CLASS NOTES
Class 8 54.206
Feudal and Industrial Adaptations
Bodley, J.: Text Ch 10 Breakdown of States; Ch 11 Europe /Commercial World Domesday Survey 1086: Bodley Ch 11, p 308 Bloch, M: “European Feudalism” in Encyclopedia of Social Sciences
FEUDAL ADAPTATION Vassalage: Oath of fielty would bind one member of the elite to a superior (in terms of land ownership/control of force). The vassal obtained a fief (landed estate) in return for military service. Vassal then subdivided his fief amongst other knights who became his vassals. Decentralized structure usurps state functions and localizes them. Warlords. Age of Chivalry: Paradox of honor midst oppression. Family vs Feudal ties. Men would rather fight than think. (Has anything changed?) Early Feudalism: Decentralized power. King is only the most powerful baron, aristocracy monopolizes means of violence and control of force, exploit peasantry thro monopoly over land. Cultural gap between nobility and peasantry not large, many knights illiterate, most illegitimate! Britain around 1100 AD, France under Charlemagne, China – Shang dynasty 1000 BC, Japan 1400 – 1500 AD. Late Feudalism: Centralized power, state bureaucracy, standing army. King has more power, aristocracy more cultured, peasants more oppressed. Britain around 1450 (Tudors), France before 1789 revolution, China 900 AD – 1850 AD, Japan 1600 – 1850 AD (Tokugaura Shogunate) Economic Base: Agricultural, low productivity, oppressed peasantry so that a specialist warrior class could be supported. Manor as basic economic unit, estate worked by serfs and chattel slaves, limited exchange and trade, each unit fairly self sufficient. Merchant Class: Influence grew in late feudalism, their capital resources sought by kings and feudal elite. They quietly engineered a financial revolution – trading corporations, investment banking etc. this structure adapted to control the industrial adaptation that had yet to happen.
INDUSTRIAL ADAPTATION Commercialization: Everything needed for well being and life support, converted into a commodity to be sold for profit. Promotes perpetual growth in the commercial production, exchange, and consumption of goods, services, and information. Replaces politicization as dominant process. Questionable cultural development - only 200 years old.
Industrial Revolution; Major Causes: 1. Looting of New World 2. Protestant Reformation 3. Enclosure Acts, 19th century England Phases: 1. 1760 – 1830, mechanization of textile industry, steam power, factory system. 2. Mid 19th century, railroads, steel, steamships, mechanized agriculture. 3. Early 20th century, car, electrical, telephone, petroleum industry 4. World War 2, aviation, aluminium, electronics, plastics industry 5. Present day, computers, automation, nuclear energy, rockets, satellites, post industrial control of information a key driver. 6. Next, “Future Shock”, eco-doom, breakdown into a modern form of Warlordism? Evolution: machines and new sources of power, exponential increase in productivity and energy use. Early factory system like a prison camp. Displaced rural workers exploited by industrialists. Situation changes with trend towards political democracy/ working class organizations (unions and political parties) that challenged for power. (Note that this challenge is within nation states, in the meantime capital has gone transnational and largely ignores the nation state.) Process: 1. Technological change where machines and inanimate power replaces reliance on human and animal power. 2. Re-organization of agriculture from a subsistence to a commercial base. 3. Urbanization – shift in population from rural to urban areas to man the factory system. 4. Development of secondary and tertiary sectors ( bureaucratization). Effects: Extreme structural differentiation, specialized roles, autonomous social units, growth of increasingly universalistic ethic. Social interaction with characteristics of rationality/ universalism/ functional specifity/ avoidance. Lack of commitment to localities, groups, relationships – adaptive response to job market. Transitory relationships, alienation in the midst of plenty, breakdown of family ties. Reflections: We are enmeshed in a 200 year old experiment in commercialization, and have so far transformed the world in disturbing ways: 1. reducing cultural and biological diversity 2. producing waste/ toxins that cannot be dealt with 3. degrading the majority of the world’s population 4. irreversibly damaging the biosphere that sustains life. The problem may not be that of whether we have reached the limits of viable adaptation. The problem that demands our attention is whether we have exceeded them.