I don’t know how much rethinking economics is actually going on (I have my suspicions, but no hard data). I do have a good idea of how much rethinking politics/academia/civilsocietying is going on, and it’s not much at all/zero. The latest piece of hard data came tonight, at the University of Manchester. The debate/discussion was on the hot topic of “is capitalism unsustainable?” (see here for a 1950s Edward Teller/Dr Strangelove throwback: physics Has All The Answers and Salvation We Need).
Around 110-120 (I counted) mostly white, mostly middle-aged/old people turned out on a Sunday night to…. well, I don’t know why they came: to hear from the great and the good, I suppose. Me, I mostly went for the anthropological lulz, and I got them.
Here are the predictions I made, and the scores I got. After that, I’ll do super brief capsule (bullet-points) of what I scribbled down (It wasn’t, as far as I can tell, filmed or audio recorded).
Prediction
How’d I do?
1
There will be no “turn to the person next to you and introduce yourself” at the outset
CORRECT
2
There will be no “turn to the person next to you to share thoughts” between speeches
CORRECT
3
There will be no time for “clarification” question after each speech
CORRECT
4
No one will actually try to define capitalism
CORRECT (they may have had a go in the last 20 minutes)
5
There will be no mention of “false needs” and the advertising industry
WRONG. Molly Scott-Cato had a portion of her speech on this (though she then drew I think too firm a line between Sigmund Freud and Edward Bernays)
No distinction will be made between capitalism and industrialism
CORRECT
8
No one on panel will make distinction between capitalism and democracy
CORRECT
9
It will be at least an hour before anyone from the audience is able to ask a question
CORRECT (closer to 75 minutes, I think).
Kevin Anderson went first, with the latest update of his “Paris vs Growth? Two degrees, maths and equity” powerpoint.
If the top ten percent of global emitters reduced their level to the average European, that would lop 30% of human emissions
Human emissions 65ish% percent higher than they were in 1990 (went up 1.5% last year, will go up again this year).
The “Climate Glitterati” stick in his craw, and he named names – Mark Carney, Adair Tuner, John Gummer, Nick Stern, Christina Figueres, Mike Bloomberg, Al Gore, Leonard Di Caprio. He also served it out to grey-haired academics who he said were running cover for them.
Sound quality was quite a problem, and there was no accompanying powerpoint (a visual prompt might have helped us decipher some of the random syllables?)
Mostly advocating a Green New Deal (because the 2008 one gained such traction?)
There’s a proposal on the Washington State ballot, which got there in the teeth of some trade union opposition.
Vested interests need to be fought and defeated (nowt in speech about the mechanics of how you do that, but I suspect this article and this article might have more on that).
Degrowth is a Bad Idea, won’t deliver the emissions reductions we need.
Giorgos Kallis (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Institute of Environmental Science & Technology)
Same sound/no powerpoint issues as before
At least tried to answer the question by asking two sub-questions is economic growth unsustainable? Does capitalism need growth? (if answer to both questions is yes, then, well, yes).
Took issue with Pollin’s tight focus on energy systems.
Thought that even if we could contract the economy it “would be a stupid idea”
kind of (as you’d expect) talked around the question, quite “well, what do you mean by capitalism?
Actually talked about advertising and the creation of false needs, and vested interests in, for example the “Pheobus” (sic) cartel. (light bulb manufacturers who kept bulbs life short to keep punters having to buy them).
Talked about interest (but not ‘fractional reserve banking”) and the discount rate.
Then the chair (Maeve Cohen of Rethinking Economics) had a whole set of questions and panellists responding to each other (something, surely, that the audience was present and equipped to do??) Fun only for the sniping.
Finally three questions from the aduience got asked – what about a truce in the green growth/degrowth wars and agreement on caps? – why haven’t we got through to the climate deniers and those who vote for them? And ‘how bad will the next recession be’.
Those (good) questions got relatively brief answers and then the panellists basically started talking to each other again. And I left. Life really is too short, what with pretty damn imminent societal breakdown. I’d rather be under one or both of the bloody cats….
Highlights
Professors Kevin Anderson and Professor Robert Pollin lobbing increasingly flashy and bangy skype-grenades at one another.
A couple of Polyp cartoons
Lowlights
The total lack of clarity in terms of defining what the hell “we” (i.e. they) are talking about.
Surely someone of them thinks that capitalism isn’t just a set of organisations but, you know, a social relation?
The lack of a sense that we have been having this debate, on ecological terms, for just on 50 years.
The chair abusing (in my opinion, maybe not others’) the chair’s position to ask multiple questions, which then bounced back and fourth among the panellists
The egofodderfication of it all
What the hell do I mean by egofodderfication? Read on if you wanna know.
Egofodder is what I call the audience at any public event (big or small) which has not been structured by the organisers to provoke the highest possible amount of participation, engagement and mingling.
Here’s an old video.
Is egofodderfication unsustainable? “Sadly No”
The social norm is that you turn up to a meeting and are talked at for at least 45 minutes (if you’re lucky). Then the sharp-elbowed might get to ask a question. Then you file out.
And people keep coming back for that. There’s a hardcore of the same old faces (I used to be one of them) who would go to the opening of an envelope, to keep the gnawing sense of despair and powerlessness at bay. And there is, flowing over these stones, a river of people seen once or twice, who never can see a way ‘in’ for themselves, their concerns, and realise that they’d be better off reading a book/watching at TED talk, for all of the actual human interaction they would get at one of these wretched events, where they are talked at by experts. But there are always enough ‘new people’ scared shitless by the news and the obvious total incompetence of our “leaders” (not just international and national, I’m looking at YOU, GMCA and MCC) in even having the tiniest idea what to do. So in that sense, organisers of activist meetings, public events, academic seminars etc will never lack for warm bodies to be their ego fodder, coming from the usual suspects and the not-yet-churned through.
