Says Who?: the struggle for authority in a market-based society by Paul Verhaeghe | Goodreads

Says Who?: the struggle for authority in a market-based society by Paul Verhaeghe | Goodreads




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Says Who?: the struggle for authority in a market-based society

by
Paul Verhaeghe,
David Shaw (Translation)
3.33 · Rating details · 12 Ratings · 4 Reviews
‘We live in an extremely controlling society in which authority has disappeared … traditional authority is lapsing into brute force … and we ourselves must take the first steps towards creating a new social order.’



This was the trenchant diagnosis by Paul Verhaeghe at the end of his acclaimed book about identity, What About Me? Now he returns to investigate another aspect of our lives under threat: authority.



In Says Who?, Verhaeghe examines how authority functions and why we need it in order to develop healthy psyches and strong societies. Going against the laissez-faire ethics of a free-market age, he argues that rather than seeing authority as a source of oppression we should invest in developing it in the places that matter. Only by strengthening the power of horizontal groups within existing social structures, such as in education, the economy, and the political system, can we restore authority to its rightful place. Whether you are a parent or child, teacher or student, employer or employee, Says Who? provides the answers you need. (less)

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Paperback, 272 pages
Published July 13th 2017 by Scribe UK
ISBN
1911344447 (ISBN13: 9781911344445)
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Nov 19, 2017Iancu S. rated it liked it
Came across the author after a glowing review of his previous book (about identity in a market society). Decided I didn't want to read yet another diagnostic of how neoliberalism is screwing everyone up, so picked up this book instead. Its central idea is that traditional models of top-down authority are crumbling, and they need a replacement, which the author sees in 'horizontal' models of distributed authority, where various collectives deliberate and participate directly. This can happen in the school, the corporation or the nation.

The book reads easily, but doesn't really have a coherent feel. And, for a university professor, the author has an unsually breezy approach to referencing. In some cases, like his discussion of the 'tragedy of the commons', you could tell he hasn't read the authors he's discussing: Garrett Hardin's famous paper proposed command & control, top-down planning as *one* possible solution to the tragedy of the commons. The other solution was the allocation of property rights. (This is important, but goes unmentioned, because it doesn't really fit the narrative). In other cases - his casual, unattributed mention of Germany using 'two-thirds renewable energy' - he is simply wrong. Germany gets around one third of its power from renewables - power, not energy.

The book has interesting insights, and I enjoyed the writing style, but I'm not sure I'll open it again anytime soon. (less)
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Mar 02, 2018Peter Geyer rated it liked it
Shelves: culture, europe, morals-values, owned, organisations, psychoanalysis-psychotherapy, religion, society, the-self
The cover of this book strongly suggests that this book is complementary to Verhaeghe's What About Me, an excellent text about current dilemmas around identity in what might be broadly called Western society.

Here the theme is authority, or at least its decline in politics and elsewhere, a contention easily verified by turning on a tv, going online, or reading a newspaper. Verhaeghe takes the position early in the book of identifying authority historically with patriarchy, with discussions about parenting, teaching (he's an academic), families and the changing role of women. This is from the context of his profession as a psychotherapist and his examples are predominantly from Europe, particularly from what were called at one time the Benelux countries (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg). His psychoanalytic references are Freud and Lacan and he tells us he's not getting into types of personality.

I must admit that I found his argument rather thin, even though it is an obviously relevant issue. This might be because his depiction of discipline in the home and so on seemed a bit too strident and I wondered whether he was reflecting his own experience or what happens in the culture he lives in. That's not to say that giving people a "clip over the ear" doesn't happen in Australia, or didn't happen when I was growing up (from teachers in my case, not parents) – I think the author and me might be in a similar age bracket – but I would have wanted more evidence rather than story-telling.

One of the aspects of this loss of authority is a lack of trust in democracy. Here the examples given about extending the franchise are in Verharghe's locality. This information could have led him to emphasise that democracy is a very recent process and not a given.

He takes the collapse of trust in authority back to the Paris riots of May 1968, usually presented as a significant moment by purveyors of postmodernism, who often forget that their locality limits the influence of such events. Down here, the American experience seemed to be more imitated and relevant, although I was still at school in 1968, and essentially away from such volatility.

A solution presented here is a more communal approach to deciding, and he suggests some examples of this occurring, including social media. Somewhat curiously (for me, anyway), the approach of the Brazilian businessman Ricardo Semler is introduced as part of this way forward. Semler was a big deal for a while 25 years ago in the frenzy associated with self-directed work teams, or "industrial democracy" if you like. I didn't know that he was still going.

Certainly ideas like this are preferable to worker surveillance or entertainment/exercise strategies designed to keep the worker at work, a criticism laid (also 25 years ago) at the feet of those who wished to import Japanese-style work practices.

I thought this argument was rather thin, and for two main reasons.

Firstly, there's the comment made by Mark Fisher (previously reviewed), as well as others over the years, that capitalism, however described, has tended to subsume protests and various movements for change into what used to be called the prevailing paradigm. This kind of thing, for me, anyway, was apparent in the late 1970s. That's not to say no change has occurred over the years, just that it the prevailing system has swallowed it up. Whether that's a good or bad thing is subject to considered opinion

The second problem, for me anyway, is that this desired change (whatever its benefits), seems too superficial, as though people will change their habits overnight, much as what appears to be expected by those encouraging or expecting flexibility in behaviour when explaining ideas about different personalities.

In some respects, this comes down to a general presumption that human beings are "social animals" – whatever that means. This statement appears regularly these days, often about the purported needs of people in old age. But it says nothing about general sociability, or levels of sociability, even inclinations, interest or skills. The levels of co-operation required for what Verhaeghe suggests appear to rest on an undefined general natural sociability.

Another claim made in the book, regularly made in all sorts of places, is that this current generation (usually not defined) is the most educated in history, a statement I've never seen explained, or challenged for that matter. I presume what is meant by this is that this particular group of people have reached higher levels of formal schooling than those in past times. This is a statement about averages therefore, perhaps also the result of strategies to keep children at school, or higher leaving ages, or the demands of the workforce.

It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with being "educated" or that everybody in this cohort is literate, or more literate and educated than older cohorts. It's like saying that people are more knowledgeable these days because they have access to the internet, a quite different proposition from being able to evaluate and understand what's on there.

A couple of weeks ago I was having a conversation with a bright young person, probably in the purported group, in which I stated I didn't get a car licence (effectively culturally mandatory in my country at that time) until I was over 20 and one of the reasons was I didn't want to drive a polluting vehicle. He thought this was admirable and that I was far ahead of my time, but I replied that pollution of this and other kinds was in fact part of general discourse and quoted a couple of pop songs as examples (I left out Rachel Carson's Silent Spring etc).

So what is needed is more than motherhood statements or rash unsubstantiated generalisations.

This is a clearly written book and the translator has utilised a number of common English phrases. The examples given by the author in constructing his argument are excellent; what he proposes is a bit flimsy, although not unexpected from what little he says about himself. (less)
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Jan 29, 2018Rhonda rated it liked it
Shelves: business
An interesting thesis on the difference between authority (2 people and an institution) and power (2 people), but somewhat lightweight in constructing an argument for horizontal power. One example of a company and the concept of kids being raised by lots of people other than their parents, together with a misunderstanding of the tragedy of the commons, is nowhere near enough to be persuasive. There are too many personal asides that don't strengthen the argument. While it's good to read a non-US author on this topic from a psychology perspective, the tone is uneven and I think the translator had a difficult job. (less)