1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,720 [Electronic beat] 2 00:00:05,800 --> 00:00:08,080 [Enda:] Welcome to Futures Conversations, 3 00:00:08,080 --> 00:00:11,480 the Edinburgh Futures Institute podcast that showcases 4 00:00:11,480 --> 00:00:15,400 all the wonderful research taking place at the Edinburgh Futures Institute. 5 00:00:16,320 --> 00:00:19,720 Research at the Futures Institute is challenge-led and interdisciplinary 6 00:00:20,080 --> 00:00:23,680 addressing many of the greatest challenges we face in the world today. 7 00:00:24,480 --> 00:00:28,800 I'm your host, Enda Delaney, the Director of Research at the Futures Institute. 8 00:00:28,800 --> 00:00:32,520 [Electronic beat] 9 00:00:35,120 --> 00:00:38,360 [Enda:] In this episode, I'm joined by Professor Liz McFall. 10 00:00:38,640 --> 00:00:41,400 Liz is professor of Sociology of Markets 11 00:00:41,400 --> 00:00:45,280 and Director of the EFI Data Civics Observatory. 12 00:00:46,280 --> 00:00:48,360 Liz, just to get our discussion going, 13 00:00:48,360 --> 00:00:51,360 could you tell us a little bit about your background, where you grew up, 14 00:00:51,440 --> 00:00:52,760 who inspired you, 15 00:00:52,760 --> 00:00:56,040 what values were important to your family and wider social group?- 16 00:00:56,240 --> 00:01:00,840 [Liz:] So I'm from Broxburn, which is a small former shale mining town 17 00:01:00,840 --> 00:01:03,000 about nine miles west of Edinburgh. 18 00:01:03,040 --> 00:01:07,000 On my father’s side, my history traces back to Irish immigrants 19 00:01:07,000 --> 00:01:08,720 who came to work the shale mines, 20 00:01:08,720 --> 00:01:10,280 the shale oil industry. 21 00:01:10,280 --> 00:01:12,360 Broxburn was a boom town for about 22 00:01:13,440 --> 00:01:14,920 just under 100 years, 23 00:01:14,920 --> 00:01:17,920 it was the biggest crude oil manufacturer 24 00:01:18,000 --> 00:01:20,640 in the world for that period of time. 25 00:01:20,640 --> 00:01:23,400 But the significant part of that for me, 26 00:01:24,040 --> 00:01:24,680 erm... 27 00:01:24,680 --> 00:01:28,440 growing up there was that university wasn't really 28 00:01:28,840 --> 00:01:32,760 a thought for people of my background, people at my school. 29 00:01:33,120 --> 00:01:36,160 So Edinburgh University was obviously something we knew about, 30 00:01:36,560 --> 00:01:40,920 and you knew of people who went there, but it wasn't really a thinkable thought. 31 00:01:41,680 --> 00:01:45,560 Even though I would say from about the age of 13 or 14 32 00:01:45,560 --> 00:01:48,200 I knew I had some level of academic ambition. 33 00:01:48,480 --> 00:01:53,120 So I went from school at the age of 16, 34 00:01:53,120 --> 00:01:56,040 I wasn't quite at my 17th birthday, 35 00:01:56,040 --> 00:01:59,120 to Queen Margaret College, which was then 36 00:01:59,640 --> 00:02:02,920 in the second year of launching a degree called Communication Studies. 37 00:02:03,880 --> 00:02:06,880 I remember one of the nuns, Sister Immaculata, saying to me, 38 00:02:07,320 --> 00:02:11,720 “central institution degrees are not worth the same as university degrees”, but 39 00:02:11,720 --> 00:02:15,720 they had the same name, Bachelor of Arts, so I didn't really understand that. 40 00:02:16,480 --> 00:02:18,840 I think my biggest understanding of university was from 41 00:02:18,840 --> 00:02:21,840 watching University Challenge, and I did not identify.- 42 00:02:22,160 --> 00:02:25,280 [Enda:] And what was this route to academia for you? 43 00:02:25,320 --> 00:02:28,880 You're obviously- you're a professor of Sociology now at Edinburgh University, 44 00:02:29,320 --> 00:02:32,480 you know, how did you get from Queen Margaret to- 45 00:02:32,520 --> 00:02:34,000 to where you are today?- by a very convoluted route. 46 00:02:34,000 --> 00:02:35,880 [Liz:] By a very convoluted route. 47 00:02:36,240 --> 00:02:41,800 So I was less than 17 years old when I started my first degree in 1982. 48 00:02:42,920 --> 00:02:45,920 By 1985, I had dropped out. 49 00:02:46,160 --> 00:02:49,440 And it took me till 1987 to realise that was a bad idea. 50 00:02:49,440 --> 00:02:51,640 So I had to finish the degree, which I did. 51 00:02:51,640 --> 00:02:54,080 But that left me with an ordinary BA degree 52 00:02:54,080 --> 00:02:58,040 at a time when I was increasingly thinking 53 00:02:58,040 --> 00:03:00,520 I want to get back to academic work. 54 00:03:01,320 --> 00:03:03,240 So in about 1990, 55 00:03:03,240 --> 00:03:06,520 I signed up for a master's degree. 56 00:03:06,560 --> 00:03:08,720 The only master's degree I could get funding for 57 00:03:08,720 --> 00:03:11,280 was one that included Information Technology, 58 00:03:11,280 --> 00:03:14,800 which the Scottish Office was then funding master's degrees for. 59 00:03:15,200 --> 00:03:18,920 This is immediately pre-internet, so the information superhighway 60 00:03:18,920 --> 00:03:21,000 was beginning to be talked about. 61 00:03:21,480 --> 00:03:23,280 But no one really knew what that was. 62 00:03:23,280 --> 00:03:25,880 And as someone who wasn't really a technical person, 63 00:03:25,880 --> 00:03:27,880 I didn't really understand what it was either. 64 00:03:27,880 --> 00:03:31,440 And it was interesting enough, even though at least 50% of it was 65 00:03:31,880 --> 00:03:37,920 a struggle for- for me to understand things like the engineering of networks 66 00:03:37,920 --> 00:03:43,240 that was starting to happen and the little bits of coding on expert system shells 67 00:03:43,240 --> 00:03:45,680 that I had to do, which was probably 68 00:03:45,680 --> 00:03:47,440 the worst three weeks of my life. 69 00:03:47,440 --> 00:03:50,160 But there was a part of it which was to do with 70 00:03:50,160 --> 00:03:54,480 information technology or innovation policy, which I did get very interested in. 71 00:03:54,880 --> 00:03:57,880 That's why I did my dissertation in, 72 00:03:58,080 --> 00:04:01,720 and the route that I took was about the social and cultural determinants. 