Background
Adams, Richard Newbold was born on August 4, 1924 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Son of Randolph Greenfield and Helen Constance (Spiller) Adams.
( All social structures are essentially power structures ...)
All social structures are essentially power structures dependent on energy. The concept of power and the role of energy in social organization are crucial and timely concerns, especially in light of the current apprehension about future energy resources. In Energy and Structure, Richard N. Adams argues that social power affects humanity's approach to ecological, economic, and political problems, directing people to seek solutions that are often deceptively shortsighted. Adams, an anthropologist, proposes that social power is directly derived from control over energy processes. He identifies how power and mentalistic structures constitute fundamental determinants that shape the lives of people at all stages of cultural development, forcing them to accept alternatives often far removed from their desires. His central thesis is that the amount of power in any system varies with the amount of control exercised over the environment and that increasing power and control lead to increasing centralization of decision-making, social marginalization, and environmental despoliation. Thus the more highly developed societies, by virtue of their greater controls, are responsible for the greater ultimate subordination and destruction of human potential, as humanity combines technological advances with a growing inability to exercise good judgment with respect to our own survival. Energy and Structure begins with an examination of the basic theory of social power—what it is and how it works. Adams defines and differentiates between the concepts of power and control, authority and legitimacy, power domains and levels. He then examines the underlying metatheory of energetic and mentalistic structures and provides an analytic model of the evolution of power, from the primitive band to modern nations. He predicts the emergence of supranational blocs and discusses other future possibilities. Throughout, his theoretical points are solidly supported by examples drawn from a wide range of cultures.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0292720130/?tag=2022091-20
(Pan American Sanitary Bureau, Scientific Publications, No...)
Pan American Sanitary Bureau, Scientific Publications, No. 33, December, 1957. Additional Contributor Is Ofelia Hooper.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0879170565/?tag=2022091-20
( Can human social evolution be described in terms common...)
Can human social evolution be described in terms common to other sciences, most specifically, as an energy process? The Eighth Day reflects a conviction that the human trajectory, for all its uniqueness and indeterminism, will never be satisfactorily understood until it is framed in dynamics that are common to all of nature. The problem in doing this, however, lies in ourselves. The major social theories have failed to treat human social evolution as a component of broader natural processes. The Eighth Day argues that the energy process provides a basis for explaining, comparing, and measuring complex social evolution. Using traditional ecological energy flow studies as background, society is conceived as a self-organization of energy. This perspective enables Adams to analyze society in term of the natural selection of self-organizing energy forms and the trigger processes basic to it. Domestication, civilization, socioeconomic development, and the regulation of contemporary industrial nation-states serve to illustrate the approach. A principal aim is to explore the limitation that energy process imposes on human social evolution as well as to clarify the alternatives that it allows. Richly informed by contemporary anthropological historicism, sociobiology, and Marxism, The Eighth Day avoids simple reductionism and denies facile ideological categorization. Adams builds on work in nonequilibrium thermodynamics and theoretical biology and brings three decades of his own work to an analysis of human society that demands an extreme materialism in which human thought and action find a central place.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0292720610/?tag=2022091-20
Adams, Richard Newbold was born on August 4, 1924 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Son of Randolph Greenfield and Helen Constance (Spiller) Adams.
Bachelor of Arts, University of Michigan, 1947; Master of Arts, Yale University, 1949; Doctor of Philosophy, Yale University, 1951.
Ethnologist, Institute Social Anthropology Smithsonian Institution, Guatemala City, 1950-1951;
specialist grantee, State Department, 1951-1952;
scientist, World Health Organization, Guatemala City, 1953-1956;
professor sociology and anthropology, Michigan State University, 1956-1962;
visiting professor anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, 1960-1961;
professor anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, 1962-1984;
Rapoport Centennial professor liberal arts, University of California, Berkeley, 1984-1991;
professor emeritus, University of California, Berkeley, since 1991. Assistant director Institute Latin American Studies, University Texas, Austin, 1962-1967, director, 1986-1990, department chairman anthropology, 1964-1967. Program consultant Latin American division Ford Foundation, 1967-1985.
Visiting research professor Research School for SocialSci., Australian National U., Canberra, 1980, 84. Visiting professor Federal U. Riode Janeiro, 1970, Iberoam. U., Mexico, 1974, 78, National Institute Anthropology and History, Mexico, 1975, 76, U. São Paulo, Brazil, 1978.
( Can human social evolution be described in terms common...)
(Toda estructura social es una estructura de poder que act...)
( All social structures are essentially power structures ...)
(Pan American Sanitary Bureau, Scientific Publications, No...)
(1967 Chandler HARDCOVER, 288pp, 8vo.)
(Book by Adams, Richard Newbold)
(Book by Adams, Richard N.)
(Book by ADAMS (Richard))
Served to Lieutenant (junior grade) United States Naval Reserve, 1943-1946. Fellow American Anthropological Society (Executive Board 1970-1972, president 1976-1977), American Association for the Advancement of Science (vice president, section chairman 1972-1973). Member Latin American Studies Association (president 1967-1968), Society Applied Anthropology (president 1962-1963), American Ethnological Society, SigmaXi. M C.
Married Betty Virginia Hannstein, Nov 4, 1951. Children: Walter Randolph, Tani Marilena, Gina Constance.