In our final year in review post, Steve Fuller looks back on 2012. He explains how there are two stories from the end of this year which he will be watching intently in the next

Fuller, Steve

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blo gs.lse.ac.uk http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/po liticsandpolicy/archives/29431Fracking and Willetts: two stories to watch in 2013In our final year in review post, Steve Fuller looks back on 2012. He explains how there aretwo stories from the end of this year which he will be watching intently in the next.The implications of  two stories f rom the end of  2012 are worth watching in 2013. The f irststory has global consequences. It concerns the terms on which a global climate agreementwas reached in Doha in early December. Instead of  pledging an across-the-board reductionof  carbon emissions, the world’s nations concurred on the need to create a f und to assistthe impoverished areas of  the world in adapting to the substantial climate changes thatmost scientists f orecast in the not- too-distant f uture.This surprisingly – and, to my mind, welcomed – dose of  pragmatism occurred in the  same week that theUK Chancellor George Osborne announced substantial f inancial incentives f or ‘f racking’, the deep-rockdrilling f or gas and petroleum, a process that the CEO of  Shell Oil recently predicted on the BBCprogramme ‘Hardtalk’ would lead to a rejuvenation of  the manuf acturing sector in the developed world,not least the US and UK.If  successf ul, f racking could well delay the development of  alternative energy sources, as well asthreaten still greater destabilisation of  the climate, as elements closer to the Earth’s core come to bedisturbed. However, given the promised quantit ies of  energy, f racking, even with all its risks, may also bethe easiest way to uphold a ‘business as usual’ att itude towards organizing the world’seconomy. Perhaps this is part of  the Realpolit ik behind Doha’s sudden burst of  charity towards thepeople most vulnerable to severe climate change: Call it ‘anticipatory compensation’ f or damages.The second story has arguably more local, but no less important consequences – at least f or thepolit ics of  the academy. It concerns the gradual unf olding of  the world- view of  David ‘Two Brains’Willetts, government minister f or universit ies, which is nowadays subsumed under the Department ofBusiness. In mid-October, Willetts delivered almost two speeches – the second he simply published toavoid protests – that hinted at an intellectually sophisticated justif ication of  the neo- liberal approachto academic research. However, ‘intellectually sophisticated’ does not necessarily mean intellectuallysatisf ying!The f irst speech was delivered at the annual meeting of  the Association of  Business Schools, locatedthis year at my own University of  Warwick, the original ‘enterprise university’. Here Willetts of f ered somebracing advice to UK business schools, which have been hit harder than most other parts of  academiaduring the current recession. Income f rom both research grants and training programmes is sharply downin most places. In response, Willetts argued that business schools should be allowed to keepa larger share of  whatever income they receive – as opposed to using it to cross-subsidise less lucrativereaches of  the university.At the same time, and somewhat surprisingly, he stressed that business academics should be rewardedmainly f or their contributions to improving the UK economy. The overall picture here is one of  businessschools becoming increasingly autonomous f rom their academic moorings, while aligning their researchinterests with that of  government business policy. The proposal recalls Nationalökonomieand Staatswissenschaf t – the customisation of  economics and polit ical science to the interests of  thestate – that was a distinctive f eature of  German academia during that nation’s rise to superpower statusin the Wilhelmine period leading up to the First World War. It was against this backdrop that Max Weberstruggled to assert social science’s ‘value-neutrality’.Willett ’s second speech was the annual John Desmond Bernal Lecture that was due to be delivered atBirkbeck College London. Armed with the strange polit ical economy bedf ellows of  Friedrich Hayek andKarl Polanyi, Willetts chastised Bernal, an inveterate central planner with Soviet sympathies, f or f ailing tosee the role of  a robust state in providing f inancial incentives and, more importantly, a securelegal inf rastructure f or innovative markets to develop.Between these two speeches Willetts usef ully demonstrates that the state in neo- liberalism is no lessinterventionist than social democracy or, f or that matter, socialism. Its telos looks toward a ‘corporatist’state, which in the extreme involves the reconf iguration of  all government f unctions – including thoseoriented to welf are – in the service of  wealth production. In such a world-view, the distribution of  wealthenters the policy horizon as a potential drag on productivity but not as a posit ive policy goal in its ownright.Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the British Politics and Policy blog, norof the London School of Economics. Please read our comments policy before posting.About the authorSteve Fuller is Auguste Comte Chair in Social Epistemology at the University of Warwick. He tweets at@ProfSteveFuller. No related posts.

Fracking and Willetts: two stories to watch in 2013

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