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Amartya Sen’s famous study of famines found that people died not because of a lack of food availability in a country, but because some people lacked entitlements to food. Can the same now be applied to the causes of global poverty?

The post The poverty paradox appeared first on OUPblog.

Poverty can be defined by 'the condition of having little or no wealth or few material possessions; indigence, destitution' and is a growing area within development studies. In time for The Development Studies Association annual conference taking place in Oxford this year in September, we have put together this reading list of key books on poverty, including a variety of online and journal resources on topics ranging from poverty reduction and inequality, to economic development and policy.

The post Poverty: a reading list appeared first on OUPblog.

Books are not only a great resource for developing reading skills, they are also a fantastic way to help kids develop healthy feelings and relationships. In the coming weeks, the First Book Marketplace will feature a collection of hand-picked books that address key aspects of social and emotional development.

In addition to the books, First Book has partnered with Molina Healthcare to provide helpful resources that teachers and parents can use to tie these engaging stories to healthy living. Teaching kids how to interact with others and manage their own emotions is an essential part of their development, just as important as their intellectual or physical development. These carefully curated books and resources are designed to do just that.

Here’s a sneak peek of the kinds of books and tips you can expect in the collection!

I Can Help by David Hyde Costello

A little duck gets lost until a helpful monkey comes along to lend a hand.

Brainstorm a number of situations that children may find themselves experiencing in which they need to ask for help. Next, identify who are the appropriate people in their family, school or community to ask for help in those situations. Examples could include calling 911 for firefighters in the case of a fire, talking with a teacher or parent for homework help, and visiting a doctor or school nurse if they are sick. This activity can be extended by role-playing. For example, one child can pretend to see a fire and call a firefighter for help. Then another group of children can pretend to be firefighters who come and put out the fire.

My Friend Maggie by Hannah E. Harrison

Paula knows Maggie is a great friend, but when Veronica says mean things about Maggie, Paula doesn’t stand up for her.

Letter writing, even when one doesn’t plan to give the letter to the addressee, can be a great tool for processing feelings and thinking through how to handle a conflict. Have the children write a letter from one of this story’s characters to another (such as from Maggie to Paula), explaining how that character’s actions made her feel. Encourage students to try letter writing (even without giving the letters) when they face conflicts with their friends to help them express their feelings and think through how they would like the situation to be resolved.

For more books and resources from First Book and Molina Healthcare, please visit the health and wellness section on the First Book Marketplace.

The post Sneak Peek: Resources For Social & Emotional Development appeared first on First Book Blog.

Just over a year ago, in March 2014, UNU-WIDER published a Report called: ‘What do we know about aid as we approach 2015?’ It notes the many successes of aid in a variety of sectors, and that in order to remain relevant and effective beyond 2015 it must learn to deal with, amongst other things, the new geography of poverty; the challenge of fragile states; and the provision of global public goods, including environmental protection.

The post The future of development – aid and beyond appeared first on OUPblog.

Leadership training has become a multi-billion dollar global industry. The reason for this growth is that organizations, faced with new technology, changing markets, fierce competition, and diverse employees, must adapt and innovate or go under. Because of this, organizations need leaders with vision and the ability to engage willing collaborators. However, according to interviews with business executives reported in the McKinsey Quarterly, leadership programs are not developing global leaders.

The post Can leadership be taught? appeared first on OUPblog.

In 1958, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., the US ambassador to the United Nations, summarized the role of the world organization: “The primary, the fundamental, the essential purpose of the United Nations is to keep peace.  Everything which does not further that goal, either directly or indirectly, is at best superfluous.”  Some 30 years later another ambassador expressed a different view. “In the developing countries the United Nations… means environmental sanitation, agricultural production, telecommunications, the fight against illiteracy, the great struggle against poverty, ignorance and disease,” remarked Miguel Albornoz of Ecuador in 1985.

These two citations sum up the basic dilemma of the United Nations.  It has always been burdened by high expectations: to keep peace, fix economic injustices, improve educational standards and combat various epidemics and pandemics. But inflated hopes have been tempered by harsh realities. There may not have been a World War III but neither has there been a day’s worth of peace on this quarrelsome globe since 1945. Despite all the efforts of the various UN Agencies (such as the United Nations Development Programme) and related organizations (like the World Bank), there exists a ‘bottom billion’ that survives on less than one dollar a day. The average lifespan in some countries barely exceeds thirty. According to UNESCO 774 million adults around the world lacked basic literacy skills in 2011.

