1 00:00:01,370 --> 00:00:04,579 It was a cold, sunny March day. 2 00:00:05,318 --> 00:00:07,875 I was walking along the street in Riga. 3 00:00:08,796 --> 00:00:12,042 I remember the winter was slowly coming to an end. 4 00:00:12,066 --> 00:00:14,813 There was still some snow around here and there, 5 00:00:14,837 --> 00:00:17,827 but the pavement was already clear and dry. 6 00:00:18,151 --> 00:00:19,396 If you've lived in Riga, 7 00:00:19,420 --> 00:00:24,795 you will know that feeling of relief that the first signs of spring bring, 8 00:00:24,819 --> 00:00:27,525 and you no longer have to trudge through that slushy mix 9 00:00:27,549 --> 00:00:29,228 of snow and mud on the streets. 10 00:00:30,099 --> 00:00:33,262 So there I am, enjoying my stroll, 11 00:00:33,286 --> 00:00:38,675 as I suddenly notice a stencil on the pavement in front of me, 12 00:00:38,699 --> 00:00:39,884 a graffiti: 13 00:00:41,177 --> 00:00:44,956 white letters painted on these dark grey bricks. 14 00:00:44,980 --> 00:00:46,449 It says, 15 00:00:46,473 --> 00:00:51,192 "Where is your responsibility?" 16 00:00:52,904 --> 00:00:55,138 The question stopped me in my tracks. 17 00:00:56,102 --> 00:00:59,789 As I'm standing there considering its meaning, 18 00:00:59,813 --> 00:01:04,964 I notice I'm standing outside the Riga Municipality Social Welfare Department. 19 00:01:05,660 --> 00:01:09,490 So it appears that the author of this graffiti, whoever it is, 20 00:01:09,514 --> 00:01:14,115 is asking this question to people coming to apply for social assistance. 21 00:01:15,845 --> 00:01:17,303 That winter, 22 00:01:17,327 --> 00:01:22,719 I had been doing research on the aftermath of the financial crisis in Latvia. 23 00:01:22,743 --> 00:01:27,826 When the Global Financial Crisis erupted in 2008, Latvia got hit hard 24 00:01:27,850 --> 00:01:29,971 as a small, open economy. 25 00:01:30,439 --> 00:01:31,615 To balance the books, 26 00:01:31,639 --> 00:01:35,412 the Latvian government chose a strategy of internal devaluation. 27 00:01:35,436 --> 00:01:40,011 Now, in essence, that meant drastically reducing public budget spending, 28 00:01:40,035 --> 00:01:42,890 so, slashing public sector workers' wages, 29 00:01:42,914 --> 00:01:44,395 shrinking civil service, 30 00:01:44,419 --> 00:01:47,463 cutting unemployment benefits and other social assistance, 31 00:01:47,487 --> 00:01:49,001 raising taxes. 32 00:01:49,720 --> 00:01:53,028 My mother had been working as a history teacher her whole life. 33 00:01:53,575 --> 00:01:59,032 The austerity for her meant seeing her salary cut by 30 percent 34 00:01:59,056 --> 00:02:00,539 all of a sudden. 35 00:02:00,563 --> 00:02:03,773 And there were many in a situation like hers or worse. 36 00:02:03,797 --> 00:02:08,530 The costs of the crisis were put on the shoulders of ordinary Latvians. 37 00:02:10,056 --> 00:02:13,101 As a result of the crisis and the austerity, 38 00:02:13,125 --> 00:02:17,632 the Latvian economy shrank by 25 percent in a two-year period. 39 00:02:17,656 --> 00:02:20,524 Only Greece suffered an economic contraction 40 00:02:20,548 --> 00:02:22,387 of a comparable scale. 41 00:02:23,772 --> 00:02:27,091 Yet, while Greeks were out in the streets for months 42 00:02:27,115 --> 00:02:31,260 staging continuous, often violent protests in Athens, 43 00:02:31,284 --> 00:02:34,452 all was quiet in Riga. 44 00:02:35,504 --> 00:02:39,218 Prominent economists were fighting in the columns of "The New York Times" 45 00:02:39,242 --> 00:02:42,859 about this curious extreme Latvian experiment 46 00:02:42,883 --> 00:02:45,074 of this austerity regime, 47 00:02:45,098 --> 00:02:46,971 and they were watching on in disbelief 48 00:02:46,995 --> 00:02:49,393 how the Latvian society was putting up with it. 49 00:02:50,607 --> 00:02:52,460 I was studying in London at the time, 50 00:02:52,484 --> 00:02:55,218 and I remember the Occupy movement there 51 00:02:55,242 --> 00:02:57,740 and how it was spreading from city to city, 52 00:02:57,764 --> 00:02:59,893 from Madrid to New York to London, 53 00:02:59,917 --> 00:03:02,472 the 99 percent against the one percent. 