Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
Despite the criticism leveled at marketing, why has marketing continued its inexorable march into every aspect of life? Since the end of World War II, two major trends have been affecting the practice of marketing: customer power and self-service. Both trends have been accelerated by the Internet.
What kinds of historical echoes sound loudest in today’s China? And which past leaders deserve the most credit — and blame — for setting the country on its current trajectory? These are timely questions as the Chinese Communist Party celebrates it’s 90th birthday today. For in China, as elsewhere, milestone moments are fitting times for backward glances and often accompanied by symbolic gestures that invite scrutiny.
By R. B. Bernstein
Historians these days regularly have to brace themselves for some new, hallucinatory version of the American past. The latest example is Representative Michele Bachmann’s claim that the founding fathers worked tirelessly to end slavery.
Really?
By Ian Ker
The only reason I have for writing the lives of writers and thinkers like Newman and Chesterton is because I think they are important writers and thinkers and I assume that is, if not the only, certainly the, or a major part of, the reason why anyone would wish to read their biographies. I therefore do attempt to bring to life both their thought and their writings for the reader. A reader of a biography of Jane Austen, say, can be assumed to have read all the relatively few novels she wrote, but very few readers of a biography of Newman and Chesterton can be assumed to have read anything more than a tiny portion of their voluminous works.
As LGBT Pride Month draws to a close, there’s a lot left to think about. Just last Friday, New York became the 6th (and largest) state to legalize same-sex marriage. It was not a Pride Month many New Yorkers will forget.
By Erik N. Jensen
Summer officially arrived on June 21, and as Americans anticipate lounging by pools and vacationing on beaches, they also look in the mirror and worry about how that midriff will look, once it’s squeezed into a swimsuit. Despite the country’s rising obesity rates, our society has not grown more accepting of different body types and sizes. We seem, if anything, to have become less accepting of them. Women in the 1950s and
By Paul Strohm
Among ethical concepts, conscience is a remarkable survivor. During the 2000 years of its existence it has had ups and downs, but has never gone away. Originating as Roman conscientia, it was adopted by the Catholic Church, redefined and competitively claimed by Luther and the Protestants during the Reformation, adapted to secular philosophy during the Enlightenment, and is still actively abroad in the world today. Yet the last few decades have been cloudy ones for conscience, a unique time of trial.
By Anatoly Liberman
Half of 2011 is behind us. This is reason enough for looking through one’s notes and offering a retrospect.
Old Business
Once again many thanks to those who responded to my question about the difference between in future and in the future. I am sure
As a proud potato-eater of Irish descent, I was often told by my grandmother Rafferty, “Eat all your potatoes if you want to grow tall and strong.” It seems my grandmother was on to something. Between 1000 and 1900, world population grew from under 300 million to 1.6 billion, and the share of population living in urban areas more than quadrupled, increasing from two to over nine percent. The increase in population accelerated dramatically over time and occurred almost entirely towards the end of the period. Many demographers, historians, and economists alike have speculated as to the reasons for such growth on a global scale. The authors of
By Tee L. Guidotti
Mengxi Village, in Zhejiang province, in eastern coastal China, is an obscure rural hamlet not far geographically but far removed socially from the beauty, history, and glory of Hangzhou, the capital. Now it is the unlikely center of a an environmental health awakening in which citizens took direct action by storming the gates of a lead battery recycling plant that has caused lead poisoning among both children and adults in the village.
By Elvin Lim
New York has just become the sixth state to legalize same-sex marriage, together with Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Iowa, and the District of Columbia. New Jersey, Maryland, and Rhode Island have not legalized same-sex marriage, but they do recognize those performed in other states. State by state, the dominoes against same-sex marriage are falling away as surely as reason must conquer unreason. President Barack Obama has been accused of allowing a state governor
By Dennis Baron
The Supreme Court is using dictionaries to interpret the Constitution. Both conservative justices, who believe the Constitution means today exactly what the Framers meant in the 18th century, and liberal ones, who see the Constitution as a living, breathing document changing with the times, are turning to dictionaries more than ever to interpret our laws: a new report shows that the justices have looked up almost 300 words
As our nation’s birthday approaches, The Oxford Comment pays tribute to an institution that has influenced American identity from the very beginning: the bar. Over lunch at The Ginger Man in New York City, Christine Sismondo discusses American vs. Canadian drinking culture (can you guess whose is better?) and why prohibition doesn’t actually increase drinking.
By Jonathan Crowe
The world around us has been in a state of constant change for millions of years: mountains have been thrust skywards as the plates that make up the Earth’s surface crash against each other; huge glaciers have sculpted valleys into the landscape; arid deserts have replaced fertile grasslands as rain patterns have changed. But the living organisms that populate this world are just as dynamic: as environments have changed, so too has the plethora of creatures inhabiting them. But how do creatures change to keep step with the world in which they live? The answer lies in the process of evolution.
Apparently this is what happens when a small branch falls on a power line. Interesting information about coffee and caffeine Infographic: income levels of America’s major religious groups This was surely an expensive Inception wedding reception. The new FDA anti-smoking warnings are graphic. Lego my car. This woman is reading the entire Patient Protection and […]
By Daniel Byman
On paper, Egyptian jihadist Ayman al-Zawahiri, who just formally filled Osama bin Ladin’s shoes as al Qaeda’s emir, seems a perfect replacement for the late Saudi terrorist. Zawahiri formed his own terrorist group as a teenager, and ever since he has fought autocratic Muslim regimes and the United States with both tenacity and intelligence. As bin Ladin’s number two, he learned at the feet of the master, and by some accounts taught his boss much of what he knew about how to run an underground organization.