Monday 30 August 2010
Friday 27 August 2010
A note on faith
If you read this blog, you're going to come to the conclusion that I'm principally blogging about two things: my Christian faith and my love and practice of modern British History. Mainly because I am.
I'm inclined to phrase both in 'intellectual' terms, as to be honest it is the language where I feel most comfortable. I love ideas and their intricate complexities.
If you were to ask me to provide one reason why I was an historian, and one reason why I'm a Christian, the only answer I can give you is to paraphrase Anthony Hopkins' line from Shadowlands: I do so because I cannot do otherwise. The need to know the world, and my Father flows from me. Believe me when I say that at various times I have tried to stem both. I often contemplate life without History in it, and I would by lying if I said that doubts and disobedience did not sit beside my faith. I cannot dam either ultimately. I do not think I would be happy without History being somewhere in my life, and I cannot imagine life without Christ being there.
Just to let you know.
On that note: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk7SX3r59sc
Another from the THES
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=413172&c=1
Interesting. The question is though whether this is an extension of an existing practice or the adoption of a new one.
I might go back and work sometime soon.
Interesting. The question is though whether this is an extension of an existing practice or the adoption of a new one.
I might go back and work sometime soon.
Very Bad Reasons for doing things #2 - another post on defence (Defence #2)
I was watching Sharpe the other night. If you're unfamiliar with the TV series, it's adapted from the books by Bernard Cornwell and tells the story of a working-class man in the Napoleonic-era British Army who, through dint of his soldering skills, honour and trustworthiness, rises from the ranks to end up at the Battle of Waterloo as a Lieutenant-Colonel.
In this particular episode however Sharpe is attempting to secure his promotion to Captain by trying to get command of the Forlorn Hope (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forlorn_Hope) during the Siege of Badajoz. The problem he faces is that as an officer promoted from the ranks he is too senior to be one among the men but too 'common' to be one among the officers. As such he finds himself constantly having to gain new rank by using suicidal acts of bravery to stake his claim. Here Sharpe, recently demoted from being a brevet Captain back down to Lieutenant, has been shunted off from his beloved Light Company to become the Regimental Quartermaster.
Needless to say that Sharpe, a killer by instinct, is less than happy. At one point he strains a friendship with one of Lord Wellington's staff officers to try and get command of the Forlorn Hope, arguing that he is not suited to sending out 'lists' (which he makes it clear he considers a task beneath him). He is sharply reminded that lists are what the Army runs on.
Nowadays, thankfully, we have lost that class-based prejudice in the Army. The first man to rise from Private to Field Marshal did so in 1920 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Robertson). Today the British Army specifically encourages its Non-Commissioned Officers, where thought wise, to try and become officers.
Nor is there a prejudice against logistical work within the Army. For a start, Napoleon's maxim that an 'Army marches on its stomach' is well appreciated. The fighting power of an Army now is also very technologically based, while the end of the British Empire has not rid us of our desire to operate globally (though without now having the bases that used to support such operations).
One of the interesting things in studying turn of the last century politics is the similarities to modern politics. Between 1906 and 1911 the Liberal War Secretary Richard Haldane enacted a substantial series of Army reforms (the 'Haldane Reforms'). As it turns out, very few people could oversee the entirety of what he was doing because few MPs really knew much about the inner workings of the British Army. Plus ca change. In the modern age, where military operations are equally as if not more complicated, defence procurement has nevertheless taken the lead as the truly incomprehensible military topic of our times.I'm not saying that I'm an expert by any stretch of the imagination. I have no idea, for instance, what the Defence Industrial Strategy is* (http://www.talkcarswell.com/show.aspx?id=1550). My point though is that to my mind the British public and its body politic are the modern equivalents of Lt. Richard Sharpe. True, we express genuine concern when we think of our soldiers and servicemen heading over to Afghanistan and Iraq without the proper kit and that our military is being 'overstretched'. Yet we're too often minded to think of the 'sharp end' of the British Army, without being reminded that a lot of careful, and tedious, work has to go in to making sure it is well supplied and well equipped. Unless more people, especially MPs and Lords, take an active long-term interest in the Armed Forces (above all else, in Defence Procurement), then we will continue being the 'Borrowers' that the US Armed Forces know us as.
* A few PSs
PS #1: What I didn't make clear in the above is that a lot of the increased cost of our military is due to the increasing reliance on technology, and to simple inflation ('defence inflation', I'm told, constantly runs over the normal level).
PS#2: While I'm not sure what the DIS is, I'd imagine that the words 'marginal constituency' are involved in some capacity.
In this particular episode however Sharpe is attempting to secure his promotion to Captain by trying to get command of the Forlorn Hope (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forlorn_Hope) during the Siege of Badajoz. The problem he faces is that as an officer promoted from the ranks he is too senior to be one among the men but too 'common' to be one among the officers. As such he finds himself constantly having to gain new rank by using suicidal acts of bravery to stake his claim. Here Sharpe, recently demoted from being a brevet Captain back down to Lieutenant, has been shunted off from his beloved Light Company to become the Regimental Quartermaster.
Needless to say that Sharpe, a killer by instinct, is less than happy. At one point he strains a friendship with one of Lord Wellington's staff officers to try and get command of the Forlorn Hope, arguing that he is not suited to sending out 'lists' (which he makes it clear he considers a task beneath him). He is sharply reminded that lists are what the Army runs on.
Nowadays, thankfully, we have lost that class-based prejudice in the Army. The first man to rise from Private to Field Marshal did so in 1920 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Robertson). Today the British Army specifically encourages its Non-Commissioned Officers, where thought wise, to try and become officers.
Nor is there a prejudice against logistical work within the Army. For a start, Napoleon's maxim that an 'Army marches on its stomach' is well appreciated. The fighting power of an Army now is also very technologically based, while the end of the British Empire has not rid us of our desire to operate globally (though without now having the bases that used to support such operations).
One of the interesting things in studying turn of the last century politics is the similarities to modern politics. Between 1906 and 1911 the Liberal War Secretary Richard Haldane enacted a substantial series of Army reforms (the 'Haldane Reforms'). As it turns out, very few people could oversee the entirety of what he was doing because few MPs really knew much about the inner workings of the British Army. Plus ca change. In the modern age, where military operations are equally as if not more complicated, defence procurement has nevertheless taken the lead as the truly incomprehensible military topic of our times.I'm not saying that I'm an expert by any stretch of the imagination. I have no idea, for instance, what the Defence Industrial Strategy is* (http://www.talkcarswell.com/show.aspx?id=1550). My point though is that to my mind the British public and its body politic are the modern equivalents of Lt. Richard Sharpe. True, we express genuine concern when we think of our soldiers and servicemen heading over to Afghanistan and Iraq without the proper kit and that our military is being 'overstretched'. Yet we're too often minded to think of the 'sharp end' of the British Army, without being reminded that a lot of careful, and tedious, work has to go in to making sure it is well supplied and well equipped. Unless more people, especially MPs and Lords, take an active long-term interest in the Armed Forces (above all else, in Defence Procurement), then we will continue being the 'Borrowers' that the US Armed Forces know us as.
* A few PSs
PS #1: What I didn't make clear in the above is that a lot of the increased cost of our military is due to the increasing reliance on technology, and to simple inflation ('defence inflation', I'm told, constantly runs over the normal level).
PS#2: While I'm not sure what the DIS is, I'd imagine that the words 'marginal constituency' are involved in some capacity.
FYI: Tom Wright's retirement, and the Florida Phone Shop Manager
Tom Wright, who's retiring from the Bishopric of Durham to take up a chair at St. Andrew's University, has given an interview to Today's Jim Naughtie, talking about the need for the Church to concentrate more upon social mobility (as well as on the CoE's media image). Worth a listen:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8948000/8948907.stm
Also in the News, from some time ago, is this story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10822923. Christian forgiveness at its finest, in my humble opinion
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8948000/8948907.stm
Also in the News, from some time ago, is this story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10822923. Christian forgiveness at its finest, in my humble opinion
Thursday 26 August 2010
Historiography #0
A few days ago I promised a blog post on historiography. Here's a few things to take note of before we get seriously started on that topic:
1. Historiography is essentially the history of History (the subject), concentrating on the evolving philosophies/methodologies of Historical study up to and including the present day.
