text:
The Book is the Thing
Tuesday 8 November, 2016 Friday 4 June, 2021
A professional toolkit for those who aspire to make better.
I offer this specific bibliography to students, professionals and organizations in the pursuit of differential growth through differentiated value. Please offer your critique and additions.
For my students and alumni of the School of Visual Arts Masters program in Interaction Design, I hope you will stand on the shoulders of these visionaries, scientists, designers, academics, entrepreneurs and thoughtful observers. Stand taller. See farther. Make better.
"The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you."
~ W. Somerset Maugham
10 Rules for Strategic Innovators
Govindarajan, Vijay and Chris Trimble , 2006
"VG", as he is thankfully known, has served as a Tuck business school professor and innovation professor in residence at GE, one of the great corporate innovation laboratories. VG and Trimble explain the issues that arise when building breakthroughs in existing businesses. The rules themselves are less memorable.
Like many books, this serves as a guide to help senior executives push past the present, relinquish past assumptions, and open their eyes to new possibilities. It prods us to allow for a different future.
101 Design Methods: A Structured Approach for Driving Innovation in Your Organization
Kumar, Vijay , 2013
IIT Institute of Design professor Kumar teaches design planning and methods programs to the students of this remarkable program, founded by the late Jay Doblin (still the only institution offering a doctorate in design).
We employ this book as a field guide and reference to specific tools and methods for the major elements of the profession – turning "design thinking" (a disconcertingly flaccid label) into designed action.
The Age of Insight
Eric R. Kandel, 2012
Neuroscientist Dr. Kandel won the Nobel Prize in 2000 for his work on long-term memory, how our brain chemistry allows our recollections to persist. Before studying memory in sea slugs, he was a Freudian psychotherapist. Here he returns to Vienna, the city of his birth, to discover why it served as the fount of so many ground-breaking ideas in the 19th-century. Vienna engaged in a rare intellectual dialogue among artists and scientists inspired by each others' works.
Mandel's review of five leading minds (including Sigmund Freud and Gustave Klimt) show how their critical breakthroughs in science, medicine and art laid the groundwork for present-day discoveries in brain science.
Ampersand: Growth by Design
Roger C. Mader, 2011
It may appear self-serving to offer the website for my own consultancy, but it represents the compilation of experiences from a wide and accomplished array of practicing innovation and design professionals, including Ampersand partners, clients, affiliated universities, students and organizations. It remains the only source to depict the push/pull model for balanced growth—adding the demand-driven "pull" methods of innovation strategy to the conventional "push" approach of business strategy. It simplifies a more comprehensive approach to innovation design using the 4D method. It offers many other tools, lessons and examples.
And it is does not attempt to sell you anything.
Art of Digital Marketing: Definitive Guide to Strategic, Targeted, Measurable, online campaigns
Ian Dodson, 2020
Dodson promotes this as a comprehensive guide to digital marketing (it's not, but there's no such thing). IT does a good job of describing how to use the multiple tiers of digital tech to reach and serve consumers. The book uses the profession's leading certification from the Digital Marketing Institute (DMI).
It presents a reasoned inverse methodology for digital marketing: start with the customer and work backwards. Couldn't agree more.
Art of Innovation: Lessons and Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm
Kelly, Tom with Jonathan Littman, 2001
The IDEO method, now projected through Stanford's Hasso Plattner d school program, is described by co-founder Tom Kelly.
He makes sense of surprisingly simple techniques like "build your greenhouse" (a workplace that fosters ideas) and "live in the future."
The Art of the Long View
Schwartz, Peter 1991/96
Adopting the scenario planning method first devised by Royal Dutch Shell in the 1970s, Schwartz revolutionized the way the world pursues the future. From the White House to Proctor & Gamble, scenario planning is used to plan for multiple possibilities — convergent planning for divergent futures.
As one example, envision a simple 2×2 grid plotting two axes against one another. Imagine a future that is richer or poorer on one axis, and on the other, openly global vs. protectively parochial. If all 4 are possible, then a strategy that contemplates only one puts all others at risk.
The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures
Roam, Dan 2008
Consider just two clear principles: A picture is worth a thousand words, and keep it simple. Clarify a problem or sell an idea using a simple set of tools.
We all have some talent for visual thinking. Thinking with pictures can help discover ideas, solve problems in unexpected ways, and improve ability to share your insights.
Kim, W. Chan with Renée Mauborgne, 2005 and now living through http://www.blueoceanstrategy.com
These professors at a premiere European business school, INSEAD, describe the logic behind choosing innovation strategies that get you to "uncontested market space". They refer to this open "blue ocean" to distinguish it from a crowded "red ocean" where you are swarming among other sharks. See "Different" for a less academic interpretation. See their original HBR article Creating New Market Space for the shorter origin thesis for this book.
Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street
Brooks, John, 2014 edition
I confess that I picked this up because it was cited by both Warren Buffet and Bill Gates as among the most influential business books of their long and fruitful careers and subsequent philanthropy. It's really a compilation of essays from the financial journalist and novelist most frequently associated with his writing in the latter half of the 20th century for the New Yorker. And he reads like the New Yorker, breathlessly erudite. I was particularly inspired by the monumental failure of the Ford Edsel, thoroughly researched and boldly led with more money and marketing than any prior consumer product. And it missed its moment. Badly. Sometimes it really is as simple as squandering the moment.
So many painful lessons, too obvious after the fact, that could hopefully save us both from repeating them.
Business Model Generation
Ostwalder, Alexander with Yves Pigneur, 2009
Practical innovation techniques crowd-sourced from 470 strategy practitioners from 45 countries. An exercise in collaborative, curated visuals, frameworks, business models and several illustrative case studies.
Catalyst Code: The Strategies Behind the World's Most Dynamic Companies
Evans, David & Richard Schmalensee, 2007 and blog: catalystcode.com
Some of today's most valuable businesses (Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook) act as platforms and learn from customers.
The authors dig into the ultimate user observation research question: what is the customer actually trying to do? Bob Moesta refers to it by the clumsy lingo Clayton Christenson confabulated as "jobs to be done". (Don't get me wrong; Christenson was a giant in the field of observed behavior and translating it into breakthrough strategies. It just entertains me when new disciplines such as a business strategist attempt to reinvent the established design method for innovation because they didn't realize it was already machined into professions from architecture to UX design). So what are the jobs that customers are trying to accomplish, particularly when they hack their own uses for products that aren't quite right, but right enough right now.
Change by Design
Brown, Tim 2009
IDEO method arrives updated by CEO Tim Brown. He describes design thinking as a collaborative process where design methods match people's needs with solutions that are technically feasible and a viable business strategy.
Conscientious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business
Mackey, John with Raj Sisodia 2014
You've got to love the journey of a 70s hippie, dedicated to his collective community organic grocery he set up with his girlfriend, only to go out of business when a flood swamped the stacked crates of produce at their simple non-profit. But then, like the final scene from It's a Wonderful Life, the neighbors started streaming in, salvaging what they could, pumping, draining, mopping and saving a dream. The future CEO of Whole Foods realized that profit wasn't the enemy. Profit was the only way he could ensure a sustainable source of healthy food in the communities that relied on him.
His purposeful model, which includes a number of breakthrough management practices, serve as an early and leading lesson in the transition to more thoughtful and sustainable businesses in concert with the interests of their communities, not just their stakeholders. The battle to pry his jewel from the greedy fists of private equity investors by selling to his "white knight" Jeff Bezos has yet to play out fully. So many lessons, and now also accompanied by a Field Guide.
As with many of these texts you can also scan youtube and other repositories for video presentations, commencement addresses and TED talks from either of the authors.
http://www.core77.com
This design magazine and resource serves the industrial design community since 1995. Among its many contributors are SVA's chair for the Products of Design MFA, Allan Chochinov.
Democratizing Innovation
von Hippel, Eric 2005
A professor of technology innovation at MIT, von Hippel specializes in the nature and economics of distributed and open innovation. Like Lessig, he promotes open access to intellectual property, and protections that balance the promotion and reward for new ideas with the democratization of their impact.
This work reminds me that Benjamin Franklin suffered a huge outcry against public libraries when he first proposed them for the formative United States, on the understandable grounds that they would deprive authors of fair compensation if an entire community could share a single edition. The debate over the commons continues.
blog: designobserver.com
Join Michael Bierut's community of, for lack of a better term, observed design. Tactical genius. Download the app.
Norman, Donald 1990
Deconstruct the inherent design, both good and bad, of the stuff we all use without questioning.
Warning for your inner obsessive compulsive disorder: now you are REALLY going to hate that crappy seal on your fridge, squeaky hinge, and clogged drain.
Design Thinking and Innovation at Apple
Thomke, Stefan with Barbara Feinberg, Jan 2009 Harvard Business Review
A short , instructive case study on Apple's design leadership.
Designing Interactions
Bill Moggridge, 2007
A personal narrative and design philosophy from a much missed founding father and leading voice in Interaction Design. Moggridge was a co-founder of Ideo, having made his mark in the early design of personal computer platforms, notably the breakthrough Grid laptop, and later concluded his career as the chairman the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in Manhattan.
Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd
Moon, Youngme 2010
Enjoy a witty thesis on the futility of competing head-to-head in a death spiral to commoditization. Moon—a leading Harvard MBA researcher, professor, and innovator—urges us to be different to be better. See Blue Ocean Strategy for the method.
Digital Ground: Architecture, Pervasive Computing, and Environmental Knowing
McCullough, Malcolm 2005
This architecture professor at UMichigan attempts to update building design to accommodate new modes of dislocated interaction spawned by electronic media since the telegraph.
