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Anthropologist Jason Antrosio says Romney and Jared Diamond are two sides of the same coin
A long, complex post so I'll just take a few disconnected excerpts.
More than Guns, Germs, and Steel – Anthropology 2.5
The Jared Diamond of Guns, Germs, and Steel has almost no role for human agency–the ability people have to make decisions and influence outcomes. Europeans become inadvertent, accidental conquerors. Natives succumb passively to their fate. But in 2005 out comes another book from Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. Suddenly choice and agency are back!
...
However, I have not seen any evidence for Diamond being uncomfortable with the determinism he previously embraced. On the contrary, Diamond claimed Guns, Germs, and Steel was not environmental determinism. I also do not see Collapse as investigating agency–it is rather, for most cases, depicting how people “choose” to fail. So when Europeans “succeed” at colonialism, that was not their doing, nor their fault; when other societies falter, that was a choice to fail: “Taken together, the two books struck Frederick K. Errington, an anthropologist . . . as a ‘one-two punch.’ The haves prosper because of happenstance beyond their control, while the have-nots are responsible for their own demise” (A Question of Blame When Societies Fall, Johnson 2007). Or, “note the subtle shift (or less charitably the contradiction) between the ‘accident’ of conquest in Guns and the ‘choice’ of success or failure among Diamond’s Anasazi in Collapse” (Wilcox 2009:124).
...
Mitt Romney may not have read Jared Diamond’s books. Maybe he just saw the movie. But Romney delivers the essence–that root success is accidental and then “culture” provides the rest. Diamond recapitulates this view in his broadside at Romney, describing that “institutions promoting wealth today arose first in Eurasia, the area with the oldest and most productive agriculture.” They may be on different sides of the political fence, but both Jared Diamond and Mitt Romney–in Diamond’s words–”fail to understand history and the modern world.” And that’s scary.
Full post (~2,000 words): http://www.livinganthropologically.com/anthropology/guns-germs-and-steel
The Jared Diamond of Guns, Germs, and Steel has almost no role for human agency–the ability people have to make decisions and influence outcomes. Europeans become inadvertent, accidental conquerors. Natives succumb passively to their fate. But in 2005 out comes another book from Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. Suddenly choice and agency are back!
...
However, I have not seen any evidence for Diamond being uncomfortable with the determinism he previously embraced. On the contrary, Diamond claimed Guns, Germs, and Steel was not environmental determinism. I also do not see Collapse as investigating agency–it is rather, for most cases, depicting how people “choose” to fail. So when Europeans “succeed” at colonialism, that was not their doing, nor their fault; when other societies falter, that was a choice to fail: “Taken together, the two books struck Frederick K. Errington, an anthropologist . . . as a ‘one-two punch.’ The haves prosper because of happenstance beyond their control, while the have-nots are responsible for their own demise” (A Question of Blame When Societies Fall, Johnson 2007). Or, “note the subtle shift (or less charitably the contradiction) between the ‘accident’ of conquest in Guns and the ‘choice’ of success or failure among Diamond’s Anasazi in Collapse” (Wilcox 2009:124).
...
Mitt Romney may not have read Jared Diamond’s books. Maybe he just saw the movie. But Romney delivers the essence–that root success is accidental and then “culture” provides the rest. Diamond recapitulates this view in his broadside at Romney, describing that “institutions promoting wealth today arose first in Eurasia, the area with the oldest and most productive agriculture.” They may be on different sides of the political fence, but both Jared Diamond and Mitt Romney–in Diamond’s words–”fail to understand history and the modern world.” And that’s scary.
Full post (~2,000 words): http://www.livinganthropologically.com/anthropology/guns-germs-and-steel
Antrosio elaborates further in a second post:
Jared Diamond won’t beat Mitt Romney: Liberal Coffee-Table Histories vs. Real History
The really scary thing is not that Mitt Romney misused, misinterpreted, or just didn’t read Jared Diamond. It’s that Romney’s views are very much in line with what Diamond gave us from Guns, Germs, and Steel to Collapse: the differential success of the world’s nations–and European imperialism–is due to accident, except when societies “choose to fail.”
Everybody knows Jared Diamond chided in the New York Times that Mitt Romney Hasn’t Done His Homework.
...
The big thinkers have spoken. Look out Mitt Romney. Plunging poll numbers to follow.
Let’s get real. Does anyone actually think a Jared Diamond piece in the New York Times–of all places–is going to move a single vote? Or even, for that matter, help us understand contemporary politics, international relations, and world history? If anything, it may be counter-productive. Considering how well Richard Dawkins belittling arrogance has been working for public acceptance of evolution, this so-called gaffe may be just what Romney needs to put him over the top.
Full post (~2,400 words): http://www.livinganthropologically.com/2012/08/04/diamond-romney
The really scary thing is not that Mitt Romney misused, misinterpreted, or just didn’t read Jared Diamond. It’s that Romney’s views are very much in line with what Diamond gave us from Guns, Germs, and Steel to Collapse: the differential success of the world’s nations–and European imperialism–is due to accident, except when societies “choose to fail.”
Everybody knows Jared Diamond chided in the New York Times that Mitt Romney Hasn’t Done His Homework.
...
The big thinkers have spoken. Look out Mitt Romney. Plunging poll numbers to follow.
Let’s get real. Does anyone actually think a Jared Diamond piece in the New York Times–of all places–is going to move a single vote? Or even, for that matter, help us understand contemporary politics, international relations, and world history? If anything, it may be counter-productive. Considering how well Richard Dawkins belittling arrogance has been working for public acceptance of evolution, this so-called gaffe may be just what Romney needs to put him over the top.
Full post (~2,400 words): http://www.livinganthropologically.com/2012/08/04/diamond-romney
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