I should begin by saying how thrilled I
am to be here tonight I’d have read
Richards books and follow his lectures
and essays for many many years so it’s
wonderful for me to have this chance to
talk to him this evening at first a few
words about how we’re going to organize
it and we’re here as you know to discuss
Richards latest book together and he is
going to speak about the key themes in
the book we even have a conversation
about it and then you’ll have an
opportunity to ask questions to Richard
before we break and he will kindly do
the book signing so over to Richard
who’s going to discuss the key things in
the book I want to tell you a little
about this book and in a way I hope that
the book is not what people expect sort
of your first impression of a book about
about cooperation might be how to get
everybody on the same page to work
together as a team like you know rolling
together in a scull about cooperation
this kind of coordination of everybody
contributing their might to get
something done that’s not what I mean
by cooperation I was interested in a
different kind of problem which is how
do you cooperate with people who are
different from you people you don’t know
you don’t like maybe that you disagree
with which is a much more adult kind of
problem of cooperation I live in a very
complicated society with lots of
difference in it and how do people reach
across those bonds of difference to be
able to work with people unlike
themselves
and that’s the problem I set myself
curiously if you work in an artisans
workshop that’s often the problem that
people were actually working together
face not of course they they they have
to work together in the sense of
coordination and the sometimes in the
same age but the more skilled people get
the more as a where their page is their
own page if I can put it that way and
that in really complex workshops like a
scientific laboratory which is workshop
the same problem of how you deal with
difference different skills different
understandings of a problem emerges so
what I am trying to do is look at what
are the skills that people need to
communicate across these barriers and
difference and I’ll just mention four of
them to you
the first has got a very fancy name just
called biologics and what a dialogic
skill means this fancy name is a really
a synonym for we think about as good
listening skills what it means is that
you are able to understand and respond
to what something means to say to you
rather than what they do say to you it’s
quite different from the dialectics
where I say something you go no more or
I just
entirely and then we have a back and
forth and then we come to an agreement
about something or we think we have
gotten closer to each other
what dialogic says about the truth
invented by me held bakhtin was a
Russian linguist about 60 years ago is
that you say something and I say that’s
not really what you mean but rather than
debate it with you I’m going to find
ways to find out what you really do mean
so I’ve become skilled in and in asking
you questions in listening to your
silences you know the things that are
too difficult for you to say and so on
and the result of that is that I
understand you better but that and
perhaps you feel like you’re better
understood but we don’t necessarily come
to an agreement so in that way it’s also
unlike dialectical things which
interchanges which lead to this kind of
cooperation where everybody’s on the
same page and dialogic that’s there is
no end like that and as we know in
intimate life and our family life and
love affairs most of our relations with
people who really care about our
dialogical rather than dialectical
remember we give them the space to be
themselves
we understand over time what they mean
to say well they seem angry but they’re
not really angry and so on and I’ve
tried to understand that same principle
in this is in larger social relations
that’s a so dialogic is a form of
cooperation cooperating with the
intentional
oh the second of these and it’s
difficult to learn the second of these
skills is the in this kind of
cooperation is the use of the
subjunctive rather than the declarative
and this follows on from the first if I
say to you I think X your responses okay
I agree or I now I disagree but if I say
I would thought that perhaps I use that
subjunctive voice the ambiguity that
that establishes leaves room for you to
come back to and discuss with me and you
Brits are masters of I would have
thought that you never sometimes you
know you don’t mean it
yes I would have thought and that and
then there’s a real punch
academics are British academics famous
for that but in everyday life the notion
of using the subjunctive is a way of
inviting somebody’s response and that
means that you are comfortable with
dealing with ambiguities rather than
clarity’s and I think for this kind of
cooperation you know with people are
different that learning how to be
comfortable with and to work with
ambiguity through the deployment of the
subjunctive voice is a very important
thing
skill to master I’ve seen this in the
states in conflicts we can read about
this in the book between Koreans and
blacks Africa
Americans which are enormous ly fraught
these are two groups that I really have
been each other’s throats free for
decades and frequently violently so and
the ways in which they’ve become more
adept at making peace with each other
have to do with gradually instead of
being very declarative in your face
being rather more evasive and more
subjunctive in what they say to each
other and there’s a long section in my
my book about that the third of these
skills is the complex cooperation is
more often informal than formal and I’m
not going to take a lot about that
because it’s a long complicated subject
but just intuitively when you have
something like Robert’s Rules of Order
to run a meeting everybody gets their
say but very few times two people
actually engage with each other you know
I have a order of a meeting and
everybody has heard but it’s something
that often is very unproductive way to
deal with complex issues and what my
research team and I did was look at ways
to informal eyes settings where there’s
a lot of conflict so that people feel
that there aren’t really any guidelines
of rules that they have to deal with
each other in order to give a shape to
meetings and I put this as a kind of
rule and is what diplomats know
as well the when in a situation of
people relatively calm with each other
on the same page the formality serves
the purpose is a kind of record-keeping
and that helps you come to cooperate in
that kind of world pulling together way
but when you’re in a situation of
difficult the fact that you have this
informal eyes situation means that you
have to deal with the other in order to
keep the meeting going and so that’s
it’s an important issue in it’s more
contestant thing finally I’ve made an
argument which about this kind of
complex cooperation which seems to
enrage religious people and I don’t know
why this is that I’m an atheist but I’m
a really nicely a theist but it seems to
get them really going and this argument
is this that what the address to the
other in this kind of complex
cooperation invokes empathy rather than
sympathy it’s a really important
distinction when we feel sympathy for
somebody else it’s like you know there
but for the grace of God go I Adam Smith
in the Theory of Moral Sentiments so as
I see somebody else trip in the street
and I think oh I hurt you know you you
have the simpl that’s me
whereas empathy is I wonder what he
tripped over it’s a cooler emotion is a
cooler address to the other you’re
interested in what’s happening to them
than feeling that identifying with I
didn’t sympathy as a matter of
identification empathy is a matter that
keeps distance and replaces
identification by curiosity in the
workshop empathy that’s a really
important phenomenon you’ve got are so
curious why did that experiment go wrong
instead of going oh poor you or
something like that you want to know
what did you do wrong what happened in
social relations it’s got a different
configuration imagine that I am as I am
a upper middle class white man and some
buddy who is a black poor exile starts
telling me the story of save being
tortured being being brutalized in some
way if I express sympathy for them by
saying oh god that must have been
terrible I can imagine that it was awful
the other person could get quite angry
about that how could I imagine that how
could I presume to identify with
somebody else who is in a more difficult
position than I am whereas if I said to
them tell me about it what happened to
you
what was it like which is an empathic
reaction I’m showing respect
I’m not presuming that my I can know
what somebody else experiences and I
think this is probably this address to
the other through empathy rather than
sand
thie is really the way in which we honor
somebody else’s differences and I’ve
tried in my book to show what this means
in everyday relations with people in a
variety of settings in the workplace
community life and so on so are some
very well pointed all professors over
but this is the kind of the basic
pattern of this book I just tell you one
program one consequence of thinking
about cooperation complex cooperation in
this way that emphasizes the logics the
subjunctive voice informality and
empathy is that a problem in urban life
which we not have not addressed very
well so far I think can be addressed and
that is the relationship between
communities at their edges we’ve tended
to think when we have different
communities together that their
relations that discussions with each
other what they how they cooperate is a
matter of solidarity what they have in
common but my idea is that we shouldn’t
try to say between a middle-class white
community in a poor black or poor Asian
community try to find how they can make
common cause but how they can speak to
each other even across the barriers of
being different without having to
presume that there’s something that it’s
them all together
so I just say is the final word about
this that my book is an argument for
cooperation and against solidarity
that’s the point of my book and that’s
what’s got these religious people in
twist this is very bad
ethically at least the arch the Catholic
Archbishop but for London thinks this is
a terrible council cooperation rather
than solidarity subscribe to this wicked
which I took as a compliment so that’s
