9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It was a cold, sunny March day.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I was walking along the street in Riga.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I remember the winter was slowly[br]coming to an end.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
There was still some snow[br]around, here and there,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but the pavement[br]was already clear and dry.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
If you've lived in Riga,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
you will know that feeling of relief

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that the first signs of spring bring,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and you no longer have to trudge[br]through that slushy mix

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
of snow and mud on the streets.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So there I am, enjoying my stroll,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
as I suddenly notice a stencil[br]on the pavement in front of me,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
a graffiti:

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
white letters painted[br]on these dark grey bricks.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It says,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
"Where is your responsibility?"

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The question stopped me in my tracks.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
As I am standing there,[br]considering its meaning,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and I notice I'm standing outside

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the Riga Municipality[br]Social Welfare Department.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So it appears that the author[br]of this graffiti, whoever it is,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
is asking this question to people[br]coming to apply for social assistance.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
That winter,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I had been doing research on the aftermath[br]of the financial crisis in Latvia.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
When the Global Financial Crisis[br]erupted in 2008, Latvia got hit hard,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
as a small, open economy.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
To balance the books,[br]the Latvian government

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
chose a strategy of internal devaluation.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Now, in essence,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that meant drastically reducing[br]public budget spending,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
so slashing public sector workers' wages,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
shrinking civil service,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
cutting unemployment benefits[br]and other social assistance,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
raising taxes.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
My mother had been working[br]as a history teacher her whole life.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The austerity for her meant seeing[br]her salary cut by 30 percent

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
all of a sudden.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And there were many in a situation[br]like hers or worse.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The costs of the crisis were put[br]on the shoulders of ordinary Latvians.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
As a result of the crisis[br]and the austerity,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the Latvian economy shrank[br]by 25 percent in a two-year period.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Only Greece suffered[br]an economic contraction

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
of a comparable scale.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Yet, while Greeks were out[br]in the streets for months

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
staging continuous,[br]often violent protests in Athens,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
all was quiet in Riga.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Prominent economists were fighting[br]in the columns of The New York Times

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
about this curious extreme[br]Latvian experiment

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
of this austerity regime,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and they were watching on in disbelief[br]how the Latvian society

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
was putting up with it.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I was studying in London at the time,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and I remember the Occupy movement there,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and how it was spreading[br]from city to city,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
from Madrid to New York to London,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the 99 percent against the one percent.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
You know the story.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Yet when I arrived in Riga,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
there were no echoes of the Occupy here.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Latvians were just putting up with it.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
They swallowed the toad,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
as the local saying goes.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
For my doctoral research,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I wanted to study how the state-citizen[br]relationship was changing in Latvia

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
in the post-Soviet era,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and I had chosen the unemployment office

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
as my research site.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And as I arrived there[br]in that autumn of 2011,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I realized I am actually[br]witnessing firsthand

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
how the effects of crises are playing out,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and how those worst affected by it,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
people who have lost their jobs,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
are reacting to it.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So I started interviewing people

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I met at the unemployment office.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
They were all registered as job seekers[br]and hoping for some help from the state.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Yet, as I was soon discovering,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
this help was of a particular kind.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
There was some cash benefit,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but mostly state assistance came[br]in the form of various social programs,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and one of the biggest[br]of these programs was called

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
"competitiveness raising activities."

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It was, in essence, a series of seminars[br]that all of the unemployed

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
were encouraged to attend.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So I started attended[br]these seminars with them.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And a number of paradoxes struck me.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So imagine,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the crisis is still ongoing,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the Latvian economy is contracting,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
hardly anyone is hiring,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and there we are,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
in this small, brightly lit classroom,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
a group of 15 people,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
working on lists of our personal[br]strengths and weaknesses,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
our inner demons that we are told[br]are preventing us from being

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
more successful in the labor market.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
As the largest local bank[br]is being bailed out

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and the costs of this bailout are shifted[br]onto the shoulders of the population,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
we are sitting in a circle

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and learning how to breathe deeply

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
when feeling stressed.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
(Breathes)

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
As home mortgages are being foreclosed

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and thousands of people are emigrating,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
we are told to dream big[br]and to follow our dreams.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
As a sociologist, I know[br]that social policies

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
are an important form of communication

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
between the state and the citizen.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The message of this program was,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to put in the words[br]of one of the trainers,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
"Just do it."

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
She was, of course, citing Nike.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So symbolically, the state was sending[br]a message to people out of work

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that you need to be more active,[br]you need to work harder,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
you need to work on yourself,[br]you need to overcome your inner demons,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
you need to be more confident,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that somehow being out of work[br]was their own personal failure.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The suffering of the crisis

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
was treated as this[br]individual experience of stress

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to be managed in one's own body

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
through deep and mindful breathing.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
These types of social programs[br]that emphasize individual responsibility

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
have become increasingly common[br]across the world.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
They are part of the rise[br]of what sociologist Loïc Wacquant calls

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the "neoliberal Centaur state".

