Ancient China to

Modern East Asia

By Clement Blakeslee, B.A., M.A., M.Sc.Retired public affairs broadcaster, political journalist, human resources consultant, native affairs advocate, social science academic, and environmental advocate

Buddha graphic by Wilfredor / CC BY-SA 3.

PART I: PREFACE

EAST MEETS THE WEST : A NOETIC ENRICHMENT 3FUNDAMENTALS OF NOETIC CAPITAL 4CHAPTER 1: MODELS OF SOCIAL INVESTMENT 7CHAPTER 2: HUMAN CAPITAL/BASIC CULTURAL WEALTH 13CHAPTER 3: COMMUNICATION AND CREATIVITY 23CHAPTER 4: TRADITIONAL VS. NEW AGE ORGANIZATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS 37CHAPTER 5: BALANCING SOCIAL ELEMENTS 43

PART II: MODELS OF SOCIAL INVESTMENT

ESSAY 59-63

PART III: DEVELOPMENT DIMENSIONS

LITERATURE REVIEW 67-119

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PrefaceEast Meets West: A Noetic Enrichment

Perhaps it would be just as well for me to lay out some of the intellectual influences in which I operate vis a vis ethical and philosophical considerations. Some of the philosophers and scientists who have influenced me are mainstream academic figures. Others are more relevant to Oriental traditions even though they may live in Western societies. During the last generation there has been a fusion of Eastern and Western thought which has greatly changed academic thinking in many of the world’s best universities. Alan Watts and J.C. Pearce are a couple of the international figures who work hard to relate Eastern and Western philosophy. Fretjof Capra in The Tao of Physics was only one of the many scientists who regard Eastern spiritualism and Western science as a mutual enrichment.

The great sweep of Western philosophical tradition from the early Greeks to modern logical positivists represents a very complex intertwining of mystical thought with mathematical principles. Since the early Greek logic has played a dominant role in spiritual pursuits as well as empirical ones. The mathematical systems of Descartes and Newton were inextricably enmeshed in their understanding of the divine presence. Thus, various forms of logic and mathematics have historically dominated academic thought in theology and philosophy. Even the quintessential personality of St. Thomas Aquinas was dependent upon logic as his tool of analysis.

Whether studying the nature of the human condition, the imperatives of the ethical systems or the grand design of God, all were arranged as though they were pursuing a scientific problem. During the eighteenth century the secular forces of science began drawing it away from more traditional philosophical and theological pursuits. Dave Hume, Adam Smith, Emanual Kant, the French philosophers such as Voltaire and Rousseau are only a tiny sample of the secular divergents from religious inquiry.

Such secular scholars looked at the problem of ethics and the nature of the human condition from a very different perspective. Ideas involving the social contract in one or another manifestation became the justification for ethical principles. Another frame of reference was human nature as a reference point for understanding ethics without God as an orchestrator. Many social sciences and biological sciences relevant to and understanding of human nature evolved out off this secular philosophical debate. August Compte and Jeremy Bentham in the early nineteenth century founded schools of science or pseudo-science, depending on your point of view. They saw the social order quite clearly without reference to divine forces. Thus for them social relationships and ethical principles were a secular matter embedded in their perceptions of human nature.

Thus the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw a great divergence between science and traditional theology/philosophy. Not until the decades following World War II did spiritual inquiry and scientific pursuit begin to flow back together. Once again human nature was seen from a more mystical point of view with spiritual concerns being central to understanding human

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nature and the ethical imperatives derived from that nature. It should be observed that traditional religion as in Christian orthodoxy plays a much smaller part in the new fusion of science and religion. Oriental contributions from Buddhism, Taoism and the more mystical aspects of Hinduism provide a very large contribution to this new stream of intellectual inquiry.

Therefore, when I am asked to answer a problem of an ethical nature I do so from the standpoint of the growing ranks of New Age academics, both philosophers and scientists. The works of Confucius impress me because they so carefully entwine personal rights and personal duties with public obligations enmeshed in a network of reciprocity and balancing forces at all levels of society. The object of Confucianism is as long term perspective with a deep sense of history concerning the survival of the social order by means of encouraging and facilitating the highest possible level of social harmony. This point of view understands harmony to be a delicate balance of innumerable forces playing themselves out at the national level, the provincial level, the community and or clan level, and the personal level. The object was to balance public harmony and social survival with individual needs and personal pursuits. Chinese political and social thinkers never regarded individualism as the quintessential coinage of their understanding of the human condition. The individual was part of the public body and in no way antagonistic to the public body.

It seems to me that Western philosophic traditions have had a very meager understanding of society and the sense of public that the Chinese have so carefully developed. A brilliant three volume work, entitled The History of Private Life speaks to this state of affairs rather eloquently. From classic Greece through Rome and into the Middle Ages, Western society never really dealt effectively with the problem of publicness and the understanding of the requirements of publicness being of equal or greater importance than to the understanding of privateness. Property, ethics, government and even religion were preoccupied with the sanctity of the individual to the expense of the public polity.

The world views of Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, J.S. Mill and endless others in that intellectual tradition regard the state as the enemy because it is a public instrument. Their sense of privateness involves property and every other dimension of human activity. This intellectual backdrop I believe cripples the ability of Western societies to work out ethical systems of a public nature. Instead, we rely on the reference point of the individual.Part one: Fundamentals of Noetic Capital

Part one: Fundamentals of Noetic Capital

During the last 500 years, Western European culture has witnessed some dramatic transformations in the economic order and in all other social institutions. In only half of a millennium, Western Europe transformed itself from a medieval feudal economic social system to the advanced societies associated with the post-industrial era.

The factors propelling European change for the last 500 years are complex and numerous. However, one of the most fundamental changes during this period has been several stages of transformation in the concept of capital. The attribution of value and the belief system surrounding the fundamental generators of value shaped the idea of

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capital as well as guided the transformation from one belief system to another. The medieval concept of value was very different from the mercantile concept which replaced it. Although capitalism emerged out of mercantilism, the concept of value did not change greatly until this century when an utterly new notion of capital appeared--namely, human capital.

The medieval world view saw land and labour as the fundamental generators of wealth and therefore the basic expression of value or capital. Medieval principalities were very simple economic systems. Although money was used to support military campaigns and to pay for exotic commodities, for the most part the medieval economy was supported by the labour of the peasant and the produce his labour brought forth from the land. The wealth of the lord was as much an expression of the number of peasants working the land as the amount of land he had for working. Medieval Christianity frowned on money lending and other forms of manipulation of monetary capital for profit.

From the middle 1300s when plagues eradicated two-thirds of Western Europe’s population until the early 1500s when maritime rivalries began far-flung empires, Europe transformed itself from medieval to modern political and economic systems. Some of the factors driving this transformation were: (1) labour crisis due to decimation of population; (2) the collapse of Byzantium in 1453; (3) the invention and spread of the printing press in the mid-1400s; (4) the rise of Ottoman Turkey and the blockade of the caravan routes; (5) the influence of the Basques, Vikings, Italians and Portuguese in launching the maritime age; (6) the rise of Protestantism and its social impacts in the early 1500s; and (7) the use of slavery in building overseas plantation economies.

The cash economies created by overseas empires supported by plantations did two things. It generated enormous amounts of cash for European merchants and military adventurers, and it transferred European medieval society from the European homeland to the overseas empires. Labour at home was seen more and more as a cost to be avoided in preference for overseas activities which generated cash. Early in this process, shops and factories began manufacturing trade goods for overseas markets but also for home markets.

Thus, the transformation in the view of capital from land and labour to cash and factories moved Europe from medieval life to industrial life. The industrial notion of wealth was the creation or acquiring of factories and all that served factories for the purpose of amassing cash. European thought formalized the new view of capital in the concept of capitalism as defined by a string of British scholars from Adam Smith to John Stuart Mill.

This thinking dominated Western thought until a variety of philosophers, economists and other scientists began developing the idea of human capital. World War II saw the destruction of the conventional industrialized society and the transformation of Western Europe and North America to the post-industrial societies which see ultimate value in the human mind and its creative qualities. The modern

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view of human capital ascribed ultimate value to the skills, talents and capacities of individual minds and their cooperative synergism.

Although our accounting systems have not caught up with this fundamental change in the concept of value, the pressure is mounting for it to do so. The decade of the ’90s will be the decade of consolidating the concept of human capital by clearly understanding where ultimate value lies.

Previous understandings of capital ascribed value to external objects. Even the labour of peasants was viewed more as a disciplined effort of domestic animals than a feature of human dignity and integrity. Peasants were not valued for their artisanship or their intelligence; rather, they were valued for the crops they produced and for other forms of sweat labour. The use of slave labour in overseas empires was a device for transferring European serfdom to overseas possessions. As the peasant lost his value at home, the slave gained his value overseas, thus allowing European society to completely change its focus of capital to buildings, factories, ships and the raw material to feed the system. In both the mercantile period and the capitalist period, the point of all this was to generate profits by accumulating cash, preferably gold coin.

The new view of capital internalizes value by recognizing that the creative, cooperative efforts of individuals are the generators of all material wealth--cash or otherwise. Productive equipment in factories, non-renewable and renewable resources, agricultural and urban land and money itself are derived forms of capital and therefore secondary as expressions of value to the skills, talents and capacities of the human mind.

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CHAPTER 1MODELS OF SOCIAL INVESTMENT

Nearly anyone can declare that he or she is a futurist, then after the declaration attempt to read the tea leaves for the human quest. Some futurists obviously enjoy a very high level of credibility, while many others fail to acquire such acceptability.

In the U.S. there are three futurists of a rather cautious nature. Their version of future analysis avoids dealing with radical paradigm shifts. Their view of society is probably a fair reflection of mainstream middle-class America.

Phillip Schlechty is an educator who is attempting to design educational programs in keeping with anticipated trends. He does not see major structural revisions in North America, and he does not see the school as an arena for generating such revisions. His line of thinking is more of a method for enriching human resources and using human resources in a more efficient and effective fashion. Because he is a relatively cautious analyst, I would suspect that he enjoys a reasonably high level of credibility.

When Schlechty’s work in education is paralleled with Tom Peters’s analysis for business (particularly in the book Thriving on Chaos), and John Naisbitt’s work in social policy (Megatrends 2000), there emerges an intellectual continuity and a policy of a highly congruent nature. These three do not wish to destroy the old paradigm, they just want to change the direction vis-à-vis the use of human resources and vis-à-vis organizational vitality. They are greatly concerned with the dissipation of societal vigour through destructive conflict in both the public and private sectors. If there is a theme that pervades such work, it is the critical need to generate a cultural focus and to facilitate harmony in every dimension of life.

I find it difficult to fault such thinking, but I do regard this approach as extremely cautious. Certainly Fritjof Capra is a far more radical futurist in nearly every respect. In all of his books, including The Turning Point, he makes every effort to argue for a thoroughly new paradigm in physics, in the social sciences, in environmental concerns, as well as economic and political pursuits. He is not so much a Marxist thinker as he is a New Age thinker--in my mind there is a very considerable difference. The term ‘New Age’ does carry with it some flaky baggage, Shirley MacLaine style. However, alternative designations have their own problems. The more commonly used alternatives are the post-industrialist era, the post-modern generation, the information age, the New Thought Movement, and the Human Potential Movement. Capra is most closely affiliated with the Human Potential Movement, which is in part a

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product of the Esalen Institute. Of all these terms I prefer ‘New Age,’ recognizing that for some people there is an image problem.

Some of the scholars I feel particularly comfortable with in regards to their view of the future represent a wide range of disciplines and backgrounds. Helen Henderson in her book, Politics of the Solar Age, Jane Jacobs in Cities and the Wealth of Nations, Robert Reich (1984) in The Next American Frontier and Lester Thurow (1985) in The Zero-Sum Solution are new paradigm economists with a deep interest in the issues surrounding human potential. They all bring a refreshing view to the inter-relationship among basic social institutions for the enrichment of human capital. The skills, talents and capacities of the base population are as important to the social order as the leadership capacities of the social elite. Enrichment of society through education is a powerful theme for these four economists.

The New Age line of thought, or the human potential literature, constitutes a new paradigm quite different from the old capitalist paradigm or even the traditional paradigm associated with analytic philosophy, behavioural psychology, operational sociology and even traditional theology. The style of science explicated by theoretical physicists such as David Bohm, Geoffrey Chew and Fridjof Capra mesh very well methodologically, ontologically and epistemologically with a whole spectrum of disciplines responding to this totally revolutionary world view. Not only economists responded to this profoundly new style such as the four I mentioned above but also historians, theologians, psychiatrists, oncologists and an incredible diversity of like-minded people who are reshaping our understanding of ourselves, of nature and of the spiritual dimension.

The late theologian, Alan Watts, who was on faculty at Berkeley for many years, did much to bridge these interdisciplinary concerns through this New Age paradigm. In one of his last works in 1972 he provided a brilliantly simple analysis of this new way of thinking. The work is called The Book. He has profoundly influenced psychologists such as Ken Wilber, psychiatrists such Roger Walsh and many other brilliant proponents of the New Age methodology.

In short, what is the essence of the New Age paradigm? Perhaps it is easier to say what it is not. Certainly, it is non-mechanistic, non-reductionist, non-materialistic, and certainly non-traditional in just about every sense. The Vedic scriptures of India, the Taoist scriptures of China and the Zen Buddhism of today’s Japan have challenged and often replaced traditional Western paradigms. The Oriental influence on Alan Watts, Ken Wilber, Fridjof Capra and a whole galaxy of like-minded scholars is simply quite profound.

Another important feature of this New Age paradigm is an abandonment of the patriarchal, power-focused, authoritarian world view. The feminist

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movement seems to fit well into this new paradigm, as do the various green movements. Concomitant with this is a philosophical stance that decries the excessive disparity between the base population and the elite population of various modern societies. There is a new political imperative embedded in New Age thinking. This leads to social policy which will have a profound effect on the conjugal institutions of health and education and even the marketplace itself. The reason I say the conjugal institutions of health and education is simply because these two arenas of social investment are reciprocally enmeshed with each other in a way that can generate an incredible synergism.

Those interested in the concept of human capital, as I am, recognize the near miraculous impact which can be had through universal effective health and education programs. Of course, where the greatest effect is found is in the bottom half of society, since this stratum is in greatest need of investment and will show the greatest dividends from this investment. As New Age economists, educators, psychologists and anthropologists all recognize, human capital constitutes the necessary and essential capital for any economic and political system. Limitations of financial capital, natural resources and even land base can be miraculously overcome by an intelligently focused human capital enrichment program. If we understand the synergy between health and education, and if we understand how to invest in them effectively, then the very essence of society can be changed in less than a generation as many Western and Oriental societies have already demonstrated.

This reality has worked so well for Japan that Hazel Henderson argues in her book, Politics of the Solar Age, that society currently controls or manages one dollar out of every four in the global economy. Since Japan is only 125 million people on an extremely small land base with virtually no resources, this figure is all the more startling. Japan’s per capita GNP is matched only by the per capita GNP of Sweden. These two populations are among the healthiest, most highly educated and the most economically productive that the world has to offer. They have done it by intelligent investment in the bottom half of their population through intelligently designed health and education programs.

France did not develop this strategy until well after World War II. However, since they have done so they have had an economic miracle which has seen them outstrip Britain by a full 50% margin. France has now caught up with the United States in terms of the affluence of their population, and regarding the bottom half of the population they have outstripped the United States. Out of the ruins of World War II, Germany has experienced the same economic miracle for the very same reason.

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Societies in the Orient which are mimicking Japan have likewise experienced the same economic miracle. The two most dramatic examples, because they started before other minidragons, are Singapore and Hong Kong. Currently, their per capita GNP is well ahead of Britain’s and closing fast on Japan. Korea and Taiwan started much later than Hong Kong and Singapore, but they certainly have seen an unbelievable improvement in their base population. They have outstripped Indonesia and the Philippines by ten-fold in per capita GNP.

Although the Americans seem to find it difficult to mobilize the political will for improving the lot of the bottom half of the society, they had best take heed from the worldwide examples and learn from them. Canada now has a choice between following the example of American social policy or looking to Northwest Europe for more appropriate strategies. The Americans currently are in crisis, and Canada does not need to follow their disastrous examples.

There is no doubt that the health and education institutions of Canada are more vital and more vigorous than their counterparts in the United States. Yet, if we follow inappropriate strategies borrowed from the Americans, we could lose the advantages which we currently possess vis-à-vis the Americans.

We must pay close attention to the bottom half of our population, both in health and education, and we must invest intelligently in the human capital of this base population. There are many ways Canada can achieve the per capita GNP and the prosperous and stable social context of Sweden or The Netherlands. Whether we have the creativity to invest in ourselves for optimal value, remains to be seen.

The world of today offers four basic models of socioeconomic and political organization. Nearly every society on the globe today is a living manifestation of one or another of these four models. In the real world, of course, the real thing is usually a co-mingling of more than one model. However, I find it relatively easy to understand social systems by relating them to one or another of these models.

1. The most ancient of these models is the feudal/military model. This tends to be characteristic of rural, relatively non-industrialized societies. However, some societies well along the path to industrialization have maintained the feudal/military concept of social organization. Until recently, Spain, Portugal and Greece are relevant examples. Today’s Argentina, Brazil and Philippines are examples. In such societies, wealth is concentrated in a tiny elite of 1 or 2 percent of the population. The peasant population and urban proletariat are systematically bled to the point that their lot is ruinous poverty. Although such societies have the capacity to industrialize, the results of industrialization are not shared by the massive “base population.”

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2. The next model can be characterized as the Adam Smith model. This social philosophy is a modernized version of the feudal/military model. Since 1776 when Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations, this book has provided a biblical reference for the new urban middle class made possible by the military conquests around the world by European nations. As Max Weber pointed out in his book several generations ago, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, there was a synergy between the philosophy of Adam Smith and the religious values of the Protestants. Thus the industrial urbanizing elements of Britain and other societies have a philosophy relevant to the imperial, commercial and industrial trends from the 18th century to the 20th century. This point of view saw the middle class as the legitimate creators of wealth and the appropriate possessors of property. It saw the existing feudal governments of the day as the enemy, and the peasants and factory workers as a labour resource in conjunction with land, minerals and factories. It is not too surprising that this model saw the rapid enrichment of the middle class at the expense of the “base population” and overseas subjects.

3. Karl Marx wrote his Communist Manifesto in 1848 and his massive work, Capital, during the 1860s. This radical model was an impassioned reaction to the grinding misery of the European “base population.” The societies adopting the Karl Marx model attempted to destroy the concept of private property and the institution of religion. The focal values of the Karl Marx model regard these two institutions as anathema to society devoted to equity and justice for the entire population. It goes without saying that the Karl Marx model is enjoying discreditably around the world. Even China, after 43 years of building the Karl Marx model, is now backing away from it as an economic focus.

4. The model which enjoys the highest level of credibility in today’s world I have dubbed the Otto Von Bismarck model. As Chancellor of Unified Germany, he created a polity that took clear shape during the 1860s and endures today as the organizing principle of Germany, France, Holland, Japan, Singapore and many other societies. This model sees government as the guiding instrument of society in conjunction with the industrial and commercial corporations. Private property is understood to have limits in its use and concentration. A healthy society must adequately allocate through one mechanism or another resources and services for the “base population.” The health system is deemed to be a way to ensure the health of the entire population and not just the affluent segment of the population. Health services are understood to be an essential component of a healthy society in every dimension. Likewise, education is seen as the generator of talents, skills and capacities of the entire population. This view of human capital has seen many societies explode out of feudalism into the modern industrial age.

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In Britain there is a married couple who have worked as a scholarly team in regard to the ‘conjugal’ nature of the health and education institutions. In Wynn and Wynn’s book, Prevention of Handicap and the Health of Women, they explore this issue with incredible clarity. Although British social policy has generally ignored scholars like the Wynns, the Bismarck model as practised in Northwest Europe manifests in a practical political fashion ideas outlined in their book. As the Wynns point out, if Britain fails to learn from France, Germany and Scandinavia then they will condemn themselves to being a marginal society in Europe. In the dozen or so years since they wrote the book, Britain has indeed lost even more ground vis-à-vis the continent.

The social policy implications for the ‘conjugal’ institutions in Canada are becoming clearer and clearer. We must question the very structural foundations of the health and educational institutions, especially as instruments for enriching the human capital of our base population.

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CHAPTER 2HUMAN CAPITAL / BASIC CULTURAL WEALTH

Introduction

This chapter focuses on the human mind as human capital. This focus will include: a look at human consciousness as it has evolved to today; its perceived economic value and mental potential in today’s organizations; the role of education--conventional and alternative--in the development of

human capital; and human capital in the contemporary workplace.

Evolution of Human Consciousness

Any work of this sort must look into the future. Although futurism is a risky game, we must be able to anticipate what humankind may create for itself 5, 10, 20 years in the future, or longer. Some trends are obvious; others are likely hidden from us. However, it is possible to write scenarios that examine some of the more probable courses of development. The future, however, is the future, and there are no guarantees.

One of the ways of looking into the future is by exploring the past. The growth of human consciousness over the last 100,000 years and longer is a truly exciting exploration and this growth has proven to be of great practical use. Not only has the human mind developed greater technical skills from the Ice Age to the current age; even more importantly, the human mind has explored its inherent capacity to study itself, to change itself, and to purposefully raise levels of consciousness. The last 100,000 years and more have witnessed the human spirit at work. This spirit has increasingly brought forth technical ability and mental awareness to provide ever-greater degrees of personal freedom and personal control. The next 100 years will most assuredly provide a test for the lessons learned throughout the previous 100,000 years. The genius of humankind is a double-edged sword: one side destructive, corrupting and disinvesting; the other side creative, and investing through positive understanding of human potential. Centuries ago it was clearly understood by those in the slave trade that human beings represented capital of enormous value. The bitterness of emancipation demonstrated clearly the strength of the understanding that human beings were, in the simplest and most direct form, capital (Hobhouse, 1990).

Modern industrial societies have generally lost sight of the recognition that human talent and human intellect, as well as human sweat, represents wealth. One of the clearest thinkers about this matter was the historian Oscar Handlin (1973). Even though North America was blessed with natural

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resources, and colonial powers poured financial capital into the New World, real investment was in importing human skills and human intellect, through immigration.

Since World War II, modern research and personal development programs have grown with vigour. Many streams of philosophy, psychology, medicine, organizational management, training strategies and personal growth strategies have combined to provide a new world view concerning human resources and the fundamentals of worth and value. Modern managers and professionals understand that the human mind possesses the capacity for self-analysis, self-teaching and self-correction. The human mind is now regarded as a vast storehouse of unused resources. A cliché in literature suggests that most people fail to use 90-95% of their mental resources. However, through simple and effective programs of self-investment and self-training, humans can learn to expand their available mental resource for problem-solving, growth and an expanded knowledge base. Such personal investment generates capital growth in the most fundamental and essential form.

One of the great contributions made by current thinkers and writers concerns a better understanding of the human mind, subconscious as well as conscious, and even the trans-personal nature of mind. Because the human mind has the capacity to be self-aware, self-teaching and self-correcting, culture is built in a cumulative fashion through the generations. Of course, accumulated science and technology are the most obvious expressions of intergenerational accumulation of cultural resources. However, we can look at knowledge and creativity in a broader context with a clearer understanding of the generative quality of individual human minds and the synergistic potential in cooperative effort.

Economic Perceptions of Human Capital

The human mind creates culture; culture expresses and defines value. Therefore, the organizational culture of any company or government department is the collective creation of its members and their predecessors, as a sharing of individual minds, for constructive and creative purposes, or, alternately, for attitudes which diminish and devalue. The ultimate value and worth which lies within the human mind and the accompanying useful array of human talents, can be mobilized and husbanded effectively and creatively; or all of it can be squandered.

As the human mind learns to study itself, it also learns to invest in itself through growth-oriented self-change. If the human mind is the primary and only form of true capital, then the economic implications of human resource development become not only clear, but also quite liberating. By a positive program of individual investment in mental resources, each person can create an avenue of personal growth and freedom from the enslaving bonds caused by

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external controls. In short, personal growth can lead to personal freedom, as well as to profoundly enhanced economic worth.

As the economic value of the human mind becomes clearer and better understood, organizations are increasingly realizing that they must give as much central attention to talent inventories as they do to concrete capital inventory. In our North American economic system, there is often a prevailing distinction that suggests human resources are soft, ill-defined and unreliable as compared to financial resources, deemed to be hard, precise and reliable. This work views this as a false distinction, seeing the perception of money based on the notion that value can be externalized from the human mind, then shifted and anchored in material objects or currency. This false distinction motivates policymakers to view employees as primarily an expense item; thus, managers fail to understand the capital value represented by the mental resources of employees through their aggregated talents. Traditionally machines and equipment tended to be seen as assets, with employees tending to be seen as liabilities. There is a real danger in our technological age that the continuing effort to replace people with machines may lead to a reckless abandonment of human capital and, with it, the expensive loss of some rare skills.

Value does not lie outside the human mind, even though the mind may attribute value to such things as a tar sands plant or a pocket full of coins. Although often prevalent, this work sees all such value as arbitrary, therefore changeable, dependent upon collective agreement through the dynamics of culture. This work sees human talents as expressions of mental resources; therefore, they constitute the true form of capital. We can quantify talent; we can measure it carefully; we can identify strengths and weaknesses, as well as the synergy of reciprocal talents. Just as chemicals can express a reciprocal synergy, which magnify their group effect, so it is with human talents. When human talents are properly identified and mobilized synergistically, the magnifying effect is significant. This process has two aspects: the creative function and the integrating function. It is important to recognize that these two functions are not inherently incompatible (Blakeslee, 1988a).

We must get away from the idea that an employee only brings to the company or organization the talent called upon in the job description. A company limiting its attention to narrow perception of its employees often denies itself a vast array of human capital, which could enrich the company beyond measure. No company or organization is so rich that it can afford to deny itself human resources vastly greater than the array of job descriptions.

In The Next American Frontier, Robert Reich (1984) believes strongly that the next frontier is nothing more nor less than a focusing of our attention on human capital and a consistent and wise strategy for enhancing this form of wealth. Arguing that the most competitive industrial societies are those which

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truly respect the concept of human capital and consistently pursue the enrichment of human capital, Reich believes that North America during the last half-century has failed to understand the wealth that human capital represents; therefore, for a half-century, North America has failed to husband this crucial resource. In the broadest national and corporate terms, our society tends to squander human capital, treating it as though it were merely an expense, except for the small percentage of humans which occupy senior executive levels. Even at those levels, we in North America can be inconsistent and wasteful.

Education and Human Capital

There is a change in the way education is viewed in North America. Rather than university being a rite of passage for the professions, to be accomplished between high school and career, today’s society perceives it very differently. Education, like product development, is a never-ending process which should be seen as a systematic investment in each and every individual’s human capital. Increasingly we understand enhancing human capital at an individual level through programs of continuing education and various programs for personal development. Economic reversals seem to sharpen this focus at the individual level, since it is a practical strategy for competing in the job market. However, a proactive strategy for utilizing human capital requires continuing personal development at all times, especially when the economy is buoyant.

The ‘Great Books’ program developed by the University of Chicago in the 1930s carefully built a curriculum revering the creative quality of today’s mind, by winnowing the accumulated knowledge of yesterday’s great writers. Robert Hutchins and Mortimer Adler, who co-created the program, were convinced that knowledge was power and that individual students could vastly expand both their knowledge and creative potential by focusing on less than 80 great books written during the preceding 2500 years. Their perception was that the human mind could accumulate through the generations a wide range of knowledge other than science and technology. They saw that ethical awareness could be enlarged, social tolerance could be expanded, political understanding could be increased, along with many other enriching dimensions of mental growth. The University of Chicago was careful to avoid reducing the program to an elitist exercise of literary catechism. They were concerned about the nature of North American education as a failure to appreciate the human mind in all elements of the population. They thought the University of Chicago could lead the way in building an educational philosophy that would celebrate the resources of all citizens throughout North America (Adler & Gardner, 1994).

Over 70 years later, we are still lamenting the failure of the educational system in firing the creative capacity of young students and competently

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guiding them in the acquisition of knowledge. This failure is costly, not only to the individual who fails in a personal sense, but is also extremely costly to North America’s economic order, as innumerable books and articles point out (Laxer, 1998; Swift, 1999; Willinsky, 1998).

We endlessly compare our educational system to that of Japan or West Germany, and we don’t like what we see. The problem is not so much with the top 25% of young students; rather, it is with the bottom 50%. The bottom 50% is condemned, for the most part, to occupational instability, frequent unemployment, work that remunerates poorly, and often to living circumstances that are as tenuous as their work itself.

