Wu Wei

James Attlee's Isolarion

This book is a (literary) pilgrimage down the Cowley Road in Oxford.  Cowley Road is a scruffy rundown main road of local shops and restaurants in a multi-ethnic part of Oxford, beloved of the more bohemian students and middle classes who like to live in multicultural districts in cities. During the last two and a half years we have lived in three locations near Cowley Road and got to know it well. 

Cowley Road is already an institution having a group on Facebook defending it against encroaching chain stores and restaurants. I have written about it several times (here and here ) on the blog, including about the mysterious metal castings which appeared in the pavement, whose story is explained in the book. 

The book itself might be quite hard to find, since Bee remarked that Blackwell's (where she works on Saturdays) had sold out before Christmas.

It's a pilgrimage over several years, since I don't recognise all of the sights he describes, though he updates himself, pointing out for example that the Russian food shop has become a Baltic Food Shop. As for the justification for making a pilgrimage down the street round the corner from your home, as he says:

Why make a pilgrimage to the other side of the world, when the world has come to you?

listing the locals: Jamaican, Bangladeshi, Indian, Polish, Kurdish, Chinese, French, Italian, Thai, Japanese, and African, (and that's only the restaurants).

And then there is the question whether travel broadens the mind, and whether a pilgrimage produces an achievement with lessons for the rest of life.

If we go off into the forest to learn lessons, are the things we learn there applicable to the city, or are they just forest lessons.

The book interweaves the history of the district (as it develops in the 1860s from a swamp outside the city eventually to house workers for the Cowley car plant built in the 1920s); the history of the immigrants coming to live there since the Second World War; the constant friction between "town and gown"(the ordinary people and the university which is a large landowner and employer and thus exerts an enormous influence); the variety of the shops, restaurants and services offered there recently; together  with the lives and troubles of the author's neighbours and his involvement in the local planning committee's attempts to "improve" the road by restricting the traffic and "rebranding" the neighbourhood (he becomes well-known locally for opposing this).

In some ways it is a similar pilgrimage (without the murky black and white photos) to WG Sebald's wanderings in East Anglia described in Rings of Saturn, but the author engages much less with memory and his internal world than with the external world and its inhabitants.

Some of the road's less obvious offerings are explained and experienced: the Eau-de-Vie Flotation Centre; the Blue Door (private shop), the graveyard, the robemaker, the Ultimate Picture Palace, a Mikvah.  The chapel just behind my house, I only discovered one Saturday before Christmas when a craft sale was announced.  Walking down a road I had never noticed before, within 10 yards it seemed I was already in the country with woods and a field in which there appeared a farmhouse and a small chapel labelled St Bartlemas.  The book reveals that this was the site of a leper colony.  The author records the stories of many  immigrants (even about a Georgian and the  news about the liberation Georgian region of Adzharia) who are making a success of life in the UK  but also those who struggle to obtain asylum. He records the sad story of one Albanian with mixed Serb/Albanian parents, who, despite being ready and qualified to go to university, is being sent back to  Serbia although his parents are dead, to  a very uncertain future and certainly no university education and a way out of poverty.  As he says:

Asylum seekers are just like other people. We are just less lucky.

There are many little anecdotes and descriptions of places I have never noticed although I walk along the street nearly every day when I am in Oxford. But most of all it is an affirmation of a UK which is multicultural, as well as appreciative of diversity.  As a character in the book puts it:

Although East Oxford is very multicultural, it has a very English character of its own; very tolerant, easy going. ... The other side [of town] is more snobbish, more boring. I lived in Summertown, and on Saturdays sometimes you didn't see a single black person on the street.

The Brits are never happier than to be able to point out difference, despite their reputed tolerance :).

Britishness is somehow under attack, by terrorists.  Yet the victims  of the recent London bombing on the underground

comprised only 12 Brits, the rest being 3 Poles, and one each of French, New Zealander, Turkish, Iranian, Afghani, Romanian, Vietnamese and Mauretanian.

Atlee writes:

For me the  (carriage and those) occupants represent the country I am proud to belong to.  Despite the appalling failures of our system - still marred as it is by inequality, racism and violent crime - urban Britain represents one of the best examples in a history of a tolerant, pluralistic society, albeit one based on the  Briton's famous characteristic of reserve, of keeping himself to himself and minding his own business. At certain moments, Cowley Road can seem to represent this untrumpeted success, one that appears under attack from all sides.

