tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/industrial-revolution-5557/articles
Industrial Revolution – The Conversation
2024-03-22T16:20:58Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/225406
2024-03-22T16:20:58Z
2024-03-22T16:20:58Z
Industrialisation is still vital to economic development but some countries are struggling to reap its benefits
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581880/original/file-20240314-28-tax1ga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5920%2C4642&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/industrial-worker-factory-welding-closeup-218715772">SvedOliver/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Alexander Hamilton, one of the founding fathers of the US, wrote a wealth of reports that served as building blocks for the country’s economic system. In 1791, during his time as secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton published one of his most important: the <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-10-02-0001-0007">Report on the Subject of Manufactures</a>. </p>
<p>It argued that the US needed to develop its manufacturing sector through the use of industrial and trade policy to grow its economy, bolster its military, increase its productivity, and catch up with the industrial and technological powerhouse of the time, Great Britain. </p>
<p>Hamilton died in 1804. But US policymakers, led by Henry Clay, followed Hamilton’s advice. Throughout the 19th century, the US succeeded in its mission of catching up with Great Britain and eventually became the world’s technological superpower.</p>
<p>It’s important that we remember Hamilton’s report. It’s a reminder of how thinking and strategising for economic growth and international competitiveness was changing. It was changing to a mindset that national sovereignty, economic development, international competitiveness and productivity growth are achieved through industrialisation. </p>
<p>But this long-established relationship between economic prosperity and industrialisation is now starting to change. So-called “megatrends” (technological, economic, societal and ecological trends that have a global impact) are changing traditional ideas of technological progress and, as a result, the way countries look to develop their economies. </p>
<p>My book <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-future-of-the-factory-9780198861584?cc=gb&lang=en#">The Future of the Factory</a> investigates how four megatrends are changing (and not changing) industrialisation and manufacturing-led growth. These megatrends are: the rise of services, digital automation technology, globalisation of production and ecological breakdown.</p>
<h2>Digital technology</h2>
<p>In some ways, megatrends are not changing or diminishing the importance of manufacturing-led development. </p>
<p>Digital services are increasingly seen as an alternative to manufacturing in boosting economic development. But they are not replacing the manufacturing sector as the engine of innovation and productivity growth. The manufacturing sector still scores <a href="https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/documentdetail/155731631771398616/at-your-service-the-promise-of-services-led-development">substantially higher</a> than the service sector on tradeability, innovation potential and spillovers to other parts of the economy.</p>
<p>Digital automation technology has also undoubtedly been disruptive in some sectors and countries. But they are not a significant threat to overall job displacement. This is primarily because automation technology tends to create more jobs than it displaces. </p>
<p>The introduction of the personal computer (PC) is a great example. In the US, the PC <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-work/jobs-lost-jobs-gained-what-the-future-of-work-will-mean-for-jobs-skills-and-wages">created</a> 15.8 million more jobs than it displaced between 1980 and 2015. Research has also <a href="https://www.oecd.org/els/what-happened-to-jobs-at-high-risk-of-automation-10bc97f4-en.htm">found</a> that the countries who faced a higher overall automation risk in the early 2010s experienced higher employment growth than other countries in subsequent years. </p>
<p>It seems we are excessively hyping up the expected impact of new technology on economic organisation, as we have done so many times in the past. Industrialisation and factory-based production remain crucial for economic development and innovation.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="People sat at desks using computers in an office." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581762/original/file-20240313-16-fvu77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581762/original/file-20240313-16-fvu77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581762/original/file-20240313-16-fvu77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581762/original/file-20240313-16-fvu77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581762/original/file-20240313-16-fvu77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581762/original/file-20240313-16-fvu77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581762/original/file-20240313-16-fvu77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The PC has created many more jobs than it has displaced.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/diverse-multiracial-workers-sitting-desk-working-1295892817">fizkes/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Uneven opportunities</h2>
<p>Power asymmetries in the world economy are, however, creating uneven opportunities to reap the benefits from industrialisation. At worst, they are making it harder for developing countries to industrialise altogether. </p>
<p>Transnational corporations based in high-income countries are more powerful than ever. And they often use this power to prevent countries, firms and workers in developing countries from getting a fair share of profits in global production systems. </p>
<p>Apple, for example, doesn’t actually “make” the iPhone. It outsources the production of every single component. But Apple still somehow manages to walk away with over 50% of the final retail price.</p>
<p>By contrast, the firms and workers in developing countries who assemble the iPhone (the most labour intensive part of the process) get <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-future-of-the-factory-9780198861584?cc=gb&lang=en#">less than 1.5%</a> of the final price. Large corporations like Apple also use their power to lobby for international trade agreements to work in their interests. </p>
<p>Additionally, high-income countries refuse to take their fair share of blame for ecological breakdown. They preach green industrial policy to developing countries before putting their own house in order. </p>
<p>A recent <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(22)00044-4/fulltext">study</a> found that high-income countries were responsible for 74% of global excess resource use between 1970 and 2017, despite accounting for only 15% of the world’s population. By contrast, low-income and lower-middle income countries, which make up around 50% of the world’s population, accounted for a mere 1% of global excess resource use over this period. </p>
<p>Given these developments, our system of international trade needs to be reformed so that it is fair rather than “free”. And developing countries should also have more ecological policy space in their implementation of industrial policy. The burden to deal with ecological breakdown should fall mainly on high-income countries, as these are the countries that got us into this mess.</p>
<h2>The return of industrial policy</h2>
<p>In many ways, Alexander Hamilton’s insights are still timely. Hamilton stressed the urgent need for policymakers to build up manufacturing capabilities to achieve economic growth and development. </p>
<p>This is what the US government is currently doing in an effort to re-industrialise its economy and especially to become more competitive with China. In July 2022, the US Senate <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/27/us/politics/senate-chips-china.html">passed</a> a historic US$280 billion (£222 billion) industrial policy bill — the largest industrial policy bill in history. </p>
<p>And the US is not the only country actively revamping industrial policy. The global use of industrial policy is at an <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2023/12/23/The-Return-of-Industrial-Policy-in-Data-542828">all-time high</a> as the world grapples with geopolitical tension and shocks to global supply chains. Although megatrends are changing industrialisation in some ways, they are not changing its importance. </p>
<p>We can also use Hamilton’s insights to understand the nature of competition in the modern world economy. The world economy is vastly different today, but we need to understand, like Hamilton understood, that industrialisation is a competitive game that involves power, politics, dirty play – and even warfare. </p>
<p>If the playing field is level, competition isn’t all that bad. But the global playing field today certainly isn’t level when it comes to the distribution of industrial and technological capabilities. This is one of the main obstacles to economic development in the 21st century.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225406/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jostein Hauge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
In an era of transformation, manufacturing still matters.
Jostein Hauge, Assistant Professor in Development Studies, University of Cambridge
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/226136
2024-03-22T14:14:43Z
2024-03-22T14:14:43Z
Medical science has made great strides in fighting TB, but reducing poverty is the best way to end this disease
<p><em>Every year, 10 million people fall ill with tuberculosis. Even though the disease is both preventable and curable, it kills <a href="https://www.who.int/health-topics/tuberculosis#tab=tab_1">1.5 million</a> people each year, making it the world’s deadliest infectious disease. Over 25% of these deaths occur in African countries. The World Health Organization has developed a strategy to reduce TB deaths by 95% by <a href="https://www.who.int/westernpacific/activities/implementing-the-end-tb-strategy">2035</a>. It’s a monumental task. But, global health and infectious disease specialist Tom Nyirenda tells health editor Nadine Dreyer, there are grounds for hope.</em></p>
<h2>Effective tuberculosis treatment has been available for decades. What makes it difficult to contain?</h2>
<p>Tuberculosis is a disease of poverty. It thrives in poor living conditions and overcrowding. It’s a respiratory disease and <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/tb/topic/basics/howtbspreads.htm">spreads</a> through the air when people cough, sneeze or spit. Victims need only to inhale a <a href="https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/tuberculosis">few germs</a> to become infected. </p>
<p>In 1882, when the eminent German scientist <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1905/koch/biographical/">Robert Koch</a> discovered <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/tb/topic/basics/default.htm"><em>Mycobacterium tuberculosis</em></a>, the microbe that causes tuberculosis, the disease sent shock waves throughout the world as it killed rich and poor alike. </p>
<p>At that time <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/tb/worldtbday/history.htm#:%7E:text=On%20March%2024%2C%201882%2C%20Dr,the%20United%20States%20and%20Europe.">one in seven people</a> in the US and Europe died from the “white plague”. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7263063/#:%7E:text=The%20same%20industrial%20revolution%20that,in%20the%20early%20twentieth%20century">Industrial Revolution</a> had resulted in the urbanisation of the poor, who were forced into overcrowded, squalid conditions.</p>
<p>Housing conditions improved and by the time effective antibiotic treatments were discovered in the <a href="https://www.acs.org/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/flemingpenicillin.html#:%7E:text=The%20introduction%20of%20penicillin%20in,greatest%20advances%20in%20therapeutic%20medicine.">1940s</a>, TB rates in the west had declined. </p>
<p>In poor countries the vicious cycle of poverty and disease makes it difficult to eliminate TB. Poverty leads to poor health and unemployment. Unemployment leads to poverty and poor health.</p>
<p>There has however been progress in fighting TB in several African countries. </p>
<h2>Tell us more about those countries and their successes</h2>
<p>Last year the WHO reported that seven African countries – Eswatini, Kenya, Mozambique, South Sudan, Togo, Uganda and Zambia – had <a href="https://www.afro.who.int/regional-director/speeches-messages/world-tb-day-2023">reduced TB deaths</a> by a third since 2015. </p>
<p>The WHO’s Africa office <a href="https://www.afro.who.int/sites/default/files/2023-09/Tuberculosis%20in%20the%20African%20Region_2023%20report.pdf">identified</a> several common strategies, all of which can be used by other countries on the continent and elsewhere in the world. </p>
<p>1.) Countries with limited resources need to choose where to concentrate them, for example, among people with HIV/AIDS who have a <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/tb/publications/pamphlets/tbandhiv_eng.htm#:%7E:text=People%20living%20with%20HIV%20are,body%20to%20fight%20TB%20germs">high risk</a> of contracting TB.</p>
<p>2.) Educating healthcare workers and the public to recognise symptoms is key. These include persistent coughs, phlegm, weight loss, night sweats and high temperatures. </p>
<p>3) The next step is to persuade the person suspected of having TB to get to a testing centre. There is a lot of <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2882973/#:%7E:text=The%20most%20common%20cause%20of%20TB%20stigma%20is%20the%20perceived,%2C%20malnutrition%2C%20or%20disreputable%20behavior.">stigma</a> around TB, so this needs to be approached sensitively.</p>
<p>4.) Another challenge is making sure patients finish their medicine and get better. Treatment usually lasts for six months. There are some innovative ways to tackle this. For example roping in family members, community workers and even local neighbourhood shop owners to make sure patients take their pills. </p>
<p>As human beings we can make things possible using our own communities. We have lots of solutions. </p>
<h2>Have there been advances in TB treatment?</h2>
<p>For many years it took three days to diagnose patients with TB. Three <a href="https://medlineplus.gov/lab-tests/sputum-culture/#:%7E:text=Sputum%2C%20also%20known%20as%20phlegm,same%20as%20spit%20or%20saliva.">sputum</a> smears were examined under a microscope to confirm the diagnosis. </p>
<p>Then, in 2001, there was a series of anthrax attacks on the US postal service. Powdered anthrax spores were deliberately put into letters that were mailed through the US postal system. Twenty-two people, including 12 mail handlers, got anthrax, and five died. </p>
<p>The molecular technology developed to detect anthrax revolutionised the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3590626/">diagnosis</a> of tuberculosis. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16630001/">GeneXpert</a> system, launched in 2003, was at the heart of biohazard detection for the United States Postal Service. </p>
<p>In 2010 the WHO gave the <a href="https://bmchealthservres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12913-020-4997-x">green light</a> for GeneXpert to be used to diagnose TB.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.nhls.ac.za/priority-programmes/tb-genexpert/">GeneXpert</a> test can diagnose patients in an hour. A sputum sample is collected from the patient with suspected TB. The sputum is mixed with a <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/reagent">reagent</a> and a cartridge containing this mixture is placed in the GeneXpert machine. </p>
<p>All processing from this point on is fully automated.</p>
<p>This was the first major breakthrough in tuberculosis diagnostics since the sputum smear microscopy was developed more than 100 years ago.</p>
<p>Another big development is that for the first time in a century we are closer to an effective vaccine. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/tb/publications/factsheets/prevention/bcg.htm#:%7E:text=BCG%20Vaccine-,Introduction,tuberculous%20meningitis%20and%20miliary%20disease.">BCG vaccine</a> for TB has been used for 100 years. It is largely effective for children under five, but less so in older people and can’t be used on patients who have certain medical conditions. </p>
<p>The emergence of <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/tb/topic/drtb/default.htm#:%7E:text=Multidrug%2Dresistant%20TB%20(MDR%20TB)%20is%20caused%20by%20TB,the%20treatment%20of%20MDR%20TB.">multidrug resistant forms of tuberculosis</a> has <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1201971224000584">increased the urgency</a> of developing an effective vaccine. </p>
<p>There are <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1201971224000584">17</a> vaccine candidates currently in different stages of clinical trials. </p>
<p>One of these is the M72 experimental vaccine. The <a href="https://wellcome.org/news/late-stage-trial-tuberculosis-vaccine-candidate-underway-south-africa">late-stage trial</a> of the vaccine is being rolled out in South Africa, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Kenya, Indonesia and Vietnam. A total of 20,000 volunteers will take part in the trial, which is expected to run for five years. </p>
<p>Medical advances are an essential tool to fight TB, but without combating poverty this devastating disease will remain with us.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/226136/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Nyirenda does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Seven African countries have managed to reduce TB deaths by a third.
Tom Nyirenda, Extraordinary Senior Lecture in the Department of Global Health, Stellenbosch University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/224495
2024-03-05T21:19:45Z
2024-03-05T21:19:45Z
The Anthropocene is not an epoch − but the age of humans is most definitely underway
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580004/original/file-20240305-26-j0m1i7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C180%2C5727%2C3599&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Human influence on the climate started even before the Industrial Revolution.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/factoryscape-in-the-potteries-smoke-from-chimneys-in-the-news-photo/1036135896?adppopup=true">Print Collector/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When people talk about the “Anthropocene,” they typically picture the <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-anthropocene-a-very-short-introduction-9780198792987?cc=us&lang=en&">vast impact human societies are having</a> on the planet, from <a href="https://www.ipbes.net/news/Media-Release-Global-Assessment">rapid declines in biodiversity</a> to <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-cycle/">increases in Earth’s temperature</a> by burning fossil fuels.</p>
<p>Such massive planetary changes did not begin all at once at any single place or time.</p>
<p>That’s why <a href="https://theconversation.com/did-the-anthropocene-start-in-1950-or-much-earlier-heres-why-debate-over-our-world-changing-impact-matters-209869">it was controversial</a> when, after over a decade of study and debate, an international committee of scientists – <a href="http://quaternary.stratigraphy.org/working-groups/anthropocene/">the Anthropocene Working Group</a> – proposed to mark the Anthropocene as an epoch in the <a href="https://stratigraphy.org/chart#latest-version">geologic time scale</a> starting precisely in 1952. The marker was radioactive fallout from hydrogen bomb tests.</p>
<p>On March 4, 2024, the commission responsible for recognizing time units within our most recent period of geologic time – the <a href="http://quaternary.stratigraphy.org/">Subcommission on Quarternary Stratigraphy</a> – rejected that proposal, with 12 of 18 members voting no. These are the scientists most expert at reconstructing Earth’s history from the evidence in rocks. They determined that adding an Anthropocene Epoch – and terminating the Holocene Epoch – was not supported by the standards used to define epochs.</p>
<p>To be clear, this vote has no bearing on the overwhelming evidence that human societies are indeed transforming this planet.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://ges.umbc.edu/ellis/">an ecologist who studies global change</a>, I served on the <a href="http://quaternary.stratigraphy.org/working-groups/anthropocene/">Anthropocene Working Group</a> from its start in 2009 until 2023. <a href="https://anthroecology.org/why-i-resigned-from-the-anthropocene-working-group/">I resigned</a> because I was convinced that this proposal defined the Anthropocene so narrowly that it would damage broader scientific and public understanding. </p>
<p>By tying the start of the human age to such a recent and devastating event – nuclear fallout – this proposal risked sowing confusion about the deep history of how humans are transforming the Earth, from climate change and biodiversity losses to pollution by plastics and tropical deforestation.</p>
<h2>The original idea of the Anthropocene</h2>
<p>In the years since the term Anthropocene was coined by Nobel Prize-winning <a href="https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/23/15445/2023/">atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen</a> in 2000, it has increasingly defined our times as an age of human-caused planetary transformation, from climate change to biodiversity loss, plastic pollution, megafires and much more.</p>
<p>Crutzen originally proposed that the Anthropocene began in the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/415023a">latter part of the 18th century</a>, as a product of the Industrial age. He also noted that setting a more precise start date would be “<a href="https://www.mpic.de/3865097/the-anthropocene">arbitrary</a>.” </p>
<p>According to geologists, we humans have been living in the Holocene Epoch for about 11,700 years, since the end of the last ice age. </p>
<p>Human societies began influencing Earth’s biodiversity and climate through agriculture <a href="https://cligs.vt.edu/blog/climate-change--a-new-twist-on-a-very-old-story.html">thousands of years ago</a>. These changes began to accelerate about five centuries ago with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/anthropocene-began-with-species-exchange-between-old-and-new-worlds-38674">colonial collision of the old and new worlds</a>. And, as Crutzen noted, Earth’s climate really began to change with the increasing use of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/history-of-Europe/The-Industrial-Revolution">fossil fuels in the Industrial Revolution</a> that began in the late 1700s.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579988/original/file-20240305-20-6j3yag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579988/original/file-20240305-20-6j3yag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579988/original/file-20240305-20-6j3yag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579988/original/file-20240305-20-6j3yag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579988/original/file-20240305-20-6j3yag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579988/original/file-20240305-20-6j3yag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579988/original/file-20240305-20-6j3yag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579988/original/file-20240305-20-6j3yag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A chart reflecting timing of the ‘Anthropocene Event’ shows how various human activities have affected the planet over mlllennia in the recent geologic time scale. Click the image to enlarge.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://doi.org/10.1002/jqs.3416">Philip Gibbard, et al., 2022</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The Anthropocene as an epoch</h2>
<p>The rationale for proposing to define an Anthropocene Epoch starting around 1950 came from overwhelming evidence that many of the most consequential changes of the human age shifted upward dramatically about that time in a so-called “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/2053019614564785">Great Acceleration” identified by climate scientist Will Steffen</a> and others. </p>
<p>Radioisotopes like plutonium from hydrogen bomb tests conducted around this time left clear traces in soils, sediments, trees, corals and other potential geological records across the planet. The plutonium peak in the sediments of Crawford Lake in Ontario, Canada – <a href="https://theconversation.com/did-the-anthropocene-start-in-1950-or-much-earlier-heres-why-debate-over-our-world-changing-impact-matters-209869">chosen as the “golden spike</a>” for determining the start of the Anthropocene Epoch – is well marked in the lake bed’s exceptionally clear sediment record. </p>
<h2>The Anthropocene Epoch is dead; long live the Anthropocene</h2>
<p>So why was the Anthropocene Epoch rejected? And what happens now?</p>
<p>The proposal to add an Anthropocene Epoch to the geological time scale was rejected for a variety of reasons, none of them related to the fact that human societies are changing this planet. In fact, the opposite is true. </p>
<p>If there is one main reason why geologists rejected this proposal, it is because its recent date and shallow depth are too narrow to encompass the deeper evidence of human-caused planetary change. As geologist <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaa7297">Bill Ruddiman and others wrote in Science Magazine in 2015</a>, “Does it really make sense to define the start of a human-dominated era millennia after most forests in arable regions had been cut for agriculture?”</p>
<p>Discussions of an Anthropocene Epoch aren’t over yet. But it is very unlikely that there will be an official Anthropocene Epoch declaration anytime soon.</p>
<p>The lack of a formal definition of an Anthropocene Epoch will not be a problem for science. </p>
<p>A scientific definition of the Anthropocene is already widely available in the form of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/jqs.3416">the Anthropocene Event</a>, which basically defines Anthropocene <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2023.104340">in simple geological terms</a> as “a complex, transformative, and ongoing event analogous to the Great Oxidation Event and others in the geological record.”</p>
<p>So, despite the “no” vote on the Anthropocene Epoch, the Anthropocene will continue to be as useful as it has been for more than 20 years in stimulating discussions and research into the nature of human transformation of this planet. </p>
<p><em>This article was updated to clarify that a new attempt at an official Anthropocene Epoch declaration is unlikely soon.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224495/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Erle C. Ellis is a former member of the Anthropocene Working Group of the International Commission on Stratigraphy. He is a member of the American Association of Geographers.</span></em></p>
Scientists have been debating the start of the Anthropocene Epoch for 15 years. I was part of those discussions, and I agree with the vote rejecting it.
Erle C. Ellis, Professor of Geography and Environmental Systems, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/205511
2023-06-27T16:00:54Z
2023-06-27T16:00:54Z
Welsh mining towns had alternative currencies 200 years ago – here’s what the crypto world could learn from them
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/532005/original/file-20230614-21-yyoovi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C28%2C2400%2C1156&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A halfpenny token issued by the Parys Mining Company of Anglesey in 1788. The hooded druid design was used for many years and was the first of hundreds of token designs.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Conder_Token_1788_Anglesey_Halfpenny_DH275_composite.jpg">BrandonBigheart/Wikimedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>You can also read this article <a href="https://theconversation.com/dyma-beth-allair-byd-crypto-ei-ddysgu-or-arian-cyfredol-oedd-yn-cael-ei-dalu-i-weithwyr-yng-nghymru-canrifoedd-yn-ol-205424">in Welsh</a>.</em></p>
<p>The global cryptocurrency market has seen a number of recent setbacks: from the collapse of the <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/c10bc6f7-abbe-45dc-9367-042186c3336f">Terra/Luna system in May 2022</a> to the failure of <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/913ff750-d1f4-486a-9801-e05be20041c1">FTX</a>, one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world. </p>
<p>Because of these factors, and other concerns over cryptocurrencies’ <a href="https://ccaf.io/cbnsi/cbeci/ghg">carbon emissions</a>, these assets <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-30/does-crypto-owe-anyone-an-apology-after-2-trillion-of-losses">lost US$2 trillion in value</a> (£1.5 trillion) in 2022.</p>
<p>But while cryptocurrencies get a lot of attention today, in some ways they are not a revolutionary concept. Hundreds of years ago, workers in Wales were often paid with alternative currencies instead of money.</p>
<p>These currencies were physical tokens that represented and were linked to the value of real money. Many cryptocurrencies work in a similar way, acting as digital tokens that <a href="https://www.oecd.org/finance/The-Tokenisation-of-Assets-and-Potential-Implications-for-Financial-Markets-HIGHLIGHTS.pdf">represent a ledger of financial assets</a> (this is known as “tokenisation”).</p>
<p>Digital currencies are also not reliant on any central authority, such as a <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-03-15/cryptocurrencies-are-rising-so-are-the-stakes-for-governments">government or bank</a>, to uphold or maintain their network of exchange. Again, this is similar to how physical tokens were used by Welsh mining companies. </p>
<h2>Currency crisis</h2>
<p>Towards the end of the 18th century the coinage of Britain was in a deplorable state due to the severe <a href="https://coinsandhistoryfoundation.org/2021/07/13/eighteenth-century-britain-coinage-in-crisis/#:%7E:text=The%20production%20of%20silver%20coins,of%20coins%20made%20from%20it.">shortages</a> of silver and copper coins. During the Industrial Revolution people migrated from the countryside into mining and manufacturing centres. But living in towns required money, and the ability to pay wages was impossible for businesses without small change. </p>
<p>With an influx of new workers using money, new shops were opened to meet demand, creating more jobs that required payment in coins. Although the production of counterfeit coins was illegal and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4091719">punishable by death</a>, it was not illegal to produce tokens with other designs which could be used instead of coins. </p>
<p>The first great era of token production during the <a href="https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/industrial-revolution-and-technology/">first Industrial Revolution</a> began in 1787 with the issue of the <a href="https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG214134">Parys Mining Company</a> token. This company mined at Parys Mountain on the Welsh island of Anglesey. It briefly produced more copper than any other mine in the world during the Industrial Revolution. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A quarried landscape of brown and orange earth." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531672/original/file-20230613-15-vt2pzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531672/original/file-20230613-15-vt2pzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531672/original/file-20230613-15-vt2pzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531672/original/file-20230613-15-vt2pzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531672/original/file-20230613-15-vt2pzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531672/original/file-20230613-15-vt2pzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531672/original/file-20230613-15-vt2pzd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">What Parys mountain on Anglesey looks like today.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://pixabay.com/photos/anglesey-parys-mountain-wales-3816220/">rhianjane/Pixabay</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It also used the high-quality ore from its mine to produce tokens which could be exchanged for official coin at full value at any one of its shops or offices. This made the Parys Mining Company the first company in the world to issue tokens. These were described as the “<a href="http://provincialtokencoinage.weebly.com">premier tokens</a>” of the 18th century by that era’s coin experts.</p>
<p>Soon, practically every town in Britain was producing its own tokens. This was driven in part by a shortage of government coinage and improvements in coin manufacturing by <a href="https://globalcapitalism.history.ox.ac.uk/files/case28-matthewboultonscoinspdf">Matthew Boulton’s Soho Mint</a> in Birmingham, who also turned his hand to tokens. </p>
<p>By the turn of the 19th century, the total supply and fast circulation of tokens, foreign coins and other substitutes probably <a href="http://projects.exeter.ac.uk/RDavies/arian/welsh.html">exceeded</a> those of the official coin of the country.</p>
<p>The process of tokenisation was subsequently seen in other countries, in particular the United States. Mining and logging camps in the 19th century US were typically owned and operated by a single company, often <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1992612">in remote</a> locations with poor access to cash. </p>
<p>These companies would often pay their workers in “scrip”, or tokens. The workers, given the limited places they could spend scrips, had little choice but to purchase goods at company-owned stores. By placing large mark ups on goods, the <a href="https://rethinkq.adp.com/artifact-coal-company-scrip-miners/">company</a> could increase their profits and enforce employee loyalty. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A close up of a silver coin on a green background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531992/original/file-20230614-19842-dbn8gn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/531992/original/file-20230614-19842-dbn8gn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531992/original/file-20230614-19842-dbn8gn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531992/original/file-20230614-19842-dbn8gn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531992/original/file-20230614-19842-dbn8gn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=724&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531992/original/file-20230614-19842-dbn8gn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=724&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/531992/original/file-20230614-19842-dbn8gn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=724&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Parys penny produced by the Parys Mining Company.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Parys_Penny.jpg">Obscurasky/Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While the production of tokens by the Parys Mining Company were spurred on by the first Industrial Revolution, the adoption and popularity of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has been hastened by the <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/the-fourth-industrial-revolution-what-it-means-and-how-to-respond/">fourth Industrial Revolution</a>.</p>
<p>Although they are more than 200 years apart, the history of these tokens have important lessons for today’s cryptocurrencies. First, for cryptocurrencies to succeed there needs to be various ways for individuals to accumulate the crypto/tokens, plus a demand and use for the crypto that means it holds its value, and trusted environments where exchange for goods and services can take place.</p>
<p>And second, for cryptocurrencies to be successful and sustainable in the long term they must uphold their original purpose of having an ecosystem that remains independent of a single company or government. Efforts to lock cryptocurrencies to a single organisation do not look positive, for example Facebook’s failed attempt to <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/layer2/2022/01/28/reflecting-on-facebooks-hilarious-well-deserved-crypto-failure/">launch a cryptocurrency</a>, announced in 2019. </p>
<p>The tokens of Welsh mining companies inherently failed when the closures of the mine or shops led to the removal of one or more of the three components of the ecosystem. And then people left with the tokens lost their money, a lesson for us today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205511/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A Welsh mining company was the first to issue tokens to workers as an alternative form of payment.
