İngiliz Bireyselciliğinin Kökenleri

by Alan Macfarlane, Onur İşçi (Translator)

Yaşayan en saygın antropologlardan biri olan Alan Macfarlane, bu önemli kitapta, İngiltere’nin ortaçağ feodalizminden Sanayi Devrimine uzanan beş yüzyıllık toplumsal dönüşüm hikayesini ele alıyor.

Macfarlane, feodal sistemin olgunlaşma çağı olan on üçüncü yüzyıl İngiltere’sinin aile hukuku, toprak rejimi, mülkiyet ilişkileri ve dinsel-toplumsal yapılanma modelinin nasıl olup da uzun vadede Avrupa anakarasından farklılaştığını ve “İngiliz istisnailiği” denen olgunun köklerinin nelere dayandığını araştırıyor.

Marx, Weber, Bloch, ve Goody gibi birçok tarihsel sosyologla diyalog halindeki İngiliz Bireyselciliğinin Kökenleri, sadece İngiliz toplumunda ailenin dönüşümünü, köylülükten kentliliğe geçişi, Aydınlanma ve Sanayi Devrimini hazırlayan koşulları değil, bugünün bireyselleşmiş Angola-Amerikan yaşam kültürünün de pek çok ayrıntısını gösteren, çok zengin bir çalışma...

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, British Literature, Anthropology, Philosophy, Sociology

328 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Alan Macfarlane was born in Shillong, India, in 1941 and educated at the Dragon School, Sedbergh School, Oxford and London Universities. He is the author of over twenty books, including The Origins of English Individualism (1978) and Letters to Lily: On How the World Works (2005). He has worked in England, Nepal, Japan and China as both an historian and anthropologist. He was elected to the British Academy in 1986 and is now Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of Cambridge and a Life Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge.

Reviews

[Ferda Nihat Koksoy · Rating 4 out of 5]

"İngilizler, ilk zamanlardan bu yana enseste karşı umursamaz görünmekteydi. Bu durum beni, antropologların diğer köylü  toplumlarında bulduğu şeylerle uyuşmayan genel cinsellik ve evlilik örüntüsünü incelemeye itti. Akrabalık görecelí olarak önemsizken, evlilik ebeveynler tarafından minimum sekilde kontrol ediliyor ve cinsiyetler arasındaki ilişkiler alışılmadık biçimde rahat görünüyordu. İngiltere, çağdaşı Akdeniz bölgesiyle kıyaslandığında bile bu durum böyleydi."

-İngiliz köy ve kasabalarının 13.yy'a kadar ayrıntılı olarak incelenebilen toplumsal ve ekonomik zihin yapısı, bireysel ve kapitalist küçük piyasalara sahip olduklarını gösterir; Avrupa'nın diğer kısımları ise toprağın ailenin ortak mülkiyetinde olması ve orada aile için kendilerinin çalışmasıyla farklıdır.

"Ekonomik ve toplumsal yaşamdaki bireyselcilik barizdir, tüm kapsadığı zaman içerisinde tek başına durmayan bir İngiliz bulmak imkânsızdır. O, ben-merkezci akrabalık sistemiyle sembolize edilmiş ve dünyanın merkezine dikilmiştir. Bu şu anlama gelir: İngiliz bireyselciliğinin kökenlerini bundan böyle Protestanlık, nüfus değişimi, ortaçağların sonundaki piyasa ekonomisinin gelişimi ya da yazarların altını çizdiği diğer etkenlerle "açıklamak" mümkün değildir."

"Marc Bloch, bireysel mülkiyet gelişiminin İngiltere'ye özgü olduğuna ve bír şekilde, "İngiliz ekonomik tarihindekí iki çok önemlí gerçekle -yani sömürgeci yayılma ve Sanayi Devrimiyle-" ilişkili olduğuna inanır. Çok yakın bir zamanda Harold Perkin, Britanya Sanayi Devriminin en büyük sebebinin, "18. yűzyılda gelişen Íngiliz toplumunun biricik doğası ve yapısı" olduğunu savunur." Bu sosyal yapının en temel özelliği, "hiyerarşinin açıklığı, aşağı ve yukarı hareket özgürlüğü ve hepsinden őte, yerleşik aristokrasi ile diğerleri arasında yasal ya da geleneksel engellerin olmayışı"dır. Bu, diğer her şey gibi, bireysel mülkiyet modelinden çıkmıştır."

