Oxford University Press's Blog, page 196

The myth of a color-blind justice system in America

Ever wonder why Lady Justice looks the way she does?   She is modeled after the Roman goddess Iustitia and is an allegorical personification of the justice system.   She is usually depicted with a scale in one hand, a sword in the other, and wearing a blindfold.  Why?  Well, she is to use the scale to weigh the evidence.  Then, based on the evidence, she is to swing the sword in order to levy a swift and appropriate punishment.  And during all of this, she is supposed to be blind – or impartial – to the defendants’ wealth, power, status, and presumably, to the colors of their skin.

“Justice statue lady” by William Cho. Public domain via Pixabay.

As of December 31, 2016, an estimated 1,506,757 individuals were under US state and federal correctional jurisdiction. Of those 1.5 million justice-involved individuals, 1,395,141 (92.5%) were classified as men and 111,616 (7.4%) as women. (The Bureau of Justice Statistics only offers the gender binary for classification purposes.)  In 2016, Whites comprised 61.6% of the US population, Hispanics/Latinx 17.6%, and Blacks/African Americans were 13.3%.  Yet, the percentage of sentenced prisoners that same year was White 30.2%, Hispanic/Latinx 23.3%, and Black/African American 33.4%. For those older than 18 in the US, this is a rate of imprisonment of 274 per 100,000 Whites, 857 per 100,000 Hispanics/Latinx, and 1,609 per 100,000 Blacks/African Americans.  Black adults are imprisoned at almost six times the rate of Whites.  So, what does Lady Justice make of this?  She might use her scales to examine the evidence – do folks behave differently or are they treated differently?

Do African Americans commit 6 times more crime or more severe crimes than Whites?  No.  They don’t.   There are some variations in offending by race/ethnicity.  FBI data suggest that Blacks commit more murder than Whites and Whites commit more rape.  African American offenders were disproportionately arrested for robbery and gambling as compared to their percentage in the population.  And Whites were disproportionately arrested for burglary, larceny-theft, other assaults, sex offenses, drug abuse violations, DUIs, arson, and vandalism, when compared to their percentage in the population.   When researchers control for legal and extra-legal variables, people of color are significantly more likely to be punished and are punished more severely for the same offenses committed by their White peers.

So then, disproportionality does not necessarily mean disparity? Disproportionality simply indicates that something is out of proportion with what is expected.  It is a mathematical calculation that doesn’t assess fairness or justice. Disparity, on the other hand, often includes the expectation that outcomes are fair and/or just.   Therefore, it depends on the goal or purpose.  We might ask Lady Justice about her goal/purpose.

The mission of the US Department of Justice is, “To enforce the law and defend the interests of the United States according to the law; to ensure public safety against threats foreign and domestic; to provide federal leadership in preventing and controlling crime; to seek just punishment for those guilty of unlawful behavior; and to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans”.  Does the US justice system ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans?  Or has the blindfold fallen off and folks are treated differently by the system?

So as Lady Justice continues her work with the First Step Act and the reauthorization of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, the time is right for national justice reform and smart decarceration – but this must include a specific focus on racial and ethnic disparities.  A race-based problem requires a race-focused solution. Social work’s history and connection to the juvenile and criminal justice system, along with the ethical principles of service, social justice, dignity and worth of the person, and integrity, and a commitment to racial equity – can make us powerful allies for change.

Featured image: “Walhalla, Donaustauf, Germany,” by Markus Spiske. Public Domain via Unsplash.

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How Tony Blair’s special advisers changed government

Tony Blair is one of the great conundrums of our time. We all know his legacy, from the widely-condemned invasion of Iraq to bequeathing a great National Health Service to the United Kingdom. But how he governed, how decisions were made, is still hotly debated. Was he radical, was he “unconstitutional”?

Public service reform, from foundation hospitals to academy schools, under Blair was vast, all with the backing of massive financial investment and spending. But his reform of the Civil Service was much more limited. The area where he was undoubtedly different is in his use of special advisers, nowadays often shortened to “spads.”

It was only in the late nineteenth-century that the difference between politicians and civil servants became an iron demarcation. The idea of spads, or irregulars as they were known then, emerged during the pressures of the First and Second World Wars when the best from outside government—such as business people and academics—were needed inside. Their services were dispensed with as soon as each war ended.

Spads re-emerged in 1964 when the new government of Harold Wilson brought in a small number of high-profile left-leaning economists as unelected appointees, technically temporary civil servants who provided specialist skills that the Civil Service could not and political commitment it would not. Every government since has followed suit and numbers have crept up. Margaret Thatcher began her premiership with single figures but these had doubled by the time she left office. They doubled again under John Major to 38 in 1997. Blair initially doubled them again from 38 to 70, and they rose to 84 in 2005, before falling back to 73.

