The First Institutional Spheres In Human Societies

Author : Seth Abrutyn
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000471241
Total Pages : 437 pages
Book Rating : 4.43/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The First Institutional Spheres in Human Societies written by Seth Abrutyn and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-03-15 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Author : Seth Abrutyn
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781032124131
Total Pages : 424 pages
Book Rating : 4.3X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The First Institutional Spheres in Human Societies written by Seth Abrutyn and published by . This book was released on 2021-10 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Author : Jonathan H. Turner
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3031124480
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.88/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Inter-Societal Dynamics written by Jonathan H. Turner and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-04-02 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Author : Steven Hitlin
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3031320220
Total Pages : 461 pages
Book Rating : 4.24/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Handbook of the Sociology of Morality, Volume 2 written by Steven Hitlin and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-10-25 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook articulates how sociology can re-engage its roots as the scientific study of human moral systems, actions, and interpretation. This second volume builds on the successful original volume published in 2010, which contributed to the initiation of a new section of the American Sociological Association (ASA), thus growing the field. This volume takes sociology back to its roots over a century ago, when morality was a central topic of work and governance. It engages scholars from across subfields in sociology, representing each section of the ASA, who each contribute a chapter on how their subfield connects to research on morality. This reference work appeals to broader readership than was envisaged for the first volume, as the relationship between sociology as a discipline and its origins in questions of morality is further renewed. The volume editors focus on three areas: the current state of the sociology of morality across a range of sociological subfields; taking a new look at some of the issues discussed in the first handbook, which are now relevant in sometimes completely new contexts; and reflecting on where the sociology of morality should go next. This is a must-read reference for students and scholars interested in topics of morality, ethics, altruism, religion, and spirituality from across the social science.

Author : Kevin McCaffree
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1000523225
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.25/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Cultural Evolution written by Kevin McCaffree and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-03-14 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Author : Kevin McCaffree
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000545199
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.97/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Dance of Innovation written by Kevin McCaffree and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-06-19 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few of us, amidst our daily chores and responsibilities, consider how mundane infrastructures—from electrical grids to sewage systems—have developed over millennia in ways that enable everything we cherish, from democracy to technological innovation to individual liberty. But what drives the evolution of this infrastructure? And why is infrastructure so critical to human flourishing? In this book, the most innovative and interdisciplinary study of cultural evolution ever produced, new concepts are explored, new histories are brought into contact and new ground-breaking insights are defended. What makes creativity unique in human societies is not only our capacity to generate and modify our diverse individual intuitions about the social and physical world, but also our capacity to form and leave groups fluidly in a dancing rhythm of oscillation across the expanse of history. This book walks the reader carefully through these processes, with clear concepts and an approachable writing style.

Author : Jonathan H. Turner
Publisher : Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1035310007
Total Pages : 283 pages
Book Rating : 4.05/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Biosocial Evolutionary Analysis written by Jonathan H. Turner and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2024-01-18 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This authoritative book proposes a methodological and theoretical strategy for developing sociological explanations of the socio-cultural universe. Jonathan H. Turner and Alexandra Maryanski discuss the problems that persist in explaining the socio-cultural universe using only biological and psychological approaches and outline new strategies for understanding the evolution of human beings and their biological nature.

Author : Nicolò Bellanca
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 3030006956
Total Pages : 204 pages
Book Rating : 4.52/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Isocracy written by Nicolò Bellanca and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-03-30 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the twentieth century there were two great political and social paradigms, the liberal-democratic and the libertarian (in its various socialist, anarchist, and communist delineations). The central idea of the first approach is isonomy: the exclusion of any discrimination on the basis that legal rights are afforded equally to all people. The central idea of the second approach is rather to acknowledge and address a broader spectrum of known inequalities. Such an approach, Bellanca argues, allows the pursuit of pluralism as well as a more realistic and complex view of what equality is. Here he analyzes the main economic and political institutions of an isocratic society, and in so doing, effectively outlines how a utopian society can be structurally and anthropologically realized. This book is ideal reading for an audience interested in the critique of contemporary capitalism through a renewed perspective of democratic socialism and leftist libertarianism. Nicolò Bellanca is Associate Professor of Development Economics at the University of Florence, Italy. He is the author of a broad array of scholarly articles, books and textbooks about both the history of economic thought and development economics. His current research focuses on the theory of institutional change.

Author : Malcolm Waters
Publisher : Taylor & Francis US
ISBN 13 : 9780415133012
Total Pages : 578 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Modernity: Modernization written by Malcolm Waters and published by Taylor & Francis US. This book was released on 1999 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: V.1 Modernization -- V.2 Cultural modernity -- V.3 Odern system -- V.4 After modernity.

Author : H.Gordon Skilling
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 1349092843
Total Pages : 302 pages
Book Rating : 4.40/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Samizdat and an Independent Society in Central and Eastern Europe written by H.Gordon Skilling and published by Springer. This book was released on 1989-06-18 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study of the "independent life of society" (dissent) in Central and Eastern Europe examines the forms of independent activity at work today. Included are autonomous family life, religion and nationalism, the second economy, "samizdat" communications, the second culture and social deviance.