This bottom 50% of our social system is treated wastefully by our failing to understand that there are mental resources left unused, undeveloped and unrespected by our educational system and by our marketplace. It should be acknowledged here that progressive business leaders and educators are recognizing this problem and are trying to do something about it. If we systematically waste half of our population, then we cripple ourselves in the international marketplace--already all too evident. We also cripple ourselves socially and politically through widespread alienation and even overt hostility to all of our major institutions. Nearly half of our population fails to vote, even in major federal elections. Traditional religious institutions have lost an enormous amount of popular support. This trend is reflected throughout other major structures of society.

If we socialize a large proportion of our fellow citizens in self-perception of failure or personal worthlessness, then we fail to invest purposefully and positively in all of those individual minds. So it should come as no surprise that if we fail to invest appropriately and effectively, then we fail to get any return on investment. In fact, instead of getting a social return, what tends to happen is that we get enlarged cost factors in a variety of social and health programs. A culture of failure easily develops into a culture of illness; a culture of illness becomes a serious personal and social liability, costly to everybody.

Many societies have understood the connection between the culture of illness and the disinvestment in human capital that damages the marketplace (Wynn & Wynn, 1979). Bismarkian Germany, well over 150 years ago, understood the connection between a vibrant economy and a competent population (Taylor, 1955). The economic and scientific miracle of German society that predated World War I was more than frightening to all of its competitors. And of course, out of the ashes of World War II, Japan had its own economic miracle resulting from their own careful investment in human capital with all the resulting benefits.

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The four mini-dragons of Asia--South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore likewise experienced the same growth for the same reasons. On the other hand, the Philippines’ failure to grow illustrates the plight of a number of other Third World countries who have failed to grow because of failure to understand human capital in any terms other than sweat. Fifty years ago, Finland clearly understood this problem and in one generation moved their economy from a Third World profile to a successful modern profile. A decade later, France came to the same realization and likewise developed a systematic effort toward capital investment in the vulnerable segments of their population. It is no accident that France has had an economic miracle parallel to their new social effort. This lesson is not just a recent one.

Implied so far, but not clearly distinguished, are two forms of human capital:

(i) sweat capital--simple physical labour. Modern technology is rapidly diminishing the importance of human labour. Also, physical power is little more than an alternative to animal power derived from horses, yaks or even draft dogs.

(ii) mental capital--the resources of the mind.

Those societies that restrict the view of human capital to that of mere labour reduce the view of human beings to being commensurate with donkey power. Much of the Third World is severely crippled by this tragically incomplete view of human worth (De Soto, 2000; Mazrui, 1986; Salvucci, 1996). Thus, country after country in the Third World is condemned to economic stagnation, social instability and financial mismanagement.

Education as Adult Lifestyle

The learning society is growing because it must . . . When life was simpler, one generation could pass along to the next generation what it needed to know . . . tomorrow was simply a repeat of yesterday. Now, however, the world changes faster than the generations, and individuals must live in several different worlds during their lifetimes. (Cross, 1981, p. 272)

One distinction our culture has historically made is between education and work. In education we have arranged our institutions so that education is that which is done in schools and colleges. Work is that which is done in plants and offices. This leads to a further distinction: Education is for young people and work is for mature people.

While it is true that companies are increasingly providing staff development services, it is also true that school boards and colleges are offering adult education programs. Historic traditions and distinctions are still

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dominant, however, and our support for adult education is still weak and erratic.

It is sad to observe that a significant part of our adult population is relatively incompetent in written and spoken language skills. Even sadder, all too many professional people read very little and are less than enthusiastic about continuing education. Many adult education course offerings consist of little more than recreation. It is also evident that universities reach out to the community with reluctance and hesitancy; therefore, they do not seriously engage the adult population in a focused, ongoing educational regime. Although the situation varies greatly across North America from one institution to another, and from one locale to another, the North American scene could certainly be improved. Typically, if individuals in our society wish to acquire graduate degrees, they must quit their jobs and return to the dependent, adolescent role associated with undergraduate life.

These traditions are kept alive by a false sense of standards; also by a total misunderstanding of human capital, and how to invest effectively in human capital. Those who function as professionals in human resources have an obligation to promote, in both private and public sectors, a healthier understanding of human capital and a commitment to invest in human capital and human resources through continuing education that is convenient, effective and growth-oriented. We must invest in the work force as a deliberate and focused strategy, leading to personal growth for every employee. There is simply no alternative to continuous personal growth through formal educational programs, and through work experience which recognizes personal growth (Blakeslee, 1988b).

In spite of the reluctance of traditional universities, a vigorous industry has grown up during the last generation through private universities that serve adult workers while they remain on the job. These universities--even though they are not subsidized--have achieved this spectacular growth by recognizing this clear need in the adult population and effectively meeting that need. Some public universities are beginning to move in this direction with a greater sense of priority; yet in the United States, as in Canada, they tend to suffer from bureaucratic ossification and a blunted sense of purpose (Ghosh & Ray, 1991).

Today’s competitive environment simply demands that we enrich the mind throughout the work years and afterwards by investing in personal growth through purposeful educational programs.

Alternative Educational Programs

‘Student as employee, and employee as student’ is rapidly becoming the theme of today’s workplace. Career flexibility and career development are increasingly entwined with educational enrichment as an ongoing and

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inseparable relationship. For over a generation the concept has been around of a university without walls. Both Britain and the United States have had a limited number of publicly supported educational institutions which actively promote off-campus services (McGeveran, 2001). However, this concept has only recently become widely acknowledged in the Western world. Some private universities are actively promoting programs in the workplace and other off-campus learning environments. Some of these programs are extremely high quality even though they are non-traditional.

The internet system is now changing, and will probably continue to change, the technology of education and the availability of information as well as formal courses. As a result, interest in education is beginning to cut across all demographic and regional categories. In fact, a recent survey confirms that Canadians are increasingly turning to the internet for education.

According to the survey, 26% of Canadians have searched the internet for online courses, 8% have taken an online course and 7 percent have taken an in-person course that includes a significant online component . . . . Among those who studied online, the great majority, or 90%, said they would recommend studying online. They said they liked online courses because they saved a significant amount of time, the courses improved their employment possibilities, and the internet provided them with a means to take courses they wouldn’t otherwise have sought. (Kapica, 2002, p. 1)

The survey concluded that education is making significant inroads into the way Canadians use the internet.

Educational institutions need to take advantage of this opportunity by exploring this area more closely in order to determine the types of courses potential participants are interested in taking online. . . . Besides being an effective medium for the actual delivery of online educational content, the internet is a significant marketing tool for institutions who are offering traditional in-person educational courses. (Kapica, 2002, p. 1)

The advantages of online education are further evidenced by these considerations:

- It is no longer necessary to quit work or to take a prolonged leave in order to further a university program. This means the cost of the education can be drastically reduced because there is no need to lose income for two or three years.

- There is no need to absorb the expenses commensurate with residential settings.

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- The structure of online education means that institutional staff costs and capital costs are greatly diminished by more rational planning and utilization of facilities.

An individual can acquire solid and competent academic recognition for academically valuable job experience. Through a variety of testing services and practicum arrangements, it is possible to get substantial academic recognition for job-related experience.

Modern communication and transportation greatly facilitate individualized instruction and off-campus services. Weekend seminars can draw instructors from across the continent with great efficiency, thereby making most locales accessible to some of the best brains in a given field of study. Modern telecommunication, facsimile transmission and the internet expand the information base beyond belief. Many graduate programs provide short, on-campus experiences during the summer, which can be integrated with a holiday schedule. This allows an annual gathering of the students, which provides the bonus of a certain amount of traditional university environment.

Through night courses, correspondence courses, teleconference courses and websites, students can avail themselves of a more individualized, if less systematic, approach to ongoing educational development. Although this approach involves a significant proportion of the adult American population, a certain ‘ad hoc’--even random characteristic tends to accompany this approach. Sometimes the interests do not rise much above the hobby level. If all one wants is to further a hobby, this issue should be clear both to the providers of the service and the students--although some hobbies can actually have considerable academic value and can lead to new career opportunities.

Human Capital in the Contemporary Workplace

The social and technical impact in the workplace imposed by advances in communication technology constitutes one of the most important foci of changes in the marketplace as well as the workplace. Innumerable books have been written about changes in the North American marketplace. Of course, these changes in the marketplace will have profound effects on the nature of the workforce, with corollary changes in the technical and social environment of work.

Technical advancements in telecommunications have reshaped the way we communicate from building to building or from city to city. As cell phones become miniaturized, they have become as much a part of personal paraphernalia as the ballpoint pen. Electronic publishing, along with advances in photocopying and facsimile transmission of information, have further revolutionized the style and impact of communication. Each office has the capacity to generate information as a self-contained electronic information

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system. Furthermore, the capacity of an office to receive, process and use information has been magnified considerably. There has also been a shift from blue-collar to white-collar employment. Automation on the shop floor is radically changing the nature of the factory and its human requirements. Obviously there is a point beyond which this change cannot proceed. Even with robotic energy, there will always be some requirement for human power to manage, organize, or perform dirty, unpleasant and manual labour. The percentage of blue-collar labour will probably not shrink to less than 10-20%. Although women on average are still paid less than the male population, there is no doubt that the female population is moving overwhelmingly into white-collar areas in the service industry and in office work. Women are now close to 50% of the workforce and will probably remain at this level for the foreseeable future (Reed, 1998). Doubtless the salary differential between men and women will lessen, but how it happens is up for intense argumentation in both business and government.

The average age of the workforce is rapidly rising, giving us a very different population pyramid than during the baby boom. Twenty-five percent of the population will soon be in the retirement category (Statistics Canada, 2002). This shift will mean a rapid decrease in the availability of cheap, youthful and inexperienced workers. Table 1 presents a comprehensive summary of these statistics.

TABLE 1SHIFTS IN POPULATION SIZE OF VARIOUS AGE GROUPS

COHORTYEAR OF

BIRTHAGE IN

2001

AVG. NO. OF BIRTHS PER

YEAR SIZE

Pre-WW1 Before 1914 88+ 201,000 Relatively small

WW1 1914-1919 82-87 244,000 Relatively small

1920s 1920-1929 72-81 249,000 Relatively large

Depression 1930-1939 62-71 236,000 Relatively small

WW2 1940-1945 56-61 280,000 Relatively large

Baby boom 1946-1965 36-55 426,000 Very large

Children of the boomers 1980-1995 6-21 382,000 Relatively large

Children of the baby bust cohorts 1996 on 0-5 344,000 Relatively small

(Statistics Canada, 2002)

Another serious challenge concerns the educational profile of the population. Half the workforce will be technically competent and fully

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acclimatized to the communication demands of the coming white-collar world (Statistics Canada, 2002). However, the other half of the workforce will represent serious impairment in communication skills as well as the technical and personal aptitudes characteristic of the white-collar world. To change this situation requires a profound re-examination of the causes of this condition and strategies required for dramatically changing it.

The modern marketplace demands effective communication and unfettered creativity. If we truly believe in these things, then it is essential to teach people how to maximize their mental resources. Both large governments and multinational companies constitute the primary targets for change. The bloated and the ossified must be decentralized, streamlined and simplified--or else they run the risk of bankruptcy or disintegration. Tom Peters (1988) argues, as do others, that small is beautiful and flexibility an imperative.

Fortune 500 has shed hundreds of thousands of jobs through automation and offshore manufacturing. North America is rapidly becoming a marketplace of service companies, involving perhaps as much as three out of four in the workforce. Along with the flattening of management structures goes a decentralization of research and development, marketing strategies and product modification (Thurow, 1980). The marketplace is becoming an elaborate array of small, specialized niches responsive to small, flexible companies (note the explosion of small beer companies with unique products filling a specialized niche all over North America). More creative product development and higher-quality products are essential to the new style. It is just as imperative for people to change as it is for companies to change.

Healthy leadership is important through a clear understanding of mentoring; yet leadership is not enough. Each individual must take responsibility and control of his/her own personal investment program as a positive contribution to him/herself and, therefore, to the organization. A healthy personal investment program will most assuredly build a healthy organization. Leadership can coach, urge and facilitate, but it cannot take control or responsibility for the personal investments of each individual. Ultimately that lies with each and every person.

CHAPTER 3COMMUNICATION AND CREATIVITY

Introduction

In Tom Peters’s (1988) Thriving on Chaos, he sounds an alarm bell that would shatter the ears of the deaf. It is his opinion, as well as many other New

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Age thinkers, that the North American marketplace is currently experiencing--and will continue to experience--an unbelievable transformation.

Both large governments and multinational corporations constitute the primary targets for change. The bloated and the ossified must be decentralized, streamlined and simplified or else they run the risk of bankruptcy or disintegration. Peters does believe, as many do, that small is beautiful and that flexible is an absolute imperative.

In recent years, the Fortune 500 has shed hundreds of thousands of jobs through automation and offshore manufacturing. North America is rapidly becoming a marketplace of service companies, involving perhaps as much as three out of four in the workforce. Along with the flattening of management structures goes a decentralization of research and development, marketing strategies and product modification. The marketplace is becoming an elaborate array of small, specialized niches responsive to small, flexible companies. (Note the explosion of small beer companies with unique products filling a specialized niche all over North America.) More creative product development and higher quality products are essential to the new style. It is just as imperative for people to change as it is for companies to change.

In Vincent Nolan’s (1987) Innovative Management Skills, he deals with three crucial subjects: communication, problem solving and team building. As a New Age thinker, he understands problem solving and communication as brilliantly as anyone I have read. I am persuaded that effective communication and truly creative problem solving are skills that everybody needs in the new marketplace. Although we give lip service to unfettered creativity and lucid communication, I am of the opinion that a wide variety of subliminal cultural streams sabotage both communication and creativity. Nolan makes a very strong case for most corporate climates being quite hostile to innovation even though they talk about valuing it. It perhaps is a truism to say that the more layers of management an organization possesses, the greater is the likelihood of amplifying error in the process of communicating.

We talk endlessly about listening being crucial to communication, yet how many fast-trackers really know how to do that? For communication to be accurate, it must be open and yet how often do hidden agendas completely derail open or honest communication? Those who are familiar with New Age literature are probably aware of the potential negative impact of subconscious strategies and hang-ups on both communication and creativity.

Conscious assertions regarding the merits of innovative talents and vital communication are not enough. Everybody needs to learn how to access subconscious resources and reprogram subconscious fear and anger if the individual is to contribute to the organization at a level closer to his true potential. Since organizational culture is built by the participation of those

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individuals involved in the organization for a long time, it becomes obvious how important it is to make better use of the true potentials of all managers and employees.

The mind resources available to everyone through a better understanding of transpersonal consciousness as well as the inner consciousness are simply beyond measure. Programs now abound for teaching people how to avail themselves of these resources and, just as important, how to unload all of the debilitating, limiting and diverting strategies that nearly everyone has picked up during a lifetime of experience.

For over a quarter century, Herbert Benson, MD, along with a number of Harvard colleagues, has explored the powers of the human mind from a medical perspective through careful quantification of physical experiences, either of a destructive nature or of a healing capacity. In Your Maximum Mind (Benson, 1987), he provides a clear focus to the considerable amount of research done at Harvard over the last generation. Innumerable other universities are following similar research pursuits with parallel results.

Put very simply, the mind and body possess two modes of response: the stress response and the relaxation response. Prolonged exposure to the stress response is inhibiting to the mind and debilitating to the body in very measurable terms, whereas the relaxation response expands the mind and heals the body in easily quantifiable terms. In short, stress is not only the enemy of the individual--in its totality among many individuals it becomes the enemy of the organization. Furthermore, if communication is to flow openly and honestly as well as reciprocally it must be by virtue of individual minds being free of the counterproductive forces of stress.

The modern marketplace demands effective communication and unfettered creativity. If we truly believe in these things, then it is essential to teach people how to maximize their mental resources.

Innovation: Creativity or Crisis

Innovation — “The introduction of something new: A new idea, method or device” (Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary).

With this definition of innovation in mind, it is obvious that innovation is commensurate with change. The change may be massive or minimal; it may be structural or procedural; it may be in equipment or materials; or it may be in manpower configurations of management or the front line. Yet something important must be said about change. Although the marketplace is constantly experiencing change, the consequences can be negative and destructive as well as creative and developmental. Change can elicit the emotion of fear as well as the expectation of benefits. Change can be manifested amid aggression and

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confrontation, or it can be a cooperative expression of quality control and productive output.

Ideological compulsions can drive the pursuit of change so that management fails to distinguish between the destructive and the beneficial. If management denigrates human capital and debases its value, then change may be pursued without regard for the talents of the workforce or the human potential of the frontline. If this mistake is made, then an enormous amount of productive capacity can be crippled and vast reserves of financial capital can be dissipated.

Two companies typify the difference between innovation as a creative process and innovation as a state of crisis. Eastern Airlines, under the guidance of Frank Lorenzo, constituted a pristine case of blind change resulting in crisis and eventual dissolution. In contrast, Chrysler Corporation, under the guidance of Lee Iacocca, clearly demonstrates an organization which innovates creatively and effectively.

Frank Lorenzo began his dubious career by managing Texas Air, derisively known as Teeter-Totter Air. Through clever strategies understood by accountants, lawyers and bankers pursuing the goals of takeover, Frank Lorenzo was able to acquire Continental Airlines. Through bankruptcy manipulations and other exploitative tactics, he bashed the workforce into submission to gain leverage in the deregulated marketplace. Few analysts saw any benefit to the public, any benefit to the employees or any benefit to productivity. It was simply takeover for takeover’s sake and the financial milking of the company. With this lesson firmly lodged in Mr. Lorenzo’s mind, he then acquired Eastern Airlines. He subsequently began selling off pieces of the airline, demanding massive salary cuts from frontline employees and otherwise behaving as a raider. In 1991, Eastern declared bankruptcy, as did its sister company, Continental, a few years earlier.

These acquisitions certainly precipitated change by a so-called innovative response to the deregulated airline industry. Obviously, this form of innovation relies on aggression, confrontation and crisis. In the case of Eastern Airlines, the stakes were 30,000 jobs, 20% of the flying public and the solvency of the junk bonds for such maneuvers. As a ruthless corporate raider and union buster, Frank Lorenzo was named as “one of Time Magazine’s 10 Worst Bosses of the Century” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Air_Lines). Such entrepreneurial skills do not benefit the marketplace and do not serve the reputation of capitalism in a positive manner.

Fortunately, Chrysler Corporation tells a very different story. The earlier management of Chrysler, dominated by bankers and accountants, had virtually destroyed the company. However, when Lee Iacocca brought the new

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management team to Chrysler, the changes were startling, dramatic and effective. For years, Lee Iacocca and many of his close colleagues had regarded their careers at Ford as a stifling of creativity and a blockage of innovation. When he and associates gained control of Chrysler, their innovative talents became obvious almost instantly. Quality control was attacked with passion and purpose, and the results were profound. New product lines were established which filled obvious niches in the marketplace. Plant efficiency was dramatically improved without reducing the workforce to Third World wage rates. Chrysler demonstrated that you could enjoy North American wage rates and remain competitive with offshore automobile companies.

Chrysler invested appropriately in its human capital as well as its physical plant. The benefits to the employees and to the marketplace are a matter of record. Dutch and German companies understand this principle and so do Japanese companies. Fortunately, an increasing number of North American companies like Chrysler understand these principles. The dramatic turnaround at Harley-Davidson is another case in point. The revitalization of Remington Electronics is another.

Tom Peters’s (1988) Thriving on Chaos also provides a very long list of case histories of companies who have begun to understand how to better invest in human capital and how to benefit from that investment. Peters also makes a point well worth pondering. He argues that Japan and Germany and other hot competitors invest in engineering talents and technical skills to a far greater degree than North America. He also points out that we over-invest in lawyers and accountants, which may be useful for takeover gambits but add little to the productive spirit of the marketplace. Peters suggests that if we invest in human capital, then we need to focus on engineering, science and technology. The current emphasis on MBAs and lawyers is, to his mind, counterproductive. The contrast between Eastern Airlines and Chrysler Corporation certainly supports Tom Peters’s contention.

Working, Learning and Growing

Our culture has historically made some distinctions which are no longer very useful. First, we have arranged our institutions so that education is that which is done in schools and work is that which is done in plants and offices. This leads to another distinction: Education is for young people and work is for mature people.

It is true that increasingly companies are providing staff development services, and it is also true that school boards and colleges are offering adult education programs. But the historic traditions and distinctions are still dominant, and our support for adult education is still weak and erratic.

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It is sad to observe that roughly half of our adult population is relatively incompetent in written and spoken language skills. Even sadder, all too many professional people read very little and are less than enthusiastic about continuing education. Too much of the adult education offerings are fluff courses being little more than recreation. It also is most evident that universities in Canada reach out to the community with reluctance and hesitancy and therefore they do not seriously engage the adult population in a focused, ongoing educational regime. Typically in Canada, if you wish to acquire graduate degrees you must quit your job and return to the dependent, adolescent role associated with undergraduate life.

These traditions are kept alive by a false sense of standards and by a total misunderstanding of human capital and how to invest effectively in human resources. Those of us who function as professionals in human resources have an obligation to promote in both the private and public sectors a more healthy understanding of human capital and a commitment to invest in human resources through continuing education that is convenient, effective and growth-oriented. We must invest in the workforce as a deliberate and focused strategy leading to personal growth for every member of the workforce. There simply is no alternative to continuous personal growth through formal education programs and through work experience which recognizes personal growth.

A vigorous industry has grown up in the United States through the private industry context that serves adult workers while they remain on the job. These universities have had spectacular growth, even though they are not subsidized, by recognizing the clear need in the adult population and effectively meeting that need. Some public universities are beginning to move in this direction with a greater sense of priority, yet in the United States as in Canada they tend to suffer from bureaucratic ossification and a blunted sense of purpose.

Nevertheless, American businesses are increasingly searching for a more effective relationship between the classroom and the marketplace. American business spends over $200 billion a year on in-house educational programs (this is considerably more than Canada’s annual national budget). Private American universities seem to understand this issue and are willing to energetically bridge the gap.

Increasingly, Canadians are recognizing the value of this new spirit and are therefore bringing the American programs to Canada. This is causing reactions from Canadian universities which tend to be more self-serving than public-spirited. If Canadians want to avoid American intrusions, it will be necessary to create our own educational programs which serve our adult population with high-grade meat rather than recreational fluff.

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We who are in human resources must energetically tend to our own educational needs and constantly invest in our own personal growth through an ongoing educational program. Although many people currently do this on their own, I believe it would be valuable for human resources organizations to focus on this issue and to promote it relentlessly, especially for their own members, but also for the business environment at large. Human resources people are constantly called upon to serve as mentors and teachers. In my view it is very difficult to be a quality mentor or teacher without, at the same time, being an enthusiastic student. Formal, structured, educational programs do provide focus and encouragement for personal growth, but many informal devices can also play a vital role, such as a clear and disciplined reading program.

Today’s competitive environment simply demands that we enrich the mind throughout the work years and even afterward by investing in personal growth through purposeful educational programs.

Problem Solving and the Role of Metaphor

There is a false distinction that has plagued Western culture for centuries, if not for millennia, dealing with the dichotomy between that which is metaphoric and that which is literal. In our common-sense traditions, we are sure that some words and some ideas represent reality in a literal meaning in that there is no doubt about the connection between the object and the idea. Ordinary language philosophy has provided a 20th-century academic justification for this point of view.

The corollary to this idea is that some words and some ideas represent reality only as a metaphor. That is, the connection between the object and the idea is an indirect, symbolic connection. The color black in China has a very different symbolic significance than the same color has in Canada. The maple leaf in Canada possesses a very different symbolic charge than it would have in China. There are those who would see some passages in the Bible as a careful recounting of point-by-point events while others would regard the same passages as an allegorical lesson. Disputes over biblical interpretation can give real poignancy to the distinction between literal and metaphoric accounts. However, the world of mathematics can provide a more objective look at this distinction. Algebraic formulas are not, and cannot be, a literal representation of the environment. These systems are culturally agreed-upon systems of symbols that are by their nature arbitrary and conventional and, therefore, utterly without literal representation.

If symbols lack a widespread conventional understanding, then they seem esoteric or, if you will, metaphoric. If an individual is highly innovative, then by definition this person is introducing symbolic references which have not established a high level of group acceptance and understanding. The issue here is not a distinction between the literalness of ideas and the metaphoric

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nature of ideas, but rather the nature of acceptance of symbolic reference points. The argument boils down to this point: The human mind operates in terms of symbols–new and old. The symbolic content of the mind is, therefore, a metaphoric representation of external objects and events. Therefore, mind is metaphor and there is no distinction between literal representation and metaphoric representation. There may be distinctions at the symbolic level between the simple and the complex, the generally accepted and innovative, the routine and the bizarre, and many other such distinctions. Yet all remains metaphor. This point becomes important in the way training is done in any organization, or certainly in the implications for organizational development.

Often in training the technique of role play is used. The technique has been used for countless years with widespread acceptance. However, there is a danger in the technique in that it can become cliché-ridden and extremely predictable. On the other hand, if improvisational dramatic techniques are introduced, by its nature innovation occurs and the process becomes less predictable. The process of improvisation seems to some as metaphoric or allegorical when, in fact, the real issue is that it is innovative. Innovation gives freshness to a process because the individuals involved must engage in establishing commonality of meaning and agreement regarding symbols. The innovative process of improvisation theatre elevates role play to a symbolically richer process. Many would argue that the symbolically richer process provides a more creative climate for learning which can result in more effective training.

The same point can be made regarding the process of brainstorming. Hanging charts on the wall and allowing people to make lists on those charts often is highly conventional and extremely predictable. Regardless of the situation, the same old words and the same old lists can occur over and over and over. The predictability of the process drastically diminishes the effectiveness of time spent doing it. Utility is lost in predictability. However, if the group is encouraged to consciously and deliberately engage in a synectic approach, then predictability is exchanged for innovation. That is, the persons involved are encouraged to use metaphor in the process, which means that the connection between symbols and events becomes more removed. The freshness of the symbolic content necessitates a mental process of reaching for understanding and groping for mutuality that may emerge. This deliberate use of metaphor breaks the process of literal-mindedness and conventionality. If trainers accept the idea that mind is metaphor and they consciously use the metaphoric potential of group action, then innovation can occur. Utility is enhanced at the expense of predictability.

There are some hazards in deliberately and purposefully using innovative techniques for purposes of organizational development or even of training. Many people are afraid of exposure or afraid of rejection. Such people believe they can protect themselves from these fears by routine, predictable

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behaviour. Consequently, the demand for innovation precipitates exposure and leaves the issue of acceptance more than a little open. Those who govern their lives by fear do feel precarious in the midst of innovative process. However, if an organization governs its internal dynamics through the shared fear of its members, then that organization runs the risk of sterility and complacency.

Skill Inventory as an Organization Innovation

During the last generation, much managerial energy has been spent in the improvement of inventory systems. Sloppy inventory management has been the downfall of many companies which otherwise function well in the marketplace.

Modern computers certainly make it easier to maintain exact reading on inventories and appropriate balances of supplies and materials. Oil companies can provide daily checks on several important functions of each and every well in the company’s system. Manufacturing companies are now able to keep a flow of materials without having enormous backup supplies in the warehouses. Smart management and smart computers have made inventory control a much simpler and a much more efficient process.

Unfortunately, North American organizations have not given equal attention to developing inventories relevant to the skills, talents and capacities of their roster of employees, both frontline and management. A company’s human resources, represented by the skills, talents and capacities of their total complement of employees, constitute greater assets than goods or cash. Michael Silva, Tom Peters, Peter Drucker, Robert Reich, Lester Thorow, William Ouchi and John Naisbett are some of the modern thinkers offering persuasive arguments regarding people as assets rather than seeing them as mere costs.

It is as important to know and appreciate the skills and talents of frontline workers as it is to know the total capacities of senior management. The Germans, Dutch, Swedes and Japanese have, for decades, understood the importance of human beings as company assets. Furthermore, it is as important to invest in the mental resources of each and every employee as it is to invest in the plant and equipment. When Chrysler lost sight of this reality, it faced bankruptcy. However, Lee Iococca and his team dramatically returned this corporation to the healthy column. They realized that the company required management which understood their human resources as much or more than the financial resources.

Tom Peters’s (1988) book, Thriving on Chaos, catalogues a long list of North American companies who have redirected their thinking in terms of human assets. As he and many other management experts recognize, there are a number of North American companies who have followed this principle for

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decades. Warren Buffett’s investment genius (he is the all-time success story in the investment field) clearly understands that a company’s assets are people as much as products.

It is safe to say, however, that few companies have developed clear, concise inventory systems for their human resources. Personnel forms are full of irrelevant information, useless information or, worse still, mischievous information. Typically, questions are asked for which there is no clear, useful purpose. All too often, personnel forms gather dust unless the employee is going to be fired or laid off. The decision-making for promotions or for severance is often little better than whimsical. No truth can be clearer than, “No information should be gathered if it is not going to be intelligently used.” The corollary to this truth is, “Be sure that each item in the human inventory provides beneficial knowledge.”

