Global Economy in the Asian Age . Berkeley:

 Andre Gunder Frank. RcORIENT: Global Economy in the Asian Age . Berkeley: 

University of California Press, 1998. xxix + 416 pp. ISBN 0520214749, $15.95 (paper). 

Reviewed by Kees Tcrlouw, 

Department of General Human Geography 

Faculty of Geographical Sciences 

Utrecht University, Utrecht, THE NETHERLANDS 

This review also appears in the TESG Journal of Economic and Social Geography. 

Copyright 9 the Royal Dutch Geographical Society. 

We got it all wrong. Every social scientist frequently ha~ that sneaking feeling that 

perhaps the world is not constructed a~ he or she thought it wa~. Most ofus then have a 

drink and a good night's sleep, go back to the university the next day, and keep on 

teaching along the well-trodden path of our predecessors. Ifwc arc wrong, we arc at lea~t 

in well-respected company. But Andre Gunder Frank is not like the rest ofus. This 

maverick of many decades ha~ now written a book in which his iconocla~m reaches a 

new climax. That Samuel Huntington and Walt Rostow got it wrong won't surprise the 

reader familiar with Frank's earlier work on dependence and the development of 

underdevelopment. But Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Werner Sombart, Max Weber, Arnold 

Toynbee, William McNcill, Fcrnand Braudel, and even Immanuel Wallcrstcin arc now 

added to that list. Andre Gunder Frank also secs fatal errors in his previous work on 

dependency theory. 

All these godfathers of social development study arc guilty ofEuroccntrism. They all 

look for explanations for the rise of (W cs tern) Europe after the Middle Ages against a 

background of stagnating A~ian societies. All these a~sumptions arc wrong according to 

Frank. In that period Europe did not rise compared to Asia. On the contrary, Europe only 

a~ccndcd in the 19th century due to a (temporary) decline in A~ia. Frank interprets this a~ 

one of the many seesaw-like centuries long swings of rise and decline within a millenniaold world-system. Not Europe (which after all wa~ only a minor part of the worldsystcm) but this world-system should be the start of our understanding of social 

development. This is, according to Frank, the unity in the diversity. The original sin of 

social historians and theorists is that they start at the wrong place. Like the proverbial 

drunk they look for their keys only under the lamp post. The further away from Europe, 

the less data arc available for the social scientist. Because unknown is not unimportant, 

Frank visits some oa~cs in this Oriental data desert. Although in his opinion the worldsystcm is much older and consists not only of economic relations, Frank "limits" his 

analyses to the global economy between 1400 and 1800. He discusses global trade, the 

flow of silver from America to Asia, the comparative productive strength of Europe and 

A~ia, and the theoretical implications of all his findings. 

Frank studies global trade by describing some of the trade going on in different macrorcgions in the world (The America~, Africa, West Asia, the Indian Ocean, Southca~t A~ia, 

and the rest of Asia). Frank a~scmbles the jigsaw puzzle of the global economy by 

starting at the edges, but these pieces don't belong together. There wa~ trade going on within those macro-regions. Frank gives some anccdotical evidence for that, although he 

docs not make solid comparisons, and we have to place a lot of trust on Frank's 

judgments on the facts. But the trade between these regions is neglected. Frank's heap of 

anccdotical evidence of early regional trade camouflages the virtual absence of world 

trade. Only the trade in silver, porcelain, and silk had a global reach, hardly the 

foundation for a substantial world-system. 

Frank's arguments about trade have another important flaw. The lavish descriptions of 

trade practices say little about their importance for the local economics, which is essential 

for the existence of a meaningful world-system. For instance, on page 97 Frank underpins 

the importance of trade within Southca~t Asia in particular and global trade in general by 

listing some large trade-dependent cities in Southca~t A~ia. But long distance trade is 

only one ba~is for sustaining an urban population. Market towns and administrative 

centres dependent on the agricultural supplies of their immediate hinterland can also be 

very large. Large cities at the shores of world sea~ don't necessarily indicate the existence 

of important trade across these oceans. 

Frank's conclusion on global trade is that Asia and especially China dominated the global 

economy. His observation that Europeans had a much less important role in Ea~t A~ian 

trade than China is correct. But because he fails to compare trade within A~ia to trade 

within Europe (sec for instance p. 184), his conclusion that Europe wa~ peripheral to the 

world-system is false. In that period Europe and Asia were largely external to each other. 

If China wa~ central, it wa~ only central to Asia, not the world a~ a whole. Only the flows 

of silver to which Frank devotes a whole chapter indicate China's dominance. This 

chapter on the important monetary connections in the world after the discovery of 

America is the most convincing part of the book. But the importance of this trade is 

questionable. The importance of the inflow of luxury consumer goods, not usable in the 

real economy of everyday life, wa~ limited in Europe. China may have been central in the 

global economic network, but that network wa~ unimportant - especially when compared 

to the present (twentieth-century) connections. Europe wa~ perhaps marginal to the prc1800 global economy, but that global economy wa~ marginal to the parts it very weakly 

connected. 

[Page 178] 

Journal of World-Systems Research 

Frank's a~scrtion that Europe and Asia were then, and arc now, part of the same unified 

world-system is problematic on other grounds. Frank makes too little distinction between 

the worldwide connections of the pa~t and the present. Frank delimits his world-system 

with an all-or-nothing criterion. The present world-system emerged, according to Frank, 

when the social development of different parts of the world started influencing each other. 

This stretches the world-system so much in space and time that it becomes a meaningless 

concept. If almost all of human history takes place within the same world-system, the 

explanatory power of the world-system for the worldwide differences in social 

development is greatly reduced. Frank also ignores the changing nature of worldwide 

contacts. These have intensified in impact and incidence. These changed from weak incidental, mostly cultural, influences to strong mutual economic relations upon which 

the everyday functioning of each economy depends. For instance, Frank makes very 

plausible that the introduction of maize fanning from America by way of Europe to 

China stimulated Chinese economic development from the 17th century onward. But this 

one-off is hardly comparable to, for instance, the present integration of the automobile 

industry in which the assembly plants of the global firms use parts produced in many 

different countries. By heaping all worldwide relations into one world-system one 

implicitly denies the importance and explanatory power of extending and intensifying 

relations within the modern world-system. 

The world is a much more complex and multilaycrcd place than Frank acknowledges. 

This book review can only outline a better solution where Frank's ideas arc integrated 

with those oflmmanuel Wallerstcin ("Societal Development, or Development of the 

World-System," International Sociology, 1986), Fcrnand Braudel (The Perspective of the 

World, 1986), and Christopher Chase-Dunn and Thomas Hall (Rise and Demise: 

Comparing World-System~, 1997). Frank's global history is the starting point. The 

historic examples of worldwide influences arc important and have been too much 

neglected. Chase-Dunn and Hall make a very useful distinction within this global 

complex between four different exchange networks: information, prestige goods, 

political-military power, and bulk goods. The first two have the widest spatial range, 

while the latter two have the deepest impact. There is also a succession from culture, 

through politics to the economy. Most social development can be explained from within 

the last of these networks. When the borders of these four networks converge, then a 

world-system emerges. For instance Frank's book sketches the shadow of such a world -

system in East Asia between 1400 and 1800. Much more recognizable is the Europcanbascd world-system as studied by Wallcrstcin, which emerged after the Middle Ages 

through the incorporation of the Americas. Only after a second phase of expansion in the 

nineteenth century did it overwhelm the whole world. Braudel agrees that this Europcanbascd world-system has a logic of its own, but this structure also hides a sequence of 

several different networks. These, which I provisionally label "world-formations," have 

cores located in different places. Not only their spatial, but also their economic and 

political, organizations differ within the broad logic of capitalism. During a period of 

stagnation a new world-formation arises out of the remnants of the old one. Crises mark 

the beginning ofa process of reformation: one coherent world-formation which 

developed at a leisurely pace is going into decline. At the same time another worldformation is being born amid much hesitation and delay (Braudcl, p. 85). These were 

subsequently centered on Venice, Genoa, Amsterdam, England (London), and the United 

States. The stumbling rise of East A~ia in the last decades is perhaps the beginning of a 

new world-formation. 

The parallel Frank draws between the rise of East A~ia in the world-system during recent 

decades and its strong position before 1800 is not only debatable on theoretical grounds, 

but also on empirical grounds. Frank underpins the dominant position of Asia in general 

and China in particular in the pre-nineteenth century global economy not only on their 

presumed centrality in trade, but also by claiming that East A~ia's economy was more 

advanced than Europe's and was developing at a faster rate. Frank's assertion that these societies' technology wa~ more advanced and their manufacturing su pcrior to the 

Europeans is generally correct, even though his comparison between Europe and A~ia is 

once again unbalanced. For Europe, he stresses that although university knowledge wa~ 

developing, it lacked link~ with production. However, his discussion of technology in 

A~ia focusses on the many sophisticated goods they produced. 

More problematic is his analysis of the development of A~ia compared to Europe. He 

a~scrts that it wa~ the A~ian economics and societies that were developing while Europe 

wa~ lagging behind. Population figures, which arc the only useful global comparative 

data indicating social and economic development in this period, clearly show, according 

to Frank, that in "the period from 1400 until 1750 or even 1800 population grew much 

fa~tcr in A~ia, and especially in China and India, than in Europe" (page 171 ). This is one 

of the few instances in which Frank's evidence can be checked. Frank's own data is 

augmented by Bairoch, one of the scholars with whom he docs not disagree. Because 

Frank frequently stresses that the Asian share of world population incrca~cd, the 

following figure uses this claim a~ the ba~is for comparison. 

[Page 179] 

Journal of World-Systems Research 

Figure: Changing Shares in World Population 

Source: Frank, p. 168, and P. Bairoch, J. Batou, and P. Ch?vrc, The Population of 

European Cities: Data Bank and Short Summary of Result~ (Gcn?vc: Librairic Droz), 

1988, p. 297. 

Frank is wrong to compare Europe a~ a whole with Asia. Even the staunchest 

Euroccntrists stress the rise of Western Europe. The figure shows that the regional 

differences within Asia arc quite small compared to the dramatic differences within 

Europe. The biggest contra~t between growth and decline arc not found between Europe 

and Asia, but within Europe. This is evident in the figure, even though the data from 

Bairoch give much lower population estimates and growth figures for Europe a~ a whole 

in that period (sec also the table). Especially Southern Europe stagnated, while the United 

Kingdom rose at a much stronger rate than India or China. So the period of what Frank 

secs a~ an "Asian age" in fact a Northwest European age. But by only looking at Europ c 

a~ a whole, this rise is hidden by the relative decline of Southern Europe. This wa~ 

however only the ca~c between 1600 and 1750. Only between 1700 and 1750 did the 

United Kingdom decline relative to Asia. So Frank's a~scrtion that in "the period from 

1400 until 1750 or even 1800 population grew much fa~tcr in Asia, and especially in 

China and India, than in Europe" (page 171) is only true for just a part of the period in 

just a part of Europe. Frank's entire book is ba~cd on this kind of selective use of evidence. Frank only looks for confirmation of his thesis. He docs not test clear-cut 

questions against the data, but only uses the information and opinions of others which 

suit him. All others arc ignored. 

However critical one must be of Frank's argument~, it is an inspiring book to rcad. lfhc 

were correct, we would have to clear all the cla~sics on social development from our 

bookshelves and replace them with his latest book. Clearly, l don't think that is necessary. 

l have put it on my shelfjust below the cla~sics. His book shows the importance of 

studying area~ not in isolation, but in their developing relations with the rest of the world. 

