Economic Reductionism Research Articles

Regulation and the Revolution in United States Farm Productivity by Sally H. Clarke

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 851 screw companies. Before the 1920s automatic lathes were limited almost exclusively to the production ofscrews or other products that could be machined from wire or metal rods. In the sewing machine industry, where automated, multifunction turret lathes received their widest use, they accounted for only one-sixth of all machines. This hardly amounts to automated “mass production,” as distin­ guished by David Hounshell from the American system. Ruby does not discuss such distinctions, however. Instead he dedicates an entire chapter to the definition of what we mean when we say “machine tool” as opposed to “automatic machine tool.” Here his conclusions seem soft. Unlike Hounshell, who pointed to international debates about the “American system” in the 19th century and about “mass production” in the 20th, Ruby’s definitions seem useful only as de­ scriptive terms of historiographical debates: “In the 1880s,” Ruby tells us, “the theme of automation was not yet discussed” (p. 135). Thus even if various industries were finding a few specialized pur­ poses for automation, engineers and workers did not yet conceive their daily work in the terms Ruby puts forth. The book is no less valuable, however, for Ruby is honest about making his distinctions: this is not “Whig” history. And he is right to uncover neglected precedents in mass production. His lathes are older than and at least as important as, say, the Chicago pork pro­ cessing plants—whose technology was quite a bit farther removed from assembly line tools than the machines that Ruby richly de­ scribes. Michael Allen Dr. Allen teaches in the School ofHistory, Technology, and Society at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Regulation and the Revolution in United States Farm Productivity. By Sally H. Clarke. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. xiv+310; illustrations, maps, figures, tables, appendices, notes, index. $59.95 (hardcover). The question ofwhy people adopt technological innovations, and why they do not, has had a sturdy but unresolved life among histori­ ans of technology. It has never been easy to explain the ultimate success or failure of technologies without sounding either Whiggish or overly deterministic. For many economists, the acceptance or re­ jection of technology can be accounted for by invoking the behavior ofrational actors and market forces. This sort ofexplanation, unfor­ tunately, often sounds flat and unpersuasive to historians: surely the explanation is more complex, more ambiguous, than mere bottom lines would suggest. In the field of agricultural history, however, eco­ nomic explanations are abundant and in fact dominate the entire 852 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE discourse of adoption. Somehow, scholars in agricultural history are themselves satisfied with such accounts. Sally Clarke is an economic historian who chafes at the economic reductionism so often encountered in histories of technology and agriculture, and in this book she tries to provoke some new ways of looking at innovation. Her questions are these: why did midwestern farmers adopt technologies in the 1930s but not in the 1920s, despite evidence that adoption in the 1920s would have made economic sense? And what role did New Deal regulation play in their calculus? Clarke looks closely at three new technologies: the tractor, the me­ chanical corn picker, and hybrid corn. The tractor, she argues, was the most important technology avail­ able to farmers in the 1920s and promised a good return on invest­ ment. Most economists would argue that a farmer would certainly have purchased a new tractor because it would have increased pro­ duction and thus the farmer’s profit. Yet very few midwestern farm­ ers bought a tractor before the mid-1930s. Why? Clarke suggests sev­ eral reasons, all having to do with a poor “investment climate,” which is an amalgam of rational and irrational factors that shaped farmers’ reasoning. First, tractors required a big cash outlay, which, while not important to economists studying aggregates, was very im­ portant to individual farmers struggling with the post-World War I market downturn. Second, farmers were worried about market prices for their commodities over the short term. And third, the lending policies of banks during this period were neither generous nor flexible. Thus, farmers came up with a production strategy that made sense overall, even...

Multi‐modal thinking in soft systems methodology's rich pictures

Methodologies in systems analysis and design are traditionally dominated by technological determinism and economic reductionism. This paper proposes a framework for incorporating additional dimensions. The framework is based on theories behind multi‐modal thinking and is incorporated in Soft Systems Methodology. In order to test its applicability the framework is used in an empirical study.

