Societies Past and Present

Thomas Burr is Associate Professor of Sociology at Illinois State University. As an undergraduate double major in Political Science and Latin American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, he became deeply interested in global issues. He followed this interest at San Francisco State University, where he earned an M.A. in International Relations with a thesis on the history of global political culture. At U.C. Davis he earned an M.A. in History and a Ph.D. in Sociology, specializing in comparative history and economic sociology, for which he researched how producers and consumers related in product markets, using the late nineteenth- and early twentieth‑century U.S. and French bicycle markets as a comparative case study. From this study he published articles on producer-consumer collaboration on market formation, market trajectories, market institutions, and product innovation. This research, and this book on global historical sociology, has required reading in economics, marketing, psychology, anthropology, and archaeology, and has therefore cultivated his strong interest in interdisciplinary historical social science. In addition to researching and teaching global sociology, he teaches economic development, popular culture, theory, and research methods. He is increasingly interested in historical methodology, especially the use of secondary historical sources. He lives in Normal, Illinois with his wife and daughter.

• Chapter 1. Introduction: Human Groups, Globalization, and the Long Run.- Chapter 2. Our Common Humanity: Hominin Evolution, the Reasonable Actor, and Groups.- Chapter 3. The First Globalization: Foraging Bands on the Global Human Frontier, 100,000-12,000 BP.- Chapter 4. The Agricultural Revolution: Group Diversification, Domestication, and Expansion, 33,000-7000 BP (31,000-5000 BP).- Chapter 5. The Urban Revolution I: Chiefdoms and Other Complex Societies, 6000-1000 BCE (8000-3000 BP).- Chapter 6. The Urban Revolution II: Consolidation and Expansion of Complexity in Agrarian States, Empires, and Civilizations, 3500 BCE-1450 CE.- Chapter 7. The Second Globalization: Industrial Revolution and Global Conquest, 1450s-1910s CE.- Chapter 8. Building a Global Society: Accelerating Globalization, 1910s-2010s.- Chapter 9. Social Patterns of Developed States: Industrial Capitalist Democracies, 1910s-2010s.- Chapter 10. Social Patterns of Developing States: Globalizing the Industrial Revolution, 1910s-2010s.- Chapter 11. Conclusion: The Future, Social Evolution, and Theorizing Humans.