Aspirations

In a paper that I read recently on the im-materiality of religion, the author chose to use the word ‘aspiration’ as one of those elements that she described as an immaterial aspect of religion. The authors, Marian Burkhart and Maria Westendorp, were arguing that scholars of urban religion had become too fixated on the material manifestations of religion within the urban environment. By looking at the lives of two Christian women involved in the umbrella movement in Hong Kong, they suggested that it is also important to look at immaterial elements, and among those they chose to identify ‘aspirations’. Religion, it appears gives these women aspirations, both for their own lives, but perhaps more importantly for the city itself.

I think I was most struck by the choice of word. I would talk of ‘hopes’, or of ‘ambitions’, I am not sure that ‘aspirations’ is a word that I would have thought of in the context. However, having used the word, this paper set me thinking. Is there something that ‘aspirations’ might offer that some of the other words that we could use do not?

In particular, I began to think about students going to university and the various discourses that currently exist around the expectations, hopes and ambitions that students have as they start on their journey. The government, for example, and many others within our society, tend to assume that the purpose of going to university is to get a good job and to earn money. The assumption is that students are ambitious, they want the very best for themselves and they can calculate the value of attending university, setting this against the debts that they will incur, and, taking all that into account, plan for their future, their ambition.

At another level there is also a growing sense of entitlement. This derives from the idea that we have commercialised university so much, set a price on the privilege of learning, that students come to university with expectations of success. They feel entitled, not just to outstanding teaching and world leading student support, but to the result that they expect to achieve. I have written elsewhere about the way in which expectations have changed, from my own day, way back in the 1980s, when I felt I was lucky just to get the chance to attend university, to today when students turn up expecting to achieve a first class degree, or at least a 2:1, because that is what they are paying for.

And to turn this around once again, there are also narratives which tell us how unprepared students are for university. The pandemic, the disruption to education, the levels of concern about mental health among young people, all mean that students come to university not believing that they can achieve, not knowing how to turn things around, to gain resilience, or even to survive. Such students need all the support we can offer simply to remain and to focus on their learning, let alone worrying about their expectations for the future, if any such future even exists as the world overheats and all the jobs are taken by AI chatbots.

There are so many conflicting messages out there, different narratives that not only those in universities need to manage, but that students also need to negotiate and find their way around. It is obvious that many students may well switch between these narratives, and many more, only settling on any one within the specific context in which they must identify what it is that they expect, assume, or desire from university.

Is this a context in which to talk about ‘aspirations’ might help us to cut through all the noise? Somehow the word itself seems softer than either ‘expectations’ or ‘ambitions’. We may be ambitious for a good job, high earnings, fame and fortune. We might expect, either everything on a plate, or complete disaster. There is something in the words themselves that lead us to associate them with a particular kind of outcome, and in each case something very precise and very concrete. ‘Aspiration’ raises other kinds of opportunity. The fact that the authors in the original paper use it in a religious context gives some hint to this. We might want to say, for example, that we are ambitious for a good job and high salary, but we aspire to a good life, to helping others, to giving something back to the world or to society. Aspiration almost demands something positive, something more abstract, something that we can, perhaps, all share.

This is perhaps pushing the argument too far. We can all aspire to a good job and a high salary, but even saying that suggests to me that the way we might go about achieving that would be different from the methods we would use if we simply said we were ambitious. Ambitions are selfish? Aspirations are charitable? Perhaps, or perhaps not. This may just be my own associations. However, I do think there is something in what I am trying to get at here.

The real question, therefore, is to ask what starts to happen if we begin to talk to students about their aspirations, whether in applying to university, in coming to university, or for what it is that they want out of university and for the rest of their lives. If we can only ask students to think carefully about what it is that they aspire to, and why, then we might be able to have a very different kind of conversation. We might be able to change the narrative, to focus on more than simply getting a good grade, or even surviving three years. It has something to do with confidence, something much more personal than expectations or ambitions, something that talks of values as well as instrumentality. It is probably something that all good employability units do already, as will many academic tutors, without ever naming it as a particular approach. I may be being romantic. It is just that reading that paper, about something entirely different, suddenly got me thinking, and, you never know, there may just be something in it.

Snow White in the Age of Social Media

Snow White acts as something of leitmotif throughout my current book on the nature and use of stories in religion. In each chapter I provide a different analysis of the tale and a different perspective or way of telling the story. In the chapter on ‘Function’ (which begins with the theories of Malinowski) I suggest that one of the functions of fairy tales is to provide an emotional journey, following the hero through a series of trials and torments leading to the happy ever after. Snow White is built around a series of crises, each building on the last, in which the emotional tension rises, only to be released before building to the next crisis and a new predicament for the young hero. I suggest that this is the same kind of construction that was later used by Dickens and his contemporaries in publishing novels in parts, each with cliff hanger at the end forcing the reader to buy the next part, of contemporary multi-part television dramas, with the same use of the cliff hanger endings to draw us into binge watching the whole series in one go. I suggest that Snow White would make an excellent gritty contemporary drama over six episodes, but I don’t have the space in the book to outline what that might look like. This is my re-imagined story: –

Snow: A Fairy Tale for the Age of Social Media.

Episode One: Mirror

Rose, a fifteen-year-old girl, is one of two adopted children of a self-focused celebrity and social-media influencer. Prince, the older brother, maybe around twenty, is constantly rowing with his mother as she seems more interested in her own media presence than any of her children (who are just part of this image). Rose is a sassy self-opinionated young woman, and we see her out with friends, playing with a choker and heart pendent, and spending long periods of time on social media with her online friends. The mother wants both the children to attend parties and humiliates Rose because she is not traditionally attractive. The mother gets angry at some other celebrity who appears to be eclipsing her on social media and seeks the help of Al, her publicity guru, to take the rival down. This shows her ruthlessness and lack of concern for others. Towards the end of the episode, the mother notices that her daughter has more ‘likes’ than her, despite not conforming to her idea of beauty and behaviour. Rose’s posts are based on ‘clean living’ and condemning the values of her mother and her lifestyle. The episode ends with Rose reading a long rant on her tablet in which her mother is threatening to tear her to shreds and even to kill her.

