New Localism: Living in the Here and Now [1st ed.] 978-3-030-21578-1;978-3-030-21579-8

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-vii
Introduction (Andrew Stables)....Pages 1-6
Globalisation and Dis-location: Theoretical Framework (Andrew Stables)....Pages 7-40
Localism and Protectionism (Andrew Stables)....Pages 41-56
Economic Localism (Andrew Stables)....Pages 57-66
Living in and for the Here-and-Now (Andrew Stables)....Pages 67-81
New Localism, Arts and Culture (Andrew Stables)....Pages 83-95
Going with the Flow of Human Aspirations (Andrew Stables)....Pages 97-112

Citation preview

Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress 10

Andrew Stables

New Localism Living in the Here and Now

Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress Volume 10

Series Editor Dario Martinelli, Faculty of Creative Industries, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, Vilnius, Lithuania

The series originates from the need to create a more proactive platform in the form of monographs and edited volumes in thematic collections, to discuss the current crisis of the humanities and its possible solutions, in a spirit that should be both critical and self-critical. “Numanities” (New Humanities) aim to unify the various approaches and potentials of the humanities in the context, dynamics and problems of current societies, and in the attempt to overcome the crisis. The series is intended to target an academic audience interested in the following areas: – Traditional fields of humanities whose research paths are focused on issues of current concern; – New fields of humanities emerged to meet the demands of societal changes; – Multi/Inter/Cross/Transdisciplinary dialogues between humanities and social and/or natural sciences; – Humanities “in disguise”, that is, those fields (currently belonging to other spheres), that remain rooted in a humanistic vision of the world; – Forms of investigations and reflections, in which the humanities monitor and critically assess their scientific status and social condition; – Forms of research animated by creative and innovative humanities-based approaches; – Applied humanities.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14105

Andrew Stables

New Localism Living in the Here and Now

123

Andrew Stables (emeritus), University of Roehampton London, UK

ISSN 2510-442X ISSN 2510-4438 (electronic) Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress ISBN 978-3-030-21578-1 ISBN 978-3-030-21579-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21579-8 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

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2 Globalisation and Dis-location: Theoretical Framework 2.1 The Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 The Welcome Principle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Micro, Meso and Macro Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 The Rise of Globalisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4.1 Standardisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4.2 Universalism, Impersonalism and Modernity . 2.4.3 Modernity: The Long March of Applied Universal Reason . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4.4 The Limits of Universal Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5 The Performativity Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.6 The Left-Behind Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.7 Democratic Deficit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.8 Modernism Cf. Humanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.9 In Summary: Globalisation/Dis-Location . . . . . . . . . 2.9.1 Theoretical Resources and Possibilities . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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3 Localism and Protectionism . . 3.1 The Importance of Context 3.2 Forms of Local Production 3.2.1 Steel . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.2 Food and Drink . . . 3.2.3 Music . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.4 Summary . . . . . . .

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1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Background and Rationale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Knowledge and Understanding as ‘Recognition As’ References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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3.3 Security of Supply . . 3.4 Community Cohesion 3.5 Environmental Health 3.6 Cultural Diversity . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . .

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5 Living in and for the Here-and-Now . . . 5.1 Ethics of New Localism . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Politics and Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 Existential Localism . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4 From Consumption to Production . . 5.5 Localism, Waste and Recycling . . . . 5.6 Borderless Crime and Local Action . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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6 New Localism, Arts and Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 The Importance of Local Engagement . . . . . . . . . 6.2 Synaesthesia: Relating the Local and the Global . . 6.3 Local Arts Organisations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4 Aesthetics, Environment and Policy . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5 The Local Dimension of Other Aspects of Culture 6.6 From Measurement to Meaning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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4 Economic Localism . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Economic Ideologies . . . . . . . . 4.2 Arational Utility Maximisation 4.3 Public Services . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.1 Health . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.2 Policing . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.3 Transport . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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7 Going with the Flow of Human Aspirations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1 The Way and the Truth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 Maximal Preference Utilitarianism as an Educational Aspiration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.1 Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.2 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.3 Justifying Maximal Preference Utilitarianism . . . . . . . 7.2.4 History of Utilitarianism as an Educational Ideal . . . . 7.2.5 The Parameters of Maximal Preference Utilitarianism for Schoolchildren . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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7.2.6 Application Beyond Children 7.2.7 Concluding Remarks . . . . . . 7.3 Thinking About Capabilities as Well References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 1

Introduction

1.1 Background and Rationale This book marks an extension and application of the fully semiotic position developed in a series of publications beginning with Living and Learning as Semiotic Engagement (Stables 2006a) and applied to childhood in 2011, to the human condition more broadly in 2012 and to learning theory in 2018 (with Nöth, Olteanu, Pesce and Pikkarainen). Previous considerations of the policy implications of this position can also be found in inter alia (Daniels et al. 2019; Stables 2006b, 2009). The new humanities—the Numanities—should not shy from social and cultural theory in the broadest sense. There are theoretical perspectives that come from the humanities that have immense potential significance for economic and political planning as well as for aesthetics and pure history. One such is semiotics. In construing all life as semiosis, semiotics has potentially something to say about everything, yet semioticians have tended to leave the economics to economists and the politics to political scientists and sociologists. Following Sebeok and others, I am also happy to extend the boundaries of semiosis well beyond human living, so ecological concerns form a major theme of this book (e.g. Sebeok 2001). There are indeed many individual examples of semiotics being drawn into sociology, such as in actor network theories and the development of ‘material semiotics’ (Law 2008), but the potential role of the discipline in these areas is still under realised. Semiotics has also found a role within certain social-psychological perspectives, such as that of situated cognition (e.g. Kirschner and Whitson 1997). There is also a wide range of work under the broad umbrella of social semiotics though this field too still lacks holistic social theories grounded in semiotics; rather, semiotic approaches tend to be used on a case by case basis to investigate social and cultural dynamics. As Theo van Leeuwen has put it: Social semiotics is not ‘pure’ theory, not a self-contained field. It only comes into its own when it is applied to specific instances and specific problems, and it always requires immersing oneself not just in semiotic concepts and methods as such but also in some other field (Van Leeuwen 2005: 2). © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 A. Stables, New Localism, Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21579-8_1

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1 Introduction

In short, there are many publications about what semiotics is, but still too few about what semiotics can do for social policy conceived in the broadest sense. The present volume aims to contribute to the field of semiotically driven social theory from the premise that life is inevitably lived in the here-and-now and not merely as the mental application of abstract principles and truths (see Stables 2012 for some of the origins of this argument.). Sensing, perception, apperception and conception interrelate. We live less as operatives within some vast law-driven machine than as responders to environmental signs and signals. Society is not an abstraction or a material machine but an umwelt differently experienced, and indeed differently bounded, in each case. It comprises living, interpretive communities. There is nothing fixed about it. Semiotic theory per se is not then the concern of the coming argument. Rather, it is grounded in a central insight of all semiotic approaches: that reality is what reality means to experiencing subjects, individually and collectively. Meaning, interpretation and subjective experience generally are not merely man-made glosses on external reality but are part of that reality itself, so there is no firm divide between the objective and the subjective. Experience is therefore intersubjective: it is of the world and in the world. Furthermore, as with the issue of observer-dependence in quantum physics, that experience—physical, linguistic, emotional and rational—is always grounded in place, personal history and community, and the whole is richer for every individual contribution and every individual difference. The real world includes rational abstractions but does not consist solely of them, although most modern philosophy understands truth in terms of concepts. In pursuit of a rebalancing, this book contributes to the development of place-based politics, economics, ethics and aesthetics. The following chapters explore the revivification of the local, the lived and the experiential, including the non-rational, in the context of globalisation. This is therefore not a scholarly work on semiotics per se so much as a speculative work on a semiotic ground. The motivation comes from a number of sources. First, many world events in the period around 2016, when the planning of the writing began, can be understood as different sorts of reactions by local communities to national, supranational and global forces that were perceived as threatening in some way. Some of these were movements of nationalist resurgence on a small scale, such as those towards Catalan independence within Spain and Kurdish self-government. One, the Occupy movement, was more of a mass movement of the political Left. Other movements were more closely allied to Right wing populism, including the Front Nationale in France, the rise of the Alternative for Germany movement, and the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States. The vote within Britain to leave the European Union seemed to involve elements of more than one of these tendencies. What united these very disparate uprisings was a sense that the new world order might have brought overall prosperity but ‘it hasn’t done anything for us’, in certain local circumstances. Merely prioritising the local is not enough, however. Localism can, like anything else, be positive or negative. Simply to close one’s doors to outside influences is likely to be the first step towards annihilation, and pure trade protectionism is a dangerous and often self-defeating game. On the other hand, life is lived locally. The local

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is a synergy, an encapsulation of universal influences in a particular here-and-now. Everything exists within the here-and-now, including memories, plans, theories and knowledge of other contexts. The local is not less than the universal, therefore, so much as its real expression. The here-and-now is a lived reality, while the universal is an abstraction, a cerebral and conceptual reality. Localism need not therefore be characterised as merely a knee-jerk defence reaction against external authority and power, for the local takes from and feeds into the universal. A reappraisal of localism is therefore called for that construes it as a creative and positive force that enriches the national and the supranational rather than tries to keep them at arm’s length. Philosophically, the modern world is built on belief in the supremacy of universal reason, even though each of us lives in a world of significations that overlaps with, but does not coincide with, the worlds of others, human and non-human (Stables 2012). Whatever we do, we do in a particular place, at a particular time, under particular conditions. We cannot and indeed should not merely fall back on the received opinions of distant experts for prescriptions that can be applied indiscriminately. Our problems are not all solved by the unquestioning acceptance of standardised prescriptions. For example, the best educated people use their schooling but do not rely solely on it, while the wise pursuer of a healthy life pays heed to medical advice but in the context of responsible decisions he or she makes about lifestyle. In the end, teachers and doctors are useful but they do not make us what we are; we need to work in tandem with them, as the local and immediate should work in tandem with the universal generally. Reality is semiotic, various and local, though it takes from, and then informs the universal. The local and the global need each other; the relationship should be one of agonism, not antagonism. Thus while I found some of the world events around 2016 alarming, I recognised in them a tendency that my interest in semiotic and pragmatist philosophy should have led me to predict: a tendency towards empowerment of the local in the face of a standardising and impersonal global system, as many people experienced it. The world these relatively voiceless people knew simply did not tally with the assumptions of experts. To some extent, therefore, the present argument concerns the status of various kinds of knowledge: it has an epistemological element.

1.2 Knowledge and Understanding as ‘Recognition As’ Within the umwelt, knowledge and understanding are matters of signification and response, not merely of insight into universal truths, though such insight may or may not inform signification and response: that is, abstractions and generalisations are essential to living but living is not merely a matter of abstraction and generalisation. For the purposes of the present argument, knowledge and understanding can both be taken as ‘recognition-as’. That is, my response to anything is to associate it with previous experience, including understanding it as contextualised within certain patterns. If I see a shoe, I know both that the visual data denote ‘shoe’ from experience and that shoes are things worn on the feet, particularly for walking outside. As

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Bertrand Russell first argued, knowledge needs acquaintance but cannot be complete without description (DePoe, undated). However, the gist of the present argument is that such knowledge is not merely applied in real situations, but used selectively, synergetically and interpretively. We do not react to a real life situation by selecting a piece of knowledge as if it were a simple tool. Rather, we recognise a situation as echoing various previous situations that it evokes in combination. Life makes sense because life is haunted, and not merely by universal generalisations. This ensures that the experiences of others can never simply be assumed by the application of a theory, however attractive. For this reason, the work that follows is deeply critical of strong ideological commitments of Right, Left and even Centre (depending on what ‘Centre’ actually means in a given context). Neither corporate free-market capitalism nor socialist rational planning can be depended on to enhance everyone’s quality of life; on the other hand, neither is it valid to make crass judgments such as blaming all the world’s woes on ‘communism’, ‘globalisation’ or ‘neo-liberalism’, ideologies inform and interact; living merely takes account of them. In one sense, therefore, this will be an empiricist argument, assuming that knowledge and understanding are born of experience, and that experience is not merely the application of conscious knowledge and understanding. Concepts interact with emotions and other physical and psychological responses, and the life that valorises the former over the latter is not a superior one. It is important to note, however, that the present argument is for rich, or thick empiricism, not the thin classical empiricism that takes knowledge as the direct result of immediate sense data. I am certainly not arguing that our sensory experience alone allows us to experience the objective reality of nature (For further exploration of this contrast, see Stables 2013). On this account, thought and language are forms of experience rather than detached commentaries on it (see also Koopman 2009, who suggests such an acknowledgment might be a way of uniting divided strands of the pragmatist tradition.). All experience is in part historical, and in part that of others: it is haunted by memories, traditions, expectations and associations generally. What is being suggested here is not merely a view of knowledge as recognition, but rather as ‘recognition-as’ rather than ‘recognition-of’. We do not simply recognise things-in-themselves through either our senses or our powers of reason. This view is therefore opposed to idealist conceptions of knowledge such as that suggested in Plato’s dialogue Meno (undated), in which Socrates shows us an uneducated slave boy’s understanding of geometry. On the present argument, the boy had experienced things like those that Socrates suggests: he recognises patterns from his experience and can apply this recognition to new experiences; this does not serve to tell us whether or not the patterns relate to universal truths. The present argument is also opposed to the conception of knowledge of entities as they simply ‘are’ in themselves. The truth about the world requires us to play our part in its construction. The argument for new localism is therefore based not on the Platonic assumption that the local and immediate are merely trivial instances of universals, nor on the classical, thin empiricist argument that entities are defined by qualities that are directly perceived; rather, the local and even the trivial are the living bases of our worldviews, and when our worldviews work, we take it that they constitute knowledge and under-

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standing. This is as true of communities of expert scientists as of communities of, say, craft workers or manual labourers. Unfortunately in recent years the worldviews of such apparently discrete communities seem to have tended to move ever further apart. Perhaps this has been an inevitable consequence of the specialisation of labour. Whatever the causes, it has begun to produce significant problems for the functioning of modern states, including representative democracies, since representation of one’s voters wishes is much more difficult when it can no longer be assumed that there is a strong shared ideological commitment. This is not to argue that we live in isolated bubbles, either as individuals or as communities. The aim of this book, therefore, is to think through some of the ways in which the local and the global could interact more productively. It posits New Localism as ways of empowering individuals and local communities so that they can grow and flourish while the systems that connect and support them also remain strong. It aims to provide a more nuanced and positive set of ideas for local renewal than crude anti-capitalist or anti-government formulations, for simple rejection is not much of a blueprint for the future. The first, and longest chapter makes the argument more fully; the remaining, shorter chapters each examine a particular aspect of the issues: the economic, political, ethical, aesthetic and educational implications of New Localism.

References Daniels, Harry, Andrew Stables, Hau Ming Tse, and Sarah Cox. 2019. School design matters: relating school environments to the practice and experience of teaching and learning. London: Routledge. DePoe, John M. undated. Knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Accessed 2 Jan 2019 from https://www.iep.utm.edu/knowacq/#SH2b. Kirschner, David, and James A. Whitson (eds.). 1997. Situated cognition: Social, semiotic and psychological perspectives. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Koopman, Colin. 2009. Pragmatism as transition: Historicity and hope in James, Dewey and Rorty. New York: Columbia University Press. Law, John. 2008. Actor-network theory and material semiotics. In The New Blackwell Companion to social theory, 3rd ed, ed. Bryan S. Turner, 141–158. Oxford: Blackwell. Plato. undated. Meno. Accessed 1 Jan 2019 from http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/meno.html. Sebeok, Thomas. 2001. Biosemiotics. In The Routledge companion to semiotics and linguistics, ed. P. Cobley, 163–164. London: Routledge. Stables, Andrew. 2006a. Living and learning as semiotic engagement: A new theory of education. New York: Mellen. Stables, Andrew. 2006b. From semiosis to social policy: The less trodden path. Sign Systems Studies 34 (1): 121–134. Stables, Andrew. 2009. School as imagined community in discursive space: A perspective on the school effectiveness debate. In Knowledge, values and educational policy: A critical perspective, ed. H. Daniels, H. Lauder, and J. Porter, 253–261. London: Routledge. Stables, Andrew. 2011. Childhood and the philosophy of education: An anti-aristotelian perspective. London: Continuum. Stables, Andrew. 2012. Be(com)ing human: Semiosis and the myth of reason. Rotterdam: Sense.

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Stables, Andrew. 2013. Semiotics as philosophy for education: From concepts to signs. In Interaction in educational domains (Papers from the Finnish educational research conference 2012), ed. K. Tirri and E. Kuusisto, 37–49. Sense: Rotterdam. Stables, Andrew, Winfried Nöth, Alin Olteanu, Sebastien Pesce, and Eetu Pikkarainen. 2018. Semiotic theory of learning: New perspectives in philosophy of education. London: Routledge. Van Leeuwen, Theo. 2005. Introducing social semiotics. New York: Routledge.

Chapter 2

Globalisation and Dis-location: Theoretical Framework

Abstract The first chapter takes an overview of the argument, explaining its origins in terms of both theory and recent political events. The central ethical premise is explained: that of the Welcome Principle as a feature of a move towards a more place-based ethics, aesthetics, economics and politics. The problematic role of the nation state as a meso level structure between the macro level structures of global corporatism and the micro level structure of the local community is discussed. Four aspects of globalisation, partly intentional and partly not so, are defined: standardisation, impersonalism, a mechanistic approach to life, and universal ethics. Problems arising from these positions include narrow performativity, a sense that many people and communities have been ‘left behind’ and a democratic deficit, whereby local voices are increasingly ignored. The argument also considers the limiting effects of humanism and the need for ecological awareness and action. The theoretical influences on the argument are also explained, particularly its debt to semiotic pragmatism.

2.1 The Problem This chapter addresses the concern from a historical and theoretical perspective. Chapters 2–6 will then examine specific aspects of the problem offering, where possible, suggestions for practical action. We live in a transformed world, in which mass famine has largely been eliminated, most people die of old age rather disease or famine, and more people kill themselves than are killed in wars or by terrorists (Harari 2016). These are dramatic changes, and in many cases amazing achievements, for which we should all be grateful. However, there is a problem. New opportunities have been opened up, but how can claims on them be managed? How can we balance the interests of competing parties, and, overall, allow for maximal human preference (Stables 2016: see Chap. 6) while preserving ecological balance (which is chiefly characterised by non-human interests) and economic efficiency? Does globalisation inevitably mean that the big global players—the massive corporations and superstates—will see their interests win through in every situation? In short, how can everyone have a meaningful voice

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in a globalised world? It is important to address these issues for, as it stands, many people have been literally and metaphorically dis-located. Often, local preferences run up against corporate or ‘big state’ interests. For example, globalisation involves greatly enhanced freedom of movement, and people tend to bring increased economic activity, but the nature of that activity can be controlled from afar to the point at which local communities and individuals feel disempowered, unable to make livings on their own terms or even to feel at home in their own rapidly changing communities. National wealth is not the only valid criterion for flourishing: gross national product does not determine individual quality of life, though it doubtless affects it (GNP per capita, though a little used measure, would be better, though it still does not tell the full story.). For example, the UK increased its gross national product in the early 21st Century partly through the mass immigration of cheap labour, but this was not perceived as advantageous in all communities, as the 2016 vote to leave the European Union illustrates. Not all imported labour is cheap labour, of course. The situation frequently arises in which Person A is moving to a new country to take up a new job and has found a place she would like to live. This new country offers opportunities for financial growth and security that Person A’s home country do not offer. Person B lives next to the plot of land on which Person A’s house will be built, subject to final permission being granted. After a lifetime of public service, Person B spent a lot of money on buying a house on the edge of town adjacent to a conservation area. However, conservation area status has now been removed because of increasing population and demand for homes. Whose rights should prevail in this situation, or in the related but often more painful case of poorer refugees and economic migrants seeking local residence? At present, the power rests between individuals and the state, differently balanced according to national context. Individuals tend to have legal property rights. However, small communities usually do not share such rights collectively: there is no legal conception in most Western countries of villagers collectively owning their villages, for example, and thereby having the final say about the development or otherwise of their collective estate. In fact, in general, there has been a general loss of participative democracy in small communities. Even in Boston, New England in the United States, where the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century residents gathered in places such as the Faneuil Hall to decide their next moves as independent from British colonial rule (albeit the suffrage was initially limited to property owning males), representative democracy now holds sway over direct participation, although communities in New England still have annual town hall meetings to advice their local representatives. In the UK, residents only tend to be consulted on major matters after politicians have decided on what those matters are and very small councils, such as parish councils, have very limited powers. These matters will be discussed more fully later, particularly in Chap. 4, so let us now return to the specific question. If A’s rights prevail universally, then the wish of a human being to be housed, anywhere, will trump any other considerations, including those of local wishes, biodiversity, infrastructure readiness or agriculture.

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If B’s ‘rights’ (for rights in law are questionable here) prevail universally, then there will be a de facto a limit on allowed immigration and national planning policy will be no more or less than the aggregate of local wishes (as opposed to the current situation in which local communities between them are supposed to enact government-led targets).

2.2 The Welcome Principle I argue that local communities (not isolated individuals) should normally have priority over the wishes of incomers in these situations. This is the Welcome Principle, and an example of place-based ethics. There may be exceptional circumstances, for example those relating to refugees seeking asylum in their nearest safe countries, in which the rule might occasionally have to be overturned in the face of a major humanitarian need that cannot be met any other way, but these would indeed be exceptional. In other words, I shall argue for B above, given that B sees things much the same as the majority of her neighbours. Otherwise there is an ethical stalemate. Acceptance of this case requires not only acknowledging the limits of globalisation but also valuing local understandings even where they diverge from widely accepted universal principles (such as freedom of movement, where ‘movement’ implies long term dwelling). Implicit in the latter is an acceptance that even universal human rights can be interpreted variously according to context. Thus while such rights serve as important regulative ideals, mere rights-talk is not sufficient to solve many issues on the ground. Chapter 6 will conclude with some further consideration of this issue of the limits of relying solely on rights, and suggest that rights considerations might be considered alongside concern with capabilities. Across the world, this argument is being made implicitly far more powerfully than I can make it explicitly, through a series of responses to globalisation in recent years, from the Occupy movement on the political left to the election of Donald Trump on the Right. I do not approve of all these movements to a greater degree than any particular reader of this text, but I believe they have appeared for a common reason: universalist globalisation simply has not been working for an increasing number of people. Mainstream political and philosophical thought has had problems accepting this. For example, many around the political Centre in the UK and other European countries have claimed that the referendum outcome to leave the European Union was the result of dissatisfied working class people who would not have voted that way were they materially better off. While there may be some truth in this (for implicit in the present argument is that nothing has a single cause), the explanation ignores the fact that in London, where less well off people struggle most to rent or buy, there was a huge ‘Remain’ vote, while in areas of the North of England where house and rental prices are much more in the range of regular young workers, the ‘Leave’ vote was very strong. Surely, the undeniable expression of the sentiment ‘We don’t like what’s going on’ cannot be dismissed as merely frustration at financial inequality,

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but relates to something more cultural and even deeper: to threats to a way of life in a broad sense. We might have seen this coming. As Jean-Francois Lyotard argued in The Postmodern Condition (Lyotard 1986), contemporary societies tend not to be unified by belief in any one ‘grand narrative’ but instead to be characterised by sub-cultural movements. Thus even religious fundamentalism and strong nationalism (for example, in the cases of Scotland, Chechnya, Catalonia and the Kurds) tend to express themselves in opposition to the vast apparatus of the larger modern nation state and its associated international alliances. We should not be surprised therefore, that there is increasing scepticism about the unquestioning acceptance of globalisation as progress. One of the extreme expressions of this progressive view has been that globalisation can abolish the Us–Them distinction, making everyone ‘Us’ and no one ‘Them’ (Giddens 2013). This is self-evidently doing violence to language, as much as equally meaningless expressions as ‘There’s no such word as “can’t”’ or ‘Giving 110%’. ‘Us’ only has meaning in the presence of ‘Them’. Human differentiation is inevitable and will find new forms if suppressed. There can only be in-groups if there are out-groups and vice versa. This is not to argue that ‘They’ should be treated unkindly, of course. Conceiving of the world in terms of Us and Them exonerates ‘us’ from treating ‘them’ with respect. By contrast, the Welcome Principle demands moral consideration by the welcoming community. The question, ‘Do I/we want to welcome these people here?’ has to be addressed and cannot be shied away from: the Welcome Principle entails responsibilities as well as rights. It is always possible to treat ‘Them’ with respect. Indeed, it is always in the human interest so to do, since what constitutes ‘Us’ overlaps what constitutes ‘Them’: the boundaries between in and out groups are not as fixed as the zealots would like to believe. We are all made of the same stuff, after all. Each of us lives in a Hereand-Now that overlaps with that of others but is also distinct (Stables 2012). It is inevitable, therefore, both that each of us will have a slightly different worldview, and that communities will be recognised by commonalities of worldview. Globalisation, however, as the rise of ‘abstract systems’ (Giddens 1991), can seem to invade and standardise this unique living space, and this forces a reaction.

2.3 Micro, Meso and Macro Structures This book therefore explores the implications of the simple ethical premise that when claims are otherwise equal, the local should take precedence over the non-local. The need arises to address this issue because the period in which we live, which some have termed Late or High Modernity (Giddens 1991), some Postmodernity (Lyotard 1986) and others Liquid or Hyper-Modernity (Bauman 2000; Lipovetsky and Charles 2006), is on all these accounts agreed to be a period in which traditional ways of

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living have been challenged and previously enduring certainties, such as those of family, community and nation, have been unsettled. I refer to what is required as New Localism. What, however, is the justification for referring to this as New Localism as opposed to merely ‘localism’? By this phrase, I am stressing two changes. The first is from seeing the local as opposed almost exclusively to the national, towards seeing the local not as antagonistic towards anything in particular, but rather as in an agonistic relationship with the global: the local and the global need each other to thrive. I am therefore also arguing for something that is not merely protectionist, conservative and backward looking but rather uses traditions and communities to innovate and add richness in every conceivable sense. The aim is protection and empowerment rather than mere protectionism. This chimes with inter alia Lipovetsky and Charles’ view of hypermodernity as a period in which apparently endless innovation is possible (albeit at certain psychological cost, on their account) as humanity shifts its operational emphasis on objects to an emphasis on attributes, so that entities become known for what we can do with them rather than having fixed and inflexible historical status (Note that this chimes with the epistemological position outlined in the Introduction.). Old localism was about retreat into an ossified past; new localism is concerned with new possibilities arising from existing circumstances. This argument is largely concerned with the relationship of the individual and small group, the micro level, with that of global forces, the macro. The nation state is no longer the big picture, although certain very powerful nation states, such as the United States, China and Russia, wield influences roughly on a par with those of the biggest transnational corporations. In general, however, the nation is now a meso-level structure that mediates—though sometimes is scarcely involved—in actions and decisions between the macro-level of the global market and the microlevel of the local community and the individual. The current argument will therefore construe nationhood is an unstable concept, both synchronically and diachronically. Consider, for example, how the concept of nationhood currently plays out in China and in Northern Ireland, or how conceptions of Italian nationhood have varied over the course of the past two hundred years. Amidst this uncertainty, however, it should be acknowledged that global power has been held firmly within the hands of certain dominant, often imperial nations, for much of modern history, often at the cost of the integrity of smaller nations. Also, the power enjoyed by these nations developed largely through two often related channels: invasion and trade. Under the Millennial condition, however, multinational corporations have increasingly become powerful, and often in ways nations cannot match or control: consider, for example, the problems in extracting national taxes from giant multinational companies in recent years, or fighting cyber-crime in conjunction with huge internet and social media organisations. In summary, in the chapters that follow, the nation will sometimes be an agent of the universal, sometimes of the local, and often some sort of intermediary; every effort will be made to make the context clear in each case. In the context of the argument advanced in this book, then, the nation sometimes represents the local voice, rather than the dominant, universalist one. Indeed, there have been times in the past when this was so, though the context was then of invading

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force and/or empire rather than international corporate trade, albeit there was some international trade also; the example of England in the Middle Ages is discussed below. The Twentieth Century, however, was very much a Century of powerful nation states, whereas the Twenty-First has increasingly been about international trade much of which nations have struggled to control: trade in knowledge as well as goods and services. The internet and digital technologies have served to take globalisation to another level beyond that offered by the development of mass international travel in the last Century. In the current context, modern nationalisms can still be strong, unifying and almost universalising, as perhaps in the cases of Russia or China or the United States, depending on perspectives, but more often recent nationalist movements have been expressions of regional opposition to such powers, as in the cases of Chechnya, Tibet, Catalonia or the Kurds. What is meant by ‘the nation’ is after all very different in different contexts. For example, within the UK, concepts of nationhood vary considerably in the cases of Northern Irish Republicans, the Scottish, the Welsh and the English, and sometimes within these groups, while ‘British’ has a set of connotations quite different from at least the first three of these. There are large nationalisms and small nationalisms. In this spirit, there will be much made in the following chapters of the desirability of greater devolution to small communities: the agonistic relationship here, though, is not with or against the national government so much as with or against the hegemony of international corporations and superstates. To be productive, this needs to be an agonistic, not antagonistic relationship: local communities and international corporations need each other as local and national governments do. This is therefore neither an argument about nations vis-à-vis local communities, nor nations vis-à-vis the international community (insofar as it is a community). Rather, the key focus of this book is the relationship of the community at the level of personal lived experience to the global market: nations, therefore, play a very varied role in this. This book is about the micro-macro relationship. Let us return to the original question and examine the issue in a little more depth. To argue that ‘when claims are equal, the local should take precedence over the nonlocal’ is not to argue that the murderer’s wish should trump that of the intended victim, nor the thief’s the property owner’s, for in these cases the claims cannot be justified as equal, but rather that locally produced goods should not be priced out of the market where there is demand for them, nor communities be overridden in decisions about their futures. There are, of course, significant problems in deciding when claims are equal, but we have to move forward on a principled basis of some sort and will discuss the problems this entails. As a starting point, however, consider the tension between the concepts of inward migration (generally considered a good thing), and invasion (considered bad). Major democracies, including the United States, Britain, Australia, France and Germany, have been much exercised by this issue in the present century, and various political movements of the 2010s, including the election of Donald Trump, the rise of Alternative for Germany and Brexit have given voice to popular concerns. Under a relatively free system, freedom of travel and association mean both that people have rights to visit other countries, to work and make relationships there and, by implication, to settle, insofar as settlement is a right, which is less clear. On the

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other hand, existing citizens have their own property rights (an incomer cannot settle on one’s own property, generally speaking), but also some generally acknowledged, if not legally binding, rights of settlement and community. In extremis, there is a general acceptance that those who already inhabit an area should have some say over excluding incomers who are seen as heavily disruptive, either in terms of quantity (pure numbers in a given area) or quality (say, the introduction of criminality). This usually falls short of a legal right, nevertheless. The lines between healthy immigration and invasion are thus not easily drawn. For example, there is considerable and enduring debate over whether the AngloSaxon settlement of England should be referred to as an invasion. More recently, the British people exposed painfully contrasting perspectives in their attitudes to inward immigration during the period of the Brexit vote and negotiations. These perspectives were to some extent painful in their contrasting because there was so much local variation; these were problems of some communities more than others, but the local voices and concerns were not, in general, the stuff of which national news and media coverage were made. Late/Post/High Modernity has intensified concerns about migration because freedom of movement coupled with mass transportation and neoliberal global economics have served to weaken national boundaries and enable increasingly large waves of people—all with some justification, though not all with equal justification—to travel not merely to safe neighbouring countries (where ‘refugees’ can formally be so treated, according to the Geneva Convention) but to countries far away. Despite the horrors of war in countries such as Syria and Yemen, the majority of these are economic migrants, some travelling on reliable information, others not. This has meant significant depopulation of some countries, including a swathe of countries across Eastern Europe, and significant population increases in attractor nations, such as the UK, where the English language, relatively liberal laws on immigration and welfare, and a generally strong economy resulted in net inward migration of over a third of a million (about 0.5% of the total population) per annum in the years immediately prior to the Brexit vote in 2016. In addition, increasing life span meant that the already-resident UK population was increasing, and getting older and in more need of care. Also, Britain’s former colonial status and role in the Commonwealth results in liberal immigration laws for residents of many non-European countries. Given that the new incoming population tended to be concentrated in certain areas, there was understandable concern in some quarters about pressure on services, infrastructure and land, and this concern played a part in the vote to leave the European Union. The knee-jerk, popular reaction is often, but by no means always, one of simple protectionism and sometimes xenophobia (‘There are too many foreigners…’). Over time, there are doubtless benefits of immigration, even on a large scale. All modern nations are mixtures of some sort, if one looks back far enough. In recent times, immigration has resulted in increase in the UK’s gross national product, and the increased population has coincided with increased national employment and reduced unemployment, in stark contrast to certain less well off European countries such as

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Spain, Italy and Greece (https://www.statista.com/statistics/268830/unemploymentrate-in-eu-countries retrieved 27 October 2018, cites rates of unemployment in 2018 as 20.2% in Greece, 15.2% in Spain and 10.9% in Italy). However, many things are good for one in general but bad if taken to excess: food, for example. These national statistics do not define all the lives and experiences of people on the ground, many of whom have not experienced increased quality of life under rapidly increasing populations. For some, the influx has meant little more than more crowded, tenser streets, longer queues at hospitals and for buses and trains, pressure on housing and land, the disappearance of countryside and, in some cases, the appearance, probably unintended, of ghetto areas in which the previous inhabitants feel uncomfortable; meanwhile, there has been no clear concomitant increase in personal wealth or wellbeing or in opportunities for jobs or accommodation for many. Unfortunately, present arrangements are endorsing such anomalies. The free movement of people within the European Union, for example, is a policy not open to radical reinterpretation according to local circumstances. The challenge therefore is to seek ways to rebalance in these cases that do not simply retreat into isolationism, xenophobia and economic protectionism; indeed, to rebalance in a way that is more positive than negative for the world as a whole as well as for people in any particular locale. Mere protectionism is not the answer: it is exclusionary, while new localism should be inclusionary. To make new localism inclusive will entail increased responsibilities as well as rights, for individuals to some extent, but collectively for small communities in particular. This is where the democratic deficit lies after centuries of making democracy less participative and more selectively representative, particularly in countries that are effectively two-party states. A return to more place-based politics is called for, but this is no easy task. We should remember, though, that this is not an entirely new phenomenon and that previous ages have found new ways of reinvigorating the local without denying the universal. For example, prestigious late Medieval literature began to appear in indigenous languages such as English (Chaucer) and Italian (Boccaccio) in what proved to be successful attempts to develop vernacular culture at a time when there was a strong European élite and Latin was the language of church and bureaucracy. At that time, England was a small nation, a local rather than a global force in the terms of the present argument. Although there was only limited international trade then, and there were no vast transnational corporations (arguably the first of these was the British East India Company half a millennium later), the English were a nation ruled by the Norman French at the secular level and by the Roman Catholic church at the religious level, thus French was the language of the court and Latin the language of religion. Furthermore, like most or all European countries, stability depended on strong relations, and sometimes intermarriage, between ruling families across Europe. In this context, English emerged as the new language of the people, drawing on both its Anglo-Saxon roots and the more recent French influence: it is ironic, and in part simply fortuitous, that it is now globalisation’s lingua franca. Part of the appeal of Chaucer (1343–1400) and later Shakespeare (1564–1616) was not only that they were good at using the English language but that they were developing its literary

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use. The English language was regarded as a project to project regional identity, as have the Welsh, Gaelic and Catalan languages in recent years. Shakespeare coined many new words in his literary output, and in many other cases he was the first to put them in writing that has survived (see, for example, http://shakespeare-online.com/ biography/wordsinvented.html retrieved 25 January 2019.). Desire for new moves of this sort is evident in the increased disenchantment with established political parties in recent years. In many places, there is felt to be the need for an infusion of new cultural blood into the global system, though forces within that system unfortunately often act against the development of such new initiatives.

