Tag Archives: Economy

Salmon fishing on the Tweed: reflecting on a process of citizen story-telling

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Two years ago Newcastle University Institute of Social Renewal sponsored a series of citizen-led story-telling events in the North East border town of Berwick upon Tweed. Our ‘listening project’ coincided with the town celebrating 900 years of history: it focussed on the traditional livelihood of ‘net and coble’ salmon fishing and how it contributed to a local sense of identity and belonging.

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Local citizens, whose voices are rarely heard in major decision-making, were asked to share their personal impressions of this once thriving local industry. At the time it was feared that the last commercial fishing station would remain closed forever. As well as collecting personal impressions we wanted to stimulate a wider-ranging conversation about the potential to revive and sustain net fishing activities on the Tweed. Since the industry contracted rapidly in the 1980s, Berwick has lost net fishing jobs and income and the further risk is of losing ‘intangible heritage’ associated with net fishing traditions. We heard different views about what is valued, such as a living river, and how to keep knowledge alive that is embodied and rarely written down.souvenir-book-cover

From the stories we gathered for a final souvenir publication we found a clear ambition in Berwick to preserve an active, fully functioning fishery, rather than to celebrate deep rooted fishing heritage only as a chapter of Berwick’s past. This ambition echoes a growing trend for the English regions and small towns in particular that seek to retain artisan products and keep craft skills alive. This is evident in Slow Food and Cittaslow quality of life initiatives that help to define Berwick through popular food, drink, civic arts and heritage festivals.

Engagement, impact and renewal

Mid-way through listening to local concerns we published a blog in July 2015. At the end we pondered the impact that public dialogue might have in reviving the last remaining fishing stations; one at Paxton (catching and releasing fish for scientific purposes only) and one at Gardo (perched alongside the iconic 17th century Old Bridge at the very heart of Berwick). Back then it was difficult to imagine what a positive impact of social renewal might bring about. So it is hugely satisfying today to be standing on the Old Bridge with a crowd of visitors watching the net fishing at Gardo (these images taken 21st April 2017). Visitors have always gathered in large numbers to watch the fishing by net from a wooden coble – and now they can do so again.

Crowd on Old Bridge

Commercial fishing continues on a modest scale due to the inspirational commitment of Michael Hindhaugh, who set up the River Tweed Wild Salmon Company as a social enterprise in 2015, and groups of volunteers, such as the Berwick Town Team, eager to ensure the continuation of the traditional net and coble fishing method. The River Tweed Wild Salmon Company makes available the only legal way to purchase Tweed wild salmon as it is illegal to sell rod-caught salmon. The Company also caters for corporate team-building and groups of family and friends to participate in the authentic net fishing experience. Michael is the first to acknowledge that the Company can never operate as a conventional business, based on salmon sales alone:

“I’d not make it on The Apprentice! We just about broke even last year. As a social enterprise it’s not about making a living but keeping the practice alive here on the Tweed. My team are all retired fishermen, plus a couple of students taking on seasonal work. The B&B businesses really appreciate us fishing, even on a short season, because it’s a huge spectacle that never fails to draw a crowd”.

This resonates with arguments for agricultural subsidies in some rural economies which are not competitive when priced purely on a single product. A wider view of rural services would take account of the contribution artisan fishing makes to a locally distinct landscape and quality of life.

Net fishing on the TweedCitizen-led archives

Many people who came along to our story-telling events in 2015 brought with them family photographs, news cuttings, artefacts and documents to show their personal connections to the netting industry. These citizen-led archives continue to grow as part of a continuing conversation on the significance of net fishing and the river to Berwick. This is evident in a recent Berwick Town Team exhibition which attracted close to one thousand visitors over a fortnight. Visitors were invited to add comments and names to the many photographs assembled, to increase the richness of the local salmon fishing story.

