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Globalised economy making water, energy and land insecurity worse: study

sc604 — Mon, 26 Oct 2020 00:54:35 +0000

Countries meet their needs for goods and services through domestic production and international trade. As a result, countries place pressures on natural resources both within and beyond their borders.

Researchers from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge used macroeconomic data to quantify these pressures. They found that the vast majority of countries and industrial sectors are highly exposed both directly, via domestic production, and indirectly, via imports, to over-exploited and insecure water, energy and land resources. However, the researchers found that the greatest resource risk is due to international trade, mainly from remote countries.

̽��ֱ��researchers are calling for an urgent enquiry into the scale and source of consumed goods and services, both in individual countries and globally, as economies seek to rebuild in the wake of COVID-19. Their study, published in the journal Global Environmental Change, also invites critical reflection on whether globalisation is compatible with achieving sustainable and resilient supply chains.

Over the past several decades, the worldwide economy has become highly interconnected through globalisation: it is now not uncommon for each component of a particular product to originate from a different country. Globalisation allows companies to make their products almost anywhere in the world in order to keep costs down.

Many mainstream economists argue this offers countries a source of competitive advantage and growth potential. However, many nations impose demands on already stressed resources in other countries in order to satisfy their own high levels of consumption.

This interconnectedness also increases the amount of risk at each step of a global supply chain. For example, the UK imports 50% of its food. A drought, flood or other severe weather event in another country puts these food imports at risk.

Now, the researchers have quantified the global water, land and energy use of 189 countries and shown that countries which are highly dependent on trade are potentially more at risk from resource insecurity, especially as climate change continues to accelerate and severe weather events such as droughts and floods become more common.

“There has been plenty of research comparing countries in terms of their water, energy and land footprints, but what hasn’t been studied is the scale and source of their risks,” said Dr Oliver Taherzadeh, who led the research while a PhD student in Cambridge’s Department of Geography. “We found that the role of trade has been massively underplayed as a source of resource insecurity – it’s actually a bigger source of risk than domestic production.”

To date, resource use studies have been limited to certain regions or sectors, which prevents a systematic overview of resource pressures and their source. This study offers a flexible approach to examining pressures across the system at various geographical and sectoral scales.

“This type of analysis hasn’t been carried out for a large number of countries before,” said Taherzadeh. “By quantifying the pressures that our consumption places on water, energy and land resources in far-off corners of the world, we can also determine how much risk is built into our interconnected world.”

̽��ֱ��authors of the study linked indices designed to capture insecure water, energy, and land resource use, to a global trade model in order to examine the scale and sources of national resource insecurity from domestic production and imports.

Countries with large economies, such as the US, China and Japan, are highly exposed to water shortages outside their borders due to their volume of international trade. However, many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, such as Kenya, actually face far less risk as they are not as heavily networked in the global economy and are relatively self-sufficient in food production.

In addition to country-level data, the researchers also examined the risks associated with specific sectors. Surprisingly, one of the sectors identified in Taherzadeh’s wider research that had the most high risk water and land use – among the top 1% of nearly 15,000 sectors analysed – was dog and cat food manufacturing in the USA, due to its high demand for animal products.

“COVID-19 has shown just how poorly-prepared governments and businesses are for a global crisis,” said Taherzadeh. “But however bad the direct and indirect consequences of COVID-19 have been, climate breakdown, biodiversity collapse and resource insecurity are far less predictable problems to manage – and the potential consequences are far more severe. If the ‘green economic recovery’ is to respond to these challenges, we need radically rethink the scale and source of consumption.”

Reference:
Oliver Taherzadeh et al. ‘Water, energy and land insecurity in global supply chains.’ Global Environmental Change (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2020.102158

̽��ֱ��first large-scale study of the risks that countries face from dependence on water, energy and land resources has found that globalisation may be decreasing, rather than increasing, the security of global supply chains.

By quantifying the pressures that our consumption places on water, energy and land resources in far-off corners of the world, we can also determine how much risk is built into our interconnected world

Oliver Taherzadeh

WxMom

Iowa County Drought

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Robots and carbon targets may signal the end of globalisation

fpjl2 — Wed, 17 May 2017 13:42:19 +0000

For decades we have been told that globalisation is an irresistible force. As Tony Blair said: “you might as well debate whether autumn follows summer.”

According to a new book by a Cambridge academic, however, factors ranging from automation and 3D printing to environmental regulations and customer expectations are now spelling the beginning of the end for globalised manufacturing.

Dr Finbarr Livesey, an expert in public policy, says that while digital globalisation continues apace, early signs can be seen of a sea change in the production and distribution of goods: with global supply chains shrinking as companies experiment with moving production closer to home.

In From Global to Local: the Making of Things and the End of Globalisation, published this week by Profile Books, he argues that many of the big assumptions we have about globalisation and outsourcing are now wrong, and that the global economy is subtly changing in ways yet to be picked up by blunt macroeconomic measurements.

“Robots are becoming cheaper than overseas labour, climate concern and volatile fossil fuel markets are restricting carbon footprints, and consumers increasingly expect tailored products with express delivery. Bouncing production around the planet is already making less and less economic sense,” says Livesey.

“Holding on to familiar stories about the global economy is not an option, as technological and political changes make a mockery of any past consensus.”

However, he warns against falsely claiming such shifts as a victory for protectionism: the technologies allowing the return of production to high-cost economies are unlikely to mean the promised return of jobs.