we’re on that well so unless you’re
empathic because we should all learn to
be witness Archbishop I’m sure you
listen we have all made mental notes
that we should become more dialogical
more empathic use the subjective more
often and be more sensitive to
informality now for those of you and I
imagine that’s many of you in the
audience who’ve read this book you’ll
know that like all Richards books it has
an absolutely incredible array of
references this is always one of the
delights of reading a Richard Sennett
book so this traces complex cooperation
from the medieval guilds who were of
course key themes and the craftsman as
well your previous book through the
writings of Michele de Montaigne the
christening of one of the sons of
Victoria and David Beckham the
restoration of the neues Museum in
Berlin the workings of the John Lewis
Partnership and so on and so on so the
inevitable question is given that this
is the second book in your trilogy which
deals with the skills we need to sustain
daily life why choose cooperation and
why specifically write about it now why
is it suddenly so important well I think
why it’s while writing about it now is
that is in part a political and
political economy
answer which is that the ways were
working in modern forms of work are more
and more results forms of cooperation
every MBAs in the United States I’m sure
you’re much more sophisticated here
learns about how to show that you’re
cooperative at the workplace it’s one of
the most fungible skills are supposed to
have but it’s not cooperation in which
the corporation actually deals with
things like the other person is
difficult
the core of the project you have is
impossible you fail and the other person
is is in need of real help and I saw
this you know I’ve been writing for a
long time I have I have two arrows in my
quiver one is was I write about cities
and the other as I write about labor and
I saw this in the 90s how this teamwork
in business was a kind of dumb kind of
yeah the theatres of cooperation in
which people really were stabbing each
other by the they were smiling in front
but they were stabbing each other in the
back and it’s very pronounced in
supposedly new capitalist kinds of labor
and you know high service work and so on
so I think what we’ve lost in the
changes in capitalism that have occurred
in the last 30 years or so
is the notion that cooperation is
meaningful and that’s where I began on
the labor side of this
I think there’s a political reason for
this as well that most of 20th century
left-wing politics and I would rule you
all and left for this evening has been
about solidarity rather than cooperation
I’m appalled when I I’m you know I’m a
junkie of politics so I actually read
these manifestos and I’m appalled at
every single labor manifesto I’ve read
since sliver came to power in 1997 it’s
all about people pulling together about
the finding the common threads and
multiculturalism you can spin this out
every any way you want
it’s about annihilating the differences
that hurt between people and keeping
differences kind of garnish so can you
explain how that Russian solidarity is
different from cooperation it’s
different because what it does that
political that sort of well-meaning
labor version of it we don’t know about
conservatives but what it does is
second-generation Muslim and you’re a
second generation you know if you’re a
twentieth generation Brit you know there
are things that I’ve suffered that you
never have and conversely you’ve got a
sense of place which I will never have
in my lifetime these are painful
differences why should we say that this
is not those painful differences are not
the subject of our relations with each
other why should we have this papal this
Tony Blair problem that everybody can
find a common
thread the of of life in Britain its
infant Island in infantilizing you know
and a lot of the language of left-wing
politics of solidarity because it denies
you know the fact that people differ in
painful ways of complex ways it produces
the kind of political language which is
inferior to what we know from private
life about how difficult it is to be
with somebody somebody else you know it
makes the public realm into something
that everything is nice or solvable you
know that’s another thing that I find
extraordinary about this the language of
solving a problem is the language of
solidarity right but we know that most
problems in life are not soluble you
just live with the ambiguity things that
are half-measures cannot resolve in this
dialectical way your relations with
other people so that’s I guess that’s
the real world you know I’d like to see
the sea I mean another way to put this
is I’d like to put the social back into
socialism and the social means
recognizing how difficult social
relations are between people well I
suspect there will be few people who
would argue with your analysis of recent
labor party manifestos on the language
that’s used but surely there is a way of
looking at the recent development of
Britain in suggesting that there has
been genuine progress in recognizing the
differences that you’re talking about
and seeing them as points of distinction
or interest and we have broadly speaking
become a less racist a less homophobic
and that’s bigoted society in recent
years so how does this sit with your
your argument had somebody told me 20
years ago that gay marriage would be
legalized in my lifetime I would have
laughed and said if only but it won’t be
just as Americans of my generation never
thought their country could have a black
president but none have been delighted
to be proved wrong
do you feel that this doesn’t represent
real progress or that it’s not enough
progress question it is progress or at
least it’s the diminution of a source of
conflict maybe you know I’m biased about
this because I’ve been dealing with two
areas of where you have a lot of
inequality and a lot of conflict which
is work and urban life you know but I
take your point it’s all not black and
it’s all my darkness out there but let
me ask you in turn why do you think that
this happened in Britain it’s not so
much in the States I think this is the
Obama phenomenon is complicated but I’m
curious why I think this has happened in
Britain because it is striking that you
gay marriage people are much more
tolerant of that well it’s it’s a
a very sophisticated evolution of the
gay rights movement in Britain with a
knowledge of its history the sort of
horrible history of prejudice homophobia
and brutality of past year so I think
that gathered momentum as it did after
Stonewall in the United States and also
I suppose I would be more interested in
your view on this as a non Brit living
in Britain if you look at popular
culture in Britain so many of the most
popular totems are either very gay or
very camp
I mean Coronation Street would be our
primary so for decades Freddie Mercury
who as a teenager in the 70s I didn’t
realize was gay and how was it that we
were he was so classic I know the fact
that else who in many ways I think he
and Talley unwittingly has pandered to a
sort of homophobia given that his life
has been very unhappy in many ways and
he had to struggle for his sexuality I
think that made people who didn’t feel
comfortable about male gay sexuality
somehow had he been dazzlingly beautiful
and charismatic and gorgeous and his
life banan problematic I think they’d
have found him more threatening and
harder to take but by the time he
married David Furnish he was a national
treasure with sung at Diana’s funeral I
think she although I’m a Republican with
a smaller also probably had a very
positive influence lots of gay friends a
very early AIDS campaigner I think all
these things came together and suddenly
the British didn’t feel as uncomfortable
with different sexualities as they had
no we’re having a discussion my sense of
this is a situation about this as a as a
foreigner in Britain although I lived
here 20 years is that you British a much
more tolerant than you think and I’ve
always had that feeling and you’ve done
something which Americans don’t know how
to do which is not talk about things
when there I saw this I came here for a
conference in the late seventies I’m
very old and it was a conference on race
relations and you’d had a race riot here
and the most remarkable thing to me
about this conference was that when
things hot adult people they stopped
talking you know they avoided the
subject it was brilliant
but I would say in general that you are
much more tolerant people certainly than
Americans are who if they have a
difference with somebody want to
confront them with it and I mean part of
Obama’s problem is that I would say he’s
not very his manner is not the manner of
confrontation you know and that’s
enraging to people they think that he’s
particularly to whites
it’s enraging if he were an angry black
man they get it and they could put him
in a box you know but he’s not an angry
black man he’s somebody he’s rather
I think and well it’s also an
interesting consideration surely that
had he not been black to such a
sophisticated cerebral figure may not
have been electable
I mean America clearly got a different
package than it to thought but let’s
return to the cooperation is we could
carry on talking about through all of
this all all evening there’s a very
funny passage in your book when you talk
about coming to Britain and we’re all
talking in the subjunctive and you
haven’t got a clue what we really are
some nations that tend to be better
attuned to cooperation in that way yes
well I mean I wouldn’t put it nationally
but it’s a form of put it another way
it’s whether it’s social relations take
the form of this kind of everyday
diplomacy or of a kind of everyday
theatre you know I mean diplomats you
remember this chapter and every day
policy in my book
I mean diplomatic ways of dealing with
other people which I think you are
despite yourselves masters of it’s a way
of assuming that the point of a social
relationship is to keep the social
relationship going and up to the point
where you can’t take it anymore if
you’re in a country like the United
States or France that’s not the point
the point is to display this
dramaturgical display of yourself and
one of the things we noticed about when
we did this study of cooperation in the
workplace
the French were great at dramatizing in
French working these are French people
working for word international
corporations we’re great at dramatizing