Slow qualities of life

Watching the net fishing up close it’s easy to be drawn into its rhythmic qualities: the coble rowed out, paying out the net in a semi-circular ‘shot’, outlined by floats, encircling any passing fish in the decreasing draw of the net, the coble rowed back to land and the net winched in. These ‘slow’ qualities of life have widespread appeal, as evident in the success of ‘slow TV’ and ‘slow radio’ broadcasting leisurely canal journeys, glassblowing and sounds of the summer. Why not net fishing? Nothing much happens but the tempo is therapeutic, focusing in on what appears to matter, not, ironically, whether a fish is caught rather something altogether more pastoral. It is about giving rural activities the time that they take, valuing particular skills rather than only caring about the final product. These observations and the impact our project has had links to ongoing research advancing new paradigms of sustainable de-growth.

Dr Helen Jarvis is a reader in social geography from Newcastle University School of Geography, Politics and Sociology. Working jointly with Tessa Holland, doctoral candidate, the project “Salmon Fishing on the Tweed” was awarded a Social Renewal grant in Spring 2015.

Reducing inequality…in national wealth

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The next in the blog series from Newcastle University Societal Challenge Theme Institutes giving recommendations for targets and indicators of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, is from Dr Andrew Walton, Lecturer in Political Philosophy in School of Geography, Politics and Sociology.

In the current proposal for the Sustainable Development Goals, Goal 10 states the aim to ‘reduce inequality within and among countries’.  For many (good) reasons, much articulation of this goal has focused on its first component – reducing inequality between co-citizens within countries.  But it is important also to consider what should be the appropriate target for the second component.  What should be our aim and measure in reducing inequality amongst countries? My suggestion is to lessen the gap in per capita national wealth – the value of each country’s financial and physical assets.

Measures of (in)equality

The basic idea of measuring (in)equality involves comparing the circumstances of certain actors.  Thus, any conceptualisation of equality must specify an answer to two questions:

  1. Which actor should be compared?
  2. What aspect(s) of their circumstances should be compared?

There are different ways to conceptualise and measure (in)equality historically [1]:

Model Actor Aspect(s)
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Countries Final value of goods & services produced within nations’ borders
GDP/capita ‘Average’ citizen (country ÷ population) Final value of goods & services produced within nations’ borders
Income Persons or households Disposable income / expenditure
Wealth Persons or households Assets, including financial holdings and physical goods, such as real estate

Perhaps obviously, these models ask us to think about (in)equality in rather different ways.  For example, on current figures using GDP suggests that China is better-off than Switzerland, whereas GDP/capita suggests the opposite [2].  Similarly, both GDP and GDP/capita suggest that Brazil is a relatively well-off country, but measuring income and wealth highlight that it is home to individuals who are worse-off than almost the entire populations of similarly well-off countries [3].

What these differences highlight is that asking which model we should use to measure (in)equality pushes us to explore deeper philosophical questions about our underlying reasons for being concerned with (in)equality, and to find a measure that is tailored to these concerns.  My suggestion here is that some of our underlying concerns point in the direction of exploring how countries compare in per capita wealth [4].

Why compare countries and why compare them per capita?

For many people it will seem obvious that there is something important about whether their country is well-off.  It is sometimes thought important for ensuring that their country is respected by others and very commonly because it has a significant impact on whether its citizens have comfortable lives.

Some argue that comparing national circumstances is a mistake. They suggest that, ultimately, it is only the welfare of people that matters and, as noted above, cross-country comparisons can hide that some individuals within countries are badly-off.  Advocates of this view might argue that Goal 10 should be collapsed into one goal: measuring (in)equality amongst individuals worldwide.

We should reject the conclusions of this argument.  Because the SDGs also consider (in)equality within countries and have other goals targeting aspects of individual welfare, they will not overlook the worry mentioned above.  Meanwhile, because one thing that benefits people’s welfare is to participate in the collective decisions and development of their nation, even this individual-centred view can acknowledge the importance of a world involving country groupings and, thus, the additional relevance of cross-country comparisons.

However, we should accept the point that countries are, in essence, valuable only insofar as they benefit their populations and our comparisons between them should reflect this concern.  It is for this reason that our cross-country comparison should focus on a per capita measure, which looks at how some aspect of a country’s circumstance relates to its people.