Livesey also argues that if ‘deglobalisation’ is indeed coming down the line then Brexit may be a particularly bad move for UK manufacturing:

“Trying to reach over our neighbours in the name of ‘global Britain’ at a time when many companies are on the cusp of reverting to regionalism means that marginal calls for European manufacturing bases may go to France or the Czech Republic, for example, rather than the UK,” he says.

Leaders in both west and east have hitched their wagons to the apparent inevitability of globalisation over the past thirty years. Yet, as Livesey points out, regionalism never went away. A significant percentage of exports continue to land in the same area they originate: around 50% in Asia and North America, and as much as 70% in Europe.

In the book he draws attention to examples of what he believes to be “weak signals of early change” as major companies tentatively start to U-turn on globalisation.

̽��ֱ��new Adidas ‘Speedfactory’ uses automation and 3D printing to produce high-end trainers – not in China or South Asia, but in Germany. “And we were told textiles were never coming back,” says Livesey.

̽��ֱ��mighty General Electric recently rejuvenated a vast manufacturing “ghost town” in Kentucky when they realised appliances could be made for the same or cheaper in the US than in China.

Foxconn, the company that makes iPhone innards, raised eyebrows when they suggested robots could replace one million Chinese workers – and that production could even move to the US as a result.

Global supply chains cost companies time in an age of next-day delivery, and add risks of disruption – from cultural differences to natural disasters – and even intellectual property theft. They also take a heavy environmental toll: shipping alone produces a billion tonnes of carbon, roughly equal to that of Germany.

“Take Zara, one of the daughters of ‘fast fashion’,” says Livesey. “They have a cycle from design through to production and shop floor delivery of just four weeks. In some cases it would take almost that long just to ship product from China. ̽��ֱ��new ‘Belt and Road’ initiative may only reduce that to two weeks.

“Many companies can’t afford the time, not to mention the added risk, of freighting goods around the world. Zara base much of their production in Spain, Portugal and Morocco to be on Europe’s doorstep – an example of ‘nearshoring’.”

Ultimately, the journey from production to customer may be measured in metres rather than continents. For example, Harvard Bookstore’s ‘Espresso Book Machine’ uses information from digital files to print and bind new books in store on demand.

Livesey highlights the patents for mobile 3D printing filed by Amazon in 2015 as indicative of a hyper-local rather than hyper-global direction for production. “While not currently feasible, there may come a time when your purchased product is printed en route to your house.”

While he admits that the data from the last few decades can make his position seem Canute-like at the moment, Livesey argues that the tide is turning, with signals of new localism amid the noise.

A recent survey of over 500 companies found well over half were moving production away from China. One in six companies surveyed by the Engineering Employees Federation had moved production from a low-cost economy to the UK. ̽��ֱ��Korean government passed a ‘U-Turn’ law encouraging companies to return from China.

“Companies are deciding to have their production either in their home country or nearby. Automation is attacking the costs of labour and shifting the calculus for managers. Political forces are constraining the space for manufacturing, for example restricting emissions from transport. ̽��ֱ��early signs are there.”

Finbarr Livesey will be discussing his book and the future of globalisation at this year's Hay Festival.

A new book suggests there is early evidence of a coming U-turn in the globalisation of manufacturing – and that the story we are told about the direction of the global economy is wrong.

Holding on to familiar stories about the global economy is not an option, as technological and political changes make a mockery of any past consensus

Finbarr Livesey

Container Port, Barcelona,

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New evidence of suicide epidemic among India’s ‘marginalised’ farmers

fpjl2 — Thu, 17 Apr 2014 08:51:14 +0000

A new study has found that India’s shocking rates of suicide are highest in areas with the most debt-ridden farmers who are clinging to tiny smallholdings – less than one hectare – and trying to grow ‘cash crops’, such as cotton and coffee, that are highly susceptible to global price fluctuations.

̽��ֱ��research supports a range of previous case studies that point to a crisis in key areas of India’s agriculture sector following the ‘liberalisation’ of the nation’s economy during the 1990s. Researchers say that policy intervention to stabilise the price of cash crops and relieve indebted farmers may help stem the tide of suicide that has swept the Indian countryside.

This latest work follows on from a recent Lancet study by researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), which showed Indian suicide rates to be among the highest in the world – with suicide the second leading cause of death among young adults in India.

In 2010, 187,000 Indians killed themselves – one fifth of all global suicides.

However, while the Lancet study revealed suicide rates in rural areas to be almost double those of urban areas, and the most common method of suicide to be deliberately ingesting pesticide, the LSHTM authors did not believe they had enough evidence to show suicide rates are higher in farmers.

Suicide rates vary sharply across the different Indian states. Building on the LSHTM study, researchers from Cambridge and UCL analysed suicide figures of 18 Indian states – as well as national crime and census statistics and surveying done by the Ministry of Agriculture – to create data models that investigated whether case studies of “farmer suicide” that concentrate on a few suicide hotspots could be generalised across India.

̽��ֱ��team, from the Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Department of Sociology and ̽��ֱ�� College London’s Department of Political Science, say they have found significant causal links showing that the huge variation in suicide rates between Indian states can largely be accounted for by suicides among farmers and agricultural workers.

Farmers at highest risk have three characteristics: those that grow cash crops such as coffee and cotton; those with ‘marginal’ farms of less than one hectare; and those with debts of 300 Rupees or more. Indian states in which these characteristics are most prevalent had the highest suicide rates. In fact, these characteristics account for almost 75% of the variability in state-level suicides.

̽��ֱ��researchers say the results of their statistical analysis support many case studies and reports from the field and suggest there is a suicide epidemic in marginalised areas of Indian agriculture that are at the mercy of global economics. ̽��ֱ��study is recently published online in the journal Globalisation and Health.