2.4 The Rise of Globalisation ‘Globalisation’ is therefore not a discrete phenomenon, nor one of merely the current millennial condition. The entire history of homo sapiens seems to have been one of movement, temporary settlement, appropriation and exchange. In effect, there has always been an interest in relocation, trade across borders and cultural borrowing. In recent years, however, this trend has been accentuated by faster travel and electronic communications. The more fluid the world has become, the more a new, standardised economic and cultural model has emerged, in which multinational corporations hold immense power over social norms and individual lifestyle choices. This has had two broad effects: mass acceptance by many, and fierce opposition by some, who have retreated to older models (largely), such as nationalism and religious fundamentalism, in attempts to counter what they perceive as threats to their identities and lifestyles. It is hard to identify anything new ideologically in many current reactions to globalisation. Despite this tendency towards universal standardisation, however, globalisation is not an absolute state but a trend and, perhaps, an attitude. As such, it is broadly sympathetic to both free trade and human rights and antipathetic to unnecessary borders and restrictions, such as censorship and economic protectionism. Put thus, why would anyone object to globalisation? To understand this, I suggest we need to concede that globalisation is the result of prioritising the universal over the local and the abstract over the concrete, and that people are often fearful of the consequences of continuing this trend for their self-identities. This objection has a somewhat different emphasis from the more widely rehearsed anti-neoliberal critique of the power of unelected corporations and their associated advertisers and marketing people (such as Monbiot 2016). Sometimes, anti-neoliberal critiques simply offer to replace one totalising and standardising system with another. The political alternative promoted in the present argument is somewhat distinctive within this debate. It is more a critique of universal standardisation than specifically of corporate capitalism; indeed, it acknowledges that the latter has brought benefits as well as problems. To borrow Monbiot’s term, the world is, after all, not a complete mess even if somewhat of one; there are many people enjoying unparalleled standards of peace, security and economic wellbeing.

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2.4.1 Standardisation Standardisation is good when little hangs on the reduction of variety that it results in. For example, life is made much easier when there are standard measurements for screws, bolts, soft drinks and the like. However, often standardisation comes at the cost of loss of valuable variety. Fruits and vegetables provide good examples of this. Apples, for example, are widely available in stores across the world, often having been imported from far away, but the range of apples available for sale through mass outlets in an apple-growing region such as the English Midlands is tiny compared to the range of varieties that have been bred over the centuries. Those that are favoured by the supermarkets will often be regular in shape, heavy in cropping and highly diseaseresistant, but they will not reflect the wide array of tastes and textures that could be available. Modern technology has driven an intensification of mass standardisation. Broadly, the path to the modern age has been that described by Auguste Comte in the Nineteenth Century: from religious dogma to rationalism to science (Comte 2012). Science applied as technology and then marketed in the most cost efficient way has resulted in goods being made available widely, but only often at the cost of loss of local variety. The abstract and the universal, rather than the particular and various, are the driving forces of modern science. A. N. Whitehead has described modern philosophy as a “series of footnotes to Plato” (Whitehead 1979: 39) and it is to Plato we first owe the view that rigorous intellectual inquiry can lead us to the true meanings of universal concepts, such as beauty or justice. According to dominant readings, Plato regarded context and materiality as distractions from the path of rigorous inquiry into the nature of universal truths that were contextless, mental and disembodied: the pure forms. Mainstream Western philosophy has since then broadly followed Plato’s lead, with the exception of the dismissal of empirical experience, applying it to ethics (the rules of human behaviour) as well as epistemology (the science of knowing). Kant, for example, argued that we should act on the basis of the Categorical Imperative: in effect, that we should act in a way that we would consider always to be right, regardless of local factors that may yield unfortunate consequences. Prominent moral philosophers of the modern era have accepted that the purpose of philosophical ethics is to arrive at moral codes that are objectively valid and thus universally applicable. The more universal truth is, the more abstract it is. There is a continuum from concrete to abstract, from ‘don’t hit that dog’ to ‘don’t hit dogs’ to ‘don’t hit’ to ‘avoid violence’. Modern philosophy has tended to operate at the level of the abstract. Indeed, this has resulted in many desirable outcomes. Modern science and technology have benefited enormously from the quest to identify universal, abstract truths that can be applied as theories and operationalised in practice. Thus Anthony Giddens, a great supporter of globalisation, has written of Late Modernity as High Modernity, characterised by the rise of abstract systems, beginning with the standardisation of time between the 16th and 19th Centuries (Giddens 1991). The standardisation of time is indeed an interesting example to explore in this context, for while it empowers in some areas, it simultaneously disempowers in

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others. In the pre-Modern and Early Modern worlds, the times to sow seed, sleep, harvest and eat were set by the seasons and the weather. Whether it was the right time to do something was a matter requiring human judgment and sensitivity. Following a series of moves to standardise time within nations, prompted in the England by moves such as Elizabeth 1’s road building programme in the late 1500s and the development of railways in the early 1800s, everyone in the UK can now confidently know the ‘correct’ time on one level. Finding the right time then becomes increasingly a mechanical act of rule-following (the working day begins at 9 a.m., for example). However, the standardisation does not work perfectly internationally even at a mechanical level: for example, Spain is two hours ahead of England while not being to the East as it adheres to Central European Time. More significantly though, the time on the clock may well not be the best time for me, or you, to do a certain thing. The tyranny of clock time creates traffic congestion and delays recovery from illness, as well as allowing the sort of co-ordination that allows us to rely, more or less, on the availability of a train or aeroplane to take us where we want to go. Modern time is generally time as technology: it is a tool for social interaction. However, to live satisfying lives, people need to retain the freedom to march to their own drums (Thoreau 1966) and to make more subjective decisions about when they feel ready to do certain things: to understand time as significance and opportunity (see also Stables 2012). This tension between two conceptions of time dates back to at least the ancient Greeks, who distinguished between chronos (time as measurement; our clock time) and kairos (the opportune time, as in ‘it’s time to sow the seeds’: time as significance). In everyday experience, the distinction has not really gone away though the separate terms have (see http://www.exactlywhatistime. com/other-aspects-of-time/time-in-different-cultures, retrieved 28 October 2018, for example, for a fascinating summary of some cultural differences in approaches to time in the modern world.). Each age must aim to find its balance between these two conceptions of time, as it must between the local and distinct, and the universal and standardised, more generally.

2.4.2 Universalism, Impersonalism and Modernity Universalist reason and ethics can stand in the way of new localism, though they should not. To take two examples, a universal logic of design can blind us to contextual differences, as will be discussed in Chap. 5, while a universal ethics of non-aggression can prevent us from defence against the unalloyed aggression of others. From a purely logical point of view, it might be argued that there is no rational reason to favour the local and contextual: two wrongs do not make a right. Any such reason must be purely pragmatic. This is a problem with rationalism, however, not with people. Reason is impersonal while people are bound by relationships and environments. Philosophy is often blind to this, but human flourishing demands attention to local context. The universalist ethics that lie at the heart of the Western philosophical tradition tends to undervalue local experience and interpretation, though

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there is a considerable range of views around this. Meanwhile, people experience the consequences of their actions locally. You can say what you like about what should happen in the world, but it is only when you act locally that you experience, and thus can learn fully from, the consequences of your actions. The old environmentalist adage, ‘Think Global, Act Local’ is to some extent misleading: one inevitably thinks local, albeit in the context of the global, otherwise every place would be treated the same. To take a concrete example, there may well be universal value in the vegetarian argument that meat production is ecologically damaging. At the same time, there are specific areas of rich pasture land or prairie that are well suited to grazing animals but would only produce good crops with considerable human interference, including more advanced drainage systems and widespread chemical use. The global truth in this case may not always justifiably determine local action. Local action and consequence are very important in developing ethical reasoning and moral responsibility, including but also going beyond the adoption of the Welcome Principle. Think of the effect of being confronted with our own household waste, for example. At present, we can easily justify that what we do is worthwhile since we simply hand over our leftovers to others to dispose of out of our sight. The vast amount of plastic packaging and throw-away cutlery, for instance, does not seem in any one place or at any one time to be the problem that it actually is at the global level because the chain of local action and consequence has been distorted. However, the power of the rationalist tradition is great. Perhaps most famously in the Myth of the Cave in Republic (Plato 2007: Book VII), Plato argues that our individual, local experience of life is of no more value than chasing shadows. It is only by logical pursuit—dialectic, mathematics—that we can attempt to even draw near to understanding timeless truths about universals, including non-mathematical constructs such as beauty and justice. Interestingly, Plato takes Socrates as his model here, though Socrates himself (as described by Plato, as he left no texts of his own) was always keen to discourage people from thinking they were getting anywhere near any such understanding. At various points in the Republic, Socrates points to the foolishness of those who believe they have attained true and final knowledge. The impossibility of attainment notwithstanding, the dominant interpretation of Plato has been that there is a possibility of perfect and final knowledge, though it can only be approached through logical inquiry. For millennia now, philosophy has distanced itself from other belief systems, other than mathematics and rigorous physical science (formerly known as natural philosophy), through its demand for reasoned justification in relation to abstract principles. Interestingly, however, Plato’s own method of dialectic does not sit at the heart of contemporary philosophical method. We often seek nature’s universal laws without much emphasis on direct human interaction or acknowledgement of differing viewpoints. We utilise the empirical in the search for universal truths. Of course, Plato is not the whole story of Western philosophy, even if its father. Empiricism owes little to Plato but a great deal to Aristotle, his pupil, whose teleological perspective allotted differing ends and means to both intellectual concerns and the practical actions of individuals (Aristotle 2011). Aristotle argued that each life form’s role in furthering the greater good derives from its telos or ultimate purpose,

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hence people are suited to different occupations, and animals to different functions (To Aristotle, while humans had rational souls, animals had sensitive souls: Bos 2010. Animals had experience and were not simply machine-like creatures. The contrasting mechanistic worldview that grew from Platonic roots will be discussed below.). Locke took empiricism further by arguing that individual experience is necessarily always distinctive, and that all knowledge and understanding follow experience (Locke 1996). Kant, Leibniz, Spinoza and Hegel, in rather different ways, sought to understand the empirical as contributing to overall rational progress, as did Peirce, who to many stands as the father of modern semiotics (Guyer 1992a, b; Kulstad 1997; Spinoza 2016; Duquette undated; Olteanu 2015). Nevertheless, modern empiricism often operates on a thin view of what constitutes experience, construing experience often as no more than that which is observed under controlled conditions, and focusing on one dynamic at a time as though natural events have single causes and effects, which is rarely if ever the case. Some philosophers have sought ways to attain perfect rationality by making use of everyday experience rather than rejecting it, and modern empirical science operates on this basis to some degree: it is not merely deductive. However, what counts as experience in empiricism is often only that which can be observed and measured consistently by more than one investigator: hardly the gamut of the human condition. Those philosophers of science who have argued that scientific progress is arbitrary, agonistic, culturally driven, or about disproof rather than proof (for example, respectively, Lyotard 1986; Kuhn 1996; Feyerabend 2010; Popper 2002) tend still to be regarded as controversial left-field figures. Most of the great philosophers of the Western tradition sought ways to understand individual experience and/or local variation as resources for greater understanding while still inferior to it. Of the major Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment figures pursuing critiques of rationalism, Hume went the furthest in his flirtation with the idea that a human being may be no more than a ‘Bundle of Perceptions’ who merely notices that events follow on from each other, and cannot understand causes in any more meaningful way (Hume 1745). American pragmatism, as understood by James and Dewey, is arguably the nearest modern Western philosophy gets to downplaying absolute reason in favour of individual (James) and collective (Dewey) experience (Menand 2011). An alternative tradition dating back to at least Heraclitus, in the Greek tradition, and the Buddha, whose influence has lately been felt more strongly in the West, according to which change is the only universal certainty we can grasp, has been for millennia regarded as peripheral. Heraclitus, whose work unfortunately only survives in fragments, argued that a river’s water is never still and is never the same (though it remains water), thus the generalisations (water, river) are effectively of less universal value than the appreciation of change. The Buddha also argued that much or all of what we understand is the result of consciousness and karma (cause and effect of actions: not merely our own), while true understanding involves seeing that reality is evanescent, empty of form and substantial essence. However, Heraclitus and the Buddha are also peripheral figures in Western philosophy, particularly in academia (Graham 2015; Velez undated).

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To understand human flourishing in terms solely of universal rationality is reductive. Ancient Greek philosophy as a whole realised this, as its aims included the pursuit of eudaimonia (happiness) and arete (virtuous excellence). While professional philosophy has become increasingly Truth-based rather than Way-based, and furthermore concerned predominantly with analytic logic, our understanding of human evolution, largely since Darwin, has enabled us to understand that human flourishing as a whole is not a matter purely of mind and logic; we cannot flourish as human beings by attempting to enforce a strict distinction between mind and body. We are inevitably embodied beings whose experiences of life are grounded in places and relationships and are dependent on physical health and a sense of wellbeing. We cannot be purely rational calculating machines living in a world of concepts, though we may be able to create such machines and even fear their power to challenge us in certain respects. In any case, we cannot calculate other than with respect to affairs in which we have an interest. It is important that we act in accordance with how we have evolved to act (Note that I am not assuming that Darwin’s conception of evolution is entirely adequate to explain all forms of change in the modern world; it needs some modification so to do: Olteanu and Stables 2018.). Further progressive change can only arise from acceptance of who we are in the broadest sense, whether that change is obviously biological or more short term and technological. This does not require condoning every impulse and action, but it does require living with, acknowledging and drawing conclusions from our actual, evolved responses to others and to events: that is, to personal, localised experience.

2.4.3 Modernity: The Long March of Applied Universal Reason While Plato is a seminal figure in the quest for universal reason, it is the period of Western history between the Middle Ages and the present day during which the results of this quest began to be applied to improve the human condition. As Comte argued, the progress was from unquestioned religious belief to rationalism to science: physical science before social science. Modernity is the period during which science became systematised and technology became its application. To Aristotle, techne was skill, craft (Aristotle 2011); for us, technology has become something replicable, mechanical, electronic and largely impersonal. From a broadly evolutionary perspective, historical periods may be conceived in terms of shared sets of values and practices that people believed would enable them to flourish. On this basis, modernity has certain defining characteristics. These are humanism, belief in autonomous rational agency, belief in progress and the transformation of the natural environment. By humanism, I simply refer to the idea that human beings are uniquely endowed or gifted in certain respects: that is, that only human beings have minds, divine characteristics, understanding of the regularities of nature, language and finer feelings.

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Following from this is the belief that the prime function of human life is to use the natural resources available to improve human life; this is the overriding value irrespective of religious commitment. Human beings are deemed capable of this because they are able to reason for themselves, whether that capacity is encouraged to act independently, as in revolutionary Europe, or in the service of social order, as in many Asian traditions. (Asian traditions are differentially affected by mainstream Western philosophy: there are often other traditions at work.) This sense of human giftedness has been more apparent in modernity than in other epochs, as far as we can tell from the limited evidence that exists about human beliefs. Between the Middle Ages and roughly the present day, people seem to have assumed that their flourishing is best served by stressing not only the superiority but the absolute qualitative difference of the human from other creatures, but this is by no means a necessary or timeless assumption. The prehistoric cave paintings that can be found in many sites around the world, and no more extensively than at Lascaux in the French Dordogne, seem to show a world in which humanity’s relationship with other species is much more fluid and less clearly demarcated than in modern times (Herzog 2010). Surviving ancient rituals from around the world often involve people taking on animal states. On such accounts, human flourishing depends on a symbiotic rather than exploitative relationship with non-human nature. There is a prima facie logic to people recognising the value of taking on the strength of the lion or the vision of the eagle and acting in order to try to imbue some of those qualities into themselves (This is not to claim that such practices arose as the result of conscious deliberation.). In modernity, this approach to human enhancement has been replaced by one that no longer worships nature but merely exploits it. Even in Ancient Greece, the attitude to animals was very different from that which has dominated since Descartes and Newton, who regarded all of nature beyond the human as operating blindly and mechanically in accordance with nature’s laws. This dichotomy of animals-as-nature-as-machines versus humans-as-supernatureas-minds is by no means apparent in the extensive works of Aristotle, where each creature has its own psyche (soul, or life force) and telos (purpose in the greater scheme of things: Bos 2010). On Aristotle’s account, animals are not machines, even if some of them exist to feed us. There is an important difference here between ancient and modern conceptions of the human vis-à-vis the natural world: it is only in the latter case that non-human nature is seen merely as standing reserve (Heidegger 1977), as resource simply to be mined to further human interests. Earlier humanity had to fight against aspects of nature and might fear much of it, but wholescale destruction and exploitation without conscience or some form of self-sacrifice would have been dangerous as well as unthinkable, an attack on the gods and spirits themselves. While human survival and flourishing have always been the prime motivator of human beings, ideas of how best to achieve these have changed enormously, with severe ecological consequences. Modernity thus construed began in the late Middle Ages and was propelled by a fierce belief in free human inquiry, as opposed to received wisdom and superstition, with effects on society, particularly in terms of scientific and technological progress. The artistic Renaissance, and innovative thinkers such as Galileo, Locke and Newton

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all share a belief in the power of the human mind to improve the lives of individuals and societies. However, the unalloyed optimism of the Enlightenment was to be shortlived. To many, the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th Centuries marks a critical moment in Modernity: the moment at which the problems associated with scientific progress came to be acknowledged alongside its benefits. Poets such as Blake and Wordsworth, and philosophers such as Rousseau, all precursors of the cultural movement of Romanticism, have left us powerful expressions of dissatisfaction with industrialisation, as the following brief quotations illustrate. Blake: I wander through each charter’d street Near where the charter’d Thames does flow And mark in faces that I meet Marks of weakness, marks of woe (London. Blake 1977) Rousseau: We are born free and everywhere we are in chains (The Social Contract. Rousseau 1997: opening) Wordsworth: Getting and spending, late and soon, We lay waste our powers (Lines Composed Upon Westminster Bridge. Wordsworth 1973) Here we see the first responses to Enlightenment science and progress as wasteful, spiritually sterile and disempowering. Particularly since the Industrial Revolution, with its often alarming social outcomes, technological progress has been widely regarded as a mixed blessing. The voices of the Earth and of the non-rational mind seem to many to have been silenced by a rapacious obsession with control (Bonnett 2004). On the other hand, Modernity’s achievements have brought great benefits including in terms of health and life expectancy, so the picture remains a mixed one. Given this ambivalence, it is not surprising that there have been many contrasting characterisations of Millennial, post-industrial society. Optimists such as Giddens (1991) refer to Late Modernity as High Modernity. Castells (2000) celebrates the power of mass communication in his vision of a Network Society. On the other hand, Lyotard (1986) describes the end of the modern condition with the collapse of anything like universal belief in modernist ideals such as liberty, progress and science; to Lyotard, Late Modernity is Postmodernity, characterised by sub-cultures rather than any one dominant culture (In many ways bleak, if the dominant culture is that of international media celebrity, a culture in which winners take all without always even having to achieve anything of substance, then Lyotard’s vision of an even more fragmented society might seem appealing to many.). Others recognise recent changes as an evolution of Modernity, but with some unsettling effects, such as Bauman’s

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Liquid Modernity (2000) and Beck’s Risk Society (1992), worlds in which change is so fast that individuals find themselves attempting to negotiate fundamentally unstable conditions without any settled sense of self-identity or moral compass. Much as these accounts differ, there is common ground between them. Dislocation is a common theme, in the literal sense of dis-location: becoming separated from locally distinct traditions and ways of life, either to migrate to something better (globalised consumer culture, or however one would prefer to describe it) or to feel disempowered and disenfranchised, or some mixture of the two. Meanwhile, at the meso level—the level of the nation state or broader, but not international community—fundamental shared beliefs and authority systems are undermined by mass communication and other forms of mingling. Thus even in highly controlled societies, there is much unofficial access to products such as Western films, via the internet. Religious and political former certainties are challenged by new ideas. While on one level, this has the potential to open minds to new possibilities, on another, people find it increasingly hard to manage risk, and perhaps as a result are less motivated by deferred gratification. The mass media play a key role here. Through selecting certain items, and indeed people, as newsworthy, local populations are presented with a somewhat homogenised and highly selective view of what seems to be important. This has severe consequences for individual decision making. In a tight-knit traditional community, for example, people might have been used to helping others in times of crisis. Their televisions and other devices, however, do not show much in the way of local news but focus on disasters of perceived international significance sometimes thousands of miles away. For example, as an individual, if there is exceptional weather in my local area, I know that certain precautions need be taken. However, I am less clear how I, as an individual, should respond to a famine in Africa or a flood in India. Of course, there is a positive moral challenge in thinking all this through. On the other hand, the problematisation of proximity and distance that the mass media causes can be the source of considerable anxiety and confusion (Stables 1998). Ulrich Beck (1992) is one of the best known commentators to have considered the individualisation of risk that Late Modernity brings. Bombarded with effectively globalised information from a bewildering range of sources, life for the growing individual seems simultaneously full of possibilities and frighteningly confusing. The development of modern science brought with it a set of beliefs about how people could better thrive. Now exploitation of nature could exist without atonement, and the assumption was that stressing the difference between human and animal nature was the way forward. Only humans shared with the divine the gift of reason, and the capacity of free will to direct it. This of course implied responsibility towards others outside as well as within the human family, but gone was the acceptance that we already are, in some important sense, lion or eagle, and that diminishing non-human nature is a diminishment of ourselves. The dawn of the third Millennium coincides with a revision of modernity’s assumptions in this respect. A series of interrelated concerns about pollution, habitat and species loss, biosecurity and climate change all tend towards a revised view according to which human flourishing is dependent on non-human flourishing, and

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the narrow immediate human interest is not the only one to be taken into account. On this revised account, for us to flourish, the planet as a whole must flourish. This tension between two world views plays out differently according to context. For example, in the context of US politics at the time of writing, the unreconstructed modernist view is in some respects closer to that of President Donald Trump than that of the state of California, which in 2018 committed itself to phasing out carbonreleasing sources of energy by 2040. Also, at first blush it would seem that Trump’s view is the more closely associated with localism, as he promises to safeguard coal mining communities and the like through protecting them against the vagaries of the global market. This is indeed a form of localism, but not the New Localism for which I argue in this book, as it threatens to weaken rather than strengthen the symbiotic relationship between the local and the global: it is pure protection of the old in the face of the new. If Trump’s policy were to encourage the developments of new technology to render the use of local resources more efficient and less environmentally damaging, then and only then might it qualify as New Localism, whether those local resources be sunshine (in large supply in most of the USA) or even new forms of carbon capture to enable a revised and much cleaner form of coal industry. Moves such as making Las Vegas’ municipal buildings entirely reliant on alternative energy sources might be regarded as New rather than Old Localism (https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ entry/the-city-of-las-vegas-is-now-powered-entirely-by-renewable-energy retrieved 30 October 2018). In general, the modernist agenda has not been abandoned. Whether the postmodern period is best described as Late Modern, Postmodern, High Modern, HyperModern or Liquid Modern is a matter of where one places the changes on a continuum and of how relatively positively or negatively one feels about them. Beyond these differences, there remains near universal belief in the potential power of scientific innovation for technological development and a sense that progress is both desirable and possible. There is no evidence mass rejection of advanced health care or of digital technology, for example, despite the debates around the specific roles these should play in society. Notwithstanding, the emphasis is now increasingly on scientific and technological innovation that enhances rather than damages biodiversity. In the short term, this requires a reduction in heavy industry and in carbon producing, energy guzzling factories, homes and transport, and in policies that will tie people more closely to their local environments and what they can produce, for themselves first and then for the world at large. New Localism thus inevitably involves global responsibility, by attempting to strengthen the ecosystem as a whole rather than damaging it in the pursuit of our own narrow purposes.

2.4.4 The Limits of Universal Ethics The triumph of a belief in universal, undifferentiated reason inevitably correlates with a belief in the superiority of universal ethics. According to such a belief, if it is right to hold a moral position in one case, it is right in all cases, as Plato, Kant and

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many more recent philosophers have argued. If it is right to be honest, you should be honest to all others on all occasions (no white lies); if it is right to care for children, you should care for children on the other side of the world as much as you care for your own. If these strictures are impractical, it is you who are at fault rather than the system of ethics. By contrast, under Buddhism, there is no such enduring system to fall back on other than certain timeless truths including acceptance of change, belief in compassion, and ultimately belief that your actions will and do change the world, alongside the actions of others, for yourself and for those who follow you. There is no necessity to believe or disbelieve in God, for example. Overall, I take the view that Buddhism has more to offer New Localism than most of the Western philosophical tradition with the exception of pragmatism, that also stresses the responsibility of the individual and small group in trying out courses of action and progressing through learning from their consequences. Semiotics—my own specialist interest—is philosophically a branch of pragmatism. One might consider Christianity thus (that is, as a religion best followed through practical action) except that it is rarely considered a philosophical tradition, though its ethics can stand in absence of religious belief, as is the case for many declared humanists. It must be acknowledged, of course, that all the religious traditions have been interpreted and applied in a variety of ways, by no means all of them sympathetic to other human beings, let alone the rest of nature. From a pragmatic perspective, to qualify as a valid universal ethic, the actions such an ethic prompts must always work, though not necessarily immediately. However, we only know whether actions have been successful other than through trying them out in specific, concrete contexts. It is unlikely therefore that full agreement about a universal ethic could ever be reached beyond perhaps the broadest of generalisations, such as the Golden Rule, the aim of treating others as you would have others treat you. Pragmatism accepts that moral judgments and choices of action are always undertaken in unique contexts, and this places heavy emphasis on the role of personal judgment. Universalism, meanwhile, can detach people from confronting the consequences of their actions and reduces the scope for contextual judgment, and can thus promote bigotry and greed rather than good. This was certainly not Kant’s intention, but it is nevertheless easier to follow universal dictums than to weigh up consequences. There is much bigotry in the world masquerading as universal reason and right, some of it coming from adherents to traditions including Buddhism, Christianity and pragmatism. Traditionally ethics have been divided into two broad types. Deontological ethics are duty-based and prescribe actions because they are in accord with an accepted dogma, which can be belief in absolute rationality, as explicit in Kant and implied in Plato, but could also be something less obviously rational such as patriotism. Consequentialist ethics prescribe, or recommend, actions based on their observable outcomes. To claim that strongly rationalist views are non-consequentialist is, however, misleading. Consider compassion as a universal good. This claim can only be based on thinking through the consequences of actions, reflecting post hoc on the consequences of actions, or a combination of the two. From any perspective that rejects absolute mind-body Cartesian substance dualism, among them strong semi-

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otic perspectives (Stables 2012; Stables et al. 2018), thoughts and actions cannot be completely demarcated in any case. It follows that actually there can be no ethical system that is non-consequentialist in the broadest sense, as rationalism could not hold—indeed, could not feasibly emerge—in an entirely irrational world comprising entirely irrational people. The effective difference between deontological and consequentialist ethics therefore lies in consideration of long term versus short term consequences rather than in consideration of consequences at all. At one end of the continuum lie belief systems based on lapsarianism: belief that the world is corrupted and good actions will bear fruit in the afterlife, either on another plane or through reincarnation. For any person, this is the longest term thinking possible. At the other end is the crudest form of pragmatism that values any action that one can get away with in the short term. This again is a continuum rather than a strict bifurcation. For example, Buddhists make longterm considerations about consequences for rebirth and possible escape from it through Nirvana, while Utilitarians can balance the demands of act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism, the former placing more focus on immediate consequences than the latter which, in some forms, may effectively be synonymous with deontological ethics as they require habitual rule following for the common good. If all ethical systems are driven by calculations of consequences in some way, then it is important that every individual is able to make such calculations as fully as possible. To do this requires a high degree of local control over actions. If there is only one available way to do things, people cannot either individually or collectively develop or verify any ethical system: they are effectively prevented from growth into more rational agency (Hence a paradox: people who have not experienced democracy are not well placed to act responsibly as democrats, yet can only learn to do so by being granted democratic rights. Often the move to a more democratic polity can result in things getting worse before they get better.). If we cannot see the consequences of our actions, we cannot reset our moral compasses, or even have any faith in them. Therefore we must act locally to make sense of the world. It is not merely a case of seeing the consequences of our actions either. We should be able to feel them. In an age of mass production and transportation, I have very little idea of the consequences of buying, say, a particular item of clothing from a large multinational chain. I have no idea of the conditions under which workers for that firm are treated, for example, particularly in other countries. However, if I buy an article of clothing from a local tailor, I can have far more knowledge of its provenance, and such choices give me scope for moral action and ethical deliberation that simply would not be possible were I to live my whole life without such choices. Buying local products is overall a richer experience. Multiply this to the whole range of areas in which we might, or should, be making moral choices, and the extent of the issue is apparent. In the long run, universal ethics themselves will be weakened by this lack of an agonistic relationship between the local and the global. Whatever we believe, we always judge by results in the long run, even where others are bewildered about our conclusions. Falling back on abstract universal principles can reduce levels of personal risk, at least in the area of moral self-worth. Deep learning (Sterling 2001), however, arises

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from the management of risk, insofar as personal consequences flow from how we incorporate new information into our world views and act on it. In a traditional society, with an apprenticeship model of education, young people were gradually inducted into a limited range of skilled practices and learnt to manage the attendant risks as they went along. In our world, young people are not so neatly inducted but are instead invited to make lifestyle choices from a huge palette of options while not being trained for any social role in particular. Meanwhile, they are allowed to take very few risks, as the recent emphasis has been very strongly on child protection; even playing outside the home is now much more severely curtailed than in, say, the 1960s. Even more confusingly, there may be traditional influences at play that dismiss their aspirations so they may feel degraded by members of their local communities. As a result, many people are both less inclined to see themselves as having a fixed role (contra Aristotle) and more inclined to be frightened of commitment. Perversely, the pressure to make lifestyle choices may actually reduce the capacity to learn through risk rather than enhance it. Rather, it is anxiety that is enhanced. This may mean that it is harder to ‘grow up’ at all, as the phrase is generally understood. Arguably young people are infantilised for longer than they used to be. Even the extension of compulsory education can be seen as a symptom of this infantilisation, since it defers the point at which people can achieve a high degree of personal and economic independence as a result of their own actions and choices. Indeed, the traditional notion of the adult citizen as a responsible, mature individual with a largely fixed but productive role in society has been weakened by recent social change, and changes to childhood cannot be understood apart from changes to adulthood (Stables 2011, 2017). This more fluid world view should be more empowering, but in effect may often be the reverse. Taken together, there are a number of historical trends that point to a reconsideration of the human from the responsible agent of Renaissance humanist modernity to, effectively, the machine of post-industrial late modernity and then the lost soul of the digital age. The mechanistic logic that has brought great scientific and technological development over the past five hundred years has also had an unintended result: the tendency to regard and evaluate social institutions and actors purely mechanistically, in terms of measurable outputs in relation to measurable inputs. Lyotard referred to this tendency as ‘performativity’, and argued that it is the inevitable result of the impossibility of arriving at a shared set of guiding values.