2. It is not at all a universalistic subject. Western historiography traces a path from the histories of ancient Greece through Roman and (early) Christian historiography to the development of modern historiographical principles in the early 19th century, spurred on not least by the German historian Leopold von Ranke and his transposition of philological methodologies into History. The effects of cultural imperialism mean that Western historiographical methodology is the dominant form, but substantially different forms from other cultures still exist. Different methods of Historiography therefore depend on the cultural/idealistic backgrounds of the writers. The philosophical/theological/cultural backgrounds of writers cannot be divorced from the historiographical style they chose, especially as it will influence their epistemological methodologies as well as their creative ones.
3. Yes, I am deliberately choosing long words for this post.
4. Very broadly speaking, Historiography can be divided into the Traditional, Modernist and Post-Modernist schools, depending on one's attitudes to primary source material. The division I'm suggesting here is between the Traditional and Modernist (that primary source material is in itself inherently reliable) and the Post-Modern (that primary source material is not inherently, or indeed at all, reliable), although an equally useful division could be between the Traditional (concentration on higher politics and 'events', conservative style of communication) and the Modernist/Post-Modernist (imaginative styles of communication, tendency to concentrate on social history). The only constant when grouping together various histories is that it is very difficult to divide them all into exact groups.
5. I've only been studying this for a year, so please don't take anything I say as gospel.
Tuesday 24 August 2010
Oh okay, while I'm here
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/russia_in_color_a_century_ago.html
Via The Conservative History Journal, here are a series of photographs taken in the old Russian Empire between 1909-1912. Worth having a look at not simply because of the stunningly original, near colour photography (not done via colourisation, a horrible idea only beaten by post-production 3D) but also for the sheer delight in viewing what just might be considered 'a lost world'. The history of Russia between 1912 and the modern day is of vast internal upheaval - under the Stalin leadership unimaginable acts were committed in an effort to modernise and brutally control the various subject peoples of the Soviet Union (entire populations were, not often admittedly but more than once, moved by the central authorities over thousands of miles). In some cases the past is another country on a different continent.
Via The Conservative History Journal, here are a series of photographs taken in the old Russian Empire between 1909-1912. Worth having a look at not simply because of the stunningly original, near colour photography (not done via colourisation, a horrible idea only beaten by post-production 3D) but also for the sheer delight in viewing what just might be considered 'a lost world'. The history of Russia between 1912 and the modern day is of vast internal upheaval - under the Stalin leadership unimaginable acts were committed in an effort to modernise and brutally control the various subject peoples of the Soviet Union (entire populations were, not often admittedly but more than once, moved by the central authorities over thousands of miles). In some cases the past is another country on a different continent.
A quick post tonight
Amalgamating two elongated 'Confusion Posts'
Number 1
'The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there' is, of course (as Wikipedia reminds me) from L.P Hartley's The Go-Between (1953). The idea that the past is somehow 'different', that it judged and must be judged differently, has good basis. The common outlook on life has identifiably and radically changed within the last few decades. If one was to go further and compare 2010 and 1910 the contrast would become more stark. Changes in technology, culture, politics and fashion have altered society substantially over that period. It has, I believe, also changed the individual's outlook upon life and the world substantially over a similar period. It is a personal belief, and not one that I've ever done any sort of research into, that the British do live in a faster-paced and more resource-filled society than we did in 1910, but also into one that is in many ways more fragile.
The question is though to what extent, for lack of a better word, 'outlooks' have changed over that period. The Mediterranean World in the time of Philip II of Spain is a book that I need to read, by the French Annales historian Fernand Braudel*. In it, to my understanding, Braudel arranges the book into three 'layers' of time. The first is the geographical, in which the passage of events is monumental, measured and irresistible. The second is the social and cultural, which operates more quickly. This layer deals with socio-political groupings, as opposed to the concentration on the environmental in the first layer. The third is the 'time of events', a history of names and immediate occurrences.
As I said I've not read The Mediterranean World, so please don't put that much store by what I've just written. The idea that I see Braudel suggesting, that of a multi-layered history within a (psycho)geographically defined area is an interesting one however. It suggests to me that there may be common psycho-philosophical linkages between our ancestors and ourselves. Now, this needs to come with the caveat that I'm a modernist by trade and therefore more likely to see such linkages than a medievalist, classicist or paleo-historian. Nevertheless, it's an idea I might take up at some point - the past may be 'another country', a land not our own where different views are taken and different practices performed, but it is still populated by the same bare stock of humans.
Number 2
The quote I was confusing Hartley's maxim with was 'The Undiscovered Country', from either Hamlet (Act III, Scene 1, as my compendium reminds me) or from Star Trek VI depending on your taste (mine edges towards Star Trek VI). The difference is not just between high and pop culture. In Hamlet the Undiscovered Country is the existence beyond death ('But that the dread of something after death,-/The Undiscovered Country from which no traveller returns'). In Star Trek VI the Undiscovered Country is the future ('I offer a toast. The Undiscovered Country.....the future' - Chancellor Gorkon during the dinner scene on the Enterprise).
Which allows me (I think) to get onto my other topic for tonight and continue this theme of Christianity and History jogging through this blog. It's impossible to address Christian faith without allowing for the historical perspective. For one, Christian theology is essentially positivist in its view that historical events will one day end - with the Second Coming (although its view on human nature it seems prevents it from being Whiggish). On an individual note Luke 1:1-3 describes how the writer, having 'carefully investigated everything from the beginning' has decided to write a 'careful account' of the life of Christ (quotes from the New Living Translation). Even the more metaphysically-inclined John writes in John 21:25 that 'Jesus also did many other things. If they were all written down, I suppose the whole world could not contain the books that would be written'. The implication, to my mind here, is that the Gospel writers had what we today would consider historiographical methodology in mind when they wrote their accounts.
(John, I believe, was more inclined towards presenting the supernatural, holistic truth of Christ rather than the more historically-based one given in Luke).
However this all raises the question of the relationship between one's faith and profession if you are a Christian historian. Modern interpretations of the Rankian principles of source analysis** emphasise that no matter one's ideological perspective, any historical assertion must be based firstly on primary source material. No one event has, at the more complicated level of analysis, a single universally-agreed narrative. As long as your perspective is written with primary source material in mind and provable by well-structured referencing then you are free to argue whatever you like. For instance, I believe that John Keegan's A History of Warfare (1993) is at its heart a deeply flawed book that puts across a discreditable anti-Clausewitzian argument that in no way disproves the strategic theoretical aspects of On War (1832). However I also believe that is a viable work of history, in that Keegan shows his working freely and musters acceptable levels of primary source material to support his argument (I just happen to disagree with the conclusions he reaches).
Alrighty then, you might argue, so what? The historical argument for Christ's earthly ministry is old hat - you yourself posted a link to a William Lane Craig paper on it a few days ago. How do we marry together Christian beliefs and Rankian principles though? A recent conversation with a good friend at St. Leonard's reveals that while he has made the conscious decision to believe in the literal truth of Genesis 1-3 (the Creation story), I still have problems with it. I'm not at all comfortable with the idea of mythologising the Eden narrative, given New Testament statements over its reliability (that it is a reliable account), but the Rankian in me argues that I cannot condemn fellow historians for departing wholesale from available source material and then freely do so myself. The immediate get-out clause is that with the transcendental nature of God there is an avenue for anti-divine theories of creation to be discarded, but I feel I need to do more thinking/reading/praying before I make that jump.
