Oxford University Press's Blog, page 233

The potential preventive promise of music

I became a parent around the time I started working in childhood mental health, providing music therapy to children with complex trauma histories. Through these experiences, I became aware both personally and professionally of the profound impact a child’s early environment has on their social and emotional development outcomes and later behavioral and academic ones.

With this in mind, I invited Dr. Varvara Pasiali, music therapy professor at Queens University and co-author of a recently published article in the Journal of Music Therapy, to share about her music-based social skills training program and the importance of supporting individuals who live in low resource communities.

Q: What does it mean to live in a “low” or “limited resource” community? What are potential developmental implications of doing so?

In communities, crises and stressors may happen on an individual level (e.g., sickness, mental health issues), family level (financial issues, divorce, poverty), or societal issues (e.g., poor schools, unsafe neighborhood). Constant, cumulative, and prolonged exposure to crises can deplete an individual’s capacity to deal and cope with life adversities and stressors. I use the words “low” or “limited” as umbrella terms for individuals who are more likely to be exposed to multiple crises.

Individuals who live in low resource communities may not have equitable opportunities in society. Using the term low or limited resources removes the stigma of referring to children, families, and communities as “at risk.” Low resources inexorably reflect social inequities in the type of supports specific individuals may have (or need) to thrive. The conception of low resources does not simply refer to income, but also to social capital, inclusion, and exclusion. The Australian Institute of Family Studies has developed an excellent conceptualization of community disadvantage.

Because the developmental implications are complex and multi-faceted, low resources is a term that may propel us towards action. The million-dollar questions to consider are: “What type of supports or interventions do we need to consider as music therapists when working with individuals with low resources?” and “In what ways does participation in music-based experiences become a resource as we engage others in music therapy?”

Q: What unique role do music therapists have when working with youth in limited resource communities?

Individuals who live in low resource communities may not have equitable opportunities in society. Using the term low or limited resources removes the stigma of referring to children, families, and communities as “at risk.” Low resources inexorably reflect social inequities in the type of supports specific individuals may have (or need) to thrive.

It is all about optimization of the approach the therapist will use when embedding themselves in a community and working with different individuals. In the face of social inequities and barriers that individuals in low resource communities may face, in what ways can music therapists provide interventions that serve as buffers shielding those from identified risks?

I view the role of the therapist as a resource strengthener and collaborator. In this study, we found that the collaboration of the teacher was central to reinforcing the social competence skills we were aiming to strengthen in the youth. In general, the ultimate goal is for participation in music therapy to meet unique needs and scaffold adaptive outcomes. Those needs (outcomes) vary from community to community and from individual to individual.

Throughout our study, we sought to create a program focused on social skills development. We found that music making enabled us to connect with the children at our research site. That connection translated to the children being eager to participate. However, our work would not have been possible without the collaboration and support from the afterschool teachers. It was a team effort.

A program using music-based experiences is unique because: (a) songs serve as ways to memorize information and new skills, (b) active music making allows for non-verbal engagement and interactions among group members, (c) playing collaboratively can reinforce positive relationships, and (d) rhythmic synchronization has the potential of becoming a salient feature in group cohesion.

Q: How did you (and your students) notice the children changing during the course of the music therapy program you implemented? Was this reflected in study outcomes?

The most profound changes we noticed were in musical interactions—many children in our group were related (siblings or cousins), so when they were playing collaboratively it was impressive. Sibling rivalry, as reported by the teacher, was often preventing the children in the program from working collaboratively. These collaborative musical interactions became a holding space for facilitating cooperation and on task behaviors. Moreover, we believe that active music making helped the children focus and sustain attention. Practicing such collaborative interactions musically may have translated to the positive changes in communication we noted as an outcome. Furthermore, the collaborative music making ability of the children in the group increased gradually over the course of our sessions.

Also, it may have helped that participants in our study learned social skills information embedded in the songs we taught them. The therapeutic experiences we provided targeted a specific set of skills which we introduced in a step-by-step process through the lyrics. The teacher observed the children singing the songs throughout the week. Our songs were vehicles for delivering information and the repetition of singing those songs throughout the week may have assisted in committing skills and concepts to memory.

Q: What is next in terms of your clinical and research work with the children in your study?

Through my clinical work, I would like to explore further the notion that beat synchronization and music improvisation are pathways for social awareness. Specific to my research, I would like to continue developing the music-based social skills program and re-implement it in a follow-up multi-site research study using comparison groups.

Featured image credit: Guitar by the river by Cecile Hournau on Unsplash .

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The shortest history of hatred continued and partly concluded

As a matter of fact, it is a long story, because the distant origin of hate—the word, not the feeling—is far from clear. As usual, we should try to determine the earliest meaning of our word (for it may be different from the one we know) and search for the cognates in and outside Germanic. At the beginning of the month (see the post for 1 August 2018), a good deal was said about the Gothic language. The reason is clear: apart from the most ancient Scandinavian runic inscriptions, the Gothic Bible is the oldest extant text in Germanic. It was written in the fourth century, and it often preserves the most archaic forms we have. With Gothic we are closer to the beginnings of Germanic speech than with Old English, Old High German, Old Norse, and the other closely related languages. The runic inscriptions are useful, but their vocabulary is limited. For example, there is nothing about hate in them.

