Oxford University Press's Blog, page 170

What we learned from the financial crisis of 2008

It has been over a decade since the global financial crisis of 2007-2008, which threatened to destroy the financial system, and wreaked havoc on the financial well-being of households, firms, and governments. It is an appropriate moment to assess where the banking industry is today to review the research on the policies implemented during and since the crisis to determine their effectiveness in making the financial system safer, and to evaluate the challenges to the banking system in the future.

Since the crisis banks have reduced risks and now hold more capital and liquid assets. In the United States, Europe, and elsewhere, banks are subject to new capital, liquidity and tax regulations; resolution regimes; stress tests; bail-in mechanisms; corporate governance regimes; executive compensation and disclosure rules; and enhanced supervisory oversight, particularly for the most systemically important banks.

The policy responses of the US and European governments to the crisis were similar, but not identical. Governments introduced a broad range of bailouts and guarantees aimed at preventing runs on banks and money market funds, aggressive recapitalization of banks and the wider financial system with expanded deposit insurance coverage, liquidity injections to various markets and institutions, and accommodative fiscal and monetary policy aimed at boosting economic growth. In an important difference, the lender of last resort facility in the United States expanded beyond the commercial banking system to investment banks and funding markets. In order to preserve the domestic housing market, the U.S. Treasury Department took over two government-sponsored enterprises, the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac). The federal government also enacted several other policies to slow the decline in house prices and aid real estate financing.

In general, the policy actions on both sides of the Atlantic were widely considered to have been successful in preserving the stability of banking systems and averting a more severe economic downturn. However, just when financial commentators believed that the crisis was subsiding, several countries in Europe experienced a sovereign debt crisis. Government deficits and debt, exacerbated by the bailouts of troubled banks, triggered a crisis of confidence in certain Eurozone economies including Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain. The combination of a banking and sovereign debt crisis led to European banks recovering more slowly than counterparts in the US.

The United States stated the legislative process to deal with the crisis and reduce risks in banks earlier. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 set rules as to how banks should be regulated such that taxpayers were not liable for future bailouts. Many of the recommendations of Dodd-Frank were slow to be implemented fully. A bill passed by Congress in May 2018 rolled back various features of the legislation, especially in areas that impacted small and medium-sized banks. In Europe, the structural reforms proposed in the 2012 Liikanen Report have been introduced in a phased manner. By early 2018, a ban on proprietary trading came into in force (the similar US Volcker rule from the Dodd-Frank Act was in place in 2015), and national regulators across the EU enforced the legal separation of high-risk trading from core deposit-taking and lending for certain large banks. As in the United States, a new bank resolution regime was created in the shape of the Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive of 2015, albeit this has not been fully introduced in all member states. It’s unclear how Europe will implement the new European deposit insurance arrangements as part of plans for a Banking Union.

Financial technology developments include online banking, robo-advisory investment services, distributed ledger technologies (Blockchain) and marketplace lending. There are now numerous cryptocurrencies in existence (including Bitcoin, which accounts for 66% share of the total cryptocurrency market capitalization). These developments bring both threats (via competitive challenges from the entry of technology firms) and opportunities (via changes to enable the re-design of existing business models) for established banks.

Many of the aforementioned developments are affecting the banking industry globally. Moreover, the slowdown in economic growth, the low interest rate environment, trade wars and Brexit impediments, together with regulatory measures designed to improve safety and soundness, have acted as a drag on bank performance. Banks and regulators continue to grapple with the complexities of measuring and managing bank specific and systemic risk. Uncertainty continues to heighten. Climate change, trade wars, Brexit, Euro area challenges (such as Italian indebtedness), the slowdown in emerging markets (China in particular), political polarization, and Middle-East tensions all add to uncertainty and a less favorable global operating environment for banks going into the next decade.

Featured image credit: Photo by Etienne Martin via Unsplash.

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Monthly gleanings for October 2019

Parting formulas

I received a question about the origin of French adieu and its close analogs in the other Romance languages. This question is easy to answer. The word goes back to the phrase à Dieu “to God,” which is the beginning of the longer locution à Dieu commande, that is, “I commend (you) to God” or, if we remain with French, “je recommande à Dieu.” The European parting formulas are of rather few types. They may be like Engl. fare well (as in Byron’s 1816 poem: “Fare thee well, and if for ever, still for ever, fare thee well”). Latin vale, the imperative of the verb valēre “to be strong or well,” carries the same message. The practice of commending, that is, recommending one to God (à Dieu = ad deum) goes back to Christianity. French adieu enjoyed some popularity even outside France. Thus, it (or its northern variant adé) migrated to Germany. In rapid speech, its possibly Wallonian variant adjuus (sounding close to Spanish adiós) yielded the almost unrecognizable word tschüs. German Gott befohlen carries the same message as adieu. God may also be invoked elsewhere. Thus, Russian spasibo (stress on the second syllable) “thank you” goes back to spasi Bog ‘God save you’.

