German sociologist, philosopher, and political economist
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On this episode of Below the Radar, our host Am Johal is joined by Wendy Brown, distinguished American political theorist and Professor Emerita of Political Science at the University of California Berkeley. Together they discuss Wendy's writing on the emergence of and critical responses to identity politics, physical border controls as performative expressions of sovereignty, the replacement of democratic values with neoliberal values of free market competition and individualism, and her forthcoming work on expanded notions of democracy that account for the past, future, human and non human. They also discuss the 2024 American presidential race, and as this episode was recorded in May, before President Joe Biden announced that he would not run for re-election, some comments are out of date, though still relevant to larger conversations around electoral politics. Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/250-wendy-brown.html Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/250-wendy-brown.html Resources: Wendy Brown: https://www.ias.edu/sss/wendy-brown States of Injury: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691029894/states-of-injury Walled States, Waning Sovereignty: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9781935408031/walled-states-waning-sovereignty Undoing the Demos: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9781935408543/undoing-the-demos Bio: A political theorist who works across the history of political thought, political economy, Continental philosophy, cultural theory and critical legal theory, Wendy Brown is the UPS Foundation Chair in the School of Social Science. Prior to her appointment at the Institute, she was Class of 1936 First Chair at the University of California, Berkeley, where she was a prize-winning teacher and scholar. Drawing from Nietzschean, Weberian, Marxist, Foucauldian, feminist and postcolonial angles of vision, Professor Brown writes about the subterranean powers shaping contemporary EuroAtlantic polities, with particular attention to the political identities, subjectivities and expressions they spawn. The author/co-author of a dozen books in English, she is best known for her interrogation of identity politics and state power in States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity (1995); her critical analysis of tolerance in Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire (2006); her account of the inter-regnum between nation states and globalization in Walled States, Waning Sovereignty (2010); and her study of neoliberalism's assault on democratic principles, institutions and citizenship in Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism's Stealth Revolution (2015) and In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West (2019). Across her work, Brown aims to illuminate powers unique to our era and the predicaments they generate for democratic thought and practice. These predicaments range from rule by finance, to the de-democratization of political culture, to the nihilistic depletion of truth, values and conscience. Currently, Brown is exploring how political freedom can be salvaged from its historical imbrication with regimes of class, race and gender subjection and be made responsive to the climate crisis. Her driving question is whether and how political freedom can be reformulated in light of both. She is also extending and revising for publication her 2019 Yale Tanner Lectures, “Politics and Knowledge in Nihilistic Times: Thinking with Max Weber.” Cite this episode: Chicago Style Johal, Am. “States of Injury — with Wendy Brown.” Below the Radar, SFU's Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, September 17, 2024. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/250-wendy-brown.html.
The Weberian definition of the state is an institution with a monopoly over legitimate violence within a defined territory. Eager to explain the genesis of European nation states, Weber's model is a poor fit for the history and experience of American statehood. What might explain the marked failure of the United States government to monopolize violence within its territory, and the historical and contemporary prevalence of violence in American civil society? In his dissertation research, Hugh Wood, PhD candidate at Cambridge University seeks to find an answer. Using three case studies of private violence sanctioned by the state, expropriation and murder of indigenous people in the West, corporate policing and labor discipline in the industrial North, and the night riders and lynchings of the Jim Crow South, Wood explores the long history of bloodletting in American civil society. Wood's project explores an essential element of American history with profound implications for the present. In support of his work, Wood received a grant from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more information on our funding opportunities, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.
The original EBL crew (Tyler, Joel, Dorus and Josh) reunite for a special 50th episode for a discussion of philosopher Alasdair Macintyre's "After Virtue". In the first part, we focus on the first half of the book and discuss Macintyre's diagnosis of modernity's moral confusion, the problems of Weberian rational Bureaucracy, the limits of social science, the dominance and manipulation of emotivism, the theological engagement with Macintyre and a short critique of Macintyre's limits.To Support us:https://linktr.ee/thamsterKo-fi.com/thamsterwitnatThumbnail Art and Video editing by:Censored Anon:https://t.me/thecensoredanonreturnsFollow us on Twitter:https://twitter.com/TylerThamsterhttps://twitter.com/JeffersonLee86://twitter.com/DisctTomCruisehttps://twitter.com/juicedavisxhttps://twitter.com/philosophy4fithttps://twitter.com/theopolitic
Can the study of religion be justified? Scholarship in religion, especially work in "theory and method," is preoccupied with matters of research procedure and thus inarticulate about the goals that motivate scholarship in the field. For that reason, the field suffers from a crisis of rationale. Richard B. Miller identifies six prevailing methodologies in the field, and then offers an alternative framework for thinking about the purposes of the discipline. Shadowing these various methodologies, he notes, is a Weberian scientific ideal for studying religion, one that aspires to value-neutrality. This ideal fortifies a "regime of truth" that undercuts efforts to think normatively and teleologically about the field's purpose and value. Miller's alternative framework, Critical Humanism, theorizes about the ends rather than the means of humanistic scholarship. Why Study Religion? (Oxford UP, 2021) offers an account of humanistic inquiry that is held together by four values: Post-critical Reasoning, Social Criticism, Cross-cultural Fluency, and Environmental Responsibility. Ordered to such purposes, Miller argues, scholars of religion can relax their commitment to matters of methodological procedure and advocate for the value of studying religion. The future of religious studies will depend on how well it can articulate its goals as a basis for motivating scholarship in the field. David Gottlieb is the Director of Jewish Studies at the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago. He is the author of Second Slayings: The Binding of Isaac and the Formation of Jewish Memory (Gorgias Press, 2019). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
Can the study of religion be justified? Scholarship in religion, especially work in "theory and method," is preoccupied with matters of research procedure and thus inarticulate about the goals that motivate scholarship in the field. For that reason, the field suffers from a crisis of rationale. Richard B. Miller identifies six prevailing methodologies in the field, and then offers an alternative framework for thinking about the purposes of the discipline. Shadowing these various methodologies, he notes, is a Weberian scientific ideal for studying religion, one that aspires to value-neutrality. This ideal fortifies a "regime of truth" that undercuts efforts to think normatively and teleologically about the field's purpose and value. Miller's alternative framework, Critical Humanism, theorizes about the ends rather than the means of humanistic scholarship. Why Study Religion? (Oxford UP, 2021) offers an account of humanistic inquiry that is held together by four values: Post-critical Reasoning, Social Criticism, Cross-cultural Fluency, and Environmental Responsibility. Ordered to such purposes, Miller argues, scholars of religion can relax their commitment to matters of methodological procedure and advocate for the value of studying religion. The future of religious studies will depend on how well it can articulate its goals as a basis for motivating scholarship in the field. David Gottlieb is the Director of Jewish Studies at the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago. He is the author of Second Slayings: The Binding of Isaac and the Formation of Jewish Memory (Gorgias Press, 2019). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies
Can the study of religion be justified? Scholarship in religion, especially work in "theory and method," is preoccupied with matters of research procedure and thus inarticulate about the goals that motivate scholarship in the field. For that reason, the field suffers from a crisis of rationale. Richard B. Miller identifies six prevailing methodologies in the field, and then offers an alternative framework for thinking about the purposes of the discipline. Shadowing these various methodologies, he notes, is a Weberian scientific ideal for studying religion, one that aspires to value-neutrality. This ideal fortifies a "regime of truth" that undercuts efforts to think normatively and teleologically about the field's purpose and value. Miller's alternative framework, Critical Humanism, theorizes about the ends rather than the means of humanistic scholarship. Why Study Religion? (Oxford UP, 2021) offers an account of humanistic inquiry that is held together by four values: Post-critical Reasoning, Social Criticism, Cross-cultural Fluency, and Environmental Responsibility. Ordered to such purposes, Miller argues, scholars of religion can relax their commitment to matters of methodological procedure and advocate for the value of studying religion. The future of religious studies will depend on how well it can articulate its goals as a basis for motivating scholarship in the field. David Gottlieb is the Director of Jewish Studies at the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago. He is the author of Second Slayings: The Binding of Isaac and the Formation of Jewish Memory (Gorgias Press, 2019). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies
Can the study of religion be justified? Scholarship in religion, especially work in "theory and method," is preoccupied with matters of research procedure and thus inarticulate about the goals that motivate scholarship in the field. For that reason, the field suffers from a crisis of rationale. Richard B. Miller identifies six prevailing methodologies in the field, and then offers an alternative framework for thinking about the purposes of the discipline. Shadowing these various methodologies, he notes, is a Weberian scientific ideal for studying religion, one that aspires to value-neutrality. This ideal fortifies a "regime of truth" that undercuts efforts to think normatively and teleologically about the field's purpose and value. Miller's alternative framework, Critical Humanism, theorizes about the ends rather than the means of humanistic scholarship. Why Study Religion? (Oxford UP, 2021) offers an account of humanistic inquiry that is held together by four values: Post-critical Reasoning, Social Criticism, Cross-cultural Fluency, and Environmental Responsibility. Ordered to such purposes, Miller argues, scholars of religion can relax their commitment to matters of methodological procedure and advocate for the value of studying religion. The future of religious studies will depend on how well it can articulate its goals as a basis for motivating scholarship in the field. David Gottlieb is the Director of Jewish Studies at the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago. He is the author of Second Slayings: The Binding of Isaac and the Formation of Jewish Memory (Gorgias Press, 2019). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology
Can the study of religion be justified? Scholarship in religion, especially work in "theory and method," is preoccupied with matters of research procedure and thus inarticulate about the goals that motivate scholarship in the field. For that reason, the field suffers from a crisis of rationale. Richard B. Miller identifies six prevailing methodologies in the field, and then offers an alternative framework for thinking about the purposes of the discipline. Shadowing these various methodologies, he notes, is a Weberian scientific ideal for studying religion, one that aspires to value-neutrality. This ideal fortifies a "regime of truth" that undercuts efforts to think normatively and teleologically about the field's purpose and value. Miller's alternative framework, Critical Humanism, theorizes about the ends rather than the means of humanistic scholarship. Why Study Religion? (Oxford UP, 2021) offers an account of humanistic inquiry that is held together by four values: Post-critical Reasoning, Social Criticism, Cross-cultural Fluency, and Environmental Responsibility. Ordered to such purposes, Miller argues, scholars of religion can relax their commitment to matters of methodological procedure and advocate for the value of studying religion. The future of religious studies will depend on how well it can articulate its goals as a basis for motivating scholarship in the field. David Gottlieb is the Director of Jewish Studies at the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago. He is the author of Second Slayings: The Binding of Isaac and the Formation of Jewish Memory (Gorgias Press, 2019). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology
Can the study of religion be justified? Scholarship in religion, especially work in "theory and method," is preoccupied with matters of research procedure and thus inarticulate about the goals that motivate scholarship in the field. For that reason, the field suffers from a crisis of rationale. Richard B. Miller identifies six prevailing methodologies in the field, and then offers an alternative framework for thinking about the purposes of the discipline. Shadowing these various methodologies, he notes, is a Weberian scientific ideal for studying religion, one that aspires to value-neutrality. This ideal fortifies a "regime of truth" that undercuts efforts to think normatively and teleologically about the field's purpose and value. Miller's alternative framework, Critical Humanism, theorizes about the ends rather than the means of humanistic scholarship. Why Study Religion? (Oxford UP, 2021) offers an account of humanistic inquiry that is held together by four values: Post-critical Reasoning, Social Criticism, Cross-cultural Fluency, and Environmental Responsibility. Ordered to such purposes, Miller argues, scholars of religion can relax their commitment to matters of methodological procedure and advocate for the value of studying religion. The future of religious studies will depend on how well it can articulate its goals as a basis for motivating scholarship in the field. David Gottlieb is the Director of Jewish Studies at the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago. He is the author of Second Slayings: The Binding of Isaac and the Formation of Jewish Memory (Gorgias Press, 2019). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/buddhist-studies
Can the study of religion be justified? Scholarship in religion, especially work in "theory and method," is preoccupied with matters of research procedure and thus inarticulate about the goals that motivate scholarship in the field. For that reason, the field suffers from a crisis of rationale. Richard B. Miller identifies six prevailing methodologies in the field, and then offers an alternative framework for thinking about the purposes of the discipline. Shadowing these various methodologies, he notes, is a Weberian scientific ideal for studying religion, one that aspires to value-neutrality. This ideal fortifies a "regime of truth" that undercuts efforts to think normatively and teleologically about the field's purpose and value. Miller's alternative framework, Critical Humanism, theorizes about the ends rather than the means of humanistic scholarship. Why Study Religion? (Oxford UP, 2021) offers an account of humanistic inquiry that is held together by four values: Post-critical Reasoning, Social Criticism, Cross-cultural Fluency, and Environmental Responsibility. Ordered to such purposes, Miller argues, scholars of religion can relax their commitment to matters of methodological procedure and advocate for the value of studying religion. The future of religious studies will depend on how well it can articulate its goals as a basis for motivating scholarship in the field. David Gottlieb is the Director of Jewish Studies at the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago. He is the author of Second Slayings: The Binding of Isaac and the Formation of Jewish Memory (Gorgias Press, 2019). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education
Can the study of religion be justified? Scholarship in religion, especially work in "theory and method," is preoccupied with matters of research procedure and thus inarticulate about the goals that motivate scholarship in the field. For that reason, the field suffers from a crisis of rationale. Richard B. Miller identifies six prevailing methodologies in the field, and then offers an alternative framework for thinking about the purposes of the discipline. Shadowing these various methodologies, he notes, is a Weberian scientific ideal for studying religion, one that aspires to value-neutrality. This ideal fortifies a "regime of truth" that undercuts efforts to think normatively and teleologically about the field's purpose and value. Miller's alternative framework, Critical Humanism, theorizes about the ends rather than the means of humanistic scholarship. Why Study Religion? (Oxford UP, 2021) offers an account of humanistic inquiry that is held together by four values: Post-critical Reasoning, Social Criticism, Cross-cultural Fluency, and Environmental Responsibility. Ordered to such purposes, Miller argues, scholars of religion can relax their commitment to matters of methodological procedure and advocate for the value of studying religion. The future of religious studies will depend on how well it can articulate its goals as a basis for motivating scholarship in the field. David Gottlieb is the Director of Jewish Studies at the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago. He is the author of Second Slayings: The Binding of Isaac and the Formation of Jewish Memory (Gorgias Press, 2019). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion
Can the study of religion be justified? Scholarship in religion, especially work in "theory and method," is preoccupied with matters of research procedure and thus inarticulate about the goals that motivate scholarship in the field. For that reason, the field suffers from a crisis of rationale. Richard B. Miller identifies six prevailing methodologies in the field, and then offers an alternative framework for thinking about the purposes of the discipline. Shadowing these various methodologies, he notes, is a Weberian scientific ideal for studying religion, one that aspires to value-neutrality. This ideal fortifies a "regime of truth" that undercuts efforts to think normatively and teleologically about the field's purpose and value. Miller's alternative framework, Critical Humanism, theorizes about the ends rather than the means of humanistic scholarship. Why Study Religion? (Oxford UP, 2021) offers an account of humanistic inquiry that is held together by four values: Post-critical Reasoning, Social Criticism, Cross-cultural Fluency, and Environmental Responsibility. Ordered to such purposes, Miller argues, scholars of religion can relax their commitment to matters of methodological procedure and advocate for the value of studying religion. The future of religious studies will depend on how well it can articulate its goals as a basis for motivating scholarship in the field. David Gottlieb is the Director of Jewish Studies at the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago. He is the author of Second Slayings: The Binding of Isaac and the Formation of Jewish Memory (Gorgias Press, 2019). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Can the study of religion be justified? Scholarship in religion, especially work in "theory and method," is preoccupied with matters of research procedure and thus inarticulate about the goals that motivate scholarship in the field. For that reason, the field suffers from a crisis of rationale. Richard B. Miller identifies six prevailing methodologies in the field, and then offers an alternative framework for thinking about the purposes of the discipline. Shadowing these various methodologies, he notes, is a Weberian scientific ideal for studying religion, one that aspires to value-neutrality. This ideal fortifies a "regime of truth" that undercuts efforts to think normatively and teleologically about the field's purpose and value. Miller's alternative framework, Critical Humanism, theorizes about the ends rather than the means of humanistic scholarship. Why Study Religion? (Oxford UP, 2021) offers an account of humanistic inquiry that is held together by four values: Post-critical Reasoning, Social Criticism, Cross-cultural Fluency, and Environmental Responsibility. Ordered to such purposes, Miller argues, scholars of religion can relax their commitment to matters of methodological procedure and advocate for the value of studying religion. The future of religious studies will depend on how well it can articulate its goals as a basis for motivating scholarship in the field. David Gottlieb is the Director of Jewish Studies at the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago. He is the author of Second Slayings: The Binding of Isaac and the Formation of Jewish Memory (Gorgias Press, 2019). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Can the study of religion be justified? Scholarship in religion, especially work in "theory and method," is preoccupied with matters of research procedure and thus inarticulate about the goals that motivate scholarship in the field. For that reason, the field suffers from a crisis of rationale. Richard B. Miller identifies six prevailing methodologies in the field, and then offers an alternative framework for thinking about the purposes of the discipline. Shadowing these various methodologies, he notes, is a Weberian scientific ideal for studying religion, one that aspires to value-neutrality. This ideal fortifies a "regime of truth" that undercuts efforts to think normatively and teleologically about the field's purpose and value. Miller's alternative framework, Critical Humanism, theorizes about the ends rather than the means of humanistic scholarship. Why Study Religion? (Oxford UP, 2021) offers an account of humanistic inquiry that is held together by four values: Post-critical Reasoning, Social Criticism, Cross-cultural Fluency, and Environmental Responsibility. Ordered to such purposes, Miller argues, scholars of religion can relax their commitment to matters of methodological procedure and advocate for the value of studying religion. The future of religious studies will depend on how well it can articulate its goals as a basis for motivating scholarship in the field. David Gottlieb is the Director of Jewish Studies at the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago. He is the author of Second Slayings: The Binding of Isaac and the Formation of Jewish Memory (Gorgias Press, 2019). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies
Can the study of religion be justified? Scholarship in religion, especially work in "theory and method," is preoccupied with matters of research procedure and thus inarticulate about the goals that motivate scholarship in the field. For that reason, the field suffers from a crisis of rationale. Richard B. Miller identifies six prevailing methodologies in the field, and then offers an alternative framework for thinking about the purposes of the discipline. Shadowing these various methodologies, he notes, is a Weberian scientific ideal for studying religion, one that aspires to value-neutrality. This ideal fortifies a "regime of truth" that undercuts efforts to think normatively and teleologically about the field's purpose and value. Miller's alternative framework, Critical Humanism, theorizes about the ends rather than the means of humanistic scholarship. Why Study Religion? (Oxford UP, 2021) offers an account of humanistic inquiry that is held together by four values: Post-critical Reasoning, Social Criticism, Cross-cultural Fluency, and Environmental Responsibility. Ordered to such purposes, Miller argues, scholars of religion can relax their commitment to matters of methodological procedure and advocate for the value of studying religion. The future of religious studies will depend on how well it can articulate its goals as a basis for motivating scholarship in the field. David Gottlieb is the Director of Jewish Studies at the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago. He is the author of Second Slayings: The Binding of Isaac and the Formation of Jewish Memory (Gorgias Press, 2019).