Old conservatism in ‘new’ clothes

This review article considers two books about development theory and practice informed by what is variously referred to as an ‘impasse'/'post‐impasse'/'post‐Marxist’ framework. The latter, its adherents maintain, is a new approach to development that transcends economic reductionism and instead recognises/celebrates cultural ‘difference’, ‘diversity’ and ‘choice’. By contrast, it is argued here that many of the allegedly ‘new’ claims/arguments advanced by the postmodern ‘impasse’ are those traditionally made not just by populism but also by conservatism. Beyond the Impasse: New Directions in Development Theory, edited by F.J. Schuurman. London: Zed Books, 1993. Pp.ix + 233. £13.95 (paperback). ISBN 1 85649 2109 Rethinking Social Development: Theory, Research and Practice, edited by D. Booth. Harlow: Longman Scientific & Technical, 1994. Pp.ix + 319. £19.99 (paperback). ISBN 0 582 234972

Fertility Transitions, Family Structure, and Population Policy.

Part 1 Historical fertility transitions: beyond economic reductionism - the transformation of the reproductive regimes in France and Belgium in the 18th and 19th centuries, Ron Lesthaeghe. Part 2 Transitions in Asia: sociodemographic determinants of the fertility transition in Korea, Doo Sub Kim the social context of fertility decline in Thailand, Philip Guest and Aphichat Chamratrithirong nuptiality patterns in Thailand - their implications for further fertility decline, Bhassorn Limanonda relationships between maternal nutrition and fertility in developing countries, Kathleen Ford and Sandra Huffman the effect of migration on contraceptive usage and service point choice in Indonesia, Charles Lerman. Part 3 Women and family structure: economic development, women's status, and changing family structure in Taiwan, Peter S.K. Chi family structure, liberty and equality, and divorce - a cross-national examination, Roger D. Clark extended house-holds - a survival strategy in poverty, Ricardo F. Neupert rice, labour, and children - a study of peasants' livelihood strategies in Northeast Thailand, Napaporn Havanon. Part 4 Population policy and development planning: the integration of population factors into the development planning process - a review of methods and approaches, Amit K. Bhattacharyya from demographic models to public policy, Leon F. Bouvier the nature and tasks of population and development planning, Ita I. Ekanem.

Purposes and paradigms of management accounting: beyond economic reductionism

Neo-classical economics does not of itself provide an adequate explanation of current management accounting practice and research. Ideas from several other disciplines have been used in an attempt to facilitate a more complete understanding of management accounting. There now exists a multiplicity of ‘ways of seeing’ management accounting which adds richness to the literature. This paper first describes a number of the current theoretical-paradigmatic approaches, and then offers a typology for understanding them. It is suggested that each of these schools has different insights to offer the study of management accounting and that attempts to privilege one school over another should be avoided. Management accounting is seen as fulfilling a multiplicity of purposes which can only be understood by analysing the actions of the management accounting actors involved.

Legitimating Slavery in the Old South: The Effect of Political Institutions on Ideology

“Hegemony” has become a fashionable catchword in a number of intellectual circles. One encounters it among historians, sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, even (or, perhaps, especially) literary critics. Many a frustrated radical finds it a useful explanation for the quiescence of the masses. Marxist scholars frequently see it as a liberating departure from Marx's economic reductionism. More mainstream social scientists often detect little harm in it, since the notion that people are not ruled by force alone, but also by ideas, seems highly congruent with what they have learned from Max Weber and Talcott Parsons.

