World religions and social evolution of the Old World Oikumene civilizations : a cross-cultural perspective

Table of Contents Preface i By Dr. Douglas R. White Acknowledgments iii Introduction Part 1 1 Notions and Definitions: "Evolution, "Development", "Progress", "Antiprogress" Part 2 9 Social Evolutionism: Idealism vs. Materialism Chapter 1 13 World Religions as a Factor of Social Evolution of the Old World Oikumene: A Discriminant Analysis Chapter 2 33 World Religions as a Factor of Social Evolution of the Old World Oikumene: Islam and Christianity Chapter 3 65 Parallel Cousin (FBD) Marriage, Islamization, and Arabization Chapter 4 79 Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia Chapter 5 89 Unilineal Descent Organization and Deep Christianization Chapter 6 109 Unilineal Descent Organization and Religions of Non-Violence Chapter 7 119 Christianity and Democracy: A Cross-Cultural Study Conclusion 139 Beyond Materialism and Idealism Appendix 1 153 Discriminant Scores from Functions 1–5 for Discriminant Analysis Appendix 2 157 New "Matricentricity/Patricentricity" and "Unilinearity/Bilaterality" Scores for Cultures Analyzed in this Monograph Appendix 3 159 An Apologia for Comparative Evolutionary Method of Anthropology By Andrey Korotayev, Alexander Kazankov, Leonid Dreier, and Natalia Dmitrieva Appendix 4 185 "Galton's Asset" and "Flower's Problem": Cultural Networks and Cultural Units in Cross-Cultural Research By Andrey Korotayev and Victor de Munck Bibliography 211 Index 235

This book provides a cross-cultural analysis of traditional social organization of the Old World Oikumene civilizations, which suggest that the world religions were its major determinant. The role of Christianity and Islam as determinants of social evolution is analyzed in more detail. Formal analysis performed in this book shows that though such factors as political centralization and class stratification were also important determinants, the difference in traditional social organization between Christian and Islamic cultures were mostly shaped by the respective world religions. This study also analyzes such topics as influence of Islam on social patterns in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, or Hinayana Buddhism influence on the evolution of kinship organization. This cross-cultural analysis makes it possible to provide an entirely new assessment of the old controversy between Materialism and Idealism, to move beyond both of these approaches.