Foundation VI 1

Vol. VI

2014

No. 1

Foundation Edited and Compiled by St Chad’s College Middle Common Room

Editor in Chief: Anna Shierson Manuscript Editors: Oliver W. J. Burnham and J. P. Cassidy Article Editors: Barbara Mutedzi, Katharine Adnitt and Jessica Prestidge

For copyright and usage information, please contact the Editorial Board via the Principal of the College: The Rev. Canon Dr J. P. Cassidy St Chad’s College 18 North Bailey Durham DH1 3RH

ISSN 1752-0398

Contents Contributors............................................................................ iii Preface ..................................................................................... v The Enigma of Lady Wisdom: External Foreign Deity, Internal Hypostasis or simply an Amalgamated Literary Figure? ......................................................................................1 Keith Leong Medicine and the Medieval Arabic World: Ophthalmology, Cardiology, and Wine in Ibn Sina’s Canon of Medicine ..............................................................................15 Curtis Runstedler Involvement and Detachment – Implications for Organisational Research .........................................................24 Peter Swan Loss and Restoration in the Apollonius of Tyre Narrative Cycle from Antiquity to the Renaissance ...............................40 Koren Kuntz Public House Sessions: Family, Community Building and Intergenerational Transmission of Folk Music in England ....52 Élise G. M. Gayraud Counting Bombs without Numbers: Are Enactment-Based Risk Management Techniques Useful in High Risk Environments? ........................................................................72 Nick Torbet

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Contributors Keith Leong has completed a graduate diploma in theology with a biblical studies concentration and will be pursuing a masters in October 2014. He is interested in the interface between science and theology.

Curtis Runstedler is currently studying his MA in Medieval Literature. His research focuses on medieval werewolves, particularly their humanness and wolf-like realities in the medieval romance. He will be starting his PhD in the autumn and looking at the development of the supernatural during the Middle Ages.

Peter Swan has recently completed his PhD in the Department of Geography. His research involved an ethnographic case study of a community 'arts and health' organisation based in a small market town in Northern England. He investigated the tensions between the working ethos of third sector organisations and the environment within which they operate, and how organisations can absorb, resist and negotiate any challenges to their way of working.

Koren Kuntz is a doctoral student in English and is currently researching the relationship of music and visual art to medieval dream poetry. She is currently working as an editorial assistant for Professor Elizabeth Archibald on an upcoming book entitled Troy and the European Imagination 900-1700. Later this year, she is to begin an internship with The Getty Museum in Los Angeles on an exhibition entitled The Art of Alchemy. Élise G. M. Gayraud is a doctoral student in ethnomusicology. In her thesis, titled Playing with identity: Preserving and transforming Folk music in 21st century England, she is looking at the recent changes in the folk music scene in England, exploring a wide

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variety of concepts, such as identity, tradition, culture and globalisation.

Nick Torbet is a Master's student at the School of Government and International Affairs; during the course of which he completed a short research project with the Institute for Hazard, Risk and Resilience. Prior to studying at Durham he was an Army Officer specialising in Explosive Ordnance Disposal, serving a number of tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Preface It is with great pleasure that we can present the St Chad’s College Journal. This re-launch has been greatly anticipated. All of the essays were written by postgraduate members of the College, and we’re very pleased the Middle Common Room is able to contribute to the academic life of St Chad’s. This academic journal provides a small insight into the thriving interests and studies of St. Chad’s College. The editor in chief is particularly grateful to the Principal, Dr Cassidy, for his help and advice with academic publications, the Rev. Ashley Wilson for his encouragement and organisation and Oliver Burnham, the MCR President, for his help in decision making and formatting. The editor in chief would also like to express her gratitude to all the contributors and to her team of sub-editors.

Anna Shierson St Chad’s College June 2014

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The Enigma of Lady Wisdom: External Foreign Deity, Internal Hypostasis or simply an Amalgamated Literary Figure?

Keith Leong Introduction

Wisdom literature from the Second Temple period has been a perennial object of lively discussion in biblical scholarship concerning, among other things, the precise dates of their composition, the history of redaction, intertextuality with Israel’s Ancient Near Eastern neighbours and theological significance.

Within the Hebrew Bible, and specifically concerning the book of Proverbs, these speculations have been exacerbated by the difficulty of dating the many independent units of which it is comprised. This is because, unlike other books, such as parts of the book of Kings in the Nevi’im, or Historical Books in the Christian Canon, these disparate proverbial sayings are not tied to a coherent and identifiable historical context supported by extrabiblical corroboration.1 Consequently, form criticism is also less useful in determining their dates and contexts.2 Furthermore, they lack consistency with the rest of the Hebrew Bible’s strong emphasis on ‘covenant, election or law’.3 The personification of Lady Wisdom in the first unit of Proverbs, that is Chapters 1-9, is generally held by scholars to be the latest unified addition to the book. It has itself engendered a For example, the events of the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem in 701 BCE by Sennacherib, mentioned in 2 Kings 18.13-16, are also narrated in ‘several Assyrian sources and are also depicted in the palace reliefs of that king’, Marc Brettler, The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha ed. by Michael D. Coogan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 316.

2 Stuart Weeks, An Introduction to the Study of Wisdom Literature (London: T & T Clark, 2010), p. 107. See also Michael V. Fox, The Anchor Bible: Proverbs 1-9 (New York: Doubleday, 2000), p. 6 3 Weeks, An Introduction, pp. 6, 1 1

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sizeable critical legacy concerned with, on the one hand, its possible intertextuality with foreign female divinities, and on the other, its somewhat overlapping significance as a kind of hypostatization of an attribute of their God.4 This concept of Lady Wisdom as a hypostatization was further developed in the later Wisdom of Solomon and Ben Sira and it was eventually interpreted to support a Christology in John’s gospel and in the writings of the Church Fathers.5 It has been assumed in both cases that it was the intention of the original authors for Lady Wisdom to be understood as a kind of divine figure, rendering her amenable to future theological interpretations.

This brief article will consider recent contributions to biblical scholarship and will make the case that, while there is some possible evidence for Lady Wisdom’s intertextuality with foreign female divinities and unquestionable evidence for its later use by the writers of the New Testament and the Church Fathers to reveal an implicit Christology in the Hebrew Bible, 6 the portrayal of Lady Wisdom primarily in Proverbs 8.22-31 and 1.22-31, and wherever else she is invoked in the 1-9 unit, did not have intrinsic divine significance of either kind that is traceable to authorial intent.

Gerhard von Rad points out that this term has become problematically ‘loaded’ and has chosen to ‘avoid it completely’. See his Wisdom in Israel (London: SCM Press, 1972), p. 147 footnote. Fox’s definition, which is the implicit definition supposed by this article, is simply ‘mythic objectifications or personifications of divine qualities, gifts or attributes or of abstract concepts or aspects of human existence, whereby such entities assume an identity of their own’, Fox, The Anchor Bible, p. 353.

5 R. B. Y. Scott, ‘Wisdom in Creation: The 'Amôn of Proverbs VIII 30’, Vetus Testamentum, 10 2 (1960), pp. 215, 216. See also Weeks, An Introduction, p.

40 6 Or, more appropriately, the Septuagint.

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Concerning External Intertextuality with Foreign Female Divinities

In order to defend this thesis, this article will first seek to show that Lady Wisdom was probably not an externally borrowed divinity from Israel’s Ancient Near Eastern neighbours.

Representing a well-established position, Charles T. Fritsch, in The Interpreter’s Bible, identifies Lady Wisdom as a hypostatization of Canaanite derivation. Also, against the scholarly consensus that the Proverbs 1-9 unit was probably the latest composition and addition to the book,7 he argues that because chapters 8-9 ‘point to strong Ugaritic and Phoenician influence’, they are ‘one of the oldest parts of the book’. Unfortunately, while he provides evidence that they are ‘closer in thought than in mode of expression’ to the other sections’ connections with foreign literature like the Mesopotamian Proverbs of Ahikar, and the generally agreed upon Egyptian Teaching of Amenemope with the 22.17 – 24.22 unit, he does not provide any direct examples for his claim regarding Lady Wisdom.8 Three responses may be given in opposition to Fritsch’s thesis: (1) It is important to note that evidence for intertextuality between Proverbs and Ancient Near East sources that do have female divinities does not constitute sufficient proof that Lady Wisdom is therefore also a borrowed divinity. Among the few newer scholars who agree with the possibility of dating the Proverbs 1-9 unit outside of the Persian or Hellenistic Period to an earlier time when Ancient Near East intertextuality could constitute a stronger probability is Nili Shupak, who compares the strange or foreign woman and Lady Wisdom with Egyptian See Fox, The Anchor Bible, p. 6. See also Katharine Dell, ‘The Book of Proverbs’, in The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha, p. 895 8 Charles T. Fritsch, The Interpreter’s Bible, ed. by George Arthur Buttrick (New York: Abingdon Press, 1955), pp. 767, 775, 768, 767, 768 7

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instructional literature discussed in H. W. Fischer-Elfert’s ‘Abseits von Ma’at: Fallstudien zu Aussenseitern im Alten Ägypten’. Her thesis is that the strange or foreign woman and Lady Wisdom are derived from ‘practical instructions based on an everyday reality that fill the purpose of didactic literature’ designed to teach youths to avoid adulterous women, a theme that is prevalent in the Egyptian literature since the 3rd Millennium BCE. While she also notes that ‘in the present instance one cannot speak unequivocally of Egyptian influence on Proverbs’,9 her article shows that even if intertextuality with foreign sources that do have female divinities can be evidenced, one cannot justifiably affirm that Lady Wisdom was modelled on their attendant divinities – in Egypt’s case, these would be Ma’at and Isis – in the absence of a direct linguistic correspondence. Supporting this principle, Michael Fox provides an example from Egyptian literature of ‘Truth and Falsehood’ being allegorically personified but who are ‘written with the sign used to designate humans’, unlike Sia or Ma’at who were understood to be personifications of divine attributes. This, he argues, shows that ‘personification does not in itself indicate hypostatization, even in a culture with numerous hypostases’.10 (2) Among the scholars who accept the possibility that Lady Wisdom has had conscious foreign antecedents, the general consensus is that it was nevertheless re-appropriated to fit a certain religious understanding that would exclude anything that challenged Jewish concepts of the nature of their God as their one and only. 11 Gerhard von Rad, similarly representing older Nili Shupak, ‘Female Imagery in Proverbs 1-9 in the Light of Egyptian Sources’, Vetus Testamentum, 61 (2011), pp. 312, 313, 323. The Egyptian sources she cites are The Instruction of Ptahhotep, The Instruction of Ani, and the Demotic Instructions.

10 Fox, The Anchor Bible, p. 331 11 See Deuteronomy 6.4, also known as the Sh’ma. This uniqueness of Yahweh ‘calls for utter devotion – heart, soul, and might’, Brevard S. Childs, Biblical Theology in the Old and New Testaments (SCM Press, 1992), p. 355 9

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scholarship, in his classic Wisdom in Israel, begins his discussion of the personification of wisdom with what it ‘really means in the context of Yahwism’, which is a ‘faith in Yahweh as creator’. Given this grounding supposition, he concedes that Lady Wisdom does share some similarities with the Egyptian goddess Ma’at, who, like her, is presented as a child embracing her father. However, von Rad also points out that this only could show that ‘ideas which had their roots elsewhere came to Israel’s help when she needed them’, because in the case of Lady Wisdom, unlike Ma’at, she ‘has no divine status, nor is [she] a hypostasized attribute of Yahweh; [she] is, rather, something created by Yahweh and assigned [her] proper function’. Within his exegesis, which incorporates Job 28 as an important contemporaneous development of the concept of wisdom, the proper function in question is to be ‘an attribute of the world […] by virtue of which she turns towards men to give order to their lives’.12 Fox, who is also marginally sympathetic to the intertextual view, begins by arguing that the evidence for a connection to a Canaanite goddess is scant, and as for the Egyptian goddess Ma’at, she ‘never seems to speak at all’, which would be a strange source for Lady Wisdom given her enthusiasm for giving speeches.

However, he concedes that the Egyptian goddess Isis, who in the Hellenistic period ‘became the most popular goddess in the Near East’ could have been an influence. Importantly, though, this concession is qualified by the recognition that ‘even if this background could be confirmed, it would not mean that Lady Wisdom is an Isis figure’. Rather, her similarities with Isis would

Gerhard von Rad, Wisdom in Israel, pp. 144, 156, 153, 156. This position is echoed in H. Gese, ‘Wisdom, Son of Man, and the Origins of Christology’, Horizons in Biblical Theology, 3 (1981), p. 32, whereby ‘in creational order God mediates himself to the world, and in the knowledge of wisdom this mediation is completed’. See his whole article for an in-depth account of the progression of wisdom in Second Temple Judaism which eventually led to its connection to Jesus Christ in the New Testament.

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have served to ‘displace Isis in Hellenistic Jewish sentiments’.13 Therefore, Fox, as with von Rad, argues that Isis would have been used as a tool in the service of Jewish theology, and so would not have been understood or composed intentionally as such to have a kind of divine significance that would challenge devotion to their God commanded in the Sh’ma.14 (3) Some scholars think that there is not enough evidence to justifiably say that Lady Wisdom was influenced by foreign deities at all. Concerning method, Stuart Weeks argues that regarding the biblical Wisdom literature’s similarities with Egyptian or Mesopotamian sources, ‘general resemblance’ does not necessarily imply ‘specific dependence’, and in the case of older works, ‘there is no reason to suppose that the Jewish writers could easily have read or understood texts in archaic languages such as Sumerian or Middle Egyptian, or even Akkadian and the later forms of Egyptian’. Regarding Lady Wisdom specifically, he argues that Isis only became internationally famous ‘later than most scholars would date Proverbs 1-9’. Furthermore, he also points out that Ma’at was actually a personified literary concept and was only presented as a goddess in artistic depictions, and so Jewish writers could not have ‘acquired their familiarity [with a deified Ma’at] from any reading of Egyptian instructional literature’. He concludes by noting that ‘in the end, it is hard either to prove or disprove that the depiction of Wisdom in Proverbs 1-9 has been influenced, directly or indirectly, by representations of goddesses in the literature, liturgy, or iconography of other countries’.15

Fox, The Anchor Bible, pp. 335, 336, 337 If one accepts the scholarly consensus that the Proverbs 1-9 unit was probably compiled in -the Persian or at the very latest, the Hellenistic Period, then the account in Ezra-Nehemiah of the ‘canonization’ of the Torah, which encloses the Sh’ma, for the Jews who returned to Jerusalem at the Persian Ruler Cyrus’s edict would lend credence to this point.

15 Weeks, An Introduction, pp. 17, 41, 42 13 14

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The Enigma of Lady Wisdom

This section has endeavoured to show that the case for Lady Wisdom’s divine significance via external intertextuality with Ancient Near East sources is weak. In other words, it is not likely that Lady Wisdom was a borrowed foreign female deity, and even if she were, she would be divested of any kind of theological significance that would threaten to displace Jewish devotion to their God. In the following section, this article will examine Lady Wisdom’s depiction internal to the Hebrew Bible, and seek to make a similar case for her non-hypostatization.

Concerning Internal Significance as a Hypostatization of YHWH

It will be helpful first to reproduce the relevant sections of the personification of Lady Wisdom that concern the thesis of this article.

Proverbs 1.20-33 (NRSV): 20 Wisdom cries out in the street; in the squares she raises her voice.

21 At the busiest corner she cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she speaks: 22 ‘How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple?

