Oxford University Press's Blog, page 353

The life and work of Alan Turing

Alan Turing was one of England’s most influential scientists of the twentieth century. He is best remembered as having cracked the codes used in the Enigma machines, enabling the Allies to defeat the Nazis in many important battles, particularly in the Atlantic Ocean. While this achievement which arguably helped to bring the Second World War to a quicker end has been brought to the fore through popular histories (including The Weinstein Company’s The Imitation Game starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Turing), much of Turing’s less well-known work has shaped the field we know today as ‘artificial intelligence’.

Pioneering the field of ‘machine intelligence’, today we celebrate all of Turing’s achievements and the legacy his research left. Find out more about some of the key events that shaped his investigations with this interactive timeline.

Featured image credit: Enigma by Rama. CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons .

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9 facts about hermeneutics

What does hermeneutics mean? Where did the term originate and how is it used in day-to-day life? Jens Zimmermann, author of Hermeneutics: A Very Short Introduction, tell us 9 things everyone should know about hermeneutics.

Hermeneutics is all about interpretation in fields of study, such as interpreting plays or novels, but also in day-to-day life, when we interpret actions of our friends or try to figure out what a job termination, for example, means in the context of our life story.
Hermeneutics is the art of understanding and of making oneself understood. It goes beyond mere logical analysis and general interpretive principles.
The word ‘hermeneutics’ comes from the ancient Greek language. Hermeneuein means ‘to utter, to explain, to translate’ and was first used by thinkers who discussed how divine messages or mental ideas are expressed in human language.
Hermeneutics is also the name for the philosophical discipline concerned with analysing the conditions for understanding. Hermeneutic philosophers examine, for example, how our cultural traditions, our language, and our nature as historical beings make understanding possible.
Hermeneutic thinkers argue that understanding is the interpretive act of integrating particular things such as words, signs, and events into a meaningful whole. We only really understand an object, word, or fact when it makes sense within our own life context and thus speaks to us meaningfully.
Philosophical hermeneutics refers to the detailed and systematic examination of human understanding that began with the German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002). He argued that our perception of the world is not primarily theoretical but practical. We don’t assess objects neutrally from a distance, but they disclose themselves to us as we move around in an already existing totality of meaningful relations.
Modern hermeneutic also has to ask how the digital revolution changes the conditions for understanding texts. For example, text encodings are already an interpretation and different search parameters represent texts through a particular, pre-selected focus.
The ancient Greek philosopher Plato (427–347 BCE), used the word hermeneutics in dealing with poets as ‘hermeneuts of the divine’, and his student Aristotle (384–322 BCE) wrote the first extant treatise on hermeneutics, in which he showed how spoken and written words were expressions of inner thoughts.
Hermeneutic thinkers claim that our modern consciousness has been shaped in such a way that we imagine ourselves as ‘islands of awareness’ floating in the grand ocean of life, disconnected from other selves. The Canadian philosopher and hermeneutic thinker Charles Taylor  labelled this specious self-contained consciousness as a ‘disengaged self’.

Featured image credit: books by Chris Lawton. Public domain via Unsplash.

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How can we save the pollinators?

An often-cited estimate is that one-third of the food you eat comes from insect pollinators. Many of the fruits and vegetables that you enjoy develop their fruit and seed primarily through insect pollination services. Other sometimes overlooked benefits of pollinators are the ecological services that they provide. For example, insects pollinate many plants that provide erosion control, keeping our waterways clean. Ground-nesting bees, meanwhile, can help aerate and mix soil. And yet another benefit is simply the aesthetic beauty that many pollinators have. Striking swallowtail butterflies, bustling orange-tailed bumble bees, rubicund milkweed beetles, and metallic green sweat bees beautify our landscape. Can you imagine a world without these creatures?

The critical role that pollinators play in our planet is the reason why both scientists and the public are so concerned about their declines. The US Fish and Wildlife Service’s recent designation of seven bees as endangered species has reinvigorated public attention to the plight of pollinators.

Pollinators face many known challenges. Pollinator health research has often focused on a select few pollinators, including the European honey bee, bumble bees, and butterflies (e.g. Monarch, Regal Fritillary). Less or no work has been done on most of the other 4,000 North American bees; the nearly 13,000 moths and butterflies; and many fly, wasp, and beetle pollinators. However, there are common threats that impact pollinator health and for which there is evidence in pollinator declines.

Habitat loss is one of the major culprits responsible for pollinator declines and impacts on their health. Lack of floral abundance, poor floral diversity, and forage habitat fragmentation are often cited as agents of declines in generalist pollinators. Specific larval plant hosts declines, like milkweed for monarch butterfly larvae, are also linked to pollinator declines. Also a loss or lack of nesting, overwintering habitat, and aggregation site disturbance can affect pollinator populations. Further, some pollinators like the Regal Fritillary require large stretches of very specific habitat types to complete their life cycle (e.g., tallgrass prairie and related open locations). For bees and adult moths and butterflies, one of the easiest things homeowners can do to help is plant a diversity of pollinator-friendly blooming plants in their landscapes.