* PS: I promise a blog post explaining the Annales school of history, with special reference to Le Roy Lauderie's Carnival at Romans (as that's the only Annales book I've actually read) sometime. Possibly as soon as I actually understand the School.
** OK, and another on von Ranke. I may combine the two into one massive post on historiographical methodologies and cultural perspective, I warn you of that!
Number 1
'The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there' is, of course (as Wikipedia reminds me) from L.P Hartley's The Go-Between (1953). The idea that the past is somehow 'different', that it judged and must be judged differently, has good basis. The common outlook on life has identifiably and radically changed within the last few decades. If one was to go further and compare 2010 and 1910 the contrast would become more stark. Changes in technology, culture, politics and fashion have altered society substantially over that period. It has, I believe, also changed the individual's outlook upon life and the world substantially over a similar period. It is a personal belief, and not one that I've ever done any sort of research into, that the British do live in a faster-paced and more resource-filled society than we did in 1910, but also into one that is in many ways more fragile.
The question is though to what extent, for lack of a better word, 'outlooks' have changed over that period. The Mediterranean World in the time of Philip II of Spain is a book that I need to read, by the French Annales historian Fernand Braudel*. In it, to my understanding, Braudel arranges the book into three 'layers' of time. The first is the geographical, in which the passage of events is monumental, measured and irresistible. The second is the social and cultural, which operates more quickly. This layer deals with socio-political groupings, as opposed to the concentration on the environmental in the first layer. The third is the 'time of events', a history of names and immediate occurrences.
As I said I've not read The Mediterranean World, so please don't put that much store by what I've just written. The idea that I see Braudel suggesting, that of a multi-layered history within a (psycho)geographically defined area is an interesting one however. It suggests to me that there may be common psycho-philosophical linkages between our ancestors and ourselves. Now, this needs to come with the caveat that I'm a modernist by trade and therefore more likely to see such linkages than a medievalist, classicist or paleo-historian. Nevertheless, it's an idea I might take up at some point - the past may be 'another country', a land not our own where different views are taken and different practices performed, but it is still populated by the same bare stock of humans.
Number 2
The quote I was confusing Hartley's maxim with was 'The Undiscovered Country', from either Hamlet (Act III, Scene 1, as my compendium reminds me) or from Star Trek VI depending on your taste (mine edges towards Star Trek VI). The difference is not just between high and pop culture. In Hamlet the Undiscovered Country is the existence beyond death ('But that the dread of something after death,-/The Undiscovered Country from which no traveller returns'). In Star Trek VI the Undiscovered Country is the future ('I offer a toast. The Undiscovered Country.....the future' - Chancellor Gorkon during the dinner scene on the Enterprise).
Which allows me (I think) to get onto my other topic for tonight and continue this theme of Christianity and History jogging through this blog. It's impossible to address Christian faith without allowing for the historical perspective. For one, Christian theology is essentially positivist in its view that historical events will one day end - with the Second Coming (although its view on human nature it seems prevents it from being Whiggish). On an individual note Luke 1:1-3 describes how the writer, having 'carefully investigated everything from the beginning' has decided to write a 'careful account' of the life of Christ (quotes from the New Living Translation). Even the more metaphysically-inclined John writes in John 21:25 that 'Jesus also did many other things. If they were all written down, I suppose the whole world could not contain the books that would be written'. The implication, to my mind here, is that the Gospel writers had what we today would consider historiographical methodology in mind when they wrote their accounts.
(John, I believe, was more inclined towards presenting the supernatural, holistic truth of Christ rather than the more historically-based one given in Luke).
However this all raises the question of the relationship between one's faith and profession if you are a Christian historian. Modern interpretations of the Rankian principles of source analysis** emphasise that no matter one's ideological perspective, any historical assertion must be based firstly on primary source material. No one event has, at the more complicated level of analysis, a single universally-agreed narrative. As long as your perspective is written with primary source material in mind and provable by well-structured referencing then you are free to argue whatever you like. For instance, I believe that John Keegan's A History of Warfare (1993) is at its heart a deeply flawed book that puts across a discreditable anti-Clausewitzian argument that in no way disproves the strategic theoretical aspects of On War (1832). However I also believe that is a viable work of history, in that Keegan shows his working freely and musters acceptable levels of primary source material to support his argument (I just happen to disagree with the conclusions he reaches).
Alrighty then, you might argue, so what? The historical argument for Christ's earthly ministry is old hat - you yourself posted a link to a William Lane Craig paper on it a few days ago. How do we marry together Christian beliefs and Rankian principles though? A recent conversation with a good friend at St. Leonard's reveals that while he has made the conscious decision to believe in the literal truth of Genesis 1-3 (the Creation story), I still have problems with it. I'm not at all comfortable with the idea of mythologising the Eden narrative, given New Testament statements over its reliability (that it is a reliable account), but the Rankian in me argues that I cannot condemn fellow historians for departing wholesale from available source material and then freely do so myself. The immediate get-out clause is that with the transcendental nature of God there is an avenue for anti-divine theories of creation to be discarded, but I feel I need to do more thinking/reading/praying before I make that jump.
* PS: I promise a blog post explaining the Annales school of history, with special reference to Le Roy Lauderie's Carnival at Romans (as that's the only Annales book I've actually read) sometime. Possibly as soon as I actually understand the School.
** OK, and another on von Ranke. I may combine the two into one massive post on historiographical methodologies and cultural perspective, I warn you of that!
Sunday 22 August 2010
Plugging away.....
I am of course entirely biased and shamelessly attempting to curry favour when I recommend that you read:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/books/review/Hari-t.html - Johann Hari in the New York Times on how good Richard Toye's Churchill and Empire is.
http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2010/08/15/churchill_in_focus/ - David M. Shribman in the Boston Globe on how good Richard Toye's Churchill and Empire is.
and http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3664544/The-friendship-between-the-20th-centurys-two-political-titans.html - John Campbell in The Daily Telegraph on how good Richard Toye's Lloyd George and Churchill: Rivals for Greatness is
(In my defence, I have read Lloyd George and Churchill and it is not bad at all)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/books/review/Hari-t.html - Johann Hari in the New York Times on how good Richard Toye's Churchill and Empire is.
http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2010/08/15/churchill_in_focus/ - David M. Shribman in the Boston Globe on how good Richard Toye's Churchill and Empire is.
and http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3664544/The-friendship-between-the-20th-centurys-two-political-titans.html - John Campbell in The Daily Telegraph on how good Richard Toye's Lloyd George and Churchill: Rivals for Greatness is
(In my defence, I have read Lloyd George and Churchill and it is not bad at all)
Some brief thoughts on the Park51/Cordoba building situation
As I understand it, this building will serve as an Islamic community centre, include worship rooms. It is not at the Ground Zero site, but two blocks away - such was the force of the impact on 11th September that some parts of one of the planes managed to do serious damage to the building that day.
Under the auspices and spirit of the US Constitution, the owners of Park51 have full right to build a community centre on the site they have chosen, which can include as prominent and large an Islamic worship area as they like. Freedom of expression including religious expression is plainly allowed within the US Constitution. That goes for those supporting and those opposing the project. Let's face it too, I doubt whether or not real estate in Manhatten is that cheap. This is probably the best place they have available to build if they're going to.
There are some questions about the funding involved, but that is beyond my ability to comment upon. Apart from that the reasons for not putting a site including Islamic worship rooms on a site that close to Ground Zero are fairly similar to my not founding a British cultural centre on the Garvagh Road in Belfast. I would have every legal right to, it would not be a centre designed to throw the history of The Troubles in the faces of the locals, and possibly it would be beneficial when it came to healing the divisions between Nationalists and the British state. I still wouldn't volunteer to lay the foundation stone.
I'm not going to start dictating who people can worship. I am a Christian, but I believe that the argument is best won by persuasion and prayer rather than plain shouting. The builders of this project can have the best of intentions, but that still doesn't mean it's necessarily a good idea.