2.5 The Performativity Problem It has become a tendency within Modernity to think of all systems as machines, and thus individuals as cogs within those machines. We have tended to scientise, or mathematise, society, yet from a semiotic perspective, mathematics is a sign system among other sign systems, not the logical root of all other sign systems, as the modernist account tends to assume. This move can be understood particularly as a consequence of the 17th and 18th Century Enlightenment. This was a period of

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massive growth in scientific understanding, or natural philosophy, and in certain other fields including ethics and politics: it was the period of inter alia Descartes, Locke and Newton. Broadly, the Enlightenment had two aims: one of pure understanding, and one of social progress. What happened most dramatically, however, was the growth in applied science, in technology. The collective insight of Descartes, Newton, Leibniz and others did not result in direct social progress, in the sense of alleviation of poverty and disease and amelioration of the environment; more obviously, it resulted in the Industrial Revolution: in huge social change rather than social progress. There was massive growth in national wealth during this period, but there was also terrible poverty, albeit of a rather different kind from that of the rural poor. Dislocated and dislocated from their villages and traditions, millions found themselves in crowded and unsanitary conditions, working long hours in loud and dangerous environments, their lives controlled by the abstract system of clock time and the demands of mass production. This suffering was not confined to the workers themselves. In her history of childhood compiled through analysis of original documentary sources, Linda Pollock (1983) found more evidence of cruelty towards children in the 19th Century than in the 18th, when there is evidence of considerable liberalisation notwithstanding the considerable social problems of the period (Pollock 1983). Notwithstanding the aims of Enlightenment thinkers, therefore, the postEnlightenment period was strongly marked by the rise of the machine. There were always aspirations behind the Enlightenment that transcended the mechanical: Comte’s role in developing the discipline of sociology in the Nineteenth Century is an expression of this aspiration, as is the work that John Dewey and others were involved in with the Chicago School of the later 1800s and early 1900s. That sense of aspiration is strongly evident in the much earlier music of Bach, for example, and in the explicit commitments of natural and other philosophers to “justify the ways of God to Men” (as Milton put it in the opening stanza of Paradise Lost: Milton 2005) and to understand the connections between “the starry heavens above me and the moral law within”, as Kant expressed it in the Critique of Practical Reason (Guyer 1992a, b). In short, there were regulative ideals that drove the Enlightenment project, so were intended to characterise Modernity as a whole: ideals such as truth, liberty, reason and progress. However, belief in a clockwork universe implies that reality is always measurable and it is this mechanistic view that has dominated modernity. Concepts such as truth, liberty and reason are difficult to measure, so begin to lose salience. Progress can be measured, but only in certain forms (That is, change can be measured in certain forms, and may be interpreted as growth.). Ironically, the tendency to think in mechanical terms has in many areas been strengthened rather than weakened by the opposition that inevitably arose to industrial urbanisation and other problematic outcomes of the Enlightenment project. In The Postmodern Condition, Jean-Francois Lyotard explains this paradox. In effect, when people lost unquestioning faith in the redemptive power of applied science, as we see in the work of the Romantic poets at the turn of the 19th Century or the work of Rousseau, they also dented faith in the ‘grand narratives’ of truth, liberty, reason and progress. However, shorn of these regulative ideals, there is no longer any moral

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compass to guide the machines that enjoys general support. There have been other candidates, of course, including socialism, humanism and religious faiths, but none of these has prompted anything like universal loyalty. The consequences of this philosophical impasse are experienced inter alia in the way public services are evaluated. For example, schools are deemed improvable if they adopt input measures that appear to have resulted in improved outputs elsewhere. If School, or School System A adopted innovation X and experienced output improvement I (AX → I), it is assumed that X will have the same level of effect in school or system B (BX → I). However, this is illogical as A and B remain different, so B + X will not necessarily lead to I. There is no reason to believe that an intervention in one context will have the same effect as it did in another. Universal generalisations cannot validly be made from specific instances, yet performative policy making has nothing firmer to fall back on. Relatedly, in a sort of subversive desperation, correlations are often taken as cause-and-effect relationships, even though there is no logical reason to assume that they are: sometimes numerical inequalities may be taken as ipso facto proof of social injustice, but this is not a logical leap unless one adopts a form of extreme egalitarianism. Even more ridiculously, issues are judged relatively and treated as absolute: such as defining, say, child poverty or educational underachievement as featuring in the bottom 40% of outcomes, and then pledging to remove it. It is impossible to remove the bottom 40% of anything: on a percentage measure, four out of ten will be the bottom 40%. All these causes—raising achievement, reducing poverty, treating hospital patients more quickly, eliminating discrimination on grounds of gender and ethnicity and many others—are admirable, but the use of simple quantitative measures to diagnose and solve them often results in absurdities. (A colleague recalled a meeting of a university equalities committee at which one member proposed that a measure of the committee’s success would be that all students would achieve the same results.) All these absurdities are symptoms of performativity. If there is no ethical yardstick, no moral consensus or real commitment, progress can only be measured by the efficiency of the machine, by performativity. Thus in contemporary societies, efficiency is measured in terms of the effectiveness of outputs in relation to inputs, as less concrete things cannot be easily measured. We live in a world of targets and benchmarks, in which complex activities such as teaching or tending to the sick are reduced to simple input-output measures. We cannot put a number on compassion, for example, so it escapes evaluation, other than very indirectly indeed (e.g. the number of children or old people reported as having been abused). Hospital waiting lists and examination results can be measured much more easily so are taken as the most valid indicators of public services. If, however, everybody tried harder to act fairly and compassionately, all the problems would be ameliorated. Numbers often miss the point. There are four related and fairly self-evident negative consequences of this narrow performativity: first, it reduces the scope of the activity (so that there need be no specifically ethical or moral element in teaching or nursing, for example: these become regarded as techniques); secondly, these generalised, blanket measures take no account of the experiences of particular individuals, or of specific context in

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any other sense; thirdly, there is no agreed basis on which to reform the system other than to make it even more efficient in terms of reaching narrowly defined targets; fourthly, and perhaps most dangerously of all, falling back into a simple set of systemic solutions removes moral responsibility from individuals, be they lowly employees, corporate directors or investment bankers. The algorhythms that guide policies in the digital age are based merely on selective use of factual data, for only ethical reflection and moral judgment can guide interpersonal behaviour that is compassionate and just. Such reflection and judgment can only be exercised by specific individuals in specific contexts. Thus systems that seem to be improving society may be effectively leaving more and more people behind. The pursuit of narrow targets may be reducing the quality of life of both providers and recipients of services.

2.6 The Left-Behind Problem Performativity contributes to the broader, more diffuse problem of people feeling abandoned by the system. The 2010s have seen a number of expressions of public reaction against globalisation. As noted above, this has taken a number of forms, including Right wing politics (the election of Donald Trump, and the growth of Far Right groups in Europe), Left wing politics (the popularity of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader in the UK and Bernie Sanders in the US, and the Occupy movement) and small scale nationalism, such as the bid for Catalan independence. All these anti-globalisation movements detailed above have been fuelled by a sense of being left behind by globalisation. In some cases, this sense is communal, as where local industries have folded under the competition from cheaper labour abroad, or where high levels of immigration have impacted on public services, infrastructure or the environment. In other cases, the sense is more of individuals left behind, such as those deprived of state benefits in the UK because of weaknesses in the delivery of the new ‘universal credit’ welfare system, or of young, educated middle class people who feel they will be deprived of their parents’ opportunities in expensive areas such as London because of high accommodation costs and house prices. I will argue that this feeling of being left behind is, at least in part, a feeling of dis-location, in the most literal sense: the feeling that people no longer feel there is a ‘place’ for them, either geographically or in a more abstract sense, and that at least part of the solution to this is to reinstate a sense of personal and small-scale collective responsibility. The problem of being left behind is, on this account, a problem of dislocation, and dis-location involves a loss of voice, both in terms of what one has to say, grounded in one’s traditions, beliefs and responsibilities, and in terms of the degree to which others have any interest in what one has to say. In short, globalisation has brought with it a degree of democratic deficit. Future chapters will offer concrete suggestions to help address this.

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2.7 Democratic Deficit An important element in feeling left behind lies with the belief that you have no say will have no effect on important decisions affecting your future. Nevertheless, globalisation, with its concomitant commitment to relatively free trade, has been supported by those with strong commitments to democracy, embraced by those on both the neoliberal Centre Right and the social democratic Centre Left. At first blush, it may seem perverse therefore to claim that globalisation has entailed a democratic deficit. Unintended though this deficit may be, however, there is ample evidence to support the claim. In matters of governance and regulation, globalisation inevitably encourages levels of supra-national organisation. These organisations in turn negotiate with their national constituents. This means, in effect, that those with aspiring national status are two steps, rather than one, from self-determination. This has been manifest in Europe in 2017 with the issue of Catalan independence, and the difficulty the European Union has in acknowledging the aspirations of those who may wish to leave a constituent state. Three years earlier a similar dynamic was apparent in the case of Scotland, though here an open referendum on independence had been allowed by the nation state (UK) and had been defeated. This illustrates the paradox of globalisation, as few would disagree that certain pan-national bodies do good work (one might cite the United Nations, for example), yet at the same time, pan-national governance and regulation often reduce the genuinely local voice. This is as true of the world of business as of politics: multi-national corporations bring great benefits but are also blind to local aspirations and differences; globalised corporatism struggles to relate to persons and communities, as do globalised institutions. This sense of voter alienation has been exacerbated culturally from the tendency of globalisation to increase the separation of both private and community values from the public sphere. The public sphere has become ever more closely managed, notwithstanding the opportunities of the internet. Political discourse has become increasingly dominated by spin and fake news; public relations and marketing have become widespread occupations of choice. For young people, the situation is exacerbated by the tendency of the mass media to focus on celebrity rather than concrete achievement or mature debate; global mass culture provides surprisingly and depressingly few admirable role models. All in all, the globalised world offers few if any opportunities for real, engaged, mature debate or the input of the person once referred to as ‘the little man’, to the extent that the local and the global seem hardly to be in any sort of dialogue. Under globalisation the little (wo)man becomes littler still. There is then a very unhealthy dislocation between the home and community, where people (those lucky enough to live outside totalitarian states) can exercise some free choice and engage in healthy debate, and the larger public sphere that seems increasingly impenetrable and unresponsive while becoming ever more powerful.

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2.8 Modernism Cf. Humanism So far, the argument has been about the world as almost entirely a social construct. However, the world does not merely comprise humanity, nor can it ever do so. The past half-millennium has been dominated by a narrow humanism that has often blinded us to our dependence on the biophysical beyond ourselves. Even the Italian Renaissance was driven by religious humanism: the belief in the specialness of the human as made in God’s image. Subsequent scientific progress was underpinned by a desire to understand the ways of God in nature, assuming that the power of reason came from God and was shared by human beings alone with Him. In short, while Modernity may not quite have claimed, ‘We can do anything’, many of its developments have been undertaken in a spirit of righteous control over nature: human as mind, reason and creativity; non-human as mechanical, mindless and merely instinctive or habitual. A sense of responsibility for nature, especially when patchily applied, does not amount to a full recognition of ourselves as natural, however. Inevitably, technological progress has enabled humanity to extend its controlling power over nature ever further, treating the natural as endless resource, until the point came at which it became clear that the resource was not endless and that the biosphere was being damaged by human activity. As we stand at a crossroads regarding faith in globalisation, we are also impelled to consider our right relationship with the non-human world. Performative modernity (or postmodernity) proceeds on measurement. Measurement presupposes quantifiable entities. Quantification of entities presupposes their separations and relative stability. In short, contemporary society runs on the basis of closed and predictable systems. However, all systems are effectively open, at least in the sense of being ‘leaky’. ‘No man is an island’ as the poet John Donne put it (retrieved from https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/no-man-is-an-island 28 January 2019). Each of us depends on those who brought us up, and on those who support us now. To breathe oxygen, we rely on plant life to produce it; for plant pollination we rely on bees and other insects, and so on. Localism inevitably implies relatedness, and our relations are human and non-human. In other words, life is an interdependent, everchanging web in which no entity exists other than in context and in relation, and temporarily. When humanism goes unchecked, however, only the measurable interests of apparently discrete human beings will be taken into account. Of course, some progress at conservation may be made this way, as efforts to sustain resources are redoubled. However, a fundamental arrogance remains that could damage the ecosystem to the extent that human life becomes impossible, as we cannot realistically have complete ecological understanding, so to move forward solely on the basis that we should take what we ‘need’ (i.e. want) and then deal with the resource issues that ensue is to court disaster: we cannot fully understand all the relationships on which we ultimately depend. These considerations point to the need for any form of new localism, while primarily aimed at addressing the excesses of rationalist universalism, also to question

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humanism as much as the other grand narratives of Modernity. Post-humanism is, however, already a double-coded term, with many post-humanists in the transhumanist tradition interested solely in the enhancement of the human through technology and the merging of the human and the robotic in a cyborg future (see, for example, discussion of some of the social implications of this in McCracken 1997). This form of posthumanism often neglects utterly the ubiquity and value of human relations with the non-human at myriad levels. Rediscovering the local, the sense of being hereand-now, is one way of reconnecting with these inevitable and extremely important relationships. Whatever a person does, it is done in a place, in a biophysical and geophysical context, by an embodied being attempting simultaneously to adapt to and exploit, his or her environment, or umwelt. Living in the here-and-now is something that depends on many elements beyond ourselves; when we damage these elements, we damage our own lives. Place-based ethics, politics and aesthetics assume both the interrelatedness of entities within places and the overlapping of places themselves. Old localism works on assumptions of separateness (Us vs. Them); new localism on relatedness (Us vis-à-vis Them).

2.9 In Summary: Globalisation/Dis-Location The local and the universal are two sides of the same coin: each cannot thrive without the other, and neither should ignore the importance of the other. When we talk of an ‘individual’, this is generally double coded. An individual is both a typical example and in some way different from the community as a while. Suppression of either the local or the universal leads to a weakening of the other. The relationship of the local and the global should be seen as agonistic rather than antagonistic, each requiring the other as day requires night or left requires right, and tension between the two is one of the means by which progress occurs. It is as naïve to be ‘anti-globalisation’ in the literal sense as it would be to be anti-day or anti-night: one might have a preference for one over the other, but each requires the other. Local action is not necessarily limiting in terms of social influence or importance. Local goods are often positional in the sense that significant action in a local context carries with it status and respect that do not accrue from the more piecemeal application of universal goods (such as making a significant difference to a local charity rather than giving small amounts of money to various international charities on a more piecemeal basis). Sometimes a big fish in a small pond can cause ripples that spread far and wide. This book shows a preference for the local, but not in the spirit of trying to annul the universal. Our understandings of universals, on which our technology and politics depend, can only develop healthily when there is diversity and innovation at the local level, just as local communities and individuals can only thrive through trading with, learning from and generally interacting with others. There is a dialectic between the local and the global; each tests the other. The present argument takes as a premise that this necessary balance is out of kilter in some respects, as evidenced both by popular movements, including returns to nationalism and the

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British vote to leave the European Union, and by many instances in which local and individual initiatives to feed new ideas and products into the system are stymied, often by the raw economic efficiency that production on a mass scale provides. The tyranny of the abstract idea has held sway in late Modernity and the importance of local interpretation has been undermined. On a concrete level, globalisation has not always brought greater variety in a very meaningful sense. For example, note how the proliferation of television channels since the 1960s has not resulted in a flourishing of differing forms of television output, or how in many spheres globalisation has not increased the range of active producers and viable products in the marketplace. Brands proliferate but often largely replicate each other, and this is largely because a very few big players monopolise the market, often selling through a range of brand names. It is as though success on the global scale is limited to the very few indeed who can access global mass media and the huge costs involved in mass international trade while the rest cannot compete. Among other consequences, this results in a very few earning vast amounts: the greatest disparity is not between the top 1% of earners and the rest, but between a tiny proportion of people within that top 1% who have international media exposure (the film stars, international sports stars, leaders of corporations) and everybody else, who struggle to make ends meet without international recognition: for example, the actors who are not ‘the face of’ any global brand. All in all, localism feeds universalism but the standardisation produced by globalisation can ultimately defeat itself. The big systems of globalisation—corporatism and big-state nationalism, whether of Left or Right—tend towards monopoly. There is no doubt that globalisation has brought advantages. Communications and travel are quicker and often easier. Mass produced goods are easily available. Trusted international brands can be accessed from much of the Earth. There has been an explosion in global trade and overall economic growth. However, the downsides have begun to come to the fore in recent years. – Easier movement of people has resulted in a global tide, flowing often from poor and unstable states to richer, settled states. This has offered enhanced life opportunities for many individuals but has placed considerable pressure on some receiving communities while doing little to ameliorate conditions in the places left behind. – Goods are cheaply mass produced but at the expense of extremely low wages and poor working conditions in some countries. This has reduced wages in richer countries and lost them manufacturing capacity, worker protection and jobs for their indigenous population (Globalisation has produced many new jobs, though not often in areas that local communities are prepared for). – Greater freedom of choice has sometimes been at a trivial level. For example, supermarket shelves may stock greater numbers of brands selling much the same product while the actual range of foods available (e.g. fruit varieties) may not be increased, and may even be diminished. – Meanwhile, products sold are increasingly difficult to take apart and mend. For example, it is now necessary to buy a whole headlamp unit for a car whereas fifty

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–

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years ago one could simply replace a bulb by taking the unit apart and reassembling it. These moves gradually disempower ordinary people. The corporate sector is so powerful that it can exercise considerable control over areas such as information and, indirectly, local freedom of action. Mental illness has increased as people—particularly the young—feel increasing pressure to succeed against impersonal standards in an uncaring world. Extremely rich celebrities are held up as role models even where they have achieved very little other than celebrity. Style has triumphed over substance. Public services, roads, hospitals and the green environment have all had population pressure put upon them in some countries and have lost skilled personnel to look after them in others. Finally, there is still, as there always will be, Us and Them.

If something is not done to address these concerns, there is a danger that the advantages of globalisation will be lost as societies retreat into isolationism, economic protectionism, closed borders and closed minds. All these are likely to reduce material living standards. The challenge therefore is not to undermine globalisation in every respect, but to find a new balance, specifically between the local and the universal. This is something that can happen at a number of levels, from the use of concrete resources to the philosophical. Nor is this simply a feature of the public sphere. The nature of the everyday encounter has also been affected by globalisation in its various forms. On average, when we meet people, we know less and less about them in a meaningful, qualitative way. Of course, we may be able to position them in terms of recognised categories, but this falls far short of knowing significant events in the personal history. Note how dating sites work, using standardised information to attempt to show compatibility. The dimensions of the localism-universalism dynamic are various. They include the tension between local responsibility and universal rights, between the choice to accommodate and the desire to settle (often temporarily), between charity beginning at home and universal compassion. Sometimes the local sets the pragmatic, even the inevitable, up against the ideal; sometimes this may happen in reverse. At times, the dynamic feels like one of defence versus attack. Whatever the specific issue, all this is about Us (whoever we are) and Them (whoever they are). Globalisation cannot remove this distinction. There will never be no Us and no Them. Furthermore, communities will never see completely eye-to-eye, within or between; each community has its own semiotic code, its own way of making sense. These codes affect and infect each other but they never totally coincide. The remaining chapters will consider these dynamics from ethical, existential, economic and cultural perspectives, after one further chapter in which the more general implications of globalisation are concerned: specifically, the tendency of anti-globalisation discourses towards local protectionism. As we prepare for a future that, though uncertain, is shaped by forces we can recognise and in part explain, we need to consider very carefully how these evolving dynamics might affect both

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educational provision and social policy more broadly. The final chapter will tackle this challenge directly.

2.9.1 Theoretical Resources and Possibilities The present argument is grounded in social theory and philosophy, though its aims are not those of mainstream sociology or rationalist philosophy. Nor is it an anticapitalist, anti-globalisation thesis. Romantic socialist solutions do not create wealth any more than ‘free market’ capitalism in the modern world can be entirely free. The challenge is to enable capitalist wealth creation to operate more in the interests of the subjective and intersubjective (the qualities of people’s lives) as well as the objective (gross national products, sales and employment figures and so on), and to consider how local communities and individuals can play their role in this. There is an emphasis on the subjective and inter-subjective, therefore, with which many sociologists and many philosophers would take issue. Sociologists and philosophers have often ‘reached in’ to the humanities to develop their theses. This book ‘reaches out’ from the subjective and intersubjective bias of the humanities into the fields of ethics and social policy. A rebalancing between the local and the universal is called for. There is no doubt that globalisation has delivered for many in terms of overall economic growth but often at the cost of detriment to the quality of life in other respects. That rebalancing has to take place in the context of modern institutions. Some of these are more strictly meso-level that micro or macro-level organisations. The nation state is, of course, a hugely important player in these debates. The state, in the context of this argument, is local with respect to ‘national versus international’ issues but universal with regard to ‘Us versus the government. The Janus-like role of the state in these arguments will need sensitive treatment and acknowledgment throughout. Sociologically, the argument is strongly influenced by Giddens’ account of late modernity as the rise of abstract systems, though it lacks some of his optimism (Giddens 1991). According to Giddens, what separates the premodern from the modern era is the replacement of local patterns with standardised ones effectively imposed from without. The first of these, as noted above, is the standardisation of time, a process begun within the English and Welsh contexts with Elizabethan road building and the increased interactivity between market towns, and greatly furthered by the building of the railways and the resulting need for agreement over clock time in the Nineteenth Century. Of course, neither the roads or the railways were ‘bad things’: each helped to improve the quality of life for millions. However, each progressive change of this sort carries some negative implications. For example, the farmer who used a complex reading of the environment to sow or harvest ‘when the time was right’ or who woke with the morning light increasingly became the regulated worker whose rhythms were determined by uncaring impersonal demands. Gradually, as individuals became materially wealthier (in many cases), they were slowly undermined in terms of the value of their skills and judgment. Nowadays, most

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people have very little capacity to work constructively with their immediate environments. Few people are able to wire or heat their houses, construct their plumbing systems, mend their televisions, cars or computers, or even make their gardens productive. There are systems for all these things, over which nearly everybody has no effective control at any level. The scope for satisfaction and cultural enrichment that comes from doing things differently and innovatively on your own patch of land has dwindled almost to nothing. The ancient Greeks’ two conceptions of time, chronos and kairos (above) remind us that the modern world is so dominated by clock time that knowing when the time is right for us has become increasingly difficult. Coupled with the individualisation of society under late capitalism (Beck’s ‘risk society’: 1992), individuals have become increasingly expected to make their own lifestyle choices while simultaneously becoming deskilled and incapable of meaningful action. No wonder levels of anxiety and related mental health are high (https://www.nami.org/ Learn-More/Mental-Health-By-the-Numbers retrieved 30 October 2018). The situation is not helped by educational practices that accentuate the abstract and the critical over the practical. For example, it seems to be putting the cart before the horse to teach students about the problems of inequality in neoliberal, capitalist societies before students understand how liberalism and capitalism work and how they can manage their own time, skills and resources to do as well as possible within the system. It is after one has learnt practical skills to survive that one is in a position to critique systems positively, not before: otherwise, all students are being taught is that the world is bad and it is for others to fix it on their behalf, and this is not a healthy way to approach life. In recent history, the two overriding abstract systems that have tended to standardise are those of state socialism and corporate capitalism. While capitalism is grounded in the arguably quite natural tendency to produce more than is necessary to build up a stock on which to build in future years, beginning with producing more food than is necessary merely to last the Winter (‘waste not, want not’), modern corporate capitalism has resulted in huge multinational companies with greater power than small nations who can produce and disseminate goods and services which are homogenous and cheap such that it is uneconomic for smaller producers to undercut them, in the meantime producing huge wealth for a very small minority (though also reductions in absolute poverty, sometimes at the cost of greater inequality). Meanwhile, socialism, the most tried alternative to capitalism, has failed to increase capital so has resulted in less overall wealth, albeit with greater equality, at least within individual nations. Socialism on one level is an expression of universal humanism. However, practised on a large scale, state socialism has become as impersonal and abstract as corporate capitalism; in the centralised socialist state, there is again no opportunity for local initiative, and the distribution of wealth suffers in two respects: first, there is always a group of distributors (‘the Party’ or the leader and côterie) who are not part of the equal distribution; secondly, the pot of money to be distributed decreases, whereas under corporate capitalism it tends to be increase but not be distributed anything like equally. Referring to the work of von Hayek (2006), British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once said, “There’s no such thing as society. There are individual men and

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women and there are families” (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/apr/08/ margaret-thatcher-quotes retrieved 30 October 2018). The present argument takes Thatcher’s point that society is an abstraction but will not endorse the taking of sides. Society is indeed an abstract system, not a person; however, a person is nothing without society. There is also the intermediate concept of community. Communities have a concreteness that ‘society’ does not. There is no doubt, for example, that Hayek was part of a community of economists, even if he disagreed with many of them, or that Margaret Thatcher was a member of a community of Conservative MPs. The present challenge is to encourage the local to the overall benefit of the national and the global: to find a way of enabling the creative interplay between relatively free individuals, families and communities and the larger scale systems within and by reference to which they operate. Several moves will be considered including those that might stimulate local sourcing and contracting, skew transportation taxes such that short journeys are prioritised over long, encourage local diversity, put planning decisions more into the hands of the people, and generally give greater value to heritage, tradition and local flavour as aiding rather than abetting local appeal. In relation to this last point, we shall consider activities as diverse as brewing, food strains, means of production, music and the visual arts and architecture. The philosophical basis of the present argument is in pragmatist philosophy: specifically, in semiotic philosophy. Semiotics—literally, the study of signs—is most commonly known as an applied discipline, widely used in areas such as film and media studies where verbal and visual text is interrelated and messages are conveyed through a range of media acting together. There is, however, a long tradition of semiotic thought at a much more foundational level, an ancient heritage of seeing the world as “perfused with signs if it is not composed exclusively of signs” (Hoopes 1991: 258) This perspective has stood in opposition to purely rationalistic, ideas-based philosophy, particularly in the early Scholastic tradition, and in a more recent movement spearheaded by the Nineteenth Century pragmatist (or ‘pragmaticist’ to use his own term) philosopher, C. S. Peirce. The history of semiotics as philosophy, at least up unto very recent debates, has been comprehensively covered in a range of publications by John Deely (e.g. Deely 2001). I have been associated with this movement for some years and have attempted to develop a ‘fully semiotic’ position with the following characteristics (Stables 2006, 2012, 2016; Stables et al. 2018). On this fully semiotic account, we cannot validly distinguish between the world as it is, beyond our perceptions, understanding and experience, and the world as understood, perceived and experienced through the human tradition. This is not to argue that the world is simply a human construction, or that understanding and perception are limited to the human, let alone to any particular viewpoint. It is, however, an anti-dualist account insofar as it refutes any view of reality as a purely abstract, cerebral entity (a view derived from Plato and heavily influential on mainstream Western philosophy) but rather insists that human perception, experience and reality comprise part of, and a view on the rest of, reality as a whole. On this account, reality, as we know it, is always embodied and embedded. Any suggestion that, for example,

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social structures are ‘real’ and subjective experience is ‘imagined’ must be rejected as strongly as the opposing tendency towards solipsism and anti-realism. In short, the view that we operate with respect to abstract systems must not override the recognition that we also do so in distinct personal and collective contexts. The teenager who spends much of his time engaged with an online community from his suburban bedroom is always affected by his domestic context and all that goes with it, from the British weather to his parents’ relationship. This is what I mean by the local with respect to the global. Any view that denies the importance of each to the other is potentially damaging, yet the contemporary world has valorised scientific and particularly technological progress to the point at which local initiative has often been squashed and evaluations have increasingly become impersonal and standardised. This can have deleterious effects on the very abstract systems that have come to dominate, ossifying them while draining the life blood that feeds them. This book seeks to find ways of redressing this balance through consideration of the economic, ethical and cultural implications of this tendency and ways in which policy and practice might evolve to allow a healthier interplay between the local and the universal than is currently the place. However, the theoretical position it develops does not sit entirely comfortably within either mainstream philosophy or the social sciences. It is a position of semiotic pragmatism that can inform debates in philosophy, sociology, economics and the traditional humanities.

References Aristotle. 2011. The Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Lesley Brown and David Ross. Oxford: OUP. Bauman, Zygmunt. 2000. Liquid modernity. Oxford: Polity. Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk society: Towards a new modernity. London: Sage. Blake, William. 1977. The complete poems. London: Penguin. Bonnett, Michael. 2004. Retrieving nature: Education for a post-humanist age. Oxford: Blackwell. Bos, Abraham. 2010. Aristotle on the differences between plants, animals and human beings and on the elements as instruments of the soul. The Review of Metaphysics 63 (4): 821–841. Castells, Manuel. 2000. The rise of the network society. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Comte, Auguste. 2012. Cours de philosophie positive, leçons 46–51. Paris: Hermann. Deely, John. 2001. Four ages of understanding: The first postmodern survey of philosophy from ancient times to the turn of the twenty-first century. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Duquette, David. undated. Hegel: Social and political thought. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Accessed 26 Jan 2019 from www.iep.utm.edu/hegelsoc/. Feyerabend, Paul. 2010. Against method. New York: Verso. Giddens, Anthony. 1991. Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the late modern age. Oxford: Polity. Giddens, Anthony. 2013. The third way: The renewal of social democracy. London: Wiley. Graham, Daniel. 2015. Heraclitus. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Accessed 26 Jan 2019 from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heraclitus. Guyer, Paul. 1992a. Introduction: The starry heavens and the moral law. In The Cambridge companion to Kant, ed. P. Guyer. Cambridge: CUP. Guyer, Paul. 1992b. The Cambridge companion to Kant. Cambridge: CUP. Harari, Yuval Noah. 2016. Home Deus: A brief history of tomorrow. New York: Vintage. von Hayek, Friedrich. 2006. The constitution of liberty. London: Routledge. Heidegger, Martin. 1977. Question concerning technology and other essays. New York: Harper.

