The Cambridge Globalist Vol. III (Nov. 2014)

VOLUME I ISSUE III, NOV. 2014

Going Viral: the Human Impact on Emerging Infections | Where Education and Wealth Fails: Demystifying the Causes of Terrorism | Anonymou$ | Regulating Bankers: Can we Stop the Rot? | Polio: the CIA’s Latest Undercover Agent | Factory Bound: Gender Inequality in China | Changemaking |

A New Social Medicine | Equality as Principle Versus Equality as Principle Applied | Brazil Between the Shots / / a Playoff for Public Space

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E D I T O R I A L T E A M

Editors-in-Chief

Section Editors

PoliticsEconomics

CultureScience &Technology

Finance Director

Publication Designer

Emily Fitzell Mossy Wittenberg

Kenza BryanJamie ParkerSophie AshfordTom Evans

Ravi Solanki

Ella Jackson www.ella-jackson.com

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“A really extraordinary accomplishment” - John Fisher Burns, Pulitzer Prize-winning London Bureau Chief for The New York Times

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Going Viral: the Human Impact on Emerging Infections

Grace Macklin

Where Education and Wealth Fails: Demystifying the Causes of

TerrorismHelena Roy

Anonymou$Mossy Wittenberg

Regulating Bankers: Can we Stop the Rot?

Jamie Parker

Polio: the CIA’s Latest Undercover Agent

Amy Dighe

Factory Bound: Gender Inequality in China

Mara Budgen

ChangemakingRavi Solanki

A New Social MedicineGuy James

Equality as Principle Versus Equality as Principle Applied

Xavier Bisits

// Brazil Between the Shots // Emily Fitzell

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Disclaimer:The views, opinions and content of this publication are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the

views of the Cambridge Globalist.

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GOING VIRAL : THE HUMAN IMPACT ON EMERGING INFECTIONS

GRACE MACkLIN

Biological Natural Sciences, Gonville & Caius (2012) Photograph by NIAID of Ebola Virus partile at 15,000x magnification

In 1963, T. Aiden Cockburn, a respected physician and anthropologist, proclaimed: “We can look forward with confidence to a considerable degree of freedom from infectious diseases at a time not too far in the future. Indeed… it seems reasonable to anticipate that within some measurable time… all the major infections will have disappeared.”

This naïve belief prevailed in the mid-20th century. The prospect of eliminating major factors facilitating the spread of infectious disease (though improved sanitation, better socioeconomic conditions and medical breakthroughs for antibiotics and vaccination) gave hope for a future in which infectious disease would be consigned to history. The human population welcomed the prospect of a future free of infection.

However, the decades following this statement saw the emergence of a plethora of viral infections, the most notable being Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), first isolated in 1983; Hepatitis C, identified in 1989; Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which emerged in late 2002; and now Ebola. First identified in humans in 1976, the virus currently carries the threat of global outbreak, which the Centres of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) predicts could result in up to 1.4 million cases by January 2015. So what happened to Cockburn’s vision of a world free from disease?

To answer this question, we have to understand what causes a viral infection to emerge in the first place. Emerging viral infections aren’t always necessarily new in a population; they might have existed previously, but are increasing in incidence or geographical range. At a molecular level, mutations within the genetic code of the pathogen can alter the virus to facilitate its emergence. Mutation is a fundamental fact of life; and most importantly (in terms of managing a disease outbreak) it is largely out of our control.

But alongside mutational changes within the pathogen, the responsibility for emerging viral infections can also lie with changes in the environment or host population. These are factors for which we have ultimate responsibility. The media regularly informs us of the negative implications of human behaviour on the planet, from the damage we are doing to the environment, to the consequences of exponential population growth and depleting resources. Yet it is rarely highlighted that our anthropogenic social and environmental modifications are also facilitating and conceivably even inducing the emergence of novel and pre-existing viral infections. Environmental modifications, such as deforestation and climate change, alongside ever-changing and modernising human population dynamics, behaviour and density are actually creating new pathways from which viruses can emanate.

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) emerged in late 2002 in China’s Guangdong providence with devastating effect, becoming a major global health threat within two months. SARS presented itself as an uncharacteristic form of pneumonia, with individuals developing severe respiratory compromise. Its symptoms developed rapidly, to serious effect; patients required ventilatory support and in many cases the disease induced multiple organ failure. By early 2003, SARS had spread from Hong Kong to more than 300 countries worldwide, infecting over 8000 people with a 10% fatality rate. It provoked

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large-scale quarantine around Asia and finally resulted in the World Health Organization issuing a global alert for the first time in more than a decade. On March 27th 2003, Hong Kong closed all its schools and quarantined more than 1000 people. In the succeeding two weeks, alarm and caution resonated around the globe: Malaysia refused entry visas to Chinese travellers, and in Thailand all passengers and crew members on aeroplanes were quarantined if anyone on board was found with symptoms. Citizens were told not to travel to China and Hong Kong unless it was absolutely necessary.

The origin of the SARS virus was traced back to the Horseshoe bat, its natural host. As a novel coronavirus (the cause of the common cold) which was distinct from those known to be in existence, it was able spread with the momentum witnessed during the outbreak, transmitted rapidly via the respiratory route. There were several factors that contributed to the emergence of SARS in the human population and its rapid global transmission. In China, livestock markets are rife with captive wild bats, usually placed in the vicinity of another susceptible mammalian species: the Civet cat. Through such livestock markets, humans put animals in unnaturally close proximity, promoting the spread of infections between species. The virus therefore spread from Horseshoe bats to Civet cats, which are consumed as a delicacy in China’s Guangdong Providence. As a result, the virus transferred from Civets to humans in this region. A mutation in the virus supported this transmission to the human population and the mutation allowed it to infect humans more efficiently.

Health officials reported in early 2003 that the majority of SARS cases in Hong Kong could be tracked down to a single doctor that treated patients in Guangdong. The doctor travelled back to Hong Kong on February 21st, where he infected several members of the public staying in the same hotel. Subsequently, SARS began to spread around Hong Kong; then from Hong Kong to the rest of the world. This extensive transmission was caused by frequent and rapid air travel, which was amplified by virtue of Hong Kong being a global travel hub. The time it takes to travel to a city on the other side of the world is significantly shorter than the incubation period of most infectious diseases: the time elapsed between exposure to a pathogen and the initial appearance of symptoms. As a result, people were delivering SARS to uninfected countries without the slightest awareness. Like W.H Auden’s arriving stranger in his haunting poem Gare du Midi, the airborne passengers landed to “infect a city whose terrible future may just have arrived”.

We can therefore attribute the rapid emergence and devastating geographical extent of SARS to humans, and more specifically, to our livestock markets, which caused unnatural and artificial relationships of close proximity between animals; our consumption of food from these markets; and extensive global

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The time it takes to travel to a city on the other side of the world is significantly shorter than the incubation period of most

infectious diseases: the time elapsed between exposure to a pathogen and the initial appearance of symptoms.

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travel. It has been estimated that at any time there are more than 500,000 people in the air at once. Indeed, this is a key factor in fostering the spread of all infectious disease from contained countries, not just SARS. It seems fair to conclude then that we are to blame for the emergence of the SARS virus in the human population.

SARS is far from the only disease whose emergence we have facilitated. Dengue Virus is over two-centuries old, but it is currently the most rapidly spreading mosquito-borne viral disease in the world. As a result of anthropogenic social and environmental changes in the modern world, Dengue incidence has increased 30-fold over the last 50 years, specifically influenced by population growth, urbanisation of the tropics and climate change. Each year it produces around 50 million new infections and at least 1200 deaths worldwide, mainly among children. Originally, Dengue fever was contained to non-human primate hosts in the jungle and transmitted by the Aedes stegomia mosquito. Though transmission to humans sometimes occurred, it was extremely rare. However, human modification to the natural dengue environment has led to an explosion of the virus into the human population. Destruction and clearing of the jungle for human habitation brought humans into close proximity with the natural hosts of Dengue, facilitating the movement of the virus between the different species. Simultaneously, the virus acquired a mutation causing a more proficient infection of the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which prefers to bite humans to other animal species, thereby increasing the incidence of human infections. Human destruction of habitats, however, is not the sole accountable factor for the rapid spread of Dengue among the human population. The virus requires high population densities to carry out efficient transmission, which recent population growth has provided. Improper disposal of artificial refuse by humans has also augmented the outbreaks. Discarded refuse collects stagnant water, which acts as a basin for mosquito eggs and consequently supports mosquito reproduction.

Furthermore, as anthropogenic climate change has increased, the spatial distribution of the Dengue vector, Aedes aegypti, has increased over the last 25 years. Greater rainfall in certain areas and warmer temperatures have provided expanding areas with optimal conditions for the mosquitos, allowing them to broaden their geographical range from its usual confinement of tropical regions. There have recently been outbreaks in Florida, which has not seen Dengue in over 40 years: a consequence of the increasing prevalence of the Aedes aegypti mosquito across the USA. Additionally, higher temperatures reduce the time that the virus requires to replicate and disseminate within the mosquito; this extrinsic incubation period is essential for the virus to reach the mosquito salivary glands and transmit to humans during mosquito feeding. Increased temperatures subsequently allow the mosquito to be infectious to humans for a longer time period and infect more people in their lifetime. Dr. Felipe Colón-González from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at UEA predicts that the “mean annual Dengue incidence may increase by about 12—18% by 2030, 22—31% by 2050, and 33—42% by 2080 across Mexico showing an increasing effect of climate change on Dengue” in ‘The Effects of Weather and Climate Change on Dengue’. It is evident that this cumulative growth in the geographical range habitable for mosquitos increases not only the range of Dengue, but also the reach of other mosquito-transmitted

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diseases, such as Yellow Fever and Malaria. The recent eruption of Dengue incidence is an apt illustration of how the environmental changes resulting from human activity and changing social dynamics have greatly facilitated the emanation of viruses over the past few decades.

As the current fear of Ebola consumes scientists and civilians around the globe, we attempt to decipher why this outbreak, which has at present exceeded 10,000 cases, came to surface and if human behaviour is rooted at the cause. The first human outbreak of Ebola was recorded in 1976 in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Human and primate cases are zoonotic outbreaks, following transmission from the natural host. However, this natural host was only identified in 2005, when a ‘trapping’ exercise revealed it as the fruit bat, which carries the virus asymptomatically. A hypothesised explanation for outbreaks of Ebola returns to those underlying factors seen in SARS and Dengue: consumption of animal meat and climate change. Historically, outbreaks of Ebola have occurred during periods of drought. It is thought that when the environmental pressure of a drought brings together diverse groups of animals in search of scarce food and water, the close proximity of these animals facilitates transmission from the bat reservoir to other animals, such as chimpanzees and gorillas. Human consumption of this ‘bush meat’ can therefore transfer the disease into the human population. Starving humans are also more likely to eat food they would normally avoid, such as dead bats on forest floors.

