Developing Institutions

March 6, 2007 4:51 PM

Organized religion, business, military. I am looking for info about the different phases these institutions went through and how their hierarchy developed as they grew. Anything from Antiquity to the Romantic Era.

Anything from Antiquity to the Romantic Era. All cultures, not just European. Overviews or more detailed info would be great. Anything that gives the *reasons* why, not just stating what happened when would be best.

Unrelated, but as a bonus, any short stories or anecdotes about subversive activity to climb up said hierarchies throughout history would be fun.

posted by parallax7d to society & culture (7 comments total)

First, your question is incredibly broad.

Second, have you read much sociology? You might start with: Max Weber's Sociology of Religion. It's long and a bit dry, but a good place to begin to think about these kinds of things at least on the religion side.

Third, you might want to read about the Chinese Imperial Bureaucracy, Medieval Church history, the growth and development of monasticism in early Buddhism and histories of early Imperial/late Republic Rome.

So get thee to a library.
posted by MasonDixon at 5:24 PM on March 6, 2007

The work of Michel Foucault would be the optimal path to pursue--try Discipline and Punish or Madness and Civilization. It will change everything about the way you think about institutions.

On business you will of course never find a more important treatment than Karl Marx's Capital.
posted by nasreddin at 5:45 PM on March 6, 2007

Business became organized, in the sense that we now think of it, in the age of railroads. Before railroads, it was possible to run a company successfully without middle management, org charts, scientific management principles, etc. There were not ever "mom-n-pop" railroads. And, it's been argued, that there could never have developed such companies as a mom-n-pop railroad company. A book about this is The Visible Hand by Chandler. HTH, because your question is so broad and deep (thousands of years and across three of the biggest social drivers that civilization has created) as to be essentially unanswerable.
posted by zpousman at 5:51 PM on March 6, 2007

Thanks for your answers so far. I know the question is unanswerable. I'm not looking for "the answer" rather lots of references and specific recommendations. Keep them coming!
posted by parallax7d at 7:46 PM on March 6, 2007

Check out the writings of Ivan Illich. Like Foucault, he will also change the way you think about institutions. (I think he's a little easier to read than Foucault, too.)
posted by bokinney at 9:06 PM on March 6, 2007

I'm not sure what you need this for, so my answer could be completely off base.

Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and Marx's Capital both have chapters detailing the rise of economic institutions. I'd take their histories with a grain of salt.

There are certainly less loaded sources out there. Philosophers make for great reading but seem to overstep their bounds on too many subjects. (history, psychology, physical science.) This is going to piss some people off, sorry. That being said, it's great to build ideas off of philosophy, just make sure the facts back up the hypothesis. I'd really avoid anything published before the 20th century as well. I'd look towards recent contemporary sources from academically respected Sociologists and Anthropologists. Anything older than that seems to be rife with mostly scientific racism and armchair speculation. People like Hobbes and Hume are interesting to read but pretty detatched from what contemporary specialsts believe.

As far as financial institutions/currency, one readable title immediately comes to mind, The Company of Strangers by Paul Seabright. It's broad and will blow your mind and a lot of your assumptions.

There's a slew of introductory anthropology books out there that gloss over early civilization and social systems.

A good history of anthro theory book will cover early sociologists/anthropologists and their ideas from Comte onward. I'm a big Marvin Harris fan (He build some of his ideas off of Marx's, I guess that's loaded.), so I'll recommend his book.

Robert Carneiro has written a lot on the importance of organized military in early civs. I'd look and see if any of his stuff works for your purposes.

I'm not sure if this anecdote is what you're looking for, or the exact opposite, but Toyotomi Hideyoshi is an interesting guy to look at. He was born a peasant and rose to become Shogun of Japan. One of his most famous policies prevented any other peasants from becoming warriors and thus following in his footsteps. Be careful, anime-loving Japanophiles love mangling Japanese history. Try to avoid any sites with photos of Ninjas.

Also look at the later Roman empire and the shift from citizen soldiers to barbarian Foederati
posted by Telf at 11:46 PM on March 7, 2007

It's fiction, but Stephenson's Baroque Cycle is a great look at the emergence of what we'd consider the modern world. Banking, nations, science etc. There's enough real information in there to really blow your mind.
posted by Telf at 11:53 PM on March 7, 2007