hooking up

(11-12, 22-23): from calling to dating to hooking up: less supervision/monitoring

(25): hooking up as dominant way to get into relationships

(57): why college?

(71): 'hooking up' as only game in town

(95): 'the norm'

(105-106, 125): the sexual double-standard

(128-130): 'life after college' -- back to 'dating'

(172-173): gender inequality across calling, dating, and hooking-up scripts

(183): men as having benefited from the 'sexual revolution'

(183-184): hooking up doesn't mean just promiscuity



- - - - -

"...In terms of living arrangements, 30 percent of all beginning students live on campus,
27 percent live off campus, and 43 percent live with their parents or other relatives.
Most two-year and less-than-two-year institutions do not offer on-campus student
housing. At four-year institutions, almost two-thirds of beginning students live on
campus. Low-income students are far less likely than middle- and upper-income
students to live on campus at four-year institutions (45 percent versus 75 percent).
Many low-income students are older and have their own families; these students
may prefer to remain in their existing homes or apartments, or the institution they
attend may not offer suitable accommodations. Another explanation is that lowincome
students are twice as likely as middle- and upper-income students to
choose to live with their parents. At four-year institutions, 35 percent of low-income
freshmen live with their parents, compared with 16 percent of middle- and upperincome
beginning students. There are many reasons why students might choose
this option, but the cost saving is likely a primary reason for living at home..."

http://www.acenet.edu/bookstore/pdf/2002_crucial_choices.pdf

creating a class, mitchell stevens

(11-12): reproduction thesis vs. transformation thesis -- ends up somewhere in the middle

(13): the credential society ('educational' legitimation)

(14): machinery for the transmission of privilege, in short

(18): Bourdieu and 'social class' as marked out through aesthetics

(20): weakness of quantitative work thus far has been that they haven't delved into admissions process

(22): key page -- meritocracy? nope

1. admissions process/athletic competitions are primary mechanisms of status differentiation
2. elite colleges as 'sensual'/'emotional' organizations
3. the machinery is elemental to American class structure

(32): 'status' as main business of elite colleges [hmm...]

(50-51): massaging the Numbers-- had to look good

(94): Traveling/contact fostering class barriers as well (has to do with 'ease' for admissions officers--bang for buck)

(98-99): Athletics not simply an adjunct program - important prestige system for American higher education (status of the other schools it faces on the playing field) [affluence embodied in sports and 'beautiful physiques' vs. poverty embodied in ailments]

(131-132, 136): myth of natural talent -- 'upper-middle-class children receive the lion's share of athletic support in America' (citing Lareau). writing consciously about the 'vast majority,' here

(142-143): Race -- these institutions bear the imprint of history, but are also anxious to recruit diverse populations: not just b/c of ethical concerns, but also b/c of rankings/status worries

(157): a 'white culture'

(186): Decisions -- need to think about 'individualized consideration' (committee), without overemphasizing or understating it -- there are forms of class bias that inhere in these selective college admissions (evaluative storytelling)

(222-224): F-rounds

(226): (1) privilege in information delivery (which is how individualized consideration is discriminatory--infrastructure to get word across to counselors); (2) decisions made in an intramural context--those with privilege are more likely to have influential advocates

(229-230): in Yield season, the 'management' of emotions/desires to bring them is central [but arg admits that students opt for 'highly rated'--insistence on 'emotions' seems misplaced, despite attempts to justify it]

(245): c cultivation prep for college

(247): higher educational institutions as forging the morality of 'meritocracy' [few of us question this -- DISCUSS]

(247-248): sum--organizational machinery that reproduces the privileges familiar to u-m-class America; "the terms of college admission have become class-biased standards by which we measure the fruits of parenting and the preponderant means of laundering privilege in contemporary American society."

(251): acct of social context -- educational system came of age in 50s 60s as America's answer, almost. to unfairness (let business do its work -- but equality of opportunity + acendant middle-class)

(252): a modest welfare State -- but biggest higher education infrastructure in the world.

(254): education as path of access to the upper middle class

(255): in the context of neoliberal restructuring, selective Colleges as an insurance scheme for an anxious elite [this is wishy-washy -- a nice story, but makes no mention of the fact that these were not the people hit hard by the transition]

(258): 'total institutions' -- governing marriage, love, sex, etc., as well as labour markets

(260-261): 'back-to-basics' reforms [citing Arum] in schools, leaving students even less well-equipped

(263): a tiny fraction of those educated -- but 'our best and brightest' (profound cultural influence)

- - - - - -

PROPOSALS?

citizen and subject, mahmood mamdani

(7): apartheid was but an idealized form of rule that the British and French had pioneered--institutional segregation (indirect rule) [doctrine of difference, which aimed at evolution of separate institutions appropriate to the African spirit]

(8): three questions

1. to what extent was structure of power in contemporary Africa shaped in the colonial period rather than the anticolonial revolt?
2. was not racial domination mediate through ethnically organized local powers?
3. is it not the burden of protest to transcend these differences without denying them

(8-9): four objectives

1. question the writing of history by analogy
2. to establish that apartheid was the generic form of the colonial state in AFrica
3. to underline the contradictory character of tthnicity
4. the deracilization of the bifurcated State does not bring with it democratization

(9): critique of dependency theory as a 'unilinear social science' [the charges made in this section feel misplaced]

(12-13): history by analogy versus history as a process [but supposition of universalism? by straddling abstract universalism and intimate particularism, you have an easy answer--but are you really willing to find yourself in the 'middle' on the question of speaking across contexts, etc?]

(16): direct rule -- europe's initial response to the problem of administering colonies; civilizing mission; an unmediated despotism (favored by settler, agrarian capital--which wanted land and free labour)

(17): indirect rule -- mode of domination over a free peasantry; land remained customary; market restricted to products of labour; a legal dualism; a mediated despotism (favored by mining, finance and commerce--which wanted a docile-ish labour force, i.e., migrants)

(18): indirect rule was also a response to resistance, of course

(19-21): four moments

1. the colonial State -- protector of the society of the colons
2. the anticolonial struggle
   
3. independence -- tended to deracialize the State, but not civil society (affirmative action)
4. collapse of embryonic civil society

(22): importance of land being defined as a customary holding, which had three effects

1. African was containerized as a tribesperson
2. colonial powers seized upon the most authoriatarian/monarchical of existing traditions--an ideological construct that mirrored their own practices
3. the Native Authorities were marked by force to an unusual degree--after all, their ultimate authority was the central civil power (a decentralized despotism)

(24): this form of rule/State shaped the nature of resistance that it provoked (peasant insurrectionists fought against a State-enforced version of the customary)

(26): the conservative States removed the sting of racism but kept the Native Authorities intace; the radical States tried to eliminate the Native Authorities but tightenened central control over these communities, intensifying extra-economic pressures on the peasantry

(28): in South Africa, because of the relative strength of industrialization/civil society, the creation of the bifurcated State required an above-average level of force

(29): strong industrialization also meant that cities were the site of struggle

(29-): five developments led to 1994

1. shift to apartheid rule in late 40s -- forced removals
2. this notwithstanding, proletarianization and urbanization continued
3. decade of peace ended in 1973 and 1976
4. original social base was migrant labour--but by 1990, rural migrants appeared as country bumpkins
5. struggle reached a stalemeate by mid-1980s

(31): the struggle lacked a perspective with which to understand urban-rural tensions [voluntarist?]

(37): 'cotton famine' --> colonization [not really situated in the context of the 'great depression', but idea is there]

(38): indirect rule in equatorial Africa was the legacy of the Asian experience and the experience of 19th c. Africa

(39): customary was neighter arbirarily invented nor faithfully reproduced

(39): key--'colonial notion of precolonial was a reflection of the decentralized despotism it was striving to create'

(43): key--colonial period brought the village-based despot, shorn of rule-based restraint, into existence -- no longer were peers or the people a 'check' on their authority

(48): from multiple to singularly despotic -- colonialism built on the 19th century conquest states

(49): importance of 1857 as a pivot, from civilizing mission to Native Authority

(50): what was distinctive, about colonialism, was the newfound 'scope of the customary'

(54): the 'Cheif' as petty legislateor, administrator, judge, policeman

(57) the American car and pilgrammage to Mecca

(59): exactly--indirect rule as colonialism's foot-soldiers run amok

(61): gave rise to a bifurcated reality -- with customary law on the one sdie, and modern law on the other

(67-68, 102): both political resistance and economic reasons (solution to labour problem, for mines) play their role in the fashioning of indirect rule in South Africa [even settlers can get on board, once they've expanded and are looking for 'tribal stability']

(100): apartheid was an attempt to 'freeze' detrabilization, which threatened to destabilize the National Party gov't

(109): the legal dualism was, of course, a reflection of the dual forms of power

(110): two ways in which this was different

1. previously autonomous social domains came within the scope of the NA's authority
2. any challenge to chiefly power would have to reckon with the clout of the central authority

(130): minmalist reforms (Chad, CAR, Zaire, Togo, Kenya, Nigeria) vs. maximalist reforms (Neiger, Mali, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Nigeria, Tanzania)

(135-136): imp--radical regimss as the 'inheritors' of the colonial tradition of rule by decree [problem of the alternative--too easy a critique, here, to say some form of democratic negotiation would have been 'better'. but that doesn't mean, of course, that the centralizing position is defensible, either]

(139): three distortions, the NA brought

1. notion of community rights very one-sided -- couldn't recognize multiple rights in land
2. hitherto rural powers were confused with proprietary rights
3. migrants/strangers were no longer allowed access to the land

(141): straight line from the permanent Settlement to the Buganda Agreement of 1900, which sought to create a landed aristocracy

(143): again, settler capitalists were checked by (1) peasant resistance; (2) strategy of other fractions of capital (example, here, of the Mau Mau)

(144): coercion was central to the customary

(145-146): comment on dependency theory--the 'deepening' of markets (all that dependency theorists see), but customary authority also gave some of these peasants independent access to the means of subsistence

(148-165): importance of 'unfree labour'

eric wolf, europe and the people without history

(3): central assertion is that world of humakind is a totality -- inquiries that disasemble this totality into bits falsify reality ('nation', 'society', 'tribe', etc.) [seems like a banal point -- but the excellence of this book lies, really, in his commitment to substantiating this simple point with a very rich history]

(4): against boundedness

(6): marxism against teleology -- we have to account for developments in mateiral terms (no such thing as the 'immanent drive to success', of a bounded region).