Given such a seemingly dismal record, it is worth asking whether the UN has outlived its usefulness. After all, the organization turns 69 today (October 24th, 2014), a time when many citizens in the industrialized world exchange the stress of daily jobs for leisurely early retirement. Has the UN not had enough of a chance to keep peace and fix the world’s problems? Isn’t the obvious conclusion that the organization is a failure and the earlier it is scrapped the better?

The answer is no.  The UN may not have made the world a perfect place but it has improved it immensely. The UN provides no definite guarantees of peace but it has been – and remains – instrumental for pacifying conflicts and enabling mediation between adversaries. Its humanitarian work is indispensable and saves lives every day. In simple terms: if the UN – or the various subsidiary organization that make up the UN – suddenly disappeared, lives would be lost and livelihoods would be endangered.

In fact, the real question is not whether the UN has outlived its usefulness, but how can the UN perform better in addressing the many tasks it has been charged with?

The answer is twofold. First, the UN needs to be empowered to do what it does best. Today, for example, one of the most pressing global challenges is the potential spread of the Ebola virus. Driven by irrational fear, politicians in a number of countries suggest closing borders in order to safeguard their populations. But the only realistic way of addressing a virus that does not know national borders is surely international collaboration. In practical terms this means additional support for the World Health Organization (WHO), the only truly global organization equipped to deal with infectious diseases. But the WHO, much like the UN itself, is essentially a shoestring operation with a global mandate. Its budget in 2013 was just under 4 billion dollars. The US military spent that amount of money in two days.

Second, the UN must become better at ‘selling’ itself. Too much of what the UN and its specialized agencies do around the world is simply covered in fog. What about child survival and development (UNESCO)? Environmental protection (UNEP) and alleviation of poverty (UNDP)? Peaceful uses of atomic energy (IAEA)? Why do we hear so little about the UN’s (or the International Labour Organization’s) role in improving workers’ rights? Does anyone know that the UNHCR has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize twice (out of a total of 11 Nobel Peace Prizes awarded to the UN, its specialized agencies, related agencies, and staff)? It’s not a bad CV!

We tend to hear, ad nauseam, that the 21^st century is a globalized one, filled with global problems but apparently lacking in global solutions. What we tend to forget is the simple fact that there exists an organization that has been addressing such global challenges – with limited resources and without fanfare – for almost seven decades.

Indeed, it seems that in today’s world the UN is more relevant than ever before. At 69 it is certainly not ripe for retirement.

 Featured image credit: United Nations Flags, by Tom Page. CC-BY-SA-2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

The post Ripe for retirement? appeared first on OUPblog.

        

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Along those same lines, DC’s Burbank office is totally ramping up — although not in editorial, where the biggest defection is coming. and in some pretty big jobs — a VP of Development, a VP of publicity (possibly the position Alex Segura’svacated when he went back to Archie?) Even interns if you want to be the next Joe Kubert or Paul Levitz.

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Hello and welcome to the first post from the ALSC Public Awareness Committee! The Public Awareness Committee focuses on ways to reach out through public awareness campaigns about the importance of library services for youth.  The PAC works to promote awareness of the value of excellent library service for all children. In other words, we work in the name of advocacy for library services to youth.

Advocacy is a word that you most likely hear regularly in the world of public libraries today.  Advocacy is typically defined as the act of pleading or arguing in favor of something, such as a cause or idea. In the current climate of shrinking budgets, shifting education curriculum and new technology, those of us who work in youth services need to be more aware than ever of the importance of urging others to recognize the role libraries play in the development of children.

Most of us are probably eager to discuss our work with anyone who is willing to listen. We stand in a special position within the community ripe with advocacy opportunities. But sometimes the topic of advocating may seem overwhelming. There are many ways that you can advocate daily the importance of library services to children.

As youth services librarians, we regularly interact with parents and children both in programs and while working at the reference desk, providing countless chances to build future lifelong library patrons through stellar customer services and programming. By being the best librarian you can be, you are advocating for your library! You are exhibiting precisely the sort of services that children benefit from when visiting the library. Leading that storytime and discussing early literacy with new parents? Advocating! Outreach programming to local daycares and preschools? You are spreading the word about the wonderful library services available to adults and children who may not otherwise have been exposed to such information. Hurrah, advocacy!

