Social Space and the Periodization of Economic History: A Case from Taiwan

Case studies in local economic history and organization conventionally employ either of two rhetorical strategies. In the first, a particular world view, theoretical orientation, or set of basic categories is assumed and forms the basis for organizing a description of a particular case; in the second, the facts or data are marshaled in an attempt to validate, authenticate, or test an explicitly stated theoretical position. Of course, these are ideal types, and many studies quite appropriately combine both. Progress is conceived as an outcome over time in which both kinds of study contribute to ever more elegant, encompassing, and parsimonious orderings of data. The nature of the relationship between theory, assumptions, world view, and so forth on the one hand, and data, subject, or facts on the other, transcends otherwise widely divergent arguments-for example, “Marxist,” “dependency,” “neoclassical,” and (more subtly) “substantivist.” In short, a common value, broadly “positivist,” informs most Western sociaI science discourse.