How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge?

23 Give heed to my reproof; I will pour out my thoughts to you; I will make my words known to you.

24 Because I have called and you refused, have stretched out my hand and no one heeded, 25 and because you have ignored all my counsel and would have none of my reproof, 26 I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when panic strikes you, 27 when panic strikes you like a storm, and your calamity comes like a whirlwind,

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when distress and anguish come upon you.

28 Then they will call upon me, but I will not answer; they will seek me diligently, but will not find me.

29 Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord, 30 would have none of my counsel, and despised all my reproof, 31 therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way and be sated with their own devices.

32 For waywardness kills the simple, and the complacency of fools destroys them; 33 but those who listen to me will be secure and will live at ease, without dread of disaster.’ Proverbs 8.22-31 (NRSV) 22 The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago.

23 Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth.

24 When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water.

25 Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth— 26 when he had not yet made earth and fields, or the world’s first bits of soil.

27 When he established the heavens, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, 28 when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, 29 when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, 30 then I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always,

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31 rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.

Two discrete sets of evidence commonly cited for Lady Wisdom’s divine qualities are found in translations in which she seems to be described as God’s co-eternal co-creator in 8.22 and 8.30a, and her prophetic and divine voice in 1.22-31. Alan Lenzi pairs Proverbs 3.19 – ‘The Lord by Wisdom founded the earth; by understanding he established the heavens’ – with 8.22 to argue for the translation that God ‘acquires’ rather than ‘creates’ wisdom in 8.22, which implies that she is not a created thing but is actually co-eternal with him, who acquired her. He also argues for intertextuality, but one that does not feature ‘an exact semantic parallel’, of the depiction of Lady Wisdom in Proverbs 8.22-31 with the birth narrative of the creator god Marduk in the Mesopotamian creation narrative Enuma Elish, which renders 8.30a amenable to the translation that Wisdom is an artisan ‘through which and with whom he creates the world’.16 Similarly, David Noel Freedman sees Proverbs 8.22-31 as creation theology, 17 and, combining the evidence in Proverbs 1.22-31 of personified wisdom’s prophetic and divine roles of exhortation and laughter at and refusal to hear the cries of those who originally ‘ignored all [her] counsel’ 18 evidenced elsewhere in the speeches of the prophets and of God in the Hebrew Bible respectively, argues that she has ‘become more than just a prophetic figure but also something that merges egos with the divine’.19 Alan Lenzi, ‘Proverbs 8:22-31: Three Perspectives on Its Composition’, JBL, 4 (2006), pp. 696-697, 703, 705 17 David Noel Freedman, The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992).

18 Proverbs 1.15 NRSV. 19 Freedman, The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary. Among other scholars who hold to the ‘artisan’ or ‘master worker’ reading with its attendant theological significance are Mitchell Dahood S. J. in his ‘Proverbs 8,22-31 Translation and Commentary’, Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 30 4 (1968), pp.

512-521, and Fritsch in The Interpreter’s Bible.

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Concerning Lady Wisdom’s seemingly divine and prophetic role, Fox argues that robust and consistent parallels between her speeches and either the divine or the prophetic voice cannot actually be found. While he concedes that Lady Wisdom’s reproofs echo prophetic behaviour, Amos’ and Ezekiel’s in particular, he attributes that similarity ‘to the fact that prophets sometimes take on a teacher’s role’, which is essentially all that Lady Wisdom’s behaviour could amount to. Furthermore, ‘Wisdom neither declares God’s judgment nor claims to be mediating his word, which is a prophet’s defining role’. And as for her divine persona that ignores the cries of fools, which is how ‘God behaves toward unworthy supplicants’, Fox notes that ‘unlike God, Wisdom does not herself execute retribution’. Fox concludes that any view of Lady Wisdom is one that has to take account of the ‘variety of persons in the sketch’ that constitute her. Therefore, for him it is more likely that she is simply ‘a new and independent literary figure [that] has been composed of fragments of reality’,20 whose amalgamated literary significance will be touched upon at this article’s conclusion.

Concerning her co-eternal and co-creator status alongside God, largely legitimised by the translations ‘acquired’ rather than ‘created’ in 8.22, and ‘artisan’ or ‘master worker’ in 8.30a, Fox argues for and agrees with the fact that most modern translations prefer ‘created’ as opposed to ‘acquired’ in 8.22 which, at any rate, coheres with 8.24-5’s language of her being birthed.21 The issue concerning ‘master worker’ is more complicated because it had already been interpreted as such in the earliest translations and exegetical references along with its theological developments. R. B. Y. Scott notes that the ‘skilled artisan’ reading, which is virtually synonymous with ‘master worker’, is attested to or implied in the Septuagint, the Syriac Peshitta, the Latin Vulgate, the Aramaic Targums, Philo of Alexandria’s writings, and the New Testament, 20 21

Fox, The Anchor Bible, pp. 333, 334, 333, 341 Fox, The Anchor Bible, p. 279. Von Rad also holds to the ‘created’ view.

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specifically John 1.3 and Colossians 1.16. Scott notes the implication of this translation: ‘if this was the meaning […] intended by the author of Prov. viii it would indicate that he was thinking of Wisdom as something very like an hypostasis’.

Nevertheless, Scott also argues that determining authorial intent of a given text cannot be predicated on ‘later literary allusions since these testify only to different exegetical traditions’. Rather, it is more important to look at the text itself and see what ‘best suits the context’. He rejects the ‘artisan’ reading because 8.26-29 emphasise repeatedly that God is the one doing the creating. After examining and rejecting other potential translations, he settles on the view that 8.30a should be translated as ‘then I was at his side, a living link’.22 Fox also rejects the ‘artisan’ translation because ‘this notion seems to be deliberately repudiated in 8:30-31, which emphasizes that Wisdom played while God worked’, and instead argues for ‘child’ or ‘nursling’ as the best exegetical option beside the language of birthing and playing. He argues that the lengthy description of creation is not there to showcase Wisdom’s creative acts alongside God but rather ‘to celebrate her pre-eminence’ as a being created even before the existence of the primeval ocean, tehomot, which God subdued to create the world, placing the mountains in its sockets to hold up the triple layer of the heavens, the earth, and Sheol, in the Hebrew cosmogony of Genesis. Fox also notes that Lady Wisdom ‘has three designations: hokmah, binah, and tebunah’, throughout the 1-9 unit,23 which is not appropriate for a stable hypostasis whom one would expect would have only one name.

Weeks’ article ‘The Context and Meaning of Proverbs 8:30a’ also argues against ‘master worker’ as a good option because it has problems with precedent. Weeks notes that one will have difficulty trying to explain ‘why the active role of 22 23

R. B. Y. Scott, ‘Wisdom in Creation’, pp. 216, 221, 215, 217, 222 Fox, The Anchor Bible, pp. 355, 285, 281, 282, 353

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Wisdom is introduced only at this late point in the poem mentioned nowhere else in Proverbs 1-9’. Concerning the possible exception at 3.19-20, he maintains that Wisdom there is portrayed ‘more specifically as a tool or an attribute, not an actor in creation’. He argues that 8.30a is linked not to the preceding creation verses as a kind of completion of their consecutive ‘temporal expression’ which would lend itself to a ‘craftsman’ reading as a kind of fitting climax, but rather it is linked to the verse that comes after it. Therefore Weeks argues that 8.30a is not about the time before creation, but about the time after creation, in which case ‘faithful’ would fit better. Consequently he translates the verse as such: ‘And I have remained at his side faithfully, and I remain delightedly, day after day’. He concludes therefore that ‘the verse is not a cosmological assertion of Wisdom’s intrinsic nature or role at creation, but, like the rest of the poem, it is an assertion of Wisdom’s value and reliability’.24 Conclusion

Given the weight of the recent scholarly consensus and the force of their arguments, it seems that, on the one hand, Lady Wisdom was probably not intended to be a borrowed divinity from Israel’s Ancient Near East neighbours for the three reasons stated in the first main section of this article. On the other hand, the subsequent section also shows that evidence for her hypostatization predicated on translations of 8.22 and 30a, and her divine persona in 1.22-31 are also far from agreed upon. In addition to this, scholars have also cited a host of problems with a clear hypostatization reading of Lady Wisdom notwithstanding Weeks, ‘The Context and Meaning of Proverbs 8:30a’, JBL, 125 3 (2006), pp. 434, 434 footnote, 437, 438, 440, 442, 441. In his book he provides a very simple apologetic for the non-divinity of Lady Wisdom: since she is intimately connected with her antithesis, the strange or foreign woman, and ‘if Wisdom is supposed recognizably to be a goddess, what does that make the woman?’. Weeks, An Introduction, p. 40 24

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the weight of subsequent interpretive glosses since these are not predicated on authorial intent but on later ‘exegetical traditions’,25 each with their specific theological suppositions. In its place they have offered more conservative and contextually appropriate explanations for the personification of Wisdom.

Weeks posits that the personification is ‘merely adopting a style imposed by its context, where a speech by Wisdom is required in response to the previous speech by the foreign woman’.26 Fox also notes that ‘everything in the chapter [including her personification] serves the rhetorical goal of influencing the reader to desire wisdom’.27 This of course begs the question: What concept of wisdom is being endorsed here? Can it be harmonized with other Judaic engagements with wisdom in the Second Temple Period? And what would it mean for modern faith communities to appropriate these disparate insights? These questions, while also important and perennially discussed in biblical scholarship,28 are beyond the scope of this brief article.

Scott, ‘Wisdom in Creation’, p. 221 Weeks, An Introduction, p. 41. See also pp. 105-106 27 Fox, The Anchor Bible, p. 293. See also Jane Webster, ‘Sophia: Engendering Wisdom in Proverbs, Ben Sira and the Wisdom of Solomon’, JSOT, 78 (1998), pp. 63-79, who takes a literary approach, for a similar conclusion.

28 Looking at the enormous corpus of wisdom literature in the Ancient Near East, Weeks does not think one can do better than ‘speak of their works loosely as products of a wisdom tradition, which drew on long-established genres linked to exhortation and disputation, was marked by a characteristic style of discourse, and focused on particular problems surrounding the individual human life’, Weeks, An Introduction, p. 144.

While Weeks and others have argued that it was probably not in the original authors’ intention for Lady Wisdom to be connected with the Torah, Karel van der Toorn has argued that, because the pre-existence of Wisdom in Proverbs influenced the later assertion of the pre-existence of the Torah in the Mishnah, wisdom became another name for ‘the Book of the Law’, and so for Jews of the Rabbinic Period, to be wise was to submit to the authority of the pre-existent Torah. See Karel van der Toorn, The Image and the Book (Peeters, 1998), pp. 245-246.

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Therefore, while Lady Wisdom continues to be a conceptual enigma because of her possible intertextuality with foreign female divinities as well as her rather significant historic interpretation as a prefigured Christ in the New Testament and appearance in later Christological controversies,29 this article has endeavoured to show that the evidence for either is insufficient to justifiably claim that these were also the original author.

‘In the fourth century, Prov 8.22 became a crux interpretation that pivoted on the question of whether Christ was coeval with the Father (Athanasius) or was his creation (Arians)’, operating on the early and widely held assumption that 8.30a should be translated ‘master worker’, Fox, The Anchor Bible, p. 279. As an important aside, this article is not attempting to imply that Christological reflections on Proverbs and theology derived from those reflections are mistaken. Approximations to authorial intent, which is one of the goals of the historical-critical method, is not considered a normative requirement for theological interpretation of scripture as suits the needs of the Church. For a brief discussion of this, see Walter Moberly, The Bible, Theology and Faith: A Study of Abraham and Jesus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), chapter 1. For a substantive engagement with this issue, see Francis Watson, Text, Church and World (London: T&T Clark, 2004 29

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Medicine and the Medieval Arabic World: Ophthalmology, Cardiology, and Wine in Ibn Sina’s Canon of Medicine Curtis Runstedler

Medical practice and study within the medieval Arabic world, particularly the written works and treatises of the great Arabic thinker and practitioner Ibn Sina, still hold value to the world of modern medicine. While his most influential work, Canon of Medicine, is often praised as a historical text, it is important also to recognise the lasting impact of his methodologies and approaches toward medicine. I plan to discuss how Ibn Sina’s medical contributions provide modern medicine with invaluable insights and early recognition of ophthalmology and workings of the heart.

Ophthalmology is the study of disease, anatomy and physiology of the eye. Ibn Sina’s approach to ophthalmology and cardiology is important because he connects medical practice with surgery, as well as outlining early medical conditions and maladies. I will also explore his physiological understanding of wine, focussing on its remedial qualities and relationship to medicine. Through this discussion, we can hopefully have some appreciation of the medieval Arabic world and their subsequent contributions toward early medicine.

Ibn Sina (known as Avicenna in the Western world) was born in 980 AD in Afshaneh, which is old Persia.1 He was a promising young man, reading the Qur’an and important Persian works by the age of ten,2 and becoming a physician by the age of eighteen.3 After he medically treated the prince, he was rewarded with access to the royal library. 4 Through this and other established networks and government connections, he became

1

Abdolali Mohagheghzadeh et al., ‘Avicenna (980-1037 A.D.)’, Journal of Neurology 259/2 (2012), 389-90, at p. 389.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid.

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Prime Minister. Later in his career, he was imprisoned as well.5 While in prison, he engaged in writings on medicine and philosophy. Ibn Sina described neural functions with anatomy, joining physiology with early psychology. He also contributed towards palaeontology and the natural sciences, proposing the theory of petrifying fluids to explain fossils, which was influenced

by Aristotle.

It is important to note at this stage that Greek medicine reached the Arabic world before philosophy. Ibn Sina translated a wealth of Greek material, particularly the writings of Galen. He was familiar with the theories and works of Aristotle and Hippocrates, who had written about medicine. Islamic philosophers were exposed to a wide range of Indian and Persian medical works, as well as the Greek sources. Ibn Sina wrote a treatise On Smallpox and Measles, which was not covered in the Greek texts, but these were two diseases that wrought havoc upon the Arabic world. He also wrote a treatise about why some people prefer quacks to skilled doctors, which would become a major medical issue in the late medieval and early Modern period.

The Canon emerges from this period as his most influential medical work. He describes medicine as ‘the art whereby health is conserved and the art whereby it is restored, after being lost’. 6 In this book, he discusses sexually transmitted diseases, prevention, and treatment, and he also mentions quarantine and the values of its use. Gerard of Cremona translated The Canon in the twelfth century, introducing it to the Western world.7 The Canon had a lasting legacy in the later historical period, serving as the standard medical textbook, and it was used in Europe up until the sixteenth century.8 Furthermore, Ibn Sina’s medical teachings Ibid.

Ibn Sina, tr. Cibeles Jolivette Gonzalez, The Canon of Medicine (New York: AMS Press, 1973), p. 25.

7 Mohagheghzadeh, p. 389.

8 Mark Johnson and Osama Tashani, ‘Avicenna’s Concept of Pain’, Libyan Journal of Medicine, 3 (2010), 1-4, at p. 1.

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became the basis for the curriculum in the classrooms of Vienna and Frankfurt.9 While many researchers have focussed on sections of The Canon, his ophthalmological contributions have often been overlooked. In this text, he explains the causes of diseases, their symptoms, and treatment. His ophthalmological influences are largely influenced by Galen’s findings. He identifies nozul al maa as an obstruction where moisture accumulates and prevents images from entering the eye.10 This is suggestive of orbitopathy, a modern diagnosis where the obstruction causes swelling and redness around the orbital area. Ibn Sina also discusses cataracts, categorising them according to their density, size, and colour, and identifying two different types, complete and partial cataracts.11 His observations, which determine the necessary fluidity of the lens, are important for contact lens replacement (contact lenses must be changed at regular intervals because the eye requires moisture and lubrication). These classifications helped him to advise methods of treatment. The symptoms of cataracts that he describes include seeing floating objects, blurred vision, monocular vision, and double vision.12 Many of these symptoms remain the same within modern cataract diagnoses.

