Download or read book Alternatives of Social Evolution written by and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Eighth Day written by Richard Newbold Adams and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 1988-03-01 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can human social evolution be described in terms common to other sciences, most specifically, as an energy process? The Eighth Day reflects a conviction that the human trajectory, for all its uniqueness and indeterminism, will never be satisfactorily understood until it is framed in dynamics that are common to all of nature. The problem in doing this, however, lies in ourselves. The major social theories have failed to treat human social evolution as a component of broader natural processes. The Eighth Day argues that the energy process provides a basis for explaining, comparing, and measuring complex social evolution. Using traditional ecological energy flow studies as background, society is conceived as a self-organization of energy. This perspective enables Adams to analyze society in term of the natural selection of self-organizing energy forms and the trigger processes basic to it. Domestication, civilization, socioeconomic development, and the regulation of contemporary industrial nation-states serve to illustrate the approach. A principal aim is to explore the limitation that energy process imposes on human social evolution as well as to clarify the alternatives that it allows. Richly informed by contemporary anthropological historicism, sociobiology, and Marxism, The Eighth Day avoids simple reductionism and denies facile ideological categorization. Adams builds on work in nonequilibrium thermodynamics and theoretical biology and brings three decades of his own work to an analysis of human society that demands an extreme materialism in which human thought and action find a central place.
Download or read book Nomadic Pathways in Social Evolution written by Kradin, Nikolay N. and published by MeaBooks Inc. This book was released on 2015-04-26 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book is written by anthropologists, historians, and archaeologists specializing in nomadic studies. All the chapters presented here discuss various aspects of one significant problem: how could small nomadic peoples at the outskirts of agricultural civilizations subjugate vast territories between the Mediterranean and the Pacific? What was the impetus that set in motion the overwhelming forces of the nomads which made tremble the royal courts of Europe and Asia? Was it an outcome of any predictable historical process or a result of a chain of random events? A wide sample of nomadic peoples is discussed, mainly on the basis of new data
Download or read book The Social Conquest of Earth written by Edward O. Wilson and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2012-04-09 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Bestseller and Notable Book of the Year A Kirkus Reviews Book of the Year (Nonfiction) Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence (Nonfiction) From the most celebrated heir to Darwin comes a groundbreaking book on evolution, the summa work of Edward O. Wilson's legendary career. Sparking vigorous debate in the sciences, The Social Conquest of Earth upends “the famous theory that evolution naturally encourages creatures to put family first” (Discover). Refashioning the story of human evolution, Wilson draws on his remarkable knowledge of biology and social behavior to demonstrate that group selection, not kin selection, is the premier driving force of human evolution. In a work that James D. Watson calls “a monumental exploration of the biological origins of the human condition,” Wilson explains how our innate drive to belong to a group is both a “great blessing and a terrible curse” (Smithsonian). Demonstrating that the sources of morality, religion, and the creative arts are fundamentally biological in nature, the renowned Harvard University biologist presents us with the clearest explanation ever produced as to the origin of the human condition and why it resulted in our domination of the Earth’s biosphere.
Download or read book The Early State Its Alternatives and Analogues written by Leonid Grinin and published by ООО "Издательство "Учитель". This book was released on 2004-05-20 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Issues of formation and evolution of the early (archaic) state continue to remain among those problems which have not found generally accepted solutions yet. New research shows more and more clearly that pathways to statehood and early state types were numerous. On the other hand, research has detected such directions of sociocultural evolution, which do not lead to state formation at all, whereas within certain evolutionary patterns transition to statehood takes place on levels of complexity far exceeding the ones indicated by conventional evolutionist schemes. Contributors to The Early State, Its Alternatives and Analogues represent both traditional and non-traditional points of view on evolution of statehood. However, the data presented in the volume seem to demonstrate in a fairly convincing manner a great diversity of pathways to statehood, as well as non-universality of transformation into states of complex and even supercomplex societies.
Download or read book The Evolution of Social Institutions written by Dmitri M. Bondarenko and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-09-12 with total page 662 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a novel and innovative approach to the study of social evolution using case studies from the Old and the New World, from prehistory to the present. This approach is based on examining social evolution through the evolution of social institutions. Evolution is defined as the process of structural change. Within this framework the society, or culture, is seen as a system composed of a vast number of social institutions that are constantly interacting and changing. As a result, the structure of society as a whole is also evolving and changing. The authors posit that the combination of evolving social institutions explains the non-linear character of social evolution and that every society develops along its own pathway and pace. Within this framework, society should be seen as the result of the compound effect of the interactions of social institutions specific to it. Further, the transformation of social institutions and relations between them is taking place not only within individual societies but also globally, as institutions may be trans-societal, and even institutions that operate in one society can arise as a reaction to trans-societal trends and demands. The book argues that it may be more productive to look at institutions even within a given society as being parts of trans-societal systems of institutions since, despite their interconnectedness, societies still have boundaries, which their members usually know and respect. Accordingly, the book is a must-read for researchers and scholars in various disciplines who are interested in a better understanding of the origins, history, successes and failures of social institutions.
