Oxford University Press's Blog, page 355

Did branding predict Brexit?

Branding predicted Brexit. This bald assertion points to a fascinating truth about the art of branding. Because branding feeds on, and feeds into, popular culture, it’s often a leading indicator of bigger, political phenomena. Where branding leads, the rest of us follow. Let me explain.

2016 was the year of populism. Among other things, the phenomenon of Brexit and Trump was a popular backlash against globalisation – the corporate mainstream of the last 30 years. It signalled the end of an era: the political and economic consensus that started with Thatcherism in Britain and Reaganomics in America. Suddenly, people rose up against the negative effects of globalisation – the inequalities it has produced, and its failure in the last ten years to increase household incomes.

So have people also rebelled against branding? Branding is a phenomenon that’s similarly global, also corporate, and that also reached its peak in the last 30 years. Reagan and Thatcher championed the idea of the market, and wherever there’s a market, there’s branding. Competitors in any market need to signal what they stand for, how they’re different, why they’re better – and that’s what branding does. Rejecting pure market economics, you could argue, also implies questioning the whole business of branding.

There’s certainly a spectacular growth in mistrust of large branded corporations. In a 2017 survey by the PR company Edelman, only 58% of people trusted businesses, and this figure was falling in 18 countries. Powered by the internet, people are better informed, more sceptical, and less deferential. Consumers are certainly less loyal to the big brands. According to a 2015 study, 90% of the leading household goods brands in America are losing market share.

But people continue to buy branded goods. We might reject unfettered market capitalism, but that doesn’t stop us going shopping. In many ways, branding is more powerful than ever. The VW emissions scandal did terrible damage to the company’s reputation, but somehow its brand emerged unscathed. People still like the brand, and still buy the cars.

In fact, branding responds very quickly to changes in the popular mood, to shifts in the zeitgeist – faster than politicians. For that reason, it pays to watch what’s going on at the frontiers of branding, because it may tell you what’s about to happen more broadly in society. And in particular, it pays to have a look at what big companies are doing that seem to break the conventional rules of branding.

For example, branding prefigured the populist rejection of the global in favour of the local, in a phenomenon called ‘debranding.’ Starbucks has stores in Seattle that look like neighbourhood coffee shops. The bookseller Waterstones has stores disguised as (for example) Southwold Books. Companies like this want to look like citizens of somewhere, not citizens of the world. And there’s a remarkable new demand for things – from bread to beer – that are local, artisan, craft-based and, seemingly, unbranded.

Share a Coke Name Promotional Coca Cola Bottle by Mike Mozart. CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr.

Branding for a while has championed the past – the good old days when America or Britain were ‘great’ – another feature of populism. Dozens of companies, particularly retailers, now include their heritage in their logo. The UK supermarket Morrisons is now ‘Morrisons since 1899.’ Marks & Spencer is ‘M&S est 1884.’ John Lewis is ‘Never knowingly undersold since 1925.’

Branding even anticipated populism’s support for the ordinary person against the institution. To take a trivial example, in 2013, Coca-Cola replaced its name on its cans with people’s names. Superficial perhaps, but a significant gesture by one of the world’s most valuable brands.

How does this happen? As the popular mood changes, often at a subterranean level, branding people notice. As people started to feel uncomfortable about globalisation, branding started to respond. This isn’t usually sinister manipulation by cynical strategists: more often, it’s creative people responding intuitively to the atmosphere around them. Branding people are very finely tuned to twitches in contemporary culture. And sometimes they start the twitches themselves. Or branding that’s a response to a mood change in one country becomes a stimulus to that change in another.

Branding is an example of how the corporate mainstream preserves itself. Global business can quickly morph, or put on a new coat, in order to survive. But more interestingly, it’s worth watching where branding goes next. In the last couple of weeks, we’ve seen the rise of ‘brutalist’ design in user interfaces with brands like Instagram. Simpler and more childlike visuals for Häagen-Dazs. And in the branding consultancy where I work, the emergence of branding based on Chinese philosophy, and on the aura of artificial intelligence. What does all this tell us about the referendums and elections of the 2020s?

Meanwhile, as globalisation falters, branding as a cultural practice seems unstoppable. All those local, artisan craft breweries are, of course, exquisitely branded.

Featured image credit: twitter facebook together by LoboStudioHamburg. Public domain via Pixabay.

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World Elder Abuse Awareness Day: A reading list on elder mistreatment and neglect

The abuse and mistreatment of older adults is a devastating and widespread social problem that spans all social classes, races, genders, religions and nations. An estimated four to six percent of the more than 725 million older adults worldwide have experienced some form of mistreatment, often at the hands of the very people entrusted with their care. In the United States, experts estimate that as many as 10% of adults ages 65+ have experienced mistreatment. Elder mistreatment comes in many forms, including neglect, financial exploitation, and emotional, physical, and sexual abuse.

