Description
From the Stone Age to the Internet Age, this book tells the story of human sociocultural evolution. It describes the conditions under which hunter-gatherers, horticulturalists, agricultural states, and industrial capitalist societies formed, flourished, and declined. Drawing evidence from archaeology, ethnography, linguistics, historical documents, statistics, and survey research, the authors trace the growth of human societies and their complexity, and they probe the conflicts in hierarchies both within and among societies. They also explain the macro-micro links that connect cultural evolution and history with the development of the individual self, thinking processes, and perceptions. Key features of the text Designed for undergraduate and graduate social science classes on social change and globalization topics in sociology, world history, cultural geography, anthropology, and international studies. Describes the evolution of the modern capitalist world-system since the fourteenth century BCE, with coverage of the rise and fall of system leaders: the Dutch in the seventeenth century, the British in the nineteenth century, and the United States in the twentieth century. Provides a framework for analyzing patterns of social change. Includes numerous tables, figures, and illustrations throughout the text. Supplemented by framing part introductions, suggested readings at the end of each chapter, an end of text glossary, and a comprehensive bibliography. Offers a web-based auxiliary chapter on Indigenous North American World-Systems and a companion website with excel data sets and additional web links for students.
Table of Contents
Part I The Framework Chapter 1 History and Social Evolution Chapter 2 The Comparative World-Systems Approach Chapter 3 Biological Bases of Social Evolution Chapter 4 Building a Social Self: The Macro-Micro Link Part II Stateless Systems Chapter 5 World-Systems of Foragers Chapter 6 The Gardeners Web Chapter Indigenous North American World-Systems before the Rise of Chiefs Chapter 7 The Sacred Chiefs Part III State-Based Systems Chapter 8 The Temple and the Palace Chapter 9 Public Spaces, Self, and Cognitive Evolution in Early States Chapter 10 The Early Empires: Semiperipheral Conquerors and Capitalist City-States Chapter 11 The Central System Part IV The Long Rise of Capitalism Chapter 12 The Long Rise of the West Chapter 13 The Modern World-System Chapter 14 The Early Modern Systems in the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries Chapter 15 The Global Nineteenth Century Chapter 16 Public Spaces, Individualism, and Cognition in the Modern Age Chapter 17 The Twentieth-Century Age of Extremes Chapter 18 The World-System since 1945: Another Wave of Globalization, Hegemony, and Revolutions Chapter 19 Late Globalization: The Early Twenty-First Century Chapter 20 The Next Three Futures: Another Round of US Hegemony, Global Collapse, or Global Democracy?