Advocacy can be a goal of your day, everyday. If we want to continue our quest to support literacy growth and be a part of the cultural development of children, we need to focus on spreading the word about public libraries and their valuable contributions to the youth of the community.

What sort of advocacy efforts do you focus on at your library? What tips might you have for reaching out into the community?

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Nicole Lee Martin is a Children’s Librarian at the Grafton-Midview Public Library in Grafton, OH and is writing this post for the Public Awareness Committee.

By Dorothy Crawford Chance is a fine thing, especially when it leads to a major new discovery. Remarkably, this often seems to be the case with scientific discoveries, at least in my field - tumour virology. We now know that around 20% of cancers are caused by microbes but without chance this figure might be substantially lower. The first human tumour virus was discovered in 1964 by Anthony Epstein and Yvonne Barr at the Middlesex Hospital in London with the virus being named Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) after its discoverers.

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By Peter Gill

International responsiveness to the food crisis in the Horn of Africa has relied again on the art of managing the headlines.  Sophisticated early warning systems that foresee the onset of famine have been in place for years, but still the world waits until it is very nearly too late before taking real action – and then paying for it.

The big aid organisations, official and non-government, are right to say they have been underlining the gravity of the present emergency for months, at least from the beginning of the year.   On June 7 FEWS NET (the Famine Early Warning Systems Network funded by USAID) declared that more than seven million in the Horn needed help and the ‘current humanitarian response is inadequate to prevent further deterioration.’ Two seasons of very poor rainfall had resulted ‘in one of the driest years since 1995.’   Still the world did not judge this to be the clarion call for decisive intervention.

Three weeks later, on June 28, OCHA (the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) said that more than nine million needed help and that the pastoral border zones of Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya were facing ‘one of the driest years since 1950/51.’  Six decades!   Two generations!  A story at last!  The media mountain moved, and the NGO fund-raisers marched on behind.

I have The Times of July 5 in front of me.  ‘Spectre of famine returns to Africa after the worst drought for decades,’ says the main headline in World news.  On page 11 there is a half-page appeal from Save the Children illustrated with a picture of a six-week old Kenyan called Ibrahim ‘facing starvation.’  On page 17 Oxfam has its own half page saying that ‘more than 12 million people have been hit by the worst drought in 60 years.’  The Times that day also carried a Peter Brookes cartoon of a hollow-faced African framed in the map of Africa, with his mouth opened wide for food.

So, for 2011, an image of Africa has again been fixed in the western consciousness. It is an image of suffering – worse, of an impotent dependence on outsiders – that most certainly exists, but is only part of the story, even in the Horn.

The western world may understand something of the four-way colonial carve-up and the post-colonial disaster that overtook the Somali homeland, but it certainly has no proper answers to the conflicts and dislocation that lead to starvation and death. In northern Kenya, to which so many thousands of Somali pastoralists have fled in recent months, the West does have an answer of sorts – it can feed people in the world’s largest refugee camp, in the thin expectation of better times back across the border. Then there is Ethiopia, with several million of its own people needing help, its own Somali population swollen by refugees, and the country for ever associated with the terrible famine of 25 years ago which launched the modern era of aid.

Here it is possible to make some predictions. There will be no widespread death from starvation in Ethiopia, not even in its own drought-affected Somali region where an insurgency promotes insecurity and displacement. New arrangements between the Ethiopian government and the UN’s World Food Programme have insured more reliable and equitable food distribution, and the Government presses on with schemes to settle pastoralists driven by persistently poor rains from their semi-nomadic lifestyles.

The government of Meles Zenawi, which has just marked 20 years in power, has on the whole a creditable record in response to the prospect of famine.In 2003/4 the country faced a far larger food crisis than it did it in 1984, but emerged from it with very few extra deaths. In the former famine lands of the North where there is an impressive commitment to grass-roots development there is almost no chance of a retu

This post originally appeared as a guest blog at OwlReviewaBook.







BE A JERK AND YOUR CHARACTERS WILL THANK YOU FOR IT


Bethany asked me to write a little something about character development, so here I am attempting to write a little something about character development.

There’s one major problem.

I honestly don’t know anything about character development.

Okay, so maybe I’m exaggerating just a little bit for the sake of comedy.