73 00:04:01,760 --> 00:04:06,280 At that time, everyone was talking about Japan, or to some extent, France, 74 00:04:07,280 --> 00:04:09,720 as being exemplars 75 00:04:09,720 --> 00:04:11,640 of how you support an innovation policy 76 00:04:11,640 --> 00:04:16,120 that can enable economic recovery to pick up really quickly. 77 00:04:16,800 --> 00:04:20,480 And I had the sense that this simply wouldn't work here 78 00:04:20,480 --> 00:04:24,280 because you could see the cultural and social determinants of 79 00:04:24,680 --> 00:04:29,000 why that works in other places, but wouldn't necessarily work here. 80 00:04:29,000 --> 00:04:33,360 And I think that was probably one of the things that reminded me 81 00:04:33,360 --> 00:04:37,080 that the sociocultural dimensions 82 00:04:37,400 --> 00:04:40,080 of economic policy 83 00:04:40,080 --> 00:04:43,360 was kind of where my interest really lay. 84 00:04:43,360 --> 00:04:45,080 I was always interested 85 00:04:45,080 --> 00:04:49,640 in the kind of cultural and promotional side of communication. 86 00:04:49,920 --> 00:04:52,920 So I'd been very interested in advertising, 87 00:04:53,000 --> 00:04:56,880 but I was kind of interested not just in how it looked, but how it worked. 88 00:04:57,280 --> 00:05:00,560 So I started teaching in further education in what was then called 89 00:05:00,840 --> 00:05:03,840 Jewel and Esk Valley College, and I was teaching marketing and 90 00:05:03,840 --> 00:05:06,400 basically anything they asked me to teach [laughs] 91 00:05:06,400 --> 00:05:10,240 and this was a route for me to try and figure out if I wanted to teach. 92 00:05:10,240 --> 00:05:13,880 And around that time, I was hired by the Open University as a part time tutor, 93 00:05:15,400 --> 00:05:18,000 teaching an Introduction to Social Sciences. 94 00:05:18,000 --> 00:05:22,160 And this was really kind of enlightening for me 95 00:05:22,160 --> 00:05:25,160 because I remember in the early sort of, 96 00:05:25,200 --> 00:05:28,760 staff development workshops being asked: “well, what was my discipline?” 97 00:05:29,280 --> 00:05:31,560 And I didn't have an answer, I didn't know. 98 00:05:31,560 --> 00:05:34,320 [laughs] So it took about three years of teaching 99 00:05:34,320 --> 00:05:36,120 on that course to realise that 100 00:05:36,760 --> 00:05:40,320 if I had a home, it was more sociology than anything else, 101 00:05:40,320 --> 00:05:44,640 but I still considered myself a very kind of unconventional, 102 00:05:45,640 --> 00:05:50,320 sociology-adjacent type person in a kind of academic disciplinary way, 103 00:05:50,320 --> 00:05:51,840 if not an intellectual way.- 104 00:05:52,120 --> 00:05:55,560 [Enda:] I started my academic career in the Open University as well, and 105 00:05:55,680 --> 00:05:59,400 I mean, I'm interested to know if you you feel that the values of, 106 00:05:59,400 --> 00:06:03,920 of the Open University, that you've sort of carried them with you through- 107 00:06:04,080 --> 00:06:08,920 throughout your career, their emphasis on social inclusion, diversity of learning, 108 00:06:10,520 --> 00:06:13,520 different cohorts of people that they attract?- 109 00:06:13,560 --> 00:06:14,560 [Liz:] Oh, absolutely. 110 00:06:14,560 --> 00:06:18,720 The Open University, certainly as it was when I joined in the early ‘90s, 111 00:06:18,760 --> 00:06:22,280 has absolutely shaped my values and what- what 112 00:06:23,120 --> 00:06:28,720 I hold most sacred, if you like in higher education, 113 00:06:29,000 --> 00:06:32,280 and that is to do with accessibility to all. 114 00:06:32,880 --> 00:06:35,880 It's also to do with making content 115 00:06:36,240 --> 00:06:39,720 that is going to work on a variety of different levels, 116 00:06:39,720 --> 00:06:44,440 for a variety of different abilities and a variety of different backgrounds. 117 00:06:44,520 --> 00:06:48,720 The way that the Open University did that, certainly in the social sciences, 118 00:06:48,960 --> 00:06:52,280 was to present dimensions of everyday life to students. 119 00:06:52,720 --> 00:06:55,280 So you're meeting students where they already are. 120 00:06:55,280 --> 00:06:58,840 You're kind of engaging them with things they already know, 121 00:06:59,000 --> 00:07:01,920 and just pushing a bit further to try and think about 122 00:07:01,920 --> 00:07:04,800 aspects of everyday life, making the familiar strange. 123 00:07:04,800 --> 00:07:08,240 And at that time, you had people like Stuart Hall and Doreen Massey 124 00:07:08,520 --> 00:07:12,000 on Open University broadcasts, which were still happening on BBC2 125 00:07:12,000 --> 00:07:15,680 late at night, but also on more mainstream 126 00:07:16,000 --> 00:07:20,200 programs like The Late Show, expressing and communicating these ideas. 127 00:07:20,200 --> 00:07:22,280 And this kind of blew me away 128 00:07:22,280 --> 00:07:24,480 because I hadn't thought about disciplines in that way.- 129 00:07:24,480 --> 00:07:28,880 [Enda:] This emphasis on the everyday, I think, fits very much into what you do at EFI, 130 00:07:28,880 --> 00:07:33,440 running the Data Civics Observatory, which I know has being inspired by the 131 00:07:33,720 --> 00:07:36,720 the great town planner and polymath, Patrick Geddes. 132 00:07:36,720 --> 00:07:39,440 Could you tell us a little bit about what the Observatory does, what- 133 00:07:39,440 --> 00:07:42,440 what its purpose is and how you see that, er, 134 00:07:42,600 --> 00:07:46,280 informing policy, society more generally?- 135 00:07:46,520 --> 00:07:50,440 [Liz:] When I first heard about the Edinburgh Futures Institute, I was blown away 136 00:07:50,440 --> 00:07:54,680 by how much this kind of geographical site had changed. 