Attitudes toward Race, Hierarchy and Transformation in the 19th Century
نویسندگان
چکیده
Using the debates between Classical political economists and their critics as our lens, this paper examines the question of whether we're the same or different. Starting with Adam Smith, Classical economics presumed that humans are the same in their capacity for language and trade ; observed differences were then explained by incentives, luck and history, and it is the "vanity of the philosopher" incorrectly to conclude otherwise. Such "analytical egalitarianism" was overthrown sometime after 1850, when notions of race and hierarchy came to infect social analysis as a result of attacks on homogeneity by the Victorian Sages (including Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin), in anthropology and biology (James Hunt and Charles Darwin), and among political economists themselves (W.R. Greg). Two questions were at issue. Do everyone's preferences count equally, and is everyone equally capable of making economic decisions? In Smith's account, philosophers and subjects alike are capable of making decisions. The oppositional view held that some are different from others. Since "difference" implied "superiority" in the period we study, we call this doctrine "analytical hierarchicalism." JEL classification numbers : B 12, Z 1.
منابع مشابه
How "Caucasoids" got such big crania and why they shrank. From Morton to Rushton.
In the 19th century measurements of cranial capacity by Morton and others supported a "Caucasoid>Mongoloid>Negroid" hierarchy of intelligence. This continued through most of the 20th century but was challenged by a nonhierarchical view originating with Boas. Beginning in the 1980s Rushton correlated cranial and IQ measurements and presented a hierarchy with "Mongoloids" at the top. Each of thes...
متن کاملTo Have an Ethos Transplant, as It Were: Iranian Organizations in Washington DC in Early 21st Century
Based on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork from 2004 to 2006 among a range of Iranian organizations in Washington, D.C., this article argues that the studied organizations were engaged, without being always necessarily aware of it or formulating it as such, in what we may call an “ethos transplant:” a transformation of “Iranian character” and political culture to make it more susceptibl...
متن کاملThe position of Persian language and literature in Ottoman’s 19th century literature and historical developments
With the spread of western reforms in the 13th/9th century, Ottoman’s literature was reformed either. To reform Ottoman literature, they decided to transform the Ottoman language and literature relations with Persian language and literature. On one hand, they considered problems of Ottoman literature regarding Pindaric and its inefficiency for entering new areas such as novel, drama, and journa...
متن کاملChronicle of Datura Toxicity in the 18th and 19th Century
Background: Datura stramonium is a poisonous and common flowering plant that is a member of the Solanacae family. Datura poisonings are a rare occurrence in the 21st century, making toxicological information on this plant sparse. Historical information on Datura provides useful information on the clinical symptoms and characteristics of poisonings. This review looks at the state of knowledge on...
متن کامل