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March 19, 2013
World Social Work Day: Against neoliberal social work?
Social workers around the world are being invited to celebrate World Social Work Day on 19 March under the banner “Promoting Social and Economic Equalities”, taken from the Global Agenda (2010). Such a call to arms is sorely needed in the face of the growing influence of neoliberalism on global social work, an influence manifested in marketisation, consumerisation, and managerialisation. These dynamic processes and trends represent neoliberalism on the move as it colonises the world. This is not to suggest that the same detailed and identical neoliberal template for social work is emerging in many disparate countries. Rather, these three developments represent an overall direction of travel. In individual countries the extent to which the developments have progressed and in what combinations they have developed is path-dependent; it depends on political institutions, constitutional arrangements, the extent of opposition to them, and so on. Nevertheless, as a direction of travel neoliberalism is increasingly prominent in many countries as a bounded rationality, governing the limits and forms of what is know-able, say-able, and do-able in social work as a result of the impact of the three developments.
Marketisation
Neo-liberalism tells us that markets are needed in social work and that the role of the state is to create the institutional framework within which the social services market operates. In neoliberal rhetoric the installation of markets is supposed to produce competition on quality and price, with the former going up and the latter going down. All too quickly, markets introduce a race to the bottom on price alone and undermine the sense in which social services previously countered market values by stressing citizenship rights, entitlements, and needs; the market is not an arena of social justice. Conveniently this means that governments are able to hold the consequences of punitive policies and cuts in funding at arms-length because market outcomes are, allegedly, neither fair nor unfair but simply flow from “impersonal” market forces.
Consumerisation
Markets require customers. Neoliberalism promises that markets will liberate the users of social work from their alleged role as passive recipients of social workers’ attentions and turn them into active, rational, self-interested, choice-making customers. Neoliberalism argues that customers have high expectations, forged in consumer culture and carried over into their encounters with social work. However, the neoliberal rhetoric slips all too easily into managerial definitions of what being treated well as a customer means, usually through simplistic and narrow definitions of customer satisfaction such as the use of proxy measures. For example, when I returned to a period of practice as a social worker, the proxy measure of the quality of an assessment was the social worker giving the service user a copy of the written document that resulted. I could have undertaken the worst possible assessment — not listened to a service user, behaved in an oppressive manner, and so on — but as long as I gave her or him a copy of the written document my assessment would be judged to have met the standard laid down to measure customer satisfaction.
Such narrow approaches sidestep questions of justice, inequality and oppression, and ignore the extent to which we have to learn to behave as consumers; proficient consumerism is not a ready-made experience that all possess innately. Our consumer learning is located within a class position that intersects with a range of other social divisions in our biographies (age, disability, gender, “race”, sexuality). In addition, consumerism hides the reality of how most, maybe all, people come into contact with social work. They aren’t making a “customer choice”. They come from stressful conditions, they have lives that seem unbearable, their contact with social work may have been initiated by someone else and may be unwelcome. They are, therefore, likely to be trying to get their circumstances or improved rather than seeing themselves as customers accessing a particular “commodity”.
Managerialisation
In order to move in the direction of marketisation and consumerisation, social work becomes increasingly managerialised. The search for “better” management focuses on the world of private business in the belief in a generic model of management, which minimises the differences between private businesses and social work. This has three main consequences. First, the commodification of services through managerial identification of discrete problem categories and a menu of service options, quantifying and costing service outputs. This results in social workers being deprived of meaningful working relationships with and commitments to service users and reduces social work to a series of one-off transactions. Secondly, cuts in funding and expectation of efficiency gains exert a general downward pressure on costs. Thirdly, greater managerial control is exerted over professional space. An example of this is performance management: organisational objectives are identified, performance indicators are developed to reflect the objectives, targets are set in terms of the performance indicators, and progress is monitored using the PIs. Even its supporters identify a range of dysfunctional consequences, such as tunnel vision (an emphasis on phenomena that are quantified in the performance management system at the expense of unquantified aspects of performance) and gaming (minimising the apparent scope for performance improvement to avoid increased expectations and higher targets in the future). Another example of the extension of managerial control over professional space is the introduction of call centres into social work. This is the epitome of treating users of social work as customers. It introduces a process for dealing with them taken from the business sector that ignores the potential complexity of their “transactions” and jettisons social work’s emphasis on seeking to establish trust with and appreciate the unique circumstances of the service user.
Call centres are much-vaunted by their proponents because they overcome barriers of place and time. However, a sense of place and locality has other connotations in terms of service users’ identities and where and how they want services to be provided. These kinds of concerns were traditionally seen as integral to the nature of social work. In many progressive aspirations for social work, the notion of responsiveness to the ‘local patch’ has had pride of place. With the advent of call centres, the ability of social workers to be aware of and utilise local networks and resources is rendered unimportant.
Think global, act local
Some readings of these three developments suggest that neoliberalism is now indelibly inscribed in the consciousness of service users, social workers and managers so that neoliberal social work is the only form of social work with which it is possible to identify. An alternative is to see service users, social workers and managers as interpellated (being “called”) by neoliberalism. From this perspective, social workers (and others) may be called but may not respond to the call or may respond to it in ways that were not anticipated. This potential gap between neoliberalism’s intentions and accomplishments needs to be exploited not only by individual social workers struggling to work in the interests of service users in their day-to-day practice but also through collective struggles that support World Social Work Day’s Global Agenda at the national and local level (see Social Work Action Network).
