Oxford University Press's Blog, page 346

Which of the fathers in Shakespeare said these words?

Everyone knows William Shakespeare, the prolific English playwright and poet of the late 1500’s and early 1600’s. His extensive collection of comedies, tragedies, and romances are still very popular today. In fact, they are frequently referenced, adapted, and studied across the globe due to their reputation and his. In light of TNT’s new television series, Will, which premiered on July 10th of this week and chronicles the early life of William Shakespeare on the play-writing circuit, we created a quiz to test your knowledge of Shakespeare’s works.

How familiar are you with these notable quotes from the fathers in Shakespeare? Test your knowledge by matching the quotes with the father who said it.

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How did the Jews survive? Two unlikely historical explanations

How have the Jews survived over the centuries? This is a question that has intrigued and perplexed many. While powerful world empires have risen and fallen, this miniscule, largely stateless, and often despised group has managed to ward off countless threats to its existence and survive for millennia. In seeking to answer the question, a wide range of theological, political, and sociological explanations have been proffered.

Clearly, the Jews developed a remarkable capacity to move, integrate, and adapt to different settings over the course of time. But what lies behind that adaptive mechanism? Two unlikely and somewhat controversial factors can help us understand: assimilation and antisemitism. Far more commonly, these explanations are seen as causes of Jewish decline or disappearance. But in fact they have served, especially in tandem, to sustain the Jews.

Throughout much of their history—bookended by ancient and modern experiments in sovereignty—Jews have dwelt as a diaspora people under the control of Gentile hosts. It is a commonplace assumption that they lived apart from the rest of society, at least until the nineteenth century. In fact, an ancient Jewish adage has it that the Jews survived because they refused to adopt non-Jewish names, languages, and dress habits. It turns out, as a historical matter, that Jews continually adopted non-Jewish names, languages, and dress habits. The great first-century Alexandrian philosopher, Philo, was responsible for translating primal Jewish theological beliefs into a sophisticated philosophical system, thereby allowing for a key moment of invigoration for Judaism. It is important to recall that Philo bore a non-Jewish name, spoke and wrote in a non-Jewish language (Greek), and absorbed non-Jewish dress habits. His example is not the exception, but rather the rule in Jewish history. From Philo’s Alexandria to Hasdai ibn Shaprut’s Spain to Gracia Mendes Nasi’s Constantinople, Jews have adopted, through a natural process of osmosis, the culture of the societies in which they have dwelt. This accounts for the extraordinary richness of Jewish minhag, or custom, which reflects the artistic, liturgical, and cultural norms of the local non-Jewish environments in which Jews lived. What minhag also shows is that Jews never integrated local customs without leaving a distinct imprint of their own religious and ritual traditions upon them. In the most notable of cases, Jews absorbed the language of the land in their long diaspora history, but very frequently adapted that vernacular by inserting Hebrew words and rendering the written version in Hebrew characters.

This process of cultural absorption and adaptation led the American historian Gerson Cohen to refer provocatively to “the blessing of assimilation in Jewish history.” Without this constant form of cultural exercise, Cohen argued, Jews would have atrophied and disappeared long ago from the stage of history. It is precisely assimilation, or the cognate term “acculturation,” that provided the requisite interaction to keep Jews dynamic and alive.

And yet, just as the Jews set their own limits to assimilation by rendering the vernacular in Hebrew letters (which was intended for an exclusively Jewish audience), so too the surrounding Gentile world set its limits. Alongside daily economic relations in the marketplace and less visible forms of cultural exchange, there were deep undercurrents of hostility between Jews and non-Jews from ancient times to the present. A distinguished line of thinkers, from the 17th-century philosopher Spinoza to Jean-Paul Sartre in the 20th to the contemporary historian David Nirenberg, took note of this hostility and hinted at its constitutive and even preservative impact. Thus, Spinoza observed in the Theological-Political Treatise that Gentile enmity had the ironic effect of preserving Jewish distinctiveness.

What did this mean in practice? It meant that the Jews’ ongoing adherence to a distinct set of ritual practices while dwelling under Christian or Muslim regimes highlighted their minority status. This adherence also triggered, in the Christian context, the long-standing accusation that Jews were guilty of the crime of “deicide,” and thus “worthy” of social segregation and debasement. The resulting stigmatization served to impede the advance of assimilation, preventing the full immersion of Jews into Gentile society but affirming at the same time their sense of uniqueness. In this way, assimilation and anti-Jewish expression were counterweights on a scale, encouraging the regular rejuvenation of Jewish culture while also assuring the perpetuation of a sense of separation from the majority culture. Of course, this carefully calibrated system could be and was undone by instances of murderous violence, which has marked the long history of the Jews, most infamously in the Holocaust a mere seventy-five years ago.

