WEBVTT Kind: captions; language: en-us NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (H?Y) 00:00:00.100 --> 00:00:09.700 alright welcome back so before we get to the first challenge to this neoliberal consensus that we've 00:00:09.700 --> 00:00:20.800 talked about as sketched out by Milton and Rose Friedman as they draw on Adam Smith. Before we start to 00:00:20.800 --> 00:00:29.900 challenge this consensus I'd like you to invite I'd like to invite you to consider how NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 72% (MEDIUM) 00:00:29.900 --> 00:00:30.750 NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:00:30.750 --> 00:00:42.400 it perhaps nonetheless is onto something obviously correct okay. Adam Smith to put it mildly was no 00:00:42.400 --> 00:00:51.600 fool because think about this isn't it true that it's not indeed from the as he puts it the 00:00:51.600 --> 00:00:56.800 benevolence of the butcher or the Brewer that we get our meat or our beer but rather from the 00:00:56.800 --> 00:01:00.450 pursuit of their self-interest in other words when NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:01:00.450 --> 00:01:09.400 the Butcher and Brewer seeks to make money the rest of us can actually enjoy their services so 00:01:09.400 --> 00:01:17.800 isn't the profit motive indeed a key element of economic life and something that's economic 00:01:17.800 --> 00:01:27.550 anthropologists like yourselves have to face up to and kind of accept as a foundation. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (H?Y) 00:01:27.550 --> 00:01:37.700 have you ever met a merchant who does not like to invest low and sell high? I think that Adam Smith 00:01:37.700 --> 00:01:47.700 and my extension the Friedman's were onto something fundamentally correct. It is indeed 00:01:47.700 --> 00:01:52.600 not from the benevolent care of the person operating the cash register at Kiwi or Rema 1000 or 00:01:52.600 --> 00:01:56.950 another grocery store that we get to buy our bread and our milk and our butter, NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (H?Y) 00:01:56.950 --> 00:02:04.500 in a market sellers and buyers are indeed locked into a kind of a dance where the price is 00:02:04.500 --> 00:02:11.800 influenced by how much someone is willing to pay for an object and how hard and expensive it is for 00:02:11.800 --> 00:02:14.300 the seller to obtain that object NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:02:14.300 --> 00:02:16.800 it's true NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 80% (H?Y) 00:02:16.800 --> 00:02:24.750 also that way there is the man in a globalized interconnected economy you will often get supply NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (H?Y) 00:02:24.750 --> 00:02:34.100 people producing services. So the economists are right about these things I think and about one thing 00:02:34.100 --> 00:02:44.300 in general that incentives matter I think that is kind of the the key touchstone for economics 00:02:44.300 --> 00:02:52.300 incentives matter etc etc. So just to kind of clear up any kind of misunderstanding 00:02:52.300 --> 00:02:55.250 that we could invite here NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:02:55.250 --> 00:03:00.100 no one that you'll go on to read in the syllabus has NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (H?Y) 00:03:00.100 --> 00:03:04.100 any problem with this story of economic life NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:03:04.100 --> 00:03:14.100 but all of the text that you will go on to read also say this in one way or another that hey 00:03:14.100 --> 00:03:20.800 this is not the end of the story what people do as they engage in production in distribution and 00:03:20.800 --> 00:03:28.500 consumption or transfer of assets. in other words as they go on living economic lives NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:03:28.500 --> 00:03:36.000 in a sense I sometimes think of the syllabus as a piece of classical music NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:03:37.700 --> 00:03:46.850 a symphony if you like and the symphony begins with a very clear tone triangle and Milton Friedman 00:03:46.850 --> 00:03:55.100 and the notion of the freedom to choose in a market is that triangle, but from here every text that 00:03:55.100 --> 00:04:01.400 you read will add a layer to the symphony making it more complex and richer our understanding of how 00:04:01.400 --> 00:04:06.700 people live and why the world is as as it is Will NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (H?Y) 00:04:06.700 --> 00:04:08.800 get richer NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:04:08.900 --> 00:04:12.850 and that is of course kind of a nice NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 80% (H?Y) 00:04:12.850 --> 00:04:19.700 way of breaking down the differences on the syllabus saying that they'd all these different 00:04:19.700 --> 00:04:28.800 perspectives they belong in the same Symphony. It perhaps also cloaks up some of the real 00:04:28.800 --> 00:04:35.000 differences and antagonism that there are in the syllabus and David Harvey in fact argues comes 00:04:35.000 --> 00:04:42.900 out very strongly arguing that the story that Milton Rose Friedman and scholars or NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:04:42.900 --> 00:04:49.200 or economists like them tell is actually NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:04:50.100 --> 00:05:00.200 an ideology it's part of an ideological project and intellectual excuse for waging a class war or 00:05:00.200 --> 00:05:07.900 project by the economic Elites to regain power and to increase their economic power NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 76% (H?Y) 00:05:08.600 --> 00:05:14.500 and whether in the end of this course or in the in a couple of weeks you think and you look back and 00:05:14.500 --> 00:05:18.700 you say that David Harvey or have someone else in the syllabus actually ended up successfully 00:05:18.700 --> 00:05:26.100 destroying the neoliberal consensus that we started out with or whether you think that perhaps both 00:05:26.100 --> 00:05:34.250 David Harvey and the Friedman's miss out on some fundamental aspect of economic life as its lived 00:05:34.250 --> 00:05:37.650 well that is for you to decide NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (H?Y) 00:05:37.650 --> 00:05:48.200 and to think about perhaps towards the end of this course. But for now with Harvey I think the more 00:05:48.200 --> 00:05:53.900 appropriate metaphor even though I like the symphony metaphor for the syllabus or for at least for 00:05:53.900 --> 00:05:56.500 the text that we're dealing with today is NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 88% (H?Y) 00:05:56.500 --> 00:06:08.400 the boxing ring now we have learned about the perspective of the Friedman's and their boxing 00:06:08.400 --> 00:06:21.300 coach Adam Smith and now here he is into the ring now steps this man David Harvey and his boxing 00:06:21.300 --> 00:06:22.250 coach NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (H?Y) 00:06:22.250 --> 00:06:33.200 although it doesn't read in black-and-white perhaps in this text but this is nonetheless the 00:06:33.200 --> 00:06:42.600 case, his boxing coach is Karl Marx very different thinker than Adam Smith. Although 00:06:42.600 --> 00:06:51.400 there are some interesting overlaps between them. Now if we if we stick with these two for the sake 00:06:51.400 --> 00:06:52.600 of clarity NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 73% (MEDIUM) 00:06:52.600 --> 00:06:58.000 you see that right off the bat in the title of David Harvey's text which is the 00:06:58.000 --> 00:07:04.600 introductory chapter 2 of his book on neoliberalism you see it the challenge coming up, freedom is 00:07:04.600 --> 00:07:13.400 just another word and in the sense that sums it up for you I mean it resonates also with much of 00:07:13.400 --> 00:07:18.400 what we're going to talk about in this course. When you hear people talking about something that is 00:07:18.400 --> 00:07:22.150 quote unquote "free" or where they talk about Freedom or NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:07:22.150 --> 00:07:24.350 something being voluntary NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:07:24.350 --> 00:07:30.400 this course tells you sharpen your head reach for your intellectual revolver there's something fishy 00:07:30.400 --> 00:07:31.650 going on NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (H?Y) 00:07:31.650 --> 00:07:44.900 with this discourse of freedom, and the fishy thing for David Harvey what he finds fishy about the 00:07:44.900 --> 00:07:53.800 neoliberal consensus is actually quite straightforward: NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:07:53.800 --> 00:08:02.750 when you look at the history of the spread of the market at is in envisaged and indeed designed NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (H?Y) 00:08:02.750 --> 00:08:07.900 by Milton Friedman an economist that were trained by him NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (H?Y) 00:08:08.500 --> 00:08:16.900 or that were inspired by him, when you look at what happens when when this market is put into the 00:08:16.900 --> 00:08:18.050 world NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 88% (H?Y) 00:08:18.050 --> 00:08:20.800 you actually see the state everywhere. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (H?Y) 00:08:20.800 --> 00:08:36.600 The state has a very crucial part to play, this picture is from Chile in 1973 this is one of the 00:08:36.600 --> 00:08:43.700 countries where the new liberal economic consensus was first tried out in Chile the U.S 00:08:43.700 --> 00:08:51.400 orchestrated a coup in Chile that led to the downfall and murder of Salvador Allende NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (H?Y) 00:08:51.400 --> 00:08:55.500 the democratically-elected Socialist leader of that country NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (H?Y) 00:08:55.500 --> 00:09:08.400 and we can say a lot about Chile but it's clear here that the state is involved in promoting a certain a 00:09:08.400 --> 00:09:10.700 particular kind of market NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:09:10.700 --> 00:09:13.800 which is supposed to be free. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 88% (H?Y) 00:09:13.900 --> 00:09:22.200 isn't it strange David Harvey kind of invites us to reflect in his opening pages isn't it strange 00:09:22.200 --> 00:09:30.400 how the free market seems to ride into town on the top of a state-ordered military tank? NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (H?Y) 00:09:31.200 --> 00:09:47.000 Harvey observes the same was the case for Iraq and the way contractors and state builders in the US 00:09:47.000 --> 00:09:58.600 Military and the US government explicitly sought out to bring the market to Iraq and to enforce it NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (H?Y) 00:09:59.000 --> 00:10:08.100 so recall the neoliberal consensus holds among other things that the market is something that 00:10:08.100 --> 00:10:15.200 emerges organically from people's propensity to barter and exchange and it's something that 00:10:15.200 --> 00:10:21.900 exists therefore outside the state the government needs to stand aside for the market to flourish 00:10:21.900 --> 00:10:30.050 and here we see leading example examples of how States violently go in NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (H?Y) 00:10:30.050 --> 00:10:35.750 to enforce the market to bring the free market NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 88% (H?Y) 00:10:35.750 --> 00:10:47.200 across the world to expand the market. So this is what you see when you take a different starting 00:10:47.200 --> 00:10:56.800 point, historical perspective which is what David Harvey is developing here. You 00:10:56.800 --> 00:11:03.900 end up seeing something different. In contrast to Friedman's emphasis on the idea of individual 00:11:03.900 --> 00:11:06.400 motivations that is kind of the starting the basis for NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:11:06.400 --> 00:11:11.600 for their analysis. David Harvey starts from a focus on history and Global political economic 00:11:11.600 --> 00:11:13.400 structures NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:11:13.700 --> 00:11:27.600 and he traces the rise of neoliberalism as a response to something that happened in the late 40s 00:11:27.600 --> 00:11:32.800 until the late 70s and this is a period NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:11:32.800 --> 00:11:35.100 of NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (H?Y) 00:11:35.600 --> 00:11:49.250 world history when government's believed in Keynesian mixed economies where by the 00:11:49.250 --> 00:11:57.750 state as envisioned to have a role and very active role in the economy NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 77% (H?Y) 00:11:57.750 --> 00:12:06.000 mixing he quotes just to show that the there was a Keynesian consensus before the neoliberal 00:12:06.000 --> 00:12:12.700 consensus Nixon declared that "we are all Keynesians now" John Maynard Keynes is the man who says that 00:12:12.700 --> 00:12:22.099 kind of makes sharp remark on what we've been talking about in the last lecture that capitalism is 00:12:22.099 --> 00:12:27.250 the astounding belief that the most wicked of the men will do the most wickedest of NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (H?Y) 00:12:27.250 --> 00:12:33.700 things that is look after their own self-interest for the greatest good of everyone it is quite an 00:12:33.700 --> 00:12:42.800 astounding belief he says and basically Keynes you can read about more in our introductory book by 00:12:43.500 --> 00:12:50.600 Keith Hart and Cris Hann in economic anthropology and you can read the story in more 00:12:50.600 --> 00:12:56.750 detail but Keynes is basically a Social Democrat he believes in NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:12:56.750 --> 00:13:09.800 The state's legitimate role in ordering and creating functional markets with you know