Episode Two: Heart

A party is getting underway, hosted by the mother. She is insisting that Rose is present, although she is very reluctant and wants to be with her own friends. The Party is attended by a whole series of celebrities, all of whom are getting off their heads with drink and drugs. The mother instructs Al to get Rose drunk or stoned, but she is not touching either drink or drugs. Al spikes her drinks and slowly she begins to lose control, and, at the mother’s insistence, she is plied with drugs. The mother tells Al to take Rose into town, to photograph her in compromising positions, and to upload these onto her social media sites. The next day police arrive at the door, only Prince is around having come back early in the morning to find the remnants of the party. The Police give him the choker, a coat and boots and Rose’s phone. They say they found them by a bridge over the river. Prince screams through the house, waking his mother and asking what she has done. She pretends to be shocked, blames Al and then collapses again. Prince finds Al in a seedy bar in town, distraught. He says that he cannot go back because he has killed Rose and cannot be forgiven. He just wants to die.

Episode Three: Forest

Rose is walking, dishevelled and dazed along the back streets of the town. A Police car stops but Rose swears at them, and the officers choose to drive on. Rose collapses and falls in a doorway. A street preacher passes, tries to raise her and then goes to get help. Once he has gone, Rose struggles up and starts to stagger down the street. She is picked up by a man in a beaten up, but once expensive, car. He can get nothing out of her and takes her back to a run-down house where there are other men and girls, all illegal immigrants. He clearly runs some kind of trafficking outfit and is constantly arguing with the other men. The other girls are more street wise and can give as good as they get, although there is a constant air of violence and menace. When Rose comes round, she cannot, or pretends not to, remember her name, and is initially treated well by the other girls. However, after a few days, one of the girls asks why this new girl (called Snow because of the remnants of drugs down her front when she was brought in) is not ‘earning her keep’, there is an almighty row and the bloke who picked her up, Forest, insists that she is not that type of girl. When he is away for a couple of days, and the guy in charge gets a call. He decides it’s time for Rose/Snow to work (it is never stated what the ‘work’ is and we are left to guess), and dresses her in white before taking her out to the car only to see Forest standing in the road looking daggers at him.

Episode Four: Fairest

Prince has been searching for any sign of his sister. He demands that the police officer at the station tell him whether any bodies have been found, they have not, and why they are not out there looking for her. The officer is dismissive, it is clearly a case of suicide. Prince goes back to his flat. Al is there, drunk and in despair. He cannot say whether he killed Rose, or whether she jumped, or whether he imagined the whole thing, he is beginning to doubt his sanity and blames the mother, who is now all-over social media as if nothing had happened. Prince is also touring the bars, asking for any news. At one, on the edge of the district, he meets the bloke from the traffickers clearly the worse for wear. Prince shows him the photo and bloke says that he can get him a girl that looks just like her, but it will cost. The next day Prince comes back, and the bloke comes in with a different girl, he says this one will have to do, the other is worth more than he could afford, and then leaves. Prince asks the girl about Rose and shows her the photo. The girl recognises her and says how the boss is protecting her, she cannot leave the house, and does all the cleaning, but she is also not being asked to work. She thinks her boss is keeping her for himself. Prince asks if the girl would be prepared to smuggle a phone to Rose and at first the girl is reluctant, but she is persuaded. The episode ends with the mother scrolling through her phone and suddenly seeing an image of her daughter looking fresh faced with no further comment. She screams.

Episode Five: Choker

The mother is waiting in an upmarket hotel, scrolling on her phone and vaping. She is joined by Forest looking very suspicious. She shows him the picture and asks if he knows the girl. Forest denies it, but the mother persists. She says that she represents a very important client who would pay handsomely for time with this girl. Forest looks again at the picture and asks where the mother got it and why she thought it had anything to do with him. She says he was not easy to track down, but the image is trending on social media and gaining lots of attention. Forest is now nervous and asks what the arrangements might be. The mother says she wants the image taken down and that she wants to meet with the girl to ‘prepare’ her, she will make it more than worth his while. Later, at the house, all the other residents have been sent out and only Forest and Rose are present. Forest also leaves and says that he is expecting a visitor, Rose is to entertain her till he returns. The mother arrives, veiled, and Rose does not recognise her, or pretends that she does not recognise her. They talk and the mother says that she should smarten herself up. She says that she has some things in her bag that would make her look pretty. Rose is reluctant but is talked into it by her mother. Standing behind Rose, her mother removes her veil and Rose recognises her in the mirror although she says nothing. The mother combs her hair, applies make up etc. and then takes the choker out of the bag. Rose says that the choker was given to her by her birth mother, and the stepmother smiles. Rose lets her stepmother put the choker on and makes some comments about social media, taunting her stepmother, who proceeds to tighten the choker around her neck.

Episode Six: Glass

Forest is pacing up and down a hospital waiting room with glass walls and large window. Rose is not dead, but she is unconscious. Forest is making up stories about how she choked on a piece of apple. The doctors want to call the police, they are not convinced by the explanation. Forest is getting scarred and is about to get violent when Prince arrives, the other girl has called him. He goes for Forest who stumbles and runs for the door. Prince is sitting by the bedside when his stepmother walks in, she says she has come to look after her daughter, how relieved she is that Rose is alive, etc. Prince tells her to leave and the mother throws insults at him, accusing him of always lusting after his sister. Prince is angry and threatens his mother. She leaves, throwing down some grapes that she said she had brought for Rose, insisting that Prince makes sure Rose gets them when she wakes up. Somewhat later Al comes in, sobering up and wanting to seek Rose’s forgiveness. She is still in a coma, or is pretending to be, and he sits with Prince absentmindedly eating the grapes. He suddenly jumps up and rushes out with stomach pains and Prince urgently calls a doctor, saying the grapes must have been poisoned. The show ends with Prince giving a statement to the police, saying how he believes that his sister was trafficked and strangled by Forest and that his mother tried to poison her. The police look very sceptical and say that they could only corroborate this if Rose wakes up, all the evidence is circumstantial, and the show ends with a police guard on the door of Rose’s room in the hospital.

Not a satisfactory ending, I know, but then neither is the happy ever after of the original story! I also want to make Rose’s complicity, or direction, of the action somewhat ambiguous, she cannot be a passive ‘victim’. Likewise, we should never be sure if Forest is a trafficker running a prostitution racket, or a legitimate asylum seeker, and that others in the house are taking advantage of him. I would want to leave a certain level of moral ambiguity.