137 00:07:54,680 --> 00:07:58,320 And the ideas for the Edinburgh Futures Institute 138 00:07:58,880 --> 00:08:02,760 at that moment were just mind blowing to me in terms of 139 00:08:03,720 --> 00:08:06,000 what looked like a commitment to doing- 140 00:08:06,000 --> 00:08:10,320 to doing education a bit differently, to making, as the saying goes, 141 00:08:11,560 --> 00:08:13,400 a more porous-walled university. 142 00:08:13,400 --> 00:08:17,400 So it was much less cut off from the city, 143 00:08:18,120 --> 00:08:21,840 and that went on to inform 144 00:08:21,840 --> 00:08:25,400 the ideas behind the Data Civics Observatory. 145 00:08:25,400 --> 00:08:28,080 When I first encountered the work of Patrick Geddes, 146 00:08:28,080 --> 00:08:31,720 it was when I came back to Edinburgh and did that thing 147 00:08:31,720 --> 00:08:35,280 that people often do when they've left the city and returned 20 years later, 148 00:08:35,280 --> 00:08:38,080 I was looking at it with new eyes 149 00:08:38,080 --> 00:08:42,240 and trying to map together what the city I had known and loved, 150 00:08:42,520 --> 00:08:45,920 actually all my life, but particularly in the ‘80s and ’90s when I lived here, 151 00:08:46,640 --> 00:08:49,760 to the changes that had taken place, and to try and 152 00:08:50,000 --> 00:08:54,400 look for, probably for the first time, at how the city functioned technically 153 00:08:55,320 --> 00:08:57,480 and materially. 154 00:08:57,480 --> 00:09:01,480 I think that sort of slowly led me to the work of Patrick Geddes, 155 00:09:02,120 --> 00:09:05,240 who appealed to me enormously as I started to find out 156 00:09:05,240 --> 00:09:08,040 more about him for all sorts of reasons. 157 00:09:08,040 --> 00:09:11,360 But most keenly was the idea that he was a very, 158 00:09:11,360 --> 00:09:15,280 very keen observer and a very eclectic observer of everyday life. 159 00:09:15,840 --> 00:09:18,360 So he had been developing a whole bunch 160 00:09:18,360 --> 00:09:21,760 of different visual techniques for watching the city, observing the city, 161 00:09:22,120 --> 00:09:25,120 trying to understand how people lived within it, 162 00:09:25,800 --> 00:09:28,960 but trying to understand it not just from a scholarly perspective, 163 00:09:28,960 --> 00:09:31,640 trying to understand it because he wanted to intervene, 164 00:09:31,640 --> 00:09:33,120 taking a close watch on the city. 165 00:09:33,120 --> 00:09:36,120 But secondly, the idea of conservative surgery, 166 00:09:36,440 --> 00:09:39,840 because this Royal Mile, this, part of the Old Town 167 00:09:39,840 --> 00:09:43,800 that looks like it's always been that way, actually owes much of its appearance 168 00:09:44,040 --> 00:09:47,040 to the kind of interventions that Geddes and his, erm, 169 00:09:47,760 --> 00:09:50,760 followers and community actually made. 170 00:09:51,000 --> 00:09:54,560 So the appearance of decked access, the little balconies 171 00:09:54,560 --> 00:09:59,160 on which you'll see plant pots, and so forth, and the green areas around 172 00:09:59,520 --> 00:10:02,520 Ramsay Gardens, these are a direct result of his 173 00:10:03,120 --> 00:10:06,560 quite early commitment to conservative surgery. 174 00:10:06,560 --> 00:10:08,560 Not treating, erm, 175 00:10:08,560 --> 00:10:10,680 problematic areas of cities 176 00:10:10,680 --> 00:10:14,160 as something that needed to be completely bulldozed, modernised. 177 00:10:14,160 --> 00:10:17,200 Conservative surgery was “let's save the important bits 178 00:10:17,200 --> 00:10:19,320 and improve them and make them more liveable. 179 00:10:19,320 --> 00:10:22,240 Let's deal with these kind of every- 180 00:10:22,240 --> 00:10:26,520 things that everybody wants a bit of natural light, green space, 181 00:10:27,880 --> 00:10:30,880 housing that's not dark, crowded, damp.” 182 00:10:31,040 --> 00:10:33,720 That was really appealing to me, this kind of combined 183 00:10:33,720 --> 00:10:37,600 observatory and laboratory on the city as a sort of thing 184 00:10:37,920 --> 00:10:42,800 that EFI might be able to sort of reinvent- 185 00:10:42,800 --> 00:10:46,480 and this sort of settlements project reinvention, this idea that, 186 00:10:47,520 --> 00:10:51,120 well, we are responsible for the city more than just as an employer, 187 00:10:51,120 --> 00:10:55,640 more than just as a landlord, and more than just as an education institute. 188 00:10:56,480 --> 00:11:00,960 We have expertise that should be intervening in the city 189 00:11:01,360 --> 00:11:06,040 and- and has the capacity with things like the City Region Deal to do it. 190 00:11:06,600 --> 00:11:10,200 The Data Civics Observatory basically just tries to reinvent 191 00:11:11,320 --> 00:11:13,840 Geddes’ core ideas 192 00:11:13,840 --> 00:11:17,320 for a- a contemporary context. 193 00:11:17,320 --> 00:11:20,920 Also provide you an insight to how those cities are functioning 194 00:11:20,920 --> 00:11:22,960 how people feel about those cities, 195 00:11:22,960 --> 00:11:26,760 whether they're visitors, short-term residents, or long-term residents. 196 00:11:26,760 --> 00:11:30,600 So we've experimented with a number of small projects to try and 197 00:11:31,680 --> 00:11:34,720 do a Geddesian type thing of, erm, 198 00:11:34,720 --> 00:11:37,080 observing and experimenting with, well, 199 00:11:37,200 --> 00:11:42,240 how does it work to watch the city and sort of almost play it back to it? 200 00:11:42,640 --> 00:11:46,720 So amplify the knowledge that's already out there amongst local communities.- 201 00:11:47,000 --> 00:11:49,800 [Enda:] Maybe just be worth explaining for the listeners the sort of 202 00:11:49,800 --> 00:11:53,240 socioeconomic context of- of Granton Waterfront 203 00:11:53,240 --> 00:11:56,240 and what you've been involved in doing there.