This abuse and neglect of older adults violates the cultural expectation that society’s elders should be respected. Mistreatment has far-reaching implications for the physical, mental and financial well-being of older adults, and is particularly harmful to those who are already socially isolated. Recognizing the magnitude and severity of this problem, in 2011 the United Nations General Assembly, in its resolution 66/127, designated 15 June as World Elder Abuse Awareness Day. It represents the one day each year when the entire world is called on to recognize and voice its opposition to the abuse and suffering inflicted on older adults. In recognition of World Elder Abuse Day and in solidarity with older adults who have experienced mistreatment, we have created a reading list of recent articles from Gerontological Society of America journals that reveal the sources, consequences, and possible interventions to address elder abuse worldwide.

Elder Abuse: Global Situation, Risk Factors, and Prevention Strategies by Karl Pillemer, David Burnes, Catherine Riffin, and Mark S. Lachs in The Gerontologist.

This article provide an overview of the global context of elder abuse, with a focus on prevention. The authors identify the characteristics of the victim, abuser, relationship between the two, local community, and broader social context that are sources of risk and resilience. The study identifies five promising strategies for prevention: multidisciplinary team approaches (particularly in countries where the service system is sufficiently developed to require coordination); helplines for potential victims; financial management for elders at risk of financial exploitation; caregiver support interventions; and emergency shelter for victims.

Perceived Quality of Life following Elder Mistreatment in Rural India by Srinivasan Chokkanathan and Aravindhan Natarajan in Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences.

Drawing on theories of resilience, the authors investigate factors that protect against declines in quality of life among older adults experiencing mistreatment in rural Tamil Nadu, India. Results show that being single, hailing from a low income family, high levels of relationship strain, and experiencing more than one type of mistreatment were associated with decreased quality of life. High levels of mastery and social support were associated with better quality of life following mistreatment. Resources that protect one’s well-being are effective only for those experiencing relatively low levels of mistreatment, shedding light on the need for resources to help the most severely abused.

Elder Mistreatment Among Chinese American Families: Do Acculturation and Traditionalism Matter?  by XiangGao, Fei Sun, and David R. Hodge in  Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences.

This study used survey and focus group data to understand abuse and neglect among the under-researched population of Chinese-American older adults. The main goal was to understand whether acculturation (adopting and integrating US cultures and practices) versus traditionalism (maintaining Chinese beliefs and practices) were linked to older adults’ experiences of abuse. They found that acculturation was linked with higher levels of abuse, although traditionalism was not protective. The authors conclude that prevention efforts should focus on building “bi-cultural” identities among both older adults and their adult children.

Varying Appraisals of Elder Mistreatment among Victims: Findings from a Population-Based Study by David Burnes, Mark S. Lachs, Denise Burnette, and Karl Pillemer in  Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences.

Most studies of elder mistreatment use service provider data or victim reports of whether they were abused, with little attention to victims’ subjective assessments of the experience. This study examined victims’ appraisals of perceived seriousness of emotional abuse, physical abuse, and neglect.  Emotional abuse was appraised less seriously among victims who were both functionally impaired and dependent upon the perpetrator, lived with the perpetrator, and of older age. Emotional abuse was perceived with greater seriousness among victims enduring more frequent or varied abuse and when the perpetrator was less closely related. These findings may help social service workers to identify populations at greatest risk of severe mistreatment.

Using Latent Class Analysis to Identify Profiles of Elder Abuse Perpetrators by Marguerite DeLiema et al. in Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences.

Efforts to stem elder abuse require an understanding of perpetrators, as well as victims. This study uses latent class analysis to identify distinctive profiles of elder abuse perpetrators. Using both victim and caseworker data provided by Adult Protective Service (APS), the researchers identified four profiles of abusers: Caregiver, Temperamental, Dependent Caregiver, and Dangerous. Dangerous abusers evidenced the highest levels of aggression, financial dependency, substance abuse, and irresponsibility. Caregivers are lowest in harmful characteristics and highest in providing emotional and instrumental support to victims. The authors recommend tailored interventions to reduce problem behaviors and enhance strengths specific to each abuser profile.

A Systematic Review of Sexual Assaults in Nursing Homes by Daisy Smith, Lyndal Bugeja, Nicola Cunningham, and Joseph E. Ibrahim in The Gerontologist.

Over the past decade, reports of sexual abuse in nursing home have captured extensive media attention. This study explores published studies on the topic, and found that sexual assault is the least reported type of assault in nursing homes. Victims of sexual assault were likely to be women with cognitive or physical impairments. Perpetrators were likely to be male residents, although staff members were occasionally the perpetrators too. The results highlight the need for better staff training in detecting, examining, and managing sexual assaults in nursing homes.

Featured image credit: old hands by Jack Thacker. Public domain via Unsplash.

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The tale of Madame d’Aulnoy

We may see fairy tales now as something from our youth, a story to get a child to sleep, keep them from boredom, or to teach a moral lesson. However, fairy tales haven’t always just been for kids. In late seventeenth-century France the fairy tale became a ‘legitimate’ genre of literature for the educated (adult) classes to read.

Fairy tales were introduced in to literary salons by a group of gifted female writers, including Mme d’Aulnoy, Mme d’Auneuil, Mme de Murat, Mlle Lhéritier, and Mme de La Force. The below video provides a brief introduction to this era of fairy tales and the most famous French writer of fairy tales (after Charles Perrault): Mme d’Aulnoy.