When building a skill and talent inventory, the human resources department should keep several principles in mind:

(1) Although skill inventories can be meshed with performance evaluations, punitive intent must be kept out of the instrument.

(2) Trust must exist for all those included in the inventory toward those who manage the inventory.

(3) Ethical management of skill inventories must appear to be true as well as being true in fact.

(4) If an inventory is to be useful, it must be used daily, weekly or at most monthly.

(5) The object of the inventory is to mesh job requirements with individual skills--an easy accomplishment if irrelevancies are kept out of the way.

(6) It is crucial to understand that skills developed off the job can be extremely valuable for work assignments.

(7) It is important to recognize that specific work assignments and individual personalities are much more multidimensional than is customarily recognized.

(8) The social and personal investment in each adult human being is gigantic, and the inventory should capitalize on such previous investments.

(9) The inventory should be meshed with in-house training and outside education which should be an ongoing program for all individuals.

(10) The inventory must be as objective, appropriate and valuable as the effort given to the company’s financial documents.

If the company’s skill and talent inventory is developed with these principles in mind, organizational effectiveness and strategic innovation can be enhanced in a spectacular manner. The mentoring and leadership capacity of management can become much more purposeful and valuable in both short- and long-term

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contexts. The front-line atmosphere can acquire a much more humanitarian culture toward assisting employees’ ownership of their work assignment.

It is time that all organizations--government, corporations and private agencies--learn from those companies who respect their human resources. Effective and useful inventories necessarily enrich reciprocal respect within an organization by making teamwork more vigorous and more collaborative.

Issues in Today’s Complex Organization

A generation ago, Robert Ardrey wrote The Territorial Imperative (1966) and African Genesis (1961) among other things. His central theme in these books was very simple: Throughout human evolution and the parallel evolution of our close cousins, group life has always been dominate by the drive for status and the equal drive to protect turf. He saw these two drives largely as the main business of males; of course, the main business of females was reproduction. In today’s highly urbane and civilized life, Ardrey believed that these two drives dominated life in the complex organization as much as they did a million years ago on the East African plain. Those who are inclined to a more chauvinistic view of the world tend to find Ardrey’s arguments attractive. However, in the world of anthropology as well as in the business of organizational development, there are vocal thinkers who strongly disagree with Ardrey.

Richard Leakey, one of my favourite anthropologists, views human origins as a collaborative and cooperative effort with the emphasis on egalitarian spirit between the sexes and status arrangements being relatively undifferentiated. These two world views have clashed since before the days of Hobbs and Locke.

A German thinker of enormous weight regarding the study of complex organization was Max Weber. A hundred years ago he established the modern science of organizational analysis and the various behavioural themes that are most likely in complex organization. Peter Blaugh subsequently updated Weber and placed the analysis in a North American context. Then in the 1980s, Brian Spikes became a particularly clear spokesman for changing the traditional view of organizational dynamics. Since Weber, the trend has been away from authoritarian, autocratic, rigid, highly stratified organizational structure to fluid, relatively flat, highly flexible organizations. The emphasis is away from leaders who dictate toward leaders who mentor.

One of the most traditional issues that hangs on tenaciously is the psychological and structural split between line management and those providing staff functions. A lot of organizational energy is consumed by the not-so-subtle conflict over status and turf that tends to haunt line and staff cleavages. Those with a New Thought orientation see such energy expenditures

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as debilitating, diverting and inhibitory. Those with a traditional point of view regard such conflict as inevitable, natural and productive. In this regard I am definitely not a traditionalist.

Creativity is not enhanced by conflict, and productivity is not enhanced by personal struggle even if it’s polite. The North American passion for perks of status and well-defined turf is, in my mind, a cultural aberration which we inherited from Great Britain. However, new cultural influences are sweeping North America which support a world view totally different from its traditional organizational structures. In setting up an automobile plant in Quebec, the Koreans taught a dramatically different lesson about status and turf. They delicately blended all components of leadership into a very flat organization, with lateral barriers minimized or eliminated. In short, in their plant the ‘egg crate’ approach to management has been stripped, along with assigned parking spaces, private washrooms and all the other badges of turf and status.

One obvious concept we need to look at in North America is that an office may be occupied simultaneously by more than one person, and that within the office people can be brought together because of their varied talents rather than because of their rigid similarities. In short, staff can be blended with line without raising the traditional reference points of conflict, namely status and turf. A generation ago, Peter Blaugh thought that the flow of communication in a complex organization must flow as freely upward as downward. For this to happen, barriers of status and turf must be minimized. Creativity is crippled if communication is crippled. If the upward flow of communication is blocked, then there is serious crippling. It is equally obvious that the lateral flow of communication must be open and free. Psychological and structural divisions between staff and line certainly cripple lateral communication.

Traditional organization was built on a rigid military model. The New Age organizational model is a flat, flexible and creative one.

Multiculturalism and Human Capital

First, let’s look at the concept of human capital. As I understand this idea, human capital means the sum total of an individual’s capacities, talents and skills present in the mind of the individual and exchangeable with other individuals. Consequently, the culture of any organization constitutes the pooling of all of the mental capacities, talents and skills of those who constitute membership in the organization. Therefore, human capital is both a concept applicable to a given individual or a specific group. Skills are abilities generated by careful training and applicable to specific performance requirements whether it be operating a lathe or playing a violin. I see talents as a higher order of mental resources referring to particularly conspicuous abilities of an individual which may well be inborn. In musical terms, Itzhak

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Perlman has talent whereas a barn dance fiddler has skill. The more difficult concept to identify is that of capacities. It seems to me the human mind possesses some fundamental inherent functions from which all things are derived. There, elemental capacities of mind concern such things as communication, emotional states, intuition and a great many other basic functions. As a result, human resources are manifestations of the human mind at work through its accumulated capacities, talents and skills. When people work cooperatively and collectively, these resources can be multiplied synergistically, meaning that the contribution of the many individuals are multiplied rather than merely added.

In a pluralistic society such as Canada or the United States, the concept of multiculturalism is essential to healthy relationships among the various racial, religious and ethnic elements that constitute a pluralistic society. Even though the Americans have historically espoused a process of fusion of these various elements in the motif of the melting pot, that society has, in recent years, accepted a much more pluralistic model. In Canada, the view toward the diverse elements of society has been a model typified by the concept of a mosaic. The idea of a mosaic makes an effort to honour the cultural and social differences characterizing each element of the mosaic. Thus the idea of multiculturalism possesses a peculiarly Canadian flavour. It has not been easy to honour the idea of multiculturalism because people have often been fearful of cultural and social differences. Yet in the last couple of decades, the Government of Canada and more recently the Government of Alberta have given greater reality to the concept of multiculturalism through official government policy.

The key to honouring human capital in a multicultural environment is communication. All human enterprises are manifestations of communication whether it be at the family level, the company level or the community. Unfortunately, human communication has two opposite capacities. When communication is healthy, generative, open and supportive, the social benefits are enormous. However, human communication can be negative, destructive, dishonest and poisonous. The social costs generated can be horrendous. Both the idea of human capital and the idea of multiculturalism can only survive in a healthy state if communication is kept positive and generative rather than negative and destructive.

In short, the issue becomes a matter of investment. Positive communication facilitates enriched investment by generating social value. Disinvestment is a by-product of negative communication by inducing social costs. If different social elements possess skills, talents and capacities particular to their own group, then each ethnic group can contribute an enrichment to the human capital stock. Just as team building in modern organizations often relies on a number of individuals with divergent abilities

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that can greatly enrich the team, so it can also be applied to communities and corporations. A variety of cultural groups can synergistically greatly magnify or multiply the capacities, talents and skills available to the organization.

Investment in human capital can be enriched by encouraging each cultural element to add their particular genius to the total pool of skills, talents and capacities. To do this it is absolutely essential to be able to identify the skills and talents of each individual in a very sensitive manner. It is possible to develop inventories of skills and talents in a manner that honours cultural differences rather than trying to avoid them. In building such inventories, communication must be kept open and honest and utterly free of hidden hostilities or punitive judgements. No organization can afford to be ignorant of the full range of skills of any individual, nor can they afford to be ignorant of the cultural riches of any particular ethnic group.

Through a healthy multicultural policy, human capital can be enriched for the company or for the community. It is necessary to recognize both the hazards of negative investments as well as the practical payoffs of positive investments.

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CHAPTER 4TRADITIONAL VS. NEW AGE ORGANIZATIONAL

CHARACTERISTICS

Introduction

When looking at today’s organizations from a New Age perspective, the assumption is made that all formal organizations share a high level of functional and structural characteristics regardless of the institutional setting in which they appear. Government agencies, business enterprises and educational services are similar creatures by the mere fact of being formal organizations. Obviously, a steel plant is different from an elementary school, a government health service is different from a high school. Nonetheless, these differences can give rise to notions that these various formal organizations share little in common. After recognizing these differences, it is important and necessary to look at formal organizations as a category of human creations which can be related to one another in a meaningful and fruitful way. During the 5000 years since mankind has invented and elaborated on formal organizations, the principles governing such organizations have endured through time and have had parallel expressions in a wide range of cultural settings.

Traditional formal organizations were invented to manage the complex affairs of early urban life. The differentiation of labour, the stratified class structure, the formalized institutions of religion and government, and the very extensive and complicated requirements of an established military led to the necessity of formal organizations. I see human associations in essentially two manifestations:

(1) Informal organizations are essentially emotionally rich, personally intimate and relatively enduring associations. Of course, such things leap to mind as the nuclear family, extended families, friendship associations, intimate work groups and collaborative efforts of artists and craftsmen. In primitive and peasant societies, these organizations operate without written codes and rules and without formal outside instruments of dispute resolution and community management.

(2) Formal associations tend to express rules and codes which are written and which do substitute the more personal methods of directing group effort. Formal organizations can be relatively small, involving only a handful of people, but often they are very large associations of many thousands. Formal organizations attempt to regulate and control status and role relationships and rules of leadership in a non-personal and non-intimate fashion. The industrial revolution and the urban explosion commensurate with it have vastly elaborated the size, the complexity and the number of formal organizations.

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Formal organizations, having operated for centuries based on traditional models, are now rapidly changing to adapt to this new social model, often referred to as the Information Age, the Post-Industrial Age, or the New Age. Many people prefer the term ‘New Age’ because it implies cultural changes in areas of life other than the marketplace. The term itself suggests cultural emphases of a philosophical, religious and psychological frame of reference. Furthermore, even medicine, anthropology, sociology and physics are being revolutionized both epistemologically and methodologically.

One of the most brilliant analysts of this tradition has been Fritjof Capra in several of his works, from The Tao of Physics (1975), The Turning Point (1982), Uncommon Wisdom (1988), and The Web of Life (1996). Another brilliant analyst concerned with this shift in consciousness is Ken Wilber in books such as Up from Eden (1981). In the religious realm, Ernest Holmes had an enormous impact through a long life of teaching and writing. His book, The Science of Mind (1938) typifies his life’s work.

Experts in organizational development have given a practical spin to some of this thinking. Such articulate spokesmen include Brian Spikes, Tom Peters and Peter Drucker. Generally, this group of New Age management experts express a conviction that the world as we find it since World War II and into this next century is so fundamentally different from the traditional industrial urban model that our very survival requires a fundamental mutation in the nature of formal organizations and in the principles by which we manage them. Three schemata will attempt to give some shape to the nature of the New Age perception of formal organizations and their requirements: Managing an Innovative System, Personal and Organizational Alternatives, and New Age and the Traditional Organizational Characteristics.

Managing an Innovative System

The health and vitality of any organization relies on a management team that knows how to manage an innovative system in a rapidly changing social environment. Team building for management groups is universally necessary in today’s organization.

Six major qualities must be strongly present for a management team to be effective and innovative. They are:

(1) Communication – open and honest,(2) Reciprocal help – dependable and reliable,(3) Respectful relationships – integrity and dignity of each,(4) Generating group image – awareness of clients and colleagues,(5) Shared purpose – team cohesion, and(6) Planning – priorities and strategies.

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The six functions mentioned above presuppose a rapidly changing human environment. It presupposes that innovation constitutes a necessity for organizations to deal with. This model also presupposes that traditional, rigid, authoritarian and highly stratified organizations are out of place in the human requirements of today. Although Max Weber did a brilliant job of analyzing the classic aspects of the traditional organization, his view of bureaucracy is no longer relevant to today’s organizations if the New Age analysts are correct. The six items above are intended as a functional hierarchy. That is, the #1 requirement of an organization is effective communication which is open and honest. No longer can communication from the top down only; no longer can communication be used manipulatively and dishonestly if the organization is to cope in today’s climate. If communication is multidimensional and if hidden agendas are kept out of the communication process, then the second step in the functional hierarchy can have a reasonable chance for success.

The second item, reciprocal help, indicates teamwork and mutual support which creates a functional synergy. If the task teams have a strong sense of collaborative responsibility and a web of reciprocal inputs to the group effort, then this functional level can provide the support for the third item in the hierarchy.

Without going through a description of all six levels, suffice it to say that planning is the ultimate functional requirement. Through planning, innovation is encouraged and directed. For planning to be effective, it must be recursive. Feedback from all stakeholders must focus the planning process day by day. Planning is not restricted to the front office but rather should be incorporated into the daily activities of each and every task team.

One of the reasons that planning often becomes ineffective and even unacceptably time-consuming is because an organization attempts to plan without dealing with the first five functions in the hierarchy. Planning can be efficient and effective if the other five functions are in a healthy state of operation. Not only is it the pulse of innovation, but is also the servant of organizational requirements. Planning can be the barometer by which the recursive inputs of an organization can be focused and managed.

Personal and Organizational Alternatives

In the table presented below, there are 10 polarities of requirements within an organization which focus on organizational needs (left-hand column) and individual needs (right-hand column). These 10 polarities can be weighed one against the other in terms of the weight given to one column at the expense of the other. When using a percentage, it can be determined where an organization should be and, in fact, where it is in actual operation. The New Age organization would emphasize the items in the right-hand column at the expense of those in the left-hand column. Particular organizations may vary in

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the weight given to the right-hand column. However, no organization could abandon the left-hand column altogether. Whether the weight in the left-hand column should be 10% or 30% depends on the size and complexity of the organization among other things.

PERSONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL ALTERNATIVES     Standard Procedure Individual JudgementCentral Management Frontline ManagementVertical Relationships Lateral RelationshipsManagement Ownership Job OwnershipAuthority InitiativeEfficiency EffectivenessSet Time Discretionary TimeFixed Environment Flexible Environment“Boss” Oriented Rewards Self-Oriented RewardsTraining MentoringJob Description Skill Inventory

New Age and Traditional Organizational Characteristics

This third and final schemata again presents two columns of reciprocal functions, with the traditional organization typified in the left-hand column and the New Age organization typified in the right-hand column. In a sense, this can be viewed as a good list/bad list setup. The optimal idea, therefore, is to replace functions in the left-hand column by those in the right-hand column to the greatest degree possible.

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NEW AGE AND TRADITIONALORGANIZATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS

Traditional New AgeLabour as liabilities Employees as assetsConfrontational management style Open and receptive management styleNarrow and rigid definition of tasks Fluid and optimal employee groupingExternal controls (authoritarian, critical and restrictive styles)

Internal controls (quality circles and self-regulating units)

Authoritarian organizational chart (many levels of middle management supervision)

Flat organizational chart (emphasis on flexible and innovative grouping)

Organizational culture as conflict and manipulation

Organizational culture as collaborative and collegial

Fear of change Commitment to innovationThe technological imperative The human capital imperativeEmployee as subordinate to machine Employee as superordinate to machineMan as expendable part Man as an asset to be developed

These 10 polarities certainly do not exhaust functional aspects of formal organizations; however, they can be extremely useful when making presentations re: organizational development.

A Canadian management consultant, Brian Spikes (1987) has written a book, BOSS is a Four-Letter Word, which distinguishes two profoundly different styles of management. One style, which he calls the Boss Style, operates on the traditional autocratic, vertical and functionally rigid style of an organization characteristic of the classical industrial period before World War II. The other style he identifies deals with the idea of leadership in a more modern sense. This style of leadership is seen as responsive to the public being served, to the concerns of the frontline units and to anticipate problems before they happen. This requires a sense of mentoring, of empowerment of subordinance and a facilitator of innovation. Although Spikes’s book is aimed primarily at the private sector, it could be equally applicable to governmental agencies.

A quote from Spikes’s (1987) book sums up his view of the progressive leader:

“To create an environment for maximum self-motivation, leaders pay special attention to four major items:

1. Non-verbal factors in their daily relationships with employees. Why? Because actions speak louder than words, or What you are speaks so loud, I cannot hear what you say.

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2. Leaders provide feedback on how people are doing so that they can regulate and monitor their own performance.

3. Leaders provide generous amounts of information about the job they are doing.

4. Leaders make sure that people know what is expected of them before they start doing a job. Any job.”

An organization’s human resources, represented by the skills, talents and capacities of its total complement of employees, constitute greater assets than goods or cash. Michael Silva, Tom Peters, Peter Drucker, Robert Reich, Lester Thorow, William Ouchi and John Naisbitt are some of the modern thinkers offering persuasive arguments regarding people as assets rather than seeing them as mere cost. It is important for an organization to think about its people in terms of a talent inventory. North American organizations have done little to develop talent inventories, but the Germans, Dutch, Swedes and Japanese have, for decades, understood the importance of human beings as organizational assets.

Again, the point of such efforts is the healthy, positive use of human resources to minimize conflict and the waste of individual talents. The creative capacity of the human mind is truly remarkable, and formal organizations could do so much to foster this creativity and build a healthier organizational culture generally.

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CHAPTER 5BALANCING SOCIAL ELEMENTS

Introduction

This chapter includes many ground elements of a blueprint for a Fifth Societal Model. It is an effort to balance social practices and social elements for humanity to escape the hazards of previous mistakes. The work of the four scholars discussed below has been chosen in the belief that they provide an innovative approach toward balancing major elements of society. These elements are presented through these authors’ work, providing a synergistic web of social policy imperatives relevant to the post-industrial era and the very survival of humankind. The four scholars are in concurrence about

i. the necessity for decentralizing society, in most aspects of social institutions and societal functions; and

ii. the concentration of power and property in the hands of a minute segment of society propelling the existing four models of society.

This chapter begins by introducing three age-old questions, the answers to which will provide balance and integration for a society and its various institutional components. The four scholars presented in this section, taken as a totality, provide an intellectual package, exploring these three questions and offering clear, poignant answers.

Question 1: “How do we relate to the Divine?” What is the nature of the divine order and how do human beings relate meaningfully to the spiritual dimension of life and the divine order of the universe? This theological problem cannot be ignored, denied or avoided. Of course not all theological systems are composed of elements easily transferred from one system to another, yet each theological system must have internal integrity and continuity which provide ultimate meaning and direction for human existence.

Question 2: “How do we relate to nature?” This question concerns humanity’s relationships with nature, including all dimensions of the environment. Urbanized, post-industrial life tends to separate human beings from contact with, and a sense of, the interwoven web of nature. This state of psychological separation can lead to such misguided policies and practices that human life itself becomes threatened. Our technological and scientific success in previous centuries has tended to blind commercial and governmental leadership towards environmental mistakes of the past and our disregard of nature itself.

Question 3: “How do we relate to each other?” This question is simply, “What are the moral/ethical imperatives of one human being relating to another or one societal element relating to another?” The great sages as far

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back as Confucius, Buddha, and Isaiah have admonished their fellows about this question and the answers offered. Often these answers are given with a sense of urgency, because societal survival may rest on the need to eliminate unjust and unfair practices which can contaminate any society. History is littered with societies which failed to ask and answer this vital question in a way that provided moral/ethical integrity and balance. Collapse of great empires and destruction of polities can often be understood by examining the internal corruption and decay of the moral/ethical core of a society.

Four Scholars’ Work, Presented in Order

Three of the four scholars whose insights will be examined are women. This may be no mere coincidence, and may have some connection to their non-patriarchal, non-lineal, non-mechanistic, non-reductionistic, and non-traditional approach to social inquiry and social policy. These four do not appear to regard themselves as an integrated cadre who consciously relate to each other. They may or may not be aware of each other’s work. However, elements of a fifth societal model emerge when their work is arranged in the order below. They are:

1. Fritjof Capra: The Tao of Physics (1983) and The Turning Point (1982). Capra’s value lies in fusing insights from his own field of physics with wide-ranging societal insights. Capra’s analytic paradigm, in both physics and societal ethos, is contemporary and post-positivist.

2. Hazel Henderson: Creating Alternative Futures (1978) and The Politics of the Solar Age (1988). The question most central to this work concerns humanity’s relation to nature. Although interested in the moral/ethical order, the principal value of Henderson’s work is her clear understanding of the relationship between society and nature. She examines the marketplace and government in terms of social policy which will either sustain the environment or destroy it. She attacks traditional economists and their dogmas masquerading as science. She argues that economics and the social sciences must release their tight grip on ideologically driven nostrums for social policy.

3. Ursula Franklin: The Real World of Technology (1990). A retired professor of physics, Franklin is primarily concerned with the way in which science and technology have been used in the marketplace and the way in which the marketplace drags society to the brink of environmental calamity. Concerned with the moral/ethical dimensions of society, as well as with humanity’s relationship to nature, Franklin has relevant and insightful understanding of the social sciences, most especially economics. She clearly understands that the physical sciences and the human sciences require different methodological approaches, resulting in differing epistemological and ontological principles. Maintaining a proper

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relationship between technological systems and vital social institutions is one of her concerns, as well as the moral/ethical needs of society and the requirements of nature, meaning that technology must be subservient to social policy.

4. Charlene Spretnak: States of Grace (1993). Spretnak addresses the third great question: Humanity’s relation to the divine order. She relates humankind’s spiritual quest to the moral/ethical core of any society and the way in which it becomes translated into social policy, be it economic or environmental.

Fritjof Capra. Capra (1982), in The Turning Point, views the waning decades of this century as a generation of crisis for the entire planet. Capra argues that the crisis is multidimensional and potentially terminal for humankind. In the first chapter of this book he introduces several major paradigms for examining the human condition. He certainly sees the current climate of Western culture as overwhelmingly sensate. Another paradigm is the Taoist concept of yin and yang. Again he sees Western culture overwhelmingly dominated by the yang ethos or, if you will, the hyper-masculine. He also introduces the Marxian dialectic and its focus on struggle and conflict as a social dynamic.

Capra (1982) views the solution to crises facing society as being a shift from the patriarchal focus to a more humane and egalitarian set of social relationships. One dimension of the crisis is an imperative shifting of all human societies toward a greater respect for nature and a diminution of exploitative economic and technological strategies. A further dimension of the intellectual and scientific crises involves most major disciplines, most especially economics, but also includes psychology, medicine, and other disciplines important to human survival. He believes these crises aspects are forcing humankind toward a new grand strategy or set of master ideas, a social paradigm which addresses the very crisis state we are in, and a healthy solution.

In Chapters 2 and 3, Capra (1982) deals with the development of science and the philosophy of science from 1500 to the current time. These chapters follow the shift in Western cultural ethos and academic contributions through massive shifts in worldview. From 1500 to 1700, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Bacon, Descartes, Newton, and others moved Western thought from a medieval, organic, grand vision to a clockwork, mechanistic, rationalistic and empirical worldview.

Capra (1982) argues in Chapter 2 that Bacon represented a current of scientific thought that was highly empirical and inductive as a central methodology. Descartes represented another stream of thought which was mathematical, deductive and highly mechanistic as a central methodology.

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Capra argues that Newton’s contribution was a unification of these two streams of thought in a methodology which became known as Newtonian mechanics. It was based on a broad system of philosophy--some parts explicit, some implicit. This system seemed to satisfy most of the scientists and intellectuals in Western Europe from the 1600s until the 20th century.

In Chapter 3, Capra (1982) discusses the great scientific achievements during the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. Where Capra differs from other historical treatments of Western intellectual development is his adherence to the idea that the Newtonian worldview is no longer adequate for scientific inquiry, and may be erroneous as a methodology for social sciences. He draws on other physicists such as Chew and Bohm to support his philosophical stance. In the years since Capra wrote The Turning Point, Stephen Hawking, along with John Gribbon and other cosmologists, have redirected science down a totally new road divergent from Newtonian mechanics. Capra’s central point is that classical economics, as systematized by Adam Smith in 1776, has served the commercial, industrial and financial class very well, but it has not at all well served nature, the base population, or even the lower ranks of the middle class. Capra’s historical analyses cover three centuries of intellectual development vis-à-vis the marketplace. Although Capra has a considerable interest in the humanitarian dimensions of Marxist thought, he argues that both communist and capitalist societies have become obsessed with a narrow notion of growth, and an irresponsible hostility to environmental issues. He further argues that the United States possesses an inefficient economy in spite of massive profits, because it is fed by exploiting the Third World, as well as the domestic American base population. He focuses on the massive multinational corporations as an aberrant human enterprise. To Capra, size alone can become pathological among human institutions, because of their adherence to growth as a first concern. To Capra, healthy human institutions need to be small, flexible and local (with a few exceptions for truly national and international functions). This idea is very much in keeping with Ursula Franklin’s (1990) notion of “earthworm social action.” Like Franklin, Capra (1982) talks a great deal about the question, “Whose benefits; whose costs?” (Franklin, 1990, p. 124). Capra (1982) follows up on a question asked by Ursula Franklin about Capra’s own ironic observation that foreign aid is a process which takes money from the poor people of a rich society and gives it to the rich people of a poor society.

Capra (1982) believes that we apply utterly improper methodology to economic inquiry. Whether economists are monetarists, econometricians, or institutional analysts, for over 300 years they have designed their models in tune with Newtonian mechanics and with the mechanistic, reductionistic and segmented conceptualizations derived from Cartesian thought. Capra passionately argues that classical economics has become intellectually

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bankrupt by virtue of clinging to this classical model-building analytic process. He quotes more traditional economists such as Milton Friedman, who ruefully acknowledged that the discipline of economics had oversold itself. As Capra sees it, economics must abandon its narrow perspective on Newtonian mechanics by developing a more organic systems style of modelling. This would require the inclusion of ecology, public health, political science, psychology and sociology. According to Capra, the Newtonian model has either limited utility in the social sciences or no use at all!

He treats the mind/matter issue in keeping with Oriental thought as expressed in Zen Buddhism and Taoism, as well as in some branches of Hinduism. In a certain sense this discussion reflects his subsequent book, The Tao of Physics (Capra, 1983). However, while dealing with the mind/matter issue, Capra reviews a number of thinkers in anthropology, psychology, theology, biology, physics and physical chemistry. His ontological and epistemological construct views mind and matter as co-extensive, and thereby co-manifested in all phenomena.

Another set of terms Capra explores is life/non-life. The Gaia hypothesis developed by James Lovelock and Lynn Margolis (Lovelock, 2000) is dealt with extensively as one scientific approach for grappling with vast systems which we have historically treated as either living or non-living. Again, like the mind/matter issue, the Gaia hypothesis views all phenomena as expressing the quality of life, in some fashion or another. The idea of self-regulation is dealt with as one aspect of the entire earth and its many sub-systems.

Capra (1983) also sees biological evolution and even the existence of individual organisms as being guided by two complementary functions:

i. the adaptive function guided by genetic drift, genetic selection and mutation; and

ii. the creative function guided by self-regulation and mentation.

Capra heavily criticizes social philosophy and biological methodology, which distorts Darwinist thought by exaggerating the adaptive function to the exclusion of the creative function. Another problem with social Darwinism is that this view of life generates a methodology driven by a notion of struggle, conflict, domination and competition. Capra argues persuasively that cooperation and symbiosis are even more important to life than competition.

Capra’s (1983) organic systems concept views phenomena as a set of relationships and reciprocal functions, rather than as an array of segmented structures with clear boundaries. The systems approach is a way of seeing phenomena without focusing on boundaries, and without reducing phenomena to ever-smaller components. He does raise the matter of micro-systems and

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macro-systems as distinguishable from one another, but reciprocally related in an elaborate web of relationships. This causal framework is a two-way street; thus, micro-systems and macro-systems influence each other reciprocally. This holistic systems scientific view can be applied, according to Capra, to most areas of inquiry, without the distortions or limitations of classical methodology. Capra does not regard the Newtonian model as wrong; he simply regards the holistic systems approach as being more intellectually advanced and providing a much wider application.

The threads of thought woven throughout this book come together in Chapter 12, while focusing on economic issues and environmental concerns. The sense of crisis permeating the entire book once again becomes the theme of this chapter. Humanity faces an imminent crisis due to brutalizing the environment and wasting human resources. This chapter argues that if humanity chooses the right grand strategy, with due regard to the health of society and the health of the environment, then the imminent crisis could be averted. However, if the trends of the last few centuries are allowed to continue unrestricted, then human survival is at stake.

