2. Dating and the facebook

3. What your phone might do for you two years from now. H/T Marginal Revolution

4. Thinking about evolution

5. Banking – science or art? – Gillian Tett

6. Wall Street Bonuses: Culture, Identity, and Crisis – Karen Z. Ho

7. Why Africa welcomes the Chinese – Paul Kagame

At the Association of Social Anthropologists Blog: Most notably, banking conferences – like marriages – provide a chance for a social group to assemble iin one place, in a way that reaffirms their common identity and enabled them to forge new alliances, often in opposition to others. It also provides a forum for the group to restate their core assumptions and ideas in a manner that allows the group to reproduce and disseminate a cognitive map, over time. Some of this is done overtly, and self-consciously, with power-point presentations on a podium, or deliberate, carefully chosen branding and marketing campaigns. However, the most powerful forms of intellectual ‘reproduction’ occur through more informal means: the gossip around the bar about bonuses (that reinforces the dominant assumption that bigger pay is tantamount to success); the use of complex mathematical language to discuss credit (which makes it acceptable to talk about money for hours on end, without ever mentioning a human being); the sartorial conformity, as bankers all wear chinos and expensive watches/ear-rings (which underlines the idea that wealth is unifying source of identity, but only when it is not overtly displayed); the widespread use of speaker ‘biographies’ (which also stress the common educational, quasi-kinship bonds that link the group), or the use of ‘on-the-record’, or ‘off-the-record’ conventions for journalists, (which reinforce the assumption that bankers have a right to control information flow to the outside world.)

However, the other feature which makes investment banking conferences oddly similar to marriage rituals is that they are also one of the few occasions when ‘outsiders’ have a chance to slip into the banking world, and properly observe the interactions of the group, and the way that they discuss and display themselves. This is not always possible: just as some weddings might be limited to a tiny group of invited guests, some conferences will tightly control the members, and ban outsiders, such as the media. Yet, the bar to entry can often be overcome, since investment banking conferences are so big, and bankers are meeting away from their own, private space in the office or trading floor. So I, for one, plan to keep attending as many of these events as possible – only this year, in a symbolic nod too the new mood of austerity, the conferences are no longer being staged in holiday resorts such as Barcelona, Cannes, Boca Raton or Las Vegas (which used to be hot destinations of choice), but instead in the more humdrum, ’serious’ locations of Washington, or Edgware Road, London.

The full post is here.

From a policy brief from the United Nations University: We have already witnessed over the past year brave and even imaginative efforts by many developing countries in order to cope. Developing countries with the largest and strongest economies, such as China, India and Brazil, have shown encouraging early signs of recovery after implementing timely countercyclical policies. In many African countries governments have been proactively attempting to protect their economies. In many (including Botswana, Mauritius and South Africa) governments have increased their expenditure. Ghana, facing a large budget deficit, is negotiating assistance from the IMF. Kenya and Tanzania are carefully monitoring their economies. The African Development Bank reacted quickly by identifying the most vulnerable countries and making emergency finances available. Many longterm investment projects in Africa, many in critical infrastructure, seem to remain in place.

The fact that many developing countries can now act in this way is quite in contrast to their actions during previous global recessions, such as those in the early 1980s, 1990s and in 1998. Then, developing countries, especially those in Africa, were much less well-managed. Deficits were high and reserves were low. Consequently, when global growth declined, these economies shrunk substantially. This time around, with a few exceptions, developing countries have, on average, had more leeway: deficits are lower and reserve holding is much better. In Asia, valuable lessons were learnt after the 1998 financial crisis, the actions Developing countries should not expect too much assistance from the rich world implemented in response to this have resulted in their economies becoming less vulnerable to financial shocks. Many countries here, such as China and South Korea, accumulated large foreign exchange reserves in order to insure themselves against such crises. While this reflects on an international financial system that is not trusted by developing countries, it does show that developing countries can and will act in their own best interests.

It also needs to be pointed out that improvements in macro-economic management in many developing countries have resulted in improvements in governance – including improvements in many African countries. These improvements, including more robust democracies; more frequent elections; initiatives to reduce corruption and end conflicts; and to empower women, are largely home-grown. It would be very difficult to argue that they were the outcome of Western aid or pressure. This means that better governance, which leads to better resilience in the case of financial and economic shocks, have most often been achieved without, or even in spite of, Western aid.

If this crisis can ever be said to have a positive outcome, it may be that of developing countries showing that they can and should manage by themselves and collaborate with regional institutions and the UN development system. They still are – and this is another lesson from the crisis – very dependent on global economic growth, but unlike in the past, the extent of the rest of the world’s, in particular the West’s, dependence on developing countries is also becoming abundantly clear. Demand in the West will be low and sluggish for years to come. Global growth depends now more than ever on growing demand in developing countries. The days of the USA as a ‘consumer of last resort’ (as described by Joseph Stiglitz) are over.

The full document [pdf] is here

My Bachelors thesis – seems like a world ago now – is a discourse analysis of ideology in Nigerian newspaper editorials. My interests in editorials have come up again, and I am thinking of launching a series over at NigeriansTalk that brings together, at least once a week, editorials of different newspapers. I know it is a rather rough way to measure what is important to the Nigerian press, but it is nevertheless an indication.

For instance, the case of Miss Grace Ushang, the NYSC member who was raped to death on September 27, 2009, came up in a NEXT editorial on October 30, and in a Nigerian Guardian editorial today, November 2. NigeriansTalk’s Nneoma blogged about it on October 22.

I would love to make it a daily affair, but I am so busy I cannot commit to doing that. If anyone is interested in doing it for NigeriansTalk please leave me a message here.