(8): against the 'disciplinizaiton' of sociology

(8-9): nice critique of sociology's main postulates -- the uniting flaw is the attempt to think of social relations as not simply autonomous, but even as causal in their own right.

1. that relations between individuals can be abstracted from the economic, political, ideologcial context in which they are found (and instead treated sui generis)
2. that social order depends on the growth of social relations (on 'density)
3. formation of such ties depends on a common moral order, moral consensus
4. development of social relations constitues a society, which is the seat of cohesion (cohesiveness means that society has a stable internal structure

(11): social order vs. social disorder in the mind of sociologists (has to do with density of ties amongst individuals; atomized vs. densely knit)

(12): Parsons took Weber's 'gesellschaft' and gave it a 'positive' spin

(17): methodologically, holism will consist in a move away from separate 'cases' to an integrated process (laws of motion that span many different cases)

(18): important -- it's worth noting explicitly that the claim of 'totality' is contingent, not unconditional. in other words, it depends on showing substantive interactions amongst societies. doesn't preclude the claim there might well exist societies that can be thought of developing as 'bounded' units, certainly. situations in which 'societies' lived on the margins, unaffected; BUT the crux of the claim is that the vast majority of what social scientists have understood as 'bounded' units ('nations', 'tribe', etc.) have not, in fact, been bounded. in sum, it's not an abstract statement of ontological fact, as much as an empirical claim about the scope of social forces that have influenced the development of individual societies. and the evidence is the history he tells.

(21): 'universal history'? -- Wolf suggests that "there was no universal history": but what this means, really, is that there are now 'laws of motion' that transcend all modes of production; what it doesn't mean, however, is that you can't ascribe laws of motion across space/time (the claim, of the po-marx types, would be that this is only possible for capitalism, not for pre-capitalist MoP -- Wolf's history shows that this is emphatically false, I think).

(23): important--with Marx, against Weber/Frank/Wallerstein -- (1) profits don't become capital, without some serious change in social relations of production; (2) charges them with under-interrogating the periphery--there is a range and variety of these modes of existence, and the way in which they were shaped.

(31): world in 1400 as an arcihpelago of agricultural areas, connected by trade routes

(32): long-distance exchange routes possess ancient routes--but movement tended to favor luxury goods, when we're talking about long-distance trade

(33): 1000-1400: age of the pastoral nomad (Turk, Mongol, Arab, Berber) -- protection rents on the trade routes (though, once conquerers, they couldn't govern on 'horseback')

(36-37): outline of Ottoman class structure: ulema, askeri, merchants, moving to tax farming + ayans

(38): Ibn Khaldun's cycles (against Goldstone, rooted in a real-material observation of class conflict--not lack of eschatalogical element, for God's sake)

(40): Africa south of the Sahara was an 'integral part of a web of relations' -- networks of exchange that far transcended European integration at this point [again, can make explicit, though, that this is an empirical claim]

(41): and E. Africa

(48-49): 'caste' in India ('untouchable' concentrated in densely populated and irrigated regions of the Indo-Gangetic plain)

(50): in the context of political decentralization, caste was the 'poor man's solution to Empire' -- maintained linkages across units

(52-53): hydraulic requirements of Chinese agriculture influenced development of the Chinese bureaucracy

(58): 'lord of Malacca has hands on throat of Venice'

(60): 'politically-enforced' exchange in the Andes (rather than merchants, etc.) -- had to do with the nature of zone-based production, he's arguing

(71): in short--'everywhere in 1400,' populations existed

(71): no such thing as a 'precontact' present -- doesn't even depict the situation before European expansion, and certainly doesn't allow us to make sense of the world, post-expansion

(74): universalizing--the use of 'labour-in-general' (not quite abstract labour, i don't think) allows us to think about all organized human societies in a common/universal way (and--let's be explicit--not just capitalist societies. this is done, of course, through the concept of a mode of production.

(76): three modes of production--capitalist, tributary, kin-organized (saying that he's being deliberately parsimonious)

(76): relationship between mode of production (political-economic relationships) and society (totality of interactions). [he's not entirely clear how strong a claim he wants to make--I think it would be quite strong, clearly]

(77-79): capitalist mode of production -- nice contrast with Weber, Tilly, Wallsertein (wealth is not capital until it ocntrols means of production--what it means to say, basically, that 'capital is a social relation')

(79): tributary mode of production -- extraction of surplus based not on dull compulsion, but on political and military coercion

(81): important discussion of Asiatic vs. Feudal distinction -- here making a strong claim about levels of abstraction. because of the empirical fact that the operative variable really is state strength (and that societies typically thought of as Asiatic differed on this score, and societies thought of as Feudal differed on this score), he argues that they're better thought of as 'political variables' that distinguish one tributary society from another [what i mean is that there is a specific 'abstraction' claim, here--this is a single mode, rather than two. put differently, the operative dynamic that is different in the two is not a mode-defining one]

(82): trade can happen in a tributary society -- circulation of the surplus, etc. [question, of course, re: the degree to which this happened--most people didn't participate, i imagine]

(82): 'civilizations' were cultural interaction zones pivoted on a hegemonic tributary society

(83): ideological limits to resistance movements

(84-85): tributary elites had difficult relationships with merchants, often acting as fetters

(85): key statement of distinction between Wolf/Marx and Weber/Wallerstein/Frank (capitalism as a qualitatively new phenomenon, not quantiative accretion of merchant activity)

(87): slave labour has never constituted a major independent mode of production -- but has played a subsidiary role in providing labour under other modes

(88): kin-ordered mode of production -- social labour locked up and organized through kinship

(94): *can very well become inegalitarian under conditions of scarcity

(96): *and also under the impact of other modes (examples of slavery and the fur trade) -- this explains 'chiefdoms'

(98): redistribution in these societies is not just egalitarian, but actually a mechanism for clas-formation

(100): doesn't want to make an evolutionary argument [but surely some form of evolutionary argument, however weak, is necessary?]

(104): q-begging claim re: italian states' success? or contingent?

(109): the 'crisis of feudalism'

[full notes stop here]]

(133-134): *pathogens insufficient to explain the wiping out of the native population of the Americas--the disruption of elaborate trade networks b/c of slavery and forced labour produced malnutrition and dislocation that enabled the genocide

(145, 148): *'republicas de indios' -- not repositories of pre-Hispanic past, but refugee communities (involving the creation of a local nobility, etc.)

(161): *w/ fur trade, warfare pattern among populations changed in intensity/scope, etc. , as they battled to supply them

(193-194): *in sum--fur trade brought illness and warfare

(196): 80% of all slaves came to NW betwen 1700 and 1850

(199-200): vs. Eric Williams, suggests that slavery be called 'principal dynamic element', but that we don't go as far as Williams

(202): slaves in Scotland

(202): indentured servitude

(203): 'ideological explanation' for Why Africa?

(203): not N. America because of ease of resistance

(206, 208, 230): *enormous effect of slave trade on African societies--stregnthened existing states, and spurred state formation in other cases

(234, 237): eureopeans did not dominate production/commerce in South and South-East Asia as they did in Africa and Americas (exception of British in India)

(243): when State was strong, giving jagirs; when weak, using zamindars

(245): evolution of Company man from 'merchant' to bureaucrat/soldier-administrator

(247): private property rights with PSettlement

(250-251): ryotwari unleashed indebtedness

(252): moving away from 'liberalism' post-1857, towards racism

(255): bullion drain

(256): *repurcussions for Chinese peasanty of the trade (Brenner question, here, though)

(257): description of the triangular trade -- India helping them balance the books

(257): not enough, of course -- until the advent of opium

(261): *India made possible British advocacy of 'free trade' -- which in turn helped German and American industrialization

(266-267): late 1700s, capitalism becomes dominant MoP in procuring social labour

(268): why Europe? 'adv. of backwardness' type

(268-270): but a good description of the English transformation [four reasons]

(274): only 23% of textile work force were adult men

(275): the 'factory'

(276): 'resistance to work' (penal workhouses, etc.)

