Agrarian Societies

SOC 370: Social ChangeDr. Kimberly Martin

Agrarian StatesCharacteristics of Agrarian States1. Two classes: Nobility (5%) & Peasantry

(95%)

2. Peasants exploited by threat of force from organized military force

3. All surpluses extracted from producers in the form of rent, taxes and/or tribute

4. Production for use economy rather than production for exchange/trade (Some merchants who may be wealthy, but have low status)

Agrarian StatesCharacteristics of Agrarian States, con’t

5. Class interest but no class struggle (nobles like the status quo and changes in productivity would not have benefited the peasants, but would go to nobles)

6. Militarized societies focused on internal repression and external conquest

7. Most in equilibrium with no or very slow social and economic change

Why Equilibrium Now?

Why such slow change??

After the neolithic revolution change was rapid and accelerating.

Hort/Pastor to Agric to State to Civilization/Empire

Why more than 4000 years until next major change (to capitalism)?

Kinds of Change in Agrarian Socieites

• Extensive growth – increases in economic productivity that only provides for the subsistence of a growing population

• Intensive growth – increases in economic productivity that exceed the subsistence needs of a growing population = increase in economic output per capita

• Social growth – a quantitative change in social organization (more of the same)

• Social evolution – a qualitative change in social organization (development of new forms)

Reasons for Equilibrium

1. No incentive to change2. Instability of rule by nobility

(infighting over wealth and power, wars and dynastic change)

3. Since all surplus was taken by nobility, there was nothing to invest in improved means of production

4. Capitalism (the next stage) requires extensive markets that take time to build up (both foreign and domestic) – and that time appears to be approximately 4,500 years

Social Growth in Agrarian Societies

Four forms:1. Population growth2. Political growth (size of empire

and increase in complexity)3. Technological growth (economic

and military)4. Economic growth (increase in size

and density of trade networks)

Population growth experiences a burst of change after 1000 BC

Growth in the size (and corresponding complexity of empires, with 3 periods: 3000 – 2000 BC, 1

500-600 BC, and from 200 BC on

Growth in urban population and number of large cities with a jump in the number of large cities between 650 BC and 430 BC

Enlargements

Improved Technology

• Discovery of iron smelting (1800 BC)

• Chinese inventions and discoveries through diffusion

Expansion of Trade Networks

Maps show a huge jump in the number of cities involved in trade across the old world.

Large empires had necessary comunication and transportation systems for long distance trade

Increased trade impacted changes in technology through diffusion

Most diffusion was from China to other parts of the old world.

World Systems Theory and Agrarian Societies

• Empires conquer and exploit the resources and labor of other cultures

• WST divides societies into Core and Peripheral categories

• Core societies exploit and raise their standard of living through the use of the resources and labor of others

• Peripheral societies have their resources and labor drained off by Core societies

• WST was developed to explain global capitalism; does it work for agrarian states?

• Did the core societies benefit more from the relationships or did the peripheral societies?

• Some instances show the peripheral societies benefited more

Problems in Agrarian Societies

Problems with expansion of empires and trade:

• Transport of goods shifts from water to land (slower, less efficient).

• Much larger military to support (parasitic population).

• Local elites competing for piece of pie.• Unconquered “barbarians” nibbling at edges

of empire.• Internal conflict among empire’s elites.

Devolution/Collapse3000 BC to 1500 AD saw the growth and collapse of

agrarian-based empires not just Rome, but all over the world.

1. Breakdown of centralized control2. Small states emerge from single centralized state3. Monumental architecture and public works stop4. Palaces and central storage abandoned5. Shift from centralized to local control of

subsistence6. Simplification of technology for local use7. Reduction of population rapidly8. Settlements abandoned

Explanations for Collapse

1. Resource depletion2. Natural catastrophes3. Insufficient response to problems because of

limited political, economic, military capacity4. Competition with other complex societies5. Foreign intrusions by less complex peoples6. Class conflict and elite mismanagement7. Conflict due to a lack of understanding about

systems by peasants8. Loss of vigor, decadence9. Chance10. Declining advantages of complexity,

increasing cost of complexity

Sanderson’s Choice?Increasing cost of complexityDecline in ability to acquire slaves because

everyone had already been conqueredGrowing power of merchant class -- Outcasts,

but growing richer, more organized, technologically advanced, etc.

“collapse then is not a fall to some primordial chaos, but a return to the normal human condition of lower complexity . . . It is an economizing process”

Tainter (1988)

Study Guide• Agrarian statesTechnological growth• Nobility Economic growth• Peasantry Trade networks• Extensive growth Merchant class• Intensive growth Trade networks• Social growth World Systems

Theory• Social evolution Core societies• Political growthPeripheral societies• Population growth Merchant class