Blair’s spads were a step change in power and for the first time so far contained figures who would become household names. Alastair Campbell was perhaps the best known from the first days and one who as press secretary and later director of communications in No. 10 Downing Street came to personify another Blair-era concept: spin. David Miliband was also in No. 10 as the young head of the Policy Unit. Both Ed Balls and Ed Miliband joined Chancellor Gordon Brown in HM Treasury. Balls was especially was very powerful, described by some as the deputy chancellor, and he became in effect the inescapable single conduit between the mighty Treasury and the complicated chancellor. David Miliband rose to become Gordon Brown’s foreign secretary; Ed Miliband succeeded Brown as leader of the Labour Party. Balls became Miliband’s shadow chancellor of the Exchequer.

The spads of New Labour formed a significant new third tribe of government, a development that occasioned a short-lived furore. Indeed, as Blair observed “it was considered by some to be a bit of a constitutional outrage” — though the House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee thought the issue generated “more political heat than useful light.” Blair basically summed up the issue when he asked “why shouldn’t you, if you are the elected government, have people who support what you are doing?”

By their very nature, spads encroached on the traditional power of the senior civil servants. Otherwise known as mandarins, senior civil servants had grown accustomed to being at the very apex of British government. Indeed, the top mandarin, the cabinet secretary, traditionally sits next to the prime minister around the cabinet table taking the minutes. He is — quite literally — the PM’s right hand man. The mandarins’ power had grown during the twentieth century and reached an apogee during the pendulum politics of the 1970s when unsettled governments came and went after a few years and the Civil Service provided stability.

While Thatcher’s spads had their moments, it was under Blair that this inevitable power struggle came to the fore. From Campbell’s reform of government presentation to Balls’s reshaping of the Treasury hierarchy, mandarins were sidelined.  But the most significant conflict came within No. 10 Downing Street in the early years with Jonathan Powell’s appointment as chief of staff. The seniority given to this role by Blair challenged the cabinet eecretary and difficulty ensued. While there had only been twelve cabinet secretaries from the office’s creation in 1916, Blair’s decade saw four different ones.

Eventually, a new equilibrium emerged. Spads are now an essential component of British government. The role of chief of staff has survived, too, even through tough times such as the aftermath of the 2017 general election and Theresa May’s enforced sacking of her dual Chiefs.

But some aspects have snapped back into place. While spads are still a part of government, they are no longer anywhere near as prominent. Indeed, even for those in the political game, it’s not easy to name many. And the long years as a career civil servant of the late Lord Heywood of Whitehall (under first Blair, then Gordon Brown, followed by David Cameron and May) proved that the space for a politically impartial, firm gripper of policy at the very centre of government, is very much alive. During the UK’s existential Brexit angst, the country will need Heywood’s successor, Sir Mark Sedwill, in a way that his predecessors would very much approve.

Feature Image: House of Parliament by Lies Thru a Lens. CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons. 

 

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Has China’s one child policy increased crime?

Crime rates in China have increased more than six-fold over the past three decades. Likely causes include extraordinary economic growth and rising inequality, mass rural-urban migration, and the erosion of traditional values. China’s one child policy may, however, have also played a role. At the same time as crime has increased, the one child policy, coupled with a strong preference of Chinese parents for sons over daughters, has resulted in there being approximately 120 boys for every 100 girls in China.

These surplus young men are moving in large numbers out of the countryside and into China’s industrial cities in search of jobs. Many of them will struggle to find a wife. That young unmarried men are the main perpetrators of crime worldwide and commit more than two thirds of violent and property crimes in China has given rise to concerns about crime escalation in China.

China’s launched its one child policy in 1979 as a means of reducing population growth in the world’s most populous nation. The policy limited urban couples to only one child. In many rural areas, a second child was allowed if the first child was a girl. The strong culture of son preference (particularly in rural areas), coupled with the availability of ultrasound technology and female infanticide and abandonment, has resulted in a profoundly skewed sex ratio.

Much has been written about the impacts of the policy – including on fertility and sex-ratios, marriage, ageing of the population, the labour market, savings, and anti-social behaviour, such as selfishness. Several authors draw attention to the potential for crime and social conflict – and a 2013 study finds that crime is higher in provinces with higher ratios of men to women.

Examining the relationship between China’s sex ratio and its crime rate more closely suggests that the problem is serious. Data collected from Chinese men who were inmates of a Chinese prison and similar non-inmates shows that the skewed sex ratio accounts for a 34% increase in China’s crime rate, and that the financial pressure on men to attract a partner makes them more likely to engage in criminal activities.

Men are finding it difficult to find a wife. Meanwhile, the forces of supply and demand determine that brides are becoming increasingly expensive. It is not unusual for families to expect the bridegroom to supply an apartment and a substantial cash gift, often amounting to more than US$15,000.

