Autore: Peter Herrmann's Blog

Dr. Peter Herrmann is a sociologist of German origin -- well, he was, before moving forward, being now ..., well, some say: social philosopher, permanently crossing borders between arts, economics, jurisprudence, philosophy, political science and .., yes, still sociology ... and having lost many links to the origins as fasr as nationality is concerned, trying to imagine that there is no border ...

The no-problem-society I – Beautification of teaching, administrative nonsense

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, general, joys - what we usually take for it, quotes, thoughts on life and its philosophy

The superior Man is aware of Righteousness, the inferior man is aware of advantage.
Confucius

Of course, working with slides and even pleasing the eyes as part of it, has some benefit while lecturing. Not least in the context of courses and presentations in a ‘foreign language’. It may be beneficial for lectures, and it surely is beneficial in the eyes of students. And of course, this way it is possible to make use of some special ‘brain features’: some visual effects make memorizing easier.

And of course, there is nothing wrong with nicely presented slides, simply for the sake of beauty as value in itself or possibly as matter of entertainment. And as so often there is a but. Put forward as question: Even if we agree that it had been an ongoing dream of humankind to

liberate mankind from its oldest and most natural burden, the burden of laboring and the bondage to necessity’[1]

– as Hannah Arendt expressed it – the fact remains that the necessity is not defined by the unbearable lightness of being, by the beauty of the past but by the fact – taking it from Kierkegaard that

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

Doesn’t this also mean we should recover the pleasure and excitement of learning, of comprehending? I remember having observed together with my daughter for a long time, squatting on my haunches, a snail: slow movements, nothing ‘eye catching’ – to be honest, I was a bit annoyed when she first asked to stay and watch. Still, it was ‘worthwhile’, exploring the slow way. There is, of course, a special reason for mentioning it, a reflection that came up, getting manifest during the last days and weeks. I started to think of it in terms of

the no-problem-society.

It is so often that I hear this term: transporting stuff and storing it in some new place, rescheduling teaching hours, internet-blackboard services not working, transferring money and being confronted with strange fees, charged on the European single market … and then of course, a major financial crash and economic meltdown. Sure, the latter finally had been recognised as a serious problem, after ignoring early warnings with the comment

‘No problem’.

Too late, some still managed and made profit even from the problems others faced, some under all (their own) problems, committing suicide. – No problem, right? As much as all the small incidences are

‘No problem’ …

Behind all this is the increasingly virulent statement of

No problem.

Actually something else is meant: if difficulties arise we deal with them as problem, not allowing to see the problematique, the fact that many singular issues are actually part of a much wider setting with structural and processual deficits, the core issue being the loss of the ability to act socially, even: to act in terms of making any positive social contribution.[2] And it is not possible to wrap them nicely up and maintain the complex connection: in the Netherlands they spend now huge amounts of money for some minor changes in the treatment of psychiatric patients, without considering the underlying causes that brings people into the situation: that makes psychiatric treatment necessary and makes it for a while even ‘efficient’ when it is done this way (I know, we discussed this for instance in connection with the lege Basagli, see also here).

Seems to be far fetched? But is it really: Consider you are studying and there is a change of the schedule. One day before the lecture newly scheduled time, you learn that the next day you have to turn up to a lecture. Effects on motivation? Effects on success of learning? … Of course, it is difficult to follow lectures on a new topic, take up the challenges to look in a different way at reality. But to which extent does it really help to play problems down, referring first to the ‘we always did it this way’? The first impression is always a lasting one. And should the first impression then be about problem-solving by playing them down?

– But don’t blame the students! Allow them to have and talk about problems.

