Description:
This book expands a foundational definition of the institution, one which locates them as the basic building blocks of human societies - as structural and cultural machines for survival that make it possible to pass precious knowledge from one generation to the next, ensuring the survival of our species.
Review Quotes:
A bold departure from the current fragmented vision of social organization that characterizes most of the field of sociology, The First Institutional Spheres in Human Societies' breadth and depth is rarely paralleled except for in the authors' previous work. This book holds the potential to be a discipline-influencing book. Abrutyn and Turner tell the story of the emergence of institutions, in all of its complexity, to shed light on how this level of social organization emerged and how this level of social organization works. They detail how biology and social organization interact to generate the emergence of human institutions. Their historical approach to the phenomenon gives us a particular sort of insight that we could not get by only looking at current instantiations of institutions.
Erika Summers-Effler, Notre Dame University