Co-Designing Economies in Transition

* Book: Ed. by Vincenzo Mario Bruno Giorgino, Zack Walsh. Co-Designing Economies in Transition: Radical Approaches in Dialogue with Contemplative Social Sciences. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018

URL = https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-66592-4

Description

1.

"This transdisciplinary volume puts forward proposals for wiser, socially just and sustainable socio-economic systems in transition. There is growing support for the view that the end of capitalism is around the corner, but on which conceptual and ethical basis can we interpret these times? With investigations into feminist economics, post-growth environmentalism, socio-technical digital design, collaborative and commons economics, the editors create a dialogue between radical knowledge/practices and contemplative social sciences to transgress disciplinary boundaries and implement new visions of reality. This important book challenges our ways of thinking and outlines a pathway for new research."

2.

"We are entering an era characterized by new social and economic forms beyond our understanding. In this introduction to Co-Designing Economies in Transition, we introduce the transdisciplinary vision intended to understand such changes, and we summarize each of the chapters that help map the Great Transition that is already underway. In particular, we explain why it is important to create dialogue between radical knowledge-practices and contemplative social sciences to meet the great challenges of the twenty-first century. As a new emerging paradigm, contemplative social sciences are based on systematic efforts to integrate the wisdom traditions with the social sciences. They are intended to help us develop a more open-minded approach to understanding social interactions within a participatory, but not pre-classificatory, scheme. As such, we contend that the transdisciplinary vision and methodologies offered by this book suggest avenues for new ways of thinking about and co-designing a socially just and sustainable future."

Contents

Part I: Transdisciplinary Foundations for Contemporary Social and Economic Transformation

• In Search of a New Compass in the Great Transition: Toward Co-designing the Urban Space We Care About Vincenzo Mario Bruno Giorgino, Pages 15-41
• Navigating the Great Transition Via Post-capitalism and Contemplative Social Sciences

Zack Walsh, Pages 43-61

• Having, Being, and the Commons

Ugo Mattei, Pages 63-71

• Par Cum Pari: Notes on the Horizontality of Peer-to-Peer Relationships in the Context of the Verticality of a Hierarchy of Values Michel Bauwens, Pages 73-88
• Economics Beyond the Self

Laszlo Zsolnai, Pages 89-97

• The Koan of the Market

Julie A. Nelson, Pages 99-107

• Epistemology of Feminist Economics

Zofia Łapniewska, Pages 109-133

• How to Make What Really Matters Count in Economic Decision-Making: Care, Domestic Violence, Gender-Responsive Budgeting, Macroeconomic Policies and Human Rights/ Margunn Bjørnholt, Pages 135-159
• Contemplative Economy and Contemplative Economics: Definitions, Branches and Methodologies

Xabier Renteria-Uriarte, Pages 161-187

Part II: Collective Awareness, the Self, and Digital Technologies

• From Smart Cities to Experimental Cities?

Igor Calzada, Pages 191-217

• FirstLife: From Maps to Social Networks and Back. Alessio Antonini, Guido Boella, Alessia Calafiore, Vincenzo Mario Bruno Giorgino, Pages 219-233

* The Organic Internet: Building Communications Networks from the Grassroots Panayotis Antoniadis Pages 235-272 [1]

• Technocratic Automation and Contemplative Overlays in Artificially Intelligent Criminal Sentencing

Philip Butler, Pages 273-296

• One Bright Byte: Dōgen and the Re-embodiment of Digital Technologies

David Casacuberta, Pages 297-315

Discussion

Vincenzo Giorgino:

"All economic interactions are a kind of specific set of relationships, belonging to the more general type of social relationships.

In other words, all kinds of economies are based on relational work. From the capitalist economy to that of the commons, no form excludes human interaction and all the components that characterize it: cognitive, emotional and sensorial.

The secularized contemplative knowledge and practices of our traditions of wisdom can inspire actions oriented towards the alleviation of social and economic suffering and to forms of provisioning for oneself and others that sustain the flourishing of life in general.

The secular translation of contemplative knowledge/practices as a commons is a pathway worth of exploration and experimentation ([2]).   Beyond Zelizer’s focus on interaction (only) between actors, I sustain that what happens at individual level – inner/action - is of the utmost importance.

Individuals, even if taken alone, are never isolated atoms, as assumed in mainstream sociology, but living beings who are able to influence the world as such (and, obviously, the other way round).

Said this, in social sciences we should not only concentrate on finding patterns but recognize the chaotic processes beyond their emergence. At the roots of our knowledge there is one’s own personal experience, that is deeply interactional (M. Polanyi). On this epistemological level, the secular contemplative approach contributes to the emerging enactive paradigm in the social sciences. As I do not believe in rigid disciplinary boundaries, I am oriented to a transdisciplinary approach, ie an approach that transcends not only the barriers between academic disciplines but also between academic, professional and the personal knowledge of non-experts.

