Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Jay Walljasper: The Victory of the Commons
The Victory of the Commons: Nobel Prize-winning economist Elinor Ostrom proved that people can—and do—work together to manage commonly-held resources without degrading them.
by Jay Walljasper
Yes!
The biggest roadblock standing in the way of many people's recognition of the importance of the commons came tumbling down when Indiana University professor Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel Prize for Economics.
Over many decades, Ostrom has documented how various communities manage common resources — grazing lands, forests, irrigation waters, fisheries — equitably and sustainably over the long term. The Nobel Committee's recognition of her work effectively debunks popular theories about the Tragedy of the Commons, which hold that private property is the only effective method to prevent finite resources from being ruined or depleted.
Awarding the world's most prestigious economics prize to a scholar who champions cooperative behavior greatly boosts the legitimacy of the commons as a framework for solving our social and environmental problems. Ostrom's work also challenges the current economic orthodoxy that there are few, if any, alternatives to privatization and markets in generating wealth and human well being.
The Tragedy of the Commons refers to a scenario in which commonly held land is inevitably degraded because everyone in a community is allowed to graze livestock there. This parable was popularized by wildlife biologist Garrett Hardin in the late 1960s, and was embraced as a principle by the emerging environmental movement. But Ostrom's research refutes this abstract concept with the real life experience from places like Nepal, Kenya and Guatemala.
"When local users of a forest have a long-term perspective, they are more likely to monitor each other's use of the land, developing rules for behavior," she cites as an example. "It is an area that standard market theory does not touch."
Garrett Hardin himself later revised his own view, noting that what he described was actually the Tragedy of the Unmanaged Commons.
Columbia University economist Joseph Stiglitz, also a Nobel winner, commented, "Conservatives used the Tragedy of the Commons to argue for property rights, and that efficiency was achieved as people were thrown off the commons...What Ostrom has demonstrated is the existence of social control mechanisms that regulate the use of the commons without having to resort to property rights."
To Read the Rest of the Article
by Jay Walljasper
Yes!
The biggest roadblock standing in the way of many people's recognition of the importance of the commons came tumbling down when Indiana University professor Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel Prize for Economics.
Over many decades, Ostrom has documented how various communities manage common resources — grazing lands, forests, irrigation waters, fisheries — equitably and sustainably over the long term. The Nobel Committee's recognition of her work effectively debunks popular theories about the Tragedy of the Commons, which hold that private property is the only effective method to prevent finite resources from being ruined or depleted.
Awarding the world's most prestigious economics prize to a scholar who champions cooperative behavior greatly boosts the legitimacy of the commons as a framework for solving our social and environmental problems. Ostrom's work also challenges the current economic orthodoxy that there are few, if any, alternatives to privatization and markets in generating wealth and human well being.
The Tragedy of the Commons refers to a scenario in which commonly held land is inevitably degraded because everyone in a community is allowed to graze livestock there. This parable was popularized by wildlife biologist Garrett Hardin in the late 1960s, and was embraced as a principle by the emerging environmental movement. But Ostrom's research refutes this abstract concept with the real life experience from places like Nepal, Kenya and Guatemala.
"When local users of a forest have a long-term perspective, they are more likely to monitor each other's use of the land, developing rules for behavior," she cites as an example. "It is an area that standard market theory does not touch."
Garrett Hardin himself later revised his own view, noting that what he described was actually the Tragedy of the Unmanaged Commons.
Columbia University economist Joseph Stiglitz, also a Nobel winner, commented, "Conservatives used the Tragedy of the Commons to argue for property rights, and that efficiency was achieved as people were thrown off the commons...What Ostrom has demonstrated is the existence of social control mechanisms that regulate the use of the commons without having to resort to property rights."