The exact cause of the current outbreak in West Africa is unknown, but it is speculated that it maybe a direct result of the longer dry season this year – a probable effect of climate change. If this is indeed found to be the case, then we must accept that human behaviour is partially responsible for the outbreak. These possible causes highlight the repetitive nature of human impact on emerging infections. With the WHO stating that the Ebola incubation period can vary from 2 to 21 days, there is a legitimate fear that airborne travel could spread the disease around the world, as we saw previously with SARS.

While man continues to plunder the environment at a rate previously unparalleled, aided by technology and with little regard for the consequences, T. Aiden Cockburn’s statement seems not only premature but also increasingly unrealistic. In a global context, where we are creating attenuating geographical and interspecific boundaries, it appears that new viruses will continue to emerge and challenge the human population for the foreseeable future. Current debates on the impact of climate change and need for sustainability are not the only grave considerations about our continuing disregard of the environment. The underlying anthropogenic contributions to the emergence of infectious diseases need to be addressed and broadcast with more attention and urgency. This is crucial if we are to reduce the role humans play in emerging infections and develop a more defensible civilisation and environment.

Like W.H Auden’s arriving stranger in his haunting poem Gare du Midi, the airborne passengers landed to “infect a city whose

terrible future may just have arrived”.

WHERE EDUCATION AND WEALTH FAILS: DEMySTIFyING THE CAUSES OF

TERRORISM HELENA ROy

Economics, Pembroke (2013) Photograph by Coby Bidwell

On September 19th 2001, in response to the 9/11 attacks, the then State Senator Barack Obama wrote in The Hyde Park Herald that the “fundamental

absence of empathy on the part of the attackers… grows out of a climate of poverty, ignorance, helplessness and despair.” At the same time, George Bush revealed one strand of his foreign policy in a similar way, stating: “We

fight against poverty because hope is an answer to terror.”

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These canonical statements imply that it is economic deprivation and a lack of education that breeds terrorists, fostering bitterness and extreme views in troubled regions. But this is a reassuringly simple answer to an unnervingly complex problem. It fits nicely with a materialistic Western understanding of empowerment, implying that the sociopathic nature of murderous terrorist attacks is a product of ignorance and economic envy. Among the more recent adherents of this viewpoint have been highly regarded figures and organisations such as Rowan Williams, the Muslim Council of Britain and Muhammad Yunus.

And yet, defining “terrorism” as premeditated and politically motivated violence, terrorists are in fact more likely to be drawn from relatively high-income, well-educated backgrounds. As a 2007 study by Prof. Krueger of Princeton University reveals, terrorism is not a product of inferior education or economic power. Terrorists do not explicitly seek financial rewards for their actions, and rarely cite academic drought as their motive.

Rather, terrorists are often born from an environment in which civil liberties are suppressed. The educated individual becomes willing to pursue a political grievance through violence when there are few alternatives available. Improved education and lifting people out of poverty should be pursued as ends in themselves, but they are in no way guaranteed to prevent fanatical attacks.Terrorists are more likely to be educated and relatively wealthy

Two-thirds of the 25 terrorists involved in the planning and hijacking of the four aircraft in the 9/11 attacks had attended university. More recently, would-be medical student Nasser Muthana from Britain appeared in a video filmed in Syria and linked to Islamic State (formerly known as ISIS) entitled ‘There is no life without Jihad’. His heartbroken father described him as quiet, well-educated and intelligent.

If poverty and poor education had a strong motivating relationship with terrorism, we would all be in immediate peril. Almost half the world’s population lives on less than $2.50 a day, and nearly one billion people entered the millennium unable to read a book or sign their names. These variables should be regarded as peripheral causes at the very most.

Think about it in terms of a simple supply-demand model. On the supply side,

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the material opportunity cost of committing suicide implies that terrorists should be drawn mainly from low-income groups. However, committing oneself to fanatical extremism requires an understanding of the wider political issues at stake, and this tends to be more common among the highly educated. People with less material wealth tend to prioritise physical gains over ideological goals – and terrorism is rarely concerned with fulfilling the former.

On the demand side, many terrorist organisations have no shortage of people willing to end their lives in the name of a political grievance. So they screen participants, favouring those who are less visible to the authorities and most likely to succeed. To avoid predictability, they often adopt a somewhat random strategy in order to escape an easily recognisable profile.

Combined, these trends point to two conclusions. Firstly, better-educated terrorists are generally chosen from a large and varied pool, heightening the likelihood that terrorists will be from affluent backgrounds. Secondly, the supply side is far more difficult to tackle than the demand side. There will probably always be people driven to extremes by a grievance, and the varied nature of these people makes it difficult to profile a ‘typical’ terrorist. The demand side is easier to combat. Demand for terrorism is not reduced through increased wealth or education, but through offering solid alternatives of political expression; which may, in turn, decrease supply.

TERRoRISM IS AN ATyPICAL FoRM oF VoTING

So poverty and poor education cannot entirely explain terrorism. Consider it, then, as a particular criminal occupation. The literature on crime sees criminal activity, economic and academic deprivation as intrinsically and positively linked; but only in the instance of property crime. As studies by Piehl (1998) and Ruhm (2000) demonstrate, there is no relationship between poverty, education and the likelihood of perpetrating a violent crime. Low-level, petty crime is prevalent amongst the poor as an economic end in order to survive; violent crime is caused by entirely different psychological motives largely unrelated to material gain.

Or instead, analogise terrorism to voting. Terrorism is a vicious and inept form of political expression. Congruously, people with better education vote in larger numbers than the uneducated, because, in spite of higher opportunity costs, the former perceive a greater benefit from participating in the process than the latter (and find it less costly to form views to express). In fact, in Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan and Turkey in 2004, those with higher levels of education were more likely to argue that suicide attacks against Americans and Westerners in Iraq were justifiable. Those with a lower level of education were more likely to reply ‘no opinion’.

TERRoRISM IS BRED NoT FRoM A LACk oF ACADEMIC oR ECoNoMIC oPPoRTUNITIES, BUT FRoM SUPPRESSED CIVIL

LIBERTIES

Based on a sample of 11,026 data points, with perpetrators and victims from different countries, and using a sophisticated binomial regression, Professor

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Krueger’s study (mentioned above) drew some useful conclusions. First, that the provision of civil liberties in a given country was negatively related to originating terrorists, and positively related to being targeted. Second, that being an occupier is positively related to being targeted, and being occupied has a positive effect on becoming a terrorist.

International terrorists are more likely to come from nations that suppress civil liberties. The relationships between the number of international terrorists that originate from the country and the nation’s per capita income or illiteracy rate (as a proxy to education) are statistically insignificant. Being home to a large population of Muslims, or a large population of Christians, similarly has no significant effect. Adding to the complexity, international terrorism was also found to be less likely to occur between pairs of countries with different predominant religious groups.

Suppressing political rights consistently raises the likelihood that citizens of a given country will partake in terrorism. Suicide missions hit Western targets not because they are affiliated with wealth and education, but because the West is influential, and terrorism has a greater chance of success against a democracy than an autocracy.

Terrorists aim to further political goals, such as forcing a foreign power to withdraw, or influencing the result on an election. Often too weak to wage civil war, terrorists spread fear through the population so as to pressure voters into selecting political change. Empirically, terrorism has influenced political outcomes. In Israel, terrorist attacks within the three months running up to an election were associated with a 1.35 percentage point increase in support for right-block parties – a significant margin given the closeness of most Israeli elections. The closer the attacks are to the election, the greater the impact they are likely to have.

What this shows is that preventing terrorism is achieved best by domestic political reform, ensuring the representation of minorities, securing freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and the presence of an independent judiciary. Terrorism is political expression when voting or peaceful methods of protest are no longer a means to an end.

A failure to understand the significance of representative politics is central in assisting organisations such as Islamic State in Iraq – or Nouri al-Maliki’s failure Maliki ruled as a proto-dictator. Stridently sectarian, he made every effort to marginalise the Sunni minority. Educated Britons and Europeans, as well as those from advantaged backgrounds in Iraq, have joined Islamic State. Most of IS’s many allies in Iraq say they do not seek conquest, but autonomy for Sunnis or a fairer share of representation in a truly united Iraq. Jessica Lewis, at the Institute for the Study of War, points out that “[IS] have shadow governments in and around Baghdad” and an “aspirational goal to govern.”

Powerful enough to capture cities and key infrastructure, IS have demonstrated in Iraq how broader repressions of individual freedoms strengthen a terrorist cause. From random attacks to full conflict, depriving sectors of society of civil liberties increases the supply of terrorists and the demand for willing fighters

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when peaceful protest fails. The Sunnis of Iraq are not driven to support IS for economic gain. They do not follow the black flag because they are poorly educated. They see IS as allies who can redress the grievances brought by the Maliki government, which at best ignored the Sunnis, and at worst persecuted them.

CoNCLUSIoNS

If favourable economic circumstances go any way to reducing terrorism, it is by raising the likelihood that a country can also sustain civil liberties and political rights. Greater wealth and improved education alone are insufficient. In Obama’s address on counter-terrorism last May, he argued that “foreign assistance cannot be viewed as charity. It is fundamental to our national security and it’s fundamental to any sensible long-term strategy to battle extremism.” Such aid would, he said, create “reservoirs of goodwill that marginalise extremists”. Though politically useful, these solutions fail to address the fundamental causes of terrorism.

Terrorism is an application of the economics of occupational choice, and is intrinsically tied to a country’s political climate. It is used as a tactical alternative to voting when voting is merely a pretence or is absent altogether. It is not viable to continue declaring a war on a tactic, and a “war on terror” cannot be waged by occupying countries with a propensity for originating international terrorists and trying to educate them.

Domestic political reform, and ensuring full representation, is the only path to reduced terrorism. When non-violent methods are verifiable means to achieve political ends, the opportunity cost of terrorism increases, and both supply and demand plummet.

Yet despite plain evidence, governments continually fall into the same trap. We see this in Iraq and Egypt, where suppressing freedom of speech as a vehicle for a political expression will drive citizens to violent alternatives. Similarly, the West continually encourages political and civil repression through its support of detested regimes for largely material purposes, whether through direct or indirect backing, and then mistakes the source of terrorism as envy resulting from economic disenfranchisement.

Support for civil liberties should, according to Krueger, provide “the arsenal in the war on terrorism”. Civil liberties, wealth and education often coincide, but the former is the key to stopping terrorism.