Bee by Anton Atanasov. CC0 Public Domain via Pexels.

Pesticide exposure, including insecticides, miticides, herbicides, and fungicides can harm or kill pollinators. Direct exposure to pesticides through spray contact have long been known to harm or kill pollinators. More recently, plant systemic pesticides, like those found in seed coatings, have been implicated in pollinator deaths or changes in pollinator behavior. Exposure to these pesticides can come through collection of seed coating fragments sloughed off during planting or through coming in contact with pollen and nectar containing traces of pesticides. Less understood is cross-pesticide target and class interactions and their impacts on pollinator health. A universally accepted approach to limiting the effects of pesticides on pollinators is to simply reduce or eliminate the use of pesticides in your landscape. In all cases, following good integrated pest management practices should be used to deal with any pest concerns.

Diseases and parasites are major factors in the health of pollinator declines. Perhaps most famous is the parasite Varroa destructor and its effect on European honey bees. Varroa mites parasitize developing and adult honey bees making them susceptible to diseases. If unmanaged, Varroa mites cause colony death. In other insect pollinators, like bumble bees, parasites and diseases are also a concern. Further, there is evidence in these bumble bees and other pollinators that disease and parasites are spread from managed bees to wild populations. While the magnitude of disease spread is not well understood, there are steps you can take to limit disease sharing. Hobbyist beekeepers should source honey bees from reputable breeders and watch for signs of disease in colonies throughout the year. If you think a disease is present, consult an extension expert for steps to manage diseases and parasites. Never release bumble bees and other lab-reared insects into the wild. Releasing these may expose wild populations to disease.

Other less-understood impacts on pollinator health include pesticide-class interactions, micro-habitat dynamics, invasive plant and animal species, and climate change. While less is understood concerning these impacts, much scientific investigation is currently being done to determine the nature and impact of these factors on pollinator health. With all of these issues facing pollinators, they need our help. Fortunately, there are many ways to get involved. Here are five ways you can help pollinators:

Plant for pollinators. One of the best ways to support pollinators is to feed them. Whether you choose to scatter seed or design a structured garden, thoughtfully include foraging habitat that provides nectar, pollen, and leaves. In temperate regions, homeowners should plant early and late blooming flower, shrubs, and plants, during times of the year when floral resources are sparse. Native and naturalized plants are fantastic, but non-natives can also provide good sources of pollen and nectar for generalist species. Nectar-sipping adult moths and butterflies start out as leaf-consuming caterpillars. Planting milkweed will support our declining Monarch butterfly populations. To start selecting plants for your area, check out the Xerces Society’s pollinator-friendly plant lists. For targeting specific pollinators or management of large areas of land, we recommend working with knowledgeable entomology or conservation professionals to plan and design these habitats.

Poppy by BNPT. CC0 public domain via Pixabay.

Think outside the hive. “Home sweet home” for most bees is not in a hive. Most bee species are solitary, meaning each female bee makes a tiny nest by herself in soil or natural cavities. In fact, these bees are so docile and their nests so inconspicuous, you probably wouldn’t notice one right at your feet. You can provide natural habitat for solitary bees by leaving some bare soil on your property, and refraining from cutting back pithy-stemmed plants (some tiny bees build a small nest inside hollow stems). Take it a step further by building artificial bee houses from wood, natural stems, and other materials.

Become a citizen scientist. There is still a lot to be learned about pollinators. You can support timely, relevant, and impactful pollinator research programs by becoming a citizen scientist. Activities can range from monitoring habitats and submitting observations to sharing photographs or transcribing labels. Find a project that’s the perfect fit and pitch in.

Talk pollinators up. Learn about pollinators and share your knowledge with others. Many people only need a moment to realize how important pollinators are. By sharing your positive experiences with pollinators in the garden, on a walk or through citizen science, you can be an agent of change.

Celebrate Pollinator Week. Find a Pollinator Week event near you. Remember that Pollinator Week happens every year. Perhaps you will want to organize your own Pollinator Week Event.

Featured image credit: Bee, lavender by castleguard. CC0 public domain via Pixabay.

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Latino fathers and parenting: lessons learned from Puerto Rican fathers

Fatherhood is a complex and an evolving concept which has gained national attention. Fathers play an important role in the development of their children, which also has an impact on their identity as a father. Minority fathers, particularly Latino fathers, have been under-recognized in this call to better understand fatherhood. However, given that Hispanics are the largest minority group in the US, the experiences of these fathers are of heightened importance. The primary role of all parents is to influence, teach, provide love, and to watch their children. There is evidence that cultural differences in parenting styles influence child behaviors. Also, the impact and interpretation of parental behaviors vary between different cultural groups. Understanding how culture is embedded into family life and parenting practices will allow for more culturally grounded, therapeutic interventions and prevention programs focusing on parenting. Puerto Rican fathers, and Latino fathers in general, gave us many lessons for fatherhood research that we can learn from.

