Book Description
This award-winning book explores one of the most successful cultures and society the world has ever seen-capitalism. From its European roots more than 500 years ago to the present, the book examines the problems of capitalism's expansion, inequality, environmental destruction, and social unrest. Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism provides the reader with the anthropological, economic, and historical framework to understand the origins of global problems, why globalization and the global expansion of the culture of capitalism has generated protest and resistance, and the steps that are necessary to solve global problems. As one reviewer said, "This is a book that will doubtless create debate and controversy, but its topic should be pondered seriously by all who consider themselves citizens of our world society today." For anyone interested in global issues and international affairs.
Customer Reviews:
Why we need to change the world.......2007-06-01
This is an excellent book even if it is outrageously over-priced.
To be sure it is polemical and passionate, neither of which are necessarily bad things and certainly not in this case. Professor Robbins argues clearly and cogently for viewing capitalism as another culture and not as an inevitable evolutionary outcome of economic history.
Perhaps the book over-emphasises the dangers and difficulties of capitalism but it is not inaccurate in describing them. Here is a history of capitalism laid out in well-written prose and it is not a pretty history. We have much to answer for and much to do to put things right.
Highly recommended.
way overpriced but worth reading.......2006-12-08
I've given this three stars simply because it would have to be astounding good to be worth $77, and it's not. It is very good however, and if the price was more like $20 of less, which would be reasonable for an oversized paperback, I would have given it 5 stars. Evidently, because it's a textbook the publisher can get away with this. However, I happened to find a used copy at a college bookstore, and felt I should get it because I have been wanting to better understand globalism, CAFTA, NAFTA, the WTO and the protests against it, the World Bank and how it both helps and interferes, the jobs that are being outsourced to Asia (btw, last time I spoke to Amazon customer service, it was with someone in India!), the seemingly endless reach and power of certain multi-national corporations, etc., and I thought this book would fit the bill. I haven't finished it yet, but it certainly does, and I've been learning a lot from reading it. Thought it definitely has a point of view, I feel it's a more balanced introductory book than the many highly opinionated books written by particular economists and think-tankers who are inevitably trying to persuade rather than educate.
Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism (according to Marx).......2005-12-23
This text was required reading for a political science class dealing with developing nations. The only major problem I have from this book being in a political science class is that the content is overwhelmingly normative--the reader is given the impression that capitalism and capitalists are unanimously responsible for nearly everything terrible that has happened, including war, disease, famine, etc. The author spends a great deal of time talking about the resurgence of mostly benign protestant fundamentalism, while devoting only a few pages to discussing Islamic fundamentalism (it's really the West's fault, for spending a few million to support the mujahadeen). While there is a case to be made that market failures do lead to starvation, no mention is given to famines by progressives like Josef Stalin or Mengitsu (they aren't even listed in the glossary).
The book is written through the prism of Marxism and dependency theory by bourgeoisiephobe Richard Robbins, someone who should owe some gratitute to capitalism for getting this piece published.
On pages 42-43, one can see good examples of his economic illiteracy: the production function is "the black box" and he ignores conventional economic terms by designating "C" (which denotes consumption in economics) for commodities. Perhaps none of this is relevant, since he is a political scientist who seems to be making up his own economic models.
This book does give good insight into the structuralist perspective on international political economy. The solutions presented towards the end are, however, unrealistic (zero-economic growth, a "maximum wage," on income, revoking corporate personhood, etc.) Use this book to complement your studies on IPE/sociology/whatever suits your fancy and incorporate texts from the liberal and mercantilist schools if you want a real understanding of how the world workds.
WOW!!!.......2004-09-29
It's such a great book and it gives you detailed insights. I learned so much, I never knew how serious global issues were until now.
Excellent book for anyone who cares about the world today!.......2001-08-24
I admit I'm a little biased. Richard Robbins was actually a professor of mine at SUNY Plattsburgh, and I had the opportunity to read this book while at the same time taking his global issues class. This book not only changed my mind about a few of the world's issues, it also gave me a broader perspective about the world in general. I now think about things such as 'where do my clothes come from?' and 'how did my fruit cup get here?'. Robbins is an extremely talented man and writer who asks the question, 'Is Disneyland for Everyone?' The answer: a resounding 'No, and here's why!' This book would benefit anyone seeking to gain an understanding about the world and his/her place in it. It truly is a global world, and Robbins' book is the first step to living in it.
Book Description
Slavery helped finance the Industrial Revolution in England. Plantation owners, shipbuilders, and merchants connected with the slave trade accumulated vast fortunes that established banks and heavy industry in Europe and expanded the reach of capitalism worldwide.
Eric Williams advanced these powerful ideas in Capitalism and Slavery, published in 1944. Years ahead of its time, his profound critique became the foundation for studies of imperialism and economic development. Binding an economic view of history with strong moral argument, Williams's study of the role of slavery in financing the Industrial Revolution refuted traditional ideas of economic and moral progress and firmly established the centrality of the African slave trade in European economic development. He also showed that mature industrial capitalism in turn helped destroy the slave system. Establishing the exploitation of commercial capitalism and its link to racial attitudes, Williams employed a historicist vision that set the tone for future studies. In a new introduction, Colin Palmer assesses the lasting impact of Williams's groundbreaking work and analyzes the heated scholarly debates it generated when it first appeared.
Customer Reviews:
Capitalism and Slavery is definitely food for the brain........2006-08-19
This is a very, very excellent piece of work. I read and studied this book when I was a teenager in high school in Trinidad. At that time I was required to study the book as part of our Caribbean History syllabus. That was over 13 years ago. So as an adult I decided to purchase the book and appreciate the information. And boy this was the best decision I ever made. I recommend people of all races and backgrounds to read this book. As the first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago Dr. Eric Williams has left us with a gift.
Capitalism and Slavery.......2006-05-11
The basic theory underlying Eric Williams's Capitalism and Slavery is that slavery in the colonies, particularly the West Indies so far as this analysis is concerned, brought about capitalism, and thereby led to its own decline.
The first five chapters of the book explain the nature of British economics prior to the American Revolution. Synthesizing information rather than expressing his own view, Williams discusses triangular trade among England, the African coast, and the slave-holding colonies. In essence, England exported goods and ships, Africa exported slaves, and the colonies exported slave-produced raw materials.
American independence destroyed the mercantilist scheme of triangular trading. The ex-colonies now had no incentive to trade with the West Indies at their monopoly prices, instead turning to French islands for their sugar, at considerably lower prices. Consequently, British businessmen were no longer interested in giving economic protection to the West Indies because doing so without mainland North America would cost them money. One basic tenet of Adam Smith's capitalism is that business should be efficient and profitable, and monopolies simply were neither. The laissez-faire approach, or Smith's "invisible hand," meant eliminating monopolies and letting economics take its course.
During this time the Industrial Revolution also occurred, generating new machinery, most notably Watt's steam engine, and simplifying the extraction of raw materials. Ironworks were now much more efficient, for example, as was the process of turning wool into useable cloth. These advantages put Great Britain in a position to economically dominate the world. During this time also Spanish colonies in South America began breaking away from Spain, opening up vast regions for British trade. Similarly, Asia became a possibility for a wide variety of goods, most notably, in the scope of Williams' book, East Indian sugar. All these opportunities and Britain's economic superiority culminated in the end of monopolistic practices.