This is a text with a Scandinavian runic inscription: valuable but not for our immediate purpose. Image credit: Runestone U 240, Vallentuna by Berig. CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

In Gothic, two verbs occurred: hatan and hatjan. They (especially hatjan) turned up in very few forms, and little is known about their grammar and about the semantic differences between them. In the previous post, the Greek verbs that Wulfila translated with hatan/hatjan were discussed at length. In Old English, only hatian has been recorded, and it meant “to pursue,” not “to hate” (for example, in Beowulf, the phrase “to pursue [hatian] with evil deeds” occurs). In the Old Germanic texts, the word for hate appears again and again, but the context is most often religious, so that the early history of the verb hate is strongly colored by the Bible.

The senses “pursue” and “persecute” furnish better clues than “hate” to the verb’s initial meaning. For example, in the Old Scandinavian myths, the planets and gods live in constant fear of annihilation. But for Thor who wields the mighty hammer Mjöllnir, the giants would have destroyed the world, and chaos would have reigned supreme. Among other things, a wolf called Hati is in constant pursuit of the sun (and will indeed swallow it at Ragnarök). The monster’s name must have meant “pursuer,” not “hater”: a beast does not hate its prey.

This is Hati, the Pursuer. Image credit: Far away and long ago by Willy Pogany. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The vacillation between hatan and hatjan recurs elsewhere. Outside Gothic and occasionally Old Icelandic, j in the suffix (I highlighted it above) causes a change called umlaut. In this case, umlaut turns the vowel a into e, and we’ll see many forms with e as we go along. Side by side with the name of the voracious Hati, there was the Old Icelandic word hetja “a brave warrior.” (Write hetja as hätja, and everything will fall into place!) No doubt, the hetja, too, was a “pursuer” (of his enemies). Equally revealing are the Modern German verb hetzen “to hound, to set dogs on” (the noun for this activity is Hatz “hunt, hunting with dogs”), even though it was attested rather late, and its Old English counterpart hettan “to persecute.” We may probably conclude that the history of hatred did begin with persecution and pursuit, rather than detestation, aversion, or wrath (wrath and anger occurred in last week’s discussion). The closest Germanic cognates of the noun hate (Old Engl. hete) are Old High German haz (Modern German Hass), Old Saxon heti, and Old Icelandic hatr. Also related is Old Saxon hōti “hostile.” The change from short a to long o (ō) is due to another process, whose nature has often been discussed in this blog. I mean ablaut (see, for instance, the post for 12 April 2017). In Modern English, we observe it when we conjugate some verbs (shake ~ shook, come ~ came, and the like), but in the past it was a motor of multifarious changes and alternations.

A word’s etymology is incomplete unless we have found its cognates. According to what is said above, ideally, they might be expected to mean “revulsion,” “fight,” perhaps “anger,” “pursuit,” and “persecution.” Let us remember that hate is a Germanic word, and, if we want to discover its congeners in Greek, Latin, Celtic—anywhere in Indo-European outside the Germanic family, we will need candidates that begin with k and have d in the middle, for this is the correspondence dictated by the inexorable First Consonant Shift, or Grimm’s Law (compare Engl. what and Latin quod, that is, kwod; Engl. two and Latin duo). At one time, Gothic hatis was compared with Latin odium “hatred” on the assumption that in the prehistorical epoch, odium lost initial k, but no one thinks so now.

Here are the cognates of hate one usually finds in etymological dictionaries and special papers: Greek kêdos “sorrow,” Welsh cas (allegedly from kads-) “hate,” and several other words meaning “hate, “destruction,” but also “care” and “sorrow.” From time to time, odd meanings turn up, for instance, “marriage.” Then it is said that “care” is behind it all. Yet the real surprise is Old Irish cais, which means “love” (compare Welsh cas, above).  In the previous post, I mentioned Ossetic, an East Iranian language, in which a word for “love” is allegedly related to a Slavic word for “enemy,” and warned that I was planting a time bomb.

Ossetia, a place full of hatred and love. Image credit: Overview map of the South Ossetia region of Georgia by United Nations Cartographic Section. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The article in which I have read about Ossetic bears the title “Hatred and Love.” Its author belonged to a school that tended to explain all kinds of seemingly irreconcilable contradictions by referring to magic (we’ll encounter another such case next week). To be sure, magic can be black or white, it is supposed to heal or harm. Beware of powerful skeleton keys when it comes to reconstruction! Everything suddenly finds an easy and plausible explanation. The trouble is that the opposites do meet, and only a short step separates love from hatred.  These platitudes are good for clarifying many things, but do they account for the origin of the word hate?

Our choices are few. We may honor the entire multitude of the suggested non-Germanic cognates and try to put “care,” “sorrow,” “marriage,” and “love” in one semantic bag and try to reconcile them. Or we may decide that some of those words from Sanskrit, Greek, and Celtic don’t belong together. After all, phonetic similarity guides us to possible cognates, but the choice is ours: we may accept or reject them. It will be fair to say that in our case many things remain puzzling. The link from hate to the words meaning “pursue” or “persecute” looks too good to sacrifice. “Care,” even “sorrow”, and the rest cause trouble.