This is an impetus for some unmarried men to turn to financially rewarding crimes, for example robbery, burglary, drug dealing, illegal business dealings. A high ratio of men to women in a man’s marriage market is associated with higher rates of financial crime. Violent crime is unaffected.

Furthermore, China’s skewed sex ratio means that boys are growing up in an environment surrounded by many more boys than girls. This male-heavy environment affects boys’ behaviour. They become more impatient, more risk-taking, and more neurotic (as captured by behaviour in experimental games and responses to survey questions).

These behavioural impacts explain a further, smaller portion of the increase in crime. Risk-taking and neuroticism are strongly associated with the probability of engaging in criminal activity and being incarcerated.

So, how to combat these pressures? The obvious answer is to reverse the trend in the sex ratio. In late 2015, China moved in this direction by relaxing the one child policy to allow all couples to have two children. This was largely done for reasons to do with concerns associated with a rapidly ageing population.

But some researchers predict little change in fertility behaviour; the Chinese have become accustomed to single children. The financial and other competitive pressures of life also limit the ability of parents to feel they can support more children.

Even if the policy does result in a swing back to more girls, it will take at least a generation for the ratio between men and women of marriageable age to approach parity. In the short term, the current marriage market pressures, and associated crime problems, are likely to continue.

Featured image credit: “ Child China” by christels. Public domain via  Pixabay .

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The ethics of the climate emergency

During the last few days of February we experienced the warmest Winter day since records began, with a high of 20.6 degrees (Celsius) at Trawscoed in mid-Wales. As if that was not enough, the record was broken again the next day with 21.2 degrees at Kew Gardens. This unseasonable weather is one of many signs of climate change and global warming. Another has been the flowering of snowdrops this Winter which began in late December. So did the opening of daffodils, which in William Wordsworth’s day did not flower until April.

Recently, tens of thousands of school students stayed away from classrooms to demonstrate for action on climate change. They are recognising that there is a climate emergency, and that governments and corporations need to take emergency action.

Last October, an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report explained why average temperature increases must be restricted to 1.5 degrees, one of the agreed goals of the Paris agreement of 2015.

Limiting average increases to 2 degrees, they explain, will be nowhere near enough to prevent the flooding of low-lying islands and coastal cities, and the loss of almost all coral reefs. Disappointingly, however, the national commitments made at Paris would spell a catastrophic increase of towards 3 degrees. Governments need to rachet up these commitments at coming review conferences, as a matter of urgency.

Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary-General, is soon to hold the first of these review conferences. The UK government, which is hoping to host this conference, needs to commit now to more drastic cuts to set an example to the rest of the world.

Ethicists debate the grounds for taking such emergencies seriously. By now it is widely agreed that the people of the present matter, however distant, and wherever they live. But many of them are losing their livelihoods because of climate change, and they are usually people who have hardly at all contributed to it. And that is hardly fair.

Most people also agree that coming generations matter, and should be taken into account. Some suggest that the more distant in time future people are, the less they matter. Yet suffering in fifty or a hundred years is likely to be just as bad as suffering now. Many people already recognise this. As Hilary Graham and her fellow-researchers have shown, if you ask about future interests in an impersonal manner, you get answers that downplay these interests, but if you ask about what we should do to make life bearable for our grandchildren, you get much more affirmative answers, expressing deep concern about their well-being.

But this too means that we need to take action in the present to prevent rising sea-levels and freak weather events of greater intensity and frequency than the world has yet known both in the present and later in this century.

There is also a debate about whether other species matter. Everyone agrees that we need the ecosystems on which human beings depend to remain intact, and most hold that we need to preserve these and other ecosystems for the sake of their natural beauty. Many go on to hold that the needs of nonhuman species count ethically alongside our own, whether or not they count as much as our own.

When we get concerned about the bleaching of coral reefs and the disappearance of their polychrome communities, our concern expresses a blend of reasons of these kinds. But increasingly people (particularly young people) are worried about the wellbeing of animals and their habitats.

Just at the same time, there is are alarming losses to populations of many wild species, and to biodiversity.  All governments need to make special efforts to preserve wild species, and the governments of developed countries should subsidise poorer countries (which are often the homes of biodiversity hot-spots) to enable them to do this.

But far from the biodiversity emergency being in competition for our attention with the climate crisis, they should be seen as a single emergency. This is because one of the main causes of threats to wildlife is nothing but climate change.

So we need urgent plans and policies to replace carbon-based energy generation with renewable energy. We need to eat less meat, thus increasing our life-expectancies and reducing emissions of methane. We need to replace vehicles with diesel and internal combustion engines with electric cars, lorries and (if possible) ships. And we need to cut down on our airline travel. Individuals, companies and governments all have a part to play.