In thinking of the future, it is worth asking whether antisemitism will continue to impede the path of Jews into the mainstream of the societies in which they dwell, particularly in North America. Might the relative absence of antisemitism upend the dynamic that assured the Jews’ remarkable, long, and anomalous historical journey? Or given its recurrence today, will antisemitism continue to be a paradoxical force of preservation of the Jews?

Featured image credit: home building architecture by stux. Public domain via Pixabay.

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Anniversary of Goodall at Gombe Stream [reading list]

Tomorrow, 14 July, is the anniversary of when Jane Goodall first arrived on the shores of Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve in western Tanzania in 1960. Jane Goodall is a famous primatologist and ethologist, and has dedicated her life to researching and understanding primate behavior. During her time at Gombe Stream, Goodall observed chimpanzees making and using tools, the first observations of any wild animal to do so. She also observed chimpanzees hunting and eating meat (which disproved a widely-held belief that chimpanzees are primarily vegetarians), and she witnessed chimpanzees using human-like communications within their communities. In honor of Goodall’s contributions to our current understandings of primates and the anniversary of the start of her important research at Gombe Stream, we’ve put together a primate-themed reading list.

“Introduction by Jane Goodall” from The Chimpanzees of the Budongo Forest: Ecology, Behaviour and Conservation by Vernon Reynolds

In this introduction, Jane Goodall reviews the separate experiences she and a fellow researcher, Vernon Reynolds, had while studying chimpanzees in Africa. This introduction discusses the political unrest that impacted research attempts and reviews the current endangered species status of chimpanzees.

Deputy Secretary Higginbottom Poses for a Photo With Dr. Jane Goodall and the State Department’s Global Health Diplomacy Director Jordan in Washington by U.S. Department of State from United States. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

“Diversity of tool use and tool-making in wild chimpanzees” from The Use of Tools by Human and Non-human Primates by A. Berthelet and J. Chavaillon

Published in 1993, this chapter discusses observations of tool use by wild animals in many different contexts, citing Goodall’s research and observations of chimpanzees using tools. It notes that while primates use tools in the most flexible way, only wild chimpanzees were observed to make tools.

“Primate classification and evolution” from Primate Sexuality: Comparative Studies of the Prosimians, Monkeys, Apes, and Humans by Alan F. Dixson

This selection discusses the different classifications of primates and their evolution. Primates are taxonomically classified based on their morphological traits, which have important implications for the understanding of primate evolution and classification.

“Adult human perception of distress in the cries of bonobo, chimpanzee, and human infants” by Taylor Kelly, David Reby, Florence Levréro, et al.

Understanding the extent to which humans perceive the emotional state of animals has both theoretical and practical implications. While recent studies indicate that natural selection has led to some convergence of emotion coding among vertebrate species, it has also been argued that interspecific communication of emotions can fail due to species-specific signalling traits impairing information decoding and/or absence of familiarity with heterospecific communication systems.

“Similarity and Difference in the Conceptual Systems of Primates: The Unobservability Hypothesis” from Comparative Cognition: Experimental Explorations of Animal Intelligence by Edward A Wasserman and Thomas R Zentall

It is easy to embrace the idea that humans are very different from even their closest living relatives. In the abstract, this tension between similarity and difference does not present a real barrier to thinking about cognition from an evolutionary perspective. After all, that is what evolution is all about: similarity and difference. The general practice of comparative psychology has largely been a deflationary one, attempting to explain away differences between species as unimportant, trivial, or simply a function of methodological artifacts. This chapter explores the possibility that many species form concepts about observable things and use those concepts in flexible and productive ways.

Bonobos: Unique in mind, brain, and behavior, edited by Brian Hare and Shinya Yamamoto

Along with the chimpanzee, the bonobo is one of our two closest living relatives. With the end of the major conflict in the DRC and a growing community of bonobos living in zoos and sanctuaries, there has been an explosion of scientific interest in the bonobo with dozens of high impact publications focusing on this fascinating species. This research has revealed exactly how unique bonobos are in their brains and behavior, and reminds us why it is so important that we redouble our efforts to protect the few remaining wild populations of this iconic and highly endangered great ape species.

“Behavior within groups” from Primate Ecology and Conservation, edited by Eleanor Sterling, Nora Bynum, and Mary Blair

This chapter discusses the major topics one needs to know about within-group primate behavior research. It begins by defining the primate group and reviewing the array of social units identified. Primate groups can be described in terms of their social organization, mating system, and social structure; these attributes are discussed, along with group size, cohesion, sex ratios, and costs-benefits of group living.

Apes, Language, and the Human Mind by Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Stuart G. Shanker, and Talbot J. Taylor

Primate research has yielded stunning results that not only threaten our underlying assumptions about the cognitive and communicative abilities of nonhuman primates, but also bring into question what it means to be human. At the forefront of this research, Sue Savage-Rumbaugh has achieved a scientific breakthrough of impressive proportions. Her work with Kanzi, a laboratory-reared bonobo, has led to Kanzi’s acquisition of linguistic and cognitive skills similar to those of a two and a half year-old human child.

