Oxford University Press's Blog, page 996

Ganja administration

By James H. Mills

It was announced on 10 December as an outcome of the recent Commission into cannabis that the UK Government has decided to reorganise its ‘ganja administration’ with the objective of taxing sales of the drug in order to generate revenues and to control the price in order to discourage excessive consumption. The Government will work with partners from the private sector to ensure that products of a consistent quality are available to consumers. A source at one of the cannabis corporations has stated that they are happy to make a full contribution to the Government’s finances, although critics have argued that they deploy a range of strategies to avoid paying tax.

The Home Affairs Committee’s Ninth Report, with the title Drugs: Breaking the Cycle, generated plenty of controversy early in December when the Prime Minister rejected its recommendation that a Royal Commission on Drugs Policy be established. The controversy may well have been a furore had an announcement along the lines of the above been included in its pages. Yet mention in the Committee’s report of state cannabis monopolies, of the legal consumption of the drug, and of permissive control regimes in faraway countries, invite comparisons to a previous period in British history, as does the Prime Minister’s allusion to a Royal Commission. This was a period when the paragraph above would have raised few eyebrows as British tax collectors skimmed off revenues from some of the world’s largest cannabis consuming societies.

The period, of course, is the 1890s. The Commission in question was the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission which was ordered in the House of Commons in 1893 and which reported in 1894. This Commission was the forerunner of the better known Royal Opium Commission which came to its conclusions in 1895. The enquiry into ‘Indian Hemp’, or cannabis, was focused on the colonial administration in India and its handling of the cannabis trade there. Critics of the opium trade had discovered that the Government of India was also making money from cannabis through a tax on the local market there, and seized on this as further evidence of the corruption of British rule. William Caine, one of the most passionate of these critics declared that cannabis was ‘the most horrible intoxicant the world has yet produced’ and started a campaign that forced the inquiry.

What the inquiry revealed was a thriving market for cannabis products in Britain’s colonies in south Asia. These substances had long-been been used for medication and intoxication there, and complex local beliefs about their uses and dangers were well-established before the British arrived. Colonial scientists and doctors proved to be curious about the potential of cannabis, and William O’Shaughnessy, Professor of Chemistry and Medicine in the Medical College of Calcutta, championed its virtues as a wonder-drug in the 1840s. However, the most sustained interest in the substance on the part of the British was from the Excise officials charged with taxing it as by the 1890s revenue from commercial cannabis was in the region of £150000 per annum, or around nine million pounds in today’s money.

Many of these officials worked readily alongside India’s cannabis producers in the trade. One magistrate reported that ‘they are singularly peaceable and law abiding and they are remarkably wealthy and prosperous’ and went on to note that:

The ganja cultivators contributed amongst them Rs. 5000 for the creation of the Higher English School at Naugaon. If a road or a bridge is wanted, instead of waiting for the tardy action of a District Board or committing themselves to the tender mercies of the PWD the cultivators raise a subscription among themselves and the road or bridge is constructed.

Other British officials were more suspicious of these producers however. As early as the 1870s fears were expressed that all manner of strategies were devised by those in the trade to evade the administration’s efforts to tax it. Storing crops away from the eyes of inspectors, claiming that fires had destroyed full storage facilities and clandestine shipments of the drug were all uncovered. Officials regularly swapped stories like the following:

In December, a couple of police constables and a village watchman were, about 9pm, on their way to Bálihar, when they saw two persons crossing the field with something on their heads. On their shouting out, the men dropped their loads and ran off. It was then found that they had dropped 36 ½ kutcha seers of flat hemp. The drug was taken possession of by the constables but the culprits were never traced.

Perhaps because of such episodes the British continued to tighten their grip on commercial cannabis into the twentieth-century and reforms in the wake of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission included price fixing, government-controlled warehousing of all crops, and licensing of both wholesale and retail transactions. The example of cannabis-taxation in India was followed elsewhere, with colonial administrations as far apart as Burma and Trinidad abandoning initial attempts at prohibition. In fact it emerged in 1939 that the Government in India had been supplying cannabis to markets in both Burma and Trinidad in contravention of the international controls on the drug that had been imposed in 1925 at the Geneva Opium Conference.

While the Home Affairs Committee is right to look to current experiments with control regimes for cannabis in Washington, Colorado and Uruguay, perhaps the stories above are reminders that British history too provides plenty of evidence for assessing ‘the overall costs and benefits of cannabis legalisation’. These stories provide glimpses of a world where cannabis transactions provide state revenues rather than act as drains on resources, where suppliers club together to pay for educational facilities rather than hang around school-gates plying their wares, and where doctors work freely with a useful drug. But they also seem to warn of the moral complexities of state-sponsored markets in psycho-active substances, and of the problems that any control system will face when confronted by those keen to maximise their profits from such drugs.