To Read the Rest of the Article
Leigh Goldstein: Documenting and denial -- discourses of sexual self-exploitation
Documenting and denial: discourses of sexual self-exploitation
by Leigh Goldstein
Jump Cut
In December 2008, the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and CosmoGirl.com published a report summarizing the findings of a survey they had commissioned on adolescents, twenty-somethings, technology and sexuality. Entitled, appropriately enough, “Sex and Tech,” the report and related articles were made available on each organization’s website, along with press releases highlighting some of the statistics that the survey of 1280 subjects had generated. The report was immediately followed by an Associated Press article citing its findings. The story was then picked up by several newspapers, online magazines, cable news programs, each calling particular attention to one statistic: twenty percent of teens overall (i.e., boys and girls) have “sent/posted nude or semi-nude pictures or video of themselves.”[1][open endnotes in new window]
Judging from the spate of articles that have followed since its publication, the “Sex and Tech” study seems to have lent statistical credence to a practice that legal scholars and some journalists have been addressing for the past few years.[2] Generally referred to as “sexting” or “self-produced child pornography,” this practice involves adolescents taking pictures of themselves naked or barely clothed or engaged in a sexual act and then posting the images online or texting or emailing them to friends. As the label “self-produced child pornography” indicates, the production, distribution and possession of these images is a criminal act if the subject photographed is under eighteen. Minors participating in this seemingly innocuous form of flirtatious or erotic exchange have been formally charged with production and distribution or possession of child pornography.
For example, in a 2004 Florida state case, a sixteen-year-old girl (A.H.) was adjudicated as a delinquent for taking pictures of herself having sex with her seventeen-year-old boyfriend and then emailing them from his computer to hers. And in 2002, in Seattle, Washington, August Anthony Vezzoni, then sixteen years old, was adjudicated as delinquent for showing nude photographs of a former girlfriend to friends at school. Or, to take a more recent example that has received much media attention, three teenage girls in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, were charged in January 2009 with producing and distributing child pornography for taking and then sending nude pictures of their own fourteen and fifteen year old bodies and then texting the images to their friends. Three boys (aged 16 and 17) who received the images were charged with possession of child pornography. In the last six years, similar charges have been brought against minors in Alabama, Connecticut, Denver, Florida, Georgia, New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin.[3]
These cases, and the media coverage they receive, all attest to the fact that child pornography has become a crime in which minors are constructed as perpetrators as well as victims. This paradoxical stance towards minors, predicated on a construction of children as innocent and punishment of those who defile that construct, is propped up by complex argumentation on the part of judges and legal scholars as well as some equally convoluted thinking on the part of journalists. Before further engaging with both those forms of discourse and the ways in which they construct children, I would like to address the question of statistical research and the dearth of up to date studies on child pornography within U.S. academia.
The circulation of dubious statistics and conjectures regarding child pornography should be read as an inevitable consequence of the legal penalties for having any encounter with pornographic material featuring subjects who are minors. The very act of approaching persons under eighteen and asking them if they produce, possess, or distribute erotic material featuring themselves (or another minor) constitutes a crime. One’s standing as scholar or researcher makes no difference from a legal perspective. Ask a minor about naked photos and you are soliciting contraband and harassing a child.[4]
While the current legislation against child pornography is certainly a research hurdle, I want to make clear that its consequences extend beyond the fate of the minors who produce it or the scholars who would hope to study them. By criminalizing self-produced child pornography, our government has effectively censored minors’ right to record their sexualities or erotic identities. It is as though the existence of underage sex dealt a bad enough blow to our culture’s construction of childhood; the production of a visual record of such acts has been designated as beyond the pale, a social practice that must be eradicated.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
by Leigh Goldstein
Jump Cut
In December 2008, the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and CosmoGirl.com published a report summarizing the findings of a survey they had commissioned on adolescents, twenty-somethings, technology and sexuality. Entitled, appropriately enough, “Sex and Tech,” the report and related articles were made available on each organization’s website, along with press releases highlighting some of the statistics that the survey of 1280 subjects had generated. The report was immediately followed by an Associated Press article citing its findings. The story was then picked up by several newspapers, online magazines, cable news programs, each calling particular attention to one statistic: twenty percent of teens overall (i.e., boys and girls) have “sent/posted nude or semi-nude pictures or video of themselves.”[1][open endnotes in new window]
Judging from the spate of articles that have followed since its publication, the “Sex and Tech” study seems to have lent statistical credence to a practice that legal scholars and some journalists have been addressing for the past few years.[2] Generally referred to as “sexting” or “self-produced child pornography,” this practice involves adolescents taking pictures of themselves naked or barely clothed or engaged in a sexual act and then posting the images online or texting or emailing them to friends. As the label “self-produced child pornography” indicates, the production, distribution and possession of these images is a criminal act if the subject photographed is under eighteen. Minors participating in this seemingly innocuous form of flirtatious or erotic exchange have been formally charged with production and distribution or possession of child pornography.