While sunny days in February are welcome, an overheated, tempestuous and increasingly flooded future world is not. We need to support Antonio Guterres’ worldwide campaign to prevent it.

Featured image credit: Climate Change by TheDigitalArtist. Pixabay License via Pixabay.

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Better detection of concussions using vital signs

As a father of a young ice hockey player, I’m all too familiar with every parent’s concern about concussions. As a neuroscientist, I chose not to accept that it was okay to rely on subjective and error-prone tests to understand how best to care for our brains after concussion. We dared ourselves to think bigger, and to devise a solution that was larger than concussions – to ask the question: “Why don’t we have objective vital signs for brain function?”

We have vital signs for our body like heart rate, body temperature, respiratory rate, and blood pressure. Why not for our brain? You can’t treat what you can’t measure, bottom line. Therefore, we must first know if brain injuries, like concussions, have significantly affected brain function. We must also know whether our treatments are helping to promote improved recovery. In essence, we must have an objective measuring stick for brain function.

The laboratory research that underpins the emerging brain vital signs framework began more than 20 years ago, with applications in concussion evaluation now moving into its 6th year. Brain vital signs uses portable brain wave recording technologies (called electroencephalography, or EEG) to automatically translate complex brain functions into a simple and intuitive vital sign framework. It provides an objective, physiological evaluation of brain function.

It’s possible to measure brain vital signs reliably in all people across age ranges. Like blood pressure, the brain’s vital signs tend to have common ranges. Each person has his  own unique results that can be monitored over time. Brain vital sign monitoring is currently in validation trials for aging, brain injury, and dementia applications. However, the most remarkable results so far have come from the applications in concussion research across the United States and Canada.

We have vital signs for our body like heart rate, body temperature, respiratory rate, and blood pressure. Why not for our brain?

In the Editor’s Choice study published in Brain: A Journal of Neurology, we reported the initial results of a multi-year collaboration with Mayo Clinic Sports Medicine Center in Rochester, Minnesota to deploy brain vital signs in youth ice-hockey players (Junior A, Division III). The study is part of an on-going research collaboration to deploy brain vital sign monitoring in athletes.

So, what next? It is possible to have vital signs for brain function and that these appear to have tremendous promise to improve brain health. Consider, for a moment, the global impacts that vital signs have for heart health. Our hearts are much healthier due to our ability to monitor vital signs like blood pressure. There is no reason now not to move toward a similar situation for brain health. Immediate next steps are underway. For instance, applications in concussion have since been expanded to youth football, with preliminary results showing very similar outcomes.

The science beyond brain vital signs is not new. Over the last century researchers around the world have been investigating brain vital signs. What is new is the translation of that science into a simple, practical framework to objectively monitor healthy brain functions – such as sensory processing, attention processing, and cognitive processing.

Most encouragingly, particularly as a hockey dad, this objective measuring stick is quickly helping to identify effective treatments of concussion. In the years to come, we hope that improved protective equipment and increased awareness for preventative regulations will continue to advance the concept of safe sports. If a picture is worth a 1,000 words, it may well be that an objective medical imaging picture is worth much more in terms of brain health. Concussion remains a global concern, but optimized brains working together can find quick solutions to concussion and other problems just like it.

Featured image credit:  “SFU Ph.D student and brain researcher Shaun Fickling uses ‘brain vital signs’ to monitor brain function” by Simon Fraser University. Used with permission. 

 

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Four important women who championed peace

Throughout history women have struggled against adversity in order to enable future generations of women to have a greater freedom of choice. Though history favours the warriors, monarchs, and rebels, female pacifists and mediators behind the scenes were just as vital in the fight for equality. Female peacemakers are among those women who have made a substantial impact on the world, yet between 1990 and 2017 women represented only 2% of mediators and 8% of negotiators in major peace processes, despite the importance of women’s input in policy-related decisions.

In celebration of women committed to peace, here are four women from history who supported pacifism or who fought for women’s equality through nonviolent methods.

Ruth Fry (1878-1962)

Fry grew up in a family of Quakers. She acted as her father’s secretary at The Hague in 1899, during which time her belief that peace can be created through goodwill and international dialogue rather than violence was solidified, guiding her life mission as a pacifist and humanitarian.

Fry’s most significant work was accomplished as general secretary of the Friends War Victims Relief Committee, a position she occupied from 1914 to 1924. The Quaker-led charity was focused on relief work for European civilians following the impact of the First World War. Under Fry’s guidance, the organisation was one of the first to work with Britain’s former enemies in Austria and Germany, providing food and clothing for middle-class children, who Fry believed would be the ones to reconstruct their fallen nations later in life.