Why compare wealth?

Some possible ways we could make per capita inter-country comparisons would be the following:

Model Actor Aspect(s)
GDP/capita ‘Average’ citizen Final value of goods & services produced within nation’s borders
Wealth/capita ‘Average’ citizen Assets, including currency, stock, bond holdings and physical goods, such as land, natural resources, and rights to global commons
Capabilities ‘Average’ citizen Human development indicators, such as life expectancy, education, income

A reasonable case could be made that reducing inequality between countries in any of these respects would be a worthwhile target.  Nevertheless, I proposed at the beginning of this post that the goal should be to focus on wealth/capita.  Two related points support this view.

First, neither GDP/capita nor capabilities takes full account of the aspects of a country’s circumstance that affects the welfare of its population.  To take two clear examples, currency reserves and natural resources, which are considered in wealth/capita, but not these other measures, both allow a country to provide its population with economic security and future consumption [5].

Second, many of the assets that countries hold are a matter of luck.  For example, no country did anything to entitle it to the oil or gold that lies within its borders and, indeed, much of their economic wealth arises from the fortunes of the market.

In cases where there is a good that many actors desire and which no actor is entitled automatically to own, it seems sensible to distribute that good equally.  If Isaac and I are sat beneath a tree feeling hungry when an apple falls on his head, it seems reasonable for us to share it.  Similarly, insofar as it is valuable for countries to hold financial and physical assets and their current holdings have arisen from good fortune, there is a reason to aim for equalising their shares.

Moving towards international equality

A more fully fledged case for measuring inter-country (in)equality in terms of per capita national wealth is that achieving parity in this regard can, under certain conditions, represent a truly idealistic aim.  There is a moral argument that a distribution of assets is fair if it mirrors what each relevant actor would have bought with equal purchasing power in the context of all goods being priced at a market-clearing equilibrium [6]. Such a distribution, in the international context, would entail equality in per capita national wealth and it is fair because it reflects the equality of all parties in their access to these goods and allows them to shape their holdings according to what they believe is worth having.

Realising this aim is perhaps a more long-term project than for the framework of the SDGs.  Nevertheless, it helps show the value of building our understanding of (in)equality in national wealth and beginning to reduce it, whilst casting light on some important steps for moving towards this goal:

Pursue (the second component of) Goal 10 by:

  • Establishing a national wealth index and collect data on countries’ standings.
  • Setting a target of reducing inequality in per capita holdings.

Connect these targets and their longer-term aim to:

  • Adding impetus to Goal 16.7 of ensuring responsive, inclusive, participatory, and representative decision-making, in order for countries’ choices about asset holdings to reflect the collective interests of their people.
  • Helping articulate Goals 17.10-17.12 on shaping international trade towards an equal and equilibrated market.

Dr Andrew Walton is lecturer in political philosophy at Newcastle University. His main research interests are in global justice, liberal-egalitarian and socialist thought and questions of justice in public policy.

 

[1] The essential ideas used to construct this table are taken from Milanovic, B., Worlds Apart: Measuring International and Global Inequality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005)

[2] These figures can be found via UN, ‘National Accounts Main Aggregates Database’, available at http://unstats.un.org/unsd/snaama/selbasicFast.asp [Accessed 17th June 2015].

[3] See, for example, Credit Suisse, ‘Global Wealth Report 2014’, available at https://publications.credit-suisse.com/tasks/render/file/?fileID=60931FDE-A2D2-F568-B041B58C5EA591A4 [Accessed 17th June 2015].

[4] This suggestion is elaborated in more detail in Walton, A., ‘On the Currency of International Equality’, forthcoming.

[5] It is worth noting that Capabilities also seems to point towards important aspects of human welfare.  However, many other SDGs will pursue these kinds of concerns anyway, leaving space for the second part of Goal 10 to speak to the concerns I mention here.

[6] This view is most commonly associated with Dworkin, R., Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000).