Slavery had precipitated these developments by generating fantastic wealth through triangular trading; without slavery, that trade scheme would not have existed. Once these developments came to pass, however, slavery proved itself largely pass?. Without the monopoly on West Indian sugar, slave trading became substantially less profitable. At the same time, when the American mainland split from Great Britain, suddenly Britain was no longer dependent on slavery for economic success, but instead could be a global distributor for goods. Furthermore, abolitionists in England gave cry to the crime of slavery, since they were no longer directly dependent on it, and eventually Britain banned the slave trade.
Williams's analysis is interesting and well worth reading. That said, his assertion that slavery declined is only partly true; it was alive and well in the southern United States. Furthermore, while Williams claims slavery brought about triangular trading, which in turn brought about the Industrial Revolution, one wonders if slavery simply expedited the arrival of the Industrial Revolution. Finally, he focuses to a significant extent on British humanitarianism in ending slavery; cynically, one must consider the relevance of slavery to those humanitarians, and how many there were after the Industrial Revolution.
A wonderful thesis withstanding the tests of time.......2006-03-21
I recently read this book for graduate school and highly recommend it. This book was written in 1940 and while critics have been able to pick at a few details within the book, noone has every successfully disproven his entire thesis - that the rise of industrial capitalism would not have been possible without the existence profits derived from slavery and the slave trade. Williams does a splended job of illustrating how slavery influenced all facets of the triangular trade, which in turn shaped Britian into an economic power. It also brings put the economic reasons for the abolitionist movement (namely, that abolitionists were motivated by free-trade, no necessarily compassion in their opposition to the slave trade).This is a must-have book for anyone interested in a strictly economic look at slavery, it's rise, fall and demise.
Misunderstanding of Islamic slavery.......2005-11-13
The last two reviewers who seemed to criticize Williams for not discussing other forms of slavery miss the point. Williams was not engaged in some sort of West bashing but attempted to explain the significance of slavery in the development of the Caribbean. Insofar as Islam is concerned, the reviewers once again miss the essential point. Rather than investigate what Islam actually says about slavery they go with a knee-jerk assumption. Here is what Kecia Ali has written about slavery in Islamic society:
"The Qur'an, which Muslims believe to have been revealed by God to the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century, makes numerous references to slaves and slavery (e.g., Q. 2.178; 16.75; 30.28). Like numerous passages in the Hebrew bible and the New Testament, the Qur'an assumes the permissibility of owning slaves, which was an established practice before its revelation. The Qur'an does not explicitly condemn slavery or attempt to abolish it. Nonetheless, it does provide a number of regulations designed to ameliorate the situation of slaves. It recommends freeing slaves, especially "believing" slaves (Q. 2.177). Manumission of a slave is required as expiation for certain misdeeds (Q. 4.92; 58.3) and another verse states that masters should allow slaves to purchase their own freedom (Q. 24.33).
The Qur'an also suggests certain means of integrating slaves, some of whom were enslaved after being captured in war, into the Muslim community. It allows slaves to marry (either other slaves or free persons; Q. 24.32; 2.221; 4.25) and prohibits owners from prostituting unwilling female slaves (Q. 24.33). Despite this protection against one form of sexual exploitation, female slaves do not have the right to grant or deny sexual access to themselves. Instead, the Qur'an permits men to have sexual access to "what their right hands possess," meaning female captives or slaves (Q. 23.5-6; 70.29-30). This was widely accepted and practiced among early Muslims; the Prophet Muhammad, for example, kept a slave-concubine (Mariya the Copt) who was given to him as a gift by the Roman governor of Alexandria.
Traditional Islamic law (fiqh) elaborates significantly on the Qur'anic material concerning slavery. The enslavement of war captives is regulated, along with the purchase and sale of slaves. While it is not permissible to enslave other Muslims, the jurists clarify that if a non-Muslim converts to Islam after enslavement, he or she remains a slave and may be lawfully purchased and sold like any other slave. (This rule closes a potential loophole allowing for slaves to gain their freedom by the simple fact of conversion.) The law also prescribes penalties for slave owners who maltreat or abuse their slaves; these penalties can include forced manumission of the slave without compensation to the owner.
Islamic law devotes special attention to regulating the practice of slave marriage and concubinage, in order to determine the paternity and/or ownership of children born to a female slave. A man cannot simultaneously own and be married to the same female slave. The male owner of a female slave can either marry her off to a different man, thus renouncing his own sexual access to her, or he may take her as his own concubine, using her sexually himself. Both situations have a specific effect on the status of any children she bears. When female slaves are married off, any children born from the marriage are slaves belonging to the mother's owner, though legal paternity is established for her husband. When a master takes his own female slave as a concubine, by contrast, any children she bears are free and legally the children of her owner, with the same status as any children born to him in a legal marriage to a free wife. The slave who bears her master's child becomes an umm walad (literally, mother of a child), gaining certain protections. Most importantly, she cannot be sold and she is automatically freed upon her master's death."
As for the Aztec, they had a system of slavery that also came with a bundle of rights, far different from the chattel slavery of the European variety.
Caribbean History.......2004-12-03
Although there may be complainants about Dr. Williams not addressing certain forms of slavery throughout history it has to be kept in mind that his thesis was about the hows and whys of African enslavement in the Caribbean. Williams firmly argues and details how today's culture of racism and capitalism was born.
This book is extremely well done and a great beginner for anyone interested in the topic of Caribbean history.
Book Description
Max Weber's best-known and most controversial work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, first published in 1904, remains to this day a powerful and fascinating read. Weber's highly accessible style is just one of many reasons for his continuing popularity. The book contends that the Protestant ethic made possible and encouraged the development of capitalism in the West. Widely considered as the most informed work ever written on the social effects of advanced capitalism, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism holds its own as one of the most significant books of the twentieth century. The book is one of those rare works of scholarship which no informed citizen can afford to ignore.
Customer Reviews:
Great theory, but not always an easy read.......2007-07-30
Max Weber's thesis that the Protestant work-ethic helped give rise to the spirit of modern capitalism is well known, but how true is it? Weber goes into an impressive review of historical details on how Luther's concept of the calling became the Calvinist concept of labor to glorify God, and finally the Puritan concept that is applied to business as well as anything else. In short, the Protestant hard-work ethic, intended to be a sign of election and to glorify god, inadvertently (at least in part) gave birth to the spirit of capitalism, of sustained, planned, methodical profit-making. Though capitalism is no longer dependent upon religion for maintaining its ethos (we are all caught in the rat race), it is fascinating how Weber makes a compelling case that a once anti-materialist Protestant Christianity came to affirm the capitalist spirit by way of a hard-working ethic. Many of Weber's themes are persuasive, if also controversial. Weber has by no means isolated the final or full cause of the take-off of capitalism in modern times, but he has made a good case for one contributing factor. Would that his style of writing had been a bit more direct - Weber's insights are at least worth careful reading.
Value edition for the budget minded.......2007-06-06
The "reviews" about Weber's thesis could fill libraries. Ooops! They actually have!
So let's ignore that.
The focus here is on value, and this Dover value edition is perfectly fine for the thrifty college student on a limited budget who needs to read this work for an assignment but doesn't want to be at the mercy of the University Library.
This is a seminal work that reaches far into other fields of inquiry, so it is likely you will need it no matter what your field.
The binding is an el-cheap-o slab of glue, so it won't lie flat on your desk when you are transcribing a quote for a citation.....but since you've downloaded the text file you'll just cut and paste anyway.