Are you intrigued by this group of women, and want to learn more? Then keep reading for some interesting facts about d’Aulnoy and fairy tales in seventeenth-century France:

This group of writers were the first to designate this literary genre as a fairy tale, or contes de fees, with the narratives varying between 10 and 60 pages in length.
During the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth century, fairy tales reflected changes happening in King Louis XIV’s court.
d’Aulnoy’s Histoire d’Hypolite, comte de Duglas (or the Story of Hypolitus, Count of Douglas) was the first literary fairy tale published in the French language.
A number of the fairy tales written by this group of writers grapple with the question of love. In several tales written by d’Auneuil, she provides a critical perspective, rejecting the conventional idea of a happy ending. Whereas Murat treated love from multiple perspectives – for example in Anguillette passionate love overrides temperance, which leads to tragedy.
Almost 30% of the French fairy tales that appeared in English between 1691 and 1729 were written by d’Aulnoy.
Lhéritier, the niece of Charles Perrault, was the writer of the first literary version of Rumpelstiltskin, originally made famous by the Brothers Grimm, called Ricdin-Ricdon.
Strong heroines play a significant role in many of d’Aulnoy’s tales, for example the heroine Finette-Cendron is a resolutely active character, combining the qualities of Thumbelina and Cinderella.

Featured image credit: Photograph by Jovi Waqa. CC0 1.0 Public Domain via Unsplash .

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Mid-June etymology gleanings

From the life of words

John Cowan pointed out that queer “quaint, odd” can be and is still used today despite its latest (predominant) sense. Yes, I know. Quite intentionally, I sometimes use the phrase queer smile. It usually arouses a few embarrassed grins. My students assume that a man in the winter of his days is so un-cool that he does not know what this adjective now means. I have never tried queer smell and will probably not risk it, but I once wrote a post on qualm (13 August 2014), whose German cognate means “dense smoke”—a queer pair, when you come to think of it. Peter Maher sent me an ad about a store, announcing twenty things to do in Intercourse, all of them quite innocent and unexciting. He also reminds us of the famous word homely, “unattractive” in North America, but “cozy” on the other side of the Atlantic. By contrast, homey, I think, has positive connotations everywhere. All kinds of impulses can come from home. Thus, Icelandic heimskur (-sk is a suffix, and –ur is a masculine ending) means “foolish,” for a benighted stay-at-home has not seen the world, and the result could be predicted. In German, heimisch is “native, indigenous, local; familiar,” while heimlich (the same root with a different suffix) means “secret” (kept at home and hidden from others, as it were).

A queer smile.

The comment on liberal was most interesting. I am so used to the American meaning of liberal “left-leaning” that I forgot (assuming that I ever knew it) vastly different, even opposite senses. Ever since the French revolution, left has meant “radical,” but lo and behold! even this usage is not universal. I am of course aware of the baffling differences between the meanings of the “same” word in Swedish and Danish, Russian and Polish/Czech, etc. As for jewelry, yes, there is a diphthong in it, but a rather unsteady one, and its second element is not too prominent in rapid speech.

In connection with this diphthong I would like to tell a story. About ten years ago, at the very beginning of the existence of this blog, I was asked who introduced the term schwa into Indo-European linguistics. Schwa (in transcription, the letter e upside down), it will be remembered, is the vowel we hear in the words about, lament, and even sofa.  In the r-less dialects of English, worker has it. I hoped I could find the answer in ten minutes and, naturally, began with Jacob Grimm, for he coined terms like umlaut, ablaut, and a few others. However, schwa did not show up in Grimm. Then I tried Karl Brugmann and Ferdinand de Saussure, who too could have been the originators of the term, and again found nothing. At last I turned to Eduard Sievers, the author of the ground-breaking book The Foundations of Sound Physiology (1876), in later editions called The Foundations of Phonetics (in German: Grundzüge der Lautphysiologie and Grundzüge der Phonetik). Yes, it was he who first used the name of a Hebrew sound for “the neutral” vowel of Indo-European! Some time ago, for the needs of this blog, I looked up schwa in Wikipedia. The term, it is said there, was introduced by Jacob Grimm. The cautious editor supplied this statement with the note citation needed. Yes, indeed. Wikipedia is a most reliable source, and I am sure that the person who wrote the article on schwa went my way but left off when the spoor turned cold. He made a natural mistake: the sought for linguist could have been Jacob Grimm, but it was not!

This is the transcription sign of schwa; and this is Eduard Sievers, the great scholar who introduced schwa into Indo-European studies.
Hunting metaphors

There must be dozens of them, for hunting and poaching played an outstanding role in the life of the English. Hunting was the main pursuit of the European aristocracy and could not but find a strong reflection in the languages of the Middle Ages. One such idiom I did use in the text of my post on the phrase at bay, 17 May 2017 (hunt with the hounds and run with the hare—a miracle of natural alliteration), and, considering the fact that there is a book or at least an article on everything in the world, I am sure that such idioms have been collected. Here I can only cite those that have occurred to me on the spur of the moment: bark up the wrong tree, wild goose chase, and perhaps witch hunt, and head hunt. To make up for the paucity of examples, I’ll quote the end of one of the most beautiful lyrics written in English: “Home is the sailor, home from the sea/ And a hunter home from the hill.” Those are the last lines of Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Requiem.”