Good horizontally-integrative macro history indeed needs to place our Europcan-ba~cd 

world-system in a wider perspective. However, l think that Andre Gunder Frank's 

argument is only partly right. He is, however, very convinced of the correctness of his 

book. 

Table: Changing Shares in World Population (1400 = Index Value of I 00) 

Year 

1400 1500 1600 1700 1750 1800 

Europe (Frank) 100 128 152 154 155 170 

Europe (Bairoch) 100 113 126 115 112 120 

United Kingdom 100 119 138 154 149 183 

Netherlands 100 132 192 191 158 145 

Southern Europe 100 106 118 98 94 97 

Spain 100 105 I I I 87 80 88 

A~ia 100 95 100 108 113 I I I 

India 100 98 113 131 141 139 

China 100 93 96 I I I 120 125 

Note: The index is ba~cd on the share in world population of each country or region for 

each year. lt expresses the change in shares of world population a~ compared with the 

year 1400. For instance, China's population in 1400 wa~ 112 million, ofa world total of 

373 million. ln 1800 China's population had incrca~cd to 345 million and that of the 

world a~ a whole to 919 million. Thus, China's share of world population incrca~cd from 

30.03 percent to 37 .54 percent. Therefore, China's share in world population incrca~cd by 

(37.54 - 30.03)/30.03 = 25.01 percent, and its index changed from 100 to 125. 

[Page 180] 

Journal of World-Systems Research Huntington \u20 I 9s Cla~h Revisited 

Samuel P. Huntington. The Cla~h of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. 

New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996. 367 pp. ISBN 0684844419, $14.00 (paper); ISBN 

0684811642, $25.50 (hardcover). 

Reviewed by 

David Skidmore, Department of Political Science, International Relations Program, 

Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa, USA 

Also published in Pacifica Review: Peace, Security and Global Change (Australia). 

Copyright 9 Carfax Publishing Company Limited. Republished by p cnnission. 

Introduction 

Although eight years have now pa~scd since the fall of the Berlin Wall, no satisfying or 

widely accepted label ha~ yet been pinned to what is still, unhelpfully, referred to a~ the 

post-Cold War era in international relations. This is not, however, for lack of effort. 

Scholars, journalists and pundits have proposed an a~tonishingly diverse range of 

paradigms for comprehending the structure and dynamics of contemporary world politics. 

Some pessimists foresee a return to the unstable multi-polar rivalries characteristic of the 

first half of the twentieth century (Mcarshcimcr 1990). Perhaps even more alarmingly, 

others predict a spreading erosion of state power, accompanied by lawlessness, resource 

scarcities and general social decay (Kaplan 1996). Optimists, on the other hand, argue 

that the end of the Cold War will usher in a bright new age which, in contra~t with the 

bloody and tragic experiences of the pa~t, will bring about the obsolescence of major war 

(Mueller 1990), the spread of democracy (Russett 1993; Brown, Lynn-Jones and Miller 

1996), the deepening of interdependence (Rosccrancc 1986) and perhaps even a 

figurative end of history (Fukayama 1992). 

This great debate recall~ and often reprises earlier periods of intellectual ferment that 

followed perceived turning points in international relations, such a~ the years after the 

First and Second World Wars. Such debates arc necessary, important and often 

provocative. They serve to enliven scholarly and popular discourse by forcing 

participant~ to reexamine ba~ic a~sumptions and contemplate fresh perspectives during 

periods of fundamental change. Inevitably, however, these grand intellectual cla~hcs also 

give rise to ungrounded speculation, overdrawn claims and a good deal of plain hype. 

Samuel Huntington \u2019s new book, The Cla~h of Civilizations and the Remaking of 

World Order, exemplifies both sides of this coin. The decades of the Cold War were 

characterized by a cautious, narrowly conceived and relatively static brand of thinking 

about international relations. Huntington\u2019s rcconccptionalization of international 

politics, while not a~ dramatic a departure from traditional realism a~ some have 

suggested, nevertheless represents anew level of intellectual risk-taking by one of the 

field\u2019s most prominent mainstream spokespersons. It also, however, illustrates a truism well known to reformed gamblers: big bets, whether in poker or in academics, 

often fail. Such is the fate ofHuntington\u2019s ambitious but seriously flawed effort to 

chart a new direction in thinking about the future of international relations in the postCold War period. 

Summarizing the Argument 

Huntington\u2019s post-Cold War paradigm can be summarized as a series of 

straightforward propositions: 

I. The principle political cleavages of the post-Cold War world will center along the fault 

lines dividing civilizations from one another. Culture, rather than ideology or national 

identity, will serve as the main litmus test for distinguishing friend from foe. 

2. Although states will remain the central actors in world politics, the alliance behavior of 

states will be largely dictated by civilization politics. Unity among countries sharing the 

same overarching cultural values and commitments will rise while conflict across 

civilization boundaries will grow. Fault line wars along the borders where civilizations 

come into contact will threaten to expand through a phenomenon Huntington refers to as 

"kin country rallying." While states, therefore, will continue to serve as the active agents 

of international politics, civilizations can be considered the principle units of analysis. 

3. Although the clash of civilizations will be multifaceted, the most important dividing 

line will separate Western societies from the other six or seven civilizations identified by 

Huntington. Western cultural penetration and political domination has prompted 

resentment and heightened attachment to non-Western cultures in other parts of the world. 

At the same time, the declining relative economic and demographic power of the West 

will bring growing political challenges to W cstcrn hegemony on the part ofrising states 

representing rival civilizations. 

4. In response to these circumstances, W cstcrn societies should strive to strengthen and 

unify their own civilization against possible internal or external challenges to core values 

and interests. At the same time, the West should shed its universalistic pretensions by 

forswearing efforts to transform other societies into a W cstcrn mold or meddling in 

conflicts that do not directly threaten vital W cstcrn interests. Peace, should it prove 

possible, will rest upon the maintenance of a stable balance of power among the core 

states ofrival civilizations. 

The following discussion evaluates these propositions at both the theoretical and 

empirical levels. The theoretical structure ofHuntington\u2019s argument raises several 

important questions: What arc civilizations and how can we identify them? Will 

underlying trends in the intcrnatonal system, including modernization, globalization and 

democratization, lead to convergence or divergence among states? Is the West, taken as a 

whole, entering a period of decline as compared with competing civilizations? How docs Huntington\u2019s new paradigm relate to traditional realist thinking about international 

affairs? In addition to these broad, overarching issues, it is also important to a~k how well 

Huntington \u2019s argument performs in helping to explain a number of recent empirical 

ca~cs, such a~ the Bosnian conflict, the Persian Gulf war, and the growing tics between 

China and the Middle Ea~t. Finally, this review concludes with consideration of the 

policy implications flowing from Huntington\u2019s perspective. 

[Page 181] 

Journal of World-Systems Research 

Defining and Identifying Civilizations 

The problems begin with Huntington \u2019s concept of "civilization." Civilizations arc 

defined a~ social entities that serve a~ the most cncompa~sing object~ of political and 

social identification short of the human species itself. The most important defining 

feature of a civilization is the unifying culture that it represents. Culture is, however, an 

indistinct and multifaceted concept. What arc the core clements of a culture? Huntington 

relics most heavily upon religion, although not in a consistent fa~hion. Language, 

ethnicity and a common history arc invoked in some ca~cs but not in others. In general, 

Huntington offers no standard criteria for identifying civilizations or distinguishing them 

from one another. 

The elusiveness of culture a~ an organizing principle for understanding possible 

cleavages in international politics is evident in Huntington \u20 I 9s cla~sification scheme. 

The West is ba~ically defined a~ Europe and its former settler colonies, such a~ the U.S., 

Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc. Yet Latin America, conquered, settled and 

colonized by Europeans, is treated a~ a separate civilization all its own, even though most 

Latin Americans speak Spanish, Portuguese or English and worship a Christian God. The 

Slav-Orthodox world of Russia, the Ukraine and portions of the Balkans is also treated a~ 

a distinct civilization, despite its close proximity to the rest of Europe, its history of 

interaction with the countries to its West over many centuries and the fact that its people 

also embrace a branch of Christianity. 

In his original Foreign Affairs article (Huntington 1993), Huntington designated China, 

along with a number of nearby smaller countries who have been influenced by its culture, 

a~ Confucianist. Perhaps belatedly realizing that hardly anyone in China now refers to 

thc1rnelvcs a~ a "Confucianist" and that China ha~ spent most of the pa~t century in 

rebellion against its own traditional culture, Huntington resorts, in his book, to the even 

more ambiguous label of"Sinic" to designate this part of the world. Huntington regards 

Japan a~ a unique civilization all by itself, despite the heavy influence of China in 

Japan\u2019s history and culture and Japan\u2019s adoption of Western-style political 

institutions over the pa~t half century. Huntington is typically vague about the particular 

cultural features that ostensibly distinguish Japan so uniquely from other civilizations. 

The Islamic world, stretching from North Africa and the Middle Ea~t to parts of South 

and Southca~t A~ia, is defined solely by a common religion. Profound differences in language, geography, ethnicity, history and tradition apparently count for little within 

what Huntington portrays as a near monolithic Islamic world. India is treated as the core 

of a separate Hindu civilization, yet countries whose people embrace Buddhism arc 

denied civilization status. Finally, Huntington docs not know what to do with the cultural 

diversity and fragmentation of Sub-Saharan Africa, effectively and quite unsatisfactorily 

classifying these countries as constituting only half a civilization. 

What should be clear is that this motley collection of arbitrary cultural entities do not 

constitute "like units" that can be treated as distinct but isomorphic players in world 

politics. Ifwc unpackagc and disaggregate the concept of culture, it quickly becomes 

apparent no civilization is culturally pure, unique or homogcnous. Religion, language, 

history, tradition - each overlaps, undcrlaps and intertwines within and across 

Huntington\u2019s civilization categories in hopelessly complex ways. In an age of 

globalization, in fact, cross-cultural borrowing and penetration have accelerated in ways 

that render rigid distinctions less and less meaningful. This docs not mean, of course, that 

culture is irrelevant to understanding politics at either the domestic or international levels. 

But it docs suggest that such investigations must address the subtle and complex nature of 

such linkages and that the place to begin is at the micro level rather than with 

misleadingly broad stereotypes. 

Convergence or Divcrgcncc9 

In seeking to decipher the underlying forces shaping the post-Cold War world, many 

observers have focused on three trends: the rapid speed of economic modernization in 

some parts of the developing world, the deepening of international interdependence (or 

globalization) and the spread of democratic political institutions. For most, these 

tendencies portend a more hopeful future of growing peace, prosperity and cooperation. 

Modernization and globalization together serve to increase economic welfare and pave 

the road to a more secure and peaceful world. The mutual benefits of growing trade and 

investment have a pacifying effect on state behavior. The accelerated circulation of ideas, 

information and people enhances mutual understanding and leads, over time, to a 

growing convergence in values, institutions and interests. The spread of democracy, for 

its part, serves as a hedge against reckless or expansionist foreign policies and enhances 

mutual trust among societies that embrace similar political principles. 

[Page 182] 

Journal of World-Systems Research 

Claims for the pacifying effects of modernization, globalization and democratization 

have generated considerable debate among international relations scholars. It may prove 

true, as some argue, that early formulations of these hypotheses will be found too 

simplistic in their underlying assumptions and too hopeful in their projections of the 

future. At the least, further refinement and qualification will undoubtedly prove necessary. 

