I recently finished Acemoglu and Robinson's Why Nations Fail. I also recently finished Graeber's Debt: The First 5000 Years (more on that later).
My reaction was similar to Fukuyama's (response from Acemoglu and Robinson).
I'd just like to add a few things.
First of all, the bit on Rome I found unconvincing. Building on what Fukuyama already said, it is also possible to look at the transition from Republic to Empire as being a result of new economic realities and creative destruction. Arguably, the "new men," such as Cicero, had interests in businesses different from those of the old Senatorial class and particularly in different areas, outside of the immediate area of Rome and out in the provinces. While the Roman Constitution gave at least some rights to those within Rome itself, it did a very poor job of representing the interests of provincials; the Imperial system may have provided more access.
This raises some important questions regarding putting inclusiveness on an axis. Can it really be represented this way, or are the questions of who is represented, to what extant, and how separate questions? For the Roman case, which was more inclusive; a system that opened elections (to some extent) to many different economic levels but was dominated by a largely closed class of aristocrats and excluded those that could not be present in the city itself, or a system that granted access to the elites throughout the provinces, providing at least some access to the provincials in those provinces, even if less access for all economic groups within the capital itself? How much did representation by tribes matter? How much does indirect vs. direct representation matter for putting a society on this access? I'm not convinced we can meaningfully get policy recommendations or enhance our understanding along such an undefined axis.
Showing posts with label book review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label book review. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Book Review: The Rhetoric of Reaction
This was a really great book. It made me reflect on just how valuable high school civics courses could be with the right curriculum. At only 170 pages of actual text, this book would make an excellent centerpiece.
The book addresses three common patterns that reactionary rhetoric falls into, as well as three mirror image patterns that progressive rhetoric falls into. Being aware of these tendencies is very important in a democracy, too often our political analysis amounts solely to justification rather than analysis.
Hirschman identifies three main types of reactionary rhetoric, the perversity, futility, and jeopardy arguments. The perversity argument is the assertion that a reform will have the opposite effect intended, the futility argument says that the reform seeks to violate some kind of social law and will have no effect, and the jeopardy argument says the reform will threaten some earlier and more important achievement. These arguments are frequently brought out as little more than a mad-lib, any issue under the sun can be put into this pattern and we react to it as if it were a plausible argument (the psychology of why this is so would be interesting to learn about, Hirschman doesn't get into that). The thing is, when these patterns come up there is rarely any evidence to support the analysis, an assertion is simply made that things will be that way, and whatever the psychological reasons for this, we take the argument seriously despite the lack of data or evidence.
Hirschman gives examples of the basic pairs argued by reactionaries and progressives, it's kinda scary how often these arguments are seen, anyone that looks at a comments page of a blog will see them just about daily and often see them being made when there is no data whatsoever backing them up .
Reactionary: The contemplated action will bring disastrous consequences.
Progressive: Not to take the contemplated action will bring disastrous consequences.
Reactionary: The new reform will jeopardize the older one.
Progressive: The new and old reforms will mutually reinforce each other.
Reactionary: The contemplated action attempts to change permanent structural characteristics("laws") of the social order; it is therefore bound to be wholly ineffective, futile.
Progressive: The contemplated action is backed up by powerful historical forces that are already "on the march;" opposing them would be utterly futile.
Of course, many of these things may be true in part but the arguments are often made at extremes. For instance, some anti-poverty programs create work disincentives, however this effect is far too small to offset more than a tiny portion of the overall gain (also, this particular example works well for a perversity effect because it is the policies that limit anti-poverty spending that is generally the work destructive portion, means testing, such as that of Medicaid or SSDI is well established as having a relatively large work disincentive impact, non-means tested programs less so, another good example is limits on welfare which push more people into SSDI which has larger work disincentive effects than welfare programs, perversity cuts both ways). Reasonable people can disagree about the relative costs and benefits of policies, however, when these rhetorical methods are being used it is almost always a signal that the person engaging in argument is not being rational. The perversity argument is rarely made to suggest specific program alterations to reduce work disincentives to a minimum, it is almost always made to tell us that the cure is worse than the disease and that poverty alleviations programs will lead to broken families, less people working, and everyone being poorer, assertions that are demonstrably false.
Of course, someone may be making these arguments in a more limited sense, as I did above in regards to means testing. My point however, is that arguments that take these forms are a red flag that the listener should be particularly suspicious and critical of the argument being made, it is well known that people are gullible with regards to these arguments and the speaker most likely is playing off this gullibility for political ends. This is why works like this should be taught in high school, it would greatly benefit our democracy if students were taught at a young age what kinds of arguments to be particularly sceptical of and to demand extraordinary evidence in support of. All of the rhetorical methods described by Hirschman fit this pattern, while not necessarily false, they are arguments that any well-meaning citizen should believe only when extraordinary evidence is given for them. Otherwise, it is best to simply ignore them as propaganda.
The book addresses three common patterns that reactionary rhetoric falls into, as well as three mirror image patterns that progressive rhetoric falls into. Being aware of these tendencies is very important in a democracy, too often our political analysis amounts solely to justification rather than analysis.
Hirschman identifies three main types of reactionary rhetoric, the perversity, futility, and jeopardy arguments. The perversity argument is the assertion that a reform will have the opposite effect intended, the futility argument says that the reform seeks to violate some kind of social law and will have no effect, and the jeopardy argument says the reform will threaten some earlier and more important achievement. These arguments are frequently brought out as little more than a mad-lib, any issue under the sun can be put into this pattern and we react to it as if it were a plausible argument (the psychology of why this is so would be interesting to learn about, Hirschman doesn't get into that). The thing is, when these patterns come up there is rarely any evidence to support the analysis, an assertion is simply made that things will be that way, and whatever the psychological reasons for this, we take the argument seriously despite the lack of data or evidence.
Hirschman gives examples of the basic pairs argued by reactionaries and progressives, it's kinda scary how often these arguments are seen, anyone that looks at a comments page of a blog will see them just about daily and often see them being made when there is no data whatsoever backing them up .
Reactionary: The contemplated action will bring disastrous consequences.
Progressive: Not to take the contemplated action will bring disastrous consequences.
Reactionary: The new reform will jeopardize the older one.
Progressive: The new and old reforms will mutually reinforce each other.
Reactionary: The contemplated action attempts to change permanent structural characteristics("laws") of the social order; it is therefore bound to be wholly ineffective, futile.
Progressive: The contemplated action is backed up by powerful historical forces that are already "on the march;" opposing them would be utterly futile.
Of course, many of these things may be true in part but the arguments are often made at extremes. For instance, some anti-poverty programs create work disincentives, however this effect is far too small to offset more than a tiny portion of the overall gain (also, this particular example works well for a perversity effect because it is the policies that limit anti-poverty spending that is generally the work destructive portion, means testing, such as that of Medicaid or SSDI is well established as having a relatively large work disincentive impact, non-means tested programs less so, another good example is limits on welfare which push more people into SSDI which has larger work disincentive effects than welfare programs, perversity cuts both ways). Reasonable people can disagree about the relative costs and benefits of policies, however, when these rhetorical methods are being used it is almost always a signal that the person engaging in argument is not being rational. The perversity argument is rarely made to suggest specific program alterations to reduce work disincentives to a minimum, it is almost always made to tell us that the cure is worse than the disease and that poverty alleviations programs will lead to broken families, less people working, and everyone being poorer, assertions that are demonstrably false.
Of course, someone may be making these arguments in a more limited sense, as I did above in regards to means testing. My point however, is that arguments that take these forms are a red flag that the listener should be particularly suspicious and critical of the argument being made, it is well known that people are gullible with regards to these arguments and the speaker most likely is playing off this gullibility for political ends. This is why works like this should be taught in high school, it would greatly benefit our democracy if students were taught at a young age what kinds of arguments to be particularly sceptical of and to demand extraordinary evidence in support of. All of the rhetorical methods described by Hirschman fit this pattern, while not necessarily false, they are arguments that any well-meaning citizen should believe only when extraordinary evidence is given for them. Otherwise, it is best to simply ignore them as propaganda.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Book Review: Growing Public
Book review of Lindert's Growing Public
Read this book, my copy will shortly be on its was back to Washington state to be available for another interlibrary loan (I'll probably be buying a copy to keep as a reference soon as well). This is one of the better books I've read on comparative policy history. There are two volumes, the first is accessible to the general public but still contains a wealth of data, the second contains his model and a great deal of information on the data and calculations. The second volume is aimed at social scientists but is worth reading for anyone puzzled over why his findings seem at odds with reports of what is supposedly expert opinion found so frequently on the internet.
Lindert's basic puzzle is why the relation between social spending and economic growth is close to zero, and according to his empirical estimates possibly slightly positive. His answer is basically common sense, democracy serves as a check on any excesses so greater public spending tends towards both more efficient taxation and more efficient social policies (with some exceptions I'll mention briefly later).
The general gist of what he is communicating are summed up in 9 conclusions from page 20 of volume 1:
1. There was so little social spending of any kind before the twentieth century because political voice was so restricted.
2. The central role of political voice is shown by an exceptional early case. Both Britain's relatively high poor relief in 1782 - 1834 and cutbacks in 1834 and 1870 fit the changing self-interest of those with voice.
3.Just noting the interests of those with voice helps explain education puzzles (summarized).
4. The great advance of social spending since 1880 is explained partly by the same political-voice motif, partly by population aging, and partly by income growth...
5. Postwar welfare states developed more fully in countries where the middle and bottom ranks traded places more and were ethnically homogenous
6. The same forces that explain the growth of social spending until the 1990s carry implications for the future of all regions... (greatly summarized)
7.The net national costs of social transfers, and the taxes that finance them, are essentially zero.*
8. That large social programs have cost little in practice is consistent with the rise of European unemployment since 1970... the loss in output was less severe because those who remained out of work tended to be less productive workers anyway.** (summarized quite a bit)
9. Two general principles seem to explain why the welfare state does no net damage to GDP per capita and why welfare states will not collapse. The first is that high budget democracies show more care in choosing the design of taxes and transfers so as to avoid compromising growth. The second is that broad universalism in taxes and entitlements fosters growth better than the low-budget countries' preference for strict means testing and complicated tax compromises.
I can't emphasize enough how important this book is to read if you want to understand growth, spending, and optimal policy. There are bits I could quibble with, and I found other criticisms of small pieces online, but this is inevitable with any book of this scope. I certainly couldn't find anything that presented a challenge to the conclusions, some of the things I would quibble with would actually reinforce them.
A significant part of this book is that there are tradeoffs on both the tax and spending side. Neither the optimal tax utopia of the far right nor the high spending utopia of socialism are compatible with either side's preferences on the tax or spending side. The far right can't get their optimal taxes without high social spending and the far left can't get their high spending without efficient taxes that allow capital to flow freely. This book just reinforces my conviction that both poles are dead wrong and the state is essentially symbiotic with markets rather than opposed, efficient taxation is not possible without efficient social policy. Also, it reinforces the idea that many social policies actually are efficient, while it is possible to simply state that the government never does anything useful the empirical data says the opposite.
This isn't to say that Lindert finds all welfare state policies effective. For instance, he finds that employee protection laws are correlated with both higher unemployment and lower growth. This isn't surprising but it needs to be mentioned that other works on the subject find that social spending is heavily correlated with the socialist influence that leads to these confrontational policy with business. It's perfectly consistent with my contention that the standard left-right ideological paradigm fails to grapple with the actual observed effects of policy.
Something I would find interesting is an extension of part of the books argument to look at why US spending and taxing are so inefficient. One notable possible cause is the very low voting turnout. It may easily be the case that the lack of democratic participation and knowledge in the US is enabling certain elites to have undue influence in our public policy leading to both inefficient taxation that benefits these groups as well as inefficient social policy which serves to help prevent voter mobilization that would increase spending as well as targeting inefficient tax privileges. I think this equilibrium may be particularly damaging to small business owners (and the poor), a subject I'll take up in a later post.
A working paper that addresses some of the same issues the books do is available online, though I urge you to read the entire thing to get the full argument.
* While this may seem peculiar to many that are used to hearing about the negative effect of taxation, much of what is written about taxes relies on assumptions that social spending does no good. Using this assumption taxation can never be anything but a loss so it's basically a meaningless result as far as optimal levels of social spending and taxation go. Though this assumption can be valid when analyzing trade-offs between various forms of taxation.
** This is something that will be uncomfortable for many to admit. A lot of policies seek to induce more individuals to work. However, evidence indicates that those that are dropping out of the labor market are the least productive individuals. Is it really efficient to be trying to incentivise someone to work whose marginal labor productivity may be below the minimum wage and may even be lower than a subsistence wage? In this case, it may be more efficient to just provide welfare rather than wasting resources on either carrots or sticks to get this theoretical marginal individual to work. The choice in this case may be to pay for welfare or for prison. I won't pretend to have an answer, I just want to raise the question.
Read this book, my copy will shortly be on its was back to Washington state to be available for another interlibrary loan (I'll probably be buying a copy to keep as a reference soon as well). This is one of the better books I've read on comparative policy history. There are two volumes, the first is accessible to the general public but still contains a wealth of data, the second contains his model and a great deal of information on the data and calculations. The second volume is aimed at social scientists but is worth reading for anyone puzzled over why his findings seem at odds with reports of what is supposedly expert opinion found so frequently on the internet.
Lindert's basic puzzle is why the relation between social spending and economic growth is close to zero, and according to his empirical estimates possibly slightly positive. His answer is basically common sense, democracy serves as a check on any excesses so greater public spending tends towards both more efficient taxation and more efficient social policies (with some exceptions I'll mention briefly later).
The general gist of what he is communicating are summed up in 9 conclusions from page 20 of volume 1:
1. There was so little social spending of any kind before the twentieth century because political voice was so restricted.
2. The central role of political voice is shown by an exceptional early case. Both Britain's relatively high poor relief in 1782 - 1834 and cutbacks in 1834 and 1870 fit the changing self-interest of those with voice.
3.Just noting the interests of those with voice helps explain education puzzles (summarized).
4. The great advance of social spending since 1880 is explained partly by the same political-voice motif, partly by population aging, and partly by income growth...
