Book Summary "Overheating: : An Anthropology of Accelerated Change", Sintesi del corso di Antropologia

Scarica Book Summary "Overheating: : An Anthropology of Accelerated Change" e più Sintesi del corso in PDF di Antropologia solo su Docsity! Overheating by T. Hylland Eriksen Chapter 1: Le monde est trop plein Lévi-Strauss + the world is too full; he referred to the fact that the world was filled by people, their projects, material products of their activities. The world is overheated. The popularity ofthe term ‘globalization’ started in the same period of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of apartheid and the coming of the internet (1989/1990); in this period, we have the creation of a global moral community. The world had been transformed into a single moral space. However, it is only in the last decades that the word ‘globalization’ has entered into common usage and it may be said that capitalism, globally hegemonic since the 19°" century, is now becoming universal. In fact, nowadays it is difficult to find groups of people living independently of a monetised economy. The friction between the systems of value and morality started to characterise the modern world. Contradictions It is an interconnected world but not an integrated one. Rights, duties, opportunities and constraints continue to be unevenly distributed. One fundamental contradiction consists inthe chronic tension between the universalising forces of global modernity and the desire for autonomy in the local community or society. Globalization>+ does not lead to global homogeneity, but it highlights a tension between the system world the life-world, between the standardised and the unique, the universal and the particular. The relationship between economic development and human sustainability is also a chronic one, and it constitutes the most fundamental double-bind of the 21° century capitalism. TRADE- OFF between economy and sustainability it is the most important contradiction of our global system. We can conclude that our globally interconnected world could be described through its tendency to generate chronic crises, being complex in such a way as to be ungovernable, volatile and full of unintended consequences; the major transformations of globalization involve the environment, economy or identity. Accelerated growth The first fact about the contemporary world is accelerate growth. the fastest growth does not take place in the realm of the population; there are several domains in which we can observe a significant growth, such as the access to internet, migration, tourism, urbanisation, international trade. However, not all change accelerates and not everything that changes has similarly momentous consequences. Two changes are worth mentioning to better understand the contemporary world: Population growth and the increase of energy use. Since we are now seven times as many as we used to be at the end of the Napoleonic wars, it comes as no surprise that we use more energy today; but the crucial point is that energy use has grown much faster than the world population. the direct consequence of it are pollution and environmental degradation. Unfortunately, we still struggle with finding an alternative; The acceleration of history the author suggests 1991 as key year in which the transition from modernity to postmodernity started. This is the year during which the conflict between capitalism and socialism ended, at the same time the Cold War came to and end. Moreover, the Indian economy was deregulated and Mandela had been released by prison. In a nutshell, in this period the future of the world seemed to consist in a version of global neoliberalism, that in a few years revealed to be not that good. In fact, social inequalities continued to exist and in some countries they grew enormously. Furthermore, to millions of people freedom of neoliberalism deregulation means insecurity and reduced autonomy. Chapter 2: A conceptual inventory Economic, cultural and other forms of change are currently uneven paced. This leads to instability, uncertainty and unintended consequences which can locally be best understood as crises of reproduction. Since we don't even know what those are, Eriksen is dedicating this chapter to our education. Anthropocene: the name given to the current geological era characterized by global human domination. The repercussions of human action are noticeable even in areas where humans have not ever set foot. In this era the conception of nature has shifted: it went from being culture’s threatening opposite to something fragile and weak that must be taken care of by humans. The Anthropocene is nothing but a global (large-scale) conceptualization of a set of overheating effects. Neoliberalism: a particular kind of market-oriented economic ideology and practice characteristic of the late XX/early XXI century. It began around 1980 under the form of cuts in public expenditure and the encouragement of the development of competitive markets whenever possible. According to David Harvey, neoliberalism proposes that human wellbeing can be best advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade. The role of the State is to create and preserve an institutional framework appropriate to such practices. Neoliberal policies have been pursued in basically every part of the world. In economic anthropology, the question concerned whether the economy should be viewed mainly as maximizing behavior (formalism) or as the social organization of production, distribution and consumption. Neoliberalism allowed communication to have a global reach, but it suffocates the possibility to have a powerful ideological alternative. People are starting to be disillusioned with the large-scale Chapter 3: Energy As Trawick and Hornborg wrote, “economic growth is a physically destructive process rather than a creative one. Energy enters in human life in a multitude of ways creating scarcities, inequalities and environmental concerns. The issues related to energy are