Y ct considerable research already suggests that the assertions outlined in the previous 

paragraph contain more than a kernel of truth. Huntington, however, attempt~ to turn these arguments upside down. Far from enhancing 

peace and cooperation, modernization, globalization and democratization, it turns out, 

plant the seeds of heightened civilizational conflict. According to Huntington, 

modernization and Westernization arc entirely distinct. A society can modernize without 

changing its core values. Indeed, Third World modernization is typically accompanied by 

an anti-Western backla~h. The enhanced resources brought about by the modernization 

process arc then put at the disposal of a political agenda hostile to the West. 

The growth of interdependence leads not to convergence but instead to the heightened 

awareness of differences. Only when brought into regular contact will people who 

identify with contrary value system~ come into conflict with one another. Indeed, 

interdependence may spark resistance and hatred when it takes the form of cultural 

penetration of one society by another representing incompatible bclicfa and values. For 

this rca~on, the backla~h against interdependence will lead states to reorient their political 

and economic tics, where possible, toward countries that share ba~ic cultural traits in 

common with their own. ln coming years, economic interdependence will tend to cluster 

within civilizations while exchanges across civilizations will become incrca~ingly 

shallow and precarious. 

Huntington acknowledges that a shared commitment to democracy may well help to 

cement friendly tics among Western countries. But the spread of democracy to nonWcstcrn societies simply provides an avenue to power for religious fundamentalists or 

indigenous cultural movements that often embrace values far removed from those 

characteristic ofWcstcrn democratic societies. The foreign policies such parties 

subsequently pursue lead to incrca~cd conflict with the West. 

ln short, Huntington suggests that modernization, interdependence and democratization 

lead not to convergence and incrca~cd cooperation among nations but to growing 

divergence and civilizational conflict. To understand why Huntington \u2019s contrarian 

views arc unconvincing, it is worthwhile to examine his ca~c for divergence in greater 

detail. 

Modernization 

Huntington docs not dispute that modernization, in the form of economic development 

and enjoyment of the benefits of science and technology, serves a~ a near universal 

a~piration across all civilizations in today\u2019s world. Y ct he treats modernization a~ 

strangely divorced from culture. Modernization, Huntington tells his readers, docs not 

equate with W cstcrnization. The West is unique and what makes it so unique is a set of 

cultural values, norms and belicfa that were largely in place long before the West it~elf 

modernized under the guise of the industrial revolution. Other societies, Huntington 

argues, will seek to emulate the West in their pursuit of modernization and the 

accompanying enhancement to wealth and power that go with it. But this process will 

leave the underlying cultural characteristics of such societies untouched. This is a sweeping and untenable claim. It is true, of course, that important clements of 

present day W cstcrn culture can be traced back prior to the dramatic scientific, 

technological and economic changes of the past two centuries. It is demonstrably untrue, 

however, that the latter phenomena have proceeded without leaving their own 

fundamental mark upon the evolution ofW cstcrn culture. 

Nor docs it seem likely or possible that modernization will fail to produce significant 

transformations in the culture and values of societies presently undergoing rapid 

economic development. Moreover, the cultural consequences of modernization may have 

something in common across societies. One recent study of values and norms in countries 

around the world offers evidence that, while there do indeed exist distinct cultural 

groupings that might be thought of as civilizations, the direction of change in values over 

time is consistent across all civilizations. The authors attribute this finding to the ongoing 

and pervasive influence of modernization in all parts of the world (Inglehart and Carballo 

1997). 

Interdependence 

It is true, of course, that the penetration ofW cstcrn cultural symbols into non-W cstcrn 

societies, combined with a history ofW cstcrn power, domination and exploitation over 

other peoples, has often sparked movements aimed at combating external influences and 

reasserting traditional values and norms. Y ct it is far from clear that such movements arc 

generally successful in their aims. Huntington overlooks the fact that cultural penetration 

occurs only where there is a demand for it. While traditionalists in some societies rail 

against bluejeans, rock music, W cstcrn fast food, Hollywood movies and other cultural 

imports, these very challenges to older cultural traditions persist and grow only because 

others in the same society - often the young - choose to embrace them. Contrary to 

Huntington\u2019s view that cultural traditionalists arc gaining strength in much of the 

non-Western world, traditionalism is in most places on the defensive and losing ground. 

[Page 183] 

Journal of World-Systems Research 

In rejecting the idea of cultural convergence, Huntington considers only one possible 

form that convergence might take, namely, the triumph ofW cstcrn culture. This is, 

indeed, an unlikely (and undesirable) prospect. But convergence may not mean the 

victory of one culture over all others, but instead a process of mutual borrowing, leading 

to a gradually progressing, though never complete, synthesis across cultures. In this 

version of convergence, it is not only non-Western societies that arc transformed by their 

contact with the West (as they arc), but the West itself which is similarly altered in 

substantial ways. The multi-cultural movement in the U.S. and the growing impact of 

immigration on European societies provide examples. Rather than withdrawing into a 

cocoon, it seems more likely that most societies will seek ways to adapt to a multicivilizational and increasingly interdependent world. In few societies will this process be 

free of strain and conflict. Individuals and groups will clash over what sort of adaptations arc necessary or desirable and how fa~t they should be made. But the underlying process 

itself appears irresistible. 

Intcrdcpcndcncc, of course, rests upon economic a~ well a~ cultural forces. Huntington 

a~sumcs that culture trumps economics. In doing so, he underestimates the powerful role 

that material interests play in driving forward and defending links of interdependence. 

Huntington acknowledges that self interest will prompt continued economic exchanges 

across countries. But he suggests that these exchanges will incrca~ingly take place a~ a 

regional ba~is among countries sharing similar cultural commitments. Trade and 

investment across civilizational boundaries, will shrink proportionally a~ compared with 

regional trade. Similarly, political efforts to build preferential trading blocs will succeed 

only when they follow, rather than cut across, cultural lines. 

For most countries, trade confined to civilizational boundaries offers a poor substitute for 

a more global and diverse set of trading partners. Most countries belonging to non -

Western civilizations arc developing countries that depend heavily upon export revenues. 

Whether these exports consist primarily of raw materials or manufactured products, the 

principle markets for such good~ lie in the industrialized countries of the West. While 

trade among developing countries will likely grow over time, continued dependence upon 

trade with the West will rule out the development of closed civilization blocs in the 

economic sphere for many decades to come. 

Although Huntington claims that multilateral economic liberalization cannot succeed 

among countries of varied cultures, the opposite conclusion is closer to reality. 

Huntington unrca~onably dismisses the substantial accomplishments of 

multicivilizational economic and political organizations such a~ the Association of South 

Ea~t A~ian Nations (ASEAN) and the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) 

forum. Unconvincingly, he explains away the North American Free Trade Agreement 

(NAFTA) by suggesting that Mexico now a~pircs to transform itself from a Latin 

American country to a smaller version of the United States. This treats the pa~sing 

rhetoric of Mexican political leaders far too seriously. Most significantly, Huntington 

entirely ignores the success of the World Trade Organization (WTO), a global trading 

agreement that cncompa~scs countries from every civilization. Business is still business 

and profit is still profit, whatever the language and whichever the god to whom traders 

and investors direct their prayers. 

Democracy 

Democratization, Huntington claims, also lead~ to divergence, a~ electoral system~ arc 

ca~ily highjackcd by anti-Western cultural traditionalists. Democracy is not, however, an 

empty procedural shell that exists in abstraction from the cultural values of the 

surrounding society. A country that ha~ embraced and established genuinely democratic 

institutions is likely to be one that ha~ already moved a considerable distance toward the 

underlying values ( also held, but not monopolized, by the West) that place democracy in 

esteem. The spread of democratic institutions presupposes a degree of convergence in 

a~sociatcd values, norms and a~pirations. The actual practice of democracy, in turn, reinforces some values while undermining others. Both the inputs and outputs of 

democratization, in other words, themselves reduce the cultural distance across societies 

that follow the democratic path. 

The record thus far, in any ca~c. docs not support Huntington\u2019s a~scrtion that 

democracy enhances the likelihood that a country will turn against the West. With some 

exceptions, Western tics with Third World countries typically improve substantially in 

the wake of democratic transitions and Third World democracies arc much less likely to 

adopt anti-Western rhetoric and foreign policies than non-democracies. 

The Decline of the Wcst9 

Huntington\u2019s claim that the West ha~ peaked and is now entering a pha~c of 

relative decline vis a vis other competing civilizations appears overwrought, at the lea~t. 

Only Huntington\u2019s "Sinic" civilization, centered around China, clearly appears on 

the a~ccndancc relative to the U.S. and Western Europe. Africa remains hopelessly mired 

in poverty, political fragmentation and ethnic turmoil. lncrca~ingly, much the same can 

be said of India. Latin America ha~ only recently begun a weak recovery from a "lost 

decade" of debt and economic recession. Japan appears to have peaked in the late eighties. 

For much of this decade, its economy ha~ been stagnant and it~ politics hobbled by 

paralysis. Moreover, Japan\u2019s political and military clout remain limited. The Soviet 

Union is no more. Russia and the successor states that Huntington identifies with the 

Orthodox-Slav world will take decades to recover from the wreckage of political and 

economic collapse. 

[Page 184] 

Journal of World-Systems Research 

Although Huntington cites the demographic surge of the Islamic world a~ a source of 

strength, this same indicator could be seen in a different light a~ a source of weakness. 

Moreover, the wealthiest states of the Islamic world, namely the major oil exporters, have 

witnessed steep declines in their export revenues a~ the real price of oil continues to 

decline. The Persian Gulf war revealed the Wcst\u2019s va~t military superiority over the 

Islamic world, a~ even Iraq, its most formidable conventional military power at the time, 

found it impossible to mount serious resistance to U.S. and allied forces. Indeed, though 

Huntington is correct to note that the West ha~ often found itself in conflict with parts of 

the Islamic world over recent years, he ignores the fact that is ha~ been the West, not its 

Islamic rivals, who have typically prevailed in such contests. 

Even China\u2019s potential threat to the West is ca~y to exaggerate, despite its size and 

recent record of rapid economic growth. China remains a relatively poor country. 

Average incomes arc less than one tenth of those in the United States. Only thirty percent 

of the population is urbanized. Moreover, China\u2019s ability to sustain rapid economic 

growth faces serious obstacles in the years ahead: significant food and energy shortages, 

the persistence of a large, inefficient and money-losing state-owned sector of the 

economy, infra~tructurc bottlenecks, growing environmental problem~. and social strains caused by the unevenness of economic progress between prosperous coastal regions and 

backward inland regions. 

China\u2019s recent growth in military spending follows a decade of severe neglect 

toward defense needs during the eighties. Much of China \u20 l 9s increased defense 

budget has gone to meet rising personnel costs rather than new weapons procurement. 

The quality of China\u2019s military technology is poor. China\u2019s huge, laborintcnsivc land army remains ill-trained and poorly equipped. Naval and air forces, while 

improving, arc still inadequate to project power much beyond China\u2019s own borders. 

Moreover, China\u2019s rate of growth in defense spending has been matched or 

exceeded by most of its neighbors in East Asia. China is probably two decades away 

from possessing the warmaking potential to seriously challenge the military dominance 

of the U.S. and its allies in the Pacific region. For all of its problems, the demise of the 

West has been greatly exaggerated. 

Comparisons with Realist Theory 

Perhaps more than anyone else working in the field of political science, Huntington has 

in the past insisted on the importance of political institutions. For most of his career, 

Huntington has been regarded as a realist. In international politics, realists focus on the 

struggle for power among autonomous and self-regarding states. Y ct Huntington pays 

little attention to states or other types of political institutions in The Clash of Civilizations. 

Has Huntington, in his reincarnation as a cultural dctcnninist, abandoned the realist 

principles that have guided him through so much of his intellectual career? 