Suicide missions hit Western targets not because they are affiliated with wealth and education, but because the West is influential, and terrorism has

a greater chance of success against a democracy than an autocracy.

Above a certain amount, cash ceases to be useful. Anyone making serious profits from criminal activity needs the money in a less suspicious, more amenable form – in a bank account to start with, and then perhaps invested in something more exciting: a helicopter (Arnoldo Aléman, corrupt ex-President of Nicaragua), or a $15 million New York apartment (Sun Min and Peter Mok Fung, insider traders on the Hong Kong Exchange). This transformation requires two things. The first is a bank willing to accept the money. The second is some sort of corporate structure, to take ownership of the funds and obscure the identity of the people who own and benefit from them.

There are numerous places in which it is possible to incorporate a company whilst remaining mostly or completely anonymous. These include famous Caribbean tax havens like the British Virgin Islands and the Bahamas, but also destinations which one might have thought more legitimate: Germany, for example, and several US states (most notoriously Delaware). Of course, selling to Ponzi & Co. of the Bahamas is likely to make a law-abiding business uneasy. Moral compunction aside, established business destinations have due diligence regulation, falling foul of which can result in severe penalties. Riggs, once the largest bank operating in Washington D.C., was forced to sell up at a huge discount after being convicted of accepting millions of dollars from anonymous companies in the Bahamas during the nineties – which, as officials at Riggs almost certainly knew, were linked to massive corruption under the Pinochet regime in Chile.

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ANONyMOU$

MOSSy WITTENBERG

English, Corpus Christi (2012) Photograph by PhotoGraham

But in a large number of countries it is possible to register a company in the name of another company located elsewhere, or to hire a complete stranger as nominee director. So criminal activity making use of corporate anonymity typically involves a chain: profits from official corruption in Russia could pass through a company in the British Virgin Islands, via one in Washington, to a trust in Australia and from there into Australian bank bonds, without causing much suspicion at the receiving end.

I spent July volunteering with Global Witness, an NGO focusing on investigative journalism and advocacy, as part of its campaign to end anonymous companies worldwide. This is an ambitious goal. Anonymous company practices are entrenched in numerous jurisdictions and feature in the corporate structures of some of the world’s largest businesses (in perfectly legal, if occasionally questionable ways). In places like the British Virgin Islands, anonymous companies represent an integral part of the economy.

But the range and number of criminal cases in which such companies appear, and the sums frequently involved, highlight the need for Global Witness’s campaign. At one end of the scale are cases involving collusion, bribery, tax evasion, and the like. Alongside their role in laundering the proceeds, anonymous companies often play a direct role in such corruption. For example, during the noughties, James Ibori (a UK national who, before becoming a Nigerian state governor, worked as a cashier at the hardware chain Wickes) created anonymous companies to bid for major contracts from his own government. The bidding process was of course a sham: Ibori’s companies were guaranteed success and so he awarded the money – tens of millions of pounds – to himself. In contrast, despite its vast natural resource wealth, more than 60% of the population in the Nigerian region Ibori governed live on a dollar or less per day.At the other end of the scale, anonymous companies facilitate the trafficking of drugs, people, and the weaponry which fuels violent conflict across the globe. Liberian companies, for example, which do not even require a registered address within the country, were particularly useful to those fostering and profiting from the 1991-2002 civil war in neighbouring Sierra Leone, which left more than 50,000 dead.

It may seem a generalisation, but large scale crime necessarily involves large sums of money: some sort of illicit or corrupt financial practice almost invariably accompanies major criminal activity. And anonymous companies represent an effective and straightforward way to obscure the identity of its perpetrators and beneficiaries.

Global Witness and their partners have had some success in their campaign to end anonymous companies. In 2013, David Cameron announced that the

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... profits from official corruption in Russia could pass through a company in the British Virgin Islands, via one in Washington, to a trust in Australia and from there into Australian bank bonds, without causing much suspicion...

UK would make information available on the real ownership of most British companies. He commented that: “For too long a small minority have hidden their business dealings behind a complicated web of shell companies, and this cloak of secrecy has fuelled all manners of questionable practice and downright illegality.”

This is a major step, both in the precedent it sets and because British companies have frequently been involved in money laundering and other criminal activity. One of the biggest cases I researched whilst at Global Witness involved two of Vladimir Putin’s associates, who used a British company with nominee owners to inflate the cost of the essential medical equipment they supplied to the Russian state. Around $50 million of their vast profits appear to have been spent on a luxurious estate near the Black Sea.

But whilst the British government is exercising a reasonable amount of power to curb “questionable practice and downright illegality”, it is worth noting that some of the most crooked incorporation locations of all, like Gibraltar and the British Virgin Islands, are attractive precisely because of their British Overseas Territory status, which is seen as a guarantee of financial stability. The Territories are self-governing, but the link means that the UK government cannot be considered to have fully cleaned its hands of the issue.

Despite the clear importance of Global Witness’s campaign, I struggled at points with how intangible it is. It was hard to find motivation in the feeling that what I was doing was immediately useful: broadly speaking, it is not possible to go and meet someone who feels they, specifically, are a victim of financial corruption. Of course one could meet with a Russian citizen who felt failed by the country’s health system, or with a victim of the civil war in Sierra Leone. But neither would be likely to pin their suffering on illicit financial structures, even though these are undoubtedly an integral factor in the problem.

But corruption in a sense claims more victims than any other category of crime. The Department for International Development has described corruption as the greatest single threat to its work, and Ban Ki-moon called it a “threat to development, democracy and stability”. The situation of Equatorial Guinea underlines this: despite a per capita GDP of more than $30,000—the twentieth highest in the world—the country is ranked in the bottom third of the UN’s Human Development Index. Notwithstanding, the son of the country’s president recently used a British Virgin Islands company to buy himself a private jet.

It is not only people in developing countries who lose out. The effectiveness of anonymous company structures makes it impossible to calculate the scale of the issue: there is likely to be significantly more money moving illicitly around the globe than one could reasonably account for in an estimate. But the damage done to the global economy each year is significant, including the potential growth lost because of lack of competition, the public money lost on inflated government contracts, the portions stolen from aid budgets and the numerous challenges presented to businesses by corruption. The combination of such factors undoubtedly impacts developed national economies which means that, even if only by a little, it lightens our own wallets too.

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REGULATING BANkERS:

CAN WE STOP THE ROT? JAMIE PARkER

Economics, Corpus Christi (2013) Photograph by POSTBEAR

The fallout from the 2008 financial crisis was felt almost immediately. Governments around the developed world, having spent the previous decade ‘asleep at the wheel’, hurried furiously to introduce a flurry of new restrictions and regulations on banks. It did not take long for a ‘something-must-be-done’ mentality to resonate not only in Britain, but in the United States and Europe too.

There is now some consensus across the political spectrum that the excesses of unfettered capitalism must be tamed. The argument for a minimalist ‘light touch’ to financial services is morally bankrupt. But six years on from the crisis, and with bankers being paid record bonuses, has enough been done to ‘help to stop the rot’?

Crises go hand in hand with reform. They hold a mirror up to society and challenge the wisdom of previously accepted norms. In this respect, 2007/8 was no different. Since the recession, financial services have become as much a political liability as they have an economic asset. Eager to engage with disenchanted voters, both the Obama and Cameron administrations have promised to mend their broken banks.

Yet the appetite for a revolutionary overhaul of the financial system appears now to have faded into distant memory. As corporate banks dust themselves down and recapitalise their balance sheets, the temptation is simply to relapse into bad habits of the past.

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Avoiding this temptation is no easy task. Banks are not like other businesses. Financial services contributed £65bn in tax revenues to the Treasury in 2012/13, higher than any other sector of the economy. They also employ 1.1 million people in the UK alone. Fear that stifling regulations will undermine London’s competitiveness explains, in part, the lethargy with which the governments have been willing to countenance revolutionary reform.

Calls for financial prudence also come at a time when banks are being criticised heavily for their tight-fistedness and unwillingness to lend. Hereto, the conflict of interest is clear. Banks cannot both save for a rainy day and at the same time lend extensively to businesses and households. At the moment, the government seems to have trapped them between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

A comprehensively regulated and sustainable financial system must not be sacrificed in favour of political expediency and short-term economic growth.The key will be balance. Banks must return to practicing intermediary functions and engage in more ‘boring banking’. However, they must also be free to pursue the commercial objective of profitability. Risks, where they are calculated and proportionate, are not incompatible with economic resilience and stability.

It is important too that banks are not led to believe they are somehow immune from insolvency or collapse. During the crisis, the problem of moral hazard became immediately apparent. If bankers know that the taxpayer will be waiting with a box of tissues and a blank cheque when things go wrong, the incentive to behave responsibly is fundamentally undermined.At the time, the then Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, was austere. In 2007, he warned that crucial to instilling discipline into financial markets is allowing failing banks to slide. He believed that financial prudence is grounded in an understanding that risky actions could have potentially damaging consequences.

However, large corporate banks were deemed ‘too big to fail’ when they got into trouble. The Bank of England acted as lender-of-last-resort, injecting liquidity into financial institutions by buying up the toxic assets and debt which banks were desperate to offload. Meanwhile, the taxpayer got busy too – bailing out RBS and Northern Rock – which were both taken into public ownership.

The balance of liability and risk did not fall proportionally on the banks themselves. The Central Bank guaranteed all debt, including worthless toxic assets like sub-primes. This was a critical mistake. Indiscriminately buying up debt in this way threw all market discipline out of the window. As Walter Bagehot presciently argued in 1854, in a crisis “Central Banks should lend freely to solvent depository institutions… they should, [however], do so against good collateral and at high enough interest rates to deter borrowers not in need.” Because banks had been allowed to become such large and complex organisations in the years preceding the crisis, they were able to exercise unprecedented leverage over the government. Now, proposals have been forwarded on both sides of the Atlantic to trim down, and even break up the very largest players in the market. Crucially, this will ensure that banks are responsible for themselves in the good years and the bad.

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The banking sector cannot remain dominated by a small number of institutions, with disproportionate market share and jaw-dropping market capitalisations. Opening up financial services to competition from smaller players, such as Virgin Bank or Metro, would deter banks from exercising undue complacency and distribute risk between incumbents. It should also ensure that banks operate more in the interest of their consumers, for whose money they are ultimately responsible.

There can be no ‘get out of jail free’ card for when things go wrong. It is completely unacceptable that the private sector enjoys all the profit when the times are good and that the taxpayer is left to pick up the tab when it all goes wrong. This is not a game of ‘heads the banker wins, tails the taxpayer loses.’

