Anthropology and Global History: From Tribes to the Modern World-System

by Robert M. Carmack State University of New York at Albany

Overview

Anthropology and Global History explains the origin and development of human societies and cultures from their earliest beginnings to the present—utilizing an anthropological lens but also drawing from sociology, economics, political science, history, and ecological and religious studies.

Carmack reconceptualizes world history from a global perspective by employing the expansive concepts of “world-systems” and “civilizations,” and by paying deeper attention to the role of tribal and native peoples within this history. Rather than concentrating on the minute details of specific great events in global history, he shifts our focus to the broad social and cultural contexts in which they occurred. Carmack traces the emergence of ancient kingdoms and the characteristics of pre-modern empires as well as the processes by which the modern world has become integrated and transformed. The book addresses Western civilization as well as comparative processes which have unfolded in Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africa. Vignettes opening each chapter and case studies integrated throughout the text illustrate the numerous and often extremely complex historical processes which have operated through time and across local, regional, and global settings.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780759123908
Publisher:	AltaMira Press
Publication date:	10/11/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	390
File size:	17 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Robert M. Carmack is professor emeritus of Anthropology, University at Albany. He has authored or edited thirty books in his long career and specializes in anthropology and archaeology of the indigenous of Central America, particularly the Mayas.

Table of Contents

Contents
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1 DEFINING WORLD-SYSTEMS AND CIVILIZATIONS
Vignette: A World-System and Civilization Framework for Understanding the 9/11 Twin Towers Attack
Conceptualizing World-Systems
Case Study 1: Construction of a Hydroelectric dam in a Peripheral Costa Rican Community
Conceptualizing Civilizations
Case Study 2: Wilkinson’s Argument that “Civilizations are World Systems”

CHAPTER 2 HISTORY OF TRIBAL SOCIETIES AND CULTURES
Vignette: First Contacts with the Papuan Tribal Peoples of New Guinea
Historical Overview of Tribal Societies and Cultures
Pre-Historic Transformation from Bands to Tribes
Case Study 3: Yanomami Tribal Peoples
Historical Emergence of Tribal Chiefdoms
Case Study 4: Powhatan Chiefdom
Contemporary “Tribal Nations” (Australian Aborigines, Waziristan Pashtun Tribes, Garifuna)

CHAPTER 3 HISTORY OF ANCIENT TRIBUTARY SOCIETIES AND CULTURES
Vignette: Understanding an Ancient Cuneiform Tablet from Mesopotamia
Historical Overview of the Ancient Eurasian Tributary Societies and Cultures
Ancient Fertile Crescent (Mesopotamia, Egypt and Northeast Africa, Persia)
Case Study 5: Emergence of Ancient Israel and Judaism
Ancient Asia (China, India)
Ancient Europe (Greece, Rome)
Case Study 6: Samir Amin's Perspective on the Ancient Network of Eurasian World-Systems and Classic Civilizations

CHAPTER 4 HISTORY OF LATE PRE-MODERN TRIBUTARY SOCIETIES AND CULTURES
Vignette: Mohammed the Messenger, Founder of an Islamic State and Religion
Historical Overview of Late Pre-Modern Eurasian Societies and Cultures
Imperial Core Powers of the Late Pre-Modern Eurasian World-System (Islamic, Chinese, and Byzantine empires)
Case Study 7: Mediating Role of India within the Thirteenth-Century Eurasian Trade Network
Feudal Peripheries of the Late Pre-Modern Eurasian World-System (Western Europe, Japan)
Case Study 8: Russia, from Feudalism to Empire
Late Pre-Modern "Outer Peripheral" and "Frontier" States (Sub-Sahara African States,Late Pre-Modern New World "Frontier" States)
Case Study 9: Quetzalcoatl, a Mesoamerican Frontier Culture Hero

CHAPTER 5 HISTORY OF THE MODERN WORLD-SYSTEM AND ITS "OCCIDENTAL" CIVILIZATION
Vignette: Queen Elizabeth at the Dawn of the Modern Era
Defining "Occidentalism"
Modern World-System and Its Western Core Powers
Case Study 10: U.S. rise to World-System Hegemony
Western Civilization and Its Impact on the Modern World-System
Modern World-System Periphery and Resistance to the Western Core Powers
Case Study 11: Occidentalism and Resistance through Heroic Suicide

