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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Rethinking Social Evolution: The Perspective from Middle-Range Societies

Rethinking Social Evolution: The Perspective from Middle-Range Societies

Rousseau, Jérôme

Hardcover

AnthropologyGeneral Sociology

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 0773531106
ISBN13: 9780773531109
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
Published: Oct 26 2006
Pages: 304
Weight: 1.23
Height: 0.69 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

Human societies are characterized by complex and varied social systems that change through time due to communication and negotiation. Jérôme 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 and suggests that conflicts about sharing generate social transformations that result in inequality and increasingly encompassing socio-political structures.

Rethinking Social Evolution is a wide-ranging exploration of how language and increased cognitive abilities constitute the motor of social evolution. Drawing on a wide range of ethnographic case studies, Rousseau offers a better understanding of how modern societies are the result of choices by people who both collaborate and compete.

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