Can the study of religion be justified? Scholarship in religion, especially work in "theory and method," is preoccupied with matters of research procedure and thus inarticulate about the goals that motivate scholarship in the field. For that reason, the field suffers from a crisis of rationale. Richard B. Miller identifies six prevailing methodologies in the field, and then offers an alternative framework for thinking about the purposes of the discipline. Shadowing these various methodologies, he notes, is a Weberian scientific ideal for studying religion, one that aspires to value-neutrality. This ideal fortifies a "regime of truth" that undercuts efforts to think normatively and teleologically about the field's purpose and value. Miller's alternative framework, Critical Humanism, theorizes about the ends rather than the means of humanistic scholarship. Why Study Religion? (Oxford UP, 2021) offers an account of humanistic inquiry that is held together by four values: Post-critical Reasoning, Social Criticism, Cross-cultural Fluency, and Environmental Responsibility. Ordered to such purposes, Miller argues, scholars of religion can relax their commitment to matters of methodological procedure and advocate for the value of studying religion. The future of religious studies will depend on how well it can articulate its goals as a basis for motivating scholarship in the field. David Gottlieb is the Director of Jewish Studies at the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago. He is the author of Second Slayings: The Binding of Isaac and the Formation of Jewish Memory (Gorgias Press, 2019). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
It is difficult to overstate China's rise in terms of economic development in the four decades - growing from one of the poorest countries to becoming the world's second-largest economy. China has also become an important geopolitical partner to many developing countries, and it is quite common to encounter talk of the ‘‘China model'' of development as being more suitable for many African countries that have struggled with economic transformation. Joining me on today's episode is political scientist Yuen Yuen Ang to unpack what China did during the reform years and the many ways that process is misunderstood. She has two excellent books (linked here) on China, and she is one of the most careful, thoughtful, and perceptive scholars I have read.TranscriptTobi; Welcome to Ideas Untrapped, and my guest today is Yuen Yuen Ang who is a professor of political science at the University of Michigan. She has written two very important books on China. And I want to talk to her today about the first book, How China Escaped the Poverty Trap. Welcome, Yuen.Yuen; Well, thank you very much, Tobi, thank you for having me. And I very much appreciate your support.Tobi; In global development today, it's almost impossible not to talk about China. China has become so important both economically and geopolitically, and we know that the picture or the situation was quite different 40 years ago. Another thing with what China has done in the last four decades, I mean, two-thirds of the global reduction in poverty is in China and so many other amazing things, is that there's a lot of, should I say, content on China and in my experience, it feels a bit like quantum physics and that Feynman quote, which is the more you read on China, the less we understand. But, reading your book for me as being quite illuminating. Again, I want to thank you for writing it. So the first question I'll ask you is, very early in your first book you made what I think was an important distinction, which is the difference between market-creating institutions and market-preserving institutions. Can you elaborate more on that? And how China was able to take advantage of the former?Yuen; Sure. Well, first of all, I really love the quote that you used. And before I jump into the question that you just asked, I think it's useful to respond to your comments, which I think it's very insightful, which is that everyone is very interested in China. There's a lot of talk about it, but it feels confusing. And so at the outset, when I write my books, I think one of the things that I wanted to set out to do was to provide an integrative account of China's development since its market opening in 1978. And I stress the word integrative, because I think one of the sources of confusion that you alluded to comes from the fact that there are many, many accounts about China's development, but they tend to focus on only one aspect. So some will talk about trade, others might talk about economic policy, so there are so many different topics about China. But what people need is an integrative account that puts all of these different elements and variables together. I really put them on a timeline to help people to understand, sort of, the different factors that were salient at different points in time. And this is important for correcting the misconception that there is one China model, like some kind of blueprint that was created at the outset and designed to help China take off. So that was the kind of broader backdrop that motivated the way that I write my book, in particular, the first one. Let me now come back to your original question, which is the concept of market-building and market-preserving institutions. And the important thing to understand about institutions is that economists have all agreed that good institutions, such as rule of law, such as formal accountability, such as modern courts, that all of these good institutions are essential for growth. And you have famous books like Why Nations Fail pretty much making similar arguments. And that then translated into the good governance agenda that was advanced by International Development Agencies, such as the World Bank. So for about, I would say, 1990s to the present day or so, there was a great deal of attention and hope that if poor countries could get institutions, right, if they could have first-world institutions, then they will be able to have economic growth and become developed. And when I look at the China case, that obviously does not follow that formula, because if you look at the early parts of China's growth, and even until today, there are so many dimensions of China's institutional design - everything from the ownership of companies, to the property rights, to the design of bureaucracies that just don't conform with what we think first-world good institutions should look like. So why is it that China has been able to grow its economy without those first-world institutions that economists say are the preconditions for growth, and this has been a long-standing puzzle in political economy? So from my investigation, what I find is that the fallacy with the conventional wisdom is that it thinks that there is just one universal set of institutions that are necessary for growth, namely, the first-world rich country institutions. But in fact, what really happens in the course of development is that countries actually have to develop qualitatively different institutions for early and late stages of growth. And those institutions at early stages of growth, that can support the growth process can actually look very, very different from the first-world norms. They can look in ways that conventionally we would dismiss as dysfunctional or corrupt. But those institutions can actually work very well at early growth stages. And subsequently, however, when the economy takes off, and it enters into a more mature stage of development, and then you begin to see that, yes, you do need institutions that are more like fist-world institutions, such as formal regulations, private property rights, and so forth. So that is why I make a distinction between market-building institutions and market-preserving institutions.Tobi; I mean, one important thing that I also learnt from your first book, and you can please correct me if I'm getting this wrong, is that (it's interesting you alluded to economics accounts of China's rise) ever since the works of people like [Robert] Wade and [Alice] Amsden talking about the East Asian miracle, there has always been this importance for the role of the states. And then the discussion then polarizes into, do you use the State? Or do you use the markets? And policymakers in different developing countries choose what they see, you know, and some stressed the importance of state capitalism. But what I learned from your book was that it really doesn't matter the kind of political system you run. Every political system in history that has gone through that stage has used market-building institutions. One thing you also talked about quite early in the book is this concept of directed improvisation. What is that? And how did China use that?Yuen; Yes. The conventional wisdom when people look at China's case is to assume that the recipe for its economic growth must be centralized political control because it is an authoritarian regime. So when people talk about the China model today, it's reduced or dumbed down into, basically, authoritarianism, plus some elements of capitalism. And I question that conventional wisdom in my book. If the answer was simply authoritarianism and centralized control, then China would have prospered long ago, under the reign of Mao, where you had absolute centralized power under one leader, even more centralized back then than it was today. So it couldn't be that centralized political control or authoritarianism is the answer to China's development. Instead, what really happened is that the central government under Deng Xiaoping was the reformist leader who took over thus helping change the role of the central government from that of a dictator to a director. And what the director does is that it focuses its job on setting up conducive conditions for bottom-up innovation and bottom-up adaptation, primarily among local governments. So China is politically centralized, but it's economically and administratively decentralized. But in encouraging local governments to adapt and to find local solutions to local problems. The central government still plays a crucial role in terms of providing direction, setting up the rules of the game, defining what the goals and targets should be. So these were the ways in which the central government “directed” the process of adaptation. So directed improvisation simply means you have the merger of direction from above, with bottom-up adaptation among local governments. So in the first 30 years of reform, which most people call the reform period, which is up to 2012, what you can see in China is actually a diverse range of regional economic models, and not just one. And if you take even any county or city in China, and you trace the history of development over those 30 years, you'll find that the role of the government and the development strategies that that particular city undertook kept changing over time. So I think it is this highly adaptive element of the Chinese experience that is often neglected, or not understood in the global discourse about China because people are overly distracted by stereotypes about authoritarian control. But the point that I think is most valuable, and that China should talk about more is the adaptive element under the reformist Deng government and the amount of diversity that they were able to create despite being a formerly authoritarian state. Tobi; One distinction I'll also like you to elaborate [on] is control versus influence, which was something I also got from your book and found interesting. I remember reading Robert Bates, writing about the political economy of Africa. He talked about the importance of control regimes, you know, having a closed economy, price distortion, regulation of industrial outputs, regulation of markets, these were things that were also part of China's economy and policymaking during the Mao era, you know. But we also observed that during the reform years after 1978 policymaking also was not thrown into chaos, you know, like the opposite of control. So how did China manage that balance, particularly substituting influence for direct administrative control of policy?Yuen; I'm really glad that you raised this subtle point, but an important point. So let me give some theoretical background before I elaborate on the China case. If you look at the conventional thinking about politics and economics, it is really a literature that is obsessed with control. Right? So it's always about someone controlling someone, it's like the state controlling civil society, or politicians controlling bureaucracy, central governments controlling local governments. And this fixation with control is, I think, an extension of a mechanical intellectual paradigm. So if you look at the beginning of my book, I talked about how and why I use a complexity paradigm to interpret the Chinese development process. The conventional paradigm is a mechanical one. So things about how things work as if it functions as a machine. And indeed, the top economists do explicitly say that they think in