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Conflict-resolution mantras for the workplace and everyday life [infographic]

Great leaders show composure during stressful situations. But remaining cool and collected in times of crisis is easier said than done, partly due to our own behavioral patterns. Allowing ourselves to become tethered to a particular agenda or resolution puts us at risk for increased stress and diminished communication.

Being open to personal change is the first step to improving conflict-resolution habits. Self-management allows leaders to more effectively manage conflicts. Mantras (or internal chants) are a great way to self-manage: these small reminders can help us control our emotions and, in turn, any conflicts that arise.

With insights from What You Don’t Know about Leadership, but Probably Should and Change: What Really Leads to Lasting Personal Transformation, we put together a list of mantras for effective conflict-resolution. Take a look at the infographic below to see how you might better handle difficult conversations—both in and out of the workplace.

Download this infographic as a PDF or PNG.

Featured image credit: “monochrome-photography-of-people-shaking-hands-814544” by Savvas Stavrinos. CC0 via Pexels.

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A guide to the ISA 2018 conference

Founded in 1959, the International Studies Association is one of the oldest interdisciplinary associations, dedicated to understanding international and global affairs. With a world-wide presence and growing influence, the ISA is instrumental to the promotion and funding of International Studies. Their annual convention will take place between 4-7 April, this year in San Francisco and there will be multiple events taking place throughout the week. Here are a few of the events we are looking forward to:

Wednesday 4 April 8:15am – 10:00am

Roundtable: “The Promise and Paradox of War.” A Roundtable Discussion on Maja Zehfuss’s War and the Politics of Ethics. Maja Zehfuss will partake in a roundtable focusing on his study of the paradoxical nature of contemporary wars, which often kill the civilians they intended to protect. Cian O’ Driscoll will participate on the same roundtable ahead of his own on Thursday.

Wednesday 4 April 10:30am – 12:15pm: 

Roundtable: “The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy.” Matthew Kroenig will present a roundtable on Amercia’s nuclear capabilites, the place of nuclear power within international politics and the fundamental aspects of nuclear deterrents and nuclear strategy.

Wednesday 4 April 1:45pm- 3:30pm 

Panel: “Environment and Conflict.” Erika S. Weinhall will speak on a panel focusing on multiple environmental topics, including the environmental infrastructure of the Israeli-Palestinian-Arab conflict, and the challenges of securing water and sanitation for citizens affected by warfare in Africa. Erika will be speaking on several panels at the ISA Conference. 

Wednesday 4 April 4.00pm – 5:45pm 

Panel: “Is Russia a Revisionist Power?” William Wohlforth will speak on a panel focusing on contemporary Russia and post-communist systems. William will speak on several other panels throughout the week which explore aspects of international security and American foreign policy.

Wednesday 4 April 4.00pm – 5:45pm

Roundtable: “Producing Knowledge About Knowledge Production in Conflict Settings: Methodological Challenges and Opportunities.” Sara De Jong will partake in a roundtable which will explore the sociological aspects of international politics and peacekeeping operations.

Thursday 5 April 8:15am – 10:00am

Roundtable: “International Political Theory and “Real Politics” II: Issues, Problems, and Policies.” Cian O’Driscoll will attend a panel focusing on his study of moral victory in contemporary warfare, with victories themselves often being ambiguous and compromising affairs.

Thursday 5 April 1:45pm – 3:30pm

Panel: “Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives on Governance in Areas of Limited Statehood.” Anke Draude will chair a panel which will explore one of the conferences key themes: Power of Rules and Rule of Power. She will be joined by Tanja A. Borzel.

Thursday 5 April 4:00pm – 5:45pm

Roundtable: “The Power to Make and break Rules: How Are Non-State Actors Reshaping International Norms on Justice and Security?” Adam Bower will participate on a roundtable discussion which will explore one of the conferences key themes: Power of Rules and Rule of Power.

Friday 6 April 8:15am – 10:00am

Roundtable: “Trust and Distrust in International Relations.” Nicholas John Wheeler will partake in a roundtable discussion which will explore the turbulent relationships between rival countries and trust-building between enemy nations seeking to cooperate.

Friday 6 April 8:15am – 10:00am

Panel: “New and Old Institutions in Global Health Governance.” Jeremy Youde will attend a panel to discuss contemporary aspects and challenges of global health, with a focus on Brazil’s position in international health institutions.

Friday 6 April 8:15am – 10:00am

Roundtable: “Coercion: The Power to Hurt in International Politics.” Kelly Greenhill and Peter Krause will chair a roundtable themed on international security and the relationships between countries which have been affected by migration, terrorism and cyber warfare.

Saturday 7 April 8:15am – 10:00am

Panel: “The Intellectual Legacy of Lewis F. Richardson I: Models of Arms Races and Beyond.” Mark Crescenzi will attend a panel on the scientific study of international processes, with a focus on cooperation and conflict.

