Oxford University Press's Blog, page 835

Memories of Andy Calder

By Susan Gathercole

Andy Calder (1965–2013)

Andy Calder, dearly loved by his family and his many friends and colleagues from all over the world, died unexpectedly on 29 October 2013. Born in Edinburgh in 1965, he was a loving brother to his sisters Kath and Clare and brothers-in-law Gary and Tony, and a devoted uncle to his nieces and nephews.

Andy was known internationally as a leading cognitive neuroscientist. He was a deep thinker, a meticulous experimenter, and an inspiration for those who worked alongside him. His ground-breaking research led to major new insights into vital social abilities, such as how we recognise faces, and how the brain processes and distinguishes between emotions.

After completing a PhD at Durham, Andy joined the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at Cambridge (then the Applied Psychology Unit) in 1993, becoming a programme leader in 2000. In addition to his dedicated team in Cambridge, Andy worked closely with many collaborators, bringing to each project excellence in methods and precision in scientific thinking. This led to new discoveries including the brain systems that underlie unusual social abilities in conduct disorder and autism.

The news of his untimely death is devastating for all that knew him. Not yet 50, Andy had a wonderful future as a scientist still ahead of him. His abilities to answer important fundamental questions using rigorous methods will continue to inspire his many collaborators and the broader field of social neuroscience. A passion for overseas exploration made Andy a great travelling companion and a keen guest in the laboratories of his dear friends and fellow scientists, including Gilli Rhodes and Colin Clifford in Australia.

Andy was wonderful company. He was an entertaining house guest with his family every Christmas, and took a keen interest in all his nieces and nephews Clark, Amy, Ava, Rebecca, Cameron, Tim and Eve as they were growing up. He had a passion for film and theatre, and every summer would make the trip home to take full advantage of the Edinburgh Festival. A gifted pianist and singer, Andy was a key figure in pantomimes and productions in Cambridge. He made many lasting friendships with colleagues, who were delighted by his warmth, lightness of spirit, and wit (see colleagues’ memories).

Andy will be held dearly in the hearts of the many that knew him. He is greatly missed, but his spirit, life and achievements will be celebrated for many years to come.

Susan Gathercole is Unit Director at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit. This article originally appeared on The Psychologist.

Andy Calder was a leading social cognitive neuroscientist at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit. He was the lead author on Oxford Handbook of Face Perception.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Subscribe to only psychology articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Image credit: Image courtesy of Susan Gathercole.

The post Memories of Andy Calder appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesThe ADHD explosion: How much do you know about the disorder?Beggars, buggers, and bigots, part 3A hidden pillar of the modern world economy 

Selected fables about wolves and fishermen

Jean de La Fontaine’s verse fables turned traditional folktales into some of the greatest, and best-loved, poetic works in the French language. His versions of stories such as ‘The Wolf in Shepherd’s Clothing’ and ‘The Lion and the Fly’ are witty and sophisticated, satirizing human nature in miniature dramas in which the outcome is unpredictable. The behaviour of both animals and humans is usually centred on deception and cooperation (or the lack of it), as they cheat and fight each other, arguing about life and death, in an astonishing variety of narrative styles. To get a flavour of the fables, here are two taken from Selected Fables by Jean de La Fontaine, translated by Christopher Betts.

The Wolf in Shepherd’s Clothing


A wolf had hunted sheep from local fields,


but found the hunt was giving lower yields.


He thought to take a leaf from Reynard’s book:


disguise himself by changing what he wore.


He donned a smock, and took a stick for crook;


the shepherd’s bagpipes too he bore.


The better to accomplish his design,


he would have wished, had he been able,


to place upon his hat this label:


‘My name is Billy and these sheep are mine.’


His alterations now complete,


he held the stick with two front feet;


then pseudo-Billy gently stepped


towards the flock, and while he crept,


upon the grass the real Billy slept.


His dog as well was sound asleep,


his bagpipes too, and almost all the sheep.


The fraudster let them slumber where they lay.


By altering his voice to suit his dress,


he meant to lure the sheep away


and take them to his stronghold in the wood,


which seemed to him essential to success.


It didn’t do him any good.


He couldn’t imitate the shepherd’s speech;


the forest echoed with his wolfish screech.


His secret was at once undone:


his howling woke them, every one,


the lad, his dog, and all his flock.


The wolf was in a sorry plight:


amidst the uproar, hampered by his smock,


he could not run away, nor could he fight.


Some detail always catches rascals out.


He who is a wolf in fact


like a wolf is bound to act:


of that there ’s not the slightest doubt.

The Fisherman and the Little Fish


A little fish will bigger grow


if Heaven lets it live; but even so


to set one free, and wait until it’s fat,


then try again: I see no sense in that;


I doubt that it will let itself be caught.


An angler at the river’s edge one day


had hooked a carp. ‘A tiddler still,’ he thought,


but then reflected, looking at his prey:


‘Well, every little helps to make a meal,


perhaps a banquet; in the creel


is where you’ll go, to start my store.’


As best it could, the fish replied:


‘What kind of meal d’you think that I’ll provide?


I’d make you half a mouthful, not much more.


I’ll grow much bigger if you throw me back;


then catch me later on; I’d fill a sack.


A full-grown carp’s a fish that you can sell;


some greedy businessman will pay you well.