machine mode. So when you think in machine mode, everything looks like a control problem. And so that's why you see the literature and Political Economy being so fixated on control. But what we don't talk about enough, or sometimes not at all, is the other element of human activity, which is, apart from trying to control we also adapt all the time, including in Nigeria, and we have very little understanding in the political economy context of how do people adapt? Why do they adapt? What are the conditions that make adaptation possible? What are the products of adaptation? These are the various questions that we don't ask in political economy. So once you move to the Chinese context, and you apply the lens of adaptation, it immediately opens up a very different story from the traditional one that was entirely about control. One of the things that is important to know when we think about China is that control is always an element present in the Chinese political context. And it's present in a big way because it is a top-down political system. So I'm not saying that there is no control in China. Of course, there is; such as censorship. But what I'm saying is that as the reformed leadership under Deng took over from Mao, it dramatically change the role of government as well as the mixture of control and adaptation. So on under Deng, of course, there were still policies of repression and control. The family planning policy, for instance, required a great deal of forceful implementation. But it also dramatically increase the amount of adaptive activity that the government carried out. So the distinction I make is that when you are fixated on control, what we conceptualize is that politicians want to control the outcome. So they already have a predetermined outcome or solution, and they're just trying to control everyone so that they can get there. Right? When I use the term influence, however, the assumption is that oftentimes, the leaders actually do not know what the best outcome should be. They don't have the solutions to the problems that they face. And this was absolutely evident in China's market transition process, because that was something that China had never tried before, it had never tried to move from communism to a market economy. So oftentimes, these leaders themselves do not actually know what is the best solution that they should create. And so what they did is instead of trying to control outcomes, which presumes that you have a lot of knowledge and know exactly what's best for you, they instead try to influence the process of coming up with solutions by, for example, encouraging local governments to come up with solutions that are tailored to local conditions, but at the same time setting up some guardrails in this process of experimentation. So that is what I mean by the difference between trying to control an outcome versus influencing the process of problem-solving.Tobi; One thing I so love about your first book, which you've also alluded to in your answer is appreciating that a society and the economy is a complex system. And you said that an alternative to control in complex systems is to influence the process of adaptation and change. So I want you to talk briefly about how these influence the design of the reform packages themselves in the China reform experience, particularly the three key mechanisms you talked about in the book, which were variation, selection, and niche creation. How did that work?Yuen; Yes, I'm happy to do that. Let me focus on the first two parts because of time, which are variation and selection. And these terms come from the well-established scientific literature about how adaptation happens. So adaptation begins with generating a variety of possible solutions. So that's why the first mechanism is variation. And this is followed by selection. So from the possible pool of solutions, you pick one, and you test it out, collect feedback and decide "do you want to continue with this solution? Do you want to share this solution with others, or perhaps you find out the solution I picked didn't actually work so well, so let's select another one."And niche creation is about creating differences among members of the units so that these members can coexist, instead of competing head-on with one another. So I use these mechanisms to organize different parts of the book in explicating what were the mechanisms that the central government designed in order to structure the process of adaptive governance in China.And on variation, I look specifically at the system of political communication in China. China is a top-down political system. So the way the top government sends commands - written directives to the local governments - is the primary and most important mechanism by which it commands, instructs, and guides the whole bureaucracy. And normally, this is a system that, frankly, almost nobody studies because it doesn't really seem interesting. It's a command system. So you think that, you know, whatever, if Beijing wants to send a command. But what I argue and actually show in the book is that the command system in China actually functions in ways much more interesting way can imagine. And specifically, what I show is that in the Chinese political system, the central government would send out three different types of signals. The first signal is what I call black signals. These are written directives, where the language is explicitly clear, saying, "yes, you can do this. Yes, the local governments all over China, you can do this." And the second type of directive is what I call red signals, which explicitly says, "no, you cannot do this." So, for example, "no, you cannot exceed the amount of water use by this amount." And then the most interesting one is the third category, which is the grey directives. So commands that are deliberately ambiguous. And there are a lot of ambiguous commands and instructions that occur in the Chinese political system. And they still do today. And I argue that what these ambiguous commands do is that they actually provide room for experimentation. Because from the perspective of the local officials when the command is vague and ambiguous, and broadly stated, it means that they are free to interpret how to implement that particular instruction. And when they experiment and try things out, it produces, generates a variety of possible solutions. And from these possible solutions, the regulators in Beijing can then take a look at these options, many of which they had never thought about before and then decide, "among these possible solutions, are there some really good ones that we should scale up to regional or national levels," or sometimes they might also realize, oh, some local experiments turn out to be not good. And we are going to change our commands from grey to red and say, No, I don't want you guys to try this anymore. So through this varied and dynamic system of commands, is one example of a mechanism by which the central government in China is able to calibrate the amount of discretion that it gives local officials, allowing them to experiment when the central government wants to experiment, and then also providing a mechanism for the central government to collect feedback to scale things up if they want to. And also to scale things down, if they decide that that is the right thing to do.Tobi; So it's really hard to talk about China, at least the way China is being written about generally, without talking about state capacity. Like you talked about in the early part of the discussion that analysts and scholars usually take one thing and focus on that when discussing China, and there is always this talk about state capacity being the be-all of how China was able to reform itself and become rich. You know.Some say it's the bureaucracy that was inherited from the communist regime, some talk about the 5000-year history of civilization, and so many other theories. But you've discussed this often on your Twitter feed, and in other appearances, that when we talk about the bureaucracy, we usually have the Weberian Western-type democracy in mind, and that the way scholars and people discuss this is like, it's the only way to achieve bureaucratic coordination. But you've also challenged the idea that there are other forms of bureaucracy. So I want to ask you, how did China achieve that bureaucratic coordination without feeding into the Weberian archetype? You know, so to speak, because the challenge with most developing countries like Nigeria, which I am familiar with, is that you often have pockets of effectiveness in different arms of the government, but it's usually difficult for one vision to be projected, you know, and be implemented. So how did China achieve this through its bureaucracy, what were the design elements?Yuen; I am very glad that you brought up this important point. It is a point that I keep making in my books and in other forms of speaking. It is also a point that many people find hard to accept. The reason for this is that for a very long time, the conventional wisdom has always subscribed to the view that there is only one standard for good institutions, for stake capacity, for good governance and that is to look like rich Western nations. Now, the conventional wisdom doesn't put it this way, but if you look at all of the global metrics that are created, regardless of the names that are coined for them, it's always the same countries that are ranked in the top 10. And it's always the same group of countries, including Nigeria, and sometimes China that's ranked at the bottom, right?And so this is very deeply entrenched in both academic and popular thinking that there is only one standard in this world for good governance and good institutions. And that we should only use that benchmark. And when we look at developing countries, their situation is only accessed in terms of their distance from this ideal type. So things in developing countries are not perceived as being qualitatively different, they are instead perceived as deficient because they don't comply with the standard expectation of how things should function. And so including in the discussion about state capacity, one of the core elements of state capacity is bureaucratic capacity. And so as you alluded to, everyone subscribes to the legal-rational model that Max Weber had portrayed 100 years ago. And it is assumed that the only kind of effective bureaucracies are the ones that have these Weberian qualities, and everything else must be corrupt or dysfunctional. And the reason that I questioned this conventional wisdom is that I think it is... first of all, it reflects a first-world bias that people are either unaware of or unwilling to admit. And second of all, it is limiting and distorting. Because when you assume that there is only one standard, you cannot see qualitative or categorical differences. Meaning that perhaps in this world, we are actually comparing apples, oranges, bananas and guavas. But when you say only the Apple is the legitimate fruit, and then you look at the banana, and you think, "Oh no, the banana is deficient, because it doesn't look like an apple," right? So that is why it becomes this very narrowing logic. And what I find from both my historical research and my field research, in the case of China, as a very good example is that the qualities of an effective bureaucracy were actually very different at the early and late growth stages. So the given example, I show that in the early 1980s, 1990s, when markets first opened in China, the country actually relied on bureaucracies that had non-Weberian characteristics. So they were not specialized. Local governments would mobilize every agency to go and recruit investors. And this defies Weber's rule of specialization and technocracy. They also create a mechanism where these bureaucrats were basically taking a cut from the investments they could bring in which in economics, we say high-powered incentives. And in Weberian bureaucracy, you're not supposed to provide high-powered incentives, you're supposed to have these very modest rule-abiding and somewhat boring bureaucrats in office. And the reason why these non-Weberian qualities work very well, in the beginning, is because they made the best use of what China had in the beginning, which is it had a communist apparatus and a communist apparatus [that] is good at mobilization. It made use of the personal connections of local government officials and these personal connections substituted for formal property rights, and so forth. And so even though these individual characteristics would appear to be wrong from the first-world perspective, they were actually functionally a good fit with the objectives of early development. However, as the process goes on, income rises, the markets become more complex, businesses grow and so forth, the society and the economy had different objectives, had different priorities about growth. They no longer wanted just any type of growth they wanted, instead, quality growth in states-selected priority sectors. And that's when you begin