 

Building up STEAM

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Professor Rachel Armstrong is Professor of Experimental Architecture in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, and her Idea for an Incoming Government is to put the A back into STEM education. In British education, but also in our society, the arts play a part that fundamentally enriches, and Professor Armstrong urges an incoming government not to allow our cultural landscape to turn into a tedious shade of grey. Read about the Institute for Social Renewal’s other contributions to policy on our website.Building up STEAM

What’s the problem?

In a technologically advanced age, STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) subjects are regarded as a fundamental way to boost the technological competence of our workforce. As a result, they have taken a central position in British education. While the original educational concerns that forged STEM promoted a more widespread uptake of these subjects, other commentators suggest that the term embodies synergies between these disciplines, which highlight the importance of cross-disciplinary collaborations in the innovation process.

After a period of activism where the innovative potential of collaborative practices invited the introduction of ‘A’ for arts into the acronym shortly after its conception, we find that our core competencies are abbreviated back down to ‘left’ brain activities. While absolute distinctions between ‘left’ (logical) and ‘right’ (creative) in itself is a controversial claim, the generalization symbolizes broad differences between the sciences and arts. The consequences, unintentional or otherwise, of omitting the ‘A’ may push us back to the Enlightenment views of a knowledge dichotomy that Snow challenged over half a century ago in his 1959, Two Cultures Rede lecture.

Presumably, the climate that has allowed the arts to wither from centre-stage education relates to a streamlining of investment that appears more directly related to immediate returns in employment, global competitiveness and economic growth. Newcastle City Council is living testimony to such measures, having had its creative arts funding slashed by 50% in 2013, provoking widespread outcry.

The solution

It is imperative that ‘A’ is immediately reinstated. Even Ada Lovelace herself, who is attributed to designing the first computer program and has become a figurehead for the recruitment of young women into STEM subjects, advocated a ‘poetical science’. It is also not sufficient to assume that the creativity associated with the arts and humanities will inevitably be infused into scientific subjects without specifically creating funded opportunities for this to occur and to keep on happening.

Moreover, justifying arts in purely utilitarian terms such as facilitating technological innovation and leadership in an efficient workforce completely fails to acknowledge their enduring enrichment of society and culture. Additionally, the future of the arts should be in no way enslaved to its enlistment to STEAM.

The evidence

Civilizations are more than a function of their economic growth. Their vigour is acquired through the hearts of their communities – and passions are not won by facts. So, while science claims a necessary position of neutrality, objectivity and distance from their studies, the arts are deeply immersed in their subjects. The objective goal of achieving technological advancement without investing in shared values will only take us so far in uniting people.

In this age of great challenges, it is imperative that we can think beyond the limits of rational solutions and deal with the uncertainties of our situation by venturing into unknown territories. The consequences of starving our students and civic communities of these skills are far more insidious and enduring than facing any financial crisis.

STEAM is not just a procedural set of issues aimed at managing the meaningful integration of arts with science but also draws attention to investments made in the arts at a national and European governmental level. The scientification of our society is embodied in a recent international conference entitled ‘The future of Europe is Science’ that proposed to address subjects such as ‘How will we keep healthy? How are we going to live, learn, work and interact in the future? How will we produce and consume and how will we manage resources?’. While many aspects of our lives can (within limits) be evaluated objectively, such as average income, or employment statistics, these questions cannot be exclusively served through an objective, empirical scientific analysis. Indeed, a Europe without humanities and arts feels a chillingly soulless place. Right now, we are faced with spreading neoliberal malignancy that is turning our cultural landscape into a tedious shade of grey. It is reducing our daily lives to the pursuit of one bottom line – money – where we are aware of the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

If we are to survive what is likely to be an extremely challenging century, where we face many contradictions that do not clearly present us with logical solutions, such as reducing the gap between the have and have not’s, tackling dramatic weather changes, combating drastic resource challenges and managing ideological conflicts, then we’ll need to be extremely imaginative across all disciplines. It is only through actively nurturing creativity from an early age that we will be able to do more with less, produce new kinds of value, work productively in partnership with nature and find new ways of working within constraints.