Download or read book Human Extension An Alternative to Evolutionism Creationism and Intelligent Design written by Gregory Sandstrom and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-08-11 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book proposes a new angle on the controversy over evolution as a biological theory, creation as a theological/worldview doctrine and evolutionism, creationism and Intelligent Design theory as social ideologies. Rather than presenting a polemic that will enrage or delight one camp or another, this book proposes that a cease-fire is possible.
Download or read book Socialism Capitalism and Alternatives written by Peter J. S. Duncan and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2019-10-14 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1989 the Berlin Wall came down. Two years later the Soviet Union disintegrated. The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union discredited the idea of socialism for generations to come. It was seen as representing the final and irreversible victory of capitalism. This triumphal dominance was barely challenged until the 2008 financial crisis threw the Western world into a state of turmoil. Through analysis of post-socialist Russia and Central and Eastern Europe, as well as of the United Kingdom, China and the United States, Socialism, Capitalism and Alternatives confronts the difficulty we face in articulating alternatives to capitalism, socialism and threatening populist regimes. Beginning with accounts of the impact of capitalism on countries left behind by the planned economies, the volume moves on to consider how China has become a beacon of dynamic economic growth, aggressively expanding its global influence. The final section of the volume poses alternatives to the ideological dominance of neoliberalism in the West. Since the 2008 financial crisis, demands for social change have erupted across the world. Exposing the failure of neoliberalism in the United Kingdom and examining recent social movements in Europe and the United States, the closing chapters identify how elements of past ideas are re-emerging, among them Keynesianism and radical socialism. As those chapters indicate, these ideas might well have potential to mobilise support and challenge the dominance of neoliberalism.
Download or read book Comparative Archaeologies written by Ludomir R Lozny and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-04-06 with total page 850 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Archaeology, as with all of the social sciences, has always been characterized by competing theoretical propositions based on diverse bodies of locally acquired data. In order to fulfill local, regional expectations, different goals have been assigned to the practitioners of Archaeology in different regions. These goals might be entrenched in local politics, or social expectations behind cultural heritage research. This comprehensive book explores regional archaeologies from a sociological perspective—to identify and explain regional differences in archaeological practice, as well as their existing similarities. This work covers not only the currently-dominant Anglo-American archaeological paradigm, but also Latin America, Western and Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa, all of which have developed their own unique archaeological traditions. The contributions in this work cover these "alternative archaeologies," in the context of their own geographical, political, and socio-economic settings, as well as the context of the currently accepted mainstream approaches.
Download or read book Chiefdoms written by Robert L. Carneiro and published by Eliot Werner Publications. This book was released on 2017-12-31 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What many anthropologists regard as the major step in political development occurred when, for the first time in history, previously autonomous villages gave up their individual sovereignties and were brought together into a multi-village political unit--the chiefdom. Though long neglected as a major stage in history, recent years have seen the chiefdom come in for increased attention. As its importance has been more fully recognized, it has become the object of serious scholarly analysis and interpretation. In this volume specialists in political evolution draw on data from ethnography, archaeology, and history and apply fresh insights to enhance the study of the chiefdom. The papers present penetrating analyses of many aspects of the chiefdom, from how this form of political organization first arose to the role it played in giving rise to the next major stage in the development of human society--the state.
Download or read book Rethinking Social Evolution written by Jérôme Rousseau and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2006 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wide-ranging exploration of how language and increased cognitive abilities constitute the motor of social evolution.
Download or read book Human Evolution Beyond Biology and Culture written by Jeroen C. J. M. van den Bergh and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 575 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A complete account of evolutionary thought in the social, environmental and policy sciences, creating bridges with biology.
