Ulrich Beck on Risk Society, Individualization, and the Future of Jobs

Ulrich Beck quotes:

Risk Society
Modern society presupposes side effects that are spatially, temporally, and socially bounded. Without that condition, it can't function. Only against this background, when it was assumed that the side effects of modernization would always somehow be compensated for, could faith in progress become popular and widespread.

In is a general, institutional principle: in any case where a clear chain of causality cannot be demonstrated, there is therefore no risk. When the affected people take their case to the scientists, they find themselves talking to a group whose most identity-defining belief is that the canons of causal evidence and inference must always be strictly adhered to. When these criteria can't be satisfied, scientists can be depended upon to explain away any new risk as a mere fantasy without giving it any further consideration.

Individualization
Class analysis has always been in part an attempt to conjure up class solidarity, to postulate the collective subject as a historical subject, and then to build a political program around it. But as a utopia, and as a political program, class leads to a picture of society that is exactly the opposite of individualized society, and to politics that are exactly the opposite of political individualism. If you ask what are the new ideas and political strategies that class analysis can generate for the present situation, all you get is antiquated answers or total hopelessness.

Class concepts, no matter how subtle, simply can't capture the existing complexity of radically unequal living situations, either within nationstate societies or between them. What they do instead is deceive us with a false simplicity. The frame of reference has changed. Our model of class struggle and class society presumes the nationstate. The old marxist argument that the worker knows no nation has today been turned on its head. It is capital's activists, those who have made globalization their profession, who don't have any fatherland, while the workers and their unions call on "their" governments for aid... Marxists use class analysis in part as a means of finessing their way around the central problem facing us, the question of what we can find that can successfully serve as the basis of long-term, progressive solidarity.

Labor
Labor is a means by which the structure of power is internalized through everyday routines, each of which involves the positing of meaning and the submission to control. When every desire to build a life, an identity, an existence, is forced to be mediated through the labor market, what results is one of the subtlest and most refined systems ever invented for getting people to conform to the societal structure of power. People adapt themselves. They fit in. This self-activated conformity to rule constitutes the core of labor society. It transforms the control of rulers into self-control. Individuals integrate themselves into the system of labor, they makes themselves functional. The net of exploitation that binds them is experienced as self-exploitation, as drive, as something to be proud of.

The voluntarily unemployed say: Screw That. We are using unemployment compensation as a foundation to explore new forms of existence. We are the pioneers of a post-labor society. We are searching out activities that interest us, that we enjoy. We want a life where we an switch from one activity to another, because variety and change in themselves make all activities more enjoyable. We don't need the control claims of labor society to organize ourselves.

Paid labor has a monopoly on meaning (that is, for work to be considered significant, it seems it has to be paid for) and it has a monopoly on the means of existence. But labor society and its totalizing claims are really a very recent phenomenon. For most of history there was a wealth of alternatives. There still are. But these other activities are always practiced in tandem with labor and are often more necessary, though less visible. They form its necessary background, without which society could not exist. Most of these activities seem to share two characteristics. They have a strong emphasis on self-initiative; and they are activities in which the ends and products are transparent to the people doing it.

This necessarily raises a question. If this system is beginning to dissolve, and if, in many ways, we want it to dissolve, then how can we create an alternative milieu in which individuals who have been fragmented and atomized can be socialized? Where they can experience something like society, and internalize the values of society?

How Much Energy It Takes to Eat

Most energy use in the path from farm to fork happens in the kitchen. Just driving to the grocery store to pick up the groceries uses more energy than all the industrial agriculture, shipping warehouses, and long-hauls trucks used to get your groceries into the store. Also, depending on how much you buy at one time, you are likely burning more calories (in gasoline) than you just bought....think about that the next time you're calorie-counting!

Apparently, most of the (increasing) energy consumption in the kitchen comes from more people owning dishwashers and second refrigerator/freezers. Energy use has increased in the kitchen even while people spend less time in the kitchen.

Of course, the above perspective does not mean that reducing energy consumption in any sector is less important than any other sector.

Source.

What do Wilderbeast eat in Ngorongoro?

This computer model knows:

Bruno Latour

I've been reading a lot of Bruno Latour, the French sociologist and philosopher of science. His book, We Have Never Been Modern contains what may be the best review of another awesome book, Leviathan and the Air Pump, by Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer. Latour reconceptualizes their work as showing the invention of separate spaces for scientific versus political discourse, not just the clash between the two realms. Latour goes on to propose a three-category conceptual framework for everything: natural, social, and textural.

