The First Institutional Spheres in Human Societies

Evolution and Adaptations from Foraging to the Threshold of Modernity

By: Seth Abrutyn, Jonathan H. Turner

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Paperback | 16 March 2022

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484 Pages

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22.86 x 15.24 x 2.46

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Few concepts are as central to sociology as institutions. Yet, like so many sociological concepts, institutions remain vaguely defined. This book expands a foundational definition of the institution, one which locates them as the basic building blocks of human societies - as structural and cultural machines for survival that make it possible to pass precious knowledge from one generation to the next, ensuring the survival of our species. The book extends this classic tradition by, first, applying advances in biological evolution, neuroscience, and primatology to explain the origins of human societies and, in particular, the first institutional sphere: kinship. The authors incorporate insights from natural sciences often marginalized in sociology, while highlighting the limitations of purely biogenetic, Darwinian explanations. Secondly, they build a vivid conceptual model of institutions and their central dynamics as the book charts the chronological evolution of kinship, polity, religion, law, and economy, discussing the biological evidence for the ubiquity of these institutions as evolutionary adaptations themselves.

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A bold departure from the current fragmented vision of social organization that characterizes most of the field of sociology, The First Institutional Spheres in Human Societies' breadth and depth is rarely paralleled except for in the authors' previous work. This book holds the potential to be a discipline-influencing book. Abrutyn and Turner tell the story of the emergence of institutions, in all of its complexity, to shed light on how this level of social organization emerged and how this level of social organization works. They detail how biology and social organization interact to generate the emergence of human institutions. Their historical approach to the phenomenon gives us a particular sort of insight that we could not get by only looking at current instantiations of institutions.

Erika Summers-Effler, Notre Dame University

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