About their own problems, the problem they have and they have with us – different toothless problems we create for them. Of course I know and appreciate the difficulty that occurs when being confronted with writing, listing to and presenting something new, something unknown: and personally I usually do not want to start again and again with what people should and could know, trying to develop things further. And I know and appreciate that it is easy to challenge people – and seeing that some of them are indeed over-challenged. Then, however, making things clearer so that everybody understands may not be the solution – it reduces the suggested solution on what is immediately possible – here and now, not allowing to think about the there and tomorrow. Anyway, many people still do not do anything with the recipes, handy to solve a problem, but not allowing moving easily beyond. It easily ends in the attitude:

No problem

Allowing us to move on, working on some patchwork answers:

  • chasing students to the next-day seminar, where they can enjoy the latest slide beauties
  • making up some administrative rules that allow to drawer everything (well, I mean with this: put everything into its own drawer) from where we can push and pull it around according to immediate ‘needs’
  • to find interim storage space, fading out that life is as such a matter of interim being
  • learning for the next-day’s seminar instead of learning for the future
  • colleagues plagiarising, and not really heard when talking about it with other colleagues
  • seeing articles that are obviously written on the basis of the material easily available AND that is not causing difficulties in pursuing the own ‘argument’ – ‘making things fit’
  • leaving students alone, not giving the information, the review of exams with which they can see there strength and weakness, beyond the schematised SWOT-analysis
  • …

All this and much more … it is

No Problem

we hear. This no-problem-society emerges as the

Visibility of Nothingness

celebrating the form, celebrating the external beauty of smoothness instead of looking at the eternal beauty of contradictoriness and its dialectical overcoming in the Heraclitian river which is a matter of permanent  challenge and thus change …

Many are walking away, nodding about the need to radically rethink issues and … the reference to the well known ‘But we always did it this way’ and cannot change things easily. Finally we have to accept that there is

No problem

Always offering the perfect solution. We are easily trotting away like donkeys.

Over- and under-challenge is somewhat a catch 22-situation which is a serious problem. Not least as we are indeed educating people within institutions that offer mass-education, are setting up administrations that are part of a hegemonic system that controls masses of people – finally we all have to survive.

Slow reading does not fit into such educational setting (though many students love it when they are allowed as it challenges them to think and to talk about themselves); complains about administrational issues does not fit into the framework and so they are met with ‘Thanks … for your good suggestion’ and presumably a fist in the pocket and the attitude of ignoring – ‘Yes, sure, I will come back to you ..?’ The attitude of ignoring? But of course not, things that do not exist cannot be ignored (though the fish complained while suffocating, lacking water). Surely Kierkegaard may come to mind again, having stated, that

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.

And this is reflecting the increasing amount of streamlined language, presented on beautified slides, offering food for thought that is already digested …, not ready to enter contest and contestation, not allowing to recognise that the student who does not walk half of the way by him/herself did not learn anything – Socrates said something like this, in a way similar to the words of Confucius, contending

I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand

Also Hannah Arendt comes to mind again – her reflections are as follows:

Wherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become political by definition, for speech is what makes man a political being. If we would follow the advice, so frequently urged upon us, to adjust our cultural attitudes to the present status of scientific achievement, we would in all earnest adopt a way of life in which speech is no longer meaningful. For the sciences today have been forced to adopt a ‘language’ of mathematical symbols which, though it was originally meant only as an abbreviation for spoken statements, now contains statements that in no way can be translated back into speech.

What once became known as Potemkin village, presents itself today as designer market for people who do not have any problems. Finally there are always computers and robots that can help – or should I say: who can help? Finally we are now discussing in law the prospects for the marriage and divorce law for cross-marriages between human and robot …

… but let’s wait and see …, and continue on this later … for time we acknowledge

Jezelf een vraag stellen, daarmee begint verzet. En dan die vraag aan een ander stellen. (Asking yourself a question, that is how resistance begins. And then ask that very same question someone else.)
[Remco Campert]

______________

[1]            Ahrendt. The Human Condition; Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1958: 4

[2]            “Social contributions” – we hardly understand the meaning anymore – we cannot really grasp that they are going beyond ‘doing good’ for individuals that face ‘social problems’

academic bloomers

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, projects, works, works, projects, publications

Something is going wrong in academia – is it a matter of the publishing sector or the awarding system? A sentence in Bruno F. Frey’s article on ‘Publishing as prostitution? – Choosing between one’s own ideas and academic success‘ (Public Choice 116: 205–223, 2003) does not provide the answer, though it importantly poses the question.

