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Things I like

Can rejecting mainstream western values make you happier?

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One of the happiest people I ever met, during a 6 month stay in a Buddhist centre, was a monk named Rabden – curious, I thought, how a man who had rejected just so much of what we regard as normal in Britain, could be so happy. He had no full time job to give him status, he owned no possessions, he obviously had no wife, no friends in the Bessie sense of the word, he never watched TV or listened to music, the only clothes he wore were orange and yellow robes, and he lead a very constrained life of giving classes on Buddhism and meditating. I mean, for Buddha’s sake, he didn’t even have a Facebook account. How on earth could this person be so happy?

Now I know that not that all Buddhist monks are happy, and that not that not all people who are not Buddhist monks are unhappy, but when you meet someone as happy as this individual, it inspires you to know what they know, in this meeting inspired me to learn more about Buddhism and its approach to happiness – 20 years on I think I’m ready to pass this understanding on – but I’m going to break with Buddhist tradition (i.e. I’m going to intellectualize about this rather than live it) and try and demonstrate how the Buddhist path to happiness is the antithesis of how most of us seek to be happy in Western society.

I think this is pretty useful, and fits in nicely with  a few recent sociological/ psychological books on happiness and why so few people are actually happy in western societies. Books such Oliver Jame’s ‘Britain on the Couch’, Michael Foley’s ‘The Age of Absurdity’, and Richard Layard’s Happiness are the kind of books that spring to mind – but this offering is less social-scientific and more personal and spiritual (pseudo-spiritual is probably a better label).

What is happiness and how do we realize it – According to (my interpretation of) Buddhism?

First of all – the way Happiness is conceived of in Buddhism is different to the way it is conceived of in Mainstream Western Society

Achieving happiness for most people in the United Kingdom hinges on accumulating objects, people or states of mind that are believed to be desirable and avoiding objects, people and states of mind that are believed to be undesirable.

The ‘logic of happiness’ is as follows: ‘If I am currently in a state that I want to be in, then I am happy; or, ‘if I am in an undesirable state (for example, at work for many of us) then if I can only get to where I want to be at some future point, then I will be happy in the future.

To give some typical, concrete examples of how most of us think about happiness, it is quite common for many of us to equate happiness with desirable states such as being on holiday, while out shopping for nice new, desirable things; when we are with people we like. Similarly, when we are in undesirable states, we often find ourselves thinking about some happier time in the future: ‘If I can just get that car; have that hairdo; afford that holiday; get drunk at the weekend then I will be happy. Such thoughts are very typical in contemporary Britain, and hardly anyone would take umbrage with anyone else expressing such thoughts.

The above logic of happiness is based around the individual making effort to accumulate things that he or she does not have in this moment. Happiness involves being in a state that one believes to be desirable.

Happiness in Buddhism, on the other hand, is more about being content or satisfied, or sometimes just enduring what is in this present moment, rather than striving to achieve happiness at some future point.

The logic of happiness is ‘I am in this state; I accept it and I will be fully aware in it and focus on it, whether or not I deem this present state to be desirable or undesirable’. The logic is one of fully focusing on the present, on whatever is occurring, on whatever arises, even if that is not pleasant, rather than focusing on states believed to present that one believes one will be in some future time.

To give a concrete example of this, rather than finding myself unhappy at work and distracting myself from work with constant thoughts about what I will be having for dinner later, or about what I will be doing at the weekend, the Buddhist way is to give up on those thoughts of future pleasure and focus on what one is doing right now, in other words, one gives oneself up to the moment whether pleasurable or undesirable rather than giving up on the undesirable moment and distracting oneself with future thoughts of pleasure.

The logic of happiness in Buddhism is one of making an effort to focus on the present, making an effort to control one’s thoughts and desires so they do not take me away from this moment right here and right now. Happiness, or more accurately contentment involves giving up ones desires and accepting what is.

So the Buddhist ideal is one of achieving happiness through giving up desire, rather than trying to gain those things that one desires. This is a logic of happiness to be realised through detachment, rather than happiness to be gained through attachment.

The feeling of this type of happiness is one of peace of mind, of contentment and satisfaction with what one has rather than one of an excited lusting after what one desires, a calm contentment with what is, rather than a seeking after the high of attainment of what one desires.

The implication is that the feeling of happiness in Buddhism is one that is much is calmer than the typical visions of happiness that we have in the West, which often tends to involve images of ‘peak experiences’, of winning a contest, of gaining something extraordinary, of buzzing on a high.

The Buddhist Path to Happiness

The key to happiness in Buddhism is to follow something called the noble eightfold path – and this essentially boils down to the following principles – this isn’t a full interpretation of what’s involved in following Buddhism but these are some of its core principles – (the tenets as named in the path are in brackets)

  1. Knowing yourself and your ‘true nature’ ‘(right understanding’)
  2. Developing compassion (‘right thought’)
  3. Residing in the truth (‘right speech’)
  4. Renouncing material goods (‘right action’ – NB there is a lot more to this, but this is key!)
  5. Doing worthwhile and ethical work (‘right livelihood’)
  6. Leading a disciplined, routine life (‘right effort’)
  7. Being aware of what you are doing and not being carried away by passionate emotions (‘right concentration’)
  8. Meditating (‘right meditation’)

It’s worth noting that these tenets (which aren’t that dissimilar to most other mainstream religious ethical codes) argue that self-constraint and thinking of the social consequences of one’s actions are as important as ‘taking care’ of your ‘self’.

