Oxford University Press's Blog, page 839

Whole life imprisonment reconsidered

By Dirk van Zyl Smit

The sentences of those who murder more than one person, or who kill in particularly gruesome circumstances are naturally the stuff of headlines. So it was again on 18 February when a specially constituted bench of the Court of Appeal, headed by the Lord Chief Justice, ruled that there is no legal bar on whole life orders for particularly heinous offences. In such cases, judges can continue to order that offenders deserve to remain in prison for the rest of their lives.

The case arose because in July 2013, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights found in Vinter and others v United Kingdom that even offenders on whom whole life orders had been imposed had to have a prospect of release. To deny them this hope meant that the punishment was inhuman and degrading, thus infringing the prohibition of such punishments in Article 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights. It had to be clear to offenders at the time of sentencing that if circumstances changed and there was no further justification for continuing their imprisonment, there was an appropriate procedure in place for reconsidering continued detention. English legislation allowing for the release of prisoners facing whole life sentences only on compassionate grounds was deemed insufficient to give prisoners hope as the Secretary of State for Justice had stated in the ‘lifers’ manual’ that he would only consider the release on compassionate grounds of prisoners who were terminally ill or seriously incapacitated. In the view of the European Court, allowing someone out of prison only when they are at death’s door was not ‘release’ in the full sense of the term. This judgment left some English courts uncertain about whether they should impose whole life sentences, particularly as the UK government declared that it was reluctant to change the law or policy in terms of which it should be applied.

The Court of Appeal’s finding was presented by a large section of the press as a ruling that prisoners subject to life orders could be denied all prospect of release. Even the BBC led with ‘Court of Appeal upholds whole-life principle’.

The reality is far more complex. The European Court of Human Rights never held that courts could not sentence someone to whole life imprisonment. The confirmation that judges could continue to impose this sentence was therefore unsurprising. What the European Court had established was the principle that, even where such sentences were imposed, there still had to be a prospect of release for the offender who could demonstrate that his continued detention was no longer justified, because, for example he no longer posed a risk to society.

Close reading of the judgment shows that the Court of Appeal accepted this principle. It disagreed with the European Court only on whether the powers of the Secretary of State for Justice were so limited that he might not be able to release someone when required to do so. According to the Court of Appeal, the European Court had been misled by the lifers’ manual, which wrongly purported to limit the release powers of the Secretary of State. The Court of Appeal explained that as a matter of law, the Secretary of State was required to exercise his powers in conformity with the European Convention on Human Rights and the common law. This meant that in every case where a prisoner claims that there are exceptional circumstances that justify his release from a whole life sentence, the Secretary for State will have to consider the claim and give a reasoned decision for allowing or rejecting it.

Jail cells at the Southborough Police Station. Photo by Beth Melo. CC-BY-ND-2.0 via My Southborough Flickr.

This outcome is rich in irony. Chris Grayling, the Secretary of State for Justice, has been scathingly critical of the European Court of Human Rights’ decision in the Vinter case, and saw the decision of the Court of Appeal as restoring whole life sentences. He will now be responsible in his official capacity for the procedure which is designed to ensure prisoners subject to whole life orders retain a prospect of release, something which he resisted by declining to amend the lifers’ manual. Nor will the Secretary of State be able to allow his antipathy to the release of such prisoners to influence his decisions, which, the Court of Appeal emphasised, will be subject to the rigours of judicial review as required by the common law.

Together with Pete Weatherby QC and Simon Creighton, I argued in a recent article in the Human Rights Law Review that the consequences of the European Court’s judgment in the Vinter case are far-reaching. In order to ensure that prisoners serving whole life sentences have a hope of release, prison regimes will have to provide them with opportunities to prepare themselves to lead a crime free life; they must have an opportunity to rehabilitate.

Moreover, these release procedures must meet the requirements of due process. We recommend that the Secretary of State refer the release applications of prisoners serving whole life sentences to the Parole Board. Although current law, as interpreted by the Court of Appeal, would allow him to take the final decision in such cases, we propose that he should give the Parole Board the power to decide for it is fundamentally wrong for a politician to have the final say over whether someone should be released.

Finally, we suggest that the Secretary of State announces as a matter of urgency when whole life sentences will be reconsidered routinely. We suggest that this should happen after no more than 25 years have been served and at regular intervals thereafter.

In the end, what matters is that even the worst and most reviled offenders are treated fairly. Justice requires that regard be had for their rights too. It should not have required Europe to spell out that it was necessary to do so. The Court of Appeal has now gently reminded the Secretary of State of his common law duties in this regard too. One can only hope that misplaced opposition to European intervention does not lead to a failure to act.

Dirk van Zyl Smit is Professor of Comparative and International Penal Law at the University of Nottingham. He is the author of “Whole Life Sentences and the Tide of European Human Rights Jurisprudence: What Is to Be Done?” (available to read for free for a limited time) in the Human Rights Law Review. His most recent OUP book is Principles of European Prison Law and Policy: Penology and Human Rights (written with Sonja Snacken). He is currently leading a research project on Life imprisonment worldwide.

Human Rights Law Review promotes awareness, knowledge, and discussion on matters of human rights law and policy. The Review publishes critical articles that consider human rights in their various contexts, from global to national levels, book reviews, and a section dedicated to analysis of recent jurisprudence and practice of the UN and regional human rights systems.

Oxford University Press is a leading publisher in international law, including the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law, latest titles from thought leaders in the field, and a wide range of law journals and online products. We publish original works across key areas of study, from humanitarian to international economic to environmental law, developing outstanding resources to support students, scholars, and practitioners worldwide. For the latest news, commentary, and insights follow the International Law team on Twitter @OUPIntLaw.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.