Is egofodderfication unsustainable? Hell yes
We (most of us) think that a civil society upsurge, an unprecedented social movement of diverse groups is required. And yet we tolerate the same old broken tools, thinking they will work this time, because we are too scared to piss off “busy” event organisers. But what it does is wastes the time and potential connection of usual suspects and ALSO offers a granite wall of alienation for ‘newbies’ to scale. Some do, mostly they don’t. Mostly they go away, and are ‘lost’ to ‘activism’ (of whatever stripe).
Since someone on the panel launched a thought experiment, I thought I’d have one here too.
What if there was a social norm that every meeting (whether it was activist, local authority, academic, whatevs) started with a call for people to introduce themselves, very briefly, to someone they don’t know (but always have a system where people can hold up their hand or whatever to opt out!)
What if there was a social norm that wherever it was possible (i.e. multiple speakers) there would be a chance for people to compare notes between speakers, and ask questions of CLARIFICATION.
What if there was a social norm that before the Q and A (which was never more than 45 minutes from the beginning of the event) people had a chance to turn to a friend/stranger and get help making a long question into a short one, or a half question into a whole one, and then the chair could choose from more hands than the stale male hands that inevitably go up.
What if speakers were expected to spend a quarter of their time explaining concrete things that could be done, and how people in the room could take concrete steps towards that?
What if speakers were expected also to address the question “what have ‘we’ (academics/activists/politicians) been doing wrong/badly in the past?” and explain how they were doing better in the future (i.e. from right fricking now.).
What if speakers via skye were asked to record their initial talks, and have a powerpoint alongside, sent to the organisers in advance; and then come in “live” purely for the Q and A (though obvs have been “lurking” to hear the other speakers’ comments).
What if there was a social norm that events would be filmed and blogged so people who couldn’t make it could still feel a part of it, rather than apart from it?
Maybe then, the networks of people who care (and if you came out on a dark Sunday night, you care) would grow thicker, people would randomly encounter people and we’d all be better connected, less atomised, less isolated. Who knows, you might even be able to grow some movements with the help of those networks. I know, I know, crazy talk.
said, and then a precis of the questions and answers that followed. There’s even a bonus snarky summation from me. I aim to make the whole blog post somewhat shorter than last one (#oldpeople #decreasingstamina), but again, [my snark is in square brackets and red…]
Speech, speech!
Bluhdorn was introduced by the chair Margaret Haderer, Institute for Social Change and Sustainability, WU Vienna, who pointed to his prolific output (the word ‘frantic’ was in there…)
If you really want the low-down, defo watch this totally amazing, professionally made video – post-ecological thinking
[So, I’m going to bullet point lots of the speech]
The talk is part of an international research workshop – key question is whether societal transition – at which a declatory level is accepted – might be impossible to achieve, and if so why? What kinds of transformations are going on instead?
Three issues for tonight
Change in social value preferences, shift in political culture we are witnessing in contemporary consumer societies
Rise of right wing movements and parties, which are conducting a head on attack on eco-agendas
Thirdly, talk about Robert Inglehart, the founding father of academic study of values. His 1977 book The Silent Revolution says our societies should be becoming evermore eco and socially progressive. Has a new book saying this (Cultural Evolution).
So, the speech is a response to Backstrand’s speech which was on the supply-side, of what (Swedish) state can provide, while this is looking at demand side- what citizens want..
Argument
modernisation/emancipation-induced change in social value preferences helps to explain the resilience of unsustainability
Rise of right-wing populism is NOT a “reversal” of the emancipatory agency, but its dialectically transformed and politically outsourced continuation.
The change in political culture in the wake of the populist revolution is part of modern consumer societies’ adaptation to sustained unsustainability.
Resilience has become popular in parts of the eco-political literature. Normally has positive connotations. Not often used alongside unsustainability… Donna Nelson et al 2007 –‘the amount of change a system can undergo and still retain the same function and structure while maintaining options to develop.’
‘still retain the same function and structure’ is an interesting phrase, which shows a shift in perspective. Modern socieities adamantly defending their unsustainability [Bush Snr declaring at Rio that the American way of life was non-negotiable]
Social Values and Political |Culture
Shift in values and culture in liberal consumer democracies are centrally important to this resilience. (Of course, there are drawbacks to this way of looking at things). But, useful. Prevailing norm specification and legitimation are crucially importance for the resilience, inertia…. [Did I mention my PhD thesis is called Enacted Inertia?]
Robert Inglehart work is well known and much debated, The Silent Revolution introduced “material to post-material values, and “security to self-expression”. In most recent work, though, the “post-material values” argument does not play major role, but democratic values and self-expression are still there (see pages 114 and 124)
Self expression values emerge when a large share of the population grows up taking survival for granted (124)
Since democratic institutions provide greater free choice than authoritarian institutions, people with self-expression values generally want democracy (121)
Cognitive self-mobilisation makes [middle class people]more skilled at organising in order to get them (119)
Inglehart reassures us democracy has not reached its high-water mark, there is no long-term retreat, ad no need to panic. A curious story. Post-materialist/eco-values no longer prominent We might be tempted to dismiss Inglehart’s argument wholesale and call it academic path dependency. But that would be throwing out baby with bathwater…. There are strengths in Inglehart’s analysis
significant parts of society are rebelling against the iron cage of consumerism
emphasis on the individual, its subjectivity, its identity and its value preferences
particular focus on well-educated middle class as pioneer of change (the cultural creators).
Theory of modernisation—induced value and culture change and rise of self-determination and self-expression values are being articulated ever more vociferously
ever increasing demand for choice IS a driver of societal change.
And also ‘end of democracy thesis’ is indeed mistaken: Inglehart can give us good guidance there. However, there are also weaknesses.
Firstly, he does not explore what kind of self, and how prevalent understandings of this Self may change. These are changing/have changed
Secondly no attempt to spell out what the notions of freedom and autonomy may imply and how prevalent notions of freedom and autonomy may change, or may have changed.
Thirdly, no differentiation between different forms of democracy. Occasionally very simplistic.
If we iron out the weaknesses in his views, we will get closer to understanding/explaining resilience of unsustainability.
