The Oculus: U21 Melbourne

Universitas 21 is an international network of twenty-three leading research-intensive universities in fifteen countries. Collectively, its members enroll over 700,000 students, employ over 145,000 staff, and have nearly 2.5 million alumni. The network’s purpose is to facilitate collaboration and cooperation between the member universities and to create opportunities for them on a scale that none would be able to achieve operating independently or through traditional bilateral alliances.

Each year, a member institution hosts the Universitas 21 Undergraduate Research Conference.

The University of Melbourne hosted the sixth annual conference, organized on the theme “Faculty of Imagining,” from 1 to 7 July 2010. Fifty-eight students attended, representing twelve countries and nineteen institutions. The University of Virginia’s student-run research journal, The Oculus, has the privilege of publishing research papers presented at the annual U21 undergraduate research conference.

For more information regarding Universitas 21, visit www.universitas21.com.

The Oculus Co-Editors-in-Chief: Mitchell Leibowitz & Tudor Cisu Design, Format, Compilation by David Wu University of Virginia Charlottesville, Virginia United States of America

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference

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ni ndergr v eraduate sita s 21 Research Conference: Melbourne U Table of Contents

(3)

Subversive Imaginings: Narrative Strategies in Collette Khuri’s Layla Wahida Anandi Rao, University of Edinburgh

(8)

Hinduism in Britain and its Direction for the Future

(12)

Re-imagining Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women in Canada

Amy Swanwick, University of Nottingham

Corinne Jones, University of Birmingham

(18)

I Think, Therefore I Reappraise: Exploring the Relationships between Empathy and Emotion Regulation Elizabeth A. Bendycki, University of Virginia

(23)

Imagining the Circumcised Woman: A Critique of the Binary Logic in Women’s Rights Discourse Evelyn Wan, University of Hong Kong

(28)

Binary Unities: Split Selves in Yves Bonnefoy and Michel Henry

(30)

Interpreting Nietzsche’s Perspectivism and What This Means for our Conception of Knowledge

Graham Riach, University of Glasgow

Jack Wright, University of Edinburgh

(36)

Envisaging State Healthcare: A Visual Investigation into Irish Public Health Campaigns 1945-1958 Jane Hand, University College Dublin

(43)

Richard Flanagan’s Gould’s Book of Fish: Rewriting Tasmanian Ecology Jill Carman, University of Queensland

(46)

A Chinese Verbal Inhibitory Control Task with Potential Clinical Application Ka-Man Chong and Sam-Po Law, University of Hong Kong

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(52)

Is Trust a Necessity? A Case Study of Group Lending Within Microfinance in the Mbarara District, Uganda Karin Gรถransson and Anna ร stergren, Lund University

(60)

Obesity in Scotland: A Quantile Regression Approach to Studying the BMI Distribution Kelly Gallacher, University of Glasgow

(66)

Drug Discovery from Ardisia elliptica

(72)

Continuous Flow, Multi-Phase Reaction Modeling of Biodiesel Production using Cahn-Hilliard Approach

Jun Feng Lee, National University of Singapore

Lu Han, University of Connecticut

(76)

Success Factors in Australian Public Sector Alliance Projects

(80)

Genetic Basis for Sexual Dimorphism in the Lizard Anolis sagrei

Matthias Wobbe, University of Melbourne

Megan Kobiela, University of Virginia

(84)

Generating Automatic Abstractive Summaries of Product Reviews: The ASSESS System Nicholas FitzGerald, University of British Columbia

(88)

Agricultural Credit in India: An Essay

(91)

Bacterial Metallothionein, SmtA, as a Virulence Factor

(97)

Gender Differences in Imagination Among Indian Adolescents

Sourovi De, University of Delhi

Stephanie Davis, University of Connecticut

Uma Ranganathan, University of Delhi

(102) Language Rights and the Security Dilemma: Education Policy at the Margins of Contemporary China Verity Robins, University of Nottingham

(108) From the Culture Industry Thesis to Deconstruction: H(a)unting Issues of Representation Veronika Fafienski, University of Birmingham

(114) The Role of Connexins in Adult Neurogenesis Xien Lei Liversidge, University of Auckland

(118) Capacity Factors of a Point-to-point Network Yuan Li, Yue Zhao and Haibin Kan, Fudan University

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference

Subversive Imaginings: Narrative Strategies in Collette Khuri’s Layla Wahida Anandi Rao

University of Edinburgh

Abstract For marginalised groups in society, the imagination and imaginative techniques are key to expressing ideas and opinions that have hitherto been silenced. This is even more so in a country like Syria where censorship of the written word has been prevalent in one form or another for over a century. In this paper I will look at imaginative narrative techniques in Layla Wahida, a novel by Collette Khuri as an example of this. Born in 1937 Collette Khuri is a Syrian novelist, poet and short story writer. When she began writing in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s she was one of the first women to write about women’s desire and female sexuality from a woman’s point of view. Since these themes were taboo to an extent, she used imaginative techniques in a subversive manner in her writing. Of the numerous strategies that she uses this paper will focus on her use of ellipsis points and ‘extraliterary genres’. The overall discussion in the paper is informed by an understanding of the work of discourse theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, whose work on the narrative, the word and the dialogue, has often been appropriated by feminist literary critics as a means to breakdown traditionally held dichotomies like male/female, public/private, and objectivity/subjectivity to name a few.

Introduction

Literary canons have traditionally been dominated by men, and given this, women writers have often worked with and tried to subvert techniques used by their male counterparts in order to forge a literary tradition of their own1. In this paper I look at the ways in which Syrian author Collette Khuri does this in her second novel Layla Wahida (A Single Night). Before moving onto the novel itself it is worth looking briefly at some aspects of the political and social climate in Syria in the first half of the twentieth century.

Syria, in the early twentieth century, saw a variety of regimes come and go, until 1963 when the Ba‘ath party came to power (See Box 1 for details)2.

It is perhaps ironic that despite all these upheavals the only constant in Syria right from Ottoman rule up to and including the Ba‘athist regime is the country, Syria has been fraught with some form of censorship3. Nonetheless several eminent figures of the Arab literary (male) canon including Nizar Qabbani and Zakariya Tamer have emerged from 1 Feminists right from Virginia Woolf (A Room of One’s Own) to Elaine Showalter (A Literature of Their Own) and Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar (The Madwoman in the Attic), among others have looked at the dearth of a female English literary tradition. In the case of Arabic literature, Ashour et al. make a strong case for the existence of a female literary tradition. However, most general introductions to Modern Arabic Literature mention one or two women, if any.

2 Timeline adapted from Samar Attar, Lina: A Portrait of a Damascene Girl ,Colorado Springs: Three Continents Press, 1994, 214-217.

3 Mohja Kahf, ‘The Silences of Contemporary Syrian Literature’, World Literature Today 75.2 (2001) 230.

the country4. There have, of course, been women writing in the country from the early decades of the century5, however the texts they have written have often been seen as being more ‘personal’ or ‘private’ in nature rather than being ‘literary’ and/ or ‘political’ like those of their male counterparts.

Collette Khuri’s work, too, can be seen as being more ‘personal’ and ‘confessional’ and not ‘political’ or even ‘literary’. However, in the rest of this paper I will argue that it is precisely this characteristic that makes her fiction(s) subversive and politically engaged.

Collette Khuri was born into an elite Christian family in 1937, in Damascus6. Her grandfather was Faris al-Khuri, a leader of the Syrian independence movement who later became Prime Minister of Syria in the 1960s. Despite his early nationalist tendencies, the government during his tenure as Prime Minister was seen as being too pro-Western.

This seemingly conflicting relationship between nationalist sentiments and ‘liberal’ western ideals was experienced by not only nationalist leaders educated in France but also by the women in their households like Collette, who was educated at the Arab French Institute. Furthermore, despite the fact that Syria is a Muslim majority country it has always had a sizeable population of minorities, up 4 For my discussion I am using Syrian to describe authors who either, through their work, can be identified as Syrian or write, live and work in Syria.

5 Subhi Hadidi and Iman al-Qadi, ‘Syria’, in Radwa Ashour, Ferial J. Ghazoul and Hasna Reda-Mekdashi, eds., Arab Women Writers: A Critical Reference Guide 1873-1999, trans. Mandy McClure, Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2008, 60.

6 All Biographical details are from Ashour et al Arab Women Writers.

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Box 1. Political Context: Early 20th Century Syria

until the present. Surprisingly enough, members of these minorities, like the Khuri family, have often occupied positions of power (see box 2). Collette rose to fame with her first novel Ayyam Ma’ah (Days with Him) which was published in 1959. It was controversial in its depiction of female desire and an affair between a young female poet and a musician outwith the confines of marriage. At the same time, speculation was also rife that the novel was based on Collette’s affair with acclaimed Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani. She has since published several novels and collections of short stories and poetry.

Theoretical Framework

Feminist literary critics have often turned to discourse theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, and his work on the narrative, the word and the dialogue, as a means to breakdown traditionally held dichotomies like male/female, public/private, and objectivity/ subjectivity to name a few. Bakhtin, with his emphasis on the dialogic interconnectedness between the individuality of the speaker, and the social factors that impact the meaning of what is said, develops a fluid model of meaning creation instead of a polarising one. It is however problematic to unequivocally appropriate his work to women’s writing because, by and large, he did not mention any writing by women in his literary criticism.

However, some of the concepts he uses in his analysis of Dostoevsky’s work and the novel as a genre are useful as starting points for the analysis of various fictions.

One such concept is that of ‘heteroglossia’, which is a web-like coming together of ‘a diversity of social speech types and a diversity of individual voices.’7 The implication here is that a heteroglossic text is one that challenges the dominant discourse by giving voice to different points of view. For Bakhtin, the novel was a prime example of such a text, because there was often conflict between the voices of different characters, or between that of the narrator and the characters. As an extension of this, he goes on to describe Dostoevsky’s particular style as being ‘polyphonic’ – one where not only is there a plurality 7 M. M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981, 263.

Box 2. Religious groups in Syria

of voices, but these voices emanate from a ‘plurality of equal consciousnesses’8. The operative word in this case is ‘equal’ because this multiplicity of voices is not relegated to the periphery; rather each of them is treated as being equally valid. It is this strategy that makes a polyphonic text subversive and is one of the reasons why Bakhtin is appropriated by critics analysing literature by ‘minority’ groups.

This dialogic interconnectedness between and across various elements in the texts, as well as the use of polyphony as a strategy forms the basis of my analysis of Syrian women’s fiction. In recent times Syrian fiction, especially women’s fiction, has not been the subject of much literary analysis, perhaps due to relative lack of conflict in Syria when compared to the rest of the Levant (Lebanon and Palestine specifically). In the texts, however, there is conflict in the Bakhtinian sense of interaction between various voices/positions. This conflict, in the case of women authors specifically, is often within the female protagonist/narrator herself, rather than between different characters or contexts.

For instance Reem, the protagonist of Collette Khuri’s Ayyam Ma‘ah, is a polyphonic character, voicing her identities as a woman, as a Syrian, as a young person, as an educated person etc. These different identities are often in conflict with one another. This analysis of the subversive nature of some of the narrative strategies adopted by Collette Khuri is informed by the Bakhtinian concepts outlined above.

Of Voices and Silences: Stylistic Strategies in the Novel

Given that canonical literature has traditionally consisted of works by men, destabilisation of conventions is a particularly potent means to resist patriarchy and its confines for women writers, in this case from Syria. However, this resistance is fraught with complexities as is the notion of a ‘woman writer’- a category impossible to homogenise. This makes strategies adopted for this end complex as well. They involve an interaction between and the articulation of, perhaps paradoxically, various voices and silences. This section will look at two such strategies: the appropriation of ‘extraliterary genres,’ 8 Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, trans.

R. W. Rostel, Ann Arbor, Michigan: Ardis, 1973, 4.

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference which allows different voices to be expressed, and the use of pauses, specifically ellipsis points, which focuses more on silences in Layla Wahida.

Layla Wahida is for the most part a letter written

by Rasha to her husband recounting the events of the previous night, which she spent with another man.

Rasha and her husband are in Marseilles because he has work there. She has a doctor’s appointment in Paris which she is forced to go to alone after her husband gets tied down with work. It is in Paris that she meets the other man and writes the letter to her husband from the hotel room the following morning.

The first strategy is the use of ‘extraliterary genres’ – ‘the genres of everyday life ’9. This includes, among other things, the incorporation of diaries, and letters. In doing so not only does the text cross ‘the boundary of what we call strictly fictional literature’10 but it also highlights issues of narrative authority and subjectivity. Furthermore, it questions notions of grand narratives as well.

Collette Khuri does this in Layla Wahida by writing the novel in the form of a long letter from Rasha to her husband, written after she has spent the night with another man. By using this form, Khuri challenges literary conventions in a vein similar to that of her protagonist Rasha, who challenges the linguistic conventions of daily life, and sees them as originating in patriarchy. The novel begins with such a challenge when Rasha questions the reasons why she usually begins letters to her husband with the phrase, ‘My Dear Husband’. She describes this phrase as being one, which ‘her pen used to write automatically’11. The interesting thing in this sentence is that the subject of the verb ‘write’ isn’t Rasha, but is the pen, thereby implying not only that this sentence is written in a state of extreme unconsciousness but also, if the word ‘pen’ is being used metonymically, that social factors condition the individual woman in this manner. She goes on to speculate on the reasons why she unconsciously uses this phrase. One of the reasons she comes up with has to do with being taught from a young age that husbands were meant to be ‘dear’12. Both the act of questioning and the results it yields serve to unhinge conventions – in this case it is the ‘husband’ who is portrayed as always being ‘dear’ to the wife – especially those implicitly created by patriarchy.

Another convention that using the letter undermines is the position or the role of the reader.

As the novel is a letter, the implied reader is Rasha’s husband, even if he doesn’t actually read the letter during the course of the narrative. Furthermore, this letter engages with the implied reader extensively.

For instance, while describing events of the previous 9 Bakhtin, Dialogic Imagination, 33.

10 Bakhtin, Dialogic Imagination, 33.

11 Collette Suhayl Khuri, Layla Wahida, Beirut: al-Maktab al-Tijari, 1961, 13.

12 Khuri, Layla Wahida, 14.

morning when she was in Marseilles with her husband, Rasha writes, ‘remember?’13in an attempt to reach out to the implied reader and involve him in the process of remembering. Such an invitation is interesting for several reasons. First, it highlights that the creation of memory and by extension history, is a collaborative process. Second, by asking her husband to remember and corroborate her story, she is seeking a form of legitimacy. Third, and this is somewhat paradoxical to the second point, by inviting her husband to participate in the creation of these memories, she is indicating his complicity in the societal elements that have made her complacent.

At the same time, however, she often slips into her husband’s consciousness while trying to guess his reaction. For example, she says:

‘My words have astonished you... my opinions have frightened you... and have made you wonder what has happened to her to make her philosophise so... she, who used to normally write to me about nothing but the ordinary...

Yes, what’s happened to her?

What’s happened to me...14’ This extract, is in fact in a Virginia Woolfesque style of free indirect speech where a third person narrative is combined with an individual character’s stream of consciousness. Until the ‘so’ the voice is clearly that of Rasha, the narrator. However, from that point up until ‘her?’, it switches to her husband’s consciousness even if she remains the one voicing it.

As a woman, and perhaps especially as a wife this serves to subvert the authority of the voice of the husband by showing its predictability and the ease with which it is assumed by her.

This usage of the implied reader also complicates the position of the actual reader. For instance, it is easy for the actual reader to assume the role of the implied reader, even without necessarily empathising with or taking on the role of the husband. This can have a twofold implication.

Firstly, the actual reader, like the implied reader has an opportunity to actively engage with the letter writer, given the predominance of rhetorical questions posed in the letter. Secondly, even if the actual reader does not identify with the character of the husband, her thought process may be guided by the thoughts that Rasha attributes to her husband.

The way in which Khuri uses the rhetorical question in Layla Wahida leads to another technique employed in the text being discussed here, the use of ellipsis points (‘...’). Khuri seems to repeatedly use them to indicate pauses in the thought processes of various characters, as well as to provide opportunities for the reader to interact with the text and play a 13 Khuri, Layla Wahida, 20.

14 Khuri, Layla Wahida, 14-15.

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part in the creation of meaning. For example, in the quote above, consider the uses of the ellipsis points between the phrases ‘my opinions have frightened you’ and ‘and have made you wonder’. Instead of explaining the reasons behind or the manifestations of the fright, all the reader (whether actual or implied) gets is a forced pause between thoughts. As with any reader-response based analysis15, the meaning that this pause can carry is manifold and depends on the reader. This pause for instance, could evoke any, all, none or a combination of the responses given below (other responses are potentially plausible as well), depending in part on which word of the preceding phrase, the reader places the most emphasis on. If the emphasis in her mind were on ‘opinions’, she may use the pause to consider the opinions Rasha has presented, and her response to them, whether of fright or of any other. If the emphasis were on ‘frighten’, or if the opinions in question did frighten her just as they are assumed to frighten the implied reader, the pause may be used to experience the physical sensation of being frightened, or its aftereffects. If however the emphasis were on the use of the pronoun ‘you’, the pause may evoke a fleeting moment of self-reflection on her personality. For the implied reader and his (i.e. Rasha’s husband) relationship and interaction with Rasha, the pauses could represent the implications of the statements presented, which might be quite radical if they were explicitly voiced by a woman. As an example of this it is worthwhile to look at the first few sentences from the quotation above: ‘My words have astonished you because you are not used to me expressing myself, my opinions have frightened you as they challenge your patriarchal authority over me and have made you wonder what has happened to her to make her philosophise so’.

This time however I have placed probable implications in italics in place of the ellipsis points used by the author. The meaning that the inserted words convey is however, implicit in the original.

Not explicitly saying it is perhaps a strategy adopted by the author to expose ingrained states of mind without being controversial, or at any rate more controversial than some of Khuri’s work was perceived to be. Moreover, in many ways, not stating it makes it all the more powerful both because it puts some of the onus of the situation on the reader and also because it mirrors the silences that are often integral to women’s lives, and that Rasha has had to endure before the events of that particular night.

15 The primary questions that reader-response criticism explores revolve around the existence of multiple readings and their relative plausibility as well as validity. Todd F. Davis and Kenneth Womack, Formalist Criticism and Reader-Response Theory, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002, 51.

Conclusion

Along with using ‘extraliterary’ genres, this technique of having pauses/omissions and using ellipsis points also makes the texts ‘heteroglossic’ in that it marks the coming together of ‘literary’ and ‘everyday’ languages. Pauses, as signified by the ellipsis points in the written text, are a common feature of speech16, and by giving them a visual representation, the boundaries between oral and written texts are blurred. Moreover, it is also indicative of the ‘struggle’ between what Bakhtin calls ‘authoritative discourse’ and ‘internallypersuasive discourse’17. For him the former is the ‘word of the fathers’ the authority of which was ‘already acknowledged in the past’18 while the latter is closer to ‘retelling a text in one’s own words’19. This implies an intense dialogue between narrative conventions and traditions and individual subjectivity. In the case of the texts looked at here this can be seen more in terms of resistance against the narrative traditions, conventions or as Bakhtin calls it the ‘word of fathers’20which for a woman writing, and especially the women considered here, takes on a highly gendered meaning.

References

1. Ashour, Radwa, Ferial J. Ghazoul and Hasna Reda-Mekdashi (eds.), Arab Women Writers: A Critical Reference Guide 1873-1999, trans. Mandy McClure, Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2008.

2. Attar, Samar, Lina: A Portrait of a Damascene Girl, Colorado Springs: Three Continents Press, 1994.

3. Bakhtin, Mikhail, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, trans. R. W. Rostel, Ann Arbor, Michigan: Ardis, 1973.

4. Bakhtin, M. M., The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981.

5. Davis, Todd F. and Kenneth Womack, Formalist Criticism and Reader-Response Theory, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002.

6. Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth Century Literary Imagination, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979.

16 The link between ellipsis points and everyday speech is discussed in Anne C. Henry, ‘The Re-mark-able Rise of ‘...’: Reading Ellipsis Marks in Literary Texts’ in Joe Bray, Miriam Handley, and Anne C. Henry (eds.), Ma(r)king the Text: The Presentation of Meaning on the Literary Page, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2000, 138.

17 Bakhtin, Dialogic Imagination, 424.

18 Bakhtin, Dialogic Imagination, 342.

19 Bakhtin, Dialogic Imagination, 424.

20 Emphasis mine.

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference 7. Hadidi, Subhi and Iman al-Qadi, ‘Syria’, pp. 60-97 in Radwa Ashour, Ferial J. Ghazoul and Hasna Reda-Mekdashi (eds.), Arab Women Writers: A Critical Reference Guide 1873-1999, trans. Mandy McClure, Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2008.

8. Henry, Anne C., ‘The Re-mark-able Rise of ‘...’: Reading Ellipsis Marks in Literary Texts’ pp. 120-142 in Joe Bray, Miriam Handley, and Anne C. Henry (eds.), Ma(r)king the Text: The Presentation of Meaning on the Literary Page, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2000.

9. Kahf, Mohja, ‘The Silences of Contemporary Syrian Literature’, World Literature Today 75.2 (2001) 224-236.

10. Khuri, Collette Suhayl, Layla Wahida, Beirut: alMaktab al-Tijari, 1961.

11. Khuri, Collette, Days with him, trans. Farishta G.de Sayess and A.de Sayess Abbasi, Damascus: MAS, 2005.

12. Showalter, Elaine, A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Brontë to Lessing, London: Virago Press, 1982.

13. Woolf, Virginia, A Room of One’s Own, London: Penguin Books, 2004.

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Hinduism in Britain and its Direction for the Future Amy Swanwick

University of Nottingham

Abstract The future of Hinduism in Britain should be considered in light of its history and current trends. Two distinct directions are acknowledged here, the dilution of the faith and the search for more a more philosophical and scripture based understanding of the religion.

The faiths shift to the domestic realm is also explored and analysed as well as the possible reasons for this change. Through previous research and interviews all these trends are isolated and discussed here in order to make predictions about the future of Hinduism in Britain.

Introduction

Hinduism has always been a religion centred on its geographical location. The Persians are known to use the term ‘Hindu’ during the first millennium AD in reference to the people living in the region of the Indus valley, the country of India.1 The name of this home is Bharat, meaning India, and the connection between Hindus and the land is important spiritually.2 ‘Within the bounds of Bharat the Hindu is ritually safe, beyond its boundaries lie all manner of impurities and pollutions.’3 Therefore it is interesting to see what happens to this religion, so defined by its geography, when its location is changed in a drastic migration, in this case its move to Britain. While for some older generation Hindus maintaining Indian tradition has become very important, the younger members of the community who have grown up in Britain feel somewhat differently. This article is built on a dissertation which considers the Hindu faith within its new context and its current form and trends. Based on previous research and insights obtained through an interview process it attempts to make educated predictions for the future of Hinduism in Britain.

Discussion

One of the main generational differences which has been brought to light through this process is how the younger generations of Hindus in Britain appear to be taking their religion in two different directions. Firstly a more diluted version of Hinduism has arisen, much as a result of a British upbringing, which has brought about more private and secularised faith. Hindus are increasingly performing their rituals in their homes; the temple 1 Vertovec, Stephen, The Hindu Diaspora: Comparative Patterns, Routledge, London, 2000, p9 2 Thomas, Terence, ‘Hindu Dharma In Dispersion’, in The Growth of Religious Diversity: Britain From 1945, Volume 1: Traditions, Edited by Gerald Parsons, The Open University, Routledge, New York, 1993, p175 3 Thomas, Terence, ‘Hindu Dharma In Dispersion’, in The Growth of Religious Diversity: Britain From 1945, Volume 1: Traditions, p175

is less required as a source of community.

For the first British Hindus the temple fulfilled a number of religious and cultural needs. In most cases I have found that these needs were in direct relation to the different geographical locations from which its members came from in India, East Africa or the Caribbean, or due to the complex web of caste originating sects found in Britain. Along with religious practice I would argue that the temple organisation was a place for the Hindu, religious and ethnic minorities to come together in shared experiences and goals. Some of the uses of the temple were very different when compared to the practice established in India and some adaptations had to be made, Ursula King argues that ‘the temple helps to express and enforce a separate religious and cultural identity and it has thus acquired a new function for which there is little need in India.’4 R. Jackson agreed that this new situation which Hinduism was faced with in Britain meant, ‘the temple is no longer just a centre for devotion, but is an oasis of Indian culture in an alien environment.’5 Once Hindus initially started settling in Britain more community based forms of worship began to take place, ‘the number of Hindus in local areas grew, as they gained in wealth, as their social networks extended and strengthened, and as they grew in experience and confidence in organising themselves, making use of public facilities and services, and dealing with British rules, regulations and government bodies.’6 As Vertrovec states, ‘one temple after another was founded in rapid succession.’ Within 10 years there were 82 temples in Britain and the numbers were still increasing.’7 One 4 King, Ursula, A Report on Hinduism in Britain, Community Religions Project Research Papers (New Series) no 2, The University of Leeds, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, p6 5 Jackson. R, ‘The Shree Krishna Temple and the Gujarati Hindu Community in Coventry’, in D.G. Bowen (ed), Hinduism in England, Bradford College, Bradford, 1981, p61-85 6 Vertovec, Stephen, The Hindu Diaspora: Comparative Patterns, p128 7 King, Ursula, A Report on Hinduism in Britain, Community Religions Project Research Papers (New Series)

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference interviewee explained that upon arriving in Britain there was no temple for him to attend, instead he regularly went to a Christian church, he argued his faith could just as easily be practised there as in a purpose built Hindu building.8 Many other Hindus also appeared comfortable to practise their religion anywhere; it was the friendship and community spirit among people of shared background that needed to be recreated in the British setting.

Therefore the temple was important in its role to the community formation and the functions it provided within that realm. Kim Knott argues that strong social ties were needed and indeed found for British Hindus, allowing them to form organizations, pass on traditions to younger generations and to continue communal rituals.9 It is perhaps surprising then to find that the young people interviewed for this research admitted that they do not regularly attend a temple, when they do it is for a special occasion such as a festival. Without religion being a part of a regular routine it has begun to have less of an impact on the believer’s life. One 18 year old girl explained to me that her father performed regular rituals at a shrine in their home; she said she relied on his faith to bless the family as a whole.10 Her father however explained that when he first came to Britain all he had was his religion, he said he tried to practice Hinduism as much as possible and that his religion was of huge importance to him.11 Through talking to the interviewees it seems apparent that the extended family and the Hindu community have much less of a role now that nuclear families are perhaps better formed. One of the reasons for this may just be that over time the Hindu migrants have become more assimilated into the wider British community and no longer feel the need to cling to others who previously migrated from similar backgrounds as themselves. Initially the community was a huge comfort to migrants moving to an alien and perhaps sometimes hostile country. A 22 year old man explained in interviews that his father ‘bragged’ about how he had come to Britain, faced the challenges that went along with that move and has now found his place in the wider British community.12 This success and these feelings of acceptance show decreased levels of reliance on Hindu community and increased levels of no 2, The University of Leeds, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, p6 8 Interviewee B, male Hindu aged 58, born in Uganda, interviewed on 13/04/2010 9 Knott, Kim, ‘Hindu Temple Rituals in Britain’, in Hinduism in Great Britain: The Perpetuation of Religion in an Alien Cultural Milieu, Ed. By Richard Burghart, Tavistock publications, London, 1987, p158 10 Interviewee A, female Hindu, aged 18, born in England, interviewed on 12/04/2010 11 Interviewee B 12 Interviewee E, male Hindu aged 22, born in England, interviewed on 27/04/2010

integration and assimilation with Britain, this results in less emphasis being placed on the importance of the temple and community temple worship.

There is also a lack of interest and appreciation of the languages used by the older generation and the importance of language as a way of connecting the community with their historical and cultural ties. It appears that many young Hindus are more attached to their British identity and language, which given the majority of them were born here seems understandable. This shows that Hindus have been successful in their assimilation to the host country, but that some traditions and aspects of importance may have been lost or diluted along the way. Caste, language and religious ritual, while still recognised, do appear less important to many young Hindus, another sign that times have changed.

This dilution of Hinduism in Britain seems troubling to some of the 1st generation Hindus. One father explained in an interview that he wished his daughters knew more about their religion, culture and language. He showed disappointment in their lack of interest and motivation to engage in culture and religion focused learning. When they were younger they had attended Guajarati language classes and attended more community events however now they were approaching their early twenties their faith had taken more of a backseat.

He admitted that as a family they did not attend the temple regularly and instead domestic worship had become an important part of their lives. He explained that he felt it was vital for him to pass on his history and culture to his daughters but also that they must take from Hinduism the understanding, respectfulness and tolerance of others.13 The values that the religion prescribes appear more important in this case than regular ritualistic practice of the faith.

The second direction of Hinduism which the young appear to favour is towards a more philosophical scripture based faith. Those Hindus interviewed who showed more signs of a connection to their faith and heritage were involved less so in ritualistic aspects and more so in understanding the sacred Hindu scriptures and philosophising about issues that arise from it. A 22 year old male interviewee described older generations of Hindus as having a ‘blind faith,’ he argued that they followed Hinduism because of tradition and cultural heritage ‘without intellectualising things’.14 This is an important change of direction to note, it seems that Hinduism in Britain is moving away from its ritual and cultural importance into a more scholarly scripture orientated religion. The interviewee supported his ideas by explaining that he himself and other Hindu friends attended twice weekly classes in Leicester which sought to understand and discuss 13 Interviewee B 14 Interviewee E

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the Bhagavad Gita.15 Three of the interviewees also acknowledged involvement in Hindu societies at their universities and the attendance of various educational lectures.16 Hinnells notes that this is a trend towards a ‘sanitized’ form of Hinduism; he exemplifies this with the move away from purity laws but towards the teachings of Gandhi and the Gita.17 Hinduism is becoming a more scholarly religion and for some British Hindus it is an important change of direction to be involved with.

The Swaminaryan School in London also includes in its curriculum this year lessons on Hindu philosophy and values taught by many of the popular Hindu scriptures, showing that the importance of this type of Hindu academia is starting to be recognised.18 Hinnells in 2000 stated ‘increasingly younger Asians are studying their heritage at western universities.

What the long term impact will be, and how it will effect relations between these western-educated youth and leaders in the old countries has yet to be seen…what happens in the Diaspora, will, for better or worse, have an influence on the religion in the old country.’19 Today it can be argued that this education has influenced the religion as discussed above, in the sense that the youth are enthusiastic to challenge scripture more and question the place of cultural traditions and rituals. The effect of these pursuits on those Hindus back in India is yet to be researched. Hinnells argues however that ‘the importance of the diaspora groups, and their impact back in the old country, seems almost certain to grow.’20 This is due to globalization and increased access to modern technology. It has become common for Hindu organisations, such as ISKCON, to reach a larger Hindu audience through the internet. I think that the practice of utilising this modern day tool is only going to increase. As organisations reach out and receive new members it seems like a kind of modern day missionary movement, this type of recruitment is perhaps one of the ways in which Hinduism has adopted Christian and western processes in order to develop itself further in this global world. ISKCON uses their website to promote 15 Interviewee E 16 Interviewee A,D,E and F 17 Hinnells, John “South Asian Religions in Migration” in The South Asian Religious Diaspora in Britain, Canada The United States, edited by Harold Coward, John R. Hinnells and Raymond Brady Williams, p10 18 Accessed on 02/05/10 http://www.swaminarayan. brent.sch.uk/images/policies/Curriculum%20 Guide%20Senior%20School.pdf p33 19 Hinnells, John “South Asian Religions in Migration” in The South Asian Religious Diaspora in Britain, Canada The United States, edited by Harold Coward, John R. Hinnells and Raymond Brady Williams, p7 20 Hinnells, John “South Asian Religions in Migration” in The South Asian Religious Diaspora in Britain, Canada The United States, edited by Harold Coward, John R. Hinnells and Raymond Brady Williams, p10

their community and charity projects, this type of activity sees Hindu organisations performing more of a mainstream role in the British and worldwide communities. Globalization looks set to continue to be an important development for Hinduism and its future in Britain, potentially replacing the smaller local communities which were originally formed with a larger and a more unified one. The effects of this could possibly mean a more defined Hinduism in Britain, hopefully overcoming the problem of confused self identity in some young British Hindus, an issue discussed further in the complete dissertation. Due to the involvement of British Hindu teachers in India21 and increased use of the internet it can be argued that this new form of Hinduism could potentially be developed there as well, but only time will tell. Hinnells argues that ‘western leaders visit the old country where they are often seen as important and successful people, with something to offer.’22 Therefore if this prediction were to be realised in Britain we can expect something similar to have potential in India.

Conclusion

In summary this research has brought to light two trends which Hindu youth in Britain are favouring. Firstly a more diluted faith which is characterized by a detachment to the community and the temple though a more domesticated faith, a lack of connection to Indian language and culture, and a more private and personal version of the religion. The second trend is exemplified through those young Hindus who, while still showing some of the previous characteristics, also strive to gain a more scholarly understanding of Hinduism.

We can expect these two trends to continue and combined with globalization I would predict that the scholarly direction will lead to the Hindu communities identity becoming more unified and defined in Britain and in turn the world.

New academic discourse will hopefully bring a fresh look at Hinduism which may reach out and connect with those Hindus in the diluted trend, engaging them in modern, relevant discussions.

The practice of domestic worship shows no signs of changing soon and shouldn’t be affected by globalization and the more unified Hinduism. The internet has been more of a resource for bringing Hindus together in the involvement in the British and world community, there is no reason for this to affect the personal practice of faith.

21 Hinnells, John “South Asian Religions in Migration” in The South Asian Religious Diaspora in Britain, Canada The United States, edited by Harold Coward, John R. Hinnells and Raymond Brady Williams, p10 22 Hinnells, John “South Asian Religions in Migration” in The South Asian Religious Diaspora in Britain, Canada The United States, edited by Harold Coward, John R. Hinnells and Raymond Brady Williams, p10

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference While it is impossible to know the future, this research has considered the past and the present of Hinduism in Britain which has enabled the future to be forecast. It has become clear that there is a need for more scholarly thought in the area of British Hinduism. The current trends displayed in the young Hindu population definitely provide fascinating and important insights worthy of academic consideration. One thing is clear, Hinduism has found a firm home in Britain and continues to evolve with the times and respond to the challenges it faces in its western context.

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Re-imagining Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women in Canada Corinne Jones

University of Birmingham

Abstract A disproportionate amount of Aboriginal1 women have gone missing or been murdered in Canada since the 1980s. It is only in the last five years, since the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC)’s began their activism through their Sisters in Spirit (SIS) initiative, that the mainstream media and majority of the population have paid attention to this crisis. Historically, activism has been one method that marginalised voices have used to make themselves heard. But does activism really have the potential to instigate change in society? In this paper I explore why Aboriginal women need to be re-imagined in society and analyse how the NWAC’s activism has attempted to reduce Aboriginal femicide.

Previous academic research on activism in North America has tended to ignore grassroots activism in non-white communities. This paper thus fills a gap in the research by providing a critique of Aboriginal feminist activist techniques. Indeed, as Amber Dean attests, critique of important socio-cultural practices must occur, and occur in a thorough manner, in order to understand what exactly it is that makes forms of activism most effective (2008, p.237).

This paper is an abridged version of my BA American and Canadian Studies dissertation. For more information on the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC)’s work, please visit www.nwac-hq.org.

Introduction O Canada!1 Our home and native land! [...]The True North strong and free!

- Excerpt from the Canadian National Anthem (Canadian Heritage 2009).

Oh, Canada. A developed nation of the Western world and key player on the world stage. A nation perceived as polite, liberal, and multicultural.

A nation ranked fourth internationally for its high standard of living by the UN (UNDP 2009). A nation whose Prime Minister hailed as “the one country... everybody would like to be” at the G20 summit in 2009 (cited in Ljunggren 2009). A nation that, ostensibly, is strong and unified.

Yet the reality faced by Canada’s Aboriginal population is somewhat incongruent with the nation’s portrayals of harmony. In the last three decades alone, more than 520 Aboriginal women and girls have gone missing or been murdered in Canada (Amnesty International 2009, p.1).

Considering Aboriginal women represent only 3% of the Canadian population (NWAC, Raising Awareness toolkit 2007, p.3), this is the equivalent of approximately 18,000 women from all ethnic groups in Canada being murdered or disappearing (Boswell 2009). In 2008, 56% of the cases remained unsolved (NWAC, SIS National Statistics 2008, p.1).

1 The term “Aboriginal” or “Indigenous” in a Canadian context refers to First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples. In the interest of consistency, I will use the term “Aboriginal” throughout this paper, except when quoting other sources.

Amnesty International and the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) compiled a seminal report in 2004 entitled Stolen Sisters: Discrimination and Violence Against Indigenous Women in Canada which urged the Canadian government to take action. The report noted a 1996 Canadian government finding that Aboriginal women are five times more likely than other Canadian women between the ages of 25 and 44 to die as a result of violence (p.2). Amnesty International stated that “Canadian authorities could and should have done more to ensure the safety of these women and girls” (ibid). A year later, in 2005, the NWAC was granted $5million by Status of Women Canada to deliver a five-year research, education and policy initiative surrounding the epidemic of missing and murdered Aboriginal women in Canada. This initiative was called Sisters in Spirit.

The bulk of this paper examines the ways in which Aboriginal women have been targets of violence. I am particularly interested in the way that Aboriginal women have been perceived in the Canadian imagination up until the present day, and how these stereotypes are remnants of colonisation which have allowed for the violence to continue and be ignored by non-Aboriginal society. I will also examine how Sisters in Spirit’s activism has been a way to re-imagine Aboriginal women in order to reduce the violence perpetrated against them.

I became interested in how the intersection of Aboriginal women’s race and gender operated differently pre- and post-European contact when attending a talk in 2009 in Montreal, Canada. The talk was entitled “Justice for Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women” and was hosted by then

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference President of the NWAC, Beverley Jacobs. As bereaved family members faced the audience holding up images of their loved ones, I realised the extent to which missing and murdered Aboriginal women in Canada is a national, current crisis. I left the event pondering whether or not Canada could ever live up to its ideals of post-colonial unity, strength, and freedom, if members of the Aboriginal population continue to battle with the aftermath of colonisation.

SIS’s activism seemed one way to attain the enormous changes that are required to achieve such claims. I thus came to form the basis of my thesis for this paper: How has Sisters in Spirit’s activism attempted to re-imagine Aboriginal women in order to reduce the racialised, sexualised violence against Aboriginal women in Canada?

As a white female student of British and French heritage, ‘studying’ the Aboriginal people of Canada is intrinsically problematic. Studying Aboriginal issues from a non-Aboriginal perspective replicates the colonial process, as Aboriginal people become the subject of white Western study and critique. To minimise my inherently Eurocentric perspective, I will refer to as many sources written by Aboriginal academics as possible. I will begin by contextualising the history of Aboriginal women in Canada to outline how and why their victimisation has become so embedded in the Canadian mindset, causing their deaths or disappearances to have gone unnoticed in dominant society until only recently. This context will allow me to analyse how SIS’s activism to reduce violence against Aboriginal women interrogates the racist and sexist attitudes which continue to pervade in Canada.

Aboriginal Women as Subjects of Conquest

M. Annette Jaimes*Guerrero has described the imperial rhetoric behind the conception of North America as “patriarchal colonialism” (2003, p.65).

Many scholars2 have commented that Aboriginal women have suffered considerably more than Aboriginal men in post-contact Canadian society precisely because of the patriarchal mindset propelling the conquest of Canada. In order for colonisation of the Americas to occur, the Aboriginal cultures had to be eliminated. Disqualifying the power balance held between men and women in Aboriginal societies was one method colonialists used to disrupt the pre-contact communities. As several Aboriginal critics and academics attest,3 many Aboriginal communities living in North 2 See Jeanette Armstrong (1996 p.ix); Yvonne Jermaine Dufault (2003, p.46); Beverley Jacobs (2008); Emma LaRocque (1996, p.11); Stephanie A. Sellers (2008, p.83); and M. A. Jaimes*Guerrero (2003).

3 See Kim Anderson (2000); Kathlena Allyson Anderson (1996); Jeanette Armstrong (1996); Beverley Jacobs (2009); Cora Voyageur (2008); and M.A, Jaimes*Guerrero (2003).

America pre-contact were built upon egalitarian and co-operative principles. The construction and understanding of gender roles in these societies were infused with values of collectivity rather than promoting a gender-based hierarchy (Anderson 1996, p.11), and colonisers imposed their patriarchal beliefs upon the Aboriginal communities by disqualifying the powers of Aboriginal women as the decision-makers.

Sexual violence proliferated during the colonial era to subjugate Aboriginal women. As Smith states, “it is precisely through sexism and gender violence that colonialism and white supremacy have been successful” (2005, p.127). Stereotypes negating Aboriginal (particularly First Nations) femininity and exoticising their sexuality were continually reinforced by colonisers in order to “eas[e] the conscience of those who wished to abuse without consequence,” (Anderson 2000, p.100). A view that First Nations women “had the power to seduce any man into promiscuity” (Jaimes*Guerrero 2003, p.67) was promoted to excuse their abuse at the hands of European settlers. Some First Nations women were sexualised as “Indian Princesses” and their bodies equated to the land they lived on as virgin territory to be conquered (ibid, p.101). In order to justify the “civilising” paternalism behind colonial takeover, women who refused to comply with the colonisers’ demands were depicted as dirty, lazy, uncivilized, and “morally reprehensible”, traits summed up by the label of “squaw”, similar to a modern-day understanding of “whore” (ibid, p.100, 103).

As Smith points out, “In patriarchal thinking, only a body that is ‘pure’ can be violated. The rape of bodies considered inherently impure or dirty simply does not count” (2003, p.73). Consequently, “Indian princess” or “squaw” stereotypes tainted female Aboriginal bodies as “sexually violable and ‘rapable’” (ibid), simply because they did not conform to European standards of femininity. As Aboriginal scholars Emma LaRocque (1996, p.12) and Kim Anderson (2000, p.101) indicate, such imagery continued throughout “North American his-story” (ibid), with Disney’s overtly sexualised portrayal of Pocahontas in 1995 as a prime example.

LaRocque believes: there is a direct relationship between racist/ sexist stereotypes and violence against women and girls. The dehumanizing portrayal of the ‘squaw’ and the oversexualization of Native females such as in Walt Disney’s Pocahontas surely render all Native female persons vulnerable (1996, p.12).4 4 Another example of how pervasive colonial Aboriginal female stereotypes have been in the North American imagination is 1982 video game entitled “Custer’s Revenge”, in which players earn points for raping Aboriginal women in North America (Smith 2003, p.80).

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Reiterating LaRocque’s statement above, a study compiled in 1998 on how race features in sexual abuse trials in Canada concluded that assumptions made about female Aboriginal promiscuity have resulted in Aboriginal women being regarded as “inherently rapable” (Razack, cited in Anderson, 2000, p.111). This outcome demonstrates how colonial discrimination against Aboriginal women continues to marginalise them today, and reveals how entrenched negative perceptions of Aboriginal women have become in the Canadian imagination.

The disproportionate amount of Aboriginal women who have disappeared or been murdered in the last three decades is testament to the extent to which they are discriminated against in Canada.

Interviews with families of missing or murdered Aboriginal women have prompted Jacobs and Williams to confirm that “systemic inequalities and Canada’s genocidal policies [such as the Indian Act and residential schooling] have played a key role” in the lives of missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls (2008, p.129-131) due to the multigenerational effects of colonisation. Indeed, the belief that Aboriginal women are inherent victims or easy targets is a continuation of colonial perceptions of Aboriginal women as “racially inferior and sexually licentious” (Jiwani 2009, p.65), and causes their death or disappearance to be unsurprising and thus unworthy of media sympathy or police attention.

Families of missing or murdered Aboriginal women frequently experience these unhelpful attitudes.

For example, the grandmother of Felicia Solomon, a 16 year old girl originating from a Cree Nation in northern Manitoba, has said that the media labelled Felicia a prostitute when she went missing in 2003 because of the poor area where the family lived. The family say that the police did not help to search for Felicia or to publicise that she was missing, causing the grandmother to believe that the police were influenced by the media’s negative assumptions of Felicia. Her remains were found later that year, yet her murder still remained unsolved in 2009 (Amnesty 2009, p.17). Indeed, as Sarah Carter (1997) and Yasmin Jiwani (2009) attest, poverty and colonisation have combined to establish a conflation of “Aboriginal woman” with “prostitute” in the Canadian mindset, even in the twenty-first century.

Dara Culhane has described how mainstream media coverage has a tendency to sensationalise the “drugs, sex, violence, and crime, rather than the ordinary and mundane brutality of everyday poverty” that many of the missing or murdered women faced (2003, p.595). Media coverage of violence perpetrated against Aboriginal women by white men, as Jiwani discovered, often gives more background information about the offender whilst consistently describing the victim as nothing more than a “drug-addicted prostitute” (2009, p.69). Such representations make Aboriginal women seem

responsible for the violence against them and implicitly blame the victim. Additionally, such one-sided reporting perpetuates the colonial and patriarchal belief that men (especially white men) can commit violence against an Aboriginal woman or girl and generally be immune to punishment because female Aboriginal bodies are expendable to the nation. The media’s propensity to decontextualise violence against Aboriginal women is especially dangerous as it has the power to influence society and cause myths to proliferate. When portraying women or girls as “culpable for their victimisation” (p.68), the media overlook the fact that the violence missing or murdered Aboriginal women have faced is a result of inequalities remaining from colonisation. Acknowledging colonisation and ignorance as the root causes of the violence “elicits profound discomfort in a nation state like Canada, evidencing as it does the continuing effects of settler colonialism... and its ongoing reproduction” (Culhane 2003, p.595).

Aboriginal Activism Against Racialized, Sexualized Violence

Aboriginal Activism has been key in disrupting Canada’s status quo on the ongoing violence against Aboriginal women by forcing a re-imagining of the women who have been victims of murder or abduction. Through the Sisters in Spirit (SIS) initiative, the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) has collaborated with “other Aboriginal women’s organizations and the federal government” to address “racialized and/or sexualized violence, that is, violence perpetrated against Aboriginal women because of their gender and Aboriginal identity” (NWAC SIS Background, 2009). By raising public awareness and understanding of the extent to which the ongoing violence is the result of racism and sexism, SIS aims to dispel common myths held by the public surrounding missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls and thus re-imagine how Aboriginal women have been viewed in the media and in the collective public imagination. I will now outline how SIS has used consciousness-raising and public memorialisation techniques to attain this re-imagining.

Consciousness-Raising “Part of trying to come out of this [colonial] system is...to learn about the oppressiveness of the colonisers... and the dishonour of our people in general, but of our women specifically” Beverley Jacobs, (2009).

As an activist technique, consciousnessraising has the capacity to dispel derogatory myths the general public may harbour and can instil a widespread recognition of the need for change.

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference Haugaard (2003) has understood consciousnessraising as “a process of bringing tacit knowledge into discursive consciousness, which enables individuals to examine how structures, which they had previously accepted, not only work to their disadvantage but are possible to reject” (cited in Hunter 2006, p.61). SIS has used consciousnessraising techniques to increase awareness of the correlation between colonisation and violence against Aboriginal women.

One of SIS’s most successful forms of consciousness-raising has been their educational toolkits, which are presented as PowerPoints at workshops in Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities. SIS toolkits take social, cultural, and historical context into account when dealing with racialised, sexualised violence by attributing racialised, sexualised violence to Canada’s colonial past. In the toolkit entitled Raising Awareness, SIS attests that the legacies of the Indian Status, residential schooling, and the “sixties sweep” have contributed to the “current status of Aboriginal women” (NWAC 2007, p.3). Placing racialised, sexualised violence in its colonial context is integral to positioning Aboriginal femicide not as an unjustifiable, unfounded epidemic, but as a result of twentieth century colonial policies which specifically intended to oppress Aboriginal women.