Importantly, while we actively acknowledge our limits, we must also relentlessly pursue new ways to transcend them. This simply cannot be done purely objectively. It requires personal investment, which means believing in common goals and embracing the seemingly impossible. If we are to protect and restore our heritage, our community and our faith in humankind then we need a different toolset that creates a counterbalance within STEM, one that that refuses to be answerable to sciences, yet also has the capacity to potentiate them, so that we can remain critical of developments – while also fulfilling our passions.

We should indeed build on firm foundations that ensure that our workforce, leaders and next generations have the intellectual and practical skills to be competitive on a global scale, but we must also sow the seeds of our culture with the imaginative flexibility to deal with the unknown, uphold a humane quality of life and to invent into new spaces that have never before existed. So, let us not forget the broader needs of our society when thinking about our institutional goals, national productivity and shared futures – and urgently invest in the creative capacity of people by putting the ‘A’ back into STEM.

Joining the dots: making healthcare work better for the local economy

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On Thursday 26th February Professors Rose Gilroy and Mark Tewdwr-Jones (Newcastle School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape) launched a collection of papers that they co-edited in association with the Smith Institute and the Regional Studies Association. Below is the latest in our Ideas for an Incoming Government series from Professor Gilroy, taking a look at the connection between health and the economy, and suggesting a way forward for public health delivery.

Jigsaw puzzle, success in business concept

Who should take responsibility for improving the health of the nation? Is it the role of the NHS, or are we simply shifting responsibility by asking our health system to pick up the pieces (and the cost) caused by policy failures elsewhere? What is the real cost of poor health?

The Marmot Review of 2010 estimated that health inequalities cost the taxpayer over £30 billion a year in terms of lost productivity and associated welfare and health costs. Can we really afford to ignore this? A new joint report from Newcastle University academics, the Smith Institute and Regional Studies Association aims to address the issue of health inequality. Launched at Portcullis House, Westminster last Thursday, 26th February in front of an audience of local government officials, researchers, representatives of the TUC, RTPI, NHS, The Design Council and lobby groups, the report – Joining the Dots: Making healthcare work better for the local economy – discusses the far-reaching consequences of poor health and the responsibility of employers, local planners, and new governance structures in taking a pro-health position that will help to tackle health inequalities.

From considering the social and economic determinants of health; the limitations placed on people’s lives from shrinking local investment in the supply and quality of public services; the need to consider the whole city as an arena for older people’s wellbeing and the struggle to overcome institutional and cultural barriers to make new legislation work, this collection of research challenges all sectors of British society to put health at the heart of its thinking.

The debate was chaired by Andy Love, Labour MP for Edmonton, with the report launched by myself and my School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape colleague Professor Mark Tewdwr-Jones, as co-editors of the report. David Buck, Senior Fellow in Public Health and Inequalities at the Kings Fund joined us to talk about the links between poor health, poverty and worklessness, while Professor Sarah Curtis of Durham University presented compelling evidence linking employment status to health outcomes. Professor Curtis emphasised the long shadow that regional unemployment casts across the course of people’s lives. Elsewhere, Deputy Lords leader Lord Philip Hunt considered the role of the NHS as an employer and reflected on the recent news that Greater Manchester will have devolved power over its local NHS spending, with huge potential implications for local accountability and a new, more holistic understanding of people’s health and social needs.

However, as several contributors argued, it is the ability of individuals and organisations to overcome the often complex local governance map and develop a joint vision and shared objectives that will lead to success in addressing the UK’s deep health inequalities.

The conclusion of this report is clear: too often we intervene too late and forget that health starts where we live, learn, work and play. The key to good health is to build preventative services in communities, helping us to take care of our families, our schools, our workplaces and our playground and parks. When considering national and local spending priorities, we must understand the need to make pro-health choices to tackle the scandal of health inequality in modern Britain.

View the full report via The Smith Institute. (PDF)

Tweet @Social_Renewal using #Ideas4anIncomingGovt to join in the conversation.