Summary
Democracy: Quinn Slobodian, Professor of the History of Ideas at Wellesley College, takes Laurie Taylor on the journey of radical libertarians who search for the perfect home, free from the burden of democratic oversight, from Hong Kong to Canary Wharf and the Honduras. What accounts for the explosion of new legal entities, including free ports, gated enclaves, city states and special economic zones?
They're joined by Mukulika Banerjee, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics, whose latest study into the lives of West Bengal villagers finds that they promote democratic values in everyday acts of citizenship at a time when Indian democracy is under threat. How do their creative practices around kinship, farming and religion promote republican virtues of cooperation, civility, solidarity and vigilance?
Producer: Jayne Egerton
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Take some time for yourself with soothing classical music from the mindful mix, the Science of |
| 0:07.0 | Happiness Podcast. |
| 0:08.0 | For the last 20 years I've dedicated my career to exploring the science of living a happier more meaningful life and I want |
| 0:14.4 | to share that science with you. |
| 0:16.1 | And just one thing, deep calm with Michael Mosley. |
| 0:19.4 | I want to help you tap in to your hidden relaxation response system and open the door to that |
| 0:25.4 | calmer place within. Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:30.3 | BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts. |
| 0:37.0 | This is a Thinking Loud Podcasts from the BBC, and for more details and much much more about thinking |
| 0:43.8 | allowed go to our website at BBC.co. UK. |
| 0:48.5 | Hello as a teenage revolutionary I always thought of capitalism as an evil monster. I may not have been able to |
| 0:56.6 | define it or indeed catalogue its intrinsic features but I certainly knew it was |
| 1:02.0 | peculiarly insidious. |
| 1:04.3 | Let down your God for a moment and you could readily become prey to its seductions. |
| 1:09.1 | But where exactly did capitalism start and finish? |
| 1:13.7 | Did my concern about its evil effects exclude me from shopping at Tesco's, banking with |
| 1:19.1 | Barclays, holidaying with Butlins? |
| 1:22.0 | That was the trouble with capitalism. It was here, there, and everywhere. |
| 1:26.5 | Well, these juvenile thoughts came back to me, those eyes reading a new properly grown-up book which hunts down capitalism in novel locations, |
| 1:36.7 | locations characterized by one defining feature, lack of democracy. |
| 1:41.5 | Well that book is intriguingly entitled Crack Up Capitalism, Market Radicals, and The Dream of |
| 1:47.2 | a World Without Democracy. |
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