A well-known example is Akerlof’s “Market for Lemons”, which was rejected by the American Economic Review and the Review of Economic Studies as being “trivial”, and by the Journal of Political Economy for being “too general” before it was accepted by the Quarterly Journal of Economics, which was instrumental in him winning the Nobel Prize.

Will we be able to contribute to the debate during the next days in Shanghai, addressing conference on

Responsible leadership, global citizenship and the role of education – what might the last 10 years tell us about the next 10 years?

organised at theThe Sino-British College, USST, 上海理工大学中英国际学院 ?

Working from rather different perspectives and interests on the contribution, titled “‘Chinese Higher Education in an International Sitting: Progress and Challenges’” (together with Fan Hong/Rzepka, Remi) was already a challenge. The gain for me, against the odds: becoming even more aware of the difficulties to “put students first”.

If I will still be able total up on the new plan: writing an textbook for economics from and for the lifeworld perspective of which the fundamental is that another world is indeed, possible if it trust in the honesty “grand narrative of small people” as main bulwark against strives and lies of old and new princes, West and East.

see also https://youtu.be/6FJxTwHuotI

Realities and perspectives of the progressive and leftist processes in Latin America

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in general

In the context of the XIII Conference of Latin American Studies “Realities and perspectives of the progressive and leftist processes in Latin America”, taking place from today until the 21st of October 2016 in Havana, Cuba, an article I read recently, comes to my mind.

It is about the US Blockade on Cuba being ‘Genocidal’ and the fact that it also violates international law and the human rights of Cubans – so the statement of The National Union of Cuban Jurists.
My small contribution to this debate is concerned with reflections on
Reactivating Existing Traditions for Progress
Indeed, the question of today is very much about finding a specific independence of opening economies – counteracting the American strive for another occupation of foreign terrain.
Then, approaching crisis analysis in a more complex way, we detect as one of the fundamental issues the frequent trend of reviving traditional forms of economy and society. This can be seen as matter of the grand narratives of historical development (the renaissance may be seen as one of the most pronounced ‘steps’) but also as matter of the narratives of the medium range.
Currently this pattern should be closely observed, encouraging us to make use out of the current developmental stage and crisis by way of analysing the contradictions of the mode of production. What is usually termed as industry 4.0, fourth industrial revolution and also uberisation and emergence of the big-data-society is surely a double-edged sword. In any case, this ambiguity means not least the emergence of potentials for new spaces of societal practice that allow the creatively-productive integration of economy and social activities on the one hand and the development of individuals in their communities and societal development on the other hand.
Referring to the French Theory of Regulation and the Theory of Social Quality, the contribution will suggest some perspectives for global development, where actually countries from the global periphery can develop an avant-garde position. At the centre, we the following topics will be looked at:
* Politics of New Technologies
* Precarity or a new work-life balances
* Wealth – Redistribution versus New Production
* Local and Global – Development in one country or many different worlds
* Small is Powerful – Potentials for small countries and niche economies.
Matters, narratives of the grand narratives of historical development, the narratives of the medium range and the present moment, merging at times.

Disenchantment …

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, general, Peter's Log, thoughts on life and its philosophy

or enchantment …?
In sociology we know latest since Max Weber about the disenchantment of the world. And still we cannot completely grasp it … – You may remember an entry some time ago, when I wrote about a chat with a friend, looking at The Other Dimension.

There it was about emotions, the exceptional and the part of life we cannot and do not even want to explain. There is again another dimension, the enchantment and fascination we overlook so often for which we do not have the time. The enchantment by something that seems to be just routine, perhaps even left to the autopilot, and as it is part of daily life we forget to approach it – sure, not least a metaphor, but there is indeed some fascination in so many things that may seem so very ordinary, from approaching a another country by plane to the landing, looking into the eyes of friends. Don’t we do it nearly every day, and don’t we easily forget about it ?

