Frank-Landes Debate, Page 7
William Fowler: Gentlemen, let us return to the format.
Andre Gunder Frank: Right.
William Fowler: The next question is Professor Frank to Professor Landes. And here there's been a slight change. And that is that the Professor Frank has asked that his question number three of the original question number three, now be question two. And I just mention that in case any of you are following in a text.
The question from Professor Frank to Professor Landes is as follows. “In ReOrient, I employed a combination of demographic and macro and micro economic analysis of relative world, regional, and sectoral factor supply and demand prices, especially of labor, capital and power sources and of the rational responses, there too, by individual decision makers in their choices among alternative technological processes and investments. You, on the other hand, make no such analysis in your book and then avoided the challenge your critics posed to you recently in Chicago. So, why do you dismiss, perhaps, my, still, inadequate answers as fantasies? And what alternative answer or even analysis can you offer to the question of how your allegedly cultural continuities led to contingent disjunctures.” Professor Landes.
David Landes: Well, I think we both try to do this. We just come out with different results. The business of allegedly important cultural continuities leading to contingent disjunctures. I make explicitly the point that culture is critical but that culture is not unchanging, and that, in fact, you can't even look at the story of the industrial revolution without understanding that it entailed a drastic cultural reeducation of the work force, that people were taken out of agriculture, were hired in industry and they had to learn to live and work very differently. So, the notion that so that my things or continuities, the implication that that means that they're unchanging, that's simply not true. Your inadequate answers as fantasies, you'll have to tell me where I said that they were fantasies, but, alright.
Andre Gunder Frank: Really?
David Landes: Yeah.
Andre Gunder Frank: Really?
David Landes: Yeah.
Andre Gunder Frank: Alright.
David Landes: So, and, for the rest, about supply and demand prices, yes, well, that's my point about the fact that labor costs more in Europe and Europe's looking for other ways to do things. Now the Chicago reference has to do with the debate that we had in Chicago at the World, no, it's not the World. It's the Social Science History Association. So, they had a meeting and I had five or six people telling me what was wrong with my book and then I had to reply and there is a real difference of opinion between me and some of the people at the Chicago meeting and we may want to talk about that later. Their feeling was that, yes, Europe was first, but that the others would have taken the same path once they were ripe and ready for it. They weren't ripe and ready. In that sense, they are very different from Andre Gunder Frank's notion of Asia being ahead. No, they thought Asia was somehow behind and Europe came first but Asia would have gone there. I don't think that there's any way to test that, but I have a somewhat skeptical position except for Japan which I think might well have industrialized even if they had never heard about Europe. But, aside from that, I'm not sure what you mean by the challenge the critics posed to me in Chicago. So, there.
Andre Gunder Frank: The challenge was to explain two of them said the important thing to explain was contingencies. Okay, the challenge is to explain a contingent, sudden change on the basis of a permanent condition, the Jack Goody thing. You didn't do that then and you haven't done it now.
David Landes: See I have the...
Andre Gunder Frank: Yes
David Landes: the, where I terrorize you or whatever.
Andre Gunder Frank: First of all, it says fairy tale right here.
David Landes: Yes. Yes.
Andre Gunder Frank: Yes, does it say fairy tale?
David Landes: It says fairy tale.
Andre Gunder Frank: Yes, it says fairy tale.
David Landes: It is a fairy tale.
Andre Gunder Frank: Well
David Landes: Yes. Okay.
Andre Gunder Frank: I can't look this up. I'll look it up later.
David Landes: Alright, look it up and you'll send me a letter.
Andre Gunder Frank: No, no, no... I'll show it to you before we go.
David Landes: Okay.
Andre Gunder Frank: It's marked.
David Landes: Alright.
Andre Gunder Frank: Where were we?
William Fowler: I'm not sure.
David Landes: I don't know, you're supposed to respond.
Andre Gunder Frank: I'm supposed to respond.
David Landes: You want me to say some more?
Andre Gunder Frank: Yes.
David Landes: Okay.
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