For example, in a 2004 Florida state case, a sixteen-year-old girl (A.H.) was adjudicated as a delinquent for taking pictures of herself having sex with her seventeen-year-old boyfriend and then emailing them from his computer to hers. And in 2002, in Seattle, Washington, August Anthony Vezzoni, then sixteen years old, was adjudicated as delinquent for showing nude photographs of a former girlfriend to friends at school. Or, to take a more recent example that has received much media attention, three teenage girls in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, were charged in January 2009 with producing and distributing child pornography for taking and then sending nude pictures of their own fourteen and fifteen year old bodies and then texting the images to their friends. Three boys (aged 16 and 17) who received the images were charged with possession of child pornography. In the last six years, similar charges have been brought against minors in Alabama, Connecticut, Denver, Florida, Georgia, New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin.[3]
These cases, and the media coverage they receive, all attest to the fact that child pornography has become a crime in which minors are constructed as perpetrators as well as victims. This paradoxical stance towards minors, predicated on a construction of children as innocent and punishment of those who defile that construct, is propped up by complex argumentation on the part of judges and legal scholars as well as some equally convoluted thinking on the part of journalists. Before further engaging with both those forms of discourse and the ways in which they construct children, I would like to address the question of statistical research and the dearth of up to date studies on child pornography within U.S. academia.
The circulation of dubious statistics and conjectures regarding child pornography should be read as an inevitable consequence of the legal penalties for having any encounter with pornographic material featuring subjects who are minors. The very act of approaching persons under eighteen and asking them if they produce, possess, or distribute erotic material featuring themselves (or another minor) constitutes a crime. One’s standing as scholar or researcher makes no difference from a legal perspective. Ask a minor about naked photos and you are soliciting contraband and harassing a child.[4]
While the current legislation against child pornography is certainly a research hurdle, I want to make clear that its consequences extend beyond the fate of the minors who produce it or the scholars who would hope to study them. By criminalizing self-produced child pornography, our government has effectively censored minors’ right to record their sexualities or erotic identities. It is as though the existence of underage sex dealt a bad enough blow to our culture’s construction of childhood; the production of a visual record of such acts has been designated as beyond the pale, a social practice that must be eradicated.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Peace & Conflict Studies: Part Three
[For students: 1) Capturing Reality is a good resource for understanding documentaries as an "art form" 2) I wanted to show you This Is What Democracy Looks Like, but ran out of time, it is a compilation of the footage from a 100+ independent media/journalists covering the 1999 Seattle WTO Protests 3) Manufacturing Consent is a great introduction to Noam Chomsky and the Propaganda Model of the Media--good supplement for thinking about what I have been discussing throughout this section 4) I provided more info on Chomsky and Propaganda 5) linked the previous two Peace & Conflict posts 6) the G20 articles can be found online here and the paper North of Center is a free bi-weekly newspaper that is available around town at the entrance of downtown independent businesses 7) comments/questions can be posted in the comment section of this post and/or feel free to stop by my office OB236B to talk. I really appreciated the level of engagement for this section, thank you!!!]
