Cowboy Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics, Part 2: A View from the Street

Despite the growth of inequality in contemporary China and the precarious means of subsistence for the lowest rung, few voices have shouted above the parapet to protect or increase the lot of the poorest. If we take Beijing, a seemingly booming metropolis, visible indications of inequality and economic problems can be found almost everywhere. In a brief walk through the prospering nanluo guxiang alleyways (南锣鼓巷) of the drum tower area, one can take in street after streets of trendy coffee shops and ‘international bars’, pay 40 kuai for a drink (equivalent to the daily wage of a waitress serving it), or be caught in the jam-packed streets of fashionable young Chinese shoppers dazzled by various arty, luxury consumer fashion items. In less upmarket areas 9 kuai can buy you a relatively healthy meal of noodles. Instead one can consult international entertainment guides printed in English to see adverts for concerts such as ‘progressive’ metal band Opeth for 680 kuai, about three times the price of a comparable UK concert (an upcoming Avril Lavigne concert costs 1700 kuai, about 170 UK pounds). You can then turn a corner and within seconds the streets are empty, the residents are aging, and the homes are without heating, running water, and toilets. The generation gap and the income disparities are visibly staggering. This is not simply about inequality per se but about access to the means of subsistence- a basic income, health, and education. Accessing largely privatised social services is not cheap and housing prices have exploded. For example, it costs about 400 pounds a month to rent a small studio flat with no cooking facilities in the Xiaoxitian area (a relatively affordable district adjacent to Beijing Normal University). This is much the same as a one person flat with separate rooms, a full kitchen and bathroom in Manchester, UK. Average income in the UK is $38,540 compared to China’s $4,260. No surprise then that small shop-owners still have beds in their stalls all over Beijing and rely on small heaters or electric blankets though the winter. Capitalism seems to inevitably produce winners and losers and this is perhaps most dramatic in its global phase where wealth and goods are not confined by national borders. The winners and losers here are worlds apart and there is little responsibility being shown by the winners.

Pun Ngai, author of Dagongmei, brings to light a serious contradiction in the claims of China’s opening up in the reform era. We ordinarily expect capitalism and wealth creation to thrive on social and spatial mobility; business and people have to be willing to move to where money can be made and profit found. However, while the Chinese system has privatised social services and to some extent opened its markets to global capital, it has not abandoned the household registration system (hukou). This divides citizens into urban and rural residents and ties residents to their place of birth if they wish access discounts to the most basic healthcare and early schooling still available under the system. This means the rich are increasingly mobile both in global terms (they can afford to travel abroad or go to see Opeth in Beijing) and in national terms because they can move to other cities and pay for private healthcare and schooling. This maintenance of immobility combined with skyrocketing housing prices has led to the phenomenon of what Pun Ngai termed “dormitory capitalism”; not only does the hukou system make the millions of migrants who move to the city de facto illegal aliens in their own country but due to the cost of housing many have to live in dormitories in basements owned by their employers rather than be made homeless. This provides a lifestyle completely at odds with representations of a rising, powerful China and in utter contrast to the nouveau-rich playing on their laptops and sipping high status coffee. Coupled with the fact that trade unions are de facto outlawed in China, this also enables the owners of such businesses a level of control over their employees such that the most marginalised (poor, rural women) are “instantly disposable” and in many cases cannot refuse to sell their bodies. Approximately 12% of China’s GDP can be accounted for by the sex trade.

I’ll offer a brief personal story of how the process of renting a house works in Beijing. This is written from the relatively privileged perspective of my partner and me. However, much can be gleaned from it to tell us where wealth goes and the attitudes towards it in Beijing today. We were advised by both Chinese and foreign friends that to find a house in Beijing, going through an agency would cost more but it would save us a lot of trouble and avoid the risk of being ripped off later. We explored the xiaoxitian area and discovered that there are perhaps half a dozen of such firms on every street! These firms manage large amounts of property for landlords who often own entire apartment blocks. The streets are not only decked in adverts everywhere but you can see their staff standing on most street corners waiting for clients or waiting for people to look at their adverts which also adorn many street corners. This is big business. Overhearing conversations on the street and in restaurants, housing seems to be the hot topic of the day- everybody needs it but most seem to be struggling to pay for it. We looked at a number of flats and studio apartments to little avail as our rough budget of 4,000 kuai (about 400 pounds) would only cover decaying flats with broken toilets or a tiny studio. Eventually we received a phone-call from an unknown number offering us help to find a flat. We assumed he was from one of the companies we had consulted but we eventually discovered he was actually a middle man to the middle men at the estate agents. He provided clients to the firms who make money finding clients for the under-rich landlords. We eventually met with him and spent the best part of a day or two chatting with him as we looked for accommodation. He offered us a reasonable deal, he said, because we were British. This was an offer he wouldn’t extend to Greeks and Italians in the Eurozone who renege on their debts! As most young men in Beijing, his life revolved around making as much money as he could to pay for housing, keep his family afloat, and save for the future. He claimed his wage for acting as a middle man to the middle men was about 10,000 kuai per month – light years ahead of the national average and equivalent to our individual incomes in the UK. When we discussed tax, he mocked the UK tax system for taking money away from people (China’s income tax is a rate of about 20% for those making more than a very healthy 5,000 kuai a month). He audibly scoffed at our suggested notion that this money could be used to help society. Socialism remains comedic and kitsch amongst China’s youth. In fact, he described life and business in China, in the same way as many here, as “people-eat-people” (ren chi ren; 人吃人). Competition is so fierce here that people believe it demands that one pursues wealth and self-interest without responsibility to others outside one’s family, let alone any socialist commitment to aiding the poorest rungs of society.

