A Note on Civilizations and Economies (original) (raw)

Abstract

This article approaches the topic of civilizations and economies through a discussion of two key texts that appeared during the first wave of interest among social scientists for the phenomenon of civilization: 'Note on the Notion of Civilization' ([1913] 1998) by Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss, and 'Author's Introduction' ([1920a] 1930) by Max Weber. Durkheim and Mauss were of the opinion that civilizations have their own, unique form of existence that is very difficult to understand and theorize. Civilizations, they nonetheless suggest, are marked off by symbolic boundaries and consist of elements that are hard for political authorities to control, including money, commerce, techniques and tools. Max Weber's most important attempt to struggle with the idea of civilization, can be found in his portrait of Western civilization in 'Author's Introduction'. Weber, as is well known, suggests in this writing that Western civilization is characterized by a 'specific and peculiar rationalism'-and he devotes a large part of the text to a portrait of modern rational capitalism. This type of capitalism, we conclude, is consequently civilizational in nature. Its emergence, as Weber also shows elsewhere, cannot be explained by referring to some special group or nation. The two works by Weber and Durkheim and Mauss, the article concludes, allow us to better understand civilizations as distinct social-cultural configurations and also to approach their economic dimension. Both works emphasize the fact that one needs to use an interdisciplinary as well as a comparative approach to undertake a civilizational as well as a civilizational-economic analysis.

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  24. ■ Richard Swedberg has been Professor of Sociology at Cornell University since 2001. He was born in Stockholm, Sweden, and has his degrees from Stockholm University (law) and Boston College (sociology). His two main areas of interest and research are economic sociology and social theory. His major books are: (edited with Neil Smelser), The Handbook of Economic Sociology (1994, 2005), Max Weber and the Idea of Economic Sociology (1998), Principles of Economic Sociology (2003) and Tocqueville's Political Economy (2009). He is currently working on two projects: an economic sociology of the financial crisis (2008-) and an attempt to theorize economic competition as a social mechanism and as a component of capitalism. Address: Cornell University, Department of Sociology, Uris Hall 328, Ithaca, NY 14853-7601, USA. [email: rs328@cornell.edu] ■ European Journal of Social Theory 13(1)