Monthly Archives: June 2009

Books History Women's history

Living through not-the-end of the Roman Empire

June 28, 2009 – 7:31 pm

The “end of the Roman empire”: it is a popular topic, with some big questions around if: why? How? when? They’ve been some excellent, illuminated books written on it – I reviewed one of them recently – but what tends to disappear in these accounts is the real lived experience of the people of the period. They can’t have been, in their own minds, living through the end of empire – they were living their lives, dealing with the local upsets, expecting the empire which in human timeframes had gone on “forever”, to continue. It’s to attempt to get at something of that lived reality that Giusto Traina has written 428AD: An Ordinary Year At The End of the Roman Empire.

He had to find some way to choose the year, of course, and he selected this one because it marked the end of the Kingdom of Armenia, which just happens to be the author’s special subject. That’s a good start, because it gives him a entirely different perspective to authors traditionally fixated on Constantinope, Rome or Ravenna (the new western capital). Indeed, the perspective here is as broad as could be, for he follows an ancient rhetoric tradition, taking the reader on a journey around the empire, a rough circuit of the Med and beyond, extending even into the Sassanian empire, which that year seized the previously independent Armenia, and along the Silk Road.

He also tries not to look forward, to view the trajectory of everything as heading towards fragmentation and collapse, which of course it wasn’t: something seemed at the time to be coming back together quite nicely after the disaster of the sack of Rome in 410. And although the sources seldom allow us to get down to fine detail, he notes that for most people, these events were irrelevant to their time:

“…the life of a typical community as governed by liturgical and civil calendars and, of course, the ubiquitous seasonal rhythms of the rural economy. For many intellectuals of the time, the calculation of time seemed an inappropriate concern, whose elimination was prompted by the anxiety of the times…the man who was buried in Apamea of Syria in a Christian sepulchre dated to the early fifth century must have requested the ancient pagan motto that appears on its threshold… “Are you rushing? – I am. And where are you rushing? – To this place.”

One man who had no choice but to rush in 428 was Flavius Dionysius, with whom we start our journey. He is starting out from Antioch, HQ of the Roman army in the east, leading an important and complex diplomatic mission to meet a Persian delegation. But he’s suffering facial paralysis. (Traina suggests this might have been stress-related, since he had a difficult task, for a military man – to accept a fait accompli – the loss of independence of Armenia to Persian rule – it had been an important buffer between the two eastern giants.) As Traina explains we only know about his mission because of this, for it is recorded in the life of Simeon Stylites – the famous pole-sitting monk (the stump of his final pole still survives outside Aleppo). The modern author has had to put together the details, for no other western source records the mission, and none pay attention to the fall of Armenia, which Traina suggests reflects embarrassment that a Christian land had been abandoned to its fate.

Flavius is handy for Traina, for no sooner was he back from this tough job than he had another delegate task, to escort the Syrian cleric Nestorius from his monastery to Constantinople, a journey that also allows the author to explore the tensions and developments of the church of the time. Simeon was an outstanding, in more ways than one (his column, from which he never descended, was 9 metres high when Flavius visited – it eventually went to 16), but he represented an extreme of religious ascetism that, Traina says, helped to cement the identity of Syria, which had been an uncertain border province, while shocking the more established regions.

That brings our journey to the heart of the eastern empire, Constantinople, and Traina visits the royal palace, where interestingly, two women were at the heart of politics. One was Pulcheria, the sister of Emperor Theodosius II, and his spiritual guide. The other was his empress, Eudocia, who was from a family of pagan intellectuals and only converted upon marriage, and had a reputation as a protector of heretics. (They had a parallel in the Western empire, the 40-year-old Aelia Galla Placidia, mother of the child emperor, a woman of uncommon political experience, who had briefly been empress in the West, was exiled to Constantinople, taken hostage after the sack of Rome and taken by the Visigoths back to Gaul, where she ended up marrying King Ataulf, who was shortly after murdered, when she returned to Ravenna.)
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Blogging/IT

