I am glad that I could make a small contribution* to celebrate this great colleague – it is always a pleasure to meet a person that is ready to stand up, to move things – to sit down – to seriously discuss issues, and to be around – just to have a good time together. Zsuzsa, thank you!!
* I cannot set the link to the actual publication
Surprising? Yes, it is indeed the United States of Northern America who are playing a leading in the care sector — of course, one may have to look exactly at the definitions of “care” and “leadership”. Check yourself here for the
And do not forget to watch the embedded film.
It had been a brief trip – a short distance, it takes about half an hour by train to arrive from Changsha in Yueyang. I had been there earlier, seeing the blueprints and architectural models of what I would visit now as reality already in place – surely part of the reality as it is about an ongoing development (can anywhere and any time be an end to development?).
Sunday morning, the second day of the weekend trip, 收件人 collects me from the hotel and we walk along the lake – although it is cold again, it is nice, especially after having made the first steps and warming up. A modern and clean area – the tennis court, a little lake with goldfish and golf course bring the notion of the “leisure society” to the fore.
After walking on for a while, I see some old houses, a bit stray from the development path – I write development path as the way we walked is part of the ongoing development programme that aims on attracting tourists – for me always a bit of a contradiction in terms, as I ask myself about the self-destructive potential: People come to an area because they are looking for nature, for some remoteness that allows retreating from the daily stress. Anyway, asking for these houses, is met with a question:
Do you want to walk a bit through the countryside?
And so we go, changing from the clean park-street to a more or less muddy pathway. After having walked there for some time an old man looks – a bit – skeptical at us – his one hand holds the walking-stick; with the other he is looking after the plants.
My father would know all these plants – he grew up in the countryside.
收件人 says. And I want to know a bit more. He is from the real countryside whereas for the people here the little farming is an additional source of income – the elderly and the women doing the jobs “at home”, whereas the “male breadwinner” is working in some industrial job, perhaps doing some farmwork in the evening. A bit further I see the rubble of destroyed cottages, the real development path: contrasting the old with the new, but more showing the contradictions between them. The rubble and a bit further the new houses – not really skyscrapers, but too high to easily count or estimate the number of stories. I ask where the people will live in the future.
The government provides apartments – and also some subsidies that makes it possible to pay the rent.
So far the new houses look neat – as long as one does not see the large squares that had been there before; and one can truly acknowledge the greens, the new squares, the nearness to the lake, and the view on the mountains in the distance … – yes, and another feature is again and again delightful – the “monuments”: old stones, pagodas, tablets bearing the inscription of traditional and new poems …, integrating different perspectives.
We talk about the price of accommodation – those who lived here in the old cottages may gain nicer accommodation – and they get apparently also some support. Finally they need the compensation for the loss of the additional income of subsistence farming. – But is that compensation measurable in terms of money? Do they loose part of what was meaningful for them? Do they loose the burden of the heavy work?
收件人’s parents want to buy a new place and this brings us to a more general perspective which can be put into a nutshell:
Isn’t it what we read in the Critique of the Gotha Program?
From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.
Sure, in the light of the market it refers to the ability to pay, and the need to submit to the rules of competition. And this is major part of the individualism: personal disintegration, taking the form of the need to look after yourself stops all of us from looking for integrated solutions, going beyond the establishment of princedoms and princessdoms.
May be the brother from Kenya knows it, admiring the Chinese:
They are clever. Loosing no time, just looking around and implementing …. – that is what they do.
Sure, his reflections on his home country are interesting – and the endless trust of both of them:
You surely need a bishop to perform …
is somewhat perplexing.
— Sitting with the back to us: a father with his son …. – I have to admit that the permanent rattling of the computer game they are playing, implementing shooting at, racing after, hunting for virtuality makes me a bit irascible …, nothing alluring about it ….
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The day after the symposium was the day of … – well, it was not really holiday. It was about other meetings – the many ambassadors that participated in the symposium had been now “replaced” by the individual ambassadors: instead of meeting the ambassadors as collaborators, it was now meeting the ambassadors. One could think: they represent their country; but they also may represent themselves – just having a job, living in another country than that of their origin and somewhat “merging images and expectations” – at least in some cases. If one would not know the mechanisms that are behind of being sent on mission into the different countries one could occasionally get the impression ambassadors come to the country that they see “as their own”, the country in which they would really like to live … . Perhaps it is about extremely privileged people who are able to live up to the Aristotelean “vision” that
[t]he ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.
[t]he current financial crisis can make us overlook the fact that it originated in a profound human crisis: the denial of the primacy of the human person.(Evangelii Gaudium, 2013)
those who come too late are castigated by history
(Mikhail Gorbachev)
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The current financial crisis can make us overlook the fact that it originated in a profound human crisis: the denial of the primacy of the human person.