"Homo economicus ve piyasa toplumu, Adam Smith yazmadan yüzlerce yıl önce de İngiltere'de mevcuttur."

"...İngiltere, Marx ve Weber'in farkına vardığı temel gerçek için, yani üretim araçlarının -teknoloji ve ekolojinin-, sosyal ilişkileri ve ideolojileri belirlemek için basit biçimde yeterli olmadığı, ortada karşılıklı bir etkileşim olması gerekliliği için büyük bir örnektir."

"Bu çalışmada;  Marx, Weber ve birçok ekonomi tarihçisi tarafından öne atılan kriterleri kullanarak İngiltere'nin 1550 ya da 1750'de olduğu gibi, 1250 yılında da "kapitalist"bir ülke olduğu tartışılmıştır. Yani, o dönemde de gelişmiş bir piyasa ve emek hareketliliği vardır, arazi bir emtia gibi görülmektedir, özel mülkiyet yerleşmiştir, dikkate değer bir coğrafi ve toplumsal hareketlilik vardır,  aile ve çiftlik arasında tam bir ayrım söz konusudur ve hem rasyonel hesaplama hem de kâr güdüleri geniş biçimde yaygındır."

(Bunların da açıklaması) "...başka bir yerde yatıyor olmalıdır, ancak kökenler bizim bu çalışmada denediğimizden daha geriye götürülmediği sürece gerçek nedenler karanlıkta kalmaya devam edecektir."

[Fred R · Rating 4 out of 5]

Macfarlane tells us that this book, oddly enough, was inspired by his studies of English witchcraft beliefs. The book could be seen as prolegomena to Clark's more intensive "Farewell to Alms," seeing as the derive similar (and similarly wide-ranging) conclusions from similar data.

Macfarlane begins with a fairly long investigation into the question "what is a peasant," which is not entirely relevant, but is interesting enough in its own right for me to forgive him.

All told, this book is about as good as a book titled "The Origins of English Individualism" which doesn't tell you the origins of English individualism can be.

[Vadim Polikov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short book refuting established theory that the British farmers were peasants in medieval times, where peasants are defined as people who work on a family farm, stay on the family farm, and keep the farm in the family. Marx and Weber theorized that the transition from peasants to a commercial economy led to modernity. MacFarlane presents evidence that English farmers were selling their farmland, not staying on the land or passing the land to family and were therefore very different from peasants pretty much anywhere else in the world, and this was the case for as far back as records go, to the 12th century. Last chapter gives implications, so rereading last chapter is good enough.

[Thomas Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterly piece of scholarly iconoclasm. This work is the key to understanding the uniqueness of the English-speaking peoples and the differences between their cultures, history, and social attitudes vis a vis contemporary societies in continental Europe and elsewhere. Since the birth of sociology and anthropology scholars have assumed that England transitioned from the kind of backwards communal peasant culture found over much of the world at the time, into a civilisation based on individual rights and ownership somewhere around the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries. Macfarlane however, shows that as far back as the records go the English people were individualist in their social, economic, and legal customs. And even hints, that the origins of this unique way of organising society, one which was destined to give birth to the industrial revolution, individual rights and liberties, and the modern world itself, may lie hidden in the mists of time, in the ancient woodland culture of prehistoric Germanic tribes!

[joan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written in 1978, as union power was asphyxiating the nation, and showing strong signs of an impending paradigm shift away from Marxist-framed history, this study offers a picture of the early English as unusually, even uniquely egocentric and individualistic. A nation of shopkeepers from time out of mind.

Unfortunately the author stops in the 12th century and doesn’t delve into pre-conquest documents (it’s more of a review of other histories, pointing out anomalies and blind spots.) But I come away with the deep explanation involving repeated partial invasions, replacements of elites with their top down reorganisations, and letting bottom up market forces sort out who could most profitably fulfill tithe obligations. A repeated fracturing and healing. Centralisers couldn’t prevail, neither could clans stabilise.

So we have England’s busy geography and complex mixed agriculture to thank. The open plains and steppes are the enemy of freedom.

The Marxist historians seem, however, to have carried on regardless, judging by some other recent books on the subject matter.