- 204 00:11:56,320 --> 00:11:57,640 [Liz:] Sure, erm, 205 00:11:57,640 --> 00:12:00,680 so Granton is in an area 206 00:12:00,680 --> 00:12:05,240 that borders the Forth, along the Firth of Forth 207 00:12:05,440 --> 00:12:09,120 after the Industrial Revolution, it becomes very significant 208 00:12:09,120 --> 00:12:12,120 in terms of Edinburgh's transition, 209 00:12:12,320 --> 00:12:13,800 to using gas energy. 210 00:12:13,800 --> 00:12:17,920 So the train lines, which are now cycle paths, 211 00:12:18,080 --> 00:12:19,560 stretch along the North shore 212 00:12:19,560 --> 00:12:22,560 and they end up in Granton, and they would have fed the gasworks, 213 00:12:22,680 --> 00:12:26,640 which gradually in the 20th century, became also places 214 00:12:26,640 --> 00:12:30,360 where a lot of early municipal housing estates grew up. 215 00:12:30,680 --> 00:12:34,040 So you get this dense social housing appearing, 216 00:12:35,480 --> 00:12:38,400 sometimes under quite severe economic constraints. 217 00:12:38,400 --> 00:12:42,160 So the building- housing itself, even though some of it was award- 218 00:12:42,160 --> 00:12:46,280 award-winning in its time, was probably not 219 00:12:46,280 --> 00:12:48,880 manufacturers of the best quality materials. 220 00:12:48,880 --> 00:12:51,880 So flats became damp, erm, 221 00:12:52,320 --> 00:12:54,640 they became dirty, they became hard to maintain, 222 00:12:54,640 --> 00:12:56,960 they became very cold in the winter. 223 00:12:56,960 --> 00:12:59,600 And at the same time this was happening, 224 00:12:59,600 --> 00:13:02,600 the economic fortunes were starting to fail. 225 00:13:02,840 --> 00:13:07,640 So you had a period where this bulk of housing, 226 00:13:07,640 --> 00:13:10,640 the density of housing, had grown up very quickly and 227 00:13:10,640 --> 00:13:14,960 in advance of the infrastructure, in advance of the green spaces and the shops 228 00:13:15,720 --> 00:13:18,120 and schools that you need to 229 00:13:18,120 --> 00:13:21,200 sort of, form the social and cultural life of a city. 230 00:13:21,360 --> 00:13:25,520 To cut a long story short, in the postwar period, areas like Granton, 231 00:13:25,520 --> 00:13:27,600 despite whatever hopes there were for them, 232 00:13:27,600 --> 00:13:33,800 became centres of a concentration of multiple deprivation. 233 00:13:34,120 --> 00:13:36,120 And you get the same patterns, 234 00:13:36,120 --> 00:13:39,120 if you look at the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation, 235 00:13:39,360 --> 00:13:42,600 all surrounding the perimeters of Edinburgh, you get the dark colours, 236 00:13:42,600 --> 00:13:47,280 the blacks that indicate a high index of multiple deprivation. 237 00:13:47,640 --> 00:13:50,640 And it's striking how much that 238 00:13:50,880 --> 00:13:54,440 the social topography of Edinburgh 239 00:13:54,680 --> 00:13:57,640 actually resembles its natural topography, where you have 240 00:13:57,640 --> 00:14:02,280 this volcanic peak in the centre sloping away down to the south and the north. 241 00:14:02,280 --> 00:14:06,840 The interest in Granton as a Data Civic Observatory project 242 00:14:06,840 --> 00:14:11,240 came from well, let's try and understand how this has happened. 243 00:14:11,760 --> 00:14:15,680 And also particularly from, to go back to the City Region Deal, 244 00:14:16,120 --> 00:14:21,240 the fact that the Granton Waterfront development project had started there, 245 00:14:21,520 --> 00:14:24,240 and this is a very long-term, 246 00:14:24,240 --> 00:14:29,520 public sector-led project designed to take a more sustained 247 00:14:29,600 --> 00:14:32,680 and comprehensive approach to regeneration in the area.- 248 00:14:33,040 --> 00:14:36,920 [Enda:] So I wanted to move on to ask you a little bit about the visual dimension to- 249 00:14:36,960 --> 00:14:37,560 to your work. 250 00:14:37,560 --> 00:14:40,360 There's a very strong visual, erm, dimension. 251 00:14:40,360 --> 00:14:45,120 Both in the Granton Civicscope and also the work of the AreWeData Collective. 252 00:14:45,440 --> 00:14:49,080 Why is the visual dimension so important for- for what you do?- 253 00:14:49,480 --> 00:14:51,760 [Liz:] I think there's all sorts of aspects to it. 254 00:14:51,760 --> 00:14:55,040 The most obvious one is having the background at the Open University 255 00:14:55,520 --> 00:14:58,200 The Open University taught in a very visual way, 256 00:14:58,200 --> 00:15:01,200 because if you're not seeing students face to face, 257 00:15:01,440 --> 00:15:03,440 you need all sorts of tools to make, erm, 258 00:15:04,640 --> 00:15:06,720 ideas come alive for them. 259 00:15:06,720 --> 00:15:10,920 It takes 20 to 40 minutes to watch the kinds of films that 260 00:15:10,920 --> 00:15:16,640 the collective I’m involved with make, and I hope to kind of make people feel 261 00:15:16,880 --> 00:15:22,080 something as a result of watching these films, not just acquire facts, but 262 00:15:23,120 --> 00:15:26,360 acquire a sort of feeling to be literally moved 263 00:15:26,800 --> 00:15:30,280 by, well, this is the history of the place that I live in. 264 00:15:30,720 --> 00:15:35,600 This is the history of why this shop layout is this shop layout. 265 00:15:35,600 --> 00:15:37,840 Very, very ordinary and very, very mundane. 266 00:15:37,840 --> 00:15:40,840 But how it happens is really fascinating. 267 00:15:40,880 --> 00:15:44,560 And you can tell those stories in film in a way that you can’t, erm, 268 00:15:45,480 --> 00:15:47,880 in an academic paper, and you certainly can't tell them 269 00:15:47,880 --> 00:15:50,880 to the sort of variety of audiences that, erm, 270 00:15:51,960 --> 00:15:53,680 I hope are out there.