Organismos Internacionales de protección de Derechos Humanos a

Because of the tremendous importance of subsistence technology, scholars since the eighteenth century have returned to it repeatedly whenever they have attempted to develop a comprehensive and systematic taxonomy of human societies. When one considers the entire range of societies, from the prehistoric past to the mod- ern era, no other characteristic has greater predictive and explanatory power. Know- ing a society’s technological resources for obtaining energy and materials tells us more about the society and why it is as it is than any other single fact (Heise et al., 1976).3

Not surprisingly, the oldest and most widely used methods of societal clas- sification focus on precisely those resources. One is based on the technology of

energy production. As early as the middle of the eighteenth century, the French

scholar and reformer Turgot differentiated among hunting, pastoral, and farming societies, and Montesquieu among savagery, barbarism, and civilization, which he linked directly to differences in modes of subsistence.

The other long-standing method is based on the technology of materials. Beginning in the nineteenth century, archaeologists differentiated among paleolithic, neolithic, chalcolithic, bronze-, iron-, and steel-age societies. More recently, however, as the techniques of archaeological research have grown more sophisticated and theoretical interests have increased, archaeologists have shifted the focus of their attention from materials to energy, so that today one reads with increasing frequency in their literature of food-collecting and food-producing so- cieties. This shift was stimulated by the discovery that the distinction between paleolithic and neolithic societies closely approximates the distinction between food-collecting and food-producing societies (Childe, 1936).

The most satisfactory system of classifying societies currently available is a refinement of the eighteenth-century schema developed by Turgot and others. Modern research suggests the utility of differentiating among seven basic types of societies, plus subdivisions of the basic types and various hybrid types that com- bine substantial elements of two or more of the basic types.

3. Measures of technology always load heavily on the first factor in any broadly based factor analysis.

Figure 5.1 indicates the two-dimensional nature of the modern taxonomy. In other words, the basic taxons are products of the interaction of the two most basic variables influencing societal development according to ecological-evolu- tionary theory—namely, the characteristics of the environments in which these societies are located and the level of technological resources available to them. The horizontal dimension reflects variations in the biophysical environment; and the vertical, variations in subsistence technology.

As the figure indicates, technologically advanced types of societies are ca- pable of expanding into new and different kinds of environments from those in which they developed initially. Thus, modern industrial societies, while develop- ing initially in areas suited to plow cultivation and/or areas favoring overseas trade and commerce, are now found in nearly all kinds of environments. Also, many horticultural and agrarian societies of the past annexed territories previously oc- cupied by maritime or fishing societies. The important point, however, is that each of the basic societal types reflects a unique combination of environmental and technological characteristics and these determine what might be called their

operative technology (i.e., those technological resources actually employed in their

most essential economic activities). While other technologies may be known, en-

Industrial societies

Agrarian societies Maritime societies Fishing societies Horticultural societies Herding societies Semiarid, arid and desert environments Cultivable land unsuited to plow cultivation Cultivable land suited to plow cultivation Marine environments

Hunting and gathering societies

Type of Environment Level of

Technological Advance

= Common patterns of societal evolution Low

High

Characteristics of Sets of Societies 85 vironmental conditions render them less relevant and less important in the pro- duction of goods and services.4

Within the framework defined by the ecological-evolutionary taxonomy, one can easily add further specifications to achieve greater precision in explana- tion and prediction. For example, in contemporary societies, one can use GNP per capita or energy consumption per capita to obtain a much more precise mea- sure of the overall level of technological development (Frisbee and Clarke, 1979). In preindustrial societies, one can often find important secondary technological criteria. Thus, agrarian societies can be subdivided on the basis of the presence or absence of iron tools and weapons; horticultural societies can be divided on the basis of the presence or absence of metallurgy and/or irrigation and fertilization; and herding societies can be divided on the basis of the presence or absence of large domesticates, such as cattle, horses, and camels.

One can also use nontechnological criteria to subdivide the basic taxons. For example, agrarian societies can be divided on the basis of their dominant religious tradition into Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, and so forth. Similarly, in- dustrial societies of the last 100 years can be divided on the basis of the ideologies of their ruling elites into capitalist, democratic socialist, and revolutionary social- ist societies.

