Professor Joe Henrich (Harvard) presents his new book on 'how Westerners became psychologically peculiar and particularly prosperous'.

He suggests that the Western Church eroded kinship in Europe, which enabled a process of cultural evolution, resulting in democratisation, innovation, and economic growth.

I present an alternative hypothesis: through economic development, wage labour, non-familial employment, and rural-urban migration, people broaden their networks beyond kinship. So my suggestion is that economic development fosters cultural change.

Let me know what you think!!

Read more about Professor Henrich: https://henrich.fas.harvard.edu/

And his book: https://weirdpeople.fas.harvard.edu/