The human economy might be the most complex thing in the known universe. It is comprised of millions or billions of self-directed human beings, their technologies, and institutions, each continuously acting and interacting within an already ridiculously complex natural world. To navigate this complexity, economists, like science fiction writers, must start with what they know and try and fill in the many gaps in their knowledge with calculated guesses, conjecture, and a little bit of fantasy. In fact, it is when we forget how complex the economy is, when we are confident without justification of the impact our changes will have – that’s when we tend to really mess things up. 
With the help of aliens, androids, Dr. Spock and Darth Vader, Understanding Economics: A work of science fiction takes an in depth look at the factors that make economics so difficult to understand and explain and, aware of these limitations, tries to explain them anyway. 
THE FIGHT 
It might not seem apparent as we sit quietly on the bus, do our taxes or wait patiently in line to order our coffee, but the foundation of the human economy is an organism whose ancestors have scavenged, fought, killed and died to enable us to come into existence. This organism, with all its fears and desires, strengths and weaknesses, remains at the centre of economics today. 
FAITH 
Without faith we are nothing - but not in a religious sense. Without faith in each other, in our institutions, our governments and our financial system we would literally have only a fraction of the wealth and comforts we enjoy today. We might sometimes fantasize about a post-apocalyptic world with no rules, where we're left to our own resources, but in reality, most of us wouldn't even survive. 
THE MACHINES 
Forget about the impending AI apocalypse, the machines rose up and took control a long time ago. Our institutions are a technology of our own making that control our lives and our economy in ways that that we have much less control over than we might like. 
CHAOS & CONTROL 
An economy is a precarious balance of chaos and control. When chaos reigns we lose the benefit of people working together to solve their problems. Excessive controls constrain the experimentation and variation through which an economy and its participants come up with new and highly effective solutions to its problems. 
NO SUPERHEROES 
There are no superheroes who can save us. There aren't even superheroes who can consistently determine right from wrong. What there is, if we're lucky, is a process that ensures that our system of government is subject to continuous change intended to benefit those who are being governed. 
THE MATRIX 
Our economic world exists within a virtual reality of money and finance which facilitates things that couldn't be done without them. But it also distorts reality, making it hard to distinguish between fact and fiction and smart, or not so smart economic decisions. 
DEFAULT SETTINGS 
Whatever freedom we may perceive we have to direct our economy, we are constrained by our physical, cultural and political realities as well as the predominant intellectual theories of our time. For good and bad, our economies are defined by these default settings. 
BETTER REPLICANTS 
Our understanding of economics is informed by complex theoretical models, but no matter how advanced these models might be, they are a long way from being able to replicate our incredibly complex economic reality.

Understanding Economics: A work of science fiction

Business & Money

Hicks, Dan

Economics

Daniel Hicks

The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution

<div>Walk into any European museum today and you will see the curated spoils of Empire. They sit behind plate glass: dignified, tastefully lit. Accompanying pieces of card offer a name, date and place of origin. They do not mention that the objects are all stolen. Few artefacts embody this history of rapacious and extractive colonialism better than the Benin Bronzes - a collection of thousands of metal plaques and sculptures depicting the history of the Royal Court of the Obas of Benin City, Nigeria. Pillaged during a British naval attack in 1897, the loot was passed on to Queen Victoria, the British Museum and countless private collections. The story of the Benin Bronzes sits at the heart of a heated debate about cultural restitution, repatriation and the decolonisation of museums. In The Brutish Museum, Dan Hicks makes a powerful case for the urgent return of such objects, as part of a wider project of addressing the outstanding debt of colonialism.</div>