Britblog Roundup No 228

June 28, 2009 – 7:27 pm

Welcome to this week’s Britblog roundup, which comes to you with a Gallic flavour, courtesy of the very patient Cafe des Tilleuls in Autun, Burgundy, where I’ve been clogging up their tables and using their electricity for far too much of past week, unsuccessfully trying to escape from various forms of work on what is officially a holiday, hogging their WiFi signal. (Unfortunately French dongles are horribly unreliable, at least in the hamlet where I’ve been trying to use one – they only work when it is cloudy, and using the British one is horrendously expensive and only slightly more reliable.) The plus side is that the cafe does a fine line in enormous fancy ice-creams…

So Salut and pass the chocolate sprinkles!

I haven’t been reading the English-language news all week – so this is a roundup untainted by any influence of the MSM beyond Le Monde and La Journal Saone-et-Loire – it’s just the British blog view of the world, as nominated by you: see what you think of it! (And if you want to bypass all the politics, just skip down to the entertainment section – look for the bold paragraph…)

I couldn’t help knowing the Michael Jackson had died – mostly because every French radio station I could find seemed to be playing one of his songs that even I recognised: can’t say I actually have an opinion on the death, however, and, suggests Dave Osler, politicians shouldn’t either. But Marxists should, says A Very Public Sociologist.

And since I’m in France, I should also highlight Jessica Reed’s discussion on The F Word of the French burqa ban, an issue also discussed on Heresy Corner.

Staying Continental, on Amused Cynicism there’s a consideration of who votes for the Pirate Party across Europe – it’s the internet generation. (Although I don’t think Cabalamat is right about them using Facebook, that’s so last month – Twitter’s IT now, I think).

And on Pajamas Media, there’s an interview with MEP Dan Hannan, who is apparently a political star in the US.

Getting into British parliamentary politics, LibDem Darryl Goodliffe is worried about the Green Party’s impact on its vote, and Peter Cranie says the fear is making them fight even dirtier than usual.

Another Lib Dem is taking a realistic look at her political prospects: Charlotte Gore says her blog has pretty much killed her chances – which raises an interesting question for future generations of politicians.

Also on the politics side, Green Socialist is applauding the closure of private schools,

Turning more “social”, on Next Left, Rachel Jolley is worrying about pensions. (Although I do think that when you look at the ageing society, that also means fewer kids – and what really matters is the dependency ratio, not the number of aged – and also the old are going to be working longer – the French papers were full last week of plans to raise the retirement age in France, which is in practice among the lowest in Europe).

And, one of the scandals of Britain – women in prison. On the F Word Abby O’reilly reports on the massive rise in the number of women prisoners self-harming. And a salutory fact – more women are sent to prison for shoplifting than for any other offence…

On, one might say, the other side of women’s issues, Jackart on A Very British Dude, is defending Rebekah Wade and attacking Michel Hanson on the issue of women taking their husband’s names when they marry. (As regular Britblog readers will know, the rule for hosts is that all posts nominated must be posted, unless there’s a really good reason not to.)

And The Filthy Smoker on The Devil’s Kitchen has strong views on the price of alcohol (which comes with a language warning).

The issue on Himmelgarten Cafe is weight, and a new study confirming that being “moderately overweight” under current classifications will see you live longest. On The Ministry of Truth we’re also going sort–of-medical, looking at the regulation of psychotherapy and counselling.

Stumbling and Mumbling is wondering how the banks should be structured – pay isn’t the only issue, he suggests.

While Peter Ashley on Unmitigated England, to judge by his comments, has clearly hit a nerve with his complaint about English distances being given in miles, and so has Victoria on Feminnazery, with a strong view on Burger King’s new “sexual” burger.

But that’s enough misery – let’s have some cheer and entertainment, and more chocolate sprinkles!

I couldn’t do better than start with Philip Wilkinson’s visit to St Botolph’s, Slapton, Northamptonshire, which sounds absolutely stunning.

