The Great Transformation

We’re assailed by articles and books which tell us that the world is changing dramatically because of such technology as driverless cars, keyhole surgery, contraception and social media.

But, in a sense, this has been our story for the last century and more – although Karl Polyani may have been the first (in 1944) to analyse this closely in his classic The Great Transformation which analysed the power aspects behind the transition from feudalism to a market economy.

Other writers periodically try to anticipate what they consider to be significant social change but none perhaps greater than Peter Drucker, an Austrian born in 1909, best known for his management writing – indeed the father of management. His initial education was in Vienna but he graduated in Frankfurst (in International and Public Law), practising journalism in Hamburg and London before migrating to the US where he became a US citizen in 1943.

I have a theory that people who experience different worlds (geographical and/or intellectual) are able somehow to see the world differently - and are more creative. The theory is described here. Drucker went on to use his experience of being the first person to research management in General Motors to write first The New Society – anatomy of the industrial order (1950) and then to anticipate Alvin Toffler’s “Future Shock” (1971) with The Age of Discontinuity – guidelines to our changing society (1968). In both cases he demonstrated amazing sociological insight – somehow sensing a change in the wind’s direction before it even happened. And he was probably the first person to use the phrase “post-capitalist” when he published (in 1993) Post Capitalist Society

Francis Fukuyama may have inherited his mantle when he published The Great Disruption (1999) – although Drucker lived a good age, dying in 2005. I’ve added him to the table you'll find in the 2020 post which I can't reproduce here because the blogpost people seem to have run out of editors and any table now overlaps into the right hand column! This post is best read in conjunction with A Short Note and annotated bibliography on CHANGE

Further Reading

https://asaduzaman.medium.com/summary-of-the-great-transformation-by-polanyi-c329541e8532

https://weapedagogy.wordpress.com/2017/12/27/resources-for-study-of-polanyis-great-transformation/

The Technology Trap C Frey 2019

The most readable Guidebooks to Economics

I have, I readily admit, a certain fixation about the style of social science books – particularly economic ones. I have at least 5 reasons for deep concern –

- the lack of taste shown by publishers - who insist on imposing narrow and badly-written texts on us

- the way continuing academic compartmentalisation into tinier and tinier sub-fields makes it more and more difficult for those who work across disciplinary fields to get a serious hearing

- the obfuscating nature of the prose - which results as they disappear up one another’s arses;

- the dominance and unjustifiable arrogance of the economists; and

- the managerialist grab of the past few decades

I try, occasionally, to explore why specialists write such inferior books compared to those who have resisted groupthink and who approach an issue more creatively…..from a multidisciplinary point of view. I find myself using the metaphor of a bridge, border or network.

But perhaps “outsider” is a better term since it better conveys the sense of not belonging to the group – of being on the periphery…..Indeed the word “periphery” also gives a useful sense of the importance of messages and pressures from diverse sources in helping avoid the dreaded disease of “groupthink”…  “Think “peripheral vision” and “tunnel vision”, focus – which is why my blog currently bears the title it does….

Like the good social scientist I am, I already have a hypothesis – namely that the feeling of being an outsider is a catalyst to identify and challenge “groupthink” and that writing is an effective way of exploring the multiple perspectives which subsequently open up…..

Clearly one can be a great writer without being (or feeling) an outsider - although I suspect that people who lack empathy won’t be great writers. But the weak point in my argument is the connection between creativity and writing. There’s no obvious reason why those with creative insights should be able to express them clearly in writing,,,,……Or is there?    

But I have probably been insufficiently sensitive to the system in which social scientists are trapped…

Academics are now under pressure to publish - with their Departments rewarded financially for those who have high ratings from what’s called “peer-reviews”. Those who accept the “conventional wisdom” in their fields and write in jargon will generally score well in these ratings.

But go off piste and/or write in plain language the (wo)man in the street can understand and you’re in trouble.

One of the concluding chapters of The Econocracy – the perils of leaving economics to the experts by Earle, Moran and Ward-Perkins (2017) explains this very well. And argues, correctly in my view, that the way we allow economists to continue to bamboozle us into believing that the subject is a difficult one is nothing short of criminal!