Hildebrand and Hadubrand, father and son, the the protagonists of an old epic song. Hate and distrust conquered love, and the son was killed by his father. Image credit: Title page of the Juengeres Hildebrandslied by Unknown. CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Words for abstract concepts usually go back to the names of concrete actions, qualities, or things.  A recent theory has it that the word for “hate” can be traced to the image of a flock of small birds falling on their enemy and chasing it away. In this scenario, Latin cadere “to fall” emerges as a cognate of hate. It is a perfect candidate, for it begins with k and has d in the middle! Then there is the German noun Hader “fight,” with good cognates in and outside Germanic, known to some from the ancient name Hadubrand. Is this word akin to hate? And what about the birds?

We’ll let this embarrassment of riches be and come away with a modest prize: “hate” seems to have begun with “pursuit” and the feelings experienced by a hunter and a fighter. The rest is murky and will remain such for at least some time. Other than that, love is better than hate, even if the history of language sometimes puts them on an equal footing.

Featured Image: “Dargavs Ossetia Kakaz” by Amort1939. CC0 via Pixabay.

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Big Data and the Happiness of Cities

In today’s world of big data and mass media saturation, statistics and graphs are constantly being thrown at us. For researchers, wading through, and making sense of, the sea of numbers is as much about the journey as the destination. But for most people who are simply trying to live their lives, all these facts and figures appear like so much street noise to be filtered out, or flies to be swatted away.

When economic data is used to comprehend the world around us, we tend to focus on a handful of well-known and easily understood statistics, like the growth rate of output (Gross Domestic Product, or GDP), or changes in stock prices. While these statistics are key to understanding our economy as a whole, they are not measuring our everyday needs and experiences; and, they pertain mostly to money and income.

The Well-being Index

A large body of social science research on well-being, however, shows that income is only one small component of life satisfaction. Just as important—if not more—is our health and the quality of our social interactions—a feeling of connectedness to friends, family, and community. Do we have people to rely on in times of need? Do we have access to affordable and reliable medical care? Do we trust our neighbors and feel secure in our neighborhoods? These are what really matter to us; and these are what need to be measured.

It is time we quantified how the important things around us determine our well-being and our government creates a quality of life measure that is as widely used and understood as that of say Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and focuses on making sure our society provides us with more of what makes us satisfied with our lives. It is time our governments create both a national and a local Well-being Index (WBI).

The WBI would offer a simplified measure about the key elements that make us satisfied with our lives. It would tell us about economic growth, but would also include the other key things that determine life satisfaction. A good model was created in 2015 for New York City. The Center for Innovation through Data Intelligence (CIDI) funded the creation of a WBI for each neighborhood in the city.

This WBI is calculated based on data about five main categories: health, income, housing costs, crime and safety, and infrastructure services. In essence, it creates for each neighborhood an indicator of how well that neighborhood is providing for the well-being of its residents. Perhaps not surprisingly, there a lot variation around the city. Manhattan tends to score high, while the Bronx scores lower.

While this New York City WBI is but one of several, they remain just research projects (and perhaps marketing tools). Our political leaders need to create the institutional framework for a uniform government-produced measure of well-being. To be used as a policy tool, the WBI needs to be produced and widely disseminated at least annually, if not quarterly.

The WBI Impact

Imagine that the Times Square news ticker announced the WBI values for cities or regions around the country? Imagine that the pop-up message on your smartphone indicated that Detroit’s Well-Being Index was the highest in 10 years? Imagine that politicians ran on a platform that promised to increase well-being next year by 6%?

In this time of political divisiveness, governors and mayors can lead the way by formalizing the measurement of well-being. Using the WBI to guide policy decisions, for example, will force leaders to address our nation’s transportation woes. Long commutes in snarling traffic or rides on antiquated subway systems diminish people’s happiness, as well as their health. Paying 40 or 50% of income for housing is another source of anxiety, and would drive lower WBI values.

Mayors, of course, are concerned with these things, but when citizens demand to know from them what they did to raise the WBI, they will have to focus more directly on what people want and need. It can offer a kind of>ranks 18th in life-satisfaction. We have the means to start making well-being the focus of local and national policy

You will be happy if they did.

Featured image credit: Manhattan Empire State image by  Free Photo. Public domain via Pixabay.

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The allure of the peasant in organic farming

Idealizing pre-modern life has a long history in western culture. When Europeans discovered the vast new world of the Americas, new visions and possibilities arose in their imagination, not just of the Native Americans that populated the new continent, but of Europeans themselves. The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes understood Native Americans to live in a pre-civil condition, savages ridden with violence. Sharing the same humanity in common with Europeans, he argued that humans avoided this condition only by absolute sovereignty, such as held by an absolute monarch. In the eighteenth century, Jean-Jacques Rousseau imagined Native Americans as peaceful utopians, practicing free love, devoid of property claims and thus devoid of violence. Thomas Jefferson envisioned a republic of yeoman farmers independent from degenerate courts and large cities who served as the future’s best hope for the newly minted United States. The allure of the peasant has endured to our present day in many forms. The organic farming movement, in particular, channelled these ideals of peasant simplicity into modern urban culture in the twentieth century.