Academic citations to this edition are perfectly acceptable in scholarly papers and under MLA, ASA, APA, ACS, APSA, "Turabian" and MHRA style guidelines (and perhaps others).
A Very Standard Economic Postulate.......2007-04-15
Assuming Max Weber's thesis to be true proves useful. By assuming it as a postulate, one gains a potential way of understanding the beliefs of the western-world's upper pareto boundary and the typical ressentiments / bad faith (bad-tempered, difficult mental traps everyone who tries to create something can't help but fall into from time to time, mea culpa!) of the lower.
Max Scheler (who advised Karol Wojtyla as a Ph.D. student) seems to have done something similar to what Max Weber describes the upper pareto boundary (somewhere over the rainbow as the song goes) as having done. Max Scheler "attempted to reconcile Nietzsche's ideas of master-slave morality and ressentiment with the Christian ideals of love and humility."
Anyway, just projecting a few of my other readings onto this one a bit. L8R.
Don't buy the Dover edition of this book........2006-10-26
The Dover edition of the book has been bound so tightly that it's difficult to turn the pages--and to read the words, which are nearly swallowed up by the binding. It feels like if you force it at all, the whole binding will come unglued.
It may be cheap, but it *feels* so extremely cheap that it's just not worth the money saved. Buy yourself another edition--or for that matter, just get the text free online. Anything's better than trying to read this edition.
great idea, little proof.......2006-09-26
As part of my enquiry into the forces that the Reformation unleased, I decided to at last read this classic.
Alas, it was disappointing in that Weber makes the assertion - that reformation-spawned ideologies were the foundation of the capitalist revolution - and then offers little historical explanation as proof of his thesis. Instead, what he does is to painstakingly describe the ideologies in question, to show that they are compatible conceptually with his definition of capitalism (the rise of an urban bourgeoisie that created wealth by investing in industry as a major new economic actor, eventaully leading to the eclipse of the old land-based aristocracy). As Hannah Ardnt said, so long as you are far enough from reality, you can make almost any ideas appear compatible. As such, I was unconvinced that a) the feeling of being among the elect made people work harder to prove it by material success and b) that a heightened sense of individuality that arose with separation from the papist ideologies augmented this pursuit of self-development via the massing of personal capital. While the protestant ideologies may conform vaguely to these notions, that does not in the slightest prove a direct causal connection. Indeed, one might argue that it was the repression by the Inquisition - against the bourgoise's challenge to traditional aristocrats - that may have delayed the development of capitalism in Catholic countries for a few centuries. (That capitalism did develop in many Catholic countries also undermines the book's prinicpal thesis.)
This essay is interesting as a pioneering attempt at sociological determinism from a rather existentialist perspective, but reading the whole thing was a bit much for me. Weber was a great and innovative thinker, however out of date his modes of reasoning have become - they are strictly qualitative. Not recommended except asof historical interest.
Book Description
The subject of The Wheels of Commerce is the development of mechanisms of exchange--shops, markets, trade networks, and banking--in the pre-industrial stages of capitalism.
Customer Reviews:
One of the best books I will ever read.......2007-04-08
Wow, by far one of the best books that I have ever read. I usually do not like history because I prefer to be more proactive and immersed in today's world. But the clarity on our society's current situation that this book gives by examining the roots of the movement to capitalism is incredible and was so worth my time that I had to take a week's vacation off work in order to make sure that I could focus to read this. The writing conveys only one thing - complete clarity into the world today. It is an incredible opus; I loved it.
There is no easy answer to the challenges we humans face in organizing and creating a shared activity to enable the greatest overall productivity and happiness. The evolution of humanity during the early Renaissance years provides the explanation for where and why we are organized in this way today. Understanding this time in this way (through the lens of the economics of that time period) gives a much greater appreciation for the world today that we have constructed. The most core problems of humanity - social mobility, equitable distribution of resources, stability, and collective cooperation, have never (and may never) become solvable. This book explains these dynamics so eloquently that I wish I had time to read it again and again - much like a great adventure novel that as a kid you just wished would never end and felt a real loss once it did and you had to re-emerge into the real world around you.
Braudel is phenomenal in his depth of understanding about how society of the 15-18th centuries operated. I can't recommend it more highly.
Very Annalesesque.......2006-06-09
In The Wheels of Commerce, Fernand Braudel deftly blended history and economics with the result that neither suffers. His goal in this book, the second volume in his Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, was "to analyse the machinery of exchange as a whole, from primitive barter up to and including the most sophisticated capitalism" (21). In the process of examining this machinery of exchange, Braudel also proposed an ambitious thesis concerning the origins of capitalism. The book itself is a monumental work, an impressive combination of statistical analyses and illustrations from primary sources.
Braudel's first two chapters, "The Instruments of Exchange" and "Markets and the Economy," investigated the role of circulation. In chapter one, he concentrated on the mechanisms by which goods (and money) were traded. Braudel explained that markets and shops were at the bottom of the world of commerce. Markets took place once or twice a week, and shops were open everyday. Fairs, the wholesale markets, were on the higher level. Participants traded large amounts of goods and settled their accounts at the end. Braudel pointed out the importance of fairs in the development of capitalism: "The fair itself created credit" (91). If one merchant had a negative trade balance with another merchant, he would either offer a bill of exchange (a promise of payment on another exchange) or defer payment with interest until another fair. Additionally, these bills of exchange could be sold to a third party if necessary, introducing speculation. The trading mechanisms of the fair were eventually consolidated into the large exchanges of cities like Amsterdam and London, and eventually these exchanges grew into the stock markets. Chapter two investigated the manner in which merchants engaged in trade. Braudel stressed the importance of trading circuits and the use of paper (especially in the form of bills of exchange) for profitability. One of the key ideas in this chapter is the role of distance on price. Price was not set solely by supply and demand, but was also affected by the distance the product had to travel. His insight into system was helpful. "Any capitalist market has a series of links in a chain, and somewhere near the middle there is a point higher and more remunerative than the rest" (193).
The next two chapters, "Capitalism Away from Home" and "Capitalism on Home Ground," dealt primarily with issues regarding production. Chapter three dealt with what could be considered the lower world of production. One of the key issues that Braudel explicated was the role of fixed and circulating capital. The fixed capital that was invested in production was tied up in equipment and other items, while the circulating capital was more liquid and included wages. Braudel also investigated the role of land in production and capitalism, noting: "The great landowner was not a capitalist, but he was a tool and a collaborator in the service of capitalism" (271). He also focused on the peculiarities of production in these pre-industrial years. In chapter four, Braudel investigated the higher world of production. His explanation of the development of banking practices, which would fund production, was illuminating, as was his discussion on the development of companies from private family business to joint stock companies.
Though the book focused on capitalism's development in Europe, Braudel integrated discussions on other geographical locales as well. Braudel did not present Europe as arriving at its capitalist system in a vacuum. He noted the role that other cultures had in aiding the formation of the European model, not just through trade, but also through Europe's adoption of foreign innovation. However, Braudel surprisingly downplayed the importance of double-entry book-keeping to the emergence of capitalism. He asserted that the practice did not spread quickly and was not universally adopted, giving notable examples (574).
