WEBVTT

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It was a cold, sunny March day.

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I was walking along the street in Riga.

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I remember the winter was slowly
coming to an end.

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There was still some snow
around here and there,

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but the pavement
was already clear and dry.

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If you've lived in Riga,

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you will know that feeling of relief
that the first signs of spring bring,

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and you no longer have to trudge
through that slushy mix

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of snow and mud on the streets.

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So there I am, enjoying my stroll,

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as I suddenly notice a stencil
on the pavement in front of me,

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a graffiti:

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white letters painted
on these dark grey bricks.

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It says,

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"Where is your responsibility?"

NOTE Paragraph

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The question stopped me in my tracks.

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As I'm standing there
considering its meaning,

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I notice I'm standing outside the Riga
Municipality Social Welfare Department.

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So it appears that the author
of this graffiti, whoever it is,

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is asking this question to people
coming to apply for social assistance.

NOTE Paragraph

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That winter,

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I had been doing research on the aftermath
of the financial crisis in Latvia.

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When the Global Financial Crisis
erupted in 2008, Latvia got hit hard

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as a small, open economy.

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To balance the books,

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the Latvian government chose
a strategy of internal devaluation.

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Now, in essence, that meant drastically
reducing public budget spending,

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so, slashing public sector workers' wages,

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shrinking civil service,

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cutting unemployment benefits
and other social assistance,

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raising taxes.

NOTE Paragraph

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My mother had been working
as a history teacher her whole life.

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The austerity for her meant
seeing her salary cut by 30 percent

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all of a sudden.

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And there were many in a situation
like hers or worse.

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The costs of the crisis were put
on the shoulders of ordinary Latvians.

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As a result of the crisis
and the austerity,

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the Latvian economy shrank
by 25 percent in a two-year period.

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Only Greece suffered
an economic contraction

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of a comparable scale.

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Yet, while Greeks were out
in the streets for months

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staging continuous,
often violent protests in Athens,

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all was quiet in Riga.

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Prominent economists were fighting
in the columns of "The New York Times"

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about this curious extreme
Latvian experiment

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of this austerity regime,

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and they were watching on in disbelief

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how the Latvian society
was putting up with it.

NOTE Paragraph

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I was studying in London at the time,

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and I remember the Occupy movement there

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and how it was spreading
from city to city,

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from Madrid to New York to London,

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the 99 percent against the one percent.

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You know the story.

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Yet when I arrived in Riga,

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there were no echoes of the Occupy here.

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Latvians were just putting up with it.

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They "swallowed the toad,"
as the local saying goes.

NOTE Paragraph

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For my doctoral research,

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I wanted to study how the state-citizen
relationship was changing in Latvia

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in the post-Soviet era,

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and I had chosen the unemployment office

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as my research site.

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And as I arrived there
in that autumn of 2011,

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I realized, "I am actually
witnessing firsthand

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how the effects of crises are playing out,

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and how those worst affected by it,
people who have lost their jobs,

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are reacting to it."

NOTE Paragraph

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So I started interviewing people
I met at the unemployment office.

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They were all registered as job seekers
and hoping for some help from the state.

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Yet, as I was soon discovering,
this help was of a particular kind.

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There was some cash benefit,

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but mostly state assistance came
in the form of various social programs,

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and one of the biggest
of these programs was called

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"Competitiveness-Raising Activities."

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It was, in essence, a series of seminars

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that all of the unemployed
were encouraged to attend.

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So I started attending
these seminars with them.

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And a number of paradoxes struck me.

NOTE Paragraph

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So, imagine:

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the crisis is still ongoing,

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the Latvian economy is contracting,

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hardly anyone is hiring,

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and there we are,

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in this small, brightly lit classroom,

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a group of 15 people,

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working on lists of our personal strengths
and weaknesses, our inner demons,

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that we are told are preventing us
from being more successful

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in the labor market.

NOTE Paragraph

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As the largest local bank
is being bailed out

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and the costs of this bailout are shifted
onto the shoulders of the population,

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we are sitting in a circle
and learning how to breathe deeply

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when feeling stressed.

NOTE Paragraph

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(Breathes deeply)

NOTE Paragraph

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As home mortgages are being foreclosed

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and thousands of people are emigrating,

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we are told to dream big
and to follow our dreams.

NOTE Paragraph

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As a sociologist,

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I know that social policies
are an important form of communication

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between the state and the citizen.

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The message of this program was,

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to put it in the words
of one of the trainers,

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"Just do it."

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She was, of course, citing Nike.

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So symbolically, the state was sending
a message to people out of work

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that you need to be more active,
you need to work harder,

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you need to work on yourself,
you need to overcome your inner demons,

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you need to be more confident --

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that somehow, being out of work
was their own personal failure.

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The suffering of the crisis

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was treated as this
individual experience of stress

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to be managed in one's own body

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through deep and mindful breathing.

NOTE Paragraph

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These types of social programs
that emphasize individual responsibility

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have become increasingly common
across the world.

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They are part of the rise
of what sociologist Loïc Wacquant calls

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the "neoliberal Centaur state."

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Now, the centaur, as you might recall,

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is this mythical creature
in ancient Greek culture,

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half human, half beast.

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It has this upper part of a human
and the lower part of a horse.

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So the Centaur state is a state

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that turns its human face
to those at the top of the social ladder

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while those at the bottom
are being trampled over,

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stampeded.

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So top income earners and large businesses

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can enjoy tax cuts
and other supportive policies,

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while the unemployed, the poor

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are made to prove themselves worthy
for the state's help,

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are morally disciplined,

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are stigmatized as irresponsible
or passive or lazy

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or often criminalized.