After looking at a half a dozen flats with him, we eventually had to lower our standards. We accepted a reasonably sized but decaying and concreted floored flat with a bathroom I could barely stand in. It seemed quite pleasant compared to others we could afford. When we arrived to sign the contract, a problem emerged. Every foreign national in China has to register themselves and their address with the local police station. However, the landlord insisted we register with a fake address at a different station because it would be “more convenient”. This was a way for them to avoid taxes on the rental income as well as the fee associated with this registration. They either had relationships (guanxi; 关系) with police or a landlord in another part of town. Knowing that if anything went wrong we would be the ones in trouble and would probably be sent home, we opted to find somewhere else despite having spent the better part of a week looking at houses. The only way we could both afford to live in Beijing would be in a small and relatively old studio flat. We found such a studio flat in the xiaoxitian area thanks to our anti-Euro middleman to the middlemen in a relatively nice apartment block. We were quite satisfied.

At this stage we still thought our man was just an ordinary middle man but on settling to sign the contract, we realised that this wasn’t the case. An employee of an estate firmed arrived with the contract, refused to say a word, drew up the details, pointed and said ‘sign’. We insisted we read what we were signing up to. He was clearly annoyed but would tolerate this. Our man told him “don’t worry, foreigners are all like this, they just take contracts seriously”. Relationships may be more important than law in China but as travelling foreigners without any networks we opted to stick to the law. On perusal of the contract it turned out they were adding 9 days onto the 6 month lease we agreed. The company man repeatedly urged us to sign as it was “much the same” and would only grin when I said if it is much the same, then change it! After much to-ing and fro-ing I told the company man that I didn’t want to give 1,000 kuai for nothing to a rich landlord. This he found amusing. He agreed to reduce the additional time to 7 days, even though he had claimed it was impossible due to the contract he had with the company who had a contract with the landlord! We both realised this was how these cowboys make lots of money. He, along with hundreds of other agents, was travelling round town all day. If they made a free thousand kuai off every customer they were raking it in without even considering the profit from their legitimate business. After much consternation and urging us to sign, the agreement was made that the original middle man would take the additional cost out of his ‘finder’s fee’. He had of course told us that this would be reduced earlier but now there was no chance- we had to pay him a full month’s rent in cash with no tax paid just for the sake of a few phone calls. No wonder he makes a good wage. The pair of us were then hurled onto the back of a small motorbike and driven to the company office bouncing off a taxi on the way. The company man, who had seemed so aloof and high status from our first meeting, refusing to even engage with our middle man, was suddenly in a different social position. He was being shouted at by his boss and providing us with a place to sit and a drink in this bustling office where multiple deals were being negotiated all round us. The boss grilled him on how much he had got for the flat. He seemed pleased with the 3,500 kuai per month we agreed to pay. All of a sudden, the rate seemed like it had been negotiable and we guessed that the company weren’t just making money as a set fee from the landlord but were probably creaming extra cash off by charging us a higher rate than what they were telling him. I would doubt the taxes are being paid.

The inconvenience of all this was tiresome but quite amusing and a good learning experience. The real story is that so much money is slushing around, tax-free and destined for landlords’ pockets, that multiple middle men can still make a healthy, largely tax-free living by knowing the market but doing very little. This opportunity would not be available to the additional illiterate 30 million adults who merely happened to be born in a poorer hukou (household registration area). Adam Smith and Karl Marx both agreed that under capitalism, the arduousness of labour is inversely proportional to the profit made from it. When we think back to those having to live in their shop-stalls to survive or living in dormitories and basements selling their bodies, this is clearly the case in contemporary China. National television (CCTV) devotes hours to heart-warming stories of peasants, who have to work endlessly without complaint to pay healthcare bills or send their kids to school, as examples to be admired. Perhaps regulating the cowboy capitalists and using taxes to pay for schools and hospitals, instead of mega-pr events like the Olympics or indeed a nuclear arsenal, would mean the poorest wouldn’t have to be admired for the hardship they endure.

Cowboy Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics, Part 1: The Big Picture

The end of the cold war and in particular, the effects of the global financial crisis, has led to a convergence of interests between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the US, the world’s declining hyper-power. It suits both the neo-conservatives in Washington and authoritarian leaders in Beijing to represent the new China as an economic powerhouse. US foreign policy hawks portray China as a threat to the prevailing hegemony justifying military spending and protectionism while the CCP domestically celebrates itself as the only way to prosperity (see the slogan: 只有共产党才能建设好新中国; “Only with the communist party, can we build a new, great China”). Since the onset of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in 1978, China has indeed enjoyed spectacular double-digit economic growth figures. The glitz and glamour image of the ‘new’ China exemplified by Shanghai’s pudong skyline is mesmerising for foreign investors and travellers alike. As important as these images and representations are in recreating an attraction towards the new China or what Joseph Nye called China’s ‘soft power’, there is indeed a lot more happening behind these images and on the streets of China’s ever-expanding cities let alone the hugely impoverished countryside.

The World Bank’s 2011 data tell us average global income (GNI per capita) is just over 9,000 US dollars. According to the same stats, income in China ranks at 121 of 215 in the world at $4,260. This does not diminish the impressive growth China has enjoyed over the last 40 years but it does put it in context; average income in Kazakhstan is $7,440. With economic growth, China has become one of the most unequal countries in the world- ranking at 36, ahead of the US at 44^th and the UK at 92nd. This should make us take a step back and ask who are the 99%? The neoliberal, capitalist United States is actually more egalitarian than the supposedly socialist China and indeed enjoys an average income of more than 10 times that of the purported threat to its global hegemony. The World Bank celebrates its own achievements and the seemingly inevitable logic of the ‘free-market’ by claiming 200 million have been pulled out of poverty across the globe since the 1980s. Chinese people constitute the majority of these yet all is not what it seems. These figures are extrapolated from a handful of booming eastern and southern coastal cities, which are not representative of China as a whole and which present an even greater problem considering the level of inequality across the nation.

The Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative produced a spectacularly detailed set of statistics on multi-dimensional poverty (eg income, education, health, etc) which breaks down different types and levels of poverty across different regions within nations. China is one of the only countries in the world which did not submit regional figures, so we can’t even adequately capture regional inequality in China in ways which we can for supposedly “failed states” in Sub-Saharan Africa such as Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Democratic Republic of Congo. We know that regional inequality is a huge problem and that since the 1990s it has grown. For example, the GDP per capita of Yunnan province is about 10-15% of that of Shanghai, the image of Chinese modernity. We also know that when the World Bank revised its definition of poverty upwards to an underwhelming $1.25 a day, the number of people living in “extreme poverty” in China jumped from 130 million people to 207 million, about a sixth of the total population. This means one sixth of the population of China are neither sharing in the statistically pleasing double digit growth nor the mesmerising hi-tech appearance of the new China. Despite double-digit national growth throughout the 1990s, Shanghai as one of the fastest growing regions saw no relative income growth and the poorest lost income in absolute terms (see Huang, Yasheng (2008) Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

The global financial crisis of 2008 laid bare the lack of regulation of capitalism had opened the most vulnerable in society to the vagaries of financial markets despite their lack of participation in them. In the UK, David Cameron calls for a “responsible capitalism” and in the US, Barrack Obama was initially lauded by many for his goals of extending access to healthcare to all. ‘Responsibility’ to others and the pursuit of self-interest above all else under capitalism may be oxymoronic. However, the political need to attempt to reconcile them in public discourse at least indicates a broader accountability to a wider range of social interests. In China, Deng Xiaoping’s mantra, “to get rich is glorious”, sums up the attitudes of Chinese youth today who see communism as a kitsch yet backward social irrelevance and money as a cure to all ills. Of course, the great leap forward in which 30 million people died of famine, the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, and the gloominess of communist uniformity remain as reminders of the failures of anything but the pursuit of wealth in the self-imagination of contemporary Chinese youth. The cyclical crises of capitalism throughout twentieth century Europe and the US offer very different storehouses of imagination to that of China. Today, the Chinese government, official media, and popular discourse frequently refer to the global financial crisis as the “western financial crisis”. It is often explained it in cultural terms as a failure of “westerners” to save money and pay off their own mortgages in contrast to the Asian traditions of savings and austerity.

What is less said in popular media, both in China and abroad, is that the housing market in China today bears many of the hallmarks of the economic conditions which led to the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US, which ultimately triggered the global financial crisis. The IMF has warned of the economic crash that could result from soft loans with little hope of return, unregulated lending, concentrated housing ownership, and rising property prices. Like the US at the turn of the 21^st century, this resembles capitalism at its most irresponsible and most unstable. The difference is China has even less of a social safety net than the US, let alone Europe; going to school and visiting a hospital almost universally require payment up front. Those in the most financially vulnerable positions can expect to pay for any crisis as they have in the US and Europe through tax-funded bailouts for failing financial institutions and increasingly squeezed funding for social services upon which the poorest rely. Those raised on the dogma of the pursuit of wealth are unlikely to be willing to give much of it up when push comes to shove. Given the poorest in China are considerably worse off than the poorest in the US or Europe and already lack access to basic social services, any major economic downturn would not just threaten their means of home-ownership but would jeopardize the means of subsistence for millions of people.

Yasheng Huang’s Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics effectively shows us that both the growth of income for the poorest and private access to credit enjoyed during the 1980s has been reversed since the 1990s. The system has now re-directed tax incentives, subsidies, and favourable terms of credit away from small private enterprise and towards large-scale foreign direct investment and businesses closely aligned or partly owned by government. This is reflected in news headlines of large-scale corruption and corporate land-grabs converting farms and poorer housing areas into property developments with little compensation and no hope of being affordable. The result has been stagnation in incomes in rural areas, a decrease in spending on social services, and growth in illiteracy (30 million more people between 2000 and 2005) since the 1990s. China appears to be maintaining the authoritarian political apparatus of ‘communism’ whilst promoting the business interests of large-scale state-owned enterprises. This is becoming the worst of both worlds as freedom for the nouveau rich in urban centres can be bought and the voices of the lowest rung go unheard. Given the lack of regulation of big business and the lack of social responsibility shown in the system, it seems fair to call this cowboy capitalism. The US and Europe pay lip-service to human rights but they say little about the poorest rungs of Chinese society. In the end, the poor are the losers in the geopolitical game, which produces images of an inevitably rising China.