Even though successful merchants were found all over the world during this time period (especially in Islamic lands that provided them with a favorable status), full-blown capitalism developed first in Europe. Braudel attempted to provide an explanation as to why this was the case. His thesis regarding this matter is the raison d'ýtre of the book. Braudel believed that three conditions were necessary for the emergence of capitalism. The first was a "vigorous and expanding market economy" (600). Braudel noted that many regions fulfilled this qualification. The second necessity, which hindered many prime candidates, was a strong hierarchy was necessary. This hierarchy encouraged the accumulation of wealth. Landed positions were not hereditary in India, China, and Islamic lands making the nobility's position precarious and the accumulation of wealth difficult. Braudel only mentioned two areas that fulfilled these first two necessities: Europe and Japan. However, Japan closed herself off to world trade, the third necessity. Braudel noted, "Long-distance trading ... was the only doorway to a superior profit level" (601). Braudel's case is a compelling one that must be addressed by anyone investigating this topic.
The Wheels of Commerce is immense, but immensely readable. Braudel portrayed for his reader a heady, exciting Europe, one in which the prime goal was to spend money faster than it could be made. However, even during his descriptions of the dizzying pace at which money was circulated, Braudel did not lose sight of his objective. His scope was large, but he remained precise in both style and purpose, obviating the befuddlement of the layperson (which I confess to being). The book is a balanced work, exhibiting a variety of historical methods. Braudel made extensive use of statistics and mathematical models (the book contains a plethora of charts and tables), but he also included numerous narratives regarding business practices of the time (demonstrating an astonishing knowledge of the primary sources). Because of the attention with which he supported his claims, historians of all stripes can admire this book.
Finally, the student of economic history should not overlook one of the finer aspects of The Wheels of Commerce. This book contains over 120 excellent illustrations from the 15th-18th centuries. The pictures, which vary from woodblock prints to oil paintings, depict the lives of those involved in commerce at the time. Not only do the abundant illustrations make this book a more attractive read, but also they provide the book with a certain level of completeness, giving the reader more tools by which he or she can comprehend the emergence of capitalism in Europe
Capitaliism, trade and globalization explained.......2006-05-17
There are various pretenders to the throne of explaining globalization, such as Thomas Friedman's recent The World Is Flat, but all such efforts seem shallow and pallid compared to the masterwork of the genre, Fernamd Braudel's trilogy Civilization & Capitalism, 15th - 18th Century (The Structures of Everyday Life (Volume 1), The Wheels of Commerce (Volume 2)
and The Perspective of the World (Volume 3)
I do not lightly suggest tackling almost 1,800 pages of reading, but there is simply no substitute (short of a master's degree) if you aspire to a true understanding of global trade's role in the social, political and economic history of our world. It is not a boring read--anything but, for Braudel's depth of research, breadth of knowledge and his appreciation for the limits of current scholarship are matchless. Where authors like Friedman incautiously grind whatever axe they set out, drawing upon work which supports their thesis, Bruadel is ever-cautious about drawing hard-and-fast conclusions from the data he has culled from archives' dusty pages.
What Braudel reveals is a world which has been disrupted by far-reaching trade for hundreds of years. Capital has flowed across the great oceans of our globe for far longer than most people realize, destroying local industries in favor of distant ones in the process. It is impossible to summarize such a rich, vast work, but reading even one of these volumes will give you a deep insight into the long history of globalization, and how entire industries and financial centers have been displaced time and again in the Arab Levant, in Asia, and in Europe. You will also come to understand the rise of European economic dominance, and how it cannot be so neatly attributed to guns, steel and germs, as appealing and powerful as Jared Diamond's thesis may be.
Braudel does not work to create over-arching explantions so much as present the archival facts he so assiduously assembled. (The books were written in the late 1970s; Braudel died in 1985 at the age of 83.) For example, he shows that prosperity, since at least the 1400s if not earlier, is inevitably found in those cities and regions where prices are highest. It is counter-intuitive at first--since shouldn't money go farther where prices are low?-- but the same is obviously true of our era. The most prosperous nations are those with the highest costs, and the poorest are those where prices are lowest.
At a minimum, this sheds light on the centuries-old exodus from rural to metropolis, and on the nature of prosperity itself. I recommend these volumes not just for their vast erudition but for the enjoyment gained from his unparalleled mastery of everyday life in distant lands and distant times. Not much has changed, it seems, except the speed of the ships and the communication between traders.
WOW!.......2005-01-22
I don't even LIKE history or economics...but I love this book.
In the course of researching some historical background for an English Lit paper, I ran across two of Braudel's books -- this was one of them.
It was so fascinating that I read the entire book (even though what I needed for the paper was a few pages); and then I went ahead and bought my own copy, plus others by this author.
Topology of the market.......2002-07-10
This is the second volume of Braudel¡¯s ¡®Civilization and Capitalism¡¯. The second volume deals with the market economy, while the first volume, ¡®Structures of Everyday Life¡¯ takes on infra-economy or material civilization. As I said on the review of the first volume, in the pre-industrialized societies, the market system is not the only form of resource allocation. The material civilization is the first layer of economy on the bottom, the market system is the second layer located above the first layer. The exchange or commerce was not natural economy but artificial economy in the jargon of the 18th C economics: Market is premised on the separation of production and consumption. Such a division is not natural, but is developed over long time. In this vein, the market is not natural at all. The market is the point in which material life and economic life meet each other. The market is the network. It links region to region, national economy to national economy. The form and scope of market has been evolved over time. When we track the forms of market, we could paint the history of capitalism. Nonetheless, Capitalism is often regarded as synonymous to market economy. But market is not unique to capitalism. But it goes without saying that capitalism can¡¯t exist without market. All economic activities under capitalism are carried out on the market. Changes in the form of market signals the changes of capitalism. When, for example, we talk about globalization, we have in mind the change of market based on national economy to global market. The second volume is about the topology of market. Based on the scope of space the market serves, we could trace out the path of capitalism since the 15th C. But market is not capitalism. To understand this point, you¡¯d better check the third volume, ¡®The Perspective of the World¡¯.
Amazon.com
In the brave new world of the "flexible" corporation, Richard Sennett observes, workers at all levels are regarded as wholly disposable, and they have responded in kind, ceasing to think in terms of any long-term relationship with the organizations they work for. This, he argues, has tremendous negative consequences for workers' emotional and psychological well-being. Even in menial jobs, we extract much of our self-image from the idea of a "career"--a life narrative rendered intelligible by specific loyalties, which is to some degree self-invented but also in some respects predictable. Innovations like "flextime" and bureaucratic "de-layering" seem to promise more freedom to define one's career, but in fact they create jobs in which there's less freedom than ever to be had. The Corrosion of Character is a short, anecdotal book, and while one might wish that it included a discussion of the social and psychological costs of the sheer increase of work time in the average worker's week, Sennett has created a pithy, disturbing picture of the cost of the corporate world's much-vaunted new efficiencies. --Richard Farr
Book Description
In The Corrosion of Character, Richard Sennett, "among the country's most distinguished thinkers . . . has concentrated into 176 pages a profoundly affecting argument" (Business Week) that draws on interviews with dismissed IBM executives, bakers, a bartender turned advertising executive, and many others to call into question the terms of our new economy. In his 1972 classic, The Hidden Injuries of Class (written with Jonathan Cobb), Sennett interviewed a man he called Enrico, a hardworking janitor whose life was structured by a union pay schedule and given meaning by his sacrifices for the future. In this new book--a #1 bestseller in Germany--Sennett explores the contemporary scene characterized by Enrico's son, Rico, whose life is more materially successful, yet whose work lacks long-term commitments or loyalties. Distinguished by Sennett's "combination of broad historical and literary learning and a reporter's willingness to walk into a store or factory [and] strike up a conversation" (New York Times Book Review), this book "challenges the reader to decide whether the flexibility of modern capitalism . . . is merely a fresh form of oppression" (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
Customer Reviews:
How Instability and Superficiality Destroy the Inner Meaning of Work.......2007-07-20
Transient consultants have replaced entrenched bureaucrats. Teams and teamwork have replaced adversarial labor/management and individual ego-driven rivalries. Knowledge gleaned from marketing studies has replaced knowledge gained from every day experience. New machines have made the once complex extremely simple, and the once dangerous safely sanitized. Companies that were once entrenched ethnic enclaves are now look more closely like America.