Other than that, consider Engl. see you soon and goodbye. See you soon is reminiscent of German auf Wiedersehen, a possible calque of French au revoir “until we see each other again.” Goodbye is an alteration of the phrase God be (by) you. Good has been substituted for God in it. Good day, good evening, and so forth have the same origin. Since a simple question from our correspondent has resulted in a full-fledged digression, I may mention the well-known fact that the origin of the English formula so long, unlike the origin of all the previous ones, is enigmatic. The phrase surfaced in print only in the middle of the nineteenth century and is, most likely, an Americanism. Its foreign origin is nearly certain, and several lending languages, from Hebrew (via Yiddish) to Irish, have been suggested.  German, as I think, though often mentioned in this context, is the least likely of them; so lange has never existed as a parting formula.

Fare thee well. Image credit: “kids waving goodbye ship” by skeeze via Pixabay.

I will quote two statements, because neither seems to have made it to websites. (Nowadays, an enterprising etymologist has to compete with the Internet, rather than with many dictionaries on the shelf, for, indeed, what is the point of writing books if anyone can Google for the interesting word, add etymology or origin to it, and get pages of usually reliable information?). Both statements, extracted from the periodical Notes and Queries, date to 1921: 1) “I heard this expression first early in 1875, when in Colombia (S[outh] A[merica]). It was in constant use among the Cornish, Welsh and English miners as an equivalents to Hasta luego [‘until then’], the usual Spanish form to taking leave.” 2) “About twenty years ago I was told that it is allied to Samuel Pepys’s expression ‘so home’, and should be written ‘so along’ or ‘so long’, meaning that the person using the expression must go his way.” The first source (from Spanish) looks promising. The second has no value, for Pepys lived in the seventeenth century, and the formula, as we have seen, is recent. But, since fanciful explanations of this sort are common, it is useful to have a safeguard against them.

S-mobile

S-mobile is like a barnacle, except that it appears in unpredictable places. Parallel forms with and without it have been recorded even in one and the same language. As I have mentioned in some previous post, the most detailed description of this enigmatic “prefix” and of the hypotheses of its origin can be found in Mark R.V. Southern’s book Sub-Grammatical Survival: Indo-European s-mobile and its Regeneration in Germanic (1999).

How mysterious is the origin of Engl. pig?

What do they have in common? Among other things, possibly a similar origin of their names. Image credit: “big-boar-clean” by Robert-Owen-Wahl via Pixabay.

Since I discussed this word in my book An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology: An Introduction (2008), I will dispense with the details. The origin of pig is called obscure, because, though old, this animal name has no respectable cognates, except Dutch big (!). It has been known for a long time that English, along with the other Germanic languages, has numerous words like pod, pud, bug, pug, buck, big, and others, beginning with b, d, g or p, t, k and ending in the same consonants. All of them refer to things fat, plump, bloated, or puffed up (that is, swollen and therefore sometimes frightening). Long lists of such monosyllables were put together as early as the end of the nineteenth century (by serious students of Indo-European, rather than by enthusiastic amateurs, ready to celebrate the first hypothesis that occurs to them), but it is amazing how reluctantly etymologists take note of them. The Indo-European word for “pig” has come down to English as sow and swine. Animal names are often baby words of the structure referred to above. They appear from “nowhere” and supplant the old-timers. I have been promoting the idea that dog (“of unknown origin”) is one of such words, and I have little doubt that in this respect dog and pig belong together.

Tweed

The best-known etymology of tweed is as follows: “Trade name originating in the accidental misreading (by James Locke, a London merchant, as is alleged by some) of tweel or tweeled, Scottish forms of twill, twilled, assisted by association with the river Tweed” (The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology). Skeat, rather ominously, did not include the word in his Concise Dictionary, but the strongest dissenting voice known to me is Henry Cecil Wyld’s in The Universal Dictionary of the English Language: “Hardly from twill, as sometimes suggested, as the two kinds of cloth have no resemblance; probably the name of the Scottish river.”

Tweed and twill. Are they similar or different? Left image: “Harris Tweed” by PKM. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. Right image: “Herringbone twill” by Kaushik Gopal.

Our correspondent (I have not been authorized to disclose his name, thought of course there is no secret) writes: “This apparently developed from the “Tweed Fishing or Travelling Trousers” advertised in numerous publications from 1834-1838 by the clothing house of Doudney & Son, 49 Lombard Street. And the connection seems to be made here: ‘So celebrated has amateur rod-fishing in the Tweed become, that the proper costume of the sportsman has now become an object of speculation among the London tailors, one of whom advertises among other articles of dress “Tweed Fishing Trousers.” The anglers who have so long established their head-quarters at Kelso, for the purpose of enjoying the amusement of salmon fishing in the Tweed, have had excellent sport lately: some of the most skillful having caught five or six salmon a day, weighing from six to fourteen pounds each [New Sporting Magazine, June 1837]’.”