But now, you’d need a hundred fish


the size that I am now, to fill a single dish.


Besides, what sort of dish? Hardly a feast.’


‘No feast? quite so,’ replied the man;


‘it’s something, though, at least.


You prate as well as parsons can,


my little friend; but though you talk a lot


this evening it’s the frying-pan for you.’


A bird in the hand, as they say, is worth two


in the bush; the first one is certain, the others are not.

Jean de La Fontaine (1621-95) followed a career as a poet after early training for the law and the Church. He came under the wing of Louis XIV’s Finance Minister, Nicolas Fouquet, and later enjoyed the patronage of the Duchess of Orléans and Mme de La Sablière. His Fables were widely admired, and he was already regarded in his lifetime as one of the greatest poets of his age. Christopher Betts was Senior Lecturer in the French Department at Warwick University. In 2009 he published an acclaimed translation of Perrault’s The Complete Fairy Tales with OUP.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Subscribe to only literature articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Image credit: Both images are from Gustave Doré’s engravings, which are included in the edition, and are in the public domain.

The post Selected fables about wolves and fishermen appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesBook vs movie: Thérèse Raquin and In SecretJane Austen and the art of letter writing“You’ll be mine forever”: A reading of Ovid’s Amores 

Beggars, buggers, and bigots, part 3

By Anatoly Liberman

Unlike so many words featured in this blog, bugger has a well-ascertained origin, but it belongs with the rest of this series because it sheds light on its companions beggar and bigot. The route of bugger should be familiar by now (it is the same as before): from French, to Middle Dutch, and finally, to English. A single, most ingenious, attempt to derive bugger from Greek pygé “buttocks,” with reference to katapygón “sodomite,” has been rejected for good reason: there is no way to explain how a noun popular in Classical Greek made its way into Middle English slang. At present, everybody agrees that the source of bugger is Old French bougre, which in the Middle Ages meant “heretic,” from Bulgarus “Bulgarian.” The Bulgarians were Orthodox Christians, specifically Albigensians, and various sins, including bestiality, were imputed to them. Those rumors spread and were busily cultivated in Southern Europe before, during, and after the Albigensian Crusades (1209-1229), a bloody campaign I mentioned last week in connection with beggar and Beguines. With regard to etymology, a parallel case is Cathari, another “heretical” sect. From Cathari, known in Italy as Gazari, German has Ketzer “heretic” and Dutch has ketter, for, naturally, heretics are expected to perform all kinds of abominable acts: once a deviant, always a deviant. (Incidentally, even Old French erites, from hæreticus, meant “pervert; sodomite.”) We can see that the fate of “beggars,” “buggers,” and “bigots” is part of the history of the hapless Albigensians. I’ll return to bigot next week, but those interested in what has already been on this subject are invited to read the essay “No one wants to be a bigot” (26 October 2011); they will also find some discussion of bugger there.

Today, beggar, as noted in the previous post, can be a humorous word of abuse (you little beggar). I am not sure whether such usage is a remnant of the days when beggar had not yet acquired its modern sense (hardly so!) or a mild amelioration of beggar “mendicant.” In any case, the same has happened to bugger. Even stripped of its sexual connotations, bugger can be a rude word (“rascal, scoundrel”), but in many parts of the English speaking world it functions as a rough term of affection, and you, little bugger may be synonymous with you, little beggar. Such semantic leaps are often hard to follow. But the phonetic proximity of beggar to bugger must have played an important role in their rapprochement.

This is what John Orr, a distinguished Romance philologist, said on a related matter. To repeat: in Old French, Medieval Latin Bulgarus became bougre, and it is from this bougre that English has bugger. However, “the field of expletive words is one in which associative tendencies that are always present in the organic development of language have their freest and fullest play, and their study is for this reason highly instructive, inasmuch as it gives us insight into processes which in normal speech are far less easy to detect.” Orr asks why among taboo words with unsavory connotations some become expletives, while others don’t. This is an important question. Etymologists have often wondered why, for example, our infamous F-word supplanted a bunch of its synonyms and even conquered the world. Apparently, it owes its good luck to its phonetic shape: the verb is short and energetic—just what one needs in this situation. Orr also suggested that bougre had an obvious advantage over erites because it is more fit for exclamatory purposes: compare French boo!, Engl. bah!, and their likes. I think he was right and that there is much more to say about the makeup of interjections. But at the moment, let us look at the etymology of the French expletive.

Some people may know the archaic English preposition maugre “in spite of.” It goes back to Anglo-Norman maugré, literally “bad pleasure,” a compound (no longer felt to be such) meaning “bad pleasure” (mal- and grace). The phrase maugré Dieu! “Goddamn!” became a curse in French, so much so that the verb maugréer turned into a synonym of “to swear.” For euphemistic purposes it was replaced with bongré Dieu! (bon- “good” for mau- “bad”), and this bongré developed regularly into bougre. Once in circulation, it entered into contact, merged with, and “enriched” the much older bougre, the word that was borrowed into English as bugger. Romance etymology is not my area, and I can have no independent opinion about the origin of French words. I have done so before and decided to stay away from other people’s turf (once bit, twice shy), but in my unprofessional view, Orr’s hypothesis of two sources of Old French bougre looks acceptable. Even if he erred, his approach to expletives and slang is fruitful.

