Author : George McClelland Foster
Publisher : HarperCollins Publishers
Page : 312 pages
File Size : 14,70 MB
Release : 1973
Category : Social Science
ISBN :
Non-Aboriginal material.
Author : Jared Diamond
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 727 pages
File Size : 10,10 MB
Release : 2012-12-31
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1101606002
The bestselling author of Collapse and Guns, Germs and Steel surveys the history of human societies to answer the question: What can we learn from traditional societies that can make the world a better place for all of us? “As he did in his Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond continues to make us think with his mesmerizing and absorbing new book." Bookpage Most of us take for granted the features of our modern society, from air travel and telecommunications to literacy and obesity. Yet for nearly all of its six million years of existence, human society had none of these things. While the gulf that divides us from our primitive ancestors may seem unbridgeably wide, we can glimpse much of our former lifestyle in those largely traditional societies still or recently in existence. Societies like those of the New Guinea Highlanders remind us that it was only yesterday—in evolutionary time—when everything changed and that we moderns still possess bodies and social practices often better adapted to traditional than to modern conditions.The World Until Yesterday provides a mesmerizing firsthand picture of the human past as it had been for millions of years—a past that has mostly vanished—and considers what the differences between that past and our present mean for our lives today. This is Jared Diamond’s most personal book to date, as he draws extensively from his decades of field work in the Pacific islands, as well as evidence from Inuit, Amazonian Indians, Kalahari San people, and others. Diamond doesn’t romanticize traditional societies—after all, we are shocked by some of their practices—but he finds that their solutions to universal human problems such as child rearing, elder care, dispute resolution, risk, and physical fitness have much to teach us. Provocative, enlightening, and entertaining, The World Until Yesterday is an essential and fascinating read.
Author : Rudi Volti
Publisher : Waveland Press
Page : 707 pages
File Size : 18,34 MB
Release : 2024-03-19
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1478652861
Society and Technological Change continues to be the essential text for exploring the relationship between human societies and the ever-evolving landscape of technology. The ninth edition follows the historical trajectory of technological development and its profound impact on various aspects of human life, from communication and healthcare to economic systems and governance. At the same time, it shows how these technologies have themselves been shaped by social, economic, cultural, and political forces, and that the study of technology is important not just for its own sake but also for what it tells us about the kinds of societies we make for ourselves. With its engaging writing style and thought-provoking content, this new edition continues to be an indispensable resource for students, scholars, and anyone seeking a deep understanding of the intricate bond between society and technology in our ever-evolving world.
Author : Richard F. Salisbury
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 402 pages
File Size : 28,91 MB
Release : 2024-06-28
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0520415515
Vunamami attempts to isolate the dynamic that produces economic development by analyzing the interplay of forces over a ninety-year period in a village in the Tolai area of New Guinea. Theories that stress the importance of external forces in producing economic development, or contrast “traditional conservatism” with “innovative modernization,” view history through the eyes of outsiders and misconstrue the nature of traditional society. This "outside view" sees change as a result of external pressures; the “local view” regards outsiders only as triggers for processes of internal development, political initiatives, and the adaptation of technical innovations to local conditions, spurred by political entrepreneurs and technological innovators in the community . Richard F. Salisbury argues that without internal changes, technical innovations are uneconomical and destined to fail. Vunamami is optimistic about the potentialities of internal social change for producing economic development without foreign aid. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1970.
Author : Margaret Mead
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 24,36 MB
Release : 1955
Category : Civilization
ISBN :
Author : Jacques Ellul
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 531 pages
File Size : 39,74 MB
Release : 2021-07-27
Category : Technology & Engineering
ISBN : 0593315685
As insightful and wise today as it was when originally published in 1954, Jacques Ellul's The Technological Society has become a classic in its field, laying the groundwork for all other studies of technology and society that have followed. Ellul offers a penetrating analysis of our technological civilization, showing how technology—which began innocuously enough as a servant of humankind—threatens to overthrow humanity itself in its ongoing creation of an environment that meets its own ends. No conversation about the dangers of technology and its unavoidable effects on society can begin without a careful reading of this book. "A magnificent book . . . He goes through one human activity after another and shows how it has been technicized, rendered efficient, and diminished in the process.”—Harper's “One of the most important books of the second half of the twentieth-century. In it, Jacques Ellul convincingly demonstrates that technology, which we continue to conceptualize as the servant of man, will overthrow everything that prevents the internal logic of its development, including humanity itself—unless we take necessary steps to move human society out of the environment that 'technique' is creating to meet its own needs.”—The Nation “A description of the way in which technology has become completely autonomous and is in the process of taking over the traditional values of every society without exception, subverting and suppressing these values to produce at last a monolithic world culture in which all non-technological difference and variety are mere appearance.”—Los Angeles Free Press
Author : Björn-Ola Linnér
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 249 pages
File Size : 32,74 MB
Release : 2019-10-03
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 1108487475
A comparison of how societal actors in different geographical, political and cultural contexts understand agents and drivers of sustainability transformations.