These “historical realities” in Raising Awareness (ibid) validate the victimisation of Aboriginal women by illustrating that the women are neither inherently vulnerable, nor to blame. M. Annette Jaimes*Guerrero has attested that implicating colonial heritage in feminist Aboriginal activism is a form of “historical agency” which empowers Aboriginal women by allowing them to comprehend how their race and gender has been constructed as vulnerable, which in turn allows them to reclaim their identity. I would also argue that employing historical agency in activism counteracts negative media coverage which imagines violence against Aboriginal women as a natural and inescapable occurrence, and has the potential to break the cycle of ignorance which has allowed the violence to continue.

Public Memorialisation “Mourning [is] not simply... a process of remembering the dead and marking the... value of their lives but [is] also... an attempt to create something out of that loss” Marita Sturken (1997, p.199).

Grief and mourning remain traditionally personal experiences. With the practice of public memorialisation, these private responses are brought into a communal sphere. Observing the bereaved experience the intensely personal

aftermath of a traumatic loss removes the traditional barriers which render grief and mourning private experiences and can implicate a witness to engage with the sorrow. Public memorialisation has been employed in the twentieth century to commemorate and provide consolation for large-scale losses, such as the Holocaust, or soldiers lost in the World Wars.

Yet memorialisation does not function solely to remember the past, as Andreas Huyssen has argued: “We need both past and future to articulate our political, social, and cultural dissatisfactions with the present state of the world… Memory discourses are absolutely essential to imagine the future” (2003, p.6).

SIS has employed public memorialisation as an activist strategy through SIS vigils which are held annually across various towns and cities in Canada. These vigils dismantle the racist belief that Aboriginal women are unworthy of mourning, remembering, or protecting by calling attention to the trauma and loss the bereaved families are undergoing, and underlining the normality of the missing or murdered women’s lives. By remembering and humanising these women in the public eye as sisters, mothers, or daughters who are sorely missed, SIS have used public memorialisation to generate empathy and appeal for future change through a re-imagining of missing and murdered Aboriginal women.

Conclusion

As I explored in my introduction, when the media presents Aboriginal femicide as a natural and inescapable occurrence, it reinforces the colonial perception that Aboriginal women are inherent victims. Although the SIS vigils are successful in raising awareness of the issue across Canada and humanising the victims, they do not interact enough with the non-Aboriginal public about the colonial causes of Aboriginal femicide to affect a re-imagining.

The SIS toolkits, on the other hand, illustrate a more productive way of deconstructing colonial attitudes, as they deploy “historical agency” (Jaimes*Guerrero 2003, p.67) to contextualise the discrimination against Aboriginal women. In shedding light on the realities of the causes of missing and murdered Aboriginal women, SIS’s toolkits help to shift the dominant discourse and perceptions surrounding the dead or disappeared to promote a nationwide reimagining of Aboriginal women. Consciousnessraising is thus the most successful technique that SIS have employed in their activism as it enables both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people to question white privilege in Canada, and can change how the women who have died or disappeared are imagined in the nation’s collective cultural memory.

SIS’s activism with the wider public via their annual vigils would be more effective in reimagining women and reducing violence if they

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framed Aboriginal femicide in their understandings of the root causes of racialised, sexualised violence.

Such contextualisation needs to be shared in the public domain more explicitly if colonial myths harboured against Aboriginal women are to be dispelled. Ideally, over time, public understanding could cause a widespread review and critique of white privilege in Canada, causing discrimination against Aboriginal women to diminish, and decreasing the amount of murders and disappearances.

Nevertheless, SIS’s work has undoubtedly been valuable in highlighting discrepancies in Canada’s portrayals of harmony and “generating political will to address [violence]” (WHO 2007 p.5), but there is undoubtedly still a long way to go before Aboriginal women are equal in society. Beverley Jacobs declared in 2009 that Sisters in Spirit had “just begun. We’re just at the tip of the iceberg on this” (2009). Let’s hope this iceberg doesn’t melt.

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The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference 22. Amnesty International (2009). No More Stolen Sisters: The Need for a Comprehensive Response to Discrimination and Violence against Indigenous Women in Canada. Ottawa: Amnesty International Canada.

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30. Hunter, Chris (2006). “The Master’s Tools Revisited: Can Law Contribute to Ending Violence Against Women?” IDS Bulletin 37(6): 5768.

31. Native Women’s Association of Canada (20072009). “Sisters in Spirit – Raising Awareness” [o n l i n e] . h t t p ://w w w. n w a c - h q . o r g /e n / awareness.html [Accessed November 22nd 2009).

32. Jaimes*Guerrero, M.A. (2003). “‘Patriarchal Colonialism’ and Indigenism: Implications for Native Feminist Spirituality and Native Womanism.” Hypatia 18(2): 58-69.

33. Sturken, Marita (1997). Tangled Memories: the Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering. London: University of California Press.

34. Huyseen, Andresas (2003). Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.

35. Jaimes*Guerrero, M.A. (2003). “‘Patriarchal Colonialism’ and Indigenism: Implications for Native Feminist Spirituality and Native Womanism.” Hypatia 18(2): 58-69.

36. World Health Organisation [WHO] (2007).

Primary Prevention of Intimate-Partner Violence and Sexual Violence: Background Paper for WHO Expert Meeting May 2–3, 2007. Geneva, World Health Organisation.

37. Jacobs, Beverley (2009). “Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women” A Talk at McCord Museum, Montreal, Canada. March 16. [Online] www.mediacoop.ca/audio/1267 [Accessed December 5th 2009].

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I Think, Therefore I Reappraise:

Exploring the Relationships between Empathy and Emotion Regulation Elizabeth A. Bendycki University of Virginia

Abstract Empathy and emotion regulation have been implicated as critical to socio-emotional functioning, though examination of possible cognitive mechanisms common to both has largely remained unexplored.

We examined the relationship between empathy and emotion regulation through self-report questionnaires and a behavioral task where participants regulated their emotions to salient film clips. Participant reports of tendencies to use reappraisal as a regulatory strategy correlated positively with cognitive empathy assessments. Alternatively, negative correlations were found between cognitive empathy measures and selfreports of tendencies to use suppression as a regulatory strategy. These results support the hypothesis that cognitive skills critical to empathy are likewise paramount to regulation strategies like reappraisal.

Introduction

The ability to reason about others’ mental and emotional states while simultaneously regulating one’s own is critical to socio-emotional functioning.

Previous studies have sought to understand the theoretical and practical implications of empathy and emotion regulation in their separate domains; the present study seeks to investigate possible cognitive mechanisms common to both. Empathy and emotion regulation require both cognitive and emotional skills devoted to understanding one’s own and another’s experiences.

Perspectives on Empathy

While there are disputes as to what empathy fully entails, there is general consensus that empathy is the “vicarious experience of another’s emotions” (Spinella 2003). This definition captures how empathy involves an attempt to think and feel as someone else does. However, maintaining some “cognitive distance” between self and other is imperative lest one become too overly involved in another’s emotional affairs (Decety & Jackson, 2004).

Balancing the distinction between self and other and avoiding the merging of self-other representations (Jackson et al., 2006) is a self-regulatory process.

Much of why empathy has been so difficult to fully characterize stems from the emotioncognition interplay empathy requires. The skills of perspective-taking and imagining what another is experiencing qualify empathy as cognitive, but the aspect of “feeling as another may feel” renders empathy as emotional (Spinella, 2003). Theorists are sensitive to incorporating both cognitive and emotional aspects of empathy in their definitions, either as simultaneous or dichotomous processes.

Batson (2009) combines cognitive and emotional components in his outline of eight possible uses of empathy, including “feeling as another may feel,”

“projecting or imagining how another would feel or think” and “feeling for another who is suffering” (similar to sympathy). However, Simone ShamayTsoory (2009) takes a more dichotomous approach by defining “cognitive empathy” and “affective empathy” as separate constructs. Theory of mind, a “detached analysis” through which people reason about another’s thoughts and intentions, facilitates cognitive empathy, while simulation processing, or attempting to match another person’s mental states, characterizes affective empathy.

The Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) developed by Davis (1980; 1983) captures both cognitive and emotional empathy constructs through a multidimensional assessment with four subscales: perspective-taking, fantasy, empathic concern and personal distress. The “perspectivetaking” component prompts participants to reflect on their ability to adopt the viewpoint of others.

The “fantasy” subset questions prompt respondents to consider how much they become emotionally involved with fictional characters and cognitively project themselves into stories through imagination.

On the other hand, the “empathic concern” and “personal distress” domains inquire into the extent to which participants can sympathize with and are affected by others in an emotionally moving or distressing way (Davis, 1983).

Emotion Regulation

Emotion regulation involves changing one’s own response to an emotional stimulus in a similar way that empathy requires changing one’s thoughts or feelings to match someone else’s. Many studies suggest emotion regulation is facilitated by cognitive strategies such as rethinking a situation through reappraisal (Goldin et al., 2008; Gross, 2002). Gross & John (2003) designed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire to assess individual differences in

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference two emotion regulatory processes: reappraisal and suppression. Reappraisal, which comes early in the “emotion-generative process”, requires rethinking a situation or stimulus to mitigate emotional intensity.

By contrast, suppression, which comes later in the emotion-generative process, involves inhibiting emotional expressions and behaviors (Gross, 2002).

Gross further characterizes this distinction by contrasting how reappraisal dampens “emotional experience” while suppression inhibits “behavioral expression”.

Beyond their conceptual differences, research supports how the emotional trajectories prescribed by adopting reappraisal or suppression strategies differentially affect emotional and social wellbeing. Using self-report and peer assessment questionnaires to gauge emotion experiences, level of social support and endorsement of depression, Gross & John (2003) found that reappraisers tended to have closer relationships, more extensive support systems and more positive well-being compared to suppressors, who tended to have less support and were more likely to endorse depression. These findings suggest there are socio-emotional benefits to actively utilizing reappraisal and potential pitfalls of relying on suppression to regulate one’s emotions. Although there are divergent correlations between regulatory strategies and well-being, it is important to remember that the reappraisal and suppression subscales are independent of each other, representing two separate factors (Gross & John, 2003). As such, individuals could theoretically score high on both factors; indicating a tendency to use one strategy does not preclude strongly endorsing the other.

Perspective-taking and Reappraisal: Common Cognitive Mechanisms

Both empathy and emotion regulation thus involve a shift in one’s perspective. We believe the “cognitive flexibility” required to exercise empathic perspective-taking strategies and imagine oneself in another’s position is similar to the flexibility utilized in reappraising an emotional stimulus. In this sense, empathy can be construed as “reappraisal of position”- rethinking one’s perspective in relation to another person’s experiences, as opposed to rethinking one’s own emotional experiences as in reappraisal.

In order to study reappraisal strategies and create opportunities for participants to empathize, we presented participants with several short video clips and encouraged them to either decrease or increase their “natural emotional response,” or to simply attend to the film as normal. The results of the behavioral film task are not reported here.

Because the cognitive flexibility required to regularly use reappraisal is likely to be related to the cognitive empathy skills underlying perspective-

taking, we hypothesized that participants who reported being skilled at the cognitive empathy will also endorse emotion regulation tendencies favoring reappraisal. In contrast, we expect that participants who endorse regulation strategies favoring suppression will tend to score lower on the Perspective-taking and Fantasy subscales of the IRI, due to their tendencies to keep emotional thoughts to themselves. We also hypothesize that there will not be a strong relationship between the emotional empathy measures, Empathetic Concern and Personal Distress, and reappraisal and suppression tendencies, as emotional empathy does not require the same cognitive flexibility as do Perspectivetaking and Fantasy.

Method

Participants and Recruitment

Our sample was comprised of 60 college students from the University of Virginia. The sample included 18 men (30%) and 42 women (70%) between the ages of 18-22 (Mage= 18.85; SDage= 0.97). However, due to changes in the questionnaire battery during the course of data collection, several participants had incomplete data sets; thus, in some cases, 47 participants were used in the analysis rather than the full set of 60 participants. The majority of participants (n=59, 98%) indicated their race as White. Participants were recruited through the Psychology department’s participant pool. This study was part of a larger investigation on emotion regulation across the lifespan that included an additional sample of older adult participants not reported here.

Questionnaires

The following self-report questionnaires were included in the assessment battery:

Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI):

The Interpersonality Reactivity Index (Davis 1980; 1983) consists of four subscales that assess individual differences in empathic responding.

The IRI is a “multidimensional” questionnaire that taps both cognitive and emotional constructs.

Accordingly, the “Perspective-Taking” (PT) and “Fantasy” (FS) subscales measure skills critical to cognitive empathy, including the ability to adopt another person’s viewpoint and identify with fictitious characters, respectively. On the other hand, the “Empathic Concern” (EC) and “Personal Distress” (PD) subscales assess emotional empathy through questions regarding individual differences in sympathy, concern for others, and reactivity to stressful situations (Davis 1980; 1983). The questionnaire includes 28 statements, or 7 questions per subscale, which participants rated on a 5 point Likert scale.

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Table 1. Correlations between Interpersonality Reactivity Index (IRI) and Emotion Regulation Question subscales

Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ):

The Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Gross & John, 2003) assesses the extent to which participants rely on reappraisal or suppression to regulate their emotional response. Participants answer ten Likert items (7-point scale), six of which correspond to the reappraisal factor, and four of which correspond to the suppression factor. An example of a reappraisal item is: “When I want to feel more positive emotion (such as joy or amusement), I change what I’m thinking about.” An example of a suppression item is “I keep my emotions to myself.”

Participants receive both a reappraisal subscore and a suppression subscore from their responses; the two subscores are uncorrelated. High scores on either scale indicate a strong tendency to use that strategy, and low scores indicate an aversion to that strategy.

Procedure

After arriving at the lab and providing informed consent, participants completed a battery of questionnaires on a computer assessing their interpersonal abilities. The Interpersonal Reactivity Index and Emotion Regulation Questionnaire were administered during this time.

Following the experiment, participants were debriefed and given the opportunity to ask questions of the research assistants. Upon successful completion of the study, participants were awarded credit through the UVA participant pool system.

Results

Consistent with our hypotheses, significant positive correlations were found between cognitive empathy strategies and emotion regulation tendencies favoring reappraisal. Scores on the “Perspective-taking” subscale of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) were positively correlated with scores on the “Reappraisal” subscale of the

Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ), r= .56, p < .001. A strong positive association between the Fantasy subscale of the IRI and the Reappraisal scale of the ERQ was also found, r= .34, p= .02, (see Figure 1).

Conversely, and also as hypothesized, negative correlations were found between cognitive empathy strategies and the “Suppression” subscale of the ERQ, r= -.36, p=.01 for Perspective-taking and r= -.46, p=.001, for Fantasy (see Figure 2). Interestingly, although the IRI measure of “Empathetic Concern” did not significantly correlate with Reappraisal, r= .07, p= .64, it did predict Suppression scores, r= -.38, p= .008. Table 1 illustrates the correlations between all four IRI subscales and both the Reappraisal and Suppression subscales of the ERQ.

Discussion

These results indicate there is a relationship between self-reports of empathic abilities and emotion regulation tendencies. Consistent with our hypothesis, we found that cognitive empathy skills were positively associated with reappraisal tendencies and negatively associated with suppression tendencies. Inconsistent with our hypotheses, we found a significant correlation between Empathetic Concern and suppression tendencies, suggesting a possible connection between emotion regulation and emotional empathy, in addition to cognitive empathy.

While significant correlations were found between the IRI and ERQ, the results of this experiment are limited to what can be interpreted from participant’s self reports. It is possible that the study may suffer from demand characteristics, wherein some participants either inflate or misrepresent their abilities in order to “look good” to the experimenter. Alternatively, not all participants are equally self-aware; some participants may have

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference

Figure 1. Relationships between cognitive empathy IRI scales and self-reports of reappraisal tendencies

Figure 2. Relationship between cognitive empathy IRI scales and self-reports of suppression tendencies

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greater insights into their emotional tendencies than others and thus be more accurate in their reporting.

Future studies could benefit from third-person observations or friend ratings of participants to verify the accuracy of reports.

Although we found a relationship between cognitive empathy measures and emotion regulation styles, it is possible that a third variable is mediating this relationship. The ability to change one’s thinking and figuratively step outside of one’s thoughts is a cognitive skill required to both empathize with others and to regulate one’s emotions. Future studies should further explore the roles of cognitive flexibility and imagination, as these phenomena could be the bridge between empathy and emotion regulation.

Another concern with this study is the relatively small sample size (n=47). While this sample had enough power to draw conclusions regarding overall trends, it would be helpful to verify these results with a larger sample. Repeating the study with populations other than college students would likewise validate the scope of these results.

Beyond incorporating a larger sample size, future studies should aim to extend the findings of the present study through experimental designs that assess individual differences in empathy and emotion regulation skills. A movie watching task in which participants are instructed to change their thoughts to a film stimulus is a good online measure of reappraisal abilities (see Gross & Levenson, 1995) that also mimics real-world emotion processing because it requires engaging with dynamic stimuli.

Tasks that that require empathic reasoning such as the Mind in the Eyes test (Baron-Cohen et al., 2001; 2004) could help tap into individual differences in social cognition and are relatively easy to administer by hand or on a computer. Overall, investigating individual differences in the use and application of both empathy and emotion regulatory skills would validate the strength of the relationship between these two domains of socio-cognitive functioning.

References

1. Baron-Cohen, S., Wheelwright, S., Hill, J., Raste, Y., & Plumb, I. (2001). The “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” test revised version: A study with normal adults with asperger syndrome or highfunctioning autism. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 42 (2), 241-251.

2. Baron-Cohen, S. & Wheelwright, S. (2004). The empathy quotient: an investigation of adults with asperger syndrome or high functioning autism, and normal sex differences. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 34 (2), 163-175.

3. Batson, C.D. (2009). These things called empathy: Eight related but distinct phenomena. In J. Decety and W. Ickes (Eds.), The Social Neuroscience of Empathy (3-15). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

4. Davis, M.H. (1980). A multidimensional approach to individual differences in empathy. JSAS Catalog of Selected Documents in Psychology, 10, 85.

5. Davis, M.H. (1983). Measuring individual differences in empathy: Evidence for a multidimensional approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44 (1), 113-126.

6. Goldin, P.R., McRae, K., Ramel, W., & Gross, J.J. (2008). The neural bases of emotion regulation: reappraisal and suppression of negative emotion.

Biological Psychiatry 7. Gross, J.J. (2002).

Emotion regulation: Affective, cognitive and social consequences.

Psychophysiology, 39, 281-291.

8. Gross, J.J. & John, O.P. (2003). Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: implications for affect, relationships and wellbeing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(2), 348-362.

9. Gross, J.J & Levenson, R.W. (1995). Emotion elicitation using films. Cognition and Emotion, 9 (1), 87-108.

10. Jackson, P.L., Brunet, E., Meltzoff, A.N., & Decety, J. (2006). Empathy examined through the neural mechanisms involved in imagining how I feel versus how you feel pain. Neuropsychologia 44, 752-761.

11. Preston, S., Bechara, A., Damasio, H., Grabowski, T.J., Stansfield, R.B., Mehta, S. & Damasio, A.R. (2007). The neural substrates of cognitive empathy. Social Neuroscience, 2, 254-275.

12. Shamay-Tsoory, S.G. (2009). Empathic processing: Its cognitive and affective dimensions and neuroanatomical basis. In J. Decety and W. Ickes (Eds.), The Social Neuroscience of Empathy (3-15).

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

13. Spinella, M. (2005). Prefrontal substrates of empathy: Psychometric evidence in a community sample. Biological Psychology 70, 175-181.

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference

Imagining the Circumcised Woman:

A Critique of the Binary Logic in Women’s Rights Discourse Evelyn Wan

University of Hong Kong

Abstract While the international human rights framework is used to outlaw practices which are viewed as human rights violations in the form of culture-based violence against women, supporting feminist legal rights would possibly undermine women’s right to cultural uniqueness. Using female genital cutting as an example, the paper addresses the question of whether the complete elimination of the practice constitutes an infringement of women’s right to choose culture.

I argue that the human rights framework perpetuates the process of oppression and discrimination against Other cultures through constructing the stereotypical image of the circumcised woman and assigning fixed features to her—she is downtrodden, oppressed, she blindly follows cultural norms and is incapable of deciding what is best for her body. The construction of such a victim image is premised upon the problematic binary opposition of the First World Self vs the Third World Other. A deconstruction of the binary logic would shed light on why it is problematic and discriminatory to fall on the side of feminist rights and disregard claims of culture.

Introduction

Female genital cutting (“FGC” thereafter) (also known as female circumcision or female genital mutilation) is a traditional practice which is prevalent in specific African cultures and in Islamic religions, with origins dating back over 2500 years. FGC usually involves the partial or total removal of the clitoris and/or the prepuce.

Parts of the labia majora and minora may also be scraped away, and the vaginal opening sewn together. The FGC operation usually takes place between the ages of three to twelve years old2, but some women opt for the operation in adulthood.

In recent decades, countries like the United States and France criminalised the act, and international human rights documents, in particular those which protect women’s and children’s rights, were used to eliminate the continuation of the ritual (WHO 2008, 4).

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1 In the official documents of the United Nations, the term “female genital mutilation” is used to emphasise the symbolic violence embedded within the practice.

See Annex 1 of the Interagency Statement (2008) for a further discussion of the use of terminology. For the sake of neutrality and to avoid judgment, the term “female genital cutting” is used here instead to characterise the practice.

2 This figure varies across different communities. For instance, in Mandinga in Guinea-Bissau, the FGC ceremony traditionally takes place between eight to twelve years old (Johnson 2000, 224). In parts of Mauritania, Nigeria, and Ethiopia, however, the operation may be performed early—within the first few weeks following birth. In Kenya and Tanzania, young women are cut on their wedding night. In Mali, the operation may be performed on married women after they have had their first child (Slack 1988, 443).

In 2008, 10 international organisations3 including the United Nations and the World Health Organisation published an interagency statement to urge governments worldwide to take up an active role in eliminating FGC completely.

It was recommended that governments should enact legislations to criminalise the act and set up mechanisms for civil remedies such that women who have undergone the operation can seek redress from the practitioners. In the international arena, the call for elimination of the practice has not only targeted children, but has also banned adult women from undergoing the operation.

With the emphasis on feminist rights, international law precludes the notion of choice for the women involved to opt for undergoing the cultural practice. As a result, a woman’s associated right to culture may be undermined. This paper thus sets out to address the question: does the complete elimination of the cultural practice constitute an infringement of women’s right to choose culture?

3 The international agencies included are the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, United Nations Population Fund, Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Children’s Fund, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, United Nations Development Fund for Women, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and the World Health Organization.

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Contrasting Views on FGC

The international community’s response to FGC differs from the African perspectives. To the international community, FGC is considered problematic on two levels—in terms of physical health issues and of the symbolic meanings embedded within the practice. Potential long-term health risks associated with FGC include scarring, infertility, urinary tract infections, and increased blood loss and intensified pain during labour. Shortterm health risks such as infections and gangrene may occur, as the operations are often carried out under unsanitary conditions in the rural villages (Platt 2007, 322).

The symbolic meanings of the practice were recognised as indicators of women’s inferior position.

FGC is regarded as a “discrimination based on sex because it is rooted in gender inequalities and power imbalances between men and women and inhibits women’s full and equal enjoyment of their human rights” (WHO 2008, 10). As maintained by First World feminists, the perpetuation of FGC points to the patriarchal norms of the cultures in question and specifically highlights the male desire to exert control over the sexual desires of the women. By removing the clitoris which is the central site of sexual pleasure for women, the procedure can “help insure a girl’s virginity before marriage and fidelity afterwards by reducing sex to a marital obligation” (Okin 1999, 14). Opponents of the practice also assert that FGC is performed to “prove a man’s masculinity and virility by achieving the difficult act of penetrating a circumcised woman” and that “this type of sexual control renders women vulnerable to male domination” (Platt 2007, 325). The operation of FGC then results in a degradation of women’s status as inferior to men and as subjected to male control.

Given these derogatory symbolic meanings, FGC is seen by the Western world as a violation of her bodily integrity.

The African view suggests that there are other reasons to practise FGC. According to Ellen Gruenbaum’s ethnographic research on female circumcision in Sudan, FGC serves as “a key mechanism for ensuring that girls arrive at their marriage beds untouched, thereby preserving family honour” (2001, 78). Women also “emphasised the clean, smooth, and pure body that results from circumcision as being a prerequisite and preparation for marriage and reproduction, preparing a girl’s body for womanhood and thereby conferring the right to bear children” (ibid., 79). Women themselves may not see the purpose of FGC as a preservation of virginity, but rather they wish to assert their identity as reproducers, who are ready to become mothers.

FGC may also be performed in relation to the “cultural construction of personhood” (Johnson 2000, 222). As a coming-of-age initiation, FGC serves a “transformative role that extends beyond the ritual

context of initiation into everyday life” (ibid., 223)— the pain associated with the operation signifies the inevitability of the pain a person will suffer in her life. The personal aspect of FGC’s meaning is stressed here—instead of consistently tying FGC’s meaning to sexual oppression, the procedure may hold strong personal meanings for individuals as a means to ascertain one’s identity and mark the entrance to adulthood. The ritual serves as an important marker in the development of the girls involved.

The Ban as a Proposed Solution

At first sight, the complete ban on FGC protects women from physical bodily harm and symbolic violence. It recognises women’s right to bodily integrity, and women are liberated from the structure of male dominance and degradation of their status through the operation. However, the perceived importance of the practice to the Third World women is disregarded in the process. Here I emphasise that the discussion below is focused on adult women, instead of young girls who may be forced by their parents into the procedure4. Indeed, in some communities FGC is “freely undergone by adult, sane, and educated women after the birth of their last child as a way of regulating their sexuality, or reminding themselves that they are from now onward primarily mothers rather than wives, or as a religious sacrifice of what they greatly value for the sake of their children and family, or as a symbolic break with one phase of life” (Parekh 1999, 71). By placing a blanket ban on the practice, women who wish to undergo circumcision would not be allowed to choose the procedure.

Moreover, what is significant is the image of the circumcised woman created vis-à-vis the ban.

The discourse turns the women into subjects and imposes a fixed identity onto them. I propose that the consequence of characterising FGC as oppressive constructs the stereotyped image of the circumcised Third World woman as a victim of culture and assigns fixed features to the figure—she is downtrodden, oppressed, she blindly follows cultural norms and is incapable of deciding what is best for her body, which is placed in opposition to the First World Women’s self-perception as agents capable of choice.

This is because ‘culture’ is seen as the culprit which harms the women in question, forming the basis for the discourse’s bias to the side of feminist rights, accorded at the expense of women’s cultural rights within the international human rights literature. As 4 The idea is that a paternalistic ban on the procedure may be justified because of the potential harm and bodily invasion done to children as they do not possess the capacity to account for their actions. The same, however, cannot be said for adult women who one would generally assume to possess the autonomy to make decisions for themselves.

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference a result, the human rights framework discriminates against Other cultures.

I will situate this claim within the context of the practice to explain that the construction of such a victim image is premised upon the problematic binary opposition of the First World Self vs the Third World Other. A deconstruction of this would shed light on why it is problematic and discriminatory to fall on the side of feminist rights and disregard claims of culture.

The First World Self vs the Third World Other

The Self is the subject who actively gives interpretations to the Other, which is an object to be looked at and observed and the identity of the Other is imposed by the interpretation of the Self. It would appear that the ban against FGC is premised upon a conventional outsider view, i.e. the First World Self observing the Third World Other, and such is the imposition of the image of the circumcised woman from the First World onto the Third World—“the observer is the one who seeks to comprehend and to control, to classify and to represent the culture to the other(s) [… which] leads to the silencing of dissenting opinions and contradictory perspectives, and yields dominant master narratives of what the cultural tradition is” (Benhabib 2002, 102). Deconstructing this process of signifying difference between the women from the First World and the Third World would likely reveal the possible biases of the First World.

In Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?, Azizah Y. al-Hibri uses the phrase “Western patriarchal feminism” to assert that feminist rights as institutionalised through human rights law stems from “the perspective of the dominant cultural ‘I’, a Western point of view” (1999, 41), which forms the Self. In the eyes of the West, FGC is foreign and unimaginable. Thus, when encountering the foreign practice of FGC, First World women are able to both distinguish and distance themselves from the Third World by concentrating on the obvious cultural differences. In the process, they Otherise Third World women and essentialise their position of authority as Self. Leti Volpp encapsulates the above in this way—“Western discourse on [FGC] directs a ‘horrified gaze’ towards [Third World Women], rather than looking at the complexities5 surrounding the issue” (1996, 1579). The complexities are wiped away and ignored, and the discourse reduces the 5 Volpp explains that the complexities facing the women may include “the way that poor women face limited health care and educational opportunities, and suffer from the denial of economic and political agency due to global inequalities, rearticulations of patriarchies in specific regions and the legacies of colonisation” (1996, 1579).

accounts of the women’s lives to the core image of the downtrodden circumcised woman, shredding away other characteristics and concerns raised through the issue of the genital surgeries.

Sander L. Gilman points out that characterisation of FGC as oppressive and barbaric “mirrors [the writer’s] own beliefs and background”.

He argues that the negative perception towards the practice is simply because “these rituals create (in the mind of the external observer) physical images of difference” (1999, 54) and signals the failure in forging understanding of the nature and substance of FGC. This interpretation demonstrates that the point of the view of the Self is privileged, whereas the voice of the Other is silenced through the Self’s hegemonic reading of the practice. The Other is the passive object to be looked at and to have meaning(s) imposed by the Self.

This Self/Other binary is problematic precisely because the Self fails to acknowledge the perspective of the Other. One can expect that in the eyes of Third World women, (cultural) practices in the First World may also be foreign and unimaginable6.

Examples would be the use of plastic surgery, breast augmentation, liposuction and other bodily modifications for the purpose of beautification. Just as an American white woman has never imagined undergoing FGC, a rural Kenyan woman possibly has never imagined the use of plastic surgery for slimming down and for removing body fat, nor has she imagined breast augmentation or perhaps even the need for it. While FGC is consistently associated with violence with the use of terminology like ‘genital mutilation’, the breast augmentation operation itself is also inevitably linked with a sense of ‘mutilation’ and ‘physical invasion’ as the breasts are cut open to accommodate the implants.

However, as argued by Isabelle Gunning, the operation is never characterised as such (1992, 215).

Gunning attributes the differential treatment to how a person is familiar with his/her own culture as opposed to feeling foreign towards other cultures—“How bizarre and barbaric must a practice like implanting polyurethane covered silicone into one’s breasts be perceived by one not accustomed to the practice” (ibid., 213). Western feminists do not immediately recognise a surgery like breast augmentation as problematic because when one deals with one’s own culture and custom, it is relatively easier to identify the larger social context and the agendas involved and one is more aware and appreciative of the complexities involved in the 6 Martha Minow suggests that stories about foreign and unfamiliar cultural practices are exoticised such that they can illuminate the “otherness” of women different from the “dominant Western nations” (Minow 2000, 128). See her essay “About Women, About Culture: About Them, About Us” for her discussion of the cross-cultural examination of women’s concerns.

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consideration7. However, a person from outside of the culture, a person who has never encountered breast augmentation before, may be oblivious to the context and simply view the practice as “a single horror” (ibid., 215). The cultural specificity of different practices and rituals results in the difficulty for ‘outsiders’ to understand and appreciate what these people from another culture do.

One can then draw a parallel between the curiously enigmatic nature of FGC from the First World’s point of view and the equally enigmatic nature of other bodily modifications from the Third World’s point of view. By taking up the perspective of the Other, the hegemonic reading of FGC from the First World perspective is destabilised.

The binary logic is also evident in constructing the image of the circumcised woman as a victim, as opposed to First World Women who are agents and possess the autonomy to make sensible and voluntary choices for deciding on bodily modifications. By assigning them the victim image, Third World women are immediately thought of as not autonomous, their agency being bracketed by their culture and they fail to recognise that their bodily integrity has been invaded by undergoing FGC. They are also unable to stand up for their own rights and fight against the symbolic oppression by abandoning the practice.

This can be illustrated by juxtaposing vulvovaginal rejuvenation and labia trimming practised in the West with FGC. Vulvovaginal rejuvenation and labia trimming refer to procedures where the vagina is tightened and the labia majora is reduced, and the physical appearance of the genitals after FGPS and the appearance after traditional FGC can be rather similar. A 2009 study conducted on female genital plastic surgery (FGPS) in the United States published by the International Society for Sexual Medicine found that 32.7% of the respondents found that the procedure could help them boost self-esteem and improve self-image (Goodman and Placik et al. 2009, 7). Looking at this function of FGPS, when women from the First World undergo the surgery, one would suggest that they are doing it for themselves, and have autonomous choice over their bodies. Yet when a Third World women undergo FGC, the derogatory symbolic meanings are immediately highlighted and the women’s personal positive perceptions towards FGC are disregarded.

The call for a complete elimination of the practice undermines Third World women’s agency.

What the international community (in effect made 7 Although a Western feminist may view breast implants as problematic, she would be much less inclined to jump to the conclusion that women deciding to undergo the operation must suffer from impaired autonomy or that her decision is overtly due to cultural pressure, as is the case with FGC.

up of mainly Westerners) does in according these rights is to protect these Third World women from harm and to educate them about what is the ‘right’ to do. As Gilman puts it, “‘she’ (i.e. the Other woman practising FGC) must be rescued from the ignorance of superstition by ‘Western women’” (1999, 55).

Agreeing to the outright banning of the practice could in fact mean that one is ascribing to the image of the Third World woman as weak and incapable of having their own independent decisions free from the interference.

It would appear that by distinguishing between First World and Third World women, what the women’s right discourse ends up doing is discriminating against Other women by denigrating them to an inferior position, by imposing on them a victim image, and by characterising them as oppressed individuals whose choice or consent to FGC must be disregarded due to their lack of autonomy. Juxtaposition of FGC with cosmetic and genital surgeries in the West reveals the biases of the First World as they impose their views upon Other cultures, failing to address the nuances and complexities within FGC as a cultural practice.

To decide on what to do with a cultural practice which appears to be problematic at first blush, one must avoid a binary logic in thinking about other women. In the case of FGC, if one is more appreciative towards the meanings of the practice to the women, one may be able to avoid the oppositional construction of the Self/ Other binary between the First World and the Third World, including its hierarchical configuration which promotes the First World perspective.

Concluding Remarks

What I have illustrated above is how the West has imagined and constructed the image of the circumcised woman. The assignation of such an image is not unlike what Edward Said termed as Orientalism, the imaginary of the East (loosely referring here to the Third World) through the eyes of the West/ First World.

The idea of protecting women’s rights through eliminating FGC may not be the best solution. If one had allowed for the grown women to decide for themselves what to do with their bodies, the women may be empowered through self-determination and self-expression of identity—they could find a sense of empowerment through ritual, and by embracing their ethnic and cultural identity, they feel that they are part of the community they belong to. An example is Fuambai Ahmadu, an anthropologist from Sierra Leone, who chose to be circumcised at age 22. She reported that she did not experience the negative effects of FGC on sexuality which were often claimed in the literature, and said that she and other members of her community found the

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference initiation ceremony empowering8. On the contrary, if the Third World women were to opt for another standard (one that the First World advocates for) and take a stand for their own bodily integrity, they could find another form of empowerment through liberating themselves from what they view as dominance and oppression. In any case, to remove the Orientalist slant from the women’s rights discourse, one must give women from FGCpractising communities the opportunity to shape their own identities and to stop viewing them as victims who are incapable of making decisions for their bodies.

Gender, after all, only forms one aspect of a person’s identity—ethnicity is an important factor too. However foreign it may appear, a cultural practice such as FGC may indeed give women a sense of empowerment as symbolic of their entrance into the community and as a facet of their identity formation—and it is not up to the Western feminists to only read the practice as symbolic of oppression and patriarchy and blatantly disregard any positive meaning FGC may have for the women living within those cultures. Recognising a woman’s right to culture could potentially empower the women to exercise autonomous choice over the options open to them.

References

1. “Eliminating Female Genital Mutilation: An Interagency Statement.” edited by World Health Organisation. Geneva: WHO Press, 2008.

2. al-Hibri, Azizah Y. “Is Western Patriarchal Feminism Good for Third World/ Minority Women?” In Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?, edited by Matthew Howard, Joshua Cohen, and Martha C. Nussbaum. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.

3. Banda, Fareda. “Female Genital Cutting, Human Rights and National Legislation.” In Women, Law and Human Rights: An African Perspective, edited

by Fareda Banda. Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2005.

4. Benhabib, Seyla. The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002.

5. Essén, Birgitta, and Johnsdotter, Sara. “Female Genital Mutilation in the West: Traditional Circumcision Versus Genital Cosmetic Surgery.”

Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica 83 (2004): 611-13.

6. Gilman, Sander L. “”Barbaric” Rituals?” In Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?, edited by Matthew Howard, Joshua Cohen, and Martha C. Nussbaum. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.

8 See Shweder, Richard. “What About “Female Genital Mutilation”? And Why Understanding Culture Matters in the First Place.” Daedalus 129, no. 4 (2000) at 213.

7. Goodman, Michael P., Placik, Otto J., Benson, Royal H., Miklos, John R., Moore, Robert D., Jason, Robert A., Matlock, David L., Simopoulos, Alex F., Stern, Bernard H., Stanton, Ryan A., Kolb, Susan E. and Gonzalez, Federico. “A Large Multicenter Outcome Study of Female Genital Plastic Surgery.” Journal of Sexual Medicine 7, no.

4 (2009): 1565-77.

8. Gruenbaum, Ellen. The Female Circumcision Controversy: An Anthropological Perspective.

Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001.

9. Gunning, Isabelle R. “Arrogant Perception, World-Travelling and Multicultural Feminism: The Case of Female Genital Surgeries.” Columbia Human Rights Law Review 23 (1992): 189-248.

10. Johnson, Michelle C. “Becoming a Muslim, Becoming a Person: Female “Circumcision”, Religious Identity, and Personhood in GuineaBissau.” In Female “Circumcision” In Africa: Culture, Controversy, and Change, edited by Bettina ShellDuncan and Ylva Hernlund. Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 2000.

11. Minow, Martha. “About Women, About Culture: About Them, About Us.” Daedalus 129, no. 4 (2000): 125-45.

12. Okin, Susan Moller. Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? Edited by Matthew Howard, Joshua Cohen, and Martha C. Nussbaum. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.

13. Parekh, Bhikhu. “A Varied Moral World.” In Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?, edited by Matthew Howard, Joshua Cohen, and Martha C. Nussbaum. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.

14. Platt, Jessica. “Female Circumcision: Religious Practice V. Human Rights Violation.” In Law and Religion, edited by Gad Barzilai. Aldershot, England; Burlington, VT.: Ashgate Publishing, 2007.

15. Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon, 1978.

16. Shell-Duncan, Bettina and Hernlund, Ylva, ed. Female “Circumcision” In Africa: Culture, Controversy and Change. Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 2000.

17. Shweder, Richard. “What About “Female Genital Mutilation”? And Why Understanding Culture Matters in the First Place.” Daedalus 129, no. 4 (2000) 18. Slack, Alison T. “Female Circumcision: A Critical Appraisal.” Human Rights Quarterly 10, no. 4 (1988): 437-86.

19. Volpp, Leti. “Talking “Culture”: Gender, Race, Nation, and the Politics of Multiculturalism.”

Columbia Law Review 96 (1996): 1573-617.

20. Young, Iris Marion. On Female Body Experience: “Throwing Like a Girl” And Other Essays. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

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Binary Unities:

Split Selves in Yves Bonnefoy and Michel Henry Graham Riach

University of Glasgow

Abstract This paper focuses on the role of imagination in the work of the great twentieth-century French poet and theoretician Yves Bonnefoy, and the similarities it has with the thought of Michel Henry, a wronglyoverlooked French philosopher. Both Bonnefoy and Henry express the need to seek out a sense of the givenness of our experience, the ‘real’ which is concealed behind a veil of abstraction and conceptualisation.

In juxtaposing the works of these thinkers, I hope to demonstrate the need for synthesis between imagination and practice. I examine the similarities between their conceptions of what constitutes the ‘real’, their reasons for striving towards it, and the means by which they feel it should be attained. In particular, I will examine the roles of embodiment, language, and, by derivation, conceptuality.

The imagination can be ephemeral and liberating, but brings with it notable absences, namely the need for practice, and concrete realisation of the abstract. Faced with the discrepancy between imaginary worlds and reality, Bonnefoy and Henry turn inward, seeking universality in that which seems to them the most personal, and the most immediate: subjectivity, flesh, and lived experience. Given the richness of their thought, the work of these two thinkers has been hugely underrepresented in recent study, a trend which I hope to rectify in this research.

In the search for the Real, our frantic clawing at the doors of science or the heaped rubble of history reveals little, save an ever-receding ontological floor and the inadequacy of our method. Faced with the exterior, intentional world’s seeming incapacity to grant access to the Real, Yves Bonnefoy and Michel Henry turned inward, seeking universality in that which seems to them the most personal, and the most immediate: subjectivity. Where one strand of phenomenology set out from Husserl towards textuality, virtuality, and shifting systems of signs, Henry and Bonnefoy took the road less travelled, towards the flesh and the immediacy of lived experience.

Through the incorporation of language, in other words by reading poetry aloud, Bonnefoy hopes to find ways to access presence, a term he uses to describe ‘[an] impression of participating in a reality suddenly more immediate, more unified, and more interior to our being.’1 This state of grace has been lost, he would have it, through our use of language, which has left our subjectivity estranged through language’s conceptualisation of the world. One means of regaining access to the realm of presence is through direct contact with nature, when chance smiles upon us, and we temporarily feel ourselves to be in communion with all things. In poetry, Bonnefoy seeks a less aleatoric means to reach presence. However, he believes that by its very nature language substitutes a conceptual replacement for the object itself; a letter, be it alphabetical or postal, 1 Yves Bonnefoy, ‘Poésie et liberté (1989)’ in Entretiens sur la poésie (1972-1990) (Mercure de France, 1990) p310, trans. Graham Riach

always indicates an absence. In Bonnefoy’s words: ‘[The word horse] contains a quiddity, nothing else, and as such it is destined never to evoke, like a proper noun cried out could, the actual existence here, before me, of ‘a horse’…what is ‘horse’ if not a concept?

A horse, yes, before me, and ‘horse’, the notion of it, no matter how this notion is determined.’2 The central paradox in Bonnefoy’s thought is that he considers language to be both the cause of our separation from essential reality, and a means to find access to presence, the place where reality is experienced at its most immediate. This may seem impossible, but Bonnefoy argues for a distinction between poetic language and other forms, claiming for poetry a capacity to overcome the pitfalls faced by non-poetic language. Before examining this in more detail, a brief description of Michel Henry’s position will help put this in perspective.

While Bonnefoy holds language to be at the root of our alienation from the real,3 Henry feels that a distancing from our own corporeal immediacy clouds our awareness of what he calls life, ‘the pure ontological element’ that is ‘anterior to every act of understanding directed toward it.’4 According to 2 Yves Bonnefoy, ‘La poesie francaise et le principe d’identite’, in Un rêve fait à Mantoue (Mercure de France, 1967) trans. Graham Riach pp 91-2, trans.

Graham Riach 3 ‘Poésie et liberté’, p310 4 Michel Henry, The Essence of Manifestation, Trans. Girard Etzkorn (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973) p153

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference Henry, life is an immediate subjective experience of the world, a kind of gut instinct which occurs before our intentional interaction with it. Life is experienced thanks to auto-affectivity, a self-awareness of one’s own participation in life, coupled with a sense of one’s individuality and pathos, which consists of feeling both joy and suffering. This auto-affection is closely tied to his concepts of praxis, and flesh.

With regards to flesh, it is important to bear in mind here that Henry distinguishes between the flesh of our organic body, which would participate in the world, and a more fundamental, subjective fleshliness, constituted of auto-affectivity, which participates in life. As James Williams points out in an enlightening article comparing some aspects of Henry with other philosophers, unlike Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s intertwining of the body and consciousness, which links the two, but on a basis of difference, Henry claims their indivisibility.5 This distinction is useful, as it foregrounds the necessity for Henry of dismantling the binary between body and self. Where Descartes states Cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I am, Henry might be thought to claim Facio ergo sum, I do therefore I am.

For Henry, if objective intentionality, a kind of conscious perception of the world, is put first, it causes an abstraction from immediate subjectivity similar to the estrangement from reality Bonnefoy claims is caused by language. In other words, both theorists feel that we are living in a world of concepts which keeps us at a distance from our immediate experience of being. One of the key means Henry advocates for accessing a state of unity with the exterior world of objects is through praxis, a physical interaction with the world which bypasses the objectification caused by conscious perception.

This concept of praxis helps in understanding Bonnefoy’s conception that poetry can allow us to experience reality directly. In his essay ‘Poetry and Freedom’, he clarifies why poetry can accomplish what other language cannot: Words, yes, but active in a sentence in a way I have not yet spoken of…Words, and with them signification, but this time also sounds, rhythms which are formed from one vocable to others in a different type of language, a new scheme of association… before any thought.6 The similarities here with Henry’s concept of an experience of reality ‘anterior to every act of understanding directed toward it’ are striking.

5 James Williams, ‘Gilles Deleuze and Michel Henry: Critical Contrasts in the Deduction of Life as Transcendental’ accessed on http://www.springerlink. com/contentv/61122382002p7814/ on the 27/09/09 pp7-8 6 ‘Poésie et liberté’, p320

Poetic language, then, when it is spoken, has not only the abstract qualities of the linguistic signs it incorporates, but also a physical element in sound.

Crucially, words become physically palpable in the breath which produces them, and the ear which discerns them. Here, language is no longer merely a system of empty signifiers, but a ‘substance…which was breath.’7 Through its incorporation, language is transubstantiated from the ethereal to the physical, and this allows us access to presence.

However, these claims come fraught with a number of problems. In Henry’s work, as in Bonneofy’s, it is conceptualisation which constitutes the major stumbling block to direct involvement in presence, or as Henry calls it, life. Despite this, both positions rely on complicated theory, which is hardly the easiest thing to grasp non-conceptually.

In addition, both Bonnefoy and Henry have no choice but to turn to language in order to express their thoughts, tying them both to a conceptual linguistic system. Moreover, Bonnefoy gives no clear guidelines as to how we should distinguish poetic language from non-poetic, save that we will just know. Similarly, Henry is vague as to exactly what types of physical activity constitute praxis. The passage in which he comes closest to addressing the issue directly describes praxis as something which occurs when the body’s physicality, grafted onto its subjective core, is exploited through movement as an instancing of auto-affection.8 This does not seem to provide a particularly rigorous model from which to work.

Despite these problems, I feel that the picture Bonnefoy and Henry paint of our relationship with the world in which we live to be a vivid one, and it is one which is often in accord with what I have experienced personally. Yes, the imagination can grant us relief from the burdens of the world. Yes, it provides us with the fuel to persist in our endeavours, but whatever it offers us, it can only be thought valuable in that it benefits us in our physical lived experience, our most immediate point of contact with the world. This idea is eloquently summed up

by Bonnefoy in one of his later poems, and it seems fitting that the last words be his:

Passer by, these are words. But instead of reading I want you to listen... 9 7 ‘Poésie et vérité’ p262 8 Michel Henry, La Barbarie (Paris : P.U.F., 2001) p98 9 Yves Bonnefoy, ‘Passer-by, these are words...’ trans.

Hoyt Rogers, The Partisan Review, Vol. LXVII, No. 2, Spring 2001

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Interpreting Nietzsche’s Perspectivism and What This Means for our Conception of Knowledge Jack Wright

University of Edinburgh

Abstract

In On the Genealogy of Morality1 Nietzsche claims that “there is only a perspectival seeing, only a perspectival ‘knowing’”. The interpretation of this idea goes far beyond a simple textual debate, and signals a dividing line between sceptical relativistic approaches and analytic positivistic approaches to the ideas of truth, knowledge, and science. This short paper will be mainly concerned with looking at readings of Nietzsche’s later works2 to compare three different approaches to this perspectivism: a relativistic sceptical understanding popular amongst some post-structualists, a more positivistic analytic approach advocated

by Brian Leiter, and a third way that tries to combine the sceptical aspect of the first while avoiding the slide into relativism. I will analyse each interpretation based on its how well they fit with the texts, but also mention what I see as the pros and cons of the positions more generally3. I will argue that the relativistic component of the post-structualist’s sceptical approach is an undesirable conclusion that is incompatible with other aspects of Nietzsche’s work, and entails nihilism. I will also argue that the opposing positivistic interpretation fails because it misses the context of Nietzsche’s work, relies too heavily on an optical analogy, and generally it misses the inescapable necessity of interpretation in everything. I will then argue that the correct reading of perspectivism is our third way, which manages to simultaneously combine aspects of both and shift the question from the domain of knowledge to that of value.

