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How Societies Change (Sociology for a New Century Series), by Daniel Chirot
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This book, the only brief and affordable macro-sociology text available for undergraduates, describes how societies have changed over the past five thousand years. The discussion focuses on the idea that industrial societies, despite their great success, have created a new set of recurring and unsolved problems which will serve as a major impetus for further social change. This book explores development through historical narrative and examines the globalization/development paradox through in-depth case studies.
- Sales Rank: #677979 in Books
- Published on: 2011-05-27
- Format: DVD Single
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.01" h x .41" w x 6.08" l, .58 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 184 pages
Review
It's good to have a concise, well-written summary like this. (David Swift 2009-09-22)
About the Author
Daniel Chirot is the Job and Gertrud Tamaki Professor of International Studies and of Sociology at the University of Washington in Seattle. His most recent book is called Contested Identities: Ethnic, Religious, and Nationalist Conflicts in Today’s World and was recently published by Routledge. He is the author of Modern Tyrants, published by Princeton University Press, and the co-author, with Clark McCauley, of Why Not Kill Them All? The Logic and Prevention of Mass Political Murder, also published by Princeton. He has written several books about global social change and has authored as well as edited other books about economic history, ethnic conflict, and international politics. Chirot has served as a consultant for various foundations and NGOS working in Eastern Europe and West Africa. His research and writing has been helped by grants from, among others, the United States Institute of Peace, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. He has a BA from Harvard University in Social Studies and a PhD in Sociology from Columbia University.
Most helpful customer reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful.
a framework to shape quests
By C. Kollars
I've looked far and wide for a boad brush description of cultures that among other things would explain why the west is currently ascendant, something much more detailed than just saying "Industrial Revolution," yet still accessible to a generalist. I finally found it in this slim volume. Apparently targeted at college sociology course reading lists, it also serves the curious general reader quite well.
It's pleasing and intellectually satisfying to have such a broad sweep laid out so succinctly. This book avoids the pole of too much depth and erudition--hundreds and hundreds of pages of rather obscure analysis, parts of which are outdated or irrelevant. One need only browse the references in this book to see the difference between its sources and itself. Materials written by Max Weber, Talcott Parsons, Karl Marx and many many others tend to be decades old and to mix insights with errors and irrelevancies so that grasping them is difficult without a fairly thorough academic background. This book also avoids the other pole of being too superficial to be useful--simply saying Industrial Revolution as if that answered all questions.
A brief description of how very early human societies (hunter gatherer) were organized opens the book. Next it discusses agrarian societies in some depth: how did they come about? how widespread were they? how did various people live in them? what problems did they bring? Then it covers the question of why the west grew to dominate, including the historical roots of how it happened, relationship to enlightenment ideas, the economic transformation at the base of the dominance, and its consequences (empires, nationalism, the importance of commerce, etc.). Next the modern era is analyzed in some detail: industrial cycles and their effect on various states, other political movements such as Marxism and facism, and a short discussion of ecological pressures. The conclusion is a combination of an explicit description of the underlying theory, listing of a few problems that may be faced in the future, and a summing up of the approach to social change illustrated throughout the book.
Of course many of the points the book makes in its context also touch peripherally on other fields ...but the book doesn't lose its focus by chasing these other threads. Here are just three examples: i) Agricultural peasants are so conservative because they instinctively understand that a single negative experiment may mean the end of their existence. ii) Marxism ruled so much of the earth then fell apart so rapidly because it over-generalized the problems of the first industrial cycle (based on textiles) to suggest solutions that were increasingly mismatched to the problems of later industrial cycles. And iii) warfare was the only realistic way to compare the strength of different agrarian cultures.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
Superb; Brimming with Valuable Insights
By Camber
This superb book by Daniel Chirot considerably exceeded my hopes and expectations. Chirot brilliantly illuminates key factors which influence how societies change, and he maps out how societies have actually changed historically as a result of these factors.