Banks must look after themselves.

Since 2008, politicians, economists and journalists have spilt much ink exhaling the virtues of regulation. However, they have done so without due consideration of what this will actually mean in practice. Ben Bernanke reflected on the crisis and argued that it “showed not that regulation and supervision are ineffective…but that the execution must be better and smarter.”

So how do we make regulation better and smarter?

The Central Bank should be located at the centre of any credible regulatory framework. The links between monetary policy, market confidence and financial discipline are inextricable. Following Gordon Brown’s controversial legislation in 1998, supervision of financial services was transferred from the Bank of England to an independent Financial Services Authority. This was a mistake. If the Central Bank is responsible for administering the medicine to treat the hangover in a crisis, then should they not also have the right to ‘take away the punch bowl’ in the good times, too?

In recent years there have been steps taken to reassert the sovereignty of the Central Bank.

The dark clouds of 2008 challenged the efficacy of independent regulation. The rot has not just harmed the integrity of the banks – the ratings agencies too have emerged bearing the same scars of imprudence and irresponsibility. A careless ‘free-for-all’ mentality towards issuing coveted AAA ratings on debt obligations in pre-crisis years distorted an already complicated relationship between lenders and borrowers. Prized assets – considered ‘ultra-safe’, like US government bonds – were rated in the same way as toxic waste like CDOs – now termed Chernobyl Debt Obligations. These uncollateralised obligations were hardly worth the paper they were printed on.

The alphabet soup of assets, securities and debt obligations, coupled with the poor judgement of ratings agencies, made measuring and distinguishing financial risk virtually impossible. It was estimated that in 2007 there were as many as 64,000 different financial products available rated as AAA.

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The agencies themselves, Standard and Poor, Moody’s and Fitch are commissioned for their services by the issuers of debt: largely the banks. If an agency gains a reputation for issuing tough, realistic ratings, then banks shop around and look elsewhere. It’s like giving a child the choice between having their exam script marked by a teacher who only ever gives A*s and a teacher who examines harshly and fairly, handing out mainly Cs.

For the financial system, the results proved very serious indeed.

Yet regulation since the crisis has been worryingly heedless to this problem. There must be greater transparency both in terms of what bundled debt actually consists of, and indeed, the tools deployed by agencies to measure the quality and risk of that debt.

The focus seems to be aimed more at addressing the causes building up to bad debts, rather than flagging it up when it does accumulate.

For instance, in the UK, the Vickers’s Report recommended ‘ring-fencing’ the more risky investment banking activities (termed ‘casino banking’ by sceptics) from more conventional retail operations such as offering mortgages. The hope is that separation will prevent commercial banks such as Barclays from taking their depositors’ savings and using them to play ‘fast and loose’ in high risk ventures, such as issuing securities on uncollateralised debt. It should also reduce exposure, avoiding a domino effect in which shocks in one sector of the financial system destabilise other sectors. But regulation of this nature scratches the surface of the complex and more intractable problems which frustrate the smooth functioning of financial markets. Without an outright ban on merging investment and retail banking, critics fear that financial institutions will be able to exploit the permeability of boundaries between them. Banks are not anchored by the strait laces of morality; after all, rules are there to be broken.

Proponents of Vicker’s have stressed their plans to ‘electrify’ the ring-fence, but how this will be done is still unclear. The solutions must address the causes, not just the symptoms.

In the UK, unlike on Wall Street, banks have not been engaged heavily in investment banking. HBOS and RBS failed through risky practices in assets considered ‘safe’, such as mortgages.

Separation is not an end in itself. The wholesale conduct of the banks must be subject to more thorough cross-examination, in particular of how much money they lend, that is their liabilities, in relation to the size of their assets. This kind of scrutiny has been driven principally through the Basel Accords.Regulators have taken steps to embed greater resilience into financial institutions, and encourage them to ‘fix their roof while the sun is shining.’ Basel III legislated for a gargantuan ten-fold increase in the reserve capital ratio banks must now hold – a liquidity ‘cushion’ as high as 8%. In theory, recapitalisation will ensure that institutions are better placed to weather the storm, and independently of government.

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These reforms accompany a new ‘stress test’ which has been designed to prevent the repetition of frantic write-downs and auctioneering of assets as seen at the height of 2008. Banks should not have to resort to panic tactics in the event of a crisis. Scenes in 2007 of anxious savers queuing outside Northern Rock are the hallmark of a bank which has become over-extended in financial markets.

Preventing over-exposure has been a key objective of post-crisis regulation. It is not difficult to forget though, that at the heart of the crisis were the bankers themselves. They, along with MPs and journalists, have spent the last six years vying for the position of ‘public enemy number one’. Yet public animosity comes at a time when record bonuses are being issued at HSBC, Barclays and other high street banks. Why are we rewarding failure?

The perception that it’s ‘one rule for them, another rule for everyone else’ has put pressure on politicians to do more to moderate the opulent bonus culture which pervades Wall Street and the City.

However, taming the banks has proved difficult. National interests, as is so often the case, stall progress in coordinating more global solutions. Managers in the City have underlined the need to maintain competitiveness in dynamic global labour markets. They say that a cap on bonuses would drive talent abroad and damage incentives for financial innovation. This only reinforces the point that any meaningful solutions to the problem must be reached through international cooperation.Perhaps EU legislation has been most encouraging in this regard. Regulators have reformed not just the size of bankers’ bonuses, but crucially the means by which they are paid. In 2010, it was proposed that a typical bonus packet should consist of just 20-30% in up-front payment. The remainder, meanwhile, should be withheld for 3-5 years. In the past, high-flyers could simply threaten to quit and command higher salaries and bonuses elsewhere. Under new rules, this kind of brass-neck would result in them sacrificing years worth of deferred bonuses.

It is not entirely clear whether this regulation will be sufficient to dispel the sort of short-termism and arbitrary risk mentality which pervaded the pre-crisis years. Critics argue that three to five years is still not long enough. If bonuses were withheld for a decade, or even until retirement, then there were would be a solid iron social contract between bankers and shareholders.

It is crucial too that pay is performance related. ‘Reward for failure’ encourages complacency and damages incentives. The system must encourage – and not just expect – financial prudence. Equally, bankers must fulfil their side of the bargain, behaving in the spirit of the law and not just hiding behind its letter. But before joining the long line of angry people queuing to ‘bash the bankers’, it is worth recognising that a poorly designed regulatory framework has been as responsible for recklessness as the egotistical bankers themselves. Bankers are human beings, and as such, they act in self-interest. Naturally, they seek immediate financial rewards. The important step forward now will be to channel that energy into long-term strategy and financial innovation, rather than erratic risks in search of short term pay packets.

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Governments share responsibility for the failures in 2008. Their derisory attempts to instil market discipline on financial institutions clearly failed. The ‘tick-box’ micro-prudence regulation of the pre-crisis years was unfit for purpose. Regulators must be more dynamic in order to respond to the fast-moving conditions of financial markets. If the circumstances change, then they must shift the goal posts to reflect those changes.

Regulation, and indeed the regulators, must be smarter. In some respects, this has meant taking a retrograde step to a ‘pre-regulation’ era. Gone are the unwieldy statutory bureaucracies governing markets. Instead, and underlying Vickers’ proposals, there is an advocacy to move away from Roman law-type regulation, which is prescriptive, that is ‘you can do anything that is allowed’; towards common law, where you can do anything that is not prohibited.

The hope is a compromise: between calculated risk and financial innovation. But these measures are meaningless unless greater parity can be established between different countries and banks. Steps towards achieving more ‘global’ solutions to what are global problems have been painfully slow. Only cross-border cooperation will contain the devastating ripple effect witnessed across the world in 2008.

Global capital flows cannot simply be banned. The benefits of spreading risk and building resilience into international markets far outweigh any destabilising effects they may have in times of trouble. Nonetheless, the scale of financial globalisation now requires a correspondingly ambitious programme of reform and regulation.

This has not as yet been forthcoming.

Basel III, for instance, is being implemented differently across countries. In the US, accounting rules have been far more stringent on big banks. But even within Europe, Britain, France and Germany have proposed different bank holding company structures. An idiosyncratic and localised legal environment will encourage banks to move capital around in search of unregulated ‘havens’, or to just play on their home turf.

Sir Mervyn King famously commented that “global banks are international in life but national in death”. The challenges of financial globalisation are plenty, but so too are the benefits of inter-national cooperation.

Overcoming national boundaries and securing more globalised regulation will provide stable foundations upon which to construct resilient financial service sectors in the UK, Europe and America.On May 2nd 2011, US Navy SEALs stormed a compound in Abbottabad and killed Osama bin Laden – an international terrorist responsible for the deaths of thousands of people. Almost exactly three years later, on 5th May of this year, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global emergency due to the extraordinary spread of wild polio, a disease which has racked up a much greater body count than bin Laden ever did. But is there more that connects the two killers?

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The declaration is only the second time that WHO has announced a public health emergency of international concern, the first being the 2009 swine flu pandemic. This announcement comes at a time when The Global Polio Eradication Initiative, a vaccination program led by WHO, should now be in its final stages; and, indeed, it has made excellent progress in terms of meeting the targets set in the ‘endgame’ strategy that aims to eradicate the virus completely by 2018. Vaccines for polio have improved exponentially over the last half a century, meaning the disease is now completely preventable.

So why do we now have a global health emergency on our hands?

POLIO: THE CIA’S LATEST

UNDERCOVER AGENT AMy DIGHE

Biological Natural Sciences, Gonville & Caius (2012) Photograph by SANOFI PASTEUR

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Polio is caused by a virus from the family known as ‘Picornoviruses’. It has no animal reservoir, meaning it exclusively infects humans, so eradication does not require control of other animal populations. The virus spreads from person to person by ingestion of contaminated food or water, allowing it to multiply in cells of the small intestine. From there, it can invade cells of the central nervous system (CNS) leading to ‘Poliomyelitis’, a debilitating disease that can lead to the characteristic paralysis due to the degeneration of motor neurons that innervate muscles. Initial symptoms include fever, stiff neck, vomiting and headaches, and while 90% of people who are infected with the poliovirus show no symptoms, they still shed the virus particles in their faeces, allowing it to be passed on to others where the disease may manifest.

The WHO’s polio eradication initiative was enormously successful. It managed to reduce the number of cases from 350,000 in 1988 to 650 in 2011. Europe was declared polio-free in 2002 and impressively the virus was also eradicated in India in 2012 – despite the country being deemed the most technically challenging environment in which to administer the vaccine due to high migration rates, high birth rate and high population density, coupled with low levels of established routine vaccination programs and poor sanitation. With the spread restricted to only a handful of countries (Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria), small-pox-style global eradication was within sight.

