tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/america-5065/articles
America – The Conversation
2024-03-06T17:15:09Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/225020
2024-03-06T17:15:09Z
2024-03-06T17:15:09Z
A US with fewer allies threatens global security
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579834/original/file-20240305-30-n3u2sq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=30%2C0%2C6657%2C4652&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/american-soldiers-us-flag-troops-1170998920">Bumble Dee/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>At a recent election rally in South Carolina, Donald Trump <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68268817">said</a> he would “encourage” aggressors such as Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to Nato allies he considers to have not met their financial obligations. </p>
<p>Trump’s comments, however offensive, may merely be an electoral strategy. Why should, say, a South Carolinian citizen see their taxes go towards defending faraway lands, especially if they believe these partners are not willing to pay equally? </p>
<p>But there’s also a logic to his remarks that Europe should recognise, especially in light of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Many European nations need to build up their <a href="https://www.econpol.eu/sites/default/files/2024-01/EconPol-PolicyReport_45_0.pdf">own security capacities</a> again after years of lax spending on defence.</p>
<p>Regardless, such public comments from a presidential candidate have long been unthinkable. Since the second world war, America has sought out allies. What would it mean for the nation’s security, as well as that of the wider world, should they forego them?</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/x7HE6bCe24g?wmode=transparent&start=23" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Trump says he ‘would encourage’ Russia to attack non-paying Nato allies.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>British precedent</h2>
<p>The modern US-led global order is in many ways a modern iteration of something developed by Great Britain at the beginning of the 19th century. Britain used the peace negotiations that followed the Napoleonic wars (1803–1815) to try and limit the power of expansive land empires like that of defeated France. </p>
<p>The 19th century is sometimes referred to as “Pax Britannica” (British peace) because of the relative absence of conflict between major European powers, with the notable exception of the Crimean War (1853–1856). It lasted until a unified German state emerged as a land power in continental Europe in 1871, upending the security presumptions of the post-Napoleonic peace.</p>
<p>One of Britain’s key reasons for fighting two world wars against Germany was to maintain its version of a global order. But, in winning, Britain depleted its finances – and <a href="https://www.antiquesage.com/world-war-ii-bankruptcy-of-the-british-empire/">capacity to maintain an empire</a> – through borrowing from the US. </p>
<p>The US had become the new economic heavyweight, with a military built up and spread by wartime necessity. Its adherence to basic principles meant the British did not resist America’s newfound global primacy. </p>
<p>Free trade was to remain sacrosanct. Sea trade routes were defended as these were (<a href="https://theconversation.com/with-airstrikes-on-houthi-rebels-are-the-us-and-uk-playing-fast-and-loose-with-international-law-222906">and still are</a>) vital for US economic superiority. The US would also maintain the kind of alliances that the British tended to turn to during times of war, where coalitions of allies share the costs and persevere towards victory. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/with-airstrikes-on-houthi-rebels-are-the-us-and-uk-playing-fast-and-loose-with-international-law-222906">With airstrikes on Houthi rebels, are the US and UK playing fast and loose with international law?</a>
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<h2>Lonely at the top?</h2>
<p>The US would actively shape the world to its own liking in the post-war period. After the hyper-nationalistic conquests that were characteristic of its enemies in the first and second world wars, the US wanted no more empires.</p>
<p>It set up institutions dedicated to spurring free trade and global stability like the UN, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. And it formed alliances, most notably Nato, which included befriending wartime enemies like Germany and committing themselves to a long-term global role.</p>
<p>These alliances allowed the US to station troops overseas in strategic positions without having to administer a costly and potentially discontented empire, like the British and basically every world power had done before them.</p>
<p>Much of this was motivated by the Cold War. The Soviets had exchanged Nazi occupation of eastern Europe for their own. And it was widely believed that in the absence of US security guarantees, western Europe would also be invaded and made communist – an ideology that the US considered incompatible with its own. </p>
<p>The great power competition soon led to US involvement in other zones of communist activity, such as Asia. This was a period in which the US intervened in foreign governments and carried out or supported ethically questionable conflicts. For US politicians, however, it was generally bipartisan to believe that US intervention was justified by a bigger conflict between democracy and authoritarianism.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579835/original/file-20240305-26-olbpm3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white image of paratroopers jumping out of a plane." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579835/original/file-20240305-26-olbpm3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579835/original/file-20240305-26-olbpm3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579835/original/file-20240305-26-olbpm3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579835/original/file-20240305-26-olbpm3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579835/original/file-20240305-26-olbpm3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=682&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579835/original/file-20240305-26-olbpm3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=682&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579835/original/file-20240305-26-olbpm3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=682&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">US paratroopers carrying out a strike in the Tay Ninh province of south Vietnam in 1963.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/vietnam-war-march-1963-840-south-245961343">Everett Collection/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>US power was also different to, say, the heyday of the Spanish empire in the 16th century. This empire did an excellent job of antagonising other powers and depleting its own vast resources in endless wars over honour and Catholicism.</p>
<p>Although certainly not universally loved, US power is not completely resented. This has much to do with America’s <a href="https://news.illinoisstate.edu/2018/07/book-examines-american-cultures-influence-on-the-world/">globally exported culture</a>, from Hollywood to hip-hop. But also in how its power can be articulated as mutually beneficial to other nations, both in terms of trade and security. </p>
<p>We do not live in a peaceful world. But it is widely acknowledged that the world would <a href="https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/12/11/if-the-united-states-pulls-back-the-world-will-become-more-dangerous">become more dangerous</a> if the US were to suddenly disengage. US security guarantees, for instance, disincentivise allies like Germany and Japan from developing nuclear weapons for their own safety.</p>
<h2>Global security is American security</h2>
<p>Supporting US allies, which was once a bipartisan issue in American politics, is becoming a <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/can-republicans-find-consensus-foreign-policy">zero-sum game</a> – even though it is just about the most dangerous issue to do this with. </p>
<p>Bringing global security guarantees into question is exactly what states hostile to the US want. They know it weakens a world order that protects democracies, global trade, and weaker states that could otherwise be imposed upon militarily. </p>
<p>The US protects these not merely as an act of charity, but also because they are in the vital interests of America’s own safety, even if it can seem indirect to some American voters or the politicians who recently <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-senate-passes-us-95-billion-aid-package-for-ukraine-what-this-tells-us-about-republican-support-for-trump-223502">held up aid</a> for Ukraine.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/us-senate-passes-us-95-billion-aid-package-for-ukraine-what-this-tells-us-about-republican-support-for-trump-223502">US Senate passes US$95 billion aid package for Ukraine – what this tells us about Republican support for Trump</a>
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<p>Ironically, a worldview that sees raw, almost <a href="https://www.britannica.com/money/mercantilism">mercantilist</a>, selfishness as the entirety of foreign policy is exactly the thing that the US’s global order of free trade and respecting national sovereignty has discouraged for almost a century. </p>
<p>If America First becomes America Only, it might be a world view that certain regimes wish to emulate. But morally, it will not do what the nation managed in the past. To convert souls to an American future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225020/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Rees receives funding from The University of Exeter and The Royal Historical Society.</span></em></p>
A world where the US has fewer allies would be an even more dangerous place.
William Rees, PhD Candidate in Modern American History, University of Exeter
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/213714
2023-10-05T19:16:35Z
2023-10-05T19:16:35Z
Humans got to America 7,000 years earlier than thought, new research confirms
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551046/original/file-20230928-19-398dat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C5%2C1726%2C806&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The footprints come from a group of people of different ages.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Park Service</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When and how humans first settled in the Americas is a subject of considerable controversy. In the 20th century, archaeologists believed that humans <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-clovis-point-and-the-discovery-of-americas-first-culture-3825828/">reached the North American interior</a> no earlier than around 14,000 years ago. </p>
<p>But our new research found something different. Our latest <a href="http://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adh5007">study</a> supports the view that people were in America about 23,000 years ago.</p>
<p>The 20th century experts thought the appearance of humans had coincided with the formation of an ice-free corridor between two immense ice sheets straddling what’s now Canada and the northern US. According to this idea, the corridor, caused by melting at the end of the last Ice Age, <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17838701/">allowed humans to trek from Alaska</a> into the heart of North America. </p>
<p>Gradually, this orthodoxy crumbled. In recent decades, dates for the earliest evidence of people have crept back from 14,000 years ago to 16,000 years ago. This is still consistent with humans only reaching the Americas as the last Ice Age was ending.</p>
<p>In September 2021, we <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abg7586">published a paper in Science</a> that dated fossil footprints uncovered in New Mexico to around 23,000 years ago – the height of the last Ice Age. They were made by a group of people passing by an ancient lake near what’s now White Sands. The discovery added 7,000 years to the record of humans on the continent, rewriting American prehistory. </p>
<p>If humans were in America at the height of the last Ice Age, either the ice posed few barriers to their passage, or humans had been there for much longer. Perhaps they had reached the continent during an earlier period of melting. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/fossil-footprints-prove-humans-populated-the-americas-thousands-of-years-earlier-than-we-thought-168426">Fossil footprints prove humans populated the Americas thousands of years earlier than we thought</a>
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<p>Our conclusions were criticised, however we have now published evidence confirming the early dates.</p>
<h2>Dating the pollen</h2>
<p>For many people, the word pollen conjures up a summer of allergies, sneezing and misery. But fossilised pollen can be a powerful scientific tool. </p>
<p>In our 2021 study, we carried out radiocarbon dating on common ditch grass seeds found in sediment layers above and below where the footprints were found. Radiocarbon dating is based on how a particular form – called an isotope – of carbon (carbon-14) undergoes radioactive decay in organisms that have died within the last 50,000 years.</p>
<p>Some researchers claimed that the radiocarbon dates in our 2021 research were too old because they were subject to <a href="https://heritagesciencejournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/2050-7445-1-24">something called the “hard water” effect</a>. Water contains carbonate salts and therefore carbon. Hard water is groundwater that has been isolated from the atmosphere for some period of time, meaning that some of its carbon-14 has already undergone radioactive decay. </p>
<p>Common ditch grass is an aquatic plant and the critics said seeds from this plant could have consumed old water, scrambling the dates in a way that made them seem older than they were.</p>
<p>It’s quite right that they raised this issue. This is the way that science should proceed, with claim and counter-claim.</p>
<h2>How did we test our claim?</h2>
<p>Radiocarbon dating is robust and well understood. You can date any type of organic matter in this way as long as you have enough of it. So two members of our team, Kathleen Springer and Jeff Pigati of the United States Geological Survey set out to date the pollen grains. However, pollen grains are really small, typically about 0.005 millimetres in diameter, so you need lots of them.</p>
<p>This posed a formidable challenge: you need thousands of them to get enough carbon to date something. In fact, you need 70,000 grains or more.</p>
<p>Medical science provided a remarkable solution to our conundrum. We used a technique called flow cytometry, which is more commonly used for counting and sampling individual human cells, to count and isolate fossil pollen for radiocarbon dating. </p>
<p>Flow cytometry uses the fluorescent properties of cells, stimulated by a laser. These cells move through a stream of liquid. Fluorescence causes a gate to open, allowing individual cells in the flow of liquid to be diverted, sampled, and concentrated.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Illustration of pollen grains." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551051/original/file-20230928-25-iu74im.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551051/original/file-20230928-25-iu74im.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551051/original/file-20230928-25-iu74im.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551051/original/file-20230928-25-iu74im.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551051/original/file-20230928-25-iu74im.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551051/original/file-20230928-25-iu74im.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551051/original/file-20230928-25-iu74im.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Pollen can be a useful tool for dating evidence of human settlement.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/pollen-grains-different-plants-3d-illustration-1479353525">Kateryna Kon / Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>We have pollen grains in all sediment layers between the footprints at White Sands, which allows us to date them. The key advantage of having so much pollen is that you can pick plants like pine trees that are not affected by old water. Our samples were processed to concentrate the pollen within them using flow cytometry. </p>
<p>After a year or more of labour intensive and expensive laboratory work, we were rewarded with dates based on pine pollen that validated the original chronology of the footprints. They also showed that old water effects were absent at this site. </p>
<p>The pollen also allowed us to reconstruct vegetation that was growing when people made the footprints. We got exactly the kinds of plants we would expect to have been there during the Ice Age in New Mexico. </p>
<p>We also used a different dating technique <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s43586-021-00068-5">called optically stimulated luminescence</a> (OSL) as an independent check. OSL relies on the accumulation of energy within buried grains of quartz over time. This energy comes from the background radiation that’s all around us.</p>
<p>The more energy we find, the older we can assume the quartz grains are. This energy is released when the quartz is exposed to light, so what you are dating is the last time the quartz grains saw sunlight.</p>
<p>To sample the buried quartz, you drive metal tubes into the sediment and remove them carefully to avoid exposing them to light. Taking quartz grains from the centre of the tube, you expose them to light in the lab and measure the light emitted by grains. This reveals their age. The dates from OSL supported those we got using other techniques.</p>
<p>The humble pollen grain and some marvellous medical technology helped us confirm the dates the footprints were made, and when people reached the Americas.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213714/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Robert Bennett receives funding from UK Arts and Humanities Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sally Christine Reynolds receives funding from Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)</span></em></p>
The early settlement of the Americas is hugely contested area of archaeology.
Matthew Robert Bennett, Professor of Environmental and Geographical Sciences, Bournemouth University
Sally Christine Reynolds, Associate Professor in Hominin Palaeoecology, Bournemouth University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/193449
2023-01-16T19:04:10Z
2023-01-16T19:04:10Z
Bret Easton Ellis’s ambitious new novel of sex, violence and adolescence in 80s Los Angeles is autofiction for our digital age
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/504581/original/file-20230116-20-ayd74x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=29%2C11%2C3964%2C1982&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Image credits: (background) Vlada Karpovich/Pexels; (author photo of Bret Easton Ellis) Casely Nelson.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Halfway through Bret Easton Ellis’s first novel in 13 years, <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Bret-Easton-Ellis-Shards-9781800752450/">The Shards</a>, the 17-year-old narrator, Bret (a fictionalised version of the author) pitches to a producer, Terry Schaffer. </p>
<p>This Bret, who is working on the debut novel the real Bret published in 1985 – <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9915.Less_Than_Zero">Less Than Zero</a> – describes the scenario he has developed.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[A] boy, his friends, young people in L.A.; sexy, a little bi, drugs, someone is killed, there’s a chase, violence and bloodshed, a mystery that the boy solves or maybe not, I preferred the downer ending but could make it upbeat as well, I’d offer, we could negotiate that.</p>
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<p>To a certain extent, this pitch, which the narrator pretty much makes up on the spot, mirrors the plot of Less Than Zero (which, despite some biographical overlap, Ellis has always considered a work of fiction). </p>
<p>With a few changes, the scenario could also double as a summary of The Shards. The crucial difference is that this new novel – in ways Ellis’s debut does not – dissolves the lines between fact and fiction, reality and fantasy. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: The Shards – Bret Easton Ellis (Swift Press)</em></p>
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<h2>Writerly imagination in overdrive</h2>
<p>The story is set in the autumn of 1981 and revolves around a cluster of wealthy students enrolled at Buckley College, an exclusive Los Angeles prep school.</p>
<p>Bret, who is gay but closeted, is dating Debbie Schaffer (who has justifiable doubts about her boyfriend’s friendships with Ryan Vaughn and Matt Kellner), and is friends with two teenage sweethearts, Susan Reynolds and Thom Wright.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/504574/original/file-20230116-62628-czg0zi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/504574/original/file-20230116-62628-czg0zi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/504574/original/file-20230116-62628-czg0zi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=837&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504574/original/file-20230116-62628-czg0zi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=837&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504574/original/file-20230116-62628-czg0zi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=837&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504574/original/file-20230116-62628-czg0zi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1052&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504574/original/file-20230116-62628-czg0zi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1052&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504574/original/file-20230116-62628-czg0zi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1052&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The ‘real’ Bret Easton Ellis as a high schooler, in his yearbook photo from The Buckley School, Sherman Oaks California.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>The Bret who is writing this novel then introduces two more characters – a student named Robert Mallory and a serial killer called The Trawler – into the mix.</p>
<p>Not long after, Matt goes missing. The fictional Bret’s writerly imagination goes into overdrive. He suspects Robert is responsible, and that he is The Trawler. Things quickly spiral out of control. </p>
<p>As Ellis’s fans will anticipate, his latest is full of pop culture references (the Buckley clique are big New Wave fans), sex and drugs, and acts of grotesque violence rendered in tonally neutral prose. Some cultural commentary, too, on the purported perils of political correctness. Think: <a href="https://theconversation.com/joan-didion-for-sale-the-auction-of-the-authors-belongings-reveals-the-grand-fiction-of-her-image-194690">Joan Didion</a> meets <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000361/bio">Brian De Palma</a>. </p>
<p>When it comes to content, The Shards, with its cast of hedonistic and disaffected adolescents, aligns with three of Ellis’s earlier L.A. novels: Less Than Zero, 1987’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9912.The_Rules_of_Attraction">The Rules of Attraction</a>, and the sequel to his debut, 2010’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7519866-imperial-bedrooms">Imperial Bedrooms</a>.</p>
<p>In terms of length, however, The Shards, which is 600 pages long, is closer to Ellis’s New York fictions: 1991’s American Psycho (which I believe is the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-case-for-american-psycho-why-this-controversial-book-sold-here-in-shrink-wrap-still-matters-188463">most important novel</a> of the 1990s), and 1998’s <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/bret-easton-ellis-glamorama-book-890620/">Glamorama</a> (easily, for me, the best novel of the 1990s).</p>
<p>What, though, of form? To answer that question, we should turn to what once seemed a relative outlier in Ellis’ fictional oeuvre, 2005’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4031.Lunar_Park">Lunar Park</a>. This is from the first chapter: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It was to deal primarily with the transforming events of my childhood and adolescence, ending with my junior year at Camden, a month before Less Than Zero was published. But even when I simply thought about the memoir it never went anywhere (I could never be honest about myself in a piece of non-fiction as I could in any of my novels) and so I gave up.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In an <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-autofiction-turns-the-personal-into-the-political-192180">autofictional move</a> that prefigures the central conceit of The Shards, Lunar Park’s narrator – a fictional version of Ellis in middle age – is discussing a memoir he didn’t write. This Ellis says he “had even given it a title without having written a single usable sentence: Where I Went I Would Not Go Back”. </p>
<p>Ellis’s interest in the creative treatment of actuality emerges in these extracts, as does his willingness to mine his youth for inspiration.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/g4oPo5BBxA8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Bret Easton Ellis’s debut novel, Less Than Zero, was a 1987 film.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-case-for-american-psycho-why-this-controversial-book-sold-here-in-shrink-wrap-still-matters-188463">The case for American Psycho: why this controversial book (sold here in shrink wrap) still matters</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The ‘fake enclave’ of the novel</h2>
<p>Now consider what Ellis says about that most recognisable of literary forms: the novel. This is from White, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/bret-easton-ellis-interview-smiley-face-killers-b1770127.html">the contrarian essay collection</a> he published in 2019. Pay attention to his descriptions of Lunar Park and Imperial Bedrooms:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The desire to write prose had kept pulsing faintly within me for years but not within what I now saw as the fake enclave of the novel. In fact I’d been wrestling away from the idea of “the novel” for more than a decade, as evident in the last two books I published: one was a mock memoir wrapped within a horror novel, and the other was a condensed autobiographical noir I pushed through painfully during a midlife crisis, a story about my first three years back in Los Angeles futilely working on movies after I’d lived in New York for almost two years. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ellis’ dissatisfaction with the novel is palpable. “For those past five years I had no desire to write a novel and had convinced myself I didn’t want to be constrained by a form that did not interest me anymore.”</p>
<p>But why, given his apparent lack of interest in the form, did Ellis bother writing another novel? This is the explanation he gives in the “preface” to The Shards, which, to repurpose Ellis, reads as an expansive L.A. noir wrapped up as an ostensibly honest memoir:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It wasn’t until 2020 that I felt I could begin The Shards, or The Shards had decided that <strong>Bret</strong> was ready because the book was announcing itself to <strong>me</strong> – and not the other way round. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Bret speaking here is a fictional, older version of the novel’s narrator. He is reflecting on the traumatic events of The Shards: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I hadn’t reached out to the book because I spent so many years pushing myself away from The Trawler, and Susan and Thom and Deborah and Ryan, and what happened to Matt Kellner; I had relegated this story to the dark corner of the closet and for many years this avoidance worked – I didn’t pay as much attention to the book and it stopped calling out to me. But sometime during 2019 it began climbing its way back, pulsing with a life of its own, wanting to merge with me, expanding into my consciousness in such a persuasive way that I couldn’t ignore it any longer – trying to ignore it had become a distraction.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/504578/original/file-20230116-26-xx6srm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/504578/original/file-20230116-26-xx6srm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/504578/original/file-20230116-26-xx6srm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504578/original/file-20230116-26-xx6srm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504578/original/file-20230116-26-xx6srm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504578/original/file-20230116-26-xx6srm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1164&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504578/original/file-20230116-26-xx6srm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1164&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504578/original/file-20230116-26-xx6srm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1164&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>(I should note, there is also a preface to the “preface”, where the “real” Bret – the one writing the novel in our hands, as opposed to the book within the book – thanks the reader for sticking with him over the years.)</p>
<p>It seems that, try as he might, Bret Easton Ellis - imagined or actual - simply cannot get away from the novel. </p>
<p>He admits this in White, while harking back to his experiences in the 1980s and 90s. “I rarely gave interviews between book publications because part of the process was still mysterious to readers,” Ellis ruminates, “with a kind of secret glamour that added to the excitement with which books were once received, whether negatively or positively.” </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-autofiction-turns-the-personal-into-the-political-192180">How autofiction turns the personal into the political</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Exploring analog v digital worlds</h2>
<p>To his credit, Ellis, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/bret-easton-ellis-thinks-youre-overreacting-to-donald-trump">who is quite cranky these days</a>, appreciates that things are different now. As he argues in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41429819-white">White</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>But novels don’t engage with the public on that level anymore. I’d wistfully noted the overall lack of enthusiasm for the big American literary novels […] but I’d also realized that’s nothing to worry about. It’s only a fact, just as the notion of the great American studio movie or the great American band has become a smaller, narrower idea. Everything has been degraded by what the sensory overload and the supposed freedom-of-choice technology has brought to us, and, in short, by the democratization of the arts. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>For better or worse, there is, in Ellis’s reckoning, no going back. Hence the steps he took:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I started feeling the need to work my way through this transition - to move from the analog world in which I used to write and publish novels into the digital world we live in now (through podcasting, creating a web series, engaging on social media) even though I never thought there was any correlation between the two. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ellis knows better now. The Shards, which started as a year-long, hour-by-hour performance hosted on <a href="https://www.patreon.com/breteastonellispodcast">Ellis’s podcast</a> is proof there are points of correlation between the analog and digital realms, which he also defines in relation to - of all things - the concept of Empire:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If Empire was about the heroic American figure - solid, rooted in tradition, tactile and analog – then post-Empire was about people who were understood to be ephemeral right away; digital disposability doesn’t concern them – they’re rooted in traditions created by social media, which is solely about exhibition and surface, and they don’t follow a now dated path of cultural development.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This helps us understand The Shards, which is the best and most ambitious novel Ellis has published since <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9913.Glamorama">Glamorama</a>. Forget what Ellis said about being done with the novel. His latest, which unfurls, as the narrator states, across the “deep span of empire”, confirms that Ellis remains committed to the form, and the opportunities it affords him.</p>
<p>The Shards is a bold attempt to understand how the analog and digital interact. This accounts for the novel’s countless, obsessive descriptions of outmoded forms of analogue tech: the cassette, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betamax">Betamax</a>, and, most tellingly, the typewriter. It also explains Ellis’s bravura manipulation of genre (the age of the digital, as we know, is one where once-stable systems of classification tend to collapse).</p>
<p>With his latest, Ellis is, in essence, attempting to refashion and – to crib from the Trawler – <em>remake</em> the (analog) novel in our contemporary (digital) age. I think he succeeds. Others may disagree. Either way, The Shards is a timely reminder this is a writer willing to take risks. </p>
<p>Whatever one thinks about the other Brets floating around, it’s good to have this version of Bret Easton Ellis back.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193449/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexander Howard does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Bret Easton Ellis’s first novel in 13 years blurs fact and fiction, mining his youth for material. The result is Joan Didion meets Brian De Palma.