Perspectivism in On the Genealogy of Morality1,2,3

Before we dive into our discussion of perspectivism it is important to think about the context of Nietzsche’s work; this draws in a vast array of considerations, but there are two that are particularly important for our present purposes.

We must first note that Nietzsche is a philosopher who’s work is a continuation of a lineage that runs through Schopenhauer, and many other European philosophers of the time, but that ultimately begins with Kant; we can trace many of the methodological aspects (i.e. continuing the critical project), questions and ideas of Nietzsche (Smith, 2010) right back to Kant4. One central issue of this lineage was how to formulate metaphysics to make it possible to have knowledge of things in themselves (things as they are absent of us as opposed to knowledge of things as they are merely apparent to us). Kant, Hegel and in a more negative way Schopenhauer had differing ideas of how to do it, but they were all obsessed with this issue; Nietzsche was also influenced by this, but in a rather different way. The second contextual consideration is the Enlightenment; characterised by Adorno and Horkheimer as “the disenchantment 1 Henceforth: Beyond Good and Evil – BGE, On the Genealogy of Morality – GM, and Twilight of the Idols – TI. 2 Specially BGE (1-23), TI (IV), and mainly Essay 3 of GM 3 Both of these aspects, but particularly the later, are greatly expanded on in the larger project of which this paper is a part 4 This is not necessarily a positive lineage, more that Nietzsche’s ideas follow on from and react against those of Kant and Schopenhauer

of the world; the dissolution of myths and the substitution of knowledge for fancy” (1997, p. 3), the Enlightenment revolutionised ideas and attitudes about religion, morality and knowledge. Nietzsche had great respect for the general myth-busting attitude of the Enlightenment; his (and later Adorno and Horkheimer’s) problem with many ideas during and post it was that he felt they failed to recognize that in many areas they simply replaced old myths with new. In brief Nietzsche’s ideas were influenced by, a reaction against (the situation it left western philosophy), and a continuation of the Enlightenment all at the same time.

The texts that this paper focuses on (GM, TI, and BGE) are the ones that are most concerned with critiques of Kantian and Enlightenment ideas. GM itself is a text that Nietzsche calls his “thoughts on the descent of our moral prejudices” (GM Pref. 2); where these “thoughts” are the basis of a critique on the prevailing Christian morality of his (and to a large extent our) age. We will focus particularly on the third and final Essay of GM where Nietzsche goes beyond morality and embarks on a wider critique on the whole of western society; he attacks aspects of art, science, religion and philosophy and concludes that there is one ideal/value system that underlies all of the problems that he addresses: the ascetic ideal. For Nietzsche this ascetic ideal is the intentional object behind judgements of the world in terms of transcendental values (Smith, 2010); it is the mistake of confusing one’s interpretations of the world (i.e. one’s ideals) to be some metaphysical evaluative standard of the world. Asceticism for Nietzsche is a disaster:

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference “I can think of hardly anything that has sapped the health and radical strength of precisely the Europeans so destructively as this ideal; without any exaggeration we are entitled to call it the real catastrophe in the history of European man.” (GM III 21) It is so damaging because transcendental values declare that the world that is is not as it ought to be, and that the ideal world, the world as it ought to be, does not (and often cannot) exist. This entails nihilism - an abhorrent conclusion to Nietzsche because he believes it to be incompatible with the flourishing of life (GM III 4-6). This is precisely what Nietzsche thinks the obsession with the real/mere apparent world does because it assumes we must have knowledge of things in themselves, and that the mere apparent interpretations that we are capable of need to some how be increased (by applying some metaphysical standard/move) to be of value. The dichotomy is ascetic because it devalues the only kind of interpretations/knowledge we can have.

In fact it is not only that this dichotomy is ascetic, it is also a key cornerstone of asceticism because for ascetic ideals to be transcendental they must be above mere interpretations, they must be truths of things in themselves; thus, the whole ascetic game of forcing interpretations on others and claiming that they are more than interpretations requires the dichotomy.

It is in Nietzsche’s attack on the other products of asceticism that we find the most significant passage on what he sees as the antidote to it: perspectivism: “From now on, my philosophical colleagues, let us be more wary of the dangerous old conceptual fairy-tale which has been set up a ‘pure, will-less, painless, timeless, subject of knowledge’, let us be wary of the tentacles of such contradictory concepts as ‘pure reason’, ‘absolute spirituality’, ‘knowledge as such’: - here we are asked to think an eye which cannot be thought at all, an eye turned in no direction at all, an eye where the active and interpretive powers are to be suppressed, absent, but through which seeing still becomes a seeing-something, so it is an absurdity and non-concept of eye that is demanded.

There is only perspectival seeing, only a perspectival ‘knowing’; the more affects we are able to use for the same thing, the more complete will out ‘concept’ of the thing, our ‘objectivity’. But to eliminate the will completely and turn off all the affects without exception, assuming we could: well? would that not mean to castrate the intellect?…” (GM III 12)

The core idea of perspectivism is the inescapable fact that we always know from a perspective; the interpretation of this idea, why it is an antidote to asceticism, and the consequences of it on our picture of knowledge is what will be discussed in the rest of this paper.

The Received View

The first way we can look at perspectivism is as a radical sceptical attack on all knowledge; this way of interpreting it was popular amongst many poststructualist readers of Nietzsche (Deleuze, 2006; Derrida, 1979), and Leiter (1994, 2003) and Janaway (2007) call readings of these kinds the Received View (RV). Janaway characterises RV as: “[T]he radical doctrine that there can be no human knowledge that is not a falsification of reality, that all of our beliefs are ‘mere interpretation’, and that no one set of beliefs enjoys epistemic privilege over others.”

(Janaway, 2007, p. 203) Leiter attributes its origin in the Englishspeaking world to Danto, who claims that: “There is no real world structure… no way the world really is in contrast with our modes of interpreting it. There are only rival interpretations” (1965, p. 76) The different versions of RV are more complex and vary more than Leiter and Janaway seem to recognize, but they are generally right in saying that at the centre of them all is the idea that the world itself contains no facts and that every truth or piece of knowledge is just one interpretation of a world that has no determinate features. This means there is no epistemically privileged mode of access to the world, and so, no particular perspective or interpretation is better than any others. These readings of perspectivism, thus, lead to a relativistic conclusion about knowledge.

The problem is that such a relativistic conclusion seems to be inconsistent with the rest of Nietzsche’s work; elsewhere Nietzsche argues for many ideas and assertions that necessitate the possibility of epistemic privilege. For example, in BGE 134 Nietzsche claims that “from the senses originate all trustworthiness, all good conscience, all evidence of truth”; this is just one place where Nietzsche affirms a kind of empiricism, an approach that: “Depends precisely on the existence of an epistemologically privileged class of claims about the world (the claims based on sense experience).” (Leiter, 1994, p. 337)

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If it is held that all claims/ideas/theories are equally valid interpretations then we cannot have such an epistemic privilege; thus, RV cannot support Nietzsche’s empiricism. This shows that it is unlikely that Nietzsche meant perspectivism this way. In fact, outside of the textual discussion, this is also a reason to reject RV more generally because it shows why relativistic conclusions are undesirable.

If there is to be any intellectual discussion/debate about anything ever it cannot be every theory or idea is of equal worth; the relativistic position leads to an end of any possible discussion and it ultimately amounts to nihilism (which is the deeper underlying reason that Nietzsche would have rejected it). Note, however, that these points alone do not refute it RV5.

It is still up to those that reject RV to come up with an alternate interpretation of perspectivism that fits better.

Non-sceptical Perspectivism

In order to dislodge RV Leiter (1994) argues that the core of perspectivism is based on two ideas: (i) Doctrine of Epistemic Affectivity - all knowledge necessarily presupposes “affects”; which implies (ii) Doctrine of Perspectives - knowledge is analogous to vision in the sense that both are dependant upon perspectives that presuppose “affects” (interests and values in knowledge, particular physical conditions in seeing). Leiter claims that if we can work out an idea of perspectivism in terms of vision, then utilizing this optical analogy we can find Nietzsche’s analogous idea of perspectivism about knowledge.

Leiter (1994, 2003) gives four claims about seeing that he hopes are widely accepted: (a) we necessarily see an object from a particular (physical) perspective; (b) the more perspectives we have the better our conception of the object; (c) we will never exhaust all possible perspectives; (d) the are many indefinable things that may distort our perspectives of an object. He thinks that these four features of seeing form the core of perspectivism about vision, and gives us what he sees as the following analogous picture of knowledge: despite (a’) the necessity of knowledge being from the perspective of certain affects, we can cumulatively build knowledge of the actual world by the fact that (b’) the more affects we see the world from the better our conception of it will be, but at the same time we will never come to a complete picture of the world because (c’) there are an infinite number of interpretive interests (affects); finally, some perspectives are not ‘true’ because (d’) there are many interpretive interests and needs that will distort them. So, from the optical analogy Leiter gives us a theory of perspectivism about knowledge (a’)-(d’) that allows us to accumulate knowledge, 5 The general discussion on the validity of relativism is a much larger task than this paper, I merely want to show why it des not fit with Nietzsche’s work and why it is generally an undesirable conclusion

and to declare some interpretations to be false.

His perspectivism, therefore, avoids the relativistic conclusions of RV. The first problem with Leiter’s interpretation of the situation is one of context. He seems to miss the fact that the discussion of perspectivism comes in the middle of a larger more wide-ranging critique on western ideas and methodologies, and in particular western attitudes (and arrogance) towards knowledge. Scientific positivism (a picture that Leiter’s interpretation alludes to) is a large part of the attitudes towards knowledge that Nietzsche attacks.

In GM III where Nietzsche is critiquing the products of the ascetic ideal in society he asks whether science can save us from asceticism, but concludes that “it is not the opposite of the ascetic ideal but rather the latter’s own most recent and noble manifestation” (GM III 23). This is because the positivistic scientific attitude assumes and espouses two things without question6: (1) that a progression towards (without necessarily arriving at) ultimate truth is possible, and (2) that such a drive towards truth is valuable; together (1) and (2) form an “unconditional will to truth, [that] is faith in the ascetic ideal itself” (GM III 24). Leiter claims that this is simply an attack on the valuation of truth within society, and that it does not necessarily imply a sceptical component. But, this muddles the issue up; Nietzsche does indeed attack the valuation of truth within society, but does so because he thinks the question of value is the only one we can ask; nothing has an epistemic standing absent of value (GM III 25), everything is interpreted with relation to some values.

More generally, the major problem with RV was that it failed to provide a measurement for epistemic privilege (which as we saw amounted to relativism).

Leiter (1994) claims that his schema allows for this by rejecting interpretations that are from perspectives that are in some way distorted (using property (d’)); this is presumably possible by taking alternate perspectives which cumulatively show that the disputed perspective was wrong. Yet it is not clear that this cumulative version of objectivity is what Nietzsche would have wanted, or is even possible.

Throughout GM Nietzsche attacks the commonly held interpretations of his society; the products of the ascetic ideal (Christian morality, philosophy, etc.) are all common cumulative interpretations, and yet Nietzsche is clearly opposed to the idea that they are right or ‘true’. This is also a more general problem; in the terms of Leiter’s argument all perspectives are influenced by some affects, but just because many affects point towards one interpretation that does not mean that that interpretation is correct, rather that many people hold the same affective values.

The underlying issue here is that Leiter seems 6 This is how Nietzsche saw the issue in science in his time, these assumptions are less prevalent and unquestioned now

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference to assume that the optical analogy is a central and key point of Nietzsche perspectivism rather than seeing it for what it really is: a heuristic devise with an added bit irony. Throughout history knowledge has been linked with light and seeing (think of “seeing the light”, Plato’s philosopher coming out of his cave to see the forms), Nietzsche’s use of the optical analogy is an attempt to turn this idea on its head (TI IV) by showing that even in vision absolute truth doesn’t exist. Thus, even if we allow Leiter to assume that by showing vision to have some cumulative progression towards ‘reality’ he can say that perspectivism about knowledge allows for the same, he misses the point. As we have seen Nietzsche’s attack on the possibilities of knowledge is not confined to the optical analogy it just takes its most explicit form through it; the fact that all around GM III 12 Nietzsche insinuates towards the rejection of the standard idea and valuation of truth suggests that his perspectivism is meant to be doing the same thing.

Another Way

The overly sceptical version of perspectivism is undesirable because it’s too relativistic, but Leiter’s positivistic version seems to miss the point of the whole idea. As a way into our solution we must look in more detail at some of the reasons accepting RV. Schrift (1990) argues that for Nietzsche the whole concept of truth is misleading, pointless, and potentially life negating.

“The objective apprehension of truth is not only a myth, however; it is a “bad” myth, for one forgets that the moment of apprehension is a creative moment.”

(Schrift, 1990, p. 158) And so, according to Schrift, Nietzsche adopts the idea of perspectivism as a sceptical framework that allows for the denial truth. He claims that perspectivism must be pluralistic, in that it allows for a multiplicity of ‘correct’ interpretations, and that it needs a sceptical component that plays two crucial roles in the critical transvaluation of values: (i) it acts as a criterion from which we can critique and reject views that deny space for further interpretation by claiming that they are members of some privileged epistemic class; (ii) by rejecting dogmatic theories it allows a space for constant, creative, interpretative play. In this sense perspectivism reinvigorates life by “stimulating [the] enigma and ambiguity of existence”(Schrift, 1990, p. 155); it prevents the closing off of life’s rich ambiguity, and perspectives that reach out to differing affects are judged by how much “they creatively enhance or impoverish this ambiguity which is life” (Schrift, 1990, p. 156).

His overriding point is that a dogmatic adherence to the idea of truth “[amounts to] the denial of the

perspective – the fundamental condition – of life” (BGE Pref.) because it blocks opportunities for further pluralistic, interpretive, imaginative play7; an antidote to this is a perspectivism that contains some scepticism of ‘truth’. Nehamas agrees and thinks that not only must the accepted version of perspectivism not allow for absolute truths it must discriminate against them; there are bad interpretations, and they are precisely those that assume themselves to be absolutely true, because they block the subject off from further interpretation (1985, p. 49).

Nehamas and Schrift’s ideas highlight a crucial point for us: in line with our discussion of context, and because of the constraining nature interpretations that claim absolute truth Nietzsche’s perspectivism must contain some sceptical component. Even if Nietzsche does sometimes want to affirm or deny certain interpretations, he never claims to do so absolutely, but instead in line with some goal, some set of values that underlie his interpretation. This leads us into the central point of this essay, one that is made by both Foucault (1990a) and Deleuze (2006) (and elsewhere by Schrift (1988, 1995)): because it is unreliable, Nietzsche regards the question of truth irrelevant; it should be forgotten, instead we must always ask ourselves: for whom is this interpretation? Who does it benefit and what values does it affirm?

“It is high time to replace the Kantian question, “How are synthetic judgments a priori possible?” with another question, “Why is belief in such judgments necessary?”” (BGE 11) It is this switch of question that our formulation of perspectivism must support.

RV claims that there are no facts, that we see nothing but our perspective, and so, everything is arbitrarily interchangeable. But it is unclear that such resignation is required to support pluralism and the critical transvaluation of values in the way Schrift thinks perspectivism must. The view I argue for, Pluralistic Perspectivism (PP), turns the resignation of RV around: all we ever see is our perspective, but this is not because there are no facts about the world, it is because there are too many facts and we must necessarily select some and ignore others.

In agreement with Leiter, White (1990) points out that for Nietzsche there must be some kinds of facts8, but that these facts alone are entirely 7 This point is a lot more complex and important than I have just put it, it goes right into the heart of why Nietzsche critics asceticism and towards his idea of what it is for life to flourish see Nehamas (1985) for more detail 8 For example, Nietzsche claims “that ‘sinfulness’ in man is not a fact, but rather the interpretation of a fact, namely a physiological upset” (GM III 16).

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expands the bounds of our knowledge beyond our senses (GM III 25) whatever we present will always be our interpretation. But, he does not think that this inescapable bounding means our knowledge and thoughts on the world are mere interpretations, each one as valid as the next; he wants us to forget this false dichotomy altogether:

Figure 1. Duck-Rabbit originally presented by Jastrow (1899)

insignificant. In recognizing particular phenomena as significant and calling them facts we are already interpreting them where multiple other interpretations where possible (like ignoring them).

A very simplistic optical example of this can be found in famous duck-rabbit illusion (see figure 1); there are many facts about the picture: it is a bunch of lines, it is a collection of dark patches on a white space, or, more famously, it is a duck and/or a rabbit.

Notice that when you see the picture as a duck you cannot see the rabbit and vice versa; this highlights nicely that every explanation/interpretation of what it is necessarily includes or excludes many facts; even the explanation that lists all the facts of the picture (were it possible) would still only be one of many possible interpretations, it would have interpreted all the facts as relevant and as ‘facts’.

This “too many facts” idea is the point of PP it implies that everything is an interpretation and never the interpretation, and because there are an infinite number of facts that we may assign to things we may always question the significance of the facts given. This means that PP retains some scepticism about claims to truth. At the same time PP also allows for the rejection of interpretations - since there are facts, an interpretation that lies about them is one that is incorrect (for example: that Nietzsche was German is True; that he was Ghanaian is not) – and for the comparison (in terms of epistemic value) between them (where an interpretation that represents many facts incorrectly is worse than one that is generally right). In this way PP is able to avoid relativism. But, these points alone do not do justice to the important shift PP allows us to make. In PP the sceptical component allows us to rid ourselves of dogmatism, and the factual component allows us to see differences between interpretations; coupling these two points together we can compare the facts people choose to interpret as relevant, and ask the crucial question: Why?

Forget About it

Nietzsche’s general argument is for the rejection of ideas like ‘absolute truth’ or ‘hard facts’; without some impossible metaphysical jump that

“The ‘real world’ – an idea no longer of any use… let us abolish it… We have abolished the real world: what is left? the apparent world perhaps? … But no! with the real world we have also abolished the apparent world!” (TI IV) The dichotomy of real/apparent world is an error because the idea that any truth can be absent of interpretation is an error; everything is always and forever an interpretation, and because of this knowledge bounded by sense is not mere it is valid/ invalid (based loosely on representation of facts) and then good/bad (based on one’s value schema).

We should forget about knowledge of things in themselves and instead ask the question of value.

Because everything is in some way an interpretation, everything (including Nietzsche’s ideas and those of asceticism) is interpreted the way it is for a reason.

Nietzsche wants us to accept this, stop pretending we can have any kind of methodology or theory that allows us to eliminate interpretation and replace it with ‘hard fact’9, and instead start being more critical about what interpretations are really of value.

Our understanding of perspectivism as PP allows this; it is the antidote to the asceticism of dogmatism, and the nihilism of relativism precisely because it commands that we make this switch in focus: from truth, to the critical transvaluation of values10. So, from what has been discussed we can conclude that Nietzsche’s understanding of perspectivism must be something in-between Leiter’s interpretation and RV; maybe something like RV. The more general picture has been alluded to but not sufficiently discussed in this paper, but from what has been said it seems that because perspectivism is inescapable and because PP seems like the best way we can interpret it our understanding and discussion of knowledge and truth in society should move towards a more pluralistic paradigm, one in which we accept that critical interpretation is a valuable as ‘hard fact’ because the concept of ‘hard fact’ is a myth.

9 This is not only because it is impossible but also because it is damaging since it prevents people from being constantly critical and interpretive 10 There is obviously the crucial point here that the relativism can be simply moved into the domain of values; thus, entailing Nihilism after all. I would argue, however, that this is not the case as it is not clear that morality must be relative or that if it is it entails Nihilism in the same way, but this is a discussion that will have to wait for another time.

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference References

1. Adorno, T., & Horkheimer, M. (1997). Dialectic of enlightenment: Verso Books.

2. Ansell-Pearson, K. (1995). The significance of Michel Foucault’s reading of Nietzsche: Power, the subject, and political theory. In P. Sedgwick (Ed.), Nietzsche: a Critical Reader. Oxford: Blackwell.

3. Danto, A. C. (1965). Nietzsche as philosopher: Columbia Univ Pr. 4. Deleuze, G. (2006). Nietzsche and philosophy: Continuum International Publishing Group.

5. Derrida, J. (1979). Spurs: Nietzsche’s styles (B. Harlow, Trans.): University of Chicago Press.

6. Foucault, M. (1980a). The History of Sexuality Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings (Vol. 1977, pp. 183-193).

7. Foucault, M. (1980b). Two lectures Power/ knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings (pp. 78-108).

8. Foucault, M. (1984). Nietzsche, genealogy, history.

In P. Rainbow (Ed.), The Foucault Reader (pp. 76100).

9. Foucault, M. (1990a). Nietzshce, Freud, Marx. In G. L. Ormiston & A. D. Schrift (Eds.), Transforming the hermeneutic context: from Nietzsche to Nancy: State Univ of New York Pr. 10. Foucault, M. (1990b). The will to knowledge: the history of sexuality (R. Hurley, Trans.): Penguin.

11. Janaway, C. (2007). Beyond selflessness: reading Nietzsche’s Genealogy: Oxford University Press, USA. 12. Jastrow, J. (1899). The Mind’s Eye. Popular Science Monthly(54), 299-312.

13. Krell, D. F., & Wood, D. C. (1988). Exceedingly Nietzsche: aspects of contemporary Nietzscheinterpretation: Routledge.

14. Leiter, B. (1994). Perspectivism in Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals. In R. Schacht (Ed.), Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality (pp. 334-357): Univ of California Pr. 15. Leiter, B. (2003). Routledge philosophy guidebook to Nietzsche on morality: Routledge.

16. Nehamas, A. (1983). Immanent and Transcendent Perspectivism in Nietzsche. Nietzsche-Studien Berlin, 12, 473-490.

17. Nehamas, A. (1985). Nietzsche: Life as literature: Harvard Univ Pr. 18. Nietzsche, F. (1990). Twilight of the Idols (R. J. Hollingdale (1968), Trans.): Penguin Classics.

19. Nietzsche, F. (1997). Beyond Good and Evil (H. Zimmern, Trans.): Dover.

20. Nietzsche, F. (2007). On the Genealogy of Morality (C. D. C. 1994), Trans. Rev. student ed.).

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

21. Schacht, R. (1994). Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality: Essays on Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals: Univ of California Pr.

22. Schrift, A. D. (1988). Foucault and Derrida on nietzsche and the end(s) of ‘man’. In D. F. Krell & D. C. Wood (Eds.), Exceedingly Nietzsche: aspects of contemporary Nietzsche-interpretation (pp. 131-149): Routledge.

23. Schrift, A. D. (1990). Nietzsche and the question of interpretation: between hermeneutics and deconstruction: Other.

24. Schrift, A. D. (1995). Nietzsche’s French legacy: a genealogy of poststructuralism: Burns & Oates.

25. Sedgwick, P. R. (1995). Nietzsche: a critical reader: Blackwell.

26. Smith, D. (2010). Lectures on Nietzsche Course on Early Continental Philosophy. University of Edinburgh.

27. Tomlinson, H. (1988). Nietzsche on the Edge of Town: Deleuze and Reflexivity. In D. F. Krell & D. C. Wood (Eds.), Exceedingly Nietzsche: aspects of contemporary Nietzsche-interpretation (pp. 150-163): Routledge.

28. White, A. (1990). Within Nietzsche’s labyrinth: Routledge.

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Envisaging State Healthcare:

A Visual Investigation into Irish Public Health Campaigns 1945-1958 Jane Hand

University College Dublin

Abstract Government involvement in health provision became increasingly central to national agendas in the post-World War II world. The recognition of the need for such provision in the wake of the losses attributable to war ensured that public health would become an issue of increasing importance throughout Europe. This article analyses the general trend towards governmental involvement in Irish health provision by engaging in an examination of the role of the visual in the public health campaigns of 1945-1958. This increasing emphasis on the visual in society will be assessed through the prism of health posters and pamphlets.

By examining the many and varied visual representations of illness, the depiction of those at risk from disease can be understood as an aestheticised one. Symbolic imagery and metaphors, which articulate particular beliefs about illness and its victims, were employed as an advertising tool adopted by the Irish state. The analysis of health announcements in terms of iconography regarding disease, child welfare and the perception of women indicates that such media, despite appearing nationally all-inclusive, were in reality, aimed at specific groups or genders in society. Such announcements promoted a conceptualised and imagined view of society under the auspices of health promotion.

Introduction

A culture of public health advertising emerged in the post-World War II years throughout Europe.

In an Irish context visual advertising techniques were utilised in a concerted effort to publicise and consequently combat an array of health, hygiene and national welfare issues. Historical discourse has traditionally omitted any substantial investigation of the visual within the narrative of public health care.

Only recently has the visual within history gained prominence having previously tended to be almost exclusively aligned with the study of art. In an Irish context, academic research has often focused on the political or religious debates that public health schemes engendered. Greta Jones in her work on tuberculosis in nineteenth and twentieth century Ireland concentrates on the campaign to combat tuberculosis, not so much from a visual standpoint, but rather as an analysis of the political ramifications of the work of the Anti-Tuberculosis League and later the Anti-Tuberculosis Section of the Irish Red Cross during the 1940s.1 Similarly, Eamonn McKee2 and Lindsey Earner-Byrne3, in their respective 1 Greta Jones, ‘Captain of All These Men of Death’ The History of Tuberculosis in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Ireland (New York, 2001).

2 Eamonn McKee, Church-State Relations and the Development of Irish Health Policy: The Mother-andChild Scheme, 1944-53’, Irish Historical Studies, Vol. 25, No. 98 (1986), pp. 159-194.

3 Lindsey Earner-Byrne, ‘Managing Motherhood: Negotiating a Maternity Service for Catholic Mothers in Dublin, 1930-1954’, Social History of Medicine 19, no. 2 (2006), pp261-277.

works on the development of maternal and welfare health policies in the Irish state, concentrated on the political and religious controversies such proposals provoked. Ruth Barrington, in her extensive work Health, Medicine and Politics in Ireland 1900-1970 also affords only minimal attention to the advertising campaigns conducted throughout the 1940s and 1950s, concentrating instead on the political conflicts and compromises increased governmental involvement in healthcare generated.4 Whilst the visual has often only been utilised for illustrative rather than discursive purposes that is not to say that contemporary academic work has wholly ignored the propagandist campaigns of the midtwentieth century. On the contrary, Barrington and Jones both make reference to the use of pamphlet material and state propaganda in order to publicise various campaigns.5 However they fall short of any thorough investigation of the public health notices themselves.

Such an absence of any effective evaluation of the public health notice, thus far, is therefore noteworthy considering their alleged importance in effectively transferring information regarding disease and hygiene to the general populous.

Health posters and pamphlets can be perceived as essentially ephemeral objects and their intended function has been to make an initial and temporary impression and then essentially disappear.6 4 Barrington, Health, Medicine and Society.

5 Jones, The History of Tuberculosis in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century, p. 196-198.

Barrington, Health, Medicine and Society, p. 199.

6 Cooter and Stein, ‘Coming into Focus’, p. 183.

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference

Figure 1. TB poster issued by the Anti-Tuberculosis Section of the Irish Red Cross (NAI, HLTH D102/8)

Figure 2. Department of Health pamphlet providing advice and tips on dealing with coughs in children (NAI 2002/74)

Pamphlets and posters dealing with maternal and child welfare services, the combat of tuberculosis and the importance of home hygiene will be analysed in relation to their intended function and their inherent symbolism.

The Health Hints in the Home series, introduced at the behest of central government in the late 1950s, aimed to highlight the continuing efforts to combat various health and hygiene issues. It specifically addressed ‘Diphtheria Immunisation’, ‘Mumps’, ‘Flies – The Assassins of the Home’, ‘Sore Throat’, ‘Cough in Children’, ‘Whooping Cough’, ‘Your Children’s Teeth’, ‘Worms in Children’ and ‘Measles’.

The Anti-Tuberculosis section of the Irish Red Cross Society distributed an array of poster and pamphlet material relating to tuberculosis in a concerted attempt to educate and inform the public on the spread of the disease and the importance of early detection. This article investigates the importance of such public health images in transferring an imagined construction of independent Ireland to the nation. This specific conceived perception of society will be examined within three distinct areas of study namely, the perception of the mother in Irish public health campaigns, the use of the Irish language in health information, and disease representation within the sphere of public health.

Whilst the actions of successive Ministers for Health were indicative of a new and somewhat radical agenda for disease control and treatment, the social and cultural climate of the period was still predominately influenced by the machinations of the Catholic Church under the auspices of the Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid. 8 This was reflected in an increase in the popularity of Irish Catholic social instruction and the efforts of the Catholic Church in applying the teachings of papal encyclicals to contemporary social problems.9 A more thorough commitment to Catholic social teaching, to Catholic concepts of the moral law and a more explicit recognition of the special position of the church within both Irish political and social life was expounded.10 Whilst it appeared that Irish social conditions were improving in the post-Emergency period, Ireland still had the highest rates of infant and maternal mortality in Europe by 1949.11 Central Statistics Office data imparts a clear and candid picture of the high level of death rates from infectious diseases amongst children aged 1 to 4 in 1949.12 Tuberculosis accounted for 14.8% of deaths amongst infants, diarrhoea and enteritis 6.6% and whooping cough at 4.7%.13 Tuberculosis also affected large numbers of young adults, and was accountable for half of all deaths of those aged 25 to 34 in 1949. The incidence of the disease in 1952 was 230 new cases

The P erception of the Mother in Irish P ublic Health Campaigns

During the period 1945-1960 a general reappraisal of the role of State and local government in relation to public health was undertaken.7 A need for interventionist and preventative policies rather than curative practices was championed.

7 Diarmaid Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland 19002000 (London, 2004), p. 497.

8 John Horgan, Nöel Browne: Passionate Outsider (Dublin, 2000), p. 72.

9 Barrington, Health, Medicine and Politics, p. 143.

10 Whyte, Church and State in Modern Ireland, p. 158.

11 Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland, p. 497.

12 Central Statistics Office, That was then, This is now: Change in Ireland, 1949-1999, ed. Adrian Redmond (Dublin, 2000), p. 37.

13 CSO, That was then, This is now, p. 37.

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Figure 3. Department of Health pamphlet to explain the principles of the Mother and Child Scheme (NAI, Dept. Taoiseach, S14997A)

per 100,000 of the population.14 Such stark figures ensured that some form of government intervention would be necessary to combat these extreme levels of infectious disease and the corresponding high mortality rates.

Familial and maternal obligations consequently became central to State-led health campaigns throughout the post-Emergency period. The mother was repeatedly broadcast as the chief provider for the child within the home. The protection afforded the family in the Irish Constitution and the treatment accorded women in Article 41 was deeply influenced

by Pope Leo XIII’s Encyclical Rerum Novarum of 1891, which asserted that only in extreme cases was it acceptable for the State to interfere with the family.15 The clause relating to mothers concluded that “a woman is by nature fitted for homework, and it is that which is best adapted at once to preserve her modesty and promote the good bringing-up (sic) of children and the well being of the family”.16 As illustrated by the central positioning of the mother and child in Fig. 1 it is this perception of the role of women in society which recurs throughout the published propaganda material of the period.

Furthermore the influence of scientific advances had a potent impact on the provision of infant welfare from the early 1950s. The principle that women required scientific and medical advice to raise their children properly gained increasing prominence in the twentieth century. The need to follow explicitly the direction of experts made 14 CSO, That was then, This is now, p. 36.

15 Dermot Keogh and Andrew J. McCarthy, The Making of the Irish Constitution 1937 Bunreacht na hÉireann (Cork, 2007), p. 113.

16 McQuaid extract from Rerum Novarum, UCDA P150/2411, deValera Papers.

Figure 4. Madonna and Child, Sassaferrato 1609-1685

women more acutely responsible for the health and welfare of their families.17 It was through the ideology of scientific motherhood that the nurture of children could be elevated to the status of a profession.18 Motherhood was identified as a site from which women were to locate their identity and lifetime happiness.19 The Health Hints in the Home campaign centred on specific maternal instruction and health guidelines. Such pamphlets functioned to prevent and reduce the high rates of infant mortality in the State. The importance of early detection in ensuring recovery rates is highlighted both textually and illustratively. In Fig. 2 the Mother is depicted undertaking what is portrayed as her maternal duty by seeking the judgement and guidance of the medical profession. Whilst this is a highly stylised representation, its purpose is to establish a particular mode of behaviour and correct health conduct.

This pamphlet is specifically aimed at the female in society and more particularly the mother as the primary care-giver to the child. The male figure, the professional and skilled doctor, although working in the domestic environment clearly represents the gender divide within Irish life. Concurrently it endorses the doctor as the mother’s guide. Therefore the pamphlet is intended to assist the mother in carrying out her maternal responsibilities astutely.20 17 Rima D. Apple, ‘Constructing Mothers: Scientific Motherhood in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’, Social History of Medicine, no. 8 (1995), pp.

161-178 18 Apple, ‘Constructing Mothers: Scientific Motherhood in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’, p. 165.

19 Apple, ‘Constructing Mothers: Scientific Motherhood in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’, p. 164.

20 Apple, ‘Constructing Mothers: Scientific Motherhood in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’, p. 168.

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference

Figures 5 and 6. Department of Health pamphlets promoting Diphtheria Immunisation (NAI 2002/74)

The family is enshrined in the Constitution of the state as the “natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society”21 By extension the mother within the home is established as the essential and imperative care-giver of the family unit. It is this perception of the role of women, particularly mothers, that serves as a recurring visual representation in many of the State produced public health notices concerning infant welfare throughout the post-Emergency era.

The iconography utilised throughout the public campaign to promote the “Mother and Child Scheme” employed specific symbols and metaphors which were presented as representative of the moral code prevalent in contemporary society. The Brigid’s Cross held a prominent position in the official publication of the “Mother and Child Scheme”. As depicted in Fig. 3 the central composition of the mother and baby is juxtaposed with the religious symbol of a Brigid’s Cross. This cross was believed to protect the home from evil, hunger and fire. The pictorial representation of the Mother and Child proves reminiscent of traditional depictions of the Madonna and Child. Consequently the informal and maternal arrangement and the juxtaposition of the two central figures with the St. Brigid’s Cross alludes to Madonna and Child symbolism. By utilising such powerful and easily recognisable iconography the poster achieved a high-level of comprehensibility.

This constitutional image of the role of women in society disregarded the continuously increasing numbers of women engaged in gainful employment outside the home during the 1950s. Indeed such proliferation did little to alter the traditional

perception of women which was repeatedly illustrated in a variety of health notices, namely that of homemaker.

The adoption of the Irish language in the publication of a variety of health notices characterises a distinct depiction of an imagined Independent nation. In a society which was increasingly operating in the English language the continued use of Irish in the political and administrative function of the state represented its importance as a symbol of Irish identity. Cultural nationalism assumed the role of official state ideology.22 Conradhna Gaeilge, a non-governmental organisation responsible for the promotion of the Irish language, had actively and successfully founded it as an emblem of national identity since the early years of the twentieth century.

The Irish language had been established as the first language of the state in Bunreacht na hÉireann, the Irish Constitution, 1937. The centrality of the Irish language, as seen in Fig. 5 and Fig. 6, ensured that health notices would now be published in both the Irish and English language. The production of equal numbers of health notices in both the Irish and English languages serves to somewhat over emphasise the number of Irish speakers operating outside that of Gaeltacht areas. All those pamphlets produced for the Health Hints in the Home campaign were available in both an Irish and English language version. The production of such health notices represents the maintenance of governmental cultural policy as opposed to a true reflection of language usage amongst the general population.

21 Bunreacht na hÉireann, 1937, Article 41; available from http://www.taoiseach.gov.ie/upload/static/256. htm; accessed on 24 February 2010.

22 Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin, Language from Below: The Irish Language, ideology and power in 20th Century Ireland (Oxford, 2006), p. 170.

The Irish Language

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Figure 7. Department of Health Pamphlet dealing with Measles (NAI 2002/74)

Whilst the number of school children speaking Irish had increased since Independence in 1922 the use of the language rarely transferred to the home environment. Education was the chief means of restoring the language to prominence in Irish society. However the payment of fees restricted entry to secondary schools and universities.23 Certainly language restoration could not be achieved by a mainly primary education.24 The ethnic definition of ‘Irishness’ shifted slowly from the Irish language to Catholicism.25 From the late 1930s the views of the church came to dominate the ideology of the state.

During the period ending with the Second World War support for the Irish language peaked and yet the spoken language went into a gradual decline.26 This decline continued throughout the post-war years, a reality which is noticeably absent in the numerous Irish language health notices produced throughout these same years. Certainly the harsh reality of poverty and emigration fractured the popular perception of the Irish language idyll that had been promoted since the 1930s.27 The contrast between government rhetoric and practice marked the declining role of the state. Bilingualism rather than restoration became the more viable aspiration of the state.

Disease Representation within the sphere of Public Health

The representation of disease and illness in a highly controlled style signified the portrayal of a particular ‘imagined’ view of society. A specifically 23 24 25 26 27

Ó Croidheáin, Language from Below, p. 173. Ó Croidheáin, Language from Below, p. 171. Ó Croidheáin, Language from Below, p. 178. Ó Croidheáin, Language from Below, p. 196. Ó Croidheáin, Language from Below, p. 207.

idealised view of society in relation to disease representation was circulated for precise reasons, particularly the control of fear, the creation of alternative historical truth and to affirm the social and religious tenets of the Irish Constitution and the society in which it operated. It has been suggested that the depiction of those at risk from certain diseases can be understood as an aestheticised one.28 Such images attempted to simplify the actual complexities of disease and the society in which they functioned through the use of highly formulated images. Therefore symbolic imagery and metaphors, which reveal particular beliefs about both illness and its victims, were employed as a successful advertising tool adopted by the State.

The employment of images in a highly constructed manner can be primarily perceived as governmental efforts to combat fear. Formal rigidity and expectation in visual images allows a certain level of normalcy to remain within the field of disease and illness.29 S.L Gilman and Mary Douglas argue that those rigid forms of art that often reveal themselves within the confines of the public health poster represent an attempt at controlling disease within civil society worldwide.30 Despite the significant infant death rate from measles, which stood at 3.3% of all deaths in the one to four age group in 1949, the visual projection of the disease highlighted preventative and curative measures as a means to combat both concern and anxiety.31 In Fig. 7 the depiction of the child with the arm raised and fist clenched alludes to recovery and inherent strength against the ravages of infectious disease. The control of fear by national governments through their public health advertising schemes coincided with a wish to promote the prevention of disease within society rather than introducing heightened curative measures. It is therefore within a specific aesthetic tradition, that of imagining and presenting disease, that a sense of ultimate loss is projected.32 Images are placed within culturally accepted boundaries and categories of representation. Within “art”, they are presented as a social reality, a controlled image of the world.33 It is imperative that a positive focus regarding the state health service is constantly maintained. As Gilman indicates, one function of the health poster is to enable a general attempt by society to “localize and therefore limit the source of pollution”.34 By portraying preventative measures, both visually and textually, society preserves a level of hope and optimism within public medical 28 Gilman, Picturing Health and Illness, p. 115.

29 Gilman, Disease and Representation: Images of Illness from Madness to AIDS (New York, 1988), p. 2.

30 Gilman, Disease and Representation, p. 2.

31 CSO, That was then, This is now, p. 37.

32 Gilman, Disease and Representation, p. 2.

33 Gilman, Disease and Representation, p. 2.

34 Gilman, Disease and Representation, p. 5.

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference

Figure 8. Beware of Diphtheria: Protect Your Child by Immunisation! (NLI OPIE K / 57/4)

Figure 9. Department of Health Pamphlet dealing with Worms in Children (NAI 2002/74)

discourse. Furthermore, the nationwide campaigns introduced in the post-Emergency period, genuinely improved early detection rates and consequently led to the successful treatment of disease.35 From the introduction of national immunisation schemes the number of cases gradually declined as increased numbers availed of the service. As expressed in Fig. 8, the use of a direct-address style “ PROTECT Your CHILD by IMMUNISATION” the accompanying text to pamphlet material relating to diphtheria immunisation only serves to further foster the conception that confidence in curative measures were continually maintained within the visual expression of disease and illness.

It is perhaps the image itself which makes the historical narrative appear complete rather than partial.36 The health poster, illustrated pamphlet and more generally the public health notice can often serve as tools of state propaganda for national health.

The image, when combined with the associated caption effectively forms a narrative closure with each acting as verification for the other in the public eye.37 The visual representation acts to erase any ambivalence within the historical discourse and leaves more limited space for contestation in any historical interpretation.38 In an Irish context neither the poster nor the pamphlet depicts the end result of disease.

Rather there is a deliberate focus on the healthy in society, those who have followed health instruction and education, the preventative rather than the palliative cure. Certainly, as argued by Gilman, the representation of those at risk from certain infectious diseases is an aestheticized one.39 In an attempt to

simplify the actual complexities of disease, the use of highly constructed images renders the portrait of the sufferer inconsequential to the actualities of the illness. The person at risk is shown to be ‘healthy’ and therefore beautiful, thereby more receptive to positive action from a visual viewpoint. As depicted in Fig. 9 the two potential sufferers are displayed as healthy and happy, the successes of a pro-active preventative health policy. Whilst the mortality statistics for many of the infectious diseases during this period are distressingly high, the depiction of the prospective victim omits any reference to death or the act of dying. It is thus, argues Gilman that “these images are both dying and not really dying.

The anxiety about death can thus be bonded.”40

35 Horgan, Nöel Browne, p. 72.

36 Cooter and Stein, ‘Coming into focus’, p. 186.

37 Cooter and Stein, ‘Coming into focus’, p. 186.

38 Cooter and Stein, ‘Coming into focus’, p. 186.

39 Gilman, Picturing Health and Illness, p. 115.

Conclusion

The production of a range of aestheticised images represented the visualisation of a specifically Irish culture. Health campaigns launched by successive Irish governments throughout the 1940s and 1950s targeted particular groups in society through specific forms of representation. The visual and verbal language employed in public notices correlate with the prevailing beliefs of the era. Religious symbolism remained intertwined in the idealised representations of both mothers and children, serving to illustrate the significant position of the Catholic Church within the State system. The inherent weakness of the social feminist movement within Irish society facilitated the production of particular images which upheld traditional gender roles.41 In a society largely dominated by Catholic social teaching the maintenance of long-established 40 Gilman, Disease and Representation, p. 117.

41 Earner-Byrne, ‘Managing Motherhood: Negotiating a Maternity Service for Catholic Mothers in Dublin, 1930-1954’, p. 274.

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societal positions remained largely unchallenged.

The centrality of the mother and child was clearly advanced in a variety of poster and pamphlet material.

Certainly disease control and prevention became somewhat central to State policy. By producing a series of health notices, the State attempted to overcome the clash between assistance and intervention. The motivating factor was left to the individual but concepts of maternal duty and health prevention for the good of society generally were repeatedly accentuated. Moreover it was the cultural and social character of the country which influenced the representative framework of the numerous propagandist images and films of the period. Health issues provided the necessary means for signifying a specific conceptualised image of society to the nation. Ultimately, the administrative fervour of successive governments in advancing health promotion campaigns would prove invaluable in the diminution of endemic infectious diseases.

References

Primary Sources

1. Bunreacht na hÉireann, 1937. Article 8, Article 41.

2. Dáil Éireann Debates (Parliamentary Debates) 1947-1958.

3. Department of Health Files, National Archives of Ireland, Dublin.

4. Department of Justice Files, National Archives of Ireland, Dublin.

5. Department of the Taoiseach Files, National Archives of Ireland, Dublin.

6. Éamon de Valera Papers, University College Dublin Archives.

7. James A. Deeny Papers, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin.

8. Official Health Periodicals, National Library of Ireland, Dublin.

Secondary Sources

9. Apple, Rima D. ‘Constructing Mothers: Scientific Motherhood in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’. Social History of Medicine, No. 8 (1995), pp. 161-178.

10. Barrington, Ruth. Health, Medicine and Politics in Ireland 1900-1970. Dublin, 1987.

11. Clear, Caitriona. Women of the House: Women’s household work in Ireland 1926-1961: Discourses, Experiences, Memories. Dublin, 2000.

12. Cooter Roger, and Stein, Claudia. ‘Coming into focus: Posters, power, and visual culture in the history of medicine’. Medizinhistorisches, No.42 (2007), pp181-209.

13. Earner-Byrne, Lindsey. ‘Managing Motherhood: Negotiating a Maternity Service for Catholic Mothers in Dublin, 1930-1954’. Social History of Medicine, Vol 19, No. 2 (Mar., 2006), pp. 261-277.

14. Ferriter, Dermot. The Transformation of Ireland 1900-2000. London, 2004.

15. Gilman, Sander L. Picturing Health and Illness: Images of Identity and Difference. Baltimore, 1995.

16. Gilman, Sander L. Disease and Representation: Images of Illness from Madness to AIDS. New York, 1988.

17. Horgan, John. Nöel Browne: Passionate Outsider.

Dublin, 2000.

18. Jones, Greta. ‘Captain of all these Men of Death’: the History of Tuberculosis in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Ireland. Amsterdam, 2001.

19. Keogh, Dermot, McCarthy, Andrew J. The Making of the Irish Constitution 1937 Bunreacht na hÉireann.

Cork, 2007.

20. McKee, Eamonn. ‘Church-State Relations and the Development of Irish Health Policy: The Motherand-Child Scheme, 1944-53’. Irish Historical Studies, Vol. 25, No. 98 (Nov., 1986), pp. 159-194.

21. Ó Croidheáin, Caoimhghin. Language from Below: The Irish Language, ideology and power in 20th Century Ireland. Oxford, 2006.

22. Redmond, Adrian. Central Statistics Office, That was then, This is now: Change in Ireland, 1949-1999.

Dublin, 2000.

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference

Richard Flanagan’s Gould’s Book of Fish: Rewriting Tasmanian Ecology Jill Carman

University of Queensland

Abstract Richard Flanagan, the contemporary Australian novelist, has for decades been a passionate advocate for environmental conservation, particularly in his home state of Tasmania. He has built up a strong political profile on Tasmanian environmental issues, leading protest rallies, giving speeches, and writing in newspapers the world over. In his novels, however, he takes a very different approach, opening the Tasmanian environment up into a playful and disturbing new world. Flanagan’s 2000 novel, Gould’s Book of Fish, exemplifies this tendency. It is a work that must be understood within the long history of Tasmanian environmentalist art, which has traditionally depicted the environment within a highly aestheticised wilderness discourse. In Gould’s Book of Fish, Flanagan resists this trend, choosing instead to represent the local environment as a surreal and violent space. The text’s fixation with physical experience allows for an understanding of environment in a broader sense, which makes clear the connections between the humans and the surrounding world. It is precisely Gould’s Book of Fish’s refusal to depict nature in any kind of a natural way at all that makes it such an ecologically important novel.

Tasmania. Home to the world’s cleanest air, and some of the world’s clearest water. This island off the southern end of Australia’s mainland holds the world’s last great temperate wilderness. A remarkable more than 40% of the state is given over to national parks, reserves, and World Heritage sites.

In its rugged mountain ranges, dense rainforests, wild rivers and glaciated peaks there is wildlife, scenery and vegetation unlike anywhere else on earth.

You could be forgiven for thinking that this introduction reads like a tourist advertisement for Tasmania’s natural attractions. A reasonable assumption—most of that material came straight from the official Tourism Tasmania website (“Wilderness Areas”). I do this to emphasise that this image of Tasmania as a land of ancient wilderness is a crucial element of its construction today.

Here, the Australian environmental movement is at its strongest. The focus of this paper is on the contemporary Tasmanian novelist Richard Flanagan, and his 2000 novel, Gould’s Book of Fish, a novel which contributes to the environmental movement in some unexpected ways. Flanagan’s novel arises out of a rich tradition of Tasmanian environmentalism, an understanding of which is crucial to my reading of his work. Before I consider Flanagan’s work further, it is necessary to briefly contextualise it within a consideration of Tasmanian environmentalism, and Tasmanian environmentalist art.