addressed in different ways. Some believe that solar power will save the climate, while others emphasize the continued importance of coal, gas and oils. Coal planet Coal and modernity are two sides of the same coin, since it fostered industry, the exponential population growth, steamships, locomotives and factories. The exact dating of the onset of the Anthropocene remains an open discussion, but a meaningful starting point would be around the year 1800, the beginning of the fossil fuel age. Since 1800 the population has grown sevenfold, but also our energy use has grown 28 times. We may argue that with oil and gas the era of coals has come to an end, in the West we no longer smell the smoke and breath the dust, and there are advantages in using oil and gas such as the fact that their production and distribution do not require much labour and it is controlled by the governments Anyway as Mitchell writes in “Carbon Democracy”, the political power is not just related to the ability to produce, control and distribute energy, but also to stop the flow of energy. For this reason, coal mines are more democratic than oil platforms. Coal remains a popular source of energy, and its consumption continues to increase. The global dependence on fossil fuels, and the success we have in extracting and utilising them represents one of the main narratives about the Anthropocene and its contradictions. Thinking about energy There is no indication that humanity will be able to survive in a peaceful way without a steady and reliable source of energy. If we look at climate and environment from an overheating perspective we must focus on the relationship between capitalist expansion and environmental degradation. Climate change must be seen in relation to extractive industries -->Example: Mining industry in the Zambian Copperbelt The mining operations are owned by transnational companies. They have their head offices outside the country, so in order to get started they first have to negotiate with the Sierra Leonean Government and with local chiefs and landowners. Moreover the success of this industry depends on the situation on the global commodities market. Locally the effects of the mining boom have increased prosperity, but also inequality and health problems -->The relationship between energy and the human condition remains unstudied The energy-affluent... Jeremy Rifkin: “The third industrial revolution” + the combined outcome of solar power and internet communication will transform capitalism decentralising the world economy of communication and strengthening the local communities -->everyone can produce its own energy limiting the State-power -->clash of scale: the small-scale alternative communities may be self-sufficient in energy, but they cannot be scaled up without losing their character, or there is no sign that this mode of leaving will spread soon Example: In Norway the most part of the energy used comes from the hydroelectric plants, but they one of the main oil exporters. This duality reveals a double-bind where growth in energy use and ecological sustainability ae desired, but it is impossible to achieve both at the same time. Solastalgic me jlons Another type of energy is food energy. In the near future we will have to feed 9 or even 12 billion people, but even if we reduce food waste, meat consumption and we improve distribution, a large part of the population should revert to manual agricular work. Food is energy as is coal, gas and electricity and the contemporary consumption is unsustainable. Chapter 4: Mobility With the accelerated contact between previously distant parts of the world, not only communication is facilitated, but so are misunderstanding and disagreements (i.e. the Danish cartoon crisis which lead to riots in Muslim countries). Not only was communication of the crisis overheated, but also its reaction. Financial crises lead to a cooling down of economies. In fact, accelerated change doesn't necessarily implies that everything speeds up. Overheating processes hide cooling down places, activities or domains. First, accelerated change can't last forever. Second, there is a direct relationship between overheating and cooling down (even if the sun shines, there will be places left in shade). Third, different parts of a culture change at different speed. One of the hugest characteristics of our overheated world is increased mobility. As a percentage of the world's population, the proportion of international migrants is lower than it was right before WWI, but the absolute number are higher. Different forms of mobility have increased in the last decades: global air traffic grew by 60 per cent and, at a more local scale, in China more cars were sold in 2012 alone that the entire number of car present in the country in 1999. Labour migration has vastly accelerated; although it is hard to distinguish between refugees and labour migrants. Besides that, most of them have to make a living anyway in their new county and millions of them send money to their families in their home country, called remittances. We have two contrasting kinds of pressure point concerning mobility from an “overheating” perspective: globalization involves time-space compression, so while tourist are celebrated for their powers to shrink distances and connect territories, migrants of any type are discriminated for the same reason. Tourism bubbles Bali is a clear example of touristic eden which in reality is drastically different from what is sold. Piles of rubbish inundate beaches and water. Waste of the proliferating tourism facilities end up in the sea without treatment. When you cross the street to buy a drink, you are likely to find international brands but you won't find a local newspaper. Bali is densely populated reaching 4 million inhabitants and growing. It is said that Balinese culture has been immune from foreign influence, and it has definitely shown resilience. Tourists were worrying about their impact on local cultures, so a particular kind of