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 to
social change that is employed in the rest of the book.
Science
and Objectivity
The
scientific study of social change is not as straight-forward as studying
rocks or frogs.If we were extra-terrestrials
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, Republicans or Greens, Hunt Club or Bowling League. Objectivity
is a key requirement of science, and yet we are trying to be objective
about ourselves and our own history.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.But
another path is to try to attain a sufficient degree of objectivity by
becoming aware of the sources and strengths of our prejudices.To
do this we need to understand how science itself is a cultural product
and how scientists are influenced by social processes.We
need to place ourselves in historical perspective and then to use that
understanding as a basis for examining our own biases. We need to be clear
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. I
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 least they are
provisionally accepted. When we play chess or basketball we agree to operate
on the basis of the rules of the game.When
we do science it is likewise. 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, relatively elegant (simple), and powerful
in the sense that theoretical propositions account for a lot of the patterns
of social change that can be observed.
Causal
propositions 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 scientistswe 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. Every scientist is also these other
things, and good social science can be helpful for pursuing the goals that
are associated with these other roles.The
idea here is that each of us plays more than one game, and we need to be
clear about which rules are which.A
person who is a social scientist during the day is a parentand
a citizen by night – s/he wears more than one hat. But the operations of
one game may have implications for another.
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 will go beyond social
science to suggest how what we know might be used to bring about a more
humane and sustainable world society.As
a citizen I am a humanist, so I will affirm that the survival of the human
species is a desirable goal.This
does not contradict what I have said above about my scientific goals.My
political and social valuesare choices
and commitments that I have made, and I recognize that these cannot be
proven 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.
(drawing
of person with two hats: one says “scientist,” the other “humanist”)
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 the main religion
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 of the postmodernists.Science
can be modest and useful without the arrogance of scientism.
(sketch
of person with two hats: one says “scientist,” the other says “humanist”)
The
Comparative Method
All
science is based on the comparative method in the sense thatcausality
is inferredby comparing sequences
of events. When it is possible to manipulate the processes under study
scientists do true experiments because causal inferences can be made more
reliable by isolating and simplifying the operation of variables.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. In most of social
science it is not feasible to carry out true experiments, but we can still
employ the logic of the experimental method in order to make inferences
about 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 if, 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 if there is a patterned
relationship between A and X that might indicate causality. We can also
measurevariation in other variables
to try to infer how they may be involved in the relationship between A
and X.
The
comparative method allows us to infer causality, albeit with varying degrees
of certitude.We choose comparable
cases or instances of the processes of social change we care about, and
then we measure the variables that we think are causing the main (dependent)
variable of interest, and we test causal propositions by studying variation
over space or time (or both).Whether
we study one case over time or several comparable cases we are employing
the comparative method and the strategy of quasi-experimental research
design.
Figure
1.1:Does A Cause X?
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. because
there is usually error in our measurements of variables, and
2. because
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 Bullmouse 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
statements and we try to comprehend 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 settlements.
The ability to accurately date artifacts is an important method for understanding
sequences of development and what was going on at the same time in different
regions.We can often infer a great
deal about patterns of trade and interaction from the distributions of
artifacts for which the original sites of procurement can be determined.
For example, volcanic glass (obsidian) can be chemically “finger-printed”
so that it is possible to know that a particular obsidian arrowhead originally
came from a quarry far from where the arrowhead was found.By
studying the composition of arrowheads at a site we can see how trade and
procurement patterns changed over time. We can sometimes find archaeological
evidence of proto-money, the use of certain trade items as generalized
media of exchange.Archaeological
evidence cannot tell us directly about what people thought or felt, but
we can make educated guesses about their social organization based on the
remnants that human occupation leaves.
Ethnographic
evidence is that information that has been gathered by anthropologists
who have studied people who live in less complex societies that survived
until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.The
ethnographers moved in with the remaining hunter-gatherers and tribal peoples
of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to study their languages, and
their material and ideological cultures.The
greatest use of this corpus of evidence for the study of social evolution
is the light that it sheds on the lives of people who lived thousands of
years ago, but it is important to realize that hunter-gatherers who managed
to survive until recently may not accurately represent of hunter-gatherers
who lived long ago.Obviously those
who have been long in contact with more complex societies are likely to
have adapted to these interactions in important ways that change the nature
of their institutions.The usage
of ethnographic evidence to supplement archaeological evidence needs to
be cautious regarding this problem.
