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The Casefor CulturalSensitivity in (Economic) History THE PROFESSION by DavidMoltke-Hansen !economic history is stilla battleground. George C. Rogers made thepoint in his commentary on several econometricpapers some two decades ago. Observing "It is names, not numbers, that count, " heflashed on the screen a slide ofa mid-eighteenth-century waterfront view ofCharleston, South Carolina. He then went down the row ofwharves and after naming their owners, explainedtheir ties across theAthntic, down in the Caribbean, andalong theAthntic seaboard. It was a bravuraperformance. Historyfor him was about people, not simply their statistical shadows andpatterns. Itfrustrated Rogers that his subject had been lost to view in thepapers on which he was commenting. Why not, he in effect was asking render the understandings derivedfrom statisticalanalysis in such terms as his reading ofthe Charleston waterfront suggested? Rogers'commentary was aho substantive. South Carolinians in the eighteenth century lived within the worldeconomic system. The meanings andfunctions ofthis system, however, werepersonalas wellas local, notjust statistical orglobal. The same is true, it can be argued, when the subject is the American Souths industrialization in the half-century before or the half-century after the Great Depression. One needs to grasp the nature of the challenges and changes facing the Souths leading modernizers, this argument goes, to see broadly the contexts and constraints within which these men operated. That said, the story is still the achievement of relative economic success in a relatively backward area, and that story should, the argument continues, take us back from numbers to names and from economics to culture. From this perspective, much of the interest of the story lies in the ways in which modernizers defined and pursued their goals culturally as well as economically. These men were not simply importing, but adapting, as well as adapting to, norms and practices originally developed elsewhere. In doing so, they were taking into account issues of race, class, and gender that had specifically regional, not only national, dimensions. The argument has present application . Although Mississippi and North Carolina are now the most industrialized states in the union, labor does not have nearly the organized presence there that it developed in the North. This matters, as do the differences in worker culture between North and South. As a machinist from New Jersey recently observed, living in Charlotte is not like living in Newark or Chicago. He was talking about more than prevalent accents and diet. He found education, productivity, and professional associations as well as pace of life, neighbors' attitudes, and entertainment opportunities very different. "You can take the Yankee out of the North," he said, "but you can't take the North out of the Yankee." Many southerners would agree. There are still cultural as well as economic differences between North and South, although they are diminishing. continued on page IO ??????????G z^ÏHi X E — ? z G. Z u. : ? BllRAL SENSITIVITY ronmmnifrompay 9 What scholars need to remember, the culturally sensitive insist, is that the Souths industrialization began as southerners were consciously reframing their cultural identities after the Civil War. In important ways the economic and cultural development of the region were intertwined. The contrasting argument is that an area's long-term economic success is to a large degree situational and circumstantial, not cultural or social or moral. The small initial advantages ofsome communities or regions become magnified with the passage of time. Success breeds success. Little differences become big differences. Such economic success, however, is not predestined or permanent. The plantation economy propelled much of the Old South's wealth but then mired the region in colonial dependence on an industrializing North in the wake of the Civil War's devastation. Scholars inclined to this culturally insensitive approach ignore the arguments of Max Weber and Richard Tawney in, respectively. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit ofCapitalism and Religion and the Rise ofCapitalism. Weber and Tawney sought to explain the motives and behaviors of the participants in the take-offs ofthe economies of Northern and Western Europe. They observed that Protestantism arose in these same areas of future economic development at a time and among people important in that development. Their conclusion was that the culture and elements of the ideology of Protestantism...

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