The truth is that I don’t know anything that I’m supposed to know about character development. Plus, I’ve always found it a bit weird for me when someone asks me to write about the “craft” of anything.

The only real “craft” I have any right lecturing on is Kraft Macaroni and Cheese – which happens to be the only food in existence with a taste wholly dependant on your mood. If you’re depressed it’s awesome. If you’re happy, it’ll make you depressed.

That should be their slogan.

The only real bit of advice I can offer up when it comes to your characters is this: Be a jerk.

As a writer you’re in control of every aspect of your character’s lives and it’s pretty safe to assume that you feel a certain love for them. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s great actually. You should love them. If you don’t love them, the fact that you’re going to spend endless hours and upwards of a 100,000 words writing about them would just be silly.

A problem arises when you love them so much that you start treating them the way you want them to be treated, rather than the way they need to be treated.

If it makes sense for them to get hurt, be prepared to hurt them. If they have to die to get across your point, I suggest you find yourself a sturdy tree and pull out the hangman’s noose.

Remember that great story where everything always worked out for everyone and everything was fantastic all of the time?

No?

That’s because it doesn’t exist.

You can’t be a good friend to your characters. You have to be a terrible friend. It’s a necessity of the relationship. At some point you’re going to make them hurt. You’re going to drag them through the mud and make them cry. You’re going to take them to the lowest of lows and just when they think you’re done hurting them, you’ll slap on some more.

It’s for their own good.

It has to be done and you’re the heartless jerk that has to do it.

In my opinion the love you feel for the characters you create has be a tough love. Anything else is a detriment to your story. It does them an injustice, it does you an injustice, and it does the term injustice, injustice.

Wait…

That last part didn’t make any sense.

Ignore the fact that I typed it.

Love your characters and love your story enough to be the jerk they need you to be.

Wow, that almost sounded like I knew what I was talking about – a little bit anyway. And I wasn’t even ruminating on the pros and cons of Velveeta Shells and Cheese as opposed to Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.

Don’t even get me started on that battle of the unhealthy titans.

We’d be here for hours.

Steven

Peter Gill is a journalist specialising in developing world affairs, and first travelled to Ethiopia in the 1960s. He has made films in and reported from Gaza, Lebanon, Afghanistan, South Africa, Uganda, and Sudan, as well as Ethiopia. He recently led BBC World Service Trust campaigns on leprosy and HIV/AIDS in India. His new book is Famine and Foreigners: Ethiopia Since Live Aid, which is the story of what has happened in the country since the famous music and television events 25 years ago.

This third and final part of our ‘Ethiopia Since Live Aid’ blog feature is an original post by Peter Gill, in which he discusses the West’s view of aid and Africa. If you missed it, on Tuesday we read an excerpt from the book, and yesterday we ran an exclusive Q&A with Peter.

This 2010 ‘Summer of Africa’ has been promoted as a moment of transformation – an acknowledgment that the continent may at last be on the move, that it may be beginning to cast off its image as global basket case, ceasing to be a ‘scar on the conscience of humanity,’ in the phrase of former Prime Minister Tony Blair.

It was 25 years ago in July that a great Ethiopian famine and the Live Aid concert which it inspired underlined the physical and moral enormity of mass death by starvation. These events defined popular outrage at the human cost of extreme poverty and began to build an extraordinary consensus around the merits of aid. A generation later, in the teeth of financial gales in the rich world, this consensus is under increasing scrutiny.

Of course aid works and it works at many levels. Charity is an essential characteristic of social relationships. It saves lives and it helps individuals, families, sometimes whole communities to improve their existence. What the big aid flows – from governments and charities – have not done is to change the face of poor societies, to overcome the disgrace of extreme poverty.

Now the western world may have missed its opportunity to fix the problem. It may no longer have the means. It is also far too preoccupied with addressing the processes of how best to deliver aid, and has failed to sort out whether it had the right strategy in the first place.

What went wrong, I believe, is that we kept seeing Africa in our own image – as we would like it to be, rather than as it was. The colonial period may have become history, but the colonial mindset of ‘we-know-best’ has surely persisted. We compounded the error by allowing our hearts to rule our heads in how we spend the aid money. We have been more troubled by the symptoms of poverty than to see where our help was most needed.

