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Three Stories of Art and War II коли гуркочуть гармати- музи замовкають The Russian invasion catapulted the Ukrainian art world into crisis, and desperate measures were undertaken to secure staff, collections, and artists. Dreams are deferred but stubborn resilience manifests as a desire to not only protect cultural heritage, but also somehow provide opportunities for continued creativity. Three institutions from all regions of Ukraine—Central, East, and West—reflect on their current challenges, on how they are coping, and what might be in store for the future. When cannons roar, the muses will not fall silent. Mykhailo Glubokyi, an IT specialist from Kharkiv, Ukraine, is the Communications Director for Izolyatsia/iZone and a board member of Trans Europe Halles, a Europe-based network of cultural centres at the forefront of repurposing industrial buildings for arts, culture, and activism. Izolyatsia is a nongovernmental and non-profit platform for contemporary art. It was founded in 2010 in a former insulation materials factory in Donetsk and on 9 June 2014 the territory was seized by Russian Federation militants and is now used as a prison camp and torture chamber. Izolyatsia subsequently relocated to Kyiv to a shipyard warehouse where it continued its programme as both a centre for international creative industries and Ukrainian cultural activities. On 24 March 2022, Izolyatsia in Kyiv was forced to close due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This interview was conducted on 14 April 2022. Figs 1 & 2. Pre-2014, Izolyatsia Donetsk, Make-Up…Peace and Homo Bulla © Mykhailo Glubokyi. Constance Uzwyshyn, for CJLPA : Izolyatsia was based in Donetsk. What is going on with the Donetsk Izolyatsia building now? Mykhailo Glubokyi : It is a prison.[1] Unfortunately, it remains held by Russians. Stanislav Aseyev,[2] who was released, has started looking furiously for people who imprisoned him. He managed to identify a couple of Russians who worked at the prison. As soon as they became public, they disappeared. It is not possible to understand who is behind this now and what happened to these people. Unfortunately, nothing has changed with this place. Now we have received reports that in newly occupied places, like Kherson, they are doing something similar there—building illegal prisons, holding people, torturing people, persecuting people. Unfortunately, this model is considered successful and is duplicated.

Each year, The Economist publishes a Democracy Index. The 2022 edition listed 167 countries ranked on metrics of five dimensions: electoral process and pluralism, the functioning of government, political participation, democratic political culture, and civil liberties. The US ranked 26th in the world. At the top of the list were Norway, New Zealand, Finland, and Sweden. At the bottom were North Korea, Myanmar, and Afghanistan. No real surprises there, but Taiwan (8), Uruguay (13), South Korea (16), UK (18), and Costa Rica (21) all outranked the US. The US had slipped over the past six years from a full democracy to a flawed democracy.[1] All democracies have flaws. They are human creations after all. But the US has more flaws than many of its democratic peers. The insurrection of 6 January 2021 revealed a disturbing refusal by some to accept the results of democratic elections. On that day, protestors gathered at the Capitol to overturn the result of the 2020 Presidential election. The insurrectionists sought to stop the ceremonial congressional confirmation of Joe Biden as the 46th President of the US. In this essay, I want to explore some of the reasons behind this democratic slippage. I focus on electoral issues, rather than the deep-seated socio-economic context of the insurrection. I will draw on some of my previous work.[2] It is important to begin with the realization that the US was founded as a republic, not as a democracy. The founders were distrustful of the raw political energy of the people. In 1787, James Madison, the 4th US President, described democracies as spectacles of turbulence and contention; incompatible with personal security or the rights of property.