It is further worth noting that all of this links into a certain view of the nature of self and reality – there is logic behind what we should do to be happy and what the nature of the self really is – but I’m not going into that here (it’ll take too long)

The Buddhist view of happiness compared to the Western view of happiness

It is striking how the means whereby so many of us are encouraged to achieve happiness in the West is so often the complete antithesis of how to achieve happiness (defined more accurately as peace of mind) in Buddhism – to contrast to the 8 fold path above – it is not unusual to see people suggesting that one does any number of the following to be happy –

 

  1. Constructing and expressing your self – i.e. your self-identity – through consuming products, constructing a narrative of the self on Facebook, and our obsession with biography and celebrity all suggests we see this as crucial to happiness
  2. Putting yourself, or at least your family first and acting out of self-interest – rather than devoting yourself to the service of others (ok so a lot of people give to charity, but this is after one’s sorted oneself out)
  3. Acting/ concealing aspects of the truth or just downright lying  – ok I’ll admit that lying is generally frowned upon, but our obsession with privacy maybe suggests we like to conceal the fullness of ourselves from the world – and isn’t acting out social roles really just lying about who we really rather than being fully open and honest?
  4. Accumulating stuff and attaching yourself to particular people and values – this is obvious – and it includes our obsession with romantic love and children.
  5. Doing a job primarily for the money rather than the social good – ok once again there are plenty of people who choose to do socially useful jobs, but many who see work as just a means to an end.  
  6. Being free to pick and choose, being freedom from routine, trying new things, striving to constantly reinvent yourself – this speaks for itself
  7. When at work – switching off – again – this should ring true with many
  8. Always doing rather than sitting still – one of my pet hates – we tend to think the happiest people are the busiest – not necessarily true.

So that’s the rather eclectic theory out of the way but the question I’m left with is this – and talk about a question that’s going to be a total nightmare to control for and operationalise – are people who are more inclined to define happiness as ‘peace of mind’ and seek happiness through Buddhist means happier than those who define happiness as ‘maximizing peak experiences’ and who seek happiness through the means of mainstream Western Society?

Related links

The Buddhist way to happiness

Buddha – Pursuit of Happiness

The sources of happiness according to Buddhism

Can Buddhists transcend mental reservations?

Alternatives, Things I like

I hold Jamie Oliver responsible for my present anomic condition

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Reserach suggests Jamie Oliver is responsible for 27% of anomic feelings experienced by UK males aged between 30-39

He’s such an inspiration that, in my efforts to emulate his energetic,  socially-conscious uber-interesting, jam-packed, metro-sexual-male-having-it-all life-style, I simply don’t have time to make his delicious home made-pasta recipe this week – I mean, I’m sure you can feel my pain, I’m gonna have to sink to the lows of bying pasta-in-a-packet.

Fortunately this month’s ethical consumer magazine has a handy guide to packet-pasta and sauce, that allows me to purchase pasta according to my ethical standards – i.e. to avoid purchasing from companies that damage the environment, harm animals, or employ their workers under poor conditions. Actually, perhaps this is another reason why Oliver is responsible for my Anomie – he did such a great job setting up his 15 restaurant, giving local unemployed teens a chance, and then he goes and becomes the face of Sainsbury, which, like the other three supermarkets, are intent on maxmising profit, often at the expense of people and planet.

 

Anyway, back to the pasta –

If you care about animals, you might like to boycott the Bertolli range

The two with the lowest scores include Buitoni (Pasta and Sauce) – owned by Nestle, Bertolli (sauce) – owned by Unilever, and Seeds of Change – owned by Mars (I was expecting Monsanto with a name like that) – this last one’s particularly deceptive as it look so lovely and cosy-homely-organic.

For details of why you might want to avoid the above pasta varieties – follow these links

Boycott Mars – it’s basically over animal testing

Uniliver – is buying palm oil from companies who destroy the rainforest

And Nestle – it’s still babymilk!

The best buys – Clearspring Pasta and La Terra e il Cielo  

Things I like

Fair Trade Versus ‘free trade’

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Fair Trade has expanded massively in the last decade – Here’s a few reasons why I like Fair Trade and why I don’t like the neoliberalised free market. I should have posted this for #worldfoodday – better late than never. Obviously relevant to Global Development course – a post on the limitations of fair trade is coming later

 

Fair Trade – Core principles and practices

‘Fair Trade involves thinking about the practicalities of trade and asking questions such as ‘can trade be made to work for rather than against commodity producers in the South, can the process of production be democratized, ownership shared, organized labour encouraged, child labour unnecessary, environmental sustainability and human rights promoted. Can consumers be induced to think and pay more than they currently think is necessary? Is it possible to survive and even thrive in and against the conventional market place? Is there any bottom line other than price and profit?’[iii]

‘Fair trade is an alternative approach to conventional trade and is based on a partnership between producers and consumers. Fair trade offers producers a better deal and improved terms of trade. This allows them the opportunity to improve their lives and plan for their future. Fair trade offers consumers a powerful way to reduce poverty through their every day shopping.’[iv]

 

What is ‘Fair Trade’?

