CopyLeft 2012 Elvin K. Wyly
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elvin's index
Light reading, December 2011: recent Master's and Doctoral scholarship reading completed (left), current stack of book-length brainstorming and late-night reading (right). Dan Georgakas's eloqent Detroit, I do Mind Dying, Wernick on Comte's secular humanist challenge to theological-metaphysical hegemony, Bunge's hardcore theorization of history and geography ("space will tell..."), Hill speaking truth to power, and the Caro biography of Moses that Jane Jacobs called "an immense public service."
Who doesn't love Harper's Index? But if the index itself is subject to copyright restrictions, the graceful simplicity of the idea itself cannot be controlled. Everyone has an eye for useful statistical facts, even when (perhaps especially when) we remember Nietzsche's warning that "there are no facts as such; we must first introduce a meaning in order for there to be a fact."
But the Latin root for "fact" is factum, "a thing done."
So let's do something rigorous and radical, scientific and socialist.
The Radical Central Limit Theorem
The theorem is this: Somewhere, in the middle of all of this, you might find something that will anger or inspire you to create your own data -- to do something that is all at once radical, equitable, scientific, and emancipatory. Engage the positivist-conservative-military-capitalist infrastructure. Resist it, fight it, radicalize it.
Do something, and be inspired as well by those who continue to inspire me: Robert S. Wyly, Jatinder Dhillon, Saul Alinsky, David Harvey, Susan Hanson, Kathe Newman, Dolores Hayden, Ann Markusen, Antonio Gramsci, Auguste Comte, Bill Bunge, Brian Berry, Jennifer Wolch, Peter Gould, Jim Wheeler, John S. Adams, Trevor Barnes, Derek Gregory, Gerry Pratt, Jamie Peck, Juanita Sundberg, Ananya Roy, Danny Dorling, Karl Marx, Paul Plummer, Byron Miller, Dan Hammel, Jeff Crump, Loretta Lees, Tom Slater, Mark Davidson, Judith Martin, Fred Lukermann, Paul Roebuck ... the list goes on and on for me ...
...and I'm sure you have your own endless list of mentors, allies, and unindicted co-conspirators.
A small random sample...
Alleged number of total votes ever cast in "American Idol" competitions: 4.87 billion.
Source: Fox (2012). "Fox Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Celebration." Broadcast June 24.
Market price for Kloe Kardashian to run your message on her Twitter feed: $9,100. Snooki's price: $7,800.
Source: SponsoredTweets.com, cited in Wired (2012). "Datastream." Wired, April, p. 24.
Estimated number of spam texts to U.S. cellphones in 2011: 4.5 billion. Number in 2009: 2.2 billion.
Source: Ferris Research estimates, cited in Nicole Perlroth (2012). "Spam Invades a Last Refuge, the Cellphone." New York Times, April 7.
Amount given to Newt Gingrich's SuperPAC by a single individual, the casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson: $100 million. Now, assume Adelson decides to give his entire net worth to the eventual Republican nominee in the general election; to match the financial power of this single individual, every one of the donors who gave to Barack Obama's 2008 campaign would have to give $300.
This equation of democra$y would thus be:
1 Sheldon Adelson = 69.5 million Obama donors.
Source: Adapted from figures cited by Bill Maher (2012). Real Time. March 2.
Percentage of consumers who checked the box for an online purchase that affirmed their agreement with the following April-Fool's Day punk'd end-user license agreement with the online retailer Gamestation: "By placing an order via this Web site on the first day of the fourth month of the year 2010 anno Domini, you agree to grant us a non-transferable option to claim, for now and forever more, your immortal soul": 88 percent.
Source: Elisabeth Rosenthal (2012). "I Disclose ... Nothing" New York Times, January 22, p. SR1, SR7, quote from p. SR 7.
Percentage increase in the number of guns sold in the United States, 2010 to 2011: 100. Number of gun-sale background checks performed on the Friday after Thanksgiving, 2011: 129,166. Rank of that day in the history of background-check recordkeeping: 1. Percentage change in violent crime from 2010 to 2011: negative 6 percent.
Source: Lawrence O'Donnell (2012). "The Last Word / Rewrite." New York: MSNBC, January 2.