Walking Across Paris

Walking in Paris is a very different experience from walking in London. Above all there is less obvious difference and contrast within Paris, or at least within the centre of Paris. Normally, I would travel by Metro, but on my last trip, to visit the exhibition of a sale of some of Hélène Leloup’s collection of African, or more particularly Dogon, art, I had arranged the flights so that I would effectively have two full days in the city, and the exhibition (along with others at Christie’s and the Paris auction houses at Drouot) would not take all that time. What is more, until the last hour or so of the second day it was beautiful weather and ideal for just a gentle wander through the streets, not exactly springtime, but pleasant enough all the same.

When we usually visit Paris, it is to attend Parcours des Mondes (the annual exhibition of non-European art held among the galleries of Saint Germain des Prés in September each year) and we stay in a hotel in the Latin Quarter. On this occasion, because of the late decision to go and see the exhibition (I really couldn’t miss it given Leloup’s central position in the writing on the Dogon) our usual hotel was full, and I booked into a hotel not far from Sotherby’s who were hosting the sale, on the Boulevard Haussmann.

However, from the airport I got the RER down to St Michel and toured the galleries of St Germain before heading across the river, through the Jardin des Tuileries and on to the Rue Saint Honoré, at the end of which, opposite the Palais de l’Élysée, Sotherby’s has it’s Paris offices. Then, after lunch at a street corner café, it was on to the hotel (and some shopping at Printemps). The following day I explored the area around the hotel, the Parc Monceau, a couple of musées on its edge, and then down to Christie’s just off the Champs Élysée, back to Sotherby’s for a second look, and on, via the Madelaine to Rue Drouot, some exploring of that area, and back to the hotel via the Musée Gustave Moreau and the Eglise de la Saint Trinité, before walking from the hotel, down the length of the Rue Saint Honoré to Les Halles and the train back to the airport (it was on this last stretch that the heavens opened and I had to shelter in the perfume and candle shop Diptyque).

Wherever you walk in this central area of Paris you are surrounded by multi story stone houses, of differing styles, but all of a similar size and grandeur. Of course, what happens at ground level does vary, especially in shopping areas or in the occasional street set aside to cater for tourists and filled with cafés and other food outlets. Before reading Edmund de Waal’s The Hare with the Amber Eyes I had assumed, without really thinking, that these were all either offices or flats. It has not occurred to me that many were single mansions owned by individual families. Perhaps in some parts that was never the case. It was in the area around the Parc Monceau, where I was wandering on the second morning, that the house that is mentioned in de Waal’s book is situated, and it was clearly a place where numerous wealthy families lived. Three of the mansions are now museums and I visited two on this trip (we had been to the third on our last visit). This gives a very different insight into what otherwise seem very impersonal blocks of stone clad buildings, each fronting directly onto the street with no gardens to speak of (but just look up, and the joy of seeing large plants, including lemon trees, growing on the balconies above gives a splash of colour even to the most monochrome of these streets).

It is, however, at street level, and perhaps with the people, that the real variety is seen. The galleries and cafés of Saint Germain des Prés, the designer outlets, and designer people, of the Rue Saint Honoré and the much more earthy and human communities around Rue Drouot, leading up to Montmartre. Equally significant are the views. Haussmann, in designing the street plan, was very keen to encourage long streets, at different angles, that lead to vistas and points of view across the city. To turn a corner and then to see the road laid out, often with a monument or church in the far distance, is one of the great pleasures of walking around Paris.

Paris is a city of revolutions and of riots, as we have seen only to clearly in recent weeks. The divisions of wealth, of race, of society are as strong as in any city anywhere in the world. They are just not so obvious on the streets in the centre, except at times of trouble and protest. Paris has always been for me, despite all this, a very human city. Perhaps the riots, the violence, the open expressions of naked emotion, are part of that humanity. There is nothing that is false, or in the English sense ‘polite’ about Paris (although I have always found the people welcoming and seldom rude, as their reputation so often suggests). The scale is also not immediately human, but the repetitions, the long-repeated avenues, the stone clad buildings, all subtle variations of each other, are, in some strange way, human. It is also the cafés, tables and chairs on practically every corner, the simplicity of the fare, the buzz of people sitting, stopping, eating, drinking, that is human. I feel comfortable, relaxed, able to merge into the background. It is a real pleasure to walk around the city and watch its people going about their business.

Needless to say, I did not buy anything at any of the auctions. The prices were far too high for me. I simply wanted to go and to see what was there, and how they were presented. It is, of course, possible to do this online, but that is not the same. To be able to look at the objects themselves, objects that had been handled by Hélène Leloup, objects that had been made, and used, by the Dogon, was an incredible privilege, and well worth taking a couple of days in Paris.

On Reading Dalrymple, Christians and the Middle East

I have just finished reading William Dalrymple’s From the Holy Mountain. I have to say that it was one of the most depressing books that I have read in a long time. The book outlines Dalrymple’s journey from Mount Athos through Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Egypt to the Coptic necropolis of Bagawat in the southern Egyptian desert. Dalrymple is drawing inspiration from The Spiritual Meadow of John Moschos. This was written in the late sixth century and early seventh century, at the height of the Byzantine Empire, and just before the rapid growth of Islam. It is, among other things, an account of Moschos’ travels and his visits to various monasteries across the region. It is these monasteries that Dalrymple sets out to visit.

What is very clear, however, is that, apart from Athos, where Dalrymple starts his journey, the Christian communities he visits are under existential threat and persecution. The people, unable to survive in their native lands, are rapidly emigrating to the US, Canada and Sweden, among other places. The ancient Christian communities across the Middle East are dying out. Dalrymple travelled in the early 1990s, and he consistently predicts that within twenty years there will be no Christians left in the countries that he visited.

Dalrymple recounts many stories of horror, of violence, of naked persecution and of despair. What is interesting, however, is that in each country the troubles faced by the Christians come from different sources, whether it is from nationalists (primarily Kurds, but also Turks) in southern Turkey, Jewish settlers in Israel, or Islamic extremists in Egypt. In the Lebanon it is even other Christians who are the primary cause of the persecution and violence. Only in Syria are the Christian communities relatively safe and thriving, although we all know only too well what has happened there in more recent years. Twenty years on, now thirty years on, some, very small, Christian communities are still struggling to survive, but I would doubt whether many of the monasteries that Dalrymple visited are still open, even in the very limited way they were in the 1990s.