Organic farming evolved in response to industrialization and the globalization of foodstuffs. The loss of soil fertility that accompanied industrial farming in the latter part of the nineteenth century also led to the perceived loss of nutrition in the food that farms produced. To organic farmers in the mid-twentieth century, the protocols devised by Albert Howard, the founder of the organic farming movement, did more than merely restore the soil. It meant recovering the simplicity of life that they imagined went hand in hand with a pristine, natural, and healthy peasant life. Organic activists contrasted the healthy peasant life as an antidote to canned milk, canned food, adulterated bread, and crops raised on “chemical dope.” To a growing army of savvy consumers, organic farming represented a connection to a lost way of life and to vanishing spiritual values. This ideal of peasant virtue transmitted seamlessly into the environmental movement from the 1940s to the present.

Critics rightly claim that the idealization of the peasant is allied to the myth of the “noble savage” and to a form of Orientalism, that is, to imagining peasant societies found in the East (and elsewhere) as exotic. But it would be a severe misreading to characterize the peasant ideal as merely looking down on the “other”. Rather it was clearly admiration, if oversimplification, of rural living. The founder of organic farming, Albert Howard, along with his second wife, Louise Howard, pointed to the Hunza valley in the western Himalayas as a place where peasants lived in spectacular health and whose natural farming techniques protected the fertility of the soil. The Hunzas served as an antidote to industrial farming and consumerism. Much like the myth of Shambhala valley, later popularized as “Shangri-La” by James Hilton in his 1933 novel Lost Horizon, imagining a peasant paradise served as a needed refuge from the stress of an unnatural modern lifestyle.

Image credit: Fair Trade Laos Coffee by Fair Trade Laos. CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr.

Today, when one walks into a coffee shop in an American or European city, one will often find coffee posters on the walls picturing a smiling Latin American coffee farmer with a weathered face. Often the farmer is holding coffee beans in his outstretched hand, as if to show you that he produced it just for you. These pictures persuade consumers to buy coffee that is “fair-trade,” ethically sourced, or sustainably produced, and thus is fairer to the worker and better for the environment. Although it is easy to write these pictures off as crass advertising that “green-washes” idealized peasant life, the pictures are also powerful indicators of the persistent allure of rural values in an industrialized urban world.

Myths and symbols are still important to organic farming and to modern consumers. Just as the myth of a pristine peasant life gave a sense of natural authenticity to organic protocols, small farmers today have become a totem of authenticity in a globalized, homogenized, and increasingly monotonous corporate market. Urban consumers live in suburbs and cities far removed from the location where colourful bananas, coffee, and chocolate are grown. Coffee advertising, which changed significantly from the eighteenth to the late twentieth century, is a good example of this detachment. Only in the last few decades have marketers in the United States linked quality coffee with certification schemes to highlight an ethical relationship between consumer and producer.

Today, the romanticizing of the small farmer reflects the cultural and economic dynamics of post-colonial globalization. It also reflects the remarkable allure of the peasant image that has endured as part and parcel of the western, and now global, heritage.

Featured image credit: agriculture asia countryside cropland by Pixabay. Public domain via Pexels .

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Why We Fall for Toxic Leaders

School shootings, terrorism, cyberattacks, and economic downturns open the door to toxic leaders. Small wonder these dangerous, seductive leaders attract followers worldwide. Toxic leaders typically enter the scene as saviors. They promise to keep us safe, quell our fears, and infuse our lives with meaning and excitement, perhaps, even immortality.  Yet, as history grimly attests, they routinely leave us far worse off than they found us.

We are most vulnerable to toxic leaders when our sense of safety lies at low ebb. Leaders who vow to make us “great again” may actually create, not simply exacerbate, our anxieties. Their grandiose illusions require only the simplest response: total acquiescence. That is the tip off, the smoking gun. Still, their seductive offers usually prove irresistible.

The temptation to follow toxic leaders has deep roots, first, in our existential anxiety, the knowledge that, inevitably, we all physically die. We struggle mightily to ignore that inexorable clock ticking deep inside us. Yet, when cascading massacres and other crises assault our senses, we taste our own mortality. “Active shooters” and exploding packages are just the latest entries in a growing catalogue of death-dealing disasters that stir our existential anxiety.

Predictably, toxic leaders step forward to reassure us that they alone can avert our “appointment in Samarra,” annihilate our human “enemies,” and assuage our social disadvantages – but only if we pledge allegiance to their flag.

A second and related root of our vulnerability to toxic leaders feeds on our deep hunger for meaning and intensity in our lives. This yearning increases our vulnerability to toxic leaders’ promises of an exhilarating existence, etched forever in human memory. We can console ourselves about the prospect of physical death if an intense life opens the door to immortality. As Napoleon knew so well, “There is no immortality but the memory that is left in the minds of men.”

