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What to do about Syria?

The chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria, on 7 April 2018 by the military forces of Bashar al-Assad, brought renewed calls for international action to protect civilians and resolve the brutal internal conflict that has persisted for over seven years and produced as many as half a million deaths. Despite calls for action by many Western governments, direct action and intervention have generally been in short supply, perhaps in part because Western observers do not perceive Assad as a particular threat or sufficiently villainous to warrant strong action.

Given such calls, it is useful to review some of the most commonly proposed policy prescriptions for terminating conflicts or protecting civilian lives during armed conflict. Scholars have devoted substantial attention to understanding the conditions that promote interventions in foreign conflicts and to investigating their effects on violence. This literature can serve as a starting point for evaluating the relevant options available to policymakers interested in halting the bloodshed in Syria.

The imposition of economic sanctions is a common punitive foreign policy, particularly among Western democratic states. Their advantage is that they impose costs on the target government but rarely endanger the lives of citizens in the sender. The expectation is that as economic costs on the targeted country mount, its leaders become more likely to concede to the demands of the sender. Existing studies demonstrate that multilateral sanctions, such as those imposed by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), are substantially more effective than unilateral sanctions. So, any sanctions-induced change in the Syrian government’s actions would most likely occur only if the permanent members of the UNSC can agree to impose them, or if a sufficient number of members states can overcome the collective action problem and agree to impose substantial sanctions outside of the UN framework. The former seems highly unlikely given Russia’s support of Assad, and the latter is historically uncommon. Perhaps more importantly, the success of sanctions in this area is fairly poor. Previous studies suggest that the imposition of harsh economic sanctions can exacerbate human rights abuses and may inadvertently lead to an intensification of conflict. At minimum, targeted leaders often turn to predatory economic behaviors, including appropriating and redistributing property and wealth, to maintain their control on power, practices that often have a deleterious influence on the economic security and rights of their citizens.

A second policy available to policymakers is direct military intervention. Armed intervention is an unpalatable, and therefore less common, option for hastening a conflict’s end or protecting civilians. Elected leaders are typically reluctant to become involved in foreign conflicts for humanitarian purposes because the public is often highly sensitive to casualties. Thus, even if an intervention were to save civilian lives abroad, rising causalities among the intervention force would rapidly dampen public support for humanitarian missions. The erosion of public support for US intervention in Somalia is the quintessential example of this effect. And as public support for such actions declines, so too does the willingness of leaders to maintain them. Of course, public support is partly shaped by the narratives and counter-narratives contrived and disseminated by activists and policymaking elites. Adept leaders that construct a compelling narrative for intervention are sometimes able to persuade reluctant publics to maintain support for such actions.

What effect might such interventions have on conflict termination and the protection of civilian lives? Overall, the entry of additional actors tends to prolong ongoing conflicts. This is because additional actors complicate an already difficult bargaining process by expanding the range of interests that must be satisfied, and potentially widening areas of disagreement among the parties. Given the number of actors already involved in the Syrian conflict, the entry of new groups is unlikely to bring the war to a speedier conclusion. In terms of civilian protection, the effect of biased interventions—those directly opposing or supporting a specific side in the conflict—are unclear. While some studies suggest that biased intervention increase civilian victimization by the actor they oppose, other studies have found that interventions that directly oppose perpetrators of mass killing can effectively reduce the severity of such violence.

…additional actors complicate an already difficult bargaining process by expanding the range of interests that must be satisfied, and potentially widening areas of disagreement among the parties.

By contrast, multilateral peacekeeping missions appear more likely to help reduce violence and prevent its recurrence. Most previous studies conclude that peacekeeping missions are effective at preventing a return to violence once the sides have agreed to halt the fighting. The catch here is that despite numerous short-lived ceasefires, none of the actors appear ready to seriously consider participating in a comprehensive peace process. Nonetheless, peacekeeping missions, particularly United Nations Peacekeeping Operations (UNPKO), appear to have a net positive effect on reducing violence levels. This effect increases as international commitment to the peacekeeping effort increases. More robust UNPKOs—typically measured in terms of the number of troops committed to the mission by UN member states—are more effective at reducing civilian deaths both during the conflict and the often highly unstable and unpredictable period immediately following a peace agreement or ceasefire. The obvious snag in deploying a UNPKO to Syria is the unwillingness of the Russian government (and to a lesser extent China) to consider such actions from the UNSC. As long as these actors maintain their opposition to the deployment of a robust peacekeeping force, this option remains unlikely.

Where does this leave policymakers who have an interest in ameliorating the daily suffering endured by the Syrian population? Unfortunately, there appears to be few effective options. Sanctions will most likely prove ineffective and may marginally worsen the situation. Interventions directly against the Syrian regime threaten to expand the conflict by potentially leading to confrontations between Russia and Western forces, which would undoubtedly prolong the war and exacerbate civilian suffering. A robust peacekeeping force appears to be the most promising option. The challenge will be convincing Russia that a UNPKO does not necessarily undermine its ability to pursue its strategic interests in Syria, which would likely require substantial and unpopular concessions from Western government, not the least of which is tolerating the survival of Assad’s government and return to the pre-war status quo in the country.