Neoliberalism and the Decline of Global Growth

The post-World War 2 world saw global growth reach 3.5% in the 1960s and even during the crisis years of the 1970s the world enjoyed 2.4% growth. John Ruggie famously described the international system of this period as ‘embedded liberalism’ (Ruggie, 1982). Industrialised states pursued liberal economic policies but international agreements legitimised state intervention in the economy to protect the interests of labour and the socially marginalised. This was largely a compromise between the interests of labour and capital such that free-markets prevailed but the vulnerable could be protected. Neoliberalism then emerged in the midst of the 1973 oil crisis to break this compromise by prioritising capital and the interests of business primarily through privatisation of services, reduced public spending on social services, and the restriction of power of organisations which represented the interests of workers (Trade Unions). Since the adoption of neoliberalism under Thatcher in the UK, Reagan in the US and promoted globally through the IMF, the 1980s saw global growth fall to 1.4%, 1.1% in the 1990s and less than 1% in the 2000s. Meanwhile the top 1% of earners in the UK increased their share of wealth from 6.5% to 13% (Harvey, 2007). The world is getting poorer and the poor are bearing an ever increasing burden to pay to maintain a global financial system which is keeping them poor. Banks have been bailed out and nationalised because we are told we need them and this is a ‘crisis’. On the other hand, Malaria, an easily preventable disease, kills 800,000 people every year. We hear nothing of this ‘crisis’ because it occurs in regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa which have little political power at the global level and limited economic value. We are now in the midst not of a debt crisis but a growth crisis, which has to be paid for by previously protected vulnerable groups. This is being made worse as the UK continues on an economic course which cuts people's ability to support themselves by cutting pensions and restricting public sector pay so that it does not reflect inflation. Fanatical commitment to neoliberalism has meant that when growth slows, neoliberal states demand that the poor and lower middle classes get paid less in order to ‘balance the books’. This will lead people further into the debt, which is supposed to be the wiped out according to the Conservatives.

The Conservatives did not win the election in the UK outright and they did not outline their plans for pensions, the NHS, and public sector pay in their manifesto. They do not have the mandate to proceed with a plan that promotes the interests of capital over those of labour. Support the strikes before there are no social services left.

References:

Ruggie, John (1982) ‘International Regimes, Transactions, and Change: Embedded Liberalism in the Post-War Economic Order, International Organization, 36/2, pp.379-415.

Harvey, David (2007) ‘Neoliberalism as Creative Destruction’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 610, pp.22-44.

Commodified Communities: Selling the Nation in a Global Age

Patriotism and consumerism appear to have no obvious connection. The nation as a bounded community of people who identify with one another appears to stand in contrast to the workings of global capital which flows across borders in the search for profit not social recognition. Production and trade have been transnationalised to the extent that ‘Buy American’ and ‘Buy British’ is impossible when buying any consumer goods made of more than a few simple parts. A single computer may be designed in Silicon Valley, built in Japan, assembled in South East Asia, and dumped in China when past their sell by date. However, we still see a growing clamour to sell national pride and to commercialise the boundaries of belonging. Since 9/11 Wal-Mart expanded its sale of flag-emblazoned merchandise for sale with “respectful” and “patriotic” flag disposal services in stores for used flags positioned conveniently next to shiny new ones. In 2004, Wal-Mart was voted the most admired company in the US despite facing criticism for its unfair wages for women, de-unionisation, and monopoly practices. Professor Jennifer Scanlon says “the American Public and Wal-Mart are complicit in a performance of patriotism in which consumerism stands in for more concrete and difficult civic work”. It is easier to buy belonging in a community than to work to make it a better place. This is a reciprocal relationship between consumerism and nationalism such that transnational companies sell the nation and the nation buys it. This dynamic where consumerism and nationalism reproduce and reinforce each other is not restricted to the US. In China, Aigo is one of the nation’s leading electronic companies and is now a sponsor of Manchester United FC. The name Aigo in Mandarin Chinese (aiguozhe; 爱国者) means “patriot” and this is not lost on Chinese consumers seeking to “buy Chinese” in an age where their consumer options are transnationalised. One of the most frequent seen adverts on Chinese state television (CCTV) between 2009-2010 was for a medicine brand which ended with the catchphrase “mother I love you, motherland I love you” (mama wo ai ni, zuguo wo ai ni; 妈妈我爱你, 祖国我爱你). Viewers are then left with the impression that loyalty to a consumer brand equates to loyalty to the nation. You can buy belonging in a national-consumer community.

How people choose to spend their money has long been represented by states as linked to their identity as members of the nation. One of the many propaganda cartoons produced by Walt Disney in the first half of the twentieth century represented American consumers as divided between spending and saving. Scrooge McDuck tells Americans they must “save for victory” in World War 2. Spending money was un-patriotic because it helps the rise of Fascism by draining the treasury of tax resources. Of course representations of the nation have changed as capitalism becomes more and more globalised and it shifts from supply-side economics to demand-led. One of the first public addresses by President George Bush after 9/11 was to stress the threat of terrorism to our ever-expanding consumerist lifestyle linking shopping with national security: “We cannot let the terrorists achieve the objective of frightening our citizens to the point where we don’t…conduct business, we don’t shop”. “We” are being defined as shoppers and the threat of terrorism is to our “we-ness” is through the danger presented to our consumer-lifestyles. More recently, David Cameron defined Britishness through our economic behaviour during the “financial crisis”: “Some say that to succeed in this world, we need to become more like India or China, or Brazil, but I say: we need to become more like us. The real us. Hard-working, pioneering, independent, creative, adaptable, optimistic, can-do”. In practical terms Cameron continued to stress we pay off our credit card bills, tying national loyalty to stabilising financial capitalism. It seems patriotism is emerging as a resource our leaders can draw on to demand the economy works in specific ways. “Can-do” or “stiff upper lip” means “flexible” labour protection policy and a “disciplined” labour force in the words of the IMF. Cameron is using patriotism to tell people in Britain that they are not like Indians or Chinese, we are different. We should supposedly keep it that way by paying off our credit card bills and working hard and without question in a labour market that has seen employment slump and benefits slashed since the Conservative Party came to power. To be British means to behave in ways which maintain the workings of capitalism as it currently works- don’t’ complain about anything or you aren’t “can-do” and you aren’t British. For Cameron, it also means we should identify with billionaires within our borders who benefit from inequality instead of Indians and Chinese who suffer from it.