As regards the understanding of ‘the self’ there is a rich body of literature. In the well-educated middle classes where Inglehart identifies the Silent Revolution) they are ever less predetermined, and ever more a project the individual can/must pursue. This self, this identity is ever less unitary, homogeneous. In reality, it’s more dynamic, fractured…
Ever more this self-actualisation project is done via the consumer market.
If all this is the case, the rise of expression values can be seen as the rise of ‘the unsustainable self’ [need to consume at a frantic rate] With ever-increasing pressure to mobilise all resources for realisation of the Self Project, and choices in the consumer market ever more important, and the expansion of lifeworlds, lifestyles, arenas of self-experience, ever more planned obsolescence in self-experience, unsustainabilty is no longer an unintended and potentially amendable side effect, but a constitutive principle of modern identity, lifestyles and society. [as the young people used to say, ‘it’s not a bug, it’s a feature]
The subjective is and patterns of self-realisation of the most innovative and progressive parts of society, in particular are unsustainable by intention and design.
The analysis of this value and culture shift goes along way in explaining the resilience of unsustainbility.
Second major Inglehart deficit – failure to spell out what exactly ideals of freedom and autonomy are supposed to look like.
Inglehart is right to say in era of neoliberalism, freedom and autonomy seen as about ‘free choice’, but this ISN’T how we used to think, and isn’t compatible with eco-politics sense of 1970s. There was an different understanding of autonomy then.
Wasn’t about free choice, but accepted limitations and boundaries that had to be kept. [see also the concept of eudaimonia?]
In line with Kantian tradition, post-Marxist,these saw freedom and autonomy primarily as inner, moral and intellectual freedom. Around dignity and integrity, rather than fulfillment in/through the market. Freedom and autonomy implied the ability and duty to recognize, follow and appreciate the guidance and imperatives of reason versus animalistic impulses).
Freedom and autonomy understood in collective sens, limited by the principles of inclusion, equality and reciprocity. They were conceptualised as ecologically inclusive. (dignity for other species etc). Within these boundaries, precisely, freedom and self-determination were the normative base of eco—democratic, eco-political project. Only within these boundaries are rise of individualism conducive (to human flourishing).
But the logic of emancipation is not known for respecting boundaries. Quite the contrary, transgression of boundaries is its thing. [Erich Fromm knew this.]
The dynamics hollowed out the norms of the eco-democratic project and also incrementally depleted normative resources of the project Emancipatory movements metamorphosed from agents of project into its grave-digger. [“From emancipation to emaciation”?]
The dialectic of emancipation explains how and why the most emancipated and progressive parts of contemporary consumer societies are a key parameter for the explaining the resilience of unsustainability.
These parts of society have embraced and are defending patterns of self-realisation which have moved beyond Kantian boundaries and emancipated themselves from restrictions from which Inglehart thought would mean eco-improvement.
The most of us in the room belong to this well-educated section of society, with the uncompromising defense of their lifestyles
[Prof Kevin Anderson- if you want to see a high emitter, look in the mirror]
This may well be why in Inglehart’s new work post-materialism no longer prevalent.
So, it is mistaken to see what is happening as reverse, backlash or regression. Rather, it’s the playing out of the internal logic
Such conceptualisations (if Inglehart et al) are the socially and politically sedative performance, the simulative maintenance of norms and values which have factually long been abandoned because they are incompatible with contemporary understandings of freedom, self—realisation and a good life. Current developments are not a deviation from the trajectory of modernisation and emancipation but its continuation.
Any return to a supposedly normal course or status quo ante is not to be expected.
The attempt to portray the projected socio-ecological transformation in terms of than emancipatory promise and gain has lost its sociological foundation.
[Lyrics: “Whatever happened to the people who gave a damn”… Gil Scott Heron, song ‘South Carolina’ 1980.
Middle class not ANTI democratic, ANTI environmental, but reconfigures what these terms mean.
Third major Inglehart deficit is his failure to explore different styles of democracy.
Authoritarian reflex/populist reflex. e.g. the following quotes
Decades of declining real income and rising inequality, together with unprecedented massive immigration, have produced a long-term period effect supporting the populist vote (186)
still, income factors such as income and unemployment rates are surprisingly weak predictors of the populist authoritarian vote. (181)
He concedes however that age-linked cultural voters are STILL the best predictors for who votes right/against social change
[Karl Mannheim and cohort effect!]
Older people freaked out by large scale immigration. But these effects are temporary (old people die).
So Inglehart thinks Right-wing populism therefore a passing tide, says democratic values will recover… Thus ‘no need to panic’.
Bluhdorn – Whole range of respects you’d want to take issue. Academically and politically irresponsible. But, on focus on the resilience of unsustainabilty… see it as a continuation rather than reversal of middle-class emancipatory project.
With simplistic notion of modernisation and equally simplistic “democracy versus authoritarians”, Inglehart fails to see at the possibility is a reconfiguration of democracy.
He’s right it hasn’t reached its end, but fails to recognise possibility of transformation, but he fails to see the following
There’s a multiple dysfunction of democracy, a legitimation crisis.
Economic growth is actually unlikely to recover, and the most progressive parts of society are seeing de-limited views of freedom are seen as non-negotiable.
The emancipatory agenda pushes the necessity to reconfigure democracy to accommodate contemporary understandings of self-realisation and self-expression.
Rather than being a short term antidemocratic tide, the populist revolution lastingly reconfigures democracy so as to enable it to manage ever higher levels of social inequality, indeed ot politically organise and legitimate a politics of ever-increasing exclusion.
By remodeling democracy into a tool for a majoritiarian politics of exclusion, the populist revolution substantially increases modern societies’ resilience to social and ecological unsustainbility.
Bluhdon says he is NOT doing this analysis with any kind of moralising intentions, but from the perspective of a reflexive, critical sociology. Aware of the problems – one methodological problem is that BOTH sides are at pains to express their incompatibility with each other. Everyone claims that ‘they are the people, drain the swamp etc.
Meanwhile, civilised civil society is saying we’re not the mob, we’re reasonable.