(285): *changes in NA American tribes

(286-287): Egypt

(290): India as an early example of 'peripheral industrialization' (up until it lost out to Japanese competitoin) [good example of Whiggish idiocy]

(291-292): railroads as 2nd industrial revolution, in mid 1800s

(297): articulation of MoP

(297): imp--again, vs. Frank/Wallerstein--can't collapse everything into the 'capitalist world-system' (with everyone as bourgeois or proletarian). collapses concept of capitalist mode of production into concept of capitalist world market (not any better than Ibn Khaldun, or Smith)

(300-301): against Lenin's imperialism

1. centralization leading to more competition
2. most capital being exported to other capitalist countries
3. trade and the flag relation was more indirect

(303): to Zazluich -- "what I wrote applies only to W. Europe" (1881)

(313): (1st) G Depression --> Scramble for Africa

(317): the 'fall of the planter class,' rise of the agricultural plantation

(330, 335): *w/ decline in slavery, a 'crisis of the aristocracy'

(336): with this, the creation of a rural proletariat (in Cuba, here)

(349): *Shaka the Zulu -- new political entity, conditioned by Boer and English competition

(352): imp-- growth of capitalism brought about a qualitiative change int he commercial networks connected with it -- networks now served capitalist accumulation [claim about strong form of integration]

(354): for mainstream sociology, the birth of the w-class was a worry -- 'disorder', etc.

(358): 'working classes' [differentiation within]

(362): three waves of migration: (1) towards industrial centers in europe; (2) Europeans overseas; (3) contract laborers of diverse origins to the expanding mines/plantations

(368-369): Indian and Chinese labor in the E. Indies, mid- to late- 1800s

(379): against granting explanatory power to heterogeneity -- what matters is the class character of this heterogeneity (must be located in the nature of social labour allocation, the labour process).

(381): 'constructedness' of race -- ethnicity is not 'primordial', but historical product of labour market segmentation under capitalism

(384): restatement of 'totalty'

(384): no one whose history is still 'cold'

(387): need, correspondingly, to rethink the category of 'culture' -- notion of specific and integral cultures is a specific project. instead, 'fluidity and permeability' of cultural sets

(388): nice passage on the nature of ideology -- meaning is developed and imposed by human beings; construction is a 'social process' that cannot be understood as the working out of an internal cultural logic

(390): imp-- 'ideology as making sense of a field of force' generatd by a mode of production

- - - - -

[1] it's worth noting explicitly that the claim of 'totality' is contingent, not unconditional. in other words, it depends on showing substantive interactions amongst societies. doesn't preclude the claim there might well exist societies that can be thought of developing as 'bounded' units (though his first chapter is basically making the argument that, even in 1400, this is not the case)--certainly, though, there might well be situations in which 'societies' lived on the margins, unaffected. BUT the crux of the claim is that the vast majority of what social scientists have understood as 'bounded' units ('nations', 'tribe', etc.) have not, in fact, been bounded. in sum, it's not an abstract statement of ontological fact, as much as an empirical claim about the scope of social forces that have influenced the development of individual societies. and the evidence is the history he tells (pg. 18).

another way of thinking about this whole question is quantitative/qualitative determination of what produces non-boundedness -- (1) is it a certain amount of interaction that prohibits analytic of boundedness? (2) is it the simple fact of interaction (so long-distance trade)? or (3) is it some kind of combination of both--as in, 'boundedness' is basically off-the-table, but the character of the 'non-bounded' frame we will use is influenced by the nature and degree of interaction

[this leads to the thrust of his objection to Wallerstein and Frank -- see [3] below. leaving the 'periphery' unspecified]

[2] 'universal history'? -- Wolf suggests that "there was no universal history": but what this means, really, is that there are now 'laws of motion' that transcend all modes of production; what it doesn't mean, however, is that you can't ascribe laws of motion across space/time (the claim, of the po-marx types, would be that this is only possible for capitalism, not for pre-capitalist MoP -- Wolf's history shows that this is emphatically false, I think). [should clarify the differences between him and a Charkabarty, for example -- see p. 74, as well, where he discusses the use of MoP in the abstract]

[3] viz-a-viz Frank/Wallerstein (pg. 23, pg. 85, pg. 297)

[4] the Asiatic/Feudal distinction. he's making a specific claim about how this does not signify a difference in relations of production/force of production, but rather in the political variable of state strength. thus, this is better thought of as a distinction internal to the MoP discussion.

jack goldstone, revolution and rebellion in the early modern world (1991)

(xxv): 1850 as pivot point (in most of world, England earlier) -- economic innovation in org. of labour and the tools of production make population pressures moot [this is important, insofar as it spells out the nature of the social institutions that will alleviate the pressures felt by early modern states]

(1-2): concerned, against Eurocentrism, with world-wide problems in (1) late 1500s to mid 1600s, and then again between (2) 1770 and 1850

(5, 8): definition of State Breakdown -- not all political institutions, but a breakdown of central authority's ability to dominate in a confrontation with the elite [using this, rather than revolution, because the latter term doesn't really fit many of the early modern state crises -- as in 'new institutions' new status structure, etc. ]

(11): the binary notations

(13-15): revisionists re: English revolution -- not long-term social causes (unlike Hill, Moor, Anderson, Wallerstein), but conjunctural ('large-scale historical accidents'). noting that this is unsatisfying, insofar as we're not content abandoning explanation.

(19): Skocpol doesn't help

(20): incidence of war (unlike Chorley) doesn't help -- the Second Thirty Years War (1688-1714, under Louis XIV) nor the Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815) wrought revolution in Europe. 1830 and 1848 saw revolutions in places that were relatively free of war

(21): imp. caveat: wars can matter through costs -- military pressures depend on the scale and cost of war

(24): short summary of demographic-structural model -- large agrarian states of this period were not equipped to deal with the impace of steady growth fo population that began throughout N. Eurasia. this led to persistent price inflation, and tax revenues lagged behind these prices because most early modern states were based on fixed rates of taxation. expansion of armies eld to rising real costs. attempts to increase state revenues led to elite resistance, and rarely succeeded. hence (1) fiscal crisis. (2) elite also struggled secure their own relative position--increasing rivalry and factionalism. (3) and population growth also led to popular struggles: rural mistery, urban migration, falling real wages--and an expanding youth cohort.

(25-26, 28): source of population increase was exogenous -- combination of favorable climate and receding disease

(26, 36): key question -- certain States were able to streamline expenses/expand incomes (England and Prussia, during the favorable interlude of 1660-1760). why? [Goldstone has a conjunctural explanation] /"institutional flexibility"

(31): not crude Malthusianism -- 'popular control' kept populations well below the Malthusian limit; moreover, population is not driven merely by births ((1) epidemic disease, (2) growth of food supplies gen. exceeds population increase; (3) distributional effects most important (before Malthusian limits))

(33): population increase has nonlinear effect on marginal groups

(35): earthquake metaphor

(37): a new synthesis:

1. synthesis of economic and political history (against Marxism)
2. synthesis of new social/demographic history with old political history
3. world-wide/holistic
4. cyclic forces, rather than secular [not entirely, of course, insofar as this is demographic-structural]
5. structure + culture [shameful!]
6. methodological

(41-42): centuries between 1250 and 1850 "show relentlessly cyclic patterns"

(64, 65-67): challenging the Marxist vs. Revisionist frame on the Eng. Revolution

(65): Goldstone's argument on , from 1500 - 1830s: (1) ecological crisis eroded royal authority and social stability, resulting in State Breakdown in 1640 (recovery after 1660s -- this is why 1688-1689 was 'painless'); (2) period from 1660-1750 one of relief; political struggles did not threaten the State; (3) from 1750 -1832, another period of ecological crisis, but moderated by the new resources created by the Industrial Rev.

(68): 1640 vs. 1688-1689

(68-69): classic Marxist position of 'bourgeois revolution' undermined by finding that most conflicts were intra-class fights, not cross-class; neo-Marxist position that difficusion of capitalist economic relations undermined traditional life, producing sharp conflicts also doesn't find support--neither enclosures ((1) the Crown was largest encloser in England, and (2) most popular disturbances were not led by enclosure victims, but by rural artisans and squatters) nor overseas trade ((1) Eng. not net exporter of grain, most gentry wealth came from elsewhere; (2) timing of grain expansion doesn't coincide with revolution'; (3) many of the 'new capitalists' were not enemies of the Crown but rather its allies) can do the explaining they want them to do.

(82): Skocpol, Wolf, Paige don't apply here: artisans and uban groups, not peasants, were key in English revolution. Nor does international competition with more powerful states really work (re: Skocpol)

(87): price revolution was not a silver bullion problem

(95): inflation hit the State--the Crown was not well-placed to deal with inflation (cost of maintaining army, etc.)

(109, 123): intra-elite conflict

(125, 128): high mobilization potential

(129-130, 132): also wants to add radical Puritanism to the mix -- but makes it clear, also, that this had material origins ('scapegoats were sought for the decay of the economic/social order')

(137): youthfulness of population

(140): cities

(141): English Rev., in sum




(107): Stuart financial crisis arose from inability to cope with cumulative inflationary pressures due to inflexibility in the early modern English tax system [key question, here, is whence the 'inflexibility'? can the old explanations help us account for inflexibility?]

