given, part of an immutable international order, but have not paused to think about the extent to which they are undermining economic development strategies, to say nothing of the hopelessness and cynicism which they generate in the countries where such strategies fail, year after year. Particularly important in this regard would be the lack of physical safety and security in many countries in Africa and elsewhere (e.g., Haiti) which fundamentally undermine the stability of interactions between economic agents. It may well be that physical security is a _necessary_ starting condition to give economic development a chance to get started. So, in Africa at least, poverty and underdevelopment may have more to do with geography and climate, with the internal politics of natural resource management, and with the toxic interactions between ethnic diversity and artificial borders creating conditions of physical insecurity, with purely cultural factors playing a subsidiary role.

# **8. Knowledge and technology**

Max Weber famously made the case about the role of culture in development in his essay “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,” arguing that Protestantism promoted the rise of modern capitalism “by defining and sanctioning an ethic of everyday behavior that conduced to business success” comprising “hard work, honesty, seriousness, the thrifty use of money and time (both lent us by God)” (Landes, p. 175). Weber’s tribute to Protestantism and its influence in the rise of industrial capitalism is not without its complications. Temin (1997) makes the valid point that Weber made his case largely in reference to Calvin and other 16th century dissidents’ vision of Protestantism. But the rise of industrial capitalism did not happen until close to 300 years later and it manifested itself not in the lands of Calvin and Luther but in Britain. De Long (1988) makes the additional point that it was not at all clear that Protestantism initially was all that friendly to the spirit of a capitalist economy: “Strong Protestantism—Calvin’s Geneva and Cromwell’s Republic of the Saints—saw theology and economy closely linked in a manner not unlike the Ayatollah’s Iran. And religious fanaticism is not often thought of as a source of economic growth”<sup>29</sup> It was not until the late 18th/early 19th century that profit seeking and wealth accumulation had become morally acceptable attributes in countries that had committed themselves to a Protestant religious tradition. Temin suggests that the culture of Protestantism was beneficial only in the presence of a particular set of technologies and organization, which did not appear until well after the Protestant Reformation: “In the age of hand-crafted products, Protestants and Catholics were economic equals. But when it became necessary to invest in factories and machinery to exploit a new technology, then the culture of Protestantism was a decided advantage.”<sup>3031</sup>

> 29 De Long, 1988, p. 1146.

> 30 Temin, p. 269.

31 Regardless of the exact dynamics of the causal chain between religion and the rise of capitalism, it is evident that a crucial aspect of culture such as religion is related with economic attitudes and outcomes, even in contemporary society. Guiso, Sapienza and Zingales (2003) use cross-country survey data to show that Catholics and Protestants are more likely than nonreligious people to consider teaching thrift to their children important. Further, in the US, Catholics, Protestant and Jewish respondents have a more negative attitude toward redistribution compared to respondents with no religious association. Barro and McCleary 18