Sudan and the fallacy of nationhood - UChannel review

On UChannel Podcast at Princeton University spoke Jok Madut Jok,Associate Professor in the Department of History at Loyola Marymount University about Sudan. We have written before about failed states and the notion of a failed state and even with the very general and little knowledge we tend to have about Sudan, we can assume it is a failed state. Jok Madut Jok goes a step further however to speak about the fallacy of nationhood; the treatment of Sudan as a state, even a failed one at that, is wrong and has terrible consequences.

It needs to be repeated: we know so little about Sudan. Jok is kind enough to fill us in on many details and I advise everybody to listen at least for that: to become a little bit more informed about Sudan. To know of its enormous size, its being straddled on the transition between North Africa and subsaharan Africa, of its numerous ethnicities, languages and religious diversity. It is at this background Jok shows how political Islam has disrupted the country (that was hardly one country to begin with). He also shows that once there is this failed state, assuming nevertheless it is a state, allows for the government to use warlords and wage a brutal war by proxy.

The consequences as always are extremely dear on the ground. Not only is there anarchy, violence and starvation, there is also slavery, child soldiering and terrible cases of rape. The apparent intention is not only to show how the land is ravaged, but also how Sudan failed as a state (cannot be a one state?) and how the notion of nationhood actually works as a detriment rather than as a good ideal to salvage Sudan, if bit by bit.

More UChannel Podcast:
Against intervention,
Lakhdar Brahimi on Afghanistan and Iraq,
Europe versus Islam,
Power of Cities,
Gaza (Tony Blair).

Anne is a Man in the week of March 16

I am planning to give seven reviews this week, although I have not yet decided which they are going to be. Here is a list of the likely candidates.

- A recent issue of UChannel Podcast paid attention to Sudan. Speaker Jok Madut Jok from Sudan, explains the failed state and the entailing sufferings and injustice.

- The latest episode of Veertien Achttien tells the biography of Sir Ian Hamilton. (Dutch)

- The New York Times has a podcast in which the readers' moral questions are addressed. The Ethicist.

- Another recent issue of UChannel Podcast has a lecture about the use of robots in warfare

- VPRO's Marathon Interview had Chris Kijne interview the artist Jan Montijn, with a lot of attention to Montijn's experiences in World War II, most notably in the German Army. (Dutch)

- Upon a tip from a reader I will be listening to Speaking of Faith's conversation with Mary Doria Russell about The Novelist as God.

- There are two new episodes of The Word Nerds waiting for me to listen to and review.

- Also, I have a couple of weeks of BBC's Thinking Allowed that are waiting for a review.

- The London School Of Economics (LSE Events) invited Jean-Pierre Filiu to speak of the EU's contribution to peace in the Middle-East.

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Evolution, genetics and history - New Books In History

The podcast New Books In History begins to state that among biologists it is assumed that mankind has not evolved in the last 60,000 years. I have heard this mentioned on other podcasts as well. NBIH then interviews Gregory Cochran who wrote a book together with Henry Harpending that presents reasons why mankind has continued to develop.

The title of their book is The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution and it sort of puts the common evolutionary logic on its head. Whereas the consensus assumes that since man has captured all corners of the world and with the help of agriculture made himself independent of environment, there is no evolutionary strain towards development in any direction. Cochran tries to show that exactly the development of agriculture in the last 10000 years radically changed the environment of man and with its fundamentally different culture, presented man with totally new parameters of survival, hence with new evolutionary constraints.

He continues to apply this logic onto more smaller levels and groups in a much shorter time span, such as Ashkenazi Jews, who were rather isolated in Europe since the Middle Ages and needed a whole different set of qualities for survival than others. He claims this counts for special features of the group. I wonder whether this isn't taking it too far, since this stretches only over 1000 years and that seems awfully short to me, from the standpoint of evolution. In any case, we need to know more of genetics to get better answers and this goes to show, genetics is going to affect our narratives of history, which is only one reason among many why this podcast issue was a thrilling one to listen to.

More NBIH:
Kees Boterbloem about Jan Struys.

The Great Library - In Our Time

Last Thursday's episode of BBC's In Our Time was about the The Library of Alexandria. As far as I knew it was destroyed by a Muslim conquerer who reasoned (I paraphrase): anything that is there this is the Koran, we already have it and anything that is there that is not the Koran, we do not need it.