 A useful and accessible starting point is to turn to in the New Internationalist’s ‘no-nonsense guide to fair trade, in which the author argues that ‘Fair trade addresses the injustices of conventional trade, which traditionally discriminates against the poorest, weakest producers. It enables them to improve their position and have more control over their lives.’ In concrete terms, Ransom distinguishes 7 ideals (see below) that businesses involved in the fair trade movement should be committed to. Despite recent concerns that Fair trade is not as ‘fair’ as it might be in practices, these 7 ideas are still firmly embedded in Fair trade International’s standards for producers and buyers  and include the following

1.         Democratic organization

2.         Recognized Trade unions

3.         Decent working conditions

4.         Environmental sustainability

5.         The minimum price guarantee

6.         The social premium

7.         Long-Term relationships 

Given that one of the core principles of the fair trade movement is ‘democratic organisation’ it is both inevitable and healthy that there is ongoing debate over how these ideals manifest themselves in practice, a factor, along with the global scope and rapid expansion of the movement, which helps to explain why there is such a wide variety of fair trade labeling initiatives.  This said, it is at least possible to discern a shared set of core ideals that, in principle at least, set fair trade apart from ‘free trade’

The democratic imperative in fair trade suggests that to be truly fair, food production and distribution would involve the creation of new food networks, smaller scale, and less oligopolistic than they are today, and the idea of fair shares suggests ethics comes before profits – challenging the very motive for engaging in production and exchange – (on both the part of producers and buyers… ). This potentially puts the practise of fair-trade into conflict with the present global neo-liberal free market system.  This idea is not lost on many in the fair-trade movement

Piercy, commenting on the early origins of the fair trade movement in the 1960s in the United Kingdom, makes the following, more concrete criticisms of ‘free market’ economics.[v]

  • The poorer countries becoming caught in a trap of producing raw materials that are subject to price fluctuations while wealthier countries ‘added’ value to these raw materials by producing them
  • The increasing subsidies wielded by MNCs – receiving subsidies from governments in the form of tax breaks or infrastructural development.
  • Quotas on imports to protect key industries.
  • Subsidies to farmers in developing countries, meaning the prices of their products are cheaper than those produced by farmers in the developing world.
  • MNCs using their buying power to force down prices paid to farmers in the developing world down, resulting in prices in supermarkets going down.
  • The agents of large companies often bribed officials to encourage them to ignore health and safety and labour laws, allowing the all too familiar and terrible sweatshop conditions

Similarly, even the briefest perusal of some of the informative material produced by the World Development Movement[vi] or even a more mainstream group such as Oxfam[vii], both founder members of Fair trade International, reveals many criticisms of the way that various and numerous multinationals, the World Trade organization and The European Union operate in ways that systematically put profits for shareholders over people and planet.

 

The fair trade standards – the institutional framework

Before examining the extent to which the ‘Supermarkets’ move into the fair trade market transgresses the spirit and practice of fair trade, it is necessary to outline in concrete terms what exactly the ideals mean in practice, to this we need to look at the institutional framework which informs fair trade standards.

Fair trade International is the international body with overall responsibility for developing the fair trade standards associated with the fair trade logo and brings together production, purchasing and consumption through devising and maintaining the standards which producers and buyers agree to in order to qualify for certification and be able to display the fair trade logo[1]. The standards are different for producers and buyers, and much more rigorous for producers.

Producers must be democratically organized, preferably into co-operatives or other democratic associations, the right of workers to join trades unions and enjoy decent working conditions will be guaranteed, and there will be no child labour. There will also be a commitment to reinvesting profits into the social development of the workers and wider community and any productive enterprise should be environmentally sustainable.

Buyers that purchase fair trade products guarantee to pay a ‘premium price’ that covers the cost of production – and is enough for investment in longer term social development. Buyers also have to commit to long term relationships with their producers.

 

The Fair Trade Standards

Fair trade International publishes several documents that outline the standards fair-trade producers and buyers need to maintain in order to qualify for fair-trade status and be able to display the fair-trade local. There are separate, yet overlapping standards, based on core principles for producers and buyers of fair-trade products

  • For producers  standards are outlined separately for small scale producers[2]; contract production[3] and for hired labour[4]
  • Standards for buyers are outlined in the ‘The Generic Fair trade trade standards’[5] document which outline the relationship between producers and buyers. In addition there are also additional, specific standards for producers producing certain products[6] and a prohibited materials list[7],

 

The seven ideals of fair trade – what they mean in practice

Below is an outline of what Ransom’s seven ideals of fair trade should look like in practice, if we take the standards outlined by Fair trade international as a base.

