Accueil
https://soc.ucla.edu/person/rebecca-jean-emigh/
"There were two Florentine currencies, one in gold and one in silver, and the exchange rate between them fluctuated (de Roover 1963: 31–34). In the Catasto of 1427, the exchange rate was four lire to one gold florin. Gold florins were divided into twenty gold soldi, and lire were divided into twenty soldi di piccioli." (p.XIV)
"This book takes up the classic social science question of why capitalist development occurs by asking where it does not occur. [...]
In the Middle Ages, [the Italian region of Tuscany] had a highly advanced economy and was a center for finance, trade, and manufacturing. It is, in fact, sometimes considered to be fully capitalist (Cohen 1980: 1349 ; Michels 1975: 11), mature (Cipolla 1952: 178), or even, perhaps, industrializing (Malanima 1988:63). Yet, despite this early development, the transition to full-scale industrial capitalism occurred relatively late there. [...] In contrast to the Netherlands, where an advanced economy led to a relatively early transition to capitalism, even if it did not produce the first transition to capitalism, Italy as a whole is considered to be a late developer." (p.1)
"Here is the short answer: a high degree of inequality between the rural and urban sectors assured that the spread of capitalist markets in Tuscany—quite paradoxically decreased overall market participation and undermined the growth of market institutions. Thus, capitalist markets—and even more fundamentally capitalism—“unmade” themselves in Tuscany. I combine theories of sectors, markets, and transitions to capitalism to make two sociological contributions. First, I show how sectoral relations are crucial to transitions to capitalism and, second, I show how capitalist development can contract markets." (p.2)
"Patterns of urban and rural interaction have been used to explain how capitalist social relationships, such as private property, wage labor, and markets, replace other relationships, such as communal property rights, family labor, and requisitioning. In addition, sectoral theories have been used to explain industrialization, which depends on the expansion of manufacturing and the contraction of agriculture, in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) and the share of the labor force. At the same time, however, agricultural productivity must increase, so that the smaller labor force employed in agriculture can produce enough food for both sectors (reviews in Ranis 1988:82–83; Timmer 1988:276–279; Varshney 1993a:6). Sectoral theories describe whether these transformations occur, on what terms they occur, and whether they promote economic growth and continued industrialization. Thus, sectoral theories can explain the sectoral shift associated with industrialization, once a set of capitalist social institutions is in place. Still, sectoral theories remain underutilized, especially in comparison to class analysis (N. A. 1984:1).
Early sectoral theories emphasized the importance of aggregate—and sometimes forced—transfers of resources between the rural and urban sectors that promote industrialization (i.e., investments that increased agricultural productivity and transfers of agricultural surpluses to the manufacturing sector) (e.g., Bukharin [1928] 1982:309–321; Lewis 1954; Preobrazhensky [1926] 1965:84–85). More recent theories, however, point to the role of dense intersectoral linkages and their underlying institutional supports in establishing patterns of sectoral interaction that increase urban and rural demand for goods and services, thereby creating economic growth (Becker, Hamer, and Morrison 1994:46–48; Epstein and Jezeph 2001; Lanjouw and Lanjouw 2001:11–14; Storm 1995:764–767). I draw on these recent theoretical developments to explain the Tuscan case. Tuscan rural and urban interaction increased agricultural productivity and transferred surplus to merchant activities but did not produce the expected outcome of industrialization. Thus, aggregate transfers did not have the predicted effect. Because rural and urban interaction destroyed rural market institutions, it did not draw rural inhabitants into market structures and capitalist social relationships, nor did it create dense intersectoral relations that could have supported industrialization. Analyzing intersectoral linkages in their concrete social detail explains how the relations between urban and rural regions hindered the development of industrial capitalism in Tuscany." (p.3)