The Discoverers: A History of Man's Search to Know His World and Himself
Boorstin, Daniel J. 1983
The first in a trilogy of master works by the former US Librarian of Congress, described accurately as "perhaps the greatest book by one of our greatest historians, The Discoverers is a volume of sweeping range and majestic interpretation. To call it a history of science is an understatement; this is the story of how humankind has come to know the world, however incompletely ("the eternal mystery of the world," Einstein once said, "is its comprehensibility").
The book proceeds through sections based on momentous discoveries. Boorstin first describes the liberating concept of time—"the first grand discovery"—and continues through the age of exploration and the advent of the natural and social sciences.
Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things
An update on his 1990 work; the joys and frustrations of your can opener. It's nice to know why.
Evolution of Design
Doblin, Jay 1974, ID Archive: id.iit.edu/index.php?id=1109
The evolution of design first formally appeared in Jay Doblin's presentation on "Chicago Bauhaus: Past, Present and Future" at the 1974 symposium for the IIT merger with his Institute of Design.
The great industrial design leader of mid-century Manhattan, founding director of Chicago's Institute of Design, and AIGA champion, Doblin makes the case for the "university of visual education". He tours us through the history of visual experimentation from the Renaissance to the Bauhaus.
Many years after his passing, Doblin's dream—to recast industrial design as a mechanism to solve society's greatest challenges—grows even more resonant today.
Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy
Reverby, Susan M. 2009
A cautionary tale of best of human intentions executed inhumanely. In the design of research, ethics misaligned becomes history maligned.
www.fastcompany.com
The dotcom bible of Silicon Valley innovation survived the dotbomb thanks to a rich compendium of the next new thing. Hardcore valley entrepreneurs, like my co-author Dave Hersh, may dismiss the magazine as popular mass media. I have found though that beyond the rarified fog of the bay, aspiring innovators are introduced to compelling ideas and welcomed into a growing fraternity of practice through this publication. You may particularly benefit from the works of Kevin Kelly and the late and much missed Linda Tischler.
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Csikszentmihaly, Mihaly 1991
This long-observed psychology study reveals the common factors that allow some people to achieve a super-performance "zone" (think Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods). This work resulted in new design forms for playgrounds, for example, to induce "flow".
For a primer, see MC's TED presentation circa 2004.
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
Taleb, Nassim Nicholas 2005 updated edition
A treatise from a Wall Street debunker on how even professional investors delude themselves by misunderstanding causality. Fight past Taleb's smug self-congratulation. It's worth it.
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid
Prahalad, CK 2010 (5th anniversary edition)
From the prolific strategist and professor who first conceived (and later abandoned) "core competencies" of the organization to inform strategy. Here he lays out the logic, some key methods, and cases to show how to radically reinvent business models for the billions of customers who cannot yet afford but nonetheless aspire to a Western standard of living.
Foundations of Strategic Management
Harrison, Jeffrey S. 2007
The Fred G. Peelen Professor of Global Hospitality Strategy at Cornell University presents a concise textbook on the important theories and views of his field. Readers learn the most critical topics in strategy today and study examples from cutting-edge firms.
Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences
Gardner, Howard 1983; 1993
McArthur grant recipient and Harvard professor Howard Gardner viewed intelligence as 'the capacity to solve problems or to fashion products that are valued in one or more cultural setting'. He reviewed the literature using eight criteria or 'signs' of an intelligence. His idea of a range of human capacities, from musical intelligence to the intelligence of self-understanding, now informs everything from early education to the formation of high-performance teams.
Levitt, Steven D. with Stephen J. Dubner, 2005
Finding the real rather than presumed variables that drive change, from a celebrated young economist who was apparently galled by the marketing schtick of the publishers title. The conclusions about why US crime rates plummeted in the 1990s put the lie to many municipal law enforcement claims, particularly here in New York.
Also check out the ongoing podcast series, by the same name.
From Production to Connection: A New Model for Market Organization
Mader, Roger C. and Jeffrey P. Semenchuk, 2000
My visionary co-author Jeff Semenchuk first proposed this concept in the late 1990s. He observed the tectonic shift taking place under the first wave of the commercial internet. Initially he proposed the death of industry segmentation as the organizing feature of commerce. Although provocative, it wasn't quite right, or at least not quite yet. Months of study and debate morphed into a recognition that companies must inevitably shift from an industrial-era model organized around the assets of production, to a more customer-centric digital-era construct, organized around the connection to that customer. Jeff Bezos was already acting on this premise. We were simply observing the impact on our clients.
Navigating the shift from production to connection became the central thesis for the second act in our careers. Jeff became one of the first strategic "Chief Innovation Officers", moving beyond the traditional boundaries of R&D to craft new businesses, offerings and partnerships across multiple industries. I took a parallel path as advisor to him and many other corporate leaders and entrepreneurs on the subject of innovation strategy; and as a professor on the topic at SVA.
This work, first published by Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, is memorialized here: from-production-to-connection. It later appeared in the UK Journal of Strategy.
Future Interaction Design
Pirhonnen, Antti 2005
The Finnish author, though academic, pursues several intriguing human factors to anticipate how human/computer interaction will fundamentally shift.
The Future of Ideas: the fate of the commons in a connected world
Lessig, Lawrence 2001
The author, a professor at Stanford Law School, continues his critique of Intellectual Property (IP) copyright laws restricting freedom of ideas for too long (in the US system), destroying the potential for innovation.
Lessig convincingly argues that works should enter the public domain faster, as intended by the framers of the US Constitution.
The Game Changer: How You Can Drive Revenue and Profit Growth with Innovation
Laffley, AG with Ram Charan, 2008
The real game changer was Laffley, who single-handedly created the strategy market for design-led innovation through his transformation of P&G, the worlds largest consumer product company. A first hand lesson in the tough decisions and big risks to do it right.
Good Strategy, Bad Strategy
Rumelt, Richard, 2011
Sometimes the best way to understand a complex topic is to compare good and bad. From Hannibal's original "Father of Strategy" to the slaughterhouse of World War I's trench warfare, Rumelt ruminates on what makes for good versus bad strategy.
The four elements of a successful strategy outlined in Chapter 5 earn your attention. They can also be gleaned from this lecture at IMD.
Great Inventions
Dyson, James and Robert Uhlig, 2001
This highly visual compendium depicts and describes the history of over 700 inventions, and their inventors (where known). These are the ideas made real that transformed civilization, from flint-head tools of 350,000BC, to the international space station. The contributors are wide-ranging but it does show a British bias.
Johnson, Crockett 1955
Even in its 50th+ edition, this childhood classic reminds us to think with a child's imaginative sense of possibility. Pick up your crayon and start a journey.
Harvard Business Review on Innovation
HBS Press
A compilation of popular articles on innovation from the Harvard Business Review.
How David Beats Goliath
Gladwell, Malcolm May 11, 2009
New Yorker Archive
This New Yorker article saves you reading Outliers, with a pithy story of a renegade girls' basketball team upending the league by playing an uncommon game – effectively soccer on a basketball court.
With historical precursors, such as George Washington's thorough early thumpings at the hands of the British by trying to compete head-to-head by fighting the formal imperial fashion. Only when he adopted the Native American tactics of hit-and-run ambush did he turn the tide for his colonies' independence (a lesson that established militaries, particularly America's, seem doomed to constantly relearn).
Id-mag.com
Since 1954 the magazine has been a US beacon for the culture of design. Worth a print subscription.
The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation
Jon Gertner, 2012
All the answers are out there. We just have to find the precedents, and Bell Labs was arguably the most productive corporate research center in history.
Bell Labs housed 1,200 scientists across a spectrum of scientific disciplines. Gertner introduces the people and reveals the processes behind inventions including the transistor, radio telescope, communications satellite, digital camera, laser and the UNIX operating system, producing seven Nobel Prizes.
The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future
Kelly, Kevin 2016
From the man who observed technology as destiny, a compelling argument that barring the death of the human species, these technology trends (like AI, or the shift from stores to flows), must inevitably happen. How they manifest? That's for us to help determine.
Innovation Algorithm: TRIZ, Systematic Innovation And Technical Creativity
Altschuller, Genrich 1999
The USSR sentenced the author to a 25 year gulag-getaway for the daring of his theory of invention. He used his insights to survive Stalin, and became renowned for his Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ is the Russian acronym).
Refined over decades, his magnum opus, published posthumously, presents tools to practice creativity as an exact science. You can find archival footage of the great man on Youtube.
Innovation and Its Discontents: How Our Broken Patent System is Endangering Innovation and Progress, and What to Do About It
Jaffe, Adam with Josh Lerner, 2004
Another impassioned plea to reform US patent law for the good of the many, at the cost to the originators. One well-informed side of an age-old dilemma.
The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution
Isaacson, Walter 2014
The author of the Steve Jobs hagiography provides a more useful analysis here in the lives (and oddly, the sex lives) of the founders of the modern computer era, starting with Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's daughter and a proto-coder. Useful as lessons in history – innovation as evolution vs revolution.
The Innovator's Dilemma
Christensen, Clayton 1997
This classic explains why well-run companies, constantly trying to improve their offerings for their most demanding customers, so frequently miss the real revolutions that upend their businesses. Ironically, the error comes in a narrow focus on serving today's lucrative customers with ever better products, while upstarts instead focus below the radar on non-customers.
Christensen continues to teach, while his business partners, including InnoSight and the estimable Bob Moesta at ReWired, advise clients on their "jobs to be done."
Christensen followed this work witih The Innovator's Solution and The Innovator's Prescription (a thesis on revitalizing US healthcare, based on his own time as a patient). A remarkable observer and teacher, Christensen's ongoing publishing on the topic is among the most thoughtful and well-articulated in business.
Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men
Criado-Perez, Caroline, 2020
Invisible Women was recommended by Ritu Parekh as a thought-provoking book. The alumna of Design for America notes that it "highlights why using data to make design decisions isn't good enough."
The book argues, "we really need to scrutinize the data itself—otherwise you risk unintentionally harming a whole subset of the human population."
Learning From Nature: The Innovative Invader
King, Clivedon Henry
learning-from-nature-the-innovative-invader
The math theorist, sculptor, amateur evolutionary biologist and professor of design for the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, King observes that many lessons of innovation can be derived from the successes of invasive species.
You can discover Henry's mind and explore this and other analyses at his Man of String blog.
And you really should see his art.
kk.org
kk.org/cooltools/the-best-magazi.php
"New Economy" commentator Kevin Kelly's thoughtful community of contributors. One section includes such "cool tools" as a running list of the best magazine articles ever, by category, according to a recommendations algorithm. Cool.
The Last of the Metrozoids
Gopnik, Adam – New Yorker Magazine, July 10, 2004
This article recounts the life lessons of a great little league football coach, who also happened to be a revered professor at Princeton and curator of sculpture at MoMA. Gopnik describes a method of coaching that models the best practices of instructional design application. It's a short, breathtaking article of a life well-led, that by his example, shows the value of design synthesis.
Kemp, Martin – Oxford University Press, 2004
From the leading authority on all things Leonardo:
"Governing everything..the principle of 'Necessity'…dictates that form always perfectly fits function in nature…it compels every force to expend itself in the most direct way available to it; it prescribes that the simplest design to achieve a given end will be followed; and it must be respected by any human contriver of artificial things (ie – you and me). Necessity is the mistress and the teacher of nature; necessity is the theme and inventor of nature, the curb, the rule and the theme.
The universal architecture of Necessity is geometry."
The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity & Economic Progress
Mokyr, Joel – Oxford University Press, 1992
A young and vital Professor Mokyr changed my life by translating the arcane numeracy of microeconomics into the transactions that drove the Dutch and then English to dominate global shipping trade and opening of international markets. Every breakthrough technology, from the printing press to the steam engine, served as a leapfrog event not just in the riches of inventors or the wealth of nations, but in the elevation of ideas and aspirations.
A Little History of the World
Gombrich, Ernst H. 2005 (English translation)
Read this aloud to children and give them the gift of world history from your wisest grandfather.
Written on a challenge in 1935 and updated in his dotage, Gombrich's polymath narrative begins with "once upon a time" and takes you from the original big bang through what might still prove to be the last – the atomic bomb, yet ends by counting the blessings of science and human knowledge. I sneak it in under the auspices if Chapter 2: The Greatest Inventors of All Time – the wheel, fire, lever and the accomplishments of early civilization through the Bronze Age.
Of all the books cited here, this one can change the early trajectory of a life.
Making Innovation Work: How to Manage It, Measure It, and Profit from It
Davila, Tony with Marc J. Epstein, and Robert Shelton, 2005
Designing the organization to enable innovation — Innovation as discipline, not an exercise in creativity. Pragmatic advice to skirt common barriers.
Mavericks at Work, Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win
Taylor, William C. with Polly LaBarre, 2006
Taylor and LaBarre, a founder and a top editor of FastCompany, assemble a useful, engaging narrative around hot companies on how to rethink industries, companies, brands, partnerships with other firms, and customer experiences. Briskly practical.
MCC's Human Interface Laboratory – The Promise and Perils of Long-Term Research
Curtis, Bill – Dec 2010 Interactions Magazine: interactions.acm.org/content/?p=1427
Curtis describes the 80s history of the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation in this article. An institute of early HCI researchers in Austin during the "first golden age" of human/computer interaction design, MCC is now remembered as a cautionary tale, ironically in the archives of Jon Kolko's Interaction Magazine, which terminated publication with this final issue of 2010.
http://www.metropolismag.com
Metropolis examines contemporary life through design—architecture, interior design, product design, graphic design, crafts, planning, and preservation. A source of inspiration from former creative editor and my fellow SVA faculty, Criswell Lappin.
Lewis, Michael M. 2003
Measuring the right indicators, rather than the conventional ones, transformed the Oakland A's from a 3rd tier ball club into pennant contenders, at a fraction of the cost incurred by traditional champions using traditional methods like Steinbrenner's New York Yankees.
Myths of Innovation
Berkun, Scott 2007
An attempt to dispel 10 common myths about the process of innovation, such as the "eureka moment" – the misconception that an idea arrives fully formed seemingly out of nowhere. See Steven Johnson's "Where Ideas Come From" for a similar approach more thoughtfully told.
The Naked Ape
Morris, Desmond 1973
A modern Darwinian assessment of human behavior from an anthropologist's dispassionate perspective: humans observed objectively as just another idiosyncratic primate. Demonstrates the importance of anthropology as a central thesis of research to reveal latent user needs through demonstrated behaviors, rather than speculative assertion (interviews), group think (focus groups) or other false assumption.
NONOBJECT
Lukic, Branco with Barry M. Katz, 2010
In an "objective" world of facts, the authors present the "nonobject" world of perception, experience, and possibility. In this vivid visual work, Lukic (award-winning designer) and Katz (design historian) imagine what would happen if design started not from the object but from the space between people and the objects they use.
Open Business Models: How to Thrive in the New Innovation Landscape
Chesbrough, Henry 2006
The next stage of openness according to the originator. See his Open Innovation, below.
Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology
From the Haas professor who coined the term, open innovation is among the most important recent strategies for innovation, to enable a network of loosely coordinated participants, usually with asymmetries of power.
Orbiting the Giant Hairball
Mackenzie. Gordon 1998
Take an eccentric innovation journey with a light-hearted practitioner.
Organizational Ambidexterity
Tushman, Harreld and O'Reilly, California Management Review, Summer 2009
Managing with both practical acumen of planning and the inverse attributes of creativity, ambiguity and flexibility.
Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics
Beinhocker, Erik 2007
This McKinsey Fellow proposes a new model to investigate the source of economic generation. He seeks to replace a static model based on Newtonian physics (change comes as an external shock) to an organic model – an adaptive network that increases value as it best adapts to human needs and desires.
Out of Crisis
Deming, W. Edwards, 1986
The classic analysis of opportunity lost and painstakingly regained, as told by the father of quality management. The genius behind "that which is measured gets done" includes, among other imperatives, the requirement for sample design to ensure effective change. I would submit that the latter half of the 20th century was dominated by the total quality movement he engendered, a revolution in making the present offering better. We stand at the forefront of the next shift: revolutionizing the applied science of commercial innovation.
Paul-Rand.com
50 years of articles and begrudging wisdom from the artist who credentialized all design through his iconic, intentional corporate logos.
Ponzi's Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend
Zuckoff, Mitchell 2006
A biography of the original get-rich-quick scheming charmer, this sociopathic hubris recurs generationally and undermines faith in ethical conduct. What actions can we each take to ensure we reinforce our professional practices? How might an enterprise be purpose built for ethical compliance?
Profiting from Intellectual Capital, Extracting Value from Innovation
Sullivan, Patrick H. 2001
A survey of ways to integrate IP strategies and business model to build breakthrough businesses. Leaders fail to demand bold ideas. Or lawyers, paid to avert risk, forbid them. This book how some companies broke out of these traps.
Rethinking Users: The Design Guide to User Ecosystem Thinking
Youngblood, Michael and Benjamin Chesluk 2020
Anthropologist design researchers can teach us not just to rethink users, but they demonstrate it by rethinking the book for their readers. This thoughtful compendium actually arrives as a box with a matching book inside, accompanied by a set of cards to provide an interactive toolkit for user research in the field and on the fly. Very clever, and illustrated by Nadeem Haidary with the elegance of simplicity.
See a short trailer here.
Hurari, Yuval Noah 2011, 2014 English edition
Few books have taught me a blinding lesson in virtually every chapter. As Jared Diamond says, it "tackles the biggest questions of history and the modern world, and is written in unforgettably vivid language."
Harari offers the perspective of a very rare and erudite polymath, with a confidence that may undo some of his assertions over time. Despite that, if like me you are curious and often conflicted about the habits of human social behavior, I offer this as maybe the most important book so far this century.
Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design
Buxton, Bill 2007
A celebrated musician/designer's take on "sketching" as design method for prototyping, particularly for adaptive technologies. See its terrific design bibliography, which saves me from incorporating it here.
The Sources of Innovation
Von Hippel is best known for his work on the diffusion of innovation, how ideas spread. Here he serves as an early advocate to employ users, partners and participants in a business network as the best source of insight.
The Story of English
MacNeil, Robert with Robert McCrum, William Cran, 1993 updated edition
A friendly visual text to accompany the famous 8-part 1986 PBS video series. Maps and other engaging visuals trace this history of this anachronistic, cobbled together from neighboring tribes and invading conquest, and then shipped around the world in the era of discovery, to take up new roots, meanings and accents around the world. Language serves as a proxy for the evolution of society and ideas.
Follow the intertwined branches as this contemporary world language spreads like a virus. I found many of the lessons of evolution you might expect from the most important element of human interaction: the vernacular in which we frame and foster ideas.
The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human
Jonathan Gottschall, 2012
Storytelling is an essential tool of innovation – allowing audiences to share in the perception of need and the possibility of breakthrough solutions. Gottschall shows why this is essential, describing the human mind is a narrative machine, organizing experience into stories. He describes stories as gravity for our thoughts — an invisible force that grounds our perceptions, beliefs and behaviors.
He uses absorbing narratives and deconstruction of dream sequences to convey his investigation of storytelling.
