Autor: Byrne, Patrick H.

Buch: Beitrag zur Konferenz: World Views: Environment, Culture, Religion 7: 1-2 (March 2003)

Titel: Ecology, Economy and Redemption as Dynamic: The Contributions of Jane Jacobs and Bernard Lonergan

Stichwort: Jane Jacobs; Merkmale für gesunde biologische u. ökonomische Systeme 4; Vermeidung eines Zusammenbruchs

Kurzinhalt: Jacobs argues that there are four basic processes for evading collapse: bifurcations, positive feedback, negative feedback and emergency adaptations.

Textausschnitt: (4) Evading Collapse

All dynamic systems are in danger of succumbing to instability, which is why they need constant self-correction (2000, 85).

11a Because there is no such thing as a "total system," dynamic biological and economic systems characterized by development, expansion and self-refueling also need processes that enable them to survive (when they do survive) both dramatic changes to which they are not already adapted, and unintended consequences of their own functioning. Jacobs argues that there are four basic processes for evading collapse: bifurcations, positive feedback, negative feedback and emergency adaptations. I will forego the rich details of her discussion of these processes, offering just one illustration, and fundamental points that she draws. (Fs)

11b "Positive feedback loops" Jacobs writes "permit biomass expansion and economic expansion without loss of dynamic stability" (2000, 94). She illustrates the role that positive feedback can play through an analysis of the dynamics of Grand Banks cod fishing. Here is a clear instance of a system of intertwined natural biological and a human economic systems. Processes of development and expansion led to technological innovations in trawlers, nets, sonar detection, etc., as well as growth in the yield of cod. However, the numbers of fish caught and their sizes eventually began to decline. This led a rise in prices. Rising prices, declines in fish size and yield were forms of positive feedback information. They suggested to many that the intelligent response would be to cut back on the rate of fishing. But in fact just the opposite happened. Instead, the fishing industry responded with more sophisticated equipment and more intensive fishing, requiring greater financial investments. But catches continued to decline, and returns on investments were disappointing: more positive feedback. Yet in 1992 Grand Banks cod fishing collapsed, "a horrendous economic and social disaster ... to say nothing of an ecological disaster, whose ramifications are still unknown" (2000, 97). The problem, Jacobs argues, was not "the feedback information, but the response to it." The root problem, she claims, was government subsidies of the escalating growth of fishing. Had the subsidies been added into the costs, "cod would have priced itself out of the market before fish stocks collapsed" (2000, 100). (Fs)

11c From this and similar illustrations Jacobs raises two serious considerations. First, each of these manners of evading collapse has an associated "trap." She analyzes the forms of these traps, often through the sorry lessons of human ventures that failed to beware of them (instances of Lonergan's "general bias"). (Fs)

11d Second, the existence of traps raise for her the question: "whether our species has inborn traits that restrain habitat destruction"? (2000, 125). This is a way of posing the question of redemption, even though she is not a theologian. She considers several possibilities, among them aesthetic appreciation, fear, awe, but ultimately concludes that it is our intelligence, our moral consciousness, and our awareness that we partake of "processes of development and diversification" that we receive as gifts-which of course is one way of talking about the awareness of grace (2000, 130-32, 146). Elsewhere she identifies love as the source of recovery as when people chose to stay and work together in slums out of love of their neighborhoods (1993, 279-83) and when people act out of care for future generations they will never see. Like Lonergan, therefore, Jacobs is keenly aware of the need for the healing and restorative power of love to reverse the effects of bias against understanding. (Fs)