“An introduction to primate conservation” from An Introduction to Primate Conservation, edited by Serge A. Wich and Andrew J. Marshall

Primate conservation’s goal is to ensure the long-term preservation of nonhuman primates. This selection provides a succinct overview of the diversity and biology of the primate order, which forms the foundation of the conservation efforts.

Featured image credit: Image by Ryan Al Bishri. CC0 public domain via Unsplash.

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Racing to the crossroads at NASIG 2017

I was lucky enough to be able to attend the NASIG (formerly the North American Serials Interest Group, Inc.) 32nd Annual Conference in Indianapolis this year as a first time attendee. I’ve only ever heard good things about the annual NASIG conference, so I knew what to expect, and I was not disappointed. This conference creates a great environment for librarians, vendors, and publishers to collaborate. I was thoroughly impressed that there were people present at the conference who have attended all 32 conferences. I hope that I can continue to attend in the future. As I’ve had time to reflect on the conference, there are a few things that resonated with me, but I didn’t go to a session or event that I wasn’t able to glean something from. I wasn’t able to attend everything, of course, so I’ve already began to peruse the NASIG Slideshare for other presentations from the conference, and I’m looking forward to reading the NASIG newsletter for some other recaps. Here are a few quick takeaways from my experience at the conference:

The Conference Mentoring Program and First Timers Reception

Being a first timer, I wanted to know how to make the most of the conference. The conference mentoring program and first timers reception programs really helped me to do that. The mentoring program is a great opportunity for first timers to learn the ins and outs of the conference and meet new people. My mentor took the time to go around with me and introduced me to several people the first night of the conference and that allowed me to make connections throughout the entire conference. I would recommend this program to any first time attendee or any long-time attendee who’s willing to help someone out. The First Timers Reception is also a beneficial event that allows you to take full advantage of the mentoring program. This is not only a great platform to meet your mentor or mentee, but lots of other people as well. The conference has a lot packed into a few days, so it’s nice to have some time at the beginning to check in with mentors, mentees, and other first timers before things get crazy (in a good way!).

“Evaluating User Experience and Access Data to Reveal Patrons’ Print and Digital Serials Preferences”

This session was interesting because it was led by the library at the Art Institute of Chicago, which is a library that serves a diverse population of people. The library used usage statistics and analysis of user experience through surveys and interviews to draw conclusions about their users’ preferences. This is important for any organization, but it was particularly important for this library because of the different types of people using the library, including museum curators, research associates and docents, interns, volunteers, faculty and students of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, museum visitors, and outside researchers. The libraries concluded from the research that print and electronic resources are used by patrons, because patrons like the convenience of the online resources, but they use print resources to gain more context on the materials and when online scans are inadequate.

“They Searched What? Usage Data as a Measure of Library Services & Outreach”

Usage data is valuable for renewals, but the library staff at Indiana State University felt that they could do more with that information, as presented in this session. They needed to examine many moving parts to tell its story about user experience. User behavior information, combined with information about discovery, e-Resources, and website lib guides helped to paint a clear picture about how the library could improve the services offered. This library, like the library at the Art Institute of Chicago, also found a somewhat interesting need among their users. Some of its top searches were related to drag racing and motorsports because of the Motorsports Management program that Indiana State University offers. This is something that the library was aware of, but the scope of the searches illustrated the need to highlight these resources more. The next steps for this project included developing user personas for different users of the library. In my experience, developing personas like this is very useful in parsing out the needs of your users, so I would be interested to see where that arm of the project goes in the future.

“The Charm, the Harm, & the Daring of Dillinger”

 Though not library-related, this lecture that was a part of the opening session was really interesting and well-done. Story Performer Sally Perkins, in conjunction with the Indiana Historical Society, spoke about American gangster John Dillinger, who was born in Indianapolis. The quality of this lecture shows how much care goes into planning NASIG, not only of the formal sessions, but also the social and extra things at the NASIG conference. The talk was very entertaining and informative, which matched well with the overall tone of the conference.

These four parts of the conference, and many others, were really interesting to me and helped me get the most out of the conference. I really appreciate everyone who put their time and effort into planning the conference and those who presented at the conference, as well as anyone who was nice enough to just strike up a conversation with me.

Featured image credit: Indianapolis Motor Speedway by tpsdave. Public domain via Pixabay.

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Dogs in ancient Islamic culture

Dogs in Islam, as they are in Rabbinic Judaism, are conventionally thought of as ritually impure. This idea taps into a long tradition that considers even the mere sight of a dog during prayer to have the power to nullify a pious Muslim’s supplications. Similar to many other mistakenly viewed aspects of Islamic history, today both most Muslims and non-Muslims think that Islam and dogs don’t mix.