More specifically, as with biological evolution of organisms, Chirot shows how the size and (hierarchical) complexity of societies has tended to increase during the transition from (a) hunter-gatherer bands to (b) small agricultural societies to (c) larger agricultural civilizations to (d) modern rationalized and industrialized societies. Modernization in particular has resulted in many beneficial changes which have raised average standard of living and produced high culture, but has also resulted in considerable intensification of population pressure, environmental impact, social instability, social inequality, and competition and conflict.
More generally, Chirot argues that, since social change is an evolutionary process, governed by selection and involving some contingency (randomness), we can't reliably judge the adaptive fitness of changes (including new ideas) except in retrospect. This makes the past only a limited guide to the future, and so there is much uncertainty about what policies we should pursue going forward, which explains the endless debate regarding how conservative versus progressive we should be. But we might still be justified in at least concluding that diverse and flexible societies, with elements of democracy such as checks and balances (however cumbersome and messy), are better equipped to adapt and innovate to meet challenges, as compared to societies with centralized bureaucratic control, which tend to be inefficient and oppressive because they're prone to rigid inflexibility, corruption, and tyranny.
A major strength of the book is that it's wonderfully concise. Rather than bogging the reader down, Chirot provides just the right amount of detail and examples to effectively illustrate and flesh out the key ideas and themes without obscuring them. The result is that this 144-page book packs as much punch as a typical book two or three times longer, so the book should be read slowly and carefully, allowing plenty of time ponder and absorb. To top it off, the book is enjoyably readable, even engrossing, despite the compression. I wish all books were written like this!
Very highly recommended to anyone seeking to better understand how the (social) world works, thereby putting current affairs in a useful sociohistorical context. In fact, this book should be mandatory reading for anyone involved in politics and/or public policy.
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
Useful but flawed
By Scott P. Crane
I enjoyed Chirot's book, both for it's coverage of early human societies and for it's conciseness and accessibility. However, I found Chirot's discussion of the modern world quite flawed. Just a few issues I had:
1) Chirot dismisses all modern socialist movements and ideas by pointing out the failures of communism and conflating all socialism with communism. At one point he provides data showing how European nations are doing better than the US in terms of lower inequality (he could have also mentioned better healthcare and education, comparable innovation) but he never mentions the role of socialism in those nations, nor the role of socialism in the economic boom in the US in the mid-20th century. He dismisses all socialism as an intellectual pipe dream or a Luddite movement by those who hate progress.
2) He tries to lump fascism and communism together as opposition movements to capitalism, failing to admit the close ties between fascism and capitalism (Spanish Civil War, early support for Mussolini and Hitler by US industry) and even claiming that modern European socialist governments have their roots in the corporatist elements of fascism. Perhaps he should examine the incestuous relationship between government and industry in modern capitalist society and rethink this. He also relies on the tired notion that fascism and communism become surrogate religions to their proponents, again ignoring the near cult-like status that "free markets" enjoy at all levels of western capitalist government and media.
3) Chirot repeatedly puts the cart before the horse in examining why certain societies or elements within society don't seem to have progressed in the same way as the broader western capitalist society has. In particular, he seems to blame the problems the Arab world faces as being solely due to their unfortunate embrace of extremist Islamism, completely ignoring the fact that this is a minority of Arab society and that it is almost entirely a reaction to western imperialism. No mention of Iran 1953 or Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 2000s. Similarly, he blames ethnic minorities' economic woes in the US on their lack of solid family structure and good western values, utterly failing to recognize the historic economic and political discrimination that continues to exist here. Apparently broken families cause economic hardship, but economic hardship doesn't cause broken families.
4) Chirot tries to assert that history and society have a direction and purpose, "progress", and that modern western capitalist democracy is the best fulfillment of that direction and purpose. He dismissively admits that it is not perfect, but discards all alternatives and denigrates those who have sought them.
The earlier chapters of Chirot's book I found quite good, and some aspects of the later chapters were as well, particularly the brief discussion of industrial cycles and the poor fit of Marx's theory to later cycles. This is a short and easy read, but full of interesting ideas. I recommend it but with qualifications.
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