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

The post Whole life imprisonment reconsidered appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesThe case law of the ICJ in investment arbitrationConservation physiology of plantsThe Oral History Review at the OHA Midwinter Meeting 

Spiritual but not religious: knowing the types, avoiding the traps

By Linda Mercadante, Ph.D.

Many religious people think—or hope—that all those who self-identify as “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR) are “seekers” looking for a spiritual home. And many non-religious people assume that SBNRs are routinely hostile to religion and probably have been hurt by it. In fact, after speaking with hundreds of SBNRs all across North America over a five-year period, I have found neither of these assumptions to be accurate or widely representative.

Photo courtesy of the author.

Instead, I have found my interviewees falling into five types. I spoke with adults from many generations and found that the types cut across all age groups. While I found that people sometimes moved from one type to another, many others stayed put. Having a set of categories like these helps us better understand this rapidly growing segment of the United States.

Here are the five types I found:

Dissenters: Dissenters largely stay away from institutional religion, whether from bad experiences or, more often, theological differences. Many of these had a religious background and either protested or simply drifted away from it. Against popular assumptions, however, this type made up a fairly small percentage of my total.

Casuals: For Casuals, religious and spiritual practices are generally approached on an “as-needed” basis and discarded or changed when no longer necessary. Spirituality is not felt to be the organizing center of their lives. Many of the “casuals”—especially younger ones—had little or no religious exposure either as children or adults. This type represented a very large percentage of my total.

Explorers: These people seem to have a spiritual “wanderlust.” Acting more like tourists, they don’t expect to settle down in any permanent spiritual home. They are different from “casuals,” however, because spirituality is a central interest for them. Thus, they are always ready to try something new. Explorers represented a modest but significant percentage and were certainly some of the more intriguing interviewees.

Seekers: Unlike the above types, these SBNRs are actually seeking a spiritual home in which to settle down. They may frequently be frustrated in the search, but they persevere. They do this because they long to belong, whether that is to God, Spirit, or a spiritually-grounded group. Against popular assumptions that every SBNR is a “seeker,” they only represented a modest percentage of the total.

Immigrants: These were interviewees who had moved to a new spiritual “land” and—like geographic immigrants—were trying to adjust, usually with some difficulty. Often they had once been “seekers.”  This represented, by far, the smallest number of interviewees.

Once we understand that “spiritual but not religious” people come in different types, both religious and non-religious people will avoid the common conceptual traps that prevent us from fully seeing and appreciating this growing group. For religious people, there are two traps. First is what I call the “mea culpa” trap (“What did we do to hurt them?”). In fact, I heard very few religious “horror stories.” Clearly, religion isn’t as unilaterally repressive as some people like to think. But, in addition, fewer and fewer numbers are raised with any religious exposure at all. Thus, many interviewees had no bad experiences with religion to prevent them from considering it.

The second religious trap I call “If we build it, they will come” (“If only we fix our music, greet newcomers better, have better community, they will want to join us”). Yet for increasing numbers, religion is not a habit, but a strange world. Religious people should not expect SBNRs to show up at the sanctuary door. Instead, they will have to be encountered in other ways and places.

Non-religious people, too, need to avoid some traps. It is a mistake to assume SBNRs are generally hostile to religion. It is also misguided to assume SBNRs don’t take religious issues seriously. When I did find SBNRs who had explicit issues with organized religion, it was often a theological problem that kept them away or a sadness that, unlike others, they never quite “got it.”

Knowing the types and traps will help us take a more nuanced view towards the growing phenomenon of SBNRs. On the plus side, increasing numbers are becoming open to a variety of spiritual guides, alternatives, and even religious traditions, as they continue to nurture the spirit within. The downside, however, is that as many bring less information, heritage, or background with them on their spiritual journey, they will have to work harder to distinguish the deep spiritual wells from the shallow puddles.

 Linda Mercadante is the B. Robert Straker Professor of Historical Theology at The Methodist Theological School in Ohio and is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA). She is the author of Belief without Borders: Inside the Minds of the Spiritual but not Religious.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.


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

The post Spiritual but not religious: knowing the types, avoiding the traps appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesThe Plantation Church: a Q&A with Noel ErskineThe Press stands firm against the French Revolution and NapoleonThe Oral History Review at the OHA Midwinter Meeting 

Conservation physiology of plants

By Mark van Kleunen

Conservation physiology was first identified as an emerging discipline in a landmark paper by Wikelski and Cooke, published in Trends in Ecology and Evolution in 2006. They defined it as “the study of physiological responses of organisms to human alteration of the environment that might cause or contribute to population decline”. Although the case studies and examples presented by Wikelski and Cooke focused on wild animals, they indicated already that conservation physiology should be applicable to all taxa. With the launch of the journal Conservation Physiology – one year ago – this taxonomic inclusiveness was made more explicit, and the definition was broadened to “an integrative scientific discipline applying physiological concepts, tools and knowledge to characterizing biological diversity and its ecological implications; understanding and predicting how organisms, populations and ecosystems respond to environmental change and stressors; and solving conservation problems across the broad range of taxa (i.e. including microbes, plants and animals)”.