5. Postwar welfare states developed more fully in countries where the middle and bottom ranks traded places more and were ethnically homogenous
6. The same forces that explain the growth of social spending until the 1990s carry implications for the future of all regions... (greatly summarized)
7.The net national costs of social transfers, and the taxes that finance them, are essentially zero.*
8. That large social programs have cost little in practice is consistent with the rise of European unemployment since 1970... the loss in output was less severe because those who remained out of work tended to be less productive workers anyway.** (summarized quite a bit)
9. Two general principles seem to explain why the welfare state does no net damage to GDP per capita and why welfare states will not collapse. The first is that high budget democracies show more care in choosing the design of taxes and transfers so as to avoid compromising growth. The second is that broad universalism in taxes and entitlements fosters growth better than the low-budget countries' preference for strict means testing and complicated tax compromises.
I can't emphasize enough how important this book is to read if you want to understand growth, spending, and optimal policy. There are bits I could quibble with, and I found other criticisms of small pieces online, but this is inevitable with any book of this scope. I certainly couldn't find anything that presented a challenge to the conclusions, some of the things I would quibble with would actually reinforce them.
A significant part of this book is that there are tradeoffs on both the tax and spending side. Neither the optimal tax utopia of the far right nor the high spending utopia of socialism are compatible with either side's preferences on the tax or spending side. The far right can't get their optimal taxes without high social spending and the far left can't get their high spending without efficient taxes that allow capital to flow freely. This book just reinforces my conviction that both poles are dead wrong and the state is essentially symbiotic with markets rather than opposed, efficient taxation is not possible without efficient social policy. Also, it reinforces the idea that many social policies actually are efficient, while it is possible to simply state that the government never does anything useful the empirical data says the opposite.
This isn't to say that Lindert finds all welfare state policies effective. For instance, he finds that employee protection laws are correlated with both higher unemployment and lower growth. This isn't surprising but it needs to be mentioned that other works on the subject find that social spending is heavily correlated with the socialist influence that leads to these confrontational policy with business. It's perfectly consistent with my contention that the standard left-right ideological paradigm fails to grapple with the actual observed effects of policy.
Something I would find interesting is an extension of part of the books argument to look at why US spending and taxing are so inefficient. One notable possible cause is the very low voting turnout. It may easily be the case that the lack of democratic participation and knowledge in the US is enabling certain elites to have undue influence in our public policy leading to both inefficient taxation that benefits these groups as well as inefficient social policy which serves to help prevent voter mobilization that would increase spending as well as targeting inefficient tax privileges. I think this equilibrium may be particularly damaging to small business owners (and the poor), a subject I'll take up in a later post.
A working paper that addresses some of the same issues the books do is available online, though I urge you to read the entire thing to get the full argument.
* While this may seem peculiar to many that are used to hearing about the negative effect of taxation, much of what is written about taxes relies on assumptions that social spending does no good. Using this assumption taxation can never be anything but a loss so it's basically a meaningless result as far as optimal levels of social spending and taxation go. Though this assumption can be valid when analyzing trade-offs between various forms of taxation.
** This is something that will be uncomfortable for many to admit. A lot of policies seek to induce more individuals to work. However, evidence indicates that those that are dropping out of the labor market are the least productive individuals. Is it really efficient to be trying to incentivise someone to work whose marginal labor productivity may be below the minimum wage and may even be lower than a subsistence wage? In this case, it may be more efficient to just provide welfare rather than wasting resources on either carrots or sticks to get this theoretical marginal individual to work. The choice in this case may be to pay for welfare or for prison. I won't pretend to have an answer, I just want to raise the question.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Book Review: Do-Gooders: How Liberals Hurt Those They Claim To Help
[Updated with a new statistic for chapter 3, I had to check the raw data for comparable stats]
[ Updated 2nd time with information I happened to find interesting in the marriage report I checked for stats]
em·pir·i·cal
1: originating in or based on observation or experience
2: relying on experience or observation alone often without due regard for system and theory
3: capable of being verified or disproved by observation or experiment
4: of or relating to empiricism
So, what to say about a rather silly book Do-Gooders by Mona Charen (hmm, my Amazon Associates link function hasn't been working, this is annoying, not that I think anyone would want to buy this thing, but I like linking to the edition I read). This is my first experience reading a book from the right wing rage machine (the left has one too, but they are more prone to documentaries). I don't think anyone is expecting much factual accuracy from this kind of work so I'll only go into things moderately. What does jump out at me though is this quote from the book, "Conservatives tend to underestimate the worth of their own principles-freedom, self0reliance, tough mindedness, empiricism- and seem to accept the idea that liberal values-compassion, soft-heartedness (soft-headedness?), and equality- are superior." I can accept most of this as what I would expect from a political polemic, fair game for this genera. This book displays all these qualities and attributes the qualities with liberals it claims to. With one exception, there is nothing empirical about this book. It quotes a lot of numbers but it does not seriously rely on observation, it makes a great deal out of system and theory rather than experience and observation, and it doesn't follow any kind of systematic method for collection or use of data. The author jumps around between rates and absolute numbers with no regard for which is appropriate. The author pays no attention to base rates, quoting statistics to prove her point without acknowledging underlying trends. Most evidence presented is in the form or quotations and anecdotes, the fundamental attribution error (ascribing observations to human action rather than to situational factors) is rampant.
Now, from this sort of book I wouldn't expect empirics, except empiricism is singled out as a primary virtue. I'll go briefly through the book to point out the real howlers.
Chapter One - Judge Not
This chapter basically goes over the rise, and decline, of the crime rate in the US attributing crime primarily to liberals insistence on rehabilitation and light sentencing and the fall in crime rates to increased punishments. The big issue this ignores is that both the rise, and later fall, in crime rates were coordinated across all developed nations, none of which had the same tough on crime approach the US used. While US crime rates were worse in many aspects before the sharp rise, they remain so in many aspects. There are some anecdotes of particularly stupid things liberals said, but if I desired to do so, I'm sure I could find similar anecdotes from conservatives. This proves nothing. Crime is not an area of specialty for me and is overall not completely understood, so I've got little more to say. But if base rates and widely ignored correlations are not taken into account to provide an explanation, empirical methods are not being used. The main problem in this chapter is spurious correlation and the fundamental attribution error, base rates are ignored, causality is attributed because two things are happening roughly at the same time but precise dates are not established meaning that the comparison is meaningless, and all the incendiary rhetoric and quotes amounts to no more than meaningless anecdotes.
Chapter 2 Stoking Fear and Hatred in the Name of Racial Sensitivity
This chapter is mainly polemic quotes, I don't really have anything to say about this. With one exception, the author states that "about 180,000 ballots in Florida were not counted due to voter error: either undervoting, or overvoting. It is impossible to know how many of the "spoiled" ballots were cast by African Americans since we have a secret ballot."
Anyone that knows empirical methods will know this is bullshit. We do not have to know the provenance of individual ballots cast to establish how many ballots were cast by African Americans (within a certain degree of statistical error). If we know the demographics of given counties and if we know other relevant characteristics of the voting districts in question, and we know the participation rates for the districts, then we can use statistical methods to answer this. It will take a lot of slogging through boring data for graduate assistants but this is well within the realm of the possible (assuming data is collected for the relevant counties, not being very interested in electoral politics I don't know 100% that this data exists, but I believe it does). If more votes are being rejected consistently in African American counties than can be explained by other factors than it is possible to establish causality. I don't know if this is the case, but anyone that understands statistics will know that the secret ballot should have no impact on establishing the veracity of this claim.
Chapter 3 The Promise of Compassion
This is basically a long chapter on the culture of dependency argument. Here I'm going to break out some statistics, since I have them. A lot of ink is spilled over rising illegitimacy rates, illegitimacy increased among all groups in society not just the poor or ethnic groups. These rates varied with no relation to changes in welfare benefits. There is no causal relation between welfare and illegitimacy (welfare did allow more women to keep their children despite being single, however, simply giving them up for adoption is no sure way to have them adopted so this is a naive suggestion). There are legitimate concerns regarding the decline in marriage rates and the effect this has in children, but the dates and distribution of the problem isn't right for a welfare based explanation.
There are base rate problems, she claims between 1963 and 1973 welfare caseloads increased 230%. Population increased, the economy was substantially worse in the 1970s, and family structure and demographics have both changed. The raw number means nothing without associating it with other changes. Poverty also declined remarkably during this period and labor force participation also rose. What does the increased caseload have to do with anything?
She talks a bit about welfare reform. The main takeaway here is that work incentives were a good thing but the actual fear of liberals largely came to pass. There is evidence that the most poor and detached women that had been long term welfare recipients simply dropped off the rolls and did not start working, this pool has likely increased. The poverty gap (basically how much income is below the poverty line) among the most deprived groups has increased. On the other hand, employment has increased and welfare rolls decreased dramatically and spending declined from $24 billion in 1988 to $13 billion in 1999. But what isn't mentioned is the massive increase in work supports that accompanied welfare reform, spending rose from $11 billion in 1988 to $66.7 billion in 1999 and non-cash work supports increased from $9.5 billion in 1993 to $18 billion in 1999. Claims about jobs are also misleading, once the expansion was over unemployment rose and labor force participation fell, the lack of rise in welfare rolls had less to do with lack of need than it had to do with new restrictions. There is evidence that women use welfare more strategically, in the low wage sector of the economy jobs tend to be unstable so women delay going on welfare, despite lack of income, until joblessness is prolonged. They want to save their 60 months for when the really need it. This does not indicate reduction in need but that women value security over present income, they want welfare as insurance and are willing to undergo deprivation to retain a safety net.
Perhaps the best example of deceptive, and non-empirical use of statistical data is when she notes that the percentage of African American children raised by married parents increased from 34.8% in 1996 to 38.9% in 2001. What's notable about this is the implication that the percentage was rising before welfare reform and declined after. I couldn't find exactly comparable statistics, but the birth rate among unmarried women was already falling before 1996. According to "Nonmarital Childbearing in the United States 1940-1999, National Vital Statistics Reports, the birth rate among unmarried women had begun to fall in 1994 (and probably even earlier due to changes in reporting data in the early 1990s resulting in an overstatement of births to unmarried parents in the first few years of the decade relative to the rest). While this is change is a good thing, it is unlikely to have anything to do with welfare reform, unless a very high degree of political information and sophistication is assumed for unmarried poor women (also the number of people on welfare isn't large enough for it to be likely that welfare policy changes would be significant in national level statistics).*
Chapter 4 Rewarding the Worst Families
There are tons of problems with the foster care and adoption systems. It would be nice if there were enough wiling parents to adopt all the children being cared for by bad parents. The author does nothing to establish that her alternative is realistic. Trying to offer services to dysfunctional families is an attempt to make the best of a bad situation. Blaming liberals for this is just absurd. Not much more to say about this.
Chapter 5 The "Grate" Society
Yep, homelessness is bad. No, blaming this on deinstitutionalization is not really accurate. It is true that we let people out of institutions without putting adequate systems in place. But institutions were very destructive to the individuals involved and extremely costly. This chapter is mostly anecdotes and doesn't really present real alternatives. Yes this is a problem, but some empirical evidence rather than anecdotes would have helped. But, of course, "there has never been a more humane country in the whole history of humanity," so I guess the problems with both the earlier and current system are OK then.
Chapter 6 The Liberal War on Rigor and Patriotism in America's Classrooms
Yeah, I like standardized testing to. Other than that, this chapter is silly.
*Incidentally, reading this report was somewhat eye opening on numbers. I realized that some of what I had understood about welfare and teen pregnancy came from reports written in the 1980s. There is a high degree of cyclicality in these numbers and rates rose significantly in the 1980s, meaning that some of what I though was true based on these papers may not be (then again, those writing these reports may have had better data sets, the start of the series in 1940 is likely a trough without data going further back it's hard to say what a base rate would be). This couldn't be due to welfare since the 80s weren't great years for welfare increases but it does indicate rates were somewhat higher than I believed relative to early periods (rates also fell in the 60s and part of the 70s before rising again, total % of births decreased because births to married mothers declined more sharply, what this indicates is that planned pregnancies fell while unplanned remained stable or increased). Of course, 1940 is very likely to have had an unusually low rate of births of all kinds, given the war going on and the lingering effects of the depression. I'd like to have numbers going back to 1900 for better comparability.
[Update: This was interesting, pregnancy rates feel sharply among non-white women between 1990 and 1995 from 175 per 1000 to 152 in 1995 (women 18 - 44). Among all women, the decline was from 102 to 96. The abortion rate also fell sharply between 1980 and 1995. I have no real theoretical observations from any of this, other than I hadn't realized the high cyclicality of birth rates. Very interesting, and certainly something that doesn't seem to match with welfare state policies. Marriage rates also increased among women who conceived first child before marriage in 1990-1994 relative to 1980-84. Seriously contradicts the view about welfare reform having something to do with marriage, this seems to be varying independently.
[ Updated 2nd time with information I happened to find interesting in the marriage report I checked for stats]
em·pir·i·cal
1: originating in or based on observation or experience
2: relying on experience or observation alone often without due regard for system and theory
3: capable of being verified or disproved by observation or experiment
4: of or relating to empiricism
So, what to say about a rather silly book Do-Gooders by Mona Charen (hmm, my Amazon Associates link function hasn't been working, this is annoying, not that I think anyone would want to buy this thing, but I like linking to the edition I read). This is my first experience reading a book from the right wing rage machine (the left has one too, but they are more prone to documentaries). I don't think anyone is expecting much factual accuracy from this kind of work so I'll only go into things moderately. What does jump out at me though is this quote from the book, "Conservatives tend to underestimate the worth of their own principles-freedom, self0reliance, tough mindedness, empiricism- and seem to accept the idea that liberal values-compassion, soft-heartedness (soft-headedness?), and equality- are superior." I can accept most of this as what I would expect from a political polemic, fair game for this genera. This book displays all these qualities and attributes the qualities with liberals it claims to. With one exception, there is nothing empirical about this book. It quotes a lot of numbers but it does not seriously rely on observation, it makes a great deal out of system and theory rather than experience and observation, and it doesn't follow any kind of systematic method for collection or use of data. The author jumps around between rates and absolute numbers with no regard for which is appropriate. The author pays no attention to base rates, quoting statistics to prove her point without acknowledging underlying trends. Most evidence presented is in the form or quotations and anecdotes, the fundamental attribution error (ascribing observations to human action rather than to situational factors) is rampant.