The importance of family. Puerto Rican fathers shared that they have a strong commitment to being a role model and father. The fathers focused on promoting individual obligation and connectedness to the family. Fathers shared that the family stem was central however emotional connections with extended family were also highly valued. Historically, the traditional Latino family structure has been patriarchal and often contains the element of machismo. Although machismo is sometimes associated with bravery and aggressiveness, there was evidence that it is also accompanied by an obligation to the family and the family’s well-being. One father stated the importance of the interconnectedness of the family:

“What I’m trying to teach them is that when you do something crazy, it doesn’t just affect you. It affects the entire family. It affects the entire reputation of that entire family.”

Respect is central. The fathers all highlighted values such as respect, loyalty, and obedience. Latino fathers are often conceptualized as harsh, however monitoring of their child was done through the cultural value of respect. However, respect was bidirectional in nature, the father expected respect from their child, but they also respected their child. Some fathers spoke of not harshly punishing in public so as not to disrespect their child. One father said (translated from Spanish):

“Age does not matter. Because for that word: respect, age does not exist. Because an adult must not disrespect a child, nor a child an adult.”

Showing warmth and love. Puerto Rican fathers showed warmth and love towards their children, while developing sympathy and solidarity with their feelings. Most of the fathers mentioned showing signs of love such as hugging and kissing. However, many fathers noted intergenerational differences, such as their fathers being absent or not showing affection. As one father mentioned:

“I didn’t grow up with my dad. So you know, I try to be different…every day I tell my kids I love you, I kiss them, I hug them. I’m very affectionate, very close with them. Very touchy-feely with them. And I know that in our culture that’s very hard because a lot of us didn’t grow with our dads or dads weren’t like that.”

Puerto Rican fathers, and Latino fathers in general, gave us many lessons for fatherhood research that we can learn from.

Focusing on relationship development. How Latino fathers developed a relationship with their child was tied closely to their child’s interests. Fathers were highly involved and responsive to their children. They engaged in play that focused on the child’s strengths and abilities. The relationship was bi-directional, the child talks, they listen, the father talks, the child listens. As one father indicated:

“I’ll tell you for my 14-year-old, I always look at her life like, you know when you’re trying to teach your child how to ride a bike? And the training wheels are off and they’re riding and they think they got it all together. But really, you’re running behind them with, the tip of your finger, you’re holding the seat, but they think they’re riding by themselves. I do that a lot with my daughter…you know, and I do it because I want her to feel like and know that I’m building that trust.”

These are valuable lessons that we can learn from Puerto Rican fathers that indicate that culture influences their parenting in a substantive way. Culture doesn’t just inform, but rather constructs the traditional parenting values. Cultural lenses help frame the way we view traditional constructs of parenting, such as control and monitoring, warmth, and the parent and youth relationship. Parenting practices for Puerto Rican families are actualized through the fundamental cultural concepts of familismo, loyalty and solidarity towards members of the family; respeto, adhering to authority; simpatía, interpersonal harmony; and personalismo, trust and warmth in interpersonal interactions.

In conclusion, fathers were excited to be asked about their opinions about parenting. The men expressed that often they feel ignored by services and that providers often speak directly towards the mother, however they felt just as knowledgeable and involved with their child as the mother. We need to continue to update our practices to involve Latino fathers with a culturally grounded approach that emphasis the importance of close family relationships, interpersonal responsiveness, interdependence, personal dignity, and respect.

Featured image credit: Silhouette father and son by Unsplash. Public Domain via Pixabay.

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Katherine Dunham: the artist as activist

In October 1944, the African American choreographer Katherine Dunham (1909-2006) stood in front of an audience in Louisville, Kentucky and announced that she and her dance company would not return to Louisville until the city desegregated its theaters. Word of her brave stance ricocheted across the country, finding its way into a newspaper in Indiana, where a fifteen-year-old boy wrote her an admiring letter saying that she was an inspiration in the fight for racial equality. A few months later, Dunham again made headlines by purchasing a mansion on Manhattan’s storied Upper East Side, effectively attempting to integrate the highest echelons of New York society. Columnist Dan Burley of the New York Amsterdam News wrote, “Somewhere down the line the dream of a new world envisioned by both Katherine Dunham and [singer] Paul Robeson is bound to appear.”

Despite being widely recognized during her time for her activism, Dunham does not currently figure in the American collective consciousness about racial justice movements. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, or Fannie Lou Hamer more easily come to mind, people who led the “classic” phase of the Civil Rights Movement. In elementary school I learned, as many American schoolchildren do, that the Civil Rights Movement began in 1955 when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus. A decade earlier, however, Dunham was on the front lines of the Black Freedom Struggle.

In particular, Dunham is a model for the artist as activist. Though often overlooked in official narratives, artists are necessary to social justice movements. They are the ones who imagine a better future; they possess a gift to see beyond the bleak present and share that vision with others, whether through lyrics to a song, paint on a canvas, or in Dunham’s case, dancing bodies onstage. As celebrities, their voices can have a profound influence on popular culture. The peak of Dunham’s career took place during the decades of the 1930s through the 1970s, a period often romanticized by white Americans as the halcyon days of the “American century.” For black Americans, however, as well as for people of many other ethnic groups, the mid-twentieth century United States was often a place of racial terror and oppression. Between 1924 and 1965, the United States shut down its borders, reducing immigration to almost zero and even turning away Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany. Lynchings and other forms of anti-black violence occurred routinely, often openly encouraged by local and state governments. In the late 1940s and into the 1950s, Cold Warriors in the government silenced dissent and viewed racial justice activism as tantamount to treason.

