Monthly Archives: May 2013

Wisdom of crowds

Posted on by

There’s a long feature in the FT today about the Italian writing collective Wu Ming, Wu Ming’s Magical History Tour, pegged to the English publication of their latest book [amazon_link id=”1781680760″ target=”_blank” ]Altai[/amazon_link]. It’s worth signing up for your free quota of FT articles to read it, if you’re a non-subscriber.

[amazon_image id=”1781680760″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Altai: A Novel[/amazon_image]

The article paints the new novel as a kind of sequel to 1999’s [amazon_link id=”0099439832″ target=”_blank” ]Q[/amazon_link] by Luther Blisset (more or less the same group of people). Both are set in the turmoil of 16th century Europe. Asked why this period, “The 16th century was the foundation of modernity,” replies Wu Ming 4, “of the state, of capitalism, of the idea of the clash of civilisations.”

[amazon_image id=”0099439832″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Q[/amazon_image]

It doesn’t touch on the intervening [amazon_link id=”0099472333″ target=”_blank” ]54[/amazon_link], set in post-World War 2 and dawn-of-cold-War Italy, and speaking even more directly to the conflicts of our own times, and the dreams and nightmares of 20th century idealism.

[amazon_image id=”0434012939″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]’54[/amazon_image]

You have to surrender yourselves to these novels, which defy succinct summaries of plot or meaning. But I loved the first two, which stimulated me to have ideas, make connections, think about surprising conjunctures. I like the style of the collective as well – although I don’t read Italian, they have a blog that looks rather provocative – from what I can glean, they think ‘a plague on all your houses’ about Italian politics, including the Five Star Movement. But then, so do many people think about their politicians in many countries…..

I’ll definitely be reading Altai.

The humility of economists*

Posted on by

In the course of working on a forthcoming lecture, I’ve been dipping back into James Scott’s superb 1998 book [amazon_link id=”0300078153″ target=”_blank” ]Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed[/amazon_link].

The book describes the catastrophic consequences of a number of idealistic grand schemes of the 20th century, including Soviet collectivization and Tanzanian ‘villagization’. In the conclusion, Scott focuses on the common theme of the failure to take account of the radical uncertainty of the future.

“Social and historical analyses have, almost invariably, the effect of diminishing the contingency of human affairs,” he writes. “A historical event or state of affairs simply is the way it is, often appearing determined and necessary when in fact it might easily have turned out otherwise.” He offers policymakers some rules of thumb:

1. Take small steps – and stand back and observe in between each.

2. Favour reversibility. “Irreversible interventions have irreversible consequences.”

3. Expect surprises.

4. Plan on human inventiveness. “What is perhaps most striking about all the high modernist schemes is how little confidence they repose in the skills, intelligence and experience of ordinary people.” The less is ‘left to chance’, the less room for local experience and knowledge.

He doesn’t spell out the conclusions for social scientists, but the main one I take from the book is: be extremely cautious about assigning causality. Or in other words, be far, far humbler about what we know than is typical. A lot of economic analysis suffers from the same high modernist blinkers as the disastrous social engineering described in the book.

* Spot the irony – just in case you hadn’t

[amazon_image id=”0300078153″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (Yale Agrarian Studies)[/amazon_image]

Filthy rich bankers

Posted on by

“Entrepreneurship in the barbaric wastes furthest from state power is a fraught endeavour, a constant battle, a case of kill or be killed, with little guarantee of success. 

No, harnessing the state’s might for personal gain is a much more sensible approach. Two related categories of actors have long understood this. Bureaucrats, who wear state uniforms while secretly backing their private interests. And bankers, who wear private uniforms while secretly being backed by the state.”

Spot-on political economy from Mohsin Hamid in [amazon_link id=”0241144663″ target=”_blank” ]How To Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia,[/amazon_link] an excellent, funny and moving novel. It was perfect for my flight, and associated delays, today.

[amazon_image id=”0241144663″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]How To Get Filthy Rich In Rising Asia[/amazon_image]

Learned ignorance

Posted on by

“Besides the imperfection that is naturally in language, and the obscurity and confusion that is so hard to be avoided in the use of words, there are several wilfull faults and neglects, which men are guilty of…. [T]he first and most palpable abuse, is the using of words, without clear and distinct ideas…. [T]his artificial ignorance, and learned gibberish, prevailed mightily in these last ages, by the interest and artifice of those, who found no easier way to that pitch of authority and dominion they have attained, than by amusing the men of business, and the ignorant, with hard words, or employing the ingenious and the idle in intricate disputes about unintelligible terms, and holding them perpetually entangled in that endless labyrinth.