Ruth was not the only significant member of her wider family: her great aunt was prison reformer Elizabeth Fry who used to feature on the £5 note, and her ancestors established the well-known Fry’s confectionary business in Bristol.

Ethel Snowden (1881-1951)

Image credit: “Ethel Snowden in ‘A political pilgrim in Europe (1921)'” by S. A. Chandler & Co. CC0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Snowden was a socialist, suffragist, and peace campaigner who was one of the leading figures of the suffragist movement prior to the First World War.

Snowden wrote a number of books advocating for feminism, including one titled The Woman Socialist (1907), in which she argued that the state should pay the majority of childcare costs and provide salaries for mothers. She also advocated for co-parenting and for easier divorce.

During the First World War, Snowden began actively campaigning for peace, undertaking speaking engagements across the UK to advocate for an early and fair peace settlement. After the war, she held a number of political roles to continue spreading her enthusiasm for peace.

Kathleen Lonsdale (1903-1971)

A crystallographer in profession, Lonsdale was a committed pacifist who became drawn to Quakerism due to her support of peace. Lonsdale strongly believed in Gandhain non-violent resistance and in civil disobedience, holding the principle that “as violence does not further peace in the home, neither would it in world politics”; this belief led Lonsdale to spend time in prison for refusing to register for civil defence in the Second World War.

Following the Second World War and the month she spent as an inmate in Holloway prison, Lonsdale furthered her peace work in several ways, including campaigning for prison reform. In addition, Lonsdale’s concern about the ethics of science – particularly in the context of war – peaked following the advent of nuclear weapons. She became vice-president of the Atomic Scientists Association, president of the British section of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and she frequently attended meetings of an anti-nuclear group of scientists called the Pugwash movement.

Image credit: “Kathleen Yardley Lonsdale (1903-1971)” by Smithsonian Institution. CC0 via Wikimedia Commons.

In addition to her work as a peace activist, Lonsdale was successful in her day job, becoming one of the first two women elected to the Royal Society as fellows in 1945 for her contributions to crystallography.

Hilda Murrell (1906-1984)

Although best known in life for directing her family’s successful rose growing business, Murrell was also an environmentalist and peace campaigner, working with the Jewish Refugee Children’s Society during and after the Second World War to assist with the care and resettlement of wartime refugees.

Later in life, Murrell became increasingly concerned about the threat of mass extermination by nuclear weapons and by the environmental damage caused by the nuclear power industry. Murrell became a member of several anti-nuclear and peace-promoting organisations including the European Nuclear Disarmament Movement and the Shropshire Peace Alliance; she was also a founding member of the nuclear freeze movement in Britain and a private researcher, completing a paper criticising the government’s paper on radioactive waste management at the age of 78.

These four women represent just a handful of those who have had an impact on peace in the world, whether they have campaigned for peace or campaigned peacefully for something they believe in. As we continually strive toward achieving gender equality worldwide, this list of women will only grow in number and in impact, leading to the betterment of the world for all.

Featured image: Woman Sitting on Bench by  Tranmautritam, CC0 via  Pexels

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The long-term effects of life events on happiness are overestimated

Estimates about how people assess their future well-being are the basis of many decisions, which means they are also of economic interest. But how accurate are people in the predictions of their own well-being? It turns out that people tend to make systematic mistakes when predicting their subjective well-being after major life events. We focused on people who had experienced major life events such as marriage, the death of a partner, invalidity, unemployment, separation, or divorce. The results showed that the life events had less of a long-term impact on participant’s satisfaction than they assumed.

The examined life events did have a significant impact on the well-being of those affected. Positive events were linked to a strong increase in life satisfaction, and negative events to a strong decrease. However, people overestimate how long the effect of an event continues. The fluctuations in life satisfaction did not last long, but rather swung back completely or partially to the long-term level of previous years.

Recently married people, for example, overestimate how happy they will be in five years. In contrast, people underestimate their future life satisfaction after negative events, such losing a job or becoming disabled. There was an exception, however: after separating from a partner, participants estimated the change in their life satisfaction five years later more or less correctly.

This runs contrary to the central assumption of economic theory that people can usually predict what will benefit them. The effect of adaptation could contribute to these mispredictions: people do not place enough weight on the idea that they can get used to positive or negative circumstances and adjust to them. Events and new circumstances thereby lose their appeal – or become less burdensome.

If people do not take adaptation into account, this likely influences how people make decisions. People would presumably make different decisions if they knew in advance how quickly they could get used to certain altered life circumstances. The risk of misprediction is particularly great if people have to make trade-offs between different areas of life – or between activities and possessions, to which people can adapt very differently. For example, people tend to adapt easily to changes in material goods such as car ownership but less easily to social circumstances such as repeated interaction with friends.

