Battle of Ideas Festival Audio Archive

State vs. market: is there a way forward?

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2013 on Saturday 19 October at Barbican, London.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
The free market has long been understood as a key aspect of freedom more generally. But critics also see the market as a place of exploitation, as a threat to, rather than an expression of, our freedom. And in the past 150 years there has grown up a counterbalance to the market in the form of the state: both the protector and regulator of the market. Should private businesses be compelled to obey the dictates of the public as personified by the state? Or, conversely, should they enjoy the same freedoms as private individuals – the freedom to buy what they want and sell what they want? Does that extend to discrimination in the labour market? Should employers be able to discriminate against employees they think are too old or customers they just don’t like?
Might it be that an increasingly top-heavy state is holding back the entrepreneurial dynamism of the market, or should we view it as vital life-support to a system far beyond the capabilities of private enterprise, however large? Is it right that the market should be involved in the traditional functions of the state like prisons, healthcare, even the army and the police? And must the state act as a prop to the market by subsidising industries that are failing or would never start up in the first place without a hand-out from the taxpayer? Can it, given the scale of public debt, even afford such largesse? Is it time to find a way past the opposition between state and market? Do the terms even make sense anymore, given the degree of mutual reliance and interpenetration they have now achieved?
SPEAKERSLouise Cooperfinancial analyst and blogger, CooperCity.co.uk
Thomas Hylland Eriksenprofessor of social anthropology, University of Oslo; novelist; author, Ethnicity and Nationalism and Globalization: the key concepts
Phil Mullaneconomist and business manager; author, Creative Destruction: How to start an economic renaissance
Dr Andrew SentanceSenior Economic Adviser to PwC (since 2011); formerly, external member, Monetary Policy Committee, Bank of England
CHAIRAngus Kennedyconvenor, The Academy; author, Being Cultured: in defence of discrimination

East Asia: the new global hotspot?

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2013 on Saturday 19 October at Barbican, London.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
Kim Jong-un’s North Korea may call for a ‘merciless, sacred, retaliatory war’ against the US imperialists and South Korean ‘puppet warmongers’ it blames for inching the Korean peninsula towards thermonuclear war. But China, despite distancing itself from its communist neighbour’s antics, also feels itself threatened by the US. In the East and South China Seas, across the Pacific, and even in its relations with India, China feels encircled, whatever successes are achieved by its ‘String of Pearls’ strategy of alliances with countries such as Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Is it paranoia or imperialist ambitions that lead China to hack Pentagon computers and build up a carrier fleet? What should we make of Xi Jinping’s talk of his ‘strong-army dream’ and desire for ‘the great revival of the Chinese nation’?
Japanese military posturing over the Senkaku Islands has led its military ally America to call for restraint and cooler heads. But some see the US guarantee of Japan’s security as a potential trigger of world war – analogous to the interlocking alliances that precipitated World War I a hundred years ago. How accurate is it to see conflicts in the East and South China Seas, and nearby, through the lens of the tensions that broke out in 1914? Is Myanmar really a new Serbia? What about the dangers of border skirmishes between India and China? India and Pakistan? And has the friction really gone out of the relationship between China and Taiwan?
Is East Asia really the key cockpit for tomorrow’s major wars? Perhaps saner voices will prevail against the national resentments that characterise China, Japan, America and other states in the region. But what is the exact nature and strength of the different nationalisms at work there, anyway? Does Asia’s arms race reflect rivalry for natural resources, historical resentments, or the simple fact of China’s rise and America’s decline? Could hothead nationalism – whether Japanese, Chinese or North Korean – be the spark that ignites war in the east?
SPEAKERSBen Chueconomics editor, the Independent; author Chinese Whispers: why everything you've heard about China is wrong
Professor Steve Tsangdirector, China Policy Institute, University of Nottingham
James Woudhuysenvisiting professor, London South Bank University
CHAIRRob Lyonsscience and technology director, Academy of Ideas; convenor, IoI Economy Forum

Battle of Ideas festival 2013: welcome address

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2013 on Saturday 19 October at Barbican, London.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
The ninth annual Battle of Ideas festival opened with a Welcome Address hosted by Claire Fox, Director of the Academy of Ideas.
SPEAKERSEvan FueryVice President Exploration Business Development Origination, Statoil
Leonora Thomsondirector of audiences and development, Barbican Centre
Mike Wrightexecutive director, Jaguar Land Rover
CHAIRClaire Foxdirector, Academy of Ideas; panellist, BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze; author, I Find That Offensive

Atheism: what's the point?

