Social Stratification

Guns, Germs, and Steel: Prologue

Why GGS in this class?Human history before 1750 constitutes

99% of the 5 million year history of our species

If we start with stratified societies (e.g., post the industrial revolution), we don’t fully explain why societies are stratified or why some countries industrialized first

Ergo, we have to go back into history and pre-history to explain stratification

Eurasia

Modern history is dominated by the

role of Eurasia

Why Eurasia?Why did Eurasian countries become so

powerful and innovative? (i.e., Eurasian countries became empires, dominating other countries)

Typical answers invoke “proximate forces” – the factors that immediately proceed the event:Rise of capitalism, mercantilism, scientific inquiry,

technology, and nasty germsBut the proximate forces are not “ultimate

forces” – the factors that explain the proximate forces

The roots of Eurasian dominance lie in the preliterate past before 3,000 BCE.

Yali’s QuestionYali was a New Guinean politicianHe recognized the disparity in “cargo”

between Europeans and New GuineansThis lead him to ask Diamond,

“Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?” (p. 14)

Reformulated, the question is the same as the one we just asked:Why was Eurasia able to overcome

subsistence living and produce surplus agriculture as well as produce much more technologically advanced goods before anywhere else in the world?

Not actually Yali

New Guinea200 years ago was basically a stone age

civilizationStone tools; no metal toolsSmall villages, no centralized authority

When whites arrived they considered New Guineans “primitive”What does that mean?

Why not another way?Why weren’t Native Americans,

Africans, and Aboriginal Australians the ones who decimated, subjugated, or exterminated Europeans and Asians?

Technological differences in 1500CE were the proximate causes, but what are the ultimate causes?

11,000 BCE – When it all beganWhy is 11,000 BCE so important?

All humans were basically hunter-gatherers at that point

We were all at the same basic stage of development

We were basically equalWhat happened?

“Why did [technological] development proceed at such different rates on different continents?” (p. 16)

Objections“If we succeed in explaining how some people

came to dominate other people, may this not seem to justify the domination?” (p. 17)

“Doesn’t addressing Yali’s question automatically involve a Eurocentric approach to history, a glorification of western Europeans, and an obsession with the prominence of western Europe and Europeanized in the modern world?” (pp. 17-18)

“Don’t words such as “civilization,” and phrases such as “rise of civilization,” convey the false impression that civilization is good, tribal hunter-gatherers are miserable, and history for the past 13,000 years has involved progress toward greater human happiness?”

Other ExplanationsBiological or genetic differences:

Europeans are genetically superior to non-Europeans

Is this true?Stimulatory effects of northern Europe’s cold

climate and the inhibitory effects of hot, humid, tropical climates on human creativity and energyDo some climates lead to smarter humans?(Note: Climate is important, just not in this way.)

(Side note: Diamond says New Guineans are smarter than Westerners (p. 21). How good is his evidence?)

AfricaArguably, modern humans evolved in

Africa. If we have lived there longer than

anywhere else, why isn’t that the cradle of technological advancement?

Summary of the Book“History followed different courses for

different peoples because of differences among peoples’ environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves” (p. 25)

What does this ultimately tells us about the causes of economic inequality?

(Note: Environment, coupled with genetic mutations, also explains evolution)