Feature image credit: “Bride and groom” by scottwebb. Public domain via Pixabay.

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Women of substance in Homeric epic

Men carve meaning into women’s faces; messages addressed to other men. In Achilles’ compound, the message had been: Look at her. My prize awarded by the army, proof that I am what I’ve always claimed to be: the greatest of the Greeks. 

Pat Barker’s book The Silence of the Girls is one of a wave of novels giving a “herstory” angle on the Greek epic: from Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad to Emily Hauser’s For the Most Beautiful and Madeline Miller’s Circe, there is no shortage of female perspectives on the Homeric poems. Combine this with Caroline Alexander’s translation of the Iliad and Emily Wilson’s of the Odyssey, each the first English translation of their poem written by a woman, and we have a real feminist revolution in our mainstream engagement with Homer. The tables have well and truly turned.

But what fascinates me is that the radical change is in the reception of Homeric epic, not Homeric epic itself. The poetry hasn’t changed—only the way we look at it. It’s not Homer’s fault that his poetry is rarely translated by women. It’s not Homer’s fault that Classics has historically been a male-dominated province. It’s not Homer’s fault that groups like the Women’s Classical Caucus still have a long road ahead of them. Books like The Silence of the Girls give voice to women constrained by a patriarchal society and a masculine epic idiom of action. But are they really “revisionist” readings? Or are they, rather, bringing out something that is already there in the Homeric poems? It seems to me that the ostensible masculinity of the Iliad belies a sensitivity to the female viewpoint, and this is further developed in the Odyssey. Homer is not uninterested in his female characters—we just need the right tools to see it.

They prove so compelling because we want to hear these “alternative” stories, stories the classical tradition has suppressed for so long. Because there is a critical mass of people listening for the woman’s voice.

The portrayal of women in Greek epics is firmly grounded in commodification. Through social processes as diverse as marriage and the spoils of warfare, the women of Greek epics are caught up in a male-controlled network of exchange. In fact, in Greek mythology Pandora, the first woman, is given to mankind as part of an exchange of tricks between Zeus and Prometheus. Pandora’s very name, ‘All-Gift’, connects her with gift giving. When Agamemnon tries to appease Achilles’ wrath with material offerings in the embassy of the Iliad book 19, the list runs seamlessly from metal to livestock to women, with little differentiation between them:

They brought seven tripods from the hut, those which he had promised,

and twenty shining cauldrons, and twelve horses.

And they brought straightaway seven women whose work was blameless,

and the eighth was fair-cheeked Briseis.

Women become objects which exist for the purpose of, or find their identity in, exchange. And yet, as Deborah Lyons writes in her 2012 Dangerous Gifts: ’As much as men may define women as exchange objects, there is always the possibility that women will find a way to express their own agency.” In the Iliad 19 passage, the women are prized for their ‘work’, which in Homeric epic implies more often than not the production of woven objects. And restricted to their domestic sphere, they are left to their own devices in a domain in which objects proliferate. Homeric women use such objects to negotiate their agency: a subversion of the male viewpoint, as women enact their agency through the very form they themselves are thought by their men to embody.

So telling the story from the perspective of a female character, who is key to the narrative but relatively minor in her Homeric setting, is one way to give voice to the women of Greek epics. Another option is to consider these women in another way—through the objects they use to negotiate their agency, to express themselves, and to contribute to the action. Sadie Plant in her 1997 book Zeroes + Ones traces female involvement in technology from Ada Lovelace and her thinking machines to the Bomb Girls and the woman at the telephone switchboard. She sees the development of technology as one continuous process whose common denominator is weaving: “The yarn is neither metaphorical nor literal, but quite simply material, a gathering of threads which twist and turn through the history of computing, technology, the sciences and arts.“ Plant writes: “They ’signal to each other‘, whispering in their own strange codes, ciphers beyond his linguistic powers, traveling on grapevines which sidestep centralised modes of communication with their own lateral connections and informal channels.” Similarly, Jean Baudrillard in Cool Memories: “They are all involved together in secret discussions. Women weave amongst themselves a collusive web of seduction.” These threads can be traced back to before the Jacquard loom, before wires and software—to objects in Homeric epic. These informal channels and secret discussions are already embedded in archaic Greek poetry. Luce Irigaray expresses the concern: “what if these ’commodities’ refused to go to market? What if they maintained ’another’ kind of commerce, among themselves?” Through objects, Homer’s supposedly ‘commodified’ female characters create their own kind of commerce, and their own channels of communication.