Edward Thomas Jones, Senior Lecturer in Economics / Director of the Institute of European Finance, Bangor University
Laurence Jones, Lecturer in Finance, Bangor University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/205992
2023-05-25T02:34:37Z
2023-05-25T02:34:37Z
Working from home immoral? A lesson in ethics, and history, for Elon Musk
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527439/original/file-20230522-15-y07zqy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C152%2C2550%2C1316&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lewis Hine/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Elon Musk doesn’t like people working from home. A year ago he declared the end of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jun/01/elon-musk-return-to-office-pretend-to-work-somewhere-else">remote work</a> for employees at car maker Tesla. Now he has called the desire of the “laptop classes” to work from home “immoral”.</p>
<p>“You’re gonna work from home and you’re gonna make everyone else who made your car come work in the factory?” he said in an interview <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/16/elon-musk-work-from-home-morally-wrong-when-some-have-to-show-up.html">on US news network CNBC</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s a productivity issue, but it’s also a moral issue. People should get off their goddamn moral high horse with that work-from-home bullshit. Because they’re asking everyone else to not work from home while they do.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There’s a superficial logic to Musk’s position. But scrutinise it closer and the argument falls apart. While we have a duty to share workload with others, we have no duty to suffer for no reason. And for most of human history, working from home has been normal. It’s the modern factory and office that are the oddities. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-many-days-a-week-in-the-office-are-enough-you-shouldnt-need-to-ask-166418">How many days a week in the office are enough? You shouldn't need to ask</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Working from home and the industrial revolution</h2>
<p>Prior to the industrial revolution, which historian date to the mid-1700s to mid-1800s, working from home, or close to home, was commonplace for most of the world’s population. This included skilled manufacturing workers, who typically worked at home or in small workshops nearby. </p>
<p>For the skilled craftsperson, work hours were what we might call “flexible”. British historian <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/past/38.1.56">E.P. Thompson records</a> the consternation among the upper class about the notorious “irregularity” of labour.</p>
<p>Conditions changed with the rapid growth and concentration of machines in the industrial revolution. These changes began in England, which also saw the most protracted and tense conflicts over the new work hours and discipline factory owners and managers demanded.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A home textile workshop, in Britain or Ireland. This image dates from the 19th century." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527925/original/file-20230524-17-9w9r0e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527925/original/file-20230524-17-9w9r0e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527925/original/file-20230524-17-9w9r0e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527925/original/file-20230524-17-9w9r0e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527925/original/file-20230524-17-9w9r0e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527925/original/file-20230524-17-9w9r0e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527925/original/file-20230524-17-9w9r0e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A home textile workshop in Britain or Ireland. This image dates from the 19th century.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Judgements of conditions for workers prior to industrialisation vary. Thompson’s masterpiece study <a href="https://www.bard.edu/library/pdfs/archives/Thompson-The_Making_of_the_English_Working_Class.pdf">The Making of the English Working Class</a> (published in 1963) recounts bleak tales of families of six or eight woolcombers, huddled working around a charcoal stove, their workshop “also the bedroom”. </p>
<p>But it also mentions the stocking maker with “peas and beans in his snug garden, and a good barrel of humming ale”, and the linen-weaving quarter of Belfast, with “their whitewashed houses, and little flower gardens”. </p>
<p>Either way, working from home is not a novel invention of the “laptop classes”. Only with the industrial revolution were workers required under one roof and for fixed hours.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/meet-the-matchstick-women-the-hidden-victims-of-the-industrial-revolution-87453">Meet the matchstick women — the hidden victims of the industrial revolution</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Misapplying a concept of justice</h2>
<p>Musk’s moral argument against working from home says that because not all workers can do it, no workers should expect it. </p>
<p>This has some resemblance to the “categorical imperative” articulated by 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”</p>
<p>But acting according to the same <em>principle</em> does not mean we all have the same options. We can, for example, want all workers to have the maximum freedom their tasks allow.</p>
<p>The wider error Musk appears to be making is misapplying what ethics researchers call distributive justice. </p>
<p>Simply put, distributive justice concerns how we share benefits and harms. As the philosopher John Rawls explains in his book <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=ACyVDwAAQBAJ&dq=Justice%20as%20Fairness%3A%20A%20Restatement%20cambridge%20university%20press&lr&source=gbs_book_other_versions">Justice as Fairness</a>, in distributive justice we view society as a cooperative activity, where we “regulate the division of advantages that arises from social cooperation over time”.</p>
<p>Research on distributive justice at work typically concerns how to pay workers fairly and also share the suffering or “toil” work requires. But there is no compelling moral case to share the needless suffering that work creates. </p>
<h2>How to share more fairly</h2>
<p>Clearly, professionals benefit from work in many ways we might argue are unjust.
As economist John Kenneth Galbraith observed satirically in <a href="https://www.amazon.com.au/Economics-Innocent-Fraud-Truth-Time/dp/0618013245">The Economics of Innocent Fraud</a>, those who most enjoy their work are generally the best paid. “This is accepted. Low wage scales are for those in repetitive, tedious, painful toil.”</p>
<p>If Musk wanted to share either the pay or toil at Tesla more equally, he has the means to do something about it. He could pay his factory workers more, for example, instead of taking a pay package <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/business-63628186">likely to pay him US$56 billion</a> in 2028. (This depends on Tesla’s market capitalisation being 12 times what it was in 2018; it’s now about 10 times.) </p>
<p>To share the “toil” of work more fairly, he wouldn’t just be <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-sleeping-habits-tesla-factory-floor-twitter-late-nights-2022-11">sleeping at work</a>. He’d be on the production line, or down a mine in central Africa, dragging out the cobalt electric vehicle batteries need, <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/02/01/1152893248/red-cobalt-congo-drc-mining-siddharth-kara">for a few dollars a day</a>.</p>
<h2>Elon, the floor is yours</h2>
<p>Instead, Musk’s idea of fairness is about creating unnecessary work, shaming workers who don’t need to be in the office to commute regardless. There is no compelling moral reason for this in the main Western ethics traditions. </p>
<p>The fruits and burdens of work should be distributed fairly, but unnecessary work helps no one. Commuting is the least pleasurable, and most negative, time of a workers’ day, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01441647.2019.1649317">studies show</a>. Insisting everyone has to do it brings no benefit to those who must do it. They’re not better off. </p>
<p>Denying some workers’ freedom to work from home because other workers don’t have the same freedom now is ethically perverse. </p>
<p>Musk’s hostility towards remote work is consistent with a long history of research that documents managers’ resistance to letting workers out of their sight. </p>
<p>Working from home, or “<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=9LgIEAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR1&dq=Anywhere+Working+and+the+Future+of+Work&ots=c7lRsbZT_X&sig=eXjic-t1XqAY0ehZ8Kb-C5WKW5M#v=onepage&q=Anywhere%20Working%20and%20the%20Future%20of%20Work&f=false">anywhere working</a>”, has been discussed <a href="https://theconversation.com/50-years-of-bold-predictions-about-remote-work-it-isnt-all-about-technology-135034">since the 1970s</a>, and technologically viable since at least the late 1990s. Yet it only became an option for most workers when managers were forced to accept it during the pandemic.</p>
<p>While this enforced experiment of the pandemic has led to the “<a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-economic-and-labour-relations-review/article/abs/public-servants-working-from-home-exploring-managers-changing-allowance-decisions-in-a-covid19-context/1603C6B399ECCBE3DFF8ACD91FF4C39D">epiphany</a>” that working from home can be as productive, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/3-ways-bossware-surveillance-technology-is-turning-back-the-management-clock-189070">growth of surveillance systems</a> to track workers at home proves managerial suspicions linger. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/3-ways-bossware-surveillance-technology-is-turning-back-the-management-clock-189070">3 ways 'bossware' surveillance technology is turning back the management clock</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>There are genuine moral issues for Musk to grapple with at Tesla. He could use his fortune and influence to do something about issues such as <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2023/02/08/battery-push-by-tesla-and-other-ev-makers-raises-child-labor-concerns/?sh=7f3e61dd7789">modern slavery in supply chains</a>, or the inequity of <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/business-63628186">executive pay</a>. </p>
<p>Instead, he’s vexed about working from home. To make work at Tesla genuinely more just, Musk’s moral effort would better be directed towards fairly distributing Tesla’s profit, and mitigating the suffering and toil that industrial production systems already create.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205992/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dale Tweedie receives no funding from any organisation that would benefit from this article. </span></em></p>
Elon Musk says wanting to work from home is unethical when not all workers can do it. Here’s why this argument is wrong.
Dale Tweedie, Senior lecturer, Macquarie University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/203653
2023-05-12T12:21:51Z
2023-05-12T12:21:51Z
What’s a Luddite? An expert on technology and society explains
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525491/original/file-20230510-25-btjznr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=349%2C298%2C1982%2C1453&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Some Luddites simply want to press 'pause' on the uninhibited march of technological progress.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/digital-rain-2-royalty-free-illustration/1326774318?phrase=luddites&adppopup=true">Stan Eales/iStock via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The term “Luddite” emerged in <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-the-luddites-really-fought-against-264412/">early 1800s England</a>. At the time there was a thriving textile industry that depended on manual knitting frames and a skilled workforce to create cloth and garments out of cotton and wool. But as <a href="https://www.bl.uk/georgian-britain/articles/the-industrial-revolution">the Industrial Revolution</a> gathered momentum, steam-powered mills threatened the livelihood of thousands of artisanal textile workers.</p>
<p>Faced with an industrialized future that threatened their jobs and their professional identity, a growing number of textile workers turned to direct action. Galvanized by their leader, Ned Ludd, they began to smash the machines that they saw as robbing them of their source of income.</p>
<p>It’s not clear whether <a href="https://www.history.com/news/who-were-the-luddites">Ned Ludd was a real person</a>, or simply a figment of folklore invented during a period of upheaval. But his name became synonymous with rejecting disruptive new technologies – an association that lasts to this day. </p>
<h2>Questioning doesn’t mean rejecting</h2>
<p>Contrary to popular belief, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/im-a-luddite-you-should-be-one-too-163172">original Luddites were not anti-technology</a>, nor were they <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-the-luddites-really-fought-against-264412/">technologically incompetent</a>. Rather, they were skilled adopters and users of the artisanal textile technologies of the time. Their argument was not with technology, per se, but with the ways that wealthy industrialists were robbing them of their way of life.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525490/original/file-20230510-25-vvlwmh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Engraving of a mob of men breaking into a factory." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525490/original/file-20230510-25-vvlwmh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525490/original/file-20230510-25-vvlwmh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=677&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525490/original/file-20230510-25-vvlwmh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=677&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525490/original/file-20230510-25-vvlwmh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=677&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525490/original/file-20230510-25-vvlwmh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525490/original/file-20230510-25-vvlwmh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525490/original/file-20230510-25-vvlwmh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=851&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A wood engraving from 1844 depicts Luddites destroying power looms.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/austro-hungaria-social-history-bohemian-weaver-mutiny-news-photo/549548257?adppopup=true">Archiv Gerstenberg/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Today, this distinction is sometimes lost.</p>
<p>Being called a Luddite often indicates technological incompetence – as in, “I can’t figure out how to send emojis; I’m such a Luddite.” Or it describes an ignorant rejection of technology: “He’s such a Luddite for refusing to use Venmo.”</p>
<p>In December 2015, Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and Bill Gates were jointly nominated for a <a href="https://theconversation.com/if-elon-musk-is-a-luddite-count-me-in-52630">“Luddite Award”</a>. Their sin? Raising concerns over the potential dangers of artificial intelligence. </p>
<p>The irony of three prominent scientists and entrepreneurs being labeled as Luddites underlines the disconnect between the term’s original meaning and its more modern use as an epithet for anyone who doesn’t wholeheartedly and unquestioningly embrace technological progress. </p>
<p>Yet technologists like Musk and Gates aren’t rejecting technology or innovation. Instead, they’re rejecting a worldview that all technological advances are ultimately good for society. This worldview optimistically assumes that the faster humans innovate, the better the future will be.</p>
<p>This “<a href="https://www.masterclass.com/articles/move-fast-and-break-things">move fast and break things</a>” approach toward technological innovation has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years – especially with growing awareness that <a href="https://theconversation.com/sci-fi-movies-are-the-secret-weapon-that-could-help-silicon-valley-grow-up-105714">unfettered innovation can lead to deeply harmful consequences</a> that a degree of responsibility and forethought could help avoid.</p>
<h2>Why Luddism matters</h2>
<p>In an age of <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/chatgpt-pause-ai-experiments-open-letter/">ChatGPT</a>, gene editing and other transformative technologies, perhaps we all need to channel the spirit of Ned Ludd as we grapple with how to ensure that future technologies do more good than harm.</p>
<p>In fact, “<a href="https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/kirkpatrick-sale-crow-s-nest-distribution-neo-luddites-and-lessons-from-the-luddites">Neo-Luddites</a>” or “New Luddites” is a term that emerged at the end of the 20th century.</p>
<p>In 1990, the psychologist Chellis Glendinning published an essay titled “<a href="https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/chellis-glendinning-notes-toward-a-neo-luddite-manifesto">Notes toward a Neo-Luddite Manifesto</a>.” </p>
<p>In it, she recognized the nature of the early Luddite movement and related it to a growing disconnect between societal values and technological innovation in the late 20th century. As Glendinning writes, “Like the early Luddites, we too are a desperate people seeking to protect the livelihoods, communities, and families we love, which lie on the verge of destruction.”</p>
<p>On one hand, entrepreneurs and others who advocate for a more measured approach to technology innovation lest we stumble into avoidable – and potentially catastrophic risks – are frequently labeled “Neo-Luddites.” </p>
<p>These individuals represent experts who believe in the power of technology to positively change the future, but are also aware of the societal, environmental and economic dangers of blinkered innovation.</p>
<p>Then there are the Neo-Luddites who actively reject modern technologies, fearing that they are damaging to society. New York City’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/style/teens-social-media.html">Luddite Club</a> falls into this camp. Formed by a group of tech-disillusioned Gen-Zers, the club advocates the use of flip phones, crafting, hanging out in parks and reading hardcover or paperback books. Screens are an anathema to the group, which sees them as a drain on mental health.</p>
<p>I’m not sure how many of today’s Neo-Luddites – whether they’re thoughtful technologists, technology-rejecting teens or simply people who are uneasy about technological disruption – have read Glendinning’s manifesto. And to be sure, parts of it are rather contentious. Yet there is a common thread here: the idea that technology can lead to personal and societal harm if it is not developed responsibly. </p>
<p>And maybe that approach isn’t such a bad thing.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Maynard does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Despite the association of ‘Luddite’ with a naïve rejection of technology, the term and its origins are far richer and more complex than you might think.
Andrew Maynard, Professor of Advanced Technology Transitions, Arizona State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/197788
2023-02-15T16:00:14Z
2023-02-15T16:00:14Z
Was Earth already heating up, or did global warming reverse a long-term cooling trend?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508700/original/file-20230207-21-1bdmxo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=166%2C39%2C5107%2C3328&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Natural records suggest a cooling trend was underway thousands of years ago.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/ploughing-scene-wall-painting-tomb-of-sennedjem-valley-of-news-photo/475591523">DeAgostini/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Over the past century, the Earth’s average temperature has swiftly <a href="https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature">increased by about 1 degree Celsius</a> (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit). The evidence is hard to dispute. It comes from thermometers and other sensors around the world.</p>
<p>But what about the thousands of years before the Industrial Revolution, before thermometers, and before humans warmed the climate by <a href="https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/19/what-is-the-greenhouse-effect/">releasing heat-trapping carbon dioxide from fossil fuels</a>?</p>
<p>Back then, was Earth’s temperature warming or cooling?</p>
<p>Even though scientists know more about the most recent 6,000 years than any other multimillennial interval, studies on this long-term global temperature trend have come to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1407229111">contrasting conclusions</a>.</p>
<p>To try to resolve the difference, we conducted a comprehensive, global-scale assessment of the existing evidence, including both natural archives, like tree rings and seafloor sediments, and climate models. Our results, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05536-w">published Feb. 15, 2023</a>, suggest ways to improve climate forecasting to avoid missing some important slow-moving, naturally occurring climate feedbacks.</p>
<h2>Global warming in context</h2>
<p>Scientists like us who study past climate, or <a href="https://www.usgs.gov/programs/climate-research-and-development-program/science/paleoclimate-research">paleoclimate</a>, look for temperature data from far back in time, long before thermometers and satellites.</p>
<p>We have two options: We can find information about past climate stored <a href="https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/how-proxy-data-reveals-climate-of-earths-distant-past/">in natural archives</a>, or we can simulate the past using <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-how-do-climate-models-work/">climate models</a>.</p>
<p>There are several natural archives that record changes in the climate over time. The growth rings that form each year in <a href="https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/how-climate-works/tree-rings-and-climate">trees</a>, <a href="https://eos.org/editors-vox/stalagmite-layers-reveal-hidden-climate-stories">stalagmites</a> and <a href="https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/how-can-corals-teach-us-about-climate">corals</a> can be used to reconstruct past temperature. Similar data can be found in <a href="https://icecores.org/about-ice-cores">glacier ice</a> and in tiny shells found in the <a href="https://www.icm.csic.es/en/news/what-do-marine-sediments-tell-us-about-earths-climate">sediment that builds up over time at the bottom of the ocean</a> or <a href="https://www.earth.ox.ac.uk/2017/01/using-lake-sediments-to-understand-past-climate/">lakes</a>. These serve as substitutes, or proxies, for thermometer-based measurements.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Illustration shows different types of natural archives and how cores are taken." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506970/original/file-20230130-508-h5lwde.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506970/original/file-20230130-508-h5lwde.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506970/original/file-20230130-508-h5lwde.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506970/original/file-20230130-508-h5lwde.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506970/original/file-20230130-508-h5lwde.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506970/original/file-20230130-508-h5lwde.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506970/original/file-20230130-508-h5lwde.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Trees are the best-known natural archives. Here are several others that hold evidence of past temperature. Cores or other samples from these archives can be used to reconstruct changes over time.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.victorleshyk.com/">Viktor O. Leshyk</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For example, changes in the width of tree rings can <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-012-1611-x">record temperature fluctuations</a>. If temperature during the growing season is too cold, the tree ring forming that year is thinner that one from a year with warmer temperatures.</p>
<p>Another temperature proxy is found in seafloor sediment, in the remains of tiny ocean-dwelling creatures called <a href="https://www.bgs.ac.uk/discovering-geology/fossils-and-geological-time/foraminifera/">foraminifera</a>. When a foraminifer is alive, the chemical composition of its <a href="https://blogs.egu.eu/divisions/cl/2017/11/24/forams-the-sea-thermometers-of-the-past/">shell changes depending on the temperature of the ocean</a>. When it dies, the shell sinks and gets buried by other debris over time, forming layers of sediment at the ocean floor. Paleoclimatologists can then extract sediment cores and chemically analyze the shells in those layers to determine their composition and age, sometimes going back millennia.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two female scientists aboard a boat examine a sediment core, with the layers clearly visible." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506968/original/file-20230130-14-2uvwwp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506968/original/file-20230130-14-2uvwwp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506968/original/file-20230130-14-2uvwwp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506968/original/file-20230130-14-2uvwwp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506968/original/file-20230130-14-2uvwwp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506968/original/file-20230130-14-2uvwwp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506968/original/file-20230130-14-2uvwwp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ellie Broadman, right, an author of this article, holds a sediment core from a lake on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Emily Stone</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Climate models, our other tool for exploring past environments, are mathematical representations of the Earth’s climate system. They model relationships among the atmosphere, biosphere and hydrosphere to create our best replica of reality.</p>
<p>Climate models are used to <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-well-have-climate-models-projected-global-warming/">study current conditions</a>, <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/emissions-scenarios/?idp=0">forecast changes in the future</a> and <a href="https://pmip.lsce.ipsl.fr/about_us/overview">reconstruct the past</a>. For example, scientists can input the past concentrations of greenhouse gases, which we know from <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-022-00351-3">information stored in tiny bubbles in ancient ice</a>, and the model can use that information to simulate past temperature. Modern climate data and details from natural archives are used to test their accuracy.</p>
<p>Proxy data and climate models have different strengths.</p>
<p>Proxies are tangible and measurable, and they often have a well-understood response to temperature. However, they are not evenly distributed around the world or through time. This makes it difficult to reconstruct global, continuous temperatures.</p>
<p>In contrast, climate models are continuous in space and time, but while they are often very skillful, they will never capture every detail of the climate system.</p>
<h2>A paleo-temperature conundrum</h2>
<p>In our <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05536-w">new review paper</a>, we assessed climate theory, proxy data and model simulations, focusing on indicators of global temperature. We carefully considered naturally occurring processes that affect the climate, including long-term variations in <a href="https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2948/milankovitch-orbital-cycles-and-their-role-in-earths-climate/">Earth’s orbit around the Sun</a>, greenhouse gas concentrations, <a href="https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/how-climate-works/how-volcanoes-influence-climate">volcanic eruptions</a> and <a href="https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-incoming-sunlight">the strength of the Sun’s heat energy</a>.</p>
<p>We also examined important climate feedbacks, such as vegetation and sea ice changes, that can <a href="https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/how-climate-works/albedo-and-climate">influence global temperature</a>. For example, there is strong evidence that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2013.10.022">less Arctic sea ice</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/2997337">more vegetation cover</a> existed during a period around 6,000 years ago than in the 19th century. That would have darkened the Earth’s surface, causing it to absorb more heat.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507969/original/file-20230202-12383-ugtxhe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507969/original/file-20230202-12383-ugtxhe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507969/original/file-20230202-12383-ugtxhe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=323&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507969/original/file-20230202-12383-ugtxhe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=323&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507969/original/file-20230202-12383-ugtxhe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=323&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507969/original/file-20230202-12383-ugtxhe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507969/original/file-20230202-12383-ugtxhe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/507969/original/file-20230202-12383-ugtxhe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some example of foraminifera shells.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Foraminifera_Phototable.jpg">From Anna Tikhonova, Sofia Merenkova, Sergei Korsun and Alexander Matul via Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our two types of evidence offer different answers regarding the Earth’s temperature trend over the 6,000 years before modern global warming.
Natural archives generally show that Earth’s average temperature roughly 6,000 years ago was warmer by <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-020-0530-7">about 0.7 C (1.3 F) compared with the 19th century median</a>, and then cooled gradually until the Industrial Revolution. We found that most evidence points to this result.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, climate models generally show a slight warming trend, corresponding to a gradual increase in carbon dioxide as <a href="https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/development-agriculture">agriculture-based societies developed</a> during the millennia after <a href="https://www.livescience.com/40311-pleistocene-epoch.html">ice sheets retreated</a> in the Northern Hemisphere.</p>
<h2>How to improve climate forecasts</h2>
<p>Our assessment highlights some ways to improve climate forecasts.</p>
<p>For example, we found that models would be more powerful if they more fully represented certain climate feedbacks. One <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abj6535">climate model experiment</a> that included increased vegetation cover in some regions 6,000 years ago was able to simulate the global temperature peak we see in proxy records, unlike most other model simulations, which don’t include this expanded vegetation.</p>
<p>Understanding and better incorporating these and other feedbacks <a href="https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL085982">will be important</a> as scientists continue to improve our ability to predict future changes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197788/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ellie Broadman has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the University of Arizona, and Northern Arizona University.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Darrell Kaufman receives funding from the National Science Foundation.</span></em></p>
Evidence in Earth’s natural archives, from tree rings to seafloor sediments, points to one trend. Some climate models suggest another.