Dunham never gave up fighting, both onstage and off, for the change she wished to see in the world: namely, the end to racial discrimination on a global scale and the forging of world peace based on intercultural exchange and understanding. In the 1930s, she conducted ethnographic research on Caribbean dance and creatively interpreted what she learned with sensitivity and intelligence for the concert dance stage. Her choreography had an important political impact by challenging stereotypes about black cultures and offering a vision of liberation to her black audiences. In Dunham’s highly theatrical dance revues, her dancers and musicians—who came from many different countries, melding their various rhythmic sensibilities and cultural backgrounds together—literally embodied the cosmopolitan, harmonious future she envisioned. The same was true of the Katherine Dunham School of Dance, which she founded in 1944 in New York. Journalists remarked on the interracialism and internationalism on display at the school, in which teenagers from Harlem mingled with budding actors Marlon Brando and James Dean, Vodou singers and drummers from Haiti, and aspiring dancers from Ireland and Palestine.

Nor did Dunham limit her activism to the United States. In Brazil in 1950, she prepared a lawsuit against the Esplanada Hotel for refusing to lodge her because of her race, and the streets of São Paulo filled with protestors to support her cause. Brazil’s legislature quickly wrote, and passed, a bill banning racial discrimination. Soon thereafter, she began choreographing a new thirty-minute dance piece, Southland, which dramatically depicted a lynching and its tragic aftermath. She premiered it in Santiago de Chile to the consternation of local American embassy officials, who feared it would provide fodder to the strong Communist movement in the country. Despite warnings from them, she re-staged Southland in 1953 in Paris, then let it drop from her repertoire because of the emotional and psychological strain it imposed.

This strain helps explain why Dunham was not always visibly on the front lines. From 1955 to 1965, she barely set foot in the United States. She did not March on Washington, sit in at a lunch counter, or organize voter registration. In our current call-out culture, we are often quick to judge when someone does not seem one hundred percent “woke,” meaning, always already committed to social justice in every facet of their lives. But inconsistency can be generative. Every farmer lets a field lie fallow for a season to replenish growth. This approach is not an excuse for inaction, but rather a recognition that people can contribute to social justice in their own ways and on their own time frames that allow for regeneration of the spirit. Decades before the phrase “self-care” entered the lexicon, Dunham insisted on staying true to her artistic dreams and living a life filled with beauty. In her holism, her internationalism, and her melding of arts and activism, Katherine Dunham inspires us to envision a better world and take steps to make it happen.

Featured image: “ Civil Rights March on Washington” by Archives Foundation. CC by 2.0 via Flickr.

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Introducing Joel Rinsema, the Choral Promotion Manager

Joel Rinsema joined OUP in March 2017. We caught up with him to find out what exactly being a ‘Choral Promotion Manager’ involves, how much coffee he drinks, and what his life was like before he joined the Press.

When did you start working at OUP?

In my previous life, I worked with the multiple Grammy award winning Phoenix Chorale (USA) for 23 years in many capacities: as a singer, as Assistant Conductor and as President/CEO. I relocated to Denver, Colorado three years ago to conduct the wonderful choral group Kantorei, a role I still hold alongside my OUP work. I also worked in church music for over 25 years.

What do you do in your role as Choral Promotion Manager of North America for OUP?

I represent OUP composers in North America, promoting the existing catalogue, as well as trying to procure North American premieres and commissions. Much of my time is spent communicating with leaders of educational and professional choral ensembles, introducing them to OUPs offerings.

What’s the most surprising thing you’ve found about working at OUP?

How quickly I started to use British colloquialisms. I have to fight off saying the word ‘peckish’ when I haven’t had breakfast.

What’s the least surprising?

How nice, intelligent, funny and collaborative my co-workers are.

What is your typical day like at OUP?

Coffee, email, coffee, web searches, coffee, phone calls, coffee, meetings, coffee.

What’s the most enjoyable part of your day?

Skype-ing. Being a remote employee means spending a lot of time at my desk in front of the computer and on the phone. It’s always nice to see and speak with a real live human being albeit on my computer screen, rather than staring at web pages.

What’s the least enjoyable?

When technology isn’t working, and when I’ve run out of coffee.

Open the book you’re currently reading and turn to page 75. Tell us the title of the book, and the third sentence on that page.

From Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth:  ‘In pursuit of those estimates, she combed through the available evidence, searching for signs of intellectual precocity –and from the age and superiority of these accomplishments she reckoned each person’s childhood IQ.’

Tell us about one of your proudest moments at work.

Probably standing on the Grammy Award stage with my colleagues of the Phoenix Chorale.

If you could trade places with any one person for a week, who would it be and why?