[Thomas Solow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Macfarlane argues that, in England, contrary to the work of some historians and social critics, there is no good historical evidence for a real "peasant society". In such a society, cash would be rarely used, land would be rarely sold, and most families would be engaged in subsistence farming, passing land from generation to generation.

Instead, "English individualism" in the form of proto-capitalism, wage labor, and individual rather than communal ownership of property goes back to at least the 13th century, before the Black Death and probably earlier.

A quick read. Well written and fairly interesting. The argument itself is simple and much of the space is given to quoting various sources.

[Martin Abel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many influential contemporary authors take for granted the impression of Marx (followed by Weber, followed by Polanyi) that the character of Englishmen and their society changed AFTER the 16th and 17th century when the process of enclosure and expropriation reportedly destroyed the traditional and communal peasant society. MacFarlane uses an extensive set of primary and secondary sources to demonstrate something which other historians before him suspected but did not dare to say out loud: all the evidence, MacFarlane says, points to the non-existence of any kind of peasant society in England already in the 13th century, even before the Black Death. Technologies develop, the population slowly (less than in actual peasant society) grows and grows richer, but the English individual and English society of 1750 is almost indistinguishable from their ancestors 500 years ago. As historical travellers confirmed, the English have always been individualistic: their production and consumption centred around individuals (men & women) with exclusive property rights, as opposed to family households, they extensively hired outside labour force long before feudalism started its retreat in continental Europe, they were self-reliant and thrifty, they married late, they traveled for work, they kept only one heir, they readily threw their parents out of the house when the parents proved to be a burden, etc.
MacFarlane is not comfortable speculating how it might have happened that the English developed this kind of personality and interpersonal relations that would spread about the world with the spread of capitalism. So the name of his book is, to some extent, misleading - as some reviewers complained. But unless he gravely misinterpreted the court rolls and other historical sources he used, the argument seems to be solid enough.
My favourite citation concerns the exportation of English socio-economic model to developing countries (MacFarlane was writing in late 1970's). MacFarlane warns that by absorbing this model, these countries 'are not merely incorporating a physical or economic product, but a vast set of individualistic attitudes and rights, family structure and patterns of geographical and social mobility which are very old, very durable, and highly idyosyncratic. They therefore need to consider whether the costs in terms of the loneliness, insecurity and family tensions, which are associated with the English structure outweigh the economic benefits.'
''

[Larn E]

What Macfarlane seeks to do in this text is prove that ‘peasant’ society didn’t exist in medieval England because there was too much individualism and capitalism. What he actually proves is that Medieval English society wasn’t the same as rural Russian peasant society, which doesn’t necessarily go without saying. He also manages to give good reasons for not accepting claims about peasant family mentality as it attached to land. However, following his idol, Maitland, he throws the baby out with the bathwater and dismisses all mentality and community structures, as well as any legal ideas not represented by inviolable inalienable legal rights. There is much to critique in the work, but it’s also undeniable that Macfarlane introduced a healthy note of scepticism into discussion here.

[Norman Briggs · Rating 4 out of 5]

The majority of the book develops a rigorous and competent defense regarding what peasantry (of which he gives a precise technical definition I won't explain here) really was in historical England. While I think this was necessary to establish credibility and refute arguments from detractors, it did drag on a lot longer and made the reading less enjoyable. The crux of the book is really chapter 8, the final chapter, which outlines - if the work is true - the natural consequences of what the distortion of history has done in the modern era regarding the nature of human economic enterprise.

[Stuart Roderick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Flawed but fascinating

[Epictetus · Rating 3 out of 5]

First impressions. The author is very concerned with Marx, and spends some ink justifying Marx because he uses good data, i.e. data from England, which was the most extensive of any country for the period that interested Marx, without mentioning that Marx was a fraud in his use of these statistics. Perhaps the author grew up in thrall to communism, as so many intellectuals of his vintage did?

The book is dense and the arguments detailed, which is required for any serious work of this kind, but this work has two flaws. It is often repetitive, and it is too much founded on Marxist dogma, which is assumed and not subject to critical evaluation, at least not in the parts that I have read.

Nonetheless, the book is detailed and serious, far away in style from some of the popular expositions of important subjects that came in the same delivery of books.