While not totally disapproving, the author looks at these and other current developments and finds them wanting. Work no longer generates the kind of passionate commitment it once did, and he cannot blame the workers, because their employers no longer show the loyalty they once did. In newly created world of permanent transience, little is cumulative, and the only test is who can do the best job now according to given specifications, with little concern for the past or for the future. Individual personal character is corroded--gradually destroyed--because sacrificing for the future makes little sense and virtues like loyalty to coworkers and one's employer are unrewarded, unexpected, and unappreciated.
The author finds the new arrangements are more about glib superficial agreements rather than the creation of authentic human relationships. Teams focus on short-term ends, with leaders who play down their authority and assume the falsely modest role of facilitators. A more adversarial assertion of self-interest and opinion would in the long run serve the companies better, as people bind together from honest discussion and disputes, the author asserts.
The author's individual chapters are each in themselves excellent essays: they are entitled Drift, Routine, Flexible, Illegible, Risk, The Work Ethic, Failure, and The Dangerous Pronoun. The most profound chapters are perhaps those on (1) risk, which documents the odds against success and the difficulty many people have adjusting to this reality; (2) the work ethic, which shows how it is undermined in many different ways by transience in co-workers and authority structures; and (3) failure, which shows both its commonality and the difficulties workers have in dealing with it and crafting a successful future because it is often experienced more as a personal reckoning than as a result of powerful institutional and competitive forces undermining their best efforts.
The author adds statistical tables which document the decline of manufacturing and the rise of personnel and computer and data processing services; declining employment and the rise of wage inequality; lower productivity growth in the U.S. than in France, Germany, Japan; the steady decline in union membership as a percentage of the workforce and its plateau in actual number of workers covered; the rising percentage of women from 22 to 44 in the workforce and the declining percentages of workers in other generational categories; the rising number of workers on flexible schedules; the rising number of workers using computers; the generally falling earnings that job switchers get; the slow rise in jobs requiring a college degree; and the great rise in percentage and numbers within the labor movement of public sector workers.
The strength of the author's approach is that he mixes analysis of anecdotes with scholarly research touching on both workers and working conditions and life in general. The author not only brings a lot of fresh material to the analysis of corporate working conditions, but he provides original and creative analysis to familiar material so that we see it with new significance in new contexts.
No one should consider taking a corporate job, or a job in a large organization, without reading this book. It is sociology at its best, both the critiquing economic trends and relating them to lives of individuals who are both representative and compelling. The author's writing is gripping, passionate, and thought-provoking. He manages simulaneously the difficult tasks of both synthesizing past scholarhip and breaking new ground extremely well.
fight against "de-characterization".......2007-01-04
An important book, in which some of the undesirable effects of the ways our every-day working lives are organized are put under scrutiny and criticized. All those who want to continue to work with real human beings rather than with post-modern robots should read this book.
Sympathetic to workers' problems but you may find little new here.......2006-05-29
A doctor warned me once that people weren't built for rapid mentally jumping from one thing to another and that hi-tech companies tended to use people up. Sennett's warning came quite late.
Sennett's findings seem well intended but not surprising at all to anyone who has worked in hi-tech. I suspect many other workers have noticed the consequences of the "new" capitalism. Similarly, there seems nothing wrong with trying to simplify what is happening by noting a few key characteristics and values. Sennett's observations on the exploitation of "teamwork", although familiar, are welcome. "Risk", "failure", "flexibility" , it all can become as manipulative as political speech about "liberty", "democracy" and "free markets".
However, the 176 pages seem like 20. Despite footnotes, Sennett seems to be writing as if he were the first observer of capitalism, entirely out of character for the profound author of "The Hidden Injuries of Class:. The exact nature of the impact on character in this newer book seems largely unestablished. The efforts of unions, albeit sparse with hi-tech, goes unnoticed. The real consequences on real lives becomes an apparent gentlemenly philosophical exercise. How carefully he closes: "But I do know a regime which provides human beings no deep reasons to care about one another cannot long preserve its legitimacy". If there were, in this book, more sociological and less anecdotal support for such a claim, "The Corrosion of Character" might be worth your reading. As it is, you may well know it yourself.
Sennett does note at the end a "fear of the resurgence of unions". I didn't see that Sennett provided any pointers on where to seek help apart from an abstract appeal to community. Instead of watching your own character corrode, one possibility is seeking out a union on the Web (such as the Industrial Workers of the World).
This book was a big disappointment as I had read Sennett before and been quite impressed, so I may now have expected a lot. It may still be that for some readers this book will help identify for them what is troubling about their work and serve as a basis for discussion of work problems with others.
Yes, but..........2006-04-25
I don't know yet if I learned something I didn't knew from this book. The examples Sennett gives are really entertaining; so much that I think maybe he should follow the Clifford Geertz road (or a more mainstream Barbara Ehrenreich one!). It was also refreshing to listen to old classic names as Smith, some old greek and that one of the Encyclopedia (ah, yes, Diderot). The use of the classics was especially good in Sennett's discussion of character and work, from antiquity passing by Christendom, Calvinism and reaching Weber's 'wordly ascetism' (Ch. 6: The Work Ethic). The rest of the book is not very innovative for the informed sociologist (but I loved the shot in the last chapter against those neo-tocquevillian communitarians Putnam style). So I don't know if recommend this book to you or not. It brings some interesting ideas about the relation of labor structure to character, but mostly does not go deep enough in each facet of the subject. Each chapter could be expanded to be a book in itself, and maybe Sennett's intention was to let us to do it! About those reviewers that are in favour of late-capitalism oppression: enjoy your 'happy life' because nobody's safe. Maybe next year it will be your turn. Anyway we will help you; that is the problem of being from the Left... we care.
Reminds us to think.......2006-04-20
If a book is 205 pages long, and at the end, you have learned 30 pages worth of thought, this can, I guess, been called an incredibly rich book. "Corrosion of character" provides, I would say, a little less, but after all, Sennett is a Sociologist, if I get it right, so diluted messages come at no surprise. Just kidding, of course. I guess people would not buy the book would it be just 25 pages long, and then Sennett could not make all the travels and conversation in doubtlessly expensive intercontinental flights. And the idea of analyzing the working environment of today's people is an interesting one. Not spectacularly new, true enough, but then it comes down to the avility of the author to develop new ideas and show new examples in order to keep the interested. Sennett can do that, and I was only rarely bore, even though I would not be able to define now, that I've read it, what the news really was. There is a floating idea rather than a concrete list of issues: accept that your (our) life needs be permanently refelcted, that you have the liberty to free yourself from the pressures of your environment - and that you should do so at times, because otherwise you may get lost and never have the chance to think about "what went wrong" again. The important message of the book is to remind us of that.