“Many believe that the opening of markets and scaling back of state support following the liberalisation of the Indian economy led to an ‘agrarian crisis’ in rural India – which has resulted in these shocking numbers of suicide among Indian agricultural workers,” said lead author Jonathan Kennedy.

“Small scale farmers who cultivate capital-intensive cash crops – which are subject to massive price fluctuations – are particularly vulnerable to accruing debts they can’t repay. Many male farmers – who are traditionally responsible for a household’s economic well-being – resort to suicide because they can’t support their families.”

̽��ֱ��researchers found that suicide rates tend to be higher in states with greater economic disparity – the more unequal the state, the more people kill themselves – but inequality as a predictor of suicide rates paled in comparison with cash crops and marginalised, indebted farmers.

̽��ֱ��state of Kerala – one of the most developed in India – has the highest male suicide rate in India. If Kerala were a country, it would have the highest suicide rate in the world.

Areas such as Gujarat, in which cash crops are mainly cultivated on large-scale farms, have low suicide rates. This is because wealthy cash crop farmers have the resources to weather difficult economic periods, says Kennedy, without falling into debt and ruin.

Another outlier is West Bengal, which has high numbers of smallholders but an average suicide rate: but this is an area in which the Communist Party of India (Marxist) – who have an “unrivalled commitment” to improving the lot of poor farmers – have had a strong political influence over the past four decades.

̽��ֱ��researchers say their study points to a vicious cycle of Indian smallholders forced into debt due to market fluctuations. While 300 rupees – the debt figure analysed in the study – only amounts to $5, the government defines a mere 25 rupees as an adequate daily income in rural India.

̽��ֱ��shame and stress of no longer being able to provide for their families has resulted in hundreds of thousands of male farmers, and in many cases their wives too, taking their own lives by drinking the modern pesticides designed to provide them with bountiful harvests – a truly horrific end as the chemicals cause swift muscle and breathing paralysis.

Added Kennedy: “ ̽��ֱ��liberalisation of the Indian economy is most often associated with near-double digit growth, the rise of India as an economic powerhouse, and the emergence of wealthy urban middle classes. But it is often forgotten that over 833 million people – almost 70% of the Indian population – still live in rural areas.

“A large proportion of these rural inhabitants have not benefited from the economic growth of the past twenty years. In fact, liberalisation has brought about a crisis in the agricultural sector that has pushed many small-scale cash crops farmers into debt and in some cases to suicide.”

Latest statistical research finds strong causal links between areas with the most suicides and areas where impoverished farmers are trying to grow crops that suffer from wild price fluctuations due to India’s relatively recent shift to free market economics.

It is often forgotten that over 833 million people – almost 70% of the Indian population – still live in rural areas

Jonathan Kennedy

Vinoth Chandar

Agriculture is the backbone of India

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African Horse Sickness: mapping how a deadly disease might spread in the UK

amb206 — Sat, 25 May 2013 07:00:00 +0000

As its name suggests, African Horse Sickness (AHS) is associated with the continent of Africa, where it is feared as a deadly disease. It has long been assumed by British veterinarians and horse-owners that the disease, which is carried by midges, could not spread to cooler northern climates.

But researchers now think that its arrival in northern Europe could be only a matter of time – and perhaps more importantly, that it could spread if it did arrive.

A study undertaken by scientists at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Department of Veterinary Medicine, in collaboration with the Animal Health Trust and ̽��ֱ��Pirbright Institute, shows how dangerous it could be for the horse and pony population if AHS was introduced into the UK. ̽��ֱ��research also identified which regions would be worst hit at different times of the year.

This information could be vital to strategies for coping with an outbreak if it arrived. ̽��ֱ��study also emphasises the importance of the continued exclusion of the disease.

̽��ֱ��research was led by Dr Gianni Lo Iacono, a multidisciplinary scientist whose expertise lies in the mathematical modelling of a range of problems related to the interface between biology and physics. He worked with a team of colleagues from complementary fields including Professor James Wood, a renowned specialist in infectious diseases.

Most strikingly, East Anglia emerges from the study as the region that is most vulnerable to AHS spread which could occur if the disease was not identified early enough for action to be taken to contain it.

In Africa, the disease is spread by infected insects from species of midge known as Culicoides imicola, which carry the African Horse Sickness virus, an orbivirus of the family Reoviridae. Once a horse is infected by AHS, there is no treatment and no cure: the animal will have a high fever within 24 hours and most infected animals will be dead within 48 hours.

Other equidae, zebras and donkeys, are susceptible to AHS infection but do not have such severe disease. Infected zebras do not exhibit any apparent symptoms: as seemingly healthy animals they are potentially lethal carriers. Donkeys develop symptoms but can survive the disease.

First recorded references of AHS occurred in 1327 in Yemen, and in the mid-1600s following the introduction of horses to southern Africa. ̽��ֱ��disease was clearly identified by the British Army in South Africa 150 years ago when scores of cavalry horses perished in an epidemic.

Ever since, European horse owners have taken comfort from the fact that the disease could not strike in cooler countries. ̽��ֱ��British climate was considered too cold for the Culicoides imicola midges to survive. On top of this, the UK (and Europe more generally) has protective mechanisms in place that prohibit horses from Africa entering the country.

A growing number of veterinarians now believe that AHS can now arrive in the UK. Well-documented outbreaks were reported in Morocco (1965, 1989–1991), Spain (1987, 1988,1990) and Portugal (1989). ̽��ֱ��British climate is warming and global transportation of perishable fresh goods – such as flowers and vegetables – offers a possible route for infected midges to enter the country.