Barker’s Briseis tells us that “Men carve meaning into women’s faces; messages addressed to other men”—but there are just as many messages exchanged between women. And what is even more interesting is that, whilst Briseis can interpret the men’s messages, in the Homeric poems it is often the case that the female communicative code cannot be interpreted by the men. These really are secret discussions. Homeric women are not only objectified but are also well-versed users of objects. This is something that Homer portrays clearly, that Odysseus understands—but that has often escaped many other men, from Odysseus’ alter ego Aethon in Odyssey 19 to modern experts on Homeric epic. The time is definitely ripe for the feminist wave to make something of this.

Featured Image Credit: Greek Ruin by Luca Nicoletti. Public Domain via  Unsplash.

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Reconsidering the period room as a museum-made object

For those of us used to visiting historical houses and encyclopedic museums, the word “period room” will sound familiar. A period room is a display combining architectural components, pieces of furniture, and decorative objects organized to evoke—and in some rare cases recreate—an interior, very often domestic and dating from a past era.

Period rooms were widespread among European museums during the last decades of the nineteenth century, and became popular in North American institutions in the early twentieth. They have long counted among museums’ most popular displays. Their appeal is in part due to their cohesiveness coupled with their immersive format, two features that made them comparable to time capsules. Yet, over the past decades, many curators and scholars have condemned period rooms for occupying (too) large a surface area in increasingly crowded galleries, for their lack of flexibility, as well as for their doubtful authenticity, which is often seen as a threat to the value and authority of museum collections. But the debate about whether period rooms are “authentic” or “fake” tends to ignore what they really are: a museum-made object.

Indeed, it is extremely rare that a former interior is transposed without any transformation into a museum to become a period room. Curators of period rooms select objects such as wood paneling, mantelpieces, flooring, chairs, tables, vases, and tapestries, to name only a few, and put them together to form what appears to be a bedroom, a kitchen, or any other built environment the museum decides to put on display. Moreover, these elements usually come from various locations. Museum staff can modify wood panels to meet specific constraints in the galleries and custom make some components (such as plaster cornices). Although the ensemble formed almost never existed prior to its display by the museum, it needs to look as seamless as possible for the period room to be credible to visitors.

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The ambiguity between the material status of the period room as an object created by the museum and its display as an example of a specific room (e.g. a French eighteenth-century boudoir, a Spanish seventeenth-century bedroom, etc.) from a bygone era may appear unsettling. But it does not mean that the museum intends to fool visitors by making them believe in a forgery. However, the assessment of their value needs to take into consideration two things. First, while a period room provides information about the historical period represented by its furnishing and décor, it teaches us at least as much about the historical moment when the period room was installed in the museum. Second, history and fiction are not necessarily in contradiction.

A period room refers to both the past and the present. The way we look at the past is always informed by current concerns insofar as our interpretation of objects and events from previous centuries changes in agreement with the advancement of knowledge and with what is considered relevant and worthy of interest in the present. For instance, referring to “times of national crisis” and “patriotic celebration,” Hillary Murtha explains that “the pervasive nationalism of such moments has often been a driving force behind the (re)interpretation of American period rooms.” The life story of a period room, how it was interpreted and altered through time, offers an interesting perspective on the culture that created it.

Regarding the relationship between history and fiction, it is common to consider them as antithetical, especially when thinking about the production and dissemination of knowledge. Yet, the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur has shown that both are intimately related, especially with respect to their narrative qualities. According to Ricoeur, to dismiss their connection is to adopt a “positivist” conception of history and an “anti-referential” approach to literature. In other words, dismissing the connection between history and fiction means rejecting the importance of interpretation in historical facts and believing that fiction exists in a vacuum, impervious to the external world. In the case of the period room, the encounter between history and fiction occurs in the process of its making, in its staging to recall daily activities, or in its mediation by interpreters dressed in period costumes. To overlook the intermingling of history and fiction is therefore to forget their joint contribution to the cognitive process through which one – whether curator, interpreter, or visitor – makes sense of something as foreign as the past.

These ideas are often overshadowed by a conception of authenticity that focuses on the accuracy of the historical moment represented in the period rooms. But it’s also important to consider the significance of how curators fashion such displays. To acknowledge this process and—even more daring—to bring it to the fore in the museum involves a shift from thinking about the period room as a way of defining and freezing in time societies of the past to thinking about these sort of displays as a way to better understand how a society constructs its own identity through its conception of history. Because it raises questions about how societies approach the past, make sense of it, and put it on display, about what is shown, what remains hidden, and why, to think about the making process of period rooms opens up new avenues to (re)consider their current value.

Featured image credit: “Castle” by Tama66. Public Domain via  Pixabay .

