The WEIRD Henrich book

Joseph Henrich’s The WEIRDest People in the World is now out. Here is one review. I am about half way through, and I am likely to rate the book as highly as The Secret of Our Success, with little overlap between the two.

His main claim is that using statistical analysis, he and his colleagues have shown that: (a) where the Christian church has its deepest roots, people are less strongly embedded in kin-based clans, with cousin marriage being a strong component of the clan society; and (b) where clan structures have broken down, individualism and what we might call the psychology of the liberal enlightenment are more likely to have emerged.

I wrote about some of his research here.

I will want to go back and re-read MacFarlane’s The Origins of English Individualism (cited by Henrich but seemingly not much discussed, and Mark Weiner’s Rule of the Clan, also cited but seemingly not discussed. I reviewed Weiner here.

7 thoughts on “The WEIRD Henrich book

  1. I like this line from the “Atlantic” book review:
    “His quarry are the ‘enlightened’ Westerners—would-be democratizers, globalizers, well-intended purveyors of humanitarian aid—who impose impersonal institutions and abstract political principles on societies rooted in familial networks, and don’t seem to notice the trouble that follows.”

    P.T. Bauer would approve.

  2. There was mounting ’mong Graemes of the Netherby clan;
    Forsters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they rode and they ran:
    There was racing and chasing on Cannobie Lee,
    But the lost bride of Netherby ne’er did they see.
    So daring in love, and so dauntless in war,
    Have ye e’er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar?
    -Walter Scott

  3. Steve S says he got the idea from Stanley Kurtz in MR comments section. Who probably got the idea from Charles Darwin (inbred?) son, George, who got it from Joe Blow. Who probably wasn’t attracted to his cousin after the wheel was invented and animals domesticated traveling longer distances in temperate climate (unlike inbred arid regions of earth) and also helped start the Catholic Church as a good tax dodge. It’s creationist to argue the church (err state) converted man. Maps not chaps.

  4. Just downloaded for Kindle.

    Question: why is it worth reading vs. “A Farewell to Alms” or “The Company of Strangers”? And, should I start with “The Secret of our Success,” before this one?

    Note: understand that the books don’t necessarily overlap, but trying to understand what is new here.

    Thanks ASK readers for your feedback!

      • I liked the last two paragraphs of Daniel Dennett’s review. It’s a not very veiled challenge to do science rather than politics–which is nice to see in the NYT.

        “A good statistician (which I am not) should scrutinize the many uses of statistics made by Henrich and his team. They are probably all sound but he would want them examined rigorously by the experts. That’s science. Experts who don’t have the technical tools — historians and anthropologists especially — have an important role to play as well; they should scour the book for any instances of Occam’s broom (with which one sweeps inconvenient facts under the rug). This can be an innocent move, since Henrich himself, in spite of the astonishing breadth of his scholarship, is not expert in all of these areas and may simply be ignorant of important but little-known exceptions to his generalizations. His highly detailed and confident relaying of historical and “anthropological facts impresses me, but what do I know? You can’t notice what isn’t mentioned unless you’re an expert.

        “This book calls out for respectful but ruthless vetting on all counts, and what it doesn’t need, and shouldn’t provoke, is ideological condemnations or quotations of brilliant passages by revered authorities. Are historians, economists and anthropologists up to the task? It will be fascinating to see.”

  5. I just want to point out that the late UCLA economics professor Deepak Lal talked about this decades ago.

    He referred to the Gregorian Revolution, which was the new rules for marriage and sex for converted Europe. I was skeptical at first, but it appears that there is something to it.

    I will point out what is not PC at all. The high degree of close-kin-marriage and polygamy in the Muslim Arab world likely explains the extreme clannishness of that culture, which is a barrier to political and economic development. Some lucky countries hit the jackpot with oil, but that is a gift rather than development.

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