This topic is currently marked as "dormant"—the last message is more than 90 days old. You can revive it by posting a reply.
1pomonomo2003
There are several schools of universal history: ye olde civilizational school (think Spengler and Toynbee), world system theory (Immanuel Wallerstein, Samir Amin, Andre Gunder Frank), cliodynamics (Peter Turchin, Andrey Korotayev), and macrosociology (from Marx and Weber to Charles Tilly and Randall Collins). They all write about, in Tilly's phraseology, "Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons".
I find this way of writing about history the most compelling. I know that there are reasoned opponents to all universal history. Especially today, when the world is teetering at the edge of war (for instance, things are going to become so bad in Russia this year that she must either lash out or acquiesce to the sanctions) it is not surprising that to many universalism seems but a dream.
And it may prove to be so. But even though our world be little more than a miasma of particularities (wet weasels fighting in a dirty hole), I will persist in my universalism.
Now, one should not assume that all universalists agree. No. Not even those from the same school. I have just reviewed "The World System: Five Hundred Years or Five Thousand?" and it highlights a rather large disagreement among world system/s theorists. Some in the group may be interested in reading it.
I find this way of writing about history the most compelling. I know that there are reasoned opponents to all universal history. Especially today, when the world is teetering at the edge of war (for instance, things are going to become so bad in Russia this year that she must either lash out or acquiesce to the sanctions) it is not surprising that to many universalism seems but a dream.
And it may prove to be so. But even though our world be little more than a miasma of particularities (wet weasels fighting in a dirty hole), I will persist in my universalism.
Now, one should not assume that all universalists agree. No. Not even those from the same school. I have just reviewed "The World System: Five Hundred Years or Five Thousand?" and it highlights a rather large disagreement among world system/s theorists. Some in the group may be interested in reading it.
2Macumbeira
Thumbed !
3theoria
Comparative/macro history misses the fine details. Regionalist/micro history misses the forest for the trees. One can learn from both genres.
4stellarexplorer
Enjoyed your review, Joe. Nice summary. You've also convinced me to read this....
5pomonomo2003
#2. Thanks Macumbeira.
#3. Agreed theoria. Without micro history there could be no macrohistory. I find the forest more interesting than trees.
#4. Thanks Stellar. I believe you will enjoy it.
Joe
#3. Agreed theoria. Without micro history there could be no macrohistory. I find the forest more interesting than trees.
#4. Thanks Stellar. I believe you will enjoy it.
Joe
6Doug1943
I'm with Pomonomo2003 here (I think). (Call us the Idiot-Optimist school.)
It's just that those broad, sunlit, universalist uplands don't have a smooth highway climbing up to them. Humanity advances, but the line shows it's a non-monotonic function. You have to take a moving average, and sum over decades, if not centuries.
Things looked pretty bleak in 1939, with Stalinism clamped onto a third of the globe, and the Nazis and their allies on the march everywhere. Five years later, the fascists were on their way to the garbage heap, and it only took another 45 years before the Communists stopped being a serious factor in history. Now we've got the Islamists, but in the long run, they're doomed.
For my money, the optimism that Marx and Engels showed in the Communist Manifesto, with its paean of praise for international predatory capitalism, is still justified. They way underestimated the importance of non-economic factors in shaping short-term historic events, and the extent to which these factors vary across the globe, but they were right on the money, in my opinion, in understanding that economic-technical-scientific growth enables social progress.
It's just that those broad, sunlit, universalist uplands don't have a smooth highway climbing up to them. Humanity advances, but the line shows it's a non-monotonic function. You have to take a moving average, and sum over decades, if not centuries.
Things looked pretty bleak in 1939, with Stalinism clamped onto a third of the globe, and the Nazis and their allies on the march everywhere. Five years later, the fascists were on their way to the garbage heap, and it only took another 45 years before the Communists stopped being a serious factor in history. Now we've got the Islamists, but in the long run, they're doomed.
For my money, the optimism that Marx and Engels showed in the Communist Manifesto, with its paean of praise for international predatory capitalism, is still justified. They way underestimated the importance of non-economic factors in shaping short-term historic events, and the extent to which these factors vary across the globe, but they were right on the money, in my opinion, in understanding that economic-technical-scientific growth enables social progress.
