The Dynamic Society: Exploring the Sources of Global Change

Rating:
Summary: History in the Upper Case
Review: Professor Snooks has produced a magnum opus in "The Dynamic Society". He forwards an existential (empirical, inductive)economic model that elucidates not only the passage of human society from the beginnings, but encapsulates the rhythms of life itself.

The key elements of the model are these -

1)A dynamic actor, "materialist man" (MM) who maximizes material advantage over the course of a lifetime. Snooks is at great pains to distinguish his dynamic MM from both homo economicus (a static concept), and other forms of analytical (passive and active) agents utilized in both the social and the physical sciences. 2) The strategic demands of MM drive history. These demands manifest themselves in "dynamic strategies", which Snooks identifies as Conquest, Commerce, family multiplication and Technological Change. 3) The waxing and waning of dynamic strategies define cycles and epochs, institutional frameworks, the rise and fall of civilizations, and the level of economic growth (=GDP/capita).

The dynamic material model is a serious challenge to established modes of dialectical, idealist, material and institutional historiography. The serious practitioner and the ambitious student can hardly afford to be ignorant of the arguments of Professor Snooks.