Our fortunate way of the life in the West – prosperity allied with liberal democratic forms of government – may be the envy and the aspiration of many in the poor world, but did that give us the right in the name of ‘good governance’ to insist that there are quick and easy steps to achieving it? In the decades after Europe’s helter-skelter decolonisation, was it realistic to ignore the lessons of our own tortured political evolution and demand swift democratic reform as a condition of aid?

Our rich world sensibilities have, rightly, been offended by deaths from preventable diseases and we have, again rightly, poured money into ever more ambitious health initiatives. But we have made little corresponding effort to help African women plan their families by plugging the huge gap in contraceptive needs. Aid expenditure on family planning has actually fallen in the past de

Mini-Conflicts Help Characters Stand Out

For my WIP, I’m spending the week fleshing out characters.

I”ve written about characters many times.
Here’s a Character Checklist, and 15 Days to a Stronger Character, and many other posts on character.

At this stage in character development, I’m mostly concerned with creating an interesting mix. For this story, there’s a crowd of characters which could get confusing for the reader unless each character is, well, a character! Unique. Compelling.

They must be different in at least these ways:
Description. I need a wide variety from fat to anorexic, tall to short, white to black, and young to old. Beyond that, there are so many variations! Hair can be wild or tame, big or missing.
Eyebrows fascinate me: drawn on or so hairy that they grow together in the middle.
Teeth: laser white, yellow, rotten, dentures, cracked, gaps.

Speech: With a background in speech pathology, I pay attention to this one for sure. I try not to put stuttering in too much (which means I never allow myself to do that for fear of doing it too much). Accents are a way to distinguish someone. Dialects are fascinating to study, for example the difference between Bostonians and New Orleans residents.

Movement: Those teens who sag&bag, walk with one hand on their waist band, hitching up the shorts/pants every other step. (Watch Pants on the Ground – the man who inspired a surge in the belt market.) Something like that, tied to the unique clothing style is what I’m looking for.

Create Mini-Conflicts

Of course, there are other ways, but you get the idea. What I’m especially looking for is the interaction between characters and their descriptions. For example, if there’s a sag&bag teen, there needs to be another character who despises that type of dress; and of course, those two characters need to come into direct conflict.

I’m matching up the characters for mini-conflicts like this. They won’t be the main plot, but will add comic relief, extra bits of tension, and variety to the novel. Doing this at this early stage will build in more potential, more material to work with as I start the first draft.

How do you make your characters stand out?

PR Notes Question of the Week

If you didn’t see Sunday’s post, I’ve asked a question about book promotion: If you had $1000 to spend on book promotion, how would you spend it? I’d love to hear a wide variety of responses this week. Please comment here.