(150-151): imp--the reason that the crisis didn't hit immediately (and pressures built up) had to do with the flexibility of English institutions (Crown could survive rising prices by selling assets, could borrow, had to sell offices, etc.) -- again, a path back to structure? / 'psi' as a political measure

(157, 161-162): the Fronde -- though this wasn't as radical as in England b/c no cross-class coalition could be built [to some extent the explanation is ideology, which is just silly; and more to the point, it is immediately question-begging -- why, if France was no less capable of absorbing stress, was cross-class coalition not possible?]

(167): why no crisis in Spain of comparable magnitude? peripheral crises, but the heartland was intact

(171): sum of French Rev. historiography (parallels developments in English Revolution debates)

(172): three problems with Skocpol:

1. France was not a laggard; in fact, its output in trade and industry was larger than England's; American War of Independence was France's least costly.
   
2. Skocpol tells us little about why conflicts within the elite were so intense
3. understates the importance of urban unrest in Paris

(175-176): key, Goldstone offers a contingent explanation for why England was rebuilt along more flexible lines ('unique events had to do with a change of dynasty' -- tax system transformed, and resolution of elite conflicts as well). [you are forfeiting a large part of what you set out to do, with this, given the importance of the 'structural' in your argument; the discussion of France, for example, is simply an assertion, rather than an argument].

(191): most Frenchfolk did not benefited from growth in industry/trade, as they were in agriculture

(193): Louis XIV had been fine, because of stable prices and fine agicultural sector; this was to change.

(197, 199, 202, 207, 208-209, 214, 218, 317): key--French tax system and the 'mysterious' fiscal crisis of 1999 -- too much emphasis on land taxes, viz-a-viz indirect taxes on industry/trade [again, is the explanation for this simply 'accidental'? to do this the State would have had to move against its elite--p. 214, 218; it couldn't do this in France, but managed to do this in England. why? given the work that the 'structural' is doing, then the Rev will not be much more than a 'large-scale historical accident'. we have to ask why the State didn't move to impose 'indirect taxes' on industry/trade; comparison with England and Prussia.

(227, 238): not social immobility, but social mobility -- there is no distinct, disenfranchised 'bourgeois class' to be found, in France. wealthy nobles and wealthy commoners were indistinguishable, re: sources of their wealth

(249): popular element in French Rev

(251): Skocpol re: peasants -- grievances always present; Goldstone after a more dynamic understanding of the causes behind rebellion than collapse in State authority)

(253): mention of Brenner on France (as nation of smallholders)

(259): in NE during French Rev, peasants were particularly vulnerable to population pressures (b/c of cash tenancy and wage labor) [this might be another way to get at the defects of his position that 'capitalism' solves population pressures; there is no doubt that there is a grain of truth in his argument, but it needs to be properly specified: what about capitalism?]

(261): French agriculture not 'backward'

(271): army's disintegration was important [but in this entire way of thinking about State breakdown, this is relegated to the background -- it depends on the larger price movements, and the question of when it is no longer possible to afford an army]

(272): both nobility and revolutionaries used the language of the Enlightenment

(287-288): vs. Marx on capitalism's advance, re: 1830 and 1848 -- most backward areas should have been most rebellious, etc.

(296-297, 299): Napoleonic stability, which was temporary

(313): 1848 wasn't 1789 primarily because of the relative health of State finances

(314): interesting -- a different way to understand the 'treachery' of the 'bourgeoisie' in 1848, which had to do with the fact that there was 'much displacement, but little turnover' (counterrevolution from the Right was, thus, not a big threat -- there wasn't a large cohort of disgruntled surplus sons calling for a return to more tradition). and there were continued threats on the Left.

(322): periodization of the poor laws -- the 'calm', 1660 - 1750, didn't need them

(332-333): again, interrogate -- we have a contingent explanation for why 1830-1832 was a 'reform crisis', rather than a revolution (William called Parliament)

(333): Eng 1848 vs. France 1848 was really a question of industrial 'take-off'

(335-337): key--Elbe avoided revolt, in Germ, unlike Southwest [in the explanation, though, this doesn't seem to have too much to do with 'capitalism' (almost the opposite) -- rather, down to the availability of land and the fact that peasants were 'better off' b/c of the requirements of Junker landlords (they gave peasants independent access to their means of subsistence, in effect)]

(362): in Ottoman and Ming states, bulk of income was drawn from fixed, land taxes -- which left them vulnerable when the ecological crisis hit

(389): interesting parallels between discussions of Puritanism, 'Sufism' and heterodox Confucian strands [hints at a kind of ideological flexibility that he's going to turn around and wholehartedly deny in the post-breakdown phase]

(399): failure of leadership in the Taiping rebellion made revolution impossible? (didn't cast its ideological net wide enough... odd]

(414): key difference in Japanese case was the fact of 'in-kind' taxes, which made stable population growth crisis producing; this affirms position that he's not a crude Malthusian, but a demographic-structuralist

(426): no marginal elites in the East (b/c they had been more fairly organized at the top?), who could attack the very principles of Ottoman and Confucian rules (those broad-based attacks that did emerge, as in the Taiping rebellion, alienated too many elites to have much hold). no 'clear alternative' was produced.

(429): profoundly odd and anti-theoretical approach to the relation of ideas to structure

(434): summary of his very bad ruminations on ideas in the course of revolution -- a wide mix in the first phases, but then an elite group has to emerge to build a cross-class coalition, post-revolution

(436): in England in 1640 and France in 1789 you got profound 'ideological' breaks with the past; in Ottoman and Ming-Qing transition you got lots of institutional change (more, in fact), but you didn't get 'ideological' breaks with the past [and I, thanks to you, am profoundly disgusted and confused, in equal measure]

(438): not an argument about the degree/scope of institutional change, which was more in the Asian cases

(443-444): odd argument that revolutionary ideology and revolutionary results don't go together (ranks the revolutions by ideological radical-ness, and results radical-ness, and notes a disconnect) [but how do you measure the former? seems completely arbitrary. subordinate groups? elite groups? pamphlets? speeches? what?]

(446-448): [and here we get the WTF moment] Westerners had an 'eschatalogical' view of history, whereas Easterners were locked in a 'cyclic' view of time [incidentally, the proof for this is quoting a couple of Westerners and a couple of Easterners (oh, and Chinese peasant revolts looked backed to "idealized past dynasties" -- French peasant revolts?)]

(448): ridiculous! they smashed everything, but their smashing everything (b/c it occurred with non-eschatalogical framing) was restorative, not progressive.

- - - - - -

[1] conjunctural explanation of institutional reform -- if it's a demographic-structural model, can we afford a contingent explanation for structural change? alternatively, can old structural models explain these specific patterns? (p. 26, p. 36, p. 107, p. 150, p. 175, p. 202)

[2] take on the Fronde vs. English revolution explanation, which is tied to the above but distinct. why was it that no cross-class alliance could arise in Fr? ideology? come off it. [the Moores review makes this point. when demographic trends are similar, then culture is called in, as an exogenous factor, to explain things. but why not structure? Moores notes that in France there were real-material ties to the king that didn't exist in England, where instead you had a group of self-confident agrarian capitalists (does this hold up to historical evidence?)] (p. 161-162)

[2b] we can add to this the contingent explanation of the 'reform crisis' of 1830-1832. didn't erupt because William called Parliament?

[3] capitalism solves the problems of population pressure? (1) this needs to be properly specified [what does it mean to say that 'capitalism' has or hasn't arrived? Junker 'agribusiness' estates -- was it 'wage-labour'? see p. 335] ; (2) what is related, this requires an inability to think holistically, in contrast to his aims, which comes out obviously in his treatment of China and Russia ('combined and uneven development'). in other words: yes, some features you see in other capitalist economies haven't arrived (productivity, namely--'capitalism as productive forces,' almost), but this is not because capitalism hasn't arrived.

[4] confusion of variables in the Psi measure [as per the Arjomand review -- using what he wants to prove as a measure that is supposed to prove it]

[4] not even worth taking the ideological crap at the end seriously, but still. the causal argument can be undermined (1) at the level of the argument itself; (2) at the level of the empirical 'facts' he summons to justify each link in the causal chain

the argument:

marginal elites who want to change the principles = C1 (structural)

cultural framework posesses an eschatalogical element = C2 (ideological)

C1 + C2 --> 'symbolic transformation and revolutionary political reconstruction'

absence of C1 + C2 --> 'conservative state reconstruction'

(some of) the problems:

1. the marginal elites come from unfairness in State construction. correct? if not, then where and why? structural explanation?

2. marginal elites --> revolution link [surely this is contingent? what about claims around 1848, and treachery?]

3. absurdity of the claim around West as uniquely 'eschatalogical'. [quote a bunch of bigots, or quote a couple of Westerners to make your point. ]

4. absurdity of the C2 --> transformative settlement [setting aside the problems in measurement, what is a defensible mechanism for this? elites mobilize a radical language and, voilah!, you have ideological dynamism?]

5. arbitrariness of what's being measured [how do you measure ideological dynamism?]

6. idiocy of explandum --> rise of the west link [ideological dynamism is supposed to produce the rise of the West? this is unvarnished idiocy!]

7. it's worth going through the counterfactuals, which clarify the transparent stupidity of this argument: (a) marginal elite and/or(?) eschatalogical cultural framework in Ming-Qing transition/Ottoman State breakdown would have produced ideological dynamism/institutional innovation, which would have produced the rise of the East; (b) absence of marginal elite and/or(?) eschatalogical cultural framework in Eng/France would have produced absence of ideological dynamism/institutional innovation, which would have presented the rise of the West.

