Human Institutions: A Theory of Societal Evolution

By Jonathan H. Turner

Book Overview

In recent years 'the New Institutionalism' has focused more on organizations in their social and cultural environments than on societal-level institutional systems. Thus, missing from these studies has been a larger sociological analysis of institutions, per se. In his newest book, leading social theorist Jonathan H. Turner offers a creative, richly grounded reinterpretation of social evolution. He ressurrects a level of analysis undertaken by earlier functionalist theorists, but with a new-found emphasis-that of discovering the larger forces driving the formation of human institutional systems. Only by exploring the larger macro-dynamics can the institutions of economy, kinship, religion, polity, law, and education be fully understood, as Turner persuasively shows in this magesterial explication of twenty millenia of human social life.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0742525597
• ISBN13: 9780742525597
• Release Date: March 2003
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Length: 328 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 8.8"