̽��ֱ��prospect of AHS brings sharply into focus the need for greater research into ways of preventing an incursion of AHS – and ways to cope in the event of an outbreak. “Our work demonstrates that there is no place for complacency about the ability of the virus to spread here,” said Professor Wood.

A greater understanding of AHS requires a multi-stranded approach covering the behaviour and life cycle of the midge and the geographical distribution and movement of horses, plus possible routes for infection to enter the country. Midge numbers and activity are highest during the warmer summer months, when the arrival of infection from overseas would be most serious.

In the UK, all horses have passports as a legal requirement but these documents record the owners’ address rather than the location where their animals are kept. If horses were mapped according to their owners address, London, for example, would emerge as the centre with the densest horse population. Clearly most horses owned by Londoners are kept outside the city, many of them within easy driving distance of their owners’ homes.

Correcting this issue posed problems. However, satellite data on land usage and a survey which recorded the distribution of distances between horses and their owners in different land-use settings (people live closer to their horses in rural areas than they do in urban areas) allowed the researchers to produce a more meaningful map of the risk of the disease. This showed that East Anglia is particularly vulnerable to an outbreak: not only is the region warm and dry, but it also has distinct clusters of horses, notably around Newmarket.

̽��ֱ��team has also investigated another important aspect of the disease: the possible 'dilution effect' that could be achieved through keeping animals not susceptible to the virus, such as cattle and sheep, close to horses.

Dr Lo Iacono explained: “In some communities in Africa people keep cattle or sheep near their houses in the belief that this will distract mosquitoes carrying malaria away from people. Some midges show apparent preference for cattle over sheep, so in South Africa deploying cattle to protect sheep from bluetongue (a similar disease to AHS in cattle and sheep) has been proposed as a way to control the disease. On the other hand, the presence of other species might well prove to be an added attraction for midges, exacerbating the threat to horses.”

̽��ֱ��research re-emphasises the importance of veterinary education to allow early disease identification, which can reduce the critically important reaction times to allow optimal control.

̽��ֱ��tools that Dr Lo Iacono has developed have potential applications in mapping and responding to the spread of other diseases, some of which are ecologically even more complex – such as Rift Valley Fever, a mosquito-borne disease that affects both humans and animals, causing a serious disease and in some cases death.

̽��ֱ��research provides a good example of how theoretical models can identify biological knowledge gaps (identifying midge biting preferences). This is now being taken forward in other studies.

‘Where are the horses? With the sheep or cows? Uncertain host location, vector-feeding preferences and the risk of African horse sickness transmission in Great Britain’ by Giovanni Lo Iacono, Charlotte Robin, Richard Newton, Simon Gubbins, and James Wood is published by the Journal of the Royal Society, Interface (2013) 20130194 doi:10 .1098/rsif.2013.0194

For more information on this story contact Alex Buxton, Office of Communications, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge amb206@admin.cam.ac.uk 01223 761673.

A disease lethal to horses, until now confined to hot countries, could arrive in the UK. New research creates a picture of its possible spread and pinpoints the area that would be worse hit.

Our work demonstrates that there is no place for complacency about the ability of the virus to spread here.

Professor James Wood

Mick Dolphin (Flickr Creative Commons)

Early morning, Newmarket

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Lessons from history: how Europe did (and didn’t) grow rich

amb206 — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 08:00:00 +0000

In the modern world, we take for granted the fact that our economies become richer and more sophisticated decade-on-decade – and that our grandchildren will live a better life than our own, just as we live a better life than our grandparents. However, for the greatest part of human history, the standard of living was low and subject to little improvement.

One of the most important questions that economists seek to answer is how we made the shift from stagnation to continued growth, a shift commonly thought to have occurred with the Industrial Revolution in late 18th-century Britain. ̽��ֱ��stakes are clearly high: being able to answer this significant question would give us the potential to unlock millions of people from poverty across the world today.

̽��ֱ��most popular answer to the question of who or what created lasting growth can be found on the reverse side of the British £20 note, which bears the face of Adam Smith, champion of the free market. Following Smith’s Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, liberalisation and free trade have become familiar to us all, and the state and the market are commonly seen in opposition, with the release of the market requiring reining in the state through privatisation and deregulation.

In the tradition of Smith, modern day economists argue that the reason why economies were poor in the past was that absolutist monarchs undermined property rights (reneging on debt and forcibly extracting wealth from minority groups), and that the state too heavily regulated the economy, including granting monopoly privileges to guilds and international trading companies, all of which limited the incentives and ability of people to buy and sell goods freely. ̽��ֱ��result was that people lacked the incentive to produce, invest and invent – economic growth was thereby hampered.

Only with the onset of the Glorious Revolution in Britain in 1688, which transferred power from the monarch to an elected parliament, were markets supposedly set free, culminating in the Industrial Revolution a century later. In the century which followed, the collapse of the Communist regime in Russia and the success of market liberalisation in China, seemed to add credence to this free-market led view of growth. By 2003, following decades of market liberalisation across the globe, the President of the American Economic Association stood up and publicly announced that the future was bright for the global economy. Instead, what happened was the very opposite: we now stand in the middle of the greatest global economic crisis since the Great Depression.

So, with the economic crisis in mind, what evidence is there to support the claim that markets really do deliver in the long term? As my recent book Markets and Growth in Early Modern Europe has uncovered, very little historical evidence exists to support this claim, despite its power and influence on policy-making over the last two centuries.