Author : Peter J. Richerson
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 499 pages
File Size : 38,21 MB
Release : 2013-11-01
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 0262019752
Leading scholars report on current research that demonstrates the central role of cultural evolution in explaining human behavior. Over the past few decades, a growing body of research has emerged from a variety of disciplines to highlight the importance of cultural evolution in understanding human behavior. Wider application of these insights, however, has been hampered by traditional disciplinary boundaries. To remedy this, in this volume leading researchers from theoretical biology, developmental and cognitive psychology, linguistics, anthropology, sociology, religious studies, history, and economics come together to explore the central role of cultural evolution in different aspects of human endeavor. The contributors take as their guiding principle the idea that cultural evolution can provide an important integrating function across the various disciplines of the human sciences, as organic evolution does for biology. The benefits of adopting a cultural evolutionary perspective are demonstrated by contributions on social systems, technology, language, and religion. Topics covered include enforcement of norms in human groups, the neuroscience of technology, language diversity, and prosociality and religion. The contributors evaluate current research on cultural evolution and consider its broader theoretical and practical implications, synthesizing past and ongoing work and sketching a roadmap for future cross-disciplinary efforts. Contributors Quentin D. Atkinson, Andrea Baronchelli, Robert Boyd, Briggs Buchanan, Joseph Bulbulia, Morten H. Christiansen, Emma Cohen, William Croft, Michael Cysouw, Dan Dediu, Nicholas Evans, Emma Flynn, Pieter François, Simon Garrod, Armin W. Geertz, Herbert Gintis, Russell D. Gray, Simon J. Greenhill, Daniel B. M. Haun, Joseph Henrich, Daniel J. Hruschka, Marco A. Janssen, Fiona M. Jordan, Anne Kandler, James A. Kitts, Kevin N. Laland, Laurent Lehmann, Stephen C. Levinson, Elena Lieven, Sarah Mathew, Robert N. McCauley, Alex Mesoudi, Ara Norenzayan, Harriet Over, Jürgen Renn, Victoria Reyes-García, Peter J. Richerson, Stephen Shennan, Edward G. Slingerland, Dietrich Stout, Claudio Tennie, Peter Turchin, Carel van Schaik, Matthijs Van Veelen, Harvey Whitehouse, Thomas Widlok, Polly Wiessner, David Sloan Wilson
Author : H.T. Wilson
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 174 pages
File Size : 19,8 MB
Release : 2023-11-06
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1003824943
First published in 1984 Tradition and Innovation by viewing Western civilization as a culture, puts the common perspectives of our major Western institutions in bolder relief. The author shows how the institutionalization of central modes of Western rationality-found in capitalism, industrialization, science, science - based technology, bureaucracy, the rule of law, the social and behavioral sciences-has created a culturally and historically unique form of collective life: advanced industrial society. Indicative of this development is the nature and meaning of the so-called innovative society itself, where rationality is increasingly seen to repose in institutions and organized structures rather than in individuals. Professor Wilson argues that this rationality is becoming traditionalized as a central artifact of our form of life, one which believes in the independent existence of the ‘facts of life’. This is borne out by the increasing autonomy of what professor Wilson calls ‘disembodied disciplined observation’, determined as it is to annihilate contemplation and reflection in its effort to reconstitute practice in its own image. This is an interesting read for students of sociology, political science, public administration, and social science in general.
Author : Gerard Karel Boon
Publisher : Martinus Nijhoff Publishers
Page : 614 pages
File Size : 25,1 MB
Release : 1979-02-28
Category : Law
ISBN : 9789028605206