Alexander Howard, Senior Lecturer, Discipline of English, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/189139
2022-12-08T19:24:09Z
2022-12-08T19:24:09Z
Friday essay: a sex-positive feminist takes up the ‘unfinished revolution’ her mother began – but it’s complicated
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496669/original/file-20221122-26-j8utbt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C17%2C3976%2C1958&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The main photo is author Nora Willis Aronowitz, with her mother Ellen Willis pictured, in black & white, on right. (Left image is from Unsplash/Gabriel Nune.)</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Bad Sex – like <a href="https://www.hachette.com.au/roxane-gay/bad-feminist">Bad Feminist</a> (the title of the essay collection that launched Roxane Gay to literary stardom back in 2014) – is an enticing title for a book. Who hasn’t had bad sex at some time or other, including those of us who identify as feminists? </p>
<p>Bad sex, variously defined and experienced, continues to be depressingly common, even though sex “has never been more normalised, feminism has never been more popular” and “romantic love has never been more malleable”. </p>
<p>Or, so argues Nona Willis Aronowitz, in her genre-defying first book, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/639587/bad-sex-by-nona-willis-aronowitz/">Bad Sex: Truth, Pleasure and the Unfinished Revolution</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Bad Sex: Truth, Pleasure and an Unfinished Revolution – Nona Willis Aronowitz (Plume).</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Aronowitz’s regular writing gigs include a love and sex advice column for Teen Vogue. But in taking “bad sex” as her subject, she’s less concerned with offering remedies than in the “broader question of what cultural forces interfere with our pleasure, desire and relationship satisfaction”. </p>
<h2>What has changed, what remains</h2>
<p>In her cleverly constructed investigation, Aronowitz makes this a personal and historical question, as well as a feminist dilemma. Across 11 chapters, she blends memoir, social history, feminist analysis and cultural commentary in a highly readable, often insightful – and occasionally self-indulgent – fashion. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496118/original/file-20221118-18-tla1jx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496118/original/file-20221118-18-tla1jx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496118/original/file-20221118-18-tla1jx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496118/original/file-20221118-18-tla1jx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496118/original/file-20221118-18-tla1jx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496118/original/file-20221118-18-tla1jx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496118/original/file-20221118-18-tla1jx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496118/original/file-20221118-18-tla1jx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Hers is a very US-centric story: the backdrop to her investigations is the election of Donald Trump and his term in office, which heightened the chaos of her personal world, and her feminist framework is almost exclusively US-based. But Bad Sex has wider resonance and appeal.</p>
<p>The starting point is Aronowitz’s own compulsion to understand and move beyond the “bad sex” that eroded her otherwise satisfying (though ultimately short-lived) marriage. Through her “zig zag pursuit of sexual liberation”, Aronowitz ranges across the contemporary sexual landscape – dating apps, ethical non-monogamy, sexual and gender fluidity – while also looking back to feminist and gender history to contemplate what has changed, and what perennials remain. </p>
<p>These include the murky edges of consent (a conversation, she reminds us, that started well before #MeToo), everyday forms of sexual coercion, and the “woke misogynist” – a contemporary type with antecedents like “men’s libbers”. </p>
<p>Yet despite what the title might suggest, sexual harm is not her main concern and Bad Sex is not a #MeToo book. Aronowitz wants to bring both pleasure and nuance back to the centre of feminist sexual politics, including by way of telling the truth about how difficult it can be for women to pursue (or even identify) their desires in an enduringly patriarchal world. </p>
<p>Sometimes this involves poking gentle fun at herself and the whole concept of “feminist sex”. (“I wanted my hook-ups to be both fulfilling and morally sound”.) But there’s no doubting her commitment to the task – which includes knowing her history.</p>
<h2>Feminist sexual revolutions and sex wars</h2>
<p>The “unfinished revolution” of the subtitle is the explicitly feminist sexual revolution launched by women’s liberationists like Anne Koedt, whose essay <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26221179-the-myth-of-the-vaginal-orgasm">The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm</a> was first published in 1968. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496332/original/file-20221121-9586-bdeyjm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496332/original/file-20221121-9586-bdeyjm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496332/original/file-20221121-9586-bdeyjm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496332/original/file-20221121-9586-bdeyjm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496332/original/file-20221121-9586-bdeyjm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496332/original/file-20221121-9586-bdeyjm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=975&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496332/original/file-20221121-9586-bdeyjm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=975&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496332/original/file-20221121-9586-bdeyjm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=975&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>By harking back to it, Aronowitz offers an updated telling of the heady and horny history of early radical feminism – as captured in Jane Gerhard’s <a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/desiring-revolution/9780231112055">Desiring Revolution: Second-Wave Feminism and the Rewriting of Twentieth-Century American Thought, 1920 to 1982</a> (2001), and before that, <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/daring-to-be-bad-1">Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America 1967-1975</a> (1989) by Alice Echols. </p>
<p>In this century, “radical feminism” has ossified into a catch-all for what many see as the most negative and obstinate manifestations of feminism – among them transphobia, anti-porn and anti-sex work, gender essentialism, and an agenda dominated by white, middle-class women. </p>
<p>But Gerhard and Echols, among many others, have recuperated a vibrant and multi-faceted lineage of radical feminism in which good sex was integral to liberatory feminist politics. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496116/original/file-20221118-18-mxk3ep.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496116/original/file-20221118-18-mxk3ep.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496116/original/file-20221118-18-mxk3ep.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496116/original/file-20221118-18-mxk3ep.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496116/original/file-20221118-18-mxk3ep.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496116/original/file-20221118-18-mxk3ep.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496116/original/file-20221118-18-mxk3ep.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496116/original/file-20221118-18-mxk3ep.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>The points at which those earlier histories conclude are significant. Echols stops in 1975. She says that’s when “cultural feminism” became the dominant strain of feminism in the US, marked by separatism and a female counterculture that alienated many heterosexual and bisexual women – not to mention lesbians who were turned off by what they saw as the policing of their sexual desires. </p>
<p>Gerhard continues to 1982, the year of the historic <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Barnard_Conference_on_Sexuality">Scholar and the Feminist Conference</a> at Barnard College. Entitled “Towards a Politics of Sexuality”, the conference was convened by feminists eager to return to (and extend) feminism’s earlier focus on sexual pleasure – much to the consternation of anti-porn feminists. They protested outside, wearing T-shirts with “For a Feminist Sexuality” on one side, and “Against S/M” on the other. </p>
<p>The Barnard Conference did not launch the “Feminist Sex Wars” – with “pro-sex” feminists on one side and the so-called “anti-sex” feminists on the other. It certainly galvanised them, though. And it has been heavily dissected and narrated ever since, including by those who were there. </p>
<p>Anthropologist Gayle S. Rubin, part of the West Coast lesbian sadomasochism scene, was still a graduate student when she presented an early version of her since much-anthologised essay, <a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/1560/chapter-abstract/173938/Thinking-SexNotes-for-a-Radical-Theory-of-the?redirectedFrom=fulltext">“Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality”</a>, at the conference. </p>
<p>In her essay, Rubin lamented the “temporary hegemony” of the anti-pornography movement, defended pro-sex feminism as part of a longer tradition of sex radicalism, and provocatively challenged the “assumption that feminism is or should be the privileged site of a theory of sexuality”. This last point partly accounts for why Rubin’s essay is as canonical to queer theory as it is to feminist thought.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496117/original/file-20221118-20-psgdmc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496117/original/file-20221118-20-psgdmc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496117/original/file-20221118-20-psgdmc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496117/original/file-20221118-20-psgdmc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496117/original/file-20221118-20-psgdmc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496117/original/file-20221118-20-psgdmc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496117/original/file-20221118-20-psgdmc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496117/original/file-20221118-20-psgdmc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Amia Srinivisan.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWjqeAarm2I&t=1762s">lecture</a> delivered earlier this year, Rubin noted a resurgence of interest in the Feminist Sex Wars, post-#MeToo. It’s evident in a surge of books released in 2021. There were two dedicated revisionist histories: Lorna Bracewell’s <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/why-we-lost-the-sex-wars">Why We Lost the Sex Wars: Sexual Freedom in the #MeToo Era </a> and Brenda Croswell’s <a href="https://nyupress.org/9781479802708/the-new-sex-wars/">The New Sex Wars: Sexual Harm in the #MeToo Era</a>. </p>
<p>And those Feminist Sex Wars were part of philosopher Amia Srinivisan’s lauded essay collection <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/right-to-sex-9781526612533/">The Right to Sex</a>. Srinivisan also wrote <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/13/who-lost-the-sex-wars">an essay for The New Yorker</a> on the Sex Wars, extending its preoccupations to the British context.</p>
<p>Each of these books is markedly different in its emphasis. Bracewell spotlights the participation of queer women of colour. Croswell contemplates the limits of the law for addressing sexual assault. And Srinivisan re-evaluates anti-porn feminism in light of contemporary concerns. All three, however – like Aronowitz – see the feminist politics of sex as unfinished business, with the Feminist Sex Wars of the 1980s offering both guidance and a cautionary tale.</p>
<p>For Rubin, however, the new literature on the Sex Wars – some of it tainted with errors of fact – is not so much history as a reiteration of myths and recycled narratives. These books reflect what she sees as a “growing tendency to pontificate on these earlier conflicts without actually knowing what was going on in them”, nor the context in which they unfolded (notably – the Reagan administration, the rise of the Christian right and the onset of the AIDS crisis). </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496353/original/file-20221121-48207-ba7q3u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496353/original/file-20221121-48207-ba7q3u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496353/original/file-20221121-48207-ba7q3u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496353/original/file-20221121-48207-ba7q3u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496353/original/file-20221121-48207-ba7q3u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496353/original/file-20221121-48207-ba7q3u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496353/original/file-20221121-48207-ba7q3u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496353/original/file-20221121-48207-ba7q3u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Rubin recalls the Sex Wars as traumatic for many reasons, including because they eclipsed an earlier, more wide-ranging and libidinous feminist sexual agenda. Early radical feminists and women’s liberationists, says Rubin, were “incredibly concerned with sex, sexuality, women’s sexual pleasure, along with violence, rape and battery, and a whole lot of other things”. </p>
<p>One of the most prominent was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/10/arts/10willis.html">Ellen Willis</a>, author of “Towards a Feminist Sexual Revolution” (published in 1982), among other key essays. Two years later, her daughter (with activist and scholar <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/21/us/stanley-aronowitz-dead.html">Stanley Aronowitz</a>) was born: Nona Willis Aronowitz.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-the-metoo-era-a-reckoning-a-revolution-or-something-else-176565">Is the #MeToo era a reckoning, a revolution, or something else?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Like mother, like daughter?</h2>
<p>Like many millennial women, Aronowitz came of age with “pro-sex” feminism on the ascent. But though she was literally raised by one of the recognised progenitors of that feminism, she says while she was growing up, her mother “didn’t pry or even offer” counsel on puberty or sex. </p>
<p>Willis died in 2006, when Aronowitz was in her early 20s. It’s primarily through her mother’s writings that she’s absorbed her views on sex and relationships, including as editor of the posthumous collection <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-essential-ellen-willis">The Essential Ellen Willis</a> (2014). </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496109/original/file-20221118-14-kiynvw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496109/original/file-20221118-14-kiynvw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496109/original/file-20221118-14-kiynvw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=311&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496109/original/file-20221118-14-kiynvw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=311&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496109/original/file-20221118-14-kiynvw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=311&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496109/original/file-20221118-14-kiynvw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496109/original/file-20221118-14-kiynvw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496109/original/file-20221118-14-kiynvw.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ellen Willis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Minnesota University Press</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Bad Sex she digs deeper, reading through her mother’s letters and personal papers to piece together her sexual experiences and past relationships – including with Aronowitz’s father. Some of what she finds is confronting (especially about her dad’s first marriage). But there’s also solace, wisdom and solidarity to be found in her mother’s life and writing, and those of others like her, who have made (or continue to make) “good sex” central to their feminism.</p>
<p>Willis began her writing career as a rock critic. She was initially wary of the version of women’s liberation she found in <a href="https://repository.duke.edu/dc/wlmpc/wlmms01037">Notes from the First Year</a> (1968), a collection of writings from New York radical women. </p>
<p>“Sexuality,” writes Aronowitz, “was all over Notes” – including Koedt’s advocacy for the clitoris and call to “redefine our sexuality”, and Shulamith Firestone’s transcription of one of the group’s meetings on sex, a somewhat damning indictment of the sexual revolution. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496115/original/file-20221118-26-psgdmc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496115/original/file-20221118-26-psgdmc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496115/original/file-20221118-26-psgdmc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496115/original/file-20221118-26-psgdmc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496115/original/file-20221118-26-psgdmc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496115/original/file-20221118-26-psgdmc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496115/original/file-20221118-26-psgdmc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496115/original/file-20221118-26-psgdmc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Willis wrote at the time that “the tone strikes me as frighteningly bitter” – but within months of meeting the New York women, she was a total convert. She formed the breakaway group <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redstockings">Redstockings</a> with Firestone, who went on to write the feminist classic <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/1853-the-dialectic-of-sex">The Dialectic of Sex</a> (1970). Willis also re-evaluated her relationship with her boyfriend in the light of what consciousness-raising had exposed, and went on to spend much of her thirties single. </p>
<p>By the end of the 1970s, Willis was an eloquent critic of the then-emerging anti-pornography feminism. She warned in a landmark 1979 essay that if </p>
<blockquote>
<p>feminists define pornography, per se, as the enemy, the result will be to make a lot of women afraid of their sexual feelings and afraid to be honest about them. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the same essay, Willis shared that “over the years I’ve enjoyed various pieces of pornography […] and so have most women I know”. A couple of years later, in <a href="https://academic.oup.com/minnesota-scholarship-online/book/14252/chapter-abstract/168135486">“Lust Horizons: Is the Women’s Movement Pro-Sex?”</a> (1981), Willis surveyed the flashpoints. </p>
<p>She concluded that both “self-proclaimed arbiters of feminist morals” and “sexual libertarians who often evade honest discussion by refusing to make judgements at all” were obstacles to “a feminist understanding of sex”. By her lights, that involved recognising that “our sexual desires are never just arbitrary tastes”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/shulamith-firestone-why-the-radical-feminist-who-wanted-to-abolish-pregnancy-remains-relevant-115730">Shulamith Firestone: why the radical feminist who wanted to abolish pregnancy remains relevant</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A candid narrator</h2>
<p>Aronowitz is clearly indebted to her mother’s style of feminism. Her description of Willis’s particular niche (in the introduction to The Essential Ellen Willis) could well describe her own. She was intellectual, but not academic. She was a journalist, but not primarily an “objective” reporter; she “poached from her life and detailed her thought processes”. </p>
<p>Like her mother, Aronowitz is alert to the grey areas between utopian feminist visions of sexual liberation and the tricky realities of heterosexuality – or in Aronowitz’s case, heteroflexibility. “Reconciling personal desire with political conviction,” she writes, “is frankly, a tall order,” but nevertheless “essential”.</p>
<p>Yet while Willis stopped short of memoir, Aronowitz – reared on social media as much as feminism – is a candid narrator. It’s hard not to bristle with sympathy for her now ex-husband Aaron when she describes their sex towards the end as “metastasizing in the worst way”, or her own experience of it as “some putrid combination of bored, irritable, and disassociated”. </p>
<p>Elsewhere, Aronowitz describes her sexual encounters when her marriage is opened up, while she’s separated and as she moves into a new relationship – in enough detail to possibly tip over into too-much-information territory for some readers.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496356/original/file-20221121-12-el1m9f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A smiling woman with curly hair in front of a painted red brick wall." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496356/original/file-20221121-12-el1m9f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496356/original/file-20221121-12-el1m9f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496356/original/file-20221121-12-el1m9f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496356/original/file-20221121-12-el1m9f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=476&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496356/original/file-20221121-12-el1m9f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496356/original/file-20221121-12-el1m9f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496356/original/file-20221121-12-el1m9f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nona Willis Aronowitz is a ‘candid’ narrator, but Bad Sex doesn’t descend into ‘an extended confessional’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Emily Shechtman</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What stops Bad Sex from descending into an extended confessional is that her truth-telling (which is different to tell-all) is not a solipsistic exercise. Aronowitz knows the limits of extrapolating from one’s own experience – especially if, like her, you’re a white, middle-class feminist with a big platform – and that the best way to do it is to be honest and to share the stage. </p>
<p>She reveals she enjoyed the social capital accrued from getting married and was terrified of being thirtysomething and single. And how she violated the rules of ethical non-monogamy (crossing over into a far less progressive “affair”), and largely went through the motions of queer experimentation. </p>
<p>Aronowitz indicts herself as much as she does her own generation of so-proclaimed sexual renegades. But hers is not a satirical gaze; her quest to understand what makes sex “good” or “bad” – and why it matters – is genuine.</p>
<p>Aronowitz typically launches each chapter with a personal experience: either her own, or from someone who offers a different perspective. Like her friend Lulu, a Black, queer woman, whose personal and family histories preface a larger discussion of the distinctive trajectories of black feminist sexual thought. </p>
<p>Readers with prior knowledge will be familiar with some of the key works and figures Aronowitz showcases (for instance, Audre Lorde’s classic 1978 essay <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50683.Uses_of_the_Erotic">“Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power”</a>). She weaves these classics together with contemporary literature and activism (like adrienne moore browne’s 2019 book <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/40549668-pleasure-activism">Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good</a>). And so, she provides entry points for different potential audiences: readers seeking a historical primer, and readers who are after an update. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496112/original/file-20221118-15-61dji2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496112/original/file-20221118-15-61dji2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496112/original/file-20221118-15-61dji2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496112/original/file-20221118-15-61dji2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496112/original/file-20221118-15-61dji2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=487&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496112/original/file-20221118-15-61dji2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=612&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496112/original/file-20221118-15-61dji2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=612&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496112/original/file-20221118-15-61dji2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=612&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Audre Lorde.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The gap between theory and practice – or the challenge of what Sara Ahmed calls living a feminist life – is of special interest to Aronowitz. She manages to both capture the power of polemic in feminist history and to get behind the scenes. </p>
<p>For instance, Aronowitz reminds us, even Emma Goldman, the defiant anarchist who inspired women’s liberationists with her proclamations of free love, was hardly immune to romantic despair.</p>
<p>Elsewhere, she revisits essays by radical feminists <a href="https://www.greenlion.com/dana.html">Dana Densmore</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roxanne_Dunbar-Ortiz">Roxanne Dunbar</a> on celibacy and asexuality as essential and invigorating aspects of second-wave feminist sexual thought. </p>
<p>When Densmore later tells her there wasn’t anyone in their militant group, Cell 16, who was actually celibate, Aronowitz isn’t surprised or judgemental. Instead, she heeds what Densmore saw as the most important sentence of her essay – one Aronowitz had originally overlooked: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>This is not a call for celibacy but for an acceptance of celibacy as an honourable alternative, one preferable to the degradation of most male-female sexual relationships. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sex, Densmore tells her, was “really bad in 1968”. In the early phase of the sexual revolution, when feminism had yet to happen, “it felt important to tell women they could walk away from bad relationships.”</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-with-men-i-feel-like-a-very-sharp-glittering-blade-when-5-liberated-women-spoke-the-truth-191496">Friday essay: 'with men I feel like a very sharp, glittering blade' – when 5 liberated women spoke the truth</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What now?</h2>
<p>Over 50 years later, Aronowitz has a lot to share with readers about sex. But her book is no polemic. In thinking about sex – her own and in general – feminism has clearly been an enormous and generative influence, but Aronowitz also acknowledges its limits and shares her frustrations. “I felt grateful”, she writes, “for the radical feminism that encouraged shame-free sexual exploration but I resented its high bar too.”</p>
<p>Crucially, however, Aronowitz does not disavow feminism or make grand claims about what sex should or should not be. That phase, Aronowitz suggests, was necessary once, but is now over. </p>
<p>This sets Bad Sex productively apart from other recent books, such as Louise Perry’s <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-au/The+Case+Against+the+Sexual+Revolution-p-9781509550005">The Case Against the Sexual Revolution: A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century</a> (2022). Perry’s somewhat unrelenting diatribe against sex-positive feminism concludes with motherly advice to her readers, including “don’t use dating apps” and “only have sex with a man if you think he would make a good father to your children”. </p>
<p>For Aronowitz, ultimately the “unsteady conclusions of liberationists” – including those of her mother – were more inspirational “than any righteous slogan”. Bad Sex offers a rich compendium of these teachings, but its value is more elusive and greater than this. </p>
<p>In sharing her doubts, reflections and vulnerabilities, Aronowitz pushes feminist sexual politics beyond the binaries it is sometimes reduced to: pleasure/danger, positive/negative, pro/anti. Instead, she pushes it towards the complex engagement that Ellen Willis, among others, had encouraged all along.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189139/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Zora Simic does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Nona Willis Aronowitz, daughter of a second-wave feminist, ranges across the contemporary sexual landscape – and looks back at the history of feminism – in a ‘zig zag pursuit of sexual liberation’.
