WHEN once people might have talked of guilt and free will, now it is agency and victimhood that are the favoured terms in conceptualising the individual’s relationship to society.
Questions of agency and victimhood crowd in on the account of Shamima Begum’s involvement with Islamic State (IS), as told in Josh Baker’s riveting documentary I’m Not a Monster (Radio 4, Wednesdays), converging on one, central question: is she more sinned against than sinning? A naïve 15-year-old longing for Utopia and radicalised by a trusted friend? Or a bored teenager looking for kicks among exotic, dangerous rebels?
A feature-length television treatment of this subject was due to be broadcast this week on BBC2, but, if you like a slower burn, then this ten-part series is the medium for you; and the Beeb have been canny in reserving for radio the first major revelation: that the people-trafficker responsible for getting Shamima and her two companions over the Turkey-Syria border was affiliated to the Canadian Embassy in Jordan. Aren’t the Canadians supposed to be the nice guys of North America?
Only in Episode 4 (last week) did the programme start grappling with the big question. Ms Begum denies knowing anything about IS barbarities, despite their wide reporting in the West, but she is inconsistent. Vastly more important than what she saw or didn’t see on social media, however, was the influence of a friend who had already taken the journey and vouched for all the blandishments of the Caliphate.
What was lacking was any discussion of specific religious doctrines or practices which might have played a part in Ms Begum’s thinking. If she was capable of organising carriage to Turkey, and from there to Syria, she is presumably capable of articulating something of her ideological principles.
The same tussle between agency and victimhood characterised Kate Beaton’s story, as told to Outlook (World Service, Thursday of last week): of a graduate student and wannabe cartoonist, travelling to the oil sands of Alberta to find work. There, she entered a camp, where 2500 workers, mostly migrants from across North America and mostly male, were extracting bitumen from the alien terrain. As they say in the old Westerns, this was no place for a lady. Beaton’s account of sexual intimidation in this deracinated, isolated population is chilling. How and why she stayed there for two years remained a mystery to the listener.
Frank Field has throughout his career found himself out of step with his peers when it comes to questions of personal responsibility (Press, 3 February). In a poignant interview on Sunday (Radio 4), he blamed the “huge failure” of his campaigns against poverty on both his inability to promote an understanding of “self-interested altruism” and the Labour Party’s unwillingness to see “the fallen side of human nature”. On the basis of the self-critical tone of this interview, he might be content with the epitaph “I wasn’t that good.”