And the hunter home from the hill.
The verb bay and sound imitation in etymology

The definition of bay is “to bark with prolonged tones.” Thus, bay is a close synonym of howl. It may well be of imitative origin, a relative of bow-wow and woof-woof. Onomatopoeic words are numerous. The effect sometimes depends on vowels and sometimes on consonants. A classic example of a “laryngeal” word is the verb laugh. Its etymon is hlahjan, with h and in Scots loch. We have here a formation of the same type as cluck, click, clack, and even clock. Laugh designated a guttural noise that had nothing to do with merriment. The literature on onomatopoeia and its role in the formation of the human language and in etymology is enormous.

The verb bay is especially common in this situation.
English spelling is in good shape

Mr. Madhukar Gogate informs me that it is unpractical to change English spelling and that in India, a country in which millions of people use the English language, no one will support the reform. As far as I can judge, the rest of the world has the same opinion. Well, if the world stands pat, we’ll keep wasting money and brain cells on learning our hieroglyphs. Every group of people deserves the spelling it has. At one time, a representative spelling congress was being planned, but for quite some time I have not heard any mention of it. Dictionary makers, etymologists, and spelling reformers must live long.

Singular or plural?

Some time ago, I quoted an example like the one below, and the reactions to it were mixed. In my opinion, this usage need not be banned but should hardly be recommended. It is reminiscent of the well-known agreement of the verb with the closest noun of the type the mood of the tales are gloomy. “While I am proud to call myself a progressive and a Democrat, this kind of political correctness is one of the things that evoke among the average person a negative reaction toward progressives….” The subject is one, not things. Also, I am a bit puzzled by the use of among referring to the average person.

Finally, my thanks are due to Stephen Goranson for informing me about The Athenian Mercury and The Athenian Oracle. I had no notion they existed. As could be expected, the University of Minnesota owns both, and I will read them. Some amusing etymologies may turn up there. Incidentally, on the Internet, I have seen a long discussion about whether one should say thanks are or thanks is due. The plural seems more natural. This is as sure as eggs is eggs.

Image credits: (1) “Wry Smile” by Phil Warren, CC BY 2.0 via Flickr. (2) “Schwa” by Lfdder, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. (3) “Eduard Sievers” by Unknown, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. (4) “Robert Louis Stevenson at the age of 27.” by Unknown, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. (5 and featured) “Dog wolf yelp moon” by Pezibear, Public Domain via Pixabay.

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UKIP: death by overdose of success or a premature obituary?

In 2006, the political scientist Lieven De Winter pronounced “overdose of success” as the cause of death of the Belgian autonomist party, the Volksunie (People’s Union). This party was defined by its fight for the creation of a Belgian federal state – a major devolution of powers from the central government to regional authorities.

The Volkunie was a perpetual thorn in the side of mainstream political parties since its first significant parliamentary gains in the 1960’s. Over time, electoral pressure from the Volksunie led to mainstream parties gradually adopting their own versions of a devolutionary agenda. After four successive state reforms from 1970-1993, each one handing more power to regional authorities, Belgium finally proclaimed itself a federal state.

Its political mission achieved, the Volksunie faded significantly in the polls, while its members lost a sense of purpose. It was left for dead in 2001. Some of the more moderate members found comfortable refuge in mainstream parties, while a faction of radical autonomists for whom devolution was never enough helped breathe life into a new party, the N-VA (New Flemish Alliance).

The N-VA would not make the mistake of being a one-issue party, developing instead a comprehensive and distinctive socioeconomic platform. Yet a cornerstone of its policy programme was to take the Volksunie agenda even further and seek out the complete secession of Flanders from Belgium. Traditional parties have refused to usurp this agenda, maintaining commitment to a unified Belgium. With a meteoric rise in the polls, the N-VA is now the largest party in Belgium and in a governing coalition.

Death by overdose of success?

The trajectory of the United Kingdom Independence Party bears some striking resemblances to the rise and fall of the Volksunie.

UKIP’s driving goal has always been for the UK to leave the EU. Its anti-immigrant rhetoric, concretely translating into a demand for full national control over migration policy, folded nicely into the case for leaving the EU and its free movement regime.

The party dramatically increased its vote share in local, national and European elections on virtually every occasion since it first contested elections in 1994. While this resulted in just one seat at Westminster in 2015, UKIP gained 150 local seats in 2013 and became the biggest British party in the European Parliament in 2014.

This increasingly intense electoral pressure only partly impacted on mainstream parties initially, primarily by emboldening UKIP-sympathizers in the Conservative Party to raise the question of EU membership and growing migration numbers more vocally. By 2010 the Conservative Party was attempting to draw the anti-immigrant vote away from UKIP, with an electoral pledge to drastically reduce net migration to the tens of thousands. Failure to execute this policy when in government did little to stem the onward march of UKIP.