However, this positive trajectory was not to last, as the spread of wild polio in 2014 increased by 82% in the period known as the “low transmission season”, when the viral spread is usually at its minimum. According to the statement made by WHO on the 5th May, approximately three times more cases have been reported compared to the same time in 2013, and these have involved international spread from three out of the now ten remaining infected areas: Pakistan to Afghanistan, Syrian Arab Republic to Iraq, and Cameroon to Equatorial Guinea. It is these statistics that led WHO to deem the spread extraordinary and declare the international health emergency. Of particular concern is the fact that the foci experiencing the international spread are surrounded by countries with complex humanitarian needs – the ideal breeding ground for infectious disease to emerge untargeted by effective vaccination programs.

However, aside from the numerous problems the re-emergence of polio presents as a disease, the global situation is made even more complicated by a popular idea emerging amongst extremist Islamic groups. The idea that the vaccination program is in fact a cover enabling America to sterilise young Muslims has been propagated by such organisations – and as conspiratorial as it sounds, there are understandable reasons for believing this myth, and it is not the first time vaccines have been linked to rumours of mass sterilisation. The first wide spread thinking of this type was actually propagated by a Catholic ‘pro-life’ group in 1994 when a scientific publication proposed an anti-pregnancy vaccine. The paper explained that the vaccine would use a carrier protein derived from the tetanus bacteria as an adjuvant for the actual functional ‘anti-pregnancy’ protein. This was misinterpreted by the pro-life group and they began spreading the rumour that the routinely used tetanus vaccine sterilises people. This idea, despite being cleared up at its origin (although not before it caused extensive disruption to the tetanus shot programs in Central America) may have sowed a seed of suspicion linking vaccines and sterilisation.

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The current lack of confidence in the polio vaccine, often administered by organisations from outside of endemic areas, was first observed in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and fell against a backdrop of perceived ‘Western’ animosity towards Islamic extremists, and in some cases also towards the peaceful majority of the Islamic population, following the Al-Qaeda attack on 9/11. This lack of confidence, which was being dealt with diplomatically, became active hostility when it emerged that the CIA had in fact used a sham Hepatitis B vaccination campaign amongst children in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in order to collect DNA samples of local children to compare with that in their possession, belonging to Osama bin Laden’s sister. (The brain of bin Laden’s sister had been taken by the American Government immediately after she had died of a brain tumour in Boston two years prior to the assassination). The goal of the sham vaccination program was to establish whether any of bin Laden’s children were present in the area, and in that way confirm the CIAs intelligence before sending in the US Navy SEALs for the assassination on the 2nd May 2011. It is known that the fake vaccines were first administrated in one of the poorer areas of Abbottabad to give the scheme more credibility; however after only one dose the program moved on into areas nearer bin Laden’s presumed hiding. It has been said that the DNA collection was not successful in aiding the investigation.

The violent killing of vaccine workers in Pakistan and Nigeria, and breakdown of national vaccination programs just when they needed strengthening, has allowed spread into unprotected populations. International vaccination programs pulled their workers out of certain areas of Pakistan due to the violence they were experiencing. Spread within the country has now extended into the Waziristan region where vaccination is banned by the Taliban allowing rapid transmission. Similar spread in Nigeria has infected people in Somalia where there is an Al-Shabab ban on vaccination.

The 67th World Health Assembly met in Geneva at the end of May, where WHO led discussions about what should happen next with regards to wild polio. The major risks to the success of the program were outlined and suggestions of how to best avoid these include ensuring full national ownership of the eradication programs in infected countries, as well as the introduction of an additional inactivated dose of vaccine alongside the routine oral vaccine, and a heightened surveillance system in conflict stricken areas.The events leading up to this extraordinary spread of wild polio of international concern illustrates that tackling global health problems is as much about people and building international relationships of trust as it is about developing the understanding and technology needed to theoretically eradicate a disease. Hostility towards the polio vaccine is not an idea extremists have plucked out of thin air, but the product of complex attitudes born out of a history of people mistreating and mistrusting each other. The social considerations and tactful administration of a vaccine need just as much time and respect as the science behind it.

Creating a successful vaccine is a huge feat of achievement, which is why it is so important that its administration should not be undermined, as it was in this case by the actions of the CIA.

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China under Mao is remembered as a time of ideological chauvinism and societal paranoia, but also of radical commitment to gender egalitarianism: according to the Communist leadership, true socialism would come only if women participated in society on a par with men. This egalitarian ethos was certainly enlightened, but it was by no means perfect. Whilst the muscular women of Maoist propaganda emblemised the strong and androgynous ideal-type female of those years, women’s involvement in the productive activities of the centrally planned economy did not undercut their roles as primary carers for the household and children. As for so many women throughout history and the world, this ‘double burden’ limited their ability to match the achievements of men.

Chairman Mao himself had a contradictory relationship with women. Some accuse him of having been a monstrous womaniser, yet others associate him with his celebrated quote that “women hold up half the sky”. Whilst China did not emerge from the Maoist era as a gender equal society, what has happened since has eroded the terms of gender relations. China’s new path to socio-economic development, pioneered by Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s, has been ineffective at best – and regressive at worst – in bridging the gap between men and women in the world’s most populous country. Gone are the days of thinking of women as holding up half the sky. The Chinese state today embraces the view that men and women are fundamentally different from each other; that women’s first obligation is to their reproductive roles, and men’s to their productive ones.

FACTORy BOUND: GENDER INEqUALITy IN CHINA

MARA BUDGEN

MPhil in Development Studies, Christ’s (2013) Photograph by DANIEL FOSTER

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The All-China’s Women’s Federation (ACWF) was founded in 1949 and shut down during the Cultural Revolution, but re-opened in 1976. Since then it has become an NGO, but retains its role as the women’s rights branch of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The ACWF has done laudable work to put the issue of gender inequality on the political agenda, coordinating projects such as vocational training for rural women and conducting important research into the conditions of women’s subordination. But in the eyes of some, it falls foul with its underlying message: that women occupy fundamentally different positions from men in the vast constellation of ascribed roles that structure Chinese society.

What is intriguing about China’s case is the utterly dramatic transition that has occurred as a result of its intensifying turn towards market-oriented development. This has prompted many to conceptualise it as a giant laboratory for understanding the effects of post-socialist transitions on gender relations. At least since the times of Karl Marx himself, social scientists have been probing the question of how capitalist development affects the relative positions of women and men in society, as well as what meanings are attached to these socially constructed categories. The economist Ester Boserup, as well as other members of the Women in Development (WID) movement of the 70s, made an important contribution to this debate by describing how ‘development’ perpetuates patriarchy, because men are better positioned to take advantage of socio-economic opportunities.

So how does this manifest itself in the China of stellar economic growth driven by deluges of exported consumer goods? Let us begin at the beginning – childhood. A persistent gap in educational attainment between Chinese girls and boys has existed prior, during and following the economic liberalisation reforms of the late 1970s, to this day. Two statistics are widely cited to convey the gravity of the situation: in the 1990s around 70% of illiterates were female and, according to the World Bank, around 80% of school dropouts were rural girls. Yet, even with these numbers up our sleeves, no one can quite agree whether economic liberalisation reforms have actually aggravated the gender gap in education. This is partly because of the ‘dual’ nature of Chinese society, which, just as much as around gender, is structured around the rural-urban fault line. Different conditions prevail in the countryside and in cities, and this affects girls’ access to education.

When discrimination against female education does occur, it is an extremely complex phenomenon, deriving from deep-seated cultural practices and their interaction with modern adaptations to post-reform society. The cross-fertilisation of these variables sets the scene for girls’ unfavourable position in claiming the same share of household resources as boys. In rural areas in particular, girls are disadvantaged at the outset because of cultural perceptions of female inferiority, as well as the exogamous, patrilocal marriage traditions practiced by many rural families. This means that marriage occurs between members of different villages, and that women, once married, move into their husband’s family’s home. This affects the way they are perceived by their families when they are children: they are seen as ‘temporary’ members of the household and so investing in their education is thought be akin to contributing to the fortunes of another family.

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As a result of economic liberalisation reforms, rural areas have seen the Household Responsibility System replace the collective structure of agriculture that existed in the Maoist years. Another aspect of the reform package has been the restructuring of state expenditure via a stronger emphasis on decentralised financing, which has put the onus for the provision of public services on local governments. In this context, families themselves must bear the costs of education more heavily. This is not only in terms of monetary expenditure, but also in terms of ‘opportunity costs’, i.e. what opportunities are sacrificed if children go to school. For example, rural girls’ labour is often seen as more gainful than their education. Even though the same logic applies to male children, sons are considered safer ‘investments’ because – whilst their education is costly – they are more likely to earn back the income spent once they enter the job market.

Some disturbing statistics confirm the trend of discrimination against female education. A 2012 study using data from 1989 to 2006, conducted by Ming-Hsuan Lee of National Taiwan University, revealed that the presence of a single male sibling meant that a rural girl was schooled for 0.62 years less than a rural girl with female siblings, on average. The presence of a single male sibling was associated with 50% less spending on the healthcare of a female child in rural areas in a study conducted in 2001 by Aziz Khan and Carl Riskin.

Whilst this evidence highlights rural girls’ disadvantage in securing household resources relative to boys, a different picture emerges when we consider urban areas. In these, the gender gap in education has narrowed substantially since the late 1970s, partly thanks to the more stringent application of the One Child Policy. In single-daughter only families, the incentives to invest in education are as strong as in families with a single son. Ensuring children’s education is particularly important in the Chinese context, as many millions of Chinese do not have pensions. This is why it’s so important to have adult children who, having received adequate schooling, are more likely to earn enough to support their parents when they retire.

Unfortunately, the One Child policy has also had negative effects. Because the Policy puts huge pressure on parents who, with a single shot at parenthood have to put all their eggs in one basket, it enforces ‘son preference’ to the point that many female children are being eliminated. Some girls have gone missing because of abandonment and underreporting, and media reports highlight alarming cases of female infanticide, including through neglect, although the most common means of discarding daughters is female-selective abortion. The practice is illegal, but it is thought to be an important driving factor behind the unbalanced sex ratio in China. In the 1960s and 70s, the sex ratio at birth was of 106 boys to every 100 girls, which is considered to be the biological norm. By 1990, the ratio had increased to 111 boys to every 100 girls, then to 116 by 2000 and 119 by 2005.