And staying on the history trail, on Liberal England, Jonathan Calder has been visiting the school where William Gladstone didn’t go, and Dr Roy has been following the trail of some really religious bees.

Missy M is establishing which cigarettes and alcohol don’t count at all – you’ll be pleased to know, with summer holiday season approaching, that none do in foreign countries.

But Trixy is demanding that the eggs in her egg roll come runny, health and safety be damned!

Also in the contest for most entertaining read is Juliette’s exploration of her local video shop – time for a good book, I’d say!

And if this isn’t been too self-referential, I’m going to round up this roundup with reference to another roundup – Jim Jepps on The Daily (Maybe) this week hosted the enormous international Carnival of the Green. (If you’re interested in hosting, be warned, you have to book several years in advance.)

The next edition will be on Mr Eugenides on July 5 – don’t forget to send your nominations to britblog AT gmail DOT com.

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Miscellaneous

Of figs, mulberries and memories

June 28, 2009 – 4:59 pm

Memory is a funny thing, and add nostalgia to the mix, then it is really odd. Since soon after I got my little holiday house in France, I’ve planned to plant a fig tree in the front garden. (Just got to paint the wall it will go against first…)
Why? Well I like figs, but they’re generally available in shops – I think the real reason is a sense of nostalgia.

Perhaps the first time I realized that you could grow your own food was visiting my grandmother’s garden in Sydney. She had a magnificent vegetable patch that covered virtually all of the quarter-acre block, but I don’t think it had made any impression on me before I taste a fig – my first I suspect – that she’d just picked from the tree.

In my memory it isn’t a very large fig tree, which since I was probably about five at the time means it must have been pretty small indeed, and it was covered with bird-netting (that was probably grandfather, he was big on bird netting, even though with this garden, and a holiday place stocked with scores of fruit trees, they had far more than they could eat or give away).

But it tasted great – and whenever I eat a fig I flash back to that moment. (Possibly because figs were, in my youth anyway, seldom sold in shops in Australia, so I didn’t eat many.)

Then I was thinking about the tree to shade the patio I’m now installing out the back. It’ll probably be a cherry, since that seems to be an appropriately luxuriant option, and they seem to do well here – mostly almost ripe now.

But suddenly from nowhere popped into my head “I’d love a mulberry tree”. Actually, I’ve never seen one around here, and I suspect that the winters might be too cold, but I realized why that produced warm and fuzzy feelings in me was, when I thought about it, another early memory. I must have been about seven, on our first family farm holiday (which involved staying with a family and participating in farm life).

I was off with the farm kids, about my age. We were all on ponies (they must have given me a very quiet one), and we rode up to a mulberry tree and started picking them. Of course they were soon out of reach, so the other kids started standing on their saddles to reach higher. So did I – then the inevitable happened, the pony walked out from under me, and I ended up sprawled on the rotting mulberries underneath.

I don’t know why this is a good memory – I undoubtedly got into deep trouble for the state of my yellow T-shirt (still remember that – how odd!), since I was supposed to never get mucky (and I think generally didn’t as a child, for lack of opportunity).

But as a result of that memory – possibly because it was a rare occasion when I was mixing with other kids on more or less common ground (they were used to visitors and probably under strict instructions to treat the visitors’ kids like their mates) — I come over all warm and fuzzy at the thought of mulberry trees.

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Politics

Camden council calls for PCT to stop health centre tender

June 18, 2009 – 11:55 pm

John Bryant, chair of the Camden Council health scrutiny committee, kept the best to last this evening, as after a long and sometimes heated debate about Camden NHS’s draft primary and urgent care strategy (formerly Camden PCT), he concluded that the committee would be recommending that all work on the tendering process for the proposed new GP-led health centre at Euston be postponed until after the public tendering process.