Bill Gates. Not as the computer genius, but as the generous philanthropist. Whilst I think that I am able to make a difference in the job(s) I hold, having the nearly unlimited resources of Bill and Melinda Gates, and the ability to give freely to causes they are passionate about, and their impact on making the world a better place, is enviable.

What drew you to work for OUP in the first place? What do you think about that now?

It was really the opportunity to work for a highly respected business with a long and established history of excellence. I have a deeper appreciation, understanding and respect for Oxford University Press now I have joined the team.

How would you sum your job up in 3 words?

Promoter, Communicator, Matchmaker.

What is your favourite word?

Elevate. I like this word, as it can have many different meanings. To ‘raise’, to ‘lighten’, ‘to bring exposure to’. (Yes, I’ve consulted with the Oxford dictionary!).  I like to think that I do this with the choral art form in every aspect of my life.

What do you like to do outside of work?

Anything outdoors: skiing, fishing, camping, golfing, boating, hiking, biking.

Featured image credit: Coffee beans by Alexas Fotos. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay. 

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The dwarfs of our vocabulary

I receive all kinds of questions about etymology. Unless they are responses to my posts, they usually concern slang and exotic words. No one seems to care about and, as, at, for, and their likes. Conjunctions and prepositions are taken for granted, even though their origin is sometimes obscure and their history full of meaning. In my work, I have dealt only with if and yet in detail and found both etymologies highly complicated.

The sorely neglected members of etymology.

One thing can be said with certainty about conjunctions and other so-called form words. Their change into connectives was a gradual process. Today they are usually very short. For instance, the Russian for “and” is i (the vowel as in Engl. it), while one of the prepositions for “at” is u (as in Engl. put). In the past, all such words were longer. The process of abridgment can sometimes be observed without any knowledge of historical linguistics. For example, the Scandinavian languages lost final n, so that the cognate of Engl. in there is just i. The English indefinite article goes back to the numeral one. It still has n before vowels (an apple), but before consonants only a remains (a pear).

A modern conjunction could once be an adverb. Such is the history of Engl. but, which not too long ago meant “outside” (it still does so in some British dialects). The Old English forms of but and about were būtan and abūtan respectively, so that their similarity needs no proof. Both words have lost their second syllable (-an). However, the root vowel of about preserved its length and became a diphthong by the Great Vowel Shift, whereas in būtan, which stood in an unstressed position, ū was shortened; hence the modern form but, as in shut, cut, and so forth. Būtan was a sum of a preposition (be or bi) and ūtan “out” (such sums are common: compare Engl. within and without). Therefore, it comes as no surprise that but, with its ancient reference to things “outside,” has turned into an adversative conjunction.

Even more instructive is the history of the words for “and.” The Latin for “and” was et, recognized from French, where it has stayed unchanged in spelling, and from et cetera. In Gothic (a Germanic language, recorded in the fourth century), the exact correspondence of et is iþ (þ has the value of th in Engl. thin). If Slavic ot– “from; against” has the same root, we witness another case of a symbiosis between a conjunction and a preposition. This iþ ~ id was all over the place in Old English, German, Saxon, and Icelandic, though in all those languages it had lost part of its independence, turned into a prefix, and functioned as the first element of compound words.

English has its reflex (continuation) in at least two words: in eddish “aftermath; stubble,” which was called edgrow in Middle English, and in eddy “a small whirlpool.” If eddy had existed in Old English, it would have sounded as edwǣg (wǣg “wave”: cf. German Woge), that is, approximately “wave and another wave.” Since eddy was recorded only in the fifteenth century, it might have been a borrowing from Scandinavian (Old Icelandic had iða, a close counterpart of eddy).

This is a whirlpool, or eddy, signifying the importance of the conjunction and.

We can now return to and. It looks like a cognate of Latin ante “before.” The word from which it was derived meant “across; separated; in front of.” It can be seen in Engl. end, whose Gothic cognate is andeis, and Old Icelandic enni “forehead.” Both the end and the forehead are indeed “at the font.” German und had many variants, anti, enti, and inti, among them. It would be easy to refer this plethora of vowels to ablaut and in one case to umlaut (in enti, final i would have turned a into e, but Icelandic had en ~ enn, a safe cognate, and there was no i in it).

Why did Old High German need so many variants of such an outwardly simple word? Full-length essays and even a book have been written about this conjunction. Characteristic of the mess one encounters in dealing with form words is also the multitude of senses Middle High German unde ~ und ~ unt had: “and; likewise; but; meanwhile; namely; as; as long as; which.” In translating the great Middle High German poems, one often wonders what this short word means.

In one’s own language, the speaker rarely notices such a lack of precision. Consider Engl. as “to such a degree; according to; when; because” (as soon as possible; as I said; as the night was drawing on…; as there is no quorum….). Something along the same lines can be said about since (it has been years since we met; since so many people are absent…). Usually the context disambiguates the message. Yet even in a living language trouble is not always excluded. German wenn means “when” and “if.” Therefore, wenn ich komme means either “when I come” or “if I come.” This is rather inconvenient, but unschooled people are not even aware of the problem. Engl. as is derived from alswā, that is, “also.” We see the same scenario occurring again and again. It appears that every conjunction, a short connective, reduced to one or two sounds, was once a full-fledged word. Repeated hundreds of times in the role of a link and occurring in an unstressed position, it would lose its weight and become a syntactic ligament.

