I’ve just returned from two weeks in the US with my colleague Dr May Tan-Mullins. Each day we read reports of the passage of the beleaguered Olympic torch on its inappropriately named ‘journey of harmony’. And even as I write this, protestors have clashed with the authorities in Seoul. In cities across the globe we saw diversions, protests, and heavy-handed ‘torch guards’ man-handling people out of the way. In my last blog I was talking about China’s role in Sudan and Darfur. The issue now is Tibet, although it’s often wrapped up together with China’s broader human rights record at home and abroad. 

The Tibet issue is complex, but is seen as an internal issue with many Chinese supportive of their state’s stance on Tibet. When I was in the US various head of state pulled out of the Games’ opening ceremony. Hardly outright condemnation, but a symbolic gesture nonetheless. Others have called for a boycott of the Olympics to shed light on China’s occupation of Tibet.

Darfur protests in Washington. Photo: May Tan-Mullins

The call for a boycott is coming from a wide range of groups, including US Senators, Hollywood actors, international journalists, Tibetans in exile, Burmese activists, and Taiwanese political parties. They all use China’s human rights abuses domestically and internationally as the reason and believe a boycott would highlight these and shame China into reform as well as hurting China economically through lost revenue. But would a boycott work?

First, we need to look at the interests and agendas of some of these groups. For some in the US, while the headline is human rights abuses, there is list of other misdemeanours which go beyond human rights and are about US strategic interests (e.g. China’s support of Venezuela’s left-wing President Hugo Chavez, China’s blocking of sanctions against Iran in the UN Security Council, and the fact that China has allegedly been ‘spying’ on the US). And some sections of the Taiwanese Olympic boycott lobby have deeper political roots going back to China’s ‘One China’ policy and its denial of the legitimacy of Taiwan. So, in looking at a potential boycott let’s also look at the geoeconomic and geopolitical motives behind the proponents.

Second, history suggests that Olympic boycotts (in 1956, 1976, 1980 and 1984) haven’t achieved much, and often don’t achieve what they set out to do. If the issue is human rights abuses then how can anyone know that a boycott will lead to democracy in China and more ethical foreign policy? In the Tibet case an international boycott might only strengthen the Chinese peoples’ stance on Tibet, so more international dialogue might be better of the kind advocated by the Dalai Lama. Overseas, China’s role in the world is mediated bilaterally and multilaterally so how would a boycott of a sporting event work alongside these other, more lasting political institutions and relationships? A boycott might be a useful tactical device at a time of international attention on China, but if it is not part of a wider strategy then it’s unlikely to work.

Third, there is also an argument that beyond the high level state agendas and lack of apparent reforms that the Olympics have in fact led to a political and cultural shift in urban China, with a blossoming of civil society organisations that have been critical of the state. So, if we look at the actual political changes, as opposed to those represented in Western media, it may be that China is changing as a result of the Olympics.

Finally, there is the hypocrisy of scapegoating China to serve western agendas. If we are serious about boycotting China then similar public actions need to be taken against all rights abusers and not just China. Once again, singling out China in this manner serves to reinforce the spurious democratic credentials of many western governments. Moreover, the western firms who are heavily involved in the Olympics (e.g. GEC, Visa) are wary about upsetting a lucrative market and so would not support a boycott.

About the author

Giles Mohan is a senior lecturer in development studies. He teaches on the Open University’s development studies programme as well as in geography. Giles’ research examines politics in Africa, particularly ways in which rural communities access the government as well the role of diasporas in national politics.

In my last post I argued that people’s contributions can’t always be calculated and added up. That week there were two stories in the press – one about the value of migrants and the other about the value of housework that made me think that the attempts being made to put a figure on how much housework or migrants’ work contribute to an economy were inadequate. I felt that the incalculable worthiness of people too needs to be recognised.

I still hold by what I said there but the teacher’s strike on April 24^th made me wonder when and what kinds of calculations might be important, even necessary.