Under the auspices and spirit of the US Constitution, the owners of Park51 have full right to build a community centre on the site they have chosen, which can include as prominent and large an Islamic worship area as they like. Freedom of expression including religious expression is plainly allowed within the US Constitution. That goes for those supporting and those opposing the project. Let's face it too, I doubt whether or not real estate in Manhatten is that cheap. This is probably the best place they have available to build if they're going to.
There are some questions about the funding involved, but that is beyond my ability to comment upon. Apart from that the reasons for not putting a site including Islamic worship rooms on a site that close to Ground Zero are fairly similar to my not founding a British cultural centre on the Garvagh Road in Belfast. I would have every legal right to, it would not be a centre designed to throw the history of The Troubles in the faces of the locals, and possibly it would be beneficial when it came to healing the divisions between Nationalists and the British state. I still wouldn't volunteer to lay the foundation stone.
I'm not going to start dictating who people can worship. I am a Christian, but I believe that the argument is best won by persuasion and prayer rather than plain shouting. The builders of this project can have the best of intentions, but that still doesn't mean it's necessarily a good idea.
Friday 20 August 2010
Very bad reasons for doing things
Watching Good Will Hunting.
There's a scene in the first quarter of the movie where Will tears apart a Harvard student who is attempting to intimidate his friend Chuckie by ruthlessly criticising the student's views on economic development in the pre-revolutionary southern American colonies. The student, Will surmises, has not an original idea in his head: his views are being shaped by the stage he's got to on the Harvard reading list.
It reminds me how little I know about economic history. Mark Overton is the Professor of Economic History here at Exeter (http://humanities.exeter.ac.uk/history/staff/overton/), and in between being Pro-Vice Chancellor he came to give us a lecture last Autumn term on the subject. It was interesting. He covered the development of modern Economic History and how it is largely intertwined with the history of Cliometrics (numerical and statistical analysis of historical economic trends), along with reminding us all what a revolutionary effect that computing developments have had on research.
Yet here I am, almost a year later, and the amount I know about economic history is about as small as it was then. The idea that Cliometrics is the great hope for objective historiography has been disproved. Firstly, like most of the great 'Historiographical Hopes' of the post-WWI age, its advocates seriously overstated its effectiveness and reliability. Secondly, the modelling that William Fogel et al ended up with was substantially divorced from reality.
(I'm not entirely sure about this, but some of the contributing factors that may have occurred is that economics - to my understanding - treats human beings as 'rational actors'. I'm not convinced that humans should always be assumed to be acting rationally)
At the same time though the 'rejection' of Cliometrics doesn't mean that you can understand your time period without knowledge of the economics involved. I'm doing my doctoral research on British politics and the Haldane Reforms (of the British Army) between 1906-1914. If I want to know what non-military factors shaped those Reforms, I have to look at the Protectionism-Free Trade dispute of 1902-1910, and the impact of that old age pensions being introduced had upon the 1908 budget. If you want to understand the 'People's Budget' of 1909, you have to realise that the Government was not only looking to challenge the authority of the House of Lords, it was looking to balance the Budget in the face of massive defence estimates and a two-year (1907-1909) recession. Which leads you to ask about why it saw the need to balance that Budget, which in turns leads you back to 19th century liberal economic analysis, and the predominance of Gladstonian economists among the senior levels of the early 20th century British Treasury.
My point, if I have one, is that it's impossible to be a purely political, religious, sociological or cultural historian. In my humble opinion it's more sensible to divide areas of study by time period rather than subject. The subjective viewpoint has to acknowledge inter-connectedness. My research is on politics and defence, but I have to include in that everything from economics to the influence of the Daily Mail.
So why don't I know more about economic history than I did a year ago? Well, and here the title comes into play, economic history is quite dull really. Cliometrics involves a substantial amount of computing and maths: Overton for instance learnt to program whilst being involved into early studies as to what computers could do for history. I'm sure that there are some historians out there who enjoy working with numbers - they're called quantitative historians and they used to be everywhere apparently. I don't though. So I tend to leave numbers out of my work.
My conclusion? I should do more economic analysis. I probably won't though, not because it doesn't need to get done but because I'm human and I like working on things that interest me. My suspicion is that quite a few of my fellows do too.
There's a scene in the first quarter of the movie where Will tears apart a Harvard student who is attempting to intimidate his friend Chuckie by ruthlessly criticising the student's views on economic development in the pre-revolutionary southern American colonies. The student, Will surmises, has not an original idea in his head: his views are being shaped by the stage he's got to on the Harvard reading list.
It reminds me how little I know about economic history. Mark Overton is the Professor of Economic History here at Exeter (http://humanities.exeter.ac.uk/history/staff/overton/), and in between being Pro-Vice Chancellor he came to give us a lecture last Autumn term on the subject. It was interesting. He covered the development of modern Economic History and how it is largely intertwined with the history of Cliometrics (numerical and statistical analysis of historical economic trends), along with reminding us all what a revolutionary effect that computing developments have had on research.
Yet here I am, almost a year later, and the amount I know about economic history is about as small as it was then. The idea that Cliometrics is the great hope for objective historiography has been disproved. Firstly, like most of the great 'Historiographical Hopes' of the post-WWI age, its advocates seriously overstated its effectiveness and reliability. Secondly, the modelling that William Fogel et al ended up with was substantially divorced from reality.
(I'm not entirely sure about this, but some of the contributing factors that may have occurred is that economics - to my understanding - treats human beings as 'rational actors'. I'm not convinced that humans should always be assumed to be acting rationally)
At the same time though the 'rejection' of Cliometrics doesn't mean that you can understand your time period without knowledge of the economics involved. I'm doing my doctoral research on British politics and the Haldane Reforms (of the British Army) between 1906-1914. If I want to know what non-military factors shaped those Reforms, I have to look at the Protectionism-Free Trade dispute of 1902-1910, and the impact of that old age pensions being introduced had upon the 1908 budget. If you want to understand the 'People's Budget' of 1909, you have to realise that the Government was not only looking to challenge the authority of the House of Lords, it was looking to balance the Budget in the face of massive defence estimates and a two-year (1907-1909) recession. Which leads you to ask about why it saw the need to balance that Budget, which in turns leads you back to 19th century liberal economic analysis, and the predominance of Gladstonian economists among the senior levels of the early 20th century British Treasury.
My point, if I have one, is that it's impossible to be a purely political, religious, sociological or cultural historian. In my humble opinion it's more sensible to divide areas of study by time period rather than subject. The subjective viewpoint has to acknowledge inter-connectedness. My research is on politics and defence, but I have to include in that everything from economics to the influence of the Daily Mail.
So why don't I know more about economic history than I did a year ago? Well, and here the title comes into play, economic history is quite dull really. Cliometrics involves a substantial amount of computing and maths: Overton for instance learnt to program whilst being involved into early studies as to what computers could do for history. I'm sure that there are some historians out there who enjoy working with numbers - they're called quantitative historians and they used to be everywhere apparently. I don't though. So I tend to leave numbers out of my work.
My conclusion? I should do more economic analysis. I probably won't though, not because it doesn't need to get done but because I'm human and I like working on things that interest me. My suspicion is that quite a few of my fellows do too.
Being reminded of something
http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/2282763.html#comments shows us some extracts from Mark Millar's comic book Chosen.
Luke 22:7-8, New Living Translation:
'"Teacher", they asked, "when will all this happen? What sign will show us that these things are about to take place?"/He replied, "Don't let anyone mislead you, for many will come in my name, claiming 'I am the Messiah,' and saying, 'The time has come!'. But don't believe them".
More relevantly here would be the chronology of Revelation, from Revelation 17-21.
I saw the twist coming, but wanted to believe the central character was the Son of God. Need to read my Bible more.
Luke 22:7-8, New Living Translation:
'"Teacher", they asked, "when will all this happen? What sign will show us that these things are about to take place?"/He replied, "Don't let anyone mislead you, for many will come in my name, claiming 'I am the Messiah,' and saying, 'The time has come!'. But don't believe them".