Bougre had a long history in Europe and was also in vogue in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Germany. In Northern Germany, it had some currency in the form bögger. It seems that, wherever it took root, its spread was facilitated by its expressive sound form. This leads me to the idea that, although each of the three nouns—beggar, bugger, and bigot—had an individual history, their popularity depends partly on the sound symbolic notion that words of this type belong together and mean something bad.

Two and a half years ago, while examining the etymology of bigot, I did not realize the connection. Yet I did notice how close bigot and bugger were. Now I think I can say more about this subject. It was the history of the verb bicker (see a recent post on it) that made me renew the search. I have also read some works that I did not know then. When one is busy writing an etymological dictionary, one is well-advised to finish the entire work and then send it to print, rather than publicizing it piecemeal, because with every next entry one learns something new about the previous ones. Bicker leads to beggar, beggar to bugger, and bugger to bigot. But then one may die (perish) before publishing anything. Next week I will return to bigot and close this miniseries.

There is a Russian folktale called “The Turnip” (“Repka”). Once such a gigantic turnip grew in the field that the farmer was unable to pull it out. He called his wife to come to the vegetable patch; yet the recalcitrant turnip did not budge. The old woman asked their daughter to assist them—still no result. Then their granddaughter was sent for, but it took the additional efforts of a cat and a mouse to complete the task. This is how one succeeds in solving the riddle of some “immovable” words: beggar after bicker, bugger after beggar, bigot after bugger, and the work is done. Enjoy the picture.

Anatoly Liberman is the author of Word Origins And How We Know Them as well as An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology: An Introduction. His column on word origins, The Oxford Etymologist, appears on the OUPblog each Wednesday. Send your etymology question to him care of blog@oup.com; he’ll do his best to avoid responding with “origin unknown.” Subscribe to Anatoly Liberman’s weekly etymology articles via email or RSS.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Subscribe to only language articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Image credit: “The Big Turnip–A Russian Folk Tale,” Primary Education, vol. 24, no. 10 (October 1916), 519, via eHistory at OSU.

The post Beggars, buggers, and bigots, part 3 appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesBeggars, buggers, and bigots, part 1Beggars, buggers, and bigots, part 2Monthly gleanings for February 2014 

The ADHD explosion: How much do you know about the disorder?

The push for performance has never been higher. Students today are faced with a grueling course load, extra-curriculars, and standardized tests. In the wake of this competitive atmosphere, the United States has seen a spike in both ADHD diagnoses and increased demand for prescription medicine. But who’s to blame? The fast-paced, technophilic culture that young people are subjected to, or the parents who are quick to medicate a child who is under-performing at school?

In The ADHD Explosion: Myths, Medication, Money, and Today’s Push for Performance, Stephen P. Hinshaw and Richard M. Scheffler offer new insight into the origins, science, and troubling trends behind this ever-increasing disorder. Take our quiz to find out how much you know about ADHD, and learn more about some of the new research published in the book.

Get Started!




Your Score:  
Your Ranking:  

Stephen P. Hinshaw and Richard M. Scheffler are the authors of The ADHD Explosion: Myths, Medication, Money, and Today’s Push for Performance. Stephen P. Hinshaw, PhD, is Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and Vice-Chair for Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. He is also editor of Psychological Bulletin. Richard M. Scheffler, PhD, is Distinguished Professor of Health Economics and Public Policy in the School of Public Health and the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Subscribe to only brain sciences articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Image credit: Young teacher explaining the world to preschoolers via iStockphoto.

The post The ADHD explosion: How much do you know about the disorder? appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesChanges in the DSM-5: what social workers need to know8 марта 1979: Women’s Day in the Soviet UnionA hidden pillar of the modern world economy 

Academic publishing gets a close-up

By Alice Northover

A recent Publishers Weekly story highlighted some of the innovative work that many university presses are undertaking: video marketing. Slick mini-films uploaded to YouTube may be common for the latest YA sensation at the trade presses, but cameras tend not to be seen among the spires of higher education. But Oxford University Press is one of many academic publishers using videos to present scholars’ ideas in a dynamic way – and further serve the press mission of excellence in research, scholarship, and education.

Over 40 marketers from across the academic publishing division — including publicity, end-user marketing, product marketing, and journals marketing — participate in some form of video production as part of their job. While the majority of their time and resources are still spent on traditional marketing activities, and the amount each person works on varies (from one a year to a dozen), video is seen as crucial to communicating the often complex ideas inside academia. Marketers may hire an outside production team and plan an elaborate day of filming with multiple interviews, or simply sit a lexicographer down in a meeting room for a couple hours to discuss their work. Sometimes freelancer editors are brought in to polish employee-filmed videos, or staff edit and polish videos in-house. Our New York office has a basic studio for DIY work. And, of course, the occasional author may produce their own video which we can edit and finalize, or simply host on our YouTube channel.

TYPES OF VIDEOS

The most basic form of video we produce – and in fact the majority of videos we produce – is the author interview. Whether visiting our New York office and spending 20 minutes in the studio, or in the Long Room of Trinity College Dublin Library, authors present the ideas conveyed in their latest work. And we’re not averse to an interactive interview, especially when it means a visit to a brewery. We spoke to Garrett Oliver, editor of the Oxford Companion to Beer, at the Brooklyn Brewery, where he gave us a tour of the facilities and explained the science behind beer.

