Rethinking Social Evolution: The Perspective from Middle-Range Societies - Hardcover

Rousseau, Jérôme

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0773531106 ISBN 13: 9780773531109

Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2006

Synopsis

A wide-ranging exploration of how language and increased cognitive abilities constitute the motor of social evolution.

About this title

Review

"Rousseau's formulation and analysis of a classic problem in anthropology and political philosophy is substantial and distinctive, bringing together an impressively wide range of ethnographic material." Robert Winzeler, anthropology, University of Nevada

Synopsis

Compared with other primates, humans have complex and varied social systems that change through time. As a result of greater cognitive complexity and language, humans can communicate and negotiate varied forms of cooperation. Jerome Rousseau makes cognitive complexity his starting point in an innovative study of how and why human societies evolve. The focus of Rousseau's enquiry is "middle-range" societies - a vast category between hunter-gatherers and states. Breaking away from traditional analyses of social evolution as a response to ecological constraints, he shows that social systems are maintained and transformed through self-interest. He also offers an analysis of how conflicts about sharing generate social transformations that result in inequality and increasingly encompassing socio-political structures. "Rethinking Social Evolution" draws on a wide range of ethnographic case studies to show how language and increased cognitive abilities constitute the motor of social evolution, offering a better understanding of how modern societies continue to transform themselves and showing that societies are the result of choices by people who both collaborate and compete.

Edition details

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0773531106
• ISBN 13: 9780773531109
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 304