Integral Bibliography of the Evolution of Society and Social Systems

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unedited draft of a bibliographic project undertaken in 2006

Bibliography

THIRD QUADRANT: THE EVOLUTION OF THE SOCIAL SYSTEM

(the inter-objective organisation of society)

table of contents part three, sub-part 1 - systems


- 3.1 introduction: generalities on systems and their evolution 3 1. SYSTEMS (AND SYSTEMS THINKING) 3 2. EVOLUTION 7 3. THE SCIENCES AND THEIR EVOLUTION 9 - 3.2 The evolution of the world system (history of the world) 10 1. UNDERSTANDING THE DYNAMICS OF HISTORY 10 2. PROGRESS, DECLINE, CATASTROPHISM, AND CIVILISATIONS 16 3. HISTORY OF THE WORLD: EVOLUTION IN TIME 20 4. GLOBAL FUTURES 30 5. REGIONAL HISTORIES 35

bibliography


HOW TO READ ABOUT SYSTEMS?

You are now entering what is the bottom-right quadrant of Wilber’s AQAL system which concerns observable systems that govern the interconnected objects in the material, living and human worlds.

We start with generalities about the workings of the systems governing the material and human world, starting with systems theory as such. We distinguish premodern phases, governed by the ideas of a “great chain of being”; modern phases, where we place cybernetics, systems theory, and modern wholism; and postmodern conceptions such as autopoiesis and the new theories concerning chaotic and complex behaviour. Next we examine the nature of the laws of evolution, that other great set of laws governing the world of matter, life, and culture, and we mention both the scientific doctrine, and the encompassing integral versions which attempt to view evolution in a non-reductionist manner. Finally, in a as yet underdeveloped section, we will mention how the sciences themselves have evolved. We have already listed some works about the emerging ‘new paradigms’ in the scientific fields.

Having versed ourselves in the general laws governing the world of matter, we are now ready to enter the world of human and their systems. We will start examining the ‘objective history of the world’, but not without first having had a critical look at ‘history’ itself. The first question is: how have historians viewed the general dynamics of historic change and development. Then, we look at the world-systems perspective, as it is now indeed a priority to view the world as a whole. But to do this in a proper fashion, we have to take into account the postcolonial and postmodern-inspired critiques of eurocentrism, as well as with the first slate of historical works which have started with concrete new ‘non-eurocentric’ accounts. We also look at how historians themselves have critically viewed their craft.

Next, we explore some current themes about the dynamics of history such as: the eventual progress, decline, or catastrophic ending of history, and the nature of civilizations themselves. This includes books about the debate started by Francis Fukuyama, about the end of history, and the increasing number of ‘anti-civilisational’ books, which want to return mankind to a more ‘natural’ and pre-civilisational state.

We are now ready to enter the stream of history as such, starting with the dawn of human culture out of animality, the archaic period, and the subsequent tribal period before the advent of writing. We enter history proper, with books focusing on total ‘objective’ histories of places and times, rather than the specific cultural history that we focus on in quadrant four. After reviewing history up to contemporary times, we look at “Global Futures”, and conclude with a section on regional histories, where countries and regions themselves are viewed across time.

After such a thorough overview, we are now ready to study the specific human systems, such as the political systems, and the economic systems, see the next documents, also part of the third quadrant, for the books on these topics.





- 3.1 introduction: generalities on systems and their evolution


1. SYSTEMS (AND SYSTEMS THINKING)


The following section contains books that are necessary to understand the various approaches of systems as such, in particular the cosmic system (‘the universe’ as a whole) as conceived by humanity. The premodern approach of a hierarchy of spheres of beings and of beings themselves has been well described by Lovejoy. In modern times, systems theory has been developed as the science of the behaviour of systems, with related approaches cybernetics for information systems, while more recently chaos and complexity theories have arisen. The specific concept of (w)holism usually stands for a modernising of the traditional approach, and intends to go beyond reductionism of classic science (which generally reduces wholes to the behaviour of its constituent parts) and so enables seeing the whole again. Much discussed have been the theories on the self-production of (conscious) life by Varela and Maturana, called autopoesis.


Premodern approaches: the “great chain of being”


- Frank O. Lovejoy THE GREAT CHAIN OF BEING

(a thorough review of the traditional conception of the Cosmos, before the advent of modernity; as expressed by Western authors from Greek antiquity onwards)



Modern approaches: cybernetics, systems theory, wholism


	.Cybernetics



.Systems Theory


- Laszlo, E.  (1972).  Introduction to Systems Philosophy.  NY: Gordon & Breach. 
                         
- Laszlo, E.  (1972).  The Advance of General Systems Theory.  NY: George Braziller,
                           
- Laszlo, E.  (1972).  The Systems View of the World.  NY: George Braziller, Inc. 


- Ludwig von Bertalanffy. General Systems Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications. G. Braziller, 1968.


- Uncommon sense : the life and thought of Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901-1972), father of general systems theory.  Mark Davidson 

(foreword by R. Buckminster Fuller ; introduction by Kenneth E. Boulding. -- 1st ed. -- Los Angeles : J.P. Tarcher ; Boston : Distributed by Houghton Mifflin Co., c1983. 247 p. ; 25 cm. Bibliography: p. 229-236. )


.Wholism Today


Wholism is not only the traditional conception of life associated with the overall concept of the Great Chain of Being, but has also been revisited in the (post)modern era, most notable for example in Ken Wilber’s ‘holonic theory’ expounded in “Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality”.


- Jan Smuts: Holism and Evolution

(“one of the best ever written on the idea of holism” Bennett biblio)


- Arthur Koestler. The Ghost in the Machine.

(“Has anyone ever read any of the original works by Arther Koestler, regarding the concept of holons ? He originally published it in "The Ghost in the Machine" - 1967. If find his discussion provides considerably more depth to the notions of holons than Wilber - although Wilber is much easier to articulate and understand - some of the conceptual problems we've been having with holons might be better addressed by referring to Koestler. What Wilber uses as the 20 tenets, Koestler identified - in the Appendix of the mentioned title - "General Properties of Open Hierarchical Systems (O.H.S)." He lists '62' properties, under different sub-headings.” - source: postconpol)


- Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality. By Ken Wilber. Shambhala.

(the first chapters deal in particular with the characteristics of holons and develops a ‘holonic theory’ to interpret the world as a never-ending series of wholes that themselves are part of ever bigger wholes; but this work is of course a postmodern reworking)


Postmodern approaches: autopoeisis, chaos & complexity


- Le Systeme des Objets: la consommation des signes. Jean Baudrillard. Gallimard, 1968. (english: system of objects, Verso Book)


- I. Prigorine et I. Stengers. Entre le Temps et l’Eternite. Fayard, 1988. 

(on the arrow of time in the physical universe)


- Fisch, Weakland, Seagal. Tactique du changement.

(reflections of the ‘Palo Alto’ school on how to effect cognitive and behavioural change - rec. Gaudin)


.Autopoesis


-  F. Varela, E. Thomson, E. Rosch, L'inscription corporelle de l'esprit, Paris, Seuil, 1993, p.334 (D. Violet, juin 2001) 


-Maturana, Humberto, and Francisco Varela .The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding, Boston: Shambhala / New Science Press, 1987. Revised paperback edition released in 1992.

(“This book is a summary popular account of Maturana and Varela's ideas. Many of the basic concepts are introduced here, but some of them (including the key concept of autopoiesis) are not defined to the same degree of detail one finds in Maturana & Varela (1980) or the seminal 1970's era articles. In other words, The Tree of Knowledge will give you a basic taste of Maturana and Varela's ideas.“)


- H.Maturana and F.Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition: The realization of the living, 

D.Reidel, Boston, 1980, 141 pp+xxv.

(" Dans toutes les traditions contemplatives, les maîtres expriment une instante mise en garde contre les conceptions figées et les concepts pris pour réalité. Nous reconnaissons à cet égard que notre propre projet de promouvoir le conceptd'enaction dans les sciences cognitives comporte un danger certain, qui nous donne à réfléchir. Nous ne voudrions en aucun cas échanger la relative humilité de l'objectivisme contre l'orgueil consistant à penser que nous construisons notre monde. Mieux vaut un cognitiviste honnête qu'un théoricien de l'enaction imbu de lui-même et solipsiste " English synopsis: “ This has to be considered the main published reference on autopoiesis. The book contains two key papers reprinted with an extended introduction by Maturana and a preface by Stafford Beer. Short but painstakingly detailed, this is the theory in a concentrated form.” - The Observer web )


- Varela, Francisco J.  Principles of Biological Autonomy, New York: Elsevier (North Holland), 1979. (out of print)

(“This is Varela's 'magnum opus' on autopoiesis. Highly recommended as an introduction to the field. His exposition of autopoiesis vs. the more general concept of 'autonomy' helps put the theory into a broader context. This is also the single best introduction to Varela's attempts during the 1970's to develop a mathematical nomenclature for his work -- especially his exploration of the theories of George Spencer Brown on 'distinction' as the fundamental act of cognition. In an Internet-based search for data on Brown and his work, one conclusion was that Varela's book is the best single introduction to that work (less dense than Brown's own Laws of Form” - The Observer web).


