One of the most useful ideas serving North American capitalist hegemony is exceptionalism. Proponents of legitimacy in the state and the academy for the past two centuries have flogged the notion that what happened (for the white man) in North America is unique and superior to occurrences elsewhere. One result is a preoccupation with and celebration of our own institutions and accomplishments, and a conviction that other experiences, though interesting, regrettable, inferior or hateful, are not worthy of consideration except as negative example. Perhaps this aversion to ‘foreign ideas’ and the preference for localist and exceptionalist explanations has had no more impact than in the social sciences. There may be some cause for this tendency in the concrete and specific nature of the material of history, economic, sociological and political science. Of course, all societies and all time periods differ, but the point carried to its logical conclusion results in the crassest empiricism.