 

1. Democratic organization –

It is believed that the best way of guaranteeing that trade adds to the social and economic development of producers and of their communities is to ensure as far as possible that producers are be small scale, preferably organized along co-operative lines so that they are democratically controlled by their members. All members should have a voice and vote in the decision-making process of the organization and there should be no discrimination on the basis of any “distinction of any kind such as, race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status”

Probably less well known is that fair-trade producers should aim to establish more control over the productive processes related to their own production through, for example, establishing more direct communication and negotiation with buyers, adding value by establishing processing facilities and/ or by heading towards mutual ownership with other producer organizations

2. Recognized Trade unions– Where not co-operatively owned, as is the case in many large scale fair-trade producers, workers will have the right to join an independent union and to organize collectively to improve their bargaining power in relation to their employers. This obviously implies that workers will be contractually employed and that the company will have overt, written employment policies, clearly outlining the conditions of employment.

3. Decent working conditions – workers should receive at least a living wage, not be required to do forced overtime, have decent breaks and work within god health and safety parameters. The organization is also expected to will continue to develop its business-related operations and maximise the return to the members, which may involve reducing cost in operations, increasingly skilled management and staff, the building up of working capital, implementation of quality control, training/education and risk management. Working conditions should be equitable for all workers. Salaries must be equal or higher than the regional average or than the minimum wage in effect. Health and safety measures must be established in order to avoid work-related injuries. A crucial part of this ideal is that child labour does not occur. Fair Trade licensing requires that children below the age of 15 are not employed. According to the standards laid down by the fair trade foundation, child Labour is not altogether banned as children may help their parents after school and during holidays, but only on the conditions that working hours do not ‘jeapordise’ the child’s education, through preventing the child attending school for example, and that work is supervised by a parent and that the child’s wellbeing is not undermined in any way.

4. Environmental sustainability – Producer organizations are expected to assess the environmental impacts of its members’ operations, to develop plans designed to mitigate those impacts and to monitor the implementation of those plans – the standards outline a fairly lengthy list of expectations – such as protecting virgin forest, establishing buffer zones, not depleting local resources and improving members standard of living so they can live more sustainably. Given that by far the largest fair trade sector is in agriculture, it is no great surprise to find that the conservation of soil is a primary tenet of sustainable agricultural production. Finally, to get fair trade accredited, certain things are band such as Genetically Modified Organisms.

5. The minimum price guarantee – fair trade buyers agree to pay a minimum price for products even when the market price for that product falls below the minimum price. This is to provide a degree of security of income, guarding against increasingly volatile price fluctuations in the price of food. The minimum price varies by product. Companies trading Fair trade products must pay a price to producers that aims to cover the costs of sustainable production: the fair trade minimum price, and also pay an additional sum that producers can invest in development: the fair trade premium.

6. The social premium – The ‘minimum standards’ are fairly straightforward – the fair trade premium must be democratically spent in accordance with Fair trade Standards to improve the social wellbeing of the workers in the producer organization, their families, and the wider community. What the money gets spent on will depend on the perceived needs and wants of the particular community of producers. Examples of how the premium has been spent include everything from work relating training for employees, to buying text books for worker’s children, to improving local buildings and water supplies. Money has even been spent on developing a local football club in one South African community. See the section on ‘case studies’ for more details.

7.Long-Term relationships – Producers are expected to partially pay for products in advance when producers ask for it and to sign contracts that allow for long-term planning and sustainable production practices.

 

Fair Trade against Free trade

I don’t want to go into detail about the global ‘free trade’ food system – but this is the briefest comparisons of how the mainstream food business undermines the principles of fair trade.

Selected principles of the Fair Trade Movement Selected principles of the neo-liberal free market system
 

  • Democratic organization – ideally in the form of co-operative organization where workers own and control the company for which they work.
  • Recognized Trade unions –workers will have the right to organize collectively to improve their bargaining power in relation to their employers.
  • Decent working conditions – workers should receive at least a living wage, not be required to do forced overtime, have decent breaks and work within god health and safety parameters
  • Environmental sustainability – small scale production
  • The minimum price guarantee – fair trade buyers agree to pay a minimum price for products even when the market price for that product falls below the minimum price. This is to provide a degree of security of income, guarding against increasingly volatile price fluctuations in the price of food. The minimum price varies by product.
  • The social premium
  • Long-Term relationships
  

  • Top down management style – CEOs and directors run the company of behalf of distant shareholders – CEOs and directors control shares themselves – strategic decisions made by senior managers with little input from workers / Distancing of those  in the supply ‘Outsourcing’ production -lengthy and obscure supply chains / rule of the consumer rather than the producer
  • Increasing trend towards hiring of agency workers who have fewer rights. Some companies do not allow workers or actively discourage workers to join trades unions
  • Sweat shop labour, moving around ‘race to the bottom’
  • Industrialized mass production techniques, widespread pollution..
  • Using monopoly power to push prices paid for raw materials down/ gambling on food prices and increasing sustainability/ Subsidies to EU farmers – undermines principle of a ‘fair market price’ WTO, monopoly power…
  • WTO lead Neoliberalisation – undermining the welfare state – through encouraging privatization and deregulation
  • Failure to engage in enduring relationships

 

Sources 

[1] Certification is carried out by a separate body – see flo and NET for more details.