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Herzog, Walter. 2010. Cave of forgotten dreams (documentary film). Hoopes, James. 1991. Peirce on signs: Writing on semiotic. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Hume, David. 1745. A letter from a gentleman to his friend in Edinburgh. Accessed 14 March 2017 from www.davidhume.org/texts/lg.html. Kuhn, Thomas. 1996. The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kulstad, Mark. 1997. Leibniz’s philosophy of mind. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Accessed 26 Jan 2019 from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz-mind/. Lipovetsky, Gilles, and Sebastien Charles. 2006. Hypermodern times. Oxford: Polity. Locke, John. 1996. An essay concerning human understanding. Indianapolis: Hackett. Lyotard, Jean-François. 1986. The postmodern condition: A report on knowledge. Manchester: Manchester University Press. McCracken, Scott. 1997. Cyborg fictions: The cultural logic of post-humanism. Socialist Register 33: 288–301. Menand, Louis. 2011. The metaphysical club: A story of ideas in America. New York: Flamingo. Milton, John. 2005. Paradise lost. Mineola, NY: Dover. Monbiot, George. 2016. How did we get into this mess? Politics, equality, nature. New York: Verso. Olteanu, Alin. 2015. Philosophy of education in the semiotics of charles peirce: A cosmology of learning and loving. New York: Peter Lang. Olteanu, Alin, and Andrew Stables. 2018. Learning and adaptation from a semiotic perspective. Sign Systems Studies 46 (4): 409–432. Plato (2007). The republic, trans. Desmond Lee. London: Penguin. Pollock, Linda. 1983. Forgotten children: Parent-child relationships from 1500 to 1900. Cambridge: CUP. Popper, Karl. 2002. The logic of scientific discovery. London: Routledge. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1997. ‘The social contract’ and other later political writings, ed. Victor Gourevich. Cambridge: CUP. Spinoza. 2016. The chief works of Benedict de Spinoza, ed. R. H. M. Elwes, vols. 1, 2. (unplaced): CreateSpace. Stables, Andrew. 1998. Proximity and Distance: Moral education and mass communication. Journal of Philosophy of Education 32/3, 399–407. Stables, Andrew. 2006. Living and learning as semiotic engagement: A new theory of education. New York: Mellen. Stables, Andrew. 2011. Childhood and the philosophy of education: An anti-Aristotelian perspective. London: Continuum. Stables, Andrew. 2012. Be(com)ing human: Semiosis and the myth of reason. Rotterdam: Sense. Stables, Andrew. 2016. Maximal preference utilitarianism as an educational aspiration. Ethics and Education 11 (3): 299–309. Stables, Andrew. 2017. Schooling vis-à-vis Learning: the case for reducing compulsion. In Schools in transition. Linking past, present, and future in educational practice, eds. Pauli Siljander, Kimmo Kontio and Eetu Pikkarainen, 241–254. Rotterdam: Sense. Stables, Andrew, Winfried Nöth, Alin Olteanu, Sebastien Pesce, and Eetu Pikkarainen. 2018. Semiotic theory of learning: New perspectives in philosophy of education. London: Routledge. Sterling, Stephen. 2001. Sustainable education—Towards a deep learning response to unsustainability. Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review. Accessed 30 Oct 2018 from https://www.developmenteducationreview.com/issue/issue-6/sustainable-educationtowards-deep-learning-response-unsustainability. Thoreau, Henry David. 1966. Walden. New York: Peter Pauper. Velez, Abraham. undated. Buddha. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Accessed 26 Jan 2019 from www.iep.utm.edu/buddha/. Whitehead, Alfred North. 1979. Process and reality. New York: Macmillan. Wordsworth, William. 1973. Wordsworth: Poetical works, ed. Thomas Hutchinson, revised Ernest de Selancourt. Oxford: OUP.

Chapter 3

Localism and Protectionism

Abstract This chapter focuses on the problematic relationship between (new) localism and old-fashioned protectionism. First, it stresses the need to take context into account. It then examines three forms of industrial and cultural production in which issues of globalisation vis-à-vis localisation have been to the fore in recent years: steel production, food and drink, and music. In each case, the dynamics are different in terms of where the local input and imperative lies, including whether it principally relates to production or consumption. Examples of potential good practice are cited, and suggestions are offered. The issues are then revisited in the light of four broader concerns: those of security of supply, community cohesion, environmental health and welfare, and cultural diversity. All of these can be seen as driving forces of policies that deserve to be considered examples of new localism.

3.1 The Importance of Context I have argued that in cases of equal rights, the local should take precedence over the global. That is, if an incomer wishes to exercise his or her right to settle in a new community, but the community does not want new houses built at this time, then the community’s rights should generally trump those of the intended incomer, as the alternative would be sanctioned invasion. Except in extreme and exceptional cases, such as may arise in areas adjacent to those at war or affected by natural disaster, our rights to settle should in effect be conditional on welcome. An objection may be that such a position can seem narrow-minded and selfdefeating, as communities gain their strength over time, as do individuals and nations, from mixing with others. Communities, individuals and nations need ‘new blood’, genetic diversity and the influx of new ideas and practices. Indeed, immigration, overall and over the long term, has had many benefits; few would argue for endless inbreeding. The point is that ‘overall’ should not govern local decisions. In all matters, there is a balance to be struck and a context to be evaluated. What I am proposing is that local communities take more responsibility for setting this balance, and bear more of the consequences of their decisions as a result. There are many instances in life when a generally good thing is not good in a particular context. After all, food © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 A. Stables, New Localism, Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21579-8_3

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is undoubtedly good for you, but eating too much on a particular occasion clearly is not and obesity is an increasingly recognised global problem. Furthermore, when the global trumps the local entirely, diversity is reduced. Local habits, perspectives, skills and much more are lost, as we see throughout the world where local building materials and techniques are no longer used, as a result of which each town and village looks increasingly like others. For instance, when I moved from London to the English countryside in the late 1970s, there were virtually no large housing estates made from non-local materials; now the majority of the housing stock in the area is of this type. Such estates tend to have no local character whatsoever. In economics, this argument has often been seen as a battle between proglobalisation free trade positions and backward-looking protectionism, and there is indeed a widespread recognition that cutting oneself off from global free trade tends to be economically damaging. This polarisation is neither helpful nor necessary, however. There are many situations which demand a degree of local protection which does not lapse into negative protectionism. More importantly, ultimately global progress requires local progress in as many places as possible. Ultimately, universal progress is universal local progress. Note that there are certain areas in which the above argument is much more readily accepted than others, and is not seen as particularly controversial. Consider plant and animal diseases, for example, as a subset of the major issues of biosecurity. Globalisation of goods and services entails globalisation of microbes, as a result of which many species have come under threat in recent years. In the UK alone, there is wide public awareness of the loss of red squirrels and honey bees, of Dutch elm disease, of ash die-back and of many more threats to indigenous flora and fauna: all in this list are at least in part disease-borne problems that result from international travel. Other threats come more specifically from global warming, itself in part the result of mass human travel and transportation, such as the spread of dangerous insect species, such as that of the Asian hornet bee to more northern areas. Unlike in the corporate economic sphere, however, there would be few who would argue against the protection of local flora and fauna against such globalised threats. Biological protectionism must win out over globalised disease if at all possible. This is not to say that it is always wrong to introduce new species (even though many new species do less for biodiversity than those that are well established). In all these cases, there are value judgments at stake. The bottom line, at least for a democratic society, is: do we want this or not? The aim must always therefore be to invigorate the local but not at the expense of losing the benefits of the global: it is always a matter of trade-offs. The ethical principle of prioritising local interests should not be sacrificed to corporate or broader political aims, though the boundary between local interest and unwarranted protectionism is often a very difficult one to draw. Take as an example the Southern Italian city of Matera. This geologically unique place—essentially a sandstone chasm—is one of the oldest continuously inhabited places in the world, having housed cave dwellers for thousands of years. Until the 1950s and beyond, Matera was widely considered, by the authorities at least, a disgraceful slum. Against many of their wishes, the cave-dwelling families were

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relocated to flats and houses with modern facilities. Now many of the rock dwellings themselves have been modernised, with electricity and other amenities; there are now hotels and grand mansions cut into the rock. The caves have been gentrified, and Matera has evolved from shameful slum to tourist honeypot. It was named European City of Culture for 2019 and is a UNESCO World Heritage site: a double-edged sword given the number of likely visitors. Matera is an example of how things can change dramatically and quickly but not always necessarily in line with the wishes of local people, though those people themselves may not always have been united. There is no simple right and wrong in a case such as this. Matera is an example of just how complex and fast moving these issues can become. However, there is a world of difference between the myriad choices facing such communities being solved largely by the communities themselves, and the common alternative of the authorities deciding what is good for the local people irrespective of their wishes. The local and the global are always intertwined in some way or another. I sit at my computer in rural England writing this for an international publishing house. Mass production and uniqueness attempt to co-exist to mutual benefit, whether in an individual’s creative work, a village’s architecture or a community’s sense of wellbeing. A problem arises, however, when the freedom to price, buy and sell results in a mixed blessing of affordable goods available to all at lower prices than are feasible for the production of local goods in smaller quantities. Mass production and mass communication on the global scale bring significant effects, including feeding the world, but over time can result in communities becoming unable to feed themselves.

3.2 Forms of Local Production Life experience overall is necessarily embedded, embodied and local, and cannot be otherwise. The real challenge, therefore, is for the local to produce what the global cannot, but at present often the scope to do this is reduced by mass production mechanisms both undercutting the local on price and costs and being too inflexible to allow for the dissemination of local expression. Intuitively, as well as ethically, this seems wrong: distant resources should in general be more expensive to access than local resources where quality and demand seem comparable. For example, one might hope that nationally produced high grade steel would be better value than that produced on the international market, but this is often not so. Balancing the local and the global economically cannot be a one-way process, however. For example, purely local producers cannot expect high salaries, but nor should external slave labour ever be tolerated. As it stands, current policies often favour the global over the local. As one of very many examples, the UK places higher taxes on home-produced than on imported wines. In this chapter, I shall consider three topical cases: food and drink production, steel production, and the production of new music. The chapter will conclude with some suggestions. The concept of localism will play differently in each of these

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three scenarios. In the case of steel, what is likely at stake is merely the place of production, and the people associated with this. There is no claim to originality or local distinctiveness in the product; the argument is not generally about ‘better steel’. The more pertinent issues in this case are local employment and security and sustainability of supply. By contrast, localism in music refers to originality and distinctiveness entirely and not necessarily at all to place, except where place based characteristics define the music in some way—but even in this case, the composer could, in effect, be anywhere. Food and drink production lie between these extremes and combine to varying degrees issues of local sourcing, local distinctiveness (of taste, strain or means of production) and originality. In all cases, the opponent is mass production and standardisation, and thus a kind of reductionism, but the angle and means of potential attack on the status quo are in each case quite distinct. It is important too always to guard against simplistic solutions. The term ‘protectionism’ implies a distortion of market mechanisms, yet no market can be completely free in a complex modern society. Market forces affect all aspects of life, but at the same time no market is unaffected by political considerations. For example, taxation affects costs and prices and thus inevitably affects both supply and demand. The case of steel production, compared to the other two considered here, seems to be the one that calls most strongly for protectionism per se, as, on the supply side at least, there may be nothing distinctive about the nature or manufacture of the steel produced. However, there are distinctive elements on the demand side. That is, government, workers and general public may all have reasons for wanting steel to be produced nationally, if not exactly locally. These range from pure sentiment and nostalgia (the country should produce its own steel as it used to), through personal finance and community cohesion (jobs in the steel industry) to national security. Note that this is an inversion of the situation regarding housing that began the present argument. In the case of local building, the present argument is that local preference should determine supply regardless of demand. In the case of steel production, the case would need to be made to boost local supply in response to local demand even where this seems uneconomic.

3.2.1 Steel The British steel industry has been through a major crisis in recent years. In September 2015, Sahaviriya Steel Industries announced that they would be ‘mothballing’ their major facility in Redcar on Teesside in the North East of England. This precipitated announcements of reductions in UK production capacity from a number of other major manufacturers, including Tata Steel and Caparo, threatening around 7,000 jobs. In May 2016, Tata sold its long products division employing 4,400 people. In July, the sale was put on hold while it attempted to merge the majority of its remaining operations (employing 9,000 people) with other steelmakers, but Tata said it would sell its speciality steel business (employing 2,000 people).

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Underlying these decisions were some serious structural problems and external challenges. In particular: • “Massive growth in the volume of steel produced international, especially in China, since the early 2000s; • Slowing growth in China and other emerging economies meaning that steel consumption had ceased to keep pace with the growth in production; • A resulting surplus in steel in China, much of which was exported. Since 2009, there had been a 300% growth in Chinese steel exports, and the EU saw a 50% increase in Chinese steel imports over this period; • A reduction in steel prices because of the glut; • At the same time, the cost of overheads in the UK was high by international standards. Industrial electricity prices in the UK were more than 50% above other major EU economies. Business rates were also high in the UK, and the strong pound (prior to the EU referendum, which resulted in a reduction of the value of Sterling with respect to both the Euro and the Dollar) made UK exports less attractive. • All this has made international investors question how cost effective and sustainable the UK steel industry is in the long run.” (Rhodes 2018). This news caused major national concern. Not only is steel production an important element of Britain’s manufacturing base (0.7% of manufacturing output and 0.1% of the economy overall): the major sites were in areas of relatively low wealth that could ill afford the job losses. In 2016, steel employed one in every thousand UK workers: 32,000 in all. At the time of writing, it appears that this crisis has been at least temporarily avoided. In September 2017, the German manufacturing firm ThyssenKrupp announced that it was taking over Tata Steel’s European steel operations including the Port Talbot steel works in South Wales. However, there was still major restructuring of the industry, with some losses of capacity. Nevertheless, the UK government did seem able, through a series of actions, including direct government investment, to ameliorate the situation somewhat. The actions they agreed as a longer term policy include: • “Compensation for energy intensive industries: the Government has made provision to compensate industries which use a disproportionately high amount of energy for any additional costs incurred by carbon reduction polices, such as the carbon price floor, the EU emissions trading system and the climate change levy. • Review of business rates: The Government is examining how the business rates system can be changed including and examination of how R&D intensive businesses can be treated more fairly by the business rate system. • Anti-dumping measures: The Government successfully campaigned to see a more rigorous system of anti-dumping rules enforced across the EU which would prevent particularly Chinese firms selling steel at below market rates within the EU (the EU introduced anti-dumping measures against Chinese imports of rebar in July 2016).

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• Infrastructure pipeline: The Government have compiled and regularly update the Infrastructure Pipeline which sets out the UK’s future infrastructure needs to beyond 2030. This is intended to help producers understand steel requirements in the UK over the next decades, enabling capacity planning. • Public procurement and ‘Buying British’: As a major source of demand for steel, the Government tries to purchase steel from UK suppliers where possible. Anna Soubry commented that CrossRail used 97% “UK content” during its development. As well as encouraging public procurement of UK goods, the Government is also encouraging private sector manufacturers in the UK to use UK suppliers of steel, for example in the automotive industry.” (Rhodes 2018). Having stated these general objectives, the UK government then made moves to localise the policy in terms of developing action plans for specific regions, described in the report as follows: South Tees Development Corporation Following the closure of the SSI steel plant in Redcar, the South Tees Development Corporation was established in October 2015 to support economic growth in the area. The purpose of the corporation is: …to further the economic development of the area through physical regeneration, social regeneration and environmental regeneration so that it becomes a major contributor to the Tees Valley economy, bringing the SSI site, and other underutilised land in the area, back into economic use. By attracting private sector investment the STDC will secure additional, high quality jobs for the people of Tees Valley and provide a safe environment for the workforce. The Corporation’s ‘Master Plan’ aims to create approximately 20,000 jobs and increase the economic contribution of the region to the overall UK economy to £1 billion a year. The government will invest £118 million in the Corporation, with the intention of boosting leisure, tourism and the skills of workers in the area. Swansea Bay City Region Deal City deals are bespoke packages of funding and decision-making powers negotiated between central government and local authorities and/or Local Enterprise Partnerships and other local bodies. Further information can be found in the Library briefing paper, City Deals. The government announced its intention to create a City Deal for the Swansea Bay area in the 2016 Budget. The Prime Minister confirmed this in March 2017, and stated that the Deal planned to created up to 9,000 new jobs and encourage up to £1.3 billion worth of investment into the region. The Swansea Bay area includes the Port Talbot steel plant, now owned by ThyssenKrupp. As part of the deal, the new Steel Science Centre will be set up in the area. This will: • Focus on providing commercial R&D to address the current and future challenges of sustaining steelmaking capacity in the Region and the UK • Work with Industry to reduce its carbon impact and place the Region at the cutting edge of low carbon production (ibid.).

Whether these moves amount to protectionism is arguable. Perhaps it most charitable to state that the degree of protectionism falls within the boundaries of common international practice: that is, it is protectionism, but on a scale widely practised by competitors. However, there are other arguments employed here beyond mere protectionism. Security of supply is a partial justification for the Buying British initiative.

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The tweaking of energy policy to allow steel to be less ‘green’ than other industries may seem painful to many environmentalists, but could be justified as flexibility within an overall national drive towards carbon reduction, at least in the short term. Less controversial is the proposed change to the business rate system, that aims to reward companies committed to capacity building in various forms. The infrastructure pipeline can also be seen as characteristic of the kind of industrial policy that is fairly common within capitalist economies and which, if successful, could increase investment confidence in the private sector. There are certain other measures that could be taken to boost local steel supply that are not of the sort that might lead to a trade war. These include using transport taxes to render it cheaper to move iron and steel short distances than to ship them across the world. However, serious problems remain. A national government cannot control all taxes on sea and air travel, for example. Also, no government can, over the long term, subsidise an industry such as steel in which home-grown workers and costs generally are much higher than costs incurred in overseas production except where there is an overriding argument so to do. (See below.) There is a point beyond which the local cannot be valorised without the sort of protectionism that fundamentally damages international trade. The inescapable inference from this is that there must be some distinctive local factor that drives changes to market mechanisms that will give greater priority to the local and thus justify changes to market rules that promote diversity. In the case of steel production, there may be two such factors: national security, including sustainability of supply, and the maintenance of local communities. However, even the second of these is problematic as it cannot reasonably expected that local communities will be ultimately immunised against change; however, catastrophic, single-factor, immediate change might be something that can reasonably be mitigated. It should certainly be handled better than has been the case in many run-down former industrial communities around the globe. With reference to this, let us return to the biological example. If a particular area contains Britain’s last population of a particular tree that is free from a global disease, then there would be wide support for protecting those trees as best as one could. This is a short-term strategy, but it offers some hope for the future. It may be wisest, however, to construct such a policy as transitional until some more genuinely sustainable new order can be established in the area of biosecurity. Humans are biological, too: what holds true in relation to biosecurity may well also hold true in terms of human wellbeing.

3.2.2 Food and Drink In many but not all cases of food and drink production, the local distinctiveness on the supply side is clearer than in a case such as steel. A micro-brewery, using local water and possibly also locally sourced ingredients, and brewing in its own way, will produce beer that is in some way distinctive. Similarly, locally grown

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fruits and vegetables may be of varieties that valorise taste over disease-resistance or transportability, and will often taste fresher than, it not otherwise different from, produce from far away. However, there are sentimental forces at play here, too: to many it seems simply ridiculous or sad that local farmers do not produce food eaten locally. There are also food security and sustainability issues. In general, however, it is easier than it is in the case of steel to argue that what deserves improved access to the market is a distinctive product. There are certain success stories, among them production of beers and ales from local and micro-breweries. In Britain and Ireland, this has been a trend promoted via a public campaign, the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA). This is a potted version of CAMRA’s own account of its history from its website: CAMRA was formed in March 1971 by four men from the north-west of England who were disillusioned by the domination of the UK beer market by a handful of companies pushing products of low flavour and overall quality onto the consumer. It was inside the westernmost pub in Europe—along the Irish Kerry coast—where the first foundations of the Campaign were laid. The newly formed Campaign’s name was altered at AGM in 1973 to the ‘Campaign for Real Ale’. Following the first AGM in 1972, comprising the four founders and their friends, interest in CAMRA and its objectives spread rapidly, with 5,000 members signed up by the following year. In the present day, CAMRA has over 183,000 members across the world, and has been described as the most successful consumer campaign in Europe” (adapted from http://www. camra.org.uk/key-events-in-camra-s-history retrieved 12 October 2018).

Alongside its growth, CAMRA has successfully campaigned for several political and legal changes in the UK, including the protection of pubs from redevelopment and freezes on budgetary beer duty. There are also numerous examples in other major beer drinking countries including Belgium and the United States, not all of which have required the support of a powerful public body such as CAMRA. Ben and Jerry’s ice cream offers a rather different example in the food and drink arena. Here, the products are standardised across the world, and the company is now a major international brand with production outside as well as within the USA. However, Ben and Jerry’s has taken some unusual steps in its history to protect and promote local business around its home town of Burlington in Vermont, New England. Most notably, in 1984, they “set…a precedent by discovering a little-known clause about stocks and brokering, then establishing a Vermont-only public stock offering to raise money for a new manufacturing plant”, while in the following year “The Ben and Jerry’s Foundation (was) established with a gift from Ben and Jerry and 7.5% of the company’s annual pre-tax profits to fund community-based projects” (Retrieved from www.benjerry.co.uk/about-us#2timeline 12 October 2018.). On one level, Ben and Jerry’s is a classic example of a global brand, yet the company has done more than most to boost the local economy of its origins.

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3.2.3 Music The production of new ‘indie’ music is different in many ways. First, it need bear no relation to geographical locale. Although some music at least evokes a sense of place, most does not. The issue here is purely financial insofar as new artists (not only musicians) find it very difficult to get suitable reimbursement for recorded music as very cheap downloading via global websites offers artists so little per play or purchase. (Live music is less affected by recent changes.) At the time of writing, major streaming sites such as Spotify and Deezer pay artists approximately one-tenth of a US Cent per song streamed: thus new artists require their work to be streamed on a thousand occasions to raise a dollar. For those whose sales operate in the millions, the situation may be tolerable; for those less known, however talented, it is much harder. In complete opposition to the steel industry, output of music does not necessarily result in material sales. In the past, music was successful financially where it sold paper copies (sheet music), or musical instruments, or records, cassettes or CDs, or seats in concert halls. With the exception of the last of these, these markets are now very limited. The best hope for much music is that it can sell advertising, either through its direct use or indirectly via its popularity. Some music may also be used in film and television for more artistic purposes. Unfortunately music has rarely attracted great wealth simply by virtue of being good; now, more than ever, it is easy to hear good music for free. As in many other areas, including food production, the current situation is excellent for consumers but very difficult for producers. However, in the longer term, consumers will also suffer if producers of high quality music that may appeal to minority tastes are driven out of the market completely. In the case of new recorded music, the impetus for localism is therefore driven largely by the supply side. There may always be an appetite for new music in the most general sense, but listeners expect to be surprised by new music they like: insofar as there is a demand, there is little clarity about what is being demanded. In complete contrast to housebuilding, or even steel supply, there are no serious ecological, environmental or social consequences of localised musical production. At the same time, while new music is not necessary, it is worth noting the huge impact that the music industry has had on certain economies: think, for example, of the Beatles phenomenon and its effect on Britain: Paul McCartney has been one of the UK’s greatest ‘invisible’ export earners, though he and the Beatles now form only a small element of a huge industry with global reach. In the British case, among others, there is a strong case for seeing music, as other art forms, as part of the lifeblood of the nation. The real challenge for producers of new music is that of upfront costs. Most composers and performers may realistically not aim to make a full-time living from their art. However, to distribute and sell music at all requires investment, in recording (typically several hundred pounds, euros or US dollars per day), advertising and legal considerations, such as the registering of compositions with the relevant performing rights society, which requires fees. Without support for these processes, the making

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of music can easily become an activity effectively available to only the better off. However, there are a number of measures that could be taken to bolster grassroots music, and other arts activity, in addition to the occasional funding available from bodies such as the Arts Council of Great Britain. Government incentives to promote small business could also apply to artistic production. We saw above how large firms involved heavily in research and development might be treated relatively leniently in terms of taxes and other incentives; surely the same could apply to those in the arts and culture industries who are engaged in future capacity building through activities such as recording and registering new work, beginning with simple moves such as, say, exemption or partial exemption from value added (sales) tax for recording studios working with new or unsigned artists or private art galleries with a proven commitment to include a proportion of work from local artists. Stronger, albeit potentially more expensive moves, could involve one-off subsidies for new musicians or artists to have their work distributed.

3.2.4 Summary In summary, the three cases considered in this chapter raise three sets of concerns: 1. How to boost local supply to meet demand without lapsing into damaging trade protectionism (especially steel); 2. How to enable fair access to the market for locally produced, distinctive goods and services (e.g. food and drink); 3. How to enable fair access to the market for innovations that add diversity and colour though they may not meet any primary social need or other obvious specific demand (e.g. ‘indie’ music production). It is important to bear in mind that in each of the three cases, specific reasons can be identified for some sort of protection against existing global market forces. These reasons taken together are, in short, security of supply, community cohesion, environmental health and welfare, and cultural diversity. (Biodiversity has also been considered.) The first three of these are principally demand side reasons: local production is demanded for reasons of security and social and environmental flourishing. The supply side reasons are to do with the fostering of human creativity and social and environmental diversity. Let us briefly consider how policies might give value to each of these concerns without fundamentally undermining the free(ish) global market.

3.3 Security of Supply National security concerns are in part determined by the nature and extent of the polity. Security of supply for the United States, for example, requires somewhat different considerations from security of supply for, say, Malta. For the former, some

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sort of protectionism might be a much more valid option than for the latter, given the vast range of its resources; for the latter, openness to external suppliers will be inevitable. Under all circumstances, however, the degree to which issues of supply are related to those of security, and indeed sustainability, is often underplayed (Gough and Stables 2008). Insofar as we need electricity, we need supply to be reliable, safe and uncontested as far as possible, while also sufficient to meet demand. Wars have been fought, and more may yet be fought, over oil; wars are possible over gas, water and possibly other resources. For all states, the first task is to determine what resources are available within its boundaries. For the purposes of this particular discussion, nation states are being taken as localities, simply as general resource supply decisions are generally taken at the national level, other than in large federated countries such as the USA; the same argument could be applied to more local solutions where applicable. For example, within the United States there are very different priorities at the time of writing between individual States, with some still somewhat dependent on traditional coal, and enjoying strong rhetorical support from President Trump, while others, such as California, have become majorly dependent on solar and other forms of alternative energy. Resources, of course, are not simply given by nature. What nature provides only becomes a resource through the use of human technology in the broadest sense. Neither a piece of coal nor a bucket of seawater are resources until we know how to make something of them: thus seawater was not a feasible drinking water resource until modern methods of desalination and filtering had been perfected. In effect, resources are always finite but never fixed (Stables 2010). That is, at any one time, only a limited amount of capacity to, say, create electricity is available, but in ten years’ time twice as much electricity might be made available from the same amount of resource-potential: wood, coal, sunshine, wind or whatever. It is important to bear this in mind as it is a classic example of the importance of the local and the universal working together. Mere rejection of globalisation would damage the scientific community’s capacity to generate the technologies to boost local sources of supply. On the other hand, the mere imposition of universal solutions is insensitive and often counter-productive. For example, universal reason (that is, in practice, in this case, the consensus of the scientific community) might dictate that nuclear energy production is safe. As purely rational actors, local people should always accept that. However, as more than merely rational actors, many people imagine the consequences of problems at nuclear plants, or with waste, and therefore do not want such power stations, particularly in their locales. To subject everyone to the consensus of experts might be to condemn them to lives of increased anxiety and consequently reduced motivation, even if there never are any accidents. In summary, it is in everybody’s interests to ensure the economic viability of applying new technological solutions to develop local resources in ways that are comfortable for local people. There are certain necessary conditions for this to be possible. First, there must be suitably funded innovation at national and international levels to develop the technology and the capacity to apply it locally. Secondly, there must be identifiable potential resource sources that can be tapped locally without

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massive disruption to local communities. Thirdly, there must be at the national level both the financial and organisational capacities to make the system work efficiently on the ground. Particularly in the first and third cases, it is essential to have a fairly strong national economy; I stress that the present argument for new localism does not share with many environmentalist accounts an objection to economic growth. On this account, it is not economic growth per se but the means by which it is generated and the uses to which it is put that cause the problems. Indeed, economic growth is often a prerequisite for making things better. This is not an apologia for unbridled exploitative capitalism, but rather an argument for responsible capitalism, as innovation requires the resource to fund it. Capitalism is ultimately grounded in the development of stocks to lead people out of hand-to-mouth subsistence living. This required the generation and subsequent investment of some excess production, or profit. This remains the only tried and tested basis for the generation of new wealth and resource. However, certain forms of contemporary capitalism have closed off certain opportunities for local development. They have used resource faster than they have created it, and have adopted increasingly standardised and undifferentiated models through cost efficiency and control of the supply chain. Corporate capitalism, like state socialism, has tended towards monopoly, whereas the life-blood of capitalism has always been profit, innovation and investment led by people who are simultaneously within the system and free from overburdening systemic restraints. Security of supply requires, therefore, a delicate balancing act at the level of national government, considering national energy needs, resource possibilities, available technology (development and application) and environmental impact. In all these areas, local wishes should be of paramount importance. Energy supply exists to serve people on the ground. One potential lever is that of the taxation system. At present, taxation is focused on wealth. It might, however, be possible to focus taxation more on resource and environment. Under this alternative scenario, inefficient or dirty energy use could be taxed more harshly while concomitantly rewarding clean energy use, and particularly clean energy generation. Many governments currently take such issues into account to a limited degree but the emphasis in taxation remains almost exclusively on wealth. The problems, however, are not wealth per se but certain uses of wealth that effectively reduce the prospects for flourishing of individuals and local communities: uses of wealth that effectively remove opportunities from local people rather than enhancing them and pollute rather than enhance local communities and environments. The problem is not inequality of income in itself but rather what that inequality results in, in certain cases. A totally egalitarian society in terms of income would find it hard to invest and innovate at the macro level, and such equality would not rule out behaviour by some individuals that severely damaged others. In addition to this, any move towards income equality would soon be partially undermined, or reversed (depending on one’s perspective) by the different uses individuals put to their allotted wealth, leading to new inequalities. In this respect, the present argument runs counter to the main thrust of so-called Green politics, which tends to be left-of-centre in economic terms, often quite

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strongly so. The present argument stresses that wealth creation is a precondition, but not a sufficient condition, of enhancing local, less damaging, energy supply. It is broadly a politically Centrist argument. Unfortunately Centrist politics in many countries seems to have lost its participative commitment, however. For example, Tony Blair’s New Labour government in the UK was broadly Centrist but was also characterised by sophisticated use of ‘spin’ and the application of standardised accountability measures across the public services; certainly a far cry from, for example, the Liberal party of the 1960s under leaders such as Jo Grimond who prided themselves on their responsiveness to local voices in policy making. The new localism advocated here respects the power of capitalism to generate wealth but respects above all the voices of the people from the bottom up.

