Workshop Notes: Rethinking ‘North and South’, Comparison and Conceptualisation

The Big Society, Small World workshop at the University of Bristol a couple of weeks ago brought together a refreshingly cross-cutting and varied group of speakers, which in my mind can only be a greatly helpful way of addressing the constant need to question and challenge conventional constructions of areas, topics and discipline which typically structure academic institutions and events.  The general theme of the day was moving beyond global divisions of ‘north’ and ‘south’, or ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ – this was undertaken in different ways by different speakers.

Martin Gainsborough, who has investigated liberal interventionism in inner-city Bristol from the 19th-century onwards, laid down this question at the beginning of the day: why is Development Studies taught about countries ‘over there’?  Africa, of course, is the iconic centre (and sometimes sole component) of development courses.  I wholeheartedly agree and would be really interested to learn of any courses/departments that are already looking at this problem and integrating studies.

Mark Duffield described common shifts from ‘modernism’ (which sought to reduce uncertainty and pursue universalist policies and systems through state-centred models such as national healthcare) to ‘liberalism’ (which seeks to embrace uncertainty and dismantle state provision, with NGOs rapidly filling the vacuum delivering temporary and targeted project aid).  Broadly speaking the argument was that these shifts have been playing out across both ‘north’ and ‘south’.  The current crisis has exacerbated but also illuminated the fragility of democracy and social protection in liberal capitalist systems, the NGOization of the north, and our having to go through our own ‘Structural Adjustment Programme’ replete with food banks/feeding stations.

Jeff Winters talked about his research on oligarchy, which spans Asia (Indonesia and the Philippines in particular) and the US, with some equally applicable analysis and conclusions.  There were some vibrant discussions on this – especially relevant in light of developing conceptualisations of the worldwide mega-wealthy, or ’1%,’ through phenomena like the Occupy movement, and the contest for Republican candidature currently playing out in the US.  Apparently Mitt Romney would be the 2nd richest President ever, and can increase his personal wealth by the worth of the average American household every 3 days, simply by sitting on and accruing to his $250 million fortune.  I have not read Winters’ notable book on oligarchy, though he admitted that many of the questions being put to him at the workshop quickly revealed its limitations: firstly, in dealing only with how oligarchs may be tamed (by which he meant stabilised and ordered, willing to invest and hold off preying on each other) rather than fundamentally limited or prevented from reaching such elevated financial and power statuses in the first place; and secondly, in sidestepping questions of how oligarchy operates throughout the global – as opposed to national – economy (for example, authorities may prevent overt predation in the USA but the violence and disorder inherent in the oligarch’s wealth channels may reverberate elsewhere, as with the drugs trade in Latin America, for instance).

Jean Grugel, an expert on children’s rights both in ‘developed’ Europe and ‘developing’ South America, gave an interesting account of the wacky realpolitik of the European Commission.  The EC’s recent forays into the area of children’s rights in the EU did not go according to plan when the prominent NGOs and advocacy groups they had got on board (who were going to provide the kind of civil society voice, authority and resources they needed) pulled out from policy dialogue.  These organisations were disappointed that the EC, rather than use this as a unique opportunity to hit hard at states’ abuse of children’s rights, such as increasing child poverty or detention of asylum-seekers, came up with the sple, showstopping idea of setting up a missing children telephone hotline.  Without the support of the influential NGOs, this initiative “couldn’t even be given the veneer of success”.  What was most interesting to me was how this issue highlighted in an open and self-reflective way the inescapably subjective and personal nature of intellectual analysis in such matters: how Jean had picked out one particular narrative that she saw as significant – the growing strength of large European NGOs who are now prepared to disagree, to pull out of partnerships and dialogue, if they don’t believe governance institutions are doing the right thing – whereas others, not least the EC itself, would have picked out other equally plausible and significant narratives, for instance the success story of learning, of building its skill and capacity in breaking into areas for the first time where it does not have competence.

Andreas Karpati, a PhD student at Aberystwyth, is doing a fascinating comparison of periods of ‘calamity’ in Haiti, with the 2010 earthquake, and Ireland, with the great 19th-century famine.  For him the underpinning connection or foundation for studying and comparing these two cases is the inherent contradictions in the social relations of capitalism.  This analysis is premised very much on the work of Karl Polanyi, who theorized a ‘double movement’ of marketization and social protection.  The same problem in Haiti and Ireland was that there was only a single movement of marketization, without the necessary social protection element to accompany and mitigate it.  He described the World Bank’s insistence on Haiti modernizing its economy based on competitive advantage of exports and manufacturing, during the 1980s and 90s, which created an influx of young labour into the urban centres – ready to take up those new manufacturing jobs – thus devastating the rural peasant economy.  But the anticipated new jobs never materialised, leading to a swell of marginalized, urban slum-dwellers who had no network or system of social welfare available to mitigate their vulnerability.  I’m sure a similar story can be told across vast swathes of the world.

