book reviews (the third quarter is over already!)

Those who have visited our living room (and if you have not, you are most welcome to come visit) have noticed that we have a bit of a capacity problem as far as books are concerned.

Marriage has been a rather distressing affair as far as books are concerned—I no longer seem to know what books I have or what the books on our shelves are about. And though the books we own that I have not read are quite numerous, I always seem to want what I cannot have. So I end up borrowing books from the library instead of reading what I have on hand. But this last quarter, I’ve finally decided to dig into the books that are now overflowing onto our floors.

As a side note, I have also decided that I am tired of Amazon/Borders/B&N’s domination of the book market, and despite the fact that I have enjoyed their low prices for many years, I think I will try to buy from independent book sellers from now on. Let’s see if I can resist the 30%-40% price slashes at Amazon. (I continue to be content with Paperbackswap though the selection often isn't great)

But enough with pictures and mundane chatter, and onto the reviews. My husband complained in my last set of book reviews that he wanted a thesis for why I rated each book with the number of stars that I did. It is not that deep. I write these reviews, not to pretend to be some professional reviewer, but simply to help me remember each book, its contents and what I liked or disliked about it. In doing so, I hope to give others some guidance as to whether or not they would like to read the book themselves. I do not assess these books in terms of its quality of writing or judge them as a piece of work or a contribution to humanity or whatnot; I am merely rating my enjoyment of the book in my little subjective world. :)

Rating scale from Goodreads
* didn’t like it
** it was ok
*** liked it
**** really liked it
***** it was amazing

Fiction

**** The Road (Cormac McCarthy) ~ This book traces the journey made by a father and his son as they attempt to reach the coast. The world has been destroyed by presumably what resembles a nuclear apocalypse. Major cities were burned, nearly all vegetation and animal life were destroyed, and everything was covered in ashes. As food became scarce, violence and murder increased until even humans were far and few between. McCarthy writes very simply and very calmly, but manages to recreate the bleakness and constant fear that permeates the father and his son’s journey. His novel highlights the extremes of human depravity, explores the tensions between compassion and survival, and offers a somber picture of hope.

**** Out of the Silent Planet (C.S. Lewis)~ C.S. Lewis never fails to satisfy me. This is the first volume of his science fiction Space Trilogy, and in many ways, reverses the elements of a traditional science fiction alien civilization plot. This novel functions at many levels—a beautiful exposition of life on another planet, an exploration of human nature and fear, and a critique of modernism. (PLOT SPOILERS AHEAD). A man named Ransom is captured by two humans and taken to Mars, a planet whose civilization has not “fallen” into original sin. Unlike a traditional science fiction plot, this alien civilization is peaceful and is not intent on invading other planets, even though their own is dying. The two humans, who captured Ransom, because of their own fear (based on their own knowledge of human nature), misunderstand the alien civilization’s good intentions for the worse. One of the most poignant passages occurs at the very end, when one of the humans who captured Ransom stands before the Oyarsa defending his modernism vision of taking over other planets “for the sake of humanity”. His speech is translated into a language that is intelligible to a society that knows not war, violence or oppression. In the translation, the contradictions and foolishness of modernism are revealed.

**** Peralandra (C.S. Lewis) ~ This novel reads nothing like the typical interplanetary travel and discovery we expect in science fiction novels, but is rather intensely mythical and philosophical. This is not to say that C.S. Lewis does not describe a beautiful, enchanting and strange vision of the planet Venus— covered in water, where the patches of solid land float on the ocean like water lilies, shifting great distances and undulating according to the water movement. The main character Ransom is sent to Venus in order to play role in the “Garden of Eden” mythological equivalent. Humanity has just begun on the planet Venus, with Adam and Eve in a state of innocence, and forbidden from sleeping overnight on the “Fixed Land”. Satan has shown up as and continuously tempts “Eve” to disobey God’s order. What follows is an intense philosophical reflection on the choice presented to Adam and Even in the Garden of Eden.