Book Description
In this provocative book Richard Sennett looks at the ways today’s global, ever-mutable form of capitalism is affecting our lives. He analyzes how changes in work ethic, in our attitudes toward merit and talent, and in public and private institutions have all contributed to what he terms “the specter of uselessness,” and he concludes with suggestions to counter this disturbing new culture.
“Hardly any social thinkers have given serious thought to the drastic changes in corporate culture wrought by downsizing, ‘re-orging,’ and outsourcing. Fortunately, the exception—Richard Sennett—is also one of the most insightful public intellectuals we have. In The Culture of the New Capitalism Sennett addresses the new corporate culture with his usual vast erudition, endlessly supple intellect, and firm moral outlook. The result is brilliant, disturbing, and absolutely necessary reading.”—Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream
“[Sennett] has brilliantly pushed his thinking. . . . [A] triumph.”—Will Hutton, The Observer
“Reflective, studded with sharp insights, moving with grace between big ideas and specific cases. This is vintage Sennett.”—Douglas W. Rae, author of City: Urbanism and Its End
“Packed with thought. . . . Profound and challenging. . . . [I am] full of admiration for the subtlety and originality of Richard Sennett’s work.”—Madeleine Bunting, New Statesman
Customer Reviews:
Mysteries of Corporate Mayhem Revealed!.......2006-11-27
Richard Sennett in THE CULTURE OF THE NEW CAPITALISM reflects upon the reactionary extirpation over the past three decades of the Western social capitalist state. Starting with a discussion of Bismarckian social capitalism which was founded on the model of the Prussian Army's highly successful bureaucracy and which provided structure and discipline to cultural relations, Sennett ends with a bleak meditation on the values encoded in the New Economy versus the Old. These include the elevation of process over craftsmanship, of "flexibility" over stability, of superficial over deep knowledge, and of centralized power over mediated authority. Along the way, Sennett shares pithy insights into the nature of this revolutionary shift and the cultural and economic dislocations it has caused.
Sennett states that three new pages were turned in the late twentieth century workplace. "First has been the shift from managerial to shareholder power in large companies." (pg. 37) This shift in power, according to Sennett turned a second new page: "The empowered investors wanted short-term rather than long-term results." The third new page representing a challenge to the past "lay in the development of new technologies of communication and manufacturing." He notes that "one consequence of the information revolution has...been to replace modulation and interpretation of commands by a new kind of centralization." (pg. 43) At the same time, automation, growing out of technological innovation "...has affected the [social capitalist] bureaucratic pyramid in one profound way: the base of the pyramid no longer needs to be big." (pg. 43). Circuits replace people.
According to Sennett, the old model, built on the pyramid model with a mass of workers at the bottom responding to a chain of command situated at the top is on the way out. In contrast, the new model he likens to an MP3 player: "The MP3 machine can be programmed to play only a few bands from its repertoire; similarly, the flexible organization can select and perform only a few of its many possible functions at any given time. In the old-style corporation, by contrast, production occurs via a fixed set of acts; the links in the chain are set. Again in an MP3 player, what you hear can be programmed in any sequence. In a flexible organization, the sequence of production can be varied at will." (pgs.47-48). (Notably, and perhaps inevitably, the new model got its start in the cutting edge businesses of finance, technology, pharma and media and their support industries: marketing research, advertising, and business consulting).
In a remarkable section on the shift in how employees are assessed - based on achievement in the old structure and "potential" in the new -- he shows how SAT testing supports the new regime. Sennett notes that "in the search to consummate the project of finding a [Jeffersonian] natural aristocracy, the mental life of human beings has assumed a surface and narrowed form. Social reference, sensate reasoning, and emotional understanding have been excluded from that search, just as have belief and truth. ...These [flexible] institutions ... privilege the kind of mental life embodied by consultants, moving from scene to scene, problem to problem, team to team. He says that "...this talent search cuts reference to experience and the chains of circumstance, eschews sensate impressions, divides analyzing from believing, ignores the glue of emotional attachment, penalizes digging deep--the state of living in pure process which the philosopher Zygmunt Bauman calls 'liquid modernity.'" (pgs. 120-122)
He notes that while citizen-workers might have been trapped in Max Weber's "iron cage" under the old system, nevertheless the structure gave its denizens a sense of meaning and was roughly consonant with general social values. In essence, Sennett says: "Time lay at the center of this military, social capitalism: long-term and incremental and above all predictable time." (pg. 23).
This new architecture, crafted by the business consultant class to whom agency is given by the new corporation, enables the exercise of enormous centralized power through new communications technology, and at the same time evades the responsibility of its recommendations, as do those who hire them. Bloodless terms like "flexible" workplaces," "off-shoring" and "right-shoring," "downsizing" and "right-sizing" are, for instance, deployed to mystify mass firings and those responsible for them.
The ideal worker in this paradigm is conceived to be flexible, cooperative, efficient and not get too involved in the nuts and bolts when doing problem-solving. Want ads looking for "entrepreneurs," and "self-starters" are emblematic of this shift. The ideal worker is most of all attuned to short-term shareholder values, values which insist on change. Whether the change is good or bad is almost irrelevant: change is in and of itself a signal to investors of impending short-term gains.
Sennett offers "five ways in which the consumer-spectator-citizen is turned away from progressive politics," each element of which arises from the culture of the new capitalism. He says that the consumer-spectator-citizen is "(1) offered political platforms which resemble product platforms and (2) gold-plated difference; (3) asked to discount 'the twisted timber of humanity (as Immanuel Kant called us), and (4) credit more user-friendly politics; (5) accept continually new political products on offer."(pg. 163). Summarizing these points, he says: "The culture of the new capitalism is attuned to singular events, one-off transactions, interventions; to progress, a polity needs to draw on sustained relationships and accumulate experience. In short, the unprogressive drift of the new culture lies in its shaping of time." (pg. 178).
In his last paragraph, Sennett attempts to end on a hopeful note: "What I have sought to explore in these pages is thus a paradox: a new order of power gained through and ever more superficial culture. Since people can anchor themselves in life only by trying to do something well for its own sake, the triumph of superficiality at work, in schools, and in politics seems to me fragile. Perhaps indeed, revolt against this enfeebled culture will constitute our next fresh page."
I don't know about you, but I'm not holding my breath.
Working in the New Economy.......2006-05-09
As a member of the New Left in the 1960's, Richard Sennett was a young radical railing against big corporations and big government. He was also critical of state socialism for being just another bureaucratic system holding the individual in its suffocating grip. That was then, now the bureaucracies have been delayered and flattened out. It's management by email.
As the old saw goes: Be careful what you ask for. In "The Culture of New Capitalism," Sennett seems somewhat nostalgic for the security and rewarding work that bureaucracies once provided. The dismantling of large-scale institutions did not result in the communities of trust and solidarity for which the radicals had hoped. Instead, they left modern day workers in very fragmented and ambiguous working conditions.
According to Sennett, these conditions came about in the 1970's and have accelerated since. After the breakdown of the Bretton Woods agreement, capital markets became globalized. Corporate managers became more concerned about increasing short term value - higher share price - and less concerned about the long-term welfare of their employees. Over the years wages have stagnated and benefits have been reduced. In short, "the new capitalism" or "new economy" of which he speaks has been reconfigured to give an increasing amount of wealth to shareholders rather than employees.
What effect this has had on the workplace is the focus of this study. The target industries of this study were high technology, finance, and media, but what has taken place there foreshadows what is happening in other industries and also the public sector.