Reference

Pluto Press

Review\n'A real game-changer' 
The Economist\n'If you care about museums and the world, read this book' 
New York Times 'Best Art Books' 2020\n'Hicks's urgent, lucid, and brilliantly enraged book feels like a long-awaited treatise on justice' 
Coco Fusco, New York Review of Books\n'Unsparing ... especially timely ... his book invites readers to help break the impasse by joining the movement for restitution.' 
CNN\n'The book is a vital call to action: part historical investigation, part manifesto, demanding the reader do away with the existing "brutish museums" of the title and find a new way for them to exist' 
Charlotte Lydia Riley, Guardian\n'A startling act of conscience. An important book which could overturn what people have felt about British history, empire, civilisation, Africa, and African art. It is with books like this that cultures are saved, by beginning truthfully to face the suppressed and brutal past. It has fired a powerful shot into the debate about cultural restitution. You will never see many European museums in the same way again. Books like this give one hope that a new future is possible.' 
Ben Okri, poet and writer\n'An epiphanic book for many generations to come' 
Victor Ehikhamenor, visual artist and writer\n'Unflinching, elegantly written and passionately argued, this is a call to action' 
Bénédicte Savoy, Professor of Art History at Technische University\n'In his passionate, personal, and, yes, political account, Dan Hicks transforms our understanding of the looting of Benin. This book shows why being against violence now more than ever means repatriating stolen royal and sacred objects and restoring stolen memories' 
Nicholas Mirzoeff, Professor in the Department of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University\n'Destined to become an essential text' 
Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times\n'Dan, your words brought tears to my eyes. I salute you' 
MC Hammer\n'A masterful condemnation and inspiring call to action' 
Los Angeles Review of Books\n'Timely' 
Nature\n'The Brutish Museums shows that colonial violence is unfinished, and as it persists in the present, it cannot be relativized.' 
Ana Lucia Araujo, Public Books\n'The Brutish Museums leaves no stone unturned' 
Financial Times\n'The Brutish Museums argues, persuasively, that the corporate-militaristic pillage behind Europe's encyclopedic collections is not a simple matter of possession, but a systematic extension of warfare across time' 
The Baffler\n'A bombshell book' 
Los Angeles Times\n'After this book, there can be no more false justifications for holding Benin Bronzes in museums outside of Africa' 
Africa is a Country\n'Presents a powerful case for restitution of looted objects, and hostile responses to it highlight enduring attachments to imperialism 
'Counterfire'\nWinner of the 2021 Elliott P. Skinner Book Award\n"If you care about museums and the world, read this book"—New York Times 
"Urgent, lucid, and brilliantly enraged…a long-awaited treatise on justice."—New York Review of Books 
"A real game-changer."—The Economist 
"A bombshell."—Los Angeles Times\nThe Brutish Museums sits at the heart of a heated debate about cultural restitution, repatriation, and the decolonization of museums. Since its first publication, museums across the western world have begun to return their Bronzes to Nigeria, heralding a new era in the way we understand the objects of empire we once took for granted.\nWalk into any western museum today and you will see the curated spoils of Empire. They sit behind plate glass: dignified, tastefully lit. Accompanying pieces of card offer a name, date, and place of origin. They do not mention that the objects are all stolen.\nFew artifacts embody this history of rapacious and extractive colonialism better than the Benin Bronzes--a collection of thousands of metal plaques and sculptures depicting the history of the Royal Court of the Obas of Benin City, Nigeria. Pillaged during a British naval attack in 1897, the loot wa

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

This study uses the perspectives of what might be termed the 'empirical tradition' of British landscape archaeology that developed in the 1960s and 1970s, especially in industrial archaeology, to explore the early modern history of the 'garden' landscapes formed by British colonialism in the eastern Caribbean, and their place in the world. It presents a detailed chronological sequence of the changing material conditions of these English-/British-owned plantation landscapes during the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries, with particular reference to the origins, history and legacies of the sugar industry. The study draws together the results of archaeological fieldwork and documentary research to present a progressive account of the historical landscapes of the islands of St Kitts and St Lucia: sketching a chronological outline of landscape change. This approach to landscape is characterised by the integration of archaeological field survey, standing buildings recording alongside documentary and cartographic sources, and focuses upon producing accounts of material change to landscapes and buildings. By providing a long-term perspective on eastern Caribbean colonial history: from the nature of early, effectively prehistoric contact and interaction in the 16th century, through early permanent European settlements and into the developed sugar societies of the 18th and 19th centuries, the study suggests a temporal and thematic framework of landscape change that might inform the further development of historical archaeology in the island Caribbean region. The broader aim of the study relates to exploring how archaeological techniques can be used to contribute a highly detailed, empirical case study to the interdisciplinary study of postcolonial landscapes and British colonialism. In order to achieve this goal, the study draws upon the techniques of what has been called the 'empirical tradition' of landscape archaeology.