There is no such way to gain admittance or give defence to strange and absurd doctrines, as to guard them round with legions of obscure, doubtful and undefined words….Thus learned ignorance hath been propagated in the world.”

[amazon_link id=”0141043873″ target=”_blank” ]John Locke[/amazon_link] could have been reading in almost any modern academic discipline, or listening to pretty much any financial pundit.

[amazon_image id=”0141043873″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Of the Abuse of Words (Penguin Great Ideas)[/amazon_image]

 

Look around in anger

Posted on by

It is a little known – and when known, usually ignored – fact that only about 13% of England’s land area is actually developed. (The figure is from Kate Barker’s 2006 report on Land Use Planning in England – summary here, with link to the report). There’s a quiet literature on those areas that are not deep countryside but not urban and developed either. Michael Symmons Roberts and Paul Farley called them [amazon_link id=”0224089021″ target=”_blank” ]Edgelands[/amazon_link] in their book. Richard Mabey also wrote about them in [amazon_link id=”0956254551″ target=”_blank” ]The Unofficial Countryside[/amazon_link].

[amazon_image id=”0224089021″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Edgelands: Journeys into England’s True Wilderness[/amazon_image]

[amazon_image id=”0956254551″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Unofficial Countryside[/amazon_image]

Yet the firm impression of England (I’m referring to England, not Britain, specifically) is of a crowded, suburbanised, ugly place. Maybe the reason is the sheer ugliness of so many provincial towns and cities, so many made devastatingly horrible and unwalkable by post-war mis-planning, veneration of the car, rapacious property development using cheap design and cheaper materials. Owen Hatherley’s latest book, [amazon_link id=”1844678571″ target=”_blank” ]A New Kind of Bleak: Journeys Through Urban Britain[/amazon_link], documents the ruining of British towns (Belfast, Edinburgh, Cumbernauld and Aberdeen are included). Even readers who don’t share his ranty left-wing politics will recognise the ugliness he bemoans in his descriptions of towns such as Plymouth, Bristol and Preston. Similarly, he describes the parts of touristy places such as Oxford and Brighton where the tourists don’t go. The story is the same, anti-human (but always pro-car) planning, cheap and shoddy materials, designs that are bland at best.

[amazon_image id=”1781680752″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]A New Kind of Bleak: Journeys Through Urban Britain[/amazon_image]

Hatherley’s previous book, [amazon_link id=”1844677001″ target=”_blank” ]A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain[/amazon_link], had in its sights what he sees as the continuation by the New Labour governments of a veneration for markets and neglect of public space. Aesthetically, he railed against the jolly colours and frippery of so many new buildings of the 2000s. This latest book takes in the long sweep of architecture and town planning since the end of the second world war. The blurb claims the author looks to a hopeful future, but I must say I couldn’t spot these notes of optimism. This is a bleak, angry book.

The thing is, its descriptions of our ugly provincial townscapes, the dreadful quality of so much modern architecture, the horrible conditions in which so many people have to live – not to mention the high prices they pay and shortage of homes – are accurate. The first chapter here is titled: “Thames Gateway: One of the Dark Places of the Earth.” Yep.

Hatherley projects his politics on to what he sees, but anybody can recognise his descriptions of dreary shopping malls, multi-lane highways cutting through town centres, bland blocks of flats or hutch-like houses made of cheap materials. This is what we’ve done to our land in recent decades. So although the ugly sprawl is, by the numbers, not that extensive, it scars our spirit and helps sustain the dream of a lovely and verdant English countryside in the popular imagination.

Hatherley ends with the argument that the Occupy movement, evidently camped outside St Paul’s cathedral when he published this, might augur a new approach to urbanism and planning. That’s obviously sheer romanticism, although it’s true that Occupy might well be one of the more obvious signs of the ending of the generation-long grip of reductionist market philosophy on public policy. There are signs in many domains of a revival of concern for public space. But I’m a boring pragmatist: Kate Barker’s two reports from 2004 and 2006 were full of sensible recommendations, a few of which were acted on. We need her to update us on what to do next.