[3] Thus, the government in the US was structured to insulate political elites from popular opinion. The Congress, the executive, and the judicial–a nine-member oligarchy of lifetime political appointees whose guiding ideology always seems half a century behind the general public–limit and blunt the expression of the popular will. The hallmarks of a healthy democracy are that each vote should be counted and each one should count equally. This is not the case in the USA, where the difference between popular will and political representation is growing. Let’s look at four sources for the growing deficits of US democracy. Follow The Money Money plays a huge role in US politics. Members of Congress need to solicit vast amounts of money to wage their electoral campaigns. Money comes from a variety of sources. There is the modest contribution of the ordinary citizen, that can sometimes make a difference in insurgent campaigns. There are also the legal contributions from well-founded groups. Lastly, there is the ‘ dark money’ of nonprofit organizations including unions and trade organizations, and political action campaigns (PACs) who do not have to disclose their donors.[4] Individuals can contribute to these organizations’ political campaigns while remaining anonymous. The Supreme Court, in a series of rulings including Buckley v, Valeo in 1976 and Citizens United v. FEC in 2010, made it easier for all types of money, including dark money to flood into the political system.[5]

Introduction There has been an epochal shift from the traditional industries established by the Industrial Revolution, including hand production methods in machines[1], to a post-Industrial Revolution economy based upon information technology, widely known as the Digital Age.[2] Lord Sales has referred to computational machines as ‘transformational due to their mechanical ability to complete tasks…faster than any human could’.[3] The twenty-first century has seen an enhancement in human innovation, and the world of law is being forced to change. Legal practice has become more technology-centric, allowing for law in theory and in practice to keep abreast of society. This article explores how technology, specifically AI, has evolved through the digital age. Firstly, it will explore how the evolution of AI has warranted a cataclysmic shift in the law. Then, in chapter two, it will illustrate the challenges which AI has posed and which it has the potential to create for the law. In so doing, it will identify how AI could pose a substantial threat to the law. In chapter three, however, solutions to the issues that AI poses will be addressed and analysed. Undoubtedly, AI can be a substantial threat to the law. Nonetheless, this article aims to illustrate that human creativity must not be underestimated. If used correctly, AI could change how law functions in the twenty-first century for the better. This article explores various theoretical aspects of how AI and the law interact with society, focusing in particular on Lessig’s Law of the Horse[4] and the new revelation of the Law of the Zebra.[5] It further treats the concept of technological exceptionalism and how this theory has allowed for the progressive evolution of AI. McGinnis and Pearce argue that machine intelligence and AI will cause a ‘great disruption’ in the market for legal services.[6] This article will explore this concept of disruptive innovation, suggesting that the disruption McGinnis and Pearce allude to will be more significant in scale than initially anticipated. It will explore the ethical, moral, and social issues associated with AI, investigating how AI has the potential to pose a problem to the law. As an extension of the moral, social, and ethical issues presented, this article will offer an insight into AI’s autonomy as regards the law. Finally, the problems of foreseeability and transparency will be discussed in terms of the substantial issues AI poses to the law. The idea of the robot judge will be addressed, identifying how this could materialise. Its benefits and challenges will subsequently be critically assessed in terms of the threat to legal practice in the twenty-first century. Additionally, the practicalities of the robot judge will be assessed, suggesting that it is an unnecessary fear and a potential gift. As part of chapter two, the idea of AI systems being granted a more respected legal personality will be explored. The arguments presented will allude to the sophistication of current AI technology and issues surrounding liability. The importance of the concept of legal personality will be stressed, demonstrating that society must be cautious as to who is granted legal rights of personhood. Chapter three will present innovative solutions to the problems assessed in chapter two. This section will set out a detailed model that allows for the comprehension of the legal disruption caused by AI and its associated technologies.