to see an evolution in the bureaucracy towards the more specialized and technocratic forms that we see in first-world countries today. So to sum it all up, there are two takeaways. The first takeaway is [that] the good institutions that are often touted as universally ideal institutions are actually good institutions suitable for advanced stages of growth. But early stages of growth may actually require functionally and qualitatively different institutions that make the best use of what low-income societies have. So that is the first takeaway. And the second takeaway is that we should drop this assumption that there is only one standard because that prevents us from seeing potentially creative solutions throughout the developing world.Tobi; So your second book, "China's Gilded Age: the paradox of economic boom and vast corruption," I would say, also slayed another dragon for me personally, only that the dragon is not China. So from my experience in Nigeria, when you talk about corruption, the almost - I should say, self-interested response you get from politicians is that there is corruption in other places. And from somebody coming from a civil society background or even an average citizen, that answer is unpalatable, because the way we have been made to think about corruption is usually about the overall level of corruption, the quantitative level of corruption. But in your book, you made it important that the qualitative aspect of corruption is also important. So can you please briefly explain the difference? How did you come about this insight of unbundling corruption, so to speak?Yuen; Yes. So the second book is called China's Gilded Age. And it is a sequel to my first where I zoom in on the relationship between corruption and capitalism. And the core argument of the second book is actually quite simple. What I argue is that corruption comes in different types. And different types of corruption have different forms of harm. And I focus on one particular type of corruption that I call access money: elite exchanges of power and wealth. And I show that in many contexts, not just in China, access money can actually encourage businesses to do more business; because politicians provide them with conducive conditions. But that this form of corruption results in indirect risk and harm that is nearly impossible to quantify. And so once we, in particular, zoom in on access money, we can understand why there are many economies that are prosperous, on the one hand, but on the other hand, have many structural distortions and risks. And in addition to China, the other country that fits this model is actually the United States. So whether you look at the United States in the late 19th century, the original Gilded Age, or whether you look at the United States during the 2008 financial crisis and today, you'll find that these are wealthy capitalist economies that produce rapid growth, but also [produce] inequality - a great deal of inequality and a great deal of policy distortions and systemic risk. And that is the kind of corruption that is neglected that people don't look at. The reason for this is that most people, when they think about corruption, they immediately think about the forms of illegal corruption that they encounter in their daily lives. So when a policeman stops you and extracts a bribe from you. Now that is obviously corrupt. It is an act of bribery, it is illegal, it is extortion. And so the focus is on this type of corruption. Whereas a lot of the popular discourse neglects the other type of corruption - access money - which has always been actually central to the history of capitalism.Tobi; I find that book very insightful. I'll give you a brief anecdote. The former president during one of his media appearances went on television and made, I would say, the error at the time of saying that corruption is different from stealing. And it happened to be one of the things that became a public relations nightmare for him. So I just want to ask you, for countries that are dominated by the destructive types of corruption, can they transition to access money types of corruption, and can they also avoid the inequalities that come with it? And I should say that you stressed in the book that corruption is not good, which is another wrong message that a lot of people take from the book.Yuen; So my book, China's Gilded Age, unfortunately, as you pointed out, is widely misunderstood. As soon as people see the story of corruption coexisting with growth, they take that argument out of context, and start screaming that, "oh, my god, she's saying corruption is good for growth, and she's saying we should do more corruption."And so there have been quite a lot of nonsensical reactions to the argument. So at the outset, let me stress that actually, I made clear throughout the book, and over and over again in my speaking that all corruption is bad. This is not an argument about corruption being good in any way. All corruption is bad, but the harm is expressed in different ways. And so that is why I use the analogy of drugs. I used the analogy of toxic drugs to refer to extortion and embezzlement. These types of corruption have absolutely no benefit, you immediately see the harm, and it immediately destroys the economy. And Nigeria is a good example of this type of highly destructive corruption. And the second type of corruption I call speed money, I refer to that as painkillers. So you can think about a business that pays a small bribe so that it can get a business license faster. And that corruption is a painkiller in the sense that it allows the business to buy some conveniences, gets rid of some headaches, but that doesn't actually help the business to make more money. Ultimately, for the business owner, it is a hassle. And it is a cost. So that's not good, either. And the last type of corruption, access money, I call it steroids. So steroids, as we know, is a kind of drug that dishonoured athletes use to help them grow muscles and perform superhuman feats. But if you keep using steroids, then ultimately it's really going to have a whole range of serious side effects that accumulate over time. And access money is a type of corruption that you find in high growth or wealthy, crony capitalist economies, right? So what people should take away from this book is not that corruption is good, or that countries should do more corruption, which obviously would be nonsensical. Instead, they should really think about the following issues. First of all, countries should take a look at what is the dominant type of corruption that exists in their country, and think about the appropriate methods to fight the dominant type of corruption. For instance, in the United States, extortion, petty bribery, these sometimes happen, but it's not common in the United States. But over there, the dominant type of corruption is legalized access money. So lobbying has become a gigantic industry. And so the United States would have to come up with very different ways of fighting the kind of corruption that dominates in their society. Conversely, when you look at Nigeria, it has all four types of corruption that I talk about and so in a country like Nigeria, there has to be a focus on fighting all of these four types of corruption, but particularly the toxic ones. So embezzlement, extortion, imposing petty bribes, and thuggery on people. These types of corruption have no benefits at all. They drain the economy and the burden falls most heavily on the poor. So countries have to think about what are the measures they can take to bring down this overtly, growth-dampening corruption. And if you look at the Chinese experience, what happens as it developed over time is that the structure of corruption changed, and it invested at least 20 years of efforts to really bring down extortion and embezzlement.And although I had an entire chapter devoted to that topic, a lot of people just ignore it. And instead, they run with the misleading conclusion that oh, we should do more corruption. They ignore my discussion about the 20 years of effort that China put into bringing down extortion and embezzlement. So for readers in Nigeria, start with the obvious things, things like extortion, embezzlement… of course, they're wrong; of course, they're terrible; of course, they're damaging, so do something about that first before you even attempt to think about how can we transition to more advanced forms of crony capitalism like we might see in some advanced economies. The other takeaway I would add... the third takeaway that I would emphasize is that the part about access money, it's not about how do we encourage more access money corruption… the way to think about that takeaway is how do countries like Nigeria, create incentives for government officials to have a personal stake in economic outcomes? Right.And so what happened in the Chinese case is the system that I call profit sharing. Meaning local officials have a stake in economic growth, which comes both in terms of their career, as well as in their financial payoffs. And that shows up as access money.It doesn't mean that other countries should have more of that kind of corruption. Instead, the real lesson is, if not this type of corruption, are there other less damaging ways in which we can create incentives for government officials to actually have a personal stake in economic development?Tobi; One final question, I know our time is gone. I know scholars usually, sometimes, shy away from making policy proposals but for countries that are also interested or ambitious about escaping the poverty trap, what… maybe theoretically speaking, or practically, what are the three things that you would recommend from your research on the China experience? Not necessarily copying China, we know that has pitfalls, so what would you recommend? Yuen; It's a good final question to wrap up. Um, I would sum up with three takeaways. The first takeaway is, really work hard on fighting the overtly growth damaging types of corruption. It is a simple takeaway, but a lot of people actually forget about it. So things like embezzlement, things like extortion. If Nigeria could bring down the level of these damaging types of corruption, of course, immediately, you will see the economic and social benefits. So work hard on that. And then the second takeaway is, how is it possible for government officials in Nigeria to have a personal stake in collective outcomes? I don't have the answer. But I think it is a question that Nigerians have to sit down and think about. One of the things that are often missing in developing countries is a discussion about incentives and also about a sense of personal ownership in shared outcomes. People prefer to invest their energies in criticizing politicians and so forth. But if you think about it from an institutional perspective, why should that particular politician care about the collective outcome? Right. So how can we create those incentives, which doesn't necessarily have to be monetary. It could also be non-monetary, it could be reputational, how do we make them care? Right? So that's the second thing to think about. The third thing I would emphasize is a principle that I call using what you have, and China illustrates that principle, richly. Using what you have means that every society, even one that is a low-income society has a lot of indigenous resources, they have human capital, they have creativity. So the first step of development is not to go and copy rich countries, it is also not to sell your oil resources, but to really make the best use of these indigenous resources. And so for those who know my first book, actually, in the conclusion, I have a chapter about Nollywood. And that's an excellent example whereby under desperate circumstances, the people in Nigeria actually created an industry from the bottom up using what Nigeria had at that particular time. And so there are so many instances throughout the developing world where there are actually a lot of indigenous resources, they are untapped, or they are ignored or they're dismissed. Because we are so used to thinking that the only right solution is to look like rich countries. And we have to drop that mindset. I think it's part of an extension of a colonial mindset as well. And developing countries have to develop a certain sense of intellectual independence, as well as confidence in seeing the potential that is already existent in every society, and make the best use of those resources to kickstart entrepreneurship and new industries.Tobi; Thank you very much, Yuen Yuen Ang, it's been fantastic talking to you.Yuen; Thank you very much. It's a real pleasure to speak with you. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.ideasuntrapped.com/subscribe
This was originally released as part of our reading group series, which you can access by becoming a Patron : https://www.patreon.com/red_star_radio We review Weber's section on Bureaucracy included his seminal work (and foundational sociological text) Economy and society: An outline of interpretive sociology.
