Anthropological Hypothesis

There are mainly three views regarding why inequality exists in the world. One is the climate hypothesis of French Philospher, Montesueiu who argued people of tropical areas are lazy and therefore, they are less innovative and productive whereas people of other areas are hardworking and therefore innovative and productive. That is why UK and USA are rich while Sub-Saharan Africa is poor. Second one is the Cultural Hypothesis of German Sociologist, Marx Weber who argued it is culture in the form of the protestant ethics that made UK rich. Third one is the ignorance hypothesis formulated along the line of the definition of the economics by Lionel Robinson and according to this economies often face market failure and rich countries are rich as they are able to formulate better policies to tack the menace of market failure as a they are knowledgeable compared to poor countries who cannot formulate better policies to deal with market failure and therefore they are poor.

 In my view none of these views are satisfactory to explain the phenomenon of world inequality as demonstrated by Acemoglu and Robinson (2013) in Why Nations Fails…….and a satisfactory explanation to the world inequality lies in the anthropological attributes of human being as explained below.

Ignorance hypothesis says that rich countries have eliminated the problem of market failure with better policies. If so what enabled them to make better polices? Or why poor countries are unable to make better policies? To answer this we have to resort to their culture. Rich people are rich because of their rich culture, not in the sense defined by the Marx Weber along the line of religion; instead it is to be defined in the line of the anthropology. To go further in the sense that to know how Anthropology rendered world unequal, we have to unearth the mystery behind the human evolution. I do not believe that people of the world as whole are evolved from the same origin and in the same environment. It is this difference in the origin and environment that caused difference in the culture, appearance, norms, skills, talents, aptitude etc which made someone better and other worse. There can be a temptation to explain this link between Anthropology and Inequality with Montesquieu’s Climate Hypothesis citing the example that people of Tropical area like Africa are black whereas people of arctic areas like Canada are white. But, I think it is not appealing because if so, how the people of tropical areas like Middle East and Australia happened to be white?

Also, there is a problem with the perspective we look at the development today. We look at the development through the prism of the principles dictated by industrial revolution which as per this Anthropological Hypothesis could be the outcome of the natural instincts and aptitudes that the British people inherited from their ancestors and thereby they were naturally tuned to develop means and ways to make industrial revolution successful. How can we say that people of another region, say India, would be comfortable with such means and ways that found fascination with British? Not one thing here that in the ancestral tradition of the Indian society, “sanyasm” (sainthood) is an important stage of their life in which they renounce all their material endowments and move to jungles or Himalayan mount ranges to meditate. A the same time, in a society like British, what we have seen is just contrary to this with a penchant to make more endowments throughout life. Please do not try to interpret this with the Max Webers’ cultural hypothesis as culture is the outcome rather than villain.

Therefore, in my view, to find a sensible explanation to the world inequality, we have to recognize the anthropological diversity of human being which forged their varying capabilities and cultures. However, in the modern era, only the capabilities and culture of the British inherited from their ancestors got patronage though industrial revolution and therefore, modern developmental discourse got biased in favor of a particular group and capabilities to the complete decimation of the capabilities and talents that people of other regions had inherited from their ancestors. That is why world is unequal.

It is in this context, a truly democratic globalization assumes significance recognizing the diversity of the human aptitudes and capabilities paving way to comparative advantages across the world. Thus, if we capitalize this diversity thorough international trade in a truly democratic manner giving due consideration to all, we can eliminate the world inequality.