Then from out the cave the mighty Polyphemus answered them: ‘My friends, it is Noman that is slaying me by guile and not by force’. And they made answer and addressed him with winged words: ‘If, then, no man does violence to thee in thy loneliness, sickness which comes from great Zeus thou mayest in no wise escape’. —Homer , The Odyssey, Book IX […] for when man was first placed in the Garden of Eden, he was put there ut operaretur eum, that he might cultivate it; which shows that man was not born to be idle […] let us cultivate our garden. —Voltaire, Candide Introduction The emergence of global digital surveillance and control heralds the advent of digital technologies as the nexus of social cohesion and political decision-making. The ominous image of representatives from Google, Apple, Facebook (Meta), and Amazon engaging in political discourse with representatives from the seven most economically advanced nations in the world at the G7 meeting in 2017 epitomises how this emergence has upset the balance of power. This new form of surveillance and control marks a paradigm shift within surveillance theory. Whereas Foucauldian panopticism had informed our understanding of the dynamic between surveillance and control, many recent publications are more likely to be informed by Deleuze’s concept of the society of control, which reconceives the dynamic as existing between access and control. We are, then, beckoned to shift the locus of our analyses from subjectification to access control as the primary power mechanism to be analysed. In this paper, I examine the contemporary discussion surrounding Foucauldian and Deleuzean methods of power analysis. While I will defend the Foucauldian focus on subjectification as a privileged power mechanism, I recognise that Foucault’s analysis of subjectification as such is untenable. This paper seeks to uncover how a post-Foucauldian conception of subjectification can contribute to the discourse on power in the emerging societal landscape of global digital surveillance and control. In order to arrive at a post-Foucauldian conception of subjectification, I first elucidate what exactly Foucault means by subject. Then, informed by Heidegger’s analysis of Dasein, I exposit how a subject arrives at their operating framework, ie, their framework of possible thought and action. Employing Deleuze’s concept of territory, I then arrive at a conception of how the operating framework of subjects can be produced and reproduced. This exploration ultimately culminates in ten theses regarding a post-Foucauldian concept of power and subjectification. Finally, I conclude that a post-Foucauldian conception of subjectification can restore the focus on subjectification within power analysis, thereby providing us with an explanatory model that can account for the voluntary display of intentional socially desirable behaviour by subjects en masse. 1. Foucault and Deleuze Before delving into the discussion surrounding Foucauldian and Deleuzean power analyses, I will first devote a few elucidatory remarks to the concept of power and the concealments that the English language entails in respect to it (§1.1). Afterwards, I articulate the difference in focus between Foucault’s and Deleuze’s analyses. In §1.2, I defend Foucault’s position, namely, the importance of a focus on subjectification in power analysis. In §1.3, I problematise Foucault’s account of subjectification and articulate the necessity of a post-Foucauldian conception of subjectification.

Artists have drawn ideas, thoughts, and concepts from the works of others for centuries. However, copyright infringement issues frequently arise in the contemporary world. The case discussed in this piece concerns contemporary artworks from the ‘Canal Zone’ series by Richard Prince. Most of the works had photographs by Patrick Cariou incorporated in them, which were previously published in Cariou’s Yes Rasta book. Following an analysis of appropriation art history, postmodern theories, contemporary art market, the contradictory nature of copyright law, and finally the US ‘fair use’ test and ‘transformative character’ requirement, the author is critical of copyright law not allowing for appropriation art. She is of the view that under certain circumstances, the use of preexisting art is justified. Appropriation art history In the history of art, it would be an impossible task to count all the times artists have ‘copied’, in the broad meaning of the word, one another. Appropriation art per se was recognised around the time Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque made their collages from 1912 onwards, and Marcel Duchamp’s exhibited his ‘Readymades’ in 1915.[1] It can be defined as intentional borrowing, copying, and alteration of existing images and objects.[2] Artists have been ‘appropriating’ each other’s works for centuries. One example is Raphael (fig. 1), whose work was recreated by Diego Velázquez (fig. 2), which in turn inspired Francis Bacon (fig. 3). Fig 1. Raphael, Portrait of Pope Julius II, 1511. Wikimedia Commons: National Gallery. . Fig 2. Diego Velázquez, Portrait of Pope Innocent X, 1650. Wikimedia Commons: Doria Pamphilj Gallery. .

‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ is a phrase that has been raptured up into the popular English lexicon, cited, quoted, parodied, remixed, and dissolved into an ironic confirmation of the satire that produced it. It was the most iconic line from Network (1976), a now-classic film that told the dark tale of a fictional American network news anchor, Howard Beale (played by posthumous Academy Award-winner Peter Finch), whose blooming madness was exploited by his bosses for ratings bonanza. But in becoming a meme detached from its context, it rather proved the film’s point: in the particle accelerator of mass media, even the most potent radicalism can be diffused into mere entertainment. The line’s endless citation,[1] repeated without irony,[2] obscures the fact that the line represented a grim low point in the movie. Shouting it into the camera, Beale commanded the American public to get out of their chairs and holler the memorable phrase out their windows, shouting to the heavens in pure outrage about ‘the depression, and the inflation, and the Russians, and the crime in the street’ (sound familiar?), leading to angry Americans shouting about their anger into the uncaring night. It was not meant to be admired, much less imitated. It was a warning. And a particularly prescient one, at that. The film has many admirers — such as Aaron Sorkin, whose own smugly liberal style is but a dim echo of Network screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky’s own preachy yet eloquently radical approach. Such fans suggested that the movie predicted the rise of reality TV; in 2000, Roger Ebert, in a reflection on the film, asked if even in his darkest nightmares Chayefsky could have foreseen how his film anticipated the World Wrestling Federation and Jerry Springer, which is almost quaint to consider now.[3] In truth, none of those things were what Network anticipated. The film was about something more abstract than a single TV show, or even a genre. It was about how mass media perverted popular will and commodified it. And nothing embodies the realisation of its warning quite like social media. Indeed, to look at a platform like Twitter is to see millions of people yelling endlessly about their rage into the endless night of the internet, a vastly more efficient and perpetually running version of people yelling out their apartment windows. What results is a medium that is, despite all evidence to the contrary, anathema to politics. *** The best satires are often the least effective as warnings; the very things that make them popular—memorable, engaging speeches like Howard Beale’s—can outshine the subtler points that make them incisive. While writing this article, I looked up the most popular YouTube clip of the ‘mad as hell’ speech.

