Evolution of Human Societies

• Society refers to a group of people who interact in a definable territory and share the same culture.
• Societies consist of institutional constraint and coordination exercised over people's choices and actions.
• Humans are a product of the type of society they live in.

Evolution of Human Societies

• August Comte (1798–1857) provided the first sociological theory on this topic.
• Theological stage: humans explain causes in terms of the will of anthropocentric gods.
• Metaphysical stage: humans explain causes in terms of abstract ideas like nature, natural rights, social contracts, or self-evident truths.
• Positive stage: humans explain causes in terms of positivist, scientific observations and laws.

Karl Marx on Society

• Evolution of societies from primitive to advanced comes as a result of power struggles in each epoch between different social classes over control of property.
• Societies are characterized by different modes of production, or "material bases".
• A society's type and level of development depend on how people produce the material goods needed to meet its needs.
• Marx categorized historical types of society, for example primitive communists are hunter gatherers like the Haida.
• Transformations from one society to the next are generated by a society's capacity to generate economic surpluses, and by the conflicts and tensions when one class monopolizes economic power or property.

Gerhard Lenski's Definition

• Sociologist Gerhard Lenski (1924-2015) defined societies in terms of their technological sophistication.
• Advances in technology alter the relationship between humans and nature.

Preindustrial Societies

• Hunter-gatherer groups had a basic structure until 10,000-12,000 years ago.
• Hunter-gatherer groups were based around kinship or tribal affiliations, survived on what nature provided, and immediately consumed what they obtained, producing no surpluses.
• Hunter-gatherer groups were nomadic.
• Distribution of economic surplus is organized on a communalistic, shared basis with little private property, cooperative work, and extensive gift giving.
• The use of resources was governed by usufruct, the distribution of resources according to need.
• Power is shared equally or shifts among community members based on individual skills and talents.
• Social control is exercised through shared customs.
• Society is organized on the basis of kinship and kinship ties.
• There is little separation between intimate private and public life.
• Community life is personal and emotionally charged with little division of labour and no social isolation.
• Art, storytelling, ethics, religious ritual, and spirituality are fused in daily life.
• Hunter-gatherer groups developed mechanisms to prevent evolution into more advanced sedentary, agricultural societies.
• The authority of the headman or titular chief rests on the support and confidence of community members rather than permanent institutional structures.
• Potlatch is a means of redistributing wealth and preventing permanent inequality from developing.
• Hunter-gatherer groups largely disappeared because of colonization and European diseases.

Horticultural and Pastoral Societies

• Around 10,200 BCE, another type of society developed in ancient Anatolia (now part of Turkey).
• Horticultural societies formed in areas with rainfall and fertile soils to grow stable crops with simple hand tools, resulting in permanent settlements.
• Pastoral societies rely on the domestication of animals.

Agricultural Societies

• Agricultural societies relied on permanent tools for survival, unlike pastoral and horticultural societies, which use small, temporary tools.
• Around 3,000 BCE, the Agricultural Revolution made farming possible and profitable.
• Crop rotation and reuse of waste products were implemented.
• Human settlements grew into towns and cities, especially in bountiful regions, and became centres of trade and commerce.
• Music, poetry, and philosophy rose to prominence.
• Social classes and power structures became entrenched.
• Slavery was institutionalized as a large-scale source of labour.
• Slavery was the dominant form of class exploitation in the agricultural empires of Greece and Rome.

Feudal Societies

• The 9th century in Europe gave rise to feudal societies.
• Feudal societies were agriculturally based, organized according to a strict hierarchical system of power founded on land ownership, military protection, and mutual obligations.
• Forced labour of serfs was gradually replaced by a system of rents and taxation.

Industrial Societies

• The Industrial Revolution began in the 18th century.
• In 1782, James Watt and Matthew Boulton created a steam engine that could do the work of 12 horses.
• Urban centres rose in prominence.
• Serfs and peasants, expelled from ancestral lands, sought factory jobs in cities, and urban populations grew increasingly diverse.
• Sociology was born during the 18th and 19th centuries, during the Industrial Revolution.

Post-Industrial Societies

• Postindustrial societies are also called information societies.
• They are based on the production of information and services.
• The introduction of new postindustrial technologies, like computers, at the end of the 20th century ended the industrial age.
• Much of social structure and ideas, like the nuclear family, left-right political divisions, and time standardization, have a basis in industrial society.