54 00:03:02,496 --> 00:03:03,808 You know the story. 55 00:03:04,534 --> 00:03:06,891 Yet when I arrived in Riga, 56 00:03:06,915 --> 00:03:09,283 there were no echoes of the Occupy here. 57 00:03:09,897 --> 00:03:12,147 Latvians were just putting up with it. 58 00:03:12,889 --> 00:03:17,076 They "swallowed the toad," as the local saying goes. 59 00:03:18,202 --> 00:03:19,964 For my doctoral research, 60 00:03:19,988 --> 00:03:24,497 I wanted to study how the state-citizen relationship was changing in Latvia 61 00:03:24,521 --> 00:03:26,188 in the post-Soviet era, 62 00:03:26,212 --> 00:03:28,531 and I had chosen the unemployment office 63 00:03:28,555 --> 00:03:30,003 as my research site. 64 00:03:30,554 --> 00:03:34,013 And as I arrived there in that autumn of 2011, 65 00:03:34,037 --> 00:03:37,833 I realized, "I am actually witnessing firsthand 66 00:03:37,857 --> 00:03:40,404 how the effects of crises are playing out, 67 00:03:40,428 --> 00:03:44,474 and how those worst affected by it, people who have lost their jobs, 68 00:03:44,498 --> 00:03:46,051 are reacting to it." 69 00:03:47,668 --> 00:03:52,591 So I started interviewing people I met at the unemployment office. 70 00:03:53,954 --> 00:03:58,668 They were all registered as job seekers and hoping for some help from the state. 71 00:03:58,692 --> 00:04:03,181 Yet, as I was soon discovering, this help was of a particular kind. 72 00:04:03,205 --> 00:04:04,757 There was some cash benefit, 73 00:04:04,781 --> 00:04:09,289 but mostly state assistance came in the form of various social programs, 74 00:04:09,313 --> 00:04:11,747 and one of the biggest of these programs was called 75 00:04:11,771 --> 00:04:14,220 "Competitiveness-Raising Activities." 76 00:04:15,279 --> 00:04:17,223 It was, in essence, a series of seminars 77 00:04:17,247 --> 00:04:19,930 that all of the unemployed were encouraged to attend. 78 00:04:19,954 --> 00:04:22,844 So I started attending these seminars with them. 79 00:04:23,975 --> 00:04:26,627 And a number of paradoxes struck me. 80 00:04:27,048 --> 00:04:28,532 So, imagine: 81 00:04:29,435 --> 00:04:32,274 the crisis is still ongoing, 82 00:04:32,298 --> 00:04:34,412 the Latvian economy is contracting, 83 00:04:34,436 --> 00:04:36,516 hardly anyone is hiring, 84 00:04:36,540 --> 00:04:38,029 and there we are, 85 00:04:38,053 --> 00:04:41,076 in this small, brightly lit classroom, 86 00:04:41,100 --> 00:04:43,358 a group of 15 people, 87 00:04:43,382 --> 00:04:47,988 working on lists of our personal strengths and weaknesses, our inner demons, 88 00:04:48,012 --> 00:04:51,103 that we are told are preventing us from being more successful 89 00:04:51,127 --> 00:04:52,691 in the labor market. 90 00:04:53,727 --> 00:04:56,614 As the largest local bank is being bailed out 91 00:04:56,638 --> 00:05:01,244 and the costs of this bailout are shifted onto the shoulders of the population, 92 00:05:01,268 --> 00:05:06,669 we are sitting in a circle and learning how to breathe deeply 93 00:05:06,693 --> 00:05:08,557 when feeling stressed. 94 00:05:08,581 --> 00:05:11,457 (Breathes deeply) 95 00:05:13,265 --> 00:05:15,716 As home mortgages are being foreclosed 96 00:05:15,740 --> 00:05:18,292 and thousands of people are emigrating, 97 00:05:18,316 --> 00:05:22,115 we are told to dream big and to follow our dreams. 98 00:05:23,524 --> 00:05:24,689 As a sociologist, 99 00:05:24,713 --> 00:05:29,234 I know that social policies are an important form of communication 100 00:05:29,258 --> 00:05:31,180 between the state and the citizen. 101 00:05:31,753 --> 00:05:33,498 The message of this program was, 102 00:05:33,522 --> 00:05:35,712 to put it in the words of one of the trainers, 103 00:05:35,736 --> 00:05:36,902 "Just do it." 104 00:05:36,926 --> 00:05:38,769 She was, of course, citing Nike. 105 00:05:39,478 --> 00:05:43,622 So symbolically, the state was sending a message to people out of work 106 00:05:43,646 --> 00:05:47,343 that you need to be more active, you need to work harder, 107 00:05:47,367 --> 00:05:50,642 you need to work on yourself, you need to overcome your inner demons, 108 00:05:50,666 --> 00:05:52,244 you need to be more confident -- 109 00:05:52,268 --> 00:05:56,409 that somehow, being out of work was their own personal failure. 