Category: Development + Economic Globalization

The Power of Scale

(2003) John Bodley

 

 

 

 

Bodley distinguishes two broad streams, or perspectives, in sociology – and claims that the model he presents in Power of Scale bridges them. One is the “interpretive, symbolic or postmodern” approach. This view, using Bodley’s example of feudal Southeast Asia, “emphasiz[es] cultural meanings and symbolic views … describ[ing] political rulers as benevolent figureheads who were primarily concerned with building temples, hosting ritual spectacles, and protecting the populace”. Under this account, I suppose, Bodley subsumes the views of those who hold that inequitable distribution of wealth is something of a necessary evil towards greater goals like the Hubble Space Telescope, Le Louvre, and the Great Pyramid of Giza. Continue reading The Power of Scale

Biofuels and the Globalization of Risk

(2010) James Smith

In writing this book, Smith sets his sights on more than just the consequences and risks, global and local, wrought by the (imprudent, he argues) adoption of biofuel technology and -policy.  His is also a deeper and more general meditation on the present Era’s faith in technology: “This narrow perspective, of looking to first-, second- and third-generation technologies to deal with the world that confronts us, blinds us to the teleologies that led us there in the first place.”  Biofuels present an ideal lens through which to cast light on this simple and profound observation. Continue reading Biofuels and the Globalization of Risk

Unto This Last

(1862) John Ruskin

“So far as I know, there is not in history record of anything so disgraceful to the human intellect as the modern idea that the commercial text, “Buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest,” represents, or under any circumstances could represent, an available principle of national economy. Buy in the cheapest market? yes; but what made your market cheap? Charcoal may be cheap among your roof timbers after a fire, and bricks may be cheap in your streets after an earthquake; but fire and earthquake may not therefore be national benefits. Sell in the dearest? — Yes, truly; but what made your market dear? You sold your bread well to-day: was it to a dying man who gave his last coin for it, and will never need bread more; or to a rich man who to-morrow will buy your farm over your head; or to a soldier on his way to pillage the bank in which you have put your fortune?”

Fantastic.  What took me so long to discover Ruskin?  Had I discovered him sooner, I would have discovered some of my own conclusions on the subject of Political Economy sooner, too.

Text: http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=RusLast.xml&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=all

Audio: http://librivox.org/unto-this-last-four-essays-on-the-first-principles-of-political-economy-by-john-ruskin/

A Triad of Marxist Classics

Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels

Value, Price and Profit (1865), Karl Marx

Wage-labour and Capital (1847-1849), Karl Marx

When told what has been occupying me for several hours today, several people reacted with surprise: “You mean you haven’t read that before!?”  (Parenthetically, it turned out on each of these occasions that the disappointees had themselves, in point of fact, never read the Manifesto or the other works either.)  So now I have.  The comments below are highly simplistic, and I am almost embarrassed to reveal them here. Continue reading A Triad of Marxist Classics