what you get here

This is not a blog which opines on current events. It rather uses incidents, books (old and new), links and papers to muse about our social endeavours.
So old posts are as good as new! And lots of useful links!

The Bucegi mountains - the range I see from the front balcony of my mountain house - are almost 120 kms from Bucharest and cannot normally be seen from the capital but some extraordinary weather conditions allowed this pic to be taken from the top of the Intercontinental Hotel in late Feb 2020

Saturday, June 25, 2022

Scottish to the Bone?

Something seems to be stopping me from delivering on my promise to reveal the essence of the Scottish soul. Perhaps the sheer impossibility of the task? I know the country too well to be comfortable with cultural generalisations. We like, for example, to think of ourselves as egalitarian and, on Burns’ Night, wallow in sentiment and whisky about our values.  But I grew up in a shipbuilding town deeply riven with class (and religious) divisions – which undermined the myths the country tried to sell…

·       The professional classes lived in the West End and attended the fee-paying school there.

·       The working class lived next to the shipyards to the east of the town and went to the state schools. 

It’s true that the Calvinist reformation brought educational opportunities to Scottish people noticed even by English visitors - 

schools paid for by the Church of Scotland and local landowners were established in all rural parishes and burghs by an Act of Parliament in 1696. These educational ssocial status. The democratic nature of the Scottish system so impressed the 18th century writer Daniel Defoe that he remarked that while England was a land 'full of ignorance', in Scotland the 'poorest people have their children taught and instructed'. The openness of the Scottish system ran all the way from the schoolroom to the university. A talented working class boy the 'lad o'pairts' through intelligence and hard work and by utilising a generous system of bursaries was able to gain a university education, something largely unthinkable in England in the 18th century.   

and the Scottish Enlightenment seemed to supply the proof of the benefits of that system – although, arguably, it’s been downhill since then with historians tracing the misery into which the working class sank until the Labour Government of 1924 began to offer some hope – particularly with John Wheatley’s historic Bill on Social Housing which started a process confirmed by Atlee’s pioneering government of 1945-51. TC Smout’s “A century of the Scottish people 1730-1850” catches the change well    

Economic historians see a ‘triumphal progression’ from the success of textiles in the first phase of industrialisation through that of iron and coal in the second, followed by a surge in ‘steel, ships, jute, tweed and high farming’ which crashed dismally with the post-1920 depression. But the social historian notices that life in the heydays of success was commonly brutish and that the inter-war years show a marked improvement for ordinary people in terms of health and housing, real income and recreation. The grandchildren of the ‘vibrant’ Scots who worked for heroic industrial success under Beardmore, or strove for a new world order with Keir Hardie, have settled cannily, Smout’s overview implies, for bread and circuses, alias sliced loaf and East Enders. This he most controversially tends to attribute to what he sees as the malign effects of the Scottish education system – still complacently admired by many of those whom he deems to have been its victims.

 

The general ethos of Scottish education, he argues, was throughout his ‘century’ anti-egalitarian. It aimed ‘firstly at providing, as cheaply as possible, the bulk of the population with the bare minimum of education combined with adequate social discipline, and secondly, at giving a small number of children of all classes, but especially of the higher classes, a more respectable academic education, to qualify them for their role as a controlling élite.’ Following the Education Act of 1872, old burgh schools which had given some kind of general access to learning were either transformed, as in 13 cases, into ‘Higher Class Schools’, fee-paying at first, or made into essentially elementary board schools. Edinburgh’s professional middle class successfully captured for its own purposes the funds of the Merchant Company schools and of the Heriot Trust, which had originally been intended for the unprivileged. As a present-day resident, I can confirm that educational snobbery is uniquely widespread in Edinburgh.

For the mass of the population, education thus came to involve a syllabus restricted to the three R’s, thrashed home with the tawse, instilling what A.S. Neill called ‘a gigantic inferiority complex’. Smout sees this as the key ‘to some of the more depressing aspects of modern Scotland’, where there are ‘too many people who fear what is new, believe the difficult to be impossible, draw back from responsibility, and afford established authority and tradition an exaggerated respect.’ 