110 00:05:57,038 --> 00:05:59,616 The suffering of the crisis 111 00:05:59,640 --> 00:06:02,781 was treated as this individual experience of stress 112 00:06:02,805 --> 00:06:04,667 to be managed in one's own body 113 00:06:04,691 --> 00:06:06,939 through deep and mindful breathing. 114 00:06:10,019 --> 00:06:14,020 These types of social programs that emphasize individual responsibility 115 00:06:14,044 --> 00:06:17,095 have become increasingly common across the world. 116 00:06:17,119 --> 00:06:20,876 They are part of the rise of what sociologist Loïc Wacquant calls 117 00:06:20,900 --> 00:06:23,693 the "neoliberal Centaur state." 118 00:06:23,717 --> 00:06:25,548 Now, the centaur, as you might recall, 119 00:06:25,572 --> 00:06:28,228 is this mythical creature in ancient Greek culture, 120 00:06:28,252 --> 00:06:29,835 half human, half beast. 121 00:06:29,859 --> 00:06:34,788 It has this upper part of a human and the lower part of a horse. 122 00:06:34,812 --> 00:06:37,395 So the Centaur state is a state 123 00:06:37,419 --> 00:06:42,251 that turns its human face to those at the top of the social ladder 124 00:06:42,275 --> 00:06:45,482 while those at the bottom are being trampled over, 125 00:06:45,506 --> 00:06:46,755 stampeded. 126 00:06:46,779 --> 00:06:49,253 So top income earners and large businesses 127 00:06:49,277 --> 00:06:52,827 can enjoy tax cuts and other supportive policies, 128 00:06:52,851 --> 00:06:55,347 while the unemployed, the poor 129 00:06:55,371 --> 00:06:58,677 are made to prove themselves worthy for the state's help, 130 00:06:58,701 --> 00:07:00,528 are morally disciplined, 131 00:07:00,552 --> 00:07:03,932 are stigmatized as irresponsible or passive or lazy 132 00:07:03,956 --> 00:07:05,827 or often criminalized. 133 00:07:07,065 --> 00:07:10,644 In Latvia, we've had such a Centaur state model 134 00:07:10,668 --> 00:07:12,947 firmly in place since the '90s. 135 00:07:12,971 --> 00:07:17,221 Take, for example, the flat income tax that we had in place up until this year 136 00:07:17,245 --> 00:07:19,596 that has been benefiting the highest earners, 137 00:07:19,620 --> 00:07:23,374 while one quarter of the population keeps living in poverty. 138 00:07:23,820 --> 00:07:29,070 And the crisis and the austerity has made these kinds of social inequalities worse. 139 00:07:29,094 --> 00:07:33,553 So while the capital of the banks and the wealthy has been protected, 140 00:07:33,577 --> 00:07:35,339 those who lost the most 141 00:07:35,363 --> 00:07:38,611 were taught lessons in individual responsibility. 142 00:07:40,097 --> 00:07:44,442 Now, as I was talking to people who I met at these seminars, 143 00:07:44,466 --> 00:07:46,724 I was expecting them to be angry. 144 00:07:47,158 --> 00:07:48,468 I was expecting them 145 00:07:48,492 --> 00:07:51,358 to be resisting these lessons in individual responsibility. 146 00:07:51,382 --> 00:07:55,716 After all, the crisis was not their fault, yet they were bearing the brunt of it. 147 00:07:56,417 --> 00:07:59,668 But as people were sharing their stories with me, 148 00:07:59,692 --> 00:08:02,228 I was struck again and again 149 00:08:02,252 --> 00:08:06,483 by the power of the idea of responsibility. 150 00:08:07,596 --> 00:08:10,085 One of the people I met was Žanete. 151 00:08:11,299 --> 00:08:14,289 She had been working for 23 years 152 00:08:14,313 --> 00:08:18,767 teaching sewing and other crafts at the vocational school in Riga. 153 00:08:18,791 --> 00:08:21,110 And now the crisis hits, 154 00:08:21,134 --> 00:08:24,253 and the school is closed as part of the austerity measures. 155 00:08:24,277 --> 00:08:30,211 The educational system restructuring was part of a way of saving public money. 