Networks, scale, sustainability

This morning at the Rethinking Marxism conference we went to a panel on “agrifood alternatives” (F6 on your programs). The talks were interesting, and the Greek guy actually talked to the audience about what he knows rather than reading a paper, which was nice. I had to step out for the one on family farm feudalism, but Rachel, who grew up on a family farm in family farm country, said she got it wrong by reading the organization of farm labor through a formalistic egalitarian ethic rather than understanding the trade-offs, reciprocities, constraints and affordances of the cultural form ethnographically.

One of the issues for the panelists was the sustainability of independent organic farming. There seemed to be some agreement between the two practical panelists that smallholder farming was only sustainable with substantial exchange networks enabling distribution of knowledge, goods and labor. This has historically been true, of course; either holdings are large enough to integrate essential resources and functions, or smaller units have to find ways to pool. Over lunch we talked about things like churches, Granges, barn raisings, guilds, Rotary Clubs and so on as this kind of partial or comprehensive networking institution for local communities. Tocqueville’s ’secondary powers’ and Durkheim’s ‘professional ethics and civic morals’ are examples in different contexts of the idea that there have to be ways of organizing community effort and resource between the household and the state.

There’s both some mythology and some truth to the idea that these kind of networking processes were self-organizing in traditional agrarian societies. When we say “capitalism” we are often using a shorthand to designate the kinds of networks that are created by markets. Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ points to a dynamic that is at least in principle self-organizing, albeit manipulable by savvy operators. The challenge for marxists and other critics of either system is to figure out how to make network formation more intentional and egalitarian, without losing the affordances (stability, prosperity) of the old self-organizing networks.

Off to another panel, on the economics of art.

Guest post: Chuck Dyke on Edgar Morin

By Chuck Dyke, Temple University. This is a draft of an essay scheduled for publication. All rights reserved.

NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT
The dread of nothing is pretty ironic. The average density of the universe comes out to a couple of hydrogen atoms per cubic meter, so almost nothing is what we’ve got: cosmic minimalism; a huge canvas with a few specks on it. Fortunately (one supposes) at small scales the specks aren’t spattered evenly. Some places the almost nothing has clumped up into the something.

In the same vein, they tell us that the whole shebang is just a particular configuration of the quantum vacuum. Then they tell us that the quantum vacuum, while being nothing, is far from being nothing. Nothing is unstable, so at incredible rates and in incredible profusion it reconfigures itself, as if there were a manic quantum Jackson Pollack in a meth frenzy: swish, swoop, splash and drip. Out of the frenzied blur of combination and recombination came space and time, the possibility of painting and sculpture, and the possibility of music – eventually. So here we are. And for all that, we’re still in the quantum vacuum; and as it expands, faster and faster, it appears, it gets ever more vacuous.

To help me think about vacua, voids, emptiness, and the meaning of nothing, I’d like to enlist the help of Edgar Morin. He’s not all that widely known or remembered these days. That’s a shame, since among writers of the 20th Century he may well provide more that we could profitably learn than most of the others. At a time when arguably the most critical problem facing us all is that of coming into some viable harmony with the planet we live on, I don’t think it would be wise to ignore one who has taken such a deep look at our place in earthly existence. Because his work is so wide ranging, I won’t embark on a silly attempt at a synopsis of his work. Rather, we’ll sample him, and dwell on a few passages useful for the route we want to travel. In fact, we’ll confine ourselves to one of the most central topics in Method: Opening [notes omitted].

The context for understanding opening is embedded in the following:

Thus, the key idea is evident: the environment is permanently constitutive of all the beings which feed in it; it permanently cooperates in their organization. These beings and organizations are, therefore, permanently eco-dependent.
But, in a paradox which is proper to the ecological relation, it’s in this dependence that the autonomy of these beings is woven and constituted.
Such beings can build and maintain their existence, their autonomy, their individuality, their originality only in ecological relation, that is to say in and by dependence on their environment; whence the alpha idea of all ecological thought: the independence of a living being necessitates its dependence with respect to its environment. (p. 202)

For example, the give and take between independence and dependence can go like this: The more I’m willing to engage with my natural environment productively, the less dependent I am on other humans and their institutions. I avoid these dependencies by opening up to the environment through my productive interaction with it – by gardening, for example. But then the wheel turns, I become dependent on the environment, the whims of weather, and so on. You can’t outrun the dependency no matter how hard you try to close yourself off from it. You can only create the illusion of independence. The alternative is to examine the patterns of interaction – the openings – that are ultimately inevitable.

