I think we now have our own "two cultures", and Immanuel's post on
eurocentricism reaffirms one side: Arab, Chinese, Indian civilizations,
he argues, were immune to the "toxin" that is/was capitalism and the
European west was not. This position, not all that different from its
earlier formulation in Marx and Weber in the sense of preserving the great
divide between East and West, is now opposed by the other view: there
is/was no eurodifference in the realm of economic practice from the rest
of the world. An euroadvantage emerged, yes, but that is a shift of
centers within a preexisting and long in place world economy rather than
the emergence of capitalism.
Immanuel is "holding the tiller firm", the conceptual tiller of Marx and
Weber, that of the greate divide, of Europe--vs.--the--rest. The
moral evaluation of the euro difference also remains as it was with
Marx--negative, capitalism having done less rather than more good.
Where we go from here remains to be seen. We seem to have hit something
of wall. Either one belives in the difference the west supposedly made,
or one doesn't. My sense is that the facts of the case will continue to
accumulte, with Gunder's manuscript on the unity of it all being the most
complete statement of the no-difference position to date. We will argue
back and forth, debate this and that.
But if the Kuhn idea has any validity then paradigmatic shift will not be
the result of accumulating facts about Chinese production of porcelin for
export, but of some sort of theoretic reformulation or breakthrough.
That has yet to happen. For the social science part of all this--the Marx
and Weber that is theory/concept/analyitical
structure/derivations/etc.--change will come with another such model,
framework, conceptualization, theory, etc. that replaces/absorbs Marx
Weber appears. Questioning eurocentricism is part of the replacement
process; moving on to more deeply question Marx Weber and the
euro-difference is another part. The capstone probably remains a
formulation that obviates the east/west dichotomy which still remains at
the conceptual heart of Marx (asiatic mode vs. capitalism) Weber (western
rationality/capitalist spirit vs. eastern traditionalism). That is
somewhere off in the future.
Albert Bergesen
Department of Sociology
University of Arizona
Tucson, Arizona 85721
Phone: 520-621-3303
Fax: 520-621-9875
email: albert@u.arizona.edu