A New Commonwealth — Ver 5.0
The mystery of money The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled. (John Kenneth Galbraith) Ours is an age of money. If human society has any unity at this time it is as a world ‘market’. There is nothing wrong with people exchanging goods and services as equals. […] →Read more
The term ‘informal sector’ (later ‘informal economy’ and now often just ‘informality’) arose almost four decades ago to describe the unregulated activities of the Third World urban poor. But the problem of proliferating urban masses, supporting themselves in invisible ways and at some perceived risk to public safety, is an older one. →Read more
Lecture 1: African development in the twentieth century 1. ‘Africa’ and the question of ‘development’ 2. Africa’s traditional societies and agrarian civilization 3. Africa’s urban revolution in the twentieth century 4. A note on the North and South African exceptions 5. Urban commerce and the informal economy Lecture 2: African development in the twenty-first century […] →Read more
Je dois d’abord rappeler que la France ne vit ni en vase clos ni dans un monde immobile. Nous devons prendre conscience que nous vivons une communauté de destin planétaire, face aux menaces globales qu’apportent la prolifération des armes nucléaires, le déchaînement des conflits ethnico-religieux, la dégradation de la biosphère, le cours ambivalent d’une […] →Read more
Revised version of 'A liberal revolution for Africa?' below. From Pan-Africanism to national capitalism I consider here Africa’s development prospects in the coming half-century, viewed in the light of the century that has just passed. Africa has seen extraordinary urban growth in the twentieth century and this, rather than the conventional view of the continent […] →Read more
Durkheim assembled a team to promote his vision for sociology, but he and Mauss were a double act like Marx and Engels. There was room for only one leader of the movement, so we speak of the Durkheimians and the Marxists. Mauss and Engels each assumed leadership of the movement they jointly founded after their […] →Read more
Money talks, it’ll tell you a story Money talks, says strange things Money talks very loudly You’d be surprised the friends you can buy with small change J.J. Cale “Money Talks” (song) In this essay, I try to account for money’s power to influence our minds and social relations. It would be easy, but misleading […] →Read more
(Public lecture, 'The African Revolution: urban commerce and the informal economy', given at the University of Ghana in Accra, 8th January 2007) I spent over two years, 1965-68, living mainly in an Accra slum area, Nima 441. Not long afterwards and drawing on that research, I was credited with being the source of the ‘informal […] →Read more
The term ‘informal economy’ became current in the 1970s as a label for economic activities that take place outside the framework of bureaucratic public and private sector establishments. It arose in response to the proliferation of self-employment and casual labour in Third World cities; but later the expression came to be used with reference to […] →Read more
The two great memory banks are language and money. Exchange of meanings through language and of objects through money are now converging in a single network of communication, the internet.
We must learn how to use this digital revolution to advance the human conversation about a better world. Our political task is to make a world society fit for all humanity.
