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Jared Diamond Calls Out Mitt

Interesting statement by the author of Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond, about Mitt’s “interpretation” of his book.

Written by brandyaven

August 4, 2012 at 6:39 pm

Posted in uncategorized

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8 Responses

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  1. I think this is the first time that a sociologist has called anything by Jared Diamond interesting.

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    cwalken

    August 5, 2012 at 4:44 am

  2. @cwalken: Touché!

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    Randy

    August 5, 2012 at 7:30 pm

  3. I love the line “In fact, Mr. Landes analyzed multiple factors (including climate) in explaining why the industrial revolution first occurred in Europe and not elsewhere.” It would have been nice to inform the reader that Landes largely dismisses everything but culture. On page 516 of “The Wealth and Poverty of Nations,” Landes wrote “If we learn anything from the history of economic development, it is that culture makes all the difference.” Landes largely re-itereated this argument (plus some institutional economics) in his 2006 Journal of Economic Perspective paper. It makes me wonder if Mr. Diamond read the Landes book closely.

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    Bob Subrick

    August 5, 2012 at 11:04 pm

  4. Subrick,

    This suggests the intriguing possibility of an infinite regress of “you misunderstood my book” op-eds.

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    gabrielrossman

    August 6, 2012 at 5:56 am

  5. Daron Acemoglu & James Robinson (authors of “Why Nations Fail”, to which the answer is “institutions”) link to a bit of a back-and-forth they had with Diamond here.

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    Wonks Anonymous

    August 6, 2012 at 2:33 pm

  6. Somewhat odd that an economist ends up emphasizing factors (e.g., culture, institutions) typically associated with disciplines outside economics (e.g., anthropology, sociology).

    Extrapolating Landes’ claims raises some problematic implications. For example, if culture is what provides the basis for economic growth and development, certain cultures are ostensibly superior to others. This raises questions of cultural superiority, racism, and cultural relativism. After all, the Saudis enjoy strong economic growth and development but I doubt most Westerners would want to put their culture on a pedestal.

    An accurate and valid explanation is likely to be far more complex and nuanced, involving not only numerous variables (e.g., geography, culture) but temporal and systemic factors (e.g., what happens when a developing nation encounters a developed one).

    I also find the depiction of “culture” rather narrow, if not wholly misinformed. Culture does not exist in a social vacuum. For example, certain cultural aspects of capitalist societies only exist because of the existence of key institutions (e.g., laws governing private property); without these, cultures of innovation and entrepreneurship would hardly be sustainable.

    I suspect that a lot of this goes back to business-school type approaches that adopt catch phrases or concepts as mantras only to be dropped as soon as the next one comes along, all without any real substantive understanding of what such ideas entail. “Culture” is merely the latest flavor, supplanting emphases on “the long tail”, “black swans” and other similar intellectual fads.

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    candrews

    August 6, 2012 at 6:27 pm

  7. Since both conquest and economic development are competitive multi-actor games in which one actor’s outcomes are products not only of that actor’s traits but of the actions and traits of the other actors in the system, it would seem in principle inappropriate to attribute outcomes like economic development or political dominance to traits of nations, rather than to processes of interactions among nations.

    I really enjoyed reading Jared Diamond’s books. They were thought-provoking and interesting and I learned a lot form them, even as (with all such synthetic efforts) they are ultimately self-contradictory, over-simplified, and factually incorrect in specific places. After I read the books, I got on line and read all the critiques. The combination of the books and the critiques was a very useful education.

    But, of course, if a politician tried to talk about the complex interplay of multiple forces in a competitive multi-actor game, he’s be immediately ruled out as a competent politician. This is depressing to think about.

    Oh, and candrews’ comment is spot on.

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    olderwoman

    August 6, 2012 at 7:13 pm

  8. It is complicated… Still and all, for all the factors that exist, some ordering and arranging, comparing and contrasting is possible, or we could never build a jet aircraft or a skyscraper: everything is complicated, and yet understandable. And understanding can be largely imperfect and incorrect and still work, as in the case of telegraph, telephone, urban electrification, and radio in the century before quantum electrodynamics. So, we might not understand everything about economic prosperity, but some outcomes are explicable. Thus, in the decolonization period, Singapore’s choices based on the visible experience of the USA versus the USSR brought prosperity.

    I am not sure that Saudi Arabia can lay any claim to “economic development,” though they have prosperity from petroleum. Where are the Internet hubs, and Nobel laureates, after all, but in the very places that complain about their dependence on Saudi oil? And why don’t the Saudis just inject a few billion into Palestine so that they can eclipse Israel with their wealth? Well, it is complicated…

    All seriousness aside, the discussion topic reminds me of the scene in Annie Hall where Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) pulls Marshall McLuhan from behind the signboard to shut up the Columbia U. professor.

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    Michael E. Marotta

    August 7, 2012 at 1:13 pm


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