Saturday 7 April 1:45pm – 3:30pm

Panel: “From Migrants Rights to the Right to Migrate: Global Standards, Regional Paradigms and National Discourses.” Justin Gest will partake in a panel to discuss matters on ethnicity, nationalism and migration. Justin’s focus will be on immigration policy-making within autocratic regimes.

  Saturday 7 April 4:00pm – 5:45pm

Panel: “The Thinking and Practice of Post-Crash IMF and the Opening and Closing of Domestic Economy Policy Space: Are the Days of “One-Size-Fits-All?” Gone?” Ben Clift will partake in a panel to discuss the political economy on an international scale, and the International Monetary Fund.

These are but a few of many events taking place at the ISA conference this week. We hope that you are as excited as we are to be attending the conference, and we hope to see you there!

Featured Image Credit: Panorama Golden Gate Bridge by 1552036. Public domain via Pixabay.

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Arranging the music of J. S. Bach

If composers and arrangers have long reworked the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, they have followed the lead of none other than the composer himself, for Bach was an inveterate transcriber of his own music and the music of others. For solo organ Bach transcribed Vivaldi’s Concerto for two violins Op. 3 No. 8, while his G major Concerto BWV 592 acknowledged the musical efforts of Prince Johann Ernst, nephew of his employer at Weimar, discreetly tidying and improving details in the process. Bach’s great Mass in B minor is a compilation of his earlier compositions, while the exuberant opening sinfonia of Cantata No. 29 is an expansion of the Prelude from his E major Partita for solo violin.

From soon after Bach’s death composers picked up the challenge, transcribing and adapting Bach’s music to create new works of their own. Some of these are faithful transcriptions, merely taking Bach’s music and re-scoring it for other instruments, as for example Mozart’s arrangements of fugues from The Well-Tempered Clavier for string quartet, K 405, or Samuel Wesley’s transcriptions of the Trio Sonatas for Organ, which simply give each of the three lines of the original to three hands at one piano. Such adaptations brought the original music to a wider audience and perhaps enabled a deeper appreciation of it – if contrapuntal lines can become obscured on the relatively monochrome palette of a keyboard instrument (especially the unvarying tones of a harpsichord or organ), then they could be heard much more readily separated out onto different instruments or performed by different players.

For other composers the temptation to embellish the original proved too strong. Schumann’s piano accompaniments to the six cello suites fill out the implied harmonies on the piano, but at least in textures more sparse and with more respect for Bach’s harmony than the full accompaniments to the same pieces by his compatriot Friedrich Stade.

From the mid-19th century comes an even more famous example, Gounod’s Ave Maria: Meditation sur le 1er Prélude de J. S. Bach. Originally published for violin (or cello) and piano and harmonium, with a later sung version adding the “Ave Maria” text, this ingeniously took Bach’s C major Prelude from Book 1 of The Well-Tempered Clavier and used it as the accompaniment to a newly composed melody. Gounod attempted to repeat the trick later in his life, adding a melody to Bach’s Lute Prelude BWV 999 to create a second “Ave Maria,” but this lacks the melodic grace of its predecessor – there are very few Bach pieces simple enough also to work satisfactorily as accompaniments.

From the same period we have Franz Liszt’s transcriptions of Bach music (often organ compositions) for piano, with left-hand octaves mimicking the organ pedals, and virtuosic figuration in the right hand scooping up much of the writing for manuals. This approach reached its apogee 50 years later in the transcriptions of the Italian pianist Ferruccio Busoni, who in a multi-volume series spanning some 30 years published his piano adaptations of Bach’s keyboard music. Using the whole range of the keyboard, and with passages doubled in octaves and sixths, these employ the full panoply of the piano’s capabilities to capture the grandeur of Bach’s originals.

Twentieth-century composers are no exception to those eager to adapt Bach’s music. An unlikely duo of Elgar and Schoenberg both orchestrated organ works by Bach, with very different results. Bach’s music has also been the inspiration for jazz musicians, from Django Reinhardt comping energetically to violinists swinging the opening movement of the double violin concerto, to the many improvisations of Jacques Loussier.

It is perhaps a mark of the respect musicians have for Bach’s music that so many have used it as the basis of new works, and it is a tribute to its strength that it can withstand this adaptation and remain recognisably itself. The foundation of Bach’s music is a logical counterpoint driving individual lines set within clear harmonic structures, and as such the component parts can readily be redistributed amongst other instruments, even as the arranger adds details and fingerprints of their own. It’s hard to imagine musicians will ever lose their fascination for this most inspirational of composers.

Featured image credit: Bach for Violin:  14 pieces arranged for violin and piano  cover. Copyright OUP.

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The Church of the Holy Sepulchre and Jerusalem’s property tax

When is a property tax dispute between a church and a municipality an international controversy? When the church is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the municipality is the city of Jerusalem.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is one of the holiest sites in Christianity. The Church takes its name from what is traditionally believed to be the tomb of Jesus located within the Church. For many Christian pilgrims coming to the Holy Land, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is the highlight of their pilgrimages.