[2] http://www.fair trade.net/fileadmin/user_upload/content/2009/standards/documents/04 10_EN_Generic_Fair trade_Standards_SPO_Aug_09_EN_amended_version_04-10.pdf

[4] http://www.fair trade.net/fileadmin/user_upload/content/2009/standards/documents/04 10_EN_Generic_Fair trade_Standard_HL_Aug_2009_EN_amended_version_04-10.pdf

[6] http://www.fair trade.net/product-standards.0.html

[7] http://www.fair trade.net/fileadmin/user_upload/content/FLO_Prohibited_Materials_List_Dec_2007_EN.pdf


[i] http://fair tradecertified.org/get-involved/blog/producer-voices-kuapa-kokoo-ghana

[ii] http://journeyforfair trade.blogspot.com/2011/03/listening-to-voices-indonesia.html

[iii] Ransom, David (2007) The No-Nonsense Guide to Fair Trade, New Internationalist

[iv] Fair Trade International – http://www.fair trade.org.uk/what_is_fair trade/faqs.aspx

[v] Piercy (2009) Jeremy: Coffins, Cats and Fair Trade Sex Toys, Quick Brown Fox Publications

[vi] http://www.wdm.org.uk/blog/fair-trade-not-just-fair trade

[vii] http://www.oxfam.org.uk/resources/issues/trade/introduction.html

 

Marxism, Things I like

Happiness is just around the corner and other ‘anti-Capitalist’ cartoons

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– Double header of Marxism* coming up in Sociology next week – The Marxist perspective on crime in A2 and intro to Marxism in AS – and here’s some nice cartoons that illustrate the broad marxist critique of Capitalism –

Firstly, an animated cartoon – the rat race –

And the non-animated version

And secondly – from our concerned friends organising this year’s buy nothing day – on November 26th this year!

And putting things in global perspective –

 

And this should bring a certain Marxist concept to mind – for ‘business man’ read the ‘Bourgeois’ or the ‘Capitalist Class’

*Or at least what the AQA call Marxism – which basically involves teaching it in a very generalised way – in fact anything that is critical of Capitalism and Elites can count as ‘Marxism’ in this context – which means anything from Marxism all the way through to Anarchism comes under the heading. Loose I know – but then again it is just the start…

Related Posts

My Book – Why Western Notions of Happiness are Unsatisfactory and How Buddhism Can Lead to a Deeper Sense of Happiness

Mainly for my own reference – some postcards

But what can I do?, Things I like, Wealth and Income Inequality

It’s business as usual at the Bankers’ annual party

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Check out this wonderful piece of research – I guess it’s overt non-participant observation and semi-structured interviews – where members of the Robin-Hood Tax crew sneak into a city-bankers’ party to see what’s going on –

 

Apparantly the mood is somewhat more subdued than in previous years but the filmakers still conclude that despite the fact that bankers have received billions of tax payers money the following is still the case –

1. Bankers are still making a lot of money

2. The same people as caused the last financial crisis are still at the helm of the banking industry – and it’s business as usual

3. The government apparantly has no power to control the financial sector whatsoever!

 

The Robin Hood Tax is a proposed 0.05 tax on all financial transactions – that would reportedly raise over £100 billion a year to help pay for – well – whatever Nation States wanted – education, povery relief, combatting climate change…. It’s explained in the video below

 

I mean it’s hardly smashing Capitalism – but it is something you can support if you want to make the world ever so slightly less unequal!

Things I like

8 Reasons Young Britains Don’t Fight Back?

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Excellent  recent post from Alternet with the above title – very useful updates on the continued relevance of what the A2 syllabus broadly calls ‘Marxist Theory’ – It basically argues that there are 8 ways in which the system socialises youth into being passive and unconcerned so there is no belief among the young that they can (even if they believe they should, which is rare) change anything… even with the increasingly obvious social injustices in the West – the most obvious being the fact that the rich are getting richer while the poor suffer.

The article has a U.S. focus – below I outline the ‘8 reasons why people don’t fight back’ andconsider the extent to which these ‘8 ways are true in modern Britain, adding in a few further pieces of evidence, drawn from a few books I’ve read and my experiences of students I’ve taught. So are there eight reasons Young Britains don’t fight back include –

One – Debt – University graduates starting out in life with thousands of pounds of debt are too concerned about losing their jobs to get involved in protest.

Impossible to tell at the moment how this will play out in the future in the UK – the government only recently introduced hefty tuition fees. I’m not convinced that debt will act as a passifying force in the future. To be honest, I’m broadly optimistic about the future of protest in the UK and its possible beneficial effects on our democracy, although, the biggest challenge is to actually translate critque into alternatives – and broader economic alternatives for everyone rather than just focussing on the student debt issue. Something I’ve yet to look into is mass debt-default/ not-paying movement as a possible strategy to bring down the elite – kind of like is occuring in Greece.

Two – Psychopathologising and medicalising non-compliance

This is where any behaviour that is critical of the system is deemed to be a sympton of psychiatric disorder. To be honest I don’t think this is happening in the UK to the extent it is in the US –  I only heard of ‘opposotional defiant disorder’ through this blog for example. What is happening though is increasing police powers have lead to people being arrested for ‘suspected’ anti-social behaviour, and the now near-ubiquitous use of kettling could turn people off protest, although there are some encouraging signs of students at the recent fees protests who witnessed kettling and have been turned against the government and very much onto protest. 