Looking at evidence from as far back as ancient Babylonia and through to medieval, early-modern and modern Europe, my research has built a picture of the evolution of markets across the long span of human history using one particularly abundant historical data source – the prices of goods. ̽��ֱ��prices originate from sources as wide as the clay tablets of ancient Babylonia to the account books of Oxbridge Colleges, and include those for a number of commonly consumed goods (such as candles, soap and linen), with the most abundant being for cereals (which provided around 80 per cent of calorie intake in pre-modern Europe).

Where markets became more developed, one should find that in response to trade flows, prices became less volatile and, for the same good, converged across different locations. By applying statistical techniques to measure price behaviour, I have been able to measure market development in a consistent and comparable way across different parts of Europe and across many hundreds of years.

If the free-market view were correct, the picture revealed should have been very simple: poorly-developed markets throughout history until the 17th and 18th centuries, at which point new previously unseen levels of market development were achieved (particularly in Britain), culminating in the Industrial Revolution and the birth of modern economic growth. Instead, the picture I found was very different indeed: markets were certainly not a ‘modern invention’.

Indeed, the presence of markets in Europe as far back as Roman times would not surprise any visitor to museums, many of which have on display a great abundance of coins indicative of market-exchange, together with artifacts such as vases which had been traded across hundreds of miles to the point at which they were unearthed in an archaeological dig. Such markets were supported by the vast state infrastructure for which the Romans are famous – a stable coinage system, a taxation system that funded transport and utilities, and a common legal system to uphold contracts.

Once the Roman state began to crumble, so did the markets it supported, leaving Europe in what was once called the ‘Dark Ages’, falling behind Byzantium and the Orient. Indeed, it was only with the development of institutions in medieval Europe which substituted for the state (such as the Church, guilds and city-states) that markets began to recover – a process which took many centuries.

My research shows that, by the end of the medieval period, markets were around two or three times as developed as in the early ancient period and were highly active throughout Europe. At this time, Venice was the leading long-distance trader on the continent, sourcing exotic silks and spices that had travelled along the ‘silk road’ from the Orient and Middle East all the way to Constantinople. In an effort to sell their goods to European customers, the Italians carved out and linked themselves into trade routes across Europe, exchanging the exotic goods from the East together with the produce of the Mediterranean (oil, soap and wine) for the woolen cloth of north-western Europe (where 45 per cent of the residents of Bruges worked manufacturing cloth in the early 14th century), and the grain, metals, amber and furs of central and eastern Europe.

̽��ֱ��customs records of Southampton reveal a constant battle between the English authorities and the Italians, with one official refusing in 1423 to disembark an Italian ship on which customs duties were owed, only for the captain stubbornly to set sail, with the official eventually having to give in and disembark on the Isle of Wight.

Not only were markets for goods advancing in the medieval period, but so were those for finance, as along with the medieval trading boom came a demand for credit. It was in medieval Italy that Europe’s financial markets first began to develop, benefiting from the mathematical techniques which flowed from the East alongside the spices and silks. For this reason, many modern day banking terms have their origins in the Italian language, including the old symbols for the British currency (L, s and d), and, more generally, why the ‘intellectual fizz’ that was the Renaissance originated in the part of Europe most closely tied with the East.

Looking in envy at the wealth created by the Italian cities through trade with the East, other parts of Europe soon started to take advantage of developments in trading technology (such as sturdier ships, navigation and maps) to search for their own route to the Middle East and Orient. In the late 15th century, Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic to find a ‘back door’, stumbling on the Americas along the way (some say that he took some convincing that he was not on Chinese soil). ̽��ֱ��result was the birth of the Atlantic economy, and the first major globalisation of the world economy: as calculated by O’Rourke and Williamson, world trade in the first half of the 16th century grew at a rate of 2.4 per cent a year, a figure not far off that in the twentieth century.

̽��ֱ��level of market development achieved by the end of the medieval period was already so advanced that, as my book argues, it was barely surpassed by the time of the Industrial Revolution three centuries later, only after which did markets witness a second phase of significant improvement. This is evident in the reduction in the disparity of wheat prices across Europe in the course of the 19th century, when the average price-gap fell from 45 per cent to only 4 per cent, indicating significantly more connected markets. This second major phase of improvement was an outgrowth of the Industrial Revolution itself, based on the application of the steam engine to ships and rail, which drastically cut transport costs, making the world ‘smaller and flatter’.

With these greater flows of goods came significant flows of people – around 30 million people emigrated from Europe to the USA in the century after 1820. This was a process of globalisation that worked on all levels: goods, people and money, and it was not surpassed until towards the end of the 20th century. As with that most recent round of globalisation, it was economic growth itself (or the technologies it brings) that enables markets to reach a new level of development.

In sum, what my research has shown is that the two most significant phases of market development occurred either side of the period traditionally emphasised - and that they took place well before the Industrial Revolution, and then subsequent to it, as opposed to during the 17th and 18th centuries. ̽��ֱ��idea that markets are at the root of the modern age of sustained economic growth is therefore seriously in doubt when we look at the historical evidence. Instead, it makes much more sense to argue that markets, while necessary, are both insufficient for growth and are as much a consequence as a cause.

If we want to understand why the Industrial Revolution occurred and so how Europe and the West grew rich, we need to continue to pursue this long-span historical approach; looking back at economies throughout the past to work out in which ways they were similar and, more importantly, in which ways they truly were different to those of the modern age.

For economists immersing themselves in theory and models, economic history provides a wealth of evidence that is yet to be fully exploited – and which has the potential for revolutionising economic policy and, with it, the lives of many people in the present and future. Until the lessons of history are learned and we realise that more than markets were required to light the fire of continued growth, we may find it difficult to escape the current economic crisis and return to the sustained growth we had begun to take for granted.