"Marxists emphasize that a capitalist class wins a historic struggle to control production, which they continue to transform according to their interests so that capitalist social relations predominate. Neoinstitutionalists, implementing the idea of individuals as inherently utility maximizing, consider how institutional relations foster (or not) the establishment of capitalist relations that allow individuals to pursue their interests. Weberians also attend to these institutional arrangements but emphasize their cultural and political roots. As a result, Weberians tend to view institutional arrangements as constitutive of capitalism, not just as preconditions as neoinstitutionalists do. Third, within these paradigms, authors locate different prime movers, that is, different sets of relationships or factors central to the rise of capitalism (cf. Crafts 1977:429–430), including agrarian class structure (Brenner 1985a, 1985b), the nation-state (Anderson 1974), the world system (Wallerstein 1974), power (Mann 1986), religious beliefs (Collins 1997), elites (Lachmann 2000), field systems (Hopcroft 1999), technology (Goldstone 2002), or a cultural climate conducive to the adoption of technology (Jacob 1997:113–115). However, the most interesting treatments combine these approaches, such as Lachmann, who uses elite theory as the prime mover in combination with Marx’s emphasis on conflict. Perelman (2000:32–35, 94–96) combines a Marxist emphasis on class conflict and primitive accumulation with a Weberian-like emphasis on the cultural and political underpinnings of capitalism, which were created by classic economists’ theory of laissez-faire that was used to justify dispossessing the peasants. Similarly, I combine a Marxist emphasis on the dialectical constitution of ideal and material factors with a Weberian understanding of social action. I call my approach “dialectical Weberianism.” Like Marxist analyses, I emphasize inequality, but I conceptualize it in terms of sectors, not classes." (pp.4-5)
"Polanyi’s ([1944] 1957:73) argument that markets are self-destructive because they commodify all aspects of human existence is similar to Marx’s. However, politics conditioned this outcome, so it was not inevitable ; in particular, class mobilization could have created social institutions that counteracted commodification (Burawoy 2003:228). Thus, contemporary sociology should seek to understand how market change produces these different outcomes, though relatively little scholarship has done so (cf. Fligstein 2001:14), and most focuses on market expansion (review in Chapter 3), not market contraction as in Tuscany.
More specifically, the Tuscan case directs analytic focuses toward what occurs when a more advanced capitalist market intersects with a less developed one. The classic or neoclassical economic perspective suggests that this intersection reinforces and extends the less developed market. However, a Marxist perspective stemming from the idea of the “development of underdevelopment” (Frank 1966:17), the “articulation of modes of production” (Althusser and Balibar 1970:307; Laclau 1971:35–38; Meillassoux 1981:xiii; Steinberg 2003:451), or “unequal exchange” (Amin 1976: 287 ; Emmanuel 1972: 265–267) suggests that the spread of capitalism can have the paradoxical effect of reinforcing or reproducing non-market, precapitalist economic forms. If this idea is extended to markets, it suggests that the growth of a capitalist market could have the paradoxical effect of limiting market participation. Such was the case in Tuscany: the penetration of more developed capitalist, urban markets into less developed, rural markets in the presence of a high degree of sectoral inequality essentially erased, or unmade the less developed market structures, thereby decreasing the extent of the market, and in the long run, undeveloping capitalism. Similarly, in some contemporary markets—contrary to the currently hegemonic neoliberal “free-markets” rhetoric—the use of barter, family labor, and informal exchange increased when a more highly developed capitalist market penetrated a less developed one." (p.6)
"While capital accumulation is central to capitalist production, it also generates social inequality that can undermine capitalism as social actors with vastly different amounts of resources become unable to participate in markets as substantive equals, though they are formal equals. To synthesize these points, I develop a sociocultural model of markets as structures. I use Sewell’s (1992) definition of structures, which are composed of resources that are actual and schemas that are virtual." (pp.6-7)
"Precapitalist actors are also rational and will respond to economic incentives. It is only the “wrong” culture or politics that prevents these incentives from being realized. Rational economic changes would be implemented, but powerful actors prevent changes that would increase efficiency because they would be contrary to their own interests (Knight 1992:40). This work supports the commonsense idea that capitalism is efficient and rational; only inefficient cultural beliefs and political patronage prevent economic progress. It has also been reinforced by the dramatic collapse of state socialism in Eastern Europe, as well structural adjustment programs and other shifts from planned to free-market economies (Emigh 2005a). Thus, unlike the classic perspective, it assumes a continuity of behavior between the past and present. However, like the classic position, the outcome is more often assumed than empirically demonstrated." (p.8 )
