As part of our informal series on artificial intelligence, Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Matt Beane, Assistant Professor of Technology Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara, about his book The Skill Code: How to Save Human Ability in the Age of Intelligent Machines (HarperCollins, 2024). 

Beane outlines the fascinating forms of research he did - both his own ethnographic work and reanalyzing the data of other ethnographers - to better understand how automating technologies are being adopted in organizational settings and how such adoption may threaten traditional mentor-mentee relationships through which junior workers learn crucial skills. Beane also discusses ways in which the worst negative skill-learning outcomes may be avoided and his own work trying to create new training systems to improve our current situation.

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The recent retreat from globalization has been triggered by a perception that increased competition from global trade is not fair and leads to increased inequality within countries. Is this phenomenon a small hiccup in the overall wave of globalization, or are we at the beginning of a new era of deglobalization? Former Chief Economist of the World Bank Group Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg tells us that the answer depends on the policy choices we make, and in The Unequal Effects of Globalization (MIT Press, 2023), she calls for exploring alternative policy approaches including place-based policies, while sustaining international cooperation.

At this critical moment of shifting attitudes toward globalization, The Unequal Effects of Globalization enters the debate while also taking a step back. Goldberg investigates globalization's many dimensions, disruptions, and complex interactions, from the late twentieth century's wave of trade liberalizations to the rise of China, the decline of manufacturing in advanced economies, and the recent effects of trade on global poverty, inequality, labor markets, and firm dynamics. From there, Goldberg explores the significance of the recent backlash against and potential retreat from globalization and considers the key policy implications of these trends and emerging dynamics.

As comprehensive as it is well-balanced, The Unequal Effects of Globalization is an essential read on trade and cooperation between nations that will appeal as much to academics and policymakers as it will to general readers who are interested in learning more about this timely subject.

Pinelopi (Penny) Koujianou Goldberg is the Elihu Professor of Economics and Global Affairs and an Affiliate of the Economic Growth Center at Yale University. She holds a joint appointment at the Yale Department of Economics and the Jackson School of Global Affairs. From 2018 to 2020, she was the Chief Economist of the World Bank Group. Goldberg was President of the Econometric Society in 2021 and has previously served as Vice-President of the American Economic Association. From 2011-2017 she was Editor-in-Chief of the American Economic Review. She is member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, recipient of Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and Sloan Research Fellowships, and recipient of the Bodossaki Prize in Social Sciences. She is also a Distinguished Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research (NBER), research fellow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) in London, UK, fellow of the CESifo research network in Germany, and member of the board of directors of the Bureau of Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD).

Interviewer Peter Lorentzen is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of San Francisco, a nonresident scholar at the UCSD 21st Century China Center, an alumnus of the Public Intellectuals Program of the National Committee on US-China Relations, and is currently a visiting scholar at the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions. His research focuses on the economics of information, incentives, and institutions, primarily as applied to the development and governance of China. He created the unique Master’s of Science in Applied Economics at the University of San Francisco, which teaches the conceptual frameworks and practical data analytics skills needed to succeed in the digital economy.

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In the present day, Big Tech is extracting resources from us, transferring and centralizing resources from people to companies. These companies are grabbing our most basic natural resources--our data--exploiting our labor and connections, and repackaging our information to control our views, track our movements, record our conversations, and discriminate against us. These companies tell us this is for our own good, to build innovation and develop new technology. But in fact, every time we unthinkingly click "Accept" on a set of Terms and Conditions, we allow our most personal information to be kept indefinitely, repackaged by companies to control and exploit us for their own profit. 

In Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back (The University of Chicago Press, 2024), Ulises Mejias and Nick Couldry explain why postindustrial capitalism cannot be understood without colonialism, and why race is a critical factor in who benefits from data colonialism, just as it was for historic colonialism. In this searing, cutting-edge guide, Mejias and Couldry explore the concept of data colonialism, revealing how history can help us understand the emerging future--and how we can fight back.

Mention in this episode: Tierra Comun (English Version)

Ulises A. Mejias is professor of communication studies at the State University of New York at Oswego.

Nick Couldry is professor of media, communications, and social theory at the London School of Economics and Political Science and faculty associate at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society.

Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College.

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Challenging mainstream narratives in political economy, the new book Feminist Political Economy: A Global Perspective (Agenda Publishing, 2023) serves as an introduction to a new era of critical research. It is written by Prof. Sara Cantillon, Dr. Sara Stevano and Prof. Odile Mackett, who have carried out incredible work to deconstruct gender-blind approaches in contemporary economic research. The book brings together the most important topics in political economy and demonstrates why feminist approaches are crucial to understanding social relations. It begins with an overview of feminist political economy and then offers a nuanced perspective on care, social reproduction, inequalities in households and labour markets, and the feminisation of poverty. As mentioned in the podcast, the book not only takes a feminist approach to theory, but is also an example of the practice of feminist research, focusing for example on female scholars.

