scholarly journals How competition drove social complexity: the role of war in the emergence of States, both ancient and modern

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 728-745
Author(s):  
EDUARDO ALBERTO CRESPO ◽  
TIAGO NASSER APPEL
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Complex Societies ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
The West ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Multilevel Selection Theory ◽  
Great Divergence ◽  
Cultural Traits

ABSTRACT The origin of human ultrasociality - the ability to cooperate in huge groups of genetically unrelated individuals - has long interested evolutionary and social theorists. In this article, we use cultural group or multilevel selection theory to explain how cultural traits needed to sustain large-scale complex societies necessarily arose as a result of competition among cultural groups. We apply the theory at two key particular junctures: (i) the emergence of the first States and hierarchical societies, and (ii) the Rise of Modern Nation-States and the associated Great Divergence in incomes between the West and the “Rest” that began in the eighteenth century.

scholarly journals The co-development of agriculture and flood–related problems in the parishes of Högsby and Mörlunda, Sweden, 1600–1800

Water History ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oscar Jacobsson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Agricultural Development ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Water Rights ◽  
Risk Exposure ◽  
General Level ◽  
Arable Crops ◽  
Vital Resource

AbstractThis paper analyses the development of flood related problems in two parishes in southeastern Sweden—Högsby and Mörlunda—during the period 1500–1800. The questions asked concern the role of the larger development of the agricultural production in the expansion of flooding problems during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and also investigates how this relationship was perceived by the local inhabitants. This is done through an analysis of the development of agriculture in the area using historical maps, combined with a study of written source material such as parish records and court protocols. The river Emån which flows through these parishes had long been a vital resource in the cattle–based economy of the studied parishes. This relationship turned more problematic by the turn of the eighteenth century due to the introduction of autumn rye into the agricultural scheme, prolonging the period of flood risk exposure for the arable crops. Combined with arable field expansion during the eighteenth century, this increased the sensitivity of agriculture to flooding. This development was not apparent in the discourse of the local inhabitants by the end of the eighteenth century, who instead interpreted increasing flooding problems in relation to existing water rights principles. These emphasized the more direct effects of human and natural obstructions in the river channel. The limits of historical memory as well as the necessities of agricultural development colored the local interpretation. Such processes on a general level were also closely inter–linked with the large–scale institutional changes of the period.

scholarly journals Conflicting Perspectives on the “Migrant Crisis” in the Horn of Africa

2018 ◽  
pp. 228-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
John R. Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Action Plan ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Horn Of Africa ◽  
Apparent Paradox ◽  
Population Displacement ◽  
Nation States ◽  
And Migration

In sharp contrast to the sense of a “migrant crisis” which prevails in Europe, nation states in the Horn of Africa understand migration, including state-induced population displacement, as unexceptional. The chapter addresses this apparent paradox by contrasting European policy discourse on migration with the long-term political and structural processes in northeastern Africa that cause population displacement and migration. The chapter then examines the migration policies of governments in the Horn and concludes by arguing that the European Union misrepresents and misunderstands the factors responsible for large-scale migration and the role of states in exploiting migrants. For these reasons it is highly unlikely that the EU-Horn of Africa Action Plan/Khartoum process will bring about better border management policies and practices.

scholarly journals About the Role of the Northern Branch Value in the Great Silk Road

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muratbek Kozhobekov
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Practical Importance ◽  
Silk Road ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
The West ◽  
Material Wealth ◽  
Large Scale Project ◽  
Northern Branch

The Great Silk Road for many centuries served as a connecting element between the cultures of East and West and on informative and communicative patency was a unique invention of world civilization. Not only the material wealth, but the cultural values of the East and the West, were carried along the Great Silk Road. In this regard, the study of the participation of Kyrgyz in this large-scale project of humanity, is of great scientific and practical importance. Despite the remoteness of the Kyrgyz Kaganate from the main path, the Kyrgyz actively participated not only in trade but also in cultural relations of the Eurasian subcontinent. According to the information of the eastern authors, the Kyrgyz had close trade and political ties with many countries of the East and Central Asia.

Next-generation Gulf monarchs will set new rules

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Energy Transition ◽  
Gulf Cooperation Council ◽  
Current Line ◽  
Economic Diversification ◽  
The West ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Gcc Countries ◽  
Social Liberalism

Significance This brings in different perspectives on issues such as economic diversification, social liberalism, Israel and the role of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Impacts Longstanding fears of family splits over the succession could persist in Kuwait and potentially Saudi Arabia. The GCC will become even less significant, lacking any economic, infrastructural or security role. Large-scale ‘giga-projects’ raise concerns that vanity is outweighing viability. The prospect of receding support from GCC countries could undermine entrenched elites in both the West Bank and Beirut. The upcoming ‘energy transition’ will face the current line-up of rulers with a unprecedented economic crisis in the coming years.

Crystal River and the Archaeology of Early Village Societies in the American Southeast (and Beyond)

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Thomas J. Pluckhahn ◽  
Victor D. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Public Works ◽  
Complex Societies ◽  
The People ◽  
Hunting And Gathering ◽  
The World ◽  
American Southeast ◽  
Crystal River ◽  
Village Societies

In the archaeology of the American Southeast, the Woodland period (from around 1000 B.C. to A.D. 1050) is not conventionally understood as an interval marked by significant “firsts.” But it was marked by a dramatic change in the way people related to one another, as indicated by the earliest widespread appearance of sedentary villages, often associated with large-scale public works like mounds of earth and shell. Crystal River and Roberts Island are examples of these “early villages,” a term archaeologists have used to describe similar societies around the world, typically in reference to societies making a transition from hunting and gathering to farming. However, the people of Crystal River and Roberts Island faced many of the same social and ecological pressures. Early villages are important for what they can tell us about the role of cooperation, collective action, and conflict in the historical process and development of larger and more complex societies.