In their call to arms, toxic leaders identify the “Other,” whom we must vanquish to satisfy these needs. Naming the “enemy” not only explains our discontent. It also ignites fierce emotions that goad us on: anger, hatred, distrust, envy, even greed. Meaning and intensity fuse.

In our ordinary lives, we all live intensely at key moments: the birth of a child, the loss of a loved one, the discovery of love. Toxic leaders, however, guarantee us incessant intensity, heated by a flame of fury, hostility, and revenge. They continue to feed that fire until it engulfs not only the despised “Other,” but the followers, and, eventually, even the toxic leader. That followers, themselves, face dangers large and small from toxic leaders is evident in the number of loyalists’ lives lost, careers curtailed, and resources ravaged.

A third deep root of our “fatal attraction” to toxic leaders: by supporting them, we become “the Chosen,” special individuals, sheltered within the privileged “center of action.” Within that sacred space, key decisions are shaped – mostly in our favor. Even when we are not part of the toxic leader’s inner circle, our dedication to that vision anoints us as valued members of “the base.” The catch: as “the Chosen,“ we feel compelled to squelch any rising doubts, much less act upon them, lest we face eviction from the Garden of Eden. Witness the steady stream of ousted White House staff whose slightest deviations have pushed them outside looking in.

What effective countermeasures, if any, can we take?

Most importantly, we can face up to our fears and stare them down. Confronting anxiety stimulates both resilience and creativity. As psychologist Kurt Lewin noted, this exposes us to change, prompting us to experiment, learn, and innovate still more. Innovation, itself, seasons life with fervor.  Galvanized to invent novel solutions, we create new institutions that reduce our fears.  And, ironically, acting despite our anxiety takes courage, the active ingredient in true heroism, the one real path to immortality.

Next, we can seek “dis-illusioning” leaders, who shatter our illusions, forcing us to face reality, opening the door to self-reliance, confidence, and growth. “Dis-illusioning” leaders teach us to engage in the “valuable inconvenience of leadership,” that is, sharing the hardships of leadership and developing our “leader within.” These tough-minded leaders demonstrate that, far from being the privilege of a select few, leadership is the responsibility of us all, whereby we learn to shoulder life’s burdens with strength and grace.

One more weapon against toxic leaders: select – or better yet – become a “connective leader.” These valuable leaders easily identify even the slimmest mutuality in conflicting agendas of diverse, but interdependent, groups. They help us see ourselves “completed” – not diminished – by our connection to others, as the Nguni Bantu concept of “Ubuntu” suggests. Connective leaders enable us to reject the “we/they” dichotomy, opening possibilities for comradeship, collaboration, and even more creativity. By becoming our most complete selves, we find the intensity and meaning we’ve been seeking.

Living as connective leaders, we engage in enterprises devoted to the common good, beneficial and supportive to all – like global, enduring, and sustainable peace. As “complete” persons, we can join with others to live intensely, with purpose, and possibly – just possibly – set the world on a better trajectory. Combined, these strategies offer strong defenses against toxic leaders.

The choice is ours. The time is now.

Featured image credit: Photo by rob walsh . Public domain via Unsplash.

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Ten perspectives on music and autism, from ten people on the spectrum

Since the emergence of autism as a diagnosed condition in the 1940s, the oft-noted musical proclivities of people on the autism spectrum have generated much interest. Reports of savant-like abilities, extraordinary feats of musical memory, and disproportionately high rates of perfect pitch abound, along with a high degree of emphasis on music’s importance in therapeutic interventions.

With all this attention on the autism-music nexus, there has been surprisingly little on what autistic people themselves have to say about how they make and experience music, and why it matters to them that they do.. In the below excerpts from Speaking for Ourselves, we hear from several musically engaged autistic individuals featured in the book, learning directly from them about the joys and challenges of living with autism, living with music, and living life in general.

 

“Autism isn’t cholera; it isn’t some disease you can just cure… And there is no cure. There really isn’t. It’s just there, wound into your personality.”

— Mara Chasar, student and fiction writer

 

“An excellent way to understand us is to really listen to what we have to say.”

— Elizabeth J. “Ibby” Grace, professor of education, vocalist, and autistic rights advocate, in Typed Words, Loud Voices

 

“The way I act, react, understand, and stand in the world is because I am Autistic. Autism cannot be separated from me and is part of every aspect of my life… The fact that I don’t speak makes me listen better, I guess… I was listening to some [hard rock] and I kind of liked it. I was listening to the lyrics at first but then it was like seeing a ball of light, spinning, then melting into drops of light. In some loud moments I could see some notes, like, jumping behind the ‘noise.’”

— Amy Sequenzia, widely published author, blogger, and autistic rights advocate

 

“I found ensemble performance to be a welcome refuge from the interpersonal entanglements I had to endure in the outside world. The music did not laugh, or judge, or make nasty comments, or quizzical facial expressions and gestures at the sight of some unexpected behavioral tendencies, among other things. For these reasons, I will always love it.”