The recent public debates over the wearing of the poppy for Remembrance Sunday are a case in point. Turnouts at the cenotaph for actual remembrance are relatively small and co-ordinated through active organisations such as the British Legion. However, more passive consumers can now purchase all manner of goods from ties to caps to umbrellas to cufflinks to tablecloths in order to display their level of patriotic devotion and stand “shoulder to shoulder with all those who serve”. Judging by the Poppy Shop’s apology on their website in November 2011 that orders would be delayed due to a high volume of orders, it appears the British public are keen to buy their community membership. However, they are less keen to do “concrete and difficult civic work”. Joining a campaign, for example, to give an hour of one’s time to look after elderly veterans who are now in Britain’s understaffed nursing homes would be of more benefit than wearing a poppy. Wearing of the poppy to symbolise national belonging, which involves nothing but a small purchase, has in recent years been mobilised to the extent that it is framed as an issue of national security. The BBC linked tragic deaths of soldiers in Afghanistan, a very real and violent conflict, to the banality of the poppy. On Question Time, the popular British politics ‘debate’ show, Stephen Pollard, journalist and author on Israeli politics and history, claimed burning poppies should be outlawed, regardless of freedom of speech because they go to the heart of “who we are”. Identity here is framed as a security issue such that alternatives to this particular understanding of national identity are to be eliminated through force. David Cameron saw fit to demand FIFA, football’s ruling body, make the exception only for England to allow “political and religious” symbols on national football shirts in their game against Spain because it was a matter of “national pride”. Cameron and other Conservatives stressed that the poppy was “not political”. However, it is impossible to claim England’s supposed symbols of “national pride” are “not political” but those of other nations, which are banned on national football shirts, are “political”. This representation of the poppy as a performance of patriotism may not be new. However, what is new is this vigour that defines purchase and display of a poppy as the very heart of “who we are” and a symbol which is unquestionable and beyond politics. The English national football team have played on the 11^th November many times over the years and haven’t worn or asked to wear poppies on their shirts. This is but an example how of national communities become a commodified mode of self-understanding where alternatives are deemed ‘outside’ the boundaries of community. This follows the framings of how we organise capitalism and how we spend our earnings as security issues at the heart of our national identities. There are many ways to interpret why wars happen and whose interests they serve. However, the voices of those who see the First World War as a human tragedy which saw states across the world needlessly send millions of working class humans to their death are being excluded as un-patriotic because they don’t wish to wear the poppy. The poppy is said to represent them but it does not represent their views because it has become a symbol of “national pride” instead of remembering dead human beings. Today, identifying with humans who are victims of wars waged by Britain in Iraq and Afghanistan beyond our borders over those within our nation who send them to war is deemed unpatriotic in the same way that submitting to a flexible, unregulated labour market is essential to being British. Today, capital and people flow across borders but there is still capital to be made by going to war and selling its products under the banner of patriotism.

Apple and the Symbolic Construction of the Self/Other

It is not unusual to send condolences to family and friends of a recently deceased loved-one. What is unusual is when people are moved to grief for someone they have never met. It is not unusual to enquire why this is so. The death of Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, led to a global outpouring of grief in the form of shrines from Beijing to California and from Seoul to Sydney. However, these are globalised, metropolitan centres where people who can afford to buy Apple’s exuberant products are concentrated. This is not reflective of some human community transcending divisions of geography and social class. These are relatively fortunate people commemorating the death of an incredibly wealthy man. Nonetheless, this public outpouring goes way beyond brand loyalty or the usual arguments that Macs are faster than PCs. These are highly symbolic rituals which tell us about who and what we value and who and what we do not. Jonathan Jones of the Guardian gushed that Apple products “made the world more beautiful” and “more human” such that Steve Jobs changed how “we” see the world. “We” refers here to people in metropolitan centres with enough disposable income to be part of this in-group. The inevitably corresponding “they” are the rest of the world, “outside” this group and presumably less human for their inability to enjoy these products.

It is tempting, as Alex Massie does in The Spectator, to dismiss these outpourings of attachment, grief, and worship for the CEO of a company whom they never met as "members of a cult that's just as stupid as any other and equally deserving of scorn and pity". However, this downplays the social significance in terms of both sheer numbers of people involved and the transnational scale on which unbridled admiration for the contribution of Apple to people’s lives we have witnessed. Massie also called this phenomenon iReligion and this seems a fairly accurate description given the blind faith and ritualised shrines we have witnessed. The Apple logo and Steve Jobs have become powerful symbols people express loyalty to and through which they identify themselves as free-thinking, modern individuals. Apple personifies something people want to be. The long running Mac advert series on UK TV exemplified this personification of the brand. It successfully anthropomorphised PCs to be like their users: old, traditional, and behind the times. Mac users then are symbolically articulated as young, fresh, and driving the times. The argument here is not to say Apple products are not fun to play with. They are. The argument is to say people in positions of relative fortune are investing their self-identifications in such products. These self-identifications are to the exclusion of the poor, globally marginalised Other. Ironically, these identifications are ultimately to the detriment as opposed to the enrichment of the individual.

Anthony Cohen’s 1985 classic The Symbolic Construction of Community applied decades of fieldwork in social anthropology on the intersection between social and personal identities. He produced a compelling argument to explain traditional community and nationalist loyalties. However, it equally illuminates why in the contemporary world when people are bombarded by commercial advertising demanding brand loyalty, and where struggles over local, ethnic, religious, national, transnational, and global forces regularly spill over into violence, we are still constantly trying to discover and rediscover where “we” belong and who “we” are:

“(symbols) ‘express’ other things in ways which allow their common form to be retained and shared among the members of a group, whilst not imposing upon these people the constraints of uniform meaning. Because symbols are malleable in this way, they can be made to ‘fit’ the circumstances of the individual. They can thus provide media through which individuals can experience and express their attachment to a society without compromising their individuality…what is actually held in common is not very substantial, being form rather than content.”