how cooperative they were but were very
withdrawn from other workers in the
workplace so I I’d say I’m not so some
French were wonderful of course but but
I mean I think it’s a it’s a question of
whether you’re in a culture which is in
which the display dramaturgical display
of yourself is foregrounded versus a
culture like yours in which diplomacy it
becomes more of a kind of model for
social social relationships and what I’d
say to you about this I mean I know this
has is amusing sides to it but it’s
deadly serious
because in cultures like France when you
have an ethnic conflict between people
for instance in the in the full board
and in the suburbs and people in the
center the responses of people in the
center are not empathetic
they’re either you know you victims oh
you know racial injustice and racism so
on the left but more largely they’re
confronted with other people which who
are telling them what it means to be
like
secular and what it means to be French
and that’s with this is one of the great
violent you know conflicts in France and
the way in which French people talk as
secular French people to these people
the Muslim Muslim in full book inflames
the problems even more so I mean the
many things about Britain which are
terrible of course but in I think you’re
really quite gifted socially because of
this big phenomena of coming years is
clearly going to be the increasing power
of China which is going to start
influencing many many more areas of our
lives and in their areas and in the book
you talk about a phenomenon called the
Guang I was promoted while she met work
could you explain what it is and why you
found it so intriguing well I don’t
think it will directly have an impact on
us but it’s a wonderful form of
cooperation watching and what it is is a
form of say I’m 16 years old and I need
the money to go to university and you’re
my uncle I mean I’m in Shanghai and
you’re my uncle in Singapore my Chinese
uncle or once removed twice removed who
knows and you pay my school bills I’ve
incurred a debt to you but the Chinese
don’t monitor us that debt that is I
might pay that debt back by giving some
medical
if I become a doctor to your aged mother
or taking in a relative the whole idea
about our cheese is what’s called
asymmetrical reciprocity and you can
understand this is a big word for
something that’s very important rather
than me saying i gift you X so you owe
me X it’s me saying I’ll help you
but sometimes somewhere you or your
relatives will help me back and it’s a
principle of cooperation which allows
the Chinese during the worst periods of
Mao to survive internally and also
externally and it’s now beginning lots
of debates about whether the conscience
is changing but you understand what this
is we think about cooperation something
where I given you X and you give me what
you gave me the same thing back when you
have asymmetric reciprocity you have a
social bond which is intense and it
honors both sides I know I owe you or my
children owe you but the form in which I
give back is what I can give back rather
than this contractual of form of of
exchange and I think it’s made them very
strong in the book you draw many other
examples of complex cooperation in many
different contexts one of my favorites
was Robert Owen and the Rochdale
principles and we also point out that
it’s wonderful though the Rochdale
principles may have been in many ways
Robert on was responsible for the
corporate bonus in reading the original
so could you explain the purpose of the
Rochdale principles
they evolved well you know both in
Britain and to a lesser extent in
America in the 19th century there were
very strong cooperative movements do you
know by the way that 2012 is the year of
the cooperate of the co-operative UN
year of the co-operative that’s our
fault and we had lots of discussions
about Robert oh and Owens motion was
basically this the oppressed people need
to have to develop ways of cooperating
with each other
rather than spending their time and what
he called useless anger and it was the
overnights it was the great reproach to
Marxism this is all 19th century context
but the notion was that a cooperative
was something where we’re people poor
to not expend useless anger but to do
something for themselves and these
Rochdale principles there are six of
them I think six yeah six there are ways
to organize a community savings bank an
old-age scheme you know they enabled you
to to establish cooperatives and one of
the six principles is that is bonus that
is just as in goldman sachs that you
distribute the excess
that you don’t need to run the
cooperative every year but I think he
had a rather different idea of the bonus
goldman sachs
but you know if you think about what’s
happened the last five years you know
we’ve taken a we’ve expended a lot of
useless anger against bankers who are
much more potent than any of us are and
defending themselves I mean they own
this government you know and what we
haven’t done is going back to his
cooperative movements to take care of
ourselves and Owen would say to people
forget about them you’re never going to
make David Cameron into one nation Tory
no matter how he talks maybe even at
Miliband you should be starting new
institutions where PSA people pool
information about jobs or pool taking
care of the sick and so on so that’s
what the year of the co-operative was
supposed to tell you about but obviously
we haven’t done a good job about it but
so many 12 days of X pirates
if we look at a contemporary example of
cooperation but one of the most
intriguing ones was the restoration of
the neues Museum in Berlin run by David
Chipperfield could you tell us about
well this is a wonderful urbanistic
example Chipperfield who was a british
no sir david translators was charged
with restoring the museum that had been
blasted in the Second World War in
Berlin reconstructed and he had two
groups fighting each other one were
people who wanted to restore the museum
to its 19th century imperialist
glory because it’s full of things that
the Germans long before the Nazis came
to power to from the rest of the world
and so those were people on the one hand
for restoration and on the other side
where people who want to start clear the
whole thing out and make a new museum
truly neues museum building and what he
did was a kind of repair which
incorporated and I think this is really
to me very moving about it which left
for instance a lot of the bullet holes
in the fabric of the museum
he put it back in working order but when
you walk through this museum you are
aware that this museum was bombed by
bomber Harris and then was left to rot
by the communists there are lots of
parts of it which are unresolved and
it’s a physical experience of something
that’s biological and which arouses
empathy rather than sympathy because
you’re asking what are these
it’s a shrapnel that are left in the
fabric you know it’s a physical
translation of this he yes he was very
diplomatic in negotiating between these
two groups but what interested me was
the actual physical form of the museum
it embodies a kind of complex
negotiation between two very different
and it should be flat which is a very
option so I was interested in both the
process by which the museum was made but
also the fact that you know what I’ve
described you is a process but it also
has its manifested in physical form
there are biological forms it’s a whole
issue so I was thinking about this as a
metaphor about repair and not only
cooperate in how how metaphorically
repair their strategies of repair that
are cooperative with it is absolutely
extraordinary building let’s talk about
an example of failed cooperation and in
a completely different sphere and one
that he’s an together and allude to
fairly often his Google Wave oh yes
that’s so really interesting and I’m so
glad so what why why did it fail okay
this is really an interesting project in
I was contacted in 2009 when I started
working on this book on cooperation by
people at Google who said would you be
involved in the beta testing of a new
online
program we think that you can imagine
what they think that the the the web is
a wonderful way beyond things like like
Skype and so on that we can actually use
the web for really serious cooperation
and then that it’s something called
Google Wave and I in a group of people
became amongst its beta testers that’s
where you try out the program a
real-world situation and I really
learned a lot by the failure of this
program here’s what the engineers had
thought they have thought the process of
cooperating is coming closer and closer
to be on the same page that dialectical
process and that translated by by
unscreened
that the parts of the screen that got
bigger were about the parts that people
agreed with and or to the side of the
screen were what were called irrelevance
ease now you know that when you’re
having a conversation about a complex
thing that’s something that seems
irrelevant that comes out of left field
that’s lateral knowledge can some times
be the most important thing that happens
in the conversation and what was
happening with Google Wave was that
these kind of this kind of lateral
knowledge was being literally pushed
aside and the people who would raise
this lateral No
worthy their contributions were being
shoved aside we were having a discussion
about ethnic problems in London and more
and more focusing on problems of
religion and so on but there were some
members of this group who were spread
all over Europe and and North America
some members of this group were saying
well maybe these problems aren’t really
as important as the gender problems
between generations within Islam and
maybe we should forget about whites in
this discussion they got pushed to the
side and because on the screen they got
pushed their contributions got pushed on
the side these people began to
participate less and less you know now
and the project came out with banality
what everybody agreed on could agree on
was jumpa whereas all the complexity had
been moved to the side now I was
interested in this because in a workshop
and particularly in the laboratory
workshop it’s often what we think of its
lateral knowledge or a lateral procedure
which gets shoved up against something
that’s difficult and you’re trying to
make work and suddenly this thing that
looked irrelevant becomes trans the key
unlock to solving a problem that you
can’t solve within its own terms it’s a
very common thing within good-good