CHAPTER 6 HISTORY OF THE MODERN WORLD-SYSTEM AND ITS "ORIENTAL" CIVILIZATIONS
Vignette: Empress Dowager Cixi and Xuan Tong (Pu Yi), the Last Chinese Emperor
Defining "Orientalism"
Asia in the Context of the Modern World-System Periphery (China, Japan)
Case Study 12: The Changing Role of Caste in Modern India
Middle East in the Context of the Modern World-System Periphery
Case Study 13: Iraq and the Saddam Hussein Wars

CHAPTER 7 HISTORY OF THE MODERN WORLD-SYSTEM AND ITS "POST-COLONIAL" CIVILIZATIONS
Vignette: Initial Encounter between Spanish Colonizers and the Inka
Defining "Post-Colonialism"
Latin America in the Context of the Modern World-System Periphery
Case Study 14: The Virgin of Guadalupe Cult, a Post-colonial Mexican Legacy
Sub-Sahara Africa in the Context of the Modern World-System Periphery
Case Study 15: Post-Colonial Symbolism and Indigenous Leaders in Modern South Africa

CHAPTER 8 HISTORICAL ROUTES TO MODERNIZATION WITHIN THE MODERN WORLD-SYSTEM: DEVELOPMENT AND REVOLUTION
Vignette: Robespierre and the French Revolution
Modernization through Development
Case Study 16: Development in Turkey
Modernization through Revolution
Case Study 17: Revolution in Nicaragua
Failed Development, Failed Revolution
Case Study 18: Rwanda's Failed Development and Failed Revolution

CHAPTER 9 HISTORY OF POST-MODERNIZATION AND THE FUTURE OF THE MODERN WORLD-SYSTEM AND ITS CIVILIZATIONS
Vignette: McWorld vs. Jihad
Defining the "Post-Modernization
Case Study 19: U.S. Modernism Versus European Post-Modernism
Defining the "Postmodern" Perspective
Case Study 20: Michele Foucault, a Pioneer Postmodernist
Competing Perspectives on the Future of the Modern World (Postmodern, Social History, Anthropological, World-System, and Civilizations)

Summary and Conclusions
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
About the Author

Editorial Reviews

Anthropologist Carmack provides an overview of global history intertwined with a discussion of scholarly attempts to conceptualize historical change. He employs what he calls a 'global-oriented world-system and civilization framework.' Summarizing the work of scholars including Immanuel Wallerstein (especially), Eric Wolf, Samuel Huntington, Benjamin Barber, and others, he explores how a 'world-systems' framework enhances understanding of historical change in 'civilizations' across the world; in particular, understanding why actors within them pursue liberal developmentalist or radical revolutionary agendas. .. [T]he book provides a helpful introduction to many critical ideas.. . .[T]hose trying to grapple with and conceptualize the 'big picture' will find much of value in the book's theoretical summaries, definitions, and vignettes. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

Choice Reviews

Carmack sees the rise of the West as part of a historical progression beginning with tribal societies and continuing to today’s world of global conflicts. To read this invaluable book is to understand the stages of history over time and within their various geographic, cultural, and religious frameworks; it is to understand the rise of civilizations over the entire sweep of history, progressing from tribal societies to today’s world of global conflicts; and it is to ponder the problems and prospects of the future.

Warren Roberts

Anthropology and Global History is impressive in its breadth and depth, concise enough to hold the reader’s attention, and thorough enough to provide a rich sense of the major scholars and critics of World System theory as well as the history and anthropology of various world regions. Students and scholars alike will appreciate this excellent synthesis of the history of aboriginal peoples the world over—not to mention Carmack’s lively and engaging writing.

David Carey Jr.