Punjab agriculture minister Malik Ahmad Ali Aulakh has said that wheat production target for the Rabi season 2010-11 has been set at 25 million ton, some 1.5 million ton above the assessed national food requirement at 23.5 million ton.

With the prices of sugar skyrocketing, the Council of Common Interests agreed on Monday to a proposal of the federal government to end the role of the Trading Corporation of Pakistan in import and supply of sugar, giving a free hand to millers and wholesalers to determine its price. The move, according to an official, was in compliance with an IMF condition to end subsidy on food items. This means the government will no longer provide subsidised sugar to consumers through utility stores or open market.

The Finance Minister said that IMF has linked the release of next tranche of the $11.3 billion Stand-By Arrangement (SBA) with concrete progress on RGST and reforms in the power sector. Sources said that the Finance Minister told the meeting that introduction of RGST Bill in the Parliament was 'must' to ease the concern of the lending agency prior to the next round of talks after the Pakistan Development Forum.

"Ministries and Divisions have, therefore, lodged strong protest with the Planning Commission," sources said, adding that the staff who were working on different development projects are no longer being paid. Following the direction of Finance Division, the Planning Commission has proposed to slash Rs 70 billion federal component of PSDP 2010-11 due to financial constraints in a summary moved to Prime Minister in October 2010 for formal approval. "But Prime Minster Secretariat has not conveyed any formal decision in this regard," sources added. The government had earmarked Rs 280 billion as federal component for current financial year's PSDP. The Planning Commission has also recommended cancellation of Rs 89.27 billion budgetary allocation for around 258 new projects (with total cost of over Rs 698.38 billion) from the current financial year's PSDP and diverting these funds to rehabilitation of the flood-hit areas.

Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association (PCGA)'s Chairman Chaudhry Masood A Majeed and Vice Chairman, Nawab Shehzad Ali Khan opposed the imposition of RGST terming it disastrous for ginners as well as cotton growers. Government should not implement this unjust tax otherwise industry will be forced to close its factories.

A extraordinarily panicked newly-elected central Chairman of Pakistan Readymade Garments Manufacturers & Exporters Association (PRGMEA) Ejaz Khokhar has therefore, suggested revival package including capping the utilities prices for industry, suspension of Export Development Fund (EDF), collection forthwith, abolition of taxes (including Reformed General Sales Tax), special mark up rate and smooth flow of raw materials to the textile ancillary industry.

Meanwhile, the protests of powerlooms owners have been entered into the second week. They observed black day and staged protest carrying black flags and banners at front of their factories. Briefing to media, Chaudhry Salamat Ali, Chairman, Pakistan Hosiery Manufacturers and Exporters Association (PHMA) North Zone demanded that the export of cotton and yarn should be banned to control the growing day-by-day rates of raw material, which hampering the textile industry and three million labourers livelihood. Chairman, PHMA, North Zone demanded to the government that the export of cotton and yarn should be totally banned till meeting the demands of the domestic sector and should be eliminated the monopolists and capital mafia, who are adding fuel to the fire by their speculative activities ignoring the national interests. Wasim Latif Chairman, and Adil Manzoor Ellahi Vice Chairman Pakistan Textile Exporters Association in a press statement demanded duty free import of polyester fibre to cover the shortage of 20 percent of cotton crop washed away by floods and 30 percent demand supply gap of polyester fibre in the country.

The prices of the entire range of essential kitchen items have jumped up by 10 to 30 percent within last one week in the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi, according to a survey conducted by Business Recorder. Traders in Rawalpindi/Islamabad wholesale markets told Business Recorder that prices of most of the food items have risen subsequent to the increase in prices of petroleum products.

Briefing the media persons spokesperson to the President Farhatullah Babar said that the meeting was part of the interactive sessions the President has been regularly holding with private entrepreneurs in search of solution to the country's economic woes.Issues ranging from reconstruction of flood areas to inflation and from engaging private entrepreneurs in mega development project to raising equity from stock markets for infrastructure projects were discussed in the meeting, he said.

State Minister for Economic Affairs, Hina Rabbani Khar on Friday said that Pakistan needs $1.93 billion for the recovery and rehabilitation of flood-stricken people. She said this while addressing 'Launching of Pakistan's Floods Relief and Early Recovery Response Plan 2010' ceremony jointly organised by the United Nations (UN) and National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) here on Friday.

The Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI) President Sultan Ahmed Chawla has urged the government not to borrow a single penny from the IMF, Word Bank or any other institution in future rather it should seek moratorium for five years to help country get out of loan trap. Pakistan is in critical situation now only due to mismanagement and imposition of one sided decisions and it has been shunting the economy to destabilisation. He said IMF package has only provided the poverty not prosperity.He also emphasised to privatise the Railways, Steel mills and PIA in the vested interest of Pakistan. It will accelerate the economy to boost up in well manner. He also suggested overcoming the crisis of electricity, the offers from China and Iran must be considered. But in the long term dams must be constructed at any cost.

There are three major conditions which the government has failed to comply with. Firstly, failure to begin implementation of the value-added tax, renamed as the Reformed General Sales Tax (RGST) by the incumbent Finance Minister Dr Hafeez Sheikh in an effort to dispel few domestic controversies over the proposal. Secondly, failure to effect reforms in the energy sector that include full cost recovery through elimination of subsidies not expected to be supported by the general public still smarting under the recent 9 percent escalation in prices of petroleum products, in line with the rise in the international market; and to reduce the subsidy on electricity by increasing the tariff by 2 percent every month until end June 2014. Thirdly, government excessive borrowings from the central bank due to delay in reimbursement of Coalition Support Fund. The implementation of both these policy options requires strong political will owing to fear of a political backlash... Economists no doubt would point out that compliance with these conditions must be viewed as a short-term measure and that the long-term measures must include a long standing demand of the public, that is now echoed by the international donor community: tax the elite across-the-board on the one hand, reduce corruption and budgetary support of the state-owned enterprises and stop government profligacy on the other. According to media reports, the visiting International Monetary Fund (IMF) team has criticised the government's slow progress in complying with two conditions of the November 2008 Stand-By Arrangement (SBA): implementation of the value added tax (reworded as the Reformed General Sales Tax by incumbent Finance Minister Dr Hafeez Sheikh) and power sector reforms that include the ending of all subsidies in an effort to move towards full cost recovery.

Prior to denigrating the IMF for interfering in our macroeconomic policy decision-making, three factors need to be acknowledged. First and foremost, it was the federal government that approached the IMF seeking the SBA; and if reports are accurate, it was the federal government that sought US mediation to convince the IMF to support Pakistan through the 7.3 billion dollar assistance in the first place. Second and related fact is that the economic havoc created by the PML (Q) government and the caretakers in 2007, in a blatant attempt to win over voters for the scheduled February 2008 elections, led them into taking decisions that were untenable from an economic perspective. These decisions included extending a hefty and unsustainable subsidy for petroleum products that seriously compromised the budget deficit, propelling inflation on the one hand and inter-circular debt on the other. Such unsavoury decisions compelled the PPP-led government to seek the SBA in the first place. And third, the IMF conditions that the government has yet to comply with are economically sound given certain assumptions. These include: (i) the refusal of the government to impose a tax on the elite that includes a tax on the income of rich landlords; (ii) the need to improve governance, which must include appointing heads of state-owned entities (SOEs) on merit rather than on the basis of nepotism. The fact that the ruling party has selected heads of SOEs on the basis of nepotism became evident in the National Insurance Company Limited, the Pakistan Steel Mills, OGDCL and the Pakistan International Airlines. Thus significant economies could have been affected if these companies had been headed by competent people who would have ended their heavy reliance on budgetary support; and (iii) reduce non-development expenditure... The latest reports reveal that the federal government would have to raise power tariffs by about 2 percent per month to be able to meet this target, an amount that is expected to have a very high political cost, especially with all the political parties, including those which are in coalition with the government, lamenting the fact that the PPP-led government did not take them into confidence while raising the price of petroleum products by about 9 percent this week.

The All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (Aptma) is going to hold a crucial meeting on energy crisis with the Federal government on Monday in a situation where gas supply to industry is already in doldrums ahead of winter season. The Aptma delegation, under the leadership of Chairman Gohar Ejaz, will call on Federal Minister for Textile Farooq Saeed and Federal Minister for Petroleum Naveed Qamar... He said a hurried landing of Federal Petroleum Minister in Lahore during last week had also failed to develop tangible improvement. According to him, the judicious economic contribution of textile industry was far ahead of the fertiliser industry and the CNG pumps, as 15 million direct and indirect workforce is attached to the textile throughout the country.

The government will sign an agreement with American based seed producing company Monsanto by the end of December, 2010, Business Recorder has learnt. The Ministry for Food and Agriculture (MinFa) and the American seed company Monsanto had singed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on April 10, 2010 for providing Bt Cottonseed to Pakistan.

He admitted that the PPP government after coming into power took some unpopular decisions in the larger interest of the country like withdrawing subsidies on utilities to save national economy from crisis. He said that the increase in prices of petroleum products was necessary to avoid deficit of Rs 100 billion.