laboratory it’s also true in arts you
know you work or way of something as a
painter you will go away from it start
looking at something else you know look
take a different set of colors or
whatever and suddenly this other thing
begins
to unlock the key of what you were
trying to do another practice and this
is a very familiar craft thing that we
have that we have this kind of knowledge
but here in the social realm it was
being literally displaced on-screen and
we were losing participants and so on
and what was remaining the common thread
was Tony Blair’s language
the common thread was threaded air just
so I’m not anti computer at all but I
was interested in the way in which two
purposeful to organized to engineered a
form of cooperation actually leads to
poor results and again it’s that
ambiguous thing well we leave something
indeterminate and informal off the kind
of something from left field comes in as
a solution to a problem
now here you as Brits have a big issue
in education and health service and so
on there’s not much room for ambiguity
your masters are trying to close down
the area of solutions so that everything
is foreseen in advance and the kind of
wild solution in education the suddenly
figuring out that if you could study
painting in school but you no longer can
for for credit I guess it is that that
might have something to do with the way
you solve a problem in little boards all
right all of that is being dismissed and
you’re getting this kind of shopkeeper
mentality
knowing in advance what you’re trying to
find out that is a recipe for disaster
there has got to be a room for the
ambiguous then the four for intuition I
mean there has to be in science there
must be an in education as well and it’s
only that ambiguity at say that allows
people to really seriously cooperate
with each other and share different
kinds of knowledge so given that you’ve
been thinking and writing about the
subject of complex cooperation for so
long
are there any instances of daily life
that you just think of screaming out for
more ingenious cooperative approach well
schools I mean whenever I look at a
school full of computer screens at which
kids are sitting individually I think
you know throw them out get rid of those
screens have you ever tried if you don’t
own a Mac 27-inch iMac two for four
people to watch one screen together and
discuss what’s on it it is difficult but
then the content of those screens this
was another issue area to come to
actually people may be at their screen
and isolation but the world had opens up
to them is completely it could network
so and one thing I wasn’t sure where you
stood in the book was on social networks
like Facebook and Twitter I use you were
quite ambiguous about them do you see
them as
potentially positive media of
communication or largely negative do
they simply give the illusion of
community in other words well as you
know I mean I think they’re the Arab
Spring tells us that these programs can
be used for wonderful forms of
cooperation but they’re not the forms
for which they were designed and
Facebook in particular was a kind of
beauty parade you know it’s meant to be
a dating resource amongst undergraduates
at Harvard University is and what’s
built into what’s engineered into it is
the notion of display rather than an
interaction if you remember I had the
example of somebody who had 627 friends
600 something like that if each of those
friends sent all if you multiplied 627
by 627 just for one day send one message
what kind of a social network would that
be be impossible you’d have about a
thousand messages one day so it’s
organized it’s a social network
organized before display and I think the
Holy Grail in this is how you get around
the problem of display and get
communication instead it’s the same
problem and well so do you see Twitter
as being more genuinely communicative
obviously it never more than 140
characters
yeah
because the visual component is less
yeah well there is no all right well it
could be but I mean the point I’d make
to you about this is that we’re just at
the beginning with these devices and the
first time we’re out of the box with
them we think about them as social but
they’re not really sociable in the sense
of interacting and maybe it will be that
entrance smaller intranets of 50 60
people become the more social really
truly social forms of media but the
logic of course of Twitter is to have
the billion people that use it so you
can send a billion people advertising
and this is why in my first book I was
so taken with Linux I’m a technological
not idea but close to it and but I’ve
learned how to program in Linux and
that’s a different world because the
world that doesn’t isn’t controlled by
Bill Gates well but that is the the sort
of dazzling wonder of the internet
because Tim berners-lee designed it so
that no everybody has equal access you
and I and Bill Gates have the same level
of access to it it can never however
hard Google tries being monopolized by a
single force because everybody still has
energy which is quite remarkable yes but
it means that you better become a
craftsman of the internet to use it well
to to find sites and places where you
can really interact with other people
requires not performing google’s search
which will send you up as you know the
Google’s z4 first sites first and so on
shall we give people time I think we
should so as you’ve alluded to your last
book the craftsman while mics are being
prepared and someone final question
your next book is on the making of
cities could you tell us something very
quickly about that question I mean I’m
in the forest at this moment yeah I mean
it’s a book about the craft of urban
design and it’s more in a way more
specialized book it’s about how can we
apply the principles of craftsmanship to
making cities but but I’ve become
confused because I’m also looking at how
we can become better more skilled at
using cities more competence urbanites
which is not necessarily a question of
design so I’m deep in this forest now
but that’s that’s what it’s about it’s
about the craft of living and and
designing cities and the ambiguity
between the two well we look forward so
could you if you have a question for
Richard could you raise your hand and
you will have to slink into the
let me go because I really want to
address the first what you say there are
forms of toleration which are bred by
indifference you know you just tolerate
they go their way and you go yours and
it’s a question of what form toleration
takes and sometimes toleration by a
difference can be very liberating to
oppressed groups you know people just
don’t care about but your first question
is a really interesting one there’s a
lot of research done about the
quote/unquote natural instinct to
cooperate with your own kind and what’s
interesting about it it’s ologists have
done this and they’ve done it for both
primates and free human beings is that
it seems like it’s more natural
then cooperating with people who
different from you but in fact this kind
of illusion they found for instance that
a baby’s cooperation with its caregiver
in the past mostly its mother is a prop
as as far as we can tell is a learning
during its first year about about
working well with an object the nipple
whether its biological or Oh
which is not you
there’s no identification in the first
year year-and-a-half with the people
that newborn cooperates so you know
cooperation at birth and in the most
fundamental of its natural cycle is
about dealing with that difference in
order to survive and so on another bit
of research I don’t know very much about
that but I do know more about the
research that deals with the inevitable
relation between cooperation with your
own kind and competition with the
corporation and competition are not
opposites you know we have to cooperate
and say them
of the game in order to play above it
but it seems that through our forms of
cooperation with people who are nearly
like you or the same as you that give
rise to the kind of oedipal drama of
aggression and so there’s something
called the cooperation aggression
complex you can read about it in my book
and what that is is that people who are
exactly like yield our people whom you
never give the freedom to be any
different from you in other words you’re
in a kind of competitive relationship
about them who is the most who is the
most white who is the most Islamic and
the fact that you’re all alike to begin
with sets up this aggressive competitive
relationship and Freud is our great
guide to this this is what sibling
rivalry does the dynamics of sibling
rivalry
so that’s natural where is the kind of
cooperation I’m talking about is more
archaic in the life cycle but it doesn’t
give rise to that nose competition for
who’s the most the most the only
question I ask you about this is do you
feel I mean where this really beresan my
own life is the sellout on tuition fees
would you have stayed if you were lived
in in that coalition with with would you
have stayed in a Lib Dem party if your
leaders had sold out on this principle I
think at that point I wouldn’t know that
and what that that the reason for that
is that what you have there is
cooperation which is really collusion
you have an agreement so that an elite
can maintain itself in power and that’s
a collusive you know those leaders
should have been fighting the corner of
no tuition fees that’s why they were put
it’s not a basic tenets of Lib Dem
ideology that no nobody should have to
pay to go to university so when the
leaders sell you out there collusive but
why cooperate by staying in their party
yeah excuse me yeah maybe I’ve given too
much of an emphasis to it in it in its
North American and European for me I
it’s true in warfare as well people are
they’ve got to be solid there and in
order to defend themselves
I guess my vision on this is influenced
or warped by the fact that I am so
focused on the Labour process and
community conflicts that it seemed to me
that in those contexts in the community
context if it means that Lots is too
much is left out and in the work process
maybe that’s the domain in which the
circum
operates maybe maybe can’t be made as a
general argument
this is a discussion we’ll have ultra
whiskey well there is a wonderful offer
Richard has very gain we offered to take
individual questions afterwards at the
book signing when he will of course sign
your books as well I would like to be the huge thank you to him