- Mingers, John. Self-Producing Systems: Implications and Applications of Autopoiesis, New York: Plenum Publishing, 1994. 

(“This book's strength is contextualizing the origin and the proliferation of autopoietic theory. It is a good resource for researching what happened after Maturana and Varela's original publications. It covers the basics of autopoietic theory, plus the many uses and critical analyses to which the theory has been put. Mingers does a good job of laying out the issues relevant to autopoietic theory. This makes an excellent companion volume to Autopoiesis and Cognition. “ - The Observer web)


.Chaos & Complexity


- The Web of Life. Fritjof Capra. Anchor Books.

(“The best intro to systems theory. Ken always criticizes Capra for being flatland, but all systems theory is - so this is, I think definitely the best intro. It covers all of the bases, from chaos theory, to cybernetics, to autopoiesis, to self-organization, and more. The main problem with it, though, is that Capra thinks he can deduce a new politics or paradigm from systems theory.” - rec Greg Wilpert, postconpol)


- La Theorie du Chaos. James Gleick. Albin Michel, 1989.

(well-known exposition for the general reader)


- The End of Certainty: time, chaos, and the new laws of nature. by Isabelle Stengers and Ilya Prigogine.

(a rather challenging book written for readers with a basic scientific bacground which tries to reconcile physical laws without time and subjective reality which has a definite arrow of time. This was a key book describing the new scientific sensibilities around chaos theory)


- La quark et le jaguar, Murray Gell-Mann Flammarion; 1994, 

(“Le quark, c'est le simple, et le jaguar, le complexe. Ce prix Nobel de physique essaie dans ce livre de décrire les " systèmes adaptatifs complexes ", typiques du vivant, en opposition aux systèmes simples, mus par les lois immuables de la physique. Le livre, écrit sur un ton très personnel, qui ne recule devant l'anecdote autobiographique, n'en est pas moins très dense par moment. La partie sur la mécanique quantique notamment, est assez exigeante en attention de la part du lecteur. Le plus étonnant restant que dans ces chapitres, Gell Mann cherche à nous présenter le fonctionnement d'un système " simple ". - remi sussan)


- Complexity: the emerging science at the edge of order and chaos. By M. Mitchell Waldrop.

(a portrait of the radical researchers clustered around the Sante Fe Institute and their groundbreaking work)


2. EVOLUTION

Scientific approaches to evolution


- Charles Darwin. 1) The Origins of the Species. 2) The Descent of Man.

(the foundational classics that changed the way mankind viewed itself)


- The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Stephen Jay Gould. Harvard University Press.

(“a novel synthesis”, by one of the greatest biologist of our time)


- Ernst Mayer & Jared Diamond. What Evolution Is. Basic Books.

(“a clear and concise account of evolution, by a life long researcher” - NYRB)


Integral and spiritual approaches to evolution


These are accounts of evolution which have a spiritual or integrative bent.


.The Classics

The two giants who have set the stage for integrating scientific realities with spiritual understanding, into one integrated picture are Sri Aurobindo for the East (Hinduism) and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin for the West (Catholicism).


- The Life Divine. Sri Aurobindo

(the great but difficult classic by an Indian sage informed by the West, about the involution/evolution of the cosmos: “Among the major questions that Sri Aurobindo addresses and answers in The Life Divine are:

What is man’s purpose in the universe? What is the source of everything in the universe? Why was the universe created; i.e. what is its purpose? How was the universe created from a Divine source? What is the process by which the Divine became this universe? What is the nature of the cosmos; and specifically what are the nature energy, matter, life, mind, and spirit? And how do these each relate to another? What is the meaning of consciousness? What is the relationship between our consciousness and the consciousness of the Divine Source, the Absolute? Why is there division and duality, pain and suffering in the universe? Why does the individual live in Ignorance of knowledge and truth, and how can he move to a vast Integral Knowledge? What is the path that overcomes all of the universe’s, and our own limiting nature? How are humans in the future going to function? What are the changes we must undergo to move from our current human functioning to a new superhuman functioning? What is the destiny of the human collective? What is the nature of the future evolutionary Divine Life? How can we bring that future into the present?

In The Life Divine Sri Aurobindo describes the process by which the universe was created from the Real Idea of the Absolute that ended in the manifestation of our universe; i.e. the "Involution;" and then describes the process by which the created universe evolved from matter to life to powers of mind and spirit; i.e. the "Evolution." )


- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. The Phenomena of Man.

(the new findings and realities of evolution integrated into a Christian point of view of a Jesuit paleontologist).


.Contemporary Approaches


- Eric Chaisson. The Life Era: Cosmic Selection and Conscious Evolution (New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 1989) 

(“Eric Chaisson is a great educator in the field of science, and author of many books including the seminal work, The Life Era: Cosmic Selection and Conscious Evolution. He points to the vital importance of learning 'ethical' evolution NOW, in this generation. If we do so, he foresees: "Our generation on Earth... is now participating in an astronomically significant transformation. We perceive the dawn of a whole new reign of cosmic development, an era of opportunity for life forms to begin truly to fathom their role in the cosmos, to unlock the secrets of the Universe, indeed to decipher who we really are and whence we came... The implications of our newly gained power over matter are nothing short of cosmic... As sentient beings we are currently beginning to exert a weighty influence in the establishment of a "universal life" with all its attendant features, not least of which potentially include species immortality and cosmic consciousness." -consciousevolution.net)


- Duane Elgin, Awakening Earth: Exploring the Evolution of Human Culture


- Elisabet Sahtouris . EarthDance: Living Systems in Evolution, Biology Revisioned, 

(“also co-authored with Willis Harman and A Walk Through Time: From Stardust to Us”)


- William Irwin Thompson. 1) Darkness and Scattered Light : Four Talks on the Future Doubleday, 1978 2) Reimagination of the World : A Critique of the New Age, Science, and  Popular Culture; 3) Coming into Being : Artifacts and Texts in the Evolution of 

Consciousness, Vol. 1 Martins Press, 1996

(leading mythopoetician and maverick student of cultural evolution, worth reading)


- Brian Swimme, Thomas Berry: The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Age ( San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1992)


3. THE SCIENCES AND THEIR EVOLUTION


Traditional sciences


- R. Porter. The greatest benefit to mankind: a medical history of humanity from Antiquity to the Present. 1997 (rec Freeman)


- M. Kline. Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times. Oxford, 1972. (rec Freeman)


New ‘wholistic’ scientific paradigms

(since the seventies, with authors such as Fritjof Capra, Willis Harman, etc... there has been a lot of talk that the sciences themselves are abandonning their mechanistic philosophies in favour of more ‘wholistic’ or ‘organic’ points of view, hailed as a ‘new paradigm’ that could alter our societies)


- Fritjof Capra. The Tao of Physics.


- Ken Wilber. 1) A Theory of Everything; 2) A Brief History of Everything.


- Roberto Fondi. La revolution organiciste. Entretien sur les nouveaux courants scientifiques. Labyrinthe.

(this is actually a ‘New Right’ analysis: ‘comment les recherches les plus avancees en physique et biologie renouent avec les plus lointaines intuitions des traditions europpeennes. Une lecture indispensable pour les actuelles mutations epistemologiques”)


- 3.2 The evolution of the world system (history of the world)


1. UNDERSTANDING THE DYNAMICS OF HISTORY


General considerations


- The dynamics of world history. Christopher Dawson. Sheed and Ward, 1957 (‘auteurs et penseurs de la droite’)


- Johan Galtung and Sohail Inayatullah. Macrohistory and Macrohistorians. New York, Praeger, 1997.

