When the Beautifully Complex Houses the Predatory
(based on author’s new book Expulsions, published by Columbia University) by Saskia Sassen
One of the major recent challenges in the struggle for a more just society has been the emergence of what I will call ‘complex knowledge systems’ that, while they often contain admirable elements, can in the end merely lead to elementary brutalities.
These systems have expanded alongside the shift of capitalism from what I would call its traditional mode — one of evolution, development, or progress — to a more advanced phase, characterised by predatory dynamics.
Complex Knowledge? Yes, but…
These admirable knowledge systems include aspects — and only that — of digital technologies, but also advanced legal and accounting systems, algorithmic mathematics, high-level logistics, and more. I would argue that often their complexity easily camouflages their predatory character. There is often no self-evident brutality as we might see it in a sweatshop.
One example would be the sub-prime mortgage crisis that exploded in 2007: complex financial instruments and algorithmic assessments allowed the systemic risk to be suitably diversified across the global economy: when this proved not to be the case and the toxic package exploded, it led to over 13 million foreclosure notices and 9 million evicted families.
It is not simply about powerful elites
The formations I want to highlight generally operate in favour of powerful elites and owners of capital, but I see these as only a part of their functioning. To put it another way: even if we eliminated owners and managers, we would not ipso facto eliminate these predatory formations. Major capital owners and major managers matter in the current shaping of economies, but by themselves they could not have achieved the extreme concentration of wealth and unaccountable power they now have across the world. This mix of elements and its guiding logics have led to escalated systemic capacities for massive capture at the top, environmental destruction on a scale we have not seen before, and a significant rise in the expulsion of people from reasonable life options even in rich countries.
Problem is, it’s systemic
An important feature of these predatory formations is that they are systemic. They are not elementary power grabs. They are constituted through the incorporation of elements from key domains and capabilities of our current leading economies and societies. We might contrast this systemic aspect with the image of an invader who comes, grabs and leaves with the loot rather than using what was grabbed to build something new in situ. As I have said, simply getting rid of the rich is not enough to neutralise these formations. What is more, these formations are mostly beyond the reach of the usual policy responses, especially given the tendency in policy-making towards constructing silos for each policy domain. The emergent formations that concern me here cut across such domains and basically reassemble pieces of each domain into novel formations.
Concluding
Contesting or eliminating such complex mixed assemblages of core elements would require the will to disassemble them or destroy them, though there is always the possibility of auto-destruction since they tend to abuse their own power.
Saskia Sassen (b. 1947, The Hague) is a Dutch-American sociologist with a specific interest in globalisation and international human migration. Sassen is the author of ten books, and the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at the Department of Sociology and Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University.