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2012 on Sunday 21 October at Barbican, London.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
From the controversy over teaching ‘intelligent design’ in schools, to arguments over prayers at council meetings or religiously based opposition to euthanasia, abortion or gay marriage, atheists have crossed swords with religious believers over a number of issues in recent years. And the critique is not limited to mainstream religion: champions of science, reason and evidence have also sought to expose the pretences of clairvoyants and alternative-health charlatans. There is a consensus among many educated people that religious values distort rather than contribute to private morality and public debate, and that evidence should always trump faith. But can anything amounting to a value system in itself be built just on atheism, or is atheism no more than a lack of belief in gods?
Just because some atheists have a commitment to reason, does that mean that atheists are overall more likely to be rational than other people? Are atheists really any more likely to be rational in general than those who do believe in a god? Aren’t there just as many atheists who believe in life after death, homeopathy, healing crystals, horoscopes, and a whole raft of superstitions?
Many prominent atheists would no doubt say that they are atheists because of their prior commitment to reason. But it can seem to many observers that it is the atheism that often comes first, rising out of a rejection of religious belief. For some, ‘atheist fundamentalism’ is an unattractive mirror image of the religiosity it opposes, and informed by contempt for the supposedly ignorant and scientifically illiterate population, or ‘nobbers’, as one celebrity scientist calls them. Is this because ‘atheism’ per se really is no more than the negative rejection of a belief in gods? If it is, how relevant is it in a society where fewer and fewer people are being raised with a belief in gods which they can reject? Is it precisely the lack of an experience of this personal emancipation, or journey towards humanism and reason, that leads atheists instead to direct their hostility at religious believers and institutions? How compelling is a negative belief?
Nonetheless, whether it’s the worship of Stephen Fry as the cleverest human on the planet or hostility to the influence of organised religion in politics, there is a growing identification with a non-religious, atheist, and humanist approach as a cultural movement, especially among bright young people. For many, atheism implies support for such progressive causes as the ‘right to die’ and LGBT equality, human rights and liberal education. But is atheism always the same as ‘humanism’? Is it really the idea of ‘atheism’ doing the work in these causes? Are there really such things as atheist values? Aren’t there as many religious people who also have liberal, progressive and humane ideas - especially in societies like Europe where religions have responded to humanism by emulating it in many ways? And aren’t there many religious people - perhaps a majority - who are just as committed as atheists are, maybe even more so, to the idea of a secular state? If so, what is the point of atheism?
SPEAKERSAndrew Copsonchief executive, British Humanist Association
Dr Michael Fitzpatrickwriter on medicine and politics; author, The Tyranny of Health
Alom Shahawriter and science teacher; author The Young Atheist's Handbook
Mark Vernonjournalist; author, God: all that matters and The Big Questions: God
CHAIRDolan Cummingsassociate fellow, Academy of Ideas; author, That Existential Leap: a crime story (forthcoming from Zero Books)

Building an intellectual legacy – the Battle for which ideas?