Apple and Steve Jobs like all the most socially effective symbols have no fixed content. They are pure form and they are malleable. They mean everything because they mean nothing. They are so abstract and open to interpretation that they are a marketing dream. Apple allows the individual to feel as if they retain and even enhance their individuality while at the same time spending more and more of their income on products they do not need and even worshipping at shrines of a dead man they did not know. The Apple logo perhaps speaks for itself. It is just an apple, it imposes little if any content yet people wear clothes and bags emblazoning the symbol on their journeys to find who they are. The soundbites of Steve Jobs, which appeared in their thousands across Facebook and Twitter on the day of his death, are a case in point. So devoid of content are they that people can imbue their own significance in them, participate in a social ritual, yet believe they retain some sense of individuality at the same time. “Stay hungry, stay foolish” is so open to interpretation that, as Cohen says, what is being shared by repeating it across the internet is insubstantial; form rather than content. This was of course a remarkably skilful and rhetorical manipulation of human needs for social and individual identities on Jobs’ part. People could be Apple users, a group, yet imbue their own supposed individuality on what that means. All the while Jobs got richer and richer. The most powerful of all the soundbites was perhaps “don’t waste time living someone else’s life”. In other words, buying Apple products, a socially significant action, allows one to be and become an individual. The irony is staggering when millions of individuals believe that by listening to another individual telling them to be an individual and buy his products he spent his life producing is somehow living one’s own life. Choosing to worship Apple and reproduce its messages across the potentially limitless discourse of the internet is a fundamentally selective social activity. People can say anything on the internet yet they choose to let Steve Jobs speak for them as if they are endorsing individuation. Monty Python once hilariously captured the irony of how groups can be convinced they are individuals in their film Life of Brian yet it seems to have been forgotten by Apple worshippers.

The power of Apple is remarkable. The internet has provided most people with staggering access to instantaneous information. This has led to unparalleled growth in global movements for social justice, human rights, and environmental protection. Yet while Twitter is used to organise the occupation of Wall Street in the world’s most “advanced” capitalist nation, we hear nothing from Apple users of Apple’s deplorable environmental record (reportedly the worst for any foreign firm in China) and disregard for labour rights across the world. Apple’s power is such that this information is freely available yet people choose not to google it and then choose to ignore it when it is presented to them. Karl Marx would say the exploitative social relations behind the product are concealed but here they are not. In today’s world, the information is there, yet most of us choose to ignore it. We do not let this uncomfortable information influence our consumerist decision-making in our supposed struggle to find ourselves and “not live someone else’s life”. The people who suffer due to the policies of Apple most notably in China are simply not part of the “we” that people are choosing to become, otherwise “we” would not allow it to happen. The environmental damage and exploitation would simply not be allowed if it was in “our” country or “our” community. Where Marx was right (Capital Volume I and III) is that commodity fetishism links the subjective aspects of economic value and objective reality. The value groups assign to material objects are transformed from arbitrary social impositions into very real social forces in the form of prices, which for Apple are sky-high. Marx argued that “primitive” societies fetishised unexplainable phenomena as magical and thus they became sacred or taboo. Under capitalism, people attribute special powers to objects and imbue them with symbolic meaning which then became part of an objective reality reflected in prices. What Marx did not predict was that people would attribute special powers to brands and individuals who are powerful agents in reproducing the exploitative and environmentally destructive social relations, which Apple users celebrated on the 6^th October 2011. Globally dispersed shrines to Steve Jobs do not merely fetishise products they fetishise a brand and a person as symbols of who we are and the world we want to live in. This is a world which celebrates gadgets and instantaneous yet transient pleasure to the detriment of the lives and life opportunities of the poor and globally marginalised.

It is appropriate in all discussions of identity to ask where we-ness comes from, who it includes, and who it excludes. Here, we turn to the ancient Tibetan philosopher, Nagarjuna:

“The essence of entities

Is not present in the conditions,

If there is no essence,

There can be no otherness-essence.”

There can be no Self without Other and there can be no Mac user without a PC user to define itself against. Our identities have no essence. They can only be defined by what they are not. We are who we become and how we define ourselves to the exclusion of others. We can choose to become globalised citizens who take responsibility for our actions or at the very least acknowledge their implications. We are choosing not to. There is little about the symbolism of Apple which is young, fresh, and innovative. Apple is reflective of far older forms of community boundary drawing which divide people into us and them through the manipulation of symbols which demand loyalty and convince people they are all individuals. Steve Jobs was a smart man. He once said "Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life". If only those worshipping at his altar could heed this advice when they ask “who am I?” and “what type of world do I want to live in?”. When we face death Apple will provide no solace.

Imagining Sectarianism, Imagining Scotland

We have frequently heard the political slogan, “One Scotland, many cultures”, since it was launched in 2007 to brand Scotland a pluralistic society characterised by tolerance of difference. However, judging by a Scottish government poll which found that more than 85% of Scots want “sectarianism” to be an illegal offence with 89% declaring it “offensive”, most Scots now freely admit that Scotland has a problem with “sectarianism”. Roseanna Cunningham, Minister for Community Safety and Legal Affairs, told the BBC that sectarianism threatens the “very fabric of Scotland; we want to be tolerant, respectful, and forward looking”. Roseanna Cunningham’s comments and the first draft of the much-debated “anti-sectarianism bill” reveal how the debate on sectarianism is producing ideas about what type of nation Scotland should be and what it means to be Scottish. When we talk about sectarianism and what it means to be Scottish, we are, in the words of Benedict Anderson, imagining the nation. By limiting who is and isn’t to be thought of as authentically Scottish we produce what it means to be Scottish. Sectarianism is seen as a religious problem and to protect the “very fabric” of Scotland we need legislation to stop people calling each other “insert-religion-here bastards” but not necessarily “insert-ethnicity-or-nationality-here bastards”. This creates the danger that we ignore ethnocentrism whereas we crack down on religious bigotry. Here I seek not to evaluate the extent of sectarianism or to “take sides” but to examine how the term is used and the implications for how people understand Scottish identity.