As our correspondent says, this quotation is certainly worth a look.

Two terminological questions

Sweet dusting. Image credit: “Bowl mit Himbeeren” by Marco Verch. CC by 2.0 via Flickr.Some terms mean the direct opposite of what they seem to imply. One example is the legal phrase death recorded. Is there a term for such words and phrases? I can think only of enantiosemia . For example, to dust can mean ‘to remove the dust from the surface’ and to ‘to cover the surface with some powdered substance’, or Latin altus, which means both ‘high’ and ‘deep’ (the common denominator being ‘removed from the ground’), but this is hardly what our correspondent needs.It sometimes happens that two different words have the same plural, as ellipse (pl. ellipses) and ellipsis (plural ellipses). Is there a term for this confusing homonymy?

Suggestions are welcome!

As usual, I have studied all comments, but, if I had nothing quotable to say or if I have said all I could on the issue in the past, I did not find it necessary to respond. Yet it should be taken for granted that I am grateful for all expressions of interest, agreement, and disagreement with what I write in the posts.

Featured image credit: “River Tweed” by alljengi. CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr.

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Heretics to demigods: evangelicals and the American founders

In recent years, many evangelicals have lauded the American Founders.  It has become customary for them to heap effusive praise on the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787.  Even those who were openly contemptuous of Christian orthodoxy such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine often get a free pass. Ronald Reagan (an evangelical favorite, if not himself an evangelical) was fond of quoting Paine, especially his teaching about the importance of individual rights and the dangers of an intrusive state.  By contrast, one of Reagan’s Republican predecessors, Theodore Roosevelt famously dismissed Paine as a “filthy little atheist.”

As Roosevelt’s sharp words suggest, American evangelicals’ love affair with the Founders represents a more recent development.  In earlier eras, orthodox Protestants were openly critical of several Founders.  Among their favorite targets during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was Jefferson whose unorthodox views on the Bible and the divinity of Christ were well known.  During the heated presidential contest of 1800, conservative Congregationalist and Presbyterian clergy denounced the freethinking Virginian with fiery rhetoric. For instance, the Rev. Timothy Dwight, then president of Yale College, painted an alarming portrait of what Jefferson’s election could bring: “[T]he Bible would be cast into a bonfire, our holy worship changed in a dance of Jacobin frenzy, our wives and daughters dishonored, [and]… “Murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest will be openly taught and practiced.” A New York pastor warned similarly that ” the open and warm preference of a manifest enemy to the religion of Christianity, in a Christian nation, would be an awful symptom of the degeneracy of that nation, and a rebellion against God.”

American evangelicals’ love affair with the Founders represents a more recent development.

During the antebellum era, evangelicals often had unflattering things to say about Jefferson.  They attacked what they viewed as his political radicalism and questioned his Lockean understanding of the origins of civil society.  During the Virginia state constitutional convention of 1829-1830, John Randolph of Roanoke (a convert to evangelicalism) reviled Jefferson as a Francophile dreamer whose utopian schemes were impractical at best and dangerously destructive at worst. Meanwhile, the Rev. Flavel S. Mines characterized Jefferson’s “axiom of ‘equal rights’ [as] infidel, not Christian.” It “strikes at all that is beautiful in civil, or sacred in divine institutions.” Mines argued that Locke’s focus on individual rights was based on his repudiation of divine revelation as the ultimate source of authority.  These Protestants viewed Locke’s social contract as ahistorical and unscriptural.  Further, his negative, night watchman notion of the state conflicted with the older Puritan understanding of government as an active moral agent ordained by God.

During the Civil War, long simmering anxieties about the secular character of the Constitution came to a boil.  Some evangelicals in both the North and South considered the absence of any explicit reference to God or Jesus Christ in the Constitution a dangerous flaw.  Reformed Presbyterians who especially stressed Christ’s political kingship proposed a solution: a Christian amendment to clarify the divine basis of authority and explicitly state to whom citizens owed their allegiance.  The amendment never garnered sufficient political support to win congressional approval but it highlighted evangelical uneasiness regarding some of the handiwork of the Founders.

As political conservatism became more secular and more wedded to classical liberal principles at the close of the nineteenth century, evangelicals left behind some of these theological scruples and lent their voices to laudatory hymns to the Founders.  Their approach to the Founders became less nuanced and indistinguishable from the generic civil religion espoused by political conservatives by the mid-twentieth century.