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2012 on Sunday 21 October at Barbican, London.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
‘Ideas are the cogs that drive history, and understanding them is half way to being aboard that powerful juggernaut rather than under its wheels’. AC Grayling
Society seems woefully lacking in Big Ideas, and we seem to crave new thinking. In Britain, great hopes rest on the legacy of the Olympics, but however inspiring the sporting excellence we all witnessed, is it realistic that a summer of feel-good spectacle can resolve deep-rooted cultural problems, from widespread disdain for competitition to community fragmentation? In America, Mitt Romney has pledged to pit substantial ideas against the empty ‘yes, we can’ sloganeering of Barack Obama, with his running mate Paul Ryan dubbed the ‘intellectual’ saviour of the Republican Party, but can they really deliver? Europe, once the home of Enlightenment salons, is now associated more with EU technocrats than philosophes. Looking to the intellectual legacy of the past is considered out of pace with an ever-changing world. We seem estranged from ideas associated with important moments in history - the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the American and French Revolutions. Can even a basic idea like free will survive the challenges of neuroscience and genetics? When the internet offers information at the click of a mouse, what’s the point of pedagogy?
Some contend intellectual life has rarely been healthier; after all today’s governments appoint economists, philosophers and scientific advisers to positions of influence, and the fashion for evidence-based policy puts a premium on academic research. Nevertheless, the emphasis is on ‘what works’ utility and short-term impact rather than open-ended, risky ideas. Often data is passed off as Truth, and Socratic dialogue replaced by rows over conflicting evidence. The scramble for the next Big Idea seems to have replaced the creative and painstaking development of ideas. It’s as though serious ideas can be conjured up in brainstorming sessions or critical-thinking classes. But think-tanks kite-flying the latest outside-of-the-box, blue-skies-thinking speak more to pragmatism and opportunism than following in the tradition of Plato. Ideas become free-floating, divorced from their origins, and take on any meaning one cares to ascribe to them. Hence freedom can mean protection, its defence leading to illiberal regulations; equality can mean conformity and sameness; tolerance becomes a coda for indifference, and individualism denotes little more than selfishness.
Where apparently novel concepts catch on, from sustainability to fairness, identity to offence, they are often little more than fashionable sound-bites. Other ideas are even described as dangerous; those who espouse the ‘wrong’ ideas branded as modern-day heretics. But can we ever hope to approach the truth if we stifle dissent? Is intellectual life on the wane? Is it conservative to cling to old ideas, or if we don’t stand on the shoulders of giants, are we doomed to stand still ? Might truth seeking be more important than the Truth?
SPEAKERSAndrew Keenentrepreneur; founder, Audiocafe.com; author, Digital Vertigo: how today's online social revolution is dividing, diminishing, and disorienting us
Ivan Krastevchairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia; permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna
Dr Ellie Leereader in social policy, University of Kent, Canterbury; director, Centre for Parenting Culture Studies
Rob Riemenwriter and cultural philosopher; founder & president, Netherlands-based Nexus Institute; author, Nobility of Sprit: a forgotten ideal and The Eternal Return of Fascism
CHAIRClaire Foxdirector, Academy of Ideas; panellist, BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze; author, I Find That Offensive

Risk, regulation and red tape

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2012 on Sunday 21 October at Barbican, London.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
We often seem to struggle today to get the balance right between reasonable risk-taking and sensible precaution. It seems every new risk is met with ever-more petty, sometimes draconian, measures and laws. Excessive safety regulations threaten to make normal parts of life – like the humble school trip – increasingly impractical. At the same time, nobody wants to do away with sensible precautions that protect life and limb. Is there a danger that in a bid to free ourselves from excessive regulations, we might go to the opposite extreme and get burned in an unlicensed bonfire of red tape?
Whether it is the dangers of nuclear power, the risks of excessive drinking, the uncertainties around GM crops or the threat posed by trolls on Facebook, the mantra is always the same: ‘Better safe than sorry.’ And while more serious incidents may appear to demand action, policies often regulate far beyond the original cause. Recently, there has been some kick-back against this risk-averse culture, but for ‘common sense’ to prevail, we have to trust one another to exercise it, and trust powerful organisations and institutions to take public welfare seriously too. And who trusts corporations not to put profits first and safety second? Who trusts the media to self-regulate in the era of Leveson? Who argues banks should be free to take more risks in the wake of the financial crisis? And who trust bankers even to abide by existing regulations after the Libor rate-fixing scandal? Organisations have responded to the trust deficit by instituting procedures to minimise risk – and protect their reputations. So, for example, the scientific community champions the precautionary principle, even when it inhibits the scope of their own research. Or, in child-protection circles, many self-imposed regulations are seen as necessary to protect agencies in the event of something going wrong.
If we don’t take risks sometimes, how can we make progress, or even learn from our mistakes? At the same time, letting powerful organisations off the leash entirely might mean throwing out important regulations designed to protect the vulnerable from abuse. Might freeing firms from the red tape of employment law be a green light to unfair dismissal? When some procedural measures are designed to protect individuals from unwanted state intrusion, how much red tape can we afford to throw on the bonfire? How do we properly assess safety in an age in which both private and public bodies are encouraged to imagine the worst possible outcome, rather than prepare for what’s probable? Will more regulation help, or are there deeper cultural issues at stake?
SPEAKERSMarco Amitranopartner and head, risk assurance services, PwC
Josie Appletondirector, civil liberties group, Manifesto Club; author, Officious: Rise of the Busybody State
Nick Butlervisiting professor and chair, King's Policy Institute, King's College London; treasurer, the Fabian Society; former special advisor to Gordon Brown; former group vice-president, strategy and policy development, BP
Mark Littlewooddirector general, Institute of Economic Affairs
Simon Nixonchief European commentator, Wall Street Journal; author, The Credit Crunch: how safe is your money?
CHAIRClaire Foxdirector, Academy of Ideas; panellist, BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze; author, I Find That Offensive