It is a welcome change for complex issues in which history, nationalism, and religion are entangled in complex webs of self-identification to be on the front of our national newspapers instead of relegated to the sports pages. Complacency has previously allowed those discussing bigotry to reinforce national stereotypes and produce ideas about what it means to be Scottish without being challenged. For example, in 2004 the journalist Stuart Cosgrove criticised Aiden McGeady’s choice to play football for the Republic of Ireland, the country of his grandparents’ birth, instead of Scotland where he was born. Cosgrove claimed McGeady’s choice was representative of international football’s descent to the level of a “Woolworths pick and mix”. How a long history of cross-border flows of people between Scotland and Ireland has affected how people identify themselves in complex ways is dismissed as “pick and mix”. In other words, mongrel-like or not “authentic”. Like many other football journalists, Cosgrove was theorising about what constitutes national identity albeit in a comedic fashion. Cosgrove, like many commentators, employed an uncritical definition of nation as the place of one’s birth to criticise how an 18 year old footballer identified himself. His idea of national identity is exclusionary: you are simply with us (people born in Scotland who call themselves Scottish) or against us (people born in Scotland who call themselves Irish). There can be no middle ground. In a liberal democracy, which seeks to reject sectarianism, this self-identification should be an individual’s decision and the individual’s decision alone. The greatest problem here is not that people have this view of national identity. The problem is that such intolerance of those who identify themselves in a different way is left unchallenged because it is seen as belonging to the realm of football and “banter”. Thousands of people tune in to similar debates on radio stations and in print- this is influence without responsibility. Such football journalists are unwittingly imagining the boundaries of the nation through their writing. They define what it means to be Scottish and frequently exclude those who choose to celebrate what they understand to be their Irish heritage.

Dr John Kelly of the University of Edinburgh argues that the public discourse on sectarianism constructs a unified, non-sectarian identity that purportedly “real” and “authentic” Scots should share in opposition to a set of sectarian ‘Others’. In other words, by excluding certain characteristics, this discourse imagines what it means to be Scottish. In 2006 the now retired pundit, Gerry McNee, dismissed the Fields of Athenry and The Boys of the Old Brigade sung by Celtic fans along with the Sash and Derry’s Walls, often sung by Rangers fans, as “Irish tosh” “we need to get rid of”. In other words, “real” and “authentic” Scots have enclosed national identities without the “sectarian” cross-border influence from Ireland. This is of course ironic. The Sash and Derry’s walls are sung by Rangers supporters and proponents of the British Union in Northern Ireland to celebrate Britishness and how they identify themselves as not being part of Ireland. McNee’s comments were reflective of a widespread simplistic view of complex social issues that “sectarianism” comes from some barbaric outside world which we should contrast our civilised selves against.

Dismissing people’s views as “Irish tosh” because they sing songs to commemorate what they see as their British or Irish heritage narrowly draws the boundaries of acceptable public identification such that people feel their identities are under threat. This imagines Scotland as some enclosed, discrete community yet our history tells us the borders between Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Scotland are very fluid and the trans-border flows of migration are a constant. Being Irish or being British does not make one a bigot but refusing to allow people to understand themselves this way does. As Dr John Kelly noted in his written submission to the Justice Committee on the “anti-sectarianism bill”, celebration of one’s identity is not a social problem unless this involves hatred of other identities. People can disagree over the nationalist political sentiments expressed in The Boys of the Old Brigade or Derry’s Walls but it is difficult find anything in the songs themselves which express hatred of other identities. There are intolerable, racist songs sung in Scottish football grounds which is another issue altogether. However, it would be highly illiberal to criminalise songs because they celebrate identities which are not “authentically” Scottish or because we disagree with their political sentiments.

National identities can be multiple, especially in the United Kingdom. As Benedict Anderson asked “to what nation does the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland refer?”. One can be Scottish and Irish at the same time- the two countries are not sealed off and people travel and have inter-married for a very long time. One can also be Scottish and British at the same time. Many will argue it is impossible to be Irish and British but is this difference really a problem? Difference is not a problem but how it is socially organised can be. If we criminalise or marginalise people not because they hate the Other but because they see themselves as Irish or British we will create resentment and create a much more serious national conflict than we currently witness. Politicians and tourist boards can imagine an enclosed, culturally isolated Scotland but our history has different stories which should be told. If we want Scotland to be a nation of many cultures we have to allow its people celebrate their many origins.

There is No Hierarchy of Sectarianisms

Audre Lorde once said “there is no hierarchy of oppressions” and in Scotland we should be cautious not to create one. 2011 has seen the Scottish parliament attempt to draft and hastily pass legislation on what is publicly celebrated in the political soundbite of “anti-sectarianism legislation” ("Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications Bill"). The rushed draft illustrates little consideration of what sectarianism means and subsequently employs an imbalanced definition. The stated purpose of the legislation is to criminalise behaviour that expresses “hatred of, or stirring up hatred against, a group of persons based on their membership (or presumed membership) of a religious group, a social or cultural group with a perceived religious affiliation”. There are provisions for applying this to hatred against groups other than religious ones but these are sub-sectional clauses. They do not apply to section 5, a crucial part of the bill, which covers all recorded forms of speech. The emphasis is on discrimination or “stirring hatred” against groups defined by religion. The Scottish council of Jewish Communities astutely raised the problem that this “risks creating a hierarchy of discrimination”. This would mean that we only discuss “sectarianism” and prejudice in terms of religion thus ignoring ethnocentrism and racism.