Depressed by the vagaries of English syntax.

However simple the word and may seem, old languages often distinguished between the connective link between words and a synonymous link between clauses. A special particle meaning “and” might be added to words and words only. Such are Latin –que and Gothic –uh. The particle appended to the end of a word is called enclitic. Old Germanic (especially Old Icelandic) is full of enclitics. In the earliest stages of the Indo-European languages, subordinating conjunctions were rare. It is easier to say something, add and, and go on (the way children recount an episode they have just seen; this system is called parataxis). Etymology shows how notional words gradually turned into connectives, so that as, since, etc. emerged; how prepositions acquired the role of conjunctions (consider Engl. for indicating purpose—for you, side by side with for “because”) and how our modern system of hypotaxis, with its plethora of subordinating conjunctions, came into being. Characteristically, in Old Icelandic, the conjunction er meant “as, when, which, etc.”: its sole function was to show that a subordinate clause is setting in. Modern readers often wonder how to interpret such sentences.

Parataxis.

We can sometimes guess the origin of a conjunction by looking at it. Thus, because is obviously be and cause. But short words may need reinforcement, and this is how languages produce monsters like whatsoever, notwithstanding, insofar as, and inasmuch as. The last of them troubled Winnie the Pooh’s friend Eeyore, who spent some time ruminating on its meaning: inasmuch as what? We may leave the melancholy creature to its own devices but note that the history of conjunctions shows how human thought produced abstract concepts (from “the front part” to the additive and and again from “in addition to” to and), how it encouraged prepositions and conjunctions to exchange hostages, and how, to remedy the confusion, it made people coin long and unwieldy phrases, some of which can depress even a toy donkey.

Image credits: (1) “Snow white 1937 trailer screenshot (2)” by Petrusbarbygere, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. (2) “The Corryvreckan Whirlpool” by Walter Baxter, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons. (3) “Eeyore” by Christene S., CC BY 2.0 via Flickr. (4) “Caught Reading” by John Morgan, CC BY 2.0 via Flickr. Featured image: “Imp, Santa Claus, Dwarf” by brisch27, Public Domain via Pixabay.

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Visualizing the global income distribution

The evolution of the distribution of income among individuals within countries and across the world has been the subject of considerable academic and popular commentary in the recent past. Works such as Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century or Joseph Stiglitz’s The Price of Inequality have become unlikely bestsellers, garnering a startling degree of both academic and popular interest.

The last few decades have seen a sharp increase in global integration with its attendant benefits and anxieties. Concerns about the distributional effects of cross-border flows of trade and finance have grown and are central issues in political debates worldwide. At the same time, massive global inequities, dysfunctional polities, and the most egregious outcrops of these-civil breakdowns and mass migration have become the staple of mass media.

Also in the last couple of decades, for the first time in human history, we have the raw materials to measure the living standards of individuals across the world in comparable terms. The careful collection of survey information from almost every country in the world, led by national statistical offices and multilateral organizations, and the simultaneous collation and harmonization of price data by the International Comparison Project has made it possible, in principle, to truly understand and compare the fortunes of individuals in any country or region in the world with others from elsewhere.

Figure 1 (using data drawn from the Global Consumption and Income Project) provides a simple snapshot of the distribution of income. The height of the ‘skyscrapers’ represent average incomes in purchasing power (PPP) terms in 2005 for each population decile for over 150 countries in the year 2014. That is the height of each building represents the average income in 2014 in dollars for 10% of the population of a country, correcting for the fact that prices differ across countries. The height of each bar in the chart varies along two axes: the first, the horizontal axis is a ranking of countries from the poorest (the Democratic Republic of Congo) on the left of the figure to the richest (Luxembourg) on the right; the second, from the front to the back of the figure, shows the distribution of income from poorest to richest within each country. Note that the skyscrapers for some countries such as India and China are wider. This indicates their relatively large size of population.

Figure 1: average income of each decile of the population, $2005 PPP terms in 2014. Image by CORE, used with permission

As is evident, most of the ‘mass’ of income is on the right-hand side and at the back, indicating that most of world income is held by the rich in the rich countries. A relatively rich US individual sitting on his income skyscraper looks down on a world that is very far below him in terms of living standards.

Figure 2 a: Kernel Density Distribution of Income for world and constituent regions, $2005 PPP terms in 1990. Image by Rahul Lahoti, used with permission.

As starkly as this image shows how the global income distribution is skewed towards the rich, it does not capture the ways in which the growth in Chinese and Indian incomes in the last two decades has led to an overall reduction in global inequality, even if intra-country inequality has risen in many countries. This is better seen in figures 2a and 2b (again using data drawn from the Global Consumption and Income Project) which shows the density of the income per capita in 2005 PPP terms in 1990 and 2010 respectively for the world and its constituent regions. In the first figure (1990), the world seems to have two peaks, with a grouping of the mass of poor countries to the left and richer countries to the right.