The UK Border at Heathrow Airport by Dannyman. CC-BY-2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Not wishing to adopt an anti-EU position, Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron’s decision to hold a referendum on EU membership was widely seen as a party-political gamble. Should he convince the British people to remain in the EU, it was expected, internal dissent among Euro-sceptical Conservatives would run silent and UKIP would be discredited to the extent that it failed to convince voters on its core policy issue.

The eventual decision of the British people to leave the EU on 23 June 2016, in an advisory referendum, effectively turned withdrawal from the EU into the de facto policy of both the Conservative and Labour parties.

Although the UK is not yet out of the EU, and the terms on which the exit will take place are not clear, UKIP’s mission is widely perceived as complete. In the May 2017 local elections, it lost all of its local seats and its national vote share collapsed in this month’s Westminster elections.

The only venue where UKIP’s voice continues to have a strong presence is the European Parliament. All of these seats will vanish with Brexit in 2019.

A premature obituary? 

But is it premature to write UKIP’s obituary as it appears to overdose on its own success, muck like the Volksunie? And is there the political space for a new and more sophisticated movement to emerge from its ashes, analogous to the N-VA’s development?

A resurgent UKIP, or a new and more durable offshoot party, is not a very strong possibility in the near future. A ‘soft’ Brexit combined with a possible failure to significantly reduce immigration numbers could give new impetus for some to continue the fight for a deeper severing of ties from the EU and a more restrictive migration policy.

Yet the challenge of doing this will be greater than before.

First, UKIP, or its successor, would no longer be able to rely on the visibility it gained from representation in the European Parliament. Instead, it would have to rebuild its local support from scratch and do far better in national elections than it was ever before capable.

Second, a ‘hard’ Brexit or extreme immigration policy is by no means universally preferred by those enthusiastic to leave the EU. Many previous UKIP voters defected to the Labour Party, known for its more moderate position on Brexit and immigration, in the June 2017 national elections. This suggests that, with some kind of Brexit guaranteed and a tightening of migration policy likely under any government, a large portion of Euro-sceptical voters now feel free to use their vote for selecting parties on the basis of more ordinary domestic issues.

Third, the new UKIP would have to contrast itself with a different kind of Conservative Party, one that has proved increasingly ready when under enough electoral pressure to undermine UKIP support by embracing its main policy goals.

An unlikely lifeline remains that could save UKIP, or transform it into a more durable movement. Progress towards a soft Brexit may lead to the defection of some hard-line Euro-sceptic MPs from the Conservative Party to form an alliance with what remains of the UKIP base. Such an infusion of experienced and electable party politicians could provide the impetus for an invigorated and more sophisticated multi-issue right-wing movement in the UK. And with its more radical members gone, the Conservatives would find it difficult to match this emergent right-wing agenda, making the new movement genuinely distinct.

UKIP may be on life support, and very likely dead in the not too distant future, with low prospects for revival. But in these times of political surprises, the obituary must be postponed.

Featured image credit: HighVis UKIP by Jennifer Jane Mills. CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr.

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“Finding Clarity” [an extract from Martin Luther]

The foundation of Protestantism changed the religious landscape of Europe, and subsequently the world. Heinz Schilling traces the life of Martin Luther and shows him not simply as a reformer, but also as an individual. The following extract looks at the aftermath following the publication of Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses.

Luther did not become a reformer overnight. The publication of his Ninety-Five Theses was only the opening act in a back and forth, rife with tension, involving his continuing intellectual and personal development as professor at the university in Wittenberg, on one hand, and complex external events that became part of the everyday existence, on the other. In a multifaceted process for which he did not bear sole responsibility, events beyond the university turned the Augustinian monk into one of the most prominent figures of his age. He was borne through these months and years on a wave of approval and admiration, but he also faced biting criticism that challenged him to the core, even to the extent of being accused of heresy, which put his life on the line: ‘In three weeks I will have the heretic in the fire and he will go to heaven in a bath cap,’ Tetzel had sworn as early as 1517.

Within a few weeks Tetzel’s words reached Luther, who now lived in the shadow of that all-too-real threat. Those who criticized the church could not easily shake off the memory of the bonfire lit in Constance some hundred years earlier to silence Jan Hus, the ‘heretical’ Czech reformer.

The situation seemed all the more dangerous as in October 1518, one year after Luther had published his Ninety-Five Theses, it was impossible to predict whether the electoral Saxon ruler would stand by him in the long run or whether Frederick would decide to distance himself from his criticized professor. When Luther learned that Karl von Miltitz, Rome’s special legate, was on his way to the Saxon elector and had with him ‘three papal letters in order to arrest me and hand me over to the pope’, he prepared himself for the worst—for imprisonment, death, or, as the best of the worst, banishment to France, an idea that Cajetan the papal legate, had thrown in the mix. Whatever the outcome, he was clear ‘that in this matter and on other matters I must make haste’, by which he meant that he had to give his newly discovered truth both written and organizational roots in order that it might not be stifled should he die or be imprisoned: ‘In order that they don’t kill me when I am unprepared or weigh down on me with punishments,’ he recorded, ‘I have organized everything and await God’s decision.’ As a precaution he had instructed his community in Wittenberg, ‘Live well…should I not return’, exhorting them ‘not to be alarmed by the enraged papal punishments directed against me…but rather to leave this matter and similar things to God’.