Ibn Sina recommends many herbal ointments for remedial care. To reduce cataract opacity, he advises varying levels of food intake, as well as consumption of ‘fennel juice mixed with honey and wild marjoram’.13 He attributes cataract formation to an imbalance of the four humours.14 While humourism is discredited in modern medicine, cataracts can be attributed to other health Ibid.

M. Nejabat et al., ‘Avicenna and Cataracts: A New Analysis of Contributions to Diagnosis and Treatment from the Canon’, Iranian Red Crest Medical Journal, 14/5 (2012), 265-70, p. 268.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid.

13 Nejabat et al., p. 268.

14 Ibid., p. 269.

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problems, such as smoking and air pollution. His recognition of build-up in the lens contributes to modern laser eye surgery, where the protein accumulation is assessed before proceeding with the operation. The methodology here is important because he considers the relationship between anatomy and function. He also demands practical study and observation of the body and its parts rather than assumption. Ibn Sina also considered the patient’s mental and psychological state during surgery and treatment. Ibn Sina ensured that the patient was comfortable and sound for surgery and medical procedures.

It is also important to consider how he viewed eyesight.

While he retained much of Galen’s notions about the eye, he favours Aristotelian thought of the intromission (light affects the eye) theory as opposed to Galen’s extramission (eye affects the light) theory.15 Ibn Sina agrees that ‘the crystalline lens is the principal instrument of vision’ and that sight is one of the five senses.16 He also agreed with Galen in the distribution of light through hollow optic nerves. However, Ibn Sina was against Plato and Galen’s extramission theory, and as part of his adherence to Aristotelian thought, Ibn Sina reasoned that the light affected the eye. His understanding benefits the contemporary use of contact lenses, which are put in place to improve vision by concentrating light and reducing refractive error. In The Canon, he describes the different parts of the eye, including the iris, cornea, lens, optic nerve, optic chiasma, choroid, retina, and other parts which are still recognised in medicine today.17 Ibn Sina further improves Galen’s view of the eye, detailing its specific features.

Ibn Sina had contemporaries who also contributed to literature of the eye. Huyayn ibn Ishaq wrote Ten Treatises of the ‘A History of the Eye’, last accessed February 1, 2014 https://www.stanford.edu/class/history13/earlysciencelab/body/eyespag es/eye.html 16 Nejabat et al., p. 268.

17 John McGinnis, Avicenna (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 10910.

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Eye, which is a ninth century account of vision and largely derives from Galen’s understanding of the eye. His interpretation follows a hierarchal and orderly structure, specifically the lens as fundamental for sight. He proceeds to describe the other parts in relation to facilitating the eye’s function. Alhazen blended Euclidean, Aristotelian, and Galen’s theories of optics and sight to explain vision, culminating with his Book of Optics. He describes parts of the eye and light refraction, following Ptolemy and Euclid’s ideas about vision. Al-Nafis would later offer his own contributions about ophthalmology in the thirteenth century.

Ibn Sina also describes the heart and its properties.

Although his physiology of the heart is predominantly Galenic in theory, he does integrate Aristotle into his explanation of the system. Ibn Sina identifies the heart, liver, and brain as the three principal organs in the human body, and he also mentions the reproductive glands.18 He tells us that the heart warms the diaphragm and the body. Al-Nafis would later write about pulmonary circulation in the body. He recognises the heart’s central function to the body, this nexus of life, providing function to the liver and brain.

Ibn Sina recommends paying close attention to the heart, where its role and purpose was often overlooked. He anatomises the heart, linking the major arteries to the heart and their role in facilitating the heart.19 Ibn Sina’s focus on arterial direction benefits modern physicians, enabling them to place heart stents in order to relieve blocked arteries. He observes how the aorta has three valves which open during contraction and close during relaxation of the heart. This effect disallows blood from flowing back into the heart.

Ibn Sina also discusses how different drugs affect the heart and their effects. He outlines their advantages and disadvantages, Mohammed Chamsi-Pasha and Hassan Chamsi-Pasha, ‘Avicenna’s Contribution to Cardiology’, Avicenna Journal of Medicine, 4/1 (2014), 9-12, at p. 11.

19 Ibid.

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writing that the heart has the responsibility and function of regulating and maintaining warmth and breath.

The heart, he said, also enables the soul to convey its different faculties, providing a theory that establishes that the senses can properly function through the heart. Ibn Sina attributes temperament and morality of the individual to the heart; and if one stays too long in a bath, for example, it can affect the heart, claiming that the bilious humour will cause an imbalance within the system. The heart is also identified with pulse and respiration.

With regards to remedial care, Ibn Sina suggests treatments for tachycardia (from the Greek word tachys meaning quick, fast, and kardia, which means heart), which is the medical term for when the heart beats too fast.20 He associates the occurrence of tachycardia to irregularities of pulse and other conditions. 21 More importantly, he deduces that fatty degeneration and accumulation affects the heart.

He recognises that tobacco intake is detrimental to the heart, relating it to maladies and health problems. He mentions tremors of the heart leading to sudden death. Analysing tremors of the heart is particularly difficult because they could indicate a wide range of issues, ranging from heart palpitations to tachycardia to heart disease. He links intensive pain to tremors of the heart, which indicates potentially more harmful symptoms.

As with his ophthalmological care, Ibn Sina offers remedial advice for heart care. He recommends using cloths in order to remediate diseased conditions of the heart. Furthermore, he cites the use of stupefacients (drugs that induce stupor) such as opium and mandrake seed for pain relief and better heart condition.

Similarly, in modern times drugs are used to relieve pain during surgery. Furthermore, Ibn Sina’s observance of regulated heart

20 21

Chamsi-Pasha, p.10.

Ibid.

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beats anticipates the application of adenosine and cardioversion, which aim to stabilise the heart.

As well, he determines the values and remedial qualities of wine. His insights propose new herbal remedies and methodologies towards health care and treatment. At the time of his writing, the Islamic view towards alcohol was less orthodox (as the term is used today). The Qu’ran passages about alcohol were less well-defined. Centuries later, the Qur’an forbade alcohol consumption, and Ibn Sina’s wine embrace has given him some detractors. 22 He also physiologically assesses its benefits, advantages, disadvantages, and treatment for overconsumption.

Ibn Sina knows about the antiseptic qualities of alcohol, using wine to wash and clean wounds.23 He praises good wine, claiming that excellent wine causes strong emotions and good breath. He considers wine rich because its nutrients are distributed to the body. He believed that wine heats the body, and excess wine affects the pulse.24 He gives us his essential healthy meal, which include fragrant wine, sweets, wheat, and goat or lamb meat.25 Ibn Sina also informs us about inebriation and hangover remedies. He advises to drink in moderation, ideally three glassfuls in a meal, and it should be consumed during the meal, not after, so that the digestion process is not affected.26 Excess wine can be injurious, and he rationalises that it swims in the stomach.27 We see wine used during surgery and for remedial purposes, to nourish and comfort. He praises older wine as medicinal, whereas he sees newer wine as dysenteric.28 Ibn Sina Omar Brousky, ‘Fine Wines Flourishing in Morocco’, Fox News, last accessed February 1, 2014 http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/06/25/fine-wines-flourishing-inmuslim-morocco 23 The Canon, p. 520.

24 Ibid., p. 411.

25 Ibid., pp. 394-5.

26 Ibid., pp. 395-7.

27 Ibid., pp. 410-11.

28 Ibid., p. 411.

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believes that the best wine is ‘clear, white, tending to a red tinge of good bouquet, and neither tart nor sweet’.29 He relates wine to intellect, stating that ‘wine does not readily inebriate a person of vigorous brain’.30 If wine goes too quickly to the head, he suggests dilution, and the other alternative he gives involves taking lozenges and myrtle seeds.31 Ibn Sina looks at the disadvantages of wine excess as well, noting the breakdown of the liver and brain. His hangover remedy includes emesis (procured vomiting), followed by water, a bath, and rubbing the body with oil.32 This also indicates his interest in hygiene and its medicinal values. His remedy for inebriation includes a white cabbage, pomegranate, and vinegar.33 Ibn Sina establishes this methodology to his medical explanations. He describes wine and its properties, outlines its uses, advantages, disadvantages, and then proceeds to propose remedial action for excess and misuse. The order and formulaic structure of The Canon is important towards its use and understanding.

The Canon of Medicine offers us an incredible lens into the past where we can interact not only with the fascinated medical history of the medieval Arabic world, but also his methodology and insight, which still holds meaning in our current age. Ibn Sina’s structured and systematic approach to ophthalmology and cardiology exemplifies how we can find meaning and interact with these texts. It is important that we continue to understand these sources and consider how they associate with our own lives. His medical work opens gateways for cooperation and further learning. Ibn Sina’s desire here is not to preach or convert, but rather to inform and educate.

Revisiting The Canon of Medicine gives us the opportunity for discovery and a relationship with the past and our health care Ibid.

Ibid., p. 410.

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid., p. 412.

33 Ibid.

29 30

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and well-being. Vision and hearts are so central to our lives and literally how we see the world, and perhaps reviewing these treasures of the past can promise a fruitful and healthy future.

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Involvement and Detachment – Implications for Organisational Research Peter Swan Introduction

Researchers from qualitative and quantitative backgrounds differ in their choice of methods used to collect data. Positivists generally adopt a detached approach to study, emphasising separation between researcher and research subject(s). This, they believe, is the most accurate and objective means of capturing social phenomena. Qualitative researchers, on the other hand, believe that an involved approach allows for an understanding of complex circumstances that detached methods cannot provide.

However, even amongst qualitative researchers such as ethnographers, there is considerable variation as to how much involvement is desirable within the research environment. There are compelling reasons for taking a highly involved position within ethnographic research; for example, it can help researchers understand a group or culture from their perspective, and can assist with the development of rapport. However, being too involved with research subjects can result in a loss of objectivity, with some degree of detachment arguably being necessary to limit bias and ensure methodological rigour.

This article discusses my experiences of taking an ‘involved’ position in the field during my doctoral research, highlighting the challenges of this approach and its implications for organisational research in general.

The case study organisation

The overall aim of my PhD research was to explore the tensions between the ethos and values of third sector organisations and the environment within which they operate, investigating how organisations can absorb, resist and negotiate any challenges to

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Figure 1: The lantern procession.

their way of working. It involved an ethnographic case study of ‘Artspace’,1 a community ‘arts and health’2 charity located in a small market town in Northern England.

Located in a largely rural area, Artspace started life as a grassroots initiative, being run in a rented building containing little more than a woodstove and a long table. Ever since it first provided services to the public back in early 1997, the organisation has expanded considerably, purchasing and The names of the organisation and any research participants have been anonymised.

2 ‘Arts and health’ is defined as the ‘creative activities that aim to improve individual/community health and healthcare delivery using arts-based approaches’ (Michael White, ‘Determined to Dialogue: a survey of arts in health in the Northern and Yorkshire region 2001-2002’ (CAHHM: University of Durham, 2002), p. 11).

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renovating its own premises, and offering a diverse and growing range of activities which include creative writing, walking, gardening, singing, and cookery. Artspace is also involved with annual celebratory arts projects, such as the lanterns procession (Figure 1), attended by hundreds of people from the surrounding area and further afield. Although funded by the local council to provide the equivalent of a day service to people with mental ill health, the organisation is open to the whole community, playing a key role in fostering social inclusion within the local area.

Artspace’s aims include the development of creative skills, increased social capital, and the promotion of healthy living. Art and creativity is viewed by the organisation in a wide sense, encompassing activities that involve an element of ‘doing’ something well. The ethos of the organisation acknowledges that everybody has their own, unique talents, regardless of age or ability, and seeks to nurture them in a safe and friendly environment (Figure 2). Artspace employees believe that beneficiaries should be free to engage with the activities at their own pace, and recognise that any benefits to health and wellbeing may take weeks or even months to become apparent.

An ethnographic study

As research required an in-depth investigation of a single organisation, an ethnographic approach was identified as being the most suitable method for my needs. I relocated from Durham to work alongside Artspace, immersing myself within the organisation, participating fully in its activities, and interacting with staff, practitioners and beneficiaries on a daily basis.

Fieldwork took place between September 2010 and October 2011.

Ethnographic studies usually involve a researcher participating, covertly or overtly, in people’s lives over an

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extended period of time3. They seek to understand the lived experiences of a particular group, and attempt to make sense of people’s subjectivities and other ‘taken for granted’ aspects of their lives, such as their relationships, values, and emotions.4 Multiple methods of data collection are common to ethnographic studies, and may include participant observation, interviews, surveys, and filmic approaches.5 Ethnographic research is an iterative process, building on ideas obtained throughout the length of the period of fieldwork.6 It could best be described as a voyage or journey, rather than as a simple confirmation of pre-conceived ideas.7 One of the essential aspects of an ethnographic study is the development and maintenance of a positive and intimate relationship between researcher and researched – a process that typically cannot be achieved on a shorter timescale.8 Taking an involved approach enabled me to uncover the network of shared meaning that existed within Artspace and the wider community, and gain a better understanding of the tacit behaviours and processes, which would not have been possible through the use of quantitative methods.9 In addition, spending a considerable period of time working alongside an organisation was the most appropriate way in which it could be observed to evolve and respond to changes over the course of a year.10

Martyn Hammersley and Paul Atkinson, Ethnography. Principles in practice (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007).

4 Antonius Robben and Jeffrey Sluka, (eds), Ethnographic Fieldwork (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007).

5 Mike Crang, and Ian Cook, Doing Ethnographies (London: Sage, 2007).

6 Mike Crang, and Ian Cook, Doing Ethnographies (London: Sage, 2007).

7 Hammersley and Atkinson.

8 Barbara DiCicco-Bloom, and Benjamin Crabtree, ‘The qualitative research interview’, Medical Education, 40 (2006), 314-321.

9 Crang and Cook.

10 Crang and Cook.

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Figure 2: The Artspace environment.

As well as fully participating in the creative activities, I was provided with a desk space in the staff office. I interacted with both staff and service users on a daily basis, with casual conversation providing me with further insight into their roles, beliefs, and personal history. While the majority of my research was based around participant observation, I also conducted 44 semi-structured interviews with beneficiaries and employees. I used photography to illustrate my research and capture the ethos of the organisation in action. I also occasionally drew upon secondary data such as reports written by or for Artspace.

Involvement versus detachment in organisational research

While it is commonly assumed that ethnographic techniques such as participant observation require high levels of involvement or integration between the researcher and the group or culture

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being studied, some researchers may adopt a more naturalistic or detached perspective. Here, the social world is treated as if it were a natural phenomenon, with the ethnographer interfering as little as possible.11 Gold developed a typology of participant observer roles, detailing how participant observation exists on a continuum between complete detachment and complete involvement (Figure 3). Complete observers, according to Gold, do not take part in the social setting at all, and attempt to view social phenomena from an outsider’s perspective.12 On the other extreme, complete participants adopt an insider, covert position, interacting with research subjects as naturally as possible. In some cases, complete participants seek to understand how people think, act and categorise the world from their own perspective, 13 with the beliefs or opinions of the researcher being discounted or negated as far as possible.