From a sociological perspective, looking beyond the self-description of the actors, it is possible, even constructive, to bridge the abyss to think about symbiosis (not conscious!) between the non—negotiable freedoms whose self-descriptions do not allow them to self-organise this exclusion, and those to whom they outsource this class.
This has always been the case. Comparable to outsourcing of sourcing of consumer goods, and outsourcing waste disposal of problematic stuff to the Global South.
Panel Discussion
Karin Bäckstrand: Three critiques
Too deterministic about this value shift
Too speculative, no empirical foundation around a) rise of populism and b) resilience of unsustainability
Underestimate resilience of political institutions to the changes
re 1. YES, we’re in a dark place right now, but if longer perspective, and look at same-sex marriage, gender equality, there IS change.. RW populist parties won’t be able to reverse this. 82 percent of Swedes do NOT support Swedish Democrats.
2. I know this paper doesn’t have empirics, but as political scientist, there is a lot of research, we need numbers. Could draw on public opinion work. e.g. Dennis Everberg this morning, (who looked at “Resisting Transition: An Empirical Investigation into the Social Forces of Business as usual”) in Germany. We need more than anecdota, look across levels, countries…
Also, if unsustainabiility is constitutive, why have these conferences?!
3. Political institutions actually stick. E.g. in US, Trump is not able to dismantle the lot. Some standing up for the rule of law etc.
Arias-Ladonaldo
Stimulating lecture. The right questions, but have disagreements about your seductive almost apocalyptic arguments.. You approve of Inglehart emphasis on autonomy. Are all these subjectivities alike? Aren’t populists appealing to notion of community that has been eroded by the market etc.
Are we not talking about two kinds of unsustainable selves?
Children of the 60s looking for shelter in identity politics.
Compelling aspect of lecture in ‘unsustainable self.
Was the bounded self an illusion? Mostly embraced by a very few. Mostly captured by capitalists
Maybe the 60s moment was always just going to be a moment? And 60s were rebellion against boring conformist 50s etc.
Eco-democratic project was individualistic
Fourth – rise of unsustainable self thesis – but ecomodernism is a narrative on offer. Can it seduce the unsustainable selves?
Fifth- interpretation of populist wave. Not the whole story. Populism is also protest against globalisation and psychological impact of GFC.
Christoph Gorg
Not easy to comment on paper/speech.
Share some of the pessimism, but not the conceptual foundations. Also missed the empirics.
Good to emphasise current industrial societies are unsustainable.
Not possible to use Inglehart ot explain all this.
Read Silent Revolution when it came out and then decided to read better books….
Preferences are not fixed, they develop!
Second, the term resilience. Even in ecology it’s highly contested. Resilience Alliance did a power grab on this!
Last point – yes, need to act as scientists not activists. But can we do that from ‘neutral’ perspective?! If you speak of unsustainablity, this includes a normative judgement.
Need to think ‘how to change it’?
Bluhdorn Answers brief because I don’t disagree with much of the panellists
We as interpreters of ongoing or not-ongoing changes, are caught up in narratives, conceptualisations which we have re-iterated for decades. My agenda not to be optimistic or pessimistic, but how can we – if at all – break out of these self-description narratives.
How can we get out of the repeat cycle?!
Inglehart’s book is indeed terrible. Am not defending it. Am trying to tease out whether anything useful in his approach that can take us somewhere.
Not defending the term resilience – just saying is there any mileage in it, around reading against the grain.
And yes, need to check if Dennis’s data can be read through my perspective…
Not trying to offer theory of populism. Looking at phenomenon and seeing how it might be connected to the resilience of unsustainability.
Yes eco-democratic project was an illusion! But a significant enough illusion that Inglehart wrote a book.
Thanks to everyone! Clarifications will go into paper
Questions from floor
Meadowcroft – certainly stirred things. Could you explain what IS the curious resilience of unsustainability. I don’t see why there is anything to explain. Why SHOULD society evolve towards sustainability. All sorts of forces that reproduce current set ups?!
Bluhdorn – one could say ‘nothing’ if don’t expect societal transformation and assumes a certain trajectory. We need an explanation for universal commitment but no action, and also why you’re now allowed to say ‘I don’t care’ (Drill Baby Drill)
Luigi- Following Gorg point – concept of resilience. Foucault said ‘look, often/always in history we are stuck into problematisations. Frameworks of thinking that can be totally opposite but share conceptual foundations and be in hidden agreement.
Dorothea – DO we need new questions? Are we asking wrong questions? Might it simply be that other social forces stronger than our analysis?
Eric – remark on middle-class. To what point in Europe does this work? In USA ‘crisis of middle-class’. In US self-identification of working class has gone up…
Ingolfur – same old stories. Post-growth folks – nothing new. I read these stories 30 years ago….
Andrea – evolving self of middle-class and rise of right-wing populism. Two remarks. 1. outsourcing – its not the progressives outsourced, they lost it, if they ever had it in the first place
2 sectors of middleclass not progressive!
James – your feeling that nothing is changing. I sympathise, especially over some of the debates (e.g. post-growth etc). While doing my PhD on the topic of British State conceptualisations battles in the 1880s, I saw same debates, decided same underlying structures
Margarete – once pushed it, got to go normative or empirical, you have to go somewhere/can’t stay where you are.. Risk of sweeping generalisations
My take
Ingolfur’s work is always invigorating. I remember reading his take on non-violent direct action subcultures as a Theme Park and punching the air – “finally, an academic looks at social movements and refused to suspend his critical faculties in exchange for access to these people” And I totally buy post-ecological thinking (see amazing video above). And I never liked Inglehart, so this is catnip to me. It’s good to call bullshit on the soft-green middle classes who think that they’re doing their bit by buying organic yoghurt while cranking out the airmiles. And it’s good to see what is happening now as part of an unfolding logic.
I think the word resilience was a hostage to fortune. We’d possibly have had a different, more fruitful discussion if the terms persistence or tenacity had been used.
And, as with the entire conference, the ‘what is to be done’ question has gone largely unasked, and even more largely unanswered. Truly, we are living it large….