Ellie Broadman, Postdoctoral Research Associate in Climate Science, University of Arizona
Darrell Kaufman, Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Northern Arizona University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/196129
2023-01-04T13:27:28Z
2023-01-04T13:27:28Z
William Wordsworth and the Romantics anticipated today’s idea of a nature-positive life
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502403/original/file-20221221-12-9wf35m.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C6%2C1491%2C1129&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Wiliam Wordsworth lived and wrote in Grasmere, in England's Lake District, from 1799-1808.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Grasmere_from_Stone_Arthur.jpg">Mick Knapton/Wikipedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Musical performances usually happen in concert halls or clubs, but famed cellist Yo-Yo Ma is exploring a new venue: U.S. national parks. In a project called <a href="https://www.yo-yoma.com/news/yo-yo-ma-at-the-grand-canyon-big-time-and-our-common-nature/">Our Common Nature</a>, Ma is performing in settings such as the Great Smoky Mountains and the Grand Canyon. By making music and bringing people together in scenic places, Ma aims to help humans understand where they fit in the natural world.</p>
<p>“What if there’s a way that we can end up thinking and feeling and knowing that we are coming from nature, that we’re a part of nature, instead of just thinking: What can we use it for?” Ma mused in a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/arts/music/yo-yo-ma-our-common-nature.html">recent New York Times article</a>. </p>
<p>There’s a buzzword for this outlook: nature-positive. And it’s cropping up at high-level meetings, including the 2021 <a href="https://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/50363/g7-2030-nature-compact-pdf-120kb-4-pages-1.pdf">G-7 summit in Cornwall, England</a> and the COP15 biodiversity conference in Montreal that adopted an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/19/climate/biodiversity-cop15-montreal-30x30.html">ambitious framework for protecting nature</a> in December 2022.</p>
<p>As a group of environmental leaders <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/what-is-nature-positive-and-why-is-it-the-key-to-our-future/">wrote in 2021</a>: “A nature positive approach enriches biodiversity, stores carbon, purifies water and reduces pandemic risk. In short, a nature positive approach enhances the resilience of our planet and our societies.” </p>
<p>This is a dramatic shift from the mentality that has driven industrialization and global economic growth over the past 250 years. But it’s not new. As a researcher in the humanities and author of “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Radical-Wordsworth-Poet-Changed-World/dp/0300169647">Radical Wordsworth: The Poet Who Changed the World</a>,” I see nature positivity as a welcome revival of an outlook that English poet William Wordsworth and other Romantics proposed in the late 1700s.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Cellist Yo-Yo Ma plays ‘In the Gale,’ an original piece for The Birdsong Project, a collaboration to support bird conservation.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The birth of the sublime</h2>
<p>In the preindustrial era, when life was dominated by hard manual labor, wild nature wasn’t viewed as a terribly attractive place. In the 1720s, writer Daniel Defoe, <a href="https://www.globalgreyebooks.com/tour-through-the-whole-island-of-great-britain-ebook.html">touring across the island of Great Britain</a>, denounced the mountains and lakes of northwest England as “the wildest, most barren and frightful of any that I have passed over.” </p>
<p>The mountains were horrible to look at, impossible to pass over and, worst of all, had “no lead mines and veins of rich ore, no Coal Pits,” Defoe wrote. They were “all barren and wild, of no use or advantage either to Man or Beast.” </p>
<p>Attitudes began to change a generation later, with the expansion of a middle class that had the leisure and resources to enjoy a spot of tourism. Early guidebooks gave directions to viewpoints, or “stations,” that opened onto spectacularly beautiful vistas. </p>
<p>Philosophers and poets began to view natural phenomena such as ocean waves, lightning flashes over a mountain or the darkness of old-growth forests with awestruck pleasure rather than fear. They called these sights the “sublime,” a word that we still reach for when contemplating, say, the vastness of the Arctic or the Amazon. As <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/26/obituaries/barry-lopez-dead.html">Barry Lopez</a>, author of “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/103565/arctic-dreams-by-barry-lopez/">Arctic Dreams</a>,” once wrote, the “sublime encounter” with such places offers us a profound “resonance with a system of unmanaged, nonhuman-centered relationships”.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The aurora borealis, or northern lights, have become a modern tourist draw that attracts people to remote northern locations.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Romanticism emerged as the steam engine and the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/technology/spinning-jenny">spinning jenny</a> were driving mass urbanization. As workers flocked from farms to grimy cities in search of manufacturing jobs, a reaction set in: yearning for a return to nature. This became the hallmark of the <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/roma/hd_roma.htm">Romantic movement</a> that flourished across Europe through the mid-1800s. </p>
<h2>‘A sort of national property’</h2>
<p>Many writers, thinkers and artists contributed to this outpouring of nature-positivity. Beethoven’s <a href="https://www.npr.org/2006/06/12/5478661/beethovens-symphony-no-6-in-f-major-op-68">Pastoral Symphony</a> and the <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/joseph-mallord-william-turner-558">paintings of J. M. W. Turner</a> are examples. But in the English-speaking world, none were more influential than <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/long-reads/2020/04/radical-lessons-william-wordsworth-250-years-jonathan-bate-biography-review">Wordsworth</a> (1770-1850).</p>
<p>Born and raised in England’s Lake District, Wordsworth felt alienated from fellow students at Cambridge. As an aspiring journalist in London, he was stunned to discover that many people did not know their next door neighbor’s name. Only when Wordsworth returned to nature – first in the English west country and then when he went home to the Lakes – did he become his true self and write his greatest poetry. </p>
<p>In verse and prose, Wordsworth made a series of revolutionary claims. In the preface to his 1800 collection of poems, “<a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lyrical_Ballads_(1800)/Volume_2">Lyrical Ballads</a>,” he argued that men and women who live indigenously within a natural environment are uniquely in tune with “the essential passions of the heart” because their very humanity is “incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature.” </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502420/original/file-20221221-12-8i9x3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Portrait of a man with arms folded, standing on a rocky point" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502420/original/file-20221221-12-8i9x3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502420/original/file-20221221-12-8i9x3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502420/original/file-20221221-12-8i9x3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502420/original/file-20221221-12-8i9x3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502420/original/file-20221221-12-8i9x3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502420/original/file-20221221-12-8i9x3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/502420/original/file-20221221-12-8i9x3g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Wordsworth on Helvellyn,’ a mountain in the Lake District (1842), by Benjamin Robert Haydon.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wordsworth#/media/File:Wordsworth_on_Helvellyn_by_Benjamin_Robert_Haydon.jpg">Wikipedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In his “<a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/guide-to-the-lakes-9780198848097">Guide to the Lakes</a>,” Wordsworth warned against such innovations as planting non-native conifers that spoiled the beauty and eroded the soil of his native region. Instead, he proposed preserving places of outstanding natural beauty like the Lake District as “a sort of national property.” </p>
<p>This idea later would help to <a href="https://exhibits.lib.byu.edu/wordsworth/">inspire the U.S. national park system</a> and England’s <a href="https://www.hdrawnsley.com/index.php/2-uncategorised/111-no-man-is-an-island">National Trust</a>. Today the concepts of <a href="https://theconversation.com/protecting-30-of-earths-surface-for-nature-means-thinking-about-connections-near-and-far-180296">conservation zones and protected areas</a> are central to the goal of a nature-positive world.</p>
<p>Inspired by Wordsworth’s idea that the health of human society depends on a healthy relationship with the environment, the great Victorian social thinker <a href="https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/arts-blog/john-ruskin-environmental-campaigner">John Ruskin</a> turned economic theory on its head. In polemical pamphlets and public lectures, Ruskin argued that the basis of what was then known as “political economy” should be not labor and capital, production and consumption, but “<a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/environment/energy-government-and-defense-magazines/white-thorn-blossom">Pure Air, Water, and Earth</a>.” </p>
<p>Almost exactly 150 years later, on July 28, 2022, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a <a href="https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3982508?ln=en">resolution</a> recognizing a universal human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/CmTUNuTu27X/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<h2>Colonial conservation?</h2>
<p>Wordsworth’s influence on the conservation movement wasn’t entirely benign. Late in life, he lamented that his very advocacy of the beauty of the Lake District had brought in a mass tourist industry that had the potential to <a href="https://www.johndobson.info/Tourists/NumberedPages/Page_39.php">destroy the very beauty he sought to preserve</a>. </p>
<p>Furthermore, protecting wild places risks displacing indigenous peoples who have lived in harmony with the land for centuries. Creating conservation zones and protected areas in the rain forests of Central America and the Amazon basin has sometimes <a href="https://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/12/08/conservation-zones-exclude-indigenous-people-drive-deforestation-report/">shut out local tribes</a>. </p>
<p>Organizations such as the <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/sierra-club-apologizes-founder-john-muir-s-racist-views-n1234695">Sierra Club</a> and the <a href="https://theecologist.org/2016/mar/29/century-theft-indians-national-park-service">U.S. National Park Service</a> are now striving to transcend this long history of “<a href="https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/conservation-policy-and-indigenous-peoples">colonial conservation</a>.” The importance of working together with indigenous peoples and learning from their time-honored values and conservation practices received new attention at major conferences on climate change and biodiversity in 2022, although some observers argued that the resulting commitments <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2022/11/words-that-didnt-make-the-cut-what-happened-to-indigenous-rights-at-cop27/">fell short</a> of <a href="https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/cop15-biodiversity-conference-fails-protect-indigenous-peoples-rights">what was needed</a>.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1605112015835566081"}"></div></p>
<p>In my view, Wordsworth knew that the truly nature-positive are those whose livelihoods and senses of self and community are wholly bound to their native places. As he wrote in “<a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lyrical_Ballads_(1800)/Volume_2/Michael">Michael</a>,” the great pastoral poem at the climax of “Lyrical Ballads”:</p>
<pre class="highlight plaintext"><code> And grossly that man errs, who should suppose
That the green valleys, and the streams and rocks,
Were things indifferent to the Shepherd’s thoughts.
... these fields, these hills
Which were his living Being even more
Than his own blood—what could they less? had laid
Strong hold on his affections, were to him
A pleasurable feeling of blind love,
The pleasure which there is in life itself.
</code></pre><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/196129/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Bate does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The idea that human activity threatens nature, and that it is important to protect wild places, dates back to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.
Jonathan Bate, Foundation Professor of Environmental Humanities, Arizona State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/194006
2023-01-02T12:40:34Z
2023-01-02T12:40:34Z
Student and teacher involvement in reforming schooling matters — how Montréal schools are tackling this
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501691/original/file-20221218-11243-y0enmo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C206%2C2752%2C1738&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Schooling models designed for the industrial revolution need to change.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you could redesign high school, what might you change? How could the schedule be more flexible? What if teachers worked together as teams? What if groups of students were combined based on interest and given the opportunity to connect learning to their everyday lives? </p>
<p>Noel Burke, the founder of an educational reform initiative in Québec called NEXTschool, has been asking these questions for years. </p>
<p>After working as a teacher, administrator and government official, Burke travelled to innovative high schools in <a href="https://ojc.school.nz/">New Zealand</a> and <a href="https://www.designtechhighschool.org/">Southern California</a> and met with educators throughout Canada with the goal of figuring out how he might help empower schools in Québec to “<a href="http://www.nextschoolquebec.com">better align with the learning needs of students in the 21st century</a>.” </p>
<h2>Designed for industrial revolution</h2>
<p>Like most educational institutions across Canada, Québec English high schools <a href="https://www.edweek.org/education/opinion-theres-nothing-especially-educational-about-factory-style-management/2014/04">retain structures designed for the industrial revolution to support shift work and a culture of management</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Lockers seen in a hallway." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501690/original/file-20221218-22-n4klx3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501690/original/file-20221218-22-n4klx3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501690/original/file-20221218-22-n4klx3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501690/original/file-20221218-22-n4klx3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501690/original/file-20221218-22-n4klx3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501690/original/file-20221218-22-n4klx3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501690/original/file-20221218-22-n4klx3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">High schools need to adapt to today’s challenges and what students need to know for their futures.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Today though, the realities of students’ lives have transformed, and schools are slowly adapting to a <a href="https://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=6864">knowledge-based economy</a> and <a href="https://www.cmec.ca/682/global_competencies.html">unpredictable ecological and social challenges</a>.</p>
<p>As part of a <a href="https://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/about-au_sujet/index-eng.aspx">Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council</a> funded research project, we belong to a team of researchers from <a href="https://www.mcgill.ca/dise/">McGill’s Department of Integrated Studies in Education</a> studying educational change. </p>
<p>Working alongside Burke, we examined new models of education that emphasize learning opportunities that connect to what high school students care about and what they need to know for our future.</p>
<h2>New models for schooling</h2>
<p>These new models often feature <a href="https://www.amle.org/is-your-school-schedule-flexible/">flexible timetabling</a>, <a href="https://www.pblworks.org/what-is-pbl">project-based learning</a>, <a href="https://www.overlake.org/students/policies/cocurricular">co-curricular crediting</a> where students
earn credits for participating in extracurricular activities, and <a href="https://edpolicyinca.org/publications/learning-hubs">learning hubs</a> that offer small groups of students academic and other holistic supports.</p>
<p>To date, we have worked alongside teachers from several local Québec English high schools to consider their creative, context-specific responses to how they’d redesign school. We have also been engaging students in activities to ensure that teachers and administrators know what students really want and need from school. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/machines-cant-personalize-education-only-people-can-154339">Machines can't 'personalize' education, only people can</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Teachers discussed concerns such as replacing homeroom with flexible blocks where students can access academic support and turning campus green spaces into shared instructional areas.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/P1uo-7DY9-I?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Vanessa Gold, part of the research team examining NEXTschool asks ‘Would it all go to hell if we got rid of the bell?’ in a song about the reform initiative.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We adapted a participatory visual research method called <a href="https://participatorycultureslab.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/wake-up-and-smell-the-coffee-facilitators-guide-pdf.pdf">photovoice</a> to invite student input. Students explored their educational problems and aspirations by taking photographs around their school, displaying them and then gathering with classmates and teachers to discuss what their photos mean to them. </p>
<p>Teachers have consistently been surprised by students’ concerns and suggestions — highlighting the importance of finding ways to involve genuine student input into educational change.</p>
<h2>Teachers as agents of change</h2>
<p>For a reform like NEXTschool to be successful, Burke agrees that students must be involved more authentically and more often. But he believes teachers are the ones who need to be positioned as the “project implementors” and “agents of change.” He shared this with us over the course of several interviews we held with him in summer 2022.</p>
<p>Burke is aiming to empower teachers as the frontline workers best able to facilitate the changes needed for lasting educational reform. He suggested schoolboards have to follow teachers on the path they want to go rather than showing them the path based on top-down policy.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/teachers-are-on-the-front-lines-with-students-in-the-coronavirus-pandemic-149896">Teachers are on the front lines with students in the coronavirus pandemic</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Research has shown that conventional reforms driven from the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0031721715614828">top down are rarely aligned with the path teachers believe best for their classes</a>. </p>
<p>NEXTschool aims to centre teachers’ understanding of their teaching and school while balancing the voices of students in expressing their learning needs.</p>
<p>The project engages teachers around the key features of space, time and learning in ways that function more like a menu as opposed to a recipe. Burke’s position is that educational partners benefit from having options laid out with the repercussions of choices unpacked. For example, if teachers choose to <a href="https://www.enrichingstudents.com/flexible-high-school-schedule-examples">pursue flexible timetabling</a>, they benefit from understanding how it impacts teacher planning time. </p>
<h2>‘How can we make this happen?’</h2>
<p>Burke believes educational change is more likely when teachers are trusted in determining what changes are needed and how to go about them. </p>
<p>This means that, as Burke explained, NEXTschool is an evolving model amenable to a variety of settings, where local control and student engagement drive the reform.</p>
<p>Burke conceded that even with his confidence in teachers, he is aware of the vital role administrators play in supporting teachers to take the necessary risks to innovate schools. </p>
<p>Burke suggests administrators’ primary role is helping mitigate the risk teachers take when trying <a href="https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/taking-beautiful-risks-in-education">new things in the classroom</a>. Administrators must ask teachers: “How can we make this happen and how can I help you with this?” </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/to-serve-school-communities-and-address-inequities-after-covid-19-principals-must-become-activists-175491">To serve school communities and address inequities after COVID-19, principals must become activists</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A teacher seen in a hallway." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501694/original/file-20221218-25-t8sc5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/501694/original/file-20221218-25-t8sc5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501694/original/file-20221218-25-t8sc5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501694/original/file-20221218-25-t8sc5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501694/original/file-20221218-25-t8sc5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501694/original/file-20221218-25-t8sc5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/501694/original/file-20221218-25-t8sc5p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Engaging teachers at the local level matters with schooling reform.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Allison Shelley/EDUimages)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>System now intolerant of risk-taking</h2>
<p>Teachers often <a href="https://www.k12dive.com/news/risk-taking-adds-value-for-both-educators-students/517390">feel unable to take risks</a> because, as Burke described, they feel the system is intolerant of risk-taking. </p>
<p>In the <a href="https://crowleym.com/2018/03/22/education-in-a-world-of-compliance/">compliance culture common to educational institutions</a>, teachers and students have to navigate the top-down management that prescribes rigid scheduling requirements, discrete subject area focuses, standardized ministerial exams and so on.</p>
<p>One of the significant promises Burke has made about NEXTschool is that “it liberates” teachers from the conventionally rigid structures and expectations of a Canadian high school.</p>
<p>Yet, a more malleable and open structure can be discomforting when schools have only known a <a href="https://theconversation.com/6-actions-school-systems-can-take-to-support-childrens-outdoor-learning-167745">system characterized by quite the opposite</a>.</p>
<p>For educational change to be achieved, the NEXTschool approach of identifying context-specific features to reform can provide the structure that teachers and students are accustomed to while promoting flexible, meaningful innovations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/194006/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aron Rosenberg is research assistant at McGill University, investigating and supporting the NEXTschool initiative. His research team receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lisa Starr receives funding from SSHRC. </span></em></p>
A schooling reform project is taking lessons from innovative high schools and educators in New Zealand, Southern California and Canada to make schooling more relevant for students today.
Aron Lee Rosenberg, PhD Candidate, Department of Integrated Studies in Education, McGill University
Lisa Starr, Associate Professor, Department of Integrated Studies, Faculty of Education, McGill University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/191461
2022-11-02T12:06:05Z
2022-11-02T12:06:05Z
What contemporary feminism owes to Victorian textile workers in Glasgow
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486806/original/file-20220927-14-tc8raz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C1985%2C1155&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Glasgow's harbour on the River Clyde was an artery of the industrial revolution.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As well as being Scotland’s largest city, Glasgow was its industrial heart. Central to the civic story, is the River Clyde, famed as a global shipbuilding hub in the 20th century. But the Clyde, along with an abundant supply of coal, also made Glasgow the ideal location for the textile industry. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Scotland/The-Industrial-Revolution">In the 1820s</a>, spinning mills, weaving mills, dye houses and garment factories sprang up, dominated the urban landscape.</p>
<p>Access to the public sphere and the professional world had been the prerogative of men in the 1800s. But the textile industry presented an opportunity for women. From the introduction of automatic looms and sewing machines, machinery became less physically demanding to operate. That gave women an advantage, and in Glasgow, they began to step out of their homes to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25530560">claim a place on the factory floor</a>.</p>
<p>Men remained dominant in managerial positions. Women were paid on average between <a href="https://eh.net/encyclopedia/women-workers-in-the-british-industrial-revolution/">one third and one half of what men earned</a>. In response, Glasgow’s pioneering female workers began a struggle to profoundly change the conditions for women living and working around the world. It would take decades, but they eventually enabled their fellow women to gain visibility and greater rights, both in the workplace and throughout society.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A painted portrait of a 19th-century woman in a black dress with a white collar and a red bow" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474326/original/file-20220715-26-dy01pt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474326/original/file-20220715-26-dy01pt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474326/original/file-20220715-26-dy01pt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474326/original/file-20220715-26-dy01pt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474326/original/file-20220715-26-dy01pt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=727&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474326/original/file-20220715-26-dy01pt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=727&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474326/original/file-20220715-26-dy01pt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=727&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Emily Patmore, 1851, by John Everett Millais.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://uploads0.wikiart.org/images/john-everett-millais/emily-patmore-1851.jpg">Wikiart</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I have been sifting through research and documents as part of my doctoral studies and they reveal more about the attitudes and barriers these groundbreaking women faced. Such insight into these lives makes their achievements all the more remarkable.</p>
<p>As Glasgow’s textile industry expanded in the 1800s, women represented a rising percentage of the workforce. As the municipal archives show, the city had 403,120 inhabitants in 1861, 58% of whom were women. Of these, 65% were working women, the majority of whom were employed by the textile industries. They came to be seen as a plentiful supply of cheap labour and were, as historian Judith Walkowitz has said, the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/prostitution-and-victorian-society/0D62DC0E48D49A3FA0630DBAD4DCB35B">“symbol of industrial exploitation”</a>.</p>
<h2>Factory work and sexuality</h2>
<p>The association of women and machines was in itself controversial and prompted a fierce debate. As women shifted into factory work, they were forced to use looms and other machines for up to 12 hours a day, with repetitive gestures. They became, in the eyes of the male supervisors and foremen, “machine women”, bewitched and disembodied. And when femininity was associated to this strangeness, it elicited fear in men. The men came to think of themselves as inquisitors and the machine became the pillory, with women condemned to subordination.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471159/original/file-20220627-12-f07i21.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471159/original/file-20220627-12-f07i21.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471159/original/file-20220627-12-f07i21.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471159/original/file-20220627-12-f07i21.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471159/original/file-20220627-12-f07i21.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=967&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471159/original/file-20220627-12-f07i21.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=967&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471159/original/file-20220627-12-f07i21.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=967&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Saltmarket, 1866: working-class living conditions in Glasgow were considered the worst in the UK.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Thomas Annan</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These automaton women still possessed a glimmer of humanity, as men in power at the time saw it: their sexuality. For seamstresses, this was expressed by the perpetual movement of the legs and foot on the pedal. Doctors thought this use of the pedal could induce <a href="https://www.persee.fr/doc/roman_0048-8593_1983_num_13_41_4651">hysteria and excitement</a> in women. The French deputy Charles Benoist wrote in 1904 that mixing men and women in the mills of France and Britain, combined with the lack of privacy, the heat of the coal-fired boilers and the ambient humidity, would exacerbate passions.</p>
<p>The scientific community at the time <a href="https://www.cairn.info/revue-les-cahiers-dynamiques-2013-1-page-31.htm">believed</a> women lacked the imagination needed for tasks that were creative or that required a high level of finish. Women were thus forced into unskilled jobs with little responsibility, and their access to training was limited. To ensure discipline – and to protect men from temptation – factory owners implemented a strict division of tasks according to gender and put female workers under close supervision. They were not, under any circumstances, to be distracted from their work.</p>
<p>The owners and operators of mills thus sought to control women in every way – not just physically and professionally, but also morally.</p>
<h2>The struggle for women’s rights</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490884/original/file-20221020-11-d8nfh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490884/original/file-20221020-11-d8nfh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=938&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490884/original/file-20221020-11-d8nfh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=938&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490884/original/file-20221020-11-d8nfh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=938&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490884/original/file-20221020-11-d8nfh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1178&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490884/original/file-20221020-11-d8nfh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1178&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490884/original/file-20221020-11-d8nfh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1178&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Women’s rights leader Anna Munro in Glasgow, circa 1909.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=91329411">Women’s Freedom League</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Glasgow’s textile industry began to decline with the outbreak of the American Civil War (1861-65). The United States was the sole supplier of cotton to the city’s textile industries, and the conflict led to a breakdown in trade and bankrupted many companies.</p>
<p>As the industrial context became more difficult, working conditions for women worsened. The workplace was competitive, with job insecurity and financial strain. Because men continued to monopolise skilled positions and dominate the management structure, when sexual assaults occurred, women were often reluctant to testify for fear of being dismissed.</p>
<p>Victorian society did not recognise sexual harassment, and male integrity was assumed and protected. If women did speak out, their aggressors were most often left unpunished and the <a href="https://blog.bham.ac.uk/legalherstory/2018/03/20/the-victorian-social-purity-movement-a-noble-pursuit-or-morality-crusade/">fault assigned to female worker</a> and her inherently provocative nature. After all, if such acts occurred in the workplace, how could they really be sexual harassment?</p>
<p>But as early as the 1860s, women workers in Glasgow’s factories began to fight back. The decline of the textile industry exacerbated unemployment and economic difficulty, and working-class women joined forces with middle-class feminists in demanding gender equality at work. In 1883, the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41881697">Co-operative Women’s Guild</a> was established, followed by the <a href="https://libcat.csglasgow.org/web/arena/glasgow-womens-suffrage">Glasgow and West of Scotland Association for Women’s Suffrage</a> (GWSAWS) in 1902. Together, these and other organisations pushed for greater protections for women throughout society.</p>
<p>After 16 years of struggle, in 1918, women in Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom were finally granted the right to vote. These pioneering organisations and the women who founded them played a key role in changing perceptions of women. From the reclusive, demonised worker to the strong, independent force, with full and equal rights.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191461/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fanette Pradon is a doctoral student at the LLSH doctoral school of the University of Grenoble and the ILCEA4 laboratory.</span></em></p>
Women in the textile factories of 19th-century Glasgow faced terrible working conditions. In fighting for their rights, they prepared the ground for feminists today.
Fanette Pradon, doctorante en civilisation britannique, Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA)
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/190213
2022-10-13T17:24:29Z
2022-10-13T17:24:29Z
Despite its long history of wildfires, Canada still doesn’t know how to live with them
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489266/original/file-20221011-13-yrd2is.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=33%2C67%2C2779%2C1695&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The growing instances of intensifying wildfires suggest that we have yet to learn to live with the fires.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the fall of 1922, the city of <a href="https://torontoist.com/2014/10/historicist-the-great-fire-of-1922/">Toronto sent 85 surplus streetcars to Haileybury and other northern Ontario</a> towns to help house thousands of desperate people who had lost their homes to wildfires.</p>
<p>Known as the Great Fire, it burned nearly 1,700 square kilometres of the area — including the town of Haileybury. It killed 43 people and caused millions of dollars in property damage in 18 townships. A newspaper referred to it as the “worst disaster that had ever overtaken northern Ontario.”</p>
<p>It was not. </p>
<p>The wildfires back then were as fierce, deadly and eerily similar to the ones we have today. And we have yet to learn to live with them.</p>
<h2>Fires of the past</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/nb-author-great-miramichi-fire-remember-1.5751761">Great Miramichi fire</a>, which destroyed forests and devastated communities across northern New Brunswick in 1825, was the <a href="https://www.mqup.ca/miramichi-fire--the-products-9780228001485.php">largest and one of the most deadly wildfires</a> in North American history. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://todayinottawashistory.wordpress.com/2014/08/20/the-great-fire-of-1870/">Saguenay and Ottawa Valley fires in 1870</a> could have been just as deadly when they forced the evacuations of several thousand people. The capital city would have burned down that summer had it not been for a quick-thinking engineer who ordered the gates of the St. Louis dam on the Rideau Canal to be breached so that it would flood city streets.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A black and white image of a burning city." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489434/original/file-20221012-15-c3tqqd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489434/original/file-20221012-15-c3tqqd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489434/original/file-20221012-15-c3tqqd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489434/original/file-20221012-15-c3tqqd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489434/original/file-20221012-15-c3tqqd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489434/original/file-20221012-15-c3tqqd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489434/original/file-20221012-15-c3tqqd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Porcupine fire, which levelled numerous towns in Ontario and killed 73 people, was followed by a deadlier fire that killed 223 people five years later.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(National Archives of Canada-Henry Peters)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/massive-fire-burns-in-wisconsin">Seventeen villages were levelled in Wisconsin</a> the following year, killing between 1,200 and 1,500 people.</p>
<p>In 1881, the <a href="https://news.umich.edu/fires-ravaged-michigans-thumb-in-1871-1881/">Michigan’s Thumb fires</a> burned 1,480 barns, 1,521 houses and 51 schools, while killing 283 people and injuring many others. <a href="https://eminetracanada.com/how-indigenous-people-were-blamed-for-wildfire-devastation/657404/">Smoke from those fires</a> coloured the sky over Toronto.</p>
<p>In 1908, <a href="https://tourismfernie.com/history/the-great-fire-of-1908">the British Columbia town of Fernie was levelled by a wildfire</a>. In 1911, the <a href="https://www.historynerd.ca/2017/08/21/south-porcupine-burns-1911/">Porcupine fire</a> killed 73 people while levelling the towns of South Porcupine and Pottsville in Ontario before partially destroying Golden City and Porquis Junction.</p>
<p>There was almost no warning five years later when a <a href="https://www.timminspress.com/opinion/columnists/communities-were-ravaged-shaped-by-historic-fires">deadlier complex of fires swept through the same region and killed 223 people</a>.</p>
<p>Each summer and fall, it seemed, ended badly somewhere.</p>
<h2>Déjà vu</h2>
<p>The similarities between the fires now and then are uncanny, as described in my book <a href="https://www.mqup.ca/dark-days-at-noon-products-9780228012092.php?page_id=46&"><em>Dark Days At Noon: The Future of Fire</em></a>.