This historical backdrop helps illuminate the bizarre spectacle of best-selling evangelical author David Barton recently maintaining that Jefferson was a bona fide evangelical. In short, two developments (among other factors) help explain the evangelical change of heart regarding Founders like Jefferson and Paine.   First, evangelicals came to embrace uncritically the minimalist, laissez-faire model of the state championed by many Founders.  Second, theological commitments became less important to conservative Protestants as pragmatic concerns about securing and protecting their political influence prevailed.

Uncritical nationalism and partisanship have long been temptations for Christians of every sort.  Still, reflecting on their past critical engagement with the Founders can bring greater clarity to how evangelicals envisage their role in the public square today and their distinctive contribution to the larger American experiment.

Featured Image: ‘Mount Rushmore’ by Stephen Walker. Free via Unsplash. 

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Eight books to read to understand African economies [reading list]

Africa’s GDP growth is projected to accelerate to 4.0% in 2019 and 4.1% in 2020. The economy continues to improve in future. To raise further awareness of the growing importance of the study of African economics, we have created a list of books that explore the varied areas of the continent.

China-Africa and an economic transformation, edited by Arkebe Oqubay and Justin Yifu Lin
This volume considers China-Africa relations in the context of a global division of labour and power, and through the history and experiences of both China and Africa. It examines the core ideas of structural transformation, productive investment and industrialization, international trade, infrastructure development, and financing. Read a chapter here.Taken for a ride, by Matteo Rizzo
The growth of cities and their informal economies are key characteristic of societies in Africa today. This book contributes to our understanding of both, drawing on long-term fieldwork in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and charting its public transport system’s journey from public to private provision. Read a chapter here.Modernizing VATs in Africa, by Sijbren Cnossen
Tax revenues in most African countries fall far short of what is necessary to finance basic human and economic development. This book is an indispensable guide to understanding how tax system works in Africa. This highly informative and well-researched book makes the case for modernizing African VAT systems and how and why this can be achieved. Read a chapter here. The Oxford handbook of the Ethiopian economy , edited by Fantu Cheru, Christopher Cramer, and Arkebe Oqubay
From a war-torn and famine-plagued country at the beginning of the 1990s, Ethiopia is today emerging as one of the fastest-growing economies in Africa. This book focuses on structural transformation to explain Ethiopia’s unique model of development. Read a chapter here. Youth and jobs in rural Africa , edited by Valerie Mueller and James Thurlow
Many people believe that Africa will struggle to create jobs for its rapidly growing population, and that rural youth will eventually migrate to cities or other countries. This book uses survey data to show the constraints and opportunities facing young people in rural Africa. Download the book here. The politics of social protection in eastern and southern Africa , edited by Sam Hickey, Tom Lavers, Miguel Niño-Zarazúa, and Jeremy Seekings
Why have so many countries in Africa adopted social protection programmes, policies that are designed to reduce poverty, over the past decade? This book challenges the common assumption that this phenomenon has been entirely driven by international development agencies, instead focusing on the role of politics in specific African countries. Download the book here.Agriculture, diversification, and gender in rural Africa, edited by Agnes Andersson Djurfeldt, Fred Mawunyo Dzanku, and Aida Cuthbert Isinika
This book contributes to the understanding of small farms in sub-Saharan Africa. It explores how small farmers’ livelihoods have changed over time, with a special focus on how changes have affected men and women differently. In general, women have much poorer access to agricultural sources of income. Download the book here.Ghana’s economic and agricultural transformation, edited by Xinshen Diao, Peter Hazell, Shashidhara Kolavalli, and Danielle Resnick
This book reveals that despite over 30 years of continuous growth in per capita income and rapid urbanization, Ghana has not industrialized and most of its workers remain trapped in low productivity work in agriculture and services. Using Ghana as a case study, the book explores the challenges and opportunities of Africa’s growth and transformation. Download the book here.

This reading list outlines the various themes of African economics such as trade, agriculture, employment, and finance, which are essential for economic development. With more information on these topics, we can begin to understand the reasons behind economic growth in Africa and the hurdles in development.

Featured image credit: “desk globe on table” by Kyle Glenn via Unsplash.

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Why people disagree

People disagree. Human beings often express conflicting views about a variety of different issues, from food and music to science and politics. With the development of advanced communication technologies, this fact has become more visible than ever. (Think of Twitter wars.) The extent and depth of our disagreements can lead many to despair of making progress through rational debate. Before resigning ourselves to pessimism, however, we should make sure that we understand the phenomenon. Philosophical reflection might help.

Consider the following discussion:

Aurora: Everyone has a moral obligation to do what they can against climate change, even when this means making choices that can negatively affect their family or their country. Making a large donation to a charity that protects rainforest might mean less money for your children’s education, and policies that reduce emissions might make the industrial sector of your country less competitive. I understand this is tough, but preventing climate change requires tough decisions.