Strategic Management: Competitiveness and Globalization, Concepts and Cases
Hitt, Michael A. with R. Duane Ireland and Robert E. Hoskisson, 2010 (10th edition)
More international in scope than most US texts, this standard contains a detailed investigation of strategic management in the context of globalization and competitiveness. First section is devoted to theory and the second is dedicated to case studies.
Strategic Management: Concepts and Cases
David, Fred 2008 (12th edition)
With constantly updated cases, David's practitioners' guide stands the test of time in it's 12th edition.
The Strategy Process: Concepts, Context, Cases
Mintzberg, Henry with James Brian Quinn, 2002 (4th edition)
Compiled by sometimes controversial Professor of Management Studies at McGill University, Mintzberg uses Quinn's Harvard Business Review material and case studies, as well as unedited contributions from other authors. He combines theory and practice in coverage of strategy and organization.
Strategy Safari : The Complete Guide Through the Wilds of Strategic Management
Mintzberg, Henry with Professor Bruce Ahlstrand and Joseph B. Lampel, 1998
The authors review four decades of academic literature to catalog ten schools of strategy. I find it clarifying to map the strategy landscape, distinguishing Porter's school of competitive strategy from the field of design strategy that gave birth to my field of innovation.
Strategy: Winning in the Marketplace: Core Concepts, Analytical Tools, Cases
Thompson, Arthur A. Jr. with John E Gamble, A. J. Strickland III, 2003
This team of strategy professors have published several well-known strategy texts; this one is most concise with provocative cases for group discussion.
Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers is the New Way to be Smart
Ayres, Ian 2007
With the emergence of epic data volumes and our ability to tap into them, data mining and number crunching can reveal insights never available to us before. The Yale econometrician makes the science of algorithmic insight accessible.
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
Kearns Goodwin, Doris 2009
The Pulitzer Prize winner describes the unlikely rise of an underdog to the uncommon ability to build a multi-faceted, multi-talented and vastly more powerful team of collaborators despite bitter prior rivalries. In a profession and world that increasingly demands our close collaboration, Lincoln's example shines.
http://www.ted.com
The life-hobby of Richard Saul Wurman, architect turned conference host and now cranky curmudgeon, his curated site of 18 minute video clips of the most interesting people on the planet could serve as a fascinating post-graduate education.
Ten Types of Innovation: The Discipline of Building Breakthroughs
Keeley, Larry, with Ryan Pikkel, Helen Walters, Brian Quinn et. al., 2013
Nearly 20 years ago a brilliant staffer at Chicago's storied Doblin Group latched on to the insight that innovations stratify across the value chain, from supplier relationships and financial models on one end, to brands and customer experiences at the other. Research using this simple framework revealed that the most common but least productive innovation investments focus exclusively on producing new products. The bigger wins come from crafting new ways to capture revenue and captivate customers, often in a combination of innovations that make it hard for competitors to decipher. Fantastic cases from one of the world's most pithy polymaths, Larry Keeley – a personal mentor and friend. See the handy card set by Ryan Pikkel. Mix and match to concoct your own breakthroughs, kids!
Thoughts on Interaction Design
Kolko, Jon 2009, 2nd edition Feb 2011
Elegant translation of theory into practice, as taught at Carnegie Mellon.
Gladwell, Malcolm 2002
Is there really causality from Soho skater kids favoring Keds to their explosive and totally unexpected reappearance in the sudden brand relevance of teenagers at the end of the 20th century? How does that happen?
Gladwell makes a great case for this and other anecdotes. Now if he could just explain that hair style…
Understanding Industrial Design: Principles for UX and Interaction Design
King, Simon and Chang, Kuen, 2016
The coauthors of the "beetle book"are an industrial designer, and a UX designer, both former Ideo staffers. King and Cheng reconnect industrial and interaction design, the physical and digital.
The duo remind us of the integral nature of design, intertwined as they once were. Consider data as just another industrial material, with lessons that apply universally.
See the fastcompany review for the short course.
We Are Smarter than Me: How to Unleash the Power of Crowds in Your Business
Libert, Barry and Spector, Larry, 2007
For lessons in "looking outside for inspiration", xx compiles stories of early practitioners of crowd-sourcing for content as well as innovation. To make the point, the authors crowd-sourced the book itself from the wikisphere, first soliciting examples, then inviting the crowd to vote for the best examples, which ended up in the book. Innocentive arises as one of the more famous examples, but lesser-knowns provide useful models.
Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation
Johnson, Steven 2010
This prolific and captivating cultural explorer and serial author of Interface Culture, Mind Wide Open, Everything Bad is Good for You, Ghost Map and the Invention of Air finds incredible insights on innovation, although that was not his central topic until this book. Through historical examples, Johnson overturns common myths of discovery and invention. He deconstructs what it means to have a hunch. He illustrates the value of networks, and posits the annoyingly meaningful role of serendipity to invention. I also recommend his Ghost Map and Invention of Air for what are, in essence, detailed case studies of design strategies that changed the world. This TED synopsis will serve as a proxy but the book is worth it for the case examples: http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_johnson_where_good_ideas_come_from.html
Sendak, Maurice 1963
The not-very-good illustrator (he had to use monsters because he couldn't draw horses), Sendak won the 1964 Caldecott Award and my perpetual thanks for this classic of all ages.
Sendak reminds us that sometimes, to find the wilds of our imaginations, we must be sent to our rooms without supper.
Surowiecki, James 2005
The author of the business page every other week in The New Yorker offers an engaging series of stories to illustrate that all of us are smarter than any of us. An insight that propels us every day.
From hybrid garbage trucks to kitchen alchemy. Did you know that adolescent female chimps role play with dolls they fashion from sticks? How does that inform your world view? What else don't we know we don't know?
Zero to One
Thiel, Peter 2014
From the cofounder of PayPal and Palantir, and prescient early investor in facebook, LinkedIn and SpaceX, (and notably before he somehow justified a decision to represent the Silicon Valley elite to the Trump administration) – Thiel outlines the formula for true commercial innovation. He differentiates between making "more", the horizontal progression from one to "n", and making "new", the vertical progress of going from zero (never previously existed) to one.
Thiel makes a compelling argument that, following a burst of innovation from the steam engine through the mid 20th century, the US flourished in an era of vertical progress, with breakthroughs in multiple domains of new "technology". The last 50 years has witnessed the expansion of the world economy through globalization, lateral progress across geographies to make more of the same, better, faster, cheaper. He urges us to recognize the difference and reinvest our attention and assets in returning to a golden era of innovation. His actions speak volumes, as Thiel puts his considerable money where his mouth is.
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Pomeranz refuses to be bothered by failures
By Patrick Saunders and Denver Post |
February 22, 2012 at 11:56 p.m.
SCOTTSDALE, ARIZ. — Drew Pomeranz didn't have an ounce of magic in his left arm in a late September game against Houston last year.
The Astros opened the game with six consecutive hits for the first time in their 49-year history as the Rockies lost 11-2. As the shelling continued, the 22-year-old Pomeranz remained stonefaced.
"You have to flush it," Pomeranz said. "As a pitcher, you can't afford to get too ticked off. Just flush it if something bad happens. That's the way I was raised to play baseball."
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Home > Opinion > On Colonialism and Lesser Britain
On Colonialism and Lesser Britain
Behind the bluster that has sought, somewhat over-anxiously, to articulate the Scottish Referendum result announced on 19th September, 2014 as being in some way "definitive", there is an uncomfortable Unionist problem; even Unionists do not seem to believe their own story of triumph. The conventional question in Unionist media, endlessly and rhetorically repeated with the same populist gloss, amounts to the following: what is it that Yes voters do not understand about 'No'? Indeed in a curiously perverse turning of the world upside-down, it is the losers of the Referendum that are now being accused, gratuitously, of unseemly triumphalism.
One mischievous form of answer might be to observe that given the result of the referendum, and the enduring existence of the Union; why do Unionists feel the need to ask such a question? Simon Jenkins, however has provided a more reasoned response in 'We must heed calls for self-rule, or the union is doomed' (Guardian, 17th December, 2014); but only to reveal Unionism's inarticulate exasperation with the discovery of what victory actually meant; a Unionist victory which is anything but "definitive".
Jenkins' explanation for the Pyrrhic nature of the Unionist victory is that the referendum was not a final answer, but rather part of a process. We may think such a considered process may have required first, the rebuffed two-question referendum to provide the required momentum for appropriate, measured constitutional change that took into account the heartfelt wishes of voters (along with a reference to DevoMax), only to discover that this is just the memory of events that everyone in Westminster is now so eager to forget altogether: but rather than dwell on past Unionist blunders, let us jump ahead to the point at which Jenkins reveals where he wishes this staged process to lead: and it turns out to be DevoMax, power-sharing and, according to Jenkins, like "all big countries", some kind of British 'Federation'.
We may ask with some surprise, just what sort of "federation" is the UK? Of course we know the answer; for most of us did not know that the UK was actually a 'federation' at all (neither confederation nor federal state), or indeed that it had ever claimed to be a federal state; but rather, that quite deliberately the 'Union' was designed to be precisely the opposite; an "incorporating union". For those still in doubt, the words of AV Dicey (1835-1922), Britain's most influential constitutional lawyer of the late 19th/early 20th century from his notably, but perhaps not entirely accidentally titled, "England's case against home rule" (1886), in which Dicey argued against Irish Home Rule, may prove usefully unambiguous:
"The federalism, again, of America or of Switzerland is the consequence of the existence of the States which make up the Federation. The United Kingdom does not consist of States." (Ch.IV, p.53)
Dicey's principle objections to the prospect of the innovation of federalism in Britain are nothing to do with democracy, equity or accountability, but almost wholly because of his opinion that it will produce a diminution of power; the power of Parliament, the power of England at home and abroad, the power of the British Empire. Federalism represents a "fundamental revolution" (Ch.VII, p.191) and the resistance to fundamental, federalist overhaul of the constitution is palpable.
