Religion Hurdle or barricade?
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Transcript Religion Hurdle or barricade?
Religion
Hurdle or barricade?
“Hurdles”
Obstacle course trad-modern
And authentic-deformed
Modernization hurdles
Characteristics of capitalism
social environment
motivation geist = “spirit”
Spirit of capitalism
Endorses acquisition
Applies to gain without limit
Reorganize procedures re total task
Labour until you drop
Discipline & self control
“Sociology of Pain”
Curse of rationality
Bur org = price of civilization
Acetism unnatural
Need explanation for motivation
Calvinism fits bill
Five points of Calvinism
T-U-L-I-P , T, Total Inability;
U, Unconditional Election; L, Limited
Atonement; I, Irresistible(efficacious)
Grace; and P, Perseverance of the Saints."
Religion
Intuitively important
Hard to prove effects
Few have direct economic links
Minimal role in authority?
Religion as barricade
Religion as defense
Aggressive developers
Or protection against system that
violates ethics?
Progress not the enemy, moral
degradation
Porous barricades
Secularization
Social values yield to capitalism
Rational economy not because of
Calvinist strength, but insipid
Christianity
Confucianism
Identified as variable
per capita growth gap with
Hindu/Buddhist/Islamic states
“Eastasia” values identified:
loyalty/ nationalism/ education/
single-party/ respect/
Confucianism
Benevolence explains weak labour
unions
Family explains high savings rates
Miroshima rushes in and claims
Confucian strand in Japan explains
superior growth over China
more than necessary condition: prime
cause
Davis’ critique
Confucius opposed to profit! [239]
Neglects presence of self-interest,
disloyalty, conflict
even Samurai wanted rewards!
Consensus elusive
[Note lack of sacrifice to bail out
flagging economy]
Max Weber (1864-1920)
Protestant Ethic and the
Spirit of Capitalism
Weber’s observations 1
Chinese had wrong “geist”
Laboured but lacked capitalist selfdiscipline
Family protection and kinship a
barricade
Moral and legalistic state failed to
provide rational bureaucracy
Weber’s observations 2
Scholarship “magical”
Study “assimilation” not creation
Puritans sought to transform world:
Confucian to accommodate to it
Weber’s observations 3
Lack of tension or angst
“Nothing more radical than a good
solid education was needed to make
the world as good as it ever was,
or could be” [243]
Ethnocentrism abounding
Japan
Cards stacked against 1603-1868
Tokugawa
Resource poor, isolationist,
hereditary merchants … likened to
toads!, toll roads, ancestral land,
economy embedded in kinship and
guilds
Japan Negative
enablements
By C19th had economic surplus,
literacy, rural proletariat, economy
was disembedded
Buddhism used by Tokugawa and
autocratic Meiji developers to
control masses
An individual oriented religion not
confronting social injustice
Japan Negative
enablements
Buddhism passively “accepts the
spirit of the times” [251]
Shinto was equally compliant
“Silent accomplice”
Religious belief became secularized
Japan Positive enablements
Early modern Japan had ethic for
society with embedded economy
Confucian barricades held during
1920s & 1930s
Work ideology, not ethic
=principles averred in public
Embedded society
Industry now seeking protection
from society and its claims
Organic model of society --> into
organic model of industry
Japan: people yielding their claims
to those of the economy
[still true as state tries to boost
spending?]
Spirit of capitalism!?
Weber & Asia
Traditional economies showed
“universal and mutual distrust”
Then “rational depersonalizing of
business”
Paternalistic industry
“Simply co-opted the symbols and
values of the traditional households
and villages they were actually
destroying” [266]
Work ethic?
Industries have patrols and spies
Militant unions destroyed after
WWII
Horizontal mobility restricted
Seniority pay as inducement
[268] “industrial discipline in the
Far East depends on much more
than a “work ethic” […]
Islam
1683 Failed siege of Vienna
Fundamentalists see Islam
challenged by infidels and Muslim
apostates
Democracy irrelevant
no questioning of republic permitted
God’s polity
no state, only a ruler; no court, only a
judge; no city, just … neighborhoods
No legislative or corporate bodies, thus
no need for principle of representation
History of Islamic states almost wholly
autocracy
Modernization?
Reinforces obstacles
Power of state to intimidate
increases
Philosophy sharpened by foreign
imports
Accommodation?
Sunnis see Caliph elected by those
qualified to make a choice
relationship contractual
Islamic ruler is not above the law, but
is subject to it like humblest servant
Pluralism also accepted in Islamic law
and practice
Temptations
Doctrine of elective and contractual
sovereignty largely ignored since
early days of Caliphate
Consultation restricted to ruler and
inner circle
Policies for west?
Right wing accepts dictators in
name of democracy
Left wants concessions on rights
Existing regimes might be better
Fundamentalists hard to remove