While reference works have clearly moved from print to online, our understanding of them often hasn’t. Product videos deliver clear explanations of our online reference products, what purpose they serve, and how academics can use them. Instructional videos provide a crucial guide to many of our products and services. What better way to illustrate search tricks and tips on Oxford Handbooks Online than to show it in action?

Journals offer us with a unique way of addressing current research and trends in the field — both in print and on camera. The European Heart Journal’s EHJ Today pairs editors with leaders in the field of cardiology to discuss their work and the impact it will have – whether or not it appears in the journal. These discussion videos can also bring people around a common theme. For example, Arne Kalleberg, editor of Social Forces, interviewed sociologists from around the world on inequality (the theme of the American Sociological Association Annual Meeting in 2013).

Both journals and our higher education textbooks generate another a unique opportunity: creating supplemental material to demonstrate ideas within the text. Chemistry³: Introducing inorganic, organic and physical chemistry, Second Edition by Andrew Burrows, John Holman, Andrew Parsons, Gwen Pilling, and Gareth Price is accompanied by over 90 videos illuminating key concepts. Scientific journal articles are often accompanied by animated models, and in some cases a live demonstration:

Click here to view the embedded video.

YouTube provides us with a chance to share conferences and webinars with people who couldn’t attend the original, whether it’s Psychtalks, an OED Symposium, or the Teaching of Public Law.

Video also presents a unique way to share our Press history, whether its lexicographers explaining the process of words entering the OED, or silent films from 1925. Watch out for some interviews with our Press Archivist, Martin Maw, on the Press and the First World War later this year.

Click here to view the embedded video.

There are even videos that members of the public don’t see. When introducing new journals or textbooks, we sometimes create videos for our sales staff to better explain them. Authors or editors reveal what’s unique and can provide more information in two minutes than a packet of papers that takes 15 minutes to read.

But perhaps our favorite videos are ones that we didn’t produce. In 2012, Oxford University Press partnered with the Guardian for the Very Short Film competition. Students from across the United Kingdom competed to explain a concept in less than 60 seconds. The winner, Sally Le Page, showed how it is impossible to understand biology without evolution by natural selection in “A Very Short Film on Evolution.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

PURPOSE OF VIDEOS

But what’s the point of all these videos? Has anyone ever sat down to watch a video and decided to buy a book immediately afterwards? Well it’s misleading to consider these videos in isolation. We never spend hours creating a video only to have it sit on YouTube for no one to see.

First off, we put a tremendous amount to time and effort into writing titles, descriptions, and tags to ensure they show up in search results – giving people basic information and a direction at the beginning of their research journey. (YouTube is the second most popular search engine in the world.)

Second, we use these videos across our social media, from this blog to Facebook, Tumblr to Google Plus, and everything in between. They can provide some much needed refreshment in a sea of text and engage or re-engage readers. Social Bakers found that videos uploaded directly to Facebook see 40% higher engagement than YouTube links shared to Facebook.

But social media isn’t the only place you’ll see videos pop up. You can find them in e-newsletters, on product pages on our website, even on vendor websites, such as Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Our publicity team also uses video to pitch radio and television producers, demonstrating how enlightening our authors — and their ideas – are. And authors use these videos for future speaking engagements and media appearances.

But most importantly, these videos disseminate Oxford scholarship around the globe, and even help the occasional student pass their final exam.

Alice Northover is a Social Media Manager at Oxford University Press. She works with many of the marketing staff producing videos, whether issuing branding guidelines, advising where to make a cut, or just uploading videos to YouTube.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Image credit: Close-up shot of a lens from high-end DV camcorder. Photo by TommL, iStockphoto.

The post Academic publishing gets a close-up appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesFemale artists and politics in the civil rights movementLibrarian voices from the other side of the worldA record-breaking lunar impact 

A hidden pillar of the modern world economy

By David Gugerli and Tobias Straumann

In September 1965, Hurricane Betsy devastated parts of Florida and the central United States Gulf Coast. The damage was estimated at $1 billion – so far the costliest natural disaster in US history. In August 1992, Hurricane Andrew made havoc to towns and cities on The Bahamas and in Louisiana and Florida. This time, the damage amounted to $26.5 billion – again so far the costliest natural disaster in US history. In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated parts of the United States Gulf Coast. The proud and old city of New Orleans was inundated. The total damage from Katrina amounted to $81.2 billion, twice as much as the damage from Hurricane Andrew, when adjusted for inflation. So far, Hurricane Katrina has been the costliest natural disaster in world history.

In other words, extreme events have caused increasingly extreme damage, and each time the jump in costs came as a surprise. Yet, although not anticipated, these extreme events did not cause any major economic disruption in the US or global economy. This is not to say, that the regions and people most affected by the hurricanes were not suffering from unemployment and economic hardship thereafter. But given the huge losses and the importance of the United States for the global economy, the lack of serious negative economic consequences is rather striking. The hurricanes were followed by bankruptcies of insurance companies, but the sector as whole stayed firm.

The Swiss Re Building in London, more commonly known as The Gherkin.