- 271 00:15:53,680 --> 00:15:56,720 [Enda:] I'm fascinated by your research on the sociology of markets, 272 00:15:57,200 --> 00:15:59,480 particularly your work on the insurance industry, 273 00:15:59,480 --> 00:16:00,800 erm, can you tell us a little bit 274 00:16:00,800 --> 00:16:04,080 about the insights that’s offered by your research on an industry 275 00:16:04,080 --> 00:16:08,040 that perhaps mightn't be seen as the most obvious place for a sociologist to work on?- 276 00:16:08,040 --> 00:16:11,480 [Liz:] Being a sociologist of markets, and particularly 277 00:16:11,480 --> 00:16:15,720 a sociologist of insurance, puts you in quite a- quite a narrow group. 278 00:16:15,880 --> 00:16:19,800 And this has struck me as somewhat bizarre. 279 00:16:19,800 --> 00:16:25,040 Insurance, in many ways, is the very first mechanism for the distribution of risk. 280 00:16:26,120 --> 00:16:30,440 It’s how we collectivise and share across a society. 281 00:16:30,840 --> 00:16:33,920 So it's at the very political and social centre 282 00:16:33,920 --> 00:16:37,440 of how societies are organised economically. 283 00:16:37,680 --> 00:16:41,400 It's fate matters in terms of 284 00:16:42,360 --> 00:16:46,440 how risk is distributed and who pays for it in society. 285 00:16:46,720 --> 00:16:49,560 And in the last 100 years, 286 00:16:49,560 --> 00:16:52,480 there has been a fairly steady 287 00:16:52,480 --> 00:16:55,480 individualisation of that risk, 288 00:16:55,840 --> 00:16:58,440 both in terms of how individuals 289 00:16:58,440 --> 00:17:01,600 insure themselves against calamities 290 00:17:01,600 --> 00:17:05,280 or plan for their future, in terms of their pensions. 291 00:17:06,680 --> 00:17:10,280 But also in terms of how the social 292 00:17:10,280 --> 00:17:14,400 and political infrastructures on which we all rely are funded. 293 00:17:14,880 --> 00:17:19,080 A similar pattern can be observed in almost every field of insurance, 294 00:17:19,480 --> 00:17:22,480 including things like, climate insurance. 295 00:17:22,520 --> 00:17:25,880 Notoriously, the capacity of individuals 296 00:17:25,880 --> 00:17:30,000 to insure homes in flood-prone areas has diminished. 297 00:17:30,680 --> 00:17:33,680 And behind the scenes of that, there's this kind of jostling between, erm 298 00:17:34,120 --> 00:17:37,600 private and public measures for collectivising 299 00:17:38,200 --> 00:17:42,720 or individualising risk, which are not straightforward. 300 00:17:43,040 --> 00:17:46,160 That sometimes we are towards a more social collective solution 301 00:17:46,640 --> 00:17:48,800 and other times to a very individual solution. 302 00:17:48,800 --> 00:17:52,080 And tracking that through tells you a great deal about the sort of social 303 00:17:52,080 --> 00:17:54,160 and political settlement. 304 00:17:54,160 --> 00:17:56,280 I was quite simply fascinated by 305 00:17:56,640 --> 00:18:02,000 how you get people to buy products that they don't want, like, need, understand. 306 00:18:02,000 --> 00:18:06,760 And life insurance is a fantastic example of that, 307 00:18:06,760 --> 00:18:11,360 particularly life insurance that was bought by poor customers, working class customers. 308 00:18:11,760 --> 00:18:14,760 So the early appetite for insurance were, 309 00:18:15,240 --> 00:18:18,560 the very poorest in society would devote a substantial proportion 310 00:18:18,560 --> 00:18:21,560 of that income, at a time when they could barely feed the family, 311 00:18:22,040 --> 00:18:25,040 to paying for this arcane financial product. 312 00:18:25,040 --> 00:18:28,600 That seemed to me a fascinating social and sociological problem. 313 00:18:28,600 --> 00:18:30,320 To understand how that worked. 314 00:18:31,640 --> 00:18:32,240 I should probably 315 00:18:32,240 --> 00:18:35,240 also mention that my father sold this form of insurance [laughs] 316 00:18:35,400 --> 00:18:40,320 So from the- all through the late 1960s to the 1970s, 317 00:18:40,320 --> 00:18:44,240 I was the social accompaniment to an agent that helped- 318 00:18:45,080 --> 00:18:47,360 I'm making this sound terrible. 319 00:18:47,360 --> 00:18:50,880 I didn't help my my father on his rounds, but it was common 320 00:18:51,120 --> 00:18:54,480 for this to be seen as a family and community arrangement.- 321 00:18:54,840 --> 00:18:57,240 [Enda:] How does this fit into the work that you've done, 322 00:18:57,240 --> 00:19:00,240 you have been a pioneer in the field of cultural economy and, erm, 323 00:19:02,280 --> 00:19:05,080 that's a really important field. 324 00:19:05,080 --> 00:19:07,840 What do you think that field offers us at the moment, 325 00:19:07,840 --> 00:19:11,480 and indeed, given our emphasis in the Futures Institute, erm, 326 00:19:11,480 --> 00:19:13,920 down the line in- in the future?- 327 00:19:13,920 --> 00:19:17,240 [Liz:] Cultural economy at its core is a project, 328 00:19:17,240 --> 00:19:20,280 and certainly, as I understand it, is all about 329 00:19:21,240 --> 00:19:24,240 the orchestration of technique and sentiment, 330 00:19:24,400 --> 00:19:29,200 by which I mean that you have to understand the way that the material, 331 00:19:29,240 --> 00:19:33,200 technological, economic and financial 332 00:19:34,160 --> 00:19:37,160 forms of organisation intersect 333 00:19:37,360 --> 00:19:42,720 with how meaning is created for the customers in that marketplace. 334 00:19:43,040 --> 00:19:45,240 How does this product mean something? 335 00:19:45,240 --> 00:19:48,240 If you take the example of insurance, you're dealing with a product 336 00:19:48,600 --> 00:19:50,160 that people don't understand. 337 00:19:50,160 --> 00:19:53,880 So you need some kind of interaction that makes it makes sense 338 00:19:53,880 --> 00:19:55,560 and makes it be meaningful. 339 00:19:55,560 --> 00:19:58,960 So that is kind of trying to understand always 340 00:19:59,040 --> 00:20:02,040 the intersections between culture and economy. 