First, Sennett finds that employees must learn how to manage short-term relationships; corporations no longer provide a long-term framework. Second, the modern workplace values a meritocracy of potential abilities rather than craftsmanship developed over a long period of time. And finally, one must learn how to let go of the past and accept the fact that one's place in the corporation is no longer guaranteed. To sum up, the ideal worker in the new economy is someone who must think in the short term, constantly develop their potential and not look over their shoulder.
That's great if you are young, unattached, wealthy, and well educated. However, if you are middle-class, middle-aged, and have multiple responsiblities, it's a cruel world.
For nearly a generation, globalization has brought downward pressure on unskilled wages, but now - thanks to technological innovations - it is bringing downward pressure on skilled wages as well. Never before has capitalism had unlimited access to labor. There has been a race to the bottom in search of lower wages.
Americans seem to have resigned themselves to the vicissitudes of the global labor markets; the Europeans and the Japanese have been less sanguine, or a least more protective of their lifestyles. It may be that Americans believe free markets are an intrinsic good. I believe that at some point there will be a backlash against outsourcing and offshoring, and that this book may be prescient. As Sennett rightly notes, free markets do not necessarily translate into more freedom for individuals.
Book Description
In recent years sociologists have taken up a fruitful examination of such institutions as capital, labor and product markets, industrial organization, and stock exchanges. Incorporating classic and contemporary readings in economic sociology as well as offerings from related disciplines, this book provides students with a broad understanding of the dimensions of economic life. A major introduction by the editors traces the history of thought in the field and assesses recent advances and future trends. LONG DESCRIPTION BEGINS HERE
Customer Reviews:
Worlds apart: the story of the Methodenstreit.......2001-07-05
This excellent book is a must for anyone interested in the historical roots of the dominant economic school today (noeclassical economics) and how it shares foundations with sociology. This may come as as a surptise for most students of either economics or sociology, but these approaches used to unite in studying the dynamics and mechanisms of society. However, due to fundamental disagreements pertaining on how to study this phenomenon, economics and sociology separated in the 19th century (the methodenstreit) read all about why and how these schools mnow wide apart maybe are reuniting in a neoinstitutional framework. This book is really well-written by one of the really great authorities in social network research: Richard Granovetter. I can only recommend this book which will make you feel much wiser on the social sciences when you are done with it
Book Description
Volume III investigates what Braudel terms "world-economies"--the economic dominance of a particular city at different periods of history, from Venice to Amsterdam, London, New York.
Customer Reviews:
Changes your perspective on history.......2005-10-09
I am a huge reader of history, and this is one of my favorites of all time. While full of interesting facts and stories, it is set apart from most books by the depth of the analysis it provides. It walks the line between history and social science, hinting at a theory of civilization and capitalism based on case studies from around the world. Though professional it is not dry (though I am infamous for enjoying a good dry book). My only criticism of it is the parts where it ventures into the cyclic theory of history. This is a European (or French) historiographic technique of trying to edition long recurring cycles. Frankly I find the concept forced (even more frankly, it's bunk!) and it always annoys me when I come across it...but it is part of the historical tradition Braudel was involved in, so it must simply be tolerated as a blemish on an otherwise stunning achievement.
A Very Great Work.......2005-08-06
Braudel was one of the greatest economic historians of all time. His scope alone was incredible. But what in the end hurt him and significantly diminished his findings was his unfamiliarity with the work of Harold Innis, whose landmark "Empire and Communications" was published a quarter century before Braudel published this book in the original French.
Only Innis early work on the Canadian fur trade is referenced in Braudel's bibliographies. His later work on information in the creation of markets is not.
Both looked at the economics of space and time, but what for Braudel ended in a series of uncertain conclusions ended for Innis in a profound theory of how the falling costs of information altered trade and communications patterns on a global scale.
Put the two together and you have a clear picture of paradigm shifts over the centuries and an excellent framework for understanding outcomes in today's globalized economy.
The time of the world.......2002-07-05
This is the third volume of Braudel's 'Civilization and Capitalism' The third volume is about the capitalism as world economy. This is the reason why Braudel says that capitalism is premised on market economy. But market economy is not capitalism. To grasp this point, we should pay attention to Braudel's conception of time.
Braudel sees three levels of time. Events time is the immediately observable. But the event doesn't explain itself. They have to be placed within the context of what Braudel called conjunctures, or the set of forces that prepare the ground for events. Conjectural time is medium term; the span of an economic cycle, of a certain configuration of social forces, or of a certain paradigm of scientific knowledge. At the deepest level is longue duree. It involves structures of thought (mentality) that are very slow to change: economic organization, social practices, political institutions, language, and values. These structures are all cohesive and interdependent, yet each moves at a different pace. Conjunctural changes that become consolidate and stabilized could signal a change in the longue duree. Events are conditioned and shaped by the structures of the longue duree, but events may also cumulatively challenge, undermine, and transform these structures. The explanation of history involves the interaction of all three levels of time.
Three levels of time correspond to three layers of economy. capitalism has the longue duree as its modality of time. But Braudel use the term, capitalism a bit different from Marx's definition. Braudel defines capitalism as world-economy. There have been several world-economies throughout history. Capitalism is only one of them. World-economy structures (or organizes) the space as a hierarchy of division of labor. At the top of the hierarchy lies a center. Several world-cities surround it. So world-economy is about patterning space around a central city. This is the point Braudel meets the world system theory. In fact, Wallerstein, the proponent of world system theory borrowed Braudel's idea. American world system theories centered on Wallerstein and the SUNY's Braudel Center.
from market mechanisms to policy and history.......2002-02-20
Where the first two volumes of this trilogy covered living standards and the evolution of market mechanisms and capital accumulation, this one completes the picture with detailed historical examinations of the policies of the most successful cities and nations in the development of capitalism.
In fascinating detail, Braudel starts with the trade system of Venice, which allowed that tiny and resourceless city-state to dominate the world trade economy for centuries, and which culminated in the golden age of Amsterdam. THese cities, he argues persuasively, pushed commercial and financial capitalism to new heights, that is, with a combination of banking and control of trade routes, they created monopolies that benefitted themselves largely at the expense of their trading partners. They did so with a combination of readily mobilisable financial capital, clever warehousing (particularly in Amsterdam, which was like a perpetual market fair) that allowed them to control supplies and hence sell items at the right time for the higest price, domination of shipbuilding technologies as well as naval prowess (i.e. state piracy), and the control of the origin of their supplies, as in the Dutch East Indies for the spice trade. Braudel argues that it was a conscious policy. He also deliniates how Spain and then Portugal were beaten.
He then moves on to the birth of industrial capitalism in England in the late 18th C, which the loss of the American colonies - and hence ended its military obligations there while trade increased - facilitated. The great difference here, which he argues is a creative extension of the other long-existing forms of capitalism rather than its true beginning as many claim - was that investment was made in new technologies. It is similar to what the U.S. and Japan have done as major economic powers with different industrial systems: the U.S. had the largest national market, while Japan created cartels that could control prices (going after market share rather than immediate profit).
Braudel also examines basic questions of how an economy is successfully ?revolutionised.? What makes inventions take off in one society and not another? Is it one factor, or many acting together in concert? In particular, he compares the cases of the newly de-colonised United States and Latin American, in which the former was able to place itself at the center of the world economy and compete while the latter were weak and hence consigned to a subordinate role by the superpower of the day, Great Britain. He also examines the case of France, which was never able to enter the first rank of commercial and industrial nations prior to the 20C because, he argues, Paris (an administrative and not a trade capital) dominated the country and never learned to respect entrepreneurs.
