McNeill

McNeill explores the idea of the early society as a way to interpret and understand preindustrial living. He goes into detail of various historical events describing important factors that played into the societies shaping and how they learned and assigned meaning to other cultures. In today’s society technology has help shape the way in which states interact and how we view others around us. Since advanced technology did not emerge until later on in history, McNeill attempts to explore the different ways states interpreted each other’s actions. He uses globalization as a way to help describe polyethnicity and how states became less homogeneous. As states learned of each other’s existence they began to see that there were in fact others around them with very different ideals then what they had been used to. McNeill describes three main ways in which states became interconnected during early history, conquest, enslavement and trade.

            While it seemed as if there had been advancement in the world due to state interaction it eventually lead to nationalistic and homogeneous ideals. States began to grow concerned by these outside actors and threatened by their new and different ethics, as well as their state capabilities. Nationalism fueled individual need for change and caused states to function on a new level. This caused kingdoms that had been in place for many years to falter and new state lines were drawn. McNeill also describes how this new system of states caused actors to turn to what was familiar and reject the unknown. People assign meaning and interpret others actions according to what they know and what they have learned from those around them.

            Opinions are formed in accordance to how a certain group has historically been viewed. While reading this article I could not help but think of the current Arab-Israeli conflict and how it has been ongoing for hundreds of years. The theory of social construction can be linked to the bottom-up viewpoint and can be used to explain why the Arabs and Israelis continue to have unrest; they have been conditioned to assign meaning to the conflict at hand and have acquired this point of view from years of learning and listening. Their shared understandings and expectations in relation to the social structure will ultimately determine how they perceive the knowledge of the conflict and how they have assigned meaning to their own interpretations of the situation, which has continued to link negative emotions to the opposing side. In this case human nature is a fundamental reflection of political behavior and will only change in the event that future generations break away from this learned conduct.