But the end of the book ("Things fall apart") records that Cowley Road is losing the struggle against gentrification.  In the last year, Costa Coffee has arrived, the Zodiac is now Carling Academy. 

And here in Tbilisi, the locals point proudly to Sharden St, a row of upmarket shops and restaurants, which could be in any big city in the west, frequented mainly by those expats and Georgians who need to be seen and be seen in smart places. 

Whereas I am looking for the equivalent of Cowley Road.

Technorati tags: Cowley Rd, pilgrimage, Multiculturalism, diversity, books

Alan Bennett's The Uncommon Reader

This I bought for someone for Christmas and then kept it myself. In it, the Queen (the one with corgis) suddenly discovers reading and begins to enjoy it.  From not knowing where to start, she is advised by a member of the kitchen staff (they met in the travelling library in the grounds of the Palace) whom she promotes to her amanuensis, and they recommend each other books as they discover them.  Time for reading plays havoc with her official duties, and is heartily disliked by her staff and the corgis, not to mention the Prime Minister.  Of course, the book is really about the pleasures of reading:

'I don't see', said the Queen, '... Why should the public care what I am reading?  The Queen reads. That is all they need to know. "So what?" I should imagine is the general response.'

'To read is to to withdraw. To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it' said Sir Kevin,' if the pursuit were less ... selfish.'

'Selfish?'

'Perhaps I should say solipsistic.'

'Perhaps you should.'

Sir Kevin plunged on.'Were we able to harness your reading to some larger purpose - the literacy of the nation as a whole, for instance, the improvement of reading standards of the young...'

'One reads for pleasure,' said the Queen. 'It is not a public duty.'

'Perhaps', said Sir Kevin, 'it should be.'

'Bloody cheek,' said the Duke, when she told him that night.

It's a small book, an easy read, gently poking fun at the monarchy as an institution, especially the officials who surround and restrict her, at the Queen and her aloofness and lack of emotion, while attempting to show a potential for humour and understanding of human life which she does not show through her official life, (or how her character might have developed if she was more of a reader). 

While the end (I won't spoil it) comes with both a surprise and a threat from the Queen, as written by Bennett, it also comes with an (unanticipated but gentle) warning to the Queen.

In my new apartment

Despite the frustration of moving somewhere new and not quite getting the hang of things, not having everything I need, and not feeling like going out shopping in the cold and dark after work, I'm enjoying my new flat.  Living somewhere new means getting used to another set of arrangements, the same but still not same as where you lived before. 

Having to spend two evenings in waiting for the internet man to not come, I have had to find other ways to amuse myself than the internet.  Each time I come in, I don't unlock the door and turn off the signalisation quickly enough (within 10 secs), so I get a "welcome home" call immediately I get in from the security firm.  I think I have managed it once so far.

There are only 4 keys I need: "turn this one 4 times and this one 2 and you can use this one if you only go out for the rubbish".  I was completely fooled trying to get in the front door of the block.  Press 35 and call, said the landlady.  I thought this was to contact the security men on the door of the block, but it seems it was for the entryphone.  But I wasn't in my flat to let myself in.  Eventually it dawned on me that this was what the 4th key was for.  It's quite hard holding the little LED light on my key ring and getting right key in the right lock in the right sequence.  Finally I got in and then had a call from one of my colleagues who is having similar problems but has a bad key.  Eventually after enlisting the help of neighbours she managed it.  Not the best way to come home after a long day. 

Somehow although the flat is warm, the hot water isn't.  At 7.30 am this is a real pain.  I ventured out this evening onto the balcony, putting my coat and boots on, to inspect the boiler and turning everything to max, but still not much better, though it does improve during the evening.  Eventually I worked this out as well.  The water flow controls the water temperature, so you have to run off the cold water first, then turn the flow down till it heats up, then turn it down again to a reasonable temperature.  It's the same problem in Britain if you have one of those new-fangled condensing boilers without hot water storage.  Either you fill the bath with cold water quickly or you throttle the water flow down so it has a chance to get heated.  That means it takes so long to run a bath that the water has gone cold.  Foreigners are so clever not even bothering with baths.