The ignition of fires between 1870 and 1922 was fuelled by higher temperatures, drier forests and the kind of elevated lightning activity that we are experiencing today. </p>
<p>Much of the warming back then can be attributed to the end of the little ice age (1300 to 1850) <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-original-climate-crisis-how-the-little-ice-age-devastated-early-modern-europe-178187">that dramatically cooled parts of the world</a>, and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-industrial-revolution-kick-started-global-warming-much-earlier-than-we-realised-64301">Industrial Revolution</a> in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Plumes of smoke rise from a power plant" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489437/original/file-20221012-5658-7sx1fo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489437/original/file-20221012-5658-7sx1fo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489437/original/file-20221012-5658-7sx1fo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489437/original/file-20221012-5658-7sx1fo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489437/original/file-20221012-5658-7sx1fo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489437/original/file-20221012-5658-7sx1fo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489437/original/file-20221012-5658-7sx1fo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=560&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The burning of fossil fuels is primarily responsible for the higher temperatures that fuel wildfires.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Today, <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/stories/fossil-fuels-dirty-facts">the unprecedented warming</a> taking place is primarily because of the burning of fossil fuels.</p>
<p>Forest land-grabbing and negligence has also fuelled numerous fires in the past and present.</p>
<p>Before and beyond the turn of the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/temperate-forest">19th century, people moved into boreal and temperate forests</a> to take advantage of cheap land and jobs in the mining and forestry sectors. Today, people are building <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/vancouver/article-a-pandemic-fed-urge-to-ramble-sending-bc-real-estate-prices-soaring/">luxurious country homes in places like the Okanagan</a> to escape the cost of living in big cities.</p>
<p>Sparks from trains and the careless disposal of locomotive ash accounted for a <a href="https://pubs.cif-ifc.org/doi/pdf/10.5558/tfc2014-062?download=true">significant number of fires in Ontario in the past</a>. Following the Lytton fire in B.C. in 2021, the head of Canada’s Transportation Safety Board acknowledged <a href="https://www.radionl.com/2021/10/18/tsb-says-more-needs-to-be-done-to-prevent-train-caused-wildfires-as-risk-grows-due-to-climate-change/">that more work is still needed to prevent wildfires caused by trains</a>.</p>
<h2>Gaps in public policy</h2>
<p>The other thing that hasn’t changed much is public policy. The Porcupine fire in 1911 as Canada’s version of the Big Burn, a <a href="https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb5444731.pdf">complex of fires</a> that swept through the northern Rockies of the United States in 1910 and resulted in sweeping policy changes.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A black and white image of a mountain on fire" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489444/original/file-20221012-24-u7i2zu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489444/original/file-20221012-24-u7i2zu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489444/original/file-20221012-24-u7i2zu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489444/original/file-20221012-24-u7i2zu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489444/original/file-20221012-24-u7i2zu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489444/original/file-20221012-24-u7i2zu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489444/original/file-20221012-24-u7i2zu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The destruction caused by the Big Burn of 1910 pushed the U.S. to revamp its wildfire management strategy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/fsnorthernregion/4929769257/in/photolist-8vCmDF-E3z8q2-ocmRsX-oczB4b-nVazPY-nVaFKr-EYbEUi-wZokmD-ovsbmw-ouqN9h-eeGCiQ-iGtZEn-sGrZef-ow9NqC-2hynMFE-of2i3p-ocvh2o-g1vNoQ-ocE6sF-tmU217-ocmSbv-nVbbg2-nV9Xyd-ocuUEf-oczYuh-ocmRot-E3f9vC-EXDNjS-ERLp3i-Eru2nD-wjPumv-eeGLaG-eeGSsU-eeGSKC-eeGRbN-eeBfkP-eeB4YF-eeGK43-eeB9v2-eeB31K-preajL-eeATZk-EFNdEa-roXP8k-xgQukD-oeSiDc-ocE6Vp-oczYeC-oczB6f-oaBNRw">(Forest Service Northern Region/flickr)</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Following the Big Burn, the U.S. passed the <a href="https://foresthistory.org/research-explore/us-forest-service-history/policy-and-law/the-weeks-act/">Weeks Act</a> that authorized the government to purchase up to 30 million hectares of land to protect watersheds from development and wildfire. This mandated the U.S. Forest Service to work with state fire bureaus, which were happy to co-operate because it came with funding they could not otherwise afford.</p>
<p>In contrast, Canadian politicians failed to do what was necessary to prevent future fires. The government, which owned many of the railroad companies, <a href="https://www.mqup.ca/dark-days-at-noon-products-9780228012092.php?page_id=46&">blamed Indigenous people for many fires</a>. Better legislation and fire management strategies were still not in place five years after the Porcupine fire when the Matheson fire took the lives of 223 people. Nor were they there in 1922, when the Great Fire devastated Haileybury. </p>
<p>Canada had a chance to replicate what the U.S. Forest Service was doing, but failed to as funding for fire research and management was badly decimated by budget cuts and the off-loading of responsibilities to the provinces in the 1930s. </p>
<p>Even today, provinces like Alberta have <a href="https://www.firefightingincanada.com/alberta-cuts-millions-from-wildfire-management-budget-22839/">cut wildfire budgets</a> to save money, only to pay the price when wildfires like the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire, which forced the <a href="https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/news/article/this-day-in-weather-history-may-3-2016-fort-mcmurray-evacuations-begin">evacuation of 88,000 people</a>.</p>
<h2>Managing future fires</h2>
<p>The fact that fire is still entering towns like Lytton and Fort McMurray without adequate warning suggests we have yet to learn to live with the fires that we have stoked by burning fossil fuels, <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-fight-wildfires-and-climate-change-with-wetlands-117356">draining wetlands </a> and suppressing natural fires that would have otherwise produced more resilient forests. </p>
<p>Stopping Indigenous burning that <a href="https://phys.org/news/2022-04-indigenous-good-forests.html">aided forest regeneration</a> didn’t help.</p>
<p>We are now in a unique situation where hot fires are creating their own weather — <a href="https://e360.yale.edu/features/fire-induced-storms-a-new-danger-from-the-rise-in-wildfires">fire-driven thunderstorms and pyrogenetic tornadoes</a> — that can spawn other fires. We saw this in Fort McMurray in 2016, in B.C. in the following years and in 2019 and 2020 when <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-021-00192-9">Australia’s Black Summer fire season led to a massive outbreak of fire-induced and smoke-infused thunderstorms</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YvfDbODi-vQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Wildfire-fuelled tornadoes have been witnessed across Canada, Australia and the U.S.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is, in a word, scary.</p>
<p>The title of my book <em>Dark Days at Noon</em> harkens back to 1780 when smoke from distant fires blocked out so much sunlight that people from all over New England thought the end of the world was at hand. The end of the world is not at hand, but there will be many more dark days at noon if we do not learn to live with fire.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190213/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Edward Struzik does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The wildfires of the past were as fierce, deadly and eerily similar to the ones we have today. And we have yet to learn to live with them.
Edward Struzik, Fellow, Queen's Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy, School of Policy Studies, Queen's University, Ontario
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/183167
2022-05-18T14:17:55Z
2022-05-18T14:17:55Z
How taking a closer look at your family tree can help you get to grips with climate change
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/463924/original/file-20220518-15-kz0ys8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4352%2C2877&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tracing our ancestors' connections to colonialism and industrialisation can help us personally connect with the climate crisis.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/female-hands-holding-old-photo-her-1787418920">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Engaging people when it comes to climate change can be challenging. Climate conversations are often technical and dry, making it hard to see how it connects to our own lives. As a <a href="https://wiserd.ac.uk/people/flossie-kingsbury/">historical researcher</a> I’ve been figuring out how we can make this connection clearer, and believe that taking a look at our family histories might hold the answer. </p>
<p>While climate change might seem abstract or distant, our own history is inherently personal. Tracing a family tree can show how historical events, including those that influenced <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-science-everyone-needs-to-know-about-climate-change-in-6-charts-170556">climate change</a>, altered life courses. Through pilot research with my own family tree, I’ve found that family history can be a useful tool for understanding how the root processes that kickstarted climate change created the world we now inhabit.</p>
<p>Put simply, climate change is the result of two processes: <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-the-industrial-revolution-really-tells-us-about-the-future-of-automation-and-work-82051">industrialisation</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/colonialism-why-leading-climate-scientists-have-finally-acknowledged-its-link-with-climate-change-181642">colonialism</a>. Industrialisation is when a society’s primary mode of production shifts from manual agricultural labour to machine-aided manufacturing. Colonialism is when one nation occupies and exerts control over another, usually involving violence and exploitation. </p>
<p>Both processes are underpinned and sustained by a <a href="https://extraction.sites.ucsc.edu/">culture of extraction</a>: the mindset, still present in western societies today, that all resources (natural, like trees, and cultural, like traditions) exist to be capitalised on in some way. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A series of textile machines with women working at them" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/463931/original/file-20220518-13-oiplcp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/463931/original/file-20220518-13-oiplcp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463931/original/file-20220518-13-oiplcp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463931/original/file-20220518-13-oiplcp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463931/original/file-20220518-13-oiplcp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463931/original/file-20220518-13-oiplcp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463931/original/file-20220518-13-oiplcp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The industrial revolution was a major contributor to climate change.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/women-working-textile-machines-beaming-inspecting-244389922">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In British history, this is reflected in the intertwined growth of the industrial revolution and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/three-imperial-policies-that-still-influence-life-in-britain-today-181629">British empire</a>. Both were fed by extracting coal to fuel factories, railways and steamships; extracting the raw materials required to produce goods; and exploiting land and labour from subjugated nations and the British working class.</p>
<h2>Family branches</h2>
<p>Let’s look at some examples from my own family. Samuel Polyblank (born around 1816), one of my great-great-great-grandfathers, was a shipwright from <a href="https://theconversation.com/barbara-windsor-youre-more-likely-to-hear-a-cockney-accent-in-essex-than-east-london-now-152033">London’s East End</a>. The ships he worked on helped to feed demand for international trade, taking goods to and from the colonies. They may even have been used by the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/04/east-india-company-original-corporate-raiders">East India Company</a>, the world’s first global corporate superpower, and a key player in colonial rule and exploitation in Asia. </p>
<p>Through his work, Samuel Polyblank found himself caught up in, and working to support, a system <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/to-fix-climate-crisis-we-must-acknowledge-our-imperial-past/">whose impacts</a> – including widespread deforestation, pollution, soil sterilisation and <a href="https://theconversation.com/biodiversity-collapse-the-wild-relatives-of-livestock-and-crops-are-disappearing-116759">biodiversity collapse</a> – continue to be felt today.</p>
<p>Another example is Daniel Winchester (born around 1791). One of my great-great-great-great-grandfathers, he was an <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/iron-founder/m0114hcj_?hl=en">iron founder</a> from <a href="https://theconversation.com/edward-colston-statue-toppled-how-bristol-came-to-see-the-slave-trader-as-a-hero-and-philanthropist-140271">Bristol</a>. Bristol is famous for its numerous connections to the <a href="https://www.bristolmuseums.org.uk/stories/bristol-transatlantic-slave-trade/">slave trade</a> and to the British empire’s <a href="https://www.bl.uk/west-india-regiment/articles/an-introduction-to-the-caribbean-empire-and-slavery">Caribbean plantations</a>. And what those plantations relied upon very heavily were imported supplies for fossil fuel-driven processing plants and factories – which were frequently made of iron. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A statue of Edward Colston, a slave trader" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/463925/original/file-20220518-16-krs6kt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/463925/original/file-20220518-16-krs6kt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463925/original/file-20220518-16-krs6kt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463925/original/file-20220518-16-krs6kt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463925/original/file-20220518-16-krs6kt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463925/original/file-20220518-16-krs6kt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463925/original/file-20220518-16-krs6kt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Edward Colston, a Bristolian who profited from the slave trade.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/21804434@N02/7698693922">Mira66/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I don’t know for certain if Daniel Winchester’s work ended up in British plantations: but since at the time there were iron foundries in Bristol that made things which did, it’s not unlikely. And I know that Daniel made enough money to buy his own home and leave it to his son, a rare occurrence at a time when only a tiny proportion of Britain’s homes were occupied by their actual owners.</p>
<p>Although the Winchesters were not truly wealthy, still working manual occupations and relying on child labour to supplement their income, they were able to start passing down <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jan/31/inheritance-britain-wealthy-study-surnames-social-mobility">intergenerational wealth</a>: a hallmark of privilege that was only available to a small minority. It seems reasonable that the reason they were able to do this is because they capitalised, knowingly or not, on industrial demand that came from slavery.</p>
<p>This is uncomfortable to acknowledge, but if we want to understand the roots of climate change, it’s exactly what we should consider. It’s improbable that either Daniel Winchester or Samuel Polyblank set out to promote slavery and colonial violence any more than they set out to promote climate change. The world they lived in meant it was possible to participate in this extractive, exploitative system without confronting it, in the same way we struggle to understand our individual influence on climate today. </p>
<h2>How to engage</h2>
<p>One challenge of personally engaging with the <a href="https://www.un.org/press/en/2021/sc14445.doc.htm">climate crisis</a> is learning that your ancestors were complicit in things that you would rather be distanced from. But this isn’t about blaming our ancestors, who may well have been exploited themselves. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="People holding a sign reading 'Climate Justice'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/463947/original/file-20220518-19-a9oezw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/463947/original/file-20220518-19-a9oezw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463947/original/file-20220518-19-a9oezw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463947/original/file-20220518-19-a9oezw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463947/original/file-20220518-19-a9oezw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463947/original/file-20220518-19-a9oezw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/463947/original/file-20220518-19-a9oezw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protesting is one way to participate in the climate movement.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/marrakesh-morocco-november-9-international-youth-512818693">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Instead, understanding these connections can help encourage us to prioritise <a href="https://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-a-justice-issue-these-6-charts-show-why-170072">climate justice</a> and eco-friendly behaviours in our own lives, from cutting down on meat and <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-sun-is-setting-on-unsustainable-long-haul-short-stay-tourism-regional-travel-bubbles-are-the-future-140926">unsustainable travel</a> to writing to your <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/get-involved/contact-an-mp-or-lord/contact-your-mp/">elected officials</a> about environmental issues in your community. So how might you think about your own family tree’s links to climate change? Here are my top questions to consider:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Think about where the things your ancestors used or bought came from, and where things they may have been involved with making were sent. How do these connect them to the industries and trade networks born of colonialism?</p></li>
<li><p>If they were wealthy, what was the source of that wealth? If they weren’t, what benefactors funded any hospitals or workhouses they may have used: and would those have existed without industry and colonialism?</p></li>
<li><p>What did they pass down? Think about not just objects but also any wealth or property, as well as skills and cultural practices. How might these legacies be transformed into climate-friendly resources, for example through donating to environmental groups?</p></li>
</ul><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183167/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Flossie Kingsbury does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Understanding how our ancestors may have benefited from industrialisation and colonialism could help us become more climate-friendly citizens.
Flossie Kingsbury, Postdoctoral Research Associate in History, Aberystwyth University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/157574
2021-08-09T19:17:48Z
2021-08-09T19:17:48Z
Robots are coming for the lawyers – which may be bad for tomorrow’s attorneys but great for anyone in need of cheap legal assistance
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/413984/original/file-20210730-21-nlw7em.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=104%2C166%2C6835%2C4452&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sign on the dotted line.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/robot-assisting-person-in-filling-form-royalty-free-image/949223252">AndreyPopov/iStock via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Imagine what a lawyer does on a given day: researching cases, drafting briefs, advising clients. While technology has been nibbling <a href="https://www.rocketlawyer.com/">around the edges</a> of the legal profession for some time, it’s hard to imagine those complex tasks being done by a robot.</p>
<p>And it is those complicated, personalized tasks that have led technologists to include lawyers in a broader category of jobs that are considered <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90221230/these-jobs-are-safe-from-being-replaced-by-automation">pretty safe</a> from a future of advanced robotics and artificial intelligence.</p>
<p>But, as we discovered in a recent research collaboration to analyze legal briefs using a branch of artificial intelligence <a href="https://www.ibm.com/cloud/learn/machine-learning">known as machine learning</a>, lawyers’ jobs are a lot less safe than we thought. It turns out that you don’t need to completely automate a job to fundamentally change it. All you need to do is automate part of it.</p>
<p>While this may be bad news for tomorrow’s lawyers, it could be great for their future clients – particularly those who have trouble affording legal assistance. </p>
<h2>Technology can be unpredictable</h2>
<p>Our <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3811710">research project</a> – in which we collaborated with computer scientists and linguists at <a href="https://www.mitre.org/">MITRE</a>, a federally funded nonprofit devoted to research and development – was not meant to be about automation. As <a href="https://law.uoregon.edu/people/faculty/tippett">law</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=TBORAN0AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">professors</a>, we were trying to identify the text features of successful versus unsuccessful legal briefs.</p>
<p>We gathered a small cache of legal briefs and judges’ opinions and processed the text for analysis.</p>
<p>One of the first things we learned is that it can be hard to predict which tasks are easily automated. For example, citations in a brief – such as “Brown v. Board of Education 347 U.S. 483 (1954)” – are very easy for a human to pick out and separate from the rest of the text. Not so for machine learning software, which got tripped up in the blizzard of punctuation inside and outside the citation.</p>
<p>It was <a href="http://captcha.net/">like those “Captcha” boxes</a> you are asked to complete on websites to prove you’re not a robot – a human can easily spot a telephone pole, but a robot will get confused by all the background noise in the image.</p>
<h2>A tech shortcut</h2>
<p>Once we figured out how to identify the citations, we inadvertently stumbled on a methodology to automate one of the most challenging and time-consuming aspects of legal practice: legal research.</p>
<p>The scientists at MITRE used a methodology called “graph analysis” to create visual networks of legal citations. The graph analysis enabled us to predict whether a brief would “win” based on how well other briefs performed when they included a particular citation.</p>
<p>Later, however, we realized the process could be reversed. If you were a lawyer responding to the other side’s brief, normally you would have to search laboriously for the right cases to cite using an expensive database. But our research suggested that we could build a database with software that would just tell lawyers the best cases to cite. All you would need to do is feed the other side’s brief into the machine. </p>
<p>Now we didn’t actually construct our research-shortcut machine. We would need a mountain of lawyers’ briefs and judicial opinions to make something useful. And <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.1126/science.aba6914">researchers like us</a> do not have free access to data of that sort – even the government-run database <a href="https://pacer.uscourts.gov">known as PACER</a> charges by the page. </p>
<p>But it does show how technology can turn any task that is extremely time-consuming for humans into one where the heavy lifting can be done at the click of a button. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A large room is full of women sitting at tables and using sewing machines to make garments, while a woman is standing, in 1937" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415035/original/file-20210806-25-rj1ujo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415035/original/file-20210806-25-rj1ujo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415035/original/file-20210806-25-rj1ujo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415035/original/file-20210806-25-rj1ujo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415035/original/file-20210806-25-rj1ujo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415035/original/file-20210806-25-rj1ujo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/415035/original/file-20210806-25-rj1ujo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sewing machines didn’t replace seamstresses but they changed the job considerably.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/IndustrialRevolutionILGWU1937/ceeafed42dd3455abf90c2043843e292/photo?Query=sewing%20AND%20machine&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:asc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=283&currentItemNo=4">AP Photo/Clarence Hamm</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A history of partial automation</h2>
<p>Automating the hard parts of a job can make a big difference both for those performing the job and the consumers on the other side of the transaction.</p>
<p>Take for example, a <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=0c-8AAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false">hydraulic crane</a> or a power <a href="https://patents.google.com/patent/US1826489A">forklift</a>. While today people think of operating a crane as manual work, these powered machines were considered labor-saving devices when they were first introduced because they <a href="https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.156473/page/n7/mode/2up">supplanted the human power</a> involved in moving heavy objects around. </p>
<p>Forklifts and cranes, of course, didn’t replace people. But like automating the grind of legal research, power machines multiplied the amount of work one person could accomplish within a unit of time. </p>
<p>Partial automation of sewing machines in the <a href="https://archive.org/details/fatigueefficien00gold">early 20th century</a> offers another example. By the 1910s, women working in textile mills were no longer responsible for sewing on a single machine – as you might today on a home sewing machine – but wrangling an industrial-grade machine with 12 needles sewing 4,000 stitches per minute. These machines could automatically perform all the fussy work of hemming, sewing seams and even stitching the “<a href="https://archive.org/details/fatigueefficien00gold">embroidery trimming of white underwear</a>.” Like an airline pilot flying on autopilot, they weren’t sewing so much as monitoring the machine for problems.</p>
<p>Was the transition bad for workers? Maybe somewhat, but it was a boon for consumers. In 1912, women perusing the Sears mail order catalog had a choice between “drawers” with premium <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101066804939&view=1up&seq=214&skin=2021&q1=embroidered">hand-embroidered</a> trimming, and a much cheaper machine-embroidered option.</p>
<p>Likewise, automation could help reduce the cost of legal services, making it more accessible for the <a href="https://www.justice.gov/archives/atj">many individuals</a> who can’t afford a lawyer. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mpFjxbiMnME?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Legal scholar Miriam Cherry discusses workplace automation with Elizabeth Tippett.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>DIY lawyering</h2>
<p>Indeed, in other sectors of the economy, technological developments in recent decades have enabled companies to shift work from paid workers to customers. </p>
<p><a href="https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/04/from-touch-displays-to-the-surface-a-brief-history-of-touchscreen-technology/2/">Touchscreen technology</a>, for example, enabled airlines to install check-in kiosks. Similar kiosks are almost everywhere – in parking lots, gas stations, grocery stores and even fast-food restaurants.</p>
<p>At one level these kiosks are displacing paid labor by employees with unpaid labor by consumers. But that argument assumes that everyone could access the product or service back when it was performed by an employee. </p>
<p>[<em>Insight, in your inbox each day.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=insight">You can get it with The Conversation’s email newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>In the context of legal services, the many consumers who can’t afford a lawyer are already <a href="https://www.amacad.org/publication/access-what">forgoing their day in court</a> altogether or handling legal claims on their own – often with <a href="https://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/plr/vol43/iss4/1/">bad results</a>. If partial automation means an overwhelmed legal aid lawyer now has time to take more clients’ cases or clients can now afford to hire a lawyer, everyone will be better off.</p>
<p>In addition, tech-enabled legal services can help consumers do a better job of representing themselves. For example, the federal district court in Missouri <a href="https://www.moeb.uscourts.gov/esr-electronic-self-representation">now offers</a> a platform to help individuals filing for bankruptcy prepare their forms – either on their own or with a free 30-minute meeting with a lawyer. Because the platform provides a head start, both the lawyer and consumer can make better use of the 30-minute time slot.</p>
<p>More help for consumers may be on the way – there is a <a href="https://techindex.law.stanford.edu/">bumper crop</a> of tech startups jostling to automate various types of legal work. So while our research-shortcut machine hasn’t been built, powerful tools like it may not be far off. </p>
<p>And the lawyers themselves? Like factory and textile workers armed with new power tools, they may be expected to do more work in the time they have. But it should be less of a grind. It might even free them up to meet with clients.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157574/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The research cited in this article was produced in collaboration with MITRE, a federally funded non-profit devoted to research and development in the public interest.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charlotte Alexander receives funding from the National Science Foundation. </span></em></p>
Lawyers were thought to be mostly immune from the coming AI revolution, but two legal experts explain why jobs that rely on human ingenuity can still be affected.
Elizabeth C. Tippett, Associate Professor of Law, University of Oregon
Charlotte Alexander, Associate Professor of Law and Analytics, Georgia State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/160743
2021-05-17T15:08:28Z
2021-05-17T15:08:28Z
Sweden’s first labour movement didn’t fear technological change – they embraced it to demand higher wages
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/401060/original/file-20210517-15-p0vd6e.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C0%2C3976%2C3994&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/sweden-flag-large-group-people-form-1937108845">Sudarsan Thobias/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>About a century ago, a poor country in northern Europe made a big leap into modernity. Using new technology, engineers <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421518307468">built hydroelectric dams</a> to harness the energy in Sweden’s roaring rivers, generating electricity which would, for the first time, find practical use in homes, factories, railways and agriculture. </p>
<p>Taking place decades after Sweden’s nineteenth-century mechanisation, this electrification was the country’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/history-of-Europe/A-maturing-industrial-society#ref311206">second industrial revolution</a>. It brought with it powerful forces of change that swept through civilian life, stoking tensions between employers and workers as evidenced by a huge increase in strike action at the time.</p>
<p>But here’s where the narrative takes a surprising turn. Unlike the famous machine-breaking <a href="https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/The-Luddites/">Luddites</a> of Britain’s first industrial revolution, Sweden’s protesting workers didn’t seem anxious or angry about the technological change taking place in their factories. Instead of fearing for their jobs, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-economic-history/article/more-power-to-the-people-electricity-adoption-technological-change-and-labor-conflict/63B6909C4CEC0038680E0802444862BB#article">our recent study</a> found that the vast majority of Sweden’s strikers were simply demanding higher wages. </p>
<p>Today, we’re living through a <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-fourth-industrial-revolution-is-powering-the-rise-of-smart-manufacturing-57753">fourth industrial revolution</a>, marked by advances in computing power and breakthroughs in artificial intelligence. It has provoked its own backlash – some call it a “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/dec/28/tech-industry-year-in-review-facebook-google-amazon">techlash</a>” – and has caused some workers to fear that <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.org/activity/redefining-work-debate-are-robots-taking-over-our-jobs/">new machines will take their jobs</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-fourth-industrial-revolution-could-lead-to-a-dark-future-125897">The fourth industrial revolution could lead to a dark future</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Sweden’s workers expressed no such sentiment during the country’s electrification, suggesting that <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3105385?seq=1">revolutionary technologies</a> can empower workers rather than leaving them feeling vulnerable or exploited – a lesson we could apply to today’s innovations and the anxieties that have accompanied them.</p>
<h2>Technological revolution</h2>
<p>For some decades around the turn of the 20th century, Sweden experienced a period of upheaval. Workers had begun to form unions and perform strikes. Strike action became increasingly audacious, leading to the <a href="https://www.primidi.com/anton_nilson/amalthea_bombing">placing of a bomb</a> on a ship named Amalthea in 1908, which had carried British strikebreakers to the docks of Malmö. The explosion killed one and wounded 23.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A black and white photo of a ship with a hole in it" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400772/original/file-20210514-15-vxgwrm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400772/original/file-20210514-15-vxgwrm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=364&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400772/original/file-20210514-15-vxgwrm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=364&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400772/original/file-20210514-15-vxgwrm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=364&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400772/original/file-20210514-15-vxgwrm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400772/original/file-20210514-15-vxgwrm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400772/original/file-20210514-15-vxgwrm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=457&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The hole blown in the side of the ship Amalthea. The episode is regarded as Sweden’s first terror attack.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Amalthea-1908.jpg">wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A year later, organised labour and capital met in a <a href="https://libcom.org/history/1909-swedish-general-strike">great showdown</a> of strikes and lockouts. Employers would eventually <a href="https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/journals/article/53058">come out on top</a>. But protests continued through the <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/sweden">first world war</a>, with ordinary men and women taking to the streets to protest soaring food prices. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1917/04/23/archives/stockholm-crowd-shouts-republic-hunger-demonstration-inspires.html">Revolution was in the air</a>, forcing politicians to finally take moves to extend voting rights for working-class people. </p>
<p>This was a formative phase for Sweden’s institutions and the <a href="https://www.lo.se/english/the_collective_agreement">social contract</a> between citizens and the state. It also happens to have been a time when Sweden was busily building a national grid, powering homes and factories with electricity generated by its new hydropower plants.</p>
<p>For workers, this meant change. Electricity enabled owners to do away with the single <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/steam-engines">coal-fired engines</a> that drove machines via a series of belts, using instead a number of smaller motors for each machine. This provided firms with a more reliable source of energy, increasing the pace and continuity of production. This in turn made some jobs obsolete – though it also created new ones.</p>
<p>It’s tempting to assume that these forces – technological change and labour conflicts - were related. The narrative close to hand is that workers went on strike to block the new technology and to save their jobs. </p>
<p>We know that was often the case in Britain during the first industrial revolution, when some workers torched their own mills and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25149563">destroyed their newly mechanised looms</a>. During the Napoleonic Wars, the secret <a href="https://industrialrevolution.org.uk/luddites-attack/">Luddite movement</a> continued in the same spirit and later, in the 1830s, agricultural workers protested the introduction of threshing machines in the so-called <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aeri.20190385">Swing Riots</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-victorians-had-the-same-concerns-about-technology-as-we-do-60476">The Victorians had the same concerns about technology as we do</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Swedish strikers marching along a country road" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/401023/original/file-20210517-15-2ds1bh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C30%2C1725%2C1020&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/401023/original/file-20210517-15-2ds1bh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=344&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/401023/original/file-20210517-15-2ds1bh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=344&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/401023/original/file-20210517-15-2ds1bh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=344&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/401023/original/file-20210517-15-2ds1bh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/401023/original/file-20210517-15-2ds1bh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/401023/original/file-20210517-15-2ds1bh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Swedish workers protesting wage reductions in 1931, after the country’s electrification.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1led0513adalen.jpg">Sten Sjöberg/IBL/wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For our research, we searched the records of over 8,000 work stoppages recorded by Swedish authorities between <a href="https://swedishhistoricalstrikes.wordpress.com/data/">1863 and 1927</a>. Among these events, we were surprised not to find a single strike with the declared purpose of protesting electrification, and just a handful of strikes that were described as attempts to reverse mechanisation more generally. </p>
<p>To see if there were more subtle links between technology and labour conflict, we then conducted a <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-economic-history/article/more-power-to-the-people-electricity-adoption-technological-change-and-labor-conflict/63B6909C4CEC0038680E0802444862BB#article">more rigorous analysis</a>, consulting maps of the early electricity grid and comparing them against census data on Sweden’s parishes at the time. </p>
<p>Before electrification, the parishes didn’t differ all that much. But as the grid materialised, those parishes that were supplied electricity suddenly experienced radical changes, including a sharp increase in strikes. So while workers didn’t directly relate their strike action to electrification, our findings suggest the two were indeed linked.</p>
<h2>Fourth industrial revolution</h2>
<p>We know that the strikes increased among Sweden’s industrial workers, whose skills were in high demand, but not for agricultural workers, whose jobs were disappearing. We see the same kind of pattern today: high-demand Google workers have <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/04/tech/google-alphabet-union/index.html">formed a union</a> and <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/03/google-employee-protests-as-part-of-new-tech-resistance.html">have been on strike</a>, but workers in declining industries have lost their bargaining power and their collective voice.</p>
<p>But unlike Sweden’s experience of electrification, today’s industrial revolution features a strong <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/ab94fb30-cea2-11e9-b018-ca4456540ea6">fear of automation</a>, with some researchers predicting that <a href="https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/publications/the-future-of-employment/">47% of jobs</a> in the US could be at risk of technological replacement. This fear has only been <a href="https://techmonitor.ai/technology/ai-and-automation/covid-19-and-automation-anxiety">exacerbated</a> by the economic uncertainty caused by the pandemic.</p>
<p>We can understand today’s automation anxiety with reference to our study of Swedish workers. Technological revolutions often produce <a href="https://hbr.org/2016/02/todays-automation-anxiety-was-alive-and-well-in-1960">suspicion and anxiety</a>, but we found no such response from the unions and strikers we researched. Instead, it’s clear that new technologies can also empower workers – but only when they recognise that they ought to enjoy a share of the increased productivity delivered by technological change.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/160743/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span><a href="mailto:kerstin.enflo@ekh.lu.se">kerstin.enflo@ekh.lu.se</a> receives funding from Swedish Research Council, Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, Ragnar Söderberg Foundation and Länsförsäkringars Forskningsford. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span><a href="mailto:jakob.molinder@ekh.lu.se">jakob.molinder@ekh.lu.se</a> receives funding from Jan Wallander och Tom Hedelius forskningsstiftelse </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tobias Karlsson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Sweden electrified at the turn of the 20th century, leading to over 8,000 work stoppages – but the strikers were no Luddites.