Capra (1982, 1983) draws heavily on two economists for focusing this chapter: Hazel Henderson (1978, 1988), our second featured author in this chapter, and Kenneth Boulding (1981). The thrust of the arguments concerns such matters as entropy, appropriate use of human labour, a concern for regenerative and self-correcting systems, and a plea for using renewable energy to the greatest degree possible. Large bureaucratic systems, Capra argues, are inefficient and dissipative of human and natural energy. This entropy state is the driving engine of imminent crisis for the planet.

Capra (1982, 1983) also raises concerns regarding de-urbanizing society. By this, he does not mean returning to a rural or feudal past, but rather to an imaginative future of smaller communities on a more human scale, in which the production/consumption cycle would become more localized and labour-intensive. This new social trend would avoid the dissipation of energy through global bureaucratic networks of production, distribution and marketing. De-urbanizing society does not mean a village-based xenophobia, but rather a way for people to relate to each other politically, economically and socially, with minimal costs to human health and social viability. A term Capra coins for this new survival strategy for humankind is “think globally; act locally.”

A key element in these arguments concerns the inefficiency and environmental hazards surrounding the nuclear industry, whether for electric power or for war. Capra’s credentials as an atomic physicist provide a sharp bite to his concerns regarding nuclear energy. Environmental hazards from the petroleum industry and other fossil fuels also threaten the globe climactically

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and ecologically. Reliance on fossil fuels in a competitive drive for dominance contributes heavily to the problem of entropy.

Capra (1982, 1983) does weave threads of optimism throughout his books as counterweights to the sense of crisis emphasized in the discussion immediately above. He sees the holistic health movement (which has flowered at least in North America since he wrote) as a vital redirection of traditional views in the organic systems direction. He sees the feminist movement and its strategies as sympathetic to an organic systems approach to social analysis. The human potential movement and its parallel academic expressions, such as humanistic and transpersonal psychology, are of similar effect. And the ecological movement has provided focus to political debate over economic and industrial strategy, as well as over social policy itself.

Hazel Henderson. A well-known social policy activist who has held a range of positions in U.S. and international organizations concerned with social policy, and particularly with the environmental implications of social policy, Hazel Henderson (1978, 1988) believes that our plundering of the environment threatens societal survival for post-industrial societies, as well as for the Third World. Henderson’s grasp of the institutional dynamics of government and the marketplace is both original and well-informed. Much of her work attacks traditional economics. Part of the paradigm shift she imagines would necessitate fundamental revision of the Adam Smith paradigm and the social policy constellations derived from that paradigm.

Even though Capra (1982, 1983) and Henderson (1978, 1988) are anchored in different academic disciplines, there is much in their analyses that is quite compatible. Capra is certainly aware of this compatibility, clearly acknowledged in his book Uncommon Wisdom (Capra, 1988). This book provides extended discussion of Henderson and her role in creating a new societal model for the salvation of humankind. Capra believes that Henderson’s perception of the misuse of technology and the instruments of the marketplace are essential to an understanding of today’s crises.

… Henderson criticizes the fragmentation in current economic thinking, the absence of values, and their failure to take into account our dependence on the natural world. … she extends her critique to modern technology and advocates a profound reorientation of our economic and technological systems, based on the use of renewable resources and the attention to human scale. … The reason for the impasse in economics, according to Henderson, lies in the fact that it is rooted in a system of thought that is now outdated and in need of radical revision. Henderson shows in great detail how today’s economists speak in “heroic abstractions,” monitor the wrong variables, and use obsolete conceptual models to map a vanished reality. The key point of her critique is the striking inability of most

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economists to adopt an ecological perspective. The economy, she explains, is merely one aspect of a whole ecological and social fabric. (Capra, 1988, pp. 233-234)  

… Henderson makes it clear that economic and institutional growths are inextricably linked to technological growth. She points out that the masculine consciousness that dominates our culture has found its fulfillment in a certain “macho” technology--a technology bent on manipulation and control rather than cooperation, self-assertive rather than integrative, suitable for central management rather than regional and local application by individuals and small groups. As a result . . . most technologies today have become profoundly anti-ecological, unhealthy, and inhuman. (Capra, 1988, p. 237)

The rest of the discussion regarding Henderson’s ideas will be drawn primarily from her work, The Politics of the Solar Age (1978). However, she presented her concerns over a looming societal crisis succinctly in a later work, Creating Alternative Futures (1988). “Whether we designate them as ‘energy crises,’ ‘environmental crises,’ ‘urban crises,’ or ‘population crises,’ we should recognize the extent to which they are all rooted in the larger crisis of our inadequate, narrow perception of reality” (Henderson, 1988, p. 134).

An important theme in Henderson’s (1978) work concerns the 500 or so massive multinational corporations. Henderson, like a great many other scholars, is alarmed at the political clout possessed by these massive corporations through their control of the marketplace, whether domestic or international. Quite simply, they use their economic power as a lever to manipulate political power.

Corporate power is encountered daily by millions of citizens who attempt to fight polluted air, oil-smeared beaches, plagues of non-returnable cans and bottles, supersonic transports, rampant freeways, deceptive advertising, racial discrimination in employment, exploitation of natural resources, mushrooming shopping centers, and housing developments, as well as huge military appropriations. In all such battles, sooner or later, they come up against some corporate Goliath, and find their slings unavailing. Newly radicalized, they learn that the 500 largest corporations not only control more than two-thirds of the country’s manufacturing assets but also influence elections by carefully channelled campaign contributions that avoid legal restrictions. (Henderson, 1978, p. 48)

In the next quote, Henderson draws on a St. Louis economist, Elmer G. Doernhoefer. Henderson quotes material from Doernhoefer, drawn from a

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memo to Congress. She uses this material to demonstrate her concern regarding the concentration of wealth in the United States in the top 1% of the population--the concentration is even more dramatic when the top 10% of the population is considered. (It should be mentioned, however, that various scholars do treat this concentration in somewhat different fashion. The resulting description of this concentration may vary in particulars, but the picture remains very much the same.)

“The situation stems from the fact that fully 25 % of personal income in the US consists of dividends, interest, and rentals,” and he cites studies by the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, that “1% of US families with the largest income accounted for 47% of all dividend income and 52% of the market value of stock owned by all families, and that 10% of the families with the largest income accounted for 71% of the dividend income and 74% of the market value of stocks.” (Henderson, 1988, pp. 58-59)

Another view important to Henderson’s work concerns the misuse of analytic models, and a resulting perversion of social policy, not only in conception but also in implementation.

The heroic macroeconomics conceptualizers in Washington miss important trends and huge geographical differences in the real functioning of the economy as well as the larger society. For example, they do not measure the growth of the countereconomy, because they cannot conceive of its existence. Similarly a “national level of unemployment” of, say, 6 percent conceals enormous geographical and group differences, so that a “national,” buckshot approach, such as an across-the-board tax cut, will miss most of its targets and simply increase general demand and inflation. (Henderson, 1988, p. 61)

This last quote from Henderson reveals her perceptions regarding the professional and managerial functionaries supporting mega-corporations and mega-governments. The following point is an important one, because if Henderson has ‘got it right,’ it has implications for the communications media and the material they communicate.

Perhaps the most dangerous expression of the old, either/or thinking is the growing sense of despair and loss of confidence of leaders who see that they are losing control of that part of the system they created and the dreams of technological glory slipping from their grasp. They rigidify their grasp on the wildly gyrating “controls” and redouble their efforts, not seeing that it is only they who are falling from their collapsing hierarchies. They cannot see what is growing in their societies: the cooperative,

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localized countereconomy, our safety net and bridge to the dawning solar age. (Henderson, 1988, p. 64)

Hazel Henderson is not alone in viewing current trends in the human quest as possessing some pathological dimensions. Although she doesn’t use the term ‘social pathology,’ what she describes in terms of misuse of technology, socially dangerous concentration of power and wealth, and plundering of the environment is close to a straightforward discussion of social pathology. If the globe is to have a workable fifth model, such social pathology must be recognized for what it is, and dealt with as such. However, before the pathology can be identified, and before social policy can be formulated to correct this pathology, it is essential that relevant analytic models be used as holistic analytic tools, recognizing the complexity of reciprocal, causal relationships. The environment must be included in such models, both in short-term and long-term aspects.

Hazel Henderson (1978, 1988), like Ursula Franklin (1990), our third author, reveals some optimistic faith in the hidden, alternative economy. Both Henderson and Franklin believe that this hidden economy is more important to the gross domestic product than is recognized by conventional economic models. Whether in such vital social functions as business, education, governance, etc., this hidden community-based social order constitutes the greatest hope for societal renewal, as well as reconnection of people with nature.

Ironically, several components of the post-industrial technological system may assist the process of decentralizing the concentration of power and property, in providing neighbourhoods and communities with collective capacity to take greater control of their day-to-day existence. The vast array of satellites which now facilitate multimedia communication, involving computers, telephones, and other such devices is enabling communities and individuals to bypass conventional communications media. For many concerned about the role of communications media as agents of the power elite, a technological system which bypasses these conventional structures offers revitalizing possibilities.

Ursula Franklin. Professor emerita of physics at the University of Toronto, Ursula Franklin’s interest as a research physicist has focused throughout her professional life on metallurgy. One of her particular interests concerns Bronze Age casting technology, and its social context in ancient societies. Her book considered here goes well beyond technology to examine societal dynamics and the place of technology in the vital functions of society.

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It is my conviction that nothing short of a global reformation of major social forces and of the social contract can end this historical period of profound and violent transformations, and give a manner of security to the world and to its citizens. Such a development will require the redefinition of rights and responsibilities, and the setting of limits to power and control. There have to be completely different criteria for what is permissible and what is not. Central to any new order that can shape and direct technology and human destiny will be a renewed emphasis on the concept of justice. The viability of technology, like democracy, depends in the end on the practice of justice and on the enforcement of limits to power. (Franklin, 1990, p. 14)

Franklin presents a very clear and compact argument about technology in society in its several dimensions. She makes a helpful distinction, seeing technology characterized by two very different manifestations socially, intellectually, and technically. The terms Franklin uses for this distinction are:

- the production model, essentially a factory model, whether done in a factory or in some other context such as a high school or university.

- the growth model, whose essence understands the individual craftsman, artisan, artist as central to the production process, and in control of the process, more or less, from beginning to end.

The production model emphasises the idea of maximum output and minimum input. It also contains the idea of standardized production, facilitated by division of labour segmenting the production process into discrete steps, with specific individuals assigned each step in the process. This notion of technology has been an emergent by-product of the Industrial Revolution and the machine age concomitant with it. With the explosion of the use of chemical energy and electrical energy to drive machines, the human worker moved to the periphery of the process and literally became adjunct to the machine. Although mass production is facilitated in this manner, massive human cost happens, spiritually separating the individual from the production process, because of the centrality of the machine and the segmentation of the production process.

The growth model view of technology has been a feature of human society for millennia. It was the dominant model before the Industrial Revolution (even though Franklin [1990] identifies some cases in classical Rome and ancient China when some use was made of the production model). In the growth model the emphasis is on the skills, talents and capacities of the individual person making the item--even trading it. A specialist in ancient bronze casting, Franklin draws on this production method for many examples. Although bronze casting in the Shang dynasty over 1200 BC was done in a

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manner which can be called a production model, the ancient Peruvians and west Asians exercised this technology in a manner which can be called a growth model.

A metaphor useful to understanding the growth model is the image of a horticulturalist tending the garden throughout the entire cycle of nature’s reproduction. The process is a web of relationships between gardener, plants being tended and all of the natural forces and relationships relevant to the gardening process. In this model there is a reciprocal dance among all the active agents, with the person central to this web and mindful of the considerable extensiveness of this web of reciprocity. Franklin (1990) obviously believes that such a model is more mindful of nature and environmental requirements as a set of reciprocities than is the production model. In fact, the hazard of the production model is the mindlessness of its relationship to the environment and the accompanying web of reciprocities.

Franklin (1990) does not have blind faith in science and technology. She does trust means of knowing other than math, ematics, logic, and experiment. She values the intuitive, experiential, reflective, and spiritual dimensions of individuals and their immediate social circles.

Today’s scientific constructs have become the model of describing reality rather than one of the ways of describing life around us. As a consequence there has been a very marked decrease in the reliance of people on their own experience and their own senses. The human senses of sight and sound, of smell and taste and touch, are superb instruments. All the senses, including the so aptly named “common sense,” are perfective and it’s a great pity that we have so little trust in them. (p. 39)

Another important insight is offered in the following quote.

The fact citizens are more and more stringently controlled and managed is often considered as normal and fundamentally beyond questioning, as a necessary feature of technological societies. Technology has been the catalyst for dramatic changes, in the locus of power. Traditional notions about the role and task of government, for instance, or about what is private and what is public, are in the light of these changes more often akin to fairy tales than to factual accounts of possible relationships of power and accountability. (Franklin, 1990, pp. 55-56)

Franklin (1990) is concerned with the explosion of prescriptive technology and the production model as the ethos of Western society during the last century. Her discussion of the sewing machine is an example. The sewing machine was initially seen as a useful household device for women to use for family production (a holistic view of technology--a growth model). The sewing machine was intended to liberate women from the drudgery of hand sewing for

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family use. The notion of the sewing machine was as a device for every household and therefore a mass production product in itself. The machine would be produced as an expression of prescriptive technology, clearly within the production model. However, an irony of the sewing machine was that entrepreneurs saw the possibility of using it within a factory environment for improving the process of commercially making garments. Thus, in the sweat shops of New York, Chicago, Montreal and Winnipeg, women were enslaved to the sewing machine in the commercial production of clothing. The device intended to liberate women certainly contributed to that liberation, but it also became the means for enslaving women in a dehumanized factory environment. In one context, the sewing machine facilitated a holistic growth model of technology; in the other context, it became a central feature of prescriptive technology in a production model of technology.

This, along with other important inventions mentioned by Franklin, reveals a deep irony. What may start out as a device for enriching life and liberating the consumer may, through the process of time and factory application, become the very opposite. She also draws parallels in the prepared food arena, frozen and otherwise. Cars can liberate but they can also enslave. In the same way, arguments swirl around the home computer and computerized network as either an expression of liberation or as one of enslavement.

Franklin (1990) is deeply concerned with the matter of the interplay between humanitarian concerns and technical solutions. She poses the pre-eminent questions to be asked of technology:

Should one not ask of any public project or loan whether it: (1) promotes justice; (2) restores reciprocity; (3) confers divisible or indivisible benefits; (4) favors people over machines; (5) whether its strategy maximizes gain or minimizes disaster; (6) whether conservation is favored over waste; and (7) whether the reversible is favored over the irreversible? (Franklin, 1990, p. 126)

Franklin focuses over and over again on matters of justice, fairness, reciprocity and the overall integrity of persons and society. It is her opinion that narrow technological efficiency need not be, and frequently is not, the guiding concern for a manufacturing process or a technical innovation. She cites examples from ancient Peru in regard to bronze casting to illustrate that other social, political and cultural concerns can limit or guide technology as subservient to other master ideas. Furthermore, Franklin argues that in the post-industrial global context, technology must be the servant of humanitarian and humanistic values, if the integrity of human society is to be promoted or sustained. She links the broader cultural concerns of humanitarian nature as being intrinsically

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related to honouring nature as a guiding feature in the relationship web for the maintenance of life.

In Franklin’s (1990) view, technology can intrude into the web of reciprocity in a way which segments, separates and subverts the quality and dignity of life. However, the good news is that technology can be harnessed for human benefit in a way which liberates and enriches life. To accomplish this end, the relationship between the industrial/commercial arena and political institutions must be profoundly changed. Political instrumentalities can no longer be passive instruments of business to further their narrow and exploitative commercial and technical interests.

Charlene Spretnak. A highly visible activist in matters of social policy, Charlene Spretnak’s activity in the ecological movement has resulted in several other works besides the one discussed in this section. In addition to her environmental interests, Spretnak has a central concern with both feminism and spirituality. States of Grace (Spretnak, 1993) weaves these things together in a balanced and insightful manner. Like many scholars, Spretnak views the patriarchal system, which evolved integrally with the feudal/military societies spanning the last five millennia, as responsible for the inequities and devastation characteristic of today’s world. Like the other two women in this chapter, Spretnak is deeply troubled by the disparity in property and power between top social elements and base populations. She is also concerned about the economic and physical predation of women, not only in the U.S., but around the world.

In spite of these things, Spretnak (1993) does not come across as bitter or defeated. On the contrary, she sees great hope in the eco-consciousness of women and the crumbling structures of patriarchal society. Another element of her optimism emerges from her spiritual perspective. She believes that the salvation of the planet rests in large measure on a heightened consciousness of spiritual awareness and a coming together of spiritual traditions from a wide range of cultures.

Although raised in the Catholic tradition, Spretnak’s (1993) interests go beyond parochial Christianity. Her work dealing with Oriental thought is insightful and illuminating. Moreover, she has a thorough appreciation for Aboriginal religions, as expressed in North American Shamanism. Spretnak’s spiritual awareness draws on theologically sophisticated world religions, as well as folk religions lacking formal organization. The book title, States of Grace, appears to capture the depth and scope of Spretnak’s work, not only in terms of spiritual consciousness, but also regarding the intertwining issues of the marketplace and the environment.

The following few quotes capture the optimism emerging from Spretnak’s (1993) perspective:

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The three groupings of the Eightfold Noble Path (morality, meditation, wisdom) are viewed by Sulak Sivaraksa, a Thai who is chairman of the Asian Cultural Forum on Development, as vehicles of self-knowledge that can lead to what Paulo Freire calls “conscientization” in Latin America, an awakening and awareness of the dynamics of one’s socioeconomic situation. Sivaraksa sees the “awakening into awareness” in a spiritual sense as well as a materialist one, emphasizing that only wisdom can avoid the hatred, greed, and delusion served by partial knowledge. (pp. 59-60)

There is a connection between spiritual awareness and eco-consciousness:

Truth is pluralistic in that it is relational and intersubjective--but humans are not the only subjects in the universe. Indeed, the universe itself is a grand subject. When we cultivate sensitivity toward other forms of being, we begin to recognize the value, requirements, and movement toward satisfaction that are located in plants, animals, communal structures, events, and place. In such a condition of receptive awareness, the truth we grasp has greater depth than that arrived at through a denial of engagement (Spretnak, 1993, p. 212).

Spretnak (1993) reveals clear awareness of the scientific implications, as theological perspective merges with post-rationalist science:

The new attention to process in recent decades is an expression of the spiritual awakening of postmodernity. Indeed, the father of general systems theory, the biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy, was inspired by the creation-centered mystic Nicholas of Cusa, and numerous scientists working in postmodern directions of theory and experimentation grapple with issue of being and becoming that have long been central to the wisdom traditions. (p. 215)

Another dimension of her more hopeful outlook is clearly revealed in the following quote:

In the work now required of us, both the immediate and the long-term, a seeming flood of pressing needs demands attention--recognizing our kinship with the Earth community and acting to protect it, nurturing and protecting that which cannot be commodified, and replacing politics of denial with a renewal of coherence based on wisdom and compassion. (Spretnak, 1993, p. 231)

Charlene Spretnak does not use her engagement with spiritual matters as a mechanism for blissful denial of the world’s wide array of ugly

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manifestations, be they environmental or pathological social institutions. Although the previous quotes reveal her fundamental optimism, the following demonstrates Spretnak’s awareness of humanity’s capacity for harm:

The perception that life in the Unites States is becoming increasingly violent is no mere paranoid delusion. The number of violent criminal acts per hundred thousand citizens annually has nearly quadrupled from 1960 to 1988. Rates of rape and assault have climbed sharply in recent years. Every fourteen seconds a woman is battered somewhere in our country. Child abuse, including sexual assault, is coming to light in vast numbers in all socioeconomic classes. Drug-related murders terrorize many urban neighborhoods. (Spretnak, 1993, p. 73)

A more global perspective is focussed on the exploitation of women:

A study of Third-World women, which was not intended to focus on “battering” by men, repeatedly found it to be a common thread among women’s experiences in a variety of patriarchal cultures. Moreover, the female body is not only abused but exploited: women worldwide contribute two-thirds of the work hours, earn one-tenth of the income, and own one one-hundredth of the property. Patriarchy is real. (Spretnak, 1993, p. 117)

Spretnak (1993) goes on to acknowledge the disparity between rich and poor in American society. Her arguments reveal a social policy perspective, seeing such disparities as insufferable in a humane, civilized and healthy society:

In our own country, attention to structural injustice can hardly overlook the fact that the richest 1 percent of American families own more than 40 percent of the net worth owned by all American families. The top 20 percent of American households hold nearly 90 percent of the net financial assets. The poorest 50 percent of all American families combined, many of whom are single mothers and their children, own roughly three cents of every dollar’s worth of all the wealth in the country. (p. 168)

With Spretnak’s work, the elements for the Fifth Societal Model come together with consistency and balance among the four scholars. Only decades ago, the inclusion of a spiritual component for new integrated societal model would have enjoyed little academic acceptance. A wide range of disciplines, however--from physics to ecology--are now sensitive to the intertwining nature of post-positivist scientific theory and spiritual insights.

Spretnak’s (1993) work is a great single discussion of the intertwining realities: societal, environmental and spiritual. Moral and ethical dimensions of social policy are enriched by a non-parochial spiritual perspective. Purpose,

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value and meaning expressed in social institutions are humanely and humanistically enriched by an accepting and inclusive spiritual consciousness. Charlene Spretnak’s optimism seems to spring from a clear understanding of this issue. Only time will tell whether her optimism is sound or misplaced. This work chooses to accept her optimism as a viable alternative to moral/ethical paralysis and political despair.

No one of these four works in itself covers all the elements needed for a Fifth Societal Model. However, when they are arranged in the order presented here, elements to form a clear and coherent framework for a fifth model emerge in organic fashion out of their totality.

MODELS OF SOCIAL INVESTMENT

Nearly anyone can declare that he or she is a futurist, then after the declaration attempt to read the tea leaves for the human quest. Some futurists obviously enjoy a very high level of credibility, while many others fail to acquire such acceptability.

In the U.S. there are three futurists of a rather cautious nature. Their version of future analysis avoids dealing with radical paradigm shifts. Their view of society is probably a fair reflection of mainstream middle-class America.

Phillip Schlechty is an educator who is attempting to design educational programs in keeping with anticipated trends. He does not see major structural revisions in North America, and he does not see the school as an arena for generating such revisions. His line of thinking is more of a method for enriching human resources and using human resources in a more efficient and effective fashion. Because he is a relatively cautious analyst, I would suspect that he enjoys a reasonably high level of credibility.

When Schlechty’s work in education is paralleled with Tom Peters’s analysis for business (particularly in the book Thriving on Chaos) and John Naisbitt’s work in social policy (Megatrends 2000), there emerges an intellectual continuity and a policy synergy of a highly congruent nature. These three do not wish to destroy the old paradigm, they just want to change the direction vis-à-vis the use of human resources and vis-à-vis organizational vitality. There are greatly concerned with the dissipation of societal vigour through destructive conflict in both the public and private sector. If there is a theme that pervades such work it is the critical need to generate a cultural focus and to facilitate harmony in every dimension of life.

I find it difficult to fault such thinking, but I do regard this approach as extremely cautious. Certainly Fritjof Capra is a far more radical futurist in nearly every respect. In all of his books, including The Turning Point, he makes every effort to argue for a thoroughly new paradigm in physics, in the social sciences, in

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environmental concerns, as well as economic and political pursuits. He is not so much a Marxist thinker as he is a New Age thinker--in my mind there is a very considerable difference. The term ‘New Age’ does carry with it some flaky baggage, Shirley MacLaine style. However, alternative designations have their own problems. The more commonly used alternatives are the post-industrialist era, the post-modern generation, the information age, the New Thought Movement, and the Human Potential Movement. Capra is most closely affiliated with the Human Potential Movement, which is in part a product of the Esalen Institute. Of all these terms I prefer ‘New Age,’ recognizing that for some people there is an image problem.

Some of the scholars I feel particularly comfortable with in regards to their view of the future represent a wide range of disciplines and backgrounds. Helen Henderson in her book, Politics of the Solar Age, Jane Jacobs in Cities and the Wealth of Nations, Robert Reich (1984) in The Next American Frontier and Lester Thurow (1985) in The Zero-Sum Solution are new paradigm economists with a deep interest in the issues surrounding human potential. They all bring a refreshing view to the inter-relationship among basic social institutions for the enrichment of human capital. The skills, talents and capacities of the base population are as important to the social order as the leadership capacities of the social elite. Enrichment of society through education is a powerful theme for these four economists.

The New Age line of thought, or the human potential literature, constitutes a new paradigm quite different from the old capitalist paradigm or even the traditional paradigm associated with analytic philosophy, behavioural psychology, operational sociology and even traditional theology. The style of science explicated by theoretical physicists such as David Bohm, Geoffrey Chew and Fridjof Capra mesh very well methodologically, ontologically and epistemologically with a whole spectrum of disciplines responding to this totally revolutionary world view. Not only economists responded to this profoundly new style such as the four I mentioned above but also historians, theologians, psychiatrists, oncologists and an incredible diversity of like-minded people who are reshaping our understanding of ourselves, of nature and of the spiritual dimension.

The late theologian, Alan Watts, who was on faculty at Berkeley for many years, did much to bridge these interdisciplinary concerns through this New Age paradigm. In one of his last works in 1972 he provided a brilliantly simple analysis of this new way of thinking. The work is called The Book. He has profoundly influenced psychologists such as Ken Wilber, psychiatrists such Roger Walsh and many other brilliant proponents of the New Age methodology.

In short, what is the essence of the New Age paradigm? Perhaps it is easier to say what it is not. Certainly, it is non-mechanistic, non-reductionist, non-materialistic, and certainly non-traditional in just about every sense. The Vedic scriptures of India, the Taoist scriptures of China and the Zen Buddhism of today’s Japan have challenged and often replaced traditional Western paradigms. The Oriental influence on Alan Watts, Ken Wilber, Fridjof Capra and a whole galaxy of like-minded scholars is simply quite profound.

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Another important feature of this New Age paradigm is an abandonment of the patriarchal, power-focused, authoritarian world view. The feminist movement seems to fit well into this new paradigm, as do the various green movements. Concomitant with this is a philosophical stance that decries the excessive disparity between the base population and the elite population of various modern societies. There is a new political imperative embedded in New Age thinking. This leads to social policy which will have a profound effect on the conjugal institutions of health and education and even the marketplace itself. The reason I say the conjugal institutions of health and education is simply because these two arenas of social investment are reciprocally enmeshed with each other in a way that can generate an incredible synergism.

Those interested in the concept of human capital, as I am, recognize the near miraculous impact which can be had through universal effective health and education programs. Of course, where the greatest effect is found is in the bottom half of society, since this stratum is in greatest need of investment and will show the greatest dividends from this investment. As New Age economists, educators, psychologists and anthropologists all recognize, human capital constitutes the necessary and essential capital for any economic and political system. Limitations of financial capital, natural resources and even land base can be miraculously overcome by an intelligently focused human capital enrichment program. If we understand the synergy between health and education, and if we understand how to invest in them effectively, then the very essence of society can be changed in less than a generation as many Western and Oriental societies have already demonstrated.

This reality has worked so well for Japan that Hazel Henderson argues in her book, Politics of the Solar Age, that society currently controls or manages one dollar out of every four in the global economy. Since Japan is only 125 million people on an extremely small land base with virtually no resources, this figure is all the more startling. Japan’s per capita GNP is matched only by the per capita GNP of Sweden. These two populations are among the healthiest, most highly educated and the most economically productive that the world has to offer. They have done it by intelligent investment in the bottom half of their population through intelligently designed health and education programs.

France did not develop this strategy until well after World War II. However, since they have done so they have had an economic miracle which has seen them outstrip Britain by a full 50% margin. France has now caught up with the United States in terms of the affluence of their population, and regarding the bottom half of the population they have outstripped the United States. Out of the ruins of World War II, Germany has experienced the same economic miracle for the very same reason.

Societies in the Orient which are mimicking Japan have likewise experienced the same economic miracle. The two most dramatic examples, because they started before other minidragons, are Singapore and Hong Kong. Currently, their per capita GNP is well ahead of Britain’s and closing fast on Japan. Korea and Taiwan started much later than Hong Kong and Singapore, but they certainly have seen an unbelievable improvement in their base population. They have outstripped Indonesia and the Philippines by ten-fold in per capita GNP.

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Although the Americans seem to find it difficult to mobilize the political will for improving the lot of the bottom half of the society, they had best take heed from the worldwide examples and learn from them. Canada now has a choice between following the example of American social policy or looking to Northwest Europe for more appropriate strategies. The Americans currently are in crisis, and Canada does not need to follow their disastrous examples.

There is no doubt that the health and education institutions of Canada are more vital and more vigorous than their counterparts in the United States. Yet, if we follow inappropriate strategies borrowed from the Americans, we could lose the advantages which we currently possess vis-à-vis the Americans.