Tasmania has been at the heart of the environmental movement in Australia for the last forty-odd years.

Indeed, it is in Tasmania that the world’s first-ever Green Party was formed, in 1972 (Hutton and Connors 121). Major Tasmanian

environmental campaigns, fought to save various wilderness areas, have become issues of national importance.

The Tamar Valley pulp-mill, the Franklin River, Lake Pedder—these Tasmanian campaigns are household names for most Australians, and have been instrumental in raising public support for environmental issues more generally.

Tasmanian artists have played a crucial role in these conservation campaigns from the beginning, working to publicise and popularise key campaign issues. The first major conservation campaign fought was to prevent the damming of Lake Pedder, and local Tasmanian artists were a critical part of the movement. The Pedder campaign mounted a case for wilderness that was, in a large part, aesthetic.

The important role played by local artists within this campaign was such that the Commonwealth Inquiry into Lake Pedder admitted the testimony of artists— “professionals in aesthetics”—affirming the natural beauty of the lake, which was considered to be expert evidence on a par with evidence on the lake’s scientific and recreational value (Bonyhady 34). Future environmental campaigns waged in Tasmania have continued to rely heavily on art to politicise the importance of wilderness areas. In the fight to save the Franklin River, wilderness photography remained a central campaigning tool.

Peter Dombrovskis’s photograph of “Rock Island Bend” on the Franklin River became the campaign’s central image, symbolising the mystical wilderness quality of the river. The photograph was used to great political effect in the lead-up to the 1983 federal election, when it appeared as a full-colour insert in one million copies of newspapers on the mainland in

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a bid to make the dam an election issue. The leader of the Australian Greens political party, Bob Brown, has commented that fellow politicians still tell him that the lift-out was the most effective political advertisement they have ever seen (Wildness).

Richard Flanagan, a fifth-generation Tasmanian, is a contemporary novelist writing out of this landscape. He has a strong political profile, and has been a consistently strong voice within the Tasmanian environmental movement.

He has led protest rallies, delivered speeches, and written in newspapers the world over on Tasmanian environmental issues. His novels, however, present a strikingly different conceptualisation of the environment. Gould’s Book of Fish, in particular, is a text that refuses to depict the natural world with any representational stability. Instead the Tasmanian environment is portrayed in surreal forms that entirely erase all traces of the wilderness discourse so important to the environmentalist movement.

This is an interesting contradiction between Flanagan’s political work and his fictional work, one that I argue leads to a much richer understanding of the environment.

Gould’s Book of Fish is a difficult book to summarise, but essentially, it’s the story of the Tasmanian convict William Buelow Gould, a real historical figure, who painted a series of paintings of Tasmanian fish. These paintings still exist today, and Flanagan reproduces the images at the start of each new chapter. This, however, is where the similarities between the historical record and Flanagan’s novel end. William Buelow Gould narrates the action of this novel. He is a melodramatic, foul-mouthed petty criminal with artistic leanings. In the story as he tells it, locked within his prison cell, he is commissioned to paint a series of watercolours of fish, but as these paintings progress, he finds himself becoming progressively more attached to these creatures. By the story’s end, Gould, with a sense of inevitability, metamorphoses into a fish—a weedy seadragon, to be precise. Gould’s records of these events, replete with his fish paintings, are preserved as the Book of Fish, which is discovered some 200 years later by a local petty criminal, who finds himself getting sucked into the story as well.

This is a surreal and playful novel with a decidedly political agenda. The novel addresses the shameful treatment of the Tasmanian Aborigines, contemporary Tasmanian tourism, the literary marketplace, the brutality of convictism, and much more besides. Interestingly, however, there are not many mentions of the Tasmanian environment, the pristine wilderness of rainforest and river in which this story is set. In the face of this, I wish to argue that this is a deeply environmental novel. Like many Tasmanian artists before him, Flanagan is working to engage environmental consciousness, but he’s doing it in quite an unusual way. Here, there

are no lush evocations of peat and moss and ancient trees. Rather, through the eyes of Gould, the reader is granted quite a different take on the concept of environment. Environment, in this novel, is best considered in terms of its more general meaning as simply, surroundings. It is not some lush, green realm at a remove from human activity, but a very tangible thing in this book, an omnipresent, often claustrophobic space that interacts with the novel’s characters. The scene is set for this understanding of environment very early in the novel.

In one of the opening episodes, Gould, imprisoned within his cell, narrates his surroundings.

He describes in particular his cellmate, who he affectionately refers to as the King. Gould and the King share what Gould calls a “fish cell,” built at the base of the cliffs ringing the island, so that it fills almost entirely with seawater every high tide. In this claustrophobic environment, Gould describes his cell-mate. The King, Gould tells us, is a silent, majestic figure. The King is, writes Gould: ...a most remarkable man.... His presence is large, inescapable. You can feel him all over you. Sometimes I think of him only as a creeping slime rising up the walls... He grows daily not only in my estimation, but also, it has to be admitted, in his very being, becoming more & more corpulent.... (49-50) Slowly, it becomes apparent to the reader that Gould’s majestic cellmate is in fact, a corpse. This grotesque body bobs around the waterfilled cell every high tide, slowly becoming more bloated, and more recently, notes Gould, developing a greenish tinge. In this vignette, the scene is effectively set for what will be the ongoing fixation on physical environment throughout the novel. This is not a conventionally picturesque understanding of environment but one that’s much more immediately tangible, in say, the slime of a decomposing, waterlogged corpse.

It is this fascination with the physical that I think makes Gould’s Book of Fish such an interesting text to read in an ecological light. This is a very earthy novel, full of often hyperbolic references to physical experience—by turns bawdy, scatological, and violent. . Characters are eaten by giant pigs and digested as giant pig turds, they are gruesomely disembowelled, they engage in sex acts with bottles of cologne. In this attention to the physical lies the ecological insight of the novel. As an embodied subject, Gould is all too aware of his environment.

Through their shared physicality, the natural world and the realm of the human are shown to be, in this text, inextricable. This is an ecological message of the most basic order: Gould is materially constituted, and as such has an affinity with the whole of the material world. The focus on the disgusting and

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference the bawdy elements of Gould’s physical experience, which pervade the novel, sets this out in striking terms.

Gould becomes more aware of this connectedness to the whole physical world through the fish paintings that he creates. This act of art involves him sitting for hours at a time with each expiring fishy subject, studying them up close as he commits them to paper. It is a process by which he reaches what might be called the novel’s ethic of connectedness, which Gould records as a rapturous epiphany: Because of my newfound proximity to what hitherto had been little more than stench wrapped in slime & scale, I began to dream that there was nothing in the extraordinary universe opening up in front of me, not a man or woman, not a plant or tree, not a bird or fish, to which I might be allowed to continue remaining indifferent. (258) And indeed, Gould does not remain indifferent to these fish. His felt affinity for them is not abstract but bodily. In one of the novel’s many surreal moments, Gould metamorphoses into a weedy seadragon. The “whole extraordinary universe” is so radically connected in Gould’s Book of Fish that such boundaries between beings constantly shift.

As I see it, Flanagan’s novel is ecologically important precisely for its surreality, for its focus on the bawdy and disgusting elements of the physical world at the expense of depicting the ancient rainforests. This is a text which challenges the distinction between the realm of the human and the realm of nature. Humans are always already involved in the world around them, and this is the powerful ecological message of the book. Historically, it has been artforms such as nature photography, which idealise what is beautiful and pristine in nature, that have been aligned with Tasmanian environmentalism. While such artforms have an important place within the environmental movement, Flanagan’s novel offers an important difference of perspective.

There is no idyllic, untouched wilderness space in this text and yet the environment, more broadly conceived, is everywhere, interacting with human development and even merging the two together in surreal metamorphoses. This novel emphasises the connections between the human and the surrounding world, in a way that shows us to be inextricably tied to the fate of this world.

When all’s said and done, Gould’s Book of Fish is just a book—a wildly imaginative, moving, unsummarisable story about convicts who turn into fish, among many other things. It’s not going to change the world in the same way as, say, emissions reductions targets or campaigns against rainforest

clearfelling might. What it does do is inspire the imagination, provide another means of thinking through the question of human’s relationship to the world around them. In the history of the Tasmanian environmental movement, the imaginative role played by art has been an important one. In the surreal and playful world of Gould’s Book of Fish, as I have argued, Richard Flanagan continues this tradition.

References

1. Bonyhady, Tim. “Lake Pedder: 1971.” Island 56 (1993): 29-34. Print.

2. Flanagan, Richard, Gould’s Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish. Sydney: Picador, 2001. Print.

3. Hutton, Drew, and Libby Connors. A History of the Australian Environment Movement. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999. Print.

4. “Wilderness Areas.”

DiscoverTasmania.com.

Tourism Tasmania, 2010. Web. 7 Aug 2010.

5. Wildness. Dir. Scott Millward. Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2003. Videocassette.

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A Chinese Verbal Inhibitory Control Task with Potential Clinical Application Ka-Man Chong and Sam-Po Law University of Hong Kong

Abstract Recent findings suggested a relationship between inhibitory control and language production in the aspect of language treatment outcomes (Yeung, Law, & Yau, 2009). The present study aimed at developing a modified version of the classic Stroop task, a verbal inhibitory control task without the requirement of verbal output, applicable to those with language and speech production problem i.e. aphasic individuals.

Normative data were collected from 50 Cantonese-speaking Chinese in the classic and modified Stroop tasks and interference effects were found. The interference effects in the modified Stroop task confirmed an element of inhibition which could be considered as related to “resistance to distractor interference”, and highlighted the potential clinical application of the task. In addition, the absence of a significant correlation in the interference effect size between the current modified Stroop task and the classic Stroop task was consistent with and indeed predicted by the account of different inhibitions-related functions.

Introduction

Executive functions can be defined as mental functions which organize, regulate and execute purposive behaviors enabling humans to solve problem for successful living (Hamilton & Martin, 2007). One of the critical components of executive processes is inhibition, a term defined by the ability to suppress interfering or irrelevant information (Friedman & Miyake, 2004; MacLeod, 2005). Inhibitory control process has long been an essential explanatory element in mental functions like attention and working memory (Macleod, 1991).

Recently, Hamilton and Martin (2007) showed that the inhibitory control deficits might underlie short-term memory impairment. Disruption to inhibition might account for language production deficits. The findings of Yeung, Law, and Yau (2009) converged on the close relationship between inhibitory control and language production in the aspect of language treatment outcomes. Yeung et al. showed an adverse effect of inhibitory control deficits on the efficacy of a word retrieval treatment for anomic individuals based on their performance on a nonverbal inhibitory control task, i.e. the Attention Network Test (ANT).

Meanwhile, Hamilton and Martin (2005a) reported a dissociation between the performance in verbal and non-verbal inhibitory control tasks in a stroke patient with semantic short-term memory deficits. This indicated the differentiation of components of inhibition into verbal and non-verbal modalities. As the findings in Yeung et al. was based only on the results of a nonverbal inhibitory control task, further investigation in aphasic individuals’ verbal inhibitory control abilities, and the relationship between these abilities and the language treatment outcome should be addressed.

Therefore, the development of verbal inhibitory control tasks is of great clinical significance.

The Stroop task (Stroop, 1935) has been widely used in research on working memory and attention (MacLeod, 1991). In the classic Stroop task, participants have to name the ink color of a written color word. Typically, naming the ink color of the color word in the incongruent condition (e.g. saying ‘green’ in response to the written word “RED” presented in green) is less accurate and slower than naming the ink color of a series of Xs or a neutral word in the control condition. This is known as the Stroop interference. In contrast, color naming is faster in the congruent condition (e.g. saying ‘green’ to the written word “GREEN” presented in green) than in the control condition. This is known as the Stroop facilitation.

Since 1965, more than 2,000 studies have examined the Stroop task and different theoretical approaches have tried to explain Stroop interference (MacLeod, 1991). Cohen, Dunbar, and McClelland (1990) proposed the relative-pathway-strength account in the framework of parallel distributed processing (PDP), which introduced inhibition as the explanatory element. In their model, the process in the reading pathway contributes inhibitory input to the response unit which increases the time required to accumulate enough activation from the color naming pathway to exceed a threshold for a response, resulting in interference.

On the contrary, Macleod, Dodd, Sheard, Wilson, and Bibi (2003) argued that inhibition was unnecessary in the Stroop task and they suggested that inhibitory links in the Cohen et al.’s (1990) PDP model might not be necessary to explain the Stroop effect. They instead argued for Roelofs’s (2003) account based on the WEAVER ++ model

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference of word production. Although Macleod et al.

(2003) suggested that Roelofs’s account was free of inhibition, according to Hamilton and Martin (2005b), the production rule -- “If the goal is to say the name of the color, and input is received from a word, THEN block out the word input” (Roelofs, 2003, p.

101), could reasonably be regarded as inhibition.

Since then, inhibition has been the core element in different accounts for the Stroop effect; as such, the Stroop task is considered a verbal inhibitory control task. The task is available in Cantonese (Lee, Yuen & Chan, 2002) and is the only verbal inhibitory control task used in Hong Kong. However, the task may not be administered to those with language and speech production problems, i.e. aphasic and dysarthic speakers. The speech and language deficits restrict one’s ability in participating in task requiring oral responses. The lack of suitable assessment of verbal inhibitory for this population has motivated the current study. It involved a modification of the response modality of the classic Stroop task from oral to covert responses.

Given the potential significance of inhibitory control in language rehabilitation (Yeung et al., 2009), it is desirable to include a verbal inhibitory control task as part of language assessment, and its score may provide valuable information for designing language rehabilitation programmes for aphasic individuals.

For any modified version of the classic Stroop task, a significant correlation between the conflict effects in response time in the classic Stroop task and those of the modified test can be taken as an indicator of external validity. In the present modified Stroop task, a spoken color name is presented simultaneously with a written word in each trial, and the participant has to decide if the former matches the color of the written word by pressing a button. Different from the classic Stroop task, an auditory signal is involved and a spoken word-color matching is required. Compared to the classic Stroop task, both tasks involved inhibition of distraction from the written word. On this basis, it was predicted that the conflict effect in the modified Stroop task would be correlated with that in the classic Stroop task.

In summary, the purpose of this study was to develop a version of the Stroop task without requiring oral responses for Chinese speakers.

Normative data were collected to investigate if the Stroop interference effect was present. The validity of the modified Stroop task was also investigated by correlating the size of the conflict effect in the modified Stroop task with the classic Stroop task.

Method

Participants

Fifty undergraduates (25 males and 25 females) aged from 19 to 25 from local universities in Hong Kong participated in the study. All participants were native speakers of Cantonese without a history of color blindness, brain injury and hearing impairment.

Materials and Design

Classic Stroop task. The stimuli used in the present computerized version were Chinese characters related to the colors 紅 red, 黃 yellow, 藍 blue and 綠 green, and unrelated characters including 問 ask, 英 outstanding, 走 go and 生 birth, appearing in red, yellow, blue or green. The unrelated characters acted as the neutral words and were chosen from a database of high frequency Chinese words at a primary two reading level. The whole task consisted of 104 trials in three conditions (36 congruent, 36 incongruent and 32 neutral trials). The example trials of each condition were illustrated in figure 1.

Modified Stroop task. The auditory stimuli, / huŋ4/ red, /wɔŋ4/ yellow, /lam4/ blue, and /luk9/ green, were spoken by a native Cantonese female speaker. The written word stimuli were the same as the classic Stroop task except for the neutral Chinese characters. Only 問 ask and 英 outstanding were included chosen randomly from the neutral words used in the classic Stroop task. The modified task consisted of 144 trials in six conditions with 24 trials each. The example trials of each condition were illustrated in figure 2.

Procedure

The classic and modified Stroop tasks were completed in a single session. All participants were individually tested in a sound-attenuated room.

In both tasks, an E-prime programme presented the written stimuli on a Fujitsu-brand laptop color screen.

Classic Stroop task. The participant was seated in front of the screen and a microphone was connected to a voice key to collect vocal latency between stimulus onset and response onset. The participants were asked to verbally name the color of the word as accurately and quickly as possible. The 104 trials were presented in different randomized orders across participants. Each participant’s response was charted by the experimenter for accuracy.

Modified Stroop task. The participant was seated in front of the screen and earphones were worn for receiving the auditory stimuli. A response box was connected to the laptop to collect latency and accuracy data. On each trial, a spoken color name was presented simultaneously with a written color word. The participants were asked to decide if the auditory stimulus matched the color of the written

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Figure 1. Example trials of experimental conditions in the classic Stroop task

word stimulus and respond by pressing either the “Yes” or “No” key on the response box as accurately and quickly as possible. Two experimental blocks were executed. In each blocks, 12 trials of each conditions were included with a total of 72 trials.

The trials in each block were presented in different randomized orders across participants.

Data Analysis

Response latencies and error rates of both the classic and modified Stroop tasks were submitted to a by-subject and by-item analysis of variance (ANOVA) with experimental conditions as the main factor. The one-way repeated ANOVA test with the Geisser-Greenhouse correction and one-way ANOVA test were used in by-subject and by-item analyses, respectively. Post hoc tests with adjustment for multiple comparisons using the Bonferroni method were done between conditions in the two tasks to test for the interference and facilitation effects.

Results

Classic Stroop Task

Response latency. Incorrect responses including wrong response words, trigger of the voice key by a non-speech sound, and failures to respond within the designated 3000 msec interval after the target presentation were excluded from data analysis. Group means of the response latency were calculated across the trimmed-mean latencies of each participant in each condition. Any trial that deviated from the participant’s mean response time in a particular condition by more than three standard deviations was also eliminated; as a consequence, 1.5% of data were removed.

Participants’ mean response times in the three experimental conditions are presented in Table 1. A significant main effect of congruency was revealed in by-subject, F1 (1.479, 72.485) = 200.16, ηp2 = .803, p < .001, and by-item analyses, F2 (2, 101) = 293.97, ηp2 = .853, p < .001, respectively.

Interference effects: The mean difference between incongruent and neutral trials was statistically significant both by-subject, p <.001, and by-item, p <.001, indicating that responses in incongruent trials were slower with an interference of 124 msec.

Facilitation effects: The mean difference between congruent and neutral trials was statistically significant both by-subject, p <.001, and by-item, p <.001, showing that responses in congruent trials were faster with a facilitation of 48 msec.

Error rate. Participants’ mean error rates in the three conditions are given in Table 1. The error rate averaged 3%. A significant main effect of congruency was revealed, F1 (1.466, 71.827) = 41.59, ηp2 = .459, p < .001 by-subject, and F2 (2,101) = 39.71, ηp2 = .440, p < .001 by-item. Only the mean difference between incongruent and neutral trials was statistically significant both by-subject, p <.001, and by-item, p <.001, demonstrating that responses in incongruent trials were less accurate than on neutral trials.

Modified Stroop Task

Response latency. Incorrect responses were excluded from data analysis. Group means of the response latency were calculated in the same way as the classic Stroop task. As a result, 1.25% of data were removed.

The mean response times by the six experimental conditions are presented in Table 2. A significant main effect was revealed in by-subject, F1 (3.329, 156.442) = 97.722, ηp2 = .675, p < .001, and byitem analyses, F2 (5, 138) = 81.487, ηp2 = .747, p < .001.

Interference effects: Significant interference effects were assessed using relevant neutral trials as the baselines. Responses in the positive different character condition were significantly slower than positive neutral character trials with an interference of 81 msec both by-subject, p < .001, and by-item, p < .001. Responses in negative same character trials were significantly slower than negative neutral character trials with an interference of 57 msec in by-subject, p <.001, and by-item, p <.001. Responses in negative

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference

Figure 2. Example trials of experimental conditions in the modified Stroop task

different character trials were significantly slower than negative neutral character trials with an interference of 21 msec in the by-subject analysis, p = .048, but not by-item, p = .377.

Facilitation effects: The mean difference between positive same character trials and positive neutral character trials was significant in the by-subject analysis, p < .001 but not by-item, p = .054, indicating responses in positive same character trials were significantly faster with a facilitation of 31 msec. (See Appendix A for detailed post hoc results for all comparisons.)

Error rate. Participantsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; mean error rates are presented in Table 2. The error rate averaged 4% for participants. A significant main effect was revealed in the by-subject, F1 (2.41, 118.088) = 68.922, Ρp2 = .584, p < .001, and by-item analyses, F2 (5,138) = 42.427, Ρp2 = .606, p < .001. For the three contrasts that yielded significant interferences in response latency, except the contrast between negative different character and negative neutral character trials, showed significant mean differences in error rate. (See Appendix B for detailed post hoc results in all comparisons.)

Validation of the Modified Stroop Task

Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated between the significant interference effects in the modified Stroop task using neutral trials as the baselines and the Stroop interference in the classic one, i.e. difference in mean response time between the incongruent and neutral conditions. None of the correlations were significant, all p > .05.

Summary of Findings

Significant interference and facilitation effects were found in the classic Stroop task. In the modified Stroop task, interference effects on response latency were found for the positive different, negative-same and negative-different character conditions, and a facilitation effect was found for the positive same character condition, in comparison with the control conditions. The interference effects found in the modified Stroop task confirmed an element of inhibition in the task. Nevertheless, there was an absence of a relationship in interference effect size between the two tasks.

Discussion

Stroop Interference in the Classic Stroop Task

A significant Stroop interference was found in the incongruent condition as in previous studies of the Stroop task (e.g. Glaser and Glaser, 1982; Kane & Engle, 2003). In the task, the robust habitual word reading process must be suppressed with the goal maintenance of color naming. Considering different stages of information processing, the task involves inhibition at the output level. The phonological representations derived from color naming and word reading, respectively, compete with each other. The resolution of competition is reflected in the longer latency in the incongruent condition.

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Interference Effects in the Modified Stroop Task

Significant interference effects were found in the positive different, negative same and negative different character conditions using relevant neutral conditions as baselines. In these conditions, suppression of both semantic and phonological information of the written stimuli is of prerequisite to give correct judgment on the compatibility of the spoken color name and the color of the written stimulus. For instance, in a positive different character trial with the spoken color name /huŋ4/ red presented with the written word 綠 green appearing in red color, one is required to ignore both the phonological form / luk9/ green and the semantic information “green color” of the written word 綠. Similar suppression is proposed in the negative same character and negative different character trials. The process of compatibility judgment occurs once the information has entered the working memory and it is proposed to take place in the intermediate perceptual stage, as opposed to the final verbal output stage.

Insignificant Correlation between the Classic and Modified Stroop Tasks

Although interference effects were found in both the classic and modified Stroop tasks, there was an absence of correlation in interference effect sizes between the two.

One explanation for the finding is based on the taxonomy of conceptually distinct inhibitionrelated processes suggested by Friedman and Miyake (2004). The insignificant correlation may be taken to indicate that the inhibitory components underlying the classic and modified Stroop tasks are different and separable. As mentioned before, the classic Stroop task involves the suppression of the robust habitual word reading process that makes the inhibitory-related process reasonably be regarded as the Prepotent Response Inhibition, which is defined as “the ability to deliberately suppress dominant, automatic, or prepotent responses” (Friedman & Miyake, 2004, p.104). While the present modified task does not involve any habitual or well-trained ability such as word reading, but rather the suppression of the phonological and semantic information of the written word, namely resistance to distractor interference, defined as “the ability to resist or resolve interference from information in the external environment that is irrelevant to the task at hand” (Friedman & Miyake, p.104). Seen in this light, the present insignificant correlation is consistent with the view of separable inhibition-related processes.

The conceptual distinctions of inhibitionrelated functions correspond roughly to different stages of information processing. The resistance to distractor interference seems to be referring to the initial perceptual input stage of processing that distractor information must be suppressed in order to select target information while the prepotent response inhibition refers to a later output stage of

processing where the relevant response must be selected vis-a-vis suppression of irrelevant response (Friedman & Miyake, 2004). The modified Stroop task taps the suppression of distraction during matching process between the auditory signal and color of the written word at the input processing stage. On the other hand, in the classic Stroop task the response competition between the phonological representations of the color name and written word is at the output stage. Therefore, the different processing stages that the two tasks tap may also account for the insignificant relationship between their interference effects.

Clinical Implications

Although a lack of relationship was found between the classic and modified Stroop tasks, this did not diminish the significance and the potential clinical application of the present modified Stroop task. This task is believed to tap one’s verbal inhibitory ability to suppress phonological and semantic interference from a written word. To evaluate the clinical applicability of the present modified Stroop task, future recruitment of anomic individuals as participants is necessary. Besides, to further support its clinical application, similar to the study of Yeung et al. (2009), the present modified task may be involved in the initial assessment of an anomic treatment. This aims to investigate if there is a unique correspondence between the anomic individuals’ performance on the present modified Stroop task and the treatment outcome.

Limitations of Present Study and Further Research

While the insignificant correlation of the present finding may be taken to support the account of separable inhibition-related functions, it is incompatible with the results and conclusions in Friedman and Miyake (2004). In that study, a significant correlation between resistance to distractor interference and prepotent response inhibition was found using Pearson correlation (.18). However, it is noted that the correlation coefficient was low and was based on a rather large sample size (220 participants). One may question whether the present study would obtain the same significant finding with a larger sample size.

Conclusion

Significant interference effects were found in the modified Stroop task. It is argued that the task involves the inhibitory function of resistance to distractor interference. Hence, it has potentially important clinical application for assessing verbal inhibitory control functions of individuals with speech and language disorders. Future studies following the suggestions outlined above will provide a more comprehensive understanding of verbal inhibitory control and its implications for language rehabilitation.

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference References

1. Cohen, J., Dunbar, K., & McClelland, J. (1990).

On the control of automatic processes: A parallel distributed processing account of the Stroop effect. Psychological Review, 97, 332-361 2. Friedman, N. P., & Miyake, A. (2004). The relations among inhibition and interference control functions: A latent-variable analysis. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133, 101-135 3. Glaser, M. O., & Glaser, W. R. (1982). Time course analysis of Stroop phenomenon. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 8, 875-894 4. Hamilton, A. C. & Martin, R. C. (2005a).

Dissociations among tasks involving inhibition: A single-case study. Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience, 5, 1-13 5. Hamilton, A. C. & Martin, R. C. (2007). Proactive interference in a semantic short-term memory deficit: role of semantic and phonological relatedness. Cortex, 43, 112-123 6. Kane, M. J. & Engle, R. W. (2003). Workingmemory capacity and the control of attention: The contributions of goal neglect, response competition and task set to Stroop interference.

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 132, 4770 7. Law, S.-P. (2008). Development of verbal and nonverbal inhibitory control tasks for Chinese adult speakers. CRCG Seed Funding for Basic Research, University of Hong Kong.

8. Lee, T. M. C., Yuen, K. S. L., & Chan, C. C. H. (2002). Normative data for neuropsychological measures of fluency, attention, and memory measures for Hong Kong Chinese. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 24, 615632 9. MacLeod, C. M. (1991). Half a century of research on the Stroop effect: An integrative review.

Psychological Bulletin, 109, 163-203 10. MacLeod, C. M., Dodd, M. D., Sheard, E. D., Wilson, D. E., & Bibi, U. (2003). In opposition to inhibition. In B. H. Ross (Ed.), The Psychology of Learning and Motivation (vol. 43, pp. 163-214). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

11. MacLeod, C. M. (2005). The concept of inhibition in cognition. In D.S. Gorfein & C. M. MacLeod (Eds.), Inhibition in Cognition (pp.

3-23). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association 12. Roelofs, A. (2003). Goal-referenced selection of verbal action: Modeling attentional control in the Stroop task. Psychological Review, 110, 88-125 13. Stroop, J. R. (1935). Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 18, 643-662 14. Yeung, O., Law, S.-P., & Yau, M. (2009). Treatment generalization and executive control processes: Preliminart data from Chinese anomic individuals. International Journal of Language and communication Disorders, iFirst Article, 1-11

Acknowledgments

The first author would like to express her sincere thanks to her family, friends and fellow colleagues, especially Carole, Sabrina, Cynthia and Moria for their inspiration and endless support during subject recruitment and data collection.

Thanks also extend to all participants for their help and co-operation during data collection.

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Is Trust a Necessity?

A Case Study of Group Lending Within Microfinance in the Mbarara District, Uganda Karin Göransson and Anna Östergren Lund University

Abstract One reason for poverty is that many people are denied access to financial markets. A new alternative way of providing credit to people living in a vulnerable economic situation is microfinance. Microfinance has often been a success story and one explanation has often been the impact of social capital.

This thesis investigates the relationship between social capital and microfinance. Do individuals and groups with a higher social capital perform better in the context of microfinance; do they receive more loans as implied in theory? The aim is to review the impact of the different dimensions and types of social capital on the success of microfinance. To evaluate this, our study was conducted in the Mbarara district in the southern part of Uganda, in cooperation with The Foundation for International Community Assistance (FINCA). To gather the information we attended 34 group meetings where three members in each group answered our questionnaire. To be able to use the information we use econometric methods.

The results of this study make it hard to draw any general conclusions about the impact of social capital. They indicate that individuals with relatively lower trust are better off in terms of received loans.

Higher education and collective action also have a positive impact on the number of loans a participant receives. In terms of number of received loans, it is better to be a man.

Introduction

The reality that many of the world´s peoples face today is that they are trapped in a vicious circle of poverty. Poverty is characterized by the failure of people, households or entire societies to have sufficient resources to assure their basic requirement. Of course this is not a desirable state and people wish to escape from their vulnerable living situation. Even though people want and try to escape poverty, they often lack access to the necessary resources to manage this.

One of the necessary resources that poor people lack access to is financial services. Access to credit could make it possible even for the poor to improve their small business, living standards and in the long run break the vicious circle of poverty.

Clearly, there is a need for an alternative way for poor people to get access to credit. One possible solution came in 1976 when Grameen Bank was founded in Bangladesh. This new way of giving poor people access to credit was called microfinance.

Microfinance solves the problem of lack of collateral and is therefore widely accepted for its efficient way of supplying credit for the poor.

Microfinance has been rather successful and the number of microfinance institutions has increased a lot, especially in the developing world. It makes you ask the question: What makes microfinance work? Academic research in the area of microfinance is relatively new. Mainstream research often concludes that social capital contributes to the success

of microfinance.1 The presence of social capital facilitates cooperation among individuals to achieve socially optimal goals and could therefore explain why microfinance works.

We find the connection between microfinance and social capital very interesting, partly due to the fact that social capital is very complex and has different dimensions. The purpose of our research was therefore to evaluate, through econometrics methods, the impact of social capital on the designs of the group loans given through microfinance. Since social capital is multidimensional it is important to examine the relationship between the different dimensions and microfinance.

To evaluate if social capital has an impact on microfinance, this research focuses on two questions: 1 See for example the following sources for further information about recent research.

Cassar, Alessandra, Crowley, Luke and Wydick, Bruce.

(2007) The effect of social capital on group loan repayment: evidence from field experiments The Economic Journal, 117 (February), Blackwell publishing, F85-F106.

Gomez, Rafael and Santos Eric. (2001). Membership Has Its Privileges: The Effect of Social Capital and Neighborhood Characteristics on the Earnings of Microfinance Canadian Journal of Economics, vol 34, nr 4, Blackwell Publishing, p. 943-966 Olomola, Ade S. (2002) Social capital, microfinance group performance and poverty implications in Nigeria. Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research (NISER) Ibadan

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference • •

Do the different dimensions of social capital have any impact on the number of loans received?

Do the different types of social capital, bonding, bridging and linking social capital have an impact on the number of loans received?

To be able to conduct our study we collaborated with a microfinance institution; The Foundation for International Community Assistance (FINCA).

Uganda was the first country in Africa where the organization started Village Banking groups. Today the organization is one of the largest microfinance institutions in the country2 and this is the reason why we have chosen Uganda for our study, together with the widespread poverty.

Theoretical Framework

Our theoretical framework consists of three parts, each of them relevant for the subject of this research.

Credit

Although poor people demand credit, they still lack access to it.3 This indicates that there must be some kind of market failure and the answer is found in the financial market. The failure is characterized by information asymmetry,4 lack of collateral, high interest rates and lack of portfolio diversification.5

Microfinance

Due to the problems stated above, there is a need of a new, alternative way for poor people to borrow. One popular new way is called microfinance and it is financial services directed towards poor people.6 Microfinance brings many benefits for the poor compared to loans on the other types of credit markets because it solves some of the problems that exist on the other markets. The main advantage of microfinance is the possibility of receiving a group based loan where members work as each other’s collateral. The group can loan a larger amount which is then repaid frequently in small sums and therefore it is possible even for poor borrowers to repay their loans. If the group, as a whole, shows a good repayment schedule, it can get access to larger repeated loans and other financial possibilities.7 Microfinance institutions solve the problem of low-potential profitability when they charge market interest rates.8 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

FINCA 2010 Robinson 2001 p. 9.

Ray 1998 p. 53 Islam 2007 p. 67-74 Ledgerwood 1999 p.1 Arun et al 2009 p. 13 Islam 2007 p. 73f

The problem with portfolio diversification is partly solved by microfinance, due to the fact that the group members engage in different types of activities. Still, the problem of unexpected situations, for example natural disasters, remains. Microfinance also contributes to portfolio diversification when each borrower is responsible for every member’s debt. If one member fails to pay the other members are obligated to pay his debt and therefore the risk for the lender will be lower since the risk is spread out among many individuals.9

Social Capital

Traditional capital has been defined as the contribution to productive activity made by investment in physical capital and human capital.10 This view of capital has changed and a new type of capital, social capital, is now considered as having an enormous impact on economic development, especially in developing economies.11 Social capital is a very complex concept with many definitions.

Therefore it is hard to recognize any true meaning of social capital and many definitions of the concept are used. With regard to the purpose of our study we use the World Bank description of social capital that gives a broad and general picture of the concept: Social capital refers to the institutions, relationships, and norms that shape the quality and quantity of a society´s social interactions.

Increasing evidence shows that social cohesion is critical for societies to prosper economically and for development to be sustainable. Social capital is not just the sum of the institutions which underpin a society- it is the glue that holds them together.12 Social capital exists at all levels of the society; national level, community level and on an individual level.13 As well as different levels, different dimensions and types of social capital can be identified. The World Bank identifies five dimensions of social capital; group and network, trust, collective action, social inclusion and information and communication.14 Bonding, bridging and linking social capital are different types of social capital.15

The Impact of Social Capital on Microfinance

Social capital affects the welfare of everyone in a society but it is especially beneficial for the poor because it can work as a substitute for human and physical capital. Therefore social capital creates 9 Ibid p. 74 10 Dolšak & Ostrom 2003 p. 275 11 Castiglione, Van Deth & Wolleb 2008 p. 373 12 World Bank 1 2009 13 Gomez & Santos 2001 p. 946 14 World bank 2 2009 15 Muriisa 2009 p.38-40

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Table 1. The definitions of the variables and their expected impact

economic avenues for poor people and helps communities to grow economically.16 In general social capital has a big influence on the economy especially when the market is failing in some way.17 In societies that lack a sufficient formal safety net, relations to people in the close environment could work as a substitute for this.18 It is important though to be aware that social capital can be a hindrance to economic development when group interests are not in line with society’s overall interest.19 Social capital appears to have an impact on actors in the society and society at large.

For the purpose of our research it is interesting to distinguish the impact on the outcome of microfinance. Social capital between groups helps to mobilize resources such as increasing access to more formal credit systems, for example microfinance programs,20 it also plays an important role for the outcome. Castiglione et al states that the connection between local social networks that consist of associates, who trust each other, has a major impact on the success of microfinance. These connections have been an important channel through which an 16 17 18 19 20

World Bank 3 2009 Castiglione, Van Deth & Wolleb 2008 p. 375 World Bank 3 2009 Castiglione, Van Deth & Wolleb 2008 p. 374 World Bank 5 2009

economy could reduce the impact of the failure of the financial market and make the economy more efficient, especially in developing countries.21 Information sharing and collective actions that exist between members of a network have many positive outcomes. Foremost social capital helps to solve the problem with information asymmetry and also contributes to lower the transaction costs.

Trust between parties that are interacting makes a third supervising party unnecessary and therefore the transaction costs are declining. Eventually the decreased transaction costs and the level of trust lead to aggregate benefits.22 Through the horizontal relationship between group members, group lending can solve the problem of information asymmetry. When they work as a group, the connections between the members contribute to overcome the problem of hidden information but also problems of collective repayment through peer pressure.23 Dolšak and Ostrom argue that adverse selection and moral hazard can be avoided when people involved in microcredit projects can choose who to cooperate with. They then choose people that are trustworthy and have a personal knowledge 21 Castiglione, Van Deth & Wolleb 2008 p. 468 22 Hjøllund & Tinggard Svendsen 2000 p. 3 23 Castiglione, Van Deth & Wolleb 2008 p. 376

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Figure 1. Conducted from the empirical material, gathered in cooperation with FINCA

about. This selection of group members promotes group homogeneity when it comes to land holding, gender and income. Group homogeneity also promotes repayment of the loans, when repayments are encouraged because the group members are required to act together.24

Method

Due to the purpose our research we have chosen to use a quantitative method consisting of a questionnaire with its questions on an individual level. The questionnaire is based on standard questions for measuring social capital.25 To gather the data, we took part in 34 microfinance group meetings in cooperation with FINCA Mbarara where we received a total of 102 individual responses. The individuals were randomly selected at the meetings, and often selected by the field officers.

To be able to analyze the questionnaires we use statistical methods; multiple linear regressions analyzed with the method of ordinary least squares (OLS).

The dependent variable (Y) is set out to be the total number of loans each group in this research’s 24 Dolšak and Ostrom 2003 p. 275 25 The questions are taken from the following sources: Hjøllund, Lene & Tinggard Svendsen, Gert (2000). Social capital. A standard method of measurement. Department of Economics- The Aarhus school of business. Aarhus Holm, Håkan & Nystedt, Paul. (2005). Trust in surveys and games- a matter of money and location?. Department of Economics- Lund University, Lund and the World Bank´s Instrument of the Social Capital Assessment Tool.

sample has received and indicates how successful the specific group is in terms of repayments and efficiency. The independent variables (xki) consist of questions asked in the questionnaire; demographical aspects and the different dimensions of social capital.

The demographic variables are included to describe the sample but also because we think that they have an impact on the dependent variable. The social capital variables were transformed into aggregated variables corresponding to the different dimensions of social capital. All the social capital variables, including the aggregated, were transformed into dummy-variables responding to high and low social capital.

The definitions of the variables and their expected impact can be seen in Table 1.

Every method has its limitations.26 Although the one used in this thesis is not an exception, we consider the chosen method to be appropriate due to the purpose of this thesis.

Results

Figure 1 illustrates a compilation of the dependent variable, i.e. number of loans received on group basis. The base-line for the dependent variable is the year of 2008 and all groups that we met have had an ongoing business since then. The figure tells us about the variation of the dependent variable. 27 26 See for example Lundåsen & Pettersson (2009).

27 Bulikiro, I (2009)

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Table 2. Shows the results from regression 1

The first relationship that we test, Equation 1, is the impact of demographic variables and the different dimensions of social capital on the number of loans received.28

Equation 1:

Number of received loans= β + β1Gender + β2Age + β3Education + β4Number of years in business + β 5Income per capita + β 6Trust + β7Networks + β8Social inclusion + β9Civic action + β10Information and Communication + ε From the beginning the sample size was set to 102 individuals but after processing the data a great loss appeared. As seen in the table above the sample size was reduced to 48 observations.

The loss appeared because problems arose about the coding of some of the variables corresponding to social capital. All the individuals that once or more answered “I don´t know” and “Hard to answer” were excluded from the material. This because all the variables are coded into dummy variables 28 To be able to use the method of ordinary lest squares (OLS) the data have to fulfill the assumptions of the multiple linear regression model (see for example Gujarati 2006 p. 212f). In our case all the assumptions are successfully fulfilled and the method can therefore be seen as appropriate.

responding to high or low social capital and we cannot say that this answering alternative is either high or low social capital. The sample size is still appropriate though.29 The regression shows that individuals with higher education receive on average two more loans than the study’s participants with a relative lower education. Individuals with low trust, compared to individuals with high trust, receive on average five more loans. Finally, individuals with high collective action receive on average one more loan compared to participants with low collective action.30 The following equation is used for the second analysis:

Equation 2:

Number of received loans= β + β1Gender + β2Age + β3Education + β4Number of years in business + β 5Income per capita + β 6Bonding social capital + β7Bridging social capital + β8Linking social capital+ ε Men receive on average almost three more loans than women, individuals with a higher education level receive on average one more loan than individuals with a lower education level and 29 See for example Westerlund 2005 p. 59 30 The variables are significant at α=0.1.

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference

Table 3. Shows the results from regression 2

individuals with low bridging social capital receive on average one more loan than participants with high bridging social capital.

Analysis

In the first regression the variable corresponding to education is significant. The explanation why education has a positive impact on the success of microfinance could possibly be found in the advantages that follow with a higher education. With a higher education one can assume that you have more knowledge and information about how the society works and how parties interact with each other and in the long run it affects their participation on a market.

The result that lower trust is positive, in relation to the number of received loans, was quite unexpected since it contradicts the mainstream theory on the subject. The answer could perhaps be found in the relationship between FINCA and the different banking groups. The groups may have low trust in other people in the society but higher trust in an external enforcer, in this case FINCA. FINCA works as an external enforcer that makes the group work and makes sure that the repayments are made.

Although there might be individuals that do not trust the members of their group, they might be willing to take the risk of other members not being

honest and who fail to pay back their loans because there are no other alternative ways of receiving credit than through a microfinance institution.

The second significant variable corresponding to social capital is collective action. Within microfinance institutions, groups need to collaborate to achieve common goals. Even if all the members do not trust each other, they have to collaborate because they have a common goal they all want to reach.

As in the previous regression the education variable, as well as the variables of gender and bridging social capital, were significant in the second regression.

The reason why it is more beneficial to be a man if you want to receive more loans could be explained by their superior position in the Ugandan society. A man is often the head of the household, even in financial terms. In relation to womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s economic position in the household (they might not even have access to their own income) a man is often favored since he is often in charge of the householdâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s gathered income. Following this reasoning, it might be easier for a man to have better repayment documentation and therefore qualify for additional loans.

Another possible situation could be that even if it is the women that are involved in microfinance it is in reality their husbands that decide over

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the repayment. If the husband is in control of the household’s finances and if he does not have any incentives to see that the loans are replayed, maybe the wife will not have access to money to repay her loans.

Members that have lower bridging social capital receive more loans than those with a relative higher bridging social capital (trust in people outside your close surrounding but also in people in the same economic situation as you). One explanation could therefore be that individuals have a low bridging social capital because it is not profitable to trust these people, since they have very little to offer you. Hypothetically, with a high bridging social capital responsibility might follow. Personal contacts are very important in many developing countries and sometimes you must rely on people outside your our close surrounding for economic assistance. These ties work in the other direction as well; if you have a high bridging social capital you might have a larger amount of people that rely on your assistance. Therefore you sometimes have to share your assets more often and in the long run you might have less capability to repay your loans.

Conclusion

The results of the research make it hard to draw any general conclusions about the impact of social capital; it matters in a different way to what mainstream theory suggests. Trust is important for microfinance but individuals receive more loans if they have a lower level of trust. Collective action had a positive impact just as we thought. The other variables in our regression corresponding to the other dimensions of social capital turned out not to be statistically significant and therefore we are not able to draw any conclusions from them.

Bridging social capital has an impact on the number of loans received, although our results contradict mainstream theory when a lower bridging social capital is better in terms of number of loans received. Unfortunately the variables corresponding to bonding and linking social capital turned out not to be statistically significant and therefore it is hard to draw any conclusions from them.

Due to our results suggestions for future research could for example be to focus more on the other aspects of social capital and put this into other contexts than is done today. It would be interesting to analyze whether the negative aspects of social capital actually is present more often than we think when it comes to microfinance.

References

1. Arun, Thankom, Hulme, David, Matin, Imran and Rutherford, Stuart. 2009 Finance for the Poor.

In Hulme, David and Arun, Thankom (2009) Microfinance A reader Routledge, Chippenham. p.

7-16.

2. Castiglione, Dario, Van Deth, Jan W and Wolleb, Gulielmo. 2008. The handbook of social capital, Oxford university press 3. Dolšak, AvNives and Ostrom, Elinor. 2003. The commons in the new millennium: Challenges and adaptation, MIT PRESS 4. Gujarati, Damodar N. (2006). Essentials of Econometrics, Mc Graw Hill, New York 5. Hjøllund, Lene and Gert, Tinggard Svendsen.

2000. Social capital: A standard method of measurement, Department of Economics-The Aarhus school of business, Aarhus 6. Islam, Tazul. 2007. Microcredit and Poverty Alleviation, Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham 7. Ledgerwood, Joanna. 1999. Microfinance handbook: an institutional and financial perspective, The World Bank, Washington D.C. 8. Lundåsen Susanne och Petterson, Thorleif. 2009.

Att mäta tillit – teori och metodprobelm. In Trägårdh, Lars. (et.al.). Tillit i det moderna SverigeDen dumme svensken och andra mysterier, SNS Förlag, Stockholm. p. 112-147 9. Muriisa,Roberts. (2009). The AIDS Pandemic in Uganda – Social Capital and the Role of NGOs in Alleviating the Impact of HIV/AIDS, VDM Verlag 10. Ray, Debraj. 1998. Development economics, Princeton University Press, Princetown 11. Robinson, S. Marguerite. 2001. The Microfinance Revolution Sustainable Finance for the Poor, The World Bank, Washington D.C. 12. Tinggard Svendsen, Gert. 1998. Social capital, economic and transition economies, Department of Economics-The Aarhus School of business 13. Westerlund, Joakim. 2005. Introduktion till ekonometri, Studentlitteratur, Lund

Electronic Sources

14. Cassar, Alessandra, Crowley, Luke and Wydick, Bruce. 2007. The effect of social capital on group loan repayment: evidence from field experiments, The Economic Journal, 117 (February), Blackwell publishing, F85-F106. Available at: < http://ehis. ebscohost.com.ludwig.lub.lu.se/ehost/detail?vid =1&hid=114&sid=a2ff5a79-98a44abf8918fc26d2d 68011%40sessionmgr114&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWh vc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=bth&AN=25751978 > 18 April 2010 15. FINCA, 2010, available at: < http://www. v i l l ag eb a n k i n g.o r g/s it e/c.e rK PI 2 PC IoE/ b.2671211/k.BFD7/Uganda.htm > 9 April 2010

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference 16. Gomez, Rafael and Santos Eric. 2001.

Membership Has Its Privileges: The Effect of Social Capital and Neighborhood Characteristics on the Earnings of Microfinance, Canadian Journal of Economics, vol 34, nr 4, Blackwell Publishing, p. 943-966. Available at: < http://www.jstor.org/ stable/3131932 > 18 April 2010 17. Olomola, Ade S. 2002. Social capital, microfinance group performance and poverty implications in Nigeria, Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research (NISER) Ibadan. Available at: <http://www.csae.ox.ac.uk/conferences/2002UPaGiSSA/papers/Olomola-csae2002.pdf> 18 April 2010.