This global inequality is substantially reduced in the second panel (2010), with a large mass of both East Asian and South Asian populations catching up with parts of Europe and South Asia.

Figure 2b: Kernel Density Distribution of Income for world and constituent regions, $2005 PPP terms in 2010. Image by Rahul Lahoti, used with permission.

China, in particular, has moved on to becoming relatively richer in the global distribution. Figure 3 a and 3b show the relative position of people from six large countries in the world and income distribution in 1990 and 2010 in $2005 $PPP terms. The horizontal axis shows the percentile of the country’s distribution from poorest to richest while the y axis shows the same percentile in the global income distribution. So, for example, even if you were in the poorest percentile of the US income distribution, you were around the 80th percentile of the global income distribution in both years.

Figure 3a: Individuals Position in Country Percentile and World Percentile for selected countries, $2005 PPP terms in 1990. Image by Rahul Lahoti, used with permission.

 

Figure 3b: Individuals Position in Country Percentile and World Percentile for selected countries, $2005 PPP terms in 2010. Image by Rahul Lahoti, used with permission.

In 1990, the Chinese poor (as measured by the poorest percentile) were the poorest in the world, with the relatively poor of every other country being richer than them. Indeed, for the countries we chose, every percentile of the Chinese distribution was poorer than every equivalent percentile from the other countries. The richest Chinese were only at 40th percentile of the world distribution overall. By 2010 however, the situation had changed quite dramatically. While the Chinese poor are still among the poorest in the world, the richest Chinese are now at the 80th percentile of the global income distribution.

The last twenty years have seen great churn in the global economy and have generated both winners and losers within and between countries. If we take the world as a whole and measure the differences in purchasing power of individuals wherever they happen to be, global inequality has fallen in the last two decades because of the relatively rapid growth of the previously very poor Indians and Chinese. But inequality continues to remain stubbornly high. While there has been progress, a lot more remains to be done to ensure that the world does not continue to experience the inexcusable differences in income and welfare that we currently see.

Featured image credit: Currencies by 16:9clue. CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr.

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The biological ironies of transgender debates

Transgender issues have made significant headlines in the United States. Not long ago, North Carolina struggled to repeal a 2016 law that required people to use only public restrooms that matched the sex on their birth certificate, not their lived gender identity. Only weeks earlier, the US Supreme Court declined to hear a case from a Virginia student on the same issue. Then, in mid-April, over eight million viewers of the “Survivor” TV series watched as one competitor tried to malign a fellow contestant by exposing him as transgender.

At the same time, however, common cultural assumptions surrounding “basic” conceptions of sex and gender are replete with ironies. They assume that male and female should be clear, discrete categories; that assigning sex unambiguously is an appropriate baseline; and that anatomies, physiologies, and behaviors naturally align in a uniform and dichotomous fashion. Not so, biologically speaking. How, indeed, do we define male and female scientifically? Regardless of one’s definition, exceptions can be found. Sex is not either-or. Accordingly, a binary framework for interpreting gender seems ill-informed.

For example, consider an individual who due to their genetic profile does not generate the enzyme 5-alpha-reductase (as portrayed in Jeffrey Eugenides’ Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Middlesex). Such a person, based on outward appearances, will be labeled female at birth. At puberty, however, hormone levels change, the penis grows, and the voice deepens. Male gonads, one finds, had been there all along. But the development of the other traits had been dramatically displaced in time. Cases in one village in the Dominican Republic are so common that they have a special name: guevedoces, or sometimes machihembras. What does “sex assigned at birth” mean in a case like this, when so much changes?

“Amphiprion ocellaris (Clown anemonefish)” by Nick Hobgood. CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Nor is sex necessarily static or fixed. Many tropical fish change sexes during their lifetime, sometimes in a matter of hours. In clown fish, when females die, males can become females—a provocative detail not depicted in the popular animated film, Finding Nemo.

In other species, both sexes exist simultaneously. Snails, earthworms, barnacles, and many deep sea fishes are hermaphrodites, having both types of gonads, and play two reproductive roles. Sex is not exclusively either-or.

Traits associated with the sexes are not consistent either. Not all humans with testes develop extensive facial hair or muscle mass. Nor do all those with ovaries develop large breasts or exhibit menses. Mosaics of all sorts can be found—all produced by natural causes. In some mammals, such hybrids are the norm—in spotted hyenas, kangaroo rats, bush babies, and Old World moles. Thus, one cannot universally correlate any set of traits exclusively with one type of gonad. These features, so often used to delimit the sexes, hardly assort uniformly, and therefore cannot definitively distinguish male and female.

Many people imagine that biological science can establish sex unambiguously. In a common perception, the chromosomal makeup of human females is XX, and males XY. Yet in some individuals, the genes that activate hormones related to differences in male fetal development have been translocated to an X-chromosome. The developmental male is XX. Other chromosomal combinations, such as XO and XXY, are well documented and have their own distinctive body biologies. Relying on genetics and chromosomes does not resolve all cases.

