Tag Archives: Research

Craftwork and Education

‘The Intelligent Hand’ at the Fab Lab

Professor Trevor Marchand writes…
On the evening of Tuesday March 15, I screened my new documentary film, The Intelligent Hand, at the Fab Lab in the City of London. The event was hosted by the RSA Inequality in Education Network and attracted a diverse audience of educators, university academics, practicing craftspeople, woodwork trainees, and professionals from various sectors.

See The Intelligent Hand here…

I introduced the film with a short talk on craftwork and education, and the screening was followed by a period of focussed discussion amongst audience members in small groupings. In turn, this set the scene for an open Q&A and general conversation. Our discussion was framed by the broad question: ‘What needs to change in order to make vocational education and craftwork attractive options in Britain?’

This article provides a synopsis of my introductory talk before offering a summary of the key issues raised by audience members in conversation.

Introductory Talk

I began my talk with a brief overview of the anthropological fieldwork I have carried out over the past two decades with minaret builders in Yemen, mud-brick masons in Mali, and fine woodwork trainees in Britain. Each of these studies aimed to understand the technical, social and cultural mechanics of apprenticeship systems and skill-based learning. My research has been part of a burgeoning interest among social scientists, educators, and cognitive and neuroscientists in embodied ways of learning and knowing. My ethnographic approach has endeavoured to move the study of human knowledge well beyond what people say and think to include what they actually do, in practice.

My findings robustly challenge the enduring Cartesian division made between internal mind operations and physical doing. The data demonstrates that craftspeople are thinking with tools-in-hand, and they are actively engaged with materials, other actors, and the surrounding environment in their pursuits to solve problems, enhance skills, broaden knowledge, and construct social identities and professional status.

Calculating, theorising, setting goals, imagining outcomes, and working out hypothetical pathways toward a solution are very much a part of both design and making in craftwork. But, equally, physicists, mathematicians, and philosophers engage bodily and sensorily with the world in solving the tasks and problems they set for themselves. In sum, my introductory talk demonstrated that the boundary drawn between ‘academic’ and ‘hands-on’ work is less tidy and far more porous than what is popularly assumed.

To conclude, I stressed that practical skill learning is not ‘unthinking imitation’. Rather, it involves multiple and highly complex forms (of often non-verbal) communication and, like scholarly knowledge, skilled practice is a hard-earned cognitive achievement. Britain’s education policies therefore need to be reformed around a more holistic definition of ‘knowledge’ – one that recognises the unity of mind and body and that desists from imputing hierarchy between them.

Practical know-how must be accorded the value and status that it merits: not merely for increasing economic productivity or reducing the nation’s skills gap, but more importantly craftwork should be celebrated and promoted as an attractive career path leading to satisfying work and life.

Audience Discussion

What needs to change in order to make vocational education and craftwork attractive options in Britain?’ This question generated our open conversation. Audience members broke into discussion groups and an individual from each volunteered to act as spokesperson, offering a summary of the key ideas, issues, and further questions that arose. A general conversation followed.

Angela launched the exchange with her group’s observation that, historically, England’s education policy has been framed by a persistent mind-body dualism. By contrast, she urged recognition of ‘the parity between using one’s brain and one’s hands’, and she drew our attention to the Steiner School example and its emphasis on learning-by-doing. Anna later noted that tuition fees for Steiner Schools were prohibitively costly for the average family, while, distressingly, state school curricula for young children includes little if any practical hands-on learning.

Cheryl, a college woodworking instructor in the audience, added that, regrettably, ‘many secondary schools no longer host woodworking courses: it’s expensive; it takes up a lot of space; the tools and machinery are expensive; and the overheads are expensive.’ As a consequence, career options in the crafts and trades are made invisible to British youth. As one audience member said, ‘there is a need to make craftspeople role models’. Like sports celebrities, artists, and renowned chefs, their names, skills, values, and contributions to society need to be made part of popular public discourse.