Kerstin Enflo, Professor of Growth, technological change, and inequality, Lund University
Jakob Molinder, Postdoctoral Researcher, Economic History, Lund University
Tobias Karlsson, Senior Lecturer in Historical Labour Markets, Lund University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/146087
2021-01-24T14:08:36Z
2021-01-24T14:08:36Z
Hidden in plain sight: The infrastructures that support artificial intelligence
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/360096/original/file-20200926-22-vahctv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=35%2C0%2C5955%2C3997&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Artificial intelligence requires machines, processing power and energy consumption, among other things. Often, we're unaware of the presence of this infrastructure around us.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>During a walking tour of Queensland’s Daintree rainforest in Australia, a talented guide regularly pointed out creatures that were well camouflaged into their surroundings. At one point, he directed our attention to a tree trunk, where a large grasshopper was camouflaged. The guide’s observations and stories wove together the connections between biology, geology and colonialism, helping explain how big and small changes could transform life in this ecosystem.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357895/original/file-20200914-22-1yv4zsn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Grasshopper camouflaged on a tree trunk" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357895/original/file-20200914-22-1yv4zsn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357895/original/file-20200914-22-1yv4zsn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357895/original/file-20200914-22-1yv4zsn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357895/original/file-20200914-22-1yv4zsn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357895/original/file-20200914-22-1yv4zsn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357895/original/file-20200914-22-1yv4zsn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357895/original/file-20200914-22-1yv4zsn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sometimes it’s difficult to see something, even when you’re staring directly at it. How many of us are aware of what’s hiding right in front of us?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Author)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our society has been altered by the rapid proliferation of new technologies and devices that produce digital data. Nested within and feeding on this data ecosystem, artificial intelligence (AI) executes cognitive tasks with more potency and speed than human beings. The large-scale transformative power of AI remains camouflaged in plain sight.</p>
<p>Through the lens of the <a href="http://infieri.umontreal.ca/en/home/#section-what-is-rih">responsible innovation in health research program</a> at the Université de Montréal, we critically examine what lies beyond our immediate experiences of AI.</p>
<h2>Artificial intelligence in our lives</h2>
<p>Much like driving a car, we do not need to understand how AI works in order to use its applications. And similar to ways in which the fossil fuel industry shaped the role of cars in our society, AI is delivered through powerful commercial interests and <a href="https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/libro?codigo=769585">large digital and physical infrastructures</a>. To better understand their impacts, there is an urgent need to critically appraise how AI delivers its much-touted promises.</p>
<p>At the onset of the Industrial Revolution, people in Montréal had no clue about the kinds of infrastructures that were going to be developed to extract, exploit, distribute and use fossil fuels. Montréal was ideally located to transport goods, including oil, and refineries were later concentrated along the Saint Lawrence River. Beyond negative impacts on residents’ health, the decisions made at the turn of the 20th century to exploit fossil fuels have had long lasting self-reinforcing effects.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357911/original/file-20200914-22-179j08m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A vintage photograph of Montréal in 1896." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357911/original/file-20200914-22-179j08m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357911/original/file-20200914-22-179j08m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357911/original/file-20200914-22-179j08m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357911/original/file-20200914-22-179j08m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357911/original/file-20200914-22-179j08m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357911/original/file-20200914-22-179j08m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357911/original/file-20200914-22-179j08m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The industrial landscape of the Lachine Canal — the birthplace of Montréal industry — pictured here in 1896.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://collections.musee-mccord.qc.ca/en/collection/artifacts/VIEW-2944">(Wm. Notman & Son/McCord Museum)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And now, in the 21st century, we are seeing the changes AI brings and we need to consider the wide-ranging ramifications.</p>
<h2>Physical support networks</h2>
<p>The jewel in the crown of the <a href="https://ppforum.ca/publications/new-north-star-ii/">intangibles economy</a>, AI needs <a href="https://dora.dmu.ac.uk/handle/2086/19990">expansive e-infrastructures</a> that have tangible impacts and costs. Estimates suggest “<a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2205779-creating-an-ai-can-be-five-times-worse-for-the-planet-than-a-car/">that the carbon footprint of training a single AI is as much as 284 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent</a>” — five times the lifetime emissions of an average car.</p>
<p>If we choose to exploit the “<a href="https://www.wired.com/insights/2014/07/data-new-oil-digital-economy/">oil of the 21st century</a>,” we will have to build large powerful computational centres and sizable server farms. AI requires networking and cloud infrastructures to capture, analyze, share and archive vast amounts of data. </p>
<p>When deep learning techniques are involved, training is a key step that consists of feeding the algorithm with large and mostly unstructured datasets. The training of a single AI-based application may be split over dozens of chips and may require months to complete. </p>
<p>Although it only takes a low energy tap on a smartphone to use an application, its development is energy intensive and non-renewable energy sources have a much larger environmental impact. </p>
<h2>Energy for training</h2>
<p>Thankfully, data scientists are starting to calculate the energy required to develop AI tools before they are made available for use. For instance, a process involved in automating the design of a neural network through trial and error — called the Neural Architecture Search (NAS) — is highly energy intensive. Without NAS, training the <a href="http://www.talktotransformer.com/">AI tool Transformer</a> takes 84 hours, but with NAS it takes more than 270,000 hours, thereby “<a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2205779-creating-an-ai-can-be-five-times-worse-for-the-planet-than-a-car/">requiring 3,000 times the amount of energy</a>.”</p>
<p>Reducing the carbon footprint of AI requires a “<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.18653/v1/P19-1355">concerted effort by industry and academia to promote research of more computationally efficient algorithms</a>” and the use of more sustainable hardware and model development strategies.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4S5ZBjIvX2c?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Yahoo! Finance takes a look at artificial intelligence and the environment.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Future policy</h2>
<p>Because <a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/jit.2015.5">data generated through digital interactions</a> are worth their weight in gold, commercial agreements are likely to keep the future of AI into the hands of those with corporate interests. Exploiting data to increase corporate profits are the core business of tech giants like Amazon and Google.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/its-time-for-a-new-way-to-regulate-social-media-platforms-109413">It's time for a new way to regulate social media platforms</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>This is one of the reasons why it is important for public policy-makers to create alternative entrepreneurial pathways where data scientists and programmers who aim to design much more meaningful AI can thrive.</p>
<p>Could AI empower those who tackle today’s major societal challenges and seek solutions for the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-15871-z">common good</a>? For instance, what would an eco-friendly AI tool to help us meet the <a href="https://sdgs.un.org/goals">United Nations Sustainable Development Goals</a> look like? What <a href="https://doi.org/10.1186/s12992-020-00584-1">alternative business and data governance models</a> should be promoted for benefits to be shared equitably? </p>
<p>Seeing the forest and the trees could turn a more responsible vision for the 21st century into a tangible reality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/146087/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pascale Lehoux receives funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR; #FDN-143294). The CReSP, where her research team is located, is supported by the Fonds de recherche du Québec - Santé (FRQ-S).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lysanne Rivard does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Artificial intelligence is supported by an infrastructure of hardware and software that is growing increasingly present in our lives, yet remains hidden in plain view.
Pascale Lehoux, Professor of Health Management, Evaluation and Policy, Université de Montréal
Lysanne Rivard, Senior Research Advisor, Public Health Research Institute, Université de Montréal
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/144454
2020-08-27T12:20:51Z
2020-08-27T12:20:51Z
Abolishing child labor took the specter of ‘white slavery’ and the job market’s near collapse during the Great Depression
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353775/original/file-20200820-16-1u0kl3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C0%2C996%2C634&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">These boys working in a Georgia cotton mill were photographed in 1909. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2018674998">Lewis Hine/The National Child Labor Committee Collection via Library of Congress</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Today, <a href="https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/youthlabor/agerequirements">U.S. laws and regulations bar kids</a> under the age of 14 from working in most industries. Children under 17 may not work more than three hours on school days, for example.</p>
<p>Ever wonder where these rules came from?</p>
<p>While <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=q7nIrq8AAAAJ">studying this issue for more than a decade</a>, I’ve learned that very few Americans thought there was anything wrong with child labor before the Civil War. <a href="https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/child-labor-in-america/">Most kids under age 15 worked</a> up to 14 hours a day, either alongside their parents or for an employer – unless they were rich. In that case, other children worked for their families. </p>
<p>Enslaved children typically began working alongside their mothers in the fields at a very young age. They also did housework, hauled water and took care of animals. Not only were these enslaved people unpaid “child laborers”; the law cast them as <a href="https://iupress.org/9780253222640/stolen-childhood-second-edition">property subject to the threat of sale</a>.</p>
<p>After emancipation, the question of whether to outlaw child labor was hotly contested for more than 80 years. Northern reformers who sought abolition <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">squared off against their Southern opponents</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354460/original/file-20200824-14-1kuf4ir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black sharecroppers, picking cotton in Texas" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354460/original/file-20200824-14-1kuf4ir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354460/original/file-20200824-14-1kuf4ir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=627&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354460/original/file-20200824-14-1kuf4ir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=627&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354460/original/file-20200824-14-1kuf4ir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=627&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354460/original/file-20200824-14-1kuf4ir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354460/original/file-20200824-14-1kuf4ir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354460/original/file-20200824-14-1kuf4ir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=788&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Even after emancipation, Black children would toil all day long in the fields.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.thestoryoftexas.com/discover/campfire-stories/african-americans">Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Early laws only regulated child labor</h2>
<p>As I explain in <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">my new book on the topic</a>, it took the Great Depression to reserve full-time employment for adults.</p>
<p>After the Civil War officially ended child slavery, most Americans still did not think there was anything wrong with children earning their keep, as long as working kids could <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">get at least a rudimentary education</a>. While some states such as Massachusetts had child labor laws on the books, those measures only regulated employment. Children could be limited to working <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1010335.pdf">as many as 10 hours daily</a>.</p>
<p>By the 1870s, unions condemned child labor on the basis that overly young workers competed for jobs, making it harder for adults to <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-World-of-Child-Labor-An-Historical-and-Regional-Survey/Hindman-Hindman/p/book/9780765617071">obtain higher pay and better conditions</a> – not due to concerns about the well-being of kids.</p>
<p>The government first gathered data on child labor, which was defined at the time as the <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">gainful employment of children under the age of 15</a>, in 1870. That year’s census counted 750,000 employed children – 1 in 8 American kids. It was a low estimate that excluded children working for their families.</p>
<p>The 1900 census found that more than 1 in 5 children worked. Reformers believed the real rate was even higher.</p>
<h2>Lax Southern regulations</h2>
<p>Some companies, meanwhile, were moving production to Southern states like North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama to take advantage of their <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">lax regulations</a>. Cotton milling quickly became one of the nation’s <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">most child-labor-intensive industries</a>, along with coal mining.</p>
<p>By 1900, a <a href="https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2017/article/history-of-child-labor-in-the-united-states-part-1.htm">quarter of the South’s nearly 100,000 textile workers</a> were under 16. Northern reformers were calling for change.
They objected not because they considered child labor a form of child abuse but rather because <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">these little workers were white</a>.</p>
<p>The image of pale, shrunken-faced, debilitated poor white boys and girls in Southern textile mills was sensationalized in the North as “<a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">white child slavery</a>.” Once the issue became a national obsession, activists formed the
<a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">National Child Labor Committee in 1904</a> to “change the public conscience” on this issue.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354463/original/file-20200824-20-glk0sx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Girl working in box factory in 1909" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354463/original/file-20200824-20-glk0sx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354463/original/file-20200824-20-glk0sx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354463/original/file-20200824-20-glk0sx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354463/original/file-20200824-20-glk0sx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354463/original/file-20200824-20-glk0sx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354463/original/file-20200824-20-glk0sx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354463/original/file-20200824-20-glk0sx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Little girls and boys often worked long days in factories, alongside adults.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/523064">Lewis Hine/Department of Commerce and Labor's Children's Bureau</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A culture war</h2>
<p>Southern industrialists resisted regulations, insisting that they were uplifting poor whites. They denounced child labor reform as “<a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">aggressive Northern interference</a>.”</p>
<p>Despite Southern opposition, reformers argued that state-level regulations were rife with loopholes and difficult to enforce. In 23 states, for instance, there was <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">no official way to determine children’s ages</a>. Additionally, many states allowed <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">poor children to work out of “necessity</a>.”</p>
<p>The committee first pushed to outlaw child labor in 1906 on the grounds that it weakened the white race and, therefore, interfered with U.S. plans for global dominance.</p>
<p>Named after Sen. Albert Beveridge of Indiana, the Beveridge bill sought to use the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution to ban the <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">interstate shipment of products made by child labor</a>. Southern opponents defeated it.</p>
<p>In 1913, the minister <a href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1961/06/30/118915298.html?pageNumber=27">Owen Lovejoy</a> brought new religious allies to the committee, which by then focused on the <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">sinfulness of child labor</a> in America.</p>
<p>In 1916, they got Congress to pass the the <a href="https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=59">first federal child labor law</a>. Like the Beveridge bill, the new law prohibited shipping products made with child labor across state lines. </p>
<p>However, a North Carolina mill worker, Roland Dagenhart, challenged the measure in court on the grounds that it violated his right to have his sons employed. The case wound up before the <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/247/251/">Supreme Court, which ruled in Dagenhart’s favor in 1918</a>.</p>
<p>Reformers would try again, this time using the federal taxing power to tax the products of child labor, but the Supreme Court would strike down that law – also challenged in court by a Southern mill worker – <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/259/20/">as unconstitutional in 1922</a>.</p>
<p>The showdown came in the 1920s. Fed up with the Supreme Court for repeatedly overturning child labor laws, Northern reformers tried to amend the U.S. Constitution. Prohibition had recently secured the 18th Amendment, and women had just gained suffrage through the 19th Amendment.</p>
<p>Many observers wrongly predicted that a child labor Amendment would <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">become the 20th amendment</a>.</p>
<p>U.S. culture was changing at the time. Americans were beginning to consider <a href="https://theconversation.com/teen-boys-will-be-boys-a-brief-history-103970">adolescence as a separate developmental stage</a> between <a href="https://massculturalcouncil.org/creative-youth-development/boston-youth-arts-evaluation-project/brief-history-of-adolescence-youth-development/">childhood and adulthood</a>. Likewise, the <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1900-1940/268us510">education of children through high school</a> was <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/programs/statereform/tab5_1.asp">gradually becoming mandatory</a>. </p>
<h2>Small farmhands</h2>
<p>And yet those expectations didn’t materialize, due to a <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">rural backlash</a>.</p>
<p>Back then, most family farms relied on their own children’s labor. Many other children were hired as farmhands or “helpers” in <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">seasonal agriculture</a>. A 1922 <a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000932806">study of seasonal demand for farm labor</a> in Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey found that three-fifths of white children and nearly three-fourths of black children were working before the age of 10.</p>
<p>Southern industrialists seized the moment, warning thousands of farm families of a government takeover of their farms. A collective uprising against a child labor constitutional amendment became yet another culture war, this time between rural and urban communities.</p>
<p>Reformers panicked, buying radio spots and distributing pamphlets backing off the notion that they wanted to interfere with family farms. The movement to pass a <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">child labor amendment fizzled by 1925</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354458/original/file-20200824-14-1lr0124.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Wanted: Small boys sign in Manhattan in the early 20th century." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354458/original/file-20200824-14-1lr0124.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354458/original/file-20200824-14-1lr0124.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354458/original/file-20200824-14-1lr0124.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354458/original/file-20200824-14-1lr0124.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354458/original/file-20200824-14-1lr0124.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354458/original/file-20200824-14-1lr0124.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354458/original/file-20200824-14-1lr0124.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Factory employers would seek out children for jobs where little fingers would come in handy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/nclc.04997/">Lewis Hine/National Child Labor Committee collection via Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Labor markets</h2>
<p>It took the <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">Great Depression</a> to resolve the debate over child labor.</p>
<p>Both Southerners and Northerners embraced an argument that union organizers had been making for decades and agreed that all available jobs in the nation should go to adult workers rather than children.</p>
<p>[<em>Understand new developments in science, health and technology, each week.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/science-editors-picks-71/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=science-understand">Subscribe to The Conversation’s science newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Subsequently, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal included the <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/43csw7rr9780252043444.html">first federal child labor law not to be overturned by the Supreme Court</a>. This 1938 law included provisions banning child labor under age 14 in most industries while exempting “children under 16 employed in agriculture” and “children working for their parents” in most occupations. </p>
<p>Today, FDR’s <a href="https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/flsa">measure is still the basis of child labor laws in America</a>. It was a major victory, to be sure. But its <a href="https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/14/the-children-in-the-fields">limitations reflect the mixed legacy</a> of the movement to abolish child labor.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144454/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Betsy Wood has received funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. </span></em></p>
More than a fifth of US children were working in 1900, and many Americans saw nothing wrong with that. It took decades of activism and court battles plus economic upheaval to change course.
Betsy Wood, Instructor of American History, Hudson County Community College
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/129037
2019-12-19T14:47:04Z
2019-12-19T14:47:04Z
Decking the halls of history: the origins of Christmas decorations
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307876/original/file-20191219-11900-1id8fcp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/natural-winter-christmas-background-holly-ivy-1225592965">Shutterstock/marilyn barbone</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The idea of hanging up decorations in the middle of winter is older than Christmas itself. Decorations are mentioned in ancient descriptions of the Roman feast of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-busy-romans-needed-a-mid-winter-break-too-and-it-lasted-for-24-days-69661">Saturnalia</a>, which is thought to have originated in the 5th century BC. </p>
<p>Some 900 years later, a Christian bishop in Turkey wrote disapprovingly about members of his congregation who were drinking, feasting, dancing and “crowning their doors” with decorations in a <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/765667.The_Stations_of_the_Sun">pagan fashion</a> at this time of year. </p>
<p>The 6th-century <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/St-Gregory-the-Great">Pope Gregory the Great</a> took a different line. The Venerable Bede, an English monk, records that English pagans had celebrated the start of their year at the winter solstice and called it “the night of the mothers”. </p>
<p>Gregory recommended that these celebrations should be reinvented rather than banned. So the construction of green boughs and natural adornments was instead focused on churches – using plants that have retained their festive significance to this day. </p>
<p>Nature, of course, has a role to play. In countries like the UK, midwinter greenery is limited. The leaves that are available – holly, ivy and mistletoe – became obvious choices for decorations. Mistletoe had long been revered by druids, while holly and ivy were celebrated in English songs at least from the 15th century. </p>
<p>King Henry VIII composed one which begins: “Green groweth the holly, So doth the ivy, Though winter blasts blow never so high, Green groweth the holly.” (I have modernised the spelling, but it was never very catchy.)</p>
<p>Greenery was cheap and perhaps for that reason is not mentioned in descriptions of domestic decorations from medieval Europe. Aristocratic households preferred to display their wealth by bringing out their best tapestries, jewels and gold platters. </p>
<p>Wax candles were another form of conspicuous consumption, as well as a nod to religious significance. But descriptions of Christmas festivities well into the 17th century focus on the decoration of the person rather than the house. Strange costumes, masks, role-reversing clothes and face-painting are all repeatedly mentioned. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307881/original/file-20191219-11929-187zqgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307881/original/file-20191219-11929-187zqgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=302&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307881/original/file-20191219-11929-187zqgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=302&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307881/original/file-20191219-11929-187zqgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=302&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307881/original/file-20191219-11929-187zqgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307881/original/file-20191219-11929-187zqgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307881/original/file-20191219-11929-187zqgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Old and new.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/illuminated-christmas-tree-piazzale-michelangelo-cathedral-1268034535">Shutterstock/Dan74</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Early emphasis on domestic decorations does appear in a Christmas song by the English poet and farmer <a href="https://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/get_ivy_and_hull.htm">Thomas Tusser</a>, written in 1558. It opens: “Get ivy and hull [holly] woman, deck up thine house.” Clearly, the decoration of family homes was considered to be work for women – and this too has become a persistent tradition. </p>
<p>In the following century, Christmas celebrations became a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/holydays/christmas_1.shtml">matter of heated argument</a> between reformers and traditionalists, with the reformers attacking what they saw as pagan revelries. </p>
<h2>Creating modern traditions</h2>
<p>It was the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Industrial-Revolution">Industrial Revolution</a> which came much closer to destroying Christmas than the puritans managed, by taking away traditional holidays in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Social reformers responded by energetically reinventing traditions. </p>
<p>The emphasis remained heavily on female responsibility for decorations, however. The British magazine, The Lady, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Tb0CmbFokF4C&pg=PT199&lpg=PT199&dq=the+lady+1896+meagre+christmas+decorations&source=bl&ots=ptzKopAruX&sig=ACfU3U268e3HK-vOER_Ziw-so9Kbnl3Zkg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjDgtjSwcHmAhWymFwKHbGXDmkQ6AEwAHoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=the%20lady%201896%20meagre%20christmas%20decorations&f=false">asserted in 1896</a> that any hostess whose decorations were “meagre” was a disgrace to her family. </p>
<p>What then would be expected by this date? A middle-class woman might have been guided by the song which opens with the celebrated instruction to “Deck the hall[s] with boughs of holly”, published in 1862. </p>
<p>This song is itself a good example of the ongoing recreating of traditions throughout history. The new English lyrics were written to accompany a 16th-century Welsh melody, whose original words made no mention of holly or decorating. The 1862 lyrics were almost immediately updated to remove encouragement of heavy drinking.</p>
<p>Still relatively new in Britain and the US at this time, though rising in popularity, was the German custom of the decorated Christmas tree, which was first recorded in the Rhineland in the 16th century. </p>
<p>Its decorations were mainly candles and small presents, which were often homemade food and sweets. By 1896 the tree might be accompanied by a display of printed Christmas cards bearing images of holly, mistletoe, seasonal food and bells. Newer images included robins and, of course, Father Christmas. Another innovation was the arrival of electric lighting in the 1890s, which made possible the invention of fairy lights. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307878/original/file-20191219-11951-10mzt05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307878/original/file-20191219-11951-10mzt05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307878/original/file-20191219-11951-10mzt05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307878/original/file-20191219-11951-10mzt05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307878/original/file-20191219-11951-10mzt05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307878/original/file-20191219-11951-10mzt05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307878/original/file-20191219-11951-10mzt05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lighting up midwinter.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/beautiful-decorated-fireplace-christmas-tree-cottage-329622008">Shutterstock/kryzhov</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Arguably, the Industrial Revolution, having failed to destroy Christmas, eventually absorbed and expanded it. Affordable, mass-produced toys, gifts and decorations turned Christmas into the festival we know today and made decorations possible for almost all households, even in big cities where foliage was scarce. </p>
<p>One man who played a major part in creating and spreading affordable versions of decorations was the American entrepreneur and retail mogul, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Woolworth-Co">F W Woolworth</a>. His decision to import large quantities of glass baubles and stars, originally produced by family workshops in Germany, did much to spread this new medium. </p>
<p>Alongside these came paper garlands and decorative Christmas stockings, as well as painted tin toys. Another idea which started in Germany was tinsel. This was originally fine, sparkling strips of silver, but was later mass produced – first in cheaper metals, and then plastic. </p>
<p>Today, of course, plastic is widely out of favour. As a result, perhaps we will see further reinvention of our Christmas decorations and traditions – which, from a historical perspective, is a tradition in itself.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129037/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anne Lawrence-Mathers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The pagans paved the way for our modern festivities.
