Product Review: Protestantism and Capitalism: The Mechanisms of Influence

Abstract

110-Theory and Epistemologyin divisions between "sanitary" and "unsanitary" nations, with just as devastating consequences.By reinforcing superficial distinction between nations, cross-national debates focused on the actions of isolated nations and deflected attention away from the forces of a global economy and the possibility of a more collaborative approach.All told, cholera was cast, by various actors, as a disease particular to a people, to a region, or to a nation. In the process, those who suffered received little of the attention they needed, and policy discussion was constrained. Many actors, Briggs argues, were complicit in detaching the spread of cholera from its institutional roots. Indeed, despite some statements to the contrary, Briggs himself is not afraid to join in the blame-game: He casts blame just as generously as have others, even if he does so more broadly. In this light, it is difficult to feel optimistic after reading the book or to think the epidemic was anything less than overdetermined. By casting its net so wide, Stories in the Time of Cholera succeeds in illustrating the pernicious effects of cultural reasoning and of constructing artificial divisions between peoples and nations. Yet, in so doing, it can only provide loose guidelines for the future. In the long run, this book calls for greater sensitivity to cultural rhetoric and for vesting more authority in local leaders rather than distant representatives. But if the social divisions that lie at the heart of the book's argument are as long-standing as they seem, disparities in cholera infection are likely to continue since they are merely one reflection of larger antagonisms.In the short run, the book's implications are probably more straightforward: Stories in the Time of Cholera encourages officials to adopt simple approaches, but to avoid simple logics. The spread of cholera, to be sure, can be curbed with broad public health investments and the elimination of severe material deprivation. Why such approaches were obscured, however, is a more complex story, and this book illustrates the power of narrative to deflect attention in entirely different directions. It is the power of a good ethnography to elaborate this more complicated story and to illustrate how debates can turn quickly to differences between peoples and nations, rather than the structures and ideologies that link them.