Both David and Sam, as spokesmen for their groups, interrogated the entrenched divide between academic and vocational education, and society’s tendency to stereotype ‘vocational education’ as ‘a cheap job-training scheme, providing a basic level of skills to get people into employment’. The ambiguity of the term ‘vocational’ and its relation to the equally woolly category ‘craft’ was raised.

Emma, a furniture maker, queried the distinction made at her college between fine woodwork as a craft and the bench joinery programme as a vocational route. It was suggested that the NVQ framework has had the effect of narrowing popular understanding of ‘vocational’ as a kind of ‘non-academic, technical training’ for tradespeople, craftspeople, and technicians. In the past, by contrast, vocational training also encompassed the education of lawyers, architects, engineers, and medical doctors. Training in these latter disciplines became firmly established within the university; and today, Sam noted, university qualifications are ‘perceived as more valuable’ and therefore ‘fetch greater remuneration in the job market’.

One participant in Wendy’s group was Swiss, and another Swedish, and together they discussed ‘the differences between Britain and other countries’ in terms of the structural relations between academic and vocational/craft pathways. It emerged that in some European countries it is easier to ‘cross from one to the other’, depending on what kinds of skills and knowledge an individual needs at different points in their professional development.

See the IoM here...
See the IoM here…

In Enna’s group, one university student described the Institute of Making at UCL, which, according to its website, is ‘a cross-disciplinary research club for those interested in the made world,’ from molecules to buildings. Group members extolled the notion that ‘doing something with your hands should not be divorced from a university education’.

Joe, as spokesman for his group, asked ‘Can computer coding be considered a craft?’ In response, I recounted my arrival at the Fab Lab earlier that evening, when a young man working there inquired about the subject of my talk. I replied, ‘The importance of craftwork’. He smiled, saying, ‘Oh great! I can relate to that.’ I asked what he did. He told me, ‘I design circuit boards’. In our brief exchange, he made no hesitation in relating his work to ‘craft’: circuit board design, like blowing glass or potting, involves a unity of hands and mind in making, experimenting, and creatively solving problems as they arise.

Another audience member added that he too viewed his work as a craft. He claimed that as a management consultant who analyses and solves business problems, his practice ‘combines art and science’. ‘It involves whole-body learning,’ he continued. ‘It’s about perception, it’s about understanding situations and being able to interpret them. I just use a different set of tools from planes and chisels.’

The subject of ‘power and inequality’ was also tabled for discussion. Graham proclaimed that, ultimately, ‘it’s all about power: about empowering people to bring about social and economic change’. He lamented craft’s second-class status and ventured, ‘If people – in education, in politics, in society – could be made to understand that craftwork can be powerful, it would move mountains. But until we achieve that realisation, we’ll carry on with the malaise that we’ve got.’ Richard highlighted the perverse fact that those most handsomely remunerated are those in the finance sector ‘who make absolutely nothing: they don’t make things, they don’t make books, they don’t make education, they don’t heal us of our ills.’

William Morris on Wikipedia...
William Morris on Wikipedia…

In thinking about ‘what needs to change’, Catherine pointed to the kinds of social reform advocated by William Morris, and argued for the continued relevance of his ideas. According to Rachel, the starting point for change needs to be with us, the consumers: ‘We need to stop buying cheap sh** from IKEA. We need to seriously understand the value of an object and the effort that goes into making something.’ Emma, the furniture maker, shared her story of struggle to make a living as a craftsperson and the need to find work outside her practice in order to make a living and survive. Wendy, too, told us of friends who tried to set up as woodworkers, and failed. ‘Alongside craft skills need to go business skills,’ she said, and that needs to be a core part of craft and any other kind of vocational training.

Brian underscored the need to focus on inequality, as it is made manifest in power structures, gender hierarchies, social-class privilege and, importantly, access to education, training and work within the craft sector. He felt that craft has an important role to play in counteracting inequality in its various guises. In the UK, for example, women and minority groups are patently underrepresented in carpentry, and niche practices such as fine woodwork and furniture-making are dominated by trainees and practitioners from the middle classes.