John Harris is Emeritus Professor at the University of Warwick and Visiting Professor at Royal Holloway, University of London. He was a social worker, training officer, and manager prior to moving into social work education. He is the co-author of The Oxford Dictionary of Social Work and Social Care with Vicky White.
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The case for a European intelligence service with full British participation
The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival 2013 is in full swing, welcoming thinkers and writers from across the globe to our wonderful city of Oxford. We’re delighted to have over thirty Oxford University Press authors participating in the Festival this year! OUPblog will be bringing you a selection of blog posts from these authors so that even if you can’t join us in Oxford this year, you won’t miss out on all the action. Don’t forget you can also follow @oxfordlitfest and check the event schedule here.
Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones will be appearing at the Oxford Literary Festival on Thursday 21 March 2013 at 2 p.m. in a panel event with Clare Mulley, Chris Morgan Jones, and Mark Huband, to discuss ‘the spying game: reality and fiction’.
By Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones
The question is not what can membership in the European Union do for us in the UK, but what can we do for the EU? There is one way in which we British can strengthen the benefits of union. We can demand and nourish a European Intelligence Service (EIS). Forget the parochial moaning, the time is ripe for such an initiative.
In the last century it came to be accepted that effective intelligence can not only win wars and minimize civilian casualties, it can also help to prevent war — precisely the main aim of the EU, as its recent Nobel Prize confirmed. It further came to be accepted that intelligence liaison is important (two heads being better than one), and that the dominant cooperation was between the UK and USA. The Anglo-American arrangement contributed to the winning of two world wars and to the keeping of the Cold War peace.
But the ‘special intelligence relationship’ declined after the 1950s. The Cambridge Spy Ring and cover up undermined US faith in British intelligence. American administrations began to use the CIA to impose unilateral policies. Displeased with Prime Minister Edward Heath’s overtures to Europe, Henry Kissinger temporarily cut off privileged UK access to US intelligence information. Britain was broke, dependent on the Almighty Dollar, and powerless to resist these developments.
More recently, President Barack Obama performed his “pivot to the Pacific”, detaching America from it umbilical Old World ties. US interests demanded that and so does demography – Americans of European descent are about to become a minority in the USA. The idea that the relationship with Britain is special in the sense of being exclusive has for years been a cause of discreet mirth in Washington. And what’s the advantage of the US intelligence link? On present evidence, the CIA has gone into terminal decline. Demoted in the Washington hierarchy, it now specializes in drone attacks.
The EU already has some intelligence assets. The European Police Office, or Europol, is essentially an analytical intelligence agency. Thanks to French initiatives, the EU is developing a satellite intelligence capability. SITCEN is a small foreign intelligence analytical unit that reports to the External Action Service, the still-embryonic foreign affairs branch of the EU.
There are weaknesses in the current EU set-up. Member states hold the whip hand, and there is a lack of trust in the centre. Along with this goes weakness on the legislative side – we really shouldn’t trust a European intelligence service unless there is a stronger European parliament to oversee it. Neither Europol nor INTCEN have an intelligence collection facility. This means they can’t trade information with other bodies. Last and by no means least, continental Europe is, with honourable exceptions, shot through with racism. A good intelligence service must be cosmopolitan if it is to have the right expertise, and if people of all backgrounds are to trust it sufficiently to offer their cooperation.
We in Britain have something to offer. GCHQ is a major asset of a kind that the EU lacks and needs. We have experience and (setting aside the scandals that make such good stories in the press) a tradition of success in secret intelligence. We have a long way to go regarding racial tolerance, but it is a brutal truth that we can offer a better record than our continental cousins who do not even track inequalities – here, we can lead by example.
Europol HQ, The Hague
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Henry Kissinger
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Ilkka Salmi, SITCEN Director
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Rob Wainwright, Europol Director JPG
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In one crucial respect, we have already shown leadership. Since the 1990s, a remarkable number of British people have served in senior EU security and intelligence posts: Jonathan Faull as Director General of Justice and Home Affairs, Adrian Fortescue as his predecessor in the post, William Shapcott at SITCEN, Rob Wainwright as director of Europol, Aled Williams as president of Eurojust, and Catherine Ashton as High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy. We have expended our political capital getting our people into these security jobs as distinct from other posts.
To appreciate fully the positive side of a European agency, it is also wise to think negatively. Scotland may become independent. As recent parliamentary hearings confirmed, independence would necessitate a Scottish intelligence service. In the absence of an EU solution, the disaggregation of personnel with conflicting loyalties might well destroy all trust within and towards British intelligence.
Finally, the Americans. Setting aside Kissinger and other tantrums, it must be remembered that Washington has always wanted us to integrate with Europe. President Obama has recently reiterated the point. Furthermore, the Americans recognize the benefits of competitive intelligence estimates. If an alternative, trusted view of WMD had been expressed a decade ago, the world would have been saved a great deal of grief.
Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones is the author of In Spies We Trust: The Story of Western Intelligence (OUP, 2013) and of earlier histories of the CIA and FBI. Born in Wales, he is an emeritus professor of history at the University of Edinburgh.