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Uncovering social work’s scientific rigor

Social Work as a profession was founded in the late 1900s and in the ensuing 120 years social workers have been at the forefront of movements for civil rights, worker’s rights, access to medical care for the poor, destigmatization of mental illness and substance abuse, improved treatment of incarcerated individuals, and many forms of work with children and families to keep them safe and healthy. Harry Hopkins, the architect of the Works Progress Administration, was a social worker. One of Hopkins’ legacies to the nation is the Social Security program, which provides income benefits to retired workers. Frances Perkins, the first woman appointed to a president’s cabinet, and Jeanette Rankin, the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress, were also social workers. Despite this legacy, though, the popular perception of social work is as a profession that lacks intellectual and scientific rigor. But social work has made many important contributions to other fields.

Research and knowledge generation go back to the two founding mothers of social work in the United States: Jane Addams and Mary Richmond. In the Progressive Era, the settlement house movement emerged consisting of community-based collective residences dedicated to improving the health and wellbeing in poor communities. The most famous of the Settlement Houses that were founded in Eastern and Midwestern communities was Hull House in Chicago, founded by Jane Addams. The women of Hull House conducted detailed social surveys of the neighborhoods that Hull House served. Addams used data from the surveys to inform the collective activism of Hull House and community members to improve neighborhood living conditions through garbage removal, working sewers, access to health care, and care for the children of mothers who were factory workers. Hull House itself provided kindergartens for young children and children’s health care along with their other activities.  Addams was also a key figure in the philosophical development of American Pragmatism alongside John Dewey, one of the undisputed intellectual leaders of the Progressive Era. Even at the time, Hull House was seen as an experiment in pragmatism. Addams went on to become the first social worker to win a Nobel Prize.

Even earlier, Charity Organization Societies were founded in a number of cities to coordinate and improve on benefits received by individuals and families. These services consisted of home visits undertaken first by volunteers called “friendly visitors” and later by trained social workers called caseworkers. Mary Richmond, a leader in this effort, conducted  research to guide volunteers and caseworkers in their practice. In her book, Social Diagnosis, she described the social situations of poor people needing aid, classifying cases into types according to the specific circumstances of their poverty. Some families were abandoned by wage-earning husbands. The help provided to them consisted of immediate cash benefits followed by training for the wives in occupations providing new income. In the case of an invalid, a volunteer would arrange access to health and convalescent care perhaps along with cash support until health had been restored. Although it seems unthinkable today, these and other early developments in social services, public and private, were not inclusive of African Americans in need, leading their communities to develop charitable organizations of their own.

Beyond the intellectual contribution of individual social workers, though, the field of social work has been the academic source of concepts widely used in medicine, psychiatry, and nursing today. The biopsychosocial perspective, which looks at the role that psychological and environmental factors play on individual health is an important development in the healthcare field. In medical circles, the term is attributed to the psychiatrist George Libman Engel, who first used the term in 1971, but a quick search of the literature identified two social work articles published in 1952 and 1963 using the term “biopsychosocial.” The first addressed curriculum in social work education, and the second was about defining the aims and domains of social work, a problem we still struggle with today. In both articles, the writers took the term “biopsychosocial” as needing no explanation, implying common knowledge of it in the social work field. For example, today we know that simply providing medication to people who test positive for HIV requires special efforts to address the structural, social, cultural,  and psychological issues that may interfere with the regular and continuous use of viral suppressant medications to promote both personal and public health.

A more recent example of unacknowledged social work contributions to knowledge is found in the work of Diana Pearce, a social worker and researcher on women’s welfare, poverty, and economic inequality at the University of Washington. In describing the fate of “welfare mothers” in her 1970 dissertation, she coined the term “the feminization of poverty” to describe how social welfare systems create poverty among women. This term and this concept are now well established in the field of social development worldwide. Poverty is still concentrated in households headed by women, and Pearce continues her efforts to address this disparity by advocating for increases in the minimum wage and changes in the measurement of household income needs by basing aid on household sufficiency and not the  flawed poverty line.

More recently, we have learned that the origins of the evidence-based and widely used model of psychiatric aftercare called Assertive Community Treatment (commonly known in medicine as ACT) was derived from the practice of a social worker named Mary Ann Tate. Many in the psychiatric hospital she worked in were concerned with the high rehospitalization rate of patients discharged into the community. Psychiatrists there tried to identify any practitioners who were more successful than others in helping patients remain in the community, and it was social worker Mary Ann Tate who had the best track record in this area. The model is thus based in the practices she had developed to avoid rehospitalizations. Because the lead authors in publications describing this practice model were psychiatrists, the social work contribution has only recently been identified.

It seems that we know more about the “heart” of social work—the dedication to service—than we do about its “head”—the contributions the profession has made to other areas of research. Some have recently begun to study the contributions of those who have created and sustained systems of care in African American, Native American, and Spanish-speaking communities. No doubt these and other examples of social work’s intellectual contributions are still unrecognized.

Featured image credit: “Eureka” by Fachy Marín. CCO via Unsplash.

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