I most enjoyed the talk by Japhy Wilson, a research fellow at Manchester, on “the big society abroad!”  He discussed the apparently bizarre allure of Jeffrey Sachs and the Millennium Villages Project for the Conservative Party and its international development policy.  There was a sweet picture of Sachs and George Osbourne chumming up in a cornfield.  Why should neoliberal conservatives be interested in such an extreme form of social interventionism (even the previous Labour gov had refused involvement)?  Wilson argues that this seeming contradiction can be explained by the principle of “entrepreneurial zeal” which explicitly underpins the MVP: the reasoning being that ‘they’ (the impoverished villagers) only lack capital – financial, natural, social and so forth – so if ‘we’ can give them those inputs, they can become just as darn entrepreneurial as the rest of us!  Though a pure form of liberalism classically rests on the invisible hand of spontaneous market functioning, it doesn’t seem to pan out like that in many… most… all societies, but rather than change the model, adherents attempt to change the world to fit the model.  One World Conservatism and the MVP are thus aligned by an underlying Smithian “pre-lapserian” fantasy of an organic, original and benign market society based on hard work, frugality and exchange, which only goes wrong when there is abuse, greed and external predation.  The Millennium Villages thus become an ideal site for intervention that stands outside these external abuses, reminiscent of not only the civilizing mission of colonialism but also paternalistic-philanthropic model villages such as Bournville in the UK.  Within this discourse, the facts that the MVP is partly funded and guided by some of the world’s most mega-rich individuals, that it envisions a romantically harmonious village community in need of outside help, apparently without power discrepancies and disputes, and apparently disconnected, or at least disconnectable, from unjust or damaging national and global structures and systems, can all be swept aside.  The problem of course is that this (re)creates, without explicitly owning it, a model of what society should look like, what life should be about, what subjects should want and be like.  As Wilson argued, it smooths away the ‘rough edges’ of capitalism without fundamentally questioning complicated social hierarchies and disparities.  But it can only ignore these problems, leading to constant anxiety about “rhetorical slippage” within its own narratives.  All these issues are precisely what I’m interested in within my own area of research… lots of good stuff to think about!

One problematic aspect of the day was considering methodological and conceptual bases for this type of cross-cutting work.  Unfortunately I had to leave early so perhaps this was discussed in more detail towards the end, but none of the speakers while I was there really tackled this issue head on.  With some it was more implicit in their papers – Karpati for instance works in a Marxian vein and therefore will make certain presumptions about the nature of capitalism as it applies to different countries in similarly socially-contradictory ways.  I do think it’s important though to try and make these foundations explicit, to think about why it is legitimate or not to compare or cross-reference different places and phenomena.  How do we conceptualise communities, countries, regions, the international, similarities and differences?  On what epistemological and ontological grounds?  It is something I’m always struggling with in terms of my own study of discourse – I’m thinking of problems around ‘meta-discourses’, structures and agency, drawing boundaries around discourses, identities, geographically, historically…  I’m sure this will be something I need to delve into more especially as I try to combine two sites of fieldwork, education and tourism.  As ever, thoughts appreciated!

 

Unruly Politics, Big Society, Small World

A very well-written article from last month on Occupy LSX, unruly politics and ‘subversive ruliness’ by Alex Shankland, who picks up on the significance of the camp’s fastidiousness over orderliness and domestic rules (such as recycling arrangements, banning drugs and alcohol), transparently formulated almost obsessively through time-consuming democratic deliberation.  “The process is the message”.  Clearly, there are more than echoes of Foucauldian thought in the protestors’ sense of what they are doing – new possibilities of knowledge and meaning come to exist, and then come to be repeated and reinforced, through their enactment in precisely mundane and micro worlds such as arranging daily living.  Nothing should be taken for granted, because it is that which is obvious and common-sensical that is often a significant point of entry for change.

Of course, change cannot be won by camping and committees alone, and it usually takes unruly contestation to seize the attention of the powerful. At the same time, mobilisation that challenges the state but leaves streets unsafe and refuse uncollected will rapidly lose legitimacy. The trick is to undermine power by showing what it is not: if bankers and politicians damage democracy through unruly behaviour, then rule-bound, scrupulously democratic protests like OccupyLSX can show by example just how hypocritical are their claims to exercise legitimate authority. If entrenched elites try to show their power by enforcing their version of order in public spaces, then unruly contestation of those public spaces can show that without the consent of the citizens, this power can quickly prove to be a hollow fantasy.

Could such a mix take root among protest movements in the UK? For all the attempts to link them within a common frame of “disorder” and “criminality”, there is currently little or no connection between the scrupulously “ruly” OccupyLSX campers, most of whom are (or at least sound like) middle-class student activists, and the hyper-marginalised urban youth whose riotous protests sparked last summer’s upsurge of “unruly shopping”. But if the two groups actually learn to talk to each other in 2012, then this could prove to be the year that the financial and political elite starts to tremble.

This last point is interesting and I think it’s, at least aspirationally, right.  Though of course it would be a fallacy to speak too sweepingly of the ‘hyper-marginalised’ youth as having no set of their own ‘rules’, their own ethics and outlook, just like the Occupy campers (of which – for both groups – breaking the law and ‘mainstream’ social rules is sometimes an important part), so perhaps it’s also about different groups oppositional to the establishment learning to talk to each other in order to understand and somehow link or align their sets of rules or principles.  But I don’t think I hold out as much hope as Shankland for this happening effectively and the ensuing ‘trembling’ of the elite this year…

But what I really wanted to say about this piece is that it was written for an IDS blog: and how great to see London riots and activism figuring so seamlessly and naturally among posts on the grand dames of ‘international development’ such as sanitation, women’s rights and World Bank reports on climate change!  This is how the recasting of ‘development’ takes place, and those artificial divides between ‘North’/ ‘South’ or ‘developed’/ ‘developing’ get deconstructed.  It is not exactly a novel suggestion to think of ‘developed’ places such as the UK desperately in need of development (if by this we mean progressive change, justice and welfare for all), but it is still actually relatively uncommon to bring this to bear alongside and intermingled with the ‘traditional’ development studies of the African village or Amazonian deforestation, and to glimpse the deep inter-relation and common themes of seemingly different kinds of problems in seemingly separate parts of the world.