Zora Simic, Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities, UNSW Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/187057
2022-08-11T12:14:18Z
2022-08-11T12:14:18Z
Politicians seek to control classroom discussions about slavery in the US
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478567/original/file-20220810-4757-e6ok2b.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3994%2C2664&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Texas law says slavery cannot be taught as part of the 'true founding' of the United States.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/members-of-the-house-select-committee-on-constitutional-news-photo/1233910770?adppopup=true">Tamir Kalifa/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Of all the subjects taught in the nation’s public schools, few have generated as much controversy of late as the <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1818816116">subjects of racism and slavery</a> in the United States.</p>
<p>The attention has come largely through a <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/01/05/gop-red-wave-critical-race-theory-526523">flood of legislative bills put forth primarily by Republicans</a> over the past year and a half. Commonly referred to as anti-critical race theory legislation, these bills are meant to <a href="https://www.chalkbeat.org/22525983/map-critical-race-theory-legislation-teaching-racism">restrict how teachers discuss race and racism in their classrooms</a>.</p>
<p>One of the more peculiar byproducts of this legislation came out of Texas, where, in June 2022, an advisory panel made up of nine educators recommended that slavery be referred to as “<a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2022/06/30/texas-slavery-involuntary-relocation/">involuntary relocation</a>.” </p>
<p>The measure <a href="https://www.complex.com/life/texas-education-slavery-involuntary-relocation">ultimately failed</a>.</p>
<p>As an educator who trains teachers on how to educate young students about the history of slavery in the United States, I see the Texas proposal as part of a disturbing trend of politicians seeking to hide the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-world-history-of-violence/violence-slavery-and-race-in-early-english-and-french-america/A70A9EB704B9377091F489FB185C596D">horrific and brutal nature of slavery</a> – and to keep it divorced from the nation’s birth and development.</p>
<p>The Texas proposal, for instance, grew out of work done under a <a href="https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/872/billtext/pdf/SB00003F.pdf#navpanes=0">Texas law</a> that says slavery and racism can’t be taught as part of the “true founding” of the United States. Rather, the law states, they must be taught as a “failure to live up to the authentic founding principles of the United States, which include liberty and equality.”</p>
<p>To better understand the nature of slavery and the role it played in America’s development, it helps to have some basic facts about how long slavery lasted in the territory now known as the United States and how many enslaved people it involved. I also believe in using authentic records to show students the reality of slavery.</p>
<h2>Before the Mayflower</h2>
<p>Slavery in what is now known as the United States is often traced back to the year 1619. That is when – as documented by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Rolfe">Colonist John Rolfe</a> – a ship named the White Lion delivered <a href="https://www.nps.gov/jame/learn/historyculture/african-americans-at-jamestown.htm">20 or so enslaved Africans </a> to Virginia.</p>
<p>As for the notion that slavery was not part of the founding of the United States, that is easily refuted by the U.S. Constitution itself. Specifically, <a href="https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S9-C1-1/ALDE_00001086/">Article 1, Section 9, Clause 1</a> prevented Congress from prohibiting the “importation” of slaves until 1808 – nearly 20 years after the Constitution was ratified – although it didn’t use the word “slaves.” Instead, the Constitution used the phrase “such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit.”</p>
<p>Congress ultimately passed the “<a href="https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/slave-trade.html#:%7E:text=The%201808%20Act%20imposed%20heavy,its%20passengers%20sold%20into%20slavery.">Act Prohibiting the Importation of Slaves</a>,” which took effect in 1808. Although the act imposed heavy penalties on international traders, it did not end slavery itself nor the domestic sale of slaves. Not only did it drive trade underground, but many ships caught illegally trading were also brought into the United States and their “<a href="https://www.docsteach.org/documents/document/act-prohibit-importation-slaves">passengers</a>” sold into slavery.</p>
<p>The last known slave ship – the Clotilda – <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/clotilda-last-known-slave-ship-arrive-us-found-180972177/">arrived in Mobile, Alabama, in 1860</a>, more than half a century after Congress outlawed the importation of enslaved individuals.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478572/original/file-20220810-11-fge28d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A map of Africa showing slave trade routes" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478572/original/file-20220810-11-fge28d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478572/original/file-20220810-11-fge28d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478572/original/file-20220810-11-fge28d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478572/original/file-20220810-11-fge28d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478572/original/file-20220810-11-fge28d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478572/original/file-20220810-11-fge28d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478572/original/file-20220810-11-fge28d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An 1880 map shows where enslaved people originated from and in which directions they were forced out.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/map-showing-the-sources-of-slave-supply-and-routes-of-news-photo/3277873?adppopup=true">Hulton Archive/Stringer via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>According to the <a href="https://hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu/trans-atlantic-slave-trade-database">Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade database</a>, which derives it numbers from shipping records from 1525 to 1866, approximately 12.5 million enslaved Africans were transported to the Americas. About 10.7 million survived the Middle Passage and arrived in North America, the Caribbean and South America. Of these, only a small portion – <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/how-many-slaves-landed-in-the-us/">388,000</a> – arrived in North America.</p>
<p>Most enslaved people in the United States, then, entered slavery not through importation or “involuntary relocation,” but by birth.</p>
<p>From the arrival of those first 20 so enslaved Africans in 1619 until slavery was <a href="https://www.archives.gov/historical-docs/13th-amendment#:%7E:text=Passed%20by%20Congress%20on%20January,within%20the%20United%20States%2C%20or">abolished in 1865</a>, approximately <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/0144039X.2020.1755502">10 million slaves lived in the United States and contributed 410 billion hours of labor</a>. This is why slavery is a “<a href="https://equitablegrowth.org/working-papers/the-contribution-of-enslaved-workers-to-output-and-growth-in-the-antebellum-united-states/">crucial building block</a>” to understanding the U.S. economy from the nation’s founding up until the Civil War.</p>
<h2>The value of historical records</h2>
<p>As an educator who trains teachers on how to deal with the subject of slavery, I don’t see any value in politicians’ restricting what teachers can and can’t say about the role that slaveholders – <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/interactive/2022/congress-slaveowners-names-list/">at least 1,800 of whom were congressmen</a>, not to mention the <a href="https://www.whitehousehistory.org/slavery-in-the-presidents-neighborhood-faq#:%7E:text=A%3A%20According%20to%20surviving%20documentation%2C%20at%20least%20twelve%20presidents%20were,Andrew%20Johnson%2C%20and%20Ulysses%20S.">12 who were U.S. presidents</a> – played in the upholding of slavery in American society.</p>
<p>What I see value in is the use of historical records to educate schoolchildren about the harsh realities of slavery. There are three types of records that I recommend in particular.</p>
<h2>1. Census records</h2>
<p>Since enslaved people were counted in each census that took place from 1790 to 1860, census records enable students to learn a lot about who specifically owned slaves. Census records also enable students to see differences in slave ownership within states and throughout the nation.</p>
<p>The censuses also show the growth of the slave population over time – from
<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/0144039X.2020.1755502">697,624</a> during the first census in 1790, shortly after the nation’s founding, to <a href="https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1860/population/1860a-02.pdf">3.95 million</a> during the 1860 census, <a href="https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/civil-war-the-nation-moves-towards-war-1850-to-1861/">as the nation stood at the verge of civil war</a>.</p>
<h2>2. Ads for runaway slaves</h2>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478576/original/file-20220810-11-2f8cts.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An advertisement for two men who ran away from slavery" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478576/original/file-20220810-11-2f8cts.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478576/original/file-20220810-11-2f8cts.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=821&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478576/original/file-20220810-11-2f8cts.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=821&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478576/original/file-20220810-11-2f8cts.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=821&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478576/original/file-20220810-11-2f8cts.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1031&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478576/original/file-20220810-11-2f8cts.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1031&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478576/original/file-20220810-11-2f8cts.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1031&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Advertisements for fugitive slaves offer a glimpse into their lives.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Few things speak to the horrors and harms of slavery like ads that slave owners took out for runaway slaves.</p>
<p>It’s not hard to find ads that describe fugitive slaves whose bodies were covered with various scars from beatings and marks from branding irons.</p>
<p>For instance, consider an <a href="https://dlas.uncg.edu/notices/notice/505">ad taken out on July 3, 1823</a>, in the<a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/sn83025819/"> Star, and North-Carolina State Gazette</a> by Alford Green, who offers $25 for a fugitive slave named Ned, whom he described as follows:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“… about 21 years old, his weight about 150, well made, spry and active tolorably fierce look, a little inclined to be yellow, his upper fore teeth a little defective, and, I expect, has some signs of the whip on his hips and thighs, as he was whipped in that way the day before he went off.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Advertisements for runaway slaves can be accessed via digital databases, such as <a href="https://app.freedomonthemove.org/">Freedom on the Move</a>, which contains more than 32,000 ads. Another database – the <a href="http://dlas.uncg.edu/notices/">North Carolina Runaway Slave Notices project</a> – contains 5,000 ads published in North Carolina newspapers from 1751 to 1865. The sheer number of these advertisements sheds light on how many enslaved Black people attempted to escape bondage.</p>
<h2>3. Personal narratives from the enslaved</h2>
<p>Though they are few in number, recordings of interviews with formerly enslaved people exist.</p>
<p>Some of the interviews are <a href="https://www.loc.gov/collections/slave-narratives-from-the-federal-writers-project-1936-to-1938/articles-and-essays/introduction-to-the-wpa-slave-narratives/limitations-of-the-slave-narrative-collection">problematic</a> for various reasons. For instance, some of the interviews were heavily edited by interviewers or did not include complete, word-for-word transcripts of the interviews.</p>
<p>Yet the interviews still provide a glimpse at the harshness of life in bondage. They also expose the fallacy of the argument that slaves – <a href="https://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/wise/wise.html">as one slave owner claimed in his memoir</a> – “loved ‘old Marster’ better than anybody in the world, and would not have freedom if he offered it to them.”</p>
<p>For instance, when Fountain Hughes – a <a href="https://www.monticello.org/getting-word/people/fountain-hughes">descendant of a slave owned by Thomas Jefferson</a> who spent his boyhood in slavery in Charlottesville, Virginia – was asked if he would rather be free or enslaved, he <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/afc1950037_afs09990a/">told his interviewer</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“You know what I’d rather do? If I thought, had any idea, that I’d ever be a slave again, I’d take a gun and just end it all right away, because you’re nothing but a dog. You’re not a thing but a dog. A night never come that you had nothing to do. Time to cut tobacco? If they want you to cut all night long out in the field, you cut. And if they want you to hang all night long, you hang tobacco. It didn’t matter about you’re tired, being tired. You’re afraid to say you’re tired.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s ironic, then, that when it comes to teaching America’s schoolchildren about the horrors of American slavery and how entrenched it was in America’s political establishment, some politicians would prefer to shackle educators with restrictive laws. What they could do is grant educators the ability to teach freely about the role the slavery played in the forming of a nation that was founded – as the Texas law states - on principles of liberty and equality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187057/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Raphael E. Rogers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Lawmakers are seeking to downplay the role that slavery played in the development of the United States, but history tells a different story.
Raphael E. Rogers, Professor of Practice in Education, Clark University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/188133
2022-08-03T15:44:55Z
2022-08-03T15:44:55Z
Afghanistan: assassination of al-Qaida chief reveals tensions at the top of the Taliban
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/who-was-ayman-al-zawahri-where-does-his-death-leave-al-qaida-and-what-does-it-say-about-us-counterterrorism-188056">killing of the al-Qaida leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri,</a> in Kabul by a US drone strike on July 31 raises some crucial questions. It appears the ruling Taliban were aware of, and gave their blessing to, al-Zawahiri staying in one of the residential areas in Kabul. But did someone in their hierarchy turn him in to the US – and if so, who and why? </p>
<p>It’s worth thinking about what this means for the relationship between the two groups: one an ailing global terror network, the other an insurgent group trying to gain international legitimacy for its takeover in Afghanistan. </p>
<p>A little recent history is enlightening. In February 2020, a <a href="https://theconversation.com/after-us-and-taliban-sign-accord-afghanistan-must-prepare-for-peace-132303">peace deal signed in Doha, Qatar</a> between the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (the Taliban) and the US paved the way for Washington to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan after 20 years. The Americans were promised a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan which pledged not to “allow any of its members, other individuals or groups, including al-Qaida, to use the soil of Afghanistan to threaten the security of the United States and its allies”. </p>
<p>The US hoped to use the Taliban to counter ISIS-K’s growing threat in the region. Desperate for cash and international recognition, this sealed the deal on the Afghan part.</p>
<p>But even if they were publicly praised, the Doha accords were <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/south-asia/afghanistan/311-taking-stock-talibans-perspectives-peace">not accepted and honoured by all</a>. The pledge to sever ties with al-Qaida created friction inside the Taliban. This was largely a generational divide. On one side was a younger, more technologically savvy and English-speaking leadership group which saw the opportunity to rebuild the group’s image and attract vital funds to rebuild civil society. On the other side were older Taliban fighters.</p>
<p>A faction of these older fighters are loyal to <a href="https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2021/08/18/who-is-mullah-abdul-ghani-baradar-the-talibans-de-facto-leader">Abdul Ghani Baradar</a>, who was appointed deputy leader after the Taliban takeover. The Mullah Brothers group mostly hail from the Taliban heartland around Kandahar in the south of Afghanistan, and represent a hardline jihadist viewpoint. Also opposed to the Doha accords is the militant <a href="https://www.dni.gov/nctc/groups/haqqani_network.html">Haqqani network</a>, which is thought to have been instrumental in installing al-Zawahiri in Kabul in a house owned by Sirajuddin Haqqani, now the interior minister in the Taliban government in Kabul. </p>
<p>The Mullah Brothers and the Haqqani network represent a more militant wing of the Taliban that feel that the Doha agreement not to aid or support al-Qaida sets them against a group which is ideologically close to them, in breach of the <a href="https://www.economist.com/special-report/2006/12/19/honour-among-them">Pashtun code</a> which forbids betrayal.</p>
<p>This instability within the Taliban surfaced even as the last US airplane left the country in August 2021, and the various factions began to jockey for primacy in the new administration. aqqani’s appointment as interior minister is thought to have been a sop to his faction but this has not eased the tension, according to a high-ranking official of the disbanded Afghan Army, who told me: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sirajuddin Haqqani has never obeyed the Quetta Council of the Taliban, for he considers himself the conqueror of Kabul. So there is little doubt that created a safe haven for Ayman al-Zawahiri – keep in mind, that was a Haqqani guesthouse.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Another Afghan intelligence officer told me: “The truth is, in spite of their promise, the Taliban – and the Haqqani network in particular – have never really cut ties with al-Qaida, going against what was agreed with the US.”</p>
<h2>Did the US have local help?</h2>
<p>It is still too early to know what happened – and the whole truth might never emerge. The drone strike had reportedly been planned for months. It may well have been planned and executed without any local assistance, and might just have been down to first-rate intelligence work. But the kind of surgical operation carried by a US drone in a heavily guarded area suggests at least some help in tracking al-Zawahiri’s precise location. </p>
<p>And, in an area of the world torn by poverty, food insecurity and rampant corruption, the <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/wanted_terrorists/ayman-al-zawahiri">US$25 million (£20.5 million) reward</a> to uncover al-Zawahiri’s safe house would have been a strong incentive.</p>
<p>Let’s assume that someone will claim that reward for assisting the US. There are two possible scenarios. Despite being close to al-Qaida, the Mullah Brothers group had much to gain by revealing al-Zawahiri’s location. In addition to the rewards, they could advance their own influence by dealing a blow to Haqqani’s credibility while advancing their own political position.</p>
<p>The second scenario deals with regional dynamics. Traditionally, members of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) have enjoyed fairly <a href="https://www.cfr.org/article/pakistans-support-taliban-what-know">strong ties with the Afghan Taliban</a>. These connections are reportedly still solid – particularly with the Haqqani network. </p>
<p>Both of the Afghan officers who spoke with me said that Pakistani intelligence would have come under strong political pressure to cooperate with the US. The intelligence officer told me that not only did Islamabad give Washington permission to use its airspace to carry out the attack, but “members of the ISI may have disclosed and/or confirmed al-Zawahiri’s location to avoid economic collapse in certain areas”.</p>
<h2>Bracing for the fallout</h2>
<p>Regardless of all this, al-Qaida has suffered a tremendous blow. Al-Zawahiri was there from the beginning – the most important figure after Osama bin Laden, inspiring and galvanising jihadists around the globe. He was considered a tactical genius, instrumental in planning spectacular attacks – including 9/11 – as well as in the identification and infiltration of new theatres of operation. </p>
<p>It will not be easy to replace an element of his calibre. But al-Qaida has previously shown a strong capacity for regrouping, and al-Zawahiri’s departure could represent a chance to bring in a younger and more technologically savvy leader who can speak to the next generation of aspiring jihadists around the world.</p>
<p>As for Afghanistan, al-Zawahiri’s death may have dire implications. Accusations of cooperating with the Americans will affect the already divided Taliban leadership – which could lead to bitter internecine fighting within it. And the presence of a terrorist as prominent as al-Zawahiri supposedly under the protection of senior Taliban cadres will not help US-Taliban relations. It is a direct breach of the Doha accords. </p>
<p>Any rift at the top of the Taliban would also allow other terror groups operating in Afghanistan, such as <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-58333533">ISIS-K</a>, to expand their influence and operations, with terrible consequences for ordinary Afghans.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188133/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michele Groppi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The assassination of the leader of al-Qaida in Kabul raises some important questions about divisions among the Taliban leadership.
Michele Groppi, Teaching Fellow in Challenges to the International Order, Defence Studies Department, King's College London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/184982
2022-06-14T14:30:00Z
2022-06-14T14:30:00Z
Summit of the Americas: Biden’s attempt to unite the region on migration gets off to a shaky start
<p>The ninth <a href="https://www.state.gov/summit_americas_takeaways">Summit of the Americas</a>, hosted by the Joe Biden in Los Angeles from June 6 to 10, was overshadowed by US president’s decision <a href="https://time.com/6184340/summit-of-the-americas/">not to invite</a> the presidents of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua. The reason given for this was antidemocratic leadership and disrespect for human rights in those countries. But you might question this exclusion if you believe that the main democratic principles include freedom of association, speech and inclusiveness.</p>
<p>In his remarks at <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBS6SUr3exg">the opening plenary</a> of the summit, Biden emphasised on various occasions the importance of working together and collaboration between the North, Central and South America when tackling regional issues, such as economic, climate and migration crises, among others. But the decision to exclude the three countries led several other leaders to <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2022/06/07/politics/summit-of-the-americas-joe-biden/index.html">boycott the event in solidarity</a>. Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), as well as the presidents of El Salvador (Nayib Bukele), Honduras (Xiomara Castro), and Guatemala (Alejandro Giammattei), also skipped the event. </p>
<p>Mexico is an interesting case. After a rocky start, AMLO managed to build a friendly relationship with Donald Trump during his time in the White House. But he hasn’t struck up such an easy relationship with Biden. This might seem counter-intuitive when you consider that while Trump had a zero-tolerance migration policy, Biden is looking to introduce a more humane immigration system.</p>
<p>AMLO’s respect for <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-54861000">Trump</a> was reflected by Latino voters in the 2020 presidential election in which he won the border state of Texas and in Florida, the US states with the high population of Latinos, predominantly Mexican-American and Cuban and Venezuelan-American, respectively.</p>
<h2>New economic plan</h2>
<p>Biden used the summit to launch a new economic partnership plan, “<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/06/08/fact-sheet-president-biden-announces-the-americas-partnership-for-economic-prosperity/">Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity</a>”. This, he said, would aim to grow economies from the bottom up: developing innovation, strengthening supply chains and aiming to prioritise the growth of the green economy, with jobs in producing clean energy and protecting biodiversity. </p>
<p>Biden also announced his plans to combat corruption in the region and promote the rule of law, forging a partnership with Latin American countries to fight the powerful transnational criminal organisations, drug traffickers and the illegal weapons trade. Cooperation would also aim to improve healthcare provision across the region and increase food production. The idea, in a nutshell, is to improve the quality of life and security in Latin America to the extent that illegal migration to America would fall as people enjoy better conditions in their own countries.</p>
<h2>Experts are divided</h2>
<p>At face value, so far, so positive. But the director of the Center for the United States and Mexico at Rice University in Texas, Tony Payan, thinks the plans outlined at the summit have little chance of having the desired impact, especially when it comes to migration. He believes the western hemisphere is too politically divided and chaotic to make any real progress in these areas. Payan told me: “For now, no matter how well intentioned the declarations may be, their words will fade away with little to no accomplishments.”</p>
<p>On the other hand, the president of the <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/news/los-angeles-declaration-migration-cooperation">Migration Policy Institute</a>, Andrew Selee, believes that <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/06/10/fact-sheet-the-los-angeles-declaration-on-migration-and-protection-u-s-government-and-foreign-partner-deliverables/">a declaration</a> signed by 20 nations at the end of the summit, the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection marks a “<a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/news/los-angeles-declaration-migration-cooperation">significant step</a> forward in creating a common language and a coherent set of ideas for more cooperatively managing migration movements across the Americas”.</p>
<h2>Will it work?</h2>
<p>The goal of The Los Angeles Declaration is to control and regularise an unauthorised migration through the American continent by shared responsibility among all countries. It suggests some <a href="https://www.elmundo.es/internacional/2022/06/11/62a445f121efa00c428b45e1.html">concrete metrics</a> as targets for the programme. For example, the US will invest US$314 million (£260 million) of humanitarian help for vulnerable refugees and migrants. In addition the US has pledged to accept a further 20,000 refugees in the next two years. An additional US$65 million will be used to promote temporary work among Haitian and Central American temporary workers.</p>
<p>The Los Angeles Declaration not only talks about possible solutions to migration to the US, but also between Latin American countries. Mexico, whose secretary of foreign affairs Marcelo Ebrard attended, has pledged to include 20,000 refugees from Central America and Haiti in its labour market. By the end of August 2022, Colombia will assign regularisation permits to 1.5 million of refugees and migrants from Venezuela.</p>
<p>But the declaration also has its limitations. The executive director of the pro-migrant foundation <em>América Sin Muros</em> (America Without Walls), Bernardo Méndez-Lugo, told me he thinks US money and increased working visas will simply not be enough for millions of needy migrants who take the illegal road towards a better life. He also pointed out that the agreement doesn’t specify how the US will legalise the status of the 5 million irregular Mexican migrants or the 2 million irregular migrants from Central American countries already in the US. Nothing has been settled to resolve the status of the 600,000 “dreamers” – the children of illegal migrants who have grown up in the US or the hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans, Hondurans and Salvadorans with temporary protected status in the US.</p>
<p>So while the declaration is no doubt a stepping stone to solving the migration crisis in the Americas, the commitment will need to be followed up with concrete actions from the whole region. It will bear fruit only if all countries are united. And, of course, the absence of significant players in this issue from the summit is not a good sign that the Americas are on the same page when it comes to solving the irregular migration crisis.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184982/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>I am currently a member of Liberal Democrats, but this will change.</span></em></p>
The US president was hoping that the gathering of Latin American leaders would present a united front of migrants. But several key players were absent.
Katia Adimora, PhD Researcher, Edge Hill University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/183829
2022-05-26T06:29:52Z
2022-05-26T06:29:52Z
Will the latest shooting of US children finally lead to gun reform? Sadly, that’s unlikely
<p>Mass shootings in the United States are all too common and, sadly, unsurprising to much of the world.</p>
<p>But when the victims of such violence are primary school students, the world takes notice.</p>
<p>Coverage of <a href="https://www.9news.com.au/world/texas-school-shooting-robb-elementary-gunman-timeline-how-massacre-unfolded/e5a9a188-72ee-4b17-afd4-3fc2645094e7">this week’s mass shooting at a Texas elementary school</a> in the coming days will follow a predictable pattern. After all the horrifying details are released of the shooting, we return to a very simple debate: why can’t America stop the scourge of gun violence?</p>
<p>The reason is that gun violence is emblematic of a broken political system that fails to protect its own citizens.</p>
<h2>A stain on America’s reputation</h2>
<p>Frequent mass shootings are one of the most widely known things about the US internationally, and are a stain on the country’s international reputation.</p>
<p>President Joe Biden came to office promising to restore some measure of faith in American democracy, and to prove the American system was a <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/state-of-the-union-2022/">superior model</a> to that of autocratic great powers such as China and Russia.</p>
<p>But when it comes to curbing gun violence in America, a very different international narrative takes hold. Global audiences often see the failure to take aggressive action against gun violence as a symptom of a dysfunctional system of government incapable of protecting its own citizens, including children.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1529475585466064896"}"></div></p>
<p>News agencies of countries such as China often taunt the US for failing to take aggressive action on guns. In 2019, Chinese tabloid Global Times <a href="https://abc17news.com/news/national-world/cnn-asia-pacific/2021/09/20/china-and-the-us-were-both-born-from-armed-conflict-theyre-now-polar-opposites-on-gun-control/">claimed</a> China’s effective gun control was “a lesson for the US”.</p>
<p>These arguments are obviously made for self-interested reasons: namely, to present the Chinese government in a much more favourable light. But given the extent to which the US believes in the superiority of its values, one would think the criticisms should sting. Sadly, this isn’t the case.</p>
<p>A 2021 Pew Research Survey <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/04/20/amid-a-series-of-mass-shootings-in-the-u-s-gun-policy-remains-deeply-divisive/">found</a> 53% of Americans want stricter gun laws. This includes 81% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, but only 20% of Republicans and those who lean Republican.</p>
<p>However, support for specific restrictions like “background checks” <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/06/opinion/how-to-reduce-shootings.html">is a lot higher</a>.</p>
<h2>No longer a good model of democracy</h2>
<p>No matter how often Biden talks about restoring “America’s soul”, as he did in his inaugural address, America’s international reputation has taken a big hit.</p>
<p>International student numbers in America, a good gauge of America’s ability to attract foreign talent to its universities, <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/international-students-united-states-2020">declined during the Trump years</a> and wasn’t solely attributable to the pandemic. The country’s broken politics, which included rising anti-immigrant sentiment and gun violence, played its part in making the US a <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/international-students-united-states-2020">much less attractive environment</a>. </p>
<p>Opinion polls also confirm a declining faith in the health of American democracy. Across 16 advanced economies surveyed by the Pew Research Center, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2021/11/01/what-people-around-the-world-like-and-dislike-about-american-society-and-politics">an average of 83%</a> of people said the US is no longer a good model of democracy to follow.</p>
<p>This makes for depressing reading and seemingly makes it incumbent on the Biden administration to take action on gun control.</p>
<h2>But this will prove difficult</h2>
<p>Biden is rightly appalled by this latest massacre and will advocate the need for gun reform. But without the support of the Congress, little will happen federally. </p>
<p>This is the story of the Obama presidency on gun reform. It’s shameful the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in 2012, where 20 children were killed along with six staff members, didn’t lead to comprehensive gun reforms in the way the Port Arthur massacre and the Christchurch mosque shootings did in Australia and New Zealand.</p>
<p>Worse still, some American politicians bragged about their ability to stop gun reform. Republican Senator Ted Cruz ran a campaign ad <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/seeing-america-again-in-the-texas-elementary-school-shooting">stating</a>: “After Sandy Hook, Ted Cruz stopped Obama’s push for new gun-control laws”. He’s now tweeting <a href="https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1529190433091461123">that</a>: “Heidi & I are fervently lifting up in prayer the children and families in the horrific shooting.”</p>
<p>This is America’s broken political system in a nutshell.</p>
<p>Cruz doesn’t represent majority opinion in America, but the Democrat-controlled Congress won’t enact reform because Democrat Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema don’t support getting rid of the “filibuster”. A filibuster is when a member of a legislative body such as the US Senate endlessly talks in order to obstruct the passage of a piece of legislation. Senate rules dictate that 60 US Senators out of the 100 must vote to end a filibuster and force a vote. This holds true when it comes to gun reform legislation, and this isn’t going to happen anytime soon. </p>
<p>What’s more, too many American politicians are disinterested in comparing American public policy with laws in other wealthy nations, or showing any concern about America’s reputation in the wider world. </p>
<h2>Change at the state level?</h2>
<p>Change to American gun laws is most likely to happen <a href="https://theconversation.com/after-mass-shootings-like-uvalde-national-gun-control-fails-but-states-often-loosen-gun-laws-183879">at the state level</a>.</p>
<p>In Texas, the current governor signed into law last year seven pieces of legislation loosening restrictions of gun-rights now and into the future (one new law “exempts” Texas from potential federal restrictions).</p>
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<p>If you <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272719301446?via%3Dihub">dive deep into the data</a>, it finds states controlled by Democrats are more likely to enact gun restrictions after mass shootings, and states controlled by Republicans are more likely to loosen gun controls.</p>
<p>Given the Republican party is the dominant party at the state level (with 28 of the 50 state governorships), and Congressional Republicans can easily block legislation at the federal level, this most recent tragedy will sadly lead to more inaction on gun reform.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183829/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Frequent mass shootings are a stain on the country’s international reputation. But it’s likely the latest episode will lead to more inaction on gun control.