More relevantly here would be the chronology of Revelation, from Revelation 17-21.
I saw the twist coming, but wanted to believe the central character was the Son of God. Need to read my Bible more.
Thursday 19 August 2010
The fourth plinth
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11017724
The six pieces that have been short-listed for the fourth plinth at Trafalgar Square.
All of which are quite good. I like the rooster, and the map of Britain, for instance. I've two problems with these though. Firstly the design of some of these entries is questionable (why is growing up so heroic? We all have to do it).
Secondly though there's the question of setting. Courtesy of Wikipedia, here are a few pictures:
The six pieces that have been short-listed for the fourth plinth at Trafalgar Square.
All of which are quite good. I like the rooster, and the map of Britain, for instance. I've two problems with these though. Firstly the design of some of these entries is questionable (why is growing up so heroic? We all have to do it).
Secondly though there's the question of setting. Courtesy of Wikipedia, here are a few pictures:
 |
| Trafalgar Square in 1908 |
 |
| Sir Henry Havelock. Victorian hero and general. Note the Whiskers |
I've no objection to 'modern art' per se. Does it work contextually here though? Perhaps a statue of someone like Florence Nightingale, or another figure associated with wartime medicine or humanitarianism, to remind us of what goes with all the military glory celebrated elsewhere in the Square.
Wednesday 18 August 2010
The Pope's visit to the UK #1
A small, but noteworthy, dispute is raging on the Guardian Unlimited website.
Last week a meeting apparently took place at Richmond Council's local library, supported by the 'Protest the Pope' campaign. The Guardian's 'Church Mouse' commentator has taken offence to its location and content, and Andrew Copson, of the British Humanist Association, has written an opinion piece defending the meeting and those at it.
Copson's defence is here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/aug/18/religion-catholicism-pope-protest. It links to 'Church Mouse' piece, which can be found here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/aug/16/pope-protest-richmond-council?showallcomments=true.
Needless to say that my theological and philosophical sympathies are not with Mr. Copson. Yet he seems to have had the benefit of actually being at the meeting, as opposed to 'Church Mouse', who relies on second-hand reports from the Telegraph. The linkage that 'Church Mouse' draws between the Richmond meeting and a Catholic group that has had to call the police over threats linked to the Pope's visit is clumsy at best.
Here debate over the Pope's visit should be divorced from the ongoing theological battle between Christian Apologists and New Atheists. The fact of the matter is that there are important reasons to hold the Catholic Church up to examination. The Church's reaction to the clerical abuse scandal has unearthed a culture where the survival and well-being of the Church has been placed too often above the teachings of Christ and the needs of individual believers, and that must stop. We cannot go forward, and reform Catholicism where it needs reformation, if at every point the dialogue between church hierarchy and secular society continuously descends into the same arguments of old (it is noticeable how many times 'Church Mouse' emphasises the role of the Richmond LGBT Forum as an organiser of that meeting). Just because these people are humanists and atheists does not necessarily mean that the views they are putting forth on these individual points aren't also correct.
As Christians we should be guided by prayer and by the Holy Spirit in seeking to help the Catholic Church overcome its difficulties. If we are to oppose opinions, they should be because they are contrary to our position as Christians, not because they are proposed by people who we object to.
At the same time though, can we try to have a papal visit that does not include large scale atheistic protest? The issues that Mr. Copson mentions in his piece are important; the fact of the matter is that people do disagree with the Catholic Church's position over African aid, homosexuality and women's rights. They have every right to do so, and should not be stopped doing so. The danger I feel is that we end up with two sides shouting at each other, but never really listening to one another. Let's put it another way: as mentioned, I disagree with Mr. Copson's theological beliefs entirely. That doesn't mean that I should automatically bar my ears to what he says, as he should not to what I might say to him.
Last week a meeting apparently took place at Richmond Council's local library, supported by the 'Protest the Pope' campaign. The Guardian's 'Church Mouse' commentator has taken offence to its location and content, and Andrew Copson, of the British Humanist Association, has written an opinion piece defending the meeting and those at it.
Copson's defence is here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/aug/18/religion-catholicism-pope-protest. It links to 'Church Mouse' piece, which can be found here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/aug/16/pope-protest-richmond-council?showallcomments=true.
Needless to say that my theological and philosophical sympathies are not with Mr. Copson. Yet he seems to have had the benefit of actually being at the meeting, as opposed to 'Church Mouse', who relies on second-hand reports from the Telegraph. The linkage that 'Church Mouse' draws between the Richmond meeting and a Catholic group that has had to call the police over threats linked to the Pope's visit is clumsy at best.
Here debate over the Pope's visit should be divorced from the ongoing theological battle between Christian Apologists and New Atheists. The fact of the matter is that there are important reasons to hold the Catholic Church up to examination. The Church's reaction to the clerical abuse scandal has unearthed a culture where the survival and well-being of the Church has been placed too often above the teachings of Christ and the needs of individual believers, and that must stop. We cannot go forward, and reform Catholicism where it needs reformation, if at every point the dialogue between church hierarchy and secular society continuously descends into the same arguments of old (it is noticeable how many times 'Church Mouse' emphasises the role of the Richmond LGBT Forum as an organiser of that meeting). Just because these people are humanists and atheists does not necessarily mean that the views they are putting forth on these individual points aren't also correct.
As Christians we should be guided by prayer and by the Holy Spirit in seeking to help the Catholic Church overcome its difficulties. If we are to oppose opinions, they should be because they are contrary to our position as Christians, not because they are proposed by people who we object to.
At the same time though, can we try to have a papal visit that does not include large scale atheistic protest? The issues that Mr. Copson mentions in his piece are important; the fact of the matter is that people do disagree with the Catholic Church's position over African aid, homosexuality and women's rights. They have every right to do so, and should not be stopped doing so. The danger I feel is that we end up with two sides shouting at each other, but never really listening to one another. Let's put it another way: as mentioned, I disagree with Mr. Copson's theological beliefs entirely. That doesn't mean that I should automatically bar my ears to what he says, as he should not to what I might say to him.
Thoughts on imagery, colour and context
I took this photo in 2007, from a ferry going across Sydney harbour. At the time I remember how odd it was to actually see the Sydney Opera House. I should explain that I'd landed the day before and hadn't yet got my bearings around central Sydney. We'd got on the ferry at the Central Terminal, and were following the curvature of the harbour. You could see office blocks, but an office block is just an office block really, when the office blocks suddenly stopped and around the corner the Opera House came into view.
It was not necessarily that I was surprised by it; the form of the Opera House is so familiar now that it's difficult to find something shocking about it. It was the dissonance between seeing that image and seeing the reality that was startling. The idea of the Opera House was an established fact in my mind, but I had no exposure to its reality. Somehow, and it's difficult to put your finger exactly on why, but encountering the actual building was a transformative experience. I suppose it was just that it had had an artificial existence until then; finding it there, situationally contextualised, transformed my understanding of it.
This meanwhile was from the top of a hill near Ullswater in Cumbria, taken last year. Now on one level it has an immediate resonance with all of us. Personally speaking it reminds me of a long walk I had just taken with my mother (she's off camera), and the Lake poets (who I was thinking about, I believe, when I was taking that shot). On one level then, the image is a universal stimulus (providing of course one provides some sort of contextualisation), but on other it is a uniquely personal memento. If another person was to take the same walk as I, get to that point and take an identical shot, it would still have a different meaning to them than it does to me.
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I can't remember when these were taken, but they show part of a field in my village. Here of course the difference is technical. The first shot was designed to take as much colour out of it as I could with my camera, the second to put as much in. I don't know which one of these I prefer. The first one is colder, but to my mind it has a more ethereal beauty to it. The second is far warmer, but occasionally I find its warmth almost intrusive. They were taken within a minute of each other while I was out for a walk; if it was solely a case of assigning memory and feeling to pictures I should have no interest in delineating them. I do though: it's fascinating that you can get so much difference into what is essentially the same shot just by making technical adjustments.
