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Can we find an alternative way of thinking to combat the single thought thats currently swamping us? And can we still exist as consultants if we even dare to try? Is it possible for us to think at all in Nicaragua today, or will we just continue to blame the system for the limited and routine ideas we churn out in return for considerable financial reward?
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ocial scientists and other intellectuals have covered a lot of ground in studying the poor. We invade their homes without so much as a search warrant and pester them with surveys. We weigh their children, count their pigs and hens, measure their land and dig up their past. If they gave us half a chance, wed even rummage in their pockets and have a look under their beds. We investigate how much they have and how much they dont have, what they spend their money on and what and how much they eat. Then we weigh, survey, dig around and count again because we need to compare the situation after to the situation before. In investigation after investigation we discover new manifestations of poverty, expressed as vulnerability, the weak exercise of citizenship or deficient empowerment.
28 envo
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ANALYSIS
always selects other worlds as its objects and only rarely studies itself, in which case it demonstrates an indulgence that it never displays when studying others. From our lofty intellectual position, we dont consider ourselves the object of study; dont see our own gaps and cracks. Theres no profusion of concepts to estimate our deficiencies, assess our weaknesses or correct the way our vulnerabilities affect our perception of reality. And this tends to perpetuate our illnesses, errors and defects. The conditions in which a thought is produced are very rarely taken into account, as if they were removed from the product to be obtained. It is forgotten that analysis is conditioned by the hermeneutic place. Referring to his profession as a sociologist, Bourdieu mentioned the existence of tendencies towards error that vary by sex, social origin and intellectual formation. And in another text, he pointed out that sociologists always run the risk of applying to the social world categories of thought that the social world have instilled into their spirit. There is thus a need to sociologically analyze the social conditions in which their instruments of thought are produced.
We need to put ourselves under the microscope of that same criticism we so generously apply to politicians, the poor, producers, traders, migrants and other subjects who dont themselves generate analyses but are always exposed to ours
where they were installed by society and our class position is to be reformatted. The nature and modus operandi of the pressures must discovered in order to mitigate their force. And above all, it must be seen how much of what we say is conditioned by those prejudices and pressures. Our behavior is induced and fueled by our sense of belonging to a certain group. That belonging is reinforced by our actions: what we eat, what we wear, what we see at the cinema, among many others. It is enormously reinforced by what we think and say. That belonging also co-opts our good intentions, so that the great idealistic proposals of a member of the middle class, for example, run headlong into his or her consumption habits and survival strategies. Those strategies and habits have to be named and the way they function has to be described to stop them having such a determining effect on what we think and ensure that the commitment is real. The problem is that when an initiative like this gets underway it immediately generates furious reactions that indicate our fierce resistance to being stripped of the label we use to sell ourselves. Self-criticism runs up against many obstacles. Those who doubt it should take a quick look at the defense mechanisms identified by Freud: negation (refusal to recognize the problem), rationalization (self-justifying ideological production), projection (seeing the dollar signs in your neighbors eye but not in your own), formative reaction (doing and saying the opposite of what one feels), displacement (looking for a scapegoat) and the like.
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NICARAGUA
The flip side of the lack of institutional commitment to its employees is, quite appropriately, lack of employee commitment to the institution. Any commonality of interests that could once be built upon is replaced by denuded self-interest on both sides
write and think the way we do (issues, approaches, methods, etc). It would be very interesting to unravel the relationship between social conditions and the cognitive limitations of thought production. But in this case well have to limit ourselves to examining the way the labor system in Nicaragua affects intellectual products. What is that system like? What conditions does it imply? The first thing we can state is that we intellectuals are not in the other corner, but rather in the same corner as those we analyze. While perhaps a little distant, were not so very distinct. Generalized precariousness conditions the labor status of intellectuals in Nicaraguaparticularly those of us who have gotten involved as consultants. Just as foreign cooperation has consultants paid by the consultancy, universities have lecturers whose earnings depend on the number of class hours they teach, and NGOs and private businesses have drivers who are hired by the day. Institutions dont want to commit themselves over the long term because that would multiply their obligations as employers. In the net administrators mentality, cost reduction is a primordial objective at whose altar anything can be sacrificed. Instrumental rationality conceives of human beings only as resources, one more productive input whose cost can be mitigated by reducing their use, depreciating them and acquiring them under circumstances that are disadvantageous for them. The tendency of institutions to supply unstable work follows the same logic as the tendency of states to cut social spending.
