Lerro

Have gender inequalities always existed? Did inequality occur instantaneously, or gradually over centuries? How responsible were women for their subordination? why was there no women's movement in ancient times?

Power in Eden: The Emergence of gender Hierarchies in the Ancient World answers these important questions and many others with a reconstruction (based on the best existing evidence and research) of the multidimensional events and processes that led to the emergence of institutionalized male dominance beginning in the late Neolithic age and ending in the axial Iron Age in 500 BCE. I will show across a period from 6000 BCE how socio-ecological transformations across five social formations (hunting-gathering bands, simple and complex horticultural villages, agricultural states and commercial states) were responsible for the dominance of a few men over most women and most other men.

My principle claims are that ecological and demographic forces such as repeated population pressure and resource depletion created great social stress which men and women reacted to differently. These forces also catalyzed new social processes in the Bronze Age, including the rise of political centralization, economic stratification, the invention of the plow, and hieroglyphics. The new gender hierarchies were deepened by the emergence of coined money, the alphabet and iron tools which consolidated male dominance. These material forces were sustained and legitimized by the sacred movement from animism to polytheism to monotheism. Lastly these socio-ecological dynamics lead to changes in the psychology of people: the appearance of the individualist self and new form of reasoning which I call "hyper-abstract" cognition.

My work draws primarily on -- and synthesizes -- the arguments of anthropologists, archaeologists and macro-sociologists, while granting some ground to evolutionary psychologists. While I am sympathetic to the uses of goddess spirituality for women today. I disagree with most everything they say about ancient history.

So what's new about this book? What will be added to the discussion of gender hierarchies that hasn't been said before? I have not done original research which bring to light new facts. What I have done is to bring together the existing material of first-rate scholars in many fields and put it together in the following new ways:

All materialist* theories, whether intentionally or not, do not have a well developed explanation of how the sacred meaning making systems tend to legitimize gender hierarchies. My chapter on goddess ideology criticizes idealist attempts to explain the technology, economics, politics from sacred beliefs. However my chapters on the movement from earth-spirit magic to sky god religion are designed to fill the gap left by materialist authors.

Materialist theories do not have an explanation of how society gets internalized inside people's minds and hearts, that is, into their psychology. Materialist theories tend to see people as victims of circumstances. Without a psychological theory we cannot address the question of how much women colluded with material forces once they were in place.

In my three psychological chapters I show how a psychology of subordination is built right out of the demographic, ecological, technological and economic and political structures materialist theories have identified. I apply Vygotsky's socio-historic theory of learning to show how society gets inside of people and how society gets reproduced when people go to work.

While some ecological and structural theories argue that the biophysical setting affect gender relations in my chapter on natural disasters in the Bronze Age I argue for radical climatic downturns from the debris of a comet or asteroid caused stress between men and women beyond the normal inability of societies to regulate their ecol

Review by Stephen K. Sanderson:

Bruce Lerro says he would like to be a Renaissance Man and thinks he was born in the wrong century. As someone well acquainted with him, I can testify to both of these. Lerro is an old-fashioned scholar who harkens back to the founders of sociology and anthropology in his unusual intellectual breadth and depth. Despite working in relative intellectual isolation, Lerro has discovered important bodies of work in several social sciences and has drawn heavily on them in developing his thinking. Several years ago he published From Earth Spirits to Sky Gods, a book that attempted to explain the evolution of religion from simple, primitive forms (Earth Spirits) to the major world religions that evolved in the first millennium BCE (Sky Gods). In developing this work, Lerro drew on the evolutionary anthropology and sociology of such figures as Marvin Harris, Gerhard Lenski, Stephen Sanderson, and Christopher Chase-Dunn, as well as on the cognitive-developmental psychology of Jean Piaget. This represented a rare attempt to bring together theoretical traditions that are normally thought of as totally distinct.

In his latest book, Power in Eden, Lerro draws on the same theoretical traditions in attempting to understand gender inequality and its transformations between the early Neolithic Age (about 6000 BCE) and the Axial Iron Age (500 BCE). Lerro goes back to the classical Marxist analysis of Friedrich Engels and examines the neo-Engelsian work of Karen Sacks and Lise Vogel. He also looks at the materialist analyses of Rae Lesser Blumberg and Janet Saltzman Chafetz, which is some of the most important comparative work on gender inequality.

Lerro nods in the direction of evolutionary psychological theories of gender, giving them some credence but stopping short of full endorsement. He notes that these theories focus on the universality of gender inequality, on which they shed considerable light, but cannot explain why gender inequality is extreme in some societies but much milder in others. Here Lerro suggests that we need to look at the material conditions in which people find themselves, especially a society's technological stage of development (hunter-gatherer, horticultural, agrarian).

Lerro adds a psychological twist to these analyses by looking at the rise of so-called hyperabstract reasoning and the individualist self and how these evolutionary developments have influenced the structuring of gender relations. He also seeks to relate evolutionary changes in religious thinking to gender relations.