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Image credits: Europol HQ, The Hague © Europol; Henry Kissinger © NARA; Illka Salmi © SUPO; Rob Wainwright © Europol. Used with permission; all rights reserved.
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March 18, 2013
Two visions of the end in Wagner’s Parsifal
Two centuries after Richard Wagner’s birth in 1813, his final music drama Parsifal continues to exert uncanny fascination, as Francois Girard’s new production at the Metropolitan Opera shows. For much of his life, Wagner was captivated by the legends of the Holy Grail; this “stage consecration festival play” is his culminating work. Dark episodes in Parsifal’s performance history display clearly the risks of its aesthetic treatment of redemption, which can project a hypnotic portrayal of collective identity. It was not without justification that Friedrich Nietzsche likened the exquisite music of Parsifal to the treacherous temptress Circe, claiming that “one must be a cynic in order not be seduced… and able to bite, in order not to adore.”
Who is redeemed at the stirring conclusion of Wagner’s mythic drama? In this scene, Parsifal at last finds his way back to the Grail Temple, heals the anguished King Amfortas with the Holy Spear and reunites Spear and Grail as unseen choruses sing “Redemption to the Redeemer!” from the heights of the dome. Although Wagner assimilates many Christian elements in Parsifal, Christ is never mentioned by name, while some aspects of the work draw on Buddhist and pagan elements. Parsifal is not a Christ substitute, and the nature of the undisclosed redeemer in the Grail remains open to interpretation. The death at the conclusion of Kundry, the only important female figure, has provoked divergent responses. Many recent productions keep Kundry alive, and in that regard Girard offers a fresh perspective.
The Bayreuth Circle regarded themselves as Knights of the Grail committed to promote a racist nationalist vision of Germanic self-realization. Decades after the composer’s death in 1883, the Wagner clan grouped itself around the propagandist Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who had married Wagner’s daughter Eva. Chamberlain espoused a religiously oriented anti-Semitism, hailing Adolf Hitler in 1924 as a “god-sent benediction”. At the renewal of the Wagner Festival at Bayreuth that year, Wagner’s son Siegfried hoisted not the banner of the Weimar republic, whose black-red-gold tricolor his father had honored in 1849, but instead the imperial flag, a choice signaling his reactionary disdain for democracy and internationalism. By 1924, the Green Hill with its Wagner festival theater at Bayreuth had turned brown.
An artist member of the Bayreuth Circle, Franz Stassen, created scenes based on Parsifal, including the illustrations shown here, of Parsifal holding the Holy Spear (end of Act 2) and the Grail (end of Act 3). In the first picture, the young Parsifal grasps the spear in his right hand while light streams down, and Kundry lies at his feet beside wilted flowers (Plate 1). The second depiction shows an older, Christ-like Parsifal holding the glowing Grail touched by light from above while Kundry gazes upward and the assembled knights stare transfixed; the scene is framed by an angelic host rising up from the musical excerpt at the foot of the image (Plate 2). The musical notation shows the passage leading to Kundry’s death at the ensuing A-minor chord, whereas the framing design of angelic figures corresponds in the musical realization to the unseen choral voices from the dome singing “Redemption to the Redeemer!”. Stassen has illustrated precisely Wagner’s stage directions at this juncture, with white dove hovering over glowing Grail while Kundry’s gaze is uplifted to Parsifal.
Plate 1
Plate 2
At the outset of the Third Reich, Hitler was depicted as a Parsifal-like figure in a manner that absorbs the imagery from Wagner’s work (Plate 3). The Führer appears here bearing a Nazi flag while an eagle hovers. The eagle in the poster is highly stylized, with a mechanized appearance, suggesting a military plane almost as much as a regal bird. The slogan “Es lebe Deutschland!” can be translated as “Long live Germany!” Light streaming from above identifies the leader as a “Lichtgestalt,” an expression used by Chamberlain to describe Hitler. This Hitler propaganda poster combines the imagery of the two depictions of Parsifal by Stassen. In place of the Holy Spear as the focus of light streaming from above, Hitler carries a Nazi flag in his upraised right hand; instead of the dove and assembled knights, the Führer stands beneath the hovering eagle with shining light from above in front of a host of his brown-shirted followers.
Plate 3
In 1933, the year Hitler rose to power, a book on Parsifal was published by Alfred Lorenz, who identified German’s new leader with Parsifal. For Lorenz, the closing affirmative music of Wagner’s drama discloses Wagner’s “prophetic thoughts” about a “new Parsifal religion,” enabling the listener to experience through the music the following insight, which he highlights in spaced-out print:
“W e s h o u l d o v e r c o m e d e c a y a n d a s a r a c i a l l y
h i g h – b r e d p e o p l e a d v a n c e t o v i c t o r y.”
This is a chilling example of an ideological reduction of an artwork to serve a murderous totalitarian regime. For those who accepted this interpretation, Werktreue or “faithfulness to the work” became inseparable from commitment to Hitler’s “New Germany”.
