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The Causes of Progress: Culture, Authority, and Change
Compares the development of different regions of the world, discusses the importance of literacy for cultural change, and examines the cultural effects of parental authority and the status of women
- GenresHistory
217 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1987
15 people want to read
About the author
Emmanuel Todd
68 books181 followersEmmanuel Todd is a French historian, anthropologist, demographer, sociologist and political scientist at the National Institute of Demographic Studies (INED) in Paris. His research examines the different types of families worldwide and how there are matching beliefs, ideologies and political systems, and the historical events involving these things.
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November 25, 2022Comment:
This book is far more progressive than his "The Explanation of Ideology". He achieves this not by revising his anthropological theory, but by bringing into the equation other sociological considerations. -Most especially, demography and literacy rates, and their effect on the success of modernization. I found this book less convincing than his "Explanation" book. But this is because I read this "Progress" book thirty years after its translation. Had I seen it in the eighties, I likely would have found it more convincing.
Always be aware that just because data sets indicate a given outcome likely, there is no inevitability in human prognostication. All you need do is gamble on sports to see that. So long as there is an unknown future, all data sets that one can work with are necessarily (definitionaly) incomplete regarding the event that needs to be predicted. Once the event occurs, it becomes a new data point in said data sets, sometimes altering them.
...And there is absolutely no way to get around this.
This book is far more progressive than his "The Explanation of Ideology". He achieves this not by revising his anthropological theory, but by bringing into the equation other sociological considerations. -Most especially, demography and literacy rates, and their effect on the success of modernization. I found this book less convincing than his "Explanation" book. But this is because I read this "Progress" book thirty years after its translation. Had I seen it in the eighties, I likely would have found it more convincing.
Always be aware that just because data sets indicate a given outcome likely, there is no inevitability in human prognostication. All you need do is gamble on sports to see that. So long as there is an unknown future, all data sets that one can work with are necessarily (definitionaly) incomplete regarding the event that needs to be predicted. Once the event occurs, it becomes a new data point in said data sets, sometimes altering them.
...And there is absolutely no way to get around this.
Displaying 1 of 1 review