We must pay close attention to the bottom half of our population, both in health and education, and we must invest intelligently in the human capital of this base population. There are many ways Canada can achieve the per capita GNP and the prosperous and stable social context of Sweden or The Netherlands. Whether we have the creativity to invest in ourselves for optimal value, remains to be seen.

The world of today offers four basic models of socioeconomic and political organization. Nearly every society on the globe today is a living manifestation of one or another of these four models. In the real world, of course, the real thing is usually a co-mingling of more than one model. However, I find it relatively easy to understand social systems by relating them to one or another of these models.

1. The most ancient of these models is the feudal/military model. This tends to be characteristic of rural, relatively non-industrialized societies. However, some societies well along the path to industrialization have maintained the feudal/military concept of social organization. Until recently, Spain, Portugal and Greece are relevant examples. Today’s Argentina, Brazil and Philippines are examples. In such societies, wealth is concentrated in a tiny elite of 1 or 2 percent of the population. The peasant population and urban proletariat are systematically bled to the point that their lot is ruinous poverty. Although such societies have the capacity to industrialize, the results of industrialization are not shared by the massive “base population.”

2. The next model can be characterized as the Adam Smith model. This social philosophy is a modernized version of the feudal/military model. Since 1776 when Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations, this book has provided a biblical reference for the new urban middle class made possible by the military conquests around the world by European nations. As Max Weber pointed out in his book several generations ago, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, there was a synergy between the philosophy of Adam Smith and the religious values of the Protestants. Thus the industrial urbanizing elements of Britain and other societies have a philosophy relevant to the imperial, commercial and industrial trends from the 18th century to the 20th century. This point of view saw the middle class as the legitimate creators of wealth and the appropriate possessors of property. It saw the existing feudal governments of the day as the enemy, and the peasants and factory workers as a labour resource in conjunction with land, minerals and factories. It is not too surprising that this model saw the rapid enrichment of the middle class at the expense of the “base population” and overseas subjects.

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3. Karl Marx wrote his Communist Manifesto in 1848 and his massive work, Capital, during the 1860s. This radical model was an impassioned reaction to the grinding misery of the European “base population.” The societies adopting the Karl Marx model attempted to destroy the concept of private property and the institution of religion. The focal values of the Karl Marx model regard these two institutions as anathema to society devoted to equity and justice for the entire population. It goes without saying that the Karl Marx model is enjoying discreditably around the world. Even China, after 43 years of building the Karl Marx model, is now backing away from it as an economic focus.

4. The model which enjoys the highest level of credibility in today’s world I have dubbed the Otto Von Bismarck model. As Chancellor of Unified Germany, he created a polity that took clear shape during the 1860s and endures today as the organizing principle of Germany, France, Holland, Japan, Singapore and many other societies. This model sees government as the guiding instrument of society in conjunction with the industrial and commercial corporations. Private property is understood to have limits in its use and concentration. A healthy society must adequately allocate through one mechanism or another resources and services for the “base population.” The health system is deemed to be a way to ensure the health of the entire population and not just the affluent segment of the population. Health services are understood to be an essential component of a healthy society in every dimension. Likewise, education is seen as the generator of talents, skills and capacities of the entire population. This view of human capital has seen many societies explode out of feudalism into the modern industrial age.

In Britain there is a married couple who have worked as a scholarly team in regard to the ‘conjugal’ nature of the health and education institutions. In Wynn and Wynn’s book, Prevention of Handicap and the Health of Women, they explore this issue with incredible clarity. Although British social policy has generally ignored scholars like the Wynns, the Bismarck model as practised in Northwest Europe manifests in a practical political fashion ideas outlined in their book. As the Wynns point out, if Britain fails to learn from France, Germany and Scandinavia then they will condemn themselves to being a marginal society in Europe. In the dozen or so years since they wrote the book, Britain has indeed lost even more ground vis-à-vis the continent.

The social policy implications for the ‘conjugal’ institutions in Canada are becoming clearer and clearer. We must question the very structural foundations of the health and educational institutions, especially as instruments for enriching the human capital of our base population.

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Development Dimensions1. Treasures from the bronze age of china

Book Summary

This beautiful-color presentation of the superb works of art found in the tombs, mausoleums, and buried hordes of ancient china reveals the emergence almost 4,000 years ago of a remarkable civilization that becomes more fascinating with each new discovery. Recent decades have seen a tremendous surge in archaeological research in china, and the finds of the law five years ranks among the world’s most important of this century, making Chinese archaeology one of the fastest growing- and most exciting- areas of art history today.

In addition to 117 color plates with catalogue descriptions for each of the objects, Treasures from the Bronze Age of China provides an informative text that illuminates the history of the Bronze age. Featured in the collection are more than sixty ritual vessels of precious bronze that epitomize the technical and artistic accomplishments of their makers. Included, too, are marvelous carved jade pieces, such as those discovered in the tomb of lady Fu Hao, Royal consort and commander of armies, whose tomb was the first to be found intact at the brilliant Shang capital of Anyang

For many, a special highlight of this book and exhibition may be the amazing terracotta figures taken from the “ buried army” of the first Emperor of Qin, unifier of china and builder of the Great Wall. Excavated in 1974, these life size soldiers are horses were created as a bodyguard for the emperor in his afterlife, and represent the most significant revelation of all in recent Chinese archaeology. Staggering in size and quantity (over 7,000 were found), unparalleled in technique, and uncannily realistic in appearance, they bring to life the people who created the treasures of the Bronze Age and suggest the untold riches that still await the archaeologist in the Chinese soil.

Book reviews

Anyone who has seen the remarkable life-size terra-cotta figures of ancient Chinese warriors and horses found recently in the burial complex of the First Emperor of Quin (221-210 B.C.) will know what I mean when I say that these figures are an impressive reminder of how incredibly accomplished Chinese civilization was 2,000 years ago.And yet these figures, part of a landmark exhibition called "The Great Bronze Age of China," now on view at New York's Metropolitan Museum, come fairly late in the overall history of China. They were made at a time roughly midway between te present and the beginning of the historical period to which they belong. The Great Bronze Age of China

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began shortly after 2000 B.C. During its early years the Chinese already had a distinctive form of writing, a stratified society governed by an all-powerful ruler, and large urban communities. It was a society controlled, according to its religion, by the gods, who exercised absolute authority over all human actions and events. They were believed to be the ancestors of the ruler, whose primary responsibility it was to intercede with the gods on his subjects' behalf. This was done through elaborate state rituals, which tended more and more to revolve around the large and impressive bronze vessels for which this age is famous.

All this and a great deal more is spelled out in fascinating detail, coupled with gorgeous color illustrations, in two books: "The Great Bronze Age of China" (in hardcover), and "Treasures from the Bronze Age of China" (in paperback). Both books are based on the exhibition, which was sent here by the Chinese government and includes 105 objects of bronze, jade, and terra cotta.The larger, hard-cover books is a considerably expanded version of the paperback, with only the color plates and some short prefatory pieces remaining the same in both. These color plates are the next best thing to seeing the exhibition itself (which will tour four other American cities after it closes at the Met July 6). Beginning with an exquisite cup from around the 17th century B.C., and ending 104 plates later with one of the warrior figures mentioned above, they give a startingly clear, full, and detailed account of the entire exhibition in first- rate color reproductions. But if the color plates are the same, the texts are not. The text of the paperback is only a short introduction to the art and the history of the period. While this is enough for anyone interested only in gaining a general idea of what was going on in China at that time, it falls short of what one would need to get a full picture of the entire Bronze Age.On the other hand, the text of the larger book is all one could ask for, short of a specialized textbook on the subject. It includes essays written by Chinese and American scholars on, among other things, "The Splendor of Ancient Chinese Bronzes," "The Chinese Bronze Age: A Modern synthesis," and "Burial Practices of Bronze Age China." These and the accompanying black-and-white illustrations give sufficient insight into the sources and the iconography of Bronze Age art for the general reader to view it in its proper context -- and not merely as a collection of alien and exotic objects.Of particular interest is the "Summary of Comments on the Catalogue from the Committee for the Preparation of Archaeological Relics, People's Republic of China," which is exactly what the title indicates. Apparently the committee, when presented with the manuscript of this book, found little to challenge. And what there was seems to have been limited to minor matters of detail and interpretation.

Both books would make worthy additions to any art library. The color plates alone make the paperback a bargain, while the greater expository material in the hardcover -- plus its larger size and the marginally better color quality of its illustrations -- make it fully worth its higher price.

By: Theodore F. Wolff http://www.csmonitor.com/1980/0609/060950.html

Biography

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Editor in chief: John P. O’Neill

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

On March 30, 1880, after a brief move to the Douglas Mansion at 128 West 14th Street, the Museum opened to the public at its current site on Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street. The architects Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould designed the initial Ruskinian Gothic structure, the west facade of which is still visible in the Robert Lehman Wing. The building has since expanded greatly, and the various additions—built as early as 1888—now completely surround the original structure.

The Museum's collection continued to grow throughout the rest of the nineteenth century. The 1874–76 purchase of the Cesnola Collection of Cypriot art—works dating from the Bronze Age to the end of the Roman period—helped to establish the Met's reputation as a major repository of classical antiquities. When the American painter John Kensett died in 1872, thirty-eight of his canvases came to the Museum, and in 1889, the Museum acquired two works by Édouard Manet.

The Museum's Beaux-Arts Fifth Avenue facade and Great Hall, designed by the architect and founding Museum Trustee Richard Morris Hunt, opened to the public in December 1902. The Evening Post reported that at last New York had a neoclassical palace of art, "one of the finest in the world, and the only public building in recent years which approaches in dignity and grandeur the museums of the old world."By the twentieth century, the Museum had become one of the world's great art centers. In 1907, the Museum acquired a work by Auguste Renoir, and in 1910, the Met was the first public institution in the world to acquire a work of art by Henri Matisse. The ancient Egyptianhippopotamus statuette that is now the Museum's unofficial mascot, "William," entered the collection in 1917. Today, virtually all of the Museum's twenty-six thousand ancient Egyptian objects, the largest collection of Egyptian art outside of Cairo, are on display. By 1979, the Museum owned five of the fewer than thirty-five known paintings by Johannes Vermeer, and now the Met's twenty-five hundred European paintings comprise one of the greatest such collections in the world. The American Wing now houses the world's most comprehensive collection of American paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts.

 The Metropolitan Museum has continued to refine and reorganize its collection. In 1998, the Arts of Korea gallery opened to the public, completing a major suite of galleries devoted to the arts of Asia. The Ancient Near Eastern Art galleries reopened to the public in 1999 following a renovation. In 2007, several major projects at the south end of the building were completed, most notably the fifteen-year renovation and reinstallation of the entire suite of Greek and Roman Art galleries. Galleries for Oceanic and Native North American Art also opened in 2007, as well as the newGalleries for Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Paintings and Sculpture and the Ruth and Harold D. Uris Center for Education.

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On November 1, 2011, the Museum's New Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia opened to the public. On the north side of the Museum, the Met's New American Wing Galleries for Paintings, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts reopened on January 16, 2012, signaling the completion of the third and final phase of The American Wing's renovation.

2. The First Emperor Of China

Book summary

More than 2000 years after the death of the first emperor, Qin Shihuang, the Chinese have released thousands of documents and artifacts from his reign, which recreate in detail the palaces, the clothes, the weapons and the armor of the period. Qin's achievements were superhuman. He unified China; set 30,000 people to the task of building the Great Wall of China, burying countless of thousands on the way; and created the Chinese language. This is a biography of one of the world's great military and political leaders, who, until now, has remained an enigma.

Book Reviews

This book accompanies an IMAX film of the same name. Exquisite in-detail look at the Qin dynasty. Although one of the shortest dynasties, it was arguably the most important in Chinese history. Gorgeous photo dramatizations of true (and purported) events courtesy of the Xi'an film studio as well as many pictures of historical artifacts. It gives an introduction to Qin Shihuang, his army, his advisors, his laws, his public-works projects, palace intrigue and his legacy. The book outlines the exciting and dramatic detials of what it was like to live during the Warring States Period, the Qin and early Han dynasties. The authors have truly poured a lot of thought and care into writing it.

Amazon customer review http://www.amazon.ca/First-Emperor-China-R-Guisso/dp/1559720166

A great introductory text on Qin Shihuang, with gorgeous full-color photographs of artifacts, paintings, and sites in China relating to the emperor and his rule. It examines his life with as little bias as possible, given the lack of complimentary resources on him. Though the book was written in 1989, it is still useful for some basic information on the man who first unified China.

4/5 on here, 8/10 for myself

Megan Andersonhttp://www.goodreads.com/review/show/81042122?book_show_action=true&page=1

Author Biography

R.W.L. Guisso was educated at the universities of Toronto, Kyoto, and Oxford. He has published extensively in his respective fields of Chinese history and literature. Among

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Professor Guisso’s publications is the standard biography of Wu Zetian, Wu Ts’e-t’ien and the Politics of Legitimation in T’ang China (1978). His most recent collaborative translation, is the In the Inner Quarters, and it was chosen as the best book in the category of erotica by the American Association of Independent Publishers in 200

Dr. Pagani teaches courses in Asian art history and serves as chair of the department.  She came to The University of Alabama from Canada in 1993.  She has published and lectured internationally on the arts of Asia. Her book, “Eastern Magnificence and European Ingenuity”: Clocks of Late Imperial China (University of Michigan Press, 2001), is the result of research she conducted at the Palace Museum, Beijing.  She is co-author with R.W.L. Guisso of The First Emperor of China. Pagani recently spoke on Late Imperial Chinese clocks at the symposium, “Behind the Vermillion Walls: Courtly Life in the Forbidden City” at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

David Miller was born in Norfolk. He has worked in advertising as a copywriter, and later as a creative director.He has travelled widely all over the world and has lived and worked in Malaysia and Singapore. Shark island was inspired by his experiences while visiting a small island off the coast of Malaysia.David now writes full-time and lives in Hampshire with his wife, Su'en and his daughter, Hanna.

URL: http://www.lovereading4kids.co.uk/author/2079/David-Miller.html

3. China’s Imperial Past

Book summary

A work unique in the sweep of its design and scope, intended expressly for the general reader interested in human history and culture, this is a vivid panoramic survey of the vast course of Chinese civilization from prehistory to 1850, when the old China began the agonizing transition to the new. Historical surveys of China tend to be dynasty-by-dynasty chronicles with a profusion of names and dates and occaisional cultural tidbits, or to concentrate on the period from earliest times to the Han dynasty (or the T'ang), giving only scant coverage to the last thousand years. China's Imperial Past is different. Not only does it treat the three major periods of Chinese history at roughly equal length, weaving all their complexity into a balanced, integrated whole, but it gives ample space to China's magnificent literary and artistic achievements.

The author's approach is primarily interpretive, emphasizing patterns of change and development rather than factual details, but he never loses sight of the particularities that made traditional Chinese civilization one of the richest in human history. Especially notable are the many translations of Chinese poetry, among them more than twenty exquisite poems from the great poets of the T'ang. The author divides Chinese history into three major epochs: a formative age, from high antiquity to the unification of China under the Ch'in in the third century B.C.; an early imperial age, from the Han dynasty (202 B.C.-A.D. 220) through the T'ang (618-907) and its breakdown; and a later imperial

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age, from the Sung dynasty (960-1279) to the mid-nineteenth century.

Each major epoch is considered in topical chapters—on general history, political institutions, socioeconomic organization, religion and thought, and literature and the arts. A brief Epilogue comments on aspects of Chinese history since 1850.The book includes 47 plates, eight maps, and various charts, and as appendixes and unusually detailed chronological table, notes on the Chines language, and suggestions for supplementary reading

Book Reviews

An admirable success. It is the embodiment of great Sinological acumen and experience and of a lovingly painstaking scholarship, beautifully presented. Moreover, it is a book that deploys its learning gracefully and succinctly, with a rhetorical modesty that is likely to wear very well on its many future readers. . . . Professor Hucker has produced a most attractive harvest of the many labors of his distinguished scholarship and teaching career, and we should be grateful."—Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies

"The book is an impressive tour de force of skillful organization, clarity, and precision; the style is quiet, concise, and unambiguous. Hucker's coverage is strikingly comprehensive. . . His incorporation of the major findings and issues of recent research is meticulous and well proportioned."—The Journal of Asian Studies

"The genius of the book lies in its organization. . . . It is arranged in such a way that one can read it straight through for a comprehensive view of China's past; or one can read it topically, as a record of major events, or as a political-institutional history, or socio-economic history, or the history of ideas, or literary or art history. . . . It is an eminently sound introduction to its subject, a work compiled with evident thought and care."—History

"China's Imperial Past, by Charles O. Hucker, is the best introduction to Chinese culture from earliest times to the 19th century."—Diversion

"[The] achievement of Professor Hucker is a formidable one. His work is a beautifully balanced one, organized with logic and clarity. His interpretations, if leaning to the safe side, are invariably sound. His erudition is carried lightly and there is found throughout, an awareness of the needs of the student. . . . In sum, Hucker has produced a readable and comprehensive text. It will undoubtedly become a standard in college courses and it can be highly recommended to anyone who seeks a solid yet painless introduction to the civilization of traditional China."—Monumenta Serica (Germany)

"Charles O. Hucker is not only a name, it is a quality mark, and to Chinese history China's Imperial Past is an excellent introduction. It is an extremely well written and well structured account of China's political, social, economic and cultural history from the

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beginning through the first half of the nineteenth century."—Acta Orientalia

"The book is an ambitious one, attempting to encompass over four thousand years of Chinese history and culture in slightly more than four hundred pages. Yet in section after section we are treated to well-organized, concise, yet meaty presentations of figures, events, works of art, or analytical interpretation. . . . Hucker hasn't allowed political history to monopolize his story, although it does form the backbone. But he obviously has a weakness for literature, which, fortunately for the reader, he indulged. . . . Like all good history, China's Imperial Past does deepen the present, enhance our awareness of what is truly new, and entertains in the process. Not a bad bargain."—The Asia Wall Street Journal

"China's Imperial Past fills a great need in the area of Chinese studies, the need for a readable and accurate introduction for both the layman and the beginner, for a book without overpowering erudition or demeaning "shallowness. The author has brilliantly accomplished this remarkable and difficult tour de force. He has produced a book which not only provides the reader with a wealth of information on all aspects of the civilization of China but which also stimulates his desire to read other, more detailed works."—Journal of Asian History

"Handsome and readable. . . . Not since Latourette's The Chinese: Their History and Culture have we had such an even-handed review of Chinese history as this volume provides."—Pacific Affairs

"Professor Charles O. Hucker, author of two very stimulating books on Ming history and editor of one book on Ming government and institutions, has now produced another opus magnum on China's imperial past. . . . Professor Hucker has produced a book which is not only suitable for students in the English-speaking world but demonstrates to sinologists, teachers and students alike that Chinese history in the tung-shih style can be written in this way."—Journal of Oriental Studies

Author Biography

Charles O. Hucker (June 21, 1919 – November 18, 1994), was a professor of Chinese language and history at the University of Michigan. He was regarded as one of the foremost historians of Imperial China and a leading figure in the promotion of academic programs in Asian Studies during the 1950s and 1960s.Born in St. Louis, Hucker graduated from the University of Texas, and served in the Army Air Corps during the Second World War, where he rose to the rank of major and was awarded the Bronze Star. He completed a Ph.D. in Chinese language from the University of Chicago, was a fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation, a senior fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and a frequent consultant to the U.S. Office of Education, foundations, and various colleges and universities. Hucker was awarded an honorary doctorate of humanities from Oakland University in 1974. Before joining the

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University of Michigan in 1965 where he was the chair of the Department of Far Eastern Languages and Literatures, Hucker taught at the University of Chicago, the University of Arizona, and Oakland University. Throughout his teaching career, Hucker was an active member of many professional associations. Hucker was among a small number of American scholars of Chinese history who visited scholarly centers in China in 1979 under the joint auspices of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

At the time of his retirement from the University of Michigan in 1983, Hucker was regarded as one of the foremost historians of imperial China and a leading promoter of academic programs in Asian Studies during the 1950s and 1960s. In his honor, the University established the Charles O. Hucker professorship in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures. Hucker was particularly noted for his "A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China," regarded as the most comprehensive guide to traditional Chinese government in a Western language, as well as his study of the Censorial system in Ming Dynasty China. He also wrote "China's Imperial Past," a general history of Imperial China. He was a contributor to the Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopedia Americana, and The Cambridge History of China. His China to 1850: A Short History (1975) was widely used as a college text.In retirement, Hucker and his wife, the former Myrl Henderson, whom he wed in 1943, lived in Tucson, Arizona, where he was a volunteer in schools and hospitals. Hucker also wrote plays and short stories, several of which have been published or produced. Hucker died on November 14, 1994, in Odessa, Texas, at the age of 75.

4. The Genius of China

Book Summary

It is one of the ironies of history that the Chinese, who had all the ingredients for modern science long before the Renaissance, failed to build on their immense knowledge. Today, very few people are aware of the vast body of Chinese invention. The suspension bridge, the fishing reel, the stirrup, the parachute, paper money, playing cards, the decimal system, the seismograph, negative numbers, brandy, rudders, cranks, movable type, matches, steroids as drugs, propellers, biological pest control—all these and many more were Chinese inventions. This volume traces the stunning achievements of ancient and medieval China.

Book Reviews

It's often suggested in the West that so-called Oriental peoples are copiers rather than innovators. Then someone will mention, for instance, gunpowder, paper, or the printing press, three major inventions of the Chinese, and the Western naysayer will assert that although the Chinese may have invented a few things, they didn't progress and follow through with their inventions as did inventors and entrepreneurs in Europe and America. Robert Temple is an English professor with an arm's length of degrees,

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memberships and fellowships to his credit. He is notably a visiting professor of history and philosophy of science at Tsinghua University in Beijing. He has compiled this large, satisfyingly attractive and fact-filled book to respond to such negative impressions of the Chinese, who, it turns out, not only invented the aforementioned items but were the first people to heat with natural gas and make extensive use of the first plastic (enamel). Cleverly, the Chinese did not initially use paper, made from compressed hemp, to write on but for wrapping, nose-blowing and "personal hygiene." Good on them. They also used paper for clothing, even employing a thickened version for military armor. In the first century A.D., the Chinese were building suspension bridges. In the ninth century, they famously invented gunpowder, using it to ignite rockets, and by the tenth century they had advanced its use to set off a fuse for a nasty flame-thrower that "sprayed enemies with burning gasoline" (reminiscent of a much later Western killing device, napalm spray). They fashioned bombs, mines and guns, even repeating guns, centuries before these notions of warfare occurred to Americans or Europeans.

The Chinese were also years ahead of us in the development of medicines. Sometimes their diagnostic techniques were astonishingly accurate, though some were based on mere superstition. They identified symptoms of diabetes mellitus, correctly associating it with sugar in the urine; this was as early as 655 or before. They used thyroid extracts to treat goiter and reputedly possessed the secret of smallpox inoculation by around the year 1000 .D. The Chinese contribution to mathematics includes negative numbers, decimal fractions, algebra and geometry, as well as "Pascal's Triangle" - obviously assumed to have been the creation of a European, but demonstrably in use in China as early as 1303 A.D. by one Chu Shih-Chieh and then referred to as "The Old Method." By report, the Chinese had mastered the art of manufacturing phosphorescent paint 700 years or so before the first appearance of such a substance in the West, when it was named "Canton's phosphorus" for its inventor.

This is a book that impresses with the wealth of its information. It contains a handy timeline demonstrating the approximate lag of years between each Chinese invention and its Western counterpart. There are color photographs throughout along with older black and white ones and relevant drawings. These days, we Americans would do well to understand the Chinese as thoroughly as we can; this book is a good starting point in beginning to understand that before "we" "discovered" the Orient, it was doing fine without us and our primitive technologies.

URL: http://www.curledup.com/geniusch.htm

The captivating, award-winning look at ancient China's unparalleled achievements now gets a lavish, revised color edition. Undisputed masters of invention and discovery, the ancient Chinese made pioneering strides in engineering, medicine, technology, math, science, warfare, transportation, and music that helped inspire the West's agricultural and industrial revolutions. They were the first to drill for oil, build a suspension bridge, understand how blood circulates through the body, and even isolate sex hormones. Based on research by the late Dr. Joseph Needham, author of the 25-volume epic

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"Science and Civilisation of China" and the world's foremost scholar of Chinese science, "The Genius of China" captures the spirit and excitement of centuries of ingenuity.

URL: https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Genius-of-China-3000-Years-of-Science-Discovery-Invention/312255292227902

Author Biography

Professor Robert Temple is author of a dozen challenging and provocative books, commencing with the international best seller, The Sirius Mystery. His books have been translated into a total of 44 foreign languages. He combines solid academic scholarship with an ability to communicate with the mass public. He is Visiting Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science at Tsinghua University in Beijing, and previously held a similar position at an American university. For many years he was a science writer for the Sunday Times, the Guardian, and a science reporter for Time-Life, as well as a frequent reviewer for Nature and profile writer for The New Scientist. He is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, and has been a member of the Egypt Exploration Society since the 1970s, as well as a member of numerous other academic societies. He has produced, written and presented a documentary for Channel Four and National Geographic Channels on his archaeological discoveries in Greece and Italy, and he was at one time an arts reviewer on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Kaleidoscope’. In 1993, his translation of the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh was performed at the Royal National Theatre in London. With his wife, Olivia, he is co-author and translator of the first complete English version of Aesop’s Fables, which attracted a great deal of international press attention at the time of its release, as the earlier translations had suppressed some of the fables because of Victorian prudery.

Temple was a colleague of the late Dr. Joseph Needham of Cambridge, in association with whom he wrote The Genius of China, which has been approved as an official reference book (in Chinese) for the Chinese secondary school system, and which won five national awards in the USA. He has done archaeometric dating work and intensive exploration of closed sites in Egypt with the permission of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities. His research into historical accounts of the Sphinx is the first comprehensive survey ever undertaken.

http://www.robert-temple.com

5. The Genius That Was China

Book Summary

With remarkable insight, clarity and a wealth of facts and fascination

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information, the Genius That Was China traces journey through world history which follows the different roads taken by eastern and western nation to achieve wealth and power in the modern world.

From the time of Marco Polo until the late eighteenth century, the stability and wealth of the Chinese empire were regarded with awe and administration by the rest of the world. When Marco Polo returned from his journey of mythic wealth, beauty, and harmony: the empire of the great Kubla Khan, the Mediterranean to the China sea, and along the fabled silk road , where European and Arab merchants shipped the exquisite products of Chinese civilization. Apart from luxury items such as precious silks and porcelains, Chinas’ most valuable export commodity was its technological and scientific innovation, several hundreds years ahead of many primitive methods still used in the west.

While technology has always been a primary source of wealth, power and stability, true potential of a new invention was often not recognized until it was transported to a different social and cultural environment. By the time paper and printing, the compass, and water-powered machines were introduced in Europe and rapidly began to change the face of the western world; they have been in use in china for hundreds of years. In 1840, during the devastating opium war between Britain and china, the Chinese saw the return of gunpowder, and the cannon- which they had invented thousands years earlier- on board British gunboats. Ironically, the destructive powers of these war instruments had by then been tempered and refined in the highly competitive industrial environment of nineteenth-century Europe, and the superiority of British military technology meant by 1900, the celestial empire was in ruins.

Book Reviews

If medieval China, that vast commercial empire glimpsed by Marco Polo, had gunpowder, paper, a huge army, the compass and other technological wonders, then why didn't the Industrial Revolution occur there instead of Western Europe? Why did the Chinese remain technically backwards for centuries and fall prey to the West's political dominance? These questions are addressed in this enriching, splendidly illustrated study, a tie-in with a PBS-TV series. Australian producer Merson's intriguing chronicle is a subtle account of East-West exchanges--cultural and technical--through the centuries, as well as an inquiry into why the full potential of a scientific discovery often is not realized in its country of origin. As a case in point, he weighs Japan's pre-eminence in high technology based on innovations adapted from the West. He also gauges the enormous environmental and technological problems facing Deng Xiaoping's China.

By: Publishers Weekly

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http://www.amazon.com/The-Genius-That-Was-China/dp/0879513977

Prof Merson published this book as a companion to the PBS series. It is a well researched book with pictures and illustrations to help reader understand the technology that made China enviable and admired. It is their contribution in terms of philosophy and technological advancement both of which impacted Europe to explore and develop.

China, an agricultural based economy had international trade two thousand years with silk and porcelain. Admiral Zheng He had the Chinese Treasure Fleet made seven trips in a peace mission. The Jesuit to china helped the exchange of ideas and technology. Confucianism to Europe promoted "Enlightenment". The political, industrial and agricultural revolutions changed Europe.

Enriched in military might and hunger for markets, European powers came to take advantage of the teacher with gun-powder and cannons and forced unequal treaties on China. This book talked about the low point of the Boxer movement 1900 with only five nations. However, in signing the Boxer Protocol, there were eleven nations with eight countries occupying Peking. It also compared the two outcomes in China and Japan upon European civilization impact.