The Giants of Asia

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2012 on Sunday 21 October at Barbican, London.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
With their huge populations and buoyant growth rates, China and India are two of the economic and technological powerhouses of the twenty-first century. And though many seem to forget it after the Lost Decade, Japan is the third largest economy in the world, the second largest developed economy and the world’s largest creditor nation. Its GDP per capita growth in the past 10 years still outpaced Europe and the United States. Nevertheless, all three countries have giant problems, too. China’s property and banking sectors raise some worrying questions. In Japan, Toyota is back, but to turn Sony round will require a miracle. In India, scandals around licences for 2G telephone networks, and the sale of coal assets, have reduced the state to impotence – while in the countryside, despite improvements, child malnutrition continues. Nor do the three giants get on. They dispute borders (China-India), as well as maritime boundaries and islands (China-Japan). Moreover, to its two rivals, China looks too friendly towards countries like Pakistan and North Korea.
For America, China saves too much, consumes too little, steals US innovations, engages in cyber-war, runs its currency too cheap, hoards rare earth metals, and tramples on human rights. For many environmentalists, the industrialisation and motorisation of China and India is a step too far for a fragile planet. Meanwhile Japan still takes flak for its resistance to inward investment, immigration, women’s rights and political reform. Despite the opportunities it sees in Asia, the West can seem fundamentally disdainful of the giants there.
The West perhaps underestimates China’s growing consumer class, and China’s powers of innovation. But can the country’s leader-in-waiting, Xi Jinping, control property and the banks enough to prevent social and economic turmoil – turmoil that Wen Jiabao, his forerunner, warned could be as great as that of the Cultural Revolution? Can Japan’s economy, now effectively nuclear-free, really avoid a third ‘lost decade’ of zombie banks and ineffectual governments? David Cameron has high hopes for UK plc in India. But can India’s own ineffectual government restore growth – or will the country’s general election, due by 2014, lay bare the country’s wasted years for all to see? Will the giants of Asia stumble in the face of the US rebound? And when might Asian production finally and decisively shift to low-cost Indonesia, Bangladesh and Vietnam?
SPEAKERSProfessor Barry Buzanemeritus professor, LSE; author, The United States and the Great Powers: world politics in the twenty-first century
James Woudhuysenvisiting professor, London South Bank University
Dr Linda Yuehfellow in economics, St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford; adjunct professor of economics, London Business School; economics editor, Bloomberg TV
CHAIRPhil Mullaneconomist and business manager; author, Creative Destruction: How to start an economic renaissance

Free will: just an illusion?

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2012 on Sunday 21 October at Barbican, London.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
Free will is at the root of our notions of moral responsibility, choice and judgment. It is at the heart of our conception of the human individual as an autonomous end in himself. Nevertheless, free will is notoriously hard to pin down. Philosophers have denied its existence on the basis that we are determined by the laws of nature, society or history, insisting there is no evidence of free will in the iron chain of cause and effect. Theologians have argued everything happens according to the will of God, not man. And yet, when we decide we want something and act on that, it certainly seems as if we are choosing freely. Are we just kidding ourselves?
Some of the most profound contemporary challenges to the idea of free will come from neuroscientists, evolutionary psychologists and biologists. They argue we are effectively programmed to act in certain ways, and only feel as if we make choices. Some argue, for example, that we can easily be nudged into certain types of behaviour if only the right stimuli are applied. It is widely believed that advertising can make us buy things we don’t need or even want. Stronger forms of this reasoning can be found in the idea that early intervention, usually before the age of three, can determine the sort of adult a child will grow up to be. Without such intervention, we are told, their future will be determined by genetics, by their environment, by the way their parents treat them.
Nevertheless, common sense still gives strong support to the idea that we have free will. We understand there are relatively large areas of our lives in which it makes sense to say we could have acted differently, with correspondingly different results. The law recognises this too: it is no defence to say you stole because your parents were cruel to you. We feel remorse at opportunities we could have taken but did not. And we do sometimes choose to do the right thing even against our own interests: in extreme cases some even lay down their lives for others and for ideals. Jean-Paul Sartre argued, ‘the coward makes himself cowardly, the hero makes himself heroic; and that there is always a possibility for the coward to give up cowardice and for the hero to stop being a hero’. Is the idea that we might be born cowards, or heroes, an excuse for not facing up to our moral responsibilities? Or is free will really an illusion, the by-product of a vain belief that we are all special?
SPEAKERSJoe Friggieriprofessor of philosophy and former head of department, University of Malta; poet; playwright; theatre director; three-times winner, National Literary Prize
Dr Daniel Glaserdirector, Science Gallery London, King's College London
Neal Lawsonchair, Compass; author, All Consuming; former adviser to Gordon Brown; co-editor, Progressive Century
Dr Ellie Leereader in social policy, University of Kent, Canterbury; director, Centre for Parenting Culture Studies
CHAIRAngus Kennedyconvenor, The Academy; author, Being Cultured: in defence of discrimination

