The historicization of globalization: Dynamics of change in Eurasia sur la 'longue duree'

Human communities formed to pool resources, to join forces to fight organic entropy. Grouping required an informational framework provided by status. Status determined the level of access to energy, the level of organic dis-entropy achieved. Since status is not fixed by natural laws, human social action is a manifestation of status-seeking behavior.; Status established order, but inequality pushed order toward entropy. The result is an ongoing dialectic between social dynamism and conservatism. All order is embedded in social institutions, that are both material structures and ideal systems, and that range in format from the nuclear family to the most complex imperial civilization. Social institutions are the channel for status-seeking action. They combat entropy through the exercise of power, both material and ideal.; If individual and collective behaviors are unitary, the energy necessary to combat organic and social entropy is rare. Institutions of social order have been pitted against each other competing for resources. Scarcity resulted in systemic conflict between communities, civilizations, etc. The intensity of competition stratified functioning hierarchies, and reified the distinguishing traits and unique social patterns that evolved through institutionalization.; However, individuals could affiliate with multiple institutions and bear multiple identities. Their interest was in the diversification of access to systems of status and, through it, the diversification of resources made available to them. Crisscrossing allegiances across institutional lines fed currents of diffusion. The result was imperfectly homogeneous societies, exposed to an ongoing process of globalization.; The two dialectics of status-achievement and resource-acquisition presided over the evolution of pre-modern societies. Social dynamics were not cyclical, but evolutionary, even though evolution was repeatedly halted by severe episodes of breakdown. The observation of a number of cases in Eurasia reveals that most societies underwent similar evolutionary processes under the influence of global dynamics of change. The driving force behind social evolution was secular demographic growth, and the associated phenomena of urbanization, division of labor, and exchange.