It
is often possible to use the written observations and records made by the
first literate observers of preliterate peoples (missionaries, etc), though
these sources of information are usually heavily biased by the civilizational
perspectives of the observers. Once societies have developed writing we
can decipher their own written records and documents as sources of evidence
about social institutions and practices. The firstwritten
languages emerged along with the original invention of states in Mesopotamia
about 5000 years ago.Records and
documents were written on clay tablets that preserve rather well under
dry conditions. Ironically, the development of papyrus documents in later
millennia created a larger hole in the evidence because papyrus is more
fragile than clay tablets. Our documentary knowledge of the great Persian
Empire of the Achaeminids is largely confined to epigraphs, inscriptions
on stone monuments, because the papyrus documents have decayed.We
use documentary evidence in conjunction with archaeological evidenceto
gain an understanding of the early civilizations. We also see the development
of formal systems of money and can infer much about ancient economies and
polities by studying coinage.
Ancient
states began to gather systematic evidence about their own finances and
the populations under their control. This evolved into the modern system
of statistics,censuses and national
accounts that we use as evidence of social change. Sample surveys and systematic
studies of large populations allow us to be much more thorough andprecise
about social changes that have occurred in the last half century.We
can now use satellite data to study large-scale social processes such as
urbanization and global deforestation.
Social
Evolution
Social
evolution is most simply the idea that social change is patterned and directional
– that human societies have evolved from small and simple affairs to large
and complex ones. The idea of social evolution has had a rough career in
social science and it is still in disrepute in some circles. Part of the
problem has been that earlier formulations of the idea embodied certainassumptions
that are unscientific in nature. The idea that some human societies are
superior to others because they are “more advanced”has
been used as a justification by some people for dominating and exploiting
others. The social evolutionism of the British anthropologists of the nineteenth
century presented London society as the highest form of civilization and
depicted colonized peoples as savages and barbarians. Evolutionary ideas
were used to support a philosophy of social Darwinism in which the current
winners were depicted as better adapted and loserswere
portrayed as on the way to extinction because of genetic and/or cultural
deficiencies. More recently Talcott Parsons’s (1966) version of structural/functional
evolution presented the United States in a similar light.
In
reaction to these problems many social scientists embraced a radical cultural
relativism in which each society was understood as a unique constellation
of institutional practices.It was
assumed that there were no inherently superior social structures, but rather
that all human cultures were equal, though different from one another.
The ethnographer Franz Boas was the greatest proponent of this approach
and modern anthropology was heavily influenced by his stress on careful
fieldwork that recorded the linguistic, spiritual and material attributes
of human societies.The ethnographic
corpus produced by following Boas’sapproach
is a vast resource for our knowledge of ways of life different from our
own despite the cultural biases and problems of objectivity of those who
have “tented with the natives.”But
the rejection of social evolutionism has ebbed as the elements that made
it obnoxious have been separated from the more basic notions of patterned
and directional change (Sanderson 1990).
There were three main problems with social evolutionary thinking thatneeded to be rectified:
1.Social evolution is easilyconfused with biological evolution, and yet these are largely distinct and different processes.
2.Evolutionary thinking has tended to involve teleological assumptions in which the purposes of things have been asserted to be their cause.
3.Evolution has been confused with the idea of progress – the notion that things are getting better.
Social
vs. Biological Evolution
Social
evolution and biological evolution are different processes, though they
share some similar characteristics.Confusing
these processes causes great misunderstanding and facilitates theoretical
reductionism in which social science is subsumed as a sub-branch of biology.While
biological evolution is based on the inheritance of genetic material, social
evolution is based on the development of cultural inventions.Both
genes and cultural codes are information storage devices by which the experiences
and outcomes of one generation are passed to future generations.Social
evolution did not exist before the invention of culture.Animals
that do not have the biological ability to manipulate symbols and to communicate
them do not experience the process of social evolution.The
human animal is uniquely equipped to evolve socially because of the presence
of the relatively large unpreprogrammedcortex
of the human brain. This unusual piece of equipment makes possible the
learning of complex codes and their infinite recombination.
