Universal Model of Historical Dynamics

THE UNIVERSAL MODEL OF HISTORICAL DYNAMICS

AS A BRIDGE BETWEEN MACROSOCIOLOGICAL THEORIES AND CONCEPTION OF GLOBAL SOCIAL EVOLUTION

Institute for Philosophy and Law, Novosibirsk State University,

For conceptualizing conditions and actions the universal model of historical dynamics is used. The model consists of several phases which form three main loops. Each loop begins from the phase of social stability - an organic system of effective regimes that allows influential groups to achieve their values and goals. Stability is disturbed by so called basic factors of historical dynamics (demographic, ecological, resource, social and cultural ones). Critical force of disturbance leads to a challenge – strong discomfort of influential groups which now must give a response i.e. must change essentially everyday behavior and/or organize some large-scale mobilization activity. The phase of response is the main point of divergence (bifurcation) where according to type of response one of main loops evolves.

The first loop just returns to the phase of stability (fig.1). The response in this case is adequate and compensator one. New stability minimally differs from previous by minimal amelioration of some functions, institutions, regimes that temporally softens or neutralizes the destructive effect of historical dynamics factors. This is the path of step-by-step evolution [White 1975; Carneiro 1970].

Fig.1. The mechanism of step-be-step evolution.

The second loop is the most dramatic one. The non-adequate response usually leads to conflicts and enforcement of challenge. If inadequacy of the response prolongs escalation of conflicts and destruction leads to a crisis. If no fresh effective response appears, this loop proceeds “working” as a self-destructive way to a social abyss. Conceptually it is a special kind of positive cycle where each destructive trend leads to next destructive trend and all they enforce each other. Such structure was called the megatrend “Well” (or “Abyss”). If the social system is an empire or a state, this megatrend leads to a social revolution, state breakdown and territorial fragmentation.

Fig.2. The mechanism of crisis and breakdown.

Breakdowns of Ancient and Medieval empires, of old regimes in modern social revolutions, recent Soviet collapse can serve as examples of such a historical pattern [Tainter 1988; Skocpol 1979; Kennedy 1987; Goldstone 1991; Collins 1995; Turchin 2003].

The third loop is the effect of series of adequate and prospective responses (here the model is rather close to the Toynbean original explanation of growth of “cultures” – local civilizations). How long such social resonance can continue? It depends on the given resource basis and ability of new cooperative community to find new sources, i.e. to give new adequate responses for new deficiency challenges. If new mobilizing community is successful in providing necessary resource basis for more than 1-2 generations, the specific historical phenomenon evolves – dynamic strategies [Snooks 1996].

Fig.3. The mechanism of ‘historical miracles’ (systemic transformations, evolutionary breakthroughs).

Here it means a bunch of cooperative activities with general objective direction that prolongs for two and more generations and uses each significant result as a base for new movement in the same direction. Seven main groups of dynamic strategies include coercive, commercial, technological, resource-transit, socio-engineer, demographic, and cultural ones.

Usually effective strategies are connected also into bunches. In cases of resource abundance and new effective responses to deficiency challenges they form a megatrend “Lift” (or “Escalator” - a positive cycle of factors but now factors of rise, growth and development). Such megatrend always includes significant institutional reforms that open new space for effective regimes development. These structural changes lead to a system transformation — the irreversible ongoing transit to some new social stage (fig.3). Sooner or later some new balance establishes and this new stage becomes a new social stability (the beginning of all three loops within the model).

Fig. 4. Universal Model of Historical Dynamics. Full version.

Status of the Model —
the Ontological Paradigm for Theories of Dynamics

What is methodological status of the presented model (fig.4)? Let’s consider the classical discussion on objectivity and interpretation. “Naturalists” defend full objectivity of their statements while “constructivists” (also adherents of hermeneutics, phenomenology, relativism, postmodernism, etc.) insist on inevitability of interpretations. It is true that all general propositions on history, historical phenomena, processes, and trends are interpretations (“the truth of constructivism”). But not all interpretations are equal in adequacy and validity. Some of them can be justified by various empirical methods and logical means (the systematic comparison of historical cases, formulating and testing hypotheses, statistics, etc.) and can be considered as objective theoretical knowledge (“the truth of naturalism”). Also there is a wide range of helpful preliminary ontological, conceptual, logical, and methodological concepts and propositions that can not be tested and proved directly but serve as a necessary intellectual basis for theoretical and empirical research.

In these terms the following description of the universal model of historical dynamics has the status of the ontological paradigm for various theories of historical change [see Stinchcombe 1987]. As far as the theories of step-by-step evolution [White 1976, Carneiro 1970], collapses, state-breakdowns and revolutions [Moore 1966; Skocpol 1979; Kennedy 1987; Tainter 1988; Goldstone 1991; Collins 1995], mass mobilization, dynamic strategies [Tilly 1992; Snooks 1996], systemic transformations and modernizations and other dynamic theories can be tested and proved — they all support this covering ontological model.