We mustn’t underestimate the gravity of this phenomenon, nor the damaging effects it has. Yet trying to make sense of it is by no means simple. The sad fact is that parents who believe that daughters have fewer opportunities in life than sons are not delusional. This doesn’t justify the selective excision of female children from the population, but it does begin to explain it. Partly because

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of unequal access to education, the labour market in China is highly gender segregated. The marketisation and liberalisation of the economy have opened up millions of new employment opportunities for women, but these have tended to be in unskilled jobs on factory floors in light manufacturing industries. This means that, as a group, women are disproportionately represented in low-paying jobs with few benefits and little scope for advancement. On the other hand, more prestigious occupations such as managers, engineers and technicians are highly male dominated.

The reasons behind this are, again, the fruit of a complex set of circumstances that link cultural perceptions of gender with real constraints on female employment. Because enterprises are required to pay for maternity leave and childcare, employers are disincentivised from hiring women. Compounded with the idea that female workers will leave their jobs once they get married, or their productivity will fall because of the ‘double burden’ they will have to face if they have children, many employers view nourishing the skills and experience of male workers as more worthwhile. The view of women as ‘temporary’ members of the workforce is reinforced by discriminatory retirement policies. Though the age of retirement varies between sectors, women usually retire five years earlier than men. This also limits the scope of their income-earning opportunities in later life, and given the absence of universal pensions, there is no guarantee they will have access to a living allowance.

Added to this is the fact that women tend to be hired in unskilled manufacturing jobs because it is thought that, given their responsibility towards housework and rearing children, they have more modest career aspirations and thus are more accepting of low pay. Another stereotype is that, having smaller hands, women are more suited for the dexterous work needed to assemble small parts on the assembly lines of light manufacturing industries. Overall, the effect of gender segregation in employment is not only the perpetuation of women’s lower societal status, but also the widening of gender income gaps. These affect all sectors of the Chinese economy and, though they are partly explained by differences in the productivity of male and female labour, they are also the result of outright discrimination.

From foot binding to factory work, the life of Chinese women has gone through many radical transformations. Since the late 1970s, poverty has been reduced, incomes have increased and women have access to more jobs than ever before. Yet there is something fundamentally dissonant in the uneven way the benefits of development have been spread. Women in China are conceptualised as occupying a second-tier position in society, and it may come as no surprise that there are many fewer female than male CCP members, and that a woman hasn’t sat on the Politburo (the highest body of the Party) since 1987. Women have had and continue to have a small voice in what course China’s development takes, and in five, ten, twenty years’ time, we risk coming back to the question of their subordination to realise that things have just gotten worse. Because, whilst it is certainly true that women in China hold up half the sky (at least), they occupy almost no seats in the heavenly council that directs affairs on earth.

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In 2007, Vodafone’s Tanzanian branch, Vodacom, launched a novel mobile financial services programme called M-Pesa. It allowed individuals with a mobile phone number to create a virtual ‘bank account’ where they could store, transfer, and receive money. In a country where only 9% of its 49 million people have access to a formal bank account, access to mobile banking jumped from 1% in 2008 to more than 90% by the end of 2013.

Today, people use their M-Pesa account to buy food, pay for medical treatment, and receive their working salary. But where did this remarkably successful venture originate? It was born out of the simple yet telling observation that individuals lacking direct access to a formal bank seemed to be trading mobile phone credit in exchange for products and services, particularly in poorer and more rural regions. Soon after its inception, M-Pesa attracted a catalysing investment of about $1.5 million from the UK Department for International Development and grew exponentially. Now, there are more than 30 million mobile money accounts in the country.

This innovation revolutionised financial transactions in Tanzania. It created a new financial market that allowed even those in the poor urban slums and the isolated rural villages to manage their money on their phone and trade more readily.

Principally, innovations function by unlocking potential. They drive entrepreneurship and endow current resources with an additional capacity to create value. Innovation can be radical, such as Richard Branson’s diversification of Virgin Group, or it can be incremental, such as Gmail’s byte-size changes over the past 10 years. But above all, innovation combines new ideas and creativity with past experience and knowledge to develop and implement solutions to make an impact.

CHANGEMAkING

RAVI SOLANkI

Medicine, Trinity (2011) Photograph by PETE BROWN

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Often, these ‘innovative solutions’ can be present in the most unexpected of places. The Brazilian mechanic Alfredo Moser developed a frugal solution to the frequent power cuts in his hometown of Uberaba. The Moser Lamp, as it became known, consists of a used plastic bottle filled with water and a bit of bleach, and functions by refracting sunlight indoors to illuminate electricity-free. This simple solution has mobilised an international movement introducing the Moser Lamp to over 15 countries, including Tanzania, the Philippines, and the US.

Similarly, in Pakistan and Brazil, a novel sanitation solution is being rapidly integrated throughout urbanised areas. While conventional sewerage systems require very large pipes deep underground, simplified sewerage utilises smaller, shallower pipes. Consequently, a sanitation network using the latter technology is far less expensive and can therefore be entirely community-led. Especially in cities like Dar es Salaam, where only 17% of the city is covered by sewerage solutions, simplified sewerage technology could become a hallmark to improve sanitation in the city. This past summer, the Cambridge Development Initiative (CDI), a new student-led NGO at the University, piloted the first system of this kind in East Africa for 250 people. By engaging with the local community every step of the way, CDI was able to create as sustainable an impact as possible. For without this serious commitment from the locals, the system would have mutated into an unsuccessful and alien attempt at eliciting change. Indeed, by the end, the true changemakers became the local citizens and students. They led infrastructure design and construction on the ground. They monitored the state of the network. They managed the loan re-payment system.

Achieving a sustainable impact, however, can be a challenge for even the most experienced innovators. Platforms like the Center for Health Market Innovations (CHMI) have been formed in response. CHMI encourages changemakers to identify and connect with over 1,800 innovative healthcare solutions present throughout the world. From mobile phone-based child and maternity health awareness to community-derived health insurance schemes, these innovations can act to inspire improvements in healthcare in other countries.

CDI aims to improve healthcare access in Tanzania, a country with a healthcare system that mismanages treatment at the primary level and suffers from an insufficient number of health facilities, regular drug stock-outs, and an incredible shortage of healthcare workers. Analysing popular healthcare access innovations in Kenya and Rwanda, CDI and its local partners designed a new business model for healthcare delivery: a financially lean franchise of health shops and clinics offering essential primary care. By using the advantages of next generation rapid diagnostic tests and working closely with secondary and tertiary healthcare providers, the clinics can target the most common communicable diseases and provide a framework for management of chronic conditions and improvements in maternal health. As a for-profit model, this healthcare access innovation can focus on providing a social impact while being financially self-sufficient. However, this innovation also requires the approval and commitment from the Tanzanians themselves, especially if it can become the country’s first assessment of task shifting in the healthcare sector. Only by working with the Ministry of Health and local governments is CDI able

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to move forward with the project, and only with their support can CDI hope to create long-term changes in healthcare access and outcomes.

But for innovative solutions to create a sustainable impact, they must be designed with the individual in mind. They must be human-focused. In 1978, David Kelley founded a consulting firm that focused on the human element of design. Through his firm IDEO, Kelley went on to change the way scientists and artists alike thought about design. Recently, IDEO’s team has been applying its methodology to change the way the world is producing innovative solutions for global development. Their philosophy of human-centred design depends upon three primary steps: (1) empathise with and understand your target audience or community; (2) ideate; and (3) prototype your solutions with the willingness to fail often, fail quickly, and adapt dynamically. This philosophy is a trademark tool for some of the most influential organisations in the world, not least Acumen, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Google.

CDI developed a training programme centred around this philosophy of idea generation and worked with 22 University students in Dar es Salaam to help them create their own business ideas concentrated on making a social impact. By keeping the human element in mind at all times, the ideas developed have the opportunity to make tangible improvements to the lives of those in the city’s slums. Targeting ideation towards specific domains such as nutrition and off-grid energy can allow CDI to use its tried-and-tested approach to find business solutions to some of the most pressing problems in Tanzania.

However, a strategy which focusses on innovation and human-centred design often faces a series of Sisyphean obstacles: students outnumbering desks 8 to 1, floors composed entirely of dirt, no access to electricity, demotivated teachers failing to give their lessons, and a curriculum that expects students to grasp the English language within a matter of months. These were all challenges faced by CDI as it undertook a difficult journey to improve pedagogical outcomes in two government schools in Dar es Salaam. Even with a clear understanding of what is required on the ground, progress was slow. However, steady improvements were made in teaching, as seen through the incorporation of academic peer-2-peer learning groups. The need to create long-term change became paramount: it engendered a heightened awareness of realities on the ground, and an understanding that such a reality should guide the direction of the long-term holistic strategy for school rejuvenation.

Innovation, human-centred design, and long-term commitment are fundamental to the establishment of long-term change. All three are required to meet standards of excellence for sustainable impact. M-Pesa was innovative, designed from a human perspective, and fortunate enough to receive both the national and international commitments necessary to generate long-term change. To date, over $27 billion has been transacted using the network in Tanzania.

By following these same principles, we too can become innovators and changemakers. We can build upon these foundations to help improve the lives of others. As CDI has shown, following these three principles can truly revolutionise the global impact of student volunteering.

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Do short-term financial interests compromise delivery of long-term scientific objectives? The free market regularly compels companies to maximise profit for shareholders, but this can stifle the development of solutions to big problems. This problem extends across vital sectors such as Energy, Defence, Transport, Finance and Agriculture but it is particularly visible within the Pharmaceutical industry.

Starting from scratch, a new drug takes around twelve years and costs something in the region of $2 billion to develop. For every drug that reaches the market there are hundreds that fail, as the complexity of human chemistry makes drug development notoriously difficult to predict. Drugs reaching the

A NEW SOCIAL MEDICINE

GUy JAMES

Physical Natural Sciences, St John’s (2009) Photograph by JOHN TWOHIG PHOTOGRAPHy

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market must pay not only for their own development but also for the cost of the many failures. In addition, the current regulatory system is lengthy, convoluted and corruptible, problems which are well surmised in Dr. Ben Goldacre’s excoriation ‘Bad Pharma’, concerning the withholding and distortion of clinical trail data by drug companies.

An effective pharmaceutical industry is now unsustainable in the free market, a result of the tremendous changes since its inception. The complex way that medicines are regulated prevents small companies from competing effectively with large established pharmaceutical companies (often grouped under the title ‘Big Pharma’). People cannot choose to live without healthcare anymore than they can choose to live without sanitation, food or water. Rushing into an emergency room is not entering a free market; you cannot choose whose bandage to use or which blood to be given. Healthcare is not expected to work like that, so why should drug development?