It is not just the contemporary oppression of the Christian communities that Dalrymple articulates. His narrative puts this into an historical context and demonstrates, across the region, how the downfall of the Ottoman Empire (under which, for five centuries or so, the Christians had been tolerated and allowed to live and worship in relative freedom), and the outcomes of the First World War, colonialism and the establishment of the State of Israel, with all the errors and mistakes that were made by Britain and France, and others, across the region, it was always the Christians who suffered and, as nationalisms grew, it was the Christians who were expelled, or destroyed in one genocidal massacre or another.

While those perpetuating the horrors that Dalrymple relates are almost always local, he clearly places the blame firmly on the Western powers and their actions, both in the past and in the present. The drive to ethnic unity, nationalism, religious purity, or whatever it might be, has led to Christian communities being forcibly expelled from the lands in which Christianity had its birth, but that drive has its roots in the actions, and decisions of Britain and France and other Western nations. All this was happening, and continues to happen, with the full knowledge of Western governments, but with hardly any significant comment or condemnation on their behalf.

One of the points that Dalrymple wishes to emphasise is the common origins, in a local Semitic culture, of Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Over and over again Dalrymple compares a particular Syriac or Coptic Christian practice with what we usually associate as Islamic practice, showing the very close similarities between the two. The keeping of the times of prayer, fasting, the actions of prayer, the call to prayer and so on. It is the common heritage that Dalrymple highlights, and it is this, in his view, that makes the current oppression of the Christian communities, and their expulsion from their native lands, all the more devastating. In many places Christian and Muslims shared common traditions, healing rites associated with particular shrines for example, and common spaces where both Muslims and Christians worshiped, together, but in their own way.

Added to this is the way in which, in Turkey and in Israel particularly, it is not just the communities that are being oppressed. The material remains, the monasteries, the churches and other monuments, are also being systematically obliterated. It is the memory that is being destroyed, all evidence that there ever was a strong and thriving Christian community in these places. This a cultural vandalism that Dalrymple finds to be particularly devastating and one that has the potential to destroy much of the cultural remains and art of the late Byzantine period across the region. It did not stop in the 1990s of course. The destruction, of both communities and peoples, has continued with the civil wars in Iraq and Syria (still a small beacon of hope in Dalrymple’s book) and the continued oppression of minority religions in Iran. The Christian communities of the whole region are now, very obviously, hanging on by a thread. History and heritage are being lost and the people are moving away in ever increasing numbers.

Ironically, I was reading Dalrymple’s book as I was also reading the Book of Joshua for my daily bible reading. Joshua tells the story of the people of Israel taking possession of the land that God had promised them. What becomes very telling, particularly in the light of Dalrymple’s text, is the constant refrain, throughout Joshua, of God telling the people to destroy each city and all its people, not one is to be saved, not even the women or children. God is demanding total extinction, absolute ethnic cleansing. It is against this background, this ancient ideology (not just for the people of Israel, but for all peoples of the region) that I was reading about the destruction of the Christian communities. Has anything significant changed in the three or four thousand years between these texts? I fear not, and that it perhaps the most depressing element of all.

A Night at the Ballet

There is not nearly enough modern dance and ballet outside of London. Here in the Midlands, we have the Birmingham Royal Ballet and then various touring companies that may come to Malvern, Wolverhampton, the Hippodrome in Birmingham or elsewhere. Unless you are on the various mailing lists or know where to look it is very easy to miss some significant events.

It was therefore very disappointing to go to see the Birmingham Royal Ballet at the Hippodrome, for their triple bill and find it all very tired and somewhat half hearted. We have seen Still Life at the Penguin Café at least twice before, and Apollo at least once, but we had enjoyed them and decided that it was worth going again. Knowing the work, however, illustrated just how lacklustre and lacking in vitality and crispness this performance was. In previous performances certain animals, or rather the dancers performing as the various animals in the Penguin Café, held the stage and projected energy and life. Something of that was missing for this performance. Having said that, however, the more recent piece, Interlinked, was excellent and very well danced.

It was a real pleasure, therefore, over the last weekend to go to Wolverhampton Grand Theatre to see BRB2, Carlos Acosta’s Classical Selection. This was a touring show that Acosta and the BRB had brought together featuring new, or newish, young dancers from the company in classic works, par de deux’s, solos and an ensemble work called Majisimo, with a decidedly Spanish feel. The dancers were brilliant, and the various short works allowed them to shine, showing off both their skills as dancers and their artistry and presence. It was all too short, of course, but an excellent showcase for the younger soloists within the company.

The dance that has stuck in my own memory, however, was a new work created by Acosta around the classic choreography of Michel Fokine’s Dying Swan. This was originally created, according to the programme, in 1907 for Anna Pavlova and was danced to the Swan from Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals (the company had brought a pianist and a cellist to provide some live music among other recorded accompaniments, which I thought was a great move). The original harks back to Swan Lake, of course, and also references Tennyson’s poem Le Cygne, and it is a very classic solo for a single female dancer in tutu and performed, as the programme tells me, ‘almost entirely of pas de bourées, a smooth running step performed entirely en pointe’. Around this, however, Acosta had woven a new dance, this time for a male dancer in white tights. The programme says nothing about this, apart from saying ‘for this performance Carlos Acosta has reimagined this iconic solo as a duet’. This second dance, however, in a very modern idiom, was also a death and the dancer moved across the stage in various stages of agony as he interacted with the dying swan, without ever touching her. The piece opened with the sound of wind blowing across the water and only gradually did the Saint-Saens emerge from the background noise. It was an incredibly powerful work and an example, that you see often in art galleries these days, but rarely in dance or other medium, of a classic work in dialogue with a brilliant modern choreographer creating something that is considerably more than the original.

I am not sure what this show would have cost to produce. A very significant amount I am sure, but also very significantly less than a full production with sets and full orchestra. It did, however, give the dancers a chance to get out, and for the company to reach a much wider audience.