3.4 Community Cohesion In Chap. 4 particularly, I shall argue for new forms of participative local councils with increased powers. Part of the rationale for this is to enable local communities to have a greater say in their economic prosperity, though this implies responsible recognition of limitations as well as aspirations. Modern states generally operate what might be termed limited representative democracy: that is, effectively voting for a government between usually only two feasible alternatives. After the election it is assumed that the preferred party will then govern in the interests of the majority. This is to democrats a vastly superior system to any autocratic alternative. Also, the complexities of modern life more or less dictate that certain universally important functions be effectively decided by central government: functions such as defence, fiscal policy and aspects of infrastructure such as major roads. However, this system ignores not only the heterogeneity of voter aspirations but also that they may not be strictly rational and consistent. This means that certain local interests and preferences are downplayed; even scorned. For example, there is often criticism in the UK of ‘Nimbyism’ (=‘not in my back yard’) as an explanation for local councils rejecting, or trying to block, planning applications. ‘Nimbyism’ is characterised as an irrational, selfish response to an objectively rational argument for housing to meet the needs of an increasing population and changing demographic. However, there may often be more to objections to externally imposed planning policies than merely isolationism, and people in local communities are surely the best placed to define and express such objections. A government that cannot trust people to know in general what is in their own interest can hardly merit being termed democratic. Irrespective of one’s views on whether such blocking tactics might be justified in any particular instance, the framing of the debate is often highly paternalistic, assuming that local people simply do not know better than national government. However, the counter argument is that local people have invested far more in their local communities than any distant government, and therefore care more deeply (not necessarily more rationally) about its future, including its capacity to house their

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children and grandchildren where that is their wish. New localism should respect the greater depth of this attachment to rebalance the dialogue more in favour of the local than is generally currently the case. As explained more fully in Chap. 4, such a move would increase not only community rights but also awareness of responsibilities as simple bloody-mindedness and resistance to change would have consequences that the community would have to bear. At present, there often seems little worth in pursuing deliberative inquiry into issues such as this beyond a certain point, as the rules dictate that ultimately local communities will have to ‘grin and bear it’. While this might be easy to argue in certain extreme cases, in terms of ordinary local changes, there is surely space for increased local participative democracy. Increased community cohesion begins therefore with acknowledging local preferences even where they seem anomalous to central governments, elected or otherwise. The process then needs to be developed through the kinds of policy initiative that are returned to in Chap. 4.

3.5 Environmental Health and Welfare Our care for the planet requires a healthy relationship between abstract reason, widely available technology, individual ethics and local action. Without all of these elements acting together, we simply cannot tackle issues such as climate change, pollution, deforestation, biosecurity and habitat loss. We require science to give the best possible understanding of the processes, technology to produce the most sustainable means to tackle the problems, individuals to realise the consequences of their actions on the rest of the world, non-human as well as human, and communities to make responsible shared decisions that aid rather than abet. This requirement does not demand complete consensus: for example, experts might well differ about the level of the human contribution to global warming, or the desirability of a new airport runway. However, it does demand open debate in the spirit of appreciating that all these levels of knowledge and action are valid, are needed, and deserve to be taken into account. Consider fracking for shale gas: for some, a relatively minor issue; for others, a very important one. The science tells us that this is a relatively cheap and plentiful, and thus secure and sustainable, energy source, albeit productive of greenhouse gases. Technology is available to extract it relatively safely but nevertheless with certain environmental consequences. Individuals may be swayed either by the scientific argument above or by the level of threat. Local communities may either welcome or oppose fracking broadly on these grounds. In such a case, the delicate balance that holds the universal and the local in fruitful harmony can easily be upset. All sorts of things might be proved wrong: the science might be overestimating the supply, the technology may not be as safe as hoped, individuals might reject fracking while increasing their energy demands, and local communities may reject all initiatives almost as a kneejerk reaction. I, for one, am not sure what to think about fracking overall. However, should the issue become a local and immediate one for me, I hope the following conditions would apply. First, I hope that my view, however uncertain,

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would be properly listened to and taken into account alongside the views of others. Secondly, I hope that the information presented would be detailed, valid, balanced and clear to non-experts. Thirdly, I hope that very powerful vested interests would not be able to override all democratic input regardless, even though I know my own view might not prevail. Unfortunately, in many places in the world, trust between the local and the ‘system’, and even within the system, seems to be in short supply and it is unlikely these conditions would be met. This is a situation that demands urgent attention, both political and economic. Economic pressures are bound to be important in all matters of environmental protection, but major problems arise when governments or corporations are perceived to be acting in their own interests solely. Let us consider this in terms of the various levels of activity defined above: the scientific, the technological, the individual and the community. At the purely scientific level, the issues are of funding and dissemination. The funding needs to be available, not solely through organisations that are perceived as biased: for example, not all pharmaceutical research should be funded by pharmaceutical companies. The research outputs and outcomes should be disseminated freely, demanding a certain honesty and openness from publishers, journalists and other broadcasters. The scientific community should not over-egg its own lobbying in these matters in order for mere self-justification and thus increased future funding, as this risks loss of public confidence in science. In terms of technology, the issues of design and implementation may be quite different. Motor vehicle development provides salient examples here. Although alternatives to the oil (petrol or diesel) driven internal combustion engine have been scientifically possible for some time, it takes an extended effort, often with pressure from government and economic incentives, to effect a sea-change in use such at the desired move to electric powered vehicles (noting that in the UK, for example, petrol and diesel vehicles will not be allowed on the roads after 2040, and that other European countries have made similar commitments). In terms of the individual, there are issues of voice and of agency. The individual can express preferences through purchasing, but only from the range available, noting that mass produced well tried products are always cheaper than those that are innovative but may be preferred ethically, such as electric cars. There are also issues of how much individual initiative can be allowed to count. There may well be public safety reasons for banning many home-made motor vehicles from public roads; on the other hand, individual, extra-institutional initiative has been behind many valuable innovations in relation to transport as well as other areas: a much cited example is the invention of ‘cat’s-eyes’ as central road markings by the English inventor Percy Shaw (1890–1976). Indeed, it could be argued that as power over innovation is strengthened within large corporations, there should be a concomitant attempt to create incentives to encourage individual innovation outside the system, for, as Gregory Bateson argued, major changes to systems are caused by disruption from outside themselves (Bateson 2000). Local communities can, or should have, major roles in relation to transport issues, from parking and pedestrian zones to the citing of train and bus stations. Broadly speaking, the more empowered they are with respect to these decisions, the more responsibly they will undertake them (Someone who does not share this assumption

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may struggle to define themselves as a democrat.). Beyond this, local communities could have powers of environmental protection and enhancement that go well beyond those commonly available at the time of writing. There will be more detailed discussion of this in later chapters.

3.6 Cultural Diversity The issue of cultural localism will be addressed specifically in Chap. 5. Although we have a tendency to construe culture in very broad terms, such as ‘European culture’ or ‘Aboriginal culture’, it is also useful sometimes to think of culture in much more localised ways, in terms of ‘how we do things’ or ‘have done things’ or ‘want to do things’ ‘around here’. Appreciation of local culture involves acknowledging and valuing present practice, deepening respect for the histories that lie behind it, and fostering debate about future developments, alongside real opportunities for action. Drawing these strands together, the desirability can be seen of balancing funding available to multinational and to more local players as far as possible. ‘Funding available’ does not necessarily mean funding given, or subsidy, but refers to financial capacity in a broader sense. This is not an argument for a control economy or ‘nanny state’ but rather for a system that enables local enterprise to thrive and grow in the context of the mass economies of scale provided by global suppliers. However this system is designed, it could operate in every conceivable area of human action: local resources, facilities, services and systems (education, health, welfare, sport, policing, infrastructure), environment, and response to national and international systems. There is some more detailed discussion of ways forward in the chapters that follow.

References Bateson, Gregory. 2000. Steps towards an ecology of mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gough, Stephen, and Andrew Stables (eds.). 2008. Sustainability and security within liberal societies: Learning to live with the future. London: Routledge. Rhodes, Chris. 2018. UK steel industry: Statistics and policy. House of Commons Briefing Paper 07317. Accessed 1 Nov 2018 from www.parliament.uk/commons-library. Stables, Andrew. 2010. Making meaning and using natural resources: Education and sustainability. Journal of Philosophy of Education 44 (1): 137–152.

Chapter 4

Economic Localism

Abstract This chapter considers new localism from a specifically economic perspective. It begins by considering the major economic and political trends of recent decades: so-called neoliberal corporate economics, Marxism and nationalism of various stripes. The recent trend within some totalitarian states towards harnessing capitalism for ultimately state-controlled ends is also discussed. The tendency within economics generally has been to see individuals as rational utility maximisers. However, this assumes a degree of homogeneity and consistency that is at odds with the principle of new localism. The remainder of the chapter therefore develops suggestions based on the idea of people as arational utility maximisers, taking ‘utility’ in a very broad sense, and stressing that ‘arational’ implies ‘more than merely rational’ rather than ‘irrational’. The argument is explored further through some concrete suggestions relating to the delivery of public services, specifically in the areas of health, policing and transport. In all of these, there could be moves towards greater local control and responsibility.

4.1 Economic Ideologies As illustrated in the last chapter, issues of new localism are always to some extent issues of economics. Taken together, the politics and economics of the past century have been dominated by the battle between three ideologies: nationalism (of Left and Right), liberal free trade and Marxism. Of these, the latter two have particularly strong implications for economic policy. Nationalists can adopt either free trade or more protectionist policies of one sort or another. For example, in recent years, there has been increased evidence of what economists have termed ‘state capitalism’, which in its extreme forms entails states using corporations for political as well as purely economic gain. China is often cited as a prime example of state capitalism in practice (Szamosszegi and Kyle 2011), as might Vladimir Putin’s Russia in certain respects. Sometimes, as in the cases of China and Vietnam, capitalist economics have been increasingly practised within one-party avowedly Communist states. Such an approach may be necessarily short

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term, however: in the long run either the state or the market must dominate the determination of production and distribution. While free trade carries with it the long term promise of greater social freedoms generally, it is also the case that both free trade liberalism and state socialism can tend towards a form of standardisation. Monolithic states determine ‘needs’ and only produce accordingly, and such a controlled economy is difficult to reconcile with liberal politics. On the other hand, big corporations undercut others on costs and effectively squeeze out small scale production and local variation, ostensibly under the banner of liberal values. While each stands for freedom, in some ways each simultaneously restricts it. To keep the intended advantages of both these systems (wealth creation in one case; wealth distribution in the other), but to limit their downsides, requires an economy that simultaneously produces wealth, is inclusive, and promotes diversity, both natural and human. To do so may require removing some of the economic advantages of escaping national accountability, as big corporations might do through tax avoidance, while also not allowing either perceived national interests or an obsession with material equality to result in the stunting of initiative or the imposition of reductive targets, as happens under socialism. The challenge explored in this chapter is that of enabling the economic system to valorise placeholder rights, as argued in the first chapter, by empowering local producers and consumers in ways that do not wipe out the positive effects of global trade. In effect, this means allowing local producers to compete on as near a level playing field as possible with mass producers who can practise economies of scale. This implies broadening the supply base to enable diversity and strengthening sanctions against forms of monopoly that effectively drive local producers out of the market. State socialism, state capitalism and corporate capitalism all tend towards monopoly, albeit in different ways. Environmental costs should also be factored into these calculations so that as far as possible the system rewards responsible behaviour and deters that which pollutes and reduces biodiversity. In one sense, then, the argument is for greater diversity. However, even this concept is differently understood within competing ideological systems. ‘Diversity’ is a term that has often been used in a very narrow way in the recent policy debate, simply, albeit understandably, to support the greater involvement of minority groups. It has become closely identified with identity politics: the view that social justice is best brought about by policies that favour recognisable ethnic and social groups in given situations. This sort of politics is often statistically driven and works towards equality in the form of numerical parity. For example, is it sometimes argued that the proportion of people in a given profession should mirror the proportion of that group within the society as a whole. This approach to diversity is basically concerned with large identifiable groups rather than differences at the local and individual level. (The argument is also open to question on the grounds that it takes correlations as causal, is if disparity in numbers is necessary the result of injustice.) The potential limits of these standardised diversity policies are discussed with reference to a specific example in Chap. 5. In a broader sense, policies notwithstanding, diversity in many areas has been reduced in recent decades: in species, in languages and even arguably in cultural output.

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For instance, the hundreds of television channels each of us can now access do not seem to offer a significantly greater range of programme types appealing to different interests than the two or three available in the 1960s. Globalised diversity may thus undermine itself to some degree. Standardisation can be fostered under the banner of diversity if large and powerful interest groups dominate the agenda in this area. The present argument seeks diversity in a broader sense than merely redressing an imbalance between Large Group A and Large Group B, though this kind of activity may often be desirable. New localism should ‘let a thousand flowers bloom’ as far as is safe and possible. At the extremes, mass standardisation has resulted in some situations that seem prima facie absurd. Wool provides a salient example. Farmers feel they have to shear sheep in the animals’ interest, thus creating a resource (wool) that once powered whole national economies. Now, however, sheep wool in the UK is generally valued at less than the cost of shearing the sheep, and is worth less than mass produced fibre, despite the fact that sheep provide a plentiful, indeed inevitable supply of material that for millennia effectively clothed entire populations and indirectly fuelled much economic growth. Much of it now gets thrown away as it is cheaper to buy clothes constructed from artificial fibres and shipped half way around the globe. There are many such examples around the world. This is not merely a matter of nostalgia for pointless lost tradition; rather, it is the undervaluing of natural, available, relatively non-polluting resource at the expense of far less sustainable modes of production, largely as the result of massive economies of scale at the level of the multinational corporation and global trade. This is not to claim that all local communities will thrive, for there is no immunity against change in the broadest sense. Local communities, like individual people, nations and everything else, have their periods of rise and decline. However, the undervaluing of local tradition has contributed to such declines being more extreme than they might have been in many cases. For example, many industrial towns were built around coal mining or other heavy traditional industries and have struggled, particularly since the 1980s and their steep decline. There may be a degree of inevitability about this: when a major employer leaves town, there will be consequences. However, in many cases the consequences seem to have left the places in a kind of limbo, detached from productive economic life, with low educational achievement and high instances of drug use and other social problems: in other words, an overriding sense of hopelessness. In some cases, as that of Cumbernauld in Scotland, modernist social planners decided the appropriate response to industrial decline was effectively to rip up the existing structure and start again, leaving such places with no evidence of their histories at all. Moore (2013), makes much of the awfulness of this situation in Cumbernauld, describing the thinking that redesigned the town in 1955 as “globalised dunce fuel” (Moore 2013: 170) having spent time walking in the central ‘Megastructure’, a very name that suggests an approach to planning that values the antithesis of the local. It is, of course, possible to exaggerate the effects of these decisions, and it would be wrong to assume that no lessons have been learnt since (for example, at the time of writing, nearby Cowdenbeath is undergoing major redevelopment about which there has been a much more positive response: Stark 2018). However, the

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universalist modernist visions that prompted urban planning in the mid to late 1900s have often seemed deluded in retrospect, and, ironically, the construction techniques, sometimes involving much concrete in cold, damp climates where it does not age gracefully, have not stood the test of time as well as the more solid offerings of earlier times. It seems that the Victorians built things to last, while the Twentieth Century modernists built things that simply failed to last, in many cases. The ripping up of old industrial communities might offer something new but can hardly be called ‘new localism’ since it is not building on what is there in any positive sense. Even if an industry has departed, the fact that it had been there has made its mark on the community; it is part of what gives that community its identity and therefore the possibility to move forward. It is interesting, if painfully ironic, to compare the situation in some former industrial towns in Northern England with the thriving heritage centre at Ironbridge, in Shropshire in the North-West Midlands, where a Victorian industrial town has been recreated and millions pay to enjoy it. Further problems with the assumption of a universal logic of design will be discussed in a later chapter, in the context of schools. An example of recent much better practice, from the new localist perspective, is the town of Burnley in North-West England, depressed for some years in the late Twentieth Century, but now one of the most successful ‘tech towns’ in the North of England, having made judicious use of its heritage as a place for engineering to attract and support many smaller but effective digital companies (Financial Times 2018). Whether the story is one of abject decline or rebirth depends to a considerable extent on the vision of local councils, but economics at the national and international scale has an important role to play. For example, as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the UK between 2010 and 2016, George Osborne promoted the concept of the ‘Northern Powerhouse’ in the industrial heartland of Northern England, including the cities of Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Leeds and Bradford, with the aim of “boosting the local economy by investing in skills, innovation, transport and culture, as well as devolving significant powers and budgets to directly elected mayors to ensure decisions in the North are made by the North” (UK 2018). Particular examples will be cited later. While it is not within the scope of this book, or indeed this author, to engage in a detailed discussion about the implications of these observations for the development of economic theory, it is nevertheless important to consider in broad terms what sort of economic theory might serve to contextualise the issues around new localism. Specifically, it is pertinent to consider, albeit briefly, how economic theory tends to look at the dynamic between universal rationality and local preference. We need to consider what sort of economic model could best serve to underpin moves to promote localism that does not damage global wealth creation and freedoms of trade and movement. In effect, a model is sought that gives value to the local within a global marketplace.

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4.2 Arational Utility Maximisation Modern mainstream liberal economics has been predicated on the assumption that people are rational utility maximisers: that is, that they will base their economic activity on their rationalisations about what they need and want, and will be fairly consistent in so doing. Consistency and standardisation may be inevitable corollaries of economic rationalism, as is the endless stream of targeted advertising that is directed at us through social media, based on assumptions about our relatively stable patterns of consumption. In a broad sense, rational utility maximisation is predicated on individual and local preferences. However, there is a great difference between accepting this in a weak sense, whereby people tend to have distinctive patterns of activity that broadly fit their opinions and prejudices, and in a strong sense, whereby individuals’ economic decisions are purely rational and entirely consistent. Thus the degree to which people are best construed as rational utility maximisers has been the subject of considerable debate in recent years (Hodgson 2012). The present argument construes people as reasoning and deliberative but also embodied and embedded, so not as totally predictable rational calculating machines independent of context. Other considerations apart, people’s choices are inevitably constrained by availability, for demand that is not supplied can eventually disappear as people are not aware of certain choices. An example is that of multiple fruit varieties. Many fruits sold are from disease-resistant, heavy cropping varieties. Many consumers are likely to be unaware that much better tasting varieties exist as they have never come across them. As this example illustrates, demand without supply withers. Then, literally, the supply withers: the old, tastier fruit varieties simply die out and consumers are no longer aware of them as options. If something is not available for long enough, we tend to forget we want it. In this case, limited supply easily leads to whole species loss. At the time of writing, there is a significant danger of a world shortage of bananas as commercially bred bananas (now almost all the bananas that are grown) are of one type that is battling disease (BBC 2018). Across the board, there are concerns about farming monocultures, but the global market, as currently arranged, is not making it easy to move towards greater diversity of supply. Insofar as this is rational, it is also reductive. One issue is that of how to define a rational decision or opinion. Just as rationality may seem a stronger test than reasonableness, which merely suggests a degree of balanced deliberation, whether a particular decision is rational or not is rarely a matter to be confirmed, or even discussed, in purely logical terms. Supposedly rational creatures always have certain interests in mind, and these interests may or may not seem rational. The concept of enlightened self-interest has been a mainstay of liberal political thinking since the late Eighteenth Century: an idea associated with philosophers including Adam Smith and Edmund Burke, to the effect that the best interests of society are ultimately served by individuals following their own selfinterest. While this perspective is associated by many with a rather callous approach to free trade that always acts in the interests of the powerful, it is not necessary to be committed to classical liberalism to find some validity in the concept of enlightened

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self-interest in the broadest sense. It is easy to argue that collaboration is often in one’s best interests, for example, or that society benefits from adults looking after their children. Of course, there are arguments about who ‘our’ children are (adopted children? Children in the neighbourhood? Children in this country?), but the fact that the boundaries here are unclear show how the relationship between the local and the global is best construed as agonistic as opposed to antagonistic: it is impossible to draw a clear line between ‘my children’, ‘our children’ and ‘others’ children’. Such tensions prompt the kind of deliberation that result in actions being more committed and ethically considered than they might otherwise be. There are arguments that might be martialled on both sides in order to argue whether prioritising care for ‘one’s own’ children is rational. However, we are not merely rational actors in an abstract sense. Mostly, people do not think through this issue but merely look after their own children as a priority; they have a powerful instinct (for want of a better word) so to do; furthermore, they tend to disapprove of anyone who does not, and to use their powers of rationality to evaluate policies that may or may not help or hinder them as child-rearers. Of course, if everybody looked after their own children, and were prepared to adopt others as their own in situations such as parental death, there would be no unlooked after children so social duties would have been fulfilled through mass attention to personal duty. Arguably, this would require universal compassion rather than universal reason. The tendency to favour those near to us over those further away is indeed difficult to justify on purely rational grounds, yet it seems inevitable. We cannot simply be rational decision makers as we are not simply rational beings in the abstract, universalised sense. We are beings who tend to rationalise, deliberate and make conscious decisions, but from our own somewhat distinct starting points. On the present account, therefore, human beings are not either purely rational utility maximisers nor purely irrational. Setting aside the other problematic issue of whether we are really utililty maximisers at all (since going on holiday or giving presents might or might not have utility value, depending on perspective), people might best be seen either as arational utility maximisers in a fairly weak sense or as suprarational utility maximisers. By both of these I mean that people generally have, or can find, reasons for their actions, and are usually fairly consistent regarding their economic activity, but their decisions are based on what they feel like doing, what ‘feels right’, rather than what has been arrived at as right following rigorous purely logical debate. What feels right is inevitably conditioned by people’s senses of obligation towards those close to them and thus to their local communities in some sense, though this may mean very different things to different people. It also entails other factors, only some of them conscious, including adherence to community and tradition, physical wellbeing and self-confidence. Acting on ‘what feels right’ can be construed as either not rational (arational as opposed to irrational) or more than rational (suprarational), since rationality does not quite do the job for us on either account. Construed either way, when globalised economics runs up against what feels right for people, the system is liable to attack and damage. Human motivation is broadly threefold. It can be ethical: one gets satisfaction from feeling one has done the right thing. It can be financial: one gets satisfaction

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from making, saving and/or spending money and building as well as using resources. It can be physical or somatic: one gets satisfaction from what gives one feelings of enjoyment, health and vitality, and by extension, what gives that to others with whom we share our physicality, from our own children as ‘flesh and blood’ to other people and certain other creatures with whom we have any sense of affinity. All these criteria are contextually variable and vary between persons. Any two persons are bound to have somewhat different motivations depending on a number of factors. What is meat for the goose cannot always be meat for the gander. According to this model, it is inevitable, rather than irrational, that people will tend to judge society on a range of local outcomes: issues such as local crime, opportunities for their children, availability of services, state of the environment and so on. The argument that gross national product has improved, and that therefore there are increased opportunities to earn and spend if one is prepared, say, to move to a big city or undertake training for a role that has little intrinsic appeal, will never convince everybody. Apart from the fact that gross national product may increase simply because population has increased, thereby proving of little benefit to individuals (a more valid measure would be national product per capita), there are also broader issues of quality of life at stake. To take the example of Southern England, there may well always be more opportunities in London than Cornwall, in the far Southwestern tip of England, but there is an appropriate balance to be struck. For many people in the South-West, actual quality of life in Cornwall is of greater concern than potential quality of life in London, even where the latter is deemed to offer that given the downsides of cost, overcrowding and the rest. However, life cannot be lived simply in consideration of the local: modern societies demand complex public services that always require some degree of organisation at the regional or national level. This is the next issue to be considered.

4.3 Public Services The above considerations raise the issue of local provision of services in a globalised context in which costs can be driven down. Three examples will be briefly considered: health, policing and transport. In all these contexts, it is important to bear in mind that as arational utility maximisers, local aspirations may not automatically match those of others elsewhere in every respect, or neatly match government policy. Note also that in contrast to some of the situations discussed in Chap. 2, the universalising drift has been towards helping the producer, or provider; unlike the cases of food, drink and music discussed in the previous chapter, the changes brought about by mass standardisation have benefited the producer, or provider, rather than the consumer. In these cases, the rebalancing that is required is in favour of the users of the services. The dynamics of new localism indeed differ somewhat from case to case.

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4.3.1 Health Health systems vary considerably between countries, as do those of policing and transportation. However, in many countries, decisions impacting on local communities have come to be taken more and more on a regional, if not national basis. It has often proved more cost effective, for example, to have only one hospital providing ‘accident and emergency’ (A&E) services in quite a large geographical area. This enables expensive resources and specialist staff to work together at the lowest possible cost, but increases travel times and costs, waiting times and general inconvenience for patients. Many other specialist services have been centralised in this way. Increasingly, the local ‘cottage hospital’ has disappeared as patients have to travel for more advanced provision. To a large extent, this is indeed inevitable, as advanced, expensive services do indeed require economies of scale, and health interventions have become more specialised, technological and expensive. Nevertheless, there are a number of ways in which local agencies could play an increased role in health and medical provision. For example, local clinics could act in an advisory capacity and as filters, reducing the need for people to access services further afield. Such clinics could be placed in key community buildings (post offices, churches, pubs, hotels) and could include pharmacies. Online and telephone services, such as the NHS Direct service in England, could be locally run to give local advice on access. There could be more, and better co-ordinated local transport to hospitals and clinics. There could even be planned bunching of operations at major centres to deal with people from different locations. Many such changes could be expedited by having more really local voices on decision making bodies, thus rebalancing the power over decisions towards the local.

4.3.2 Policing Regarding policing, there could be a return to more local stations and patrols, perhaps at the expense of reduced bureaucracy and regional and national accounting procedures. The public could have better direct email as well as telephone access. A higher proportion of police officers could be appointed with local knowledge and connections, so that a greater proportion of people are aware of who their local police contact should be—and such contacts might as often as possible have real local connections. Police presence on the streets need not be intimidating and can give great consolation to the law-abiding majority. Recent estimates in England suggest that at any one time, only about 11% of police officers are out on patrol (FullFact 2012), and there is certainly a widespread public perception that police are not as ‘visible’ on the streets as they once were. With policing, as perhaps with no other public service, there can be an ‘Us versus Them’ problem; the best way for the police to feel like ‘us’ is for some of them to be active members of our communities.

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4.3.3 Transport Regarding transport, there could be greater efforts to empower the local voice with respect to levels of service, fares, the positioning of facilities, and modes of transport available. Over the longer term, more local involvement might result in services being better co-ordinated locally, both in terms of facilities (bus stations near or within rail stations near or within airports and so on) and in terms of timings. There could also be greater use of locally employed and volunteer services to bridge the gaps in the system, for example by providing buses from villages to towns with bus and rail stations, where such services are deemed uneconomic by larger operators. (Indeed, voluntary assistance can also prove very valuable in the previously discussed cases of health and policing services, as long as professional standards are maintained.) These volunteer services could in principle work in tandem with the professional operators, notwithstanding the understandable reluctance of providers and labour unions to embrace the concept of unpaid labour; sometimes people welcome such opportunities to contribute. As with housing policy, much of the challenge lies in trying to make innovations genuinely bottom-up rather than top-down, and ensuring the system is flexible enough to respond to innovations and suggestions from the very lowest level of organisation.

4.4 Conclusions Transport offers an apt metaphor for the problem as a whole. The paradox of globalisation is that while it standardises, it leaves many behind. You cannot catch the bus to work if there is no bus at the right time to get you there. Globalisation provides opportunities and wealth overall but this is not what primarily concerns any individual who is living in the here-and-now. In some respects, globalisation can entrench inequalities. For example, at the national level, globalisation appears to be transnational or supranational but in fact maintains or even exacerbates a core-periphery model (Berend 2004). For instance, within the European Union, and particularly within the Eurozone, where countries cannot allow the value of their currencies to vary, certain nation states are effectively locked into existing roles: for example, Germany as massive producer and power, and southern states such as Greece as largely dependent consumers. From a purely economic perspective, there are a number of possibilities that could be investigated and perhaps pursued in attempts to address this within the broad theoretical umbrella of acknowledging people as arational utility maximisers in a weak sense. For example, there could be a further shift in taxation policies from taxing wealth to taxing energy use: ‘the polluter pays’. This would have the effect of encouraging local, ecologically friendly technologies and discouraging mass transportation by road, sea and air. There could be reductions in business rates for enterprises that promote the local, while to balance this, international transportation

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costs could rise. Further incentives could be made available for truly local economic enterprises such as community shops and pubs on a local or regional basis. Examples of the kinds of action possible are provided through the UK’s ‘Northern Powerhouse’ initiative, which included a £3.4 billion fund to ‘Provid(e) targeted financial support to locally-determined projects in order to unlock growth’ (UK 2018), albeit there was no apparent theoretical underpinning to this initiative of the sort argued for here. These projects included four large grants to further and higher education, the latter for research to boost businesses in the life sciences area via an existing science park, and the former for training centres and apprenticeships with an advanced manufacturing and engineering bias. Other projects were for an Olympic legacy park in Sheffield, “to allow it to become an internationally recognised centre for health, welfare and innovation” while creating “1,000 high-value jobs” and for improved flood defences in Hull (ibid.). Such projects exemplify a form of government intervention that largely exists to boost the private sector, and thus create wealth. On the other hand, this was a purely regional initiative rather than radical shift in policy to boost local enterprise throughout the nation. There are several steps on the path to greater economic localism that go beyond mere protectionism, but the first, and arguably most important is the acknowledgment and valorisation of people’s real, arational preferences. In this chapter, we shall discuss how people can be given greater rights to exercise these preferences, but also greater responsibilities so that they can no longer get away with simply decrying the system from a distance. This sort of alienation or anomie is corrosive of democracy and threatens long term prosperity. Chapter 5 presents another challenge to many economic models by questioning the degree to which numerical measures are appropriate final indicators. After all, in its original meaning, ‘economics’ refers to management of the environment, not solely to econometrics. Balancing the books is a precondition of improved quality of life, and profit, in a broad sense, is necessary for innovation, but true quality of life is not defined by global economic statistics.

References BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation). 2018. Accessed 1 Nov 2018 from https://www.bbc.co. uk/news/uk-england-35131751. Berend, Ivan. 2004. Globalization and its impact on core-periphery relations. UCLA Conference paper. Accessed 20 Nov 2018 from https://eschlorship.org/content/qt5zn164xm.pdf. Financial Times. 2018. Accessed 1 Nov 2018 from http://burnley.co.uk/financial-times-reportsburnley-leading-uk-tech-town. FullFact. 2012. Accessed 7 Dec 2018 from https://fullfact.org/crime/police-bureaucracy-are-frontline-officers-spending-85-their-time-paperwork/. Hodgson, Geoffrey. 2012. On the limits of rational choice theory. Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Working Paper. Moore, Tim. 2013. You are awful (But i like you): Travels through unloved Britain. London: Vintage. Stark, Jim. 2018. Cowdenbeath on the Up and Up. Central Fife Times and Advertiser, 15 Jan 2018. Szamosszegi, Andrew, and Cole Kyle. 2011. An analysis of state-owned enterprises and state capitalism in China. Washington DC: Capital Trade. UK (United Kingdom Government). 2018. Accessed 1 Nov 2018 from http://www. northernpowerhouse.gov.uk.

Chapter 5

Living in and for the Here-and-Now

Abstract This chapter explores the specifically ethical dimensions of new localism. First, it considers the differences and overlaps between forms of consequentialist and deontological ethics, arguing that falling back on universal prescriptions can, by default, lead to a failure to take individual and collective responsibility. The argument is then developed through considering this in relation to the public sphere of political arrangements and the private sphere of life choices and attitudes. In relation to the former, the case is made for a partial move back from representative democracy to participatory democracy at the local level, with national policy in certain areas becoming the aggregate of local policies, rather than the present situation in which national governments expect local communities to implement policies with very limited space for interpretation. Existentially, examples of immanent transcendentalism, including forms of Buddhism and Thoreau’s Walden experiment, are cited as ways of increasing awareness and appreciation of the local environment, human and nonhuman. In light of this, issues of waste management are discussed, as well as the broader social issues of borderless crime and the role of the local in maintaining a healthy balance between production and consumption.

5.1 Ethics of New Localism This chapter will consider the ethical and existential aspects of new localism. After a general introduction to the issues, the chapter will focus on two specific sets of concerns and possible responses to them, before bringing these together. First there is the political concern around what new localism might mean for social policy: the proposal is for greater local participatory democracy with a concomitant weakening of national and international governance in certain areas. Secondly, though relatedly, there is the existential concern of what new localism might mean for how we live our lives as individuals. The two are, of course, related and overlapping, such that a consistent ethical commitment to new localism should not let either the community or the individual trample on the rights of the other, just as local initiative generally should enhance the global and universal rather than diminish it.

