Gerhard Lenski

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Gerhard Emmanuel Lenski (born August 13, 1924) is an American sociologist known for contributions to the sociology of religion, social inequality, and ecological-evolutionary social theory (which is related to cultural evolution). He is a Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

In his Power and Privilege (1966) and Human Societies: An Introduction to Macrosociology (1974) he expands on the works of Leslie White and Lewis Henry Morgan. He views the technological progress as the most basic factor in the evolution of societies and cultures. Unlike White, who defined technology as the ability to create and utilise energy, Lenski focuses on information - its amount and uses. The more information and knowledge (especially allowing the shaping of natural environment) a given society has, the more advanced it is. He distinguished four stages of human development, based on the advances in the history of communication. In the first stage, information is passed by genes. In the second, when humans gain sentience, they can learn and pass information through by experience. In the third, the humans start using signs and develop logic. In the fourth, they can create symbols, develop language and writing. Advancements in the technology of communication translates into advancements in the economic system and political system, distribution of goods, social inequality and other spheres of social life. He also differentiates societies based on their level of technology, communication and economy: 1) hunters and gatherers, 2) simple agricultural, 3) advanced agricultural, 4) industrial 5) special (e.g. fishing societies).

To add to the description of Lenski's work given here, one must note that the different types of societies are not separated by technology per se, but by subsistence technology, the methods used to produce the societies basic needs. While technology alone does not determine the type of society, it does, in Lenski's view, limit what is possible. The simplest example is food production: how a society produces its food establishes limits to the size of the population that can be sustained. Given that humans, like most other species, tend to over-reproduce, population pressure is created. In short, societies must always seek to find ways to produce more food so that larger populations can be sustained, and so that draconian methods of population control (war and infanticide, for example) will not be necessary. This constant pressure to accommodate growing population is a key catalyst for discovery and invention. Of course this process is much easier to discern in earlier forms of social organization, such as hunting & gathering and horticulture, but the principle also applies to more modern social forms. Lenski's genius, in my view, lies in his argument that knowing a society's type of subsistence technology allows one to predict a great deal about its social organization - political, social, economic, and religious. Looking at the developing world in the early 21st century, one can explain a great deal about a developing country by looking at what sort of social organization it had when it began to industrialize. The correlation and typical consequences are uncanny. For instance, if a country entered the industrial era from a primarily horticultural type of production - its people are highly likely to have a stronger alliance to their tribe than to their nation-state. Tribal affiliation was paramount in the horticultural era. This gradually evolved into nationalism in the agrarian era - but many of the newly independent states created through the United Nations, post WWII, were still largely horticultural. Arguably this has been a huge impediment to development in these states, but one that has gotten surprisingly little attention from policy makers or diplomats.