Although the definition of conservation physiology, and also the journal with the same name, covers in principle all taxa, plants (and also microbes, and among animals the invertebrates) are still clearly underrepresented. Of the 32 papers that were published in the journal in 2013, only three (9%) focussed on plants. This underrepresentation of plants, however, appears to be a general trend in conservation science, as the journal Conservation Biology had only ten out of 93 contributed papers (11%) focussing on plants in 2013. The journal Biological Conservation did a bit better with 59 out of 309 regular papers (19%) focussing on plants in 2013. Given the importance of plants as primary producers, which are indispensable for all other organisms, and the fact that 10,065 of the 21,286 species (47%) assessed by the IUCN Red List as globally threatened are plants, they clearly deserve more attention in the field of conservation physiology, and conservation science in general.

Conservation science has many important, frequently intertwined, sub-disciplines, including among others conservation policy, conservation genetics and conservation physiology. The strength of physiology, and thus of conservation physiology, is that it focusses on the mechanisms underlying patterns by identifying cause-and-effect relationships, preferably through experimentation. Physiology is directly related to the functioning and function of plants. This means that physiological knowledge is imperative for understanding the habitat requirements of endangered native plants and of potentially invasive exotic plants, and the ecological impacts of invasive exotic plants and migrating native plants. An accessory advantage of working with plants is that they lend themselves extremely well for experimental studies, as they are sessile, can easily be marked, and frequently can be grown in large numbers under greenhouse or garden conditions. Plants are thus ideal objects for conservation physiological studies.

Given that plants are underrepresented, a logical question is what kind of plant studies fall under the umbrella of conservation physiology. The three reviews on plants that were published in Conservation Physiology in 2013 do a great job in setting the scene. Hans Lambers and colleagues reviewed the research on phosphorus-sensitive plants in a global biodiversity hotspot. Many of these species are threatened by the introduced pathogen Phytophthora cinnamomi and by eutrophication; the latter partly due to large-scale application of phosphite-containing fungicides (biostats) that are used to fight the pathogen. This illustrates how one conservation measure may cause undesired side effects. Physiological understanding of how phosphite functions could help to develop alternative fungicides with less negative side effects. Fiona Hay and Robin Probert reviewed recent research on seed conservation of wild plant species. They clearly make the case that if we want to preserve genetic material of wild plant species in ex-situ seed banks for conservation purposes, physiological research is imperative for developing optimal storage, germination and growth conditions. Last but not least, Jennifer Funk reviewed research on physiological characteristics of exotic plant species invading low-resource environments. Prevention of invasions and mitigation of the impacts of invasions requires physiological research that resolves the question whether exotic species manage to invade low-resource environments through enhanced resource acquisition, resource conservation or both. These three reviews thus illustrate already three important plant-related topics in conservation physiology: causes of threat of native plants, ex-situ conservation, and invasive exotic plants.

An important topic that hasn´t been covered yet in the journal Conservation Physiology is how plants will respond to climate change. As physiology underlies the fundamental niche of a species, physiological studies can inform predictive models on potential responses of plants to climate change. Related topics are how endangered and invasive plant species will respond to increased CO2 levels, and how their vulnerability to diseases may change under novel climatic conditions. Furthermore, as we seem to miserably fail in reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, it becomes also more likely that governments will start to implement climate engineering methods to reduce incoming solar radiation or atmospheric CO2 levels. Undesired ecological side effects of these methods will raise novel conservation issues for which physiological knowledge will be imperative. Other topics that haven’t been covered yet are physiological responses of plants to pollution, and how endangered species that are difficult to propagate from seeds could be multiplied using tissue culture or other techniques. Obviously, the list of potential topics that I have mentioned here is far from exhaustive, but I hope it illustrates that many of the plant-related topics on which many of us work already or will work in the future fit within the discipline of conservation physiology.

Mark van Kleunen is a Professor of Ecology at the University of Konstanz. His research focusses on invasiveness of exotic plants, plant responses to global change and life-history evolution. This blog post is an adapted version of his editorial ‘Conservation Physiology of Plants‘ in the journal Conservation Physiology.

Conservation Physiology is an online only, fully open access journal published on behalf of the Society for Experimental Biology. Biodiversity across the globe faces a growing number of threats associated with human activities. Conservation Physiology publishes research on all taxa (microbes, plants and animals) focused on understanding and predicting how organisms, populations, ecosystems and natural resources respond to environmental change and stressors. Physiology is considered in the broadest possible terms to include functional and mechanistic responses at all scales.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Subscribe to only earth and life sciences articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Image credit: California wildflowers. By Rennett Stowe. CC-BY-2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

The post Conservation physiology of plants appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesProving Polybius wrong about elephantsHow we all kill whalesPredicting who will publish or perish as career academics 

The Oral History Review at the OHA Midwinter Meeting

By Troy Reeves

I had the pleasure of participating in certain parts of the Oral History Association’s Midwinter Meeting, held 14-16 February 2014 in Madison, Wisconsin. Let’s get this question answered right off the bat: Why Wisconsin in February? Because the organization meets in the winter (or early spring) at the location of the upcoming meeting. Since the OHA’s 48th Annual Meeting will be held in Madison (8-12 October), the group’s leadership met in Madison this month. It seems everyone in attendance embraced the Wisconsin winter, including marveling at the ice fishing “shacks” on Madison’s lakes and watching the cross-country skiers take over Capitol Square during Madison’s Winter Festival.

I served as a tour guide for the organization’s executive director Cliff Kuhn. Fresh off his appearance in the Chronicle of Higher Education’s article (and video chat) about the Belfast Project, Cliff came into Madison ready to talk about all things oral history. Cliff thought both the article and the chat went well. “I was pleased that the Chronicle reporter addressed a complex subject in considerable depth,” he said. “With the chat we were able to discuss at some length a number of important issues the Belfast Project/Boston College case raised which are of interest to oral historians and archivists.”