Prof Merson foretells that the center of economic power, intellectual creativity and technological innovation have shifted from China to Europe and US and now, in 1990s, apparently back to Asia again. His prediction becomes reality in 2012 and Hillary declared the American Pacific Century. It is interesting to see that competition will bring about innovations and break through for the benefit of mankind.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Genius-That-Was-China/dp/0879513977

Author Biography

Associate Professor John Merson was the Director of the IES until January 2012 and Head of the Graduate Research Program in Environmental Policy and Management at UNSW.He is one of the founding Directors of The Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute, and has been a consultant to the UNESCO, APEC, IUCN, DEST & Dept of Foreign Affairs. He was a member of the Australian Indonesia Steering Committee on Science and Technology, and the Australia Korea Forum.He is the author of seven books and a wide range of academic papers and research covering issues of Environmental and Development, Adaptive Environmental Policy & Management and Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation.For his journalistic work he is the recipient of a United Nations Media Peace Prize

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http://www.ies.unsw.edu.au/our-people/associate-professor-john-merson

6. Lords Of The Rim

On one level, this book is a lively version of Chinese history from 1100 B.C. to the present, through the screen of the dealings of its merchant class. On another level, it is an Arabian Nights tale of scandal, war, politics and, above all, money-making. "To be rich is good," runs an old Chinese proverb. On yet another level, it is a brilliant analysis of the enormous power wielded by a widely scattered group of 55 million Chinese merchants who live in self-imposed or government-ordered exile throughout Asia and, increasingly, in the U.S. and Canada. In the scramble of Western entrepreneurs for footholds in China's enormous markets, asserts Seagrave (The Soong Dynasty), this is the group to reckon with. They're already there. They have a hammerlock on commerce in nearly every country of the Pacific Rim. It is they who financed the current economic boom that has made China the third largest market in the world after the U.S. and Japan, and they who have the greatest stakes in which direction post-Deng China takes. To top off his engrossing account, Seagrave speculates on several possibilities including the breakaway of some southern regions, origin of most of the overseas Chinese, into independent countries. Seagrave has delivered an engrossing mercantile history and he looks forward, with a blend of apprehension and admiration, to the early 21st century, when China is expected to become the world's largest market and the Chinese to join the ranks of the world's most powerful producers.

Book Reviews

Seagrave, the son of missionary parents, has written numerous books about the Far East, including Dragon Lady (LJ 3/15/92). He believes that today 55 million expatriate Chinese dominate the economy of the Pacific Rim. Here he explores how these overseas Chinese came to be so powerful. Seagrave begins in the 11th century B.C.E., when merchants were exiled to the South China coast by the oppressive Chou dynasty. They then moved offshore, establishing economic power bases. Seagrave describes how over the centuries the overseas Chinese became incredibly rich. He discusses many contemporary issues, including their financing of the economic boom in China, how they achieved an edge on Western companies, and how even the Japanese cannot do business without their assistance. His is an engaging and absorbing history appropriate for the general reader as well as the specialist. Highly recommended.?W. L. Wuerch, Micronesian Area Research Ctr., Univ. of Guam

http://www.amazon.com/Lords-Rim-Sterling-Seagrave/dp/0399140115

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I was pleasantly surprised by this offering of Sterling Seagrave's as normally, his works would be double the thickness of this book but hey, isn't it this saying that don't judge the book by its cover? The book spanned thousands of years, going back through time in China illustrating to us what events led to the exodus of Chinese overseas. I simply couldn't put the book down reading about those legendary statesmen like Sun Ping, Sun Tzu, Wu Tze Shih, Chao Tsao, & so forth. I vaguely knew of what my older generations told me about them when I was a kid but now, everything is coming back to me. Sterling Seagrave is at his best unwoven all the complex threads that have had been set up by those master puppeteer, who in this case is none other than overseas Chinese. I don't believe the author is making up stories here at all. Many readers found the content rather far-fetched but people in the region would disagree with that because South-East Asia is undeniably an interesting place to be. Rather, I'm astounded by his in-depth knowledge of what's happening in the South East Asia. Many of the incidents mentioned were happening in my time & I could still vividly remembered what I read in the newspaper or what I heard from the older generations who used to work for those tycoons. Whilst it's true that the second part of the book is becoming overbearing (probably it's because I have known of the incidents already or that it's already been covered in other Sterling Seagrave's offering), overall, this is still a well-researched book. A job very well-done, indeed.

By: Ping Lim

http://www.amazon.com/Lords-Rim-Sterling-Seagrave/dp/0399140115

Authors Biography

Sterling Seagrave (born 1937) is the author of thirteen non-fiction histories and biographies, many co-authored with his wife, Peggy Seagrave. He grew up in Asia, in the remote Golden Triangle opium country on the Burma-China border, when Burma was still part of British India. He is in the 5th generation of American medical missionaries, teachers, and doctors who first came to Burma in 1832. He was in Burma when it was invaded by Japan in 1942, but with other family members were aboard the last refugee ship to India. His father, bestselling author of Burma Surgeon and Burma Surgeon Returns, was General Stilwell's chief medical officer in the CBI Theater. In 1947-8 when Britain gave Burma its independence, multiple civil wars broke out that continue today, and led to a military dictatorship still in power now. He was educated at a boarding school in India, then later in North and South America. In 1958, he dropped out of college and went to Cuba, age 21, as a stringer for the Chicago Daily News, instead helping Fidelistas in Pinar del Rio move ammunition and medicines brought by smuggling boats from the Florida Everglades. Since age 18, he has been a journalist at various newspapers including four years at The Washington Post.

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In 1965 he resigned to freelance throughout Asia for magazines including TIME, LIFE, Newsweek, Esquire, GEO, Atlantic, and Smithsonian. In 1979, he began writing investigative books, about the secret use of chemical and biological weapons, followed by a series of books on the powerful dynastic families of Asia, revealing their true histories disguised by propaganda and hagiographies. Death threats from Taiwan followed publication of The Soong Dynasty, a nationwide bestseller and top choice of the Book of the Month Club. The film option was purchased by George Roy Hill and Paul Newman. Next came books about Japan's looting of Asia in WW2, and how the treasure "vanished" when it was secretly recovered by the CIA to bribe foreign dictators and oligarchs. More death threats caused him to move to Europe in 1985 with Peggy Seagrave. They are now French citizens, writing their fourteenth book. Many have been bestsellers in multiple languages, including Mongol. In France, Seagrave has published three French editions in Paris, and has had long interviews in Paris Match, Nouvel Observateur, and Valeurs Actuel.

They lived on a sailboat for ten years, then moved ashore to restore a 13th C stone wine-cave first built by the Knights Templar. It is surrounded by vineyards, with fine views of the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean. They have spent 17 years restoring it, while continuing to research and write books. They are now working on film projects, as well, including a major documentary film about his father, being produced by a Chinese film company; Seagrave's father was chief surgeon both for Stilwell's American forces, and Chinese armies retaking Burma from Japan. So the "Burma Surgeon" is a legendary figure in China as well.

7. China: Tradition and Transformation

Review

This book, originally published in 1973, is authored by John K. Fairbank, Edwin O. Reischauer and Albert M. Craig. It has been revised and updated over the years so that it has remained a very popular upper level undergraduate and graduate level text in many college courses on Japan, China and South East Asia.It is an excellent survey of these countries written by the United States'foremost scholars of East Asian history. The book suffers only from the attempt to cover too much ground. The histories of countries as vast and important to the world economy as Japan and China cannot be adequately told in a combined volume especially when lumped together with the additional nations of Korea, Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia.Still the volume is familiar old chestnut for an entire generation of history students and looks as if it will remain so for the next generation. The book is extremely well indexed

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and leads the reader directly to the topic desired, even if the reader will eventually have to go to other volumes to get the whole story on that topic.

By: Brian Wayne Wells, Esquire, reviews "East Asia."

http://www.amazon.com/East-Asia-Tradition-Transformation-Revised/dp/0395450233

Author Biography

Born in South Dakota, John King Fairbank attended local public schools for his early education. From there he went on first to Exeter, then the University of Wisconsin, and ultimately to Harvard, from which he received his B.A. degree summa cum laude in 1929. That year he traveled to Britain as a Rhodes Scholar. In 1932 he went to China as a teacher and after extensive travel there received his Ph.D. from Oxford University in 1936. Between 1941 and 1946, he was in government service---as a member of the Office of Strategic Services, as special assistant to the U.S. ambassador to China, and finally as director of the U.S. Information Service in China. Excepting those years, beginning in 1936, Fairbank spent his entire career at Harvard University, where he served in many positions, including Francis Lee Higginson Professor of History and director of Harvard's East Asian Research Center. Fairbank, who came to be considered one of the world's foremost authorities on modern Chinese history and Asian-West relations, was committed to reestablishing diplomatic and cultural relations with China. He was also committed to the idea that Americans had to become more conversant with Asian cultures and languages. In his leadership positions at Harvard and as president of the Association for Asian Studies and the American Historical Association, he sought to broaden the bases of expertise about Asia. At the same time, he wrote fluidly and accessibly, concentrating his work on the nineteenth century and emphasizing the relationship between China and the West. At the same time, his writings placed twentieth-century China within the context of a changed and changing global order. It was precisely this understanding that led him to emphasize the reestablishment of American links with China. More than anyone else, Fairbank helped create the modern fields of Chinese and Asian studies in America. His influence on American understanding of China and Asia has been profound.

Edwin O. Reischauer was born in Japan in 1910, the son of Protestant educational-missionary parents, founders of Japan's first school for the deaf. After being educated in Japanese and American schools, he received his B.A. from Oberlin College in 1931 and his M.A. from Harvard in 1932. Four years later he received a Ph.D. in Far Eastern Languages from Harvard. In 1938 he joined the faculty at Harvard, where he rose to the position of professor and acted for an extensive period as director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute. His academic career was interrupted by World War II, during which he served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Army, and he held civilian posts first in the War Department and later in the Department of State. In 1961 he again took leave from Harvard to accept a position for which he had been hand-picked by President John F. Kennedy---ambassador to Japan. The Japanese accepted him as one of their own; one

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editorial writer welcomed him by writing that he was well informed about Japan, "having no equal among foreigners on that point." Another remarked how satisfying it would be to "write an editorial and know that the American Ambassador will actually be able to read it." Reischauer was a prolific writer and an energetic speaker who saw his role as introducing Japan to America. In his writings and in his activities in other media such as film, he was committed to reaching as broad an audience as possible. At Harvard he led in training the first generation of true American scholars of Japan. As U.S. ambassador to Japan, however, his role became reversed as he sought to educate Japanese about America and Americans. In the wake of the war in the Pacific, Reischauer hoped to show Americans and Japanese that the two countries could and should be close allies and friends. His assessment of Japan's history emphasized the nonrevolutionary character of its modern history and its outward-looking development. In his view Japanese war and aggression were aberrations in a long emerging liberal tradition. His positivist interpretation has been a leading influence in defining America's postwar vision of Japan.

8. China: A New History

Summary

Anyone interested in the history of China will find Fairbank’s final work

remarkable and unlike any other survey. Completed just two days before the author’s

death, CHINA: A NEW HISTORY combines the fruits of a flood of academic studies

produced during the past twenty years with the insight of more than fifty years of

professional and personal China-watching. As a result, this selective work exhibits a sure

sense of what is meaningful in China’s long history. It never becomes dull, plodding, or a

mere chronicle of facts.

Fairbank organizes his book around four themes. First, he confirms many of the

myths and legends surrounding China’s prehistory on the basis of recent archaelogical

discoveries. Next he traces the growth of imperial autocracy, demonstrating both its

potential for development and the inherent difficulties of modernizing under such a

system. Why did China fail to keep pace in the modern world when, as late as the

eighteenth century, she was in many economic ways comparable to Europe? Fairbank

suggests that there can be no monocausal explanation for the great paradox “that bothers

all Chinese patriots today.” Rather, it must be explained by broadly applying Chinese

appreciation of the ideal to a host of challenges which, in the West, would have been

greeted with a compromising pragmatism.

The third quarter of the book is devoted to the failure of Republican government

in China between 1912 and 1949. By emphasizing the rise of communism, it flows neatly

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into a cogent discussion of the vicissitudes of communist society since 1949. In the last

quarter of CHINA: A NEW HISTORY, Fairbank demonstrates that the policies of the

Chinese communist government have alternated between progressive, creative leadership

and misguided fanaticism. The Tiananmen Massacre of June 4, 1989, is portrayed as

typical of Chinese autocracy and notable only because the Western press was so ready to

report it.

Rarely will the nonspecialist find such clear writing so well-informed by years of

academic inquiry. Dozens of illustrations, six tables, and twenty-four maps richly

complement the text. Finally, Fairbank is not afraid to admit that the expansion of

knowledge about China should make us all aware of the magnitude of what remains to be

learned.

Reviews

No American scholar of China was better known to the public and academia alike than Fairbank. This history of China, completed two days before his death in 1991, is a fitting final work. In covering the breadth of the country's history, from the earliest archaeological records to the present, the author is occasionally short on details, but lay readers and undergraduate students will appreciate the perceptive analysis and explanation throughout, leading to a better understanding of this complex nation, its people, and its importance in the world. Furthermore, Fairbank's command of recent research, along with an excellent bibliography, will appeal to the scholarly audience. Highly recommended. History Book Club selection.-- Kenneth W. Berger, Duke Univ. Lib., Durham, N.C.

By: Library Journal

URL: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/china-john-king-fairbank/1101465606?ean=9780674018280

Most fascinating for me in this history of China was the discussion of the recent economic opening that this huge and populous nation has undertaken. The reasons given for why they have been becoming capitalistic, (in fear of becoming like the USSR and to try to modernize their society) were intriguing. I must admit that I had a long prejudice against Chinese politics, as I considered it a state run by thugs. But after reading this book, I realized the long tradition of Confucian thought, and its effects on governance over the history of China. Also interesting was the role the US had in the Nationalist cause at the turn of the last Century. The tragic situation of women in the society, which was not elaborated on very much, but still fascinating and disturbing was also explored. I also enjoyed the stories of the dynasties, although I still don¿t have them all straight in my mind. But I did get a feel for why the dynasties rose and fell, and how they interacted with the rest of the world. The rise of the Communist party in China was very interesting, and I am very curious to see where things go now. The civic traditions and endemic

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corruptions inherent in the social structure could be seen in their interrelated complexities rising over the millennia as governance of this vast and diverse land was figured out. Mostly this book opened my mind to a society and culture I knew little about, and helped me to begin to appreciate it much more. Compared to the ever-present violence and destruction, religious persecution and conflict, and social disruption and seemingly unending tales of power-drunk warlords conniving to divvy up and consume land and influence that I gleaned reading the history of Europe, the history of China seems almost stable and consistent.

URL: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/china-john-king-fairbank/1101465606?ean=9780674018280

Author Bibliography

Born in South Dakota, John King Fairbank attended local public schools for his early education. From there he went on first to Exeter, then the University of Wisconsin, and ultimately to Harvard, from which he received his B.A. degree summa cum laude in 1929. That year he traveled to Britain as a Rhodes Scholar. In 1932 he went to China as a teacher and after extensive travel there received his Ph.D. from Oxford University in 1936. Between 1941 and 1946, he was in government service---as a member of the Office of Strategic Services, as special assistant to the U.S. ambassador to China, and finally as director of the U.S. Information Service in China. Excepting those years, beginning in 1936, Fairbank spent his entire career at Harvard University, where he served in many positions, including Francis Lee Higginson Professor of History and director of Harvard's East Asian Research Center. Fairbank, who came to be considered one of the world's foremost authorities on modern Chinese history and Asian-West relations, was committed to reestablishing diplomatic and cultural relations with China. He was also committed to the idea that Americans had to become more conversant with Asian cultures and languages. In his leadership positions at Harvard and as president of the Association for Asian Studies and the American Historical Association, he sought to broaden the bases of expertise about Asia. At the same time, he wrote fluidly and accessibly, concentrating his work on the nineteenth century and emphasizing the relationship between China and the West. At the same time, his writings placed twentieth-century China within the context of a changed and changing global order. It was precisely this understanding that led him to emphasize the reestablishment of American links with China. More than anyone else, Fairbank helped create the modern fields of Chinese and Asian studies in America. His influence on American understanding of China and Asia has been profound.

9. Winner Take All

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Book Summary

Hardly a day passes when newspaper headlines or media commentators don’t scream warnings of impending doom—shortages of arable land, clashes over water, and political Armageddon as global demand for fossil fuels far outstrips supply—but only one country appears to understand the importance of controlling these crucial assets: China. InWinner Take All, international economist and bestselling author Dambisa Moyo explains the implications of China’s aggressive rush for resources around the world, a campaign that surpasses even the voracious demands for raw materials sparked by the Industrial Revolution. As Moyo compellingly argues, China’s seemingly unstoppable drive will have global consequences for us all.

Book Reviews

China's impact on the global economy since it embarked on the pursuit of growth

through the market three decades ago has been a two-way street. On the one hand, there

is the familiar story of how the world's most populous nation and its second biggest

economy has exported a stream of cheap manufactured goods with richer nations making

up for the deficiencies of domestic demand in what is still quite a poor country. On the

other hand, there is the story of China as the biggest buyer of raw materials on a

worldwide scale, a resources-poor nation bent on headlong expansion which needs to be

fuelled by supply from Africa, the Middle East, Australia, Latin America and neighbours

such as Burma.

This second element in China's rise has been recorded in a number of regional studies on

Africa and Latin America. Now economist Dambisa Moyo has broadened out the canvas

to set China as the core element in her dire warning of a global race for resources as

demand for everything from copper to corn outpaces supply.

She marshals an intimidating array of evidence, though her insistence on the growing

deficiencies of supply leads her to wave aside such developments as the effects of

technology and exploration on energy resources, which have had a habit of confounding

the doomsayers. Nor does she chart the use of new metals or the expansion of mining or

increased yields reported from new strains of food seeds.

Pursuing her Malthusian course, Moyo calls for co-ordinated international action in

response. What form such action would take is unclear. The disappointing outcome of

the Rio +20 Earth summit shows again how difficult it is to get disparate countries to

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agree on concrete steps to deal with major global problems. That said, this book's overall

message is one which certainly deserves greater attention that it generally receives.

But Moyo's account of the principal character in the drama she sets out is too limited and

needs to be set in context. She fails to provide the essential domestic component in

China's resources demand.

For instance, the book takes China's increasing demand for food and land on which to

grow it as an external issue whereas it stems in considerable part from the inadequacies

of the country's domestic agriculture and the policy priorities of successive governments.

Equally, there is no discussion of how the large excess capacity of Chinese industry fuels

purchases of hard commodities beyond what the country really needs. As with

manufactured goods, China has to "go out" in part because of the weaknesses of domestic

policies. It has built up big inventory stockpiles which enable it to act as the market price

fixer and produce a whole subset of traders whose purchases may well be sold on world

markets rather than ever going to the mainland.

ch factors need to be considered for a fuller assessment of the role of a country in which

the authorities often pursue self-defeating policies that have global implications. Nor does

Moyo's depiction of China as the winner which will take all in the competition for global

resources take sufficient account of the problems, some self-inflicted, which companies

from the mainland are experiencing.

Moyo's book is published just as the global "super cycle" in hard commodities appears to

be tapering off, in part because of the decline in China's growth rate. An upward cycle in

agricultural products may set in if China has a bad harvest and the government relaxes its

grain self-sufficiency policy.

But, for all Moyo's insistence that a crisis is inevitable and that China will be the only

gainer, we are in uncertain territory here. Forecasting commodity movement is

notoriously difficult given the number of factors involved in determining supply and

demand. Moyo has rung an alarm bell, but how her warnings will translate into reality

remains problematic – as does China's ability to be the winner, which takes all.

By: The Guardian

URL: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jul/01/winner-take-all-dambisa-moyo-review

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Now she has focused on the way China is scooping up natural resources to fuel its race to be the world's largest economy, and the impact this will have on the rest of us.

She tells this story from a different perspective than most writers of the West, for she does see things in part from the standpoint of Africa. She was born and brought up in Zambia, before she took her masters at Harvard and her doctorate at Oxford. Africa, with its abundant mineral resources, has been a recipient of huge Chinese investment.

It is a remarkable story: China's leap from an impoverished agrarian society to the world's second largest economy in the space of 30 years. Nothing on this scale and at this speed has ever happened before in the history of the world economy: this is faster than the rise of the US in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th. But there is a further difference. When the US expanded, it discovered, or at least unlocked, new natural resources: vast mineral wealth and the new lands of the prairies. China has some natural resources but not nearly enough to supply its needs, so it has to find them from elsewhere.

This scouring of the world for resources is the start of the trail Moyo takes us along: the demand for land and water on the one hand, and for oil, gas and minerals on the other. She looks at the way commodity markets function and at the particular pinch points likely to arise. For example, there seems likely to be an ample supply of aluminium and an adequate supply of cotton and wheat; but also a likely huge excess of demand over supply in copper, lead, zinc. She looks at how China has sought to ensure access to these commodities, if necessary paying over the odds. She looks at the thrust into Africa and the way in which Chinese investment is rather more welcome among Africans than the variety of aid programmes of Western nations and NGOs. "The closer you get to the ground in Africa," she observes, "the better China's participation is viewed."

But she also warns. She warns of the potential for conflict over food. She warns of pollution in China and the costs that this imposes principally on the Chinese people, but also beyond China's borders. And she rounds up her thesis by looking at outcomes of varying degrees of nastiness – from "death and destruction rivaling... that witnessed in the past world wars" to "the view that the Chinese economy is slowing, and slowing fast" and so "will no longer demand world resources in substantial qualities."

This is not an elegantly written book. Her technique is to pepper her assertions with a mass of statistics that often seem scattered like a condiment onto the meal. And there is a hectoring tone that becomes wearing. But she does go to the heart of the issue: what China does over resources is profoundly important, and that deserves our attention.

By Hamish Mcrae

URL: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/winner-takes-all-by-dambisa-moyo-7899529.html

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Author Bibliography

Dambisa Moyo is a global economist and author who analyzes the macroeconomy and international affairs. Her work has taken her to more than 70 countries over the last decade, during which time she has developed a unique knowledge on the inherent conflicts facing developed economies, as well as the interaction between politics, international finance and developing markets.

In particular, her work examines the interplay of international business and the global economy, while highlighting the key opportunities for investment; capitalizing on her rare ability to translate trends in markets, politics, regulatory matters and economics into their likely impact on global business.

Dambisa Moyo serves on the boards of Barclays Bank, the financial services group, SABMiller, the global brewer, and Barrick Gold, the global miner. She was an economist at Goldman Sachs and a consultant to the World Bank in Washington, D.C.Dambisa was named by TIME Magazine as one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World,” and to the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders Forum.

She was awarded the 2013 Hayek Lifetime Achievement Award, named for the Nobel Prize winner and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Friedrich Hayek. Dr. Moyo has been a participant at the Bilderberg Conference and the U.S. Federal Reserve Jackson Hole Conference. In addition, she serves on the World Economic Forum’s Network of Global Agenda Councils on Global Imbalances, and is a member of the Atlantic Council.

In 2015, Dambisa joined the judging panel of the FT – McKinsey Best Business Book Award. She is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is a Better Way for Africa and How the West Was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly and the Stark Choices Ahead.Her third book was Winner Take All: China’s Race for Resources and What it Means for the World.Dambisa is a contributing editor to CNBC, the business and finance news network. Her writing regularly appears in economic and finance-related publications such as the Financial Times and theWall Street Journal.

She completed a PhD in economics at Oxford University and holds a Masters degree from Harvard University. She completed an undergraduate degree in chemistry and an MBA in finance at American University in Washington, D.C.She is an avid tennis fan and has run numerous half marathons and marathons.

10. Family, Fields, and Ancestors- Constancy and change in China social and Economic History, 1550-1949

Book Summary

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The first book to synthesize and make available important research on the social and economic history of China in late Imperial and modern times, this is a much-needed supplement to existing political histories. Drawing on a vast array of sources pertaining to the period from the Ming Dynasty to the Communist revolution, Lloyd E. Eastman clarifies the complexities of Chinese society while paying tribute to its extraordinary regional, social, and historical diversity. He covers a wide range of topics, from population trends, family life, and popular religion, to agriculture, commerce, manufacturing, and class structure. He also includes incisive comparisons with European socioeconomic history. Family, Fields, and Ancestors portrays aspects of China that have been largely ignored in other general texts but that are crucial to a full understanding of China's historical development in modern times 

Book Reviews

"Provides solid grounding in the economic and social context that shaped modern China's political history....The chapters are clearly written and generous in their presentation of factual data."--History

"Excellent background for a modern China course."--Linda Walton, Portland State University

"A most useful resource for teachers and students of modern Chinese history, as well as those who labor in the vineyards of world history/civilization courses....The best single assessment available of the economy and society of China in the four hundred years before the Chinese Communist takeover, providing a coherent picture of a vast and complex region in a global context."--The Historian

"[Eastman] has succeeded in producing a textbook noteworthy for its direct and lucid discussion of many major historical issues....The book's style is marked by an informality and verve certain to keep students' interest....Students will gain much from this readable introductory synthesis."--Asia

"A very useful textbook....Significantly supplements the dominant emphasis on political and intellectual history in other texts, and thus better reflects the interests and findings of important new trends in the study of China's history by Americans and others."--Journal of Economic History

URL : https://global.oup.com/ushe/product/family-fields-and-ancestors-9780195052701?cc=ca&lang=en&

“If you are curious in understanding a large part of Chinese culture and some aspects of its history this is an excellent place to start. By no means a beginners book but clearly written and logical in its presentation professor Eastman makes it easy to understand for a layman. Highly recommended”.

URL: http://www.amazon.ca/Family-Fields-Ancestors-Constancy-1550-1949/dp/0195052706

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Author Biography

URL: Parks M. Coble, Paul A. Cohen and Patricia Ebrey (1993). Lloyd E. Eastman (1929–1993). The Journal of Asian Studies, 52, pp 1110-1112. doi:10.1017/S0021911800036925.

11.China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power

Book Summaries

This thought-provoking analysis of daily life in China is the first book to rival Fox Butterfield's China: Alive in the Bitter Sea (LJ 4/15/82). All the authors are New

York Times correspondents, but while Butterfield did five years of graduate work in Asian studies, Kristof graduated from law school and WuDunn has an MBA and a master's degree in public administration. As a result, they analyze China in terms of its progress in the areas of civil rights and business. The authors argue that today's leaders are remarkably similar to those of past dynasties but that, given their entrepreneurial energy, Chinese people are living better now than ever before. In interviews with many different types of people, Kristof and WuDunn (who won a Pulitzer Prize for their reporting on the Tiananmen Square massacre) observe that Chinese society is changing slowly in the face of much blatant injustice. On a positive note, they see China as a nation that is beginning to appreciate the benefits of law over imperial rule. Highly recommended.

By Peggy Spitzer Christoff, Oak Park, Ill.

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The definitive book on China's uneasy transformation into an economic and political superpower by two Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporters. An insightful and thought-provoking analysis of daily life in China, China Wakes is an exemplary work of reportage. Has 16 pages of photos.

Book Reviews

In one of the best books on contemporary China, Kristoff and WuDunn ponder a central paradox: an explosion of wealth and entrepreneurship in the world's third biggest economy (after the U.S. and Japan) flourishes under a repressive, authoritarian regime. This husband-and-wife team, Pulitzer Prize-winning Beijing correspondents for the New York Times from 1988 to 1993, take us from the Xinjiang region in China's far west, where an Islamic revival threatens Party rule, to occupied Tibet seething with hatred for the Chinese overlords. They report on widespread alienation from the government, massive rural poverty, rampant bribery and corruption, increasing discrimination against women in the workplace, routine abduction and trafficking in women and children. The authors also perceive ``the embryo of a civil society'' emerging that may one day undermine the dictatorship. WuDunn, who is Chinese-American, writes of her sometimes-frustrating search for her native identity in a regimented society pervaded by a “culture of silence”.

By: Nicholas D. Kristof, Author, Sheryl WuDunn, With, Kristof

URL: http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-8129-2252-3

While there is much to criticize about China Wakes, there is also much to recommend it. There is ample reason that it has become one of the classic "must reads" China books: it is an easy, accessible read that assumes the audience knows little, if anything, about China, and it covers very attention getting "human interest" type stories.The latter fact has drawn much fire in other reviews, that murders and scandals are hardly representative of any country. While I concur, it also reveals the major problem of Western journalism on China: ignoring the big picture in favor of the exciting story. I have enormous respect for Kristoff and Wudunn as professional journalists, and for their colleagues now working for the NY Times in China. The current Beijing correspondent has done amazing work on the cover-up of the AIDS epidemic in China, the Shanghai correspondent has broken ground with his coverage of organ harvesting in prisons, and another of their staff has done notable work on labor unrest. Those stories are important and provide insight into the larger workings of the machine that is China, but compiled together would create a rather skewered version of the very complicated entity that is China. Unfortunately, what the average American wants to read on China is such sound bytes.