Three – Schools educating for compliance rather than democracy. Drawing on Jonathon Kozol, the author argues that ‘School teaches us that we are “moral and mature” if we politely assert our concerns, but the essence of school—its demand for compliance—teaches us not to act in a friction-causing manner.’ (This seems to a timely return to Ivan Illich’s ideas in deschooling society NB- I think blogging etc. could well be quite close to the ‘learning webs’ at least as far as humanities are concerned that Ivan suggested as part of his education-altertative)

I’m in basic agreement with this. While the the citizenship agenda widely taught in UK schools offers critically minded teachers the opportunity to teach about direct action etc, more often than not citizenship is a lame excercise in getting students to accept their client-role in UK politics.

I am also frequently dismayed at the gaps in students’ knowledge know when they start A levels at 16 – I remember last year that only about four students out of forty (this was in the A2 year!) had a basic understanding of the process of global warming – I really don’t think it should be my job to teach this stuff!

Four – No child left behind/ Race to the Top – The title here isn’t overly clear – this is a critique of ‘testing culture’ in education. The author says ‘standardized-testing tyranny that creates fear, which is antithetical to education for a democratic society. Fear forces students and teachers to constantly focus on the demands of test creators; it crushes curiosity, critical thinking, questioning authority, and challenging and resisting illegitimate authority’

This is most definately happening in the UK – a number of my colleagues (I teach 16-19) have complained of students turning up to revision lessons with a ‘revise me’ attitude. As if spending time on revision classes rather than actual teaching wasn’t bad enough, students now expect to be guided through revision step by step – . The deeper cause of this is of course an education system dominated by league tables in which teachers are encouraged to ‘teach the test’ –  Students have learnt that what matters is their exam performance (their relative exam performance even!) rather than the subject matter itself.

I’d also say that schools are increasingly undermining students’ ability to think critically by pandering to short attention spans and pushing what I call ‘edutainment’ (See Frank Furedi’s Wasted) – teaching through popular game activities – which further reinforces the passive-consumer identity –  although I might er be guilty of this myself!

Five – Shaming Young People Who Take Education—But Not Their Schooling—Seriously. This is where the government equates just being at school and completing school with a minimum standard of qualifications as an indicator that you are a ‘valued member of society’ who is ‘heading for success’ – the other side of this equation is to damn and even criminalise those people who are not in school or who do not finish school.

In the UK the gradual expansion of the ‘education life-cycle’ – children now start younger and within three years will have to stay in some kind of education or training until 18 – suggests a similar trend towards the state pushing the value of education, as does the state’s right to imprison parents of truanting children.

AS to demonising those who fail – the term NEETS – 16-24 year olds Not in Education, Employment or Training has also appeared in the last decade – the term being pretty much synomous with the roughly million strong young underlcass who have failed everything in school. These are seen as such a threat to society that government task forces have been commissioned to figure out what to do with them. (On this note there is a book I’m looking forward to reading that covers the demonisation of the working class more generally – ) 

Six – The Normalisation of Surveillance – Once again – yes yes yes – one of the most obvious trends in the UK – the most surveilled society on earth – just in college we have the crystal registration system, then a seperate attendance monitoring system, 4 interim reports, and parents evenings. These processes are all found in primary and secondary schools as well of course, all required for effective monitoring of progress. There is also a system in place which alerts authorities to ‘potential problem students’ before they start school so that they can be put into special measures when they start.

This excellent podcast looks at what students think of surveillance – it includes some pretty grim material of the inreasing use of cameras in toilets.

Seven – Television – well at least we don’t have Fox News! Not that it would matter because students aren’t interested in news. Here the author notes the pacifying effects of TV on students – well intuitively I agree that TV has a negative effect, very difficult to prove this of course, this reminds me of some nice research from 2006 – apparantly 1 in 6 young people think they have a realistic chance of becoming famous like someone off Big Brother – suggesting TV does matter.

I’m also convinced that, and Darren Brown had better watch out, that I can pick which students’ parents read the Daily Mail Comic after a month of listing to their views.

Finally, it is worrying how much students love watching videos in class – OK there are a lot of good documentaries for Sociology thanks mainly to C4, the Beeb and especially indepednents, but sometimes I think I could stick on any old nonsense and the students’s be happy. Getting them to disuss even the most basic points from a 20 minute vid is, however, much more difficult.

Eight – Fundamentalist Consumerism – the arguement here is that consumer culture undermines the ability of people to form solidaristic movements

Are students affected by consumerism? Well many of them are – interested in Fashion and expressing their identities through the stuff that they buy – but a number are also more than just consumers – I’m not so pessimistic about this – perhaps things are genuninly worse in the US?

Overall I’d say similar trends are occuring in the UK, but I’m not convinced that UK youth are as passive and consumerist as Americans – I think there’s hope for the future – especially when our elites are making such arses of themselves and such a bloody mess of our society.

Book reviews, summaries and excerpts, Things I like

Good Economic Policy Does Not Require Good Economists

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Hi, just a brief summary of the penultimate chapter of ’23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism’

The key point of this chapter is that many economic success stories are to be found in countries where economic policy was not run by ‘expert economists’ – East Asian countries  in the 1980s are cases in point – especially and most obviously China.  It is only since the rise of neoliberal economics and the Chicago School (of economics, not sociology!) especially that economic experts and policy has basically screwed the majority.