Seen against this troubling ideological background, and the more recent tendency of Parsifal productions to alter Wagner’s directions (for instance by rehabilitating Kundry), several aspects of Girard’s production merit comment. The narrow cultic Grail community in Act 1 is segregated on the right side of the stage, while excluded female figures lurk in the shadows on the left side. The dividing line on the stage becomes a gigantic wound from which blood flows down into the sinister setting of Act 2, Klingsor’s treacherous magic castle of deceptive illusions. As Kundry delivers her poisoned kiss to Parsifal on a bloodied bed, they are observed voyeuristically by Klingsor in Girard’s staging, which makes sense, since he functions here like the director of the action, using the enchanted castle as his stage set. The tragic dualistic split starts to be overcome in the Good Friday Scene in Act 3, as Parsifal moves across to stage left, foreshadowing the integration of women into the closing integrative synthesis, in which the male and female symbols—Spear and Grail—are joined. Kundry’s involvement here is crucial, since she acts as the Grail bearer, carrying the shrine to the front of the stage, and her active role (departing from Wagner’s instructions) allows her death to be felt as a positive release from her curse and countless reincarnations.
This Parsifal dispenses with a Grail Temple, while broadening the sphere of action as something cosmic. A constricted cultic focus—the orientation so discredited by National Socialism—is replaced here by an open inclusive perspective. Musically as well, features associated with the temple—the bells and unseen choruses—are pallid aspects of an otherwise vivid production. The planetary images in this staging are suggestive of Wagner’s principal medieval source, Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, in which the Grail is not the cup that caught the Savior’s blood but a miraculous extra-terrestrial stone. Superb performances of Gurnemanz by René Pape and Parsifal by Jonas Kaufmann contribute to the power of this production, whose closing aesthetic depiction of redemption transcends the closeted world of white-shirted male believers from Act 1, thereby critiquing narrow sectarian religion while affirming the need for a more encompassing spiritual vision.
William Kinderman is Professor of Musicology at the University of Illinois – Champaign-Urbana. His books include the forthcoming Wagner’s Parsifal (OUP 2013), Beethoven’s “Diabelli” Variations (OUP, 1987), ed., Beethoven’s Compositional Process (Nebraska, 1991), Beethoven (OUP and California, 1995), ed., The Second Practice of Nineteenth-Century Tonality (Nebraska, 1996), Artaria 195: Beethoven’s Sketchbook for the ‘Missa solemnis’ and the Piano Sonata in E Major, Opus 109 (Illinois, 3 vols., 2003), ed. (with Katherine Syer), A Companion to Wagner’s “Parsifal” (Camden House, 2005), ed., The String Quartets of Beethoven (Illinois, 2006), and Mozart’s Piano Music (OUP, 2006). He is also an accomplished pianist whose recordings have been met with global acclaim; his CDs of Beethoven’s last sonatas and Diabelli Variations have appeared with Arietta Records.
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Image credits:
Plate 1: Franz Stassen, illustration of Parsifal holding the Holy Spear, from his 15 Illustrations for Wagner’s Sacred Stage Festival (Bühnenweihfestspiel).
Plate 2: Franz Stassen, illustration of Parsifal holding the Grail, from his 15 Illustrations for Wagner’s Sacred Stage Festival (Bühnenweihfestspiel).
Plate 3: Poster showing Hitler as Parsifal-like “Lichtgestalt” figure.
All images used with permission via William Kinderman.
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Preparing for ASIL 2013
By Ninell Silberberg
In How Nations Behave, Louis Henkin’s classic book on law and foreign policy, he noted that “almost all nations observe almost all principles of international law and almost all of their obligations almost all of the time.” The purpose then, of international law, is to provide a framework for the practice of stable and organized international relations and a process for resolving conflicts when they arise.
International law is an interesting field because countries are not obligated to abide by it unless they have expressly consented to do so. Thus, international lawyers are at the forefront of deciding the legality of issues that can affect the futures of billions of people. Do you ever wonder whether targeted killing is legal; if Somali pirates can be arrested in open waters; or whether all nations should be held to the same environmental standards? International lawyers regularly answer these questions.
A group of 1,500 international law scholars, students, and practitioners will convene in Washington, D.C. from 3-6 April at the American Society of International Law’s 107th Annual Meeting. They will come together to share research, commiserate, and catch up with friends from around the world. They will ask themselves how the international legal order should evolve in a world that is more inter-connected and multi-polar than ever before.
Those who have been to the ASIL annual meeting before know that it is a three day conference packed with informative panel discussions and networking events. This year’s conference is no different. Each of the panels sound fascinating, with impressive participants including Dinah Shelton, Dame Rosalyn Higgins, and Harold Koh, while The Hudson Medal Luncheon honoring Judge Bruno Simma, the Annual dinner presenting the ASIL Honors and Awards, and the Grotius Lecture are not-to be missed.
If you’re wondering what to do when you’re not attending sessions, check these conference-related happenings:
Wednesday: Hugo Grotius is considered to be the founder of International Law, so it’s only fitting that the conference begins each year with a lecture in his honor. This year’s Grotius Lecture takes place on Wednesday from 4:30-6:30 p.m.
Thursday: Thursday morning, the first full day of the conference, is great time to check out the exhibits. Most offer conference discounts and fun giveaways. If you enjoy browsing, the booths will have less traffic today than on Friday or Saturday. On Thursday night, The President’s Reception takes place at the National Portrait Gallery, where you can discuss the current state of international law while enjoying portraits of the people who shaped history.
Friday: Curtis Bradley will be signing copies of his book, International Law in the U.S. Legal System , at the Oxford booth from 2:00-2:30 p.m. directly following the Hudson Medal Luncheon. On Friday night, the International Law Students Association will host a Desert and Dance Party from 10:00 p.m.-12:00 p.m.
