Cultural Premises, Political Structures and Dynamics

Abstract

Using the typical early pre-colonial African state as well as the Byzantine and Chinese empires as examples, the authors argue that the proper understanding of the state and, more generally, of political institutions and processes, requires that political actors and actions be studied in the context of the culture of which they are a part. The three case studies provided show that the impact of cultural factors on political processes, specifically the impact of a society's fundamental cultural premises, or what might be called a society's vision of civilization, is effected through the activities of and the types of coalition formed by a society's elites.

Collective action and cultural change: Revisiting Eisenstadt’s evolutionary theory

“…Although Eisenstadt was never crystal clear in positing a single theory of evolution, we can look at two clues to best understand what he thought evolved. First, the bulk of Eisenstadt's historical research was focused on two specific epochs and processes: the evolution of political autonomy in agrarian states beginning some 5000 years ago (Eisenstadt, 1963(Eisenstadt, , 1977Eisenstadt et al, 1987) and the emergence of religious entrepreneurs (Eisenstadt, 1980(Eisenstadt, , 1982(Eisenstadt, , 1986(Eisenstadt, , 1990 during the so-called Axial Age (ca. 800-200).…”

“…Primarily, it was his later interests (e.g. Eisenstadt, 1986Eisenstadt, , 2000Eisenstadt et al, 1987), what he termed "multiple modernities," that have deservingly received much attention (Alexander, 1992;Alexander and Colomy, 1990;Joas, 2012;Wittrock, 2005). In the article, we argue that his earliest work on sociocultural evolution (Eisenstadt, 1963(Eisenstadt, , 1964(Eisenstadt, , 1965(Eisenstadt, , 1971) deserves a renewed focus, especially in light of the recent advances made in neo-evolutionary theory (Machalek and Martin, 2016) and the growing integration of cognitive and evolutionary psychology into sociology (Norenzayan, 2013;Slingerland et al, 2013).…”