Customer Reviews

Cultures Merging: A Historical and Economic Critique of Culture (Princeton Economic History of the Western World)

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What are we to make of the title "Cultures Merging"? Does it imply a trend towards homogenization? Or is it less a blending and more a colorful agglomeration of ideas and attitudes, differing in the details but nonetheless united in matters of economics and the pursuit of prosperity?

"Cultures Merging" addresses the relevance and influence of culture on economic development, advocating a middle road between the extremes of "cultural fixity", in which culture is primary, and "cultural nullity", in which culture has no place or does not matter. But these terms themselves, as Prof. Jones shows, while useful for setting boundaries, fail as self-consistent ideas, for in arguing one position, one must necessarily consider the other or risk becoming irrelevant to the real world. The very notion of "culture", in fact, presupposes biases used in the very decision making processes that economists are fond of analyzing. Thus one cannot hope to approach a complete study of the influence of culture upon economics without also looking at beliefs, customs, social mores, and cultural values. In the spirit of the catholic and liquid nature of his subject, Jones draws liberally upon economics, anthropology, sociology, historical examples, and personal anecdotes to illustrate the many ways that culture influences economics and to what extent one may properly attribute the advancement of the latter to the former.

In the end, Jones's message seems to be a hopeful one, arguing that culture may be used to advance economic development in a way that avoids cultural imperialism from without but also advances the culture--in terms of individual rights and freedoms--from within. In this scenario, then, the persistence of culture, its "ghostly transit through history," evolves in response to the needs of the market and commerce rather than stubbornly remaining unchanged and fixed. We see it happening now in communist China, although in a very controlled manner, and we may hope, for the benefit of all the world's citizens, that similar economic progress will be fostered elsewhere.

This book is slightly esoteric and fails to keep in line with its thesis primariliy do to the authors on exuberance for a topic he seems so well acquianted with. In the current debates over globalization, and both the neo-left and neo-right resorting to base generalizations about the human cultural experience, much to the service of demegougery. The author contends that culture is not an absolute and provides an awesome rebuttal to the cultural relatvisim that has plagued Universities in the West since the Boasian school of anthropology became accepted at Orthodoxy. The author is not completely opposed to the idea of culture however he believed that culture can be placed into a rational calculus and must be if economist are going to be able to address problems of global development. Though the book apppears cold iin its debunking of such an academic sacred cow, the authors sympathy for the human experience and its potential emerges throughout the work. I think it would be useful to people of all ideological persuasions, ranging form classical Marxist to Neo Liberals and in between. Even if you are apathetic, read this seminal work that may one day be regarded as a classic. You won't have many regrets.