DATA-MUNDO: data in a world-historical perspective

Fábio Pádua dos Santos
Gueibi Peres Souza

It is no novelty that there is an effort to overcome disciplinary boundaries between economics, politics, sociology, and history. It is also not recent the attempt to build a historically grounded social science. Nevertheless, the most difficult part of this task has been, and continues to be, establishing a dialogue between economics and the other social sciences, as well as between social sciences and history. It is in this dialogue that the pertinent and persistent questioning arises about what would be the place of qualitative and quantitative informational sources. In particular, about the place of data and statistical models in the effort to overcome disciplinary boundaries. Or even, if there is an adequate ordering to integrate such sources?

In this message, which inaugurates the CWEdata, we seek to answer these questions taking into account the need to forward the dialogue between economics with social sciences and history, as well as to point out the role of mathematics and statistics in this interlocution. To this end, first, we explore Karl Polanyi’s argument about the economicist fallacy. From Celso Furtado, we illustrate the implications of this sophism. To circumvent the economicist argumentative error, we recover Fernand Braudel’s contribution on historical times and his critique of social sciences. We point out, based on Immanuel Wallerstein, the type of statistics that is necessary for the construction of world-historical perspectives. Finally, we highlight the importance of integrating available qualitative and quantitative informational bases.

Many years ago, in his book The Great Transformation, Karl Polanyi (2012a [1944]) noted that all branches of the social sciences were established on Adam Smith’s hypothesis of man’s natural propensity to exchange. For Polanyi, starting from this hypothesis, 19th-century social thought developed the market mentality that resulted in the economicist fallacy, i.e., a logical error in which human economy is equated with the specific form of the market. In the author’s analysis, this misunderstanding originates from the formal definition of economy, which, besides isolating the economic dimension from the other spheres of life, understands it logically as a relationship of means and ends, in which the agent satisfies his needs and desires by minimizing means. As a result, the material production of life is not only reduced to a problem of scarcity, but also enunciated as a universal truth. However, scarcity and relative choice are, for Polanyi (2012b [1977], p. 72), a special situation where “[…] economizing or getting something below the price, refers to the choice between alternative uses of insufficient means”. Therefore, Polanyi argued that the formal concept of economy induces economic historians to transplant this specific form of economy to other societies and social scientists to assume its meaning without questioning. Polanyi’s critique suggests that both social scientists and historians have misunderstood the place of economy in everyday life and, mainly, how it connects with the other spheres of life. However, it is important to reinforce that at no point did Polanyi question economic analysis. His objective was to establish the historical and institutional limits of price formation mechanisms in economies.

As an alternative, Polanyi proposed a substantive view of the economy, in which man’s subsistence, the material production of life, should be theorized from the relationship between man and nature and between man and his peers, which may or may not involve choice in the sense of market choices. Anthropology contributes with the view that customs and traditions can eliminate the choice problem. From it, Polanyi intended to transcend the limitations inherent to economic analysis thus contributing to a general theory of economic organization.

From our point of view, Polanyi’s critique is welcome. Accepting it does not mean admitting any superiority of his analytical scheme, it only indicates an important step towards the eminent need to open up economic sciences. Besides taking an important step in the deconstruction of mainstream economic science, the distinction between formal and substantive economy established by Polanyi proves very useful in the process of establishing a bridge between economic sciences and the other social sciences and these with history. It also calls into question the identification of the scientific character of economics with positive economics. Celso Furtado (1974, p. 113-115), for example, in Objectivity and Illusionism in Economics, well exposed this limitation:

For the price of beans to be something rigorously objective, it should be, as taught in textbooks, the result of the interaction of two forces, supply and demand, endowed with objective existence. It would be the case, for example, if the supply of beans depended only on rainfall and its demand on the physiological needs of a defined group of people. But the truth is that the supply of beans is conditioned by a series of social factors with a historical dimension, which range from credit manipulation to finance stocks to pressures to import or export the product, not to mention control of transportation means, the degree of market monopoly, etc. In the same way, demand results from the interaction of a series of social forces, ranging from income distribution to the possibility that people have to survive by producing for their own subsistence. When applying the analytical method to this phenomenon (the price of beans), the economist says: all other factors constant… When this epistemological difference is perceived, it is easily understood that in economics scientific knowledge, that is, the possibility of verifying what is known and using knowledge to predict (and therefore to act more effectively), cannot be achieved within the methodological framework in which the so-called “positive economics” has been operating.

In the effort to establish a dialogue between social sciences, Fernand Braudel (1992 [1959], p. 43), in the classic article History and Social Sciences: The Long Duration, argues, based on his conception of historical times that long duration would be “indispensable to a common methodology of the human sciences.” In this endeavor, Braudel did not discard the use of quantitative methods as a guide and support for the formulation of empirical models, in fact he was concerned with the effect of time on these representations. Braudel (1992 [1959], p. 68) said that “models were of variable duration: they are worth the time that the reality they record is worth”. Thus, models are not atemporal nor aspatial. Therefore, they are not universal. In this sense, statistical models can prove statistically significant both in time and space. Furthermore, there is no reason to insist on a kind of cult of the significance level, when we know that by minimizing the probability of committing type I error (when the true null hypothesis is rejected) we can say that we are practically maximizing the probability of committing type II error (when a false null hypothesis is not rejected).