If you are lucky enough to be joining us in DC, don’t forget to visit the Oxford University Press booth (tables 4-7), where you can demo our new law products, browse our award winning books, and pick up an Oxford journal.
To follow the latest updates about the ASIL Conference as it happens, follow us @OUPAcademic, ASIL @asilorg, and the hashtags #asil2013, and #asil13.
See you in DC!
Ninell Silberberg is an Assistant Marketing Manager on the Law team at Oxford University Press USA.
Oxford University Press is a leading publisher in Public 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.
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March Madness: Atlas Edition – Round Two
It’s time for Round Two of March Madness: Atlas Edition, right on the heels of the first round of the March Madness basketball playoffs beginning tomorrow, Tuesday, 19 March 2013. While players battle it out on the court, countries in our tournament are competing for the coveted title of “Country of the Year” based on statistics drawn at random from Oxford’s Atlas of the World: 19th Edition.
Last week we asked: Which country has the highest GDP per capita?
Check out the winners below! Did you get them right?
Madagascar vs. Democratic Republic of Congo WINNER: Madagascar
Ethiopia vs. Burma (Myanmar) WINNER: Burma (Myanmar)
Indonesia vs. India WINNER: Indonesia
China vs. Japan WINNER: Japan
Italy vs. Greece WINNER: Italy
Costa Rica vs. Turkey WINNER: Turkey
Venezuela vs. Mexico WINNER: Mexico
Australia vs. USA WINNER: USA
For Round 2, we want to know: Which country has a higher level of endemism?
Madagascar vs. Burma (Myanmar)
Indonesia vs. Japan
Italy vs. Turkey
Mexico vs. USA
Endemic species, plants, and ecosystems refer to those which are unique to a specific country, such as the aye-aye lemur of Madagascar. It’s currently estimated that there are about 14 million species in the world, but only 2 million have been formally identified. Can you figure out which country has the higher level? To determine the winners in this week’s round, select the country with the highest level of endemism in each bracket. You can print out our Atlas bracket (below) and place your bets, or play along on
March 16, 2013
Hypnosis for chronic pain management
How can hypnosis affect pain management? The results from three lines of research have combined to create a renewed interest in the application of hypnosis for chronic pain management.
First, imaging studies demonstrate that the effects of hypnotic suggestions on brain activity are real and can target specific aspects of pain. Hypnosis for decreases in the intensity of pain result not only in significant decreases in pain intensity, but also decreases in activity in the brain areas that underlie the experience of pain intensity. At the same time, hypnotic suggestions for decrease in the unpleasantness (but not intensity) of pain have significant effects on how bad the pain makes people feel, but not necessarily intensity. Interestingly, these suggestions result in decreases in activity in the areas of the brain responsible for processing the emotional aspect of pain, but not those areas that are responsible for processing pain intensity.
Second, research studies demonstrate that hypnotic treatments can save money. Hypnotic suggestions for reduced pain and improved healing have been shown to reduce the time needed for medical procedures, speed recovery time, and result in fewer analgesics needed — all of which not only result in more comfort for the patient, but save the patient and the patient’s insurance companies money. In a time of growing medical expenses, it’s nice to have a treatment that can actually result in cost savings.
Third, a rapidly growing body of research shows that hypnosis works. When hypnosis and hypnotic suggestions are combined with other treatments, those other treatments become more effective. When people with chronic pain are taught how to use self-hypnosis for pain management and improved sleep, they experience pain relief and sleep better. This research also reveals that hypnosis has many “side effects”, which are overwhelmingly positive. People who learn self-hypnosis can not only experience significant pain relief, but report a greater sense of overall well-being and control.
For all of these reasons, more clinicians are seeking to learn how to apply hypnosis and to teach self-hypnosis to their clients with chronic pain.
Mark P. Jensen is Professor and Vice Chair for Research of the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Washington Medical Center. He has published more than 250 articles and book chapters on pain assessment and management, and is currently Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Pain. He is the author of Hypnosis for Chronic Pain Management: Workbook and Hypnosis for Chronic Pain Management: Therapist Guide, winner of the 2011 Arthur Shapiro Award for Best Book on Hypnosis, from the Society of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis. He will be presenting a “Hypnosis for Pain Management” workshop on pain management at the 55th ASCH Annual Scientific Meeting and Workshops on 16 March 2013.
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Image credit: A pocket watch is going through a hypnotizing motion. Image by matt_benoit, iStockphoto. >
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March 15, 2013
Erasmus Darwin: sex, science, and serendipity
Patricia Fara will be appearing at the Oxford Literary Festival on Thursday 21 March 2013 at 2 p.m. to discuss Erasmus Darwin and sex, science, and serendipity.
By Patricia Fara
The world, wrote Darwin, resembles ‘one great slaughter-house, one universal scene of rapacity and injustice.’ Unexpectedly, that fine image of competitive natural selection was created not by Charles Darwin (1809-1882), but by his grandfather Erasmus (1731-1802). Although Charles publicly dissociated himself from this embarrassing relative, he inherited his views on abolition and evolution.