Concerning gender, Cheryl, the college instructor, noted that in some years no female trainees enrol on the fine-woodwork programme. She could not explain why this happens, especially since ‘there is not the same stigma attached to going into the carpentry trades for girls as there is for boys’. It is often perceived that boys going into the trades must have failed or performed poorly in school. Cheryl recounted her own experience:

‘I went to an all-girls’ grammar school, and my parents were both teachers. So I can’t imagine that if I were a guy I would have ended up an apprentice on a Southwark council scheme. But that was a wise move for me: I received wages to go to college and get an education, and the qualifications to eventually become a teacher and an assessor. I don’t think that could have happened if I were a boy.’

Charlotte offered some final thoughts on the original question I had posed. She invested hope in the emerging neuroscience discourse to positively change popular (mis)conceptions about the mind-body relation.

‘The neurosciences are informing us that learning is a whole-body activity: that it involves posture and rhythm; it’s about connection to tools; and it involves training vision and touch. All forms of education and work demand that our sensory capabilities are fully developed. When an individual is developed in this way, they are both craftsperson and academic, endowed with creative understanding. We need to develop people broadly.

Thanks

Thanks to the Inequality in Education Network, and especially John Bayley and Lynda Haddock for organising and mediating the event. Thanks to Fab Lab for graciously hosting us. And thanks to all those who attended and participated in what was – I hope for all – an evening of stimulating conversation and exchange.

Review by Prof. Trevor Marchand.


You can see the full creative credits for The Intelligent Hand on our films page here…(Ed.)

Turning the tide - making a difference
Turning the tide – making a difference

Digital Dividend 2016 from the World Bank

Digital Dividends is the 2016 World Bank development report assessing the state of digital access, utility and relevance across the world.

”We find ourselves in the midst of the greatest information and communications revolution in human history. More than 40 percent of the world’s population has access to the internet, with new users coming online every day. Among the poorest 20 percent of households, nearly 7 out of 10 have a mobile phone. The poorest households are more likely to have access to mobile phones than to toilets or clean water”. Source: World Bank, Digital Dividend 2016.

digitalDividendsWorldBankCoverpic-m
Get your copy here…(pdf)

The World Bank report is not solely dedicated to education, although beginning on page 258, a series of case studies and assessments take the temperature of digital content and technological availability in the educative orbit.

The news is not all good. Despite advances in distribution and utility, the report argues that lack of access to apprpriate technology remains one of the stumbling blocks of digital emancipation. Within the context of the whole report the old observation is still true, even in 2016. No technology, no equality, or rather no parity of expectation.

”If you compared our world today with the world one hundred years ago, you would encounter amazing advances in science, commerce, health care, transportation, and other areas. But if you were to compare the classroom of a hundred years ago with an average classroom today, you would recognise it immediately: students lined up in rows, paper and pencil in hand; a teacher at the blackboard jotting down facts; students furiously copying all that is written and said, expecting to memorise the facts and spit them out on an exam”. Source: Robert Hawkins (2002), World Bank, Digital Dividend 2016.

Relevant here is the World Bank general observation that despite mushrooming relative growth in device numbers, it is the lack of change, sophistication and learning in the ‘analogue’ institutions of countries in transition, government and civil institutions and, within our field of vision as a project, schools and universities that hampers effective capitalisation of the ‘digital dividend’.

Given that lack of technology is the absolute disenfranchisement in the digital age, the World Bank report offers some interesting insights and recommendations for the skills sector, of whatever shade.

It looks at and notes improvement in uptake of MOOCs (Massive Open On-line Courses) and at the web functionality of services like The Khan Academy, The report notes that even where the Khan toolkit has been applied in the classroom, it is as a supportive, supplementary element to the learning.

Taking a view of the One Laptop per Child initiatives around the globe, the report notes that despite this comprehensive and energetic programme of hardware distribution, the best recorded learning outcomes are arrived at where the laptops are accompanied by instructional support and traditional teaching skills.