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‘Charity begins at home’ is known as a Victorian saying, but it remains the case that if everyone in the world were looked after by those physically nearby, there would be no need for worldwide charity. That is not to say either that the virtues propelling such actions are not universal (kindness and generosity, for example), nor is it to claim that all local problems can be solved without aid from further afield. Nevertheless, universalist modernist ethics have failed to acknowledge the principle that, as embodied beings, we are rooted in places, and have the most power to act in relation to those nearby, human and non-human. All good action must be undertaken by someone, somewhere. This chapter argues for localism with respect to responsibility and, in that sense, a return to the quest for personal salvation. Universal rights talk is not enough to invigorate the local in the context of the global. Universalist ethics encourages us to think of the suffering of a child halfway round the world as of equal to that of a child in the house next door. In terms of the subjective experience of the suffering child, this is unquestionably the case. However, ‘thinking of’ leads to ‘responding to’, and universalist ethics do not help us enough here. The universal, abstract truth (that suffering per se is the same everywhere) should not trump the equally powerful truth that we are most empowered to act where we are. Beyond the household, we are best placed to help the child next door, of all children in need. Confusion in this area leads to some strange distortions. We may support environmental movements that rely on international travel and movement of goods, and we may not look for problems near to us but rather actively seek causes to support in other countries. Also, because the scale of suffering around the world is so vast, we may merely be paralysed into inaction. It is one thing to respond to an immediate crisis close at hand, quite another to respond to a cacophony of messages, often of unknown provenance (increasingly so since the rise of social media) coming from afar. The steps to action become too complex to negotiate easily. Is this news real or fake? How important is this to me? How do I prioritise the range of demands for help that I get from the mail and the media? Mass communications have brought about new ethical problems by distorting traditional conceptions of proximity and distance (Stables 1998). It is natural to conflate the idea of feeling close to someone with a sense of moral obligation towards that person, and vice versa. Conversely, it is valid to keep our distances from beings that threaten us, even though we may wish them well, just as we wish endangered species of dangerous animals well but do not wish for physical proximity to them. How, however, do these inevitable dynamics prepare us to respond to the highly selective news items we attend to with their attention to a diffuse, though challenging, set of international issues? By bringing the news from far away into our living rooms, the mass media inadvertently causes moral conflict at the same time as it raises global awareness. This thesis—that mass communication has brought moral confusion through interrupting traditional notions of proximity and distance that have prompted compassionate response—can be seen as one aspect of what Ulrich Beck (1992) has termed the ‘risk society’. In premodern times, dangers were signalled in the immediate environment, from drought and fire to flood and disease. Now, by contrast, we are expected

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to take a sort of intellectual control over almost every aspect of our lifestyles. Management of risk has become more diffuse, more uncertain, and more dependent on individual life choices. In the past, people responded in part instinctively to immediate threats and sought means to forestall as well as offset them. There was little doubt as to whether there was a problem to be addressed. Such instinctual reactions have now been suppressed and distorted. We are warned against intervening in acts of cruelty we see on the streets, for example, or tackling burglars in our houses, while encouraged to give money to support appeals to alleviate suffering in distant lands. Unfortunately, the result can be one of increasing inaction, as we feel both psychologically and emotionally stifled. Mass communication enables us to guard against risk to some extent by warning us of likely drought, fire, flood or disease, but it is not always at all clear which threats we should be responding to. In the UK, for example, different daily newspapers are in the habit alerting us to different things: the Daily Express is notorious (or renowned, depending on one’s preferences) for its continual habit of predicting dire weather, usually by implicitly generalising a possible threat to one part of the country to the whole nation. Other news outlets concern us with far different, and differing things. The loyal reader of one newspaper receives a highly selective view of the world. The overall result may be not so much that we are better able to decide what risks to confront and how, but that we are rather much less clear than people in the distant past about what we feel we need to do next. As at other points in this argument, I stress that I am not arguing for a return to premodern times, but for a sort of rebalancing, a new validation of the local. Premodern life could indeed be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”, as Thomas Hobbes reminded us (Hobbes 1651: Pt. 1, Chap. 13, Para. 9), but late modern/postmodern life can be long, anxious and unfulfilling (e.g. Baudrillard 1983). Somehow we need to harness the advantages of mass communication while also returning to a healthier realisation of the primacy of the local, the personal and the instinctive in driving human concern and action.

5.2 Politics and Policy I shall approach this problem from the perspective of placeholder ethics, by which I mean the rights and responsibilities that go with both private property and community protection and enhancement. There are situations in which ‘I was here first’ and ‘we are here already’ will inevitably carry weight, particularly with respect to previously uninhabited territories. However, laying claim to somewhere does not amount to licence to destroy or debar, for instance through degrading the environment or blocking existing rights of access: roads or footpaths, for example. Having a right to private property or defined community entails responsibilities as well as rights. This chapter will explore how some of those responsibilities might play out, in terms of how we might make something of the local: for example, gardens, roofs and shared spaces as well as the interiors of our dwellings.

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By extending the range of the local from merely private property to shared community space, a significant move is made with respect to policy. Although most politicians and local authorities recognise the desirability of seeking local views, these views are merely used to inform debate while policy is driven by the Lockean principle of individual property rights on the one hand and objectives of national government on the other; in some cases, it is driven merely by the latter. Political discourse in many countries is conducted as a battle between individualism and national collectivism, with smaller local communities largely disregarded. On the classical liberal account, one has near absolute rights over one’s own property, be one an individual, a corporation or a state, with certain safeguards built into the planning system. However, this situation does not acknowledge the full reality of, say, buying a house at a certain price because of its location when one has no final say over the future development of that location. The title of the UK’s Channel 4 television series about houses Location, Location, Location implicitly makes a point about planning policy that many governments do not fully acknowledge: that one’s quality of life is not merely a matter of good government policy and sufficient private property (https://www.channel4.com/programmes/location-locationlocation Retrieved 31 January 2019). One’s surroundings matter a lot. The dynamics at work are not merely those of individual property rights and national policy priorities. The signifying environment—the umwelt—is of paramount importance. The present argument is also broadly a liberal argument, insofar as it acknowledges the rights and responsibilities of individuals even where these do not conform to a majority pattern and it acknowledges the validity of all sincere claims. However, it is more a Deweyan than a Lockean liberalism that is promoted here, in which it is the immediate social group, rather than merely the individual, or even individual family, whose views are prioritised. Let us apply this to the concrete example with which Chap. 1 began and the proposed Welcome Principle. If an outsider wishes to settle in your village, on the Lockean account, you have no right to object as long as your own property remains untouched, though some account could be taken of ramified harm: pollution of the air or water or noise, for example. On the present account, the collective view of the community should not merely inform but lead policy. This represents a major shift for states such as the UK. At present, housing needs (for example) are nationally determined and local authorities are required to meet them. On the modified Deweyan account offered here, collective decisions about local spaces should be paramount, with national policy (about migration and housing, in this case) arising from the total of these decisions. The objection that local groupings might make selfish decisions is not valid. It does not offend the principle any more than the corresponding objection to national planning merely on the grounds that national politicians do not always make desirable decisions. Anyone’s decisions about anything could be construed as selfish by another party. Democratic control is not subject to a specific competence or acceptability test. At least in this case there is immediate and tangible accountability. Furthermore, such increased local responsibility should help to end the blame game that characterises much current political discourse. National politicians will no longer be able to make

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sweeping statements about implausible plans, while individuals will not so easily be able to blame national government for failing to address issues. Consider, for example, how the dynamics of debate around the US–Mexican border would change if local communities, particularly along the border but also elsewhere, were the bodies responsible for agreeing arrangements. At the time of writing, the US Congress endured a long shutdown because of a stand-off between President Trump and the Democrats on this issue. It is the people who live near the border who are best placed to lead this debate, on the present argument. I have seen little reporting of their views on the issue. A more problematic objection is that, as noted above, all community spaces are, in some way, private property, either of individuals or collectives, from governments to corporations to existing local councils. Even common land may well be managed by some sort of bespoke committee or appropriated by default by certain individuals through habitual patterns of use. It is not therefore possible to make any collective local decisions without some sort of potential conflict with property owners. Here again, however, the Welcome Principle can hold sway. In cases where the future of a piece of land is in dispute between, say, a controlling national company and the wishes of local people, the proximity of the landlord can be recognised as a factor in resolving the dispute. Therefore, a local landowner may in certain circumstances be challenged by community wishes, but a distant landowner’s view will be given relatively less credence. This would likely have the effect over time of reducing, but not eliminating, distant landlords. Procedurally, principles such as this are difficult to define closely other than after many instances of case law. The principle, however, would offer much greater protection to a current private landowner who does, or does not, wish to, say, build in her garden, than to a corporation that seeks to completely redevelop a large area of land sold to it by a retired farmer. The local bonus would then work as follows. Where claims are otherwise equal, the local community should trump larger external agencies, such as national government, except in exceptional cases of mutually recognised national need such as that related to war or an immediate humanitarian crisis nearby (but not one very far away). However, where claims are both local, such as a private landowner wishing to construct a shed at the bottom of his garden, both landowner and community should be happy to accept the proposal. This shared control would not give the right of local communities to force change on established use of private land, however, unless a recognised public nuisance could be identified. For example, local communities could not tell a private landowner to plant different flowers in a border or dig a wildlife pond in the garden, unless under some strange circumstance the present situation can be adjudged polluting in some way. Nevertheless, the proposal offers increased powers to local collectives. It would not determine who could buy land, but would have control over what is done with it. This would, for example, deter developers from accruing land in areas where their proposed development is not wanted by local residents or, conversely, that they have no intention of building on for many years for purely financial reasons. In effect, it gives significant rights and responsibilities to local people over their local environment. To avoid misuse of this power, it might be argued that certain conditions

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should be met. Firstly, as such collectives are intended to be small (no bigger than a few thousand people in any case), there is a stronger than usual case for strongly participatory democracy, with all resident adults—resident, say, for more than twelve months—eligible to propose, speak and vote, and with all policy collectively decided under the aegis of a Chair locally elected for a fixed term. Secondly, the responsibility here is not only towards people but towards land the stewardship of which has been given to local control. Thus, in a strong sense, the rights and responsibilities entailed are environmental and ecological rights and responsibilities. Let us consider how such locally driven decision making might operate on as environmentally and ecologically sustainable grounds as possible. Regarding planning, placing more responsibility in the hands of local communities means giving people greater control over the air they breathe, the water they drink, the landscape they see and the artificial light they choose to either enjoy or eschew. Of course, none of these can be totally determined by the actions of one community, but if each community had the power to take more control over decisions that so directly affected their quality of life, this should have an overall ameliorative effect. It might mean, for example, that a highly polluting industrial practice could no longer find any home in which it was welcome; if it were retained for its benefits to employment and so on, that would be a local decision made by people ready to accept the consequences for them at first hand. Access to services could also be made more efficient and less wasteful by putting more decisions into local hands. In the case of medical services, local communities could at least input into the decisions about deployment of medical and ancillary staff, citing of machinery and so on. Issues around so-called ‘health tourism’ might become less acute if patterns of health provision in any area were approved by the population of that area. There are already many examples of good practice. Individual businesses and other enterprises can act in ways that are more environmentally and ecologically sustainable, and many are leading the way. For example, the firm Cymru Kitchens in Newport, South Wales, makes and fits kitchen units. Putting aside for a moment considerations around how often people really need to change their kitchen units, this firm not only removes the old units but uses the energy from burning them to fuel its factory (http://www.cymrukitchens.com/index#section-home retrieved 2 November 2018). This sort of recycling practice could be much more widespread. In terms of rights, such a form of localised participatory democracy would put significant powers into the hands of communities, who would effectively have the final say over land use. There would have to be certain safeguards, adherence to which would be a major responsibility. In their weakest form, these safeguards might amount to ensuring simply that neighbours were not directly damaged by agreed changes and that necessary existing cross-boundary services (such as drainage and cabling) be maintained. In a stronger form, communities might be expected to, for example, at least maintain biodiversity, remain or become carbon-neutral, at least maintain the level of green space (perhaps including green roofs to new buildings), and be responsible for certain local services such as shops and post offices. On

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this stronger account, localisation could have significant environmental as well as political benefits. Let us remind ourselves of how different this proposed system is from that which widely holds sway at the time of writing, by considering the proposed ‘Oxford-Cambridge Arc’ (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment45991203 retrieved 27 October 2018). The proposal is to create a million new dwellings (they cannot surely be called ‘homes’ until they are happily lived in), alongside businesses and opportunities for further expansion of research facilities connected with the region’s major universities. All this development would be alongside a new highway. Needless to say, these proposals have proved hugely controversial, but the key point in relation to the present argument is that the local communities involved have been given so little say. The environmentalist George Monbiot is quoted as saying, “In 30 years, if this scheme goes ahead, (Oxfordshire) must build as many new houses, and the infrastructure, public services and businesses required to support them, as have been built in the past 1,000. A million new homes amounts, in effect, to an Oxford-Cambridge conurbation. But none of this is up for debate. By the time we are asked for our opinion, there will be little left to discuss but the colour of the road signs.” (ibid.) From the perspective of the present argument, the undesirable effects of lack of local power over such decisions are twofold. First, and most obviously, distant decision making may result in people’s environments being radically changed against their will. Secondly, it takes from people any sense that they have either rights or responsibilities regarding their local and regional environments. This can serve to breed a counterproductive negativity, whereby people automatically refuse development while simultaneously demanding increased spending on health services, schools and other public institutions that requires economic growth to fuel tax take. (Simple redistribution of existing wealth is not a long term solution, as countries such as Venezuela have found to their detriment.) However, if people sometimes have naïve, hypocritical or narrowly selfish attitudes to these matters, this is in part because they have effectively been infantilised by the present system. Until people have to take responsibilities for their collective actions, they will be inclined to both blame the authorities and expect them to provide. Thus civil life and democracy are eroded by high-handed, distant decision makers who are, after all, working on the assumption that local people cannot be trusted to make sensible decisions about the future. This is not the way to promote healthy democracy, despite the fact that local communities may often not wish to do what governments want. Governments should respond to these wishes, not trample over them. Most of the above considerations relate to the communal. There is, however, another aspect to enhanced awareness of, and responsibility for, the local, and that concerns the individual’s relationship with the environment.

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5.3 Existential Localism Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) is one of a series of writers from the last two centuries who celebrate a sort of immanent transcendentalism: the belief that a better life results from contemplation of, and action on, the local rather than obsession with material gain through action in the public sphere. Wordsworth, Emerson and environmentalists such as Schumacher are major figures with respect to this, but Gregory Bateson and others who have argued for a more situated, less narrowly humanistic conception of mind have also pointed the ways towards human development through local action. This section concerns the ethics of localism for the individual: the ethics of living in the here-and-now. This necessarily involves a reawakening of the senses, appreciation of the immediate environment and concern for those around us, including the nonhuman. It implies a return to a greater sense of home as where we live, as opposed to merely where we undertake certain actions, such as sleeping and eating, and a more generalised increased awareness of our surroundings wherever we are: the antidote to the state of mind induced by modern urban living that Roger Waters described as “comfortably numb” in the Pink Floyd song of that name. This desired state of mind, of heightened awareness infused with compassion, is surely that that many spiritual leaders urge. The Dalai Lama put it as follows: “The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness.” (Dalai Lama 2016: no page number.). Thoreau explained his decision to live in the woods by Walden Pond for two years as follows: I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived (Thoreau 1854: no page number.).

Such a heightened awareness may be painful at times, revealing darker aspects of human living that are often taken for granted. A minor example: in a nearby village is a drainage ditch. In times past it had frog spawn in the Spring. Then someone unblocked the entrance (a grill along the road side) during a storm with a strong chemical. Since then there have been no frog spawn. Under the pressure of needing to avoid a local flood, no one stopped to be aware of the chemical that was being used; as a result, the local environment was degraded for some years. With greater attention and some human effort, the soakaway into the ditch could have been cleared by human effort alone as a result of which the local frog population, and everything that goes along with it, could be much higher. By such careless measures we slowly damage the ecosystem. To avoid this situation, we need an enhanced sense of history alongside an appreciation of the present and a willingness to do well. Thoreau’s aim was to live as intensively as possible in the here-and-now, valuing heightened awareness of the local above mere conventional adherence to an externally driven system. There are various elements to this worldview. In part it is anti-materialistic in the sense that it sees life energy wasted on the pursuit of consumerism; on the other hand, it is strongly materialistic in that Thoreau seeks a deeper reality through real physical engagement with his environment, through

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activities such as measuring the depth of the pond. In the final chapter he stresses the value of not nailing into plaster but working through to the firm material behind it. In part it is about engagement with the here-and-now, but that engagement often leads to periods of reflection, including some nostalgia, as Thoreau shares his thoughts about the nobility or ignominy of the ancient and modern worlds. In part it is about solitude and the rich experience it brings, yet by placing his hut only a mile outside the town (Concord, Massachusetts), and seeking a degree of social interaction, Thoreau reflects at some length on lives other than his own. To many modern readers, Thoreau’s style seems laborious and somewhat selfindulgent, yet his “experiment in living” is, at heart, an attempt at rebalancing the local and the global. He does not seek to reject universal truths; indeed, he spends considerable time cogitating upon them. He does, however, see enrichment of life through far greater involvement with the physically proximate, however humble and of whatever species. If we seek our adventures there, we can find that “The universe is wider than our views of it”, while distant travel is “only great-circle sailing” (Thoreau 1854, Chap. 9). Travel leads to self-discovery, or to nothing of value. An important aspect of this discovery is that we are all different. Rather as Rousseau argues for the growth of innate self-confidence (amour de soi-même) in Émile (1979), as opposed to the weak and denigratory view of self (amour propre) engendered through mere socialisation and the constant comparison with others that results, so Thoreau urges us to celebrate difference and unconventionality where this feels right to the individual: Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer (Thoreau 1854, Conclusion.).

Thoreau’s influences doubtless include the transcendentalism of his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson and the general pioneering spirit and work ethic of the extreme Protestant tradition that inspired the earliest English speaking settlers. There are also strong resonances with Wordsworthian Romanticism. Moreover, Thoreau’s knowledge of Classical culture and, to some extent, of Indian religion and philosophy is evident throughout his work. While in many respects a counter-cultural figure, he is certainly not an isolated voice. In many respects, his plea is for mindfulness: he distinguishes between levels of awareness of everyday reality in terms of being asleep or awake to it. In a broader sense, his views resonate strongly with the Buddhist as well as the Christian Protestant traditions, in terms of his strong emphasis on individual attitude and work shaping quality of life. His deep attention to the land is echoed in Twentieth Century work including Aldo Leopold’s land ethics (Leopold 1968) and in the broader deep ecology movement (Naess 2010). These then are the dimensions of existential individual localism: increase awareness (to find the extraordinary in the ordinary), extend compassion, move and act carefully; often, slow down. However, new localism is not merely about individuals but about relationships and communities. Thoreau may not the most inspiring example here, as he spends virtually no time on relationships per se, though he is clearly interested in persons other than himself. However, just as attention to the individual should by no means invalidate the social (as in the aim of the French Revolution:

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fraternity is as important as liberty and equality), neither should an emphasis on community play down the degree to which we are all, in some senses, marching to the beats of different drummers. The above principles guiding individual existential localism could be incorporated into the practices of the newly empowered participatory councils argued for above. Increased responsibility for local decisions at least has the potential to increase awareness of local conditions, extend compassion to neighbours and visitors, and encourage careful and considered action on a small scale, bearing in mind that if practised everywhere, this would result in careful and considered action across the board. Often, decisions may be made more slowly than before but more deliberately, where there are no simple off-the-shelf solutions. Meanwhile, individual rights can be guaranteed at least as strongly as they now are, although individuals may find themselves increasingly accountable to their neighbours.

5.4 From Consumption to Production Linking the theme of Chap. 4 to that of Chap. 3, we should note that many social commentators have defined the Late Modern or Postmodern age as an era of consumption rather than production. The discussion in Chaps. 2 and 3 showed products as diverse as food and music as available cheaply to consumers though local production is often uneconomic. This is a sharp reversal of the conditions pertaining through most of history. Aristotle, for example, describes a world in the Nicomachean Ethics in which most wealth is created by the household and a minority only by trade. However, by the mid-Nineteenth Century, Henry David Thoreau writes in Walden about the tendency to sacrifice or defer the challenges of home making and local production on the mistaken belief, in his view, that prospering necessarily requires significant income gained from trade (Aristotle 2011; Thoreau 1854). Doing something positive at the local level remains however a form of production, and there is a new balance to be struck here. There are a number of moves that could increase and encourage more diverse, local production, in the broadest sense. One is to tax travel and energy use more, the more that is used. As suggested in Chap. 3, household wealth could be taxed less and energy use more. This would help to enable locally produced products to fare better in the local marketplace than mass produced products that have been subject to mass transportation, for example. Business rents could be lowered to encourage local businesses. Such businesses could be given tax breaks for the use of local resources and labour. The media, from national and regional tourist boards to local websites, could do more to promote local distinctiveness. There could be more events to showcase local goods and talents. However, there is an existential as well as a policy element to this. In general, people could become more attentive to the distinctive qualities of local enterprise and value it more highly in their consumer behaviour. This kind of appreciation might be easier, however, if the advantages of local sourcing and creation were more evident.

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At present, some of the consequences of mass global transportation remain hidden. For example, modern systems of waste disposal mask the general public from some of the more dire long term consequences of our mass produced, throwaway society.

5.5 Localism, Waste and Recycling The issue of waste in a sense transcends those of production and consumption, as each of these activities can be undertaken with varying levels of environmental impact, and much of that impact concerns waste. Unfortunately, waste issues tend to be hidden and thus easily forgotten. Furthermore, waste increases with scale of operation while scale of operation increases the distance between us and the waste we produce. Cost efficiency on a large scale can be very wasteful, as evidenced in the amount of food produced but not sold, the amount discarded by supermarkets, and the amount of fish killed but not subsequently eaten during commercial fishing. About a third of food produced each year is not eaten (http://www.fao.org/save-food/ resources/keyfindings/en retrieved 2 November 2018). An important feature of new localism could be higher levels of awareness and responsibility for dealing with our own waste as individuals and communities. Without this change, we are sheltered from the consequences of our own actions, and this has become increasingly acute in recent years. South Korea has recently begun to charge its citizens for disposal of food waste: the more you generate, the more you pay (Lee and Paik 2011). Not having adopted such a policy, much of the UK’s food waste at the time of writing goes half way across the world to landfill in China, where it will not rot down for decades; at the time of writing, most of it is not even composted. There are alarming levels of non-biodegradable waste, notwithstanding that nothing biodegrades normally in airless landfill sites. For example, there are now more mobile devices than people on Earth (https://www.independent.co.uk/lifestyle/gadgets-and-tech/news/there-are-officially-more-mobile-devices-than-peoplein-the-world-9780518.html Retrieved 2 November 2018). As the technology has developed, smartphones (in particular) have become cheaper to produce and almost universal. They are small and thus seem easily disposable: once binned, they are easily forgotten and lost to the human gaze. However, smartphones do not decompose readily. Indeed, they contain many rare minerals that are in short supply and are difficult to mine, including gold. It has been estimated that about one gram of gold could be extracted from about 40 discarded smartphones (BBC 2018). Other waste materials, including fabrics, plastics and even newspaper, decay extremely slowly, especially in oxygen-deprived sealed landfill sites. Meanwhile, the extent of human waste sent to landfill, notwithstanding increasing levels of recycling, is staggering compared to a century ago (ibid.). This is an area in which increased global efficiency has come at a significant cost. Councils now remove waste regularly and apparently cleanly, and it is disposed of in sites hidden from the public gaze—though sometimes just beneath our feet, where the site has been sealed off. This often involves considerable transport costs as well

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as the scientific expertise required to keep the process as safe as possible. However, it is also an area in which simple objection to modern systems would be entirely counterproductive. The mass disposal of waste is necessary; the keeping of such waste from centres of human population is highly desirable; scientific and technological expertise is not available at local community level; furthermore, such expertise is not only necessary to keep the process safe but also enables us to benefit in some ways from it, such as through the harvesting of methane gas, and the development of technology to mine landfill sites, for example for the precious metals in smartphones referred to above (though few of these initiatives have yet been put into action on a large scale). To object wholescale to modern waste management is as naïve and counterproductive as kneejerk anti-globalisationism in other areas. This does not mean there is no problem of local detachment, however. That there is such a problem is evidenced partly by the lack of attention this issue receives in the run of complaints against impersonal abstract systems. In general, people are not strongly motivated to take more personal responsibility for their waste; it is not something they wish to dwell on, or indeed dwell near to. Julia Kristeva coined the term ‘abject’ to refer our reaction to something that, while defining us as human, simultaneously repels us (Kristeva 1984). Corpses, vomit and faeces are abject in this sense. We have a deep psychological and emotional need to keep our distance from such things. Ironically, this need is associated in part with the fact that these are rotting, dying things, though they all ultimately feed the soil. Modern circumstances, however, have allowed us to detach ourselves so completely from objects stimulating abjection that a sort of immature hypocrisy or double-think has taken hold. For instance, we have become increasingly concerned about health but often remain uncomfortable about death. Another striking example concerns infant sanitation. In order to dispose of faeces, we use disposable nappies (diapers) because they seem to conceal the abject and can be disposed of easily. However, experience is showing that disposable nappies do not break down in landfill sites for decades, possibly centuries. By trying to deal cleanly with our babies’ waste, we are in fact causing considerable damage to our environment, and possibly to the health of future generations. There are many other such problems, including plastics that find their way back into our drinking water and electronic products that leech heavy metals into the soil and potentially the water supply. As Shakespeare’s Macbeth came to realise, too late: “This even handed justice commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice to our own lips” (Macbeth Act 1, Scene 7 in e.g. Shakespeare ed. Bate 2008). One conclusion is that we must keep faith with the present system and work to improve it. Another is that we must find ways of increasing local responsibility for our own actions in relation to waste disposal and recycling. It might be argued that if we all became more environmentally aware, we would not need to change anything, as we would act responsibly in relation to things that do not happen on our doorsteps. However, abstract knowledge never becomes full understanding without human contact and experience. Brains are parts of bodies and the two work together; human beings are not abstract reasoning machines. It follows that people will take greater responsibility for waste when they experience the consequences directly.

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There is therefore a circle to be squared here. On the one hand it is important to retain appreciation of a system that deals with our waste behind our backs and out of our sight, but on the other we also need a direct personal involvement in this process to develop as more responsible citizens in this regard. There are various ways in which newly empowered participatory local councils might play a role here. The task is to turn back the clock a hundred years in one respect but not in another: to return to the sense that the waste we create is our responsibility and our choice, and will be disposed of mostly locally, but not to return to the ad hoc system of merely burying waste locally or hopefully throwing it into the water, or burning it all on bonfires. The two key elements here are those of awareness and of price and cost. It is likely that attention to the latter will have some positive effect on the former. If somehow individuals and communities could be charged more precisely for the quantity and type of waste they produced, this would be a sharp prompt to learning more about waste management generally. In arguing for this, the attendant danger must be acknowledged, that people may be more tempted to dispose of waste privately and dangerously to avoid costs. Any revised system would have to take these considerations into account. Part of the problem is that local authorities have, largely for economic reasons, become less local and more regional, and therefore impersonal. There is a danger in distancing payment from service. People then may begin to think that certain benefits come as part of the natural world and can be taken for granted (albeit the natural world itself cannot be taken for granted) and this encourages a culture of dependency, expectation and lack of responsibility. In some sense, we all need to confront our own waste. Even the local council is now something detached in many ways from most people’s sense of day-to-day responsibility. Thus there is a case for a new emphasis on paying directly for the services we use. Such new payment would have to balance realistic cost of services provided with ability to pay, and would have to safeguard against practices such as fly-tipping, but moves in this direction are possible and have indeed been put into play by some local authorities. For example, many British local councils provide waste bins for garden waste at a cost, and one can purchase in multiple quantities at multiple cost. However, this is in some respects a fringe issue as garden waste is by definition biodegradable so should not be a major disposal problem, and not everyone has a garden. The same principle could be applied to other forms of waste though, realistically, the system would have to be policed in a way some might object to; however, this policing could be undertaken consensually at very local level. Each householder might, therefore, be given collectable waste containers for different kinds of waste, and charged per container, or by weight of output. Such containers should not be unhelpfully generous in size, to discourage large amounts of waste. At the same time, local communities could take greater responsibility for the state of their own roadsides, laybys, waste bins and open spaces, mostly in terms of rotas for clearing and cleaning, but also perhaps in terms of fining or otherwise punishing significant transgressors. Participative local democracy will not work if it is all about rights; it must also, indeed primarily, be about responsibilities. If we cannot take responsibility for our own waste, how can we argue for the right to be considered citizens?

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Such systems of payment might be modified by some kind of means testing, whereby those on higher incomes pay more for the services, but a central plank of the policy would be to increase a sense of responsibility for waste. Another area in which the global has increasingly impinged on the local in ways that seem to leave the latter powerless is that of international crime and terrorism, including cyber-crime.

5.6 Borderless Crime and Local Action As noted in Chap. 2, effective policing requires strong communications and reactivity at the local, regional, national and international levels. The same holds true for security issues generally: the thwarting of a major terrorist plot often begins with someone noticing something odd about a neighbour’s behaviour. Certain forms of crime seem particularly difficult to deal with at even a national level. At first glance, it is difficult to see how very local action could be of much help in the field of cyber-crime. However, awareness of one’s neighbours (short of prying) can be very valuable in preventing crime, and also in other less difficult areas. Organisations such as churches, councils, social clubs and sports teams all serve a number of community functions, from making one aware of when neighbours are ill or in trouble, to increasing awareness of the state of the local environment outside the home. There is nothing necessarily intrusive about any of this. Here, the political and the existential overlap, for much crime prevention is done by noticing, and reflecting on what one has noticed. Many readers will have had the experience of feeling that something might be wrong with a situation, a person or whatever, though not necessarily following it up. I once watched people steal a friend’s car, but failed to acknowledge to myself that what I was seeing was actually happening; I assumed I had been mistaken. On another occasion I had a strange feeling about a car that pulled up in a space near my office. I thought of taking its number but did not. Later that day I discovered my bicycle had been stolen from near that space. Such moments of intuition and tentative perception—‘gut feeling’ if you like—are often important and should be acknowledged and reflected on, perhaps issuing in action. Do to so requires a commitment to valuing such experiences and allowing oneself the time to consider them. It also requires social structures for sharing, reflecting on and acting in response to such noticings. Our standardised, routinised lives, as operatives of impersonal, abstract and rational systems, leads us to tend to reject rather than embrace troubling experiences. However, such noticings can keep us more secure. Over time, we have become more sensitive to the signs that emails and telephone calls might be scams, for example. Hypothetically, there could be some sort of local screening of incoming telephone calls to prevent such calls reaching, for example, vulnerable older people—but this would be a matter for communities to decide for themselves. The primary challenge is to reanimate ourselves as fully sentient, and not merely rational, beings: in short, to live more fully in the here-and-now.

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References Aristotle. 2011. The Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Lesley Brown and David Ross. Oxford: OUP. Baudrillard, Jean. 1983. Simulations. LA: Semiotext(e). BBC. 2018. The secret life of landfill: A rubbish history. Accessed 2 Nov 2018 from https://www. bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bgpc2f. Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk society: Towards a new modernity. London: Sage. Dalai Lama. 2016. Accessed 11 Jan 2019 from https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/238605-theroots-of-all-goodness-lie-in-the-soil-of. Hobbes, Thomas. 1651. Leviathan or the matter, forme and power of a common-wealth ecclesiasticall and civil. Harvard Classics Edition, Pt. 1, Chap. 13, Para. 9. Accessed 2 Nov 2018 from https://www.bartleby.com/reference. Kristeva, Julia. 1984. Powers of horror: An essay on abjection. New York: Columbia University Press. Lee, Seunghai, and Hae Sun Paik. 2011. Korean household waste management and recycling behavior. Building and Environment 46 (5): 1159–1166. Leopold, Aldo. 1968. A sand county almanac and sketches here and there. Oxford: OUP. Naess, Arne. 2010. The ecology of wisdom: Writings by Arne Naess, eds. Alan Drengson and Bill Devall. London: Penguin. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1979. Émile, or on education. New York: Basic. Shakespeare, William. 2008. The RSC Shakespeare: The complete works, ed. Jonathan Bate. London: Palgrave. Stables, Andrew. 1998. Proximity and distance: Moral education and mass communication. Journal of Philosophy of Education 32 (3): 399–407. Thoreau, Henry David. 1854. Walden or life in the woods. Accessed 2 Nov 2018 from https://www. gutenberg.org/files/205/205-h/205-h.htm.