It was early 2018 when I did the first list for my readers of clearly-written explanatory economics books which I could recommend….   So it’s about time it was updated

All the books until the list reaches 2017 are downloadable in full 

Table 1; Best written books about Economics for the general reader (chronological order)

Title, author and date	Comment
Almost Everyone’s Guide to Economics; JK Galbraith and N Salinger (1978)	One of the world’s best non-fiction writers and economists is quizzed by a Frenchwoman. Superb
Short Circuit – strengthening local economies in an unstable world” - Ronald Douthwaite (1996)	Very practical insight into local economic development by an Irishman – but also inspirational….24 years on, it hasn’t really been bettered.
Debunking Economics – the naked emperor dethroned; Steve Keen (2001 and 2011)	Written before the crash, it might be called the first alternative textbook (except it’s much greater fun to read!). By an Australian
Economics for Everyone  – a short guide to the economics of capitalism”; Jim Stanford (2008)	a very user-friendly book commissioned by Canadian trade unions with excellent graphics and “further reading” list ….for full version see table 2 …..
Zombie Economics - how dead ideas still walk among us; by John Quiggin (2010)	is a great read – with a self-explanatory title. He is also an Australian
23 Things they didn’t tell you about capitalism; Ha Joon-Chang (2010)	superbly-written demolition job on the myths perpetrated on us by economists. By a Cambridge economist educated in South Korea
"The End of Progress - how modern economics has failed us"; Graham Maxton (2011)	a highly readable book by an ex-Director-General of the Club of Rome
Austerity – the history of a dangerous ides; Mark Blyth (2013)	written by a Scottish political scientist/political economist (now working at Brown Uni in US) , it shows how old theories still affect the contemporary world profoundly
Economics of the 1% - how mainstream economics serves the rich, obscures reality and distorts policy; John F Weeks (2014	One of the best introductions to the subject - which can't be faulted for being over-diplomatic!  By a US economist who worked in London from the 2000s
Credo – economic beliefs in a world of crisis; Brian Davey (2015)	An alternative approach to economics which situates it in its cultural and historical context. It may be long (at 500 pages) but is definitely worth persevering with....
Economics Rules – the rights and wrongs of the dismal science; Dani Rodrik (2016)	Rodrik is from Turkey and is one of the few economists prepared to challenge the mainstream. This is a balanced rather than critical analysis
The Econocracy – the perils of leaving economics to the experts; Earle, Moran and Ward-Perkins (2017)	This is a highly readable little book from those who took part in the protests about the irrelevance of economic teaching and set out the deficiencies they experienced. This is one of the few which is not freely downloadable
Vampire Capitalism – fractured societies and alternative futures; Paul Kennedy (2017)	A sociologist’s treatment which earns high points by stating in the very first sentence that it has “stood on the shoulders of so many giants that he is dizzy” and then proves the point by having an extensive bibliography with lots of hyperlinks…
Doughnut economics – 7 ways to think like a 21st century economist; Kate Raworth (2017).	This Oxford economist’s book is advertised as a new perspective on the subject. One of the few not downloadable
Economics for the common good; Jean Tirole (2017) A French Nobel-prize winning economist	A useful review here
Economics in Two Lessons; John Quiggin (2019) Google excerpts only	Quiggin wrote this book on his website, seeking feedback as he went . You may therefore be able to see a fair amount of the content here
“What’s wrong with economics – a primer for the perplexed”; Robert Skidelsky (2020)	Skidelsky is a stylish writer – historian and biographer of Keynes – I’ve long admired. I’ve not had a chance to read the book yet – although Diana Coyle’s not impressed

Further reading

The Delusions of Economics - the Misguided Certainties of a Hazardous Science Gilbert Rist (2010)

429,500 academics are employed in British universities

What are Universities for? Useful briefing paper from 2008

Working Across Cultures - how it expands the mind

I opened a veritable Pandora’s Box of personal memories this week – with the post on memoirs……..

Then remembered a stack of large notebooks I had used in the 1980s to record both initial scribbles and final typed-up papers as I had struggled to make sense of the nature of the organisational venture I was then engaged in - trying to reshape a large bureaucratic system in the West of Scotland. And duly found about 1,500 pages – stashed away behind the Scottish section of my bookcase!!

As I dipped into them, I realized that I now write much better than then – indeed that I think more clearly……And how much of this I owe to my nomadic lifestyle of the past 25 years. 

In central Europe in the 1990s I needed to speak more slowly (generally through interpreters); had the time in the pauses, as the interpretation was being done, to think carefully about both what I should be saying - and how to say it. And, under questioning, I was having to explain more clearly what I thought my concepts actually meant!!

Far from being a nuisance, it helped me see things from other people's point of view. I was having to “relativise” – to be aware that the experiences and images certain words and concepts brought to my mind generally aroused very different images in my interlocuteurs’ minds – and to try to deal with this…..  

I was able to produce a detailed analysis of the 1980s venture only nine years later - thanks to the greater "distance" my nomadic work had helped me develop. A short Urban Studies fellowship in the mid 1990s in my old University (Glasgow) also helped. You can see the result in Organisational Development and Political Amnesia

All relevant to the flood of books which hit me this week – mainly collections of essays – a genre I have loved since my schooldays when Francis Bacon and Charles Lamb were favourites. The literary canon, apparently, distinguishes various forms of essay and “personal essay” is evidently the more precise term for the type I like. The Art of the Personal Essay is a 770-page collection with a superb introduction to the genre by Phillip Lopate who writes…….