Add a Comment More from this Blog | Email This | Add a Tag 14. If you want children to read, buy Fairtrade!! By Leslie Wilson 3 Comments | Previous | Top | Next By: Leslie Wilson, on 3/4/2010 Blog: An Awfully Big Blog Adventure (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap) JacketFlap tags:  development, Leslie Wilson, Fairtrade Foundation, Bookaid, Fairtrade Fortnight, World Book Day, Add a tag This is World Book Day, but it’s also still Fairtrade Fortnight, and books and Fairtrade go together – not because authors are underpaid, though most of us are – but because there are thousands of kids in the world who never get a chance to learn. This is sometimes because they are girls, but mostly because they’re poor, and the children work and help keep the family going. I wrote in an earlier blog about the wonderful work that’s being done in Cairo, educating the children of the waste recyclers. But every time you buy a Fairtrade product, you're not only giving producers a fair price for their product, but also subscribing to a raft of benefits for the community. Part of the price of Fairtrade goods is what's called the Fairtrade premium, and the producers choose what they will spend this on – examples are farm inputs such as fertilisers and pesticides, but also, importantly, medical expenses and school fees. To give one example, the Kavokiva cooperative in southeastern Côte d’Ivoire, which produces cocoa beans. In this region, the illiteracy rate among agricultural communities is as high as 95%. Many schools are badly equipped and too far away for children to attend every day. Kavokiva was Fairtrade certified for cocoa in 2004. Although the global recession has hindered sales, the Fairtrade premium has helped the cooperative to build schools in some villages where the government school was too far away. It has helped furnish classrooms and blackboards, and other supplies. It also distributes scholarships to that the members’ children can pay school fees. Clearly, one still has to scout around to find Fairtrade products in many areas – though the Waitrose coffee and tea shelves are a joy to behold – but things are looking up. You can buy Fairtrade avocados, fruit, chocolate, coffee, tea, honey, nuts, apricots, beauty products and goods made from Fairtrade cotton, to name but a few. Tate and Lyle, Cadburys, and Kit-Kats are some mainstream companies who have recently made Fairtrade commitments. I bought several T-shirts made with Fairtrade cotton from Marks and Spencers last year. I plan to email people like Marks and Sparks and say you’d like to be able to get more Fairtrade products even than they sell at the moment. I also mean to write to other chocolate producers and egg them on to go Fairtrade – but the Co-op does a nice chocolate bar, and Traidcraft Swiss chocolate is brill! Green and Blacks’s Maya Gold chocolate is Fairtrade, of course. On the topic of books, I’m shamelessly using the column to make a plug for another charity, which is Bookaid International. They make books available to kids in Sub-Saharan Africa, Palestine and Sri Lanka. You can find out more on their site, url below. In Kenya, they help provide a camel mobile library service!! This is an idea that appeals to me greatly. For as long as I can remember, books have lit up my life, but I had the benefits of being brought up in a highly literate family, having a good, state-funded education, and having, from the time I was very small, access to free libraries. I know many of you will have had similar advantages. But the relative wealth and privilege of our own country – the recession notwithstanding – has too often been bought at the expense of other people in poorer countries. The Fairtrade Foundation - and Bookaid - are working to change all that. Look for the Fairtrade marque on Fairtrade products - I meant to put it in here, but couldn't manage the technicalities of downloading it! I'm sorry, daffy authors... But you can see it on the products I've mentioned above, or at their website. I've found out one can help fund Bookaid (and other charities) by shopping at a range of online retailers, Amazon, Tesco, Asda, Next, M and S, John Lewis, Ebay, Comet – and more – via a site called The Giving Machine. There’s also a thing called the Reverse Book Club. For three pounds a month you can buy 36 books every year for people who need them. 3 Comments on If you want children to read, buy Fairtrade!! By Leslie Wilson, last added: 3/5/2010 Display Comments Katherine Langrish said, on 3/4/2010 9:57:00 AM What a great post for World Book Day, Leslie - making sure children around the world have access to books. I shall look up Bookaid. Dianne Hofmeyr said, on 3/4/2010 1:15:00 PM The Reverse Book Club sounds a tremendous idea. In South Africa the metal containers used for shipping and exporting goods are turned into libraries in Squatter camps. They're a bit hot on days when the temp is 34 degrees but are still a haven for people who have utterly no access to books. michelle lovric said, on 3/4/2010 10:34:00 PM Love the idea of Reverse Book Aid, Leslie, will look it up. A really apt post for the day. Add a Comment More from this Blog | Email This | Add a Tag 15. Countdown to Copenhagen: Gordon Wilson 0 Comments | Previous | Top | Next By: Kirsty, on 12/3/2009 Blog: OUPblog (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap) JacketFlap tags:  development, copenhagen, COP15, gordon wilson, Economics, UK, Politics, Science, environment, Current Events, Geography, A-Featured, United Nations, sustainability, climate change, Add a tag By Kirsty McHugh, OUP UK In the last of this week’s Countdown to Copenhagen blog posts, Gordon Wilson of the Open University writes about public action and climate change beyond the COP15 summit. He is Senior lecturer in Technology & Development, and has been writing and researching on development issues