— Donald Rindale, attorney, former trombonist, and former musicology graduate student

 

“When I put the music on I get a creative spark-type thing, ‘cause usually it’s hard for me to think, and when I get that creative spark I honestly can’t tell you what comes through my head, but I feel I’m able to take the song and in a sense manipulate it and put it into words.”

— Addison Silar, student and science fiction writer

 

“The pianist in me and the person in me are two different types. The pianist in me is someone that does [things] almost immediately and instinctively (and quickly); the person is not always as nimble as at the keyboard. That’s the main difference.”

— Dotan Nitzberg, concert pianist

 

“I’ve been fired from, or have left, more bands than I can count… So often, as with a great blues band I was playing with, I’ll be hired very enthusiastically, and then one day (or so it seems to me), all of a sudden, I’m a piece of shit and I’m out of the band. I have no idea why, except that it’s just the way it goes when you’re wired all funny.”

— Gordon Peterson, freelance musician and early music specialist; former music professor

 

“A major ‘issue’ (or part) of what having Asperger’s is like for me [is that] I am pulled in these two different directions. My modes of being can fluctuate between… having control and experiencing freedom, but I have a hard time (as with any polar opposites) hovering in the middle between them without gravitating toward one extreme or the other at any given time.”

— Maureen Pytlik, clarinetist and mathematician

 

“I would like to express to the rest of the world, that you judge me for who I am as a person not based on what I am. Autism is a part of who I am but I do not allow for it to define me. In conclusion, as you meet us you will find we are just as diverse and different from one to the next [as other people are]. We all have our own life stories. All we ask for is simply to be treated with the same respect as we would be [if we were not autistic] when it comes to interacting with society in general.”

— Graeme Gibson, world music instrument collector and online instrument museum curator

 

“You don’t get to tell me who and what I am. I do.”

— Kassiane A. Sibley, author and autistic rights advocate

 

Featured image credit: Lyrics by allisonmseward12. CC BY-2.0 via Flickr.

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Teaching environmental privilege is integral to environmental justice

Privilege has become a serious area of inquiry in recent years. White privilege and male privilege have hit the spotlight, as has racial disparities in police brutality and the #MeToo movement highlighting workplace harassment and sexual assault. Privilege is a complex phenomena to understand and even harder to teach. But, if we are really going to unravel racism or sexism, we know we have to include the privileges those problems support.

Environmental privilege is a related phenomena, and while it seems to be an understudied area of privilege (and not the only one) it is still important, probably more than we realize. One way I teach about privilege is through the lens of the Person in Environment perspective. Looking at any human being, we can see that their particular personhood—built on their age, gender, race, and wealth status—combines with their environment—a conglomeration of geography, culture, space and time—to create a type of privilege. This privilege reflects itself in a person’s lived experiences, including their experiences of nature’s bounties and burdens.

The best place to begin learning about any privilege is self-examination.

The best place to begin learning about any privilege is self-examination. Peggy McIntosh’s 1989 piece about white privilege, “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” was a groundbreaker for white readers. Yet, we know it doesn’t tell the whole story of privilege. As we consider environmental privilege, the lens provided by McIntosh provides a framework to view environmental privilege. Using similar statements, we can consider the many ways the environment provides privileges that we may no longer “see.” I list a few of them here knowing full well that geography, wealth, nation, as well as gender and race, all intersect and influence the experience of environmental privilege. For many people living in wealthy countries, their environmental privilege can look like the following list of privileges:

1) I use as much tap water as I choose for my daily activities, such as bathing and cooking, without thinking about it.

2) Year round, I eat fruits and vegetables that are not grown in the region in which I live.

3) I control the temperature of my home for my own comfort.

4) I own land.

5) I have access to beautiful views of nature where I live, work, or play.

6) I breathe clean air at home, school, and work.

7) My trash is hauled far away from my home.

8) I drink clean water.

9) I feel safe in the outdoors near my home.

10) When I go to parks or nature preserves, I see people who look like me.

Raising awareness on privilege—beginning with oneself—is one important way for students to learn about environmental justice. Coupling this reflection with data on environmental injustices—asthma rates, lead exposure, or proximity to landfills—is an important beginning place. This data brings to life the documented disparities for women and people of color in the United States. But this data is rarely enough. All of us can reflect on our own experiences and contributions to these systems to begin to imagine the possibilities of change.

Environmental justice is a key social problem of contemporary society, but like issues of race or gender, it is hard to teach about justice without recognizing the flip side: the privileges some people in society have. Like we have learned from our efforts to dismantle racism and sexism—where white people begin to identify the privileges of being white and men begin to recognize the privileges of being male—Black Lives Matter and #MeToo have brought what were once abstract concepts into the lived realities of people lives. Elevating the understanding of the injustices experienced by people, and simultaneously asking those with more privileges to reflect and consider ways to dismantle their own privileges, is one method of social change. Environmental justice is similar to social justice in this way. Dismantling the power structure includes recognition of privileges and the replacement of privileged behaviors with new behaviors focused on equity.

After all, we teach about environmental justice because we want to change the experiences of people, and we want our students to infiltrate and modify the institutions and organizations in which they will work and lead. When we reflect on our own privileges and see the data, we can begin to see the ways it can be changed, and even more importantly, that we have the responsibility to do the changing.