Monday 16 August 2010
After 12 months and a few blog entries, my thoughts on being a PhD student
In about a month, it will be a year since I started my PhD. As this blog is entitled 'Accounts of a Confused Postgraduate', I thought I ought to break off from the musings to try and offer a few thoughts as to what to do if you ever start down this road:
- Remember at all times that all secretaries are your friends. Your supervisor(s) may be the acknowledged world experts on your subject area, but secretaries are the one's who know where the forms go and where room X is.
- Cultivate a hobby and stick with it. At this moment in time you love your proposed subject area and can't imagine anything better than researching it. Remember though that you are going to be spending the next three years concentrating exclusively on this topic. Have something to do that's not research-based, or you will go mad.
- If you can't cook at all, learn. If you can cook, make sure you have a meal or two that you can always throw together in five minutes. Whatever happens, try and eat a well-balanced meal three times a day. Your brain is your key resource and it won't function at its best on junk food and beer.
- It is possible to drink too much caffeine/eat too much chocolate. Remember 'a (reasonably) healthy mind in a (reasonably) healthy body'
- Your chance of getting research funding varies according according to your proposal strength and subject area. Work like fury on that research proposal.
- There will be point when you're tired, frazzled and can't think properly. You have no idea what to put into your thesis next, it's Friday night, and everyone outside seems to be having the time of their lives. Speaking as an humanities student, there are two ways of dealing with these moments. Firstly, have some other work you can go off and do while waiting for inspiration on your thesis (I chose either book reviews or papers) or just a random bit of escapism (video games for instance). The second is to simply press on and force a conclusion to what you're writing. It's up to you to learn when to use each technique.
- Despite that though, remember that you are a human being. You are entitled to spend some time away from your work with friends. Don't let it overwhelm you and always have a clear idea as to what the aims of your research are. You will have to adapt any research plan as time goes on, but always have a few clear aims in mind as to why it is you're here.
- Your supervisor(s) are immensely clever people, acknowledged experts in your area, with far better research skills than you. Remember though that they were once post-grad researchers themselves. Don't be afraid to ask them questions – that's what they're being paid to be supervisors for. If you have a question, don't be intrusive, but at the same time always ask if you think someone in your department/faculty can answer it. A question asked in honest inquiry is never unfruitful. What you learn might be that it's a bad question, but you have learnt something.
- Learn the lingo and people involved. This year for instance I've been a HUSS SSLC PGR rep (school of Humanities and Social Sciences Staff-Student Liaison Committee Post-Graduate Researcher representative). Alright, that was perhaps an extreme example. Like all areas through of society post-graduate research has its own vocabulary and it is helpful to know it. Also, and this is more useful, learn the major bodies involved in your area. Know which is your Research Council, what the Leverhulme Trust is, and who the major society involved in your research is. Pick up on what are the major publications in your field. Learn the relevant deadlines for funding and make a note of them (buy a diary!). Get to know the important figures in research. Which leads us on to –
- Officially your PhD is the process of your doing your thesis over 3-4 years (increasingly 3-4 years is the time limit research councils set universities). Unofficially there's more to it than that. Your PhD is the process of your becoming what it is you want to do next. If you want to be an academic, then you have to start submitting conference proposals and trying to get papers published. If there's an organising committee you can be on, get on it! If your university is offering a career development scheme, put your name down for as many classes as you can! The number of people leaving universities with PhDs in this country is far more than the number of available academic places. The Academy does not owe you a living; it's up to you to get yourself ready for the big wild world. Your thesis is still central to your doctorate, but there's a lot more to it than just that.
Whatever happens to you, remember that you're starting out on an exciting time in your life. Doing a doctorate enables you to do move onto a whole new level. You will be doing your own research, developing those skills and building on those experiences you've explored while doing your BA and MA. It is a lot of work, but there are a whole lot of great moments that make up for it – I got to leaf through a whole lot of Winston Churchill's handwritten letters this year, and as an historian let me tell you that that's pretty cool. You'll be mixing too with some of the fine young minds of this generation; cross-pollinating ideas and building the Academy of tomorrow.
Make sure you know what you're researching. Know which university and scholar you want to research with. Try your best to get calm, reasonable house-mates; it does matter a lot. Make mates, do your best and keep a level head while you're doing it.
God bless, and best of luck
Biblical Historiography - William Lane Craig on why the Gospels are believable
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5207
I'm not familiar with every nook and cranny of Biblical historiography. To my mind though, here William Lane Craig (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lane_Craig) presents a good summary of why the accounts of the New Testament, especially the Gospels and Christ's Resurrection in particular, have good historical grounding. I wouldn't call it an immediately conclusive piece, as he raises several ideas that deserve further reading before a definite opinion is taken, but I struggle to find a strong counter-argument to his conclusions.
I'm not familiar with every nook and cranny of Biblical historiography. To my mind though, here William Lane Craig (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lane_Craig) presents a good summary of why the accounts of the New Testament, especially the Gospels and Christ's Resurrection in particular, have good historical grounding. I wouldn't call it an immediately conclusive piece, as he raises several ideas that deserve further reading before a definite opinion is taken, but I struggle to find a strong counter-argument to his conclusions.
Saturday 14 August 2010
Two unrelated points
This, from the blog of the littlest J'Ro (Jonny Rose) is worth a read: http://jonathanrose.wordpress.com/2010/08/03/a-divine-comedy-my-review-bbc2s-latest-religious-sitcom/#comments
If you watched Michael Wood's programme on Beowulf (and Bartlett on the Normans) you would have seen examples of how the Norman Conquest influenced the development of language. Bartlett points out that our words for even different stages of the same foodstuff represent the division between Anglo-Saxon and Norman. If it is cared for by a peasant, rolls around in its own faeces and eats swill, it's a 'pig' (from the Anglo-Saxon old English). If it is served up on a plate for a nobleman after killing and cooking, alongside a glass of wine and some vegetables, then it's 'pork' (from the Norman French). So far, so post-structuralist/modernist use of language in reinforcing ideationally-based social hierarchies (yes, I'm looking at you, my loose understanding of the theories of Michael Foucault). As Wood points out though, many of our words for key relativistic concepts come from the Anglo-Saxon: love, forgiveness, hate, God. It's just a thought (and as indicated above, my post-modernist-fu is not strong), but I like to run with that contrast at a later date if it's possible.
If you watched Michael Wood's programme on Beowulf (and Bartlett on the Normans) you would have seen examples of how the Norman Conquest influenced the development of language. Bartlett points out that our words for even different stages of the same foodstuff represent the division between Anglo-Saxon and Norman. If it is cared for by a peasant, rolls around in its own faeces and eats swill, it's a 'pig' (from the Anglo-Saxon old English). If it is served up on a plate for a nobleman after killing and cooking, alongside a glass of wine and some vegetables, then it's 'pork' (from the Norman French). So far, so post-structuralist/modernist use of language in reinforcing ideationally-based social hierarchies (yes, I'm looking at you, my loose understanding of the theories of Michael Foucault). As Wood points out though, many of our words for key relativistic concepts come from the Anglo-Saxon: love, forgiveness, hate, God. It's just a thought (and as indicated above, my post-modernist-fu is not strong), but I like to run with that contrast at a later date if it's possible.
Friday 13 August 2010
From the desk of the Times Higher Education Supplement
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=412994&c=1
I thought I ought to post something on 'higher' education, to contrast with the 'low' culture of the previous post. A welcome piece of news this, but not a conclusion surely that it should have taken serious research to come up with? The Library is the immediate research point at any university (and in my case the most often used; I simply don't have a large enough budget to go out on frequent research trips). A better equipped and better funded library therefore must be bound to have a beneficial effect on a university's research and its research income.