** Invitation to a Beheading (Vladmir Nabokov) ~ This is one of Nabokov’s earlier works, composed in Russian and translated by his son into English. It narrates the imprisonment leading up to the execution of Cinncinnatus C., accused of “gnostic turpitude”. The novel offers commentary on totalitarianism, authority, conformity as well as the nature of fiction. I was a little disappointed with the novel—I had high expectations of the novel because it was so intriguingly described in “Reading Lolita in Tehran”. But I don’t do well with “absurd” stories, and this novel was full of irrational and crazy scenes that defied expectation and made no sense. The prose style, though suggestive of Nabokov’s masterpiece Lolita, was underdeveloped in comparison. There were a few notable passages on Cinncinnatus’s emotional reaction to the absurdity and surrealist that surrounded him, but otherwise, the novel is interesting only for the theoretical questions it poses and as a work of Nabokov, but not so much for holiday reading enjoyment.

*** Invisible Cities (Italo Calvino) ~ In this novel, Marco Polo describes to emperor Kubla Khan (spelling?) the various cities in the kingdom that he has conquered. What follows are short vignettes describing various cities, that hover somewhere in between real physical cities and ethereal metaphysical cities. Calvino seeks to describe different aspects of the personality, character and scope of cities—their changes, the way they make people interact, their relationship with other cities, with poverty, with corruption etc… This doesn’t quite carry the narrative cohesiveness or thematic clarity of say, Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles. It is another case of a novel that reads better as poetry, or perhaps, as paintings or sketches. Calvino writes fairly well, and some of the vignettes are quite thought-provoking and beautiful but others resemble more frustrating art for art’s sake.

*** Atonement (Ian McEwan) ~ I was interested in reading this novel as several of my friends have absolutely loved it (and not because there’s a Keira Knightly film!). However, while I enjoyed the novel, I didn’t find myself loving it, primarily because I tend not to be that into period novels, or more “emotional” or “sentimental” fiction. I’m more into “idea” novels or novels that play with language. That being said, I will attest that the novel is very well-written. McEwan narrates his plot and characters with a melodramatic and psychological approach, that sometimes borders on humourous. I was especially amused with his descriptions of Briony, a 12-year old (?) aspiring writer who reminded me much of myself. The ending really distinguished the novel beyond a simple period piece (at times, the novel reminded me of Jane Austen)—it was surprising, moving and thought-provoking. (PLOT SPOILERS AHEAD) At the end, it is revealed the novel was written by Briony and that her sister Cecilia and her lover Robbie Turner actually both died in the war as opposed to reuniting happily in the novel. The novel serves as an atonement for what actually happened, giving her Cecilia and Robbie an opportunity to live together happily in fictive memory. “When I am dead, and the Marshalls are dead, and the novel is finally published, we will only exist as my inventions… No one will care what events and which individuals were misrepresented to make a novel. I know there’s always a certain kind of reader who will be compelled to ask, But what really happened? The answer is simple: the lovers survive and flourish. As long as there is a single copy, a solitary typescript of my final draft, then my spontaneous, fortuitous sister and her medical prince survive to love.”

***** That Hideous Strength (C.S. Lewis) ~ One of the most telling ways to determine if I have been reading a good book is to examine my reading space. Am I surrounded by little shreds of ripped paper, the remnants of make-shift bookmarks used to mark passages that I like? This certainly was the case with this book. The novel is set in England and recounts a marriage between two academics and the rise to power of the modernist organization, N.I.C.E., the National Institute for Controlled Experiments. This was probably my favourite book out of the Space Trilogy, because of its chilling portrayals of marriage, academic life and institutional life were so realistic (realistic in the sense that it touches upon the real spiritual core of these institutions, not in the sense that it is “probable” and likely to happen in this world). Despite the realism, or perhaps because of this realism, the novel also provides a brilliant exposition at the level of ideas, relating to the history of mankind, the nature of gender and the character of obedience, power and love. Couple that with humorous, sharp and yet beautiful prose, and you have one spectacular book. Read with care. Even I did and I’m the queen of skimming.

Non-Fiction

** Mindless Eating (Brian Wansink) ~ I picked up this book at the library while in California visiting my family. I skimmed through it one afternoon. It is part interesting and entertaining facts and research relating to the psychology of eating and part “easy diet”/healthy eating advice. The book provides simple ways of reducing calorie intake by taking advantage about how we psychologically relate to food. The diet/healthy eating tips were mostly common sense, but helpful to a certain extent (I have a terrible office snacking habit). Of all the research studies, I most enjoyed the experiment where participants ate day-old chocolate cake. Despite having eaten the same cake, participants who received menus that noted the cake as “chocolate cake” rated the cake taste as mediocre or poor, whereas those who received menus with “Fine Belgian Double Chocolate Cake” rated the cake as amazing and very good. Interestingly enough, in this study and many others participants always noted that they didn’t believe they would be affected by such marketing tactics.