James H. Mills is Professor of Modern History at the University of Strathclyde and Director of the Strathclyde hub of the Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare (CSHHH) Glasgow. Among his publications are Cannabis Nation: Control and consumption in Britain, 1928-2008, (Oxford University Press 2012), Cannabis Britannica: Empire, trade and prohibition, 1800-1928, (Oxford University Press 2003) and (edited with Patricia Barton) Drugs and Empires: Essays in modern imperialism and intoxication, 100-1930, (Palgrave 2007). The extracts above are all taken from his books.

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Image credit: Photograph of cannabis indica foliage bygaspr13 via iStockphoto. 

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Roast Goose, the Mrs Beeton way

With Christmas approaching, we are looking towards the food we’ll share on the day itself. If you’re looking for ideas, who better to consult that Mrs Isabella Beeton herself, who authored the seminal Household Management at just 22 years old. Below is her sage advice on that classic Christmas meat, roast goose.

Ingredients:

Goose

4 large onions

10 sage-leaves

¼ lb. of bread crumbs

1 ½ oz. of butter

salt and pepper to taste

1 egg

Choosing and Trussing

Select a goose with a clean white skin, plump breast, and yellow feet: if these latter are red, the bird is old. Should the weather permit, let it hang for a few days: by so doing, the flavour will be very much improved. Pluck, singe, draw, and carefully wash and wipe the goose; cut off the neck close to the back, leaving the skin long enough to turn over; cut off the feet at the first joint, and separate the pinions at the first joint. Beat the breast-bone flat with a rolling-pin, put a skewer though the under part of each wing, and having drawn up the legs closely, put a skewer into the middle of each, and pass the same quite through the body. Insert another skewer into the small of the leg, bring it close down to the side bone, run it through, and do the same to the other side. Now cut off the end of the vent, and make a hole in the skin sufficiently large for the passage of the rump, in order to keep in the seasoning.

Mode

Make a sage-and-onion stuffing of the above ingredients; put it into the body of the goose, and secure it firmly at both ends, by passing the rump through the hole made in the skin, and the other end by tying the skin of the neck to  the back; by this means the seasoning will not escape. Put it down to a brisk fire, keep it well basted, and roast from 1 ½ to 2 hours, according to the size. Remove the skewers, and serve with a tureen of good gravy, and one of well-made apple-sauce. Should a very highly-flavoured seasoning be preferred, the onions should not be parboiled, but minced raw: of the two methods, the mild seasoning in far superior. A ragout, or pie, should be made of the giblets, or they may be stewed down to make gravy. Be careful to serve the goose before the breast falls, or its appearance will be spoiled by coming flattened to the table. As this is rather a troublesome joint to carve, a large quantity of gravy should not be poured round the goose, but sent in a tureen.

Time – A large goose, 1 ¾ hour; a moderate-sized one, 1 ¼ hour to 1 ½ hour.

Seasonable from September to March; but in perfection from Michaelmas to Christmas.

Average cost, 5s. 6d. each. Sufficient for 8 or 9 persons.

Note

A teaspoon of made mustard, a saltspoonful of salt, a few grains of cayenne, mixed with a glass of port wine, are sometimes poured into the goose by a slit made in the apron. This sauce is, by many persons, considered an improvement.

Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management is a founding text of Victorian middle-class identity. It offers highly authoritative advice on subjects as diverse as fashion, child-care, animal husbandry, poisons, and the management of servants. The Oxford World’s Classics edition is an abridged version, edited by Nicola Humble, which does justice to its high status as a cookery book, while also suggesting ways of approaching this massive, hybrid text as a significant document of social and cultural history.

For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford’s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

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Image credit: Crispy grilled goose for Christmas. Photo by Chikei Yung, iStockphoto.

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Killing journalists in wartime: a legal analysis

By Sandesh Sivakumaran

The last couple of years have been bad for journalists. I’m not referring to phone-hacking, payments to police, and the like, which have occupied much attention in the United Kingdom these last months. Rather, I’m referring to the number of journalists who have been killed in wartime.

Arab news reporters conduct an on-site interview with 4th Civil Affairs Group Public Affairs Officer Maj. M. Naomi Hawkins in front of the Dr. Talib Al-Janabi Hospital in Fallujah, Iraq, on Dec. 2, 2004. The hospital was one stop during a tour for media to different sites where reconstruction efforts are beginning after the November battle with insurgents. Photo by Cpl. Theresa M. Medina, U.S. Marine Corps.