I read this book five years ago for a college class, just after returning from my first trip to China. Even then, it was outdated. A deeper criticism, though, is the book's Beijing bias. I, granted, have my own bias as a Shanghai-lander, but it's frustrating

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reading books by Beijing-based expats. In Beijing, politics is everything and everything is politics, and foreigners, especially journalists, are sequestered into isolated compounds. After exposure to too much coal dust and so uptight an environment in Beijing, one starts to see conspiracy theories and political boogeymen under every bush. The rest of China is not like that.

Nonetheless, it is a good overview of China in the early 1990s, and if you're a bit of a "China virgin", China Wakes coupled with a few Jonathan Spence books should break you in

By:Onna

URL: http://www.amazon.com/China-Wakes-Struggle-Rising-Power/dp/0679763937

Author Biography

Sheryl WuDunn

A third generation Chinese American, Sheryl WuDunn grew up in New York

City on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She attended Cornell University, graduating

with a B.A. in European History in 1981.[4] For three years, WuDunn worked for Bankers

Trust Company as an international loan officer. After this, she earned her M.B.A.

from Harvard Business School and M.P.A. from Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of

Public and International Affairs.

WuDunn married reporter Nicholas D. Kristof in 1988.[5] After working for The Wall

Street Journal and other publications, WuDunn joined the staff of The New York Times as

a correspondent in the Beijing bureau in 1989.

WuDunn worked for a time for Goldman Sachs as a vice president in

its investment management division as a private wealth advisor, before leaving to write a

book.[6]

WuDunn and her husband Nicholas D. Kristof won the Pulitzer Prize for

International Reporting in 1990 for their coverage of the Tiananmen Square protests of

1989.[7]They were the first married couple ever to win a Pulitzer for journalism; WuDunn

was the first Asian-American reporter to win a Pulitzer. She also won a George Polk

Award and an Overseas Press Club award, both for reporting in China.

In 2009, WuDunn and Kristof received the Dayton Literary Peace Prize's 2009

Lifetime Achievement Award.[8] In 2011, WuDunn was listed by Newsweek as one of the

150 Women who Shake the World.[9]

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In 2012, WuDunn was selected as one of 60 notable members of the League of

Extraordinary Women by Fast Company magazine. In 2013, she was included as one of

the leading "women who make America" in the PBS documentary "The Makers." She

was also featured in a 2013 Harvard Business School film about prominent women who

have graduated from the business school.

In 2015 she signed an open letter which the ONE Campaign had been collecting

signatures for; the letter was addressed to Angela Merkel and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma,

urging them to focus on women as they serve as the head of the G7 in Germany and the

AU in South Africa respectively, which will start to set the priorities in development

funding before a main UN summit in September 2015 that will establish new

development goals for the generation.[10]

Nicholas D. Kristof

Mr. Kristof grew up on a sheep and cherry farm near Yamhill, Oregon. He

graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard College and then studied law at Oxford

University on a Rhodes Scholarship, graduating with first class honors. He later studied

Arabic in Cairo and Chinese in Taipei. While working in France after high school, he

caught the travel bug and began backpacking around Africa and Asia during his student

years, writing articles to cover his expenses. Mr. Kristof has lived on four continents,

reported on six, and traveled to more than 140 countries, plus all 50 states, every Chinese

province and every main Japanese island. He's also one of the very few Americans to be

at least a two-time visitor to every member of the Axis of Evil. During his travels, he has

had unpleasant experiences with malaria, mobs and an African airplane crash.

After joining The New York Times in 1984, initially covering economics, he served as a

Times correspondent in Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Beijing and Tokyo. He also covered

presidential politics and is the author of the chapter on President George W. Bush in the

reference book "The Presidents." He later was Associate Managing Editor of the Times,

responsible for Sunday editions.

In 1990 Mr. Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, then also a Times journalist, won a

Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of China's Tiananmen Square democracy movement.

They were the first married couple to win a Pulitzer for journalism. Mr. Kristof won a

second Pulitzer in 2006, for commentary for what the judges called "his graphic, deeply

reported columns that, at personal risk, focused attention on genocide in Darfur and that

gave voice to the voiceless in other parts of the world." He has also won other prizes

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including the George Polk Award, the Overseas Press Club award, the Michael Kelly

award, the Online News Association award and the American Society of Newspaper

Editors award. Mr. Kristof has taken a special interest in Web journalism and was the

first blogger on The New York Times Web site; he also twitters and has a Facebook fan

page and a channel on YouTube. A documentary about him, "Reporter," premiered at

Sundance Film Festival in 2009 and will be shown on HBO.

In his column, Mr. Kristof was an early opponent of the Iraq war, and among the first to

warn that we were losing ground to the Taliban in southern Afghanistan. He was he was

the first to report that President Bush's State of the Union claim about Iraq seeking

uranium from Africa was contradicted by the administration's own investigation. His

columns have often focused on global health, poverty and gender issues in the developing

world. In particular, since 2004 he has written dozens of columns about Darfur and

visited the area ten times.

Mr. Kristof and Ms. WuDunn are authors of "China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of

a Rising Power" and "Thunder from the East: Portrait of a Rising Asia." Their next book,

"Half the Sky: From Oppression to Opportunity for Women Worldwide," will be

published by Knopf in September. Mr. Kristof and Ms. WuDunn are the parents of

Gregory, Geoffrey and Caroline. Mr. Kristof enjoys running, backpacking, and having his

Chinese and Japanese corrected by his children.

12. The Yamato dynasty: the Secret History of Japan’s Imperial family

Book Summary

In The Yamato Dynasty, Sterling Seagrave, who divulged the secrets of Mao Tse-tung and the ruthlessness of Chiang Kai-shek in the New York Times bestseller The Soong Dynasty, and his wife and longtime collaborator, Peggy, present the controversial, never-before-told history of the world’s longest-reigning dynasty–the Japanese imperial family–from its nineteenth-century origins through today. In the first collective biography of both the men and women of the Yamato Dynasty, the Seagraves take a controversial, comprehensive look at a family history that crosses two world wars, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the American occupation of Japan, and Japan’s subsequent phoenix-like rise from the ashes of the Second World War.The Yamato Dynasty tells the story of the powerful men who have stood behind the screen–the shoguns and financiers controlling the throne from the shadows–taking readers behind the walls of privilege and tradition and revealing, in uncompromising detail, the true nature of a dynasty shrouded in myth and legend

Book reviews

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For fans of vast right-wing conspiracies, ''The Yamato Dynasty: The Secret History of Japan's Imperial Family'' posits a doozy: Over the last 150 years, four Japanese emperors, and assorted princes and consorts, have been so fiendishly wrapped around the fingers of a cabal of sinister power brokers, financiers and politicians as to make the Chrysanthemum Throne little more than a front for greed, corruption and fraud. That, say Sterling and Peggy Seagrave, the authors of ''Dragon Lady: The Life and Legend of the Last Empress of China,'' helps explain why Japan is today one of the ''world's richest and most deceitful governments.''

Having reported on Japan for a decade, I was surprised by how much I had missed. For instance, despite long hours spent listening to Japanese leaders dilate on the intricacies of rice subsidies or the dangers of importing aluminum baseball bats from the United States, I learned for the first time that ''many Japanese politicians . . . still state flatly that Japan did not lose the war.'' Here is another of the Seagraves' news flashes: Japan's economy was not really shattered by World War II -- its secret agents had socked away enough fascist gold to underwrite a buoyant rise from the ashes.

Behind this long-running imperial racket is a crew of Dick Tracy-like characters, including the former prime minister Nobusuke Kishi, who ''resembled a salamander,'' and the ''prune-faced'' former prime minister Noboru Takeshita. (It's true that Kishi, whom I had occasion to interview, was no Clark Gable, and did have a complicated past, but I confess that I totally missed the face thing with Takeshita and, on the whole, found Japanese pols no slipperier, say, than Al Gore among the Buddhist nuns.)

But predation has its price. By the late 1980's, the Seagraves tell us, ''so much black money was in circulation from war loot'' that Japan's speculative bubble eventually burst. And to think that some of us were bamboozled into believing that it was Economics 101 at work -- too many surplus dollars from exports channeled into too few Cartier wristwatches, overpriced Impressionist paintings and gaudy Tokyo condos.

The book's real blockbuster, though, is the story of how Emperor Hirohito escaped prosecution as a war criminal. By 1945, we're told, Japan owed American lenders huge amounts of money. Enter former President Herbert Hoover. A well-known Quaker, he conspired with ''a network of Quakers and near-Quakers'' within Japan's elite to preserve the royal family. Hoover and his allies worked to ensure, first, that Japan did not go Communist; second, that its financial gnomes stayed in place; and, third, that Wall Street got its money back.

Meanwhile, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the ruler of occupied Japan, was suborning key witnesses in the Tokyo war crimes trials to keep Hirohito out of the dock, in hopes that one day Hoover and his Republican friends would help him occupy the White House. In saving the throne, the Seagraves argue, MacArthur deviously undermined real democratic reforms in Japan and became a ''perfect patsy'' for the men who had ruled Japan before the war and would continue to do so secretly after the war. (Well, not all that secretly -- several generations of foreign reporters stationed in Tokyo knew where to find them.)

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The occupation had its share of dark corners and high-handed behavior, to be sure. MacArthur did flirt with the presidency, even if his towering self-regard made him an unlikely patsy for anybody. He did use the throne, but as a tool for what the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian John W. Dower calls his ''almost messianic zeal'' for democratizing Japan. Even though Communist advances in China and Korea forced a reversal of early policies, postwar Japan emerged, as Dower points out, ''a vastly freer and more egalitarian nation'' than before the war.

One needs to be open to new theories, of course, but big conspiracy theories require big proof, and the Seagraves fail to provide it. Despite copious footnotes, key sources are weak, or missing altogether. The authors tell us, for example, that ''documents show'' that MacArthur and Hoover knew about a ''massive recovery'' of Japanese war loot and, further, that large deposits of gold bullion were placed in accounts bearing their names -- yet I could find no further details in their book about these pivotal papers.

But then you can't be too careful. ''Old ways die hard in Japan,'' we learn, ''where it can still cost your life to speak aloud.'' My opinionated 77-year-old mother-in-law in Tokyo would find that one almost as rich as the idea that ''older generations of Japanese still believe that if they look directly into an emperor's face, they will be blinded.''

Yet even a book that presents a darkly cartoonish view of modern Japan contains elements of truth. The Seagraves are right to say we should not remember Emperor Hirohito as simply the charming old gent who met Mickey Mouse on a 1975 trip to Disneyland and overlook his role in a war that ravaged Asia in his name. But you have to wonder if it really helps drive the point home to sum up Hirohito's long, roller-coaster reign by likening it to ''the kingdom of Mickey -- his only true rival.''

By TRACY DAHLBY

URL: https://www.nytimes.com/books/00/05/14/reviews/000514.14dahlbyt.html

Authors Biography

Sterling Seagrave

Sterling Seagrave (born 1937) is the author of thirteen non-fiction histories and biographies, many co-authored with his wife, Peggy Seagrave. He grew up in Asia, in the remote Golden Triangle opium country on the Burma-China border, when Burma was still part of British India. He is in the 5th generation of American medical missionaries, teachers, and doctors who first came to Burma in 1832. He was in Burma when it was invaded by Japan in 1942, but with other family members were aboard the last refugee ship to India. His father, bestselling author of Burma Surgeon and Burma Surgeon Returns, was General Stilwell's chief medical officer in the CBI Theater. In 1947-8 when Britain gave Burma its independence, multiple civil wars broke out that continue today,

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and led to a military dictatorship still in power now. He was educated at a boarding school in India, then later in North and South America. In 1958, he dropped out of college and went to Cuba, age 21, as a stringer for the Chicago Daily News, instead helping Fidelistas in Pinar del Rio move ammunition and medicines brought by smuggling boats from the Florida Everglades. Since age 18, he has been a journalist at various newspapers including four years at The Washington Post. In 1965 he resigned to freelance throughout Asia for magazines including TIME, LIFE, Newsweek, Esquire, GEO, Atlantic, and Smithsonian. In 1979, he began writing investigative books, about the secret use of chemical and biological weapons, followed by a series of books on the powerful dynastic families of Asia, revealing their true histories disguised by propaganda and hagiographies. Death threats from Taiwan followed publication of The Soong Dynasty, a nationwide bestseller and top choice of the Book of the Month Club.

The film option was purchased by George Roy Hill and Paul Newman. Next came books about Japan's looting of Asia in WW2, and how the treasure "vanished" when it was secretly recovered by the CIA to bribe foreign dictators and oligarchs. More death threats caused him to move to Europe in 1985 with Peggy Seagrave. They are now French citizens, writing their fourteenth book. Many have been bestsellers in multiple languages, including Mongol. In France, Seagrave has published three French editions in Paris, and has had long interviews in Paris Match, Nouvel Observateur, and Valeurs Actuel. They lived on a sailboat for ten years, then moved ashore to restore a 13th C stone wine-cave first built by the Knights Templar. It is surrounded by vineyards, with fine views of the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean. They have spent 17 years restoring it, while continuing to research and write books. They are now working on film projects, as well, including a major documentary film about his father, being produced by a Chinese film company; Seagrave's father was chief surgeon both for Stilwell's American forces, and Chinese

armies retaking Burma from Japan. So the "Burma Surgeon" is a legendary figure in China as well.

Peggy Seagrave

Peggy Sawyer Seagrave was born in Washington, D.C., and graduated with honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She first worked in the film archives of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, at the National Archives. She then joined the Smithsonian Institution to produce exhibits and publications for the Bicentennial Celebrations, and the Hall of American Enterprise . Moving to TIME-LIFE Books, she became a senior researcher and senior picture editor producing many volumes in their popular historical series on World War II, Seafaring, and Planet Earth.

Peggy Seagrave worked with Sterling Seagrave on The Soong Dynasty and other books, and became co-author of Dragon Lady - The Life and Legend of the Last Empress of China. Re-investigating the "evil" Manchu empress Tzu Hsi, the Seagraves showed how her image as a murderous, sex-crazed monster was concocted and spread around the world by the Times correspondent George E. Morrison and his ally, the counterfeit historian and art forger Sir Edmund Backhouse. At the Mitchell Library in Australia,

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Peggy Seagrave discovered that the Boxer Siege of the Peking Legations in 1900 was largely the invention of Morrison, who kept a secret diary contradicting his triumphalist reports published by the Times .

The Yamato Dynasty is the first multi-generational biography of the Japanese imperial family to include its women. Among other revelations, they revealed for the first time that Hirohito’s mother was secretly a Quaker with close ties to a Quaker network in Wall Street. They also show how Hirohito's brother, Prince Chichibu, headed a secret campaign to loot twelve Asian countries and colonies conquered by Japan during the half-century from 1895 to 1945. With the collusion of US Quakers, Hirohito was exonerated of war guilt, and Japan pretended to be bankrupt, using the hidden war loot to regain its place as a world economic power and America’s far right bastion in East Asia.

Their latest book, Gold Warriors (2005) is a close look at how Japan systematically looted Asia, and what happened to the plundered treasure after 1945 when it was secretly recovered by Washington and used as a global slush fund. Writing in The London Review of Books, Chalmers Johnson said: “Gold Warriors is easily the best guide available to the scandal of 'Yamashita's gold', and the authors play fair with their readers by supplying them with massive amounts of their raw research materials

13. Sons of Heaven: A portrait of the Japanese monarchy

Book Summary

A comprehensive social history of the Japanese monarchy that sheds light on court life, ritual, sexual mores, religious observances, the development of the caste system, and the laws of succession, and shows how this 2,000 year-old institution has survived the vicissitudes of history to emerge as a strong force behind the modern Japanese state.

Book Reviews

The Japanese monarchy is the oldest and most mystery-enshrouded in existence, and this social history of it, the first comprehensive modern one to be published, is engrossing. Writing in a style at once scholarly and entertaining, Packard (Peter's Kingdom: Inside the Papal City) traces the monarchy from its legendary origins 2000 years ago to the early emperors who wielded temporal as well as spiritual power, and from the puppet emperors under the shoguns, to the Emperor Meiji who, with momentous consequences, hauled the nation into the 20th century. We're shown his grandson Hirohito124th direct descendant of the Sun Goddess, a virtual puppet himself at the time of World War II, but now an internationally respected marine biologist who, though shorn of his divinity, is his

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people's most revered living link to the past. Packard provides a mass of interesting information about the austerities, rituals and daily routine of a Japanese monarch's life.

By: Publishers Weekly

URL: http://www.amazon.ca/Sons-Heaven-Portrait-Japanese-Monarchy/dp/0684186330

The religious and political roles of the emperors of Japan, from historic origins to the present day, is presented in fascinating and sympathetic detail in this semipopular work. Packard has previously written on the British monarchy ( The Queen and Her Court) and the Vatican (Peter's Kingdom) , and he provides similar kinds of information here, e . g., on the functioning of the imperial household, court life, etc. Packard deftly combines a historical narrative with a depiction of the evolving imperial institution in a book that general readers and specialists will find accessible and interesting.

By: Library Journal

URL: http://www.amazon.ca/Sons-Heaven-Portrait-Japanese-Monarchy/dp/0684186330

Author Biography

Jerrold Packard's books include the best-selling Victoria's Daughters, the life stories of the five princesses born to Britain's longest-reigning monarch; Sons of Heaven, a chronicle of Japan's monarchy over fourteen centuries; and American Nightmare, the history of Jim Crow and the racial torment that America endured for more than a hundred years in the wake of the Civil War.  Mr. Packard lives in Vermont.

URL: http://us.macmillan.com/author/jerroldmpackard

14. Japan: The paradox of Progress

Book Summary

Change in Japan has been faster-paced and more unpredictable than in most of the rest of the word. In this interdisciplinary volume, anthropologist, economists, political scientist, psychologists, and sociologist discuss the effects of rapid change on the character of Japanese society. Augmenting description with analysis and prediction they sketch a composite portrait of a country in which old and new coexist, sometimes ironically.

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Each essay illuminates different facet of Japanese culture, dealing with such questions as how japan- the worlds third largest economic yet almost totally dependent on imports fir raw materials will survive in a world of scarcity; whether a policy of international non violence is what compromises and coalition will be necessary in a government in which left and right are opposed on almost all major issues; and how the traditional values in Japanese culture, especially the role of women, will survive the demands of modern life.

These essays depict the problems of a society in which growth generates conflict and progress generates paradox. The discussion of Japan’s experience suggests hypotheses about future of advanced industrial society in general.

Book Reviews

Focusing on attitudes in small group situations, Lewis Austin examines the attitudes and values of 43 American and 42 Japanese business and political executives. The instruments used in this fascination survey are TAT( thematic apperception test) and sentence completion tests. Austin reveals, based upon the analysis of the data, that there some fundamental differences between the Japanese and American sample with regards to their attitudes towards hierarchical relationships, the dimensions of personal elements in the superordinate-subordinate work situations, and ones member in a collective group. Thus, the two groups seem to react differently to authority, leadership, aggression, conflict and cooperation. All in all it is a very insightful book, and should be recommended to every student of Japan and comparative politics.

A generally thoughtful collection of essays by political scientists, psychologists, anthropologists, economists and sociologists on the effects of rapid change on Japanese society. The editor's introduction stresses the paradox of change but does not attempt to integrate the conclusions of the authors.

By: Donald S. Zagoria

URL: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/1977-01-01/japan-paradox-progress

This book contains timely and useful comments on the present and future of Japan. The Papers collected in it were first presented at the seminar on the future of Japan, which met at Yale University in 1973 under the chairmanship of Lewis Austin, the editor, and Hugh Patrick. They were then revised and updated, where appropriate, before they were published in 1976.

URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1153281?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

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Author Biography

Lewis Austin

Lewis Austin studied history, international relations and political science at Harvard, Columbia, and M.I.T., receiving his Ph.D. from the last. He spent six years in Japan, three of them with a multinational foreign Area fellowship program and the Social Science Research council. He is assistant professor in the department of political science at Yale University and is currently engaged in a cross- cultural study of psychopoltical symbolism. He is the author of Saints and Samurai: The Political Culture of the Japanese and American Elites.

15. Vietnam: Revolution in Transition

Book Summary

Vietnam’s Communist leaders, having gained control over the South in the spring of 1975, immediately attempted to establish socialism in the reunified country. But economic failure, foreign policy crises, and popular resistance to dogmatic programs undermined the regime’s efforts, and in 1986 the Vietnamese Communist Party embarked on a new era of doi moi (renovation). Today, the country’s leadership is moving toward a more market-oriented approach while maintaining the ultimate goal of building a socialist society. Success is by no means guaranteed.Offering an expanded and thoroughly revised edition of his successful text, William Duiker traces the course of Vietnamese history from its origins to the end of the Vietnam War. He considers the country’s political structure, foreign relations, economic situation, social problems, and cultural heritage, analyzing the diverse aspects of Vietnamese society and revealing how they have been affected by a generation of conflict and socialist transformation. The author concludes with a discussion of the dynamic factors underlying the Vietnamese revolution, looking at how the changes have affected both the region and course of the global Cold War.

Book Reviews

This book makes for an interesting and informative read, if one is looking for a general overview of the history, culture, etc. of Viet Nam. The book has two downfalls. The first being that the number of typos in the book distracts the reader, thus detracting from the enjoyment felt from reading this book. Grrrrr. The second distraction is the sheer redundancy occurring in the book. After the first four chapters, I found myself skipping over the large supererogatory sections that followed. With repetitiveness and misspelling aside, you can feel assured that you will be given a good overview of Viet Nam, its history, culture, and peoples (though the Hill Tribes, or Montagnards, are not given a lot of notice).

Customer review By Greg Ford

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URL: http://www.amazon.com/Vietnam-Revolution-Transition-Edition-Nations/dp/081338589X

Author’s biography

William J. Duiker is Liberal Arts Professor Emeritus of East Asian Studies at The Pennsylvania State University. He was a member of the History Department at Penn State until his retirement in the spring of 1997. A former foreign service officer with posts in Taiwan and South Vietnam, he currently specializes in the history of modern Vietnam and China. He was awarded a Faculty Scholar Medal for Outstanding Achievement in the spring of 1996.

Professor Duiker has written several books and articles on subjects related to modern China and Vietnam. His The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam (Westview, 1981) received a Choice Outstanding Book Award for 1982-1983, and a second award when it was published in a second edition in 1996. Other books include U.S. Containment Policy and the Conflict in Indochina (Stanford, 1994) and Sacred War: Nationalism and Revolution in a Divided Vietnam (McGraw-Hill, 1995). In recent years he has developed a strong interest in world history and with colleague Jackson Spielvogel published a textbook entitled World History (West, 1994), a third edition of which appeared in the fall of 2000.

While at Penn State, he served as chairman of the East Asian Studies Program, as well as director of International Programs in the College of Liberal Arts. He is currently a regular lecturer for the Foreign Service Institute in Washington, D.C., and lives on the Outer Banks in North Carolina.

URL: http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/authors/william-j-duiker-teen/#about

16. A History of Modern Singapore (1819-2005)

Book Summary

When C.M. Turnbull’s A History of Singapore, 1819-1975 appeared in 1977, it quickly achieved recognition as the definitive history of Singapore. A second edition published in 1989 brought the story up to the elections held in 1988. In this fully revised edition, rewritten to take into account recent scholarship on Singapore, the author has added a chapter on Goh Chok Tong’s premiership (1990–2004) and the transition to a government headed by Lee Hsien Loong. The book now ends in 2005, when the Republic of Singapore celebrated its 40th anniversary as an independent nation.

Major changes occurred in the 1990s as the generation of leaders that oversaw the transition from a colony to independence stepped aside in favor of a younger generation of leaders. Their task was to shape a course that sustained the economic growth and social stability achieved by their predecessors, and they would be tested towards the end of the decade when Southeast Asia experienced a severe financial crisis. Many modern

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studies on Singapore focus on current affairs or very recent events and pay a great deal of attention to Singapore's successful transition from the developing to the developed world. However, younger historians are increasingly interested in other aspects of the countries past, particularly social and cultural issues. A History of Modern Singapore, 1819-2005 provides a solid foundation and an overarching framework for this research, surveying Singapore’s trajectory from a small British port to a major trading and financial hub within the British Empire and finally to the modern city state that Singapore became after gaining independence in 1965.

Book Reviews

N/A

Author Bibliography

Constance Mary Turnbull (February 9 1927 – September 5 2008) was a historian lauded for her lifetime of literary research writing contributing to the documentation of Asian history, and for her documentary work on the history of Singapore. Her expertise on Singapore history and citations from her book The Straits Settlements was instrumental to the case presented by the Singapore legal team to the International Court of Justice, in claiming sovereignty over Pedra Branca in 2008.[1] (See Sovereignty over Pedra Branca/Pulau Batu Puteh, Middle Rocks and South Ledge (Malaysia v. Singapore)).

Mary was born the only child to a native farm-owner father and a schoolteacher mother from the Isle of Man, in a farm not far from Wooler, Northumberland. In the 1920s Coventry grew to be the centre of UK motor industry, and her family moved to the thriving city when her father decided to give up farming for a more lucrative career in motorcar engineering. Throughout her childhood Mary led a happy but simple life despite having to live with different relatives during the Great Depression and during the German air raids in World War II.

On leaving University, she worked for ICI in what would now be termed the Human Resources department but, looking for a more adventurous life, she joined the Malayan Civil Service, the first female administrative officer to be recruited to the Service, and one of only two women who would ever work in that capacity for the colonial authorities. She later joined the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, but on her marriage to Leonard Rayner in 1962, moved to Singapore. Here she was a member of the History Department until 1971 when she moved to Hong Kong to take up a post as Lecturer at the University's History Department.

In 1988 Mary retired from her position as Head of the History Department at Hong Kong University. She continued to write, and travel around Britain and New Zealand and on occasions, to Singapore and Malaysia for visits. In the 1990s she was commissioned by The Straits Times to compile the history of the Singapore newspaper company and in 1995, Dateline Singapore: 150 Years Of The Straits Times that resulted from nearly 3

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years' of work, was launched to inaugurate the 150th anniversary of the founding of the newspaper title.[1]

Mary died on the afternoon of September 5, 2008 of a ruptured aorta, just 5 hours after discovering the condition in a routine check-up. She had also been working on writing the third edition of A History of Singapore just before her death.

17. Monsoon

Book Summary

On the world maps common in America, the Western Hemisphere lies front and center, while the Indian Ocean region all but disappears. This convention reveals the geopolitical focus of the now-departed twentieth century, but in the twenty-first century that focus will fundamentally change. In this pivotal examination of the countries known as “Monsoon Asia”—which include India, Pakistan, China, Indonesia, Burma, Oman, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Tanzania—bestselling author Robert D. Kaplan shows how crucial this dynamic area has become to American power. It is here that the fight for democracy, energy independence, and religious freedom will be lost or won, and it is here that American foreign policy must concentrate if the United States is to remain relevant in an ever-changing world. From the Horn of Africa to the Indonesian archipelago and beyond, Kaplan exposes the effects of population growth, climate change, and extremist politics on this unstable region, demonstrating why Americans can no longer afford to ignore this important area of the world.

Book Reviews

When I first read Robert Kaplan, it was shortly after 9/11, when a whole library of books became available about U.S. foreign policy and how it should deal with the terrorist threat presented to the U.S. and democracy. At that time, in his work “Warrior Politics”, he reasonably recognizes that his perspective is but one of many and none can be truly objective. He recognized the reality of the “American imperium” in terms that imperialism is the “most ordinary and dependable form of protection for ethnic minorities and others under violent assault,” and “an imperial reality already dominates our foreign policy.” Towards the end of the work he quotes Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilization,” and follows with his own summation that “the restraining power of our own democracy makes it hard for us to demand and orchestrate authentic transitions everywhere. Only through stealth and anxious foresight can America create a secure international system.”

We have had in the intervening years since that publication a significant decrease in democracy within the U.S. (constitutional issues, international law, and human rights issues such as torture). Indeed, if democracy is inimical to mobilization, then democracy needs to be avoided, and its “restraining” power has been greatly diminished (when were the people, the demos, last asked if they wanted the U.S. to go to war?) As for demanding

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and orchestrating authentic transitions, that has been exposed through global media as being very real, although always with unexpected outcomes—and notice that the “transitions” are not necessarily labeled as democratic, simply transitions. The record over the last decade would also show that stealth has not created a secure international system (secure for whom—the global elites, the corporate bosses?) While stealth has been tried, so has massed military attack—all with expected ‘unexpecteds’ (sort of like Rumsfield’s “known unknowns”).