Complete participants share certain characteristics with complete observers: namely the fact that both approaches are usually ‘covert’, whereby the researcher ‘attempts to observe people in ways which make it unnecessary for them to take him [sic] into account’. 14 For instance, this would occur through techniques such as eavesdropping, or through the use of hidden cameras and microphones. Both complete participation and complete observation as defined by Gold are rarely carried out in research these days for ethical reasons.1516

Hammersley and Atkinson.

Gold.

13 Michael Agar, The professional stranger: An informal introduction to ethnography (New York: Academic Press, 1980).

14 Gold, p. 221.

15 Bryman.

16 Diagram adapted from Alan Bryman, Social Research Methods (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Originally conceptualised by Raymond Gold, ‘Roles in Sociological Field Observations’, Social Forces, 36/3 (1958), 271223.

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Figure 3: Gold’s typology of participant-observer roles.

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In common with the majority of ethnographers today, my positioning was neither that of a complete participant nor a complete observer. I believe that while I could best describe myself as a ‘participant as observer’, this was not a fixed position, and I had the flexibility to become more ‘detached’ or ‘involved’ depending on the time I spent in the field and what I hoped to achieve. For instance, I attempted to gain insight from a detached position when investigating the particular strategies that staff used to maintain a positive relationship with stakeholders. This enabled an analysis of the phenomenon from an outsider’s perspective, and attempted to be ‘culturally neutral’, whereby it could potentially be applied to other organisations or situations.

In addition, the perspective of ‘observer’ was adopted for practical reasons. For example, during team meetings, many of the topics of discussion were outside my area of expertise, preventing me from fully contributing as a participant.

On the other hand, during participant observation in the art sessions, both my positioning and level of understanding of the activity was often similar to that of the service users. Here I adopted an insider’s perspective to investigate the benefits that service users ascribed to Artspace and the creative process. This helped me focus on documenting that which was meaningful to the service users themselves. 17 It also enabled an autoethnographical element to research,18 whereby I was able to reflect on my own experiences of participating in the creative activities.

Positionality

While upon entering the field, my role within Artspace was somewhat detached and passive in nature, I gradually became more involved as I familiarised myself with the organisation and 17 18

Hammersley and Atkinson.

Amanda Coffey, The ethnographic self (London: Sage, 1999).

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developed rapport with artists and other paid employees. I assisted the organisation in a number of ways, such as by posting letters, helping with funding bids, and by acting as an unofficial photographer. I was even offered employment by Artspace to take photographs for a carnival that it had helped to organise, but given the numerous ways in which staff had assisted me, I accepted expenses payment only.

I believe that, despite my background as a researcher, I also successfully managed to fit in as a service user owing to the fact that beneficiaries came from a diverse range of ages and backgrounds. On one occasion a new practitioner did assume at first that this was the case. I feel that I would have utilised Artspace, or an organisation like it, had it existed in my home town, and I therefore did not feel like an outsider in some ways.

Some service users came to see me as a fellow beneficiary owing to my involved position, a view that persisted even after I had left the field and returned to Durham. During my occasional visits to Artspace after completing fieldwork, it was not uncommon for me to hear questions such as ‘will you be coming to creative writing this morning?’

In other ways, my transient presence within both the organisation and the wider community prevented me from feeling as if I truly belonged. One service user described me as existing essentially in ‘limbo’, whereby I was neither a service user nor employee. I was also an outsider at times owing to my own background and circumstances. I was unaware of the history and characteristics of the town and its surrounding areas, and therefore had to obtain this information from interviews, informal conversations, and pre-existing data – a process that took considerable time. In addition, staff and service users often talked about people or events of which I had no prior knowledge.

However, this sense of detachment, albeit minor, did help me ‘step back’ from the organisation and maintain a more objective position. For example, I became aware of certain, important

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characteristics of the local community that current residents of the town took for granted.

While it was generally easy for me to feel part of some groups, such as the men’s art group or the creative writing group, it was not so straightforward in other instances. One group was aimed at people who either experienced cancer themselves or cared for someone who did. While I was always made welcome by its members, I was also highly conscious of the fact that I had nothing in common with them. I was, therefore, not simply an ‘insider’ or ‘outsider’ in Artspace as a whole, but my positioning varied depending on the particular ‘micro-spaces’ I passed through and interacted with, both within the building and the wider community.

My relationship with Beneficiaries

I developed friendships with several service users that persist to this day. Some commentators believe that the researcher should maintain professional distance from research subjects to limit the possibility of vulnerable individuals experiencing harm as a result of researcher involvement. 19 However, after commencing fieldwork, I found that maintaining distance was both impractical and undesirable. The nature of the wider community meant that many Artspace service users utilised other community groups that I participated in, and I often met people I knew in local shops or pubs. While Artspace recommended that artists and staff maintain professional distance from service users, in reality, people I spoke with mentioned that in practice this was rarely possible given the small size of the town.

Having a close relationship with service users on the level of friendship meant that they were more likely to ‘open up’ to me about any specific concerns, for instance, about the way the Marie Smyth and Emma Williamson, Researchers and Their ‘Subjects’ (Bristol: Policy Press, 2004).

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organisation was run, or about their relationship with fellow service users, staff, practitioners, and the wider community. Such a relationship can also lead to a narrowing of the power and knowledge gap, allowing for a comfortable and open dialogue.20 However, as service users often saw me as a friend rather than as a researcher, they divulged information to me which at times was confidential or sensitive. On these occasions I had to step back from the relationship and briefly return to the persona of researcher, by asking service users whether I could use this information in an anonymised and non-identifiable form.

Nevertheless, requests were often granted with minimal effect on our relationship, with service users being happy to assist with my research.

Some commentators have argued that it is necessary for the researcher to be part of the group being studied, as they ‘have the subjective knowledge necessary to truly understand their life experiences’. 21 Researchers may also have more successful interviews if they are close to those being researched in terms of their interests, background, and age, as they are able to develop effective rapport. 22 However, being too similar to research participants may mean that the researcher can miss things that would be apparent to people from different backgrounds.23

Leigh Berger, ‘Inside Out: Narrative Autoethnography as a Path Toward Rapport’, Qualitative Inquiry, 7 (2001), 504-518.

21 Jody Miller and Barry Glassner, ‘The ‘Inside’ and the ‘Outside’ – Finding realities in interviews’, in Silverman, (ed.), Qualitative Research (London: Sage, 1997), 99-112, p. 105.

22 Eileen Kane, Doing Your Own Research (London: Marion Boyars, 1990).

23 Kalwant Bhopal, ‘Gender, identity and experience: researching marginalised groups’, Women's Studies International Forum, 33/1 (2010), 188-195.

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Implications for research

A highly involved approach can help qualitative researchers to understand the complex nature of an organisation or culture.

However, from my experience in the field, it is associated with both methodological and ethical challenges. These challenges may be hard for researchers to fully avoid, given that in ethnographic research, a balance must be struck between being involved enough to successfully build rapport with research subjects and obtain valuable data, and detached enough to preserve the researcher’s independence and avoid adversely affecting research participants.

Methodological issues

There is a danger to ethnographer researchers of ‘going native’, whereby the researcher identifies ‘so much with the participants that, like a child learning to talk, they cannot remember how they found something out or articulate the principles underlying what they are doing’.24 The researcher may forgo his or her academic role in favour of participation, or any collected data may be biased from ‘overrapport’.25 In some ways, I found it a challenge to remain detached from Artspace, and became too close to its ‘ethos’ in some respects. Researchers may face a competing sense of loyalty, both to their research on one hand, and to their study organisation and those associated with it on the other.26 In addition, the fact that I found many aspects of the creative process to be extremely enjoyable meant that at times it was hard to remain focussed on research. There were occasions where I had become so engrossed in the artwork that I almost

David Silverman, Interpreting Qualitative Data (London: Sage, 2011), p.

134.

25 Hammersley and Atkinson.

26 Hammersley and Atkinson.

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failed to notice certain interactions, behaviours or conversations that turned out to be highly significant.

Therefore, while my position within the organisation was one of involvement, I also had to remain critical at all times. Alfred Schütz suggested the ‘postulate of adequacy’, whereby ideas had to link scientific knowledge with lived experience.27 Schütz’s position can best be described as occupying a middle ground between being fully detached and fully involved with an object of study. To illustrate his position, Schütz uses a city as an object of analysis, suggesting three ways in which it can be researched.

The cartographer occupies the position of the detached observer, who may be able to research the city using observation alone, but who is not able to gain the meaningful insight that comes through involvement. On the other hand, the person on the street is fully immersed in the city as a participant, but may lose sight of the wider aims and objectives.28 The third viewpoint is that of the stranger, who experiences the city firsthand, yet maintains a level of awareness, and does not lose sight of the bigger picture.29 For Schütz, the third approach draws upon both methodological rigour and lived experience, and is thus considered to be the best compromise.30 While involvement, therefore, is key to obtaining rich and valuable data, the researcher must be capable of ‘stepping back’ to some extent.

Alfred Schütz, Collected Papers I: The problem of social reality (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1962).

28 Alfred Schütz, Collected Papers I: The problem of social reality (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1962).

29 Alfred Schütz, Collected Papers I: The problem of social reality (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1962).

30 Mark Smith, Social Science in Question (London: Sage, 1998).

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Ethical issues

It has long been known that the researcher’s presence in the field can affect research participants31, with vulnerable individuals being particularly affected by the presence of strangers. Artspace had always been open to visitors, including artists and students on university placements, and while the dynamics of groups had been affected by visitors in the past, this was less to do with the presence of new individuals, and more with how these individuals presented themselves. One staff member acknowledged that visitors who appeared informal and ‘arty’ had usually been able to negotiate themselves into groups, often through their willingness to engage with service users, whereas visitors who were more ‘official’ were seen as almost threatening owing to both real and perceived power differences. Therefore, in my case, being ‘involved’ may have minimised any negative impacts on vulnerable service users.

The issue of researcher reactivity is a concern not only when the researcher enters the field, but also on leaving it.

Conradson’s ethnographic research into a suburban drop-in centre is a prime example of this.32 He adopted an involved approach in his research, undertaking overt participant observation whilst assuming the role of a volunteer. He mentions that several months after his research ended, a particular client ceased attending. Conradson partly attributes this to changes at the centre, with three volunteers and himself leaving within a short space of time. Conradson believes that the change had ‘disrupted the relational community he [the client] had become familiar with’,33 which he confirmed though discussion with other users.

Crang and Cook.

David Conradson, ‘Spaces of care in the city: the place of a community drop-in centre’, Social and Cultural Geography, 4/4 (2003), 507-525.

33 David Conradson, ‘Spaces of care in the city: the place of a community drop-in centre’, Social and Cultural Geography, 4/4 (2003), p. 518.

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This is not an isolated case. It is recognised that in an ethnography, research participants ‘must adjust to the fact that someone they have come to see as a friend is going to turn back into a stranger’.34 During long periods of participant observation, particularly where the researcher is highly involved with an organisation, research subjects may forget that she or he will not be around forever.35 While recognising that my presence, like Conradson’s, would undoubtedly change the dynamics of the sessions to some extent, I explained to service users and staff that I would only be around temporarily, and clearly stated when I would leave the field. I also promised to keep in close contact with people, and made frequent visits to Artspace to discuss progress with my research.

Other ethical challenges associated with an ‘involved’ approach are concerned with people’s understanding of the researcher’s role. Research participants may forget that they are being studied, particularly if fieldwork takes place over a long period of time.36 As a full participant in the Artspace activities, I was aware that regular attendees occasionally saw me as ‘one of them’. I therefore reminded them of my role from time to time, often in subtle ways, as a way of maintaining trust.37 A final challenge for ethnographers is concerned with maintaining a positive relationship with the host organisation after fieldwork comes to an end. There is a possibility that research subjects, particularly those who an ethnographer has developed a close relationship with, may feel that they have been betrayed, in a sense.38 For example, the researcher may subject their opinions or their organisation to critical analysis, or may not tell their stories in a way they want to hear.

Hammersley and Atkinson, p. 95.

Bryman.

36 Crang and Cook.

37 Carolyn Ellis, ‘Telling Secrets, Revealing Lives: Relational Ethics in Research With Intimate Others’, Qualitative Inquiry, 13/1 (2007), 3-29.

38 Hammersley and Atkinson.

34 35

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While on the one hand I always endeavoured to respect my duties as researcher, I believe that this did not have to act as a barrier to critiquing the internal structures of the organisation. I believe that outlining any criticisms in a constructive way, and by promising to follow this up with discussions with staff after the research process ended, allowed me to maintain the close relationship I had developed with Artspace throughout the period of my doctorate, and helped staff understand the rationale for any critique of the organisation and its practices.

Conclusion

This article highlighted the challenges associated with an involved approach to research, and suggests ways in which they can be minimised. Many researchers develop close and intimate relationships with individuals to discover the world from their perspective, and build up trust and rapport with them. Correctly choosing when to be ‘involved’ and when to be ‘detached’ can result in authentic yet rigorous research findings.

While the extent of this involvement is controllable to a certain extent by the researcher; in other ways it may be influenced by their background, temperament, and circumstances.

Such ‘predetermined detachment’ can be beneficial in that it can help researchers maintain awareness of the overall context of their research, and minimise the possibility of them ‘going native’.

On those occasions where close involvement is desired by researchers, I believe that maintaining a positive relationship with research subjects and the host organisation, recognising the extent of the researcher’s influence, and remaining critical at all times, can help researchers avoid the methodological and ethical challenges associated with such an approach.

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Loss and Restoration in the Apollonius of Tyre Narrative Cycle from Antiquity to the Renaissance Koren Kuntz

The ancient story of Apollonius of Tyre has been transformed and recirculated in myriad ways since its initial reception, which is thought to have been at least as early as the late fifth or early sixth century.1 Successive generations of tellers as well as critics have focused upon themes of morality, courtliness, love, the dulce et utile criterion, and so on, often overlooking the tale’s psychological dimension. In fact, those who have done so have described it as ‘bare of psychological detail’, and ‘anything but subtle’. 2 Pericles, the Shakespearean dramatisation of the Apollonius story, is receiving more current critical attention after its dismissal as an overused story, while there is still doubt over Shakespeare’s authorship. The shadow of criticism aside, the story’s concern with loss and restoration, also the heart of the tale both morally and structurally, becomes a powerful emotional conduit bridging the narrative cycle as a whole. Psychoanalysis, though anachronistic, hence deserves more prominence in the interpretation of these narratives.

Trauma theory has emerged in recent decades as a literary discourse broadly intending to ‘turn criticism back towards being an ethical, responsible, purposive discourse, listening to the wounds of the other.’ 3 It offers a fruitful perspective on Elizabeth Archibald, Introduction to the Historia Apollonii, Apollonius of Tyre: Medieval and Renaissance Themes and Variations (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1991), p. 7.

2 Archibald, 14-15 and Gerald M. Sandy, Introduction to Anon., The Story of Apollonius King of Tyre’, Collected Ancient Greek Novels, Gerald N. Sandy (trans.), (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008) p. 736.

