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This global and comparative history examines the evolution of human societies over many millennia, illuminating patterns within societies today. It shows how the original human groups, bands of hunter-gatherers, grew over time into larger and more complex societies through three major transformations: settlement and domestication, the development of complexity and inequality, and industrial globalization. The book describes how each of these major changes in economy and political structure created new types of societies: villages; chiefdoms and other complex societies; agrarian states and empires; and today s global social system. It therefore shows how different types of societies came to co-exist and interact on Earth.
The book compares societies along seven aspects: their economies, political systems, cultural patterns, inequalities, family structures, demographics, and environmental patterns. It shows that even societies that shared similar basic features still exhibited great variety. The comparative framework presented here helps readers develop a conceptual vocabulary for understanding societies, the larger social systems within which they exist, and the major social changes that led to this continuing expansion.
List of contents
Chapter 1. Introduction: Human Groups, Globalization, and the Long Run.- Chapter 2. Our Common Humanity: Hominin Evolution, the Reasonable Actor, and Groups.- Chapter 3. The First Globalization: Foraging Bands on the Global Human Frontier, 100,000-12,000 BP.- Chapter 4. The Agricultural Revolution: Group Diversification, Domestication, and Expansion, 33,000-7000 BP (31,000-5000 BP).- Chapter 5. The Urban Revolution I: Chiefdoms and Other Complex Societies, 6000-1000 BCE (8000-3000 BP).- Chapter 6. The Urban Revolution II: Consolidation and Expansion of Complexity in Agrarian States, Empires, and Civilizations, 3500 BCE-1450 CE.- Chapter 7. The Second Globalization: Industrial Revolution and Global Conquest, 1450s-1910s CE.- Chapter 8. Building a Global Society: Accelerating Globalization, 1910s-2010s.- Chapter 9. Social Patterns of Developed States: Industrial Capitalist Democracies, 1910s-2010s.- Chapter 10. Social Patterns of Developing States: Globalizing the Industrial Revolution, 1910s-2010s.- Chapter 11. Conclusion: The Future, Social Evolution, and Theorizing Humans.
About the author
Thomas Burr is Associate Professor of Sociology at Illinois State University. As an undergraduate double major in Political Science and Latin American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, he became deeply interested in global issues. He followed this interest at San Francisco State University, where he earned an M.A. in International Relations with a thesis on the history of global political culture. At U.C. Davis he earned an M.A. in History and a Ph.D. in Sociology, specializing in comparative history and economic sociology, for which he researched how producers and consumers related in product markets, using the late nineteenth- and early twentieth‑century U.S. and French bicycle markets as a comparative case study. From this study he published articles on producer-consumer collaboration on market formation, market trajectories, market institutions, and product innovation. This research, and this book on global historical sociology, has required reading in economics, marketing, psychology, anthropology, and archaeology, and has therefore cultivated his strong interest in interdisciplinary historical social science. In addition to researching and teaching global sociology, he teaches economic development, popular culture, theory, and research methods. He is increasingly interested in historical methodology, especially the use of secondary historical sources. He lives in Normal, Illinois with his wife and daughter.
Summary
This global and comparative history examines the evolution of human societies over many millennia, illuminating patterns within societies today. It shows how the original human groups, bands of hunter-gatherers, grew over time into larger and more complex societies through three major transformations: settlement and domestication, the development of complexity and inequality, and industrial globalization. The book describes how each of these major changes in economy and political structure created new types of societies: villages; chiefdoms and other complex societies; agrarian states and empires; and today’s global social system. It therefore shows how different types of societies came to co-exist and interact on Earth.
The book compares societies along seven aspects: their economies, political systems, cultural patterns, inequalities, family structures, demographics, and environmental patterns. It shows that even societies that shared similar basic features still exhibited great variety. The comparative framework presented here helps readers develop a conceptual vocabulary for understanding societies, the larger social systems within which they exist, and the major social changes that led to this continuing expansion.
