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Michael Mann and Societal Aggregation: From Tribe, to Fief, to City-State, to Nation, to Empire

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Abstract

Written over decades, subsuming much of his career as a sociologist, Michael Mann’s four-volume Origins of Social Power pursues one grand theme: Societal aggregation from tribe, to fief, to city-state, to nation, to empire. Mann uses the term, “patterned mess,” in recognition of cultural, historical, and temporal particularities which overlay sociological laws as they have operated through time. Modern theories of gene–culture coevolution work precisely in this way, in that they operate on a fundamental level, even as surface features vary. So when Mann studies internal divisions and external competition as they ebb and flow creating regression and progression along this continuum of aggregation, it is now possible to partially explain this as a function of variation across aggregate life history continua.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Saint Elizabeth, Morristown, NJ, USA

    Steven C. Hertler

  2. University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Aurelio José Figueredo

  3. University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Mateo Peñaherrera-Aguirre

  4. University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Heitor B. F. Fernandes

  5. Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium

    Michael A. Woodley of Menie

  6. Unz Foundation Junior Fellow, Palo Alto, CA, USA

    Michael A. Woodley of Menie

Authors
  1. Steven C. Hertler
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  2. Aurelio José Figueredo
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  3. Mateo Peñaherrera-Aguirre
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  4. Heitor B. F. Fernandes
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  5. Michael A. Woodley of Menie
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Correspondence to Steven C. Hertler .

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Hertler, S.C., Figueredo, A.J., Peñaherrera-Aguirre, M., Fernandes, H.B.F., Woodley of Menie, M.A. (2018). Michael Mann and Societal Aggregation: From Tribe, to Fief, to City-State, to Nation, to Empire. In: Life History Evolution. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90125-1_15

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