These arguments are truly fascinating and presented with the perfect amount of detail: not too much as is often the case with Simon Schama, and not so little that only specialists can understand it. While it is sometimes difficult to follow his thread of logic, there is so much to learn from this book that I will consult it for the rest of my professional life. As a measure of its interest, I kept a marker in the footnotes, where I loved to look for references on virtually every page.
Nonetheless, as a 2000-page book that I loved, I am glad that it is done! It took me nearly two years to get through it all and I wished at times that it was more succinct. I found myself fliiping through it to see where illustrations would shorten the text. The conclusion, which attempts to offer persoective on the present, is also badly dated.
All in all, this is the most interesting and best economic history that I have ever read.
Good _economic_ history, less so for general........2001-11-02
This book would be a great text for students of economy and economic history. I, however, am interested in more general history (i.e. political/social/cultural/military), and so this book was a big diappointment. It focuses on trends in wheat prices across Europe in whatever date range to the detriment of things that (in my opinion) really matter - literary works, politics, and such. Seems like it would be a good read for economic history though, so if that's what you're into, you should give it a try.
Book Description
The essays in Millennial Capitalism and the Culture of Neoliberalism pose a series of related questions: How are we to understand capitalism at the millennium? Is it a singular or polythetic creature? What are we to make of the culture of neoliberalism that appears to accompany it, taking on simultaneously local and translocal forms? To what extent does it make sense to describe the present juncture in world history as an âage of revolution,â one not unlike 1789–1848 in its transformative potential?
In exploring the material and cultural dimensions of the Age of Millennial Capitalism, the contributors interrogate the so-called crisis of the nation-state, how the triumph of the free market obscures rising tides of violence and cultures of exclusion, and the growth of new forms of identity politics. The collection also investigates the tendency of neoliberal capitalism to produce a world of increasing differences in wealth, environmental catastrophes, heightened flows of people and value across space and time, moral panics and social impossibilities, bitter generational antagonisms and gender conflicts, invisible class distinction, and âpariahâ forms of economic activity. In the process, the volume opens up an empirically grounded, conceptual discussion about the world-at-large at a particularly momentous historical timeâwhen the social sciences and humanities are in danger of ceding intellectual initiative to the masters of the market and the media.
In addition to its crossdisciplinary essays, Millennial Capitalism and the Culture of Neoliberalismâoriginally the third installment of the journal Public Culture’s âMillennial Quartetââfeatures several photographic essays. The book will interest anthropologists, political geographers, economists, sociologists, and political theorists.
Contributors. Scott Bradwell, Jean Comaroff, John L. Comaroff, Fernando Coronil, Peter Geschiere, David Harvey, Luiz Paulo Lima, Caitrin Lynch, Rosalind C. Morris, David G. Nicholls, Francis Nyamnjoh, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Paul Ryer, Allan Sekula, Irene Stengs, Michael Storper, Seamus Walsh, Robert P. Weller, Hylton White, Melissa W. Wright, Jeffrey A. Zimmerman
Book Description
Europeans and many American pundits believe that while the U.S. economy may create more growth, Europeans have it better when it come to job security and other factors. Olaf Gersemann, a German reporter who came to America, found the reality quite different. He checked facts and found the market freedoms in America create a more flexible, adaptable and prosperous system then the declining welfare states of old Europe.
Customer Reviews:
Good information.......2007-05-27
Most literature showing the greatness of capitalism through statistics is horribly biased, but this book keeps the bias to a moderate level. This means you get a wealth of statistical information that is not overly influenced by ideology, which is a rare find.
A Well-Made Case.......2007-05-01
Like the previous reviewer, I think Olaf Gersemann offers a balanced and well-documented case that France, Germany, and Italy would benefit from some American-style economic liberalization. Advancing an argument with logic and solid empirical evidence is not the same thing as writing propaganda.
Gersemann goes out of his way to point to that it is "foolish" to believe that post-war European economic models are "generally, under all imaginable circumstances, inferior to other economic models." He draws attention to the number of Americans without health insurance, the sorry state of many of our public schools, the alarmingly high rate of poverty among American unwed mothers and their children, and the "ridiculously high" compensation of many corporate managers. This book is not a one-sided apologia.
But it does, as advertised, manage to dispel many myths about American capitalism and the supposedly kinder, more agreeable European version.
As have a number of others before him, Gersemann reveals the hollowness of the claim that the purchasing power of working-class people in the U.S. has been stagnant since the early 1970s. And he does this using household income numbers as his primary statistical evidence, even though he could have shown even more improvement (as he briefly points out) if he had used the *per capita* money income of the average household. (Household income has been depressed because there are now fewer people per house, which is a sign both of more widespread home ownership, and thus more wealth, as well as a sign of higher rates of illegitimacy.) If further adjustments are made to control for immigrants--whose pre-immigration incomes do not, obviously, show up in U.S. statistics--it becomes even more evident that the American economy is much more successful at improving the of lot native-born workers in the bottom quintile than one would gather from watching ABC News or reading *The New York Times*. That our economy also improves the lives of immigrants, and in the process makes the gains of the native-born less statistically obvious, is cause for congratulations, not criticism. The improvement in the lives of particular individuals is what matters, not the fate of a particular quintile, the composition of which is ever-changing.
Gersemann also rebuts much of the nonsense reported about the percentage of Americans who are "trapped" in poverty and about low unemployment merely being the result of mind-numbing service jobs that don't pay a living wage. He demonstrates that those on the left who praise the security offered by the European system too often fail to note that security comes at the price of dynamism, which comes at the price of opportunity, especially for those on the bottom.
Unfortunately, the same neighborhoods in France that suffer most from this lack of opportunity, and from debilitating unemployment, voted overwhelmingly for the Socialist candidate (Ms. Royal) in last week's elections, even though it is not she but the much hated Mr. Sarkozy who stands at least some chance of offering them economic opportunities infinitely more lucrative than burning cars. And of course it was the French left that took to the streets when the government attempted to enact modest reforms to make the labor market more flexible. Marching for "social justice" and against "American conditions" also meant marching for the continued joblessness of North African immigrants. But what of it? It's all too easy to ignore arguments like Gersemann's, congratulate oneself on being morally superior to capitalists, and then take a nice long vacation.
Both Europeans and Americans would benefit from reading this book. It's not a groundbreaking work of research, and in fact most of the information Gersemann presents can be gleaned from the financial press. But the book doesn't pretend to be groundbreaking. What makes it a success is that it so clearly and dispassionately debunks many of the most frequently repeated falsehoods about the American and European economies.
Challenge - not propaganda........2007-04-20
It is surprising that "Cowboy Capitalism", recommended by two nobel laureates (the late Friedman and Buchanan), would be accused of propaganda by a critical voice (Newton Ooi, below) who first proceeded to point out that all the facts it presents are true. "Cowboy Capitlism" has an agenda, of course - an agenda to sho
Policy & Current Events
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Making of Economic Society, The (12th Edition) (Heilbroner, Robert L//Making of Economic Society)
Talking Points on Global Issues: A Reader
Distant Mirrors: America as a Foreign Culture
Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict With a New Introduction by the Author
Runaway World: How Globalisation Is Reshaping Our Lives