Post-Natural Society - The Anthropocene

• Advances in computing, genetics, nanotechnology, and quantum mechanics create conditions for society to overcome the limits imposed by nature via technological interventions at the molecular level.
• Transhumanism arises with technology improving upon nature, making life post-natural.
• The anthropocene - climate change leading to mass extinctions, is seen as a possible final stage for humanity.
• In the anthropocene, people become aware of the global nature of the catastrophic risks that human activities pose to the environment.

Theoretical Perspectives of Modern Society

• Durkheim and Functionalism focus was to understand the conditions under which social and moral cohesion could be reestablished.
• European societies of the 19th century had an unprecedented and fractious period of social change that threatened to dissolve society altogether.
• Modern societies grew more populated, complex, and difficult to regulate, so solidarity or unity within the social order needed to evolve.
• Social solidarity questions why societies hold together rather than fall apart.
• Two components of social solidarity in traditional, premodern societies: A common collective conscience with communal beliefs, morals and high levels of social integration as people perform similar tasks with shared values, language, and symbols.
• Mechanical solidarity is the minimal division of labour and shared collective consciousness with harsh punishment for deviation from norms.
• Such societies permitted a low degree of individual autonomy.
• When people do the same kind of work, they tend to think and act alike.
• Modern societies, were more complex, characterized by increasing diversity of experience and division of people into different occupations and specializations.
• Modern society was held together by organic solidarity; a complex system of interrelated parts working to maintain stability.
• The transition from mechanical to organic solidarity creates periods of chaos and "normlessness," or social anomie.
• Anomie is literally "without norms" – a situation in which society no longer has the support of a firm collective consciousness.

Karl Marx and Critical Sociology

• The creation of modern society was tied to the emergence of capitalism as a global economic system.
• Marx (1818-1883) observed that the conditions of labour became more and more exploitative.
• Large manufacturers of steel were particularly ruthless and their facilities were called "satanic mills".
• The underlying structure of societies and historical change stemmed from the relationship between the base and superstructure of societies.
• Society's economic structure is the base, and culture and social institutions form the superstructure.
• Economic mode of production determines society's culture, law, political system, family form, and class conflict.
• Each type of society is characterized by different economic bases, with different forms of economic struggle.
• A mode of production is defined as: The means of production of a society–anything used in production to meet needs, and the relations of production of a society–the division of society into economic classes.
• Different epochs have different forms of ownership and class structures: Hunter-gatherer (classless/common ownership), agricultural (citizens/slaves), feudal (lords/peasants), and capitalism (capitalists/"free" labourers).
• Societies have been divided into classes with opposed interests throughout history, and class antagonisms turn into revolutions.
• Rise of the bourgeoisie and the development of capitalism created the class of "free" wage labourers, or the proletariat.
• The proletariat came from guild workers and serfs who were freed from indentured labour in feudal guild and agricultural production and migrated to cities.

Marx's Concept of Alienation of Labour

• What individuals do defines who they are.
• Being "human" is defined by the capacity to transform the world to meet survival needs.
• At its core, humanity is Homo faber (“Man the Creator”).
• With industry and capitalism, workers now work for wages alone.
• Four specific types of alienation arises with development of wage labour under capitalism: Alienation from the product of one's labour, Alienation from the process of one's labour, Alienation from others, and Alienation from one's humanity.
• The modern working class does not rise up because of 'false consciousness'.
• False consciousness is a condition in which a person's beliefs and ideals are not in their own best interest but rather imposed by the dominant class.

Marx Weber and Interpretive Sociology

• Max Weber (1864–1920) was concerned with the changes taking place in Western society with capitalism.
• Like Marx and Durkheim, he feared that capitalist industrialization would have negative effects.
• Rationalization is the general tendency to transform institutions and most areas of life by applying principles of efficiency and calculation.
• Capitalism became possible through rationalization.
• Unlike Marx, Weber defined capitalism in terms of rational processes, not private property.
• Unlike Durkheim's functionalist emphasis on social solidarity and Marx's materialism based critical emphasis on class conflict, Weber's perspective on modern society is on the development of a rationalized worldview, or disenchantment of the world.
• The advent of scientific methods and enlightened reason meant the world was demystified, and theological and supernatural accounts were not plausible.
• Weber believed the culmination of industrialization and rationalization results in the iron cage, where individuals are trapped by systems of efficiency.
• Protestant work ethic was core to the modern ethos, prescribing self-discipline, work, wealth accumulation, self-restraint, delayed enjoyment, and sobriety.