Introduction The work of many 17th-18th century thinkers on politics and society continues to shape modern discourse, with notable contributions including Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651), John Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (1750). The renown enjoyed by a small number of thinkers should not, however, divert us from more obscure but equally significant works from the period. The Anglo-Dutch critic and satirist Bernard Mandeville’s The Fable of the Bees (1714, henceforth ‘ Fable ’) is one such work. Through his central argument that the political class did not need to behave morally in order to establish a well-ordered society—hence the famous dictum ‘Private Vices, Publick Benefits’—Mandeville became one of the most controversial figures of the period. This piece will provide a brief account of Mandeville’s thought and the fierce criticism it attracted, before looking at cases of political scandals in post-war Western democracies. The legal and philosophical scholar Edward L. Rubin has compellingly outlined how, in our contemporary era, a ‘morality of self-fulfilment’, in which citizens are primarily occupied with personal interests as opposed to wider ethical commitments, has replaced the forms of Christian piety seen in the 18th century.[1] Viewed alongside Rubin, Mandeville’s thought appears almost prophetic. Though his viewpoints on the merits of capitalism and the cynicism of the political classes were radical to his contemporaries, they seem highly applicable to 21st-century society. Exploring instances of dubious moral conduct by members of the governing classes in modern morally permissive societies, the continuing relevance of Mandevillian thought becomes especially apparent. Morality in a commercial society—Mandeville’s thought In the work of Mandeville, the lay view of 18th-century Britain as a society dictated by monolithic concepts of decency and piety is quickly problematised. Indeed, these concepts are his primary targets. Humans were not a unique species following a divinely-ordained path. On the contrary, in the Fable he argued that ‘Providence should have no greater regard to our species, than it has to flies’.[2] His relegation of religion to the sidelines of discourse was an important aspect of his most prominent argument. Contrary to a movement of moralising writers who feared that commerce and social change would undermine ethics and values, the central thesis of the Fable was to connect these processes together in the couplet ‘Private Vices, Publick Benefits’.[3] He explained that ‘the skilful management of wary politicians’ regulated society. The hive of ‘bees’, a thinly-disguised metaphor for the vibrant, prosperous metropolis of London he had come to call home, were kept afloat by immorality as ‘their crimes conspired to make them great’.[4] Mandeville argued that, contrary to Biblical notions of a benevolent soul influencing human action, ‘Man centres everything in himself, and neither loves nor hates but for his own sake’.[5] He also reduced the good sense of polite society to a mere façade, as opposed to any form of innate morality, as ‘all good manners consist in flattering the pride of others, and concealing our own’.[6] Whilst his side-lining of matters relating to the Church reflected the secular character of Mandeville’s thought, the few references to the place of religion in society reduced it to little more than a tool for cynical social control. At the beginning of Part 1 of the Fable , he outlined his aim to expose the ‘unreasonableness and folly’ of those always ‘exclaiming against those vices’, a clear attack on members of the clergy publishing moralising treatises.[7] Indeed, his lampooning of the established Church went even further, identifying as the most important factors for social stability ‘envy and emulation’, traits which had ‘kept more men in bounds’ than ‘all the sermons that have been preached since the time of the apostles’.[8] In relativising Christian morality to little more than another social more and interpreting the calculating and cunning characteristics of the ruling class as necessary for wider harmony, Mandeville established himself as a highly original and controversial satirist.