The answer is no. With one important revision, Huntington\u2019s new view of the 

world is very much like his old one. World politics is still a zero sum game played among 

relatively unitary actors caught up in a never-ending struggle for power imposed upon 

them by the insecure conditions of an anarchic world. The major difference between the 

old Huntington and the new is that the unit of analysis has shifted from states to 

civilizations. The billiard balls arc larger in size and fewer in number, but they still 

careen around the realist billiard table in the same old fashion. Realist concepts such as 

balancing and bandwagoning still play a central role in Huntington \u2019s analysis. 

Huntington\u2019s efforts to provide realism with a cultural veneer do little to answer or 

obviate the increasingly potent critiques that have been leveled at realist thought in recent 

years. Instead, he merely succeeds in overlaying a realist view of the world with an even 

more problematic cultural gloss, creating a hybrid approach that is arguably more 

vulnerable than either taken separately. 

Cases 

Much of the empirical evidence cited by Huntington contradicts, rather than supports, his 

thesis. His strongest case is the Bosnian conflict. Herc, indeed, deadly cleavages 

developed along the fault lines among three of Huntington \u2019s civilizations. The breakup of the former Yugoslavia pitted Muslim Turks, Slavic Serbian Orthodox 

Christians and Roman Catholic Croats against one another. Y ct little cl~c about this tragic 

conflict conforms to Huntington\u2019s expectations. Muslim~ often serve as fanatically 

anti-Western bogeymen in Huntington\u2019s work. Yet at the beginning of the war 

large numbers of Bosnian Muslims, far more so than either of their Christian rivals, 

defended the supposedly Western values of tolerance, democracy and ethnic and religious 

pluralism. 

Nor did the Bosnian war give rise to extensive civilization-rallying among kindred states. 

A~idc from occa~ional stalling tactics, Russia provided precious little support for its 

Slavic brethren in Serbia and eventually committed troops to a Western-led peacekeeping 

mission. Bosnia \u20 l 9s Muslims welcomed the sympathies and the modest trickle of 

weapons offered by several Islamic countries. But the Bosnian government continued, 

despite repeated disappointments, to look to the West for its principal salvation. 

[Page 185] 

Journal of World-Systems Research 

The tepid support given the Bosnian Muslims by the United States and W cstcrn Europe 

stemmed less from cultural aversion than from fear of being drawn into an unwinnable 

quagmire. Indeed, media reports and public opinion surveys suggest that cultural 

differences did nothing to prevent most Europeans and Americans from drawing the 

generally correct conclusion that the Muslims were the victims of a systematic and 

horrifying campaign of "ethnic cleansing" organized by Christian Serbs and, less 

thoroughly, their sometimes allies, the Christian Croats. 

Huntington offers Saddam Hussein \u2019s efforts to rally the Arab Muslim world to his 

side in his confrontation with U.S. troops a~ another recent example of how national 

conflicts can be transformed into civilization conflicts. The Persian Gulf conflict, 

however, shows just the reverse. While Hussein did indeed "get religion" after his army 

invaded Kuwait and tried to portray himself a~ a defender oflslam against the West, the 

salient point is that this strategy failed miserably. With a few exceptions, governments in 

the Arab world fell in behind the U.S.-led strategy for expelling Iraqi troops from Kuwait. 

Although Iraq attracted some popular sympathies in the Arab world, Arab opinion wa~ 

divided and Hussein \u2019s hopes that ma~s support for his cause would lead to the 

collapse of those governments who supported Operation Desert Storm proved futile. 

Beyond the Middle Ea~t, governments representing the entire span of Huntington \u2019s 

array of civilizations joined in condemning Iraq\u2019s aggression and in supporting 

political, economic and even military sanctions. It would, in fact, be difficult to find 

another instance where such a broad and culturally diverse coalition of nations came 

together in support of a military response to aggression. 

Huntington discerns the beginnings of a na~ccnt Sinic-Islamic alliance aimed against the 

West. He ba~cs this perception upon evidence of Chinese arms sales to Pakistan and 

several Islamic Middle Ea~tcrn countries, a~ well a~ a presumed convergence of negative 

attitudes on the part of each civilization toward Western values and their penetration of these societies. If arms sales were the principal measure of an alliance across civilizations, 

then it would make much more sense for Huntington to posit a W cstcrn-Islamic 

connection, since the U.S. and Western European countries have long served as the 

primary peddlers of weapons to a variety oflslamic countries, including, on occasion, 

those led by governments generally thought hostile to the West. On the other hand, it 

makes little sense to portray Chinese arms sales to Pakistan, for instance, as evidence of 

an incipient Sinic-Islamic alliance against the West when Pakistan has long been a close 

client of the United States. 

It is, of course, true that Chinese interest in and tics to the Middle East arc growing and 

will likely continue to do so. This has little to do with a common cultural antipathy 

toward the West, however, and much to do with China\u2019s escalating need for foreign 

oil imports, chiefly from the Middle East. This is the same motive that prompts so many 

other countries, Western and non-Western alike, to build political and economic tics to 

states in that oil-rich region. The cultural character of Chinese and Middle Eastern 

societies arc simply irrelevant. Indeed, if culture were the principal determinant of 

relations between China and the Islamic world, then one might expect mutual hostility 

given China\u2019s poor treatment of the Muslim minority in its western provinces. 

Policy Implications 

Huntington rejects the notion that the coming clash of civilizations should be 

accompanied by a Western holy war against other cultures. Indeed, he warns, wisely in 

this instance, against the temptation to assume that Western culture is, should be or can 

be universal. Huntington docs, however, urge unity within the West against forces from 

both within and without that would attempt to undermine the W cst\u20 l 9s willingness or 

ability to defend its own values. Huntington tells us that the growing strength of some 

non-Western civilizations, particularly Islam, stems from their incrca~ing sense of unity 

and purpose. In response to unwelcome W cstcrn pressures, groups within these societies 

have sponsored campaigns designed to purify their civilizations and promote a return to 

the roots. Huntington implies that the West can flourish only if it is willing to do the same. 

Not only must the West gird itself to meet expected challenges mounted by non-Western 

civilizations in other parts of the world, but it must also reject or purge itself of those 

clements within its own midst who call for multiculturalism, relativism or serious critical 

appraisal of the Wcst\u2019s own flaws and deficiencies. Given Huntington\u2019s 

ungenerous a~scssmcnt of the multicultural movement, one suspects that his project a~ a 

whole is colored by a nostalgia toward a mythical pa~t ofW cstcrn, and particularly 

American, cultural homogeneity and unity of purpose. While many W cstcrn values arc 

indeed worth defending, their survival docs not depend upon a defensive response to 

perceived threats from without or within. Indeed, the future health of the West rests more 

upon its ability to engage in healthy self criticism, to provide space for previously 

marginalized voices, to learn from the successful idea~ and practices of other societies 

and to embrace change and evolution a~ a necessary and often desirable response to 

shifting circumstances. Circling the wagons is an act of desperation. [Page 186] 

Journal of World-Systems Research 

Conclusions 

With little subtlety, Huntington concludes his book by offering an apocalyptic vision of 

another world war, this time pitting the core states of competing civilizations against one 

another. Ironically, however, this frightening scenario begins not with a fault line conflict 

across civilizations but with an intra-civilizational conflict between China and Vietnam 

over control of the South China Sea. 

This choice merely underlines an empirical weakness in Huntington \u2019s presentation. 

To sustain his thesis, Huntington must not only show that conflict often occurs along the 

fault lines among civilizations, but that these kinds of conflicts arc considerably more 

common than those among groups or states belonging to the same civilization. This is a 

difficult, if not impossible, claim to substantiate. 

Take Ea~t A~ia, for instance, where Huntington \u2019s global war scenario initially 

centers. The Sinic civilization grouping includes China, Taiwan, Vietnam and Korea. Yet 

there is precious little unity within this cultural complex. For almost fifty years, Koreans 

have remained bitterly divided and engaged in a tense armed standoff that once gave way 

to outright war. The fact that mainland Chinese and Taiwanese arc cultural cousins ha~ 

produced little in the way of genuine progress toward reconciliation and reunification. 

While embracing many Chinese cultural imports, the Vietnamese have resisted Chinese 

political domination throughout their history. The two countries remain serious and 

distrustful rivals to the present day, despite similar ideological leanings. More broadly, 

some of the bitterest and most la~ting conflicts often arise among peoples who share 

much more in common in cultural terms than either docs with the outside forces that 

sometimes come to their aid. 

The superficial appeal ofHuntington\u2019s thesis is considerable. The premature and 

unsustainable euphoria that accompanied the end of the Cold War ha~ faded. In its place 

ha~ arisen considerable frustration and disappointment with a world that remains complex 

and ridden with conflict. A world-weary pessimism is now in vogue. Huntington \u2019s 

vision of global disorder fueled by a cla~h of incompatible cultures is perfectly attuned to 

the present mood and plays skillfully upon the insecurities that plague many in the West. 

Periods of transition, such a~ the present, commonly give rise to considerable uncertainty 

and pessimism. Prophets of doom and gloom find a ready audience. Fortunately, however, 

the underlying trends in the present international system, including the aforementioned 

spread of modernization, interdependence and democracy, do not justify such a dire 

outlook. 

Nevertheless, perceptions do matter. Should policy-makers and publics ba~c their 

expectations and actions upon Huntington \u2019s bleak predictions, then the danger 

exists that such prophesies could prove self-fulfilling. Perhaps the lesson for social scientists is that otherwise laudatory stabs at intellectual boldness should be tempered by 

a sense of responsibility. 

[Page 187] 

Journal of World-Systems Research 

References 

Brown, Michael, Scan M. Lynn-Jones and Steven Miller. 1996. Debating the Democratic 

Peace. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 

Fukayama, Francis. 1992. The End of History and the La~t Man. New York: Avon. 

Huntington, Samuel P. 1993. "The Cla~h of Civilizations?" Foreign Affairs 72:22-49. 

lnglchart, Ronald and Marita Carballo. 1997. "Docs Latin America Exist? ( And is There 

a Confucian Culture?): A Global Analysis of Cross Cultural Differences." PS: Political 

Science and Politics 30:34-46. 

Kaplan, Robert. 1996. The Ends of the Earth: A Journey at the Dawn of the 21st Century. 

New York: Random House. 

Mcarshcimcr, John. 1990. "Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War." 

International Security 15:5-56. 

Mueller, John. 1990. Retreat from Doomsday: The Obsolescence of Major War. New 

York: Ba~ic Book~. 

Rosccrancc, Richard. 1986. The Rise of the Trading State: Commerce and Conquest in 

the Modern World. New York: Ba~ic Book~. 

Russett, Bruce. 1993. Gra~ping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold War 

World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 

[Page 188] 

Journal of World-Systems Research Steve Fuller. Science. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. viii+ 159 pp. 

ISBN 0816631255, $14.95 (paper); ISBN 0816631247, $37.95 (hardcover). 

Sandra G. Harding. Is Science Multicultural? Postcolonialisms, Fcminis1rn, and 

Epistcmologics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. x + 264 pp. ISBN 

0253211565, $14.95 (paper); ISBN 0253333652, $35.00 (hardcover). 

Reviewed by 

Merle Jacob, Department ofThcory of Science and Research, University of Gothenburg, 

Gothenburg, SWEDEN 

One of the persistent challenges for contemporary historiography of science is the 

problem of why three great ancient cultures (China India, and Egypt) display, 

independently of one another, a similar pattern with respect to science. The pattern is one 

of "aborted discovery" in each of them in spite of the availability of talents, social 

organization, and peace - the standard explanatory devices furnished by the sociologies of 

science on which that historiography relics. 