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Book Review: 3 Books on Poverty
I'm still experimenting with doing these, my reading ran a bit ahead of my writing this week. So, I'll catch up with three short reviews.
First of is Wealth and Welfare States
by Garfinkel, Rainwater, and Smeeding. It provided a good overview of the welfare state in comparative perspective. There's a lot of data here, what will surprise some readers is that it counts education spending as a form of welfare. This has become increasingly standard in this sort of study, it's really hard to think of good reasons why to treat it separately from more traditional welfare spending.
A few other interesting notes on the book. First of all, it describes the US welfare state spending as unusually V shaped, both the poor and the rich get unusual amounts of redistribution. This is largely through treating handouts like the mortgage interest deduction as a form of income subsidy, in the final analysis, there's no defensible reason not to treat it the same way as something like section 8. They also review more recent work on social spending and growth, recent studies find social spending positively correlated with growth at existing spending levels in the developed world, while there's eventually a trade off between social spending and equality and growth, it hasn't been hit yet by any rich nation.
I should also mention that they add in mandated corporate spending in some parts of the book as welfare state policies. This would include things like spending on health benefits in the US. After all, if it's the government instituting these policies, there's no good reason to exclude them from calculations of total spending. This is separated out and traditional calculations presented alongside. There's also a good overview of the history of welfare state policies. Also, since so many seem to have problems believing this, the welfare state grew up right alongside capitalism and the more capitalist a country got, the bigger it got. I don't think this is accidental.
Definitely worth reading.
The second book is Charles Murray's Losing Ground
. This book is the biggy in convincing people that welfare spending actually hurts poor people. Reading it myself, I found it quite forced, and in parts peculiar. The first thing that struck me is that all his trends try to use the 50s and early 60s as a baseline. As we all know, the US had a number of unusual advantages during this time, we shouldn't have expected progress to continue on these lines. It certainly shouldn't have stopped because of a small increase in social spending. Also, he pins a lot of causation on programs that only impacted small numbers of people, it's hard to see how small changes in AFDC benefits could have impacted black men that much, it would seem more sensible to focus on the people actually receiving benefits. I won't go into detail on the bizarre thought experiment. The big problem with this book is that he seems to be using how he wants people to behave as a baseline, rather than how they actually do behave. I don't really think they were acting any more like he wanted them to before 1965 than they were after, which makes the whole book seem fishy to me. He has said elsewhere that he draws much of his inspiration from how people seemed to get along just fine in villages he worked in overseas. The problem with this is that those villages never really change much, they're a dead end. They don't survive capitalism. But this is the whole problem with the kind of political program being pushed here. It doesn't really seem to understand the market or how it impacts society. There's a pretty clear causality between greater reliance on markets and the erosion of traditional bonds that make village life work. This has been demonstrated many times. Blaming government for this doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Rather government responds after this erosion with social programs, not the other way around. Imagining that capitalism can co-exist with the kind of interdependence found in a village is just wishful thinking. These societies run on variations of clientelism, which is anathema to a market economy which relies on one-off interactions between strangers. They're just not compatible.
Rethinking Social Policy
by Christopher Jencks was an excellent, if dated, book. It's a compilation of book reviews and a chapter of original research. It covers affirmative action; the safety net; heredity, inequality, and crime; urban ghettos; the American underclass; and reforming welfare. There's a wealth of excellent data here, Jencks often expresses his dislike of ideology and his preference for reliance on data. Each chapter is excellent, it was the chapters on the safety net and welfare I focused on most however. The chapter on the safety net was a review of Murray's book, he exposed the flaws in logic as well as data that went into it. What I found particularly convincing was the break out of the groups that had actually received social spending and the impact on them, it was far different from Murray's contentions. Jencks' take on Murray's thought experiment was also excellent, the original scenario was plain absurd. It's still worth a read, though enough has changed that more up to date works would probably be more valuable. If you don't have Jstor access however, I can't recommend any at this time.
[There is also a somewhat testy exchange between Jencks and Murray available at the New York Review of Books, if you're a subscriber, the entire essay is there as well]
First of is Wealth and Welfare States
by Garfinkel, Rainwater, and Smeeding. It provided a good overview of the welfare state in comparative perspective. There's a lot of data here, what will surprise some readers is that it counts education spending as a form of welfare. This has become increasingly standard in this sort of study, it's really hard to think of good reasons why to treat it separately from more traditional welfare spending.A few other interesting notes on the book. First of all, it describes the US welfare state spending as unusually V shaped, both the poor and the rich get unusual amounts of redistribution. This is largely through treating handouts like the mortgage interest deduction as a form of income subsidy, in the final analysis, there's no defensible reason not to treat it the same way as something like section 8. They also review more recent work on social spending and growth, recent studies find social spending positively correlated with growth at existing spending levels in the developed world, while there's eventually a trade off between social spending and equality and growth, it hasn't been hit yet by any rich nation.
I should also mention that they add in mandated corporate spending in some parts of the book as welfare state policies. This would include things like spending on health benefits in the US. After all, if it's the government instituting these policies, there's no good reason to exclude them from calculations of total spending. This is separated out and traditional calculations presented alongside. There's also a good overview of the history of welfare state policies. Also, since so many seem to have problems believing this, the welfare state grew up right alongside capitalism and the more capitalist a country got, the bigger it got. I don't think this is accidental.
Definitely worth reading.
The second book is Charles Murray's Losing Ground
. This book is the biggy in convincing people that welfare spending actually hurts poor people. Reading it myself, I found it quite forced, and in parts peculiar. The first thing that struck me is that all his trends try to use the 50s and early 60s as a baseline. As we all know, the US had a number of unusual advantages during this time, we shouldn't have expected progress to continue on these lines. It certainly shouldn't have stopped because of a small increase in social spending. Also, he pins a lot of causation on programs that only impacted small numbers of people, it's hard to see how small changes in AFDC benefits could have impacted black men that much, it would seem more sensible to focus on the people actually receiving benefits. I won't go into detail on the bizarre thought experiment. The big problem with this book is that he seems to be using how he wants people to behave as a baseline, rather than how they actually do behave. I don't really think they were acting any more like he wanted them to before 1965 than they were after, which makes the whole book seem fishy to me. He has said elsewhere that he draws much of his inspiration from how people seemed to get along just fine in villages he worked in overseas. The problem with this is that those villages never really change much, they're a dead end. They don't survive capitalism. But this is the whole problem with the kind of political program being pushed here. It doesn't really seem to understand the market or how it impacts society. There's a pretty clear causality between greater reliance on markets and the erosion of traditional bonds that make village life work. This has been demonstrated many times. Blaming government for this doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Rather government responds after this erosion with social programs, not the other way around. Imagining that capitalism can co-exist with the kind of interdependence found in a village is just wishful thinking. These societies run on variations of clientelism, which is anathema to a market economy which relies on one-off interactions between strangers. They're just not compatible.Rethinking Social Policy
by Christopher Jencks was an excellent, if dated, book. It's a compilation of book reviews and a chapter of original research. It covers affirmative action; the safety net; heredity, inequality, and crime; urban ghettos; the American underclass; and reforming welfare. There's a wealth of excellent data here, Jencks often expresses his dislike of ideology and his preference for reliance on data. Each chapter is excellent, it was the chapters on the safety net and welfare I focused on most however. The chapter on the safety net was a review of Murray's book, he exposed the flaws in logic as well as data that went into it. What I found particularly convincing was the break out of the groups that had actually received social spending and the impact on them, it was far different from Murray's contentions. Jencks' take on Murray's thought experiment was also excellent, the original scenario was plain absurd. It's still worth a read, though enough has changed that more up to date works would probably be more valuable. If you don't have Jstor access however, I can't recommend any at this time.[There is also a somewhat testy exchange between Jencks and Murray available at the New York Review of Books, if you're a subscriber, the entire essay is there as well]
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Book Review: The Roman Republic
This will be a short review. I picked up Michael Crawford's The Roman Republic at a used bookstore. It was a good basic overview of the functioning of the Roman Republic and how this changed as its history progressed. It's done well enough, I haven't read enough about the Republic to have other specific works to compare to, and felt it was worth taking the time to read.
More generally, I have always found the Roman Republic fascinating, particularly as an example of political decay. It's an excellent example of how an extremely successful society finds itself unable to adapt to its own success and the changing obligations that result from it. Rome simply couldn't deal with the increasing power of its citizens, by the end of the Republic, the state was basically subject to its leading citizens, making the step to monarchy quite small. It's a fascinating topic, and one I plan to write a book about one day.
More generally, I have always found the Roman Republic fascinating, particularly as an example of political decay. It's an excellent example of how an extremely successful society finds itself unable to adapt to its own success and the changing obligations that result from it. Rome simply couldn't deal with the increasing power of its citizens, by the end of the Republic, the state was basically subject to its leading citizens, making the step to monarchy quite small. It's a fascinating topic, and one I plan to write a book about one day.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Book Review: The Origins of Political Order
Fukuyama's The Origins of Political Order
seeks to trace the basic outline of political development from our earliest knowledge up to the beginnings of the modern world. First off, this is an excellent book, to some degree it summarizes in one volume what I've been trying to do with my reading over the last few years. Within the book, he describes some of the biological underpinnings of political order as well as the early forms of organization these underpinnings led to, the development of the political form of the modern strong state, as well as the development of the rule of law and accountable government. He ends the book with a basic theory of political development and decay. Rather than focusing on summarizing the book, I will lay out my basic critiques of it, hopefully with enough background to be intelligible to the reader.
First of all, I have a basic philosophical disagreement with Dr. Fukuyama. Fukuyama sees modern liberal political democracy as having solved many of the basic problems of political society and as being the best form of political order we can achieve (this argument is laid out more fully in The End of History and the Last Man
, it of course does not mean the end of political change or competition but it does mean that there will be no more fundamental shifts in how societies are organized). I disagree with this view. I see a basic continuity in the belief of various societies that they have achieved some kind of apex of political order, something similar is seen in Greece, Rome, and China. Successful societies that are more competitive than and are emulated by their neighbors tend to believe this, the Chinese for instance seemed to have some writers that believed in something not too far off from democratic peace theory, if only the barbarians were brought within Chinese ritual systems and government than they would be more peaceable and interstate relations would be more predictable. These beliefs have the benefit of being to some extent true, these forms of international relations are really more peaceable than those with vastly different forms of political belief and structure. However, their repetition throughout history and later disintegration makes me believe that these ideas are essentially false. Of course, this is no more than speculation, previous periods of these beliefs lasted for quite a long time and I will be very surprised if anything new arises within my lifetime, so this belief is for all intents and purposes non-falsifiable. However, it is a basic philosophical difference, I see us as being closer to the beginning of our social evolution than we are towards its end (I don't really see there as being an end, just like there isn't for biological evolution).
More concretely, I do have some more particular critiques. First of all, Fukuyama contrasts the Chinese with no rule of law frequently with other societies (not just European) that did develop a rule of law. For long term contingent development, I don't really disagree with this. However, I am not so sure about the accuracy of crediting lower levels of arbitrary rule in Europe to this, rather than simply to the relatively high level of independent power enjoyed by non-state European political actors (rule of law may have played a role in allowing for the mobilization of this latent power, of course, I don't know enough about it to say either way). Comparing the two histories, I am struck more by instances of arbitrary rule in Europe, such as the expulsion of the moriscos, persecution of the Huguenots, seizure of church lands in many states, slaughter of the Cathars, suppression of the Hussites, as well as more narrow seizures such as those that were inflicted upon many nobles in the Holy Roman Empire in the 30 Years War. The examples used of arbitrariness in China tend to date to very early periods, such as Qin shi Huang (definitely megalomaniacal and arbitrary) from the 2nd century BC and Empress Wu in the 7th century AD, or to periods of complete political collapse and restoration, such as the first Ming emperor. I just don't really see European monarchs as being much more respectful of the law than the Chinese emperors, I see both as feeling constrained more by the powers of their leading citizens or their bureaucracies than they are by any particular respect for the law. I don't disagree that how these were both institutionalized had long term consequences, I just don't see much difference in contemporary periods and see the restraints as being tied more closely to the relative power of monarch and leading citizens than I do in the normative force of law (and to some extent I do see something fairly similar to the rule of law in the deference to received wisdom and respect for the pronouncements of earlier emperors in China, that this provided restrictions on the emperor doesn't mean that it could have led to the kind of constitutional restraints that the rule of law imposed on the west, this is the kind of coincidental development that wouldn't have been obvious to contemporary observers however). To sum this up, I agree with Fukuyama on the important long run implications of the rule of law in comparing both societies (and found especially interesting his thoughts on how the law played a role in state building, particularly in England, I'll be reading a few of the books from the bibliography based on this), but I don't really agree with the idea that this provided much normative force in actual practice during contemporary periods of comparison between the two societies.
I wrote some thoughts on individualism earlier that were spurred by this book, I won't go into this here. What did interest me greatly was Fukuyama's description of how Christianity undermined kinship ties and the family more generally, I'll be following up on reading those sources as well. This does lead me to another critique however. While Fukuyama spends a great deal of time dwelling on kinship, he doesn't discuss clientage in much more than some passing asides. I think this is pretty important to the discussion of feudalism in Europe, while Christianity weakened kinship it seems to have largely been replaced by various forms of clientage and other corporate arrangements, not only vassal-lord but also forms of clientage associated with guilds and other corporate arrangements. I think I understand why this isn't gone into at length, it shows a lot of similarity with kinship and would have unduly complicated an already complex story. Still, I think it's important to note that these relationships are important to understanding the period and that while they are not completely ignored they could bear more discussion.
I also have some minor disagreements with his contrast between the malthusian world described here and the modern world. First of all, I tend to see a little more continuity than I think he describes in the book, I reserve judgment on the whole until Vol. 2, however, so will just touch briefly on one aspect of this here. My main reservation here is that while per capita income may not change much, we do see considerable change occur even in the malthusian economy across time. This has two elements. First of all, is the shift in household consumption patterns described in Jan de Vries The Industrious Revolution.