How can we explain this resilience? Why was the insurance sector not overwhelmed by these extreme events? The main reason is that an innovation that was introduced in Central Europe about 150 years ago has fundamentally transformed the risk landscape. It is called reinsurance. With the growing complexity of the economic system in the 19th century, the reinsurance industry provided a backstop for the increasingly large insurance deals with industrial firms, shipping companies or government agencies. By providing huge reserves for extreme losses, the reinsurance industry enabled entrepreneurs, managers or bankers to take risks that would have been out of reach without the reinsurance industry. In the second half of the 19th century and ever since, the reinsurance industry has become as essential to the modern economy as the credit system, the transportation network or the energy supplies.

The oldest reinsurance company that has kept its original name is the company Swiss Re whose headquarters are located in Zurich, Switzerland. Its historical records are exceptionally rich and cover all the major themes in the history of the reinsurance industry since 1863, in particular the strong growth and internationalization in the late 19th and early 20th century, the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, the impact of booms, busts and wars between 1914 and 1945, the challenges emanating from new technologies such as atomic energy after 1945, and the transformation of the reinsurance industry by the rise of financial capitalism in the last thirty years.

These rich archives shed light not only on the development of the modern world, but also on the exciting dynamics of an industry which remains ostensibly invisible while collecting dozens of billions of dollars in net premiums, every single year. In 2012, they amounted to nearly $150 billion. The reinsurance industry is perhaps the biggest hidden pillar of the modern world economy.

David Gugerli is a Professor of History at the Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences of the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. His main interest is in the history of technology and science, social and economic history and cultural history. Tobias Straumann is Lecturer in the History Department of the University of Zurich and the Economics Department of the University of Basel. Dr. Straumann has worked in the fields of Swiss business history and European financial and monetary history. They are two of the co-authors of The Value of Risk: Swiss Re and the History of Reinsurance.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Subscribe to only business and economics articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Image credit: London Swiss Re Building. By Mariordo Mario Roberto Duran Ortiz. CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

The post A hidden pillar of the modern world economy appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesSomething to like about bitcoinWhy America must organize innovationWhy the lobbying bill is a threat to the meaning of charity 

Why the lobbying bill is a threat to the meaning of charity

By Matthew Hilton

On 30 January 2014 the UK government’s lobbying bill received the Royal Assent. Know more formally known as the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act, it seeks to curb the excesses in election campaign expenditure, as well as restricting the influence of the trade unions.

However, as various groups pointed out throughout its controversial parliamentary journey, Part 2 of the legislation will also have implications for charities, voluntary societies and non-governmental organisations once it comes into effect. Specifically, in restricting the amount of expenditure that non-party political bodies can spend ahead of a general election, it will severely curtail their lobbying, campaigning and advocacy work that has been a standard feature of their activities for some decades.

Understandably the sector has not welcomed the Act. The problem is that the legislation conflates general political lobbying with campaigning for a specific cause that is central to the charitable mission of an organisation. Sector leaders have critiqued the Bill as ‘awful’, ‘an absolute mess’ and ‘a real threat to democracy’.

It is not difficult to see why. The impact of charities on legislation in Britain has been profound and the examples run into many hundreds of specific Acts of Parliament. To mention but a few, a whole range of environmental groups successfully lobbied for the Climate Change Act 2008. Homelessness charities such as Shelter and the Child Poverty Action Group fought a battle for many years that resulted in the Housing Act 1977. The 1969 abolition of the death penalty can be partly attributed to the National Campaign for the Abolition of Capital Punishment and two pieces of legislation in 1967, the Sexual Offences Act and the Abortion Act, were very much influenced by the work of the Homosexual Law Reform Society and the Abortion Law Reform Association.

A group of campaigners from Christian Aid lobbying for Trade Justice, Oxford, 2005. By Kaihsu Tai. CC-BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The list could run on and on, but the impact of advocacy by charities on the policy process has become far more extensive than the straightforward lobbying of MPs. Charities have been key witnesses in Royal Commissions, for instance. From the 1944 Commission on Equal Pay Act through to the 1993 Commission on Criminal Justice, voluntary organisations contributed over a 1,000 written submissions. At Whitehall, they have sought a continued presence along the corridors of power in much the same manner as commercial lobbying firms. They have achieved much through the often hidden and usually imprecise, unquantifiable and unknowable interpersonal relationships fostered with key civil servants, both senior and junior.

In more recent years, charities have taken advantage of early day motions in the House of Commons. Once infrequently employed, by the first decade of the 21st century, there were on average 1,875 early day motions in each parliamentary session. The most notable have managed to secure over 300 signatures and it is here that the influence of charities is particularly apparent. The topics that obtain such general — and cross-party — support have tended to be in the fields of disability, drugs, rights, public health, the environment, and road safety; all subjects on which charities have been particularly effective campaigners.

Not all of these lobbying activities have been successful. Leaders of charities have often expressed their frustration at being unable to influence politicians who refuse to listen, else being outgunned and out-voiced by lobbyists with greater financial muscle supporting their work. But the important point is that charities have had to engage in the political arena and it is the norm for them to do so. To restrict these activities now — even if only in the year in the run-up to a general election — actually serves to turn back a dominant trend in democratic participation that has come increasingly to the fore in contemporary Britain.