This comprehensive and detailed report is not a rant by internet zealots, (…you can find anything on the internet now!). Including enlightenment we suppose. Nor is it a damning case study of the failure of digital access to change the expectations and skills of the digitally connected.

Rather, by 2016, it is understood that pedagogy and the laptop processor have yet to find their final destiny in this joint journey of discovery.

We commend this World Bank report to our readers.

Turning the tide - making a difference
Turning the tide – making a difference

Science is only for boys?

 

We had a small intake of breath when we read the headline for a web article, just published, about a state funded school in Orange County, Florida. They are intent on holding a STEM event only for boys.

No wonder some of the technically qualified, female parents began a petition to resist such a move. Which they did. In the U.S. Title IX states that…

‘No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance’.

(Title IX is a portion of the United States Education Amendments of 1972, Public Law No. 92‑318, 86 Stat. 235 (June 23, 1972), codified at 20 U.S.C. §§ 1681–1688, co-authored and introduced by Senator Birch Bayh; it was renamed the Patsy Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act in 2002…Ed.)

The school have since issued statements stressing that the event was planned as a son and mother event, which still renders some parents speechless, the subject hanging, as it does, on a core branch of the curriculum tree.  Stunning thinking in the twenty first century? See the original story on the pages of Jezebel.com here.

The issue of women and science education is part of an on-going debate in England too.

We are pleased to see that the University of Nottingham, in collaboration with Digital Women UK, are holding an important two day event in November 2015 entitled…

Missing in Action: Women and Digital Enterprise in the UK

Saturday 21 & Sunday 22 November 2015 at the University of Nottingham – Book on-line here.

‘What is Missing in Action about?
A collaboration between the Haydn Green Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and Digital Women UK, this ‘thought space’ will allow female digital entrepreneurs, academics, creative practitioners and those interested in this field, to discuss professional challenges and concerns, share insights and learn from each other’s experiences and studies of digital entrepreneurship.

Why the title?
Missing in Action reflects the fact that although female digital entrepreneurs are aspiring to start up status, or are working widely in the UK, very little is known about who they are, which communities they come from, the obstacles they face and which entrepreneurial activities they are engaged or interested in’. (Narrative source – Digital Women UK – November 2015)

Although this is a female digital entrepreneurship event, the undertow of educational neglect of women in science education is, we would argue, a clear current for discussion.

Do use the booking link above, or visit the web pages of Digital Women UK to see the distinguished speakers the event has attracted.

This will not be a men-only event we suspect…

Turning the tide - making a difference
Turning the tide – making a difference

Inequality over the last century…

 

 

Oxford economist, Max Roser, has tested the nature of structural income inequality in England and found the arguments as to ‘inevitability’ and ‘the play of market forces’ to be wanting. In his highly detailed and closely argued article, Roser signposts other economic  models, and countries, where political will and economic structures are bent to its defeat.

Max Roser (2015) – ‘Income Inequality’. Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: http://ourworldindata.org/data/growth-and-distribution-of-prosperity/income-inequality/ [Online Resource]

Roser makes some interesting and telling observations about inequality, setting his argument, as he does, across a broad swathe of economic data, by time and country.

England is interesting in that income data, defined by social group, or set out in ‘social tables’, goes back a long way. Flawed, is the Roser argument, citing the lack of scientific discipline in Gregory King’s Social Table for 1688.

However, Roser cites Milanovic, Lindert and Williamson (2008) who have graphed longitudinal data in pre-industrial societies, using the Gini Index to measure ‘inequality’ and GDP per capita to measure ‘prosperity’.

(The Gini coefficient – or Gini index – is a measure of the income distribution of a population. It was developed by Italian statistician Corrado Gini (1884-1965) and is named after him).