for many years. These include technological capabilities, professional expertise and practice, knowledge production through active social learning, and science and technology for development. He has also written extensively on sustainable development. He is one of the editors of Environment, Development, and Sustainability: Perspectives and cases from around the world. Click here for the rest of the Countdown to Copenhagen blogs. World leaders at COP15 may or may not put their pens to a deal where it is worth waiting for the ink to dry. But to place too much reliance on anything that raises hopes is more than creating a hostage to fortune. It amounts to abrogating our responsibilities as citizens through setting up straw people who fall down when they fail to deliver. The history of public policy and action has shown that they are rarely the sole acts of benign, neutral government drawing the right conclusions from technical analyses. More likely they represent a process of more-or-less ruly accommodations between many players and their different interests. Governments may be the most important of these players, but they are not the only ones. The history of public health initiatives in 19th century UK provides a useful lesson in this regard, the favourable social indicators of the Indian state of Kerala compared with the rest of India another. There is no reason to suppose that these lessons of how public needs come to be defined do not also apply to the international arena. With respect to climate change, we owe a great debt to the scientists who created a consensus under the umbrella of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and who have ensured that the issue is on national and international agendas. We should not forget, however, the potential role of informed citizens operating individually or collectively in defining public policies and actions. This role is more than ‘green’ behaviour in terms of, for example, doing our bit to reduce carbon footprints. It is also more than our right in many countries to elect and de-elect our governments, important as that is. (In any case, at an international scale, a world government that is democratically accountable is not even on the radar.) Nor does it necessarily concern our ability to mount 10, or even 100, demonstrations relating to Copenhagen. It does concern, however, our abilities to apply individual and collective pressure through a combination of working with, and where necessary confronting, governments and their international manifestations, and demonstrating alternatives. I stress the qualifying adjective ‘informed’ which I don’t restrict to citizen understanding of the science of climate change and its likely impacts, nor of the social science of understanding socio-economic impacts. Such understandings are undoubtedly necessary to be ‘informed’ but they are not sufficient. Knowing the ‘facts’ is neither enough to change personal lifestyles nor to change po 0 Comments on Countdown to Copenhagen: Gordon Wilson as of 1/1/1900 Add a Comment More from this Blog | Email This | Add a Tag 16. Bridgeless Gaps 2 Comments | Previous | Top | By: Rebecca, on 11/25/2008 Blog: OUPblog (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap) JacketFlap tags:  Anomalies, Charles Darwin, Freaks of Nature, Mark Blumberg, Richard Goldschmidt, Science, A-Featured, Psychology, evolution, development, Add a tag Mark S. Blumberg is a Professor and Starch Faculty Fellow at the University of Iowa.  He currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Behavioral Neuroscience and as President of the International Society for Developmental Psychobiology.  In his newest book, Freaks of Nature: What Anomalies Tell Us About Development and Evolution, Blumberg takes a subject that is often shunned as discomforting and embarrassing and manages to shed new light on how individuals-and entire species- develop, survive and evolve.  In the original post below commemorates Richard Goldschmidt’s death by celebrating his work. As we approach the bicentennial of Charles Darwin’s birth, I would like to take a moment to commemorate the anniversary of the death of another great biologist. Richard Goldschmidt, one of the preeminent geneticists of the twentieth century, died fifty years ago at the age of 80. When I was in graduate school, his name had become synonymous with foolishness. Indeed, one did not mention his name without the requisite acknowledgement that his views — especially his notion of the ‘hopeful monster’ — were anathema. I now look back on my eager acceptance of this judgment with a bit of shame. But there is plenty of shame to go around. Goldschmidt’s seminal volume, The Material Basis of Evolution, was reissued in 1982, 42 years after its original publication. In reconsidering Goldschmidt’s legacy in a review of that reissue, published in Paleobiology, Guy Bush related graduate school experiences that were very similar to my own: when Goldschmidt’s name came up, Bush wrote, “it was inevitably in the context of ‘hopeful monsters’ and to the accompaniment of subdued snickers and knowing nods. It didn’t take long to learn that Richard B. Goldschmidt was not to be taken seriously as an evolutionary biologist…. These early impressions were reinforced by repeated ridicule of Goldschmidt both in print and in conversations with other biologists. I now wonder how many of those who criticized him so authoritatively really read any of his book or papers.” Bush titled his review “Goldschmidt’s Follies.” Stephen Jay Gould, who penned an introduction to the reissue of the The Material Basis of Evolution, titled his piece “The Uses of Heresy.” Clearly, Goldschmidt had stepped on some toes — and those toes belonged to those individuals who were promoting the so-called Modern Synthesis. Among these promoters were Ernst Mayr and George Gaylord Simpson, two