Recently I proposed that an organisation (I am a FIFO activist on this) organise some video vox pops around an event that they’re organising for about five weeks’ time. This post is how I would do it. (Or rather, how I like to believe that I would be able to do it. By now, pushing 50, I should have realised that no battle plan survives contact with the enemy, and that my self-regard outstrips my ability, almost always…)
It’s divided into before, during and after.
Comments, criticisms and suggestions on all three are very welcome
With all these events, there are usually three acknowledged goals
Get media attention on The Issue
Build the media profile of the organisation(s)
Get the mythical New People involved
To this I would almost always add a fourth goal –
Build the knowledge, skills and relationships of those who are organising the event, whether they are centrally involved or more peripherally in putting the event on.
Before
So, I’d try to get agreement from ‘the organisers’ about what the headlines of the event are, especially if you’re also doing a video advert for the event (another blog post that).
And I’d try to get organisational buy-in by framing the video vox pops as a way of not only building profile and maybe attract new folks, but as something that can help sustain morale in the weeks/months after the event (when there is inevitably a post-event dip in energy and enthusiasm – see my famous and much-liked post on emotathons).
Part of that buy-in is agreement from organisations and individuals that when the vox pops are published online, they will be included in news digests, e-newsletters, reposted on websites and social media.
I’d go so far as to clear the questions we’d be posing to the people who took part, to head off any complaints and grumble (and, given that you are doing something new, and ‘stealing limelight’ from others, there will be grumbles…)
I’d come up with a bunch of different questions that were checked for wording and politics (see above)
The first one would always be someone’s name and where they are from.
The other questions would include
Why did you come to this event?
What personal changes have you made in your life because of [the issue]
What do you think the government should do about [the issue].
What do you think activists and organisations should do about [the issue]
Why and how should other ordinary people get involved in campaigning about [the issue]
How do you keep your hope alive, given the trajectory of [the issue]
Anything else you’d like to say?
I’d get all of these numbered, printed in the biggest possible size in landscape A4, and laminated
I’d also have a simple ‘disclaimer’ form ready – something like
‘Hi, we’re making a series of short films about the people who come to this event. You choose three questions, think about your answers. We point a camera at you. After the event, we will edit a short film of you. We will stick it up on the internet in a private site. We will then contact you to find out if you are happy with the film. If you are, we will make it public. If not, we don’t. If we don’t hear back from you, we assume you’re so unhappy you can’t actually type, and the video doesn’t go up.
We need your name
Your email and your phone number.
We will ONLY keep these for as long as we need,on paper, and we will not share them with anyone else at all. Once the video is up (or not) you will not hear from us again.’
[I don’t know what the laws are for consent of kids around this, and I’d be anxious anyway about asking people younger than about 15. I’d try to get legal advice about all that).
I’d find someone (or even ideally two people) willing to work with me especially before and during the event on the day. Find out from them what their skills and experiences are, and what knowledge skills and relationships they want to build. This has to be someone who is reliable. Don’t bother with flaky people.
I would take the promises of help from people who on the day will be busy ensuring that their organisations logos/stalls/propaganda are prominently displayed with a large pinch of salt.
I’d then do a practice run with my sidekick(s), and address any difficulties. On the Day
I’d turn up with
Video camera/recording device fully charged
Tripod
Back-up camera and/or battery.
Storage device to transfer files (because I am uber paranoid about losing stuff).
Clipboards and pens
Participation/consent forms
Two complete laminated sets of the agreed questions.
I’d have a ‘vox pop’ booth away from any point sources of noise. I’d have a neutral background for it, and the whole thing positioned as best as could be for light etc.
I’d have one person in charge of the camera (and the tripod)
The other person(people) are making sure we get copies of people’s signed consent forms
They talk them through which of the various questions they want to answer.
They mike them up if we’re going down that route (me, I am a sound clutz. That’s not good).
I’d start the filming with the person holding up their name and email on a piece of paper, which can then be edited out (obvs) which just helps make sure the right person gets the right ‘are you happy with this video’ email later.
I’d keep filming for a few seconds after they finish their answer, in case they think of something else they want to say.
At the end of the day I’d do a debrief with my sidekicks while memories were fresh.
What went well?
What went badly and what can we do better next time?
Other ideas?
After
I’d want to start getting the vox pops up as soon as possible after the event. I’d choose therefore one of the most straightforward ones done straight away. The closing credits would include the logo of the event, but not of individual organisations that were sponsoring it (so it doesn’t look like those being interviewed for the vox pops are endorsing any/all of the organisations)
I’d stick it up on a private site, contact the subject immediately.
That first one could then be press released (with the person’s permission! – but that is probably best if it is an already engaged ‘activisty’ type person who can fake being normal.)
‘xxxx of xxxx today said xxxxx. Speaking at [name of event] she said ……..
Once the first one(s) were up, I’d just try to plough through all the other editing (until I got tired/more sloppy than usual) , stick them up privately, send out the ‘are you okay with this?’ emails.
I’d then want the videos going up once or twice a week on the same day(s) until all the ones that had been okayed were ‘up’.
I’d then do a celebration/post-mortem event with the sidekicks and ask what more would be needed for them to lead the next time a video vox pop was proposed.
I’d not stress too much about viewer stats. That shit is only partly under your control.
If anyone wanted the names/emails/phone numbers for their organisations contact list, I’d tell them to… [redacted for reasons of taste].
What did I miss? How will it all go horribly wrong?
Thinking strategically is very very hard. The normal activist mode is to move (or, uncharitably, lurch) from one ‘crucial’/urgent; upcoming event to the next. It might be a camp, or a march, or a submission to some government ‘consultation’. It might be a public meeting, the launch of a document, whatevs.
You can spend literally years (decades) sitting in planning meetings where various people have sent their apologies, where the agenda is filled with seemingly crucial decisions, in meetings that are either well facilitated or poorly facilitated.
But the quality of the facilitation (turn-taking, time-keeping) is often irrelevant, because the decisions being made are purely tactical, and based on unspoken assumptions (about what the group is trying to achieve, how it is trying to achieve, what the model of social change is) that never get brought out into the light for consideration.
