Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity

Identity, a term that was not yet included in Williams’ important Keywords: a vocabulary of culture and society (1976), has become a major watchword since the 1980s. Traditional territorialized battles over democracy, political status/citizenship and wealth have been complicated by the struggle over ’race’, ethnicity, multiculturalism, gender, sexuality, recognition and a new symbolic economy characterized by the production/marketing of images (Isin & Wood 1999, du Gay et al. 2000, Lash & Featherstone 2002). The identity discourse has emerged concomitantly with such arguments that the world, particularly the Western world, is moving towards a ‘forced’ individualization: people’s lives are increasingly being left as their own responsibility, so that people shape their lives and environments through personal identities rather than through categorizations such as nationality, class, occupation or home region (Beck & Beck 2001). Contrary to previous arguments, however, people’s awareness of being part of the global space of flows seems to have generated a search for new points of orientation, efforts to strengthen old boundaries and to create new ones, often based on identities of resistance (Castells 1997, Meyer and Geschiere 1999, Kellner 2002). It is argued that collective action cannot occur without a distinction between ‘us’ and the ‘other’ (Della Porta & Diani 1999) but identity movements do not always base their activities on difference as it may be strategically beneficial to stress similarities (Bernstein 1997). This report will review one specific part of the complicated identity discourse, the question of regional identity. Along with the tendencies depicted above, this old idea has gained new importance not only in geography but also such fields as cultural/economic history, literature, anthropology, political science, sociology, psychology and musicology. I will first reflect the premises that geographers and others have associated with this mushrooming but rarely analytically discussed category, then map the conceptual gaps, and, finally, suggest some possible avenues for further research.

Region and place: Regional identity in question

Many ecosystem services are in decline. Local ecological knowledge and associated practice are essential to sustain and enhance ecosystem services on the ground. Here, we focus on social or collect ...

Social-ecological memory in urban gardens-Retaining the capacity for management of ecosystem services

Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy Joseph E. Stiglitz W. W. Norton & Company, 2010 Joseph Stiglitz's Freefall is another excellent discussion of the global economic crisis, authored by a man who ranks high among the commentators. Stiglitz was the chief economist at the World Bank during the East Asian economic crisis in 1997-1998, and then chaired the United Nations commission that sought reforms for the global financial and monetary system. He was a member of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors. This is his fifth book. There seem to be a great many Nobel Prize winners in Economics (whose collective wisdom doesn't seem to have saved the world from its financial travails), but it would surely be amiss not to mention that Stiglitz is among them. This book testifies to his distinction in that select group. Because Freefall can hardly examine the crisis without covering much of the same ground as the other books we have reviewed, we will avoid repeating that analysis here. We prefer to focus on those aspects of Stiglitz's discussion that address unresolved issues or that most bring his own learning to bear: * His view of the plight in which today's "capitalism" finds itself. * What he says (and yet doesn't say) about the whirlpool of global finance. * His critique of the response that the U.S. Federal Reserve and government have made to the crisis, including what he thinks should have been done. * In connection with this critique, his reflections on the performance both of the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations' actions through the end of 2009. * What reforms Stiglitz considers needed. His view of today's "capitalism." Although Stiglitz affirms "that markets lie at the heart of every successful economy" and is by no means anticapitalist, he shares the view that has come to be held by a great many thoughtful commentators that today's "capitalism" bears little resemblance to the competitive "private enterprise" that supporters of a market economy have long championed. He speaks of an "ersatz capitalism" that features a "corporate welfare state" driven by "blatant greed" and an ideology, sponsored by special interests, that has made a fetish of "self-regulating markets." "The current crisis has uncovered fundamental flaws in the capitalist system, or at least the peculiar version of capitalism that emerged in the latter part of the twentieth century in the United States." This realization is an intellectual earthquake. It should profoundly redirect the thinking of America's free-market enthusiasts, who will do their philosophy a great disservice if they insist on blind loyalty to the current system. We saw the same theme in our review of John Bogle's The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism,1 where we wrote that "in common with many others today, Bogle sees that the market system has become untracked - has 'lost its soul' - and needs much devoted attention (especially from capitalism's supporters...)." It is worth noting that Bogle saw the problem as societal, not just economic. "Our society is moving in the wrong direction," with "absurdities and inequities that we've come to accept" in a "wealth-oriented, things-fixated society" within which "the lure of money has overwhelmed the prestige of reputation." This suggests that even though national and international financial reforms are essential, they cannot appropriately be understood as a "quick fix" that will be sufficient to put things right. There needs to be deep concern for the systemic health of the society. What Stiglitz says (and doesn't say) about the multi-trillion dollar ocean of global finance. In our review of David Smick's The World is Curved: Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy, 2 we found that "the risks Smick describes are so many and so palpable that any objective observer would be justified in considering them intolerable. …

Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy

Obviously Mark Blyth hit a nerve with his ‘austerity’ video in 2010 – it's now been viewed nearly 50,000 times according to YouTube. 1 As a follow-up (even addendum, of sorts), his new book Austeri...

Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea

Brexit: Why Britain Voted to Leave the European Union; A Review

Social Traps and the Problem of Trust. By Bo Rothstein. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 256p. $80.00 cloth, $30.99 paper. How do you get from Moscow to Stockholm? That is, how do you create efficient, honest government like that of Sweden as opposed to the incompetence and corruption found in Russia? This question drives Bo Rothstein into an analysis of the causes of social traps—situations where actors cannot cooperate due to mutual distrust, even if cooperation is mutually beneficial. Eliminating social traps requires generalized trust, that is, social capital. How does one engender trust? Robert Putnam, both in Making Democracy Work (1993) and Bowling Alone (2001), argues that social capital is created through civil society, a process that bubbles up through history and culture. Rothstein takes this view to task for not analytically distinguishing between associations (a behavior) and trust (a belief), for it is really the belief that needs to be generated. Trust, in his view, need not evolve organically from below; it can be generated from above by establishing efficient political institutions. If public officials are corrupt, citizens will infer that people in general are dishonest and behave dishonestly themselves. Thus, social traps are sprung. The reverse is also true: Honest governance begets social trust.

Social Traps and the Problem of Trust

Is social capital a prerequisite for prosperity? This paper analyzes social capital and economic performance in the British regions. Like Italy, Britain has a north-south economic divide. Are these differences caused by unequal stocks of social capital? This paper provides limited support for the hypothesized relationship between some indicators of social capital (especially trust and civic associations) and economic performance. Economic associations, however, are negatively correlated. This highlights shortcomings in social capital theory in terms of transferring the concept to new settings, the mechanisms linking social capital to production and the translation of social capital into public policy.

Social Capital and Regional Economies in Britain

List of Tables and Figures Preface and Acknowledgments Notes on Contributors Introduction: How to Assess the Blair Legacy? T.Casey Timeline of the Blair Years PART I: POLITICS Blair's Electoral Record D.Denver & J.Fisher The Party is Over: The 'Modernization' of British Labour F.Faucher-King The Conservatives: Trounced, Transfixed, Transformed? T.Bale The Liberal Democrats After Blair D.Cutts & A.Russell The Pressure Group Challenge W.Grant New Labour, the Third Way and Social Democracy: An Ideological Assessment N.Randall & J.Sloam PART II: POLICY Blair and the NHS: Resistable Force Meets Moveable Object? C.Paton Reformulating Social Policy: The Minimum Wage, the New Deal, and the Working Families Tax Credit J.Waltman New Labour and the British Model of Capitalism T.Casey & A.Howard Judicial Reform and Human Rights M.Bevir & R.Maiman PART III: GOVERNANCE Tony Blair as Prime Minister M.Bennister The Role of Parliament under Blair M.Stuart Territorial Politics in the UK after Devolution J.Bradbury Mayors, Monitors and Measurers: Blair's Legacy to Local Democracy C.Game The Constitutional Revolution of Tony Blair J.Alt PART IV: FOREIGN AFFAIRS What Difference Did He Make? Tony Blair and British Foreign Policy S.Dyson The Mistake Heard Round the World: Iraq and the Blair Legacy D.Coates & J.Krieger A Just War: Prime Minister Tony Blair and the End of Saddam's Iraq T.Bromund Reflections on the Contemporary US-UK Special Relationship: Structure and Agency in Anglo-American Relations J.Dumbrell Blair and the European Union S.James & K.Oppermann CONCLUSION: The Legacy of Tony Blair J.Tonge References

The Blair Legacy: Politics, Policy, Governance, and Foreign Affairs

Within the study of comparative capitalisms (CC), there is little consensus on the core traits, proper labels, or categorization of different capitalist economies. This paper seeks to clarify the discussion by constructing an empirical index that can be used to map advanced capitalist economies. The index is based on a dozen variables organized into three key domains: the organization of labor, the organization of business and the role of the state. In terms of cross-national comparison, the distribution of states largely matched theory, although with greater diversity among liberal economies and relatively less among European economies than would be expected. Over time, there has been a general movement toward liberalization with some states, such as New Zealand, liberalizing substantially. Alternately others, mainly Ireland, have actually become more coordinated. Beyond descriptive mapping, this paper also demonstrates how the CC index can be used to provide analytical leverage over questions of the taxonomy of capitalisms, the connection between models and economic performance and the relative contribution of diverse institutions toward economic performance.

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1057%2Fcep.2008.19.pdf

Mapping Stability and Change in Advanced Capitalisms

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