Capitalism and Modernity: The Great Debate (review)

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.)

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).

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).

Within this broad urban network, Goody sees far more similarities than critical differences. He defines "merchants" broadly (151-2) and finds them engaging in accumulation and reinvestment of profits going back to the Bronze Age (129); he questions whether any highly specific configuration of the relations of production was necessary to sustained economic growth and "modernity." Consequently, he argues, it makes less sense to speak of a "failure" to develop "capitalism" in non-European settings than of the development of various equally viable institutions (109-111). He is even less persuaded by attempts to root modernity in a uniquely Western type of individual, whether that person is distinguished by broad characteristics (such as rational calculation, self-discipline, and risk-taking), or a more specific behavior (such as family planning). For the former, he points to examples of individualism from Japan to Sudan (91-92). On population behavior specifically, he notes the speed of the demographic transition in many parts of the world (often faster than in Europe once it began), but particularly focuses on James Lee and Wang Feng's work outlining a Chinese demographic regime that produced rates of fertility no higher than Europe's, but through very different mechanisms. In fact, Goody goes beyond the authors he relies on in minimizing East-West differences. While Lee and Wang argue that the Chinese demographic regime was "collectivist" rather than "individualistic" (even before the massive state intervention of the late 20th century), Goody doubts that the evidence presented justifies any such binary distinction (93-100). (Here Goody makes a rare historiographic slip, using Arthur Wolf's critique of Lee and Wang without mentioning their very thorough response.)

If Goody is skeptical of most claims for European exceptionalism, he is equally unconvinced by claims of "uniformitarianism": the argument, most strongly associated with James Blaut, that prior to 1492, all areas of the world had roughly comparable potentialities (63-77). He particularly notes a number of ways in which a series of developments beginning with...