These last two years alone have seen eminent journalists such as Marie Colvin and Tim Hetherington killed while reporting on armed conflicts. Just last month, two journalists were killed while reporting in Syria. Deaths of journalists during conflicts are not new — Robert Capa and Gerda Taro both died while serving as war photographers. Increasingly, though, we are witnessing the targeting of journalists because they are journalists.

Why are journalists targeted?

Journalists play a critical role in wartime — reporting on events, revealing the horrors of war, investigating abuses by the parties. Their role is a particularly important one given the fog of war. It’s often through media reporting that the public takes notice of a situation and the international community is pushed into action. For these very reasons, journalists are not infrequently viewed as a thorn in the side of the government or the armed group. They may be considered unwanted witnesses to what is going on and targeted for their reporting.

How does the law of armed conflict protect journalists?

The law of armed conflict distinguishes between different types of journalists:

Journalists who work for media outlets or information services of the armed forces.
Journalists who accompany the armed forces and are authorized to do so, but who aren’t members of the armed forces, e.g., the embedded reporter.
Journalists who are undertaking professional activities in areas affected by hostilities but who aren’t accompanying the armed forces, e.g., the broadcaster who is presenting from a conflict zone but who isn’t embedded with the troops.

The first category of journalists constitutes members of the armed forces. Accordingly, they don’t benefit from the protections afforded to civilians and their deaths don’t constitute a violation of the law.

The latter two categories of journalists are civilians. Accordingly, they can’t be attacked, unless and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities. Reporting on events and investigating abuses committed by the parties can never constitute taking a direct part in hostilities, even if the investigations lead to greater support for one side or another.

Journalists may, however, prove to be casualties of lawful attacks. This is a particular risk for journalists who are embedded with troops. The law allows for the targeting of troops and that targeting may result in bystanders or embedded reporters becoming casualties. In order to judge the legality of such an attack, the law utilizes the principle of proportionality, ie we have to weigh up the expected loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, and damage to civilian objects with the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. Only where the former is excessive when compared to the latter will the attack be unlawful. Although any loss of life is regrettable, the legal test means that deaths don’t necessarily imply that unlawful acts have been committed.

Particular controversies

One particularly controversial area of the law is the targeting of TV and radio stations. Civilian broadcasting services are protected from attack. They may be legitimate targets, however, if they constitute military objectives. In legal terms, this refers to objects that, “by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage.”

This would render dual purpose broadcasters that broadcast civilian programmes and which are used for military communications possible targets. Civilian broadcasters that broadcast propaganda are not generally considered military objectives, as propaganda doesn’t satisfy the test for a military objective. Thus, following NATO’s targeting of the RTS studio in Belgrade during the conflict in Kosovo, the Committee established by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia to Review the NATO Bombing Campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia noted that, “if the attack on the RTS was justified by reference to its propaganda purpose alone, its legality might well be questioned by some experts in the field of international humanitarian law” (para. 76). Compare that to Radio Mille Collines, the broadcaster that was inciting genocide in Rwanda and which many people consider a legitimate target. The dividing line is a tricky one to draw.

Sandesh Sivakumaran is Associate Professor and Reader in International Law, University of Nottingham. He is the author of The Law of Non-International Armed Conflict (OUP, 2012), co-editor of International Human Rights Law (OUP, 2010) and recipient of the Journal of International Criminal Justice Giorgio La Pira Prize and the Antonio Cassese Prize. He advises and acts as expert for a range of states, inter-governmental organizations, and non-governmental organizations on issues of international law.

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The ageing brain

By Dr Alex Dregan

Do vascular risk factors such as high blood pressure and smoking make us forgetful?

As our bodies start to show the signs of ageing, our brain is naturally ageing too. But some older people can become forgetful and have trouble remembering common words or organising daily activities more than others. There are few proven interventions to prevent this kind of cognitive decline in older adults, although treating modifiable risk factors for vascular disease and stroke, such as cholesterol and body mass index (BMI), has been suggested as a promising approach to preventing or delaying cognitive impairment for a growing UK population of older adults. So is there a link between high blood pressure and forgetfulness?

Despite much recent interest, studies to date have reported inconsistent relationships between blood pressure and cognitive functioning. Evidence suggests that people diagnosed with high blood pressure levels tend to perform more poorly on most domains of cognitive functioning, including memory, learning, attention, and reasoning. However, clinical trials have so far failed to demonstrate that antihypertensive drugs used to lower or control high blood pressure levels are effective in preventing cognitive decline in older adults.  This inconsistent evidence poses a challenge when developing recommendations for the prevention of cognitive ageing.