The Shearing Labour Process, 1900-1914

Recent studies of the Australian Workers' Union ( AWU) and working class politics in the pastoral industry have concentrated on the unions, its leaders, and on the property ownership of its members. This has obscured social relations of production between employers and employees within the labour process. Nor has enough attention been given to the position of pastoral workers as persons who do not own the means of production but work for wages.1 For such labour historians working class formation occurs through trade unions and other forms of political and economic organisation. There are also writers such as Connell and Irving who are in the tradition of culturalist history developed by E. P. Thompson.2 For them class is a felt experience, a set of beliefs and attitudes, a self-conception arising out of a way of life. They focus on the culture of the working class, on human agency, rather than economic structure. They recognise the importance of class relations, but equate these relations to how groups perceive themselves. This article traces working class formation to relations of production, to an economic structure rooted in the workplace where employers and employees confront each other. However, the workplace does not consist of economic relations alone, but also of juridical, ideological and power relations. As this article shows, a focus on social relations of production does not imply economic reductionism. Nor does it exclude human agency or consciousness. Buyers and sellers of labour power enter into economic relations that are simultaneously political, legal and cultural relations. Contemporary discussions of the labour process have been triggered by Braverman's argument that under modern capitalism there was an erosion of the ability of employees to regulate how work was done. In essence Braverman has focused on relations between employers and employees as power relations that were structured by technological changes. A growing division of labour, the decline of craft, and the deskilling of labour separated the conceptualisation of production from the execution of the plans of management. Control passed almost inevitably to management.3 Australian labour historians have challenged these conclusions. Bulbeck has shown how in the furniture industry compromise between factory owners and the union was more common than total opposition or subordination.4 Frances has argued that while deskilling occurred in the Victorian clothing industry, the extent of deskilling varied between different sections of the labour process, with the skilled and reskilled tasks performed by a male elite, while the deskilled tasks were left to female workers.5 These arguments are of some use to our analysis of the shearing labour process. In the first section of this article the rapid diffusion of shearing machinery is discussed. It is argued that machine shearing replaced hand shearing because it made possible cheaper and speedier shearing, but the use of machines did not improve managerial control. Nor did it lead to deskilling, and shearers won the power to decide the kind of machines they would use. Such con

World formation or world mode of production? Alternative approaches to world system analysis

Bergesen has identified the right problem but the wrong analogy. If we can make the analogy from a social formation to a world perspective then what were are analyzing is the world formation and not a world market or a world production. The capitalist world formation is the ensemble of economic relations (both the determinant production relations and the dominant world system), political relations, and ideological relations which are manifested at the world level. A world formation, as opposed to a world mode of production approach, avoids the confusion between the capitalist mode of production and participation in the capitalist world system, which Laclau pointed to as a necessary step in clarifying theories which utilize a world perspective. Furthermore, it allows us to establish the determinant effects of production in the world formation and the structuring of production by class struggle which Brenner argues is essential for the theory. And in the process it avoids economic reductionism by including the relative autonomy of the state and ideological structures.

Theories of the state and the state of accounting: Economic reductionism and political voluntarism in accounting regulation theory

It has recently been suggested that the inability of the economics-finance literature to say anything definitive about the appropriate form of accounting regulation highlights the need to augment neoclassical economic analysis with sociopolitical considerations. It is argued in this paper that patching up the orthodox theory would be futile; that the flaws are so fundamental as to warrant abandoning neoclassical state theory and embarking on a serious debate about radical theoretical alternatives. Economic reductionism and political voluntarism are shown to be the main flaws in the neoclassical theory, and these deficiencies are primarily responsible for the present theoretical disarray. After a brief overview of radical theories of the state, this paper suggests that replacing—not refurbishing—neoclassical state theory is the most plausible strategy for accounting researchers.

Ecological Change and the Politics of African Land Use

This essay explores ground common to ecology and politics. It addresses the question to what extent and in what ways are ecological ideas political ideas. The discussion, divided into five man sections, endeavors to steer a course between the pitfalls of environmental determinism on the one hand and economic reductionism on the other.The first section deals with the link between population processes and land use. Explanations stressing population increase as the driving force behind agricultural change are contrasted with arguments in which demographic fluctuations are treated as responses to economic imperatives. An example of the second kind of approach is Meillassoux's attempt to reconstruct the demographic dynamic of a precapitalist, lineage, mode of production. This is but one of a number of attempts to construct models of “natural economy” as starting points for discussions of the penetration of African agriculture by capitalism. Against the assumptions on which such models are based it is argued here, and in later sections of the paper, that the demographic and ecological processes subsumed under the category “natural economy” (or alternatively, “precapitalist subsistence production”) are more plausibly viewed asproductsof capitalism and colonialism. An example from southern Nigeria in the early colonial period is used to suggest that the kind of evidence on which Meillassoux's reconstruction is based is a complex ideological by-product of factional politics in an economy dominated by merchant capital.The second section of the paper focuses on the topic of the ecology of disease in Africa. Special attention is paid to John Ford's (1971) work on the ecology of trypanosomiasis. Critical of colonial scientific orthodoxy, and of colonialism itself (properly treated as a factor in the spread of sleeping sickness in Africa in the twentieth century), Ford's book has received some attention from Africanists in the social sciences and humanities. It is probably fair to say, however, that the originality of the book's ecological argument has yet to have its full impact on such readers. This is the justification for substantial summary of one of Ford's case studies. The significance of this case study is that is illustrates the ecological complexity characteristic of trypanosomiasis, and of a number of other African epidemic diseases, and the importance of local knowledge and initiative in adapting to such diseases.