3 The emergence of trauma theory, largely in the early 1990s, had come as a response to ‘the radical scepticism associated with post-structuralist or postmodernist theory’ which ‘risked becoming too easily caricatured as nihilistic. Roger Luckhurst, ʻMixing Memory and Desire: Psychoanalysis, Psychology, and Trauma Theoryʼ Literary Theory and Criticism, Patricia 1

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psychologically and ethically laden themes such as incest, exile, memory, loss, and restoration. The tripartite structure of Apollonius can be read as a succession of trials in the experience and interpersonal transmission of trauma. This begins with a riddle, a coping mechanism which in Paul de Man’s terms (later taken up by Caruth in the context of literary trauma) attempts to bridge the gap between a metaphorical reference and a literal representation of the same object or action which the traumatised subject is unable to convey.4 It is possible that the popularity of the Apollonius narrative lies in its effective portrayal of traumatic distancing between metaphor and object, where the riddle emblematises both the characters’ and reader’s search for meaning.5 Pericles adds a further resonance to the trauma theme: Authorial reworking in effect becomes a type of cognitive recovery enacted by the reader cum writer’s communication of the trauma to a future audience, which in turn may include writers who will pass the story onward, and so on. Pericles is a prime example of this process, resolving character orientated and metafictional loss through its indebtedness to the ancient narrative. The recovery of old romance becomes a compounded recognition of trauma, linking past to present.

Roger Luckhurst, in his essay on the functionality of trauma theory as a rising approach in literary analysis, notes that the meaning of the word ‘trauma‘ comes to include physical as Waugh (ed.), (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 506, 503 (See footnote).

4 Paul de Man, Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzche, Rilke and Proust (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), p. 77. Also cf.

Cathy Caruth, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), pp. 91-2. Both referenced in Luckhurst, p. 501-2.

5 Trauma theory also harkens back to Aristotle’s catharsis (‘purification’), though trauma theory recontextualises the idea of purgation to relate more broadly across genres. Aristotle, Poetics, trans. Martin Heath (London: Penguin, 1996) pp. 10.

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well as psychical wounding beginning in the late nineteenth century, prior to which, ‘hysteria’ (which we would now describe as ‘psychical trauma’) had been commonly diagnosed as a result of physical degeneration.6 By 1683, about a century after Pericles’ speculated publication, 7 the term was still used in medical pathology to describe ‘a wound from an external cause’.8 Freud was the first to describe traumatic neurosis in 1893 as ‘Any experience which calls up distressing effects such as those of fright, anxiety, shame or physical pain,’9 though Freud’s definition of trauma varies over the course of his career. Laplanche sums it up as ‘An event in the subject's life, defined by its intensity, by the subject's incapacity to respond adequately to it and by the upheaval and long-lasting effects that it brings about in the psychical organisation.’10 The Apollonius author shows sensitivity to mental suffering comparable to the above descriptions. When the princess of Pentapolis falls ill in love with Apollonius we are told, Within a short time, when the girl could in no way endure the wound of love, she collapsed in great weakness, her limbs prostrate, and began to lie helpless in bed [...] [The

Luckhurst 498.

Commonly held to be no later than 1608, when it was entered in the Stationersʼ Register. Doreen DelVecchio and Antony Hammond, from the Introduction to Shakespeare, William, Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Doreen DelVecchio and Antony Hammond (eds.), (Cambridge: The New Cambridge Shakespeare, 1998), p. 1.

8 ‘trauma’ (n.) S. Blankaart, Blankaart's Physical Dictionary, p. 284, cited in OED Online, March 2013, last accessed 5 May 2013, <www.oed.com>.

9 Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud, ʻOn the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomenaʼ, Studies on Hysteria, James Strachey (trans. and ed.), (New York: The Hogarth Press, 1957), p. 6.

10 Jean Laplanche and J. B. Pontalis, ʻTrauma (Psychical)ʼ, The Language of Psychoanalysis (London: H. Karnac Books, Ltd, 2006) p. 465.

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doctors] took her pulse and examined all parts of her body but did not find a trace of the cause of her illness.11 Her father comically dismisses her ailment as exhaustion from overstudy, though the reader is aware of her paralysing lovesickness. This incident is to become the basis of what I will describe as primary (directly experienced), secondary (communicated to other characters), and tertiary (as told to the audience) trauma in this story and throughout the narrative cycle to Gower’s Confessio Amantis and Shakespeare’s Pericles.

The beginning of Apollonius introduces trauma through primary and secondary experiences of the rape of the princess and Apollonius’ discovery of it. In both of these examples, the central motif is metaphor. Siegelman, writing on the use of metaphor in psychotherapy, links metaphor to primary processes in child psychological development. It becomes a powerful way of expressing ‘ineffable feeling states [which are] too vague, too complex, or too intense for ordinary speech, and can ‘approximate [a] feeling component.’12 The use of metaphor as a code for the inexpressible is applicable to the experience of trauma, in that it is ‘something that enters the psyche that is so unprecedented or overwhelming that it cannot be processed or assimilated by usual mental processes.’13 The beginning of Apollonius reflects the trauma of rape through both the narrative’s and the princess’s inability to directly address the situation. The narrator is circumspect regarding the word ‘rape’, limiting the description to a violation of marriage or nobility. We are told Antiochus had ‘lost all sense of propriety and, forgetting he was a father, took on the role of Anonymous, ʻThe Story of Apollonius King of Tyreʼ, Collected Ancient Greek Novels, Gerald N. Sandy (trans.), (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), p. 648.

12 Ellen Y. Siegelman, Metaphor and Meaning in Psychotherapy (London: The Guilford Press, 1990), p. 7.

13 Luckhurst, p. 499.

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husband,’ and after the rape, ‘The girl stood dumbfounded by her wicked father’s breach of faith and at first kept it hidden. But drops of blood fell to the floor.’14 The discrepancy between the physical drops of blood as the lack of verbalisation reflects her suppression of trauma, due to shock and the socially unspeakable nature of the deed. She describes her plight to the nurse as the destruction of ‘two noble reputations’, the perpetrator a mere abstract: a ‘breach of faith committed the crime’.15 Metaphorising becomes an attempt to bridge the gap between experience and representation, while avoiding further emotional pain and the penalty of death for confessing.

Breuer and Freud consider this silence a form of ‘mortification’.16 They explain that language, as well as revenge, can serve a ‘cathartic’ purpose as a ‘substitute for action; by its help, an [e]ffect can be 'abreacted' almost as effectively.’17 The princess remains in a state of paralysis–her inability to assimilate the traumatic event is evident in her refusal to call the criminal her father and her plan to commit suicide. As I will discuss, Antiochus’ response confirms another form of avoidance through metaphor.18 Antiochus represents a perverse inversion of the metaphor as a device for illuminating meaning by aligning distinct thoughts. While the narrative does not point to any remorse on the king’s part, his riddle, ‘I ride on crime; I feed on a mother’s flesh; I seek my brother, my mother’s husband, my daughter’s son; I do not find them’, may be interpreted as a type of tacit confession which enables him to perpetuate his crimes.19 He seems to take a haughty pleasure in reciting the riddle. Its Apollonius, p. 739.

Ibid.

16 Breuer and Freud, p. 8.

17 Ibid. Cf. Stracheyʼs note: ‘This is the first recorded use of ʻcatharsisʼ and ʻabreactʼ in a psychological context.’

18 Apollonius, p. 739.

19 Apollonius, p. 740.

14 15

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difficulty emblematic of its compositor’s nobility–only one who possesses the learning appropriate for a king may solve it. The trickery of the riddle is more gratifying for the king because its answer lies outside of the social and linguistic arenas appropriate to his subjects. Apollonius’ solution is ‘Look to your yourself’ and ‘Look to your daughter.’ The word ‘rape’ is never used). 20 Furthermore, the riddle is self-validating in that it allows Antiochus a menial, albeit repetitive, way to conceptualise the unspeakable. And he does it in such a way that thought and action are both implemented.

Siegelman explains that the paradox in metaphor ‘is that the abstract is arrived at through the concrete, through the senses [...] what gives metaphor its vividness and resonance is its connection with the world of sensed and felt experience.’21 The riddle connects abstract and physical violence with the metaphors of riding on crime and feeding on flesh. Antiochus’ fuller representation of the crime in comparison to his daughter’s abstract metaphors allows him to loosely address and validate the idea in theory and deed. That he has taken Thaliarchus as his confidant shows that he has been able to articulate the rape in some form. Caruth connects Paul de Man’s concern with the slippages between reference and representation to the structure of trauma, noting the paradox between the immediacy of an incomprehensible violent experience and the ‘belated’ postreaction of cognition.22 Antiochus’ riddle allows him to belatedly assimilate the frenzied rape into a physically and abstractly grounded metaphor, and he is able to continue his crimes. This twisted cognition comes as a response to the failure to directly apprehend the rape.

Trauma may also be inherited indirectly. The following two sections of Apollonius parallel the structure of the first, each focusing on Apollonius’ encounter with a marriageable young Apollonius, p. 740.

Siegelman, p. 7.

22 Caruth, pp. 91-2.

20 21

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woman followed by a test of his learning, leading to a realisation and fundamental shift in his relationship to the girl and to the story as a whole.23 Apollonius’ solution to the riddle indirectly implicates him into the traumatic knowledge of Antiochus’ incest.

The trauma becomes internalised by the narrative mode and transcribed into the losses and injustices of parallel episodes.

Apollonius is the hero that reconciles the increasingly distorted remnants of the original trauma, bringing shattered memories back and restructuring them in order to allow the wounds to heal.

The thus story acts as a literary allegory for loss and redemption.

Breuer and Freud explain that ‘the memory of the trauma acts like a foreign body which long after its entry must continue to be regarded as an agent that is still at work’.24 The second section, where the princess of Pentapolis falls in love with Apollonius, reenacts the first scenario in a morally sound context. Her coded description of her lover as ‘the shipwrecked man’ becomes a type of riddle which, in de Man’s terms, detaches reference from representation.25 The solution to the riddle presents the missing link. Soon they are married and order is restored. More resolution comes in the deaths of Antiochus and his daughter, struck down

by God’s thunderbolt, the wealth and kingdom left to Apollonius.26 Restoration is merely temporary. Laplanche refers to the attempt for a traumatised individual to master an event retroactively as the après coup, or ‘afterwardness’ of trauma.27 This is distinct from Antiochus’ belatedness in Apollonius’ avoidance of restructuring. Apollonius’ relinquishing of his kingdom, his decision to become a merchant in an obscure part of Egypt, and his vow ‘not to cut his beard, hair, or nails until he had betrothed his daughter’, show him submitting to mourning. The austere life Archibald, p. 12-13.

Breuer and Freud, p. 6.

25 de Man, p. 77.

26 Apollonius, p. 751.

27 Jean Laplanche, ʻNotes on Afterwardsnessʼ, Essays on Otherness (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 260-6.

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he chooses is a way of manifesting the intense pain of losing his wife. Apollonius has temporarily deserted the narrative, and the residual trauma is applied to Tarsia.

The final section of the story, following Tarsia’s life and the riddles with which she challenges Apollonius, leads to a recognition of her lineage that begins the restoration of Apollonius’ family and kingdom, and thus spurs the story to its end. As the only remaining person present at Tarsia’s birth, the nurse explains the true story while on her deathbed. The history that the nurse relates, including the advice to clutch the statue of Apollonius and proclaim her lineage if threatened, is one of trauma that Tarsia would have been too young to comprehend, but it remains a story nonetheless, which she internalises in a powerful way.28 This, compounded by the deceit of her foster parents, abduction by pirates, and selling to a pimp whom she mistakes for her rescuer, causes the trauma of her previous misfortunes (imagined and experienced) to resurface, plus the unassimilable sexual threat and she is ‘racked by convulsions throughout her body.’ 29 Her internalisation of past trauma, although imaginary, can be just as effective as firsthand experience. LaCapra notes that reading Holocaust accounts may put one at risk of ‘secondary’ or ‘muted’ trauma: ‘‘Catcheted’ or traumatising objects, such as the Holocaust, or texts that themselves raise problems of continuing concern and demand a response from the reader not restricted to purely empiricalanalytic inquiry or contextualisation.’ 30 We may, as Jacobus writes, experience ‘what amounts to a simulacrum of the survivor’s own anxiety, anaesthesia, fragmentation, or despair.’31 Apollonius, p. 755.

Apollonius, p. 759.

30 Dominick LaCapra, ʻHistory, Language, and Reading: Waiting for Crillonʼ, American Historical Review, 100/3 (June 1995), p. 825.

31 Mary Jacobus, ʻBorder Crossings: Traumatic Reading and Holocaust Memoryʼ, Psychoanalysis and the Scene of Reading (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 128.

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Tarsia’s story proves moving enough, even at the tertiary level of experience, so that the brothel-goers react sympathetically. The young men quite comically are unable to ‘assimilate’ the unexpected outpouring and become confused, lose their desire for sex, and leave in tears with a newfound pity for the human condition.32 In the final parallel riddling scene, between Tarsia and Apollonius, the riddle of own her life that she has told to the brothel customers is solved. Rather than transferring the experience of her sadness to random passerby, she finds the reflection of her fragmented sorrows in her father, like the mirror that she describes in her riddle, which ‘glitter[s] within with radiant light that reveals nothing except what it has already seen.’33 It is the recognition of a reflection that allows them both to see the entire image of their shared trauma which allows for the restoration of identity, and the circle is completed when they find Apollonius’ wife. The beginning of the story is refracted in the marriage of Tarsia and Athenagora, the man whose original intention had been to rape Tarsia in the brothel. Trauma inherited over generations receives a simultaneous restructuring and healing, which indeed points to the story’s restorative quality, as noted by Shakespeare.34 So far I have considered the intertextual application of trauma theory, its transcription and inheritance through generations, and the healing of cognitive dissociation through family reconciliation. I would like to turn to one last aspect of the Apollonius tradition that is brought to light by trauma theory, the transmission of the story itself, by focusing on Shakespeare’s Pericles. A story that had been dismissed by Dryden as ‘some

Apollonius, p. 760.

Apollonius, p. 766.

34 William Shakespeare, ʻPrologueʼ, Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Doreen DelVecchio and Antony Hammond, (eds.), (Cambridge: The New Cambridge Shakespeare, 1998), pp. 7-9.

32 33

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mouldy tale’35 and by Lytton Strachey as ‘a miserable archaic fragment’36 is restored via its immediacy in stage form. The introduction of Gower as a choral figure is a device which, in drawing attention to the story’s ‘arcaneness’ by resurrecting the poet from the dead and having him humbly proclaim, ‘If you, born in those latter times / When wit’s more ripe, accept my rhymes’, self-consciously draws the audience closer to the dated initial style and distant subject matter.37 Gower’s introductions to each act contain a dumb show which creates a dream-like, blurred effect by speeding up the narrative in the intervals. The focus is less on the familiar plot than on the alternate distancing and immediacy of dialogue. Soliloquies provide rich characterisation that is less present in the original, and a consciousness of the power of traumatic recall is clarified early: For vice repeated is like the wandering wind, Blows dust in others’ eyes to spread itself, And yet the end of all is bought thus dear, The breath is gone, and the sore eyes see clear; To stop the air would hurt them.38 The painful wind that now sustains vision becomes a metaphor for the difficulty of returning to a past state after traumatic cognitive fragmentation. The narrative has been described as paratactic, united by recurrent themes and motifs, rather than being a more sophisticated ‘hence’ narrative.39 Perhaps this, too, Ben Jonson, ʻOde to Himself upon the Censure of his ‘New Inn’ʼ, The New Inne (London: T. Harper for T. Alchorne, 1631), p. 21.

36 Lytton Strachey, ʻShakespeareʼs Final Periodʼ, Independent Review 3 (August 1904), 405-18, at p. 15; reprinted in Books and Characters: French and English (London, 1922), pp. 49-69, p. 65.