This chapter also offers a good summary-critique of neoliberalism. I thought I’d just share a few choice sections – It’s nice to see such a succinct, potted critique – reminds you of just how horrific neoliberalism is!

‘During the last three decades the increasing influence of ‘free- market’ economics has resulted in poorer economic performance all over the world – lower economic growth, greater economic instability, increased inequality and finally culminatingin the disaster of the 2008 world financial crisis. Insofar as we need economics, we need different kinds of economics from free-market economics.’

Chang then points out that many of the fastest growing economies of the last 5 decades did not practise free market economics – [most obviously China], and he goes on to say that ‘there are reasons to think that [neoliberal free market] economics may be positively harmful for the economy… Over the last three decades, economists played an important role in creating the conditions of the 2008 financial crisis (and dozens of smaller financial crises that came before it since the early 1980s, – the 1982 Third World debt crisis, the 1995 Mexico peso crisis, the 1997 Asian crisis and the 1998 Russian crisis) by providing theoretical justifation for financial deregulation and the unrestrained pursuit of short term profits. More broadly, they advanced theories that justified policies that lead to slower growth, higher inequalty, heightened job insecurity and more frequent financial crises that have dogged the world in the last three decades.

‘On top of that they pushed for policies that weakened the prospects for long-term development in developing countries. In the rich countires these economists encouraged people to overestimate the power of new technologies, made people’s lives more and more unstable, made them ignore the loss of national control over the economy and rendered them complacement about de-industrialisation. Moreover, they supplied arguments that insist that all those economic outcomes that many in the world find objectionable – such as rising inequality and poverty in poor countries are really inevitable, given selfish and rational human behaviour.”

In short, says Chang, economists (most of whom who have any policy-power subscribe to neoliberalism) has done a huge amount of harm to our society…

The message of hope, and coming back to the title of the post, is that we don’t need expert economists to turn our economy round – so trust ye in the little the guys – such as the E.F. Schumacher brigade, the New Economics Foundation and the guys at http://falseeconomy.org.uk/– the peops therein may not be as well trained as those versed in classical and neoliberal economics, but if they were running the economy, we’d probably all be a lot more prosperous and secure right now.

Book reviews, summaries and excerpts, Things I like

23 Things they Don’t tell you about Capitalism

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Just a few notes and key points from this excellent book by Ha-Joon Chang –

The book basically busts a lot of neoliberal myths. It’s worth noting from the outset that Chang isn’t a Marxist, he accepts that market systems are basically sound, and argues that what we need is a more globalised – Keynsian style of regulation to prevent neoliberal strains of free market fundamentalism.

The book is, unsurprisingly, split into 23 chapters – each chapter briefly outlines ‘one thing market fundamentalists tell us about Capitalism’ and then looks at criticisms of what we are told, thus myth busting neoliberalism and showing it up for the flawed ideology that it is.

To my mind, this is an excellent book, that finds the right balance between an academic and populist tone – the criticisms of Capitalism are made using both easy to understand analogies and stories as well as hard historical – statististical data.

Teachers of A level Sociology can use elements of this in the Global Development Module, or even to illustrate Marxist ideas of ideology (although I imagine more than half of your students just wouldn’t get it!)

Just a few of my favourite myth-buts of neo-liberalism (I’ll add in a more details later!)

Thing 1 – There is no such thing as a free market – Even today markets are regulated at both an international and national level – the most obvious example of this being immigration controls, which, if removed, would lead to mass migrations and significantly lower wages for people in the developed world. Other examples include there not being markets in people (no slavery), organs, and the fact that child labour is illegal.

We regulate some markets to such an extent that we ban trade all together, and thus it is clear that what counts as a ‘free market’ is a political decision. The ‘free market’ today isn’t something that just exists independently of the political sphere – freedoms are restricted when trading in certain goods and services are deemed too harmful or morally unacceptable. This of course lays the foundation for arguing that we should regulate speculative financial and commodity markets given the harm that they cause.

Thing 2 – Companies should not be run in the interests of their owners – what Chang means by this is that companies should not be run in the interests of shareholders – because shareholders are always after short term returns on their investment – and thus companies are run by managers in order to maximise short term returns (year on year dividends) rather than longer term productivity growth. – Later on in the book (see thing 18) Chang outlines how General Motors recently failed to invest in new technologies to make better cars – which would have made them more competitive with foregin companies, but instead invested billions in setting up new financial services because the short term return on the later was greater – thus pleasing shareholders. The end result of this is that what was once the biggest and most productive company in America was transformed in the space of three decades into a basket case that had to go begging to the US government for a bail out – but the shareholders did very nicely, and now their money’s elsewhere – it’s just the workers and the tax payer that suffered!

In this chapter Chang also provides a brief overview of the development of the Corporation – essentially it emerges that three innovations in Corporate development since the the beginning of last century have lead to the disaster that is modern capitalism – firstly, limited liability, secondly the rise of the managerial class (rather than individual Capitalists) running firms and finally the rise of shareholder ownership – these three things combined, which on their own are not necessarily in themselves bad and were in fact either necessary or desirable to keep Capitalism profitable, these three things combined have created the conditions that make companies work against the interests of the country – because now we have managers who are covered by limited liability and thus free to take risks that are beholden to shareholders to make short term gains. Chang’s not a Marxist, but I’d say this looks like a fetter situation!  