Unfamiliar now, Erasmus Darwin was well-known among his contemporaries, highly respected by many but reviled by others. Energetic and sociable, this corpulent tee-totaller was, as Samuel Taylor Coleridge put it, ‘the most inventive of philosophical men…He thinks in a new train on every subject’. On top of running a successful medical practice, Darwin was a Fellow of the Royal Society, promoted industrial innovation in the Midlands, campaigned against slavery, and was renowned for his long poems on plants, technology and evolution. The father of twelve children by two wives and his son’s governess, he envisaged an ever-changing universe that was fuelled by sexual energy and governed by natural laws rather than by God.
After his death, Darwin’s reputation plummeted because of his unorthodox ideas, but he has recently been rescued and celebrated as a prescient inventor, a key influence on Romantic literature, a champion of women’s education and the grandfather of evolution.
Darwin also became a target of political abuse. As he grew older, his opinions grew increasingly radical. Six months after the French Revolution, he exclaimed to the steam engineer James Watt, ‘Do you not congratulate your grandchildren on the dawn of universal liberty? I feel myself becoming all French both in chemistry and politics.’ In one of his long poems, The Economy of Vegetation, he welcomed the American and French Revolutions and railed against slavery.
Establishment politicians savaged him in a satirical poem called ‘The Loves of the Triangles’, which is usually seen as a light-hearted spoof of his The Loves of the Plants. But when I took the trouble to read it carefully, I realized it was far more substantial. Terrified by threats to their comfortable life style, these political poets exaggerated the risk of the French Revolution creeping across the Channel. And in particular, they focussed on Zoonomia, Darwin’s hefty medical treatise.
Although a strong influence on grandson Charles, Zoonomia was deemed so subversive that it was put on the Vatican’s banned list. Towards the end of this book, Darwin dared for the first time to suggest in print that the Bible was not literally true – that the universe was created much longer than 6000 years ago. Still worse, he proposed that human beings have gradually evolved over the millennia from primitive organisms. Or as he put it, ‘in the great length of time, since the earth began to exist…warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament…possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering down those improvements by generation to its posterity…’
Parodists fantasised about vegetables growing wings, algae turning into fish, and people rubbing off their tails by sitting in caves. Facile jokes, perhaps, but evolution implied that the working classes might better themselves and gain positions of power. Scared off by the adverse publicity, Darwin retreated to finish his most contentious work, The Temple of Nature, which was published the year after he died. This manifesto for progressive evolution revealed him to be a materialist who believed not only that God has played no role in the continuous development of the universe, but also – still more controversially – that life stemmed from matter rather than from a divine spark. Living organisms, Darwin explained, first appeared deep in the ocean. Through successive generations, these minute beings gradually grew larger, acquiring new forms and functions until whales governed the seas, lions the land, and eagles the air – and the entire process culminated in the appearance of human beings.
Modern readers often find Erasmus Darwin’s poetry excruciating, but it was very popular at the end of the eighteenth century. Since his contemporaries took him seriously, then so too should historians. Committed to progress in every field – scientific, technological, social, biological – Darwin was a champion of Enlightenment thought who provided vital inspiration for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. A controversial political radical, he campaigned for abolition and female education, and challenged Christian orthodoxy by publishing a theory of evolution before his celebrated grandson was even born.
After spending several years with Erasmus Darwin, I know that I will never like his poetry. On the other hand, I have come to admire him enormously for his determination to make the world a better place. That may sound hackneyed, but what better aim in life could anyone have?
Patricia Fara is the Senior Tutor of Clare College, Cambridge, and she specializes in eighteenth-century history of science. Prize-winning author of Science: A Four Thousand Year History (Oxford University Press, 2009), her latest book is Erasmus Darwin: Sex, Science and Serendipity (Oxford University Press, 2012).
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Image credit: Darwin family tree by Carol Christiansen. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
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Benedict XVI, Francis, and St. Augustine of Hippo
We have a new Pope: Francis — a name honouring St. Francis of Assisi, who venerated poverty and recommended it to his followers.
In the build up to his election, a good deal of attention was naturally directed to the challenges facing the Catholic Church. Not least of these is the question of social justice and the plight of the global poor. As Cardinal Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, Pope Francis had faced these with dignity, eschewing the trappings of office and choosing to live the example of a simple and humble lifestyle. The way he presented himself to the world on Wednesday night was no different. There was the same hint of an extempore independence of spirit.
But if these details seem to suggest a Catholic Church bringing itself up to speed with the world, they also offer a pause for reflection about continuity between the Pope Emeritus and this new Pope. And if poverty and a regard for the marginalized is the theme, then St. Augustine of Hippo might become the source of that reflection, as well as the link between the two men – Benedict, the Augustinian scholar and long time “doctrinal watchdog,” and Francis, the third world candidate of a modernizing Vatican.
Augustine was a sublime and prodigious scholar and a Defensor fidei. He wrote tirelessly against the major heresies and schisms of the early Church and promoted orthodoxy through that work. Yet he was also the Bishop of Hippo Regius in a declining province of Roman North Africa. The son of modest parents, he established a strict monastic discipline for himself and enforced it on his priests in the name of leadership and good example. It is often remarked upon by scholars how extraordinary it is that so much that remains foundational today in the Western Church – as indeed in the whole Western tradition of philosophy and ideas – flowed from so simple a pen in such a far-flung corner of the Empire. It does indeed make you think of Pope Francis’ words from the balcony on Wednesday night: “It seems that my brother cardinals went almost to the end of the world to choose a pope!”