The new Dead Voles

Regular readers may notice that the blog template is new. The change is in honor of the blog’s new author! Asher Kay is stepping back from his own blog, spoonerized alliterations, where he’s currently going out in a blaze of glory. Asher has vowed never to blog again. In the past he has written with swashbuckling intelligence and blood-curdling wit on culture, politics and philosophy. I’m looking forward to seeing what he doesn’t write on here.

I’m really excited about it, but don’t tell Asher. He’ll just get a big head and strut around like he owns the place.

Let all the evil that lurks in the mud hatch out

When students ask “did I miss anything important on Tuesday” or its correlate, “will this be on the test,” they are offering a peek at the creepy-crawlies under a rock most teachers would prefer not to turn over.

The unstated premise is that the class is only a series of exercises in hoop-jumping, trivia of two types: on the test, therefore given use-value only by arbitrary curricular requirements; and not on the test, useless altogether, a complete waste of time.

The fact of their presence in the classroom means that so far in their educational careers they have been pragmatically right, at whatever level of performance that particular classroom represents. The job for good teaching is to change the game so that the way they were right doesn’t work for them any more.

I feel pretty, oh so pretty

On page 4A of yesterday’s N&O I learned that rates of black bass feminization in our rivers are increasing dramatically. One in five male bass surveyed are growing egg cells, compared to only 6% in past data. Seepage from birth control pills and other hormone treatments is suspected to be the cause of this intersexing. Only in Alaska’s Yukon River basin do men remain men.

In juxtaposed news just up the page, it is reported that violent crime continues its historic decline. The ad for the Carolina Ballet at the bottom of the page may be an outlier, however.

Essay rubric

The last page of all my syllabi is an essay rubric. Each student xeroxes this and attaches it to the back of each piece of work they hand in. I developed it in collaboration with my colleagues in the History Department; the idea, with accreditation coming up and grasping after quantitative data like a schopenhauerian Will, was to give us a common metric to compare our students’ performances across a range of consensus criteria. It hasn’t quite worked out like that, but I still find it a valuable tool because it boils down nicely some epistemological lessons I’m trying to teach, I can use it in classroom workshopping of paper drafts, then reinforce it in my evaluation of the final draft while also automating certain very common comments I’d otherwise have to write out for each paper.

A couple things about scoring: it’s a standard 5-point scale for ease of data handling, so 4 and 2 are possible scores while 5/3/1 establish the range of narrative translation. Also, the main purpose of the rubric is to allow comparison within categories; there is no intent to create a more comprehensive or linear valuation among the categories, or to allow the scores to ‘add up’ to a final grade. I use the rubric as a guide to a wholistic grade, weight the left more heavily than the right, and use 1s in any category as epic fails. The rubric explanation, also included in the syllabus, follows here.

There are a lot of this sort of thing out there; this one was developed through an internal process but it’s not particularly original. Please feel free to take it (click to go to .doc file), use it as you see fit, modify it at will, and/or to propose refinements minor and major. In the unlikely event you publish anything related to it we’d appreciate the courtesy of the usual citation, as addressed in column 5.

How much is that in ponies?

I’ve worked through my private amusement enough to speak publicly about the recent revelations concerning compensation packages for retiring administrators returning to teaching in the North Carolina university system. I didn’t exactly snort my coffee when this popped up a week ago on the front page of the Raleigh N&O, but I did stare off into space for awhile.

Among the things I learned from former UNC Chancellor James Moeser (a music professor, and apparently a good one) is that it takes a year at a salary of $390,000 to prepare to team-teach one course; teaching the course, on a 1/1 load, is only worth $117K however. Doing the conversion for my standard 4/4 load plus 1/1 overload, 6 preps, I earned $4,680,000 for preps (each prep worth $390K X 2 for team-taught X 6) and also $4,680,000 oddly enough for teaching ($117K X 4 X 10) last year. I may be off by a zero or two because I’m a humanities guy not a math guy, but Moeser is too and you get the idea. Looking at my actual paycheck, I seem to have discounted my services some.