Humans
have a lot of RAM relative to ROM, whereas non-human animals have more
ROM than RAM. In computers RAM is RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY that can contain
changeable software, whereas ROM is READ-ONLY MEMORY that is permanently
programmed at birth. This is another way of saying that humans are less
instinctual than non-humans.Ants
live in large and complex societies, but their behavior in these is largely
instinctive. Their social structures are hard-wired, and the architecture
of their mounds is rigidly bound by theinstinctive
behaviors of mound-building. Humans learn the cultural software that enables
them to build large and complex societies and the plan is coded in language
and blueprints that may be modified without having to wait for the evolution
of new instinctive behaviors.Language
itself has an instinctive basis and this is why speakers of all natural
languages share a somewhat similar grammatical structure. But this biological
ability makes possible the great variation that we see in meaning systems
and social institutions.
When
nomadic hunters developedstone tools
they obviated the need to genetically select for carnivorous teeth.Thus
cultural evolution allowed humans to occupy new niches and to adapt in
new ways without waiting for biological evolution. This slowed down the
rate of already-slow biological evolution of human genes.
The
similarities between biological evolution and social evolution are these:
·both
rely on information storage to pass the experiences of one generation on
to another;
·both
are mechanisms whereby individuals and groups adapt to changing environments
or exploit new environments;
·in
both more adaptive changes drive out less adaptive characteristics through
competition.
·And
there is onemore similarity. In
both biological and social evolution more
complex systems develop out of simpler systems.
There
are, however, rather large and important differences between biological
and social evolution:
·In
biological evolution the source of innovations is the random process of
genetic mutation, while in social evolution recombinations and innovations
occur intentionally as people try to solve problems.This
is not to say that social evolution is entirely rational or even intentional,
because many social changes occur as the unintended consequences of the
actions of many individuals and groups. But the important point here is
that, compared with genetic mutation, social innovation contains an important
element of intentionality.
·The
second big difference is in the rate of change. Biological evolution takes
a long time, while social evolution is much faster and is accelerating.
Biological evolution occurs slowly because it is dependent on mating and
reproduction and on those few unusual genetic mutations that are adaptive.Social
evolution is accomplished by means of cultural inventions, and these can
spread from group to group. Societies
can “mate” and exchange cultural material, whereas species cannot exchange
genetic material.
·Another
important difference is in the relationship between simpler and more complex
forms.In biological evolution simple
one-celled forms of life co-evolve along with more complex multi-celled
organisms.Indeed, they seem to thrive.
Viruses and bacteria are doing just fine. In social evolution the situation
is vastly different. Small scale societies get wiped out by larger societies.
There is not co-evolution of small and large. Rather states and empires
destroy stateless societies(.e.g
hunter-gatherer bands) by either killing off their members or by assimilating
them into state-based societies, or both.The
history of the indigenous Americans is a case at hand.Anthropologists
have termed this the “law of cultural dominance.”It
is not anatural law in the sense
that it is impossible for more powerful cultures to allow less powerful
ones to survive, but this has not happened to any appreciable extent.
So
cultural and biological evolution are quite different processes, and it
is important to understand this distinction because the word “evolution”
is often used in ways thatcause
confusion.Many of the claims of
sociobiology and evolutionary behaviorism are exaggerations of the extent
to which human actions are instinctive and based on biological evolution.
The idea of human nature is itself a culturally constructed notion that
has powerful effects in legitimating social institutions.And
yet, to argue that human behavior is less instinctive than the behavior
of other animals does not require that we deny the biological basis of
human actions. There are clearly constraints, as well as possibilities,
that emanate from our bowels and our brain-stems.But
social and cultural evolution has radically reconstructed these constraints.
Regarding
the relationship between biological and social evolution, it is obvious
that there would have been no cultural evolution if the human species had
not evolved the ability to speak and a brain capable of storing and reconfiguring
complex codes and symbols.These
were the key developments that allowed culture to emerge.Once
culture emergedit acted back upon
biological evolution.Social structure
has taken over as a main source of influence over which humans and otherlife
forms survive and prevail. Domestication of certain animals and plants,
selective breeding, and now the development of genetic surgery, cloning
and genetic engineering have massively affectedbiological
evolution on Earth, and this impact will only become greater if the human
species survives its own experiments.
Teleology
and Unilinear Evolution
Teleology
is a form of explanation in which the purpose of a thing is alleged to
be its cause.The most famous teleological
explanation is that order in the universe is a consequence of the will
of God. Aristotle contended that all of nature reflects the purposes of
an immanent final cause.The problem
is that general purposes of the universe cannot be scientifically demonstrated
to exist. Science is limited to knowledge of proximate causation. The causes
of a thing must be demonstrably present or absent in conjunction with the
presence or absence of the thing to be causally explained.Proving
causality requires variation. General statements about characteristics
of the universe that are invariably present cannot serve as scientifically
knowable causes precisely because they do not vary.