This weekend I went out to the hypermarket call Good Wil (l) near the fortress which is the American Embassy.  It's a big shed* just expanded to twice the capacity without getting filled up yet.  It had most things, except fresh chicken, but I got everything I needed (bottles of wine, glasses and bottle opener).

I have what is called a 2 and a half room flat: a living room, a bedroom and a half room which actually is rather big, giving room for a sort of bunk bed and a study desk on the other wall.  It's really big enough to count as a proper bedroom, but is divided off by a sliding glass door so when that is open it makes a rather big living room.  When I get the internet fixed it will be perfect.

Searching the TV channels to see what the TV package has, I found Mezzo.  Since Beate is not here to organise me to go to concerts, I am enjoying myself staying in.  Last night I watched Carmen for the first time, which I really enjoyed.  The TV has really good sound.  This evening I am watching and listening to early music - it's mostly English dance tunes played by a small group with a large number of old instruments which they are playing to an open air audience somewhere with a great deal of enjoyment showing on their faces. And since it is all dance music, it's great to see them hopping about too, as I hop round the floor to the music.  It seems to be an ancient music festival in Brittany, with some people dressed in costume, though I'm not clear where the morris dancers fit in. For some reason it seems to be a festival of English music even with some college choir from Oxford.  They even managed to find some Brits to speak passable French and be interviewed.

I haven't listened much to live music on TV before, but I'm really enjoying spending cold winter evenings this way.  The only problem is getting the timing right, since we are so far ahead: 3 hours from France.

The adverts are strange.  I think I saw one where people stood on each other's shoulders eventually to form what looked like a rather tall viaduct in a valley, but I missed what it was an advert for. 

For bedtime reading I have Tove Jansson's  Fair Play, but more on that when I have finished.

* For Lithuanian readers it is Acropolis size but not nearly so well stocked.  The only competition is lots of supermarkets smaller than Minimas called Populi.  Otherwise there are minimarkets on every corner just like Pristina.   Incidentally today I saw a van going round saying "Lithuanian bakery".  Seems a curious thing to export.

Technorati tags: Tbilisi, Georgia, home

History in exile: Memory and Identity at the Borders of the Balkans by Pamela Ballinger

You can find it here on Amazon.  The image here doesn't do justice to the artwork.  You need to look at the original on Amazon to see the horror.  Here it just looks like an abstract painting.

I'm not very good at reviewing books that make a strong impression on me.  I start the review, often half way through the book, struggling to express my strong feelings.  Then I finish the book, but not the review. 

I have half finished reviews for Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson, and Imagining the Balkans by Maria Todorova.  In the same vein I am in the middle of reading History in Exile by Pamela Ballinger.  They are all by social anthropologists writing about history, memory and identity.  I think if I had my time again this is a field I would have liked to have gone into.  I find this sort of history, where real people struggle to explain what they experienced, in the light of what historians tell them was "really" happening at the time, absolutely fascinating.  As well as the language they use to describe it, often with religious symbolism even for communists.

Ballinger is writing about Italians in the Julian March and Istria between Italy and Yugoslavia, some of whom went into exile in Trieste when the border shifted after the Second World War from Italy to Yugoslavia, and some of those who did not.  The book is a lot of firsts for me:

first for the history of the region
which I knew nothing about, except my sister's hints of dark deeds after the war. Have you heard of the foibe (underground caverns with spiky stalactites into which fascists and others were thrown by partisans) or the Nazi concentration camp in Trieste which finished off Italian Jews and anti fascists alike?

first for a history of exiles
apart from some novels about the Greek exodus from Turkey in the 20s, and Russian Jews leaving for Israel and their recollections of the Soviet Union. Why do some not assimilate but cling to their exile status?  Why did Italy "submerge" the history of the exiles like the people "submerged" in the foibe?  Why do they feel like exiles in their own country?  How long do refugees stay in camps and how do they feel about their life there?

first for a social anthropology study in the Balkans
and how the complex memory is constructed first in the redemption from the Austrians after the First World War, then reconstructed during and after the Second World War (who was Fascist and who anti-fascist) and finally (perhaps) in the 90s, with ethnic cleansing in other parts of the Balkans, was history rewritten (or "unsubmerged") from political lines into nationalist Italian v Slovene/Croatian lines).  Old myths of the good Italian and the savage Balkan are revived, which have nothing to do with today's reality in 2007 in the EU, but seemed more relevant in the 90s. And finally I understand what irredentism is. 