Can the law make us equal?

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2012 on Saturday 20 October at Barbican, London.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
It has become a maxim of Western society that citizens should be equal before the law. A legal system that discriminates against minorities is widely recognised as a symptom of an unjust society. But does this mean the law should be used to make society itself more equal? Since the Equality Act 2010 has been on the statute books, a number of cases have shown how the law is being used to challenge and punish discriminatory attitudes, in the name of greater equality and the celebration of diversity. Some have welcomed this as a move towards a more just society, while others condemn it as illegitimate ‘judicial activism’.
Take, for example, the Christian couple who were successfully sued in 2011 by two gay men to whom they had refused a room in their bed & breakfast. While many saw this as a victory for tolerance, some argued that the act had limited the rights of the Christian couple to choose with whom to mix or not. Since then, Christian lobby groups have argued that the provisions of the act should apply equally to protect Christians from prejudice. Apart from the fact that it may be impossible to legislate to protect everyone in society from prejudice, another more fundamental question arises: is it dangerous to use the law to change people’s minds?
Historically, changes in the law have always codified and reflected attitudes in wider society. However, rather than simply back-up prevailing beliefs, should the law start ‘taking the lead’? Racial desegregation in the US in the 1950s and 1960s certainly involved legal coercion, but it was also driven by a mass movement for equality. In the case of something like equal recognition for gay marriage in the US and UK, or proposals that corporate boards should contain a certain proportion of women, it remains unclear whether legal moves are ‘with the tide of history’ or merely promoting an eccentric, elite agenda. If the law is allowed to intrude into private decisions about whom we employ, for example, or with whom we associate or do business, we are denied the right to make these decisions independently. Is this justified in the name of equality? Or is a society in which people only decide to treat others equally because the law tells them to really an equal society at all?
SPEAKERSDavid Allen Greenlegal correspondent, New Statesman; writer of acclaimed Jack of Kent blog
Alex Deanemanaging director, FTI Consulting; Sky News regular; BBC Dateline London panellist; author Big Brother Watch: The state of civil liberties in modern Britain
John Fitzpatrickprofessor of law and director, Kent Law Clinic, University of Kent, Canterbury
Wendy KaminerUS-based writer on law, liberty, feminism, religion, and popular culture; author, Worst Instincts: cowardice, conformity and the ACLU
CHAIRLuke Gittoscriminal lawyer; director of City of London Appeals Clinic; legal editor at spiked; author, Why Rape Culture is a Dangerous Myth: From Steubenville to Ched Evans

Capitalism: kill or cure?