Bianca: I agree that climate change is real and that adopting these measures would be necessary to stop it. But surely I have no moral obligation to do something that can negatively affect my family or my country.

Aurora and Bianca seem to disagree. They do not disagree on the reality of climate change or the effectiveness of the measures described by Aurora. But they do disagree on whether we have a moral obligation to take such measures.

Could Aurora and Bianca realistically aspire to resolve their disagreement, or should they simply agree to disagree? Before embracing the (appealing) second option, consider another case of disagreement.

Charles: Ed is really helpful and efficient. I enjoy working with him!

Danielle: Ed is not helpful and efficient at all – just wait a few days and you’ll see.

It looks like Charles and Danielle disagree about Ed. However, the conversation might continue as follows:

Charles: Are we talking about the same Ed here? I mean the new employee who has an office on my floor.

Danielle: Oh, I see! Yes, he is really helpful and efficient. Sorry, at first I thought you had a different Ed in mind.

By making sure that they are talking about the same person–by making sure that they mean the same thing with the name “Ed”–the disagreement is resolved. In fact, it turns out that there was no disagreement in the first place, for they fully agree about Ed’s qualities. The misunderstanding was easy to resolve, but the danger was real: If the misunderstanding persisted, Danielle’s words might lead Charles to change his mind about Ed and compromise their future relationship.

You might think that this example is irrelevant, having nothing in common with the previous exchange between Aurora and Bianca: “In the second case,” you might say, “Danielle misunderstood Charles. On the contrary, Bianca understands very well the meaning of Aurora’s claim about the ethical implications of climate change. Their disagreement is not based on some sort of misunderstanding; that is not what is going on there.”

This response seems natural, but the situation is more intricate. Aurora and Bianca’s respective claims both involve the phrase “moral obligation.” Do they mean the same thing with those words? Our disputes often involve terms whose meaning is difficult to clarify. Danielle thought she meant the same as Charles when using the name “Ed,” but in fact she had the wrong person in mind. How confident are you that you are not similarly confused in your own discussions?

Maybe this still seems unlikely. Isn’t this kind of confusion just a remote possibility? It is not. Aurora and Bianca’s discussion is imaginary but not at all atypical. Bianca thinks that the phrase “moral obligation” only applies when there is an appropriate connection (personal, legal, or cultural) between the relevant subjects. Therefore, one does have strong obligations towards her family or her country, while her obligations towards future generations living in other countries are weaker or even non-existent. Aurora, on the other hand, thinks that the phrase applies independently of the kind of relationship we have with others–hence her claim that sometimes the right thing to do is one that might negatively affect your family or country.

Sometimes people mean different things with the terms they use and this can generate dangerous misunderstandings. The claim is controversial. Over the last decades, several philosophers have claimed that understanding each other does not require meaning the same thing with our words. This, they say, would be too demanding–we should simply aim for similarity of meaning, since two people can never mean exactly the same thing when they communicate.

This debate matters. We should aim for fruitful disagreements, and that certainly involves understanding what the other part is saying. For instance, Charles and Danielle’s apparent disagreement is not fruitful, for it is based on a misunderstanding of Charles’ words. But what does it take to understand each other? What would it take for Aurora and Bianca to really understand each other’s ethical views? Does understanding require meaning the same when using expressions like “moral obligation”? Or is similarity of meaning enough?

In a world of pervasive disagreement, we should aim at answering these (admittedly difficult) questions. Until we have a better grasp of the conditions for mutual understanding, our disputes risk being unproductive. Perhaps our disagreements will persist, but perhaps they will prove superficial once we understand each other–after all, Charles and Danielle’s disagreement did prove superficial, for it vanished once the misunderstanding was resolved. The same might happen to other more stubborn disputes, if we make a serious effort to understand what the other person means.

If said in the right tone, “What are you talking about?” can be just the right thing to ask.

Featured image by rawpixel via Pixabay 

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Our souls make us who we are

The vast majority of today’s scientists and philosophers believe that human beings are just physical objects, very complicated machines, the essential part of which is our brain which is sometimes conscious.  My belief is that on the contrary each human consists of a body which is a physical object, and a soul which is an immaterial thing, interacting with their body; it is our soul that is conscious and is the essential part of each of us.

One argument for this comes from the structure of our brains. Our brains consist of a left and a right cerebral hemisphere and a cerebellum. Our conscious lives depend on the operation of the upper part of each cerebral hemisphere, the cerebral cortex. Occasionally patients with severe epilepsy originating in one hemisphere have that hemisphere removed. It is a recent neuroscientific discovery that, whether surgeons remove the left hemisphere or the right hemisphere, the patient thinks and behaves in much the same way as before (except for not having epileptic fits), at least in the respect that his memories remain largely the same and his character is not very different.