Israeli municipalities levy a property tax known as the arnona. Jerusalem exempts churches in general from this property tax and the religious buildings of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in particular. Besides these holy sites, the Church also owns extensive commercial real estate. This real estate investment is the source of the current controversy.

The city of Jerusalem has recently asserted that this commercial real estate does not share the Church’s property tax exemption. The Church responded by closing down, blaming the municipality of Jerusalem if Easter pilgrims lacked access to the Church. In an interim procedural compromise, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the municipality agreed that the Church would reopen, that a committee will review the issue and that, while the committee meets, no further efforts will be made to tax the Church’s commercial properties under the arnona.

On these merits, the municipality of Jerusalem is correct: churches’ religious buildings should be property tax exempt, not churches’ commercial real estate. Exempting churches from taxation protects the autonomy of religious institutions and minimizes church-state entanglement. Taxing church-owned commercial property advances fairness and economic neutrality by taxing all commercial property alike.

Why should churches be property tax exempt? The best answer is that property tax exemption respects the autonomy of religious institutions and disentangles church and state from the often contentious relationship between the taxpayer and the tax collector. There is no more entangling legal relationship than the one between the property taxpayer and the tax collector.

Besides these holy sites, the Church also owns extensive commercial real estate. This real estate investment is the source of the current controversy.

Consider, for example, what happens if a property owner is property rich (and thus owes considerable tax) but is income poor (and thus lacks the liquidity to pay the tax). When taxpayers do not have the cash to pay the property tax they owe, the municipality enforces the tax by foreclosing on the property.

The prospect of church and state entangled in foreclosure proceedings over religious properties is deeply troubling to those who value the autonomy of religious institutions, and who seek to avoid church-state tensions.

On the other hand, when a church owns commercial real estate, as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre does, less church-state entanglement flows from taxing that real estate. Church-owned commercial real estate uses the same public services as does the privately-owned real estate with which it competes. The prospect of a government foreclosing on a church building is troubling. The prospect of foreclosure on a church-owned shopping center is considerably less so.

US property taxation generally follows this pattern and is a model which the committee pondering the Jerusalem controversy should consider. Protecting the autonomy of religious institutions and minimizing church-state enforcement entanglement are important values under the First Amendment of the US Constitution and the equivalent provisions of the constitutions of the states.

Reflecting these values, every state of the union, by statute or constitutionally, immunizes church buildings from local property taxation. Beyond this basic rule, there is considerable diversity in the states’ tax treatment of religious properties. Many states, for example, relieve clerical parsonage homes from taxation. Others do not.

There are also important interpretative issues in particular cases about what exempt religious property is and what taxable commercial property is. For example, some states subject religious summer camps to property taxation. Others do not. In some states, church-operated coffee houses may be tax-exempt on the ground that such coffee houses facilitate the church’s outreach to young people. In other states, such church-operated coffee houses may be viewed as too commercial to enjoy tax exemption as religious properties.

But when churches own investment properties, used to conduct clearly commercial rather than religious activities, those properties are taxed in the US. This arrangement preserves the autonomy of churches and reduces church-state entanglement by exempting church buildings from property taxation, while advancing economic neutrality and fairness by taxing all commercial properties alike.

The committee charged with resolving the tax dispute between the city of Jerusalem and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre should follow the US pattern. The Church itself should (as the city acknowledges) remain tax exempt. The Church’s properties on the borderline between religious and commercial activities should likely be exempted as well. But the Church’s unequivocally commercial properties should be properly taxed to support the municipal services which support these properties.

Featured image credit: basilica of the holy sepulchre by pompi. Public domain via Pixabay.

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Triggered ideas: finding inspiration

Where do find your ideas? Are they buried deep in you and suddenly percolate up? Are they glimmers that appear over time until they coalesce into ‘an idea’? Are they reactions to something you see, hear, or do?

Likely, you’ve experienced all three and certainly all are the result of accumulated experiences. The last one is special though, in being what we can call ‘triggered’. Something triggered your emotions or imagination and you acted in response.

Scientists are often triggered by things around them, just like anyone else. Science is an accumulative process: we are always adding to our knowledge and building on past findings – either to support or refute. Anything can be a scientific trigger: a new or old research paper, a talk at a conference, something said in the lab, a coffee chat with colleagues, looking at the sun – anything. A useful trigger might bring about an idea for a new experiment, a solution for a seemingly intractable problem, or act to connect two disparate different dots of fact that opens a new door. The ability of triggers to work positively on the brain and creativity is why many creatives thumb through pictures or books, or scroll the internet for the ‘best of’ when needing to get past a certain block. Filling the brain with new stimuli can often spark new thoughts.

Some triggers are life experiences that alter one’s course – as in the unwelcomed onset of a severe illness, an event that has driven a pantheon of research activities, as finding answers is deeply personal.