While this books largely describes the shift as occurring during the commercial revolution I think to some extent we do see this earlier, while consumption remains dominated by food there is a greater array of goods that become available to people with what remains of their income and some greater variety of social life. So those apparently flat incomes probably do conceal at least somewhat greater variety in goods available to people as well as somewhat greater variety of production not directly related to food, even if overall incomes are limited by the very real limits of agricultural activity at this time (to further complicate this there are also some shifts towards monetization under state activity, it is hard to have a differentiated economy when coins are in short supply, as well as some easing of transport costs as more powerful states develop roads allowing more people to participate in more integrated markets, this is getting away a bit from what this books analyzes however). Also, within those flat incomes can be a degree of disproportion among groups within the large units being analyzed for per capita GDP. While overall incomes in China may be flat, this is partially the result of extensive growth into poorer areas, even as better settled, more productive areas see substantially higher incomes and greater commercial development. In this case, poorer regions being settled using either political or technological change (new crops, like potatoes, as well as farming techniques) drag down the overall level of development due to their subsistence nature. This doesn't mean that richer regions aren't experiencing greater diversification and specialization, but this doesn't show up in aggregate due to marginal extensive growth. Again, this goes a bit off topic for the book, generally I think that the economic component of development needs fuller treatment than it receives here to fully understand political development. This is probably better achieved by reading additional books than it would be by expanding this one however, though it is something that will bother me despite understanding the very good reasons for the relatively cursory treatment of economic issues here.
On the whole, however, I can't recommend this book highly enough. It was really excellent, and provided a great deal of information in one volume that could only be gained otherwise by pretty extensive reading. I would strongly recommend reading Liberman's Strange Parallels
alongside it, many of the same societies are examined from a somewhat different perspective, and with a historian's eye rather than a political scientist's. For me, the two best pieces are the introductory portions on the state of nature, examining political theory in light of better information on early history and anthropology as well as the comparison of European political development in four different cases, with a fifth case, Denmark, introduced to show an alternative path to modern institutions aside from the standard British case. I think the most valuable portion of this part is bringing up the problem of a society being too strong relative to the state and how this can be equally destructive as a too strong state, the cases of Hungary and Poland are needed warnings about the need for political balance in protecting individual liberty. The state is necessary to offset the advantages of the powerful, when it is too weak, individuals become subordinated not to the state, but to the magnates. I see no reason why this is any different for commercial elites than it is for landed ones, much of Latin America points to how this can happen just as easily whatever form of wealth or political advantages these inequalities take.
seeks to trace the basic outline of political development from our earliest knowledge up to the beginnings of the modern world. First off, this is an excellent book, to some degree it summarizes in one volume what I've been trying to do with my reading over the last few years. Within the book, he describes some of the biological underpinnings of political order as well as the early forms of organization these underpinnings led to, the development of the political form of the modern strong state, as well as the development of the rule of law and accountable government. He ends the book with a basic theory of political development and decay. Rather than focusing on summarizing the book, I will lay out my basic critiques of it, hopefully with enough background to be intelligible to the reader.First of all, I have a basic philosophical disagreement with Dr. Fukuyama. Fukuyama sees modern liberal political democracy as having solved many of the basic problems of political society and as being the best form of political order we can achieve (this argument is laid out more fully in The End of History and the Last Man
, it of course does not mean the end of political change or competition but it does mean that there will be no more fundamental shifts in how societies are organized). I disagree with this view. I see a basic continuity in the belief of various societies that they have achieved some kind of apex of political order, something similar is seen in Greece, Rome, and China. Successful societies that are more competitive than and are emulated by their neighbors tend to believe this, the Chinese for instance seemed to have some writers that believed in something not too far off from democratic peace theory, if only the barbarians were brought within Chinese ritual systems and government than they would be more peaceable and interstate relations would be more predictable. These beliefs have the benefit of being to some extent true, these forms of international relations are really more peaceable than those with vastly different forms of political belief and structure. However, their repetition throughout history and later disintegration makes me believe that these ideas are essentially false. Of course, this is no more than speculation, previous periods of these beliefs lasted for quite a long time and I will be very surprised if anything new arises within my lifetime, so this belief is for all intents and purposes non-falsifiable. However, it is a basic philosophical difference, I see us as being closer to the beginning of our social evolution than we are towards its end (I don't really see there as being an end, just like there isn't for biological evolution).More concretely, I do have some more particular critiques. First of all, Fukuyama contrasts the Chinese with no rule of law frequently with other societies (not just European) that did develop a rule of law. For long term contingent development, I don't really disagree with this. However, I am not so sure about the accuracy of crediting lower levels of arbitrary rule in Europe to this, rather than simply to the relatively high level of independent power enjoyed by non-state European political actors (rule of law may have played a role in allowing for the mobilization of this latent power, of course, I don't know enough about it to say either way). Comparing the two histories, I am struck more by instances of arbitrary rule in Europe, such as the expulsion of the moriscos, persecution of the Huguenots, seizure of church lands in many states, slaughter of the Cathars, suppression of the Hussites, as well as more narrow seizures such as those that were inflicted upon many nobles in the Holy Roman Empire in the 30 Years War. The examples used of arbitrariness in China tend to date to very early periods, such as Qin shi Huang (definitely megalomaniacal and arbitrary) from the 2nd century BC and Empress Wu in the 7th century AD, or to periods of complete political collapse and restoration, such as the first Ming emperor. I just don't really see European monarchs as being much more respectful of the law than the Chinese emperors, I see both as feeling constrained more by the powers of their leading citizens or their bureaucracies than they are by any particular respect for the law. I don't disagree that how these were both institutionalized had long term consequences, I just don't see much difference in contemporary periods and see the restraints as being tied more closely to the relative power of monarch and leading citizens than I do in the normative force of law (and to some extent I do see something fairly similar to the rule of law in the deference to received wisdom and respect for the pronouncements of earlier emperors in China, that this provided restrictions on the emperor doesn't mean that it could have led to the kind of constitutional restraints that the rule of law imposed on the west, this is the kind of coincidental development that wouldn't have been obvious to contemporary observers however). To sum this up, I agree with Fukuyama on the important long run implications of the rule of law in comparing both societies (and found especially interesting his thoughts on how the law played a role in state building, particularly in England, I'll be reading a few of the books from the bibliography based on this), but I don't really agree with the idea that this provided much normative force in actual practice during contemporary periods of comparison between the two societies.
I wrote some thoughts on individualism earlier that were spurred by this book, I won't go into this here. What did interest me greatly was Fukuyama's description of how Christianity undermined kinship ties and the family more generally, I'll be following up on reading those sources as well. This does lead me to another critique however. While Fukuyama spends a great deal of time dwelling on kinship, he doesn't discuss clientage in much more than some passing asides. I think this is pretty important to the discussion of feudalism in Europe, while Christianity weakened kinship it seems to have largely been replaced by various forms of clientage and other corporate arrangements, not only vassal-lord but also forms of clientage associated with guilds and other corporate arrangements. I think I understand why this isn't gone into at length, it shows a lot of similarity with kinship and would have unduly complicated an already complex story. Still, I think it's important to note that these relationships are important to understanding the period and that while they are not completely ignored they could bear more discussion.
I also have some minor disagreements with his contrast between the malthusian world described here and the modern world. First of all, I tend to see a little more continuity than I think he describes in the book, I reserve judgment on the whole until Vol. 2, however, so will just touch briefly on one aspect of this here. My main reservation here is that while per capita income may not change much, we do see considerable change occur even in the malthusian economy across time. This has two elements. First of all, is the shift in household consumption patterns described in Jan de Vries The Industrious Revolution.
While this books largely describes the shift as occurring during the commercial revolution I think to some extent we do see this earlier, while consumption remains dominated by food there is a greater array of goods that become available to people with what remains of their income and some greater variety of social life. So those apparently flat incomes probably do conceal at least somewhat greater variety in goods available to people as well as somewhat greater variety of production not directly related to food, even if overall incomes are limited by the very real limits of agricultural activity at this time (to further complicate this there are also some shifts towards monetization under state activity, it is hard to have a differentiated economy when coins are in short supply, as well as some easing of transport costs as more powerful states develop roads allowing more people to participate in more integrated markets, this is getting away a bit from what this books analyzes however). Also, within those flat incomes can be a degree of disproportion among groups within the large units being analyzed for per capita GDP. While overall incomes in China may be flat, this is partially the result of extensive growth into poorer areas, even as better settled, more productive areas see substantially higher incomes and greater commercial development. In this case, poorer regions being settled using either political or technological change (new crops, like potatoes, as well as farming techniques) drag down the overall level of development due to their subsistence nature. This doesn't mean that richer regions aren't experiencing greater diversification and specialization, but this doesn't show up in aggregate due to marginal extensive growth. Again, this goes a bit off topic for the book, generally I think that the economic component of development needs fuller treatment than it receives here to fully understand political development. This is probably better achieved by reading additional books than it would be by expanding this one however, though it is something that will bother me despite understanding the very good reasons for the relatively cursory treatment of economic issues here.On the whole, however, I can't recommend this book highly enough. It was really excellent, and provided a great deal of information in one volume that could only be gained otherwise by pretty extensive reading. I would strongly recommend reading Liberman's Strange Parallels
alongside it, many of the same societies are examined from a somewhat different perspective, and with a historian's eye rather than a political scientist's. For me, the two best pieces are the introductory portions on the state of nature, examining political theory in light of better information on early history and anthropology as well as the comparison of European political development in four different cases, with a fifth case, Denmark, introduced to show an alternative path to modern institutions aside from the standard British case. I think the most valuable portion of this part is bringing up the problem of a society being too strong relative to the state and how this can be equally destructive as a too strong state, the cases of Hungary and Poland are needed warnings about the need for political balance in protecting individual liberty. The state is necessary to offset the advantages of the powerful, when it is too weak, individuals become subordinated not to the state, but to the magnates. I see no reason why this is any different for commercial elites than it is for landed ones, much of Latin America points to how this can happen just as easily whatever form of wealth or political advantages these inequalities take.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Medieval Technlogy and Social Change
Lynn White's Medieval Technology and Social Change
is a fairly famous and important contribution to the study of technology. It is however a bit dated, I read it cause it was short and I found it for $3 in a used bookstore (it helped that I was $2 shy of a discount). For a more recent study of technology I'd recommend Mokyr's Lever of Riches
, though as a more general study it has less to say specifically about the Middle Ages.
Back to White's book. There are three main parts, the first, on the importance of the stirrup to the development of feudalism, is basically discredited. What I've read on the topic indicates the advantage of the stirrup, while significant, isn't as great as implied here (and if heavy cavalry was basically dependent on it, how could Alexander's hetairoi have served as a hammer to the phalanx's anvil?) and its development largely took place on the steppe and not in dark ages France.
The second part, on agriculture and particularly the three field system was interesting, but again, dated. The three field system certainly greatly benefited agriculture and allowed both more population and greater non-agricultural specialization. Again though, like with the stirrup, other books I've read have stated that the advantages were lower than presented here and that there was more going on. Other developments, such as the horse collar, were also less influential than claimed because the versions they replaced didn't have as many problems as asserted here. A good discussion, but it overemphasizes the role of technology in social change, and understandable reaction to its downplaying before this book.
The last section, on mechanical power, I found far more useful. This is again dated, White claims guns were developed in the west while they have now been decisively identified as a Chinese development (I am planning a post on how late Eurocentrism stayed with us later, I still find it even in books from the 80s) for instance, but this chapter provides much more detailed discussions of medieval technology than I found in Mokyr's book (though Mokyr is an excellent source for what he does cover). Being highly interested in economic aspects, I found most interesting the discussion of medieval labor saving devices, not just grain mills but also "mills for tanning or laundering, mills for sawing, for crushing anything from olives to ore, mills for operating the bellows of blast furnaces, the hammers of the forge, or the grindstones to finish and polish weapons and armour, mills for producing pigments for paint or pulp for paper or the mash for beer, were to be found all over Europe." (White 89) The notion that machinery was not applied to production beyond luxuries before some sort of shift in the Dutch Republic is simply a pernicious myth. It was all over Europe, and the industrial revolution can't be explained in these terms. People have been using machinery for primitive production for more than a thousand years, and not just for luxury goods. Yet I still see this idea repeated (it was widely believed in the 19th century when research such as White's hadn't been conducted, things look simple when you don't know the complexities exist, go figure). Books like this need to be read just for this knowledge, if nothing else
is a fairly famous and important contribution to the study of technology. It is however a bit dated, I read it cause it was short and I found it for $3 in a used bookstore (it helped that I was $2 shy of a discount). For a more recent study of technology I'd recommend Mokyr's Lever of Riches, though as a more general study it has less to say specifically about the Middle Ages.Back to White's book. There are three main parts, the first, on the importance of the stirrup to the development of feudalism, is basically discredited. What I've read on the topic indicates the advantage of the stirrup, while significant, isn't as great as implied here (and if heavy cavalry was basically dependent on it, how could Alexander's hetairoi have served as a hammer to the phalanx's anvil?) and its development largely took place on the steppe and not in dark ages France.
The second part, on agriculture and particularly the three field system was interesting, but again, dated. The three field system certainly greatly benefited agriculture and allowed both more population and greater non-agricultural specialization. Again though, like with the stirrup, other books I've read have stated that the advantages were lower than presented here and that there was more going on. Other developments, such as the horse collar, were also less influential than claimed because the versions they replaced didn't have as many problems as asserted here. A good discussion, but it overemphasizes the role of technology in social change, and understandable reaction to its downplaying before this book.
The last section, on mechanical power, I found far more useful. This is again dated, White claims guns were developed in the west while they have now been decisively identified as a Chinese development (I am planning a post on how late Eurocentrism stayed with us later, I still find it even in books from the 80s) for instance, but this chapter provides much more detailed discussions of medieval technology than I found in Mokyr's book (though Mokyr is an excellent source for what he does cover). Being highly interested in economic aspects, I found most interesting the discussion of medieval labor saving devices, not just grain mills but also "mills for tanning or laundering, mills for sawing, for crushing anything from olives to ore, mills for operating the bellows of blast furnaces, the hammers of the forge, or the grindstones to finish and polish weapons and armour, mills for producing pigments for paint or pulp for paper or the mash for beer, were to be found all over Europe." (White 89) The notion that machinery was not applied to production beyond luxuries before some sort of shift in the Dutch Republic is simply a pernicious myth. It was all over Europe, and the industrial revolution can't be explained in these terms. People have been using machinery for primitive production for more than a thousand years, and not just for luxury goods. Yet I still see this idea repeated (it was widely believed in the 19th century when research such as White's hadn't been conducted, things look simple when you don't know the complexities exist, go figure). Books like this need to be read just for this knowledge, if nothing else
Alexander to Actium
Peter Green's Alexander to Actium
was an excellent book covering a period that generally doesn't receive enough attention. The Hellenistic era was important to the later development of Rome and provides some great examples of despotism as well as the decadence of these societies. I personally would have wished for more about the economy, but this book is a general overview and my interests are a bit more specialized. It provides a balanced account of the basic political history as well as chapters devoted to the society of the time, art, philosophy, the economy, and more. It is most definitely worth reading.