(“Moves towards a general theory of macrohistory through a comparative analysis of twenty macrohistorians. Included are such thinkers as Ibn Khaldun, Comte, Vico, Marx, Hegel, Ssu-Ma Chien, Sarkar, Toynbee, Weber and Sorokin. For each thinker there is a diagram which presents their macrohistory. The relationship between micro and macrohistory is explored as is between macrohistory and world politics. Numerous perspectives on what we can learn from macrohistory in understanding the future.” / I recall also reading a very negative review of this essay book)


- Stephen Sanderson. Social Transformations. A General Theory of Historical

Development. Blackwell, 1995.


- F.Spier. The Structure of Big History. Amsterdam Univ. Press, 1996.


- The Collapse of Complex Societies (New Studies in Archaeology) by Joseph Tainter . Cambridge University Press, 1988.

(“The author looks at the different theories of why earlier civilizations (the Roman, the Mayan, etc..) collapsed and what we can learn from it.”)


- Nolan, Patrick and Gerhard Lenski. 1999. Human Societies: An Introduction to

Macrosociology, Eighth Edition . New York: McGraw-Hill. 479 pages.

(“has focused on the relation of techno-economic modes of production, with cultural practices” - rec Ken Wilber)


- Frank E. Manuel. Shapes of Philosophical History. 1965

(“somewhat dated but still useful history”)


- Peter Munz. The Shapes of  Time. 1977.

(“quite readable book on macrohistory”)


- Pitirim Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics.

(“based on enormous quantitative research listed in the appendices, but uses many unfamiliar terms, for example not civilisations but ‘cultural supersystem’, and divides western systems in three phases or ‘cultural epochs’, namely ideational, integral, and sensate; it focuses on historical transitions rather than melodramatic decline and falls.” - rec John P. Reilly)


The contemporary world-systems perspective


World-systems historians and theorists, such as the founder of the school Immanuel Wallerstein, interpret the history of the world as one single interconnected system. The book by Andre Gunder Frank, Re-Orient, is also classics in the genre. World-systems histories focus on the permanent interlinking networks between geographical-civilisational eras, and how they influence each other.


- C.Chase-Dann and T.Hall. Rise and Demise: Comparing World-Systems. Westview

Press, 1997.


- The World System: Five Hundred Years or Five Thousand? Andre Gunder Frank and Barry K. Gills Editor/Contributors University of Amsterdam Newcastle University London and New York: Routledge 1993, 320 pp.

(“This book debates whether world systemic interconnectedness is limited to only the last 500 years of the "modern world-system" or whether it also characterizes 5,000 years Afro-Eurasian history. The 5,000 year thesis implies a far-reaching reinterpretation from a much more Asian perspective not only of ancient and medieval but also of modern world history. The thesis poses a more powerful cultural challenge to Eurocentrism in general and to European exeptionalism and primacy in particular. The thesis also questions the ideological and political propriety of fedualism, capitalism and socialism as adequate categories of scientific analysis. This 5,000 year thesis is set out by the editor/contributors, who are joined among the contributors by Ekholm and Friedman and by Wilkinson. Wallerstein and Amin respond with defenses of the now "traditional" 500 year thesis. Abu-Luhgod takes an intermediate position. The book addreses issues in anthropology, archaeology, ecology, economic history, geography, international political economy, international relations and macro sociology.”)


- Shannon Thomas R. _An Introduction to the World-Systems Perspective_

Westview, 1989.


Non-Eurocentric meta-histories


- Andre-Gunder Frank. Re-Orient.

- Understanding Sarkar. The Indian Episteme, Macrohistory and Transformative Knowledge. by Sohail Inayatullah, Brill, Boston, 2002, 366 pages, $53

(“Sohail Inayatullah takes us on a journey through Indian philosophy, grand theory and macrohistory. We understand and appreciate Indian cyclical and spiral theories of history, and their epistemological context. From other civilizations, we explore the stages and mechanisms of social change as developed by seminal thinkers such as Ssu-Ma Ch’ien, Ibn Khaldun, Giambattista Vico, George Wilhelm Friedrick Hegel, Oswald Spengler, Pitirim Sorokin, Michel Foucault and many others. They are invited to a multi-civilizational dialog on the nature of agency and structure, and the escape ways from the patterns of history. But the journey is centered on P.R. Sarkar, the controversial Indian philosopher, guru and activist. While Sarkar passed away in 1990, his work, his social movements, his vision of the future remains ever alive. Inayatullah brings us closer to the heart and head of this giant luminary. Through Understanding Sarkar, we gain insight into Indian philosophy, comparative social theory, and the ways in which knowledge can transform.”)


- Human Society. By P.R. Sarkar (Ananda Marga Publications, Calcutta,Third edition 1987), 

(“Sarkar put forward the idea that history can be understood by seeing the cyclic rise and fall of four social classes, each having a distinct world-view. In the Human Society, Sarkar advanced the idea that the periods of social exploitation caused by the decadence of the dominant social class could be removed in the future by the emergence of moral and spiritually elevated leaders. This concept of the "Social Cycle" was brought to a wider public in 1987 by economist Ravi Batra, whose best-selling book The Great Depression of 1990 (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1987) was partly based on Sarkar's theory of history.”)


- Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History . Trans. Franz Rosenthal (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1967).

(“The founder of sociology writing in the 14th century. A must ready for understanding deep social patterns. Heavily influenced Comte, Weber, and others.” - Sohail Inatullah)


- Eric Wolf. Europe and the People Without History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997

(focuses on the multicultural aspects of capitalism)


- Eight Eurocentric Historians. By J.M. Blaut. The Guilford Press, New York, 2000. Pp. 228. ISBN 1-57230-591-6

(“History is the ideological mainstay of modernity and the queen of its disciplines: it is within a putatively historical vision that the modern man locates his subjectivity and legitimises his politics. Theories of history are thus the modern equivalents of ancient myths and medieval theodicies. Unfortunately, most narratives of modernity are also, Blaut's present work amply demonstrates, irreducibly and irredeemably Eurocentric: they are racist, polemical, self-aggrandizing and false. In the name of world-history, they propagate the worldview of supremacy and under the guise of global sociology, they promote a regime of fate. To uncover the academic mask of modern historiography and reveal is mythical visage is thus essential to any scheme of intellectual resistance against the modern indoctrination.

Blaut's work is an empiricist's unremitting haggling with the ideologues of modernity who wear the historians' masks. The list includes the arch theorist of Western rationality (Max Weber), the advocate of technological determinism (Lynn White Jr.), the guru of Marxist diffusionism (Robert Brenner), the evangelist of the 'European Miracle' (Eric L. Jones), the advocate of modern social power (Michael Mann), the champion of European 'Powers and Liberties' (John A. Hall), the mandarin of Euro-Environmentalism (Jared Diamond), and the guardian of Pax Americana (David Landes). Common to these Eurocentric reflections are, of course, the perceptions and anxieties of the 'lords of the humankind'; those who believe that theirs is the best of the worlds, and who therefore 'want to freeze history right where it is here and now.')


.Jack Goody


- Jack Goody. The East in the West. Cambridge University Press, 1996

(“The West has indulged in the idea of its own exceptional trajectory, stressing Greek rationality, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment as sources of a knowledge revolution which underpinned the creation of unique institutions (capitalism, science, the conjugal nuclear family etc.) endowed with a universal superiority. This western triumphalism seemed justified in the nineteenth century, when European imperialism unified world society; but Jack Goody, unlike so many of his postwar contemporaries, has responded to the rise of the nonwestern peoples in the twentieth century by challenging these myths of the West's origins and uniqueness. In the process he has mapped a vision of world society in which the East and West are broadly seen as equals and the South's (Africa's) distinctiveness poses immense questions of global inequality. “Apart from anything else, this book explodes the division between the West and the Rest by showing how closely bound together are the historical trajectories of Europe and Asia; and that both are separated from Africa by their common heritage in Mesopotamia's urban revolution 5,000 years ago. He seeks to demolish the cultural relativism of our century by emphasising the general consequences of fundamental changes in production, reproduction and communication which far outweigh the short-term advantages won by the West in the last few hundred years. This is an exercise in historical materialist argument which belongs with those of Morgan, Engels and Childe; its target is the frothy idealism of a latterday intellectual class which imagines its own mentalities to be the motor of human development. Jack Goody has several tactics for undermining his opponents. Above all, the characteristic institutions of urban society were invented in Asia and the attempt to drive a wedge between the Greeks and the rest of the Eastern Mediterranean was an invention of Victorian racism. He disposes of the `we create/they imitate' argument by pointing out that the time taken for Britain's industrial revolution to be adopted in India and Japan was less than that taken by early economic innovations to diffuse from Italy to North-western Europe. What is often taken to be the modern `rise of the West' was no more than a rebirth of practices which flourished continuously in the Mediterranean, Near East and Far East. Features thought to be unique to non-western societies are found in the West when ideal types are exposed to social investigation. In the historical long-run the recent period of western dominance was exceptional and short-lived, as we can now see. The main substantive contribution of the book is to offer an insightful summary of some key features of western intellectual and social history and an impressive survey of Asian economic achievements, especially India's. The usual suspects are exposed to view - rationality, book-keeping, commerce and business, the family, individualism, the forms of production and communication - and in each case an opposition between East and West is shown to be untenable. These may well seem commonplace to regional specialists; but Jack Goody's reputation and writing style will bring them to the attention of a broader audience.”0



- Jack Goody. Technology, Tradition and the State. 