Capturing Reality: The Art of Documentary (click to watch in another screen)
This Is What Democracy Looks Like (click to watch in another screen)
Manufacturing Consent (click to watch in another screen)
Noam Chomsky and Media Propaganda (Optional Resources)
Noam Chomsky and Robert Trivers: On Deceit, Groupthink, Maintaining Credibility and Denial (Seed Magazine)
Noam Chomsky: On the Global Economic Crisis, Healthcare, US Foreign Policy and Resistance to American Empire (Democracy Now)
Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Researching the Issues (Michael Benton's comments/archive)
Propaganda: Researching the Concept (Archive)
Noam Chomsky’s Website
Resources for Studying Propaganda from HUM 220: Peace/Conflict Studies (Historical Perspectives)
Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman: The Role of Mass Media
Noam Chomsky: Language, Politics and Composition
Project Censored: Top 25 Censored Stories of 2009
Michael Benton: Do We Need a Strong Public Media? (Commentary/Archive)
Past posts for the course:
Peace & Conflict Studies: Part One
Peace & Conflict Studies: Part Two
Capturing Reality: The Art of Documentary (click to watch in another screen)
This Is What Democracy Looks Like (click to watch in another screen)
Manufacturing Consent (click to watch in another screen)
Noam Chomsky and Media Propaganda (Optional Resources)
Noam Chomsky and Robert Trivers: On Deceit, Groupthink, Maintaining Credibility and Denial (Seed Magazine)
Noam Chomsky: On the Global Economic Crisis, Healthcare, US Foreign Policy and Resistance to American Empire (Democracy Now)
Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Researching the Issues (Michael Benton's comments/archive)
Propaganda: Researching the Concept (Archive)
Noam Chomsky’s Website
Resources for Studying Propaganda from HUM 220: Peace/Conflict Studies (Historical Perspectives)
Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman: The Role of Mass Media
Noam Chomsky: Language, Politics and Composition
Project Censored: Top 25 Censored Stories of 2009
Michael Benton: Do We Need a Strong Public Media? (Commentary/Archive)
Past posts for the course:
Peace & Conflict Studies: Part One
Peace & Conflict Studies: Part Two
Friday, October 30, 2009
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Mary Doria Russell: The Novelist as God
(The Sparrow is one of my favorite SF books)
The Novelist as God
Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett
Mary Doria Russell has grappled with large moral and religious questions on and off the page. We discover what she discerned — in the act of creating a new universe — about God and about dilemmas of evil, doubt, and free will. The ultimate moral of any life and any event, she believes, only shows itself across generations. And so the novelist, like God, she says, paints with the brush of time.
To Listen to the Episode and Access More Resources
The Novelist as God
Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett
Mary Doria Russell has grappled with large moral and religious questions on and off the page. We discover what she discerned — in the act of creating a new universe — about God and about dilemmas of evil, doubt, and free will. The ultimate moral of any life and any event, she believes, only shows itself across generations. And so the novelist, like God, she says, paints with the brush of time.
To Listen to the Episode and Access More Resources
Greta Christina: Atheists and Anger
Atheists and Anger
Greta Christina's Blog
I want to talk about atheists and anger.
This has been a hard piece to write, and it may be a hard one to read. I'm not going to be as polite and good-tempered as I usually am in this blog; this piece is about anger, and for once I'm going to fucking well let myself be angry.
But I think it's important. One of the most common criticisms lobbed at the newly-vocal atheist community is, "Why do you have to be so angry?" So I want to talk about:
1. Why atheists are angry;
2. Why our anger is valid, valuable, and necessary;
And 3. Why it's completely fucked-up to try to take our anger away from us.
So let's start with why we're angry. Or rather -- because this is my blog and I don't presume to speak for all atheists -- why I'm angry.
To Read the Rest of This Statement
Greta Christina's Blog
I want to talk about atheists and anger.
This has been a hard piece to write, and it may be a hard one to read. I'm not going to be as polite and good-tempered as I usually am in this blog; this piece is about anger, and for once I'm going to fucking well let myself be angry.