I took up my issues with the economic aspects earlier, in particular the puzzle of why the Greeks never developed more in the way of productive machinery. To sum up my early statements, I don't really see this as a puzzle. Lacking knowledge of what investment would later lead to I don't see why anything other than an observation of the high capital costs and low potential return is necessary to explain why businessmen of this period would favor consumption over investment. Trying to explain it in terms of slavery or of cultural attitudes seems unnecessary, durable machinery would have been basically non-existent because of poor and expensive metallurgy leading to high depreciation and plenty of land and population was available for extensive development, why would anyone try intensive methods? It took a very long time to get where we are, once the benefits became obvious we saw rapid development, until then development was essentially serendipitous, I don't think there's anything that needs further explanation here. Investment and development are simply non-obvious, until the examples were present it simply didn't happen in a predictable fashion.
The second point I want to take up regards my earlier writing about decadence. In many of these states we see political decay alongside moral decay particularly among the ruling families. There are a few points I want to make, first societies such as the Romans engaged in a fair amount of ostentatious consumption even when they were rising, attributing decadence to simple wealth seems misplaced. Also, these societies started out wealthier than they ended up, wealth seems misplaced as a reason for decadence. To go back to my earlier writing, I do think this book exposed a flaw. I had mused that rising elites would generate new forms of morality that would be more appropriate to changing circumstances than the old one, in the Hellenistic case, while there certainly was a flourishing commercial elite alongside the more traditional political elites, there isn't any evidence I'm aware of that this elite developed much in the way of a new moral and ideological system that was opposed by the old elites, they simply didn't posit anything at all. So, I have to slightly adjust my earlier statements by saying that a new, rising elite produces the opportunity to create a new morality for new conditions that will be opposed by old elites, there is however nothing that will force the new elite to form a new moral underpinning for their rise. It is simply possible for the old morality to remain the only restraint on individual action with nothing arising to take its place. This however, is something I see as being only one possibility rather than a general outcome.
The third point I want to make is that the Hellenistic kingdoms provide an excellent example of a conquest elite. This is the type of regime that best fits the notion of government as intrinsically coercive and concerned mostly with exploiting a subject population while conceiving of the state as a form of private property. This fits the Hellenistic governments very well. It is notable however, that these states aren't generalizable to political society generally, they are a particular form of society and one with distinguishing characteristics, most notably, a reliance on a distinct ethnic community and a belief in the separateness of the governing class from the rest of the society (the institutionalization of class along ethnic, political, and economic lines is also common).
was an excellent book covering a period that generally doesn't receive enough attention. The Hellenistic era was important to the later development of Rome and provides some great examples of despotism as well as the decadence of these societies. I personally would have wished for more about the economy, but this book is a general overview and my interests are a bit more specialized. It provides a balanced account of the basic political history as well as chapters devoted to the society of the time, art, philosophy, the economy, and more. It is most definitely worth reading.I took up my issues with the economic aspects earlier, in particular the puzzle of why the Greeks never developed more in the way of productive machinery. To sum up my early statements, I don't really see this as a puzzle. Lacking knowledge of what investment would later lead to I don't see why anything other than an observation of the high capital costs and low potential return is necessary to explain why businessmen of this period would favor consumption over investment. Trying to explain it in terms of slavery or of cultural attitudes seems unnecessary, durable machinery would have been basically non-existent because of poor and expensive metallurgy leading to high depreciation and plenty of land and population was available for extensive development, why would anyone try intensive methods? It took a very long time to get where we are, once the benefits became obvious we saw rapid development, until then development was essentially serendipitous, I don't think there's anything that needs further explanation here. Investment and development are simply non-obvious, until the examples were present it simply didn't happen in a predictable fashion.
The second point I want to take up regards my earlier writing about decadence. In many of these states we see political decay alongside moral decay particularly among the ruling families. There are a few points I want to make, first societies such as the Romans engaged in a fair amount of ostentatious consumption even when they were rising, attributing decadence to simple wealth seems misplaced. Also, these societies started out wealthier than they ended up, wealth seems misplaced as a reason for decadence. To go back to my earlier writing, I do think this book exposed a flaw. I had mused that rising elites would generate new forms of morality that would be more appropriate to changing circumstances than the old one, in the Hellenistic case, while there certainly was a flourishing commercial elite alongside the more traditional political elites, there isn't any evidence I'm aware of that this elite developed much in the way of a new moral and ideological system that was opposed by the old elites, they simply didn't posit anything at all. So, I have to slightly adjust my earlier statements by saying that a new, rising elite produces the opportunity to create a new morality for new conditions that will be opposed by old elites, there is however nothing that will force the new elite to form a new moral underpinning for their rise. It is simply possible for the old morality to remain the only restraint on individual action with nothing arising to take its place. This however, is something I see as being only one possibility rather than a general outcome.
The third point I want to make is that the Hellenistic kingdoms provide an excellent example of a conquest elite. This is the type of regime that best fits the notion of government as intrinsically coercive and concerned mostly with exploiting a subject population while conceiving of the state as a form of private property. This fits the Hellenistic governments very well. It is notable however, that these states aren't generalizable to political society generally, they are a particular form of society and one with distinguishing characteristics, most notably, a reliance on a distinct ethnic community and a belief in the separateness of the governing class from the rest of the society (the institutionalization of class along ethnic, political, and economic lines is also common).
Back to Book Reviews
For a combination of the reasons that I haven't seen anything in the news I'd like to comment on (the debt ceiling is the biggest thing going but there's not much worth saying about it) and that the book reviews have been the most visited pages on this blog. So, I'll start doing them again.
I had stopped because the method I was using was taking too much time. The next set of reviews will be briefer. I'll be playing around with the format a bit, my main goal will just be to mention some brief impressions of the book and some questions that I arise from it.
I had stopped because the method I was using was taking too much time. The next set of reviews will be briefer. I'll be playing around with the format a bit, my main goal will just be to mention some brief impressions of the book and some questions that I arise from it.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Book Review: The Conservative Mind
The Conservative Mind
by Russel Kirk
Haven't done one of these in a while, they were taking too much time. This will just be some brief comments.
First, this is a conservatism that makes sense. I still don't agree with it as a whole, though I certainly agree with many parts of it, but this doesn't leave me scratching my head wondering what the hell these people are talking about, which has become my normal reaction to anyone identifiable as part of movement conservatism (this should be sharply distinguished from people who simply identify themselves as conservative or on the right).
Something that especially pleased me is that Kirk made some distinctions about the relation of the individual to political philosophies which I had begun to think Conservatives no longer made in the US (considering he's been dead for some time they may not today). Specifically, he recognizes that ideologies such as socialism are extremely individualistic, they rely on a concept of an "atomized individual." His version of conservatism is by contrast explicitly corporatist, emphasizing family and community connections along with the broader concepts of tradition and culture. This was very refreshing to hear. These are basic concepts necessary for discussing most any aspect of broader social theory or identity, the constant contrasting of the individual vs. socialism that I hear constantly grates on me since it shows a complete lack of understanding of either concept.
Readers who have been following for awhile will remember this was a major issue I took with Hayek when he conflated the corporatism of Nazism with the collectivism of communism. These are completely distinct concepts, while Kirk never discusses the German far right he does show an understanding of the distinctions between Communism and socialism and other means of social identity. I was glad to see there are some well known conservative writers that get these distinctions, it's not Glenn Beck all the way down.
After reading it I was left pondering the major mistakes of both the left and right. One of these for the left, is that too often they are prone to seeking change without fully considering the costs and benefits of a new system vs. the old one, too often they only look at the ills of the old and the potential benefits of the new.
On the right, it would be good to reflect more often on if they are actually defending treasured old institutions or simply resisting new ones that may either be able to exist alongside existing institutions or may be seeking to fill a gap caused by the collapse of old institutions that are beyond hope of restoration.
[Edit: Figured I should mention a little more about the book itself. Kirk provides a good overview of conservative thinking in the US and Britain, starting with Burke. It makes no apologies for presenting this intellectual history through a thoroughly conservative frame (it calls the American revolution a conservative revolution for instance, many scholars would dispute this) but knowing this going into it adds to the appeal of the book for someone wanting to understand conservative thought. I certainly wouldn't recommend it to someone that doesn't already have at least some knowledge of intellectual and social history however, the view is that of a single interpretation of this history (and not necessarily the strongest interpretation) and would give someone unfamiliar with the material a very slanted view of intellectual development in the relevant periods, the interpretation given wouldn't be considered by most scholars to be the most accurate description of intellectual development over this span of time.
What it does communicate very effectively however is an intellectually defensible interpretation of political thought. There is a highly developed worldview running throughout the work presenting a poweful vision of both the past and of how this can be used to interpret the present. Kirk's literary style is somewhat unusual, he quotes heavily from the author's he is writing about while restating many of their ideas in his own voice. At times it can be confusing, as I reader I sometimes wondered if Kirk was trying to communicate how the author being studied should be interpreted against that author's contemporaries or Kirk's contemporaries, but despite this occaisional confusion the reader is left with an overall impression of what Kirk believes the conservative worldview and political program should look like. It's a valuable book to read for anyone wanting to understand the conservative point of view, though comparing this to what I'm hearing from conservatives contemporary to me I am left wondering if Kirk's vision is still influential or if it has been jettisoned in favor of other worldviews. In any case, it is still a valuable read for anyone interested in intellectual history and conservatism, though with the caveat that it's not valuable as a starting text, other sources should be pursued first so that a prospective reader has a firm grounding in general political thought before tackling this text (this text is written to be approachable by the general reader, the intent of the work is a political program however so the reader needs enough background to realize it is this rather than an unbiased overview of political thought).]
by Russel Kirk
Haven't done one of these in a while, they were taking too much time. This will just be some brief comments.
First, this is a conservatism that makes sense. I still don't agree with it as a whole, though I certainly agree with many parts of it, but this doesn't leave me scratching my head wondering what the hell these people are talking about, which has become my normal reaction to anyone identifiable as part of movement conservatism (this should be sharply distinguished from people who simply identify themselves as conservative or on the right).
Something that especially pleased me is that Kirk made some distinctions about the relation of the individual to political philosophies which I had begun to think Conservatives no longer made in the US (considering he's been dead for some time they may not today). Specifically, he recognizes that ideologies such as socialism are extremely individualistic, they rely on a concept of an "atomized individual." His version of conservatism is by contrast explicitly corporatist, emphasizing family and community connections along with the broader concepts of tradition and culture. This was very refreshing to hear. These are basic concepts necessary for discussing most any aspect of broader social theory or identity, the constant contrasting of the individual vs. socialism that I hear constantly grates on me since it shows a complete lack of understanding of either concept.
Readers who have been following for awhile will remember this was a major issue I took with Hayek when he conflated the corporatism of Nazism with the collectivism of communism. These are completely distinct concepts, while Kirk never discusses the German far right he does show an understanding of the distinctions between Communism and socialism and other means of social identity. I was glad to see there are some well known conservative writers that get these distinctions, it's not Glenn Beck all the way down.
After reading it I was left pondering the major mistakes of both the left and right. One of these for the left, is that too often they are prone to seeking change without fully considering the costs and benefits of a new system vs. the old one, too often they only look at the ills of the old and the potential benefits of the new.
On the right, it would be good to reflect more often on if they are actually defending treasured old institutions or simply resisting new ones that may either be able to exist alongside existing institutions or may be seeking to fill a gap caused by the collapse of old institutions that are beyond hope of restoration.
[Edit: Figured I should mention a little more about the book itself. Kirk provides a good overview of conservative thinking in the US and Britain, starting with Burke. It makes no apologies for presenting this intellectual history through a thoroughly conservative frame (it calls the American revolution a conservative revolution for instance, many scholars would dispute this) but knowing this going into it adds to the appeal of the book for someone wanting to understand conservative thought. I certainly wouldn't recommend it to someone that doesn't already have at least some knowledge of intellectual and social history however, the view is that of a single interpretation of this history (and not necessarily the strongest interpretation) and would give someone unfamiliar with the material a very slanted view of intellectual development in the relevant periods, the interpretation given wouldn't be considered by most scholars to be the most accurate description of intellectual development over this span of time.
What it does communicate very effectively however is an intellectually defensible interpretation of political thought. There is a highly developed worldview running throughout the work presenting a poweful vision of both the past and of how this can be used to interpret the present. Kirk's literary style is somewhat unusual, he quotes heavily from the author's he is writing about while restating many of their ideas in his own voice. At times it can be confusing, as I reader I sometimes wondered if Kirk was trying to communicate how the author being studied should be interpreted against that author's contemporaries or Kirk's contemporaries, but despite this occaisional confusion the reader is left with an overall impression of what Kirk believes the conservative worldview and political program should look like. It's a valuable book to read for anyone wanting to understand the conservative point of view, though comparing this to what I'm hearing from conservatives contemporary to me I am left wondering if Kirk's vision is still influential or if it has been jettisoned in favor of other worldviews. In any case, it is still a valuable read for anyone interested in intellectual history and conservatism, though with the caveat that it's not valuable as a starting text, other sources should be pursued first so that a prospective reader has a firm grounding in general political thought before tackling this text (this text is written to be approachable by the general reader, the intent of the work is a political program however so the reader needs enough background to realize it is this rather than an unbiased overview of political thought).]
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Book Review: Islam Observed
Islam Observed
Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia
A lucky find at a local used bookstore provided a slim, but interesting, book to read as a break from Braudel. Geertz is a prominent anthropologist whose work has influenced the study of culture across disciplines, I read some essays by him in political science classes for instance. This particular book is one of his earlier ones and is based upon ethnographic research in Indonesia and Morocco. In it, Geertz is seeking to observe how religions respond to deep changes within society, the study of a single religion in two such very different countries always this comparison to be successfully made.
