Question

What is “involution”? How does Philip Huang’s argument contradict Kenneth Pomeranz’s thesis?

Answer 1

This term often comes up in discussions about Asian and/or Chinese growth, or the lack of it in relation to Western Europe. In the study of economic growth the classic reference for the word involution comes from Clifford Geertz 'Agricultural Involution

The debate on the involution of Pomeranz, Brenner, Huang, Lee and others has been heated, nuanced and often enlightening. Several essential and somewhat different aspects have revolved around debate. There is a core collection of empirical disputes over the status of a variety of important variables, including, in particular, comparative living conditions and agricultural productivity rates. There is also some difference as to philosophical questions.

Philip Huang firmly argues that China's rural economy is involutionary in character. He maintains that China's agricultural economy encountered extremely low rates of per capita productivity in the late Qing and early Republican period, and was able to increase production only at the cost of ever-increasing labor inputs per unit of production (Huang 1990). The family-farming unit was one that was highly vulnerable to self-exploitation (use of free family labour well beyond the point of fair marginal return), and the burden of limited property, population growth, and technological stagnation resulted in declining productivity and stagnation to falling living standards.According to Huang and his supporters, in the early-modern era the Yangzi Delta was on an involutionary trajectory, involving the Malthusian crisis (population exceeding food production), declining labor productivity, rising land use rate, dropping marginal output and dropping living standards.

When applied to the early modern period (1600-1800), Kenneth Pomeranz strongly disagrees with the Involutionist interpretation. He suggests a thorough comparison between England and Jiangnan in the early stages of modern times to provide a more accurate comparative economic history. Against the Involutionists, Pomeranz argues that China's rural economy was approximately as successful as England's in 1700, and that rural living conditions in the lower Yangzi region were essentially the same as those of rural England in the same time

It seems likely that average incomes in Japan, China and parts of Southeast Asia were equivalent (or higher than) those in Western Europe even in the late 18th century . Pomeranz argues that the value of the disparities between land-intensive and labor-intensive agriculture is given too little attention by Huang. Pomeranz asserts that large characteristics of Yangzi Delta's agricultural productivity, manufacturing productivity, living standards and demographic behavior were generally similar in both cases;

When approaching this discussion there is an significant philosophical argument that must be stressed. All revolution and involution suggest a continuous propensity to change: either drastically rising productivity in the labor-land or slowly declining productivity. But there is a third rational alternative: typically flat productivity in the face of many other changeable variables — new fertilizers, increasing population, ecological challenges, declining land-labor ratios, technical changes, or environmental challenges.