Featured image credit: Helicopter photo by mrminibike. CC0 via Pixaby. 

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Concern for global democracy

A new report by the Democracy Project finds that a majority of Americans view democracy in the United States as weak and getting weaker. Even worse, nearly half of Americans express concerns that the United States is in “real danger of becoming a nondemocratic, authoritarian country.”

Reports such as this one come at a time in which many political observers are sounding the alarm bell that we are amid an era of resurgent authoritarianism. Though it is a stretch to say that democracy in the United States will collapse any time soon, a number of developments there and elsewhere are indeed cause for concern for global democracy.

The first is the growing attractiveness of populism among democratic audiences. In a number of well-established democracies, such as the United States and Hungary, we are seeing leaders who promote populist agendas gain power. The messages they advocate are similar: the country needs a strong leadership, elites and experts cannot be trusted, and established institutions are failing. The rising popularity of populism worldwide is troubling, however, because populist agendas are increasingly being used as a springboard for the dismantling of democracy, such as occurred in Venezuela under Hugo Chavez and Turkey under Reccep Tayyip Erdogan. In such places, populist leaders dismantle the foundations of democracy by putting loyalists in key positions of power (e.g. the judiciary), sidelining the media by censoring it or legislating against it, and muzzling civil society and political opponents. Importantly, their efforts to consolidate control are often difficult to push back against because they occur under the guise of “saving” the country.

Relatedly, a second cause for concern is the increasing reliance on pseudo-democratic tactics as a tool for maintaining power among today’s authoritarian regimes. Examples include not only the adoption of elections, incorporation of multiple political parties, and maintenance of legislatures, but also the creation of non-governmental organizations (which are actually government sponsored) to feign support for civil society, establishment of consultative forums to co-opt potential opposition, and use of fake election monitoring groups to validate what are actually unfair contests. Today’s authoritarian regimes are wise to engage in such actions. Those dictatorships that more closely mimic the behaviors of democracies last longer than their more traditional counterparts. Of course, this reality is not lost on today’s autocrats. We are seeing more and more authoritarian regimes feign democracy (in name only), such that the typical dictatorship today is far more long-lasting than its predecessor in decades past. The increasing resilience of contemporary dictatorships, coupled with the difficulty of chastising behaviors that “appear” democratic, has generated a new set of challenges for pro-democracy activists living within them and in the international community.

In a number of well-established democracies, such as the United States and Hungary, we are seeing leaders who promote populist agendas gain power. The messages they advocate are similar: the country needs a strong leadership, elites and experts cannot be trusted, and established institutions are failing.

A third cause for concern is the evolution of today’s dictatorships from a more collegial style of governance to a system of strongman rule. In the past, the typical dictatorship featured a strong and institutionalized political party (or in some cases a professionalized military junta). In such regimes, the leadership group could potentially check the actions of the leader and hold the leader accountable for poor policy choices. Today’s authoritarian regimes, by contrast, increasingly feature weak and disorganized political parties that revolve around the personality or charisma of the leader. The movement toward more personalist authoritarian rule, where power is concentrated in the hands of the leader, is worrisome on a number of fronts. Personalist dictatorships are more likely to start wars with democracies, pursue reckless foreign policy agendas, waste foreign aid, and invest in nuclear weapons, among other things. The trend toward greater personalism in new dictatorships, such as in Nicaragua under Daniel Ortega, established dictatorships, such as in China under Xi Jinping, and potentially in democracies, such as in Poland under Jaroslaw Kaczynski, is, therefore, a troubling development.

Doomsday commentary about the state of democracy in the world is perhaps overly pessimistic. After all, we have seen democratic gains in a number of countries around the world in recent years, such as in Sri Lanka, Burkina Faso, and the Gambia. That said, developments such as these are disconcerting, and advocates of democracy would be wise not to ignore them.

Featured image credit: Freedom Democracy America by Wokandapix. CC0 via Pixabay.

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Are you ballot ready?

The 2018 midterm elections could see the highest turnout for a midterm since the mid-1960s, another time of cultural and social upheaval. Michael McDonald, Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida, predicted to NPR that “between 45-50 percent of eligible voters will cast a ballot.” The Trump presidency has created a lot of debate, prompting a high level of interest in the midterms. Democrats are looking to change the majority in both the Senate and the House.

Ahead of the midterm election, which takes place on the 6th of November, we’ve collected a few freely-available journal articles and book chapters that provide insights into the debate and history behind politics, voting, and elections. #BeBallotReady and get informed.

The American Nonvoter by Lyn Ragsdale and Jerrold G. Rusk

The American Nonvoter examines how uncertainty regarding changing economic conditions, dramatic national events, and U.S. international interventions influence people’s decisions whether to vote or not. The book shows that nonvoters are, by and large, as politically knowledgeable as voters, but see no difference between candidates or view them negatively.

“The Content and Effect of Political Advertising in U.S. Campaigns” by Matthew P Motta and Erika Franklin Fowler, in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Political Communication

This article examines the effects that negative advertising has on electoral campaigns. The authors examine the contextual factors of the campaign as well as the characteristics of the messages and their effectiveness to convince swing voters.