18. World Bank, Instrument of the Social Capital Assessment Tool.

2009, available at: <http://siteresources.worldbank.org/ I N T S O C I ALC A PI TAL/Re s ou r c e s/S o c i a lCapital-Assessment-Tool--SOCAT-/annex1.pdf> 18 August 2009 19. World Bank 1, 2009, available at: <http://web. worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/ EXTSOCIALDEVELOPMENT/EXTTSOCIAL CAPITAL/0,,contentMDK:20185164~menuPK :418217~pagePK:148956~piPK:216618~theSite PK:401015,00.html> 18 August 2009 20. World Bank 2, 2009, available at: <http://web. worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/ EXTSOCIALDEVELOPMENT/EXTTSCIALCAPI TAL/0,,contentMDK:20461319~menuPK:994404~ pagePK:148956~piPK:216618~theSitePK:401015~i sCURL:Y,00.html> 18 August 2009 21. World Bank 3, 2009, available at: <http://web. worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/ EXTSOCIALDEVELOPMENT/EXTTSOCIALCA PITAL/0,,contentMDK:20185249~isCURL:Y~men uPK:418213~pagePK:148956~piPK:216618~theSit ePK:401015,00.html> 20 August 2009

Interviews

22. Bulikiro, Israel (2009): oral interview 2 December 2009, regional manager of FINCA, Mbarara. Â

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Obesity in Scotland:

A Quantile Regression Approach to Studying the BMI Distribution Kelly Gallacher

University of Glasgow

Abstract Body Mass Index (BMI) is a commonly used population level measure of obesity, calculated as weight in kg divided by squared height in metres. Cross sectional data from the Scottish Health Survey (1995, 1998 and 2003) show that the proportion of men and women age 16-64 in Scotland of all social classes who are described as overweight (BMI>25kg/m2) or obese (BMI>30kg/m2) has increased since 1995. In this paper we model the conditional distribution of the body mass index (BMI) as a function of gender, age and socioeconomic status using quantile regression. This research takes a new look at a well-known problem with the aim of improving the quality of information available. Height and weight measurements were taken from representative samples of the Scottish population during participation in the Scottish Health Survey. These measurements were used to calculate the BMI of participants. Quantile regression modelling shows that the entire BMI distribution is significantly affected by age, gender and social class, and that BMI increased significantly between 1995 and 2003 for all subgroups of the population considered in this study.

The BMI of adults in Scotland is increasing on average. The greatest effects of gender, age and social class are seen among those with the highest BMI. It is the people at the upper end of the BMI distribution whose weight is increasing at the fastest rate over time.

Introduction

Obesity is an increasingly widespread concern, with serious public health and economic consequences worldwide. It was estimated in 2001 that the cost of treating obesity and obesity related diseases in Scotland was approximately ÂŁ171 million[1]. As the number of people in Scotland classed as obese continues to increase, this cost can be expected to rise in the future.

The health of the Scottish population is consistently worse than in England and other western developed countries [2]. Predictions of future levels of obesity in the UK are currently based on English data [3]. It is of interest to gather information on obesity levels in Scotland that could be used for planning interventions relevant to the Scottish population.

Obesity is a risk factor for many health conditions and contributes towards the majority of deaths, particularly in middle and old age, in Scotland. The prevalence of obesity has been rising in many western countries such as England [3], Norway [4] and the USA [5] over the past few decades but until recently no similar information was available for Scotland. The 1995 Scottish Health Survey gathered baseline information, with later surveys (1998, 2003 and annually from 2008) providing data that could be used to monitor changes in obesity levels in Scotland over time.

The Scottish Health Survey, commissioned by the Scottish Office Department of Health (later the Scottish Executive Health Department), aimed

to overcome a lack of knowledge on the general health of the Scottish population and how it is changing over time[2], [6], [7]. It was intended to use the information gathered to estimate the prevalence of particular health conditions in Scotland and certain risk factors associated with these conditions, and also to make comparisons with other national statistics for Scotland and England. A further purpose of the survey was to make a contribution to monitoring progress towards certain health and dietary targets.

BMI is the most commonly used measure of obesity and is defined as weight (kg) divided by squared height (m2). BMI provides the most useful population-level measure of overweight and obesity as it is the same for both sexes and for all ages of adults. However, it should only be considered as a rough guide because it may not correspond to the same degree of fatness in different individuals [8] . For example, BMI is an unsuitable indicator of weight category for children, pregnant women or individuals with high muscle content.

Since 1995, mean BMI has increased for both men and women in Scotland, of age 16-64. Mean BMI for women increased from 25.8 kg/m2 in 1995 to 26.4 kg/m2 in 1998, and to 27.1 kg/m2 in 2003. For men, mean BMI in 2003 was 27.1 kg/m2, compared to 26.2 kg/m2 in 1995 and 26.6 kg/m2 in 1998. Mean BMI for men and women was greater than 25 kg/m 2 every year. Since anyone with a BMI greater than 25 kg/m2 is classed as overweight this suggests that on average, adults in Scotland are overweight.

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Figure 1. Proportion of males and females in each weight category as defined in Table 1.

Figure 1 illustrates the proportions of males and females in each weight category (described in Table 1), for each year in which the Scottish Health Survey was conducted. The proportion of males and females classed as obese or overweight has increased each year, while the proportion classed as being of desirable weight or underweight has decreased each year. The proportion of females classed as obese was greater than the proportion of males classed as obese for each year, but the proportion of males classed as overweight was greater than the proportion of females classed as overweight for each year.

Study Aim

This study examines the changes in BMI according to age, gender, socio-economic status and year in which the Scottish Health Survey was taken in a representative sample of Scottish adults. Due to changes in sampling criteria between the three Scottish Health Surveys, only subjects aged between 16 and 64 years have been included in this study, to allow comparison between years.

This study considers the application of a novel statistical method to existing obesity data, with the aim of improving the quality of information available.

This study does not aim to investigate causes of obesity, or to develop interventions based on the information obtained by applying the quantile regression technique to the data.

Method

The data sets analysed in this study contain data for approximately 18,500 subjects in total.

Height and weight measurements were collected by trained interviewers from participants of the Scottish Health Surveys, during interviews in the homes of participants. These measurements were then used to calculate the BMI of participants.

Participants in the Scottish Health Survey were classified into one of four weight categories, as defined in Table 1.

The 2003 survey defined different cut off points for the underweight and desirable categories

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Table 1: Classification of respondants by BMI

Table 2. Socioeconomic groupings used in the Scottish Health Survey

from those specified above. All analyses in this report have used the categorisation in Table 1.

Social class was based on the Registrar General’s Standard Occupational Classification [2], [6], [7] . Social class was classified as either manual or nonmanual, in keeping with other analyses of Scottish Health Survey Data and to allow comparison with studies based on English data. These categories were formed by combining social classes I, II and III (non-manual) as “non-manual” and classes III (manual), IV and V as “manual”. Social classes I to V are defined in Table 2.

People who were classed as “other” in the survey were removed from the data sets. These people form a non-homogeneous group comprising a mixture of occupations such as being a member of the armed forces, or a full time student. Any comparisons made against this group would contain little valid information and so this group was excluded from the data sets.

It was decided to remove data for a further five subjects from the data set. Data for these subjects included BMI values less than 13. It is unlikely that a human could be alive with such a low BMI level and so it was assumed that these values were due to error in the data collection or entry process.

Quantile Regression

In a standard regression model, the response variable y is some function of predictor variable(s) X and the function is defined for the expected (or average) value of the response y conditional on X, denoted E(y|X) i.e. the average value of the response, given the value(s) of the predictor variable(s). It is also possible to fit regression curves to other parts of the distribution of the response variable. For example, the conditional quantile Qy(τ|X) (τ ∈ [0,1]) is the τth percentile of the distribution of y conditional on the value(s) of X; in other words, 100τ% of the values of y are less than or equal to the specified function of X [9]. Quantile regression allows us to look at specified quantiles of the data to study how

the whole distribution of the response and not just the mean, varies with the explanatory variables [10].

Quantile regression modelling of the data was carried out using R 2.11.11[11] using the ‘Quantreg’ package [12].

Model selection was carried out by first looking at the full model with four way interactions between the predictor variables (gender, social class, year of survey and a smooth term for age). We used a natural cubic B-spline to model age (see Equation 1),

Equation 1: Definition of smooth equation to describe Age in the model

where K=2 is the number of interior knots at age 35 and 49 (the 33rd and 66th percentiles of the age range).

I used a summary of the model to systematically determine which non-significant terms (p>0.05) to remove from the model. The final model is described

by Equation 2:

Equation 2: Final Quartile Regression Model

The final model shows that the conditional quantile (τ) of the BMI distribution, given specified values of the explanatory variables (denoted by the vector X), is a function of Gender, Year, Gender by Social Class interaction, Age and Age by Gender interaction. The inclusion of τ in the model equation shows that the estimated coefficients βy {y: 0,1,2,3,4,5} are not constant across the BMI distribution.

Figure 2 contains plots of the coefficients of the final model for values of τ between 0.05 and 0.95, at intervals of 0.01. The grey shaded areas are 95% confidence bands and the solid black horizontal line shows the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) coefficients as estimated by a standard regression model (i.e. the value of the coefficients when mean BMI is assumed to be the model response). The dashed lines are 95% confidence bands for the OLS coefficients.

The x-axis shows values of τ between 0.05 and 0.95. The coefficient estimated for each value of τ can be read from the y-axis. The plotted points do not lie on a horizontal line and this indicates that not all quantiles can be represented using the 1 The original analyses that formed the basis of this project were carried out in an earlier version of R, but the analysis was reproduced in version 2.11.1 for the 2010 U21 conference, and subsequent report on the research I presented in Melbourne.

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Figure 2. Gender, Social Class and Year coefficients with 95% confidence bands (shaded) for values of Ď&#x201E; (percentiles) between 0.05 and 0.95. Solid lines indicate the value of the coefficient of the mean. Dashed lines are 95% confidence interval for the estimates of the mean coefficient.

same estimated coefficient. This indicates a single coefficient estimate of the mean (as in the standard regression model) would not fully capture the effect of the explanatory variables at the upper and lower ends of the BMI distribution.

The plot for Intercept is the base line against which the other plots can be compared. The plotted points on the Intercept plot are estimates of the BMI distribution for males of manual social class in 1995.

To estimate the BMI of a female of non-manual social class in 1998, simply add the coefficient values from the Year 1998, Gender (Female) and Gender by Social Class (Female Non-Manual) plots, for the specified quantile (Ď&#x201E;), to the value from the Intercept plot. The estimated BMI value of a specified quantile for other combinations of model terms may be calculated in the same way.

Results

Time Trend

There was almost no change in BMI from 1995 to 1998 for people with low BMI, since the 95% confidence interval for the coefficient estimate contains zero. At the upper end of the scale, the increase in BMI from 1998 to 2003 was smaller than the increase from 1995 to 1998 (Figure 2, Year 1998 and Year 2003 coefficients). This could indicate the rate at which BMI is increasing at the upper end of the distribution is slowing down, but data from later years would be required to confirm whether or not this is true.

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Figure 3. BMI by gender: 10th, 50th, and 90th fitted BMI quantiles as a function of age for year 2003

Gender and Social Class Differences

The differences in BMI due to social class are not the same across gender (as indicated by the significant interaction term: Gender by Social Class, Figure 2). Men of manual social class have lower BMI than men of non-manual social class at lower values of BMI, and higher BMI than men of non-manual social class at the upper end of the BMI distribution. For women, the difference in BMI due to social class increases towards the upper end of the BMI distribution. The difference in BMI between females of manual and non-manual social class is the sum of the Figure 2 Social Class and Gender by Social Class interaction coefficients.

BMI as a function of Age

BMI increases faster in the younger ages for males and females, then continues to increase at a slower rate and finally starts decreasing for males, but keeps increasing for females (Figure 3).

Standard regression techniques would show there is no difference in BMI at the mean for men between social classes on average (assuming the data are normally distributed so that the mean BMI value is the same as the median). Quantile regression shows there are differences for men due to social class at the lower and upper quantiles. Note that separate analyses of the data for males and females showed that social class did not significantly affect male BMI, but significantly affected female BMI. For women, quantile regression shows that social class does not affect BMI at the lower quantiles, but there is a significant social class effect at the upper quantiles.

Comparison with English Data

The prevalence of obesity in England increased significantly from 13.6% in 1993 to 24.0% in 2004 among men and from 16.9% to 24.4% among women [3] . These figures are similar to those seen in Scotland where the prevalence of obesity increased from 16.5% in 1995 to 23% in 2003 among men and from 18.0% to 25% among women.

The Health Survey for England 2003 showed that obesity rates are higher in older age groups, peaking in middle age for men and in later life for women [3]. A similar pattern was shown to exist for the Scottish data.

It is predicted that by 2012 a third of adults in the UK will be obese if current trends continue [3].

Given the similar levels of obesity between Scotland and England, it may be reasonable to assume that a similar pattern would be seen in Scotland2.

Limitations of this Study

This study uses data from the Scottish Health Surveyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s carried out in 1995, 1998 and 2003. It is not possible to predict future trends based on these three years alone. Prediction of future trends may be possible in later years when future survey results become available.

Survey weights as described in the documentation for the Scottish Health Survey [2], [6], [7] were not applied during this study. Our results might not be generalizeable to the entire Scottish population, if the sampling was biased in any way.

2â&#x20AC;&#x201A; Due to the small number of data sets used in this study (three), it is not possible to extrapolate trends for comparison with the predictions of future obesity levels based on Health Survey for England data.

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference What this Study Adds

There is no information on whether obesity increases at different rates between age, gender and socio-economic status subgroups of the Scottish population and this study shows how BMI has changed across the whole distribution, and that it is different for subgroups of the population, defined by age, gender and socio-economic status. This is shown by the non-horizontal pattern of estimated coefficients for quantiles spanning the BMI distribution. In particular, the Year (1998) and Year (2003) estimated coefficients in Figure 2 illustrate how BMI has increased at different rates across the BMI distribution over time.

Conclusion

Obesity prevalence and average BMI increased in the Scottish population between 1995 and 2003.

The results show that BMI increased for men and women of all social classes in the 16-64 age range but the biggest increase was in the upper percentiles of the distribution. Obesity is a risk factor for many major health problems so it is of concern that in general, adults in Scotland are getting heavier.

Added to this concern is that it is those who are already overweight or obese who continue to put on more weight than anyone else.

References

1. Walker A. The Cost of Doing Nothing - the economics of obesity in Scotland. National Obesity Forum, 2003 referenced in Grant I, Fischbacher C, Whyte B. Obesity in Scotland: an epidemiology briefing.

Scottish Public Health Observatory, 2007.

2. Dong W, Erins B, et al. Scotlandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Health: Scottish Health Survey 1995. The Scottish Office Department of Health 1997.

3. Zaninotto P, Head J, Stamatakis E, Wardle H, Mindell J. 2009. Trends in obesity among adults in England from 1993 to 2004 by age and social class and projections of prevalence to 2012.

Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health; 63:140-146.

4. Reas D, Nygard J, Svensson E, Sorensen T, Sandanger I. 2007. Changes in body mass index by age, gender and socio-economic status among a cohort of Norwegian men and women (19902001). BMC Public Health; 7:269.

5. Kuczmarski R, Flegal K, Campbell S, Johnson, C. Increasing prevalence of overweight among US adults. JAMA 1994; 272(3):205-11 (referenced in Dong W, Erins B, et al. Scotlandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Health: Scottish Health Survey 1995. The Scottish Office Department of Health.)

6. Shaw A, McMunn A, Field J (ed.). The Scottish Health Survey 1998.

The Scottish Office Department of Health, 2000.

7. Bromley C, Sproston K, Shelton N (ed.). The Scottish Health Survey 2003.

The Scottish Executive Health Department, 2005.

8. World Health Organisation Fact Sheet No. 311, 2006 http://www.who.int/mediacentre/ factsheets/fs311/en/index.html.

9. Cade B, Noon B. 2003. A gentle introduction to quantile regression for ecologists. Front Ecol Environ; 1(8):412-420.

10. Koenker R. 2005. Quantile Regression. Cambridge University Press.

11. R Development Core Team (2010). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. ISBN 3-900051-07-0, URL http://www.Rproject.org.

12. Roger Koenker (2009). quantreg: Quantile Regression. R package version 4.44. http:// CRAN.R-project.org/package=quantreg

Acknowledgements

This project was supervised by Dr Tereza Neocleous, Lecturer, Department of Statistics, University of Glasgow.

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Drug Discovery from Ardisia elliptica Jun Feng Lee

National University of Singapore

Abstract Ardisia elliptica is a tropical sub-shrub native to Singapore. The plant is used in traditional herbal therapy to treat parturition complications (pain and discomfort associated with childbirth) and chest pains.

This project aims to identify potent antiplatelet and anticoagulant compounds which could be used in the prevention of cardiovascular diseases (CVD, which include stroke and heart attack) from the leaf extract of A. elliptica for possible drug development in the future. Leaves of A. elliptica were boiled in 70% methanol by volume in water in a soxhlet to obtain an extract. The extract was dried and reconstituted in pure methanol for chemical analyses using Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GCMS) and High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC). An active compound β-amyrin was isolated using HPLC. β-amyrin, isolated from the leaf extract, was found to possess antiplatelet properties while the leaf extract showed both antiplatelet and anticoagulant properties in vitro in human blood and in vivo in Sprague Dawley (SD) rats. This suggests the possibility of more potent compounds with antiplatelet and anticoagulant properties awaiting discovery in the leaves of A. elliptica. Both β-amyrin and the leaf extract prolonged tail bleeding times in SD rats, indicating potent antithrombotic activity (thrombus is a clot in the blood vessel which leads to CVD). β-amyrin constitutes 0.098% by mass in the fresh leaves of A. elliptica as determined by Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (LCMS).

Introduction

Medicinal plants have been important sources of lead compounds of novel drugs. Ardisia elliptica Thunberg is a tropical evergreen sub-shrub that is native to China, Malaysia, Singapore and Sri Lanka.

The leaves and roots of this plant have been used traditionally in Southeast Asian herbal remedies.

The leaves are boiled and the extract is drunk to treat chest pains, parturition complications, fever, diarrhoea and liver poisoning.1 The leaves of A. elliptica have been reported to show plateletactivating factor (PAF) receptor-binding antagonist activity.2 Platelets are the main cellular components of white thrombi (clots), which tend to form in the arterial system. In contrast, red blood cells predominate in red thrombi, which form in veins.

The thrombi, or internal clots, are believed to be responsible for strokes and heart attacks due to their interruption of blood flow downstream in the blood vessels. Antiplatelet drugs reduce the formation of white thrombi predominantly while anticoagulant drugs reduce the formation of red thrombi.

Therefore, it is essential that drugs are tested for both antiplatelet and anticoagulant activities separately.

Platelet aggregation is part of the sequence of events leading to the formation of a clot. It refers to the clumping together of platelets in the blood which usually precedes blood coagulation. Coagulation is a process that converts soluble fibrinogen into insoluble fibrin threads, turning blood into an insoluble gel in the process. The gel plugs leaks in blood vessels and stops the loss of blood.

This study uses in vitro, in vivo and ex vivo bioassays. In vitro (in-glass) bioassays are conducted with drug samples added to human blood in a glass tube; in vivo (in the living body) bioassays are conducted with drug samples fed to the SD rats followed by the cutting of the tail to measure bleeding times; and ex vivo (out of the living body) bioassays are conducted with blood, drawn into a glass tube, from animals fed with the drug.

Objective

The overall objective is to investigate the potential antiplatelet and anticoagulant effects of β-amyrin isolated from the leaves of A. elliptica.

The specific objectives are: to carry out preliminary identification of components in the leaf extract using GC-MS and HPLC; isolate, purify and quantitate the active compound β-amyrin in the leaf extract using HPLC and LC-MS; ascertain the antiplatelet and anticoagulant effects of β-amyrin in vitro in human blood and ex vivo in Sprague Dawley (SD) rats; and ascertain the effects of β-amyrin on tail-bleeding time in vivo in SD rats.

Materials and Methods

Leaves of A. elliptica were obtained from Pasir Ris Park with permission from the National Parks, Singapore. The identity of the leaves was confirmed by the Singapore Botanical Gardens and a voucher specimen is kept in the Department of Pharmacy at the National University of Singapore.

The leaf extract was prepared using soxhlet extraction with 70 % methanol for six hours. Chemical analysis of the leaf extract was done using GCMS, with a Shimadzu system consisting of a gc2010 gas

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Figure 1: Total ion chromatograms of A) 70 % (v/v) methanol leaf extract and B) β-amyrin standard.

chromatograph and a gp2010 mass spectrometer, and using HPLC, with an Agilent 1100 series HPLC system. This was followed by a quantitation of β-amyrin in the leaf extract according to International Conference of Harmonisation guidelines using an API 2000 triple-quadrupole mass spectrometer by Applied Biosystems. β-amyrin was isolated from the leaf extract using preparative HPLC and the β-amyrin isolate was purified thereafter using semipreparative HPLC on an Agilent 1100 series HPLC system.

The isolated β-amyrin was used in in vitro bioassays on human blood which consisted of platelet aggregation assays with a whole blood aggregometer from Chronolog Corporation and plasma coagulation assays with an automated blood coagulation analyzer CA-500 series from Sysmex.

The isolated β-amyrin was also fed to SD rats for the in vivo tail bleeding assays and ex vivo bioassays which consisted of both platelet aggregation assays and plasma coagulation assays. β-amyrin standard (pure manufactured compound), used in the chemical analyses involving GCMS and analytical HPLC to verify the presence of β-amyrin in the leaf extract, was purchased from Extrasynthese.

Results and Discussion

Chromatograms obtained from the GC-MS analysis of the leaf extract and β-amyrin standard are shown in Figure 1. The chromatograms indicate that β-amyrin is present in the leaf extract. Β-amyrin

was eluted at around 67.8 min and its identity in both chromatograms was verified by mass spectrometry and an autolibrary search using the Wiley mass spectral library.

The presence of β-amyrin in the leaf extract was further verified with analytical HPLC. The chromatograms from analytical HPLC analysis of the leaf extract and β-amyrin standard are shown in Figure 2. The chromatograms indicate the presence of β-amyrin in the leaf extract. β-amyrin was eluted at around 63 min and its presence in the leaf extract was verified by comparing the UV spectra of the peak of interest and that of the β-amyrin standard.

The composition of β-amyrin in the leaf extract is about 1.2 % while that in fresh leaves of A. elliptica is 0.098 % as determined by the quantitation method using LC-MS. The results obtained for the inhibition of collagen-induced platelet aggregation, in vitro in human blood, as shown in Figure 3 suggest that all the test samples (aspirin, leaf extract and the amyrins) showed antiplatelet effects at the indicated final concentrations in the reaction mixtures.

Moreover, although the composition of β-amyrin in the leaf extract is about 1.2 % w/w, a leaf extract final concentration of 1.2 mg ml-1 and not 10 mg ml-1 was sufficient to elicit equivalent if not more potent response than 0.1 mg ml-1 of β-amyrin. This suggests the possibility of other active compounds in the leaf extract that can also inhibit collagen-induced platelet aggregation.

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Figure 2: HPLC chromatograms of A) 70 % (v/v) methanol leaf extract and B) β-amyrin standard.

Figure 3: In vitro comparison of percentage inhibition of A) collagen-induced platelet aggregation and B) arachidonic acid-induced platelet aggregation by different test samples in human blood. Error bars represent standard deviation; all experiments were done in triplicates.

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Figure 4: In vitro comparison of A) PT and B) aPTT due to different test samples in human plasma. Error bars represent standard deviation; all experiments were done in triplicates. (* indicates p < 0.05, ** indicates p < 0.01 compared with the control)

Figure 5: Ex vivo comparison of percentage inhibition of collagen-induced platelet aggregation after treatment with different test samples in SD rats. Error bars represent standard deviation and experiments on each animal were done in triplicates. Doses of test samples indicated in brackets; n denotes the actual number of rats being analysed for each test sample.

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Table 1: Tail-bleeding times after oral administration of test samples (n denotes the actual number of rats being analysed for each test sample). (* indicates p < 0.05; ** indicates p < 0.01 compared with the control)

The results obtained for the inhibition of arachidonic acid-induced platelet aggregation as shown in Figure 3B suggest that only the leaf extract demonstrated antiplatelet effects at the indicated final concentration in the reaction mixture. Both amyrin isomers did not inhibit arachidonic acidinduced platelet aggregation. The discrepancy between results obtained for the leaf extract and the amyrin isomers suggests the presence of other potent antiplatelet compounds in the leaf extract which remain to be identified.

The use of different agonists (collagen and arachidonic acid) in the platelet aggregation assays can provide some information on the possible mechanisms of action of the test samples -- details of which is beyond the scope of this discussion targeted at a wider audience.

The following section presents and discusses on the results of the human plasma coagulation assays in vitro. Prothrombin Time (PT) is a measure of the effect on the extrinsic pathway of coagulation by the different test samples while activated Partial Thromboplastin Time (aPTT) is a measure of that on the intrinsic pathway. The difference between the two pathways is again beyond the scope of this discussion. The results of the coagulation assays for human plasma shown in Figure 4 suggest that only the leaf extract has anticoagulant effect at the indicated concentration as demonstrated by the significant prolongation of aPTT. The results suggest the presence of potent anticoagulant compounds in the leaf extract which remain to be identified.

The comparison of tail-bleeding times between the control and other treatment groups shown in Table 1 suggests that both β-amyrin and the leaf extract have antithrombotic effects as demonstrated by the prolonged bleeding times.

The results from this experiment indicate that the leaf extract prolonged bleeding time more than β-amyrin. This could be due to the presence of both antiplatelet and anticoagulant compounds in the leaf extract acting synergistically to bring about the antithrombotic effect, compared with β-amyrin which only has antiplatelet effect as discussed earlier in the in vitro bioassays.

Hence, the leaf extract final concentration of 300 mg kg-1 body weight which is 10 times and not 100 times that of β-amyrin (30 mg kg-1 body weight) is sufficient to elicit more potent responses in vivo, suggesting that there may be synergistic effects of the

phytoconstituents in the leaf extract. Although herbal extracts may contain only minute concentrations of bioactive compounds, such as in this case whereby β-amyrin constitutes only 1.2 % of the leaf extract, the overall therapeutic effects observed could be a result of synergy which presents itself as a high level of potency not achievable by the individual isolates of the bioactive compounds.

The antithrombotic effect in vivo was further verified by the ex vivo platelet aggregation assays presented in Figure 5. The ex vivo assays indicated the absorption of the test samples into the bloodstream via the gastrointestinal tract, suggesting that both the leaf extract and β-amyrin are orally active. This is a highly desirable drug property as orally-active drugs would encourage greater patient compliance than those requiring intra-venous injections.

Comparing the results obtained for the leaf extract and β-amyrin in the in vitro assays, it is clear that there remains to be identified compounds with anticoagulant and antiplatelet effects in the leaf extract which have markedly different properties from β-amyrin. Further isolation should be carried out to identify these bioactive compounds.

Experimental evidence has hinted at the possible effect of synergy occurring when the leaf extract was tested for antiplatelet activity. This could be a possible explanation for the therapeutic effect observed in herbs despite the seemingly minute concentrations of bioactive compounds present.

Sceptics of herbal remedies have often cited the low concentrations of bioactive compounds in plants as a reason for their doubts in the observed therapeutic effect being caused by the compounds detected.

With the possibility of multiple compounds acting together to achieve therapeutic effects at low concentrations as demonstrated in the experiments, it is advisable that the study of medicinal plants take a turn in strategy. Isolation of bioactive compounds for individual testing may no longer be a sufficiently good analysis of the therapeutic potential of medicinal plants. It would be worthwhile examining the mechanisms of synergy occurring in the compounds present in herbs and attempt to replicate the same effect with a right combination of compounds in future drug development.

The study of prescriptions involving multiple herbs have often proved to be challenging to the novice. Prescriptions with instructions such as brewing in a claypot and consuming the medicine

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference warm may seem unimportant details to the scientist employing modern scientific methods in the study of such herbal remedies. Such instructions are often explained with unfathomable terms such as drinking the warm medicine will better promote the flow of “qi” in the body for quick recovery compared with drinking it cold. While the concept of “qi” is hardly explicable in scientific terms, it is important that the scientist relates these instructions to a sound knowledge of science wherever possible.

For instance, there have been instances in our laboratory in which boiling prescriptions in water in pyrex glass or metal pots have failed to produce the bioactive compound responsible for the therapeutic effect of the medicine. The compound could only be obtained when brewed in a claypot on a charcoal stove according to traditions. There is a possibility that claypot brewing on a charcoal stove may allow slightly higher boiling temperatures and pressures to develop in the claypot which aids the extraction process of bioactive compounds from the herbs or even establishes the right conditions for complex reactions to occur between the organic compounds to form the desired bioactive ones.

As for drinking the medicine warm, it is important to relate the simple concept of the increasing solubility of sparingly soluble compounds in water with higher temperatures. Prescriptions of medicine to be drunk warm generally have doses adjusted such that the right concentration of the bioactive compound will be present in the water extract when it is warm. When analyses are done cold or at room temperature, the concentration of the sparingly soluble bioactive compound will naturally be much lower or even undetectable in the water extract. In such instances, analyses of the sediments will generally show toxic concentrations of the bioactive compound. Thus, we see that even though Chinese physicians use perplexingly abstract concepts like “qi” in their explanation of drinking certain prescriptions warm, modern science has its own theories to explain the observations made.

It is important to appreciate the differences in the approach of experimentation and application of theories in the two disparate methods of studying medicine. Only scholars and scientists who can embrace the beauty of an open mind will have what it takes to acquire the imaginative capacity of applying modern scientific theories to the study of herbal remedies.

References

1. Ching, J., Chua, T. K., Chin, L. C., Lau, A. J., Pang, Y. K., Johannes, M. J., Tan, C. H., and Koh, H. L.(2010). β-amyrin from Ardisia elliptica is more potent than aspirin in inhibiting collageninduced platelet aggregation. Indian J Exp Biol 48, 275-279.

2. Jalil, J., Jantan, I., Shaari, K., and Rafi, I. A. A. (2004).

Bioassay-guided isolation of a potent plateletactivating factor antagonist alkenylresorcinol from Ardisia elliptica. Pharm Biol 42, 457-461.

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Continuous Flow, Multi-Phase Reaction Modeling of Biodiesel Production using Cahn-Hilliard Approach Lu Han

University of Connecticut

Abstract The purpose of my research is to model a novel continuous flow biodiesel reactor/separator in order to optimize reactor specifications for productivity. The laminar flow reactor employs a static mixing unit and achieves greater than 95% conversion. The overall chemical reaction converts methanol and triglycerides (fatty acids) into biodiesel (methyl esters) and glycerol, which form two immiscible liquid phases with methanol present in both. In modeling the phase separation and flow characteristics of the continuous flow multiphase reactor, the Cahn-Hilliard theory for diffusion and Navier Stokes momentum continuity equations are used. Different phase separation models are explored in COMSOL Multiphysics.

Introduction

Biodiesel offers many possibilities as a source of alternative energy. Biodiesel fuel is nontoxic, biodegradable, and can be used in most diesel engines with little or no modification. Biodiesel is derived from triglycerides, which are the major components of vegetable oils and animal fats. Transesterification is the chemical reaction where triglycerides react in the presence of a catalyst with methanol to produce methyl esters known as biodiesel. The majority of current biodiesel production methods employ batch reactor technology, which has a limited capacity.

Due to the immiscibility of the reactants with the products, the synthesis of biodiesel takes place as a two-phase reaction. Batch reactors utilize intense mixing in order to overcome immiscibility and batch operations require multiple separation stages to remove the byproducts from the biodiesel product.

Under specifications outlined by the ASTM, the equilibrium conversion obtained in a batch system fails to meet fuel standards.

The inefficiencies of a batch reactor can be reduced by implementing continuous removal of the glycerol phase during the reaction, which will drive the equilibrium reaction to completion. The existing technologies capable of glycerol phase separation necessitate high temperatures and pressures which introduces substantial energy costs. The novel continuous reactor/separator, patented by Dr. Parnas of the Department of CMB, employs a static mixing unit as an injector to a reaction chamber, this reliefs the need for extreme conditioned mixing. The reactants flow through tortuous pathways in the static mixer, then enters the plug flow tubular reactor where the bulk velocity in the axial direction is decreased into a laminar flow. As the reactants flow upward in the organic phase, the formed glycerol molecules separate by density and settle downward.

The continuous removal of glycerol at the bottom

and biodiesel from the top of the reactor drives the equilibrium to completion. Figure 1 is a schematic of the reactor. The reactor has achieved greater than 99% conversion of pre-treated waste canola oil to biodiesel by removing 70-99% of glycerol produced.

Model Development

The goal of my thesis is to model of the biodiesel reacting system, taking into account the phase separation. The model is an expression for Gibbs free energy based on the approach developed

by Cahn-Hilliard that assumes diffusion is driven by the gradient of the chemical potential. The general continuity expression is given by Equation 1, where u is velocity, c is concentration, M is mobility (Diffusivity * mole fraction) and μ is the chemical potential. The free energy model expressed in Equation 2 provides a means for calculating an analytical phase separation.

Equation 1:

∂c + u * ∇c = ∇(M (c )∇µ ) ∂t Equation 2:

The chemical potential can be determined from Equation 2 by applying the Frechet derivative, where γ is the gradient energy parameter, which gives an estimation of the interface between two equilibrium phases. The Cahn-Hillard continuity equation after simplification is shown in Equation 3.

Case 1 - Equation 3:

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Figure 1. Continuous biodiesel reactor; reaction produces biodiesel and glycerol that separate into two immiscible compounds

The Cahn-Hilliard equation can be combined with Navier Stokes to incorporate flow, as shown in Equation 4, where μ ∇ c is the phase-field dependent surface force.

Case 2 - Equation 4:

Equation 8:

g = ∑ xi ln xi i

Equation 8 expresses the free energy for an ideal solution. After modification, the final continuity expression is shown by Equation 9.

Equation 9:

Dr. Fred Phelan of NIST is the author of an alternative separation model that modifies CahnHilliard theory for binary phase separation by treating the solution as ideal. The free energy expression, Equation 5, combined with the Frechet derivative to chemical potential, Equation 6, yields Equation 7.

Equation 5:

Equation 6:

Case 3 for binary ideal phase separation was evaluated in COMSOL Multiphysics 3.5a, and the model did not phase separate. Investigation immediately turned to the ideal liquid assumption used for the free energy model. The binary mixture was treated with regular solution theory, which breaks the Gibbs free energy into an ideal and an excess part, as shown in Equation 10, where g id is previously defined in Equation 8 and gex is defined in Equation 11, where χ12 is a binary interaction coefficient.

Equation 10:

Equation 7: Equation 11:

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Figure 2: Cahn-Hilliard phase separation in COMSOL

Figure 3. Cahn-Hilliard with Navier Stokes phase separation in COMSOL

Equation 7 can be re-arranged and the two Gibbs free energy terms can be applied to produce the final continuity expression, Equation 12.

Case 4 - Equation 12:

Results

The models for phase separation using CahnHilliard (Case 1), Cahn-Hilliard with Navier Stokes (Case 2), binary ideal solution (Case 3), and binary regular solution (Case 4) were evaluated in COMSOL Multiphysics 3.5a with initial conditions, x1(t0)=

X1_0+A_0*sin(f_0*pi*x)*sin(f_0*pi*y). The initial condition is a high frequency randomization of mole fraction with small amplitude. The initial condition is designed to perturb the system at X1_0=0.5 or c=0 because c=2x-1. Please see the attached COMSOL Results for pictorial displays of the COMSOL results and the COMSOL inputs as PDE format for each case.

Complete derivations can be given upon request.

Future work remains for modeling biodiesel as a heterogeneous reacting system. A quaternary regular solution model should be developed and implemented into COMSOL, which is an improvement to the binary regular solution model because it will describe global reaction. Also, intermediates should be added to the regular solution theory. The methanol partitioning coefficient, which was neglected in model derivation, should

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Figure 4. Ideal solution phase separation in COMSOL

Figure 5. Regular solution phase separation in COMSOL

be reviewed. Lastly, the determination of more accurate constants of diffusivity, density gradients, and binary interaction parameters will depend on extensive literature review and estimated through the proper methods.

References

1. Chakulsi, Brian. “A Continuous Flow, MultiPhase Reaction Model for Biodiesel Production: A One- Semester Grad Project.” University of Connecticut, 2009.

2. Boucher, Matthew B, et al. “Pilot Scale Two-Phase Continuous Flow Biodiesel Production via Novel Laminar Flow Reactor-Separator.” Energy & Fuels, Vol. 23, 2009, pp. 2750-2756.

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Success Factors in Australian Public Sector Alliance Projects Matthias Wobbe

University of Melbourne

Abstract Project alliancing is a relatively new procurement method being utilised in the construction industry.

This research aims to explore the factors which contribute to successful public sector alliance projects in the Australian construction industry. Case studies and an industry questionnaire were used to investigate the organisational, alliance and human factors associated with the success of these projects. This research is of great use to the construction industry as it allows industry participants to better understand the concept of alliances and improve their project performance.

Introduction

This dissertation aims to explore the factors which contribute to successful public sector alliance projects in the Australia construction industry.

Project alliancing is a relatively new procurement method being utilised in the construction industry. It was developed in the UK on North Sea oil and gas projects in the 1990’s (Knott 1996 and Thompson 1997) and was refined in Australia by Sydney Water on the Northside Storage Tunnel Project (Ross 2008).

Alliancing is a relationship based procurement method (Jefferies, 2006) which tries to achieve a “shift to peer relationships based on mutual respect, trust and equitable sharing of all risks and benefits” (Ross 2000). On a theoretical level, Hoffmann and Schlosser (2001) found that “alliances are the most transaction cost efficient organisational form” since they replace the traditional adversarial project delivery with a scenario where all participants work collaboratively in seeking to achieve the optimal project outcome. The structure of alliances “create the essential conditions required for optimal intergroup contact” (Anvuur and Kumaraswamy, 2007). This is confirmed in literature world-wide such as (Trim, 2008), who states that “it was the alliance method which allowed contractors and owners to work in one harmonious group dedicated to continuous improvement.”

The benefits of using the alliancing approach are many. Alliances have the ability to offer greater certainty of timely completion, improved lifecycle efficiencies, greater risk and opportunity management (Liew, 2009), more effective stakeholder management, lower direct costs, higher levels of innovation (Ross, 2000), early contractor involvement (Queensland Department of Public Works, 2008) and a more enjoyable working environment (Hosking, 2005). The use of alliancing has notable long and short term effects on the industry as well. Hennefeld (2006) states that alliancing can relieve short term pressures in the industry, such as skills shortages, inappropriate risk allocation and contract strategies among others, and improve the long term operation of the industry in the way projects are procured.

Methodology

In order to better understand the nature of these success factors, three key areas of success creation in a project alliance have been identified.

The participating organisations, the structure of the alliance itself and the human factors involved in the interactions of the participants. Government information, expert reports, project reviews and journal articles were evaluated and the information synthesised to form the theoretical framework for this study. Alliancing is a complex undertaking however there seems to be little dedicated research to project alliancing success factors with a focus on the Australian construction industry. A lack of empirical research was also noted by numerous authors.

The current views and perceptions of alliance project leaders in the industry were assessed, as these people are best positioned to offer insight into the success factors being studied. A questionnaire of senior members of past Australian public sector alliance projects was used in conjunction with two case studies. The questionnaire provided quantitative data on the current industry practices whilst the case studies helped to interpret the results of the questionnaire and provide a qualitative discussion of the subject matter. This research methodology was chosen since it provided a mix of qualitative and quantitative data. The aim was to determine current industry practices as Heimeriks et al. (2009) prove that “using managerial assessments is a sound way to measure alliance performance”.

A register of successful public sector alliance projects was compiled and key stakeholders in each project identified. Research participants were selected based on selected sampling of these suitable past projects. The data produced was analysed using descriptive statistics and qualitative methods as outlined by Babbie (2003).

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Table 1. Findings of Questionnaire

Findings of Questionnaire

This study was based on an analysis of successful projects and this was proven by the response to the project profile. Projects spanning the full range of values from under $50M to over $400M were represented in the response data. On average, some of the project objectives were exceeded with time, cost and quality objectives almost always met and on average, a moderate level of innovation.

Respondents consisted of managing directors, senior partners, alliance managers and Alliance Management Team (AMT) members.

In analysing the responses to the questionnaire, the statistical mean of all the proposed success factors were calculated and the factors ranked from the most important to overall alliance success (1st) to least important (10th). These results are presented in Table 1.

Additional Findings

The final section of the questionnaire allowed respondents to provide additional factors and comments as they saw fit. Other success factors suggested were the adequate pricing of risk, celebration of success team wide and at all levels, the ability of the client / owner to manage the project effectively and design management.

“Our estimating team continued to use a business as usual approach of this being a tender that had to be won on price. As a result when some of the risks actually occurred, we blew the budget.”

“The alliance would have worked even better if the employees working in the alliance from the client actually realised they are working for the alliance and not for the client.”

These and other similar comments received show that the concepts of alliancing are still misunderstood by some participants who enter into alliances. This is ironic as all the factors associated with learning and gaining knowledge in alliance facilitation were ranked of least importance in the questionnaires.

Findings of Case Studies

Two case studies were used in order to explore the subject matter in more detail, validate the questionnaire results and fulfil the aim and objectives of this study. Both case studies were large high value road infrastructure projects located in Australia. The alliancing method was utilised due

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to the high risk nature of the works and technical and time constraints. Both projects exceeded their performance objectives, setting new industry benchmarks in safety, innovation and stakeholder management. Both projects were also multiple award winners from peak industry associations.

Four interviews were carried out in total with two being face to face interviews, one a phone interview and one an email response to the interview questions. Content analysis was carried out on the data gathered with trends, patterns and discussion being presented below.

Organisational Factors

Organisational success factors were least mentioned in the interview. Only minimal recognition was given to the significance of senior management support and training of staff.

Alliance Structural Factors

Alliance structural success factors were the second most important to the success of both projects. The importance of clear goal and responsibility definition and coordination committees was conveyed with some references made to the importance of alliance advisers and compensation. The interviewees felt that it was important to clearly define goals and responsibilities which were reviewed periodically throughout the project. Workshops were also used to reinforce these goals and responsibilities. The strategy used in case study two was to dedicate a team member to each performance objective. ALTs and AMT were used on both projects. AMTs were responsible for the day to day running of the project whilst ALTs provided senior level decision making and resource allocation.

Unanimous decisions were made which were binding as there was no recourse to arbitration. Conflict and dispute was avoided because all participants had agreed to this method of issue resolution and were aware of how it operated. Decisions on case study one were also all based on multi-criteria analysis against performance objectives. Alliance advisers were used on both projects and performance objectives were benchmarked against those achievable through the use of more traditional procurement methods.

Human Factors

The human factors associated with the alliancing project success were deemed to be the most significant.

“A project without good relationships is a bad project.”

The interpersonal relationships on both projects were given priority as continual monitoring and maintenance of relationships was carried out.

Communication was facilitated on both projects

through co-location of all team members in the one project office. This was cited in case study two to be the single most critical factor to project success, as the design management and buildability of the project was ensured.

The second most important factor in both case studies was the alliance culture which was fostered on the projects. Interviewees from case study 1 felt that they had the best project team available, with the right people and the right resources. The use of an alliance charter which set out the vision and the principles of the alliance is what created the culture. The charter ensured everyone’s view was respected. This was also pivotal in encouraging innovation on the projects. An innovation register, workshops, recognition and rewards and constant reinforcement were used to maintain the culture.

Case study 2 recorded a $23 million saving due to innovations on the project.

Additional Findings

The continual monitoring of ‘alliance health’ played a big part in each projects success. Not only the assessment of objectives but also the health of relationships was reviewed. In case study two, it was found that the biggest return on project was the increase in reputation due to the successful completion. The payments linked to exceptional performance were only second.

Discussion

Using the industry questionnaire, the most important and influential public sector project alliancing success factors were identified from each of the three groups of factors. When taking the overall mean of all three groups of success factors, the human factors were rated noticeably more important than organisational and alliance structural factors which were rated almost identically. When analysing all success factors individually however, it becomes clear that the alliance members deemed ‘hard’ factors such as resource allocation, commercial frameworks and defined responsibility most important. ‘Soft’ relationship based factors were largely rated second most important while learning and knowledge gaining factors were always rated lowest. This is an interesting phenomenon since most setbacks encountered by the respondents were due to participants who lacked alliancing facilitation skills. The single highest rating factor was however early involvement of alliance partners in the preconstruction planning phase. This is one of the major advantages alliancing offers over other more traditionally used procurement methods.

Based on the two case studies, human factors were considered the most important to the success of the case study projects. This matches the results of the literature review conducted for this research and the questionnaire. Human factors were followed in

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference importance by alliance structural factors and last of all, participant organisational factors. The single most critical factor was found to be the co-location of project team members in the same office in order to increase the effectiveness of the design management process and increase the interface between design and buildability. This matches the results of the questionnaire where the single most important success factor was early contractor involvement.

Another important conclusion that was made from the interviews was the view that the alliance culture and vision is what drove the team performance.

Conclusion

Industry practitioners can reflect on these research findings and their own practice in order to identify areas requiring improvement or increased consideration. It is recommended that organisations review their learning processes in order to improve alliance facilitation skills as this study found lack of that skill to be the greatest hindrance to alliance performance. The above research findings apply to private sector alliancing projects just as well and a prudent practitioner would consider them of great relevance to their field.

References

1. Anvuur, A. And Kumaraswamy, M. (2007) “Conceptual model of partnering and alliancing” Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 133(3), 225-234.

2. Babbie, E. (2003) “The Practice of Social Research” 9th ed. Wadsworth Pub. Co. 3. Heimeriks, K., Klijn, E. and Reuer, J. (2009) “Building capabilities for alliance portfolios” Long Range Planning, 42, 96-114.

4. Hennefeld, M. (2006) “Alliance contracting.

Removing the boundaries for infrastructure delivery” Presented at the opening plenary session of the 2006 Annual Conference of The Transportation Association of Canada, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.

5. Hoffmann, W. and Schlosser, R. (2001) “Success factors of strategic alliances in small and medium-sized enterprises – and empirical survey” Long Range Planning, 34, 357-381.

6. Hosking, I. (2005) “The case for alliancing” Infrastructure Australia, 24-25.

7. Jefferies, M., Brewer, G., Rowlinson, S., Cheung, F. and Satchell, A. (2006) “Project alliances in the Australian construction industry: A case study of a water treatment project: In: Symposium on CIB W92 : sustainability and value through construction procurement, 29 November, Digital World Centre, Salford, UK. 8. Knott, T. (1996) “No Business As Usual.” The British Petroleum Company. Britannic House, London, UK.

9. Liew, J. (2009) “Increased flexibility through alliancing” Engineers Australia, 81(1), 48-49.

10. Queensland Department of Public Works (2008) “Procurement strategy and contract selection” Queensland Department of Public Works, 2nd ed., Queensland, Australia.

11. Ross, J. (2000). “Introduction to Project Alliancing.” Presented to Institution of Engineers 17 August 2000 Brisbane, Australia.

12. Ross, J. (2008). “Price competition in the alliance selection process.” Pre-reading for Infrastructure Delivery Alliance Forum 9 April 2008 Perth, Australia.

13. Thomson, G. (1997) “Project Alliances.”

Australian Mining and Petroleum Law Association 21st Annual Conference July 1997, Brisbane, Australia.

14. Trim, P. (2008) “Barkly highway upgrade – split rock INCA alliance” Queensland Roads, 5, 34-41.

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Genetic Basis for Sexual Dimorphism in the Lizard Anolis sagrei Megan Kobiela

University of Virginia

Abstract Sexual dimorphism is readily apparent in the animal kingdom, but its occurrence is a paradox because males and females share a majority of their genome. Between-sex genetic correlations are a way to quantify the shared genetic basis of male and female traits. When these correlations are large, they may constrain the evolution of further sexual dimorphism. Anolis sagrei is a common lizard in the Caribbean and is highly dimorphic in both size and shape. This lizard was used in a laboratory breeding design to examine sexual dimorphism in six morphological traits and their between-sex genetic correlations. We found that both head width and jaw length were significantly sexually dimorphic and had weak between-sex genetic correlations.

All other skeletal characteristics (pectoral and pelvic width and length of front and hind limbs) had stronger between-sex genetic correlations and a less pronounced difference between males and females. Across all six traits, the correlation between sexual dimorphism index and between-sex genetic correlation was found to be strongly negative. This relationship suggests that either strong between-sex genetic correlations constrain the evolution of dimorphism for some traits or that strong selection for dimorphism may reduce the strength of between-sex genetic correlations.

Introduction

Sexual dimorphism, or the consistent differences between males and females, is readily apparent throughout the animal kingdom. From the smallest worm to the largest whale, males and females are often different sizes, shapes, and colors.