The Friends of Democratic Pakistan (FoDP) forum has issued a warning to the Government of Pakistan (GoP), saying that its energy crisis would become unmanageable by 2015-16 if it failed to introduce a 5-point recovery plan for immediate overhauling of its entire power infrastructure. The 5-point plan stresses urgent need to rationalise electricity prices and do away with subsidies. Other salient features of the plan are strengthening energy sector governance and regulation, developing energy finance capability, maintain energy efficiency into energy policy and fast track investment projects for energy security. The FoDP noted during the deliberations on a strategy to help Pakistan overcome its energy crisis that Pakistan's energy crisis was worsening fast as its present energy gap of 18 million metric tons of oil (MTEO) will grow to unmanageable 56 MTEO by 2015-16 and simultaneously energy import requirements will increase from $10 billion to $38 billion.

However, Secretary Finance, Salman Siddique claimed that good progress had been made during the policy-level talks with the IMF, saying that "I think we are almost there. We focus more on getting the things out of the way and a meeting of provinces has been convened on Monday to evolve consensus on RGST". Salman said good progress was also made towards budgetary framework. "We will try to place RGST before the current session of the Parliament and there would be a signing off with the World Bank and Asian Development Bank (ADB) of reformed plan of energy sector prepared by Deputy Chairman Planning Commission," he said. Replying to a question, he said that Pakistan had received $8.6 billion from the $11.3 billion total augmented SBA. He evaded a question that how the 4.7 percent fiscal deficit for the current fiscal year allowed by the IMF would be achieved. According to him, the tax target for the outgoing fiscal year will be Rs 1,650 to Rs 1,655 billion.

Major businesses including petroleum, textile chemical and other zero-rated sectors are facing serious liquidity problems as the Federal Board of Revenue is reluctant to issue SOP for processing their billions of rupees sales tax refunds, manually, Business Recorder learnt on Thursday.

Federal Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) has been slashed to Rs150 billion from Rs 280 billion. Both sides have also agreed to cut the provincial annual development programmes by 50 percent... The foreign inflows for budgetary support would fetch only around 0.6 percent of GDP as creditors were not ready to extend money directly to the government owing to lack of confidence in the leadership, said official sources who did not want to be identified. The government would have to arrange most of the financing from domestic sources, they said. Pakistani authorities informed the IMF staff that Sukuk bonds would be issued in the domestic market to raise Rs80 billion in the current fiscal year.

Foreign inflows and developments on an important loan tranche for the country are likely to drive the Karachi share market next week, dealers said. “Foreigners’ interest in the market is expected to offer significant support,” said Saeed Khalid, an analyst at Invest Capital. He said any positive news regarding the fifth tranche from International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other disbursements by International Finance Institutions (IFIs) would also pump up activity in the market. Investors were encouraged by the breakthrough reached in the talks between the IMF and the Pakistani officials, who agreed on revising fiscal deficit target to 4.7 percent, eliminating the circular debt, public listing of power companies and presentation of a new sales tax bill in the Parliament’s current session, dealers said. This offered some hope with respect to the release of the fifth tranche under the Standby Arrangement, they added.

Consumer loans fell 17 percent in financial year 2009-10 as the public income remained hostage at the hands of raging inflation, the central bank said in a recent report.
Though default rose 33 percent in 2009-10 mainly on the back of mortgage and personal loans, it is unlikely to grow further, or at least not with the same rate, amid shrinking consumer credit, analysts said. “Our economy is scantly leveraged and banks have a customer of choice in shape of the government,” said Khurram Shehzad, Analyst at Investcap Securities. “They are taking the easiest way of pumping money to the government.” The government breached IMF quarterly ceilings on borrowing from the banks during first half of the current year. It provides banks a risk-free investment avenue to avoid riskier options, such as consumer loans. “The State Bank needs to wean them off. They (banks) are supposed to channelise funds to the whole economy,” Shehzad said... In a country where only three million people use banks, barely one percent resort to mortgage unlike other developing or developed countries where the rate is much higher.

In a meeting with bed linen exporters, the former minister, Humayun Akhtar Khan, said the interest rates have been cut globally to encourage businesses while in Pakistan, the situation is exactly otherwise. “The economy is sustaining on the IMF loans and the government is blindly following its dictations,” he said. Akhtar said that the foreign direct investment (FDI) must be channelised into export-based industries, not just in telecom and power sectors, to strengthen the economy.

Although tobacco cultivation occupies a relatively small area of 0.27 per cent of the total irrigated land in the country and about 3 per cent in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, it is a chief source of revenue, employment and foreign exchange earnings to the economy. Being a highly labour-intensive crop, about 80 thousand persons are involved in its cultivation, fifty thousand are engaged in cigarette factories of the tobacco industry and another one million find indirect employment through its trading.

Experts also highlighted that reconstruction activity in flood-ravaged areas has so far been slow and limited. They say that so far there has not been any significant increase in demand for cement and other construction materials due to reconstruction efforts.

Drive down towards Taunsa barrage on the Indus River and you might see something peculiar. On the right hand, behind the bund connecting to Taunsa Barrage are acres upon acres of lush farms growing cotton and sugarcane. According to select irrigation officials, the MPA, Sabit Nazim and eyewitnesses living in the area, these areas (ponds) are government land, previously part of the old river bed, and serve as ponds where water can be redirected in case of excessively high water levels during floods. It is also an area with almost no or negligible settlement. On the other hand, the left bank of the river, where the breach took place, is populated. The ponds on the right side, where the eye needs to look far and wide to see human life, are empty of water. No one can confirm who these lands belong to or why they are dry while the left side is flooded. But whisperings of powerful interests that wanted to protect their lands thrive, and the hope is that the tribunal can help prove, or disprove, that this was the case.

Everything was working fine for Faheemullah, 25, a miner from Peer Sabak village of Nowshera district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa till August 2; the day flood hit his area. "I was earning Rs300 after working 12 hours a day in the mountains which was enough money to support my family. Since floods have hit our area everything has finished for me. I have lost my home as well as job. I am ready to work to earn money for my family but the contractors have disappeared as the communication infrastructure has wiped out and there is no way to get marble and precious stones out of mountains", he says, adding, "more than 1500 miners were working only in Nowshera. All of them have lost their jobs after the floods. I have contacted my contractor and he has told me that it would take at least six moths to start mining work in the mountains" he says... International Labour Organisation (ILO) has estimated that more than 5.3 million jobs may have lost or affected as a result of mega floods hit Pakistan.

The existing tax system protects exploitative elements having monopoly over economic resources. The poor are paying an exorbitant sales tax of 17pc to 23pc (in fact 40pc on finished imported goods after customs duty, special federal excise duty, sales tax after mandatory value addition and income tax at source) on essential commodities. But the mighty sections of society such as absentee landlords, big industrialists, generals and bureaucrats are paying no wealth tax/income tax on their colossal assets/incomes. It is tragic that in a country where the rich make billions on a daily basis, tax-to-GDP ratio is pathetically low at 9.8pc... There is an urgent need to tax wealth and income of the rich and mighty. Rent of agriculture land derived by absentee landlord should be taxed so heavily that they are forced to give up ownership -- these lands should be with the tillers who produce agriculture produces. The corporate rate should be brought down to 20pc to promote industrialisation, but any director or other office holder (having more than 20pc shares) drawing annual salary exceeding Rs5 million should be taxed at the rate of 50pc... The government should launch programmes, financed mainly through taxes, to solve the twin problems of unemployment and poverty. These welfare-oriented schemes may also include subsidised/free medical and educational facilities, low-cost housing, and drinking water facilities in rural areas (especially flood-ravaged ones), land improvement schemes, and employment guarantee programmes. Once people see tangible benefits of the taxes paid, there will be better response to tax compliance. Taxes cannot be collected through harsh measures and irrational policies. It is high time politicians, judges, civil-military high-ups and public office holders made public their tax declarations.

On November 25, 2008, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved the $7.6 billion standby arrangement for Pakistan to be delivered over 23-month, which was later enhanced to $11.3 billion in July 2009. One of the demands of the lender was introduction of Value Added Tax (VAT) from July 1, 2010. It was deferred to October 1, 2010 and now IMF has suspended release of the last tranche unless it is implemented as FBR failed to introduce RGST after lapse of the deadline fixed by the government in the budget speech of Finance Minister... There is no political will to tax the rich and mighty. They have not pointed this out in their recommendations (sic). Instead of more taxes we need reduction in excessive marginal tax rates making them compatible with other tax jurisdictions of the world, especially Asia. Elimination of GST on production, machinery and equipment is the need of the hour to promote industrialisation, but they have advised otherwise. The current external debt of Pakistan stands at $ 55 billion. That figure will jump to $73 billion in 2015-16, as debts that were rescheduled after 9/11, in exchange for Pakistan's co-operation in the war on terror, will come back into action. Besides this, Pakistan is paying over $ 3 billion on debt servicing every year on average. As for the FY 2010, this amount is $ 5. 640 billion, which Pakistan will be paying to its creditors amid 20 million people crying for most urgent basic needs; food, clothes, shelter, health and education... Pakistan's debt repayments already amount to three times what the government spends on healthcare -- in a country where 38 percent of under 5-year-olds are underweight, only 54 percent of people are literate, and 60 percent live below the poverty line... Thus, under the present circumstances, it is almost impossible for the government of Pakistan to meet basic requirements of its millions of displaced people as the international response to Pakistan is far less than the Tsunami and Haiti disasters -- the world community has only provided $229 million to Pakistan so far. This translates into $16.16 for each affected Pakistani person as compared to $1,087 every affected person in Haiti and $1,249 per affected person in the Indian Ocean tsunami.