341 00:20:02,160 --> 00:20:05,480 That culture is not this realm outside, 342 00:20:05,480 --> 00:20:09,000 that’s not this kind of purified state 343 00:20:09,840 --> 00:20:13,560 of highest civilisation that humankind can reach. 344 00:20:13,760 --> 00:20:15,400 Culture is meaningful. 345 00:20:15,400 --> 00:20:18,000 Activity is meaningful practice. 346 00:20:18,000 --> 00:20:22,600 So cultural economy is a project, whether it's applied to high frequency trading, 347 00:20:22,600 --> 00:20:24,800 climate, risk, 348 00:20:25,480 --> 00:20:29,160 data surveillance always has that interest 349 00:20:29,160 --> 00:20:32,440 at looking at the sort of material, political, technological 350 00:20:33,120 --> 00:20:37,560 arrangements and infrastructures of a given empirical case- 351 00:20:37,880 --> 00:20:40,920 [Enda:] One of the things I've been really struck, Liz, talking to you 352 00:20:41,240 --> 00:20:44,080 is you've got a very strong historical perspective. 353 00:20:44,080 --> 00:20:48,360 As a historian I obviously value that. And... 354 00:20:48,680 --> 00:20:50,680 it's great to have, that sort of said, 355 00:20:50,680 --> 00:20:53,520 why do you- why do you think it's so important for us 356 00:20:53,520 --> 00:20:57,880 to understand the past, to inform the present and the future?- 357 00:20:58,160 --> 00:21:01,400 [Liz:] For me, it's absolutely crucial to have a perspective on the past. 358 00:21:01,680 --> 00:21:04,920 I remember one of my colleagues, Yuval Millo, was saying to me, 359 00:21:04,920 --> 00:21:07,920 well, basically all sociology is historical. 360 00:21:08,040 --> 00:21:10,320 Even if you're studying the newest form 361 00:21:10,320 --> 00:21:13,360 of algorithmic trading, it's historical 362 00:21:13,680 --> 00:21:18,680 because you can only look backwards as an empirical object. 363 00:21:18,840 --> 00:21:20,520 You can only look backwards. 364 00:21:21,520 --> 00:21:25,800 I think if you're a sociologist studying a present day phenomena, 365 00:21:27,440 --> 00:21:30,320 you're always kind of looking backwards to look forward. 366 00:21:30,320 --> 00:21:33,480 Understanding where we're pointing to 367 00:21:33,480 --> 00:21:36,480 in the future involves understanding 368 00:21:36,560 --> 00:21:39,280 how the past got to be the way that it was, 369 00:21:39,280 --> 00:21:42,800 and what the intersection of, whether it's regulatory 370 00:21:42,800 --> 00:21:45,800 apparatus or, 371 00:21:45,880 --> 00:21:50,040 economic cycles or the change in fashion. 372 00:21:50,320 --> 00:21:52,080 There is a lesson for that. 373 00:21:52,080 --> 00:21:55,720 I'm probably going to have to go back to the industrial insurance example again, 374 00:21:56,400 --> 00:21:59,600 partly because one of the things that really killed that industry 375 00:21:59,600 --> 00:22:01,760 is it became unfashionable. 376 00:22:01,760 --> 00:22:04,000 It became unfashionable to have a product 377 00:22:04,000 --> 00:22:05,880 that was directed- a financial product 378 00:22:05,880 --> 00:22:08,480 that was directed only at working class people. 379 00:22:08,480 --> 00:22:11,800 It fell out of the step- out of step with everyday life. 380 00:22:11,800 --> 00:22:14,880 People didn't want an insurance agent calling at their doors anymore. 381 00:22:15,200 --> 00:22:18,200 So everyday life, the patterns of everyday life changed. 382 00:22:18,600 --> 00:22:21,520 And understanding that is germane to understanding what happens 383 00:22:21,520 --> 00:22:26,240 to the financial industries in the second half of the 20th century. 384 00:22:26,480 --> 00:22:30,800 Unpicking how the- how the world was structured, 385 00:22:30,880 --> 00:22:34,440 the financial world was structured then to where we are now- 386 00:22:34,720 --> 00:22:39,000 [Enda:] One thing that I think is... a part of contemporary societies 387 00:22:39,000 --> 00:22:42,280 is concerns about the amount of data that private companies, 388 00:22:42,280 --> 00:22:44,560 be they insurance companies, our banks, 389 00:22:44,560 --> 00:22:46,680 hold about us all. 390 00:22:46,680 --> 00:22:50,320 Do you think that's a legitimate concern on the part of citizens 391 00:22:50,680 --> 00:22:51,360 across the world?- 392 00:22:52,640 --> 00:22:55,280 [Liz:] I think it probably is a legitimate concern, 393 00:22:55,280 --> 00:22:58,680 but I think for me, I come at it slightly differently. 394 00:22:59,200 --> 00:23:02,200 I want to understand the specificities 395 00:23:02,600 --> 00:23:06,720 of how data is operating in particular, rather than just kind of 396 00:23:06,760 --> 00:23:11,880 go to the big headline banner of surveillance capitalism 397 00:23:11,880 --> 00:23:16,800 and the assumption that we are heading towards a darker and darker place 398 00:23:16,800 --> 00:23:19,640 I want to understand how datafied 399 00:23:20,360 --> 00:23:23,360 applications and platforms 400 00:23:23,720 --> 00:23:27,840 are useful or not useful to people, but I also want to understand 401 00:23:27,840 --> 00:23:30,520 the specificities of how they function commercially. 402 00:23:30,520 --> 00:23:33,520 So in my own field of, erm, 403 00:23:34,320 --> 00:23:36,520 studying insurance and life and health insurance 404 00:23:36,520 --> 00:23:40,320 and how it's been affected by big data and the drive towards 405 00:23:40,320 --> 00:23:45,160 more individualisation of- or personalisation of insurance products, 406 00:23:45,160 --> 00:23:48,960 I think it was easy to assume, say, with the example of the introduction 407 00:23:48,960 --> 00:23:53,880 of self-tracking devices having those attached to insurance policies, 408 00:23:53,880 --> 00:23:57,720 it's easy to assume that- that this is a step towards 409 00:23:58,080 --> 00:24:01,400 personalising risk so that every individual is priced for 410 00:24:02,320 --> 00:24:06,240 how much activity they do, how many bags of crisps they eat 411 00:24:06,480 --> 00:24:10,040 so that their individual health risk is measured and priced accordingly 412 00:24:10,040 --> 00:24:12,720 and they could be knocked out of the insurance market. 