156 00:08:30,235 --> 00:08:33,333 And 10,000 teachers across the country lose their jobs, 157 00:08:33,333 --> 00:08:34,963 and Žanete is one of them. 158 00:08:34,963 --> 00:08:37,896 And I know from what she's been telling me 159 00:08:37,920 --> 00:08:40,662 that losing her job has put her in a desperate situation; 160 00:08:40,686 --> 00:08:44,879 she's divorced, she has two teenage children that she's the sole provider for. 161 00:08:44,903 --> 00:08:47,393 And yet, as we are talking, 162 00:08:47,417 --> 00:08:51,587 she says to me that the crisis is really an opportunity. 163 00:08:52,579 --> 00:08:56,080 She says, "I turn 50 this year. 164 00:08:56,104 --> 00:09:01,030 I guess life has really given me this chance to look around, to stop, 165 00:09:01,054 --> 00:09:03,429 because all these years I've been working nonstop, 166 00:09:03,453 --> 00:09:04,916 had no time to pause. 167 00:09:04,940 --> 00:09:06,763 And now I have stopped, 168 00:09:06,787 --> 00:09:11,431 and I've been given an opportunity to look at everything and to decide 169 00:09:11,455 --> 00:09:13,019 what it is that I want 170 00:09:13,043 --> 00:09:14,855 and what it is that I don't want. 171 00:09:14,879 --> 00:09:18,586 All this time, sewing, sewing, some kind of exhaustion." 172 00:09:19,783 --> 00:09:23,527 So Žanete is made redundant after 23 years. 173 00:09:23,551 --> 00:09:25,897 But she's not thinking about protesting. 174 00:09:25,921 --> 00:09:29,795 She's not talking about the 99 percent against the one percent. 175 00:09:29,819 --> 00:09:31,748 She is analyzing herself. 176 00:09:32,309 --> 00:09:35,331 And she was thinking pragmatically of starting a small business 177 00:09:35,355 --> 00:09:36,929 out of her bedroom 178 00:09:36,953 --> 00:09:40,417 making these little souvenir dolls to sell to tourists. 179 00:09:40,441 --> 00:09:43,001 I also met Aivars at the unemployment office. 180 00:09:43,025 --> 00:09:45,140 Aivars was in his late 40s, 181 00:09:45,164 --> 00:09:49,674 he had lost a job at the government agency overseeing road construction. 182 00:09:50,333 --> 00:09:54,415 To one of our meetings, Aivars brings a book he's been reading. 183 00:09:54,439 --> 00:10:01,296 It's called "Vaccination against Stress, or Psycho-energetic Aikido." 184 00:10:02,030 --> 00:10:05,266 Now, some of you might know that aikido is a form of martial art, 185 00:10:05,290 --> 00:10:07,883 so, psycho-energetic aikido. 186 00:10:08,780 --> 00:10:11,556 And Aivars tells me that after several months 187 00:10:11,580 --> 00:10:15,131 of reading and thinking and reflecting while being out of work, 188 00:10:15,155 --> 00:10:20,906 he has understood that his current difficulties are really his own doing. 189 00:10:21,310 --> 00:10:22,860 He says to me, 190 00:10:22,884 --> 00:10:24,812 "I created it myself. 191 00:10:24,836 --> 00:10:27,876 I was in a psychological state that was not good for me. 192 00:10:27,900 --> 00:10:31,229 If a person is afraid to lose their money, to lose their job, 193 00:10:31,253 --> 00:10:34,260 they start getting more stressed, more unsettled, more fearful. 194 00:10:34,284 --> 00:10:35,875 That's what they get." 195 00:10:36,504 --> 00:10:38,397 As I ask him to explain, 196 00:10:38,421 --> 00:10:42,733 he compares his thoughts poetically to wild horses running in all directions, 197 00:10:42,757 --> 00:10:45,771 and he says, "You need to be a shepherd of your thoughts. 198 00:10:46,757 --> 00:10:49,035 To get things in order in the material world, 199 00:10:49,059 --> 00:10:51,081 you need to be a shepherd of your thoughts, 200 00:10:51,105 --> 00:10:54,488 because it's through your thoughts that everything else gets orderly." 201 00:10:54,512 --> 00:10:56,756 "Lately," he says, "I have clearly understood 202 00:10:56,780 --> 00:10:59,289 that the world around me, what happens to me, 203 00:10:59,313 --> 00:11:02,889 people that enter in my life ... it all depends directly on myself." 