Social Change

Globalization from the Stone Age to the Present

Christopher Chase-Dunn, Bruce Lerro

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317251965
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

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 Drawing evidence from archaeology, ethnography, linguistics, historical documents, statistics, and survey research, the authors trace the growth of human societies and their complexity, and they probe the conflicts in hierarchies both within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.

PART

I

The Framework

In order to understand the story of human social change we will need a skeleton on which to hang the muscles, sinews, and organs of the narrative. The story is about structures and institutions, and how they have changed. We will compare small, medium-sized, and large structures to one another, and in order to do this we need some abstractions—concepts—that will allow us to see the architecture of societies and intersocietal systems.

The first chapter is about social evolution in general and its relationship with human history. It is also about social science and its relationship with humanism and values. The idea of institutions is introduced and the problems of free will and determinism are discussed. A spectrum of different theoretical approaches to social change and evolution is reviewed and the synthetic approach of institutional materialism is presented.

Chapter 2 introduces the concepts of the comparative world-systems perspective—the spatial boundaries of intersocietal systems, the idea of modes of accumulation, two basic dimensions of core/periphery relations, and some characteristic features of world-systems—the rise and fall of intersocietal hierarchies and the pulsation (expansion and contraction) of trade networks. The key notion of semiperipheral development is also presented. While these abstractions are illustrated with examples, they will require grasping as analytical categories and dimensions in order that we may use them to understand the processes of human social evolution.

Chapter 3 discusses the changes that were necessary in the primate brain in order to produce a critter that could take up the game of social evolution, and how these changes may have come about.

Chapter 4 introduces key ideas about the social self as an institution, an invention that is produced by the world historical action of individuals and the possibilities and constraints that larger social structures provide. As social structures evolve so does the social self. The understanding of social psychology is important for explaining social change.

1

History and Social Evolution

This chapter explains the philosophical and scientific principles that will be the basis of our study of social change. It provides an overview of different theoretical approaches and the basic concepts of institutional materialism, the sociological perspective on social change that is employed in the rest of the book.

Science and Objectivity

The scientific study of social change is not as straightforward as studying rocks or frogs. If we were extraterrestrials sitting on the moon observing earthlings through a telescope, it would not be hard to attain a high level of objectivity. But each of us is a human speaker of a particular language living in a specific place with a head full of a particular cultural heritage and standing in a certain relationship with the rest of the occupants of our planet. We are men or women, American or Chinese, from New York or Bombay, Catholic or Moslem, Republican or Green, hunt club or bowling league. Objectivity is a key requirement of science, but we are trying to be objective about our own history and ourselves. This is a difficult task.

Because absolute objectivity is impossible, some people retreat to what we would call “extreme relativism.” Some think that the enormity of this problem means that social science is impossible, and so we should just surrender to subjectivity and enjoy it. We support another path, that is, relative objectivity. Relative objectivity does not strive for absolute certainty, but probability. We try to attain a sufficient degree of objectivity by becoming aware of the sources and strengths of our prejudices for occasions when these prejudices might be getting in the way. To do this we need to understand how science itself is a cultural product and how social processes influence scientists. We need to place ourselves in historical perspective and then use that understanding as a basis for examining our own biases. We also need to be clear about what the goals of social science are, even if they are unreachable in any absolute sense.

It has been said that science should be value-free in the sense that scientists should try to ascertain the objective truth without allowing their beliefs about good and evil to influence their judgments about what is true. We will maintain this distinction in what follows. But science also has its own values. It is a philosophical venture that has its own goals, which are themselves taken on faith or, at the least, are provisionally accepted. When we play chess or basketball we agree to operate on the basis of the rules of the game. It is likewise with science. The philosophical presuppositions of science are not themselves provable by means of science. Instead, they are values that we may choose to affirm and defend.

The main goals of the scientific study of social change are to understand the truth about what happened in the human past and to build explanations of the patterns of human behavior and social institutions. These explanations should be objectively testable, meaning that empirical evidence must be relevant to proving or disproving them. Ideally, our explanations should be as simple as they can be while still accounting for the patterns of social change. Causal propositions—assertions that A causes X—can be evaluated using the comparative method (see below). Explanations will probably never be perfect, but scientific progress means better and better approximations of the way social change actually works.

Ideally, this enterprise should approach social change from an earth-wide perspective rather than from the point of view of any particular society or civilization. Modern science emerged from the European Enlightenment’s encounter with the rest of the world during the rise of European hegemony. This historical fact must be acknowledged and examined in order for it to be transcended by a truly earth-wide science of social change.

Social science should also be objective with respect to the focus on human beings in relationship to other forms of life. Humanism is a fine ethical point of view, but social science should not presume that the human species is superior to other life forms. As social scientists we should focus on the human species without making any presumptions about the value of that species for good or ill. Some scientists study amphibians and others study humans.

Humanism and Values

But that is not all. In addition to being scientists we are citizens, as well as members of families and communities. The idea here is that each of us plays more than one game and has more than one role, and we need to be clear about which rules are which. Take, for example, the woman who is a social scientist during the day and a parent and citizen by night—she wears more than one hat. But the operations of one game may have implications for another. Good social science can be helpful for pursuing the goals associated with these other roles as well.