The power of triggers lies behind the advice to read as widely as possible and ask as many questions as possible. Seek out input, you never know where you’ll find it, but you’ll find it more often if you believe in the search. Scientists do the same when they read the literature, go to conferences, and pick the brains of colleagues. A great source of triggers can be the questions asked after you give a formal presentation. While many questions are just requests to fill in details you might have had to skip over in the talk to stick to time, some link your work with other work or otherwise suggest new and profitable avenues of investigation. Many triggers lead to collaborations. Only by joining forces to bring together two or more ways to generate, interpret, or process data can new knowledge be generated.

The job of a scientist is not only to test and prove particular facts, but to think up new hypotheses in the first place. The best scientists are question generators. Being open to new ideas, fresh perspectives, and connections between distantly related fields just accelerates this process. In fact, most scientific careers are based on asking the right questions – the ones that lead to the history making discoveries.

That first trigger can focus the mind such that new patterns that were once invisible become apparent. Once a new ‘frame’ has been set in the mind, you may find many more details falling into place. This is the beauty of finding a new ‘rule’ that explains many observations. Certainly, this happened to Darwin once he first got a serious inkling of the process of evolution. Once in sway, he collected myriad lines of evidence, even designing many bespoke experiments, for example on the breeding of pigeons, to support his theory.

Learning to seek out triggers as a scientist means going beyond human knowledge into the unknown. Scientists operate at the coal face of knowledge, interrogating Nature herself. You can’t ask a living soul the answer to your question because you are the only one thinking about it – no one knows yet. This is the key fact PhD students need to absorb – you are the world expert on what you know. You have to design an experiment and discover the answer yourself. This is the true excitement of working in science.

Triggers can get noisy, though, given the information deluge modern society suffers. A related skill to cultivate is prioritization. The best researchers have rubrics for weighing up triggers. Early career scientists in particular can be lured by a million triggers taking them in a million directions. This is a sign of an open and active mind, but it is also an impossibility to take them all forward. One must learn to pick what is do-able and achievable. Often scientific careers are made on the basis of such decisions – dead end or gateway? This is the fundamental nature of research.

Some triggers are life experiences that alter one’s course – as in the unwelcomed onset of a severe illness, an event that has driven a pantheon of research activities, as finding answers is deeply personal.

In time, your research will ideally trigger others. Sometimes a finding is so consequential it spawns whole new fields, as in the case of Darwin’s theory of evolution. He lived too early to be in the running for a Nobel Prize, but the quality of triggers is certainly in the notion of picking Nobel Prize recipients.

This column, The Double Helix, started with triggers involving ‘DNA research breakthroughs’, as in the article that launched this project. In time, triggers diversified to include how we can use scientific method and thinking to improve our everyday lives, for example to self-study our way to fixes for back pain, the process of science writing, and most recently the science of language acquisition. New triggers are brewing.

Some of the best triggers are questions, as following up means providing something that is useful. If you have been triggered by this article or any other in this column and wish to know more about a topic in DNA research or science in general, please say so in the comments below. Equally helpful, please think about commenting on any particularly fruitful trigger you’ve acted on in the past.

Featured Image Credit: “Thought, Idea, Innovation, Imagination, Inspiration” by TeroVesalainen. CC0 via Pixabay.

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Air Power: how aerial warfare has changed and remained the same

This year is the centenary of the Royal Air Force (RAF), which was the first independent air force.  Before I started writing Aerial Warfare, I would have assumed the answer to the question, ‘what was the first air arm?’ to be an early 20th century affair, armed with rickety biplanes.

In fact, the first air arm was the French Aerostatic Corps of the Revolutionary Wars of the 1790s.  They were commissioned in 1794, fought through the campaigns in what is now Belgium and the Netherlands, as well as parts of Germany.  They were disbanded after the somewhat abortive Egypt campaign in 1799.

In their first battle the 25 men of the Corps were ‘volunteered’ by their remarkable commander, Jean-Marie Coutelle, to take part in an attack on a well-defended Austrian position in early 1794: ‘We had only two casualties- one serious.  But we had proved ourselves as soldiers’. A few months later at the Battle of Fluerus on 26 June 1794, Coutelle soared over the battlefield suspended beneath the world’s first combat aircraft, the hydrogen balloon ‘L’Intrepide’.  For the nine hours of the battle he observed enemy positions and sent regular messages sliding down the cables holding the balloon to the ground.

The French Aerostatic Corps with their ‘L’Intrepide’ at Fleurus 1794. Image credit: via Wikimedia Commons .

Whilst the contribution of the Corps was probably not decisive, it was important enough for the commanding General to have the balloon included in his army’s official letterhead.  These were intrepid men, scientists at the forefront of their field, and as it turned out rather brave troops.   This is if not a unique combination, certainly rather rare, and I can think of no other combat unit in modern military history that mixed the skills of cutting edge science with front-line service.

Their story also casts light on a somewhat wider matter.  The technology they deployed was new, it was very difficult both technically and logistically to deploy.  However, when it was deployed properly it allowed commanders an entirely new perspective of the battlefield.  It was clear to very many officers that this was, whilst not perhaps a war-winning technology, it had not only demonstrated very great potential, but had to some extent fulfilled it.