To develop his argument, Geertz quickly goes over the religious history in both countries as well as traditional myths about an early religious figure in each society who also comes from a period of great change. He also describes a more recent political figure that had special significance for each state's religious life, in Morocco Muhammed V and in Indonesia Sukarno. These sections contain a wealth of fascinating information and are a good example of using comparisons to learn about culture and development. He also develops descriptions of how religious views are structured in each state, despite both being Islamic the historical experiences of each have resulted in an Islam that emphasizes very different ways of being religious and very different qualities as being admirable in religious figures.
In the more theoretical portions, Geertz describes religion as being a "symbolic screen" through which experience is interpreted. Religion serves as a paradigm, it is not the result of experiences but exists prior to them and allows them to be interpreted in everyday life. In several places he describes religion as filling in the gaps in common sense, we cannot make sense of everything we experience solely through the lens of our own experiences of how the world works so we need a broader interpretive framework.
He describes this as a fusion of common sense with the ethos of religion which makes religion part of the common sense that governs everyday interactions. He distinguishes two qualities that he sees as describing how religion alters a religious person's world view. One of these is force, which is how thoroughly it becomes infused in a person's life and how central it is to a person's identity. The second is scope, which is the range of activities where religion is seen as seen as being more or less relevant. In the two countries Geertz considers, he describes Morocco as having a greater force but less scope of religious life. Religious considerations are more intense but regard fewer aspects of everyday life than in Indonesia where almost everything has at least some small tinge of religious significance.
An area of particular interest to me is Geertz's discussion of the reaction of religious thinking to newer influences. In particular, he describes the tensions that modern life is having on religiosity in these countries. In his view, it is not reducing the role of religion in people's lives or making them doubt their own belief systems but it is instead causing them to doubt their own piety. This is caused by an increasing divergence between the world of experiences which has been influenced so much by modernization and the world as represented through their belief systems, where before each reinforced the other, now there is a divergence that needs to be reconciled.
Responses to this have varied, the one I find most interesting is scripturalism which is a return to the text of the Koran and represents a rejection not only of secular thinking but also of the religious traditions of the past. This is where the book's age actually becomes a strength. It dates from 1968, a period where the Arab-Israeli tensions were mostly between states rather than non-state groups and before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and obviously now our own, which has had a definite impact on studying Islam. Even where it is not the primary subject, I have read little on the religion that was written more recently that does not seem to have at least some influence from these events. Geertz's description of scripturalism of religion as an ideologization of it, as well as his discussions about the influence of modernity on the religious, certainly is informative of these trends that are so important today. But this is a reading of these trends after the fact, when this was written this was simply a possibility. From reading this I feel I have gained a valuable perspective on trends I know have led to radicalization that I could not have gained from reading more recent works on the subject where the direction these trends have reached today are known.
While the the book is worth reading for what it says about religion in general, or the comparative history of Indonesia and Morocco, or about comparative anthropology (or the comparative methods of cultural studies generally), I would most strongly recommend this book as a very concise way to learn about trends within Islam as they were understood before later historical developments. This is a perspective that I found surprisingly illuminating and given the work's brevity, just over 100 pages of text, would highly recommend it as a purchase for anyone that stumbles across it in a used book store (not sure I could justify paying for a new copy of a 40 year old book however, especially since Geertz has written several newer books, at least one that deals with his time in Indonesia and Morocco, though I'm unsure if the subject matter is quite the same).
Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia
A lucky find at a local used bookstore provided a slim, but interesting, book to read as a break from Braudel. Geertz is a prominent anthropologist whose work has influenced the study of culture across disciplines, I read some essays by him in political science classes for instance. This particular book is one of his earlier ones and is based upon ethnographic research in Indonesia and Morocco. In it, Geertz is seeking to observe how religions respond to deep changes within society, the study of a single religion in two such very different countries always this comparison to be successfully made.
To develop his argument, Geertz quickly goes over the religious history in both countries as well as traditional myths about an early religious figure in each society who also comes from a period of great change. He also describes a more recent political figure that had special significance for each state's religious life, in Morocco Muhammed V and in Indonesia Sukarno. These sections contain a wealth of fascinating information and are a good example of using comparisons to learn about culture and development. He also develops descriptions of how religious views are structured in each state, despite both being Islamic the historical experiences of each have resulted in an Islam that emphasizes very different ways of being religious and very different qualities as being admirable in religious figures.
In the more theoretical portions, Geertz describes religion as being a "symbolic screen" through which experience is interpreted. Religion serves as a paradigm, it is not the result of experiences but exists prior to them and allows them to be interpreted in everyday life. In several places he describes religion as filling in the gaps in common sense, we cannot make sense of everything we experience solely through the lens of our own experiences of how the world works so we need a broader interpretive framework.
He describes this as a fusion of common sense with the ethos of religion which makes religion part of the common sense that governs everyday interactions. He distinguishes two qualities that he sees as describing how religion alters a religious person's world view. One of these is force, which is how thoroughly it becomes infused in a person's life and how central it is to a person's identity. The second is scope, which is the range of activities where religion is seen as seen as being more or less relevant. In the two countries Geertz considers, he describes Morocco as having a greater force but less scope of religious life. Religious considerations are more intense but regard fewer aspects of everyday life than in Indonesia where almost everything has at least some small tinge of religious significance.
An area of particular interest to me is Geertz's discussion of the reaction of religious thinking to newer influences. In particular, he describes the tensions that modern life is having on religiosity in these countries. In his view, it is not reducing the role of religion in people's lives or making them doubt their own belief systems but it is instead causing them to doubt their own piety. This is caused by an increasing divergence between the world of experiences which has been influenced so much by modernization and the world as represented through their belief systems, where before each reinforced the other, now there is a divergence that needs to be reconciled.
Responses to this have varied, the one I find most interesting is scripturalism which is a return to the text of the Koran and represents a rejection not only of secular thinking but also of the religious traditions of the past. This is where the book's age actually becomes a strength. It dates from 1968, a period where the Arab-Israeli tensions were mostly between states rather than non-state groups and before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and obviously now our own, which has had a definite impact on studying Islam. Even where it is not the primary subject, I have read little on the religion that was written more recently that does not seem to have at least some influence from these events. Geertz's description of scripturalism of religion as an ideologization of it, as well as his discussions about the influence of modernity on the religious, certainly is informative of these trends that are so important today. But this is a reading of these trends after the fact, when this was written this was simply a possibility. From reading this I feel I have gained a valuable perspective on trends I know have led to radicalization that I could not have gained from reading more recent works on the subject where the direction these trends have reached today are known.
While the the book is worth reading for what it says about religion in general, or the comparative history of Indonesia and Morocco, or about comparative anthropology (or the comparative methods of cultural studies generally), I would most strongly recommend this book as a very concise way to learn about trends within Islam as they were understood before later historical developments. This is a perspective that I found surprisingly illuminating and given the work's brevity, just over 100 pages of text, would highly recommend it as a purchase for anyone that stumbles across it in a used book store (not sure I could justify paying for a new copy of a 40 year old book however, especially since Geertz has written several newer books, at least one that deals with his time in Indonesia and Morocco, though I'm unsure if the subject matter is quite the same).
Monday, May 3, 2010
Book Review: Civilization and Capitalism Vol. 2
The Structures of Everyday Life
The Wheels of Commerce
15th - 18th Century
Fernand Braudel
In this volume Braudel focuses on trade, commerce, and industry. The volume contains more theoretical concerns than does the previous volume, more than I can do justice to here. As a bare outline this volume sets out to refine the distinctions set out in the first volume, especially that between the free market and capitalism, probably with a bit more focus on the free-market since I assume the third volume will focus more on capitalism itself.
The first chapter seeks to describes the mechanisms that allowed for trade in the era. It describes the system of fairs that long distance trade originally took place in as well as markets and the functioning of the stock exchange. It also deals with smaller scale topics such as early shops and pedlars.
The second chapter describes the functioning of markets. This chapter contains many interesting theoretical points. Briefly, it contains a description of trading circuits and long distance trade and tries to separate out the market from other activity. It takes up topics such as describing how production was sharply limited by supply constraints on agriculture and how demand is confined mostly to the wealth since the rest too poor to demand much else than food. He also gets into some discussion of the market as a distinct system separate from the act of exchange and examines some other theories of the market. Overall, a fascinating chapter that would take quite a bit of time to unpack fully.
The third chapter fully gets into the discussion of Braudel's conception of capitalism and in particular how it relates to production in this era. Partly, his task it to explain why capital fails to have the revolutionary effect that it would later on, though he does mention in the 2nd chapter that manufacturing production had increased 5 fold between 1600 and 1800 showing that manufacturing was more significant in the period than many believe (181). There is almost too much of interest here to relate, he discusses the origins of the term capital, discusses how capital is invested during the time, discusses various types of investments, classifications of manufacturing, etc. Some of the bits I found most interesting were that one reason for the low returns on capital was the high ratio of circulating to fixed capital in the era, wages and other costs simply consumed much of the investment making accumulation of productive fixed capital (which would also where out faster than that in the industrial revolution) far more difficult. The real profit was available in distribution and marketing, not in production. As a result of this, the state often had to play a larger role in production to attract capital, without a state role many enterprises could simply not be maintained. This is just one of many obstacles described.
Chapter four describes the primary functioning of capital, in trade and in credit. This chapter discusses the importance of the highly profitable long distance trade, other sectors of the economy represent vastly larger amounts of total production but the concentration of the most profitable sectors of the economy in the hands of a relatively small group has significant consequences for development. Here he also describe early organization of trade and capital, such as the development of partnership agreements and eventually corporations (I wish there was more detail here, I am particularly curious about the development of limited liability, here this seems to be a development of merchants forming new agreements, but surely the state played a role in allowing limited liability to replace infinite liability, this development is unclear). Capitalist behavior is also described as frequently inhibiting the functioning of the self-regulating market, capitalists seek to change the rules of the game and establish monopoly profits, either through direct manipulation of markets, collusion, or attempted control through the state.
Chapter 5 sets all this against the social background of society, described as a "set of sets." This chapter, like the others, covers a lot as well. In particular it describes the state and how it became all pervasive during the era. I felt this aspect deserved more attention than it got. Other interesting tidbits were the proliferation of unused labor (paupers and vagrants), resistance of lower part of economy to using paper while upper part preferred paper (including an example of someone who got rich trading specie for soldier's paper currency), and social mobility during the period. What was most interesting however, was that he describes Europe as containing five separate hierarchies that all co-existed, seigniorial (roughly ties between lord and peasant), theocratic, territorial state, feudalism proper (chain of lords all linked together but cutting across various states), and lastly the towns (464-465). This division persists to some degree throughout the period and plays a key role due to the capitalist class remaining below those with political power so their virtues are not resented for their privileges, the ideology of the day conceives social tensions more as an active class against an idle class and less in the type of tensions between rich and poor. There is a lot more I could go into.
I'll sum this up as Braudel sums up his volume, with a brief overview of what Braudel sees as the three key elements in the development of capitalism. First, the need for an expanding market economy as a necessary but insufficient condition, second the development of a society that gives capitalist preconditions (such as inheritance rules that allow for large accumulations and division of society into groups with some degree of social mobility) examples are Europe and Japan, and last is the long distance trading routes that make up the world economy (or world economies as he puts it, he sees them as developing and changing over time). I should also note this is an overall favorable, if often critical, view of capitalism. He frequently equates capitalism with speculation and gambling but also ultimately shows that China has a free market economy without capitalism and this fails to develop. The excesses, while real, are a necessary part of the process that gives rise to the modern world, and given the very low level of material life shown at the beginning of the period I have little doubt that this on the whole a positive development.
I haven't decided what next week's is going to be yet. I'm going to get a start on the next volume of Braudel but I've been reading these too fast to truly absorb so will take this last one a bit slower. I also want to do something more modern, too much history lately. I'm going to breeze through (I've read papers on several aspects of comparative policy, especially economics, taxation and trade, but never actually read a proper general textbook on the subject so figure an overview is worth getting, even if it is from 1990) a Comparative Public Policy textbook I've had sitting on my shelf for a few years (it got left at an old apartment of mine) but may try to finish something shorter and less boring to review.
The Wheels of Commerce
15th - 18th Century
Fernand Braudel
In this volume Braudel focuses on trade, commerce, and industry. The volume contains more theoretical concerns than does the previous volume, more than I can do justice to here. As a bare outline this volume sets out to refine the distinctions set out in the first volume, especially that between the free market and capitalism, probably with a bit more focus on the free-market since I assume the third volume will focus more on capitalism itself.
The first chapter seeks to describes the mechanisms that allowed for trade in the era. It describes the system of fairs that long distance trade originally took place in as well as markets and the functioning of the stock exchange. It also deals with smaller scale topics such as early shops and pedlars.
The second chapter describes the functioning of markets. This chapter contains many interesting theoretical points. Briefly, it contains a description of trading circuits and long distance trade and tries to separate out the market from other activity. It takes up topics such as describing how production was sharply limited by supply constraints on agriculture and how demand is confined mostly to the wealth since the rest too poor to demand much else than food. He also gets into some discussion of the market as a distinct system separate from the act of exchange and examines some other theories of the market. Overall, a fascinating chapter that would take quite a bit of time to unpack fully.
The third chapter fully gets into the discussion of Braudel's conception of capitalism and in particular how it relates to production in this era. Partly, his task it to explain why capital fails to have the revolutionary effect that it would later on, though he does mention in the 2nd chapter that manufacturing production had increased 5 fold between 1600 and 1800 showing that manufacturing was more significant in the period than many believe (181). There is almost too much of interest here to relate, he discusses the origins of the term capital, discusses how capital is invested during the time, discusses various types of investments, classifications of manufacturing, etc. Some of the bits I found most interesting were that one reason for the low returns on capital was the high ratio of circulating to fixed capital in the era, wages and other costs simply consumed much of the investment making accumulation of productive fixed capital (which would also where out faster than that in the industrial revolution) far more difficult. The real profit was available in distribution and marketing, not in production. As a result of this, the state often had to play a larger role in production to attract capital, without a state role many enterprises could simply not be maintained. This is just one of many obstacles described.