Quoting again from the mentioned Other Dimension:

To take it from Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment

Bourgeois society is ruled by equivalence. It makes the dissimilar comparable by reducing it to abstract quantities. To the enlightenment, that which does not reduce to numbers, and ultimately to the one, becomes illusion.

There is surely some Madness of Sincerity of which I learned again – finally

Men are never convinced of your reasons, of your sincerity, of the seriousness of your sufferings, except by your death. So long as you are alive, your case is doubtful; you have a right only to their skepticism.”

And isn’t the ease with which we are forgetting this also one of the major wrongdoings when we as teaches stand in class, not fully respecting the performance of the students, also by not teaching them that failing in the courses does not mean “to  be a failure”? And moreover, to teach indeed fascinating innovations, making easily forgetting the foundations that are needed tallow them to evolve? In a recent lecture, part of the teaching BA-students at BCC, I tried to do exactly the opposite.

Migration

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in contemporary socio-economic situation, general, projects, works, works, projects, publications

Over the last year or so, a working group on Migration of the Scientific Council of attac –  Association Pour La Taxation Des Transactions Financières Pour L’Aide Aux Citoyens, elaborated a working paper on issues of Refuge and Migration. At the core of the work stood the elaboration of a document that evaluates and assesses the controversy of the topics Refuge/Asylum/Migration from a non-nationalist perspective. It can be seen as an important contribution against the raising nationalism and strengthening of right-wing movements in Europe, which is not least a futile ground of international terrorisms.
A short version of the document – in German language –  is now published in the journal Sozialismus (43/10): 26-30. The full document (also in German language), which is explicitly understood as working and discussion document, can be found by following this link.

A new week, an old task

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in contemporary socio-economic situation, quotes, thoughts on life and its philosophy

From:

Max Horkheimer 1939: The Social Function of Philosophy

We cannot say that, in the history of philosophy, the thinkers who had the most progressive effect were those who found most to criticize or who were always on hand with so-called practical programs. Things are not that simple. A philosophical doctrine has many sides, and each side may have the most diverse historical effects. Only in exceptional historical periods, such as the French Enlightenment, does philosophy itself become politics. In that period, the word philosophy did not call to mind logic and epistemology so much as attacks on the Church hierarchy and on an inhuman judicial system. The removal of certain preconceptions was virtually equivalent to opening the gates of the new world. Tradition and faith were two of the most powerful bulwarks of the old regime, and the philosophical attacks constituted an immediate historical action. Today, however, it is not a matter of eliminating a creed, for in the totalitarian states, where the noisiest appeal is made to heroism and a lofty Weltanschauung, neither faith nor Weltanshauung rule, but only dull indifference and the apathy of the individual towards destiny and to what comes from above. Today our task is rather to ensure that, in the future, the capacity for theory and for action which derives from theory will never again disappear, even in some coming period of peace when the daily routine may tend to allow the whole problem to be forgotten once more. Our task is continually to struggle, lest mankind become completely disheartened by the frightful happenings of the present, lest man’s belief in a worthy, peaceful and happy direction of society perish from the earth.

 

Independent thinking ….

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, thoughts on life and its philosophy, works, works, projects, publications

… and the small steps the academic world undermines it …

Two weeks teaching are over, today with the long Sunday sessions … – it is good to see the students (well, some of them) again being around, eager to learn, interested in understanding the world and gain independent thinking. Sure, independent thinking does by no means deny the meaning of work that had been done – putting all us of on the shoulders of giants and as well on those of the forgotten labouring masses of the academic world on which the monuments of giants are erected. Al this talk about giants and the acknowledgment of the pedestals on which they stand is not just about referencing but it is of fundamental importance to learn about the work that had been done, climbing on the shoulders of giants. And this is not least a matter of methodologies, theories and methods. Only this way we are able to work according to fundamentally important principles: Asad Zaman presents them in the following way:

The first of this is to consider the central role of institutions as mediators of change. … A second principle is “methodological communitarianism,” according to which only collective action creates social change … . A third principle is the strong interaction between the social, economic and political spheres which requires simultaneous consideration of all three … . A fourth principle is the reflexive relationship between theories and history. Changing historical circumstances generate theories designed to understand this change. In turn, theories affect history, since responses to change are mediated by theories. Finally, … social change is initiated by external factors, but understanding the process of change requires considering responses to these external stimuli by various groups.[1]

But what is then about independence? Just before taking up teaching again, I submitted an article to a journal – and the style guidelines deserve in the context of learning independent thinking some special attention:

The use of personal pronouns (‘I’ and ‘we’) is to be generally avoided in the text, as are phrases such as ‘This paper will analyze …’, since the paper itself is an inanimate object and incapable of cognition.

The age old and lasting Werturteilsstreit (value judgment dispute) in new veils. This dispute was at its height before WW I, in the early 1960 and it has its clandestine renaissance now — Doesn’t the quoted formulation suggest that any academic should leave personality, opinion, values etc, at the wardrobe when entering the ivory tower? – Sure, another reading is possible: academics of all disciplines, leave the tower and act in a responsible way wherever responsibility is asked for. Not least on the streets and squares – when crossing them and blocking them …

Coming back too teaching, the challenge remains: how to prepare academics to find the door of the ivory tower, making them thoroughly aware that getting in does not suggest one has to stay inside.

It is indeed still true what had been said in thesis 11:

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.

Part of my tiny contribution to the interpretation and change can be found here in the lecture recordings, which will be frequently updated throughout the term.

====

[1] Zambian, Asad, 2016: The Methodology of Polanyi’s Great Transformation; in: Economic Thought 5.1: 44-63; here: 46; I may add that I talked about methodological socialism in the book “Opening Views against the Closure of the World” which had been published earlier this year.

War – the political intercourse carried on with other means — 9/11/1973

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in general, thoughts on life and its philosophy
While writing, just before the 9/11 date, I can only assume that there will be another series of memorials … — and the one nearly complete amnesia: September 11, 1973 is the date which marks much more than just another violent rebuke of an alternative to business as usual as capitalist is called — and it is called even more so today, while the hegemony of this kind of business is barely contested in real terms.
What makes the Coup in Chile special?
To begin with, an important point can be taken from a piece by  Ralph Miliband, published in the Jacobin. He makes us aware of the fact that Chile was a showcase. We read
When Salvador Allende was elected to the presidency of Chile in September 1970, the regime that was then inaugurated was said to constitute a test case for the peaceful or parliamentary transition to socialism.
And leaving the different interpretations Miliband utters aide, it is surely true that
class struggle also means, and often means first of all, the struggle waged by the dominant class, and the state acting on its behalf, against the workers and the subordinate classes. By definition, struggle is not a one way process; but it is just as well to emphasize that it is actively waged by the dominant class or classes, and in many ways much more effectively waged by them than the struggle waged by the subordinate classes.
Gabriel García Márquez out this into the wider context in his piece Why Allende had to die?

Chile had long been a favoured area for research by North American social scientists. The age and strength of its popular movement, the tenacity and intelligence of its leaders and the economic and social conditions themselves afforded a glimpse of the country’s destiny. One didn’t require the findings of a Project Camelot to venture the belief that Chile was a prime candidate to be the second socialist republic in Latin America after Cuba. The aim of the United States, therefore, was not simply to prevent the government of Allende from coming to power in order to protect American investments. The larger aim was to repeat the most fruitful operation that imperialism has ever helped bring off in Latin America: Brazil.