In fact, this problem is exactly what has prompted a one-day conference at UoB next week organised by Mark Duffield and Martin Gainsborough: Big Society – Small World: Development Interventions in the Global North and South Compared.  Lots of interesting speakers and session topics lined up, so no doubt a post on this to follow…

Stephen Lawrence, Trouillot and Others

I have found a lot of the reporting on the trial of Dobson and Norris, the two men now convicted of murdering Stephen Lawrence in 1993, very frustrating.  Now this is certainly not my area of expertise, but at home for the holidays, I have been watching more coverage than usual, BBC in particular.  The irony of various plummy-voiced, white, middle-aged men – news correspondents, senior police chiefs, politicians, committee members, academics – lining up to eulogize the ‘Stephen Lawrence moment’, the heroic battle by his family, the watershed in modern policing, seems to go unremarked.  What’s perhaps worse is the glib narrative of progress on racial ‘tolerance’ and ‘multicultural diversity’ being constantly repeated, with a few caveats dropping a brief reference to the BNP into the mix.  Mark Easton called it “a work in progress”, not a “job done”.

Such a linear and triumphant narrative is troubling not only because of its predominantly white storytellers, not even only because it helps to smooth over and sweep away the appalling and continuing inequalities and violences rampant in many areas of society and economy (of which practices of ‘stop and search’, for instance, are only one small element), but also because it denies the endless complexity and socio-historical-geographic specificity of what ‘racism’ and ‘race relations’ and ‘tolerance’ and ‘diversity’ mean, and should mean, to different people.  The notion that we can now measure and decree a Britain that is on the whole ‘better’ than it was in this regard twenty years ago, as Easton’s soundbites inform the public, without even questioning who is measuring this, who decides how we can and should measure this, how different imaginations of this Britain might paint rather different images, how experiences may be wildly divergent in different places and for different specific subjects, with other narratives and trajectories, linked into different discursive networks.

There is little discussion of the new forms of power relations which emerge in complex and dynamic discourses of bureaucratic and ideological ‘equal opportunities’, ‘positive discrimination’ and ‘political correctness’, or in the significance of new forms of ‘benign’ or ‘ironic’ racism and othering, or in the self-power of praising all alterity and ‘openness’.  Crucial questions are absent, for instance how do such developments intertwine in contexts of neoliberalism and managerialism (for instance, ‘equal opportunities’ reinforcing an emphasis on the competitive marketplace and increasing the number of homo economicus eligible to develop themselves appropriately), or citizenship, globalization and security (for example, how asylum seekers’ and refugees’ experience of race relations in this country and Fortress Europe may in different and disturbing ways compared to any other minority communities), or development and aid (where race and forms of othering are a key trope in representations).  Surely standing this topic on its own as a ‘race crime’ without linking in to wider problematics on injustice serves to highlight and perpetuate the otherness of ‘Raceness’ that is supposedly being overcome.

The reason I am writing this post is because I have been reading, fortuitously and coincidentally, Trouillot‘s work on Global Transformations, which discusses among other things race, identity and globality.  I highly recommend the book; in it, he analyses very incisively many of the same concerns which struck me whilst watching the Stephen Lawrence news reports.  Though this is written with the US and Continental Europe in mind, I find the following very salient to this discussion and thought it would be worth posting to quote at length:

Whether or not we accept or reject difference, but especially when we claim to welcome it, we value ourselves publicly for doing so and we expect others to pass similar judgement.  This moral premium on difference, accepted or rejected, lauded or attacked, yet increasingly projected as a universal value good or bad, seems on the increase.  It is on the increase among the extremists who loudly reject foreigners, Jews, Africans, Muslims, gays – or any other marked population – on the basis of an alleged purity threatened.  They also think that ‘we’ are more open than ever before; in fact, they argue that we have become ‘too open’.  But the moral premium is most visible among those who loudly welcome this growing openness.  Often the premium on difference takes a doubly flattering form – praise for the Other and for the self who praises.  I want to question this indiscriminate eulogy of alterity.  One of its most perverse results is the reproduction of the Savage slot – and therefore of the West – good intentions notwithstanding.

…

The wholesale praise of Otherness pushes us to accept the sociohistorical equivalence of all manifestations of alterity and therefore the political equivalence of all forms of discrimination and redress.  It reproduces a main feature of the Savage slot, the erasure of the Other’s historical specificity.  All are Others are they are so in the same way.

…

Taken out of this equation of all differences is the added value of power – always specific and different, and therefore historical – that was deployed and felt in the production and reproduction of these numerous others.  … The physical and symbolic violence exerted to create and enforce these categories in specific times and places, and the identities tied to them, were always and remain both different and incommensurable.  The needs and means to redress the inequalities so produced cannot be the same.

…

More perniciously, redress is often secondary – when not altogether a superficial – issue in this eulogy.  The push toward the sociohistorical equivalence of manifestations of alterity parallels a move toward the moral and political equivalence of all forms of contact with the Others so produced.  Exceptions are made for contact that is explicitly derogatory or physically violent.  Language is purified to the point of silliness – hence the vacuous debates about the faults and virtues of political correctness that further mask both sociological inequalities and differences in symbolic power.  One does not vilify the Other on radio or television.  One does not call the Other names.  One does not attack the Other with bare hands or stones, although bombing can be permitted if approved by Washington.

…

… the premium is on the presence of that Other, however mediated – or better yet, on the mere fact of contact with the Other rather than on relations between the Other and us.  It does not matter, therefore, if that relationship reproduces the Other’s otherness…

…

We need to ask: what kinds of practices do these new illusions enable, and what are the major consequences of these practices today.  … whoever is not an Other has greater latitude than before in defining the character of that relationship.  Individuals or groups who are in the unmarked category of any alterity (whites, heterosexuals, males, citizens by birth, etc) have greater power in defining the form, the nature and the meaning of contact, and therefore what it means to be ‘sensitive’, ‘diverse’, ‘open’ or, indeed, ‘non-discriminatory’.

