HUNTING AND GATHERING SOCIETIES

The members of hunting and gathering societies primarily survive by hunting

animals, fishing, and gathering plants. The vast majority of these societies
existed in the past, with only a few (perhaps a million people total) living today
on the verge of extinction.
To survive, early human societies completely depended upon their immediate
environment. When the animals left the area, the plants died, or the rivers dried
up, the society had to relocate to an area where resources were plentiful.
Consequently, hunting and gathering societies, which were typically small, were
quite mobile. In some cases, where resources in a locale were extraordinarily
plentiful, small villages might form. But most hunting and gathering societies
werenomadic, moving constantly in search of food and water.
Labor in hunting and gathering societies was divided equally among members.
Because of the mobile nature of the society, these societies stored little in the
form of surplus goods. Therefore, anyone who could hunt, fish, or gather fruits
and vegetables did so. These societies probably also had at least some division
of labor based on gender. Males probably traveled long distances to hunt and
capture larger animals. Females hunted smaller animals, gathered plants, made
clothing, protected and raised children, and helped the males to protect the
community from rival groups.
Hunting and gathering societies were also tribal. Members shared an ancestral
heritage and a common set of traditions and rituals. They also sacrificed their
individuality for the sake of the larger tribal culture.

PASTORAL SOCIETIES
Members of pastoral societies, which first emerged 12,000 years ago, pasture
animals for food and transportation. Pastoral societies still exist today, primarily
in the desert lands of North Africa where horticulture and manufacturing are not
possible.
Domesticating animals allows for a more manageable food supply than do
hunting and gathering. Hence, pastoral societies are able to produce a surplus of
goods, which makes storing food for future use a possibility. With storage comes
the desire to develop settlements that permit the society to remain in a single
place for longer periods of time. And with stability comes the trade of surplus
goods between neighboring pastoral communities.
Pastoral societies allow certain of its members (those who are not domesticating
animals) to engage in nonsurvival activities. Traders, healers, spiritual leaders,
craftspeople, and people with other specialty professions appear.

HORTICULTURAL SOCIETIES
Unlike pastoral societies that rely on domesticating animals, horticultural
societies rely on cultivating fruits, vegetables, and plants. These societies first
appeared in different parts of the planet about the same time as pastoral

societies. Like hunting and gathering societies, horticultural societies had to be

mobile. Depletion of the land's resources or dwindling water supplies, for
example, forced the people to leave. Horticultural societies occasionally
produced a surplus, which permitted storage as well as the emergence of other
professions not related to the survival of the society.

AGRICULTURAL SOCIETIES
Agricultural societies use technological advances to cultivate crops (especially
grains like wheat, rice, corn, and barley) over a large area. Sociologists use the
phrase Agricultural Revolution to refer to the technological changes that
occurred as long as 8,500 years ago that led to cultivating crops and raising farm
animals. Increases in food supplies then led to larger populations than in earlier
communities. This meant a greater surplus, which resulted in towns that became
centers of trade supporting various rulers, educators, craftspeople, merchants,
and religious leaders who did not have to worry about locating nourishment.
Greater degrees of social stratification appeared in agricultural societies. For
example, women previously had higher social status because they shared labor
more equally with men. In hunting and gathering societies, women even
gathered more food than men. But as food stores improved and women took on
lesser roles in providing food for the family, they became more subordinate to
men.
As villages and towns expanded into neighboring areas, conflicts with other
communities inevitably occurred. Farmers provided warriors with food in
exchange for protection against invasion by enemies. A system of rulers with
high social status also appeared. This nobility organized warriors to protect the
society from invasion. In this way, the nobility managed to extract goods from
the lesser persons of society.
Feudal societies
From the 9th to 15th centuries, feudalism was a form of society based on
ownership of land. Unlike today's farmers, vassals under feudalism were bound
to cultivating their lord's land. In exchange for military protection, the lords
exploited the peasants into providing food, crops, crafts, homage, and other
services to the owner of the land. The caste system of feudalism was often
multigenerational; the families of peasants may have cultivated their lord's land
for generations.
Between the 14th and 16th centuries, a new economic system emerged that
began to replace feudalism. Capitalism is marked by open competition in a free
market, in which the means of production are privately owned. Europe's
exploration of the Americas served as one impetus for the development of
capitalism. The introduction of foreign metals, silks, and spices stimulated great
commercial activity in Europe.

INDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES
Industrial societies are based on using machines (particularly fueldriven ones)
to produce goods. Sociologists refer to the period during the 18th century when
the production of goods in mechanized factories began as the Industrial
Revolution. The Industrial Revolution appeared first in Britain, and then quickly
spread to the rest of the world.
As productivity increased, means of transportation improved to better facilitate
the transfer of products from place to place. Great wealth was attained by the
few who owned factories, and the masses found jobs working in the factories.
Industrialization brought about changes in almost every aspect of society. As
factories became the center of work, home cottages as the usual workplace
became less prevalent, as did the family's role in providing vocational training
and education. Public education via schools and eventually the mass media
became the norm. People's life expectancy increased as their health improved.
Political institutions changed into modern models of governance. Cultural
diversity increased, as did social mobility. Large cities emerged as places to find
jobs in factories. Social power moved into the hands of business elites and
governmental officials, leading to struggles between industrialists and workers.
Labor unions and welfare organizations formed in response to these disputes and
concerns over workers' welfare, including children who toiled in factories. Rapid
changes in industrial technology also continued, especially the production of
larger machines and faster means of transportation. The Industrial Revolution
also saw to the development of bureaucratic forms of organization, complete
with written rules, job descriptions, impersonal positions, and hierarchical
methods of management.

POSTINDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES
Sociologists note that with the advent of the computer microchip, the world is
witnessing a technological revolution. This revolution is creating
a postindustrial society based on information, knowledge, and the selling of
services. That is, rather than being driven by the factory production of goods,
society is being shaped by the human mind, aided by computer technology.
Although factories will always exist, the key to wealth and power seems to lie in
the ability to generate, store, manipulate, and sell information.
Sociologists speculate about the characteristics of postindustrial society in the
near future. They predict increased levels of education and training,
consumerism, availability of goods, and social mobility. While they hope for a
decline in inequality as technical skills and knowhow begin to determine class
rather than the ownership of property, sociologists are also concerned about
potential social divisions based on those who have appropriate education and
those who do not. Sociologists believe society will become more concerned with
the welfare of all members of society. They hope postindustrial society will be
less characterized by social conflict, as everyone works together to solve
society's problems through science.

Hunting and gathering societies

Hunting and gathering societies survive by hunting game and gathering edible
plants. Until about 12,000 years ago, all societies were hunting and gathering
societies.
There are five basic characteristics of hunting and gathering societies:
1. The primary institution is the family, which decides how food is to be
shared and how children are to be socialized, and which provides for the
protection of its members.
2. They tend to be small, with fewer than fifty members.
3. They tend to be nomadic, moving to new areas when the current food
supply in a given area has been exhausted.
4. Members display a high level of interdependence.
5. Labor division is based on sex: men hunt, and women gather.
The first social revolutionthe domestication of plants and animalsled to
the birth of the horticultural and pastoral societies.
Twilight of the Hunter-Gatherers
Hunting and gathering societies are slowly disappearing, as the encroachment of
civilization destroys the land they depend on. The Pygmies in Africa are one of
the few remaining such societies.

Horticultural Societies
In a horticultural society, hand tools are used to tend crops. The first
horticultural societies sprang up about 10,00012,000 years ago in the most
fertile areas of the Middle East, Latin America, and Asia. The tools they used
were simple: sticks or hoe-like instruments used to punch holes in the ground so
that crops could be planted. With the advent of horticultural machinery, people
no longer had to depend on the gathering of edible plantsthey could now grow
their own food. They no longer had to leave an area when the food supply was
exhausted, as they could stay in one place until the soil was depleted.

Pastoral Societies
A pastoral society relies on the domestication and breeding of animals for
food.Some geographic regions, such as the desert regions of North Africa, cannot
support crops, so these societies learned how to domesticate and breed animals.
The members of a pastoral society must move only when the grazing land
ceases to be usable. Many pastoral societies still exist in Africa, Latin America,
and parts of Asia.
Job Specialization
As techniques for raising crops and domesticating and breeding animals
improved, societies began to produce more food than they needed. Societies
also became larger and more permanently rooted to one location. For the first
time in human history, not everyone was engaged in the gathering or production
of food. As a result, job specialization emerged. While some people farmed or
raised animals, others produced crafts, became involved in trade, or provided
such goods as farming tools or clothing.

Agricultural Societies
The invention of the plow during the horticultural and pastoral societies is
considered the second social revolution, and it led to the establishment of
agricultural societies approximately five thousand to six thousand years ago.
Members of an agricultural or agrarian society tend crops with an animal
harnessed to a plow. The use of animals to pull a plow eventually led to the
creation of cities and formed the basic structure of most modern societies.
The development of agricultural societies followed this general sequence:

Animals are used to pull plows.

Larger areas of land can then be cultivated.

As the soil is aerated during plowing, it yields more crops for longer
periods of time.

Productivity increases, and as long as there is plenty of food, people do

not have to move.

Towns form, and then cities.

As crop yields are high, it is no longer necessary for every member of the
society to engage in some form of farming, so some people begin
developing other skills. Job specialization increases.

Fewer people are directly involved with the production of food, and the
economy becomes more complex.

Around this same time, the wheel was invented, along with writing, numbers,
and what we would today call the arts. However, the invention of the steam
enginethe third social revolutionwas what took humans from agricultural
to industrial society.
Roots of Gender Inequality
As people moved toward domesticating animals and using them to do work,
males tended to dominate more of the workforce, since physical strength was
necessary to control animals. By the time societies became agricultural, males
all but dominated the production of food. Since then, more prestige has been
accorded to traditionally male jobs than to traditionally female jobs, and hence,
to males more than to females.

Industrial Societies
An industrial society uses advanced sources of energy, rather than humans
and animals, to run large machinery. Industrialization began in the mid-1700s,
when the steam engine was first used in Great Britain as a means of running
other machines. By the twentieth century, industrialized societies had changed
dramatically:

People and goods traversed much longer distances because of innovations

in transportation, such as the train and the steamship.

Rural areas lost population because more and more people were engaged
in factory work and had to move to the cities.

Fewer people were needed in agriculture, and societies

became urbanized, which means that the majority of the population lived
within commuting distance of a major city.

Suburbs grew up around cities to provide city-dwellers with alternative

places to live.

The twentieth century also saw the invention of the automobile and the
harnessing of electricity, leading to faster and easier transportation, better food
storage, mass communication, and much more. Occupational specialization
became even more pronounced, and a persons vocation became more of an
identifier than his or her family ties, as was common in nonindustrial societies.
Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft

Sociologist Ferdinand Tnnies divided societies into two large

categories:Gemeinschaft societies
and Gesellschaft societies. Gemeinschaft societies consist primarily of villages in
which everyone knows everyone else. Relationships are lifelong and based on
kinship. A Gesellschaft society is modernized. People have little in common with
one another, and relationships are short term and based on self-interest, with
little concern for the well-being of others.

Postindustrial Societies
The Industrial Revolution transformed Western societies in many unexpected
ways. All the machines and inventions for producing and transporting goods
reduced the need for human labor so much that the economy transformed again,
from an industrial to a postindustrial economy.
A postindustrial society, the type of society that has developed over the past
few decades, features an economy based on services and technology, not
production. There are three major characteristics of a postindustrial economy:
1. Focus on ideas: Tangible goods no longer drive the economy.
2. Need for higher education: Factory work does not require advanced
training, and the new focus on information and technology means that
people must pursue greater education.
3. Shift in workplace from cities to homes: New communications
technology allows work to be performed from a variety of locations.
Mass Society
As industrialized societies grow and develop, they become increasingly different
from their less industrialized counterparts. As they become larger, they evolve
into large, impersonal mass societies. In a mass society, individual
achievement is valued over kinship ties, and people often feel isolated from one
another. Personal incomes are generally high, and there is great diversity among
people.