Moeser, befitting his high station and ticket, is nicely analytical about it all. “There’s no question I have benefited enormously, having the cushion of this time away to reflect and gain a sense of what I want to do,” said Moeser. “Could I have done it without a research leave? Sure. But I would not have been approaching the fall with the same excitement and anticipation as I am.” Thanks, Jim! Now I know what’s been missing from my teaching — excitement and anticipation!

From Beverly W. Jones, historian (go, team!) and ex-Provost of NC Central, I learned that historians, or Provosts, or Black people, or women (all of which she is and ex-Chancellor Moeser is not) are only worth $208,000 annual-rate to prepare for a full slate of teaching! Scandalous. Fortunately Dr. Jones figured out she could do the preps and then just retire, pocketing the money. Way to stick it to The Man, Bev. But I may be giving her bandito cred she doesn’t deserve. Apparently her reason for retiring was that while on prep leave she became interested in a research project on Helen Gray Edmonds, a longtime NCCU history professor, and didn’t think she could do research and teach at the same time. “I found it’s really going to be a monumental study,” she said. “I realized I’d really need the time to do it. Hopefully, I can teach a course after this book is done.” One suspects this interpretation of the mutual exclusivities of the various facets of academic labor would surprise most Tenure and Promotion committees, but it’s nice work if you can get it.

Meanwhile in a prior post on “superstar markets” our friends at orgtheory.net come right to the point and note that “[a]cademia, like many cultural/intellectual markets, has the property that a small slice of the top gets the most rewards. Very non-linear.” Ah-yup. The article Fabio recommends to support this is full of math, so although its assumptions seem awfully fishy it must be right.

Thanks to Mikhail for breaking the seal on this story, also linking InsideHigherEd.

Pick your poison

Like most people I’ve been glued to the health care debate, which has predictably turned into yet another of our great national Rorschach tests. I have no great competence in this area so what follows count only as stray thoughts for further discussion.

The number that gets thrown around for the cost of a government health care package is $1 trillion, which is obviously a lot of money; and the question is, where’s that money going to come from. With government, the answer is either taxes or debt. The funny thing to me is that the side of the debate opposed to this often talk as if this would be brand new money to spend on health care. All of a sudden health care is going to cost a trillion bucks more than before.

In reality, as I understand it, we’re already spending that trillion. And the question is not whether we’re going to spend it or not going forward (it should be, but there are wicked wiggly worms and real live ‘death panels’ in that can). The question is whether we’re going to spend it out of incomes and private debt in the form of insurance premiums and direct payments for care, or whether we’re going to spend it in taxes and public debt which then go to pay for the same services. So at this basic level the debate is not about what health care costs but about who’s going to have their hands in our pockets for it, the government or the health care industry.

In principle it ought to be possible to work out with some precision whether the inefficiencies of government or the profit-taking of big business divert more of our money from the basic purpose of keeping us healthy, and whether private or public payments and debts are more cost effective. The idea to run a government option side-by-side with private insurance would actually be a great lab to test this. But here’s where the Rorschach test comes in, because the U.S.American psyche is pretty evenly divided among those for whom Government = Big Scary and those for whom Business = Big Scary. As long as those buttons are available to push, anything like productive national debate of health care policy is unlikely, and what we’ll end up with is the usual kludgy product of interest-group horse trading.

UPDATE: Great survey and analysis of the difference between individual and social insurance here.

Psst: Life’s a bitch. Pass it on.

Due to periodic moments of weakness in which we contribute to NPR, we have a ‘free’ subscription to Newsweek. Making virtue of contingency I have discovered that Newsweek is perfect bathroom reading – so much so that I suspect it is edited with this venue in mind. Each issue has a perfect mix of shorter and longer pieces calibrated to characteristic contemplative dwell intervals. Interest is generated quickly and no great commitment is required. This may not make it a great source for a deeper understanding of the world, but it’s a useful niche nonetheless.