“For Whom the Poll Airs” by Kathleen Searles, Martha Humphries Ginn, and Jonathan Nickens, in Public Opinion Quarterly

Televised election coverage is increasingly dominated by the horse race, a key element of which is poll coverage. This article compares the polls released each day to the polls actually covered by the news networks. The authors find differences between the distribution of poll coverage and the distribution of actual poll results.

“Partisanship, Bureaucratic Responsiveness, and Election Administration” by Ethan Porter and Jon C Rogowski, in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory

This article presents evidence about the existence of partisan biases from administrators in supposedly neutral settings and raises important questions about the capacity for protecting election administration from partisan influences.

American Political Parties and Elections: A Very Short Introduction by L. Sandy Maisel

Who are the Republicans? Who are the Democrats? Who are the “others”? This book looks at party affiliation and the different relationships citizens have with political parties.

Asymmetric Politics: Ideological Republicans and Group Interest Democrats by Matt Grossman and David A. Hopkins

This book analyzes the major party differences and their implications. The authors examine their findings to enable a global view of party differences and their impact on political competition, citizen representation, and elite governance.

 Featured image credit: Republican Elephant & Democratic Donkey – Icons by DonkeyHotey. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.

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Time to abandon “beyond reasonable doubt”

In England and many other countries around the world, the standard of proof to be met by the prosecution in order for the jury to convict an accused is proof “beyond reasonable doubt” or proof that makes the jury “sure” of guilt. These phrases are supposed to convey a very high standard of proof. It is thought to require the jury to be at least 90% convinced of guilt. Barristers and evidence scholars Adrian Keane and Paul McKeown respond to some questions from the Higher Education Law team at Oxford University Press.

Why should we have such a high standard of proof?

Adrian Keane: Because it reduces the risk of convicting the innocent. It is sometimes linked to the principle that it is better that ten guilty persons are acquitted than that one innocent person is convicted.

Do the jury get any help on the meaning of “beyond reasonable doubt”?

Paul McKeown: In England, generally no help is given. Judges are advised not to define the phrase to juries other than to say that it means the same thing as being “sure”; and they are also advised not to define “sure”. Where juries ask for help on ‘reasonable doubt’, judges are advised to tell them that they can discount ‘fanciful doubts’.

But doesn’t everyone know what “beyond reasonable doubt” means, if only from watching TV dramas?

AK: No. Research shows that the figure, in percentage terms, at which jurors would be convinced of guilt ranges from 51% to 92%; and just under a quarter of them think that “beyond reasonable doubt” means “pretty likely” or “very likely”.

But presumably the range narrows, perhaps to a band of over 90%, if the jury are told that “beyond reasonable doubt” means the same as “sure”?

PM: No. The research shows that the range then becomes even wider, from 50% to 100%.

Why is the range so wide?

PM: If the judge does not define “beyond reasonable doubt” and “sure”, juries are likely to give these words their ordinary meanings. Dictionary definitions of “reasonable”, for example, include “rational” and “moderate”.

But if the jury are told that “beyond reasonable doubt” means the same as “sure”, presumably the jury will only convict if they are certain of guilt?

AK: Research shows that when members of the public were told that the test is simply “sure of guilt”, only 51% of them said that they would have to be 100% sure before convicting.

Why only 51%, given that “sure” means certain?

PM: It is true that “sure” can mean feeling certain in one’s mind, but it can also mean feeling confident, and there can be degrees of confidence. For example, when someone says that they are “sure” about something, it is not uncommon for someone to ask “How sure?”. It is also likely that some jurors are understandably confused about being told that “beyond reasonable doubt” means the same as “sure”: one meaning of “sure” is having no doubt, i.e. no doubt at all, which, whatever the judge says, cannot mean the same as having no reasonable doubt.

If what you are saying is correct, then what is the consequence?

PM: Well, at the very least it means that the risk of convicting the innocent is higher than it should be.
So what’s the answer?

AK: We should jettison both “beyond reasonable doubt” and “sure” in favour of a better description of the criminal standard of proof.

What would be a better definition?

AK: Well, it’s not going to be as snappy as the traditional definitions, but it will be much more accurate. The jury should be told that whatever they may have heard, the test is not “beyond reasonable doubt” or “sure”; that the standard of proof required is a very high standard; that it is not enough that they think the accused is probably guilty or very probably guilty; that they don’t have to be absolutely certain; but that if they have a real doubt, rather than a doubt based on an extremely remote possibility, they should acquit.

Wouldn’t it be simpler to say you have to be at least 90% convinced of guilt?

PM: It would be simpler, and it seems like a tempting solution, but the jury’s overall conclusion of guilt or innocence depends upon how it decides on the facts that are disputed. Finding the facts is an exercise that only rarely depends on precise degrees of probability, an example being facts derived from DNA evidence. Normally jurors will simply not have enough data to find facts on the basis of precise percentages.

Featured image credit: Unnamed by MichaelDBeckwith. CCO Public Domain via Pixabay.

