Gain Migrations And Cultures: A World View Chronicled By Thomas Sowell Rendered As Print
this book talks about the history of certain migrant groups of people Germans Japanese Italians Chinese Jews Indians around the world.
The picture Thomas Sowell paints about these groups spans across centuries and gives you an idea about how they were viewed and treated by their host nations, how they contributed to their respective societies, and lets you draw conclusions about migration patterns, the role of migration in a country's industry, economy, demographics, politics, and so on.
I was mainly interested in the migration aspect of the book rather than the ethnospecific history of things, but it turns out that Thomas Sowell can write an interesting book, and offer an interesting narrative even about the history aspect that I wasn't looking forward to that much.
As always, the writer is not afraid of pissing off the politically correct crows with lines like these:
"It may sound noble to say that cultures are merely different, not better or worse in any way, and that it is all a matter of perceptions and preferences.
But this argument contradicts itself by saying that one way of looking at cultural differences is betterthe way of cultural relativism preferred by a fringe of contemporary intellectuals, rather than the way preferred by the vast majority of other human beings around the world and down through the centuries.
"
or
"The very possibility that these disparities might be due to cultural differences affecting behavior and attitudes, or to differences in the human capital brought into the workplace, rather than to the behavior of the larger society, received no attention whatever, either in this statement or in much of the media or the academic world.
Yet, when all this was being said, black American married couples with college degrees were at the same income level as white American married couples with college degrees.
Even a quarter of a century earlier, black males raised in homes with books and library cards were at the same income level as white males raised in homes with similar advantages and similar education.
"
And backs the whole thing up by a trove of citations and research, There are EXACTLYas in, a hundred and ten pages of citations to other pieces of literature, making each chapter supported by hundreds of citations.
Thomas Sowell is a boss, A very insightful read into the migration patterns of nationalities around the globe and how the have impacted our every day lives.
Dowelling digs into the second and subsequent generational career domination a such as Jews who make upof the population in some countries but make up overof the lawyers.
Fascinating read. Thomas Sowell knows why races and cultures are the way they are, This is a "big picture" book, mindexpanding, horizonbroadening, and all that, Fascinating book with lots of detail,
"Migrations and Cultures", by economist Thomas Sowell, is a masterpiece work, Armed to the teeth with data there is hardly a sentence without a fact embedded in it, this book studies the causes and effects of human movement.
It was published in, a while back, but it is still relevant and most of the Migrations and Cultures's focus is on time periods before the 's.
The book is comprised of large chapters about migrants from China, Japan, India, Italy, Germany, and the Jewish diaspora.
Each one of these groups of immigrants, over time, became successful, These stories are equal parts amazing and inspiring and they often happened slowly over generations, Cultural expectations of work ethic, thrift, and education attainment all play roles, and many of these groups, all over the world, faced extremely difficult barriers to their success.
It is largely a story of capitalism,
I love Sowell's global focus, Being an American, I think our mainstream culture assumes that the immigration issue revolves around the US, This book serves as a sober reminder that US immigration is only part of the larger and much more interesting global story.
To give a small sampling, here were some memorable bits:
Sri Lanka is a very complex place.
There have been violent struggles between Buddhists vs, Hindus, the caste system plays a side role, and there is violent tribalism between the native Sinhalese northern Indian origin vs.
two immigrant waves of Tamils southern Indian origin,
Malaysia was another complex place, There was British colonial rule, Singapore breaking away from the country after independence, and a huge clash between native Malaysians and Chinese immigrants who now exercise an outsized business influence.
The Japanese immigrants to Brazil came from Japan during the Imperial Japanese days, unlike US Japanese immigrants who came in the previous proWestern Meiji era.
The Japanese in Brazil were very proJapanese in WWII and some even thought they won the war,million Japanese went back to Japan after WWII,
Indians in East Africa often called "Asians" in Africa have been very successful, despite humble work beginnings and unfair treatment in many places.
There is also some bad blood between Indians and native Africans, Also, Indians were shipped to all corners of the British Empire wherever labor was needed and have exercised wide influence.
The Jewish story is long and extremely complex, Differences in country, in era, between Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews, Eastern vs, Western European Jews, etc. ! Through it all. the Jewish population has performed extremely highly in metrics of income and education attainment,
./stars. The main takeaway is that it is an excellent book and it reminds us of the importance of immigrants around the world.
Finally, Sowell is known as a conservative thinker, but that is not how it reads, I think everyone would respect this Migrations and Cultures's research and scholarship no matter the political persuasion, Fascinating information and ideas, but a tad repetitive, Most commentators look at the issue of immigration from the viewpoint of immediate politics, In doing so, they focus on only a piece of the issue and lose touch with the larger picture.
Now Thomas Sowell offers a sweeping historical and global look at a large number of migrations over a long period of time.
Migrations and Cultures: shows the persistence of cultural traits, in particular racial and ethnic groups, and the role these groups relocations play in redistributing skills, knowledge, and other forms of “human capital.
” answers the question: What
are the effects of disseminating the patterns of the particular set of skills, attitudes, and lifestyles each ethnic group has carried forthboth for the immigrants and for the host countries, in social as well as economic terms Chapters ondifferent immigrant groups are filled with facts and have a section at the end of each that summarizes.
The last chapter in the book relates trends seen with contemporary society, The book isyears old, but the arguments and conclusions are quite relevant today, Well worth reading. This one was a mixed bag for me, . . Although I never thought I'd say this about a book from Thomas Sowell, I was close to putting it down a few times.
sitelinkThomas Sowell is an American economist, social theorist, senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, and one of the most formidable contrarian thinkers of the modern age, IMHO.
Thomas Sowell:
sitelink
Migrations And Cultures is bookof his sitelink"Culture" trilogy.
Unfortunately, I found the writing here to be markedly drier than his other books, all of which I have thoroughly enjoyed.
The book is an extensive examination of the historical movements of large groups of people.
Sowell examines these migrations, and their related socioeconomic ramifications,
Many broad migrations are covered, including:
World Warera mass migrations, Migrations between Russia and Germany are covered,
Germans around the world, Germans in Brazil are extensively covered,
Japanese around the world, Japanese in Brazil are covered, as are their migrations to North America,
Italians around the world,
The overseas Chinese.
Jews of the diaspora,
The overseas Indians.
History and Cultures.
I am generally a fan of Sowell's writing, and I usually find his books incredibly interesting, and wellwritten.
Unfortunately, this one just did not resonate the same way with me, I found the book to be almost like a longform encyclopedia article, The typical pizzazz that Sowell writes with was absent here, IMHO, . .
The book was also much longer than it could have been, The version I have clocked in atpages PDF, andhours,mins for the audiobook, A decent chunk of which could have been edited out for the sake of both brevity and clarity,
Despite being excited to continue this trilogy, this one did not meet my expectations, or the high water mark that Sowell established with his other books.
Possibly a subjective thing, but I just didn't like this one as much as his other offerings, . .
It is chock full of factual data, and no doubt the end result of hundreds of hours of research.
However, the final product just did not resonate with me, . .
.stars. .