Social Change: Globalization from the Stone Age to the Present

by Christopher Chase-Dunn, Bruce Lerro

From the Stone Age to the Internet Age, this book tells the story of human sociocultural evolution. It describes the conditions under which hunter-gatherers, horticulturalists, agricultural states, and industrial capitalist societies formed, flourished, and declined. Drawing evidence from archaeology, ethnography, linguistics, historical documents, statistics, and survey research, the authors trace the growth of human societies and their complexity, and they probe the conflicts in hierarchies both within and among societies. They also explain the macro-micro links that connect cultural evolution and history with the development of the individual self, thinking processes, and perceptions.Key features of the text

Genres: Sociology

466 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2013

Reviews

[Nemanja · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unlike Christopher Chase-Dunn's previous books, "Social Change" is meant to be a textbook for undergraduate and graduate students, and as such it does not have the academic depth of his previous works. It does relay heavily on "Global Formation", "Raise and Fall" and "Spiral of Capitalism and Socialism", to mention a few. The biggest addition that his book brings to the opus of Chase-Dunn is comparative analysis of previous world-systems, and their evolution to this day. Apart from Chase-Dunn, Bruco Lerro contributed with the analysis of the psychological aspects of the social change (the way human mind was changed by the economic and political basis of the society).

For a student of world-system analysis the part of the book related to the psychology is highly distracting and introduces concepts which require additional research and learning. On the other hand, the psychology of social change gives an interesting angle to the world-system analysis.

Most certainly, this book would serve very well as an introduction to the world-systems analysis for the simplicity of it's explanations and graphical illustrations. As such, it is much more appropriate and complete then Shannon's "An Introduction To The World-system Perspective".

My rating (3 stars) is related to the expectation that I would find substantially more new research (or at leasr references to) related to the world-system analysis. However, if this were the first book I read on the topic (as introductory text) I would certainly give it 5 stars.

[Logan Streondj · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is a well researched book that covers in one place many historical and pre historical social transitions. But it ends up promoting socialism/Communism so I had to take a star off, as that's like promoting genocide/democide. And it seems to completely ignore the agricultural element of society, as if people don't need food to live.