Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human
Societies, has been an interesting and thought-provoking read thus far. Diamond
starts out the book by asking a question posed to him by a New Guinean
politician, namely, “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo
and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of out own?”
(14). He then translates this question into the entire world, asking why
western Europeans came to have so much power over other groups of people in the
world. To sum up his answer into one sentence, he says that this inequality is
a result of western Europeans’ use and mastery of guns, germs, and steel.
Diamond’s argument seems a bit reductionist, as he narrows
the factors that cause this inequality down to only guns, germs, and steel.
Having recently read Max Weber, I can’t help but think about what Weber, as one of the founding fathers of sociology, would
think of Diamond’s book. In contrast to Marx, who says that capitalism is
developed naturally as part of a progression, Weber says that capitalism was
able to develop only by the combination of numerous factors that happened to be
together at the time, such as religion, culture, technological advancements,
and standard of living. For instance, Weber spends a great deal of time
examining the Protestant work ethic and Protestant success in the capitalist
system. Though the Protestant work ethic contributed greatly to Protestant
success in the market, Weber says that this value system alone could not have
led to the thriving of Protestants in this system. Instead, he says that this
was only possible through the correct combination of innumerable different
factors, both large and small. Similarly, if Weber read Diamond’s book, I
suspect that he would have agreed that European use and mastery of guns, germs,
and steel played a huge role in European power over the rest of the world, but
I think he would have said that there must have been many other factors that
contributed to this power and inequality.
I am not really sure how I feel about Diamond’s argument
yet, as I have only gotten through about a quarter of the book. At this point,
the argument seems logical to me, but I am not yet convinced that these were
the only three factors involved. I am very interested to see how he develops
his argument throughout the rest of the book.
I agree with Kate in her belief that it can't only be those three factors that have contributed to the inequalities between the Western Europeans and the less developed nations. I agree that guns, germs, and steel are huge factors in the difference between the communities since these aspects did contribute greatly to these inequalities, but there are many other factors that I believe are being overlooked. One example could be the different climates and resources that were available to each community. In a world without importing and exporting across different countries, the resources available in the place you live could be a huge factor in the speed of development of a community. I’m sure there are many other factors that affect these inequalities that must be combined to produce this result.
ReplyDeleteI think that to say that Jared Diamond thinks that guns, germs and steel are the sole factors in determining inequalities between different groups of humans is a mis-reading of his book. On page 23 Diamond says that the hypothesis that European guns, germs, and steel are responsible for Europe's conquest of the New World "is incomplete because it still offers only a proximate (first-stage) explanation identifying immediate causes. It invites a search for ultimate causes: why were Europeans, rather than Africans or Native Americans, the ones to end up with guns, the nastiest germs, and steel?"
ReplyDeleteA few pages later Diamond summarizes what he believes "to be the most important constellation of ultimate causes:"
"Geographic differences in the local suites of wild plants and animals available for domestication go a long way toward explaining why only a few areas became independent centers of food production, and why it arose earlier in some of those areas than in others" (29). Then, "by enabling farmers to generate food surpluses, food production permitted farming societies to support full-time craft specialists who did not grow their own food and who developed technologies" (30).
So in other words, I don't think that it's fair to say that Diamond tries to reduce everything down to guns, germs, and steel. I think that he tries to look at causal chains, searching for the earliest cause. I do think that he has a tendency to reduce everything down to geographical differences, but at the same time I understand that he has to reduce things a little bit in order to present a coherent chain of causes and effects. In fact, at times I wish he would simplify things down a little more so that I wouldn't have to read a 500 page book in order to get the gist of his argument.
I agree that guns, germs, and steel are not the only factors that led to the inequality in the world we see today. In chapter six we can see that factors like whether or not they the people tried to remain hunter and gatherers has an effect on the inequality. Jared Diamond mentions that nowadays in the first world countries, many do not have to work to raise food for themselves. This may seem like an obvious fact but the choice that some made to become farmers, while others chose to remain hunter and gathers after seeing the deleterious effect of the first farmers suffering from serious diseases and on average dying at a younger age, had an impact in answering the question of the New Guinean politician. The reason that the Europeans were able to conquer the Indians that were living in the Americas was due to the fact that there were people who did not have to raise food for themselves and they were able to specialize in other professions and had the opportunities to sail to other countries. Those they conquered did not have the same opportunities because some were still hunters and gatherers and so they could not specialize but rather they had to raise food for themselves and their families. Factors like whether or not they were hunters and gatherers are the precursors to developed societies turning to create guns, spread germs, and obtain steel.
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