Does the law take its own course or is it made to take a certain course? Property cases are notorious for taking forever, but when the crime is murder, i.e., when the state is the prosecutor, and the facts of the case have been ascertained by the most reliable authorities, can justice elude the victim’s families for as long as two or three decades? Or is it made to do so? These questions arise from the way two cases—which should have been front page news but have simply disappeared from the public consciousness—have developed. I. When protectors become predators On 9 January 1993, when Mumbai was in the grip of the second wave of communal riots sparked off by the demolition of the Babri Masjid[1], eight Muslims were shot dead by the police inside the Suleman Usman Bakery and the adjacent madrasa (an Islamic school) in the city’s old Muslim quarter. The trial of those policemen is still on—over 29 years later. If there was ever a case that can be described as an ‘orphan’, this is it. Nobody is interested in it. Those most affected by the incident—the victims’ families—are either unaware of or indifferent to the legal proceedings. The whereabouts of only one of the eight affected families is known: Abdullah Qasim, the son of one of the victims, is now a middle-aged school teacher with a family in Mumbai. The fire within, that propelled him as a 20-year-old to intervene in the initial stages of the case, is seemingly gone. Believing that the killers of his father will never be punished, his involvement is limited to appearing in court when summoned as a witness. He has already done so five times in the space of a year, taking leave from work each time—but every time, his turn to depose hasn’t come. For the Public Prosecutors (PPs) that have handled the case through the years, the tattered, yellowing files present an unpleasant, thankless duty; for the defence, the longer it is delayed, the lower the chances of their clients being brought to book. And for judges, the fact that the case is still pending, almost three decades after the incident at its centre, remains an enigma. ‘ Kasla case ahey ? (What’s this case about?)’. This question, asked with irritation by every new judge (the case record shows it’s meandered through at least 11 courts and 13 judges so far), is like a stab through the heart. If only they knew the words used by a sitting High Court judge to describe the incident! ‘The police behaved in a manner not becoming of a police force of a civilised, democratic state’, concluded Justice B N Srikrishna, heading the one-man judicial commission of inquiry into Mumbai’s post-Babri Masjid demolition riots of December 1992 and January 1993.[2]

Introduction Law centres are providers of legal aid and have been in existence since the early 1970s. Their main role has been to assist those that reside within their local communities. They specialise predominantly in social welfare or ‘poverty’ law as their legal representatives possess detailed knowledge about the problems their local residents face. This article is divided into timeframes and will consider the development of law centres in the UK from 1945 to 2021. Between 1945 and 1970, the Labour Party under Clement Attlee passed the Legal Aid and Advice Act 1949, which enabled legal aid to be funded by the State. The first law centre was created in 1970. Between 1970 and 1986, there was an exponential growth in law centres in the UK; however, the Law Society (of England and Wales) and the State were not supportive of them. Between 1986 and 1997, this article considers the further funding cuts that were made to law centres by the Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher and John Major. Between 1997 and 2010, the New Labour Party (under Tony Blair) was slightly flexible as they attempted to introduce the Community Legal Partnership Scheme (CLPS), which lacked a clear policy and coordinated funding method, so it failed. Between 2010 and 2021, the Conservative Government decided to further cut funding for law centres, but they have survived through mobilising their efforts in seeking funding from other organisations. The article submits that it was not just the State but also the Law Society’s lack of support for law centres that thwarted their development. This lack of continuity in their development can be traced back to the specific antagonistic relationships between the State, the Law Society on the one hand and the law centres on the other. The Law Society was more concerned about protecting the profession for financial reasons than the public throughout this movement. Secondly, there has never been a clear policy on law centres which has been exacerbated by the lack of a coordinated method of funding throughout the history of this movement. Having a policy would have aided their development as there would have been a clearer funding mechanism in place from the very beginning, which could have also led to uniformity in their operations. It is remarkable how far law centres have developed in terms of the services they offer to the most marginalised section of society despite the insurmountable challenges they have faced over the years due to a lack of funding, policy, and their antagonistic relationship with the State. 1945-1970: Prioritising Poverty Law The Labour Government, led by Clement Attlee, passed the Legal Aid and Advice Act 1949 to add to the social welfare of the State.[1] As a result of this Act, legal aid was funded by the State.[2] The Law Society administered the legal aid scheme alongside the Lord Chancellor for approximately forty years.[3] The Law Society was created in 1845,[4] and it was entrusted by Parliament and awarded ever-widening powers of administration and control over the solicitors’ profession.[5] Around 1948, solicitors in private practice successfully prevented the legal aid scheme from being extended to salaried law centres as they feared losing clients.[6] Further, the Attlee government considered legal advice centres to be a luxury rather than essentiality.[7] This marked the beginning of the antagonistic relationship between the State and law centres.