Although humans have undoubtedly observed these dissimilarities for millennia, Charles Darwin (1859; 1871) is cited as the first person to propose a reason for sexual dimorphism: sexual selection. Sexual selection often occurs via female choice, where females choose among males to sire their offspring, or via male-male competition for mates. Both types of sexual selection are thought to favor males with exaggerated phenotypes, whether showy display behavior or elaborate weapons for fending off rival males (Delph 2005). In addition to sexual selection, ecological selection may occur when males and females live in slightly different habitat niches, causing each sex to adapt divergently (Schoener 1976).

Genetic variation is necessary for selection to lead to any evolutionary change. In the case of the evolution of sexual dimorphism, genetic variation in sexual dimorphism is needed. However, this is paradoxical because males and females share the majority of their genome, with the exception of the sex-specific chromosomes (Lande 1987). Several mechanisms for differences in male and female gene expression have been proposed, including sex-chromosome linkages and differential gene expression due to gene cascades (Mackay 2001).

The amount of available genetic variation for sexual dimorphism may be represented by genetic correlations between male and female traits. Such

Figure 1. Male (left) and female (right) adult A. sagrei, illustrating the extensive size and shape sexual dimorphism.

between-sex genetic correlations are important because they show how constrained males and females are in the evolution of dimorphism. Traits with a strong correlation (r close to 1) may limit the divergent evolution of the sexes, whereas low genetic correlations (r close to 0) may facilitate independent evolution of males and females (Lande 1980).

In this study, I examine between-sex genetic correlations and sexual dimorphism in a lizard, Anolis sagrei (Fig. 1). Lizards in the genus Anolis have been shown to be an excellent model of adaptive radiation in the Caribbean. With over 150 species described in the West Indies alone, Anoles are unique in their radiation because of the repetition of habitat specialists that arose across multiple islands, termed â&#x20AC;&#x153;ecomorphsâ&#x20AC;? (Losos et al. 2006). Sexual dimorphism is hypothesized to aid colonization of new habitats and facilitate the evolution of different ecomorphs because each sex may inhabit a significantly different niche (Butler et al. 2007).

Anolis sagrei, or the Cuban brown anole, is a highly sexually dimorphic trunk-ground ecomorph Anole. Indigenous to Cuba and the Bahamas, this species has been introduced to Florida, Hawaii, and Taiwan (Kolbe et al. 2004). Males are larger than females, with male snout-vent length (SVL) about

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference

Figure 2. A typical radiograph of a 6-month A. sagrei.

5 cm and female SVL about 4 cm (Schoener 1976).

Besides having size and extensive shape sexual dimorphism, A. sagrei was chosen for this study because it is easily found in the field and breeds and survives well in the laboratory environment.

I measured sexual dimorphism and betweensex genetic correlations for 6 size-corrected skeletal traits in A. sagrei. More dimorphic traits are predicted to have lower between-sex genetic correlations. This pattern may arise if strong between-sex correlations constrain the evolution of dimorphism or if strong selection for dimorphism leads to the weakening of between-sex genetic correlations.

Methods

Adult lizards were collected in September 2006 and February 2009 from Bimini, Bahamas, with 73 males and 134 females collected in total. All adults are housed in separate cages until females began laying non-viable eggs (about 6 weeks), at which point they were randomly paired with males in a large cage (28 x 36 x 20 cm) with two large PVC or wooden perches, carpet for substrate, and a potted plant for laying eggs. The pairs were kept together for approximately 6 weeks, when females were removed to a separate cage and males were randomly paired to a second female to form a paternal halfsibling breeding design.

Searching for eggs started 4 weeks after adults are paired and continued weekly until the cessation of egg laying. Eggs were kept in separate containers

Figure 3. Preserved juvenile A. sagrei specimens showing a male with the chevron back pattern (left) and a female with the diamond back pattern (right).

in an incubator at 28°C and generally took three to five weeks to hatch after they were found. Upon hatching, the lizard was moved to an individual cage (17 x 26 x 15 cm) with a single perch, carpet, and a potted plant. The current analysis uses data from 649 juveniles produced from 49 unique sires and 86 unique dams.

Juvenile lizards were X-rayed at hatching and 1, 3, 6, 9, and 12 months old in order to measure several skeletal morphological markers (see Fig. 2). To take radiographs, lizards were placed in small plastic bags and placed in a 5-6°C refrigerator for 10 minutes (or less) to reduce their movements. The bags with the lizards are then taped to film and X-rayed at low power for eleven seconds. Radiographs are scanned into a computer and ImageJ is used to measure eleven traits: snout-vent length (SVL), tail length (if tail intact), jaw length, head width, pectoral width, pelvic width, and the lengths of the humerus, radius, ulna, femur, and tibia. A previous study has shown that multiple radiographs do not have an effect on the juveniles’ growth or mortality (McGlothlin et al., in prep). To date, there have been 2209 radiographs measured of the 649 juveniles.

Sex of the juvenile lizards is known at hatching by examining the back pattern. Females have either a diamond or striped pattern while males exhibit a “chevron” design or no pattern at all (see Fig. 3). Examining the gonads of many juveniles has corroborated the determination of sex by back pattern and all of the captured adults have patterns

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Table 1. The six measured skeletal traits, their between-sex genetic correlations, and their sexual dimorphism index (SDI) values with standard error (SE). Asterisks indicate significance at p < 0.05.

indicative of their sex. Of the 649 juveniles, 337 were female and 312 were male.

Data were analyzed using ASReml, a restricted maximum-likelihood program.

All radiograph measurements were natural log transformed to preserve variance independent of the mean.

Measurements were also corrected for size (using the SVL), both to correct for growth when lizards were X-rayed at multiple ages and to determine shape sexual dimorphism. ASReml uses a multivariate, one slope model to calculate the covariances both within and between the sexes. These values were used to calculate the between-sex genetic correlation (r) for each trait. For brevity, the lengths of the humerus and ulna were added together to give front limb length and the lengths of the femur and tibia were summed for hind limb length. Tail length was excluded because approximately twenty percent of radiographs had lizards whose tails were broken and therefore could not be measured. Table 1 outlines the six measured skeletal traits: jaw length (JL), head width (HW), pectoral width (PECT), pelvic width (PELV), front limb length (FL), and hind limb length (HL).

Also using ASReml, the sexual dimorphism index (SDI) was calculated using a model that included sex as a fixed ef fect and no genetic effect.

When log-transformed traits are used, the fixed effect estimate for sex provides a measure of SDI. To compare SDIs across traits, the absolute value of SDI was used.

Results

Three of the six shape traits (JL, HW, and PELV) showed significant sexual dimorphism. All traits except HW showed a significant positive betweensex genetic correlation (Table 1).

There was a strong negative correlation between extent of sexual dimorphism and the strength of between-sex genetic correlation for each trait (Fig. 4, r = -.89, p < 0.05).

Figure 4. Graph of sexual dimorphism index (SDI) versus between-sex genetic correlation (r value).

Discussion

The two head traits (jaw length and head width) had both the lowest between-sex genetic correlations and the greatest difference between the male and female traits. The large difference in head shape is expected from visual inspection of males and females (see Fig. 1); males have a much broader and bulkier head than females do. Because these two traits are so weakly correlated across the sexes, one might expect that males and females would evolve to have even more dissimilar heads if favored by selection.

Pelvis and front limb were both moderately sexually dimorphic and had stronger genetic correlations than the head traits. Males and females have been most constrained in the evolution of hind limb length and the amount of sexual dimorphism seen in the trait is accordingly low.

The correlation between amount of sexual dimorphism and the between-sex genetic correlation of the traits is probably the most valuable result from this dataset. This strong negative correlation is expected, since higher between-sex genetic correlations are thought to constrain the divergence of males and females while low correlations should allow greater sexual dimorphism to evolve (Lande 1980). What is still unknown, however, is if selection is favoring high dimorphism and therefore low between-sex genetic correlations or if high betweensex genetic correlations are limiting the extent of sexual dimorphism in some traits.

Two studies are proposed to examine Anolis sexual dimorphism and the between-sex genetic correlations further. First, populations of A. cristatellus and A. lineatopus, trunk-ground ecomorphs from Puerto Rico and Jamaica, are currently being raised in the same laboratory environment as the A. sagrei.

Once there are sufficient numbers of individuals from both species, their morphological traits will be evaluated and between-sex genetic correlations will be measured. These correlations will be compared to determine whether the same pattern of sexual dimorphism and between-sex genetic correlations

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference exists across ecologically similar species from different islands.

The second study involves multiple populations of A. sagrei. As stated above, the population currently in the laboratory is the offspring of adults captured in Bimini, Bahamas. Sexually dimorphic populations have been found on multiple islands in the Bahamas, and their SDI (measured in the field) ranges from .19 to .39 (Vanhooydonck et al. 2009). It is unknown how between-sex genetic correlations differ across populations (as it has been examined in very few studies, e.g. McDaniel 2005), so the experimental design in this study will be applied to offspring of adults captured in several different islands in the Bahamas. This will help determine whether the same strong negative relationship linking betweensex genetic correlations and sexual dimorphism index holds across different populations of the same species. Because different populations are most likely under different selection pressures, this study will also show how the between-sex genetic correlations respond to selection and therefore may evolve.

References

1 Darwin, C. 1859, The Origin of Species. London, John Murray.

2 Darwin, C. 1871, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. London, John Murray.

3 Delph, L. 2005. Processes that constrain and facilitate the evolution of sexual dimorphism. The American Naturalist 166:S1-S4.

4 Schoener, T. W., and A. Schoener. 1976. Ecological context of female pattern polymorphism in the lizard Anolis sagrei. Evolution 30:650-658.

5 Lande, R. 1987. Genetic correlations between the sexes in the evolution of sexual dimorphism and mating preferences, Pages 83-94 in J. W. Bradbury, and M. B. Andersson, eds. Sexual Selection: Testing the Alternatives. Chichester, John Wiley & Sons.

6 Mackay, T. F. C. 2001. The genetic architecture of quantitative traits. Annual Review of Genetics 35:303-339.

7 Lande, R. 1980. Sexual dimorphism, sexual selection, and adaptation in polygenic characters.

Evolution 34:292-305.

8 Losos, J. B., R. E. Glor, J. J. Kolbe, and K. Nicholson.

2006. Adaptation, speciation, and convergence: a hierarchical analysis of adaptive radiation in Caribbean Anolis lizards. Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 93:24-33.

9 Butler, M. A., S. A. Sawyer, and J. B. Losos. 2007.

Sexual dimorphism and adaptive radiation in Anolis lizards. Nature 447:202-205.

10 Kolbe, J. J., R. E. Glor, L. R. G. Schettino, A. C. Lara, A. Larson, and J. B. Losos. 2004. Genetic variation increases during biological invasion by a Cuban lizard. Nature 431:177-181.

11 McGlothlin, J. W., T. R. Cassidy, M. Adler, and E. D. Brodie III. X-ray imaging does not affect growth rate in juvenile anoles. In prep.

12 Vanhooydonck, B., A. Herrel, J. J. Meyers, and D. J. Irschick. 2009. What determines dewlap diversity in Anolis lizards? An among-island comparison.

Journal of Evolutionary Biology 22:293-305.

13 McDaniel, S. F. 2005. Genetic correlations do not constrain the evolution of sexual dimorphism in the moss Ceratodon purpureus. Evolution 59:23532361.

Acknowledgements

All animal protocols approved by IACUC. Research supported by NSF DEB grants 0650078 and 0722475. Thank you to co-PIs Jonathon Losos and Butch Brodie for their support. Special thank you to Joel McGlothlin, for without his tireless dedication and mentorship this work would not be possible.

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Generating Automatic Abstractive Summaries of Product Reviews: The ASSESS System Nicholas FitzGerald

University of British Columbia

Abstract The Internet provides many sources of unsolicited opinions, expressed through user reviews of consumer products, blogs, and forum discussions. Systems which could automatically summarize these opinions would be immensely useful to those wishing to use this information to make decisions. Most past work in automatic summarization has focused on extractive summarization, in which key sentences from the source text are identified and extracted to form the output. An alternative framework is abstractive summarization. Information from the source text is first extracted into the form of abstract data which is then processed, and from which the most important messages are inferred. This work built upon past work to create a completely automatic system which could produce abstractive summaries from a plain text corpus of product reviews without the need for any prior manual annotation. As an additional contribution, I also devised an improvement for a crucial step of the summarization process. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first complete system which effectively performs this task.

Introduction

One benefit of the Internet is that large volumes of text are available on almost any topic â&#x20AC;&#x201C; whether through web pages, blogs, or online databases of print resources. As this volume continues to increase, it has become impossible for any one person to read everything that is available. Specifically, many opinions are expressed through user reviews of consumer products, blogs, and forum discussions.

Systems which could automatically summarize these opinions into a more manageable size and provide directed links back to the original source material would be immensely useful to those who wish to use this information to make decisions, eg. consumers looking to buy a product, or marketing managers interested in gaging public opinion.

In this work, I built upon the work of Carenini et al. [1] to create a complete system which could produce abstractive summaries of reviews from a plain text corpus of reviews without the need for any prior annotation. This system is known as ASSESS (Abstractive Summarization System for Evaluative Statement Summarization). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first complete system which effectively performs this task. As an additional contribution, I also devised an improvement for a crucial step of the summarization process (see step 3).

selected or not), which allows the use of many welldeveloped classification algorithms. Unfortunately, since sentences are taken out of context and reused as-is, and may be placed adjacent to sentences from other document, the resulting summaries can lack the desired level of coherence and readability. Also, aggregation of information is limited by the extent to which it exists in the source text, which means that that the produced summaries may be highly redundant.

By contrast, Abstractive Summarization involves first extracting information from the source texts into an internal data-format, and then expressing the desired information in new sentences produced by a Natural Language Generation system. Although this approach is much more involved, it has the benefit of allowing greater control over the information expressed, thus reduced redundancy and increased aggregation of information. Furthermore, a successful Natural Language Generation component will produce more cohesive text. Table 1 shows an example of the contrast between an Extractive and Abstractive summary.

Automatic Summarization

Traditionally, systems for automatic extraction have followed two main approaches. In Extractive Summarization, representative sentences are selected from the source text, creating a summary which is a concatenation of these. This approach is simple and straightforward, as it can be cast as a binary classification problem (sentences are either

Table 1. An illustration of the differences between Extractive and Abstractive summaries. The Extractive summary lacks coherence, and is highly redundant, since the sentences have come from different document. By contrast, an abstractive summarization is able to express the same situation more cohesively and concisely.

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference The ASSESS Pipeline

To the best of our knowledge, ASSESS is the first completely automatic Abstractive Summarization system for summarization of evaluative statements (opinions). The only other input required for this system, other than the source reviews, is a hierarchy of User Defined Features (UDFs). This is a hierarchical list of features of the product important to the user.

For instance, for reviews of a Digital Camera, UDFs might include “Image Quality”, “Battery Life” and “Price”. “Image Quality” could be further separated into “Resolution”, “Focus” and “Contrast”, forming a hierarchy. These hierarchies are quick and easy to create.

The major steps involved in this system are as follows:

Step 1: Feature Extraction

Reviewers provide opinions on many features of a product within their reviews, and may use a variety of different terms to refer to the same feature. For example “picture”, “photo” and “clarity” could all refer to the feature “Image Quality”. The first step of the information extraction is to identify the feature terms each review mentions. This step produces a list of Crude Feature terms (CFs) which is then mapped to the User Defined Features (UDFs) in step 3. This allows the output summary to aggregate opinions expressed about one feature via different terms, and reduces redundancy in the summary.

For feature extraction the focus was on capturing as many features as possible (high recall rate), rather than on accuracy of output candidates (high precision). This is because nonfeatures produced at this step tend to be pruned out later by the CF-UDF mapping (step 3). Feature extraction was achieved by implementing the algorithm described by Hu and Liu [3]. Put simply, this algorithm selects groups of words which appear with high frequency within noun-phrases, as these are likely to be features. I experimented with other algorithms including [4] however Hu, Liu produced the best recall while still producing a reasonable list of feature candidates.

Step 2: Semantic Orientation Scored

The ideal system would analyze each feature within a sentence separately, and determine the opinion expressed towards each feature. However, for sentences with multiple features and complex grammatical structure, this becomes a very difficult task (see [5] sec. 6). An reasonable approximation is to calculate the overall sentiment of the sentence and apply that to all features within the sentence.

The downside of this approach is that it will incorrectly handle sentences which express multiple, contrasting opinions eg. “This camera produces great photos, but battery life is simply terrible” wherein image quality is rated highly, but battery life is given a low

Table 2. Example output from steps 1 & 2 from Canon corpus.

Sentences are tagged with the extracted features, which are assigned scores based on the polarity and strength of expressed opinions.

rating. However, in the interest of creating a working pipeline, this approximation was necessary, and should be ameliorated in a sufficiently large corpus.

[6] provides a method for calculating a semantic orientation score for a sentence by averaging scores from lexicon of positive and negative terms, adjusted by syntactic functions such as negation or emphasis. This lexicon is built from a seed list which is expanded based on distributional co-occurrence using Google hits. These scores are then normalized onto the -3 to +3 scale used by [1] and applied to all features found within the sentence. To avoid the problem described above, sentences which contain contrasting opinion terms are ignored. Empirically, this is approximately 15% of sentences in the corpora tested. See Table 2 for example outputs from step 1 and 2 – review sentences tagged with features and semantic orientation scores.

Step 3: CF to UDF Mapping

My main original contribution was an improvement of the CF-UDF mapping step. [1] provide a set of simple algorithms for mapping which are moderately successful. The downside is that the most successful of these algorithms require a tuned parameter, Θ, which acts as a threshold for accepting mappings, and which must be empirically determined for each domain (eg. Cameras, DVD players, Restaurants etc). Ideally, a mapping algorithm should not require such tuning and should function well in a wide range of domains.

I started by surveying the NLP literature on synonym matching and implementing 17 different algorithms, and analyzed their effectiveness on the metrics and corpora of [1]. These algorithms fell into two main categories: Lexicon-Based algorithms using WordNet [7] – a lexical database of terms encompassing relationships between words such as homonymity and hyponymity (X “is-a” Y), and Distribution-Based scores using search-engine cooccurance data. Several of these algorithms did quite well, however most still required optimization of Θ. In order to improve upon these scores I created a simple voting algorithm: if the majority of the

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selected, a Natural Language Generation system produces grammatical sentences expressing the information. Furthermore, each statement in the summary provides a link to the source material (the reviews) which illustrates the generalization.

This means that output test functions not only as a summary, but as a means to access the details of the source material. The information extracted from the review corpus is also displayed as a TreeMap visualization, described in [2].

Table 3. Scores of top 3 individual mapping algoriths, 3- and 5-score voting groups on APEX corpus. See [Carenini et al 06a] for definition of Accuracy and RR metrics. Note that the individual algorithms have optimal theta value, while voting groups require no parameter optimization.

mapping-scores in the vote mapped a given CF to a UDF, the mapping would be applied, otherwise it would be discarded. For the scores requiring a tuned parameter, the parameter was set such as to maximize recall ( Θ = 0). I then tested mapping for all possible combinations of 3, 5 and 7 scores. See Table 3 for a summary of scores of the top 3 individual algorithms, and 3- and 5-score voting groups.

The highest accuracy achieved by an individual metric is .787 for lch_score. This represents the maximum score achieved by the metric with Θ optimized. For certain combinations of voting groups, accuracy scores exceeded those of any of the individual algorithms – even when those algorithms’ parameters were perfectly optimized.

This means that better mappings can be achieved with no empirical optimization of parameters required. The precision which is lost by setting parameters for maximal recall is made up for by the regulatory effect of voting. Also interesting were the patterns evident in the most successful voting groups, which allow us to reliably pick a successful group of metrics to use. A good general rule is to pick one lexical metric, one term-level distributional metric, and syn_score (for a vote n=3).

Step 4: Summary Generation

Having extracted the necessary feature and semantic content, and produced a mapping of CFUDFs, our abstractive summarizer produces a succinct, grammatical summary of the most relevant information. This is achieved in several steps. First, user opinions are combined into scores which measure average opinion about a given feature, and a measure of the controversiality about that rating (whether reviewers tend to agree or disagree about the feature’s score). Then, the system selects the most important of this information to express in the summary, based on the number of reviewers mentioning a given feature, and the height of this feature on the UDF tree. Once the messages are

Results

Preliminary results for the completed pipeline are very encouraging. Summaries of the two corpora tested in [1] seem to correspond quite well to expectations. In addition, the pipeline was tested on an entirely new domain – restaurant reviews.

Despite none of the component parts of the system having been designed with this domain in mind, the pipeline seems to handle it quite well and produce reasonable outputs.

The following is an example summary for reviews of Chambar Belgian Restaurant downloaded from http://dinehere.ca. In the HTML output of the program, the bracketed numbers link to specific sentences in the corpora which illustrate the point being made: Almost all users thought the Chambar Belgian Restaurant [1] was good because many diners found the service [2] to be good. This was because even though customers had mixed opinions about the reservations [3],[4], many users liked the servers [5]. Furthermore, many customers found the price [6] to be good. Also, many diners thought the ambiance [7] was very good possibly because several customers found the noise level [8] to be good. Finally, almost all customers liked the menu [9] because many customers found the drinks [10] to be good. Also, many users liked the set menu[11]. Finally, almost all users found the food [12] to be good.

Future Work

One line of future work will focus on dealing with the problem of inter-sentential opinion differentiation described in Step 2. Ideally, out system should be able to distinguish the feature targeted by an individual sentiment expression (see [5]). Furthermore, improvements to the Natural Language Generation component should increase summary coherence and readability.

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference References

1. Carenini G, Ng R, and Pauls, A. (2006a). MultiDocument Summarization of Evaluative Text.

Proc. of the Conf. of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics, 2006.

2. Carenini G, Ng R, Pauls A, (2006b). Interactive multimedia summaries of evaluative text, Proceedings of the 11th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces, January 29-February 01, 2006, Sydney, Australia 3. Hu, M., and Liu, B. (2004c). Mining opinion features in customer reviews. Proc. AAAI. 4. Scaffidi, C. (2006). Application of a ProbabilityBased Algorithm to Extraction of Product Features from Online Reviews. Tech. Report CMU-ISRI-06-111, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University.

5. Kessler, J. and Nicolov, N. (2009). Targeting Sentiment Expressions through Supervised Ranking of Linguistic Configurations. 3rd International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM 2009), 2009. San Jose, California.

6. Voll, K. and Taboada, M. (2007) â&#x20AC;&#x153;Not All Words are Created Equal: Extracting Semantic Orientation as a Function of Adjective Relevanceâ&#x20AC;?, 20th Australian Joint Conference on A.I. 2007, Gold Coast, Australia, Dec 2-6, pp. 337-346 7. WordNet an electronic lexical database.

Cambridge, Mass: MIT, 1998. Print.

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Agricultural Credit in India: An Essay Sourovi De

University of Delhi

Abstract This paper presents an overview of the agrarian credit scenario in India. Drawing from past studies and previous research, this paper provides a detailed analysis of the various issues pertinent to the functioning of agrarian credit markets. These include the glaring chasm between demand and supply of agrarian credit, the emergence of sectors within the Indian economy which compete with agriculture for institutional credit and the aversion of institutional lenders towards agrarian borrowers. The paper also attempts an analysis of deficiencies plaguing the three distinct phases of a credit cycle—resource mobilisation, lending and recovery.

Introduction and Background “Indian agriculture has made great strides in the last fifty years of the twentieth century. From chronic hunger and abject dependence on the import of foodgrains, the country has achieved self-sufficiency not only in the production of foodgrains, but has emerged a net exporter of foodgrains consecutively for the last six years, despite the trebling of the country’s population in the last six years. “ ‘State of the Indian Farmer’—A Millennium Study (Commissioned by the Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India 2004) Without entirely discounting the achievements of Indian agriculture, asking pertinent questions about the situation of land and water resources, rural infrastructure, input management, terms of trade, agricultural marketing, credit facilities etc. is crucial for constructing a realistic understanding of the real health of Indian agriculture. This essay attempts to assess one such dimension—agricultural credit.

For a country where two-thirds of its population is dependent on agriculture, there is no denying the fact that agricultural growth is critical for the growth of the entire economy. In fact, from time to time, agricultural growth—or the lack of it—has served as a parameter for overall economic growth of the country. Under such conditions, coupled with the sheer limitation on expanding crop area, growth of farm productivity is crucial and depends heavily on sustained infusion of credit. However, in a developing country like India, depending on farmers’ savings for acquiring farm capital only leads to marginal variations in the existing traditional technology. Availability of credit at reasonable rates, therefore, becomes a prerequisite for agricultural growth.

The Demand -Supply Chasm

Having appreciated the importance of credit for a farmer to expand his ownership of resources and exploit the opportunities thrown at him, it

is equally crucial to assess the demand-supply situation of agricultural credit in India, and reckon the presence of a gap therein, if any. Factoring in the future demands of agricultural sector, the Kotaiah Group (Planning Commission, 1996) estimated the demand for agricultural credit for the Ninth Five Year Plan (1997-2002) at Rs. 2,297,500 million—an estimate that would have required a 16% growth in the rate of credit flow during the plan. It was also mentioned that approximately 47% of this credit demand was from small and marginal farmers.

As far as supply of agricultural credit is concerned, only data regarding disbursements from institutional sources (such as commercial banks, cooperative banks and regional rural banks) are available whereas non-institutional lenders (for instance, indigenous sources like village moneylenders) remain chiefly unorganised and unaccounted for inspite of their playing a massive role in supplying credit to their immediate community members. A study done on Uttar Pradesh

by Desai (1988) showed that in 1984-5, the aggregate credit supply for agricultural production from all institutional sources amounts to Rs. 32,190 million, when the credit requirement by farmers amounted to Rs. 278,240 million. This is a chasm pertinent to Uttar Pradesh for the year 1984-5 alone but can be used to sketch an understanding of the credit demandsupply chasm at the national level. In a more recent study titled Interlinked Agrarian Credit Markets: Case Study of Punjab by Anita Gill (2004) which covers 200 households each from the districts of Patiala and Amritsar in Punjab, it was outlined that total supply of formal credit met less than 50% of the total credit demand of the study area. This, to a large extent, explains the important role played by usurious moneylenders in the unorganised sector who cater to this lacuna discussed above. Moreover, according to World Bank estimates for the mid-1980s, this needversus-availability gap is further aggravated by the fact that only around a third of the institutional disbursements went to small and marginal farmers, while we noted earlier that close to half the farm credit need is generated by these farmers.

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference Policies, Institutional Lenders, and the Agrarian Borrower

Along with agriculture, several sectors compete for credit from institutional sources, i.e., there are competitors for credit in the real estate sectors, consumer loans to meet demands for household durables like white goods and vehicles, information technology etc. Though agriculture, small and cottage industries are favoured for lending by policy directives, several capital-intensive and emerging sectors are competing with agriculture for institutional credit. According to RBI’s stipulations, commercial banks are required to achieve a target of lending 18% of total credit towards agriculture.

Data for the year 2003 shows that commercial banks failed to meet this target by 3.7%. Some reasons for this shortfall could be found in the fact that information technology and real estate have also entered the ambit of priority sector lending and, as mentioned above, increased the competition for institutional credit. Secondly, bankers are averse to the piling up of non-performing assets (NPA) among rural and agrarian loans. Third, the nature of credit delivery mechanisms followed by formal sources of lending like commercial banks is not compatible, in many ways, to what one might expect from a poorfriendly lending policy (for instance, a marginal farmer might want to offer his labour as collateral while a commercial bank has no such provision and asks for formal collaterals such as land). In a case study by Dreze, Lanjouw and Sharma (1997) of north India’s Palanpur village, it was found that interests rates offered by indigenous village moneylenders ranged from 0 to 300%, while borrowers generally avoided formal credit sources due to cumbersome paperwork, need for conventional forms of collateral (such as land) and inflexible terms of lending, all of which in turn raise transaction costs.

In the Union Budget 2008-09, a scheme of debt waiver and debt relief for farmers was proposed by erstwhile Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, wherein all agricultural loans disbursed by scheduled commercial banks, regional rural banks and cooperative credit institutions which stood overdue as on December 31, 2007 will be covered under the scheme. For marginal farmers (i.e., holding upto 1 hectare) and small farmers (1-2 hectare), it was proposed that there be a complete waiver of all loans that were overdue on December 31, 2007. In respect of other farmers, a one time settlement (OTS) scheme for all loans was proposed. Upon being granted debt waiver or signing an agreement for debt relief under the OTS, the farmer would be entitled to fresh agricultural loans from the banks in accordance with normal rules. The government estimated that about three crore small and marginal farmers and about one crore other farmers will benefit from the scheme. The total value of overdue loans to be waived was estimated at Rs.50,000 crore and the

OTS relief on the overdue loans was estimated at Rs.10,000 crore.

While it is evident that such a loan waiver scheme will make indebted farmers creditworthy again, it does not address issues of creating institutional lending outlets which suit rural agrarian conditions and expand the coverage of formal credit.

Moreover, the scheme categorically mentions that only loans taken from formal sources (“commercial banks, regional rural banks and cooperative credit institutions”) will be covered by the scheme.

However, it has been shown by several empirical studies that more than half the agrarian credit needs of Indian farmers are met by unorganized lenders.

An immense lacuna of this relief scheme has been the omission of such informal borrowings.

Credit Cycles and Problems Within

It is worthwhile, at this point, to elaborate on the credit cycle of mobilisation, lending and recovery.

The first stage entails mopping up resources from the society through deposit mobilisation. Further, funds so mobilised are lent out to borrowers who have viable rural/agricultural projects to pursue; and finally, recovering the lent out amount for again lending them along with whatever resources may have been mobilised in the intervening period.

However, Surjit Singh and Vidya Sagar, in their book Agricultural Credit in India, state that cooperative banks and regional rural banks have soft-pedaled on the front of generating resources through deposit mobilisation, often citing reasons such as the lack of savings with the poor. They have mostly depended on refinancing or funds allotted to them from upper tier institutions. This has led to several inefficiencies with respect to management of funds and maintaining tighter repayment and recovery practices, as neither the shareholders nor the day-today managers of these banks have an incentive to treat these funds as their own. In the case of regional rural banks, there is no stipulation regarding the sections of the population from where deposits can be mobilised but there is a bar on lending to ‘economically resilient’ classes. This has averted deposits from the non-poor sections in the face of an absence of commensurate facilities of loans and advances. On the front of canvassing for awareness among agriculturalists regarding the availability of requisite lending facilities and creating suitable credit options for potential borrowers, institutional lenders have failed in varying degrees. This is more so for commercial banks who have not been able convert their operating standards in accordance with the needs of development banking.

These discussions bring us to the final stage of the credit cycle—recovery of loans. Surjit Singh and Vidya Sagar, in their book Agricultural Credit in India state that cooperative banks, regional rural banks and commercial banks have all failed to yield results

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in rural loan recoveries. Agricultural loan overdues and non-repayments have been ‘chronically high, all-pervasive and neutral’ to the type of credit institution. In some respects, this might be blamed on weather conditions leading to failure of crops, diversion of production loans for consumption purposes and the weak legal provisions for enforcement of loan contracts. Further, a notion has settled among many rural borrowers that loans taken by them are ‘government support’ and hence, needn’t be repaid. This notion has been fanned, from time to time, by local leaderships for fulfilment of their vested interests. Thus, Singh and Sagar state that some willing repayers have withheld repayments in expectation of a write-off. These expectations, in fact, have often been fuelled by periodic announcements of interest subsidies and/ or loan waivers. Thus, we see the battered shape of all the three stages of the credit cycle—deposit mobilisation, lending and recovery—in all the three credit systems examined here—commercial banks, cooperative banks and regional rural banks.

References

Concluding Remarks

Acknowledgements

India has faced three distinct phases of credit’s involvement in the process of agricultural growth. Prior to the nationalisation of banks in 1969, cooperative banks and indigenous moneylenders were the chief suppliers of agricultural credit. Post1969 witnessed what is often called a period of social banking. This phase saw priority being given to small and marginal farmers in the disbursement of loans. In the post-liberalisation phase ensued since 1991, financial liberalisation and deregulation, coupled with measures towards fiscal discipline have led to a reduced attention towards agriculture in general, and agricultural credit, in particular.

Within these three phases, there have been issues galore—ranging from an inability of existing institutional credit sources to meet the demand for agrarian credit, the issue of emerging sectors like IT and real estate competing for credit from the banking sector to the problems faced in the processes of deposit mobilisation, lending and loan recovery. Though not an exhaustive list of prevailing issues in agrarian credit, this essay has attempted to establish the broad, pertinent conclusion that India’s rural and agrarian sectors need credit polices to lead them from subsistence production towards surplus production.

1. Alagh, Y.K. 2004. State of the Indian Farmer—An Overview. New Delhi: Academic Foundation.

2. Dreze, J., P. Lanjouw, and N. Sharma. 1997. Credit in Rural India—A Case Study. Discussion Paper DEDPS/6: The Suntory Centre—London School of Economics and Political Science, London.

3. Gill, Anita. 2004. Interlinked Agrarian Credit Markets—Case Study of Punjab. Economic and Political Weekly, 14 August, Volume 39, Number 33: 3741-3751.

4. Government of India. 2008. Union Budget 200809. New Delhi: Ministry of Finance. Accessed of 5 March 2008 at http://indiabudget.nic.in/ ub2008-09/bs/speecha.htm 5. Planning Commission. 1996. Report of the Working Group on Agricultural Credit and Cooperation (including crop insurance) for Ninth Five Year Plan, 1997-98 to 2001-02. (Chairman: P. Kotaiah), New Delhi.

6. Singh Surjit, and Vidya Sagar. 2004. Agricultural Credit in India. New Delhi: Academic Foundation.

This paper has benefitted immensely from discussions with Rakesh Ranjan, Associate Professor, Department of Economics, Shri Ram College of Commerce, University of Delhi. The author is indebted to him for excellent research guidance.

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference

Bacterial Metallothionein, SmtA, as a Virulence Factor Stephanie Davis

University of Connecticut

Abstract The mammalian stress response protein, metallothionein (MT), is induced by various immunomodulatory molecules and plays an important role in the immune response (1). With an amino acid sequence rich in cysteines, MT is well known for its metal-binding properties. In mammalian cells, MT acts as an essential metal reservoir, regulating the amount of free zinc present in cells and the amount of zinc available for molecules important to immune function (2). In addition, MT has the ability to scavenge free radicals such as reactive oxygen and nitrogen species (ROS, RNS), interfering with their toxic effects on cells (3, 4). Over the course of a bacterial infection, innate immune cells undergo a respiratory burst where they release ROS as bacteriocides, during which MT protects the host cell against self-inflicted oxidative damage. A bacterial metallothionein, SmtA, shares sequence homology with mammalian MT as well as its metal-binding capabilities (5). Whether or not SmtA has a biological role in defending the bacteria against inflammatory ROS in a manner similar to mammalian MT remains unknown. We have shown using Escherichia coli transfected with SmtA that SmtA provides protection to transgenic E. coli from some forms of oxidative stress and that SmtA protects transgenic E. coli when co-cultured with RAW264.7 macrophage cells. Further exploration is necessary to determine whether SmtA provides protection against mammalian immune defense mechanisms in vivo; however, these initial in vitro results have provided motivation to continue these studies.

Introduction

Metallothionein (MT) is a small molecular weight protein rich in cysteine residues (Ca. 33 mol %). The cysteines present in MT provide the protein with many of its functional characterisics including the ability to bind heavy metals, scavenge reactive oxygen species, elicit chemotaxis, and influence immune cell trafficking. In mammalian cells, MT acts as a stress response protein and is induced by various immunomodulatory molecules such as divalent heavy metals, endotoxin, interferon, and reactive oxygen and nitrogen species (ROS, RNS) (611). Its role as a stress response protein as well as its known interactions with various immune molecules indicate that MT is an important mediator of an effective immune response. In total, four types of mammalian metallothioneins have been identified, all of which are encoded in a gene cluster located on chromosome 8 in mice. MT-I and MT-II are widely distributed in vivo throughout all cell types as well as in most cell lines. The remaining two isoforms, MT-III and MT-IV, have more restricted expression and are found predominantly in the brain (MT-III) or squamous epithelial cells (MT-IV) (12, 13).

Cysteine motifs present in its amino acid sequence allow MT to bind 7-8 zinc molecules. With a major function in essential metal homeostasis, mammalian MT regulates the amount of free zinc present in cells as well as the amount of zinc available for molecules important to immune function such as zinc-finger transcription factors, structural metalloproteins, and zinc-dependent

apoenzymes, all of which require elemental zinc for proper function (2). MTâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ability to bind essential metals may also be important to the hostâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s immune response during infections given that metal sequestration is one way an infected organism can restrict infectious bacterial growth. It has been shown that the sequestration of essential metals during an infection inhibits the growth and survival of bacteria that require the same essential metals to function.

In addition to its ability to bind metals, mammalian MT participates in regulating the redox potential of cells. MT is able to scavenge free radicals such as reactive oxygen and nitrogen species (ROS, RNS), interfering with their toxic effects on cells (3, 4, 14). During the course of a bacterial infection, innate immune cells undergo a respiratory burst in which they release ROS. Oxidant species known to be released during the respiratory bursts of macrophages and neutrophils include nitric oxide (NO), superoxide anion (O2-), hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), hydroxyl radical (.OH), hypochlorite (OCl-), and hypobromite (OBr-). Although ROS are released as bacteriocides, they can cause unwanted damage to the host cell by leaking back across host cell membranes. Mammalian MT, however, is inducible by and able to scavenge and neutralize ROS in the cell, limiting oxidative damage to the host.

These observations regarding mammalian MT suggest that a bacterial metallothionein, SmtA, may similarly influence the mammalian immune response. SmtA is present in Pseudomonas aeruginosa

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Figure 1. Comparison of cysteines in mammalian and bacterial metallothioneins. This alignment of human and mouse MT-I and Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Synechococcus SmtA shows 4 cysteines conserved in all 4 sequences. Sequence data is from

and Synechococcus species where its role as a metalbinding protein is clearly established. A sequence alignment between SmtA and mammalian MT shows alignment between various cysteine residues as well as other sequence similarities (Figure 1).

In addition to cysteine motifs, it is thought that additional histidine residues also contribute to SmtA’s ability to bind metals. A total of 8-9 cysteine and 3 histidine residues allow SmtA to bind, on average, 3-4 zinc molecules (5).

Like mammalian MT, SmtA is inducible in the presence of heavy metals. Its expression is controlled by the metalloregulatory protein SmtB, which normally binds the SmtA promotor region in the absence of metals, preventing transcription of the gene encoding SmtA. SmtA is known to share mammalian MT’s metal-binding capabilities and its induction through the metallo-regulated SmtB pathway is well understood, but there is a lack of research exploring the possibility of other roles for SmtA. Mammalian MT’s ability to scavenge ROS and induce chemotaxis is important to its interaction with the immune response, and if such properties of MT were shared with its bacterial homolog, SmtA could represent a virulence factor in specific bacterial pathogens.

Mammalian MT’s ability to bind and neutralize ROS protects host immune cells from self-inflicted oxidative damage. Because SmtA shares numerous cysteine motifs with MT, it may be able to scavenge ROS in a similar manner and protect bacteria from

ROS released as bacteriocides during the host’s response to infection. Protection from this source of oxidative stress could aid in the survival and increase the virulence of a SmtA-expressing bacterium, such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa, during an infection.

P. aeruginosa infections commonly occur in the airways of immunocompromised individuals and account for 10.1% of hospital-acquired infections (15). If SmtA indeed influences bacterial resistance to immune attack, it may represent a valuable target for therapeutic intervention.

Given the sequence similarities between MT and SmtA and the established shared properties between eukaryotic and prokaryotic metallothioneins, it is likely that SmtA shares additional properties with mammalian MT that have not yet been explored. The role of SmtA in metal sequestration has been well documented; however, its ability to scavenge and neutralize ROS or induce chemotaxis has not yet been addressed. Our research is designed to establish whether or not SmtA has the capacity to bind and neutralize ROS and whether the presence of SmtA is a factor in bacterial survival during infection. Our hypothesis is that SmtA does bind and neutralize ROS, protecting bacteria from oxidative stress elicited during the inflammatory response and contributing to its survival during the respiratory burst of innate immune cells.

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference

Figure 2a.

Figure 2b.

Figure 2c Figure 2. Survival of E.coli MC1061+pGex-6p-SmtA and MC1061+pGex-6P-1 after exposure to various oxidants. The E.coli MC1061 strains expressing either plasmid construct were sub-cultured from overnight cultures in a rich media containing IPTG to early log phase and monitored at OD600. The cultures were then aliquoted into 96-well plates and exposed to the various concentrations of hydrogen peroxide (a), tert-butyl hydroperoxide (b), or sodium hypochlorite (c). Values are compared to an untreated control culture maintained for the same duration.

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Materials and Methods Cells.

E. coli MC1061 cells (ATCC 53338) were cultured in rich media. RAW267.4 cells (ATCC TIB-71) are a mouse macrophage cell line and were cultured in RPMI media supplemented with 1% pen-strep, 25mM Hepes, 4mM L-glut, and 10% FBS.

Plasmid construction MC1061 E. coli.

and

transformation

of

A Pseudomonas aeruginosa SmtA gene (YP_791105) was cloned into the pGEX-6P-1 expression vector (Amersham) between the EcoRI and XhoI sites (pGEX-SMTA) (D. Laukens, U. Ghent).

MC1061 E. coli was transfected with either the pGEXSMTA or pGEX-6P-1 plasmid using the calcium chloride procedure and selected for by taking advantage of the plasmidâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ampcillin-resistance gene. Under isopropyl-b-D-thiogalactoside (IPTG) induction, the transfected E. coli express either a GST-tagged SmtA protein or GST (glutathione S-transferase) alone.

In vitro exogenous oxidant exposure.

The MC1061+pGEX-SMTA and MC1061+pGEX6P-1 E. coli were subcultured from overnight cultures to log phase in YTA media containing ampicillin and IPTG (1:1000). The cultures were then aliquoted into 96-well plates and exposed to the various concentrations of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), tert-butyl hydroperoxide (tBOOH), or sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl) ranging from 3mM to 15mM. Survival was monitored at OD600 and represented graphically as percent absorbance of untreated control.

Infection of RAW267.4 macrophage.

E. coli MC1061 expressing either plasmid construct were grown overnight and subcultured in rich media to log phase with IPTG and ampicillin (1:1000). The RAW264.7 cells were grown 72 hours, plated in 6 well plates, and allowed to adhere 2.5 hours in 5% CO2.The RAW264.7 cells were then infected with E.coli at an MOI of 5:1 and incubated in special gas at 37oC. The supernatant was removed after 30 minutes and after 24 hours and plated on YTA plates supplemented with ampicillin and IPTG to determine cfu/ml.

Results

MC1061 E. coli were transfected with a pGEX6p-1 plasmid containing the P. aeruginosa SmtA gene under IPTG induction (see Methods section).

A control pGEX-6p-1 plasmid that lacks the SmtA gene was transfected into the same strain of E. coli for use as a negative control. In the presence of IPTG, the pGEX-SmtA plasmid expresses a GSTtagged SmtA protein while the pGEX-6p-1 plasmid expresses only the GST protein. The two strains

of bacteria expressing either plasmid construct were sub-cultured from IPTG induced overnight cultures in a rich media to early log phase and then aliquoted into 96-well plates and treated with multiple concentrations of hydrogen peroxide as a source of oxidative stress. Bacteria were monitored with OD600nm absorbance readings every 30 minutes for 3 hours. When treated with hydrogen peroxide at multiple concentrations, both SmtAcontaining and SmtA-deficient strains showed a dose-dependent response. As the concentration of hydrogen peroxide increased, the bacteria were less able to survive and grow. At each concentration of hydrogen peroxide, the SmtA-expressing E. coli were better able to survive the treatment than the control strain lacking SmtA (Figure 2a). Because the only difference between the two strains is the inducible SmtA gene present in the pGEX-6p-1 plasmid of the SmtA-expressing bacteria, the resistance towards hydrogen peroxide demonstrated was concluded to be due to the presence of SmtA. In addition to using hydrogen peroxide as a source of oxidative stress, parallel experiments were completed using two other oxidants, tertbutyl hydroperoxide and sodium hypochlorite, in order to further test the anti-oxidant capacity of SmtA. Testing multiple oxidants provides a more complete understanding of the extent to which SmtA offers protection to the bacteria, and may suggest the context (e.g. interactions with macrophages or neutrophils) in which SmtA is most important.

Unlike in the presence of hydrogen peroxide, we did not find a signficant difference between the responses of the SmtA-expressing and SmtAdeficient bacteria when treated with either tert-butyl hydroperoxide (Figure 2b) or sodium hypochlorite (Figure 2c). Thus, SmtA does not protect E. coli from oxidative damage caused by all ROS. When the bacteria were treated with tert-butyl hydroperoxide we did not observe a dose-dependent response; rather, at all concentrations of the oxidant, the bacteria, regardless of the presence of SmtA, showed the same degree of viability (Figure 2b).

When treated with sodium hypochlorite, there was a dose-dependent response, although no difference in the response between the two strains was observed (Figure 2c). This data suggests that the protective effect of SmtA is not universal to all oxidants.

Additionally, we measured the survival of the two E. coli MC1061 constructs after infection of RAW 267.4 murine macrophage cultures.

Macrophages are one of the first types of immune cells present at an infection site, and upon exposure to endotoxin, macrophages are known to undergo a respiratory burst during which ROS are released as bacteriocides. The two strains expressing the plasmid constructs were grown overnight and subcultured to early log phase in rich media. The RAW 264.7 cells were grown to confluency, plated

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference

Figure 3a.

Figure 3b.

Figure 3. Survival of E. coli MC1061+pGEX-6p-SmtA and MC1061+pGEX-6p-1 after 24 hour infection of RAW267.4 macrophages. The E. coli MC1061 strains expressing either plasmid construct were grown overnight and subcultured to log phase with IPTG present. The RAW264.7 cells were grown to confluency and plated in 6 well plates. The RAW264.7 cells were then infected with E.coli at an MOI of 5:1 and incubated in special gas at 37oC. The supernatant was removed after 30 hours (a) and 24 hours (b) and plated to determine cfu/ml.

in 6-well plates, and infected with the E. coli at a multiplicity of infection (MOI) of 5:1. After thirty minutes of infection, the supernatant was removed and plated on YTA plates supplemented with ampicillin and IPTG to determine cfu/ml of the surviving bacteria. Surviving cell numbers were also determined after 24 hours of infection according to the same protocol. The SmtA-expressing bacteria were significantly greater in number than SmtAdeficient bacteria after the 30 minutes of infection as well as the 24 hour infection (Figure 3). This data supports the conclusion that SmtA confers a survival benefit to E. coli in an oxidative environment such as that produced during the respiratory bursts of macrophages.

The experiments done in Figure 2 were done in triplicate and all experiments were repeated in a duplicate experiment to ensure reproducibility.

From these initial studies, it appears that SmtA shares MTâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ROS scavenging capabilities in addition to its already established metal-binding function.

Discussion

We have been able to show that E. coli transformed with a P. aeruginosa SmtA gene is resistant to some forms of oxidative attack but not all. Further exploration is necessary to determine whether SmtA provides protection against mammalian immune defense mechanisms in vivo; however, these initial results have provided promising incentive to continue these studies and move into a model system more similar to the natural infection.

P. aeruginosa is an opportunistic pathogen, typically infecting the airways of immunocompromised individuals, such as those suffering from burns, HIV, or chemotherapy. P. aeruginosa infection is also commonly seen in patients where there has been damage to a physical barrier of the airway that normally protects against infection as in diseases like cystic fibrosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and pneumonia (15,

16). Infections with P. aeruginosa are complicated and often life threatening. Typical treatment includes two antibiotics in combination: an antipseudomonal beta-lactam and an aminoglycoside.

Pseudomonas infections, however, have a tendency towards drug resistance, demonstrating a need for alternative therapies (17).