The long evening began with the PCT reps (I’m going to call them that for clarity) setting out at length the well-known facts about Camden’s healthcare problems, with huge disparities resulting in the 10 year gap in male life expectancies between the richest and poorest wards, the 20% of deaths due to smoking, and 29% of people being “hazardous drinkers”.

We also got at length the polyclinic network strategy, which aims to see GPs linked together, developing specialities and providing extra services, something broadly no one has problems with (although there are questions about the removal of district nurses into the larger structure).

Then we got to the crux of the evening, the proposed GP-led health centre. Local campaigners – and the local community, as demonstrated by a huge public meeting this month, about which I had a letter in the CNJ this week – have expressed strong opposition to the plan, but tonight the PCT people, grudgingly, under questioning by councillors, admitted that they had already gone a long way to securing the building, and had begun the tendering process – all of this before commencing consultation, which is scheduled to start in July.

They say that they don’t have to consult on setting up the GP-led health centre, since that is mandated by the government, but only around the associated services. Whether indeed they are so directed to set up the centre was one of the evening’s key points of contention.

The Camden Local Medical Committee (an elected body representing all doctors working in general practice, with a statutory role), which expressed its clear opposition to the GP-led health centre, quoted a letter from then health minister Ben Bradshaw saying “these developments will only take place where it is ascertained after local consultation with the public and with GPs and other healthcare professionals that they will improve patient care for local communities”. This letter was also quoted by the Camden Keep Our NHS public delegation.

The PCT people in response quoted a letter from an NHS London bureaucrat; as one of the councillors said, you don’t have to be an expert on bureaucratic status to know that the minister trumps a bureaucrat.

They said they were now working fast because “London is behind the rest of the country in terms of timelines” (for setting up these GP-led centres). By the department of health targets they should already have delivered it, they said, but there had been confusion over the difference between polyclincs and GP-led health centres. (Although there still appears to be confusion: when a councillor asked about the way the new centre would be administered, who would be in charge of it, there was no answer.)

So what’s wrong with the GP-led health centre plan? This is how the Local Medical Committe puts it:
* We challenge the argument that this is a ‘must-do’ for the PCT
* We regret the lack of consultation with local GPs and patients
* We are concerned that resources will be diverted from other practices
* We do not accept this as the best way to address alleged ‘underdoctoring’ or health inequalities
* Patients of neighbouring GPs will not want their practices destablisied or forced to close down.
* Seeing unregistered patients will be costly, and will disrupt continuity of care and patient safety
* The procurement process is weighted against local practices and potentially lacks transparency. It ha also preceded local consultation
* We do not believe independent sector providers will improve health outcomes or patient satisfaction; nor will they increase access to GP care.

It wasn’t set out this evening, but the grapevine suggests that the PCT has on its initial shortlist four tenderers, of whom only one is a consortium of local GPs, with the rest being private providers, including American multinationals. It was explained that to bid for such a centre cost 50,000-60,000 pounds, with the big commercial operators expecting to get one in three or so of those bid for.

As well as the threat to GPs, this is one of the chief sources of opposition to the scheme, considerable complaints being expressed about the service being provided at the three local surgeries has handed over the American multinational United Health.

The delegation makes its point on the council steps:
nhsprotest2

You can find the agenda and the draft strategy here (and the NHS reports are in the appendix at the bottom).

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Politics

Notes from the Compass Conference

June 14, 2009 – 11:57 pm

I was speaking on Saturday at the Compass Conference, in a joint Fawcett Society/One World Action session on women and the recession, which was highly interesting, and which I’ll try to report separately, but this also gave me the chance to hear several other sessions.

There was an interesting mood at the conference, given Compass’s position — closely tied to the Left of the Labour party. Depression of course, about the state of the Labour party, but also a sense of new possibilities (with lots of talk of progressive coalitions), of new political space opening up.

The idea that clearly received the strongest support (that I heard anyway) was for a binding referendum on PR to be held simultaneously with the next election. There were many calls to campaign for that.

