Primary text for courses in Social Change.
Social change is usually understood to be mainly a matter of recent trends. The authors believe that trends and recent events need to be understood in their world historical context if we are to know their implications for action. The framework presented in this book allows the reader to see the trends and events of the recent past in terms of the patterns of social change that have been occurring for decades, centuries and millennia. By tracing the growth of settlement systems and interaction networks we can explain the processes of institutional transformation — the development of technology, information systems, moral orders, markets, and political structures -- that have made it possible for us to live in large and complex societies.
The theoretical framework is based on the comparative world-systems perspective, a macrosociological approach to world history that examines groups of interacting societies rather than individual societies as if they were in isolation from other societies.
Table of Contents:
Social Change and Evolution 1e
Expanded Table of Contents
Preface
Part I:The Framework
Chapter 1: History and Social Evolution
Science and objectivity
Humanism and values
The comparative method
Social evolution
Social vs biological evolution
Teleology and unilinear evolution
Progress and social evolution
Theories of social change
Institutional materialism
Chapter 2: The Comparative world-systems approach
World-systems
Core-periphery relations
Spatial boundaries of world-systems
Modes of accumulation
Patterns and causes of social evolution
Chapter 3: Biological Bases of Social Evolution
Introduction
Primate evolution
Bipedalism as an adaptive response
Rewiring the brain for social life
New mating practices
Australopithecines
Homo Habilius
Homo Neanderthals
Homo Sapiens
Human Consciousness in the Upper Paleolithic Age
Emergence of hypothetical thinking
Conclusions
Chapter 4: Building a Social Self: The Macro-Micro-Link
Human nature
Most common misunderstandings about evolutionary psychology
Building a social self
Part II: Stateless Systems
Chapter 5: World-Systems of Hunter-Gatherers
(Introduction)
Expansion and incorporation
Settlement systems
Cultural and social institutions
Gender relations
Sedentary Hunter-gatherer world-systems
The Wintu and their neighbors
Social Change Table of Contents
Chapter 6: The Gardiners
The biophysical ecology of egalitarian horticulturalists
The material organization of Neolithic simple horticulturalists
The environmental psychology of hunter gatherers and simple horticulturalists
Chapter 7: North American World-Systems Before Chiefs
(Introduction)
The Midwest
The Plains
The Southwest
The Great Basin
The Northwest
California
The East
Eleven Millennia on the Chesapeake
Early and Middle Archaic
Late and Terminal Archaic
Early Woodland and the Chesapeake Adena
The Middle Woodland
Late Woodland
TheChesapeake in comparative and macro-regional perspective
Interactional nets over the long run
Chapter 8: The Sacred Chiefs
Rise and fall
Chiefdom formation
Chiefdoms in Ancient Southwest Asia
The Chesapeake system at the time of Captain Smith
Bounding the Chesapeake interaction networks
The bulk goods network
Prestige goods networks
The political military networks
Ethnography
Chesapeake core-periphery relations
Mississipi complex chiefdoms
The Hawaiian world-system
Gender relations in complex chiefdoms
The self in chiefdoms
Part III: State-based Systems
Chapter 9: The Temple and the Palace
Pristine state-based world-systems
Southwest Asia from Uruk to the Akkadian Empire
State-building and class formation
Theories of pristine state formation
The institutional nature of the economy in early states
Politics within early states
Early interstate systems
Core-periphery relations in early state systems
Social Change Table of Contents
Chapter 10: Cognitive Evolution in the Bronze and Iron Ages
Matter over mind
Economic roots of reflective abstraction: redistribution and market exchange
Hieroglyphics, the alphabet and reflective abstract thinking
Theoretical implications: the socio-historical nature of abstraction
Chapter 11: The Early Empires and the Capitalist City-States
The Akkadian core-wide Empire in Mesopotamia
Semi-peripheral conquerors: barbarians on the edge
East Asian marcher states
Mesoamerican marcher States
Empires in the Andes
Early semi-peripheral capitalist city-states
Chapter 12: The Central System
The big picture
Economics and Politics of Tributary empires
More capitalist city-states: the Phoenicians
Greeks and Hellenizations
The Roman rise
Commercialization of the post-Roman Central Empires
Developent of Capitalism in China
Commercialization in India and the Indian Ocean
Core-Periphery relations in the Central-system
Conclusions
Part IV: The Rise of Capitalism
Chapter 13: The Long Rise of the West
Introduction
Eurocentrisims and cosmocentric objectivity
City growth in the core regions of Afroeurasia
Europe’s place in the old Central System
European feudalism
The long rise of European global power
The development of individualism in medieval Europe
The central system and East Asia in the twelfth to the Sixteenth century
Chapter 14: The Modern World-System
(What is capitalism and how old is it?)
The schema of constants: cycles, trends and cyclical trends
Waves of colonial expansion and decolonization
Chapter 15: The Early Modern Systems in the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries
Institutional developments in the Early Modern world regions
The second expansion of Europe
The Ming expansion and withdrawal
Expansion and peripheralization
Core-wide empire of capitalist world economy? the Hapsburg Empire
The Protestant Reformation as the first world revolution
Social Change Table of Contents
World party formation
The Dutch hegemony: the first capitalist city-state
National sovereignty and the Peace of Westphalia
Hegemonic rivalry in the 18th century
Tributary states in the Early modern Period
Chapter 16: The Ninetieth Century Wave of Globalization
(British hegemony)
The rise of Germany
1848: Another world revolution
The first new nation: Indigenous peoples of the United States
Rise of opposition to protectionism
Protection again: the irrepressible conflict
Chapter 17: The Consolidation of Individualism and Cognitive Evolution Under Capitalism
Public spaces:,individualism and cognition in the modern age
Public spaces
Social psychology in public places: seventieth and eightieth centuries
Commercialization of space in the nineteenth century
Twentieth century space
Evolution of the private realm
Modern individualism
Cognitive evolution in the Modern Age: 3rd order abstraction
Application of concrete operations from the Middle Ages to the Sixteenth century
Application of formal operations to the scientific revolution in the seventeenth century
Capitalism and formal operations
Theoretical implications: the socio-historical nature of formal operations: a Vygotskian overlay of Piaget
Chapter 18: The Twentieth Century Age of Extremes
Belle Epoque
The so-called “Great War”
The Anglo-American alliance
Developmental states and also-rans
Globalization without a hegemon
The Communist International: A World Party in the 1920’s
Wobblies and Reds in the United States
Chapter 19: The World-System Since 1945: Another Round of Globalization and Hegemony
America’s half-century
The global settlement system
The final wave of decolonization
The rise and demise of the welfare state
Breton Woods and Keynesian national development
The boom and the bubble
The world revolution of 1968
The neoliberal counter-revolution
Social Change Table of Contents
1989: Another world revolution
The great U-turn of inequality in the core
Part V: the Twenty-first Century and Beyond
Chapter 20: Late Globalization: The Early 21st Century
Major challenges of the twenty-first century
Global inequalities
Ecological degradation
The world revolution of 20XX
Core/periphery hierarchy and the global class structure
Similarities and differences between 19th and 20th century waves of globalization
The global policeman
Democratic peace and global capitalism
Chapter 21: The Next Three Futures: Another Round of U.S. Hegemony, Global Collapse, or Global Democracy
Futurism
Recent semi-peripheral development
Future scenario one: a second round of U.S. hegemony
Future scenario two:collapse:rivalry, eco-catastrophe and deglobalization
Future scenario three: a global democratic and sustainable commonwealth
The new global left
Low energy, global governance
Conclusions
List of Illustrations
List of Tables
