Introduction
I argue that Wolf’s text is deeply situated in a somewhat general critique of capitalism but still contains interesting points, especially for its time. For quotations and references, I will be using the original publication (1983).
Wolf writes from an explicitly stated analytical Marxist
point of view, visible perhaps most in his assertion that “the social sciences constitute one long dialogue with the ghost of Marx”
(Wolf 1983: 20). Wolf uses Marx in an attempt to understand the relatedness and
holistic nature of the (capitalist) world, particularly the relation between
globalized and globalizing (capitalist) market and local populations, cultures
and socio-economics modes of living (Ibid.:21).
In the beginning of Wolf’s text, I read his central argument
as proposing to view the world and its cultures in a more interconnected manner
than has been done before. The world is connected through ecology, migration,
economy and politics (Ibid.:3). He argues, through the use historical examples
ranging from Greek mercenaries in Persian armies to Iroquois importation of
British cloth, that this has always been so (Ibid.:5-6). Wolf argues that we
must not look at societies, cultures or populations as being isolated
socio-cultural systems, but rather as being in constant dialogue and connection
with Others in the world. In this part of Wolf’s text, he also criticizes the
capitalist and liberal West for writing its own history as unbroken line of
progress from Ancient Greece to the expansion west of the US and the present.
Wolf's points in short
Wolf's points in short
Wolf’s argument here is largely discursive, as I see it. His
discussion of how the social sciences came to be and the separation of social
science from political economy is interestingly enough paralleled in the essay Govermentality by Foucault. In this, Foucault genealogically
traces the art of government back to the 16th century, mirroring
Wolf’s attempt at a scientific genealogy (Foucault 1991:88-89). Political
economy was born from the shift of ‘art of government’ to ‘political science’;
as such it represents the techniques of government, the birth of a knowledge
production (Ibid.:101). Political economy is the savoir of the government, the production of a knowledge of all the
processes related to population in its larger sense (Ibid.:100). For Wolf, the
further separation of social sciences from politics and economy, signifies a
shift from studying interconnectedness and the “embeddedness” of social
relations to only individuals acting towards other individuals: “they predispose one to think of social
relations not merely as autonomous but as causal in their own right, apart from
their economic, political, or ideological context” (Wolf 1983:9) As such,
Wolf points out how the anti-holistic tendencies of modern sociology makes this
discipline unsuited for studying the multiple connections and links between
people in society and between societies.
Orientalism
Orientalism
Further in this discursive vein, Wolf opposes the dualistic,
Western way of looking at us, the developed and free versus the Other,
underdeveloped and in servitude. In this his argument is related to the
Orientalism of Edward Said (1979); namely the argument that the West sees and
defines itself in relation to a culture of opposites, the quintessential Other
being a gap or list of deficiencies.
The west is rich, the east is not; the west is democratic; the east is not; in
the west the people are free, in the east they are not. In his critique of the
discourse of Western superiority and orientalism, Wolf’s central argument is a
methodological one, as I see it. If the West, and by extension its academics,
continually cast radically different societies in the role of the generalized
Other, we will not be able to fully study understand their differences in
relation to one another:
“By equation tradition
with stasis and lack of development, [Western dualism] denied societies marked off as traditional any significant history of
their own (...) [D]iscouraging
analysis of intersocietal or intergroup interchanges, including internal social
strife, colonialism, imperialism and societal dependency (Wolf 1983:13)
Wolf combines his Marxist analysis with his call for
anti-orientalist studies of interconnectedness most sharply in his analysis of
(developed) center and (underdeveloped) satellite, a so called “development of underdevelopment” arising
from the capitalist exploitation of so-called undeveloped nations (Ibid.:22).
For Wolf, the poverty of the “underdeveloped” nations are
not to be seen in their failure to shed traditional (mal-)practices (Ibid.:13)
or failure to comply with the demands of the Western, capitalist market due to
demographic circumstances (Ibid.:22). It is “the outcome of relations between satellite and metropolis” (Ibid.),
the active maneuverings of the bourgeois West on the less fortunate, viewed as
a capitalism on a global scale with the satellites cast as the proletariat.
Beyond this central point, Wolf also writes what is essentially
a theoretic argument against simplicity in theory[1]
and in favor of multifactory explanations of social interaction and phenomena.
His views on this aspect of social science mirror those of James Scott’s book
Seeing Like a State (1998), the central argument being that both social
analysis and, in Scott’s case governmental schemes, must have eye for the
local, embedded and situational knowledge and relations of any given field.
Some of Wolf’s arguments likewise mirror those of Hobsbawn’s
concept of the invention of tradition, in arguing for a more inclusive study of
cultures and customs in motion and exchange:
“[T]he more
ethnohistory we know, the more clearly “their” history and “our” history emerge
as part of the same history” (Ibid.:19).
As such, the text outlines the basic premises for thinking about cultures being inter-related. We were always connected and global, Wolf seems to argue, and the world cannot easily be divided into distinct histories, let alone a "West vs. the rest" dichotomy of social evolution.
Bibliography
As such, the text outlines the basic premises for thinking about cultures being inter-related. We were always connected and global, Wolf seems to argue, and the world cannot easily be divided into distinct histories, let alone a "West vs. the rest" dichotomy of social evolution.
Bibliography
Foucault, Michel
1991 [1978]: Governmentality. In: Burchell, Graham, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller (eds.) The Foucault Effect. Studies in Governmentality. The University of Chicago Press.
1991 [1978]: Governmentality. In: Burchell, Graham, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller (eds.) The Foucault Effect. Studies in Governmentality. The University of Chicago Press.
Said, Edward
1979: Orientalism. Vintage Books.
1979: Orientalism. Vintage Books.
Scott, James C.
1998: Thin Simplifications and Practical Knowledge: metis. Chap. 9. In Seeing like a State: how certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.
1998: Thin Simplifications and Practical Knowledge: metis. Chap. 9. In Seeing like a State: how certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Wolf, Eric R.
1983: Introduction. In Europe and the People Without History. University of California Press
1983: Introduction. In Europe and the People Without History. University of California Press
