This section introduces the concept of the Doughnut Economics by the British economist Kate Raworth. This short insight into economics will help us connect issues dear to museum professionals with fluctuations in society. Using this larger perspective, it is possible to connect aspects of museological value discussion and significance, people’s aspiration for self-directing and the meaning of mu- seological impact as part of a sustainable economy. These aspects of society are indeed direct manifestations of the Doughnut Economics at work.
Raworth’s book Doughnut Economics (2017) points out how interconnected the globe is from the economic point of view. She describes economic development since the mid-19th century and focuses on the central role of GDP (Gross Domes- tic Product) growth in contemporary economic theories. She calls for a more detailed discussion on our concept of growth in an era when constant monetary GDP growth will no longer be a sustainable vision for the future, given the globe’s finite resources. She argues that we need to define the meaning of growth from a wider perspective and integrate such conditions as social equality, political
voices, preserving natural resources and access to education and healthy living into the scenario. The GDP way of thinking is too narrow a concept to be applied to the contemporary challenges of the world’s shrinking natural resources, and it does not address the issue of human inequality that the 21st century is facing.
The economic crash of 2008 was a wake-up call for many. Not only was the economic structure of the world in crisis, but issues such as global inequality, food supply, security and climate change also started to demand more and more attention. By no means were these issues new in 2008, but they started to appear more widely through the news and social media, and people started to become more instantly aware of the vulnerabilities of our globe. Economist Kate Raworth sums up the situation as follows: “Due to the scale and interconnectedness of the global economy, many economic effects that were treated as ‘externalities’ in twentieth-century theory have turned into defining social and ecological crises in the twenty-first century” (Raworth 2017, p. 143).
The neo-liberal economy has been under a critical eye for a long time and in- creasingly so after the financial crash in 2008. This criticism is not entirely new, as is seen in numerous historical efforts to break down the circle of wealth accumulating wealth (Stiglitz 2012; Harvey 2005; Raworth 2017). It has long been known that a large percentage of global income is in the hands of a small percentage of people; this is known as Pareto’s 80–20 rule (Raworth 2017, p.
166). Economist Thomas Piketty argued in 2014 that in time and place when the return to capital grows faster than the economy as a whole, it leads to wealth becoming concentrated to those who own capital (Raworth 2017, p. 169; Piketty 2014). Global technology has made the level of inequality better known to wider audiences than ever before, and it seems that this scale of inequality has reached the breaking point. IMF (International Monetary Fund) research shows that inequality hinders GDP growth. The more unequal societies are, the more fragile and slower economic growth they have (Raworth 2017, p. 173).
Raworth writes about the challenges of globalism and the prospects we are facing before the year 2050. The common estimate predicts that the global economy will triple in about thirty years, which will bring a whole new perspective to the concept of sustainability. According to her, it will no longer be enough to teach future economics using the mindset that originated in 1950s textbooks, which in turn were rooted in the theories of the 1850s. It is no longer possible just to master any old curriculum (Raworth 2017, p. 6, p. 8). Raworth writes that we need a new kind of thinking and a new kind of authority. “For the twenty-first century a far bigger goal is needed: meeting the human rights of every person within the means of our life-giving planet” (Raworth 2017, p. 25).
Raworth takes a critical stance and questions the need for constant GDP growth as a goal. “Today we have economies that need to grow, whether or not they make us thrive: what we need are economies that make us thrive, whether or not they grow” (Raworth 2017, p. 30). She points out that the history of GDP is actually not that long. It originates from the political situation of the mid- 1930s in the United States, where a measure for national income was needed
to be able to monitor the advances made in society, especially during the time of Roosevelt’s New Deal. For that purpose, economist Simon Kuznets made a calculation, which became known as Gross National Product (GNP). It was based on the income generated by a nation’s residents (Raworth 2017, pp. 36–37). The GNP soon became a very useful tool and by the 1960s, it was taken as a valid measure for a society’s success. A decade later critical voices started to appear and arguments for the transition from growth to global equilibrium appeared (Meadows et al. 1972, p. 24). Even Kuznets had already stated early on that one should make a distinction between quantity of growth and quality of growth (Raworth 2017, p. 40). In the 1980s emphasis changed to measure the growth within a nation’s borders and GNP changed to GDP (Gross Domestic Product), but there were no changes as to the demand for and expectation of constant growth. The economic crisis of 2008 made Western leaders rethink Kuznets’
1930s calculation and they came up with various growth-related word combina- tions such as sustainable growth, balanced growth or long-term, lasting growth, but they still very strongly insist on growth as the main measure (Raworth 2017, p. 41). Nevertheless, the need to define growth in more specific terms entered the discussion. To conclude, since 21st century globalism does not correspond to the calculations of the 1930s, a newer deal is needed.
Raworth introduces a way of thinking that she calls Doughnut Economics. Her model is based on a circular form, hence the name Doughnut, where “the social foundation of human rights and the ecological ceiling of planetary boundaries create the inner and outer boundaries of the Doughnut” (Raworth 2017, p. 49). In her model, sustainable life takes place between the inner and outer boundaries.
Outside the ecological ceiling lie ecological risk factors such as climate change, land conversion and biodiversity loss. Inside the Doughnut lie preconditions for sustainable human life, such as social equality, peace and justice, having a political voice, education and health (Raworth 2017, p. 49). It is easy to see that all these factors are very much interconnected. Once one sector reaches a crisis point it inevitably affects all the other sectors. Her model describes the goal but admits that the world still has far to go to meet this goal. Furthermore, in the efforts to solve the obstacles on our way to meet the goal, we need different tools than what the 90-year-old GDP model has been able to offer.
