Cultures Merging
A Historical and Economic Critique of Culture
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- £23.99
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- £23.99
Publisher Description
"Economists agree about many things--contrary to popular opinion--but the majority agree about culture only in the sense that they no longer give it much thought." So begins the first chapter of Cultures Merging, in which Eric Jones--one of the world's leading economic historians--takes an eloquent, pointed, and personal look at the question of whether culture determines economics or is instead determined by it.
Bringing immense learning and originality to the issue of cultural change over the long-term course of global economic history, Jones questions cultural explanations of much social behavior in Europe, East Asia, the United States, Australia, and the Middle East. He also examines contemporary globalization, arguing that while centuries of economic competition have resulted in the merging of cultures into fewer and larger units, these changes have led to exciting new syntheses.
Culture matters to economic outcomes, Jones argues, but cultures in turn never stop responding to market forces, even if some elements of culture stubbornly persist beyond the time when they can be explained by current economic pressures. In the longer run, however, cultures show a fluidity that will astonish some cultural determinists. Jones concludes that culture's "ghostly transit through history" is much less powerful than noneconomists often claim, yet it has a greater influence than economists usually admit.
The product of a lifetime of reading and thinking on culture and economics, a work of history and an analysis of the contemporary world, Cultures Merging will be essential reading for anyone concerned about the interaction of cultures and markets around the world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Neither cultures nor their economies can be fully understood independent of each other, yet specialists in both fields persist in trying; Jones, a celebrated economic historian, examines how culture influences economics, and vice versa, in detailed but occasionally dry prose. The "merging" of the title refers to what happens when, for example, U.S. soap operas are exported, with rapturous reception, to Brazil. Jones sites studies that show that "transmitting 'soaps' was more powerful than a family program was likely to have been," leading to a cultural and economic trend towards American-style soap-opera lifestyles: bigger income and smaller families. Meanwhile, the rising profile of economically attractive fast food restaurants in East Asia has led to cultural changes "by importing an unfamiliar conception of manners ... East Asians are socialized to queue, keep the lavatories clean, and give up ... spitting in public. Westerners off the farm once had to learn these things too." While lay readers might wish for more of these clear-cut examples, students and economists will find the book thorough and thought-provoking.