The audience at the main event, the triple bill, was what I would I expect for Birmingham Royal Ballet at the Hippodrome, of a certain age and well healed. They were also loyal followers and whooped with pleasure at the end of each piece, including the Penguin Café which remains a crowd pleaser, even when it is not performed as perfectly and with as much pernach as it might be. The audience at the BRB2 show in Wolverhampton was, however, slightly different. It was still of a certain age (at 61 – this was my birthday treat – I still felt to be one of the youngest there) but it was more local, not quite as well healed as the crowd that went to Birmingham. They also loved it, and were generous in their applause and appreciation for the wonderful dancing on offer. The theatre was full (although the top tear, the Gods, was closed off) and I assume that the company played to full houses in other venues on the tour.

It is difficult to manage a ballet company, of course it is, and it is very expensive to stage and to tour, but the audiences are out there if the quality is high enough and the programme is well chosen. There should be more of it outside London, but we probably all know that already.

AI and Surprise in Research

I feel that I need to have some position on AI, but I also feel out of my depth in approaching it. I am not a user of social media and can see no personal use for generative AI. Hence, I would never claim to understand it as a technology, or how it works. I am, however, fascinated by the impact it might have on education and on society, while recognising that it is more likely to be the unintended consequences that are important, rather than anything we might predict. However, here are some initial thoughts based on a couple of recent comments.

A recent edition of The Times Higher Education had two articles on AI that spoke to me. There has been a great deal on the recent advances in generative AI and ChatGPT, about whether it will be dangerous or beneficial to teaching and/or research within the university, with some more marginal work on its potential contribution to marketing, student support and other areas of university life.

The first article was by Nick Jennings, the Vice Chancellor of Loughborough, who has a background in AI, who argued for the benefits of generative AI, without neglecting the dangers. This is something that is coming, whether we like it or not. It does have significant advantages and many potential uses across the institution, including in teaching and research. We must not be blind to the dangers, but we must, essentially, go with the flow, work with this new technology and, above all, make the technology work for us. There will be some inevitable changes in practice, and in work patterns, as well as in the way we approach learning and teaching, but that could be no bad thing.

The second article was somewhat different. This was essentially about the role of ‘awe’ in research. The author, Andy Tix, a psychologist, highlighted the sense of awe, the childlike sense of wonder, that is often associated with research, especially at moments of breakthrough and the development of new and original results or applications. This sense of awe, the author suggests, is core to the research process and is something that AI, as such, cannot replicate. We can have a sense of awe at what generative AI might produce, but the AI system itself cannot replicate that sense of awe for itself. It is simply not built that way, at least for now. Generative AI can develop originality, and based on probability and comparison with existing models, it can identify when something is original. This is true in research as it is in art, poetry or any other field. Originality is simply the process of doing something different, doing something that has never been done before, and that can be measured, processed and hence identified by the machine.

What it cannot do, so easily, is to say whether that original thing is of any value or not. If there is a mechanical way of measuring beauty, a formula to be followed, then it might be able to predict whether the original artwork would be considered ‘beautiful’, but it can never be sure. Likewise in research, it might be possible to predict that an original outcome is interesting or useful, but it can never be sure. What it cannot, perhaps, do is to feel awe, that sense of ‘wow’ that real breakthroughs inevitably produce.

When I am teaching research methods, and particularly ethnographic methods, to PhD students one of the factors that I always put forward as essential to ethnography is the idea of ‘surprise’. Ethnography, done properly, when resources allow, is a long-term project, an immersion in another society or social group over many weeks, months, or even years. The question is often asked as to what this kind of long-term immersion can achieve that surveys, observation and a more superficial engagement with the society, through for example short term case studies or even investigative journalism, cannot also see. If we are relatively familiar with the society, or do a significant amount of background reading, then it sometimes does feel as though there is little left to learn. However, I would always maintain that there comes a point in ethnographic research where the immersion in the society or culture is such that the researcher suddenly becomes surprised; they discover something that they were not expecting. That is the point of revelation, perhaps the point of awe. That is the point, I would suggest, when we can begin to take knowledge forward and propose a new, and original, approach that does say something significant, and occasionally something ground-breaking that changes the way we see society (or ritual, or religion, or whatever the topic in question might be) in an entirely new way.

If generative AI has difficulty with awe, it cannot, I would suggest, be surprised, particularly in the way that I suggesting in relation to ethnographic research. Again, as with originality, it can note and identify something that has not emerged in the data before. It is more difficult for it to identify that thing as significant and its implications as ground-breaking. That process of noting, being captured by, sitting in awe of, that surprising piece of data, and of being able to see within it, or beyond it, the possibility of an entirely new way of thinking, is something that, for now, is entirely human.

Andy Tix, in the THE paper, told of a time when, as a young biology student, he was taken on fieldwork and discovered in that experience a sense of awe at what was around him. He argued that this was the core feature of learning and should sit at the heart of our education system. I couldn’t agree more, and that perhaps takes us back to the other paper, by Nick Jennings. Much of our education is still very routine, about getting across the facts, or how to interpret the facts, or about learning skills and how to apply them. All that can be done by generative AI, much faster and generally much better, than we could ever achieve. If, however, we genuinely design our programmes around learning as awe, or as surprise, and teach our students what to do next, in order to move from the raw sense of awe to the possibility of a new way of thinking (we may perhaps have to work on this) then that would radically change the way we teach, and would continue to place us one step ahead of generative AI, at least for now.

Africa, A Cry from the Heart

I am always very reluctant to treat Africa as a single space. There are too many differences and subtleties across the continent, even in so-called sub-Saharan Africa, for any generalisation to make sense. I am also very reluctant to present Africa, or Africans, as victims, or as living hard or difficulty lives. I would not want to present the whole continent as subject to oppression and suffering. There is so much joy, so much to celebrate, so many good news stories from across the continent for pain and suffering to be the single image.

Three stories, however, in the news over recent days and weeks have led me to reflect on just how much suffering does still remain across the continent, and by implication, how much of that can be blamed on European colonialism, Western neo-colonialism and international neglect over many years (not to mention slavery in earlier centuries).

The war in Sudan is the latest example, and one of many wars that are currently being waged in different countries and with different levels of intensity. Just before the Sudan crisis filled our screens, however, there were two other stories that might have gone unnoticed. There was a story from South West Tanzania, a region rich in gold deposits, where unofficial miners are turning to what the report called ‘shamans’ who, in turn are telling them to acquire the blood of virgins, leading to a rash of rapes and murders of young girls in the region. And then, in Kenya, a story of a cult that was encouraging their members to starve themselves to death and the discovery of a significant number of graves, of men, women and children.