But I think it's important. One of the most common criticisms lobbed at the newly-vocal atheist community is, "Why do you have to be so angry?" So I want to talk about:
1. Why atheists are angry;
2. Why our anger is valid, valuable, and necessary;
And 3. Why it's completely fucked-up to try to take our anger away from us.
So let's start with why we're angry. Or rather -- because this is my blog and I don't presume to speak for all atheists -- why I'm angry.
To Read the Rest of This Statement
Jennifer Michael Hecht: A History of Doubt
A History of Doubt
with Jennifer Michael Hecht
Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett
Poet and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht says that as a scholar she always noticed the "shadow history" of doubt out of the corner of her eye. She shows how non-belief, skepticism, and doubt have paralleled and at times shaped the world's great religious and secular belief systems. She suggests that only in modern time has doubt been narrowly equated with a complete rejection of faith, or a broader sense of mystery.
To Listen to the Episode and Access More Resources
with Jennifer Michael Hecht
Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett
Poet and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht says that as a scholar she always noticed the "shadow history" of doubt out of the corner of her eye. She shows how non-belief, skepticism, and doubt have paralleled and at times shaped the world's great religious and secular belief systems. She suggests that only in modern time has doubt been narrowly equated with a complete rejection of faith, or a broader sense of mystery.
To Listen to the Episode and Access More Resources
Ursula K. Le Guin: On Anarchism
"An anarchist is one who, choosing, accepts the responsibility of choice."
--Ursula K. Le Guin, Mythmakers & Lawbreakers: Anarchist Writers on Fiction. ed. Margaret Killjoy. AK Press, 2009: 8.
--Ursula K. Le Guin, Mythmakers & Lawbreakers: Anarchist Writers on Fiction. ed. Margaret Killjoy. AK Press, 2009: 8.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Miguel de Unamuno: On Truth
"My religion is to seek for truth in life and for life in truth, even knowing that I shall not find them while I live."
--Miguel de Unamuno
--Miguel de Unamuno
Frontline: The Warning
(Courtesy of Jackie)
The Warning
Frontline (PBS)
In The Warning, veteran FRONTLINE producer Michael Kirk unearths the hidden history of the nation's worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. At the center of it all he finds Brooksley Born, who speaks for the first time on television about her failed campaign to regulate the secretive, multitrillion-dollar derivatives market whose crash helped trigger the financial collapse in the fall of 2008.
"I didn't know Brooksley Born," says former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt, a member of President Clinton's powerful Working Group on Financial Markets. "I was told that she was irascible, difficult, stubborn, unreasonable." Levitt explains how the other principals of the Working Group -- former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin -- convinced him that Born's attempt to regulate the risky derivatives market could lead to financial turmoil, a conclusion he now believes was "clearly a mistake."
Born's battle behind closed doors was epic, Kirk finds. The members of the President's Working Group vehemently opposed regulation -- especially when proposed by a Washington outsider like Born.
"I walk into Brooksley's office one day; the blood has drained from her face," says Michael Greenberger, a former top official at the CFTC who worked closely with Born. "She's hanging up the telephone; she says to me: 'That was [former Assistant Treasury Secretary] Larry Summers. He says, "You're going to cause the worst financial crisis since the end of World War II."... [He says he has] 13 bankers in his office who informed him of this. Stop, right away. No more.'"
Greenspan, Rubin and Summers ultimately prevailed on Congress to stop Born and limit future regulation of derivatives. "Born faced a formidable struggle pushing for regulation at a time when the stock market was booming," Kirk says. "Alan Greenspan was the maestro, and both parties in Washington were united in a belief that the markets would take care of themselves."
Now, with many of the same men who shut down Born in key positions in the Obama administration, The Warning reveals the complicated politics that led to this crisis and what it may say about current attempts to prevent the next one.
"It'll happen again if we don't take the appropriate steps," Born warns. "There will be significant financial downturns and disasters attributed to this regulatory gap over and over until we learn from experience."