413 00:24:13,720 --> 00:24:17,040 In my own empirical research, that's simply not what we found. 414 00:24:17,160 --> 00:24:21,240 To classify and price individual risk at that level 415 00:24:21,240 --> 00:24:26,760 using these devices just is not how insurance risk functions. 416 00:24:27,240 --> 00:24:30,240 So in that particular example, the incorporation 417 00:24:30,240 --> 00:24:33,800 of self-tracking products in life and health insurance 418 00:24:34,440 --> 00:24:38,040 has got much more to do with marketing and attaching people to products. 419 00:24:38,880 --> 00:24:41,880 If you give a free Apple Watch with, 420 00:24:42,120 --> 00:24:46,120 interactive behavioural life or health insurance product, 421 00:24:46,320 --> 00:24:49,120 people like Apple Watches, they don't like insurance. 422 00:24:49,120 --> 00:24:52,840 So attaching the two together, you get some brand equity transfer, 423 00:24:53,200 --> 00:24:58,000 you get some, you know, sticky attachment where people want their Apple Watch, 424 00:24:58,000 --> 00:25:00,040 even if they don't love their insurance policy. 425 00:25:00,040 --> 00:25:02,440 So there's something else going on there. 426 00:25:02,440 --> 00:25:05,200 That you don’t discover- this is basically a defence of, erm, 427 00:25:06,240 --> 00:25:08,520 if you've got this pressing public issue 428 00:25:08,520 --> 00:25:12,120 to approach it empirically as the best work 429 00:25:12,120 --> 00:25:16,480 in critical data studies now does, it's like, well, what is the- 430 00:25:16,480 --> 00:25:22,520 how is data being used in this particular instance rather than the large headline stories- 431 00:25:22,920 --> 00:25:26,600 [Enda:] My sense is that one element that you feel 432 00:25:26,840 --> 00:25:30,840 is that this data can empower communities, particularly local communities. 433 00:25:31,240 --> 00:25:32,720 Is that a- 434 00:25:32,720 --> 00:25:34,840 through use of data 435 00:25:34,840 --> 00:25:39,280 in order to present cases or socioeconomic profiles 436 00:25:39,280 --> 00:25:41,960 that communities can, in fact be empowered, rather than it 437 00:25:41,960 --> 00:25:44,840 just being something that's imposed on communities, if that makes sense?- 438 00:25:44,840 --> 00:25:50,800 [Liz:] I mean, I think there are some intriguing examples of that in practice. 439 00:25:50,800 --> 00:25:55,360 And some of the urbanists who've looked to Patrick Geddes for- 440 00:25:55,440 --> 00:25:58,560 for example, to- to try and make sense of how 441 00:25:58,560 --> 00:26:04,120 urban life could be less sort of a smart city 442 00:26:04,120 --> 00:26:08,880 kind of top down version of how you manage cities. 443 00:26:09,200 --> 00:26:14,360 But a grassroot- grassroots, bottom up version have looked at the way 444 00:26:14,360 --> 00:26:18,480 in which communities can develop their own platforms 445 00:26:18,520 --> 00:26:24,440 or use existing platforms to share data and to organise their activism. 446 00:26:24,440 --> 00:26:28,600 One of the things that I didn't remember to mention earlier on about an area 447 00:26:28,600 --> 00:26:31,960 like Granton; Granton may have scored very highly 448 00:26:31,960 --> 00:26:35,160 in the Multiple Index of Social Deprivation, 449 00:26:36,480 --> 00:26:39,840 for decades, but it's also been a centre of, erm, 450 00:26:40,440 --> 00:26:45,320 grassroots, sustained activism over many decades. 451 00:26:45,760 --> 00:26:48,840 And I think that in the contemporary context, 452 00:26:49,600 --> 00:26:54,800 there are examples starting to appear of communities using platforms to do that. 453 00:26:54,880 --> 00:26:58,240 You could look at very mundane things, like the prevalence of 454 00:26:58,240 --> 00:27:03,320 neighbourhood WhatsApp groups or Nextdoor, which is an app 455 00:27:03,320 --> 00:27:06,360 that communities use to to share information. 456 00:27:07,080 --> 00:27:12,600 But also the appearance on platforms like Substack, which have- are beginning 457 00:27:12,600 --> 00:27:15,960 to rediscover the power of community 458 00:27:15,960 --> 00:27:18,960 newspapers, because that's a much, 459 00:27:19,120 --> 00:27:22,080 much more cost effective way than actually printing a newspaper now. 460 00:27:22,080 --> 00:27:25,240 So you get a newsletter which circulates and shares 461 00:27:25,560 --> 00:27:29,640 that kind of density of local issues and organises 462 00:27:30,000 --> 00:27:33,240 a sense of belonging, potentially, 463 00:27:33,720 --> 00:27:36,600 and community ownership. 464 00:27:36,600 --> 00:27:40,080 And I think that those kinds of things, there are also 465 00:27:41,520 --> 00:27:42,840 placemaking type 466 00:27:42,840 --> 00:27:46,360 instances of the use of Instagram and Twitter to kind of 467 00:27:47,240 --> 00:27:51,760 just share the status of an area of the type of where I live, 468 00:27:51,760 --> 00:27:54,760 like Newhaven, its appearance and social media 469 00:27:55,120 --> 00:27:59,400 over the years does change the texture and flavour 470 00:27:59,400 --> 00:28:02,760 of that place in some positive ways and in some negative ways. 471 00:28:03,240 --> 00:28:06,240 So I think there is the potential there 472 00:28:06,240 --> 00:28:10,560 to use new forms of data in a grassroots 473 00:28:10,560 --> 00:28:15,400 organising way to type of redress and organise 474 00:28:16,240 --> 00:28:20,520 something alternative to the idea of well the council 475 00:28:20,520 --> 00:28:23,760 is going to make a big change, and we're going to do community consultation 476 00:28:24,040 --> 00:28:26,520 as a more kind- there may be people 477 00:28:26,520 --> 00:28:31,120 who will never go to a community consultation exercise, but they may well post on Instagram 478 00:28:31,440 --> 00:28:35,280 or on Twitter or somewhere else about- or Nextdoor- 479 00:28:36,240 --> 00:28:37,120 about those issues. 