Este UnderstandingSociety: Many small causes é mesmo interessante. Farto-me de o referir aos meus amigos sociólogos e historiadores. Um apontamento sobre a importância das pequenas versus grandes causas na explicação dos acontecimentos históricos, agora aplicadas à explicação da queda do Império Romano do Ocidente:
"When large historical events occur, we often want to know the causes that brought them about. And we often look at the world as if these causes too ought to be large, identifiable historical factors or forces. Big outcomes ought to have big, simple causes.But what if sometimes the historical reality is significantly different from this picture? What if the causes of some "world-historical events" are themselves small, granular, gradual, and cumulative? What if there is no satisfyingly simple and macro answer to the question, why did Rome fall? Or why did the American civil war take the course it did? Or why did North Africa not develop a major Mediterranean economy and trading system? What if, instead, the best we can do in some of these cases is to identify a swarm of independent, small-scale processes and contingencies that eventually produced the outcome?Take the fall of Rome."
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