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2012 on Saturday 20 October at Barbican, London.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
The Western economic slump is conventionally attributed to a surfeit of capitalism, a market that is too free and insufficiently regulated. The financial crisis of 2008-9 is often assumed to have been caused by the unrestrained greed of bankers, personifying the financial excesses that crashed the economy. This narrative extends into a wider critique of the problems said to result from ‘neoliberal’ ideology. David Cameron, for example, quotes variants of GK Chesterton’s phrase, we have ‘too much capitalism and too few capitalists’, as he distances himself from what is termed crony or irresponsible capitalism. The heartless free market is said to exacerbate social exclusion: too much pay for the rich is said to widen inequality and reduce social mobility; too much consumption and we over-exploit and endanger the planet to the detriment of future generations; too much debt from trying to live off the future produces an economic millstone that condemns us to years of austerity.
Some, however, argue that the state has become increasingly involved in a market that, far from being free, is much more heavily controlled than ever before. In this view, our current problems are really caused by the absence of a genuine capitalism; society is being let down by too few people being prepared to promote the virtues of capitalism, with tomorrow’s entrepreneurs being driven offshore by punitive tax demands, and the business sector choked by health-and-safety legislation and bureaucratic red tape. For such critics, a political climate in which even the Financial Times can appear supportive of the Occupy movement, and in which governments plump for bailing out uncompetitive industries in the interests of short-term political expediency, can hardly be described as overly capitalist. Maybe capitalism actually needs to be freed up to renew itself through ‘creative destruction’; to concentrate on being profitable rather than responsible. Such critics demand a much-reduced role for the state to set the animal spirits of capitalism running free.
So is the market too free or too constrained? Is it as simple as cutting the red tape or must the state continue to take a leading role in kick-starting growth? If it does not, might the reality of contemporary capitalism pose an unacceptable cost to life and liberty? Just how can we manage capitalism in the twenty-first century?
SPEAKERSFerdinand Mountauthor, The New Few: or a very British oligarchy; former editor, Times Literary Supplement
Phil Mullaneconomist and business manager; author, Creative Destruction: How to start an economic renaissance
Vicky Pryceboard member, Centre for Economics and Business Research; economic advisor, British Chamber of Commerce
Mike Shortsenior vice-president, industry affairs, SABMiller
CHAIRAngus Kennedyconvenor, The Academy; author, Being Cultured: in defence of discrimination

Lessons from America: the new culture wars

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2012 on Saturday 20 October at Barbican, London.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
‘The culture war is back’, proclaimed one American newspaper earlier this year. And it’s not difficult to see why. A variety of social issues, be it gay marriage or contraception, have seemingly cleaved America in two. The tribal battle lines look familiar: on one side the socially conservative, the Christian, the blue-collar; on the other, the liberal progressive, the secular, the white-collar. American politics is now steeped in culture-war polemic. Former Republican presidential candidate and social conservative Rick Santorum talked darkly of the liberals’ ‘organised war on religion’, and his adversary, the progressive President Obama, has charged that heartland America ‘clings to religion’. But is there anything new about the current revival of the culture wars?
For those immersed in the numerous conflagrations, claims of a resurgent culture war are often rejected. This is about the rights and wrongs of a particular issue, we are told: gay marriage is, depending on whom you listen to, a matter of civil rights or one of traditional values; the exemption of religious bodies from Obama’s contraception mandate is a matter of religious freedom or women’s reproductive rights. But are these battlegrounds in fact part of a broader war between two almost entirely divergent moral communities? When Edmund White, a longtime opponent of gay marriage came out in support of it because he ‘realised how opposed to [gay marriage] the Christian right is’, did this reveal the real impetus behind such cause-fighting? Given the vituperative language used, from ‘redneck’ and ‘hick’, to ‘racist’ and ‘homophobe’, are self-styled liberals now proving themselves as illiberal as the Christian fundamentalists they rail against?
And are we seeing the emergence of something similar in the UK? When prime minister Tony Blair introduced civil partnerships back in 2004, there was virtually no fanfare. Current prime minister David Cameron’s gay-marriage proposals, however, have been presented as a cultural marker, a test of what kind of person you are. So are debates about religion or gender issues now being conducted in terms of an emerging cultural battle, one that marks out liberals from conservatives on the American model? If so, it is not only liberals making moves. The sight of angry anti-abortion campaigners arrayed outside an abortion provider has become familiar in the UK as well as the US, and the abortion debate seems to have become more antagonistic since Conservative MP Nadine Dorries’ attempt to strip abortion providers of their role counselling pregnant women. But what does all this mean? Are long-held rights and traditions really at stake, or are we witnessing the emergence of a type of politics in which fighting for a cause is less important than marking oneself out as a certain type of person?
SPEAKERSProfessor Frank Furedisociologist and social commentator; author, What's Happened to the University?, Power of Reading: from Socrates to Twitter, On Tolerance and Authority: a sociological history
John Haldaneprofessor of philosophy, University of St Andrews; chairman, Royal Institute of Philosophy; author, An Intelligent Person's Guide to Religion and Reasonable Faith
Wendy KaminerUS-based writer on law, liberty, feminism, religion, and popular culture; author, Worst Instincts: cowardice, conformity and the ACLU
John WatersIrish newspaper columnist; author, Jiving at the Crossroads and Was It For This? Why Ireland Lost the Plot
CHAIRClaire Foxdirector, Academy of Ideas; panellist, BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze; author, I Find That Offensive

High and low culture: separated at birth?