The OHA Council (L-R): Gayle Knight, Cliff Kuhn, Amy Starecheski, Jeff Friedman, Anne Valk, Paul Ortiz, Dan Kerr, Stephen Sloan (not pictured, Regennia Williams)

As I took Cliff around to some possible off-hotel sites for the upcoming conference, and meetings with representatives from the Wisconsin Humanities Council and Wisconsin Historical Society, we chatted about the relationship between the OHA and the Oral History Review. Particularly, we both lauded the work our Editor-in-Chief Kathy Nasstrom has done to in her two-plus years in charge. “Kathy has really raised the bar, and it’s getting noticed,” Cliff enthused. “At a session at the AHA on journal editing, the OHR was singled out for its inclusion of digital content.” Cliff also felt an upcoming addition to the OHR’s editorial team, Stephanie Gilmore, will bring a great deal to the journal. (Gilmore will be featured in a future podcast; yes, this is a blogpost tease!)

Saturday morning, I attended the portion of the meeting regarding Oral History Review. Cliff and I briefed the OHA Council on a few important topics. Specifically, we both noted the great reception we have received in regards to the OHR’s short-form initiative. We joked to Council that the topic (almost) “trended on Twitter.” Overall, I felt what I already knew: All of OHA’s leadership who attended the midwinter meeting respect and appreciate the work we have done. And it’s always nice to be appreciated.

Troy Reeves is the Oral History Review’s Managing Editor (though, thus far, no one has been as impressed with that title as Reeves thinks they should.) He also oversees the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s oral history program, which is housed in the UW-Madison Archives. In his spare time, he tries — quite unsuccessfully — to teach the OHR’s Social Media Coordinator about 1970s and 1980s Americana.

The Oral History Review, published by the Oral History Association, is the U.S. journal of record for the theory and practice of oral history. Its primary mission is to explore the nature and significance of oral history and advance understanding of the field among scholars, educators, practitioners, and the general public. Follow them on Twitter at @oralhistreview, like them on Facebook, add them to your circles on Google Plus, follow them on Tumblr, listen to them on Soundcloud, or follow the latest Oral History Review posts on the OUPblog posts via email or RSS to preview, learn, connect, discover, and study oral history.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.


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

The post The Oral History Review at the OHA Midwinter Meeting appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesContradictions in Cold War-era higher educationTeaching oral history in the digital ageTeaching oral history in the digital age - Enclosure 

Best Original Score: Who will win (and who should!)

By Kathryn Kalinak

This year’s slate of contenders includes established pros (John Williams, Thomas Newman, Alexandre Desplat) along with some newcomers (William Butler and Owen Pallett, Steven Price). This used to be a category where you had to pay your dues, but no longer. The last three winners had never been nominated before. So the real surprise winner in this category would be Williams.

William Butler and Owen Pallett: Her

Click here to view the embedded video.

Butler and Pallett already have a pocketful of awards and this is just the kind of “outsider” score (Butler and Pallett’s first nomination) that Academy voters love: remember Reznor and Ross winning for The Social Network? A win for Butler and Pallett makes the Academy seem hip and edgy and cool, not unimportant to an aging votership. Gravity is the favorite to win here, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the statuette goes to Her. Its use of acoustic instruments (that piano!) brings coziness to the sterile interiors and even the electronic instruments radiate warmth. The score is crucial in helping us to understand the characters in the film and feel for them. This wouldn’t be the same film without the score.

Alexandre Desplat: Philomena

Click here to view the embedded video.

Desplat has done some remarkable work in the last few years (Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, The King’s Speech, The Queen, Harry Potter, Fantastic Mr. Fox—a personal favorite) and he’s the go-to composer for films about England and now Ireland. But he’s perennially overlooked by Academy voters (he’s lost five times in the last seven years and for some amazing work—come on, Academy)! I don’t think this is his year. Philomena doesn’t have a high enough profile in the Oscar race. I would LOVE to be wrong about this. Desplat deserves an Oscar for something and why not for Philomena—it’s a heartfelt film with an equally heartfelt score.

Thomas Newman: Saving Mr. Banks

Click here to view the embedded video.

Newman has twelve nominations and no wins but I don’t think this year is going to change that. Saving Mr. Banks was almost completely overlooked by the Academy (this is its only nomination) and Newman’s style of big symphonic scoring hasn’t found favor in recent years with Academy voters. (See John Williams below).

Steven Price: Gravity


*clip from film includes “Debris” from the soundtrack

Click here to view the embedded video.

Gravity is the front runner here. The trailer’s tag line reads “At 372 miles above the earth, there is nothing to carry sound.” Except the soundtrack…which is filled with the score. Big, noticeable, dare I say it—intrusive, this is the kind of score you can’t fail to notice…even if you try. John Williams meets Hans Zimmer.

John Williams: The Book Thief

Click here to view the embedded video.

This is Williams’ forty-ninth nomination—but The Book Thief doesn’t have the visibility of other films in this category and Academy voters of late have failed to embrace the kind of big symphonic scores, like this one, that routinely won Oscars back in the twentieth century. Lush, melodic, memorable—vintage Williams. Like Newman for Saving Mr. Banks, Williams would be an upset.

Will win: Steven Price for Gravity

Should win: William Butler and Owen Pallett for Her

Kathryn Kalinak is Professor of English and Film Studies at Rhode Island College. Her extensive writing on film music includes numerous articles as well as the books Settling the Score: Music in the Classical Hollywood Film and How the West was Sung: Music in the Westerns of John Ford. She is author of Film Music: A Very Short Introduction.