There is, however, quite a different unknown strand of thinking about dogs in Islam, a long history of positive interactions between Muslims and dogs that goes back to the religion’s very beginnings. According to several authoritative accounts of his life and teachings, the Prophet Muhammad himself prayed in the presence of dogs. Many of his cousins and companions, the world’s first Muslims, raised young puppies. In the Mosque of the Prophet in Medina, the second holiest site in the world for Muslims after the Kaaba, dogs were regularly seen frolicking about during the Prophet’s life and for centuries after as well.

It’s no surprise that the first Muslims had so many dogs. Most of them kept large flocks of sheep and goats, and dogs helped to manage and protect these other animals, preventing them from running away and scaring off would-be thieves and predators. Sheep and goats were these early Muslims’ food and capital, and dogs helped to protect these investments.

Canines were also crucial companions during hunting expeditions. Long before Islam, dogs were depicted in stone carvings from ancient Egypt and Iraq running alongside their human owners. Muslims continued this use of dogs.

As Islam spread throughout the Middle East and the world, it moved from being a religion of nomadic peoples to one centered in cities. Many of the world’s largest cities in the millennium between 700 and 1700 were Muslim cities. As they did in the countryside, in cities too dogs played vital roles. They of course continued to protect property and shoo away intruders, but in cities dogs served an even more important function—they ate garbage. From Damascus and Baghdad to Cairo and Istanbul, urban authorities supported dog populations as consumers of waste to keep city streets clean. Muslim leaders built watering troughs for dogs, many mosques threw out food for them, and butchers used them to keep away rats and other vermin. Humans who committed violence against urban canines were often punished. Muslim cities were much cleaner and more pleasant places with dogs than without them.

All of this meant that Muslims throughout the world were in regular daily contact with the many dogs in their midst. They recognized how useful canines were as guards and cleaning agents and, we can only presume, developed quite intimate relationships with them built around regular contact and the kind of affection bred from codependence.

Given this history, where then did the idea that Islam is only hostile to dogs come from? The short answer is disease. About two hundred years ago, ideas about contagion began to change. Still very far from what we would today recognize as germ theory, people in the Middle East, Europe, and elsewhere started to notice a correlation between outbreaks of plague, cholera, and malaria and the physical proximity of victims to places like cemeteries, garbage heaps, and swampy lakes. City planners and governments throughout the Middle East therefore started to excise these sources of disease from the increasingly crowded districts in which their people lived. As they collected and then pushed garbage outside city walls, they also unwittingly removed the dogs that ate this trash. Dogs used to keep streets clean. Now humans did.

The historic connections between dogs and trash did not serve the animal well. Not only was there simply less garbage to eat in cities, but the garbage that did remain was now seen as a threat to public hygiene and soon too were its canine consumers. Indeed, in just a few decades in the early nineteenth century, dogs came to be seen as both economically useless and hazardous to public health. The results? Several large-scale dog eradication campaigns, far fewer dogs in Middle Eastern cities, and a change in attitude toward the animal. No longer useful and productive urban residents, dogs were now seen as dangerous, disease-ridden, and expendable.

This relatively recent sea change in Muslim attitudes towards dogs explains the dominant view of the animal today. While of course opinions vary and the elite in many Muslim countries keep dogs as status symbols, the majority of Muslims see dogs as dirty, impure, sometimes even evil. As with so much in the Islamic past today, the history of dogs is thus misunderstood by Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Most don’t know and many would likely not be open to the idea that dogs were treasured by the Prophet and millions of Muslims after him.

For those of us—Muslims or otherwise—whose most regular interaction with a living nonhuman animal is with a dog, the story of dogs in Islam offers another lesson as well. Humans did not always keep dogs for affection, love, or cuteness. For most of history, they were not pets. They were laborers, economic necessities, hunters, and street cleaners. Apart from dogs that sniff drugs, aid the blind, or chase criminals, very few of us today experience dogs as anything other than that joy that licks our face in the morning. However, throughout history they’ve been much more. Knowing this past not only gives us a fuller picture of the most ubiquitous nonhuman animal we welcome in our midst, but it also helps us to understand how our histories with other animals have shaped our current world.

Featured image credit: Edit -1-24 by Dane. CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr .

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Two numerals: “six” and “hundred,” part 1

The reason for such a strange topic will become clear right away. The present post is No. 600 in the career of “The Oxford Etymologist.” I wrote my first essay in early March 2006 and since that time have not missed a single Wednesday. When I am out of town, even for a whole month (which occasionally happens in connection with my trips to Europe), I send the essays to New York and discuss the text and the illustrations with the editors ahead of time.

600 is a respectable number, and it suddenly occurred to me that I had never addressed the origin of numerals in this blog. My reserve is due to two circumstances. 1)  As a general rule, I prefer to discuss the words about whose etymology I have something new to say, regardless of whether my opinion has the chance of being accepted (or not; I despise this pleonastic or not, though I often see it in the writings of our best authors). When it comes to obscure idioms like whip the cat (22 July 2015), I am certain that my overview, even if stopping short of a sensible proposal, will be new to our readers, and this justifies the effort. 2) The second reason is of a different kind. The highly controversial etymology of numerals presupposes delving into the obscure technical details of Indo-European phonetics, a subject I always avoid.

