Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
Bill W., the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, took an acid trip in late 1950s that reportedly allowed him to revisit the mental and spiritual condition that had inspired him to swear off booze in the first place. Although AA has no religious affiliation, the numerous references to God throughout the twelve steps make its emphasis on interior discovery and redemption an indispensable part of the program.
Recently, debates about inequality have risen to the forefront in academic and public debates. The publication of the French economist Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century in 2013 did not, to say the least, go by unnoticed. And many other prominent economists have partaken in the debate about global inequality: Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz and Angus Madison, just to name a few.
Labeling ISIS simply a terrorist organization or an apocalyptic sect of fanatics does very little in terms both of explaining and of confronting the phenomenon. What – among other things – lies at the basis of its emergence, behind and through its acts of brutality, is a different vision of international community, one hostile to that which the vast majority of states and international organizations share.
The world of wine is developing rapidly, so much so that the updated fourth edition of The Oxford Companion to Wine has added 300 new entries, including wine apps, aromatics, minerality, social media, and tasting notes language. The wine map as a whole has changed with countries like Hong Kong and many in Northern Europe developing as substantial wine producers.
The Paris Agreement will be significant only to the extent that it can motivate domestic policy change, cross-national technical assistance, and social pressure to reduce nations’ dependence on fossil fuels.
The 15th anniversary of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 has prompted considerable analysis on the achievements of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. To date, 52 countries have adopted a National Action Plan (NAP) for the implementation of Resolution 1325 and, within the United Nations, the number of women in senior leadership positions has increased.
On 19 October 2015, the tech culture website Geek published another installment of procrastination-inducing click-bait lists, namely a rundown of “The 11 best Satanists.” Here, writer Aubrey Sitterson introduced 11 people associated with Satanism, from Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey to music icons Marilyn Manson and King Diamond.
Given that Shakespeare’s company enjoyed royal patronage, performed regularly at Court, and became known as the King’s Men upon the accession of James I in 1603, you’d be forgiven for assuming that his plays were bent on buttressing rather than subverting the status quo. That assumption certainly seems to be backed up in Troilus and Cressida by Ulysses’ apocalyptic vision of the anarchy that’s bound to ensue when “degree, priority and place” are not strictly observed: “Take but degree away, untune that string, / And hark what discord follows.”
While there has been considerable normative theorizing on the topic of immigration, most analyses have focused on the relation between the migrant or prospective migrant and the society she will join—issues of admission, accommodation, integration, and so forth.
As 2015 draws to a close, Who’s Who is already ushering in the new year with its latest cohort of changemakers from the United Kingdom. From government and media, to business and the arts, over 1,000 new entries provide a glimpse into the lives of the world’s most influential leaders.
In 2010, Israel Leija was killed by a police officer during a high speed chase, which ended when Mullenix, a police officer, stationed on an overpass, shot several bullets into Leija’s car. The chase began when the police tried to arrest Leija at a drive-in restaurant for violating parole on a misdemeanor charge. When the officer approach Leija in his car, Leija drove off, with the police giving chase, while several other officers set up tire spikes along the road to stop him.
Is the world a more perilous place than ever before? Why are there so many crises? What can we do about it? Newspaper headlines routinely reflect the fact that terrorist attacks, industrial accidents, and economic and financial meltdowns are becoming more frequent and more far-reaching in their effects.
Is the human brain just a rag-bag of different tricks and stratagems, slowly accumulated over evolutionary time? For many years, I thought the answer to this question was most probably ‘yes’. The most tantalizing (but least developed) aspect of the emerging framework concerns the origins of conscious experience itself.
Europe has an apparent human rights surfeit. The European Convention on Human Rights and its dedicated Court of Human Rights establishes a pan-European human rights minimum. The EU has its Charter of Fundamental Rights and the Court of Justice, widely regarded as the most powerful supranational court in the world.
It may be fairly easy to say that the dignity of a person in the domain of psychiatry should be respected. Justification is easy to find. For example, the South African Constitution proclaims ‘everyone has inherent dignity and the right to have their dignity respected and protected.’
In 1812 Benjamin West completed his portrait of John Eardley Wilmot. The portrait was two paintings in one: it depicted its subject, Wilmot, lawyer and former Chief Justice of Common Pleas, at the foreground; in the background was a painting within a painting, a scene of American loyalists, including Native Americans, African slaves, women, and children.