politically 00:13:09.800 --> 00:13:20.150 ordered politically designed and Harvey wants to show how NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (H?Y) 00:13:20.150 --> 00:13:31.400 the elites when the neoliberal policies came into place to place this Keynesian project of 00:13:31.400 --> 00:13:41.200 State intervention in the economy when the neoliberal politics came into place as a response to this 00:13:41.900 --> 00:13:50.700 world where economic elites had lost much of their pre- NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (H?Y) 00:13:50.700 --> 00:14:01.100 war economic influence and where you also saw the rise of socialist 00:14:01.100 --> 00:14:13.500 communist alternative with the cold war you saw also the rise of socialist parties and influential labor 00:14:13.500 --> 00:14:20.650 union movements inside the West itself in France in Italy NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (H?Y) 00:14:20.650 --> 00:14:30.800 in the US in the UK. When this political establishment the political economic establishment 00:14:30.800 --> 00:14:42.000 was challenged and lost partly its grip on power in the postwar years the neoliberal policies 00:14:42.000 --> 00:14:50.599 were invented, came into power, came of influence and the NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:14:50.599 --> 00:14:58.550 Result says Harvey NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (H?Y) 00:14:58.550 --> 00:15:09.900 was that indeed the economic elites he wants to demonstrate statistically how the economic elites in 00:15:09.900 --> 00:15:16.200 the late 70s and 80s and onwards we capture that economic power that they lost in the after War 00:15:16.200 --> 00:15:24.450 years and levels of inequality shot off into the stratosphere the rich got richer 00:15:24.450 --> 00:15:27.550 and the poor stayed poor NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 62% (MEDIUM) 00:15:27.550 --> 00:15:29.600 As he NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:15:29.600 --> 00:15:35.100 demonstrates with a bunch of statistics. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (H?Y) 00:15:36.100 --> 00:15:47.200 Remember this is David Harvey's argument okay, he draws attention to the importance of freedom as 00:15:47.200 --> 00:15:55.900 as an idea, it is an idea that is used by the 00:15:55.900 --> 00:16:01.500 proponents of the neoliberal consensus to justify particular kinds of social relationships a 00:16:01.500 --> 00:16:02.900 hierarchy NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (H?Y) 00:16:02.900 --> 00:16:09.500 and Harvey claims that it's an idea that it's often used by neoliberals to limit the freedom of 00:16:09.500 --> 00:16:18.200 groups of people to choose different kinds of societies so the big question is whose Freedom are we 00:16:18.200 --> 00:16:21.450 talking about? freedom to do what? NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 77% (H?Y) 00:16:21.450 --> 00:16:26.900 how do we measure the degree of freedom in a market? NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (H?Y) 00:16:27.600 --> 00:16:35.600 and instead of markets naturally flourishing when the state withdraws you often see that states 00:16:35.600 --> 00:16:43.100 have to aggressively impose the rule of the market as in the case of Chile, Iraq, other examples 00:16:43.100 --> 00:16:51.300 throughout the text and he points out you know as I said straight off from the first Pages the role 00:16:51.300 --> 00:16:58.800 of the United States government in imposing free market economies across the world. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:16:58.800 --> 00:17:03.300 this is Harvey's arguments. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:17:03.400 --> 00:17:11.050 You see how it contributes to challenge some of the assumptions that we spoke about in the last 00:17:11.050 --> 00:17:18.599 lecture again that the market is antithetical to the state NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:17:19.099 --> 00:17:29.000 that market exchanges are fundamentally voluntary NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:17:29.000 --> 00:17:33.100 that we are free to choose in a free market NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (H?Y) 00:17:33.100 --> 00:17:41.650 there's little voluntary Harvey says in a sense there's little voluntary about 00:17:41.650 --> 00:17:47.700 someone staring down the barrel of a United States government or military NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (H?Y) 00:17:47.700 --> 00:17:49.800 gun NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (H?Y) 00:17:49.800 --> 00:17:52.600 in Iraq NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 88% (H?Y) 00:17:53.700 --> 00:18:05.950 growing up in a society made through that invasion in the image of the ideas about the economy 00:18:05.950 --> 00:18:09.650 proposed by Milton Friedman and his like. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 79% (H?Y) 00:18:09.650 --> 00:18:17.400 There's nothing voluntary about that situation says Harvey, so there's something off here, and thirdly the 00:18:17.400 --> 00:18:26.250 assumption that everyone benefits from this setup. Again remember this is you know the the core 00:18:26.250 --> 00:18:36.550 empirical basis of Harvey's argument here, we have wealth spread in stunningly unfair ways 00:18:36.550 --> 00:18:39.199 something like 3 billionaires owning NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 87% (H?Y) 00:18:39.199 --> 00:18:45.300 we know these figures we've all had them three billionaires owning as much as the poorest 600 00:18:45.300 --> 00:18:51.300 million people in the world together and that was a few years ago it's gotten worse. So how come 00:18:51.300 --> 00:19:02.100 these 600 million people who are poor engage in voluntary exchanges that end up producing that kind 00:19:02.100 --> 00:19:03.900 of world NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:19:03.900 --> 00:19:07.900 there's something fishy about that too NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 76% (H?Y) 00:19:09.800 --> 00:19:19.500 There's a firth kind of key assumption in the neoliberal consensus is as we said earlier 00:19:19.500 --> 00:19:27.800 that trading is a natural state of affairs people its markets emerged because people have a 00:19:27.800 --> 00:19:33.200 propensity attend a natural tendency to barter and exchange and that we're going to see challenged 00:19:33.200 --> 00:19:38.300 more directly in the second lecture we're going to talk about different ways in which 00:19:38.300 --> 00:19:40.300 anthropological texts NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 77% (H?Y) 00:19:40.300 --> 00:19:46.300 contribute to denaturalising these notions of exchange. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (H?Y) 00:19:46.800 --> 00:19:57.750 What we have so far are two viewpoints two very different traditions of economic thought 00:19:57.750 --> 00:20:04.900 The Friedman's stand in the tradition of neoclassical economics that starts from the 00:20:04.900 --> 00:20:11.500 position of individual motivations in transactions and tends to assume the universality of the 00:20:11.500 --> 00:20:15.100 naturalness of Market exchanges. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (H?Y) 00:20:15.100 --> 00:20:23.700 Harvey stands in the tradition of political economy, a traditional economic thought 00:20:23.700 --> 00:20:29.800 that starts from exploring the political structures within which different kinds of economic orders 00:20:29.800 --> 00:20:40.250 emerge and change the structures that are illustrated by the barrel of the gun NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:20:40.250 --> 00:20:50.100 in Chile's 1973 coup or the United States invasion of Iraq NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:20:51.100 --> 00:20:59.200 and new classical economics has tended to dominate the discipline of Economics well anthropology tends 00:20:59.200 --> 00:21:01.449 to be closer to political economy NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (H?Y) 00:21:01.449 --> 00:21:07.500 we'll see this and this will be clear as we go throughout the readings but we have also 00:21:07.500 --> 00:21:14.600 texts that are perhaps closer to the tradition of neoclassical economics NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (H?Y) 00:21:15.000 --> 00:21:25.600 I set this up as a way to map out some of the landscape that 00:21:25.600 --> 00:21:32.200 we're going to Traverse in this course. However so we have these two contenders or these two 00:21:32.200 --> 00:21:42.600 viewpoints however there is a third or perhaps a different Viewpoint that we see in this 00:21:42.600 --> 00:21:45.250 week's readings that is different from NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (H?Y) 00:21:45.250 --> 00:21:55.100 from both these perspectives on the economy and that is represented by someone who's a bit more 00:21:55.100 --> 00:22:02.900 Works in a way that is a bit more familiar perhaps to some of you who read anthropology 00:22:02.900 --> 00:22:12.400 based on ethnography and that is Karen Ho and I'll spend a few minutes in the third 00:22:12.400 --> 00:22:15.250 recording drawing out some of the NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 77% (H?Y) 00:22:15.250 --> 00:22:26.000 key insights and provocations we can find in Karen Ho's text about Wall Street bankers and the 00:22:26.000 --> 00:22:29.000 roots of financial crisis