The experience of housing tends to be ignored by most historians – one blog which has tried to remedy that is Municipal Dreams whose John Boughton has produced a fascinating recent book Municipal Dreams – the Rise and Fall of Council Housing (2018) which traces a tragic trajectory not only of british housing but of the Labour Party. Scotland was Labour to the core for a century – with a brief exception in the 1950s and now since 2007. When I came to political maturity in the 1960s I was proud to be a Labour councillor – although ashamed of how it was managing its housing and educational responsibilities. 

What exactly happened then? Was it just power going to heads? Or was it the sort of deeper arrogance exposed by James C Scott in “Seeing Like a State” and by David Graeber? However it happened, the transition is brilliantly captured in the television series “Our Friends from the North” whose 9 episodes started in 1964 and finished thirty years later just before New Labour th 

Some Lighter Moments

What happens when Scots are asked what it’s like to be Scottish

What is a Burns’ Night supper? Apologies for the Covid warning

What is “Scots wha Hae”?? 

And the best insights

·       The most insightful read on Scotland is Independence of the Scottish Mind by Gerry Hassan (2014)

·       Tom Devine is the country’s foremost historian and has a fascinating discussion here which raises the important question of whether the new historiography anticipated or post-dated the political resurgence of recent decades. This article of his gives a good sense of his opus is this one of 300 years of living next to an Elephant. Any reader willing to wade through a large book has to read Scotland – a Modern History which covers the period from 1700-2007. It will need conversion from epub

·       Understanding Scotland – the sociology of a stateless nation David McCrone (1992) is an important read

·       As is The Scots’ Crisis of Confidence by Carol Craig (2003)

Previous posts in the series

https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2022/06/journeys-in-scotland.html

https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2022/06/the-scottish-soul-insiders-tale.html


Thursday, June 23, 2022

Journeys in Scotland

I owe my readers an apology – in no way have the two previous posts offered any real insights into the Scottish soul. Pointing you in the direction of five books is all very well but my readers deserve better. When I googled “Scotland’s soul” I was directed mainly to musical groups but did unearth an interesting title The Soul of Scotland (2016) by Harry Reid, the erstwhile editor of “The Glasgow Herald” which, like most newspapers these days, has fallen on very sad times. The only decent contemporary writing nowadays comes from the weekly online “The Scottish Review” to which I directed you all in the last post.

But Scottish writers are alive - and very much kicking. My theory is that English writers (Kingsley Amis, Ian McEwan, Martin Amis, Iris Murdoch) were so caught up in the class system that they couldn’t kick out. The “thrawn” Scots have a different sensibility – it’s not so much that alienation (although some like Irvine Welsh are) but that the difference they feel from the English gives them the additional, more peripheral, vision this blog tries to celebrate

Maurice Lindsay was, for half a century, a pillar of the Scottish literary establishment and left us this great guide A Century of creative Scottish writing 1900-2000But one very curious omission from his survey was the name of poet Edwin Muir (1887-1959) who may have been too modernist and cosmopolitan for Lindsay – given his later strong European connections. Originally from Orkney, his family had to move to Glasgow and one of his early books was Scottish Journey (1935) which was nicely reviewed recently here 

Muir, torn as a young boy from his pastoral Orkney and landing in the Glasgow slums, likened this shift to travelling forward in time by a hundred years, or witnessing the fall of mankind before one’s very eyes. Such was the enormous difference between these two places. Industrial life brought to Muir and his family the gravest misfortunes one might predict to befall those living amongst such miserable decay and deprivation. These same circumstances led Muir to socialism, an awakening he readily compared to his religious conversion aged fourteen.

It is Muir the socialist and poet whose observations we read as he navigates Scotland in a borrowed motorcar, one that dances ‘like a high-spirited colt’ when pushed anywhere beyond thirty-five miles-per-hour. Muir convinces us from the outset that he is not looking, as a tourist might, for a Scotland historical or romantic, but rather the Scotland which presents itself ‘to one who is not looking for anything in particular, and is willing to believe what his eyes and ears tell him’.