Surgeons are now just beginning to be able to reconnect severed spinal nerves, and they are on the way to being able to connect a severed spinal nerve to a new nerve obtained from elsewhere. The nerves which connect brain parts with other brain parts are nerves of the same kind as spinal nerves. Hence it should become possible for surgeons to remove one hemisphere by severing the nerves which connect it to the rest of the brain and join the severed nerves to another brain.

Now suppose that both hemispheres are removed from a person whom I will call Alexandra and also from two other persons, Alex and Sandra. Alexandra’s left hemisphere is then connected to Alex’s brain, and Alexandra’s right hemisphere is connected to Sandra’s brain. Then both of two subsequent persons would claim to be Alexandra, since their one cerebral hemisphere obtained from Alexandra would provide them with Alexandra’s memories and character. Each of them would have equal claims to be Alexandra, and there would seem to be no possible subsequent experiment which could show which (if either) of them was Alexandra. Now consider one such person, for example the person who has Alex’s body. It is logically compatible with everything we could possibly discover about her body and brain, her memories and character that she is Alexandra; and logically compatible with everything we could possibly discover that she is not Alexandra. So there must be something else about her which we are not able to observe which would make her Alexandra – if she is Alexandra; and the absence of which would make her not Alexandra.

That something cannot be a material part, since we know everything about all the material parts already (they are what constitute her new brain) and they do not suffice to make her who she is; so it must be an immaterial part that is a soul. We go where our soul goes. Under normal conditions our soul goes where our brain goes; but under abnormal conditions, such as when the brain is divided, it is unknowable where our soul goes.

Featured image credit: “Beige liquid illustration photo” by Paweł Czerwiński via Unsplash.

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Completing your verbs—infinitive and gerunds

Most of us have been told at some point that a sentence has a subject and predicate and that the predicate consists of a verb and an object—the girl kicked the ball. We may have been introduced to distinctions such as transitive, intransitive, and linking verbs (like carry, snore, and become, respectively). But there is much more to the intricacies of what must follow a verb.

Linguists sometimes talk about the valency of a verb, meaning its ability to combine with other sorts of grammatical and semantic elements in a predicate. We find, for example, bitransitive verbs (like the teacher baked the children some cookies), object complement verbs (like the employees called the boss Mr. Burns), and reflexive verbs (like the witness perjured herself). Some verbs (like explain) allow their direct objects to be noun clauses but not infinitives, other verbs (like try) allow infinitives but not noun clauses.

We explained that we would be right on time.

We tried to use a new recipe.

And some verbs (like promise) allow both noun clauses and infinitives.

We promised that we would buy eggs.

We promised to buy eggs.

General dictionaries offer clues to valency by giving example sentences.  More specialized reference works, like A. S. Hornby’s 1975 Guide to Patterns and Usage in English, delineate pretty much the full range of verbs. Hornby distinguishes more than twenty-five different ways that verbs can be completed.

To me, one of the most intriguing patterns involves the distinction between gerunds and infinitives as direct objects. Some verbs, like want, agree, arrange, claim, decide, and refuse, allow infinitives to follow but not gerunds.

We wanted to spend more time at the coast.

He agreed to visit every week.

Other verbs, like enjoy, acknowledge, admit, anticipate, and avoid, take gerunds but not infinitives.

We enjoyed visiting the museums.

She acknowledged receiving the letter.

Different verbs, different patterns. But why do certain verbs prefer gerunds but others infinitives?  Sometimes the different behavior can be linked to grammar, as when a preposition is involved. We find gerunds but not infinitives after prepositions:

She succeeded in solving the problem.

I forgot about going to the play.

On the other hand, when a verb has an indirect object, the infinitive is usually (but not always) required:

We asked her to reconsider.

He convinced them to drop the charges.

Grammatical distinctions are tougher to uncover with verbs that permit both an infinitive and a gerund.  There are whole books written on the topic, such as Thomas Egan’s study 2008 Non-Finite Complementation: A Usage-Based Study of Infinitive and -ing Clauses in English. But if you are trying to wrap your head about the quirky complementation of verbs, a place to begin is with the verb remember, which allows both an infinitive and a gerund.

We remembered to buy eggs.

We remembered buying eggs.

With remember to buy eggs, the time frame of the egg-buying is understood as something still hypothetical at the time of remembering. With remembered buying eggs, the time focuses on the recollection of past egg-buying. Infinitives often convey a sense of potential activity (remembering to do something), while gerunds may refer to actions (remembering having done something).