And this is why.

Ed Balls, the schools secretary wrote in an article Why Britain has the best teachers ever on Tuesday October 23, 2007 :

The best teachers show children and young people a world they never knew existed. They open doors of opportunity and inspire a lifelong love of learning.

I hope everyone can look back on at least one teacher who really made a difference to them. We all want our children to be taught by people who not only help them to learn and progress, but also make a real difference to their lives and aspirations.

He offers a ringing endorsement to the teaching profession. He recounts, if you like, their incalculable worthiness.

However, at least according to the National Union of Teachers (NUT), this worthiness definitely remains uncalculated in the current pay offer that the government has made to teachers. At 2.45% it is well below the retail price index of 4.1%. The NUT therefore calculates that their wage increases are well below the inflation rate. They see this not only as a mark of Government failure to reward teachers with appropriate pay increases but also as signalling the wider worth given to teaching. Poor pay leads to a feeling of unworthiness among teachers and can result in falling standards amongst those who are drawn into the profession. In short, unless teachers are paid as if they are the best, the ‘best’ will shun teaching.

At the heart of this issue is an interesting paradox. Ed Balls clearly values teachers but he does not (at least according to the NUT) place an appropriate financial value on their contributions. The teachers ask for, what they consider, rightful financial remuneration – the incalculable worthiness recognised in Ed Balls’ speech seems to be inadequate. They want appropriate commensuration for their work.

Perhaps, it is worth stopping off here to explore a little what exactly we mean by commensuration. Commensuration is the process by which different qualities are made comparable by quantifying them. Of course, this process of quantification is inherently a way of ascribing value. It is not an end point but part of a system whereby you have some expectations about the contributions that might be made by teachers.

Commensuration as a practice always simplifies complex realities by eliminating heterogeneity and selecting comparable elements. It fixes, through the process of revelation, particular aspects of their existence as valuable, while obscuring others. For Plato, this process of simplification made it easier to navigate the world. It was a necessary part of rational living as it would remove passion and emotion from processes by which we value goods or people. It would stabilize our decision making by giving less room for subjective variations in what we value. His student, Aristotle, on the other hand, thought that too much was lost in this process of simplification. Difference and uniqueness and valuing things for their own sake, were, for him, the qualities that made us ethical humans.

Irrespective of whether we support Plato’s viewpoint or Aristotle’s, the value of a teacher’s labour it appears has already been calculated. The main pay scale varies across 6 bands while the upper pay scale has three bands. Progression in the main pay scale is related to years of work while progression in the upper pay scale is based on the discretion of the governing body. The value of the teacher will be assessed by school governing bodies, in line with local priorities. In addition teachers can also apply for Teaching and Learning Responsibility Allowance, if they take up a responsibility beyond that required by others. And then there are the Advanced Skills Teachers with their own 18 point pay spine; Excellent Teachers with their salary scheme; and the Leadership group which includes head teachers and other school leaders who have a 43 point pay scale. Teachers can also apply for Performance Related Pay and some teachers will be eligible for special allowances for teaching in London.

By the time I waded through these ‘differences’ in how teachers’ pay is calculated and these marks of recognition of uniqueness, simplicity began to look decidedly appealing! Jokes apart, the recognition of what matters in a particular context is something to be lauded. Teachers may (in my mind rightly) object to the way in which they have been transferred from the old scale to the new, without pay protection, leading to a reduction of recognition of certain tasks that they do and an erasure of the value of others but the many different scales does suggest the difficulties in equating qualitatively different types of work undertaken under different conditions. So the calculation of value seems, in this case, to have been done with an eye on the diversity of conditions in which teachers work

However, what is at stake here is not just the recognition of differences between teachers but also that between teachers and other workers in the economy. Why do teachers, who are given charge of shaping a whole generation for a minimum of 12 years, get paid so much less than some other professionals? What does this tell students about respect and value? What is the metric being used to calculate value? And how does this compare with how other people’s work is valued and measured? This is where recalculation seems to be necessary and important, given the society in which we live. Perhaps Ed Balls needs to go back to school for some lessons on calculating and rewarding value!

