Cultures Merging The Missing Cultural Foundations of Economic GlobalizationJones’

Abstract

Economists should not, according to Jones, neglect the legal, cultural, and social impediments that affect the dissemination of full-blown market behavior outside Western society. Custom, traditions, beliefs, and values combine with economic choice to produce existing culture. But, within these interactions, the economic choices of self-interested individuals and their formal institutions hold the upper hand. Jones rejects the hypothesis of “cultural nullity,” according to which culture depends entirely on the economy. Jones also rejects the alternative “cultural relativist” hypothesis, where each culture maximizes its own values, and the free market and capitalism are themselves cultural artifacts. For Jones, the cultural context within which capitalism develops is relevant only as a second-order factor to explain the pace and uneven nature of the global diffusion of wealth-maximizing, self-interested, and competitive behavior.

Citation

Zoninsein, J. (2007), " Cultures Merging The Missing Cultural Foundations of Economic GlobalizationJones’", Samuels, W.J., Biddle, J.E. and Emmett, R.B. (Ed.) A Research Annual (Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, Vol. 25 Part 1), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 135-140. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0743-4154(06)25014-4