Brendon O'Connor, Associate Professor in American Politics at the United States Studies Centre, University of Sydney
Daniel Cooper, Lecturer at Griffith University, Griffith University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/176792
2022-02-23T15:34:38Z
2022-02-23T15:34:38Z
Show me the money: Employees not only want better pay, they want status
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447034/original/file-20220217-17-gnekqx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C550%2C4091%2C2480&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Over 50 per cent of working Americans continue to be dissatisfied with their 'unjust' incomes. They say it isn't sufficient to meet their family expenses.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 175px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/show-me-the-money--employees-not-only-want-better-pay--they-want-status" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>There has been endless chatter about the Great [<em>insert pandemic-related work trend here</em>].</p>
<p><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/great-resignation-accelerating/620382/">Resignation</a>. <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2022/01/25/1075115539/the-great-resignation-more-like-the-great-renegotiation">Renegotiation</a>. <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/04/companies-are-reinventing-rules-as-employees-seek-remote-work-and-flexible-hours.html">Reshuffle</a>. </p>
<p>Regardless of the descriptor used, employees in the United States are purportedly <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/04/business/economy/job-openings-coronavirus.html">re-evaluating</a> the role of work in their lives. While some of this is related to deeper <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/10/19/1047032996/why-are-so-many-americans-quitting-their-jobs">existential questions</a> — like “What am I doing with my life?” or “Is this really how I want to be spending most of my waking hours?” — there might be a much simpler and more practical explanation for the <a href="https://time.com/6051955/work-after-covid-19/">take-this-job-and-reinvent-it</a> wave.</p>
<p>A classic quote from the 1996 film <em>Jerry Maguire</em> captures it well. Sports agent Jerry Maguire (played by Tom Cruise) has been fired and as he embarks to become an independent agent he desperately tries to retain one of his clients, football star Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding Jr.). </p>
<p>Tidwell shouts his demands: “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFrag8ll85w">Show me the money!</a>” He adds: “I have a family to support, Jerry!”</p>
<h2>Earning enough to make ends meet</h2>
<p>Given what Americans say about their earnings, you’d think many would be bellowing like Tidwell. From Jan. 19 to Feb. 2, 2022, my research assistant and I partnered with Angus Reid Global to field a national survey of 2,000 working Americans. We asked: <em>Do you feel that the income from your job alone is enough to meet your family’s usual monthly expenses and bills?</em> </p>
<p>An astonishing 54.8 percent said “no.” </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A list of household expenses and income is placed on top of a bill with a calculator beside it" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447393/original/file-20220219-67390-5bhg5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447393/original/file-20220219-67390-5bhg5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447393/original/file-20220219-67390-5bhg5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447393/original/file-20220219-67390-5bhg5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447393/original/file-20220219-67390-5bhg5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447393/original/file-20220219-67390-5bhg5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447393/original/file-20220219-67390-5bhg5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Over the past two decades, more than half of surveyed American workers weren’t able to make ends meet with their job earnings alone.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Considering the ominous news <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/24/learning/lesson-plans/lesson-of-the-day-inflation-has-arrived-heres-what-you-need-to-know.html">about inflation</a> lately, we figured that this unfavourable perception has spiked from previous years. But looking back through two decades of U.S. data from the <a href="https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org/variables/2817/vshow">General Social Survey (GSS)</a> — a highly reputable national survey of Americans — we were surprised by how prevalent and stable the “no” responses have been. </p>
<p>In 2018, the last time the GSS asked this question, 50.8 percent of American workers reported that the income from their job was not enough to make ends meet. And the percentage was even higher in previous years: 52.9 in 2014; 53.4 in 2006 and 55.9 in 2002. The highest on record — 58.2 per cent — occurred in 2010 at the tail end of the Great Recession.</p>
<h2>How fair is what you earn?</h2>
<p>But “show me the money” isn’t only about having enough for life’s necessities. It’s also about the sense of fairness — what scholars refer to as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.so.09.080183.001245">distributive justice</a>. In our survey, we asked: <em>How fair is what you earn on your job in comparison to others doing the same type of work you do?</em></p>
<p>While 37.9 per cent feel they are paid appropriately, 52.7 per cent feel they are paid less than they deserve. On this indicator, the shift is substantial. <a href="https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org/variables/2816/vshow">Between 2002 and 2018</a>, 40.6 per cent on average have described their pay as being somewhat less or much less than they deserve, with 2010 again being the outlier at 46.2 percent.</p>
<p>We need to earn enough to live, and the amount should be just. But there’s another element of pay that reflects something deeper. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/a0038781">A fundamental human motive: status</a>. Justifying his “show me the money” plea, Tidwell roars: “I’m a role model, Jerry,” adding “it’s a very personal … very important thing.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A graphical representation of people standing on piles of differing amount of money." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447392/original/file-20220219-42890-13sd2ql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447392/original/file-20220219-42890-13sd2ql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447392/original/file-20220219-42890-13sd2ql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447392/original/file-20220219-42890-13sd2ql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447392/original/file-20220219-42890-13sd2ql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447392/original/file-20220219-42890-13sd2ql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447392/original/file-20220219-42890-13sd2ql.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Income, which can often be distributed unfairly, determines social status.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Status matters. Not only in the eyes of others, but in our own self-evaluations too. Sociologists refer to this as <a href="http://sparqtools.org/mobility-measure/macarthur-scale-of-subjective-social-status-adult-version/">subjective social status</a>. To measure it, we told respondents to think of a ladder. At the top (10) are the people who are the best off. At the bottom (1) are the people who are the worst off. And, we asked: <em>Where would you put yourself at the present time?</em></p>
<p>On average, American workers report a 6 on the status ladder. But those who report insufficient earnings and feel severely underpaid score significantly lower (4.9), compared to those who have sufficient earnings and feel their pay is appropriate (6.6). That difference holds regardless of education, occupation, income and job authority. </p>
<h2>Can money buy happiness?</h2>
<p>Some say <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16489">money can’t buy happiness</a>, but it goes a long way to providing status. And status often <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2019.07.014">translates into happiness</a>. </p>
<p>In our survey, Americans who don’t earn enough to make ends meet and feel underpaid are less happy and hopeful about the future. Life, for them, is less enjoyable. Inadequate earnings and feeling underpaid also erode happiness more strongly than the objective indicators of low socio-economic standing do. And one’s position on the status ladder eclipses all other socio-economic indicators in predicting happiness.</p>
<p>Our sample doesn’t include any professional football stars. But it does contain a broad cross-section of American workers — doggie daycare assistants, accountants, truck drivers, software engineers, sous chefs, electricians, candle-makers and on and on. All have a few things in common: They want to earn enough money to make ends meet, they want to be paid fairly for the work they do and they all share the fundamental human motive for status.</p>
<p>As dated as <em>Jerry Maguire</em> feels, “show me the money” still resonates. Maybe it always will. Given how consistent these indicators of income dissatisfaction have been for the past few decades, perhaps the Great Re-evaluation of work should focus first and foremost on compensation. Channel your inner Rod Tidwell!</p>
<p><em>Xin Ming Matthew Zhou, an undergraduate research assistant in the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto, co-authored this article</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/176792/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Scott Schieman receives funding from Social Science and Humanities Research Council. </span></em></p>
Many Americans regularly report that they don’t make enough to support their families. Status plays a role — while money can’t buy happiness, it can bring status, which can lead to happiness.
Scott Schieman, Professor of Sociology and Canada Research Chair, University of Toronto
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/173668
2022-01-17T19:22:16Z
2022-01-17T19:22:16Z
Climate change is creating security threats around the world – and militaries are responding
<p>The British military is currently “too slow and resistant to change”, <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/chief-of-the-defence-staff-speech-to-the-royal-united-services-institute">according to</a> Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the UK’s chief of defence staff. The urgent always takes priority over the important. But in the context of one of the world’s biggest security issues – climate change – threats and adaptations are evolving at pace.</p>
<p>In summer 2021, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/assessment-report/ar6/">raised the threat level</a> posed by climate change to a “<a href="https://www.un.org/press/en/2021/sgsm20847.doc.htm">code red for humanity</a>”. Anthropogenic climate change is at once evident and escalating, transforming natural, economic and socio-political environments. As well as mitigating threats, governments and their militaries are manoeuvring to exploit opportunities and leverage advantage.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_Chapter12_FINAL.pdf">range of climate scenarios</a> have been forecast – but common to all is increased frequency and scale of extreme weather events, more droughts and floods, melting of ice caps and permafrost, rise in sea levels, and oceanic acidification and deoxygenation. </p>
<p>Both <a href="https://cciproject.uk/">human and national security</a> will almost certainly be affected by threats to agricultural regimes including increased pest and disease presence, spikes in food prices and shocks to food production and food logistics. Consequences will include the recalibration of diplomatic alliances, displacement and dispossession of peoples, border disputes, endemic famine and warfare.</p>
<p>The tempo of the threat from the climate has accelerated. Certain parts of the world are becoming “climate conflict hotspots”. The effects of climate change shape, proliferate and amplify the threat, interacting in complex ways with pre-existing vulnerabilities such as socioeconomic inequality, fragile governance and inter-group tensions.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.un.org/peacebuilding/news/ECOSOC-PBC%20Joint%20meeting%202018">UN reports</a> that temperature increases in the Sahel region of Africa will be 1.5 times higher than the global average. This is an existential problem for many countries in the region, such as Mali, where destructive weather already <a href="https://www.icrc.org/en/document/mali-invisible-front-line-climate-change-conflict-zone">jeopardises agricultural production</a>. With an population growth rate of nearly 3%, Mali is also one of the youngest and fastest-growing populations in the world. </p>
<p>Tensions between ethnic groups, for example the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19392206.2021.1925035">Fulani and Dogon</a>, have been aggravated by decades of cattle-herding and horticulture relocation as well as migration into urban centres. Violent clashes over grassland, water sources and local infrastructure have become common. </p>
<p>Scorched earth is only fertile as a recruitment ground for <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03066150.2018.1474457">violent and extremist organisations</a>. Terrorist groups such as Boko Haram, Islamic State West Africa (ISWA), Jamaat Nusratul Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) and Katiba Macina pose a threat in the Sahel, often with the intent and capabilities to mount complex attacks against government and civilian targets.</p>
<h2>Arctic militarisation</h2>
<p>In the Arctic, melting sea ice is amplifying strategic competition as the accessibility of resources improves, particularly mineral and fossil fuel deposits. New trade routes are emerging, the <a href="https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2018/09/24/what-is-the-northern-sea-route">Northern Sea Route</a> (NSR), for example, is projected to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/ecoj.12460">rival Suez Canal traffic and shift trade flows</a> between Asia and Europe. Russia has declared the NSR “a national transportation corridor” as a means to ensure <a href="https://russiancouncil.ru/en/analytics-and-comments/analytics/the-northern-sea-route-a-national-or-an-international-transportation-corridor/">exclusive access</a> to it. </p>
<p>Others, such as China and the US, however, have indicated that they regard it as an “international domain”. In reference to the “Polar Silk Road”, China has started to refer to itself as a “<a href="http://english.www.gov.cn/archive/white_paper/2018/01/26/content_281476026660336.htm">near Arctic state</a>”, something that, in absolute terms, is geographically false. Assorted Arctic and non-Arctic countries are <a href="https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/NIE_Climate_Change_and_National_Security.pdf">building ice-breakers</a> to capitalise on these new economic realities.</p>
<p>In turn, the high north is facing an unprecedented process of militarisation. Russia is investing heavily in defence infrastructure and performing its power through the presence of nuclear submarines, <a href="https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/39953/three-russian-ballistic-missile-submarines-just-surfaced-through-the-arctic-ice-together">MiG-31 Foxhound aircraft flights</a> over the north pole and into US and Scandinavian airspace, and exercises of their Arctic Motorised Brigade. In concert, this posturing informs Russia’s various competitors that it is present and, if required, will use force to defend its strategic interests.</p>
<p>Nato has been similarly present in the contest. US president Joe Biden, for example, has relaunched Arctic Warrior, a cold war training programme – and, in early 2021, <a href="https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/security/2021/03/us-b-1-bomber-makes-first-landing-inside-norways-arctic-circle">dispatched B-1 Lancer strategic bombers</a> to Norway. This brought Russian military targets in the Arctic and beyond within reach. In response and to signal a posture of competition, Russia sent a <a href="https://indiannewsweekly.com/2021/03/09/war-news-us-air-force-rockwell-b-1-lancer-strategic-bombers-deploy-to-norway-russia-missile-cruiser-marshal-ustinov-russia-sends-missile-cruiser-warship-marshal-ustinov-on-patrol-in-barent-sea-after/">missile cruiser</a> from its Northern Fleet to the area.</p>
<h2>Carbon bootprints</h2>
<p>Climate change also amplifies national security risks. There are physical risks. Many coastal naval bases are, for example, at risk from <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/663885/Future_of_the_sea_-_sea_level_rise.pdf">sea level rises</a>. There are <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3522519">liability risks</a>. Countries, particularly those in the global south, are going to seek damages from others for loss and damage resulting in economic, physical and cultural harms. </p>
<p>On a global scale, the greenhouse gas emissions of militaries <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-worlds-militaries-hide-their-huge-carbon-emissions-171466">contribute immensely</a> to the climate crisis. And, as the UK secretary of state for defence, Ben Wallace made clear at COP26, the need to reduce military emissions must be part of the route to sustainability. His comments were in line with the ambitions presented in the Ministry of Defence’s <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ministry-of-defence-climate-change-and-sustainability-strategic-approach">Climate Change and Sustainability Strategic Approach</a>.</p>
<p>Action has followed words. In the UK, the army has invested in prototype <a href="https://www.army.mod.uk/news-and-events/news/2021/07/army-hybrid-vehicles-power-forward/">electric hybrid</a> armoured, reconnaissance and logistic vehicles, with significantly reduced emissions and improved performance. The electric trucks that transport a field hospital can now supply power for up to 12 hours, providing the equivalent of nine diesel generators. New buildings on the military’s training estate are also <a href="https://insidedio.blog.gov.uk/2021/09/27/training-estate-delivery-successes-support-armed-forces/">net negative</a>, supplied from renewable sources such as anaerobic digesters and solar farms. </p>
<p>The Royal Air Force recently achieved a <a href="https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2021/11/17/british-air-force-hails-first-ever-test-flight-using-only-synthetic-fuel/">world first flight</a> powered by 100% synthetic fuel, authorised the use of <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/sustainable-fuels-to-power-raf-jets">50% sustainable aviation fuel</a> in all its aircraft, and plans to order <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/shocks-away-raf-to-fly-electric-planes-tkdpn87vz">electric-powered planes</a> for training. The Royal Navy, meanwhile, is incorporating alternative-fuelled sustainability into new ship design.</p>
<p>In addressing their carbon bootprint, militaries enhance their role in sustainable security. Moreover, as agents of “climate diplomacy”, they can influence positive change in other nations and government departments. This is becoming a vital role in a warming and increasingly insecure world.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article was co-authored by Lieutenant General (Retired) Richard Nugee, a Senior Research Associate of the <a href="https://cciproject.uk">Climate Change & (In)Security Project</a>, a collaboration between Oxford University and the Centre for Historical and Conflict Research (CHACR).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/173668/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The Climate Change & (In)Security Project is a collaboration between, and receives funds and administrative support from, Reuben College, Oxford and the Centre for Historical Analysis and Conflict Research, an independent think tank for the British Army. </span></em></p>
Climate change is forcing countries to review both their security strategies and their military sustainability.
Timothy Clack, Lecturer in Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Oxford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/168066
2021-09-16T05:20:10Z
2021-09-16T05:20:10Z
Biden announces COVID vaccine mandate for 100 million Americans. Australia shouldn’t follow just yet
<p>On Friday, US President Joe Biden announced a sweeping <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/joe-biden-makes-covid-19-vaccine-mandatory-for-millions-of-american-workers/11336a8d-d7b0-46dd-97dc-eca047ec4372">new vaccine mandate</a> for employers covering around 100 million adults.</p>
<p>Given the urgent need to increase Australia’s vaccination rate, it may be tempting to think we need our own mass mandates. </p>
<p>That would be a mistake. The US mandate responds to problems which aren’t major barriers to vaccine uptake in Australia.</p>
<p>State and federal governments here should pursue other avenues first.</p>
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<h2>Why did Biden announce a mandate?</h2>
<p>Biden has mandated vaccination for federal workers and contractors, and employees at hospitals and health centres that receive federal government funding. This covers around 17 million people.</p>
<p>Biden will also instruct his Department of Labor to issue an emergency ruling to require vaccination (or weekly testing) for workers at companies that have 100 or more employees. This should cover around 80 million people. </p>
<p>This big step has already courted backlash in Republican-led states. Why was it necessary? </p>
<p>Despite setting a good early pace, the US has fallen behind many other wealthy nations. The country hit 40% of its total population fully vaccinated in May, but is now only at just over 53%. Canada began June with just 6% of its population vaccinated, but is now at almost 70%. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/could-a-france-style-vaccine-mandate-for-public-spaces-work-in-australia-legally-yes-but-its-complicated-165814">Could a France-style vaccine mandate for public spaces work in Australia? Legally, yes, but it's complicated</a>
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<p>The US also faces large regional disparities. In the northeast, some states have vaccination rates comparable to Canada. In the south, rates are much lower. Despite administering more than 380 million vaccine doses, the country is currently recording over 140,000 COVID cases and 1,600 deaths per day. </p>
<p>The causes are complex. However, under-resourced and/or unwilling state governments, a fragmented and inequitable health-care system, a deficit of social trust, and the viral spread of misinformation undoubtedly contribute. </p>
<p>Biden’s announcement arises out of well-known problems with political action in the United States. Passing legislation would require agreement from a Congress already at loggerheads over other key planks of the Democrats’ domestic agenda. Therefore, the mandate will be implemented via Biden’s unilateral powers as president. </p>
<p>It may provoke backlash against vaccination among some people, which could impact existing vaccinations for children, as well as COVID vaccines. However, it’s difficult to see what other options are available.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1427940965696761858"}"></div></p>
<h2>Australia has other ways to increase uptake</h2>
<p>Fortunately, the circumstances are different in Australia. We would therefore advise a more circumspect approach. </p>
<p>Some states have already announced mandates for frontline health-care workers and police, and the Australian Medical Association has <a href="https://www.ama.com.au/media/ama-calls-mandatory-vaccination-across-entire-health-care-system">backed mandates for all of those who work in a health-care setting</a>.</p>
<p>Companies have introduced their own private mandates for workers, the public, or both, with Crown Resorts this week announcing <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-14/crown-pushes-for-mandatory-vaccines-for-staff-and-visitors/100459066">it’s looking to introduce such a policy</a>. State governments will be adding vaccine passports to their toolkits for venues in New South Wales and Victoria.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/vaccine-passports-are-coming-to-australia-how-will-they-work-and-what-will-you-need-them-for-167531">Vaccine passports are coming to Australia. How will they work and what will you need them for?</a>
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<p>But there are additional important pathways to increasing vaccination rates that can foster trust in the health-care system. These have proved difficult in the US, but are available in Australia.</p>
<p>Targeted outreach in the form of clinics and bespoke persuasive communications are needed for poorly reached communities. Culturally and linguistically diverse populations and Aboriginal communities need culturally safe vaccination sites and interventions to address specific concerns.</p>
<p>The Biden administration can do little to work with states with low vaccination rates. Even as cases soar in Kentucky and Tennessee, Republican state governments have been largely unwilling to take additional steps to stop the spread and speed up vaccination.</p>
<p>In Australia, with supply issues soon to dissipate, the states and territories can work together with the federal government on improving communications and addressing access issues. The current significant disagreements in our National Cabinet nevertheless pale in comparison to the ceaseless battlefield of US federalism throughout the pandemic.</p>
<p>While there has been some gnashing of teeth regarding additional supplies of vaccines to NSW, western Sydney has demonstrated <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-11/nsw-blacktown-hits-90-per-cent-vaccine-rate/100451476">how effective targeted local campaigns can be</a>. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1437874156742197249"}"></div></p>
<p>As recently as late July, there were <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/western-sydney-community-leaders-face-vaccine-hesitancy-challenge-20210726-p58czn.html">concerns raised about hesitancy in western Sydney</a>. Blacktown now has one of the highest vaccination rates in the country: <a href="https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/2021/09/covid-19-vaccination-local-government-area-lga-13-september-2021.pdf">89.5% of those over 15 years old have had at least a single dose</a>. </p>
<p>A US-style mandate is a blunt instrument. It’s potentially effective if all else fails, but not without costs.</p>
<p>We should continue to build a rollout that strengthens trust in health systems and vaccinations. This will not only help us reach the high vaccination coverage rates we need, but will also prepare us for the next crisis. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/vaccinations-need-to-reach-90-of-first-nations-adults-and-teens-to-protect-vulnerable-communities-167800">Vaccinations need to reach 90% of First Nations adults and teens to protect vulnerable communities</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/168066/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Hannah receives funding from the WA Department of Health.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katie Attwell receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the WA Department of Health. She is currently funded by ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award DE1901000158. She is a member of a government advisory committee, the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) COVID-19 Working Group 2. She is a specialist advisor to the Therapeutic Goods Administration. All views presented in this article are her own and not representative of any other organisation.</span></em></p>
There are other pathways to increasing vaccination rates, while also fostering trust in the health-care system. These have proved difficult in the US, but are available in Australia.
Adam Hannah, Lecturer in Public Policy, The University of Western Australia
Katie Attwell, Senior Lecturer, The University of Western Australia
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/166713
2021-09-08T14:59:44Z
2021-09-08T14:59:44Z
Afghanistan withdrawal has Taiwan pondering its alliance with the US – and China is upping the pressure
<p>The chaotic withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan has sparked concerns among its allies about the credibility of commitments to its strategic allies. It has been popular to compare the US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan with Saigon in 1975, but this has generated some debate among scholars of US foreign policy.</p>
<p>Harvard’s Stephen M Walt <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/08/21/afghanistan-hasnt-damaged-u-s-credibility/">noted in Foreign Policy magazine</a>, what has happened in Afghanistan is “tragic but it’s not a strategic disaster”. From a historical perspective, he wrote, the US retreat from Saigon was similarly not a strategic disaster in that it did not lead to the collapse of Nato. Nor did it force American allies in Asia into the Soviet or Chinese spheres of influence. Nor did the chaotic end to the Vietnam War cause the US client states in the Middle East reevaluate their relationships with Washington.</p>
<p>By contrast, Francis Fukuyama <a href="https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2021/08/18/francis-fukuyama-on-the-end-of-american-hegemony">has pointed out in The Economist</a> that the desperate escape of the Afghans from Kabul is a strategic misstep which signifies the end of US global hegemony. He believes that this is as much determined by domestic challenges – such as the severe polarisation of American society at the end of the Trump presidency – as by any global power shifts.</p>
<p>Former US national security adviser and secretary of state Henry Kissinger has <a href="https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2021/08/25/henry-kissinger-on-why-america-failed-in-afghanistan?utm_campaign=the-economist-today&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_source=salesforce-marketing-cloud&utm_term=2021-08-25&utm_content=article-image-2&etear=nl_today_2">argued in the same publication</a> that the unilateral decision to withdraw could damage Washington’s relationships with its allies. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The fundamental concern is how America found itself moved to withdraw in a decision taken without much warning or consultation with allies or the people most directly involved in 20 years of sacrifice.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Recent events in Afghanistan are likely to exacerbate the decline in America’s global reputation, something identified by a survey taken at the end of the Trump administration by the <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/19/the-trump-era-has-seen-a-decline-in-americas-global-reputation/">influential Pew Foundation</a>. </p>
<p>The withdrawal has prompted an ongoing debate about the reliability of the US as an ally, especially in the case of Taiwan, under perennial pressure from China, which sees the island as part of its sovereign territory. </p>
<h2>‘Strategic ambiguity’</h2>
<p>State-affiliated Chinese newspaper, the Global Times, <a href="https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202108/1231636.shtml">claimed</a> that the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan meant that Taiwan was likely to be “abandoned”. The paper’s editorial on August 16 reminded its readers that Taiwan is not a member of Nato:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The way the US maintains the alliance with Taiwan is simple: It sells arms to Taiwan while encouraging the DPP authorities to implement anti-mainland policies through political support and manipulation.</p>
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<p>Biden <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/20/biden-taiwan-china-us-defence">quickly responded</a>, insisting that Taiwan and Afghanistan are “fundamentally different situations”, adding that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We made a sacred commitment to article 5 that if in fact anyone were to invade or take action against our Nato allies, we would respond. Same with Japan, same with South Korea, same with Taiwan. It’s not even comparable to talk about that.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Within hours, <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/08/16/remarks-by-president-biden-on-afghanistan/">US officials</a> rowed back on Biden’s statement, taking pains to stress that US policy towards Taiwan has not changed. This highlights the nature of the US relationship with Taiwan which is <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-08-24/u-s-afghanistan-debacle-won-t-lead-china-to-invade-taiwan">often summed up</a> with the words “strategic ambiguity”. The US provides Taipei with the means weapons systems and training to defend itself against a possible attack. But it leaves open the question as to whether it would intervene militarily in such an eventuality.</p>
<p>Beijing <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/us-position-taiwan-unchanged-despite-biden-comment-official-2021-08-19/">responded</a> to Biden’s comments by asserting “Taiwan as a inalienable part of Chinese territory”:</p>
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<p>No one should underestimate the Chinese people’s resolve, determination and strong ability to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>‘Strategic clarity’</h2>
<p>An <a href="https://taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2021/09/04/2003763756">editorial in the Taipei Times</a> concluded that the US withdrawal from Afghanistan would provide both opportunities and challenges for Taiwan. Opportunities in that Washington is clearly shifting its focus to face what it sees as the growing threat from China, which, “as the leading democracy in the Indo-Pacific region … is firmly placed at the forefront of democracy against dictatorship”. </p>
<p>But this will be balanced by the challenge of continuing Taiwan’s journey from a rapidly developing “tiger economy” to an outward-facing, highly technocratic society which is “becoming a nation on equal terms in the global village”.</p>
<p>As far as China’s insistence that the US withdrawal from Afghanistan showed Washington’s unreliability as an ally, the editorial saw an ulterior motive at work:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The view that today’s Afghanistan is tomorrow’s Taiwan is intended to challenge the mutual trust between Taiwan and the US.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Veteran former Dutch politician and diplomat, Gerrit van der Wees – now an academic in the US focusing on east Asia, <a href="https://thediplomat.com/2021/08/did-bidens-taiwan-remarks-represent-a-us-policy-change/">pointed out in a recent article</a> that Biden’s statement should not be interpreted as a change in US policy towards Taiwan. Instead it should be seen as “a welcome move in the right direction and a step toward "strategic clarity”. </p>
<p>Describing strategic ambiguity as a tactic rather than a policy, he quoted US State Department official Ned Price’s statement on August 19 that “peaceful resolution of cross-strait relations consistent with the wishes and best interests of the Taiwan people” are a key component of US foreign policy. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Today, it is much more certain than it was even two or three years ago that the United States, with assistance from Australia, Japan, and others, would come to Taiwan’s defence in the case of an attack.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Even when Washington’s tactics regarding Taiwan remain strategically ambiguous, the clear shift from a “war on terror” in the Middle East to a focus on the Indo-Pacific should give an indication of the direction of travel in Washington. But a lot will depend on how Beijing and Taipei interpret the signals coming out of Washington.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/166713/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Beijing has reacted to the withdrawal with the message that the US can’t be trusted as an ally.