am to be here tonight I’d have read
Richards books and follow his lectures
and essays for many many years so it’s
wonderful for me to have this chance to
talk to him this evening at first a few
words about how we’re going to organize
it and we’re here as you know to discuss
Richards latest book together and he is
going to speak about the key themes in
the book we even have a conversation
about it and then you’ll have an
opportunity to ask questions to Richard
before we break and he will kindly do
the book signing so over to Richard
who’s going to discuss the key things in
the book I want to tell you a little
about this book and in a way I hope that
the book is not what people expect sort
of your first impression of a book about
about cooperation might be how to get
everybody on the same page to work
together as a team like you know rolling
together in a scull about cooperation
this kind of coordination of everybody
contributing their might to get
something done that’s not what I mean
by cooperation I was interested in a
different kind of problem which is how
do you cooperate with people who are
different from you people you don’t know
you don’t like maybe that you disagree
with which is a much more adult kind of
problem of cooperation I live in a very
complicated society with lots of
difference in it and how do people reach
across those bonds of difference to be
able to work with people unlike
themselves
and that’s the problem I set myself
curiously if you work in an artisans
workshop that’s often the problem that
people were actually working together
face not of course they they they have
to work together in the sense of
coordination and the sometimes in the
same age but the more skilled people get
the more as a where their page is their
own page if I can put it that way and
that in really complex workshops like a
scientific laboratory which is workshop
the same problem of how you deal with
difference different skills different
understandings of a problem emerges so
what I am trying to do is look at what
are the skills that people need to
communicate across these barriers and
difference and I’ll just mention four of
them to you
the first has got a very fancy name just
called biologics and what a dialogic
skill means this fancy name is a really
a synonym for we think about as good
listening skills what it means is that
you are able to understand and respond
to what something means to say to you
rather than what they do say to you it’s
quite different from the dialectics
where I say something you go no more or
I just
entirely and then we have a back and
forth and then we come to an agreement
about something or we think we have
gotten closer to each other
what dialogic says about the truth
invented by me held bakhtin was a
Russian linguist about 60 years ago is
that you say something and I say that’s
not really what you mean but rather than
debate it with you I’m going to find
ways to find out what you really do mean
so I’ve become skilled in and in asking
you questions in listening to your
silences you know the things that are
too difficult for you to say and so on
and the result of that is that I
understand you better but that and
perhaps you feel like you’re better
understood but we don’t necessarily come
to an agreement so in that way it’s also
unlike dialectical things which
interchanges which lead to this kind of
cooperation where everybody’s on the
same page and dialogic that’s there is
no end like that and as we know in
intimate life and our family life and
love affairs most of our relations with
people who really care about our
dialogical rather than dialectical
remember we give them the space to be
themselves
we understand over time what they mean
to say well they seem angry but they’re
not really angry and so on and I’ve
tried to understand that same principle
in this is in larger social relations
that’s a so dialogic is a form of
cooperation cooperating with the
intentional
oh the second of these and it’s
difficult to learn the second of these
skills is the in this kind of
cooperation is the use of the
subjunctive rather than the declarative
and this follows on from the first if I
say to you I think X your responses okay
I agree or I now I disagree but if I say
I would thought that perhaps I use that
subjunctive voice the ambiguity that
that establishes leaves room for you to
come back to and discuss with me and you
Brits are masters of I would have
thought that you never sometimes you
know you don’t mean it
yes I would have thought and that and
then there’s a real punch
academics are British academics famous
for that but in everyday life the notion
of using the subjunctive is a way of
inviting somebody’s response and that
means that you are comfortable with
dealing with ambiguities rather than
clarity’s and I think for this kind of
cooperation you know with people are
different that learning how to be
comfortable with and to work with
ambiguity through the deployment of the
subjunctive voice is a very important
thing
skill to master I’ve seen this in the
states in conflicts we can read about
this in the book between Koreans and
blacks Africa
Americans which are enormous ly fraught
these are two groups that I really have
been each other’s throats free for
decades and frequently violently so and
the ways in which they’ve become more
adept at making peace with each other
have to do with gradually instead of
being very declarative in your face
being rather more evasive and more
subjunctive in what they say to each
other and there’s a long section in my
my book about that the third of these
skills is the complex cooperation is
more often informal than formal and I’m
not going to take a lot about that
because it’s a long complicated subject
but just intuitively when you have
something like Robert’s Rules of Order
to run a meeting everybody gets their
say but very few times two people
actually engage with each other you know
I have a order of a meeting and
everybody has heard but it’s something
that often is very unproductive way to
deal with complex issues and what my
research team and I did was look at ways
to informal eyes settings where there’s
a lot of conflict so that people feel
that there aren’t really any guidelines
of rules that they have to deal with
each other in order to give a shape to
meetings and I put this as a kind of
rule and is what diplomats know
as well the when in a situation of
people relatively calm with each other
on the same page the formality serves
the purpose is a kind of record-keeping
and that helps you come to cooperate in
that kind of world pulling together way
but when you’re in a situation of
difficult the fact that you have this
informal eyes situation means that you
have to deal with the other in order to
keep the meeting going and so that’s
it’s an important issue in it’s more
contestant thing finally I’ve made an
argument which about this kind of
complex cooperation which seems to
enrage religious people and I don’t know
why this is that I’m an atheist but I’m
a really nicely a theist but it seems to
get them really going and this argument
is this that what the address to the
other in this kind of complex
cooperation invokes empathy rather than
sympathy it’s a really important
distinction when we feel sympathy for
somebody else it’s like you know there
but for the grace of God go I Adam Smith
in the Theory of Moral Sentiments so as
I see somebody else trip in the street
and I think oh I hurt you know you you
have the simpl that’s me
whereas empathy is I wonder what he
tripped over it’s a cooler emotion is a
cooler address to the other you’re
interested in what’s happening to them
than feeling that identifying with I
didn’t sympathy as a matter of
identification empathy is a matter that
keeps distance and replaces
identification by curiosity in the
workshop empathy that’s a really
important phenomenon you’ve got are so
curious why did that experiment go wrong
instead of going oh poor you or
something like that you want to know
what did you do wrong what happened in
social relations it’s got a different
configuration imagine that I am as I am
a upper middle class white man and some
buddy who is a black poor exile starts
telling me the story of save being
tortured being being brutalized in some
way if I express sympathy for them by
saying oh god that must have been
terrible I can imagine that it was awful
the other person could get quite angry
about that how could I imagine that how
could I presume to identify with
somebody else who is in a more difficult
position than I am whereas if I said to
them tell me about it what happened to
you
what was it like which is an empathic
reaction I’m showing respect
I’m not presuming that my I can know
what somebody else experiences and I
think this is probably this address to
the other through empathy rather than
sand
thie is really the way in which we honor
somebody else’s differences and I’ve
tried in my book to show what this means
in everyday relations with people in a
variety of settings in the workplace
community life and so on so are some
very well pointed all professors over
but this is the kind of the basic
pattern of this book I just tell you one
program one consequence of thinking
about cooperation complex cooperation in
this way that emphasizes the logics the
subjunctive voice informality and
empathy is that a problem in urban life
which we not have not addressed very
well so far I think can be addressed and
that is the relationship between
communities at their edges we’ve tended
to think when we have different
communities together that their
relations that discussions with each
other what they how they cooperate is a
matter of solidarity what they have in
common but my idea is that we shouldn’t
try to say between a middle-class white
community in a poor black or poor Asian
community try to find how they can make
common cause but how they can speak to
each other even across the barriers of
being different without having to
presume that there’s something that it’s
them all together
so I just say is the final word about
this that my book is an argument for
cooperation and against solidarity
that’s the point of my book and that’s
what’s got these religious people in
twist this is very bad
ethically at least the arch the Catholic
Archbishop but for London thinks this is
a terrible council cooperation rather
than solidarity subscribe to this wicked
which I took as a compliment so that’s
we’re on that well so unless you’re