But to Augustine at least, these two aspects of his life were always united in a single conception that he was anxious should not be separated. For of course one of the age-long challenges for Christianity and the Church has been to meet and overcome the world’s confidence when it claims that it understands realism best. This is not surprising: Christ proclaimed an otherworldly message on behalf of the spirituality of the human soul, and since then a critical purpose of the Church’s mission has been to preserve that otherworldly beauty in the integrity of its sacraments. At a time like now, when the world feels confident again to remind the Church that she should remain in touch with real problems, Augustine’s life and preaching offer a more nuanced perspective.
Poverty, injustice, and the general-case “problem of pain,” are not, he taught, proofs that the world should bring against the Church. The Church must of course move with the times and periodically reform herself, but the love and sympathy which alleviates suffering, one human reaching to another, is nobody’s possession but the God Who made all heaven and earth — and all men and women in His image. It is a subtle point of deep theology, threatened on either side by the ideologies that can just as quickly be made out of the cause of poverty as they can out of the cause of wealth. In Augustine’s teaching, both the rich man and the poor man prove a sacramental truth to each other before they join forces to make a better society.
Although a marbled house does contain you, although fretted ceilings cover you, you and the poor man together have for covering that roof of the universe, the sky… In the bowels of your mothers you were both naked. [En. in Ps., LXXII, 13]
On Thursday, in a Sistine Chapel Mass, Pope Francis urged:
If we do not confess to Christ, what would we be? We would end up a compassionate NGO. What would happen would be like when children make sand castles and then it all falls down.
And similarly, on 27 February, in his last General Audience, Pope Benedict called the faithful back to this reality of the barque of Saint Peter:
But I always knew that the Lord is in this barque; and I always knew that the barque of the Church is something that belongs neither to me, nor to us, but to Him alone. And the Lord will not let her sink: for it is He Himself Who leads her. This happens through the men he has chosen, certainly – but only because this is how He wants it.
This is a distinctly Augustinian call. When Augustine became a bishop and chose a monastic poverty he saw it in these terms. Human ingenuity has added to the sophistications of life and created through them the concept of progress through time — as well as the yardsticks of that progress in the rich and the poor, the developed and the undeveloped world. But if the Church is not merely to become a “compassionate NGO” she must remember that she has been appointed to remain, in the first instance, above these distinctions. It is only by continuing as the Lord’s possession (and no human’s) that she can credibly draw true seekers to her incorporeal vision of Beauty.
Beyond count are the things made by various crafts in garments, shoes, utensils, and so on – not to mention the visionary creations of artists! Men have taken this course and added all these to the allurements of the eyes, outwardly pursuing the things they make, but inwardly forsaking Him by Whom they were made; and therefore actually destroying what they were made to be… For the beautiful visions transmitted through the artists’ souls into their hands all come from that very Beauty which is above their souls, and for which my soul sighs by day and by night. [Confess., X, 34, 53]
Miles Hollingworth is Research Fellow in the History of Ideas at St. John’s College, Durham University, in the United Kingdom. His writing on Augustine has won awards from the Society of Authors (2009 Elizabeth Longford Grant for Historical Biography) and the Royal Society of Literature (2009 Jerwood Award for Non-Fiction). He is the author of The Pilgrim City: St. Augustine of Hippo and his Innovation in Political Thought, which was shortlisted for the Royal Historical Society’s Gladstone History Book Prize, and St. Augustine of Hippo: An Intellectual Biography.
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Image credits: “Habemus Papam” – Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, S.J., has been elected Pope Francis I. Source: Mazur/catholicnews.org.uk via CC BY 2.0 via Flickr. St. Augustine and four States of a fraternity. Source: WikiPaintings.
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World War II vocabulary
To celebrate the imminent release of Oral History Review (OHR)’s latest issue, 40.1, on oral history in the digital age, we’re delighted to share a chat between managing editor Troy Reeves and contributor Lindsey Barnes. Barnes and her colleague Kim Guise are co-authors of “World War Words: The Creation of a World War II–Specific Vocabulary for the Oral History Collection at The National WWII Museum,” a case study of developing controlled vocabulary for the oral history collections at the National WWII Museum. It — and the rest of issue 40.1 — will be available at OHR Oxford University Press page soon. Keep an eye on our twitter (@oralhistreview) and Facebook page to see when articles go live.
In addition to the article, Troy and Lindsay discuss the creation of http://ww2online.org and Lindsay reveals how those outside the field see oral history. The words “problem child” are used and no one is surprised. Enjoy!
[Troy: When Lindsay refers to problem child, she means oral history cataloging and metadata, not me.]
[See post to listen to audio]
Or download the podcast directly.
Lindsey Barnes is the Senior Archivist/Digital Projects Manager at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. She is currently working to provide online access to the museum’s many collections including oral histories, photographs and artifacts.
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 and like them on Facebook to preview the latest from the Review, learn about other oral history projects, connect with oral history centers across the world, and discover topics that you may have thought were even remotely connected to the study of oral history. Keep an eye out for upcoming posts on the OUPblog for addendum to past articles, interviews with scholars in oral history and related fields, and fieldnotes on conferences, workshops, etc.
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Beware the Ides of March!