tourist arose. The so-called anti-tourists arethose who seek out for destinations which do not normally attract visitors. Tourism exists in a growing variety of forms. Some participate in ecologically responsible tourism (but they travel by plane), some want to travel to poor countries to make themselves useful and engage in charitable activities to feel better about their wealthy condition. Some prefer to visit well- defined places with a defined history and culture, while some opt for non-places which are generic. Since the turn of the millennium, tourism has changed its character and has become an example of overheated modernity. For example, Dubai shifted from being a fishing village to a global financial centre and that came along with a price, not only in terms of human suffering (Burj Khalifa built by underpaid south Asian workers) but also by polluting the river and ending life for millions of fishes. Demographically, the biggest change has consisted in the predominance of Chinese. Since restrictions were erased, millions of Chinese have been able to travel abroad for the first time. Overnight, Chinese became the largest moving and spending nationality in international tourism. The most dramatic qualitative change in international tourism has been the fact that local communities exist for the benefit of tourists. A major trend concerns the commercialization of identity and attempts to achieve copyright in cultural products, in order to be able to commercialize locally rather than being overrun by large-scale companies. \ The increase in tourism and tourist-like mode of existence is a result of a globally integrated economy, growing mobility, inequalities and a middle-class focused on consumption rather than production. So, these places are defined by tourism, not the other way around. Global tourism growth is possible thanks to the abundance of fossil fuels. It's growth happened at continuous speed but with unintended consequences, like overpopulation and loss of local character. Global tourism is an important part, and is made possible by, the deregulation of markets. In fact, investments by transnational corporations in tourism infrastructure have increased and it made possible to have cheaper flights, less bureaucracy and more profits to be gained. Tourism is a major factor in upbringing the Anthropocene. The lamented cultural homogenization produced by globalization is evident in tourism centers. Tourism is a common language shared by a growing part of the world's population. Tourism operates at many scales and contributes to peculiar forms of scaling locally. For instance, the child who says s/he wants to become a tourist has developed a cognitive scale enabling transnational comparisons able to generate an imaginary that connects them to faraway locations. The double bind of tourism has another aspect besides the main one which is growth and sustainability. That is compromising local autonomy for the sake of participating in a system of global scale, while the shift from local to transnational scale also reduces flexibility. For example, the post-9/11 caused fear of flying or the 2007-8 global financial crisis, large-scale events influence small-scale conditions. A different form of mobility/immobility, which reveals overheating effects concerns the waves of refugees trying to find peace and security. What they have in common is mobility but the tourist is a voluntary traveler who is welcomed when s/he arrives, while the refugee is forced to travel and is not received with enthusiasm. cognitive scales. The growth of the cities is conceivable as a runaway process, uncontrolled, unplanned and unpredictable. As some theorists believe, the Roman Empire collapsed mainly because of the unsustainable expansions project in Britannia: growth usually increases flexibility at the individual level but reduces it at the societal scale. In fact, modern cities are more complex and less autonomous than rural lands, making them less flexible (the longer the chain to get ... (food, energy, etc.) the more likely to break). Another problem with complexity is the increase in vulnerability: the butterfly effect really gets cities: -even if 99/100 pieces are present, the machine can't work until the last piece arrives -an error in the railway gets 100000 people late to work. The city is the embodiment of the central double-bind being: the more it grows, the less sustainable it becomes (pollution, epidemics, etc.). A city inhabitant knows far more people than in rural society: town folks enlarge their social scale. - Communication Gutenberg's invention of printing, enhanced flexibility in the transmission of information but led to the loss of flexibility in linguistic variation (simplified idiom). Same with the telephone. - Informality (Black Economy/Market) In the Global South we encounter diverse, not registered, underground economies, (being: trade, barter, gifting), which, on the contrary of formal “artificial” economy, hold many societal values (trust, honour, security).Informality has also influenced the global North: for starters, the now “popular “precariat is a mixture of informal and formal labour, registered but uncertain; many workers, especially of small-scale businesses, discreetly ask you whether you want the receipt or not. Whereas in the South, most of the labour is informal and could be described as a “improvisational survivalism”. Black economy is extremely flexible because unsuccess’s (f.e. bankruptcy) are only devastating at the personal, not societal level(if there is a blackout and no water or energy are available, informal workers can go past it because they don't really use them anyway). Even though informality requires borders and clandestinely to be profitable(with its own risks of being caught, usually inversely proportional to the size of the organisation...mafiosi can bribe), it created a better neoliberalism where trade is actually free, and it promoted consumerism and more workplaces. Actually, the majority of formal