Spotted Hyena from Etosha National Park, Namibia by Yathin S Krishnappa. CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

For similar reasons, even behaviors cannot delineate male and female. In one fascinating pair of experiments, the genes of some fruit flies were manipulated, generating ostensibly female flies that exhibited typically male mating behavior and males that did not. In seahorses and spotted sandpipers (among other species), males are the primary protectors of offspring. Does that make them less “male,” or transgendered as “maternal”?

As indicated by these many examples, organisms that do not follow conventional conceptions of male and female are biologically widespread. Nor are human cases rare. In the United States, the transgender label includes some 1.4 million individuals, or more than one in every 200. One cannot easily dismiss them as mere “exceptions.” They arise through nature. Yet ironically some people view them as “unnatural.”

Ultimately, there is no biological foundation to male and female as discrete, pure categories. Accordingly, such labels on birth certificates have limited scientific meaning. The very conceptions of gender and transgender, especially as related to sex, begin to dissolve.

Issues about personal identity surely matter. Yet public discourse might benefit from reflecting on why we adopt the categories of male and female and imbue them with such significance. Why do so many people consider them “natural”? And, finally, what is at stake—politically, ideologically, and culturally—in trying to preserve sex and gender as unambiguous dualities, when the biology does not support them? Perhaps we might gain more insight into why the notion of transgender individuals seems to elicit such deep emotions and controversy.

Featured image credit: Borghese Hermaphroditus Louvre Ma231 n4 by Marie-Lan Nguyen. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. 

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Can all refugees become economically successful?

We are celebrating the 16th United Nations’ World Refugee Day, scheduled on 20 June every year. It is a day to recognize and honour refugees’ resilience, agency, and capability. In the area of refugees’ economic lives, there is growing evidence demonstrating that refugees are economic actors who are able to sustain themselves and to make socio-economic contributions to their hosting society.

Indeed, refugees are ingenious economic players, in principle. However, now we should go one step further to nurture more nuanced understanding of refugees’ economic lives and the economic disparities between them.


Refugees are not different from anyone else as human beings. In any community or population, different people suffer, survive or prosper in diverse ways, adapting to the environment in which they find themselves. Personal characteristics, such as business background, education, language skills and social networks, can have an effect on people’s livelihoods. Research on refugees’ economic lives therefore needs to understand and explain why such diversity exists in their economic consequences.

Currently, the Refugee Studies Centre at University of Oxford is undertaking a study on refugees’ economic activities with South Sudanese, Somali, and Congolese refugees in Kenya, using Kakuma camp and Nairobi as primary sites. Although the research is still in progress, our preliminary observations indicate interesting variation in their economic outcomes.

The findings demonstrate the importance of these surrounding contexts for refugees’ economic outcomes. Regardless of nationality, the income level of refugees in Nairobi appears to be much higher than that in Kakuma camp. Nairobi’s urban refugees need to meet their necessities on their own because they have little to no access to humanitarian aid – unlike camp-based refugees who receive free food ration and don’t have to pay rent. However, those in Nairobi enjoy access to increased opportunities for income-generation and education, as well as amenities such as better transportation and internet. Better access to these socio-economic infrastructures enables refugees to build more lucrative livelihoods than those refugees living in the camp.

refugees welcome demonstration by Netavisen_Sameksistens_dk. Public domain via Pixabay.

The specific characteristics and capacities of households and communities also matter, of course. Even within the same geographical context, there is significant variation in household income levels across nationality groups. Regardless of their location, Somali refugees usually earn more income than Congolese and South Sudanese refugees. These differences are largely explained by the presence of social and cultural assets of Somali communities. Utilizing their clan-based connections and transnational networks, Somali refugees tend to have better access to employment opportunities from Somali Kenyans and the remittance transfer systems. Detailed analysis of data in Kenya will be available later this year.

For recent years, promotion of ‘self-reliance’ for refugees has become a pressing agenda in the international refugee regime. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees broadly defines self-reliance as ‘the social and economic ability of an individual, a household or a community to meet essential needs in a sustainable manner’. This concept has been universally embraced by policy-makers and aid agencies and has now become an increasingly visible part in refugee assistance and protection programmes worldwide.

However, many of the past attempts to promote self-reliance have met with limited success. At least one possible reason is a universal lack of systematic understanding of the differences in refugees’ economic capacities.


There are now more than 21 million refugees worldwide. It is not realistic to assume that all of world’s refugees can fully exercise their capacity and attain self-reliance; in all societies, there are people who can be self-reliant but there are also those who struggle to make ends meet.

With a better understanding of the mechanisms that differentiate the economic consequences for refugees under various contexts, aid agencies could design and implement effective interventions that would nurture the skills and talents of refugee communities, while providing target assistance for those with limited economic capabilities and resources.

Currently, the world faces the largest refugee crisis since World War II. It is undeniable that we need to pioneer new ways to support and enable refugees’ socio-economic independence in the long-term. Recognizing and understanding differences in economic outcomes for diverse groups of refugees can offer an opportunity to radically re-think refugee assistance.

Featured image credit: refugees accept scotland by Richgold. Public domain via Pixabay.

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