The Very Short Introductions (VSI) series combines a small format with authoritative analysis and big ideas for hundreds of topic areas. Written by our expert authors, these books can change the way you think about the things that interest you and are the perfect introduction to subjects you previously knew nothing about. Grow your knowledge with OUPblog and the VSI series every Friday, subscribe to Very Short Introductions articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS, and like Very Short Introductions on Facebook.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Subscribe to only television and film articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

The post Best Original Score: Who will win (and who should!) appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesArt and industry in filmThe rise of music therapyDirty South hip hop and societal ills in the former Confederacy 

African American demography [infographic]

In celebration of Black History Month, Social Explorer has put together an interactive infographic with statistics from the most recent Census and American Community Survey. Dig into the data to find out about current African American household ownership, employment rates, per capita income, and more demographic information.

Take a sneak peak below and visit Social Explorer Presents Black History Month for the full, interactive infographic.

Social Explorer provides quick and easy access to current and historical census data and demographic information. The easy-to-use web interface lets users create maps and reports to illustrate, analyze, and understand demography and social change. In addition to its comprehensive data resources, Social Explorer offers features and tools to meet the needs of demography experts and novices alike. From research libraries to classrooms to government agencies to corporations to the front page of the New York Times, Social Explorer helps the public engage with society and science.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.


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

The post African American demography [infographic] appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesDirty South hip hop and societal ills in the former ConfederacyThe Plantation Church: a Q&A with Noel ErskineThe Black Book: Phillis Wheatley and the information revolution 

Art and industry in film

With the Oscars round the corner, we’re delving into Film: A Very Short Introduction. Here’s an extract from Chapter 3 of Michael Wood’s book. In this extract he looks at the industry and the role of the moviegoer.

Film began as a very small business, a dramatic invention but a tiny piece of the world of entertainment. It was an act among others in a variety show. Very soon, though, there were shows composed only of films, and there were special places for their showing. A cinema called the Nickleodeon opened in Pittsburgh in 1905, and by 1907 there were 4,000 such places in the United States. Something resembling an industry developed in France, Italy, England, and Germany too, and audiences grew and grew across the world. Studios were born. Pathé and Gaumont in France; UFA in Germany; Universal, Twentieth Century Fox, and Paramount in the USA. Hollywood itself, a small Californian town surrounded by orange groves, became a movie settlement because of its steady weather (and because California was thought to be far enough away from the lawsuits that rained down on experimenters and investors in New York). Something like the contours of later patterns of film-making began to form. Stars began to glitter. And above all, money began to gleam.

A whole support system blossomed: publicity machinery, fan magazines, prizes, record-kepping. Box-office results became the equivalent of sporting scores, or world championship boxing.

Avatar (2009) is the largest grossing picture ever made, unless we adjust for inflation, in which case the title goes to Gone with the Wind (1939), and Avatar moves to fourteenth place. The American Academy of Moton Pictures awarded its first Oscars in 1929, and has awarded them every year since. Programmes developed from sets of short films to single feature films plus supporting entries; and from there to the two film diet that was standard fare for so long. By 1929, 90 million cinema tickets were sold each week in America, with figures proportionally similar elsewhere. There were ups and downs during the Depression and the Second World War, but the figure had reached one hundred million by 1946. By 1955, however, the number was down to 46 million, not a whole lot more than the 40 million or so of 1922. Movie-houses, of which a little more later, rose and fell, naturally enough, to the same rhythm: there were 20,000 in America in 1947 and 11,000 in 1959.

Programmes often changed midweek, and shows were continuous, so you could come in at the middle of a film and stay till you got the middle again. Hence the now almost unintelligible phrase “This is where we came in”. There is a remarkable piece by the humorist Robert Benchley about a game he liked to play. Arriving, say, twenty minutes into a film, he would give himself five minutes to reconstruct the plot so far. Then he would interpret everything that followed in the light of his reconstruction. He would stay on to see how close he was – or pretend to see. He claimed many movies were improved by his method.

Theories of the Seventh Art arose, as well as plenty of attacks of the mindlessness of moviegoers. It was in reaction to one such attack that Walter Benjamin devloped an important piece of the argument of his essay “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility” (various versions between 1935 and 1939). The French novelist George Duhamel had included an onslaught on cinema in his witty and gloomy book on America, Scénes de la vie future (1930). The relevant chapter is titled ‘cinematographic interlude or the entertainment of the free citizen’, and within the text, the cinema is called, in the same mode of a grand irony, a sanctury, a temple, an abyss of forgetfulness, and the cave of the monster. Duhamel says that film ‘requires no kind of effort’ and ‘presupposes no capacity for consecutive thought’, ‘aucune suite dans les idées.’ Benjamin agrees that film audiences are distracted but claims that there are forms of distraction that may function as localized, medium-specific attention. ‘Even the distracted person’ he says, thinking of the moviegoer, ‘can form habits. ‘The audience’ he adds, ‘is an examiner, but a distracted one’.

Michael Wood is Charles Barnwell Start Professor of English and Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University and the author of Film: A Very Short Introduction. You can see Michael talking about film.

The Very Short Introductions (VSI) series combines a small format with authoritative analysis and big ideas for hundreds of topic areas. Written by our expert authors, these books can change the way you think about the things that interest you and are the perfect introduction to subjects you previously knew nothing about. Grow your knowledge with OUPblog and the VSI series every Friday! Subscribe to Very Short Introductions articles on the OUPblog via emailor RSS.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via emailor RSS.


Subscribe to only film and television articles on the OUPblog via emailor RSS.


Image credit: By Coyau. CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0. via Wikimedia Commons

The post Art and industry in film appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesThe world’s revolutionsIs love real?Nations and liberalism? 