What then, does Muir see? He sees much about Scotland that he admires, dislikes, and much that can only be of hindrance to anything like progress. He understands and effectively articulates the various contradictions and hypocrisies often found strung together in the identity of a place. 

He is, of course, driving – something which would immediately have marked him off as a “toff”. My father and his own father were at that precise time camping – university graduates both – I have their holiday diaries from 1933/34 still here in my mountain house. 

In Edinburgh, this is poignantly characterised by the ugly divide between rich and poor, and the obsessive keeping-up of appearances, despite glaring sanctimony, by the middle-classes. In the Borders, he visits Abbotsford House in Galashiels, once the home of Sir Walter Scott. Scott, along with Burns, whose house is also visited, was a literary figure seen as the embodiment of the kitsch, sentimental ‘Scottishness’ to which Muir and his generation of Scottish writer were so vehemently opposed. For those baptised as the Scottish Renaissance, Scott and Burns represented the idealised Scotland of the tourist; unblemished, quaint, bonnie, and not the Scotland experienced by the majority of its inhabitants. This rather fictitious Scotland contains little remedy for the large-scale unemployment that Muir sees in Glasgow, a city that once housed such misery for him.

 

Nor does the fine imagery of mist-wrapped hills and mirror-like lochs have anything to say about that stage of industrialism, also seen in Glasgow, that stays jammed at human exploitation on its path towards affordable luxury. In the Highlands, a region that really does accommodate the majestic, natural beauty that many mistake for the whole picture, Muir is no less sympathetic towards the ordinary people living there. They are as much thwarted by a crass romanticism belying genuine struggle as the rest of Scotland is.

At his time of visiting, Muir believed the Scottish Highlands to be in a third stage of its decline, something that had begun with the punishment afflicted upon the Highlanders following Culloden. The second phase of decline would, of course, be the Clearances; the forced eviction of thousands and the installation of landlordism where the clan system had previously existed.

The third stage, Muir argues, is symbolised by ‘the pictures of slaughtered animals that disfigure the walls of Highland hotels.’ This is the Highlands as a sporting playground, for its wealthy estate owners, many with little connection to Scotland other than the land they have inherited, and for those who come from elsewhere to enjoy this version of wild Scotland. The majority of locals, growing smaller in number, serve one of two purposes; to cook and clean for these visitors, or to slaughter animals for them; their own form of non-Industrial subjugation.

 

Was the independence effort of the time, the National Party of Scotland, the answer to any of the problems discussed? From Muir, a resounding no. This movement was to the poet an absurd coalition of political beliefs gathered optimistically beneath the banner of self-government. In Muir’s own words, ‘The National Party has nothing behind it but a desire and nothing before it but an ideal.’ Scottish independence, for Muir, would have to mean socialism – one could not be achieved without the other.

Some things have changed, no doubt, since 1935. Nevertheless, Muir teaches us the importance of going and finding out for ourselves, of taking the responsibility as Scots to understand Scotland and all her people. Also, the poet’s remarks about benign, optimistic nationalism not being enough remain entirely pertinent. Belief in Scottish independence must always extend to something other than simple agreement with the basic argument of the party line. For Muir, this means socialism, for others perhaps not. 

Several decades later a similar journey was undertaken to explore how Scotland had changed but called this time “A Scottish Journey” (2018) and made, this time, by motorbike which made the rider a wee bit more accessible. Although the trip was squeezed into a fortnight’s break between teaching.

But the journey I really appreciated was Journeys around Unfamiliar Britain (2016) made on a good old bike by JD Taylor who included Scotland in the tour and took 4 months to achieve. His model was the famous William Cobbett’s Rural Rides made (by horse) in the 1820s. This section from an interview the author did gives a good sense of the guy's style - 

Just as I was interested in the vast majority of people left out of London-focused narratives, so I was interested in the places between or behind official narratives of ‘England’, ‘The North’, ‘Scotland’, etc. On a bike call you can pull over at any point on the road to eat some grub, grab the ear of a passer-by.

 

Q: Where there any points in the journey where you thought ‘enough is enough. I’m going home’? What convinced you to continue?

