LA TROBE UNIVERSITY, MELBOURNE/CHARLES UNIVERSITY, PRAGUE

argument. When Max Weber outlines the long-term transformation of modern

capitalism, from an economic regime sustained by ethical commitments of religious

origin to one functioning as a self-propelling system, he suggests a process

that translates cultural orientations into economic mechanisms; as Weber’s project

unfolds, more complex views on both the emergence and the later development

of modern capitalism begin to take shape, but the absorption of cultural sources

into a rationalized economic machinery remains central, and at the same time, an

analogous trend emerges in the political sphere. The bureaucratic machine that

appears both as an essential complement and a potential threat to capitalism is

also a product of multiple historical forces, including cultural patterns. Without

entering into the specifics of Weber’s unfinished and controversial work on these

two themes, the main lines of his analyses can be taken as an anticipation of ideas

to be tested on a more general level.

To allow for autonomous economic and political dynamics is to presuppose

basic concepts of wealth and power, linked but not reducible to culture. I have

discussed this tripartite conceptual scheme at some length elsewhere (Arnason,

2003: 195–322) and cannot repeat the details within the limits of this article;

suffice it to say that both categories have to be defined with reference to anthropological dimensions that lend themselves to further specifications. Wealth has

to do with the satisfaction of human needs and the concomitant development

of human capacities that in turn give rise to new needs; the surplus-generating

dynamic inherent in this aspect of the human condition calls for symbolization

(representations of ‘wealth in general’ or ‘abstract wealth’, to use Marxian categories, are not confined to capitalist societies), and the varieties of symbolism are

– in conjunction with other factors – conducive to different modes of accumulation.

Technical progress, commercial expansion and capitalist development (in

the broad Weberian sense that includes both modern and premodern versions)

are the most important historical trends at work in this sphere. As for power, the

first step seems to be to bridge the gap between definitions that stress the general

transformative capacity of human action and those that conceive of power only

in terms of asymmetric relations between actors. The intertwining of both aspects

generates the complex formations that have been emphasized by relational

conceptions of power (from Elias to Foucault). And as the category of power is

broadened to account for this complexity, its openness to cultural definitions

becomes more obvious. The ‘cultural plasticity of power’, as it has sometimes

been called, is now widely accepted; but its obverse is the point that some kinds

of plasticity can be more conducive to a sustained and autonomous dynamic of

power structures than others.

To conclude, a brief overview will indicate ways of translating these general

reflections into specific tasks for civilizational analysis. The list can begin with

developments internal to civilizations but nevertheless illustrative of crosscivilizational trends that in each case bring about changes affecting the whole

framework. Recent scholarship has highlighted the ‘economic efflorescences’, to

use a term introduced by Jack Goldstone, that occurred in otherwise different

premodern settings, from the Graeco-Roman world to the Qing formation (as