It is easy to dismiss all these events as being ‘of Africa’. We retain the imagery and narrative of the ‘dark continent’ and we have heard so much about the wars, the violence, the rape, AIDS, famine etc. etc. from the continent that we have almost come to think of this as just being the way Africa is. The way the news is presented often suggests that there is nothing but unremitting pain and suffering across Africa, and that this is what Africa is. Africa is presented as the product of the nineteenth century, but the product, not of colonialism, but of the savagery and fever that the colonial rulers presented as the image of Africa at the time, and that remains as the fundamental image of Africa today.

All three stories, however, have their roots in the colonial encounter and the damage that was done by the Western (primarily British) powers through the nineteenth century and on into the beginning of the twentieth. Appiah argued in the 1990s that colonialism, at least in Ghana did not really affect the ordinary villager. They continued to live and work much as they had always done, and to relate to the local powers in the same way as pre-Colonial times. This may be true of some areas of the continent. The lasting impact of colonialism, however, has often only become known in some of the horrors at the end of the twentieth century, long after the colonial powers had official left and new independent governments were in charge.

The war in Sudan can be tracked back to the activities of the colonial power (in this case the UK) even if the power at the time was shared with Egypt. The tensions, and the creation and emphasis on tribalism and ethnicity that was exacerbated by colonial governments across the continent, can be seen as the direct root of the current conflict. Likewise, in Tanzania (formally German, but also a British protectorate), the breakdown of society, of social norms and the cultures collected and celebrated by anthropologists, once again has its roots in colonialism. Finally, in Kenya (again British), we see the impact of the missionaries who accompanied the colonial regime. The missions are not directly responsible for contemporary cults, but the initial introduction of Christianity and the multiplication of denominations, churches or, more recently, cults once again has it roots in the colonial period.

The European powers (and their American allies) did nothing at independence to support or enable these countries. Once again, the people of Africa were let down as the continent, under neo-colonialism, was used simply as a source of raw materials. Local economies, built on manufacturing or other industries that added value, were never allowed to emerge. Particular ideologies of international development, and support for dictators (against those who were supported by the Soviet Regime), meant that Africa had little chance to develop. The internal ethnic and personal battles often erupted into coups and/or civil wars. What is happening in Sudan is just the latest in a very long list of such conflicts. The stripping of resources, such as gold, and increasingly with the electronics industry other rare minerals, was also a deliberate policy of the neo-colonial governments, in league with the multi-national mining and extraction companies. There was no real interest in development and no concern for the break down in society that followed. And, in religion, the American pentecostalist and other multi-national churches spread new Gospels that formed the basis for cults such as the one in Kenya with its misplaced responses to the expectation of the final days.

With this horrific history we are now no longer able to do good in any shape or form. Our credibility, as nations, has been lost and no African government, or at least very few, is prepared to trust Western intervention. The continent has turned to China, which continues to be interested only in raw materials and is systematically stripping the continent of its wealth but does not come with the same colonial baggage and continues to offer the grand structural investment that the nations of the continent desire. More recently it is Russians, in the form of the Wagner Group, that national leaders are turning to as they are seen to be more effective at maintaining order, often through brutal means, where the old colonial powers are seen to be too squeamish.

What can we do? I do not have an answer to this, I can only cry. We have made such a mess that the people no longer trust us, or turn to us, and we can see why. There is little we can do, even while we watch China and Russia prevent any further growth. Why is Africa not like the tiger economies of East Asia? There is no good reason, no reason that is inherent in the people, the climate or the available resources. It is their colonial heritage, the damage we in the West have done, even after independence, that accounts for this disparity and this unfairness. It feels as if there is nothing we can do but cry from the heart…

NSS and Student Engagement: What I Learnt from Swansea University

As I continue to write new blogs for this site, I have also been reviewing some of the blogs that I wrote in my seven years as Pro-Vice Chancellor and I have chosen to rewrite them as an occasional series of what I have learnt from my time at Swansea University.

Over the last seven years Swansea continued to do very well in the National Student Survey, especially in terms of the student’s overall satisfaction, which remained consistently one of the best in the UK throughout my time at the University. Now NSS is undergoing some significant changes and the sector is asking whether it continues to be fit for purpose. In the light of that, I have gone back over some of my reflections during my time at Swansea and distilled what I believe we learnt about doing well in NSS.

Swansea University can undoubtedly be very proud of their consistent record on the overall satisfaction score, but we were always aware that there were issues in other parts of the survey that we needed to address. What I thought might be useful in this blog, therefore, is to offer a few more general comments on the NSS and what it does, and does not measure, and to outline one or two of the things that we undertook to address the concerns that such surveys raised.

The first thing to note, and to constantly keep in mind, is that the NSS is a ‘satisfaction survey’ and that what it measures is ‘student satisfaction’. We may question exactly what this is, or how this is interpreted by students. We may want to raise issues with the methodology, or the statistical questions that underlie such a survey. Others have done this over many years, and on the whole, while we know there are issues and concerns, the NSS has become established and it does measure something – student satisfaction, a sense of belonging, the commitment of students to the university or their course, levels of frustration at things going wrong – and that the regular reporting of the results to the same questions over a number of years provided a good test of how our students saw the University and various elements of their learning experience. While we must not be fixated with absolute numbers, trends up or down were certainly worth noting.

One thing that became very clear from our experience across the University is that when things go wrong, and when students become frustrated at failures of the system (at whatever level) this can have a significant effect on the scores. Such frustrations can be avoided by careful planning, although not all systems are under the control of local programme teams and mistakes can occur at all levels. We have discovered, however, that it is often the speed of our response, the reassurance that we can give to students that issues are being sorted out, and the strong message that we are listening and responding to concerns, that can go a long way to mitigate against unforeseen events. We learnt that we had to do all that we could to avoid anything that might seriously frustrate students in the first place and be quick to respond and sort problems out when they occur.

Beyond this basic level of professionalism, competence and engagement I think that we were generally very clear about what works, at least in a broad sense, and what does not; what it is that raised levels of satisfaction across the various categories of the survey. I have watched programmes and departments within the University turn themselves around and we have all learnt a great deal from what they have done. Not everything will work in every programme, but we can, I think, identify a few basic principles that, when applied within any particular programme, could significantly improve the scores.