Featured image credit: Tree vs. concrete by Paweł Czerwiński. CC0 via Unsplash.

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The Plastic Age

Recently, the issue of single-use plastic and its impact on the environment has come to the fore, with many companies vowing to cut back their plastic use, and increased media coverage across the globe. It isn’t difficult to see why there is a growing passion for addressing the problem of plastic—its environmental significance is truly shocking—and in 2016 the Ellen MacArthur Foundation published a report that concluded there will be as much plastic in the ocean as fish by 2020.

But what about the impact of plastic on human health?

A survey of research findings of human health problems, that correlate with exposure to chemicals associated with plastics, reads like a catalogue of modern Western diseases. Plastic has saturated our environment, leaving our health vulnerable to the dozens, if not hundreds, of industrial chemicals we are exposed to every day. In the not too distance future, it is likely that medical professionals will need methods for assessing the plastic load in their patients.

Read on for more information about the chemicals that make up common plastics and the part they play in various health problems.

 

Bisphenol A (BPA) previously garnered positive, rather than negative, medical attention as it was considered for use as synthetic oestrogen. However, the discovery that BPA could be used in the creation of shatter-proof polycarbonate plastic led to its widespread use in everyday household items, and prompted an avalanche of research into this curious substance.

The Endocrine society has identified BPA as an “endocrine disruptor” and, in 2012, detailed how it could derail normal cellular function and organ development, particularly during the foetal and neonatal stages of human growth. Studies in mice have indicated that BPA’s effects can be multigenerational, and long-term exposure to the chemical has been linked to female infertility, lowered sperm quality, polycystic ovarian syndrome, cardiovascular disease, and obesity.

Despite the extensive list of detrimental consequences of BPA exposure on human health, industry pushback has often stalled national regulations that would reduce the production or use of BPA. Worldwide, BPA production is almost 5 million tonnes.

 

Studies dating as far back as the 1930s demonstrated that even short-term exposure to vinyl chloride in lab animals and factory workers caused liver damage. In 1980, the National Toxicology Program listed vinyl chloride as a known human carcinogen, which doesn’t just affect the liver, but also includes the brain, lungs, and lymphatic and hematopoietic systems.

Today, there is a lower risk of ingesting vinyl chloride, after government bodies reined back the use of PVC in food packaging and films. However, swallowing or inhaling dust emitted from consumer products made with PVC remains a possible vulnerability.

 

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has determined that styrene is a possible carcinogen, and studies in mice exposed to styrene by inhalation or ingestion indicate that it causes cancer of the lung.

For the general public, breathing indoor air and ingestion of styrene migrants in food and beverages packaged or served in polystyrene are the primary routes of exposure. Although evidence of styrene carcinogenicity is humans is more limited, the central nervous system is deemed to be the most sensitive target of styrene toxicity in humans. Chronic occupational exposure can cause tiredness, feeling drunk, slowed creation time, and impaired concentration, balance, and colour vision.

 

Phthalates are ubiquitous in manufactured products, and therefore widespread in the general population. Women and children typically show greater exposure than men, and in a nationally representative sample of the US population (National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey [NHANES] 2003-2004), all of the pregnant women tested positive for at least four phthalates.

Like BPA, phthalates are endocrine disruptors. More specifically, they are antiandrogenic endocrine disruptors, and exposure to phthalates is linked with impaired genital development, reduced semen quality and sperm DNA damage, pubertal gynecomastia, and premature thelarche.

Featured image credit: 426187984 by Mohamed Abdulraheem via Shutterstock .

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World Humanitarian Day [podcast]

Humanitarianism is an active belief in the value of human life. World Humanitarian Day is held every year on 19 August to pay tribute to aid workers who risk their lives in humanitarian service, and to rally support for people affected by crises around the world.

Despite their efforts to provide aid and medical treatment to society’s most vulnerable, humanitarian workers are often directly targeted. This year, the UN is continuing their campaign from 2017, #NotATarget to continue to bring attention to the threats that humanitarian workers are increasingly facing.

On this episode of The Oxford Comment, we take a look at the challenges faced by humanitarians today. Host Erin Katie Meehan sat down with Health & Social Work editorial board member Sarah Gehlert, Belinda Gurd and Alexandra Eurdolian of the UNOCHA, and esteemed psychologist Robert J. Wicks to explore important questions about humanitarianism:

What can we do to better protect humanitarians in their efforts?What type of role does social media play in creating lasting change?What steps should humanitarians take to protect their mental well-being?

 

Featured image credit: volunteers-hands-voluntary-wrap-2729723 by geralt. CC0 via Pixabay .

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The Grainy and Grisly History of Crime Photography

Judicial photography dates back to Belgium in the 1840’s when the earliest known photographs of criminals were taken within prisons by prison officials. In Switzerland, 1852, Carl Durheim was commissioned by Attorney General Jacob Amiet, and tasked with taking photographs of arrested vagrants in Bern. During this period, judicial photography was used by local authorities to document individuals who travelled, and were unknown to local police.

