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The better angels of our nature: A history of violence and humanity

Series
Wolfson College Podcasts
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Steven Pinker gives a compelling account of the unacknowledged worldwide decline of violence in the 2014 Haldane Lecture
Professor Pinker details how humanity has gone through a series of stages over the past 6,000 years through which rates of violence have declined dramatically. For example it has been determined that approximately 15% of Palaeolithic skeletons found show signs of unhealed violent trauma, suggested violence caused deaths, while the comparative worldwide number for the twentieth century is 0.06%. From interstate warfare to homicide, he shows how we are far less likely to die a violent death than any previous generation. Pinker concludes by assessing the various reasons for this decline in violence. He believes that the move towards peace is helped by ‘our better angels’: self-control, empathy, moral sense, and reason. A number of historical developments have contributed to this move, particularly the state monopolising violence, increasing commerce, an expanding circle of empathy, and the increase in literacy, education, and public discourse. He cautions, however, that this movement was not teleological and could be subject to pauses and reversals.

The lecture is introduced by the President of Wolfson College, Professor Dame Hermione Lee.
Creative Commons Licence
Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK (BY-NC-SA): England & Wales; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Episode Information

Series
Wolfson College Podcasts
People
Steven Pinker
Keywords
Haldane Lecture
conflict
anthropology
Department: Wolfson College
Date Added: 06/03/2014
Duration: 01:00:58

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Innovation in China: a Policy Perspective

Series
Technology and Management for Development
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Professor Xiaolan Fu (Director of the Technology and Management of Development Centre, Department of International Development at the University of Oxford) speaks on the subject of industrial upgrading and technology policies in China.

Episode Information

Series
Technology and Management for Development
People
Xiaolan Fu
Keywords
economic policy
china
Chinese economy
OXCEP
Department: Oxford Department of International Development
Date Added: 05/03/2014
Duration: 00:45:38

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Science and the Humanities

Series
TORCH | The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities
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Are the Humanities and the Sciences fundamentally different? Or do they share roots, values, aspirations and a common, contemporary predicament?
Are the Humanities and the Sciences fundamentally different? Or do they share roots, values, aspirations and a common, contemporary predicament?

Presenter: Howard Hotson, Professor of Early Modern Intellectual History, University of Oxford (Chair, Cultures of Knowledge network, TORCH)

Respondents:

Ian Walmsley, Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Hooke Professor of Experimental Physics, University of Oxford
Mark Pagel, Professor and Head of the Bioinformatics Laboratory, University of Reading

Chair: Sally Shuttleworth, Professor of English, University of Oxford

This seminar is part of "Humanities and the Public Good", a special series of events bringing together leading scholars in the arts and sciences and influential figures beyond academia, to consider the role of the Humanities in addressing contemporary challenges.

Episode Information

Series
TORCH | The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities
People
Howard Hotson
Ian Walmsley
Mark Pagel
Sally Shuttleworth
Keywords
science
humanities
Department: The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH)
Date Added: 04/03/2014
Duration: 01:16:25

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Where's the Virtue in the Humanities?

Series
TORCH | The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities
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How can the Liberal Humanities own up to – and promote – its public service as a matrix of civic virtue?
Whether in banks or on the battlefield, in the NHS or in national newspapers, the need for virtuous leadership is now patent. An education in the humanities is, in fact, an education in virtues that are at once intellectual and civic, underscoring its importance for non-economic public flourishing. Such moral formation would be much more effective, however, were it openly professed and discussed. But the predominant liberal ideal, aspiring to neutrality on the Good Life, tends to suppress such profession. How, then, can Liberal Humanities own up to – and promote – its public service as a matrix of civic virtue?

Part of Humanities and the Public Good series (www.torch.ox.ac.uk/publicgood)

Episode Information

Series
TORCH | The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities
People
Nigel Biggar
Donald Drakeman
Steven Biel
Jonathan Bate
Keywords
humanities
virtue
civic engagement
Department: The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH)
Date Added: 04/03/2014
Duration: 00:46:27

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“If you do not want to see God’s hand in everything, even in the most unbearable, you are lost.” Experiencing the First World War Alongside Kaiser Wilhelm II

Series
Oh What a Lovely War? First World War Anniversary Lectures
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Leeds University's Professor of Central European History, editor of An Improbable War?The Outbreak of World War I and European Politicsl Culture before 1914, views the war through the letters of one of the Kaiser's generals to his wife.
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Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK (BY-NC-SA): England & Wales; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Episode Information

Series
Oh What a Lovely War? First World War Anniversary Lectures
People
Holger Afflerbach
Keywords
world war one
ww1
war
religion
Germany
Kaiser Willhelm II
Department: Christ Church
Date Added: 04/03/2014
Duration: 00:52:40

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Survival Migration: Failed Governance and the Crisis of Displacement