Having explored the history of charities, voluntary organisations and NGOs, tracing their growing power, influence and support, we found was that rather than there having been a decline in democracy over the last few decades there has actually been substantial shifts in how politics takes place. While trade unions, political parties and traditional forms of association life have witnessed varying rates of decline, support for environmental groups, humanitarian agencies and a whole range of single-issue campaigning groups has actually increased. Whether these groups represent a better or worse form of political engagement is not really the issue. The point is that the public has chosen to support charities — and charitable activity in the political realm — because ordinary citizens have felt these organisations are better placed to articulate their concerns, interests and values. As such, charities, often working at the frontier of social and political reform, but often alongside governments and the public sector, have become a crucial feature of modern liberal democracy.

One might have expected a government supposedly eager to embrace the ‘Big Society’ particular keen to free these organisations from the bureaucracy of the modern state. But it is quite clear that the Coalition has held a highly skewed, and rather old fashioned, view of appropriate charitable activity. The Conservatives imagined a world of geographically-specific, community self-help groups that might pick up litter on the roadside in their spare time at the weekend and who would never imagine that their role might be, for instance, to demand that local government obtains sufficient resources to ensure that the public sector — acting on the behalf of all citizens and not just a select few — would continue to maintain and beautify the world around us. There are clearly very different views on what charity is and what it should do.

Indeed, it is remarkable that when government spokespeople did comment on the nature of the charitable sector, they were quick to condemn the work of the bigger organisations. Lord Wei, the ‘Big Society tsar’, even went so far as to criticise the larger charities for being ‘bureaucratic and unresponsive to citizens’. With such attitudes it is no wonder the Big Society soon lost any pretence of adherence from the many thousands of bodies connected to the National Council of Voluntary Organisation.

It is tempting to see the particular form the Conservatives hoped the Big Society would take as part and parcel of a policy agenda that is connected to the lobbying bill. That is, there has never been an embrace of charities by Cameron and his ministers as the solution to society’s – and the state’s – ills. Rather, in viewing these developments alongside the huge cuts in public sector funding (which often trickled down to national and community-based charities), there has actually been a sustained attack on the very nature of charity, or at least it has developed as a sector in recent decades. It is no wonder that many charity leaders and CEOs, feeling cut off at the knees by the slashes to their budgets and damaged by the sustained abuse in the press for their mistakenly inflated salaries, now feel the Lobbying Act is seeking to gag their voice as well.

Matthew Hilton is Professor of Social History at the University of Birmingham, and the author of The Politics of Expertise: How NGOs Shaped Modern Britain, along with James McKay, Nicholas Crowson and Jean-François Mouhot. Together they also compiled ‘A Historical Guide to NGOs in Britain: Charities, Civil Society and the Voluntary Sector since 1945′ (Palgrave, 2012). All the data contained in these two volumes, as well as that found above, is freely available on their project website.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Subscribe to only politics articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

The post Why the lobbying bill is a threat to the meaning of charity appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesSovereignty disputes in the South and East China SeaLook beneath the voteWhen art coaxed the soul of America back to life 

Preparing for ASEH 2014 in San Francisco

By Elyse Turr

San Francisco, here we come.

Oxford is excited for the upcoming annual conference of the American Society for Environmental History in San Francisco this week: 12-16 March 2014. The theme of the conference is “Crossing Divides,” reflecting the mixed history of the discipline and California itself.

We’ll be at the Opening Reception, co-sponsored by Oxford University Press, MIT, University of Delaware, and the Winslow Foundation on Wednesday, 12 March 2014 from 6:00-8:00 p.m. in the Cyril Magnin Ballroom.

Stop by Oxford’s display in the Exhibit hall. We’ll have hundreds of books on display, including several hot off the presses like Jared Orsi’s Citizen Explorer: The Life of Zebulon Pike, Cecilia M. Tsu’s Garden of the World: Asian Immigrants and the Making of Agriculture in California’s Santa Clara Valley, and Kendra Smith-Howard’s Pure and Modern Milk: An Environmental History since 1900.

Pick up a complimentary copy of Environmental History and other key Oxford journals at the booth. The most current issue features new articles on the environmental history of work, environmental politics and corporate real estate development, the shift to steam power in water reservoirs, and how skiing transformed the Alps. The editors have also compiled a special conference-companion virtual issue that draws on the theme of “Crossing Divides.” And for your teaching and research needs we’re offering free trials of Oxford’s online resources. Check out census data going back to 1790 with Social Explorer or assign sections, chapters, or full texts of books with Oxford Scholarship Online. Pick up a free trial access card at the booth.

ASEH 2014 is offering a number of field trips, but the one we’re fired up about is a field trip to Muir Woods on Friday, 14 March 2014. In 2008 Oxford was proud to publish Donald Worster’s biography of John Muir, A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir. Worster discusses Muir’s appreciation for and belief in the power of the forest in this passage:

“Nature, particularly its forests, offered an ideal of harmony to a nation torn apart by conflict between capital and labor, country and city, imperialists and anti-imperialists. That harmony was first and foremost one of beauty; nothing in nature was ugly or discordant, a lesson that could be learned by hiking a trail into the Sierra or standing at the rail of a steamer along the Alaskan coast. The challenge was how to help American society achieve that same degree of moral and aesthetic unity.