About the author

Parvati Raghuram is Lecturer in Geography at the Open University. Her research interests focus on the ways in which the mobility, of individuals, goods and of ideas is reshaping the world.

A two hour drive and a 40 minute boat ride along the Ganges north of Calcutta is Green Island. As the name suggests this is an island where the original vegetation that once covered the Ganges Delta remains relatively undisturbed.  I say relatively because while human disturbance is limited, every year when monsoon storms and high tides swell the river level Green Island is flooded, sometimes to a depth a little over a meter.

Studying this type of vegetation is crucial to my work as it represents exactly the kind of plant community that has the potential to be preserved in the fossil record. As the floodwaters scour the leaf litter from the soil surface, and the island margins are eaten away by erosion, leaves are washed into the river where they may be deposited in muds and silts and eventually fossilised. We see many such deposits in the rock record from which we deduce information on past vegetation and climate.

I was in the company of Professor Subir Bera from Calcutta University and his wife who had organised the day. We had special police permission to visit and collect on the island and even had a police escort. On the boat with us were several people from the nearby village who had (as we discovered later) prepared a wonderful lunch of fish and meat curries, rice and fruit, all served on banana leaves.

As the open wooden boat neared the island we could see whole trees, still with green leaves, that had recently fallen in to the water as the riverbanks were eroded. Caught in the branches of one such tree was the body of a goat. Now for most this might seem gruesome but for me it was fascinating because it was another example of taphonomic processes – taphonomy is the study of fossilisation.

As the Ganges undercuts the edges of Green Island whole tress fall in to the river - perhaps on their way to being fossilised.

Green Island is a little over a kilometre in length and a few hundred metres wide. Here we collected the populations of leaves from 56 different species of trees shrubs and vines. After pressing, drying and mathematically scoring them CLAMP analysis positioned the Green Island vegetation near the Kerala sites we had previously analysed, but in an area of the three-dimensional plot that indicated they were from a slightly cooler site.

Because Green Island is on a flat delta plain I could use meteorological data in the form of a grid in which observations from individual meteorological stations can be interpolated (mathematically extrapolated) for sites such as Green Island that does not have its own measurements.

CLAMP showing the positions of modern forests determined by their leaf architecture.

The plot above shows the positions of the Indian forests that I have analysed so far. In this plot each ball represents a forest. Green Island is Labelled “Green” and the other labelled balls are forests in Kerala. The positions of balls are determined by the numerical score that describes leaf architecture for at least twenty species of woody trees, shrubs and vines from each forest.

Balls that plot close together indicate forests with similar leaf architectures, while that that plot far apart are very different. The balls are colour coded such that blue represents cool climates and red ones hot climates. Orange, green and light blue indicate forests growing in intermediate climates. It is easy to see that the Indian forests (coded maroon) all lie in the warm end of the plot.

In this plot the Indian forests have been treated as if they were fossils. They have found their own position with respect to the other sites for which the climate is known. Despite the fact that the Indian sites all plot close to other warm sites they form a group beyond the limits of the existing cloud of sites, and using this calibration all the Indian sites yield a climate prediction that is several degrees colder than that which is observed.

The next stage is to include the Indian observed climate information so that the shape of the plot will change and the ability of the method to give accurate results for fossils that represent ancient forests growing in warm climates does not suffer from the same error of underestimating temperatures.

About the author

Bob Spicer is Professor of Earth Sciences at the Open University. Founding Director of the OU's Centre for Earth, Planetary Space and Astronomical Research (CEPSAR) his interests are broad. However he is most at home when studying how plants can be used to tell us about ancient climates, and how that information can help us plan for managing our planet in the future.