The First Institutional Spheres in Human Societies

The First Institutional Spheres in Human Societies PDF Author: Seth Abrutyn
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000471241
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Book Description
Few concepts are as central to sociology as institutions. Yet, like so many sociological concepts, institutions remain vaguely defined. This book expands a foundational definition of the institution, one which locates them as the basic building blocks of human societies—as structural and cultural machines for survival that make it possible to pass precious knowledge from one generation to the next, ensuring the survival of our species. The book extends this classic tradition by, first, applying advances in biological evolution, neuroscience, and primatology to explain the origins of human societies and, in particular, the first institutional sphere: kinship. The authors incorporate insights from natural sciences often marginalized in sociology, while highlighting the limitations of purely biogenetic, Darwinian explanations. Secondly, they build a vivid conceptual model of institutions and their central dynamics as the book charts the chronological evolution of kinship, polity, religion, law, and economy, discussing the biological evidence for the ubiquity of these institutions as evolutionary adaptations themselves.

The First Institutional Spheres in Human Societies

The First Institutional Spheres in Human Societies PDF Author: Seth Abrutyn
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000471241
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 440

Get Book Here

Book Description
Few concepts are as central to sociology as institutions. Yet, like so many sociological concepts, institutions remain vaguely defined. This book expands a foundational definition of the institution, one which locates them as the basic building blocks of human societies—as structural and cultural machines for survival that make it possible to pass precious knowledge from one generation to the next, ensuring the survival of our species. The book extends this classic tradition by, first, applying advances in biological evolution, neuroscience, and primatology to explain the origins of human societies and, in particular, the first institutional sphere: kinship. The authors incorporate insights from natural sciences often marginalized in sociology, while highlighting the limitations of purely biogenetic, Darwinian explanations. Secondly, they build a vivid conceptual model of institutions and their central dynamics as the book charts the chronological evolution of kinship, polity, religion, law, and economy, discussing the biological evidence for the ubiquity of these institutions as evolutionary adaptations themselves.

The First Institutional Spheres in Human Societies

The First Institutional Spheres in Human Societies PDF Author: SETH. TURNER ABRUTYN (JONATHAN H.)
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9781032124087
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
Few concepts are as central to sociology as institutions. Yet, like so many sociological concepts, institutions remain vaguely defined. This book expands a foundational definition of the institution, one which locates them as the basic building blocks of human societies - as structural and cultural machines for survival that make it possible to pass precious knowledge from one generation to the next, ensuring the survival of our species. The book extends this classic tradition by, first, applying advances in biological evolution, neuroscience, and primatology to explain the origins of human societies and, in particular, the first institutional sphere: kinship. The authors incorporate insights from natural sciences often marginalized in sociology, while highlighting the limitations of purely biogenetic, Darwinian explanations. Secondly, they build a vivid conceptual model of institutions and their central dynamics as the book charts the chronological evolution of kinship, polity, religion, law, and economy, discussing the biological evidence for the ubiquity of these institutions as evolutionary adaptations themselves.

Modernity: Modernization

Modernity: Modernization PDF Author: Malcolm Waters
Publisher: Taylor & Francis US
ISBN: 9780415133012
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 578

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Book Description
V.1 Modernization -- V.2 Cultural modernity -- V.3 Odern system -- V.4 After modernity.

Politics in the Developing World 4e

Politics in the Developing World 4e PDF Author: Peter Burnell
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199666008
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 485

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Book Description
The fourth, thoroughly updated, edition of this well-respected textbook explores the changing nature of politics in the developing world. Leading experts in the field consider theoretical approaches, society-state relations, and policies, with a series of illustrative country-based case studies.

Social Theories of History and Histories of Social Theory

Social Theories of History and Histories of Social Theory PDF Author: Harry F. Dahms
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
ISBN: 1783502193
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
Representing a range of approaches and emphases, the chapters in this volume address and illustrate linkages between social theory and history; social theory and historical analysis as mutually supportive frames of analysis, and affinities between the history of social thought and the history of modern societies.

Handbook of Contemporary Sociological Theory

Handbook of Contemporary Sociological Theory PDF Author: Seth Abrutyn
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319322508
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 577

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Book Description
This Handbook provides the hidden common threads that tie sociological inquiry together and featuring eminent scholars, it separates itself from its predecessors in substance and organization. Rather than rehashing old debates or longingly gazing at the past, this book presents sociologists with new ways of conceptualizing the organization and presentation of sociological theory. At the heart of this Handbook’s vision is the twin goals of making theory a viable enterprise by reconceptualizing how we teach theory and keeping theory closely tied to its empirical applications. Three strategies are offered: (1) Elucidating how classic issues like integration or interaction are interrogated today; (2) Presenting a coherent vision of the social levels of reality that theorists work on such as communities, groups, and the self as well as how the coherence of these levels speaks to the macro-micro link; and, (3) Theorizing the social world rather than celebrating theorists or theories; that is, one can look at how theory is used holistically to understand the constraints the social world places on our lived experience or the dynamics of social change. Hence, in the second decade of the 21st century, it has become clear that sociology is at a crossroads as the number of theorists and amount of theory available is increasingly unmanageable and unknowable by the vast majority of professionals and students. As such, this Handbook of Contemporary Sociological Theory presents the novice and the expert with the a roadmap for traversing this crossroad and building a more coherent, robust, and cumulative sociology.