Anne Lawrence-Mathers, Professor in Medieval History, University of Reading
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/127532
2019-11-21T11:21:21Z
2019-11-21T11:21:21Z
George Eliot: 200 years on, valuable lessons for today’s millennials and baby boomers
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302878/original/file-20191121-542-14x7jgh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C8%2C1339%2C1267&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">George Eliot (1819-1880), aged 30.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alexandre-Louis-François d'Albert-Durade/National Portrait Gallery</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>We hear a lot right now about <a href="https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/our-work/intergenerational-fairness/">tensions between different generations</a>: <a href="http://jbristow.co.uk/from-brexit-to-the-pensions-crisis-how-did-the-baby-boomers-get-the-blame-for-everything">baby-boomers</a> versus <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/07/millennials-generation-y-guide-to-much-maligned-demographic">millennials</a>, for example. But <a href="https://twitter.com/Born1819">those born 200 years ago</a> combined characteristics of both these modern generations. </p>
<p>The most famous person born in 1819 is probably Queen Victoria – but she had many important contemporaries. One of these was George Eliot, a pioneering woman writer who would have turned 200 this week, and whose life and work helps us understand her world and ours.</p>
<p>The 1819 cohort was part of a <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033074/fertility-rate-uk-1800-2020/">post-war baby boom</a>. The previous decades had been dominated by a <a href="https://www.historyextra.com/period/georgian/napoleonic-wars-facts-napoleon-bonaparte-waterloo-what-happened-defeated-significance/">world war</a>, which broke out in the wake of the French Revolution and raged across Europe and parts of Africa, Asia and the Americas for more than 20 years.</p>
<p>In some ways, they were much less fortunate than 20th-century baby boomers. Their childhoods did not see the foundation of a post-war welfare state. On the contrary, the repressive government continued to forbid protests. In August 1819, working people met at St Peter’s Fields near Manchester for a political rally, but the local cavalry charged in to clear the crowd. At least ten people were killed and hundreds were injured. </p>
<p>This became known as the <a href="http://www.peterloomassacre.org/history.html">Peterloo Massacre</a>, emphasising that violence and suffering had not ended with Waterloo. 1819 was not an auspicious time to be born.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302882/original/file-20191121-467-14eg1t5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302882/original/file-20191121-467-14eg1t5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302882/original/file-20191121-467-14eg1t5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302882/original/file-20191121-467-14eg1t5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302882/original/file-20191121-467-14eg1t5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302882/original/file-20191121-467-14eg1t5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302882/original/file-20191121-467-14eg1t5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302882/original/file-20191121-467-14eg1t5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Peterloo massacre in Manchester on August 16, 1819, in which at least ten people were killed.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Richard Carlile (1790–1843)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Thoroughly modern</h2>
<p>The Victorian era saw a huge population boom and mass migration within Britain. George Eliot was <a href="https://www.georgeeliot.org/about-george-eliot/childhood.aspx">born Mary Ann Evans in the rural Midlands</a>, at a point when most people lived outside of towns. But, by the 1850s, for the first time more than half of people in Britain were urban. And Eliot became one of them – like many contemporaries <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/nov/16/george-eliot-provincial-novels-teach-brexit-britain">she left for the big city</a>, and never went back.</p>
<p>The life she made for herself in London, however, was very unusual. She seized the chance of a career when very few Victorian women had such a thing, and took on a new identity as a translator and journalist. Then she and a married man fell in love. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302885/original/file-20191121-474-1vua7t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302885/original/file-20191121-474-1vua7t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=832&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302885/original/file-20191121-474-1vua7t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=832&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302885/original/file-20191121-474-1vua7t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=832&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302885/original/file-20191121-474-1vua7t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1046&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302885/original/file-20191121-474-1vua7t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1046&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302885/original/file-20191121-474-1vua7t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1046&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Eliot’s lover, George Henry Lewes (Woodcut by S. T., 1878, after Elliott & Fry).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wellcome Collection.</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>They set up home together, and while she saw her <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/george-eliots-ugly-beauty">life-partnership with G. H. Lewes</a> as a marriage, she would always be seen by polite society as “living in sin”.</p>
<p>When she started to write novels in her late 30s, she <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000b8mf/novels-that-shaped-our-world-series-1-1-a-womans-place">wrote under a male disguise</a>. She was found out before long, but the name George Eliot stuck. It enabled her to write with the kind of masculine authority often denied to <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-companion-to-victorian-womens-writing/victorian-women-writers-careers/38E8D853C4DCD946C779429B1589C72B/core-reader">other women writers</a> of her generation.</p>
<h2>Class of 1819</h2>
<p>Few millennials have a “job for life” – and many are by necessity juggling portfolio careers. We might think of this as a new phenomenon, but both elements would have been familiar to the generation born 200 years ago. At that time, few people had much choice over what they did for a living. They followed their parents’ or local trades, working on farms, as servants or in the new steam-powered mills and factories. </p>
<p>In all these sectors, security was minimal and many migrated to follow the work. On the other hand, if you were educated and could afford it, there was freedom to explore. </p>
<p>It was quite a cohort. Among the notable individuals turning 200 this year are several others who had enormous influence on the world around them. <a href="https://www.guildofstgeorge.org.uk/about/john-ruskin">John Ruskin</a> made his name as an art critic, but was also an impassioned social commentator who wrote on everything from geology to economics. <a href="https://www.wcml.org.uk/our-collections/activists/ernest-jones/">Ernest Jones</a> grew up around royal courts and trained as a lawyer, but became a poet. He joined the radical Chartist movement that campaigned for the working-class vote, was imprisoned for it, and ended up a politician. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, Charles Kingsley’s novel <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jul/11/the-water-babies-fairytale-social-change-richard-coles-documentary">The Water Babies</a> (1863) successfully helped stop young boys being forced to work as chimney sweeps. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302895/original/file-20191121-483-35u7eb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302895/original/file-20191121-483-35u7eb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302895/original/file-20191121-483-35u7eb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302895/original/file-20191121-483-35u7eb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302895/original/file-20191121-483-35u7eb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302895/original/file-20191121-483-35u7eb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1038&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302895/original/file-20191121-483-35u7eb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1038&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302895/original/file-20191121-483-35u7eb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1038&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of Sir Joseph William Bazalgette (1819-1891) published in Punch magazine, December 1883.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wellcome Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Joseph Bazalgette was a civil engineer who <a href="https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/how-bazalgette-built-londons-first-super-sewer">rescued London from the Great Stink</a> by building a majestic sewer system, but he also enjoyed art and designed the Crossness Pumping Station to look like a medieval cathedral.</p>
<p>These people’s careers often spanned arts and sciences, invention and creativity, theory and activism, in ways few do today.</p>
<p>Today’s millennials have seen the arrival and all-encompassing spread of the internet. The 1819 generation also navigated new communication networks: their teenage years were the years of the first railways. They made the most of this new technology, and by the end of their lives train travel had become normal – it’s what enabled Queen Victoria to make <a href="http://the-history-girls.blogspot.com/2017/06/queen-victorias-first-railway-journey.html">regular trips to her highland home</a> at Balmoral.</p>
<p>But industrialisation and railway building also caused huge upheaval. In her masterpiece novel <a href="https://georgeeliotarchive.org/items/show/13">Middlemarch (1871–72)</a> – set in the Midlands during her teenage years – Eliot depicts this upheaval. She initially presents the anti-railway protesters as narrow-minded yokels, but eventually acknowledges that these men “are in possession of an undeniable truth” – the fact that they wouldn’t see any of the “social benefit” from the railways. Eliot knew that technological “progress” would damage the rural communities it left behind.</p>
<p>We often think of generational identities and divides as new, but <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jvc/article/24/3/277/5528143">the generation born 200 years ago</a> also often found itself in a generation gap. Millennials and baby-boomers both share experiences with the 1819 generation – which suggests that these two living groups are not opposites after all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/127532/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helen Kingstone does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Born the same year as Queen Victoria, Eliot faced similar life choices to many young women today
Helen Kingstone, Surrey Research Fellow, University of Surrey
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/123247
2019-09-20T09:26:58Z
2019-09-20T09:26:58Z
Stress caused sleeplessness for the Victorians too – but they thought it only afflicted ‘brain-workers’
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292613/original/file-20190916-19049-19gmimo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/FVRTLKgQ700"> Kinga Cichewicz/Unsplash</a>, <a class="license" href="http://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en">FAL</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Sleeplessness is one of the torments of our age and generation.” You might presume that this is a quote from a contemporary commentator, and no wonder: the World Health Organisation has diagnosed a <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3397790/">global epidemic of sleeplessness</a>, and it is difficult to escape accounts, both popular and scientific, of the dangers to health of our 24/7 lifestyle in the modern digital age. But it was actually the neurologist Sir William Broadbent who wrote these words, in 1900.</p>
<p>So our concerns are evidently far from new. The Victorian era experienced not only the extraordinary upheavals of the industrial revolution, but also the arrival of gas and then electric lighting, turning night into day. The creation of an international telegraph network similarly revolutionised systems of communication, establishing global connectivity and, for groups such as businessmen, financiers and politicians, a flow of telegrams at all hours. </p>
<p>Such shifts brought new patterns and expectations of work. By the 1860s the twin diseases of modernity – overwork and sleeplessness – became the <a href="https://diseasesofmodernlife.web.ox.ac.uk/victorian-light-night">focus of cultural anxieties</a>. Victorian medical men warned against the dangers of sleeplessness. Drawing on this research, an 1866 article in the Spectator argued that sleeplessness was one of the “most annoying concomitants of civilised life”, but also one of the greatest threats to health: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Any system which really increased the average capacity for sleep would benefit nervous diseases, increase the habitableness of great cities, and probably diminish perceptibly the average of lunacy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Such concerns remain strong today. In his recent book <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/21/why-we-sleep-by-matthew-walker-review">Why We Sleep</a>, the neuroscientist Matthew Walker highlights current medical findings on the threats to health from sleep deprivation, ranging from cancer, stroke and heart failure, to Alzheimer’s, depression and suicide tendencies.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292865/original/file-20190917-19068-z1cq19.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292865/original/file-20190917-19068-z1cq19.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292865/original/file-20190917-19068-z1cq19.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292865/original/file-20190917-19068-z1cq19.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292865/original/file-20190917-19068-z1cq19.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292865/original/file-20190917-19068-z1cq19.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292865/original/file-20190917-19068-z1cq19.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sally Shuttleworth and the Diseases of Modern Life team worked with the Projection Studio to create a light and sound projection onto the Radcliffe Humanities Building in Oxford, November 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Projection Studio</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The brain-worker</h2>
<p>The perils of sleeplessness are, of course, common to all. But the Victorians didn’t think so. Although the industrial classes had to work extraordinarily long hours, and were housed in poor conditions which must have affected their capacity to sleep, Victorian concerns about sleep were all focused on the professional classes, and that new creation of the period, the “brain-worker”. Sleeplessness was identified with overactivity of the brain, and hence the prime victims were believed to be those who laboured excessively with their brains, such as doctors, lawyers, academics, bankers, or politicians. </p>
<p>There was also considerable concern about schoolchildren being forced to labour long into the night on their homework, thus curtailing their sleep, with many doctors and social reformers calling for a scrapping of the “payment by results” system (which linked a school’s funding to the success of its pupils in examinations), and the creation of more healthy, and sleep-friendly, regimes of education. In his wonderful work, <a href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/k83qmc73">Hurry, Worry and Money: the Bane of Modern Education</a> (1883), the Leeds physician Pridgin Teale inveighed against the new competitive system of education which destroyed the health and moral well-being of pupils and teachers alike, leaving them exhausted and demoralised.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292446/original/file-20190913-8649-dhwndz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292446/original/file-20190913-8649-dhwndz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292446/original/file-20190913-8649-dhwndz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292446/original/file-20190913-8649-dhwndz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292446/original/file-20190913-8649-dhwndz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1147&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292446/original/file-20190913-8649-dhwndz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1147&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/292446/original/file-20190913-8649-dhwndz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1147&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Therapeutic belts which supposedly cured a number of ailments, including sleeplessness.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/kmg6w67h">Wellcome Collection</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A whole genre of “self-help” books sprang up around issues of sleeplessness, often from rather unexpected quarters, such as The Disease of Sleeplessness (1877), authored “by a country clergyman who has suffered and prevailed”. He recommends cold baths and a brisk rub, but never chloral, a drug introduced into Britain in the 1870s and widely advertised in newspapers as a remedy for sleeplessness – and clearly the source of his own problems. Chloral, he warns, “notwithstanding the numerous tempting advertisements recommending its use” should be “shunned by all as they would shun a serpent’s sting”. </p>
<p>As this suggests, our own social problems with addiction to sleeping pills have their parallels in the Victorian age. Chloral quickly became a drug of choice, as our clergyman suggests. It was associated with numerous high-profile deaths, from the artist and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti to the scientist John Tyndall (who died when his wife gave him an accidental overdose). </p>
<p>In one case, a Cambridge classicist, burdened with too much examining, took to chloral and ended up taking his own life. Such examples were <a href="https://archive.org/details/b21951962">widely publicised</a> in books on the wear and tear of modern life.</p>
<figure>
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<h2>Counting sheep</h2>
<p>In medical and popular literature, there were numerous discussions on how to combat the problem of sleeplessness. Interestingly, much of it was very similar to current advice. </p>
<p>Exercise in the fresh air should be taken every day; the bedroom should be cool and covers loose, and consumption of tea and coffee should be severely curtailed. The author of a book called Sleep and How to Obtain It, advises: “Persons who complain of insomnia should put a padlock on the teapot, and never, on any occasion, use it late at night.” </p>
<p>It was also advised that care should be taken with diet generally, and large meals avoided in the evenings. That new-fangled invention, the alarm clock (which was mass produced from the 1880s), should be shunned in favour of more natural waking – a practice now promoted by our own <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/shopping/esbest/home-garden/home-accessories/the-best-sunrise-alarm-clocks-a3124861.html">sunrise alarm clocks</a>. Some of the techniques for obtaining sleep also anticipate current yoga-based practices, with recommendations for focusing on breathing and the flow of air through the body (as well as counting sheep).</p>
<p>The Victorians were acutely aware of the relationship between the new social conditions, technologies and work practices, and the problems generated for health (although their concerns were admittedly largely focused on the upper echelons of society). </p>
<p>In the 20th century, with increasing specialisation in areas of medicine and science, that sense of technology’s interconnection with and impact on society was often lost. But recent research is recovering that balance. Overwork and lack of sleep, the Victorians argued, could lead to an early grave. Although such claims were often seen as too alarmist at the time, current sleep science has now endorsed that position. Too little sleep might indeed <a href="http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/matters/consequences/sleep-and-disease-risk">kill you</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/123247/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The research behind this article is part of the ‘Diseases of Modern Life’ project based at Oxford University, and funded by the European Research Council. These issues lay behind the projection for Victorian Light Night, produced by the Projection Studio, the Diseases of Modern Life Project, and TORCH at Oxford University, in November 2018.</span></em></p>
As early as the 1860s the twin diseases of modernity – overwork and sleeplessness – became the focus of cultural anxieties.
Sally Shuttleworth, Professor of English Literature, University of Oxford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/118927
2019-09-06T06:54:35Z
2019-09-06T06:54:35Z
A globalised solar-powered future is wholly unrealistic – and our economy is the reason why
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/283080/original/file-20190708-51312-s4m3ab.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/solar-energy-farm-high-angle-view-1069561832?src=to_vONHcYToqPUfDLq8i2A-1-83&studio=1">Valentin Valkov/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Over the past two centuries, millions of dedicated people – revolutionaries, activists, politicians, and theorists – have been unable to curb the disastrous and increasingly globalised trajectory of economic polarisation and ecological degradation. This is perhaps because we are utterly trapped in flawed ways of thinking about technology and economy – as the current discourse on climate change shows.</p>
<p>Rising greenhouse gas emissions are not just generating climate change. They are giving more and more of us climate anxiety. <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2205741-is-it-true-climate-change-will-cause-the-end-of-civilisation-by-2050/">Doomsday scenarios</a> are capturing the headlines at an accelerating rate. Scientists from all over the world tell us that emissions in ten years must be half of what they were ten years ago, or we face apocalypse. School children like <a href="https://theconversation.com/greta-thunberg-at-davos-why-gen-z-has-real-power-to-influence-business-on-climate-change-110409">Greta Thunberg</a> and activist movements like <a href="https://theconversation.com/extinction-rebellion-disruption-and-arrests-can-bring-social-change-115741">Extinction Rebellion</a> are demanding that we panic. And rightly so. But what should we do to avoid disaster?</p>
<p>Most scientists, politicians, and business leaders tend to put their hope in technological progress. Regardless of ideology, there is a widespread expectation that new technologies will replace fossil fuels by harnessing renewable energy such as solar and wind. Many also trust that there will be technologies for <a href="https://theconversation.com/new-co-capture-technology-is-not-the-magic-bullet-against-climate-change-115413">removing carbon dioxide</a> from the atmosphere and for “<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-you-need-to-get-involved-in-the-geoengineering-debate-now-85619">geoengineering</a>” the Earth’s climate. The common denominator in these visions is the faith that we can save modern civilisation if we shift to new technologies. But “technology” is not a magic wand. It requires a lot of money, which means claims on labour and resources from other areas. We tend to forget this crucial fact.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/should-we-engineer-the-climate-a-social-scientist-and-natural-scientist-discuss-104516">Should we engineer the climate? A social scientist and natural scientist discuss</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/nature-society-and-justice-in-the-anthropocene/9C290F401CDE51FC511DDCAE55634D3C">I would argue</a> that the way we take conventional “all-purpose” money for granted is the main reason why we have not understood how advanced technologies are dependent on the appropriation of labour and resources from elsewhere. In making it possible to exchange almost anything – human time, gadgets, ecosystems, whatever – for anything else on the market, people are constantly looking for the best deals, which ultimately means promoting the lowest wages and the cheapest resources in the global South. </p>
<p>It is the logic of money that has created the utterly unsustainable and growth-hungry global society that exists today. To get our globalised economy to respect <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/461472a">natural limits</a>, we must set limits to what can be exchanged. Unfortunately, it seems increasingly probable that we shall have to experience something closer to disaster – such as a semi-global harvest failure – before we are prepared to seriously question how money and markets are currently designed.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
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</figure>
<p><strong><em>This article is part of Conversation Insights</em></strong>
<br><em>The Insights team generates <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218">long-form journalism</a> derived from interdisciplinary research. The team is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects aimed at tackling societal and scientific challenges.</em> </p>
<hr>
<h2>Green growth?</h2>
<p>Take the ultimate issue we are facing: whether our modern, global, and growing economy can be powered by renewable energy. Among most champions of sustainability, such as advocates of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-green-new-deal-is-already-changing-the-terms-of-the-climate-action-debate-112144">Green New Deal</a>, there is an unshakeable conviction that the problem of climate change can be <a href="https://theconversation.com/betting-on-speculative-geoengineering-may-risk-an-escalating-climate-debt-crisis-119889">solved by engineers</a>. </p>
<p>What generally divides ideological positions is not the faith in technology as such, but which technical solutions to choose, and whether they will require major political change. Those who remain sceptical to the promises of technology – such as advocates of radical downshifting or <a href="https://vocabulary.degrowth.org/">degrowth</a> – tend to be marginalised from politics and the media. So far, any politician who seriously advocates degrowth is not likely to have a future in politics. </p>
<p>Mainstream optimism about technology is often referred to as ecomodernism. The <a href="http://www.ecomodernism.org/">Ecomodernist Manifesto</a>, a concise statement of this approach published in 2015, asks us to embrace technological progress, which will give us “a good, or even great, Anthropocene”. It argues that the progress of technology has “decoupled” us from the natural world and should be allowed to continue to do so in order to allow the “<a href="https://theconversation.com/rewilding-is-essential-to-the-uks-commitment-to-zero-carbon-emission-107541">rewilding</a>” of nature. The growth of cities, industrial agriculture, and nuclear power, it claims, illustrate such decoupling. As if these phenomena did not have <a href="https://www.footprintnetwork.org/our-work/ecological-footprint/">ecological footprints</a> beyond their own boundaries. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/an-ecomodernists-manifesto-save-wildlife-by-embracing-new-tech-40239">An ecomodernist's manifesto: save wildlife by embracing new tech</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Meanwhile, calls for a Green New Deal have been voiced for more than a decade, but in February 2019 it took the form of a <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-resolution/109/text">resolution</a> to the American House of Representatives. Central to its vision is a large-scale shift to renewable energy sources and massive investments in new infrastructure. This would enable further growth of the economy, it is argued. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/283284/original/file-20190709-44457-1ccrz37.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/283284/original/file-20190709-44457-1ccrz37.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283284/original/file-20190709-44457-1ccrz37.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283284/original/file-20190709-44457-1ccrz37.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283284/original/file-20190709-44457-1ccrz37.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283284/original/file-20190709-44457-1ccrz37.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283284/original/file-20190709-44457-1ccrz37.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">What will it take for us to seriously consider the roots of our problems?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/corn-field-dried-after-long-heat-1420578821?src=qAxsRXAWJWdivBfL6ByIag-1-78&studio=1">PicsEKa/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Rethinking technology</h2>
<p>So the general consensus seems to be that the problem of climate change is just a question of replacing one energy technology with another. But a historical view reveals that the very idea of technology is <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/nature-society-and-justice-in-the-anthropocene/9C290F401CDE51FC511DDCAE55634D3C">inextricably intertwined</a> with capital accumulation, unequal exchange and the idea of all-purpose money. And as such, it is not as easy to redesign as we like to think. Shifting the main energy technology is not just a matter of replacing infrastructure – it means transforming the economic world order.</p>
<p>In the 19th century, the industrial revolution gave us the notion that technological progress is simply human ingenuity applied to nature, and that it has nothing to do with the structure of world society. This is the mirror image of the <a href="http://www.isecoeco.org/">economists’ illusion</a>, that growth has nothing to do with nature and so does not need to reckon with natural limits. Rather than seeing that both technology and economy span the nature-society divide, engineering is thought of as dealing only with nature and economics as dealing only with society.</p>
<p>The steam engine, for instance, is simply considered an ingenious invention for harnessing the chemical energy of coal. I am not denying that this is the case, but steam technology in early industrial Britain was also contingent on capital accumulated on global markets. The steam-driven factories in Manchester would never have been built without the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/transatlantic-slave-trade#ref1224781">triangular Atlantic trade</a> in slaves, raw cotton, and cotton textiles. Steam technology was not just a matter of ingenious engineering applied to nature – like all complex technology, it was also crucially dependent on global relations of exchange.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/283279/original/file-20190709-44437-dyrf63.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/283279/original/file-20190709-44437-dyrf63.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=687&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283279/original/file-20190709-44437-dyrf63.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=687&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283279/original/file-20190709-44437-dyrf63.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=687&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283279/original/file-20190709-44437-dyrf63.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283279/original/file-20190709-44437-dyrf63.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283279/original/file-20190709-44437-dyrf63.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sketch showing a steam engine designed by Boulton & Watt, England, 1784.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SteamEngine_Boulton%26Watt_1784.png#/media/File:SteamEngine_Boulton&Watt_1784.png">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This dependence of technology on global social relations is not just a matter of money. In quite a physical sense, the viability of the steam engine relied on the flows of human labour energy and other resources that had been invested in cotton fibre from South Carolina, in the US, coal from Wales and iron from Sweden. Modern technology, then, is a product of the metabolism of world society, not simply the result of uncovering “facts” of nature.</p>
<p>The illusion that we have suffered from since the industrial revolution is that technological change is simply a matter of engineering knowledge, regardless of the patterns of global material flows. This is particularly problematic in that it makes us blind to how such flows tend to be highly uneven. </p>
<p>This is not just true of the days of the British Empire. To this day, technologically advanced areas of the world are <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800915003456">net importers</a> of the resources that have been used as inputs in producing their technologies and other commodities, such as land, labour, materials, and energy. Technological progress and capital accumulation are two sides of the same coin. But the material asymmetries in world trade are invisible to mainstream economists, who focus exclusively on flows of money.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/decolonise-science-time-to-end-another-imperial-era-89189">Decolonise science – time to end another imperial era</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Ironically, this understanding of technology is not even recognised in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Marxism">Marxist theory</a>, although it claims to be both materialist and committed to social justice. Marxist theory and politics tend toward what opponents refer to as a Promethean faith in technological progress. Its concern with justice focuses on the emancipation of the industrial worker, rather than on the global flows of resources that are embodied in the industrial machine. </p>
<p>This Marxist faith in the magic of technology occasionally takes extreme forms, as in the case of the biologist David Schwartzman, who does not hesitate to predict future human <a href="http://www.redandgreen.org/Documents/Solar_Communism.htm">colonisation of the galaxy</a> and Aaron Bastani, who anticipates <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/2757-fully-automated-luxury-communism">mining asteroids</a>. In his remarkable book <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/may/29/fully-automated-luxury-communism-aaron-bastani-review">Fully Automated Luxury Communism: A Manifesto</a>, Bastani repeats a widespread claim about the cheapness of solar power that shows how deluded most of us are by the idea of technology.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dmQ-BZ3eWxM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>Nature, he writes, “provides us with virtually free, limitless energy”. This was a frequently voiced conviction already in 1964, when the chemist Farrington Daniels <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1350728.Direct_Use_of_the_Sun_s_Energy">proclaimed</a> that the “most plentiful and cheapest energy is ours for the taking”. More than 50 years later, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/2514848619863607">the dream</a> persists.</p>
<h2>The realities</h2>
<p>Electricity globally represents about <a href="https://www.iea.org/weo2018/electricity/">19%</a> of total energy use – the other major energy drains being transports and industry. In 2017, <a href="https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy.html">only 0.7%</a> of global energy use derived from solar power and 1.9% from wind, while 85% relied on fossil fuels. <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/03/meet-vaclav-smil-man-who-has-quietly-shaped-how-world-thinks-about-energy">As much as 90%</a> of world energy use derives from fossil sources, and this share is actually increasing. So why is the long-anticipated transition to renewable energy not materialising? </p>
<p>One highly contested issue is the land requirements for harnessing renewable energy. Energy experts like <a href="https://www.withouthotair.com/download.html">David MacKay</a> and <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/power-density">Vaclav Smil</a> have estimated that the “power density” – the watts of energy that can be harnessed per unit of land area – of renewable energy sources is so much lower than that of fossil fuels that to replace fossil with renewable energy would require vastly greater land areas for capturing energy. </p>
<p>In part because of this issue, visions of large-scale solar power projects have long referred to the good use to which they could put unproductive areas like the <a href="https://theconversation.com/solar-panels-all-over-the-sahara-desert-imagine-newsletter-2-116320">Sahara desert</a>. But doubts about profitability have discouraged investments. A decade ago, for example, there was much talk about <a href="https://www.euractiv.com/section/trade-society/news/desertec-abandons-sahara-solar-power-export-dream/">Desertec</a>, a €400 billion project that crumbled as the major investors pulled out, one by one. </p>
<p>Today the world’s largest solar energy project is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/04/morocco-to-switch-on-first-phase-of-worlds-largest-solar-plant">Ouarzazate Solar Power Station</a> in Morocco. It covers about 25 square kilometres and has cost around US$9 billion to build. It is designed to provide around a million people with electricity, which means that another 35 such projects – that is, US$315 billion of investments – would be required merely to cater to the population of Morocco. We tend not to see that the enormous investments of capital needed for such massive infrastructural projects represent claims on resources elsewhere – they have huge footprints beyond our field of vision. </p>
<p>Also, we must consider whether solar is really carbon free. As Smil has shown for <a href="http://vaclavsmil.com/wp-content/uploads/15.WINDTURBINE.pdf">wind turbines</a> and Storm van Leeuwen for <a href="https://wiseinternational.org/sites/default/files/u93/climatenuclear.pdf">nuclear power</a>, the production, installation, and maintenance of any technological infrastructure remains critically <a href="https://politicalecologynetwork.org/2018/05/17/end-the-green-delusions-industrial-scale-renewable-energy-is-fossil-fuel/">dependent on fossil energy</a>. Of course, it is easy to retort that until the transition has been made, solar panels are going to have to be produced by burning fossil fuels. But even if 100% of our electricity were renewable, it would not be able to propel global transports or cover the production of steel and cement for urban-industrial infrastructure.</p>
<p>And given the fact that the cheapening of solar panels in recent years to a significant extent is the result of <a href="https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=34952">shifting manufacture to Asia</a>, we must ask ourselves whether European and American efforts to become sustainable should really be based on the global exploitation of low-wage labour, <a href="https://e360.yale.edu/features/a_scarcity_of_rare_metals_is_hindering_green_technologies">scarce resources</a> and <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1350811/In-China-true-cost-Britains-clean-green-wind-power-experiment-Pollution-disastrous-scale.html">abused landscapes</a> elsewhere. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/lithium-is-finite-but-clean-technology-relies-on-such-non-renewable-resources-109630">Lithium is finite – but clean technology relies on such non-renewable resources</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Collecting carbon</h2>
<p>Solar power is not displacing fossil energy, only <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate1451">adding to it</a>. And the pace of expansion of renewable energy capacity <a href="https://cen.acs.org/business/investment/Growth-renewable-energy-capacity-didnt/97/i19">has stalled</a> – it was about the same in 2018 as in 2017. Meanwhile, our global combustion of fossil fuels continues to rise, as do our <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jun/11/energy-industry-carbon-emissions-bp-report-fossil-fuels">carbon emissions</a>. Because this trend seems unstoppable, many hope to see extensive use of technologies for capturing and <a href="https://www.iea.org/topics/carbon-capture-and-storage/">removing the carbon</a> from the emissions of power plants and factories.</p>
<p>Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) remains an <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/beccs-the-story-of-climate-changes-saviour-technology">essential component</a> of the 2016 Paris Agreement on climate change. But to envisage such technologies as economically accessible at a global scale is clearly <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/feb/01/silver-bullet-to-suck-co2-from-air-and-halt-climate-change-ruled-out">unrealistic</a>.</p>