“Violent confrontation was not the way to achieve ecological harmony, a beautiful landscape, or a decent civilization. One must start by resolving to conserve the natural world for the sake of human beings and other forms of life. Conservation offered both an economic and aesthetic program of social reform—learning to use natural resources more carefully, for long-term renewability, and learning to preserve wild places where humans could go to learn about how nature constructs harmony. Muir tried, as other green men did, to push conservation in both directions. Achieve these reforms, he believed, and a truer, better democracy would evolve in which people of diverse origins, abilities, and needs would live in greater peace and mutuality, just as all the elements of nature did. If a forest could thrill the sense and still the troubled heart with its harmonies, then society could become like that forest. Such was the hope of the green men.”

—Donald Worster, A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir

My own first experience in Muir Woods:

I grew up in the Northeast –I’ve tapped maples looking for sap, hiked portions of the Appalachian Trail and spent enormous chunks of my childhood climbing the pine tree in our front yard–I thought I knew trees. Last Spring, while visiting friends in San Francisco, we toured Muir woods and I very quickly realized that any of the previous trees I knew were mere twigs by comparison to the majestic redwoods. It was both powerful and humbling to be among these giants, feeling dizzy trying to find their tops and small trying to wrap my arms around one and not even getting half-way. Never before had I been able to step inside a fire-charred redwood or run my hands across the hundreds of rings in a fallen tree. Muir Woods is a beautiful, peaceful place and I am very glad I was able to experience it; it was an experience I will always remember.

—Elyse Turr, History Marketing

Elyse Turr in Muir Woods

See you in San Francisco!

Elyse Turr is an Assistant Marketing Manager for history titles for Oxford University Press.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Subscribe to only American history articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

The post Preparing for ASEH 2014 in San Francisco appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesFemale artists and politics in the civil rights movementDeclaration of independenceWhen art coaxed the soul of America back to life 

Research in the digital age

Oxford Scholarship Online (OSO) launched in 2003 with 700 titles. Now, on its tenth birthday, it’s the online home of over 9,000 titles from Oxford University Press’s distinguished academic list, and part of University Press Scholarship Online. To celebrate OSO turning ten, we’ve invited a host of people to reflect on the past ten years of online academic publishing, and what the next ten might bring.

By Adrastos Omissi

As someone who has lived out his entire academic career in a research environment augmented by digital resources, it can be easy to allow familiarity to breed contempt where the Internet is concerned. When I began my undergraduate degree in the autumn of 2005, Oxford’s Bodleian Library, as well as every faculty and college library, had already digitized their search functions, Wikipedia was approaching one million English articles, and all major journals were routinely publishing online (as well as busily uploading their back catalogues). Free and instantaneous access to a vast quantity of research material is, for those of my generation, simply assumed.

The Radcliffe Camera, part of the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. By Kamyar Adl CC-BY-2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The Internet’s greatest gift is text, in every permutation and definition of that word imaginable. For research students, one of the greatest obstacles is to acquire the necessary information that they need to make their own work a solid, and above all, living piece of scholarship, in communication with the wider academic world. Text is, ultimately, the sine qua non of this struggle.

Each specialism has its own particular loves, its debts owed to the Internet. Find any doctoral candidate in Britain today and they’ll each have their own version of ‘I couldn’t have completed me doctorate without online product X.’ For me, a classicist, it was the digitization and free availability of an increasing proportion of the written records of the ancient world. Online libraries of Greek and Latin texts, libraries like Perseus, Lacus Curtius, and the Latin Library, or searchable databases like Patrologia Latina brought the classical world to life (and to my laptop).

Of course, it’s not just ancient books that are now open to easy access from anywhere that the Internet can reach. When I was an undergraduate I looked into how much it would cost me to buy the entire Cambridge Ancient History series, which I felt would make an invaluable addition to my bookshelves. The answer – somewhere in the region of £1,600 – was enough for me to go weak at the knee. Now, I have all fourteen volumes in PDF. Google Books and the increasing digitization of the archives of publishers and academic libraries means that paradigm shifting debate can now beam into student rooms and even into private homes.

Just as the automated production line turned the automobile, once a bastion of elitism, into an affordable commodity for the average household, so the Internet is now putting books that would have once been hidden in ivory towers into the hands of any person with the desire to find them. And as hardware improves, these options become more and more exciting. Tablet computing means that this enormous corpus of academic texts and original sources is now available on devices that fit into a coat pocket. Gone – or going – are the curved spines and broken bag straps that were formerly the lot of any student forced to move between libraries.

Of course, not everyone is beaming as barriers of cost and inconvenience are stripped away from academic texts. Publishers still have businesses to run and it will be interesting to see in years to come how sharply the lines of battle come to be drawn. Nor is the marginalization of the book, a thing of beauty in its own right, much of a cause for celebration. But for those wishing to access academic texts, the trend is up, and texts that would once have been found only after a long search through some dusty archive or at the outlay of several hundred pounds are now nothing more than a Google search away.