Chapter 6

New Localism, Arts and Culture

Abstract This chapter concentrates on the aesthetic and cultural aspects of new localism. It construes humans (and perhaps all sentient beings) as synaesthetic, in the sense that response and action are determined by association rather than either pure rationality or immediate sensory reception of the innate objective qualities. Human meaning making is thus always in a sense aesthetic and imaginative. The chapter then moves from addressing specific issues relating to the arts, such as the role of local arts centres, to the broader sense in which local management of the built and natural environment is inevitably conditioned by aesthetic, cultural and local considerations. Suggestions are made as to how practices and policies in areas such as language and religion could be more locally sensitive and diverse. Finally, the chapter considers the more philosophical issue of measurement and meaning, returning to the earlier critique of mathematised modernist culture and the related tendency to reduce value to the easily measurable, thus unintentionally squeezing out much of individual, local and cultural significance.

6.1 The Importance of Local Engagement The aesthetic plays a key role in making places distinctive, well loved or well known. Sometimes this is simply appreciation of the landscape. Even landscape appreciation is developed by association, however (Schama 2004). There are many beautiful landscapes in the world, or more accurately landscapes that people would probably find beautiful were they to see them, but there is a small number of places in such landscapes that are well known. (This is, of course, not entirely a bad thing, at least from the point of view of nature conservation.) Locales become famous through what they evoke, one way and another, such that the natural and the cultural are interwoven to create a holistic impression that can no longer be consciously unpicked. An interesting example is that of the English Lake District, that was largely dismissed as a barren, infertile area until the Romantic poet William Wordsworth effectively reinvented it in the public imagination. It is now England’s best known national park (see, for example, http://www.thelakedistrict.org/historical-figures/william-wordsworth/ retrieved 1 February 2019). Environments are not objective: they are umwelts. Sometimes they © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 A. Stables, New Localism, Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21579-8_6

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come to symbolise something universally important yet intangible: a sense of completeness, or the sublime, or belonging, or regional and national identity. Sometimes a particular place seems to summon up memories of the past that are not otherwise evoked, as Schama explores through a range if international examples (Schama 2004). Sometimes the associations are very personal or shared by a small group. There is much more then to aesthetic living than the activities formally known as ‘the arts’, yet the arts have an important role to play in promoting new localism, as the arts can transform an environment into a richer umwelt, a merely denotative physical landscape into a richly connotative, haunted place, as Wordsworth’s poetry helped to do for the Lake District. Living is, after all, semiotic engagement (Stables 2006). This chapter will consider that role, but will also consider the aesthetic in a much broader sense. Culture and the arts explore human experience, which is always immediate and local. Granted, distancing has an important aesthetic function within culture and the arts—literary and theatrical works are often set in faraway places to allow us to consider our conditions from an observer’s standpoint, as several of Shakespeare’s plays illustrate—but an overview emptied of detail is no longer enriching. For example, flying can be a disillusioning experience. It can be inspiring to look down on landscapes from mountain tops, and even from aeroplanes, but when one is flying at 35,000 ft, or 10 km, magnificent landscapes of forest, tundra or mountain often seem trivialised. When the overview is from too high, there is no longer much beauty or wonder in what you see. You have to be in and among the Rocky Mountains or the Arctic ice fields to really appreciate them. The fullest appreciation comes from direct encounter and engagement. This chapter therefore considers what it means to experience the local aesthetically, as opposed to merely functionally. This is important as globalisation can easily result in an indifference to the local. For example, if your work requires you to move every year or two, then attachment to your dwelling, environment or neighbours is likely to remain limited and superficial; indeed, to get too involved might be counterproductive as it would encourage greater pain on separation. Lack of local character in, say, architecture may even be helpful in such cases: one can live in the same kind of flat or house, in the same sort of street, with the same shops as one’s last and next domicile; this is consoling for the itinerant modern worker. There is a psychological and emotional motive not to get too attached to one’s locale. Here is an example of the dark side of globalisation, whereby the individual may suffer from developing rich local relations, ‘putting down roots’ and even appreciating home and environment. Bland impersonality inoculates against the loss of meaningful belonging. Thus diversity is lost. Corporate economics often welcomes this, for it is cost effective to build houses and flats to standard designs and to have identical stores in numerous locations. (Socialism might also welcome it, as it irons out material differences and inequalities.) Where a brand is successful, there seems little point in disrupting it by introducing local variations. Consider, however, the considerable losses this entails. Everywhere, that which made locales distinctive is lost. Local building materials are no longer used and often, therefore, no longer produced;

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instead, standardised bricks and the like are transported ever greater distances in ever greater quantities. Local stores do not thrive and ultimately go to the wall. Such losses are neither inevitable nor ultimately desirable, however. While all trends must pass, the quality of universal provision in all areas is ultimately damaged by the loss of local diversity, just as Twentieth Century farming monocultures proved so damaging for biodiversity: a phenomenon that has at least now been recognised if not yet properly countered. Intensive monoculture, with added chemicals as weedkillers and fertilisers, serves over time to degrade the soil itself. Some farmers are re-learning that, for example, leaving certain plants in the soil adds nitrates that otherwise have to be added as artificial chemicals, at both financial and ecological cost, and that trees and hedges provide windbreaks and help reduce soil erosion, as well as harbouring wildlife and protecting species. In terms of human experience, it is indeed variety that makes places special. In the specific arts field, new talent is always important, but it has become increasingly difficult to break into the big time. This is true across all arts and media output. For example, we now have thousands of television channels to choose from, but the effective choice between types of output seems little or no greater than fifty years ago when there were very few channels. As an extreme case of an art form in which local initiative can be strangled by corporate demands, take the example of musical theatre. Commercially successful productions, running in areas such as New York’s Broadway or London’s West End, require high levels of investment before they can begin to yield sustainable levels of income. Some of the tried and tested shows may run for years. This means that the opportunities to stage a new show at a major theatre are very limited. This increases the pressure on investors and creatives to come up with shows that are guaranteed to sell well, and this increases the tendency to play safe when it comes to plot, theme, character, script, music and staging. It also offers no place for the unestablished. Nothing challenging, controversial or in any way markedly ‘different’ is worth the risk. At the same time, the artists who are the creative lifeblood of the industry—the scriptwriters, songwriters, innovative directors and so on—have a choice between experimentation and playing safe. Playing safe is always likely to win out when the financial stakes are so high. This is not to say that there are no new musicals staged that have something new to say, but the opportunities for this are becoming ever reduced, whereas the opposite should be the case. In areas such as the creation of musical theatre, the creative artist falls between two stools that are increasingly far apart. On one sits creativity, on the other finance. Meeting in the middle is rarely a viable option. What is the point of a new musical that is either basically like all the others, or alternatively is experimental (noting that this may not go down well) but does not have the backing to be staged lavishly or in prestigious, large spaces where ticket income will be high? The latter may have the greater artistic claim, but the former is more likely to be staged professionally. However, there is limited scope for more of the same. Artists can therefore opt for artistic integrity and commercial failure or for playing an increasingly uninspiring corporate game, uninspiring because it lacks the scope for really challenging artistic exploration, and even the latter option is subject to the law of diminishing returns.

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Both sides of the equation then suffer, as creativity is stifled and our theatres are filled with ever more bland, albeit lavish, mass entertainment rituals. This trend damages both parties in the long run. I have singled out musical theatre because it is particularly expensive to develop and stage, but the dynamics apply to some degree across the arts. There is some support for intermediate levels of output, whereby, for example, small scale musical theatre that is markedly different might be staged, for example through the Arts Council of Great Britain in the UK, but even this only goes a little way to solve the problem of how to get more local energy and initiative onto the increasingly monotonous and predictable world stage. Effectively, players are mostly fixed into roles: professional and established, or new, amateur and condemned never to succeed financially or probably ever be noticed by influential critics. We cannot simply undo global corporate capitalism without doing great harm to ourselves, but we can ultimately enrich the global by constructively promoting the local where it has value, significantly improving the quality of our own lived experiences as we do so. To take a very simple and obvious example, income from tourism is likely to increase where there is considerable local variation. It is far more worth travelling round a country where the landscape and the human settlements reward the journey. On the other hand, there is no good reason for a traveller to move far beyond the major city served by an airport if all the places outside it are effectively identical and predictable. Systems are enhanced by difference, but many of our current practices are not sympathetic to this insight. Formal education, for example, tends to work with broad canvases and to teach regularity and generality. There is much emphasis on facts rather than patterns and interpretations of them. It is easier to test knowledge of the former than understanding of the latter, so this fits the performativity agenda. However, facts, which have only to be remembered, do not of themselves mean anything. Meaning requires engagement with principles and patterns, which have to be understood and then applied sensitively according to context. It is understanding, and not merely factual knowledge, that allows for prediction and thus the successful management of risk, on which a flourishing life depends. While fact-based teaching might be useful up to a point for the physical sciences, assuming the laws of nature apply evenly everywhere, it is often reductive for the arts, humanities and social sciences. Furthermore, in terms of the latter, much of what is taught is at the meso level of the nation state, with comparison between countries. There is usually little discussion of that differs within these organisational units; it would require a more post-structuralist approach to be less concerned with coherence and consistency and more with diversity and difference. In the arts, the emphasis is often on what is done particularly well by famous internationally or nationally recognised practitioners, but not on what is distinctive or different for purely personal, local or even regional reasons. Although in past times painting required the local production of pigments, and music the local construction of instruments, it is notable that very little formal education in these fields stresses these sometimes idiosyncratic features of artistic production and reception, yet in some cases appreciation of practitioners might be much enhanced were these considerations to be taken on board.

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From a semiotic perspective, places in themselves cannot be separated from places as we respond to them. Environments, like languages or dialects, are distinctive systems of signs. How each of us engages with each system, individually and collectively, impacts on it. While ordinary people may feel powerless to effect comprehensive immediate changes to neighbourhoods, they are capable of altering their attitudes to the locales, a process that will slowly lead to changes in the places themselves. This change of attitude may require no more to begin with than greater awareness. Formal education may play a part in this, as suggested above, but the main agents of change should surely be local residents themselves. Conversations with people in any place reveal great differences in levels of local awareness. While some residents seem highly knowledgeable about the news regarding their neighbours, changes to local dwellings, local land use, the practices of local farmers and the like (regardless of their opinions), others seem almost entirely ignorant of such matters, sometimes even wilfully averting their attention from matters that might draw them too closely into the local community. Meanwhile, fewer people than in earlier times take active parts in the community organisations that help to spread information, including churches, social groups and local committees. However, even conversations only happen if prompted and allowed to develop. This in turn requires some effort to engage: to get to know one’s neighbours, for example. As in many other areas, new localism depends on people taking an interest. In an impersonal world of abstract rationality, the value of a church, for example, rests solely on the rational validity of its religious dogma. However, in the personal, lived world, the value of a church does not depend on this, but on its role as a community hub and support. This is not, of course, to suggest that a church is necessarily a central element in bringing a community together, but it can be. I suggest that the first, and probably most important move against this trend is simply to re-engage the senses: to look, listen, smell, feel and taste what the local environment has to offer. The second is to share and compare experiences.

6.2 Synaesthesia: Relating the Local and the Global Human beings are naturally synaesthetic, as presumably other sentient species also are. Smells, sights, sounds, tastes and sensations of touch always bring to mind other things, so reinforcing, developing or challenging our views of the world. The pattern of a locale, an individual and group’s umwelt (von Uexküll 1926), rather than isolated facts about it, is a complex web of evocations. Although in extreme, undesirable cases, this tendency can serve to promote vicious prejudice on the basis of scientific observation—as in the case of Samuel George Morton, who in the Nineteenth Century used poor empirical data on skull size to pontificate on the supposed superiority and inferiority of races—overall it is this capacity for evocation that makes human flourishing possible (Gould 1978). Even such repellant views as Morton’s can be seen as part of a process of connection-making that has led, gradually, to a less xenophobic world. Whether or not this optimism is justified, scientific analysis, as

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well as everyday living, generally depends in no small part on analogical thinking (Stables 2017). Music provides many examples of synaesthesia in practice. The pure manipulation of sound evokes many things that only make sense in the context of human cultural tradition. Sometimes, a wordless piece of music gains its effect from its main motif sounding like its title, in terms of rhythm and prosody: the musical effect is dependent on words that are not in the music. Thus instrumental versions of Grieg’s Ich Liebe Dich or Purcell’s Remember Me, from the opera Dido and Aeneas, gain their power from the fact that we hear those words when we hear the music. The author’s own composition, with Nick Magnus, Rain Keeps Falling, from the album Soul in a Landscape, works the same way: the main instrumental theme ‘speaks’ the words ‘rain keeps falling’ (Stables and Magnus 2018). A non-linguistic animal could not possibly respond to the piece as an English speaking person might because the sounds do not carry the same associations; this does not mean that the animal in question does not operate synaesthetically or even is necessarily inferior in terms of mental function. The possibility of relating to such a piece of music is local to certain language speakers within one species, and may be further limited by exposure to different musical traditions. The message here is clear and simple. The overall progress of humankind is driven by people’s reactions to the here-and-now in ways that are not universally standard. The here-and-now is not a one-dimensional entity. Blanking out the here-and-now to drive oneself as mechanically as possible in the service of purely functional external goals will reduce rather than increase the richness of the big picture. Evocation is at the heart of enchantment and enrichment. For individuals, certain objects or works of art are strongly ‘charged’ (Pigrum 2011). For whatever reasons, they acquire particular symbolic value. Musically, many couples have ‘our song’, for example, and this song will add symbolic value as they progress through life. It might have been playing when they first met, for example, so they choose to play it at their wedding, and so on. The same can hold true for our community lives, though this aspect of shared enrichment is damaged by a lack of prolonged settlement as well as an obvious absence of local colour and tradition. For local life to become richer again will require the gradual accretion of shared meanings over time. There are many kinds of initiative that can aid this process, difficult though it will always be in places with highly transient populations and where no effort has been made to attract interest to the distinctively local through, for instance, building or landscaping practices. These initiatives include those specifically related to the arts.

6.3 Local Arts Organisations Inspection of the services and histories of successful local arts centres in the UK reveals the variety of ways in which the local and the non-local interact (e.g. Blackfriars, in Boston, Lincolnshire: www.blackfriarsartscentre.co.uk retrieved 11 January 2019). Such centres continue to exist at all often because of the dedication and com-

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mitment, over several decades, of local people: often very small, committed groups, such as that which turned an old canal-side storehouse into the Wharf Theatre at Devizes in Wiltshire; many such examples exist in Britain. If we look at the events offered by a centre such as Blackfriars, it is clear just how multi-faceted the interactions between local and non-local elements are. This partly relates to what other services are available locally: for example, many arts centres double up as cinemas where there is no local one present though this does not necessarily imply a platform for locally produced films. Most events at small arts centres are by performers who tour nationally, and occasionally internationally, but who are not major figures in the public imagination: small touring theatre companies, stand-up comics, musicians and the like. Some are genuinely local, and this is perhaps particularly so in the visual arts field. From all this we see that local arts centres promote localism in part through the dissemination of local production, but also through promoting the local productions of others (that is, others who have no national or international reputation) and sometimes merely, though importantly, by providing access to international outputs, such as Hollywood films, where there is no other local provider. What results from this mix, however, is something that is distinctly local, and, as such, has the potential to do even more to promote genuinely local production. Even those not strongly involved in the arts will concede that such local initiatives have benefit in terms of promoting local towns and districts, reinforcing a sense of local identity, and helping the local economy. There are certain policies that could encourage these initiatives, including local reductions in rents and taxes as well as direct grants. On the grounds of the exception proving the rule, let us consider briefly perhaps the most extraordinary example in the world of a local arts initiative transforming a locale: that of the Oberammagau passion play. For nearly four centuries, the villagers of this Bavarian village have re-enacted the Christian story every few years as an act of thanks to the divine for allowing them to escape the worst effects of bubonic plague. The event has now become surely the greatest piece of amateur theatre in the world, with tens of thousands attending each performance and people from across the globe coming to the area as a result of it, either to see the play or merely to enjoy the area, that is now artistically as well as environmentally rich and is home inter alia to many highly skilled woodcarvers. Oberammagau perhaps illustrates better than anywhere else the combined powers of faith and attachment to the local; it is certainly a shining example of local enterprise building on local tradition. This piece of amateur religious theatre has had the effect of transforming local lives and boosting regional tourism as well as making Oberammagau a centre for visitors and a symbol of one important aspect of Bavarian and Alpine culture. Partly this happens through a sense of alignment: one is inclined to imagine a deeply spiritual past within such communities. Partly the symbolism comes from contrast: the piety of the villagers can be set against the violent forces of nature in the mountains or the vanities of the rulers who built fairytale castles on nearby peaks. The villagers of Oberammagau may or may not attribute their wealth and success to divine intervention. Regardless of this, there are many prosaic ways in which local aesthetics can be enhanced, and politics has a role to play in this.

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6.4 Aesthetics, Environment and Policy Environmental and aesthetic concerns cannot be separated. More strongly empowered participative, truly local councils, as proposed in Chap. 4, could have significantly increased powers with respect to aspects of environmental conservation and development in which there is an important aesthetic dimension. In terms of the built environment, architects might have to have approval from local councils who could themselves insist on building materials and shapes and sizes of dwellings that fit harmoniously with those already there; this in addition to perhaps insisting on other issues including the provision of appropriate facilities, and those of build quality such as internal space and energy efficiency, which are not so explicitly aesthetic. Other aspects of the built environment might also be more strongly controlled by local wishes, including car parks, stations, pavements, roads and communication facilities. Regarding green spaces, the opportunities are many. They include verges, parks, trees, hedges, ponds and lakes, not to mention formerly non-green areas such as flat roofs and even residential roads. The scale of current local government provision, at least in the UK, is such that resolving issues such as these may involve a level of local consultation, but decisions are very largely made by ‘the council’ which is seen as a body that, although comprising largely elected members, acts supposedly on behalf of people rather than directly expressing their wishes. Members of truly local parish and community councils have very limited powers to act. Overall, local invention can turn life increasingly into art. Places can become much more aesthetically as well as ecologically rich environments through engaging with local ecosystems—indeed, even former industrial environments—in creative ways. Often the landscape suggests its own possibilities. For example, different types of soil conditions naturally favour different kinds of plant life. Damp, boggy areas, such as river valleys, may be particularly rich sites for willow, poplar and alder trees, for example. These can be very beautiful trees: the shimmering leaves of the aspen (a type of poplar) and the graceful branches of the weeping willow are much loved. There may be the opportunity to create a beautiful waterside walk in a disused industrial location at relatively low cost by simply using the species that like to thrive there. The creation of such an amenity has educational and cultural value, is relatively inexpensive, and benefits wellbeing. More broadly, all built communities are interweavings of built-over and exposed ground. In effect, therefore, all built communities are potentially gardens. Spaces may be manmade or otherwise, paved over or green, but the interweavings of such spaces can be used to create areas of great beauty, as well as ecological value, particularly if all areas, including roof spaces, car parks, roundabouts and shop fronts are included in the mix. Landscaping is, of course, already an important consideration in town and country planning but there is scope for a lot more of it to be done by local communities themselves. The templates laid down by developers and landscapers could become the beginning rather than the end of the story of enriching neighbourhoods as environments.

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Note how different this model is from that which dominated town planning in Britain in much of the latter half of the Twentieth Century, as discussed earlier. In some cases the reaction to industrial decline was effectively to rip up the existing infrastructure and start again, resulting in inaccessible tower blocks sitting astride highways and a deep loss of sense of community, particularly as this was combined with a radical policy of re-housing. The thinking behind such moves included the notion that designers create practice: that design had the potential to create new forms of community, and that only expert designers—certainly not local people—had the vision and expertise to execute this. Between 2012 and 2018, I was involved in a project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council of Great Britain (AHRC), based at the Universities of Bath and Oxford, which investigated the effects of a universal logic of design, on a much smaller scale, by looking at the schools building initiative Building Schools for the Future, specifically focusing on people using those schools some years later (BSF: UK 2009). The thinking behind BSF was that design would strongly influence practice, and sometimes actually determine it. Thus the schools were built with open plan areas for individual and group work as well as conventional classrooms, among other initiatives. They were designed on the assumption that traditional models of subject-based class teaching would be replaced with more individualised and groupbased project work, and much space was made available for fixed desktop computers. There was also a feeling that the barrier between schools and the local communities they served would be broken down, so the designs invited community members into the schools and generally encouraged a sense of openness and weak boundaries. The project found that this assumption concerning the relationship of design and practice often did not hold true, however (Daniels et al. 2019). Apart from the fact that schools repeatedly changed their principals, often because of poor inspection reports, and therefore changed their modus operandi to some extent, it became increasingly clear in a more comprehensive sense that people tend to use and modify their designs to meet their own purposes rather than vice versa. This should not come as a surprise: when we move to a new home, we do not ask ourselves, ‘What is this house asking us to do?’ but rather, ‘How can we use this space to live our lives as we wish?’. In the cases of schools we found a huge range of responses. Some, indeed, had ‘bought into’ the visions embedded in BSF and had instigated initiatives involving moves towards personalised learning and technology based group work. Others, however, more or less subverted the original design intentions to teach in much more traditional ways regardless of the building. Often, for example, doors, walls and temporary barriers were used to divide up areas designed to be open plan. In reality, overall we found very little innovation in classroom practice. In addition to the variation in user responses to the buildings, the social, technological and political environments changed in the decade between inception of these schools and the practice that we investigated. The concept of building schools for the future was problematised by the fact that the future did not turn out as predicted. For example, BSF schools were built to be open to the community, but new child protection measures demanded strict security and demarcation between school and outside: where once was open access, now were security gates. Not many people in

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2008 envisaged demands for prayer rooms from Muslim students (in some cases, the school populations had undergone radical change), nor increased class sizes to be crammed into smallish classrooms, nor the move from desktop to mobile technology, nor the new child protection agenda, nor the vastly increased numbers of students for whom English is a second language. Taken together, these findings lead to the conclusion that design can certainly affect practice, but all-in-all, practice tends to trump design: our habitual ways of behaving and aspirations tend to determine how we use buildings and spaces more than vice versa. Design offers invitations and constraints, but does not determine how we respond to them. Unfortunately, many people who were moved to the tower blocks of 1960s Britain responded by vandalising them. Perhaps, in some cases, this seemed the only mechanism available to make these places ‘theirs’. There is, after all, a qualitative difference between a space (designed by an architect), a place (where people live) and a home (where people feel comfortable and empowered). We have to appropriate our spaces to make them feel like homes. Put another way, there is no universal logic of design that can empower everybody. Imposed radical change by experts can go radically wrong. So, of course, can less expert and more locally induced change. At least, however, if local communities are empowered to make their own decisions, they can build on existing strengths and adapt with a degree of coherence. Also, local communities may well learn more quickly from their mistakes than distant authorities.

6.5 The Local Dimension of Other Aspects of Culture Issues relating to language, sport, theatre and religion have, or can have, strong local dimensions. As a small nation within the UK, Wales is an example of a region in which dual language policies have become far more pronounced in recent decades. From a situation in which schoolchildren were sometimes made to wear a ‘Welsh not’ badge to deter them from using their mother tongue, many local communities in Wales now offer schooling largely through the Welsh language, and dual language policies are in force throughout the principality. This can be seen as a gain for cultural and linguistic diversity, but it is interesting to reflect on how much more could be done at the really local level. For instance, the Welsh language did not in past centuries have a nationally standard form. Wales was a hilly country, not easy to traverse, and in any case, was not a unified nation but rather a collection of non-English speaking fiefdoms in which different versions of the language were spoken. To complement the national dual language policy, local communities have the scope to champion their own local dialects, thus enhancing the diversity further. The same avenue is open to small communities within larger, more monolinguistic cultures, such as England or Germany (though in each case there are many minority languages). A community’s linguistic profile is an important identifier but is rarely celebrated. Local dialects and accents and incomers’ linguistic traditions could be made more of in formal

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education and in other contexts. To understand how and why one’s mode of speech differs from, say, Standard English enables one to learn more about oneself and about the Standard form while strengthening rather than weakening self-identity. This is by no means to devalue the roles of English as an international language of trade or of Arabic as a unifying social and religious force in the Middle East: learning about certain forms and values of language can serve to increase, not diminish, respect for others. Sport is a field in which certain global power players have increasingly dominated the media and mass public attention in recent times. In the UK, football (‘soccer’), particularly the men’s game, has taken an ever increasing role in media and sportrelated business, while top level tennis and occasionally athletics have also kept a high profile. Rugby and cricket have become more commercialised. However, a time traveller from 1960s Britain would remember the Saturday Grandstand programme on BBC that showed live action from a wide range of sports scarcely covered now in major media, from motorcycle scrambling to wrestling. Against this trend, more could be made of local sporting traditions. While some of these remain strong, from Highland Games in Scotland to rolling cheeses down a hill in Gloucestershire, the general feeling has been lost of sport being something that local communities can practise in their own ways, making use of the occupations, landscape and traditions that give villages and other small communities their identities. The example of local theatre receives some attention elsewhere in discussion of arts centres. However, as with sport, there is great scope for creative local theatrical enterprises. For example, the people of Devizes in Wiltshire (in Southern England) in the mid-1990s devised and performed a large-scale piece of community theatre entitled ‘1810’ about the building of the Kennet and Avon canal that runs through the town. Such enterprises can have a powerful role in raising local awareness of traditions and offer extensive opportunities for creative and business initiatives. Local theatre can also play a greater role in promoting diversity. On a system scale, the theatre world has attempted to do this through initiatives such as colourblind casting and strengthening female roles. However valuable, these initiatives are inevitably limited. For example, casting does not attempt to be totally visually blind; this would be a very controversial move. There is still a general expectation that actors will look like the characters they are playing to some degree. In this context, if handled insensitively, colour blind casting can seem rather an obvious political ploy to an audience, standing out against a general casting policy that aims to make actors look like their characters. Similarly, audiences may react negatively to obvious attempts to rewrite existing gender roles, perhaps in productions based on well known literary texts of which they have prior knowledge. It is as though even diversity has now become an abstract system. To celebrate diversity more fully, there surely need to be more good plays with main characters who are female and from diverse ethnic backgrounds. However, the current business climate makes it increasingly difficult for this sort of diversity to emerge at the most publicly visible level. This may result in standardised diversity policies that strike audiences as rather thin and artificial and that inadvertently diminish difference while promoting diversity. Controversially, it might be argued that the most committed diversity policy would be one that encour-

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aged differences and forms of representation not foreseen by the policy makers, and sometimes uncomfortable for them. Theatre should be able to challenge, but mass standardisation can serve to tame oppositional voices even where it aims to include them. It could even be argued that the theatre community, which for centuries has fought against censorship, is in danger of censoring itself. Only greater empowerment of new drama from outside the theatrical and media establishments and better bridges between local and mass public theatre could allow these new forms of expression to emerge. Finally, many religions incorporate ancient traditions into more modern beliefs, and vice versa. Consider how the Christian year coincides with the pagan festivals of the Northern Hemisphere: Christmas as the coming of the light after the darkest day, Easter as rebirth of the farming year, Lent as the time of austerity before the new crops appear, and so on. Again, efforts to consider the religious or spiritual aspects of local traditions can serve to enhance rather than diminish understanding of the great themes of global religions. Religious purists who object to, say, Yoga classes or Buddhist meditation in their church halls, temples, churches or synagogues are, it can be argued, reducing rather than increasing the likelihood that local people will come to appreciate the common ground between all these great traditions.

6.6 From Measurement to Meaning Aesthetic living in the here-and-now allows us to savour and contemplate our circumstances more fully. This increases our capacity to ‘know feelingly’, to sense beauty, opportunity and threat. Unfortunately we have learned in recent times not to trust our own feelings as much as we trust impersonal measurements. For example, we may well be more likely to believe we are healthy on the basis of certain numerical readings (cholesterol, blood sugar, body mass index and so on) than on the basis of feeling energetic. Of course, in many cases, feelings and numbers work in tandem: most likely, if we do not feel well, then some measurement or other will confirm this; occasionally, serious medical problems do not manifest themselves in any obvious symptoms in the early stages. Such readings can certainly be very useful, yet insidiously we have been ‘mathematised’: we have come to believe that impersonal standardised measurements tell us all that we need to know about the state of our bodies, our schools, our hospitals and even our quality of life (Stables 2003). We do not so much ‘listen to our bodies’ as believe the numbers and worry about our bodies. In that sense, the tools have collectively become the master, and we may have increasingly begun to lose our gut instincts (literally, in some cases). A small example from personal experience concerns my involvement with a school in South Wales when I was involved in teacher education. This school was one of the friendliest, calmest and most supportive environments I visited: I always looked forward to my visits there. However, it received very poor inspection ratings and was closed down not long after. The school served a deprived inner city area comprising mostly ethnic minority families, many of them new to the UK and not originally

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English speaking. School absenteeism tended to be high and results were low. These are undeniable facts, and the inspectors were right to note them. However, these figures tell us nothing about the supportive atmosphere within the school and the boosts to self-esteem this must have given the students. Figures only measure what they can easily measure. Statistics are interesting, informative and sometimes important, but they are ultimately reductive and should be read alongside qualitative experience. Measurement does not give us the ultimate guide to living; that comes from meaning. Where we live should mean a lot to each of us. Only by dwelling sensitively can we enrich communities as our contribution to enriching society with a form of wealth that ultimately exceeds measurement. No less than the future of the ecosystem rides on a more sensitive appreciation of context. The BBC presenter Simon Reeve questioned a member of the Kogi people in Colombia (the only remaining pre-Colonial people in that part of the world able to maintain a thriving autonomous community life) about their belief that all life, from the ocean to the mountains, is connected. The interviewee simply responded to the effect that if he hurt his foot, his whole body would suffer. This is to know feelingly. There are all sorts of scientific measurements that will support his sense of lost biodiversity, but at the heart of successful moves to improve matters must surely be a degree of somatic engagement, a sense of inseparability between myself and my umwelt (Reeve 2015). The next and final chapter concerns the challenge of engaging motivations and dispositions in education, broadly defined.

References Daniels, Harry, Andrew Stables, Hau Ming Tse, and Sarah Cox. 2019. School design matters: Relating school environments to the practice and experience of teaching and learning. London: Routledge. Gould, Stephen. 1978. Morton’s ranking of races by Cranial capacity. Science 200 (4341): 503–509. Pigrum, Derek. 2011. Teaching creativity: Multi-mode transitional practices. London: Continuum. Reeve, Simon. 2015. Caribbean with Simon Reeve. Episode 2. Accessed 19 Nov 2018 from https:// www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p02l52fy/caribbean-with-simon-reeve-episode-2. Schama, Simon. 2004. Landscape and Memory. New York: Harper. Stables, Andrew. 2003. School as imagined community in discursive space: A perspective on the school effectiveness debate. British Educational Research Journal 29 (6): 895–902. Stables, Andrew. 2006. Living and learning as semiotic engagement: A new theory of education. New York: Mellen. Stables, Andrew. 2017. Perceived ontological levels and language games: The problem of analysis as a scholarly and educational ideal. Chinese Semiotic Studies 13 (1): 1–14. Stables, Andrew and Magnus, Nick. 2018. Rain keeps falling. From album Soul in a Landscape. Accessed 5 Nov 2018 from https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/andrewstableswithnickmagnus. UK (United Kingdom). 2009. The building schools for the future programme: Renewing the secondary school estate. HC 135, Report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, Session 2008–2009. London: The Stationery Office. von Uexküll, Jacob. 1926. Theoretical biology. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co.

