Strangers in a Strange Land: Humans in an Urbanizing World

by Douglas S. Massey

Drawing from evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and sociology, this truly interdisciplinary study explores how the drive to find social connection has shaped the size, structure, and organization of human communities from the Stone Age to the post-industrial present. Focusing on three central factors―the physical environment, social relations at the micro level, and social organization at the macro level―Professor Massey argues that humans are genetically programmed to be physiologically, psychologically, and socially adapted to life in small groups and to organic natural environments.  Despite this, most humans live in dense urban environments.  “As biological organisms,” Massey writes, “we are indeed strangers in a strange land.”

Strangers in a Strange Land is part of the Contemporary Societies series.

Genres: Sociology, Social

352 pages, Paperback

First published August 11, 2005

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is about the human ecology of society and cities, describing the evolutionary processes from the the point of Pre-Habiline to Neolithic society - explaining the relationship between the brain function and the limits of society. Ultimately, with the advent of modern language and the frontal cortex we developed complex culture as a new survival tool.

What is most interesting about the book is how it carefully illustrates the various biological processes, and limits, of the brain and how this explains certain social structures (both primal and modern). Once this is established, he describes the movement from foraging societies to settled cities - using the dynamics and the resources necessities of cities to describe war and general class conflict up until the industrial revolution.

I really couldn't recommend this book more for anyone interested in how human society is a product of evolution, or how we as individuals are products of evolution. Wonderful book.

[Frank · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of fascinating stuff here. Massey sums up the evolution of human society, from foraging days to the post-industrial and increasingly stratified society we now inhabit. As usual, he seems dead-on to me in his analysis of the world. And yet somehow this one feels like less than the sum of its parts. The book's synthesis is so wide-ranging and scintillating that it seems to be headed toward a conclusion that is even more profound than the one it eventually reaches, which in the end is not so different from that of Massey's other books. That said, the book does raise all kinds of other interesting questions that it doesn't necessarily pursue, and it's worth reading and thinking about for that reason as well.

One of Massey's final points is that from 1930 to 1975, America arranged its markets and government to reduce inequality, but that in the last 30 years we've gone in the other direction. Let's hope the Obama administration can change that effectively.