Almost a decade ago, Janet L. Abu-Lughod's Before European Hegemony (1991) made 

two points that arc of critical import in understanding the above challenge and how the 

publications under review may be of interest to world(-)systcms scholars. One wa~ that 

the fall of the Ea~t wa~ a necessary precondition for the rise of the modern world(-

)systcm and that since "the Ea~t had already substantially 'fallen' before the Portuguese 

men-of-war appeared in the Indian Ocean," then "no special 'virtue' inhered in the 

conquerors ... " (p. 260). The second of Abu-Lughod's point~ wa~ that in understanding 

the rise of the West, we should focus not on the Portuguese takeover of the Indian Ocean 

zone but on the Spanish incorporation of the New World. Without detracting from the 

achievement~ of Fuller and Harding, I think it would be fair to say that their contributions 

follow the path so succinctly sketched by Abu-Lughod with respect to tracing the root~ of 

modern science. 

Science and Is Science Multicultural? share a common theme in the sense that both arc 

concerned with debunking the age-old myth of European superiority and the uniqueness 

of science to Europe. The two authors approach the ta~k in very different ways, however, 

and this reviewer makes no pretence at being able to comprehensively encapsulate the 

intricacies of either author's rca~oning within the pages provided here. Nevertheless, I 

would like to focus on two broad themes that in my view constitute important moment~ 

in both discussions: European science a~ a co -production of Europe's interaction with 

other cultures, and the place of science in contemporary understanding of the world 

(public understanding of science). These themes have become incrca~ingly important a~ 

the myth of a science that is the unique invention of Europe ha~ come under attack from 

the margins (feminist and postcolonial) and the center (social studies of science). A 

second and not unimportant rca~on for the incrca~cd attention to these questions is 

provided by Samuel Huntington ("The Cla~h of Civilizations?", Foreign Affairs, 1993), 

who contends that With the end of the Cold War, international politics moves out of its Western phase, and 

its center-piece becomes the interaction between the West and non-Western civilizations 

and among non-Western civilizations. In the politics of civilizations, the peoples and 

governments of non-Western civilizations no longer remain the objects of history as 

targets of Western colonialism but join the West as the movers and shapers of history. [p. 

23] 

It is these discourses (feminist, postcolonial, and social studies of science) that form the 

point of departure for Fuller and Harding. Harding begins with a concern about 

integrating the insight~ of postcolonial and feminist criticism of received understandings 

of science and the universality of the knowledge claims produced from this process. For 

Fuller, the initial concern is with public understanding of science in the light of recent 

sociological critiques which demonstrate the social and cultural cmbcddcdncss of the 

process of knowledge production and the claim~ that emerge from such a process. 

Despite their divergence in point of departure, these two writers arc both grappling with 

the "legacy of Thomas Kuhn." By this, I refer to the post-World War II tradition of 

treating modern science as a "historical, sociological, cultural and political phenomenon." 

This body of work has revealed several invaluable insights and ha~ both helped to 

uncover a~ well a~ make problematic a satisfactory resolution of the issues on which 

Science and Is Science Multicultural? focus. 

[Page 189] 

Journal of World-Systems Research 

Science takes the reader from initiatives such a~ Science Week in Britain, which is a 

government effort to demonstrate to the public the fruits of science, to the thorny 

question of"what is science?" and finally to the view of Western science from outside. 

This involves Fuller's gazing at the practice of science from the vantage points oflslam, 

Japan, and a report purportedly written by Martian anthropologists. This approach is a 

pedagogical demonstration of the old adage of "practicing what one preaches" in that if 

we take seriously the insight that our understanding of science is dctcnnincd by our 

situatcdncss, then the view from a different location ought to reveal different insights into 

the same process. Harding retraces and expands on some of the more fundamental 

questions such a~ the role of rationality in science and what constitutes objectivity in the 

light ofpostcolonial, feminist, and postmodern contcstations of traditional understandings 

of these concept~. Put differently, she provides insight to the reader a~ to the "why" of 

Fuller's exploration of different standpoints from which to view science. Although my 

use of the term "standpoint" to describe Fuller's different perspectives is a loose one, I 

think it is justified if only a~ a tool to underscore the complementarity of Fuller's and 

Harding's contributions. 

Harding is first and foremost preoccupied with the problem of how to correct the worst 

a~pccts of Europe's Eurocentric views on science through informing it with that of other 

accounts. In this sense her objectives arc similar to Fuller's in that he too is concerned 

with bringing another perspective on Western science to the forefront of the discussion. 

Whcrca~ Fuller secs this ta~k a~ a part of an effort to improve public understanding of science, Harding's interest lies in saving what she secs a~ key European concept~, such a~ 

rationality and objectivity. Harding docs not tell us why these concept~ or their European 

versions arc central or why they arc worthy of preservation. More importantly, it is 

unclear whether the different critiques of Western science can be satisfactorily addressed 

through this approach. One sometimes gets the feeling that Harding's position is too 

much like that of a supervisor faced with a fairly well developed critique of mainstream 

theory from a clever Ph.D. student. Rather than push the student in the direction of 

developing this critique to stand on its own terms vis a vis the Received View, Harding's 

approach is to show how such a critique may be integrated without losing the central 

concepts of the Received View. This approach, while in line with the Kuhnian account of 

how science progresses, a~sumcs fundamental agreement on the part of all parties that the 

subject to be saved - in this ca~c the concepts of rationality and objectivity - should be 

saved. Harding however, argues that such agreement is not necessary since her account is 

not intended to be a universal one but merely one position from which the W cstcrn 

observer could read science. This raises the issue of standpoint epistemology, a point to 

which I will return presently. I would like, however, to leave Harding for a moment and 

turn to some a~pccts of the testimony Fuller brings forth when he gazes at science from 

other standpoints. 

One insight that Fuller gleaned from the Martian anthropologist~\u2019 report is that 

human faith in science is superstitious, given the widespread public ignorance a~ to the 

nature of this enterprise and the belief among practicing scientists that every scientific 

achievement is an advance towards the "Truth." Herc Fuller connect~ the discussion to 

what I believe is his central concern in this book, i.e. "the public understanding of 

science." On this issue, he poses two main questions: "what is the public view of 

scicncc9" and "can an enriched understanding of science that takes into account other 

perspectives on science contribute to informed public undcrstanding9" 

Fuller's argument is that science ha~ superseded religion in the public's minds' eye, but 

whcrca~ religion had been able to hold the attention of its audience for centuries, the 

congregation of science - after only a few decades of worship - ha~ started to experience a 

loss of faith. At the risk of extending the analogy too far, it would not be unfair to posit 

that science faces a dilemma similar to that encountered by the Catholic Church when 

demands were made for Ma~s to be said in the language of the congregation rather than 

Latin. Just a~ using the language of the congregation wa~ initially read a~ a process of 

demystification that would in turn threaten the authority of religion, so too can one argue 

that sociological account~ of science arc undermining of its authority. 

Rituals such a~ Science Weck arc designed on the a~sumption that the public presentation 

ofa glowing array of black boxes labeled a~ "achievements of science" would be enough 

to rca~surc the public that their tax money is well invested. "Would a public informed of 

the mundane reality behind the production of such black boxes be willing to continue to 

fund their production on the same ba~is a~ it currently docs9" Fuller believes that the 

answer to this question is yes. Judging from the science wars, many scientist~ think 

otherwise. Fuller further believes that a public informed of the fact that science is not a 

uniquely European product but a process that ha~ over time appropriated and borrowed knowledge from other cultures would also be willing to continue to support science. 

While l share Fuller's optimism about the public's willingness to pay for science, l would 

like to play devil's advocate here and raise two point~. The first is an alternative reading 

of the potential impact on public understanding of science. The second is to raise the 

issue that at the core of all these discussions is a genuine concern with the problem of the 

political accountability of science. This accountability has several other dimensions apart 

from those represented in the publications under review. In an attempt to broaden the 

discussion l will shortly sketch out some of these and their relation to the problem at hand. 

An alternative reading: both Fuller and Harding arc arguing, and quite rightly so, that it is 

about time that the public understands that W cstcrn science is not an exclusively 

European invention. They both show in different ways how the achievements of Western 

science have been the result of interplay between the West and other cultures. I doubt 

very much however, whether such a subtle account of sc icncc will capture the 

imagination of the public. Instead, l would like to pose that the response will be similar to 

that faced by world system~ and dependency analyses when they showed that the view 

that modernization was a uniquely European effort was a myth. That is, the new evidence 

will sway a small percentage of the academic and maybe even the policy community, but 

the vast majority will remain untouched. 

[Page 190] 

Journal of World-Systems Research 

The power of the idea of science as a uniquely European achievement lies in its 

simplicity, its appeal to vanity, and its bolstering the image of the West as the benevolent 

winner that can now show others how to imitate its success. The more complex and 

accurate account has only one thing going for it - accuracy - and while this may be 

irresistible to scientists, l doubt it would have a similar impact on policymakers. 

The public understanding of science is only one dimension of a larger problem which 

Fuller mentions in passing, i.e., the public accountability of science. Several observers 

have noted that we arc witnessing a new era of demands for science to be accountable. ln 

the 1960s, the movement for a socially and politically accountable science was most 

concerned that science should above all be non-oppressive and promote peace. The 

accountability of the 1990s is radically different and in many ways more layered than that 

which inspired, among other things, the social study of science and technology. 

Contemporary science faces two main types of accountability pressure: environmental 

and financial. The latter may be further subdivided into accountability to the taxpayer and 

the more narrow notion of user accountability. The second of these two is raised by Fuller, 

and l am in full agreement with his view that there is no reason why science should not 

be made to be accountable as any other activity that demands a share of the taxpayers' 

purse. Within this broad agreement however, there is a great deal to quibble over as to 

how this accountability should be implemented. Should the British research assessment 

exercises be the model or should we strive for some other type of evaluation mechanism? 

These issues have been and arc still being debated elsewhere. Fuller neglects, however, another dimension of the accountability drive which connects 

to both the ideal image of science and to the new image of science that both Fuller and 

Harding arc striving to promote. Research councils, government~, and private enterprise 

have reached a consensus on the notion thats cicntific research should be conducted in 

such a fashion as to integrate the need~ and views of users at every step of the process 

from project design to implementation. This is a great idea both in theory and in practice. 

It is also in keeping with some longstanding demand~ from several communities such as 

the social studies of science, the public, and last but not least radical scientists and some 

corporations (cf. the Lucas Aerospace cooperation experiment). 

The recent wave ofunaldutcratcd enthusiasm for this practice, however, has raised some 

problems if not for the public at least for the scientists' understanding of science and the 

University, which has until recently had a monopoly on determining the rules of 

understanding for how science should be produced. Strangely enough, I think that it is in 

social science where the move away from a science done in private and results presented 

in public has had the most dubious impact. This is ironic. Some might call it poetic 

justice, since social scientist~ have been those most cager to have a participatory science. 

This dubious impact manifests itself in cases where the new ideology of 

stakeholder/user/client participation in social science research leaves little room for the 

social scientist to reflect on the impact of his/her research on communities beyond the 

narrowly defined groups considered to be the community of interest to the project. In 

many instances, social science work robbed of this reflexive moment becomes a mere 

facilitation of policy or other goals. This type of work, while useful and in many cases 

necessary, puts into question the critical function of social science. 

