy and Harpagon are here at our beck and call, and, amazingly, harlot, harridan (an old haggard woman), and harass. Do at least some of those belong here too? And, more importantly, what does any of them have to do with Harlequin, Arleccino, the famous trickster, the lover of Columbine ~ Columbina, the best-known of all Zanies? Zany is a proper name (a cognate of John), Columbina is also transparent, but Harlequin, with his variegated dress and black mask? How did he rise to such prominence? We know the names of some English clowns. One of them is Merry Andrew (few people seem to remember him). Who else? Pulcinella, Punch and Judy, the German Hanswurst, that is, “Hans-sausage.” No, none of those resembles Harlequin.

We must find out where Harlequin was born, how he ended up being the most popular buffoon of commedia dell’arte, and of course what his name means, but the origin of a word cannot be discovered unless we know the nature of the “thing.” Wait for the story to be posted next week!

Header image: The Harpies Driven from the Table of King Phineus by Zetes and Calais, François-Alexandre Verdier (1651–1730), via Wikimedia

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Communicating and connecting with your teenager leaving for college

In a previous post I described topics of conversations to have with a teenager leaving home for college. Equally, if not more important, is the process of communication.

Understand the positive power of a strong family foundation. The power of a supportive family is almost unlimited.  Let me be clear that a family does not need to consist of a heterosexual mother and father, 2.5 children, and a golden retriever. A family is a group of people who are committed to one another for the long run, based on their love. If students understand that no matter what, they can depend on their family, any transition will be easier. Research supports this view: the same study of anxiety and depression during the pandemic revealed that family support was associated with fewer psychological disorders.

Develop your family communication skills.  The first step in the communication process may sound simple at first: listen. Too many parents, especially when anxious, tend to lecture, perhaps the worst possible strategy for communicating with teens.  You can express your emotions first, not to meet your needs but to normalize a conversation about feelings.  A parent can open a conversation with a statement like,  “I know this is a hard time for most of us, and I know I’m a bit worried. How are you feeling?” In this way, you acknowledge that it is OK to be frightened or anxious. Listening takes time, accepting some silence, and it isn’t always easy. Your teen may brush you off at first—that’s okay, there will be other opportunities. Keep the lines of communication.

Accept that communication may change. Flexibility will be key for a positive transition to college.  You may hear from your child less often: embrace that as growth. He is learning to depend on other people for support, expanding his social world.  He may primarily use texting or short phone calls when he’s walking.  You also have the right to let your child know that you need to hear from them now and then.  But don’t invade their space by reading their Instagram or Twitter. You can respect their privacy and if you want to learn more about campus life, subscribe to the student newspaper or check the college website. Other students, especially during these uncertain times, may want to stay connected and text or call often. If you already text or talk on the phone with your teen frequently, the contact may stay the same or increase. They are letting you know what they need. There is no absolute right or wrong rate of communication, especially during the first few months of the college transition.

Take care of yourself. It is axiomatic in mental health that if a parent feels psychologically healthy, so will a child.  To support your student, they need to feel that you are OK, that they can leave knowing that the situation at home is solid. This doesn’t mean that your family will be free of stress, but that you will be able to cope or find solutions to problems that arise. This is called “self-efficacy.” You may have lost your job or suffered financial setbacks during this time, or worse, lost a loved one to COVID-19. And you are probably going to miss your child. You may be under additional pressure if you are a single parent, a member of a minority group, or if you work on the front lines of healthcare or a service industry. It also appears that mothers who work outside the home may also be doing the lion’s share of the housework and educational needs of their children. Try to take time for yourself by establishing daily relaxing rituals, like short meditations or breathing exercises or listening to music. Reach out to your partner, a close friend or relative for support. Just as your child needs care, so do you.

This is a time for all of us to focus on values, on what matters most. For most of us, family and education are fundamental. Parents can help their college-age children move through this unexpectedly difficult transition, and we all need to take care of one another.

Featured Image Credit: Image by jcomp via Freepik

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Urban Studies, city life, and COVID-19 [podcast]

Oxford Bibliographies celebrates its 10th anniversary this year; in a decade, OBO has grown from 10 subject areas to over 40, and this fall will see the introduction of a new subject area that is highly relevant to our COVID-19-afflicted times: Oxford Bibliographies in Urban Studies.

Urban studies is a broad interdisciplinary field that encompasses everything from the social sciences and the humanities to architecture, engineering, and environmental science, to name just a few subfields. What connects scholars across these disciplines is the emphasis on the lived experiences in specific places featuring large, dense, and heterogenous populations—basically, city life and everything that comes with it.

Our episode of The Oxford Comment today features interviews with scholars involved in the launch of Oxford Bibliographies in Urban Studies. Editor-in-Chief Richard Dilworth and authors Zack Taylor (“Toronto”) and James Mansell (“Urban Soundscapes”) spoke with us about the new OBO subject at large, their individual contributions, and attempted to answer for us the question on everyone’s mind: what is the future of cities in a post-COVID world?

Oxford Academic (OUP) · Urban Studies, City Life, and COVID-19 – Episode 56 – The Oxford Comment

Featured image credit: Sunset on Union Street South, abandoned due to COVID-19 lockdowns, May 2020. Eden, Janine and JimCC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

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