I thought I ought to post something on 'higher' education, to contrast with the 'low' culture of the previous post. A welcome piece of news this, but not a conclusion surely that it should have taken serious research to come up with? The Library is the immediate research point at any university (and in my case the most often used; I simply don't have a large enough budget to go out on frequent research trips). A better equipped and better funded library therefore must be bound to have a beneficial effect on a university's research and its research income.
Comic Books are trash #1
Well they are, aren't they?
Alright, alright, calming down now.
The two largest comic book publishers in the world are Marvel and DC. If you think of a comic book character or team off the top of your head, chances are that they originated in a comic now published by the 'Big Two'. Superman and Batman? DC. Iron Man? Marvel. The Fantastic Four? Marvel. The Justice League of America? DC. In fact even some films you wouldn't normally associate with those publishers owe their existence to them. The new Bruce Willis film, Red, for instance, originated as a comic book published under DC's 'Vertigo' imprint. Of recent films, Hellboy (Dark Horse Entertainment) and Scott Pilgrim (Oni Press) are to my mind the two most prominent examples of non-Marvel/DC comic book-inspired movies.
There are some comic books out there that I believe rank as fine literature. I defy someone with even a basic background knowledge of the characters involved not to read and be impressed by Dwayne Cooke's Justice League: The New Frontier, a moving re-envisaging of DC's leading heroes that returns them to their original 1950's setting. On the other end of the scale Wayne Ellis's Nextwave (Marvel) is a gloriously fun over-the-top pastiche of comic book clichés. I'd heartily recommend Greg Ruckha's Queen and Country, Alan Moore's V for Vendetta, his League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and his Watchmen (which made Time magazine's 'All-Time 100 Greatest Novels' list in 2005) and Frank Miller's Batman: Year One and The Dark Knight Returns. Personally I really enjoyed some of Mark Millar and Brian Michael Bendis' run on the early Ultimate Fantastic Four books, despite that title suffering to a degree from the problems that will be outlined below.
So there are some good comics out there. There are comic books (I dislike the term 'graphic novel') that can inspire, enlighten and genuinely move. However, let me draw your attention to this:
That was last-month's preview for Birds of Prey #3, one of DC comics monthly titles. As it's not a Superman or Batman book it's not one of DC's main publications. Birds of Prey nevertheless built up a good reputation during its initial run (1999-2009) as being a well-written, fun book. When it was announced that it was coming back, believe me people were excited. I was one of them.
As you can see from the title page, only one man is currently working on this book – Ed Benes. Now scroll down a couple of pages, and take a look at the female characters. With the exception of one other character these are the title's leads.
In fairness, the first few pages take place in the blood-loss inspired hallucination of The Penguin (Oswald Cobblepot, not a good nor entirely sane man). These are only the first six pages and by the time you get to page 5 it's made clear that the 'real' leads are disgusted by what they are (accurately) imaging he's dreaming. Scroll back up to page 3 though and take another look at the art. Specifically at the faces.
No, the faces. Third panel along, just as they start posing but before zips are lowered.
The three characters in the foreground are, from left to right, Lady Blackhawk (Zinda Blake – a 'time-displaced' crack fighter pilot from the 1940s), Black Canary (Dinah Lance – a former florist and now essentially professional super-hero) and Huntress (Helena Bertinelli – the daughter of a Gotham City mob boss and former schoolteacher). For a start, when have you ever seen people holding those professions that look like that? Admittedly being a superhero would probably be quite good on the figure: one can imagine it involves a lot of exercise. Even out of the dream sequence however, these are stunningly attractive women.
Alright, alright. I'll admit it – yes it probably does help sales.
Still there's another point to be considered. Take a look again at that panel; at Lady Blackhawk and Black Canary. Apart from their similar names these two characters have no common heritage. They are as unrelated as two women can possibly be, and yet they look like sisters. In fact, allowing for the differences in haircuts and costumes, all four women shown share remarkably similar body structure and face shapes.
Again, in fairness, Ed Benes is not alone here. http://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2009/12/on-difficulty-of-drawing-womens-faces.html illustrates why some artists believe that it is honestly just more difficult to draw female faces than male ones. Nor is his art by any stretch of the imagination the worst out there. I give you the 40 worst Rob Liefeld drawings (http://progressiveboink.com/archive/robliefeld.html) to illustrate just how bad comic book art has been. Liefeld has gotten better at drawing, but while he was doing it like this he was one of Marvel Comics' most prominent artists. After all too, Benes is only drawing what Gail Simone has written as the story here.
Yet to my mind the Girls Read Comics blog (http://girl-wonder.org/girlsreadcomics/?p=42) has a point when it argues that the portrayal of female characters between the 'Big Two' is still fundamentally sexist. Let's compare and contrast. Susan Richards (the Invisible Woman) is one of the major female characters in the Marvel Comics universe. She is arguably the most powerful member of the Fantastic Four and supposedly a well-respected figure. In other words, she has come a long way from the original portrayal of her character (http://i31.tinypic.com/9thfea.png). Look at the art though here (http://marvel.wikia.com/Susan_Storm_(Earth-616)/Gallery). The breasts have become bigger and the waist thinner. Susan Richards is supposed to be a reasonably good looking woman, but not an atheistically outstanding one.
Well, it could be worse: this is what she wore for a period in the 1990s:
These meanwhile are the Star Sapphires (http://acomicbookblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/star-sapphire-corps.jpg). These women are supposed to be some of the most powerful characters in the DC universe. Stop giggling at the back there.
Some characters have such looks written into their back-stories (Mary Jane Watson, Wonder Woman). Nor is it an entirely male activity. This is from Amanda Conner's run as the artist for DC's Power Girl: http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/1599705.html?#cutid1. To me this treads the line between acceptable and unacceptable. Yes it is silly and unbelievable, but Power Girl was deliberately written for the laughs. Nor are the physical attributes of the character unrealistic – Power Girl has always been drawn with generous, ah-hum, assets (I accept that I might be somewhat biased here. Sorry).
It's not just the physical attributes though:
These are two panels from Civil War, Marvel's main 'event' comic from 2006-2007. What on earth is the point of the layout in the lower panel? The three characters who are actually talking are in the background, and the plot point they're advancing is relatively minor (believe me – I've read Civil War). The entire purpose of that panel seems to be so that foreground is prominently taken up by the backside of the character She-Hulk. In the interests of balance, this is from Gotham City Sirens # 7 (http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/1124149.html?#cutid1), a DC book. It's not a serious case, but just try and re-draw those pages in your head without showing the three women's breasts or behinds. I don't happen to think that it's that difficult an exercise.
Yes comic books are mindless trash, and yes they present an idealised version of the world in which people can have epic fights across half of Manhattan without the city being bankrupted by the damage and the entire of Wall Street decamping to Europe. They are mindless trash though from which a lot of contemporary entertainment draws ideas (apart from the movies I listed at the start of this entry, Fox's Human Target comes from a DC comics book; AMC's forthcoming series The Walking Dead from one of Robert Kirkman's titles). Is it not time that an industry that has been going for nearly eighty years odd to grow up a bit, allow it fictional heroes to appear human, in their physicality as well as psychology and, a private hope of mine, develop as characters? You never know, it might even boast sales.
PS: I am absolutely not saying that Robert Kirkman's books have the problem's I've been outlining. I was using The Walking Dead as an example of a comic book making the transition to TV and/or film
PPS: There is the argument that basic economics dictates that this wouldn't be going on if it didn't sell comics. Or does it? Marvel went bankrupt in the mid-1990s. Nowadays they operate, I believe, at a profit, but a buy-out was recently arranged by the Disney Corporation which suggests that the efforts to set up a Marvel film studios haven't worked out as well as were hoped. DC on the other hand have been a division of Warner Bros for years, potentially allowing any losses to be subsumed by their parent company. I don't think then that we can automatically make the assumption that gratuity = profit.