The Garden of the World (BAR International)

History

Americas

British Archaeological Reports

This ground-breaking book reflects on material, visual and digital culture from the Calais Jungle—the informal camp where, before its destruction in October 2016, more than 10,000 displaced people lived. Lande: The Calais 'Jungle' and Beyond reassesses how we understand crisis, activism, and the infrastructure of national borders in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, foregrounding the politics of environments, time, and the ongoing legacies of empire. Introducing a major collaborative exhibit at Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum, this book argues that an anthropological focus on duration, impermanence, and traces of the most recent past can recenter the ongoing human experiences of displacement in Europe today.  

Lande: The Calais 'Jungle' and Beyond

Politics & Social Sciences

Mallet, Sarah

Social Sciences

Policy Press

* First Oxford show for Pio Abad * Inspiration for the art includes Benin bronzes, and discussed by Dan Hicks (author of The British Museum) * Accompanies an exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum from 9 February to 8 September, 2024 Pio Abad's artistic practice is concerned with the personal and political entanglements of objects. His wide-ranging body of work, encompassing drawing, painting, textiles, installation and text, mines alternative or repressed historical events and offers counternarratives that draw out threads of complicity between incidents, ideologies and people. Deeply informed by unfolding events in the Philippines, where the artist was born and raised, his work emanates from a family narrative woven into the nation's story. Abad's parents were at the forefront of the anti-dictatorship struggle in the Philippines during the 1970s and 80s and it is the need to remember this history that has shaped the foundations of his work. This beautifully designed book accompanies the Ashmolean Museum's second exhibition of its new Ashmolean NOW series, featuring the work of Pio Abad. Abad's artistic practice is concerned with the personal and political entanglements of objects. His wide-ranging body of work, which includes drawing, painting, installation, textiles and text, mines alternative or repressed historical events, offering counternarratives. Abad's new works link narratives found in the Museum's collections and Oxford with his personal life in the UK and Philippines, where the artist was born and raised. The book features a new text by Abad and contributions by art historical experts including Dan Hicks.

Ashmolean NOW: Pio Abad

Fritsch, Lena

Pio Abad Pio Abad

Ashmolean Museum

This vivid memoir of a man described as “one of America’s greatest songwriters” by Elvis Costello, and a cat that was “fly, sly, wily, and dry” by Tom Waits. Dan Hicks had a front-row seat to the birth and death of counter culture -- San Francisco, 1966 -- it would affect both him and his music. I Scare Myself captures the highs and lows of a lifelong adventure in music. You’ll get to see Hicks’ memories of one of the changes the 60s brought, working with great musicians, plus, a foreward by Elivs Costello; and afterword by producer Tommy LiPuma; and annotations by his close friend Kristine McKenna. “I just started taking ingredients I liked and putting them together to see what came out,” Hicks writes. What came out was an amazing blend of complex time signatures, unusual instrumentation, and intricate vocal harmonies that took him to the top of the 70s rock world but also into a downward spiral of drink and drug abuse. Hicks passed away in early 2016, but his music, and the stories he tells here, remain as fresh and irresistible as ever. I Scare Myself takes readers on a journey behind the music, and into the life and mind of the fantastic artist who created it.

I Scare Myself: A Memoir

Humor & Entertainment

Jawbone Press

Corking the Bottle: A Day-by-Day Guide to a Sober Life

Religion & Spirituality

Covenant Books

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