Sophie Wushuang Yi, PhD Candidate in the Lau China Institute, King's College London
Changkun Hou, PhD researcher, Department of Political Science, National Taiwan University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/162380
2021-06-15T06:34:57Z
2021-06-15T06:34:57Z
Biden and Putin’s first meeting won’t reset US relations with Russia
<p>No one is expecting any major breakthroughs from US president Joe Biden’s first meeting since his election with Russian president Vladimir Putin. </p>
<p>Senior officials on both sides have been careful to keep expectations for the Geneva summit low. According to <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/07/politics/white-house-defends-putin-summit/index.html">the White House</a>, the Biden administration intends to use the summit to set out its foreign policy intentions and capabilities, with the specific aim of improving strategic stability and strengthening nuclear arms control. The Russians also place strategic stability <a href="https://time.com/6053298/putin-biden-summit/">on their agenda</a>, along with COVID-19 and settling regional conflicts.</p>
<p>The caution from both Washington and Moscow is not surprising. Relations between the US and Russia have been under considerable strain since 2014, when the US led an international campaign to introduce economic sanctions on Russia following Moscow’s <a href="https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-crimea-moscow-russia-26d1c8cbf518562bf137e3febd55b164">annexation of Crimea</a> and its intervention in the conflict in eastern Ukraine. </p>
<p>Moscow resents the imposition of sanctions and is deeply suspicious of western support for its own opposition figures, such as <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16057045">Alexei Navalny</a>, now serving a prison sentence in Russia. Biden’s recent description of Russia’s treatment of Navalny as <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/17/biden-denounces-russia-over-navalny-482670">“unfair”</a> will be regarded by Putin as further evidence of America trying to dictate how Russia handles its internal affairs. </p>
<p>Washington regards Russia as a troublemaker that refuses to play by the rules of diplomacy and uses its intelligence services to undermine the US and its allies, by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/17/misinformation-us-elections-2020-russia">interfering in American elections</a> or <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/09/05/644782096/u-k-charges-2-russians-suspected-of-poison-attack-on-skripals">poisoning former Russian spies</a> living in the west.</p>
<h2>A symbolic summit</h2>
<p>But if there are unlikely to be tangible results coming out of this summit, then why are the two leaders meeting at all? Part of the answer may lie in the symbolic significance of the event, for both sides.</p>
<p>For Biden, the meeting is an opportunity to send signals to several audiences simultaneously. Meeting with Putin only after attending summits with <a href="https://www.g7uk.org/">the G7</a> (which <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/24/politics/obama-europe-trip/index.html">expelled Russia</a> after it annexed Crimea in 2014) and <a href="https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_183200.htm">NATO</a> reaffirms America’s <a href="https://natowatch.org/newsbriefs/2021/nato-hold-summit-brussels-june">commitment to multilateralism</a> and to its transatlantic allies. </p>
<p>This is very different from the “America First” approach and the <a href="https://www.cfr.org/timeline/trumps-foreign-policy-moments">foreign policy turbulence</a> of the Trump administration. Making an effort to improve the relationship with Russia is important for the Biden administration, but not as important as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/06/biden-democracy-washington-post-oped-trump-republicans-china-russia-putin/">doing business with America’s partners</a>.</p>
<p>Holding a summit with Putin so early in his presidency also invites comparisons between Biden’s approach to Russia and that of his predecessor. Trump preferred to meet with Putin privately, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/15/us/politics/trump-putin-meetings.html">without US notetakers</a> leaving no official record of the discussions and generating speculation about what he might have agreed. In contrast to Barack Obama, Trump also exhibited an <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/01/trump-russia-putin-burden/580477/">almost reverent attitude</a> towards Putin.</p>
<p>Although Biden is a new president, his long career in the US Senate and his eight years as Obama’s vice president mean he is the veteran of many high-level international meetings. He is unlikely to break protocol or depart from the script by offering <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/remarks-vice-president-biden-45th-munich-conference-security-policy">a new reset with Russia</a> along the lines of the optimistic but ultimately unsuccessful proposal he made back in 2009.</p>
<h2>Positives for Putin</h2>
<p>But while Putin will neither be expecting nor offering any dramatic changes to the US-Russia relationship, this summit is nevertheless valuable for him. First and foremost, it is a clear demonstration that Russia continues to be important on the international stage. </p>
<p>Recent statements by western officials, such as Britain’s head of MI6 Richard Moore, describing Russia as <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-military-power-ukraine-britain-mi6/">a declining power</a> have clearly stung Putin’s pride. As Putin remarked at a recent <a href="http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/65749">press conference</a>, if Russia is a country in decline, then why is the west so concerned about what Moscow does? </p>
<p>Putin places a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/feb/09/mark-galeotti-interview-we-need-to-talk-about-putin-russia-trump-skripals">high value</a> on demonstrations of respect for Russia from the leaders of other countries, especially the US. A key reason for Putin’s <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/12/30/792456768/how-vladimir-putin-has-continued-to-remain-popular-in-russia">continued popularity</a> among many Russians is the perception that he is responsible for a resurgence of Russia’s prestige internationally after Moscow’s humiliating loss of power and status in the 1990s. </p>
<p>A one-on-one meeting with the US president just months after taking office is an implicit endorsement of Putin’s position that the really significant problems facing the world cannot be resolved if Russia is absent from the top table. When the two leaders spoke on the telephone shortly after Biden’s inauguration, <a href="http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/64936">Putin remarked</a> that the US and Russia have a special responsibility for maintaining global security and stability. </p>
<h2>Opportunities for collaboration</h2>
<p>To turn this statement into something more substantial than a soundbite, Putin needs this summit go beyond a de facto recognition of Russia’s great power and status, as welcome as that is. There is certainly the potential for this meeting to lay the foundations for future cooperation on specific issues where Russia’s ability to offer something concrete matches America’s desire to make progress. </p>
<p>Arms control is a good place to start. The two leaders could build on their agreement reached in January to <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/putin-and-biden-confirm-extension-of-new-start-treaty/">extend New START</a>, which limits the numbers of strategic nuclear weapons that each country can deploy and is the last remaining arms control treaty between the US and Russia. </p>
<p>The fight against COVID is another potential area for collaboration. Although both the US and Russia have had their struggles with the pandemic, Russia’s eagerness to export its <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/russia-authorises-single-dose-sputnik-light-covid-vaccine-use-rdif-2021-05-06/">Sputnik vaccine</a> could dovetail nicely with the Biden administration’s emphasis on the importance of adopting a global approach to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/09/us-biden-vaccines-pfizer-global-plan">tackling the virus</a>.</p>
<p>Considering the long list of issues that Biden and Putin disagree on, it is perhaps wise to keep expectations for the summit low. There are, nevertheless, areas where the two leaders have enough in common to justify some very cautious optimism about the future of US-Russia relations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162380/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Mathers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The Biden-Putin summit will be symbolic, rather than substantive - but there could be grounds for cautious optimism.
Jennifer Mathers, Senior Lecturer in International Politics, Aberystwyth University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/150271
2020-11-19T04:26:22Z
2020-11-19T04:26:22Z
How the US health-care system works — and how its failures are worsening the pandemic
<p>The United States does not have a health system — it has multiple systems, with no coherence.</p>
<p>If you are an armed services veteran, you have access to a comprehensive, centrally coordinated, government-run health service.</p>
<p>If you are over 65, you are covered by Medicare, a federally funded, quite generous insurance-based system.</p>
<p>If you are poor, the partly federally funded but state-run Medicaid system is your option. The extent of your eligibility will vary depending on the state you live in, but the system is generally pretty mean in terms of income thresholds for eligibility. </p>
<p>If you are employed, your employment package may include health insurance coverage and you generally get to choose — from a panel selected by your employer — which insurer will cover you in the forthcoming year.</p>
<p>The types of insurers on offer normally include those operating a fee-for-service model like Australian private health insurance, and those offering a whole-of-care experience where the insurer is also the provider, or is closely linked to the provider, and covers all care for a fixed sum each year.</p>
<p>The “Obamacare” <a href="https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/affordable-care-act/">reforms</a> added an option, for those without other coverage, of insuring through federal and state “<a href="https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/health-insurance-marketplace-glossary/">marketplaces</a>”. These marketplaces enabled people to avoid the very high premiums that was the norm for individually-negotiated private insurance, by sharing risks across the insured in a bulk-buy arrangement.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/biden-has-announced-a-covid-taskforce-to-guide-him-through-the-crisis-but-there-are-many-challenges-ahead-149850">Biden has announced a COVID taskforce to guide him through the crisis. But there are many challenges ahead</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<h2>More expensive but less effective</h2>
<p>Despite these reforms, almost <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/health-insurance.htm">15% of adults aged 18-64 have no insurance coverage at all</a>. That number is projected to rise in the short term because outgoing President Donald Trump <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/10/14/768731628/trump-is-trying-hard-to-thwart-obamacare-hows-that-going">wound back some of the Obamacare provisions</a>.</p>
<p>Unlike Australia, the US has no network of public hospitals to be coordinated and mobilised during the COVID pandemic. <a href="https://www.aha.org/system/files/media/file/2020/01/2020-aha-hospital-fast-facts-new-Jan-2020.pdf">More than half of US hospitals are not-for-profit</a>, and they negotiate contracts with multiple insurers for their income.</p>
<p>Health insurers control their costs by charging customers out-of-pocket fees, and by limiting the number of service providers covered by the plan. If you go to an uncovered provider, you pay the whole bill yourself.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1276158522615631879"}"></div></p>
<p>Some hospitals and health services in the US provide the best care in the world, albeit at very high cost.</p>
<p>Overall, the US health system is very expensive and costs roughly <a href="https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/other-publication/2020/jan/multinational-comparisons-health-systems-data-2019">twice as much as the Australian health system per person</a>.</p>
<p>Despite this, Americans have <a href="https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/other-publication/2020/jan/multinational-comparisons-health-systems-data-2019">lower life expectancy</a> than Australians.</p>
<h2>Individualism, less regulation, more gaps</h2>
<p>It is impossible to understand the US health system without considering America’s ideological and political context.</p>
<p>Politics is highly partisan. Obamacare is <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/21/politics/supreme-court-obamacare-affordable-care-act/index.html">still being fought in the courts</a>, a decade after it was signed into law, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/11/10/932441334/will-supreme-court-invalidate-obamacare-a-decade-after-it-was-enacted">to limit its coverage and impact</a>. Public opinion polling shows that Obamacare’s popularity continues to increase, but an overwhelming majority (76%) of Republicans polled <a href="https://www.kff.org/health-reform/poll-finding/5-charts-about-public-opinion-on-the-affordable-care-act-and-the-supreme-court/">supported the Supreme Court overturning it</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/pandemic-letter-from-america-how-the-us-handling-of-covid-19-provides-the-starkest-warning-for-us-all-144357">Pandemic letter from America: how the US handling of COVID-19 provides the starkest warning for us all</a>
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</em>
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<p>The dominant political ideology in the US is much more individualistic and against social service provision than in Australia. This translates into less regulation and more gaps in the social safety net.</p>
<p>Politics matters too. Trump <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/11/trumps-lies-about-coronavirus/608647/">denied the reality of COVID</a>, ignored scientific advice about its importance, and failed to develop meaningful strategies to contain the threat. <a href="https://khn.org/morning-breakout/cdc-used-to-be-one-of-worlds-preeminent-disease-fighting-bodies-but-agency-gutted-under-trump/">He gutted</a> the internationally well-regarded specialist infection control organisation — the Centers for Disease Control — in favour of <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52407177">untested treatments</a>.</p>
<h2>The perfect storm</h2>
<p>A health system that’s uneven at best, and a national individualistic orientation, overseen by an idiosyncratic COVID-denying president, created the <a href="https://eand.co/covid-is-devastating-america-and-americans-are-in-denial-about-it-ccc59bf301e2">disastrous conditions fuelling the COVID surge in the US</a>.</p>
<p>There is therefore no national strategy. The president <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com.au/trump-barely-meets-white-house-coronavirus-task-force-francis-collins-2020-10">does not attend meetings of the Coronavirus Task Force he established</a>. States and cities <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/14/best-state-responses-to-pandemic-429376">do their own thing</a>. </p>
<p>Unlike the situation in Australia, where all the states stepped up to lead the public health response, state responses in the US have often been weak, following the COVID-denying example of Trump — taking no or very limited actions while the <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/23/politics/kristi-noem-south-dakota-coronavirus/index.html">virus spreads in their states</a>.</p>
<p>The individualistic orientation translates into less concern about social norms and social solidarity — so less mask wearing, and less support for restrictions on liberties such as lockdowns.</p>
<p>The weak insurance arrangements meant that uninsured people faced <a href="https://www.talktomira.com/post/how-much-does-coronavirus-covid-19-testing-cost-with-or-without-insurance">huge out-of-pocket costs for coronavirus testing</a>, so they didn’t get tested and potentially spread the infection.</p>
<p>Antipathy to masks and restrictions allowed infections to spread too. The record number of infections — <a href="https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_casesper100klast7days">11 million Americans infected and 250,000 deaths</a> — has overwhelmed the health system, leaving people unable to get access to care in an emergency, whether COVID-related or not.</p>
<p>COVID is not the flu. It can have long-term effects on people’s health and well-being. So the disastrous Trump legacy of COVID mismanagement will have an impact on the dysfunctional United States health system for months and years to come, with poor, rural areas — ironically also mostly Trump-voting — and people of colour among the hardest hit.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-post-viral-fatigue-syndrome-the-condition-affecting-some-covid-19-survivors-146851">What is post-viral fatigue syndrome, the condition affecting some COVID-19 survivors?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/150271/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The Grattan Institute began with contributions to its endowment of $15 million from each of the Federal and Victorian Governments, $4 million from BHP Billiton, and $1 million from NAB. In order to safeguard its independence, Grattan Institute’s board controls this endowment. The funds are invested and contribute to funding Grattan Institute's activities. Grattan Institute also receives funding from corporates, foundations, and individuals to support its general activities as disclosed on its website.
Stephen Duckett received funding from the Australian Centre for American Studies and Eli Lilly for writing and publication of Duckett, S. J. 1997. Health care in the US: What lessons for Australia? Sydney: The Australian Centre for American Studies, University of Sydney.
</span></em></p>
The US health system costs roughly twice as much as the Australian system per person. Despite this, the US has lower life expectancy than Australia.
Stephen Duckett, Director, Health Program, Grattan Institute
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/147689
2020-10-08T10:55:11Z
2020-10-08T10:55:11Z
The value of a banana: understanding absurd and ephemeral artwork
<p>In September, the Guggenheim Museum in New York acquired <a href="https://news.artnet.com/art-world/guggenheim-banana-cattelan-1909179">Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian</a> by anonymous donation. The work – a banana duct-taped to a wall — was first shown and sold at the <a href="https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/this-art-is-bananas-maurizio-cattelan-presents-first-new-work-for-an-art-fair-in-15-years#:%7E:text=The%20maverick%20Italian%20artist%20Maurizio,wall%20with%20grey%20duct%20tape.">Art Basel fair in Miami Beach</a> in the autumn of 2019 where it generated attention, derision and <a href="https://wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-scoops/art-basel-2019-art-banana-memes-1203395572/">innumerable memes</a>. Social media was, for a brief time, overflowing with images of <a href="https://www.news18.com/news/buzz/people-are-coming-up-their-own-duct-tape-art-after-banana-in-art-basel-sells-for-rs-85-lakh-2416655.html">just about anything duct-taped to walls</a>: tamales, beer cans, cabbage, a <a href="https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1668205-duct-tape-banana">durian</a> fruit, a sandal, someone’s cat. <a href="https://adage.com/article/digital/brands-are-trying-one-art-basel-banana/2221661">Companies quickly countered with online ads</a> where their products, from deodorants to French fries, were shown duct-taped to the wall with a modest price tag.</p>
<p>Comedian reignited a set of questions that seem to flare up with some regularity: what makes something a high-priced artwork when another, seemingly identical, object is not? </p>
<p>Since the work was shown at an art fair, it is relevant to consider what exactly is being bought when acquiring an artwork like Comedian. The original banana had to be replaced several times during the course of the fair, once after it was eaten as <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50704136">a stunt by another artist</a>. </p>
<p>The collectors who bought and subsequently donated the work to the Guggenheim did not receive an actual banana or a piece of duct tape. Instead, what they got was a document, a so-called certificate of authenticity that granted them the right to recreate the work and instructions of how to do so. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/18/arts/design/banana-art-guggenheim.html">It stipulated</a>, among other things, that the banana should be hung 175cm above ground and that it should be replaced every seven to ten days. </p>
<h2>A banana is a banana is a banana</h2>
<p>Although the art world has accepted the idea of <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/r/readymade">ready-made</a> everyday objects as art, at least since the mid-20th century, Cattelan’s artwork invited a collective focus on the structure of evaluation of artworks. If anyone can tape anything to the wall — as many did — what is the point of a document granting the legal right to do the same?</p>
<p>Let’s compare Comedian to another fruit-based artwork: Zoe Leonard’s <a href="https://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/92277.html">Strange Fruit</a> (1992-1997), a large installation of fruit peels, carefully stitched together by the artist. It was made during the Aids crisis and functioned as a ritualised act of mourning and memorialising. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="An orange peel sowed back up." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/362243/original/file-20201007-14-1v2wvyx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/362243/original/file-20201007-14-1v2wvyx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362243/original/file-20201007-14-1v2wvyx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362243/original/file-20201007-14-1v2wvyx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362243/original/file-20201007-14-1v2wvyx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362243/original/file-20201007-14-1v2wvyx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362243/original/file-20201007-14-1v2wvyx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An orange from Zoe Leonard’s Strange Fruit.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/70278718@N00/1867504">Flikr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>After closely working with a conservator who developed a method of halting material decay at a particular point, <a href="http://contemporary.burlington.org.uk/journal/journal/intent-in-the-making-the-life-of-zoe-leonards-strange-fruit">Leonard decided</a> that it was more in line with the work’s idea to have it turn slowly into dust. In contrast to Comedian, replacing the fruit peels was not an option since the specific acts of stitching as mourning was key to the work’s meaning. The material manifestation of Leonard’s organic objects is far from stable – time passes and they change – but it is crucial that it is these precise pieces of fruit that undergo that transformation.</p>
<p>Conceptual artists in the 1960s argued that an artwork’s identity is not to be found in its physical manifestation but in the artist’s idea. That idea can, but does not have to, take material form. </p>
<p>Following that logic, the material object is a manifestation of an idea, and it is the idea that is bought and sold on the art market. When the object is reproducible or immaterial, the certificate of authenticity ensures the artwork’s identity as an artwork. Comedian is not dependent on a specific banana, any banana could be used without altering the meaning of the work. That, however, is very different from saying that any banana and piece of duct tape is an artwork by Maurizio Cattelan.</p>
<h2>Poking fun at the market</h2>
<p>Even though the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/dec/06/maurizio-cattelan-banana-duct-tape-comedian-art-basel-miami">US$120,000 (£92,000) price tag for Comedian</a> was by contemporary art standards fairly moderate, it is obviously a huge mark-up for the act of combining two very cheap and readily available materials. </p>
<p>The work’s title hints that it is aware of the comedic absurdity of its own evaluation on the art market. Also, the banana’s upward curve on the wall recalls a stylised smiling face, and the banana peel, as we know, is involved in the most basic of slapstick skits. </p>
<p>Comedian was in fact not the first time Cattelan poked fun at the market, art dealers and their place within this system. In 1995, he made his dealer Emmanuel Perrotin (in whose booth at Art Basel Comedian was shown) <a href="https://www.frieze.com/article/maurizio-cattelan">dress up as a giant pink penis-shaped bunny</a> for the duration of his exhibition at Perrotin’s Paris gallery. The piece was called “<em>Errotin le vrai lapin</em> (Errotin the true rabbit). By making Perrotin wear a ridiculous and humiliating phallic costume while carrying out his day-to-day work as a commercial gallery owner, the spectacle of the art market came into sharp view.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A gold toilet." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/362239/original/file-20201007-14-17wiks0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/362239/original/file-20201007-14-17wiks0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362239/original/file-20201007-14-17wiks0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362239/original/file-20201007-14-17wiks0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362239/original/file-20201007-14-17wiks0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362239/original/file-20201007-14-17wiks0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/362239/original/file-20201007-14-17wiks0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">America by Maurizio Cattelan at the Guggenheim.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rogueangel/34137226280">Flikr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Comedian is not the only of Cattelan’s works that has drawn attention to the Guggenheim in recent years. In 2016, the artist installed the work <a href="https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/maurizio-cattelan-america">America</a> in one of the lavatories of the museum. The 18-karat gold toilet is a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the excesses of America’s rich; a piece of satirical participatory art that welcomes people to actually use it. It has reverberations of <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/duchamp-fountain-t07573">Marcel Duchamp</a> and <a href="https://whitney.org/media/760">Sherrie Levine</a>’s lavatorial works. </p>
<p>It <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2018/01/the-art-museum-that-offered-donald-trump-a-solid-gold-toilet">could have been President Trump</a>’s after he requested to borrow a Van Gogh from the Guggenheim but was offered America instead – he declined. It then was taken in by Blenheim Palace in Oxford in 2019 where art critic Jonathan Jones <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/sep/13/maurizio-cattelan-blenheim-palace-review-hitler-golden-toilet-blenheim-churchill">commented</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>How does it feel to urinate on gold? Much like peeing on porcelain. But here, among all the photos of young Winston, it also feels like pissing on British history.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Soon after, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/20/arts/design/gold-toilet-america.html#:%7E:text=14%2C%20a%20fully%2Dfunctioning%20toilet,the%20birthplace%20of%20Winston%20Churchill.&text=The%20police%20may%20not%20know,palace%2C%20have%20plenty%20of%20theories.">it was stolen</a>. Its whereabouts remain unknown.</p>
<p>Cattelan’s works — like other pieces — must be considered in relation to other artworks and the structures in which it operates. The questions they raise are relevant but in part unanswerable: are we to take Comedian seriously, or is it an elaborate joke? And if it is a joke, who is in on it and who, or what, is mocked?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/147689/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sara Callahan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
New York’s Guggenheim Museum has acquired Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian but how can you value and own a banana and some tape?
