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Sajay
Samuel
Biography/Bibliography/Contact
Sajay
Samuel (b.1964) was
raised between two worlds.
The cemented streets
and rude apartment blocks
of Bombay City stood
in stark contrast to
the paddy fields and
foot-trodden paths of
a small village in Southern
India. Both fluent and
illiterate in his mother's
tongue, he became familiar
with traditional manners
that strictly limit
the domain of economic
exchange. The transfers
of money and food between
households were not
payments for services
but rather rooted deeply
in bonds of obligation
that tied landlord and
peasant to one another.
From Ivan Illich, his
teacher for the past
ten years, he came to
understand how standardized
economic measurements
and abstractions of
applied social sciences
falsify and slowly dissolve
such social bonds of
a people.
Samuel
went to the United States
for graduate studies
in Business Administration
and Economics, completing
his doctoral thesis
at the Pennsylvania
State University in
1995. His dissertation
dealt with the early
history of the U.S.
Federal Budget (1880-1920)
- of its symbolic rather
than its technical effects.
It is well known that
in 1870, when Augustus
DeMorgan wrote his Budget
of Paradoxes, the term
"budget" still
meant a bag of almost
anything.
Samuel
argues that, within
one decade, the same
term could be used only
in the sense of a financial
plan that cleansed administration
of politics and replaced
the moral with the factual.
Even more importantly,
within fifty years,
it became reasonable
to think of budgeting
one's time, work, and
even pleasures, which
reflected the widespread
belief that anything
could be planned. Samuel
suggested that such
a planning mentality
removes people from
the present, which is
transformed into an
artifact of a planned
future. He further argued
that the practice of
budgeting, in requiring
people to think of what
they do as resources
to be optimally allocated,
hooks them to the ideology
of scarcity.
Samuel
is now working on a
history of the notion
of 'intellectual capital'.
The most recent fallout
from the explosion in
the idea of capital,
this notion presupposes
the separation of a
person from her thoughts.
Politicians, corporate
bosses, educators and
the agents of self-help
are now encouraging
people to think of what
goes on their heads
as a strategic resource
to be grown, managed,
and economically exploited.
Samuel argues not only
that intellectual capital
requires people to think
of themselves as a variant
of some artificial intelligence,
but also that it threatens
to dry up the ground
on which people can
cultivate a sense for
each other.
Contact
sxs26@psu.edu
Bibliography
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