Cognitive ageing, such as symptoms of forgetfulness, is increasingly seen as the result of the joint effect of several vascular disease risk factors, including high blood pressure, BMI, cholesterol levels, and smoking. However,  the combined influence of these on cognitive decline is less commonly explored among older adults at increased risk of both cardiovascular disease and cognitive decline.

In a recent paper, we looked at Framingham stroke and cardiovascular risk scores (a measure used to assess an individual’s probability of developing stroke or cardiovascular disease over a 10-years period) and investigated their association with cognitive decline in older adults. The study included over 8,000 adults aged 50+ living in private households in England. Participants with the highest risk of future stroke or cardiovascular events, based on their risk factors values, were found to perform more poorly on tests of memory and executive functioning after a four year period. This adds weight to the theory that the combined effects of risk factors for vascular disease and stroke may be associated with more rapid cognitive decline in older adults. In other words, those at greater risk of cardiovascular problems were likely to experience a more rapid onset of symptoms associated with cognitive decline, such as forgetfulness.

We believe that these findings support the need for a multifaceted approach when seeking to prevent cognitive decline. The main implication of this is the need for addressing the combined effect of multiple risk factors, including lowering high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels, weight loss, and stopping smoking. Thus, healthcare professionals should encourage older people to adopt healthy lifestyles that would include stopping smoking and increased exercise (as well as improved diet not investigated here) and taking prescribed medicines aimed at controlling high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels. Such recommendations could potentially prevent or delay future declining memory or reasoning capacities in older adults, particularly those in higher risk groups.

The results also suggest that a harmful effect of high blood pressure on memory or reasoning abilities may develop over a prolonged period of time. This may be one reason why short-term trials have failed to show a consistent benefit from antihypertensive treatment on cognitive decline. For instance, since the negative impact of high blood pressure on memory or reasoning abilities takes place over a prolonged period of time, short-term treatment may not be sufficient to reverse or delay its adverse influence. Therefore, we would expect that any potential cognitive benefits from lowering blood pressure may only be observed over substantial periods of time.

These new results suggest that attention to the combined effects of multiple vascular risk factors may hold some promise as a strategy to prevent cognitive decline in older adults.

Dr Alex Dregan is a Lecturer in Translational Epidemiology within the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre at the Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Trust and King’s College London. He trained in Public health at the Institute of Education, University of London. His research interests are in translational epidemiology research as applied to public health. He is co-author of the paper Cardiovascular risk factors and cognitive decline in adults aged 50 and over: a population-based cohort study for the Age and Ageing journal,  and this has been made freely available for a limited time.

Age and Ageing is an international journal publishing refereed original articles and commissioned reviews on geriatric medicine and gerontology. Its range includes research on ageing and clinical, epidemiological, and psychological aspects of later life.

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Don’t bank on it

By Beverley Hunt

With just over a week to go until Christmas, many of us are no doubt looking forward to the holidays and a few days off work. For those working on the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, however, writing the history of the language sometimes took precedence over a Christmas break.

Christmas leave in the UK today centres around a number of bank holidays, so called because they are days when, traditionally, banks closed for business. Before 1834, the Bank of England recognized about 33 religious festivals but this was reduced to just four in 1834 – Good Friday, 1 May, 1 November, and Christmas Day. It was the Bank Holidays Act of 1871 that saw bank holidays officially introduced for the first time. These designated four holidays in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland — Easter Monday, Whit Monday, the first Monday in August, and Boxing Day. Good Friday and Christmas Day were seen as traditional days of rest so did not need to be included in the Act. Scotland was granted five days of holiday — New Year’s Day, Good Friday, the first Monday in May, the first Monday in August, and Christmas Day.

So when James Murray took over as editor of the OED in 1879, Christmas Day was an accepted holiday across the whole of the UK, Boxing Day a bank holiday everywhere except Scotland, and New Year’s Day a bank holiday only in Scotland. Yet this didn’t stop editors and contributors toiling away on dictionary work on all three of those dates.

At Christmas play and make good cheer

Here is the first page of a lengthy letter to James Murray from fellow philologist Walter Skeat, written on Christmas Day, 1905. Skeat does at least start his letter with some seasonal greetings and sign off “in haste”, but talks at length about the word pillion in between! There are at least two other letters in the OED archives written on Christmas Day – a letter from W. Boyd-Dawkins in 1883 about the word aphanozygous (apparently the cheekbones being invisible when the skull is viewed from above, who knew?), and another from R.C.A. Prior about croquet in 1892.

