AnyBook4Less.com	Find the Best Price on the Web Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Home  |  Store List  |  FAQ  |  Contact Us  |
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money Keyword AuthorISBN

Title: The Course of Human History: Economic Growth, Social Process, and Civilization (Sources and Studies in World History) by Johan Goudsblom, Stephen Mennell, E. L. Jones ISBN: 1-56324-794-1 Publisher: M.E.Sharpe Pub. Date: June, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95

Your Country USA Canada United Kingdom Australia Austria Belgium France Germany Italy Netherlands Switzerland Currency AutoUSD CAD GBP EUR AUD CHF Delivery Only cheapest delivery All delivery options Include Used Books Are you a club member of: Barnes and Noble Books A Million Chapters.Indigo.ca

Average Customer Rating: 4 (1 review)

Rating: 4
Summary: Modern economic sociology with a long-term view
Comment: When these authors talk about long-term history, they are including hominid cultures in prehistorical Europe, and Asian and African cultures, not just historical Eurocentrism. They discuss how Marx and Weber sidestep everything except European experience, and how consideration of multiple civilizations shows that social development is not a straight line. There are not many other sociology books I've read whose bibliographies include articles such as "Hominid Use of Fire in the Lower and Middle Pleistocene." Of course, since I'm not a sociologist, there's much I don't know - perhaps there are many other such books out there. But I certainly didn't find them while collecting a shelf-full for a grad-school sociology course (required for a major in another social science). This was one of the most readable of the 30 or so books I plowed through.

The main concept the authors wish to convey is that history (and sociology) should not be concerned only with chronology, but also with long-term processes. Stages, or phases, have been commented on by previous sociologists, most of them having the view either that the stages showed a steady progress upward - or a steady deterioration downward. Life has either degenerated from a golden age to a machine age, or we are now the most civilized the world has ever been in all things. In both cases, the main concerns of such authors were primarily to explain conditions in the author's present world by showing how these had arisen out of previous conditions. Such stages were a favorite of 19th-century sociologists and anthropologists. However, twentieth century authors may have gone too far in rejecting stage models; our authors here feel that both chronology and "phaseology" should be taken into account. This leads the authors to "processes."

One of the most useful concepts presented is the authors' view of the major transformations in society: from a stage where there were no societies with control over fire, agriculture, or mechanical industry, to a stage where some societies controlled some of those, to a stage where some societies control all of those areas. Then, we can place particular societies into context - if we call a particular society "agrarian", is it coexisting with many other agrarian societies? Or with industrial societies? Are they on their way toward an industrial society?

There is then a chapter showing the relationship between agrarian societies and religion; the function of priests as determiners of when it is time to plant is illustrated by both historic and not-too-long-ago examples. This is followed by a look at how an agrarian culture leads to socially stratified societies, and to warrior classes, and how the subsequent "taming" of warriors is a necessary element for further social development.

This book is somewhat academic, but not dense with jargon. It is not extremely heavy reading, and can be understood by someone without an intensive knowledge of sociology or economics. It's helpful if the reader is at least familiar with the names of such theorists as Marx, Spencer, Weber; for someone who has been introduced to those theorists in an undergraduate sociology class, and is looking for a more modern point of view from which to start a term paper or other further study, this book is a good starting point. Its multicultural viewpoint that includes Asian and African civilizations will be a welcome change from the Eurocentrism of the older theorists, and should also appeal to the professor for whom a student might be writing such a paper. Because of its title, it might not immediately come to such a reader's attention - since history, rather than social development, is in the title, some might pass over it. That would be a mistake.