Maybe I will be able to write something more when I finish the book.

I wonder whether anyone will ever do similar studies for the upheavals of Stalin's Russia, eg the Crimean Tartars, before everyone who experienced them  is dead.  And what about the people of the Austro-Hungarian border with Ukraine, where similar border changes have occurred.  How do they decide who they are, and what sort of memories do they have?  How do they keep their nationality intact? And what are their memories of the World Wars when during the fighting borders moved backwards and forwards?  Who are the goodies and the baddies?  Has glasnost and the breakup of the Soviet Union allowed a hidden story (ies) to emerge?

Technorati tags: memory, Balkans, exiles, nationalities, history, social anthropology

Eats shoots and leaves, plus earth and moon

Armed with two new guide books we wandered in a new direction this evening in search of dinner.  We settled on a Chinese restaurant which figured in both.  Alas we should have known better.  Although the menu was large and the prices were low, the food was not good.  When the waiter asked whether I liked my seaweed salad, I answered honestly that it tasted like a strange sort of pickled red cabbage.  Both my colleagues agreed that seaweed should be green and crisp but we were told firmly that by the waiter (aged all of about 20), that we were wrong and it was genuine Chinese seaweed.  China was a very big country, bigger than Europe and by implication there was more than one way to cook seaweed.  My colleagues did better with their hot and sour soup.

After that, my chicken and bamboo shoots also got the thumbs down.  That was it, lumps of chicken (boiled) with about three slices of bamboo shoot, lying in a monosodium glutamate sauce.  if you fished around  you found some tiny slivers of green, eventually identified as leek.  The tofu was more colourful but not much better in taste. Our waiter was a masochist and asked for another opinion.  When we asked where was the colour and the other vegetables, he implied that chicken and bamboo shoots was just that.  But he said this was the best Chinese restaurant in town. 

We asked where the Chinese quarter was and were told in New Belgrade, obviously some way away.  My idea was to go and see where the Chinese themselves ate, thinking of the Paddyfields in Oxford, advertised as "the place Chinese people themselves eat"  It's my current favourite, especially as it does dim sum.  The waiter dismissed this as the Chinese were a dirty people and one shouldn't go there.  At that point, the ugly head of racism reared up and we stopped the conversation.  It was sickening, particularly as we suspected that he had probably never even been near the area and was probably just going on prejudiced rumour.

For a change of mood we went off to see the "Earth from the Air" exhibition which was showing in the park near Kalemegdan.  It's a fantastic exhibition of large photos in the open air, so you can see them from a distance (as from the air) and then go closer to see the detail and read the captions.  Although I saw the exhibition first in Copenhagen and London (when we bought the book and the t-shirts) there was still a lot to look at and some new photos as well (from the tsunami damage).  There was even one showing a graveyard of Iraqi tanks which had been destroyed by depleted uranium bombs in the First Gulf War and now were a repository of toxic and radioactive waste.  But didn't they try to tell us depleted uranium was quite safe in Bosnia?

Finally on the way home we noticed there was a fantastic full moon, with the first full scale halo I can remember ever seeing.  At least I thought it was a halo, but now I've looked it up it seems it was a corona.  You can see the difference here.  This is what I saw:

Technorati tags: The Earth from the Air, Chinese food, moon corona

Bad Books

Should you write about books you haven't enjoyed?  Do they deserve the publicity?  Well, perhaps as a warning to other readers, or because I may I have got it wrong, here are three books I haven't enjoyed.

1.  Everything is illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foe

This is billed as "as funny as A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian".  It certainly tries quite hard to be funny, with an American searching for his roots in Ukraine with an interpreter who has his own version of the English language.  However,  anyone who has spent time with interpreters (however bad) will realise that they simply do not make the sort of mistakes that this guy makes.  And anyone who has spent any time trying to speak a foreign language will not enjoy laughing at other people's mistakes. His life wasn't funny anyway. I never got further than a few pages. Nor did Bee, who also bought a copy under the same misapprehension it would be like "Short History".