The Plantation Church: a Q&A with Noel Erskine

In honor of Black History Month, we sat down with Noel Erskine to learn more about the Plantation Church—the religions that formed on plantations during slavery—and its roots in the Caribbean.

How was the Plantation Church formed?

The Plantation Church was formed through the traffic across the Black Atlantic of Africa’s children, packed like sardines, and treated as human cargo, to work on plantations in the Americas. The plantation was at first a site of human bondage, and provided the context for chattel slavery, where the entire family was brutalized as they realized that there was a connection between higher sugar prices and cruel treatment of slaves. In plantation society the political power of the African chief was transferred to the white master, except in the context of the plantation, there were no safeguards for women and children. The entire family was dehumanized. Plantation etiquette required submission to the wishes of the master and failure to comply would often elicit a violent response. The will of the master applied to every aspect of plantation life. The master had the right to whip, sell, or trade members of the family whenever or for whatever reason. Africans found it difficult at first to mount a credible form of resistance against the violence perpetrated against them on plantations.

Slaves being transported in Africa, 19th century engraving. From Lehrbuch der Weltgeschichte oder Die Geschichte der Menschheit by William Rednbacher, 1890. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Why was the Plantation Church formed?

It is often forgotten that Africans who were captured and brought against their will to work on plantations in the New World left institutions of their clan and tribe behind. The creation of the Plantation Church was an attempt to hold body and soul together in an alien environment. In the Plantation Church, which was at first an African Church, Africans “stolen from the homeland” had to compensate for the loss of language, culture, and the constant change of environment as they were often sold and separated from members of their families. The cruelty meted out to Africans who traversed the Black Atlantic on route to the Caribbean and North American colonies for work in plantation society is beyond compare in the annals of the history of slavery. The Indians and Spaniards had the support and comfort of their families, their kinsfolk, their leaders, and their places of worship in their sufferings. Africans the most uprooted of all, were herded together like animals in a pen, always in a state of impotent rage, always filled with a longing for flight, freedom, change, and always having to adopt a defensive attitude of submission, pretense, and acculturation to the new world.

What characterized the Plantation Church?

Enslaved Africans on plantations “a long ways from home”, remembered home, and the memory of Africa became a controlling metaphor and organizing principle as they countered the hegemonic conditions imposed on them by their masters. There was a tension between their existence on plantations here in the New World and there in Africa, their home of origin. Here in plantation society they longed for there, their home, Africa – the forests, the ancestors, family, Gods and culture. They remembered the forests and they relived their experience of forests through the practice of religious rituals in the brush arbors, often down by the riverside. The memory of ancestors and a sense that their spirits accompanied them served as sites of a new consciousness on the plantations in which the struggle for survival and liberation took precedence. This awakening convinced them that they would survive through running away to the forests or through suicides that would reunite them with families and the Africa they remembered. It was primarily through religious rituals and the carving out of Black sacred spaces that enslaved persons were able to affirm self and create a world over against plantation society which was created for their families by the master. With the creation of the Plantation Church, the African priest and medicine man/woman were able to prevent the enslaved condition from dominating their consciousness and rob the children of Africa the freedom to dream a new world. It was the community’s memory of Africa that provided hope for dreaming the emergence of new worlds whether in Haiti, South Carolina, or Cuba.

Why is the Caribbean so important to the Plantation Church?

There were more than eleven million enslaved persons who were transported across the Black Atlantic and forced to work on plantations in the New World. Of this number, about 450, 000 arrived in the United States and all the rest went south of the border to the Caribbean nations and South America. More than twice the number of Africans who landed in the United States arrived in each of the islands of Haiti, Jamaica, and Cuba.  Additionally, it must be noted that slavery began in the Caribbean as early as 1502, well over a hundred years before the first twenty Africans landed in James Town Virginia in 1619. The historical priority and the numerical advantage point to the Black religious experience being born in the Caribbean and not the United States of America.  W.E.B. Du Bois puts this in perspective, “American Negroes, to a much larger extent than they realize, are not only blood relatives to the West Indians but under deep obligations to them for many things. For instance, without the Haitian Revolt, there would have been no emancipation in America as early as 1863. I, myself, am of West Indian descent and am proud of the fact.”

Noel Leo Erskine is Professor of Theology and Ethics at Candler School of Theology and the Laney Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Emory University. He has been a visiting Professor in ten schools in six countries. His books include Plantation Church: How African American Religion Was Born in Caribbean Slavery, King Among the Thologians, and From Garvey to Marley.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.


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

The post The Plantation Church: a Q&A with Noel Erskine appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesDirty South hip hop and societal ills in the former ConfederacyThe Black Book: Phillis Wheatley and the information revolutionThe Press stands firm against the French Revolution and Napoleon 

Spies and the burning Reichstag

By Benjamin Carter Hett

It is well known that someone set fire to the Reichstag in Berlin on the evening of 27 February 1933 – eighty-one years ago. It is also well known that Hitler’s new government took this opportunity to pass the Reichstag Fire Decree, gutting the Weimar constitution and effectively initiating a 12-year dictatorship. Many readers will know that ever since 1933 controversy has raged about who actually set fire to the Reichstag: was it the first step in a Communist coup, was it a Nazi conspiracy to supply a justification for their Decree, or was the rather confused young Dutch stonemason Marinus van der Lubbe telling the truth when he claimed he had set the fire himself?

Firemen work on the burning Reichstag, February 1933. Item from Record Group 208: Records of the Office of War Information, 1926 – 1951. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

One matter that is less well known, however, is just how much, and for how long, various intelligence services have taken an interest in these questions.

