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REVIEWS
| Capitalism and Modernity: The Great Debate. By Jack Goody (Cambridge, U.K. and Malden MA: Polity Press, 2004. vii, plus 200 pp. $21.95).
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| Capitalism and Modernity is a loosely unified set of essays rather than one tightly focused argument—but it is no less important for that. In it, one of the world's best-known anthropologists asks what modernity is, but mostly how it originated. It is not a comprehensive study, but a critical appraisal of several recent contributions to the discussion. (Full disclosure: this includes one of my books, which Goody treats quite positively.) |
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Goody argues strongly against separating "economy," "society," and "culture" in order to claim explanatory priority for one or the other. He sees invoking broad cultural generalities—"deep-rooted thoughts and practices" that permeate everything in a particular culture, and so distinguish it sharply from others— as especially counterproductive (48). He is thus sharply critical of those, such as David Landes, who stake a great deal on allegedly long-standing European advantages in "freedom," "property systems," and other very loosely-defined general "factors." Instead, Goody directs us to narrower social or cultural factors with demonstrable influence on some particular outcome (29): for instance, he rejects general claims that Europeans were more "inventive" than others, but finds the Joseph Needham's idea that scientists and craftsmen may have collaborated more closely in post-1500 Europe than elsewhere potentially useful as an explanation of its precocious mechanized industries (52). |
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Goody emphasizes that many technologies cannot be credited to any one society, instead emerging through a process of "criss-cross diffusion" in which techniques for dealing with recurring problems were adopted, adapted, and then passed along again (whether deliberately or not). Crucial examples include both technologies in the narrow sense (132–6, 142–6) and ways of knowing and organizing more generally. Thus parallel developments are not the result either of coincidence or "the universal forces of history [acting] in any semi-mystical way"; they reflect both a common Bronze Age starting point and slowly growing networks of communication, mostly connecting cities and mostly propelled by trade (160). |
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