Sara Callahan, Postdoctoral Research Associate in Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/144357
2020-08-13T20:11:35Z
2020-08-13T20:11:35Z
Pandemic letter from America: how the US handling of COVID-19 provides the starkest warning for us all
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352461/original/file-20200812-16-1on3gsi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C1%2C1000%2C661&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/statue-liberty-wearing-surgical-mask-new-1728185668">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This is one of our occasional <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/essays-on-health-32828">Essays on Health</a>, this time from an Australian visiting fellow in Washington, DC. Adam Elshaug, professor of health policy, asks how one of the world’s most inequitable health-care systems has coped with COVID-19. The short answer, he says, is that it provides a wake-up call for us all. It’s a long read.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>We all hoped for a rapid and effective COVID-19 response. For the United States, that has not occurred. It is now host to <a href="https://covid19.who.int/region/amro/country/us">more documented COVID-19 cases</a> and deaths <a href="https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html">than any other country</a>.</p>
<p>With <a href="https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population/">about 4%</a> of the world’s population, the US accounts for about <a href="https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html">25% of all cases</a> and <a href="https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html">about 20%</a> of all deaths — <a href="https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us">more than 169,000</a> deaths so far.</p>
<p>Yes, it’s a large country, but that is <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-covid-deaths-per-million">about 500 deaths per million</a> population, compared with Australia’s <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-covid-deaths-per-million">about 12 per million</a>. </p>
<p>Australia’s state of Victoria is amid its second wave, recording <a href="https://theconversation.com/723-new-covid-19-cases-in-victoria-could-reflect-more-testing-but-behaviour-probably-has-something-to-do-with-it-too-143677">723 new cases and 13 deaths</a> on July 30. The same day, the US recorded <a href="https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/">68,585 new cases and 1,465 deaths</a>.</p>
<p>I write this from my temporary base in Washington, DC.</p>
<p>I have experienced first hand, and since the outset of the pandemic, how deficiencies in the organisation of the US social, political and health-care systems have become more vivid and their consequences intensified.</p>
<p>Given its status as a world superpower, and its stratospheric <a href="https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2020/jan/us-health-care-global-perspective-2019">per capita health care spend</a>, the situation in the US is <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/covid-19-end-of-american-era-wade-davis-1038206/">truly alarming</a>. </p>
<p>Entire books will be written on this woeful epoch in US history. But I want to focus on some key observations of the country’s failed COVID-19 response, and the lessons.</p>
<h2>Transitioning to failure</h2>
<p>It would be unfair to blame President Donald Trump and his administration for the systemic failures in the US social and health-care systems. Those have been decades in the making. </p>
<p>But his pre-COVID-19 dismantling of the pandemic preparedness system, disregard for scientists, and hyper-partisanship have clearly worsened the US response.</p>
<p>I agree with the political commentator David Frum, who <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/americans-are-paying-the-price-for-trumps-failures/609532/">wrote</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>That the pandemic occurred is not Trump’s fault. The utter unpreparedness of the United States for a pandemic is Trump’s fault.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>President Barack Obama left the Trump administration with <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/world/north-america/2020/03/america-pandemic-response-swine-flu-avian">pandemic-ready infrastructure</a>. This was motivated by outbreaks of Ebola and previous novel coronaviruses (responsible for Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, and SARS, severe acute respiratory syndrome), and an appreciation of their ever-present threat. </p>
<p>Then, Trump took critical steps before COVID-19 that weakened its preparedness to the point of catastrophe. Here are just a few.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-donald-trumps-funding-cuts-to-who-mean-for-the-world-136384">Explainer: what Donald Trump's funding cuts to WHO mean for the world</a>
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<p>The Trump administration <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/nsc-pandemic-office-trump-closed/2020/03/13/a70de09c-6491-11ea-acca-80c22bbee96f_story.html">dismantled</a> the (Obama-instituted) White House team in charge of pandemic response, dismissing its leadership and staff in early 2018.
This team had also laid out a detailed dossier for a pandemic response plan. Trump ignored it.</p>
<p>Since coming to office, the Trump administration has also <a href="https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/">cut funding</a> to key agencies including the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/">Centers for Disease Control and Prevention</a> (CDC). These cuts directly impacted domestic projects and international collaborations (including with China) on pandemic preparedness.</p>
<h2>Too little, too late</h2>
<p>Even into February as the severity of the pandemic was realised worldwide, Trump was downplaying the threat, openly stating it was like <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/24/trump-again-downplays-coronavirus-by-comparing-it-seasonal-flu-its-not-fair-comparison/">the common flu</a>.</p>
<p>He called growing concerns about COVID-19 a “<a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/2/29/21159294/trump-coronavirus-hoax-south-carolina-first-death">hoax</a>” and had a “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/05/trump-coronavirus-who-global-death-rate-false-number">hunch</a>” expert assessments of the potential toll were wrong.</p>
<p>As cases and deaths, particularly <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/07/new-york-coronavirus-deaths-record-cases">in New York</a> began to rise steeply, the real evidence of unpreparedness became apparent.</p>
<p>Critically, at no point through the pandemic has the US had in place a sincere strategy of public health 101: test, trace, isolate.</p>
<p>Trump has repeatedly <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_XwC9IQKBc">claimed</a> anyone who wants a test can get a test, but this has been a <a href="https://khn.org/news/donald-trumps-wrong-claim-that-anybody-can-get-tested-for-coronavirus/">farce</a>. Shortages of testing supplies and poor coordination have hamstrung containment strategies.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">President Donald Trump saying there were enough COVID-19 tests to go round.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Even though testing has increased, it has not kept up with demand. The time to receive results as of July <a href="https://fortune.com/2020/07/14/how-long-do-coronavirus-test-results-take-quest-diagnostics-covid/">ranged from</a> 1 to 14 days, averaging 7 days. </p>
<p>This is inadequate to manage spread via active but undiagnosed cases. That is just the beginning of the current troubles. </p>
<h2>The Disunited States of America</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2006141">limited availability</a> of masks, personal protective equipment (PPE) and ventilators revealed significant cracks in US preparedness. It also put on full display the caustic political divisions that are a modern feature of US politics and society.</p>
<p>Despite the <a href="https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/coronavirus-washington-state-timeline-outbreak/IM65JK66N5BYTIAPZ3FUZSKMUE/">first cases</a> being recorded in Washington state, its deadly potential was initially felt most in the Democratic state of New York. Trump used this to avenge old scores and fuel competition between red (Republican) versus blue (Democratic) states.</p>
<p>When the New York health-care system <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/27/podcasts/the-daily/new-york-hospitals-covid.html?searchResultPosition=1">buckled</a> as a result of its fragmented structure (another failing) and enormous caseload, the state’s Democratic governor, Andrew Cuomo, called for urgent assistance, such as supplies from the national stockpile.</p>
<p>Trump <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/04/20/837737368/trump-often-picks-fights-with-governors-but-americans-like-them-more">tweeted</a> Governor Cuomo “should spend more time ‘doing’ and less time ‘complaining’.”</p>
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<p>The fierce competition between states for limited mask and PPE supplies led to suppliers price-gouging.</p>
<p>Frustration led governors to place clandestine international orders. <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/04/18/illinois-gov-pritzker-secretly-bought-medical-supplies-from-china-and-the-white-house-is-not-happy/#525b01517891">Illinois</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/20/us/larry-hogan-wife-yumi-korea-coronavirus-tests.html">Maryland</a>, for example, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/04/18/illinois-gov-pritzker-secretly-bought-medical-supplies-from-china-and-the-white-house-is-not-happy/#584bbd387891">received plane-loads of supplies</a> under the cloak of darkness and protected by state police. They <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/04/18/illinois-gov-pritzker-secretly-bought-medical-supplies-from-china-and-the-white-house-is-not-happy/#59c068917891">did this</a> “out of fear the Trump administration would seize the cargo for the federal stockpile”, as occurred <a href="https://www.boston.com/news/politics/2020/03/30/donald-trump-massachusetts-coronavirus-response-supplies">in Massachusetts</a>.</p>
<p>There has also been tension across the country about stay-at-home orders, school closures, schools and retail reopenings, data transparency and sharing – the list goes on.</p>
<p>Wearing a mask has become a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/29/face-masks-us-politics-coronavirus">political act</a>. Now, concerningly, Trump has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/us/politics/trump-cdc-coronavirus.html">ordered</a> COVID-related hospital data bypass the CDC and be fed directly to the White House, raising concerns about transparency.</p>
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<p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/us-coronavirus-data-will-now-go-straight-to-the-white-house-heres-what-this-means-for-the-world-142814">US coronavirus data will now go straight to the White House. Here's what this means for the world</a>
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<p>Despite Trump <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/04/20/837737368/trump-often-picks-fights-with-governors-but-americans-like-them-more">threatening</a> his absolute authority over the states, much responsibility rests with state governors (equivalent to Australian premiers). And yet counties (equivalent to local councils) have enacted policies independent of, and often contradicting, state policies. </p>
<p>This could be sensible in reflecting local conditions as the rolling wave moves on. However, it has confused any singular messaging and exemplified the red/blue political divide.</p>
<p>The southern (primarily red) states that were late to institute control measures and early to re-open are now the epicentre of this <a href="https://www.voanews.com/covid-19-pandemic/us-southern-states-worry-about-rising-coronavirus-spread">rolling wave</a>.</p>
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<p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-is-spreading-through-rural-souths-high-risk-population-reopening-economies-will-make-it-worse-136817">Coronavirus is spreading through rural South’s high-risk population – reopening economies will make it worse</a>
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<h2>Systemic inequality</h2>
<p>Among <a href="https://www.oecd.org/">OECD countries</a>, the level of <a href="https://inequality.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/Pathways_SOTU_2019.pdf">structural inequality</a> in the US is extreme. The collision of three problems — uncontrolled pandemic, recession, uninsured people — is disproportionately impacting the most vulnerable.</p>
<p>Pre-pandemic, about <a href="https://www.kff.org/state-category/health-coverage-uninsured/">32 million Americans</a> (around 10% of population) lacked health insurance. A further <a href="https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/rate-by-age-2/?dataView=1&currentTimeframe=0&selectedDistributions=total&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D">150 million</a> (around 50% of the population) held employer-sponsored health insurance.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1233249953511665666"}"></div></p>
<p>Up to July 18, about <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/06/weekly-jobless-claims.html">32 million Americans</a> had filed for unemployment as a direct result of the pandemic, pushing the unemployment rate <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-covid-19-crisis-how-do-u-s-economic-and-health-outcomes-compare-to-other-oecd-countries/">well into teen figures</a>.</p>
<p>This number is rising weekly and millions of those have, or will, lose their employer-sponsored health insurance at a time they may need it most.</p>
<p>The US has the unenviable <a href="https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2020/jan/us-health-care-global-perspective-2019">first place position</a> for the highest health-care costs in the OECD yet some the <a href="https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2020/jan/us-health-care-global-perspective-2019">worst health outcomes</a> among similar countries.</p>
<p>COVID-19 has placed millions more Americans further away from accessing needed health care.</p>
<p>The country was already experiencing a <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshuacohen/2019/12/01/dying-young-decline-in-us-life-expectancy-for-third-straight-year-signals-alarming-trend/#2bc0f5e56621">decline in life expectancy</a> and the fear now is this will be exacerbated further.</p>
<h2>A stark warning</h2>
<p>There is a political rallying cry in the US that the country represents a shining light on the hill, a “beacon of hope” for the world.</p>
<p>We must admit the US population size and current political climate make its pandemic response more complex than countries like Australia’s. But that doesn’t mean we can be apathetic.</p>
<p>The US, through COVID-19, offers the starkest of warnings. Underlying gross structural inequality, under-investment and unpreparedness in public health, and socio-political tensions have met in a dizzying, tragic outcome for the richest country in the world.</p>
<p>All Americans have suffered but their most vulnerable have, and will continue to, suffer disproportionately.</p>
<p>It is a shining light for what we must avoid, what we must stand up for and protect against.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This is a co-publication with <a href="https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/">Pursuit</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144357/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Elshaug will join the University of Melbourne as Professor of Health Policy and Director, Centre for Health Policy, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health and Melbourne Medical School. Adam Elshaug's spouse is Chief Medical Officer for a US ventilator manufacturer that is responding to the pandemic.</span></em></p>
Underlying inequality, an under-resourced public health system and socio-political tensions have met in a dizzying, tragic outcome for the richest country in the world.
Adam Elshaug, Visiting Fellow, Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, Professor of Health Policy and Co-Director, Menzies Centre for Health Policy, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/142814
2020-07-17T05:19:32Z
2020-07-17T05:19:32Z
US coronavirus data will now go straight to the White House. Here’s what this means for the world
<p>Led by physicians, scientists and epidemiologists, the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/">US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)</a> is one of the most reliable sources of knowledge during disease outbreaks. But now, with the world in desperate need of authoritative information, one of the foremost agencies for fighting infectious disease has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-cdc-has-gone-silent-its-voice-must-be-restored/2020/05/21/d17fdd40-9ab4-11ea-a282-386f56d579e6_story.html">gone conspicuously silent</a>.</p>
<p>For the first time since 1946, when the CDC came to life in a cramped Atlanta office to fight malaria, the agency is not at the front line of a public health emergency. </p>
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<p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/americans-still-trust-doctors-and-scientists-during-a-public-health-crisis-132938">Americans still trust doctors and scientists during a public health crisis</a>
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<p>On April 22, CDC director Robert Redfield <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmLIGwqkqTw">stood at the White House briefing room lectern</a> and conceded that the coronavirus pandemic had “overwhelmed” the United States. Following Redfield at the podium, President Donald Trump said the CDC director had been “totally misquoted” in his warning that COVID-19 would continue to pose serious difficulties as the US moved into its winter ‘flu season in late 2020.</p>
<p>Invited to clarify, Redfield confirmed he had been quoted correctly in giving his opinion that there were potentially “difficult and complicated” times ahead. </p>
<p>Trump tried a different tack. “You may not even have corona coming back,” the president said, once again contradicting the career virologist. “Just so you understand.”</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">CDC director Robert Redfield and President Donald Trump offer contrasting interpretations at an April 22 White House briefing.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The exchange was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/04/22/trumps-strange-quibble-with-his-cdc-directors-quote-reinforces-danger-his-coronavirus-alternate-reality/">interpreted by some pundits</a> as confirmation that the CDC’s venerated expertise had been sidelined as the coronavirus continued to ravage the US. </p>
<p>In the latest development, the New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/us/politics/trump-cdc-coronavirus.html">reported this week</a> the CDC has even been bypassed in its data collection, with the Trump administration ordering hospitals to send COVID-19 data directly to the White House.</p>
<h2>Diminished role</h2>
<p>When facing previous public health emergencies the CDC was a hive of activity, holding regular press briefings and developing guidance that was followed by governments around the world. But during the greatest public health emergency in a century, it appears the CDC has been almost entirely erased by the White House as the public face of the COVID-19 pandemic response.</p>
<p>This diminished role is obvious to former leaders of the CDC, who say their scientific advice has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/07/14/cdc-directors-trump-politics/">never before been politicised to this extent</a>.</p>
<p>As the COVID-19 crisis was unfolding, several CDC officials issued warnings, only to promptly disappear from public view. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/a0225-cdc-telebriefing-covid-19.html">predicted on February 25</a> that the virus was not contained and would grow into a pandemic.</p>
<p>The stock market <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/25/trump-is-reportedly-furious-with-the-plunging-stock-market-due-to-coronavirus-fears.html">plunged</a> and Messonnier was removed from future White House press briefings. Between March 9 and June 12 there was no CDC presence at White House press briefings on COVID-19.</p>
<p>The CDC has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/contamination-at-cdc-lab-delayed-rollout-of-coronavirus-tests/2020/04/18/fd7d3824-7139-11ea-aa80-c2470c6b2034_story.html">erred during the pandemic</a>, most significantly in its initial efforts to develop a test for COVID-19. The testing kits proved to be faulty – a problem compounded by sluggish efforts to rectify the situation – and then by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/18/us/coronavirus-live-news.html">severe delays</a> in distributing enough tests to the public.</p>
<p>But many public health specialists are nevertheless baffled by the CDC’s low profile as the pandemic continues to sweep the globe.</p>
<p>“They have been sidelined,” <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/14/where-is-the-cdc-trump-covid-19-pandemic">said Howard Koh</a>, former US assistant secretary for health. “We need their scientific leadership right now.”</p>
<h2>What does it mean for the world?</h2>
<p>The CDC being bypassed in the collection of COVID-19 data is another body blow to the agency’s standing. </p>
<p>Hospitals have instead been <a href="https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/covid-19-faqs-hospitals-hospital-laboratory-acute-care-facility-data-reporting.pdf">ordered</a> to send all COVID-19 patient information to a central database in Washington DC.</p>
<p>This will have a range of likely knock-on effects. For starters, the new database will not be available to the public, prompting inevitable questions over the accuracy and transparency of data which will now be interpreted and shared by the White House.</p>
<p>The Department of Health and Human Services, which issued the new order, <a href="https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/covid-19-faqs-hospitals-hospital-laboratory-acute-care-facility-data-reporting.pdf">says</a> the change will help the White House’s coronavirus task force allocate resources. <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/health-experts-fear-covid-data-will-hidden-public-after-trump-orders-hospitals-bypass-cdc-1517968">But epidemiologists and public health experts around the world</a> fear the new system will make it harder for people outside the White House to track the pandemic or access information.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/even-during-the-coronavirus-pandemic-the-role-of-public-health-workers-is-unrecognized-137144">Even during the coronavirus pandemic, the role of public health workers is unrecognized</a>
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<p>This affects all nations, because one of the CDC’s roles is to provide sound, independent public health guidance on issues such as infectious diseases, healthy living, travel health, emergency and disaster preparedness, and drug efficacy. Other jurisdictions can then adapt this information to their local context — expertise that has become even more essential during a pandemic, when uncertainty is the norm. </p>
<p>It is difficult to recall a previous public health emergency when political pressure led to a change in the interpretation of scientific evidence. </p>
<h2>What happens next?</h2>
<p>Despite the inevitable challenges that come with tackling a pandemic in real time, the CDC remains the best-positioned agency – not just in the US but the entire world – to help us manage this crisis as safely as possible.</p>
<p>In the absence of US leadership, nations should start thinking about developing their own national centres for disease control. In Australia’s case, these discussions have been <a href="http://medicalrepublic.com.au/australia-needs-cdc-now/9639">ongoing since the 1990s</a>, stymied by cost and lack of political will. </p>
<p>COVID-19, and the current sidelining of the CDC, may be the impetus needed to finally dust off those plans and make them a reality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/142814/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Erin Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is arguably the world’s best-placed agency to fight COVID-19. But it’s been cut out of the loop, and pandemic data will now go straight to the White House.
Erin Smith, Associate Professor in Disaster and Emergency Response, School of Medical and Health Sciences, Edith Cowan University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/142266
2020-07-09T02:36:57Z
2020-07-09T02:36:57Z
Lives at ‘grave risk’: Trump’s withdrawal from the WHO is a hit to global health
<p>This week US President Donald Trump made good on his threat to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organisation (WHO) by sending a <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/07/politics/us-withdrawing-world-health-organization/index.html">formal letter of withdrawal</a> to the UN Secretary-General. </p>
<p>In so doing, the president has initiated the Congressionally-mandated 12-month countdown to withdrawal that will take effect in July 2021. That is, unless it is over-turned, as presumptive Democratic nominee <a href="https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1280603719831359489">Joe Biden has immediately pledged to do</a> if elected.</p>
<p>But if the United States’ exit goes ahead, it will be a hit to global health cooperation and place lives at risk in the US and beyond.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1280603719831359489"}"></div></p>
<p>Questions persist about the president’s legal authority to <a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/LSB/LSB10489">unilaterally withdraw</a> the United States from the WHO. But under the conditions imposed by the <a href="http://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes-at-large/80th-congress/session-2/c80s2ch469.pdf">US Congress in 1948</a>, the president must first ensure payment of any outstanding dues before the withdrawal can take effect.</p>
<p>According to some estimates, the US government currently owes <a href="https://www.rollcall.com/2020/06/10/congress-weighs-next-steps-on-who-relationship/">US$58 million to the WHO</a> in unpaid dues, as well as a further <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article243874762.html">$110 million</a> to the Pan-American Health Organisation, the branch of the WHO covering North and South America. </p>
<h2>The withdrawal threatens US lives</h2>
<p>According to the American Medical Association, American lives will be placed at “<a href="https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/ama-statements/statement-withdrawal-us-world-health-organization">grave risk</a>” if Trump’s withdrawal from the WHO is not reversed. Digging a little deeper, it’s not hard to see why. </p>
<p>Twice a year, for example, the WHO <a href="https://www.who.int/influenza/gisrs_laboratory/en/">Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System</a> (GISRS) provides WHO member states with vital information on the dominant influenza strains circulating around the world. This data is then used to develop life-saving influenza vaccines. If enacted, the United States’ withdrawal will mean it’s officially excluded from this global network, placing the country at a distinct disadvantage ahead of every flu season. </p>
<p>The implications could be profound, given that in 2018-2019, <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html">34,200 Americans died of seasonal influenza-related illness</a> despite having access to vaccines developed using GISRS data.</p>
<p>Likewise, important international discussions about <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/international/506291-trump-who-withdrawal-could-boomerang-on-us">vaccine research and development</a> on diseases that threaten American lives will likely now occur without US scientists being involved. International guidelines on best medical practice will continue to be produced by the WHO but without US input.</p>
<p>The US has benefited for decades from obtaining advance warning about disease outbreaks in other parts of the world through the <a href="https://www.who.int/ihr/alert_and_response/en/">WHO’s Event Information System</a>, but this will no longer be possible. The US would be effectively cut off from such alerts, forced to rely on foreign media or public WHO announcements.</p>
<p>Aside from the notable health consequences, withdrawing from the WHO will mean the country no longer has a seat at the negotiating table on what future reforms are needed to make the WHO a more effective global health agency. This is something many of Trump’s advisers and supporters had <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/10/trump-aides-debate-demands-who-179291">wanted to see happen</a>, but the president’s actions will relegate the United States to the sidelines.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-world-agreed-to-a-coronavirus-inquiry-just-when-and-how-though-are-still-in-dispute-138868">The world agreed to a coronavirus inquiry. Just when and how, though, are still in dispute</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The future of global public health is at stake</h2>
<p>The United States has traditionally remained one of the most generous contributors to WHO-led global health initiatives, providing almost <a href="https://time.com/5847505/trump-withdrawl-who/">twice as much as most other donors</a>. Because of US withdrawal, the future viability of polio eradication, tuberculosis control, and access to HIV/AIDS treatment initiatives, just to name a few, <a href="https://time.com/5847505/trump-withdrawl-who/">are now all at risk</a>.</p>
<p>US withdrawal is likely to have a significant impact on public health in the region. The Pan-American Health Organisation (PAHO) is <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(20)31489-6.pdf">on the verge of insolvency</a> as a result of unpaid dues. The US is currently the primary debtor, owing 67% of the unpaid fees. </p>
<p>Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, PAHO provided vital technical assistance and expertise unavailable throughout many Latin American countries. In the event PAHO is allowed to go bankrupt, the impact on regional health programs such as <a href="https://www.paho.org/hq/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=15043:joint-project-seeks-to-improve-the-health-of-indigenous-women-and-children-in-the-south-american-chaco&Itemid=135&lang=en">maternal and child health</a>, not to mention the pandemic response, will likely contribute to considerable loss of life. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1280576309081538568"}"></div></p>
<p>For the World Health Organisation, the departure of the United States will be a significant blow. For many years the level and extent of technical cooperation between the global health agency and the US Government has contributed to making the world safer and healthier. Such collaboration is now under threat. </p>
<p>As with the EU’s approach to negotiations on the United Kingdom’s “Brexit”, the WHO’s remaining member states now have to make an example of the United States, ensuring that it is excluded from multiple WHO initiatives. If they do not, it risks more countries threatening to withdraw. The future of global public health is at stake, and the actions of one country cannot be allowed to undermine decades of multilateral efforts to improve the health and well-being of all peoples of the world.</p>
<p>In the event the United States does withdraw from the WHO it will sit in a unique category: that of a global health pariah. </p>
<p>America First is increasingly looking like the new reality will be America Alone.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-next-once-a-century-pandemic-is-coming-sooner-than-you-think-but-covid-19-can-help-us-get-ready-139976">The next once-a-century pandemic is coming sooner than you think – but COVID-19 can help us get ready</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article is supported by the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/partners/judith-neilson-institute">Judith Neilson Institute for Journalism and Ideas</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/142266/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Kamradt-Scott is a Non-Resident Fellow at the United States Studies Centre and the Centre for International Security Studies at the University of Sydney. He is a director of the Global Health Security Network, and co-convenor of the global health security conferences. Adam has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council and the Canadian Institute for Health Research.</span></em></p>
The actions of one country cannot be allowed to undermine decades of multilateral efforts to improve the health and well-being of all peoples of the world.