I admit that justification of any social ontology (including our universal model of historical dynamics) belongs to the second-order context [Gorman 2007, p.41-49] and is directly depends on capacity of this ontology to serve as a basis for ‘good’ explanatory theories. Are theories ‘good’ or not is a matter of justification within the first-order context. I showed elsewhere[1]. that in spite of all bulk of analytical sophistication, almost all contemporary theoretical knowledge including ethnology, experimental psychology, political sciences and historical sociology successfully apply standards of the Popper-Hempelian tradition especially in the version of research programs by Imre Lakatos. So the second-order justification of these standards is also based on the wide and blossoming practice of theoretical research [Rozov 1997]. The majority of historians (with seldom exclusion of several great ones such as F.Braudel and W.McNeill) practicize traditional empirical research of some narrow field. They are usually fully incompetent in the very theoretical approach. They do not know and even don’t want to know what is a general hypothesis and how it is possible to test it by systemic comparison of historical cases. That’s why their constant idiosyncrasy towards Hempelian standards of historical explanation still proceeds to confuse analytical philosophers of history who restricted themselves from beginning and forever to a subordinate analysis of only traditional empirical historiography).

The model of historical dynamics presented above is not just a mere ‘interpretation’ (a voluntary one among dozens of others) but a general cognitive scheme which both incorporates previous dynamic theories with some range of objectivity (justification, validity etc.) and serves as an heuristics for further formulations of hypotheses and theories.

Historical Dynamics and Social Evolution

Just in the loop 3 historical dynamics [Turchin 2003] is connected with crucial shifts of social evolution (classical works by K.Marx, M.Weber, W.Rostow, also [Wallerstein 1974-80; Goudsblom et al. 1996; Sanderson 1995; Spier 1996; Collins 1999]).

There are five well-known great irreversible transformations that form the very skeleton of the global social evolution (fig.5):

· Anthropogenesis (especially latest behavioral and cultural shifts like genesis of language and control of fire)

· Neolithic revolution (domestication of plants and animals, transition from nomadic to settlement cultures),

· Genesis of civilized societies (with state, script and cities);

· Invasive and market integration (mature empires and advanced networks of cities-states appear);

· Formation of modern bureaucratic nation-states (in one large complex with Military revolution and Industrial revolution).

Modern global transition takes alternative names (postindustrialism, postmodern societies, third wave, information society etc. I prefer name the new type sensitive societies, which means special scientific sensibility to new social problems, challenges and crises.

Fig.5. Integration of unilinear (phases) and multilinear (alternatives in each phase) conceptions of social evolution.

All these global evolutionary shifts and many smaller ones are results of correspondent complexes of dynamic strategies, megatrends ‘lift’ and systemic transformations in the universal model of historical dynamics (fig.3).

That’s why the model can be considered as a necessary intellectual bridge between large scope vision on social evolution and dozens of macro (also meso-, and micro-) sociological theories.

NOTES

Carneiro, Robert. A Theory of the Origin of the State // Science. 1970. Vol. 169. P.733 - 738.

Chase-Dunn, Christopher, Hall T. Rise and Demise: Comparing World-Systems. HarperCollins, Westview Press, 1997.

Collins, Randall. Prediction in Macrosociology: The Case of the Soviet Collapse // American J. of Sociology. 1995, May. P. 1552-1593.

Collins, Randall. Macrohistory: Essays in Sociology of the Long Run. Stanford Univ. Press, 1999.

Gellner, Ernest. Plough, Sword, and Book. The Structure of Human History. University of Chicago Press, 1988.

Goldstone, Jack. Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1991.

Gorman, Jonathan. Historical Judgment. Acumen. 2007.

Goudsblom, Johan, Eric Jones, and Stephen Mennel. The Course of Human History: Economic Growth, Social Process, and Civilization. M.E.Sharp, 1996.

Kennedy, Paul. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000. N.-Y. Random House, 1987.

Rozov, Nikolai S. An Apologia for Theoretical History // History and Theory, 1997. Vol. 36, N 3.

Sanderson, Stephen. Social Transformations: A General Theory of Historical Development. Blackwell, 1995.

Skocpol, Theda. States and Social Revolutions. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1979.

Snooks Graeme. The Dynamic Society: Exploring the Sources of Global Change. L.-N.-Y., Routledge, 1996.

Spier, Fred. The Structure of Big History. From the Big Bang until Today. Amsterdam. Univ. Press, 1996.

Stinchcombe, Arthur. Constructing Social Theories. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago and London. 1987.

Tainter, Joseph. The Collapse of Complex Societies. Cambridge & N.-Y.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1988.

Tilly, Charles. Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1990. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1992.

Turchin, Peter. Historical Dynamics: Why States Rise and Fall. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003.

Wallerstein, Immanuel. The Modern World System I-III San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974-1980.

White, Leslie. The Nature of Cultural Systems. N.Y., 1975.