It is however, quite remarkable the facility with which Unionists seize on Federalism as their first, and often last, favoured line of defence of the Union, as if it existed already and they did not ever really believe in 'incorporation' at all; only, and equally seamlessly, to adopt a contradictory position over Europe, lurching off in the opposite direction to denounce Federalism as a kind of nasty EU plot to defeat stout, hard-won British liberty. They do not even notice, that anyone else might notice, the obvious rational lacuna or the hopeless muddle.
If the UK was a 'federation', frankly in Scotland we probably wouldn't be in this mess; but then, it wouldn't be 'Britain' either, would it? Leaving Unionist blunders and non-sequiturs aside however, let us allow Jenkins to develop the idea of the Referendum as a "process", in order to discover his ultimate destination:
"That process is clearly one of ever greater separation for the component parts of the United Kingdom, a separation that was obvious from the day in 1921 when Ireland began to dismantle the "first British empire". It did so not because Irish people really wanted it, but because the London government was so incompetent at regional autonomy".
Ah, history! It is unfortunate perhaps that Jenkins' most obvious problem, as we try to sew together the disparate thoughts he has scattered so indulgently around his article, is that he does not appear to understand the implications of his own position, or the reason that 'London Government' has been, throughout its history; so obtuse, so obdurate, so hapless that it continually loses (forever) what Jenkins believes is part of 'itself'; and yet, it cannot change, or learn from history, or prevent itself from making the same mistake over, and over, and over again…. ….: which leaves us to muse whether the Union is perpetually living out the fable of the Scorpion and the Frog?
In order to understand the can of worms he has so determinedly opened, Jenkins perhaps should have first read the brilliant historian Richard Bourke on the nature of the underlying problem of "autonomy", "history", "empire" and British government, which Bourke addressed with magisterial clarity in his Historical Journal paper, 'Pocock and the Presuppositions of the New British History' (2010). What Bourke reveals in this paper; a contribution that should be of far wider interest than professional historians alone, if not required reading for all (including Simon Jenkins); is the reason why Britain never, ever manages to solve Jenkins' problem of autonomy, but instead seems to this reader fated to play out the destructive role of the Scorpion in the fable; and it appears now, to play it to the end of history.
Bourke deconstructs the 'New British History' thesis in a historical context that, conveniently for us, reflects the unintended political consequences of Jenkins' 1921 starting-point in Ireland; the fall of Stormont in March, 1972. Within Britain, this 1972 outcome produced what Bourke refers to as 'Ulsterization', by which is intended a generic term describing British Imperial history, and thus is a mere identifier of a particular historical process. Ulsterization for Bourke is therefore not a phenomenon peculiar to Ulster, or to one period in British history, or to one place; rather it is a political phenomenon distinctive in British history, or more precisely the phenomenon of Ulsterization reveals the underlying nature of Britain itself.
The process of Ulsterization is typically best seen and described in periods of British imperial retrenchment affecting settler societies, from Northern Ireland to New Zealand, from the 18th to the 20th century: but a process that falls outside the scope of contractual theories of government. Ulsterization represents a one-sided exchange, a non-reciprocal commitment in which an asymmetrical relationship is formed between supplicant periphery and imperial centre, in which the settler-society expresses its loyalty (to Britain or Empire) in terms of what Bourke describes as being essentially a "unilateral pact of submission".
We may, I think, suggest that Jenkins is not proposing Ulsterization as the solution for Scotland. Perhaps his position, as exemplified by his remarks about Ireland, is closer to the New British History, which in Pocock's hands pursues a historical understanding of the development of British citizenship ('civic virtue' for Pocock, albeit in an Empire of 'subjects') on an imperial, global canvas, and in critical response to the end of Empire and the threat of an Europeanisation programme to British autonomy that followed accession to the EU (EEC) in 1973; if it is also neo-Seeleyan, then that was Pocock's own characterisation, in reference to the historian JR Seeley (1834-95), in such works as The Expansion of England (1883). Seeley sought a deeper union, a meaningful commonwealth across the Empire. He wrote in 'The Expansion of England':
"What is the good of colonies ? That question implies that we think of a colony, not as part of our State, but as a possession belonging to it. For we should think it absurd to raise such a question about a recognised part of the body politic. Who ever thought of inquiring whether Cornwall or Kent rendered any sufficient return for the money which we lay out upon them, whether those counties were worth keeping?" (p.74)
Seeley did not consider 'Greater Britain' (a phrase borrowed from Dilke, but not the latter's idea of 'Saxondom'; a reminder however that late-19th century British intellectual life became awash with the unfortunate, abrasive, hubris-laced, late-Darwinist folly of eugenics) to be an Empire, but "a vast English nation"; a concept not without its dangers, which his own choice of words did not always avoid. He was however, acutely aware of imperial failure, the loss of the American colonies; drawing the lesson from such experiences that an enduring Empire would require to develop the idea of mutual respect in order to prosper. The capacity to develop a new, evolving relationship between province or colony and imperial centre, which Bourke describes in adaptive, evolutionary terms, sought to discover a new sense of a 'Greater Britain' emerging from the dynamics of such exchanges that at least potentially seem to transcend an otherwise commonplace British nation-state.
There is something nostalgic, almost melancholic about the New British History's neo-Seeleyism. For Bourke, it seems that Pocock presents a dialectical view of Britain in which the development of an imperial Great Britain through a process of anglicised assimilation dynamically produces a countervailing reaction against anglo-assimilation among settler communities or provinces, rather than one-way submission; something actually different from the British original, or of Ulsterization is possible; a synthesis – a Greater Britain, a higher, trans-oceanic calling. Let us call this synthesis (to use Bourke's words) a compromise or stalemate, because the synthesis stands for an underlying tension; and behind the tension there is always a stark binary option threatening to end it; independence for the settler, 'cut-and-run' for the Imperial centre. The New British History struggles to account for the resilience of the expectation of Imperial assimilation and anglicisation, the demand for submission, or the facility, increasingly over time, the alacrity with which the Empire withdrew. Resistance to complete assimilation (or perhaps this was settler society reaction to a lack of 'central' vision or at least of an attractive, compelling or competent approach to assimilation) led to the reversal of 1776, the violent and sudden loss of America.
We may also think of other ways resistance to assimilation was displayed; more typical of imperial priorities when confronted by a challenge to authority than the United States precedent, perhaps, is the slow leakage towards an uncontested separation by the 'old' colonies (Canada, Australia, New Zealand); characteristically if perhaps perversely viewed from the British perspective, as the line of least imperial resistance – withdrawal. This response is perhaps what the Empire chose to learn from the bitter blow of 1776; at least in the American or Australasian continents. Adam Smith acknowledged that accepting the loss of America was the sensible solution. We may notice that his equanimity on the matter was notably remarkable for being maintained, in the midst of, and in spite of the fact that, the Tobacco Lords of Glasgow (the transatlantic Banks or Hedge Funds of their day, with financial risks and profits to match) were confronted by the American tobacco planters seizing the opportunity presented by revolution, to default on their huge debts to Glasgow, overnight.
Hume subscribed vigorously to the same opinion as Smith; indeed his radicalism on this matter, his support for the Revolutionaries, albeit permeated with his philosophical scepticism, was an inspiration for Madison, Jay and Hamilton in 'The Federalist Papers' (1788); which ends the final paper with an anonymous quotation from Hume's 'Essays' and a tribute to the unnamed writer as "a lesson of moderation to all sincere lovers of the Union". This fulsome tribute has already left concern for Imperial objections to the American Revolution far behind in the ozymandian dust of a forgotten history; Madison and his colleagues use the wisdom of Hume in this peroration to counter the threat of factionalism among the individual States of the new Union. Hume would have enjoyed the irony, had he lived to see it.
It was Home Rule in Ireland, but Home Rule in principle, that undermined Seeley's argument, and it was only when the issue of Home Rule was raised close to home that the implicit nature of Greater Britain's limitations, the narrow interpretation of the imperialist venture, hiding behind the vanity of 'assimilation' or the euphemism of 'withdrawal', was given explicit form. In Dicey's take on incommensurability in 'England's case against home rule', he states baldly that:
"I entertain the firmest conviction that any scheme for Home Rule in Ireland involves dangerous if not fatal innovations on the Constitution of Great Britain." (Preface, p.4)
The book that followed is a 311 page explanation of his reasons for this uncompromising position. There are no compromises in Dicey's constitution: it is either Ulsterization or independence (withdrawal). At its heart this is a statement about power, drafted by the hand of a lawyer rather than engaged by the mind of a broader thinker of human nature or of the dynamics of human or institutional engagement, and certainly not written by a philosopher:
"Under all the formality, the antiquarianism, the shams of the British constitution, there lies latent an element of power which has been the true source of its life and growth. This secret source of strength is the absolute omnipotence, the sovereignty, of Parliament." (Ch.VII, p.168)
The thought is not free of illusions, but the word "sham" is not used carelessly. The constitution is a sham; the reality is "latent". For Dicey sovereignty is absolute:
"Hence, it has been well said by the acutest of foreign critics that the merit of the English constitution is that it is no constitution at all…. …. Thus freedom has in England been found compatible at crises of danger with an energy of action generally supposed to be peculiar to despotism. The source of strength is, in fact, in each case the same. The sovereignty of Parliament is like the sovereignty of the Czar. It is like all sovereignty at bottom, nothing else but unlimited power;" (Ch.VII, p.169)
I will pass no further comment on the precise meaning of the tem "unlimited", save to offer some level of mild scepticism about its operational efficacy. The problem such a statement makes for a statesman in the real world, and in a retreating Empire is simple; how do you craft a constitutional compromise with a province intent on Home Rule or independence, from a position of relative weakness, in a constitution that does not recognise the issue? It is easier simply to reduce the state and maintain the constitution than to meet the challenge. Or to express this differently; an Empire has been won and lost and the constitution is unchanged. For the constitutional lawyer nothing has changed, and there is nothing to see; but perhaps Hamlet provides an illuminating insight into the prospects for such a static, inert State; "I could be bounded by a nut-shell, and count myself a king of infinite space".