However, 600 is a milestone. The Greeks believed that the future is open because it lies in front of us, while the past, which lies behind the observer, cannot be seen or deciphered. True or not, our future, even if visible, is not particularly clear, and, since I am not sure where I’ll be another hundred posts later, I decided to turn to numerals today. Contrary to the photo that accompanies this blog, its real-life model does change. According to my reconstruction, in 2006, most of us were eleven years younger. No one’s middle name is Dorian Gray.

Strange, as it may seem to non-specialists, the origin of the words one, two, three, etc. has never been discovered despite quite a few good hypotheses. We can probably assume that at one time people counted on their fingers. Hence the suggestion that the number five (five goes back to some form like finf: compare Modern German fünf) is related to finger. Also, those who deal with language history and prehistory always try to reconstruct the ancient protoform, but it so happens that, when they cast the net widely (from, let us say, Hittite and Armenian to Old Irish and Old Norse, all of which belong to the Indo-European family) and list the available cognates, the oldest forms often refuse to yield the desired protoform, for the obvious reason that they are not really very old and might (even must) have changed dramatically from the beginning of time. Knowing all this, let us look at the possible derivation of six.

On your six. The idiom seems to have originated with pilots and means: “Danger behind you!” Imagine yourself standing in the middle of the face, with the hands of the clock as in this picture. (Such is at least the usual explanation). Got your six exists too.

Here the main difficulty is the protoform. In the Germanic languages, all the attested forms are very much alike (six, seks, and so forth). Elsewhere, the Indo-European words for “six” begin with we-, swe-, k’se-, and k’swe– (k’ designates a special variety of k, but this detail need not delay us here). For instance, Russian shest’, along with the same or similar forms elsewhere in Slavic, goes back to kse-. The main choice of the protoform is between weks and seks. The first of them has a wider distribution among the Indo-European languages and may be older. If we assume that the number six had something or even everything to do with counting on one’s fingers, weks can be understood as a congener (cognate) of the English verb to wax (its original sense was “to grow”: compare wax and wane and German wachsen “to grow”). The rationale for naming the numeral would emerge approximately as “the counting of the fingers on one hand is over, now ‘an increase’ starts.” Analogous cases are neither rare nor exotic: indeed, in several languages across the globe six is understood as an addition to the last numeral on the other (usually left) hand; it appears to mean “five plus one.”

But it is also a well-known fact that in the process of counting, numerals influence one another, so that, conceivably, the initial consonant for Germanic six changed under the influence of seven, whatever its origin. Here too analogous cases have been found. Thus, eleven very probably means “one left over ten,” while twelve has the same suffix as eleven and the root of two (the Old English forms were endleofon, from ainlif, and twelf, from twālif, respectively). In Old High German, the forms were einlif and zwelif. Later, einlif became elf, presumably on the model of zwelf ~ zwölf. In Low German, the similarity is even greater: elf, twelf. Under normal circumstances, einlif would not have become elf. Note that the influence usually comes from the next item: six like seven, eleven like twelve.

The magnificent six.

Still another factor should be taken into consideration. Many words in the Indo-European languages have initial s, a parasite, as it were, whose origin has never been explained to everybody’s satisfaction but whose existence cannot be denied. This s appears in cognates across langauges and even in one and the same langauge. It has been called movable s, and in this blog I have had more than one chance to refer to its existence. If the root of six once began with w-, the consonant s before it could be a case of movable s. To make matters worse, the Slavic numeral began with kse-. What should we do with it? Those versed in the arcana of reconstruction will easily guess that the easiest solution would be to set up the protoform kswek’s and understand the recorded forms  as the simplification of the long and bulky kswek’s. There is nothing improbable in the simplification of heavy clusters (ksw– is certainly heavy). But what is the meaning of kswek’s? An adventure in etymology consists of two parts: we try to track down the most plausible phonetic shape of the protoform and to discover its meaning. Without the second step the “adventure” degenerates into a dry exercise in comparative phonetics.

Finally, numerals are often borrowed. The examples are many. For instance, the odd Russian word for “forty” is sorok (stress on the first syllable). It is almost certainly a borrowing, even though the lending language remains a hotly contested issue. The case of sorok is not unusual. Time and again, it has been proposed that also some forms of six are loans from the neighboring languages.