A
related unscientific characterization of historical processes is inevitabilism
or the idea that history is the result of an unfolding process in which
stages follow one from another in a necessary order, like the pages of
a book.Another term for this kind
of theory is unilinear evolution.Much
of the rhetorical power of Marxism came from the stage theory of history
which alleged that socialism and communism would inevitably supersede capitalism.
Thus hard-working revolutionaries could claim to have history on their
side.Now, ironically, Marxism has
itself been thrown into the dustbin of history and the ideologues of capitalism
claim that socialism is an outdated ideology that was produced by the strains
of transition from traditional to modern society and global capitalism.
All stage theories need to be treated with skepticism, but this does not
mean that we should abandon the effort to see the patterns of social change.
The
probabilistic approach to social change outlined above disputes the scientific
validity of inevitabilism or unilinear evolution. This is not the same
as arguing that there are no directional patterns of social change or that
all outcomes are equally probable. But it is important to know that scientific
social change theory is about probabilities,not
inevitabilities.Social evolution
has not been a process in which a single society goes through a set of
stages to arrive at the most developed point. It has been uneven in space
and time. Societies that are at the highest level of complexity at one
point often collapse and the emergence of larger, more hierarchical and
more complex societies occurs elsewhere.Indeed,
this uneven pattern is one of the most important processes in the evolution
of world-systems.
A
scientific approach to social evolution does not assert final causes or
ultimate purposes. It proposes causal propositions that are empirically
testable and falsifiable with evidence about human history and social change.Neither
does social evolution claim that particular outcomes are inevitable.Contingency
and unexpected events can alter the course of human history fundamentally.
The fate of the dinosaurs, probably destroyed by the impact on Earth of
a large asteroid, powerfully reminds us about the potential importance
of unexpected events that come from elsewhere. But this should not prevent
us from trying to see the more likely patterns of development in both the
past and the future, or the trajectories that social change will take in
the absence of catastrophic events.
Progress
and Social Evolution
Progress
is not a scientific idea in itself because it involves evaluations of the
human condition that are necessarily matters of values and ethics.The
idea that a world populated by humans is better than a world in which they
are absent is an esthetic or ethical matter of choice.Even
the idea that warm and well-fed humans are better off than cold and hungry
ones, or that long, healthy life is better than shortdisease-ridden
existence --these too are value
choices, albeit ones that would be widely agreed upon by most people. When
we turn to matters of religion,family
form, cuisine, or the ideal degree of social equality it is more obvious
that we have entered the world of value decisions.One
of the biggest problems with many theories of social evolution is that
they have tended to be permeated with assumptions about what is better
and worse and many have simply assumed that evolution itself is a movement
from worse to better.And with this
powerful element embedded in them evolutionary theories have served as
potent justifications of conquest, domination and exploitation. We have
already pointed out that this problem was the main one that led the second
generation of anthropologists to reject social evolutionism in favor of
a strong dose of cultural relativism.
Theories
of progress are still important ideological elementsin
the world of politics, and so ideas about social evolution are still susceptible
to being used badly. But so are other products of science and humanistic
endeavor.Physicists are painfully
aware of how the knowledge they have produced has been turned into the
threat of nuclear holocaust.Historians,
even those who studiously avoid makinggeneralizations
about the human predicament, may find their interpretations of historical
events turned to uses of which they disapprove.Neither
scientists nor humanists can control the usage to which their works are
put.
This
said, if we agree on a list of desirable ends that constitute our notion
of human progress, then it can be a scientific question as whether things
have improved with respect to this list, or which kind of society does
better at producing the designated valuables.The
list is one of preferences, not scientifically determinable, but philosophically
chosen. This list may be my personal preferences, or some collectively
agreed upon set of preferences. This approach to the problem of progresswill
be considered near the end of this book when we ask about the implications
of our study of social change for world citizens.