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Etymology gleanings for October 2018

I have received a letter with a query about whether kibosh might be a borrowing from Hebrew. Both the Hebrew and the Yiddish hypotheses on kibosh are discussed in detail in the book by Gerald Cohen, Stephen Goranson, and Matthew Little on this intractable word (Routledge, 2018). The Hebrew origin of kibosh is quite unlikely.  I may repeat what I have more than once said in this blog. Although, when a certain word sounds similar in two languages, the idea that there was a lender and a borrower is natural, but the main thing is to trace the way of the word from place to place. Were the people who popularized the English word London Jews? If so, where and when could they make it so widely known? The three authors provided enough material to make it probable that kibosh goes back to kurbash “lash.” With regard to the English word, the distant origin of kurbash is irrelevant.

However, I have some suggestions in regard to the history and spread of kybosh in English. Nothing contradicts the idea that kurbash “lash,” once it came to be pronounced as kybash ~  kybosh, was associated with bosh “nonsense,” while the first syllable made people think of kerslap, kerplunk, kerfuffle, and the rest (we are dealing with an r-less dialect!). Perhaps without the help of folk etymology, this exotic word would not have survived. Surprisingly, the verb kybosh came also to mean “to make an object perfect.” Yet this development may not be unnatural. To kybosh meant “to put an end to something, to finish,” and finish is a double-edged word (compare something lacks finish, among others).

The three authors treat with suspicion the statement of an old correspondent to Notes and Queries that among architects to kybosh meant “to throw with blowpipe and brush dark dust into the deep recesses of carved stonework” (the reference is to Portland cement). Indeed, no evidence confirms this statement, but, when someone says “I have heard it used, practically every day for the last forty years—not in one locality, but in all parts of England,” with no one refuting those words, such a statement should be treated with a measure of respect. It is not the history of Portland cement that interests me, but the fact that in the lingo of sculptural architects the verb allegedly meant exactly what it meant in criminal slang, namely “to give a finishing touch, to make perfect.”

Allegedly, Portland cement loved to be kyboshed. The evidence is slim, but tastes differ. Image credit: Wet cement by ProjectManhattan. CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

In British school slang, kybosh once meant “nonsense, blarney” and “beating” (I’ll give him kybosh). “Beating” is quite in character, but why nonsense? Perhaps the confusion with bosh will suffice, but there may be another explanation. In the previous post, I mentioned several so-called monomaniacs, including Charles Mackay, the man who tried to derive hundreds of English words from Irish Gaelic. But I also said that, if someone offers a thick volume of nonsensical etymologies, he may in one or two cases, by sheer chance, hit the nail on the head. Naturally, Mackay derived kybosh from Irish. He wrote “Gaelic exclamation cia baois, pronounced as ci-baoish, means ‘what idle nonsense’ or ‘what indecency’.” We have no evidence that the Irish phrase ever reached England, let alone became popular there. But, if it did, it might reinforce the bosh idea. Perhaps the path of kybosh through British slang was not quite straight.

Two British dialectal words

The question was about the words mardy “a spoiled child” and wazzock “an idiot.” Their etymology is unknown, and my few remarks will be of little use. One of the problems with both is their amazingly late attestation. The OED online cites both. The earliest citation for mardy goes back to 1874. However, at that time the word had so little currency that it did not get into Joseph Wright’s English Dialect Dictionary, a wonderful work compiled at the end of the nineteenth and the very beginning of the twentieth century. Mard “petulant mood,” not recorded before 1998, is treated in the OED as a back formation from mardy, that is, mardy minus the suffix -y. Mar “to spoil a child” was known earlier. It looks like a specific sense of the verb mar “to spoil; disfigure.” However the derivation of mardy from the past participle marred does not look too convincing. Can we imagine nouns like starvedy, killedy, lovedy? Do we have any nouns with the suffix -y from past participles? Some intermediate steps in the history of mardy seem to be lost.

Wazzock may be not so impenetrable, though it surfaced in texts only in 1976 (OED). In any case, ss often varies with zz.  Wright has wassle ~ wazzle ~ wheezle. Also, wassock exists, the name of some pegs. Calling a stupid person a blockhead is common, and so is an association between an idiot and a piece of wood; –ock is of course a diminutive suffix (as in hillock and others).

More thoughts on humans and wood: Embla

The Mistletoe. Was this plant Embla? Image credit: MistletoeInSilverBirch by Andrew Dunn. CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

In the post for October 10, I mentioned Askr and Embla, the names of the first human beings mentioned in a Scandinavian myth. Askr means “ash tree,” but Embla remains a mystery, because no tree name sounds like Embla. A good deal has been written on this couple. Yet the research dealt with the possible prehistory of Embla and sheds no light on the picture before us. A comment on the post suggested in no uncertain terms that Embla is related to omela (stress on the second syllable), the Russian word for “mistletoe.” No doubt, b in Embla could be inserted between m and l. This is a common occurrence: compare the history of the English word nimble, whose root is nim– “to take.” Also, the form Emla did turn up in the past. The rest is more troublesome. One expects the second name to have made some sense to the myth makers and to those who heard it. They had no access to our dictionaries of Indo-European roots.