37 Shakespeare, ʻPrologueʼ, Pericles, 11-12.

38 Shakespeare, Pericles, I.i.97-101.

39 Northrop Frye, ʻThe Context of Romanceʼ, The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1976), p. 49.

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complements the psychology of the story, evoking the surreal state of cognitive distention through these changes in style and time span. As McManaway writes, this ‘induces in the reader or spectator a semi-hypnotic state in which everything is experienced as in a dream. This quality, which is shared by The Tempest, invests the narrative and dramatis personae with significances far in excess of the surface value of the lines.’40 Though episodic plots generally may lack realism, what emerges most powerfully in Pericles is the archetype of loss and restoration inherited from source material. Shakespeare emphasises this more than Gower or the classical text. When Pericles is reunited with Marina the pattern of loss and restoration is brought into full circle. He addresses her as ‘thou that beget’st him that did thee beget,’ recontextualising Antiochus’ forebodingly trochaic reference to incest as a metrically emphatic metaphor for the love that saves Pericles’ life, family, and reign.41 The terms of double begetting have undergone a vast moral revision. The critical assertion that ‘The story proceeds toward an end which echoes the beginning, but echoes it in a different world’ holds true.42 Once traumatic phrases, such as ‘flesh of thy flesh’, attain their proper value.43 Shakespeare enhances the thematic transfiguration of the play with stylistic changes. The Gowerian octosyllabic couplets of the initial acts become a five-stress rhythm in Act IV and then in the final act the metre changes into alternately rhyming iambic pentameter so that the ancient story resurfaces in a contemporary style. This does, as mentioned in the Prologue, have a ‘reviving’ effect for the spectator, but it comes at the price of an episodic, dream-like narrative imbued with recurrent themes and archetypes. Traumatic loss is matched with restoration of linguistic meaning, but the unravelling of the play, James G. McManaway, ʻIntroductionʻ to Shakespeare, Pericles, Prince of Tyre (London: Penguin, 1977), p. lxxi.

41 Shakespeare, Pericles, V.i.195.

42 Frye, p. 49.

43 Shakespeare, Pericles, V.iii.43.

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as a taper illuminates the audience with the pleasure of a distant past, extinguishes itself in the process, leaving us with a stronger impression of theme rather than action. Restructuring marks the release from the traumatic cycle, and marks a fresh beginning: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;To hear the rest untold; sir, leadâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the wayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;.44 Apollonius and Pericles have been criticised for wooden characterisation and lack of psychological depth. The latter play has received the added charge of redundancy. Analysis of these texts within the context of modern trauma theory instead reveals a receptiveness to the cognitive dissociation caused by trauma, with psychology as the structural backbone of the narrative.

Apollonius demonstrates the issue of trauma within the text and the ramifications of its expression through metaphor, as well as the way in which trauma can be transcribed and inherited across generations, and to secondary and tertiary recipients. The power of the story lies in the possibility of healing and restructuring of collective memory through the union of families. Centuries later, Shakespeare revives the tale, dramatising the subtleties of trauma by stylistically attracting and alienating the audience. The Apollonius cycle convinces us that memories of past trauma may still be recontextualised and reconciled in the present.

44

Shakespeare, Pericles, V.iii.80.

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Public House Sessions: Family, Community Building and Intergenerational Transmission of Folk Music in England Ă&#x2030;lise G. M. Gayraud Introduction

This paper explores the significance of traditional music sessions in public houses in relation to community building, as well as the transmission of repertoires and the wider folk culture. It is based on ethnographic observations and interviews with professional and amateur musicians, notably those in Durham and the North East. However, it also draws from academic publications on folk music practices and transmission in 21st century England. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The pubâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; is often cited by folk musicians as one of the main contexts in which they transmit and exchange tunes. Rachel and Becky Unthank, folk singers professionally performing with their family, notably mentioned regularly meeting and singing with the Wilson's family from Teesside, another family of folk singers, in the local pub folk music session.

Just getting in a pub and singing with them, in a way, [...] they are not directly teaching us but you learn from just being [there] and then you think 'I like that song, I'll find it in a book or a friend, or your dad, or on the internet'. So going to things like singarounds or singing sessions, or [...] festivals like Whitby [Folk Week] and making a point in going to hear old singers.1 In this way, they express the point of view of the majority of folk musicians in considering the significance of the community in their learning of folk and traditional songs, as well as the importance of the informal context of transmission which they regularly experience. Rare are the folk musicians who do not 1

Rachel and Becky Unthank, personal communication, August 2011.

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attend pub sessions. The popular participative website thesession.org records around 2,600 regular pub sessions, including over 400 in England, 350 in Ireland, 100 in Scotland, 50 in Wales, 600 in the USA, 80 in Australia, 80 in Canada and 70 in France. According to Rachel and Becky Unthank, the musical and singing lessons that take place in pubs are both an essential way and a place for them to learn folk music. Informal singing sessions are also one of the last places in which they can pass on songs that they do not perform very often on stage.

Carson, sharing his experience of pub folk music sessions in Ireland, in a narrative style of writing, expressively describes the dynamics of such events, which are very similar to those in England.2 Likewise, the significance of traditional or folk pub sessions has been illustrated by academic studies, notably focusing on the music scene outside the UK. Examples of these are Lederman examining a particular song and its popularisation in folk music gatherings from North America to Britain,3 Stock looking at the structure of folk sessions in England, 4 Kaul researching the changes in folk music in Ireland,5 and Waldron and Veblen, focusing on the learning processes and outcomes for amateur folk musicians.6 The points of view of the performing musicians on the significance of these events are nonetheless

C. Carson (1996). Last Night's Fun, In and Out of Time with Irish music. New York: North Point Press.

3 A. Lederman, (1993). â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Barrett's Privateersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;: Performance and Participation in the Folk Revival. In N. V. Rosenberg, Transforming Tradition, Folk Music Revivals Examined (pp. 162-175). Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

4 J. P. Stock, (2004). Ordering Performance, Leading People: Structuring an English Folk Music Session. The World of Music, Vol. 46, No. 1, Contemporary British Music Traditions , 41-70.

5 A. R. Kaul, (2009). Turning the tunes, Traditional Music, Tourism, and Social change in an Irish Village. Oxford: Bergham books.

6 J. Waldron & K. Veblen, (2009). Learning in a Celtic Community: An Exploration of Informal Music Learning and Adult Amateur Musicians.

Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, No. 180 , 59-74.

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relatively disregarded, while focus is put on the music and the repertoire shared.

From community to local music sessions

The concept of ‘community’ is central to modern reflections on networking and transmission. Dynamics of transmission of traditional and folk music operate at different levels, from family circles to local communities. Kaufman Shelemay in particular studies the evolution of this concept and suggests a number of alternative terms more suitable to the modern context.7 She first makes a direct link between the concepts of community and identity, and links her thought to Hobsbawm and Anderson's idea of Nation and Identity.8 After quoting Slobin, and advocating for his notion of ‘subcultures’ as an alternative terminology for ‘community’, she develops a similar argument for the concept of ‘music scene’.9 This terminology of ‘music scene’ is particularly useful to understanding and characterizing folk music communities' activities in twenty-first century England.

Similarly, the concept of ‘style’ is crucial when looking at folk music communities. Ó Canainn defines style as ‘either the manner of performance peculiar to an individual musician or, alternatively, those common features of performance which distinguish the majority of performers from a particular area’.10

K. Kaufman Shelemay, (2011). Musical Communities: Rethinking the Collective in Music. Journal of the American Musicological Society , Vol. 64 (No. 2), 349-390.

8 E. Hobsbawm, & T. Ranger, (1983). The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; and B. Anderson, (1983). Imagined Communities. London: Verso.

9 M. Slobin, (1993). Subcultural Sounds, Micromusics of the West. London: University Press of New England.

10 T. Ó Canainn, (1978). Traditional Music in Ireland. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, p. 40.

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Figure 1: A Thursday session at the Dun Cow pub, Durham (January 2013) with players in the foreground and audience in the background. Picture: John Ristway, used with permission.

Not only are some dance music workshops organised specifically according to the style or tunes of famous folk musicians or collectors (to preserve their views, their work and their style within the current folk community), but also in less formal settings such as pub sessions. The idea of preservation is key to the participants and the session leaders. To this cause, the Whitby Folk Week programme includes a large number of organised music sessions in pubs and other venues during the week, each led by an artist or a band, who is also performing on stage at other times. These sessions tend to be extremely popular and are often one of the few occasions for amateur participants to meet and play with folk artists of the current music scene. The artists in charge often encourage their friends and other great folk

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musicians to join them. For example, the band, Windy Gyle,11 who led several sessions at Whitby 2013, invited the famous mouthorganist Jimmy Little to join them. The significance given to intergenerational music-making within the folk community and its implication for the transmission of the music and the different existing styles is shown through the composition of its members who are all born in different decades. Importance is given to heritage by older generations of folk musicians within the folk music community, including both professional and amateur folk musicians. This was illustrated by Anthony Robb who lengthily introduced Jimmy Little, giving details about the instruments he used to play and about his education and his family, specifically mentioning his uncle and grandfather from whom he learnt.

Anthony then pointed out that the participant should therefore listen carefully to the style Jimmy was playing, imitate it and remember his way of playing. Even though this practice is not extremely frequent at folk sessions (and the rest of the band jokingly added to Jimmy that we just heard â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;the entire story of [his] lifeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;), it is still practiced and acknowledged as an important part of learning folk music. Nonetheless, the tradition of regularly holding music sessions in pubs in small local communities, at least since the folk revival, has resulted in slight evolutions in the rhythms, melodies and ways of playing folk music in each community. An experienced musician can recognise the origin of another musician by just listening to his music and observing his way of playing. However, as the traditional oral transmission of folk music results in young people playing music as they hear it, these very local differences seem to have faded out as a result of recent demographic movements, and in particular through urbanisation and young people leaving the countryside. In effect, even though traditional music sessions can still be found in most urban centres, the musical education and experiences the Band composed of Anthony Robb, Nikki Williamson, Ged Lawson, Alice Burn and Paul Knox.

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population used to acquire in their villages is substantially different from the musical sessions of mixed origins in large urban centres. In the same way, the ubiquitous presence of specifically 'Irish' sessions in areas even beyond Celtic regions can be seen to exemplify how losses in the variety of traditional and folk music are beginning to result in such music becoming homogenised and characterised by fewer differences.

This point of view seems to agree with Nettl’s analysis of Lomax's theory. 12 In his chapter ‘Cultural Grey-Out?’ Nettl discusses the issues of the loss of musical tradition or musical characteristics of traditional music due to the process of ‘Westernisation’. 13 First, he defines this phenomenon as the impact of western cultures on non-western traditions. He underlines that no human societies have survived without keeping some trace of their musical traditions. However, the impact of western cultures is undeniable, and choices and compromises have to be made in the evolution of traditions.14 Nettl specifically points out the simple nature of folk music transmitted orally in the context of local music sessions; simplicity which tends to disappear in the process of creating written records of the music.15 This could be seen as a profitable evolution and enrichment for the musical genre of folk music if it results in the detachment of the composition from the major constraint of simplicity, which was needed to facilitate oral transmission. Nonetheless, a process of complication of folk music A. Lomax, (1968). Folk Song Style and Culture. New Brunswick: Transaction Books, p. 4.

13 B. Nettl, (2005). The study of Ethnomusicology, Thirty-one Issues and Concepts. Urbana and Chicago: University Of Illinois press, p. 431.

14 See also: Slobin, (1993); Kaul, (2009); and V. Erlmann, (2003). Hybridity and Globalisation. Retrieved 2014 йил 12-May from Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World: Media, Industry and Society: http://www.credoreference.com/entry/contpmwmis/hybridity_and_global ization_in 15 Nettl (2005), p. 435.

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would result in a decrease in the accessibility of this music to the largest number of musicians. It has to be underlined that, contrary to other musical genres such as classical music, a large number of folk musicians do not have any education in the theory of music.

This in particular explains the necessity for folk composers to be able to transcribe it in other ways as opposed to classical music scores. ABC musical notation is in particular widely used in Celtic folk music. Nettl remarks that a potential process of complication of folk music could result in the standardisation of this musical genre with other types of music, its instrumentations and rhythms, which would result in losses in specificities.16 However, he also underlines hybridisation or ‘syncretism’ as one of the major effects of the westernisation of traditional cultures and music around the world. Its impacts within communities and in the context of local music sessions are seen in the variety of influences in the interpretations of the traditional repertoire, and in the recent compositions in folk music.17 Sessions' configurations and dynamics

‘Are they making it up as they go along?’ is a recurrent question that is particularly representative of the perception of folk music by non-musicians, or musicians who do not usually play traditional music. The last time I heard this question was when a British friend of mine came along to the session at the ‘Ye Olde Elm tree’ pub in Durham. Despite being British, he had never attended such an event, and asked this question after listening to several sets of tunes. This remark was most probably initiated by the lack of a classical style music sheet as a non-musician would expect necessary, as well as the communication (which sometimes turn into full conversations) between the playing

16 17

Nettl (2005), p. 435.

Nettl (2005), p. 440.

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musicians about the tune and chords currently being played as well as those to come.

To an external observer, traditional folk music sessions in pubs seem to have few organisational rules. Joining in is open to all musicians, without obvious restrictions of the types of instruments. However, the musicians themselves seem to see hierarchy in the sitting plans. These rules of behaviour during the social gathering are not written down and are relatively obscure to new attendees (whether they are musicians wishing to join in to play or are observers). They are discovered through regular attendance to the participants.18 A representative example of these are the frequent jokes at the Elm Tree pub in Durham: when the apparent, but informal, leader of the Monday night session, the fiddler and guitarist Paul Archer, leaves before the end of the sessions, the remaining musicians regularly joke on who might next sit on the central seat in the room. In the same way, at the joint ICTM-BFE conference, when Adrian Scahill was talking about his experience at an unfamiliar Irish folk session with a flute, he said ‘I was outside of my comfort zone. I don't play the flute very much, so I sat at the back of the session’.19 This example shows once more that even though the hierarchy is not openly discussed, the musicians are conscious of it and act in accordance.

The sitting placement of a musician does not only depend on an implicit hierarchy amongst the musicians, but also on practicalities. The pub sessions often start flexibly around eight or nine o'clock at night (with the exception of some weekend afternoon sessions). As a social gathering, the typical pub session starts with usual social interactions and ordering of drinks. The

For an in-depth analysis of rules and structures of folk session in England, see Stock (2004).

19 ‘Around the House Again for Old-Time's Sake: The Reissuing of Irish, Traditional Music in the Digital Age’, Adrian Scahill (Paper presented at the Joint BFE-ICTM Ireland Annual conference, Queen's University Belfast, 5 April 2013).

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sessions often start with the first few musicians who have arrived.

As musicians arrive at different times, it is an unwritten rule that they take remaining seats as close as possible to the rest of the musicians. Another implied rule integral to the dynamic of the session is not to play a tune which has been played before. This seems relatively evident if compared to other types of music playing gatherings, in which the programme is fixed and rarely involves playing the same piece several times. However, in the context of folk music sessions, the late arrivals, the neither fixed nor anticipated programme, and the potential for any participant to start a set, means that the chances that a late arrived musician plays a tune that has been played before is higher. In fact, it does occasionally happen, and is rarely unnoticed. If the repeated tune is at the start of the set, most often, musicians would simply

Figure 2: A Monday session at the Elm Tree pub, Durham (October 2011). Picture: James McLaughlin, used with permission.