One can now see why I prefer to stay away from numerals in this blog. It is the amount of legerdemain that scares away the researcher, and the ground is shaky. Yet every word deserves the linguist’s attention. Etymological dictionaries can skip some slang and the obsolete or little known words and pretend that those do not exist, but no lexicographer can do without the basic numerals. In our case, most dictionaries remain noncommittal and make do with a list of the heterogeneous cognates of six. What then is its origin?  Nobody knows for sure, and nobody knows whether Indo-European had a single form of this numeral. If indeed the starting point was counting on one’s fingers, perhaps six did signify the beginning of the “second series.” Even if so, many questions remain unanswered, with the thumb (fortunately, not the third finger) of the left hand up in the air, inviting further research, and promising victory.

There is a half-forgotten idiom at sixes and sevens. It means “in a state of utter confusion and disarray.” Its origin is contested, but the association between six and seven is obvious.

Image credits: (1) “Clock” by Robert Karkowski, Public Domain via Pixabay. (2) “Industry people” by bstad, Public Domain via Pixabay.  (3) “IceF Internal” by D B, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr. Featured image credit: “Fireworks” by Eric Spaete, Public Domain via Pixabay.

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Five reasons police think you should turn on ‘Ghost mode’ in Snapchat

Snapchat, an app which allows users to share photos and videos which delete themselves after a few seconds, is used by 166 million people worldwide. The latest Snapchat release has seen police issuing hasty warnings to users of the app, with the new ‘Snap Map’ feature raising a range of questions relating to privacy. What are some of the issues that police (and others) might have with this seemingly fun update?

1. Stalking/harassment

Revealing your exact location to your Snapchat friends may make stalkers’ jobs easier, if you aren’t aware of the different privacy settings available for location-sharing while using the app. You might have had a particularly bad Tinder date and never want to see that person again, or more seriously, a violent ex-partner who you need to avoid. The Snap Map can lead people right to your front door, or if you’re using the app often and have location­-sharing switched on, you could be letting people know exactly where you are, even more often throughout your day.

Screenshot of Snap Map taken by Heather Saunders.

2. Theft

Making your location public rather than private means you really don’t know who is watching your Snaps. Pleased with your new Xbox and wanting to share a photo with the rest of the world? You might want to think twice, as you could be an opportunist thief’s next victim, particularly if you’re Snapchatting a week on holiday in a different country, suggesting your home is empty and an easy target.

3. Child protection

Children aged 13 and above are allowed to download and use Snapchat (with parental permission), and indeed teenagers are some of the most prolific users of the app. Recent data shows that in the United States, 59% of 12 to 17 year olds were active on a monthly basis on Snapchat, and it is similarly popular among teens in the United Kingdom. Police and parents alike are worried that the new update could leave children vulnerable to predators, with strangers being able to find out exactly where they are.

4. Fraud

Just how much personal data are you sharing with strangers? With a quick look at your social media profiles, fraudsters could easily find out your full name, date of birth, where you work, names of children or pets (which are commonly used in passwords), and now with the help of the new Snapchat update, it’s fairly straight forward to work out your home address. With so much information easily accessible in the public domain, you could potentially find yourself the victim of fraud.

5. Data protection and hacking

How often do you really read all of the terms and conditions before you use an app or make a purchase? Do you know what your data is being used for? Data gathered from location-sharing has the potential to be used for all kinds of things. Imagine you are walking down your local high street and as you walk past a shop, you receive a targeted advert based on your profile information via Snapchat that persuades you to enter and make a purchase. We see similar kinds of advertising all the time online now, but this is another tool marketers could use in the future to influence consumers. Although there’s nothing criminal there, with cyber crime on the increase and large-scale hacking now a familiar story covered in the media, the Snap Map provides another potential data source that could fall into the wrong hands.

Despite the above, could the Snap Map also provide the police with a helping hand? If a crime is being committed and a Snap is shared publicly at the time, perhaps it would be reported to police sooner, and they could be at the scene quicker if needed. It could also potentially allow the whereabouts of missing or wanted individuals to be discovered – if they happen to be big fans of Snapchat.

Featured image credit: smartphone-screen-social-media by TeroVesalainen. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.

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Philosopher of the month: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel [timeline]

This July, the OUP Philosophy team honors Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) as their Philosopher of the Month. Although Hegel was a hugely successful philosopher in his own right–described as “the most famous modern philosopher” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe–his legacy remains the influence he had on later philosophers. A huge proportion of critical theory philosophers acknowledge his influence, with most major positions from the last 150 years having been developed in response to Hegelian thought, including Marxism, existentialism, pragmatism, and many more.

Born in Stuttgart, Hegel studied theology and philosophy at the theological seminary in Tübingen where he became close friends with Friedrich Wilhelm von Schelling (1775-1854). Schelling did not have the lasting impact of Hegel, but during Hegel’s early years Schelling was a much larger name in the discipline. Not only did Hegel’s early work The Difference Between Fichte’s and Schelling’s Systems of Philosophy (1801) discuss his friend’s ideas, but so too did the preface of Hegel’s first major publication, the monumental  Phenomenology of Spirit (1807). This work follows the historical and logical process of the mind reaching its final goal of being free and fully self-conscious. It has been described as one of the most influential philosophical works ever written, and famously includes the master and slave example of freedom and self-consciousness which Karl Marx used when relating capitalists to workers. Marx also took inspiration from Hegel’s Science of Logic volumes (1812-1816) for his theory of dialectical materialism.