And this is the core of such class struggle: undermine systematically any success story that shows that another world is possible. So we read

During the first year, 47 industrial firms were nationalised, along with most of the banking system. Agrarian reform saw the expropriation and incorporation into communal property of six million acres of land formerly held by the large landowners. The inflationary process was slowed, full employment was attained and wages received a cash rise of 30 per cent.
Hegemony, we know too well from Gramsci, is linked to two ways: the direct control, using violence where needed — and this is the force making sure that oppression is maintained if the soft means of hegemonic control fail to fulfill their duty. The geopolitical constellation was clear — The Time Magazine (October 19, 1970) brought it on the point, titling:
Marxist Threat In The Americas – Chile’s Salvador Allende
Indeed, as Márquez points out,
For the Christian Democrats, it was proof that the process of social justice set in motion by the Popular Unity coalition could not be turned back by legal means but they lacked the vision to measure the consequences of the actions they then undertook. For the United States, the election was a much more serious warning and went beyond the simple interests of expropriated firms. It was an inadmissible precedent for peaceful progress and social change for the peoples of the world, particularly those in France and Italy, where present conditions make an attempt at an experiment along the lines of Chile possible. All forces of internal and external reaction came together to form a compact bloc.
At the time, and I remember it well, everything was clear though undocumented – and there was still the attempt of denial – the denial of the obvious fact that this was a geopolitical strategy with many heads behind it. And mentioning those heads, pointing out that it was a coup that had been prepared for some time, had to face too often skeptical answers — but at some stage the truth cannot be denied anymore.
—–
Actually, what is true for the hot war is also true for the cold war. Chile was, at the time of Pinochet, celebrated as blueprint for what is now known as neoliberalism – to on a pedestal by Milton Friedman; and fostered by the IMF. But even in the IMF, some people wake up, seeing in tendency the wrongs for which they stand today:

An assess- ment of these specific policies (rather than the broad neoliberal agenda) reaches three disquieting conclusions:

• The benefits in terms of increased growth seem fairly dif- ficult to establish when looking at a broad group of countries.

• The costs in terms of increased inequality are promi- nent. Such costs epitomize the trade-off between the growth and equity effects of some aspects of the neoliberal agenda.

• Increased inequality in turn hurts the level and sustain- ability of growth. Even if growth is the sole or main purpose of the neoliberal agenda, advocates of that agenda still need to pay attention to the distributional effects.

—–
Back to today’s main stage then where it had been
against Chile as well — for Cuba it had been already the known strategy for a while.
And the new strategy after the democratically elected government was overthrown, was clear. The Pinochet-regime, after first establishing itself by bloody measures, established the new reign – present in an article published in The Guardian:
After Allende’s enemies finally claimed their victory against him on 11 September, Chileans protected themselves as best they could while Pinochet and his cohorts, well favoured now by Washington, turned to making themselves fortunes from the privatisation of public services and, quietly, from the trade in cocaine from Bolivia which the US never seemed to want to criticise or attack.
Indeed, Clausewitz new it and spelled it out:
War is not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse carried on with other means.
And it is in this sense that we have to learn about the “invisible financial and economic blockade” Allende spoke of, addressing the UN in December 1972.
— A topic Paul E. Sigmund discussed in Foreign Affairs (Vol. 52, No. 2 (Jan., 1974), pp. 322-340)
And that the war reports today – those on the ‘cold war’ – are not necessarily widely discussed, though fatalities and winners easily can be seen. And we should also not forget that THIS war can be found in many places around the globe – North and South, and often enough not really just as cold war. And Michael Hudson analysed this issue of Finance as Warfare.
Coming back to Ralph Miliband’s article, we read at its beginning:
Of course, the Wise Men of the Left, and others too, have hastened to proclaim that Chile is not France, or Italy, or Britain. This is quite true. No country is like any other: circumstances are always different, not only between one country and another, but between one period and another in the same country. Such wisdom makes it possible and plausible to argue that the experience of a country or period cannot provide conclusive “lessons.”
But still, despite that there are many lessons we can learn from history, also from the history of 9/11 1973 – in particular when we see all these events, now and then, not as individual occurrences but as part of the ongoing history of striving for global hegemony.