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mention it and start another tune instead, either rearranging the set, or playing a completely different set. Nonetheless, it becomes more problematic if a set moves on to a tune that has been played before. In this case, many musicians would not hesitate to simply stop playing and go on to have a conversation with the person sitting next to them, most often mentioning that the tune has been played already. In this way, if a large number of musicians stop, the set is abandoned.

As applause is not expected in a pub session, unlike in many other performance settings, playing a set without a clear ending is not uncommon. The best way of defining the end of a set is when all musicians have stopped playing. The group of musicians playing and not playing can vary during the set and, even though the implied rule is that the suggestion of tunes is most often chosen by the musician initiating the set, this responsibility can be transmitted during a set. If the set seems to end or contain only one tune, a player who knows a tune that could follow might add it at the end of the set and thus take on the lead of the tunes. Interestingly, in the case of regular folk sessions, with a core number of resident musicians, some sets of tunes might become predictable and the lead seems to be less strong as the majority of players confidently move onto the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;normalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; following tune. Consequently, this confidence as to which tune comes next can end up fixing a particular set of tunes and make it more difficult for a newcomer to play one of these well-known tunes within a different set.

The rules which operate in a pub session also tend to be entirely different from other musical genres and other types of gathering. In comparison to classical music performances in which the placement of each instrument section and each musician within these sections are crucial, the sitting plan in folk music settings does not take into account the instrument played by each participant. The only rare exception to this rule would be, when, for practical reasons, some musicians decided not to sit together in order to play better in the small spaces that pubs

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allow, such as a fiddler would avoid sitting on the right hand side of a flutist, to avoid inadvertent clashes between their bow (on their left hand side) and the flute (on the flutists' right hand side).

Even though these might appear as straightforward, obvious arrangements, in the case of a popular folk session it may pose a challenge when the room is full, if some seats are more valued than others (whether closer to the centre of the room, or simply more comfortable). Sitting next to friends to be able to have a conversation between tunes or while not playing, as well as to communicate about tunes to start, or sitting close to play together is also a factor which might enter into consideration when deciding where to sit, and often takes precedence over the comfort of sitting or of playing in a small space.

The environments in which pub sessions are usually held also have an implicit impact on the instruments played and the musical techniques used. Small spaces such as pubs divided into smaller sitting rooms would not allow for some instruments such as loud sets of pipes. Many pipers bring smaller, relatively quiet, sets of pipes, or only tin whistles with which they can join in to the session, but often mention a better set of pipes which they have at home and usually play with at different occasions, whether at an outdoor performance or on stage with a band. In a similar way, techniques of playing can be affected by the environment. For example, many folk fiddlers playing in pub sessions tend to hold their bow relatively high and their fiddle particularly low on their shoulders in comparison to classical violinists. This can be related to personal preferences or ease of playing, but can also be particularly affected by the way musicians are sitting in the pub. Many pub seats are benches, on which participants can be relatively close if the room is lacking seats or the session is particularly popular. In this setting, holding a bow from its very end and the instrument high on the left shoulder as taught in classical music education can be very impractical and unpleasant for the person sitting on the left.

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Joining in a pub session does not require any particular musical training, use of particular standardised techniques of playing or a specific level of ability. As a result, each participant comes with their personal way and manners of playing which can often be adapted to the settings offered by the pub environment, including the musicians in the room and other customers of the pub present at the time of the session. In this way, in a pub, the solution is often for the musician to hold their instrument in a different way, more appropriate to the environment in which they are performing, whereas in classical music, seats would be moved around and musical sections with similar movements are placed together. Thus, such habits and usage are most often accepted as the rule by the musicians taking part in pub sessions and perceived as an insurance of the unchangeability of such contexts.

Nonetheless, Paul Archer underlines a crucial impact of modern technology which indirectly, but significantly, affects folk music transmission within traditional contexts: Before the recordings, people would just go to a village, to a session, or a ceilidh or something, they would go with the tune in their head, and by the time they got home, it would have been changed. Tunes would evolve, all because people couldn't remember, but now, with technology the way it is, things become more definitive. You find people in sessions who play tunes exactly the way they are played on records. Not only do they play the melody, if there's 3 or 4 of them, they tend to play the same arrangement that they've heard on the CD.20 Paul Archer also points out the intrinsically changing character of folk music needs to be put in perspective when looking at the impact of globalisation on traditional and folk music and the

20

Paul Archer, personal communication, 25 April 2012.

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changes this might bring.21 The changes in the transmission of folk music and the contexts in which folk music is played are here underlined as the most significant factor in the transformation of the tradition.

This example might be relatively recent in introducing a folk musician still being particularly active of the contemporary folk music scene at a national level. Nonetheless, much can similarly be told about older, traditional musicians, as well as traditional habits, sets of tunes, or the dances usually played with.

In this way, the importance of the inclusion of several generations of musicians in a local pub session appears vital to transmit the full knowledge and understanding of folk and traditional music, the tunes, their history or their composers. It is not uncommon for musicians to come with other members of their family, whether they also playing music or not, maintaining a variety of age ranges amongst the participants. The conversations taking place during pub sessions are also revealing of the interests of the musicians and their expectations from the event. While some participants focus on the tunes and take great care in following and joining in as often as possible, whether they know the tunes or they are just learning it, other participants prefer socialising in sustaining conversations while tunes are being played. These conversations often cover a wide variety of topics, from musical instruments and their making, to current affairs and politics. It has to be underlined that music-related topics are preeminent in this context, starting in admiring someone else's instrument or asking about the name of a tune. Many anecdotes, old stories and histories of tunes are told and spread this way amongst folk musicians which can be heard later on stage by young professional folk musicians who wish to share their experience of traditional music with their audience. Other information can be shared during folk session about the community and its members.

Further analysis on recordings in pub sessions, see S. Keegan-Phipps, (2013). An Aural Tradition with a Pause Button? The Role of Recording Technology in a North East. Ethnomusicology, Vol. 57, No. 1 , 34-56.

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Missing participants due to travel, activities or health issues, as well as the musicians who used to come and play, are often mentioned during these casual conversations during or between sets of tunes. An example of this is the occasional mention of the, now professional and famous, folk fiddler Jon Boden at the session in the Elm Tree pub at Durham, who was a regular attendee whilst studying at Durham University. Some of the musicians regularly attending this session would sometimes come with old photos from this time, showing to anyone interested the participation of Jon Boden before he found success as a professional.

Figure 3: A Wednesday session at the Shakespeare pub, Durham (January 2013) with Andy McLaughlin on the pipes and his son James playing the wooden flute. Picture: Tricia McLaughlin, used with permission.

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Joining in at pub sessions

The character and influences in terms of origins of the music played is not the only variable when looking at differences between each local pub session. The balance between the number of tunes and songs is also very particular to each session. The experiences of tunes and songs are very different for the musicians. In the case of tunes, both melodic and chord players can identify patterns and accompaniments to try to join in; on the other hand, when it comes to songs, the emphasis is often put on the lyrics. Therefore, with the exception of a chorus featuring in a number of folk songs, only participants knowing the song can join in and little accompaniment is needed. Songs are therefore welcomed at the majority of folk sessions, but the participants' reception is significantly different. Songs are more often perceived as solos and even receive applause in the pub, a practice which is relatively rare and sometimes is felt slightly out of context by musicians after a set of tunes. The balance between the number of tunes and the number of songs that are played is also a subtle issue dealt with by the participating musicians often unseen by the audience or other people in the pub. In a very similar way, musicians tend to manage a variety of tunes (such as jigs, waltzes, hornpipes or slip jigs, among others) and alternate major and minor tunes to avoid monotony in the evening. Folk musicians are more likely to regularly attend similar sessions.

However, it is not uncommon for the same folk musicians to attend regular sessions elsewhere. This especially happens when visiting another city or place. The experience of integrating into a folk session as an outsider can be very different depending on the character of the session and the habits of the regular participant compared to the outsider. Attending several folk sessions during a stay in Ireland in 2013, I personally experienced this while at a Sunday session in the traditional Belfast pub McHughs, during which the four attending musicians were very keen to hear some of the folk tunes I knew and asked me regularly to start tunes,

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regardless of their Irish or non-Irish origins. In the same pub on a Wednesday, I met four young musicians, who were used to playing together and had their own repertoires of tunes, to which they were happy for me to join in. After showing my interest in their tunes, I asked for the titles of those I wished to learn and, more than once, they could not recall the titles of the tunes. After I joined in to one of the tunes that I knew, one of them exclaimed ‘Oh, she knows it!’, before directly asking me ‘Do you know the name for it?’ If the situation can seem to have comic side, as Ciaran Carson illustrates, this also shows both the extent of the common repertoire around the British Isles and the importance for musicians to show knowledge of this repertoire in order to be recognised as a contributor of the sessions, with less importance placed on remembering titles of tunes and information about them more than the music itself.22 Pub sessions are informal settings that welcome any musician, provided that they comply to the implied rules of such a gathering. Little is asked in terms of musical experience, technique or specific instrument played. The repertoire itself does not impose boundaries.

When integrating into a session, a new attendee is very often asked whether they wish to start a tune or a set of their choice.

This is received as a welcoming invitation to share their own experience of folk music. The usual answer to such a request is expected to be a set of well-known traditional tunes which most of the regular attendees of the session might know and could join in with, or a set of typical tunes from the region or area the new attendee is from, offering the regular attendees the chance to learn new tunes and expand their repertoire. After having become a regular participant to a folk music session and shared a number of tunes, from both modern and traditional repertoires, some musicians also start playing tunes of their own composition, if

22

Carson (1996).

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Figure 4: A Wednesday session at the Shakespeare pub, Durham (February 2013), including singers as well as players. Picture: John Ristway, used with permission.

they are composed â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;in a traditional idiomâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, as Nick expresses.23 In this way, many of the experienced musicians would be able to start joining in and learn these unknown tunes, both by listening and remembering, as well as identifying common traditional patterns, alongside the more original twists of the new composition. At the end of the set, it is usual for other musicians to ask for titles of tunes they have not heard before; the composer then has an opportunity to mention that they composed it. It would not be uncommon, even though not systematic, at this point for the composer to add some more detail about the reason for entitling it this way, or other additional information about the 23

Nicholas Till, personal communication, 17 April 2012.

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time, the reason or the condition in which it was composed. If the tune became played more regularly, these anecdotes could be remembered and passed on along with the tune by other members of the community to a greater number of musicians and the song then has the opportunity to enter the repertoire of main traditional tunes overtime, despite this term being difficult to define.

Conclusions

As Joey Oliver underlines, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;preserving the context, the tradition will transmit itself...â&#x20AC;&#x2122;.24 In this way, he expresses that in the case of folk music, often played in informal settings or for functional purposes, the contexts of transmission are crucial in the preservation and the transmission of the folk musical culture. As preserving the tradition does not mean saving it from any possible changes, this is particularly relevant when analysing the changes in the repertoire and the music itself through the lens of the social context in which the changes take place.

Pub sessions are often quoted by musicians as one of the main contexts available to exchange and learn new tunes.

Nonetheless, Anthony Robb, an experienced professional folk musician, underlines: Sessions are good for getting a bigger repertoire, but they are not very good for learning tradition, because usually with sessions, you get people from different places, and people play very fast, and some people drink too much, and the music might be fun, but the traditional identity quite often goes down.25

24 25

Joey Oliver, personal communication, 23 July 2012.

Anthony Robb, personal communication August 2013.

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Similarly, the weekly folk music session at the Elm Tree pub in Durham has the reputation of being very dynamic, with a relatively strong Irish character maintained by a high number of regular attendees. At a session that many musicians who used to be regular attendees took part in April 2013, a tune was played, that Gerry Kaley recognised. At the end of the tune, he remarked in a very insightful way: ‘Isn't it wonderful, how tunes enter into the tradition?’ before giving an anecdote about the last tune.

Charlie Fleming, often referred to as ‘Chuck’, heard this tune at a pub session in the late 1970s or early 1980s. Nonetheless, according to Gerry Kaley: The tune was composed by John Mason in the 1970s or early 1980s. When Charlie heard it in the pub, he learnt the first part, but then he must have gone to get a pint at the bar, because he only got the idea of the B-part, so when he taught it to us later on, he kind of made it up. By the time we recorded it in 1985, we were all playing his version, and it is still the one that we are playing, but it is only ‘loosely based’ on the original ‘Wild Roses of the Mountains’.26 As well as reflecting how a relatively modern tune, composed in the 1970s, can enter into the category of ‘traditional tunes’ in the musicians' point of view, through getting shared and regularly played amongst a community, it also shows the level of freedom and flexibility acceptable in the interpretation of tunes in the folk repertoire. More importantly, it also illustrates how the traditional context of playing in a pub can deeply influence the common musical repertoire. In effect, as this context and the implied rules of the gathering allow for musicians to play only when they wish to and leave the performance at any point, and the process of learning the repertoire is relatively free and personal, the context of the pub and the distractions it might 26

Gerry Kaley, personal communication, 22 April 2013.

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represent can have a direct influence on the most intrinsic level of the tunes.

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Counting Bombs without Numbers: Are Enactment-Based Risk Management Techniques Useful in High Risk Environments?1 Nick Torbet

There is a considerable body of risk literature devoted to highstakes risk analysis and mitigation, often considering the effects of high-impact but rare events such as natural catastrophes or major terrorist attacks. Ulrich Beck pioneered much of this form of analysis when he described ‘risk society’, and Collier developed the subject further in his work on risk ‘enactment’. 2 This theoretical background will be drawn upon throughout this paper.

However, the focus here will be on how such risk techniques can be used not only in terms of high-impact risk mitigation, but also where the act of mitigating the risk is an inherently dangerous activity - in this case predicting, searching for and identifying Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs or roadside bombs) in warlike environments. This paper will examine current High Risk Management (HRM) techniques used in such operations and argue: firstly that HRM techniques can be useful but are only meaningful in an environment of resource scarcity; and, secondly, that although current methods broadly fit the enactment model this is not explicitly recognised and there are specific improvements that could be made to the conceptual approach currently used by counter-IED professionals. Initially, this will be achieved by giving a broad outline to the physical nature of the risk faced in such circumstances, the nature of the military operations employed to mitigate such risks and an outline of the ‘backdrop of risk’ against which such activities take place.

In order to avoid revealing sensitive material some of the military information in this paper has been ‘genericised’. However, it is believed that sufficient detail has been included for the arguments put forward in this paper.

2 Beck Risk society: Towards a new modernity, Sage (1992) and Collier ‘Enacting Catastrophe: Preparedness, Insurance, Budgetary Rationalization.’

Economy and Society 37 (2) (2008).

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Secondly, a brief review of current theory on risk technologies will be conducted, particularly focusing on the work undertaken

by Collier and Bass. Following this, an analysis of current HRM techniques used in counter-IED operations will be considered against such theoretical models and potential areas of weakness will be identified. Finally, recommendations for future improvements will be made for this particular subject area.

Recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq made military casualties a subject of front page news. The â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;riskâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; that IEDs posed to soldiers became not only a matter of military strategy but also one of political debate, litigation and media criticism.3 It is useful here to outline exactly what an IED is and what the nature of current mitigation activity looks like.4 The task of IED mitigation is one that falls across all manner of military capabilities, including intelligence analysis, protective-engineering, patrol planning, and local community engagement amongst others.

There is not the space to consider the fundamental methodology behind each of these and consequently the focus of this paper will be upon those tasked with directly countering the IED threat by targeting the physical space- the IED on the ground. An IED is by its nature improvised and therefore distinct from any other.

