cover image Cultures Merging: A Historic & Economic Critique of Culture

Cultures Merging: A Historic & Economic Critique of Culture

Eric L. Jones. Princeton University Press, $39.95 (297pp) ISBN 978-0-691-11737-9

Neither cultures nor their economies can be fully understood independent of each other, yet specialists in both fields persist in trying; Jones, a celebrated economic historian, examines how culture influences economics, and vice versa, in detailed but occasionally dry prose. The ""merging"" of the title refers to what happens when, for example, U.S. soap operas are exported, with rapturous reception, to Brazil. Jones sites studies that show that ""transmitting 'soaps' was more powerful than a family program was likely to have been,"" leading to a cultural and economic trend towards American-style soap-opera lifestyles: bigger income and smaller families. Meanwhile, the rising profile of economically attractive fast food restaurants in East Asia has led to cultural changes ""by importing an unfamiliar conception of manners ... East Asians are socialized to queue, keep the lavatories clean, and give up ... spitting in public. Westerners off the farm once had to learn these things too."" While lay readers might wish for more of these clear-cut examples, students and economists will find the book thorough and thought-provoking.