Adam Kamradt-Scott, Associate professor, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/136620
2020-04-20T14:05:07Z
2020-04-20T14:05:07Z
Defunding the WHO was a calculated decision, not an impromptu tweet
<p>It wouldn’t make much sense to sack the fire service during a forest fire, yet that’s effectively what US President Donald Trump has done by <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/693f49e8-b8a9-4ed3-9d4a-cdfb591fefce">suspending funding to the World Health Organization (WHO)</a> in the middle of a pandemic. The WHO is by no means perfect, but undermining the world’s only global public health agency does not serve US interests.</p>
<p>The US is the biggest contributor to the 194-member WHO, providing around <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-52289056">US$400 million</a> (£322 million) annually, which makes up about a fifth of the budget. The organisation has been asked to do more with less for decades and is already in a fairly <a href="https://twitter.com/laurie_garrett/status/1250454778011934720?s=12">perilous</a> financial situation. </p>
<p>Although the move is characteristically shortsighted, this time Trump’s decision was premeditated. On April 10, he <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-10/trump-suggests-he-may-hold-500-million-meant-for-who">hinted</a> that US funding would be withdrawn, adding: “We’re looking at it very, very closely … we’ll have a lot to say about it.”</p>
<p>The following week he confirmed the suspension of funding and blamed the WHO for <a href="https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1250194670031974400?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1250194670031974400&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2FWhiteHouse%2Fstatus%2F1250194670031974400">“severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of coronavirus”</a>. He argued that the organisation had been too slow to investigate the outbreak and had been complicit in China’s suppression and misreporting of cases.</p>
<p>Was he correct? Well, there is evidence that local officials attempted to <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-51453848">cover up</a> the early outbreak, and the WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has stood by his endorsement of China’s heavy-handed tactics. As with decisions to honour Turkey’s <a href="http://www.euro.who.int/en/countries/turkey/news/news/2018/10/ministry-of-health-of-turkey-receives-award-for-ncd-prevention-and-control">president, Recep Erdogan</a>, and former Zimbabwean ruler <a href="https://theconversation.com/robert-mugabe-as-who-goodwill-ambassador-what-went-wrong-86244">Robert Mugabe</a>, Tedros’ stance has been <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-world-health-organization-draws-flak-for-coronavirus-response-11581525207">roundly criticised</a>. In his defence, it does seem to stem from a genuine desire to win engagement in order to deliver his mandate of achieving <a href="https://www.who.int/dg/priorities/health-for-all/en/">health for all</a>. </p>
<p>Interestingly, President Trump was one of the few world leaders who seemed to agree that China was doing a good job, praising the government’s <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1220818115354923009?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1220818115354923009&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fworld-us-canada-52294623">“hard work and transparency”</a> in January and commending Xi Jinping’s handling of the mounting pandemic in a <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/15/trump-china-coronavirus-188736">string of further comments</a> during February. </p>
<p>Trump had two other aims in mind when he pulled the rug from under the WHO’s feet. In the short term, most pundits agree that Trump’s main motivation for cutting WHO funding was to deflect blame from his own bungled handling of COVID-19 on home soil. His <a href="https://www.axios.com/trump-coronavirus-approval-rating-442a186f-0b10-467b-afb0-8ec408d8e349.html">approval ratings</a> are at an all-time low and the US now has <a href="https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html">more cases</a> of coronavirus than any other country. </p>
<p>In the longer term, withdrawing from multilateral partnerships aligns with Trump’s zero-sum worldview. As with <a href="https://money.cnn.com/2017/01/24/news/donald-trump-nato-spending/">Nato</a>, the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/08/business/trump-trade-war-wto.html">World Trade Organization</a> and virtually every other international body, Trump feels that the US is getting a bad deal from its WHO contribution. And he bristles at the thought of foreign nations exploiting American generosity. </p>
<p>Former presidents have worked to develop, maintain and promote an Anglophone, dollar-backed international world order built on American values of capitalism, liberalism, democracy, integration and the transparent rule of law. This has fostered an <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/we-enjoy-the-most-peaceful-period-on-earth-ever_b_57ab4b34e4b08c46f0e47130?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAJ-nITOdRIWCMCTezN_XkHM7PHCk_fAkCeefxRvpEtdflAqiirefCmFl4zyjm1wVgTBUaNXECdkcgcqvrksLt19ROYH2475HHa8rTookRgtGzIcphwfbCegSZsja8g1a3ytqo22NrXYfkXelBwK3WLzQSNZtD4SXXdsPRZ_vB0LE">unprecedented era</a> of peace, stability, international cooperation and integration of markets (as well as massive socioeconomic inequality) – projecting American soft power and allowing national firms to enter formerly closed markets. </p>
<p>In Trump’s view, his predecessors were chumps who allowed other countries to abuse American generosity while flouting the rules: from Nato allies shirking their responsibilities to China’s currency manipulation, intellectual property theft and disproportionate access to the WHO.</p>
<p>Yet defunding the WHO is a microcosmic act that illustrates the folly of Trump’s “America first” approach. The sums involved are peanuts to the administration – less than it costs to run a large hospital. Yet the US gets enormous bang for its buck. Its citizens are over-represented among WHO leadership and technical staff, and as a member state, it has never been afraid to use its clout to veto documents and clauses that threaten its commercial interests. The WHO’s irreplaceable work in sharing information and promoting science-based practice also benefits American citizens during the pandemic. </p>
<h2>Eastward shift in power</h2>
<p>Withdrawing from the international stage also leaves a superpower-sized leadership hole that only China can fill. If Trump wants the WHO to be more effective and less China-centric, then surely the remedy is more US engagement, not less.</p>
<p>Besides expediting the eastward shift of power, the bigger picture is that continued disengagement from lopsided international partnerships will hurt his base more than anyone else. It will lead to higher export tariffs, increasingly expensive imports, higher costs of living – and later on, geopolitical instability and weakened alliances. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-52291654">World leaders lined up</a> to condemn Trump’s assault on multilateralism, sparking a rare moment of coordination in a pandemic hitherto marked by international fragmentation. Selfish, reckless or misguidedly patriotic – whatever your take on Trump’s castigation, there is no denying that it couldn’t come at a worse time for the fragile states depending on the WHO to guide them through this raging inferno. It seems this move will achieve the exact opposite of everything Trump has intended: a worse deal for ordinary US citizens, a weaker America and an ever more China-centric global order.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/136620/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr Luke Allen is a health policy researcher at the University of Oxford. He regularly performs independent consultancy work for the World Health Organisation and has also consulted for the US government as part of a G7 contract. </span></em></p>
Trump pulling US funding from WHO served to deflect blame from his own bungled handling of coronavirus.
Luke Allen, Researcher, Global Health Policy, University of Oxford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/132690
2020-03-04T15:22:47Z
2020-03-04T15:22:47Z
Slavery: new digital tools show how important slave trade was to Liverpool’s development
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318575/original/file-20200304-66112-12r8go.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1154%2C666&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Digital reconstruction of French slaver L'Aurore.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">www.slavevoyages.org/</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Liverpool council’s decision in January 2020 to <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-51035176">contextualise streets</a> named after slave traders shed important light on the town’s infamous history as one of the world’s largest slave trading ports. Between 1696 and 1807 – when Britain abolished its slave trade – Liverpool merchants <a href="https://slavevoyages.org/voyages/CULM824v">forcibly transported</a> a phenomenal 1.3 million enslaved Africans across the Atlantic. Of these men, women, and children, 180,000 perished on the deadly Middle Passage – the crossing from Africa to the Americas.</p>
<p>As editors of <a href="https://www.slavevoyages.org/">a database of 36,000 slave trading voyages</a>, including 5,000 that set out from Liverpool, we are keenly aware of the need to depict the enormous scale of the slave trade – but to do so without losing sight of its enslaved Africans. To that end, we recently created two digital tools that show why the slave trade grew so large, enriching merchants in towns like Liverpool, and increasing the miseries that enslaved people endured on the Middle Passage.</p>
<p>The sheer scale of the transatlantic slave trade can be overwhelming. It began in 1520, when the Spanish first brought captives to the Caribbean direct from Africa, and only ended 350 years later when at least 40,000 ships sailing under the colours of almost every European and American power had engaged in the trade. These ships forcibly embarked 12.5 million enslaved people at African ports stretched across 3,000 miles of coastline, and disembarked the 10.7 million survivors in the even more geographically expansive American colonies. </p>
<p>Viewed across this vast expanse of space and time, the transatlantic trade was the largest maritime forced migration in history. <a href="https://slavevoyages.org/voyage/database#timelapse">Our new timelapse</a> captures the size and complexity of the slave trade in a single video from 1515 to 1866. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318634/original/file-20200304-66084-1kgzh5e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318634/original/file-20200304-66084-1kgzh5e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318634/original/file-20200304-66084-1kgzh5e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318634/original/file-20200304-66084-1kgzh5e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318634/original/file-20200304-66084-1kgzh5e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=284&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318634/original/file-20200304-66084-1kgzh5e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318634/original/file-20200304-66084-1kgzh5e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318634/original/file-20200304-66084-1kgzh5e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The timelapse feature shows the huge volume of the slave trade, which peaked in the late 18th century. In 1790 alone, 112,000 humans were trafficked between Africa and the Americas.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Slave Voyages</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Viewing the timelapse in its entirety reveals just how quickly the slave trade grew in the 17th and 18th centuries. A relatively small trade that had previously been the preserve of the Spanish and Portuguese exploded after 1650 as British, Dutch, French and Danish merchants entered the business. The sheer number of vessels crossing the Atlantic annually in the 18th century is particularly staggering – in the decades before 1807, some years saw over 100,000 people a year carried off from Africa.</p>
<p>Focusing on the 5,000 Liverpool voyages shows how that town helped drive the slave trade’s phenomenal growth. The first slave ship left Liverpool in 1696, but the business exploded only after 1740, when the town’s merchants aggressively searched the African coast for new slaving markets. The number of slave ships leaving Liverpool climbed annually from 1696, interrupted only by periodic wars. By the end of the 18th century, Liverpool accounted for 46% of the entire transatlantic slave trade. </p>
<h2>Recreating the slave ship</h2>
<p>Visually stunning though it is, the timelapse does little to illuminate the experiences of enslaved Africans on the Atlantic crossing. For centuries, the diagram of the Liverpool slave ship, Brooks, which shows 470 Africans trapped in the ship on its 1787 voyage to Jamaica, has represented that experience.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318386/original/file-20200303-66084-k9osx5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318386/original/file-20200303-66084-k9osx5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318386/original/file-20200303-66084-k9osx5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=179&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318386/original/file-20200303-66084-k9osx5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=179&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318386/original/file-20200303-66084-k9osx5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=179&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318386/original/file-20200303-66084-k9osx5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=225&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318386/original/file-20200303-66084-k9osx5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=225&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318386/original/file-20200303-66084-k9osx5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=225&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Brooks diagram, a deeply flawed illustration of the Middle Passage.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sotheby's</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But, as we <a href="https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/jinh_a_01337">recently argued</a>, the image is deeply flawed because it fails to show the actual number of people the Brooks carried or the conditions that they endured on the Middle Passage. To better capture the African experience of the slave trade, we created a <a href="https://slavevoyages.org/voyage/ship#slave-">3D model of a French slave ship</a>, L’Aurore – the only slaver for which detailed plans survive.</p>
<p>Although a French vessel, our model accurately depicts the features that would be found on Liverpool vessels: walls built to separate men and women, the cramped conditions in which Africans would have been trapped below deck at night, and the stultifying regime that they endured above deck during the day. Enslaved people would experience these conditions for the typically ten-week Atlantic crossing, and for the several months that the ship could be anchored off the African coast.</p>
<h2>Fighting the slave trade</h2>
<p>Our video also helps to answer a crucial question about the slave trade: why the vast majority of ships completed their voyages without their enslaved prisoners overthrowing their captors. </p>
<p>Africans were certainly not passive victims of the slave trade. Many refused food, tried to throw themselves overboard, or sought to blow up the vessel, thereby choosing death over slavery. Enslaved people also launched concerted rebellions whenever they had the chance, in the hopes that they could seize the ship and regain their freedom.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318392/original/file-20200303-66074-1jrgt0z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318392/original/file-20200303-66074-1jrgt0z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318392/original/file-20200303-66074-1jrgt0z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318392/original/file-20200303-66074-1jrgt0z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318392/original/file-20200303-66074-1jrgt0z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318392/original/file-20200303-66074-1jrgt0z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318392/original/file-20200303-66074-1jrgt0z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The barricado on the L'Aurore’s main deck, a formidable barrier that often thwarted slave resistance.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The 3D video shows why these rebellions almost always ended in failure. The security features built into ships such as L'Aurore were highly effective at halting insurrections. Enslaved men were chained, preventing them from reaching the crew behind the <em>barricado</em>, a nine-foot wooden wall across the main deck. Crewmen atop this wall could fire upon rebellious captives with swivel guns, muskets and cannon. Escaping over the sides was also difficult, because of the netting that crewmen strung up around the vessel. </p>
<p>These measures were so effective that none of the 1.3 million enslaved people embarked on Liverpool vessels were able to take over the ship, run it ashore and return to their homes. The impossible odds are best illustrated by examining the Intra-American slave trade database on slave voyages that was recently made available. The most successful rebellions occurred on ships carrying slaves from one part of the Americas to another. These generally had less elaborate defensive measures. Captives on the <a href="https://www.slavevoyages.org/voyages/JaTA4fWN">Amistad, the Creole and the San Juan Nepomuceno</a> took over the vessels and achieved a freedom that was never possible for those on Liverpool’s transatlantic ventures.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318675/original/file-20200304-66064-1t26xz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318675/original/file-20200304-66064-1t26xz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=257&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318675/original/file-20200304-66064-1t26xz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=257&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318675/original/file-20200304-66064-1t26xz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=257&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318675/original/file-20200304-66064-1t26xz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=323&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318675/original/file-20200304-66064-1t26xz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=323&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318675/original/file-20200304-66064-1t26xz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=323&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Liverpool’s Earle Street, which is named after a family that enslaved 50,000 Africans.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Google 2020</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The money that flowed back into Liverpool from the sale of 1.1 million men, women and children helped to transform the town into a booming metropolis by the end of the 18th century. Slaving merchants used their profits to lay out new streets, which they often named after themselves. Tarleton Street, Earle Street, Parr Street and Cunliffe Street – all streets that one can walk today – bear the names of merchants that collectively enslaved 134,000 Africans. Through the Liverpool council’s recent decision, they might soon become memorials to hundreds of thousands of people who valiantly, but unsuccessfully, fought for their freedom.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/132690/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicholas Radburn has received funding from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation & the Doris G. Quinn Foundation</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Eltis receives funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. </span></em></p>
If you want to know the extent of the slave trade from Liverpool, use the tools in this article.
Nicholas Radburn, Lecturer in Atlantic World History, 1500-1800, Lancaster University
David Eltis, Professor Emeritus of History, Emory University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/123408
2019-10-03T11:40:55Z
2019-10-03T11:40:55Z
3 questions about vodka, answered
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/295311/original/file-20191002-49369-1xui73u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Actor Roger Moore poses with a martini after learning he would play the British secret agent James Bond.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-International-News-England-Uni-/ea656b42a2e5da11af9f0014c2589dfb/3/0">AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Towards the end of Ian Fleming’s spy novel “Dr. No,” James Bond orders a vodka dry martini – “Shaken and not stirred please.” </p>
<p>The novel was published in 1958, at the height of the Cold War. But four decades before the Berlin Wall would crumble, vodka had already bridged the East-West divide. </p>
<p>Between 1950 and 1975, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1976/04/18/archives/vodka-is-no1.html">vodka went from being a statistical blip to America’s best selling spirit</a>. In addition to the martini, it’s become the base spirit in popular cocktails like the Cosmopolitan, the Moscow Mule and the <a href="https://www.maxim.com/entertainment/energy-drinks-with-alcohol-risky-2017-3">Vodka Red Bull</a>. </p>
<p>With National Vodka Day taking place on Oct. 4, here are the answers to a few questions I sometimes hear in my classes on food and beverage management. </p>
<h2>1. What’s vodka made from?</h2>
<p>You might think that all vodka is distilled from potatoes, but only a handful of today’s brands use the root vegetable.</p>
<p>Russia and Poland each claim to the be the birthplace of vodka, which is a Slavonic diminutive term meaning “little water.” There are mentions of vodka in Polish records <a href="http://www.drinkingcup.net/1534-vodkas-earliest-reference/">as early as 1500</a>, but the drink was probably around for at least 300 years prior – maybe even longer. </p>
<p>Potatoes, however, weren’t brought from South America to Europe <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00029633">until the 1570s</a>. And before 1700, <a href="http://www.ruralhistory2013.org/papers/11.3.4._Miodunka.pdf">it’s unlikely that they were grown in quantities large enough</a> in Poland or Russia to sustain any sort of commercial enterprise. </p>
<p>Instead, vodka was originally a grain distillate, with rye as the primary constituent. This makes sense: Rye grows better than other grains <a href="http://go-poland.pl/climate">in the cool, damp climates</a> of northern Eurasia. </p>
<p>While some vodka is made from potatoes, <a href="https://www.livescience.com/41298-what-is-vodka.html">most vodkas</a> are made from whatever grain the distiller prefers to use, with sorghum, rye, wheat and corn leading the pack. Grapes, plums and sugar cane are even used by some brands. </p>
<h2>2. Why is some vodka so expensive?</h2>
<p>A bottle of Crystal Head vodka <a href="https://www.totalwine.com/spirits/vodka/vodka/crystal-head-vodka/p/105693750">retails for around US$50</a>, while a bottle of Romanoff <a href="https://www.wine-searcher.com/find/romanoff+vodka+usa">goes for roughly $10</a>. </p>
<p>But the cheapest vodka should taste just like the most expensive one – at least in theory. <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/27/5.22">According to the U.S. Federal Standard of Identity</a>, in order for a spirit to be marketed as “vodka,” “it must be odorless, colorless and tasteless.” </p>
<p>Every vodka does have its own <a href="http://downloads.brewhaus.com/instruction-pages/wheat-vodka-recipe.pdf">mashbill</a>, which is the word for its own recipe. What’s in the mashbill can create minor differences in the flavor of finished vodka.</p>
<p>Whether a grain or fruit is used to make the vodka, each has a number of flavoring ingredients known as “<a href="http://www.dramdevotees.com/what-are-congeners/">congeners</a>” that give the final product its unique taste. </p>
<p>The primary flavor, however, is ethanol, which has a taste that evokes the smell of rubbing alcohol. Many would be hard-pressed to tell the difference between different brands of vodka in a blindfold test.</p>
<p>In fact, a taste test conducted for The New York Times by journalist Eric Asimov and a group of vodka experts concluded that America’s old favorite, Smirnoff vodka, retailing at under $15 a bottle, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/26/dining/a-humble-old-label-ices-its-rivals.html">beat out all the fancy high-priced brands for flavor and value</a>.</p>
<p>There are two real reasons that some vodkas cost so much more than others. First, some brands spend a small fortune on marketing and celebrity endorsements – think <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katienotopoulos/ciroc-vodka-ftc-instagram-influencers-diddy">Ciroc</a> and its $100 million endorsement deal with Sean “Diddy” Combs. </p>
<p>Other brands, like Grey Goose or Hangar One, simply sell their vodka at a high price point to make their brand seem luxurious and exclusive. </p>
<h2>3. Is there really vodka in that dish of pasta?</h2>
<p>Most American Italian restaurants feature “penne alla vodka” on the menu. There is, in fact, actual vodka in the sauce: Most recipes use around a quarter of a cup, though Food Network star Ree Drummond <a href="https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ree-drummond/penne-alla-vodka-recipe-2014981">uses a whole cup in her version</a>. </p>
<p>While vodka was probably first added to a creamy pasta sauce for promotional or novelty purposes, <a href="https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/18566/why-add-a-shot-of-vodka-to-a-cream-sauce">some cooks claim</a> that the vodka helps stabilize the cream and tomato mixture and that the alcohol helps extract flavors from the tomatoes and herbs. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/295312/original/file-20191002-49346-otnona.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/295312/original/file-20191002-49346-otnona.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295312/original/file-20191002-49346-otnona.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295312/original/file-20191002-49346-otnona.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295312/original/file-20191002-49346-otnona.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295312/original/file-20191002-49346-otnona.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295312/original/file-20191002-49346-otnona.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Penne alla vodka features a small amount of vodka, though Ree Drummond’s version might make you a little tipsy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/penne-alla-vodka-classic-italian-dinner-1224005827?src=Ua3z8ywcma_S4Uv6K_WMcA-1-0">Bokey/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Vodka can be used in other courses as well. <a href="https://food52.com/recipes/23145-vodka-watermelon-sorbet">A vodka-watermelon sorbet</a> is an excellent <a href="https://www.thedailymeal.com/brief-history-intermezzo-and-11-favorites">intermezzo</a>, or palate cleanser, while the authoritative Cook’s Illustrated <a href="https://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-review-vodka-pie-crust-68851">recommends</a> using some vodka when making pie crust, since it adds moisture without activating as much gluten, keeping the pie crust tender and flaky.</p>
<p>Whatever the logic, a dish with a dash of vodka – accompanied by a vodka dry martini, of course – might be the best way to celebrate National Vodka Day. </p>
<p>As they say in Russia when toasting with vodka, “<a href="https://www.rbth.com/blogs/2013/12/26/the_basics_of_the_best_russian_drinking_toasts_32961.html">vashe zdorovie</a>” – “to your health!”</p>
<p>[ <em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/123408/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeffrey Miller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
To celebrate National Vodka Day, a food historian debunks myths and highlights unknown facts about one of America’s favorite liquors.