2. Unweaving the Rainbow by Richard Dawkins

I thought it would be interesting to read some academic arguments debunking God, since I haven't believed in him since I was 13.  But then it was more teenage rebellion and disillusionment with the state of the world.  However, this book is more about why science can solve all problems, without the help of God, and still be poetic.  I have no problem with the beauty of science, as an ex-mathematician.  But I found the arguments long winded and tedious.  It simply wasn't interesting enough, sorry.  Again, I gave up early in the book.

3. Deep simplicity by John Gribbin

This promised: Chaos, Complexity and the Emergence of Life.  I haven't read much on this lately so I was looking forward to an update.  Not with my luck!  First a tedious long section on thermodynamics, which I quickly began to skip. Then some chaos theory better done by James Gleick.  Then a mishmash on earthquakes, extinctions and the emergence of life.  The emergence part quotes from Kaufmann, who does a better book called At Home in the Universe.  Extinctions are more fun in Extinctions: Evolution and the end of man by Michael Boulter.  I've got as far as the chapter called Facts of Life so maybe I will get to the end of this  book.  But it hasn't been much fun so far.

Technorati tags: bad books

Some history lessons

Whilst repatriating my own books from other people's bedrooms, I came across several small books in the series "A Very Short Introduction" so my reading will be rather random as I catch up on subjects I haven't managed so far to educate myself about.

Today I started on "Medieval Britain".  Sure enough, it starts with 1066, (no mention of King Harold and the arrow) but nothing is the same ....... History was simple when I first learnt it.  Just a few kings' names to learn plus a few funny stories:  the one who burnt the cakes, the one who lost his crown in the wash, the one who got his feet wet on the beach (wrong period I know).

Now see what really happened:

On Christmas Day 1066 Duke William of Normandy was acclaimed king of England in Westminster Abbey.  It was an electrifying moment.  The shouts of acclamation  -- in English as well as in French -- alarmed the Norman guards outside the abbey. Believing that inside the church something had gone horribly wrong, they set fire to the neighbouring houses.  Half a century later, a Norman monk recalled the chaos of that day.  As the fire spread rapidly, the people in the church were thrown into confusion  and crowds of them rushed outside, some to fight the flames, others to take the chance to go looting.  Only the monks, the bishops and a few clergy remained before the altar.  Though they were terrified, they managed to carry on and complete the consecration of the king who was trembling violently.

A very good job they didn't have television in those days.  Not very likely that people would have had confidence in a king who was trembling. 

Despite his victory at Hastings, despite the surrender of London and Winchester, William's position was still a precarious one and he had good reason to tremble.  It was to take at least another five years before he could feel fairly confident that the conquest had been completed.  There were risings against Norman rule in every year from 1067 to 1070: in Kent, in the south-west, in the Welsh marches, in the Fenland, and in the north.  The Normans had to live like an army of occupation, living, eating  and sleeping together in operational units.  They had to build castles -- strong points from which a few men could dominate a subject population.  There may well have been no more than 10,000 Normans living in the midst of a hostile population of one or two millions. 

Now isn't this sounding a bit familiar? 

This is not to say that every single Englishman (sic) actively opposed the Normans.  Unquestionably there were many who cooperated with them; it was this which made possible the successful Norman takeover of so many Anglo-Saxon institutions.  But there is plenty of evidence to show that the English resented becoming an oppressed majority in their own country.  The years of insecurity were to have a profound effect on subsequent history.  They meant that England received not just a new royal family but also a new ruling class, a new culture and language.  Probably no other conquest in European history has had such disastrous consequences for the defeated.

Leaving aside the extremely anglocentric conclusion (the book was written in 1984 not in the 19th century as you might have thought), you can draw some useful conclusions.  The idea of invading a country and not taking it over would seem pretty bizarre in medieval Europe.  If you are going to successfully invade a country to take it over, the king must go too and spend a lot of time there, getting crowned as well as being seen by the population.  Secondly, pacifying an invaded country is not going to be a quick action.  It will take years.  Nothing has changed in this respect from 1066 to 2003.  I'll leave George Bush to read my blog and draw some conclusions from history.  The rest of you can fill in the cliches about history repeating itself as farce. 

