Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History

By William H. McNeill

Book Overview

Could something as simple and seemingly natural as falling into step have marked us for evolutionary success? In Keeping Together in Time one of the most widely read and respected historians in America pursues the possibility that coordinated rhythmic movement--and the shared feelings it evokes--has been a powerful force in holding human groups together. As he has done for historical phenomena as diverse as warfare, plague, and the pursuit of power, William H. McNeill brings a dazzling breadth and depth of knowledge to his study of dance and drill in human history. From the records of distant and ancient peoples to the latest findings of the life sciences, he discovers evidence that rhythmic movement has played a profound role in creating and sustaining human communities. The behavior of chimpanzees, festival village dances, the close-order drill of early modern Europe, the ecstatic dance-trances of shamans and dervishes, the goose-stepping Nazi formations, the morning exercises of factory workers in Japan--all these and many more figure in the bold picture McNeill draws. A sense of community is the key, and shared movement, whether dance or military drill, is its mainspring. McNeill focuses on the visceral and emotional sensations such movement arouses, particularly the euphoric fellow-feeling he calls "muscular bonding." These sensations, he suggests, endow groups with a capacity for cooperation, which in turn improves their chance of survival. A tour de force of imagination and scholarship, Keeping Together in Time reveals the muscular, rhythmic dimension of human solidarity. Its lessons will serve us well as we contemplate the future of the human community and of our various local communities.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674502299
• ISBN13: 9780674502291
• Release Date: October 1995
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 216 Pages
• Weight: 0.94 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 1.0" x 6.5"

Customer Reviews

An Original and Stimulating Hypothesis

This absorbing work exposes an immense gap in the literature about and our understanding of the past, and offers a huge canvas for further speculation. Highly recommended!

Dancing as the Engine of Human History

If you are one of those people who reads in terms of things subversive or hegemonic, you will not like this book, because it so completely accepts the sort of mechanized vision of the universe so common to our age. However, if one should happen to be free of that particular affliction, then this is a fairly interesting book, for not only is it readable, rare for an academic book, but it also has something to say about human history. Mr. McNeill's thesis is that the interaction between music and dancing has had a very much greater impact on human history than has heretofore been realized, and many of his speculations are well worth pondering. For students of dance, and what is perhaps now becoming a legitimate line of academic query, a subject that may someday become known as "kinesthetics," this book is a must-read. A recent book from France about the French use of church bells appears to echo many of the themes developed here, which is to say that this book may well be looked back upon as an important first step. Of course, to a politically-minded critic, such work is utterly reactionary, and perhaps it is an escape into a fantasy of other times and places, and certainly the almost uncritical way in which McNeill accepts the current Darwinistic world view is disturbing, yet nevertheless there is much to be gained here. The long analysis of the impact of close order drill on European armies is alone work of the first water, of interest to anyone working on not just European political history, but also students of European imperialism. If this book is understood aright, much of our current thought is going to have to be revised.