Agrarian Societies
SOC 370: Social Change
Dr. Kimberly Martin
Agrarian States
Characteristics of Agrarian States
1. Two classes: Nobility (5%) & Peasantry (95%)
2. Peasants exploited by threat of force from
organized military force
3. All surpluses extracted from producers in the form
of rent, taxes and/or tribute
4. Production for use economy rather than production
for exchange/trade (Some merchants who may be
wealthy, but have low status)
Agrarian States
Characteristics of Agrarian States, con’t
5. Class interest but no class struggle (nobles like the
status quo and changes in productivity would not
have benefited the peasants, but would go to
nobles)
6. Militarized societies focused on internal repression
and external conquest
7. Most in equilibrium with no or very slow social and
economic change
Why Equilibrium Now?
Why such slow change??
After the neolithic revolution change was rapid and
accelerating.
Hort/Pastor to Agric to State to Civilization/Empire
Why more than 4000 years until next major
change (to capitalism)?
Kinds of Change in Agrarian
Socieites
• Extensive growth – increases in economic productivity
that only provides for the subsistence of a growing
population
• Intensive growth – increases in economic productivity
that exceed the subsistence needs of a growing
population = increase in economic output per capita
• Social growth – a quantitative change in social
organization (more of the same)
• Social evolution – a qualitative change in social
organization (development of new forms)
Reasons for Equilibrium
1. No incentive to change
2. Instability of rule by nobility (infighting
over wealth and power, wars and dynastic
change)
3. Since all surplus was taken by nobility,
there was nothing to invest in improved
means of production
4. Capitalism (the next stage) requires
extensive markets that take time to build
up (both foreign and domestic) – and that
time appears to be approximately 4,500
years
Social Growth in Agrarian
Societies
Four forms:
1. Population growth
2. Political growth (size of empire and
increase in complexity)
3. Technological growth (economic and
military)
4. Economic growth (increase in size and
density of trade networks)
Population growth experiences a burst of change
after 1000 BC
Growth in the size (and corresponding complexity of
empires, with 3 periods: 3000 – 2000 BC, 1
500-600 BC, and from 200 BC on
Growth in urban
population and
number of large
cities with a jump in
the number of large
cities between 650
BC and 430 BC
Enlargements
Improved Technology
• Discovery of iron smelting (1800 BC)
• Chinese inventions and discoveries
through diffusion
Expansion of Trade Networks
Maps show a huge jump in the number of cities
involved in trade across the old world.
Large empires had necessary comunication and
transportation systems for long distance
trade
Increased trade impacted changes in technology
through diffusion
Most diffusion was from China to other parts of
the old world.
World Systems Theory and
Agrarian Societies
• Empires conquer and exploit the resources and labor
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of other cultures
WST divides societies into Core and Peripheral
categories
Core societies exploit and raise their standard of
living through the use of the resources and labor of
others
Peripheral societies have their resources and labor
drained off by Core societies
WST was developed to explain global capitalism; does
it work for agrarian states?
Did the core societies benefit more from the
relationships or did the peripheral societies?
Some instances show the peripheral societies
benefited more
Problems in Agrarian Societies
Problems with expansion of empires and trade:
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Transport of goods shifts from water to land
(slower, less efficient).
Much larger military to support (parasitic
population).
Local elites competing for piece of pie.
Unconquered “barbarians” nibbling at edges of
empire.
Internal conflict among empire’s elites.
Devolution/Collapse
3000 BC to 1500 AD saw the growth and collapse of
agrarian-based empires not just Rome, but all over
the world.
1. Breakdown of centralized control
2. Small states emerge from single centralized state
3. Monumental architecture and public works stop
4. Palaces and central storage abandoned
5. Shift from centralized to local control of
subsistence
6. Simplification of technology for local use
7. Reduction of population rapidly
8. Settlements abandoned
Explanations for Collapse
1. Resource depletion
2. Natural catastrophes
3. Insufficient response to problems because of
limited political, economic, military capacity
4. Competition with other complex societies
5. Foreign intrusions by less complex peoples
6. Class conflict and elite mismanagement
7. Conflict due to a lack of understanding about
systems by peasants
8. Loss of vigor, decadence
9. Chance
10. Declining advantages of complexity, increasing cost
of complexity
Sanderson’s Choice?
Increasing cost of complexity
Decline in ability to acquire slaves because everyone
had already been conquered
Growing power of merchant class -- Outcasts, but
growing richer, more organized, technologically
advanced, etc.
“collapse then is not a fall to some primordial chaos,
but a return to the normal human condition of lower
complexity . . . It is an economizing process”
Tainter (1988)
Study Guide
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Agrarian states
Nobility
Peasantry
Extensive growth
Intensive growth
Social growth
Social evolution
Political growth
Population growth
Technological growth
Economic growth
Trade networks
Merchant class
Trade networks
World Systems Theory
Core societies
Peripheral societies
Merchant class