The true potential for aircraft as a war-winning weapon began to be realized in the First World War.  At the First Battle of the Marne in 1914, Corporal Breguet of the French Army spotted the manoeuvres of the main German army rapidly approaching Paris.  His information was received in the nick of time and allowed allied commanders to alter the plans to ensure the Germans were stopped almost within gun-range of the French capital; this was the ‘Miracle on the Marne’. Throughout WWI It was in the role of observers for the heavy guns of the artillery – bringing or later in the war, sending messages on the positions of enemy forces by radio – that aircraft were particularly effective.  When infantrymen saw enemy planes above them, they realized that enemy shells were likely to follow very quickly.

Clearly it was in the interests of the other side to ensure that such ‘reconnaissance’ aircraft were stopped; and so the ‘fighter’ aircraft was born.  Similarly it didn’t take long for the potential for ‘bombing’ aircraft also to be realised, although the first efforts of bombers in WWI, both on the battlefield, and far behind the lines against civilians in the so-called ‘strategic’ bombing role were not impressive.

By the time of the Second World War, air power had proved its worth as a military weapon in several conflicts, notably the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).  Its military potential was initially best exploited by the new German air force, the Luftwaffe, although allied air forces, learned very quickly.  Allied might ground down German air power, giving the RAF and US Army Air Corps ‘control of the air’ over Germany.  Dozens of smashed cities and hundreds of thousands of dead civilians bore testimony to what bombing from aircraft could do.  The degree to which that destruction contributed to allied victory was and remains a matter of intense controversy.

An aerostat in Afghanistan 2014. Image credit: Mcgyver2k via Wikimedia Commons .

The Cold War saw hundreds of billions of dollars flowing into aircraft development and construction.  Aside from Vietnam and many ‘small wars’ (none of them ‘small’ to their participants) these vast arsenals of ever-more advanced and expensive weaponry merely glowered at each other.

This century saw aircraft, especially helicopters and bombers or ‘strike’ aircraft as they are now called brought into the various ‘9/11 Wars’.  Once again, the jury is out as to their strategic as opposed to tactical or battlefield effectiveness.

It might be worth ending this brief survey of the history of air power by going, as it were, back to the future.  Today gas balloons (filled now by helium), tethered to the ground and packed full of sensors, stand guard over US bases in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Like Coutelle and his ‘aerostiers’ in the 1790s, their operators use these aircraft to observe enemy movements and positions.

In air power, as in so many matters, the more things change, the more they stay the same.  Whether the future of air power is manned, or as many believe, unmanned is not clear.  What is obvious is that control of the air will depend of mastery of the ‘ones and zeros’ plying up and down the various data links connecting the various airframes. This in turn will require those at the forefront of contemporary technology to be deeply involved in the business of air power; just as in 1794.

Featured Image Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons .

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The death of democracy in Stump City

Some might say that in a world that is arguably defined by a complex set of global challenges (think food security, transnational organised crime, antibiotic resistance, sustainable development, etc.) you might think that the fate of a few trees in a post-industrial city in northern England is hardly worth the political equivalent of a raised eyebrow. You would be wrong.

Political science is dominated by concerns regarding the ‘end’, ‘death’ or ‘suicide’ of democracy and books that highlight the rise of anti-political sentiment and ‘disaffected democrats.’ The crisis narratives are arguably now so ubiquitous and levels of political trust amongst large sections of the public so low that they no longer tend to provoke shock, or even concern. Crisis, it would appear, is the new normal. But in Sheffield a very abnormal political crisis appears to be unfolding. Abnormal because no one can really understand why the situation has been allowed to occur, but what is clear is that local confidence in local politics has been shaken to its very roots.

This is a storm that is currently raging in what was once a proud civic city, a steel city, and a green city, but has recently become something of an international laughing stock in terms of local governance. From healthy street tree stock to political laughing stock….

The story? In 2012 the Labour Council signed a 25-year Private Finance Initiative with a private company called Amey for pavement and street maintenance worth £2.2 billion. This contract was supposed to put Sheffield ‘Streets Ahead’ when it came to paths, pavements, and roads, but quickly degenerated into chaos and blame games as Amey implemented a rather draconian approach to tree care. Put very simply, where a mature street tree has required some form of maintenance or the street or pavement has required even the most minimal and perfectly common re-engineering, Amey has come along and chopped it down. Local communities have understandably protested against this approach but councillors blame the ruling Labour group, and the Labour group blames the PFI contract. But still what the Secretary of State for the Environment described as ‘environmental hooliganism’ has continued. So far nearly 6,000 trees have been felled in the city and a recent Freedom of Information request has revealed that under the contract a further 17,500 must fall. If the use of dawn raids and the arrest of OAPs in order to fell perfectly healthy trees was not enough – a situation the local MP and former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said was like something from Putin’s Russia – burly private security guards now protect Amey’s tree surgeons (and are themselves surrounded by legions of police officers who I am sure have better things to be doing with their time).

From Green City to Stump City in the shake of a chainsaw.