The
notion that it is plausible to formulate general theories of social evolution
is given credence by the observation that many instances of parallel evolution
have occurred. Parallel evolution means that similar developments emerge
under similar circumstances, but largely independently of one another.If
horticulture (planting) had only been invented once and then had diffused
from its single place of invention it might be argued that this was merely
a fortuitous accident. But horticulture was invented independently several
times in regions far from one another. Similarly states and empires emerged
in both the Eastern and Western hemispheres with little interaction between
the two despite that the emergence of states in the Western hemisphere
occurred some three millennia later than in the Eastern. It is also quite
likely that the emergence of states in East Asia, near the bend of the
Yellow River in what is now China, occurred largely independently of the
earlier emergence of states in West Asia, in the region that we call Mesopotamia
(now Iraq). The significance of important instances of parallel social
evolution is that they imply that general forces of social change are operating.
Our task is to determine with evidence which conditions and tendencies
were the most important causes of these developments.
Idiographic
Historicism vs. Nomothetic Ahistoricism
Before
we present an overview of different theoretical approaches to social change
we need to examine a long-standing controversy in the philosophy of social
science.Social scientists have long
argued over the degree to which human society and human behavior can be
scientifically explained and predicted. At the extremes are two antithetical
stances.Some argue that human beings
are so smart and societies are so complex that scientific explanation and
prediction by means of general laws is impossible. The only thing that
can be done from this perspective is to interpret the meaning of particular
historical events or conjunctures because meaningful generalization across
different situations is impossible.This
so-called “idiographic” approach records detailed descriptions of settings
or events and tries to understand and evoke the mentalities of the participants.This
approach often presumes that efforts to develop a transhistorical species-wide
science of human behavior and human societies are doomed to fail and theories
that claim to be scientifically universalistic are only sham fig-leaves
that are used by the powerful to legitimate their privileges. Extreme historicism,
in this meaning, is the position that every village and every human event
are unique instances that cannot be meaningfully compared with other instances.
The
other extreme position claims that social science is basically like physics.
It is possible to discover a set of universal laws that explain human behavior
and the nature of all human societies.While
nobody claims that this has already been accomplished, the historical trajectory
of social science over the past 200 years is seen by ahistoricistsas
progress toward the development of“nomothetic,”
or law-like, theories of social change.Perhaps
the sociological theory that is closestto
extreme ahistoricism is the structural functionalism of Talcott Parsons
(1966), in which all societies are understood as systems of social actors
having the same basic set of functional prerequisites.
In
practice there are few social scientists that occupy either of the extreme
stances. But many historians are partial to the idiographic stance, while
it is usually sociologists,political
scientists or anthropologists who are sympathetic to the goals of general
explanation.Most practitioners combine
the insights of the extreme positions into a stance that contains elements
of both, but in this they differ as to emphasis.It
is useful to imagine a continuum with idiographic historicism at one end
and nomothetic ahistoricism at the other (See Figure 1.2)
It
is not necessary to assert that all human behavior is equally amenable
to scientific explanation. There may be whole sectors of human action that
are quite conjunctural and extremely path dependent, in which causality
is so complex and interactive that simplifications of the usual sort employed
in scientific models are incapable of representing reality.Acknowledging
that architectural fashions or literary trends are beyond scientific prediction
does not require us to believe that there are no important causal tendencies
in the processes of economic and political development.Scholars
not only differ with respect to their location on the nomothetic/idiographic
continuum, but they also differ with regard to which aspects of social
reality they see as more patterned versus those that are understood as
primarily conjunctural or unpredictable.
Theories
of Social Change
Theories
of long-term social change differ from one another in two basic ways. One
is the extent to which they posit qualitative as opposed to merely quantitative
change. And the other is the extent to which they emphasize a single master
variable that is allegedly the main cause of change.
Some
theories posit a single logic of social change that is thought to adequately
describe the important processes in all types of human societies and in
all periods of time. Others argue that the logic of social change has itself
altered qualitatively, and so that a model that explains, for example,
the emergence of horticulture, is not adequate for explaining the emergence
of capitalism.Those who see long-run
continuities of developmental logic are called “continuationists,” while
those who posit the existence of fundamental reorganizations of the logic
of social change are called “transformationists.”Continuationists
contend that similar processes of social change have operated for millennia,
while transformationists see qualitative reorganizations of the processes
of change as having occured. The content of the models within each of these
categories is quite variable depending on what sorts of social change are
seen as most central or powerful – the master variables.