Boxing clever

Written on Boxing Day, 1891, this letter to James Murray is from Richard Oliver Heslop, author of Northumberland Words. After an exchange of festive pleasantries, Oliver Heslop writes about the word corb as a possible misuse for the basket known as a corf, clearly a pressing issue whilst eating turkey leftovers! Many other Boxing Day letters reside in the OED archives, amongst them a 1932 letter to OUP’s Kenneth Sisam from editor William Craigie concerning potential honours in the New Year Honours list following completion of the supplement to the OED.

Out with the old, in with the new

Speaking of New Year, here is a “useless” letter to James Murray from OUP’s Printer Horace Hart, written on New Year’s Day, 1886. Although not an official holiday in Oxford at that time, this letter provides a nice opportunity for discussing the etymology of the term Boxing Day. The first weekday after Christmas Day became known as Boxing Day as it was the day when postmen, errand-boys, and servants of various kinds expected to receive a Christmas box as a monetary reward for their services during the previous year. This letter talks about baksheesh, a word used in parts of Asia for a gratuity or tip.

Holidays are coming

In case you’re wondering, New Year’s Day was granted as an additional bank holiday in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland in 1974, as was Boxing Day in Scotland (and 2 January from 1973). So the whole of the UK now gets all three as official days of leave in which to enjoy the festive season.

This article originally appeared on the OxfordWords blog.

Beverley Hunt is Archivist for the Oxford English Dictionary but will not be archiving on Christmas Day, Boxing Day, or New Year’s Day.

If you’re feeling inspired by the words featured in today’s blog post, why not take some time to explore OED Online? Most UK public libraries offer free access to OED Online from your home computer using just your library card number. If you are in the US, why not give the gift of language to a loved-one this holiday season? We’re offering a 20% discount on all new gift subscriptions to the OED to all customers residing in the Americas.

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The life of J.R.R. Tolkien

By Philip Carter

Published in 1937 The Hobbit was Tolkien’s first published work of fiction, though he had been writing on legends since at least 1915. His creation — a mythological race of ‘hobbits’, in which Bilbo Baggins takes the lead — had originally been intended for children. But from the outset Tolkien’s saga also proved popular with adults, perhaps appreciative of the hobbits’ curiously English blend of resourcefulness and respectability. The book was published by Stanley Unwin, following the recommendation of his 10-year old son, Rayner, who received a one shilling reader’s fee. Its success prompted Unwin to press for a sequel, and Tolkien now began work on The Lord of the Rings — a story that ‘grew in the telling’ at readings for the famous Inklings circle in Oxford.

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Philip Carter is Publication Editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Read more about J.R.R. Tolkien on the Oxford DNB website. The Oxford DNB online is freely available via public libraries across the UK. Libraries offer ‘remote access’ allowing members to log-on to the complete dictionary, for free, from home (or any other computer) twenty-four hours a day. In addition to 58,000 life stories, the ODNB offers a free, twice monthly biography podcast with over 130 life stories now available. You can also sign up for Life of the Day, a topical biography delivered to your inbox, or follow @ODNB on Twitter for people in the news.

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Oral history in disaster zones

By Caitlin Tyler-Richards

When Superstorm Sandy hit the United States’ east coast in late October, I was struck by the way in which oral historians and other like-minded academics responded to the ensuing chaos. This was not the first time I had seen oral history interact with natural disaster; one of the first articles I prepped for our Twitter feed was KUT News’ “Forged in Flames: An Oral History of the Labor Day Wildfires,” a multi-media documentation of the wildfires that overtook Texas in September 2011. However, to see the response in real time was a completely different experience.

Almost immediately, social media like

Hanukkah and Christmas: a spiritual interpretation

By Roger S. Gottlieb

Ahhh… the joys of the holiday season in America! A frightening degree of crass commercialism, public rages about the ‘war on Christmas,’ emotionally draining family events, or a soul-graying loneliness when you have no place to go. Food in abundance, but often consumed with a sense that it’s way off of one’s (more healthy) diet; or perhaps a nagging guilt that we in the middle/upper classes have so much more than the approximately 1 billion people who lack access to clean water, adequate food, and health services. We might notice that it is, again, “warmer than usual” — even though ‘warmer than usual’ is the new usual. Overall, there’s the unrelenting message that, of all things, we are supposed to be happy — a more effective recipe for discontent bordering on depression might not be easy to find.

Even though as a Jew some of this doesn’t touch me, a good deal does: from the spectacle to the parties to the social pressure about my mood.