Other titles include the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1817), Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1821), and his posthumously published lecture notebooks. Hegel’s lecture notebooks focused on aesthetics, the history of philosophy, the philosophy of religion, and the philosophy of history. Not only did Hegel’s disciples preserve his legacy through these publications, they also continued engaging with his ideas, albeit in two factions: the Right Hegelians and the Young (or Left) Hegelians. The Right Hegelians focused on Hegel’s later years but quickly declined, with no major thinkers coming from the group. The Young Hegelians however were more radical leaning, using Hegel’s work to demand a better world, and famously included Marx in their membership. Hegel’s thinking is not only significant because of his influential publications, but also because of the continuation of his ideas through other philosophers.

For more on Hegel’s life and work, browse our interactive timeline below.

Featured image: The New Palace in Stuttgart, Germany. Photo by  Julian Herzog. CC-BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. 

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What’s in the message?

Once upon a time, it could be believed that each advance in communications technology brought with it the probability, if not the certainty, of increased global harmony. The more that messages could be sent and received, the more the peoples of the world would understand each other. Innovators have not been slow to advance comprehensive claims for their achievements. Marconi, for example, selected 1912 as a year in which to suggest that radio, in apparently making war ridiculous, made it impossible. Other pioneers have also been ambitious: the telephone, it was said, would facilitate global brotherhood (and no doubt sisterhood as well). ‘Nation shall speak peace unto Nations’ seemed the appropriate founding motto for the BBC in 1927. Decade after decade, subsequently, the claim has been repeated as each new technological advance appears.

The reality is rather different. An increased capacity to connect does not inevitably increase communication. The contemporary political world is awash with messages but, beyond simplicities, their content is ever harder to pin down. We are not sure where a line should be drawn between ‘news’ and ‘fake news’. Who is growing to draw it? Words in common currency in contemporary national and international messages leave the recipient bewildered. ‘Independence’ is a case in point. Advocates of Scottish independence wish such a Scotland to remain in the European Union. UK ‘Leavers’, however, thought that the United Kingdom could only regain its independence if it left the European Union. Fundamental words used in this debate — ‘country’, ‘nation’, ‘state’, ‘region’, ‘people’, ‘union’ — have conveyed different messages to different people.

It is not just the specific meanings of individual words that matters. It is the status and hegemony of a particular language. For example, speaking in French in Italy, the President of the European Commission, perhaps jokingly, recently suggested that the English language would lose ground in future — presumably in the European Union — after British withdrawal. On the face of it, such an assertion, deliberately provocative or not, was not implausible, given that the United Kingdom was by far the largest of the European Union member states using the English language domestically. He may, of course, be right. Yet the situation is more complex. It is not the least oddity of the present situation that the English language has deeply (though not of course exclusively) permeated the governing structures of the European Union. Indeed, a single European state, without Britain, could conceivably and sensibly use English as its language of government. To do so would build on the existing facility in the use of English amongst governing elites, sustain necessary communication with ‘the English-speaking world’, and user countries beyond it, and avoid potential acrimony about the status of German or French. It would be an alien language for all and not any longer the language of one major member.

Comparably, concerning the English language in the contemporary world, publishers too have to address cultural questions of utility and identity.

Comparably, concerning the English language in the contemporary world, publishers too have to address cultural questions of utility and identity. It is question for Oxford University Press above all. It is a UK publisher, anchored in an English university (albeit significantly cosmopolitan in composition) publishing in English (though not only in English) but reaches out into the world. Its readers and authors, variously, may want to learn English or to use English, whether in countries where it functions at particular levels and in certain milieux or where it is the language of the people (with some difference in vocabulary and pronunciation). It is this complexity in its markets which makes it impossible to characterize all OUP’s books straightforwardly. Yet if they cannot be characterized at all then the imprint would lose its identity and credibility. The Press would have failed. It is a matter, therefore, of managing messages, of recognizing diversity in countries and cultures and the needs of particular audiences, while also upholding standards of production, presentation and content which go beyond the local and are acknowledged, so far as agreement on them is possible, to be international.

Such a ‘dual mandate’, to borrow a term from past British imperial practice in Nigeria and elsewhere, is always contentious. Blending language use, ‘fairness’, cost, and bureaucratic and government convenience, is never easy, even within the contemporary United Kingdom. The continuing hegemony of a particular language, however it has come about, may induce resentment and relate to a past lingering into the present. That language may nevertheless be the only effective means of communicating within an emerging or established state. There are here deep questions which have long been argued over. We may conclude, however, that while academic books, in sending messages across the world can certainly not guarantee that ‘Nations shall speak peace unto Nations’ we may modestly yet hopefully claim that they don’t make matters worse.

