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Communities of discourse: Ideology and social structure in the reformation, the enlightenment, and European socialism
BOOK NOTES take control of their lives and design a more democratic future helped to prepare for the successful 1795 revolution in the Netherlands. At the local level, independent local institutions such as the guilds were crucial to the progress made, although the guilds were also inhibiting in their inability to build the larger alliances needed for the defense and sustainability of the democratic vision. Tilly, Charles (1990) Coercion, Capital, and European States A D 990-1990. Cambridge, MA and Oxford: Basil Blackwell (269 pp., cloth, $34.95). As nation-states appear increasingly overwhelmed by concentrated capital and unaffordable social needs, it would be helpful to look back at the great diversity of past state formations to see if they can offer any guidelines for more socially responsible public policy. A senior historical sociologist and editor of the important series Studies in Social Discontinuity takes on this daunting question, using a millenium of European experience. Contrary to conventional wisdom, he finds no single linear path of state formation. There are limits to the statist, geopolitical, world-system, and mode of production approaches. Tilly isolates four factors and their dynamic interaction: concentrated capital, coercive capability, war preparation, and international position. He shows that neat theories of state formation are implausible. European princes rarely had or sought models. State institutions grew often as byproducts of other pursuits. Both international contexts and domestic bargaining also conditioned institutional choices. In our current era of militarization and governance crisis, there may be less space for creativity, but a combination of creativity and social mobilization, I would venture, may create conditions for more just politics.
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world sugar economy after 1815; the French sugar market and how colonial tariffs created pressures and crisis; local production expansion and planter indebtedness; the technical and labor disincentives blocking rationalization; and slaves' efforts to expand control over their lives. Many factors thus worked to encourage emancipation and new forms of subordination. Wallerstein, Immanuel (1989) The Modern World-System IH: The Second Era of Great Expansion of the Capitalist World-Economy 1730-1840s. San Diego, CA: Academic Press (372 pp., cloth, $39.50). It would not be an exaggeration to suggest that the 1974 appearance of the first volume in this series began a significant paradigm shift in modern social science, leading to the application of an interdisciplinary systems approach to historical change. In volume three, Wallerstein continues his reinterpretation of modern world history. He parts company with a large body of liberal historiography over the concept of revolution. The key social processes of the late 18th century - - the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution, and settler independence in the Americas - - represented not revolutions against the capitalist world system but rather system consolidation and retrenchment. There were gains in productivity but popular voices were ultimately repressed or rechanneled to make them relatively harmless. With more than 2,000 sources and 1,300-plus footnotes, many substantive, this book will require attention. It is, however quite accessible and a most important intellectual adventure. Wuthnow, Robert (1989) Communities of Discourse: Ideology and Social Structure in the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and European Socialism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (739 pp., cloth, $49.50).
Tomich, Dale (1990) Slavery in the Circuit of
Sugar: Martinique and the World Economy 18301848. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press (353 pp., cloth, $46.50). The relations of production and exchange in any time or place are not the results of abstract market forces but instead of complex and conflicting social constructions. Using the examples of slave labor and sugar plantation agriculture in Martinique in the 1830s and 1840s, Tomich demonstrates the internal limits of slave commodity production and the organic unity and "mutually formative" nature of the world market and local relations of production. Analysis is organized in layers: the dramatic change in the
In a contribution to the study of cultural history, Wuthnow has used the three most significant challenges in the last 500 years to reveal the synergistic interplay of capitalism, institutions, and ideas. Culture is a social construction. Cultural challenges to the status quo are likely to succeed only under certain social and institutional conditions. Particularly helpful are periods of rapid economic growth and an uncoupling of traditional political alliances because such cleavages create the social space for new ideologies and the conceptual space for their construction. Wuthnow's case studies begin with the social environment at the start of the period, then proceed with comparative study of specific
1482
WORLD DEVELOPMENT
contexts in which new ideologies prosper or fail to be institutionalized, and conclude with the resulting ideological structure and how it
interacted with and reflected new social conditions.
1481
world sugar economy after 1815; the French sugar market and how colonial tariffs created pressures and crisis; local production expansion and planter indebtedness; the technical and labor disincentives blocking rationalization; and slaves' efforts to expand control over their lives. Many factors thus worked to encourage emancipation and new forms of subordination. Wallerstein, Immanuel (1989) The Modern World-System IH: The Second Era of Great Expansion of the Capitalist World-Economy 1730-1840s. San Diego, CA: Academic Press (372 pp., cloth, $39.50). It would not be an exaggeration to suggest that the 1974 appearance of the first volume in this series began a significant paradigm shift in modern social science, leading to the application of an interdisciplinary systems approach to historical change. In volume three, Wallerstein continues his reinterpretation of modern world history. He parts company with a large body of liberal historiography over the concept of revolution. The key social processes of the late 18th century - - the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution, and settler independence in the Americas - - represented not revolutions against the capitalist world system but rather system consolidation and retrenchment. There were gains in productivity but popular voices were ultimately repressed or rechanneled to make them relatively harmless. With more than 2,000 sources and 1,300-plus footnotes, many substantive, this book will require attention. It is, however quite accessible and a most important intellectual adventure. Wuthnow, Robert (1989) Communities of Discourse: Ideology and Social Structure in the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and European Socialism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (739 pp., cloth, $49.50).
Tomich, Dale (1990) Slavery in the Circuit of
Sugar: Martinique and the World Economy 18301848. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press (353 pp., cloth, $46.50). The relations of production and exchange in any time or place are not the results of abstract market forces but instead of complex and conflicting social constructions. Using the examples of slave labor and sugar plantation agriculture in Martinique in the 1830s and 1840s, Tomich demonstrates the internal limits of slave commodity production and the organic unity and "mutually formative" nature of the world market and local relations of production. Analysis is organized in layers: the dramatic change in the
In a contribution to the study of cultural history, Wuthnow has used the three most significant challenges in the last 500 years to reveal the synergistic interplay of capitalism, institutions, and ideas. Culture is a social construction. Cultural challenges to the status quo are likely to succeed only under certain social and institutional conditions. Particularly helpful are periods of rapid economic growth and an uncoupling of traditional political alliances because such cleavages create the social space for new ideologies and the conceptual space for their construction. Wuthnow's case studies begin with the social environment at the start of the period, then proceed with comparative study of specific
1482
WORLD DEVELOPMENT
contexts in which new ideologies prosper or fail to be institutionalized, and conclude with the resulting ideological structure and how it
interacted with and reflected new social conditions.