Diceyism is not consonant with Pocock's neo-Seeleyian, Harringtonian vision, but at the same time the New British History cannot account adequately for the authenticity, the persistence, the implicit authority of Dicey's relentless emphasis on the integrity of Westminster sovereignty, or for its dogged resilience long after Dicey's death. Ironically on the same issue of Ireland, neither could Seeley; indeed he seems to have crossed the floor and joined Dicey; Seeley opposed Irish Home Rule and defended the Imperial status quo on Irish independence, and received an approving letter from Dicey for his efforts; they even appeared together on the same Liberal Unionist platform. With Ireland, Seeley's vision of Greater Britain begins to unravel. The sham consitution survives intact; but everyone else, save England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, the Falklands and a few other isolated dependencies known to few outside the FCO, has simply left.
The British "imperial secret" is thus finally revealed by Dicey: Bourke argues that when the decisive crisis between peripehery and imperial centre arises, in Britain's case, and in contradistinction with the Roman Empire, where the Imperial destiny and the affairs of the provinces are deemed inseparable, in the case of Imperial Britain the security of government is promptly disengaged from the affairs of the provinces. What is finally and alone inviolate is Westminster sovereignty. This is what is meant by British exceptionalism.
Britannia leaving Hong Kong with the Heir to the Throne and the Governor of Hong Kong on board was an extraordinary, solemn and very British ritual; unconsciously celebrating the continuity of this detached, sovereign Lesser Britain. In the end Britannia always sails away from its dependencies and into the sunset, when these possessions can no longer be identified as 'dependent'. The faint, etiolated reverse-image of Britannia steaming away from Hong Kong is of a ghostly, remote, swashbuckling, privateer-adventurer opportunistically seizing a new British possession over the heads of bewildered inhabitants: finally and theatrically, rich in symbolism, Britannia rings down the curtain on empire. The escape and return home have been negotiated, content in the knowledge that Westminster sovereignty has been rescued, intact and unblemished by the collapse of empire.
The gloss is provided to the world, and to the British people that for British colonial possessions this is the constitutional analogy of 'growing-up'; the condescending and complacent view that the Mother of Parliaments knows best how, when, and who to let go. The critical sub-text however is that in Lesser Britain the only alternative to 'withdrawal' is Ulsterization. Great Britain, it seems, is an evolutionary dead-end. All that seems left now is the slow death of Lesser Britain, from the inside-out.
Richard Bourke
Simon Jenkins
By John S Warren
Published on 23rd December 2014
bowanarrow says:
I had to force myself to read this, it very hard to grasp some of the language used, thank goodness for online dictionaries, but having read it and understood some, if not most of the points, can I just say amazing use of language wonderful piece. I think I see the sun-setting as we speak…. 🙂
wrongsideoftheborder says:
You're not the only one who was glad to have online dictionaries to hand. Brilliant article though!
23rd December 2014 at 10:28 pm
I appreciated this article but I did think it could be far better expressed! Better sentence structure!
Jenkins doesn't actually mention devo max. You are imputing this to him. He mentions federalism and though he doesn't define it, it is clear he means fiscal autonomy and fuller powers than Scotland has at present as for instance when he refers to the US constitution by which Texas does not tell Colorado to re-write its drugs laws or when Madrid doesn't tell the Basques about their taxes.
It's equally clear Jenkins misunderstands that fiscal autonomy won't be coming to Scotland any time soon as when he fondly imagines we will have fiscal responsibility for income tax and that this will give us something significant. Smith's proposals will only enable us to control 30% of our revenue. And what about collection? That's a big question for me. Setting up the fiscal machinery to gather tax directly in Scotland as is being set up at the moment for the stamp duty would be a huge step forward in the way of federalism and home rule. Will HMRC collect income tax for us then send it back?
In the US each state is free to make whatever laws it wishes, including on taxes, as long as they are conform to the US constitution and meet with democratic approval. But there you have it, the missing piece that would make sense of the British polity – a written constitution. That's the elephant in the corner. Traditionally Britain has had a suspicion of written constitutions for the precise reason that everybody else likes them – because they are a check on the power of the executive.
John S Warren says:
Thank you for the comment. I shall reflect on your observation on sentence structure; it is a sobering corrective to any complacency I may have indulged following the too kind response of 'bowanarrow'!
I do not wish to follow that remark up by trying to 'score points'; I feel the tendency to do so damages the flow/value of debates in these columns, and is too readily used; so perhaps we are not referring to the same Simon Jenkins article? In any case, regarding DevoMax, on 17th December Jenkins writes: "Relations between Scotland and England will never settle until an agreed constitutional autonomy – "devo max" or "indie-lite" – is formally in place".
Best wishes to all contributors for Christmas and the New Year.
Bothy Basher says:
John – thanks for your article. Since others have mentioned it, I'll just say that the language is highly latinate and that's absolutely fine. I wouldn't bother (despite your gentle ironic reply) about anyone who is concerned about your expression and "sentence structure"(!) nor from another who is a stranger to the use of conjunctions.
You speak interestingly of "The British "imperial secret" ". I'd simply say that the secret is that Scots have been essential in running that empire despite being part of 'Lesser Britain".
Spooky, isn't it?
I will comment that your interesting article has the flavour of history from above, of 'great men' deciding the fate of Britannia and nations; a little more recognition of the role of the wealth producers – the people – might have been helpful.
Above, you often quote Dicey, though to a Scot his comments are devalued if not irrelevant for he tiresomely conflates 'England' and 'Britain', which always grates, does it not? His English exceptionalism is unaware of events in 1603 and 1707 and is thus fatally undermined, at least in 'Lesser Britain'.
nosuchthingasthemarket says:
Totally agree on your point about 'history from above'. That said, constitutional and legal history are necessarily largely written from above, due to those fields concerning books, negotiations etc that are commonly hidden from the ordinary people or – as we know – misrepresented to them by their rulers.
On quoting Dicey – my interpretation was that John was using Dicey precisely because the latter's constitutional and cultural absolutism forces him the unwanted logical outcome of offering support for independence. Dicey is useful because he's hateful. Or, to be exact, because he is both principled and hateful.
In similar logic, the importance of Scots in running the empire was (is?) not in spite of being part of 'Lesser Britain', but because of it. Empires and emperors from ancient China onward have understood 'divide and rule' not in the petty sense of dividing a single enemy into factions, but in the sense of offering a real improvement in life prospects to some of the most 'loyal' of the conquered peoples. Thus in the British context Scots loyal to the Union crown were central in administering eighteenth to early twentieth century Wales, whilst Welshmen whose religious nonconformity made them suspect at home were central in running the slave trade prior to American independence.
Hence Cardiff's Butetown, Strathnairn Street, Ninian Road, Glenroy Street etc etc, and the large number of black Americans called Jones and Davis and Williams.
A final question for John. It's serious, not rhetorical, incidentally: Why include the word 'slow' in your final summation? I presume there's a reason – everything else in the article has a logic to it – but it doesn't look to me like you've explained it. Thank you for the article.
Your points are well made. Why do I think the death of Lesser Britain is slow?
First, I think it fair to describe the Scottish people generally as being essentially (small 'c') "conservative", whatever their politics. I do not believe this will change, therefore it is important to maintain an agreed, incremental momentum drawing in support from Scots from the widest spectrum of political thought; save only those who will never change, many of whom are probably at heart unreconciled even to the continuation of Holyrood. This approach just recognises what I would term the required 'suasive realpolitik' in order to succeed, and the limitations.
Second, the Scottish Enlightenment reflects an interpretation of the world that has had a long an powerful influence, casting its remarkable shadow over thought, society and politics in Scotland over almost three centuries; it is perhaps best described as offering a theory of change based on 'evolutionary gradualism'.
Indeed, even Scotland's 'left' radicalism is relatively conservative; only in Scotland would the most articulate political radicals of the early 20th century typically turn out to be teetotal, pacifist, schoolteachers; or the stoutest practical radicals prove to be ordinary mothers organising rent-strikes in the First World War, or running 'socialist Sunday-schools'.
I believe the 45% result in the Referendum was an astonishing success in Scotland, far beyond my expectations of what might be achieved two years ago; it marked a watershed moment, a turning-point in the appetite for politics and for change in Scotland. This success was critically important and should not be forgotten. The work has begun, but it is not finished. Therefore I believe the 'disappointment' felt about the result, while understandable for some, is unnecessary. If there is to be reflection on the immediate past the focus should be on what has been achieved, and much more important, on the potential; what can yet be achieved, without being side-tracked into unrealistic short-term expectations that will not be met. Thus, the underlying instinct for 'gradualism' in Scotland will not, I believe, change significantly. The direction of travel nevertheless has been set, and the long term decline of Britain is now better understood in Scotland.
Incidentally, I hesitate to refer to Wales as the scope of my knowledge is limited; but I think the Earl of Bute achieved his influence there by marrying the largest coal-fortune in Britain.
You are quite correct, my apologies. Caused by not having a paper version in front of me and having to juggle between screens. Or else from memory. But the gist of his article is that he conflates devo max and indy lite with federalism despite apparently understanding federalism. It's a sincere attempt to understand us, but it just does show how little people down south understand about devolution. In fact, I'm not sure how much Scots understand devolution; this was a point made by Smith.