No public debate over the meaning of sectarianism has taken place despite widespread calls for one, including from the Harps Community Project, an Irish cultural association, and the Rangers Supporters’ Assembly. There is no agreed academic definition of sectarianism but its use presumes and perhaps normatively demands a higher, enclosed form of national identification. One definition of sectarianism, which circulates widely in the media and on internet forums comes from Wikipedia: "bigotry, discrimination, or hatred arising from attaching importance to perceived differences between subdivisions within a group, such as between different denominations of a religion or factions of a political movement". This presumes the existence of a unified group in the first place; some common identity which is being split between internal sects. However, the issue at hand is tension over group identification itself: people identifying with two different group categories (Irish and British) and competing for recognition and sometimes dominance. Nil By Mouth the leading Scottish charity, which challenges sectarianism, defines sectarianism as “Narrow-minded beliefs that lead to prejudice, discrimination, malice and ill-will towards members, or presumed members, of a religious denomination”. This defines and stigmatises sectarianism as purely a religious issue. This is not an academic exercise- how we define the word could determine who is to be imprisoned for up to 5 years under the new legislation. Without an informed and public debate people will continue to conflate and confuse nationality and religion. The comments of Police Federation Chairman, Les Gray, typified this confusion when he is quoted as conflating a 17^th century King of Scotland, England, and Ireland with a contemporary religious leader: "I've been in homes with King Billy on the wall and on the other side with the Pope on the wall, and both sides are just as bad.".

This is not to say that “sectarianism” has nothing to do with religion. However, it is unconvincing to frame the violence on the streets of Scotland after Celtic and Rangers play football and amongst men who do not attend church through the prism of the “Great Schism of Western Christianity” (1378-1416) or the Reformation beginning in the 16^th century. Some Celtic fans do choose to sing ‘Roamin in the Gloamin’ (“Fuck King Billy and John Knox”) and some Rangers fans choose to sing ‘No Pope of Rome’ (“No chapels to sadden my eyes”). These songs clearly emphasise religious identification and some would argue hatred of a religious Other. However, it is difficult rely on religion to explain why many more Celtic fans choose to sing The Soldier’s Song, the Irish national anthem, and Rangers fans, Rule Britannia. It seems misleading to discuss “sectarianism” or so-called “sectarian identities” without reference to nationalism and national identities.

In public political debates, there has been too little mention of the competing views on what nation(s) we belong to when we see Scottish, Irish, Northern Irish, and British flags being waved at our football grounds, some of which rightly or wrongly spark antagonism. It is this antagonism which is often at the heart of tensions we tend to describe as “sectarian”. One song sung by Rangers fans and cited as racist and sectarian by Celtic fans is The Famine Song (“the famine is over, why don’t you go home?”). This song does not refer to religion. The song is about telling descendents of Irish immigrants they are no longer welcome in the nation of Scotland and that they should return to their “home” nation. Many Rangers fans and Strathclyde Police assert that The Boys of the Old Brigade is equally “sectarian” (“On Easter morn’ I sigh, for I recall my comrades all, and dark old days gone by”). The song laments the loss of life during the Easter Rising, in which Catholics and Protestants participated. The reference to joining the IRA in the song is what is cited on the blogs of Rangers supporters as “sectarian” and crucially “anti-British”. Framing how people think about Irish history today solely through the prism of religion is problematic when people today know Protestants and Catholics alike participated in the Easter Rising. This religious prism fails to help us understand that at heart what is being criticised as sectarian in The Boys of the Old Brigade is about national boundaries not simply religious ones: “anti-British” not anti-Protestant.

The main concern raised in the Rangers Supporters Assembly’s contribution to the Scottish Parliament’s justice committee was that of the singing of “non-patriotic songs”. This presumably refers to songs which are patriotic towards Ireland over Britain such as The Boys of the Old Brigade. The Rangers Supporters Assembly claim this should be included as a prosecutable offence under the new legislation, illustrating the tensions over national identification being played out here. Online debates amongst Rangers fans and indeed former Rangers director Donald Findlay QC have sought to redefine the term “Fenian” from common usage on Scotland’s streets as a general slur with anti-Catholic connotations against Celtic fans to now mean Irish nationalists. “Fenian bastard” is then argued to be a permissible phrase because it insults and excludes people on the basis of their national and political identification. However, it seems unreasonable to argue that it is unacceptable to stir hatred against religious groups but it is acceptable to stir hatred against groups defined by national identification.

The Harps Community Project said “preconceptions surrounding cultural expression and identity with reference to Scotland’s Irish community must be discussed out-with this enforced sectarian narrative of Catholic versus Protestant”. In other words, national heritage should not be understood within an unconsciously bigoted framing of Scottish to mean Protestant and Irish as Catholic. Singing the Boys of the Old Brigade or Derry’s Walls may reveal something about someone’s national identity or their politics but it does not directly express religious hatred and it tells us nothing about someone’s religion. Hatred of the Other should not be tolerated but by defining “sectarianism” in purely religious terms we ignore the competing national identities, which are often at the heart of these communal tensions. Rogers Brubaker, an eminent expert on Nationalism, tells us national conflicts are not resolved- politicians can’t suddenly change how people identify themselves. What they can do is help create an environment in which conflict is less necessary and those identities have less political relevance. Allowing people to celebrate how they identify themselves without fear of persecution, providing they are not celebrating hatred against other groups, would help create such an environment. Creating a hierarchy of sectarianisms where we can abuse people on the grounds of national identification but not on religion may do the opposite.