The
master variables can be broadly categorized as either cultural or material,
but within each of these two boxes there are several significant subtypes.Culturalists
often emphasize the importance of the ways in which values are constructed
in human societies, and so they focus on religion or the most central institutions
that indicate the consensual and most powerful value commitments of a society.
From this point of view the most important kind of social change involves
redefinition of what is alleged to exist (ontology), and changes in ideas
about good and evil.Social evolution
is understood by culturalists as the reorganization of socially institutionalized
beliefs. For example,the important
changes in social evolution are understood to have been the transitions
from the animistic philosophy of the hunter-gatherer band to the radical
separation of the natural and supernatural realms in early states, and
then the rise of the “world religions,” followed
by the emergence of formal rationality and science – the dominant “religion”
of the modern world.Other social
changes are seen by culturalists as down stream from these most fundamental
transformations of ideational culture.
Materialists
focus primarily on the material problems that all human societies face
and the inventions that people employ to solve these problems. They note
that humans must eat and that in order for human groups to survive they
must provide enough food and shelter to allow babies to be born and to
grow up.Thus all human societies
face demographic and economic problems, and the ways in which these problems
are solved are important determinants of other aspects of social life.Materialists
assertthat human societies need
to adapt to the natural environment and to the larger social environment
in which they compete and cooperate with other human societies.Materialists
often differ as to which material problem is seen as most crucial and determinant.
Some emphasize demographic and ecological constraints, while others focus
on technologies of production or of power.Technologies
of production are those techniques and practices by which resources are
acquired or produced from the natural environment.Technologies
of power are those institutions that create and sustain hierarchies within
human societies and that allow some societies to conquer and dominate other
societies.
Institutional
Materialism
The
theoretical approach employed hereis
termed “institutional materialism.” It is a synthetic and flexible combination
of culturalist and materialist approaches that sees human social evolution
as produced by an interaction among demographic, ecological and economic
forces and constraints that is expanded and modified by the institutional
inventions that people devise to solve problems and to overcome constraints.Institutional
inventions include ideological constructions such as religion as well as
technologies of production and power.Technologies
of production are such things as bows and arrows, the potter’s wheel and
hydroelectric dams. Technologies of power are such things as secret societies,
special bodies of armed men, methods of keeping records of who has paid
taxes, tithes or tribute, as well as intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Solving
problems at one level usually leads to the emergence of new problems, and
so the basic constraints are never really overcome, at least so far.Institutional
materialism sees a geographical widening of the scale of ecological and
social problems created by social evolution rather than a transcendence
of material constraints.This is
what allows us to construct asingle
basic model that represents the major forces that have shaped social evolution
over the last twelve millennia.
As
mentioned above, institutions are inventions that are made by people for
solving problems. Much of the taken for granted aspects of our world are
composed of institutions that have been socially constructed by people
in the past. Thus we all learn a language when we are children, a particular
language with particular meanings and connotations.Our
mother-tongues are social constructions of people who spoke and made meaning
in the past, including those who raised us and those who taught them. Our
particular languages are central institutions that heavily influence our
understanding of what exists, what is possible, what is good and what is
evil.Other institutions that are
historical inventions are money, the family and productive technology.
Institutions
in the sociological sense are more than just hospitals or schools. They
are all the socially constructed and taken for granted aspects of everyday
life, including who we think we are and what we think exists. The self,
in the sense of our idea of our individual identity and what we think human
nature is,is an institution in this
sense.Institutional materialism
analyzes the interactions between the material aspects and necessities
of human life and the invention of culturally constructed institutions.
Social
structure is the main focus for the study of social change. Individuals
are born and die and so all societies are composed of structures in which
individuals either reproduce institutions in much the way that they have
been in the past, or they alter these institutions. The easiest way of
conceptualizing social structure is as an organizational chart in which
the various positions that constitute the organization are shown along
with their relationships with one another.
All
formal organizations and bureaucracies are explicitly conceptualized as
constellations of social positions (statuses) in which different individuals
occupy the various positions. So a football team has a quarterback, and
a halfback and a center and etc. Specific duties are assigned to these
positions, and a particular player is evaluated in terms of how well or
poorly he or she carries out the duties associated with the position.Sociologists
point out that informal as well as formal groups may be viewed as having
social structures.A group of friends
having lunch may be understood as performing certain scripts appropriate
to equals who care about one another, with a degree of improvisation thrown
in to constitute genuineness and agency.All
social groups are constituted in this way as organizations with rules and
assumptions.