Percentage of Americans aged 18-29 who express a positive view towards the label "capitalism": 47. Percentage who express a positive view towards "socialism": 49. Percentage among African Americans: 55.
Source: Pew Research Center for People and the Press (2011). "Little Change in Public's Response to 'Capitalism,' 'Socialism'." Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, December 28.
Share of U.S. Market held by top three banks, including non-bank subsidiaries: 44 percent. Share held by top twenty banks: 92 percent.
Source: Adam Davidson (2011). "It's Not Technically an Oligopoly." New York Times Magazine, December 11, pp. 16-18.
Number of regulatory agencies, in various jurisdictions around the world, purportedly supervising the insurance company AIG when it failed and required US$100b+ in bailouts in September, 2008: 400.
Source: Adam Davidson (2011). "It's Not Technically an Oligopoly." New York Times Magazine, December 11, pp. 16-18.
Overall profit margin on iPhones in 2009: 64 percent. Margin if iPhones were assembled in the United States rather than China (assuming 10x labor cost differential, equivalent productivity, and similar component expenses): 50 percent. Implied share of Apple iPhone profit margin financed by greater exploitation of Chinese labor: 22 percent.
Source: John Bellamy Foster, Robert W. McChesney, and R. Jamil Jonna (2011). "The Global Reserve Army and the New Imperialism." Monthly Review 63(6), pp. 1-31, specifics on p. 15.
Total Mortgage-Backed Securities exposure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as of November 30, 2009: US$6.188 trillion.
Source: SIGTARP (2010). Quarterly Report to Congress, First Quarter 2010. Washington, DC: Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, January 30, specifics on p. 117.
Amount paid by Freddie Mac between 1999 and 2008 to the consulting firm of Newt Gingrich for, among other things, his "expertise" as an "historian": US$1.6 million - US$1.8 million.
Source: Jim Rutenberg and Jeff Zeleny (2011). "Gingrich on Defensive Over Freddie Mac Fees." New York Times, November 16.
Size, in bytes, of EKW's cumulative email archive as of December 10, 2011: 31,757,538,236.
Source: A dusty old Dell laptop, circa the year 2008 in the digital Pre-Cambrian, held together with rubber bands and paper clips.
Number of photographs taken by Robert Frank on three trips across the United States in 1955 and 1956: 28,000. Number chosen for inclusion in Frank's 1958 book, The Americans: 83.
Source: Charlie leDuff (2008). "Thomas Frank's Unsentimental Journey." Vanity Fair, April, pp. 164-177, specifics on p. 166.
Odds that a single non-Hispanic African American woman will receive a high-risk subprime loan rather than a standard mortgage, compared to a non-Hispanic White couple: 4.84. Odds compared to a single non-Hispanic White female: 3.15. Odds compared to a non-Hispanic African American couple: 1.22.
Source: Elvin Wyly and C.S. Ponder (2011). "Gender, Age, and Race in Subprime America." Housing Policy Debate 21(4), pp. 529-564, specifics on p. 544.
Estimated annual cost of incarceration, per inmate, at the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba: $800,000. Cost in domestic federal prison: $25,000.
Source: Scott Shane (2011). "Beyond Guantánamo, a Web of Prisons." New York Times, December 11, A1, A26, specifics on p. A1.
Is it all coming together?
My friend Bob Catterall, Editor in Chief of City, has been asking this question for many years now. In a series of eloquent and powerful editorials, Bob analyzes the local and global convergences of our era, and considers the possibilities for radical change in an unequal, unjust world. Bob's essays inspire me to consider how my approach to that world has been shaped by the many different scholars, advocates, analysts, advocates, and street philosophers. Many of those who have influenced me would disagree with one another on all sorts of things. But that's what makes the learning so valuable, isn't it? Here are a few thoughts on how those different intellectual, methodological, and political influences can be reconciled. If you're an academic, then this might be compared to a "Gonzo Annotated Reading List." (see, for example, "Strategic Positivism," or "Positively Radical.") If you're a real person, then you'll have to trust me on the citations and other gimmicks of academic writing. The choices have been selective and unavoidably biased in what has been borrowed from different authors. Please, do read, and tell me where I'm wrong...