Is there an answer to this? A way out? Well, the major claim of spirituality — defined simply as the attempt to be mindful, accepting, grateful, compassionate, and loving — is that the more one lives by these virtues the better one feels. Spirituality offers a sure path to long-lasting, non-addictive, non-destructive peace of mind, and makes you a lot more fun to be around as well. How would it work this season?

To begin, there are certain quite effective spiritual responses: gratitude for what we do have even if it’s not ideal, compassion on our troublesome family members, tolerance for the consumerist foibles of others and ourselves.

But there’s something else to try as well. What if we read the actual stories that are the basis of both Christmas and Hanukkah from a spiritual perspective? What if we put aside the hoopla, big sales, and parties graced by altogether too much alcohol and asked ourselves if these narratives contain a deep, significant, and quite personal meaning?

One way to read the great religious myths spiritually is to internalize them, understanding the different actors and narratives as aspects of our own selves and our own experience of the world.

Understood this way, what do the birth of Jesus and the Israelite victory over the Syrian Greek occupiers and their own assimilationists have to teach us?

On the most immediate level, there is the simple joy of birth and of rebirth. Taken as a reflection of our own lives, this indicates the permanent possibility that something new and wondrous is always possible. No matter how “poor” (in whatever sense) we are, even if we have to sleep in the stable or our traditions are being erased in favor of new gods, tomorrow a fundamental change for the better may come. In a kind of miracle, reality fundamentally shifts. This may come from the powers of nature as a birth. It may come from a seemingly impossible victory of a marginalized group over an unquestionably more powerful force. But if we stay tuned into the reality of our lives, if we do not turn our back on the permanent chance of transformation, we can trust that what we face now may not last.

As participants in the change, whose courage helps bring it about, and as witnesses to processes such as birth, which draw on mysteries beyond our comprehension, we surely live in a more blessed universe if we are able recognize that such events, even the darkest of times, remain possible. It is not an irrational faith, but realism more powerful than despair, which tells us that we do not know what the future will bring.

In the spiritual appropriation of sacred texts there is always a deeper — and often a darker and more difficult — level. Let us remember that we read the familiar stories of Jesus’ birth and the triumph of the Maccabees against a knowledge of what happens later. Jesus is crucified; the Temple, re-sanctified by Jewish rebels, is a few centuries later destroyed by the Romans. There is a birth, yes, but the birth gives way to a brutal execution; a rebirth to a 2000 year exile.

In this sequence we find the ultimate truth that all mortal realities — each child born, each ethnic tradition preserved or reconstituted — is at best limited and temporary. As persons we are born to die. As humans we are part of cultural groups which are just as mortal.

Each new beginning presages another ending; each joy, a loss. Yet paradoxically, only in the finitude of what we have is the reality of human life truly experienced. And only in that experience is an authentic spiritual joy possible without energy sapping denial, suppression of the truth of mortality, or a necessarily self-destructive clinging to that which inevitably fades.

Have a happy holiday? For sure! But happiness not based in the ego’s attachment to toys, sensual pleasures, or cultural identity. It is, rather, happiness rooted in the simple but spectacular truth that to be here, even for our brief time, is a miracle. As much a miracle as the birth of a Someone who would forgive us our sins, or the triumph of the oppressed over their rulers.

We too can be born, we too can rise up against the parts of ourselves that are oppressive, or the irrational social powers that surround us. We can do it knowing that eventually we will die, and that in all probability oppression will follow any liberation we experience or create, only to make room, hopefully, for more liberation in a cycle that is the analogue of any ecosystem.

If this is a purely earthly spirituality, if heaven and immortal life and the resurrection of the body don’t figure here, well, that is the only kind I personally understand.

Take it for what it’s worth. And have blessed holiday season.

Roger S. Gottlieb is professor of philosophy at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, author of editor of seventeen books on religion, environmentalism, ethics, and political theory, and internet presence on Huffington, Patheos, and Tikkun Daily. His new book, Spirituality: What it Is and Why it Matters, has just been published by Oxford University Press.

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Image credit: Christmas shopping xwoman stress. Photo by Maridav, iStockphoto.

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Making and mistaking martyrs

By Jolyon Mitchell

A protestor holds a picture of a blood spattered Neda Agha-Soltan and another of a woman, Neda Soltani, who was widely misidentified as Neda Agha-Soltan.

It was agonizing, just a few weeks before publication of Martyrdom: A Very Short Introduction, to discover that there was a minor mistake in one of the captions. Especially frustrating, as it was too late to make the necessary correction to the first print run, though it will be repaired when the book is reprinted. New research had revealed the original mistake. The inaccuracy we had been given had circulated the web and had been published by numerous press agencies and journalists too. What precisely was wrong?