Before he was able to exclaim in Worms, ‘I’ve made it through,’ Luther had to live through a dramatic period during which he continued to work, undeterred, on the essential of his new theology. In this existential crisis he acquired an inner strength that subsequently, from the mid-1520s, enabled him to promote the reorganization of church, state, and society with the authority of a prophet sent by God. The anxieties and exertions of all his travel, poorly equipped and undertaken largely on foot, unleashed a range of troubling physical complaints with emotional origins, above all stock pains and agonizing constipation. Having suffered on his journey in 1518 to Augsburg, where he was questioned by Cajetan, the papal legate, Luther was tormented by the same ailments all the more when he travelled to Worms in spring 1521.

Yet during these testing times Luther’s theology assumed its definitive Reformation from while Luther’s character acquired the steeliness that left the reformer equal to the demands and attacks of the following decades. Luther interpreted his physical pains as assaults by the devil and therefore as a sure sign that his truth was from God and could not be halted by a human hand, no matter what burdens his body might have to bear. In a letter written in late autumn 1518 to Spalatin and the Electoral Saxon government in which he informed them that the curia was about to take action against his freedom and perhaps even his life, he could still assure his friend, ‘I am full of joy and peace and lecture and teach as before.’

Featured image credit: Martin Luther in Augsburg vor Kardinal Cajetan. Woodcut. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons . 

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Kafka’s The Trial [extract]

Last Tuesday, during our first Classics Book Club at Bryant Park of the season, Bruce Bauman (author of Broken Sleep) led a discussion of The Trial by Franz Kafka. Among many other interesting takeaways, Bauman described The Trial as “an affirmation of life, art, and of the necessity to continue against great odds.” He went on to explain that “the greatest thing art can do is increase your perception and give you hope” and stated that “a society that does not value art will starve.”

The following excerpt from the introduction of The Trail, well-known Kafka scholar Ritchie Robertson considers the many enigmas in the novel and the different interpretations to which it has been subject.

Ever since Aeschylus’ Oresteia, the motif of the trial has been fundamental to literature. Ideally, the trial serves to bring the truth to light and to assign people their just deserts. In practice, literature questions and complicates this simple conception of a trial. It shows that the meaning and purpose of a trial depend on the legal system, the society, and the people among whom it is conducted. An unjust judge may himself be put on trial, as in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. The legal system may be so heavily satirized, as in Dickens’s Bleak House, as to make it doubtful whether a trial can resolve anything of importance. Or it may be suggested, as in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, that a judicial investigation opens up a series of moral and ultimately religious problems which no legal system can handle.

In Kafka’s The Trial, there is no courtroom scene in which the issues are debated by lawyers before a judge. In keeping with the continental system in which Kafka, a law graduate, was trained, the procedure is not adversarial but inquisitorial. Once Josef K. is arrested, an examining magistrate inquires into the case against him. Hearings are held. K. engages a lawyer to advise and defend him. He hears of a vast, impenetrable legal organization, where the highest judges are wholly inaccessible, and where the trial merges imperceptibly into the verdict. No charge against Josef K. is ever formulated. The real trial is elsewhere. It may be, as Heinz Politzer argued, that we should read the novel as a ‘trial against the court’, in which the court is gradually exposed as relentless and malicious. Or perhaps we should see the trial of Josef K. as moral rather than legal: the question is not whether he is guilty of a misdemeanour, but how he responds to the increasing pressure under which the court places him. On this reading, it is Josef K.’s whole character, the extent of his human and spiritual resources, that is put on trial.

Given the vast implications of the trial metaphor, we need not expect Kafka’s own biography to yield more than trivial clues to the meaning of the novel. Nevertheless, it is striking that the main female character, Fräulein Bürstner, is usually referred to in Kafka’s manuscript by the abbreviation ‘F.B.’, which also forms the initials of his fiancée Felice Bauer. Soon after their first meeting, in August 1912, Kafka began to correspond with her — she lived in Berlin, he in Prague — and on 1 June 1914 they celebrated their official engagement. Kafka, however, had profound misgivings about marriage. It would provide an escape from solitude, but then solitude was what he needed in order to write. In his diary he wrote that at the engagement party he was ‘chained like a criminal’ (6 June 1914). Very unwisely, Kafka confided his doubts in letters to Felice’s friend Grete Bloch, who passed the bulk of the letters on to Felice. Learning about the misgivings which he had concealed from her, Felice was understandably furious. She summoned Kafka to what he described as a ‘court’ in a Berlin hotel, where she was supported by her sister Erna and by Grete Bloch (diary, 23 July 1914). It was in the aftermath of this experience that Kafka began writing The Trial.