That was the thinking behind STEP4Excellence that was initiated as a programme when I first arrived at Swansea. We used the first year to engage with students and staff across the University, to learn from our own experiences and to explore what was happening in other institutions, and to develop various strategies that could begin to be implemented through the following years. It is not, however, the specific details of STEP4Excellence that I want to develop in this blog, it is more the principles that lie behind it and what we have seen working in different parts of the University.

Student engagement is key. Having both formal and informal mechanisms by which students can express their concerns, know that these concerns are being listened to, see that something is happening, and recognise the changes that have been made as a consequence. Where this has worked particularly well is where informal mechanisms – fortnightly gatherings, drop in sessions, etc. – have supplemented the formal processes. Not every student concern is appropriate, or can be addressed immediately, but it is the fact that there is some line of communication, that the students are given an honest answer, and that those concerns that can be addressed easily are addressed, that makes all the difference. What is more, if such spaces exist and lines of communication and trust are opened then students feel involved in their learning, can often make suggestions that are well worth taking on board, and the sense of community within the programme can be enhanced.

The second area is student support. There were far too many written responses over the years from the Student Experience Survey (our internal survey that mirrored NSS and was delivered to first- and second-year students) that expressed a sense of isolation and loneliness. Students have to feel that they can approach staff across the university and that they will be listened to. We could not all deal with the issues that may be raised, and we had specialist services to pick these up. We did, however, try to make it easier for all members of the university to know where to turn, to know how to contact those who can offer support, and to look out for signs of stress and concern among those who turned to us. We introduced Academic Mentoring and a Student Life Network to provide the kind of support that a University like Swansea should be providing. This was not, however, an unmitigated success and we have, more recently, had to revert to a more traditional personal tutoring system because resources were not available to support the Student Life Network in a way that met the increasing demands of students.

Finally, teaching and learning. The NSS does not measure teaching quality per se. It asks questions about how good staff are at explaining things, whether staff make the subject interesting, levels of enthusiasm and whether the course is intellectually stimulating. Students know when they are learning well and when staff take the time to enable their learning in effective ways. NSS is not a beauty contest rewarding the staff that resort to showmanship or dumbing down. Students know what they are at university for and can recognise shallow teaching engagement when they see it. What the NSS questions reward is teaching that engages with the students, includes them in their own learning and enables them to see clearly what it is that they are gaining from the experience. This is, of course, much easier in small groups than in large lecture theatres and we were all aware of the challenges that growing numbers of students offer in this area. We aimed to work together, therefore, as a community, to explore new and innovative ways, as well as building on what we already knew worked well, to engage with our students and to support them in their learning. That, however, is the subject of a different blog.

Atheism and Photography

Atheism has been around for many centuries. The early Christians were accused of being ‘atheists’ because they did not believe in the gods of the Greek and Roman world. Atheism as we know it today, however, as a rejection of all that is supernatural or non-empirical, is largely a product of the nineteenth century (with roots going back into the age of enlightenment at the end of the eighteenth century). It is often associated with the development of science as an empirical discipline and the growth of rationalism as a way of thinking. Many of the main theorists of religion and culture in the mid-nineteenth century – Comte, Frazer, Tylor, Weber, even Marx – associate the decline of religion with the growth of rationalism and many of them link atheism proper (a rejection of God) with a wider rejection of anything that might be considered superstitious, irrational, non-empirical or supernatural. In their terms this is a rejection of all that is not ‘real’.

I am currently reading a recent text on the place of photography in the museums and scholarship related to ethnography in France from 1930-1950. This may not seem an obvious starting point for a discussion of atheism in the nineteenth century, but the introductory remarks within the book, about the development of photography and its impact on ethnography at the turn of the twentieth century led me to ask whether there might, in fact, have been a relationship between the growth of photography in the nineteenth century and the particular form that atheism took among the intellectual elite of that time. It was largely those who were writing on religion and culture, and those they associated with, who were at the forefront of the development of photography. Could there, therefore, be some kind of link.

Others will know this field much better than me, but there is surely some relationship between the growth of a medium that was seen to capture, in a mechanical form, only that which was in front of it, and an understanding of what might be considered ‘real’ and what might not. Before the photograph it was never possible to say that a person who had seen a ghost, or met fairies at the bottom of their garden, or the forces of evil, or whatever, was lying. We might not have seen such things, we might not be able to see such things, but could we ever convincingly say that they were not there, and not visible to those who can see them? When we recognise that many people across the world still live within a world that is populated by spirits and other creatures that cannot normally be seen (but which are clearly visible in certain contexts to certain people) then the oddness of our own position, which largely claims that such things simply do not exist, becomes particularly stark.

However, if we have a machine, a mechanism that allows us to see what is ‘really’ there, then that is evidence that cannot be ignored. The impact of technologies of seeing and of observation are very important to science, but they have also had a significant impact on the daily lives of the people who have come to accept, and to live, with such technologies. A camera is defined, in some ways, as a technology for capturing the visual, that which is physically in front of it. This is not true of any form of painting or printing, and it is the lack of human intervention that made this possible, or at least made the reality/validity of the image apparent to those who were observing the process.

It is no surprise that there were attempts, largely towards to end of the nineteenth century, to photograph the spiritual, or the non-empirical. The images were believed, people wanted to see them as a photograph, that is as a real representation of what was in front of the camera, and they circulated very widely throughout society. The Cottesloe Fairies are a classic example, as are the various images of plasma and other phenomena associated with seances. Arthur Conan-Doyle was a great advocate of such images and saw them as proof of the existence of what it was that they purported to show. Over time, however, such images were dismissed as fakes and eventually the mechanism of their creation was uncovered. At the same time the range of phenomena that could be captured by the camera became fixed and, more importantly, that which could not was dismissed as unreal, as simply not existing.

It is this wider sense of the radically empirical, as espoused by many of the great thinkers of the nineteenth century, that I would suggest was a product of the camera, and other technologies of seeing. If it cannot be photographed, then it cannot be real, and if it cannot be real then it does not exist, end of story. So, the question raised by so many of these early thinkers about religion and culture is how is it that so many people from across the world claim to believe in, and claim to see and engage with, that which is so patently unreal (because it cannot be captured on camera)? I have struggled to find a term for what it is that these theorists reject, and yet is still claimed by a very large majority of the human population. ‘Non-empirical’, my chosen term, is far from satisfactory, but I am not sure that ‘non-photographable’ is any better, although it may be more accurate for what I am talking about.