<p>To collect the atoms of carbon dispersed by the global combustion of fossil fuels would be as energy-demanding and economically unfeasible as it would be to try to collect the molecules of rubber from car tires that are continuously being dispersed in the atmosphere by road friction. </p>
<p>The late economist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen used this example to show that economic processes inevitably lead to entropy – that is, an increase in physical disorder and loss of productive potential. In not grasping the implications of this fact, we continue to imagine some miraculous new technology that will reverse the <a href="http://www.entropylaw.com/entropy2ndlaw.html">Law of Entropy</a>. </p>
<p>Economic “value” is a cultural idea. An implication of the Law of Entropy is that productive potential in nature – the force of energy or the quality of materials – is <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674281653">systematically lost</a> as value is being produced. This perspective turns our economic worldview upside down. Value is measured in money, and money shapes the way we think about value. Economists are right in that value should be defined in terms of human preferences, rather than inputs of labour or resources, but the result is that the more value we produce, the more inexpensive labour, energy and other resources are required. To curb the relentless growth of value – at the expense of the biosphere and the global poor – we must create an economy that can restrain itself.</p>
<h2>The evils of capitalism</h2>
<p>Much of the discussion on climate change suggests that we <a href="https://greattransition.org/gti-forum/climate-movement-whats-next">are on a battlefield</a>, confronting evil people who want to obstruct our path to an ecological civilisation. But the concept of capitalism tends to mystify how we are all caught in a game defined by the logic of our own constructions – as if there was an abstract “system” and its morally despicable proponents to blame. Rather than see the very design of the money game as the real antagonist, our call to arms tends to be directed at the players who have had best luck with the dice.</p>
<p>I would instead argue that the ultimate obstruction is not a question of human morality but of our common faith in what Marx called “money fetishism”. We collectively delegate responsibility for our future to a mindless human invention – what <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Karl-Polanyi">Karl Polanyi</a> called all-purpose money, the peculiar idea that anything can be exchanged for anything else. The aggregate logic of this relatively recent idea is precisely what is usually called “capitalism”. It defines the strategies of corporations, politicians, and citizens alike.</p>
<p>All want their money assets to grow. The logic of the global money game obviously does not provide enough incentives to invest in renewables. It generates greed, obscene and rising inequalities, violence, and environmental degradation, including climate change. But mainstream economics appears to have more faith in setting this logic free than ever. Given the way the economy is now organised, it does not see an alternative to obeying the logic of the globalised market.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/283292/original/file-20190709-44497-1gnn0vv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/283292/original/file-20190709-44497-1gnn0vv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283292/original/file-20190709-44497-1gnn0vv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283292/original/file-20190709-44497-1gnn0vv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283292/original/file-20190709-44497-1gnn0vv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283292/original/file-20190709-44497-1gnn0vv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283292/original/file-20190709-44497-1gnn0vv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">It’s the rules which are the issue – not those who win.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/dice-gambling-money-dollar-currency-550975858?src=kgQZD9JO4p1tLz_cpGUiRQ-1-33&studio=1">Theera Disayarat/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The only way to change the game is to redesign its most basic rules. To attribute climate change to an abstract system called capitalism – but without challenging the idea of all-purpose money – is to deny our own agency. The “system” is perpetuated every time we buy our groceries, regardless of whether we are radical activists or climate change deniers. It is difficult to identify culprits if we are all players in the same game. In agreeing to the rules, we have limited our potential collective agency. We have become the tools and servants of our own creation – all-purpose money.</p>
<p>Despite good intentions, it is not clear what Thunberg, Extinction Rebellion and the rest of the climate movement are demanding should be done. Like most of us, they want to stop the emissions of greenhouse gases, but seem to believe that such an energy transition is compatible with money, globalised markets, and modern civilisation. </p>
<p>Is our goal to overthrow “the capitalist mode of production”? If so, how do we go about doing that? Should we blame the politicians for not confronting capitalism and the inertia of all-purpose money? Or – which should follow automatically – should we blame the voters? Should we blame ourselves for not electing politicians that are sincere enough to advocate reducing our mobility and levels of consumption?</p>
<p>Many believe that with the right technologies we would not have to reduce our mobility or energy consumption – and that the global economy could still grow. But to me that is an illusion. It suggests that we have not yet grasped what “technology” is. Electric cars and many other “green” devices may seem reassuring but are often revealed to be insidious strategies for displacing work and environmental loads beyond our horizon – to unhealthy, low-wage labour in mines in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/29/electric-cars-battery-manufacturing-cobalt-mining">Congo</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/aug/07/china-rare-earth-village-pollution">Inner Mongolia</a>. They look sustainable and fair to their affluent users but perpetuate a myopic worldview that goes back to the invention of the steam engine. I have called this delusion <a href="https://books.google.se/books/about/The_Power_of_the_Machine.html?id=UGfBQx7RC7MC&redir_esc=y">machine fetishism</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/283295/original/file-20190709-44432-iyytzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/283295/original/file-20190709-44432-iyytzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283295/original/file-20190709-44432-iyytzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283295/original/file-20190709-44432-iyytzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283295/original/file-20190709-44432-iyytzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283295/original/file-20190709-44432-iyytzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/283295/original/file-20190709-44432-iyytzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Not the guilt free option many assume them to be.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/ev-car-electric-charging-station-power-750610873?src=A2v9viZiGi5L3rVX1zxAMg-1-1&studio=1">Smile Fight/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Redesigning the global money game</h2>
<p>So the first thing we should redesign are the economic ideas that brought fossil-fueled technology into existence and continue to perpetuate it. “Capitalism” ultimately refers to the artefact or idea of all-purpose money, which most of us take for granted as being something about which we do not have a choice. But we do, and this must be recognised.</p>
<p>Since the 19th century, all-purpose money has obscured the unequal resource flows of colonialism by making them seem reciprocal: money has served as a veil that mystifies exploitation by representing it as fair exchange. Economists today reproduce this 19th-century mystification, using a vocabulary that has proven useless in challenging global problems of justice and sustainability. The policies designed to protect the environment and promote global justice have not curbed the insidious logic of all-purpose money – which is to increase environmental degradation as well as <a href="https://www.lifegate.com/people/news/world-inequality-report-2018">economic inequalities</a>.</p>
<p>In order to see that all-purpose money is indeed the fundamental problem, we need to see that there are <a href="https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/JPE/article/view/20900">alternative ways</a> of designing money and markets. Like the rules in a board game, they are human constructions and can, in principle, be redesigned. In order to accomplish economic “degrowth” and curb the treadmill of capital accumulation, we must transform the systemic logic of money itself. </p>
<p>National authorities might establish a <a href="http://reconomy.org/what-you-can-do/alternative-banking-and-currencies/complementary-currencies/">complementary currency</a>, alongside regular money, that is distributed as a universal basic income but that can only be used to buy goods and services that are produced within a given radius from the point of purchase. This is not “local money” in the sense of <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/money-and-liberation">LETS</a> or the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800917304287">Bristol Pound</a> – which in effect do nothing to impede the expansion of the global market – but a genuine spanner in the wheel of globalisation. With local money you can buy goods produced on the other side of the planet, as long as you buy it in a local store. What I am suggesting is special money that can only be used to buy goods produced locally.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290961/original/file-20190904-175705-b5f3yp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290961/original/file-20190904-175705-b5f3yp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290961/original/file-20190904-175705-b5f3yp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290961/original/file-20190904-175705-b5f3yp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290961/original/file-20190904-175705-b5f3yp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290961/original/file-20190904-175705-b5f3yp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290961/original/file-20190904-175705-b5f3yp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Locally produced goods.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/urban-farm-growing-vegetables-on-roof-453003433?src=-1-15">Alison Hancock/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This would help decrease demand for global transports – a major source of greenhouse gas emissions – while increasing local diversity and resilience and encouraging community integration. It would no longer make low wages and lax environmental legislation competitive advantages in world trade, as is currently the case. </p>
<p>Immunising local communities and ecosystems from the logic of globalised capital flows may be the only feasible way of creating a truly “post-capitalist” society that respects planetary boundaries and does not generate deepening global injustices.</p>
<p>Re-localising the bulk of the economy in this way does not mean that communities won’t need electricity, for example, to run hospitals, computers and households. But it would dismantle most of the global, fossil-fuelled infrastructure for transporting people, groceries and other commodities around the planet.</p>
<p>This means decoupling human subsistence from fossil energy and re-embedding humans in their landscapes and communities. In completely changing market structures of demand, such a shift would not require anyone – corporations, politicians, or citizens – to choose between fossil and solar energy, as two comparable options with different profit margins. </p>
<p>To return to the example of Morocco, solar power will obviously have an important role to play in generating indispensable electricity, but to imagine that it will be able to provide anything near current levels of per capita energy use in the global North is wholly unrealistic. A transition to solar energy should not simply be about replacing fossil fuels, but about reorganising the global economy.</p>
<p>Solar power will no doubt be a vital component of humanity’s future, but not as long as we allow the logic of the world market to make it profitable to transport essential goods halfway around the world. The current blind faith in technology will not save us. For the planet to stand any chance, the global economy must be redesigned. The problem is more fundamental than capitalism or the emphasis on growth: it is money itself, and how money is related to technology.</p>
<p>Climate change and the other horrors of the Anthropocene don’t just tell us to stop using fossil fuels – they tell us that globalisation itself is unsustainable.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption"></span>
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<p><em>For you: more from our <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">Insights series</a>:</em></p>
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<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/environmental-stress-is-already-causing-death-this-chaos-map-shows-where-123796?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">Environmental stress is already causing death – this chaos map shows where
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alf Hornborg does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The design of the global money game is the real antagonist in the fight against climate change. But the call to arms tends to be directed at the players who have had best luck with the dice.
Alf Hornborg, Professor of Human Ecology, Lund University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/115415
2019-04-15T10:54:47Z
2019-04-15T10:54:47Z
Retailers like Walmart are embracing robots – here’s how workers can tell if they’ll be replaced
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269093/original/file-20190412-76862-1p14d7l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Who needs a worker checking shelves when you have a robot?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Higher-Pay-More-Productive/cc6e8eb899654b4da762986b4c224db1/2/0">AP Photo/David J. Phillip</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Walmart <a href="https://news.walmart.com/2019/04/09/squadgoals-how-automated-assistants-are-helping-us-work-smarter">recently said</a> it plans to deploy robots to scan shelves, scrub floors and perform other mundane tasks in its stores as the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/walmart-is-rolling-out-the-robots-11554782460">retail giant seeks to lower labor costs</a>. </p>
<p>While the retail giant did not say which jobs, if any, might be lost as a result, the announcement – and the many more surely to follow at other big box retailers – begs the question: How can workers prepare for a future of increasingly automated work? </p>
<p>Millions of today’s jobs are expected to be affected by artificial intelligence and automation as part of the “<a href="https://timreview.ca/article/1117">fourth industrial revolution</a>.” But just which occupations are most at risk has been a guessing game among economists, futurists and scholars trying to predict <a href="https://hbr.org/2019/02/research-automation-affects-high-skill-workers-more-often-but-low-skill-workers-more-deeply">winners and losers</a>. </p>
<p>As experts on <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=rNnjLUsAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">workers’ identities and careers</a> and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=2rn8CPEAAAAJ">industry and technological change</a>, we developed a new tool we believe will help workers more accurately determine the fate of their professions – and figure out how best to prepare.</p>
<h2>Who will be hurt</h2>
<p>A host of research studies have examined where industrial revolution 4.0 is likely to wield its greatest impact. </p>
<p>Driven by a focus on cost and efficiency, most predictions pit one group of workers against another. For example, <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.1257/jep.29.3.3">blue collar versus white collar</a>, <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.1086/697242">skilled versus unskilled</a>, <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/automation-threatens-jobs-can-education-create-new-ones">college-educated versus not college-educated</a> and even predictions by <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-work/automation-and-the-future-of-the-african-american-workforce">race</a> and <a href="https://iwpr.org/publications/women-automation-future-of-work/">gender</a>.</p>
<p>While these broad groupings <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/03/04/are-robots-competing-for-your-job">may grab headlines</a>, they offer little guidance to individual workers at a time when, more than ever, individuals are expected to take responsibility for managing and <a href="https://hbr.org/2018/11/a-simple-way-to-map-out-your-career-ambitions">driving their own careers</a>.</p>
<p>Rather than focus on efficiency or cost, <a href="https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/four-ways-jobs-will-respond-to-automation/">our research</a> offers a more nuanced and sustainable tool for examining the fate of one’s profession: value.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269239/original/file-20190415-147508-qdo8va.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269239/original/file-20190415-147508-qdo8va.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269239/original/file-20190415-147508-qdo8va.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269239/original/file-20190415-147508-qdo8va.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269239/original/file-20190415-147508-qdo8va.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269239/original/file-20190415-147508-qdo8va.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269239/original/file-20190415-147508-qdo8va.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">While humans will still value the skills of a college professor in the future, AI and online learning tools are threatening the way those abilities are delivered.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Matt Rourke</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Worker value</h2>
<p>Our research is based on the idea that every individual’s work creates value in his or her day-to-day job. </p>
<p>That value may be something a customer pays for, may enable co-workers to do their own jobs or may help the company to function internally. In any case, every job provides some degree of worth or usefulness to another party. The value is constant, but the way it is created and delivered to the end user can be threatened by automation and AI. Only after we’ve evaluated that can we determine how the coming wave of technological change will affect a job’s future prospects. To assess these threats, we need to break value down into two key components.</p>
<p>First, value is created by the skills required to complete a job, such as a programmer’s ability to code or a painter’s knack at prepping a wall and applying paint cleanly. In general, we’ve found that when skills are standardized, they are more likely to be threatened by automation or AI. </p>
<p>The second component of value, though, is separate from skills. It’s the method of delivering a job’s value to someone else, which can also be threatened by new technology. We call this “value form.”</p>
<p>For example, while a college professor’s skills and expertise in a particular domain may not be under immediate threat, the form in which their value is delivered is certainly threatened by <a href="https://qz.com/is/what-happens-next-2/1469287/future-of-college/">online learning platforms</a> and the increased use of <a href="https://qz.com/1065818/ai-university/">AI education tools</a>.</p>
<p>By considering these two threats together, workers can better assess if their jobs are at risk. </p>
<h2>Displaced or durable</h2>
<p>Our framework has four categories: A job could be displaced, disrupted, deconstructed or durable depending on the level of threat facing its skills and value form. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269098/original/file-20190412-76856-1ygf7m0.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269098/original/file-20190412-76856-1ygf7m0.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269098/original/file-20190412-76856-1ygf7m0.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269098/original/file-20190412-76856-1ygf7m0.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269098/original/file-20190412-76856-1ygf7m0.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269098/original/file-20190412-76856-1ygf7m0.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269098/original/file-20190412-76856-1ygf7m0.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/269098/original/file-20190412-76856-1ygf7m0.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This value matrix helps workers assess the threat their occupations face based on the two components of value.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/four-ways-jobs-will-respond-to-automation/">Latham and Humberd, MIT Sloan Management Review</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>Displaced</strong> signifies the jobs that are most in danger. Our analysis shows <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/3-white-collar-jobs-robots-can-already-better">pharmacists</a>, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-robots-may-make-radiologists-jobs-easier-not-redundant-1511368729">radiologists</a> and <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/robot-librarian-locates-haphazardly-placed-books-180959381/?no-ist">librarians</a> all belong in the displaced category. </p>
<p><strong>Disrupted</strong> means the skills are highly threatened, but people desire the recognized or current method of delivery, which often involves a human interaction. Examples include fast food servers, <a href="https://blogs.wsj.com/cfo/2017/03/07/need-an-accountant-try-a-robot-instead/">accountants</a> and real estate agents. </p>
<p><strong>Deconstructed</strong> flips those two around: The skills are hardly standardized but automation poses a serious threat to how the job’s value is delivered. Photographers, college professors and livery drivers are in this category. </p>
<p><strong>Durable</strong> jobs are the safest ones because both the skills and the value form are difficult or costly to automate. Lucky workers in this category include electricians, plumbers and physician assistants. </p>
<h2>What we learn from value</h2>
<p>In some ways, the value framework confirms what others have found. </p>
<p>For example, no one would have argued that shelf stockers at big box retailers like Walmart would be a safe job for years to come – as the retailer’s announcement confirms. Putting them in our framework, their primary skills of keeping inventory stocked and shelves clean are severely threatened because they are standardized and routine. </p>
<p>Furthermore, robots can deliver more value through automated transmission of inventory information. Thus, our model shows these workers will most likely be displaced. </p>
<p>However, our focus on value suggests that other predictions based merely on categories of at-risk jobs may be missing the mark. For example, <a href="https://interestingengineering.com/ai-expert-claims-plumbers-and-electricians-will-be-last-to-get-replaced-by-robots">some people predict</a> many jobs are threatened simply because they are routine, non-college-educated or blue-collar, like plumbers, electricians and hospice workers. Yet, rewiring an electrical system in a historic home or caring for a hospice patient are nonstandard jobs that require a human to create and deliver value, which is why these jobs can be quite durable.</p>
<h2>What workers can do</h2>
<p>Once workers understand the value they create and the threat automation poses to their skills and value form, what actions can they take? </p>
<p>The common answer they’ve been given thus far involves encouraging them to engage in <a href="https://hbr.org/2018/05/automation-will-make-lifelong-learning-a-necessary-part-of-work">lifelong learning</a>. But a focus on value the way our model does provides much more nuanced guidance. </p>
<p>Workers in deconstructed jobs, for example, don’t need new skills. They just need to learn to adapt existing skills to new forms of delivery. Conversely, workers in disrupted jobs need training to work alongside robots and AI systems during periods of transition.</p>
<p>And even if displaced workers – a fate that is likely to be on the horizon for Walmart’s shelf stockers – need to consider retraining, the traditional higher education system is <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/heathermcgowan/2019/04/03/what-if-the-future-of-work-starts-with-high-school/#567e3bdb5964">not well suited</a> for the future of work. Universities focus on the longer-term bachelor’s-to-master’s pathway. Rather, individuals need access to quick, modular and adaptable pathways to new jobs. </p>
<p>The 48-year-old parent who just lost his job as an accountant is not able to begin a new four-year degree program. But a three-month program to earn a cybersecurity certificate would be doable and all he needs. </p>
<p>The future of work is already here. Days after Walmart’s announcement, workers at Stop & Shop, a large regional grocery chain in the Boston area, are <a href="https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2019/04/12/stop-shop-strike-shows-mass-labor-unions-growing.html">striking</a> over increased automation. But we have time. Let’s worry less about robots and AI itself and more about the value workers can create in different jobs in a landscape that will continue to change for years to come. Value is the only constant.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115415/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Two management experts devised a new way to predict whether your job is likely to get stolen by a robot – and what you can do about it.
Beth Humberd, Assistant Professor of Management, UMass Lowell
Scott F. Latham, Associate Professor of Strategic Management, UMass Lowell
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/114021
2019-03-24T19:47:21Z
2019-03-24T19:47:21Z
How humans derailed the Earth’s climate in just 160 years
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265071/original/file-20190321-93051-vim6mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C21%2C3604%2C2453&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The exploitation of fossil fuels emits CO₂, the main cause of global warming.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/GrmwVnVSSdU">Zbynek Burival/Unsplash</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Climate change might be the most urgent issue of our day, both politically and in terms of life on Earth. There is mounting awareness that the global climate is a matter for public action. </p>
<p>For 11,500 years, atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO<sub>2</sub>) concentrations hovered around 280 ppm (the preindustrial “normal”), with an average surface temperature around 15°C. Since the Industrial Revolution, this level has been rising continuously, reaching 410 ppm in 2018. The geosciences, with their focus on timescales up to billions of years, are uniquely equipped to make extremely clear how abruptly industrial societies have changed and are changing the Earth’s climate.</p>
<h2>Climate, greenhouse gases and CO<sub>2</sub></h2>
<p>The main engine of Earth’s climate is the sun. Our star delivers an average surface power of 342 W/m<sup>2</sup> per year (roughly that of a hairdryer for each square meter of the planet). Earth absorbs about 70% of this and reflects the rest. If this were the only climate mechanism, the average temperature would be -15°C (below the freezing point of water, 0°C). Life would likely be impossible. Fortunately, some of the absorbed energy is re-emitted as infrared radiation, which, unlike visible light, interacts with the greenhouse gases (GHGs) present in the atmosphere to radiate heat back toward Earth’s surface. This greenhouse effect currently maintains our average temperature around 15°C.</p>
<p>The primary GHGs are water vapour and the much-debated CO<sub>2</sub>. Carbon dioxide contributes up to 30% of the total greenhouse effect, water vapour provides about 70%. CO<sub>2</sub>, though, has overall warming power that water vapour doesn’t. Water vapour in the atmosphere has a very short residence time (from hours to days) and its concentration can increase only if temperature increases. CO<sub>2</sub> lingers in the atmosphere for 100 years and its concentration is not solely controlled by temperature. CO<sub>2</sub> is thus able to <em>trigger</em> warming: if CO<sub>2</sub> concentration increases, the average temperature, regardless of its own trend, will increase.</p>
<h2>Carbon sinks</h2>
<p>It is thus crucial to understand how atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub> is regulated. Over geologic timescales (100,000+ years), volcanic gasses are the primary source of CO<sub>2</sub>, averaging 0.4 billion of tons of CO<sub>2</sub> per year (0.4 GtCO<sub>2</sub>/y). But CO<sub>2</sub> doesn’t just endlessly accumulate in the atmosphere. It fluxes in and out thanks to other environmental processes, and is stored in reservoirs known as carbon sinks.</p>
<p>The ocean, for one, contains <a href="https://serc.carleton.edu/integrate/teaching_materials/earth_modeling/student_materials/unit9_article1.html">50 times</a> more carbon than the atmosphere. However, CO<sub>2</sub> dissolved in the ocean can easily be released toward the atmosphere, while only geological sinks keep CO<sub>2</sub> away from the atmosphere on geological timescales.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265086/original/file-20190321-93054-1tkx8bi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265086/original/file-20190321-93054-1tkx8bi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265086/original/file-20190321-93054-1tkx8bi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=659&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265086/original/file-20190321-93054-1tkx8bi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=659&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265086/original/file-20190321-93054-1tkx8bi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=659&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265086/original/file-20190321-93054-1tkx8bi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=829&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265086/original/file-20190321-93054-1tkx8bi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=829&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265086/original/file-20190321-93054-1tkx8bi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=829&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Simplified geological carbon cycle. The sinks (black) show the sedimentation of organic matter and the alteration-synthesis coupling of carbonate. They oppose (grey) sources: volcanoes for more than 4 billion years and thermo-industrial human activities for 150 years.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">G. Paris</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The first geological sink is sedimentary organic matter. Living organisms contain organic carbon built from atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub> through <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthesis">photosynthesis</a>, and dead organisms are often sent to the bottom of the ocean, lakes, and swamps. Immense amounts of organic carbon thus accumulate over time in marine and continental sediments, some of which are eventually transformed into fossil fuels (oil, gas and coal).</p>
<p>Calcareous rocks are the second geological carbon sink. Rocks such as granites or basalts are <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weathering">weathered</a> by surface waters, washing calcium and bicarbonate ions away to the ocean. Marine organisms use these to build hard parts made of calcium carbonate. When deposited at the bottom of the ocean, calcium carbonate is eventually sequestered as limestone.</p>
<p>Depending on the estimates, these two sinks combined contain <a href="https://serc.carleton.edu/integrate/teaching_materials/earth_modeling/student_materials/unit9_article1.html">50,000 to 100,000 times</a> more carbon than the present atmosphere.</p>
<h2>The Earth’s atmosphere over time</h2>
<p>The amount of CO<sub>2</sub> in the Earth’s atmosphere has varied widely. Decades of research allow us to draw the main lines of the history beginning after the Earth was fully formed <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016703718304666">4.4 billion years ago</a>.</p>
<p>Earth’s <a href="http://www.csun.edu/%7Ehmc60533/CSUN_311/article_references/Sc_Feb93_EarthEarlyAtmos.pdf">early atmosphere</a> was extremely rich in CO<sub>2</sub> (up to 10,000 times modern levels), while oxygen (O<sub>2</sub>) was scarce. During the Archean (3.8 to 2.5 billion years ago), life first flourished, the first continents built up. Weathering started pulling CO<sub>2</sub> out of the atmosphere. The development of photosynthesis contributed to decrease atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub>, while elevating O<sub>2</sub> levels during the <a href="https://www.origins.asu.edu/blog/oxygenation-catastrophe">Great Oxygenation Event</a>, about 2.3 billion years ago. CO<sub>2</sub> concentration fell to “only” 20 to 100 times the preindustrial level, never to return to the concentration of Earth’s earliest eons.</p>
<p>Two billion years later, the carbon cycle changed. Toward the late Devonian-early Carboniferous (<a href="http://scotese.com/newpage4.htm">approximately 350 million years ago</a>), CO<sub>2</sub> concentration was around <a href="http://www.atmo.arizona.edu/students/courselinks/spring08/atmo336s1/courses/fall07/atmo551a/pdf/CarbonCycle.pdf">1,000 ppm</a>. Mammals didn’t exist. Vascular plants able to synthesise lignin appeared during the Devonian and spread. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lignin">Lignin</a> is a molecule resistant to microbial degradation that allowed massive organic carbon stocks to build up as coal over millions of years. Combined with the weathering of the Hercynian range (the vestiges of which can be found in France’s Massif Central or the Appalachians in the United States), organic carbon burial pulled atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub> down to levels similar to (or lower than) today’s and generated a <a href="https://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Plate-Tectonics/Chap1-Pioneers-of-Plate-Tectonics/Alfred-Wegener/Glacial-Deposits-from-Permo-Carboniferous-Glaciation">major glacial era</a> between 320 and 280 million years ago.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261316/original/file-20190227-150721-jqckwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261316/original/file-20190227-150721-jqckwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261316/original/file-20190227-150721-jqckwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261316/original/file-20190227-150721-jqckwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261316/original/file-20190227-150721-jqckwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261316/original/file-20190227-150721-jqckwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261316/original/file-20190227-150721-jqckwr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Eruption of Bromo volcano on the island of Java (2011). On a geological time scale, volcanoes play a role in the CO₂ cycle.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/IzoQu5vH47o">Marc Szeglat/Unsplash</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By the end of the Jurassic (145 million years ago), however, the pendulum had swung. Dinosaurs ruled the Earth, mammals evolved, tectonic activity increased and Pangea (the last super-continent) <a href="http://scotese.com/jurassic.htm">ripped apart</a>. CO<sub>2</sub> increased, to <a href="https://websites.pmc.ucsc.edu/%7Ejzachos/pubs/H%25f6nisch_etal_2012.pdf">500 to 2,000 ppm</a>, and remained at high levels, maintaining a warm greenhouse climate for 100 million years.</p>
<p>From 55 million years, Earth cooled as CO<sub>2</sub> <a href="https://websites.pmc.ucsc.edu/%7Ejzachos/pubs/H%25f6nisch_etal_2012.pdf">decreased</a>, notably following the Himalayan uplift and a subsequent increase in weathering and organic carbon sedimentation. Evolution continues with Hominids appearing <a href="https://www2.palomar.edu/anthro/hominid/australo_1.htm">7 million years ago</a>. At 2.6 million years, Earth entered a new state characterised by an alternation of glacial and interglacial periods at a regular pace led by Earth’s orbital parameters and amplified by the shorter-term carbon cycle. CO<sub>2</sub> reached its preindustrial level 11,500 years ago as Earth entered the latest interglacial stage.</p>
<h2>A new story: the Industrial Revolution</h2>
<p>Until the 19th century, the story of atmospheric carbon and Earth’s climate was a story of geology, biology and evolution. That story changed sharply following the Industrial Revolution, when modern humans (<em>Homo sapiens</em>), who probably appeared <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6363/652">300,000 years ago</a>, began extracting and burning fossil fuels on a massive scale.</p>
<p>By 1950, the addition of CO<sub>2</sub> to the atmosphere through fossil-fuel combustion was already <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/122/3166/415.2">proven</a>, via the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_carbon">carbon isotopic signature</a> of CO<sub>2</sub> molecules (known as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suess_effect">“Suess” effect</a>). By the late 1970’s, climate scientists observed a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate-change-losing-earth.html">rapid drift toward warmer overall temperatures</a>. The IPCC, created in 1988, showed in 2012 that the average temperature had increased by 0.9°C <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/observations-atmosphere-and-surface/">since 1901</a>. That change might seem modest compared to the last deglaciation, when average temperature increased by about 6°C in 7,000 years, but it’s at least 10 times faster. </p>
<p>The average temperature continues to climb, and natural parameters such as solar activity or volcanism can’t explain such a fast warming. The cause is unambiguously human addition of GHGs to the atmosphere, and <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?contextual=aggregate&end=2014&locations=XD-XM-XP-1W&name_desc=false&start=1960">high-income countries</a> emit the most CO<sub>2</sub> per inhabitant.</p>
<h2>How will our story end?</h2>
<p>Industrial societies burnt about 25% of Earth’s fossil fuels within 160 years and abruptly inverted a natural flux storing carbon away from the atmosphere. This new human-generated flux is instead <em>adding</em> <a href="https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/trends/emis/tre_glob_2014.html">28 Gt of CO₂ per year</a>, 50 times more than volcanoes. Natural geological sequestration cannot compensate and atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub> keeps rising.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/graphics/">consequences</a> are imminent, numerous and dire: extreme weather events, sea-level rise, glacier retreat, ocean acidification, ecosystem disruptions and extinctions. Earth itself has survived other catastrophes. Although current warming will outpace many species’ ability to adapt, life will continue. It is not the planet that is at stake. Instead, it is the future of human societies and the preservation of current ecosystems.</p>
<p>While the Earth sciences cannot provide solutions to think about the necessary changes in our behaviour and consumption of fossil fuels, they can and must contribute to knowledge and collective awareness of the current global warming.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>We thank <a href="https://twitter.com/morganfahey">Morgan Fahey</a> for her invaluable help with the English text.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/114021/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Guillaume Paris received funding for his research from the CNRS, the University of Lorraine and the Agence Nationale de la Recherche.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pierre-Henri Blard received funding for his research from the University of Lorraine, the CNRS and the Agence Nationale de la Recherche.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Etienne Deloule received funding for his research from the CNRS, the University of Lorraine, the Lorraine region and then the Grand Est region, the National Research Agency (ANR) and European programmes. He collaborates on research projects with Orano and Total.</span></em></p>
The Earth’s past shows the key role of CO₂ on climate for 4.45 billion years, and how human industrial activity has disrupted its cycle at an unprecedented rate over the past 160 years.
