Reply to Mark Elvin

I was quite pleased to learn that a respected scholar of Chinese history, Mark Elvin, had written a review essay of my book Uniqueness of Western Civilization (2011). Elvin's estimation is that Uniqueness is an alpha-delta book--with some very good and some unnervingly bad He sees a fundamental cleavage between those who explain rise of West in terms of some deep-seated quality in Europe's culture going back to ancient times, and those who stress conjunctural developments, numerous historical currents of significantly different characters, and relatively short-lived but world-transforming episodes. manner in which Elvin words these two approaches suggests that his sympathies are closer to latter; though he would have us believe that he is a reasonable and fair-minded judge. Having read and cited some of Elvin's work, I would say that his intellectual frame is socialistic, materialistic, secular, and multiculturalist. All of us have cultural biases, so let me concede that I prefer West to any other civilization. At same time, my book cites over 850 different sources in its effort to demonstrate uniqueness and superiority of West. This is not a task much welcomed in our current academic establishment, where students are regularly taught that cultures are pretty much in value. In this world, writing that West is superior is deemed extremist--apart from evidence. Elvin refers to those on side of this debate as the uncompromisingly pro-European cultural extremists, whereas he distinguishes the extreme proponents of other [revisionist] perspective from more reasonable, and liberal-minded proponents (like him). Elvin calls one of my arguments dangerous. After a meager sentence on alpha side of book--Duchesne probably wins most of his case on economic issues relating to comparison between Europe and China, even if only narrowly--he dedicates entire review to delta components. I will reply seriatim to his main criticisms: 1. Elvin challenges all my central arguments explaining how and why West was unique, yet he barely cites any words from what is a 500+ page book. Of nine occasions in which he cites short phrases or one-line sentences, five come from two-page Preface. five sentences from Preface are basis of his most critical remarks, which consist in large measure of words taken (sometimes verbatim) from his earlier publications, i.e., a chapter in Hans Ulrich and Gunter Dux (2010), a chapter in Carrithers, Collins and Lukes (1985), and a Comment in Bernholz and Vaubel (2004). It is almost as if Elvin had already formulated a refutation of my book years before it was published! 2. I never argued that anthropology was inherently flawed as a discipline per se. I explicitly praised as uniquely Western anthropological idea that all cultures should be studied from a universal (or less Eurocentric perspective) with equal respect and liberal-mindedness. I criticized anthropologists for attacking Western Enlightenment as ethnocentric, in that they don't even pause to reflect on fact that their own discipline is Western. I asked, for example: Is not emphasis on cultural pluralism a form of universalism that requires modes of reflective reasoning (metacultural, historical, and anthropological) that are/were unavailable in other cultures and that threaten/have threatened particular traditions and standards of diverse cultures? (19-31, 32). 3. Elvin wonders whether I am advocating creationist idealism in criticizing evolutionary materialism. To complete contrary, I dedicated two whole sections, The Exclusion of Sociobiology, and Progress and State of Nature, to argue that same evolutionary materialists who stress material conditions of life (geography, biodiversity, technology, relations of production, etc. …

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