This episode heads on seclusion from mainstream historical and political thought, the infamous Salem Witch Trials, based on a recent article written by a renowned Oxford historian, Johannes Dillinger made a good historical analysis of correlating the 17th century incident into creating a “Magical Economy” that prescribes Weberian system of Neoliberal Economy we used today. This topic explores the grave consequence of false political objectives causing severe economic scarcity. Medieval Germany offers significant European cultures and Mythology worth knowing, a much earlier story on the origins of social hierarchy take roots during the false and desperate Witch Hunting of several women in Massachusetts, North America. Let's take a closer look at Discrimination, False Belief, Economic Inequality, and Conspiracies as Alex-Jason investigate Witchcraft. www.higherdensityliving.com
Pritish Behuria from the University of Manchester has a long expertise in studying industrial policy and comparative developmental trajectories in Sub-Saharan Africa. In today's episode, we first talk about the broader context of a supposedly post-neoliberal developmental framework where industrial policy is again on the agenda - even though problems such as fiscal space, structural change, access to technology and dependency on foreign capital have changed little if at all. Pritish also shares his analysis of the Rwandan case - the apparent success story of a "growth miracle", which some explain with robust Weberian state capacities, while others brandish it as a model of financial liberalisation and good governance. Pritish analyzes a domestic political economy, where market liberalisation marginalised domestic capitalists, who couldn't as a result play an active role in diversification and structural change. Far from the miracle narrative, the Rwandan trajectory thus illustrates the inherent tensions and contradictions which traverse developmental strategies of state-led development at the current juncture. You can follow Pritish at:@pritishbehuria on Twitterhttps://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/pritish.behuria.htmlhttps://manchester.academia.edu/PritishBehuriaCheck out Recent Work by Pritish:Behuria P (2021) The curious case of domestic capitalists in Africa: towards a political economy of diversified business groups. Journal of Contemporary African Studies. DOI: 10.1080/02589001.2021.1899144. 1-17. Based on: https://www.effective-states.org/wp-content/uploads/working_papers/final-pdfs/esid_wp_115_behuria.pdf Behuria P (2019) Twenty-first Century Industrial Policy in a Small Developing Country: The Challenges of Reviving Manufacturing in Rwanda. Development and Change 50(4): 1033-1062. Available at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/dech.12498Behuria P (2018) Learning from Role Models in Rwanda: Incoherent Emulation in the Construction of a Neoliberal Developmental State. New Political Economy 23(4): 422-440. Available at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13563467.2017.1371123References recommended by Pritish:Kimonyo J-P (2019) Transforming Rwanda. Challenges on the Road to Reconstruction. Lynne Rienner Publishers. Available at: https://www.rienner.com/title/Transforming_Rwanda_Challenges_on_the_Road_to_ReconstructionOqubay A (2015) Made in Africa: Industrial Policy in Ethiopia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Available at: https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198739890.001.0001/acprof-9780198739890Cramer C, Sender J and Oqubay A (2020) African Economic Development. Evidence, Theory, Policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Open Access Available at: https://fdslive.oup.com/www.oup.com/academic/pdf/openaccess/9780198832331.pdf
This newsletter is really a public policy thought-letter. While excellent newsletters on specific themes within public policy already exist, this thought-letter is about frameworks, mental models, and key ideas that will hopefully help you think about any public policy problem in imaginative ways. It seeks to answer just one question: how do I think about a particular public policy problem/solution?PS: If you enjoy listening instead of reading, we have this edition available as an audio narration on all podcasting platforms courtesy the good folks at Ad-Auris. If you have any feedback, please send it to us.Global Policy Watch: No Telefoon in Rangoon - RSJMere Piya Gaye Rangoon Wahan Se Kiya Hai Telefoon is how C. Ramchandra immortalised Rangoon (Yangon) in our collective memories all those years ago. Unfortunately, ‘wahan se kiya hai telefoon’ is a tad difficult these days for the people of Yangon. Myanmar should be aware of the idea of eternal recurrence by now. That all events in the world recur in the same pattern over an eternal series of cycles. The coup earlier this month by the Tatmadaw (the armed forces) was a case of history repeating itself three times over in its short post-war history. The reason served by the military had a familiar ring to it. It alleged widespread voter fraud in the November 2020 elections that led to a landslide victory for Aung San Suu Kyi helmed National League For Democracy (NLD). The quasi-democracy that was in place in Myanmar since 2015 didn’t mean any loosening of the iron-fist of the Tatmadaw. It retained its control on the key levers of power. For it to allege voter fraud in elections is comical. It must follow then it is admitting its incompetence in being dictatorial. Anyway, leave that aside. History has shown logic isn’t a particular strength of military junta anywhere in the world. But irony is The senior-most military leader Gen. Min Aung Hlaing had this to say:“I would seriously urge the entire nation to join hands with the Tatmadaw (Army) for the successful realisation of democracy.” Then the junta went digital with its defence. In a country where Facebook is the internet, it posted this on its official site:After many requests, this way was inevitable for the country and that's why we had to choose it. And soon it blocked Facebook and disabled the internet for the sake of ‘stability’ in the country. The tanks were on the street and midnight knocks on the doors of NLD leaders began. Suu Kyi was taken into custody and the crackdown started. It was 1988 once again for Myanmar. The eternal cycle had recurred.As Nietzsche wrote:"Everything has returned. Sirius, and the spider, and thy thoughts at this moment, and this last thought of thine that all things will return". Myanmar has been living through a transition to a fledgling democracy over the last decade. A new constitution that allowed for representative democracy and elections took shape in 2008. In 2015, NLD won the general elections and Suu Kyi became the State Counsellor (the equivalent of PM) of Myanmar. She is constitutionally barred from becoming the President because she was married to a foreigner and her children aren’t citizens of Myanmar. There was an uneasy truce between her and the military over the last term as Myanmar saw an unprecedented period of opening up to the world, growth and freedom for its people. Anyone who visited it in the last five years would vouch for how ‘normal’ it felt. So, why the coup now? There’s never an easy answer to this. For all you know it could be General Hlaing having a bad hair day. But let’s look at it through the frames of political and social philosophy to arrive at few likely reasons.Firstly, the old Weberian power and legitimacy lens. Power is the ability to impose your will over others despite their resistance. Legitimacy is when this power is considered fair, even appropriate, by those over whom it is exercised. As Weber wrote:“The basis of every system of authority, and correspondingly of every kind of willingness to obey, is a belief, a belief by virtue of which persons exercising authority are lent prestige” Power needs prestige to be legitimate. Else, it is coercion. In Myanmar, the junta always had power but rarely legitimacy. In the quasi-democracy era, the junta ceded a thin sliver of power to the NLD. But legitimacy is a strange meal. It can feed that feeble power and bestow it with enormous strength. A second term for NLD would have done exactly that. Power is a zero-sum game. The army generals know it. People sense the winds of change fast. The military couldn’t take any further chances with this version of democracy. Self-preservation kicked in on Feb 1, 2021.Secondly, a recurring self-delusion that most authoritarians suffer from is how popular they are among the masses. The Constitution of Myanmar was drafted in a manner that favours large, majoritarian parties. You get a disproportionate number of seats regardless of the margin of victory on vote count. This was, of course, deliberate. There were two reasons for this. One, Myanmar is a multi-ethnic country with a distinct minority presence in its southwestern and northeastern borders. But the polity (the military and the NLD) is dominated by the majority Burmese Buddhists. A majoritarian Constitution is quite convenient. Two, General Hliang probably harbours political ambitions. His term ends this year. He backed the opposition in this elections thinking a victory would see him transition to being a President soon. The results were a shocker. 83 per cent of seats to NLD. The way the election rules have been drafted (by him) would now suggest an almost permanent NLD majority for the next many elections. This wasn’t acceptable. His network of businesses and the many interests of his family and friends could not be left to the mercy of mere civilian politicians. The general didn’t see himself in his labyrinth. This is the old authoritarian problem. You overestimate your popularity. No one tells you the truth. You call for the elections. Then you can’t handle the truth (no copyright issue here; Aaron Sorkin is a friend). Exhibit A of this behaviour is Indira Gandhi right after the emergency. Exhibits B, C, D.. are all dictators too many to name here. This is why good authoritarians go the other way. They change the constitution to reduce the freedoms of the opposition, they extend their terms or they take elections out from the political equation. General Hliang must speak more often to his friends who are on his speed dial - Xi, Putin or Erdogan. Thirdly, this is as good a time to mount a coup with little or no fear of international repercussions. Political cosmopolitanism is in a state of irrelevance now. The idea that states should be subject to some kind of international morality and they must behave in a manner consistent with it is at its weakest. The pandemic has further raised the walls at the borders. Transnational economic or political ideas have to contend with them. It is no surprise that international condemnation of the Myanmar coup is muted. China has asked all parties to resolve their differences internally (ha!). ASEAN, the largest market for Myanmar, has responded in a similar vein. The Biden administration has imposed sanctions and this will be followed by a few other western democracies. They hardly matter. Myanmar has lived in isolation for long to be concerned with them. So, what does the future hold for Myanmar? Will this emergency be a mere one-year interregnum and will we have democracy back after it? Freedom is addictive. Even in the smallest of doses. There’s a view that whatever passed off for democracy in the last decade will be too strong in public memory for the junta to erase altogether. Despite the internet ban, street protests are spreading and, importantly, the arms of the state like bureaucracy, police and public servants (bank or healthcare workers) are participating in a departure from the past. Will these be enough? As a realist, I understand the state can play the waiting game for long and with an increasing degree of coercion. There’s little likelihood of a Yangon spring this season. Global Policy Watch: I am Small, I contain Multitweets— Pranay KotasthaneDo I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself; (I am large, I contain multitudes.)