Social and Cultural World History

Abstract

This chapter discusses world history from a social and cultural perspective. It breaks with the more typical focus on political and economic processes carried out by governments and commercial elites to examine the ways in which labor, families, women and gender, sexuality, childhood, material culture, social structures, cultural values, and identity have been transformed across time via both local processes and encounters with other cultures. The narrative moves from foraging and farming families (beginnings to 3000 BCE), to cities and classical societies (3000 BCE–500 CE), expanding networks of interaction (500–1500 CE), a new world of connections (1500–1800 CE), and finally industrialization, imperialism, and inequality (1800–2015 CE), noting continuities as well as change.

For references and detailed context, see Merry Wiesner-Hanks, A Concise History of the World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).