This longitudinal view of inequality, by Roser, incisively demonstrates that it is political and institutional structures which enforce inequality. It is not, he argues, the market or efficiencies of capital which promote inequality as a mechanism for distribution of income. We quote his summation at length…

A lesson that that we can take away from this empirical research is that political forces at work on the national level are possibly important for how incomes are distributed. If there was a universal trend towards more inequality it would be in line with the notion that inequality is determined by global market forces and technological progress where it is very hard (or for other reasons undesirable) to change the forces that lead to higher inequality. Inequality would then be inevitable. The reality of different inequality trends within countries suggests that the institutional and political framework in different countries play a role in shaping inequality of incomes‘. (Roser, 2015)

In his well illustrated and closely argued article, Roser compares and contrasts the data for non-English speaking European countries and Japan. All examined countries reached fairly low levels of income inequality in the 1970’s, with significant increases in inequality returning after that decade. With the exception of Japan, where socio-political institutions press for equality in a way that is not available in the Euro-economic matrix.

See more graph detail here...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

…we can see the correlation between increases in the income share of the top 1% and the decrease of the marginal income tax rate since 1960. The graph confirms the hypothesis that in general as tax rates decrease, the income share of the most wealthy citizens increases. The US and the UK are both extreme examples of this happening. France, Germany, Finland, Netherlands and Switzerland all contradict this trend. While the marginal income tax rate on the most wealthy has decreased, the government has implemented other means to decrease income inequality‘. (Roser, 2015)

Ths is economic analysis of a high order, which does not set out to find an answer to a pre-conceived position, rather it uses diverse, broadly sourced data across long time spans to argue for a new mode of thought, to diminish the corruscating effects of inequality.

We are most interested in educational outputs, but see how social justice outcomes and the well-being quotient of so many could also be raised by a new economic mind-set.

interneticon2 (copy) See more of Max Roser and his work here…

Turning the tide - making a difference
Turning the tide – making a difference

 

 

The Future of Education:
an event report…

The Great Room at The RSA was full. Like a Calima, drawn towards the depression that is education in England, conversation and debate swept across the room.

We had assembled to hear Profesor Danny Dorling and Professor Diane Reay give their assessments of English education today, and to provide us with both data and questions of challenge in our collective pilgrimage for reform.

The short films below give you a flavour of our event and the messages delivered by our speakers…

youtubeButton  Professor Danny Dorling, Oct. 5th 2015

youtubeButton  Professor Diane Reay, Oct. 5th 2015

Professor Dorling challenged his audience to imagine an education system without so much testing. His exposition included illustrations of how we value memory above problem solving and experimentation. He was delighted to see in the audience, after general questioning, that so many of us had achieved ‘A’ grades. A triumph of conformity, alas, in the Dorling assessment. The whole treatise bringing into doubt the formula that a more expensive education is a more privileged education.

Professor Reay used her allotted time to deliver a statistical analysis of the inequalities in education in our country. Highlighting the fact that in the private sector, for example, spend per pupil is 2.5 times higher than in the state sector. She also highlighted the deficiencies in access to the broad and balanced curriculum which children and young people need, along with a strong section in her presentation, on happiness and wellbeing. Often disregarded, she argued, in any assessment of educational utlilty or achievement.

Whether for learners or teaching staff, levels of distress and dissatisfaction have never been higher, Professor Reay argued. Much was also made of the increasingly low level of professional autonomy afforded teachers in England now.

This was a well attended IETT event, with very high quality engagement and telling analysis from our speakers. This prompted some very lively discussion across the room, as well as new networking and professional acquaintance for many visitors to our conference. Ed.

interneticon2 (copy)  You can see more IETT events on our Conference and Events page here.

interneticon2 (copy)  You can also find more films on this topic on our The Debate – filmed page here.

interneticon2 (copy)Event films by Dan Keeble – Video Editor / Producer / DP     http://dankeeble.com/

Turning the tide - making a difference
Turning the tide – making a difference

Flotsam series:
The Sustainable Personality

Robert Lindberg is a Swedish writer and speaker, who is currently working in England, developing his theories of personal development, better  and more meaningful human contact and perceptions of the sustainable society.