The hallmark of the personal essay is its intimacy. The writer seems to be speaking directly into your ear, confiding everything from gossip to wisdom. Through sharing thoughts, memories, desires, complaints, and whimsies, the personal essayist sets up a relationship with the reader, a dialogue -- a friendship, if you will, based on identification, understanding, testiness, and companionship. (xxiii)

The personal essayist must above all be a reliable narrator; we must trust his or her core of sincerity. We must also feel secure that the essayist has done a fair amount of introspective homework already, is grounded in reality, and is trying to give us the maximum understanding and intelligence of which he or she is capable. . . . How the world comes at another person, the irritations, jubilation’s, aches and pains, humorous flashes -- these are the classic building materials of the personal essay. We learn the rhythm by which the essayist receives, digests, and spits out the world, and we learn the shape of his or her privacy. (xxiv-xxv)

The collection makes quite an interesting contrast with the other 700 page anthology which landed with a thud this week - The Lost Origins of the Essay by John D'Agata. Both volumes are international in scope (unlike John Gross’s 704 page classic The Oxford Book of Essays edited some decades ago which looks only at English writers) but D’Agata’s seems to have more focus on longer, Eastern works. Lopate’s gives us the range and writers we expect. Both are large and handsome but the Gray Wolf Press edition of The Lost Origins of the Essay is a real example of sensual work – with great quality paper, typeface and a delicate folding cover. And interesting background piece on that publisher here 

 

Three of Clive James’s explosive collections also await - Cultural Cohesion: The Essential Essays, 1968-2002; A Point of View; and The Revolt of the Pendulum: Essays 2005-2008. But

And I’m tempted to order George Orwell’s Collected Essays which I have been without for the past 4 decades….. talk about making up for lost time……

Outsiders

The weather remains amazingly mild here – registering 14 on the short motorway over the Balkans on Sunday as I drove down to Sofia although the city itself was 9 at 14.00.

For the past week I have been gripped by powerful descriptions of Europe in the first part of the century through the eyes of two writers who, in very different ways, brought the freshness of an outsider’s perspective to the various worlds they found themselves in

First the amazing Viktor Serge, born in Brussels at the end of the 19th century, knew grinding poverty as an unschooled (and imprisoned) anarchist and was allowed to join the Bolsheviks in 1917 and paints a memorable picture in Memoirs of a Revolutionary of life in those years. As one of the few individuals with western networks he played an important administrative role in the organisation of the various Communist International Conferences in the early 1920s but was too critical ever to be accepted and experienced various imprisonments and exiles.

With his literary gifts, psychological insight and proximity to key players, Serge is one of the greatest chroniclers of Europe’s socialist revolutions, and he offers a unique perspective. Unlike most of his contemporaries, he combined political conviction with a willingness to face the contradictions and failures of the Russian Revolution. Of the mid-1920s, he writes, “None of us had, in the bourgeois sense of the word, any personal existence: we changed our names, our postings, and our work at the Party’s need…we were not interested in making money, or following a career, or producing a literary heritage, or leaving a name behind us; we were interested solely in the difficult business of reaching Socialism.” But he also writes of his horror when, having escaped to Belgium in 1936 and seen the shop windows full of ham, chocolate and fresh fruit, he understood that socialism had failed to provide for the most basic material needs of the people. When his hopes were disappointed, he didn’t deny reality; he described it.Though Serge believed that individual existences were of interest only as part of the “great ensemble of life,” he placed considerable importance on personality, observing that “the character, and even in certain cases the direction, of historical facts depends to a very large extent on the calibre of individual human beings.” His memoirs are full of incisive sketches of important figures. Of Trotsky in the early 1920s, for instance, Serge wrote, “No one ever wore a great destiny with more style.” The people Serge describes are not bronze icons, but flesh and blood.

His writings are only now coming available - eg here and here; and his role in the wider anarchist movement set out here; and here.

The second, completely different, author is Christabel Bielenberg who came from a very privileged Anglo-Irish family but found herself as a young woman married to a German living in Nazi Germany for almost 15 years. The Past is Myself gives a very unusual outsider’s take on Germany of that time.

And then, by way of contrast, a third book on contemporary Siberia - Silverland; a journey beyond the Urals by the remarkable traveller Dervla Murphy. Vastly underrated as a writer, this 2007 book gives us great vignettes of people met on her train and bus journeys in freezing Siberia in the early 2000s – and the sort of life people lead in this remote region. Also good historical background – and strong opinions about the policy nonsenses of western systems. A unique blend this octogenarian gives us -  and there is a nice interview with her here.

All three books are examples of the insights good prose written by thoughtful outsiders can give us.