eminent scientists whose graduate class it was where Guy Bush’s early impressions about Goldschmidt were formed. The Modern Synthesis, which grew rapidly in stature during the 1930 and 1940s, was a critical development in evolutionary thinking as it linked the Darwinian commitment to small, incremental change with the specific details of Mendelian genetics. Goldschmidt’s “heretical” willingness to entertain the possibility of rapid evolutionary change was, therefore, a threat to a key Darwinian tenet. So Goldschmidt had to be crushed; and he was — mercilessly and effectively. To this day, despite his many seminal and undisputed contributions to science, his name and legacy remain banished in limbo. Among Goldschmidt’s many contributions was his in-depth examination of phenocopies (his term), which are ‘mutant phenotypes’ produced without genetic change through alterations in the developmental environment. These and other critical contributions provide adequate support for the notion that Goldschmidt was hardly the loon that Mayr and others made him out to be. Of course, even Goldschmidt’s fans, including Gould and Bush, recognize his missteps; but scientific perfection has never been a requirement for respect. Darwin’s gemmule hypothesis does not dampen our enthusiasm for his brilliance; and Mayr, rightly revered by the time of his death a few years ago at the age of 100, was not able to escape the occasional doozy — although he did manage to escape the kind of ridicule that he had earlier heaped on Goldschmidt. Unlike Mayr, who had little appreciation for development, Goldschmidt was particularly attuned to the significance that developmental rate, timing, and patterning mean for the individual and the species. In his words: A “genetic change involving rates of embryonic processes does not affect a single process alone. The physiological balanced system of development is such that in many cases a single upset leads automatically to a whole series of consecutive changes of development in which the ability for embryonic regulation, as well as purely mechanical and topographical moments, come into play; there is in addition the shift in proper timing of integrating processes. If the result is not, as it frequently is, a monstrosity incapable of completing development or surviving, a completely new anatomical construction may emerge in one step from such a change.” This passage, like so many others, is nuanced, sophisticated, and surprisingly modern. But that single phrase — ‘in one step’ — was heresy to too many. Nonetheless, Goldschmidt saw no other way to account for the “bridgeless gaps” that he believed to separate individual species. Nor was he alone. A half-century earlier, William Bateson had also rejected the exclusive focus of the Darwinians on incremental change. And still others, like Goldschmidt and Bateson, emphasized the need to integrate developmental perspectives into evolutionary thought. Gavin de Beer, Walter Garstang, and Pere Alberch developed similar perspectives. Indeed, it is a curious fact of history that scientists with a background in development and embryology have been less enamored of the Neo-Darwinian commitment to incrementalism and population genetics. Thus, for most of the twentieth century, these evolutionary camps were also separated by a bridgeless gap. But that gap is shrinking as development creeps steadily back into the evolutionary mainstream. Alas, Goldschmidt may still be too controversial to get any credit. For example, I recently read a scientific paper, published in 2005, that in every way evoked Goldschmidt’s ideas about rapid evolutionary change. However, there was no reference to Goldschmidt at all, but for a curious reference in the final paragraph to “the material basis of evolution,” exactly duplicating the title of Goldschmidt’s infamous book. Assuming that this author knew what he was doing, can it be that he felt comfortable only with a surreptitious acknowledgement of Goldschmidt’s influence? This suggestion hardly seems far-fetched when we consider the visceral responses that Goldschmidt and his ideas still evoke. For example, after Olivia Judson wrote a blog in The New York Times entitled “The monster is back, and it’s hopeful,” Jerry Coyne quickly shot back with a sharp rejoinder. The many comments from readers of these blogs were no less heated. It is difficult to navigate such disputes, especially when there are so many threads coursing through each argument. As with any such complex issue, agreement and disagreement can flow with each passing sentence. But, in the end, what has become clear to me is that these disputes are too firmly wedded to old facts and fading personalities. If we wish to bridge the gaps between today’s various evolutionary camps, we might want to look to the developing embryo for inspiration. Yes, we have been shaped by past disputes, but that does not mean that each generation is doomed to repeat them without modification. 2 Comments on Bridgeless Gaps, last added: 12/8/2008 Display Comments JPS said, on 12/5/2008 7:02:00 AM Thank you for a fascinating post. I suspect that part of the problem is that “hopeful monsters” has become a caricature that is now also in popular currency among creationists (along with the usual Gould quotes), used to symbolize “lack of an incremental solution,” i.e “evidence for sudden creation,” so that paying respect to Goldschmidt=ceding rhetorical ground. Mark Blumberg said, on 12/6/2008 11:05:00 AM I believe you are correct about “hopeful monsters’ having become a caricature. It seems that discussions about Goldschmidt too quickly devolve into ruminations on pigs with wings and other such silliness. But we must not grant anti-evolutionists the power to shape the discussions of those of us who take development and evolution seriously. 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