Download or read book Alternative Pathways to Complexity written by Lane F. Fargher and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2016-12-15 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alternative Pathways to Complexity focuses on the themes of architecture, economics, and power in the evolution of complex societies. Case studies from Mesoamerica, Asia, Africa, and Europe examine the relationship between political structures and economic configurations of ancient chiefdoms and states through a framework of comparative archaeology. A group of highly distinguished scholars takes up important issues, theories, and methods stemming from the nascent body of research on comparative archaeology to showcase and apply important theories of households, power, and how the development of complex societies can be extended and refined. Drawing on the archaeological, ethnohistorical, and ethnographic records, the chapters in this volume contain critical investigations on the role of collective action, economics, and corporate cognitive codes in structuring complex societies. Alternative Pathways to Complexity is an important addition to theoretical development and empirical research on Mesoamerica, the Old World, and cross-cultural studies. The theoretical implications addressed in the chapters will have broad appeal for scholars grappling with alternative pathways to complexity in other regions as well as those addressing diverse cross-cultural research. Contributors: Sarah B. Barber, Cynthia L. Bedell, Christopher S. Beekman, Frances F. Berdan, Tim Earle, Carol R. Ember, Gary M. Feinman, Arthur A. Joyce, Stephen A. Kowalewski, Lisa J. LeCount, Linda M. Nicholas, Peter N. Peregrine, Peter Robertshaw, Barbara L. Stark, T. L. Thurston, Deborah Winslow, Rita Wright
Download or read book The New Evolutionary Sociology written by Jonathan Turner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-03-09 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For decades, evolutionary analysis was overlooked or altogether ignored by sociologists. Fears and biases persisted nearly a century after Auguste Comte gave the discipline its name, as did concerns that its effect would only reduce sociology to another discipline – whether biology, psychology, or economics. Worse, apprehension that the application of evolutionary theory would encourage heightened perceptions of racism, sexism, ethnocentrism and reductionism pervaded. Turner and Machalek argue instead for a new embrace of biology and evolutionary analysis. Sociology, from its very beginnings in the early 19th century, has always been concerned with the study of evolution, particularly the transformation of societies from simple to ever-more complex forms. By comprehensively reviewing the original ways that sociologists applied evolutionary theory and examining the recent renewal and expansion of these early approaches, the authors confront the challenges posed by biology, neuroscience, and psychology to distinct evolutionary approaches within sociology. They emerge with key theoretical and methodological discoveries that demonstrate the critical – and compelling – case for a dramatically enriched sociology that incorporates all forms of comparative evolutionary analysis to its canon and study of sociocultural phenomena.
Download or read book Warfare in Bronze Age Society written by Christian Horn and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-26 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Warfare in Bronze Age Society takes a fresh look at warfare and its role in reshaping Bronze Age society. The Bronze Age represents the global emergence of a militarized society with a martial culture, materialized in a package of new efficient weapons that remained in use for millennia to come. Warfare became institutionalized and professionalized during the Bronze Age, and a new class of warriors made their appearance. Evidence for this development is reflected in the ostentatious display of weapons in burials and hoards, and in iconography, from rock art to palace frescoes. These new manifestations of martial culture constructed the warrior as a 'Hero' and warfare as 'Heroic'. The case studies, written by an international team of scholars, discuss these and other new aspects of Bronze Age warfare. Moreover, the essays show that warriors also facilitated mobility and innovation as new weapons would have quickly spread from the Mediterranean to northern Europe.
Download or read book Globalistics and Globalization Studies written by Leonid Grinin and published by ООО "Издательство "Учитель". This book was released on 2012-08-30 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today globalization can be treated as the most important global process. It is a multi-faceted phenomenon and in every country it has its own image. One can get a truly objective picture of the rapidly changing and integrating world only through a synthesis of all those particular visions. In the present anthology one can find perceptions of globalization by a number of famous scholars from different countries of the world (Ervin Laszlo, Roland Robertson, Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, Randall Collins, Christopher Chase-Dunn, William Thompson and others), but one can also get to know rather peculiar visions of globalization by the Russian scientists. The volume is entitled Globalistics and Globalization Studies. Globalistics may be regarded as a sort of systemic and more or less integrated ‘core’ within Global Studies. The anthology consists of four parts presenting a wide range of views on the meaning of the contemporary epoch, the past and the future of some important global processes. Part 1. Historical Dimension. Part 2. Globalistics, Global Studies and Models. Part 3. Trends, Risks, and Problems. Part 4. Perspectives and the New World Order.
Download or read book Social Change written by Eva Etzioni-Halevy and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-10-31 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1981, Social Change offers a critical review of the main classical and modern theories of social change, and a study of the processes of change in western societies since modernization. It focusses on the cardinal aspects of society, and those that have figured most prominently in various theories: the economy, the class structure, the political structure, and the structure of education, as they changed throughout the process of modernization and up to the 1980s. The book is divided into three parts. Part I presents a general discussion of classical and contemporary theories of the advent and maturation of modern society in Western capitalist and non-Western countries. Part II provides a more detailed discussion of modernization and subsequent changes in the Western, capitalist societies. Part III examines alternative social formations—communes and co-operatives. This book will be a beneficial read for students and researchers of sociology.