Time-Spaces of Development

In economic theory it is circumstances that dictate fashion. During the last quarter of the century, years marked by an unprecedented escalation of material production, economists of all persuasions, neoclassicals or Marxists, accorded an important place to theories of growth. Economic reductionism being fundamental, development was likened to growth, which tends to take pars pro toto and to ignore the difference between a necessary condition and a sufficient one. Suddenly economic theory, to which mechanical formalization would confer the appearance of an almost scientific rigour, became a powerful argument for the ideology of growth.

Semiology and Critical Theory: From Marx to Baudrillard

In the twentieth century several groups of social theorists have labored to unlock the Marxist paradigm from the grip of economic reductionism in which it was held by the Second International and Stalinism. The Italian Communist, Antonio Gramsci, the theorists of the Frankfurt School, Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse, independent critics such as Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin and Karl Korsch, Eastern European Communists, Georg Lukacs in Hungary, Adam Schaff in Poland, the Praxis group in Yugoslavia and Karel Kosik in Czechoslavia, and finally the existential, phenomenological and even structuralist Marxists in France and Italy have all argued that the concept of the superstructure must account for the relative autonomy of culture. They have made this argument on both epistemological and historical grounds. The epistemological arguments are by now well known and need not detain us. The reflection theory of consciousness upon which Second International and Leninist Marxism rests is clearly false and was not maintained by Marx. Although the rejection of reflection theory leaves many questions unanswered, the historical arguments are equally important and lead di-

New Marxist Approaches to the Relative Autonomy of Religion

Traditionally, marxist theory has been understood as a reductionism in which religion is conceived as a totally dependent variable, externally and mechanically determined by the economic system of each society. In the past six years, some West European scholars have tried to overcome this reductionism while preserving all of the marxian contributions to the sociology of religions. In this article, there is a summary of ideas developed by three French investigators. For all of these, the main path to overcome reductionism without abandoning the marxian standpoint is through the concept of the relative autonomy of religion: an approach in which religious systems have to be studied in themselves and to be situated within a specific macro-social context in a historical perspective, thus trying to establish the complex mutual influences between social structure and religious systems. In The German Ideology Marx and Engels laid the foundations of a specific sociological paradigm and developed the thesis of the total external determination of religion by the social-economic structure (i.e, religion considered as a totally dependent variable). In a certain sense, this approach gave birth to the sociology of religion as such. At the same time, though, it gave the impulse to an economic reductionism of religion. However, after Marx's death, Engels began to perceive the onesidedness of that approach and tried to surmount it by postulating the relative autonomy of religion (i.e., religion considered as a partially independent sociological variable). Apart from a few exceptions, this view of Engels has been used in the marxist tradition as a helpful, ready-made formal proposition to fill up the unavoidable gaps of research which have arisen because of the bias of economic determinism. In fact, though, classic marxist determinism increasingly proves itself politically and methodologically untenable: while allowing us to discern an important aspect of religion which is not visible from any other standpoint, it prevents us from seeing another equally important aspect of religious phenomena. All this has provoked the need for a more comprehensive standpoint, leading some European scholars to take Engels' later contribution more seriously. They insist on the paramount importance of developing a theory of the relative autonomy of religion, and of doing this in close connection with scientific research and political practice. At the same time, some of these scholars claim explicitly to remain within a marxist approach, insofar as a significant aspect of religious phenomena can only be perceived from that point of view. Incidentally, these recent efforts have enabled marxism to develop toward a valuable confrontation with different ideas from the sociology of religion. Among these contemporary West European essays, I have selected what I consider to be the major attempts to overcome the shortcomings of classical marxist sociology of religion while maintaining its own specific and irreplaceable contributions to the scientific study of religion. This paper is limited, however, to brief, separate accounts of the precise points as developed by each of the three chosen investigators: the anthropologist Maurice Godelier,