Now let me get three things straight: 1. I am not a tree hugger and have no history in environmental campaigning; 2. I am not a member of a political party and have no partisan affiliations; 3. Local politics generally bores me rigid. However, with that all out in the open I have to admit that as a political scientist the Sheffield Street Tree scandal – and it is a political scandal – is by some way the most interesting, revealing, and worrying political saga I have studied in over twenty years. Everyone is ‘up in arms’ –local communities, the Police and Crime Commissioner, South Yorkshire Police, the national Labour Party – all for being dragged into a very public dispute that never needed to happen. Correction: Sheffield City Council claims it does need to happen because re-negotiation the PFI contract would be too expensive.

But having studied the Sheffield Street Trees saga through a mixture of participant observation, ethnographic methods, interviews and documentary analysis over the last 12 months, what is most interesting is the manner in which the focus of the protestors has evolved. As many ‘active citizens’ have told me – ‘It’s not about the trees’. It was,  but is now about the failure of local democracy more broadly and particularly about what is perceived to be a disconnected and disinterested local political elite that treats the city as a fiefdom. The silver lining is that the controversy has mobilised the public, it has spurred civic engagement and activity in ways that would not have happened without the chainsaws and security specialists.

The Sheffield Tree Action Groups now contain more than ten thousand members, crowd funding has raised money to pay for legal reviews, festivals, and events have been held to raise awareness, beer has been brewed and the public pressure and media interest shows no sign of relenting.

From small acorns mighty oaks will grow….

Featured image credit: In Bloom Sheffield by dom fellowes. CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr.

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The language of strategic planning

My university just completed a round of strategic planning, its periodic cycle of self-evaluation, redefinition, and goal setting. Many of my colleagues were excited about the opportunity to define the future. Others were somewhat jaded, seeing such plans as bookshelf documents to be endured until the next planning cycle. Still others were agnostics, happy to see us have a good strategic plan but determined not to let it get in their way. As a linguist, I’m sympathetic to the idea of formalized systems, but the planning cycle also provoked my lexical curiosity. Where did the various terms of strategic planning come from and what do their origins tell us?

Strategic planners talk about mission, vision, and values, which are roughly glossed as “why we exist,” “where we are going,” and “how we act.” Planners talk about goals and objectives, which seem to differ primarily in specificity. Sometimes planning is run by consultants (who, according to one wag, are “people that borrow your watch to tell you what time it is”). There may be benchmarks, best practices, flowcharts, and logic models outlining success measures and responsible parties.

Historians of strategic planning, such Henry Mintzberg, author of The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, have traced the mid-twentieth century trajectory of strategic planning first into business, and later into military, academe, and the non-profit world. Mintzberg and others find antecedents in works of military theory like Sun Tzu’s The Art of War and Clausewitz’s On War as well as in labor studies like Frederick Winslow Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management.

Where did the various terms of strategic planning come from and what do their origins tell us?

Mintzberg identifies a host of approaches, classified as either descriptive (such as cultural, cognitive, and learning approaches, which consider how organizations work) or prescriptive (such as those focused on positioning, planning, or design, which are concerned with how organizations should work). And like grammars, which also use the terms descriptive and prescriptive, all plans evolve.

Origins aside, the language of planning offers an odd mix of terminology. An organizational “mission” might sound military, but the idea is ultimately connected with religion. The Oxford English Dictionary documents the noun as from the early 1500s, with a citation referring to “the missioun of the haly spreit.” The word later came to describe the work of missionaries, government emissaries in foreign missions, tasks generally, and military operations specifically—a use which the OED dates from only 1910. The term “vision” was originally a prophetic apparition but soon referred to the act of contemplating the unseen. And “values” originally referred to monetary worth and only much later ethical or moral standards. The jazzy compound “core values” is not in the OED, but Google n-grams, which allow you to search word and phrase frequencies over time, show it picking up steam in the 1960s and spiking in the 1980s.

“Goals” and “objectives” also have telling etymologies. “Goal” began as a noun of uncertain etymology, which by the 1500s referred to the finishing point of a race. “Objective” began as an adjective, borrowed from French and referring to properties of objects; by the early 1800s it referred to a thing external to the mind and by the late 1800s to a military target defined as “The point towards which the advance of troops is directed.”

The terms “strategic plan” and “strategic planning” do not appear in the OED as separate entries, but we find a 1952 citation to “management’s policy and strategic thinking” and a 1971 citation for the term “strategic business unit.” A close look at the OED treatment of “strategic” suggests that its use was gaining new traction in the late 1950s and early 1960s, with citations referring to “strategic hamlets” and “strategic studies.” And Google n-grams shows a big spike for “strategic planning” in the 1960s. The upward trend persists until a decline in the mid-1980s, when other approaches to analyzing corporate culture rose in popularity.