It’s not quite a perfect test, however. The contrast between infinitives and gerunds in the following examples is not apparent, the distinction between hypothetical activity and simultaneous action merging to virtual synonymy.

He loved to think about verbs.

He loved thinking about verbs.

Not all grammatical puzzles are easily solved.

Featured image credit: Focus definition. Photo by Romain Vignes. CC0 via  Unsplash .

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The Kingmaker is a movie about Imelda Marcos that snubs earlier documentary

My thrill in seeing Ramona Diaz’s film Imelda (2004), streaming for free online this month, was dampened by the hype surrounding a new film about the former first lady of the Philippines.

I was puzzled to read about The Kingmaker (2019) by Lauren Greenfield, touted for its “unprecedented access” (Showtime) by a filmmaker “perfect” for the subject (Variety). Frankly shocked at the blatant erasure of Ramona Diaz’s pioneering access to Imelda Marcos, watching Greenfield’s film becomes a reckoning. When white people themselves are sick of watching white movies in this era of #OscarsSoWhite, and the demand for diversity so urgent and universal in the industry, it’s not a matter of whether they should make films about brown people, but how. The Kingmaker is a wish that Ramona Diaz’s film does not exist, effacing a brown woman’s excellence in an industry known for its inequity.

How should white people make movies that represent others, and how does Greenfield fall short? In one of the earliest scenes in The Kingmaker, we see the preserved body of Ferdinand Marcos shot from different angles in his mausoleum. Ramona Diaz was the first one to shoot in this hard-won location. It is the very site where Imelda first says that “here lies love” will be etched into her gravestone. As she leans over her dead husband, saying he is Filipino and she is love, we witness a moment that encapsulates Diaz’s greatness as a filmmaker: her ability to gain access to such previously unseen sites and compel the articulation of a gargantuan vision of self. Diaz had to shoot here hurriedly, but since then, the mausoleum has opened to other filmmakers. Greenfield shoots there with several set-ups, moving lights and camera as if possessing all the time in the world—clearly thanks to the door Diaz opened. The claim, then, to “unprecedented access” is just one erasure of Diaz’s career-launching film; the many repeated moments and motifs in The Kingmaker are another.

Movies, like books, meet a need, a hunger, and a reason for why they should be made when they are. According to my interview with Ramona Diaz in 2017, she got access to Imelda because she desired attention she no longer enjoyed as first lady. The film reveals how she continued to seek power for herself and her family. In The Kingmaker, Imelda reprises herself from 2004, saying she is “missing the clout of being first lady” and wants “to vindicate the family honor.” Greenfield’s film then ends up simply reenacting much of Diaz’s Imelda as if it had not already been made, and to acclaim.

What the repetition actually shows is how the filmmakers achieve different degrees of intimacy with Imelda herself: Diaz reaches closeness to Imelda while Greenfield’s access reveals a kind of distance from her subject. For example, Diaz reveals how Imelda speaks like a broken record to suppress reality. She captures how “beauty,” Imelda’s most oft-repeated word, is part of a strange cosmology in her mind that involves the peace sign and Pac-Man. Greenfield’s film incorporates that repeated use of “beauty” but stays peripheral to the depths of her subject’s delusional worldview.

In another example, The Kingmaker repeats the story of how Imelda brought diamonds and diapers into exile, but presents it as a life-saving decision to generate the millions they would need to pay their lawyers, thereby recasting it as a lucky impulse when they fled. In Diaz’s film, however, we watch Imelda casually disclose how she was able to escape with her 11-carat and 70-carat diamonds. Diaz’s film thus reveals a different perspective: the theft that must have occurred for the first lady of a poor country, whose husband was paid an annual salary of $13,000, to have such valuable rocks in the first place.

The Kingmaker is strongest when it repeats the material from Imelda; otherwise, it struggles to find focus. One new story this film does tell is how the Marcos’s displaced 250 families from an island to make way for African zebras and giraffes to be transported there, though that story alone is not enough to make the film unique. As an artist celebrated for her career focus on wealth, Greenfield could use that status and her platform to confront and account for globalization and colonialism, even implicating Americans in propping up the dictatorship. Pretending that Imelda does not exist in re-enacting it, however, is a travesty that reveals the onus should be on white filmmakers to help open doors for brown filmmakers, rather than further obscure them.

The Kingmaker’s derivativeness defies its status as “unprecedented.” Does that description circulate because it is a white person who made the movie? Is the author “perfect” because she has made similar films about the decadence of delusional rich white people before? Critics—who themselves are predominantly straight, white, able-bodied men—also play an important role in this discourse, in which the perspectives of people of color and women are less privileged, whether in giving credit to filmmakers or considering how images hurt. But it does not have to be this way.

