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How Do People Get Big Things Done?

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Book cover The Evolution of Social Institutions

Part of the book series: World-Systems Evolution and Global Futures ((WSEGF))

Abstract

How does the human past help us figure out how to solve the biggest problems facing humanity today? For humans, getting things done is always social. Institutions are organized and socially reproduced ways of accomplishing objectives. Since people are always faced with multiple, different problems, they tend to create institutions that are varied, non-isomorphic, and non-congruent. The recent expansion of archaeological information now allows scholars to move beyond gross types toward documenting the histories of institutions and assemblages of institutions. Archaeology’s language (its units of analysis and how its data are packaged) can be reshaped to recognize the sociological, organizational nature of actors’ responses to pressing challenges. The archaeological record provides case material regarding long-enduring institutions, times of highly creative and rapid institution-building, societies that had many institutions and others that had few, and societies composed of non-isomorphic, non-centralized institutions and a few others whose institutions were more centralized. Research problems include better understanding of synchronous variation, rapid versus gradual change, internal and external causes leading to change in the relative importance or power of institutions, and the social means of limiting concentration of power. We suggest that if humanity makes an adequate response to contemporary global pollution and climate change, the response will be social, organizational. Existing institutions may be transformed, and new ones may be created. But totalizing, meta-institutions are less effective than multiple, cross-cutting institutions.

Don’t waste any time mourning. Organize!

International Workers of the World activist Joe Hill, 1915.

Carlson (1983: 235).

If Foucault is right, we may not be able to

conceive an institution that keeps our hands clean.

Caputo and Yount (1993: 22).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Archaeology, Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia, 1125 Whitehall Road, Athens, GA, 30606, USA

    Stephen A. Kowalewski

  2. Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia, 355 South Jackson Street, Baldwin Hall Room 250, Athens, GA, 30602, USA

    Jennifer Birch

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  1. Stephen A. Kowalewski
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Correspondence to Stephen A. Kowalewski .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. International Center of Anthropology, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia

    Dmitri M. Bondarenko

  2. Laboratory of Archaeology, Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA

    Stephen A. Kowalewski

  3. Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA

    David B. Small

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Kowalewski, S.A., Birch, J. (2020). How Do People Get Big Things Done?. In: Bondarenko, D.M., Kowalewski, S.A., Small, D.B. (eds) The Evolution of Social Institutions. World-Systems Evolution and Global Futures. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51437-2_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51437-2_2

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