PPPS: I cannot emphasise how much better volumes 1 and 2 at least of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen are than the ghastly film adaptation.
PPPPS: Avoid Frank Miller's All-Star Batman and Robin like the plague.
Thursday 12 August 2010
Confusion Post #2
In all honesty, what is the difference between historical re-enacting and cosplay (apart from the subject area)?
BBC Parliament on 1910
Evening all,
Before I forget BBC Parliament are running a series of programmes on the political lessons of 1910. The one up at the moment is Peers versus People, on the 1910 General Elections.
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/tv/bbc_parliament/factual/history)
I caught a lecture from the General Secretary of the Fabian Society on the Conservative reaction to the House of Lords dispute, and it was worth a look
Before I forget BBC Parliament are running a series of programmes on the political lessons of 1910. The one up at the moment is Peers versus People, on the 1910 General Elections.
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/tv/bbc_parliament/factual/history)
I caught a lecture from the General Secretary of the Fabian Society on the Conservative reaction to the House of Lords dispute, and it was worth a look
A quick one on defence (Defence #1)
Afternoon all,
It will be brief this one, as I really should be writing, but can I point people towards the debate raging at John Redwood's blog (http://www.johnredwoodsdiary.com/) over defence spending?
The Government tells us that serious cuts are going to have to be made to public spending. Now, I think I'm right in saying that the largest single outlay for any administration nowadays is health and social services. There are substantial costs involved in defence spending though. At the moment the Government is committed to renewing Trident and building two aircraft carriers that will be considerably bigger than the ones we currently operate, along with multiple other defence procurement projects (not counting the questions over our withdrawal from Afghanistan).
I don't agree with elements of what Redwood writes (I think he's wrong on why we might need to keep troops in Germany), but at least there's a debate occurring there. In my humble opinion, the announcement the other day that the renewal of Trident will have to come out of the MoD's budget was one of the most important defence decisions this country has made for some time*, and I can't remember it being comprehensively discussed.
* Not all defence spending comes out of the MoD budget; a large amount of our spending on Afghanistan for instance is paid for out of Treasury contingency funds. Now if the Treasury is going to insist on the MoD paying for Trident, that's going to create huge financial waves within that department - the cost of renewing our nuclear defence runs into the billions of pounds.
It will be brief this one, as I really should be writing, but can I point people towards the debate raging at John Redwood's blog (http://www.johnredwoodsdiary.com/) over defence spending?
The Government tells us that serious cuts are going to have to be made to public spending. Now, I think I'm right in saying that the largest single outlay for any administration nowadays is health and social services. There are substantial costs involved in defence spending though. At the moment the Government is committed to renewing Trident and building two aircraft carriers that will be considerably bigger than the ones we currently operate, along with multiple other defence procurement projects (not counting the questions over our withdrawal from Afghanistan).
I don't agree with elements of what Redwood writes (I think he's wrong on why we might need to keep troops in Germany), but at least there's a debate occurring there. In my humble opinion, the announcement the other day that the renewal of Trident will have to come out of the MoD's budget was one of the most important defence decisions this country has made for some time*, and I can't remember it being comprehensively discussed.
* Not all defence spending comes out of the MoD budget; a large amount of our spending on Afghanistan for instance is paid for out of Treasury contingency funds. Now if the Treasury is going to insist on the MoD paying for Trident, that's going to create huge financial waves within that department - the cost of renewing our nuclear defence runs into the billions of pounds.
Wednesday 11 August 2010
Confusion Post #1
How is it possible to spend the entire day writing and editing, yet still end up with 90 fewer words than you had this morning?
Follow-up to the last
Dear BBC,
While I am deeply appreciating the excellent series on the Normans (both Robert Bartlett's The Normans and Dan Snow's Norman Walks), at some point in the future could we please have a similar series on modern history. One that does not concentrate on either World War. Gender relations from 1900-1928 for instance, or on the events on 1929-1931. The pre-1914 period, for instance, gives us major industrial disputes, gender conflict not seen since the 1970s (at least) and the threat of what amounted to civil war over Home Rule for Ireland.
Please could it not be presented and researched by Andrew Marr either. He's not good at doing his own research.
Thanks
DHS
While I am deeply appreciating the excellent series on the Normans (both Robert Bartlett's The Normans and Dan Snow's Norman Walks), at some point in the future could we please have a similar series on modern history. One that does not concentrate on either World War. Gender relations from 1900-1928 for instance, or on the events on 1929-1931. The pre-1914 period, for instance, gives us major industrial disputes, gender conflict not seen since the 1970s (at least) and the threat of what amounted to civil war over Home Rule for Ireland.
Please could it not be presented and researched by Andrew Marr either. He's not good at doing his own research.
Thanks
DHS
Inside the Medieval Mind
Well worth a watch. For one, Robert Bartlett (a Professor at St. Andrews) is an excellent teacher and lecturer. For the historian it gives what seems to be – I'm a modernist, so I'm not sure – a good summary of the role of religion in the medieval mind. Even today it is difficult for many, even the religious, to grasp the prevailing socio-psychological nature of the medieval church and medieval religion. One of the major points I was taught while doing my undergraduate degree was the importance of the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia. It marked the end of the Thirty Years' War in central Europe, and the first time at which secular rulers were unequivocally placed above religious ones. After all, beforehand all your secular ruler could do was kill you.
It's also a challenge theologically; to what extent are we all accepting of the supernatural as a real element within our lives, or dedicated to combat with evil and the Devil as described in this programme? David Harris, the Rector of St. Leonard's (my church here in Exeter) gave what I thought was a thoughtful and engaging sermon last Sunday on what we as modern Christians can take from 1 Kings 17: the account of Elijah's works during the famine the Lord sends over Israel (in the reign of Ahab). The chapter concentrates especially on the prophet's time with the widow of Zarephath.
David's sermon can be found here: http://www.stlens.org.uk/index.php?option=com_sermonspeaker&Itemid=53&myussp=3
In 1 Kings there is a great linkage between the supernatural and the natural. Elijah's needs are taken care of by the ravens in the Kireth Ravine, and by the natural bread and oil of the widow. One of David's points though was how the chapter shows us the Lord is the Lord of Death, as well as life. Now this sounds a little ominous, but I would agree with David that it is something Christians need to consider and can draw great comfort from. In Kings Elijah revives the dead son of the widow, who then comes to accept that the God of Israel is in fact all-powerful. This shows the power of God over death, linking forward to the other resurrections in the Old and New Testament and ultimately to the Resurrection of Christ.
Now there is much wrong with the medieval Christianity that Robert Bartlett outlines. The belief in Purgatory is now challenged by Protestants, who believe that there is nothing within the Bible to indicate its existence. From Purgatory too, at least in the medieval age, the idea that actions could be taken on Earth to atone for the sins of the deceased. There is some evidence for that – 2 Maccabees is supposed to support the argument for those. This leads to Indulgences though – effectively payment for the remission of sins, which is contrary to the very nature of what happened on the Cross. The reliance, and praying to, Saints is also quite disturbing. Where they may have been de jure elders of the faith, in de facto terms they often come across (admittedly to the modern ear) as minor deities.
Yet at its very basic level here we have a strong belief in the supernatural as real rather than abstract; the difference between the legalism of the Pharisees and the natural faith of Elijah. In my eyes we may not want to go back to the exact beliefs of those medieval British Christians, but the fundamental spirit that motivated them may have been something we've lost.
Going the full hog
Hello,
Yep. Went full out on the narcissism. Got myself a blog.
This won't be regular - it exists to dump all the stuff I write that has little/nothing to do with my actual thesis. That and to complain about the impossibility of everything (it's been a weird day).
Yep. Went full out on the narcissism. Got myself a blog.
This won't be regular - it exists to dump all the stuff I write that has little/nothing to do with my actual thesis. That and to complain about the impossibility of everything (it's been a weird day).
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