"Polanyi ([1944] 1957:201) argued that capitalism is not self-sustaining because of its contradictory nature. Without corrective action by the state, capitalism collapses because of the misery it creates (review in Lie 1993:277–278). Similarly, Marx ([1894] 1977b:349–375) argued that the concentration of wealth by capitalists at the expense of laborers creates crisis. From Marx and Engels’s (1970:94) idea that institutions such as the state could sustain capitalism and therefore prevent economic change arose the Western Marxist analysis of the power of culture (e.g., Althusser 1971; Gramsci 1971). Thus, these traditions also motivate the idea that capitalism is not an inevitably unfolding economic system and cannot continue without cultural and political institutions." (p.9)
"Because of the historical importance and wealth of Florence during the Middle Ages, the Florentine archival holdings are vast." (note 4 p.10)
"Most of the archival evidence focuses on four small communities in rural Tuscany: two smallholding communes, Montecatini and Castelnuovo, in a region called the Val di Cecina south of Volterra, and two sharecropping parishes, Santa Maria a Spugnole and San Piero a Sieve, in a region called the Mugello north of Florence [...] Within these small towns, I examined as much archival evidence about individual rural inhabitants as possible and visited the sites."
"I examine the relations between urban and rural regions in Tuscany, roughly between 1350 and 1500. During this critical period, the transition to capitalism could have but did not occur. The post-plague period of late medieval history (after 1350) was often critical in establishing long-term economic patterns in Europe in general (Brenner 1985a:35–36) and in Tuscany in particular (Epstein 1991:4–5; Molho 1994a:66–71). Around 1500, the Tuscan historical trajectory was altered by foreign invasions (Butters 1985:viii). Because of the usefulness of the Catasto of 1427, much of the evidence is presented for the point about midway between these two dates." (p.14)
-Rebecca Emigh, The Undevelopment of Capitalism. Sectors and Markets in Fifteenth-Century Tuscany, Temple University Press, 2008, 271 pages.
"There were two Florentine currencies, one in gold and one in silver, and the exchange rate between them fluctuated (de Roover 1963: 31–34). In the Catasto of 1427, the exchange rate was four lire to one gold florin. Gold florins were divided into twenty gold soldi, and lire were divided into twenty soldi di piccioli." (p.XIV)
"This book takes up the classic social science question of why capitalist development occurs by asking where it does not occur. [...]
In the Middle Ages, [the Italian region of Tuscany] had a highly advanced economy and was a center for finance, trade, and manufacturing. It is, in fact, sometimes considered to be fully capitalist (Cohen 1980: 1349 ; Michels 1975: 11), mature (Cipolla 1952: 178), or even, perhaps, industrializing (Malanima 1988:63). Yet, despite this early development, the transition to full-scale industrial capitalism occurred relatively late there. [...] In contrast to the Netherlands, where an advanced economy led to a relatively early transition to capitalism, even if it did not produce the first transition to capitalism, Italy as a whole is considered to be a late developer." (p.1)
"Here is the short answer: a high degree of inequality between the rural and urban sectors assured that the spread of capitalist markets in Tuscany—quite paradoxically decreased overall market participation and undermined the growth of market institutions. Thus, capitalist markets—and even more fundamentally capitalism—“unmade” themselves in Tuscany. I combine theories of sectors, markets, and transitions to capitalism to make two sociological contributions. First, I show how sectoral relations are crucial to transitions to capitalism and, second, I show how capitalist development can contract markets." (p.2)
"Patterns of urban and rural interaction have been used to explain how capitalist social relationships, such as private property, wage labor, and markets, replace other relationships, such as communal property rights, family labor, and requisitioning. In addition, sectoral theories have been used to explain industrialization, which depends on the expansion of manufacturing and the contraction of agriculture, in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) and the share of the labor force. At the same time, however, agricultural productivity must increase, so that the smaller labor force employed in agriculture can produce enough food for both sectors (reviews in Ranis 1988:82–83; Timmer 1988:276–279; Varshney 1993a:6). Sectoral theories describe whether these transformations occur, on what terms they occur, and whether they promote economic growth and continued industrialization. Thus, sectoral theories can explain the sectoral shift associated with industrialization, once a set of capitalist social institutions is in place. Still, sectoral theories remain underutilized, especially in comparison to class analysis (N. A. 1984:1).