Guillaume Paris, Géochimiste, chargé de recherche CNRS au Centre de recherches pétrographiques et géochimiques de Nancy, Université de Lorraine
Pierre-Henri Blard, Géochronologue et paléoclimatologue, chargé de recherches CNRS - Centre de recherches pétrographiques et géochimiques (Nancy) et Laboratoire de glaciologie (Bruxelles), Université de Lorraine
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/112897
2019-03-20T13:14:08Z
2019-03-20T13:14:08Z
Small brewers show how craft principles could reshape the economy – but they’re under threat
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264605/original/file-20190319-60995-12b1nsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">shutterstock</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Our economy currently relies heavily on unsustainable industrial principles of mass scale, never-ending growth and throwaway consumerism. The transition to a sustainable economy, then, requires a shift in how we think about production.</p>
<p>In contrast to industrial production, craft production prioritises local production, human skill and excellence. Although craft principles were cast aside as industries were modernised, a revival is taking place. Examples of craft revival are visible in many sectors, ranging from <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10960.html">butchering</a> to <a href="https://www.patagonia.com/worn-wear-repairs/">textile production</a>, but one of the most illustrative examples comes from the booming craft beer sector. </p>
<p>In the Netherlands, about 1,000 breweries existed at the beginning of the 19th century. Following the industrial revolution, there was a dramatic switch to the mass production of one beer style: pilsner. Only 13 breweries, all now using industrial principles of production, remained <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0001839218817520">by 1980</a> and 90% of the market was controlled by the four largest players. But since then, a revival of craft production has fuelled a dramatic resurgence of the brewery population. Today, there are well <a href="https://www.nederlandsebiercultuur.nl/brouwerijen/grafiek-aantal-brouwerijen">over 300 breweries</a> again.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264842/original/file-20190320-93044-n0zpfm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264842/original/file-20190320-93044-n0zpfm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264842/original/file-20190320-93044-n0zpfm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264842/original/file-20190320-93044-n0zpfm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264842/original/file-20190320-93044-n0zpfm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264842/original/file-20190320-93044-n0zpfm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264842/original/file-20190320-93044-n0zpfm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Brewer. Designed and engraved in the 16th century by J Amman.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Brewer_designed_and_engraved_in_the_Sixteenth._Century_by_J_Amman.png">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Netherlands is not the only country where craft brewing has been revived. In 11 of the biggest beer producing nations, the number of breweries has <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/br/book/9783319582344">grown by a factor of five</a> in recent decades. If we exclude Belgium and Germany, where industrialisation <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/br/book/9783319582344">had less of an effect</a> on the traditional brewing population, the factor is even greater: 23. The US brewing population, for instance, grew from a mere 89 craft breweries in 1978 to well over <a href="https://www.brewersassociation.org/statistics/number-of-breweries/">6,000 today</a>.</p>
<h2>Challenges</h2>
<p>Part of this dramatic craft renaissance is explained by a change in demand. Fuelled by nostalgia and an anti-mass production sentiment, the market demand for local, authentic products is growing, most notably in the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/the-demand-for-local-food-is-growing-2017-4?international=true&r=US&IR=T">food industry</a>. </p>
<p>Yet demand does not change in isolation. It requires producers that are willing and able to follow alternative production principles and educate consumers. A <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0001839218817520">recent study</a> of the Dutch beer brewing industry found that the increasing success of the craft movement was in large part driven by a growing and eclectic group of beer enthusiasts that devoted themselves to becoming brew masters, regenerated craft brewing techniques and revived a declining industry in the process. The craft beer revival shows that a transition away from unsustainable, industrial production is possible and desirable. </p>
<p>But these crafty change-makers face challenges. The main issue for any incipient craft movement is to shake off the idea that craft is an outdated mode of production, strictly adhering to historic methods and recipes.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264372/original/file-20190318-28492-5foya2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264372/original/file-20190318-28492-5foya2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264372/original/file-20190318-28492-5foya2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264372/original/file-20190318-28492-5foya2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264372/original/file-20190318-28492-5foya2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264372/original/file-20190318-28492-5foya2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264372/original/file-20190318-28492-5foya2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Various bottles of craft, microbrews and IPAs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/hostonusjun-252016various-bottles-craft-microbrews-ipas-446130109">Trong Nguyen/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The craft beer revolution, for example, was not possible in places such as Germany and Belgium, which have maintained historic beer brewing traditions. There, breweries tend to strictly follow narrow interpretations of what traditional craft production means and have expectations about how and where craft skill should be applied, such as following age-old community specific recipes. This conception of “craft” constrains innovation – and indeed both countries lack the rich innovative craft brewing scene that has developed elsewhere. </p>
<p>Successful craft movements, on the other hand, smartly harness the power of localism, authenticity and nostalgia without getting stuck in the past. This attitude was <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0001839218817520">clearly expressed</a> by one Dutch brewer: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have always been bothered by the false romanticism that beer lovers like to hear and the ordinary reality of beer brewing. Beer brewing is a craft. You write your own recipes. There is no such thing as old recipes. All beers that were brewed 100 years ago are disgusting. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is an extreme opinion: generally traditions are navigated <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9783030021634">more respectfully</a>. Through craft, brewers stress their traditional, independent background while experimenting and making entirely new beers. It’s important to open up the definition of craft and to find a productive balance between tradition and innovation.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264847/original/file-20190320-93051-qkla48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264847/original/file-20190320-93051-qkla48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264847/original/file-20190320-93051-qkla48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264847/original/file-20190320-93051-qkla48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264847/original/file-20190320-93051-qkla48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264847/original/file-20190320-93051-qkla48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264847/original/file-20190320-93051-qkla48.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Microbrewery bar.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/currumbin-gold-coast-queensland-australia-january-1043495074">Alizada Studios/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Craft-washing</h2>
<p>Another challenge for the modern craft movement is the reality that any organisation can be bought. Although initially craft brewers were able to build a separate market for craft beer and resist the lure of big money, incumbent industrial brewers are now <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/garystoller/2018/03/20/craft-breweries-dominate-the-top-50-but-guess-which-giants-rule-the-beer-market/#7d31b75edcad">taking over successful craft breweries</a> at increasing speed. </p>
<p>In the Netherlands, one of the most successful craft breweries, De Molen in Bodegraven, <a href="https://www.rtlz.nl/business/artikel/4595126/bavaria-neemt-craftbrouwerij-de-molen-helemaal-over">has recently been acquired by Bavaria</a>, one of the four large incumbent brewers. Bavaria also owns the Dutch abbey brewery, De Koningshoeven, known for its authentic Trappist beer, while Heineken acquired the oldest still running brewery, Brand, in the early 2000s. This signals a new era of consolidation and raises questions about the long-term resilience of the craft movement.</p>
<p>There is more to this than simple reconcentration of market power: businesses are showing <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00076791.2016.1224234">an interest in heritage</a>. This is because consumers increasingly look for <a href="https://hbr.org/product/authenticity-what-consumers-really-want/2272-HBK-ENG">authenticity</a>. The past delivers an impression of this, shrouded as it is in a mystical aura of nostalgia. Companies therefore use the past as a coat of paint, giving their products an authentic feel. What businesses need, the past provides. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264844/original/file-20190320-93039-12l6jpw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264844/original/file-20190320-93039-12l6jpw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264844/original/file-20190320-93039-12l6jpw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264844/original/file-20190320-93039-12l6jpw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264844/original/file-20190320-93039-12l6jpw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264844/original/file-20190320-93039-12l6jpw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264844/original/file-20190320-93039-12l6jpw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An industrial brewery.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/brewery-interior-equipments-191643209">Momente/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And companies that lack longevity themselves can buy it. New manufacturers regularly <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/12/business/worldbusiness/12auto.html">purchase older businesses</a> to root their products further into the past, branding their newly bought tradition with slogans such as “since 1820”. For the same reason, companies are buying their way into craft. They capitalise on the market’s growing thirst for authenticity by creating the impression of craft production using savvy advertising. Big business appears to engage in craft-washing. They want the craft brand – but whether they want craft values is another question.</p>
<h2>A new economy</h2>
<p>This is key – because the practices and values of craftsmanship correspond well with the requirements for a sustainable economy. If we can redefine craftsmanship in a form that is <a href="https://craftsmanship.net/the-future-is-handmade/">built for the future</a>, instead of being simply a nostalgic eulogy to the past, we can create an economy based on sustainability, durability and excellence.</p>
<p>Craft could provide the means and values for a sustainable society, both socially and environmentally. In the US, the craft beer boom led to a dramatic <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/01/craft-beer-industry/550850/">increase in employment</a> during a time that beer consumption declined. And producing <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/fewer-better-things-9781632869647/">fewer, better, things</a> can have environmental benefits over mass-produced products with inherently short life cycles. Craft skills support important practices of <a href="https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-typewriter-repairman-20190206-story.html">recycling and repairing</a>. </p>
<p>In short, an updated notion of craftsmanship provides <a href="https://craftsmanship.net">the architecture needed</a> for a sustainable, innovative economy. Entrepreneurs of the future are those that redefine our relationship with materials. They are the craftspeople who <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/apr/28/new-beers-made-from-leftover-bread-marks-and-spencer-adnams">make beer out of stale bread</a>, <a href="https://fruitleather.nl/">leather from leftover fruit</a> or who fashion <a href="https://www.dezeen.com/2018/11/15/oskar-metsavaht-pirarucu-fish-skin-sustainable-fashion/">garments from fish skin</a>.</p>
<p>Whether these craft principles will shape the new economy largely depends on modern corporations truly infusing them into their organisations and going beyond craft-washing. Corporate success is historically based on choices that contradict craft principles, which means that corporations are often at a loss when it comes to meaningfully enacting any of these ideas. </p>
<p>This likely means that a transition has to be sustained from the bottom: in the microbreweries, urban gardens, maker spaces and repair cafes. The people in these spaces are not just making. They are creating the mentality needed for a sustainable economy. We need more makers, not managers.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/112897/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maikel Kuijpers receives funding from The Netherlands Organisation of Scientific Research (NWO). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catalin Popa receives funding from The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).
Catalin Popa is a member of Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25).
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jochem Kroezen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The practices and values of craftsmanship correspond well with the requirements for a sustainable economy. But they’re threatened by industry.
Maikel Kuijpers, Assistant Professor of the Archaeology of Early Europe, Leiden University
Catalin Popa, Postdoctoral Researcher in Archaeology, Leiden University
Jochem Kroezen, Lecturer in International Business, Cambridge Judge Business School
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/105319
2018-10-26T12:00:19Z
2018-10-26T12:00:19Z
Anthropocene: why the chair should be the symbol for our sedentary age
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242064/original/file-20181024-71014-1a8kyou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/chairs-arranged-pile-180500804?src=Hx1BZKcHDaMXf7nE9DYxTA-1-21">Gn fotografie/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Why are there no chairs in the Bible, or in all 30,000 lines of Homer? Neither are there any in Shakespeare’s Hamlet – written in 1599. But by the middle of the 19th century, it is a completely different story. Charles Dickens’s <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1023/1023-h/1023-h.htm">Bleak House</a> suddenly has 187 of them. What changed? With sitting being called “the new smoking”, we all know that spending too much time in chairs is bad for us. Not only are they unhealthy, but like air pollution, they are becoming almost impossible for modern humans to avoid.</p>
<p>When I started researching <a href="https://www.octopusbooks.co.uk/books/detail.page?isbn=9781788401081">my book</a> about how the world we have made is changing our bodies, I was surprised to discover just how rare chairs used to be. Now they’re everywhere: offices, trains, cafés, restaurants, pubs, cars, trains, concert halls, cinemas, doctor’s surgeries, hospitals, theatres, schools, university lecture halls, and all over our houses (I guarantee you have more than you think). </p>
<p>If I was asked to make even a conservative estimate of the number of chairs in the world, I’d find it hard to go lower than 8-10 per person. Applying that logic, there could be more than 60 billion of them on the planet. Surely chairs should be one of the universal signals of the arrival of the <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1023/1023-h/1023-h.htm">Anthropocene</a>? Just like the data required to justify the change in the name of our geological epoch, they are to be found on every continent.</p>
<p>As to why there are suddenly so many chairs, there is no single clear reason. It is a confluence of fashion, politics, changing work habits, and the lust for comfort. The last of these requires no explanation in a culture in which ease and comfort are among the strongest drivers of consumer decision-making.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242446/original/file-20181026-7065-1occimt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242446/original/file-20181026-7065-1occimt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242446/original/file-20181026-7065-1occimt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242446/original/file-20181026-7065-1occimt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242446/original/file-20181026-7065-1occimt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242446/original/file-20181026-7065-1occimt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242446/original/file-20181026-7065-1occimt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Symbol of a sedentary era.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/theater-seat-64012609?src=VoDwTK8yKlydkjXswpKVhA-1-57">Apple's Eyes Studio/Shuttestock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A history of chairs</h2>
<p>While chairs began to appear with a little more frequency in the early modern period, it seems that they became much more widely popular in the 18th and 19th centuries during the Industrial Revolution.</p>
<p>Before the 18th century, a chair was relatively easily come by, but the majority of the population had little use for them. Even today, it is not easy to sit in a hard wooden chair for sustained periods and <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/sfurn/hd_sfurn.htm">upholstered</a> chairs were prohibitively expensive. But the fashion for a new reclining culture (imported from the French court of the 18th century) helped to popularise their early use.</p>
<p>For centuries before, chairs had persistently been associated with power, wealth and high status. They were about as widely used by the peasantry as a crown. There is an instructive stage direction in the <a href="http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/doc/Lr_F1/complete/">First Folio</a> of King Lear in which the monarch enters while being carried by servants “in a chair”. The idea of chairs as a symbol of status still persists today. The highest attainment in my own profession, academia, is called “a chair”. The individual that runs a meeting is called “a chair”. The head of a company is also a chairman or woman. And it is a truth, universally acknowledged, that the best chair in any office building always belongs to the boss.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242447/original/file-20181026-7068-1r3lkaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242447/original/file-20181026-7068-1r3lkaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242447/original/file-20181026-7068-1r3lkaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242447/original/file-20181026-7068-1r3lkaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242447/original/file-20181026-7068-1r3lkaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242447/original/file-20181026-7068-1r3lkaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242447/original/file-20181026-7068-1r3lkaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Chair.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/details-vintage-furniture-wooden-motives-on-493886698?src=cB3plVK_eT18S6kuMHinEw-1-41">MarkoV87/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Once the use of chairs was democratised (particularly after the French Revolution in France and the 1832 Great Reform Acts in the UK), this coincided with a slow change in our working patterns. The majority of work done in the Victorian period would have been understood as manual labour or factory work. </p>
<p>But toward the end of the 19th century, as the second wave of a technological revolution gathered pace with inventions such as the typewriter, telegraphy and the expanding uses and applications of electricity, the labour market also began to change. The new category of office clerks were the fastest-growing occupational group in the latter half of the period. In 1851, the census suggests less than <a href="http://www.victorianweb.org/history/census.html">44,000 people</a> were performing administrative work. But in just two decades, sedentary workers had more than doubled to <a href="http://www.victorianweb.org/history/census.html">91,000</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/you-should-stand-in-meetings-dont-worry-about-what-others-might-think-99223">You should stand in meetings – don't worry about what others might think</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A sedentary planet</h2>
<p>Today, sedentary workers are in the majority. And, throughout the 20th century, a forest of other sedentary activities have grown up around us to match our new working lives.</p>
<p>Novel reading increased hugely in popularity throughout the 19th century – and further sedentary leisure activities followed in its wake: cinema, radio and TV. More recently, gaming, streaming and screen-time generally are all activities that are hungry for us to sit still in contemplation. The Anthropocene human needs chairs to fulfil all of these (I suppose we could call them) “activities”.</p>
<p>If modern life presents us with a bouquet of sedentary behaviours, then chairs are the stalks. They are so necessary to leading a modern life that most of what we do seems unimaginable without them. Research conducted by the British Heart Foundation suggests that we enjoy <a href="https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-magazine/activity/sitting-down">about 9.5 hours per day of sedentary time</a>. This means that modern humans are inactive for about 75% of their time. There are a few problems with this.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242451/original/file-20181026-7074-1sm8xxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242451/original/file-20181026-7074-1sm8xxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242451/original/file-20181026-7074-1sm8xxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242451/original/file-20181026-7074-1sm8xxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242451/original/file-20181026-7074-1sm8xxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242451/original/file-20181026-7074-1sm8xxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242451/original/file-20181026-7074-1sm8xxv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Human stalks.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/manager-discussion-coworker-open-plan-office-314862320?src=K3aPjg8_Rd2rt6k_nrF75w-1-1">Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our bodies do their best to be the kinds of body that we need. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolff%2527s_law">Wolff’s Law</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis%2527s_law">Davis’s Law</a> can be boiled down to the adage “use it or lose it” for the body’s hard and soft tissues respectively. In both cases they tell us that muscle or bone will respond either to increased load or the cessation of use. Bones become thinner or denser. Muscles, stronger or weaker. Seated so much, with most of the musculature in our backs disengaged as they recline in a chair, it is little wonder that with our weakened spines, back pain is now the <a href="https://www.nhs.uk/news/lifestyle-and-exercise/back-pain-leading-cause-of-disability-study-finds/">number one cause of disability</a>, globally.</p>
<p>Just as we have an Anthropocene environment, we might equally class ourselves as Anthropocene humans. Palaeolithic humans died most frequently in infancy. Violence and injury were also common causes of mortality in later life. Modern humans, though, overwhelmingly die as a result of metabolic disorders such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease and some cancers – all <a href="https://www.aomrc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Exercise_the_Miracle_Cure_0215.pdf">strongly linked with inactivity</a>: namely, chair use. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22302075">A 2012 study</a> investigating the effects of inactivity collated behavioural data from 7,813 women and found that those that sat for ten hours a day had shorter telomeres (an indicator of cellular ageing). Their sedentary habits had aged them biologically by about eight years. Some <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2596007">studies</a> even suggest that the effects of sitting for sustained periods cannot be offset by a <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(12)60954-4/fulltext">little exercise</a>.</p>
<p>These studies and many others attest to the fact that we should be thinking carefully about investing any further in our relatively new-found and passionate love affair with the chair.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105319/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vybarr Cregan-Reid does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Our love affair with the chair has horrible consequences.
Vybarr Cregan-Reid, Reader in Environmental Humanities, University of Kent
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/102367
2018-08-30T15:11:41Z
2018-08-30T15:11:41Z
Happy birthday to 200 years of management education
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234199/original/file-20180830-195328-1qdidgn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">ESCP Europe Business School Berlin</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ESCP Europe</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 2019, <a href="http://www.escpeurope.eu/">ESCP Europe Business School</a> will celebrate its 200 years of existence. As the world’s first business school, ESCP Europe pioneered the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0263237314000425">business school concept</a> as early as 1819. At the occasion of its bicentenary, this article looks at the past, present, and likely future developments in management education.</p>
<h2>Past</h2>
<p>ESCP Europe was established in 1819 by a group of economic scholars and businessmen, including the well-known economist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste_Say">Jean-Baptiste Say</a> and the celebrated trader <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vital_Roux">Vital Roux</a>. Its foundation marks the beginnings of the history of business schools. While this was not the beginning of management itself, it represents an important landmark for management education and a more institutionalised approach to the latter.</p>
<p>Management, which derives from the Italian word <em>maneggiare</em> (to handle, especially tools or a horse) deriving itself from the two Latin words <em>manus</em> (hand) and <em>agere</em> (to act), was conceptualised not before the 18th and 19th century as a result of the industrial revolution. Probably one of the most widely known conceptualisations is Adam Smith’s 1776 work, <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=5&ved=2ahUKEwis3Pry6vPcAhXRKlAKHT9rC58QFjAEegQIBhAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ibiblio.org%2Fml%2Flibri%2Fs%2FSmithA_WealthNations_p.pdf&usg=AOvVaw3Y8bd9XdADVgMJpmuDK6M2"><em>The Wealth of Nations</em></a>, in which he analyses among others the efficiency reached by labour division. With the Industrial Revolution, businesses grew, ownerships changed and a need for managers evolved. Higher-education institutions started courses in management, for example in Germany where several universities created Chairs in Administrative Science within the so-called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameralism">Cameralism</a>.</p>
<p>In 1819, ESCP Europe became the first stand-alone, full-fledged business school. Three different periods in the history of business schools took place since then with a fourth era standing at the doorstep. The first period is characterised by the creation of the initial institutions such as <a href="https://www.wharton.upenn.edu/">Wharton</a> and <a href="http://www.hec.edu/">HEC Paris</a>, both in 1881, or the <a href="https://www.hbs.edu/Pages/default.aspx">Harvard Business School</a> (HBS) in 1908. This period was followed by the second era, starting approximately in 1945, in which those institutions aimed to become more scientific with the objective of strengthening management as a standalone discipline. This movement was particularly enforced by the <a href="https://www.economist.com/business/2009/06/04/the-more-things-change">Gordon/Howell report</a> written for the <a href="https://www.fordfoundation.org/">Ford Foundation</a> in 1959. The creation of <a href="http://www.efmd.org/accreditation-main/equis">EQUIS</a> in 1997 represents a key date for the third period symbolising the rising importance of accreditation bodies and international rankings such as <a href="http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/rankings">The Financial Times</a> ones.</p>
<h2>Present</h2>
<p>Currently, business schools are confronted with at least <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0007681318300624">four challenges</a>. First, the emergence of rankings and <a href="https://acteursdeleconomie.latribune.fr/debats/opinion/2017-11-22/ecoles-de-commerce-assurance-qualite-et-accusations-758910.html">accreditation bodies</a> has resulted in many schools adopting a short-term and undifferentiated, me-too approach. Second, several of the most prestigious institutions have been <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/are-business-schools-blame-crisis-81537">criticised for their lack of focus on ethical decision making</a>. Third, the shift toward more scientifically robust research has resulted in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/apr/27/bulldoze-the-business-school">faculty focusing on questions that might not be entirely relevant</a> in preparing their graduates for the job market. And finally, the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000768131630009X">digital revolution</a> (i.e., the emergence of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence">artificial intelligence</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence">MOOCs</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_private_online_course">SPOCS</a>) questions the very idea of knowledge transmission itself.</p>
<p>All these developments take place in a <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0007681316000045">context of stronger financial pressure</a> forcing institutions to accept larger student numbers as well as an increase in competition due to <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0007681316000045">globalisation, digitalization and the entry of new players into the market</a>. <a href="https://www.sciencespo.fr/en">Sciences Po</a> or <a href="http://www.centralesupelec.fr/en">CentraleSupélec</a>, as example for many political science and engineering schools, are now offering programs in business and management. In addition, companies start their own corporate universities such as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_University">Apple University</a>.</p>
<p>These evolutions are so fundamental that they start a new, fourth era in the history of business education with 2012 as potential starting date with the <em>New York Times</em> proclaiming this year as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/education/edlife/massive-open-online-courses-are-multiplying-at-a-rapid-pace.html">“The Year of the MOOC”</a>.</p>
<h2>Future</h2>
<p>In future, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0007681318300624">four developments</a> will be specifically important: First, decreases in <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0007681316000045">public funding increase the need for private financing</a> – especially from alumni. This leads business schools to adopt a student-centric perspective: extracurricular activities, from study trips to student clubs and sports, will become essential in obtaining satisfaction and develop long-term bonds with alumni. A clear differentiated <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positioning_(marketing)">positioning</a> will help companies and corporate partners to understand why they should invest in one business school over another.</p>
<p>Second, knowledge transmission via traditional lectures will become the exception due to higher education’s <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000768131630009X">digital transformation</a>. Students will evolve <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781317193951/chapters/10.4324%2F9781315563312-2">from passive consumers of information to active co-producers of courses</a>. They will need to be given reasons, why they should come to a physical campus for their education: Coaching sessions, teamwork, and in-class discussions will be the norm. Work spaces in the form of <a href="https://www.aderly.com/2017/02/inauguration-of-the-emlyon-business-school-paris-campus-and-its-onlylyon_cafe/">anti-cafes</a> such as the one of <a href="https://www.em-lyon.com/en">EM Lyon</a> will become essential to fostering exchange among students and professors, but also executive education participants, and alumni.</p>
<p>Third, brand building becomes vital. Alumni and students will need to serve as brand ambassadors, especially in the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0007681309001232">social media</a> environment. Faculty will need to move toward a mind-set where scientific research needs to be simplified in order to be adopted by (business) press. Schools will need to develop the right image in areas such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_social_responsibility">corporate social responsibility</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability">sustainable development</a> since they are expected to take a strong stance here.</p>
<p>Fourth, business schools will shift from knowledge transmission to skills development since knowledge becomes readily available on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/">YouTube</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page">Wikipedia</a>, and <a href="http://www.google.com/">Google</a>. Thus, faculty will evolve from knowledge professionals into moderators and coaches. Career services will increasingly occupy a central role in helping students to identify jobs that best fit their talents and skills. Ensuring a good start in the most appropriate job is important, not only to ensure student satisfaction and a high perceived <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_on_investment">ROI</a> of (increasing) tuition fees, but also over the long run since only successful alumni will evolve into loyal donors later.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0JoYKBOnEJQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Reinvention of the Business School.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1819, ESCP Europe established the business school. In 1973, ESCP Europe was again a pioneer, inventing the first <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0263237314000425">cross-border multi-campus business school</a> enabling its students to move across and study in different countries during the scope of their studies. In 2019, ESCP Europe, now implanted in Berlin, London, Madrid, Paris, Turin, and Warsaw, will celebrate its 200th birthday ready to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JoYKBOnEJQ">(re)invent the business school</a> once again.</p>
<ul>
<li>Kaplan, Andreas M. (2018) A school is a building that has four walls… with tomorrow inside: Toward the reinvention of the business school, Business Horizons, 61(4), 599-608.</li>
<li>Kaplan, Andreas M. (2014) European management and European business schools: Insights from the history of business schools, European Management Journal, 32(4), 529-534.</li>
</ul><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102367/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This article is based on Kaplan Andreas (2018) A school is a building that has four walls…with tomorrow inside: Toward the reinvention of the business school, Business Horizons, 61(4), 599-608 & Kaplan Andreas (2014) European management and European business schools: Insights from the history of business schools, European Management Journal, 32(4), 529–534.</span></em></p>
On the fourth era of business schools and the urgency of reinventing them.
Andreas Kaplan, Rector, ESCP Business School
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.