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2012 on Saturday 20 October at Barbican, London.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
‘For a mass society is nothing more than that kind of organised living which automatically establishes itself among human beings who are still related to one another but have lost the world once common to all of them.’ Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future
The closing ceremony of the Olympics 2012 was dubbed ‘A Symphony of British Music’, but there was little that was classical about it. Despite the presence of the London Symphony Orchestra, supporting pop group Elbow, this symphony was all Spice Girls not Vaughan Williams, Russell Brand not Elgar; avowedly modern and popular. Of course there is no reason a closing party should not have a rocking soundtrack, but in many areas today it appears that the dethroning of what was once deemed ‘high’ culture has gone so far that the music of Queen, by default almost, is better than Handel. Is there such a separation between the adherents of different ‘cultures’ as to amount to a total communication breakdown between their camps?
‘Good society’, the taste of elites, has long been struggling to respond to the emergence of the masses into public life, and not just in popular forms of culture, but even the mannered aping of culture that Matthew Arnold attacked among the philistine bourgeoisie of the nineteenth century. Since the end of the Second World War, the decline in the authority of traditional forms of culture has become more and more evident: think of the late Robert Hughes’ Shock of the New; British ‘In-Yer-Face’ theatre; Schoenberg, Phillip Glass and John Cage. Or the vast numbers of questionable initiatives designed to attract new audiences to opera, galleries and concert halls. Is yesterday’s ‘high’ culture being consigned to today’s museum? Should we lament its passing? Try to preserve it? Or accept its day had come and that it’s only misplaced cultural nostalgia to imagine that what we have today is in anyway inferior? Might it even be better?
Maybe the difficulty is with our ability to discriminate between what is good and what doesn’t make the grade, between ‘high’ and ‘low’. Maybe it is our cultural judgement that has eroded, rather than classical music itself having somehow passed its sell-by-date. In the past, after all, high and low rubbed up together and influenced each other: think of composers like Dvořák and Janáček, both influenced by folk music. Is there a possibility today for such a healthy interchange between pop and classical? TV and art-house film? Street dance and ballet? Damien Hirst and Jack Vettriano? Or, in an avowedly non-judgemental age, one of relative values, of ‘I like what I like because I like it’, is what was once potentially a common and shareable cultural world, now irretrievably shattered? Reduced to the lonely perspective of the individual, as unique to him as his birth, or, on the other hand, to the mass spectacle, to entertainment rather than culture?
SPEAKERSIvan Hewettchief music critic, Daily Telegraph; professor, Royal College of Music; broadcaster; author, Music: healing the rift
Dr Tiffany Jenkinswriter and broadcaster; author, Keeping Their Marbles: how treasures of the past ended up in museums and why they should stay there
Roly Keatingchief executive, British Library; formerly first Director of Archive Content, BBC; former Controller, BBC Two; member, Barbican Centre Board
CHAIRDolan Cummingsassociate fellow, Academy of Ideas; author, That Existential Leap: a crime story (forthcoming from Zero Books)

Battle of Ideas festival 2012: welcome address

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2012 on Saturday 20 October at Barbican, London.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
The eighth annual Battle of Ideas festival opened with a Welcome Address hosted by Claire Fox, Director of the Academy of Ideas.
SPEAKERS
Sean Gregorydirector of creative learning, Barbican
Alison Sharpehead of thought leadership, PwC
Raymond Tallisemeritus professor of geriatric medicine, University of Manchester
Mike Wrightexecutive director, Jaguar Land Rover