The origin of omela has not been established. Perhaps Albanian ëmlë “sweet” (German Ampher “sorrel,” that is, “sour” [!] and Latin amārus “bitter”[!!]) is related, but there are other theories. For instance, there have been attempts to compare Embla with elm (so “little elm”?) and with Greek ámpelos “vine” (akin to Sanskrit āmras “mango tree”). All this is very interesting, but the main question remains: Did the medieval Scandinavians understand the name Embla? Apparently, they did not, for such a word did not exist. This makes our guesses uninspiring, though, to be sure, some old word may remain unknown to us.

Finally, the mistletoe would be a strange candidate for Askr’s female companion. This parasite plant grows on trees, which it eventually destroys. It is remembered in Scandinavia only because, according to a famous myth, it killed the shining god Balder (the Celtic beliefs to which we owe the use of holly and mistletoe, and the old custom of kissing under the mistletoe, immortalized in The Pickwick Papers, is not connected with Askr, Embla, or Balder). The story is the result of a misunderstanding: the mistletoe must have replaced another plant in the original myth. Those interested in knowing how it happened will find a detailed discussion in my book In Prayer and Laughter… (the chapter on Baldr).

Varia

Many thanks to Stephen Goranson for pointing to the alleged portraits of O. G. de Busbecq, none of which I risked reproducing, and for telling our correspondent where the posts on English kl– words can be found in this blog. One of the kl-words I discussed in my etymological dictionary was clover. Another correspondent wanted to know whether there might be a connection between the Germanic word and the words with a similar-sounding Hebrew root. Probably not. I say so, because clover seems to belong so very well with other kl-words, all of which refer to stickiness and are often clearly related to gl-words outside Germanic.

Possibly, this is a picture of Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, featured in the previous post. He recorded some words of the language now called Crimean Gothic. Image credit: Busbecq by Melchior Lorck. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

I left several remarks unanswered, because I have nothing to say about them, but I would be happy to read other people’s comments on them and, should there be a discussion, join it. As regards bride, I’ll return to it later.

Featured image credit: Welcome Words Greeting by Tumisu. CC0 via Pixabay.

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Twenty-five years of the medieval area with the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: A Q & A with Dr. Henry Summerson

It is twenty-five years since work started on what became the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Dr Henry Summerson was a research editor for the medieval area (pre-1500) from 1993, and in charge of the medieval era Dictionary  between 2004 and his retirement at the end of September. Here he answers questions about the past achievements and future prospects of the Dictionary’s coverage of Britain’s early history.

Question: What did the medieval area look like in 1993?

Answer: It was solid, quite wide-ranging, and rather dull, not much more than a useful source of information. A century’s further research had made most of the articles out of date factually. Changes in the way history was approached meant that they were conceptually old-fashioned as well, unable to answer the sort of questions that late twentieth-century historians were likely to ask.

Question: How did you hope to remedy this?

Answer: By replacing pretty well all the existing articles, and then adding new subjects in those areas – especially science and economic life – where the old Dictionary’s coverage had been thin. We hoped to have more articles on people active in the localities, and to give more space to women.

Question: That sounds ambitious. Was the time ripe for this sort of undertaking?

Answer: The 1990s was a good time for medieval history, with fine scholars of all ages to draw upon, and there was a much good will. We were also very fortunate in having Barbara Harvey as consultant editor for the area – she commanded a remarkable combination of respect and affection, so that people would do things for her which they would probably not have done for anyone else.

Question: How far do you think you succeeded in what you hoped to achieve?

Answer: Probably far more than we had any right to expect. Under Barbara’s leadership we covered the ground that the first Dictionary had covered, filled gaps it had left, and extended the range of the pre-1500 area, for instance by including a large number of articles on families and groups, and also on people who originated outside Britain but had a significant effect on events there (this particularly applied to Roman Britain). The new edition contained over 1600 more lives than the old one. There was still an imbalance of gender—unavoidable given the circumstances of medieval life—but at least it was less marked than it had been.

Question: And how does the achievement of 2004 look now?

Answer: Well, I am still pleased with it. There were mistakes, of course, some of them brought to light by research which the Dictionary itself had stimulated, and gaps have opened up here and there, again made visible by further research.

Question: Do you think that filling such gaps has changed the way the medieval area looks today?

Answer: A lot of new articles continued developments begun in the edition published in 2004 – foreigners active in Britain, Britons active overseas, more articles on people whose national importance derived from their regional eminence. But there has been one new development in the years since 2004, with the pursuit of completeness in a few fields. We now have articles on all the medieval Speakers of the House of Commons, and all the medieval lord chief justices of the central courts, which means, I think, that all the holders of these offices, in every century, now have articles in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. And so, too, do all the bishops between the Norman Conquest and the Reformation. Since there was no such thing as an unimportant bishop in medieval England, it seemed proper (as well as a service to readers) to give space to them all.

Question: Is completeness a trend you see continuing?

Answer: No, but there are still areas which need a more extensive coverage. We recently set about improving the Dictionary’s coverage of the late medieval religious – monks and nuns – in the end adding about fifty-five articles to the ones already there. Attending to these showed that there were many secular lords and administrators no less deserving of inclusion, and I hope they will get the attention they deserve in the years ahead. We haven’t added many individuals from outside England since 2004, with few new subjects from Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, though I am sure there are candidates worth considering. And I hope that we can also have more articles on people from the often extensive English lordships in France.