Robert, in a recent talk, declared ‘…it is time to be smart – to be humane is to be smart‘. This chimed strongly with discussions we have been recently engaged in about the quality of discourse regarding society, the individual and, of course, the role that education plays in the formation of these key  edifices of civic and personal interaction.

Robert’s web pages offer some simple, elegant and very nicely built examples  of his thinking. They are beautifully illustrated, concise and offer the viewer a great way to start a conversation about the key themes of his thesis.

We particularly liked his short opus on Collaboration – Healthy Productivity

The Linbergian argument, in this case, is supported by the research and writings of Alfie Kohn, whose early book No Contest – the Case Against Competition still well illustrates how becoming locked into competitive, anti-equality modes of thought can stifle the creativity, the potential and life chances of children and young people.

Robert generously publishes his film work under a Creative Commons license, and we think they can be perfect as a teaching/discussion tool. Kick starting a session to provoke reflection, analysis and clear thinking on a variety of thematic issues.

All are to do with our humanity.

We commend the work of Robert Lindberg to our journal readers. We think there’s a fresh, innovative and open mind at work. See Robert’s web site for more details and how to engage with the author here.

(Flotsam is our occasional series of new ideas emerging from outside the English education system…Ed).

Turning the tide - making a difference
Turning the tide – making a difference

Free money for all –
A basic human right?

In the video below, Rutger Bregman as part of a TEDx Maastricht talk, informs us of the validity of a single idea that links Thomas Paine and Milton Friedman.

Bregman argues for the universal dispersion of the basic income, as a human right. His opening argument is based upon the notion of standing on the shoulders of giants. ‘Our forefathers have worked so hard to achieve our level of propserity, we should now be able to give everyone a share of that prosperity…’

He argues that in communities where basic income experiments have been attempted, the outcome can be measured in better educational achievement, lower truancy rates, and higher economic growth. Developing an active, participatory counter to inequality.

In a disenfranchised community, he argues, a basic income frees human capacity…it does not diminish it or whither it out of laziness or lack of engagement in societal progress.

Nixon, in the 1970’s nearly passed legislation that engendered the basic income in the US, arguably at the cost of only 25 per cent of the US Defense Budget. A development now long forgotten in US economic thinking.

The London charitable experiment, cited in the film, to give long term homeless men free money, as an alternative to counselling, police monitoring and other forms of ‘traditional’ support also resulted in a variety of sustainable self help outcomes that was, by conventional critiques of ‘the benefit society’, surprising and enduring.

Bregman argues against the three most often made arguments for a universal ‘citizen wage’. It’s too expensive, all people will stop working and it will never happen, politically. The film highlights both optimism, human nature and the individuals need to make a contribution to society as counters to these narrow objections.

  • The Green Party have argued for the universal wage in their UK manifesto at the last election. Is this an idea that can stand a return to wider national focus?
  • Might this economic reform be the very bedrock of enduring and effective educational reform too?
  • Might the introduction of a universal, non-means tested income prevent the collapse of the middle -class through the unending pressure of inequality?

You can visit the web site http://basic-income.org/ and cast a vote for the universal basic income.

Turning the tide - making a difference
Turning the tide – making a difference

Injustice – why social inequality still persists?

Danny Dorling has a new edition of Injustice – Why social inequality still persists available. You can discover this and more of Danny’s work on the pages of PolicyPress at the University of Bristol here.

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More here…

‘This fully rewritten and updated edition revisits Dorling’s claim that Beveridge’s five social evils are being replaced by five new tenets of injustice: elitism is efficient; exclusion is necessary; prejudice is natural; greed is good and despair is inevitable. By showing these beliefs are unfounded, Dorling offers hope of a more equal society’.

About the author:

Danny Dorling is the Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography at the University of Oxford. He is  Honorary President of the Society of Cartographers.