And so the wheel – what I’ve called the emotathon, or emotacycle – keeps turning, with new people churning in and dropping out after two or three such ‘big events’ (over a year or two).
The hard core activists, who have a model of social change based on vanguard parties, or who get their emotional/social needs met through Activism (capital A) either don’t notice or don’t care, or do notice and care, but feel that there is no alternative.
So the same stuff keeps happening, based on unspoken assumptions that we have to ‘tell the policymakers The Truth (information deficit). That we just need to get in the media, that we need to make ourselves welcoming to the mythical ‘newbies’.
And even if you COULD get everyone to see this pattern, then you’d still struggle to escape the routine ways of doing things.
Because these are deeply entrenched (and unspoken) assumptions and habits.
And beyond that (because of that?) the skills of strategic thinking (even on a time scale of a year) either distrusted (‘you’re a control freak’) or derided (‘there you go, building castles in the air’ or ‘more masturbation, not practical ACTIONS, comrade’). Or both at the same time. And alongside this there is the elision – conscious or otherwise – of mobilising and movement-building….
So, the skills are not perceived as necessary, not respected, not rewarded. No wonder they are not developed.
And while some of us know we should do it, but it’s hard to do it on your own, and when the imperative of a 90 minute meeting is to make decisiosn about the coming weeks. There’s simply no time for discussion of where we’re trying to be in a year’s time.
So, what is to be done?
Well, if you try to do a separate ‘visioning’ session, you will have some people not be able to come, some people deliberately NOT come (because they don’t have those skills, or because they don’t want to be ego-fodder). Alongside that, you’ll attract people with limited past and less future in the group who just want to grandstand and spout but who won’t be available to do any of the work involved in turning the strategy into deeds.
So, what I think needs to happen is that elements and habits of strategic thinking have to be folded into ‘ordinary meetings’ – just a few minutes (i.e. about 20) at a time.
And based on recent experience, I’d say that the best way forward would be to have people work in pairs or threes, and do back casting from a year, “on the other side”
(More than that in a group is intimidating for some, and means a confident people can easily dominate, and is more keen to do so.)
A facilitator has to have sorted out good simple prompting questions. I’d go for one of the following
“what knowledge, skills and relationships do YOU want to have a year from now, in the context of this campaigning groups aims and goals?”
“what knowledge, skills and relationships do you think the group should have a year from now, in the context of this campaigning groups aims and goals?”
“what are the points of failure (where knowledge, skills and relationships are absent or held only in one or two individuals) in the group that we need to lessen in the coming year?”
Work in pairs or threes for say 10 minutes on one of them, and then have a plenary, that is typed up and circulated, so that people who were not present feel up to speed.
Would this work? Probably not in the sense of getting a group to have a Big Hairy Audacious Goal that looks forward a year and guides its decisions, but it would at least foreground the knowledge, skills and relationships questions, and sensitise individuals to some thinking beyond the next few weeks/couple of months.
But it won’t happen, and that’s one of the many reasons I ain’t doing any more activism. Gonna follow the Cocker protocol in the declining years of the species.
A couple of years ago the folks at the Conversation asked me to bash out a piece on what Australians knew about climate change in the late 60s, early 70s. I did an okay-ish job, but have since radically expanded my knowledge of that period. What we have below is not the first mention of climate change in books (you could see A Dirty Story and The Effluent Society both published 1970), but this is one of the more detailed ones, and was written by a couple of well-respected scientists.
I plan, #afterthethesis (which is imminent), to do something more systematic about who said what when (and it went all the way to the top – Deputy Prime Minister Doug Anthony, in 1971, f. ex). For now, this – climate change was being spoken of in terms of foreboding back in 1968-9 by Australian scientists…
but don’t judge a book just by its FRONT cover…
and then there is a mention in the first chapter…
Costin, A and Marples, T. 1971. The Nature and Quality of Resources in Costin, A and Frith, H. (eds) Conservation. Ringwood, Victoria: Pelican pp. 11-42.
I’m going through my unread gmail messages, tracking down notes to myself about the four empirical chapters of The Thesis (which is all but done). And I’m stumbling on stuff that I always intended to blog/think more about. Here’s one (should probably turn into a video!)
“The first rule for understanding the human condition is that men live in second-hand worlds. They are aware of much more than they have experienced; and their own experience is always indirect. The quality of their lives is determined by meanings they have received from others. Everyone lives in a world of such meaning. No man stands alone directly confronting a world of solid fact. No such world is available. The closest men come to it is when they are infants or when they become insane: then, in a terrifying scene of meaningless events and senseless confusion, they are often seized with the panic of near-total insecurity. But in their everyday life they do not experience a world of solid fact; their experience itself is selected by stereotyped meaning and shaped by ready-made interpretation. their images of the world, and of themselves, are given to them by crowds of witnesses they have never met and never shall meet. Yet for every man these images – provided by strangers and dead men – are the very basis of his life as a human being.
“The consciousness of men does not determine their material existence; nor does their material existence determine their consciousness. Between consciousness and existence stand meanings and designs and communications which other men have passed on – first, in human speech itself, and later, by the management of symbols. These received and manipulated interpretation decisively influence such consciousness as men have of their existence. They provide the clues to what men see, to how they respond to it, to how they feel about it, and to how they respond to these feelings. Symbols focus experience; meanings organize knowledge, guiding the surface perceptions of an instant no less than the aspiration of a lifetime. Every man, to be sure, observes nature, social events, and his own self; but he does not, he has never, observed most of what he takes to be fact, about nature, society, or self.
“Every man interprets what he observes – as well as much that the has not observed: but his terms of interpretation are not his own; he has not personally formulated or even tested them. Every man talks about observations to others: but the terms of his reports are much more likely than not the phrases and images of other people which he has taken over as his own. For most of what he calls solid fact, sound interpretation, suitable presentation, every man is increasingly dependent upon the observation posts, the interpretation centers, the presentation depots, which in contemporary society are established by means of what I am going to call the cultural apparatus.”