Three Stories of Art and War III коли гуркочуть гармати- музи замовкають The Russian invasion catapulted the Ukrainian art world into crisis, and desperate measures were undertaken to secure staff, collections, and artists. Dreams are deferred but stubborn resilience manifests as a desire to not only protect cultural heritage, but also somehow provide opportunities for continued creativity. Three institutions from all regions of Ukraine—Central, East, and West—reflect on their current challenges, on how they are coping, and what might be in store for the future. When cannons roar, the muses will not fall silent. The Jam Factory was on the verge of its debut as an interdisciplinary contemporary art centre in a repurposed industrial space in the Western Ukrainian city of Lviv when the Russian invasion started. Jam Factory General Director Bozhena Pelenska has a background in art and culture management, with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, an overseas scholarship year of study at the University of Ottawa, as well as a master’s degree in cultural studies from Lviv National University through a programme affiliated with the Central European University. She fled temporarily to Poland at the onset of hostilities to place her young daughter in a safer environment and has been returning to Lviv to continue preparations for the opening in now radically changed circumstances. This interview was conducted on 16 April 2022. Peter Bejger, for CJLPA : Please describe the Jam Factory. Bozhena Pelenska : The Jam Factory[1] is a complex of several buildings in the Pidzamche industrial district of Lviv. The main part, when you arrive at the site, is a beautiful old building which looks like a castle. It was built in a neo-Gothic style, with a tower, and the building was originally used to produce alcoholic beverages in the Austrian period, and jam during the Soviet era. This was a heritage building and had to be adapted and restored correctly. Our approach was to preserve as much as possible and to be true to ourselves. By May everything should have been finished. We had our timeline and date. The international press conference was planned for 4 April. We had our final timeline where the curators had to present the programme. The opening date actually was set for 26 August. That was in our calendar. This is where the war caught us. Fig 1. An architectural rendering of the future Jam Factory Art Centre, Lviv. © The Jam Factory.

Introduction For the maverick French author Colette, writing about her childhood offered a chance to reflect on the past while keeping a firm grasp on the present. Though frequently avant-garde in their social philosophies, her memoir-adjacent novels also make evident a measured introspection. As she writes of her own attitudes towards novels and life in semi-autobiographical novel La Maison de Claudine : ‘Je ne sais quelle froideur littéraire, saine à tout prendre, me garda du délire romanesque…’.[1] This statement speaks to her work’s tension between the realist detachment of ‘froideur littéraire’ and the nineteenth-century romanticising visions of the pastoral evoked by ‘délire romanesque’. Indeed, Colette’s writing defied simple categorisation—particularly in regard to its subtly unconventional depictions of rural France. As a close reading of La Maison de Claudine (hereafter Maison ) and the similarly retrospective Sido show, Colette’s writing on her pastoral origins is distinctive. She challenges ideas and values associated with the countryside in French realist novels and specifically pastoral novels, all while remaining distinct from the realist tradition. In this sense, though Colette’s writing has an unmistakable nostalgia, it is remarkable in its divergence from traditional romantic countryside depictions. This divergence is especially apparent in her writing’s feminist thematic focus and doubting, self-reflexive stylistic modernity; her books’ treatment of memory is self-referencing and avant-garde. She does not take the supposed ‘noble décor’ in which she grew up at face value.[2] In this essay, I argue that while Maison and Sido look back in time for inspiration, they are forward-looking and complex in their depictions of the countryside. Colette’s illustration of country living challenges stereotypes of the rural France of her childhood, which was often either romanticised for its traditionalism, or understood as being politically, economically, and socially backwards in a more pejorative sense. Colette’s work and characters, however, subvert this idea: the experiences she records and embellishes render the countryside a more modern and creative place than her urban French contemporaries believed it to be. Through devices such as humour, absurdism, and self-interrogation, Colette’s writing subverts more static depictions of nature reminiscent of the pastoral novel genre and its conservative origins in ‘la vie mondaine [,] la conception de l’honnête homme, [et les] mœurs rustiques’.[3] As explored by Eugen Weber in Peasants into Frenchmen , despite the heterogeneity of cultures across rural France, Parisians living in the mid-late nineteenth century—the time of Colette’s childhood—imagined peasants as ‘vulgar, hardly civilised, their nature meek but wild’.[4] A ‘fictional, tranquil countryside’ became the ‘pastoral vision of the rural world’ incorporated into primary school reading during the Third Republic, offering ‘conservative peasants’ as a counterpoint to France’s urban turbulence.[5]