The surprise by the end was that, likely, the Library was not destroyed, it just faded away, its remains now residing under the sea level before the north coast of Egypt. The beginning was with Ptolemy, who was taking the heritage of Alexander's conquests to a cultural level, to conquer the culture of the world after Alex had conquered the world. In addition, the Greeks with Ptolemy needed to preserve their Greek heritage in their new Egyptian surroundings.

And so, Alexandria became, as designed, the cultural center of the world. Amassing texts in its library and creating the ultimate environment for study. It also rapidly became the largest city. In its heydays it mast have attracted scholars and students from all over the world, but eventually its was overtaken by other centers such as Byzantium and Rome and even though there must have been attacks on the Library, its end as the guests on IOT assume, was simply that it fell apart. Became disorganized, dilapidated and slowly vanished into oblivion.

More In Our Time:
The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot,
The destruction of Carthage,
The brothers Grimm,
The modest proposal,
History of history.

Jimmy Wales on Wikipedia - Econtalk review

On EconTalk Russ Robert's latest guest was Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. Wales spoke about the success of Wikipedia, gave some explanation on how it works and spent some thoughts on where his next moves are.

The most interesting part, in my experience, of the interview is where Wales relates how he started out to make an encyclopedia in a more traditional way and couldn't make it work. The eventual bottom-up approach of Wikipedia, was not there from the start and was not self-evident to Wales. It seems that the formula still surprises him today.

Although there is some talk of how Wikipedia does in comparison to other encyclopedia's, I would have wanted Roberts to push Wales more to address the criticism that exist. Hardly any attention is to that or even to possible weaknesses or problems. The lack of cliffs allowed Wales to sail freely and deliver almost a sales presentation about his product. You get to see behind the screens of Wikipedia, as far as Wales allows and feels completely comfortable with.

More EconTalk:
New Deal and War Economy,
The Depression,
Wildlife, Property and Poverty.

Willem van Oranje als bijbelfiguur - Hoor Geschiedenis

Op elke werkdag luister ik naar de podcast Hoor! Geschiedenis, van Feico Houweling. Elke keer is er weer een aflevering van vijf minuten die me weer een stapje verder neemt in de Nederlandse geschiedenis. We zijn inmiddels bij aflevering 117 en in de tijd zijn we aangeland aan het eind van de zestiende eeuw. We zitten dus midden in de Opstand tegen Filips II van Spanje en hebben derhalve eindelijk het begin bereikt van de moderne Nederlandse Staat.

Een van de charmante uitstapjes die Houweling regelmatig maakt, is het voorlezen en bespreken van teksten uit het tijdvak dat op dat moment besproken wordt. Zo hebben we al het een en ander uit de Middeleeuwen gehad, we hebben Erasmus gelezen en recentelijk heeft hij twee aflevering besteed aan het Wilhelmus. Ook daar krijg je dus het gevoel dat we de moderne tijd binnengaan. Opeens gaat het over iets dat we vandaag nog gebruiken.

Houweling analyseert het gehele Wilhelmus en stipt een aantal kenmerken aan die je ook zou kunnen toepassen op de Nederlands cultuur en het Nederlandse staatseigen. Of dat allemaal zo toepasselijk is, kan natuurlijk bestreden worden, maar het is iets dat zeker niet in een cultuurgeschiedenis achterwege kan blijven. En terwijl hij het volkslied besprak en suggereerde dat daarin aan de persoon van Willem van Oranje haast Bijbelse proporties worden gegeven, vermeldt hij enkel dat in het achtste couplet een parallel met Koning David wordt gemaakt. Ik zelf had echter de indruk dat in het derde en negende couplet een parallel met Mozes aan te wijzen zou zijn en een vergleijking tussen de Opstand en de Exodus mogelijk wordt gemaakt. Ik meende mij te herinneren dat de historicus Simon Schama ook al gewag maakte van de neiging in de Nederlandse cultuur om een parallel met de Israelieten te zoeken. Ik heb het zo gauw even niet terug kunnen vinden.

Afbeelding: Wikimedia Commons. Schilderij van Adriaen Thomasz Key uit circa 1575

Meer Hoor! Geschiedenis:
Dagelijks genoegen: hoor! geschiedenis,
Hoor! Geschiedenis - historische podcast recensie.