At the end of the book Lerro raises the questions as to why there was no women's movement in the ancient world. His answer is that virtually all of the material conditions which are necessary for social movements, including gender movements, were absent. Such conditions have come into play only in modern times, he says, in an argument that parallels the thinking of the eminent historical sociologist Charles Tilly.

This book has many strengths. It reviews some of the most important literature on gender in human societies and shows that to understand gender relations one needs a comparative and historical perspective. It is written in a very accessible style and is easy to understand. Sociologists, anthropologists, and historians who study gender should read this book and consider its arguments seriously. They will be repaid for their efforts.

Review by Richard Heinburg:

The opening paragraph of this wide-ranging new book does an excellent job of delineating its formidable scope:

Why do men monopolize most technological, political, and economic power in complex societies? Have inequalities in power between men and women always existed, or did gender stratification have an origin in time? To what extent is it hardwired into our biology? How much of it is built from socio-ecological forces? Do men and women treat each other any differently under social stress? What happens to gender relations during natural disasters, famines or plagues? If gender stratification had an origin in time, did it appear all at once, or did it arise subtly and gradually over thousands of years? Were there once matriarchal societies as claimed by some feminist spiritualists? Does reverence for goddesses go all the way back to the Paleolithic Age? Is there a necessary and direct connection between the presence of goddesses in society's pantheon and the reverential status of women in that society? Were ancient tribal societies peace-loving before being invaded? When gender hierarchies emerged, were there discernible stages [to the process], was it random, or is the origin of gender inequalities too complex to sort out? How much were women responsible for their fall into subordination? Were they simply victims of circumstances or do they bear some responsibility? If so, how much? Bronze Age agricultural states were the most oppressive societies to women in history, yet we are hard-pressed to find instances of mobilization and revolution; why was there no feminist movement in the ancient world?

These are big, complicated questions, and Lerro does not oversimplify the richness of the cultural and historic context in which answers are to be found. Power in Eden is an expansive book in every sense of the term-400 pages in 8.5 x 11 inch format, and covering disciplines ranging from evolutionary psychology and archaeology to ecology and astronomy. It is both extremely readable and endlessly fascinating.

"I have not done original research that brings new facts to light," writes Lerro, with a humility one misses in the works of other synthesists such as Jared Diamond. "What I have done is to bring together existing materials produced by first-rate scholars in many fields, and put these materials together in new ways."

In his pursuit of the origins of gender inequality, Lerro consistently takes account of the role of the environment. Human culture did not unfold in pristine isolation from nature, but sprang from interactions between people and climate, food sources, and other competing species. Readers who appreciate the works of Jared Diamond, William McNeill, and Marvin Harris-who likewise place emphasis on the environmental influences on humanity's cultural development-will find much to admire here as well.

The following is a brief summary of Lerro's conclusions: There has probably never been a Goddess-centered matriarchal utopia, as hypothesized by Marija Gimbutas and her followers; however, early hunter-gatherer societies were probably highly egalitarian, and the subordination of women by men occurred in the context of societal changes that also enabled some men to control most others. These larger transformations were driven largely by resource depletion and population pressure, and eventually included the domestication of plants and animals, the building of towns and cities, the adoption of money, the emergence of pantheons of gods and goddesses, and the development of new ways of thinking (hyper-abstraction) that distanced people from their natural environments and led them to view other humans in a more utilitarian light. As society changed, people's thinking changed, their sense perceptions changed, and their familial relationships mutated. It is impossible to fully understand any one of these transformations apart from the others, or without reference to climate change and environmental catastrophes.

While Power in Eden ostensibly aims to elucidate the historical origins of enculturated male dominance, in fact it does much more than this. Readers will come away with a robust understanding of the entire process of cultural evolution throughout the past ten thousand years.

This is one of those rare and marvelous books that offers an entire education between its two covers. Bruce Lerro may be standing on the shoulders of dozens of primary researchers, but he deserves praise in his own right for the balance and range of his scholarship, and for his taking the public discussion of this important subject to a new level. If you want to know and understand the latest evidence and thinking regarding the origins of inequality in human societies, there is no better single overview than this.

You will not find Power in Eden in a store; it must be ordered online from www.trafford.com (the site is easily searchable by title and author).

From the Publisher:

In this thought-provoking new book, Bruce Lerro offers a speculative reconstruction of the sacred beliefs and practices of cultures existing between 30,000 and 500 B.C.E. Lerro describes how material changes in various social formations--including hunting-gathering bands and horticulturalists in villages--were responsible for the shift from magic to realism, from the belief in earth spirits to faith in sky gods. Drawing from such diverse theorists as Marx and Engels, Vygotsky, Piaget, and George Herbert Mead, Lerro critiques and transforms mechanical, humanistic, new age, and countercultural perspectives on the history of sacred traditions. This study of comparative religion and mythology has important applications for the fields of archaeology, evolutionary anthropology, sociology, political science, and comparative psychology.