I never felt like giving up, strange as it seems, given the difficulties I encountered. I was compelled by a feeling of necessity and fate. I was going to complete this regardless of what happened, and that perhaps I had even already completed it, and was now reliving it again and documenting it. Even where I was injured by careless drivers, or became exhausted by long nights. Of course it was very unlikely I was going to succeed, and that also energised me.

 

Q: You briefly mention meeting a young British actor,working as a bartender in a northern pub. That was quite shocking moment in the book, to see a talented and well-known young man in such circumstances. What were your own impressions of this?

Tom Turgoose is known for playing Shaun in the film This is England, a troubled young guy who finds friendship and community among a group of disaffected young skinheads in an ex-industrial Northern town, partly based on Nottingham. It was apt to find him pulling cheap pints of bland beer in a rough-and-tumble Grimsby boozer. His situation mirrored that of his character, enduring and not unhappy in a place and position familiar to many born in the late 1980s-early 1990s in Britain. He was sceptical, sharp-humoured and open-minded, and we talked for a bit. He deserves more work and accolades but, in a heartbreaking way, so do so many talented young people whose interests have been abandoned by a reactionary political establishment. I am thinking here of the many musicians, artists, writers, actors, educators and community workers I have had the fortune to call friends. They struggle on, flinty-humoured and hard-bitten, ambivalent about it all, highly educated and prematurely aged. They deserve much more than this.

 

Q: The Raleigh bike you purchased for seventy pounds at times becomes its own, quite sadistic, character within the book. It sometimes feels like the thing is holding you back with its many imperfections. Why didn’t you go with a more expensive, or at the least, more reliable bike?

No, the old Raleigh bike is the hero of the book! It just about held it together over those thousand or so miles. I consciously wanted to distance myself from the lycra-clad, middle-class professionalisation of cycling, just as I sought a similar distance from the professionalisation of politics and political theory. Using a cheap everyday road bike mirrored that of taking and using the stories and language of real individuals, as they are. And of course I was skint, and couldn’t afford much better! But I wanted to show what could be done, and focus on the journey rather than the tedious data of mileage or performance that distract so many cyclists. So I didn’t have a milometer, I wore jeans and a shirt, a cape when it rained (until that fell off the bike too), and just got on with it. And I regret nothing at all. 

Background

The most famous trip in Scotland was undertaken in 1773 by the great Dr Johnson and his biographer James Boswell, resulting in two books – the first written (from memory) a couple of years later by Samuel Johnson and entitled A Journey to the Western Isles (1775)

Boswell was a Scot who memorialised the life of Samuel Johnson so brilliantly that he effectively created the genre of the biography. It took Boswell a decade, however, before he published, from detailed notes he had taken during the journey, Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785)  

After that, it became fashionable for others to undertake the same journey eg Our Journey to the Hebrides (Pennell 1889) and Footsteps of Dr Johnson (Scotland) GBN Hill (1890)

And this is a nice recent tribute to Boswell which also mentions some of the more recent books which have repeated the journey Out of Johnson’s Shadow – James Boswell as a Travel Writer; Julian M Griffin (2017)


Wednesday, June 22, 2022

The Scottish Soul – the insiders’ tale

And indeed, the literary did win out in the battle for the Scottish soul – although the non-fiction titles are anything but dull.

I start with a wonderful collection Who Built Scotland? 25 journeys in search of a nation” (epub 2017) which showcases the local contemporary talent of poet/essayist Kathleen Jamie, writers James Robertson, Alex McCall Smith and Alistair Moffat and broadcaster James Crawford – with their evocations of Scottish architecture, libraries, archaeology and ruins.

My only beef is that their 25 selections are perhaps a trite too obvious – where, for example, is my home town of Greenock which boasts such luminaries as novelists John Galt,  George Blake and Alan Sharp; poet WS Graham and theatre director Bill Bryden ?