…

Numerous surveys on the progress of racial integration in the United States expose this convenience of the unmarked.  Again and again, a majority of whites overestimate the income of blacks, their level of education, the closing of the gap between these and other socioeconomic indicators and those of whites.  The misreading is not only sociological.  With these underestimates also come feelings and beliefs that racial inequality is on the wane, that equality has been achieved, or ‘that we have done enough for them’.  At the opposite end, most blacks know that their situation – or that of those with whom they are associated – has not improved as much as thought by the unmarked.  Not only do they not understand the feelings of satisfaction that come with this tale of Otherness vanquished, their resentment increases toward those who broadcast this false news and want to take credit for it.  … The moral aspect is defining: The unmarked are broadcasting a morality play in which they are the good guys.  On the other side of alterity, the Others take moral offense at that fraud even more than they are disturbed by their own social dejection.

Michel-Rolph Trouillot (2003) Global Transformations: Anthropology and the Modern World, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 72 – 4.

Aidnography

Thanks very much to Tobias for mentioning me in his end-of-year review over at his excellent blog Aidnography!  I’d strongly recommend signing up to the blog if you’re interested in frank insights and fascinating discussions from the world of aid, development and anthropology.  I say ‘world’ because this is one of those rare and welcome projects that spans both the academic and practitioner ‘spheres’, and in so doing exposes how detrimental the constructed divide between the two can be.  The resulting discussions are critical, sophisticated and analytically-enriched with insights from anthropological scholarship, while at the same time aligned with debates, priorities and experiences from policy and practice.  In particular, check out posts on the nitty gritty of PhDs and building an academic career, tourism and volunteering, social media, and Tobias’ own research area of Nepal and Germany.

Discourses of Economics – Occupy the Classroom

This is an interesting article at Al Jazeera by Harvard professor Dani Rodrik – Occupy the Classroom – reflecting on the walkout of students from the introductory Economics class at Harvard, who complained that: “The course propagates conservative ideology in the guise of economic science and helps perpetuate social inequality.”

[Makes me think of that dry quip in Igby Goes Down: "Oliver is majoring in neo-fascism."  "Economics."  "Semantics."]

Rodrik argues that academic economists have failed to get across to the public and policy-making spheres the nuances and multiplicity of their theories and models, the “real world complications” which ought to act as caveats against reading off simplistic prescriptions.  This has led to a situation where mainstream Economics comes to mean conservative ideology; Rodrik gives the example that a professor might tell a journalist that free trade is good, but actually in his graduate seminar there would be much deeper discussion of what ‘free trade’ might mean, what ‘good’ might mean, and good for whom?  He comments, “the knowledge that the professor willingly imparts with great pride to his advanced students is deemed to be inappropriate (or dangerous) for the general public.”  Rodrik suggests that had proper Economics and a “healthy dose of common sense” been applied, it would have prepared us for the financial crisis.

Unfortunately, there is little interrogation of how or why this situation has come about, other than that it is “odd”.  Rodrik assumes a realist position where the ‘real’ or ‘true’ Economics has been misrepresented, narrowly selected according to various biases, and over-simplified.  It would be interesting to tackle this from a discursive point of view – rather than assuming a binary of ‘true’ vs ‘ideological’ Economics, recognising that all knowledges are ‘ideologies’ in the sense that they perform power relations and create certain subject positions and certain possibilities/plausibilities, and not others.  We would then try to understand why certain discourses of Economics have flourished in certain quarters, how they exist in tandem and in tension, why does Rodrik think that the public are being exposed to supposedly ‘safe’ regimes of truth, why they are positioned as perhaps unable or unwilling to comprehend the more critical dialogues of the seminar room (or instead, perhaps, would understand them too well), why particular narratives end up being taken up, repeated, and others suppressed.  Given the hegemonic networks of neoliberalization and unjust economic relations practised by most governments, businesses and the financial institutions such as the IMF, to argue that professors support this creed in class merely in order to promote debate and critical thinking, as some of the commentators on the article have done, slightly misses the point.  This practice still promotes such a perspective as the received wisdom, the sine qua non, that ‘Other’, alternative narratives or ideas must speak to, must challenge and try to outwit, and all the more so where learned and authoritative professors are already implicated in unequal relations vis-a-vis their young students.

I suppose ultimately it would be fascinating to see how Rodrik thinks this issue plugs into wider problematics – in particular the position of the academy and of universities in the contemporary Western world, the network of power relations Economics professors and policy advisors are caught in and perpetuate through their choices.  And in what directions we might imagine seriously co-creating amongst the public and policy-makers a wider array of Economic discourses, including those which refuse the very terms on which many debates, for instance in some media, are based.

An important part of this is surely to get away from the pervasive image of economics being about maths and markets, money and trade, done in the universities by spectacled nerds avowing complex game theories or bitter Marxism, and in the ‘real world’ by aggressive, “neo-fascist” businessmen and political advisors.  To remake Economics as irreducibly and richly social, cultural, historical, never pre-determined or perfectly predictable, always already implicated in power, tensions and disparities.  To produce a discourse of economics that is a dimension or mode of what we have quite distinctly separated out, until perhaps very recently, as ‘ecology’.  Pertinently to Rodrik’s article, at the Schumacher Festival (see below post), Satish Kumar talked of his bafflement at a visit to the LSE when he asked where its ecology department was, what courses on ecology the students took as part of their basic study of economics, and learned that there is, and are, none.  His talk reminded the audience of the shared etymologies of ‘ecology’ and ‘economics’, both referring to the Greek oikos meaning house or home, the ‘principles’ or ‘discourse’ and ‘laws’ of which should surely be mutually constitutive?