Question: How can ODNB discover, let alone decide, who is to be included in areas like these?

Answer: By looking out for new work, and by keeping in touch with readers, and encouraging them to tell it about new developments. Research never stops, and I hope that those who do it, and make biographical discoveries, will let the Dictionary know what they have done, so that new articles can be added and existing ones corrected – something easily done electronically. As research goes on, the time will doubtless come when entries published in 2004 will have to be replaced altogether. Fortunately that will not be my problem!

Feature image: “A View of London, Westminster and Southwark, as they appeared A.D. 1543” by Nathaniel Whittock. Public Doman via Wikimedia.

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How digital artists are questioning artificial intelligence

Steve Goodman is best known for his work DJing as Kode9 and running the Hyperdub record label, one of the pioneering forces of UK bass culture and dubstep since 2004. Through releases by Kode9 & The Spaceape, and Burial, Hyperdub captured a sound that embodied the high-pressure claustrophobia and hyper-surveillance of urban environments in the 21st Century. Seen through this dystopian lens, people are erased from the landscape and suppressed by barely perceptible sonic frequencies, and anonymous technological forces of capitalism, yet humanity bleeds through the cracks via fragments of pirate radio signals and disembodied voices.

Nøtel is a new site-specific artwork created by Lawrence Lek and Kode9, which extends some of these themes. Situated in a newly regenerated site on London City Island, the work presents a fictional showroom for a hotel of the future, which is governed through artificial intelligence (A.I.). As you enter the building, automated sales commentaries echo across the room via out-of-phase audio loops emitting from an array of loudspeakers. Nested around a glowing green zero structure, the Nøtel showroom provides several audio-visual systems including screens and virtual reality headsets, which allow you to explore the hotel via a synthetic 3D simulation. Disembodied voices explain to you how your every need will be perfectly met through the A.I. capabilities of the hotel, which will reduce unwanted human interactions to zero.

The cite seems mainly empty at the moment, with vacant or unfinished properties, and some construction boards with promotional graphics featuring Photoshopped people living out idyllic lives in the imagined bustling complex. The designs tease the possibility to remove yourself from whatever real bit of London you live in, and move to a more artificial, streamlined, seductive and gentrified one. Nøtel encapsulates this vibe, which is already there, but turns the clock forward just a little, accentuating the dystopian qualities of the site.

Nøtel questions our human relationship with technology and the capitalist systems in which we are embedded. A.I. is significant in this equation because it represents a step toward an existence in which computational processes are presumed sufficiently capable of making important choices on our behalf, and are empowered to do so. Of course, A.I. could be extremely useful for our daily lives; for instance, it has been proposed to have significant benefits in healthcare. Yet some proposed uses, such as systems that automatically assess you for employment based on your social media profile, are potentially worrying.

Nøtel installation by Lawrence Lek and Kode9, arebyte gallery, 2018. Image credit: Jon Weinel.

The A.I. groups are aware of the ethical challenges that the technology presents, and many such as DeepMind are employing dedicated teams of researchers to examine the ethical implications for society.  Yet one wonders to what extent ethical researchers operating within an organisation with vested interests will be able to remain impartial. In this regard, perhaps we should be looking towards artists to offer more substantial outside views to explore ideas of what A.I. could be, and what positive or negative qualities it might have.

Besides Lawrence Lek and Kode9, there are other artists already exploring questions such as these. For example, at the recent EVA London (Electronic Visualisation and the Arts) 2018 conference, several speakers gave interesting talks along these lines. New York-based digital artist Carla Gannis introduced #lucilletrackball, an “A.I. Comedian” who delivers a full stand-up comedy routine of zingers and computer-based one-liners – think geeky jokes such as  “#lucilletrackball is looking for love but is not good with [email] attachments!” Along similar lines, Cecile Waagner Falkenstrøm’s FRANK is an A.I. which asks you provocative existential questions. While these artworks imagine alternative A.I. concepts, Gretchen Andrew’s insightful paper commented on the biases of search engine technologies, as she demonstrated the inherent sexism of Google Images (try searching for “girl crawling” and “boy crawling” to see for yourself – the former produces highly sexualised imagery, while the latter does not). Gretchen Andrew hacks these mechanisms with her “search engine artworks,” overriding search engine results with her own paintings.

Together with Nøtel, projects such as these present alternative viewpoints on what A.I. is and what it could be – for better or worse. These are valuable because the ‘intelligence’ part of A.I. still remains ambiguous. Often A.I. is directed to competitive, goal orientated tasks, hence you will often see the efficacy of A.I.s demonstrated through their ability to play video games. In the real world, these types of obsessive goal-orientated behaviours would probably be considered pathological if we encountered them in a person. Projects that suggest alternative ideas for A.I., such as one that can make you laugh, or annoy you by asking existential questions, may suggest more nuanced – and human – approaches to the idea of what A.I. could be.

Featured Image credit:  Nøtel by Lawrence Lek and Kode9, arebyte Gallery 2018. Photo taken with permission by Jon Weinel. 