This
structural view of human society focuses on the rules and definitions that
provide the boundaries within which individuals carry out and reproduce
social structures.But these structures
also change, and the study of social change is, in large part, the effort
to explain why structures change in the way that they do.
Social
structures are held together by three basic kinds of institutional “glue.”Social
order is produced by institutions that make human behavior somewhat predictable.In
order to compete, fight or cooperate with others I need to be able to guess
what they will do in reaction to what I do.There
are three basic institutional inventions that facilitate relatively stable
expectations about the behavior of others:
1.normative
regulation in which people agree about the proper kinds of behavior,
2.coercive
regulation in which institutionalized sanctions are applied to discourage
behavior that is considered to be inappropriate;
3.market
regulation in which individuals are expected to maximize their returns
in competitive buying and selling.
Normative
regulation based on consensus about proper behavior is the original institution
of social order. It requires
a shared language and a good deal of consensus about basic values and proper
behavior. Individuals learn the rules and internalize them and regulate
themselves and others with appeals to the moral order. This works well
in small societies in which people interact with one another frequently
and on a relatively egalitarian basis.Itworks
less well (by itself) in larger societies that require that culturally
different and spatially separated peoples cooperate with one another.
Coercive
institutions (but not coercion) were invented with the rise of social hierarchies.Institutions
such as the law do not require that each individual know or agree with
the law. Thus they work better for integrating communities that do not
share common cultures and moral orders. Legal
regulation is backed up by legitimate violence, the right of the lord or
the king to enforce the law by means of punishment and prisons. Special
bodies of armed men are used to enforce decisions made by states, as well
as to engage in conflict with other societies. Courts
are part of institutionalization of coercion as an important form of social
regulations.
Market
regulation emerged even more recently with the invention of money and commodities.
Market regulation, like institutionalized coercion, does have a basis in
presumed norms, but these norms themselves only provide the framework for
interaction. They do not require agreement about much, except that money
is useful.Markets articulate the
actions of large numbers of buyers and sellers without requiring these
players to identify with one another or even to agree about the general
rules of legality.Markets are institutions
that allow for relatively peaceful cooperation and competition among peoples
that are spread over wide distances and who have rather different cultures.
Much
of the sociology of roles, statuses and social structure is based on the
assumption that normative regulation is operating, but many social structures
operate in the absence of much consensus because they are regulated by
coercive or marketinstitutions.The
invention of these institutional forms of regulation have made organized
social interaction possible on a greater and greater spatial scale until
now we have a single global network in which all three kinds of regulation
play important parts.The story of
how these inventions came about is central focus of the study of social
evolution.
The
structuralist approach that is an important part of institutional materialism
is not, contrary to what some critics have alleged, a necessarily deterministic
approach to social life that eliminates the possibility of human freedom.
Institutional structuralism allows us to understand the constraints that
our own cultures have placed upon us so that, to some degree, we can transcend
these constraints.We see socially
constructed institutions as human inventions that both empower us and constrain
us in certain ways. The fact that the U.S. government has purchased, graded
and maintained a piece of property that is 3000 miles long and 200 feet
widemakes it possible for me to
drive from Baltimore to San Francisco in less than three days, while my
ancestors took three months to make the same trip.This
is technological and institutional empowerment.But
the same Interstate highway system means that the U.S. has invested a huge
amount of money, energy, property and human labor into a particular kind
of transportation network that might become obsolete due to some future
change in technology or in the cost of energy. The canals of Venice or
Amsterdam represent sunk costs that could not easily be reconstructed when
transportation technology changed.Our
religions, the ways in which we have defined male and femaleness, the huge
psychic investments in nationalistic sentiments, the expensive rituals
by which we demonstrate our commitments to some people and our enmities
to others -- all these institutionalized aspects of our society make it
possible for us to do some things, and very difficult to do others.This
is empowerment and structural alienation.The
analysis of institutional structures makes it possible to understand how
our history has constructed us and what we may need to do to reconstruct
the future.
Institutional
materialism is an synthetic and eclectic theoretical focus that draws from
several social science disciplines: history, anthropology, sociology, political
science, economics, demography and geography. This
will be combined with social geography as it has emerged from the comparative
world-systems perspective, the main topic of the next chapter.These
tools will help us to see the broad patterns as well as the unique aspects
of different kinds of societies in the process of social evolution.