My belief is that one of the most important ways we can effect change is to interrogate much better the cultural politics of our society, the divisions we have set up between the ‘experts’, the received frameworks for knowledges, and the ‘plebs’, the popular culture.  And to begin to understand how seemingly small and unrelated bodies of meaning in all sorts of public and policy domains become articulated together to reinforce other bodies of meaning such as the premises of neoliberal economic theory.  The new economics foundation (nef) does some interesting work in this area, for example with its programmes in Democracy and Participation, Well-Being, Valuing What Matters, Natural Economies, Local Economics and Social Policy.  It’s heartening to see a think-tank taken seriously and credibly not just providing new economic theories, not just weighing in on the ‘left’ (or the right), but disrupting the ‘left and right’ narrative of what Economics should be about, and explicitly espousing a narrative that prioritises social justice and ecological sustainability over the norms of growth and development.

If there are more like Rodrik, in influential and ‘insider’ positions, who similarly identify the problem he describes, it would be really good to see those same people take up the responsibility of addressing it, and working towards both a recreation of what Economics tells society and a democratization of what society tells Economics.

Schumacher Festival

A couple of months ago I attended the Schumacher Centenary Festival, an annual event of talks, meetings and workshops, organised by the Schumacher Society.  This organisation was set up by friends and family of E. F. Schumacher, author of Small Is Beautiful and one of the early pioneers of green, steady-state economics premised on social and ecological values.

Speakers included Tim Jackson (a former commissioner on the UK’s Sustainable Development Commission and author of Prosperity Without Growth), Stephen Harding, a leading ecology academic, and Caroline Lucas, leader of the Green Party.  I thought the best speakers by far were Bill McKibben (who had to send a video message as he was forced to miss the event to remain in situ in the US at a crucial stage of campaigning against the tar sands oil pipeline – though this actually generated a greater sense of excitement, a real eco-celebrity in our (digital) midst!), and Peter Blom, CEO of Triodos Bank, for his unflashy but frank and articulate account of the demise of proper banking in the mainstream which has contributed to both financial and ecological crisis, and the alternatives offered by banks such as Triodos which remain relatively small and provide ultra-transparency about their investments, which are selected carefully based on ecological and social impact.  One insider point Blom made was that, when he represents Triodos at national and international meetings, often the ‘bigwigs’ of the financial world are in private conversation far more engaged and ‘radical’ in their environmental stance than their ‘official’ positions and practices would suggest (particularly en masse as ‘an industry’).  I found this very interesting, especially in regard to my research interest in how dominant discourses of power/knowledge tend to reproduce processes and situations that, ‘privately’ or ‘individually’, no-one seems to agree with.

Kudos too to the film director Michael Wadleigh, who got through an inordinate amount of information in an energetic frenzy, showing his current project, an UNESCO-backed educational slideshow that tours colleges and universities explaining to young people, from the point of view of observant aliens, how our current paradigms of economic growth, materialism, outrageous resource depletion and the global disparity and injustice that have come with them, are inherently flawed and leading to catastrophe for homo sapiens on planet earth.

It was a great weekend, a particular highlight also being the small world concert on the Saturday night, though sadly the main draw for me, Vandana Shiva, couldn’t make it due to ill health.

But there were a lot of things that gave me cause for concern too.  For one, there was a lot of back patting, a lot of enraptured applause and sage nodding, a lot of emphasis on phrases like ‘this is an exciting moment, a moment for radical change!’  Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with optimistic talk, especially when an image persists of environmental activists as scaremongerers and doomsayers, and clearly I can understand why a centenary festival in particular should be an occasion for joy and hope.  But a similarly important danger is thinking that talking about the moment for change, everyone in agreement, is the same as fulfilling that potential.  There was a lot of satisfied talk of the financial crisis, but less on the overwhelming re-entrenchment of the same old growth-focused goals, dominance of western institutions dictating bail-outs, cuts and austerity, rise of neoliberal technocrat governments, the degradation of the higher education system, the lack of widespread public support for alternatives, even the sense that the public can imagine or desire alternatives – for instance, the increasing derision of the Occupy movement.

I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the most engaging talks were those coloured with a healthy dose of cynicism, an earnest sense of urgency and, actually, a certain amount of fear.  Because we should be fearful, and outraged, about climate change and degradation of our forests, oceans and minerals – provided this does not engender panicked paralysis, but is rather coupled immediately with practical courses of action to be taken individually and in our communities, and to demanded point blank from our governments, institutions and businesses.  We should be fearful of, and outraged at, ourselves – not some ‘other’, whether this is the “uncaring SUV driver” or the “disingenuous politician”.  It was the sizeable minority of smugness at the festival that I found disconcerting, looking around the room at mostly white, well-heeled women and men in their 40s, 50s and 60s, many of whom have no doubt immensely benefited throughout their own lives from Britain’s economic growth and privileged relation with the rest of the world, many of whom will have never had to worry seriously about unemployment or the very notion of being able to own their own home.  I should clarify, none of this is intended to mean that only some people (who generally don’t fit the above profile) can be credibly concerned about the environment or ‘real’ activists; we are all of us hypocritical and self-contradictory, pretty much all of the time; it is the privileged who need to change more than anyone.  My criticism is that, rather than openly acknowledge and address this issue, it was totally absent, or rather, the elephant in the very self-congratulatory room.

In fact, various speakers actually lauded the fact that this was most diverse group of participants they had ever seen at the event – and gave special mention that it was so encouraging to see many young people present (alluding, no doubt, to the Society’s particular effort this year to offer discounted tickets for students and under-18s).  I cast around, baffled, at this point.  Of course, I don’t know what their definition of ‘young’ is, but if it can reasonably be assumed to be under 40, then I don’t know where these multitudes of young people were hiding.  John and I included, I could probably count them on one hand.  Ethnic diversity was similarly limited.