All these three parties are not only coalition partners in the Sindh provincial government but are also partners in the federal government. The coalition governments have been marred by mutual distrust and an increasing observable unease, sometimes volatile, when it comes to the identification of those accused of murders and arson as well as the dispersal of government jobs. The leaders of triangular political forces of Karachi -- PPP, ANP and the MQM -- on a number of occasions went an extra mile to keep tensions in check, but the provincial leaders and workers of the coalition partners are far from any conciliation mood. The third emerging ethnic force in Karachi, the NAP was able to extract two provincial assembly seats in Karachi, much to the dismay of the MQM, on the basis of growing Pashtun population in the city. The Guardian, while reporting Imran Farooq's murder, pointed towards the MQM's "longstanding rivalries with ethnic Pashtun and Sindhi parties in Karachi," and added that "the MQM has also been riven by occasional internecine violence".

The deposit holders get negligible returns on their savings, while the banks are earning mark-up between 12 to 18 percent from borrowers -- this is the worst kind of exploitation one can think of. Even the governments -- federal and provincials -- borrow funds at exorbitant rate of nearly 14 percent from private banks. Nowhere in the world such a wide spread of earning is available to banks -- adding insult to injury they call it profit and loss sharing. One wonders what the regulator, State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), is doing... The State Bank of Pakistan, during a suo motu case before the apex court has admitted that financial institutions wrote off Rs256 billion loans from 1971 to 2009. During the self-acclaimed transparent era of Musharraf-Shaukat, loan write-offs in just seven years (2000-2006) crossed the figure of Rs125 billion, whereas in the much-publicised corrupt eras of elected governments (1985-1999) it was just Rs30 billion. This comparison speaks for itself and does not require any further comments... The new owners made billions as banks were sold at discounted prices and money realised from so-called privatisation was not used for external debt retirement but for the benefits of rulers. In the entire process, the country lost billions of rupees. The nation also suffered revenue losses of Rs120 billion as bad debts written off by the banks under the SBP's amnesty scheme enjoyed tax exemption. In 1990, the Auditor General of Pakistan issued a detailed audit report questioning the authority of Board of Revenue to issue administrative instructions for allowing bad debts. It is quite understandable how the Board of Revenue and SBP, in the presence of this audit report issued further concessions to the borrowers and banks.

The small pack of chocolate on sale cost Rs20 and the bigger one Rs30. Hazrat Bilal said he and his father bought the smaller pack from the IDPs for Rs11 or 12 and made profit of eight to nine rupees on each pack. It was strange to find out that the foreign donors had sent chocolates instead of something useful for the IDPs, who thought they couldn't afford the luxury and would be better-off selling it to make some money and use it to buy items of essential use. Another interesting observation was that Hazrat Bilal and most other sellers of relief goods were Afghan refugees. They were buying these goods from Pakistani IDPs and then selling to needy Pakistanis. Having been involved in the business of selling and buying relief goods for years, the Afghan refugees are able to do a better job in earning their livelihood in this manner. This was evident from the initially poor response to the UN Appeal for emergency international assistance for the IDPs. The UN appealed for $ 543 million to cover the cost of looking after the needs of 1.5 million IDPs for the six-month period ending December 2009. Until the end of May, it had received $ 88 million only constituting 16 per cent of the appeal. Though the response to the appeal for donations improved subsequently, the needs too kept rising with the displacement of more people and extension of the zone of conflict to new fronts in tribal areas such as South Waziristan, Orakzai and Kurram.

The economy, according to the IMF, was picking up before the floods hit the country. The real GDP grew by 4.1 percent, the current account deficit narrowed to $3.5 billion (2 per cent of GDP) and both exports ($19.63 billion) and remittances ($8.90 billion) went up during the last financial year (FY10). However, the budget deficit surpassed the 5.1 percent revised target to reach 6.3 per cent of GDP... On the basis of data provided by the Pakistan government, the IMF has predicted that during the current fiscal year, real GDP growth will come down to 2.8 percent ($190.20 billion) from the pre-floods estimates of 4.3 percent ($190.66 billion); the current account deficit will increase to 3.1 percent ($5.86 billion), 0.6 percentage points higher than the pre floods estimates of 2.5 percent ($4.62 billion); inflation will rise to 13.5 percent from 11.7 percent estimates before the deluge; exports and imports will grew by 3 percent and 8.7 percent respectively compared with earlier estimates of 4.7 and 6.9 percent resulting into trade deficit of $13.52 billion... The devastation wrought by the floods is so enormous that the Pakistan government cannot cope with it on its own and thus direly needs foreign assistance. According to Economic Affairs Division, as of September 24, 2010 total multilateral and bilateral pledges worth $1.46 billion have been made of which $411.28 million are in the form of grant and $709 million in kind. However, only $53.38 million grant has been disbursed, while relief goods worth $285 million have been received. In addition, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank will provide $1 billion and $500 million respectively in credit. The IMF's $451 million loan has already been mentioned... Floods have undone the economic recovery -- fragile though it was -- that began in the last financial year. The economic slowdown will result in loss of jobs and incomes as well as revenue. The level of domestic savings (10.1 per cent of GDP) and investment (16.6 per cent), which is already quite low, will further come down and reduce future growth prospects...

One of the planks of neo-liberal policies has been cutting public subsidies across the length and breadth of the economy, both to producers and consumers. While there is no disagreement that direct or indirect subsidies from government accruing to the rich and powerful represent a major social injustice, the facts bear witness that it has been the poor and defenseless who have primarily been at the receiving end of the anti-subsidy crusade. If there is any doubt about this we need only to cast our thoughts to our electricity bills which have doubled in recent months. And if the readers of newspapers such as this one are feeling the pinch, then one can imagine how a family of six earning Rs10,000 a month is coping with an electricity bill of Rs2000 (and often more)... Of course, a genuine programme of structural reform is exactly what is missing in most of these reports. The SBP report repeatedly notes the importance of broadening the tax net, but continues to eulogise the general services tax (GST) as the panacea to our problems. There is no mention of reviving the wealth tax, for example, which was of course abolished under the Shaukat Aziz regime even while liquid earnings of the rich and powerful were increasing exponentially. There is no mention of properly accounting for and then taxing the earnings of military-run enterprises (whether mills, colleges, real estate, etc. etc.). These are the big fish that need to be giving up a significant chunk of their incomes, while GST is simply pushed onto the consumer in the form of higher prices...

Fiscal deficit surpassed the 4.9 percent target to reach 6.3 percent of GDP despite drastic cuts in development spending as the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) was slashed from Rs646 billion budgetary allocation to Rs490 billion. Current expenditure surpassed the Rs2.26 trillion revised target to reach Rs2.40 trillion. Revenue receipts increased from Rs1.67 trillion to Rs2.05 trillion. However, as a percentage of GDP revenue fell to 14.2 percent from 14.5 percent a year earlier. Tax-GDP ratio also fell to 10 percent from 10.3 percent.

SBP has aptly mentioned that subsidies and losses of public sector enterprises increased by 10 percent compared to the previous fiscal year and "to put this in perspective, in Fiscal year 2009-10 these expenditures, as a percentage of GDP, were almost equal to the combined total budget for health and education". According to SBP, this was by no means "an acceptable situation"... It also added that recent 50 per cent hike in government sector salaries, anticipated rise in energy tariffs and removal of GST exemptions to broaden the tax base are also likely to exacerbate the already sky-rocketing prices. The SBP asserted that losses to agriculture, livestock and other sectors have limited prospects of GDP growth for FY11 to the range of "2 to 3 percent"... If the $98 billion in development assistance provided to Pakistan from 1960 to 2009 had been invested during this time to yield a moderate real return of 8 percent, it would have grown into assets equal to $619 billion in 2008, many times Pakistan’s current external debt. Instead, this debt now stands at over 70 percent of GDP, and is in and of itself a constraint on growth.

This is alarming. Some 1,233 persons have been killed in Karachi during the last 10 months. This was disclosed in a talk show by a private TV channel on October 21, 2010. To assure citizens about the government’s seriousness in putting an end to the killings, the interior minister lands in Karachi... he federal board of revenue collects some 53 percent of revenues from Karachi. About 30 percent of Pakistan’s manufacturing sector is located here and it generates some 20 percent of Pakistan’s GDP. This hub of commerce and industry now remains paralysed for many days every year... If we have a look at Karachi’s population, at 4-6 million Pashtuns constitute some 25 percent of the city’s population and around 15 percent population of the entire Sindh whereas Urdu-speaking mohajirs or MQM number around 7-9 million and thus account for some 45 percent of the residents of the metropolis and around 23 percent of the entire Sindh. Out of 168 seats in the Sindh Assembly, ANP has only 2, MQM 50, NPP 3, PML-F 8, PML-Q 11 and PPP 93.

provincializing europe, dipesh charkabarty (2000)

(6): rethinking two "conceptual gifts"

1. historicism (first in Europe, then elsewhere)
2. the very idea of the political

(9): nationalist project produced a rejection of historicist distinctions between premodern and modern

1. nationalist elite's rejection of the 'waiting-room' version
2. entry of the peasant

(11-13): Guha's critique of Hobsbawm's 'prepolitical' peasant (revolutionary peasants, but in prepolitical language)

(12) (mis)characterization of the claims of uneven development as depending on 'historicism'

(14): Guha's two logics of South Asian political modernity [but come on--elsewhere? YOU are historicizing/particularizing a relationship that is actually universal, between ideas and material causes. these are the terms in which the question must be addressed]

1. secular
   
2. 'gods and spirits'

(16): away from two assumptions [fucking infuriating!]