So in the natural course of things I recently read a review of Judd Apatow’s new movie, “Funny People.” In general, this confirmed my impression that Judd Apatow movies are to be avoided. The one I’ve seen is “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” which I found to be an unpleasant, cringe-inducing mess. The same people who liked that one seem to like this one, so no thanks.

Newsweek’s reviewer, Jennie Yabroff, illuminates my own impression by pulling on the thread of Apatow’s widely-noted misogyny, observing that it’s part of a more comprehensive misanthropy, a generalized “poisonous hostility and rage.” Adult life is a joyless slog of self-destruction, disappointment, betrayal, and constipation. But wait, there is redemption! “The one bright spot in Apatow’s dark vision is children—the point of sex and marriage; the friends who will never betray you.” She concludes with this uplifting summation of Apatow’s oeuvre: “Life, his movies suggest, is filled with angst, frustration, and tedium. The best you can do is laugh about it all, then pass it on.”

Well, I sure agree on the laugh about it part; I think the rest is largely a matter of intention and interpretation. But taking the point at face value, what are we to make of this notion that children exist to redeem dreary adult existence? How many movies does it take to notice that inflicting this nasty life on critters you’re planning to love, and then milking them for all the joy they can produce before ushering them into a long, miserable adulthood, is nothing but another betrayal, perhaps the biggest of all?

In the last couple of posts we’ve been talking about memes as units of culture whose first priority is to reproduce themselves. They don’t do it mindfully, or even ’selfishly’ in any intentional sense; it’s just what they do, whether that’s a good idea in the scheme of things or not. I’ve generally observed that humans (like ducks and viruses) work the same way. When I was newly married in my early 20s I pretty much just assumed we’d go ahead and have a couple of kids. My then-wife didn’t think that was a good idea; we were young, poor, not done with our schooling yet. I argued that we were better off than billions of other humans who had managed to raise kids successfully, but she had a higher standard in mind and wisely prevailed. It wasn’t about whether, though, it was about when. In the years following I watched other people ‘decide’ to have kids and it gradually dawned on me that the thought of not having them at all had never been entertained, or if it had been was swiftly dismissed. The decision was not about whether, it was about when.

Of course if people actually decided whether to have kids, there would be many reasons not to and that would happen much more often. But it’s not a reasoning process, or rather, ‘reasons’ to have kids come and go. Many of us don’t think any more that God wants us to have children, or that this is women’s essential mission, or that family names and properties need to be preserved. And anyone paying attention to climate science knows that Nature doesn’t need us to have any more children at all, although Nature (of which we are a part) will just adjust to whatever we do, including the one where we breed and consume ourselves and the rest of the world’s biota into extinction. It may be, as Apatow thinks, that life’s a bitch. This would seem like a good reason not to have kids (or not to be a jerk in general), but instead he’s twisted it into a reason to have them. Or it could be that we need to balance everyone else’s bad babies with our good babies, by whatever standard. Mine, I’m sure, would be magnificent and make the world a much better place. Of course everyone thinks theirs are good, and someone must be wrong. The point is there’s always a ‘reason’ to reproduce if reproduction is the unit default. That doesn’t make it a good idea, though.

Generosity

This is another spark thrown off by Larval Subjects’ meme post (see previous post for link).

Some time ago another blog colleague posted on a now-deleted blog about the generosity of famous intellectuals. He has found them to be gracious, open and helpful, even early in his career when his status was low. I’ve been mulling this. I can’t say my own experience in this respect has been entirely consistent – this colleague is himself becoming noted for selective graciousness – but in general I can confirm that many of the bigshots I’ve run across are actually pretty cuddly.

Well, sometimes that old guy wants to give you candy because he’s just super nice, and sometimes it’s because he’s got some more back at his house plus other things he’d like to show you. Levi’s argument about memes is that their top priority is to reproduce themselves, and they’re looking for whatever ways to do that they can find. What makes intellectuals famous is that they are the source or vectors of memes. They are accordingly on the make, the more so the more successful they are (or want to be).

The generosity of famous intellectuals is no different than the generosity of the old guy with candy or that fellow who winks and buys you a drink from across the bar. If he looks good to you, go right ahead. But it’s not generosity yet until you turn down the bedroom proposal and he still wants to talk to you. It’s how you treat people who aren’t means to your ends that counts.