Our future research is designed to determine SmtAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s role in scavenging ROS released as bactericides from innate immune cells of the airway where Pseudomonas infections are common. To assess the role of SmtA, wildtype P. aeruginosa could be compared to P. aeruginosa treated with small interfering RNA (siRNA) to prevent the translation of the SmtA protein. If SmtA provides protection to P. aeruginosa during mammalian infection, targeting SmtA with siRNA may be applicable to treatment of Pseudomonas infections. The use of RNA interference (RNAi) as a treatment for disease would not novel to our studies; however, it is an innovative approach and constitutes a popular area of research that holds valuable therapeutic promise. Recently, RNA interference was highlighted as a treatment for HIV in humanized mice by blocking expression of CCR5 (18). This research, along with other similar studies, provides the rationale for the use of RNA interference in our own research.

Our research may find that Pseudomonas infections treated with siRNA to stop the production of SmtA are less able to cause disease than Pseudomonas actively producing SmtA. Pseudomonas is an opportunistic pathogen, and infections often occur due to a temporary decrease in immune efficacy or temporary damage to airway barriers.

Developing a drug that would keep an infection under control until immune function is restored or until the airway repairs itself would allow the body, once healthy, to fight off the infection as it would normally in a healthy individual without the use of antibiotics. This would prevent multiple drug resistance infections and other side effects of antibiotic use, such as loss of hearing. And so, if

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SmtA proves to be a significant factor in bacterial defense against host immune mechanisms, therapeutic manipulation of SmtA may be a possible avenue of co-treatment for patients with a P. aeruginosa infection. In addition, the experimental procedure, if successful, would indicate the ability to halt the production of SmtA with siRNA, providing a specific method of therapeutic intervention that could be explored further. Therefore, our research may elucidate a new pathway to fight Pseudomonas infection and would also provide a specific means of doing so.

References

1. M. A. Lynes et al., Experimental Biology and Medicine 231, 1548 (Oct, 2006).

2. M. P. Waalkes, P. L. Goering, Chem Res Toxicol 3, 281 (Jul-Aug, 1990).

3. Z. X. Zhou, X. H. Sun, Y. J. Kang, Experimental Biology and Medicine 227, 214 (Mar, 2002).

4. L. Cai, J. B. Klein, Y. J. Kang, Journal of Biological Chemistry 275, 38957 (Dec 15, 2000).

5. N. J. Robinson, S. K. Whitehall, J. S. Cavet, Advances in Microbial Physiology, Vol 44 44, 183 (2001).

6. R. L. Friedman, G. R. Stark, Nature 314, 637 (Apr 18-24, 1985).

7. M. Karin, H. R. Herschman, J Cell Physiol 103, 35 (Apr, 1980).

8. M. Karin, R. J. Imbra, A. Heguy, G. Wong, Mol Cell Biol 5, 2866 (Oct, 1985).

9. M. Sato, M. Sasaki, H. Hojo, Res Commun Chem Pathol Pharmacol 75, 159 (Feb, 1992).

10. M. Sato, M. Sasaki, H. Hojo, Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics 316, 738 (Feb 1, 1995).

11. J. J. Schroeder, R. J. Cousins, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 87, 3137 (Apr, 1990).

12. C. A. Sogawa et al., Acta Med Okayama 55, 1 (Feb, 2001).

13. C. J. Quaife et al., Biochemistry 33, 7250 (Jun 14, 1994).

14. T. Miura, S. Muraoka, T. Ogiso, Life Sciences 60, Pl301 (Apr 18, 1997).

15. H. Kobayashi, O. Kobayashi, S. Kawai, Journal of Infection and Chemotherapy 15, 125 (Jun, 2009).

16. D. J. Hassett et al., Expert Opinion on Therapeutic Targets 14, 117 (Feb, 2010).

17. S. Kirkby, K. Novak, K. McCoy, Expert Review of Anti-Infective Therapy 7, 967 (Oct, 2009).

18. P. Kumar et al., Cell 134, 577 (Aug 22, 2008).

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by grants from NIH (ES07408) to MAL.

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference

Gender Differences in Imagination Among Indian Adolescents Uma Ranganathan University of Delhi

Abstract This paper attempts to understand the variations in patterns of imagination between boys and girls who fall in the adolescent age group. Based on a notable review of literature and the findings of research

by Susan A. Myers (1983) that reveals that gender differences exist in imagination in the context of western and east- European nations, with regard to individuals falling in adolescent age group, this study seeks to understand the differences in the light of not just the universally uniform biological factors, but also sociocultural, economic and political context of India. Data has been collected on Imagination, using the Creative Imagination Scale published in detail by Wilson and Barber (1978), from 30 boys and 30 girls from the age group of 15 to 17, falling in the economic status of Below Poverty Line and having secured education from class ten to twelve. The data has been analyzed quantitatively using statistical methods, and qualitatively in the light of socio-cultural, political and economic characteristics of India. Finally, the limitations of this research have been considered and suggestions for future research have been proposed.

Introduction

The socio-economic and cultural diversity of a nation characterizes thought patterns of an individual as much as the biological composition of a being shall do. This is the outline to the popular nature-nurture controversy. Thus, it is important to understand the influences of environmental dynamics on human cognition and action, as a base to not just explain, but also predict and control behaviour.

Imagination is an integral component of human thought. Also called the faculty of imagining, it is the ability of forming mental images, sensations and concepts, in a moment when they are not perceived through sight, hearing or other senses.

Imagination is the work of the mind that helps create fantasy. Imagination helps provide meaning to experience and understanding to knowledge; it is a fundamental facility through which people make sense of the world, and it also plays a key role in the learning process. Psychologists have studied imaginative thought, not only in its exotic form of creativity and artistic expression but also in its mundane form of everyday imagination. Ruth M.J. Byrne has proposed that everyday imaginative thoughts about counterfactual alternatives to reality may be based on the same cognitive processes that rational thoughts are based on. Thus, the domain of Psychology studies imagination not just as a component of cognition, but also as a function of social and cultural beliefs.

In India, one of the most significant bases for establishing social beliefs is gender. The variations in practices followed in the Indian cultural context between males and females, and its consequential impact is noteworthy, especially during the crucial

developmental stage of adolescence. Keeping in view the belief of Classical Psychoanalysis that early experiences of life have a greater impact on an individual’s life, than incidents in later life, it is important to study the determinants of thought and behaviour that shape the personality characteristics of adolescents.

Thus, since imagination is significantly a function of social beliefs and gender is an important determinant of social viewpoints, it may be important to assess the contribution of gender to the difference in imagination patterns between adolescent boys and girls in India. The following sections focus on the definition and aspects of imagination and also throw light on sociological components of gender differences in India, which may have an impact on imagination.

Imagination is the ability to form a mental image of something that is not perceived through the senses. It is the ability of the mind to build mental scenes, objects or events that do not exist, are not present or have happened in the past. Memory is actually a manifestation of imagination. Everyone possesses some imagination ability. In some it may be highly developed and in others it may manifest in a weaker form. It manifests in various degrees in various people. Imagination makes it possible to experience a whole world inside the mind. It gives the ability to look at any situation from a different point of view, and enables one to mentally explore the past and the future. Imagination is a concept far more frequently invoked than it is analyzed, even by philosophers. Brann (1991) calls it the “missing mystery” of philosophy: it plays a pivotal role in the epistemologies of many, diverse philosophers – from Aristotle to Hume, from Kant to Bachelard

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and Popper, and in contemporary philosophical movements such as simulation theory- but this role is rarely highlighted, and still more rarely satisfactorily explained.

A number of perspectives can be used to explain imagination. One of the most influential theories popularly used to understand cognitive development is the theory by Jean Piaget. As a biologist, Piaget was interested in how an organism adapts to its environment (Piaget described as intelligence.)

Behaviour (adaptation to the environment) is controlled through mental organizations (schemes) that are used to represent the world and designate action. This adaptation is driven by a biological drive to obtain balance between schemes and the environment (equilibration). From his cognitive theory, according to Piaget’s stages, in the Preoperational stage (Toddler and Early Childhood), intelligence is demonstrated through the use of symbols, language use matures, and memory and imagination are developed, but thinking is done in a non-logical, irreversible manner. Thus, imagination develops and is exhibited in the form of animistic thinking, make-believe play and egocentric explanations to ideas.

Also, the left and right sides of the brain have been neurologically shown to perform the function of imagination. Imagination with the left is fantasy, or rearranging what exists so it will serve a better purpose. What you are doing is altering what exists, modifying it, to get better results out of it. That is left brain imagination, which can also be accounted for being similar to creativity. However, Right brain imagination is creating something that has never happened, has not occurred yet. That is the beginning of creation, the beginning of inventions, and the beginning of discoveries. That happens for the first time. That’s right brain imagination.

From the work of Vygotsky it is known that perceptions and beliefs depend on the world view of a person. The world view is the result of arranging perceptions into existing imagery by imagination.

He cites the example of a child saying that the moon is following her when she walks around the village at night. Like this perceptions are integrated into the world view to make sense. Imagination is needed to make sense of perceptions. Vygotsky further explains the socio-cultural role in development of imagination, by placing the growing child in its environmental context, similar to the Gestalt idea.

Thus, through the processes of scaffolding and guided participation, infants are induced to think in a certain cultural perspective, which tends to continue involuntarily even in adolescence, unless the impact of education and popularly known “modernization” is significant on them. Thus, imagination of an individual needs to be placed in his/her sociocultural context, to derive a better understanding of an individual’s direction of thought.

In the wider culture too, “imagination” is a word of power. Indeed, McFarland (1985) suggests that in recent times it has taken over many of the functions once served by “soul”. No less a cultural icon than Einstein is often said to have asserted that “imagination is more important than knowledge”.

On the other hand, parents and teachers warn children not to let their imaginations run away with them, and if people sincerely claim to have had experiences that we find incredible (such as having been abducted by aliens), we dismiss the experiences as mere figments of their imagination.

It was because of usages such as this, presumably, that Pascal called imagination “that mistress of error and falsehood, “an” arrogant faculty, the enemy of reason” (Lafuma, 1960). Deep cultural ambivalence about imagination has a long history (Kearney, 1988; Brann, 1991); and thus, philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola was driven to the conclusion that “not only all the good, universally, but also all the bad, can be derived from the imagination”.

Adolescence, the transitional stage of development between childhood and adulthood, represents the period of time during which a person experiences a variety of biological changes and encounters a number of emotional issue. World Health Organisation (WHO) defines adolescence both in terms of age (spanning the ages between 10 and 19 years) and in terms of a phase of life marked by special attributes. These attributes include: 1. Rapid physical growth and development 2. Physical, social and psychological maturity but not all at the same time 3. Sexual maturity and the sexual activity 4. Experimentation 5. Development of adult mental processes and adult identity 6. Transition from total socio-economic dependence to relative independence Adolescence can be a specifically turbulent as well as a dynamic period of one’s life. It has been identified as a period in which young people develop abstract thinking abilities, become more aware of their sexuality, develop a clearer sense of psychological identity, and increase their independence from parents. Margaret Mead attributed the behaviour of adolescents to their culture and upbringing, as the majority of problems associated with adolescence in Western society are not present in other cultures.

G. Stanley Hall (1844 - 1924) is known as the Father of Adolescence. His work influenced adolescent themes in psychology, popular culture, and education. Hall coined the term “storm and stress” to describe the period of adolescence. This period is characterized by a teenager’s conflict with parents, mood disruptions, and engagement in

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference

Table 1. Characteristics of the sample

Table 2. Mean, SD and t test value of boys and girls on CIS

risky behaviour. Although the concept of storm and stress is not accepted as a universal phenomenon in adolescents, psychologists recognize that this phenomenon is most likely to take place during adolescence. However, Hall recognizes that, conflict at this developmental stage is normal and not unusual. Due to the significant changes in human thought during adolescence, it may thus be important to understand how imagination patters occur during this perceived time of storm and stress.

The area of gender has been a central theme for research across many social science disciplines.

With special reference to the Indian context, the sociological construction of gender and the laws and beliefs associated with it is an important topic of study. Thus, it is essential to understand the impact of social beliefs related to gender on the shaping of thought process of individuals, through their developmental stages. From dressing up to education and domestic work, gender has played a fairly dominant role in establishing norms.

The self-understanding of gender differences essentially commences during adolescence, when children discover the physical differences between the two sexes, and consequentially attempt to follow the sociological sanctions for their respective sexual category, mainly to attain familial, peer and social acceptance. Thus, imagination may also be understood to be shaped according to oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s understanding of gender roles. Thus, this paper is an attempt to understand the variation in imagination caused by gender in the Indian context.

Objective of the Study

To examine gender differences in imagination by obtaining information about imagination patterns of adolescent boys and girls using the creative imagination scale.

Hypothesis

There will be a significant difference in the scores obtained by boys and girls on the Creative Imagination Scale.

The relationship between the variables has been investigated using a correlational approach, without attempting to speculate causation. Thus, data was collected from students from an institution working for the benefit of the socio-economically underprivileged youth in South Delhi zone. A cover note describing the purpose of study was attached to each set of questionnaire, also explaining the voluntary and anonymous nature of the study.

Further, the participants were assured that the responses would be aggregated for the purpose of analysis. The research was conducted in a single sitting in the classroom of the institution, during the lunch hours, whereby the Creative Imagination Scale was given to 30 boys and girls, along with a personal profile form, to further investigate the present living conditions of the subject with respect to family settings, family income, religion, caste, hobbies and interests.

Creative Imagination Scale

The CIS consists of 10 items for measuring suggestibility, in terms of intensity of realism of individualsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; responses to hypothetical scenarios described by a trained administrator. The scenarios examine a subjectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ability to realistically imagine senses of weight, feeling, thirst, taste, smell, sound, heat, time, memory, and relaxation. CIS possesses high test-retest reliability (r = .79) and moderate split-half reliability (r = .50). The cross-cultural validity has been supported by low-to-moderate correlations with the hypnosis scale (Shor and Orne, 1962) and the imagination inventory (Barber and Wilson, 1979). The factor analysis of CIS yielded only one significant factor (Jerzy Siuta, 1987); this is congruent with results obtained by Wilson and Barber (1978).

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Figure 1. Mean Scores on CIS

An independent samples t test was conducted to find the extent to which boys and girls differed on the Imagination scale.

The result, as shown in table 2, reveals that the imagination score of girls on CIS is significantly higher as compared to the score of boys (t = - 2.195, p< .05). Thus, gender can be seen to have had a significant impact on imagination. The mean scores obtained by girls (mean= 25.66, SD=8.28) is greater than the mean score of boys (mean= 21.03, SD= 8.06).

Hence hypothesis 1, which states that “There will be a significant difference in the scores obtained by boys and girls on the Creative Imagination Scale”, is accepted. A graphical analysis of the mean CIS scores is presented in Figure 1.

Discussion

In accordance with past research literature, imagination has been found to be significantly different based on gender variation in adolescents (Susan A. Myers, 1983). The following section shall probe into the various that may have influenced this gender difference.

Biological Perspective

Imagination with the left is fantasy, or rearranging what exists so it will serve a better purpose. What you are doing is altering what exists, modifying it, to get better results out of it. That is left brain imagination, which can also be accounted for being similar to creativity. However, Right brain imagination is creating something that has never happened, has not occurred yet. That is the beginning of creation, the beginning of inventions, and the beginning of discoveries. That happens for the first time. That’s right brain imagination.

According to Neurological facts, the left side of the brain is stronger in males than in females, while the right side of the brain is stronger for females than males. Thus, this could be one of the reasons for the biological difference in imagination between the two genders.

In the arena of socio-cultural factors, a number of variables affect human cognition, such as family, social -economic condition, peer groups and the ecological system at large.

Pessimistic attitude towards childrearing has been shown to be a conducive factor to the development of their adolescent children’s imaginative ability (A. Rabinowitz and D. Engelberg, 2004). Due to belief systems that entail greater preference for a male child in the Indian society, parenting towards the girl child often tend to be negligent with regard to education, work, celebrations etc. Also, due to greater stigma and shame attached with happenings in the life of a girl child, like dating, sex, smoking etc. parents tend to exert authoritarian parenting style on their girl child. Hence, pessimistic attitude of parents towards their girl child could also be a factor contributing to higher imagination in girls than in boys in India.

In the light of Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory, the early developmental stages of life require parents to be actively engaged in the process of cognitive developments, which he explained through the notions of zone of proximal development and scaffolding. Vygotsky observed how higher mental functions developed historically within particular cultural groups, as well as individually through social interactions with significant people in a child’s life, particularly parents, but also other adults. Through these interactions, a child came to learn the habits of mind of her/his culture, including speech patterns, written language, and other symbolic knowledge through which the child derives meaning and which affected a child’s construction of her/his knowledge.

This key premise of Vygotskian psychology is often referred to as cultural mediation.

In the Indian context, due to the familial value system of preference of male child over female child and consequentially greater importance and attention given to male child during development, young girls in India need to actively create and apply strategies for self sustenance. Thus, imagination is an integral part of the growth, development and survival process of girls in India, which could also have caused a greater average score of girls on imagination than boys. Also, since girls in India are often expected to demonstrate flexibility in thought and behavior, which may aid their performance in various areas of life such as child rearing, family maintenance, financial management and so on, the flexibility in thought could have led to greater imagination in girls than in boys, as shown in a study by Ayanna K. Thomas, Deborah E. Hannula, Elizabeth F. Loftus (2006) whereby a comparison of behavioural estimates collected before and after imagination demonstrated that reported estimates of behaviour changed after imagination.

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference Socio-economic Conditions

This caste system in India had formed the basis of economic discrimination, the effect of which is still largely prevalent. Due to unfavourable economic conditions, girls in India are often subjected to more illiteracy and ignorance than boys. However, on their exposure to the fast moving world and their need to survive successfully, girls often create ways to carry on with their daily functions such as household work, child-rearing and family care, and try and seek intellectual and social growth through social groups, books etc. this has therefore been the result of poverty in India, and thus, imagination tends to be used as a strategy by girls to create ways of successful living, and thus the score of girls on CIS could have been more than boys.

Thus, though the results have revealed a significant difference in imagination, with girls procuring a higher score than boys, a number of factors may limit the generalization of the results obtained. First, due to a small scale study, the sample size may not be adequately representative of the population under consideration. However, this leaves scope for a larger scale study in the interest of the under-privileged youth in India. Also, the study may serve as a cornerstone for future research in a cross-sectional format; thereby help understand the differences across various socio-economic groups.

A longitudinal study may also be undertaken to understand variation in imagination over a period of time for the same sample.

Secondly, the lack of adequate theoretical work and research on imagination from the viewpoint of Psychology could have led to inadequate explanation of results. But this small initiation may be a humble contribution to the area of study of imagination, thereby serving as a guiding light for future research.

Thirdly, in accordance with Hoftede’s views, the theories used to explain the results of this study could be marked by cross-cultural variations.

However, for every beginning, it may be important understand what already exists.Finally, this study is a humble attempt to explain imagination as a tool in daily life, for survival and effective sustenance, in the context of India.

Conclusion

The results have revealed a significant difference between boys and girls on imagination, with girls scoring a higher average score than boys.

Thus, the stated hypothesis has been accepted.

References

1. Nilsson M.E.(2010),” Creative Pedagogy of Play— The Work of Gunilla Lindqvist”, Mind, Culture and Activity Vol.: 17, No.: 1, January 2010 [Page 14- 22] 2. Bravesmith A. (2008), “Supervision and Imagination”, Journal of Analytical Psychology Vol.: 53, No.: 1 [Page 101-117] 3. A. Rabinowitz and D. Engelberg (2004), “Parental influence on adolescents’ imagination” * Department of Psychology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel.

4. Lev Vygotsky (1931), “Imagination and creativity of the adolescent” 5. Thomas N.J.T (1988),” Gestalt Psychology as a Theory of Imagination”, British Psychological Society, Leeds, U.K. 6. Thomas N.J.T. (1998), “The Study of Imagination as an Approach to Consciousness”, Society for the Multidisciplinary Study of Consciousness, San Francisco 7. Maksymilian Del Mar. 2008. “Creativity and Imagination in the Practice of Philosophy” The Selected Works of Maksymilian Del Mar: http:// works.bepress.com/mdelmar/6 8. Mellou, Eleni (1995), “Creativity: The Imagination Condition”, Early Child Development and Care, v114 p97-106 9. Watson T.J.(1994), “Managing, Crafting and Researching: Words, Skill and Imagination in Shaping Management Research”, British Academy of Management 10. Ayanna K. Thomas 1 *, Deborah E. Hannula 2, Elizabeth F. Loftus (2006), “How self-relevant imagination affects memory for behaviour”, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

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Language Rights and the Security Dilemma:

Education Policy at the Margins of Contemporary China Verity Robins

University of Nottingham

Abstract This article focuses on how the Chinese state balances issues of security with the rights of minority groups to have their language accommodated in state education. This article uses a case study comparison of two provinces; Xinjiang Province and Yunnan Province to suggest that when a security dilemma arises and minority groups are assessed as a threat to the integrity of the state, their linguistic rights are restricted in education. Education is, instead, used by the state as a tool for assimilation into the majority culture and language. This is demonstrated by the example of Xinjiang Province, the home of the Uyghur people, whose relationship with the state has been tense. Yunnan Province, the home of 25 minority groups who are perceived to pose a low threat to state security, is used as a contrast with Xinjiang, to demonstrate that the security dilemma is not, however, always present between state and minority at the margins of contemporary China.

While state/minority relationships in Yunnan are not based on security, neither are these relationships based on justice. Instead this article argues that the accommodation of minority language rights in education policy in Yunnan Province is better explained as an outcome of benign indifference by the state, as security issues are placed in abeyance. Under such circumstances, there is a greater educational space for the engagement of civil society that place minority language rights at the centre of their educational objectives.

Argument and Approaches

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is a multiethnic society comprising 56 ethnic groups with languages and cultures distinct from the majority, or Han, Chinese. In any multicultural society the educational challenge is to guarantee that ‘state sponsored schooling ensures equal opportunities for all ethnic groups, promotes development of poor ethnic minority regions, [and] permits ethnic groups to practice cultural autonomy’(Postiglione,1999:3).

For linguistic human rights advocates, in particular, cultural autonomy is preserved through language.

Each language involves a unique way of looking at the world (Pupavac,2010) and acts as a medium for the communication of culture or identity, rather than just communication in itself (ibid,2010).

Consequently, for these scholars curtailing the use of minority languages in public education is seen as a curtailment of minority cultural rights by the state.

Yet, at the same time, ‘educational systems expand in reaction to a market of demands. Individuals and employers demand practical skills, social groups demand status culture and the state demands national unity and social control’(Postiglione,1999:3).

In authoritarian regimes, like the PRC, the market is heavily influenced by the state. Thus, while the demand of ethnic minorities for schools is to elevate the status of their language and culture, the actual content of schooling is likely to reflect the state’s assessment of inter-ethnic group processes(ibid). A great deal, therefore, can be learned about the PRC and its relationship with its ethnic minorities by studying minority education and how it represents minority languages within it (ibid).

If minority language policy is a reflection of the state’s assessment of its need to integrate or contain its ethnic minorities, the next issue to address is whether the state assesses different ethnic minorities in different ways. If so, how are these differences reflected in minority language provision? With this in mind, the central question of this article is; how do differing state assessments of ethnic minorities impact upon language rights in the borderlands of contemporary China. This article draws on fieldwork conducted in Xinjiang Province and Yunnan Province, China over a two year period up to 2010.

Theoretical Framework

Kymlicka’s (2004) study of ‘justice and security in the accommodation of minority nationalism’ is used as a theoretical framework. Kymlicka argues while the challenge of minority nationalism and rights accommodation arises in all parts of the globe ‘the state’s response to it varies tremendously from region to region’(ibid). In the West national minorities are ‘assessed primarily in terms of justice’(ibid). Consequently, there is a trend towards accepting the legitimacy of ‘minority nationalism and finding an accommodation that is more or less fair to both majority and minority’ (ibid). In the post-communist countries of Eastern and Central Europe (ECE), however, Kymlicka argues that ethnic minorities are assessed in terms of security.

In this region the state’s intention is to ‘ensure that minorities are unable to threaten the territorial integrity of the state’(ibid:145). Since most ECE states believe that minority rights accommodation poses

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference

Figure 1. Map of Xinjiang and Yunnan provinces

such a threat there is far less accommodation of minority language and culture in these areas than in the West (ibid).

This article uses Kymlicka’s framework, replacing the ECE with Xinjiang Province an area characterized by ethnic tension and rioting, along with a secessionist movement calling for the region’s independence. The dominant minority within this province, the Uyghurs, are viewed as one of the most politicized minorities by the PRC and are assessed in terms of security. The ‘West’ in Kymlicka’s study is replaced by Yunnan Province. This region, in contrast, is seen as less of a political threat to the PRC and to the political harmony of the whole.

Using Kymlicka’s framework, this article argues that differences between Yunnan and Xinjiang in the accommodation of minority languages in education arise largely because of the perception of the Uyghur minority as a security threat. A security dilemma between state and minority has caused the PRC to pursue a policy in Xinjiang that bolsters the security of the majority at the expense of the Uyghur minority and their language. Yet, in explaining the relative wealth of minority language instruction in Yunnan we cannot assume the converse that the difference arises because of the state’s willingness to promote language rights as an act of justice.

Rather, the assessment of Yunnan’s minority groups as a low security risk has led to benign indifference towards them by the central government rather than to active control measures. This benign indifference has created an educational space in which NGOs and community organizations provide education for minority students in their mother-tongue unhindered by central government.

Xinjiang: An Assessment of Justice

Since 2000 there has been a shift in official policy from mother-tongue to Mandarin instruction for Uyghur students. In 2002, the formerly bilingual University of Xinjiang removed all instruction in Uyghur (MRGI,2008) and in 2004 the Xinjiang Regional Government announced that ethnic minorities should all receive instruction in Mandarin at every level of education (Tsung,2009:123).

Consequently, minority schools were instructed

to merge with Han schools (CECC,2006) and the intention is that by 2012 minority schools will cease to exist.

Chinese media sources claim that the shift from Uyghur to Mandarin instruction increases the quality of Uyghur education and empowers Uyghur students by creating an environment more conducive to learning Mandarin (He,2006).

These sources suggest that the central government promotes justice for Uyghur students by facilitating their educational advancement through increased fluency in Mandarin, and increased employability in the modern Chinese workplace. Indeed, Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, an anthropologist of linguistics, argues that if you belong to the linguistic minority of your country, you ‘have to become...bilingual in order to participate in society,’(Skutnabb– Kangas,1988:14). Skutnabb-Kangas proposes that it is the duty of the education system to achieve this objective. Since Mandarin is the official state language it is a practical requirement of any good job in business or government. The shift in the language of instruction to Mandarin arguably reflects Xinjiang’s increasingly Han-dominated society, which has grown from 6% Han in 1949 to 40% today (Strawbridge,2008:1). Since there are still pockets of Xinjiang with a population of 80-90% Uyghur, the grasp of Mandarin in these areas is often limited and their opportunities to practice Mandarin outside the classroom are almost non-existent. Total immersion in Mandarin instruction, it is argued, is the ‘fastest and most effective method for gaining fluency in a non-native language’ (Bousquet,1979).

Xinjiang: An Assessment of Security

The Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP,2007), along with scholars Dwyer (2005) and Gladney (2004) critique this view. They argue that despite claims by ‘Chinese officials…that [Mandarin]1 language instruction is beneficial for Uyghur groups to participate in wider society and gain employment,…there are few corresponding policies to ensure equal opportunities in the work place’(Interviewee-A,2010). If the aim was to enable Uyghurs to compete more successfully in the job market, then a wider infrastructure of ‘regulations… organizations and affirmative action schemes’(ibid) would have also been put into place. Instead, Uyghur graduates who speak Mandarin fluently often still have trouble finding a job,2 with some signs at job fairs reading ‘Weiwuerzu bu xuyao shenqing’, ‘Uyghurs need not apply’(HRIC,2007:2).

1 Original source read Putonghua.

2 The Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps reported to have a 2.5 million, virtually all-Han Chinese, workforce in 2001–representing 13% of Xinjiang’s total labour pool, but a third of the total Han population in Xinjiang (HRIC,2007:21).

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Moreover, in purely educational terms, a switch to Mandarin as the language of instruction can be indirectly discriminatory. While ‘immersion’ techniques may be the fastest method by which students can learn a second language, it can take longer for them to catch up to native speakers in academic language skills necessary for learning conceptual subjects like Mathematics (Cummins,2003). Furthermore, Dwyer (2005:43) argues that Uyghur language instruction is more appropriate for learning foreign languages like English. The Uyghur language contains a number of Indo-European lexemes and is, like English, a stress-based as opposed to a tone-based language like Mandarin. Speakers of Uyghur are therefore on average able to learn English more rapidly and with more accurate pronunciation than their Mandarinspeaking counterparts. For example, the English word computer must first be learned through the Mandarin diannao, instead of via the Uyghur word kompyuter. By having to study English through the medium of Mandarin, Uyghur students are prone to fall behind native Mandarin-speaking students in school. If education was at the heart of this language policy then mother-tongue instruction, as implemented in much of Yunnan, would have been appropriate for certain subjects.

Instead, human rights advocates like Nicholas Becquelin (2009) argue that differences in minority language accommodation arise largely because the Uyghur minority is assessed by the Chinese authorities as a threat to state security. When state/minority discourses are securitized minority students who retain their language and culture are seen as less capable of identifying with mainstream society. This real or perceived lack of identification with majority culture is then assessed by the state as disloyalty, not just in the sense that minorities lack loyalty to the state but also in that they collaborate or have the potential to collaborate with ‘enemies’ of the state (Kymlicka,2004:156). ‘Enemies’ come in various forms, but in the Uyghur case the fear is that separatist groups, from within China or Turkic Central Asia, advocating Xinjiang’s secession, will enlist the support of Uyghur communities. Indeed, Nur Bekri of the Xinjiang Regional Government was quoted as saying that ‘terrorists from neighbouring countries target Uyghurs that are isolated from mainstream society as they cannot speak Mandarin’ and trick them into terrorist activities (UHRP,2009).

With this state assessment, the Uyghur language and its literature are viewed as political weapons in a struggle that weakens state control and central objectives (Stites,1999:124). A securitized state/ minority discourse thus requires the limiting of minority language rights to weaken minority culture, aid assimilation and prevent minority collaboration with ‘enemies’(Kymlicka,2004:156).

The timing of the language shift also supports

this view. Mass protests and violent riots in Baren town in April 1990 marked an increase in Uyghur violence in Xinjiang (Davis,2008:1). Calls for more cultural and religious rights, together with the creation of a Uyghur state of East Turkistan, struck a chord with Uyghur communities. Further demonstrations and disturbances in Yining, Khotan, Kashgar and Aksu followed throughout the 1990s (Davis,2008:6). The PRC response was the initiation of two ‘strike hard’ campaigns in 1996 and 2001 which targeted Uyghurs and separatists in Xinjiang. The overt result was an increased military presence within the province to prevent ‘crime’. However, the initial steps towards a shift in language policy were implemented at the time of the second ‘strike hard’ campaign, suggesting that the shift falls under a blanket policy aimed at curbing Uyghur culture and separatist tendencies. The sense of Uyghur disloyalty towards the central state would have been heightened during this period of ethnic tension. Thus, as Kymlicka’s theory of minority rights accommodation predicts, a more limited accommodation of minority language instruction ensued.

Yunnan: An Assessment of Security

Minority language rights in Yunnan are, in contrast, gaining increased accommodation.

According to Kymlicka’s theory this would indicate that minority communities in Yunnan are not assessed as a security threat to the integrity of the state, but are having their rights accommodated as a result of a state policy to treat them justly. It is instructive to compare Yunnan during the Cultural Revolution (CR) when minorities were perceived as a high security threat and how that differs from today.

At the beginning of the CR the Socialist Education Movement emphasized the importance of the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie as a major national security issue. Ethnic cultures were deemed ‘superstitious’ and ‘feudal’, posing an ideological threat to the Chinese socialist state (Lee,2001:183). The fear was raised that class enemies were active in minority areas that sought to sabotage China’s socialist revolution (Tsung,2009:92).

In order to prevent this, it was judged necessary to ‘eradicate minority…languages’(ibid).

Sanctions and violent attacks on minority communities during the CR deterred minority children from learning their own languages. The use of minority language in the public domain was severely restricted. Instead an emphasis was placed on ‘ethnic integration’ and ‘language amalgamation’ (Zhou,2004:68); monolingual instruction in the Mandarin language ensued for minority schools in Yunnan.

However, by the 1980s a change in policy was underway. While Deng’s market reforms strengthened the argument for the promotion of Mandarin throughout China’s education

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference system, this was not enacted at the expense of minority languages. Instead bilingual education3 programmes were introduced in many schools in Yunnan to meet parents’ aspirations for children to learn their own language (Tsung,2009:110). Some subjects were taught using the minority script and some were taught in Mandarin. In addition, both languages were often taught as separate subjects (ibid). Furthermore, the State Education Commission reported in 1994 that over 7,000 schools among 21 ethnic minorities had offered bilingual education programmes to six million minority students in 30 different minority scripts (ibid:111).

It appears that the security threat from Yunnan’s minorities has been downgraded. The lack of a secessionist movement and ethnic tension in Yunnan can be examined by using Paul Collier’s (2006) study into the causes of ethnic conflict.

He argues that countries (or provinces) that are characterized by ethnic diversity are much less likely to have secessionist movements or ethnic-related tension and violence. According to his theory, when a society is divided into a patchwork of different ethnic and religious groups it is more difficult to recruit a force of a sufficient scale (Collier,2006:12). Moreover, in ethnically diverse societies where people from different ethnic communities are interspersed with one another, and where there is no dominant minority there is usually a decreased emphasis on the right to self-determination via secession (ibid).

This profile fits the minority population in Yunnan.

Yunnan: An Assessment of Justice

Kymlicka’s model suggests that, where there is no security threat, the state is willing to promote linguistic and cultural equality as a matter of justice.

We have learned that minority language instruction in Yunnan’s education system is not only far more plural today than it was during the CR, but also far more plural than the education system of the securitized Uyghur minority in Xinjiang. One might infer that linguistic plurality in Yunnan’s education system has occurred because of a positive state policy to promote Yunnan’s minorities. Indeed much state legislation would indicate this to be the case. For example, The 1982 Constitution, the 2005 Compulsory Education Law, as well as The 1984 Regional Autonomy Law all explicitly guarantee language rights for minority students in the classroom stating that ‘schools or other educational institutions which mainly consist of students from ethnic minorities should, wherever possible, use…the language of the respective nationality or the native language commonly adopted in that region’ (MOE,2005).

Furthermore, as a signatory to international legal 3 ‘Bilingual education’ is the use of two or more languages as the medium of instruction in formal schooling (Hornberger,1990:14)

agreements like Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the Chinese state commits itself under international law to allow ethnic minorities ‘in communit[ies] with other members of his or her group, to enjoy his or her own culture…[and] to use his or her own language’(CRC,1990).

While the linguistic pluralism advanced in legislation might support Kymlicka’s conception of justice in relation to Yunnan, a closer look at the phenomenon indicates that it is often not the state that provides the variety of bilingual education programmes on offer. Instead, benign indifference by the Chinese Government towards these minorities has allowed NGOs and community organizations to put linguistic rights at the top of their agendas. In Northern Yunnan in the Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Region, for example, Ah Niu, a Tibetan intellectual, founded the Puli Tibetan School in order to provide a free education aimed at preserving Tibetan culture and helping Tibetan children who had fallen through the cracks in the Chinese state school system (Johnson,2000:264;Interviewee-B,2009). With the school staffed by Tibetans and the priority of language instruction placed first on Tibetan, then English and then Mandarin, the school offers a very different education for minority Tibetans from most Chinese state schools4.

In the same region, The Eastern Tibet Training Institute, a local NGO, runs Tibetan/ English bilingual instruction adult education classes to further English literacy and vocational training (Interviewee-C,2009). Additionally, for the Bai Minority in Shibaoshan village a cooperative venture between the United States-based language research organization ‘SIL International’ and the ‘Yunnan Province Language Affairs Commission’ has facilitated the creation of a Bai language instruction pre-school centre aimed at facilitating Bai literacy for young children and their ‘mothers, who have key influential roles in the home, but who have missed educational opportunities in the past’(Cobbey,2007:197).

There are further documented examples of well-established programmes of bilingual education facilitated by NGOs and community projects for Dai, Bai, Jingpo, Naxi, Lahu, and Yi communities in Yunnan (UNESCO,2005). These examples are indicative of the variety of bilingual instruction programmes offered by NGOs and community organizations in Yunnan in contrast to Xinjiang, suggesting it is not the state that is the main instigator of minority bilingual education.

4 In keeping with Kymlicka’s theory, schools in Yunnan are allowed more freedom to teach in the Tibetan language than schools in Tibet itself (Merrell,2002:290).

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Conclusion

The shift towards Mandarin instruction in Xinjiang’s schools can be interpreted as a policy aimed at empowering Uyghur students by providing them with the necessary language skills to function in the modern Chinese state. However, a more convincing case can be made that the change in the language of instruction is caused by the central perception of Uyghur groups as a security threat. Uyghur language instruction is seen by the PRC as communication of Uyghur culture and, as Kymlicka’s theory suggests, minority students who retain their culture are viewed as disloyal, less capable of identifying with mainstream society and more likely to identify with separatist groups.

Thus, ethnic relations in Xinjiang are seen by the PRC as a zero-sum game, or as a security dilemma: anything that accommodates or promotes minority nationalism is seen as a threat to the majority and hence is not to be tolerated (Kymlicka,2004:156).

The increase in Uyghur anti-government feeling and separatist activities in Xinjiang since the mid1990s has led the PRC directly to an education policy oriented increasingly towards limiting the accommodation of the Uyghur language and to promoting Mandarin in its place. This shift has created an education system aimed at assimilating and socializing Uyghur students into majority language and culture, furthering their loyalty to the PRC and China as a whole.

In Yunnan, the contrast between minority language policy during the CR and minority language policy today demonstrates that the PRC no longer assesses its ethnic minorities as a threat to state security. Yet, this does not necessarily mean that Yunnan’s minorities are assessed in terms of justice. Despite a wealth of PRC legislation, both in the constitution and in international and domestic legal documents, suggesting that the PRC places minority cultural rights in education at the centre of their minority policy, these legal provisions are rarely implemented by the state. Thus, I conclude the need to refine Kymlicka’s theory in relation to Yunnan. Rather than a relationship based on justice, improved accommodation in minority education in Yunnan is better explained as an outcome of benign indifference by the PRC, where security issues are placed in abeyance. Under such circumstances, a greater educational space is tolerated for civil society that places mother-tongue instruction for minority students at the centre of their educational objectives.

References

1. Becquelin, N. (09/07/2009) ‘Behind the Violence in Xinjiang’, International Herald Tribune.

Accessed 26/10/09 at: http://www.hrw.org/en/ news/2009/07/09/behind-violence-xinjiang 2. Bousquet, R. (1979) ‘French Immersion Classes in the Montreal Region’, The French Review 52(4): p.

584-593 3. CECC (2006) ‘Congressional Executive Committee on China – Annual Report’, Congressional Executive Committee on China. Accessed 11/10/09 at: http:// www.cecc.gov/pages/annualRpt/annualRpt06/ CECCannRpt2006.pdf 4. Cobbey, H. (2007) ‘Challenges and Prospects of Minority Bilingual Education in China: An Analysis of Four Projects’, in, Bilingual Education in China: Practices, Policies and Concepts, ed, Feng, A. (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd) p.182-199 5. Collier,P., (2006) ‘Economic Causes of Civil Conflict and their Implications for Policy’. Accessed 21/04/2010 at: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~econpco/ research/pdfs/EconomicCausesofCivilConflictImplicationsforPolicy.pdf 6. CRC. (1990) ‘Convention on the Rights of the Child’, http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/crc. htm 7. Cummins, J. (2003) ‘Bilingual Children’s Mother Tongue: Why Is It Important for Education?’

Accessed 04/03/10 at: http://www.iteachilearn. com/cummins/mother.htm 8. Davis, E. (2008) ‘Uyghur Muslim Ethnic Separatism in Xinjiang, China’, Asia-Pacific Centre for Security Studies. Accessed on 01/02/10 at: http://www. apcss.org/Publications/APCSS--%20Uyghur%20 Muslim%20Separatism%20in%20Xinjiang.doc.

9. Dwyer, A. (2005) The Xinjiang Conflict: Uyghur identity, language policy, and political discourse.

(Washington D.C.: East West Centre Press) 10. Gladney, D. (2004) Dislocating China: Muslims, Minorities and Other Subaltern Subjects (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) 11. He, B. (2006) ‘Xinjiang promotes the merge of Minority and Han schools’ [Xinjiāng jījí tuījìn mín Hàn hĕxiào] http://www.chinaxinjiang.cn/news/ xjxw/kjtw/t20060814_140820.htm 12. Hornberger, N. (1990) ‘Bilingual Education and English-Only: A Language Planning Framework’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 26: 12-26 13. HRIC. (2007) ‘China: Minority Exclusion, Marginalization and Rising Tensions’, Human Rights In China. Accessed on 28/11/09 at: http:// hrichina.org/public/PDFs/MRG-HRIC.China.

Report.pdf 14. Johnson, K. (2000) ‘Charity and Culture: The Puli School and a Comparison of Rural Schools and Orphanages in Northwest Yunnan’, in, Ethnic Minority Issues in Yunnan, ed, Mitchell, S. (Kunming: Yunnan Fine Arts Publishing House) p. 264-279

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference 15. Kymlicka, W. (2004) ‘Justice and Security in the accommodation of minority nationalism’, in, Ethnicity, Nationalism and Minority Rights, eds, May, Stephen., Modood, Tariq., Squires, Judith.

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) p. 144175 16. Lee, M. (2001) Ethnicity, Education and Empowerment: How minority students in Southwest China construct identities. (Aldershot: Ashgate) 17. Merrell, K. (2002) ‘Rural Education on the Edge of Tibet’, in, Ethnic Minority Issues in Yunnan, ed, Mitchell, S. (Kunming: Yunnan Fine Arts Publishing House) p. 280-297 18. MOE (2005) ‘Compulsory Education Law of the People’s Republic of China’, Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China. Accessed 02/06/09 at: http://www.edu.cn/20050114/3126820.shtml 19. MRGI. (2008) ‘World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples - China: Uyghurs’, Minority Rights Group International. Accessed 11/02/10 at: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/ docid/49749d3c4b.html 20. Postiglione, G. (1999). China’s National Minority Education: Culture, Schooling and Development.

(New York: Falmer Press).

21. Pupavac, V. (2010) ‘Language as Communication or Culture?’, Forthcoming book publication.

22. Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (1988) ‘Multilingualism and education of minority children’, in, Minority Education, eds, Skutnabb-Kangas, T., Cummins, J. (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd) p. 9-44 23. Stites, R. (1999) ‘Writing Cultural Boundaries: National Minority Language Policy, Literary Planning, and Bilingual Education’, in, China’s National Minority Education: Culture, Schooling and Development, ed, Postiglione, G. (London: Falmer Press) p.95-130 24. Strawbridge, D. (2008) ‘The Challenges of Bilingual Education in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, People’s Republic of China’ Save the Children. Accessed on 14/11/09 at: http://www.seameo.org/_ld2008/doucments/ Presentation_document/Strawbridge_xinjiang_ challenges_of_bilingual_education,.pdf 25. Tsung, L. (2009) Minority Languages, Education and Communities in China. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan) 26. UHRP (2007) ‘Uyghur Language under Attack: They Myth of “Bilingual” Education in the People’s Republic of China’, Uyghur Human Rights Project. Accessed 09/02/10 at: http:// uhrp.org/docs/UyghurLanguageUnderAttack. pdf 27. UHRP (2009) ‘UAA Concerned by top Chinese official’s comments on language policy in East Turkistan’, Uyghur Human Rights Project.

Accessed 10/02/10 at: http://www.uhrp. org/articles/2232/1/UAA-concerned-by-topCh i nese-off icia ls- com ments-on-la ng uagepolicy-in-East-Turkestan-/index.html

28. UNESCO (2005) First Language First: Communitybased Literacy Programmes for Minority Language Contexts in Asia. (Bangkok: UNESCO Bangkok).

Accessed 19/02/10 at: http://www2.unescobkk. org/elib/publications/first_language/first_ language.pdf 29. Zhou, Q. (2004) ‘The creation of writing systems and nation establishment: the case of China in the 1950s’, in, Language Policy in the People’s Republic of China: Theory and Practice Since 1949, eds, Zhou, M., Sun, H. (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers) p. 55-70 30. Interviewee-A. (18.02.2010), Washington D.C. Interviewed on Skype by: Robins, Verity.

31. Interviewee-B. (27.08.2009), Yunnan. Interviewed by: Robins, Verity.

32. Interviewee-C. (03.07.2009), Yunnan. Interviewed by: Robins, Verity. *All interviewees are anonymous in this research.

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From the Culture Industry Thesis to Deconstruction: H(a)unting Issues of Representation Veronika Fafienski

University of Birmingham

Abstract This paper argues that the ongoing generation of theoretical constructs, which attempts to conceptualise notions such as democracy, social integration and more generally, representation, under the broad frame of capitalism and globalisation, requires critical engagement in order to question the trust, which is continuously placed in the authority of the working definitions of these concepts.

In other words, the task of critical conceptual analysis is to unmask the violence behind definitions and practices of representation. Using a critical postmodern framework, this article suggests that the line of thought implicit in “Derridean Marxism” provides a passage to reconfiguring the understanding of ontology, which moreover can gesture at new forms of political and social engagement. The case of a debate between Antiono Negri and Jacques Derrida is briefly discussed to illustrate this point. This article contributes to encourage a re-imagination of political matters as non-reducible to a single mode of analysis (e.g. military, economic, psychological), since within these analyses economic or cultural identities, are presented as a caricatures. One needs to intervene with deconstructive thought to complement existing approaches to politics and examine more closely the layers, with which representations are constructed.

Introduction: Critical Postmodernism

Critical engagement with postmodern theory can indicate alternative ways of understanding presence, subjectivity and the constitution of social structures. The questions on which I will primarily focus have their roots in Marx’s statement, that there is no relation between objects and the value they possess1. This opens a discussion of the following. Firstly, how is the relationship between “the material” (object) and “the immaterial” (value) constituted? And secondly, what are the criteria for value?

In The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception (1944) Adorno and Horkheimer argue, that value accumulates as fetish. They explain that social relations, hierarchy and subjectivity operate according to laws of arbitrary value (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1944: 63)1. Currently, new technologies enhance this arbitrariness by coupling the virtual with the ‘real’ and thus generating images of ‘perfection’. In consequence, the violent politics behind abstract binary categories, e.g. male/ female; black/white; homo/hetero are rendered legitimate. Nevertheless as Deleuze and Guattari make the point in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (2004), totality is atrocious, yet fixations and embodiments (representations) continue to be sustained. This problematic is also implicit in the approach Hardt and Negri take2. That 1 see also Benjamin in Zimmermann, 1990: 243) 2 Hardt, M. and Negri, A. (2000) Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Hardt, M. and Negri, A. (2005) Multitude. London: Penguin Books.

is, they believe that the development of technology and globalisation are crucial to intellectually “connect” with others, in order to eventually resist and transform this totality. It is arguable, though, to what extent technology and communication allow for a global emancipation, since the degree of coercion which haunts the formation of identity cannot be disregarded. This insight is also of concern to Derrida. He points out, however, that a fertile ground for resistance can be found in the experience of injustice and difference. In this respect he contests the relationship between matter and property to show that issue needs to be taken with ‘ontological embodiments’, which continuously pose an obstacle for accounting for contingency and reimagining existing conditions of reality.

Consequently, I am particularly interested in how postmodern theory has inherited Marx’s political demand, namely, resisting the repressive forces of alienation in order to re-gain a sense for the spirit of revolutionary forces and more importantly, to what extent they contribute to rethinking our relationship towards the political.

