A conversation with Alice-Mary Talbot (Dumbarton Oaks) on the experience of communal monastic life in Byzantium, ranging from its organization and rules to its religious goals, engagement with society, and differences between monasteries for men and women. It is based on Alice-Mary's recent book Varieties of Monastic Experience in Byzantium, 800-1453 (University of Notre Dame Press 2019), which discusses solitary ascetics too.
18 January 2021
The Red Line: Colombia (FARC, Paramilitarios and Cocaine)
Colombia has always been closely associated with the international Cocaine trade, but the situation there is far more complicated with wider ramifications for the entire region. The government of Bogota has been at war with the rebels in a 6-way struggle for almost 60 years, with a peace deal now sitting on the table. Is this deal a workable peace though, or just the start of the next phase? We ask our expert panel. Alison Fedirka (Geopolitical Futures) Ted Piccone (Brookings Institution) Chris Sabatini (Chatham House) For more info visit - www.theredlinepodcast.com Follow the show on @TheRedLinePod or Michael on @MikeHilliardAus
BBC4 In Our Time: John Wesley and Methodism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss John Wesley (1703 - 1791) and the movement he was to lead and inspire. As a student, he was mocked for approaching religion too methodically and this jibe gave a name to the movement: Methodism. Wesley took his ideas out across Britain wherever there was an appetite for Christian revival, preaching in the open, especially the new industrial areas. Others spread Methodism too, such as George Whitefield, and the sheer energy of the movement led to splits within it, but it soon became a major force.
WithStephen PlantDean and Runcie Fellow at Trinity Hall at the University of CambridgeEryn WhiteReader in Early Modern History at Aberystwyth UniversityAndWilliam GibsonProfessor of Ecclesiastical History at Oxford Brookes University and Director of the Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History
Wisecrack: That Time Disney Built a Creepy Government
Disney World is beloved all over the globe for the pure escapism it offers. But the story behind this fantasy world is a lot weirder, and a whole lot less magical than it might seem. We'll explain in this Wisecrack Edition: That Time Disney Built a Creepy Government.
New Statesman: With Germany’s political future in the balance, centrist “Merkel voters” will be crucial
To understand the political dynamics, contemplate the historical choice at the heart of Merkelism. Between 1998 and 2005 a “red-green” coalition of the Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens modernised the recently reunified country: liberalising the old federal republic’s conservative social policies; paving the way for a multi-ethnic conception of German identity; deploying troops into combat abroad for the first time since 1945; prodding industries towards a greener future; and introducing welfare cuts purporting to adapt the economy to globalisation. The fundamental choice made by Merkel’s four governments from 2005 has been to continue the country on that trajectory, rather than to deviate from it.
That explains Merkelism’s strengths: its moderation, the stability of its course and the cautiously progressive measures often purloined from the SPD (modern family policies, the minimum wage) and Green traditions (ending nuclear power, admitting over one million refugees). It also explains Merkelism’s weaknesses: its reactiveness and preference for the more comfortable work of bedding in previous reforms over developing new ones for the future. [...]
Merkel’s gambit will loom over the aftermath too, by shaping the range of possible coalition governments. First, the electoral cost of nabbing red-green “Merkel voters” has been the transfer of some right-wing voters to a party, the AfD, that is too toxic to include in coalition calculations. Second, the socio-economic shifts of the past two decades, expanding the pool of economically centrist but socially liberal voters, have benefited the Greens most of all. Both of these trends give the left, and especially the Greens, more paths to power and make the most likely outcome a mould-breaking CDU/CSU-Green coalition. An apt legacy for Angela Merkel.
CityLab: How Fear Took Over the American Suburbs
In his book, “Neighborhood of Fear: The Suburban Crisis in American Culture, 1975-2001,” Kyle Riismandel, a senior university lecturer in the Federated Department of History at the New Jersey Institute of Technology/Rutgers-Newark, argues that suburbanites of this era engaged in “productive victimization,” using their imagined and real fears as a means to hoard power and exert local control. It’s a phenomenon he observed growing up in the suburbs of Wanaque, New Jersey — 30 miles away from New York City, 12 miles away from Newark, “but in many ways a world away” — later, at graduate school in D.C., and now, from his home back in the New Jersey suburb of Montclair.
Over those three decades, cultural and political phenomena served to make suburbanites feel less like they were living in a bucolic paradise, and more like in a land constantly under assault — with threats ranging from toxic waste and cancerous household products; to burglaries and kidnappings; to satanic cults and explicit music. Riismandel traces the reaction to these perceived threats, through the weaponization of the environmental movement as a means to offload hazards to poorer communities, the rise of NIMBYs who feared overdevelopment in their backyards, and the advent of vigilantism as a response to crime and disorder. The book captures what Riismandel identifies as a growing anxiety that undergirded white suburban life. “Things aren’t necessarily happening” to suburbanites of the time, he says, “but there’s always a sense they they will.” [...]
This continued production of threat — even without the materiality or the reality of the threat being so big — is in part because it allows people to do things. It’s facilitated by the broader political culture of the rightward turn of the Reagan era and the New Right, saying, you should be scared; that we need more cops on the street. But also in response, you can exert more control as a homeowner, or as a parent, and you can police streets more effectively, or more privately. You can do all these things that allow you to work with, or even replace, the police or the state. [...]
Part of the privilege of living in the suburbs is controlling local space, not being victimized by an actual crime. That you might be victimized by the threat of crime, and the idea of crime, but that you should be able to live free from that fear. This is why I call it the suburban crisis, because it's really just a crisis of privilege. It is not the “urban crisis,” which is, you know, deeply-rooted and systemic and structural, that we see elucidated by a number of scholars, most famously, Thomas Sugrue’s book. They're quite different. One is one of systemic racism and disinvestment. Another is one of privilege and expectation.
FiveThirtyEight: Why The Suburbs Have Shifted Blue (Dec. 16, 2020)
Suburban and exurban counties turned away from Trump and toward Democrat Joe Biden in states across the country, including in key battleground states like Pennsylvania and Georgia. In part, this may be because the suburbs are simply far more diverse than they used to be. But suburbs have also become increasingly well-educated — and that may actually better explain why so many suburbs and exurbs are turning blue than just increased diversity on its own.
According to Ashley Jardina, a political science professor at Duke University who studies white identity politics, it’s not that racial diversity isn’t a factor. Among white people, at least, educational attainment is often a proxy for how open they are to growing racial diversity, with more highly educated white people likely to think increased racial diversity is a good thing. “Education is so important because it’s intertwined with racial attitudes among white people,” Jardina said. [...]
What about places that become either more diverse or more educated, but not both? Suburban and exurban counties that grew more diverse but did not become more educated still swung toward Biden in 2020, but by a much smaller margin. It’s especially striking when you compare these places to areas that became much more educated but not more diverse, as those places actually had moved more toward Biden, on average. [...]
So what do these trends mean for Democrats — and Republicans — going forward? Jardina stressed to us that in the short term, demography is not destiny. Democrats might struggle to reproduce Biden’s strong performance in the suburbs, particularly if their Republican opponents don’t rely as heavily on racialized appeals and transparently racist tropes as Trump. “The big question mark for me is what happens in these suburban areas in two years or four years if [Republican candidates] adopt a similar strategy to Trump but with more competence and decorum,” Jardina said. “I’ll put it this way — I don’t think Republicans have lost their opportunity to stay competitive in the suburbs.”
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