Kathleen Jamie was recently named Scotland’s “Makar” and can be seen here reciting a couple of poems here 

My second choice is slightly unusual in that it goes to an online magazine “The Scottish Review” whose anthologies of great short essays can be fully downloaded here. The weekly represents the true spirit of the country – with essays freely contributed by philosophers, historians, journalists, even the odd politician. It was started by journalist Kenneth Roy whose journalism lives on in The Invisible Spirit – a life of post-war Scotland 1945-75 (2013). Even his memorial service gives a certain sense of the society he lived in 

My third choice moves us into the non-fiction and is from a real original – historian Christopher Harvie who spent some 25 years at Tubingen University before returning to Scotland in 2007 to become a SNP member of the new Scottish Parliament (for 4 years only) He writes with extensive allusions and real panache. His Scotland – a short history was originally published in 2002 and later editions don’t really take account of the considerable scholarship which has taken place since.

But it’s still a great read – as is my final choice The Scottish Enlightenment – how Scotland invented the modern world by an American, Arthur Henman (2001) which can be read in full here. Reviewer have been a bit sniffy about this book – with its typically American sub-title – but it is well-crafted and holds the reader. I would love to know what Harvie made of the book - but can't unearth any comment

Tuesday, June 21, 2022

The Scottish Soul – from the outside

Skimming the books about Scandinavia got me thinking about how contemporary Scotland might look to an outsider. Of course, having lived for more than half of my adult life abroad does make me a bit of an outsider – what visits I’ve made to the country since 1990 have been short, with 2018 being the only time I spent a few weeks in it. I did. however, have the temerity to produce a little E-book after the September 2014 referendum - based on the posts in my blog as it followed the 2 year discussion which took place in Scotland about its future 

The Scandinavians attribute their good fortune to the “folk-school” tradition which started in Denmark in the 1840s and soon spread to their neighbours. And part of that reflected the German concept of “Bildung” – which is much wider than the british understanding of “education” as explained in this short article. The Danish schools were designed to help the rural poor develop the skills which would be useful to them as they developed their agricultural system and was very much about developing their character and identity as Danes. And that same commitment can be seen in contemporary Germany with the strong emphasis on industry and on the training sector which has almost the same status as universities. 

Of course, the Scots have long been proud of their democratic approach to education – with schools and universities having been open to talent for centuries. Indeed in the 15th century, Scotland had 3 Universities to England’s 2 – and this increased by the end of the 16th century to a numerical advantage of 5-2. There has been less reason in the last century to celebrate what one important book published in 1961 called “The Democratic Intellect” by Scottish philosopher and historian of ideas, George Davie, who followed up with “The Crisis of the Democratic Intellect” (1986). Broadly speaking, Davie is concerned with the relationship between ‘the experts’ and ‘the people’. He states his overall case towards the end of the second book: 

The words “democratic intellect” offer a twentieth-century formulation of an old problem. Does the control of a group (of whatever kind) belong, as of right, to the few (the experts) exclusively, and not at all to the ignorant many? Or are the many entitled to share the control, because the limited knowledge of the many, when it is pooled and critically restated through mutual discussion, provides a lay consensus capable of revealing certain of the limitations of interest in the experts’ point of view? Or thirdly it may be held that this consensus knowledge of the many entitles them to have full control, excluding the experts.7

This is the first of five books I have chosen to reveal Scotland’s soul. The other four I will unveil tomorrow – although I’ve just realised they are all non-fiction. I’ve actually read more (Scottish – and Irish) fiction than I tend to let on so I may need to let this run longer as one of the blog’s series.  

Sunday, June 19, 2022

Limits to Growth – time to get serious

It is 50 years since the Club of Rome published the famous “Limits to Growth” which, contrary to the propaganda spewed out by the billionaire and fossil-fuel funded think-tanks, made no predictions - but offered 12 scenarios about the world

Dona Meadows was one of the report’s principal authors (with her husband Dennis) and did a 30 year update which is summarised hereThe book deals with an issue which affects us all – but in different ways depending on where we live. But even rich people – in Australia, France and the US – are now experiencing the floods and fire which indicate that we have reached too far. But the world has been strangely quiet about the book’s 50th anniversary   

Dona Meadows died sadly in 2001 but was a marvellous woman who wrote the most accessible book about systems - “Thinking in Systems – a primer” (2008) and this powerful little essay helpful to anyone seriously interested in change - Leverage Points.   

