SUM 3011 Desmond McNeill's overheads, …

SUM 3011

Desmond McNeill's overheads, 6 october 2004

Two readings which are seeking to influence the public and policy-makers. Both are about water resources.

Reisner p 481

1. Argument: people are finally seeing that water is a limited resource. Irony, and accusation of hypocrisy. Loaded words: ’heavy-handed bolshevism’, ’rugged individualist’….

2. Aswan Dam. Empirical case for comparison, but a one-sided presentation of the case.

3. Argument: long term vs. short term; public vs. private costs and benefits.

No attempt to be neutral: a polemical piece.

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McNeill, p. 258

1. What ’water as an economic good’ means.

2. There is need for a synthesis, (between economic, social and environmental) but it is unclear what this would mean.

3. What is meant by ’a social good’?

4. What is meant by ’an environmental good’?

The article attempts to be even-handed, and, for example, use the words of proponents themselves, but is it successful? Could it ever be entirely so?

Two more academic readings, communicating complex ideas.

Taylor, p. 22.

1. Things only have meaning in a field, that is, in relation to other things.

2. Analogy: like words

3. Another analogy: like colours.

4. Analogy used to examine social relations - ”hierarchical relations of power and command”.

5. The concept of a system: ”a set of social practices which sustain these hierarchical structures and are fulfilled in them”….

6. The concept of a hermeneutical circle, and what it implies: to hide from shame is ”not the same as hiding from an armed pursuer”.

This is a ’holistic’ rather than an ’individualistic’ perspective on society.

Taylor: p. 28.

1. The goal of a verifiable science has led to the search for ’brute data’ – which ”supposedly enable us to break out from the hermeneutical circle”.

2. The limitations of brute data: ”killing, sending tanks into the streets, seizing people” - and voting.

3. ”But of course a science (NB) of politics confined to such acts would be much too narrow. ”In voting for the motion I am also saving the honour of my party….”

4. Is behavioural political science: a solution to the dilemma? Apparently not (problems of methodology: eg designing a questionnaire).

Summary: he aims to show the limitations of a ’naturalist’ approach to scoial science (brute data), and argue for a humanist approach (interpretation). He relies mainly on clear argument, supported by analogy; not so much reference to empirical evidence or the authority of other writers.

Dasgupta, p 110 –113

This is an economist discussing institutions (until recently outside the realm of mainstream economics)

1. Quote Arrow. (Authority: Nobel prize winning economist).

2. Arrow ”gets the historical chronology wrong but ….” This is actually a crucial methodological point.

3. ”In poor countries communal property rights to resources are most often based on custom and tradition … Therefore, tenure isn’t secure, a vital problem to which I return below”.

4. ”As a proportion of aggregate assets, local commons range widely across ecological zones. There is a rationale for this, based on the human desire to reduce risk. .. incentives … transaction possibilities …”

5. ”An almost immediate empirical corollary is that the local commons are most prominent in arid regions, mountain regions, …”

6. Empirical evidence from Jodha. Over eighty villages in India … Cavendish study of twenty-nine villages in Zimbabwe …

7. ”A number of resources … are the responsibility of women and children.” So?

8. ”Such evidence does not, of course (NB), prove that the local commons in their samples were well managed, but it does show that rural households would have strong incentives to devise arrangements whereby they could be communally managed.”

9. ”The literature on the local commons is valuable because it has unearthed how institutions that are neither part of the market system, nor of the State, nor of the household, develop organically to cope with resource allocation problems”. (Note economic perspective; and refs)

10. But, ”richer households enjoy a greater proportion of the benefits from the commons. This is consonant with cooperative game theory…”

11. And, ’local commons are becoming degraded’ (unlike before). ”A recent intellectual tradition goes something like this (NB) ”At the margin, income today is of the utmost urgency, meaning that poverty leads people to discount future incomes at unusually (NB) high rates relative to today’s income” (one ref)

12. ”These findings are not easy to interpret.”

13. Alternative explanation: ”Institutional failure can mean that private returns on investment in the resource base are low”

14. Examples of instituional failure: ”Uncertain property rights are a prime example.

15. ”When people are uncertain of their rights to a piece of property, they are reluctant to make the investments necessary to protect and improve it”. (a priori or empirical truth?)

16. Management of the local commons has often relied on social norms of behaviour, which are founded on reciprocity. But institutions based on reciprocity are fragile in the face of growing markets. ” (evidence? Implications?).

Considerable use of empirical data and authoritative refs, but not always aware of perspective bias.