*** Ways of Seeing (John Berger) ~ This book compiles seven (?) essays, three visual, four written relating to art history, visual studies and capitalism. I didn’t really understand the visual essays, but I did find the four written ones enjoyable and thought-provoking. The first reflects upon the different ways of seeing, and reflects upon the impact of reproduction of art on art (based on Walter Benjamin’s essay Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction). The second essay related to the depiction of male and female, naked and nude. The last two essays were on oil painting and its relation to capitalism and art ownership, and the role of the image in advertising. The essays were very readable and prompted thought relating to the role of economics and social class in the production of art.

** Philadelphia 300-Year History (editor Russel Weigley) ~ History has historically been my worse subject, so please be aware of my bias in this review. Despite being averse to history, I’ve recently decided to start learning more about both Philadelphia and the United States. This book assembles essays from a variety of authors and covers Philadelphia’s colonial period to around 1975. I started reading this 750 page tome (sp?) with much interest, especially in seeing how the initial plan of this city was laid out, started skimming when I reached the 18th and 19th century, and by the 20th century, I was rapidly skimming. Though the essays are decent and informative—most of them lack a strong narrative arc or argument and read more as laundry lists of facts about the development of various aspects of Philadelphia (e.g. demographics, crime, civil institutions, government reform etc…). As someone who is interested in the “spirit” of cities, this book was more just about the bones and though providing me with a few facts about the city’s history, failed to provide a cohesive vision for understanding it. Perhaps I should not expect history to be written this way, but I want to read history as a story, not a chronological date list.

*** An Introduction to Marx (Peter Singer) ~ This was an interesting and easy to understand introduction into Karl Marx’s life, ideas and influence. Singer particularly highlighted Karl Marx’s biography (his surprisingly unproletariat life), his evolution of thought, key concepts and his influences.

**** Terra Nullius: A Journey Through No One's Land (Sven Lindqvist) ~ I think sometimes I tend to be prejudiced against obscure books—thinking that most of them are probably not very good since they are not well-acclaimed or well-known. Reading excerpts from Terra Nullius for my Community Economic Development class definitely proved my prejudice wrong (To be honest-- should I really allow my reading tastes to be dictated by Barnes & Nobles?). This is a beautiful mixture of narrative and history, describing the devastating deaths and injustices that resulted from colonization. It covers the historical conquest, recent political developments and the academic study of aborigine culture. It questions the rational justifications for these actions and reflects upon what it means to make amends on an historical injustice. The novel does not follow a linear progression, but jumps from sections of a few pages each that touch upon related topics. The book is beautifully written and clear, and incredibly informative.

we are the system

The downfall of Wall Street this week has been ringing loudly in my thoughts, but Wall Street itself has been fairly quiet. No apology. (Part of me is brimming with anger: Have they not any shame for telling the government to fuck off when they were making millions, and then going back to the tax payers for a bail out when they had dug themselves in deep shit? Has this experience humbled them at all? Or are they hidden away, gloating because they got away with a lot of money?)

But maybe I need to apologize too? I was part of that system and part of that myth. I may not have worked directly in investment banking, but I was part of the post-graduate herd of sheep that run towards New York City and fill the lower ranks of investment banks and consulting firms, without necessarily questioning the bigger picture or the assumptions of what we were doing. I may not have made the huge bonuses, but I did wine and dine a little too heartily on money that had to come from somewhere. I was fortunate that I was never asked to work directly in predatory mortgage lending, but I did work in mortgage product design that had the potential to be damaging without proper regulation. I may not have advocated for the risky leverage ratios held by investment banks, but I did do some capital regulation calculations that I barely understood. And so I was/am part of the system. And somehow, I am also responsible for what is happening.

But how do you feel sorry for something that you didn’t do directly but somehow benefited from?

In Terra Nullius: A Journey Through No One's Land (a beautifully written book by the way), Sven Lindqvist reflects on feeling contrition concerning the murder of and the theft of land from the aborigines in Australia.