Early sectoral theories emphasized the importance of aggregate—and sometimes forced—transfers of resources between the rural and urban sectors that promote industrialization (i.e., investments that increased agricultural productivity and transfers of agricultural surpluses to the manufacturing sector) (e.g., Bukharin [1928] 1982:309–321; Lewis 1954; Preobrazhensky [1926] 1965:84–85). More recent theories, however, point to the role of dense intersectoral linkages and their underlying institutional supports in establishing patterns of sectoral interaction that increase urban and rural demand for goods and services, thereby creating economic growth (Becker, Hamer, and Morrison 1994:46–48; Epstein and Jezeph 2001; Lanjouw and Lanjouw 2001:11–14; Storm 1995:764–767). I draw on these recent theoretical developments to explain the Tuscan case. Tuscan rural and urban interaction increased agricultural productivity and transferred surplus to merchant activities but did not produce the expected outcome of industrialization. Thus, aggregate transfers did not have the predicted effect. Because rural and urban interaction destroyed rural market institutions, it did not draw rural inhabitants into market structures and capitalist social relationships, nor did it create dense intersectoral relations that could have supported industrialization. Analyzing intersectoral linkages in their concrete social detail explains how the relations between urban and rural regions hindered the development of industrial capitalism in Tuscany." (p.3)
"Marxists emphasize that a capitalist class wins a historic struggle to control production, which they continue to transform according to their interests so that capitalist social relations predominate. Neoinstitutionalists, implementing the idea of individuals as inherently utility maximizing, consider how institutional relations foster (or not) the establishment of capitalist relations that allow individuals to pursue their interests. Weberians also attend to these institutional arrangements but emphasize their cultural and political roots. As a result, Weberians tend to view institutional arrangements as constitutive of capitalism, not just as preconditions as neoinstitutionalists do. Third, within these paradigms, authors locate different prime movers, that is, different sets of relationships or factors central to the rise of capitalism (cf. Crafts 1977:429–430), including agrarian class structure (Brenner 1985a, 1985b), the nation-state (Anderson 1974), the world system (Wallerstein 1974), power (Mann 1986), religious beliefs (Collins 1997), elites (Lachmann 2000), field systems (Hopcroft 1999), technology (Goldstone 2002), or a cultural climate conducive to the adoption of technology (Jacob 1997:113–115). However, the most interesting treatments combine these approaches, such as Lachmann, who uses elite theory as the prime mover in combination with Marx’s emphasis on conflict. Perelman (2000:32–35, 94–96) combines a Marxist emphasis on class conflict and primitive accumulation with a Weberian-like emphasis on the cultural and political underpinnings of capitalism, which were created by classic economists’ theory of laissez-faire that was used to justify dispossessing the peasants. Similarly, I combine a Marxist emphasis on the dialectical constitution of ideal and material factors with a Weberian understanding of social action. I call my approach “dialectical Weberianism.” Like Marxist analyses, I emphasize inequality, but I conceptualize it in terms of sectors, not classes." (pp.4-5)
"Polanyi’s ([1944] 1957:73) argument that markets are self-destructive because they commodify all aspects of human existence is similar to Marx’s. However, politics conditioned this outcome, so it was not inevitable ; in particular, class mobilization could have created social institutions that counteracted commodification (Burawoy 2003:228). Thus, contemporary sociology should seek to understand how market change produces these different outcomes, though relatively little scholarship has done so (cf. Fligstein 2001:14), and most focuses on market expansion (review in Chapter 3), not market contraction as in Tuscany.