To return to my original question: how can films by white people about brown people, in this age of #OscarsSoWhite, provide an example of ethical filmmaking that does not harm, as the erasure and recolonizing of Diaz’s film and subject does in this case? In other words, how can they avoid what celebrated Filipina American writer Gina Apostol has called Greenfield’s “Columbusing” of Diaz? An ethical filmmaking is appropriately citational; it gives credit and mentions others to amplify those other voices, especially when white filmmakers are telling brown people’s stories. This is what an ethical act of representing others entails: considering unequal access to representation and acknowledging the important, though less visible, work that has paved the way. And critics, too, must historicize films they celebrate so as not to erase brown women’s excellence in the films they’ve already made.

Photo: President and Mrs. Lyndon Johnson and President and Mrs. Ferdinand Marcos at the White House via US Library of Congress

The post The Kingmaker is a movie about Imelda Marcos that snubs earlier documentary appeared first on OUPblog.

Polychromy in Greek and Roman sculpture [video]

Greek and Roman sculpture serves as a foundational benchmark of Classical art. From the world-famous “Venus De Milo” to  Michelangelo’s iconic “David,” ancient Greek and Roman sculpture has always been characteristically colourless. Thus, ancient Greek and Roman sculpture gained its reputation for monochromaticism, as well as lasting renown amongst scholars, cementing the relationship between white, chiseled marble and ancient sculpture.

However, in 1814, an archaeologist and architectural theorist, Antoine-Chrysostome Quatremère de Quincy, coined the term “polychromy” in relation to Greek and Roman Classical sculpture. By definition, polychromy is the art of painting in several colors, especially as applied to ancient pottery, sculpture, and architecture. Quatremère de Quincy, working off of the findings of an eighteenth-century excavation of Pompeii and Herculaneum, asserted that Classical Greek and Roman sculpture was not, in fact, monochromatic. Instead, Quatremère de Quincy claimed that these ancient sculptures once had colour that, over centuries, had faded into the recognizably colourless marble.

Despite the empirical data from which Quatremère de Quincy had drawn his claim, Classical scholars were hesitant to adapt such a theory. Quatremère de Quincy had disrupted all preconceived notions of ancient Greek and Roman sculptural aesthetics. This video explores the history and recent research advances made into the polychromy of Greek and Roman sculpture, highlighting the multi-millennia misconception.

Since 1960, there has been a change of heart amongst scholars in their attitudes towards polychromy and ancient Greek and Roman sculpture. Researchers, now working to identify the pigments and techniques utilized by these pre-anno domini sculptors, are creating imaging of what these sculptures might have looked like when they were first made. Now, researchers are saddled with a new and diametrically different dilemma from their predecessors: how much colour is too much colour?

Featured image credit: “Male Grecian bust” by Juliet Furst. Public domain via Unsplash.

The post Polychromy in Greek and Roman sculpture [video] appeared first on OUPblog.

Hidden colour in Greek and Roman sculpture [video]

Greek and Roman sculpture serves as a foundational benchmark of Classical art. From the world-famous “Venus De Milo” to  Michelangelo’s iconic “David,” ancient Greek and Roman sculpture has always been characteristically colourless. Thus, ancient Greek and Roman sculpture gained its reputation for monochromaticism, as well as lasting renown amongst scholars, cementing the relationship between white, chiseled marble and ancient sculpture.

However, in 1814, an archaeologist and architectural theorist, Antoine-Chrysostome Quatremère de Quincy, coined the term “polychromy” in relation to Greek and Roman Classical sculpture. By definition, polychromy is the art of painting in several colors, especially as applied to ancient pottery, sculpture, and architecture. Quatremère de Quincy, working off of the findings of an eighteenth-century excavation of Pompeii and Herculaneum, asserted that Classical Greek and Roman sculpture was not, in fact, monochromatic. Instead, Quatremère de Quincy claimed that these ancient sculptures once had colour that, over centuries, had faded into the recognizably colourless marble.

Despite the empirical data from which Quatremère de Quincy had drawn his claim, Classical scholars were hesitant to adapt such a theory. Quatremère de Quincy had disrupted all preconceived notions of ancient Greek and Roman sculptural aesthetics. This video explores the history and recent research advances made into the polychromy of Greek and Roman sculpture, highlighting the multi-millennia misconception.

Since 1960, there has been a change of heart amongst scholars in their attitudes towards polychromy and ancient Greek and Roman sculpture. Researchers, now working to identify the pigments and techniques utilized by these pre-anno domini sculptors, are creating imaging of what these sculptures might have looked like when they were first made. Now, researchers are saddled with a new and diametrically different dilemma from their predecessors: how much colour is too much colour?

Featured image credit: “Male Grecian bust” by Juliet Furst. Public domain via Unsplash.

The post Hidden colour in Greek and Roman sculpture [video] appeared first on OUPblog.