empathic because we should all learn to
be witness Archbishop I’m sure you
listen we have all made mental notes
that we should become more dialogical
more empathic use the subjective more
often and be more sensitive to
informality now for those of you and I
imagine that’s many of you in the
audience who’ve read this book you’ll
know that like all Richards books it has
an absolutely incredible array of
references this is always one of the
delights of reading a Richard Sennett
book so this traces complex cooperation
from the medieval guilds who were of
course key themes and the craftsman as
well your previous book through the
writings of Michele de Montaigne the
christening of one of the sons of
Victoria and David Beckham the
restoration of the neues Museum in
Berlin the workings of the John Lewis
Partnership and so on and so on so the
inevitable question is given that this
is the second book in your trilogy which
deals with the skills we need to sustain
daily life why choose cooperation and
why specifically write about it now why
is it suddenly so important well I think
why it’s while writing about it now is
that is in part a political and
political economy
answer which is that the ways were
working in modern forms of work are more
and more results forms of cooperation
every MBAs in the United States I’m sure
you’re much more sophisticated here
learns about how to show that you’re
cooperative at the workplace it’s one of
the most fungible skills are supposed to
have but it’s not cooperation in which
the corporation actually deals with
things like the other person is
difficult
the core of the project you have is
impossible you fail and the other person
is is in need of real help and I saw
this you know I’ve been writing for a
long time I have I have two arrows in my
quiver one is was I write about cities
and the other as I write about labor and
I saw this in the 90s how this teamwork
in business was a kind of dumb kind of
yeah the theatres of cooperation in
which people really were stabbing each
other by the they were smiling in front
but they were stabbing each other in the
back and it’s very pronounced in
supposedly new capitalist kinds of labor
and you know high service work and so on
so I think what we’ve lost in the
changes in capitalism that have occurred
in the last 30 years or so
is the notion that cooperation is
meaningful and that’s where I began on
the labor side of this
I think there’s a political reason for
this as well that most of 20th century
left-wing politics and I would rule you
all and left for this evening has been
about solidarity rather than cooperation
I’m appalled when I I’m you know I’m a
junkie of politics so I actually read
these manifestos and I’m appalled at
every single labor manifesto I’ve read
since sliver came to power in 1997 it’s
all about people pulling together about
the finding the common threads and
multiculturalism you can spin this out
every any way you want
it’s about annihilating the differences
that hurt between people and keeping
differences kind of garnish so can you
explain how that Russian solidarity is
different from cooperation it’s
different because what it does that
political that sort of well-meaning
labor version of it we don’t know about
conservatives but what it does is
second-generation Muslim and you’re a
second generation you know if you’re a
twentieth generation Brit you know there
are things that I’ve suffered that you
never have and conversely you’ve got a
sense of place which I will never have
in my lifetime these are painful
differences why should we say that this
is not those painful differences are not
the subject of our relations with each
other why should we have this papal this
Tony Blair problem that everybody can
find a common
thread the of of life in Britain its
infant Island in infantilizing you know
and a lot of the language of left-wing
politics of solidarity because it denies
you know the fact that people differ in
painful ways of complex ways it produces
the kind of political language which is
inferior to what we know from private
life about how difficult it is to be
with somebody somebody else you know it
makes the public realm into something
that everything is nice or solvable you
know that’s another thing that I find
extraordinary about this the language of
solving a problem is the language of
solidarity right but we know that most
problems in life are not soluble you
just live with the ambiguity things that
are half-measures cannot resolve in this
dialectical way your relations with
other people so that’s I guess that’s
the real world you know I’d like to see
the sea I mean another way to put this
is I’d like to put the social back into
socialism and the social means
recognizing how difficult social
relations are between people well I
suspect there will be few people who
would argue with your analysis of recent
labor party manifestos on the language
that’s used but surely there is a way of
looking at the recent development of
Britain in suggesting that there has
been genuine progress in recognizing the
differences that you’re talking about
and seeing them as points of distinction
or interest and we have broadly speaking
become a less racist a less homophobic
and that’s bigoted society in recent
years so how does this sit with your
your argument had somebody told me 20
years ago that gay marriage would be
legalized in my lifetime I would have
laughed and said if only but it won’t be
just as Americans of my generation never
thought their country could have a black
president but none have been delighted
to be proved wrong
do you feel that this doesn’t represent
real progress or that it’s not enough
progress question it is progress or at
least it’s the diminution of a source of
conflict maybe you know I’m biased about
this because I’ve been dealing with two
areas of where you have a lot of
inequality and a lot of conflict which
is work and urban life you know but I
take your point it’s all not black and
it’s all my darkness out there but let
me ask you in turn why do you think that
this happened in Britain it’s not so
much in the States I think this is the
Obama phenomenon is complicated but I’m
curious why I think this has happened in
Britain because it is striking that you
gay marriage people are much more
tolerant of that well it’s it’s a
a very sophisticated evolution of the
gay rights movement in Britain with a
knowledge of its history the sort of
horrible history of prejudice homophobia
and brutality of past year so I think
that gathered momentum as it did after
Stonewall in the United States and also
I suppose I would be more interested in
your view on this as a non Brit living
in Britain if you look at popular
culture in Britain so many of the most
popular totems are either very gay or
very camp
I mean Coronation Street would be our
primary so for decades Freddie Mercury
who as a teenager in the 70s I didn’t
realize was gay and how was it that we
were he was so classic I know the fact
that else who in many ways I think he
and Talley unwittingly has pandered to a
sort of homophobia given that his life
has been very unhappy in many ways and
he had to struggle for his sexuality I
think that made people who didn’t feel
comfortable about male gay sexuality
somehow had he been dazzlingly beautiful
and charismatic and gorgeous and his
life banan problematic I think they’d
have found him more threatening and
harder to take but by the time he
married David Furnish he was a national
treasure with sung at Diana’s funeral I
think she although I’m a Republican with
a smaller also probably had a very
positive influence lots of gay friends a
very early AIDS campaigner I think all
these things came together and suddenly
the British didn’t feel as uncomfortable
with different sexualities as they had
no we’re having a discussion my sense of
this is a situation about this as a as a
foreigner in Britain although I lived
here 20 years is that you British a much
more tolerant than you think and I’ve
always had that feeling and you’ve done
something which Americans don’t know how
to do which is not talk about things
when there I saw this I came here for a
conference in the late seventies I’m
very old and it was a conference on race
relations and you’d had a race riot here
and the most remarkable thing to me
about this conference was that when
things hot adult people they stopped
talking you know they avoided the
subject it was brilliant
but I would say in general that you are
much more tolerant people certainly than
Americans are who if they have a
difference with somebody want to
confront them with it and I mean part of
Obama’s problem is that I would say he’s
not very his manner is not the manner of
confrontation you know and that’s
enraging to people they think that he’s
particularly to whites
it’s enraging if he were an angry black
man they get it and they could put him
in a box you know but he’s not an angry
black man he’s somebody he’s rather
I think and well it’s also an
interesting consideration surely that
had he not been black to such a
sophisticated cerebral figure may not
have been electable
I mean America clearly got a different
package than it to thought but let’s
return to the cooperation is we could
carry on talking about through all of
this all all evening there’s a very
funny passage in your book when you talk
about coming to Britain and we’re all
talking in the subjunctive and you
haven’t got a clue what we really are
some nations that tend to be better
attuned to cooperation in that way yes
well I mean I wouldn’t put it nationally
but it’s a form of put it another way
it’s whether it’s social relations take
the form of this kind of everyday
diplomacy or of a kind of everyday
theatre you know I mean diplomats you
remember this chapter and every day
policy in my book
I mean diplomatic ways of dealing with
other people which I think you are
despite yourselves masters of it’s a way
of assuming that the point of a social
relationship is to keep the social
relationship going and up to the point
where you can’t take it anymore if
you’re in a country like the United
States or France that’s not the point
the point is to display this
dramaturgical display of yourself and
one of the things we noticed about when
we did this study of cooperation in the
workplace
the French were great at dramatizing in
French working these are French people
working for word international
corporations we’re great at dramatizing
how cooperative they were but were very