British economist Tim Jackson called for sustainable economics already in his 1996 book Material Concerns. In his 2009 publication Prosperity Without Growth, he developed the concept further and showed how we must alter our way of thinking about the concept of investment. Instead of relating the concept only to the growth of new products produced by market-oriented enterprises, we should widen our scope and consider the possibilities of sustainable invest- ments. As an example, he uses cultural institutions as places that possess the know-how for producing sustainable investment in societies (Jackson 2009).
Furthermore, Kate Raworth connects the sustainability of ecological resources with the demands of the economy and argues that the almost 90-year-old concept of constant economic growth cannot solve the contemporary ecological problems we are facing. What is needed is a regenerative economy.
Financial income is just one narrow slice of what an economy generates when its aim is to promote human prosperity in a flourishing web of life.
… the new metrics will monitor the many sources of wealth – human, social, ecological, cultural and physical. (Raworth 2017, p. 240)
This is exactly where museums will be in demand. To see itself as a sustainable investment that produces regenerative good for its surrounding community has always been at the core of museum operations. We need a sector of society to show us the culturally meaningful aspects of society – to show us the culturally meaningful aspect of regenerative economics.
Theorists of regenerative economics are interested in forming scenarios of what comes after GDP, since the classical curve of constant growth ultimately leaves us hanging in the air (Raworth 2017, pp. 246–250). The mainstream economy has not invested in that question; even economist Walt Rostow in his 1960 book The Stages of Economic Growth does not address this, but ends his five stages of economic growth at the age of mass consumption (Rostow 1960, p. 6). We are entering the stage after mass consumption and the question for the 21st century is: How sustainable is the next stage? It seems that a human lifetime is just not long enough for us to truly understand this question. According to Raworth, GDP has played such a central role in economics that questioning its ultimate importance has not even occurred to many.
We are entering an era where the damaging effects of inequality on the social, political, ecological and economic levels are proving to be too serious for policy makers to ignore. We cannot any longer shun the efforts towards a sustainable society by claiming these things are too romantic or socialist in nature. The idea of sharing prosperity has often been seen as a naïve utopia and has had serious political connotations in history (Couto 2010). In our contemporary culture technology has made sharing easier and faster, both on the individual and global levels. Individuals are more widely and more quickly aware of the opinions and behaviour of other people, and they have the technology to make their opinion globally known and heard. Worldwide communication and data streaming are transforming our communities in unseen ways. We are no longer talking only with the voice of single nations; we are talking with the voice of the globe (Ormerod 2012, pp. 28–29). The concept of sharing has taken a new turn and it is too valuable of a tool to be discarded because of its interpretations in the past. As Kate Raworth has pointed out, our planet needs the concept of sharing.
This global level requires individuals to learn skills of self-directing in order to avoid falling into the patterns of past failures. The word “sharing” includes the idea of the individual responsibility and accountability that one has to have in order to make the act of sharing successful.
The question of what happens next is not an alien one to museum professionals.
They are in the field of questioning our past, present and future. They constantly have to make decisions and choices as to what kind of past our future will have (Vilkuna 2003, p. 10). It is up to museum professionals to point out culturally significant moments and transfer such knowledge to the future. This is why
they should see their careers as being mediators, not just current consumers.
Museums and their collections are part of the regenerative everyday, with re- generative economics being one part of this.
In the heritage sector, various methods of analysing and mapping cultural sig- nificances are cooperative and aim to point out cultural importance in society.
They offer ways to make deeper connections with phenomena surrounding us by use of a method that uses novel and adaptive thinking. With the help of these methods, the heritage sector of society can take part in the discussion of what will be relevant in the future. For example, Significance 2.0 (Russell & Winkworth 2009) was written in Australia and subsequently modified in Europe in such works as the Dutch Assessing Museum Collections (2014) or the Finnish Merk- itysanalyysimenetelmä (Häyhä, Jantunen & Paaskoski 2015; and this volume).
In general, these methods investigate the realm of culturally significant objects by cooperating with experts and interacting with object users. In this process, it is essential to try to determine an object’s history from the beholders’ point of view by recording the significance and stories integral to it. The selected objects are enriched by these stories and their context in the community is recorded as a statement of their significance. The community’s voice is heard, thus connect- ing things from the past more closely to lives in the present. Museologist Peter van Mensch talks about cultural biography and says that culturally significant collections can be seen as impact-increasing potentiality in society (van Mensch
& Meijer-van Mensch 2011, pp. 32–33). Another example from the Finnish cultural historical museum sector is the TAKO Tallennustyöjako (Distribution of Preservation Responsibilities). TAKO means that museums actively discuss and exchange ideas as to what to preserve and collect. With this sharing of information, the tendency of multiple museums collecting the same items or working in the same field of preservation is avoided (see also Ahola, this volume).
Analysing significance and engaging in TAKO co-operation are both ways of sharing knowledge, dividing resources and offering peer support to map out the Finnish cultural biography. These forms of co-operation are good examples of how museum organisations are able to join forces in making museums matter, including collections in the process. Sharing information, offering participation and taking part actively in peer support are all elements of signification. As stated earlier, it will not suffice if museum professionals only agree among themselves on making museums matter. This kind of co-operation of smaller groups and individuals must be placed into a larger context, as suggested by Doughnut Economics, for it to have longer-lasting effects on society.