Pragmatically, we, as sentient beings, can know intellectually that our life is finite, but our awarenesss of it grounds on some existential work we do, systematically or not, during our existence, especially in specific painful situations. This existential work, if based on systematic set of practices usually coming from the traditions of wisdom, is called contemplative work and contributes to the cultivation of life skills (Giorgino and McCown 2018 [3]).

A fully secular perspective is, in my view, a contemporary social need, especially after the remarkable success of the movement of mindfulness, so much so that it has become a respected strand of academic research and an industry that only in the US is worth of $2B annually. A critique to these developments cannot legitimate a deterministic view according to which these and related phenomena, are interpreted as the “commodification of the soul”. In my view, they are reductionist and fail to focus of what matters most. They are the outcomes of the dominance of a divisive thinking in those who wish to transform our society." (email september 2018)

Excerpts

Available in open access:

• The Organic Internet: Building Communications Networks from the Grassroots. By Panayotis Antoniadis, Pages 235-272 [4]

From the Foreword: Toward Contemplative Social Science

Sander Tideman:

"Thanks to discoveries in many scientific disciplines, most notably in social psychology and neuroscience, there is a new worldview emerging that is more suitable to the modern context. It is a view in which people, business, economy, environment and society are no longer separate worlds that meet tangentially, but are deeply interconnected and mutually interdependent. This matches with the view of sociologist Norbert Elias (2000) who said that humanity should see itself as homines aperti, in which people are in open connection with each other and their environment, being formed by and dependent on others and nature. For example, Daniel Kahneman (1979), who received the 2003 Nobel Prize in Economics for his studies on intuitive judgment and decision- making, has explored the intersection of neuro-science, psychology and real economic behavior. The significance of this work lies in its ability— for the first time in the history of economics—to describe the neurobiological basis of economic behavior. This work is bridging the heretofore distinct disciplines of psychology and economics.

These insights are revelatory because they provide empirical evidence derived from a physical-biological basis for the notion that human nature is not driven by greed, materialism, extrinsic motivation and egoism alone; at least equally important are pro-social motives, such as inclination to cooperation, moral fairness, altruism and psychological wellbeing. This not only uproots the classical model of homo economicus but also challenges the deep-felt belief that only external gratification through money and consumption can meet our needs.

The financial crisis that erupted in 2008 and the increasing impact of social technology has made it clear that this interconnected worldview is not merely academic: it best describes the reality of global society, business and finance, which functions as a tightly interwoven web of human relationships and interaction. This web extends into our global climate and ecosystems, which has been recently recognized by the global community as evidenced by UN Global Sustainable Development Goals.

They are built on the scientifically determined notion that in order for our economies to function and societies to survive, we need to respect planetary boundaries and ecological laws (Rockstrom et al., 2009). In the new reality “business as usual” or “politics as usual” is no longer an option from a long-term survival viewpoint. Indeed, leading companies have recognized the new reality—which is generally labeled as “sustainability”—as the next business “Megatrend”, just like IT, Globalization and the Internet did earlier, determining their long-term viability. Or in the words of management scholar, Frank Horwitz (2010): “The only business of business is sustainable business”.

The shift toward sustainability implies a departure from the simplistic three-pronged production-consumption financing model xiv Foreword: Toward Contemplative Social Science economy to the real economy, not only in a macroeconomic sense but also in terms of understanding the real drivers of economical value and sustainable performance.

Matching real needs and resources entails a focus on the way we think and relate to each other. Given the central role of human thinking and interacting in the new economic paradigm, we should shift our perception of markets as anonymous transactional trading places to a community operating in an interdependent economical and ecological context. The members of the community are all interrelated stakeholders who are engaged in a continuous complex inter-dependent process of co-creation of value, while fulfilling needs, both short and long term. These needs go beyond merely material economic needs, but also include emotional, social and ecological needs. Therefore, the rules of the new economic game should no longer be to maximize return on invested capital, but to create optimum resilience of the system by enhancing well-being, shared value creation and performance of all participants within the system. This presents a major shift in economic thinking indeed!

The leading management thinker Gary Hamel (2007) described this shift as follows:

- The biggest barrier to the transformation of capitalism cannot be found within the observable realm of org charts, strategic plans and quarterly reports, but rather within the human mind itself […..]. The true enemy of our times is a matrix of deeply held beliefs about what business [and economics] is actually for, who it serves and how it creates value.

The reinstatement of the mind as a prime driver in economic value creation and the revolutionary insights into the mind’s pro-social nature are giving rise to a new economic science. It is here that one can find the exciting intersection with Contemplative Science. "

More information

• Bauwens M. (2018) Par Cum Pari: Notes on the Horizontality of Peer-to-Peer Relationships in the Context of the Verticality of a Hierarchy of Values. In: Giorgino V., Walsh Z. (eds) Co-Designing Economies in Transition. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018

URL = http://www.pass.va/content/dam/scienzesociali/pdf/acta14/acta14-bauwens.pdf