That new openness was shown by the invitation for Caroline Lucas to address the opening keynote session, aand an afternoon session also featuring her with Salma Yaqoob from Respect and Aadam Price from Plaid Cymru. Although there was little sign of openess from the Labour Party: Harriet Harman also addressed the opening session, but sat removed from the other speakers, and generally managed to convey that she didn’t want to be there.

Caroline Lucas suggested that Blair’s “experiment” with New Labour had been to attempt to bring readers of the Mirror into the same big tent as the Daily Mail. She suggested that what was needed instead was a campsite of smaller tents, within which events could be more honest and transparent.

Neal Lawson, chair of Compass, defending the invitation for Caroline, referred to the 10 proposed policies of the No Turning Back campaign. The Greens had supported nine of them, the Lib Dems six, and Labour none, he said.

He said that the rise of the BNP shouldn’t be attributed to the personality of the PM, but the rise of inequality.

We have reached the end of “steam-age politics” he said. People were fed up with waiting for leaders to do things for them, and were increasingly prepared to do thme themselves. “We are the people we have been waiting for.”

In the afternoon session, Salma noted that since 1997 not one single council house had been built in Birmingham, and it was now a Tory-led council that had taken a lead in recommencing building. “Most young people associate Labour with war, with deregulatign banking, with anti-migrant policies.” Among tthe three main parties, the neo-liberal approach had become so ubiquitous as to be invisible – it was the seen as the natural approach.

Adam Price said the progressive movement had to identify and support ideas as heretical and radical as free healthcare and council housing had been seen at the start of the 20th century. He proposed as the big idea the expansion of public services, to include free school meals, free personal care for the elderly, free uni-level education and free childcare.

And he said that inherited wealth was unacceptable. Rather than the “negligible” baby bond, there should be a social inheritance fund from which all could benefit.

He drew cheers when speaking about education changes in Wales that abandon formal learning until age seven. “We are finally turning out backs on the Prussian-based model of learning to prepare children for army and factory, and empowering children to believe that they are free, autonomous individuals.”

Caroline pointed out that when you counted the members of Amnesty, Greenpeace, the Terence Higgins Trust and many other progressive organisations, the movement had never been stronger. The problem was to engage these people in mainstream politics, when they were not inspired by Labour or the Lib Dems, and faced many barriers actively designed to keep them out: the voting system, the unelected House of Lords, and the fact that within the largest parties differences of views were ruthlessly suppressed.

Jon Cruddas said that the rise of the BNP couldn’t be attributed to PR: rather, first past the post had created the conditions in which the BNP can thrive, by leaving so many feeling excluded from the political process.

Responding to an enthusiast for independent candidates from the audience, Salma said the problem with British politics wasn’t too much ideology, but not enough of it. Caroline said politics should be about bringing people coming together, not becoming more atomised.

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Books Women's history

Recovering women’s political tradition

June 6, 2009 – 2:32 pm

“Women’s political thought”: is there such a thing? Jacqueline Broad and Karen Green have no doubt that there is, at least in the European tradition. Scanning from 1400 to 1700, the foundational period for our modern political landscape, they look at a diverse range of women, from the obvious, Christine de Pizan, Margaret Cavendish, Marie le Jars de Gournay, to women you’d not normally think of as political theorists, from Queen Elizabeth I of England to Mary Astell.

Their thesis, in A History of Women’s Political Thought in Europe, 1400-1700, is that these women first of all share a consciousness of gender: “these women defend their capacity for political virtue, they argue for women’s prudence, they defend female monarchs, and they call for female liberty of conscience against the tyranny of men”. Yet, the authors have to admit their story isn’t all good news: “many are intolerant and conservative, critical of those who bring about social disorder for the sake of religious freedom and they are committed to individual virtue and passive obedience to authority”.

