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A review by arkichan
The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Henrich
3.0
WEIRD = Western Educated
The WEIRD concept is quite well known in psychology and other social studies.
Hendrich tries to show the history and development of WEIRD bias by focussing on the history of christian influence in central Europe and the devolpment of alphabetisation.
Citing many of (his) studies in great detail, he proves his point.
Nevertheless, i couldn't get rid of the feeling, that the data not really give evidence to his argument, therefor he focusses on a few studies in great, great detail - not really mentioning other studies. (But I lack enough insight to prove this point - it is just my feeling during reading).
Two other points i was confused about.
Henrich points out the role of inter-clan marriages and patrilineal inheritance. But he does not discuss or even consider of contemporary feministic research and results upon the role of women, marriage, etc. in history. Just as if these kind of studies do not exist or do not add any insight into male view of history.
The second point is the focus on religion: even though he explains why he looks upon monotheistic religions mainly, he sticks to christianity and a bit islam. He almost nowhere discusses the role of jewish influence and tradition .. even though he is doing historic research. This is very surprising and does not make much sense.
All in all it is interesting research which many points to discuss. It would be good for the book to be much shorter and to the point (at least push lots of the statistical details and scattergrams to the appendix)
The WEIRD concept is quite well known in psychology and other social studies.
Hendrich tries to show the history and development of WEIRD bias by focussing on the history of christian influence in central Europe and the devolpment of alphabetisation.
Citing many of (his) studies in great detail, he proves his point.
Nevertheless, i couldn't get rid of the feeling, that the data not really give evidence to his argument, therefor he focusses on a few studies in great, great detail - not really mentioning other studies. (But I lack enough insight to prove this point - it is just my feeling during reading).
Two other points i was confused about.
Henrich points out the role of inter-clan marriages and patrilineal inheritance. But he does not discuss or even consider of contemporary feministic research and results upon the role of women, marriage, etc. in history. Just as if these kind of studies do not exist or do not add any insight into male view of history.
The second point is the focus on religion: even though he explains why he looks upon monotheistic religions mainly, he sticks to christianity and a bit islam. He almost nowhere discusses the role of jewish influence and tradition .. even though he is doing historic research. This is very surprising and does not make much sense.
All in all it is interesting research which many points to discuss. It would be good for the book to be much shorter and to the point (at least push lots of the statistical details and scattergrams to the appendix)