 

Technorati tags: medieval England, Iraq, King William, invasion

Collapse by Jared Diamond

Eventually I finished this book, with more than a sigh of relief.  I had the same trouble with his other book, Guns, Germs and Steel: the fate of human societies.  I don't why his books are hard to read.  They are not full of "isms", footnotes and long words that you need to look up on the internet. 

It's rather that the book is like a sandwich, in that the filling is full of interesting stuff that you don't know, which keeps you reading, but the bread is rather stodgy and takes a lot of digesting.  Which is odd, because the problem is that Diamond structures the book like those American school text books that my kids had in their international school.  Each chapter started: now you are going to learn this, this and this, and it will help you understand that.  In the middle there is a box making sure you know the main points of what you are learning.  At the end there is a list of what you have learnt and what you will move on to.  Although I didn't study from predigested pap like that, my kids did fine on it, so I don't knock it for school books.  But it makes for rather repetitive reading as an adult, and if you disagree or want to ask questions, or discuss something, you can't.  Come to think of it, aren't powerpoint slides, with all those bullet points stating the obvious, a continuation of this style? Let's all move over to the Edmund Tufte website, or wikipaedia.

Back to the book.  Collapse: How societies choose to fail or survive,  started as a course of lectures for undergraduates.  However, they seem to be the sort of pure science undergrads who have never read any politics, economics, geography, ecology or anthropology. Maybe at that stage and given the normal state of knowledge in America about the non-American world, it is a valid assumption. Some American examples are given lest the message is missed at home.

Here is what you learn at the beginning of the book.  Societies collapse because of five threats (memorise them for your multiple choice exam question): damage to the environment, climate change, hostile neighbours, loss of friendly trade partners and societal response to the problems the other factors cause. This even happens in Montana.   Then follow some interesting examples: Easter Island, Pitcairn and Henderson Islands (in the Pacific), the Anasazi (in the US near the border with Mexico), the Mayas, the Vikings and Iceland, and Norse Greenland. The later examples have writing and can document their collapses.  The reasons for the earlier collapses are developed by archeologists using a variety of methods and materials (carbon-dating, tree rings, ice cores, muck-middens etc).

At this stage, Diamond suggests that there are two possible societal responses which prove successful:  top down, in large communities where rules are created by the appropriate power structure which is capable of enforcing them, or bottom up, in smaller communities, where the consequences of certain actions are obvious to the whole community, so can be communally agreed on and self-policed.  Of course, these responses apply mainly to preventing environmental damage.  But they are also applicable to the other threats. 

He then goes on to discuss more modern societies and their problems: Rwanda (genocide caused by overpopulation), Dominican Republic and Haiti (different responses to similar problems on the same island), China (a mess of everything), and Australia (trapped by a "British" mentality, mining the wealth out of everything). The problem with a short chapter on such big problems, is that explanations become simplistic, but nevertheless they are new takes on old problems.  I personally had never understood that overpopulation was a source of the genocide in  Rwanda.  And to suggest that war is an inevitable outcome of conflicts over food resources is heading down a slippery slope to justifying it.

Finally comes a section called Practical Lessons.  This starts with a chapter on decision-making, taken from management literature, rather than political science, where you might expect it to come from, given the context and the title of the book.  Here he lists five reasons why societal decisions may lead to collapse: failure to anticipate there being a problem (we didn't realise it mattered), failure to try to solve the problem (he calls it rational "bad" behaviour, on the assumption that people are rational, even in their bad behaviour), irrational behaviour (admitting that people are not rational, now), and lastly, that the solution to the problem may be beyond current capabilities (he suggests this where technology does not yet exist, or the solution is too costly).  By far the most interesting (to me at least) is the part on "irrational behaviour", because it covers most of the real world cases: the clashes of values inherent in most political struggles; the influence of religion or conservatism, and the ability of society to change; the different access to resources that different political groups have, making the struggles unequal; the different perspectives of long and short term benefits; the motivation of capitalism; as well as psychological reasons: denial and group think.