In short, yes, there is an empire, a U.S. empire; it is not democratic; it wants transitions to its own favor, and will try to make it happen either covertly or overtly. Neither is working well, unless one considers that the global elite are becoming richer at the expense of the many. He noted that his personal firsthand experience witnessing events in the world was his education and drew him to the classics of philosophy and politics “in the hope of finding explanations for the terrors before my eyes.”With that as my background to Kaplan’s writing, I thought that reading “Monsoon” would be a rather antagonistic affair, even while trying to keep in mind that this is obviously written from the U.S. perspective, however ingrained or not that might be. Fortunately, I was pleasantly surprised; not that I was in full agreement with his perspective, but his writing was both informative and entertaining within the recognition of his North American view of the world (with apologies to Mexico). Using a combination of historical background, anecdotal experiences, current interviews, supported by a wide range of travels, “Monsoon” becomes a worthwhile reading experience. It is a similarly engaging style as with Thomas Friedman and Robert Fisk, without the depth of perspective that Fisk delivers, and fortunately without the sometimes rather bizarre conclusions and statements that Friedman manages to come up with.The theme of the book—no, not global warming—is about U.S. foreign policy and how it has and will relate to the littoral states of the Indian ocean, necessitating the inclusion of China within that discussion as a non-littoral but very involved state. Travelling generally from west to east in the narrative, Kaplan presents historical background, current situations, and personal perspectives with lively and vivid descriptions along with information from interviewing a variety of people along the way. Returning to his statement from above, that he hopes to find “explanations for the terrors before my eyes,” he comes close, very close, but is just moments short of grasping what he is really seeing or saying.

There are areas of context and interpretation that do limit the text. Two of his main sub-themes are Islamic terrorism and democracy, and for both he makes statements that are almost ‘aha’ moments, but then are left hanging without actually making it into deeper connections. Further from apparent awareness, although perhaps lingering constantly in the background, is the very empire which he identified earlier as not being given its due background for the region. Other empires—Portugal, Dutch, British, French, Japanese—are all included for the influence they have had on the region, but little is discussed of U.S. actions, covert and overt, in the region, past or present. In the manner in which his information is presented, it makes little difference to the agreeable nature of the narrative, but it needs to be kept in mind while reading that there is much of the overall general context of the U.S. imperium that is not discussed. Diego Garcia is

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one of the singular misses, the island nation given to the U.S. military by Britain while the indigenous Chagossians were evicted from the island and not compensated. Ethnic cleansing? Racism? Empire? Certainly far from “the restraining power of our own democracy.”

So what about that democracy and terror? While the work does not specifically state that Islamism is the home of terror in the region, it does continue throughout, as would be necessary, the idea that most of the countries are Islamic or have large Islamic populations (India has about 160 million Muslims, second largest in the world). Further, Kaplan places that in context with the endemic poverty of the region as being the seeding ground for possible terror recruitment. If he examined his own words more carefully, he should be able to make the statement that Islamism does not breed terror, that poverty does not breed terror, but that subjugation/occupation especially from a different religious ethnic group is what creates terror.

Kaplan identifies social disruption, ethnic and religious occupation, lack of official responsibility (think the denial of democratic rights to Hamas) as being reasons for most of the disruptions to organized government in the region. That they happen to be in Islamic countries is no surprise, as the Islamic countries have been beset with imperialism for the past seven hundred years, if not longer. And while Kaplan recognizes the influences of the previous empires, very little is made of the current U.S. aggression and occupation of the region, nor its support and manipulations of various regimes that have come and gone, good guys become bad guys and move on.If Kaplan could have recognized the real train of thought that he has come up with, it would be that Islam is not the heart of terror, that disruptions to one’s daily life, to one’s homeland, to one’s religion and set of social beliefs is the main reason for terror. That is true for Sri Lanka (where a Christian led the Tamil rebellion and initiated the advent of suicide attacks), Ireland, South Africa, Lebanon, Vietnam, and much of Latin America (see also Robert Pape “Dying to Win” and Martin Roseroot “Pious Passion”). Poverty may be co-related, but is not a cause in and of itself, otherwise there would be a significant greater amount of terror in the world. Social disruption of belief systems and threats to one’s lifestyle especially by an occupying force creates the seed for terror. That is Kaplan’s biggest miss, although he does present his own evidence for it.

As for democracy, Kaplan makes a very curious and powerful statement early in the book (emphasis added):“Americans have had a tendency to interpret democracy too legalistically, strictly in terms of laws and elections. They put perhaps too much stress in the act of voting itself, an interpretation of democracy which can inhibit American power rather than project it. In some societies, particularly in the Middle East, democracy is a matter of informal consultation between ruler and ruled, rather than an official process.”Oman is used as the exemplar, as it “demonstrates that whereas in the West democracy is an end in itself, in the Middle East the goal is justice through religious and tribal authority.”

I am not sure what was intended by the line about inhibiting or projecting U.S. power, but the rest of the statement is profound in its simplicity—democracy is not just a

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vote; it involves discussion, consultation with the people and their beliefs. The U.S. is currently one of the prime counter-examples to this (although many other western nations—democracies—could be included), with an elaborate multi-year voting system with all sorts of rules and regulations that tend to limit participation rather than include it; then, when elected, it is the elite that rule and the main people consulted are the carpetbaggers and corporate bosses of the world. Hardly a democracy in Kaplan’s true view.

All in all, read the book. It provides good background information to the region and softly delves into what the future might hold. At the same time, keep in mind the lack of U.S. imperial context and interest not only for the littoral states, but other states bordering on those states.

By : Jim Miles

URL: http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2011/04/15/book-review-monsoon-by-robert-d-kaplan/

A sweeping narrative [that] deftly weaves history, reportage, and grand strategy . . . into a coherent portrait of an undercovered region whose importance will only grow in the decades to come.”—Foreign Policy“Few books can be considered indispensable, but Monsoon is one of them. . . . An essential primer for this new century’s evolving politics.”—The Dallas Morning News

“A special blend of first-person travel writing, brief historical sketches and wide-ranging strategic analysis.”—The New York Times Book Review “Compelling . . . Kaplan’s breadth of travel and learning leads to intriguing insights.”—The Washington Post 

“[Kaplan] has a gift for geopolitical imagination.”—The Wall Street Journal

URL:

http://www.amazon.com/Monsoon-Indian-Ocean-Future-American/dp/0812979206/

ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1316112721&sr=1-1

Authors Bibliography

ROBERT D. KAPLAN is the bestselling author of fifteen books on foreign affairs and travel translated into many languages, including Asia’s Cauldron, The Revenge of Geography, Monsoon, Balkan Ghosts, and Eastward to Tartary. He is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington and a contributing editor at The Atlantic, where his work has appeared for three decades. He was chief geopolitical analyst at Stratfor, a visiting professor at the United States Naval Academy, and a

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member of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, appointed by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Foreign Policy magazine twice named him one of the world’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers.”

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has called Kaplan among the four “most widely read” authors defining the post-Cold War (along with Stanford Professor Francis Fukuyama, Yale Professor Paul Kennedy, and the late Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington). Kaplan's article, “The Coming Anarchy,” published in the February, 1994 Atlantic Monthly, about how population rise, ethnic and sectarian strife, disease, urbanization, and resource depletion is undermining the political fabric of the planet, was hotly debated in foreign-language translations around the world. So was his December, 1997 Atlantic cover story, “Was Democracy Just A Moment?” That piece argued that the democracy now spreading around the world would not necessarily lead to more stability. According to U. S. News & World Report, “President Clinton was so impressed with Kaplan, he ordered an interagency study of these issues, and it agreed with Kaplan’s conclusions.”

In the 1980s, Kaplan was the first American writer to warn in print about a future war in the Balkans. Balkan Ghosts was chosen by The New York Times Book Review as one of the “best books” of 1993. The Arabists, The Ends of the Earth, An Empire Wilderness, Eastward to Tartary, and Warrior Politics were all chosen by The New York Times as “notable” books of the year. An Empire Wilderness was chosen by The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times as one of the best books of 1998. The Wall Street Journal named The Arabists one of the five best books ever written about America’s historical involvement in the Middle East. The Financial Times named Asia’s Cauldron one of the ten best political books of 2014.

Besides The Atlantic, Kaplan’s essays have appeared on the editorial pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Los Angeles Times, as well as in all the major foreign affairs journals, including cover stories in Foreign Affairs. He has been a consultant to the U. S. Army’s Special Forces Regiment, the U. S. Air Force, and the U. S. Marines. He has lectured at military war colleges, the FBI, the National Security Agency, the Pentagon's Joint Staff, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the CIA, major universities, and global business forums. He has briefed presidents, secretaries of state, and defense secretaries, Kaplan has delivered the Secretary of State’s Open Forum Lecture at the U. S. State Department. He has reported from over 100 countries. Two earlier books of his, Soldiers of God: With Islamic Warriors in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Surrender or Starve: Travels in Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea, have been re-issued, so that all his books are in print.In 2004, Kaplan was given the Distinguished Alumni Award by the University of Connecticut. In 2009, he was given the Benjamin Franklin Public Service Award by the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadeplphia.

Robert D. Kaplan was born June 23, 1952 in New York City. He graduated in 1973 from the University of Connecticut, where he was the features editor of the Connecticut Daily Campus. In 1973 and 1974 he traveled throughout Communist Eastern

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Europe and in parts of the Near East. From 1974 to 1975 he was a reporter for the Rutland Daily Herald in Vermont. In 1975, he left the United States to travel throughout the Arab and Mediterranean worlds, beginning a period of 16 years living overseas. He served a year in the Israel Defense Forces and lived for nine years in Greece and Portugal. He has been married to Maria Cabral since 1983. They live in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts. They have one son, Michael, who is married with a daughter and works for an investment bank in Boston.

18. Gravity Shift

Book Summary

The rapid growth, diversity, and strategic importance of the emerging Chinese and Indian economies have fired the world's imagination with both hopes and fears for the future. In this perceptive analysis of changing institutions, demographics, and politics, Wendy Dobson paints a thoughtful and surprising picture of India and China as economic powerhouses in the year 2030. Examining past events and current trends, Gravity Shift offers bold predictions of the changes we can expect in key economic and political institutions in China and India, changes that will inform and shape tomorrow's business decisions.

Dobson's work anticipates that by 2030, China's economy will be larger than those of the United States, India, and Japan, though its population will be aging and its growth slowing. India will also come into its own, making major strides in modernizing its vast rural population, vanquishing illiteracy, and emerging as an innovative manufacturing powerhouse. A China-India free-trade agreement could well become the foundation of a cooperative Asian economic community. As the world re-evaluates business practices in the wake of the global economic crisis, Gravity Shift provides a clear vision of how India and China will reshape the Asian region and inform and transform global economic institutions.

Book Reviews

'Gravity Shift is a fascinating account of the emergence of India and China as Asia's giant economies .... essential reading for comprehending the similarities and contrasts ... and how these countries promise to transform the global economy in the forthcoming decades.'

Arvind Panagariya, Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs; author ofIndia: The Emerging Giant

'Gravity Shift is a big-picture analysis of where the economies of China and India are today and what the future may hold ... Excellent and well-written book.'

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Loren Brandt, University of Toronto; co-editor of China's Great Economic Transformation

'A well-written analysis ... a refreshing read as to where the world is headed without the usual ideological, paranoiac or pessimistic filters that many western analysts rely on when looking at Asia's development.'

Diane Francis, National Post

'Gravity Shift is an important contribution to the literature on the global shift of economic power and influence and a good read for anyone interested in doing business in these two countries.'

Michael Kelly, Ottawa Business Journal

'Gravity Shift ... [is] a hard-to-dispute book.'

Jeffrey Simpson, The Globe and Mail

'Recommended . . . [for] general readers and all levels of undergraduate students.'

S.J. Gabriel, Mount Holyoke College, Choice Magazine

Author Biography

Wendy Dobson is an Adjunct Professor and Co-Director for the Institute of International Business at Rotman and former Canadian Associate Deputy Minister of Finance. She offers courses in international business and Canadian public policy. She chairs the Pacific Trade and Development (PAFTAD) research network and has published in English and Mandarin on Asia’s rise; the future of the Indian and Chinese economies in the world economy; the Chinese financial system; and Chinese innovation. Ya Zhou Xin Shi Li, the Mandarin translation of her book Gravity Shift, won the Annual Award for the Best Book in Finance and Economics by China’s public affairs website Hexun.com. Professor Dobson’s most recent book is Partners and Rivals: The Uneasy Future of China’s Relationship with the United States.

URL: https://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/FacultyAndResearch/Faculty/FacultyBios/Dobson.aspx

19. Three Billion New Capitalists

Book Summary

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By the beginning of this century it was already commonplace to speak of the U.S. as a “hyperpower,” to talk of its military, political, and economic clout as unprecedented in world history, and to assume that American dominance would continue at least throughout our lifetimes. It is conventional wisdom that America will have no serious rivals for at least a generation. But the American position is far more fragile and ephemeral than much of the world believes. Clyde Prestowitz shows the powerful yet barely visible trends that are threatening to end the six-hundred-year run of Western domination of the world. The trends include America’s increasingly unsustainable trade deficits; the equally unsustainable (and dangerous) buildup of massive dollar reserves in places like Japan and China; the end of America’s position as the world’s premier center for invention and technological innovation; the sudden entrance of 2.5 billion people in India and China into the world’s skilled job market; the role of the World Wide Web in permitting many formerly localized jobs to be done anywhere in the world; and the demographic meltdown of Europe, Japan, Russia, and, in later decades, even China. Three Billion New Capitalists is a clear-eyed and profoundly unsettling look at America’s and the world’s economic future, from an author with a history of predicting the important trends long before they become apparent to others

Book Reviews

Prestowitz, economic trend-spotter, reports, "Over the past two decades . . . China, India and the former Soviet Union all decided to leave their respective socialist workers paradise and drive their 3 billion citizens along the once despised capitalist road." These new capitalists symbolize the threats to end 600 years of Western economic domination as America's lead role in invention and technological innovation lessens and the Internet allows jobs to be performed anywhere. The author foresees the possibility of an "economic 9/11," which won't kill but will cause great hardship. To prevent what he sees as an accident waiting to happen, Prestowitz offers a wide range of solutions relating to the dollar's role in today's global marketplace, addressing the reality that Americans consume too much and Asians save too much, and facing energy challenges in the U.S and problems confronting our educational system. The author offers valuable insight into these important topics currently being debated in government and corporate circles. Mary Whaley

"In his provocative and thoughtful analysis, Clyde Prestowitz lays out in rapid-fire succession the unique forces that are reshaping the global economy, and the failure of the United States to grasp that its relative economic superiority, competitiveness and power are slipping away. In the candor for which he has become justly famous, Prestowitz takes the facts, however uncomfortable, and connects the dots to compel only one conclusion-that the United States' position in the world is neither birthright nor immutable, and absent concrete policy reform, our economic dominance and global influence are in genuine peril." –

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Ambassador Charlene Barshefsky, former U.S. Trade Representative

URL: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000WCV8V6?ie=UTF8&isInIframe=1&n=283155&redirect=true&ref_=dp_proddesc_0&s=books&showDetailProductDesc=1#iframe-wrapper

Authors Biography

Clyde Prestowitz is founder and President of the Economic Strategy Institute. His leadership has propelled ESI into an important role in the public policy process, influencing and often defining the terms of the debate in the areas of international trade policy, economic competitiveness, and the effects of globalization. Mr. Prestowitz has played key roles in achieving congressional passage of NAFTA and in shaping the final content of the Uruguay Round, as well as providing the intellectual basis for current U.S. trade policies toward Japan, China, and Korea.

Prior to founding ESI, Mr. Prestowitz served as counselor to the Secretary of Commerce in the Reagan Administration. There, he led many U.S. trade and investment negotiations with Japan, China, Latin America, and Europe. Before joining the Commerce Department, he was a senior businessman in the United States, Europe, Japan, and throughout Asia and Latin America. He has served as vice chairman of the President's Committee on Trade and Investment in the Pacific and sits on the Intel Policy Advisory Board and the U.S. Export-Import Bank Advisory Board. 

Clyde Prestowitz regularly writes for leading publications, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Fortune, and Foreign Affairs. He is the author of the best-selling book on U.S.-Japan relations, Trading Places, and co-author and editor of several other books on international trade and business strategy including Asia After the Miracle; Powernomics; Bit by Bit; The New North American Trade Order; Rogue Nation; and Three Billion New Capitalists. His latest book, The Betrayal of American Prosperity: Free Market Delusions, America's Decline, and How We Must Compete in the Post-Dollar Era, addresses how we can restore our economic leadership and excellence.

Mr. Prestowitz has a B.A. with honors from Swarthmore College; an M.A. in East-West Policies and Economics from the East-West Center of the University of Hawaii; and an M.B.A. from the Wharton Graduate School of Business. He also studied at Keio University in Tokyo. He is fluent in Japanese, Dutch, German, and French

URL: http://www.econstrat.org/about-us/staff-bios/20-clyde-v-prestowitz-jr-president

20. When China Rules The World

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Book Summary

For over two hundred years we have lived in a western-made world, one where the very notion of being modern was synonymous with being western. The book argues that the twenty-first century will be different: with the rise of increasingly powerful non-Western countries, the west will no longer be dominant and there will be many ways of being modern. In this new era of ‘contested modernity’ the central player will be China.

Martin Jacques argues that far from becoming a western-style society, China will

remain highly distinctive. It is already having a far-reaching and much-discussed

economic impact, but its political and cultural influence, which has hitherto been greatly

neglected, will be at least as significant. Continental in size and mentality, and accounting

for one fifth of humanity, China is not even a conventional nation-state but a

‘civilization-state’ whose imperatives, priorities and values are quite different. As it

rapidly reassumes its traditional place at the center of East Asia, the old tributary system

will resurface in a modern form, contemporary ideas of racial hierarchy will be redrawn

and China’s ages-old sense of superiority will reassert itself. China’s rise signals the end

of the global dominance of the west and the emergence of a world which it will come to

shape in a host of different ways and which will become increasingly disconcerting and

unfamiliar to those who live in the west.

Book Review

Martin Jacques, who holds academic posts at the London School of Economics and Tsinghua Universtiy in Beijing, as well as being a former journalist and founder of the left leaning Demos think-tank has produced a fascinating book about how the world’s political and economic power has been shifting in the early twenty-first century and what is likely to happen next.

Jacques finishes his book with an unexpected flourish (which I am just about to ruin for you) in which he makes a good case for China’s predicted world dominance to become a reality sooner rather than later.  Through much of the book he refers to a Goldman Sachs prediction that China’s economy will overtake the United States (US) in 2025.  The reader is left to assume that this is the date on which the new world order will be finalised.  However, in this final section he points to the rapid implosion of all things American, suggesting that the impact of the 2007/2008 financial crisis on the US (and the Europe Union), together with US foreign policy which has had a myopic focus on the middle-east for the last decade, has left the field wide open for China.  He names 2008 as the year that marked the end, or at least the beginning of the end, of a period of US world dominance that has lasted since 1945 and has been unchallenged since the collapse of the Soviet Block in 1989-1991.

Book Summary

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The book is packed full of information about Chinese and East Asian history (from Qin to Qing dynasties through the Mao Zedong era in the mid twentieth century through to the present day) the Chinese economy, society and China’s growing influence in all the world’s emerging economies.  For example tables identify that China is the biggest trading partner for a startling number of countries around the world including Brazil, South Africa as well as nearly all its South and East Asian neighbours in including those in the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Despite his contract at Tsinghua, Jacques is not afraid to tackle difficult issues like the three Ts.  Taiwan, Tibet and the Tiananmen Square protests (although to be honest he doesn’t say much about the latter) and difficult neighbourly relations with Japan, North and South Korea, Vietnam and India.  On Taiwan, Tibet and Japan in particular he goes into great detail about the thinking behind Chinese diplomacy which never loses sight of long term goals.  In fact one of the most interesting aspects of the book for me is the detailed explanation of Chinese foreign policy.   The pragmatic Chinese approach he argues is more economically driven than politically focussed, in contrast to current US and European foreign policy which governed by political ideology and the perceived need to establish western models of democracy even where that model leads to disconnects and conflict with deep seated religious requirements and beliefs.  Whilst the US has got bogged down in several protracted international disputes, China has been making startling in-roads into South America, the middle-east (where it deals with oil rich countries the west will not, like Iran) and above all Africa, where China has already become the dominant world power.

Prior to world leadership, China is currently the world’s leading emerging nation and as such seems to be a voice for emerging nations at the top table.  Along with other emerging countries, China does not feel that the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, G8, UN Security Council or even the European Union are or even try to act like they are democratic institutions that truly represent the world’s countries.  Instead the emerging country view is that these institutions were designed by powerful western countries and are skewed in their favour.  Institutions like the Chinese Development Bank, the strength of the Chinese economy and the opportunity to develop trading links with China are beginning to undermine the influence of these institutions.  Countries in Africa, South America and even the struggling economies of Southern and Eastern Europe, no longer have to go to the IMF for a bail-out with ideological strings attached.  Instead they can ask the Chinese to cover their debts, they can develop stronger trading links with China and work with Chinese companies if they need to develop new infrastructure (railways, dams and urban rapid transit systems etc).  As we have seen in recent years with UN discussions about Iran, Syria, Myanmar, North Korea, and Bahrain, China does not agree with imposing western style democracies, instead it wants to

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negotiate what it believes to be fairer representation for emerging countries within the supra-national institutions.

So what will the world be like when China is the world’s super-power? Jacques provides us with few indicators.  Firstly the wielding of economic power is demonstrated by a series of examples of how China uses the strength of its economy to lever change.  When France’s President Sarkozy indicated he might boycott the Beijing Olympics, because of the situation in Tibet, French companies in China, in particular Carrefour and PSA were plunged into great difficulties.  It was not long before President Sarkozy backtracked.  Similarly, few nations now formally recognise Taiwan as an independent nation, because to do so would put at risk economic ties with China.   Jacques predicts that this economic power will eventually be used by China to resolve the Taiwanese issue to Beijing’s satisfaction and to sort-out the current territorial disputes with Japan.

A second predicted major change will be the pattern of nation states and spheres of economic influence.  Jacques sets out an alternative pattern of civilisation states and tributary nations.  He suggests that Chinese people have an alternative way of conceiving of their country, so they do not just see themselves as citizens of the Peoples Republic of China, but also as part of the Chinese civilization an entity with influence that extends over all the Confucian heritage countries of south and east Asian and all the ethnic Chinese living around the world.   Tributary countries were in the past those Asian states which did not challenge Chinese supremacy and chose instead to work as subordinate countries trading with China and accepting Chinese leadership.  Jacques suggest that this type of pattern of middle kingdom and tributary states may re-emerge later in the twenty-first century and cover a much greater part of the world with much of South America and Africa as well as the ASEAN countries all becoming tributaries of China.  Part of a Chinese grouping, not too different to the way that western European, and the Anglophone countries operated as subordinates of the US in the cold war era.   In the future it may be the Europeans or the Japanese who feel that they no longer have much say in international disputes.

One slightly worrying issue that Jacques highlights is the Han Chinese attitude to other racial groups.  Previous superpowers, including the European colonialists of the 19th century and the US and USSR in the 20th century, do not have got a good track record on this type of issue and China may not do too well either.  Jacques suggests that the Han Chinese consider themselves superior to many other racial groups and this gives him particular concern, especially as China increases its dominance in Africa and the Han Chinese population spreads into an ever greater part of South and East Asia.

The book suggests it is more difficult to predict how the relations will develop with India, the other great emerging power (especially as China has become so influential in Pakistan of late) and what about Australia?  Will Australia extricate itself from the

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western grouping and for economic reasons align itself with China or will that be just too difficult a cultural shift for the majority of Australian’s to accept?

Finally he predicts a change in the world order with China gradually reforming institutions like the UN from within or finding ways to make them irrelevant.  On this basis the World Bank and IMF are already beginning to look vulnerable.

This is not a quick read, (well over 600 pages) but it is well worth the effort for anyone who wants to prepare him or herself for a changing world order that may arrive sooner than most of us think

Author Biography

Martin Jacques is the author of the global best-seller When China Rules the World: the End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order, which was first published in 2009. It has since sold over a quarter of a million copies and been translated into fourteen languages. The second edition of the book – greatly expanded, revised and updated – was published in 2012.

He is a Senior Fellow at the Department of Politics and International Studies, Cambridge University, and a Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing. He is also a fellow of the Transatlantic Academy, Washington DC. He was until recently a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at IDEAS, a centre for diplomacy and grand strategy at the London School of Economics.

His interest in East Asia began in 1993 with a holiday in China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. After that, he found every reason or excuse he could find to spend time in the region, be it personal, for newspaper articles or television programmes. The most important of these was meeting his wife-to-be, Harinder Veriah, in Malaysia in 1993 who then came to live with him in England the following year. His research on the book started in earnest when he went to live in Hong Kong with his wife and nine-week old son Ravi in 1998.

During the following year he travelled extensively in China, Japan and Taiwan but his work on the book was interrupted by the tragic death of his wife on January 2, 2000 at the age of 33 in hospital, a consequence of negligence caused at least in part by racism. He stayed on living in Hong Kong with his son until March 2001, fighting for an inquest into his wife’s death and then helping to initiate a campaign for the introduction of anti-racist legislation which was finally successful in 2008. In 2010, after a legal struggle with the Hospital Authority in Hong Kong concerning the hospital’s clinical negligence that lasted almost a decade, the Hospital Authority was finally forced to settle days before the matter was due to go to the High Court.

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Disconsolate, stricken by grief for Hari, his love for her beyond imagination, Martin was unable to touch the book for five years. He eventually resumed work on it in 2005. He was a visiting professor at the International Centre for Chinese Studies at Aichi University in Nagoya and later a visiting professor at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto. In 2005-6 he was a visiting professor at Renmin University, Beijing, and in 2006 a visiting senior research fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. He completed the final manuscript for the book in December 2008.

Born in Coventry in 1945, he took a first class honours degree at Manchester University followed by a masters degree. He then went to Cambridge University, where he was a member of King’s College, and gained a PhD. He subsequently held a lectureship in the Department of Economic and Social History at Bristol University.

In 1977, he became editor of Marxism Today, a post he held for fourteen years, transforming what was an obscure and dull journal into the most influential political publication in Britain, read and respected on the right and left alike, and the home of the best contemporary political analysis; it was the foremost analyst of Thatcherism, coining the term, identified the decline of the left before others, and introduced the idea of ‘new times’, based on post-Fordism and globalisation. In 1991 he closed Marxism Today. It had enjoyed a huge reputation and after its closure was sorely missed by many.

In 1994 Martin became the deputy editor of the Independent newspaper, a post he held until 1996. In 1993 he co-founded the think-tank Demos, the idea for which first occurred to him during the latter phase of Marxism Today, and which was to become influential during the 1990s.

An award-winning journalist, in 1988 he became a columnist and essayist for the Sunday Times, a relationship which continued until 1994. In 1991-2, he was also a columnist for The Times and in 1996 – 8 for the Observer and from 2002 for the Guardian and more recently the New Statesman. In addition he has written extensively for many newspapers and magazines in the UK and elsewhere including: Financial Times, The Economist, Daily Telegraph, The Independent, Daily Mail, Daily Express, The European, THES, TLS, Management Today, Esquire, World Link (journal of World Economic Forum), International Herald Tribune, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Daily Beast, New Republic, Volkskrant, Profil, La Stampa, Corriere della Sera, L’Unita, Il Mondo, Politiken, Ta Nea, Volkszeitung, Liberation, Le Monde Diplomatique, Folha Des Paulo, China Daily and South China Morning Post.

His most influential essays have included the End of Politics, the Rise of East Asia, Meaning of Middle Class Insecurity, the Age of Sport, and the Global Hierarchy of Race.

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He has made many television programmes for the BBC including writing and presenting Italy on Trial (1993), The Incredible Shrinking Politicians (1993), a two-part series on The End of the Western World (1996) and Proud to be Chinese (1998).

He co-edited and co-authored the Forward March of Labour Halted? (1981), Politics of Thatcherism (1983), New Times (1989), Wrong (1998) and has contributed essays to many other books.

He is in great demand as a speaker. His TED Talk on ‘Understanding China’ has had 1.6 million views. He has given lectures at many of the world’s top universities including Harvard, Cornell, UCLA, USC, Cambridge, Oxford, Peking, Tsinghua, Renmin, NUS, Tokyo, University of Hong Kong, amongst many others. And he has given lectures to many corporate clients including Bank of America, Shell, Allianz, BNP Paribas, Financial Times, British Telecom, BBC, HR50, Amerada Hess, Investec, DSM and Khazanah.

He is chairman of the Harinder Veriah Trust which was established in memory of his wife and gives financial support to under-privileged children at Harinder’s old school Assunta Primary in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia, in order to assist them in their education. It has also sponsored young Malaysian lawyers from under-privileged backgrounds to work for two-year stints at Hogan Lovells in London.He lives in London with his son, Ravi.

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