According to my Religious Education teacher in at secondary school, ‘contrition’ is at the core of all religions. It’s easy to make mistakes. Anybody can make mistakes, even commit crimes. The important thing is knowing how to feel contrition afterwards. That was why he began every lesson with the same question: ‘What constitutes contrition?’ To this day, I can still rattle off the answer in my sleep:
I realize I have done wrong.
I regret what I have done.
I promise never to do it again.
Today I tend to think these three criteria for contrition are far too introverted. ‘Realize’, ‘regret’ and ‘promise’ can all be done internally, in complete secrecy, without betraying any outward sign of realization of promise. Such an internal contrition process is precious little comfort the victim of the wrong I committed. And the promise is easily forgotten if nobody knows it was made. So the criteria should demand a more public process of contrition. Perhaps like this:
I freely admit that I have done wrong.
I ask forgiveness of those I have wronged.
I promise to do my best to make amends to them.
Here, the third criterion promises not only that I will not repeat the crime, but also that I will make efforts to put things right to the best of my ability. For the victims, redress is the most tangible result of my contrition and a measure of sincerity.
Can we feel contrition for other people’s crimes? Can we feel contrition for crimes we have not committed personally, but have subsequently profited from? How can we formulate the criteria for contrition to make them applicable to collective responsibility for historical crimes? Perhaps like this:
We freely admit that our predecessors have done wrong and that we are profiting from it.
We ask forgiveness of those who were wronged and of their descendants.
We promise to do our best to make amends to those who were wronged for the effects that still remain.
The larger the collective, the more diluted the personal responsibility. The less intimate the contrition, the greater the risk that it will just be hollow ceremony. A representative steps forward on our behalf, admits the wrong committed, apologizes, pays what it takes and appoints a committee to ‘monitor our practices’.

But Wall Street hasn’t even done that.*

And there are plenty of other systemic sins that we are part of—that we are responsible—but whose web of guilt is so diffuse that it’s easy to shift the blame. But the systems are composed of individuals, and as individuals, we all contribute our small, unsuspecting part in the greater injustices.

As American consumers, we are purchasers of products produced in unethical and inhumane circumstances. As Americans, we live on land that was seized from its original inhabitants. And though most of us are fortunate enough to have never been in such situations, we are certainly capable of inflicting direct bodily harm upon others.

Stanley Milgram, in conclusion to his famous experiments where test subjects delivered what they believed to be crippling electric shocks to a fellow human being (while they could hear that person screaming for it to stop), as long as the authority figure said it was okay, writes:

Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with the fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.

This is not to say that we are incapable of good, or that we do no good at all, but to emphasize that our brokenness infects nearly every action or decision that we are in, every relationship that we are in, and every system or institutional structure that we are part of. At the end of the day, we all must throw ourselves at the mercy of God.



* Terra Nullius ends the above quoted section with “Australia isn’t even doing that”. I switched it for Wall Street, but I need to give the original author credit.
** This entry draws inspiration and direct quotes from a talk on sin that my husband gave earlier this week.

end of a season*

This NY Times Op-ed by Roger Cohen eloquently touches upon the death of the myth that I wrote about in my last entry:

The leverage party’s over for the masters of the universe. Shed a tear. When you trade pieces of paper for other pieces of paper instead of trading them for real things, one day someone wakes up and realizes the paper’s worth nothing. And Lehman Brothers, after 158 years, has gone poof in the night.

We’re witnessing the passing of more than a venerable firm. We’re seeing the death of a culture.
…

So that’s what “financial killing” really means. No better illustration exists of a culture where private gain has eclipsed the public good, public service, even public decency, and where the cult of the individual has caused the commonwealth to wither.

That’s the culture we’ve lived with. It’s over now. Some new American beginning is needed.

…

When I taught a journalism course at Princeton a couple of years ago, I was captivated by the bright, curious minds in my class. But when I asked students what they wanted to do, the overwhelming answer was: “Oh, I guess I’ll end up in i-banking.”

It was not that they loved investment banking, or thought their purring brains would be best deployed on Wall Street poring over a balance sheet, it was the money and the fact everyone else was doing it.
…
But why do freshmen bursting to change the world morph into investment bankers?

“I guess the bottom line is the money. You could be going to grad school and paying for it, or earning six figures. And knowing nothing about money, you get to move hundreds of millions around! No wonder we’re in this mess: turns out the best and the brightest make the biggest and the worst.”

According to the Harvard Crimson, 39 percent of work-force-bound Harvard seniors this year are heading for consulting firms and financial sector companies (or were in June). That’s down from 47 percent — almost half the job-bound class — in 2007.