Adrastos Omissi grew up in Jersey, in the Channel Islands. He recently completed a doctorate in Roman History at St John’s College, Oxford, and now works as a researcher for the social enterprise consultancy, Oxford Ventures.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Subscribe to only education articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

The post Research in the digital age appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesPredicting who will publish or perish as career academicsHow electronic publishing is changing academia for the betterLibrarian voices from the other side of the world 

Librarian voices from the other side of the world

By Annabel Coles

Reading for our first Australia/New Zealand LAC

After months of planning, preparation and final presentation run-throughs, I stood at the front of Seminar Room 3 within the State Library of Victoria, looking across the tables carefully decorated with our OUP goody bags and name placards. It was 8:30 in the morning and I was ready to meet my first librarians from “Down Under”. Back in the office in the United Kingdom, a colleague and I had planned the two meetings (one in the morning for academic librarians, one in the afternoon with state, public, and school librarians) with military precision. The refreshments, the sessions, the materials, the presentations, the timings, even our entertainment at lunch (a local author was coming in to give a lively talk on his book) was planned to a tee. But what you can never plan when dealing with people, and perhaps especially passionate librarians, is how they will respond to those plans…

I was nervous. My colleagues were more relaxed, being based in Australia, they were more familiar with the subtle culture differences; they knew the drill. I, on the other hand, needed to fit in, be approachable, and most importantly I needed to ensure I listened and absorbed everything they had to say so I could fully represent them and their needs back in Oxford, on the other side of the world.

Shortly after 8:30 a.m. the librarians started arriving, one by one, picking up their coffees and muffins, huddling in small groups, and started chatting. I needn’t have worried.

The important thing about these events (which we are labelling our “Library Advisory Councils”) is giving the librarians an opportunity to talk with their peers on issues that matter to most to them, and we, as publishers, have the privileged to be part of those conversations. I learnt early in the sessions that they rarely get the chance to discuss issues that they want to discuss. In their usual meetings they are presented with a specific theme and asked to represent only on that area.

Ahead of the meetings it was really important that we asked what they wanted to discuss, and then we would make that a big part of the day. Of course we also have things we want to update them on — as our “Advisors” it’s important that we are able to give them information on our strategies and plans for the future — but this was never intended to be a sales pitch. We want to give them the stage and sit alongside them in the discussions, rather than it being an “us and them” debate.

For me, this was my first time on antipodean soil, surrounded by librarians who were having good and bad experiences with publishers, and this is my opportunity to do something about it. I felt lucky to sit amongst them and openly eavesdrop (whilst furiously taking notes).

Underway with the LAC

It would be naïve to think that a meeting like this could solve all the problems discussed. Some of the topics discussed were huge hitters that have been discussed and debated in various forms at library conferences around the world over the last few years. It was acknowledged that these issues are larger and more complex than we could possibly hope to remedy within a day. But, as the group were together, the very act of them venting and sharing their experiences enabled them to strengthen their own network and not feel so isolated. It also gave me first-hand experience of their thoughts and feelings on the topic, so that I can now better represent their views when I’m back in Oxford.

Once we got past those larger issues, it was now time to buckle down to get some actionable takeaways: what could we actually impact on a short term basis?

The majority of the actions that I brought away from the sessions were based around workflows: how can publishers work with librarians to make their jobs easier; cut out complexities within processes; and just generally make things simpler. The renewals process is complex and long-winded: what can we do to streamline and simplify the process? We supply our meta-data to discovery service tools but it’s getting stuck with that intermediary for months before finally getting added to their system: so how can we influence our partnerships to move things through more quickly?

Much discussion was had around business models (and we have a Future Business Models group at OUP), including Patron Driven Acquisition and Evidence Based Acquisition. Librarians had both positive and negative experiences and expectations around the impact of those on budgeting and workflows. Again, this was all gold dust to take back to Head Office and sprinkle liberally into the agenda!

So, after brainstorms, lively debate and summarising in groups, I came away with an armful of flipchart paper, covered in ideas, straight from the people who really matter. As the librarians left at the end of the sessions, they were exchanging contact details, thanking us for the day and the opportunity to be involved, and promising to pop by to say hello to us the following week at VALA (a library conference being held in the city).

The Victoria State Library, Melbourne

In addition to the fantastic feedback, I have also made some real connections with those librarians on the other side of the world to me — librarians with diverse workflows, audiences, and requirements of publishers. But now, with their voices and opinions still ringing in my ears, my intention is to carry their specific ideas and challenges, the 17000 kilometres across ocean and continents back to the working groups and strategy-makers in Oxford. There, librarian voices from all around the world, whose ideas are communicated through other Library Advisory Councils, will be heard.

Annabel Coles is the Senior Marketing Manager in the Institutional Marketing team at Oxford University Press, promoting our online products and journals to institutions across Europe and Australia and New Zealand. She has held various sales and marketing roles within OUP for nine years.

Regional “Library Advisory Councils” are held within various territories across the world to facilitate conversations with our customers (librarians) on issues that are of mutual interest to ensure that we are feeding back appropriate information and intelligence directly from our markets to our product and platform development, business model and publishing strategies across the business. This provides an opportunity to listen to our customers on their turf, alongside their peers and in their local language and specifically to speak on issues relevant to them in their part of the world. We hope that this will ensure we are bringing the customer voice back into the heart of the products and services we develop within the Global Academic Business. For more, see the OUP Librarian Resource Center.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Image credits: (1) Photograph of Steacie Science and Engineering Library at York University by Raysonho@Open Grid Scheduler. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. (2-4) ANZ LAC images courtesy of Annabel Coles. Do not reproduce without permission.

The post Librarian voices from the other side of the world appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesGoing local: understanding regional library needs8 марта 1979: Women’s Day in the Soviet UnionHow electronic publishing is changing academia for the better