In the 1850’s, prison officials in Britain began experimenting with photography; records from 1852 reveal Governor James Gardener of Bristol Gaol was routinely taking photographs of prisoners, most commonly of recidivists (reoffenders). Elsewhere in France, Ernest Lacan advocated for the wider use of photography by the French police, believing that it would be useful to monitor recidivists, however his proposals failed to gain popularity.

Photography remained a medium of the bourgeois, and the idea of using it as a method of criminal identification was degrading, as evidenced by popular culture at the time. Below is an extract of a poem written by Cuthbert Bede which was published in Punch in 1853.

“Grave as the fact is, one might laugh
Almost to see the photograph
So ignominiously applied
To serve as the Policeman’s guide.”

A transformation occurred when several technological advances enabled photography to become more sophisticated: in 1871, the gelatine emulsion was invented by Richard Maddox, followed by the introduction of dye sensitization by Hermann Wilhelm Vogel in 1873. Following the Prevention of Crimes Act in 1871 – which highlighted the usefulness of photography – police forces began to adopt the medium. The Metropolitan Police of London established their photographic register, as well as the Habitual Criminals Register. Between 1870 and 1872, more than 43,000 photographs were collected from across England and Wales, and by 1880, photography was being used by police departments throughout Europe.

Photographs were taken by commercial photographers, in some cases, by untrained policemen, meaning the style of photography was not uniform and without set parameters. The storage of printed photographs was challenging, leading to the establishment of ‘Rogue’s Galleries.’ These galleries housed thousands of photographs which were grouped according to the crime which had been committed. A rogue’s gallery was established by Allan Pinkerton at the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in 1855. Still, success rates were low, and it became clear that organised collections of photographs were not enough, if the photographs themselves could not be used as a reliable form of identification.

Image credit: Anthropometric data sheet of Alphonse Bertillon by Jebulon. Public Domain via Wikimedia.

Alphonse Bertillon realised that unregulated photography was undermining criminal identification, and he introduced a scientific method to taking photographs which he published in La Photographie Judiciaire in 1890. Bertillon invented the ‘mug shot’, which required convicts to pose for a portrait photograph and a profile photograph, both against a plain backdrop with controlled lighting.

Photographs were accompanied by five anthropological measurements: the length and breadth of the head, the length of the middle finger, the length of the left foot and the length of the cubit.

While the ‘Bertillon system’ was used as a form of identification for a time, the measurements failed to serve as an accurate form of identification for child and adolescent offenders, and was later abandoned with the introduction of fingerprinting. However, the mug shot became the default format for criminal photography, and remains in use by law enforcement agencies globally.

Prior to Bertillon’s work, it was not standard practice for the scene of a crime to be documented, or photographed. Criminology was at an early stage, and forensics did not advance until the arrival of Edmond Locard. Nicknamed the ‘Sherlock Holmes of France,’ the underlying principle of Locard’s work was ‘every contact leaves a trace.’ Locard established the first forensic laboratory in France, believing that the key to solving crimes and capturing the culprit, was to preserve and examine evidence collected from the scene.

Image credit: Photographie en noir et blanc.by Rodolphe Archibald Reiss. Public Domain via Wikimedia.

Working alongside Locard, Alphonse Bertillon established the first methodical system of photographing a crime scene, gaining recognition for his studies of homicides throughout France. Bertillon’s method was simple; he used a camera fitted with a wide angle lens which he secured on a tripod. The tripod was then placed directly over the body of the victim, photographing them in the place and position they had been found in, without disturbing the crime scene and contaminating forensic evidence. The practice was perfected by his assistant, Rodolphe A. Reiss, credited by some as the pioneer of photomacrography. Reiss specialised in taking close-up photographs of the victim’s clothing, wounds, identifying marks and fingerprints.

Crime photography evolved dramatically in the 20th century when crime was increasingly reported by tabloid newspapers. In 1912, the camera company Graflex (later Kodak) produced the speed camera, a model which was popularised by freelance photographer Arthur “Weegee” Fellig, who gained a celebrity status for photographing New York, as well as notorious crime scenes during the 1930s and 40s. “Weegee” was renowned for arriving at crime scenes before the Police, and selling his graphic photographs to numerous papers, including the Herald Tribune, the New York Post, and the American Sun.

In 1951, the invention of video recording initiated a new era of surveillance and criminal identification. Crimewatch was first broadcast by the BBC in 1984, the year which George Orwell based his dystopian novel of the same name. Regarded as an eerily prophetic novel, the society of ‘Airstrip One,’ offers a bleak depiction of omnipresent government surveillance which is used as a weapon to oppress citizens.

Recently, facial recognition technology has led to new methods of criminal identification; surveillance sunglasses are currently being tested by police forces in China, and the case for using the controversial technology was strengthened when it enabled authorities in India to locate thousands of missing children. We are entering a new era of surveillance, and whether or not this new technology will be used responsibly, or abused by those in power, remains to be seen.

Feature image credit: “Portrait Parle class, France”, from the George Grantham Bain collection at the Library of Congress. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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