Enslavement and the Reification of the Culture Industry

Adorno and Horkheimer outline, that it is the promise of the Enlightenment to bring about liberation from ignorance, by means of reason. As the Cartesian notion of cogito ergo sum implies, the process of reasoning firstly asserts reality and secondly masters it in the sense, that both, a conceptual and technical mastery of reality are supposed (Adorno, 1991: 4). Yet, as the scholars further show, if the

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference intensification of production, creation of mass goods, and virtualised images are taken as the new logic of rationality, then rationality turns against itself: “The true aims of Enlightenment: freedom and happiness [and] the path of enlightened rationality become occluded” (Adorno 1991: 4). The logic of capitalist production primarily sustains a limitless will to appropriation: “Fetishism attaches itself [anklebt] to the products of labour as soon as they are produced as commodties, [it is] therefore inseparable from the production of commodities” (Marx cited in Derrida, 1994: 166). Consequently, the very same principles of economic production extend on the sphere of culture (Adorno, 1991: 3). Culture, initially regarded as the residual sphere of freedom from capital, produces an illusionary “realization of the right to all gratification of desire while in reality continuing the negative integration of society” (Adorno, 1991: 3). This negative integration, or ‘double duty of enslavement’, becomes apparent, for instance, in the transformation of the nature of art. According to Adorno and Horkheimer “art is the emphatic assertion of […] the claim of sensuous particularity” (Adorno, 1991: 4). Under capitalism, the experience of sensuous particularity is transformed into ‘lifestyles’. Life-styles are symptomatic for fetishisation.

Initially artistic production carries the potential of retaining the individual’s political capacity (Kirwan, 2005) but “[t]he collapse of high art into the triviality of culture industry [merely sustains] the bourgeois need for materialism” (Adorno cited in Abbinnett, 2006: 24) and acquisition of “l’art pour l’art” (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1947:125); art for art’s sake. Thus, political capacity is degraded into a pure display of material purchasing power. This is even more explicit in the practice of advertising; an aesthetic picture of reality is instated in which the prevalence of life-styles distracts from an alternative experience of love, friendship and ethical responsibility.

Admittedly, Adorno and Horkheimer have been criticised that the lack of application makes their accounts dispensable3. However, I attempt to show, that their work is significant for deconstructing the pursuit of the promesse the bonheur (Adorno, 1991: 4) and the “narcisstic pursuit of consumer comforts and possessions” (Lash, 1984 cited in Casey, 1995: 24).

This leads back to enquiring how the emergence of new technological forces impact on the ‘political spirit’, so that it would be possible for an authentic, ethical demand to operate within such a logic of political, cultural and economic agency.

Ontology as Code

Hardt and Negri state, that the present conditions of economic and social life are characterised by permanent work and 3 cf. Adorno on his critics, 1991:244

communication. In fact, they stress, that the decline of industrial labour has changed the notion of subjectivity (Hardt and Negri, 2003: 117). In essence Hardt and Negri’s concept of the Multitude2 rests upon the hypothesis that economic production is simultaneously socially productive and carries the potential to resist the domination of capital (Hardt and Negri, 2005: 107). This statement makes their assumption explicit that the intensification of technology as main means of production retains the autonomy of individuals and the force of the Multitude grows simultaneously with the expansion of constraint, suppression and exploitation. Hardt and Negri argue that liberation becomes the sole, common aim of the Multitude. Derrida, to whom I will come in more detail shortly, argues however, that articulating a common revolutionary desire is always problematic. Hardt and Negri’s picture of a spatially divided yet common suffering of the many would simply return to “[…] orthodox Marxism in all its theoretical and political forms. The whole totalitarian inheritance of Marx thought is bound up with the demand, that every presentation of difference should be given its proper place in the restricted economy of class struggle” (Derrida, 1994: 193).

Thus, when analysing Hardt and Negri’s concept of the Multitude, it becomes clear that their inheritance of Marx cannot entirely refrain from relying on embodiments (ontology) and ultimately gestures at a return to the notion of totalisation.

In this line of argument, the notion of irrevocable enslavement of the mass is merely replaced with a notion of mutual recognition of common suffering.

Consequently, by imagining itself as an ontological being, the Multitude sustains a “code”, which presents an aestheticised picture of reality and which, similarly like the code of the commodity, bears no relation to truth or authenticity.

The Non-iterability of the Image

Derrida would argue against claims which locate authenticity in “the common”. In fact, for Derrida totality is marked by the disruption of spectres as “seismic events” (Derrida, 1994)4. To some extent one can claim that the Frankfurt scholars and Marx have pre-identified the ‘specter’ by formulating the fetish character of commodities. I examine this in more detail below. Traditional Marxists return to the notion of authenticity as presenting itself as an ontologically coherent formation, like the “proletarian class” (or respectively “the Multitude”).

However, Derrida argues that coherence is always 4 see Derrida, J. (1994) Specters of Marx. The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International. London: Routledge

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already infused by difference. Rendering difference into coherency would deprive it of its transformative capacity. As to the character of the “un-entity” i.e. the spectre, Derrida argues, that the cognitive perception of spectres, is mediated by language, and cannot be encompassed as ontological designation.

Language, constructs the symbol, which ‘represents’ an ontological entity. To sum up this aspect of Derrida’s position: “The ‘who’ of humanity (its inscription in time, language and culture) emerges through a technical relationship to inorganic matter which is the condition of language, and which constantly re-differentiates/ destabilizes the categories through which the social being is articulated” (Abbinnett, 2006: 111).

Thus, the question I want to examine in the following is preoccupied with the constitution of ontology and its relationship to representation.

Excursus: Ontology

As I have outlined earlier, the fetish lives through its form as property5 which constructs real hierarchical relations. In this respect, Negri sketches out, that the subject can, however, assert itself as not affected by spectres6. In other words, the conscious revolutionary can re-appropriate the spectres, which sustain the domination of capital and re-demonstrate, as Marx has coined it, one’s real interest. Thus, for Negri, the inheritance of Marx, i.e. resistance against exploitation and inequality, must be upheld in order to account for what is undeniably real (and according to Negri, non-spectral), like exploitation and flight from exploitation (Negri, 1999: 12). Consequently, Negri criticises Derrida for not referring to the material reality of these relations (13) and thus, for Negri, exploitation needs to be demystified, exactly by equating presence (i.e. the ‘real’) with ontology. Hence, Negri criticises Derridean deconstruction to be a game, which is played out in mysticism, making an overturning of injustice impossible. Negri importantly argues that rejecting a material concept of ontology makes the subject “unlocatable”, because as a spectre it wouldn’t have any tangible measure (i.e. no target or victim) (9). Yet, in contrast for Derrida, “the most problematic aspect of Marx is [his desire] to conjure away any and all spectrality as to recover the full, concrete reality of the process of genesis hidden behind the specters mask” (Derrida, 1999: 258). That is, Derrida strictly refrains from a “re-ontologisation” in the sense, that there is a “truer” reality to be discovered, 5 Eigentümlichkeit cf.Hegel 6 In Sprinker, M. (ed) (1999) Ghostly Demarcations. A Symposium on Jacques Derrida’s Spectres of Marx.

London: Verso

as suggested by Marx. According to Derrida, Nergi reproduces this gesture “which is still metaphysical, because it is ontological” (259). Derrida identifies that “clinging to ontology”, has perpetuated a promise of revolution, which has not been fulfilled. Thus, the paradigm of Marxism is rendered obsolete (257).

In other words, by ascribing ontology to social “embodiments” (institutions, representations, etc.) would consequently reify the arbitrariness of properties. This is why Derrida takes issue with a return to ‘ontology’ since he argues that the cycle of exploitation and the violence of inequality will not be changed by doing so.

In sum, Negri takes ontology as an entity, which can be incorporeal, but its inherent property sustains a particular ontological pertinence (Negri, 1999: 13).

For Derrida on the other hand, ontology is merely an intangible flux. The properties which ‘ontology’ accumulates are rooted in particularised and personalised desires, fears, fetishes, images. In this respect, Derrida suggests that stabilised knowledge or ‘authenticity’ is merely reification. In other words, reification/abstraction becomes representation and stabilises itself as “more real” than its actual state as discursive/spectral construction.

Representation and the Political

Negri’s and Derrida’s stances on ontology finally need to be taken into the sphere of politics.

However, considering the kind of politics, which they anticipate, there is a fundamental difference in their approach. Again, it is problematic that many successors of the “spirit of Marx” become lost in attempts to formulate a totalitarian Marxism (Bedggood, 1999), which disregards the haunting and returning issue of contingency. A demand for representational (i.e. objectified in symbol, materialised as presence) politics will reinstate imposed consensus, finality, performativity, i.e. everything which silences genuine diversity (Haber, 1994: 37). Yet, it would be wrong to suggest that the underlying principles of revolutionary formations, like Multitude (Hardt and Negri) or New International (Derrida) occupy an adversely opposed political and theoretical space, both are conceptualised as “[…] link of affinity, suffering, and hope, a still discreet, almost secret link, […] without status, without title, and without name, […] without contract, [...] , without coordination, without party, without country, without national community.

[It] calls to the friendship of an alliance [it is] a kind of counter-conjuration, in the (theoretical and practical) critique of [...] the concepts of State and nation, and so forth” (Derrida, 1994: 85 – 86, Hardt and Negri, 2000: 66; Hardt and Negri, 2003: 126).

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference However, for Derrida, links and alliances are contingent, and a stable, coherent revolutionary manifestation is impossible. There is continuous rupture through techno-prosthetic modifications of the body, change of the public and private social fabric and theoretical challenges to legal and philosophical conventions (Abbinnett, 2006: 189), which impede a formation of a single body of opportune organisation. Hardt and Negri’s concept, despite their assertion, that the Multitude has a “new physiology”, which organises itself without centre, without name etc., gestures towards ultimately and necessarily reverting into identity politics, because it incorporates contingency into a ‘singular flesh’ of the Multitude (Hardt and Negri, 2003: 162). The Multitude anticipates defeating injustice and exploitation, but as we have seen, the unfulfilled fate of supposedly fixed ontological formations and what they stand for is always-already subject to transformation, because limits are constantly exceeded (i.e. who/ what is the ‘proletariat’ anyway? Whom does the Labour Party in Great Britain represent etc.?). Thus, any ontologically fixed representation can only be of temporary nature, since ‘fixation’ can only signify a passage towards future transformations.

So, other than conceptualising a designation of one common desire, one needs to retour to an analysis of the perpetuation of unspecified proprietary articles (Adorno and Horkheimer. 1947: 157) and how these offer a transgression of our own cultural, economic and legislative horizon.

Envoi

In this respect, Derrida’s account titled ‘Envoi’ (Derrida, 2007) deconstructs the traditional understanding of representation, which relates representation to subjectivity as an outcome of a process of commodity gathering (Abbinnett, 2006)7. According to Derrida, the multiplicity/ contingency of “representation” (political, aesthetic/ artistic, linguistic etc.) needs to be firstly unfixed of notions, which ascribe an essential, “pure” kernel of signification to it and secondly, consequently, there cannot be a saturation of the context, in which the usage of representation is finalised. For Derrida, the practice to think what representation means in itself, invokes an essence of it, and consequently provides the illusionary impression, that one actually would find an answer to what “representation” essentially is (cf. Platonian eidos) (Derrida, 2007: 99). As Hardt and Negri (presumably unwillingly) confirm, this practice stems from the recurrent desire to find a regulator which would steer the chaos of “inter-expressive relations” (101). That is, as I have discussed above, it persists within Hardt and Negri’s account that the Multitude is fixed by the boundaries 7 Due to limited space, it is not possible to reproduce the depth of Derrida’s argument. This is a complementary account to why one must reject “identity politics”.

of its self-representation. However, implying a direct relationship between “being” and “representation” alludes to that the representational properties precede the subject as absolute eideon (108). Derrida rejects this. There is no external, objective reality, as implied in representation, which would be ‘truer than reality’. Consequently, representations are not obstructed by ideology either, in the sense, that a direct mediation of truth/authenticity is obscured.

Nevertheless, representations are designated within the boundaries of a proper place for the representing subject and express merely a subjective experience (122). On the scale of politics, this compels nations into becoming the image they construct for themselves and as a result the artificial construction between subject and its representation creates a world after its own image8.

Concluding remarks on Derrida’s Marxism

Derrida’s issue with adhering to an objective truth and ontology, has encouraged charges of “nihilism” (Wolin) or “obscurity” (Rorty; Foucault; Chomsky)9. It appears problematic to his critics, that Derrida argues against essentialism but by doing so, he expounds the arbitrariness of structure and the impossibility to assert an objective truth. By discussing ‘Envoi’, I have shown that for Derrida ontology and knowledge/truth relate to the (mis) practice of representation. Simultaneously, this is not to say, that we are merely submersed in words (Derrida, 2004) and could refrain from embodiments altogether, nevertheless, we only supposedly come to ‘understand’ objects and embodiments through subjective ascriptions of properties onto the object.

Presence alone cannot constitute the content of meaning. Therefore, one needs to refrain from ‘interpreting’ and ‘analysing’ presence, because the connection, which we draw, is ultimately a construction, a representation. Consequently, being must remain an ‘absent being.’ Here the charge of nihilism comes in; how can meaning not come from something that is? Is absence not vacuous? (Hale, 2004). Derrida responds, that this is not to say, that absence is ‘nothing’ as we know it in its reference to presence (‘something’). To clarify, representation must remain ‘absent’ from linguistic designation which fix systems of inter-references and suppose a finite meaning (e.g. Mother/Son; some-thing/ no-thing; ignorance/compassion etc). Yet, there is no essential logic in words or representation, which would presuppose legitimacy or objectivity; “We make signs and yet signs make us and we can never step outside the network of sign making” (Milibank cited in Hale, 2004).

However, critical engagement with postmodern thought involves that fixations are deconstructed, 8 cf. Marx and Engels 1848 9 cf. Hale, 2004

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whilst retaining a sense for ‘the political’. Derrida maintains the political spirit of ‘Marxism’, which is the struggle to transform existing relations and exploitation but be attempts to shift away from the determinist elements of Marx’s and Marxist thinking (Abbinnett, 2006). This serves to rethink the conceptual linkage “struggle/suppression” since it infers a self-contained logic; opposition renders its respective counterpart coherent. Paradoxingly, this reveals structure as self-imposed, rather than objective. Therefore, in Derrida’s Marxism, structure needs to escape objective determinism, which imposes a coherency onto ‘things’, so they appear as un-contingent things-in-themselves. That is, fixing an ontological representation ultimately restores control over difference (Hale, 2004), which is, not to forget, a subjective practice. Derrida’s response is that “in the name of justice then, language needs to be deconstructed, in order to show that no one’s ideas can be grounded in truth, but rather are grounded in subjective motivations” (Derrida cited in Hale, 2004).

Endnotes

1 “No object has an inherent value; it is valuable only to the extent that it can be exchanged; use value determines the fetish value [which] is the only quality [to be] enjoyed” (Marx, 1976 and Adorno and Horkheimer, 1947: 158).

2 The Multitude presents an autonomous form of a socio-economic organisation. It is a selfengendered entity, which accumulates its revolutionary force without requiring a central authoritative body (Hardt, 2009). The omnipresence of Empire, which is sustained through technology, simultaneously generates forces of creativity, which aid to construct a counter-Empire, “the Multitude”. It provides “[…] an alternative political organization of global flows and exchanges” (Hardt and Negri, 2005 p.142) and possesses revolutionary potential, which is released through the exodus of the surplus value of living, i.e. immaterial labour (ibid). According to Hardt and Negri, it is the destiny of the Multitude to control the present global transitions by inventing new democratic forms and go beyond the rule of Empire.

References

Articles and Web

1. Abbinnett, R. (2006a) Spectres of Class: Marxism, Deconstruction and the Politics of Affiliation. Journal for Cultural Research 10 (1): pp.1-22.

2. Abbinnett, R. (2007) Untimely agitations: Derrida, Klein and Hardt and Negri on the Idea of AntiCapitalism. Journal for Cultural Research 11 (1): 41-56

3. Bedggood, D. (1999) Saint Jacques: Derrida and the Ghost of Marxism. Cultural Logic [online] 2 (2) Available from: http://clogic.eserver.org/2-2/ bedggood.html#note106 4. Derrida, J. and Kamuf, P. (1985) Racism’s Last Word. Critical Inquiry, “Race”, Writing and Difference. 12(1): 290-299 5. Hale, J.G. (2004) Derrida, Van Til and the Metaphysics of Postmodernism. Reformed Perspectives Magazine [online] 6 (19) Available from: http://www.thirdmill.org/files/ reformedperspectives/hall_of_frame/HOF.Hale.

Derrida%20and%20VanTil.6.30.04.html#F4A

Books

6. Benjamin, W. (1992) (trans) Zhon, H. Illuminations. London: Fontana.

7. Casey, C. (1995) Work, Self and Society. After Industrialism. London: Routledge.

8. Deleuze G. and Guattari, F. (2000) (trans) Hurley, R. Et al. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London: Athlone Press.

9. Deleuze, G. (1984) (trans) Tomlinson, H. And Habberjam, B. Kant’s Critical Philosophy. The Doctrine of the Faculties. London: The Athlone Press 10. Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (2004) (trans) Brian Massumi. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London: Continuum.

11. Derrida, J. (1994) Specters of Marx. The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International. London: Routledge.

12. Derrida, J. (1999) “Marx and Sons” In Sprinker, M. (ed) Ghostly Demarcations. A Symposium on Jacques Derrida’s Spectres of Marx. London: Verso. pp. 213 - 269 13. Derrida, J. (2000) (trans) Bowlby, R. Of Hospitality: Anne Durfourmantelle invites Jacques Derrida to respond. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

14. Derrida, J. (2007) “Envoi” In Psyche, Inventions of The Other. Tome 1. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. pp. 94-128 15. Frissen, P.H.A. (1999) Politics, Governance and Technology. A Postmodern Narrative on the Virtual State. London: Edward Elgar.

16. Haber, H.F. (1994) Beyond Postmodern Politics.

Lyotard. Rorty. Foucault. London: Routledge 17. Hamacher, W. (1999) “Lingua Amissa: The Messianism of Commodity Language and Derrida’s Specters of Marx.” In Sprinker, M. (ed) Ghostly Demarcations. A Symposium on Jacques Derrida’s Spectres of Marx. London: Verso. pp. 168 - 212 18. Hardt, M. and Negri, A. (2000) Empire.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference 19. Hardt, M. and Negri, A. (2003) “Globalization as ‘Empire’?” In Held, D. and McGrew, A. (eds) (2003) The Global Transformations Reader. An Introduction to the Globalisation Debate 2nd ed.

Cambridge: Polity. pp. 116 – 119 20. Hardt, M. and Negri, A. (2005) Multitude.

London: Penguin Books.

21. Heidegger, M. (1950) (8th edition 2003) Holzwege.

Frankfurt am Main: Friedrich Wilhelm von Herman 22. Kainz, H. (1974) Hegel’s Philosophy of Right with Marx’s Commentary: A Handbook for Students. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

23. Kant, I. (1993) (trans) Beck, L.W. Critique of Practical Reason. (3rd ed.) New Jersey: Library of Liberal Arts, Macmillan Publishing Company.

24. Kant, I. (trans.) Zweig, A. (2002) Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. Oxford: Oxford University Press 25. Kirwan, J. (2005) Sublimity. Oxon: Routledge.

26. Marx, K. (1973) (trans) Nicolaus, M Grundrisse.

Foundations of the Critique of the Political Economy. London: Penguin Group 27. Marx, K. and Engels. F. (1983) Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei. Grundsätze des Kommunismus. Stuttgart: Reclam.

28. Massumi, B. (1992) A User’s Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London: MIT 29. Močnik, R. (1999) “After the Fall: Through the Fogs of the 18th Brumaire of eastern Springs.”

In Sprinker, M. (ed) Ghostly Demarcations. A Symposium on Jacques Derrida’s Spectres of Marx. London: Verso. pp. 110 – 133 30. Negri, A. (1999) “A Specter’s Smile” In Sprinker, M. (ed) Ghostly Demarcations. A Symposium on Jacques Derrida’s Spectres of Marx. London: Verso. pp. 5 – 16 31. Negri, A. (2003) Time For Revolution. London: Continuum.

32. Silverman, A.J. (2002) The Dialectic of Essence: A Study of Plato’s Metaphyics. Oxford: Princeton University Press.

33. Smith, A. (2001) Nationalism: Theory, Ideology, History. Cambridge: Polity.

34. Sprinker, M. (ed) (1999) Ghostly Demarcations.

A Symposium on Jacques Derrida’s Spectres of Marx. London: Verso.

35. Taylor, C. (1979) Hegel and Modern Society.

Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.

36. Levin, D.M. (1988) The Opening of Vision: Nihilism and the Postmodern Situation.

London: Routledge.

37. Weber, M. (1907) “The concept of ‘Following a Rule’” In Runciman, W.G (ed.) (1978) Selections in translation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp.99 - 110 38. Wellmeer, A. (1991) The Persistence of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press in association with Basil Blackwell.

39. Werbner, P. and Modood, T. (1997) Debating Cultural Hybridity: Multicultural Identities and the Politics of Anti-Racism. London: Zed. 40. Wrong, D.H. (1978) Power: Its Forms, Bases and Uses. Oxford: Blackwell.

41. Zimmermann, M. E. (1990) Heidegger’s Confrontation With Modernity. Technology, Politics, Art. Indiana USA: Indiana University Press.

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The Role of Connexins in Adult Neurogenesis Xien Lei Liversidge

The University of Auckland

Abstract Connexins are a family of transmembrane proteins with diverse roles in neurogenesis, the generation of new neurons, in the perinatal brain. Currently little is known regarding the role of connexins in adult neurogenesis, however, early studies of the hippocampus indicate a role for connexins in modulating neuronal proliferation. The focus of this project is the subventricular zone (SVZ), a centre of neurogenesis in the adult brain. Neuroblasts generated in the SVZ migrate towards the olfactory bulb, through the rostral migratory stream (RMS) in close interaction with supporting astroglial cells. Factors which facilitate adult neurogenesis are currently of interest as enhancement of endogenous neurogenesis pathways in the adult brain would provide a novel means of replacing degenerating neurons. To characterise the expression of Cx30 and Cx43 by the major cells types present in the SVZ/RMS, perfused adult mouse brains were serially sectioned. A series of sections at 280 Âľm intervals was used to determine the expression of connexins in the SVZ/RMS. For each connexin isoform of interest, sections were fluorescently immunolabelled for a single connexin isoform, doublecortin (neuroblasts) and glial fibrillary acidic protein (astroglia). Sections were visualised using widefield fluorescence microscopy. Initial results indicate colocalisation of Cx43 with neuroblasts throughout the SVZ/RMS. Conversely, Cx30 is strongly colocalised with neuroblasts present in the RMS but not the SVZ. Further analysis of the distribution of connexins within the SVZ/RMS will lead to a greater understanding of the role of these connexin isoforms in adult neurogenesis based on their identified roles in perinatal neurogenesis.

Introduction

Neurogenesis, the generation of new neurons, is a highly coordinated process which relies on direct interactions between immature neurons (neuroblasts) and neural stem cells (glial cells).

During neurogenesis, glial cells proliferate to generate neuroblasts, which then migrate to often distant regions of the brain where they will form the permanent cellular elements of the adult brain by taking on the characteristics of mature neurons, a process called differentiation (1, 2).

It is well established that connexins, a family of 20 transmembrane proteins of which approximately 11 isoforms have been identified in neural tissue, have roles in multiple aspects of neurogenesis occurring in the perinatal brain (3, 4). Connexin subunits associate to form connexons, these may dock with connexons of adjacent cells hence providing a means of direct intercellular communication and adhesion.

Alternatively, connexons may remain undocked to function as a conduit for communication between the intracellular fluid and extracellular environment.

One simple example of the involvement of connexins in perinatal neurogenesis is that when connexin (Cx) 43 expression is absent from the perinatal brain, the process of cell migration is severely impaired (5).

The focus of this study is a region of the adult brain named the subventricular zone (SVZ).

Normally, neuroblasts generated in the SVZ migrate through the rostral migratory stream (RMS), in a tube composed of supporting astroglial cells, to the olfactory bulb (OB) where neuroblasts differentiate to become OB interneurons (6-8). This process

allows maintenance of a cell population necessary for transmission of olfactory information. It has been shown that during acute and chronic states of brain injury, the rate of cell proliferation in the SVZ becomes greatly elevated, giving rise to neuroblasts which migrate towards the injury site and replace neurons that have been lost. Only a small proportion of the neuroblasts generated in the SVZ in response to brain injury survive and mature to take on the characteristics of the degenerated neurons (9).

The factors which facilitate neurogenesis are currently of great interest as enhancement of this endogenous neurogenesis response to brain injury could give rise to the development of novel strategies to treat neurodegenerative disease. Currently, little is known regarding the role of connexins in adult neurogenesis, however the involvement of connexins in perinatal neurogenesis and the presence of numerous similarities between perinatal and adult neurogenesis processes (1) raises the question of whether connexins play a role in facilitation of adult neurogenesis.

The aim of this research is to characterise the expression of two connexin isoforms, Cx30 and Cx43, in the SVZ and RMS of the adult mouse brain. There have been no previous studies on the expression of connexins within this neurogenesis pathway in the adult brain. However, studies of the subgranular zone of the hippopcampus, another major neurogenesis centre of the adult brain, indicate that these connexin isoforms are required for normal cell proliferation to occur (10).

Figure 1. Arrows of the same type in corresponding areas of paired images (above and below of each column) indicate putative regions of colocalisation between doublecortin (Dcx) immunolabelled cells and Cx30 or Cx43 immunolabelling. (A) Cx30 in the RMS, (B) Dcx in the RMS, (C) Cx30 in the SVZ, (D) Dcx in the SVZ, (E) Cx43 in the RMS, (F) Dcx in the RMS, (H) Cx43 in the SVZ, (I) Dcx in the SVZ. All images were obtained at 400x magnification.

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Methods

Adult mice (C57 strain, average 25 grams weight) were sacrificed using sodium pentobarbital overdose and transcardially perfused using ice cold 0.9% saline, followed by 4% paraformaldehyde in 0.1 M phosphate buffer (pH 7.4). After removal, brains were post fixed in 4% paraformaldehyde overnight and stored in cryoprotective solution (30% sucrose diluted in 0.1M phosphate buffer). Coronal sections of 30 µm thickness were cut using a sliding microtome (Leica SM2000R; Leica Microsystems). Sections were divided into 8 series, each series contained sections at intervals of 280 µm along the length of the SVZ/ RMS pathway. Prior to use, sections were stored in cryoprotective solution (30% ethylene glycol and 30% sucrose) at -20°C. To examine the relationship between the expression of Cx30 and Cx43 with neuroblast and astroglial cell types present in the SVZ/RMS, tripleantibody labelling experiments were performed. The protocol described below allowed specific antigens of interest (e.g. Cx30) to be detected using antibodies conjugated to fluorophores which emit light at characteristic wavelengths. Following each antibody incubation period, sections were washed four times for 5 minutes in PBS-Tween (0.2%) (PBS-T). All antibodies were diluted in immunobuffer composed of 1% normal donkey serum (NDS) diluted in PBS-T. Sections were washed overnight in phosphate buffered saline (PBS) followed by four 5 minute rinses in PBS-T. Sections were then blocked to minimise non-specific antibody reactivity for 1 hour at ≈20°C using 3% NDS (Sigma) and 2% bovine serum albumin (AppliChem) diluted in PBS-T. To detect neuroblasts and astroglial cells respectively, sections were incubated with antidoublecortin (Dcx) (1:500 dilution, goat polyclonal, Santa Cruz Biotechnology) and anti-glial acidic fibrillary protein (GFAP) (1:10,000 dilution, mouse monoclonal, Sigma) primary antibodies.

Antibody incubations were done overnight at 4°C. Sections were then incubated with anti-goat and anti-mouse secondary antibodies conjugated to fluorophores Alexa 594 and Alexa 647 respectively (1:750 dilution, polyclonal donkey, Invitrogen) for 4 hours at ≈20°C. To detect connexin isoforms of interest, sections were incubated with anti-Cx30 (1:250 dilution, polyclonal rabbit, Invitrogen) or anti-Cx43 (1:500 dilution, polyclonal rabbit, SigmaAldrich) antibodies overnight at 4°C. Then sections were incubated with anti-rabbit secondary antibody conjugated to Alexa 488 (1:750 dilution, polyclonal donkey, Invitrogen) for 4h at ≈20°C. Sections were mounted onto glass slides and glass coverslips were applied using ProLong Gold mounting medium (Invitrogen). To confirm that secondary antibodies used did not contribute significantly to background signal by non-specifically binding to brain sections during incubation periods, sections where primary

antibodies were omitted were prepared in an otherwise identical manner to that described above Slides were visualised using a Zeiss Axioplan2 microscope. Exposure times used to obtain images of each of the three fluorophores were kept constant for each fluorophore type. Images of the three channels were assigned pseudo-colours and overlayed using ImageJ software. Putative colocalisation of connexins with specific cell types was identified as overlapping pixels between the channels that capture Cx signal and Dcx or GFAP signal.

Results

Images suggest that Cx30 is expressed to a comparatively high level and is strongly colocalised with Dcx positive cells in the mouse RMS (Figure: A and B). In contrast, Cx30 expression levels are lower in the SVZ and a corresponding lower level of colocalisation with Dcx cells is observed (Figure: C and D). Cx43 is expressed to a high degree in both the SVZ and RMS and is strongly colocalised with Dcx cells (Figure: E, F, G and H). No convincing evidence of colocalisation of either of the connexin isoforms of interest with GFAP immunolabelled cells was found (images not shown).

Discussion

Images obtained in this study strongly suggest the presence of Cx30 and Cx43 in the SVZ/RMS pathway of the adult mouse brain. These connexin isoforms are expressed by neuroblasts which were identified using Dcx as a marker. Their localisation in this specialised pathway of neurogenesis suggests that they are involved in neurogenesis in the SVZ/ RMS as protein function is often associated with anatomical location.

Images obtained using wide-field fluorescence microscopy contain out-of-focus blur which limits the confidence with which the location of connexin immunolabelling within brain sections can be predicted. In order to confirm the observations described, the above experiment will be repeated using confocal microscopy to obtain higher resolution images. Images obtained using confocal microscopy will also be used to perform quantitative analyses of connexin expression and colocalisation with neuroblasts within the SVZ/RMS pathway.

I plan to further investigate relationships between connexin colocalisation with neuroblasts in the SVZ/RMS by performing immunolabelling experiments where neuroblasts at varying stages of maturity can be identified. Using this information and data obtained from investigations of the role of connexins in neurogenesis occurring in the perinatal brain, it may be possible to make inferences regarding the role of connexins in adult neurogenesis.

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference Acknowledgements

The supervision and support of Dr Simon O’Carroll, Professor Louise Nicholson and Associate Professor Bronwen Connor (Centre for Brain Research, Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, The University of Auckland) is gratefully acknowledged.

References

1. Cayre M, Canoll P, Goldman JE. 2009. Cell migration in the normal and pathological postnatal mammalian brain. Progress in Neurobiology.88(1):41-63.

2. Kriegstein AR, Noctor SC. 2004. Patterns of neuronal migration in the embryonic cortex.

Trends in Neurosciences.27(7):392-9.

3. Sutor B, Hagerty T. 2005. Involvement of gap junctions in the development of the neocortex.

Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA) Biomembranes.1719(1-2):59-68.

4. Elias LAB, Kriegstein AR. 2008. Gap junctions: multifaceted regulators of embryonic cortical development. Trends in Neurosciences.31(5):243-50.

5. Fushiki SM, Velazquez JLPP, Zhang LP, Bechberger JFM, Carlen PLM, Naus CCGP. 2003. Changes in Neuronal Migration in Neocortex of Connexin43 Null Mutant Mice. Journal of Neuropathology & Experimental Neurology.62(3):304-14.

6. Doetsch F, Garcia-Verdugo JM, Alvarez-Buylla A. 1997. Cellular Composition and ThreeDimensional Organization of the Subventricular Germinal Zone in the Adult Mammalian Brain.

Journal of Neuroscience. July 1, 1997;17(13):504661.

7. Doetsch F, Caillé I, Lim DA, García-Verdugo JM, Alvarez-Buylla A. 1999. Subventricular Zone Astrocytes Are Neural Stem Cells in the Adult Mammalian Brain. Cell.97(6):703-16.

8. García-Verdugo JM, Doetsch F, Wichterle H, Lim DA, Alvarez-Buylla A. 1998. Architecture and cell types of the adult subventricular zone: In search of the stem cells. Journal of Neurobiology.36(2):234-48.

9. Curtis MA, Faull RLM, Eriksson PS. 2007.

The effect of neurodegenerative diseases on the subventricular zone. Nature Reviews Neuroscience.8(9):712-23.

10. Kunze A, Congreso MR, Hartmann C, WallraffBeck A, Huttmann K, Bedner P, et al. 2009.

Connexin expression by radial glia-like cells is required for neurogenesis in the adult dentate gyrus. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. July 7, 2009;106(27):11336-41.

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Capacity Factors of a Point-to-point Network Yuan Li, Yue Zhao and Haibin Kan Fudan University

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate some properties on capacity factors, which are first proposed in [5] to investigate the link failure problem based on network coding. And then we obtain an equivalent condition to characterize edges in D-set and H-set of a point-to-point acyclic network, where D-set is the union of edges of all capacity factors and H-set consists of all the remaining ones. Besides that, some computational hardness results relating to capacity factors are obtained. We prove that deciding whether there is a capacity factor with size not less a given number is NP-complete.

Introduction

The more recent study of network coding shows that [4] by coding at internal vertices, one can achieve the optimal capacity of a multicast network, which is upper bounded by the maximum flow(minimum cut) of the network. However, this optimal capacity can not be achieved by traditional routing scheme.

Here comes a question: for a network codingbased network, is it still appropriate to evaluate its reliability by traditional concepts like edgeconnectivity as mentioned above? For traditional networks where only routing schemes are adopted, the communication will not be ruptured in case of edge failures as long as at least one path from source to the sink vertex still exists. However, in network coding-based network, the communication will be degraded even if the failures of an edge set may reduce the number of disjoint paths between source and sink vertices for the network capacity is decreased.

Koetter et al. [6] first mentioned the edge failure problems in network coding based networks.

Cai and Fan [5] formally proposed the concept of capacity factor and capacity rank. The capacity rank characterizes the criticality of a link for the network communication.

Preliminaries

In this section, we review some basic definitions, notations and results, which will be used in the sequel.

A communication network is a collection of directed links connecting transmitters, switches, and receivers. It is often represented by a 4-tuple N = (V, E, S, T), where V is the vertex(node) set, E the edge(link) set, S the source vertex set and T the sink vertex set. A communication network N is called a point-to-point communication network if |S| = |T| = 1, denoted by N = (V, E, s, t), where s is the source vertex and t the sink vertex.

Without loss of generality, we may assume that all links in a network have the same capacity, 1 bit per transmission slot. For u, v∈V, denote by <u, v>

the edge from u to v. If there are k edges from u to v, we denote by <u, v>k the set consisting of edges from u to v, or simply denote it by <u, v> when there is no ambiguity. For an edge e = <u, v>, u is called the tail of e and denoted by tail(e), and v is called the head of e and denoted by head(e).

If F⊆E, denote by N\F the network obtained by deleting edges in F from N. If V’⊆V , denote by N(V’) the network consisting of vertices in V’ and the edges among V’ of N, calling the vertex-induced network of N by V’. For V1, V2⊆V , denote by [V1, V2] the set consisting of all links with tails in V1 and heads in V2. For a network N = (V, E, S, T), an S-T cut of N is [V1, C(V1)] such that V1 is a subset of V containing all vertices in S but not containing any vertex in T. A minimum S-T cut of N is an S-T cut with the minimum size, denoted by CN(S, T).

It is well known that, for a point-to-point network N = (V, E, s, t), the maximum flow from s to t is equal to the minimal s-t cut of N and a feasible flow is a maximum flow if and only if there is no augmenting path in the corresponding residual network(Max-flow Min-cut Theorem [9], [10]). If each link in N has unit capacity, then the maximum flow f of N corresponds to |f| edge-disjoint paths from s to t in N (Integrality Theorem [10]). Throughout the paper, we always assume each link has unit capacity.

Let N = (V, E, s, t) be a point-to-point network.

For any vertex v∈V, we can assume that there exists a path from s to t in N which passes the vertex v.

Otherwise, we can delete the vertex v because v is useless for the communication between s and t in N. Similarly, for any edge e∈E, we can assume that there exists a path from s to t which passes the edge e.

Definition 1. [5] Let N = (V, E, s, t) be a point-topoint network. A nonempty subset F of E is a capacity factor of N if and only if the following two conditions hold: 1. CN\F (s, t) < CN(s, t); 2. CN\F’ = CN(s, t) for any proper subset F’ of F. N\F denotes the induced network formed by deleting F in N.

The Oculus: Proceedings of the U21 Undergraduate Research Conference By this definition, for a capacity factor F, adding any one edge e∈F in the point-to-point network N\F will increase the maximum flow. Since adding one edge can increase the maximum flow by at most 1, we have CN\F(s, t) = CN(s, t)−1.

Definition 2. [5] Let N = (V, E, s, t) be a point-topoint communication network. The collection of all its capacity factors D = {F1, F2, …, Fr} is called the capacity factor set of N. While D =∪i=1 Fi is called the D-set of N and H = E\D is called the H-set of N. By the definition, it is not hard to see that CN\H(s, t) = CN(s, t). Thus, the edge set of a point-topoint network can be decomposed into two disjoint parts, namely D-set and H-set, which represent the “important” links and the“unimportant” links.

Link failures in H-set will not decrease the network capacity, which is the value of maximum flow.

However, this classification is a little rough. The next definition gives a concept characterizing the criticality of a link more precisely.

Definition 3. [5] Let N = (V, E, s, t) be a point-topoint network. The capacity rank of a edge e∈E is the minimum size of the capacity factors containing e, denoted by CRN(e) or CR(e) when there is no ambiguity. If there is no capacity factor containing e, we define CR(e) =∞.

The links with smaller capacity ranks are of higher criticality. How to calculate the capacity rank of a given edge? Until now, the problem is still open. Since some evidence [8] shows that it may be difficult to develop an efficient algorithm. A direct idea is to find all the capacity factors and then decide the capacity rank of each edge. Figure 1 shows it’s impractical since the number of capacity factors may grow exponentially with the size of network.

Some Ppoperties of Capacity Factor

In this section, we first investigate some properties of capacity factors and then give a condition to distinguish edges between D-set and H-set.

Figure 1. Network with unit capacity

Proposition 5. Let N = (V, E, s, t) be a point-to-point network. For an edge set F⊆E containing e, if CN\F(s, t) < CN(s, t) and CN\F∪e(s, t) = CN(s, t), then there exists a capacity factor F’⊆F and e∈F’.

Proof: We prove this proposition by construction.

Consider the following collection FS = {F’ | F’ ⊆ F and CN\F’(s, t) < CN(s, t)}.

For any F’∈FS, if e is not in F’, we have N\F’= N\F’∪e⊇N\F∪e, which implies CN\F’ (s, t) ≥CN\F∪e = CN(s, t). This is contradicted with CN\F’(s, t) < CN(s, t).

Therefore, e must be in F’.

Taking the element F’min in FS with minimum size, we will see F’min is a capacity factor. By the definition of collection e F, CN\F’min(s, t) < CN(s, t) holds. Now consider any proper subset F’x of F’min.

If CN\F’x(s, t) < CN(s, t), we have found an element in FS with smaller size, which is contradicted with the minimality of F’min. Thus CN\F’x(s, t) < CN(s, t), which coincides with the definition of capacity factor. So F’min is a capacity factor containing e.

Q.E.D. Proposition 6. Let N = (V, E, s, t) be a point-to-point network. If N can be decomposed into CN(s, t) edgedisjoint paths, then for any e∈E, we have CN\e(s, t) = CN(s, t) − 1.

Proof: Let N’ = N\e, m = CN(s, t). Denote the m edge-disjoint paths by P1, P2, … , Pm. Without loss of generality, we assume e is in Pm and Pm = (u1, u2, …, uk, uk+1, … , ul), where ⟨uk, uk+1⟩ = e and 1≤k≤l−1.

Clearly, there is a feasible flow f on N’, which is consisting of m−1 edge disjoint paths P1, P2, …, Pm−1 and hence CN’(s, t)≥m−1. Recalling Max-flow mincut theorem, we know that a flow f is a maximum flow if and only if there is no augmenting paths on the residual network. So it is sufficient to show the residual network N’f has no augmenting path.

Note that all networks considered throughout the paper are acyclic. We assign each vertex an integer label by topological order, such that ⟨u, v⟩∈E implies label(u) < label(v).

According to the edge direction in network N, all the edges in the residual network N’ can be partitioned into two parts, forward edges and reversal edges. Consider all the forward edges in N’f, which can be viewed as the union of two paths, (u1, …, uk)∪(uk+1, …, ul), u1 = s and ul = t. By the label properties of vertices, for a forward edge (u, v) and a reversal edge (u’, v’), we have label(u) < label(v) and label(u’) > label(v’) respectively. Since u1 < u2 < … < ul, there is no reversal edge with head in {uk+1, …, ul} and tail in {u1, …, uk}. Therefore, u1(=s) and ul(=t) are disconnected and there is no augmenting path in the residual network N’f . This completes our proof.

Q.E.D. Theorem 7. Let N = (V, E, s, t) be a point-to-point network. For any e∈E, e is in D-set if and only if there exists a path P containing e, such that CN\P(s, t)

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Figure 2. A unit capacity network

Figure 3. The network constructed for a given expression

= CN(s, t)−1.

Proof: Necessity. Let m = CN(s, t). Since e is in D-set of the network N, by the definition of D-set, there must be a capacity factor containing e, which is denoted by F. Recalling the definition of capacity factor, for a proper subset F’ = F\e of F , we have CN\F’ (s, t) = CN\F∪e(s, t) = CN(s, t) = m.

According to Integrality Theorem, the maximum flow of the unit capacity network N\ F∪e can be decomposed into m edge-disjoint paths, denoted by P1, P2, …, Pm. Meanwhile, F being a capacity factor of N, we have CN\F(s, t) = m−1, which means deleting e in the network N\F∪e will decrease the maximum flow by 1. Therefore, e must be in one of paths, say Pk, 1 ≤ k ≤ m. It is clearly checked that CN\Pk (s, t) = CN(s, t) − 1.

Sufficiency. Suppose there is a path P, e∈P, such that CN\P(s, t) = CN(s, t)−1 = m−1. For the network N\P, we calculate a maximum flow solution f, which can be decomposed into P1, P2, …, Pm−1.

Let M and M be two edge sets, where M = P1∪P2∪…∪Pm−1∪(P\e) and M = E\M. By proposition 6, we can conclude CN\M(s, t) = m – 1 and CN\M∪e(s, t) = m. Note that CN\M(s, t) = m−1 < m = CN(s, t) and CN\ (s, t) = m. By proposition 5, there exists a capacity M∪e factor F⊆M containing e. Q.E.D. An edge of a network is either in the D-set or H-set, but not both. Taking the negative proposition of last theorem, we obtain the following result, which gives an equivalent condition to characterize edges in the H-set.

Computational Hardness Relating to Capacity Factors

Corollary 8. Let N = (V, E, s, t) be a point-to-point network. For any e∈E, e is in the H-set if and only if for any s-t path containing e, CN\P(s, t) ≤ CN(s, t) − 2.

Example 9. Consider the point-to-point acyclic network N = (V, E, s = v1, t = v6) shown in Fig.2. There are three different s-t path in total, which are P1 = (v1, v2, v4, v6), P2 = (v1, v3, v5, v6) and P3 = (v1, v2, v4, v3, v5, v6). It’s clear that CN\P1(s, t) = CN\P2 (s, t) = 1, but CN\P3(s, t) = 0. Thus e4 = <v4, v3> is the only edge satisfying the conditions in Corollary 8. Therefore H = {e4} and D = V\H = {e1, e2, e3, e5, e6, e7}, which coincides with the direct computation that D =∪capacity factor F F = {e1} ∪{e2}∪{e2}∪{e3}∪{e5}∪{e6}∪{e7} = {e1, e2, e3, e5, e6, e7}.

We consider the Maximum Capacity Factor (MCF) problem for a point-to-point network which might have cycles. Given a point-to-point network N = (V, E, s, t) and a specific number k, our goal is to answer whether there is a capacity factor with size not less than k. The formal language for this decision problem is: MCF= {⟨N, k⟩: N = ⟨V, E, s, t⟩ is a network with some capacity factor with size not less than k}.

In the following proof of our theorem, we will reduce a known NP-complete problem to MCF, which is the problem NAESAT (for “not-all-equal”).

NAESAT is an variant of SAT. In NAESAT, we are given a set of clauses with three literals, and we insist that in no clause are all three literals equal in truth value, i.e., neither all true, nor all false. It is known that NAESAT is NP-complete [11].

Theorem 11. MCF is NP-complete.

Proof is omitted because of the length of this paper.

To demonstrate the construction of Theorem 11, we present the following example of a specific expression.

Example 12. Given the expression T = (x1∨x2∨x3)∧(x1∨ ￢x3∨￢x3)∧(￢x1∨￢x2∨x3), we construct a network N = (V, E, s, t) according to the proof of Theorem 11 shown in Fig. 3. Note that all the “forcing edges”, i.e. the edges between xi and ￢xi, the edges between s’ and t’, as well as the ”connecting edges” <s’,￢x1>, <s’, x2>, <s’,￢x3>, <x1, t’>, <￢x2, t’>, <x3, t’> are not drawn in the figure. In this case, m = 3, n = 3 and k = 132 + 6 = 138.

It’s clear that x1 = 1, x2 = 0 and x3 = 1 is an assignment makes T in NAESAT. If we put vertices x1,￢x2, x3 on the left and ￢x1, x2,￢x3 on the right, just as what is drawn on Fig. 5, we obtain a maximum partially connected s-t cut [V1,C(V1)] with size k, where V1 = {s, s’, x1,￢x2, x3}.

Since MCF is in NP-complete, deciding the maximum capacity factor containing some specific edge is also NP-complete. Otherwise, by enumerating all the edges of in the latter problem, we can solve MCF in polynomial time, which is a contradiction.

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U21 Undergraduate Research Conference: Melbourne 2010 List of Participants Delhi University Sourovi De* Uma Ranganathan* Fudan University Yuan Li* Ruobing Wang Yunzhou Zhang Lund University Karin Göransson & Anna Östergren (partner project)* Maria Karlsson Christopher Sturk McGill University Lê-Anh Dinh-Williams5 Naomi Shrier National University of Singapore Danence Lee Jun Feng Lee* Melody Long University of Amsterdam Elin van Duin Robert Matthijs Noest Adriana Beeuw van Tiggelen University of Auckland Jessica Leigh Day Lisa Susanna Fendall4 Xien Lei Liversidge* University of Birmingham Victoria Brunsdon Veronika Barbara Fafienski* Corinne Jones* University of British Columbia Nicholas FitzGerald*3 Andrew Hughes1 Gahyang (Jenny) Lee University of Connecticut Stephanie Davis* Lu Han* Charles Mackin

*Author’s publication featured in this journal 1 Best Oral Presentation and 2Runner-Up 3 Most Imaginative Research (Oral) and 4Runner-Up 5 Most Imaginative Research (Poster) Joint Winners 6 Best Poster

University College Dublin Jane Hand* University of Edinburgh Andrew Stephen Jones5 Anandi Rao* Jack Wright* University of Glasgow Kelly Gallacher* Grant McLelland Graham Kyle Riach*2 University of Hong Kong Ka Man Chong* Kam Seng Lau Chung Yin Leung Kit Yan To Pui Yin Wan* University of Melbourne Joy Joohyo Han Kimberly Lau Daniel McNamara Alexandra Taylor Matthias Wobbe* University of Nottingham Verity Robins* Herman Santhony Amy Louise Swanwick* University of Queensland Jill Carman* Megan Smith Joanne Thomas University of Virginia Elizabeth Bendycki* Megan Kobiela* Aaron McCrady6 Waseda University Anna Konishi Akie Nakada & Reina Saiki (partner project)