More specifically, the Tuscan case directs analytic focuses toward what occurs when a more advanced capitalist market intersects with a less developed one. The classic or neoclassical economic perspective suggests that this intersection reinforces and extends the less developed market. However, a Marxist perspective stemming from the idea of the “development of underdevelopment” (Frank 1966:17), the “articulation of modes of production” (Althusser and Balibar 1970:307; Laclau 1971:35–38; Meillassoux 1981:xiii; Steinberg 2003:451), or “unequal exchange” (Amin 1976: 287 ; Emmanuel 1972: 265–267) suggests that the spread of capitalism can have the paradoxical effect of reinforcing or reproducing non-market, precapitalist economic forms. If this idea is extended to markets, it suggests that the growth of a capitalist market could have the paradoxical effect of limiting market participation. Such was the case in Tuscany: the penetration of more developed capitalist, urban markets into less developed, rural markets in the presence of a high degree of sectoral inequality essentially erased, or unmade the less developed market structures, thereby decreasing the extent of the market, and in the long run, undeveloping capitalism. Similarly, in some contemporary markets—contrary to the currently hegemonic neoliberal “free-markets” rhetoric—the use of barter, family labor, and informal exchange increased when a more highly developed capitalist market penetrated a less developed one." (p.6)
"While capital accumulation is central to capitalist production, it also generates social inequality that can undermine capitalism as social actors with vastly different amounts of resources become unable to participate in markets as substantive equals, though they are formal equals. To synthesize these points, I develop a sociocultural model of markets as structures. I use Sewell’s (1992) definition of structures, which are composed of resources that are actual and schemas that are virtual." (pp.6-7)
"Precapitalist actors are also rational and will respond to economic incentives. It is only the “wrong” culture or politics that prevents these incentives from being realized. Rational economic changes would be implemented, but powerful actors prevent changes that would increase efficiency because they would be contrary to their own interests (Knight 1992:40). This work supports the commonsense idea that capitalism is efficient and rational; only inefficient cultural beliefs and political patronage prevent economic progress. It has also been reinforced by the dramatic collapse of state socialism in Eastern Europe, as well structural adjustment programs and other shifts from planned to free-market economies (Emigh 2005a). Thus, unlike the classic perspective, it assumes a continuity of behavior between the past and present. However, like the classic position, the outcome is more often assumed than empirically demonstrated." (p.8 )
"Polanyi ([1944] 1957:201) argued that capitalism is not self-sustaining because of its contradictory nature. Without corrective action by the state, capitalism collapses because of the misery it creates (review in Lie 1993:277–278). Similarly, Marx ([1894] 1977b:349–375) argued that the concentration of wealth by capitalists at the expense of laborers creates crisis. From Marx and Engels’s (1970:94) idea that institutions such as the state could sustain capitalism and therefore prevent economic change arose the Western Marxist analysis of the power of culture (e.g., Althusser 1971; Gramsci 1971). Thus, these traditions also motivate the idea that capitalism is not an inevitably unfolding economic system and cannot continue without cultural and political institutions." (p.9)
"Because of the historical importance and wealth of Florence during the Middle Ages, the Florentine archival holdings are vast." (note 4 p.10)
"Most of the archival evidence focuses on four small communities in rural Tuscany: two smallholding communes, Montecatini and Castelnuovo, in a region called the Val di Cecina south of Volterra, and two sharecropping parishes, Santa Maria a Spugnole and San Piero a Sieve, in a region called the Mugello north of Florence [...] Within these small towns, I examined as much archival evidence about individual rural inhabitants as possible and visited the sites."
"I examine the relations between urban and rural regions in Tuscany, roughly between 1350 and 1500. During this critical period, the transition to capitalism could have but did not occur. The post-plague period of late medieval history (after 1350) was often critical in establishing long-term economic patterns in Europe in general (Brenner 1985a:35–36) and in Tuscany in particular (Epstein 1991:4–5; Molho 1994a:66–71). Around 1500, the Tuscan historical trajectory was altered by foreign invasions (Butters 1985:viii). Because of the usefulness of the Catasto of 1427, much of the evidence is presented for the point about midway between these two dates." (p.14)
-Rebecca Emigh, The Undevelopment of Capitalism. Sectors and Markets in Fifteenth-Century Tuscany, Temple University Press, 2008, 271 pages.
