The human capital transition and the role of policy

Along with information and communication technology, infrastructure, and the innovation system, human capital is a key pillar of the knowledge economy with its scope for increasing returns. With this in mind, the purpose of this chapter is to investigate how industrialized economies managed to achieve the transition from low to high levels of human capital. The first phase of the human capital transition was the result of the interaction of supply and demand, triggered by technological change and boosted by the demands for (immaterial) services. The second phase of the human capital transition (i.e., mass education) resulted from enforced legislation and major public investment. The state’s aim to influence children’s beliefs appears to have been a key driver in public investment. Nevertheless, the roles governments played differed according to the developmental status and inherent socioeconomic and political characteristics of their countries. These features of the human capital transition highlight the importance of understanding governments’ incentives and roles in transitions

Literature and reading

This article examines anthropological approaches to fiction reading. It asks why the field of Literary Anthropology remains largely disinvested of ethnographic work on literary cultures and how that field might approach the study of Literature and reading ethnographically. The issue of the creative agency of fiction readers is explored in the context of what it means to ask anthropological questions of literature; this includes the challenge of speaking back to dominant approaches grounded in forms of critical analysis. Finally, the article looks to recent work in the Anthropology of Christianity on Bible reading and engagements with biblical character to open up new questions about the relationship between fiction reading and temporal regimes