Thing 7 – Free-market policies rarely make poor countries rich

Chang points out that, with only a few exceptions, all of today’s rich countries have become rich through a combination of protectionism, subsidies and other policies that they advise developing countries not to adopt.

Looking at China as a case study – until a decade ago, China was highly protectionist, with an average industrial tariff rate well above 30%, and very visible trade restrictions still remain. The country has restrictions on cross-border flows of capital, a state owned and highly regulated banking sector, and numerous restrictions on foregin ownership of financial assets. Foreign firms often complain about being discriminated against. The country has no elections and is riddled with corruption and has complicated property rights. In particular, its protection of intellectual property rights is weak, making it the piracy capital of the world. The country also has a large number of state owned companies which are propped up with subsidies!

Chang then goes into a wonderful section in which he looks at the economic policies put forward by the previous American Presidents that appear on the different bank notes – many of them protectionist – policies correlated with economic growth throughout previous decades. This deserves a post on its own so I’ll save this for later!

America and China are not exceptions (even if they were – these, along with the UK  are the two most significant  economic powerhouses to have shaped history -OK with China I’m getting a bit Futerist – sorry about that – as a rule I don’t trust Futerists – and neither should you) – there are many countries in different situations that have witnessed economic growth while practising protectionist economic policy – Finland, Denmark, Germany, Taiwan, Korea and Switzerland are all examples.

Most importantly for early econmic development is the protection of ‘infant industries’ – virtually all of today’s rich countries did this early on, and most of them severley restricted foreign investment.

There are essentially three reasons why developing countries should adopt protectionist economic policies rather than opening themselves up the international free market forces –

1. Developing countries are, by definition, undeveloped, they are thus in no state to compete on the world stage with devleoped economies and their advanced technologies and managerial efficiencies. In a similar way, you would not send your 6 year old son out to compete with 26 year olds, you would protect him from the labour market and send him to school, so that when he reaches his 20s he is better educated and thus more competitive. Developing countries should protect their infant industries in a similar way.

2. In early stages of development, markets are especially vulnerable to manipulation by big (read here foreign) actors – and so the government needs to restrict thier behaviour.

3. the govt. needs to do many things itself because there are not enough private sector firms capable of providing what is needed for development.

Despite the above, the IMF has encouraged developing countries to open up their borders and expose their economies to the full force of global competition, using the conditions attached to aid. It’s been a case of ‘do as I say, not do as I did’.

Developing countries have seen a slow down in economic growth since the introduction of free market economic reforms in the 1980s – the 1960s to 70s saw annual growth of 3% while the era of free market reform 1980 -2000 saw growth, but this declined to 1.7%.

To summarise, few countries have become rich through free-trade, free-market policies and few ever will.

Thing 9 – We do not live in a post-industrial age

On the service it appears that manufacturing in the UK has declined hugely in significance – as evidenced by ‘deindustrialisation’ – in the 1970s 35% of the workforce were employed in manufacturing, but this has now dropped to just over 10%. The general line on this is that this doesn’t matter because we are now a post-industrial economy with more people employed in R and D and the service sectors.

However, if you look at things in terms of production and consumptin – it becomes apparent that the decline in manufacturing has not been as rapid as it at first appears – even though we spend more today on services (haircuts for example) – and we spend relatively less on computers – or we might spend as much as we did ten years ago but buy more of them – this is because computers are relatively cheaper than they were ten years ago while haircuts are relatively more expensive. This, in turn, is because computers, and most other industrial products, have become cheeper to manufacture because of productivity growth – technogical innovation meens you can get more computers per worker and so the cost goes down – something which simply cannot happen with haircuts and other face-to-face service jobs to anything like the same extent.

The problem a country like Britain has now got is that many service jobs depend on the industrial sector (most service jobs invovle working with stuff that’s been manufactured somewhere) – but we now have less control over the stuff we produce. Also, it’s difficult to see where our service sector can grow – as services, compared to physical products, are harder to export – consider the lanuguage barriers for a start – and this may well explain our declining rate of econmic growth – in other words, the idea that a service sector economy can carry on growing is pretty much a myth – there are huge barriers to this happening.

Thing 10 – The US does not have the highest living standard in the world

 

Thing 13 – making rich people richer doesn’t make the rest of us richer

Thing 23 – Good economic policy does not require good economists.

As always, there are some great reviews on Amazon!

Sociology Songs, Things I like

You’re the most annoying dude I ever seen brah

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Could you please move, you’re right in front of the quinoa.

If we pretend it’s not a total mick-take, and that this is a genuine song about the lived experience of middle class angst, then it certainly ticks the ‘authentic’ box, so is this hip-hpp? I mean is it ‘true’ to the roots of the movement? (As represented by the likes of NWA.)  This is a serious question that I’ll be asking at some point during the crime and deviance course.

This, incidentally, is yet another great reason to join Twitter – I stumbled upon this by browsing the tweets of David Harvey’s followers….Now that simply wouldn’t have been possible a few years ago!