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15 - Response to the critics

from Part V - Response

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 April 2016

Michael Mann
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
Ralph Schroeder
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Summary

I want to thank all the contributors to this book for having taken the time and trouble to critique my recent work. It is an honor that I have experienced before, and I love it.

The third and fourth volumes of The Sources of Social Power bring to an end my history of power relations in human societies. Volume 3 begins for the most advanced countries in 1918. Yet since my second volume on the long nineteenth century largely ignored the empires of that time, in Volume 3, I actually start my discussion of empires much further back. Volume 3 then takes the narrative forward to the end of the Second World War, and then Volume 4 takes over up to (almost) the present day. The amount of empirical material I read for these volumes is large but very far from exhaustive, since an enormous amount has been written about the modern period. It would be very surprising if I did not make mistakes or depended on unreliable historians or took one viewpoint in highly controversial debates.

But my narrative is not merely empirical. It is informed by sociological theory. As before, I structure my narrative in terms of the interplay of four power sources, each one of which generates its own networks of interaction. The four are ideological, economic, military and political power. Although all four are often entwined with each other, each has its own distinct logic of development, and so their relations with each other are ultimately “orthogonal,” independent and irreducible one to another. Thus, while in these periods I persistently stress the importance to social development of capitalism, I am also persistently critical of economic determinism, whether this comes from Marxism or neo-classical economics. Similarly, while recognizing the importance of ideologies in these periods, I reject the idealism which pervades much of the so-called cultural turn in sociology. For military power I try to correct the opposite tendency, the neglect until very recently of the importance of war and armed forces in social development. I would like to believe that the recent revival of interest in military power owes something to my influence. I will say something later in this essay about the continuing political importance of the nation-state.

Type
Chapter
Information
Global Powers
Michael Mann's Anatomy of the Twentieth Century and Beyond
, pp. 281 - 322
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2016

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References

Barkey, Karen 2008 Empire of Difference. The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Blackburn, Robert & Mann, Michael 1975 “The Ideologies of Non-skilled Industrial Workers” in Bulmer, M. (ed.) Workers’ Images of Society. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, pp. 131–161.
Bockman, Johanna 2014Socialist Globalization and Capitalist Neocolonialism: the Economic Ideas behind the NIEO”, unpublished paper, George Mason University.
Collins, Randall 1994Why the Social Sciences won't Become High-consensus, Rapid-discovery Science”, Sociological Forum, Vol 9, 155–177.Google Scholar
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Ikenberry, John 2011 Liberal Leviathan. The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Mackinder, Halford 1904The Geographical Pivot of History”, The Geographical Journal, Vol. 23, 421–437Google Scholar
Mann, Michael 1970The Social Cohesion of Liberal Democracy”, American Sociological Review, Vol. 35, 423–439.Google Scholar
Mann, Michael 2003 Incoherent Empire. London: Verso.
Mann, Michael 2005 The Dark Side of Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mann, Michael 2014 “The infrastructural powers of authoritarian states in the Middle East and North Africa” (unpublished, available on my web-site).
Naughton, Barry 2006 The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth. Boston, MA: M.I.T. Press.
Nee, Victor & Opper, Sonja 2007 “On Politicized Capitalism” in On Capitalism, Nee, Victor and Swedberg, Richard (eds.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Prasad, Monica 2006 The Politics of Free Markets: The Rise of Neoliberal Economic Policies in Britain, France, Germany, and the United States. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Priestland, David 2012 Merchant, Soldier, Sage: A New History of Power. London: Penguin Books.
Schroeder, Ralph 2007 Rethinking Science, Technology, and Social Change. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

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