Civilizational process according to Darcy Ribeiro
The book The Civilization Process is a work by the Brazilian ethnologist and cultural theorist Darcy Ribeiro (1922–1997) from 1968, in which he formulates a theory of stages of development that includes all cultures worldwide.
description
For him, the essential factor of history is technical progress or the development of productive strength . Their changes result in specific social and economic relationships (or production relationships in Marxist terminology).
According to Darcy Ribeiro, the following types of society can be distinguished:
- two different archaic societies
- undifferentiated horticultural villages
- rural artisan states
- five different regional companies
- theocratic irrigation empires (ancient China; Inca state)
- mercantile-slavist empires
- despotic-salvationist empires
- nomadic herdsmen
- nomadic shepherd tribes
- ten different world civilizations
In addition, Darcy Ribeiro undertakes a chronological classification of the historical epochs according to technological revolutions. There were eight different technological revolutions by the end of the 20th century , according to Darcy.
According to Ribeiro Darcy, there are three different stages of development:
- 1st level (basic level) - adaptive system - "material reproduction": metabolism with nature, extraction of raw materials and other primary production, processing, division of labor, application of production techniques
- 2nd level - associative system - "social reproduction": family, community, society, state or state organization, companies / businesses, etc. a.
- 3rd level - ideological systems - "ideal reproduction" (means the ideal-spiritual system)
- Religion, worldview, ideology
- Philosophy, science (including technical science)
- Law, norms, values
- Art in the narrower sense (music, literature, visual arts)
The third stage includes knowledge generation and knowledge transfer, i. H. the “production of human capital” for levels 1 and 2.
Ribeiro's theory can be characterized as follows:
- it is global, i. H. not ethnocentric or Eurocentric
- it implies a strong cultural and historical differentiation, but no inevitable sequence of stages (as in Eurocentric stage theories) and no linear progressive tendency (no teleology, i.e. no inevitable processes into a better future)
- Rise and fall are possible, so the story is open. H. the historical process is contingent : there is no future without an origin
See also
literature
- Darcy Ribeiro : The civilizing process. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt 1983, ISBN 3-518-28033-3 (original: O processo civilizatório. Etapas da evolução sociocultural. Civilizacão Brasileira, Rio de Janeiro 1968).