I. Mentalities, world views, thoughts and feelings about the wide world [more below]

II. Institutions, empowered, authoritative, governmental, administrative, and managerial =

A. Churches, censors, law courts, schools, the media [institutions [EG] responsible for "I." above]
B. The state institutions [rulers or governors, executive and/or legislative, wielding central, sovereign [ID] authority]
C. Economic institutions [more below]

III. Social structure; classes [CF=Categories], large, replicated, often hierarchical formations [more]

IV. Economy, production & distribution of valued things & services [CF=II.C above, more]

V.  Geography, topography, landscape, ecosystem, climate, flora & fauna [more just below]

THE HISTORICAL TAXONOMY JUST ABOVE IS PURELY HEURISTIC [ID].
IT CAN BE THOUGHT OF AS A SCHEMATIC FOR THE REVIVAL OF INTEREST IN "POLITICAL ECONOMY" [LOOP]

• At the bottom of the taxonomy, at point "V", at "ground level", the vertical display should be thought to become horizontal, to flatten out and project toward your position or place, some close to us, some further away
• Point "V." can be thought of as a lateral platform or a geo-physical plain (GEOGRAPHY)
• The previous vertically displayed points "I" through "IV" above and all phenomena embraced within these previous points can be placed high or low on that flat table. The following developments concentrate themselves low on that geo-surface =
  • diplomatic/military activities of centralized governments (II.B above)
  • frontier and imperialist expansion
  • urban metropols relate to their rural peripheries [ID]
  • populations distribute themselves or are distributed in cities and countryside
  • material culture is defined = weather, flora, fauna, natural resources. IE=
  • the historical "ecosystem" (i.e., the physical and biological environment)
• "IV. Economy" can be thought to be in close relationship to "V. Geography" =
  • Agriculture [EG=villages, farms, "manorialism", latifundia estates, corporate farming] [Brief history]
  • Industrialization [EG=mercantilism, laissez-faire, trans-national corporatism, managerialism]
  • Markets, trade
• "IV. Economy" and "V. Geography" can be thought to bend around to touch "I. Mentalities" at the top of the list. As Economy digs into the material culture of daily life and adjusts to its environment, it attaches itself to the upper reaches of the TAXONOMY. Energy moves between these levels, to and from ways of seeing the world. Daily behavior, customary "going about" links intimately with the fluid and complex dynamics of human consciousness. This reciprocity between the upper and the lower levels of our taxonomy is one of the most complex historical questions.
• "I. Mentalities" can be thought to be the realm of =
  • psychology, ethics, mores; "national character" (a very questionable category)
  • folk behavior, ritual, customs, culture
  • religion; myth, spiritual life, "beliefs"
  • esthetics. art
  • theologies, philosophies, ideologies, science, law [and all other formal thought systems about what's real and right/false and wrong]
• The transition from "I" to "II.A, B. and C , Institutions" is very smooth =
  • A.1. Religious officials [organizations & officers| EG=Pope, Patriarch, Rabbi, Mosque, Temple, Monastery, Shaman]
  • A.2. Censorship
  • A.3 Judges
  • A.4. Schools, universities, academies, and more recently "Think Tanks" [ID]
  • A.5. Distributers [EG=publishers, Journalists, broadcast networks, "public intellectuals", circus, internet, the media, "entertainment"] [EG]
  • B.1. Embassies and military
  • B.2. Domestic law enforcement (police)
  • B.3. Legislation
  • B.4. Budget income [EG=plunder, tribute, tithes, taxes, state enterprises and properties] CF=IV below
  • B.5. Budget expenditure (EG=Procurement (esp. military procurement), welfare)
  • C.1. finance, treasuries, banks
  • C.2. businesses, corporations
• The qualities of discipline in the realm of consciousness and vested in ruling institutions are paralleled in the qualities of "III. Social structure" =
  • A. Tight social hierarchies = social estates with strict distinctions [EG=sosloviia [ID], aristocrats, commoners]
  • B. Looser but very real social classes [EG=the rich, the poor; more abstractly bourgeoisie, proletariat]
  • C. Labor [EG=bound labor, servile labor, wage labor, etc.]
  • D. Indigenous peoples and ethnic "minorities"
  • E. Women; gender issues
  • F. Families (extended and nuclear)
  • G. "Civil society" [ID] [EG="public", leisure, sports]
• Taken together, sections "II. III and IV" describe the way peoples organize themselves or are organized by others or by circumstances to manage (1) production, (2) distribution and (3) consumption of the things they need and value [EG=Institutional "feudalism", economic "manorialism", and free-market capitalism]

The whole TAXONOMY, points "I" through "V", could be called "the economy" if we seek to understand economy

• not simply as income and expenditure data
• not simply as production and distribution of things of value (as in micro-economics)
• not simply as stock-market averages (as in financial profit-centered concepts)
• but as functioning people in functioning relationship to actual conceptual, institutional, social, economic and physical environments

We might need to return to the original written effort to explain "economy", Hesiod's Works and Days [ID], in order to restore a fuller sense of the term

Considered together, the full inventory of human historical experience was the subject matter in that grand 18th- and 19th-century tradition called "political-economy" which sought to understand how civilizations function, in the largest possible frame of critical or analytical understanding, in the most generous and all-embracing human situ [SAC LOOP on "Political-economy"]

HISTORICAL TAXONOMY IS A MOBILE -- EVEN KALEIDOSCOPIC -- BEAST

This suggestive organizational TAXONOMY is dynamic with respect to the interior relationships up and down the deceptively stiff-looking outline. The taxonomic categories are themselves fluid and intertwined with one another. Remember these cautionary and suggestive words about "taxonomies".

For example, sometimes it appears that everyday life decides the way people think, while at others it appears that the way people think determines their daily life. Arguments about crime and poverty, for example, often hang on this point. Criminality and poverty are thought by some to be created by circumstances of everyday life. Others think criminality and poverty are created by character traits of the criminals and the poor themselves, and therefore everyday life circumstances of criminals or dangerous classes of people follow from the way they think or are the result of character traits.

Historians might often consider each possibility, and they also like to ask if these situations are the same for all people, up and down the social hierarchy, or in many different places over the globe, or in all periods of historical time.

Not only is this suggestive organizational TAXONOMY dynamic in its up and down or vertical axis but there is also dynamism over historical time. Chronology works as if our dynamic but seemingly fixed TAXONOMY rolled constantly to the right. Nothing is fixed, up and down the four sections or from geographic place to place, and now we are reminded of the horizontal movement of the whole loose structure over time.

Furthermore, we notice in the record of historical experience that various sections and subsections of the taxonomy above seem to roll forward in time at widely different and irregular speeds. Some aspects of human experience seem to change quickly, then not at all, then very slowly, while others seem never to change. We sometimes detect "retrograde motion". Clothing styles, technology, etc., seem very fluid, while certain basic values seem stable. There is a fabulous history of technological change, but is there really a significant history of "murder", or of the emotions "love" and "grief"? [Consider this 2017se18:The Guardian article about how death has changed over the past 100 years in Britain [ E-TXT]

The changing and the apparently changeless dimensions of historical experience are all intertwined. And the whole package is unquestionably rolling forward in time. Such is the four dimensional kaleidoscope of history.

But what sets this squirming kaleidoscope in motion? LOOP back to webpage "Interests"



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