>Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1998 09:13:42 +0000
>From: Jeffrey Sommers <jsommers@lynx.dac.neu.edu>
>Reply-To: jsommers@lynx.dac.neu.edu
>Organization: World History Center
>To: macewan@umbsky.cc.umb.edu, albert@U.Arizona.EDU,
denemark@strauss.udel.edu,
> CHEWS@axe.humboldt.edu, lhnelson@raven.cc.ukans.edu,
> paulo.frank@wanadoo.fr, lynniew@gte.net,
> avi chomsky <achomsky@salem.mass.edu>,
> Andre Gunder Frank <agfrank@chass.utoronto.ca>,
> Boris Kagarlitsky <gbk@glasnet.ru>, dmk@world.std.com,
> parker james <hjames@emerald.tufts.edu>,
> J B Owens <OWENJACK@FS.isu.edu>,
> prasannan parthasarathi <prasannan.parthasarathi@bc.edu>,
> jagoldstone@ucdavis.edu, platttm@hhsserver.hhs.csus.edu,
> kpomeran@benfranklin.hnet.uci.edu, conlon@u.washington.edu,
> mlevine@lcsc.edu, schoeber@fas.harvard.edu,
tmciolek@coombs.anu.edu.au,
> chomsky@mit.edu, CHRISCD@JHUVM.HCF.JHU.EDU, davebuck@csd.uwm.edu,
> chriscd@jhu.edu, James Blaut <70671.2032@compuserve.com>,
> wilsondk@bc.edu, seckstei@bu.edu, j-grigera@usa.net,
pcperdue@mit.edu,
> manning@neu.edu, lrsimon@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU,
jmcarr@facstaff.wm.edu,
> ditmans1@fas.harvard.edu, michael@ecst.csuchico.edu,
> gimenez@spot.Colorado.EDU, lsgonick@csupomona.edu,
arrom@brandeis.edu,
> coatswor@fas.harvard.edu, dlandes@harvard.edu, roupp@csn.net,
> whowarth@lynx.dac.neu.edu, Emartin@lynx.dac.neu.edu
>Subject: David Landes/Gunder Frank debate
>
> David Landes and Andre Gunder Frank
> debate
>"ReOrient" vs.
>"The Wealth and Poverty of Nations"
>-- Two views of the World Economy in History (University of Amsterdam,
>emeritus) Wednesday, Dec. 2nd
>3:00-4:30 p.m.
>450 Dodge Hall
>Northeastern University Event is free and open to the public.
>Teachers are encouraged to bring their students. <jsommers@lynx.neu.edu> or
>see our web page http://www.whc.neu.edu
> HISTORY, THEORY AND POLICY?
>DEBATING THE WEALTH AND POVERTY OF LANDES AND FRANK No question that this
>will establish David Landes as preeminent in his field and in his time."
>ALBERT BERGESEN contends that Gunder Frank's ReOrient is "absolutely
>essential to understanding world history."
> maintains that Max Weber was right about the RISE OF THE WEST’
> and
>Harvard colleague SAMUEL HUNTINGTON is right about the coming CLASH OF
> between THE WEST AND THE REST’. For Landes and them,
> exceptionalism of its
>values and institutions, that were and still are lacking in the Rest.
>Thus, Landes refers to China as a culturally and intellectually
>homeostatic society that had indifference to technology, lacked
>institutions for finding and learning, abhorred mercantile success,
>showed deliberate introversion, isolationism, risk aversion,
>irrationality, xenophobia, arrogance, haughtiness, stunned
>submissiveness, self-defeating escapism and so on. FRANK retorts that Weber
>got it all wrong, and Marx, Polanyi, Parsons,
> Landes himself
> in his 1969 book UNBOUND PROMETHIUS
> the intervening 30 years of
> social theory,
> other
>historians, economists and social scientists is vitiated by the ingrained
> historiography and social theory that concentrate their
> which blacks out the
>evidence from the rest of the world and distorts that of the West itself.
>This triumphalist not to mention racist ideology masquerading as history
> holistic historical
> that not
> instead Asia, and particularly Middle Kingdom China, remained
> The subsequent Decline of the
> the West were more
>globally than locally determined temporary processes that have run their
>historical course and are already coming full circle with the contemporary
>renewed rise of East Asia and
>particularly of China. Therefore, it is high time to ReORIENT our
>historiography, social theory and political policy as well, all the
> in view of the reiteration of and accolades for the poverty of
> history’ and theoretically unfounded
> with the equally unfounded and
> propaganda about End of History”
>and Clash of Civilizations”. fundamental rethinking by the iconoclast
> who challenges virtually all other significant scholarship about the
>historical origins of the
> absolutely essential for understanding
>world history. LANDES retorts that Frank and his echoes are a magnet for
>fallacies and
>fantasies [and] the invention of folklore. Bad history.
Albert Bergesen
Dept. of Sociology
Univ. of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721
E-MAIL: albert@u.arizona.edu
PHONE: (520)621-3303
FAX: (520)621-9875