Series
Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS)
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Alexander Betts, University of Oxford, gives a talk for the COMPAS seminar series
The seminar, based on Betts' new book, explores the challenge of responding to new drivers of cross-border displacement that fall outside the existing refugee framework. Rather than beginning with particular causes of displacement - whether environmental change, food insecurity, or generalized violence - it offers a human rights-based framework through which to critically consider who, in a changing world, should be entitled to cross an international border and seek asylum. Based on extensive fieldwork, it grounds its analysis in an exploration of contemporary flight from three of the most fragile states in the world: Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Somalia. It explains the massive variation in national and international institutional responses in the neighbouring states, arguing that politics rather than law ultimately
determines how the refugee regime is implemented in practice.
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Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK (BY-NC-SA): England & Wales; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Episode Information

Series
Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS)
People
Alexander Betts
Keywords
migration
immigration
displacement
refugees
congo
somalia
Department: Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Date Added: 03/03/2014
Duration: 00:46:19

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Precarious outcomes to the Pursuit of Happiness: Lifestyle migration and liminality

Series
Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS)
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Karen O'Reilly, University of Loughborough, gives a talk for the COMPAS seminar series
This paper draws attention to the relatively affluent nature and precarious positioning of some lifestyle migration. Lifestyle migration has been defined as the movement of relatively affluent people to destinations that offer an improved quality of life. Lifestyle migrants (often, but not always, Westerners) are thought to move more in search of freedom and leisure than for security or as a result of economic necessity. However, lifestyle migrants are not always affluent in absolute terms; nor are they unerringly powerful or privileged. Increasingly, studies of lifestyle migration are drawing attention to the precarious nature of their migrant experience, whereby rules and regulations governing movement affect those groups who always seem most vulnerable: the elderly, the poor, women, and children.

Episode Information

Series
Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS)
People
Karen O'Reilly
Keywords
migration
compas
politics
happiness
Department: Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Date Added: 03/03/2014
Duration: 00:42:19

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A matter of convention? Drawing lines between slavery and freedom, and between forced and voluntary migration

Series
Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS)
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Julia O'Connell Davidson considers historical notions of slavery and how they can or cannot be applied to modern situations of forced migration.
Debates about force and freedom are fundamental to migration theory and policy. The refugee/migrant binary that has been the subject of significant critique in research continues to underpin asylum and immigration policy, while considerable resources are devoted to distinguishing between the trafficked (forced) and the smuggled (free choice) migrant. Immigration policy has long sought to categorise and 'identify' those who must be rescued and those who must be punished. This seminar series will critically examine these distinctions, but it will also engage with the hidden compulsions of immigration controls (such as worker sponsorship) and the liberally discomforting explicit force of detention and deportation. What does this reveal about ideals of freedom? What does the foregrounding of the forced/free binary obfuscate?
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Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK (BY-NC-SA): England & Wales; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Episode Information

Series
Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS)
People
Julia O'Connell Davidson
Keywords
migration
immigration
slavery
asylum
forced labour
Department: Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Date Added: 03/03/2014
Duration: 00:36:09

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The Political Economy of Tied Migrant Labour

Series
Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS)
Embed
Martin Ruhs, COMPAS, University of Oxford, gives a talk for the COMPAS podcast series
The great majority of labour immigration programmes in high-income countries are temporary migration programmes that limit the migrant‚ employment to the employer specified on the work permit. Drawing on his recent book ‚ÄúThe Price of Rights. Regulating International Labor Migration (Princeton University Press 2013, www.priceofrights.com ), Martin Ruhs discusses the causes and consequences of tying migrant workers to their employers.
Creative Commons Licence
Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK (BY-NC-SA): England & Wales; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Episode Information

Series
Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS)
People
Martin Ruhs
Keywords
migration
human rights
immigration
Department: Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Date Added: 03/03/2014
Duration: 00:20:41

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Where does migration sit within the debate over the future of the UK and Scotland?

Series
Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS)
Embed
Allan Findlay, David McCollum and Jakub Bijak give a talk on migration and Scotland
In September 2014 Scotland will hold an historic referendum on its constitutional future. Migration is an important aspect of the debates surrounding this ballot: the current UK government has emphasised its desire to restrict immigration to Britain, whilst the Scottish Government has viewed net immigration as a valuable contributor to the economic and demographic growth of Scotland. The Breakfast Briefing explores these contrasting positions and draws on new research (using secondary datasets, and interviews with employers, students and local authorities) undertaken as part of the ESRC 's 'Future of the UK and Scotland' programme. The speakers consider the challenges and opportunities that Scotland faces in devising an immigration policy attuned to its particular needs, whatever the outcome of the referendum.
Creative Commons Licence
Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK (BY-NC-SA): England & Wales; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Episode Information

Series
Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS)
People
Allan Findlay
David McCollum
Jakub Bijak
Keywords
migration
immigration
asylum
Scotland
independence
Department: Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Date Added: 03/03/2014
Duration: 00:30:10

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