What
I’m hoping is the last stretch for the book proved more arduous than I thought
– particularly checking that the 50 mini-essays which form its core actually
hang together and give some sort of narrative. These mini-essays were originally
drafted as blog posts in the last 5-6 years but have been updated and edited
for this book. That’s 50 out of 1,350 posts over the past ten years – so they
survived a tough selection process which was based on intuition rather than
explicit criteria.
“Putting Economics in its Place” maps how writers of various sorts have tried to make sense of the post-war world – not least the 2008 global economic crisis – noting that economists somehow seem least able to offer satisfactory explanations…
“Other Ways” contains various essays about social movements and the solidarity economy
Chapter 6, “Changing the World”, return to the moral and political aspects – asking whether the “western model” can survive and how it will all end. It finishes by reviewing the literature on power and change
And
they are grouped into six Parts (or chapters) whose titles, I hope, are
self-explanatory.
”Ways of Seeing” uses the title of John
Berger’s seminal book of the 1970s to highlight what seemed to be the main
subjects of controversy and debate (at least in America/Europe) from the 1930s -
decade by decade. From the 1980s there was a tendency to reduce debate to a few
competing “storylines” – reflecting the post-modernist “discursive turn” of the
times.
As
someone who studied Politics and Economics at Adam Smith’s old University
(Glasgow) it is hardly surprising that political analysis should then put in an
appearance at this point – ahead of the economics analysis which is the focus
of Chapter 3 (“Putting Economics in its Place”).
In
the 1960s, politics was an honourable pursuit and the reasons for its dramatic
decline in respect is explored in a detailed consideration of one of the few
books which has bothered to try to understand this loss of trust. The growth of
technocracy is clearly one of the factors as managers and economists have been
elevated to the status of high priests of a new religion…..
“Not in Our Name” plots the
growth in the past 25 years of social protest and moral disgust.
“Putting Economics in its Place” maps how writers of various sorts have tried to make sense of the post-war world – not least the 2008 global economic crisis – noting that economists somehow seem least able to offer satisfactory explanations…
“Our Exploitative Society”, chapter 4,
starts with a reminder that western societies are built on carbon exploitation
– and then looks at how some of the key books since 2008 have mapped the
efforts these societies have made to cope with the new realities
“Other Ways” contains various essays about social movements and the solidarity economy
Chapter 6, “Changing the World”, return to the moral and political aspects – asking whether the “western model” can survive and how it will all end. It finishes by reviewing the literature on power and change
I’m
now experimenting with Dropbox – so the
current draft should be accessible here
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