NOTE Paragraph

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In Latvia, we've had
such a Centaur state model

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firmly in place since the '90s.

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Take, for example, the flat income tax
that we had in place up until this year

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that has been benefiting
the highest earners,

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while one quarter of the population
keeps living in poverty.

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And the crisis and the austerity has made
these kinds of social inequalities worse.

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So while the capital of the banks
and the wealthy has been protected,

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those who lost the most

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were taught lessons
in individual responsibility.

NOTE Paragraph

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Now, as I was talking to people
who I met at these seminars,

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I was expecting them to be angry.

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I was expecting them

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to be resisting these lessons
in individual responsibility.

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After all, the crisis was not their fault,
yet they were bearing the brunt of it.

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But as people were sharing
their stories with me,

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I was struck again and again

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by the power of the idea
of responsibility.

NOTE Paragraph

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One of the people I met was Žanete.

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She had been working for 23 years

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teaching sewing and other crafts
at the vocational school in Riga.

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And now the crisis hits,

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and the school is closed
as part of the austerity measures.

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The educational system restructuring
was part of a way of saving public money.

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And 10,000 teachers
across the country lose their jobs,

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and Žanete is one of them.

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And I know from what she's been telling me

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that losing her job has put her
in a desperate situation;

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she's divorced, she has two teenage
children that she's the sole provider for.

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And yet, as we are talking,

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she says to me that the crisis
is really an opportunity.

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She says, "I turn 50 this year.

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I guess life has really given me
this chance to look around, to stop,

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because all these years
I've been working nonstop,

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had no time to pause.

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And now I have stopped,

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and I've been given an opportunity
to look at everything and to decide

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what it is that I want

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and what it is that I don't want.

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All this time, sewing, sewing,
some kind of exhaustion."

NOTE Paragraph

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So Žanete is made redundant
after 23 years.

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But she's not thinking about protesting.

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She's not talking about the 99 percent
against the one percent.

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She is analyzing herself.

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And she was thinking pragmatically
of starting a small business

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out of her bedroom

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making these little souvenir dolls
to sell to tourists.

NOTE Paragraph

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I also met Aivars
at the unemployment office.

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Aivars was in his late 40s,

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he had lost a job at the government agency
overseeing road construction.

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To one of our meetings,
Aivars brings a book he's been reading.

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It's called "Vaccination against Stress,
or Psycho-energetic Aikido."

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Now, some of you might know
that aikido is a form of martial art,

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so, psycho-energetic aikido.

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And Aivars tells me
that after several months

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of reading and thinking and reflecting
while being out of work,

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he has understood that his current
difficulties are really his own doing.

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He says to me,

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"I created it myself.

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I was in a psychological state
that was not good for me.

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If a person is afraid to lose
their money, to lose their job,

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they start getting more stressed,
more unsettled, more fearful.

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That's what they get."

NOTE Paragraph

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As I ask him to explain,

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he compares his thoughts poetically
to wild horses running in all directions,

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and he says, "You need to be
a shepherd of your thoughts.

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To get things in order
in the material world,

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you need to be a shepherd
of your thoughts,

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because it's through your thoughts
that everything else gets orderly."

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"Lately," he says,
"I have clearly understood

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that the world around me,
what happens to me,

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people that enter in my life ...
it all depends directly on myself."

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So as Latvia is going through
this extreme economic experiment,

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Aivars says it's his way of thinking
that has to change.

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He's blaming himself for what
he's going through at the moment.

NOTE Paragraph

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So taking responsibility
is, of course, a good thing, right?

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It is especially meaningful

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and morally charged
in a post-Soviet society,

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where reliance on the state
is seen as this unfortunate heritage

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of the Soviet past.

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But when I listen to Žanete
and Aivars and to others,

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I also thought
how cruel this question is --

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"Where is your responsibility?" --

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how punishing.

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Because, it was working as a way
of blaming and pacifying people

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who were hit worst by the crisis.

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So while Greeks were out in the streets,
Latvians swallowed the toad,

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and many tens of thousands emigrated,

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which is another way
of taking responsibility.

NOTE Paragraph

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So the language, the language
of individual responsibility,

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has become a form of collective denial.

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As long as we have social policies
that treat unemployment

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as individual failure

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but we don't have enough funding
for programs that give people real skills

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or create workplaces,

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we are blind of the
policymakers' responsibility.

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As long as we stigmatize the poor
as somehow passive or lazy

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but don't give people real means
to get out of poverty

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other than emigrating,

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we are in denial of
the true causes of poverty.

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And in the meantime,

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we all suffer,

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because social scientists have shown
with detailed statistical data

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that there are more people with both
mental and physical health problems

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in societies with higher levels
of economic inequality.

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So social inequality is apparently bad
for not only those with least resources

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but for all of us,

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because living in a society
with high inequality

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means living in a society
with low social trust and high anxiety.

NOTE Paragraph

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So there we are.

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We're all reading self-help books,

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we try to hack our habits,

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we try to rewire our brains,

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we meditate.

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And it helps, of course, in a way.

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Self-help books help us feel more upbeat.

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Meditation can help us feel
more connected to others spiritually.

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What I think we need

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is as much awareness of what connects
us to one another socially,

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because social inequality hurts us all.

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So we need more
compassionate social policies

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that are aimed less at moral education

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and more at promotion
of social justice and equality.

NOTE Paragraph

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Thank you.

NOTE Paragraph

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(Applause)