Why Gillian Tett's Anthropological Take on þe World Is Very Useful
Why you should listen to her; a N2PE event for 2021-11-18 Th
N2PE: Gillian Tett (@gilliantett) Discusses Her New Book “Anthro-Vision: A New Way to See in Business & Life”. Amid severe digital disruption, economic upheaval, and political flux, how can we make sense of the world? Leaders today typically look for answers in economic models, Big Data, or artificial intelligence platforms. Gillian Tett will discuss her new book that points to anthropology—the study of human culture. Anthropologists learn to get inside the minds of other people, helping them not only to understand other cultures but also to appraise their own environment with fresh perspective as an insider-outsider, gaining lateral vision. Moderated by Brad DeLong (@delong) with Comments from Julia Sizek (@JuliaSizek). RSVP for Zoom Link: <https://t.co/D7jbqQ1KL4 https://t.co/BO2v3Tk37v> <https://twitter.com/N2PENetwork/status/1461061581685460998>
My Proposed Intro: One of the cheesier and more adolescent of the sub-genres of science fiction I must admit I still read what is one in which some plucky human hero is confronted with an anthology intelligence: millions of organisms, each of them small and mindless on its own, yet somehow adding up to a human or more than human intelligence with Ailien and hard-to-understand belief and purposes.
But it is we humans who, looked at collectively, are this alien anthology intelligence.
Due to our extraordinary propensity to gossip, what one of us knows—or rather believes—pretty soon all of us know—or, rather can believe. Alone, each of us is nearly totally incompetent at managing our environment: put one of us out naked and alone even in as green and pleasant a land is the home counties of England, and he or she would be likely to die. But assemble us and allow us to form a division of labor, and we can undertake mighty works of nature manipulation to challenge the gods. Certainly that extremely large red-bearded guy with serious anger-management problems, that guy who likes to drink and whose hammer is the lightning called “Thor”, has nothing over us.
But in order to become an anthology communicative intelligence, we have to share not only a language but also an underlying mental map of how the universe works. And in order to become an anthology productive intelligence, we have to have trust in others—that you do your and they do their part in the division of labor, and then that the products of labor by hand and brain will in fact be shared. But how do you extend a language and a mental map beyond a very few people who have grown up together“? And how do you extend trust that your part in the division of labor will be reciprocated beyond your close kin and immediate neighbors?
What happens when we extend our division of labor from our immediate circle of neighbors and kin to encompass all 8 billion of us—that is the province of economics.
What happens when we construct at least semi-shared mental maps so that communication can succeed—that is the province of sociology.
What happens when our anthology intelligence attempt reflection on its purposes and structure—that is the province of political science.
But the processes by which we do these—those are the domains of anthropology, which is in this sense the ur-social science on top of which all else is built.
So let us pay attention this afternoon to Gillian Tett, of the tribes of the Financial Times and of the anthropology community, author of the very recently published Anthro-Vision: How Anthropology Can Explain Business and Life <https://www.amazon.com/Anthro-Vision-Anthropology-Explain-Business-Life/dp/1847942881/>
Listen to her: for I believe it is her training in anthropology that has made her uniquely insightful journalist an analyst throughout her career.
Gillian: 30 minutes? Please put questions in the chat so that I can draw on them after she finishes and after Julia Sizek comments.
Let me invoke my moderator’s privilege to make two comments:
The first is this picture—I didn't think it made you look incredibly grumpy. I did make you think it looks serious and thoughtful and considerate and—I don't want to say “the antithesis of a ‘Fox Babe’, because most of those women are extremely smart, and very good at presentation-of-self in ways important to their careers; but “the antithesis of a ‘Fox Babe’”.
The second is that when you said that Greenspan chased you down and asked for a book of anthropology about the Greeks. I was confused: I understood “Greeks” to mean not “people in Greece”, but instead “the Greek letters in financial formulas”. And I was thinking that someone has written an anthropology of the symbology of Ito processes, until I finally realized my mistake.
Brad DeLong: May I grab the moderator’s privilege to ask the last question, apropos of the return of barter?
Partha Dasgupta writes that we started out doing the division-of-labor thing with our kin and our immediate neighbors, with the division-of-labor made possible via our thick, ongoing long-time extended gift exchange relationships with those that we had good sociological reason to trust. Then we invented money. Money was liquid trust. You no longer had to know someone very well to have them be part of your division -of-labor. All 8 billion of us could be part of our division-of-labor through the non-extended one-shot gift-exchange relationships that we call “buying” and “selling”.
From money as a trust token we then get to token of money to monetary deb. And then, somehow, the moneylender gives you a gift and puts you even further into sociological debt to him by only collecting half your interest due now and adding the other half onto the principle, thus putting you further into economic debt as well.
Now we find ourselves bypassing the trust-token of money, and returning to swapping—swapping data for services. Somehow we have micropayments for advertisements via Google but not micropayments for information and entertainment.
I look at this, and I find that I have very different reactions:
Jeff Bezos—Amazon—wants my money and my data. I am happy to give it to him. I know he will use my data to try to put things on front of my nose that I might want to buy and enjoy. And I will know that I can put the item in my shopping bag, and then I will go off and think about it for a day or a week or two, and maybe come back—if I think the purchase will make me happy, and I believe that if I decide to make the purchase it will make me happy. Jeff Bezos—Amazon—is my gift-exchange relationship friend, in that our sociological exchange ties are to our mutual benefit and the reinforcement of at least a simulacrum of mutual benevolent concern for each other.
On the other hand Jack Dorsey—Twitter—wants my data and wants my money. He wants my data so that he can construct an algorithmic feed that will keep me clicking on tweets so he can show me more ads: he wants to glue my eyeballs to his screen even if—perhaps especially if, since fight-or-flight is a strong psychological force—it makes me unhappy. In some sense he is not my friend: our interactions here do not create what Albert Hirschman called doux commerce, sweet commerce, as we view everyone around us as a potential partner in win-win exchange, and thus as a benevolently-intentioned friend. I view Jack Dorsey as someone who wants to hack my brain—diminish my autonomy to direct my attention where my considered self would wish—without having the slightest concern for whether this attention-hacking is for my ill or not.
How should we think about these issues?
Gillian Tett: I think I have 30 seconds to answer. You raised a huge question, requiring the blending of economic thinking with computer science and technology and social science. Rather than try and give a quick answer let me simply suggest that this is going to be probably one of the most fruitful areas for economists and for anthropologists to dive into in the coming years…. We will see anevolutionary break point on many levels, about how we imagine money and value in a world of digital connections. Who we trust, how we build cohesion, and how we look at power structures is shifting very fast…. This is going to get more and more important in the years ahead. I salute the work that people are doing in the world of data science and computer science and social science…. The questions you end on are incredibly important. I throw them over to your amazing community to pick them up and run with it.
Brad DeLong: And with that, Gillian Tett performatively demonstrates that her ultimate and highest allegiance is to the tribe of academia, for she has ended with a call for further research. Thank you very much for coming. This has been greatly greatly appreciated. This has been truly wonderful. Thank you again, thank you all for coming.