About the Author:

Bruce Lerro teaches psychology and sociology at John F. Kennedy University and Columbia College.

Review by Richard Heinberg (rheinberg@ogc.org):

In the Axial Iron Age (starting around 600 bce), key individuals-the Greek philosophers, the Hebrew prophets, the Buddha, and Confucius-planted seeds that would grow to become Western civilization and classical civilizations of India and China. The origin of most of the core characteristics of civilization as we know it can be traced to developments in this period. Clearly, something important occurred then-some event or events that began a snowballing process of technological invention, social complexification, and the abstraction of human thought patterns-that has continued to this day. Thus, if we want to understand ourselves and our world, it is essential that we give attention to the events that occurred about 2500 years ago.

A new book offers some of the clearest and most refreshing insight into this set of questions than any to date. From Earth Spirits to Sky Gods deserves careful reading by a broad audience. Lerro has read widely and has brought together the very best evidence and thinking on this subject. His book is a grand synthesis that, by illuminating a distant historical epoch, also throws light on the present.

This work has the virtue of stating the author's perspective clearly at the outset. Lerro rejects both the ideology of progress (which holds that cultural change in the direction of increased complexity comes about because of some inherent evolutionary urge within human beings, or because of their efforts to improve their condition) and that of degeneration (which regards the development of civilization as a disaster resulting from greed or other moral lapses). Instead, he embraces the idea of improvised evolution, which holds that social trends are usually neither inevitable nor intended, but are simply responses to necessity-people doing what they must in order to deal with problems like population pressure and resource depletion.

Lerro identifies ten trends in social systems from Paleolithic bands to Iron Age States-

1) Increase in population 2) Increase in size of societies 3) Increase in variety of specialized goods 4) More advanced technology 5) Increase in social complexity 6) Increase in permanent home settlements 7) Increase in control over the biophysical environment 8) Growth in the specialized skills of labor 9) Increase in the proportion of work compared to leisure time for the average person 10) Increase in social differences in material wealth: ownership of property, tools, and people - and argues that these are "for the most part, the improvised outcomes of history."

Lerro is seeking to describe not just transformations of material culture, but mutations in human thought patterns and religious perspectives as well, and to show how changes in the infrastructure, structure, and superstructure of a society are all bound together.

In the first chapters, Lerro lays the groundwork by describing the differences between magic (the sacred systems common to hunter-gatherer and simple horticultural societies) and religion (which appears in agricultural states): whereas everyone in magical societies sees myths as literally true, the upper classes in religious societies see them as metaphors; in magical traditions, techniques for contacting the sacred dimension emphasize sensory saturation, whereas for upper classes in religious societies sensory austerity is emphasized; sacred experience for magical societies is experiential and practical, while for religious societies it is intellectual (for upper classes) and devotional (for lower classes); for magical groups, transmission of the tradition is oral, while for religions it is by means of written scriptures.

The author then turns to the evolution of politics and economics-discussing stratification, surplus expropriation, and markets-to show how the appearance of the first religions was tied to prior transformations in economy and social structure. In a remarkable chapter titled "Places, Spaces, and Sensuality: Physical Locale and Sense Ratios in the Ancient World," Lerro notes that people in all societies differentiate "place" (sacralized areas of familiarity where needs for structure, security, and familiarity can be satisfied) from "space" (areas between places, or unexplored zones that are usually regarded as secular and objectivised). Lerro argues that people living in pre-Iron-Age magical societies seem to have valued places over spaces, and the proximate senses (touch, taste, smell, and hearing) over the long-distance sense of sight; meanwhile, people in the Axial Iron-Age religious societies tended to devalue place and valued the eye above the other sense organs. "[S]ocial structures have an impact on the organization of the senses," writes Lerro, since "the type of work people do and how much power they have over their work affect which of the senses they use."

In addition to this change in sense ratios, the shift from Stone-Age to Iron-Age economies also seems to have entailed a mutation in humans' experience of self. "Individuals in all cultures, regardless of the level of social complexity, must build a social self," notes Lerro, and to do so entails mastering skills such as distinguishing the inner world from the outer world, learning language, suppressing biological urges, manipulating tools, learning roles, learning to think abstractly, and learning to decipher the codes -beliefs, morals, values, and customs-of society. "But," he argues, "this does not mean that all social selves are the same." The collectivist self of tribal peoples is more interdependent with society and nature, while the individualist self of people in complex societies is more independent, voluntary, contractual, and instrumental.

Clearly, how people think is affected by their material culture. Thus, ultimately, "it is ecological, demographic, technological, economic, and political conditions that determine which cognitive stage is predominant in a society or whether a stage will appear at all. How people reason is an adaptive response to historical transformations, not primarily a maturational unfolding of an individual."

A final virtue of this book that is worth noting: it contains over forty charts that clearly summarize the ideas the author is conveying.