204 00:11:02,913 --> 00:11:08,035 So as Latvia is going through this extreme economic experiment, 205 00:11:08,059 --> 00:11:11,201 Aivars says it's his way of thinking that has to change. 206 00:11:11,225 --> 00:11:15,936 He's blaming himself for what he's going through at the moment. 207 00:11:16,799 --> 00:11:21,670 So taking responsibility is, of course, a good thing, right? 208 00:11:21,694 --> 00:11:23,852 It is especially meaningful 209 00:11:23,876 --> 00:11:26,455 and morally charged in a post-Soviet society, 210 00:11:26,479 --> 00:11:30,012 where reliance on the state is seen as this unfortunate heritage 211 00:11:30,036 --> 00:11:31,341 of the Soviet past. 212 00:11:31,888 --> 00:11:34,940 But when I listen to Žanete and Aivars and to others, 213 00:11:34,964 --> 00:11:38,491 I also thought how cruel this question is -- 214 00:11:38,515 --> 00:11:40,419 "Where is your responsibility?" -- 215 00:11:40,443 --> 00:11:41,667 how punishing. 216 00:11:41,691 --> 00:11:45,748 Because, it was working as a way of blaming and pacifying people 217 00:11:45,772 --> 00:11:48,044 who were hit worst by the crisis. 218 00:11:48,068 --> 00:11:51,612 So while Greeks were out in the streets, Latvians swallowed the toad, 219 00:11:51,636 --> 00:11:54,939 and many tens of thousands emigrated, 220 00:11:54,963 --> 00:11:57,755 which is another way of taking responsibility. 221 00:12:00,009 --> 00:12:03,293 So the language, the language of individual responsibility, 222 00:12:03,317 --> 00:12:05,699 has become a form of collective denial. 223 00:12:06,342 --> 00:12:09,448 As long as we have social policies that treat unemployment 224 00:12:09,472 --> 00:12:11,243 as individual failure 225 00:12:11,267 --> 00:12:15,187 but we don't have enough funding for programs that give people real skills 226 00:12:15,211 --> 00:12:16,788 or create workplaces, 227 00:12:16,812 --> 00:12:19,993 we are blind of the policymakers' responsibility. 228 00:12:20,017 --> 00:12:23,864 As long as we stigmatize the poor as somehow passive or lazy 229 00:12:23,888 --> 00:12:26,484 but don't give people real means to get out of poverty 230 00:12:26,508 --> 00:12:28,030 other than emigrating, 231 00:12:28,054 --> 00:12:31,948 we are in denial of the true causes of poverty. 232 00:12:31,972 --> 00:12:33,821 And in the meantime, 233 00:12:33,845 --> 00:12:35,116 we all suffer, 234 00:12:36,060 --> 00:12:40,275 because social scientists have shown with detailed statistical data 235 00:12:40,299 --> 00:12:44,868 that there are more people with both mental and physical health problems 236 00:12:44,892 --> 00:12:49,091 in societies with higher levels of economic inequality. 237 00:12:49,115 --> 00:12:54,534 So social inequality is apparently bad for not only those with least resources 238 00:12:54,558 --> 00:12:55,746 but for all of us, 239 00:12:55,770 --> 00:12:58,256 because living in a society with high inequality 240 00:12:58,280 --> 00:13:02,459 means living in a society with low social trust and high anxiety. 241 00:13:02,928 --> 00:13:04,107 So there we are. 242 00:13:04,131 --> 00:13:06,017 We're all reading self-help books, 243 00:13:06,041 --> 00:13:07,749 we try to hack our habits, 244 00:13:07,773 --> 00:13:09,611 we try to rewire our brains, 245 00:13:09,635 --> 00:13:11,340 we meditate. 246 00:13:11,364 --> 00:13:13,732 And it helps, of course, in a way. 247 00:13:14,414 --> 00:13:17,100 Self-help books help us feel more upbeat. 248 00:13:17,124 --> 00:13:22,058 Meditation can help us feel more connected to others spiritually. 249 00:13:22,947 --> 00:13:24,588 What I think we need 250 00:13:24,612 --> 00:13:29,641 is as much awareness of what connects us to one another socially, 251 00:13:29,665 --> 00:13:32,576 because social inequality hurts us all. 252 00:13:32,600 --> 00:13:36,441 So we need more compassionate social policies 253 00:13:36,465 --> 00:13:39,684 that are aimed less at moral education 254 00:13:39,708 --> 00:13:44,246 and more at promotion of social justice and equality. 255 00:13:44,270 --> 00:13:45,469 Thank you. 256 00:13:45,493 --> 00:13:47,997 (Applause)