480 00:28:37,120 --> 00:28:41,200 So if instead of demanding the resource from 481 00:28:41,200 --> 00:28:44,480 communities and individuals to tell us what's happening in your community, 482 00:28:45,440 --> 00:28:48,480 councils and other voluntary bodies can then look at 483 00:28:48,960 --> 00:28:51,960 what are people actually saying about this place?- 484 00:28:51,960 --> 00:28:55,320 You've been involved in the Edinburgh Futures Institute for a number of years, 485 00:28:55,400 --> 00:28:57,120 being a very important person 486 00:28:57,120 --> 00:29:00,560 in designing what the- what the Futures Institute, erm, 487 00:29:01,200 --> 00:29:04,560 does, and what its outlook and what- 488 00:29:04,680 --> 00:29:08,280 what we would- would see as priorities in terms of research. 489 00:29:08,800 --> 00:29:12,080 What sort of future do you envisage given your expertise?- 490 00:29:12,920 --> 00:29:15,320 [Liz:] So that's a great huge question [laughs] 491 00:29:15,320 --> 00:29:17,680 Enda, thank you. 492 00:29:17,680 --> 00:29:19,320 So one of the things that I've done 493 00:29:19,320 --> 00:29:22,800 since I've been involved in EFI is 494 00:29:22,800 --> 00:29:28,240 I’ve almost finished making the second film, which tracks what the role of institutes 495 00:29:28,240 --> 00:29:32,000 like Edinburgh Futures Institutes have in terms of managing the future. 496 00:29:32,480 --> 00:29:35,280 And one of the jobs of those films 497 00:29:35,280 --> 00:29:38,040 is to try and showcase 498 00:29:39,080 --> 00:29:40,520 the expertise of people 499 00:29:40,520 --> 00:29:43,520 who are trying to wrestle with these, 500 00:29:43,560 --> 00:29:46,680 problems about the major catastrophes or challenges, 501 00:29:47,000 --> 00:29:49,960 wicked problems, whatever 502 00:29:49,960 --> 00:29:54,200 intractable issue the future seems to be representing. 503 00:29:54,880 --> 00:29:57,800 But it's also an attempt not just to showcase 504 00:29:57,800 --> 00:30:01,360 the individual expertise, but to better understand 505 00:30:01,960 --> 00:30:07,400 why futures institutes and City Region Deals and other forms of innovation complex 506 00:30:07,400 --> 00:30:11,040 are springing up now and what their chances are. 507 00:30:11,440 --> 00:30:15,440 So there is this orthodoxy, if you like, that, 508 00:30:16,200 --> 00:30:20,320 interdisciplinarity, co-production and cross-sectoral working 509 00:30:20,920 --> 00:30:25,960 gives us the best chance of understanding these complex, intractable problems and, 510 00:30:26,480 --> 00:30:29,480 providing a response to them in the future. 511 00:30:30,040 --> 00:30:33,040 And to some extent, that's a difficult proposition 512 00:30:33,360 --> 00:30:36,560 because in terms of interdisciplinarity, it's easier 513 00:30:36,560 --> 00:30:38,960 to say than it is to do in a meaningful level. 514 00:30:38,960 --> 00:30:41,680 And the same is true of cross-sectoral work. 515 00:30:41,680 --> 00:30:44,680 It is probably the best strategy that we have. 516 00:30:44,920 --> 00:30:48,200 It's a kind of modest and pragmatic attempt to 517 00:30:49,520 --> 00:30:52,520 mobilise and orchestrate and organise 518 00:30:53,080 --> 00:30:57,080 this- the mixture of talents that we need to discover and address 519 00:30:57,080 --> 00:31:00,840 the specificity of problems and what I would contrast it with, 520 00:31:01,160 --> 00:31:06,160 to go back to Patrick Geddes, is an opposition to the sort of tabula rasa 521 00:31:06,160 --> 00:31:08,200 the blank slate 522 00:31:08,200 --> 00:31:11,480 version of oh well we’ll wipe all this out, 523 00:31:11,480 --> 00:31:14,640 we’ll wipe out all these problems, and we'll start again. 524 00:31:15,080 --> 00:31:18,120 And this kind of new techno-libertarian 525 00:31:18,120 --> 00:31:21,040 geopolitical imaginary that you will see, 526 00:31:21,040 --> 00:31:25,840 and visions coming out of a vision like California Forever, which is a bunch of tech billionaires 527 00:31:25,840 --> 00:31:30,080 trying to engineer a new future in California 528 00:31:30,080 --> 00:31:32,600 by buying up large tracts of land 529 00:31:33,040 --> 00:31:36,720 and those kind of large scale projects of, well, let's start again, 530 00:31:36,720 --> 00:31:39,160 we'll have a smart city and we'll make it sustainable, 531 00:31:39,160 --> 00:31:43,800 and we'll have vertical gardens like in NEOM in Dubai, 532 00:31:44,040 --> 00:31:48,200 which are not grounded, in the people who actually live there. 533 00:31:48,720 --> 00:31:52,320 And in a way, I think that the attempt by futures institutes 534 00:31:53,160 --> 00:31:57,240 and City Region Deals and the others at their best because of their- 535 00:31:57,520 --> 00:32:00,640 their necessary incorporation of a variety of interest groups 536 00:32:01,320 --> 00:32:03,720 and their willingness to experiment 537 00:32:03,720 --> 00:32:08,600 with new tools are probably- probably about as helpful 538 00:32:08,600 --> 00:32:12,680 and positive a response as- certainly as I can think of- 539 00:32:13,320 --> 00:32:16,480 [Enda:] Well, thank you very much for an optimistic, message on which to- 540 00:32:16,560 --> 00:32:20,520 to leave us on and indeed for, erm, giving us these fascinating insights 541 00:32:20,520 --> 00:32:24,880 into the work that you're undertaking at the Edinburgh Futures Institute. 542 00:32:25,240 --> 00:32:28,640 If you want to find out more about Liz's work, if you go to our website: 543 00:32:29,320 --> 00:32:32,680 www.efi.ed.ac.uk 544 00:32:32,680 --> 00:32:35,720 or follow us on social media channels. 545 00:32:37,000 --> 00:32:40,040 [Electronic beat]