The Human Web: A Bird's-Eye View of World History

Nonfiction | Reference/Text Book | Adult | Published in 2003

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Preface-Introduction

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Background

Genre/Literary Context: The Transcendence of Eurocentric and Nation-State-Contained Historical Study

The Human Web is a unique contribution to historical study because of its grand scale and its transcendence of Eurocentrism and nation-state-contained analysis. The text compresses human history from the Paleolithic stone age to the 20th century into approximately 320 pages by explaining the emergence, expansion, and consolidation of human networks. The authors show how human societies organized on multiple levels, ranging from hunter-gatherer groups to the modern globalized human community. In between were villages, urban centers (and their surrounding hinterlands), confederations of steppe nomads, empires that transcended the boundaries of today’s national borders, and the nation-states that constitute the fundamental units of contemporary global politics.

By wresting historical study from nation-state-contained analysis, the authors illustrate the importance of cross-cultural and across-border exchanges in driving historical progress and shifting concentrations of power. The attention to cultural exchange or diffusion and shifts in power signify a critical departure from Eurocentrism. Eurocentric perspectives emphasize the dominance of European nations in a way that suggests their preeminence developed in a vacuum. Centering Europeans as key actors in historical progress, Eurocentrism relegates peoples of other regions to passive roles, rendering them useful in the historical narrative only in the ways that Europeans acted on them to consolidate power. Moreover, when Eurocentric perspectives acknowledge cultural and ideological influences, they cite only Greek and Roman civilizations.

In contrast, The Human Web highlights how Europe’s power, including that of Greece and Rome, could not have arisen without active participation and influences from their East Asian, South Asian, Middle Eastern, and African counterparts. In addition, the authors show that in these webs of interaction, power was not always concentrated in Europe. Accordingly, they use comparative analysis as their method of historical reconstruction.

Sociohistorical Context: The Exploration of Various Strands of History

Closely related to the transcendence of Eurocentrism and nation-state-contained historical study is the authors’ attention to various strands of history. They illustrate how today’s world arose from a confluence of political, economic, sociocultural, scientific, technological, and environmental factors. As the book articulates the processes that create, expand, and consolidate the many webs that make up the collective human web, ultimately resulting in globalization, the analysis also notes how these activities have changed the environment and Earth’s ecology, decreased cultural diversity, and increased social inequality.

While the authors identify the moment when humanity adopted fossil fuel usage and became a high-energy society, they contextualize it within earlier uses of Earth’s energy flows and modifications to the environment. Therefore, the text highlights how today’s climate issues are an outgrowth of distinctly human behavioral characteristics and deliberate choices rooted in human ambition. In addition, the text brings human complexity to the fore in its description of patterns of cultural evolution. The authors posit that a loss of diversity marks the course of human history. At the same time, they acknowledge that complete homogenization is not truly possible because culture is dynamic, and this dynamism has fostered variations on common themes. This is relevant to 21st century social and intellectual trends, which involve significant untangling and reclamation to not only push back against hegemons within the web but also to acknowledge subjugated peoples’ contributions to society, politics, and culture.

Such acknowledgement is one example of the ways that the tighter connections in the human web enable correction of the power imbalances that growing webs foster. The authors recognize the growth of inequality in each subsequent section, and their final section provides more personal commentary on the impact of globalization. Together, they suggest that reducing inequality and increasing diversity are the antidotes to the problems that the human web has created and exacerbated.