Caribbean Technological Thought and Climate Adaptation

This essay offers a critical perspective on the role technology plays in the Caribbean formation of climate adaptation. It locates this critical perspective in “the embodiment of technology,” a concept in the writings of the late political economist Norman Girvan that helped him describe how Caribbean states acquire technology and related infrastructures despite at times not having resources to maintain them. The embodiment of technology is still important today for mapping the possibilities of climate adaptation—that is, if technology transfer is a historically embodied process, then climate adaptation is a measure of how people recognize the political failures and the potentials of technology over time. The essay suggests that attention to Girvan’s writings is central to critical Caribbean scholarship on climate change for two reasons: his writings reflect the forms of intergenerational responsibility that shape climate adaptation, and they examine the shifting meaning of technology to regional identity.

Anointments and Prestige: Reflecting on #CommunicationSoWhite with Herman Gray and Oscar Gandy

Oscar Gandy, Jr. is a Professor Emeritus at the Annenberg School for Communication and a political economist. He is the author of four books, including Communication and Race: A Structural Perspective (1998), as well as numerous publications. Herman Gray is Professor Emeritus of sociology at UC Santa Cruz. He is the author of the books Watching Race and Cultural Moves, and many other scholarly writings. I spoke with both of them together about #CommunicationSoWhite, asking them as senior black scholars to reflect on contemporary discussions and suggest ways forward in the field of communication and media studies. 1 The interview is edited for brevity and clarity.

Max Weber as a Political Economist

Max Weber’s path to economic science was impacted to a large degree by political motives. The question emerges how the depiction, which has been maintained by historians of economics, of Weber as a methodologist – who demands objectivity and value freedom in scientific analysis – is compatible with the view of a young, politically-minded economist who, even from the university lectern, did not shy away from personal value judgments? The manuscripts first published recently in the context of the Max Weber-Gesamtausgabe on his lectures Praktische Nationalökonomie (1895 – 1899) reveal that Weber distinguished sharply between value judgments and scientific analysis – not in order to suppress the former, but in order to be clear about his ultimate goals and its consequences at all times and to elevate these to guide his thinking in practical questions of political economy.