Spies were a part of the story from the beginning. In March 1933, a senior officer of Britain’s MI5 named Guy Liddell traveled to Germany to make contact with the newly reorganized German Secret Police (soon to be christened the Gestapo) and its leader, the brilliant but sinister Rudolf Diels. At the time, one of the main tasks facing Diels and his officers was the investigation of the Reichstag fire. Liddell wrote a long report on his experiences in Germany, noting among other things that the weakness of the police evidence against Marinus van der Lubbe led him to the view that “previous con­clusions that this incident was a piece of Nazi provocation to provide a pretext for the wholesale suppression of the German Communist Party were amply confirmed.”

After the Second World War, Rudolf Diels and the small group of his former Gestapo subordinates who had investigated the fire in 1933 faced a difficult legal situation. To varying degrees they had been involved in Nazi crimes (including the thoroughly corrupt fire investigation itself) and they had to navigate the tricky waters of war crimes and “denazification” investigations and prosecutions. One of their real advantages, however, was their intelligence experience – coupled with their undeniable anti-Communism. This made them attractive to the Western Allies’ intelligence services. Rudolf Diels was, for many years, a key paid source on politics in Germany for the American CIC (military counter intelligence). His payment, as recorded in a written contract from 1948, was 12 cartons of cigarettes per month, supplemented now and then by ration cards and cans of Crisco – the real sources of value in Germany at the time. A few years later one of the leading figures in the West German Federal Criminal Police (BKA) complained to American intelligence officers that overly-zealous prosecutions of ex-Nazi police officers were a Cold War danger. They were weakening the BKA to the point that West Germany itself would become “a push-over for Eastern intelligence services” and thus “a weak link and danger point in the whole Western defense system.” The CIA officer who recorded these comments noted that they were “worth attention.”

One of the things that Diels and his former subordinates had to worry about was the testimony and the book of a man named Hans Bernd Gisevius, who accused them of covering up Nazi guilt for the Reichstag fire as well as involvement in a number of murders. Gisevius had himself been a Gestapo officer in 1933; from there he went on to serve in Germany’s military intelligence service, the Abwehr, during the war – and became active in the resistance that led to the famous Valkyrie plot. Diels and Gisevius hated each other. Around 1950 many well-informed people – no doubt including Diels and Gisevius – thought these men were both candidates to head the newly created West German domestic intelligence service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. When Diels and Gisevius argued about who set the Reichstag fire – which they did both publicly and vitriolically – it is hard to overlook the fact that they were competing for jobs and influence in the emerging West German intelligence sector.

The Cold War also explained why the infamous East German Stasi spent many years and considerable effort doing its own discreet research into the Reichstag fire and the people who had been involved in it. Above all the Stasi hoped to find information that would discredit prominent East German dissidents, along with ex-Nazi police and intelligence officials in West Germany. The Stasi also tried to recruit at least one well-known western Reichstag fire researcher to be, in Stasi-speak, an “unofficial employee.”

But the most important link between intelligence services and the Reichstag fire came in the form of a man named Fritz Tobias, who from the 1950s to the 1970s was a senior official of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in the West German federal state of Lower Saxony. Earlier, in the 1940s – by his own account at least – he had served as a “scout” for the British Secret Intelligence Service. This meant that, while working on a “denazification” tribunal, he was supposed to keep his eyes open for former Nazis who might be useful to the British.

In 1951 Tobias started devoting his spare time – by his account, only his spare time – to research on the Reichstag fire. By the late 1950s his work was already becoming known, and, to some German officials, somewhat troubling. Tobias could and did use the powers of his office to get information. He was able to get access to classified documents that were closed to the public, and on at least one occasion he brought a prosecutor along with him to question a retired judge who had evidence to give about the fire. Was this all really just a spare time project? In the early 1960s, when Tobias’s lengthy book on the Reichstag fire was published (lengthy in German anyway – the English translation cut it by about half), Tobias used agents from the Office for Constitutional Protection to threaten academic historians who disagreed with his arguments, and blackmailed the director of a prestigious institute with classified documents revealing that director’s Nazi past. There seems at least a possibility that Tobias’s work was really an official commission. When asked about this while testifying in court in 1961, Tobias declined to answer because of his duty to maintain official secrets.

Why would German security services in the 1960s care about who had burned the Reichstag? There are several possibilities, admittedly only speculative. Tobias’s book, like Rudolf Diels’s before him, was to a considerable extent an attack on Hans Bernd Gisevius. Gisevius had made himself very unpopular with the West German government through his advocacy of a policy of neutrality in the Cold War and his friendship with gadflies like Martin Niemöller. There are materials in the FBI’s file on Gisevius (and yes, the bureau had one) that seem likely to have come from a German security service. There is also the issue that all the state and the Federal West German governments were very much on the defensive in the early 1960s about the number of senior officials they employed who had bad records from the Nazi era. Tobias’s own state of Lower Saxony was one of the worst offenders in this regard. Tobias’s book was very much a defense, indeed a glorification, of those former Gestapo officers who had worked with Rudolf Diels – one of whom, Walter Zirpins, had an office just down the hall from Fritz Tobias at the Lower Saxon Interior Ministry.

These spies and their various schemes make up a fascinating, if murky, part of this murky historical mystery.

Benjamin Carter Hett, a former trial lawyer and professor of history at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, is the author of Burning the Reichstag, Death in the Tiergarten and Crossing Hitler, winner of the Fraenkel Prize.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.