C. Wright Mills, “The Cultural Apparatus,” in Power, Politics, and People: The Collected Essays of C. Wright Mills, p. 405-406
May as well put cards on the table. I think we’re fubarred. I think that we’ve now left it “too late” and a grim meathook future is all we have to look forward too. There is probably still time to learn a bunch of new skills, use our technology specifically to soften the coming climate blows. But we (and by we I mean entirely culpable middle-class people like me with freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of information) seem more interested in diverting ourselves, and in believing the soothing bullshit about the Paris Agreement and shiny new technologies.
Right, that said, I went to a bunch of mostly excellent sessions at the Adelaide Festival of Ideas today. (Saturday 14th) One of them was on environmental justice (forms of justice – energy, climate, transitions, are a big topicwith academics, btw). With my “even though we’re fubarred we have to act as if we’re not blah blah Gramscian optimism blah blah” hat on, I asked the panellists my curly “if you had a time machine and could warn your younger self” question. The answers were interesting, but imo incomplete. So this blog post will take you through
the outline of who said what during the panel
my question and the gist of the panellists’ answers
the answer I would have given
oh, there’s also
how the panel could have been done differently
an appeal from GetUp! about the Federal Government trying to bully them into silence
The panel was chaired by Andrew P. Street, and the panellists were Peter Owen, (who heads up the South Australian Wilderness Society), Mark Diesendorf (who has been working on renewable energy – as a scientist, activist and policy wonk – for four decades), Professor Fiona Haines (a criminologist, has written The Paradox of Regulation) and Miriam Lyons (who has worked for various outfits, is now with GetUp! Of which more later). The format was simple – questions from the chair to each of the speakers, and then the floor would be open for questions from the audience (which was very white, and very old – where are the young people? Does a Festival of Ideas not appeal? Are they all working second and third jobs to pay for their smashed avocado toast?)
Street started with a very good question – “what got you involved in environmental action/activism?”
For Diesendorf it was the realisation that his PhD thesis – on the physics of the centre of the sun – was being used by hydrogen bomb makers at Lawrence Livermore. That led him into activism with groups like Scientists for Social Responsibility.
Fiona Haines had started out looking at white colour crime – her PhD had looked at how companies responded to the deaths of workers, and she then looked at the impact on trade practices from mass She made the (entirely valid and frankly terrifying) point that we are at a tipping point, with the oceans emptying of fish while filling with plastic, heatwaves getting hotter… (see blog post about Wednesday’s event at the Adelaide Sustainability Centre).
Peter Owen told of playing on the (closed) mouth of the River Murray in 1981, and later realising birds and dolphins were disappearing. His father getting sued over Hindmarsh Island bridge protesting led to an interest in law. (This is the clearest case of the four of how “significant life experiences affect environmental action”, i.e. unstructured and unsupervised play in ‘nature’ before the age of 11 may well lead to a life long passion for “the environment”). He and the Wilderness Society are now trying to stop oil companies taking a great big and very unhealthy bite out of the Great Australian Bight…
Miriam Lyons said that she was an environmental activist – taking examples of “pollushun” to school show and tell before she could spell, and sending a protest letter to Indonesian dictator Suharto about rainforest destruction when she was 6 or 7. Contact with legendary public servant John Menadue and mutual frustration about the left being good at saying what it was against but not what it was for led to the creation of the Centre for Policy Development. Frustration with the ALP’s ability to adopt progressive rhetoric without the policy follow through has led her to other work, including Get Up! She gave a shout out to its work on a policy blueprint to make the energy transition fairer. (Not sure if she was referring to the 2016 Homegrown Energy Plan, done with Solar Citizens, or something newer).
Street then mentioned that lots of things don’t work when trying to get change, and asked the panellists to talk things that DO work.
Lyons gave the example of what Get Up! did after the 2016 election when the Turnbull government tried to abolish the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (history lesson – it had been set up under the Gillard government as part of the Clean Energy Future package – both ALP and Greens claim credit for the idea. Crucially, the Greens insisted it not be under the control of the then-Energy minister Martin Ferguson, who now chairs the advisory board of the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association). GetUp! took a decision to make ARENA’s work tangible, putting up billboards in the marginal electorates where ARENA had funded projects, getting supporters to do emails, phone calls and the physical delivery of reports to the MP’s office. She said “whenever you’re being told that you’re being counter-productive/you’d catch more flies with honey” it’s not true and you’re very close to winning if you go a bit harder.”
Fiona Haines said there were two things that make a difference. Firstly, understanding the importance of political risk. Government responses to disasters (not just environmental – could be a factory fire/collapse etc) is framed by political risk i.e. dealing with the political and economic fallout from the disaster. This they do in two ways (1) by reassuring people that they are safe and secure (or that they are the only party that can do so) and (2) by protecting their revenue and the conditions for capital investment. Dealing with the physical, technical and engineering elements is secondary to this and gets pushed aside. We can’t expect governments not to do deal with political risk (it is part of a capitalist democracy’s DNA) .– but the challenge is making sure they see that they do so in a way that also deals with the physical aspects of the disaster. Understanding this can help direct public campaigns and outrage a little better. Secondly, Secondly she spoke on CSG protests and AGL’s divestment, saying that it’s a complex story, including the fact that AGL only had limited exposure in any case, and that investors guides to the market had made a difference. (See Haines et al. 2016. Taming business? A critical analysis of AGL’s decision to divest from coal seam gas). For Haines, it’s not about individual pressures/tactics but how the pieces fit together (exactly. It’s synergies and consistent/persistent pressure(s) not singular moments).
Mark Diesendorf related the story of Franklin Roosevelt telling a civil society pressure group “you’ve convinced me, now get out there and make me do it.” He said that lobbying is useless without further pressure, with positive results coming from community groups (Solar Citizens, 100% renewables, ACF, Greenpeace, Get Up!)
So, that all took rather a long time. There was only time for one question and I got lucky (i.e. I am a huge white middle-class male who put up his hand early and made eye contact with the chair). What I said was something very similar to this:
Thanks to the panel. In 1988 there was a Greenhouse 88 conference that many people in this room probably remember. We’ve known about this problem for thirty years, but it’s getting worse. So, if the panellists had a time machine and could go back then, what advice would they give? Do we need to do more of the same – more marches, more people dressed in penguin costumes, or do we need to do something ELSE, something different?