We're watching this:
Eugene Jarecki (2012). Reagan. New York: HBO Films, Inc.
...and it's almost like I'm seeing my entire undergraduate curriculum flash before my eyes.
I was fourteen when Ronald Reagan was elected President of the United States. I grew up the youngest in my family, perpetually shaped by the feeling of having arrived too late. The sixties were over, and gone were the years of turbulence and possibility. The bizarre decade of the seventies brought an end to the myths and realities of the postwar Golden Age of Western capitalism. The end of the sixties also erased the clear boundaries between right and wrong -- between the unvarnished evils of segregation and the pure goodness of the millions working in the Civil Rights and Economic Justice movements.
I missed those years, but of course they shaped my world. Political consciousness emerged in the decisive moment when America lurched rapidly to the right. Right-wing thugs had seized the steering wheel (Peck, 2011), but before we landed in the ditch I jumped off and scrambled towards the university. The initial plan was to study engineering at the Pennsylvania State University, but before long I stumbled into the geography department. Suddenly I was captivated by the radical possibilities of all sorts of unexpected connections. An undergraduate course taught by Roger Downs just rocked my world, and got me thinking carefully about space, place, process, and context. Physical geography instilled a deep respect for analytical reasoning and careful observation of the processes shaping our environments. Human geography showcased spatial relations, the power of place, and the extraordinary diversity of cultures, economies, and ways of life around the world. One part of human geography hinted at radical thinkers who said that the world we see around us is just one of many possibilities. Radical geographers told us that we can and must do better. Another world is possible. The beginning is near.
But radicalism was inseparable from Science, because the emergence of scientific thought was itself a radical challenge. Science merits that capital-S not because it was Truth-with-a-capital-T, but because Science was a political movement and a collective achievement built within a hostile climate of metaphysical theology. The values of Enlightenment require vigilance and constant defense. Yes, we do have to be open and honest about the bittersweet history of that project: Europe's Enlightenment was not the first enlightenment, but it was the most successful in part because its contradictions were externalized, financed by the violence and exploitation of Europe's colonization of the Global South (Blaut, 1993). But the Enlightenment taught societies how to mobilize science to question the orthodoxy of theology. That lesson is still relevant today. The radical project of emancipation and social justice needs our support, from a variety of methdological perspectives.
So here's the logic. Peter Gould (1985) taught me about the power of science and mathematical thinking, in the Geographer at Work. So did David Harvey, in Explanation in Geography (1969). Lakshman Yapa taught me about the development of underdevelopment, and about colonial inequalities -- the kinds of inequalities that get us all angry at the injustices of the world. I saw science as part of the struggle to document and challenge these injustices -- and to challenge what a Republican(!) once called "voodoo economics." Science and radicalism were exactly what Peter Gould had in mind when he showed Bill Bunge's maps of rat bites, and child pedestrian deaths, in Detroit's inner city. So in geography, when I went off to grad school and learned in the literature that David Harvey's (1973) Social Justice and the City was a radical departure from his 'status quo' science of Explanation, this made no sense to me. I had been learning about Brian Berry's (1964) "cities as systems within systems of cities," and thus it came as quite a shock to realize that Berry and Harvey had been fighting so intensely over the "Revolutionary and Counter-Revolutionary Theory" chapter that was to become part of Social Justice.
Looking back, I was really learning a deep radicalism from the very deepest thinkers ... those who understood that good science and good politics go well together.
Here's a set of free associations inspired by seeing this HBO documentary. The Reagan years were when capitalism in the United States was taken over by a powerful, anti-scientific infrastructure. The Right kidnapped science, and it began to use postmodernism and poststructuralism to protect a very particular form of American Empire. Now I think I finally see the connections between different kinds of voices.
Here's what I'd recommend you skim to see the connections I have in mind.
The HBO flick reminds us that Reagan was the perfect symbol of a global postmodern turn led by America. Here was a propagandist actor politician, who moved Right-and-Up in service to the power of radical conservatism. Here was an advertising icon assuming the most powerful elected position in the world, leading the world's wealthiest democracy -- a democracy that also has the distinction of unparalleled, worldwide violence. (Keep in mind that this is the sole nation to use nuclear weapons to kill civilians, and the nation led by a figure receiving the Nobel Peace Prize while escalating drone strikes and extrajudicial killing in Afghanistan and Pakistan.).