Dr Victoria Bateman is Fellow and College Lecturer in Economics at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. She is author of Markets and Growth in Early Modern Europe (Pickering and Chatto, 2012) and contributor to RJ Van der Spek, Jan Luiten van Zanden and ES van Leeuwen (eds), A History of Market Performance: From Ancient Babylonia to the Modern World (Routledge, forthcoming).

̽��ֱ��Industrial Revolution is seen as the spark that lit Europe’s economic prosperity. In her analysis of markets over many hundreds of years, economist Dr Victoria Bateman presents a compelling argument for a broader global perspective.

My research has built a picture of the evolution of markets across the long span of history using one particularly abundant data source – the prices of goods.

Dr Victoria Bateman

Bernardo Bellotto (Canaletto) A View at the Entrance of the Grand Canal, Venice, c.1741 Oil on canvas, 59.3 cm x 94.9 cm (detail)

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Challenging “us versus them”

Anonymous — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 15:00:21 +0000

̽��ֱ��on-going financial crisis, the rise of right-wing populist and anti-immigration political parties, and continuing sectarian conflicts across the world, all multiply the tensions associated with globalisation. Under increasingly difficult conditions, people with widely differing viewpoints are compelled to rub shoulders - often uncomfortably - with each other. What many groups experience is the feeling that their values and their identity are under threat, whether that threat is real or perceived.

Our values are a primary motivating force, underpinning the way we think, behave and relate to the wider world. When we feel that our values or identity are under threat, we go into cognitive constriction, failing to see or even consider opposing points of view. This way of thinking becomes quite self-limiting, potentially leading to a clash with those who disagree, and can affect any group or belief system.

An original programme to address the tensions of worldview clash has been designed for young British Muslims by Dr Sara Savage and Dr Jose Liht, members of the Psychology and Religion Research Group in the ̽��ֱ��’s Faculty of Divinity. ̽��ֱ��programme, entitled Being Muslim Being British (BMBB), uses multimedia and role-play activities, giving participants the tools they need to see some worth in opposing viewpoints while remaining true to their own values. This shift in perception is the groundwork needed for people to work out mutually beneficial solutions to address complex social problems. ̽��ֱ��aim is to promote social cohesion while respecting difference by promoting participants’ Integrative Complexity (IC) – the ability to see value in differing viewpoints around a given issue, and to perceive a wider framework that can make sense of difference.

̽��ֱ��course serves as a primary prevention to build resilience in Muslim youth against the pull of radical groups and radical discourse that has been so prevalent online. ̽��ֱ��team have thoroughly tested seven pilot programmes around the country and are currently working with the Ealing Borough Council in London to roll out BMBB in schools.

Individuals have different lenses on the social world: some see the world in black and white, and some see it in shades of grey. There are advantages and disadvantages to both ways of thinking, and most individuals are able to adapt their level of IC as different situations may require.

“We are not promoting high IC as a universal ideal, because there are times to be very clear, to cut down alternatives and make a decision,” says Dr Savage. “Our approach makes people aware of fluctuations in IC levels in response to stress, and to be able to raise IC when the context calls for that.”

When parties with opposing viewpoints on a contentious issue both experience a drop in IC, conflict is likely to occur - people often see no other option than to go head to head. However, when people are able to see some validity in differing points of view, they are able to interact with those who have opposing viewpoints without feeling threatened or losing their commitment to their own values.

Radical ideas are quite widespread: even so, Dr Savage says of the BMBB participants, “These are not problem people: they are lovely, warm, intelligent young people. But when they are constantly exposed to a discourse that says you can’t be both British and Muslim, and it uses ‘wedge’ issues to polarise them, it’s easy to get stuck in that black and white way of thinking.”

“Our courses don’t so much ‘engineer’ a change as to remove obstacles to young people being able to think about the social world according to a wider array of their own values. By creating a safe context with the needed resources, the obstacles disappear and people are free to think for themselves.”

̽��ֱ��overall experience shows that the approach prmotoes more complex ways of thinking which value both Muslim and British heritages. Dr Ryan Williams’ research on the BMBB pilots shows that higher IC becomes socially validated and valued within the participating peer groups.

“BMBB is about enabling young people to flourish. We present a dilemma and give them the resources to try out various solutions for themselves – we never steer them toward a certain solution,” says Dr Savage.

Using a well-established coding framework to pre and post test every pilot group, participants in BMBB showed a significant increase in IC in their group discussions and projects by the end of the course.

Anti-Muslim rhetoric propagates the idea that Islam has a cognitive constricting effect, but participants in the BMBB programme discover that the opposite is true: their faith is a resource that can help them raise their level of IC.

In addition to the BMBB programme, Dr Savage and colleague Anjum Khan are in the process of adapting BMBB for use in the Netherlands, Italy, Germany and Spain, which will address the way right-wing extremism interacts with Islamic extremism. As well, Dr Eolene Boyd-MacMillan and Dr Savage have received funding from the Scottish government for a programme to address sectarian issues between Catholic and Protestant groups in Scotland - all of which are programmes running through Cambridge Enterprise, the ̽��ֱ��’s commercialisation group.

̽��ֱ��BMBB programme is funded by the European Commission. Dr Williams’ research is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust.

A series of programmes which aim to address and counteract radical thought in British youth is now being adapted for use across Europe.

Our courses don’t so much ‘engineer’ a change as to remove obstacles to young people being able to think about the social world according to a wider array of their own values. By creating a safe context with the needed resources, the obstacles disappear and people are free to think for themselves.