A further observation of the Martians' report is that the history of Western science is 

viewed as an obligatory passage point through which all aspiring cultures must go. On 

further examination, the Martians discover that this conclusion rests on a view of the 

history of science that necessitates a reconstruction of the events in that history so that 

they form one continuous episode. This is one of the seed~ that gave birth to the 

discussion that now goes under the rubric of multiculturalism and science. Other 

distortions of the history of modern science of interest to this account include the 

invisibility of the other in the history of modern science. Put differently, received 

accounts of the history of modern science depict science as the unique achievement of the 

European (usually male) person. The debate about multiculturalism, particularly as it 

manifests it~clfwith respect to the issue of why science developed in the way it did in the 

West as opposed to other cultures, is a strange one. The very term multiculturalism is 

baffling since it now denotes everything from a cultural relativist stance to a collective 

description of non-White cultures. It is as if having discovered cultural diversity, 

Eurocentric thought frames demand the creation of a new bipolar category, multicultural 

vs. monocultural, the "European us" and a "complex others." This performance of mental 

acrobatics takes on even more bizarre proportions when one considers some of the claims 

made in the pursuit of reclaiming an Islamic Science, Hindu Science, or even 

Afrocentrism. By this I refer to the fact that some of these account~, in their efforts to 

point to the flaws in the Eurocentric construction of modern history of science, the1rnelves commit the same errors. A cla~sic example is the way arguments for nonWestern science get caught up in the issue of claiming priority which is a quintessential 

part of the Eurocentric moment in science. 

Both Science and Is Science Multicultural? attempt with careful scholarship to stem the 

tide of excess that sometimes characterizes popular and even some academic attempts to 

do battle with Eurocentrism. Both account~ affirm that science is a complex social 

phenomenon that is at the very lea~t a co-production of European and non-European 

idea~ and materials. Harding's reading of postcolonial account~ traces the role of science 

in the "voyages of discovery" and the great enterprise of colonialism. Two a~pects of this 

account that struck me most were, first, the - to use an anachronistic description -

mission-oriented nature of science in the colonies. This contradicts the colonial history of 

science narratives about colonial science qua civilization of non-Europeans and 

substitutes an account which speaks of science a~ a process of the accumulation of 

knowledge necessary to displace and subjugate non -Europeans in space that wa~ 

previously theirs. The instrumentalist leanings of colonial science also raises questions 

about the validity of another popular belief about modern science, which is science a~ a 

disinterested search for knowledge. Second, I wa~ struck by Harding's synthesis of these 

concerns with the major battleground issues in post-Kuhnian philosophy of science, i.e., 

rationality, relativism, and standpoint epistemology. This is where Is Science 

Multicultural? reveals itself to be a potential candidate for cla~sroom use. Harding's 

account is a~ insightful a~ it is pedagogical and her contribution, like Fuller's, is one that 

should be on the reading list for graduate courses this fall. 

[Page 191] 

Journal of World-Systems Researcha? Graeme Donald Snooks. The Dynamic Society: Exploring the Sources of Global Change. 

London: Routledge, 1996. xvii+ 491 pp. ISBN 0-415-137314, $24.95 (paper); ISBN 0-

415-13730-6, $84.95 (hardcover). 

Reviewed by 

Andre Gunder Frank, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, CANADA 

Sec also: Steven Sanderson \u2019s earlier review of this book in JWSR. 

This review originally appeared in the Journal of World History 9:107-115, 1998? 

University of Hawaii Press and appears here by permission of the University of Hawaii 

Press. 

This book is a veritable tour de force beginning with the establishment of the universe 15 

billion years ago and the emergence of life on earth 4 billion years ago. It goes on to 

analyze the bio-social or socio-biological a~ccnt of man and of human society over two 

million years and of the rise and development of civilization over the pa~t ten thousand. 

The author offers a novel interpretation of the causes of the industrial revolution two 

hundred years ago, and stresses the demographic revolution of the pa~t fifty years. The 

political payoff from all this and more is the author's recommendation to face the future 

global ecological crisis by generating a new technological paradigm shift, rather than 

giving in to Club of Rome type ecological limits to growth, whose existence the author 

denies. Snook's resolute and uncompromising materialism is out of step with all manner 

ofpa~t and contemporary idealist positions: 

A major message of The Dynamic Society, namely that the driving force is provided by 

an overwhelming desire to maximize material advantage, is both dista~tcful and 

unacceptable to many people [ especially] intellectuals [p. 13]. Idea~ ... do not constitute 

the driving force. This position is diametrically opposed to the conventional wisdom. [p. 

203] 

The real life or motor force of this long and still ongoing process, the author is at pains to 

demonstrate, is economic -- or more precisely matcrial/ist -- competition to use scarce 

resources for survival. The author himself refers to the simile of a great game of life on 

earth. Its chess board and the rules of the game represent the constraints of universal 

chemistry and terrestrial geology. However, man [sic!] makes himself a~ indeed docs all 

life itself. They arc not a given or a mere product of chemical or natural forces. For the 

object of playing the game of life for all players derives from the genetically internalized 

and selfish individual quest for material sustenance to permit survival. The open secret of 

this social process in The Dynamic Society is the economic competition with all other 

individuals which itselfrcquircs and generates rational biological and social choice 

among different combinations of "dynamic strategics" and tactics to permit material 

sustenance and survival within these physical constraints. Thus, Snooks appeals to the 

authority of Darwin -- and of the evidence! -- to argue that natural, including social, 

selection is itself [generated and driven by] economic competition among all individual 

claimants for the scarce material resources that permit survival. Social institutions arc only enabling derivative mechanisms. The idea that idea~ or the intellectuals that 

formulate them move history is no more than the ultimate intellectual fanta~y. 

The author's tour de force includes a short history of time, plate tectonics, climatology, 

and the chemical conditions oflifc; the origin of the species and natural selection; on 

being human through competition and cooperation, selfishness and altruism; family life 

and gender in Paleolithic hunter- gatherer society and the political economy of Neolithic 

civilization; the wealth of nations and all world history. The author also discusses and 

disputes the geographical determinism of Eldredge and of Gould's Time's Arrow, Time's 

Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time, the physical "supplysidc" theses of Crawford and Marsh about The Driving Force of chemical reactions, of 

Dawkin's nco-Darwinist The Selfish Gene, and of the populationist determinism of the 

Ehrlich\u2019s Population Explosion, Ronald Lee and others. He challenges supply-side 

economics from Marx's Capital to Mokyr's Lever of Riches and modifies Kcyncs\u2019 

demand side in The General Theory. He fundamentally disagrees with Hegel about the 

role of ideology and with Fukuyama on The End of History. Indeed, he rejects all 

ideological positions about "moral/political versus economic man"; but he also docs 

battle with economists about homo cconomicus and with the "schizophrenic" internally 

contradictory position of Becker about "altruism, egoism, and genetic fitness" in A 

Treatise on the Family. And he challenges and rewrites all received economic history, 

especially The European Miracle [Jones] of Prometheus Unbound [Landes] in The Rise 

of the Western World [North and Thoma~]. These allegedly lead to The Limits of Growth 

by Meadows and the Club of Rome, and support the thesis of the entire 

ecological/environmental movement, against which Snooks combats. 

Snooks docs not dispute all these authorities just for the sake of argument. He docs so in 

order to demolish or circumvent the obstacles that all this received supply-side and 

ideological wisdom poses for the construction of a truly materialist demand-side theory 

for Exploring the Sources of Global Change in The Dynamic Society. For Snooks claims 

that these sources arc endogenous materialism or materialist cndogcncity, which generate 

the internal dynamic of all biological and social life. Snook~' exploration of this 

endogenous dynamic is designed to cover his bet on further technological change a~ the 

only way to confront the threatening Gordian ecological knot -- by cutting it through a 

new technological paradigm. Therein this book offers a wider ba~is for and complements 

Robert M. Adams' (1996) Paths of Fire: An Anthropologist's Inquiry into Western 

Technology. For that only reviews the "tunnel" history of the la~t five thousand years 

from Mesopotamia to the United States to support the plea for a U.S. government 

technology policy, which would probably be acceptable also to Snook~. 

[Page 192] 

Journal of World-Systems Research 

Snook~ construct~ a complicatedly simple model to explain endogenously driven social 

change. Decision making individuals, each acting during their own lifetime in a 

competitive environment that is subject to transformation whose rate of change is mostly 

much slower than a generation's life cycle, chose among available "dynamic strategics" to maximize their material well-being. Snooks's short summary of these dynamic strategics 

is procreation, predation/conquest, generic/technological change, and 

symbiosis/commerce, and/or their combination in set~ of such "dominant" and 

"dependent" strategics. 

Snooks devotes a chapter to each of the dominant dynamic strategics. The first one is 

family multiplication. That wa~ the dominant strategy for 99 .9 percent of humanity's 

struggle to survive during the pa~t two million years. Family units -- prior to the pa~t fifty 

years -- with an average of five members that, however, may combine in band~ of several 

families, use natural resources near them a~ gatherer-hunters. Cooperation within family 

and even band units is materially maximizing and therefore economically rational for the 

individual, and contrary to Becker (1991) and others is not a sign that altruism replaces 

competitive individualism within this social unit. Where and when foraging or gathering 

predominates, it is economically rational for women to have relatively more income and 

status. When hunting -- and a fortiori war -- predominate, the income and status of men 

rises. Family multiplication wa~ the dominant economic growth strategy a~ family and 

larger group units migrated to open up new land~ all over the habitable earth until land 

and other resources became too scarce to support this strategy any longer. That in itself 

"dynamically" generated new dominant strategics, which become socio -economically 

rational in turn. 

The next two strategics arc technological change and conquest. Indeed, adding hunting to 

foraging wa~ itself also a technological paradigm shift. Another major one wa~ the 

Neolithic agricultural revolution, which permitted the material support of far larger 

populations in smaller area~. Ala~. not all or even most of the members of these larger 

population groups were able to enjoy a~ good a livelihood, and certainly not a~ much 

freedom and leisure a~ their foraging ancestors. Nonetheless, material wealth incrca~cd, 

although it became more concentrated in the hands of upper cla~scs, who formed states 

mostly at the expense of their lower agricultural laboring cla~scs -- and of their neighbors. 

Snooks's account docs not altogether clarify how and why the rational action of "all men 

and women" led to adopting strategics whose cost for so many, including women, 

generated benefits primarily for the few. 

For these Neolithic development~ also created conditions in which conquest became 

economically rational. That is why Snooks says that civilization is synonymous with 

conquest. It became rational to pursue further economic expansion through conquest of 

neighboring societies and states. Some had also ama~scd wealth or controlled resources 

and trade routes that could be conquered and pillaged or otherwise productively 

incorporated into the spoils of the victor, for whom reliance on conquest strategy wa~ not 

only rational ex-ante but ipso facto also post hoc. All settled wealth-producing 

agricultural and industrial communities and their states became magnets for conquest, not 

only by their other settled neighbors, but also by their herding nomadic ones. That 

institutionalized offensive and defensive war, its enormous infra~tructural investment~ 

and other military and related political expenditures, and of course the political-military 

ca~tcs that came to specialize in these activities. Even so, under many circumstances and 

recurrently for a long time war and conquest wa~ able to generate greater material income and wealth for some at the expense of others. Snooks reviews the use of this strategy 

from antiquity in the Fertile Crescent, through cla~sical Greece and Rome, but also in 

Ea~t A~ia and in the W cstcrn Hemisphere to modern times. Conquest alone is however 

different from the other dynamic strategics: it is a zero sum game, which cannot itself 

directly generate more material benefit for all concerned. At best, it can and did stimulate 

others which can: further technological change used a~ a dependent strategy ( e.g., to 

improve military hardware) and the next dynamic strategy -- commerce. 