Those of you who prefer videos will be moved by this presentation of hers from 1993 when she threw away her notes to address an issue which was lurking in the lecture hall full of technocrats like the veritable elephant – namely the need for vision and the difficulties scientific people have in speaking about dreams and hopes rather than problems. It’s a superb performance – quiet but authoritative – and well worth watching. And she has a short note which captures the essence of the talk here.

In 2019 her husband Dennis did an equally powerful presentation which started with a memorable invitation to the audience to cross their arms and learn a lesson about the difficulties of changing our habits. 

And that’s the central question – why we seem unable to accept the evidence that’s been so obvious for at least the last decade that our present habits are simply not sustainable? It took me some time to pose this question – and to be open to the need to better understand the way our minds work

And I was impressed with this recent story of someone who gave up a well-paying job in the financial sector in his early 50s to join Extinction Rebellion – to realise that he simply didn’t understand the financial system That duly led me to this paper “A map for navigating climate tragedy” by academic activist Jem Bendell (2018) 

Have professionals in the sustainability field discussed the possibility that it is too late to avert an environmental catastrophe and the implications for their work? A quick literature review revealed that my fellow professionals have not been publishing work that explores, or starts from, that perspective. Why not? I looked at psychological analyses, held conversations with colleagues, reviewed debates amongst environmentalists in social media and self-reflection on my own reticence - concluding that there is a need to promote discussion about the implications of a societal collapse triggered by an environmental catastrophe.

I then asked another question – How do people talk about collapse on social media. I identified a variety of conceptualisations and from that asked myself what could provide a map for people to navigate this extremely difficult issue. For that, I drew on a range of reading and experiences over my 25 years in the sustainability field to outline an agenda for what I have termed “deep adaptation” to climate change.

I am new to the topic of societal collapse and wish to define it as an uneven ending of our normal modes of sustenance, shelter, security, pleasure, identity and meaning.

The article summarises what I consider to be the most important climate science of the last few years and how it is leading more people to conclude that we face disruptive changes in the near-term. It then explains how that perspective is marginalised within the professional environmental sector – and so invite you to consider the value of leaving mainstream views behind. And outlines the ways that people in relevant social networks are framing our situation as one of facing collapse, catastrophe or extinction and how these views trigger different emotions and ideas. I outline a “Deep Adaptation Agenda” to help guide discussions on what we might do once we recognise climate change is an unfolding tragedy. Finally, I make some suggestions for how this agenda could influence our future research and teaching in the sustainability field…..

Significantly, the same month that saw the story of the financial expert brought forward another confession from scientists who had suddenly realised that the techno-optimists were peddling dangerous delusions

Background Reading

Was given in the annotated bibliographies of two previous posts

https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2021/11/is-patriotism-answer.html

https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2019/07/what-is-wrong-with-us.html

Thursday, June 16, 2022

another attempt

The table in the penultimate post didn't work - hopefully this one will

Good “Journalistic” writers – by focus, base and nationality

People

Ideas

Events

Places

Mixed genres

Biographers

Peter Watson

Naomi Klein

 (Can)

Charles Handy

Bryan Magee

Victor Serge (Belgium)

Kenneth Roy

Masha Gessen (RU)

John Ardagh

Dervla Murphy IR

Jan Morris

Neal Ascherson

Philip Marsden

Giles Milton

 

George Orwell

Hans Magnus Enzensberger (Ger)

Francis Wheen

Arundati Roy (India)

Joan Didion  US

Tariq Ali

 (Pak/UK)

Biographers

Mark Greif  US

Mark Lilla  US

Perry Anderson US

Jill Lepore US

Historians

Political scientists

Economists

 

Geographers

Anthropologists

Sociologists

Raymond Aron

 (France)

Michael Pollan

 USA

Oriana Fallaci (It)

 

Joseph Epstein (US)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clive James

Francois Bondy (Switzerland)

Claude Roy

 (Fr)

Chris Hitchens

Martin Jacques

Paul Mason

George Monbiot

Duncan Campbell

Owen Jones

 

 