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/79417/Scotland_analysis_Devolution_and_the_implications_of_Scottish_Independan…__1_.pdf
Crawford and Boyle in Annex A above follow Dicey in his view of the incorporating union, which incorporated Scotland, apparently, but not England!
An interesting adjunct to the Liberal Unionists like Seeley were the Liberal Imperialists like Lord Rosebery who believed in Home Rule All Round. This saw the British Empire as a liberal progressive force a kind of brotherhood of man which was capable of delivering autonomy to all in its fold once they had reached political maturity. They argued for Home Rule for India as well as Ireland and Scotland. Their vision was never achieved but something like it did materialise in the form of the British Commonwealth.
I am delighted you raised Crawford and Boyle, which I think may be considered an essentially unconvincing 'opinion'; and since it is the official British government position it raises the perhaps unkind thought; is that the best they can do? The Crawford and Boyle 'opinion' has been rejected by Scheffer and by Douglas-Scott, who also refers to Sir David Edwards.
I forgot to add this on Dicey, which reflects also on Crawford and Boyle. This is what Dicey actually writes of the 1707 Act of Union:
"Up to the year 1707 there existed an English Parliament sovereign in England, and there existed a Scotch Parliament sovereign in Scotland. These two sovereign bodies in negotiating the Treaty of Union acted with scrupulous, and on the Scotch side with punctilious, independence. Neither sovereign body would consent to be absorbed in the other.
What they did agree to was to constitute a new State, namely, the United Kingdom of Great Britain, and each to surrender their separate sovereignty in favour of a new sovereign, namely, the sovereign Parliament of the United Kingdom. The English Parliament no more became supreme in Scotland than the Scotch Parliament became supreme in England. The old Parliament of each country abdicated and lost its identity in the New Parliament of Great Britain." (Ch.VII, p.244)
Thanks Nosuch for your many interesting points which I will chew over – but will spare you my conclusions as over these days I will 'have drink taken'.
On divide and rule -you say "Thus in the British context Scots loyal to the Union crown were central in administering eighteenth to early twentieth century Wales," . I didnt know this about Wales -among many things I didnt know.Thanks. 'Sic a parcel o' rogues…' we are. I did know about Churchill ordering non Scots troops into Glasgow to threaten the people.
"the importance of Scots in running the empire was (is?) not in spite of being part of 'Lesser Britain', but because of it." . Yes indeed.
You say "Dicey is useful because he's hateful." Yes, in the way that Urdu speaking Enoch Powell is useful – he has values even if they are repugnant. So did Thatcher who did what she did.
However, this I cannot thole, "Empires and emperors from ancient China onward have understood 'divide and rule' not in the petty sense of dividing a single enemy into factions, but in the sense of offering a real improvement in life prospects to some of the most 'loyal' of the conquered peoples."
Nosuch, do you really think that the British occupied (say) India, that 'jewel in the crown' for the good of the people? To improve their life prospects? Really?
Let me cite an example; in my father's city of birth, Calcutta, a British induced famine in 1943 caused the death of 3 million, to the indifference of that great Empire loving hero, Churchill. Anecdotally, I've seen the Scots tea plantations in and around Darjeeling, but it would be impossible to convince me that these plantations were for the benefit of the occupied peoples. Imperialism is the most ferocious form of capitalism is it not? Even capitalists would agree.
Mother Teresa and Empire have long been exposed as frauds – I can't believe that you subscribe to the 'benefits' of occupation.
Darien says:
Personally I am expecting 30+ SNP MP's next May to tell them where to go. Then they can have their "solemn and very British ritual".
lawrenceab says:
Wow. Not an easy read! I was very tempted to take up a sub-editor's blue pencil and simplify those long meandering – yet also poetic – sentences. But I think I get the gist.
The British establishment-state simply cannot evolve, despite appearances to the contrary that may have impressed less attentive observers (i.e. most of us!). It cannot mature in the way called for to address successfully 21st century relationships. This is true 'both ways': vis-à-vis Europe as well as vis-à-vis Scotland. It has learnt how to let go bits of the periphery when it has to, but it is in order to preserve inviolate Westminster's sovereignty. The British State, having never undergone a true transforming shock in its heartland (like a 1789 for France, a long drawn-out war of independence for the Netherlands, a risorgimento for Italy… ) can't find in itself those values required to build a lasting federal polity, one (like in Germany for instance) where power is distributed and respect is mutual.
"The British State, having never undergone a true transforming shock in its heartland"
Wouldn't you count the '45 rebellion or the (so called') English Civil war or the Chartist Movement, Lawrence? The birth and growth of the Labour Party? The current Labour Party would however tend to confirm your point about inability to evolve, for the British State does endure, surviving the recent bid to change it.
None of these, I'd agree, had the impact of the French Revolution, but they did transform.
Dean Richardson says:
The English Civil War was almost 60 years before the British state existed, although it was some 40 years after the union of crowns.
Well maybe not, Dean. The Kingdom of Great Britain was formed in 1603 under a Scots king as Head of State(s) as you know.
And the 'English' Civil war started in Scotland.
See The Wars of the Three Kingdoms.
Bothy, the Civil War was certainly decisive in that it assured the ascendency of Parliament. Royal autocracy would never prevail again (contrary to neighboring France – where it survived, so that the resulting later explosion was bigger). And I guess 1688 cemented the edifice. But I don't see it as a true transforming shock. Our Parliament has spent the better part of 800 years accruing power to itself (from above) while giving away as little as possible (to below), which makes it so damn hard for the House of Commons to even envisage an elected second chamber that would leach some power away from itself. Yet for the Union to survive there must be a more federal dispensation, so we are stuck.
I wouldn't consider the Chartists transformative, compared to what happened in 1848 elsewhere in Europe, but the rise of Labour Party is a good candidate, its true. And yet….. look at today's Britain.
new subj:
JSW – don't take all these grumbles about your literary style to heart! OK, some of it ain't exactly pellucid, but see how much interest you have aroused. As another commentator wrote, this is an article worth re-reading. It made us think. In terms of content, it is one of the best that Bella Caledinia has carried in a long time. Well done!
I'm sceptical of the idea that the Labour Party qua party changed anything substantially. Had it retained its embryo form as a 'representation committee' rather than becoming a conventional political party by the vote of its MPs alone after the 1906 election then we might have expected serious constitutional change from it. In fact, Labour politicians – with a vanishingly small number of honourable exceptions – have been less imaginative and radical (in terms of policy as well as constitution) than any of their opponents for most of the party's history. Except when persecuting the left, which the Labour Party has often been very proud to do on behalf of the Conservative Party and the media.
Thanks Lawrence,
but this is a puzzle – "Our Parliament has spent the better part of 800 years accruing power to itself ".
Who is "OUR Parliament' of 800 years? There has maybe been an English Parliament for 800 years, but not a British Parliament, which came into being in 1707. Perhaps your North American perspective has distorted your view on history, absorbing English rather than British history. No worries, it's quite a common misperception. It's your loss.
Yes I agree the Chartists were not transformative, sadly. Like Occupy Wall Street, it was not a political party and was doomed to failure, despite its great ideals.
You say "we are stuck.". No Lawrence, we are not and that's the whole point is it not? Fatalism is not a Scots trait.
On "Royal autocracy"- I prefer the French solution…it is unambiguous…..
Well, you are right of course. By "our Parliament" I was thinking as an Englishman. And it is as English that we are stuck. The Scots are luckier. You are not.
In summary I am a reluctant Yesser. I would fain see a Union that survives but I know that for it to do so, the Westminster establishment must find in itself the ability to think big, to decentralize, to cede power to an elected second chamber… and it just cannot. The WM establishment is both rigid and I think in last resort brittle. Not to mention deeply corrupted (vide the paedophilia + cover-up scandal ongoing 30 years – what a stench of putrefaction that throws off). In fact ever since 1776, whenever the Empire was faced with the choice of sharing power or ceding territory, WM chose the latter.
So I believe independence for Scotland is but a matter of time, and (being 1/4 Scot also!) I wish Scotland well.. Happy New Year to all!
Colin McKerron says:
Definitely not an easy read, in fact, it will have to be re-read several times. There is a certain magnetism about the piece which demands a return. A nut shell was mentioned, I would have liked a pointer as to the writers take on Lesser Britain's final chapter; how long will the death throes of the Empire last and when will Scotland finally 'withdraw'?
fearnach says:
Gibbons you ain't.
"But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous."
Oh dear. I found this really heavy going. I persevered but wonder how many people gave up after a few paragraphs. I think I understood what the author was conveying in this article but would it not have been better to write in a style that can be understood and appreciated by a wider audience? This literary 'showboating' may be appreciated by a few but will certainly annoy or worse still be ignored by the majority. I think this would have benefited from a peer review before being published, but judging by the authors response to some of the constructive criticism, doesn't seem to be welcome.
I am sorry you feel my response to constructive criticism was to consider it unwelcome; I was attempting to convey the opposite impression. I am disappointed that you thought I was 'showboating'.
In one of your responses you said "I do not wish to follow that remark up by trying to 'score points';" which to me implies being followed by a big BUT. Maybe it is just the way you write, but that is the impression I get.
If you examine the exchanges with 'MBC' I think you will find that there was confusion over what Simon Jenkins had actually written on DevoMax; which we satisfactorily resolved.
The negative comments to JSW are unkind, and are there simply because some want their reading to be predigested, needing no effort to absorb.
