Religion Hurdle or barricade?. “Hurdles” §Obstacle course trad-modern l And authentic-deformed §Modernization hurdles l Characteristics of capitalism.

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 acquisitionApplies to gain without limitReorganize procedures re total

taskLabour until you dropDiscipline & 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 importantHard to prove effectsFew have direct economic linksMinimal role in authority?

Religion as barricade

Religion as defense

Aggressive developersOr 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 variableper 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 ratesMiroshima 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

self-disciplineFamily protection and kinship a

barricadeMoral and legalistic state failed

to provide rational bureaucracy

Weber’s observations 2

Scholarship “magical”Study “assimilation” not

creationPuritans 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 spiesMilitant unions destroyed after

WWIIHorizontal mobility restrictedSeniority pay as inducement[268] “industrial discipline in the

Far East depends on much more than a “work ethic” […]

Islam

1683 Failed siege of ViennaFundamentalists 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 obstaclesPower of state to intimidate

increasesPhilosophy 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