After writing the first long section, beginning with Josef K.’s arrest and leading up to his sexual assault on Fräulein Bürstner, Kafka immediately turned to the last chapter, in which K. is executed exactly a year after his arrest. This was in part a precautionary measure. From the difficulties he had already had in writing The Man Who Disappeared, Kafka knew that his stories tended to run away with him, especially as he did not make plans, drafts, or sketches, but relied on the inspiration of the moment. But it also shows that the fictional K. had to be punished, and that his punishment would in some undefined way be connected with his treatment of F.B. In the final chapter, as K. is being led to his execution, he tries to resist his executioners. Just then, however, somebody who is either Fräulein Bürstner, or strongly resembles her, appears in front of them, and K. instantly feels that his resistance is pointless. In Kafka’s original conception, therefore, K.’s relations with Fräulein Bürstner were to give the novel its overarching coherence.

As Kafka worked further on the novel, its shape became less clear. Each chapter he wrote was placed in a separate folder with a brief indication of its contents (corresponding to the chapter headings in the published text). Not all of the chapters were finished. Even the long and important chapter in which K. dismisses his lawyer breaks off in the middle of the action. Others tell us more about figures who are only mentioned briefly in the completed chapters, such as K.’s mother, his girlfriend Elsa, and the state prosecutor Hasterer.

Featured image credit: “Law, Justice…” by Activedia. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.

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Famous doctors from the ancient world

Drastic advances in science have caused past medical practices to become not only antiquated, but often shocking. Although brilliant medical insights are peppered throughout history, many dated practices are more curious than insightful. From an early take on chemical warfare to human dissections, the following shortened excerpt from A Cabinet of Ancient Medical Curiosities includes short facts and quotes on some of the most famous doctors from the Ancient World.

Hippocrates

Though he is regarded as the founder of the Western medical tra­dition, Hippocrates is an extremely shadowy figure. About seventy treatises are attributed to him but, since there are numerous significant contradictions between one treatise and another, they cannot all have been written by the same person. It is in fact quite probable that Hippocrates himself wrote none of them. With this proviso, it is con­ventional to refer to him as the author of them all.

Few ancient Greek texts have been as influential in the Western cul­tural tradition as the so-called Hippocratic Oath. It is included in the Hippocratic corpus, but there is little evidence that it was actually used much in antiquity. The first certain reference to it is not ear­lier than the first century AD, in the preface to Scribonius Largus’s Prescriptions:

A doctor, being bound by the sacred oath of the medical profession, will not give a harmful drug even to his country’s enemies, for all that he will attack those same enemies in his capacity as a soldier and a good citizen.

Composite portrait of Hippocrates designed from a study of ancient medals and coins. Credit: “Hippocrates” provided by Wellcome Library, London. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Even in Hippocrates’s own family, there would seem to have been no scruples about using drugs in warfare. His son Thessalus appealed to the Athenians to help his homeland of Cos in return for the benefits that their army, afflicted with an infectious dis­ease while conducting a siege, had once received from his ances­tor Nebros, “who was universally regarded as the greatest Greek doctor of his time”:

The arrival of Nebros in the Athenian camp delighted the god Apollo, who had caused the plague. The soldiers stopped dying and by a divine chance the commander’s horse, while rolling in the dust, struck its hoof against the underground pipe through which water was led inside the city wall. Nebros poisoned the water with drugs, and this destroyed the defenders’ entrails and contributed significantly to the taking of the city (Pseudo- Hippocrates, The Embassy Speech).

Herophilus and Erasistratus

Herophilus of Chalcedon and Erasistratus of Ceos are the physicians most closely associated with medical studies in Alexandria in the first half of the third century BC, in the brief period when human dissec­tion was practiced freely:

When someone asked Herophilus for a definition of the perfect doctor, he replied, “The one who is capable of distinguishing between what is possible and what is impossible” (Stobaeus, Anthology).

Herophilus, that famous doctor (or should I say butcher?), cut up hun­dreds and hundreds of people so as to pry into nature, and he put aside human feelings for the sake of gaining knowledge. But I doubt whether his investigations of the internal organs were really clear, given that the process of dying changes living organisms, especially when the manner of death is not straightforward, but rather such as to cause distortions during the dissection (Tertullian, On the Soul).

Dioscorides

It is fairly certain that Dioscorides wrote his highly influential Medical Material in the middle of the first century AD. Manuscripts of the work report his name as Pedanius Dioscorides Anazarbeus. From this we learn that he came from the obscure Cilician town of Anazarbus (now in eastern Turkey) and that he may have owed his Roman citizenship to the patronage of the powerful Pedanii family. The most prominent Pedanius at this period was Lucius Pedanius Secundus who, while serving as Prefect of Rome, was murdered by one of his slaves for making homosexual advances to him. By senatorial decree in response to the murder, all four hundred of his household slaves, including women and children, were put to death. It is remarkable to suppose that this Pedanius might well have been the patron of the author of one of antiquity’s greatest medical texts.

Galen

Though well over half of his known works are lost, Galen is by far the most voluminous author to survive from classical antiquity. That is not to say, however, that he altogether deserves the reputation for verbosity he has had imposed on him. Usually, his instinct for ensuring clarity requires him to write at length. There are, how­ever, quite a few exceptions. He devotes several pages at the beginning of The Function of the Parts of the Body to establishing that it is not physically possible for Centaurs to exist or function efficiently: the human front half would require different food from the horse back half, and just imagine a Centaur climbing a ladder or rowing a boat or writing a book, and so on and on. But since this passage seems to be a rare instance of Galen attempting humor, perhaps we should be grateful to have it.