These numbers mirror a skewed culture. The best and the brightest should think again. Barack Obama put the issue this way at Wesleyan University in May: beware of the “poverty of ambition” in a culture of “the big house and the nice suits.”

I hope this humbling of Wall Street will make room for something more substantive to be built in its place.

*This is the second installment. The first one occurred about a year and a half ago.

when giants come tumbling down

another mad rant

It’s a strange, eerie feeling, reading about the demise of two Wall Street giants, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, following soon after the federal takeover of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and the earlier demise of Bear Stearns.

Perhaps what’s so striking about the recent failure of these large financial services firms is that they signal a death of a myth that I and so many other prestigious university graduates bought into.

Two or three years ago, all of us impressionable college graduates would have lusted after offers from Lehman Brothers or Merrill Lynch. A job at one of these firms would most likely guarantee entry into the country’s best law schools and business schools. A year ago, my former consulting firm, Oliver Wyman Financial Services, was still aggressively recruiting a larger incoming class for projected growth in consulting services for financial services industry. What did we really believe in? A bunch of managerial jargon about entrepreneurship, meritocracy, innovation, prestige and intelligence.

I do feel sorry for all of those analysts and associates who are now without a job, because I did tread that path for awhile. Perhaps now we can better know the price of being an “organization kid”, a lowly member in the network of the technocratic-managerial-financial elites – where more often than not, success is fleeting and power can quickly become powerlessness. Perhaps we will now know better than to trust in financial markets and lucrative job offers. And perhaps we will realize that we are ultimately responsible for our actions and decisions whether or not we are fully cognizant of their impact.

There is obviously a role for financial markets in today’s economy, and banking services are necessary to provide the liquidity needed to make today’s economy work. But I didn’t quite gain a sense from these Wall Street executives that they were trying to provide a valuable service to companies and individuals – that somehow got lost in the jumble of future trades, credit swaps, mortgage-backed securities and debt derivatives—which are somehow all subsumed under the interest of short-term profits.

I don’t particularly feel sorry for the top executives of these firms. In fact, I feel angry that though many may not have received any compensation packages, they still made their millions with timely stock sales and savings.

Who bears the true cost of these poor and risky decisions? The many who were lured into mortgages they cannot afford, those who are now watching their neighbourhoods deteriorate because of the growing number of foreclosures, and the working class who faces even more dismal job prospects. Many will feel the hurt of these far and distant decisions made in fancy boardrooms a lot harder than those who made the decisions.

(Do you feel powerless? Of late, I have been feeling that way. Powerlessness coupled with hope results in humility. Powerlessness without hope results in pragmatism.)

simulating integrity

a mad rant about professionalism

This was the first thing Mark had been asked to do which he himself, before he did it, clearly knew to be criminal. But the moment of his consent almost escaped his notice; certainly, there was no struggle, no sense of turning a corner. There may have been a time in the world’s history when such moments fully revealed their gravity, with witches prophesying on a blasted heath or visible Rubicons to be crossed. But for him, it all slipped past in a chatter of laughter, of that intimate laughter between fellow professionals, which of all earthly powers is strongest to make men do very bad things before they are yet, individually, very bad men.

This was an excerpt from C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength, referring to the moment in which Mark was asked to write false articles for widely-circulated newspapers. I wonder if it felt just as uneventful, just as banal for those insider traders in the 1980s, the Wal-Mart store managers who denied workers overtime pay, and the Enron accountants of Arthur Anderson. I wonder what it feels like to do things that are not necessarily illegal per se, but unethical—the blind complicit eye in the use of underpaid workers, hospital managers who turn down Medicaid patients, the predatory mortgage lenders, the more recent irresponsible portfolio decisions of the Lehman Brothers executives and the income tax accountants who obscure the truth of the cost and nature of their services to lower-income (or shall I say low-wealth?) families. But I do know what that feels like, because I would have to lie to say I haven’t done legal but unethical things in my past—and that little sigh of guilt lies somewhere buried between “everyone else is doing it too” and “I’m just doing my job and providing a service or product to the economy.”*

I recently heard the story of a very intelligent Christian, who engineered a key product for his company, and was invited to apply to become the head manager of an entire region. He was denied the position and later discovered the two reasons for it: 1. That in his interview, he mentioned that he talked to God everyday and so management suspected that he must have delusions of grandeur, and 2. that one of his guiding principles was to never lie, and the hiring consultant found himself slipping and saying “how can you trust someone who will always tell the truth….”

