Quiet around here, isn’t it?
From the monthly archives:
December 2020
I’ve just finished watching Netflix’s new Turkish miniseries Ethos, set in Istanbul and directed by Berkun Oya. This has been very little reviewed in the Western press, as far as I can see. The Guardian’s what-to-watch for December doesn’t even mention it. And yet, I think it is one of the most compelling dramas I have seen for a while. The eight episodes link characters from diverse backgrounds linked through Meryem, a hijab-wearing house cleaner who is seeing a psychiatrist, Peri, because of recurring fainting episodes. She lives with her brother, the permanently angry Yasin, a nightclub bouncer and his depressive wife Ruhiye. Meryem cleans the flat of Sinan, a philandering playboy. We get to see a spectrum of Turkish life from devout village people to sophisticated urbanites and a world where women actually dominate the action (the men are passive, confused, at the mercy of events). The soundtrack is wonderful and the acting superb, as is the lingering cinematography. I’ve avoided posting spoilers, which disables me from saying too much about what happens, but it might help to know that Gülbin’s family is Kurdish, and to be primed to think about what is happening when the Hodja’s daughter, Hayrünnisa, leaves the house in the final episode. Some of the interest is Turkey-specific but there’s much that’s more universal, such as the clash between the educated urban set and the more religious “rednecks” from out of town. Give it a try!
Some tentative thoughts, for a chapter I’m writing about the decline of neoliberalism, and the crony capitalism I see as replacing it. (unless we can achieve a leftwing alternative)
An important difference between Trumpism[1] and neoliberalism (in both hard and soft variants) is that Trumpism is associated with crony capitalism, rather than global corporations and finance. This is obscured to some extent by shared interest in corporate tax cuts and deregulation. But it’s a clear pattern,exemplified by Erdogan, Modi, Orban and Putin (search “X + crony” for illustration). Why is this? The core appeal of US Trumpism is a negative kind of identity politics, reaffirming the rightful dominance of the “unmarked category”, or default identity, that is assumed when a term like “real Americans” is used. Unmarked categories in the US context include white, male, employed, English-speaking, Christian and cis-het.
Trump’s global counterparts have the same kind of politics, but their unmarked categories are different, most obviously with respect to language, race and religion. These differences are problematic for global corporations, who want to operate in different national markets and employ the best talent they can find anywhere.
As long as neoliberalism was dominant, Trumpist voters could be bought off with gestures, while policy was run in the interests of global business. But now that the Trumpists are in charge, they are demanding measures that harm global businesses both economically (restrictions on trade and investment) and culturally (by making ascribed characteristics, rather than market outcomes the measure of esteem). By contrast, local capitalists (like Trump himself and the billionaires who now back him) mostly benefit from these measures as well as from pro-rich policies in general. Even under neoliberalism, many operated largely on the basis of connections. Provided they can stay in the good graces of the strongman (not guaranteed, as various Russian oligarchs have discovered), they are well placed in the new environment. And, unlike global corporations, crony capitalists can operate with a short time horizon. Even if Trumpist policies are ultimately disastrous in economic terms, they have time to make their pile and cash out.
fn1. In 2016, I used the unsatisfactory term “tribalism”, for want of a better alternative, but Trumpism fits the bill perfectly.
I took part in a debate today with Martin Ruhs (Oxford) for Migration Mobilities Bristol on labour migration. I’ll put in a link to the full discussion when it is available, but meanwhile, here are my opening remarks:
We live in a world where extreme poverty coexists with great wealth and where the accident of birth with one nationality rather than another has more bearing on someone’s life prospects than anything else. We also know that migration from poor countries to wealthy ones is more effective in addressing global poverty than just about anything else. Migrants from poor countries to wealthy ones gain access to more productive economies, earn higher wages than they would have at home, and send back valuable remittances to a degree that vastly exceeds the value of foreign aid programmes.
Meanwhile, wealthy countries need migrant labour to do the jobs that too few of our own citizens will do: agriculture and food, social care, health, construction, hospitality. (Jobs, actually, that once were invisible but which COVID has brought home the value of.) But immigration is also a hot-button electoral issue and nativist parties have enjoyed great success in promoting restrictionist policies that pander to anti-immigrant sentiment among electorates.
In response to this conflict between what is economically desirable (for both sides) and what is politically palatable to electorates, many economists have argued for the idea of a trade-off between openness and rights, suggesting that we can make the labour migration that “we” need more palatable to electorates to the extent to which the inferior and temporary status of those migrants is made concrete by depriving them of some rights. Here, migration is conceived of in transactional terms: “We” get a flexible and exploitable labour force, perhaps plugging key skills gaps; “they” get more money and voters don’t feel threatened that these incomers will displace them in “their own” country.
[click to continue…]
As was the case with Economics in Two Lessons, I’ve been struggling with the material for my book-in-progress, The Economic Consequences of the Pandemic. But I’ve now managed to put together a synopsis I can work with. I’d very much appreciate comments, including but not limited to: topics I should be covering; issues raised by the brief summaries; and useful references. Thanks for comments so far, and thanks in advance for more.
Here’s a piece by Deborah Parker at Inside Higher Education which describes what it has been like for her teaching in-person this semester. My experience has been almost exactly like hers, the main exceptions being that nobody spoke in Italian in my classes, and that attendance was close to perfect.
Speaking for myself here: teaching in-person has been almost completely normal. It turns out, for example, that once you have met in masks two or three times you stop noticing the masks. Sometime in October I bumped into a student with 3 of her friends on a walk and we had an extended conversation for about 20 minutes. Afterward I realised I had no idea whether she, or her friends, had been wearing masks (I was, but they didn’t have to be) — later she told me that she and one friend were maskless and the other two were masked, but honestly I had no idea. It shouldn’t be surprising that sitting at a distance feels normal – there’s a fairly rigorous social norm already of leaving an empty seat between oneself and the next student if one can. [1]
I would say that teaching in a mask is more tiring than normal teaching: I imagine that has something to do with speaking louder, and presumably getting less oxygen. But the teaching I’ve done over zoom has been exhausting, so teaching in a mask is less tiring than the available alternative. And there are many compensations: one gets to move around, share smiles and laughter with the students, hear the ambient noise, and share a sense of camaraderie.
The last (I hope) extract from the climate change chapter of Economic Consequences of the Pandemic. I’m in two minds about whether this is really needed. The group of pro-nuclear environmentalists seems to be shrinking towards a hard core who can’t be convinced (and some of them, like Shellenberger turn out to have been concern trolls all along). But every now and then I run across people who seem open-minded enough, but haven’t caught up with the bad news on nuclear.
Another excerpt from the climate chapter of my book-in-progress, Economic Consequences of the Pandemic. Comments, constructive criticism and compliments all appreciated.