One final interesting term is the acronym SWOT, which refers to an analysis of an organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, often determined by interviews with stakeholders and focus groups. The acronym makes its first appearance in the early 1960s. Albert Humphrey, the researcher whose name is often associated with SWOT analysis, wrote that:

SWOT analysis came from the research conducted at SRI from 1960-1970. The research was funded by the Fortune 500 companies to find out what had gone wrong with corporate planning and to create a new system for managing change.

By 1963, SWOT was already being mentioned in the publications by the United Nations as a tool for coordinating and integrating the work of water resource agencies and it shows up in Björn Rosvall’s 1966 book The Business Engineer, which introduces it this way:

There is, however, a tried and tested method to compress the work; using a ‘SWOT’ analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats). This method concentrates on important changes in the external and internal environments. You may well have come across it already.

The terminology of planning is continually evolving to capture new ideas. And while exploring the language of planning may not change your attitudes about the planning process, it may give you a better understanding where the ideas and concepts come from.

Featured image credit: “Post-its” by Daria Nepriakhina. Public domain via Unsplash.

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Artificial intelligence in oncology

There is no denying the presence of computers in our everyday life, whether it’s through phones, personal virtual assistants such as Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa, or video games. Lately, the interest and development surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) has escalated, and the opportunities to embrace this within the healthcare industry seem to be growing. I’m not talking about conventional robots—although robotic assisted surgery is on the rise—but the inclusion of high-speed, deep learning computers to aid diagnosis and treatment.

The growth of medical knowledge is far from slowing and is expected to double every 73 days by 2020. In 2017, in excess of over 80,000 oncology papers were published, according to indexing service Web of Science. This sheer volume of research makes it impossible for physicians to stay up to date with the latest advances in the field and so clinical decision support systems are built to work alongside doctors to ensure the latest, highest standard of care is being given. For breast cancer alone, there are 69 different approved drugs for standalone treatment. Add this to the number of combination treatments available, and oncologists face a memory test on top of their routine tasks. The focus for AI separates into two sectors—to improve speed and accuracy of diagnosis, and to increase efficiency of drug discovery.

Developed by IBM, Watson Health is an AI clinical decision support system able to analyse data across many health sectors including cardiology, drug discovery, and diabetes. Watson for Oncology (WFO) focuses on rapid diagnosis and optimum treatment proposals for cancer patients. Researchers in India recently found that WFO treatment recommendations for breast cancer patients were concordant with those of an expert panel of oncologists. In 93% of the 638 cases presented for analysis, the tumor board agreed with the WFO proposals. The same tumor board also found concordant results in lung, colon, and rectal cancer. Discrepancies were found in cases where different treatment options were available in India compared to the training location of WFO in the United States. As with most cancers however, there is rarely a right or wrong answer, and treatment proposals are determined by what clinicians believe to be the best fit for the patient.

“The issue gets more complicated when moral and ethical decisions are concerned. Can we train computers to have emotion too?”

Yet, all these developments don’t come without their limitations. WFO pulls data from patients’ records, clinical guidelines, and studies as well as journals, books, and articles. In spite of this, the system is unable to make recommendations based on its own understandings from the data, and instead relies on preliminary training from real-life physicians and analysts at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in the United States. The initial recommendations for treatment were scored and feedback was input back into the system to improve concordance. Consequently, machine learning is essentially only as good as the data and knowledge you use to train it, so a lot of responsibility rests with the experts.

The issue gets more complicated when moral and ethical decisions are concerned. Can we train computers to have emotion too?

As a result of advancements in data processing, AI has progressed leaps and bounds in recent years, with regards to being able to read and process human emotions. However, understanding emotions and expressing empathy is entirely different to just being able to decipher emotion. As of yet, it is still unclear whether WFO is able to take these facts into account and whether recommendations are the best they can be morally.

AI is being recognized as an emerging area for research and Cancer Research UK’s Grand Challenge award includes AI as a competing category for £20 million of funding. There are other oncology AI systems that are currently being used in various hospitals around the world as well as an increasing number of new launches, such as Eureka Health Oncology, ACSO’s CancerLinq, and Healthcare NExT from Microsoft. All systems primarily focus on the same goals, and it’s hard to tell which will be the most successful, especially when there are lots of improvements to be made. For now, we should be aware that AI is increasing its presence in the field and can be used to increase efficiency and accuracy in cancer treatment.

Featured image credit: “Computer, Business, Typing” by Free-Photos. CC0 via Pixabay.

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Female first: aerial women in mythology, pop culture, and beyond

The sacred is where you find it. We would be foolish to ignore human awe in contemplating the eternal stability of the night sky and envy for the flight of birds that seemed to fly between the earthly, somewhat troublesome world of constant change, and what appeared to be eternal heavenly realms. The ancient depictions of winged females, and not winged males, suggest women were perceived as having some special power that men did not. Historically, this often formed the background for gender conflicts—what women want to do and what men will allow them to do as well as female indifference to the terms set by men. Aerial women in mythology represent power and freedom. They have been worshipped as bird goddesses, Valkyries, winged goddesses, and witches. These and other flying females from a wide variety of cultures are linked to sexuality, death and rebirth, or immortality.