I think this reflects a broader problem of the event, perhaps the Society as a whole, which links back in to the above criticism – it is very much preaching to the converted, as an Occupy protestor commented on their website following the festival.  It is easy – too easy – to feel hopeful, optimistic, even smug, when you are surrounded by like-minded and similar people.  What worried me was the apparent self-delusion being collectively perpetuated in thinking that this event had somehow reached out to the ‘youth’.  I had until September this year never even heard of the Schumacher Society, and its postgraduate College, even though it is something that interests me and they are longstanding institutions of Bristol and the South-West, where I am based.  Perhaps this says more about me (!) but their communications and outreach functions can’t be up to much if this is the case??  What’s more, there was a sense of a relatively small circle of people who all knew each other personally, on the professional ‘environmental activist and academic’ circuit no doubt, but also a tightknit group of ‘Schumacher people’, demonstrated, for example with various ‘in-jokes’ and personal references, and also when it came to handing out this year’s awards which seemed to revolve around figures who were or had been in the Society or otherwise somehow affiliated.  If there is one reason that Schumacher should be celebrated and honoured, it is because he went out of his comfort zone, he transformed himself and his idea of economics over the course of his life, and his books were intended to reach out to a wide audience, to encourage them to comprehend economics, society, ecology, life, in a new way.  If the Festival seeks to continue this work, it too should strive to get out of its ‘comfort zone’ and genuinely go beyond preaching to (long converted) friends.  This is why the pedagogic efforts of speakers such as McKibben and Wadleigh, though they may seem futile or unimpressive to date, are actually far braver and more vital.

Without Guarantees

In an era of cuts, fear and extreme career anxiety – when well-educated friends of mine have been forced to revert to entry-level jobs they were doing fresh out of school or university (and those are the ‘lucky’ ones) – and reading some fairly terrifying comments from jobless and hopeless PhDs that I stumbled across in this 2009 article on lack of job security (and there are many similar forums), you have to cling to those moments in academia that make it seem worth it!  Those invigorating moments of clarity, when you overwhelmingly connect with the argument in a book or a discussion with a colleague.  It sounds perverse but one of my favourite things are those moments when you aren’t original, or rather when you discover that something you’ve thought of, a line of enquiry your mind is fuzzily pulling together, a connection you’ve made, has already been thought of by someone else; all the more so when it’s unexpected and removed from what you thought of as your own niche.  In the often lonely world of scholarship, it is no small thing to be reminded that your wacky thought processes may not be so wacky and that others’ will find meaning and usefulness in your work.

For me, Stuart Hall is one of those thinkers who has provided those invigorating moments, so calmly, eloquently and engagingly setting out his insights on culture, politics and discourse, and articulating thoughtfully certain ideas of Marx, Gramsci and Althusser, while going beyond them in a way that cannot be done if they are held too reverentially, and with a clear focus on staying attuned to the contemporary world, whatever that may be and without guarantees.  Fortuitously, Hall is also one of my supervisors’ self-confessed ‘hero’!

Currently I am reading a volume of essays in Hall’s honour: P. Gilroy, L. Grossberg and A. McRobbie (eds) (2000) Without Guarantees, London: Verso.  I’m only halfway through but so far, unsurprisingly, there have been some diverse and excellent essays which, in the vein of Hall, are clear, forthright but nuanced.  I’d recommend the whole volume including for those wanting an introduction to Hall’s themes, politics and philosophy/epistemology.  I would especially recommend ‘Taking Identity Politics Seriously’ by James Clifford; it’s very relevant to the discussions on anthropology from Jason Antrosio’s blog which I flagged up below, and argues that cultural and historically-informed anthropology is crucial in understanding ‘identity politics’, or what we might think of as a Hall-esque account of subject production and positioning (rather than a more ‘dogmatic’ poststructuralist perspective of decrying anything to do with ‘identity’ as essentialist).

Clifford points out that “cultural/historical anthropology does not appear to be required reading for a broad range of cultural studies scholars.  Too often anthropology is stereotyped and misunderstood – seen as confined to ‘pre-modern’ societies, irreparably tainted by colonialism, or fatally hemmed in by its own forms of textual and institutional authority.”  [This was certainly true of my introduction to Anthropology during my first term studying History at Oxford.  The notion of 'doing' anthropology on my own contemporary society and on myself did, and still always does always, give me helpful and refreshing pause for thought.]  Clifford argues that from its “exoticist heritage” we can rescue the question: what else is there?  The beauty of the specificity of an ethnographic approach is that it “pays serious attention to people at the margins: relatively powerless… whose particular stories are left out of national or global histories.  Of course this professional brief for diversity carries evident risks: nostalgia… wishful thinking…  But a disposition to perceive and value difference can also be understood not as a reification of otherness but as an awareness of… the ‘constitutive outside’ of even the most hegemonic social or ideological formations.”

Again, I am drawn to that overlapping place of politics, history, cultural studies and anthropology, which most of the contributors to this book, in various ways, inhabit.

Anthropological Perspective and the Responsibility of Academia

I highly recommend Jason Antrosio’s excellent blog Living Anthropologically, which has some great discussions around the important role and responsibility of Anthropology as a discipline in informing public debates and policy/decision-making concerning the profound problems facing contemporary society, not least economic and ecological crisis.  In particular this article on Moral Optimism and Capitalism.