Chapter 7

Going with the Flow of Human Aspirations

Abstract The final chapter considers ways in which policy and practice can best “go(…) with the flow of human aspirations”. It does this first by considering the treatment of children, as they constitute one of the various ‘minority’ groups that classical liberal perspectives have tended to regard as less than fully rational, so not to be trusted to follow their own preferences (‘Minority’ groups here include women, in some cases, though they do not form a numerical minority.). Drawing on a range of utilitarian writers, including Bentham, an approach to balancing the Will and Interest rights of children and young people is suggested. The implications of this position are then explored further: first for the treatment of adults generally, and secondly in terms of the possible limitations of a position solely based on conceptions of universal human rights. It is argued that a position grounded in the Capabilities approach developed by Amartya Sen can offer an appropriate response to such limitations.

7.1 The Way and the Truth The arguments in this book have been premised on the assumption that each person engages with the world semiotically, in response to his or her umwelt or environment as experienced. The world is as it is engaged with, in effect. In certain respects, this position broadly chimes with that of preference utilitarianism. This is the view that, as far as is possible and safe for others, individual preferences should be granted. This is not because all preferences are wise, or morally good, or will make one happy, but because overall, such granting contributes to the greater good and sum total of human happiness. In effect, it is better to let people find out for themselves what helps them to flourish rather than to impose upon them. In general, going with the flow of how people see and experience the world is generally the best policy as it allows people to realise and learn from the consequences of their own actions, as opposed to allowing them to take a resentful view of the world as an external force against which they are powerless. This amounts to a Way-based rather than a Truth-based philosophy, insofar as differences between human responses are not generally written off as the consequence of rational inadequacy or Marxian false consciousness. (For a fuller discussion of © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 A. Stables, New Localism, Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21579-8_7

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the environmental benefits of Eastern ‘Way-based’ as opposed to Western rationalist philosophies, see Stables 2018.) On this view, human experience, in the broadest sense, is not merely a reaction to the ‘real world’ beyond, but is part of it. Thus, human reality is the sum of human responses, where human responses are not merely ‘responses to’ reality but elements of it: cf. the definition of the sign as feature of an event, in Stables (2016c). On this account, each individual constitutes a sort of experiment in living, and each small community a collective experiment. It is in that sense this is a pragmatist account after Dewey. Human progress as a whole then comes through the collected experiments of human endeavour, the overall impact of myriad different local actions. Semiotic philosophy is, as was stated in the first chapter, a form of pragmatism, but not a purely rationalistic form; it is about actions more than merely thoughts, though thinking itself comprises one form of action. There are, of course, circumstances that render this position problematic, including those of significant numbers of people who are deemed not fully capable of making decisions for their own good. This includes, by definition, children, for we would not need the category of childhood if children were deemed autonomous rational agents, as that is what adults are, in the broad liberal tradition at least (Stables 2011). This chapter therefore confronts the challenge of how educators might square the potentially conflicting responsibilities of simultaneously letting children learn through experiencing the consequences of their chosen actions while also protecting them from potentially disastrous consequences of their naivety and vulnerability. In the context of the argument as a whole, we consider how far individual and smallcommunity preferences can be valorised without endangering the vulnerable. The chapter concludes with some reflections on how the argument in this chapter reflects the broader themes and interests of the book as a whole by focusing on the issue of rights and suggesting that thinking in terms of capabilities may often be the most productive way forward.

7.2 Maximal Preference Utilitarianism as an Educational Aspiration Note: The material under this heading is reproduced from the author’s paper, Maximal Preference Utilitarianism as an Educational Aspiration, in Ethics and Education 2016, 11/3, 299–309, by permission of Taylor and Francis publishers. (Stables 2016a.)

7.2.1 Abstract The argument in this section attempts to square libertarian principles with the reality of formal education by asking how far we should and can allow people to do as they

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wish in educational settings. The major focus is on children in schools, as the concept ‘childhood’ ipso facto implies restrictions on doing as one wishes, and schools as institutions entail inevitable constraints. Children by definition (however contested) tend to enjoy stronger protection rights but weaker liberty rights than adults (Feinberg 1980). A local preferential calculus (after Bentham’s felicific calculus) is developed as a guide for teachers, suggesting wishes should be granted where feasible and at least welfare neutral. In the case of teachers, employers set the parameters for the feasibility criterion but should also ensure at least welfare-neutrality, while students in adult and higher education should be responsible for the feasibility and welfare outcomes of their own choices.

7.2.2 Introduction The argument has four stages. The first defines and justifies maximal (as opposed to maximum) preference (as opposed to pleasure) utilitarianism, rejects flat universal utilitarian conceptions, and considers the problematic position of the child with respect to preference granting. The second considers the somewhat patchy treatment of utilitarianism in the philosophy of education literature. The third develops a specific local preferential calculus for school teachers, and the fourth considers the application of this to educational actors other than schoolchildren, specifically adult students and teachers.

7.2.3 Justifying Maximal Preference Utilitarianism Given that a school in which everyone did as they wished all the time would likely be chaotic, the first challenge is to justify the premise that preference utilitarianism has any value as an educational ideal. One important aspect of this relates to children and the degree to which they can and should be trusted to exercise preferences. This will be discussed below, but the argument as a whole is likely to attract sympathy only from those who are inclined to the view that important learning comes from exercising and taking the consequences of risks that one has taken on for oneself. Those who consider that children should have no significant rights to choose reject a basic premise underpinning this paper. In relation to the justification of preference utilitarianism in education, it is important to note two implicit caveats in the title of the paper, and to make some other preliminary remarks by means of clarification of working concepts. The first concerns the term ‘maximal’ as opposed to ‘maximum’. ‘Maximal’ implies a feasibility criterion not implied in ‘maximum’. The espoused aim here, therefore, is not to allow all sorts of preference fulfilment all of the time and immediately, but rather to aim for schools and other educational institutions to be places where actors (teachers as well as students) can exercise their preferences as far as possible within institutional

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constraints, given that such constraints in part exist in order to protect (particularly in the case of children), without undue detriment to the preferences of others. The second caveat concerns the choice of ‘preference’. The argument takes preference utility as a regulative ideal, along the lines of beauty or perfection: something constantly to be aimed for with the recognition that it can never be fully achieved. The question remains as to why such an ideal should be embraced even as an aspiration, however. Here there are what might crudely be termed more negative and positive justifications, broadly along the lines of Berlin’s conceptions of negative and positive liberty: freedom from and freedom to (Berlin 1958). The more negative argument might be taken from Hobbes, insofar as freedom is considered not as constructed through rights-granting so much as a natural condition part of which is necessarily conceded for mutual security (Hobbes 2014). The more negative justification might also draw on Lyotard’s argument that the postmodern condition is one of values fragmentation and ‘incredulity towards metanarratives’ (Lyotard 1986). On this postmodern account, there are no better or more enduring grounds for education than the feasible granting of preferences, as no other candidate value (one might cite social justice, economic growth, or national identity) can command sufficient rational consensus. In both these cases, there are no stronger grounds for acting than in relation to preference, construed either as the untamed natural condition of humanity or the default position of a society lacking a cohesive value set. The positive justification rests in the value of motivation, given that granting preferences goes with the grain of personal motivation and thus encourages both ‘deep’ and lifelong learning (Marton and Säljö 1976). In terms of a modern cliché, if we want people to do their best, we should let them pursue their (not merely our) dreams, acknowledging that in such pursuit these dreams will modify, informed by the consequences of actions in the world. While ‘dreams’ may take longer to develop than simple preferences, it is clear that those who have not yet entered, let alone left, formal adulthood are strongly motivated by personal aspirations This raises challenges in terms of how we consider childhood in relation to education, that will be addressed below. It should also be noted that aspirations need not be either rational or fully articulated verbally, but may often be evident in action and attitude. At the most basic level, preferences are realized in the processes and development of practices. Just as understanding can be construed as “know(ing) how to go on” (Wittgenstein 1967: S154), preference can be construed as choosing how to go on; this happens inevitably and well before ratiocination. A child’s preferences can to a large extent be interpreted from the direction of their play and responses, articulated and emotional, while a teacher’s preferences are manifested as much in ‘where they take the lesson’ as in conscious utterance of opinions and biases. In effect, to allow feasible preferences in formal educational contexts is to allow situations to unfold in a manner that is not overly directed or constrained by the teacher, noting both the collective nature of classroom activity and the liberty rights of the teacher on the grounds of the argument here. Thus what is proposed is a sensitive negotiation, not a free-for-all. It is therefore important to clarify the parameters of preference utilitarianism in this study, as the remarks above take us a long way from certain established forms of utilitarianism. Certain versions of particularly contemporary utilitarianism, includ-

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ing that of Peter Singer, demand a strong universality (Singer 2011). On such a flat universal account, we should be as attentive to the preferences of a child on the other side of the world as to those of our own children. Notwithstanding the moral rigour of this position, the present argument accepts the inevitability of greater care and attention to those proximal than at great distance (Stables 1998). This position is taken on pragmatic grounds, for three reasons. First, as members of educational communities (teachers, say, or students), our moral choices are inevitably principally about what we do with, for and about ourselves and a small group of others within our organizations. Secondly, a flat universalism runs the risk of undermining the utilitarian impulse entirely. As Bernard Williams has argued, the challenge of the utilitarian calculus on the world stage is so great as to be self-defeating, and has little to offer moral concerns such as that of personal integrity (e.g. Smart and Williams 1983). At the level of universality, the boundary between utilitarianism and deontology almost disappears. It could be argued that where actions should be calculated on the basis of what is best for the world as a whole, the position is almost akin to acting on the basis of a categorical imperative. (It is perhaps this difficulty that allows Barrow, below, to argue that Plato’s Republic is a utilitarian text.) Williams is thus right to critique utilitarianism in its most universalist forms, though not preference maximization per se that is not the focus of his argument. Individual preference satisfaction might, however, be offered as an alternative to Williams’ personal integrity. In the context of formal education, if every action were carefully considered using a universal felicific calculus, then (a) hardly anything could get done, as each calculation would be so difficult, (b) individual actors’ preferences would lose rather than gain salience, and therefore (c) there would be no local advantage in adopting utilitarianism as an aspiration. A final consideration is the glib but nevertheless logical observation that if everyone looked to the interests of those around them, the world would be a better place than one in which there was endless wrangling over universal goods. This argument therefore proceeds on three assumptions. First, we are each driven by an instinct to survive and flourish. Although the strength of this may vary from person to person and time to time, it does not require legal permission, though it does require some legal parameters for the protection of self and others. The focus in this argument is on Berlin’s negative liberties; it follows Hobbes in arguing for partial social restraint on freedoms that are enjoyed regardless of formal assent. Secondly, we learn through managing risk and consequence. The argument for this has been made fully elsewhere (Stables 2016b). However, it is grounded in a general pragmatism: what something turns out to be is the sum total of its effects. As Peirce put it: Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object (Peirce 1878. Retrieved from http://www.peirce.org/writings/p119. html, 13 October 2011.).

As actors balancing personal and social identities, both risk taking and feedback on our actions are integral to our development. Rom Harré has referred to this as Publication in his ‘social reality matrix’ whereby personal and social identities are formed through a cycle of Conventionalisation, Appropriation, Publication and Transfor-

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mation (Harré 1983; for a discussion relating to education see Stables et al. 1999). Thirdly, we wish in general for others to survive and flourish, but not to the same extent as ourselves (until we are overcome by extreme weakness, fear or old age) and those closest to us. Related to this, we have a better understanding of the preferences of those closest to us than those further away. Thus this argument rejects flat universalism as well as undermining any strong philosophical tendency to assert that children need to know what flourishing is before being allowed to attempt to flourish on their own terms. The will to flourish is inherent, an aspect of the survival instinct, and we are all motivated to learn, through experience, what ‘flourishing’ means for us. Philosophers can be part of, but not determine, this developing understanding. A further piece of conceptual underlabouring is required with respect to the concept of childhood. The present argument can clearly not move forward on the basis that only adults know what is good for children, yet acknowledgment of childhood as a category in any form implies recognition of children’s welfare and protection rights. Children play at being adults—as do adults—but are considerably less accountable for their actions in certain respects. Any educational planning must acknowledge the tension between motivation and protection in all its dealings, but particularly those with children. This is not to argue that childhood is a fixed concept, but to acknowledge that its existence in any operational form implies a condition of less than full rational autonomy. There are several different influences on current conceptions of childhood: on one level, we are all children (so this conception is not even age-related); on another the young tend to be less competent than adult; on another, childhood’s innocence and vulnerability bring with them valuable insights and propensities (Wordsworth’s child “as father of the man”, 1802). Nevertheless, all these views of the child imply beings who cannot be trusted with their own judgments to the extent that adults should be trusted as autonomous rational agents in modern post-Enlightenment societies, and who therefore require enhanced protection. On this ground, Feinberg stresses that liberty, or interest (we might say, preference) rights are principally adult rights, welfare rights are often common to adults and children, and children’s rights are often protection rights. In short, children tend to be passive recipients of their rights, while adults are active espousers of theirs. A problem with this view is that adults are not fully rational either. Indeed, either a ‘fully rational’ or ‘fully irrational’ being is inconceivable, unless we take all universal activity as rational, in which case children are as rational as adults. There is often hypocrisy in rationalist accounts insofar as assumptions of adult rationality may exclude large elements of the grown-up population, including foreigners, criminals, women and the mentally ill, let alone all non-human sentient beings. The idea that in a generally irrational universe, a small population of adult human beings ‘like us’ is rational is surely both indefensible and dangerous. In any case, as all who have dealt with children are aware, children do have strong preferences. Indeed, while still legally children, young people in the teenage years are expected to make choices, such as what to do on leaving school, that will have lifelong consequences for them, including constraining to some degree their future actions as supposedly autonomous adults. Even very young children have strong preferences, albeit in

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contexts of extreme worldly inexperience. It is therefore surely part of the duty of educators to increase the capacity for, and scope of, preference fulfilment as children go through school.

7.2.4 History of Utilitarianism as an Educational Ideal Given its presence in political and ethical debate, it might be argued that utilitarianism receives surprisingly little explicit attention in philosophy of education. Utilitarian perspectives have, however, influenced educational debate from the outset. While many arguments for formal schooling were grounded in a felt need to discipline and otherwise constrain energetic youth (Stables 2012), Bentham’s Chrestomathia advocated a school in which emulation and competition would replace corporal punishment, visual aids including art and wall diagrams would stimulate and support learning, and children would be grouped according to ability (Itzkin 1978). West states that J. S. Mill argued for “state supported education for all” (West undated). While others argued for mass education for compliance and discipline, either religious or military, the early Utilitarians sought it, at least in part, as a means towards self-fulfilment. Paradoxically, the same impetus is evident in much of the deschooling literature, with its libertarian aspirations to escape the trammels of state-imposed content and teaching (Illich 1995; Stables 2009; Papastephanou 2014). Any argument questioning the level and extent of compulsion in schooling is underpinned by some desire to grant preferences, though more universalist forms of utilitarianism may serve to quash individuality, as satirised in Dickens’ portrayal of Gradgrind’s school of ‘facts’ in Hard Times (Dickens 2003). One of the most extensive explicit defences of a utilitarian position in more recent literature is that of Barrow (1975). However, in arguing that Plato’s Republic is a utilitarian text insofar as it offers a template for the wellbeing of all citizens, Barrow may be stretching definitions of utilitarianism beyond their usual limits. Plato does not appear to place high value on either pleasure or, more broadly, personal preference, but is rather dismissive of all experience based knowledge claims. Such a critique has been expressed by Cohen (1977). In a later, less specifically educational work, Barrow develops his argument for a form of rule-utilitarianism on the grounds that such rule following tends to produce happiness more often than not (Barrow 2015). Such forms of utilitarianism are miles apart from preference utilitarianism: so far, indeed, that a strongly rationalist commentator might be inclined to reject the present argument as anti-philosophical. To a Platonist it is indeed anti-philosophical, as it grants greater value in many situations to individual opinion than to supposedly objective truth. However, such granting on the basis that it will promote stronger justification in the long term, as is argued below. A happiness based utilitarian account (of a more conventional sort than Barrow’s) is critiqued by Miles who has particular problem with the use of happiness as an aspiration for arts education. The paper to which Miles is responding, by James

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Tarrant, raised different criticisms of utilitarianism, and is in effect a critique of J. S. Mill (Miles 2006; Tarrant 2006). Miles’s objection is along the lines that Tarrant’s rejection of utilitarianism does not address the root of the problem. Regarding Miles, there is surely a case to be answered here, insofar as no one chooses to sit through Shakespeare’s King Lear, say, in order for them to feel happier in the short term in any trivial sense. However, one may well have a preference to see King Lear, and preferences may be seen as instrumental in bringing extra happiness, in the broader sense of human flourishing, in the longer term. Watching King Lear can certainly enrich one’s experience. It is to avoid simple preconceptions around happiness that the present argument focuses on preferences. (It may almost go without saying that utilitarianism has been subject to a number of crude caricatures: as an obsession with facts and calculation in Dickens’ Hard Times, for example, the treatment of which in the novel is popularly characterised as a critique of utilitarianism.) An argument for utilitarianism in relation to moral education by Hare has not attracted such criticism, perhaps in deference to Hare’s status as a moral philosopher (Hare 1981). Hare’s rejection of intuitionism and emphasis on rational debate about moral language appear at first blush to exert a considerable strain on any argument for granting the untutored wishes of young children. However, it is important to bear in mind that Hare’s objections are at least in part to those who simply assume universalist moral positions without argument, such as Rawls in his theory of justice (Rawls 2005). Placing greater emphasis on justification of the grounds of belief rather than the mere fact of belief has the effect of bringing pleasure and preference satisfaction closer. Hare discusses the pleasure machine imagined by J. J. C. Smart (Smart and Williams 1983) that maximizes the pleasures of a subject through generating a stream of illusory but enjoyable experiences. He sees it as an advantage of his variety of utilitarianism that, not being “formulated in terms of pleasure”, it can give weight to whether “we prefer a life for ourselves plugged into the machines to one devoted to pursuits now considered normal and enjoyable” (1981: 143). The present argument is that maximal feasible preference granting (bearing in mind the strong protection and welfare rights enjoyed by children) is more rather than less likely to lead young people to value justified rather than merely intuited preferences, in part simply because they will have been engaged in debate about what preferences should, or can feasibly, be granted, and in part because they will have learnt from the consequences of enacting preferences from a young age. There is, of course, a necessary circularity about this position as all forms of pragmatist and consequentialist ethics assume that questions of feasibility cannot ultimately be separated from those of rational desirability. If it ends up working, it is right to want it. It is the contention of the present argument that we learn ‘how to think’ with reference to our (broadly understood) empirical experience, and that such experience is enriched by our following our interests and inclinations as much as is feasible. Of course, there are necessary disciplines which, in conjunction with the outcomes of our own choices, also make us think but imposed discipline without scope for initiative tends to restrict rather than develop thinking.

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This is not to assume that preferences are all of the same tendency. In Hare (1981), for example, it is made clear that intensity of preference is a matter of concern, as are scope (including how any people are affected by the preference) and duration, and how we deal with preferences that are clearly illusory in some way. However, the fact that young children are likely to have naïve understandings of such concerns should not invalidate their finding out through the exercising of preferences given inevitable safeguards. The educational question is how best one learns ‘to think about such problems’. Unless a strong mind-body dualism is adopted, which would seem counter to most forms of consequentialism, trying things out and learning from what happens must surely play its part in developing moral reasoning as well as moral convictions. In short, it is only by exposing preferences that we can rationally discuss their ethical implications, and such discussion can at least be informed by experience arising from preference granting. In summary, the extent to which utilitarianism is accepted as educationally valuable is determined in part by construal of its parameters. Nevertheless, it is clear that utilitarian impulses of somewhat varied characters have played their parts in moulding the contours of contemporary educational debate. Specifically, the recognition that personal interest plays more strongly into than runs against universal good has been a useful counter-balance to the view that children simply have to be socialised and have all their preferences systematically beaten out of them: a counter-view to preference utilitarianism that not only underpins certain of the original arguments for compulsory education (Stables 2011, Chap. 3) but also was sufficiently widely held to infuse the English literary tradition, as, for example, in the horrific account of Lowood School in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (Brontë 1992).

7.2.5 The Parameters of Maximal Preference Utilitarianism for Schoolchildren Taking all the above into account, it is appropriate to suggest a local and specific preferential calculus for the context of schools and other forms of educational encounter with children. This is termed preferential rather than felicific since we are following Bentham broadly but focusing on preference rather than happiness. It can be modified as a useful heuristic for course planning and tutoring in further, higher and adult education, as is discussed in the final section. A problem with the application of classical Utilitarianism to the teaching of children is that, on Bentham’s calculation, the happiness/pleasure principle is likely to trump children’s preference on the grounds that teachers know better than children what is likely to produce extended pleasure. Bentham’s calculus has seven elements: Intensity (the intensity of the proposed pleasure); Duration (how long the effect will last); Certainty (the likelihood of the pleasure resulting from the action); Propinquity (the time taken until the effect); Fecundity (the likelihood of repetition); Purity (the absence of negative side-effects), and Extent (the number of people affected). While

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children will have experience sufficient for them to judge well on the Intensity criterion, their inexperience is likely to affect their judgment on all the other criteria. At first blush, therefore, it would seem that the best way to ensure children’s experiences is to deny them preferences. However, with the exception of the world’s Gradgrinds, it is generally accepted in liberal democratic societies that personal preference is central to the pursuit of happiness. The challenge is to create a formulation that considers issues of Duration, Certainty, Propinquity, Fecundity, Purity and Extent while still giving priority to children’s albeit naïve preferences. Based on each of the above considerations, therefore, the following is suggested. The question for educators is: How do I link [my understanding of] this child’s wishes to [my understanding of] the situation and the consequences of granting such wishes [bearing in mind Intention, Duration, Certainty, Propinquity, Fecundity, Purity and Extent], such that the child’s wishes can be granted as far as is feasible without detriment to the child’s welfare? (That is to say, such wish-granting must turn out to be at least welfare-neutral.) The two key principles here are: 1. the child’s wishes; 2. the calculation of their consequences and feasibility (for the school context itself severely limits the possible range of actions); 3. How to grant (1) as fully as possible in the light of (2). Suppose, for example, that a child who requires less classroom time than most to achieve highly on the formal curriculum has the opportunity to visit a space centre for the day and much wants to. Current law forbids her being taken out of school. This calculus would likely permit it. The same might be true for a child who is failing to progress in certain classroom activities but has the opportunity to attend a sports training camp during term time to progress in an activity towards which he is strongly motivated. While the proposed model falls far short of an anarchistic free-for-all, it is, for all its hedges and safeguards, likely to prove vastly more permissive than current policies in England and similarly orientated polities. In the everyday life of the classroom, it is pertinent to return to the earlier claim that preferences are realised in the processes and development of practices. Here, the implications of the proposed model will seem radical to those who oppose all forms of incorrectness, randomness and open-ended experiment. To allow feasible preference in many situations might be to allow children to work with a conceptualization that will ultimately be falsified. A minor but telling example comes from Kambouri’s study of early childhood practices, in which children maintained that water is white (Kambouri 2016). An important educational question concerns whether teachers should simply reject this assertion as wrong (as all expert opinion holds it to be) or encourage children to work with it to find out for themselves, and on their own terms, where the conceptualization is lacking. On the present account, the latter approach offers a possibility for deep learning that the former denies. It should be stressed, however, that at no point has it been suggested that teaching is merely a matter of attempting to grant preference. It has been argued that preferences should be granted where feasible within the contexts of in loco parentis relationships and inevitable, but not unnecessarily extensive, institutional, organizational and curricular constraints. The scope for action in schools is necessarily circumscribed; the emphasis here is to allow for a much freedom of action as possible with minimal,

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rather than minimum, circumscription. Constraints entail protection and it has been acknowledged that children, by virtue of being defined as such, are entitled to forms of protection, though it has not been the concern of this paper to explore these in detail. Education’s processes can, will and should involve challenging habits and perceptions: learning and living more broadly always carry an element of disillusionment as past assumptions are challenged and disrupted. Adults tend to recognise more than children that chronic sweet eating rots one’s teeth, and any calculus relating to children inevitably involves assessment of longer term pleasures and pains that inexperienced children may be less placed to make than experienced adults. To acknowledge this, however, is not to sanction constant overriding of children’s immediate preferences on the grounds that they do not know what is best for them; ultimately, they must find this out for themselves as they live lives inevitably different, and differently contextualised, from ours. An interesting parallel to the children-and-sweets issue is that of adults-and-wine. Most adults recognise that anything more than limited alcohol intake is likely to be bad for them, but many continue with it. However, there is empirical evidence to show that controlled experimentation can produce significant insights. The first example relates to what one pays for alcohol as opposed to the immediate health issue but is nevertheless relevant. There have been numerous blind tastings of wine that have surprised participants by revealing to them that they cannot, in fact, differentiate between cheap and expensive wines on the grounds of taste (Guardian 2015). The second is both personal and widespread. The present author is aware of more than one individual who modified his or her drinking habits significantly as a result of reading about a study that described the health benefits to middle-aged moderate drinkers of giving up alcohol completely for a month (Daily Mail 2015). Allowing choice and then being encouraged to reflect on it in a systematic way can have a much stronger educational effect than letting habits, good or bad, go unchecked. As far as is feasible and broadly safe, learning through experience has more powerful effects than merely listening and memorising, and some vital experiences (such as watching King Lear, or some equivalently challenging play or film preferred by a child) can be had without any immediate danger to life and limb; in other cases, limited risk taking that involves small but real physical risk may be educationally valuable, as acknowledged by both Locke (1692) and Rousseau (2001), for example. If the aim of education is in part to produce responsible citizens, it is hard to see how this can be done without allowing children to take some responsibility and to learn from the consequences of so doing.

7.2.6 Application Beyond Children This final sub-section considers how far the local calculus above for the following two groups: adult students in voluntary (further or higher) education, and teachers at all system levels.

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Students in further and higher education of legal adult age have voluntarily entered into a contract to undertake a course. Should this not conform to their wishes, they can leave. If there are issues of funding that render this problematic, these could be addressed, but it must be assumed in general that teachers/lecturers are largely granting the students’ preferences, and the students, as adults, are free to request modifications to the course should this be felt not to be the case in certain respects. On these grounds, the responsibility of teachers towards adult students is significantly different from that towards children. This is not to deny the common triadic framework between all teaching situations: that of teacher-student-subject. Higher education teachers, like those in schools, are inducting students into disciplinary practices. The difference lies with the older student having entered into the contract to undertake this work voluntarily. The terms of engagement should therefore be broadly analogous with those relating to entry into all forms of contract: the student should know roughly what type and level of service to expect and should have appropriate forms of complaint and redress available as appropriate. This contrasts with the child who cannot be presumed to know roughly what to expect as s/he is not, in legal terms anyway, regarded as an autonomous rational agent. This means that in further and higher education the terms of the contract are of utmost importance, as are the known consequences for significantly departing from it. The contract can determine, in broad but agreed terms, the level of student preference and choice that will operate. This is a very different situation from that applying to a formal school. Teachers themselves should be considered with respect to this model also. To an extent, the relationship of teacher to employer is synonymous with that of child to schoolteacher: that is, the employer has responsibility for the wellbeing of the teacher but also inevitably constrains her actions to a considerable degree. However, having appointed a teacher on the understanding that he can exercise his professional judgment flexibly with respect to the children he teaches, due regard should also be paid to the teacher’s own requests for professional and personal development. As with children, there are advantages to be gained from going with the grain of teachers’ motivations by allowing their preferences (within the boundaries of their employment of teaching only) as far as is feasible without detriment to others.

7.2.7 Concluding Remarks I have argued that students’ preferences, including those of very young children, should play their part in determining and modifying educational provision, allowing teaching, as far as is possible, to go with the grain of learner motivation. This has particular implications for schools (as opposed to institutions of further and higher institution) which are premised on the assumption that children do not know what is best for them, so have very restricted liberty rights, though they enjoy strong welfare and protection rights. A preferential calculus for use by teachers in schools is suggested, and there is discussion about how far such a calculus should be relevant

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to adult students, or indeed to teachers themselves. It is hoped that this may contribute to further discussion about the still relatively neglected issue of the degree to which educational aims should incorporate compulsion on the one hand and, on the other, attempt to respond to individual preferences.

7.3 Thinking About Capabilities as Well as Rights Effecting the kinds of change suggested in this chapter, as with those in the previous sections of this book, demands attention to human rights. However, turning rights into policies is often difficult. This is particularly so in the cases of marginalised groups who, on the classical liberal account of adult people as autonomous rational agents, may be deemed somehow less than ‘fully human’. (For a more in-depth discussion of the issues of the boundaries of the human, see Stables 2012.) Such marginalised groups inevitably include non-human animals, but also the mentally ill, demented, criminal and otherwise outcast members of society such as slaves. In many situations, women may constitute such a group: hardly a minority! For such groups, enacting full human rights presents particular challenges and in some cases (such as animals, obviously, but also criminals and those deemed incapable of rational judgment), it is not clear that there is public consensus around whether such rights should be granted. The present chapter has concentrated to a large extent on children, who form a particularly interesting and problematic group in this respect since the very definition of childhood precludes the assumption of autonomous rational agency. In other words, if you could be trusted to make your own decisions, you would not, by definition, be a child. As not yet fully rational creatures, children may have Interest rights (rights to protection, welfare and so on), but can have only limited Will rights (rights to do as they choose: Archard 2002). Thus construals of children’s rights can contain strange paradoxes, such as the idea that a child has a right to a compulsory education: that is, that it is the child’s right to be told what to do. Perhaps to a lesser extent, similar problems beset all attempts to grant rights to those who do not enjoy them. Rights, after all, like markets (Chap. 3) are never completely free. For example, my rights to freedom of movement and of assembly do not enable me to be in two places at once, to meet anyone who does not want to meet me, to meet the dead, or to go to places I cannot afford to go to. All rights are somewhat constrained by circumstances and subject to a feasibility test. Rights, in other words, are excellent as regulative ideals, to guide the direction of policy in a broad sense, but rights talk of itself does not solve all the issues of giving marginalised people voices. For that another conception is required, and a strong candidate for this is that of Capabilities. Most famously developed by Amartya Sen (2005) in the field of international development and Martha Nussbaum (2000), the Capabilities approach focuses on the skills and resources that people reauire to enable them to function as they would wish. (The discussions tend to be limited to the human sphere.) The Capabilities approach is therefore less abstract and more engaged with contextualised preferences than a pure Rights approach. It should be

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noted that there is a somewhat different emphasis in the works of Sen and Nussbaum, with the latter taking a rather more essentialist view involving ten capabilities that she regards as universal, while the former’s view may be seen as somewhat more liberal and situationist. The central question for policy makers committed to empowering the marginalised, including children and, more broadly, the local communities who form the primary focus of the present argument, might be, “What might feasibly be done to meet all aspirations?” (Stables 2013: 864). This too may be problematic, in the sense that Protection rights might continue to trump Will rights in certain cases, such as the heroin addict’s wish to take heroin, particularly where the addict has agreed to treatment. (In effect, nothing may stop the addict taking the drug if this has not been agreed.) Similarly, if we are to hold on to the concept of childhood, we must acknowledge that children need protection from carrying out certain wishes, such as putting their hands into a fire. The formulation of “all aspirations” might therefore be subject to the caveat that people should be prevented from pursuing their aspirations if and only if meeting the aspiration would prevent them from pursuing further aspirations. In other words, both the heroin addict and the child should be prevented from doing things that will damage their capacity to do things in the future. This would mark a radical departure from many present practices in placing the burden of proof on those who wish to deny the actor’s preferences, not the reverse. Consider this in relation to the debate about local control over local development in Chap. 4, for example, or in relation to the running of schools, as discussed in this chapter. In a society with a genuine democratic commitment, this formula should work to ensure maximal preference more effectively than is generally presently the case. Totalitarians might subvert it by claiming that certain actions that the state disapproves of must not be undertaken because they will lead to the loss of the actor’s freedoms, but such societies are not fundamentally committed to either rights or capabilities. Those that are could do much more to consult all their members about what they wish to achieve in their own contexts. To do so would implicitly shift emphasis away from mechanical adherence to global abstract systems and towards embodied situated actions taken by human beings with an increased sense of responsibility for their actions.

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