3 ms·
GG&S rubs academics the wrong way for a couple of reasons: 1) It accepts as a fact that the Europeans had superior technology to the peoples they encountered e
by allturtles 4y ago
GG&S rubs academics the wrong way for a couple of reasons:
1) It accepts as a fact that the Europeans had superior technology to the peoples they encountered elsewhere, which is now perceived by many academics to be a form of racism/eurocentrism. (see the discussion in the linked threads about how the Europeans weren't really that advanced)
2) Materialist explanations are out of favor. Everything is supposed to be about culture and ideology and social construction, and everything is supposed to be "contingent" (i.e. not pre-determined by material factors like geography or superior technology - see the discussion in the linked thread about "determinism," which is a bad word).
- funklute 4y ago"supposed to be" is perhaps not quite the wording I would use. My understanding is that these kinds of materialist explanations are out of favour because they have some genuine shortcomings: 1) they are largely untestable/unfalsifiable, so they veer into pseudo-science, 2) they have a tendency to cherry pick data, and 3) related to the second point, they tend to ignore the importance of the precise historical context (e.g. whether a certain king is particularly ambitious or not, could in certain cases shape the history of a region for decades or centuries to come - this is difficult to accommodate in more systemic theories).
- allturtles 4y ago(1) applies to pretty much any kind of historical argument, and historians who emphasize contingency are by no means immune to (2) (I'd say this is a weakness of humanity generally!). (3) is a reasonable argument, but the converse can also apply. I think we should be open to the idea that some historical developments hinge on individual human action, but others don't.