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The Heart-Head-Hands Approach to Building Inclusive Classrooms (infographic)

Increasingly, teachers are being asked to adopt their classrooms to include students with a wide backgrounds and capabilities. The placement of students with diverse abilities in a regular school does not guarantee high-quality education, though. Schools often feel under-resourced and unprepared to teach the students. UNICEF conducted a study in 2012 that involved participant teachers from over one hundred countries and slightly over 33% of respondents indicated that information about inclusive education was not covered during their teacher education. Similar studies were done in Australia and had comparable findings.

In order to help teachers build an inclusive classroom we have created this guide using the

When teachers understand a strong rationale behind inclusion, they tend to develop positive beliefs about inclusion. According to the theory of planned behavior, a person’s actual behavior could be predicted based on the individual’s intentions to perform the behavior. For example, whether a teacher will include a learner with a disability in his or her classroom depends on the teacher’s intention to include the learner. Intentions are influenced by three closely related psychosocial constructs of attitudes, perceived competence, and subjective norms (how significant people in the environment evaluate the behavior).

Featured image: Photo by Nathan Dumlao. Public domain via Unsplash.

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Who remembers Goffman?

Erving Goffman died 36 years ago, in 1982, but his work is still frequently cited (Google Scholar documents 260,399 citations as of this writing) and he is certainly remembered by many. This is a meditation on when we remember to think of (and credit) the originator of an idea, and when we don’t, and what difference it makes.

The first publication of Goffman’s that I ever read was Frame Analysis, published in 1974. I entered graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania in 1975, and the bookstore was highlighting campus authors. This book is not the standard route to Goffman – although he considered Frame Analysis his crowning achievement, others critiqued it. The book is long and convoluted, often cited but rarely read. At the same time, it provides an essential resource for anyone wishing to understand framing.

Goffman credits Gregory Bateson with developing the concept of frame analysis in “The message ‘this is play’” in 1955 (reprinted in his 1972 edited collection Steps to an ecology of mind). Bateson was writing about animal vs. human communication, but he emphasized the general way in which framing serves to define context and organize perceptions of behavior. Bateson linked framing to metacommunication, usually defined as communication about communication. In both cases, what’s at stake is stepping outside the current interaction in order to ask a larger question about what’s happening, and how it is being understood. Both are used to convey information about a message: a frame shapes the way something makes sense to participants (teasing vs. serious behavior, for example) whereas metacommunication refers to the behaviors specifically used to shape that understanding (so that a change in vocal pitch may indicate teasing).

Goffman expanded the concept of framing from Bateson’s initial concern with animals to social interaction among humans, suggesting that people use frames to help them answer the basic question of “What’s going on here?” He also introduced a highly elaborated set of related technical vocabulary (primary framework, keying, track, breaking frame, lamination, transformation, fabrication, etc.), and many of these terms have been adopted by later authors. The example of teasing vs. serious behavior given earlier would be a matter of what Goffman calls shifting “key,” referring to basic assumptions about the way in which behavior is to be understood. At the same time, people are complex, and so Goffman proposed multiple “tracks” occur simultaneously. For example, the “disattend track” includes backstage activities designed to facilitate interaction and maintain a frame, but which are rarely the focus of attention. The cooks in a restaurant or the photographer at a wedding serve as obvious examples. Similarly, “directional signals” provide critical information while rarely becoming the focus of attention. An obvious example here would be punctuation marks in writing, or an audience member calling out “speak up” when the speaker cannot be heard. “Breaking frame” is when one participant unexpectedly leaves the frame while others still inhabit it – as when laughing at someone who intended to be serious (or the reverse, taking someone seriously when they intended only to tease).

Army Cook Steaming Cauliflower, Pepperell Manufacturing Company. Robert Yarnall Richie, February 1943. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Today, Bateson is occasionally mentioned when discussing the concept of framing, as the one who first used the term and was acknowledged for it, but it is Goffman who is typically mentioned as the central inventor of the idea, perhaps because he was the one to write an entire book on the topic. At least that’s how it works with interaction scholars – across multiple disciplines (at least in Sociology, Communication, Linguistics, and Anthropology, those being the disciplines I mostly read).

However, something odd shows up when reading media scholars, whether they are affiliated with Communication or Sociology. Early publications (mostly 1990s) on the concept of framing mention Goffman (though not Bateson, or at least not that I’ve seen). But even a few years later (1999 and on), Goffman has disappeared entirely from most discussions of his idea. Of course, some authors do still cite him, but what prompted me to think about this were the multiple sources that do not cite him when I would have expected to see some acknowledgment.

Goffman is of course primarily recognized as an interaction scholar, known for being the person who called attention to small moments of everyday interaction as organized and worthy of study. But he did occasionally study media, even including examples from radio drama, television commercials, and soap operas (based on research by his students) in Frame Analysis. So, the issue should not be that his idea of framing is being applied to an entirely new context and therefore the original is irrelevant (A few caveats: it is the case that media scholars mostly consider frames to be cognitive structures rather than social constructions, and they mostly emphasize primary frames rather than taking advantage of Goffman’s vocabulary, instead inventing new terms: frame alignment, amplification, bridging, etc. Ironically, the one thing that should have been unnecessary, given the complaints about Goffman’s expanding glossary of vocabulary, was the creation of new terms! But even so, it’s pretty clear that the concept of framing currently used by media scholars traces directly back to Goffman, and was strongly influenced by his writings.)