I for one did not at all think that you were 'showboating'. That remark says more about John's insecurity than your article. And no need for a 'peer review ' to determine if John could read it without effort. The 'Sun' has a reading age of 12 – this blog is better than that.
So you did actually score some points then.
No, I did not. My original statement can be taken at face value. Whether Simon Jenkins had discussed DevoMax was actually a matter of real substance to the discussion. I think that is quite clear from the exchanges. While I am keen to be helpful, I can say little more on this subject.
John, There's also this refutation of Crawford and Boyle.
http://lril.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/08/12/lril.lru007.full.pdf
There seems to be a common thread in the responses made by at least 5 people and one other who had his comment removed (not sure why) that this is " Not an easy read! ". Maybe Bothy Basher has come up with the thing that links us in that we all have a reading age of 12.
I think I'll stop thrashing now as the horse seems to be dead.
Apologies I said thrashing when I should have said flogging, as in flogging a dead horse.
Thanks John! – which would you prefer? a thrashing or a flogging?
Well John, the first thing to do is relax.
The article was thoughtfully written and generously contributed here – and the writer got personal abuse for it. I object to that – I ask you criticise the content only and avoid ad hominem attacks. That's normal isn't it?
You say that 5 people were grumpy about the article which doesnt make them right, but it does make them rude if they moan that it was too difficult for them. A fine way for you to encourage the contribution of items to Bella!
Try to see beyond your individual struggle to understand – if it was too much for you, then move on. Look around for an 'easy read'. I could suggest a few if you ask; look at the the excellent images of Greg Moodie. . My reference to the Sun's reading age was directed at 1 of the 5 commenters as you well know, and not a million miles from your good self.
I agree you're right to stop thrashing about.
JSW – excellent article! Thank you!
Jonathan Wills says:
Interesting, but an incorporating union is precisely what was not agreed in the 1707 Treaty of Union. That is the root of the Empire Loyalists' dilemma. For Scotland has a different legal system from England and Wales, and that is why, for example, Cameron and his xenophobes cannot take Scotland out of Europe against our will. If England wished to leave the European Union, she would have to secede from the United Kingdom first.
Thank you for a fascinating and thought provoking essay, which is surely one of the best in recent times.
To my mind, British/English assimilation/Anglicisation is merely intentional discrimination against Scots and Scotland by the larger partner in the UK joint venture state. The BBC and MSM have arguably been the main assimilation vehicles and continue this agenda. But far too many Scots (well, at least 45% who voted in the ref) have seen through it; new media offerings like Bella etc have helped greatly.
I doubt that 'Ulsterization' could occur in Scotland because the Act of Union confirmed Scotland (and indeed many Scots regard themselves and Scotland) as an equal partner nation in the Union, not as a province or colony. The Act of Union signed by Scots MP's in 1707 reminds Scots of our equal status. Whilst our legislature was dissolved, as was England's, our nation was not. As you mentioned, this is not really understood in England, even in 10 Downing St.
As for former colonies that became independent, I think Scotland is not comparable to any. While some Anglo-'Scorpions' may claim that Scotland was incorporated, the Act of Union makes it clear this was not the case. To extend corporate analogies, the UK is a 'joint-venture' state comprising two principal partners – England and Scotland. As most business analysts know, in JV's there may be one partner more solvent than the other at any given time. However the key factor in JV survival is to what extent all 'partners' continue to derive benefits from the JV. If 'returns' (not only financial) fall below acceptable levels for one or both partners then the JV will come to an end. If the JV vehicle is bust it will likewise be dissolved. It is possible of course for one JV partner to acquire the other partner; that would then be 'incorporation' or 'absorption'. In that case the incorporated/absorbed entity would cease to exist. Clearly Scotland has not been 'acquired' and is unlikely ever to be so, despite the fact that some Scots politicians accepted bribes for their votes in 1707, though that is another (criminal) matter entirely.
Doubtless the scorpion will still be there whichever route we Scots take to liberty, whether that be a referendum or even a rapid declaration of independence by the 30+ SNP MP's next May. As your essay illustrates, Parliamentary sovereignty is all Imperial Britain understands, and the union could and perhaps should be ended the same way it was formed – i.e. by majority vote of Scots MP's, hopefully next May.
Britannia cannot 'sail away' from Scotland, as implied, however. As Britannia consists, in large part, of Scotland as one of the two principal JV partners, the latter's exit from UK union means, finally, the end of Imperial Britain.
John S W, I just wanted to thanks you for this and other articles which I much appreciate and to wish you and all your readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 🙂
Nosuchthingasthemarket
December 26, 2014 • 18:15
I'm sceptical of the idea that the Labour Party qua party changed anything substantially. Had it retained its embryo form as a 'representation committee' rather than becoming a conventional political party by the vote of its MPs alone after the 1906 election then we might have expected serious constitutional change from it. In fact, Labour politicians – with a vanishingly small number of honourable exceptions – have been less imaginative and radical (in terms of policy as well as constitution) than any of their opponents for most of the party's history. Except when persecuting the left, which the Labour Party has often been very proud to do on behalf of the Conservative Party and the med"
Nosuch, the Labour Party has made many advances for wealth producers before it abandoned Clause 4 and became New Labour. Yes it has sold out. Yes.
" Had it retained its embryo form as a 'representation committee' rather than becoming a conventional political party….Had it retained its embryo form as a 'representation committee' rather than becoming a conventional political party …..".
Nosuch, this is daft. Who taught you history – Dick Cheney?
Rosemoont says:
What an orgy of language 'fookwithery'! Interesting read, some impressive research in play, but surely a turn-off for many? In reading it, I felt like the author was self-flagellating while typing with one finger…!
On the plus side for me, some compelling parallels with the historical record.
I could not do better, I only offer opinion. There is surely a balance to be struck between this historian prose (so typified by folk like Brian Sewell in 'wanky' art documentaries) and plain english, which would work well but perhaps be more easily digested?
Looking forward to May, anyhow! 🙂
Wonderful lexis from you Rose, beginning with 'orgy' and ending in 'wanky'. Your comment is indeed an orgy of one. Enjoy! and thanks! Keep on tickling your qwerty……
JSW: a last word ref. style…
Bothy is right. We have grown too used to easy pre-digested reads…
Because you aroused my interest with this concept of 'Ulszerisation' I looked up Bourke's article on Pocock and the pre-suppositions of British History. It was on sale for £20 which I thought a bit steep. So I actually tracked Richard Bourke down (he has moved from Queens Univ London to Berlin) and emailed him to ask him for a less expensive way to read it. He promptly and generously sent me a copy.
Now believe me, THAT is a tough read, if anybody has the fortitude!! Good, though. After getting through that, I have nothing but admiration for the way you have summarized his argument, elegantly.
What a lovely outcome! Not only searching out the key article, but contacting the writer to do so, and receiving such a swift and generous response at Christmas! That is just the best Christmas present I could possibly imagine. Thank you. Happy New Year everyone…. …. …. yipeeeee!
Alex Buchan says:
Not sure if it's the same article but Bourke's 2010 article on Pocock and the Presuppositions of the New British History, is freely available online as a PDF.
Thanks for pointing people towards Bourke's article which I've just finished reading. What's interesting for me is seeing how Ulsterization manifests in relation to Scotland. We saw it most blatantly in the referendum over the issue of the common currency. No middle way could be possible. Scotland either had to stay in the union on Westminster's terms or be cast out completely. In other words Westminster reverted to the only response it could to an attempt to reconfigure relations on this island by preferring instead to cast off the offending province. As Seeley said the centre cannot see the periphery as part of itself but instead sees it as possessions to be disposed of when there is any threat to the maintenance of things as they are at Westminster. As Macwhirther says in his new book, it was at that moment many Scots saw the real nature of Scotland's relationship to the British State, and Dicey's sham constitution lost its power to deflect us away from seeing the true underlying nature of the British power. It's also useful to see how this relates to British euro-scepticism. Useful because it's through comparison with other states that Britain's peculiarity becomes evident. All the members of the EU have had to pool sovereignty, the fact that it is only in Britain that the debate on this has become so fetishized on parliamentary sovereignty and the solution is seen as cutting off the contaminating connection. This is why Nicola Sturgeon is so right to concentrate on this issue because it demonstrates the central problem facing Scotland which is that we are signed up to a polity which is at variance with the modern world.
"it demonstrates the central problem facing Scotland which is that we are signed up to a polity"
Yes Alex. We are signed up.
A thoughtful response (I agree with much of it) which if you'll excuse me for saying, has a thread running through it of Scots as victims.
It's not so. We are where we are because though we may not like it, that's what we voted for.


text:
Fylde eller Fylde Coast är en udde i Storbritannien. Den ligger i grevskapet Lancashire och riksdelen England, i den centrala delen av landet,  km nordväst om huvudstaden London. Fylde ligger  meter över havet och antalet invånare är .

Terrängen runt Fylde är mycket platt. Den högsta punkten i närheten är Hazelhurst Fell,  meter över havet,  km nordost om Fylde. Runt Fylde är det tätbefolkat, med  invånare per kvadratkilometer. Närmaste större samhälle är Preston,  km sydost om Fylde. Trakten runt Fylde består i huvudsak av gräsmarker.

Klimatet i området är tempererat. Årsmedeltemperaturen i trakten är  °C. Den varmaste månaden är juli, då medeltemperaturen är  °C, och den kallaste är januari, med  °C.

Kommentarer

Källor

Halvöar i England
Lancashire

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An old French recipe of delicious oranges with fruit juice concentrate.
100% from fruit - contains naturally occurring sugars. Made from all natural ingredients. No cane sugar. Gluten free. No preservatives, flavourings or colours.By gently cooking in the tradition of the French countryside, the natural flavour of the fruit is conserved.