Deep fakes and other forms of digital manipulation of images may well have challenged some of a certainty about the truth of the image, when that is created mechanically or in certain forms of the digital, but it has not fundamentally changed what has become common across Western society: that what is not photographable does not, and cannot, exist. I am not sure about this, and we should, perhaps ‘must’, change some of our assumptions, but it is very difficult to change our perception of reality, and that, I fear, has been changed irretrievably by the camera and the images it produces.

Saying and Not Saying

A recent email request has got me thinking this week. This was from a site that monitors published articles, and they wrote to ask if I had written the paper ‘Listening to the Language, Listening to the Words and Listening to the Spaces between the Words, Rhetoric and Pragmatics in the Performance of Christian-Muslim Relations’ (not one of my shortest titles). This paper analysed the rhetoric at work in an interreligious conference I attended in Iran almost ten years ago. In my opening speech, transmitted live on Iranian television, I had to speak to numerous audiences simultaneously and, in the light of the recent controversy over the cartoons of the Prophet, I had to tread a very careful path if we were not to be arrested on the spot. That paper made the point that it was not what was said that was most significant. Rather, it was what was not said, what was implied, the spaces between the words, that were just as important as what was said.

Some months ago, another web site asked to interview me about my work as a PVC. At the end of the interview, they asked a few general questions, including ‘what book has been most influential?’ I think my answer surprised the interviewer as I immediately said Michael Taussig’s Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wild Man. Ever since Taussig came to speak to the anthropology department at Manchester when I was doing my PhD, way back in the mid 1980s, and I began to read his work, this book has lived with me, informed almost everything that I have written and continues to haunt me today.

The immediate use I made of the book related to the second half of the text where Taussig develops the Brechtian understanding of montage to understand and engage with drug induced healing rites in Columbia. Taussig draws particular attention to the way in which montage breaks up reality and allows us to look into the spaces between the parts and to recreate new perspectives. There are other elements within this second half, including the different ways in which the narrative structure of the dreams/visions of different racial groups play out in their lives, and this is something I will explore further in my current book on myth.

However, it is the first half of the book that I was particularly thinking of when I answered that question. This begins with the horrors inflicted by the British subjects who owned rubber plantations along the Putumayo River in Columbia. The way in which the native peoples were treated was truly horrific and one of the most shameful episodes of British colonial history. The point Taussig draws out, however, is the way in which different commentators at the time related this horror to the people of England. Roger Casement, a civil servant, wrote a government report, with a coldly factual account of the numbers killed, and the methods of torture used. Joseph Conrad wrote a novella. Each had impact, but each used a different kind of rhetoric to make their point, and for Taussig it was Casement’s cold factuality that was the most devastating and ultimately led to a change in policy.

Interestingly, I have also been reading Dan Hicks’ The Brutish Museums, a work about the restitution of African art, and particularly the Benin bronzes, written by a senior curator at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. The book has some very interesting and important things to say, but it is not the content that I wish to pick up at this point (I will no doubt come back to that in other blogs), but the tone of the book, or rather the choice of rhetoric that is used. Hicks is just so angry. He makes a point of expressing his outrage and offence at the horrors that, in his view, the museums of the West are still perpetrating on the people of Nigeria by exhibiting the looted items from the sack of Benin. This is a choice. He is clearly angry and that is an appropriate response. He chooses, however, to use an excessive rhetoric of anger and outrage in his book, and to pile that language on top of itself in long purple passages, creating and manipulating words, not to say anything in particular, but rather to get across to the reader just how angry he is and just how outraged and offended he has become (the second half of the book does, however, set out the facts in a very clear and factual manner, that is particularly helpful).

Hicks’ opening rhetoric is part of a common approach used in social media, and in society more generally, where the language of offense, and the taking of offense is used to make an emotional point that almost negates the need to argue a case. It is well attested in so many areas, not least those that certain sections of society call ‘woke’. We constantly live with this heightened, excessive use of language that simply closes down any response and all reasonable conversation. At one level, such language appears to demand a response, but the only response that is acceptable, at least to the speaker, is to share the offence. To disagree is to put yourself into the world that is being condemned, the world of the colonial, the racist, the capitalist, whatever the particular bug bear actually is.

Of course, as with rubber plantation owners referenced by Taussig, there was real violence and horror in the way in which the British expeditionary force planned, sacked, and looted the royal palace at Benin, with the death of many local people (a number that is never recorded) and the destruction of a culture. However, what Taussig is asking and what I am asking in my paper, is what rhetorical response to such horror generates the most favourable response, and how best to express that in written (or oral) texts.

Hicks follows neither Casement or Conrad. He simply choses to shout and to express his outrage and his offence. My first response, on reading the first few pages of Hicks’ book, was that this was a perfect example of what some have called ‘cultural appropriation’. What right does Hicks, a white, western educated, curator of a British museum have to be outraged and offended to such a heightened level? That offence belongs, if that is the right word, to the people of Nigeria. The response of the western academic should, perhaps, be one of humble apology, remorse, the seeking of forgiveness. By taking offense Hicks effectively distances himself from those of his predecessors who perpetrated the crime. However, one of his points is that the crime continues to be perpetrated just as long as these items are displayed, and he is implicated in that as much as any of his predecessors, however much he chooses to express his outrage and offence.

However, to come back to my own article, and to the interview and the choice of a book that has been so influential for me. It is the attention to language, to what is said, and to what is not said, to how we say what we choose to say, and the tone and attitudes we adopt as we say it, particularly in the written text, that still says important things to me. This is particularly important in relation to the difficulties we face as Universities in the culture wars and the concerns over free speech. It is suggesting that the written text is also a performance, just as much as the speech I gave at the opening of the Iranian conference. Of course, it is a performance, and we can always choose how we perform the text through the words we choose and the tone we set in our writing. We can choose to perform ‘offence’ or ‘outrage’, we can choose to perform the objective setting out of the horrors we witness or experience, or we can choose to perform the horror through other voices, playing out through fiction, through narrative structures, and the appealing to emotions, seeking empathy as opposed to expressing offence or outrage. These are all choices, and they are all part of what free speech actually means in practice.