To answer this question it is necessary to go back to Iran. During one of the demonstrations in Tehran following the contested re-election of President Ahmadinejad in 2009, a young woman (Neda Agha-Soltan) stepped out of the car for some fresh air. A few moments later she was shot. As she lay on the ground dying her last moments were captured on film. These graphic pictures were then posted online. Within a few days these images had gone global. Soon demonstrators were using her blood-spattered face on posters protesting against the Iranian regime. Even though she had not intended to be a martyr, her death was turned into a martyrdom in Iran and around the world.

Many reports also placed another photo, purportedly of her looking healthy and flourishing, alongside the one of her bloodied face. It turns out that this was not actually her face but an image taken from the Facebook page of another Iranian with a similar name, Neda Soltani. This woman is still alive, but being incorrectly identified as the martyr has radically changed her life. She later described on BBC World Service (Outlook, 2 October 2012) and on BBC Radio 4 (Woman’s Hour, 22 October 2012) how she received hate mail and pressure from the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence to support the claim that the other Neda was never killed. The visual error made it almost impossible for Soltani to stay in her home country. She fled Iran and was recently granted asylum in Germany. Neda Soltani has even written a book, entitled My Stolen Face, about her experience of being mistaken for a martyr.

The caption should therefore read something like: ‘A protestor holds a picture of a blood spattered Neda Agha-Soltan and another of a woman, Neda Soltani, who was widely misidentified as Neda Agha-Soltan.’ This mistake underlines how significant the role is of those who are left behind after a death. Martyrs are made. They are rarely, if ever, born. Communities remember, preserve, and elaborate upon fatal stories, sometimes turning them into martyrdoms. Neda’s actual death was commonly contested. Some members of the Iranian government described it as the result of a foreign conspiracy, while many others saw her as an innocent martyr. For these protestors she represents the tip of an iceberg of individuals who have recently lost their lives, their freedom, or their relatives in Iran. As such her death became the symbol of a wider protest movement.

This was also the case in several North African countries during the so-called Arab Spring. In Tunisia, in Algeria, and in Egypt the death of an individual was put to use soon after their passing. This is by no means a new phenomenon. Ancient, medieval, and early modern martyrdom stories are still retold, even if they were not captured on film. Tales of martyrdom have been regularly reiterated and amplified through a wide range of media. Woodcuts of martyrdoms from the sixteenth century, gruesome paintings from the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, photographs of executions from the nineteenth century, and fictional or documentary films from the twentieth century all contribute to the making of martyrs. Inevitably, martyrdom stories are elaborated upon. Like a shipwreck at the bottom of the ocean, they collect barnacles of additional detail. These details may be rooted in history,unintentional mistakes, or simply fictional leaps of the imagination. There is an ongoing debate, for example, around Neda’s life and death. Was she a protestor? How old was she when she died? Who killed her? Was she a martyr?

Martyrdoms commonly attract controversy. One person’s ‘martyr’ is another person’s ‘accidental death’ or ‘suicide bomber’ or ‘terrorist’. One community’s ‘heroic saint’ who died a martyr’s death is another’s ‘pseudo-martyr’ who wasted their life for a false set of beliefs. Martyrs can become the subject of political debate as well as religious devotion. The remains of a well-known martyr can be viewed as holy or in some way sacred. At least one Russian czar, two English kings, and a French monarch have all been described after their death as martyrs.

Neda was neither royalty nor politician. She had a relatively ordinary life, but an extraordinary death. Neda is like so many other individuals who are turned into martyrs: it is by their demise that they are often remembered. In this way even the most ordinary individual can become a martyr to the living after their deaths. Preserving their memory becomes a communal practice, taking place on canvas, in stone, and most recently online. Interpretations, elaborations, and mistakes commonly cluster around martyrdom narratives. These memories can be used both to incite violence and to promote peace. How martyrs are made, remembered, and then used remains the responsibility of the living.

Jolyon Mitchell is Professor of Communications, Arts and Religion, Director of the Centre for Theology and Public Issues (CTPI) and Deputy Director of the Institute for the Advanced Study in the Humanities (IASH) at the University of Edinburgh. He is author and editor of a wide range of books including most recently: Promoting Peace, Inciting Violence: The Role of Religion and Media (2012); and Martyrdom: A Very Short Introduction (2012).

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!

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Image credit: A protestor holds a picture of a blood spattered Neda Agha-Soltan and another of a woman, Neda Soltani, who was widely misidentified as Neda Agha-Soltan, used in full page context of p.49, Martyrdom: A Very Short Introduction, by Jolyon Mitchell. Image courtesy of Getty Images.

