This is a hybrid issue of Rising East Online. The main stem is a portfolio of articles on the Credit Crunch, first published in June 2008; spliced onto the stem is a selection of journalism and essays; and the biggest event pertinent to this summer issue has not happened yet – the Beijing Olympics. So the purpose of this Editor’s Letter is to plant a few ideas that will tie these three together.
‘Credit Crunch’ sounds like a single-impact event, but it’s now clear that illiquidity is an ongoing condition. Not just a cold snap; more like the ice age. In June 2008 Rising East first issued this collection of essays into the objective conditions and the human subjectivities which combined to create the credit crisis. The papers collated here were commissioned as the opening foray into a story that won’t go away, and this initial collection is re-published here as a way of encouraging others to contribute to a programme of further investigation, discussion and publication sponsored by the London East Research Institute. If you have ideas and analysis to offer, please do forward your contact details to me. You’ll be invited to seminars and your work will be considered for publication in the autumn.
With London located in the midst of what appears to be speculative irrationality (though there is a logic to it, as befits the peculiar social order in which we live), it is hard to imagine the city organised along rational lines. But this is exactly what has been achieved by activist and documentarist Bruce Jerram, in his scheme to re-code and re-sign London according to a coherent grid in which each specific location is consistently identified in its relation to every other location in the city. You know it makes sense – or you will when you see it mapped out. Of course Jerram’s Code is far too sensible for a city which has been drawn up in accordance with the speculative consciousness now dominating it; nonetheless Rising East Online is pleased to present a vision of London which makes sense of its inherited misshapes.
In addition, this issue contains some beautifully-formed essays, including George Morgan’s consideration of Mike Leigh’s evocation of post-WWII East London, Vera Drake. Morgan also considers what response the film promotes among those who lived through those times in this location, but have since moved on – in Morgan’s case, to a more prosperous life on the other side of the world.
Also on the other side of the world: the Beijing Olympics. China’s ruling elite may have Beijing locked down in advance of the opening ceremony; but it is hard to see how the recent bout of China-bashing in the West will do anything to open up the cause of democratic rights in China. It is more likely to have the dual effect of endorsing Western governments in their realpolitik, and confirming the continuous networking which now forms the international NGO circuit.
Yet the Olympic events themselves may prove inspirational. Human beings competing to bend time and space around their own bodies – the very movement of athletes contains a message about the strength of human subjectivity which thankfully outstrips the fear and loathing underlying both China bashing and the credit crunch.
In Beijing as in London, surely the Olympics are a spectacle worthy of our enjoyment.
Andrew Calcutt, Editor
a.calcutt@uel.ac.uk
© 2009
Speculation makes for more efficient markets with lower transaction costs, so condemnation of speculation as wasteful should be tempered.
Michael Savage
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