In the Prince and the Wolf, Latour out-argues a professional philosopher by refusing to believe in the necessity of a single viewpoint. Instead, he argues in favor of 'Occasionalism' which finds its philosophy in each new moment.

Beaver vs. Climate Change

A new report all about beaver by my friend and chief Forest Ecologist at Wild Earth Guardians, Bryan Bird. The report, Beaver and Climate Change Adaptation in North America (pdf) contains a comprehensive review of beaver ecosystem engineering and derived ecosystem services.

Beaver occur throughout most of North America:

And they can help engineer the environment in ways that could benefit us selfish humans. I can't resist a before-and-after.

BEFORE

AFTER

Stormwater vs Toxic Polluted Runoff

The Sightline Institute, from Cascadia, has a great short video about how to talk about stormwater runoff. First, they say, be specific and vivid: its not just natural storminess. Its toxic polluted runoff. Check it out:



http://www.sightline.org/research/sust_toolkit/communications-strategy/pollutedstormwatervideo

Are Invasive Species Evil?

Mark Davis argues against seeing invasive species as evil aliens.

In his talk today, "Invasion Biology, the Science and the Ideology" Davis lambasted a prominent paper on Garlic Mustard invasion, Ready or Not, Garlic Mustard Is Moving In: Alliaria petiolata as a Member of Eastern North American Forests. 2008. Vikki L. Rodgers, Kristina A. Stinson, Adrien C. Finzi. Bioscience. He looked up a half dozen of their key citations and showed how the original papers did not support or even directly contradicted, the claims in this prominent paper. Davis argues, persuasively, that ecologists have been too quick to lay blame on invasive plants.

He wrote a paper in 2011, Don't judge species on their origins. 2011 Nature. Mark A. Davis, et al. arguing conservationists should assess organisms on environmental impact rather than on whether they are natives. Are invasive species drivers, or passengers of species loss. They may be beneficiaries rather than agents of change. Eventually, intraspecific competition triumphs over interspecific competition as invasive species run up against resource limitations. Over time, invasive species advantages may erode as other species learn to use them as resources, too. Negative soil feedbacks accumulate over time for non-native plant species. Ecology Letters. Jeffrey M. Diez, Ian Dickie, et al.

Looking into the void: the Wilderness of Dreams

When I sleep, I dream, and when I dream I wander the wildernesses I've visited in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and beyond. There are never any trails or roads, but just undulating space, pocketed with adventures. I like thinking that my feet somehow read terrain directly into my subconscious. Understanding the land is somehow different from looking at GIS or Google Earth 3D, or studying Landscape Ecology or Watershed Analysis. I like thinking that maybe mountains and streams fit together in ways only dreams can really fathom. I don't know, but I do enjoy looking down from dreamlit summits across verdant acres of potential adventure.

Species' Interactions

from Holland and DeAngelis 2009 Ecology Letters

Note that predation includes herbivory, parasitism, etc.

Resolving Ecosystem Complexity

Dr. Os Schmitz wrote Resolving Ecosystem Complexity with the aim not of solving the entire nexus of ecological problems, but of trying to disentangle the Gordian Knot. The book slices through ecology from individual behavioral tradeoffs to ecosystem nutrient cycling rates. Individuals must balance tradeoffs between eating and being eaten, so that behavioral responses to predators ripple through an ecosystem to change overall species evenness and NPP.

Schmitz first lays out a distinction between ecosystems that are absolutely resource limited and those that are relatively resource limited, citing the work of Andrewartha and Browning (1961) as well as implicating stress-gradient theories used in biogeographic studies. If herbivores are absolutely limited by the availability of resources (time, food) then a unit reduction in their numbers will not have an effect on plants because another individual will simply step in to take the place of the missing individual. On the other hand, if herbivores are relatively limited, they could eat quite a lot more if predation pressure were decreased.

Schmitz insists on treating ecosystems as (at minimum) three-level systems, because every level is limited by the availability of nutrients in the level below it and the risk of predation from the level above. Schmitz does not limit his treatment to traditional community trophic interactions however, because his individual-focussed approach shows that individual behavioral responses can be as important as population changes.

For example, when herbivores alter their behavior (phenotypic plasticity)(link to evolutionary ecology) in environments with predators, different plants can grow and different ecosystem structures can develop. He calls this the Landscape of Fear theory.