But by now the book has forgotten about the other threats and concentrates on environmental damage. He then analyses the response of different industrial sectors (oil and gas companies, hard rock mining, logging, and fishing) to consumer pressure, showing how the big international oil companies are not the villains we thought they were.  This title is awarded to third world oil companies (based on a sample of one).  Mining companies become the new villains, as do rape and run logging companies in the third world.  He identifies that consumer pressure (and employee pressure in the first world) is an effective change mechanism in demanding products produced in a sustainable way.

In the final chapter, he discusses life in Los Angeles, where he admits that transport is a major form of pollution as well as overpopulation.  After debunking some excuses for doing nothing he exhorts consumers to get involved.  But he doesn't really say how, except to buy properly labelled products, and not to blame big business which is just motivated by capitalism (which has made America great).

So in the end, the book isn't really credible as a wake up call to Americans (or others) to change their ways before imminent societal collapse, due to environmental damage.  And it hardly confronts any of the other threats the author identifies as possible reasons for collapse.

Using the earlier parts of the book as examples, we could suggest  

• pick the biggest, most urgent problem to solve (climate change perhaps, or keeping those trading partners with oil and gas friendly)
• confront psychological denial with regime change (or is this only recommended abroad?) using legitimate political means, not war
• learn to live with less (non-essential products, space, convenience) like the rest of the world already does
• (and even) too much food can be a killer as well as too little.

But somehow that's not what you expect in a textbook on the environment.

Technorati tags: Collapse, Jared Diamond, book review

Broken April

Update
This review of the novel by Ismail Kadare seems always to be in demand. Don't miss the post about Kadare himself. More book reviews are here. Sometimes I write about music and films too.

I had to write this review of Ismail Kadare's book, but first I had to reread it, as ViolainVilnius had such a different view of it from me.  I was incensed by the fact she called it barbaric, when I remembered it being about the bessa (the honour and blood feud of the traditional society in the mountains of North Albania) and a sort of feminism, which so far I haven't found elsewhere in Kadare's books.  I've written this review from memory, without the book, so there may be a few inaccuracies.

So what is it really about?  The action takes place in the 1920s or 30s.  There are three stories intertwined.  The first story is about a young man, bound up in a blood feud for an earlier killing.  Over the month of April, in turn he must kill, pay the dues for the killing and prepare to be killed in turn. He is afraid, and totally human, but nonetheless, obedient to his family and the bessa (honour code of the Kanun).  The feud chosen by Kadare to explain the workings of the Kanun is actually a quite unjustifiable one, (an insult caused by a third party). It is explained that attempts (by a female relative) were made to buy off the need for a death, but this had been prevented by an obscure but stubborn old man who had the right of veto. Kadare seems to be trying on the one hand to point out the indefensible cases which the Kanun defends, yet to point out the logical system behind the Kanun.

The second story is about a young pair of city-dwellers, a writer who decides to take his young wife on their honeymoon to the countryside of the bessa, as a sort of romantic adventure for them both.  They drive about the bleak countryside in a rather smart horse-drawn carriage, at first visiting acquaintenances in traditional homes, where men and women sleep separately (not a lot of fun on your honeymoon).  The writer husband spends most of the time explaining the Kanun traditions to the wife.  This is a useful explanatory device from the author's point of view, but could have been rather boring for the wife.  Both of them take a romantic view of the traditions, without thinking much about the human results.  In all this, the wife is fairly compliant, but obviously someone who thinks for herself.

The third story has two characters.  The first is the Chief Steward of the Blood, who works on behalf of the Prince (Duke?), to whom tribute is payable in the whole region.  Whenever a revenge killing takes place, the avenger must pay the blood dues to the Prince, and attend in person at the castle to pay them.  The Chief Steward is a sort of tax collector who also does inspections in the region to make sure he knows what is going on, and records in the history records the state of each blood feud in each district.  His musings in the book are a sort of economic forecast of the state of the blood feuds (declining) and what he can do about it, (to revive some old feuds that people have forgotten about).  The other character is an arbitrator, a local expert on the Kanun, who spends his time settling disputes about land ownership and boundaries.  This allows some more explanations about how the Kanun works in practice, in areas not involving any need for killing. 