The host, Sarah Vogelsanger, is a feminist researcher, who is interested in social justice, critical migration studies and political ecology.

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Southeast Asia is of vital importance to Australia. As a nation, Australia’s prosperity, security and economic future are intimately connected to the region. According to the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs, Southeast Asia is expected to be the fourth largest economy in the world by 2040, with its middle class already numbering close to 200 million people. Recognising the crucial significance of Southeast Asia to Australia, the Federal Government released Invested: Australia’s Southeast Asia Economic Strategy to 2040 in September 2023, which provides a roadmap to deepening our economic engagement and increasing two-way trade and investment with the region. Natali’s guest on SSEAC Stories is Nicholas Moore who Lead the development of this national strategy, and who was appointed as Australia’s Special Envoy for Southeast Asia in November 2022.

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In theory, bankruptcy in America exists to cancel or restructure debts for people and companies that have way too many--a safety valve designed to provide a mechanism for restarting lives and businesses when things go wrong financially. In this brilliant and paradigm-shifting book, legal scholar Melissa B. Jacoby shows how bankruptcy has also become an escape hatch for powerful individuals, corporations, and governments, contributing in unseen and poorly understood ways to race, gender, and class inequality in America. When cities go bankrupt, for example, police unions enjoy added leverage while police brutality victims are denied a seat at the negotiating table; the system is more forgiving of civil rights abuses than of the parking tickets disproportionately distributed in African American neighborhoods. Across a broad range of crucial issues, Unjust Debts: How Our Bankruptcy System Makes America More Unequal (New Press, 2024) reveals the hidden mechanisms by which bankruptcy impacts everything from sexual harassment to health care, police violence to employment discrimination, and the opioid crisis to gun violence. In the tradition of Matthew Desmond's groundbreaking Evicted, Unjust Debts is a riveting and original work of accessible scholarship with huge implications for ordinary people and will set the terms of debate for this vital subject.

Melissa B. Jacoby is the Graham Kenan Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network.

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The Green New Deal from Below: How Ordinary People Are Building a Just and Climate-Safe Economy (U Illinois Press, 2024) offers a visionary program for national renewal, the Green New Deal aims to protect the earth's climate while creating good jobs, reducing injustice, and eliminating poverty. 

Its core principle is to use the necessity for climate protection as a basis for realizing full employment and social justice. Jeremy Brecher goes beyond the national headlines and introduces readers to the community, municipal, county, state, tribal, and industry efforts advancing the Green New Deal across the United States. Brecher illustrates how such programs from below do the valuable work of building constituencies and providing proofs of concept for new ideas and initiatives. Block by block, these activities have come together to form a Green New Deal built on a strong foundation of small-scale movements and grassroots energy. A call for hope and a better tomorrow, The Green New Deal from Below offers a blueprint for reconstructing society on new principles to avoid catastrophic climate change.

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Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Benjamin Shestakofsky about his book, Behind the Startup: How Venture Capital Shapes Work, Innovation, and Inequality (U California Press, 2024). Shestakofsky is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is affiliated with AI at Wharton and the Center on Digital Culture and Society. His research centers on how digital technologies are affecting work and employment, organizations, and economic exchange.

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What really separates emancipatory thinking from its opposite? The prevailing Left defines itself against neoliberalism, conservative traditionalism, and fascism as a matter of course. The philosophical differences, however, may be more apparent than real. 

The Right-Wing Mirror of Critical Theory: Studies of Schmitt, Oakeshott, Hayek, Strauss, and Rand (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023) argues that dominant trends in critical and radical theory inadvertently reproduce the cardinal tenets of the twentieth century’s most influential right-wing philosophers. It finds the rejection of foundationalism, rationalism, economic planning, and vanguardism mirrored in the work of Schmitt, Oakeshott, Hayek, and Strauss. If it is to be more than merely an inverted image of the Right, critical theory must reevaluate its relationship to what Julius Nyerere once called “deliberate design” in politics. In the era of anthropogenic climate change, a substantial—not merely nominal—departure from right-wing talking points is all the more necessary and momentous.

Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter.

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Streaming Music, Streaming Capital (Duke University Press, 2024)  provides a much-needed study of the political economy of music streaming, drawing from Western Marxism, social reproduction theory, eco-socialist thought and more to approach the complex and highly contested relationship between music and capital. By attending to the perverse ways in which recorded music has been ultimately decommodified under the current regime of music production, circulation and consumption, Eric Drott explores issues that far exceed music - consumer surveillance, Silicon Valley monopolism, the crisis of care, capitalist extractivism and the climate emergency - while showing us how the streaming economy is thoroughly imbricated, and implicated, in these processes. Drott's rigorous and wide-ranging analysis thus offers novel ways of understanding music, culture, digitalisation and capitalism in present and future tenses .

Eric Drott is Associate Professor of Music Theory at the University of Texas at Austin.

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