Technological Basis of Egalitarian Economic Growth: Nineteenth-century Norwegian Fishing as an Alternative to Dark Satanic Mills

• In Event: 285 - Regular Session. Comparative Historical Sociology: The Changing Structure of Geopolitics and the Global Political Economy

Abstract

This paper offers an alternative to the view that high technology promotes development and low technology inhibits development. We differentiate between monopoly technology and accessible technology. Monopoly technology produces growth by producing monopoly rents. As a byproduct, it also produces substantial inequality both within nations and globally. Accessible technology produces growth without monopoly simply by increasing the volume of production in a lucrative business.
We illustrate this first with a consideration of successful agrarian based development in the core that was based on agricultural products that were not particularly monopolized.
We then move to a detailed consideration of fishing in nineteenth century Norway. Norway’s economic development was heavily dependent on proceeds from fishing exports. Norwegian fishing had a distinctive technology that made it particularly low tech and egalitarian. It produced substantial wealth for the nation while producing very little social inequality. This technical basis of growth became a precondition for egalitarian nature of the Norwegian welfare state.
We close with a consideration of non-technical determinants of societal inequality – and what conditions have to exist for accessible technology to be effective.

Authors

• Samuel Cohn, Texas A & M University

• Michael Joseph Upchurch, Texas A&M University

• Hannah Rahaman, Texas A&M University

• Justin Vogl, Texas A & M University