Alone together? Cultivating social solidarity in the year ahead

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2011 on Sunday 30 October at the Royal College of Art, London.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
One thing the riots this summer revealed is that in recent years there has been an implosion of community life in much of Britain. Many urban youth seem to have so little commitment to the neighbourhoods they live in that they are prepared to trash them. While the riots may be an extreme example, the broader dearth of solidarity is not confined to British teenagers. Throughout the Western world, policy-makers and social critics are increasingly concerned about social fragmentation, individuation, and a ‘look the other way’ culture. While commentators variously blame government cuts and neoliberal greed or street gangs and poor parenting for destroying social bonds, there seems to be a deeper problem that is barely addressed. The erosion of basic ties of solidarity between parents and other adults, between the generations, and across cultural groups, suggests a diminished sense of society per se, and a loss of agreement about where authority lies. Explanations focusing on individual behaviour and those pointing to impersonal economic forces seem equally inadequate in accounting for what amounts to a crisis of meaning. Arguably this trend has been accelerated by decades of misguided government interventions meant to alleviate or compensate for social fragmentation, from divisive multicultural policies and short-termist welfare programmes to over-zealous child protection schemes that institutionalise distrust.
The historic context is surely the demise of more organic social bonds, from churches to trades unions, and the associated political ideals. Indeed, collective political action seems a distant memory. While some talk up relatively feeble examples of political activity, from sporadic student gatherings to marches against the cuts, critics contend that in the absence of a much more coherent and persuasive vision for social change, this is little more than wishful thinking. There is little evidence of an upsurge of people coming together seriously to confront the economic and social problems we face, and candidly debate the barriers to social solidarity.
Even calls for us to come together for the sake of the greater good (such as David Cameron’s Big Society) implicitly assume we must put aside self-interest in favour of abstract community cohesion (‘we’re all in it together’), rather than making genuinely common cause on the basis of shared interests that might involve changing society. Artificial schemes for community service, compulsory volunteering, even supervised networking can make matters worse. What could be more corrosive to spontaneous social bonds than collective schemes supervised from on high by the state and its agencies? So how do we distinguish between sham solidarity and the real thing? Can we develop a real stake in our own communities, and look to each other - rather than the state - to solve the problems we face? How can we cultivate a more powerful sense of solidarity?
SPEAKERSProfessor Frank Furedisociologist and social commentator; author, What's Happened to the University?, Power of Reading: from Socrates to Twitter, On Tolerance and Authority: a sociological history
CHAIRClaire Foxdirector, Academy of Ideas; panellist, BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze; author, I Find That Offensive

The rise of the clicktivists: will the revolution be digitised?

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2011 on Sunday 30 October at the Royal College of Art, London.
ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION
A new generation of online activists is credited with fuelling a resurgence in contemporary protest, using blogs, Twitter and other social media to mobilise and get their message across. These so-called ‘clicktivists’ boast they are transforming the way protests are organised, taking a leaderless, spontaneous and quick-moving form. Blogger Laurie Penny even claims the web is ‘the greatest democratising force of our times’. Numerous commentators have dubbed the uprisings in Tunisia and across the Middle East ‘Wikileaks revolutions’ because of the way activists used the web to communicate and coordinate protests. And clicktivists aren’t just fomenting protests on the streets: internet group ‘Anonymous’ has taken on the websites of some of the world’s largest companies, and many claim the world’s first ‘cyberwar’ is on the horizon. Nevertheless, this new kind of online activism is also being promoted by governments. The US State Department is actively encouraging digital activists in certain countries with oppressive governments. Even the UK government is encouraging a kind of clickivism, with new forms of e-petitions being proposed to better engage with the views and desires of the public.
Is the internet just another tool in the activists’ toolbox, accelerating normal protests, or has it brought about fundamental changes? If it has, for better or worse? Is it increasing the amount of debate and discussion around protests, or actually making protests more superficial; diminishing what it is to be committed to a cause and estranging campaigners from grassroots concerns? Does the new ‘leaderless’ form of organisation online mark the development of a powerful weapon against the status quo, or instead mean protests are likely to be fleeting, ineffective and chaotic? In his book The Net Delusion, Evgeny Morozov argues that the internet can just as easily be used by governments to counter protests and for increased surveillance and control. Hosni Mubarak’s faltering administration even shut down the internet in Egypt for a week, suggesting it would be a mistake to make activism too dependent on the web.
Is proclaiming ‘It’s Twitter wot won it’ diminishing the hard work and dedication that goes into meaningful protests? Will future revolutions happen online, or do the clicktivists need to put down their laptops and get out more?
SPEAKERSDavid Babbsexecutive director, 38 degrees, an online campaigning community
Phil Boothcoordinator, medConfidential
Paul Masonbroadcaster; author, Financial Meltdown and the End of the Age of Greed; technology editor, BBC's Newsnight
Martyn Perksdigital business consultant and writer; co-author, Big Potatoes: the London manifesto for innovation
CHAIRPatrick Hayesdirector, British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA)