Changing Social Institutions
Julian Steward
Steward suggested that at the core of the urban transformation was a changing, functionally interrelated group of social institutions that accompanied population growth
Steward believed that the core was characterized by the structural relationships of interdependent institutions and that each society derives its distinctive set of social systems from its institutional core. Steward believed the you needed to investigate each society in terms of its "level of sociopolitical complexity." He saw the rise of civilization as a series of successive, major organizational levels.
1) Hunting and gathering
2) Incipient agriculture
3) Formative
4) Regional florescence
5) Initial Conquest
6) Dark Ages
7) Cyclical conquests
Steward suggested that irrigation works and water distribution required the growth of a bureaucracy along with a rise of ruling class, leisure time, and population; this in turn led society as population pressure rose toward competition and warfare. Steward saw the end result as cultural collapse and "dark ages". Steward also envisioned that any militaristic phase led to the emergence of stonger states that controlled through power.
Adams viewed causation and structure of civilization from a multifaceted perspective. He stated that evidence supports the position that "the transformation at the core of the Urban Revolution lay in the realm of social organization... For the most part, changes in social institutions precipitated changes in technology, subsistence, and other aspects of the wider cultural realm, rather than vice versa." The "Urban Revolution" implied focus on ordered, systematic processes of change that could be described in terms of a functionally related core of institutions that interacted and evolved.
He attempted to avoid the term civilization by investigating the complex core of social institutions that interacted to form early state society. His model does not favor single-factor explanations, but emphasizes complexity and systemic relationships. He envisioned three major transformations: the first two led to urban centers that were controlled by a religious elite and the third resulted in growth of secular state authority.
The first transformation involved changes in subsistence strategies. He believed that a combination of cultivated crops and herd animals or fishing yielded a stable food base that allowed the population to increase in size and density. Exchange and redistribution of food was managed by members of the temple community, and growth of this centralized means of redistribution giving the temple elite the power to coerce farmers or herders into producing surpluses. What limited food production was not land but the availability of water. Natural water courses and small-scale irrigation works allowed only a part of the available land to be adequately irrigated. Even areas that were irrigated were not equally productive. As a result, differential in productivity emerged. Those who controlled land close to the natural courses of the river were able to produce more crops and to produce them even in years of low precipitation. This led to major differentiation of wealth among farmers, which was compounded by their ability to buy additional irrigable land. Differential access to water was the first step in the emergence of class society.
The second major transformation involved a shift from kin-based to class-structured society. Kinship was the basis for organizational structure in early Mesopotamian society and such ties were influential in early administrative efforts. Economic division of subsistence activities and craft production led to specialization by family in one or more economic pursuits. Wealth accumulated by controlling good land and by managing the distribution of its products resulted in the acquisition by a few families of great wealth and power. These families attempted to retain their wealth and power by advocating an organizational structure that institutionalized the differences that were emerging. The structure would have been largely based on economic activities connected with a person's lineage. Adams believed the religious elite would have formed upper strata of society as a result of their ability to control wealth beyond that accumulating at the family level.
The third major transformation involved the transfer of administrative power from the temple to the state. Adams believed this happened largely because of increasing militarism stemming from internal and external competitive pressures.