1. that humans exist in a frame of a single and secular historical time (enveloping other forms of time)
2. that humans are ontologically singular

(17): shouldn't be concerned about transition, but translation

(18): analytical vs. hermeneutic -- Marx vs. Heidegger

(22-23): historicism as the issue [not, as we would argue, a certain way of historicizing, but historicizing itself--insane!]

(27): Europe as the master narrative

(30): for capital or bourgeois, read Europe [but this is precisely what's at issue -- his misreading of the categories of capital/bourgeois]

(31-32): Subaltern Studies was concerned with the failure of its own bourgeosie, etc. [he's pushing back, but in a very different way than we would]

(34): a head-nod to Gandhi

(40): antihistorical constructions of the past were very powerful forms of collective memory [great. everyone does this. doesn't this tell you something about the inanity of your project?]

(42-43): statement--provincializing Europe as a politics and project of alliance between the dominant metropolitan histories and the subaltern peripheral pasts; neither a nativist nor a nationalist task [finding space in the in-between, when there really isn't any to be found]

(47): Marx's two aspects:

1. the abstract human
2. the idea of history

(48): EP Thompson on w-time -- soon to be generalized to the developing world

(49): Wall Street Journal article as aesthetic representation of the thesis of 'uneven development! [again, totally misunderstanding the concept/thrust of 'uneven' development]

(50): statement of the argument, re: abstract labor, History 1, History 2 -- abstract labor gave Marx a way of explaining away difference, through the logic of History 1. But History 2 persists.

(52): imp--getting to the 'abstract human' via the concept of abstract labor [it is not at all clear, to me, that this is what the category of abstract labor achieves (or is meant to achieve), in Marx. after all, the universalist premises of Marx predate the generalization of exchange. in this sense, Chakrabarty is understating the universalist pretensions of Marxism]

(58): for Marx, abstract labor as both description and critique (through the appropriation of life, etc.)

(63): History 1 (Capital positing itself -- here some reflections on how logic of Capital can only be grasped by someone within its throes. useful, but not entirely germane to the question of Marxism's (or social science's) universalizing scope.

(64): History 2 (heterogeneity -- through the history of money? nothing, Chakrabarty's arguing, to guarantee the subordination of History 2)

(66-67): key--History 2 as that which is left over [very deceptive extended metaphor, though -- he leaves the 'excess' unspecified. how can you coherently conceptualize the heterogeneity? if you want to argue that it is meaningful, don't you have to have some account of it, beyond the simple fact of its heterogeneity? there will always be 'stuff' left over--why should we care? once you get these ppl to answer why we ought to care, of course, you see they have to bring themselves back to the terrain of the universal]

(68): productive/unproductive [here Chakrabarty wants to give this the semblance of theoretical profundity -- it is an economic distinction, for crying out loud!]

(74): against singular 'time' -- 'time' as not always 'independent' of human systems of representation

(76): the 'gods' signify differences, problems for translation [outrageous -- can be subsumed, though, under these earlier objections]

(83): imp--why is the god of the tin miners equal to the god of the Bihari peasants? [because that's the whole fucking point of social science. it's one thing to suggest that the generalization is poorly done. it's another thing to simply reassert their irreducible specificity, the result of which is simply to mystify everything. i hope it's clear why this is analytically and especially politically devastating]

(86, 90): imp--here, he's trying to rescue his own position from the mess of cultural relativism [but offering a purely instrumental defense? interesting place to attack. in general, the framing of his own defense is very slippery--sometimes more than instrumental, sometimes expressed as a recognition that one can't forfeit the terrain of the universal without becoming completely meaningless]

(93-94): subaltern histories as 'split histories' -- not just as bringing more ppl into the modern (as in history from below)

(98-99): agrees that rationality is needed in history [but this depends, of course, on what you think that means]

(101): history writing assumes plural ways of being

(102-103): imp--Guha making consciousness the subject of rebellion [here is another good place to tease out why the whole business is, for social science, so destructive? and for politics]

(103-105): question of subaltern agency

(105): position on religion, here -- as 'subaltern pasts' that can't be glibly assimilated into Marxist history [he's a bit slippery, here -- would recognize their contingency, etc. but stupid, nonetheless, insofar as he's disavowing the only sane position]

(108): imp, further evidence of slipperiness--positioning himself against a synthesis -- we have to stay with both Guha and the Santal leader, there is no third voice [what does this mean for your causal claims, etc.? oh wait -- you're not in the business of making any, I forgot]

(237-238): reason as elitist when unreason is forced to stand for backwardness [whither truth, then? we can take some of this to its logical conclusion -- 'gods and spirits' as not necessarily 'backward' beliefs. what about hierarchy of castes? what about inferiority of women? etc., etc.]

(243): taking the stone saddle-quern as an example of an 'anachronism' that is exiled into the past rather than regarded as as 'now' as the rest of the scene [but all you need is a better narrative with equally universalist pretensions -- this is the 'uneven development' question, again]

(245): from the 18th Brumaire, suggesting Marx was alive to the 'nightmares' on the present generation [yes, but Marx would argue that the successful generation would be the one that could rid itself of this]

(247): historicist vs. decisionist [don't care to understand this]

(249) insistence on plural realities [again, does this matter when we are making specific causal claims? how, where, when? and how does it not collapses in on itself, by the weight of assuming infinite difference and infinite incommensurability of cases? if difference bothers you simply because it is difference unspecified -- well, then, everything is different! you shouldn't be able to make any claims at all]

- - - - - - - - - - - -

[1] the crux of his failings around the concept of historicism is that he misunderstands his attack on a bad brand of historicizing to be a rejection of the very project of historicizing itself. so the narrative 'first Europe, then non-Europe' is of course a stupid argument. but it is stupid not because the non-Europe isn't something that can be assimilated into the categories we would use to understand. it is because the non-Europe represents, in the terms of those universal categories, something different.

[2] if you forfeit this claim about a higher level of abstraction to which both the non-Europe and the Europe can be assimilated, I fail to understand how any alternative project can escape incoherence. in other words, Chakrabarty asserts the irreducible particularity of the non-Europe (his History 2), because there is something left over when he applies the categories of History 1. that 'excess' can't be theorized--perhaps at all, but certainly through the categories of History 1.

certainly, though, this 'excess' can't be regarded as exclusive to the non-Europe? it should be obvious that there is always something left over, whenever one attempts to apply categories/causal arguments to explain a phenomenon. rather than taking the 'excess' on its own terms--as a sign of the necessary incompleteness of our categories--we should be asking whether or not the 'excess' is relevant for the sorts of claims we are making. we have to be convinced that the 'excess' is important/meaningful.

so, to the extent that you, Chakrabarty, want to prove to me that it is, you will have to return to the categories of my argument (to 'History 1' -- to the terrain of the universal): you will have to explain to me that my failure to account for this 'excess' imperils my causal argument (so the classic example, of course, would be uneven development -- the first Europe, then non-Europe argument obviously leaves out facts that are entirely relevant to the absurd causal claims it is making. but when this objection is raised, it has to be raised in general terms -- that non-Europe occupies a different place/time in global capitalism, subject to distinct pressures/competitive strains, etc.)

[3] he misreads uneven development, of course, as taking 'backwardness' as 'past'. emphatically untrue. its political thrust comes from the opposite--that 'backwardness' is part of the 'now.' (see p. 49)

[4] Gods and spirits. here, you see him 'particularizing' a question that I think is emphatically universal. why do people invoke 'gods/spirits'/supernatural (phenomena that are clearly irrational) to understand the world? how does it motivate rebellion?

for the general discussion, this is very instructive. his position is radically unstable. either (A) you assume the commensurability of these examples--which opens up interesting questions about the relationship between ideas and structure, between myth-making and rebellion, etc. (incidentally, if --as he argues -- religion/ideas are 'central' to rebellion (a parallel reality), we risk sidelining all the interesting questions? certainly, ideas can't just assert themselves on reality? can i wish a rebellion into being, because i believe a god has summoned me to rebellion? it should be clear that there there are real limits on the extent to which you can consider this a parallel reality)

or (B) you assume the incommensurability of these examples. but surely the assumption is totally destabilizing? how do you still have commensurability within the non-Europe? between countries? between provinces? between people? either (a) Chakrabarty would have to say that you do have commensurability across the non-Europe -- in which case he is clearly reifying Europe/non-Europe divide; or (b) he would have to say that you don't have commensurability across the non-Europe -- in which case he can't avoid the postmodern mush.

[5] a jump from 'abstract labor' to 'abstract human'. but it is not the case in Marx that it is the category of 'abstract labor' that enables generalization (whether it makes it possible for subjects to generalize is a separate question). generalization is possible because of the nature of social formations, as combinations of relations of production/forces of production, etc. people everywhere entering into definite relations of production to procure their means of subsistence.