tution doesnt worry about the family tensions that labor instability generates, even when they are obviously affecting work performance. Whats striking, however, is the lack of vision about the effects of working conditions on the planned products. The fact that university lecturers, like salespeople, earn according to quantityin this case how many hours of classes they teachleads to an inevitable deterioration in education. A lecturer paid by class wants to invest no more time with each one than is strictly needed. Any extra time spent in preparation, coordination meetings, working with students or in evaluation is effectively subsidizing the institution. The more detailed attention they pay to preparing their lecture and the more concerned they are about professional scruples, the worse the deal is for them. On the other hand, the more they can arrange for class time to be taken up with student presentations, the less time they have to invest themselves. The bottom line is lower education quality and increased moral hazard in the system. Neither class-paid lecturers nor day-hired drivers will give their best. This system undermines the possibility of harmonizing personal interests with the institutional strategy. There is less appropriation of and identification with the institution, essential elements for a well-functioning bureaucracy. The flip side of the lack of institutional commitment to its employees is, quite appropriately, lack of employee commitment to the institution. Any commonality of interests that could once be built upon is replaced by denuded self-interest on both sides.
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ANALYSIS
democratization, while at the same time they are volatizing their hiring, reducing their personnel in line with financial imperatives and sliding towards concentrating posts, wages, perks and labor stability among a select group of people who are best placed in the system to assert their rights. But such institutions blind themselves to this incongruence by justifying it as a means of survival. The institutions beneficent mission is presumed to guarantee that any holocaust perpetrated in its honor is beneficent.
calls the tune, but orders and imposes the subjects, approaches, deadlines and means of dissemination. All of these selection mechanisms filter out illegitimate words or heretical ideas that might open up new perspectives and call the system into question. The client-readers condition what can be said. The problem is obvious: one cant be provocative when the IDB is paying and wants a text to disseminate as part of its collection of articles. Legitimate concepts must be used, which definitely restrict the horizon of what can be thought. It amounts to a very subtle form of ideological intolerance that is thus more effective than the kind orchestrated by classic state totalitarianism. Market totalitarianism in which only marketable things are said, written or even thoughtis both more complex and more devastating to critical thought. It castrates anything mobilizing or provocative that might exist in the research profession. The main problem is not whether to charge or not to charge, to charge a lot or a little, but rather the mutilating effect of the system, its sterilizing effect on the critical function expected of intellectuals.
Market totalitarianismin which only marketable things are said, written or even thoughtis both more complex and more devastating to critical thought. It castrates anything mobilizing or provocative that might exist in the research profession
31 march 2005
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NICARAGUA
institutional economics. And just mentioning panoptic architecture serves to make us sound like experts on Foucault. Consuming canned Stiglitz on internet enables us to state that informational asymmetries impede the development of markets because they can lead to an adverse selection in resource allocation. By adequately folding together these conceptswhich are actually very revolutionarywe can achieve a state in which theres no danger of creating anything revolutionary because we establish no dialogue with either the authors or our readers. And just as the school system applies criteria that select certain kinds of skills and ends up reproducing preexisting social differences because those skills are linked to differences in inherited cultural capital, so the consultancy system maintains the differences among consultants. Thus, those paid and contracted more are the ones with the best recommendations and qualifications, which are more often than not the direct result of inherited capital. But the consultancy system goes even further: by rewarding more those who most elegantly package the same already consecrated ideas, reflection is stagnated, perpetuating the current dramatic realities.
Critical knowledge of what others have done, the possibility of discussing and establishing dialogue and the adaptation of novel theories employed as instruments of analysis are intellectual traditions that more often than not are cancelled in the rapid work and labor destabilization system generated by consultancies
work and fast think is the consultancy worlds equivalent of the catering industrys fast food. And just as a gourmet would never dream of finding an exquisite dish in Burger King, for example, no experienced reader has much expectation of stumbling across some memorable finding in any text produced by a consultant. This isnt because consultants are necessarily mediocre intellectuals; they just dont have the time to think. Their clients dont seem to expect that from them; in fact, it may be that they prefer them not to think too much. Thats why so many consultants repeat, cut, paste and get no further than a handful of slogans. They saturate their presentations with an overwhelming juxtaposition of quotes from classic works in an attempt to impress. Consultants calculate that there will always be neophytes and novices among their audiences who will be left open-mouthed by even their most insipid ideas. The impact of a particular thought is also influenced by the dissemination time. A World Bank norm is not to publish the research it finances for two years. Given the demented rhythm of Nicaraguan politics, where everything is in constant flux, this norm means that such texts are left to rot as the ideas they contain lose their applicability and relevance. Everything becomes ephemeral. On the political stage, the actors, the script and the guilty are all constantly changing. Diagnostic studies become almost immediately obsoletewith the exception of those that focus on cultural factors. And even that thought, forcibly matured by delayed publication, becomes increasingly innocuous and odorless. It has no applicability in any era and is therefore valid for any of them.