Think of the Egyptian goddess Isis who restored her husband to life by flapping her wings over his body and then had sex with him to conceive their son Horus. In different places and historical periods there were remarkably similar discourses about the unpredictable powers of aerial women, who could be generous or withholding, empowering or destructive. To fly is to experience a profound sense of freedom and power. But, because of the uncertain nature of these winged women, the question arose as to how they could be controlled—whether by supplication or coercion. Over time, they flew through a universe of ever-increasing constraint in which similar means were used to capture and domesticate them, to turn them into handmaidens of male desire and ambition. One consequence of this was male control of their sexuality. For many aerial females (swan maidens, fairies, Brunhilde), having sex can mean the loss of flight or the loss of power, as sex is part of their captivity and domestication. In contradistinction, some aerial females (goddesses, ḍākinīs, some tantric practitioners, shamans, and Asian mystics) are sexual only as their desires dictate.

Many airborne women marry mortal men, transforming them into something more than they had been, but they do not always live happily ever after. Aerial women often shape-shift between human and avian forms, as with swan maidens; while in human form, however, they are vulnerable to captivity. Once captured, they sometimes live with a man for years, and even have children, before finally escaping back into their bird form and fleeing. At other times an aerial woman willingly accepts a man but sets a condition or taboo—one that he inevitably breaks. She then flies away. This suggests the paradoxical nature of these creaturely and sexual beings; on the one hand, they are creatively involved with humans through their reproductive powers, while on the other they reject the terrestrial realm of human beings. They are essentially birdlike, briefly nesting on the earth but most at home in the sky. Some can confer the blessings of fertility and immortality or snatch life away. One needs to be very careful in dealing with them.

By the time actual aviation began, it was a carefully guarded power limited to men. Women fliers of the 1920s and 1930s were unperturbed by public opinion, as they described experiencing independence and freedom through flight. These women supported each other and organized in a very public way by staging the sky-breaking first air race by women pilots, the Women’s Air Derby of 1929. Amelia Earhart came in second, which the wildly popular, nationally-syndicated columnist and radio commentator Will Rogers trivialized by calling the event the Powder Puff Derby. The camaraderie of the participants led them to the establishment of the Ninety-Nines, the first organization for female pilots, still in existence today.

 Amelia Earhart standing under nose of her Lockheed Model 10-E Electra by Underwood & Underwood. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Wonder Woman in her early 1940s depiction brings us back to the question of sexuality. Although Wonder Woman appears not to be sexually active, and in spite of her love for US Army pilot Steve Trevor, the fact that she was born, as a princess, on Paradise Island—the mysterious home of the Amazons at the edge of the known world—signals a lesbian undertone that often rises to a crescendo in her relations with the Holliday College girls. Wonder Woman’s nom de guerre, Diana Prince—an inversion of her birth name, title, and gender—is but one example of her polymorphous sexuality.

With the advent of World War II, America was desperate for trained pilots, which required the hiring of civilian female pilots and led aerial women into war service, the inevitable domain of flying females. Like Valkyries hovering over the battlefield waiting to carry fallen heroes to Valhalla, female pilots ferried warplanes across America. Male civilian pilots could hitch rides on military planes, but women pilots could not because the press tracked almost every move the women pilots made and the Army was afraid of scandal. In March 1943, the Army briefly stopped women from being co-pilots with men and grounded them for nine days when menstruating. Both restrictions, however, were soon rescinded. Women’s sexuality continued to be guarded—they could fly, but sex was taboo—and menstruation, an assertion of their femaleness, remained a problem for many men.

It was not until 1977 that the United States Congress finally acknowledged women as military personnel, declaring them veterans and issuing them honorable discharges. Women were not allowed to fly again for the American military, or for commercial airlines, until the 1970s. Unfortunately, women were not considered for the early astronauts program of the 1960s, despite significant evidence that they were psychologically and physically better equipped than men to withstand the stress of space travel and were lighter in weight—always a benefit since the earliest days of flying. The continuing prevalent view was that women could not fly while menstruating. Somehow, the first female cosmonaut flew while menstruating without a problem, but it would take the United States another twenty years to send a woman into space. Sally Ride, a 32-year-old astrophysicist, blasted off on 18 June1983. In 1995, Eileen Collins, the first woman to pilot an American spacecraft, carried the pilot’s license of Evelyn Trout into space. Trout had flown in the 1929 Women’s Air Derby, and her pilot’s license was signed by Orville Wright.

From the earliest bird goddesses to the space age some women have refused to be defined by the restrictive gravity of men’s wishes or desires; their ability to fly empowered them to impose conditions on men, or to escape roles they found constricting. The ancient concept of powerful winged women shape-shifts into many different forms over time and place; sometimes they lose one or more characteristics while at other times they gained additional ones. Whether human, divine, or mythic creatures, men desire them, but not as they are. Rather, they want to clip their wings in order to hold them captive, controlling and constraining their freedom.

Featured image credit: Illustration to The Book of Wonder Voyages by John D. Batten. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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