Featured image credit: Photograph of women working at a Bell System international telephone switchboard. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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Warfare as the creator and destroyer of nations

There are at least four ways in which warfare in its changing forms has been formative in the rise and transformation of national collectivities.

First, warfare has been central for much nation-state formation. Most nation-states that came into existence before the mid-20th century were created by war or had their boundaries defined by wars or internal violence. Charles Tilly famously wrote, ‘War makes states and states make war’ in tracing the rise of the nation state to the incessant warfare generated by the military revolutions of early modern Europe. Out of these conflicts in early modern Europe came centralized administrations, general taxation, and the control of violence over consolidated territories. The costs of war bankrupted the French state, leading to the French Revolution that, in fusing nation and state, mobilised mass loyalties with unprecedented military power. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that modern nationalism, in both its civic and ethnic varieties, crystallised in the subsequent Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Many nationalists subsequently have cited the willingness of populations to sacrifice themselves for the nation-state as an indicator of its validity.

Second, warfare has contributed to the formation of national communities. The constitutive myths of many nations are derived from war experiences, shaping perceptions of the fundamental values of populations, and their place in space and in time. Wars have often operated in the perception of nationalists as turning points in their history for good or ill. While Englishmen celebrated the defeat of the Spanish Armada that preserved the Protestant settlement in England, Polish nationalists mourned the eighteenth century partitions between three great Empires, creating the myth of Poland as the ‘crucified nation.’ Most societies have martial time markers of great victories as well as calamitous defeats, and nationalists have evoked these contrasting fortunes to draw moral lessons, especially when embedded in the collective memory through novels, poetry, films and school textbooks. In the modern period the cult of the glorious war dead has become something of a surrogate religion, in the form of great commemorative rituals, such as Remembrance Sunday in Great Britain, that call upon survivors and descendants to preserve the values for which the dead allegedly fought. Such ceremonies may serve multiple and divergent purposes: in a secular age to overcome the trauma of mass death, to create a sense of unity, and to express a hope for the future.

Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 8 August 1588 by Philip James de Loutherbourg (1740–1812). Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Third, while the nation state system in Europe arose out of centuries of conflict, the majority of nation-states and the modern international system came into being recently by a completely different martial route: imperial dissolution in three convulsive waves during the 20th century. The first was the collapse in total war of the dynastic continental empires in Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe at the end of the First World War; the second was the break-up of overseas empires in Asia and Africa after the Second World War; and the third began with the collapse of the Soviet Union from the military and economic pressures of the Cold War. These relatively sudden dissolutions catapulted nationalist elites into power governing ill-defined territorial units, sometimes carved violently out of ethnically disputed territories, lacking developed economic and political institutions. Indeed, these (often fragile) nation-states imbued with a sense of victimhood and political vulnerability have found themselves at odds with existing interstate systems, the rules of which were defined by former imperial powers. The disruptive effects of this large-scale entry of ethnically diverse states – often with unresolved boundary issues with neighbours – has regularly resulted in projects of re-imperialization and wars of aggression by great powers. Although institutions of transnational governance, such as the League of Nations and the UN, were created in the aftermath of these wars, they have failed to resolve the security problems created by these transitions.

Fourth, contemporary military revolutions (namely, the spread of high precision weaponry and developments in asymmetric war) in the context of this new global order affect how populations relate to their state, both in the West and beyond. In Western Europe a politics of reconciliation in the form of the EU has accompanied a shift from mass conscription to small professional armies and large-scale demilitarisation. Elsewhere, intra-state conflicts predominate in fragile new states, undermining the possibility of nation-building. Everywhere in a post-imperial world there appears to be a shift from heroic martial myths that legitimised nation-states, to traumatic narratives that focus on victimised peoples, generating debates about whether we are moving into a post-national world.

This seems exaggerated. Contemporary intrastate wars in the Balkans and Sri Lanka have contributed to nation-state formation. In the West, romantic ideas of war are overshadowed by a greater recognition of individual loss, as we see in the response to the returning dead from Afghanistan, but this is in part because of the perceived futility of these wars. The continued resonance of the remembrance ceremonies of the First World War indicate that state commemorative frames maintain their potency. In many regions nationalist tensions between rival powers are, if anything, intensifying. In Russia, Putin has revived the cult of the Great Patriotic War against Hitler, to project the power of the new Russian nation state and its quasi-imperial ambitions, given military expression in the Caucasus, Georgia, and the Ukraine. Moreover, in striking contrast to Western Europe, recollections of the Second World War in China and Korea have inspired a resurgence of anti-Japanese popular nationalism, focused on the Nanjing Massacre and the exploitation of ‘comfort women.’ Here, the perception of war as traumatic may itself contribute to national solidarity.

Featured image credit: The Siege and Destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans Under the Command of Titus by David Roberts. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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