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ANALYSIS
nomic problems or fail to mention them altogether when they are the most relevant aspect of a given sphere of study. They say, for example, that micro businesses need to improve their information flows, but dont analyze who hogs the information and how the information channels are managed. They also say that micro businesses should vary their designs, improve their marketing and train their human resources, which are very commendable findings. But they pay no attention at all to social conflicts within micro businesses or between them and their suppliers or clients. Such conflicts reveal opposing strategies and explain why certain designs and marketing models are suitable in one market segment and not another, why the human resources are so unsatisfied, why employers wont invest in training them and why micro businesses prefer to compete through prices rather than quality. The fact is that examining such aspects in greater depth requires quite a lot more than just the string of clichs and simple-minded surveys and interviews with which most consultants season their studies. Researchers who get introduced into the consultancy system easily learn how to cover up.
up a parallel chain that pays out fairly. Building alternative institutions is a good thing because it fills vacuums, solves certain peoples problems and creates new experiences that can be replicated on a greater scale. But it is negative when it excludes or helps avoid broader and national struggles, because it then becomes an elegant form of giving up.
Building alternative institutions is a good thing because it fills vacuums, solves certain peoples problems and creates new experiences that can be replicated on a greater scale. But it is negative when it excludes or helps avoid broader and national struggles, because it then becomes an elegant form of giving up
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NICARAGUA
Intellectuals used to be more inclined to value symbolic goods: recognition, tributes, publications, illustrious but unpaid posts and, above all, accumulation of knowledge. Suddenly such symbolic goods have become devalued and the only ones desired are those that can be exchanged for material goods
material goods became a priority, amounting to a Copernican turnaround. Many institutions have fallen victim to this shift, which deserves a more detailed examination than I can provide in this article without sounding like an outmoded moralist. One interesting example of institutions affected by the shift towards the preeminence of material goods is provided by the universities, which are currently incapable of retaining the professionals they so carefully attracted for decades. Their move towards contracting lecturers paid by class hour has reinforced the nomadic labor practices of white-collar workers. Unattractive wages and labor instability have turned universities into a labor niche from which many good professionals have fled into the arms of the far more attractive world of consultancy. When symbolic goods had more weight, even high-flying business people and wealthy professionals were attracted by the draw of academia. Lecturing offered the kind of social visibility that their managers desks or legal practices just couldnt give them. It also provided the chance to cultivate new, attractive relations, o publicize their ideas, exercise a vocation for teaching and assume another identity. The current preeminence of material goods explains why many intellectuals prefer to dedicate themselves to making presentations in dreary grey conferencesmade greyer still by the compulsive use of Power Pointand writing slipshod documents of grey literature rather than wellargued books and articles for scientific and other prestigious journals, or quality magazines aimed at interested laypeople. The fact that publishing only offers a low yield over the long termand even that is uncertain explains why consultants very rarely publish anything.
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ANALYSIS
bolic goods triggered by a profusion of those best of all symbolic goodsprofessional degreesand complicated further by the lax selection of teaching staff. Universities churn out thousands of BAs and masters. A recent graduate with no particularly brilliant traits can quite easily end up a lecturer. These are just two body blows to academic pedigree. Being a lecturer and flaunting a university degree no longer have the same prestige they once had. Nicaraguas national university system has greatly helped accelerate this inevitable devaluation through its policy of issuing degrees with all the generosity displayed by households distributing candy in celebration of the Immaculate Conception. There has been noticeable academic decay following the invasion of the barbarian hordes. Its an open secret that a BA earned during the sixties is worth four of todays masters degrees. Measured in terms of how many material goods it can buy, the purchasing power of the university degree as a symbolic good has plummeted.
Nicaraguas national university system has greatly helped accelerate this inevitable devaluation through its policy of issuing degrees with all the generosity displayed by households distributing candy in celebration of the Immaculate Conception
petuates its perverse mechanisms. By making a pact with the system, weve ended up confirming Georg Lukcs theory that the middle classes tend to accommodate themselves to different regimes, represent strictly private class interests and have a non-transforming nature molded by changes in their surroundings that depend entirely on the behavior of other social groups.
Jos Luis Rocha is a researcher for Nitlapn-UCA and a member of envos editorial committee.
35 march 2005