economies depend on informal labour, because cheaper and not taxed, in effect the two typologies of economy are strictly interconnected and complementary (informal trade follows formal investments). If informality could look great on paper, it's still useful to remind ourselves that it doesn't create large-scale systems, it doesn't pay for societal infrastructures, and, as a matter of fact, it weakens the public sector. - Superdiversity The Superdiversity concept, introduced by Vetrovec, is about people migrating from many places to many places, increasingly differentiating the urban situation. Migrants, following such an idea, have ambiguous and fluctuating plans (Poles in Norway don't know how much time they will spend working there, because they have the chance to come and go away from Poland in a matter of few hours in very cheap flights provided by Ryanair or Norwegian; actually, they are not even true migrants because still resident in Poland).Superdiversity leads to the mixing of both languages and cultures, but also “Transmigration”, an older concept, puts into contact various states because migrants, for social and bureaucratic reasons, must keep in contact with both the host and home country. The main question about migration is: will itcreate more solidarity or violence? Both. There are people who learn from it(how to communicate effectively, socialise, new skills), but others create opposite feelings in the society(nationalism, religious fundamentalism, racism). Overheating is mainly created by the latter group and by terrorist, who increase awareness of vulnerability. Superdiversity is an effect of the Anthropocene. This is not really caused by Neoliberalism because it only encourages migrants who are capable of producing and consuming, the rest are a burden for the State(immigrants need more state support than they contribute through taxes). Migration also presents a clash of scales since it's useful for some states, who increase consumption, but unprofitable for other governments which assist to brain drains. Usually the social scale improves, but we encounter a clash of cognitive scales(humanitarian vs. nationalist groups f.e.). It cannot be considered a runaway process because migration is rigorously controlled through legislation,controls,treaties etc., but it could change into one. Superdiversity can be both flexible, in accordance to the creation of culturally diverse societies, but it can also lose such flexibility in cases of correlated violence which affect the whole population. Chapter 6: Waste Recycling is becoming a major industry in the Global North, as the Global South becomes increasingly polluted and turned in wastelands by rapid economic growth without a parallel development of waste management of waste > richer countries tend to produce more wastes, and they tend either to recycle those wastes or to expert them to poorer countries + in the Global North the waste problem has approached the double bind “growth vs sustainability”, since from a practical problem it has become a flagship in municipal environmental policies > the new northern ideology about recycling is based on the idea that all kinds of waste should be returned to the place to which they belong Waste > matter out of place, as a result of affluence and surplus + comparison with Sartre’s view of what generates nausea: liminal phenomena, the anomalies, in- between things Value creation + concept based on the fact that values is extracted from the rubbish in a country with cheap labour and returned to the rich country in the shape of a product devoid of any trace of the history of its components (ex. I throw away my old computer, it is brought to China where its pieces are reused to create a new computer) Landfill + in many places it is seen as a source of opportunities, enabling thousands of otherwise unemployed people to make a living recycling other people's waste (see Warao'’s example) Human waste + an effect of overheating, regarding the exclusion of humans from sociality and meaningful activities > cities of the Global South are forced to support more people than they were intended for, and as a consequence many of them (especially migrants) become metaphorical waste, since they are inefficient consumers and poor contributors to the GDP > double bind neoliberal practices vs human rights principles > contradiction between universal human rights and the neoliberal grading of human value on an economic scale Examples: Great Pacific Garbage Patch > discovered in 1998, a floating island made up of plastic thrown into the sea on both sides of the Pacific Ocean and currently situated between Oregon and Hawaii Fresh Kills + world's largest rubbish dump and the largest human-made structure on the planet until 2001 when it was closed, situated on Staten Island Warao + indigenous people settled on the rivers of Orinoco rivers in Venezuela and Western Guyana that have been increasingly exposed to the modern world > their villages are near Ciudad Guyana, a rapidly growing industrial city, that stores its waste in the landfill of Cambalache > Warao people have started to travel to the landfill to collect items and some of them have settled there, creating an informal economy inside and around the dump > they are living a loss of flexibility, resulting from the shift from the rural to the “dump?” life, that is transforming them into an underclass of a large-scale society Chapter 7: Information overload -Speedy transnational communication has developed speedily: information is the field where exponential growth has been more visible since the 80°s -Massive intensification of Internet has brought people from all over the world to spend more of their time communicating and accessing information online -Another consequence of the Internet intensification isthe fragmentation of information into ever small packets: attention span shrunk and ability to absorb and digest information is now limited to fragments, short texts (web engines encourage specialisation