(Evangelii Gaudium, 2013)
The market pattern, on the other hand, being related to a peculiar motive of its own, the motive of truck or barter, is capable of creating a specific institution, namely, the market. Ultimately, that is why the control of the economic system by the market is of overwhelming consequence to the whole organization of society: it means no less than the running of society as an adjunct to the market. Instead of economy being embedded in social relations, social relations are embedded in the economic system. The vital importance of the economic factor to the existence of society precludes any other result. For once the economic system is organized in separate institutions, based on specific motives and conferring a special status, society must be shaped in such a manner as to allow that system to function according to its own laws. This is the meaning of the familiar assertion that a market economy can function only in a market society.(Polanyi, Karl, 1944: The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time; Boston: Beacon Press, 1957: 57)
[n]ineteenth century civilization alone [that] was economic in a different and distinctive sense, for it chose to base itself on a motive only rarely acknowledged as valid in the history of human societies, and certainly never before raised to the level of a justification of action and behavior in everyday life, namely, gain. The self-regulating market system was uniquely derived from this principle.(ibid., 30)
While in Turkey harshest measures can be found against academics and it is a witch-hunt like atmosphere, calls for the Support of Turkish academics being answered with even more severe punishment, while there is the ongoing debate on the problems of socio-economic security for academics, another, more subtle, aspect should not be forgotten, linked to the ranking systems:
Fearing for their budgets, rectors responded with both carrots and sticks. A few weeks before the submission deadline, the CRUI announced a “university spring day”, on which every campus would hold a debate about the problems facing Italian universities. Meanwhile, Pisa suspended all planned appointments, promotions and payment of research expenses until the effect of the boycott on its budget is ascertained. And the University of Pavia announced that future resources would be distributed to departments on the basis of their VQR results: hence, fewer protesters means more resources.
An interesting way of strangulating democracy is shown where
and the questions is
Not changing my mind – though some rankings may be really useful when it comes to universities. As this insecurity ranking.
Now it would be the next task to look at an overall ranking that takes insecurity on a national level, performance in research and teaching and social quality into account. At least there is good reason to believe in what we read:
Nearly half of university teaching staff are on insecure contracts – a scenario that is sure to shock university students and is far worse than universities will own up to,” said Sally Hunt, UCU general secretary, adding that this job insecurity was likely to “compromise” their ability to teach or research.
Equally remarkable is the fact that these scenarios are considered as world leading model of and for third level education.
… back in the Middle Kingdom since a week, enjoying teaching learning to “walk economics”. Special fun the workshops – teaching without income (no extra pay), and learning without points (a course, the students take without points etc.).
Sometimes it is really like looking into the eyes of small children who see something amazing for the first time in their life (like a “summer child”, seeing the first snow) – so much more satisfying than looking at the faces of “adult colleagues” who only see what they supposedly know, struggling with maintaining that knowledge, and the jobs in which it is founded. – It is so nice to be witness, and it is so nice to accept again being student, opening the eyes like a small child and exploring together what I seem to know and of which I detect so much that is new.
I would not say renaissance, and increasingly hesitate to celebrate The Renaissance. There is still at least the one fact that needs to be considered: much of what had been ‘detected’ and ‘invented’, was known a long time before and just forgotten. Look for the work of Archimedes – and all those things that had been forgotten. No, the world was not flat in the earlier years – only some people made human kind believe it is flat. And so we find them today again, suggesting in ‘A Brief History of the Twenty-Firts Century’ that ‘The World is Flat’. Namesakes by accident? The one Friedman believes everybody can access everything; the other Friedman emphasing already earlier the Power of the Market.
May be journalistic masterpieces, surely not more than Sunday’s prayers, eye washing, pleading now from all sides for a moral economy, instead of clearly analysing the economy and demanding rights.
My be I can move the rights part on tomorrow when going to Juzizhou island for a meeting.
But after the contributions last week in Poland – the one on security, the other on precarity I remembered the song
by Giorgio Gaber. Much to think about. And and after workshops with my Chinese students the last two days, I may immediately revise, considering that we are not a lost generation but we still and more than ever can move forward, we only have to be aware that we should not save this “endangered race” of the past; instead we should think more about the future as it is given in the presence, actually this is what I talked about, right?
The two last days made another time clear to me: “we” should not blame “them”. Instead we still can and have to work together to make the future happen instead of continuing to allow that it is “exported to Panama“. Also here it is not “them” who export, but all of us allowing the structures to “make things happen” – again and again. – Also something for the discussion the week after next, in Havana.
Presentation in Warsaw, April 6th 2016:
International Conference
Precarious Places:
Social, Cultural and Economic Aspects of Uncertainty and Anxiety in Everyday Life
The recording of the presentation can be found here
Abstract
A fundamental methodological problem is the specific relevance of one of the antagonisms of capitalism, though not replacing the meaning of class-conflict but redefining and classifying it in the light of the developmental stage of the means of production: Far too little attention is paid to the contradictory character of individualisation and socialisation as it is inherent in the political economic system.
Polányi’s main argument of disembedding is inherently linked to the somewhat contradicting tendency of colonialisation which can also be seen as specific form of embedding.
The juxtaposition or dichotomisation of individualisation-socialisation is a different presentation of control of the underlying process. The term inner colonialisation gains special meaning not least in the understanding of the land grab and its metaphoric use as matter of “commons”. As such it will be used in the presentation as means for investigating 5 major myth and 5 major tensions that allow us to go beyond considering the 5 giant evils (Beveridge) that guide the welfare state debate.
[The author gratefully acknowledges the generous financial support from Zhejiang University Fund, Hangzhou, PRC and Bangor College China, Changsha, PRC]