Dr Sara Savage

Danny McL (Flickr Creative Commons)

Whitechapel Market

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Yes

Living with the Inugguit

ns480 — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 00:01:13 +0000

A rare glimpse of daily life among the remnants of the last hunter-gatherer communities of the Polar North, where traditional culture is rapidly being eroded by consumerism and climate change, can be seen online from today.

Shot over a year with the Inugguit, who live in north-west Greenland, the footage documents the lives of the last Inuit people still hunting seals and narwhals with harpoons, and records some of the songs and stories of a community whose vulnerable language, Inuktun, has never been written down in full.

Yet it also captures the fragile nature of a traditional way of life which is perhaps reaching its end. Hunting is becoming increasingly dangerous on the disappearing sea ice of north-west Greenland, but there is little alternative employment. Leonard found a world that has had to come face to face with the effects of climate change and the immediate threat it poses to their culture.

̽��ֱ��Inugguit lived as hunter-gatherers in Greenland’s remote Thule region for centuries. Some say that until they were encountered by Sir John Ross in 1818, they believed that they were the only inhabitants of the world. Today, they live in the northernmost permanently inhabited settlement on Earth. But the region’s glaciers are melting fast, the movement of sea mammals upon which they traditionally relied for their livelihoods is becoming less predictable, and the expense of supporting their communities through the provision of supply ships means that there is some pressure from their own Government, 1,000 miles away, for them to move.

̽��ֱ��film captures a sense of their oral culture - stories, myths, songs and folklore which have only ever existed in Inuktun. 770 people speak this impenetrable language of sighs and groans, in which words can be up to 50 letters long. ̽��ֱ��fear is that if the Inugguit leave their homeland in search of better employment prospects in south-west Greenland, both the language and the cultural heritage it preserves will, within a few generations, potentially disappear. Their language is not widely understood in other parts of Greenland.

More than 15 hours of footage have been edited into a short, filmed report, "Living with the Inugguit".

In part, the film documents the area’s linguistic culture. In one sequence, a 67-year-old former hunter performs one of the Inugguit’s traditional drum-songs, or piheq. In another, a young girl demonstrates how raising one’s eyebrows means “yes”, while pinching one’s nose means “no”. At the same time, however, we see the realities of a lifestyle that is still often caricatured in the west. Dog sledge races take place across the sea ice, a starving polar bear is butchered after being shot at 3 ‘o’ clock in the morning outside Leonard’s door, and violent storms relentlessly batter fragile-looking huts in tiny settlements.

̽��ֱ��most remote of these are barely clinging on. Part of the film was shot in Savissivik, on Melville Bay; a cluster of buildings mainly occupied by male hunters, whose wives have, in many cases, long-since left. ̽��ֱ��effects of climate change mean that it is now almost impossible to reach Savissivik by dog-sledge. Its eldest citizen believed the settlement would be closed down within a decade. Another community, Qeqertat, comprises a population of just 22 narwhal-hunters still cheerfully and stubbornly eking out an existence together at the end of a fjord.

Global warming is not the only reason that life is changing, however. ̽��ֱ��main settlement, Qaanaaq, is home to a community struggling with its own sense of identity as the old way of life disappears. Even here, Amazon delivers, and the material culture and produce of the west has become alluring for a generation who feel increasingly directionless. In this very remote corner of the world, there is only one visiting doctor, one policeman, and little by way of career or employment prospects.

Despite the tremendous changes in their society which have taken place in a very short period of time, the bond of family ties is as strong as ever, with some family members visiting one another four or five times a day. Some young people are caught, however, in a dilemna: “They feel a very special bond to the land and their families,” the film narrative says. “On the other hand, staying might mean an uncertain future.”

What shines through in the film are how the people were friendly, welcoming and armed with a tremendous sense of humour. This is despite a traditional suspicion of white Europeans prevailing amongst some - the legacy of years of exploitation by assorted visitors. Children, appear frequently curious to meet the filmmakers and find out about what they are doing there.

̽��ֱ��dogs which the Inugguit keep for hunting purposes and appear several times in his film became a focal point for the sense of cultural distance he felt at times. Dogs are critical to the Inugguit way of life - they can survive in temperatures as low as -50C degrees, smell seals at distant breathing holes, and save hunters’ lives by finding their way home. Yet the Inugguit have no concept of pets and treat them only as tools.

This is a culture formed against the harshest of backdrops. Local storms were so violent that in some cases the force moved items of furniture across the floor of people's huts. Three and a half months of total darkness ensue after the sun goes down on 24 October.

Amazon provided one ray of sunshine - delivering to the heart of this remote community in a testament to how irresistible forces are killing off the old ways in the Polar North.

A film documenting the disappearing oral traditions of the northernmost settled people on Earth offers a glimpse into how their way of life is threatened by climate change.

̽��ֱ��Arctic hunters believe strongly that we in the West have not listened to nature and now we are paying the price. They think it is time to use our knowledge wisely.

Stephen Leonard

Living with the Inugguit

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Yes

Death by monoculture

bjb42 — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 14:00:26 +0000

̽��ֱ��21^st century is the make-or-break century for cultural and linguistic diversity, and for the future of human civilisation per se. An unprecedented and unchecked growth in the world’s population, combined with the insistence on exploiting finite resources, will lead to environmental and humanitarian catastrophes as mass urbanisation meets fundamental problems such as the lack of drinking water. ̽��ֱ��actions that we collectively take over the next fifty years will determine how and if we can overcome such global challenges, and what the shape of the ‘ethnosphere’ or ‘sum of the world’s cultures’ is to look like in years to come.