And perhaps that in a nutshell captures what governs the boardrooms and skyscrapers where the makers and shakers of the world concoct their plans. While governments will never disappear, many will argue that it is now economics, not politics, that drives the modern world, and that the major players are not sovereign states but multinational and global corporations. And what prevails in these corporations is a code of professionalism that prioritizes profits (and mainly short-term profits) above everything else.

Every year, prestigious universities send hundreds upon hundreds of recently minted and impressionable graduates into the halls of prestigious investment banks and consulting firms. Many climbed the ranks in these institutions, perhaps with a brief boost from an MBA program. They surely have behaved up to par with the code of professionalism. Professionalism expects the employee to wear the fancy suits, talk the small-talk and the fancy jargon and know the numbers behind the pretty graphs. But we’ve ended up with-- or perhaps that’s better worded as, we’ve ended up without-- Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. Let's not forget that alongside their graves, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are in critical condition supported by the ICU of taxpayers.

Professionalism evades the question of responsibility. It shifts the blame to the institution, without acknowledging that an institution is composed of individuals. With professionalism, everyone acts according to what is expected of him in his occupational role, without question to the morality of his actions.

It is integrity that forces an employee to consider the consequences of his actions on others (rather than just trying to win the approval of salary-determining, bonus-awarding superiors). Integrity involves asking whether something that someone is asked to do for his job is right or wrong, not just profit-making, and having the courage to say no when something is wrong.

How different could the world be if people actually acted with integrity at their jobs, instead of abiding by the codes that prevailed in their work environments? Would low-wage earners be able to make a decent living (as many homeless actually have full-time jobs)? Would there be less people trapped in crippling debt?

A friend mentioned a book written by the founder of DC Central Kitchen, who argued that it’s not nonprofits that need to run more like business, but businesses that need to run more like nonprofits. I have yet to read the book but I suspect he meant that we need to abandon the code of corporate professionalism, and opt instead for one of genuine integrity, one that takes into consideration the situation of the less privileged or the less powerful.

I have questioned whether it is possible to change the system from the inside. So far, the outcomes have not been too promising.** Though if you have some examples or evidence to the contrary, perhaps they will give me some hope concerning the current trajectory of the world.


*Hannah Arendt, the Milgram Experiments and the Stanford Prison Experiment may confirm my suspicion.
** I supposed being in the system requires some degree of complicity with the system...

unequal measures of inequality

My most recent blog entry related to how the manner in which knowledge is produced within the university system is subject to a set of assumptions and methodologies. This became quite evident in this example drawn from my first class in Professor Lamas’ Community Economic Development.*

In looking at these statistics relating to income, taken from the U.S. Census Bureau, what would you conclude about equality in America?

Income of Households 2002

Race/Ethnicity	Income
White alone or in combination	$45,350
White alone	$45,390
White alone, not Hispanic	$47,194
Black alone or in combination	$30,032
Black alone	$29,982

Now take a look at these statistics concerning wealth in America, now what would you conclude?
Median Value of Assets for Households 2000

Race	Net Worth
White	$58,716
White Not of Hispanic Origin	$67,000
Black	$6,166

Percent Distribution of Household Net Worth 2000

Race	Net Worth
	Zero or Negative	$500,000 and Over
White	12.7%	9.3%
White Not of Hispanic Origin	11.3%	10.0%
Black	29.1%	0.6%

In the first case, inequality America is significant but is not of an outrageous proportion. However, looking at wealth, this picture is dramatically different. The median wealth of a white American household is over 10 times that of a black household. Furthermore, three times as many blacks than whites have zero or negative net worth.

The poverty debate both in America and around the world has been framed around the question of income (what one earns) rather than wealth (what one owns less what one owes). Two professors can both earn the same amount each year, but their lives may look very different depending on the inheritance they may or may not have received from their parents.

Because the poverty problem is framed in terms of income, the policy solutions suggested are also directed towards raising income. Our grand solutions to poverty in America seemed centered around raising minimum wages and providing better education (so that people can receive higher paying jobs). But if we were to think of the problem differently, how would our solutions change?

Interestingly enough, the major wealth-based solution to poverty has not been particularly successful. Home ownership has often been promoted as a way of increasing wealth and gaining economic success. However, this has played out into the context of income segregated neighbourhoods, disparate quality of education in public schools, and foreclosures. Home ownership has not created additional wealth especially in cases of stagnant or declining real estate prices or growing costs of maintaining a home.