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Now, the centaur, as you might recall,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
is this mythical creature[br]in ancient Greek culture,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
half human, half beast.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It has this upper part of a human[br]and the lower part of a horse.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So the Centaur state

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
is a state that turns its human face

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to those at the top of the social ladder

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
while those at the bottom[br]are being trampled over,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
stampeded.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So top income earners and large businesses

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
can enjoy tax cuts[br]and other supportive policies,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
while the unemployed, the poor

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
are made to prove themselves worthy

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
for the state's help,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
are morally disciplined,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
are stigmatized as irresponsible[br]or passive or lazy

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
or often criminalized.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
In Latvia, we have had[br]such a Centaur state model

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
firmly in place since the '90s.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Take, for example, the flat income tax[br]that we had in place up until this year

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that has been benefiting[br]the highest earners

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
while one quarter of the population[br]keeps living in poverty.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And the crisis and the austerity has made[br]these kinds of social inequalities worse.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So while the capital of the banks[br]and the wealthy has been protected,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
those who lost the most

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
were taught lessons[br]in individual responsibility.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Now, as I was talking to people

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
who I met at these seminars,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I was expecting them to be angry.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I was expecting them[br]to be resisting these lessons

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
in individual responsibility.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
After all, the crisis was not their fault,[br]yet they were bearing the brunt of it.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But as people were sharing[br]their stories with me,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I was struck again and again

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
by the power of the idea

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
of responsibility.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
One of the people I met was Janet.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
She had been working for 23 years

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
teaching sewing and other crafts[br]at the vocational school in Riga,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and now the crisis hits

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and the school is closed[br]as part of the austerity measures.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The educational system restructuring[br]was part of a way of saving public money.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And 10,000 teachers across the country[br]lose their jobs and Janet is one of them.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And I know from what she's been telling me

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that losing her job has put her[br]in a desperate situation.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
She is divorced, she has[br]two teenage children

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that she is the sole provider for.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And yet, as we are talking,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
she says to me

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that the crisis is really an opportunity.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
She says, "I turned 50 this year.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I guess life has really[br]given me this chance

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to look around, to stop,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
because all these years[br]I've been working nonstop,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I have no time to pause,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and now I have stopped

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and I've been given an opportunity[br]to look at everything and to decide

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
what it is that I want

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and what it is that I don't want.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
All this time, sewing, sewing,[br]some kind of exhaustion."

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So Janet is made redundant after 23 years.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
She's not thinking about protesting.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
She's not talking about the 99 percent[br]against the one percent.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
She is analyzing herself.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And she was thinking pragmatically[br]of starting a small business

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
out of her bedroom

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
making these little souvenir dolls[br]to sell to tourists.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I also met Ivars[br]at the unemployment office.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Ivars was in his late 40s,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
he had lost a job at the government agency[br]overseeing road construction.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
To one of our meetings,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Ivars brings a book he's been reading.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It's called "Vaccination Against Stress,[br]or Psychoenergetic Aikido."

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Now, some of you might know[br]that aikido is a form of martial art,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
so psychoenergetic aikido.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And Ivars tells me[br]that after several months

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
of reading and thinking and reflecting[br]while being out of work,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
he has understood

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that his current difficulties[br]are really his own doing.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
He says to me,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
"I created it myself.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I was in a psychological state[br]that was not good for me.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
If a person is afraid to lose their money,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to lose their job,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
they start getting more stressed,[br]more unsettled, more fearful.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
That's what they get."

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
As I ask him to explain,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
he compares his thoughts poetically[br]to wild horses running in all directions,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and he says, "You need to be[br]a shepherd of your thoughts.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
To get things in order[br]in the material world,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
you need to be a shepherd of your thoughts

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
because it's through your thoughts[br]that everything else gets orderly."

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
"Lately," he says,[br]"I have clearly understood

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that the world around me,[br]what happens to me,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
people that enter in my life,[br]it all depends directly on myself."

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So as Latvia is going through[br]this extreme economic experiment,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Ivars says it's his way of thinking[br]that has to change.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
He's blaming himself for what[br]he's going through at the moment.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So taking responsibility[br]is, of course, a good thing, right?

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It is especially meaningful

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and morally charged[br]in a post-Soviet society

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
where reliance on the state[br]is seen as this unfortunate heritage

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
of the Soviet past.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But when I listen to Janet and Ivars

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and to others, I also thought

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
how cruel this question is --

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
"Where is your responsibility?" --

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
how punishing.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Because, it was working as a way[br]of blaming and pacifying people

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
who were hit worst by the crisis.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So while Greeks were out in the streets,[br]Latvians swallowed the toad,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and many tens of thousands emigrated,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
which is another way[br]of taking responsibility.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So the language,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the language of individual responsibility[br]has become a form of collective denial.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
As long as we have social policies[br]that treat unemployment

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
as individual failure,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but we don't have enough funding[br]for programs that give people real skills

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
or create workplaces.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We are blind of the[br]policymakers' responsibility.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
As long as we stigmatize the poor[br]as somehow passive or lazy

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but don't give people real means[br]to get out of poverty

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
other than emigrating,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
we are in denial of[br]the true causes of poverty.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And in the meantime,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
we all suffer,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
because social scientists have shown[br]with detailed statistical data

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that there are more people with[br]both mental and physical health problems

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
in societies with higher levels[br]of economic inequality.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So social inequality is apparently bad[br]for not only those with least resources

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but for all of us,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
because living in a society[br]with high inequality

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
means living in a society[br]with low social trust and high anxiety.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So there we are.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We are all reading self-help books,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
we try to hack our habits,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
we try to rewire our brains,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
we meditate,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and it helps, of course, in a way.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Self-help books help us feel more upbeat.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Meditation can help us feel[br]more connected to others spiritually.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
What I think we need is as much awareness

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
of what connects us[br]to one another socially,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
because social inequality hurts us all.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So we need more[br]compassionate social policies

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that are aimed less at moral education

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and more at promotion[br]of social justice and equality.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Thank you.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
(Applause)