An anthropological (and I think we can equally say, historical) perspective is what enables us to to suspend the self/other dichotomy, and to think that we are not ‘Normal’, that our system is not natural or inevitable. On the blog I commented that the point is not to “romanticize past civilizations but rather use them as a counterpoint to expose the much more common fallacy of romanticization of our present global capitalist civilization as the ‘end of history’, a myth that very much lives on.  Historical and anthropological knowledge of the astonishing plethora of systems, ideologies, beliefs that have, in the blink of an eye that is the last few thousand years, flourished, fallen, changed, and been made to seem entirely ‘natural’ and legitimate, creates a critical distance from what we are doing in the present and a space to imagine all kinds of weird and wonderful things that humans might get up to over the next few thousand years.  Furthermore, it allows us the capacity to realise there is extraordinarily little we have to accept as ‘inevitable’, and that there may be many more diverse ways to define a ‘good life’ (ecological/planetary health, global equity, parity and justice)…”

Such an imaginative, critical ‘anthropological ability’ is at the heart of any good political and social theory, and certainly so for Foucauldian-inspired discourse analysis.  In fact there is a nice meeting place where certain kinds of anthropology, political studies and sociology overlap.  I don’t necessarily advocate a nihilistic tearing down of disciplinary boundaries but perhaps we should reconceptualise this still rather segregating model. Often I feel confused about how I should best label myself as an academic of any one particular discipline, and uncomfortable about doing so at all, when I may have a lot more in common – in terms of epistemology, approach, motivation, method and topic – with an anthropologist (or ecologist, or educationalist) out there than someone sitting next to me in my politics department.  Cross-disciplinary collaboration is one obvious answer to this and is being increasingly encouraged (though in my limited impressions, perhaps still somewhat buzzily and superficially), but even this development fundamentally accepts separate disciplines, which happen to be working together in that instance.

Hmm anyway I digress…  So bearing in mind the powerful insights that anthropologists and other humanities scholars can offer to current debates, how do we negotiate the thorny issue of ‘objectivity’ in academic life?  My view is that this supposed objectivity is itself a fallacy and very much ‘political’ as it encourages quietism, acquiescence and, by extension, bolstering of dominant norms and assumptions about what we want human society to be like, and how we want to get it there.  What troubles me is how to disrupt this myth, and how to more authentically integrate our academic work and its often logical corollaries – specific political ideas, advocacy and activism – given the already precarious situation of disdain and lack of funding for the social sciences, humanities and arts, which is especially acutely worrying for early career researchers!  Surely one part of the solution is a burden of responsibility on established and tenured scholars to create both an example and a space in which more of this can be done for those who want to, e.g…

• less tick-boxy and more loud, deep and potentially radical ‘public engagement’ (or ‘service’ as I think it’s known in the US)
• more structured and legitimized discussions of this nature within academic fora
• not being afraid to bring explanation of motivation and passion in to academic work
• more presentation of academics’ expertise in mainstream media aligned to those (such as campaign groups) who don’t necessarily have vociferous ‘experts’ arguing their case
• more collaborations between academic institutions and NGOs/campaigns; perhaps voluntary consultancy/advisory roles for academics

??? ……

(Caveat: I am not saying none of this is done already – I have encountered many inspiring and encouraging examples of engaged academics!)

Global Politics

Some of my earlier articles at Global-Politics.co.uk…

Syria uprising (August 2011)

UN Women (August 2011)

Tanzanian Pastoralists (July 2011)

Occupying My Thoughts

This week the Canon Chancellor of St Pauls, Giles Fraser, resigned in a ‘rift’ over his conciliatory approach to dealing with the Occupy London camp set up outside the Cathedral, which reopened on Friday. Not far behind came news that the City of London will now begin legal action to remove the protesters. Such headlines are the latest in a line of mainstream news coverage focusing on twists and turns of the Occupy encampment, from health and safety, to legal quandaries, to demographic make-up. Debates have ranged from the Church’s role in contemporary society, to whether homeless people should be allowed to use the tents, to the symbology and ‘irony’ of protesters donning Guy Fawkes masks and drinking Starbucks. Why is so little attention, by contrast, devoted to the momentum and purpose of the global protest movement – of which London is but one small part?

These may be interesting discussions, but I for one am weary of the degree to which much media coverage is contorting itself around the central issue of what the protests are about. The phrase ‘anti-capitalist’ might be vaguely inserted (one of those surefire ways to rile the public with images of drugged-up anarchists). When Boris Johnson was interviewed he was not pressed on how he intends to address flaws in the banking system, rampant and normalised corporate irresponsibility, tax evasion or the yawning gap between the so-called 1% and the 99%. Instead he glibly remonstrated that they had “made their point” and now he would like them to leave. As long as the movement keeps growing (and the Occupy Together website reveals 500 local ‘occupations’ and counting…), as long as people care enough to show solidarity, to camp and march over problems that are at this moment being entrenched, then the point has not yet been made.

Similarly, while sympathetic commentators expounding theories of a shadowy cabal of evil puppet-masters controlling the world are doing themselves no favours,  no major protest coverage that I have seen seriously investigates elements of truth in this. None picked up a recent study by complexity analysts from the Swiss Institute of Technology which empirically investigated the global economy and literally mapped out the interconnections between all 43,000 transnational corporations. The study found that a core of around 1,300 corporations directly or indirectly own business representing 60% of global revenues, and a “super-entity” of 147 highly interconnected corporations controls 40% of the wealth in the entire network.

Surely the prize for the most ‘shocking’ fact to emerge in recent coverage goes to the revelation that some participants go home at night to sleep and wash. Labour journalist Dan Hodges used this to slam the integrity of the “virtual” protest, ludicrously asking “does this movement and this demonstration actually exist?” Is it not perfectly obvious and reasonable that people would temporarily leave? Can critique of the financial and political system only be legitimate if someone is willing to neglect their children, work and commitments, entirely abandon their home, personal hygiene and risk exhaustion and pneumonia?