The Civil Sphere in Latin America

The Civil Sphere in Latin America PDF Author: Jeffrey C. Alexander
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108565654
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Social thinkers have criticized Latin American development as incomplete, backward, and anti-modern. This volume demonstrates that, while often deeply compromised and fragmented, Latin American civil spheres have remained resilient, institutionally and culturally, generating new oppositional movements, independent journalism, rebellious intellectuals, electoral power, and critical political parties. In widely different arenas, dissidents have employed the coruscating language of the civil sphere to pollute their oppressors in the name of justice. In the 1970s and 1980s, political thinkers heralded the resurrection of Latin American civil society, envisioning a new world of freedom and stability. Corruption, inequality, racism, and exclusion become pressing and urgent 'social problems', not despite the promises of democracy, but because of them. The premise of this volume is that Latin American civil spheres are powerful, even as they are compromised, creating challenges to anti-civil culture and institutions that trigger social reform. It is the first of three volumes that place civil sphere theory in a global context.

Human Institutions

Human Institutions PDF Author: Jonathan H. Turner
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742525597
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
In recent years 'the New Institutionalism' has focused more on organizations in their social and cultural environments than on societal-level institutional systems. Thus, missing from these studies has been a larger sociological analysis of institutions, per se. In his newest book, leading social theorist Jonathan H. Turner offers a creative, richly grounded reinterpretation of social evolution. He ressurrects a level of analysis undertaken by earlier functionalist theorists, but with a new-found emphasis--that of discovering the larger forces driving the formation of human institutional systems. Only by exploring the larger macro-dynamics can the institutions of economy, kinship, religion, polity, law, and education be fully understood, as Turner persuasively shows in this magesterial explication of twenty millenia of human social life.

Cultural Evolution

Cultural Evolution PDF Author: Kevin McCaffree
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000523225
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Since the dawn of social science, theorists have debated how and why societies appear to change, develop and evolve. Today, this question is pursued by scholars across many different disciplines and our understanding of these dynamics has grown markedly. Yet, there remain important areas of disagreement and debate: what is the difference between societal change, development and evolution? What specific aspects of cultures change, develop or evolve and why? Do societies change, develop or evolve in particular ways, perhaps according to cycles, or stages or in response to survival necessities? How do different disciplines—from sociology to anthropology to psychology and economics—approach these questions? This book provides complex and nuanced answers to these, and many other, questions. First, the book invites readers to consider the broad landscape of societal dynamics across human history, beginning with humanity’s origins in small nomadic bands of hunter gatherers through to the emergence of post-industrial democracies. Then, the book provides a tour of several prominent existing theories of cultural change, development and evolution. Approaches to explaining cultural dynamics will be discussed across disciplines and schools of thought, from "meme" theories to established cumulative cultural evolutionary theories to newly emerging theories on cultural tightness-looseness. The book concludes with a call for theoretical integration and a frank discussion of some of the most unexamined structures that drive cultural dynamics across schools of thought.

Inter-Societal Dynamics

Inter-Societal Dynamics PDF Author: Jonathan H. Turner
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031124480
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
This book by Jonathan Turner and Anthony Roberts proposes a new theoretical approach for explaining the dynamics of inter-societal systems. The authors argue that inter-societal systems have existed since the beginning of human societies and the dynamics of these systems are a fundamental property of the social universe. However, while world-systems analysis has emphasized this latter point, the authors argue the reluctance to theorize complex abstract models and systems of explanatory propositions on the dynamics driving inter-societal systems hinders scientific explanation of inter-societal dynamics. In this context, the authors critically look at contemporary theorizing and review key theories that have been developed to explain geo-economic, geo-political, and geo-cultural dynamics, from the classic period through present-day world-systems analysis and cliometrics. The book summarizes these theories clearly, emphasizing their strengths and weakness, finally developing a theoretical synthesis through new models and propositions on the dynamics of premodern and modern inter-societal systems. Professor Turner’s decades of experience writing theory books for undergraduates have ensured that this book presents abstract ideas clearly and with examples so that students can understand the arguments. This book is a must-read for all social theory researchers, academics, serious undergraduate students, graduate students, and interested laypersons.