< < <
Date Index > > > |
WS theory - an outsiders view by Clint Ballinger 06 April 2002 19:48 UTC |
< < <
Thread Index > > > |
Dear WSN: I happened to be reading a review of "Nonzero : The Logic of Human Destiny (Vintage)" by Robert Wright on Amazon and ran across the paragraph below. It seems to hold a lot of truth. "Nonzero is another of the recent works that approaches meta-history using large amounts anthropology, sociology and science. The large scale view of history (meta-history on a Toynbee scale) has been somewhat abandoned by historians in the last two generations. The few schools that have adopted such approaches, such as World-Systems, seem to have an academic and political axe to grind winding up as intellectual cul-de-sacs rather than pathbreaking theories." For a group of scholars who nominally want to look at the "big picture" more than others there seems to be an inordinate amount of bickering in WS theory over minutiae of definitions and such compared to actual research. There is an interesting parallel in another heterodox academic area, Austrian economics. I disagree strongly, as I imagine many WS analysts likewise do, with much of the mathematical and narrow econometric approach of mainstream economics. In researching this I attempted to find the best critiques of the overuse of mathematics in economics, and "Austrians" are of course noted for this. I disagree with most "Austrian" analysis, but do find important aspects of their anti-math critiques useful. As an aside, I would HIGHLY recommend an excellent article that sums up most of these points called "Why I Am Not an Austrian Economist" by Bryan Caplan, an unusually lucid economics writer of the "Virginia School" of public choice analysis ( at http://gopher.gmu.edu/departments/economics/bcaplan/whyaust.htm) This article gives a wonderfully clear overview of both neoclassical (which alone makes the article worthwhile) and Austrian economics. Likewise, Caplan, towards the end of the article, gives a brief but devastating critique of the overuse of math in economics (his "ten most useful ideas in economics" argument- check it out- it is good, and interesting, because Caplan is a Princeton trained expert in the use of mathematics in economics). At any rate, what made me think of Caplan's article in relationship to WS is his paraphrasing of Deng Xiaoping, "One should not talk of methodology every day. In real life, not everything is methodology." He says this because Austrians became known for constant bickering over minutiae of methodology. WS seems to have fallen into a similar trap. There is also a famous quote about Austrian economics by Milton Friedman who said that "there is no Austrian economics - only good economics, and bad economics." Caplan adds to this that "Austrians do some good economics, but most good economics is not Austrian." Might this not apply to WS theory? There is no world systems macro-history, only good macro-history and bad macro-history. World systems theorists do some good macro-history, but most good macro-history is not world systems macro-history. This is my view from the outside. Sincerely, Clint Ballinger Dallas, Texas PS A nice review of recent macro-histories is: Stokes, Gale (2001) "Why the West? The Unsettled Question of Europe's Ascendancy," Linguafranca vol. 11 no. 8 http://www.linguafranca.com/print/0111/cover.html ; version of "The Fates of Human Societies: A Review of Recent Macro-histories," in The American Historical Review 106, no. 2 (April 2001): 508525. I believe "Louis Proyect" project posted the Linguafranca article here several months ago, but it is worth mentioning again. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - online filing with TurboTax http://taxes.yahoo.com/
< < <
Date Index > > > |
World Systems Network List Archives at CSF | Subscribe to World Systems Network |
< < <
Thread Index > > > |