Social change: globalization from the stone age to the present

Abstract

Social change: globalization from the stone age to the present, by Christopher Chase-Dunn and Bruce Lerro, Boulder, CO, Paradigm Publishers, 2014, xxxii + 431 pp., US$69.00 (paperback), ISBN 978-1-6120-5328-8 Social Change: Globalization from the Stone Age to the Presen t by Christopher Chase-Dunn and Bruce Lerro is a comprehensive, meticulously articulated, and conceptually sound in-depth analysis of the history of globalization at a world scale and accompanied change specific to different societies over time and space. For Chase-Dunn and Lerro, globalization is an ongoing process rather than a recent phenomenon, its origins dating back to 12,000 years with recurrent manifestations in successive waves of global integration and disintegration of societies. The point of departure for this book is first, a historical approach to studying processes of change that is based on the continuities of trends and patterns between the past and the present. Second, the framework of analysis emphasizes a global comparative perspective that views national societies as subsystems of a larger world system of societies, each society co-evolving in mutual interaction with each other. For the authors, social change (change in processes or individual behavior) as a conceptual category is historically and spatially produced and dialectically related to processes of socio-cultural evolution (fundamental reorganization of institutional structures and intersocietal systems) in a mutually inclusive manner (p. xxiv). A commendable aspect of this book is its strong theoretical framework, conceptual clarity, and methodological rigor maintained in a logically consistent fashion from the beginning of the book to the end. The authors employ an institutional materialist theoretical framework, which they describe as a synthetic combination of culturalist and materialist approaches to studying socio-cultural evolution of human societies (p. 13). The idea is based on how human beings have adapted to ecological, demographic, and economic challenges from time to time by reorganization of cultural practices and socially institutionalized beliefs to solve emergent problems and overcome constraints (p. 13). Institutions--cultural, political, economic, and social--therefore become a fondamental conceptual category in the evolution, functioning and sustenance of human societies. This framework is tied together with the comparative world systems approach that allows for not only a historical but also a spatial comparison of small simple societies and networks of the past as they evolved and were integrated into more complex regional and global systems of the current world order. Conceptual categories like world systems, polities, modes of accumulation, interaction networks, and core-periphery relationship underlie the comparative world system approach. The complex inter-linkages and mutual workings such categories explain the systemic conflicts, global hierarchies, and resultant uneven development that had challenged human societies in the past and more recently. From a cultural geography standpoint, the institutional materialist framework focuses on the nexus of the cultural and material realms of human existence, not as separate entities but as mutually reinforcing of each other in a complementary pursuit of change albeit with and spatial variations. …