Academics are carefully trained to acknowledge their intellectual predecessors. We consider it plagiarism when someone is not credited with having an idea that influenced us. We tend to think that success means that people adopt your ideas, and also that they will credit you with having had them in the first place. That is typically accepted as evidence that we have influenced others, and therefore that is how most of us wish to be remembered.

However, this example of Goffman and his concept of framing as adopted by media scholars provides an alternative possibility: perhaps when your ideas are fully absorbed into the culture they are no longer acknowledged; perhaps that is the greatest sign of influence, and therefore, despite appearances, actually the best way to be remembered?

Featured image credit: Memorys by Yusuf Evli. Public Domain via Unsplash .

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Does poverty cause terrorism?

On 11 September 2001 (9/11), some 17 years ago, four hijackings of US commercial planes by al-Qaida terrorists led to almost 3,000 deaths and over 6,000 injuries, and profoundly changed our sense of security. Those hijackings resulted in the destruction of the World Trade Center towers, massive damage to the US Pentagon, and a plane crash in rural Pennsylvania. The terrorists had intended the last plane to crash into the US Capitol or the White House. That intention failed when the plane plummeted from the sky due to passengers overwhelming the terrorists in the cockpit after learning of the other three crashes from cell phone calls. As a stunned nation watched the 24/7 news coverage of the events of 9/11, members of President Bush’s cabinet, some world leaders, and the news media tried to identify a simple root cause in order to identify subsequent action to limit future terrorist attacks.

On 22 March 2002, President Bush said in a speech in Monterrey, Mexico, that “we fight against poverty because hope is the answer to terror.” In response, President Bush redirected some US aid to help fight the war on terror. Despite his speech and wish to alleviate world poverty, much of the increased aid went to bolster recipient countries’ offensives against resident terrorist groups that presented terrorism risks to the United States. The US aid did not really reduce poverty in the recipient countries to eliminate an alleged root cause of terrorism.

There is an irony about using tied foreign aid to fight terrorism on behalf of the United States or other Western donor countries. Some scholars asserted that foreign policy positions of Western countries (e.g., support of unpopular leaders or the imposition of Western liberal-based policies) sparked terrorism. If that is true, then US-tied aid can be a stimulus, rather than an inhibitor, of such terrorist attacks on US interests at home and abroad. Aid-recipient regimes may be viewed by their citizens as US puppets, thereby enraging citizens to engage in terrorist attacks to voice their displeasure. That reaction suits the resident terrorists. Additionally, grievances subsequently may follow if the aid skews the income distribution more in favor of the ruling class.

The alleged linkage between poverty and terrorism generated extensive academic research on this relationship. The well-being of a country’s citizens generally is measured by income per capita or the average income earnings of its citizens, which is total gross domestic product divided by population. Low income per capita is equated to poverty because the typical person has little to live on.

When researchers explored the relationship between terrorist attacks and income per capita, their findings were inconclusive. That was true for domestic and transnational terrorism. Unlike transnational terrorism, domestic terrorism involves perpetrators and victims from just the host country of the attack. Some articles found that more terrorist attacks took place in countries with greater income per capita, so that richer countries experienced more, rather than fewer, attacks than poorer countries. Relatively few studies uncovered the hypothesized low income per capita or poverty linkage with more terrorist attacks, consistent with the views of President Bush, media commentators, and others. Some articles found no relationship between income per capita and terrorism.

The well-being of a country’s citizens generally is measured by income per capita or the average income earnings of its citizens, which is total gross domestic product divided by population.

A recent study by Walter Enders, Gary Hoover, and Todd Sandler indicated that poor and rich countries experienced the least terrorism. In their global sample of countries, middle-income countries suffered the most domestic and transnational terrorist attacks. The storyline behind those results is that people in really poor countries are more concerned with their subsistence and surviving another day. Thus, they possess little means or interests in partaking in risky and time-consuming terrorist campaigns even when they harbor grievances. By contrast, citizens in rich countries generally have few grievances that may erupt in terrorism. Moreover, rich countries possess the manpower and hardware to crush domestic terrorist groups or to project their might abroad to annihilate foreign-based terrorist groups. A good example of power projection is the deployment of US drone attacks in Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, and Yemen.

In middle-income countries, terrorist groups can attract operatives to conduct terrorist attacks at home and abroad to air grievances and to issue political demands. Middle-income countries have less capability than rich countries to confront terrorist threats at home or on foreign soil.

Thus, unlike conventional wisdom, terrorism is not caused by poverty per se. Other simple root causes – e.g., globalization (increased cross-border exchanges) or increased immigration – also have been dismissed by researchers. Post-9/11 research showed that root causes differed by terrorist campaign, with no single genesis or easy fix for terrorism in general. Causes can include foreign policy disagreements, economic discrimination, regime change, religion-based grievances, and others. When the next large-scale terrorist attack occurs in the West, simple root causes again will be offered by political leaders and the media even though evidence does not support such assertions.

Featured image credit: Hanging Industry Stock by igorovsyannykov. CC0 via Pixabay.

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