Subsets such as these can be quite useful in the analysis of certain kinds of problems. Thus, if one wished to explain the differences between American and Soviet societies of the recent past, differences in the ideologies of the dominant elites would have to be taken into account. But these differences should never be allowed to obscure the underlying similarities between the two societies that re- flected the influence of their shared technologies. For it was this—not their ide- ologies—which explained the high degree of urbanization and literacy, the ex- treme division of labor, the small nuclear-family systems, the changing role of women, and most of the other characteristics they shared (Jones, 1983), to say nothing of the gradual convergence of their polities (e.g., the declining reliance on political repression in the Soviet Union following Stalin’s death).

At the risk of seeming fanciful, we may consider a hypothetical table that explains why advocates of ecological-evolutionary theory base their societal tax- onomy on technology rather than ideology, despite the obvious importance of ideology for certain kinds of problems. As Row A of Table 5.1 indicates, informa- tion concerning ideology would have been as good a predictor of patterns of so- cial organization in the United States and the USSR in 1975 as information about the level of development of subsistence technology in the two societies.5 _{But this}

4. For example, members of maritime societies and members of agrarian societies share most of the same technological information, but information concerning methods of utilizing marine resources is less relevant for members of agrarian societies and information concerning farming is less relevant for members of maritime societies.

5. The date chosen for the comparison in Table 5.1 was deliberately selected so as to maximize the ideological differences among the societies in the several comparisons. Following the deaths of

is true only because of the highly biased nature of the sample of societies being compared, a sample limited to two societies that shared a largely common indus- trial technology but differed enormously in terms of ideology.

The theoretical relevance and importance of this becomes more evident when we add two other societies to the analysis, China and India (Row B). Now we have two industrial societies and two industrializing agrarian societies and two Marxist-Leninist societies and two societies with democratic polities. As a result, the explanatory power of subsistence technology is increased, compared to the former example, and the explanatory power of ideology reduced.

Next, when we add all the other societies in the world of 1975 to the analy- sis (Row C), the predictive power of technology increases still further and the predictive power of ideology declines once again. Then, if we add to the compari- son, as any science of human societies must, all known societies of the past as well as the present (Row D), the balance tips further still. Finally, it is important to note that were we to compare Soviet society in 1975 with Soviet society in 1935 (Row E), the relative importance of technology would again loom large, since the ideol- ogy of Soviet elites changed little in those forty years, while Soviet technology changed greatly. Row E, however, like Rows A, B, and C, is not the kind of com- parison on which a general theory of human societies should be based. Instead, a truly general theory should be based on the most inclusive possible data set, or Row D.

Although the figures shown in Table 5.1 are hypothetical, they are not fan- ciful. A factor analysis limited to nation-states in the modern world found that per capita GNP and variables linked to it constituted the first factor, while ideol- ogy and related variables were only the third factor (Sawyer, 1967).6 _{Another fac-}

Mao and Chernenko, pragmatism began to transform the dominant ideologies in Marxist-Leninist societies everywhere far more than ever before.

6. Other studies, such as Frisbee and Clarke (1979), have shown that per capita GNP is an excellent measure of the overall level of technological development in contemporary societies.

Table 5.1. Five Hypothetical Comparisons of the Relative Power of Subsistence Technology and Ideology to Explain Basic Patterns of Social Organization

Explanatory Power of: Societies Compared Subsistence Technology Ideology

A. U.S. and U.S.S.R., 1975 .4 .4

B. U.S., U.S.S.R., China, and India, 1975 .5 .3

C. All societies, 1975 .6 .2

D. All known societies, past and present .7 .1

E. U.S.S.R., 1935 and 1975 .7 .4

Sources: Although Table 5.1 is hypothetical, it is not without empirical support. See, for example,

Characteristics of Sets of Societies 87 tor analysis, using preindustrial societies (Heise et al., 1976), found that the first factor loaded most heavily on technological variables and that nothing that could be identified as an ideological factor was statistically significant. Equally impor- tant, however, the second factor in this study appeared to be an environmental factor of the kind that is incorporated into the ecological-evolutionary taxonomy of societies (see Figure 5.1). Thus, although the numbers in Table 5.1 are hypo- thetical, their relative sizes have an empirical foundation.