Seth Abrutyn is Associate Professor in the Sociology Department at the University of British Columbia. His research straddles two primary streams: the evolution of human institutions, like religion or polity, and the role place and place-based culture play in shaping adolescent mental health and suicide. His work has won several national awards, and can be found in outlets like American Sociological Review, Sociological Theory, and American Journal of Public Health.

Jonathan H. Turner was named the 38th University Professor in the history of the University of California system. He is primarily a general sociological theorist. He has authored or coauthored 43 books, and edited 9 additional books. This book on The First Human Institutions is his fourth book on this topic human institutions, focusing on the origin of human institutional systems and their evolution to the structural and culture base necessary for modernity.

Introduction

1. On the Origins of Human Capacities
2. Selection as the Force Driving Institutional Evolution
3. Building Human Institutions
4. The Dynamics of Institutional Autonomy

5. The First Human Institution:The Evolution of the Nuclear Family and Kinship

6. The Elaboration of Kinship
7. The Emergence of Polity in Human Societies
8. The Increasing Autonomy of Polity
9. The Emergence of Religion
10. Religious Evolution and Religious Autonomy
11. The Emergence of Economy
12. The Emergence of Law
13. Legal Autonomy and the Expanding Institutional Infrastructure
14. Institutional Evolution To The Brink of Modernity
15. Institutional Evolution and Stratification
16. The Evolved Institutional Order and the West

Bibliography