Romans measured time in months but not in weeks. The Ides simply meant the middle day of a month and it functioned simply as a temporal navigation aid — one that looks clumsy to us. So one might make an appointment for two days before the Ides or for three days after the Kalends (the first day of the month) and so on. A man shouting from the back of the crowd “Beware the Ides of March!” must have sounded about as sane as a heckler yelling to a modern day politician that he should watch out for the third Tuesday in April.
But for us the Ides of March has only one meaning: the date in 44 BC when Julius Caesar was murdered by a crowd of senators led by his protégés Brutus and Cassius. Tyrannicide, treachery, pathos. And the cry “Beware the Ides of March!” is forever the warning that was ignored.
This we owe to William Shakespeare who made his murder the focal point of the tragedy Julius Caesar. The play is punchy and the action moves fast. It opens in the streets of Rome, where the people are preparing to welcome Caesar home in triumph after the defeat of his civil war rival Pompey. Meanwhile aristocrats mutter over the loss of freedom. Brutus agonizes, torn between his love for Caesar and his hatred of tyranny. The murder itself occurs at almost the exact center of the play. The outcome is briefly uncertain — will the Roman people hail Brutus and Cassius as liberators, or condemn them as murderers? Then Mark Antony, Caesar’s right-hand man, sways the crowd with a passionate funeral oration. The rest of the play follows the flight of the conspirators, their defeat in battle at Philippi, at the hands of Antony and Caesar’s heir Octavius, and their subsequent suicides. Brutus earns the shortest of obituaries from his enemies before Octavius’ closing lines “So call the field to rest, and let’s away, to part the glories of this happy day.”
The Ides themselves were not a happy day, according to Suetonius, one of Caesar’s ancient biographers. The Ides of March had been declared the Day of Parricide, and the senate was forbidden ever to meet again on that date. For things had not turned out as Brutus hoped. By Suetonius’ day it was possible to see Julius Caesar as the first of the Roman emperors, all of whom — beginning from Octavius — took Caesar’s name as a kind of title. An entire mythology had grown up of signs that had marked Caesar’s imminent death and even his subsequent transformation into a god. As Caesar’s wife Calpurnia puts it:
When beggars die there are no comets seen
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes
“Beware the Ides of March!” was just one prophesy among others that transformed Caesar’s murder from a sordid and ultimately pointless crime into an event of cosmic significance. The deaths of emperors (like their births, when viewed in retrospect) were always marked by omens. Emperors were absolute rulers in their lifetime and gods in waiting. How could their deaths be ordinary? And how could their murder even be justified?
Tyrannicide was no more popular under the reigns of Elizabeth I (when the play was first performed) or of her successor James (when it was first printed). Yet political murder and dilemmas like that of Brutus were definitely still on the agenda. Mary Queen of Scots, for example — Elizabeth’s cousin and James’ mother — had been executed for treason just a decade before Julius Caesar was first staged. These issues still mattered.
And Shakespeare’s audience knew this story in advance. A vast mass of the detail of this play, as of Antony and Cleopatra, was drawn from the Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, written by Suetonius’ contemporary Plutarch but first translated into English in 1579, a generation before Julius Caesar began to be performed. Plutarch’s Lives, which mined classical history for morally improving tales, were fantastically popular in the early modern period and indeed remained so well into the eighteenth century. Shakespeare’s audience knew from the start that Caesar would die, who would kill him, and even that young Octavius would turn out to be a greater tyrant than Caesar had ever tried to be.
So the soothsayer’s cry “Beware the Ides of March” was not a plot-spoiler. For Shakespeare this warning, and all the others, were devices to raise the tension and focus our attention on the pivotal moment of the murder. As in a thriller today, the excitement is in the obstacles put in the way of the plot. Caesar must die. But what if he listens to his wife’s terrible nightmares? or heeds the soothsayer’s warning? or reads the written warning pushed into his hand by Artemidorus “Delay not Caesar, read it instantly!” (Caesar does not.)
Shakespeare has transformed the signs of cosmic sympathy into mood music. His opening scenes are overshadowed by storms. And again before the death of Brutus there is another omen. Plutarch’s Life of Brutus tells how a monstrous figure had appeared in his tent before the final campaign. Asked its name, it replies “I am your evil demon, Brutus, and I will see you at Philippi!” then vanishes. Shakespeare tells the story almost word for word, but add the stage direction reads Enter the Ghost of Caesar. Brutus’ imminent tragedy points back to the Ides.
Shakespeare’s Renaissance audiences and readers knew the history of Rome as a history of violence. They were drawn more to the chaos of the Republic than to the imperial peace that followed it. And they certainly did not believe in closure. The story of Julius Caesar is not self-contained, and the conflicts are not resolved. It opens with two tribunes remembering how Pompey had once been just as much adored by the Roman people, as his conqueror was now. And Octavius’ last words remind us that Antony and Octavius would immediately fall out over how exactly to “part the glories” (that is to divide the spoils). There would be fresh civil wars, more treachery and many, many more murders to come. Beware the Ides of March!
Greg Woolf is Professor of Ancient History at the University of St Andrews. He is the author of Rome: An Empire’s Story, Et Tu, Brute?: A Short History of Political Murder and editor of The Cambridge Illustrated History of the Roman World.
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Image credits: La Morte di Cesare. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
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