Chapter four describes the primary functioning of capital, in trade and in credit. This chapter discusses the importance of the highly profitable long distance trade, other sectors of the economy represent vastly larger amounts of total production but the concentration of the most profitable sectors of the economy in the hands of a relatively small group has significant consequences for development. Here he also describe early organization of trade and capital, such as the development of partnership agreements and eventually corporations (I wish there was more detail here, I am particularly curious about the development of limited liability, here this seems to be a development of merchants forming new agreements, but surely the state played a role in allowing limited liability to replace infinite liability, this development is unclear). Capitalist behavior is also described as frequently inhibiting the functioning of the self-regulating market, capitalists seek to change the rules of the game and establish monopoly profits, either through direct manipulation of markets, collusion, or attempted control through the state.
Chapter 5 sets all this against the social background of society, described as a "set of sets." This chapter, like the others, covers a lot as well. In particular it describes the state and how it became all pervasive during the era. I felt this aspect deserved more attention than it got. Other interesting tidbits were the proliferation of unused labor (paupers and vagrants), resistance of lower part of economy to using paper while upper part preferred paper (including an example of someone who got rich trading specie for soldier's paper currency), and social mobility during the period. What was most interesting however, was that he describes Europe as containing five separate hierarchies that all co-existed, seigniorial (roughly ties between lord and peasant), theocratic, territorial state, feudalism proper (chain of lords all linked together but cutting across various states), and lastly the towns (464-465). This division persists to some degree throughout the period and plays a key role due to the capitalist class remaining below those with political power so their virtues are not resented for their privileges, the ideology of the day conceives social tensions more as an active class against an idle class and less in the type of tensions between rich and poor. There is a lot more I could go into.
I'll sum this up as Braudel sums up his volume, with a brief overview of what Braudel sees as the three key elements in the development of capitalism. First, the need for an expanding market economy as a necessary but insufficient condition, second the development of a society that gives capitalist preconditions (such as inheritance rules that allow for large accumulations and division of society into groups with some degree of social mobility) examples are Europe and Japan, and last is the long distance trading routes that make up the world economy (or world economies as he puts it, he sees them as developing and changing over time). I should also note this is an overall favorable, if often critical, view of capitalism. He frequently equates capitalism with speculation and gambling but also ultimately shows that China has a free market economy without capitalism and this fails to develop. The excesses, while real, are a necessary part of the process that gives rise to the modern world, and given the very low level of material life shown at the beginning of the period I have little doubt that this on the whole a positive development.
I haven't decided what next week's is going to be yet. I'm going to get a start on the next volume of Braudel but I've been reading these too fast to truly absorb so will take this last one a bit slower. I also want to do something more modern, too much history lately. I'm going to breeze through (I've read papers on several aspects of comparative policy, especially economics, taxation and trade, but never actually read a proper general textbook on the subject so figure an overview is worth getting, even if it is from 1990) a Comparative Public Policy textbook I've had sitting on my shelf for a few years (it got left at an old apartment of mine) but may try to finish something shorter and less boring to review.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
A line every social scientist (including economists) should know by heart
I'm reading Braudel and came across this quote. "But the laws or so-called laws of economics probably last only as long as the desires and realities of the period they reflect or interpret more or less faithfully." (182)
This should be required reading for any economist, and more generally any social scientist. It seems this should actually be obvious, conditions and institutions change so much that many of the assumptions, including behavioral assumptions, should only apply to a limited range of situations. If something really unexpected happens, it should be asked if there has been a shift in fundamental assumptions.
What Braudel was getting at though, was that Say's law did not hold in the pre-industrial economy. People were too poor and the income that workers were given was insufficient for more than basic needs so they could not stimulate demand for manufactures since they could not afford any. Agriculture remained too uncertain and productivity could not be increased enough to drive costs down, other factors constrained agricultural growth on the supply side despite a demand for it that could not be filled. Only when prices came down far enough in the industrial revolution could the poor participate in the manufactured goods market and the economy really take off (of course something must have happened in agriculture to but he doesn't address that in this section).
This was just a particularly interesting detail I came across that wouldn't fit into the book review on Sunday.
This should be required reading for any economist, and more generally any social scientist. It seems this should actually be obvious, conditions and institutions change so much that many of the assumptions, including behavioral assumptions, should only apply to a limited range of situations. If something really unexpected happens, it should be asked if there has been a shift in fundamental assumptions.
What Braudel was getting at though, was that Say's law did not hold in the pre-industrial economy. People were too poor and the income that workers were given was insufficient for more than basic needs so they could not stimulate demand for manufactures since they could not afford any. Agriculture remained too uncertain and productivity could not be increased enough to drive costs down, other factors constrained agricultural growth on the supply side despite a demand for it that could not be filled. Only when prices came down far enough in the industrial revolution could the poor participate in the manufactured goods market and the economy really take off (of course something must have happened in agriculture to but he doesn't address that in this section).
This was just a particularly interesting detail I came across that wouldn't fit into the book review on Sunday.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Book Review: Civilization and Capitalism Vol. 1 Part 2
The Structures of Everyday Life
Civilization and Capitalism
15th - 18th Century
Fernand Braudel
This is the second part of this review, a day later than promised. This volume continues in much the same way it started, a basic description of everyday life and the material background that it took place in. Braudel covers topics such as power sources, transportation, money, and towns and cities in the rest of the volume.
From this discussion, there are a few major points that arise. The first is a discussion of why technology could be slow to spread. This idea shows up in a few places throughout the volume, one place could be significantly more advanced in a few areas than other places but these ideas did not necessarily spread or continue to be developed. For example, he discusses Chinese metallurgy and in particular stee,l which was centuries ahead of European developments, Chinese techniques from the 13th century are not match by Europe until the 1780s. Examples of other technologies are given to show the uneven nature of development across the world, technology simply didn't spread as easily as it does today. He discusses several reasons for why there is this difference, from the fixed iteneraries that prevented most societies from exploring off known routes to resistance of craftspeople to specialize and protests in favor of old ways to it simply being cheaper to keep doing things the old way rather than take the risk and expense of trying something new. In many cases new knowledge is discovered but there is simply no desire, or even a concept really, that this new knowledge should be applied in a practical fashion. This changed to some extent, though Braudel makes no specific claims about there being a primary shift, and also claims that to some extent a resistance to innovation is still with us, only when things go wrong is there incentive enough to truly break with old ways and embrace innovation (he gives the example of oil dependency specifically).
The last two chapters deal with money and cities. He discusses different types of money, distinguishing between primitive currencies such as the use of salt or other items from more advanced monies that eventually gave rise to various kinds of credit and the notion of money of account vs the actual coinage. In addition, he discusses how more primitive systems, such as barter, continue to exist outside the money economy. The importance of credit and other monetary issues look like they will be taken up in greater detail in the next two volumes so I'll skip saying more now, though there are several interesting details in this volume.
The final chapter of the book is on towns and cities and introduces some more theoretical concepts than the earlier chapters. In particular, Braudel suggests that cities play a primary role in the development of capitalism and the modern state in the west that did not happen elsewhere in the world. The relative autonomy of towns let them develop their own economic policy that would lead to a sort of pre-capitalist mindset that would provide the basis for the evolution of modern capitalism. Of course, this was eventually followed by the subjugation of towns as the modern state developed but the state would take over much of the thinking of the towns rather than suppressing it. Inheriting both these attitudes as well as the development of the giant capital that went along with a centralized state combined to give rise to national markets that were necessary to fuel the massive concentration of wealth in the capital cities of all powerful states. These developments did not happen in places like China, where while the capital was large it had little independent life and was dependent on the ruler. Both the tradition of the autonomy of the town and the centralized state were essential ingredients for the later development of capitalism. This of course is still presented as background to Braudel's later model, it is presented as an essential ingredient but not as independently causal of the shift which is the product of more factors. Of course this is much simplified, Braudel works through an accumulation of small details to make his arguments rather than grand, sweeping generalizations of theory so it is hard to do him justice in a short space. This volume in particular seems to be more a matter of setting the stage for later volumes than it is a full fledged theory of the development and working of capitalism, it describes the material conditions it operates in and how the people living in that earlier world participated in the economy of their time.
For next week, I've gotten a good start on volume 2 so will be going ahead with that rather than Kirk's The Conservative Mind.
Civilization and Capitalism
15th - 18th Century
Fernand Braudel
This is the second part of this review, a day later than promised. This volume continues in much the same way it started, a basic description of everyday life and the material background that it took place in. Braudel covers topics such as power sources, transportation, money, and towns and cities in the rest of the volume.
From this discussion, there are a few major points that arise. The first is a discussion of why technology could be slow to spread. This idea shows up in a few places throughout the volume, one place could be significantly more advanced in a few areas than other places but these ideas did not necessarily spread or continue to be developed. For example, he discusses Chinese metallurgy and in particular stee,l which was centuries ahead of European developments, Chinese techniques from the 13th century are not match by Europe until the 1780s. Examples of other technologies are given to show the uneven nature of development across the world, technology simply didn't spread as easily as it does today. He discusses several reasons for why there is this difference, from the fixed iteneraries that prevented most societies from exploring off known routes to resistance of craftspeople to specialize and protests in favor of old ways to it simply being cheaper to keep doing things the old way rather than take the risk and expense of trying something new. In many cases new knowledge is discovered but there is simply no desire, or even a concept really, that this new knowledge should be applied in a practical fashion. This changed to some extent, though Braudel makes no specific claims about there being a primary shift, and also claims that to some extent a resistance to innovation is still with us, only when things go wrong is there incentive enough to truly break with old ways and embrace innovation (he gives the example of oil dependency specifically).
The last two chapters deal with money and cities. He discusses different types of money, distinguishing between primitive currencies such as the use of salt or other items from more advanced monies that eventually gave rise to various kinds of credit and the notion of money of account vs the actual coinage. In addition, he discusses how more primitive systems, such as barter, continue to exist outside the money economy. The importance of credit and other monetary issues look like they will be taken up in greater detail in the next two volumes so I'll skip saying more now, though there are several interesting details in this volume.
The final chapter of the book is on towns and cities and introduces some more theoretical concepts than the earlier chapters. In particular, Braudel suggests that cities play a primary role in the development of capitalism and the modern state in the west that did not happen elsewhere in the world. The relative autonomy of towns let them develop their own economic policy that would lead to a sort of pre-capitalist mindset that would provide the basis for the evolution of modern capitalism. Of course, this was eventually followed by the subjugation of towns as the modern state developed but the state would take over much of the thinking of the towns rather than suppressing it. Inheriting both these attitudes as well as the development of the giant capital that went along with a centralized state combined to give rise to national markets that were necessary to fuel the massive concentration of wealth in the capital cities of all powerful states. These developments did not happen in places like China, where while the capital was large it had little independent life and was dependent on the ruler. Both the tradition of the autonomy of the town and the centralized state were essential ingredients for the later development of capitalism. This of course is still presented as background to Braudel's later model, it is presented as an essential ingredient but not as independently causal of the shift which is the product of more factors. Of course this is much simplified, Braudel works through an accumulation of small details to make his arguments rather than grand, sweeping generalizations of theory so it is hard to do him justice in a short space. This volume in particular seems to be more a matter of setting the stage for later volumes than it is a full fledged theory of the development and working of capitalism, it describes the material conditions it operates in and how the people living in that earlier world participated in the economy of their time.
For next week, I've gotten a good start on volume 2 so will be going ahead with that rather than Kirk's The Conservative Mind.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Book Review: Civilization and Capitalism Vol. 1 Part 1
The Structures of Everyday Life
Civilization and Capitalism
15th - 18th Century
Fernand Braudel
This will be a brief overview, unlike last week's book which I had been reading concurrently with others, I just started this after finishing Wilson's book. I'm not finished yet as it is quite long, though not as long as the last, so I will just briefly touch on the major themes.
Braudel rejects at the outset the division of history into two periods, before and after the industrial revolution. His argument is that development was much more complex than this. There is an evolution but it is not that of a single economy but several. Specifically, he divides this into three economies, only one of these being the market economy that is most frequently written about. The other two economies are what he describes as material civilization, which are the kind of everyday activities where productive work is done but is informal and not governed by market transactions , and the third which he characterizes as the real capitalism which consists of the actions of only the most privileged individuals in the highest social hierarchies where a small number of the very wealthy and powerful can influence events across large parts of the system (so far this part has been addressed only in the introduction, I am probably not characterizing it entirely correctly).
The first volume deals primarily with "material civilization" though the other component economies play some role. He tries to take the entire world into account, in places the age of the book is shown particularly with parts of Asia where his claims seem somewhat different from what I've read in more recent works. Since I've read these areas are being revised due to new information coming in this isn't surprising and doesn't significantly detract from the work as a whole. He discusses in the first chapter issues having to due with population such as estimated totals, migration, attrition due to disease, and similar issues. This is interesting though some of it has likely been overtaken by more recent work.
After this section he moves on to a discussion of food, drink, and other aspects of daily life. A few interesting ideas emerge here. The most interesting is the contrasts in civilizations based on their main food products, rice requires different labor relations and can support more population than other grains for instance. There are also some discussions about why technological change differed in regions and why some regions may have resisted change. Other sections detail the spread of new foodstuffs as well as how such simple things as table manners has altered greatly over time, and links this into discussions about the debate over whether luxury was a driver of civilization and the development of capitalism or if it simply represented a waste of resources by a society with no better outlet for its surplus. Many other interesting details emerge though at this point in the work they have not yet cohered into a narrative that can be easily related. More on this book next week.
After completing Vol.1 I may move on to Russel Kirk's "The Conservative Mind" due to my recent thinking on the subject. Otherwise the next book will be Vol. 2.
Civilization and Capitalism
15th - 18th Century
Fernand Braudel
This will be a brief overview, unlike last week's book which I had been reading concurrently with others, I just started this after finishing Wilson's book. I'm not finished yet as it is quite long, though not as long as the last, so I will just briefly touch on the major themes.
Braudel rejects at the outset the division of history into two periods, before and after the industrial revolution. His argument is that development was much more complex than this. There is an evolution but it is not that of a single economy but several. Specifically, he divides this into three economies, only one of these being the market economy that is most frequently written about. The other two economies are what he describes as material civilization, which are the kind of everyday activities where productive work is done but is informal and not governed by market transactions , and the third which he characterizes as the real capitalism which consists of the actions of only the most privileged individuals in the highest social hierarchies where a small number of the very wealthy and powerful can influence events across large parts of the system (so far this part has been addressed only in the introduction, I am probably not characterizing it entirely correctly).