withdrawn from other workers in the
workplace so I I’d say I’m not so some
French were wonderful of course but but
I mean I think it’s a it’s a question of
whether you’re in a culture which is in
which the display dramaturgical display
of yourself is foregrounded versus a
culture like yours in which diplomacy it
becomes more of a kind of model for
social social relationships and what I’d
say to you about this I mean I know this
has is amusing sides to it but it’s
deadly serious
because in cultures like France when you
have an ethnic conflict between people
for instance in the in the full board
and in the suburbs and people in the
center the responses of people in the
center are not empathetic
they’re either you know you victims oh
you know racial injustice and racism so
on the left but more largely they’re
confronted with other people which who
are telling them what it means to be
like
secular and what it means to be French
and that’s with this is one of the great
violent you know conflicts in France and
the way in which French people talk as
secular French people to these people
the Muslim Muslim in full book inflames
the problems even more so I mean the
many things about Britain which are
terrible of course but in I think you’re
really quite gifted socially because of
this big phenomena of coming years is
clearly going to be the increasing power
of China which is going to start
influencing many many more areas of our
lives and in their areas and in the book
you talk about a phenomenon called the
Guang I was promoted while she met work
could you explain what it is and why you
found it so intriguing well I don’t
think it will directly have an impact on
us but it’s a wonderful form of
cooperation watching and what it is is a
form of say I’m 16 years old and I need
the money to go to university and you’re
my uncle I mean I’m in Shanghai and
you’re my uncle in Singapore my Chinese
uncle or once removed twice removed who
knows and you pay my school bills I’ve
incurred a debt to you but the Chinese
don’t monitor us that debt that is I
might pay that debt back by giving some
medical
if I become a doctor to your aged mother
or taking in a relative the whole idea
about our cheese is what’s called
asymmetrical reciprocity and you can
understand this is a big word for
something that’s very important rather
than me saying i gift you X so you owe
me X it’s me saying I’ll help you
but sometimes somewhere you or your
relatives will help me back and it’s a
principle of cooperation which allows
the Chinese during the worst periods of
Mao to survive internally and also
externally and it’s now beginning lots
of debates about whether the conscience
is changing but you understand what this
is we think about cooperation something
where I given you X and you give me what
you gave me the same thing back when you
have asymmetric reciprocity you have a
social bond which is intense and it
honors both sides I know I owe you or my
children owe you but the form in which I
give back is what I can give back rather
than this contractual of form of of
exchange and I think it’s made them very
strong in the book you draw many other
examples of complex cooperation in many
different contexts one of my favorites
was Robert Owen and the Rochdale
principles and we also point out that
it’s wonderful though the Rochdale
principles may have been in many ways
Robert on was responsible for the
corporate bonus in reading the original
so could you explain the purpose of the
Rochdale principles
they evolved well you know both in
Britain and to a lesser extent in
America in the 19th century there were
very strong cooperative movements do you
know by the way that 2012 is the year of
the cooperate of the co-operative UN
year of the co-operative that’s our
fault and we had lots of discussions
about Robert oh and Owens motion was
basically this the oppressed people need
to have to develop ways of cooperating
with each other
rather than spending their time and what
he called useless anger and it was the
overnights it was the great reproach to
Marxism this is all 19th century context
but the notion was that a cooperative
was something where we’re people poor
to not expend useless anger but to do
something for themselves and these
Rochdale principles there are six of
them I think six yeah six there are ways
to organize a community savings bank an
old-age scheme you know they enabled you
to to establish cooperatives and one of
the six principles is that is bonus that
is just as in goldman sachs that you
distribute the excess
that you don’t need to run the
cooperative every year but I think he
had a rather different idea of the bonus
goldman sachs
but you know if you think about what’s
happened the last five years you know
we’ve taken a we’ve expended a lot of
useless anger against bankers who are
much more potent than any of us are and
defending themselves I mean they own
this government you know and what we
haven’t done is going back to his
cooperative movements to take care of
ourselves and Owen would say to people
forget about them you’re never going to
make David Cameron into one nation Tory
no matter how he talks maybe even at
Miliband you should be starting new
institutions where PSA people pool
information about jobs or pool taking
care of the sick and so on so that’s
what the year of the co-operative was
supposed to tell you about but obviously
we haven’t done a good job about it but
so many 12 days of X pirates
if we look at a contemporary example of
cooperation but one of the most
intriguing ones was the restoration of
the neues Museum in Berlin run by David
Chipperfield could you tell us about
well this is a wonderful urbanistic
example Chipperfield who was a british
no sir david translators was charged
with restoring the museum that had been
blasted in the Second World War in
Berlin reconstructed and he had two
groups fighting each other one were
people who wanted to restore the museum
to its 19th century imperialist
glory because it’s full of things that
the Germans long before the Nazis came
to power to from the rest of the world
and so those were people on the one hand
for restoration and on the other side
where people who want to start clear the
whole thing out and make a new museum
truly neues museum building and what he
did was a kind of repair which
incorporated and I think this is really
to me very moving about it which left
for instance a lot of the bullet holes
in the fabric of the museum
he put it back in working order but when
you walk through this museum you are
aware that this museum was bombed by
bomber Harris and then was left to rot
by the communists there are lots of
parts of it which are unresolved and
it’s a physical experience of something
that’s biological and which arouses
empathy rather than sympathy because
you’re asking what are these
it’s a shrapnel that are left in the
fabric you know it’s a physical
translation of this he yes he was very
diplomatic in negotiating between these
two groups but what interested me was
the actual physical form of the museum
it embodies a kind of complex
negotiation between two very different
and it should be flat which is a very
option so I was interested in both the
process by which the museum was made but
also the fact that you know what I’ve
described you is a process but it also
has its manifested in physical form
there are biological forms it’s a whole
issue so I was thinking about this as a
metaphor about repair and not only
cooperate in how how metaphorically
repair their strategies of repair that
are cooperative with it is absolutely
extraordinary building let’s talk about
an example of failed cooperation and in
a completely different sphere and one
that he’s an together and allude to
fairly often his Google Wave oh yes
that’s so really interesting and I’m so
glad so what why why did it fail okay
this is really an interesting project in
I was contacted in 2009 when I started
working on this book on cooperation by
people at Google who said would you be
involved in the beta testing of a new
online
program we think that you can imagine
what they think that the the the web is
a wonderful way beyond things like like
Skype and so on that we can actually use
the web for really serious cooperation
and then that it’s something called
Google Wave and I in a group of people
became amongst its beta testers that’s
where you try out the program a
real-world situation and I really
learned a lot by the failure of this
program here’s what the engineers had
thought they have thought the process of
cooperating is coming closer and closer
to be on the same page that dialectical
process and that translated by by
unscreened
that the parts of the screen that got
bigger were about the parts that people
agreed with and or to the side of the
screen were what were called irrelevance
ease now you know that when you’re
having a conversation about a complex
thing that’s something that seems
irrelevant that comes out of left field
that’s lateral knowledge can some times
be the most important thing that happens
in the conversation and what was
happening with Google Wave was that
these kind of this kind of lateral
knowledge was being literally pushed
aside and the people who would raise
this lateral No
worthy their contributions were being
shoved aside we were having a discussion
about ethnic problems in London and more
and more focusing on problems of
religion and so on but there were some
members of this group who were spread
all over Europe and and North America
some members of this group were saying
well maybe these problems aren’t really
as important as the gender problems
between generations within Islam and
maybe we should forget about whites in
this discussion they got pushed to the
side and because on the screen they got
pushed their contributions got pushed on
the side these people began to
participate less and less you know now
and the project came out with banality
what everybody agreed on could agree on
was jumpa whereas all the complexity had
been moved to the side now I was
interested in this because in a workshop
and particularly in the laboratory
workshop it’s often what we think of its
lateral knowledge or a lateral procedure
which gets shoved up against something
that’s difficult and you’re trying to
make work and suddenly this thing that
looked irrelevant becomes trans the key
unlock to solving a problem that you
can’t solve within its own terms it’s a
very common thing within good-good
laboratory it’s also true in arts you