To the social observer, Braudel insisted, time, duration, “is primordial, because, even more significant than the deep structures of life, are its breaking points, its abrupt or slow deterioration under the effect of contradictory pressures”.

In this sense, Braudel (1992 [1959], p. 68) proposed that:

“… research must always be conducted, from social reality to the model, then from this to that, and so on, by a sequence of retouches, of patiently renewed journeys. The model is thus, alternately, an essay of explanation of the structure, an instrument of control, of comparison, of verification of the solidity and the very life of a given structure. If I manufactured [estimated] a model from the current one, I would like to put it back into reality immediately, then make it go back in time, if possible, to its birth. After which, I would calculate its probable life, until the next rupture, according to the concomitant movement of other social realities. Unless, using it as an element of comparison, I make it travel in time or space, in search of other realities capable of being illuminated thanks to it, with a new light.”

Influenced both by Polanyi and Braudel, Wallerstein (1974) also linked himself to this endeavor to rethink the social sciences inherited from the 19th century. Wallerstein led, within the Gulbenkian Commission (1996), a work of revision of the epistemological foundations of social sciences from criticisms of disciplinary boundaries, the false sense of universality, and the validity of the distinction between the “two cultures”. Wallerstein et al. (1982) recurrently insisted on the unavailability of data adjusted to the capitalist world-economy as unit of analysis. Although of undeniable value, economic, political, and social statistics collected at national, subnational, household, or individual level have certain limitations insofar as they ignore, among many aspects: a) the spatiality of economic activities over time; b) the non-correspondence between state borders and economic activities; c) the relational character of economic activities. It is also known that systematic comparisons are relatively scarce on the changes that Kondratiev cycle reversals cause in central, peripheral, and semiperipheral zones, as methodical comparisons over time are also rare, especially in the long duration.

Therefore, the project of opening up social sciences, in the sense described above, necessarily leads us to the combined use of complementary qualitative and quantitative informational sources. It would not be conceivable to adopt effective and efficient procedures, consistent with this effort, without the simultaneous and synergistic consideration of both methodological approaches. Both the effort of conceptualizing classificatory and stratification systems and that of reconciling priorities could not be obtained in a reasonably faithful way without the articulated use of these two informational bases. It is about exploring a kind of progressive symbiotic and therefore virtuous spiral between them, where one approach generates elements and results that dynamically nourish the other. In other words, we assume the premise that quantitative studies require prior qualitative studies that develop concepts and point out variables (or at least measurement needs), while analyses of theoretical interest need at various moments statistical evidence to distinguish subtle and decisive details of social behavior (values, expectations, and ideologies).

To meet this purpose, it is necessary to conceive an approach that presupposes and involves analyses broad enough to contain the dynamics of social change processes (structures in which multiple contradictions are realized and revealed), which is only possible through a methodological approach robust enough to identify world-historical patterns of continuities and ruptures. The effort to describe social realities through knowledge codified based on numbers and indicators, without the stain of quantiativism, has the power to influence the decision-making process regarding public policies more assertively, since they condition and are conditioned by levels of expectations and probabilities of future events. An example of this possibility of more complete understanding (or at least closer to it) is observed in the process of leading social scientists to make use of the exploration of frequencies, trends, and causal relationships that increasingly broad and structured databases admit, aiming to understand the various and complex risks and opportunities of the advancement of the commodification of life.

Given the discussion presented, which is broader and deeper than characterized in this brief essay, we understand that the effort to overcome disciplinary boundaries, besides the revision of the epistemological foundations of social sciences as proposed by Polanyi, Braudel, Furtado, and Wallerstein, also requires the integration of different informational bases. However, such a process must necessarily be oriented towards the proposition of alternative forms of employment of existing metrics, methods, and methodologies of measurement and estimation, so that they prove more adequate to the needs of world-historical analyses, making them thus more robust. This, however, must be conducted under the indispensable highest level of methodological rigor that the sense of responsibility and faithful application requires. Only thus, both the description of the past and eventual predictions of the future made from cuts of reality (in time and space), will enable social scientists to identify relevant social decisions. The proposition of effective strategic interventions in the search for the eradication (or at least mitigation) of undesirable phenomena from an understanding that can broadly be considered sustainable (socially just, ecologically correct, culturally accepted, and economically viable) depends on this. Decisions that are not free from bias, but that cannot make us forget that the cost of error can be socially interpreted as the most expensive.

References

Braudel, F. (1992). Writings on History. São Paulo: Perspectiva.
Costa, C. (2005). Sociology: Introduction to the Science of Society. 3rd ed. São Paulo: Editora Moderna.
Furtado, C. (1974). The Myth of Economic Development. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra.
Hopkins, T. K., and Wallerstein, I. (1982) World-Systems Analysis: Theory and Methodology. Vol. 1. SAGE Publications, Incorporated.
Polanyi, K. (2012a). The Great Transformation: The Origins of Our Time. 2nd ed. Rio de Janeiro: Elsevier.
Polanyi, K. (2012b). The Subsistence of Man and Related Essays. Rio de Janeiro: Contraponto.
Sciences., Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social. (1996) Open the Social Sciences: Report of the Gulbenkian Commission for the Restructuring of the Social Sciences. edited by I. M. Wallerstein. Mexico: Siglo veintiuno editores.
Wallerstein, I. (1974). The Modern World-System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. University of California Press.