When it emerged in France in May that 200 new trains were too wide to fit into the stations the French transport minister blamed an ‘absurd rail system’ saying: “When you separate the rail operator from the train company, this is what happens.” Greater public policy control of both the supply and the distribution of public healthcare is needed to ensure that all the decisions are being made in the best interests of patients. The moment of diagnosis is far too late to start lobbying for development of better treatments.

Cuts to Research and Development (R&D) expenditure produce a short-term but immediate rise in profit. This should encourage a company to effectively evaluate risk/reward ratios and to prioritise the most promising projects and drug candidates, making competition between companies healthy and efficient.

There are three main problems: 1. Drug development is a lengthy process but the share price of a company is closely linked to short-term profitability. Resulting cuts to R&D expenditure are difficult and slow to reverse, and have led to many companies spending less than 10% of revenue on R&D, when it should be their primary concern. 2. Drugs with potential for greater financial reward are prioritised, typically those likely to be taken by a large number of people for a long time (such as drugs to control cholesterol and diabetes). While these are important clinical areas to address, they are not necessarily the most pressing areas of public need. Many important areas are neglected. 3. Drugs that are later on in development are overvalued. They have already overcome more regulatory hurdles and are thus more likely to be eventually approved, and the resulting financial benefits for the company will come sooner. This leads to companies with ‘top heavy’ pipelines as insufficient emphasis is placed on early discovery.

Clinical drug trials are prohibitively expensive for all but the largest drug companies so smaller companies often focus on earlier, ostensibly cheaper, stages of drug development. As drug patents expire for large companies, their pipeline shifts, exposing a gap in the neglected earlier stages. At any point in time it is quicker to buy drug candidates than to develop them, so the large

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companies simply buy smaller companies, effectively avoiding risks in early stage R&D. This outsourcing is wasteful as profits from successful patented drugs are tied up in the large companies and prevented from supporting the vital early stages of drug development. The innovative processes and teams that successfully started the process can be lost as the expensive R&D departments in the acquired companies are promptly unified, streamlined or consolidated. Often, in reality this means they are stripped of assets and closed, further lowering the overall spending on R&D and leading to regular jobs crises in the industry. The drug conglomerate continues its thoughtless sojourn across the patent savannah, leaving faint impressions of innovative science in a ghastly train. Do hedge-fund managers, who own large shares in Big Pharma companies, care especially about the drug market 20 years hence, and would they be successful if they did?

It is not the fault of the companies themselves, which have done exactly what the market expects them to do. The problem is that the market is concerned primarily with profitability and not with the delivery of the science or the efficacy of the medicine. While the two are connected, the link is unlikely to be the most scientifically productive - the profit has been too far separated from the process. Many large pharmaceutical companies spend less than a fifth of their annual revenue on R&D, significantly less than they spend on combined marketing and administration. While this produces successful companies, it is evidence that the public should not rely solely upon a free market approach to meet its medical needs.

For example, there is currently little financial incentive to research new antibiotics, as they are uncommonly expensive to develop, and compete in what is currently a crowded market. Even where antibiotic research has continued it has been slow however it is of the utmost public interest to have varied antibiotics constantly in development. The incidence of drug-resistant infection in both the developing and developed world has reached pandemic proportions despite scientists repeated warnings. New antibiotics are likely to be vastly commercially successful, however individuals lack the required scale to benefit from this foresight and large companies are hamstrung by shorter-term financial considerations. The public bears the risk of falling through the gap in provision and the consequences are predicted to be devastating.

Another example is the recently announced ‘Prime Minister’s Challenge on Dementia’ which includes a much-lauded doubling of the spending on dementia research unwittingly highlights a chasm between the cost of research and the cost of care: Governmental research funding will be raised to £66 million by 2015. However, the estimated cost of dementia to the UK economy in 2012 was £23 billion, a cost that will continue to accelerate as the population ages. Obviously there must be an effort to prioritise funding for research in this area - even modest improvements in dementia treatment or prevention would save a vast sum. Alzheimer’s disease constitutes a significant portion of the dementia burden and is a particularly difficult field for drug discovery - with 99.6% of drugs failing to reach the market it is easy to see why many companies choose to avoid the field altogether (8). A grander vision for long-term policy is required to reconcile such inconsistencies in cost. It must be a matter of public policy to identify problems such as these and fund and

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protect efficient delivery of scientific solutions to them.There are similar inefficiencies in many other science and engineering sectors: As in pharmaceuticals, Energy, Defence and Transport are dominated by a small group of companies, exploiting what are effectively monopolies. All are facing challenges due to their short-term financial perspectives. The results are clear: the loss of energy independence as nuclear power stations are built by French companies with Chinese loans; the degradation of military capability caused by a dearth of vital equipment such as aircraft carriers, and high speed rail that is 25 years late and billions over budget. It is the governments responsibility to ensure these sectors are managed sustainably. While there is more work to be done on understanding the most productive scale and structure in each sector, a market in which profit is the primary metric has been shown to stall time and again.

The culture is difficult to change. Politicians might feel overwhelmed by a scientific industry many do not understand. Science is frequently misrepresented as a sort of faintly academic witchcraft perpetrated by unapproachable ‘experts’. It is important to realise that the public are not only the beneficiaries but also the guarantors of these industries. Political and not just economic pressures must be exerted for the public interest.

There is potential for a partial nationalisation of drug development. By working together and sharing some risks with Big Pharma the state could ‘outbid’ shorter-term market pressures and skew the results towards a more sustainable long-term drug policy, one that mutually supports the National Health Service. Within 20 years the state could part own the largest and most diverse drug portfolio in the world. Cost-price drugs for NHS prescriptions and improvements in patient outcomes would save billions of pounds a year, making any such project quickly self-sustaining. Overseas licenses of the drugs developed in Britain could finance a revolution not just for social medicine, but for the state sponsoring of Science as a whole. Scientific direction should become more independent from the solvency concerns of a few global companies. Projects that are less financially viable but more publicly vital could be properly supported in a way that is currently impossible. Scientific decisions about value could be made purely by clinicians, not accountants. In a relatively short time a partially socialised drug pipeline could pay for itself many times over, re-employ and retain many of the scientists who might otherwise head abroad and develop a productive symbiotic relationship with the UK’s growing Biotech industry. The public ownership of the drug trial data and the resulting transparency would also be a huge step forwards for the drug regulatory process. There is a fantastic opportunity to redefine the relationship between the public and science in the way it is directed, practiced and shared.

Ultimately new drugs are still going to have to come, in one way or another, from Big Pharma companies. Clinical trials are likely to remain too expensive to be run by anyone else, and a competitive relationship between Big Pharma will be important to maintain. However the public should not blindly trust that their best interests are necessarily being put at the fore. Policy may prove to be the only way to refocus the industry and salvage a more public and sustainable medicine.

EqUALITy AS PRINCIPLE VERSUS

EqUALITy AS PRINCIPLE APPLIED

XAVIER BISITS

Human, Social and Political Sciences, Trinity College (2013) Photograph by ELLA SADIkA

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Equality is pervasive. It defines the moral issues of our culture. It is one of the few principles in the Western world that many assume can function as a standalone argument in political and social debate.

Equality, however, is not as straightforward as can be made out. It is one thing to say that all humans are equal in dignity and worth. This is the principle. It is quite another thing to give this belief political application, especially in the field of social policy. This is the principle applied, resulting in legislation tailored to a particular situation. Equality is portrayed as something we ought to consciously pursue, whilst discrimination is made to seem like something to be avoided at all costs.

In reality, however, we discriminate – or treat differently on the basis of a subjective distinction – all the time. This comes in two forms: just and unjust. The goal of a public university, for instance, is to educate capable students. Because an atheist student is just as capable of completing university as a Methodist is, discriminating on the basis of religion would be wholly unjust. The goal of the Pontifical North American College, on the other hand, is to educate capable students in theology for service within the branches of the Catholic Church. Here, religion becomes a just criterion for discrimination.

Equality only constitutes a sound argument when we go a step further to explain why in a particular situation a factor like race, age, religion or sex is irrelevant to the ends of said situation.

Arguments based on this principle, therefore, require special care and attention. They can easily privilege partiality under the guise of egalitarian ethics. What’s more, we can observe the employment of said principle to conflicting effect. In countries like the UK, for example, it has become de rigueur to use “marriage equality” as a synonym for same-sex marriage. Conversely, in France, those behind ‘La Manif Pour Tous’ – the organisation protesting against the introduction of same-sex marriage laws – managed to reduce support for the change by using arguments which were also grounded in equality. One million French men, women and children gathered in Paris to argue that the move would lead to inequalities between children, due to the law’s encouragement of a change in family structures.

So, in order to fully expand the scope of political debate, we must move beyond a discussion of equality alone.

... Equality, however, is not as straightforward as can be made out. It is one thing to say that all humans are equal in dignity and worth. This is the principle. It is quite another thing to give this belief political application,

especially in the field of social policy....

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According to the rapper Jay-Z, opposing same-sex marriage is “no different than discriminating against blacks”. “It’s discrimination, plain and simple,” he says. This may be the case. But a successful argument should therefore demonstrate that the nature of marriage makes sex irrelevant in the same way that race is.

Certainly, if we consider marriage to be only about love, then sex is an arbitrary criterion. But so, for that matter, are all the other criteria bound up in this social contract. Take, for example, the number of partners involved. This is something that the more than 300 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender activists who signed the “Beyond Same-Sex Marriage” manifesto recognise. They argue, for instance, that multiple-partner unions should not be shunted to the side. There’s nothing particularly special about the number two that gives Jim and Tom the right to marriage over Doll, Kitten and Brynn.

A comprehensive socio-political debate about marriage thus depends on more than an appeal to equality. It depends on a debate about the nature of marriage itself, on both personal and institutional levels. First, one should ascertain why the state has reason to enshrine the institution of marriage in law. From this, the nature of marriage should become clear. It is only at this point that one can decide whether the nature of marriage means there are any just reasons for discrimination on the grounds of sex or number of partners.

Equality is a great thing to talk about. It is comforting to think that in our time, to be progressive is to believe in equality. This is a huge improvement upon the so-called progressives of the early 20th century, who believed that advances in society depended upon recognising and privileging the supposed inequality of humans through the practice of eugenics.

The principle of equality rings true because it is true. Equality in the abstract, however, says comparatively little in trying to settle a debate unless one adds further premises. When we do not go one step further in our attempts to apply it meaningfully in social and political circumstances, we can actually de-value the principle. Without further premises, equality can become little more than a culturally-mediated tool of rhetoric. The continued misapplication of this principle will have the effect of undermining the very value our society strives to foster.

