Combining media diversity with a revolutionary impulse – the Nordic model – George Lakey
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How does Scandinavia manage to delivered a notably high quality of life? In his talk introducing his most recent book, ‘Viking Economies’, Lakey combines historical analysis, economic data and interviews to find out that Norway has more start-ups per capita than the U.S., and Sweden outpaces the U.S. economy’s innovativeness and Denmark is racing ahead to achieve carbon neutrality.
But Nordic societies are not utopian. Racial and ethnic diversity challenges them. Women have not fully broken the “glass ceiling,” although they have 40% of corporate board seats and give significant political leadership. For brief periods Swedes, Icelanders, and Norwegians did de-regulate their financial sectors, with disastrous consequences that forced them back to their Nordic model. George Lakey’s researches how Scandinavian countries balance their struggles for democracy and freedom and how Scandinavia can be seen as a model others could learn from.
Viking Economics is published by Melville House, London & Brooklyn, paperback edition 2017 and was declared “Book of the Week” by the Times Higher Education.
Biography:
George Lakey is a former Professor for Issues in Social Change at Swarthmore College, USA, where he created and managed the Global Nonviolent Action Database research project.
Lakey has held teaching posts at Haverford College and the University of Pennsylvania and was a visiting lecturer at Woodbrooke College in Birmingham, UK. He has led over 1500 social change workshops on five continents, and founded and for fifteen years directed Training for Change. In 2010 he was named “Peace Educator of the Year” and published his authoritative text on adult education “Facilitating Group Learning” (Jossey-Bass). Each of his nine books has been about change and how to get it .