Commerce can incrca~c the total material welfare of the trading parties in accordance 

with the cla~sical economists' principles of absolute and comparative advantage, which 

Snooks accepts. Fortunately, he also recognizes "unequal exchange" in trade and is not so 

naive a~ modern "free traders" to claim that the benefits of trade arc likely to be 

distributed equally a~ well. Unlike conquest, commerce is a positive sum game dynamic 

strategy, whose use however makes some more equal than others. 

Commerce wa~ initiated by state traders and private merchants already in early antiquity 

in West Asia, but then also in Ea~t Asia and the Western Hemisphere, thereby taking 

advantage of differences in the natural and social endowments among regions. For 

instance, ancient intcr-fluvial Mesopotamian and Nile-straddling Egyptian bottom lands 

were good for producing food even in excess oflocal requirements and cotton for 

weaving textiles, but lacked timber and metals, which were available in highland 

Anatolia and even in the Levant. Snooks reviews the expansion of trade from there to the 

ancient Greek world, the Phoenicians and the Carthage they founded, to Rome which 

battled against it relying more on conquest than on trade, and to Constantinople, which 

survived much longer on its trading position. He then jumps to V cnicc, Genoa and Pisa to 

arrive at northwest Europe and its commercial "expansion" around the world, which ala~ 

Snooks reviews from a far too Eurocentric perspective. Contrary to Snooks (p.370), at the 

end of the Middle Ages Europe wa~ not the center but entirely marginal to a world 

trading system. It is also not true that then "history turned to north-western Europe" 

(p.369); only historians did, and even they did not do so until the nineteenth century' 

Ala~, even Snooks wa~ taken in by them: and that still compromises his otherwise 

excellent analysis, a~ we will sec further in my critique below. 

[Page 193] 

Journal of World-Systems Research 

The inequality in the benefits from commerce also contributes to political economic and 

social inequality among societies. That in turn combines with the exhaustion of the 

marginal benefits compared to the marginal costs of relying on other dynamic strategics, 

especially family expansion and conquest, but temporarily also of commerce. This 

combination of circumstances then made it economically rational for some -- in W cstcrn 

Europe -- to once again switch reliance among dynamic strategics, so that reliance on 

technology itself now became dominant. The result during the pa~t two hundred years 

wa~ an "industrial revolution" in productive, commercial, and also military technology. Therewith, Snooks arrives at the practical political policy payoff from his tour de force: lt 

is not that this new technological capacity now docs or threatens to exhaust the physical 

and natural capacity of the Earth to support life a~ we know it, a~ environmental 

ecologists try -- wrongly according to Snooks -- to persuade us. No says Snooks, it is the 

dominant dynamic strategy of technology that itself requires and will undergo still 

another major paradigmatic shift. For "materialist man is the same yesterday, today and 

forever. Only the underlying economic conditions facing him have changed" (p. 197). 

Human Dynamic Society can and will come up with the necessary and therefore 

economically rational dynamic strategy to face and overcome these new conditions -- if 

only its intellectuals will wise up and let it. 

Already in his preface, Snooks stresses that 

a major expression of the humanist spirit of this book is my argument that the dynamics 

of human society arises from the decision-making not just of small elites but of all 

members of society both male and female throughout the world .... lt may come a~ a 

surprise to some that focus upon fundamental economic forces involving a central role 

for materialist man should lead to an uncompromisingly humanist outcome. [p. xiv] 

So wide ranging a book is bound to tread on many toes. Cosmologists, geologists, 

climatologists, chemist~, evolutionary biologist~, psychologists, philosophers and others 

can and hopefully will speak or shout for thc1rnclvcs. l confine myself to reservations 

from my own perspective of world economic history and its implications for the age old 

battle between determinism and free will. l begin with the latter. 

Snooks stresses the "humanism" of his uncompromisingly materialist reading and writing 

of evolution and history in which -- to recall Karl Marx and Gordon Childc -- "Man [sic!] 

makes hi1rnclf," but not under conditions of his or (still less?) her own choosing. In this 

ta~k, all members participate, albeit perhaps not equally. Intellectual~ and their idea~ do 

so much less than they would like to think. What about the ecologists among them? Arc 

they likely to stem the "progress" to a new paradigmatic shift within the dynamic 

technology strategy? Not if there is anything to Snooks' central argument that the innate 

economic rationality of ( almost) all materialist men and women will continue to generate 

Global Change in the Dynamic Society. But then why write this book to propagate these 

or indeed any idea~ -- l a~kcd the author by e-mail. His answer: Well, idea~ do influence 

intellectuals. But why bother, l retorted, if intellectuals and their idea~ thc1rnclvcs arc 

mostly -- and thankfully! -- so useless, if not downright perverse, a~ Snooks and l 

"think"? Life is contradictory! 

Snooks also enmeshes himself in other "minor" contradictions. What is "society," 

dynamic or otherwise? Well, Margaret Thatcher said, it docs not exist; only individual~ 

do! And ultimately in Snook's book, it is the rational decision-making action over their 

own lifetimes of each, or at lea~t of almost all, individuals that drives Dynamic Society 

and its dominant strategics. But if it is the action of "all men and women" that docs so, 

then "society" ha~ been world-wide for a long time pa~t, at lea~t since the family 

multiplication strategy ran its course. Like Frank and Gills (1993) and Frank (1993), 

Snooks also identifies growth cycles of three to five hundred years duration. Unlike us, he looks for different ones in China and Rome; and he concentrates his interest in Europe 

during the pa~t millennium. That leads him to regard the fourteenth-century Black Death 

and the seventeenth-century population decline a~ exogenous event~. W c instead treat all 

these events, like the European cycle itself, a~ integral parts of Afro-Eura~ian-widc cycles 

going back to 3000 BC, which we identify and date but that Snooks disregards. 

Why then docs Snooks argue that only Western Europe relied on technological strategy 

over the pa~t millennium, which finally generated the paradigm shift to the industrial 

revolution about eight hundred years later? But such claims or analyses arc not consistent 

with the global erudition of Snooks and the wide range of his book. Indeed the same may 

be said of the above cited book by Adams (1996), who is the premier archaeologist of 

world ranging experience. For when they come down to (literally) bra~s tacks, they 

restrict the purview of their analyses so much a~ to contradict their own more global 

model~. In my view (Frank 1997) and also in that of Pomeranz (1997), this shortcoming 

is a legacy of Euroccntrism, which lead~ Snooks to disregard -- indeed explicitly to deny 

with regard to China -- the contemporaneous development~ in Asia. 

[Page 194] 

Journal of World-Systems Research 

Like Snooks, we also sec the source of the industrial revolution in rational marginal 

benefit/cost choices and response to resource factor price alternatives generated by 

changing economic and ecological circumstances. But we insist that these were global 

and not just British or West European and that it wa~ the economic history of the whole 

world and especially of Asia that confronted the previously quite marginal West 

Europeans with new choices; and only quite unexpectedly and abruptly so around 1800. 

Therefore, only a truly global economic/ecological/demographic analysis can even hope 

to account for this paradigmatic shift of also global proportions. One of the strange 

internal contradictions in The Dynamic Society is that its (for world historians and 

others) exemplary globalism over the millennia is suddenly abandoned in favor of a still 

Eurocentric "explanation" of the latest global transformation. In my view, that constitutes 

a serious shortcoming. 

Snooks' sudden abandonment of globalism also leaves less than clear or consistent to 

what extent conquest and commerce can be and still arc rationally materialist dynamic 

strategics. A "minor" but interesting example is his rather extensive but inconclusive 

treatment of World War Two, which he docs not find so rationally materialist after all. 

Yet, the Pacific part in which Japan, China, and the United States competed with each 

other very explicitly for economic resources and markets in a "Greater Ea~t Asian CoProspcrity Sphere" receives short shrift from Graeme. Not so the Atlantic and European 

theater. 

Snooks shows how economic competition generated military adventures that were 

consistent with the pursuit of rational materialist conquest strategics by the major Atlantic 

and European contestants, at lea~t until 1943. Yet, Snooks insists again and again that 

Hitler wa~ "irrational," and that the policy that he "imposed" on Nazi Germany wa~ equally so. His argument is based mainly on the horrors of the Holocaust and on Hitler's 

mistake to fight on two fronts. But what ifhc had avoided that strategic mistake or if the 

winter of 1941 had not been so severe, etc.? Snooks insists that in global materialist 

competition, the winner takes all. Then Germany might well have taken all the world's 

material benefits that the war bestowed on the United States in the \u2013 short-lived --

"American Century." 

I have touched on no more than the highlights of Snooks' magisterial tour de force. 

Therefore, I have sought to organize their exposition in a more orderly fashion than the 

author himself, who goes into vastly more detail, but docs so at the cost ofjumping back 

and forth through time from one place to another. That also makes it a bit hard to follow 

his sophisticated and complicated attempt to boil the course of the Universe, the Earth, 

Life, Humanity, Society, and World History down to bite-size categories that he in turn 

combines into a "simple" model menu of self-generating and auto-transforming rational 

materialist choices. To help the reader follow his argument, Snooks also supplies a ten 

page alphabetized glossary of three dozen of these categories, for most of which he also 

invented the terminology himself. Moreover he cites 13 pages of references including 

over 300 items; and he or his publisher supply an index that runs between pages 455 and 

491 ofa very long and dense book. Although it concentrates on only .01 percent of the 

time frame that it covers, the diligent and attentive reader will nonetheless find this book 

more richly rewarding than the other 99.9 percent s/hc is likely to read. 

References Cited 

Adams, Robert M. 1996. Paths of Fire: An Anthropologist's Inquiry into Western 

Technology. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 

Becker, G.S. 1991. A Treatise on the Family. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 

Crawford, M. and D. Marsh. 1989. The Driving Force: Food in Evolution and the Future. 

London: Mandarin. 

Dawkins, R. 1989. The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Ehrlich, P.R. and A.H. Ehrlich 1990. The Population Explosion. New York: Simon and 

Schuster. 

Frank, Andre Gunder. 1993. "Bronze Age World System Cycles" Current Anthropology 

34, No. 4 (August-Octobcr):383430. 

-~--· 1998. Reorient: Global Economy in the Asian Age. Berkeley: University of 

California Press. 

___ . and B.K. Gills, Eds. 1993. The World System: Five Hundred Years or Five 

Thousand? London and New York: Routledge. [Page 195] 

Journal of World-Systems Research 

Fukuyama, F. 1992. The End of History and the La~t Man. New York: Free Press. 

Gould, S.J. 1987. Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of 

Geological Time. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. 

Jones, E.L. 1981. The European Miracle: Environments, Economics and Geopolitics in 

the History of Europe and Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Keynes, John Maynard 1936. The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. 

London: Macmilllan. 

Landes, David S. 1969. The Unbound Prometheus. Technological Change and Industrial 

Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present. Cambrigc: Cambridge 

University Press. 

Marx, Karl 1957-61. Capital. 3 vok Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. 

Meadows, D.H, ct al. 1972. The Limit~ to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome's 

Project on the Predicament of Mankind. New York: Universe Book~. 

____ . 1992. Beyond the Limits: Confronting Global Collapse, Envisioning a 

Sustainable Future. Post Mills, VT: Chelsea Green. 

Mokyr, J. 1990. The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progcsss. 

New York: Oxford University Press. 

North, Dougla~s C. and Robert Paul Thoma~. 1973. The Rise of the Western World: A 

New Economic History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Pomeranz, Kenneth. 1997. Extraordinary Changes in an Ordinary Place. Unpublished 

manuscript. 

[Page 196] 

Journal of World-Systems Rcscarchq David Hackett Fischer. The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History. 

Oxford U.P., 1996. 536 pp. 

ISBN: 0-195-05377-X, $35.00 (hardcover); ISBN: 0-195-12121-X, $16.95 (paper). 