... Certainly, if we consider marriage to be only about love, then sex is an arbitrary criterion. But so, for that matter, are all the other criteria bound up

in this social contract. ....

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// Foreword //

This year, Brazil has occupied a central space in the global public consciousness. As the host nation for this summer’s 2014 FIFA World Cup, it became the subject of worldwide scrutiny, making headlines for its performances both on and off the pitch. In late October, attention was redirected towards the presidential elections, which saw the PT’s Dilma Rousseff scrape a hold on a second term in office.

Undoubtedly, the international media coverage of and around these two events has shaped many an outsider’s understanding of Brazil. With the Olympics returning the sporting torch to Rio in 2016, keeping Brazil in the public eye, we now face the task of advancing international commentary on this emergent global power.

Yet in handing back the task of showcasing this nation to a second sporting event, and observing its acquiescence to the promises of political continuity

// BRAzIL BETWEEN THE

SHOTS //

EMILy FITzELLMML, MPHIL in Comparative Literature, Trinity [2010)

Photograph by MIkE VONDRAN

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(a victory margin of less than 3.3 percentage points marked the tightest vote in 25 years) we already face the challenge of surmounting early signs of repetition. We, as international spectators, must anticipate the risk of relapsing our narrative and falling into patterns of cyclical commentary on Brazil; of superficially contracting this nation to the size, scope and subject of our TV screens.

The World Cup became a vehicle for presenting Brazil to the world. Given the country’s love of football, this may have seemed a fitting course. However, many have criticised the mainstream media’s synonymous treatment of event and host, arguing that it has resulted in the construction of a national narrative bound up in normative – and often reductive – social paradigms. As remarked by Ambassador Jaguaribe at the Brazilian Embassy in London: “If you watched the series of programmes shown before the World Cup, then you will probably think you went to a different country; not the one that was portrayed in the media.”

In the lead up to the tournament, reporters revelled in the hype. Sensationalist headlines were pitted against a slew of documentaries which, for the most part, chose to place their accent on Brazil’s enduring social problems: crime, violence, large-scale corruption and inequality. They performed a sensationalistic narrative, forecasting widespread crisis by honing in on the stories and images that best suited their tragic prophecy, such as shots of an overpass collapsing in Belo Horizonte – homage, perhaps, to the histrionics of Brazil’s popular telenovelas.

And yet, such tragic prophecies were ultimately – and rather spectacularly – inverted. The host nation’s unprecedented 7-1 defeat to Germany became the only shortcoming in what was popularly deemed to have been the best World Cup in history.

No sooner had the channel flicked on the tournament’s fate than images of crisis and chaos were replaced with Copacabana cheer. Indicators of social unrest were reduced to circumstantial qualifiers, factors which merely stood to hinder the execution of a sporting event. As one article chose to phrase it: ‘Yes there have been the incumbent problems of poverty and logistical chaos, but […] Brazil has made its own mark: the people, the stadiums, the atmosphere – and the games.’ Only as preface to the elections would discussions of a social, political or economic nature be granted back their proper space in print.

The World Cup made space for further global engagement with Brazil. But rather than relying solely on attention-grabbing headlines and news mediated by the agenda of an international event, what we now need is a more sustainable lens through which to observe and engage with this country and its culture in the forthcoming years. We need to look between these shots so carefully framed by the Western gaze.

A stroll down Rio’s Copacabana beach less than a week after the tournament’s close revealed a cluster of precarious metal skeletons housing temporary broadcast suites; the sole rem(a)inder of the hype around the games. From inside these towering structures, we watched international reporters toe the

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line with official praise of the event. Down on the ground, however, a few steps further along the beach, sprawled the graffitied trace of Brazilian voices left questioning the long-term impact on their country.

So, let us pick up their pen, and frame a narrative led by native hands.

In a series of online instalments, The Cambridge Globalist will be presenting conversations and images from Brazil, weaving them together in an attempt to illustrate the complex social fabric of a nation which, in the media at least, has yet to be fully explored.

// Conversations //

Rio de Janeiro / Christopher Gaffney - Academic

In Botafogo, one of Rio’s beachfront neighbourhoods, lives Christopher Gaffney, an academic and visiting professor in the Graduate School of Architecture and Urbanism at the Universidade Federal Fluminense in Niterói. He has been investigating the urban, political and economic interventions for the 2014 World Cup, and the long-term implications for Brazil of hosting the event.

Based on his research to date, I ask Christopher if he would consider the World Cup to have been a success:

“For FIFA, the World Cup was a great success. In terms of the event itself, it worked. But for Brazil, the country was suspended for a month. It was a total waste of money, a transfer of wealth from public to private hands. It was a real estate grab, and that’s what the Olympics are too.”

This distinction he makes between the two hosts bodies, Brazil and FIFA, seems to be common among Brazilians: “Sure. The World Cup happened here in Rio. But the people’s football is what you see on the beach and in the park. Beyond that, it’s all rotten and corrupt.”

If this is indeed the case, I ask, then why is it that no reporters took up this angle on the event?

“It’s just too complicated for the mainstream media,” he replies. I ask why this might be.

“Entertainment is depoliticised. There is no political consciousness about sport. Likewise, if Coca Cola starting killing people tomorrow, people would still drink it. There is no sense of consumerism as a political construct. At an academic level we write about it, we talk about it, we have conferences about it, 30, 40, maybe 50 of us. But people’s teams are such a part of their identity. They go to support them, for the love of the game, and politics doesn’t get a look in. People cannot think about their teams as political, about their sport as political, about their identity as political.”

Conducting his research, Christopher has frequent conversations with FIFA:

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“They aren’t able to think about what they do as a business model. They consider themselves the producers of a product, an international agency with a mandate to develop football everywhere. In order to justify that development, they have to host a World Cup that maximises their profit. And so the World Cup generates US$4.5 billion, $1.5 billion of which was profit. Because they’re a not-for-profit, that then has to be distributed via salaries etc. Thus, this self-proclaimed role of FIFA as an international development agency creates a tightly circular logic which is used to justify the World Cup. When I try to tell them that they are the articulator of multinational business interests, which range from stadium constructors to architects, security firms, hospitality packages, everything that involves the World Cup, they employ this distorted, fraudulent logic.”

It is not just FIFA, however, who Christopher accuses of working in their own best interest. He reflects on the trajectory of the Brazilian state.

“Everything in Brazil is so much bigger than it was 50 years ago; the population has doubled. And in the political arena, since Lula and the PT first came to power, we have gone from 15 to 29 ministries at the federal level. This syndicalisation of the state itself has become its own best interest.

“Corruption here is systemic; it has been part of Brazilian culture for 500 years. In North America, Western Europe, we have managed to hide our corruptions better. Here it’s just naked. I think that the basic systems of Brazil don’t work, so if you’re not engaged in daily corruption of some form, you just cannot get by: the bank, the bus, the line at the supermarket, everyone is always looking for some way to get around something, because if you follow the rules in Brazil, you’re done.

It’s almost impossible to get things done, so you have an entirely parallel system. Because there is no transparency in government, justice is not accessible, unless you have a lot of money. So how do you access power in any way without having some sort of alternative system?”

Christopher characterises Brazil as a highly insular place.

“The military dictatorship saw a long period of anti-intellectualism. And a long period of Brazilians not knowing anything about the rest of the world. The best Brazilian artists from the 70s and 80s were in exile, where they came into contact with new ideas. Not much came internally from Brazil.

“Those people who grew up in Brazil in that era, not ever having left the country, are now the people in charge. Because of this, a path dependent lack of creativity has evolved. This is acutely palpable in the field of urban architecture. We are so far in the past. The Institute of Brazilian Architecture is fantastically conservative, just like most other Brazilian institutions. It has been locked in a state of Niemeyerism for over 50 years – in fact we’re still building Niemeyer plans from the 1950s.”

It is for this reason, Christopher concludes, that Brazil was unable to take on FIFA this summer and truly showcase itself through the games:

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“Granted, a Brazilian architect did redo the Maracana, but it looks like just about every other stadium in the world. The Brazilians denied themselves the opportunity to appropriate their own culture and for that to be one of the things that made the World Cup noticeable.”

The conversation continues. See Also:

Brasilia / Mateus da Silva Fontenes, Translator at the National Congress

“[…] Personally, I did not see much major profit in it for people here in Brazil. I didn’t like to see how there was a brutalisation of the police forces in order to make sure the World Cup was not interrupted by protest. But then again, we were here, receiving people from all over the world, Brazil met the standards expected by international tourism, which may open doors to new unexploited opportunities […]”

Rio de Janeiro / Cristina Becker, British Council

“[…] There is no cultural infrastructure in place, and as a result, Brazilian artists are struggling. This is not for want of talent or drive, but of support, both in terms of an accessible creative platform, and funding […]”

São Paulo / Roberto Winter, Artist

“[…] Brazil is one of the most closed countries in the world, only beaten by North Korea and China. We have an apparently thriving local market for art, but practically no foreign galleries, and few foreign artists represented by local galleries. There is a certain imbalance between the economy and the culture, the whole thing comes from the closest related history, the dictatorship […]”

London / Ambassador Roberto Jaguaribe, Embassy of Brazil

“[…] My problem with global governance of sport, and indeed, global governance in general, is that it deals with an enormously valuable public good but it is not run through public interest. It is run in the interest of a group that is self-preserving and self-contained, and can continue to do that forever without answering to public demands, they are not answerable to anything. They own the governance of an enormously relevant social good- not just from a financial point of view, but a cultural and even political one, an enormous asset.[…]”

// Brazil Between the Shots // continues online at www.cambridgeglobalist.org.

With thanks to Trinity College, Ambassador Roberto Jaguaribe, Michael James Marsden, Magda Dzugan, Alex Bellos, Susie Nicklin, Adriana Pavlova, Cristina Becker, Flavio Alves,

Renato Rocha, Max de Haldevang, Stephen Eisenhammer, Tom Ashe, Christopher Gaffney, Mateus da Silva Fontenes, Cayo Honorato, Senator Ricardo Ferraço, Senator Eduardo Suplicy, Senator Casildo Maldaner, Senator Ana Amélia, Tom Hennigan, Jan Piotrowski, Roberto Winter, Marieke van Hal, Daniel Rangel, Tera Queiroz, Fernanda Brenner, Gisela Motta, Leandro Lima, Marcos Chaves, Raul Zito, Boa Mistura, Luisa Strina, Lia Contrucci,

General Richard Turner, Ambassador Alex Ellis, Fernanda Feitosa, Heitor Martins, Marcelo Araujo, Tom Petzal, Jane Stockdale and James Rogers

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The Cambridge Globalist Vol. III (Nov. 2014)

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