The Tanner Lectures on Human Values are prestigious gatherings of globally renowned scholars across the humanities and the sciences. This year’s lectures addressed the questions of Providing for a nation’s health, in a global context , where philosophers, economists, a physician and a social psychologist offered their take on different aspects of the healthcare response to global pandemics. In this piece, students, research fellows, and visiting fellows currently at Clare Hall, Cambridge provide their individual and distinct reflections on the lectures. They highlight a continual need for openness and multi-disciplinary engagement surrounding complex, global, and often polarising issues. The reflections presented herein reflect the views and ideas of scientists, philosophers, sociologists, and healthcare professionals from diverse backgrounds and nationalities. Beyond sharing these different and complementary perspectives, we aim to promote diverse, informative and welcoming forums for scholarly engagement in the pressing global issues of our time. Introduction The Tanner Lectures on Human Values[1] were founded in July 1978 at Clare Hall, Cambridge, by the American scholar, industrialist, and philanthropist, Obert Clark Tanner. His hope was to foster a legacy of lectures which ‘ will contribute to the intellectual and moral life of mankind’. Tanner stated: ‘I see them simply as a search for a better understanding of human behaviour and human values. This understanding may be pursued for its own intrinsic worth, but it may also eventually have practical consequences for the quality of personal and social life’. The Tanner Lectures are financed by an endowment, and other gifts, donated to the University of Utah exclusively for this purpose. Permanent lectureship has only been granted to eight other universities outside Cambridge. O utstanding scholars or leaders in broadly defined fields of human values—which transcend ethnic, national, religious, or ideological distinctions—are recognized and honoured through the invitation. Their lectures are also published as a written version of their presentation. This year’s Tanner Clare Hall lectures[2] invited presenters to discuss broad philosophical, financial, political, and artistic aspects of the Covid-19 pandemic. The two evenings featured six speakers from various disciplines. During the first evening, Professor Allen Buchanan, an American philosopher, was invited to speak on ‘The relationship between national and global health’. His presentation covered several areas, including how one defines ‘crisis’, when it is ongoing, as was the case for the duration of the Covid-19 pandemic. Two responses to his presentation followed, and were delivered by Cécile Fabre, Oxford Professor of Political Philosophy and Senior Research Fellow in Politics, who addressed moral duty and how it might be sustained, and by Sir Paul Tucker, a Research Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School, who commented on public health governance and its financing. For the second evening’s topic, ‘The consequences for healthcare practice, globally’, the invited speakers preferred a less hierarchical order of presenters and shared equal ‘rank’. Oxford’s Professor Trish Greenhalgh pleaded for the prudence and prevention masks offered; Professor Ama de-Graft Aikins, the British Academy’s Global Professor at University College, London, provided a compelling and colourful portrait of pandemic realities and resilience strategies in Ghana and other African countries; and Alexander Bird, Cambridge’s Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy, contrasted and compared the costs approved and disbursed by the NHS in ‘standard’ cases with those associated with Covid-19 expenses in this pandemic. Clare Hall students, research fellows, and two visiting fellows reflected on which of the Tanner 2022 messages proposed by this year’s speakers were most salient. We considered the lecture content and the subsequent, animated, discussions held during the question periods and social interactions immediately following the presentations. We submit these independently written perspectives, inviting readers to consider commonalities and discrepancies between them. Beyond the narrative, we discuss and highlight the role, and importance, of multidisciplinary and diverse perspectives in global health issues.