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Kosher beers for Hanukkah

By Garrett Oliver

I always knew that my family was a little different, but it wasn’t until my mid-teens that I realized exactly how weird we were. An African-American family living in the suburban greenery of Hollis, Queens, at the outskirts of New York City, we thought little of the fact that my father’s big hobby was hunting game birds. With dogs, no less. Often on horseback. Around the holidays, my Aunt Emma made wonderful chopped liver, and in the springtime, our table was often festooned with matzoh bread. It never occurred to us that these last two items were Jewish food traditions that rarely made forays into our community, and to this day, none of us are sure how they got there.

In a way, I think that this sort of culinary experience is at the heart of being an American, and as I travel the world, it’s one of the things that makes me proud of this country. As I prepare for Hanukkah celebrations with friends, I’m glad to say that beer is very much at the heart of the holiday meals. Some of my friends keep kosher, and many do not, but thankfully most beers are considered “kosher by default” in most parts of the world. Jewish dietary laws, kashrut, is interpreted by local councils of rabbis. In the United States, Canada and Israel, some people only eat foods that are specifically certified as kosher by rabbis, especially around Passover. At my brewery, we actually have some of our beers certified kosher for Passover, and a rabbi comes and blesses the beer!

Unless your own diet is very strict, there are very few beers that would ever cross your table that are off-limits, so you can tuck right into your holiday beer pairings. It’s nice to start off the meal with light, spritzy saisons, the farmhouse ales of Belgium. They’re dry and lively, and often show appetizing peppery and lemony aromatics. Re-fermentation in the bottle gives them a Champagne-like carbonation and texture, which is one reason why we often drink them out of Champagne flutes. Full-flavored beers can work wonders with the classics on the table, especially beef brisket and latkes. Both of these dishes are fatty, a little salty, and typified by caramelized flavors (no wonder we love them!), and beers with caramel and roasted flavors work well here. British and American brown ales are a good place to start, bringing light chocolate, caramel and coffee flavors that harmonize with everything, even sautéed Brussels sprouts. If you want something more complex, go for dark Trappist and abbey ales, where the dark color and caramel flavors come from highly caramelized sugars rather than grains. This translates into dried fruit and raisin-like flavors, along with rum-like flavors that remind me of Cracker Jacks or the burnt surface of a crème brulee.

When it’s time for dessert, beer really does outshine all other beverages. My favorite dessert beer style is imperial stout, a strong dark beer originally made for Catherine the Great. Brewed with large amounts of malts that have been roasted as dark as espresso coffee beans, imperial stouts taste like dark chocolate, coffee and dark fruit, making them a perfect foil for a range of desserts. With chocolate desserts, they play harmony, rowing in with similar flavors. With pastries such as rugelach, the coffee-like character is perfect, and the beer has just enough sweetness to match without becoming cloying. And these beers are a wonder with ice cream too — many people enjoy making ice cream floats with imperial stouts. Just make sure to have a soft-drink version ready for the kids!

The great thing about serving and bringing beer to the holiday table is that it’s fun. Everyone’s had one at some point or another, and though wine is great and has a wide range of flavor, it rarely surprises people. Beer, however, can be very surprising, because it can tastes like almost anything, from lemons and bananas to chocolate and coffee. Some friends and family might even leave your holiday table having discovered something brand new to like, and wouldn’t that be cool? This time of year I can’t help wishing that my Aunt Emma was still here; I’ll bet that Belgian abbey ales would have been great with her chopped liver, but I never learned how to make it. So among the other things you do this Hanukkah, teach the kids how to make your latkes! Though I’ll bet they’re not quite as good as mine.

Garrett Oliver, editor of The Oxford Companion to Beer, is the Brewmaster of the Brooklyn Brewery and author of The Brewmaster’s Table: Discovering the Pleasures of Real Beer with Real Food. He has won many awards for his beers, is a frequent judge for international beer competitions, and has made numerous radio and television appearances as a spokesperson for craft brewing.

The Oxford Companion to Beer is the first major reference work to investigate the history and vast scope of beer, featuring more than 1,100 A-Z entries written by 166 of the world’s most prominent beer experts. It is first place winner of the 2012 Gourmand Award for Best in the World in the Beer category, winner of the 2011 André Simon Book Award in the Drinks Category, and shortlisted in Food and Travel for Book of the Year in the Drinks Category. View previous Oxford Companion to Beer blog posts and videos.

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Image credit: Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout via Brooklyn Brewery.

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