These surreal images of hegemony, war, and image should make us stop and think. Science was supposed to give us modernity, peace and progress. Intstead it delivered us a twentieth century of faciscm, imperialism, and global war. So the academic left became disenchanted with the idea of science, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s when it seemed that "postivism" was part of the official, status-quo science of the U.S. military-industrial complex.
There's more than a few self-conscious moments of epistemology and ontology in this HBO biopic. The chapter "The Real Reagan" suddenly reminds me of an angry essay written by the most highly-cited geographer of the 1960s and 1970s -- Brian Berry -- when he saw the twists and turns of post-positivist social theorists. In "Big Tents or Firm Foundations?," Berry offers a full-throated defense of the real -- a commitment to metaphysical realism that he contrasts with the relativism and congenital argumentativeness of the reds and the greens -- the Marxists, the feminists, the Foucauldians, the environmentalists.
Why put science in opposition to radicalism? This is nonsense. To be a scientist, a positivist, means defending Science against an arrogant, violent medieval mindset that protects narrow elite power and privilege. We should be inspired by the radicalism of that famously obscure original positivist -- Auguste Comte. Almost two centuries ago, Comte declared that Another World is Possible in a manifesto he wrote in his early twenties: the "Plan of the Scientific Operations Necessary for the Reorganization of Society." In the course of sketching out his utopian plan, Comte realized it was necessary to provide a concise overview of the development of scientific ways of thinking, before he got to his main task of outlining a political program. It took Comte a lot longer than he planned to get that prerequisite out of the way: The Course in Positivist Philosophy was published in six volumes between 1830 and 1842. Comte did eventually get to the longer project -- the System of Positive Polity -- but a lot of his allies turned on him when they saw his new writing. In later years Comte's "second career" was lampooned, misinterpreted, and then almost entirely forgotten.
But of course inequalities have gotten so much worse than even Harvey could have imagined. Compare Harvey's Social Justice (1973) with the Enigma of Capital, and the Crises of Capitalism (2011).
We can and must use the rigor of science to pursue a politics of social justice and emancipation. We are still fighting over the legacy of the Enlightenment itself. We can document the enigma of capital, and the injustices of our present world. This is what Bill Bunge has taught us to do, in Fitzgerald (1971, 2009), and The Canadian Alternative (1975). We need Bunge, and Gould, and Danny Dorling (2011), to help us know how to map and measure today's injustices, and to simulate alternative urban and utopian worlds. What's so horrifying is that an aggressive Right has co-opted all the tools of the postmodern, poststructuralist academic life. The HBO documentary on Reagan teaches us how political leaders and political "truths" are constructed. Compare Ronald Reagan's political evolution, to the emphasis on the social construction of knowlege, as diagnosed by Bruno Latour
but then let's not forget: AIDS wasn't "real," because the Right denied it, or blamed it on the wrath of a God straight out of the theology of a medieval, almost Old-Testament God. Real deaths, followed by denials and a refusal of anyone in the Reagan Administrating to even use the phrase "AIDS." Meanwhile, the Laffer Curve becomes a performative reality, in the Right's grand transformation of Barry Goldwater's vision. Reagan taught us that deficits don't matter -- except when you can use deficits as a way of trying to cut benefits for the poor and working classes.
So this is what we need. Jennifer Wolch's (2003) radical openness. Gibson-Graham's (1993) project to smash capitalism while working home in our spare time. Jamie Peck's brilliant diagnosis of the intellectual infrastructure of the Right. Einstein's clear and simple proof that science and socialism are compatible and crucial.
Harvey, David (1973). Social Justice and the City. London: Edward Arnold.
Harvey, David (2011). The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bunge, Bill (1971[2008]). Fitzgerald. Second Edition. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
Comte, August (1822). "Plan of the Scientific Operations Necessary for the Reorganization of Society." In Gertrud Lenzer, ed., Auguste Comte and Positivism: The Essential Writings. New Brunswick, NJ: Transactions Publishers.
Critbits!
Use data for good, never for evil (like Steve Ruggles's IPUMS!)
- The Katrina Pain Index, August 2012, by Bill Quigley