Gradually all three stories become intertwined, as the young couple journey about the region.  The writer points out to his wife, the blood feud killer who wears the appropriate armband.  While they travel about, often watching the arbitrator make his judgements, the wife becomes increasing detached from her husband and moves into a reverie about the young killer, with whom one senses she is imagining some sort of romantic attachment.  At one level this is understandable. She has come with her husband on her homeymoon, and all she gets is lectures on the Kanun.  In turn he wonders why she is so detached. 

Two stories end in tragedy.  The young man hopes to reach home during the period of the truce, while he pays the dues, but just fails and is shot.  In the other story, the young couple visit a village where towers which protect men from revenge are located.  It is forbidden for other people to enter the towers.   The wife disappears and then it appears she has entered a tower.  The implications of this are not made clear.  I thought that perhaps she would meet the young killer, but he is elsewhere.  The result, nonetheless, is the end of the marriage.  For whatever reason, she is not the same when she came out as when she went in.  One could say that she has chosen a more romantic and fanciful life.  Or maybe she has got rid of a rather boring husband.  It' was all left very unclear to me anyway.  Maybe I missed something really important.

As for the third story, the implication from the shooting is that the revenge will continue repeating itself in the region as long as there are people there willing to live by the Kanun.    It's interesting that the Kanun itself was first written down by a priest in the late 19th century. It's hard to think of this revenge killing being part of a Christian society.  Yet the Kanun incorporates a role for the Church and acknowledges its existence.  I managed to get hold of a copy of the English translation, but haven't yet had time to have more than a quick flick through.  It is written rather like a law, in numbered paragraphs, with the first chapter being about the church, and how people on church ground are safe from the bessa. The writer (in the book) claims that attempts to impose normal justice and policing have been attempted but were rejected by the people themselves, who preferred the Kanun, which after all had been around since before the Turks. 

Somewhere else I have read that wherever it is difficult to achieve normal policing and justice, eg in mountainous areas, where access is difficult and society is split into different clans or family structures, these sort of honour rules are required to form some sort of ethical structure by which people should live their lives and by which disputes can be settled. The implication seems to be that Christian or Moslem religions are not enough.  And disputes there always are, as there is not enough agricultural land to go round and the land is overpopulated for the amount of food it can provide in most years.  This means that the disputes need to be resolved in a way that reduces the population.  Perhaps you can tell I have just been reading Jared Diamond's book Collapse, about this sort of thing (review will follow).

Which reminds me about Patrick Leigh Fermor's book about the Mani, the people who lived in tower houses in the southern tip of the Pelopponese in Greece.  They had similar revenge codes, hiding in the tower houses and building them higher as they got richer and could withstand more attacks. Yet truces had to be organised so they could grow food. Or maybe the men stayed in the towers and the women did the farming, I can't remember. The conflicts there must have been also about overpopulation with very limited agricultural land in a remote and mountainous country.  And one could also think about the mountainous tribes of the Caucasus, especially Georgia where even today, honour is important.

So what is barbaric, the situation itself of overpopulation leading to conflict, or the method of settling the conflict?  Why do people choose to live in mountainous regions where life is hard?  And what sort of rules should they have when there isn't enough food for everyone?  And how do you make the rules stick with no judges and policemen available, and when religion itself doesn't seem enough?

And what did really happen to the wife in the tower?

 

Technorati tags: Ismail Kadare, Broken April, Patrick Leigh Fermor, The Mani, Jared Diamond, Collapse, Kanun, Albania

Hazardous Occupations

Here is a review of this book, by my friend Peter who has served time in Kosovo and many third world places and has interesting views on colonialism especially with regard to Kosovo.

Thank you for recommending the book by Rory Stewart. Absolutely brilliant and amusing, except at the end when they are being shelled and it is horribly real. Liked the story the press produced about the return of the kidnapped archeologist and the Italians taking credit, and then the Sun publishing a story that it was actually British SAS disguised as Italians.

The most chilling line though was when he sees one of the Sheikhs after the bombardment, who says that they will miss him when he goes. Rory retorts" But you spent the last three days trying to kill me." "Oh that, don't take it personally."

As I said before here, you need to read it to understand exactly why everything is going wrong in Iraq.