(“In this short set of essays he concluded that a profound divergence of social and political forms between the two regions was rooted in demography (less people than land in Africa) with immense consequences for the balance between technologies of production and technologies of control. Much of the last quarter century has been taken up with an extraordinarily prolific attempt to explore this insight further. Ever since Production and Reproduction (1976), this has been founded on explicit recognition of the identity of Europe and Asia (usually referred to as Eurasia) in opposition to Africa. The present book has as its principal target any lingering pretensions to western exceptionalism.”)


- Jack Goody. The Oriental, the Ancient, and the Primitive.

(“In The Oriental, the Ancient and the Primitive one of the world’s most foremost anthropologists looks in depth at kinship practice in Asia, and continues the comparative survey of pre-industrial family formation undertaken in The Development of Family and Marriage in Europe (1983) and elsewhere. Professor Goody’s findings cause him to question many traditional assumptions about the ‘primitive’ east, and he suggests that, in contrast to pre-colonial Africa, kinship practice in Asia has much in common with that prevailing in parts of pre-industrial Europe. Goody examines the transmission of productive and other property in relation both to the prevailing political economy and to family and ideological structures, and then explores the distribution of mechanisms and strategies of management across cultures. He concludes that notions of western ‘uniqueness’ are often misplaced, and that much previous work on Asian kinship has been unwittingly distorted by the application of concepts and approaches derived from other, inappropriate, social formations, simple or post-industrial.’)


extra: THE DEBATE ON THE DOMINANCE OF THE WEST


Why is it that the West and its capitalism emerged dominant? Most of what we could call the ‘sympathetic accounts’ of the rise of the West would point out that cultural factors where determinant.


- Douglas C. North and Robert Paul Thomas. The Rise of the Western World: a new economic history. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993


- John A. Hall. Powers and Liberties: the causes and consequences of the Rise of the West. Penguin,  1985.


Critical Considerations On the Writing of History


- Marchel Gauchet. Philosophie des Sciences Historiques. Presse Universitaire de Lille, 1988


- Dhoquois, Guy. Histoire de la pensée historique. A. Colin, 1991 (marx biblio)


- Karl Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History. Yale Univ. Pr., 1953.

(recommended by Marchel Gauchet)


- Inventing the Middle Ages: The lives, works, and ideas of the great medievalists of the twentieth century. Norman F. Cantor. William Morrow, 1991.

(an analysis of the culture of scholars since 1900, on their unspoken assumptions, and how they ‘invented’ their object of study. Recommended)


- Anna Green and Kathleen Troup. The Houses of History: a critical reader in Twentieth Century History and Theory. New York University Press, 1999

(“a jargon-free introduction to the major theoretical perspectives by 20cy historians, giving clear accounts of twelve schools of thought” Twelve schools are empirism, marxist historians, freud and psychohistory, historical sociology, quantitative history, anthropology and ethnohistory, the question of narrative, oral history, gender and history, postcolonial perspectives, and the challenge of poststructuralism and postmodernism)


- Leroy-Ladurie. The Mind and Method of the Historian. Univ. of Chicago Press, 1981

(rec Foucault)


MARXIST VISIONS


- Best, Steven. The Politics of Historical Vision: Marx, Foucault, Habermas. Guilford Press, 1995.


- G.A. Cohen. Karl Marx’s Theory of History: a defence.  Clarendon Press, 2000 (rec Johan Soderberg)


- Anthony Giddens. A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism. Macmillan, 1995. (rec Johan Soderberg)




2. PROGRESS, DECLINE, CATASTROPHISM, AND CIVILISATIONS


The concept of progress and its criticism


From the Renaissance onwards and particularly in the 19th century the idea of perpetual progress took hold, a notion that got challenged by the major world wars and totalitarian disasters of the 20th century, and by postmodern challenges to eurocentric ‘grand narratives’.


- Progress and Pragmatism. By David Marcell. (Greenwood, 1974)

(the notion of progress from the Enlightenment to modernism)


- Nisbet, Robert. History of the Idea of Progress. New York: Basic Books, 1980.


- Frédéric Rouvillois, L'invention du progrès. Aux origines de la pensée totalitaire (1680-1730). Paris, Éditions KIMÉ, Collection «Philosophie-épistémologie», 1996, 487 p.

(Livre magnifique sur une époque charnière de l'histoire de l'Occident. / “excellente etude” Michea)


- J.B. Bury, The Idea of Progress, an inquiry into its growth and origin (New York: Macmillan, 1932) (a classic)


- Christopher Lasch. Progress and its critics. / (French: Le Seul et Vrai Paradis: une histoire du progres et de ses critiques. Climats, 2002)

(the author of the book The Culture of Narcissism, a virulent attack on contemporary culture, has written a history of the forces that were critical and opposed to the concept of progress; elsewhere we have a more extensive bibliography of books on the notion of progress)



The Concept of Decline


- Arthur Herman: 'The Idea of Decline in the Western Civilization'.

(Recommended Jan Geerincks)


- Staring into Chaos: explorations in the decline of western civilisation. By B.G. Brander. Spence Pubn, 1998.

(“a handy summary of the major ‘pessimist’ philosophies of history of the 19th century. Discussed are also lesser macrohistorians as Ernst von Lasaulx, Henry and Brooks Adams, Nikolai Danilevsky, Nikolai Berdiaev, Walter Schubert, but also the prophetic utterances of Albert Schweitzer and Jakob Burckhardt. They shared their prediction that the 20th century would be ‘Hellenistic’”- Rec. John J. Reilly)


- Perennialist authors such as Julius Evola, Rene Guenon, Fritjof Schuon share a vision about the decline of the world as a ‘regression of the caste system’, with ever lower castes taking over power signalling the end of the world cycle. Also part of the Hindu vision.


- Michael Grosso. The Millenium Myth.

(pays particular attention to how modern technology promises to embody apocalyptic and utopian visions, with in particular a chapter entitled ‘Technocalypse’)


.Declinist Histories


- Oswald Spengler. The Decline of the West.

(the classic declinist interpretation, still continuously in print)


- Arnold Toynbee,  A Study of History

(published over three decades in 12 volumes, it was very influential in the fifties, and friendly to the role of religion in history - John J. Reilly)


- The demoralisation of society from Victorian virtues to modern values. By Getrude Himmelfarb. Alfred A. Knopf, 1995

(“Educated people in England and America in 1900 believed in progress because they had experienced it, with crime and illegitimacy rates having fallen by half since 1850. This level of civilisation was maintained through the first half of the 20th century, up to the two world wars. Then, in the 1950s, the statistical indices of social pathology began to creep upwards and by 1990, crime rates were ten times there 19th century high... So what happened?” According to this conservative vision, the author being the wife of conservative writer Irving Kristol, it was the work of the pious middle classes and their private philanthropy. Today, we are back in the squalid 18th century situation, and a reversal could happen again.)



The end of history debate: Fukuyama et al.


After the fall of the Soviet Empire in 1991, the idea took hold that ‘capitalist democracy’ was the end game of modern history, as especially promoted in a popular book by Francis Fukuyama, who was largely inspired by his interpretation of Hegel. Obviously this provocative thesis aroused a lot of debate.


- Francis Fukuyama. The End of History.


- Christopher Bertram and Andrew Chitty (eds). Has History Ended: Fukuyama, Marx, Modernity. Avebury, 1994


- Lutz Niethammer. Posthistorie: Has History come to an End.


Apocalyptic and End Time Conceptions


- Paul Boyer.  When Time shall be no more.

(“favorite general treatment of millenialism”)


- Damian Thompson. The End of Time

(“favorite general treatment”)


- John J. Reilly. The Perennial Apocalypse. OnlineOriginals.com. 1998

(“written by an orthodox Catholic American lawyer with a fascinating website, this is an online book about the various forms that end of the world and end of history stories can take across time and cultures, from the rise of millenarian cults to the evolution of the idea of progress. Specific topics include racial mysticism, the origin of the idea of nuclear war, and the future of the apocalypse”)


The concept of civilisations


According to Andre Gunder Frank, one of the pioneers of world systems research, there are two basic ways to look at history: as a history of civilisations, their competition, replacement, or passing away, or the world systems perspective itself which puts more stress on the permanent interlinking of the different geographical-civilisational eras. The world systems perspective is covered elsewhere.


- The Evolution of Civilisations. An introduction to historical analysis. MacMillan.


 - World Civilizations: the global experience. By Peter N. Stearns et al. New York: HarperCollins College Pubn. 1996.


- Holding up a mirror: how civilisations decline. By Anne Glyn-Jones. 1996.

(“the central dilemma of history is this: the dynamic that promotes economic prosperity arises largely from the conviction that the material world alone constitutes the ‘true reality’. Yet that same dynamic undermines the authority of moral standards and thus to the destruction of civilisations. Shows in vivid detail how this played out in Greece, Rome, medieval Christendom, and contemporary society” Sunday Times)


- Kevin Reilly, _The West and the World: A History of Civilization_, 2 vols. Harper College.


- "Civilization and the Transformation of Power", by Jim Garrison (Paraview Press, New York, 2000) - rec postconpol


- Freud CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS (rec Kenneth Smith lifetime reading list)


- What is Civilisation? and other essays. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy. Golgonooza Press.

(‘this work is a veritable summa of the world’s religions and cultures, expounding in unparallelled fashion the ‘normal’ and traditional doctrine of life, art and worship as an expression of the common metaphysical doctrines of the world’s sacred traditions” - this work contains 20 essays)


- Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies, W.W.

Norten & Company, 1992.

(“This masterful tour-de-force redefines our understanding of how societies and civilization developed. I am highly skeptical of reductionist historical theories, where all developments are explained in terms of some single principle. But in this case I am forced to make an exception. The scope of evidence presented is compelling, and the reasoning is detailed and irrefutable. Jared shows how environmental factors alone create the fundamental conditions, which can explain why cultures evolved at different rates in different places.”)

- Antoine Pelletier and Jean-Jacques Goblot. Materialisme historique et histoire des civilizations. 1973


extra: against civilisation

Is civilisation not itself the original mistake? and should we perhaps return to a pre-civilisational state? A growing number of commentators are thinking in this fashion, forming what Ken Wilber has called a “Retro-romantic” movement, and differentiating themselves by how far back in the past they want to go back.


- John Zerzan: Future Primitive 

(John Zerzan is anarchist and has offered a radical critique of civilisation)


3. HISTORY OF THE WORLD: EVOLUTION IN TIME


As compared with the works listed on the cultural and thought histories listed in the fourth quadrant, we focus here on ‘objective’ histories, describing the workings of the world system and its parts, as such.


Pre-histories: before history


- The Time Before History. By Colin Tudge. NY: Scribner, 1996. 366p.

(how the human species arose in a geological and biologicial context, the last five million years, reviewed by Yes Magazine.)


- Sick Societies: challenging the myth of primitive harmony. By Robert Edgerton. Free Press, 1992.

(This is an antidote to the myth of the noble savage and to anti-civilisational and ‘primitivist’ discourse. rec sd bib)


- Marshall Salhins : Age de pierre, âge d'abondance, Gallimard, 1972 .


- La dette de vie: aux origines de la monnaie. Philippe Rospabe. Mauss/La Decouverte, 1995. 

(the original violence that gave rise to the money system, recommended by Etatsgeneraux.org)


- Dominique Lestel.  Les origines de la culture. Flammarion 2002

(“Ceci conforte les points de vue de nombreux éthologues et socio-philosophes, notamment en France Frédéric Joulian et Dominique Lestel (dont nous commenterons prochainement dans cette revue le livre passionnant Les origines de la culture. Flammarion 2002) : il n'y a sans doute pas de différences fondamentales entre les sociétés de primates d'aujourd'hui et celles des premiers hominiens. On étend d'ailleurs la réflexion à d'autres sociétés, celles de certains oiseaux et des cétacés par exemple. La question reste par contre entière : pourquoi l'évolution des sociétés d'hominiens a-t-elle divergé de celles des autres espèces animales à cultures voisines ? Deux autres questions secondaires se posent d'ailleurs : qu'étaient les sociétés animales des ancètres des grands singes il y a 3 millions d'années, et en quoi les sociétés aborigènes actuelles ont-elles évolué par rapport à celles des premiers hominiens ? - Automates Intelligents)


- The Evolution of Human Societies: From Foraging Group to Agrarian State

by Allen W. Johnson et al. (rec Ray Harris)


- The Origins of Human Society (History of the World) by Peter Bogucki 

(“The origins and development of human society are explored and illuminated in this compelling history. The book provides readers with an understanding of the exhibition of humans and the cultures they established, from the first traces of humanity to the creation of early literate societies.")


CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNTS


- Tristes Tropiques, by Claude Levi-Strauss

(the classic by the founder of structuralism, focusing on contemporary tribalism, the incest taboo, etc... which formulates some classic thesis on the origins of civilisation and sociality through these taboos; see also Freud’s Totem and Taboo)


- Claude Levi-Strauss. The Raw and the Cooked. Octagon, 1979.


Global histories


- J.M. Roberts; History of the World

(“first published more than twenty years ago, it was immediately hailed as a "stupendous achievement." "Unbelievably accurate in its facts and almost incontestable in its judgments," acclaimed A.J.P. Taylor, pronouncing Roberts's work the "unrivaled World History for our day." The book has indeed gone on to become the premier single-volume history of our time, with more than a quarter million copies sold around the world. “)


- The World to 1500. A global history. By L.S. Stavarianos. Prentice-Hall.


- Rome and China: a study of correlations in historical events. By Frederick J. Taggart. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.

(one of the few attempts to correlate history across civilisations)


- Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons. By Charles Tilly. NY: Russell Sage Foundation.


- A Study of History. Arnold Toynbee. Oxford Univ. Press.


- The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. By Paul Kennedy. Random House. 


- A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History. By Manuel De Landa. Zone Bks, 1998.

(De Landa tracks three overlapping bodies of knowledge -- Lavas and Magmas, Flesh and Genes, and Memes and Norms over the last 1,000 years and describes how the three levels of analysis interact with each other. While this is a difficult read, it provides both historic as well as scientific evidence for the theme of human emergence. Spiral Wizard gives it a Five Star ***** with the warning it is only for the serious learner who can manage small print and very dense pages. )


- Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade. San Francisco, HarperCollins, 1988

(see also the update, Sacred Pleasure. San Francisco, HarperCollins, 1996. “Decent macrohistory, great feminism, very readable. Brings in chaos and complexity to argue that we have moved from a partnership (the chalice) to a dominator (the blade) cultural system, and now through human agency we can move back to a partnership system. It calls for transformative knowledge. An excellent and important book.“ Sohail Inatullah)


- William Irwin Thompson, At the Edge of History. New York, Harper and Row, 1971.

(”Critical of the rationality of planning, of attempts that try to consciously plan the future. Thompson revokes myth and the unconscious. Unites macrohistory, mythology, and visions of the future. Examines the structure of four stages in Plato, Vico, Blake, Marx, Yeats, Jung, and Mcluhan. The future, like Being, is always more than we can ever know.” - Sohail Inatullah)


Antiquity


.Greece


- Civilisations et archeologie de la Grece Prehellenique. Guy Rachet. Rocher, 1993.

(‘prodigieuse synthese’ - Antaios)


. Hellenism


- Conquest and Empire: the reign of Alexander the Great. By A.B. Bosworth. Cambrigde, 1988 

(“a judicious biography which avoid over-romanticisation” - rec Freeman / see also from same author: Alexander and the East, the tragedy of triumph, which has more on the societal context of the conquest)


- Emile Brehier THE HELLENIC AGE (rec Kenneth Smith)


- G. Shipley. The Greek World after Alexander, 323-30 BC. 2000

(“a recent and comprehensive introduction to the Hellenistic period” - Freeman)


- S. Swaine. Hellenism and Empire: language, Classicism and Power in the Greek World, AD 50-250. Oxford, 1996.


.Rome


- W. Harris. War and Imperialism in Republican Rome. Oxford, 1979.

(“essential for an understanding of Rome’s expansion” - Freeman)


.Late Antiquity


- Peter Brown. Genese de l’Antiquite Tardive. (rec Todorov)


- E.A. Thompson. The Visigoths at the time of Ufila. Oxford, 1996.


- Averil Cameron. The Later Roman Empire, AD 284-430.  Pub 1998 (Treadgold bib)


- Stephen Williams et al. The Rome that did not fall: the survival of the East in the fifth century. 1999. (Treadgold bib)


The Middle Ages


Periodisation of the Middle Ages: 1) a high barbarian phase, from the decline of the Roman Empire up to the First European Revolution which instituted feudalism proper in around 987, with high growth from the XI to XIII century, followed by a period of decline which halved the population, a process which only got stopped around the Renaissance. (note mostly inspired by Thierry Gaudin and Jean Zin). See also the subsection on Feudalism in “Economic Systems”.


- The Little Ice Age: how climate made history, 1300-1850. Brian Fagan. Perseus.`

(London Rv of Bks)


- Early Medieval Europe 300-1000. W. HamishRoger Collins. Palgrave.

(synthesises a large and intricate body of fundamental research as well as many narrative sources - Times Higher Education Supplement)


.Eastern Europe & Byzantium


- Byzantium: the empire of the new Rome. By Cyril Mango.

(“a comprehensive treatment of Byzantine civilisation, organised by topic”, rec Treadgold)


- Warren Treadgold. 1) History of the Byzantine State and Society; 2) Byzantium and its  Army; 3) A Concise History of Byzantium.

(item 1 is a very comprehensive historical overview; item 2 a shorter companion volume; item 3 is a summary of both written five years later for the general public; by one of the major historians on Byzantium)


- Robert Browning. The Byzantine Empire. 1992. (treadgold bib)


- The Cambridge Medieval History. Vol IV: The Byzantine Empire. 1966-67. (Treadgold bib)


- Dimitri Obolensky. The Byzantine Commonwealth: Eastern Europe, 500-1453. (1971) (Treadgold bib)


- Goerge Ostrogorsky. History of the Byzantine State. Oxford, 1968 (Treadgold bib)


	 .Late Byzantium


- Michael Angold. The Byzantine Empire, 1025-1204: a political history. (1997)


-  Charles Brand. Byzantium confronts the West, 1180-1204. Cambridge, 1965


-  Peter Lock. The Franks in the Aegan, 1204-1500. (1995)


- Steven Runciman. The Fall of Constantinople, 1453. Cambridge, 1965.


.Western Europe


- R. Collins. Early Medieval Europe, 300-1000 AD. 1999 (rec Freeman)


- Johan Huizinga. The Waning of the Middle Ages.

(a classic and must read, rec K. Smith, preferably to read with a balancing book that shows how the Middle Ages carried the seeds of the coming Renaissance)


Reformation, Renaissance, Enlightenment


- J.R. Hale. Renaissance Europe, 1480-1520. 1971


- Sixteenth-Century Europe: Expansion and Conflict. Richard MacKenney. Palgrave, 1993.

(“impressive comprehensive survey” - International History Review)


SPECIFIC COUNTRIES


- Jonanthan Israel. The Dutch Republic: its rise, greatness and fall, 1477-1806.

(great historian and specialist of the Enlightenment period)


Modern Times


- Eric Hobsbawn. 1) The Age of Revolution; 2) The Age of Capital; 3) The Age of Empire; 4) the Age of Extremes.

(“in overarching conception this tetralogy about how the contemporary world was made has no equal” - Perry Anderson.)


- The Aristocracy in Europe, 1815-1914. Dominic Lieven. Palgrave, 1992.

(“studies the challenges to hereditary elites in the 19th cy. and how they responded, focusing on Europe’s three most powerful monarchies”)


Contemporary History


. Twentieth History


-  "Between Two Ages: the 21st Century and the Crisis of Meaning" 

(William Van Dusen Wishard's book, Between Two Ages, suggests that somewhere around the mid-nineteenth century a new period of western history began to be visible to a few of the more perceptive of western thinkers. Wishard calls this period the "Interregnum." The values that had united western civilization, since roughly the middle ages, were in state of accelerating disintegration. And whatever would come next... is still to arrive. This period, the one we are now in, Wishard suggests, is an Interregnum, a time between ruling paradigms. Wishard offers an excellent history of the twentieth century even as he states that: "the book is not intended to be a history but rather an assessment of some of the highlights, trends and events that are shaping the Interregnum." rec Arlington Institute)


- Hobsbawm E.-J. L’Age des Extremes. Fayard			

(history of the ‘short twentieth century, from 1914 to 1989)


- Peter Conrad. Modern Times, Modern Places. Thames & London.


-  Voyage dans le demi-siecle. Entretiens croises avec Andre Versaille. Par Gerard Chaliand et Jean Lacouture. Complexe, 2001

(“excellentes conversations sur la derniere moitie du XXeme siecle, avec Jean Lacouture, ‘specialiste des luttes armees’, Gerard Chaliand, expert ‘des experiences revolutionaires du Tiers-Monde’, et le directeur des editions Complexe”. Highly recommended by Le Nouvel Observateur)


. Specific topics/events


WORLD WAR I


- Redemption by War: the intellectuals and 1914. By Ronald N. Stromberg.

("how a few dissenters had the courage to oppose it" - Barzun)


- Society at War. Caroline Playne.

(about what happens in civil society during 1914 - Barzun)


WESTERN CULTURAL DECADENCE AFTER WORLD WAR I

There was a popular declinist theme in the interwar period. Most books which are listed here are mentioned by Jacques Barzun in ‘From Dawn to Decadence: 500 years of western cultural history’.


- The Dehumanisation of Art. By Ortega y Gasset.

(how the moderns expressed their feeling of abjection in art - Barzun / other books by this foremost cultural commentator: 1) Revolt of the Masses; 2) The Modern Theme. See also the following bio: Ortega y Gasset: a pragmatic philosophy of life. By John T. Graham.)


 - The treason of the clerks. Julian Benda. (rec Barzun)


- Defense of the Occident. Massis. (rec Barzun)


- Irving Babbitt. Rousseau and Romanticism.

("finds the germ of cultural decline in that period" - Barzun)


SOVIET COMMUNISM


- Histoire des democraties populaires. Francois Fetjo. Seuil.

(“fait autorite” - Liberation)


- F. Furet. Le passe d’une illusion.

(a primer on the history of communism)


- Les Temps de la Guerre Froide. Reflexion sur l’histoire de la guerre froide et sur les causes de sa fin. Pierre Grosser. Ed. Complexe.


.Autobiographies & Testimonials


- Max Eastman. ‘Einstein, Trotsky, Hemingway, Freud and other great companions: critical memoirs of some famous friends. Collier Books, 1962.


- Ou va le temps qui passe. Entretiens avec Francois Fetjo. Balland

(conversations with one of the great experts on the histories of eastern Europe after world war 2, and also the author of ‘Requiem pour un empire defunt, a history of the austro-hungarian empire, published by Lieu Commun - rec by Liberation)


- Sandor Marai. Land, land! Wereldbibliotheek, Amsterdam. 336 p.

(this is a memoir by a Hungarian author about the years 1944 describing the fall of the Nazis and the beginning of Stalinism in his country, and thus, an exceptional testimony of the processes of totalitarianism - strongly recommended by Knack)


- Thomas Mann. Reflections of an  Unpolitical Man.

(world war I and how it shook the convictions of the cultural elite of the day, as expressed by one of the foremost German authors: “ Although the war did not make any immediate demands on me physically, while it lasted it put a complete stop to my artistic activity because it forced me into an agonizing reappraisal of my fundamental assumptions, a human and intellectual self-inquiry that found its condensation in Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen [Reflections of an Unpolitical Man], published in 1918. Its subject is the personally accented problem of being German, the political problem, treated in the spirit of a polemical conservatism that underwent many revisions as life went on. An account of the development of my socio-moral ideas is found in the volumes of essays Rede und Antwort (1922) [Question and Answer], Bemübungen (1925) [Efforts], and Die Forderung des Tages (1930) [Order of fhe Day].”)


- Stefan Zweig. The World of Yesterday.

(one of the most moving memoirs that I have read, it starts at the end of the 19th century with all its hopes, and how these flounder with the era of the two world wars; the author was an Austrian Jew and one of the foremost authors of his time)


- Buda-Pest 1900. By John Lukacs.