However, sufficient trends do exist to enable military planning, and will be drawn upon for the purposes of this paper. An IED will usually be based upon an electrical circuit constituting at least a power source (battery), a switch (pressure plate, remote sensor etc.), a detonator (essentially functioning as an explosive lightbulb) and bulk explosives. They will regularly be concealed to prevent detection by eye or detection equipment and their 3The

Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/mar/07/death-toll-britishsoldiers-afghanistan-400, (2012) and BBC, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8699902.stm, (2010).

4 The author served as a military counter-IED professional for six years including three operational tours and would be considered, by the military, as an IED-mitigation Subject Matter Expert.

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construction and deployment is often facilitated by a small group, or cell, rather than a single individual.5 Whilst they can vary in explosive power depending on their intended target the broad principles are the same – an example of a simple IED circuit is at Figure 1.

Locating and removing such threats is inherently risky, and whilst mechanical techniques can be effective the method that has been considered most reliable by the military is to send teams of specialist soldiers into areas which need to be declared clear, and where the risk of explosive devices is considered high.

Prior to entering a risk area a threat analysis will be conducted and resources will be allocated based on this assessment. Teams responsible for searching for and identifying IEDs vary in levels of training and equipment type but in most cases are comprised of 48 individuals. Once deployed the area will be searched by a number of team members concurrently. Using detection equipment such as metal detectors, suspicious areas will be investigated using hand tools such as trowels and brushes.6 Once an IED is identified a team of disposal experts will be tasked to safely remove it. There is not the space to conduct a full review of the methodology involved, and many of the nuances will be expanded upon when discussing risk techniques, but the above provides a sufficient level of comprehension at this stage. The key distinction here is that not only does the presence of IEDs represent a high-impact risk in general but also that the mitigating activity is a high-risk activity itself, and how decisions are made about what level of risk exposure is acceptable will be one of the key themes of this paper.

There is a strong body of literature about how risk judgements are arrived at, and to what extent this can be meaningful. As will be shown below, Collier's ‘enactment’ based approach provides the most insight for the subject of this paper Wilson ‘Improvised Explosive Devices in Iraq and Afghanistan: Effects and Countermeasures.’ Congressional Research Service (2006).

6 Military Engineering Volume II (9). Ministry of Defence (2009).

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and it is useful to briefly consider this approach alongside other literature which develops it further. One of the foundations of Colliers thinking is Beck's risk society, a term Beck applies to society ‘threats’ the risk of which cannot be confidently expressed as a likelihood of future harm and whose risk is uncertain. This distinction is defined by the limits of a collective security risk technology- insurance.7 Collier outlines the nature of his approach by asking whether or not events such as natural disasters or terrorist attacks exceed mechanisms of calculated mitigation (particularly insurability) and answers: [I address] these questions by shifting attention away from insurability and calculability per se and towards an analysis of alternative mechanisms for knowing and assessing risks. The knowledge form classically associated with insurance which uses statistics to analyse an ‘archive’ of past events is only one way through which uncertain threats can be known. In what follows, I contrast this archival-statistical knowledge with enactment-based knowledge produced by ‘acting out’ uncertain future threats in order to understand their impact.8 This enactment-based approach appears particularly relevant to us. IED mitigation often takes place in a statistical vacuum, and we should consider the enactment approach in some depth if we are to attempt to later map it to counter-IED operations. An IED threat fits Collier's category of ‘[where there] is no archive of past events whose analysis might provide a guide to future events’.9 Whilst data on similar locations or circumstances may be present, the requirement for absolute accuracy of location, the pace of military activity and the problematic nature of gathering statistics in a conflict environment make a directly statistical approach Beck (1992).

Collier (2008) p225.

9 Ibid. p228.

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unhelpful.10 The risk enactment approach maps out potential futures and assesses the degree of harm they may be likely to cause (civil defence in response to a nuclear attack is an example used). Here the consequences of a particular event occurring in any particular location are calculated (in human life, economic costs etc.) and such data used to establish where to target defensive efforts or calculate insurance costs.11 Yet analysing these non-statistic based approaches exposes some apparent conceptual gaps, which Collier himself acknowledges. Firstly, empirical circumstances challenge Beck's ‘uninsurability’ hypothesis. Some insurance companies do offer catastrophe insurance, so clearly some assessment is occurring somewhere.

Secondly, whilst enactment can predict consequence severity it does not calculate likelihood. It is all very well knowing what will happen if a particular type of event occurs at a particular location but knowing how likely it is to occur is more useful. Thirdly, it appears overly reliant on non-scientific intuition and the evervariable ‘expert opinion’. To resolve these challenges we can turn to Collier's own position, as well as using other theoretical literature to develop it further. He notes firstly that enactment does not take place in a scientific vacuum, damage estimates can be reliably calculated using well-founded engineering models and principles (or an equivalent). Furthermore, amongst others he notes that there are ‘other styles of reasoning’ about risk, and that ‘one need not make any general judgement about their rationality to acknowledge their systematicity, specificity and rigour’ and that these forms have a long history of effectiveness.12

Bass and Robichaux. ‘Defense-In-Depth Revisited: Qualitative Risk Analysis Methodology For Complex Network-Centric Operations.’ IEEE, Volume 1 (2001).

11 Collier (2008).

12 Collier (2008), Hacking The Taming Of Chance, Cambridge University Press (1990) and O'Malley ‘Introduction: configurations of risk’ Economy and Society 29 (4) (2000).

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Figure 1: Photo of uncovered IED and diagram of circuit.

Detonator and Explosives

Battery

Pressure Plate Counting Bombs without Numbers

Direction of Search

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Figure 2: Photo and diagram of a roadway being cleared by counterIED team

Command Element

Searcher investigating suspicious area

Searcher

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The enactment principle is one of these ‘other styles’ and central to its development is the concept of ‘vulnerability’, which refers to the harm that will result to an asset in the event of a particular ‘hazard’. This, combined with an ‘inventory’ of assets which we wish to risk analyse allows us to calculate a ‘loss’ in the event of a catastrophe,13 and consequently start to consider a ‘risk price tag’. Yet we can develop this system further (particularly in the military field) by applying another layer: criticality. This is proposed by Bass as a concept useful for targeting mitigation resources in an environment of scarcity. It is, in short, how important the inventoried asset is to any given task or system.14 This starts to resolve our answered question of how best to target mitigation efforts; vulnerability allows us to assess what the damage will look like; and criticality tells us whether or not such damage would be significant. Yet there exists a final curtain of risk concealment- that of threat. This is the third element of Bass' system and is acknowledged by both Collier and Willis as ‘the greatest source of uncertainty [in a terrorism risk model] and derives from estimates of threat, which concern terrorists’ goals, motives, and capabilities’.15 This layer is particularly important for our purposes as it speaks directly of the need to understand where/when a hazard will emerge when dealing with a belligerent human risk (i.e. the terrorist or militant). Whilst there are nuanced differences between the threat of IEDs in conflict zones and the kind of catastrophic terrorist event that Willis and Collier describe, the principle is sufficiently comparable in either case. This final aspect of risk analysis will be inherently subjective and will rely on expert opinion, but we can apply a level of systematicity to it. We can make reasonable predictions, based on past events, about what threats (i.e. weapon systems, technical capabilities etc.) that a belligerent may possess- although in some Collier (2008) p239.

Bass (2001).

15 Ibid. p65, Collier (2008), and Willis, Morral, Kelly, & Jamison Estimating Terrorism Risk Rand Corporation, (2006).

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ways this moves into the vulnerability assessment. But, as Collier notes, opinion does not necessarily lack value: ...expert understanding is ‘subjective’ in the sense that it draws on expert opinion, not on statistical or quantitative measures. But the methodology of such expert ‘elicitation’ is systematized, and has a long history that can be traced to approaches such as the Delphi Method, developed by RAND in the early years of the Cold War.16 The nature of this methodology will be explored below, and the techniques used for ensuring that judgements by counter-IED professionals remain systematized will be evaluated against some of the criteria alluded to above.

HRM techniques used by counter-IED professionals fit broadly into the enactment space. As mentioned above, archivalstatistical information is rarely available or sufficiently reliable to make the necessary precision judgements. The key challenge is relying on an enactment based judgement and using it to effectively balance a high risk mitigation activity with the resources that are available. i.e. if it assessed that an IED may be present and must be located (in order to be removed) then one will be placing the life of any mitigating counter-IED team at risk.

All else remaining equal, one would wish to deploy as well equipped and trained team as possible, with as much time as necessary to complete the task safely. However, such tasks and assessments do not take place in isolation- there are likely to be a number of potential IED locations that need to be declared clear, and a limit on the number of teams available to complete the tasks. The tools provided to judgement-makers are designed to facilitate this decision making process and ensure the most effective deployment of resources available at the time. Johnson summarises the requirement and potential pitfalls as follows: Collier (2008) p242 and Dalkey. ‘The Delphi Method: An Experimental Study’ Project RAND (1969).

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There is a danger that risk assessments are unnecessarily conservative â&#x20AC;&#x201C; in other words mission success might require an unnecessary level of resources in order to mitigate low levels of risk. These resources might have been better deployed on other operations. Alternatively, incorrect risk values might persuade commanders to accept hazards that threaten both mission success and the resources that are deployed to perform a particular operation. 17 An evaluation of the HRM techniques used by counter-IED professionals will be discussed below. However, it is first helpful to conduct a brief review of current methodologies employed.

Counter-IED HRM techniques focus on identifying the most likely threats and identifying the most appropriate level of resource to allocate (particularly in terms of expertise/training level and equipment). They are often represented pictorially and a simplified version is shown below (see Figure 3).

The judgement-maker must first consider the ground, capability and intent in order to assess what threats are most likely to present themselves. This aspect of the assessment is belligerent focused and broadly asks what can the belligerent do (capability), where can he do it (ground) and who does he wish to do it to (intent). Once the most likely threat has been identified (this could include the likely number of IEDs in an area, their technical make-up and likely locations) the judgement-maker must then decide which resources to allocate to which threat-areas. He may for example decide to allocate a high number of non-specialist teams to areas considered low-threat (in terms of IED numbers, sophistication, etc.) and allocate the specialists to the areas considered to be of higher threat. Yet overlaying this

17

Johnson 2007, p4.

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Ground

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Basic search training (all personnel deploying to Afghanistan)

Intermediate team (specially trained and equipped infantry soldiers)

High Assurance team (specialist troops trained exclusively for role)

Figure 3: Counter-IED HRM Planning Tools (Modified from MOD 2009)

Intent

Special Hazard Teams (operate in areas of particular hazard; chemical, biological, confined spaces etc.)

Assurance level/ Numbers of Personnel

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process he must also consider the ‘assurance’ requirement. That is, how important it is that a particular area be declared clear. For example, the visit of a VVIP to an area is likely to increase the assurance requirement. Consequently, even if a threat to an area is considered low, specialist teams may still be allocated to search the area as the assurance requirement is considered to be high.18 One can see clearly that were there an infinite number of specialist teams then the threat and assurance level would be insignificant. As long as there was a threat and a need for assurance at any level then one could best mitigate the risk by allocating the highest standard of team available. This fatality dilemma has been touched upon above; even if an area is considered low-threat the existence of one IED can create an unacceptable outcome from a risk perspective- the fatality of an individual(s) searching the area in order to declare it clear. Yet given the finite nature of resources, and the necessity to complete the tasks, the judgement-maker must make an assessment of how best to mitigate the risks. The above factors (likely threat, the assurance required and the resources that should be allocated) mesh together to facilitate what is essentially an enactment-based approach to mitigating the risk.

This enactment approach is not entirely recognised or embraced. Indeed, the counter-IED HRM models obscure or overcomplicate the underlying decision process. For example when speaking of ground, capability and intent one is in fact only truly speaking of the ‘threat’ component identified by Bass19.

Ground and capability is an unusual distinction to make, as capability is a broad term which should necessitate considering all aspects of a belligerent's capabilities i.e. where geographically he is capable of operating as well as what he is technically capable of creating. The prediction of a belligerent’s intent is as reliant and subjective assessment as ever. Although this method has the 18 19

MOD (2009).

Bass (2001).

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advantage of focusing the judgement-maker on the location of the threat in the physical space, it is something of a double-edged sword. It centres any judgement around what the belligerent could do, rather than specifically mitigating the risk that the judgement-maker may ultimately be concerned with. It is a threat-based not a risk-based judgement. For example, it may be assessed that a belligerent is likely to place a large IED on a particular route, in order to target a particular convoy- and this may be one of many such threats in an area that are considered likely. Yet what has not been overtly considered is how critical the convoy is or how vulnerable. Whilst in reality these factors may be considered when allocating resources according to an ‘assurance’ requirement, they should, alongside threat, be central to the risk management methods throughout. Not only does this prevent the judgement-maker from becoming ‘belligerent focused’ but it also ensures as greater level of certainty as possible. As explained above, ‘criticality’ and ‘vulnerability’ assessments are likely to have a lower margin of error in their nature: ‘the ‘vulnerability’ module in terrorism risk modelling is subject to lower levels of uncertainty’.20 Bass provides us with a straightforward model for ensuring that resources are allocated with all the necessary risk factors considered.

This is a far better method for modelling an enactmentbased approach to counter-IED tasks as it immediately conceptualises where resources should be targeted: the centre area of greatest vulnerability, criticality and subjection to threat.

It shifts the decision dynamic from focusing upon a threat (what a belligerent is trying to do) to a risk (what a belligerent is trying to do that will have the greatest impact upon a system or task).

When allocating scarce resources it ensures as much clarity as possible and ensures less reliance on an intuitive knowledge of assurance requirements etc. Yet as mentioned above, military

20

Collier (2008).

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Criticality

Vulnerability

R Threat Figure 4.21 decision-making often takes place in a fast-paced environment where extended consideration of the factors outlined above may be unrealistic. Often the answer here is to rely on ‘intuition and experience’. But rather than rely on such ill-defined methods we can use semi-quantitative methods to assist the under pressure judgement-maker when considering factors such as vulnerability and criticality. Johnson identifies aircraft safety matrices as a possible model; here a risk value is assigned to each component of the activity (crew experience, weather, distance etc.) which allows for an overall risk scoring of any given task- to which additional resources could be targeted or the task altered. Although he rightly points out one must guard against such tools, effectively increasing risk by blinkering judgement-makers to only those risks which have a pre-assigned value.22 Consequently, such a tool would only be useful where time pressures would prevent an otherwise more thorough analysis, whilst appropriate training could guard against over-reliance or a check list approach to making judgements.

Bass (2001).

Johnson ‘The Paradoxes of Military Risk Assessment: Will the Enterprise Risk Assessment Model, Composite Risk Management and Associated Techniques Provide the Predicted Benefits?’ International Systems Safety Society (2007).

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What the above has shown is that the enactment approach is more than merely an educated guess and that carefully applied methodology can assist in making risk judgements where a statistical approach would be inappropriate. It has also shown that such judgements are only useful in an environment where mitigation is itself dangerous if one has insufficient resources to deliver the most reliable/effective solution to each risk area. The recommended improvements are in many ways not groundbreaking; counter-IED judgement-makers have proven effective to date and the factors they consider (and the solutions that they apply) would probably not differ drastically in most cases. But the recommendations are focused more on altering a mind-set; if implemented at the doctrinal level and embedded in the decision making process from initial training to operational planning then perhaps a more efficient, more consistent, risk mitigation environment would emerge.

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