Jeffrey Miller, Associate Professor, Hospitality Management, Colorado State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/109819
2019-03-01T13:37:09Z
2019-03-01T13:37:09Z
Climate change: narrate a history beyond the ‘triumph of humanity’ to find imaginative solutions
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260206/original/file-20190221-195870-tsck6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C165%2C4815%2C2457&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'American Progress' by John Gast.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=373152">Wikipedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>One reason why people find it difficult to think about climate change and the future may be their understanding of human history. The present day is believed to be the product of centuries of development. These developments have led to a globalised world of complex states, in which daily life for most people is highly urbanised, consumerist and competitive.</p>
<p>By this account, humanity has triumphed over the dangers and uncertainties of the natural world, and this triumph will continue to unfold in the future. Anything else would seem to be going “backwards”, in a world where “backwardness” is pitied or despised.</p>
<p>But it is now clear that we haven’t triumphed. The future has become very uncertain and our way of thinking needs to change. Could new historical narratives help? How might they look?</p>
<h2>Progress towards oblivion</h2>
<p>The current view of the past, present and future as a trajectory of progress is constantly reiterated by politicians and taught to children in schools. It does not offer many alternatives to the ideas and practices driving climate change and ecological breakdown. </p>
<p>There is a reassuring promise in this narrative that things naturally improve with time, requiring no commitment from ordinary people. Progress is delivered through steady work by governments and scientists, with moments of transformation by activists or visionaries. The direction of history itself is towards the general good. </p>
<p>It is very hard, then, for anyone thinking in this framework to imagine a future in which societies adapt to the challenges of climate change. This is especially the case where adaptions might have to take the form of significantly reduced consumption, unfamiliar forms of social organisation, and harder work to produce food or manage local environments. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261667/original/file-20190301-110146-vzsskt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261667/original/file-20190301-110146-vzsskt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261667/original/file-20190301-110146-vzsskt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261667/original/file-20190301-110146-vzsskt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261667/original/file-20190301-110146-vzsskt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261667/original/file-20190301-110146-vzsskt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261667/original/file-20190301-110146-vzsskt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ecologically benign societies are difficult to imagine when all previous human history is told as a story of domination and consumption.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/3d-illustration-futuristic-green-city-arched-672057994">3000AD/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These ideas about the future look very different from the technologically advanced and globalised tomorrow that the progress narrative seemed to promise. At present, ideas in popular culture about the impact of climate change are often apocalyptic and dystopian. Ideas about mitigating climate change seem limited to fantasies of last-minute salvation by scientific genius or alien intervention.</p>
<p>In this respect, climate change stands in contrast to other issues that are more rooted in a cultural understanding of history. Arguments around Britain’s departure from the European Union, for example, matter to people across the political spectrum because they’re integrated with ideas about the nation’s past trajectory, as well as the immediate concerns of people and communities. </p>
<p>Responding to climate change, meanwhile, demands a collective rupture from several centuries of development within a timescale of decades. This poses both a challenge and an opportunity to the study of history.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/european-colonisation-of-the-americas-killed-10-of-world-population-and-caused-global-cooling-110549">European colonisation of the Americas killed 10% of world population and caused global cooling</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Fields such as climate, environmental or global history help to think about the past in planetary rather than national terms. Some of that questions the western interpretation of history and the exploitation of people and nature which punctuates it.</p>
<p>Recovering the stories of people marginalised from these narratives helps people think about life in a different light. Many indigenous peoples, for example, have ideas about the past that situate humans within complex ecosystems.</p>
<p>Environmental historians also ask how past societies interacted with their surroundings and consider how and why more ecologically stable ways of living were destroyed through colonisation by powerful, expanding empires.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261672/original/file-20190301-110150-tx5xy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261672/original/file-20190301-110150-tx5xy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261672/original/file-20190301-110150-tx5xy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261672/original/file-20190301-110150-tx5xy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261672/original/file-20190301-110150-tx5xy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261672/original/file-20190301-110150-tx5xy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261672/original/file-20190301-110150-tx5xy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Water-tight aboriginal craft for collecting seeds, fruit and liquids, made from tightly woven grass in Northern Australia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Indigenous_Australians#/media/File:Aboriginal_craft_made_from_weaving_grass.jpg">Fir0002/Wikipedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Bruce Pascoe’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21401526-dark-emu">Dark Emu</a> looks at the sustainable land management techniques of Australia’s First Peoples, which were ignored by British settlers. He suggests <a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-dark-emu-and-the-blindness-of-australian-agriculture-97444">a way forward</a> for Australian agriculture based on those practices.</p>
<p>Their subject also explores how climatic and environmental change affected <a href="http://ocp.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/glodech/PDFS/McCormickEtAl2013.pdf">earlier civilisations</a>. The <a href="https://aeon.co/ideas/how-climate-change-and-disease-helped-the-fall-of-rome">fall of Rome</a>, for example, fits into a global shift in climate conditions around 500 C.E. that also resulted in <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=O9TSAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA354&lpg=PA354&dq=climate+moche+nasca+teotihuacan&source=bl&ots=DmfHX0nQ3-&sig=ACfU3U22vJgQdN-1KJ2CTjiEU0CNDD8UcQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiRwfHZ9N7gAhXC8eAKHdV2Cx4Q6AEwDnoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=climate%20moche%20nasca%20teotihuacan&f=false">the “fall” of complex states</a> in China, India, Mesoamerica, Peru, and Mexico. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/47594/1/574888918.pdf">Population health</a> and <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ZhYmAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA62&dq=hoffmann+environmental+rural+settlement&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjt-smT997gAhWSHxQKHeppCekQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=hoffmann%20environmental%20rural%20settlement&f=false">biodiversity</a> improved significantly in the following period, popularly known as the “Dark Ages”. So were powerful states always a good thing?</p>
<h2>The tangle of life</h2>
<p>The destruction of indigenous populations by Europeans from 1500 onwards may have caused <a href="https://theconversation.com/european-colonisation-of-the-americas-killed-10-of-world-population-and-caused-global-cooling-110549">huge environmental changes on the American continent</a>. As 56 million lives were extinguished, the regrowth of forests on abandoned farms may have absorbed enough atmospheric carbon to cool the global climate in the Little Ice Age.</p>
<p>Societies across the world suffered during this period. In Europe, it was a time of savage persecution of “witches”, partly due to the belief that they were deliberately causing the <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1005554519604">“unnatural” weather conditions</a>. </p>
<p>The Dutch Republic did show resilience in the harsher climate conditions of “<a href="https://www.historicalclimatology.com/blog/a-frigid-golden-age-can-the-society-of-rembrandt-and-vermeer-teach-us-about-global-warming">the frigid golden age</a>”. Its innovations for harnessing the energy of changing weather and wind patterns in shipping fuelled an aggressive trading empire.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261664/original/file-20190301-110110-1nesg1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261664/original/file-20190301-110110-1nesg1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261664/original/file-20190301-110110-1nesg1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261664/original/file-20190301-110110-1nesg1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261664/original/file-20190301-110110-1nesg1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261664/original/file-20190301-110110-1nesg1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261664/original/file-20190301-110110-1nesg1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261664/original/file-20190301-110110-1nesg1w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘The Frozen Thames’ (1677). Did Europe’s Little Ice Age derive from 56 million deaths in the Americas?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age#/media/File:The_Frozen_Thames_1677.jpg">Abraham Hondius/Wikipedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While such strategies are not templates for future action, they do underline the fact that humans have and can adapt with radically altered lifestyles, expectations, aspirations and standards of living. They needn’t always aspire to more of the same that they have at present.</p>
<p>This idea begs questions about the nature of history itself. Must history continue to be a story of humans alone? Could it become the study of humans in complex ecosystems, exploring the entangled pasts of people, animals, insects, microbes, plants, trees, forests, soils, oceans, glaciers, stones, volcanic eruptions, solar cycles and orbital variations?</p>
<p>Narrating a richer past would lessen the shock of discovering that we are, after all, earthbound inhabitants of the only planet where life is known to exist. It could show us that our survival is dependent on countless complicated and delicate relationships. Relationships that “progress” narratives have required us to ignore, despise and even fear. </p>
<p>In recognising that the established view of human history can and must change, people can think radically about society, rather than following the present course out of a failure of imagination.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109819/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amanda Power does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Progress, in historical terms, has so often meant clearing places of their native inhabitants – both human and non-human.
Amanda Power, Associate Professor of Medieval History, University of Oxford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/108194
2019-01-25T15:03:56Z
2019-01-25T15:03:56Z
Lessons from Cyclone Gaja: how to limit the impact of extreme weather in developing countries
<p>Taking up almost the entire southern tip of India, Tamil Nadu is the country’s <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/state-of-the-states-india-today-tamil-nadu-overall-most-improved-350680-2016-11-07">second-largest</a> economy. Its delta region is considered to be the “rice bowl” of the state, also producing coconuts, bananas, nuts, spices and sugar cane. On 16 November 2018, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/cyclone-gaja-news-update-status-death-toll-chennai-kerala-tamil-nadu-path-a8636796.html">Cyclone Gaja</a> struck Tamil Nadu’s coastal areas, devastating local agriculture and infrastructure, and destroying thousands of homes. </p>
<p>Despite the region being prone to extreme weather and residents receiving some advance warning, locals reported that emergency responders only managed to reach many of the remote villages a week later. Perhaps few in the West are aware of the extent of the damage and distress this violent cyclone caused. When it comes to major storms and environmental disasters, the world’s media tend to focus more keenly when developed countries are affected.</p>
<h2>Vulnerable coastal communities</h2>
<p>The devastation caused by extreme weather in Tamil Nadu remains a damning indictment on India’s ability to effectively address such emergencies, whether that be taking preventative measures or actually coping with the aftermath with a proper disaster management plan.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QB1rE1FCEgI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Cyclone Gaja saw 45 deaths reported, crops destroyed and livestock killed. One farmer committed suicide after his small coconut plantation – his main source of income – was destroyed. People were traumatised in coastal districts that were unprepared for winds of speed of 160km/h – a category 2 tropical cyclone according to the <a href="https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutsshws.php">Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale</a>. Millions of trees were uprooted, agricultural land devastated, transportation blocked by debris, communications downed and there were power outages for eight weeks. Three months on and there is still only a limited power supply to some remote areas.</p>
<p>It was this very same southern state which faced <a href="http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/files/file/The%20Cyclone%20Ockhi.pdf">Cyclone Ockhi</a> in 2017, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-38285564">Cyclone Vardah</a> in 2016, man-made <a href="http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/files/file/Disaster%20in%20Chennai.pdf">flooding</a> in Chennai in 2015, and of course, the Boxing Day Indian Ocean <a href="http://www.iitk.ac.in/nicee/RP/2006_Response_Recovery_EQSpectra.pdf">tsunami</a> in 2004.
Around 300 Tamil Nadu fishermen missing after Cyclone Ockhi have never been found.</p>
<p>India is part of the <a href="https://www.unisdr.org/we/coordinate/sendai-framework">Sendai Framework</a>, an organisation that helps participating countries to adopt disaster risk reduction as a key goal in achieving a sustainable society. The country only released its first <a href="https://www.unisdr.org/archive/49068">national disaster management plan</a> in 2016, despite all of the states on the Bay of Bengal having a history of extreme weather events.</p>
<h2>Looking to the future</h2>
<p>Developing countries often faces barriers to creating a joined-up response between national, regional and local emergency plans. Tamil Nadu’s coastal areas are highly populated with people who depend on the sea for their living. Many live in small huts and makeshift houses that are easily destroyed. Often they are ill-informed about the hazards of living in places that are subject to volatile weather, but have nowhere else to go. On top of this, poor emergency planning and communications, insufficient coastal defence investment and failure to learn from previous cyclones have all led to a kind of paralysis in creating effective disaster response strategies.</p>
<p>Cyclone Gaja stands as a warning to international disaster organisations; they must prepare the countries they work with more thoroughly for future weather disasters. They need to make clear that taking measures to limit the extent of disaster cannot be voluntary, but mandatory.</p>
<p>It will take months to clear the debris and repair the infrastructure, and years to rehabilitate entire villages across Tamil Nadu. It is time to establish a proper framework that helps developing countries to facilitate an effective response to an emergency, crucially with the help of other, more developed nations. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255585/original/file-20190125-108358-t34ipm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255585/original/file-20190125-108358-t34ipm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255585/original/file-20190125-108358-t34ipm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255585/original/file-20190125-108358-t34ipm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255585/original/file-20190125-108358-t34ipm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255585/original/file-20190125-108358-t34ipm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255585/original/file-20190125-108358-t34ipm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A home destroyed by Clyclone Gaja in a remote area of Tamil Nadu.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s also time to think about alternative options such as natural coastal defences and wetland adaption, such as creating salt marshes and growing mangrove trees and sea grasses which can diffuse the energy of coastal flooding caused by storm surges or flash floods. It’s 14 years since the 2004 tsunami struck this part of the country where <a href="http://www.iitk.ac.in/nicee/RP/2006_Response_Recovery_EQSpectra.pdf">10,000 people</a> lost their lives, and there are still serious gaps in the region’s disaster response methods.</p>
<p>Developed countries should understand the need for developing countries to be economically and technologically equipped for extreme events. For many, the issue is lack of funding for investment in coastal defences, but the Indian government needs to make this a key priority. Such extreme weather phenomena are likely to intensify as the effects of climate change – global warming and rising sea levels for example – escalate.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/108194/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anitha Karthik does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
As global warming intensifies violent weather events, the most vulnerable countries affected need help to respond more effectively.
Anitha Karthik, PhD Candidate, Edinburgh Napier University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/109061
2018-12-19T23:50:30Z
2018-12-19T23:50:30Z
The myth of the American Frontier still shapes U.S. racial divides
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251378/original/file-20181218-27776-gsf5mk.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In the 19th century, white families in the U.S. could easily acquire real estate. This was never the case for Black Americans.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/homestead-act">U.S. National Archives</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Americans study their 19th-century history, they tend to look at its great conflicts, especially the epic clash over slavery. They are less likely to recall its broad areas of agreement.</p>
<p>But what if those agreements are still shaping the present? What if Americans are still coping with their effects? The steep inequalities between white and Black wealth in America, for example, has a lot to do with a 19th-century consensus over public lands.</p>
<p>Land grants from British officials to colonial families date back to the 1600s in North America, but the general idea took on new life with the 1801 presidential election of Thomas Jefferson, a Virginia slave-owner and radical who saw all white men as equally superior to everyone else. To provide them with farms, he purchased Louisiana from Napoleon.</p>
<h2>Rights of soil</h2>
<p>Jefferson’s Democratic party organized the sale of public land in small units on easy credit. When settlers fell behind on payments, Congress gave them more time in repeated <a href="http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Land_Act_of_1820">Relief Acts during the 1810s and 1820s.</a></p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251379/original/file-20181218-27752-fdybh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251379/original/file-20181218-27752-fdybh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251379/original/file-20181218-27752-fdybh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251379/original/file-20181218-27752-fdybh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251379/original/file-20181218-27752-fdybh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251379/original/file-20181218-27752-fdybh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251379/original/file-20181218-27752-fdybh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of U.S. President Andrew Jackson, 1819.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>President Andrew Jackson followed in the 1830s by expelling some 70,000 Choctaws, Creeks, Cherokees, Chickasaws and Seminoles from their farms and villages. White families poured into the stolen ground with their slaves, creating a <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/united-states-and-canada/us-history/cotton-kingdom">Cotton Kingdom</a> that quickly spread from Florida to Texas.</p>
<p>By the time the Senate debated the General Pre-Emption Act of 1841, which gave settlers first claim to buy frontier plots at regulated prices, the United States had tens of millions of acres at its disposal. With so much room for everyone but the Indigenous inhabitants, pre-emption had wide support.</p>
<p>The senators did argue over the pre-emption rights of immigrants from Britain or Germany. By a vote of 30-12, however, they decided that European-born settlers had the same claim to the continent as native-born citizens. As <a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008700946">Democratic Sen. Thomas Benton put it, all men were equal when it came to “the rights of property.” </a> </p>
<p>During this same discussion, a member of the rival Whig Party moved to put the word “white” into the bill so that no Black settlers could make pre-emptions.</p>
<p>This passed 37-1.</p>
<p>In sum, a bipartisan goal of early U.S. foreign and domestic policy was to insure that white families could easily acquire real estate — then, as now, the major asset for most households. This was never the case for Black Americans, <a href="https://books.wwnorton.com/books/detail.aspx?ID=4294976026">who were seen as a separate and hostile “nation” within the country.</a></p>
<h2>Landless in America</h2>
<p>Hunted in the South and despised in the North, Black Americans could only buy western land from speculators, who easily cheated people with little access to courts and no standing at the polls. And so most scraped by as labourers rather than landowners.</p>
<p>The pattern continued after the Civil War, when <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062354518/reconstruction-updated-edition/">plans to give former slaves some of the lands on which they had toiled went nowhere even as Congress made western homesteads free for everyone else.</a></p>
<p>By the end of the century, railroads and other corporations had become the big recipients of federal largesse. Nonetheless, millions of ordinary white families began the modern age on their little patches of America.</p>
<p>Their real estate offered both an early form of social security and a base of family capital, an economic foundation from which to enter a more urban and industrial society. It also made them feel like the only “real” Americans, the ones who literally owned the place.</p>
<p>By contrast, Black families faced a vicious cycle of landless marginality: as agricultural or domestic workers, they were <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/studies-in-american-political-development/article/southern-imposition-congress-and-labor-in-the-new-deal-and-fair-deal/34A3D6B136E93AC83270ED9185D3CEE0">excluded from the first Social Security Act of 1935</a>, making it even harder for them to protect family fortunes. As second-class citizens and servicemen, they rarely benefited from the so-called <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/grand-expectations-9780195117974?cc=ca&lang=en&">GI Bill of Rights of 1944, which made home ownership much easier for nearly eight million veterans.</a></p>
<p>No wonder that even low-income whites were far more likely to own homes or businesses than Black families when the Great Recession struck 10 years ago. Since then, wealth disparities have grown again: <a href="https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/recent-trends-in-wealth-holding-by-race-and-ethnicity-evidence-from-the-survey-of-consumer-finances-20170927.htm">the Federal Reserve of the United States now estimates that the average white household has 10 times the total assets of its Black counterpart.</a></p>
<h2>History and mythology</h2>
<p>These grim facts do not stop the “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/12/us/charlottesville-unite-the-right-rally/index.html">blood and soil</a>” nationalists of Donald Trump’s America from feeling victimized. Nothing ever will.</p>
<p>The bigger problem is that a much wider part of the U.S. population subscribes to frontier mythologies, in which hardy white folk built the country without anyone’s help or permission. And why shouldn’t they believe so, if we don’t offer more honest accounts of the frontier?</p>
<p>For all its faults, history is better than mythology. In this case, it can illuminate how European blood gave exclusive access to American soil, enriching debates about today’s inequalities.</p>
<p>Perhaps it can even help Americans build a truly multi-racial nation, a society in which everyone feels equally American.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109061/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>J.M. Opal receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.</span></em></p>
Old 19th-century agreements between the U.S. government which expelled Indigenous peoples from their land and gave it cheaply to white settlers continue to impact inequalities in the United States.
Jason Opal, Associate Professor of History and Chair, History and Classical Studies, McGill University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/103668
2018-12-12T11:42:02Z
2018-12-12T11:42:02Z
How stereo was first sold to a skeptical public
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/250050/original/file-20181211-76980-1lfiyac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Record companies released stereo demonstration albums that showcased how sound could move from left to right, creating a sense of movement.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">From the collection of Janet Borgerson and Jonathan Schroeder</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When we hear the word “stereo” today, we might simply think of a sound system, as in “turn on the stereo.” </p>
<p>But stereo actually is a specific technology, like video streaming or the latest espresso maker. </p>
<p>Sixty years ago, it was introduced for the first time. </p>
<p>Whenever a new technology comes along – whether it’s Bluetooth, high-definition TV or Wi-Fi – it needs to be explained, packaged and promoted to customers who are happy with their current products.</p>
<p>Stereo was no different. As we explore in our recent book, “<a href="https://www.designedforhifiliving.com/">Designed for Hi-Fi Living: The Vinyl LP in Midcentury America</a>,” stereo needed to be sold to skeptical consumers. This process involved capturing the attention of a public fascinated by space-age technology using cutting-edge graphic design, in-store sound trials and special stereo demonstration records.</p>
<h2>The rise of ‘hi-fi’ sound</h2>
<p>In 1877, Thomas Edison <a href="https://www.loc.gov/collections/edison-company-motion-pictures-and-sound-recordings/articles-and-essays/history-of-edison-sound-recordings/history-of-the-cylinder-phonograph/">introduced the phonograph</a>, the first machine that could reproduce recorded sound. Edison used wax cylinders to capture sound and recorded discs became popular in the early 20th century. </p>
<p>By the 1950s, record players, as they came to be called, had become a mainstay of many American living rooms. These were “mono,” or one-channel, music systems. With mono, all sounds and instruments were mixed together. Everything was delivered through one speaker.</p>
<p>Stereophonic sound, or stereo, was an important advance in sound reproduction. Stereo introduced two-channel sound, which separated out elements of the total sound landscape and changed the experience of listening.</p>
<p>Audio engineers had sought to improve the quality of recorded sound in their quest for “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/technology/high-fidelity-sound-system">high fidelity</a>” recordings that more faithfully reproduced live sound. Stereo technology recorded sound and played it back in a way that more closely mimicked how humans actually hear the world around them.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/250041/original/file-20181211-76971-99ugt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/250041/original/file-20181211-76971-99ugt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/250041/original/file-20181211-76971-99ugt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=818&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250041/original/file-20181211-76971-99ugt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=818&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250041/original/file-20181211-76971-99ugt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=818&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250041/original/file-20181211-76971-99ugt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1028&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250041/original/file-20181211-76971-99ugt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1028&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250041/original/file-20181211-76971-99ugt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1028&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A graphic detail, from an RCA inner sleeve, shows listeners how new stereo technology operates.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">From the collection of Janet Borgerson and Jonathan Schroeder</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>British engineer <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/06/19/little-known-inventor-stereo-crucial-wwii-radar-honoured-film/">Alan Dower Blumlein</a> paved the way for two channel recording in the 1930s. But it wasn’t until the 1950s that stereo technology was incorporated into movie theaters, radios and television sets. </p>
<p>With stereo, the sound of some instruments could come from the left speaker, the sound of others from the right, imitating the setup of a concert orchestra. It also was possible to shift a particular sound from left to right or right to left, creating a sense of movement. </p>
<p>Although Audio-Fidelity Records offered a limited edition stereo record for industry use in 1957, consumers needed to wait until 1958 for recordings with stereo sound to become widely available for the home. </p>
<h2>A sonic ‘arms race’ to sell the sound</h2>
<p>When stereo records were introduced to the mass market, a “sonic arms race” was on. Stereo was aggressively promoted as the latest technological advancement that brought sophisticated sound reproduction to everyone. </p>
<p>Each of the era’s major record labels started pushing stereo sound. Companies like Columbia, Mercury and RCA, which sold both stereo equipment and stereo records, moved to convince consumers that stereo’s superior qualities were worth further investment. </p>
<p>A key challenge for selling stereo was consumers’ satisfaction with the mono music systems they already owned. After all, adopting stereo meant you needed to buy a new record player, speakers and a stereo amplifier.</p>
<p>Something was needed to show people that this new technology was worth the investment. The “stereo demonstration” was born – a mix of videos, print ads and records designed to showcase the new technology and its vibrant sound.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MVQ0mhxBuf4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Record companies were convinced the public simply needed to be exposed to the new technology to be sold on it.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Stereo demonstration records showed off the innovative qualities of a new stereo system, with tracks for “balancing signals” or doing “speaker-response checks.” They often included compelling, detailed instructional notes to explain the new stereo sound experience. </p>
<p>Stereo’s potential and potency stormed retail showrooms and living rooms. </p>
<p>Curious shoppers could hear trains chugging from left to right, wow at the roar of passing war planes, and catch children’s energetic voices as they dashed across playgrounds. Capitol Records released “The Stereo Disc,” which featured “day in the life” ambient sounds such as “Bowling Alley” and “New Year’s Eve at Times Square” to transport the listener out of the home and into the action.</p>
<p>A particularly entertaining example of the stereo demonstration record is RCA Victor’s “Sounds in Space.” Appearing a year after <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/sputnik-launched">the successful launch of the Soviet’s Sputnik satellite in 1957</a>, this classic album played into Americans’ growing interest in the space race raging between the two superpowers.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/250046/original/file-20181211-76962-2a3ni1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/250046/original/file-20181211-76962-2a3ni1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/250046/original/file-20181211-76962-2a3ni1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=596&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250046/original/file-20181211-76962-2a3ni1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=596&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250046/original/file-20181211-76962-2a3ni1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=596&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250046/original/file-20181211-76962-2a3ni1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=749&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250046/original/file-20181211-76962-2a3ni1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=749&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250046/original/file-20181211-76962-2a3ni1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=749&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">RCA Victor’s ‘Sounds in Space’ demonstration album.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">From the collection of Janet Borgerson and Jonathan Schroeder</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“The age of space is here,” the record begins, “and now RCA Victor brings you ‘Sounds in Space.’” Narrator Ken Nordine’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJ_4UztvbnE">charismatic commentary</a> explains stereophonic sound as his voice “travels” from one speaker channel to another, by the “the miracle of RCA stereophonic sound.”</p>
<p>Record companies also released spectacular stereo recordings of classical music. </p>
<p>Listening at home began to reproduce the feeling of hearing music live in the concert hall, with stereo enhancing the soaring arias of Wagner’s operas and the explosive thundering cannons of Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture.” </p>
<p>Today, rousing orchestral works from the early stereo era, such as <a href="https://csosoundsandstories.org/at-60-rca-victors-living-stereo-imprint-still-going-strong/">RCA Victor’s “Living Stereo” albums from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra</a>, are considered some of the finest achievements of recorded sound.</p>
<h2>Visualizing stereo</h2>
<p>Stereo demonstration records, in particular, featured attractive, modern graphic design. Striking, often colorful, lettering boasted titles such as “Stereorama,” “360 Sound” and “Sound in the Round.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240736/original/file-20181016-165900-1vgn9v1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240736/original/file-20181016-165900-1vgn9v1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/240736/original/file-20181016-165900-1vgn9v1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=232&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240736/original/file-20181016-165900-1vgn9v1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=232&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240736/original/file-20181016-165900-1vgn9v1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=232&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240736/original/file-20181016-165900-1vgn9v1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=291&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240736/original/file-20181016-165900-1vgn9v1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=291&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/240736/original/file-20181016-165900-1vgn9v1.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=291&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An Epic Records demonstration album cover features a rainbow of sound.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Collection of Janet Borgerson and Jonathan Schroeder</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some stereo demonstration records focused on the listening experience. The ecstatic blond woman on the cover of Warner Bros. Records’ “How to Get the Most Out of Your Stereo” sports a stethoscope and seems thrilled to hear the new stereo sound. World Pacific Records “Something for Both Ears!” offers a glamorous model with an ear horn in each ear, mimicking the stereo effect.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/250048/original/file-20181211-76959-4ln59y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/250048/original/file-20181211-76959-4ln59y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/250048/original/file-20181211-76959-4ln59y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=196&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250048/original/file-20181211-76959-4ln59y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=196&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250048/original/file-20181211-76959-4ln59y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=196&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250048/original/file-20181211-76959-4ln59y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=247&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250048/original/file-20181211-76959-4ln59y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=247&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250048/original/file-20181211-76959-4ln59y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=247&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Record companies tried to hook listeners with demonstration records featuring vivid graphics.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">From the collection of Janet Borgerson and Jonathan Schroeder</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These eye-catching design elements became an important part of the record companies’ visual branding. All were deployed to grab the attention of customers and help them visualize how stereo worked. Now they’ve become celebrated examples of midcentury album cover art.</p>
<p>By the late 1960s, stereo dominated sound reproduction, and album covers no longer needed to indicate “stereo” or “360 Sound.” Consumers simply assumed that they were buying a stereo record. </p>
<p>Today, listeners can enjoy multiple channels with surround sound by purchasing several speakers for their music and home theater systems. But stereo remains a basic element of sound reproduction. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/how-digital-technology-spawned-retros-revival-54302">As vinyl has enjoyed a surprising comeback lately</a>, midcentury stereo demonstration records are enjoying new life as retro icons – appreciated as both a window into a golden age of emerging sound technology and an icon of modern graphic design.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/103668/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Sixty years ago, stereo promised to forever change the way people listened to music. But how could record companies convince customers to buy a new record player, speakers and amplifier?
Jonathan Schroeder, William A. Kern Professor in Communications, Rochester Institute of Technology
Janet Borgerson, Senior Wicklander Fellow at the Insitute for Business and Professional Ethics, DePaul University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.