("about the cosmopolitan spirit of the era, sustained by a great deal of travel between capitals" - Barzun)


- Edward Said. Out of Place.

(an autobiography of the leftwing Palestinian critic of Orientalism, focusing on the notion of exile)


- Eric Hobsbawn. Interesting Times: a 20th  century life. Allen Lane, 2002

(autobiography of one of the major historians of the modern era,which can be read together with the last volume of this tetralogy, The Age of Extremes - rec by Perry Anderson in London Rv of Bks)


. Non-eurocentric anthropological accounts


- “With the advent of several major critiques of anthropology's guilty past, most notably Talal Asad's _Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter_ and Johannes Fabian's _Time and the Other_, anthropologists began their long journey towards redressing their fear of the modern with an innovative series of Baudelairean meditations on the dialectics of modernity and tradition, urban and rural, simple and complex. From Anna Tsing's _In the Realm of the Diamond Queen_ (1993) to Michael Taussig's _The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America_ (1980), many ethnographies in the 1970s, '80s and '90s explored the interstices *between* the pre-modern "exotic" and the modern quotidian, focusing on the interpolations of Western forms into "native" places (and vice versa). “



4. GLOBAL FUTURES


General treatments


- The Next Development of Mankind. Lancelot Law Whyte (also: The Universe of Experience)

(worked for 50 years on the expression of a new unified theory - strongly recommended by Philosphere)


- Jump Time. Jean Houston. Tarcher, 2000

(several deep trends converge to create the need for a quantum leap)


- De Quoi Demain. Dialogue entre Jacques Derrida et Elisabeth Roudinesco. Fayard/Galilee. 2001.`

(“une historienne de la psychanalyse et un philosophe deconstructioniste dans un dialogue philosophique, une celebration du role continuellement important des intellectuels ‘de se meler de ce qui ne les regarde pas’ - Le Monde)


- Dee Hock. Birth of the Chaordic Age (San Francisco, CA, Berret-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 1999) 

(“as founder and CEO of VISA International, he became aware that the fundamental problem facing modern society is the way we organize ourselves. The "command and control structure" of most organizations are literally designed to cause inequality, environmental destruction, untold human suffering and loss of spontaneity and creativity. He has founded the Chaordic Alliance to design social organization that are commensurate with the biosphere and the higher values of human nature. Chaordic is a new word that connotes the appropriate synthesis of chaos and order. "We are at the very point in time when a 400-year old age is dying and another is struggling to be born -a shifting of culture, science, society, and institutions enormously greater than the world has ever experienced. Ahead, the possibility of the regeneration of individuality, liberty, community, and ethics such as the world has never known, and a harmony with nature, with one another, and with the divine intelligence such as the world has never dreamed.")


- Thomas Berry: The Great Work: Our Way into the Future (New York, Bell Tower, 1999) 

(“In his latest book Berry passionately calls upon our generation to reverse the pattern of environmental and species destruction and to commune with nature and the whole Earth community. "Awareness that the universe is more cosmogenesis than cosmos might be the greatest change in human consciousness that has taken place since the awakening of the human in the Paleolithic Period....To move from this abiding spatial context of personal identity [the earlier view of reality] to a sense of identity with an emergent universe is a transition that has, even now, not been accomplished in any comprehensive manner by any of the world's spiritual traditions." )


- Robert D. Kaplan The Coming Anarchy, New York: Vintage Books 1999.

(the author is a foremost representative of the neoconservative ‘realist’ school, and this is a very fine description of the darker side of the international situation)


- Duane Elgin. The Promise Ahead: A Vision of Hope and Action for Humanity's Future


- Immanuel Wallerstein. Utopistics: Or Historical Choices of the Twenty-First Century.

New Press, 1998.

(a good exposition of world-system analysis for the layman, with prospects for the next decades, defined by the breakdown of the nation-state system, but also the coming together of new oppositional movements. Seel also from the same author: “The Age of Transition: trajectory of the world system, 1945-2025”)


- Earth at a Crossroads, Hartmut Bossel 

(“the author takes a deep systems approach to understanding where society is heading, and what alternatives might be available. He shows that any new path must live within various kinds of hard constraints—there aren’t really that many future paths available to us. It comes down to this: either we continue down the exploitive path to disaster, or we find the path to sustainability. Bossel shows us where that path lies by taking us on a quest into the realm of system dynamics. “)


- Thierry Gaudin et al. 1) 2100, recit du prochain siecle. 2) 2100, Odyssee de l’Espece. Payot.

(this work is the result of a massive international cooperation between futurists worldwide: this is the best consensus on the future awaiting us)


- Marc Faber. Tomorrow’s Gold. CLSA Books, 2002.

(this is a book by a very influential financial and stock market analyst, editor of the newsletter “Gloom, Boom and Doom Report”, in which he categorises the end of the 20th century as an extraordinary moment of change, not seen since the end of the 15th cy. He predicts the eventual dominance of Asian powers)


extra: Buckminster Fuller


- Critical Path. New York : St. Martin's Press, c1981

(“A complete scientific and sociological examination of human history, solutions to current problems of humanity and future trends for ``cosmic evolution.)


- Cosmography: A Posthumous Scenario for the Future of Humanity. Macmillan Publishing Company, c1992. viii, 271 p. Includes index. (ISBN 0-02-541850-5). 


- Humans in Universe. Buckminster Fuller, Anwar Dil. -- 1st American ed. -- New York : Moutin, c1983 

(“Conversations between Fuller and Indian Philosopher Anwar Dil. “)


- Ideas and Integrities : a spontaneous autobiographical disclosure edited by Robert W. Marks. --1st Collier Books ed. -- New York : Collier Books, 1969

- Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth. [New York] Simon and Schuster, 1970.

(“Fuller's seminal work regarding the relationship of humanity to the environment and planetary planning. World history takes on a new meaning and significance. A primer on Synergetics. “)


- Aaseng, Nathan. More with Less: the Future World of Buckminster Fuller (Minneapolis: Lerner Publications, c1986

(“Ninth grade reading level. Excellent introduction into Synergetics and Fuller's significance in general.”)


Fictional treatments


(note: commentaries are from Changesurfer website)


- Olaf Stapledon : Speaking for the Future (Utopianism and Communitarianism series) by Robert Crossley, June 1994

(“Olaf Stapledon , a socialist and an early and expansive visionary of the future evolution of humanity, of which socialist world government was just a first step. Amongst his novels about far future evolution, see Darkness and Light”)


- Welcome to the Revolution : The Literary Legacy of MacK Reynolds  by Curtis C. Smith, Roger C. Schlobin (eds)

(“Mack Reynolds, a science fiction author and democratic socialist, who campaigned for the Socialist Labor Party”)


- Iain Banks

(“socialist and author of the post-property Culture series”)


- John Barnes 

(“author of the classic ecological SF Mother of Storms “)


- Terry Bisson 

(“radical, author of Fire on the Mountain and many of other things “)


- John Brunner

(“a British socialist SF writer, author of the classic SF social commentaries, the overpopulation-themed Stand on Zanzibar, Shockwave Rider (the novel that proposed the idea of software worm as a terrorist weapon), and ecological The Sheep Look Up.”)


- Emma Bull & Steven Brust -- Freedom & Necessity (1997)

("Bull is a left-liberal and Brust is a Trotskyist fantasy writer. F&N is set in the 19th Century of the Chartists and class turmoil. It's been described as "the first Marxist steampunk" or "a fantasy for Young Hegelians.”)


- Nancy Kress 

(“author of the radical democratic reflection on genetics, the Beggar's Trilogy”)


- Ursula LeGuin 

(“author of anarchist The Dispossessed ; the gender-bending The Left Hand of Darkness; and the cautionary tale about wanting to change the world, The Lathe of Heaven”)


- Doris Lessing 

(“a South African expatriate, political radical, and author of the many novels including speculative fiction Canopus in Argos series)


- Simon Louvish 

(“author of The Resurrections, an alternate history, based on the premise that Rosa Luxemberg survived to lead a successful Communist revolution in Germany in 1923.)


- Ken MacLeod 

(“libertarian socialist and author of the Stone Canal, Star Fraction and Cassini Division”)


- Fred Pohl 

(“leftist, a former Futurian and author of many SF novels, including the classic critique of capitalism, The Space Merchants”)


- Joan Slonczewski 

(“a feminist Biology professor, who has portrayed radically egalitarian societies”)


- Michael Swanwick

(“author of the meditation on technology and fascism, Jack Faust; the ecological In the Drift , and the depiction of a completely collectivized Earth facing an individualistic space culture, Vacuum Flowers”)


- Warren Wagar

(“socialist and author of A Short History of the Future”)


5. REGIONAL HISTORIES


The Americas


- The Aztecs. Michael E. Smith . Blackwell 1996

(“It is framed by narrative political history, but the core of The Aztecs is social history, a description of life in the Valley of Mexico and its surrounds in the fifteenth century. For this Smith draws on a broad range of sources - native codices, accounts by the Spanish conquerors and later chroniclers, and archaeology - but particularly on recent findings from archaeological excavations (including some of his own) designed to answer particular questions. The result is quite lively, going into just enough detail about particular sites and documents to give some depth, and I found it an engaging read. I recommend it to anyone interested in the Aztecs, both general readers like myself (approaching the subject for the first time) and those with some background in the area seeking an overview. “ )


-  La Terre Pleurera. Une histoire de l’Amerique Indienne (english: The Earth Shall Weep). James Wilson. Albin Michel.

(“il etait legitime, pour ne pas dire necessaire, d’acceuillir la somme qui stupefia l’Amerique. Conjuguant l’erudition scrupuleuse et l’empathie douloureuse, Wilson a reussi la un livre superbe” - rec Le Monde des Livres)


Asia and The Middle/Near East (including Northern Africa)


.Asia - General


- Jack Goody. The Oriental, the Ancient, and the Primitive.

(“In The Oriental, the Ancient and the Primitive one of the world’s most foremost anthropologists looks in depth at kinship practice in Asia, and continues the comparative survey of pre-industrial family formation undertaken in The Development of Family and Marriage in Europe (1983) and elsewhere. Professor Goody’s findings cause him to question many traditional assumptions about the ‘primitive’ east, and he suggests that, in contrast to pre-colonial Africa, kinship practice in Asia has much in common with that prevailing in parts of pre-industrial Europe.”)


- Beyond Binary Histories. Re-imagining Eurasia to c. 1830. Victor Lieberman, Editor

(“Seeking to transcend the hoary insistence on East-West dichotomies, this collection looks for transformations in cultural and political organization across Eurasia that were both more general and more psychologically significant to pre-1830 actors themselves than the problem that has obsessed twentieth-century comparativists, namely, the origins of a unique European industrialism. Specifically, it contains nine coordinated essays which explore the proposition that the integration of isolated units to form more cohesive systems in France, Russia, and other European countries ca 1000-1830 corresponds in important respects to integrative processes in parts of Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Japan. The collaborators of this project show, in varying degrees, that political centralization in these areas reflected and inspired the creation of vernacular literatures at the expense of more universal languages. They illustrate that societies in widely separated areas, with no obvious links, became more literate, mobile, specialized, and commercial at roughly the same time. And they point out that administrative development in many of these same areas showed curiously synchronized cycles. Finally, having defined Eurasian parallels and sketched their limits, they push on to explore the underlying dynamics of these discoveries, scrutinizing the role of guns, global climate, markets, new information networks, institutional pressures, and sixteenth-century messianism. Insofar as similarities between some European and Asian areas exceeded those between different sectors of Asia, this collection invites historians to reject continental perspectives in favor of more thematic, contextually-specific categories. But at the same time, it raises the possibility of a broad "early modern" period for Eurasia at large.”)


.Central Asia


- Vincent Fourniau. Histoire de l’Asie Centrale. PUF, 1994. (Gaudin)


- Rene Grousset. L’Empire des Steppes. Payot, 1980.


 .Near East & Middle East


- A History of the Arab Peoples. Albert Hourani and Malise Ruthven. Harvard Univ Pr.

(“masterworks hailed as the definitive story of Arabcivilisation, a panoramic view encompassing twelve centuries” - TNR)


- The Ancient Near East. By Amelie Kuhrt.

(“a magnificent handbook to a vast sweep of history, from 3000 BC to Alexander the Great” - rec by BBC History mag)


- Nadine Picaudou. Les Palestiniens. Un siecle d’histoire. Ed. Complexe.


- Nadine Picaudou. La decennie qui ebranla le Moyen-Orient, 1914-1923. Ed. Complexe.


Europe and The West


.General


- History of Western Civilization: A Handbook . William MacNeil; (Paperback The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community With a Retrospective Essay)

(“most formidable world historian”)


- A History of Europe. by J. M. Roberts . Allen Lane 
                                                 

(“When J.M. Roberts's monumental History of the World was first published more than twenty years ago, it was immediately hailed as a "stupendous achievement." "Unbelievably accurate in its facts and almost incontestable in its judgments," acclaimed A.J.P. Taylor, pronouncing Roberts's work the "unrivaled World History for our day." The book has indeed gone on to become the premier single-volume history of our time, with more than a quarter million copies sold around the world. Now, in an equally outstanding performance, J.M. Roberts has turned to the history of Europe. Beginning with its Paleolithic origins and the early civilizations of the Aegean, Roberts traces the development of the European identity over the course of thousands of years, ranging across empires and religions, economics, science, and the arts. Antiquity, the age of Christendom, the Middle Ages, early modern history, and the old European order all are surveyed in turn, with particular emphasis given to the turbulent twentieth century. How is it that the small continent of Europe, with its rich multiplicity of cultures and traditions, has managed to exert so profound an influence on the rest of the world? Roberts's sweeping and entertaining history notes the paradoxical effect, for good and ill, on everything touched by "western values" whose origins lie in Europe.”)


.Modern Europe


- J.R. Hale. Renaissance Europe, 1480-1520. 1971


- Europe in the Age of Louis XIV. R. Hatton. 1969.


- A World Restored: Europe after Napoleon. By Henry A. Kissinger.

(how the balance of power was restored after the upset by Napoleon - Jacques Barzun)


- G. Williams. The Expansion of Europe in the Eigteenth Century: Overseas Rivalry Discovery and Exploitation. 1966. (web biblio)


- Braudel, Fernand 1984 Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century (3

Volumes), New York: Harper & Row.


.Contemporary Europe


- Histoire de l’Europe au XXe siecle. Jean Ruhlman et al. (five vols.: vol V: de 1974 a nos jours)


. The European Union


- The Making of Europe: an introduction to the history of European unity. Christopher Dawson. Meridian Bks, 1956 (rec ‘auteurs et penseurs de la droite)


- Marie-Therese Bitsch. Histoire de la construction europeenne. Ed. Complexe.


- Edgar Morin. Penser l’Europe. (rec Negri)


- Nicole Gresotto. La puissance et l’Europe. (rec Negri)


- Bernard Beutler. Reflexions sur l’Europe.


. Specific countries


Balkans/Eastern Europe


- Joseph Krulic. Histoire de la Yougoslavie. De 1945 a nos jours. Ed. Complexe.


- Catherine Durandin. Histoire de la nation roumaine. Ed. Complexe


France


- The Great Nation. France from Louis XV to Napoleon. Colin Jones. Columbia University Press, 2003.

(“the best history on 18th cy. France: brilliant” - NY Rv of Bks)


- Serge Berstein et Pierre Mizla. Histoire de la France au XXe siecle. Ed. Complexe (five volumes: Tome V: 1974 a nos jours.)


Germany

- A History of Prussia. H. Koch. 1978 (J. Israel biblio)


Greece


- O. Murray. Early Greece, 1993. (rec freeman)


- R. Osborne. Greece in the Making, 1200-479 BC. 1996 (rec Freeman)


Netherlands


- Jonanthan Israel. The Dutch Republic: its rise, greatness and fall, 1477-1806.

(great historian and specialist of the Enlightenment period)


Spain


- Histoire de l’Espagne au XXe siecle. Aline Angoustures. Ed. Complexe.


UK


- Britain in Revolution. 1625-1660. Austin Woolrich. Oxford University Press.

(“the definitive history of the English Civil War” )


- A.N. Wilson. The Victorians. Norton.


- The British Marxist Historians. Harvey J. Kaye. Palgrave, 1995.

(“a study of how history and historians work, and a lasting contribution to the history of 20th cy Marxism: looks at Maurice Dobb and the debate on the transition to capitalism; on Rodney Hilton and his studies of feudalism and the English peasantry; Christopher Hill on the English Revolution; Eric Hobsbawn on workers and world history; and E.P. Thompson on the making of the English working class”)