— From Walt Whitman's Song of Myself That's too nuanced a point for social media warriors of all persuasions. After all, it's now possible to judge and crucify someone — notwithstanding their unique life experiences and resulting perspectives — merely on the basis of what they tweet. Or what they don't. Just imagine. Our social media profiles — filled with inane and often ill-thought System 1 garbage output — are our most important extrinsic manifestations. It's tragic.Two recent instances drove home this point to me yet again. One, an Indian-origin Oxford University Student Union President-elect had to step down after someone dug up her old Instagram posts containing some pretty terrible (and not even funny) wordplay about a holocaust memorial. As if the label “insensitive” wasn’t sufficient, more posts were dug up to also label her "racist" and "anti-LGBTQ". What the person is today in real life, I have no idea. But what seems pretty clear to me is that past Instagram mistakes don't deserve anything more than a sincere apology. That’s unfortunately not the case though. If the internet remembers everything, social media extracts a heavy penalty for everything remembered.The second instance was a shoddy article in The Caravan titled Establishment Man: The Moral Timidity of Sachin Tendulkar. Among other things, the author was able to make gross generalisations such as "… Tendulkar also shares the worst traits of the Indian middle-class: its indifference to the general good, its lack of commitment to the values of human rights and democracy, and its intellectual vacuousness" merely on the basis of Tendulkar’s Twitter feed. The specific accusation is that while Tendulkar joined the orchestrated chorus against Rihanna's tweet, his 'Twitter stayed silent' when Wasim Jaffer was removed as the coach of the Uttarakhand cricket team.This is not a defence of Tendulkar. As much as I admire him as a cricketer, I understand that a great cricketer can also be a craven follower. But I do have a problem when this judgment gets made merely on what he didn’t tweet about. For instance, the author is quick to conclude, on the basis of a Twitter feed that “..his personal decency has always been accompanied by a deeply ingrained timidity towards authority, a primal fear of upsetting any establishment, whether cricketing or otherwise.” Yet, Tendulkar’s 2009 statement “Mumbai belongs to all Indians”, going against the well-entrenched parochial ‘Marathi Manoos’ politics, doesn’t get even a cursory mention. Similarly, the author doesn’t even attempt to show if he investigated Tendulkar’s off-Twitter support for Jaffer’s shameful ouster. After all, there is a lot someone like Tendulkar can do — and we can expect him to do in this case — than merely signal virtue on Twitter. The Wrong Path ChosenThese two instances illustrate that we give others’ social media feeds way too much importance. The first instance follows a well-established practice of digging up old tweets to defame a present-day achiever. This tendency ignores the fact that the most important human preference is our ability to change our past preferences. Moreover, the more we label people, the more we polarise our politics. Philip Tetlock claims that text analyses studies show that people already tweet more like politicians (signalling virtue) or as prosecutors (assigning blame) rather than as hypothesis testers. And so, disproportional attention to our social media past will only make more people don the role of politicians and prosecutors — ready to fight every battle across the world while burning bridges in our vicinity. The Tendulkar case is a more recent trend — people are to be judged not only on the basis of what they tweet but also what they don't. This too has a similar effect of pushing us into becoming prosecutors who are obligated to jump from one burning issue to the next without solving any.Finally, to pay disproportional attention to our social media selves is both foolish and dangerous. To rebuild broken bridges, we need to assume by default that people contain multitudes. It's going to be tough. Answer to the Quiz in #108Yes, the answer is BR Ambedkar, who else? Those were the excerpts from the election manifesto of the Scheduled Castes Federation from 1951. SCF was a precursor to the Republican Party of India. The entire election manifesto is a fascinating read. As one can expect from Ambedkar’s writings, this manifesto is not just a vague litany of promises but a rare well-reasoned agenda. Sample this:IV. Co-operation between Scheduled Castes Federation and other Political Parties 51. Mere Organization does not make a party. A party means a body of people who are bound by principles. Without principles a party cannot function as a party for in the absence of principles there is nothing to hold the members of it together. A party without principles is only a caravanserai. The Scheduled Castes Federation will not, therefore, ally itself with a Political Party which has not laid down its principles and whose constitution does not demand a pledge from its members to stand by those principles and whose principles are not in antogonism with these of the Federation.52. It is not enough to have political ideals. What is necessary is the victory of ideals. But the victory of ideals can be ensured only by organized parties and not by individuals. For these reasons the Federation will not support independent candidates who belong to no party except in exceptional cases...54. As regards other Political Parties, the Scheduled Castes Federation’s attitude can be easily defined. The Scheduled Castes Federation will not have any alliance with any reactionary Party such as the Hindu Mahasabha or the R. S. S.55. The Scheduled Castes Federation will not have any alliance with a Party like the Communist Party the objects of which are to destroy individual freedom and Parliamentary Democracy and substitute in its place a dictatorship.The manifesto can be read here (page 386). Don’t miss it. We found out about this document in a Puliyabaazi with prominent Dalit intellectual and entrepreneur Chandra Bhan Prasad.HomeWorkReading and listening recommendations on public policy mattersSabastian Strangio in the Foreign Affairs: “Myanmar’s Coup Was a Chronicle Foretold” Are coups good for democracy? A paper by George Derpanopoulos, Erica Frantz, Barbara Geddes and Joseph Wright. Answer: “We find that, though democracies are occasionally established in the wake of coups, more often new authoritarian regimes emerge, along with higher levels of state-sanctioned violence.” Get on the email list at publicpolicy.substack.com
The world is more formally democratic than ever before, if measured by the number of countries that have a representative form of government. But how viable is the Western model of liberal democracy as it travels to, and is transplanted in, different countries around the world? In this episode Professor Laurence Whitehead (Oxford University) and Dr. Yanina Welp (Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy, Graduate Institute, Geneva) examine these issues against the background of the trajectories of Latin America’s turbulent experiences with democracy and populism. Show Notes Learn more about: • Our guest Yanina Welp • Our guest Laurence Whitehead • Our host Shalini Randeria The Democracy in Question Podcast is brought to you by: • The Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna: IWM • The Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: AHCD • The Excellence Chair and Soft Authoritarianism Research Group in Bremen: WOC • The Podcast Production Company Earshot Strategies Follow us on Social Media! Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna: @IWM_Vienna Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: @AHDCentre Follow Yanina Welp on Social Media: @Welpita Subscribe & Support! If you enjoyed what you listened to, you can support us by leaving a review and sharing our podcast in your networks! Bibliography • Check out Yanina’s and Laurence’s new book: The Politics of Recall Elections • Whitehead, Laurence. (2010). Biology, Politics, and Democracy. Taiwan Journal of Democracy, 6(2). • Whitehead, Laurence. (2019).Temporal Models of Political Development: In General and of Democratization in Particular. In Democracy under Threat (pp. 23-44). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. Glossary What is modernization theory?(00:02:30 or p. 2 in the transcript) A central claim of modernization theory is that economic development, cultural change, and political change go together in coherent, and to some extent, predictable patterns. Once a society starts to industrialize, according to modernization theory, a variety of related changes become almost inevitable, such as urbanization and bureaucratization (explained below), and eventually, changing gender roles. […] The classic versions of modernization theory were deterministic, with the Marxist version tending toward economic determinism, and the Weberian version sometimes tending toward cultural determinism.Source: Ronald Inglehart, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences , 2001. Click here to learn more. What is bureaucratization? German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) argued that the growth of the population being administered, the growth in complexity of the administrative tasks being carried out, and the existence of a monetary economy requiring a more efficient administrative system were all preconditions for the emergence of bureaucracy in modern societies. As a result of the development of communication and transportation technologies, a more efficient administration became not only possible but demanded by the public. Weber argued that this shift was accompanied by an increasing democratization and rationalization of culture and that this resulted in public demands for a new administrative system that treated all humans equally. Learn more. What happened in 1949? (00:04:00 or p. 3 in the transcript) In 1949 The Federal Republic of Germany (popularly known as West Germany) was formally established as a separate nation, which marked the effective end to any discussion of reuniting East and West Germany. When did Evo Morales become president of Bolivia? (00:09:00 or p. 6 in the transcript) Evo Morales served as the President of Bolivia from 2006 to 2019. He was Bolivia’s longest-serving president and its first indigenous president. In 2019 he announced his resignation after weeks of intense protests sparked by a dispute over the results of the October 20 election. Learn more. What is partitocrazia? (00:10:30 or p. 7 in the transcript) Partitocrazia, also known as particracy or partitocracy, is a term strongly coined by Italian political scientist Mauro Calise. It is often used pejoratively to describe a form of government in which the political parties are the primary basis of rule rather than the citizens, individuals or corporations. Learn more. In which context was the Chilean constitution written? (00:19:30 or p. 12 in the transcript) The current Chilean constitution was written in 1980, during the time of a military dictatorship in Chile and so is seen by many to lack legitimacy. Learn more. What is clientelism? (00:23:30 or p. 14 in the transcript) Clientelism is a political or social system based on the relation of client to patron with the client giving political or financial support to a patron (as in the form of votes) in exchange for some special privilege or benefit. Source. Click here to learn more.
