Social Transformations

A General Theory of Historical Development

By (author) Stephen K. Sanderson

Publication date:

28 May 1999

Length of book:

496 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9780847691876

In Social Transformations: A General Theory of Historical Development Stephen K. Sanderson develops a general theory of social evolution and uses it to explain the most important evolutionary transformations in human history and prehistory. In this expanded edition Sanderson has added a discussion of the biological constraints acting on humans that have helped to push social evolution along strikingly similar lines throughout the world. The new discussion places the theoretical arguments of Social Transformations in the context of an even more comprehensive theory of human social behavior.

Chapter 1 Evolutionary Material: A General Theory of Historical Development
Chapter 2 The Neolithic Revolution
Chapter 3 The Origin of Civilization and the State
Chapter 4 Agrarian States and their Evolutionary Dynamics
Chapter 5 The Capitalist Revolution and the Beginnings of the Modern World
Chapter 6 The Evolution of the Modern World, I: The Expanding and Evolving Modern World-System
Chapter 7 The Evolution of the Modern World, II: The Emergence of the Institutions of Modernity
Chapter 8 The Question of Progress
Chapter 9 The Evolving Future
Chapter 10 Theoretical Reprise

Among much interesting recent work in historical sociology there has been nothing more ambitious than this book by sociologist Stephen Sanderson. . . . Whatever the future of 'evolutionary materialism' may be, Sanderson has done much to justify the enterprise of historical sociology and his work can be recommended without reserve to both sociologists and historians.