Here’s my best approximation of what the panellists said. It’s followed by my critique/attempt at an answer to that question.
Lyons: Be unafraid about how risky our situation is Don’t worry about frightening people into inaction if you have a proportionate action to suggest/help with. “The world is burning – change your light bulbs” is no good, but “the world is burning we need to get the right promises from politicians and then hold them to account” is better. Honesty about the scale of the problems and the scale of the solutions is needed. If we go through the lens of politicians and CEOs about ‘achievability’ we get nowhere. We need to drag the political opportunity structures over to the physical activity level.
Owen: Incrementalism has been wrong. We’ve got to go flat out. There’s no future in 20-30 years if not dealt with immediately. We’ve been in a ‘transitions’ phase for three generations. When war approaches, we down tools and act, collectively.
Haines: I was at a community event in NSW, where the town was split on the subject of fossil fuels excavation nearby and someone said “why is it wrong to care about the Great Barrier Reef?” The context was that they were getting grief from other people in town who thought caring about the environment meant not caring about human well-being. So, we have to have justice as part of what we talk about.
So, good answers in as far as the y go, but mostly addressed to ‘messaging’ and ‘mobilising’. Here’s what I’d have (tried to) say. Underneath are some hyperlinks to other things I’ve written.
Over the last thirty years we’ve made a series of what can be termed mistakes, but seemed like good ideas at the time. We’ve spent time, credibility and energy within ‘consultative’ policy development processes which ended in minimal and tokenistic action or NO action, leaving us demoralised and discredited.
We’ve tried to build common cause with some unions – see the Green Jobs Unit, the Green Goldrush campaign – but have been naïve about the power of a few unions who see coal jobs as basically sacrosanct.
Above all else, we’ve confused mobilising with movement-building. It’s easier to get people out for a march or a protest. These can invigorate, give hope. But they can also lead to people thinking ‘I’ve done my bit’, and they suck up enormous amounts of time and bandwidth. They can lead to a cycle of emotathons…
It’s even more important to grow social movement organisation groups, so they can hold meetings that are welcoming, appealing to new people, that can absorb the energy and skills of people who can’t come to endless meetings and don’t necessarily want to be part of activist subcultures. This panel is an example of this – a set of experts at the front of the room, telling the assembled rows of ‘ego-fodder’ the truth. We should have been more interested in creating links among you, and finding out what skills, knowledge and connections you have, and what skills, knowledge and connections you need to become powerful active citizens. We’ve got to stop meeting like this.
We need to go to people – especially old people, poor people, minorities etc and listen, and work with not at or on. And we are doing that – “powerful conversations” – but we needed to be doing it 30 years ago.
Ask the audience to do reflections on ‘what is environmental justice’ etc. that can be shared on the website.
Marc Hudson is finishing his PhD. No, honestly. His writing on (on climate policy, renewables etc) has appeared in The Conversation, reneweconomy.com.au and in various Australian newspapers He is researching an article on the “Greenhouse 88” conference (especially the Adelaide element). If you were at it, he would love to hear from you. Also, please pass this on to anyone who was at the event. Email: marcmywords@gmail.com Phone: 04979 32031
That GetUp! Email.
We haven’t seen anything like this before.
The Turnbull Government recently passed new police state laws that threaten our movement’s ability to campaign for a fair, flourishing and just Australia.1,2
Actions that merely harm the government’s reputation on political or economic matters can now be prosecuted as serious national security offences. So peaceful blockades of Adani coal operations, or exposing the truth about child abuse on Nauru to the UN, could carry prison sentences of up to 25 years.3
Don’t think they’ll do it? Well, in what independent MP Andrew Wilkie has called “an act of bastardry”, the Turnbull Government just authorised the prosecution of ‘Witness K’ and their lawyer for exposing potentially illegal actions by the Howard Government.4,5
It’s all having a huge chilling effect on GetUp’s campaign plans. That’s why today all of us, as GetUp’s lead campaigners, are taking the unusual step of contacting you, together.
We urgently need to build up our people-powered Civil Defence Fund to get the best, ongoing legal advice on how these new anti-democratic laws apply to our campaigns. But it doesn’t stop there, because if we can gather enough ongoing support we’re going to prepare for a potential constitutional challenge – that could see these laws struck down in the High Court.
But in order to take on the power of a government hell bent on suppressing truth and dissent we need a fresh new tide of members to join our GetUp Crew, who make a weekly contribution to support our work.
Last night we held frantic teleconferences with whistleblowers and activists who want to shine a light on the abuse of children in Australia’s detention camps on Nauru. The question we asked each other was: could we face a 25 year prison sentence for doing so?
And if Stop Adani activists blockade roads to coal ports or mines, Attorney-General Christian Porter may decide to prosecute this peaceful act of protest as “sabotage” – punishable by up to 7 years behind bars. He could do the same for protests against the secretive TPP trade deal, breaches of international law or even people protesting against Australia going to war.6
This is the same Christian Porter who authorised the prosecution of Witness K, and their lawyer, for exposing the Howard Government’s dodgy spying operation against East Timor, to swindle the impoverished nation out of billions in natural resources.
That’s why we need to build up a people-powered fund to give us access to the best legal firepower available, to ensure these laws don’t erode our ability to campaign, or indeed our democracy.
We urgently need to know how these new anti-democratic laws could impact our campaigns. And we have a legal brief ready to put into the hands of a high-powered law firm with a track record of beating back abuse of government power.
We’re also in this fight for the long haul. We’re ready to talk to some of the best barristers in the nation about a possible constitutional challenge. Can you imagine being part of a landmark High Court case to defend the freedom of political speech?
But we’re up against the full might of a Federal Government that’s on a mission to bully, silence and raze its political opponents to the ground. We can’t do any of this without a brave new tide of supporters joining our GetUp Crew.