To Watch the Documentary and Access More Resources
The Warning
Frontline (PBS)
In The Warning, veteran FRONTLINE producer Michael Kirk unearths the hidden history of the nation's worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. At the center of it all he finds Brooksley Born, who speaks for the first time on television about her failed campaign to regulate the secretive, multitrillion-dollar derivatives market whose crash helped trigger the financial collapse in the fall of 2008.
"I didn't know Brooksley Born," says former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt, a member of President Clinton's powerful Working Group on Financial Markets. "I was told that she was irascible, difficult, stubborn, unreasonable." Levitt explains how the other principals of the Working Group -- former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin -- convinced him that Born's attempt to regulate the risky derivatives market could lead to financial turmoil, a conclusion he now believes was "clearly a mistake."
Born's battle behind closed doors was epic, Kirk finds. The members of the President's Working Group vehemently opposed regulation -- especially when proposed by a Washington outsider like Born.
"I walk into Brooksley's office one day; the blood has drained from her face," says Michael Greenberger, a former top official at the CFTC who worked closely with Born. "She's hanging up the telephone; she says to me: 'That was [former Assistant Treasury Secretary] Larry Summers. He says, "You're going to cause the worst financial crisis since the end of World War II."... [He says he has] 13 bankers in his office who informed him of this. Stop, right away. No more.'"
Greenspan, Rubin and Summers ultimately prevailed on Congress to stop Born and limit future regulation of derivatives. "Born faced a formidable struggle pushing for regulation at a time when the stock market was booming," Kirk says. "Alan Greenspan was the maestro, and both parties in Washington were united in a belief that the markets would take care of themselves."
Now, with many of the same men who shut down Born in key positions in the Obama administration, The Warning reveals the complicated politics that led to this crisis and what it may say about current attempts to prevent the next one.
"It'll happen again if we don't take the appropriate steps," Born warns. "There will be significant financial downturns and disasters attributed to this regulatory gap over and over until we learn from experience."
To Watch the Documentary and Access More Resources
Speaking of Faith: Living Vodou
Living Vodou
Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippet
The word "Vodou" evokes images of sorcery and sticking pins into dolls. In fact, it's a living tradition wherever Haitians are found based on ancestral religions in Africa. We walk through this mysterious tradition — one with dramatic rituals of trances and dreaming and of belief in spirits, who speak through human beings, with both good and evil potential.
To Read/Listen/Watch and Access More Resources
Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippet
The word "Vodou" evokes images of sorcery and sticking pins into dolls. In fact, it's a living tradition wherever Haitians are found based on ancestral religions in Africa. We walk through this mysterious tradition — one with dramatic rituals of trances and dreaming and of belief in spirits, who speak through human beings, with both good and evil potential.
To Read/Listen/Watch and Access More Resources
Open Culture: free cultural & educational media on the web
Great online resource:
Open Culture editor Dan Colman scours the web for the best cultural and educational media. He finds the books you want, the classes you need, and plenty of enlightenment in between.
Open Culture
Open Culture editor Dan Colman scours the web for the best cultural and educational media. He finds the books you want, the classes you need, and plenty of enlightenment in between.
Open Culture
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Altcountry: #65 Old and New (Tunes)
#65 Old and New (Tunes)
Altcountry (Netherlands)
Appropiate new and old songs by Ronnie Hawkins, Lenny and the Piss Poor Boys, Kathy Mattea, Arlo Guthrie, Drag The River, Shiloh, Hayes Carll, Guy Clark, The Low Anthem, Naked Prey, The York Brothers, Russ Brown and Tift Merritt.
Arlo Guthrie
To Listen to the Episode
Altcountry (Netherlands)
Appropiate new and old songs by Ronnie Hawkins, Lenny and the Piss Poor Boys, Kathy Mattea, Arlo Guthrie, Drag The River, Shiloh, Hayes Carll, Guy Clark, The Low Anthem, Naked Prey, The York Brothers, Russ Brown and Tift Merritt.
Arlo Guthrie
To Listen to the Episode
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