Changing fortunes on the Aran Islands in the 1890s

1991 ◽  
Vol 27 (107) ◽  
pp. 237-249
Author(s):  
Brian Harvey
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Condition ◽  
The West ◽  
Agricultural Prices ◽  
Western Economy ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Rural Industries ◽  
Aran Islands

By the turn of the twentieth century the west of Ireland had become a geographical expression synonymous with poverty and destitution. Whilst in the eighteenth century Connacht was regarded as inaccessible, it was not considered to be overpopulated, hungry or poverty-stricken. Its economic and social condition began to change for the worse in the nineteenth century. From 1816-17 onwards the western seaboard was affected more and more severely by a series of famines and localised distress and typhus. Hardship on the islands off Mayo and Galway was so severe in 1822-3 that London philanthropists set up a committee to launch a large-scale relief programme. The committee blamed the distress on potato failure, ‘want of employment’, high rents and low agricultural prices.The deterioration in economic and social conditions is considered to have been exacerbated by the equalisation of the currencies of, and the removal of tariffs between, Ireland and Great Britain in the mid 1820s. Some rural industries, like textiles, glass and kelp-production, were wiped out. The resistance of the western economy to natural disaster was thereby severely weakened. The western isles were hit badly by the distress of 1835 and even more so by the Great Famine ten years later. Rents remained high whilst incomes fell.

Difference Unveiled: Bulgarian National Imperatives and the Re-dressing of Muslim Women, 1878-1989

1997 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Neuburger
Keyword(s):  
European Society ◽  
Muslim Women ◽  
Large Degree ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
National Identities ◽  
The West ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Veil

Recent scholarship has poignantly argued that the founding of modern “Western” nation-states is to a large degree a product of their drawn out colonial encounters with “the East.” It is convincingly argued that “the West” constructed its own self-assured, national and supra-national identities in the process of “discovering” and “inventing” the exotic yet inferior “East.” Furthermore, a diverse body of scholarship has delineated the central role of discourses on gender and sexuality in the development of Western societies and, in particular, nation-states. If the image of “pious mother” became key to Western national self-images, it was the counter-image of the women of the harem—veiled, oppressed, and mysterious—that typified representations of Eastern barbarism. Furthermore, Western economic and political penetration of its colonies was to a large degree justified by the “gendering” of the “irrational Orient” versus the “rational Occident.” The “liberation” of Islamic women from their “oppression” as typified by the veil became central to Western “civilizing” missions, which had far-reaching echoes on the frontiers of European society.

Interracial Outposts in Siberia: Nerchinsk, Kiakhta, and the Russo-Chinese Trade in the Seventeenth/Eighteenth Centuries

2000 ◽  
Vol 4 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 322-336 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva-Maria Stolberg
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Far East ◽  
The West ◽  
Multiethnic Identity ◽  
Peter The Great ◽  
The Far East ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
Border Trade ◽  
Chinese Trade

AbstractThis essay underlines the essential role of Russo-Chinese border trade in the creation of the multiethnic identity of Siberian outposts such as Nerchinsk and Kiakhta. In the seventeenth/early eighteenth century-under Tsar Peter the Great-Siberia became a meeting place for Russian, Central Asian and Chinese cultures. Furthermore, the Russo-Chinese trade was an important parameter of European economic expansion. Europe and the Far East met territorially only along the Eurasian frontier between Siberia and the Manchu Empire. Profitable trade, however, experienced a severe decline in the 1720s. Peter I's rigid fiscal policy choked off private initiative and prevented Siberia from becoming a major commercial entrepot between the West and East.

Forest history and the Great Divergence: China, Japan, and the West compared

2009 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-404 ◽  
Author(s):  
Osamu Saito
Keyword(s):  
Forest Cover ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Population Increase ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Great Divergence ◽  
East West

AbstractThis article surveys changing interrelationships between humans and the earth's forest cover over the past few centuries. The focus is on the interplay between population increase, deforestation, and afforestation at both ends of Eurasia. Through the consideration of long-term changes in population and woodland area, Japan is compared with Lingnan in south China, and the East Asians with two European countries, England and France. Based on East–West comparisons and also on somewhat more detailed intra-Asian comparisons with respect to market linkages and the role of the state, the article examines the proposition made by Kenneth Pomeranz that, although both ends of Eurasia were ecologically constrained at the end of the early modern period, East Asia's pressure on forest resources was ‘probably not much worse’ than that in the West.

scholarly journals “Cursed is the ground because of you”:

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Jordan ◽  
Marco Guerzoni
Keyword(s):  
Diffusion Of Innovation ◽  
Household Survey ◽  
Cultural Environment ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
Multivariate Survival ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
Cultural Traits ◽  
Multivariate Survival Model ◽  
Probability Of Adoption

AbstractThis paper analyses culture as a determinant of technology adoption in a developing country. While the literature discusses the influence of culture upon economic growth, little attention has been paid to the mechanisms at the micro level. Therefore, we postulate that culture plays a crucial role in hindering or fostering the diffusion of innovation, a key trigger of the engine of growth. This empirical study uses the Ethiopia Rural Household Survey to disentangle between individual cultural traits, namely, ethnicity and religion, and the cultural homogeneity of the environment as co-determinants of fertiliser adoption. To examine our hypotheses, we apply a multivariate survival model for clustered and correlated observations to account for time and location effects. The results reveal significant differences in the probability of adopting fertiliser among cultural groups. Moreover, habits and social norms, proxied by ethnicity, provide a better explanation for the role of culture, than religious beliefs, as usually posited in the literature. Also, the cultural environment turns out tobe a decisive trigger. The probability of adoption is higher in rural societies with a homogeneous ethnic environment but distinct religious variety.

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