The first volume deals primarily with "material civilization" though the other component economies play some role. He tries to take the entire world into account, in places the age of the book is shown particularly with parts of Asia where his claims seem somewhat different from what I've read in more recent works. Since I've read these areas are being revised due to new information coming in this isn't surprising and doesn't significantly detract from the work as a whole. He discusses in the first chapter issues having to due with population such as estimated totals, migration, attrition due to disease, and similar issues. This is interesting though some of it has likely been overtaken by more recent work.
After this section he moves on to a discussion of food, drink, and other aspects of daily life. A few interesting ideas emerge here. The most interesting is the contrasts in civilizations based on their main food products, rice requires different labor relations and can support more population than other grains for instance. There are also some discussions about why technological change differed in regions and why some regions may have resisted change. Other sections detail the spread of new foodstuffs as well as how such simple things as table manners has altered greatly over time, and links this into discussions about the debate over whether luxury was a driver of civilization and the development of capitalism or if it simply represented a waste of resources by a society with no better outlet for its surplus. Many other interesting details emerge though at this point in the work they have not yet cohered into a narrative that can be easily related. More on this book next week.
After completing Vol.1 I may move on to Russel Kirk's "The Conservative Mind" due to my recent thinking on the subject. Otherwise the next book will be Vol. 2.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Book Review: The Thirty Years War Part 2
The Thirty Years War
Peter H. Wilson
After a bit of a delay, here is part two of my review.
An important concept I haven't taken up yet is the confessional aspect of the war. The pre-war background he sets is one of significant intermixing between confessions at the local levels, he does a good job giving evidence such as mixed marriage to show that most people took a pragmatic view towards religion and did not let it disrupt everyday life. There were of course fundamentalists that wished to bring about greater changes but this was a small minority with limited influence. In wilson's view, it is important to make a distinction between those he calls the moderates and the radicals. Throughout the war there would be those who would use their faith as a means of validating their attempts to gain greater influence and those who would seek compromise and peace across lines of faith. Alliances between belligerents of different faiths were the rule rather than the exception and the confessional nature of the war remained limited.
This is not to say that confession did not cause considerable tensions throughout. Part of this was tide to the 1555 Peace of Augsburg, which while quite successful, the period between 1555 and 1618 was unusually peaceful for the empire, did leave several unresolved issues. The peace worked by trying to set up a legal framework that both Lutherans and Catholics could co-exist in (Calvinists were not included). There were many ambiguities to this peace of course, it did not formally make a distinction between confessions to preserve at least in form the idea there remained a unified faith since there was still a belief that there was a unity between law and faith. Or as Wilson puts it "since there could be only one truth, there could be only one law." (41) Despite the relative success of the peace there were significant remaining tensions, mostly concerning ecclesiastical lands and property which would be continuing sources of tension and outright warfare over the course of the larger conflict.
Partially leading from this Confessional divide, though also containing Constitutional and political considerations, the war kicks off with a revolt in Bohemia led by a militant Protestant Bohemian aristocracy. While the course of the actual conflict is an interesting read for my purposes the interesting section is a discussion on why the revolt failed and a bit on early modern politics in general. Wilson discusses that while the Confederates had a slogan of Estates' rights this continued to represent a form of monarchy and they were unsuccessful in extending their revolt outside their social base. (310) The personal character of politics in the era also comes through strongly, their are personal conflicts between leaders, little attempt to set up organized institutions early in the revolt, and the concept of vassalage made it easy for individuals to change side by asking for forgiveness. (310) An essential feature is that the Bohemian Protestantism was not "the faith of historical progress" but a version of "aristocratic corporatism" resisting a centralized state. (310) The Catholicism of the Hapsburg's was similar in function to the role of religion in Protestant countries attempting centralization such as England. Regular taxation and methods of awards aside from land grants centralized power in the ruler's court, as distinct from the modern impersonal state, and it continued to be social capital (in the form of a stress on emotional concepts such as trust or honor) that was awarded, meaning that landless nobles were more respected than rich burghers. (311) Much of the system remained based on patronage and ideas of reciprocity which was not legally enforceable and unstable. (311) Still, this was movement towards something like a more modern state, though still with some distinct differences. Tensions were exacerbated by the shift in power and "confessional differences merely sharpened existing tensions between the horizontal solidarity of kinship and corporate ties among nobles and the vertical relationship between patron and clients." (312)
So, since I've summarized the starting situation of the Empire, what changes happen by the end. Wilson is careful to point out that the deterministic view of the development of warfare doesn't describe the actual progress of the war well. Descriptions of individual battles show that it was not differences in technique and weaponry that were decisive but a mixture of factors, such as better generalship or command an control. Armies also didn't follow the developmental path frequently described towards more modern forces, local conditions were heavily influential with forces moving towards cavalry due to the need for long range foraging. Which also shows that these were still far from paid, professional armies. Troops went through long periods without pay and lived off the land.
As for the political settlement, the Peace of Westphalia does hold up as a critical event, though like most modern assessments it is simply a landmark on a longer road and doesn't show a sharp break with the past in most respects. The Congress itself began in 1643 and would take 5 years to complete. It fell short of expectations at the time and its achievements were mixed but its ideals and methods have "influenced the theory and practice of international relations to the present." (671) There were several important developments including the erosion of medieval concept of hierarchy and ways for all participants to negotiate together without the use of a mediator establishing a precedent that extends to this day. The goals of the Congress were not met, it was to be a general peace but given that the 30 years war was a single one of several overlapping conflicts between the involved parties, and completely ignored a few contemporary conflicts (that the idea of Europe was not fully formed yet even a European peace proved elusive, the conflict in the British isles for instance was ignored) but the idea of "a 'Christian, general, and permanent peace' intended to establish lasting friendship across the continent" offered a "new charter for European relations." (753) This was of course a very significant step towards modern ideas about war and its resolution and the idea of international law.
Wilson also points out two ideas on the notion of the state that, while hardly unique, bear repeating. The first is the classic 'Westphalian state,' familiar to any student of international relations as a political body resting "on indivisible sovereignty that both excludes external agencies and does not share the exercise of internal governance with other domestic bodies. In addition it possesses well-demarcated, non-porous borders, and a common identity and culture among its inhabitants." (754) This obviously does not describe the political system at the time and is an ideal that has never been completely reached anywhere at any time. The second is that there is a growing consensus that this form of a state is not an endpoint, we're still developing. Wilson gives a good example of this by mentioning "One recent study of the European Union presents it not as a single, centralized Westphalian super-state, but as a 'neo-medieval empire,' with the process of integration remodelling the continent along lines not dissimilar to the Holy Roman Empire." (754) (I have to track this down sometime, sounds interesting)
In addition to its role as a milestone in the development of the modern idea of the state and its importance to international relations, the peace also led in the long term to taking religion out of politics, though this was hardly the intent at the time. The Empire remained Christian, though a form of toleration was extended. Rights were conceived of as being granted to corporate groups, not to individuals. While constitutional rights were granted to the three main confessions other groups had only a limited form of toleration and could generally only practice their religion within their own homes and not publicly. For the time, this was probably the most tolerant state in Europe. The path the Empire took likely represented an alternate path to the modern secular state than that followed by governments that were more successful in their push for centralization. This rooted "religious freedom in a web of corporate rights, and thus a conservative social order that saw the rule of law, not democracy, as the guarantee for stability." (762) Which of course had long-term implications distinct from what occurred in France or England.
Well, this review is finally done, its been a busy week sorry for taking so long. I'm afraid this reads rather more like a summary paper for a course than it does a proper review. Sorry for that, it's too long of a work and the threads I wanted to pull out too narrow to give a fully comprehensible view.
For this weekend, I'll be getting a start on Braudel's Civilization and Capitalism. It's fairly long so I don't expect to finish it by Sunday, I may instead throw up a review on one of a few shorter works I've been reading concurrently, it's 50-50 either way.
Peter H. Wilson
After a bit of a delay, here is part two of my review.
An important concept I haven't taken up yet is the confessional aspect of the war. The pre-war background he sets is one of significant intermixing between confessions at the local levels, he does a good job giving evidence such as mixed marriage to show that most people took a pragmatic view towards religion and did not let it disrupt everyday life. There were of course fundamentalists that wished to bring about greater changes but this was a small minority with limited influence. In wilson's view, it is important to make a distinction between those he calls the moderates and the radicals. Throughout the war there would be those who would use their faith as a means of validating their attempts to gain greater influence and those who would seek compromise and peace across lines of faith. Alliances between belligerents of different faiths were the rule rather than the exception and the confessional nature of the war remained limited.
This is not to say that confession did not cause considerable tensions throughout. Part of this was tide to the 1555 Peace of Augsburg, which while quite successful, the period between 1555 and 1618 was unusually peaceful for the empire, did leave several unresolved issues. The peace worked by trying to set up a legal framework that both Lutherans and Catholics could co-exist in (Calvinists were not included). There were many ambiguities to this peace of course, it did not formally make a distinction between confessions to preserve at least in form the idea there remained a unified faith since there was still a belief that there was a unity between law and faith. Or as Wilson puts it "since there could be only one truth, there could be only one law." (41) Despite the relative success of the peace there were significant remaining tensions, mostly concerning ecclesiastical lands and property which would be continuing sources of tension and outright warfare over the course of the larger conflict.
Partially leading from this Confessional divide, though also containing Constitutional and political considerations, the war kicks off with a revolt in Bohemia led by a militant Protestant Bohemian aristocracy. While the course of the actual conflict is an interesting read for my purposes the interesting section is a discussion on why the revolt failed and a bit on early modern politics in general. Wilson discusses that while the Confederates had a slogan of Estates' rights this continued to represent a form of monarchy and they were unsuccessful in extending their revolt outside their social base. (310) The personal character of politics in the era also comes through strongly, their are personal conflicts between leaders, little attempt to set up organized institutions early in the revolt, and the concept of vassalage made it easy for individuals to change side by asking for forgiveness. (310) An essential feature is that the Bohemian Protestantism was not "the faith of historical progress" but a version of "aristocratic corporatism" resisting a centralized state. (310) The Catholicism of the Hapsburg's was similar in function to the role of religion in Protestant countries attempting centralization such as England. Regular taxation and methods of awards aside from land grants centralized power in the ruler's court, as distinct from the modern impersonal state, and it continued to be social capital (in the form of a stress on emotional concepts such as trust or honor) that was awarded, meaning that landless nobles were more respected than rich burghers. (311) Much of the system remained based on patronage and ideas of reciprocity which was not legally enforceable and unstable. (311) Still, this was movement towards something like a more modern state, though still with some distinct differences. Tensions were exacerbated by the shift in power and "confessional differences merely sharpened existing tensions between the horizontal solidarity of kinship and corporate ties among nobles and the vertical relationship between patron and clients." (312)
So, since I've summarized the starting situation of the Empire, what changes happen by the end. Wilson is careful to point out that the deterministic view of the development of warfare doesn't describe the actual progress of the war well. Descriptions of individual battles show that it was not differences in technique and weaponry that were decisive but a mixture of factors, such as better generalship or command an control. Armies also didn't follow the developmental path frequently described towards more modern forces, local conditions were heavily influential with forces moving towards cavalry due to the need for long range foraging. Which also shows that these were still far from paid, professional armies. Troops went through long periods without pay and lived off the land.
As for the political settlement, the Peace of Westphalia does hold up as a critical event, though like most modern assessments it is simply a landmark on a longer road and doesn't show a sharp break with the past in most respects. The Congress itself began in 1643 and would take 5 years to complete. It fell short of expectations at the time and its achievements were mixed but its ideals and methods have "influenced the theory and practice of international relations to the present." (671) There were several important developments including the erosion of medieval concept of hierarchy and ways for all participants to negotiate together without the use of a mediator establishing a precedent that extends to this day. The goals of the Congress were not met, it was to be a general peace but given that the 30 years war was a single one of several overlapping conflicts between the involved parties, and completely ignored a few contemporary conflicts (that the idea of Europe was not fully formed yet even a European peace proved elusive, the conflict in the British isles for instance was ignored) but the idea of "a 'Christian, general, and permanent peace' intended to establish lasting friendship across the continent" offered a "new charter for European relations." (753) This was of course a very significant step towards modern ideas about war and its resolution and the idea of international law.
Wilson also points out two ideas on the notion of the state that, while hardly unique, bear repeating. The first is the classic 'Westphalian state,' familiar to any student of international relations as a political body resting "on indivisible sovereignty that both excludes external agencies and does not share the exercise of internal governance with other domestic bodies. In addition it possesses well-demarcated, non-porous borders, and a common identity and culture among its inhabitants." (754) This obviously does not describe the political system at the time and is an ideal that has never been completely reached anywhere at any time. The second is that there is a growing consensus that this form of a state is not an endpoint, we're still developing. Wilson gives a good example of this by mentioning "One recent study of the European Union presents it not as a single, centralized Westphalian super-state, but as a 'neo-medieval empire,' with the process of integration remodelling the continent along lines not dissimilar to the Holy Roman Empire." (754) (I have to track this down sometime, sounds interesting)
In addition to its role as a milestone in the development of the modern idea of the state and its importance to international relations, the peace also led in the long term to taking religion out of politics, though this was hardly the intent at the time. The Empire remained Christian, though a form of toleration was extended. Rights were conceived of as being granted to corporate groups, not to individuals. While constitutional rights were granted to the three main confessions other groups had only a limited form of toleration and could generally only practice their religion within their own homes and not publicly. For the time, this was probably the most tolerant state in Europe. The path the Empire took likely represented an alternate path to the modern secular state than that followed by governments that were more successful in their push for centralization. This rooted "religious freedom in a web of corporate rights, and thus a conservative social order that saw the rule of law, not democracy, as the guarantee for stability." (762) Which of course had long-term implications distinct from what occurred in France or England.
Well, this review is finally done, its been a busy week sorry for taking so long. I'm afraid this reads rather more like a summary paper for a course than it does a proper review. Sorry for that, it's too long of a work and the threads I wanted to pull out too narrow to give a fully comprehensible view.
For this weekend, I'll be getting a start on Braudel's Civilization and Capitalism. It's fairly long so I don't expect to finish it by Sunday, I may instead throw up a review on one of a few shorter works I've been reading concurrently, it's 50-50 either way.
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