and polarisation of distributed information online) -Information revolution reflects, strengthens and transforms global inequalities: most people in the Global South don’t have access to Internet; moreover, there are also inequalities inside the southern environment: Indians and Brazilians are more online and connected than Nigerians and Afghanis. The poorer the country in terms of GDP, the less internet used inside it -With the spread of inexpensive mobiles, the digital divide between North and South has become smaller: migrants are capable of staying regularly in contact with their families overseas -The virtual mobility enhanced the physical mobility of people, at the point where the runaway growth of mobile telephony and internet use may be considered similar to the runaway growth in human mobility -Instantaneous communication accelerates social interaction, intensifies communication and amplifies the kinds of acceleration seen in other domains -The shift from physical mediums of information storage to electronic ones has made quantification difficult and exponential growth inevitable: this leads, for example, to problems of intellectual orientation and to a feeling of fatigue due to information overload even those who deny the reality of climate change. In general, the more large-scale and distant is deemed responsible for misfortune the most difficult it is to understand who to blame, but it is psychologically and socially necessary to do so. Nevertheless, attributing blame to world system can deflect attention from local conflicts and responsibilities. Scaling up, down and sideways Finding the responsible for a social critique is not straightforward in a multiscalar world where levels can be difficult to distinguish. In rich-country debates about climate change, politicians scale down to the level of the individual citizens, while green activists and NGOs scale up by blaming the politicians for not having implemented laws, regimes and regulations. So, responses to overheating effects entail one of the three ways of scaling the problems: scaling up, scaling down or scaling sideways. Scaling up refers to the belief that it should be handled at a higher systemic level. The reasoning has to go supranational and it has to act for the benefit of the system. Typical examples of upscaling are international climate summits to end in treaties, trade agreements, international laws and transnational environmental politics. ‘Major transitions’ take place when higher-level coordination is capable of enabling higher-order phenomena and lower-order phenomena to rely on each other. Attempts have been made to apply this mechanism to human social organization. Using Norway as an example of a society with little tension between low and high levels of scale, Wilson and Hessen, argue that the logic of the village, based on trust and reciprocity, can be expanded at the level of a multiscale society. The objection is that the village is non-scalable and even small and homogenous society like Norway relies on large-scale institutions, legislation and sanctions. First, countries like Norway cannot serve as a model since they are untypical. Second, shifting from the nation-state level to the planetary level may be unrealistic. Third, it should be remembered that the high level of prosperity, trust and equality enjoyed by Norway is financed by an economic growth based on oil and gas. Scaling up politically, to the global level, is based on the conviction that the problems facing humanity cannot be addressed by communities or States alone. Scaling down is based on the view that abstract entities are unable to build the trust necessary for equality and sustainability, disempowering the local level. Small scale was superior to large scale since it ensured moral accountability, quality and ecological responsibility in ways that were more difficultto handle at an abstract level of scale. Contemporary people living in complex societies have lost ecological insights that were taken for granted in small-scale societies. Yet global modernity cannot expect small-scale traditional societies to solve its own contradictions. Small-scale alternatives can supplement large-scale organization, but they cannot replace the coordinating, higher levels of scale. Scaling sideways is more diverse and less straightforward, since it is activated at many different levels of scale. Sideways scaling can operate on various systemic levels. It can be global in its ambitions (as global environmental or Islamist movements), or tiny (as networks of support à remittances that build up the economy in which the significant others of the migrants live.) The overheated world is a large-scale that dominates small-scale. For example, small traditions may coexist with large traditions, but they are marginalized. The dialectics of globalization concern the tension, not between ‘the global and the local’, but between the abstract and formal, the universal and the specific. One significant aspect of overheating is competition; runaway processes with no ceiling or regulating thermostat. The ceiling does exist, but from the logic of economic growth it is made invisible. If we consider human survival through ecological sustainability, it is necessary to distinguish between renewable and non-renewable resources. Renewable can be sold and bought since it can be recovered; non-renewable must be protected. Similarly, to fossil fuels, identity cannot be sold and bought; a non-renewable resource without which past, present and future lose their significance. It cannot be mass produced and if it universalized, it ends up being simplified. The possibility of global conversation Cultural creols + people “created” by globalisation that live in the intersection between different cultural traditions, constantly receiving many impulses from different angles > precisely because overheating processes now are universal and epidemic, the conditions for a fruitful global conversations are better than any time in the past