We argue that globalization is a central feature of coupled human–environment systems or, as we call them, socio-ecological systems (SESs). In this article, we focus on the effects of globalization on the resilience, vulnerability, and adaptability of these systems. We begin with a brief discussion of key terms, arguing that socio-economic resilience regularly substitutes for biophysical resilience in SESs with consequences that are often unforeseen. A discussion of several mega-trends (e.g. the rise of mega-cities, the demand for hydrocarbons, the revolution in information technologies) underpins our argument. We then proceed to identify key analytical dimensions of globalization, including rising connectedness, increased speed, spatial stretching, and declining diversity. We show how each of these phenomena can cut both ways in terms of impacts on the resilience and vulnerability of SESs. A particularly important insight flowing from this analysis centers on the reversal of the usual conditions in which large-scale things are slow and durable while small-scale things are fast and ephemeral. The fact that SESs are reflexive can lead either to initiatives aimed at avoiding or mitigating the dangers of globalization or to positive feedback processes that intensify the impacts of globalization. In the concluding section, we argue for sustained empirical research regarding these concerns and make suggestions about ways to enhance the incentives for individual researchers to work on these matters.

/pdf/the-globalization-of-socio-ecological-systems-an-agenda-for-2u86599gbi.pdf

The globalization of socio-ecological systems: An agenda for scientific research

This volume is a collection of the most important essays written by Franz Boas on the science of anthropology. \"Franz Boas is the father of American anthropology and one of the founders of the field of modern anthropology. The book, \"Race, Language, and Culture,\" is a collection of some of his most important essays.\"-David Schneider, University of Chicago \"An exceptional book. Exceptional because it brings into one volume sixty-two papers written by the most influential figure in American anthropology. . . . Exceptional in that it exhibits the wide range of interests and scientific exactness which made it possible for one man to exert such a profound influence on the growing science of anthropology. . . . This is a volume every student of anthropology will wish to possess; it will also have a wide distribution among other students of the social sciences, and all interested in the problems of race.\"-Fay-Cooper Cole, \"American Anthropologist\

Race, Language and Culture.

This review covers two major causes of change in pastoral systems. First is fragmentation, the dissection of a natural system into spatially isolated parts, which is caused by a number of socioeconomic factors such as changes in land tenure, agriculture, sedentarization, and institutions. Second is climate change and climate variability, which are expected to alter dry and semiarid grasslands now and into the future. Details of these changes are described using examples from Africa and Mongolia. An adaptation framework is used to place global change in context. Although pastoral systems are clearly under numerous constraints and risks have intensified, pastoralists are adapting and trying to remain flexible. It is too early to ask if the responses are enough, given the magnitude and number of changes faced by pastoralists today.

Transitions: Pastoralists Living with Change

Publisher Summary This chapter provides an overview of evolutionary theory and archaeology. If evolution is taken to mean what it does in the sciences, it has yet to be systematically applied in either sociocultural anthropology or archaeology. There are reasons to believe that scientific evolution can be expanded to provide an explanatory framework for cultural phenomena. The applicability of evolutionary theory to archaeology is not established by a demonstration of its explanatory power for sociocultural phenomena. If it is to be used in archaeology, it must be rewritten in terms that have empirical representation in the archaeological record. Archaeological evolutionary theory will have to be constructed by deducing the consequences of evolutionary theory as employed in biology and as applicable to ethnographic data for artifacts, and their frequencies and distributions. Even so, a few aspects of the archaeological record, those not directly subject to selection, will require explanation in strictly cultural terms. It is clear that archaeologists want to obtain the kinds of explanations that only scientific evolution is able to provide.

Evolutionary Theory and Archaeology

Analyses of house-size distributions in the Old and New World showed that wealth disparities increased with the domestication of plants and animals and with increased sociopolitical scale. Beneath headlines about booms and busts and other economic disturbance lies a deeper problem: wealth inequality. But what is its history, and what are the larger social factors that determine the disparate distribution of wealth? Timothy Kohler and colleagues look at the evolution of inequality worldwide since the Neolithic era, around 11,000 years ago, using house size as a proxy for calculating the Gini coefficient, a measure of wealth inequality. The study shows that, as may be expected, wealth inequality has generally increased. Unexpectedly however, inequality increased far more in the Old World of Europe and Asia than in the New (North and Central America). Even in highly urban New World sites, house sizes are generally similar. There are no enormous palaces, which one expects in Old World urban contexts. The authors suggest that the inherent wealth provided by large domesticated animals could explain the imbalance. Horses, for example, allowed people to ride around acquiring wealth from others. How wealth is distributed among households provides insight into the fundamental characters of societies and the opportunities they afford for social mobility1,2. However, economic inequality has been hard to study in ancient societies for which we do not have written records3,4, which adds to the challenge of placing current wealth disparities into a long-term perspective. Although various archaeological proxies for wealth, such as burial goods5,6 or exotic or expensive-to-manufacture goods in household assemblages7, have been proposed, the first is not clearly connected with households, and the second is confounded by abandonment mode and other factors. As a result, numerous questions remain concerning the growth of wealth disparities, including their connection to the development of domesticated plants and animals and to increases in sociopolitical scale8. Here we show that wealth disparities generally increased with the domestication of plants and animals and with increased sociopolitical scale, using Gini coefficients computed over the single consistent proxy of house-size distributions. However, unexpected differences in the responses of societies to these factors in North America and Mesoamerica, and in Eurasia, became evident after the end of the Neolithic period. We argue that the generally higher wealth disparities identified in post-Neolithic Eurasia were initially due to the greater availability of large mammals that could be domesticated, because they allowed more profitable agricultural extensification9, and also eventually led to the development of a mounted warrior elite able to expand polities (political units that cohere via identity, ability to mobilize resources, or governance) to sizes that were not possible in North America and Mesoamerica before the arrival of Europeans10,11. We anticipate that this analysis will stimulate other work to enlarge this sample to include societies in South America, Africa, South Asia and Oceania that were under-sampled or not included in this study.