know you work or way of something as a
painter you will go away from it start
looking at something else you know look
take a different set of colors or
whatever and suddenly this other thing
begins
to unlock the key of what you were
trying to do another practice and this
is a very familiar craft thing that we
have that we have this kind of knowledge
but here in the social realm it was
being literally displaced on-screen and
we were losing participants and so on
and what was remaining the common thread
was Tony Blair’s language
the common thread was threaded air just
so I’m not anti computer at all but I
was interested in the way in which two
purposeful to organized to engineered a
form of cooperation actually leads to
poor results and again it’s that
ambiguous thing well we leave something
indeterminate and informal off the kind
of something from left field comes in as
a solution to a problem
now here you as Brits have a big issue
in education and health service and so
on there’s not much room for ambiguity
your masters are trying to close down
the area of solutions so that everything
is foreseen in advance and the kind of
wild solution in education the suddenly
figuring out that if you could study
painting in school but you no longer can
for for credit I guess it is that that
might have something to do with the way
you solve a problem in little boards all
right all of that is being dismissed and
you’re getting this kind of shopkeeper
mentality
knowing in advance what you’re trying to
find out that is a recipe for disaster
there has got to be a room for the
ambiguous then the four for intuition I
mean there has to be in science there
must be an in education as well and it’s
only that ambiguity at say that allows
people to really seriously cooperate
with each other and share different
kinds of knowledge so given that you’ve
been thinking and writing about the
subject of complex cooperation for so
long
are there any instances of daily life
that you just think of screaming out for
more ingenious cooperative approach well
schools I mean whenever I look at a
school full of computer screens at which
kids are sitting individually I think
you know throw them out get rid of those
screens have you ever tried if you don’t
own a Mac 27-inch iMac two for four
people to watch one screen together and
discuss what’s on it it is difficult but
then the content of those screens this
was another issue area to come to
actually people may be at their screen
and isolation but the world had opens up
to them is completely it could network
so and one thing I wasn’t sure where you
stood in the book was on social networks
like Facebook and Twitter I use you were
quite ambiguous about them do you see
them as
potentially positive media of
communication or largely negative do
they simply give the illusion of
community in other words well as you
know I mean I think they’re the Arab
Spring tells us that these programs can
be used for wonderful forms of
cooperation but they’re not the forms
for which they were designed and
Facebook in particular was a kind of
beauty parade you know it’s meant to be
a dating resource amongst undergraduates
at Harvard University is and what’s
built into what’s engineered into it is
the notion of display rather than an
interaction if you remember I had the
example of somebody who had 627 friends
600 something like that if each of those
friends sent all if you multiplied 627
by 627 just for one day send one message
what kind of a social network would that
be be impossible you’d have about a
thousand messages one day so it’s
organized it’s a social network
organized before display and I think the
Holy Grail in this is how you get around
the problem of display and get
communication instead it’s the same
problem and well so do you see Twitter
as being more genuinely communicative
obviously it never more than 140
characters
yeah
because the visual component is less
yeah well there is no all right well it
could be but I mean the point I’d make
to you about this is that we’re just at
the beginning with these devices and the
first time we’re out of the box with
them we think about them as social but
they’re not really sociable in the sense
of interacting and maybe it will be that
entrance smaller intranets of 50 60
people become the more social really
truly social forms of media but the
logic of course of Twitter is to have
the billion people that use it so you
can send a billion people advertising
and this is why in my first book I was
so taken with Linux I’m a technological
not idea but close to it and but I’ve
learned how to program in Linux and
that’s a different world because the
world that doesn’t isn’t controlled by
Bill Gates well but that is the the sort
of dazzling wonder of the internet
because Tim berners-lee designed it so
that no everybody has equal access you
and I and Bill Gates have the same level
of access to it it can never however
hard Google tries being monopolized by a
single force because everybody still has
energy which is quite remarkable yes but
it means that you better become a
craftsman of the internet to use it well
to to find sites and places where you
can really interact with other people
requires not performing google’s search
which will send you up as you know the
Google’s z4 first sites first and so on
shall we give people time I think we
should so as you’ve alluded to your last
book the craftsman while mics are being
prepared and someone final question
your next book is on the making of
cities could you tell us something very
quickly about that question I mean I’m
in the forest at this moment yeah I mean
it’s a book about the craft of urban
design and it’s more in a way more
specialized book it’s about how can we
apply the principles of craftsmanship to
making cities but but I’ve become
confused because I’m also looking at how
we can become better more skilled at
using cities more competence urbanites
which is not necessarily a question of
design so I’m deep in this forest now
but that’s that’s what it’s about it’s
about the craft of living and and
designing cities and the ambiguity
between the two well we look forward so
could you if you have a question for
Richard could you raise your hand and
you will have to slink into the
let me go because I really want to
address the first what you say there are
forms of toleration which are bred by
indifference you know you just tolerate
they go their way and you go yours and
it’s a question of what form toleration
takes and sometimes toleration by a
difference can be very liberating to
oppressed groups you know people just
don’t care about but your first question
is a really interesting one there’s a
lot of research done about the
quote/unquote natural instinct to
cooperate with your own kind and what’s
interesting about it it’s ologists have
done this and they’ve done it for both
primates and free human beings is that
it seems like it’s more natural
then cooperating with people who
different from you but in fact this kind
of illusion they found for instance that
a baby’s cooperation with its caregiver
in the past mostly its mother is a prop
as as far as we can tell is a learning
during its first year about about
working well with an object the nipple
whether its biological or Oh
which is not you
there’s no identification in the first
year year-and-a-half with the people
that newborn cooperates so you know
cooperation at birth and in the most
fundamental of its natural cycle is
about dealing with that difference in
order to survive and so on another bit
of research I don’t know very much about
that but I do know more about the
research that deals with the inevitable
relation between cooperation with your
own kind and competition with the
corporation and competition are not
opposites you know we have to cooperate
and say them
of the game in order to play above it
but it seems that through our forms of
cooperation with people who are nearly
like you or the same as you that give
rise to the kind of oedipal drama of
aggression and so there’s something
called the cooperation aggression
complex you can read about it in my book
and what that is is that people who are
exactly like yield our people whom you
never give the freedom to be any
different from you in other words you’re
in a kind of competitive relationship
about them who is the most who is the
most white who is the most Islamic and
the fact that you’re all alike to begin
with sets up this aggressive competitive
relationship and Freud is our great
guide to this this is what sibling
rivalry does the dynamics of sibling
rivalry
so that’s natural where is the kind of
cooperation I’m talking about is more
archaic in the life cycle but it doesn’t
give rise to that nose competition for
who’s the most the most the only
question I ask you about this is do you
feel I mean where this really beresan my
own life is the sellout on tuition fees
would you have stayed if you were lived
in in that coalition with with would you
have stayed in a Lib Dem party if your
leaders had sold out on this principle I
think at that point I wouldn’t know that
and what that that the reason for that
is that what you have there is
cooperation which is really collusion
you have an agreement so that an elite
can maintain itself in power and that’s
a collusive you know those leaders
should have been fighting the corner of
no tuition fees that’s why they were put
it’s not a basic tenets of Lib Dem
ideology that no nobody should have to
pay to go to university so when the
leaders sell you out there collusive but
why cooperate by staying in their party
yeah excuse me yeah maybe I’ve given too
much of an emphasis to it in it in its
North American and European for me I
it’s true in warfare as well people are
they’ve got to be solid there and in
order to defend themselves
I guess my vision on this is influenced
or warped by the fact that I am so
focused on the Labour process and
community conflicts that it seemed to me
that in those contexts in the community
context if it means that Lots is too
much is left out and in the work process
maybe that’s the domain in which the
circum
operates maybe maybe can’t be made as a
general argument
this is a discussion we’ll have ultra
whiskey well there is a wonderful offer
Richard has very gain we offered to take
individual questions afterwards at the
book signing when he will of course sign
your books as well I would like to be the huge thank you to him
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