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

The post Spies and the burning Reichstag appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesWho started the Reichstag Fire?The Press stands firm against the French Revolution and NapoleonInternational Holocaust Remembrance Day reading list 

The rise of music therapy

By Scott Huntington

Music therapy involves the use of clinical, evidence-supported musical interventions to meet a patient’s specific goals for healing (a useful fact sheet). The musical therapist should have the proper credentials and be licensed in the field of music therapy.

Music therapy is performed in rehabilitation centers such as 12 Keys Rehab, psychiatric and even general hospitals, private practices, nursing homes, schools, etc. to treat a wide variety of issues, including social, cognitive, emotional, and physical needs. After an initial assessment, the musical therapist prescribes a treatment plan in which the patient sings, moves and dances, creates, or simply listens to music. This experience facilitates a healthy outlet for patients to communicate and express their feelings, in addition to rehabilitating the patient physically.

Rand De Mattei, a music instructor with Blues in the Schools, gets in tune with Petty Officer 2nd Class Tyreen S. McRae, a participant in neurologic music therapy, at Naval Medical Center San Diego Feb. 28. Neurologic music therapy helps Wounded Warriors recover. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Music therapy and special populations

As it has become more prevalent, music therapy has proven to be useful for a wide variety of populations. One such population is victims of crisis and trauma. After the 9/11 terror attacks in New York City, the American Music Therapy Association founded The New York City Music Therapy Relief Project. The goal of the project was to serve the children and adults living in the metropolitan vicinity by providing them with music therapy services. Some of these musical therapy programs were customized with the specific needs of caregivers in mind, targeting teachers, counselors, social workers, doctors, and nurses. More than 3,000 teachers and students were served through eleven different music therapy programs that reached out to eight local schools.

Music therapy has also been used in the treatment of mental illness. In addition to the basic care they should be receiving, music therapy helped patients with schizophrenia to achieve an enhanced mental state along with improving their overall condition. What’s more, music therapy has been shown to drastically reduce the unwanted symptoms these patients sometimes experience, making them more capable of having conversations with other people, thereby alleviating feelings of isolation and giving them more of an interest in what is going on around them.

Along with helping those suffering from schizophrenia, music therapy has also been used as an effective way to treat clinical depression. Studies have shown that when adolescents who were depressed listened to music, they had a notable drop in the levels of cortisol (a stress hormone), and the left frontal lobe of their brain was activated, which was reported to be a positive outcome.

Those who struggle with anger have also benefited from music therapy treatments. When assessed with the Achenbach’s Teacher’s Report Form, music therapy patients made significant improvements on the scale of aggression and hostility. Studies suggest that group sessions of music therapy allow patients to express themselves in a positive way, transforming their aggression and rage into healthier forms of communication. 

While music therapy can go a long way in improving the mental health of a patient, it can also help in more physical ways. For one thing, music therapy lowers a patient’s perception of their pain so that what might normally be extremely painful becomes a much more tolerable experience. For patients suffering with cancer and undergoing chemotherapy, music therapy has been known to lower incidences of nausea and anxiety, sometimes significantly lowering the fatigue, anxiety, and pain of those in hospice care.

Talking to a music therapist

I caught up with Alyssa Regan, who is in her second year in the master’s equivalency program for music therapy at Immaculata University. She’s also near the end of her full-time internship at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

How have you personally seen music therapy work on someone?

I was planning on having a session with one of my patients that I had been seeing regularly since the beginning of my internship. This patient was only 16 months old and suffered from many medical complications. When I arrived at his room, I noticed an entire medical team standing around his bed; his monitor was beeping, his heart rate and respiratory rate were so erratic that numbers weren’t even showing. My patient’s face was red and he seemed to be writhing in discomfort. With approval from the medical team, I came in and began to quietly play guitar. Around the same time, the patient was given some medication. As I began to sing, my patient’s face calmed. I aimed to match the tempo of my music with his breathing and then gradually slow it down. His HR and RR appeared on the monitors and slowly decreased. After 20 minutes or so, his vitals were stable and he was asleep. After the session, one of the nurses said, “Well, either you’re a miracle worker or those drugs kicked in extremely fast!” I’m sure the medicine had a little to do with it, but it was also the music.

Since you started studying music therapy, have you seen it grow?

Yes. I think that more of the general population is beginning to recognize it as a credible field, especially as it seems to be gaining more publicity recently (e.g. the Gabby Giffords documentary and the recent segment on the news about music therapy with premature infants). I hope it continues to grow!

Is music therapy becoming more recognized in hospitals, nursing homes, etc.? 

I think it is becoming more recognized in general, which hopefully means that there will be more jobs available. The most growth seems to be happening in hospice care.

How do you see music therapy expanding over the next ten years?

Ideally, I’d like music therapy to be seen as important as physical therapy, speech therapy, or occupational therapy. Will that happen over the next ten years? Probably not. However, I would not be too surprised if every hospice care organization, children’s hospital, and major medical and psychiatric institution in the United States had at least one music therapist on staff in ten years.

Scott Huntington is a percussionist specializing in marimba. He’s also a writer, reporter and blogger. He lives in Pennsylvania with his wife and son and does Internet marketing for WebpageFX in Harrisburg. Scott strives to play music whenever and wherever possible. Follow him on Twitter at @SMHuntington.

Oxford Music Online is the gateway offering users the ability to access and cross-search multiple music reference resources in one location. With Grove Music Online as its cornerstone, Oxford Music Online also contains The Oxford Companion to Music, The Oxford Dictionary of Music, and The Encyclopedia of Popular Music.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.


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


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

The post The rise of music therapy appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesDirty South hip hop and societal ills in the former ConfederacyLucy in the scientific methodTerror