/pdf/greater-post-neolithic-wealth-disparities-in-eurasia-than-in-4854oul90n.pdf

Greater post-Neolithic wealth disparities in Eurasia than in North America and Mesoamerica

https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1525/aa.1950.52.4.02a00080

The Science of Culture: A Study of Man and Civilization

https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1525/aa.1944.46.1.02a00030

On the concept of culture and some cultural fallacies1

https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1525/aa.1946.48.4.02a00030

The concept of cultural crisis.

https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1525/aa.1947.49.3.02a00010

Human nature and the cultural process.

CULTURAL evolutionists speak as if there were a mythopoeic or mythmaking stage of human thought in which primitive peoples have been living for untold ages. There is general agreement among ethnologists that myths deal with a supersensuous, preternatural or "supernatural" sphere of reality and refer to some prehistoric time. On this assumption myths have been defined as "stories of anonymous origin, prevalent among primitive peoples and by them accepted as true, concerning supernatural beings and events, or natural beings and events influenced by supernatural agencies."2 According to Tylor, "First and foremost among the causes which transfigure into myths the facts of daily experience, is the belief in the animation of all nature rising at its highest pitch to personification."3 Tylor, however, explicitly recognized the relativity of myth to one's criterion of possibility and noted that "The ordinary standards of possibility, as applied to the credibility of tradition, have indeed changed vastly in the course of culture through its savage, barbaric and civilized stages."4 He drew attention to the fact that the doctrine of miracles commonly accepted in the Middle Ages became, as it were, a bridge along which mythology travelled from the lower into the higher culture. "Principles of myth-formation, belonging properly to the mental state of the savage, were by its aid continued in strong action in the civilized world."5 The real mainspring of myth in all ages, Tylor maintained, has been the "pragmatizer," who, through his incapacity to hold abstract ideas, is forced to embody them in material incidents and to clothe every thought in concrete shape.6 He believed, however, that the growth of myth had been checked by science and that myth was, therefore, to be considered as primitive ethnology expressed in poetic form. 7 Similarly Wundt,8 following Vico, maintained that there has been an evolution of myth corresponding to the main stages of cultural development. Parallel to the Totemic Age he postulates the m~irchen-myth, a narrative resembling the fairy tale, which centers about magical agencies, demons and gods. In the following Heroic Age, myths arise which deal with the exploits of culture heroes, who, though aided by magic and supernatural agencies, are

https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1525/aa.1950.52.1.02a00030

The Concept of Myth and the Problem of Psychocultural Evolution1

Handle everyday research tasks with reliable, citation-backed results

Your personal Research Agent to handle research tasks with citation-backed results

Popular Tasks used by Researchers

How can I help with your research?

Meet SciSpace

Get more enhanced response by uploading the PDFs you want me to reference.

No relevant PDFs in your library

SciSpace is the AI research assistant for academics. Run systematic literature reviews on 280M+ papers, and write papers with cited sources. Trusted by 1M+ students, PhDs & researchers.

SciSpace | AI for Research

Analyze PDFs

Code & Manuscripts

Funding & Grants

Literature & Patents

Medical & Clinical Data

Systematic Review

Visualize & Present

Web & Data

Build a Google Scholar-like website for your research.

Build a website

Create charts and images for your research

Create a Chart

Write a paper for submission to a journal

Draft a manuscript

Patent Search

Design eye-catching scientific posters in minutes.

Scientific Poster Generation

Systematic Literature Review

One task is running at the moment. Your messages will be shown right after.

Drag and drop or click here to browse

Loved by <highlight>1 million+</highlight> researchers

Extract a list of specific topics and their sources from unstructured text

Topics

Compare and analyze relevant papers that matches with your search

Papers

Get insights from PDFs and bookmarked papers from your library

My library

Recent searches

Try searching for:

Catch AI-generated content in scholarly and non-scholarly content

{ai} Detector

Ai Writer

Get PDF Summaries, highlighted text explanations 

Chat with PDF

Effortlessly create in-text citations and bibliographies in APA and 2,500 other formats

Citation generator

Get explanations, summaries, and answers on academic papers

Ease up your research workflow with {scispace}'s cohort of exciting AI tools

Elevate your academic writing skills and convey your ideas the way you want

Paraphraser

Explore our range of reading and writing tools

Your file is being prepared and should be ready in a few minutes. If it's a large file, it might take a bit longer. You can close this window, and we'll email you the file when it's done.

You have reached a maximum limit of <strong>{limit}</strong> columns in the table. Remove at least <strong>1</strong> column to add or create another one.

David Bidney

Author Tools

Chat about Author