The main focus of this book is to present the best current practices of the science of social change, but in the final chapter we go beyond social science to suggest how what we know might be used to bring about a more humane and sustainable world society. As citizens we are humanists, so we will affirm that survival of the human species is a desirable goal. This does not contradict what we said above about our scientific goals. Our political and social values are choices and commitments that we have made, and we recognize that these cannot be proved by science. But science may provide useful information for realizing political and philosophical goals. Indeed, almost all modern political philosophies make appeals to science for support of their views of human nature and the possibilities for human society. The important thing here is to not put the cart before the horse. In this text the science is first.

Science need not claim to be the only valid perspective on ultimate reality. In asserting the value of the scientific approach against religious systems of thought, early scientists often took an arrogant stance that belittled other approaches to reality. Now that science itself is an important component of the emerging global culture, a more agnostic and tolerant philosophical stance is desirable, though this need not go to the extremes of cultural relativism and subjectivism advocated by many postmodernists. Science can be modest and useful without the arrogance of scientism.

We think the scientific method is best because it has the most self-correcting devices for weeding out previous errors and because it has the most built-in protective mechanisms against faulty reasoning and sloppy thinking. We agree that literature, art, and religion can also be used for inspiration and for discovering better ways to live. But we think science is the most reliable for discovering relative truths and distinguishing our subjective states—our wishes, needs, interests, fears, and past experiences—from the way the world works.

The Comparative Method

All science is based on the comparative method in the sense that causal connections are established by comparing sequences of events. When it is possible to manipulate the processes under study, scientists do true experiments because isolating and simplifying the operation of variables can more reliably test for causality. If we want to know whether A causes X, we can experimentally manipulate A and see what happens to X and isolate X from other influences to make sure that they are not falsely making it appear that A influences X (see Figure 1.1). If we wiggle A, then X should wiggle if A really causes X. In most of social science it is not feasible to carry out true experiments because we cannot actually manipulate A, but we can still employ the logic of the experimental method in order to examine causality. Thus, we design our research as if we were manipulating variables, and we look for opportunities in nature in which processes seem to be simplified and isolated. We measure variables A and X and see whether, in the course of events, a change in A seems to regularly correspond with a change in X. Or we observe a number of comparable cases and see whether there is a patterned relationship between A and X that might indicate causality. We can also measure variation in other variables to try to infer how they may be involved in the relationship between A and X.

So, for example, it is reasonable to posit that increasing the temperature causes ice to melt. This hypothesis can be tested experimentally by putting a pot with some ice on the stove. But if we were unable to manipulate temperature, we could simply measure the temperature of the pot and also measure the speed at which an ice cube melts. We would then observe that ice melts more rapidly on a warm day than it does on a cold day. By comparing the rate of ice melting on warm and cold days, we could establish that heat causes ice to melt, even without manipulating the causal variable. This is the quasi-experimental comparative method.

Figure 1.1 Does A cause X?

The comparative method allows us to establish causality, albeit less certainly than the experimental method. We choose comparable cases or instances of the processes of social change we care about, measure the variables that we think are causing the effect of interest, and test causal propositions by studying variation over space or time (or both). Whether we study one case over time or several comparable cases at the same time, we are employing a method that is fundamentally based on the logic of experiments.

We use probabilistic logic rather than deterministic logic in our models of social change. A probabilistic statement says that A is likely to cause X a certain percentage of the time. There is an explicit element of randomness or indeterminacy. A deterministic statement says that A always causes X. We use probabilistic logic for two reasons:

1. There is usually error in our measurements of variables

2. Social action is itself probabilistic rather than deterministic

Thus we do not speak of “laws” of social change, but rather of causal tendencies.

Probabilistic logic is also used in much of natural science, but it is even more important to use it in social science because we are trying to predict and explain the behavior of intelligent beings. The amount of indeterminacy in the behavior of a billiard ball is considerably less than the amount of indeterminacy in the behavior of a person. If you tell a billiard ball your prediction of the path it will take after bouncing off the side of the pool table, your statement cannot affect the behavior of the ball. But if you tell a voter that she is likely to vote for the Bull Moose Party, your prediction may influence her decision. Intelligent beings are difficult subjects of scientific study. We need to take these special problems into account in our efforts to explain and predict what humans do. So we use probabilistic theories and we try to understand the ways in which our subjects interpret their own worlds.

Types of Evidence

The evidence that we use to study social change over the long run is of several different kinds. For studying people who lived before the invention of writing we use archaeological evidence—the remains of peoples’ lives as found in artifacts, evidence of what they ate, how they constructed their habitations, the sizes of their settlements, and so on. The accurate dating of archaeological evidence is important for understanding sequences of development and what was going on at the same time in different regions. We can often tell a great deal about patterns of trade and interaction from the locations of artifacts made of raw material for which we know the original site of procurement. For example, volcanic glass (obsidian) can be chemically “fingerprinted” so that it is possible to know that a particular obsidian arrowhead originally came from a quarry far from where the arrowhead was found. It is also possible to estim...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Brief Contents
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part I The Framework
• Part II Stateless Systems
• Part III State-Based Systems
• Part IV The Long Rise of Capitalism
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Authors