What beggars belief is the obvious self-contradiction. On the one hand, participants are deemed an unrepresentative, elitist and unwashed hardcore of ‘professional protestors’ and ‘benefits scroungers’. On the other, they are lambasted for having the audacity to actually come and go from the site. Is it not testament to these protests that people leave and return, demonstrating a sustainable, earnest and representative effort, rather than a flash-in-the-pan gimmick? It shows that, despite segregation, people from all walks of life – young, old, employed, unemployed, students, professionals, families – can come together if they feel strongly enough, and pursue with dedication on Britain’s cold and rainy streets a sacrifice to their daily lives without this being fundamentally exclusionary. What Occupy activism shows is that any ordinary person can get involved in protest. It is ordinary people with jobs and kids who are losing out in, and partly responsible for perpetuating, our current state of affairs.

I am not camped at OLSX – indeed I have not even been able to visit London though I have followed events and interviews closely online. But I have visited my local, smaller occupation in Bristol. There, participants were extremely friendly and ‘normal’ – one woman we spoke to is a social worker; another participant was sitting in on his lunch break before returning to work. Some were more eloquent and articulate than others about their precise purpose, but there was a prevailing feeling of welcome contrary to the oft-described ‘arrogance’. A speaker’s corner had been established to promote public discussion. We were encouraged to join in however we could – by bringing food or supplies, by signing the pledge, by dropping in for a cup of tea.

The smug critic’s trump card is: but what difference are they actually trying to make? We know what they are against, but what are they for? Again, a no-win situation for the protestors: if they pronounce united and forthright replies, they are pidgeon-holed as a fanatical gang of loony Marxists. If they cannot immediately illustrate a highly-developed ideology or have differing motivations, they are  muddle-headed, infantile idealists. That they do not have an advanced manifesto declaring unanimous solutions to all of the world’s problems based on in-depth economic, legal and sociological research does not mean their actions are somehow ridiculous. Has no-one else noticed the laughable attempts of the so-called experts – politicians, financial gurus and scholars – to begin to understand, let alone solve, the world’s economic and ecological crises?

The purpose of Occupy demonstrations might seem under-developed but the difference they are trying to make is startlingly simple and desperately important: to raise the point – among a wider public – that the ‘There Is No Alternative’ (TINA) worldview is a bald lie. To simply disrupt the awe-inspiring might of the West’s hegemonic discourse of neoliberal, globalized and growth-premised capitalism, a discourse that suggests this is a desireable and in fact inevitable corollary of free democracy. To simply encourage ordinary people do some research and critical thinking of their own. If it is sometimes difficult to articulate proposals it is precisely because these are not necessarily organised around current categories of thought, for example, the left and right of party politics. It is extremely telling that one of the only references critics gleefully trundle out for these protestors is that old bogey state communism. Why are there only two options, the current norms or the gulag? The rush to survey participants is also telling – are they on benefits? Are they foreigners? Until they can be comfortably labelled, they cannot be slotted into a preconceived set of critiques. Even well-intentioned efforts to debunk the myths lend credence to such questions and their premises.

If the Occupy protests are about anything, it is the faintest glimmer in the human imagination versus the relentless, oppressive reality offered to us by government and corporate marketing. Before we can actually change anything we have to be able to concede that some of the most naturalised and unquestioned assumptions of our current system are neither natural nor unquestionable.  There are other possible realities. There might be a social form of capitalism predicated not on growth-at-all-costs (infinite growth – even though we have a finite and ever-dwindling resource base) but on a steady-state and community-centred model. There might be alternative curriculums that promote debate and resistance to educate young people about the complex chains of responsibility in our world economy and polity, instead of spoonfeeding and then testing meaningless chunks of information. It might become normal for enterprises to discount profit and pursue genuinely beneficial innovation. We could create political institutions primarily focused on social justice, equality and distribution, rather than electoral squabbling, one-up-manship and soundbites.

What the demonstrations must not do is focus on demonising the “1%”, the ‘greedy bankers’ and ‘deceitful politicians’. Conspiracy theories are wrong because there is no conspiracy, there is never any outright intention to create harm, whether unemployment or environmental damage. Most people in positions of power within the political and financial worlds are not evil, greedy or deceitful. They genuinely believe they are doing the right thing, or at least, nothing wrong. They have so strongly invested, heart and mind, into TINA that their horizons are sadly reduced. The only thing they believe to be a positive contribution to society is to foster business growth, create jobs and market stability, and abide by the letter of the law. Judging by comments on the BBC news website, among ordinary folks, TINA translates into: get a job (any job!) and do some ‘real work’, make money, pay taxes, and stay out of trouble, which entails ridiculing those clueless layabouts at the protests. Many are understandably so desperate to look after their own precarious job and their own family that they do not have the wherewithal to confront these issues except through an occasional and confused grumble.

As individuals we can try to overhaul our own lives, try to extricate ourselves from the most exploitative and unjust elements of the global economic system. As critics have suggested protesters ought to do, we can limit our purchases, we can take our money out of the big banks and put it into cooperatives, we can volunteer. But we quickly reach a point where, because of the ubiquity and embeddedness of the system in every aspect of our lives, we cannot realistically do any more, though more is needed. This is the point where collective protest comes in and not for nothing is it called a demonstration. It is about this demonstrative power, the performative logic of solidarity: different kinds of people in disparate locations joining a movement and reminding each other that we are not just individuals. More than that, as Dan Hodges fundamentally misunderstands, we do not have to mentally accept the range of possibilities handed down to us and constantly recreated for us by political parties and institutions including the press. Call it infantile idealism if you like, but these protestors have not lost the imaginative ability to suspect that there may be some much better, untried, realities.

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This article was originally written on Friday 28th October and was published in a slightly different form in Global Politics magazine here.

Shortly afterwards, someone pointed out to me two interesting articles that make some very similar points!

Madeleine Bunting, The Guardian

Andrew Rawnsley, The Observer