Human Institutions: A Theory of Societal Evolution

Human Institutions: A Theory of Societal Evolution
ISBN-10
0585463840
ISBN-13
9780585463841
Category
Social Science
Pages
323
Language
English
Published
2004-09-01
Publisher
Rowman & Littlefield
Author
Jonathan H. Turner

Description

In recent years 'the New Institutionalism' has focused more on organizations in their social and cultural environments than on societal-level institutional systems. Thus, missing from these studies has been a larger sociological analysis of institutions, per se. In his newest book, leading social theorist Jonathan H. Turner offers a creative, richly grounded reinterpretation of social evolution. He ressurrects a level of analysis undertaken by earlier functionalist theorists, but with a new-found emphasis—that of discovering the larger forces driving the formation of human institutional systems. Only by exploring the larger macro-dynamics can the institutions of economy, kinship, religion, polity, law, and education be fully understood, as Turner persuasively shows in this magesterial explication of twenty millenia of human social life.

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