Reviewed by Thomas Ford Brown, Department of Sociology, Johns Hopkins University 

In The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History, David Hackett Fischer 

explores the historical significance of patterns in the secular trend of prices to increase. 

As Wallcrstcin has imposed onto European history a geographical model of the world 

economy, as Arrighi has imposed a cyclical model of capitalist development, as 

Goldstein has imposed a cyclical model of war-making, now comes Fischer to 

superimpose yet another model onto history, this one focusing on price inflation.I 

Fischer observes, over the past eight centuries, four major price revolutions -- steep rises 

in prices -- punctuated by periods of relative equilibrium in which prices remained stable 

or grew at a slower pace. Fischer calls this a pattern of "price waves". His aim is to relate 

the price waves to historical events. He demonstrates how historical contingencies 

affected the wave structure, and how the waves in turn affected social and cultural 

developments, thus constituting the "rhythm of history". 

At first gloss, Fischer's approach appears cognate with other conceptions of economic 

cycles such as Kondraticffwavcs, Braudel's "secular trend", and various business cycle 

modcls.2 However, Fischer's waves differ from price cycles in both character and 

epistemic status. Price waves arc "no more ( or less) predictable than waves in the sea" 

(Fischer, 9). Fischer's waves differ from cyclical models in that waves arc apparent on the 

surface of the data. The naked eye can sec the wave pattern emerge when price trends 

over the past eight centuries arc graphed. Cycles, on the other hand, arc known through 

statistical inference, teased from the data through mathematical manipulations. Price 

cycles arc regular, predictable, and of shorter duration than Fischer's price waves. 

Fischer's waves arc far more variable than cycles in duration, magnitude, velocity, and 

momentum. They have lasted from 90 to 180 years, and arc characterized by more 

irregularity than cycles. 

The price wave, claims Fischer, is an historical fact -- not a theoretical model, and not an 

artifact of mathematical massage. The problem then becomes: what sense can we make of 

the wavc9 How docs understanding the wave alter our conception of history9 How might 

we modify our theoretical approaches to the historical development of capitalism, based 

on our new understanding of price wavcs9 

Each wave begins with a long inflationary period. Fischer calls these the Medieval Price 

Revolution (1200-1320), the 16th Century Price Revolution (1520-1620), the 18th 

Century Price Revolution (1720-1820), and the 20th Century Price Revolution (1896-

prcscnt). Price revolutions arc followed by long periods in which prices remain relatively 

stable: Following the Medieval Price Revolution, the Equilibrium of the Renaissance. 

Following the 16th Century Price Revolution, the Equilibrium of the Enlightenment. 

Following the 18th Century Price Revolution, the Victorian Equilibrium. Fischer holds that the four major price waves reveal commonalties in their structure. 

During the inflationary stage, populations grow while real wages fall. Returns to capital 

and land ownership increase. Social discord rises, as measured by indicators such as 

crime and illegitimacy. Governments experience fiscal crises, and revolution and wars 

become more likely. 

During periods of equilibrium, however, real wages rise while returns to capital and land 

diminish. Crime and illegitimacy decrease, population growth slows, and governments 

experience more fiscal and political stability. There is a cultural florescence. 

This interaction between the structure of price waves and historical events constitutes the 

analytical focus of the book. Fischer writes from the perspective of an historian, focusing 

on human experience rather than abstract numerical patterns. His book is articulate, 

ingeniously organized, and a pleasure to read. The core of the book is comprised of four 

chapters, one describing the story of each wave. 

But Fischer is not a pure, ideographic historicist. Social scientists will find the book not 

only a fascinating empirical study, but also theoretically stimulating. Fischer evaluates 

seven competing theoretical explanations for the wave structure. He not only theorizes 

the causes and structure of the waves themselves, but also compares and contrasts 

competing theoretical explanations for a variety of outcomes related to price waves. 

These theoretical explorations arc presented in a series of essays organized as appendices. 

Many readers will find the appendices the most valuable part of the book. And anyone 

interested in the topic will find Fischer's extensive annotated bibliography to be essential 

reading. Much of it references works in European languages that will be unfamiliar to 

English-only researchers. 

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Fischer conceives of price waves as an autogcnous process whose engine of self -

reproduction is driven by individuals' aggregated actions and expectations. In times of 

price equilibrium, real wages arc rising while rents and interest rates arc falling. 

Confidence rises. People marry earlier and have more children, increasing the labor 

supply. This reduces real wages and thus increases returns to capital. Aggregate demand 

grows more rapidly than supply, and so prices begin to rise. 

As inflation begins to become apparent to everyone, individuals and institutions react in 

ways that induce yet more inflation: "The stock of money is deliberately enlarged to meet 

growing demand. Capitalists charge higher rates. Landlords raise the rent. Real wages fall 

further behind" (Fischer, 247). 

Increasing inequality leads to more poverty and homelessness, straining social 

relationships and intensifying class conflict. Social cohesion diminishes, and 

consequently people begin making more claims on the state and paying ks s in taxes. This leads to state fiscal crises. The growing hardships lead to despair, and pessimism spreads. 

Markets grow less stable. Production and productivity decrease or stagnate. Stagflation 

ensues. There is general cultural dissolution. Drugs, drink, and sexual infidelity become 

more common. 

People lose the optimism that engendered the inflation to begin with. Widespread 

pessimism leads people to delay marriage and child-bearing. This reduces the labor 

supply, drives up wages, and reduces land rents. Inequality begins to decline and social 

solidarity starts to grow. As demands on state benefits fall, states become more stable and 

effective. Taxpayer resistance declines. Family and marriage become more possible and 

attractive. Domestic stability grows while bastardy decreases. But eventually, confidence 

leads to the usual problems, and the inflationary cycle begins once more. 

There arc major flaws in Fischer's presentation. First, he conflates two different types of 

inflation that each stem from different causes, and his theory fails to account for this 

divergence. One type of inflation results from a decline in the value of money relative to 

the value of other commodities. This type of inflation is caused by changes in supply 

and/or demand that alter the relative valuation between money and commodities. The 

second type of inflation results from the debasement of money. This occurs when the 

value of a given monetary unit of measurement is decreased by the government. In the 

past, this was accomplished by reducing the amount of precious metal in a given coin. 

Now, it is accomplished by increasing the supply of paper money. 

The first type of inflation can easily span national boundaries and affect an entire worldcconomy. The second type is caused by stat c actions, and thus has more impact within 

national boundaries than beyond. When paper money is dclinkcd from precious metals, 

its value becomes determined solely by state fiat. The consequence is that debasement 

becomes the only source of inflation. Inflation can now be contained within national 

boundaries. 

The fundamental difference between the two types of inflation raises questions about 

Fischer's theory. In the first three price revolutions, inflation was driven by the decline in 

the value of money relative to other commodities. But the most recent price revolution 

has been driven by governments debasing their money. Indeed, inflation in the West 

since 1970 has been caused only by debasement. While the social disruptions consequent 

to each type of inflation may be similar, the causes arc quite different. Is it possible to 

explain these two phenomena with the same theory? 

The first type of inflation fits well into Fischer's theory. The value of precious metals 

relative to other commodities is clearly determined by aggregated individual actions in 

response to prevailing conditions. But when inflation is driven by state policy, the linkage 

between that policy and aggregated individual actions is less direct, and so Fischer's 

theory becomes less relevant. The fundamental problem here is that the first three price 

revolutions were driven by Malthusian processes, while the most recent is of a 

qualitatively different character. There arc also contradictions and lacunae in Fischer's linkage between his thcorcti cal 

paradigm and his evidence. First, the rates of inflation vary considerably among historical 

periods. ln earlier price revolutions, inflation was typically l to 3 percent per year. This is 

trivial compared to the 20th century experience, in which inflation rates greater than 70 

percent occurred in several countries only last year. lt becomes necessary to explain why 

modern economics can tolerate moderate inflation without experiencing the kinds of 

major social disruption that the same rate of inflation caused in earlier times. Second, we 

need to explain why inflation often spans national boundaries even in the modern era of 

floating currencies, considering that only state manipulation of the money supply can 

create "debasement" inflation. These questions highlight significant lacunae in Fischer's 

theory. 

More damaging to Fischer's theory arc the empirical contradictions. Crucial to his theory 

is the link between population growth and inflation, but this linkage only pertains until 

the 1820s. Population grew rapidly in Europe and the US during the later 19th century, 

yet prices remained stable, even deflationary during this period. Fischer's argument here 

is founded upon shifting comparisons that arc highly questionable. For the 19th century, 

his empirical presentation describes a linkage between the growth rate of population and 

prices in England, which is substantively divergent from his theoretical link between 

population growth and prices. 

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For the 20th century, he shifts his comparison to prices in the US and world population. 

But prices and population growth within any W cstcrn European country would show an 

inverse relation during that period. There is no convincing rationale for comparing US 

prices and world population. This selective use of evidence to support the theory seems 

out of character with Fischer's generally impeccable scholarship. 

There arc also empirical contradictions to Fischer's theoretical link between rising prices 

and inequality. Inequality in Florence increases while prices remain stable between 1330 

and 1427. lncquality in the US decreases while prices rise between 1910 and 1970. 

Fischer expects real wages to fall during inflationary periods, but this doesn't happen 

between 1946 and 1970. All of these contradictions between evidence and theory arc 

found in Fischer's own text. Clearly, his theory needs refinement. 

These theoretical flaws do not undermine the book's importance. The theoretical 

problems that Fischer encounters do not warrant dismissing the entire enterprise, for he 

presents compelling empirical patterns that deserve close consideration and analysis. 

While his theoretical explanation for the price wave needs improving, the existence of the 

price wave itself is an historical fact, not a theory. Analyzing the interaction between 

price waves and historical events is clearly a worthwhile enterprise. It is also worth 

exploring whether our understanding of the 20th century price revolution and its social 

consequences can be improved by studying previous inflations. And so the book's theoretical weaknesses should not distract us from its significant 

contributions. It is a truism that all model~ arc wrong, but some arc useful. Ncocla~sical 

economists may reject Fischer's theory out of hand for being insufficiently axiomatic, and 

in places, wrong. But scholars of the modern world-system will find in Fischer an 

eminently useful heuristic model for analyzing the role of inflation over the long durcc. 

Even those who dismiss Fischer's theory out of hand will find the book valuable. The 

footnotes, appendices, and extensive annotated bibliography alone make it essential 

reading for scholars interested in the history of the modern world-system. After reading 

Fischer, any theorist blessed with the grand ambition of explaining the history of 

capitalist development ( or should I say "cursed"?) will feel compelled to address the 

questions Fischer raises. Analyzing price waves is an important ta~k, for the social 

consequences of inflation affect all humans, not just the great Braudclian bca~ts who 

roam the shadowy top layer of finance capitalism. 

Notes 

I Sec Arrighi, 1994; Brandel, 1992; Gold~tcin, 1988; Wallerstcin, 1974. 

2 Goldstein surveys most major theories of economic cycles. 

References 

* Arrighi, Giovanni. 1994. The Long Twentieth Century. London/New York: Verso. 

* Brandel, Fcrnand. 1992. The Perspective of the World. Berkeley: University of 

California Press. 

* Fischer, David Hackett. 1996. The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of 

History. New York/Oxford: OxfordfUnivcrsity Press. 

* Gold~tcin, Joshua S. 1988. Long Cycles: Prosperity and War in the Modern Age. 

New Haven: Yale University Press. 

* Wallerstcin, Immanuel. 1974. The Modern World System I: Capitalist Agriculture 

and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Slxtccnth Century. New York: 

Academic Press. 

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