After having spent a year in a remote Arctic community which speaks a vulnerable, minority language and whose cultural foundations are being rocked by climate change, it is clear to me that the link between environmental and cultural vulnerability is genuine and that the two are interwoven. Cultural practices of the Polar Eskimos are based on a history of survival strategies in one of the world’s most hostile environments. Their language and ‘way of speaking’ is a representation of that. When the sea ice disappears, their stories will eventually go with it.

We, human beings, rent the world for a period of approximately 80 years. It is our duty to future tenants to leave the house as we found it. ̽��ֱ��conservation issue goes beyond everything else and should therefore be at the heart of every policy decision. To do otherwise, would be to live in the 20^th century. At present, linguists predict that over 50 per cent of the world’s languages will no longer be spoken by the turn of the century. Instead of leaving the house in order, we are on the road to the fastest rate of linguistic and cultural destruction in history. Languages die for many reasons, but the current trend is driven by the juggernaut of the homogenising forces of globalisation and consumerism which seems unstoppable and whose language tends to be the new universal tongue, English.

I am a romantic and romantics are nowadays always disillusioned because the world is no longer how they had hoped it to be. I had gone to the top of the world and had wished to find elderly folk sitting around telling stories. Instead, I found adults and children glued to television screens with a bowl of seal soup on their lap, playing exceedingly violent and expletive crammed Hollywoodian video war games. Time and time again, I discovered this awkward juxtaposition of modernity meets tradition. Out in the Arctic wilderness, hunters dressed head to toe in skins would answer satellite phones and check their GPS co-ordinates.

Consumerism has now made it to every corner of the world. Some Polar Eskimos may live in tiny, wind-beaten wooden cabins with no running water, but Amazon delivers. Most 8 year-olds who live in Qaanaaq and the remote settlements have the latest smartphones. Media entertainment will, however, never be produced for a language of 770 speakers because it is loss-making. Technology, be it mobile phones, DVDs or video games may support the top 50 languages maximum, but never more than that. Some languages are not suited to these technologies: Greenlandic words are too long to subtitle and to use in text messaging. Polar Eskimos tend to send text messages in Danish or English because it is easier.

As the world embraces the synthetic monoculture of populism and consumerism, linguistic and cultural diversity risk being erased right across the world. For consumerism to operate efficiently, it requires as few operating languages as possible. That way, the message is consistent and the producer’s cost is minimised. This globalised consumerism is the product of a system which is based on an addiction to economic growth. Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell, and yet it is difficult to hear US presidential candidates or EU officials talk about anything else. Some politicians speak oxymoronically of ‘sustainable growth’ but the combination of a rocketing world population and finite resources is the recipe of ‘unsustainability’ par excellence. Growth has become an abstract imperative that is driving humanity to destroy the ecosystem upon which life depends. If we can shake off the growth habit and focus on the ‘local’ and sustainability for its own sake, minority languages will have a chance to prosper providing they engage with new digital media technologies. ̽��ֱ��Internet represents surely the best opportunity to help support small or endangered languages and yet 95 per cent of Internet content appears in just 12 languages. ̽��ֱ��Internet offers also a chance to move away from television which is largely responsible for the spread of a phoney, idiotic form of entertainment culture where production costs are too high to support minority languages.

I have never met anybody who is indifferent to the elimination of biodiversity or the protection of endangered animal species, but linguists and anthropologists are still being asked to defend linguistic and cultural diversity. In doing so, it should be remembered that a language is so much more than a syntactic code or a list of grammar rules. To treat language as such is to reduce it to its least interesting features. When languages die, we do not just lose words, but we lose different ways of conceptually framing things. For the Polar Eskimos, there is no one concept of ‘ice’, but over twenty different ways of referring to various forms of ice. Through different distinctions in meaning, languages provide insights onto how groups of speakers ‘know the world’.

A language is a collection of statements about the world delivered in a multitude of voices set to a background of music. There is a difference between being able to speak a language fluently and to speak a language like a native. ̽��ֱ��latter requires first and foremost a mastery of the language’s paralinguistic features – in the case of Polar Eskimo, a rich and never random repertoire of sighs and groans and a specific mix of intonation patterns and gestures accompanying particular words and phrases. To be able to speak a handful of languages as a native, you have to be able to act and act well, reproducing exactly certain collocations of words to the rhythm, gestures, flow and timbre of its speakers. This is always more important than just having a large vocabulary or putting the verb in the right place. Each language of the world requires a different voice. When we lose a language, we lose an orchestra of voices that permeate the mind. As well as knowledge and perceptions of the world which are built into local language varieties, we lose the music and poetry of words and speech which elicit so much pleasure. There should be no need to defend linguistic diversity. It and the power of language is something to be celebrated. Without it, the world would be utterly dull. After all, who wants to listen to just Beethoven, when you can enjoy Rachmaninov and Shostakovich too? Not that there is any chance of the Polar Eskimos listening to Beethhoven, they are too busy indulging in virtual reality Playstation war games whose only poetic content is ‘fucking pacify him’.

Stephen Pax Leonard is a Research Fellow at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He is primarily interested in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology.

Having just returned from a year spent documenting the language and culture of the remote Inughuit community of north-western Greenland, Dr Stephen Leonard describes how he witnessed first-hand the manner in which globalisation and consumerism are conspiring to destroy centuries-old cultures and traditions.

We, human beings, rent the world for a period of approximately 80 years. It is our duty to future tenants to leave the house as we found it.

Stephen Pax Leonard

Stephen Leonard.

Stephen Leonard in Greenland.

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Yes