Authors
Peter Alexis Gourevitch
Publication date
1990/4/1
Source
German Politics & Society
Issue
19
Pages
90-93
Publisher
Berghahn Books
Description
Perspective" had, and still has, a tremendous impact on the think ing of several generations of social scientists and historians. That essay laid the foundation for what today might be called the" Steven Jay Gould" view of comparative development: that nations make use of existing social forms (institutions, social structures, culture, economic units, etc.) in novel ways under the stimulus of powerful forces. These historically shaped new uses may have little to do with the conditions that created the institutions in the first place. Countries experience common evolutionary processes, but in distinctive ways, where happenstance and coincidence play a large role. Gould rejects a strict unilinear, determinate model of evolution. Gerschenkron rejected both Rostow and Marxism for their unilinear model of the steps through which all countries presumably pass.