They divided the period, and their writers, into two broad groups: those who celebrate heroic and even actively fighting women, such as Joan of Arc, exceptional examples of their sex which nevertheless demonstrate what women are capable of. The authors broadly locate this approach in the earlier period, and identify a rival, and largely supplanting, more “feminine” model of female excellence, including in political life, dating from around the middle of the 17th century.

The authors see this as driven particularly by Madeleine de Scudery, who “was enormously influential in developing a form of feminism that became so acceptable as to cease to be recognised as feminist. Indeed, it is arguable that Rousseau’s romantic conception of the place of love in society, and his representation of feminine difference, were influenced by Scudery, whose novels he read with his father at a very young age”.

As the authors point out, there are curious parallels here with the 20th century “turn from feminisms of equality to feminisms of difference”. They agree with Joan DeJean that women in this different way maintained political engagement, but differ from her in rejecting any claim that there was anything radical or democratic about their politics. (DeJean rejects Habermas’s claim that “the public sphere” began in the English coffee house, locating its origins instead in late 17th-century France during the “battle between ancients and moderns”.)

This reflects the explanation that Broad and Green give, which is representative of the book’s approach: while this is clearly a solidly academic monograph, it is also perfectly accessible to a general reader, and it gives a delightful introduction to many interesting women of the period. It’s a pity then that it’s only available in academic hardbook, at prohibitive library prices.

Every woman (and man) should have been taught about Christine de Pizan and her Book of the City of Ladies — clearly an outstanding thinker of the ages — at school. Those with a closer interest in European history should see how her influence continued after her death, particularly on women rulers. As Board and Green chart, her books were prominent in the libraries of royal and powerful aristocratic women, including Anne de Beaujeu, Anne of Brittany and Louise of Savoy, while they argue that Elizabeth I was almost certainly exposed to the books, and certainly to a set of tapestries depicting the City of Ladies, reported in an inventory of the possessions of the 14-year-old Elizabeth.

The authors are not, however, concerned only with royalty and aristocracy. There are also chapters on the women of the English civil war era (including Katherine Chidley and Elizabeth Poole), Quaker women (Priscilla Cotton, Mary Cole and Margaret Fell), and the women of the Glorious Revolution (Elinor James – nee Banckes and Anne Docwra – nee Waldegrave).

Bringing all of this together, the authors conclude that the traditional account of the history of men’s political ideas as a progress towards liberalism, with feminism depicted as an offshoot of this, is profoundly defective. “Long before Descartes, Christine grounded her defence of women on her own independent reason and experience, and her influence on women is significant up until the 16th century. Seventeenth-century women’s political thought is more often opposed to Machiavelli and Hobbes, rather than built on them. Marie le Jars de Gournay defends women’s equality with men, but is influenced by Montaigne, and not by Descartes. Quaker women are egalitarian but ground this on biblical injunctions, not modern political texts. Madeleine de Scudery explores models of egalitarian love and friendship between the sexes, independently of ideas about the social contract, and while 17th-century English women do engage with Locke, this engagement is as often critical as it is complimentary.”

Furthermore, the authors say, there’s a logical, continuous tradition here: “Mary Astell had read at least some of the works of Madeleine de Scudery; Scudery herself had earlier attempted to initiate a correspondence with Anna Maria van Schurman, as well as referring to Maurgerite de Navarre, and Madeleine and Catherine des Roches. Anna Maria van Schurman corresponded with Marie le Jars de Gournay and Elisabeth of Bohemia, and she was acquainted with Christina of Sweden. Schurman had also read Lucrezia Marinella, who acknowledged Moderata Fonte and earlier learned women such as Cassandra Fedele and Isotta Nogarola. Both Fonte and Marinella influenced Arcangela Tarabotti, whose ideas are sufficiently similar to those of Gabrielle Suchon to make one suspect some influence.”

As the authors conclude, their work here is preliminary. A vast amount more research needs to be done into this almost buried and forgotten tradition. And then, maybe one day, it will take its proper place as a respected, central part of our history.

And while I’m around these fields I should also point to the excellent early modern history carnival..

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