Featured image credit: “bach-flower-therapy-bach-flowers” by stux. Public domain via Pixabay.

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Has war been declining?

Is the world becoming less belligerent and more peaceful? This proposition encounters widespread disbelief, as most people are very surprised by the claim that we live in the most peaceful period in history. Are we not flooded with reports and images in the media of conflicts around the world today, some of them very active and bloody, and others seemingly waiting to happen? Have the United States and its allies not been repeatedly involved in a series of messy wars over the past few decades? Alternatively, is the relative peacefulness of today’s world not attributable to a transient American hegemony since the collapse of the Soviet Union, to a fleeting post-Cold War moment? Are we not tempted by a resurfacing of old illusions that will again be dispelled by the rise of China to a superpower status, by a resurgent Russia, or by vicious wars in south or Central Asia, the Middle East, and Africa?

The notion that war is declining first appeared in Europe and the West during the nineteenth-century, the most peaceful in European history up until then. But it seemed to have been brutally shattered by the two world wars. These were followed by the Cold War, a clash of titans which arguably did not turn hot and develop into a third world war, only, or primarily, because of nuclear deterrence.

And yet, even before and increasingly after the end of the Cold War, new claims about the decline of war have commanded attention. From the 1970s onwards, the initially startling finding that modern democratic/liberal societies hardly ever fight each other has progressively gained credence. An alternative or complementary theory has suggested that what we are witnessing is a capitalist rather than democratic peace.

Thus, several questions call for answers. First, has war really been declining? Second, if it has, why is that so? Which of the various theories that have been aired explains the decline: a nuclear peace of mutual deterrence; the notion that war, even in conventional forms, had simply become far too lethal, ruinous, and expensive to indulge in, or, when looked at from the other direction, that it no longer promises rewards; the idea that war has always been a big mistake, and was finally being got rid of as people became wiser and sick of it; a democratic peace; a capitalist peace; and peace through international institutions. How valid is each of these explanations? How do they relate to, supplant, or complement one another?

 Is the world becoming less belligerent and more peaceful? This proposition encounters widespread disbelief, as most people are very surprised by the claim that we live in the most peaceful period in history.

Third, what is the time frame of the decline in belligerency, if indeed this has taken place? Did it begin, as various scholars hold, with the end of the Cold War, in 1945, in 1918, or in the nineteenth-century? Clearly, the answer to this question may also offer a vital clue as to the causes of the change.

People have always alternated between the three behavioural options of cooperation, peaceful competition, and violence to attain evolution-shaped human desires. Developments since the onset of the industrial age from 1815 onwards have radically shifted the calculus of war and peace towards the two peaceful options, sharply decreasing belligerency in the parts of the world affected by the process of modernization. Rather than war becoming more costly in terms of life and resources, as many believe to be the case (not so), the real change is that peace has become more rewarding. The Modernization Peace concept scrutinizes, contextualizes, and encompasses within a comprehensive framework the various peace theories advanced over the past few decades, and shows the more valid ones to be elements of a greater whole. By now, war has disappeared within the world’s most developed areas and survives only in its less developed, developing, and undeveloped parts.

Finally, the Modernization Peace concept has been disrupted in the past, most conspicuously during the two world wars, and challenges to it still arise. Challenges include claimants to alternative modernity—such as China and Russia, still much behind in levels of development and affluence—anti-modernists, and failed modernizers that may spawn terrorism, potentially unconventional. While the world has become more peaceful than ever before, with war unprecedentedly disappearing in its most developed parts, there is still much to worry about in terms of security and there is no place for complacency.

Featured image credit: Paratrooper Returns Fire in Afghanistan MOD by Sgt Anthony Boocock, RLC. OGL via Wikimedia Commons.

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The life and times of Clement Attlee, the man who created modern Britain [Timeline]

The Labour Party of Great Britain was formed in 1900 and during the early decades of the century struggled as the opposition to Conservative Party, forming minority governments, under Ramsay McDonald, for only brief periods. Clement Attlee, representing London’s East End in Parliament, was there through those early struggles, a witness to Labour’s near annihilation in 1931, when it was reduced to just fifty-two seats in Parliament, and a central figure in its slow recovery over the following decade. He became the Labour leader in 1935, bringing the party into the wartime coalition in 1940, siding with Winston Churchill at Britain’s proverbial darkest hour. In 1945, the war over, Labour won an overwhelming mandate to carry out the most radical program ever presented to the British electorate by a major party. Attlee replaced Churchill as prime minister.

It is not always easy to separate Attlee, the individual, from the achievements of his government of 1945 to 1951. It was once said of the enigmatic Attlee that he was like a cricket ball—the higher he rose, the more difficult he became to capture. This timeline highlights major events in Attlee’s life, and the career of perhaps the most consequential British prime minister in the 20th century aside from Churchill and Margaret Thatcher.

Featured image credit: The Palace of Westminster in London, the meeting place of the Parliament of the United Kingdom by Mike Gimelfarb. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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