Abolishing provincialism and parochialism in knowledge gathering

[mass production of copper tools, which was beginning to be widespread in the Andes in the centuries before 1492, was already spreading in parts of Eurasia 5,000 years before that. The stone technology of the Tasmanians, when first encountered by literate observers in 1642, was simpler than that of Upper Paleolithic Europe tens of thousands of years earlier. Geography and Emergence The Broadest Pattern of Human History By Jared Diamond January 27, 2009: JARED DIAMOND is Professor of Geography at UCLA. He is the author of the recently published Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies. 9:04 PM]

[A short history of economic anthropology from The Memory Bank by keith
In The Great Transformation (1944), Polanyi brought a radical critique of modern capitalism to bear on his moment in history. We too must start from the world we live in, if we are to apply the vast, but inchoate intellectual resources of anthropology to a subject that is of vital concern to everyone. Ours is a very different world from when Polanyi so confidently predicted the demise of the market model of economy. Yet the revival of market capitalism and dismantling of state provision since the 1980s furnishes plentiful material for Polanyi’s thesis that the neglect of social interests must eventually generate a political backlash and a retreat from market fundamentalism. 7:47 PM ]

[Wake-up call: Of the rest of the world, we remember next to nothing The first striking impression I must comment upon as someone brought up solely in the Western intellectual tradition is that Power and Plenty is what we describe nowadays as a ‘wake-up call’. There is and always has been a much wider world out there than the nearer, though highly significant, horizons we normally contain ourselves within. I do not mean to imply that educated people in the West are unaware of the rest of the world – how could we be in the electronic times we live in? I am thinking more of our historical vision than today’s global reality. If our knowledge of history is lit up today, as we go back in time the darkness of ignorance about what was happening outside of Europe gradually closes in the further back in time we go. -- Ronald Findlay and Kevin O'Rourke on Power and Plenty from Adam Smith's Lost Legacy by Gavin Kennedy 4:59 PM 7:58 AM]

[ Cynthia R. Nielsen Jan 26th, 2009 at 9:06 am
Thank you, Tusar, for your comment. I agree that the discussion should be broadened beyond the black/white horizon.]

[Sanskrit Texts: A Window on Indian Scientific Tradition Prema Prakash
In the popular perception, India's contribution to the development of science and technology often appears limited to those achieved over the last century or so. However, the wealth of Sanskrit texts provides evidence that such contributions have existed over the millennia. 6:12 PM]

[Chanakya and Chandrayaan are two significant signposts nearly 2,400 years apart between which flourished a great civilisation called Bharat or India. Chanakya was the epitome of the grand Indian vision of politics and economics, which he described in a single word Arth Shastra. Home > 2009 Issues > February 01, 2009
Chanakya to Chandrayaan: India’s global vision By Ram Madhav]

[Our economic and technological processes have produced the first genuinely global form of social organization, yet we rely on political models unconsciously premised on social relations organized around rather small populations. Thinking the Present from Larval Subjects by larvalsubjects]

Abolishing provincialism and parochialism in knowledge gathering is the primary methodological upheaval that is urgent. [TNM]