Anthropology and Global History is a grand overview of human history and prehistory and a welcomed interdisciplinary contribution to the literature on world civilizations. The anthropological perspective means carefully viewing all societies and cultures in their own terms, showing how peoples in radically different societies and cultures understand their own systems and discussing how they fit within the larger world system. I am pleased that Carmack specifically includes well-informed accounts of the tribal world and highlights indigenous peoples as active agents in the contemporary world. Carmack also draws on his authoritative knowledge of Mesoamerican and Andean archaeology and ethnohistory. The world systems framework organizes the book, but he does not accept it uncritically, instead he contrasts world systems interpretations with multiple competing perspectives. The opening vignettes and case studies in each chapter give colorful details that add life to the illuminating theoretical interpretations and explanations of how the contemporary world operates and what its future might be.

John H. Bodley

A fascinating and ambitious book! I applaud Carmack’s conscientious presentation of macro-historical concepts, and his engaging use of illustrative vignettes and case studies. This text imparts a valuable interdisciplinary and historical perspective on our global cultural heritage and contemporary global challenges.

Jim Weil

Anthropology and World History is a cross-disciplinary work that may be of interest to historians, political scientists, economists, and geographers, as well as anthropologists…. There are very few anthropologists who have the ability (or the desire) to do this kind of work, and the breadth of knowledge required is formidable…. Anthropology and World History is, by turns, ambitious, engaging, and challenging. Carmack raises many important issues, resolving some while allowing others to percolate. This kind of global comparative history is not in vogue in much of cultural anthropology today. Many cultural anthropologists prefer micro-analytic ethnographic approaches to macro-historical comparative approaches. Carmack sees these two approaches as compatible rather than mutually exclusive. In arguing for global history, he reminds anthropologists of the larger questions that have animated the discipline from its beginnings. Who are we? Where did we come from? And where are we going?

Asian Ethnology

Robert Carmack's Anthropology and Global History is a masterful synthesis of the human condition across the grand sweep of time and space, from ancient tribal societies and empires to recent nation-states. By integrating "world-system" and "civilization" approaches to history, he creatively charts a complex ebb and flow of societal interactions, conflicts, expansion, colonization and exploitation on a global stage. These dynamics are richly illustrated by and interpreted from the vantage point of the diversity of cultural traditions known to anthropology. Works of this commanding scope and insight rarely come along. Carmack's book is certain to impact the field for years to come.

Robert Jarvenpa

Anthropology and Global History is impressive in its breadth and depth, concise enough to hold the reader’s attention, and thorough enough to provide a rich sense of the major scholars and critics of World System theory as well as the history and anthropology of various world regions. Students and scholars alike will appreciate this excellent synthesis of the history of aboriginal peoples the world over—not to mention Carmack’s lively and engaging writing.

David Carey

Anthropologist Carmack provides an overview of global history intertwined with a discussion of scholarly attempts to conceptualize historical change. He employs what he calls a 'global-oriented world-system and civilization framework.' Summarizing the work of scholars including Immanuel Wallerstein (especially), Eric Wolf, Samuel Huntington, Benjamin Barber, and others, he explores how a 'world-systems' framework enhances understanding of historical change in 'civilizations' across the world; in particular, understanding why actors within them pursue liberal developmentalist or radical revolutionary agendas. .. [T]he book provides a helpful introduction to many critical ideas.. . .[T]hose trying to grapple with and conceptualize the 'big picture' will find much of value in the book's theoretical summaries, definitions, and vignettes. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

Choice

Anthropologist Carmack provides an overview of global history intertwined with a discussion of scholarly attempts to conceptualize historical change. He employs what he calls a 'global-oriented world-system and civilization framework.' Summarizing the work of scholars including Immanuel Wallerstein (especially), Eric Wolf, Samuel Huntington, Benjamin Barber, and others, he explores how a 'world-systems' framework enhances understanding of historical change in 'civilizations' across the world; in particular, understanding why actors within them pursue liberal developmentalist or radical revolutionary agendas. .. [T]he book provides a helpful introduction to many critical ideas.. . .[T]hose trying to grapple with and conceptualize the 'big picture' will find much of value in the book's theoretical summaries, definitions, and vignettes. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

CHOICE