European Miracles (Not all of them nice). By: Prof. Michael Mann

This video was recorded during the "The Social and Political Relevance of Gellner's Thought Today" conference organised by Dr Sinisa Malesevic and Dr Mark Haugaard, Dept of Political Science and Sociology in the National University of Ireland, Galway. This conference was held on 21-22 May 2005. Organised at the eve of the 10th anniversary of Gellner’s death, it brought together some of the world’s most prominent social scientists whose own work, in one way or another, is indebted to the legacy of Ernest Gellner (1925-1995).
Michael Mann - Professor Michael Mann, from the University of California, Los Angeles, presents that it has been customary for well over a century to describe the "European Miracle" as having been an essentially economic and political breakthrough, leading to a highly productive capitalism and a polity embodying liberal freedoms. This is a very happy story, since it left behind societies based on want, despotism and violence. Ernest Gellner's version of the Miracle Story centred on a distinction between a past based on predation, and a future based on production. There is much truth in the Story, but the Miracle also enabled Europe/ the West to dominate the world through military conquest institutionalized as a form of imperialism that proved uniquely short-lived because it was racist, and so proved incapable of assimilating other peoples into imperial citizenship. The Miracles were plural. Thus plural, often contradictory forms of power have been playing out in the European/ Western/ American-dominated centuries ever since.
National University of Ireland, Galway
Conference Organiser: Mark Haugaard
Conference Organiser: Sinisa Malesevic
Video Production / Edition: Maria-Alejandra Gonzalez-Perez
Chair: Su-Ming Khoo