He helped create the website www.worldmapper.org which shows who has most and least in the world, working with Mark Newman,  Anna Barford, Ben Wheeler, John Pritchard, Graham Allsopp and Benjamin Hennig.

Danny and his work can be discovered on his own web pages here.


Professor Dorling was a speaker at our recent RSA conference, The Future of Education in England. Watch this space for an event review and films of our speakers and their contribution to a lively debate and thoughtful deliberation on educational reform.

Remember to visit our Monographia page to see interesting papers and reports which are attuned to our movements aims. Join the debate.

Turning the tide - making a difference
Turning the tide – making a difference

Equality – drivers and context

Inequality in Education (IETT) has a focus on education, as you would expect. Inequality and its consequences stretch across a range of life experiences and outcomes for individuals, including education of course.

Get a copy from Amazon here...
Get a copy from Amazon here…

Looking through our archive recently, we came across the slides used by Tim Stacey of the Equality Trust in a recent talk he gave, which nicely encapsulates and offers insights into the evidence base for the pursuit of equality in society.

Drawing on data from his own TrustThe Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, as well as Miles Corak and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation amongst others. His case highlights well the admixture of issues that emerge for a society which has a core social, economic and educational inequality at its heart.

You can review Tim’s excellent presentation below.

timStaceyEqualityTrust-education-and-inequality-talk-1

 

 

interneticon2 (copy)You can download your own copy of the full pdf here.

IETT is proud to support the work of The Equality Trust.

You can Contact Us here.

Turning the tide - making a difference
Turning the tide – making a difference

The Economics of Inequality

As we travel the country taking our campaign forward we often see a great book, one quarter read, abandoned on the coffee table. Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Trans. Arthur Goldhammer).

A master work of economic analysis, which retuns Marxian thought to the high table of discourse, we would argue, but which the average reader might fail to pursue to the end, due to its length and complexity.

pikettyEconomicsofInequalitycoverPic2 (copy)
Piketty’s paper…

Piketty’s framing propositions were developed, it can be argued, in an an earlier paper authored with Emmanuel Saez, in 1995. The Economics of Inequality is a much shorter work than his later magnum opus. (National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 8467. U.S., September 2001)

Recently published as a ‘new’ book by Harvard University Press, The Economics of Inequality (Amazon.co.uk) at 160 pages or so, is a much more digestible read than Capital. It has some newly updated content and tables, although the data used to deliver argument in this new work stops in the mid-nineties of course. (Harvard University Press; July 2015)

View, print or download a copy of the original paper.

In a recent New York Times book review, Inequality as it was viewed in the 90’s, the review article argues that Piketty has achieved something of a volte-face on the 1%, and their limiting effect on the economic distribution of wealth and resources.

…the most important contribution of “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” was precisely its suggestion that since then a rising share of after-tax profits in national income has indeed set us on the path back to a rentier society, in which the rich live off inherited wealth’.

The article expounds further that Piketty’s Capital ‘…made a disturbing case that we are well on the way to re-establishing “patrimonial capitalism,” a society dominated by oligarchs who inherit their wealth’.

The weakness in this earlier paper, The Economics of Inequality, the reviewer argues, is that Piketty declares, in his original research with Saez, that ”…progressive taxation seems to have prevented a return to 19th-century rentier society”. We disagree. This shorter paper is still a key piece of analysis on an emerging understanding of inequality even with an anti-rentier argument, with all its concomitant impact on economics, education, property and law.

A better critique, we would argue, is that Piketty has spent another two decades researching and thinking about his core propositions and has tempered his analytical ‘oratory’ accordingly with the publication of Capital.

Do open or download Piketty’s original paper from this page and see if you agree. The paper has some interesting historical analysis on the rise of I.T. professions and their effect on wages. (Even though contemporary analysis would now hold that this view is a ‘paperless office’ proposition, which technology also failed to achieve -Ed ).

interneticon2 (copy)Useful links:  An on-line version of the NYT Book Review here.

Turning the tide - making a difference
Turning the tide – making a difference