Social Transformations: A General Theory of Historical DevelopmentIn Social Transformations: A General Theory of Historical Development Stephen K. Sanderson develops a general theory of social evolution and uses it to explain the most important evolutionary transformations in human history and prehistory. In this expanded edition Sanderson has added a discussion of the biological constraints acting on humans that have helped to push social evolution along strikingly similar lines throughout the world. The new discussion places the theoretical arguments of Social Transformations in the context of an even more comprehensive theory of human social behavior. |
Contents
The Worldwide Transition to Agriculture | 43 |
Explaining the Worldwide Transition to Agriculture | 49 |
The Origin of Civilization and the State as a Process | 58 |
Copyright | |
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Social Transformations: A General Theory of Historical Development Stephen K. Sanderson Limited preview - 1999 |
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Africa agrarian societies agriculture argued argument Asia basic capitalist capitalist world-economy Chase-Dunn chiefdoms China civilization claims Cohen collapse complex core critical cultural decline democracy dependency theory domestication dominant early economic development elites emergence empires especially Europe and Japan European evolutionary materialism expansion factors feudalism Gerhard Lenski hegemony highly horticultural human hunter-gatherers hunting and gathering Immanuel Wallerstein important income increased individuals Industrial Revolution industrial societies involved Japan Japanese labor land least Lenski less-developed countries major Marvin Harris Marx Marxist merchants Mesoamerica mode of production modern capitalism modern world Neolithic Revolution occurred organization peasants percent period periphery political population densities population growth population pressure reciprocal altruism regions rise role semiperiphery shift sixteenth century social evolution socialist Soviet stratification suffrage Tokugawa Tokugawa period trade transition United University Press urban Wallerstein workers world commercialization world history world-system theory