I'm sure there will be more to follow on this subject.


*In fact, this entire entry is drawn from the discussion in today’s class. I guess you know it’s a good class if I come home and immediately write a blog entry.

simulating knowledge (2)

knowledge is not knowing

If today’s institutions of higher education are the factories for the “production of knowledge,”* then the assembly lines are lined with hunched over graduate students and junior faculty, managed over by tenured professors, journal publications and academic deans. Conferences, papers, books and other publications roll off the conveyor belt into this nebulous expanse known as “knowledge”.

The research, or perhaps more precisely, the knowledge produced, is not a result of some objective process, but a product of a certain set of assumptions, procedures and methodologies that are generally accepted by the said management of the university assembly line. That is not to say that none of the research is valid, but that it is subject to assumptions and processes particular to its academic field—generally accepted principles for how to conduct research and come up with conclusions.

Likewise, the knowledge produced within the walls of the ivory tower, is not necessarily more relevant, more important or more valuable than our own “knowing” as individuals. It is easy to get caught up in the abstractions of statistics, theories and categories to the extent that they become more real than the world they were supposed to study.

Case in point in these two excerpts. Excerpt one comes from Jane Jacobs Life and Death of Great American Cities, where she recounts the recounts the then prevalent urban planning mindset of privileging park space:

When I saw the North End again in 1959, I was amazed at the change. Dozens and dozens of buildings had been rehabilitated. Instead of mattresses against the windows there were Venetian blinds and glimpses of fresh paint…

But I could not imagine where the money had come from for the rehabilitation, because it is almost impossible today to get any appreciable mortgage money in districts of American cities that are not either high-rent or else imitations of suburbs. TO find out, I called a Boston planner I know.

“Why in the world are you down in the North End?” he said. “Money? Why, no money or work has gone into the North End. Nothings’ going on down there. Eventually, yes, but not yet. That’s slum!”

“It doesn’t look like a slum to me,” I said.

“Why, that’s the worst slum in the city. It has two hundred and seventy-five dwelling units to the net acre! I hate to admit we have anything like that in Boston, but it’s a fact.”

“Do you have any other figures on it?” I asked.

“Yes, funny thing. It has among the lowest delinquency, disease and infant mortality rates in the city. It also has the lowest ratios of rent to income in the city. Boy, are those people getting bargains. Let’ see… the death rate is low, 8.8 per thousand, against the average city rate of 11.2. The TB death rate is low, less than 1 per ten thousand, can’t understand it, it’s lower even than Brookline’s. In the old days the North End used to be the city’s worst spot for tuberculosis, but all that has changed. Well, they must be strong people. Of course it’s a terrible slum.”

“You should have more slums like this, “ I said, “Don’t tell me there are plans to wipe this out. You ought to be down here learning as much as you can from it.”

“I know how you feel, I often go down there myself just to walk around the streets and feel that wonderful, cheerful street life. Say, what you ought to do, you ought to come back and go down in the summer if you think it’s fun now. You’d be crazy about it in the summer. But of course, we have to rebuild it eventually. We’ve got to get those people off the streets.”

Here was a curious thing. My friend’s instincts told him that North End was a good place, and his social statistics confirmed it. But everything he had learned as a physical planner about what was good for people and good for city neighborhoods, everything that made him an expert, told him that North End had to be a bad place.

This other excerpt comes from C.S. Lewis’s novel That Hideous Strength, recounting the mind of a sociologist:

..his education had had the curious effect of making things that he read and wrote more real to him than things he saw. Statistics about agricultural labourers were the substance; any real ditcher, ploughman or farmer’s boy, was the shadow. Though he had never noticed it himself, he had a great reluctance, in his work, ever to use such words as “man” or “woman.” He preferred to write about “vocational groups,” “elements,” “classes” and “populations”: for, in his own way, he believed as firmly as any mystic in the superior reality of things that are not seen.



* Though this I suspect is changing with the growing role of the internet. In fact, Wikipedia is still bookmarked as TRUTH on my internet toolbar.
** For awhile, I think I was doing pretty well on writing entries that weren’t entirely based on quotes. I guess I’m finally breaking that streak now. It’s hard to say things when you keep finding people who write everything you would want to write, but do it much better than you ever would.