Originally published in Section Culture: Newsletter of the ASA Culture Section. Spring 2020, Vol 32. Issue 1 Book Symposium: The Civil Sphere in East Asia (2019, Cambridge) Jeffrey C. Alexander Professor of Sociology, Yale University  I am grateful to Ming-Cheng Lo, Sadia Saeed, and Lyn Spillman for their attentive and detailed readings, and most of all for their recognition that The Civil Sphere in East Asia (CSEA) … Continue reading Symposium: Against the Idea of “Western Modernity”: Axial Foundations and Contemporary Civil Spheres in East Asia

Originally published in Section Culture: Newsletter of the ASA Culture Section. Spring 2020, Vol 32. Issue 1 Book Symposium: The Civil Sphere in East Asia (2019, Cambridge) David A. Palmer Professor of Sociology, Univ. of Hong Kong   Spillman recounts how The Civil Sphere in East Asia helped her to make sense of daily headlines on the Hong Kong protests of 2019. She asks, “when do different … Continue reading Symposium: The Geopolitics of Civil Spheres: Hong Kong and the China Factor

Originally published in Section Culture: Newsletter of the ASA Culture Section. Spring 2020, Vol 32. Issue 1 Book Symposium: A Culture of Growth (2018, Princeton) Joyce Burnette Professor of Economics, Wabashi College Joel Mokyr tackles big historical questions.  His work as a whole tells the story of how Europe, and Britain in particular, became the location where modern economic growth first erupted.    We have already heard about … Continue reading Symposium: Defining a Model of Cultural Change

Originally published in Section Culture: Newsletter of the ASA Culture Section. Spring 2020, Vol 32. Issue 1 Book Symposium: A Culture of Growth (2018, Princeton) Deirdre Nansen McCloskey Emerita, Economics and History, Univ. of Illinois at Chicago Joel wrote a characteristically brilliant, witty, learned, persuasive, humane, penetrating book. It is economics, for its steady attention to the most recent insights of economic theory; it is history, for … Continue reading Symposium: Getting It Almost Exactly Right; Mokyr’s Glittering Culture of Capitalism

Originally published in Section Culture: Newsletter of the ASA Culture Section. Spring 2020, Vol 32. Issue 1 Book Symposium: A Culture of Growth (2018, Princeton) Jan de Vries Ehrman Professor Emeritus UC-Berkeley For many decades economic historians focused on honing their technical skills as economists in order to address fairly small historical questions. Recently, several leading figures have turned to big questions, those hitherto thought beyond the … Continue reading Symposium: Can economics explain cultural change?