Adam Curtis

Arthur Koestler Hu/UK

Vasily Grossman (Ru)

Seb Haffner (Ger)

Joseph Roth (Ger)

Rudolf Augstein (Ger)

Paul Foot

Patrick Cockburn

Simon Jenkins

Luigi Barzini (It)

Andrew Sampson

Svetlana Alexievich (Belarussia)

Robert Kaplan

 (US)

Geert Mak

 (Neth)

John Hooper

John Pilger (Aust)

Robert Fisk

Tobias Jones

Anthony Lane

James Meek

Andrew O Hagen

 

David Goodhart

Susan George (US)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Wednesday, June 15, 2022

Getting to Denmark

I’ve always been a sucker for books which promised to reveal the essence or soul of a nation or Region and “The Nordic Secret” (2017) - which I’m now half-way through - offers insights not only into the Scandinavian “soul” but a solution to the puzzle Francis Fukuyama set us a more than a decade ago - How to get to Denmark?

And it’s written in a highly accessible style – offering a variety of superb vignettes into the various French, German, Scandinavian (and even British) characters who helped develop the thinking which led to the “folkschools” which, the book argues, are the basis of the much-admired Scandinavian success story.  Its focus is very much on a concept with which we Brits are not very familiar – what the Germans known as “Bildung” or “opening up of the world” – with a good short article here on the concept. The authors express it nicely here - 

As we kept on reading, Lene reading more ego development psychology and Tomas reading more about Bildung, we realized that we might have stumbled upon a connection between Bildung and ego-development theory that nobody in academia had explored before. As we kept on reading and went to the German sources, we saw more and stronger similarities between Bildung (as described by the German philosophers) and ego-development (as described by contemporary developmental psychologists) than we had ever imagined.

The trouble is that it poses so many questions and leads me down such an amazing number of paths as to leave me gasping for breath eg

·       How exactly did the Scandinavian countries manage to transform themselves from backward societies in 1850 to become the most advanced and envied nations today?

·       Is it true that Denmark started the process with an outspoken and activist priest/politician who established model inspirational rural schools?

·       Ever since Robert Putnam and Edward Banfield reminded us decades ago that southern Italy seemed stuck in the 19th century, we have become ambivalent about the prospects for positive social change

·       Why have people lost interest in the question of getting corruption-free societies?

  and apparently given up on ever achieving effective states? 

I can’t hope to get through the reading my googling has unearthed – so let’s see is any of my readers can help with this annotated list of the more interesting stuff

I can’t hope to get through the reading my googling has unearthed – so let’s see is any of my readers can help. Here’s an annotated list of the more interesting stuff

Getting to Denmark (2020) – a very useful short report about the economic aspects of the Danish experience, which emphasises the importance of rural cooperatives 

Dougald Hine has lived in Norway for 30 years and produced this provocative article in 2019 which included some of the material he had found useful (it doesn’t mention The Nordic Secret which had come out in epub format in 2017) 

Lutheranism and the Nordic Spirit of social democracy Robert Nelson (2017) I’ve just unearthed what looks to be a crucial study in what remains a highly important topic for me 

A Utopia like any other – inside the Swedish model; Dominic Hinde (2016) A short book by a Swedish journalist now living in the UK and mentioned by in Hine’s article 

Viking Economics – how the Scandinavians got it right and how we can too; George Lakoff (2016) a marriage link allowed this American to gain some home truths 

Building the Nation – NFS Grundtvig and Danish National Identity et J Hall et al (2015) A fascinating study of the role this priest/politician played from the 1850s in forging a sense of national identity and loyalty. Includes a chapter by Fukuyama and also by one of the key writers on nationalism – Anthony Smith 

Becoming Denmark; Alina Mungiu-Pippidi (2006) A very useful summary by one of the top European experts on anti-corruption on the historical stages which led to the Danish success. 

State-building, governance and world order in the 21st century Francis Fukuyama (2004) A very important little book which reflected the interest in those days in nation- and democracy-building

The search for good government – understanding the paradox of Italian democracy F Sabetti (2000). Rather belatedly, the Italians get back at Banfield and Putnam