Max Weber’s The Profession and Vocation of Politics (1919) was a lecture that became one of the defining texts of twentieth century political thought. In it, Weber explores the perils and paradoxes of leadership in a modern state. Is it possible to do bad in order to do good? Can violence ever be virtuous? Does political responsibility send politicians mad? David discusses the legacy of Weber’s ideas and asks: who is the true Weberian politician?Free online version of the text: http://fs2.american.edu/dfagel/www/class%20readings/weber/politicsasavocation.pdfRecommended version to purchase: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Weber-Political-Writings-Cambridge-History/dp/0521397197Going Deeper:Geoffrey Hawthorn on Max Weber for the LRBJoachim Radkau, Max Weber (Polity, 2009)Talking Politics on ‘Politics as a Vocation’ with Jonathan PowellJan-Werner Müller, Contesting democracy: political ideas in twentieth century Europe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013)David for the LRB on Weber, Tony Blair, and the politics of good intentions See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
In this episode we are joined by Erin Metz McDonnell, Kellogg Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame and author of the recently published Patchwork Leviathan: Pockets of Bureaucratic Effectiveness in Developing States. Erin introduces us to the “budgetary unit”–a powerful, but under-utilized Weberian term–and discusses how she expands Weber’s theorization of bureaucracy […]
Would church be better off with no technology? Could Leah be a powerful dictator? Would people return to traditional authoritarian styles of leadership when the grid goes down? WE ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS AND MORE DEFINITIVELY. Charismatic versus inherited authority in the church. The worship leaders versus the pastor. Weberian analysis of the book of Judges.
------------------Support the channel------------ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thedissenter SubscribeStar: https://www.subscribestar.com/the-dissenter PayPal: paypal.me/thedissenter PayPal Subscription 1 Dollar: https://tinyurl.com/yb3acuuy PayPal Subscription 3 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ybn6bg9l PayPal Subscription 5 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ycmr9gpz PayPal Subscription 10 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y9r3fc9m PayPal Subscription 20 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y95uvkao ------------------Follow me on--------------------- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedissenteryt/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheDissenterYT Anchor (podcast): https://anchor.fm/thedissenter Dr. Stephen K. Sanderson is an American sociologist. He was a professor of sociology at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Since 2007 he has been a visiting scholar at the Institute for Research on World-Systems at the University of California, Riverside. His areas of focus include comparative sociology, historical sociology, sociological theory and sociocultural evolution. He is a specialist in sociological theory and comparative and historical sociology and is one of the leading sociologists to develop a Darwinian understanding of human society. He has written or edited ten books, including “The Evolution of Human Sociality: A Darwinian Conflict Perspective”, “Evolutionism and Its Critics”, “Human Nature and the Evolution of Society”, and “Religious Evolution and the Axial Age”. In this episode, we cover a lot of ground in Sociology and the Social Sciences. We start by talking about traditional approaches to sociology, the limitations of sociocultural accounts of human behavior, the importance of fields like sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, and the criteria to determine that a behavioral trait has a biological basis. We also discuss how to think about culture, and the relationship between culture and biology, and then Dr. Sanderson gives an overview of his Darwinian conflict theory, that tries to integrate evolutionary theory with Weberian conflict theory (with bits of Marx in there). Finally, we talk about Dr. Sanderson's work on religion, and three different types of religion – shamanic, polytheistic (pagan), and monotheistic (world transcendent). -- Follow Dr. Sanderson's work: Personal website: https://bit.ly/2H0NLie Some articles on Researchgate: https://bit.ly/2vI0NvN Amazon page: https://amzn.to/2VTsQXI Relevant books/articles: Human Nature and the Evolution of Society: https://amzn.to/2DQtXNK Religious Evolution and the Axial Age: https://amzn.to/2UD7NFh -- A HUGE THANK YOU TO MY PATRONS: KARIN LIETZCKE, ANN BLANCHETTE, SCIMED, PER HELGE HAAKSTD LARSEN, LAU GUERREIRO, RUI BELEZA, MIGUEL ESTRADA, ANTÓNIO CUNHA, CHANTEL GELINAS, JIM FRANK, JERRY MULLER, FRANCIS FORD, HANS FREDRIK SUNDE, BRIAN RIVERA, ADRIANO ANDRADE, YEVHEN BODRENKO, SERGIU CODREANU, ADAM BJERRE, ŁUKASZ STAFINIAK, AIRES ALMEIDA, BERNARDO SEIXAS, AND HERBERT GINTIS! A SPECIAL THANKS TO MY PRODUCERS, YZAR WEHBE and ROSEY!
Professor Kathryn Tanner the Marquand Professor of Systematic Theology at Yale Divinity School, delivers the Gifford Lecture entitled "Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism". The first lecture in this series discusses the Weberian approach to the influence of Christian beliefs and practices on economic behaviour, and ties it to the sort of comparison of ‘spiritualities’ offered by the French philosopher Michel Foucault in his Collège de France lectures. The lecture explores the general characteristics of finance-dominated capitalism and its culture, and outlines the basic shape of the larger argument of the series, concerning the potential for Christianity to counteract contemporary capitalist modes of control. Recorded 2 May 2016 at the University of Edinburgh's Business School.
Wherein Harry and Ron fly to Hogwarts, Harry and Ron get in trouble for flying to Hogwarts, and Darin blathers on about Weberian disenchantment for some reason.
Professor Kathryn Tanner the Marquand Professor of Systematic Theology at Yale Divinity School, delivers the Gifford Lecture entitled "Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism". The first lecture in this series discusses the Weberian approach to the influence of Christian beliefs and practices on economic behaviour, and ties it to the sort of comparison of ‘spiritualities' offered by the French philosopher Michel Foucault in his Collège de France lectures. The lecture explores the general characteristics of finance-dominated capitalism and its culture, and outlines the basic shape of the larger argument of the series, concerning the potential for Christianity to counteract contemporary capitalist modes of control. Recorded 2 May 2016 at the University of Edinburgh's Business School.
Professor Kathryn Tanner the Marquand Professor of Systematic Theology at Yale Divinity School, delivers the Gifford Lecture entitled "Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism". The first lecture in this series discusses the Weberian approach to the influence of Christian beliefs and practices on economic behaviour, and ties it to the sort of comparison of ‘spiritualities’ offered by the French philosopher Michel Foucault in his Collège de France lectures. The lecture explores the general characteristics of finance-dominated capitalism and its culture, and outlines the basic shape of the larger argument of the series, concerning the potential for Christianity to counteract contemporary capitalist modes of control. Recorded 2 May 2016 at the University of Edinburgh's Business School.
A summary of our discussion in Episode 6 with some bonus examples and an outline of the reading. During the main episode we discussed topics such as: rules, what is bureaucracy for, and who is bureaucracy for, among many other (smaller) ones.Listen to this summary if you would like a quick abstract of the episode, if you are interested in teaching/learning about Weberian bureaucracy, or simply to refresh you knowledge of this timeless classic.
I take a break from the walking tour in a fit of rage. This is taking way too long you guys. In this episode we look at the class system of the middle ages: our Weberian assumptions, Marx, and the tripartite system of social organization. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
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