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Economic Inequality, Elite Overproduction, and the Unraveling of Cooperation

By Peter Turchin March 9, 2014 No Comments

I just gave a live interview about my research to Left Jab Radio. For those listeners who are interested in the background of what I was discussing, I am reposting here the list of blogs that are most relevant to the issues of elite overproduction, inequality, and political instability.

Elite Overproduction, Inequality, and Discord

The Double Helix of Inequality and Well-Being

The Strange Disappearance of Cooperation in America

The Strange Disappearance of Cooperation in America II

The Road to Disunion

Below the Surface: the Structural-Demographic Roots of the Current Political Crisis

Bimodal Lawyers: How Extreme Competition Breeds Extreme Inequality

Why Real Wages Stopped Growing

The End of Prosperity: Why Did Real Wages Stop Growing in the 1970s?

Cutting through the Thicket of Economic Forces (Why Real Wages Stopped Growing II)

A Proxy for Non-Market Forces (Why Real Wages Stopped Growing III)

Putting It All Together (Why Real Wages Stopped Growing IV)

More on Labor Supply (Why Real Wages Stopped Growing V)

Indiscriminate Mass Murder as a Form of Political Violence

Canaries in a Coal Mine

Canaries in a Coal Mine II. “We too are asking why”

Canaries in a Coal Mine III. Is the Trend Real?

Bryan Vila: A Criminologist Comments on ‘Canaries in a Coal Mine’

Canaries in a Coal Mine IV: Alternative Explanations

Published On: March 9, 2014

Peter Turchin

Peter Turchin

Curriculum Vitae

Peter Turchin is an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Connecticut who works in the field of historical social science that he and his colleagues call Cliodynamics. His research interests lie at the intersection of social and cultural evolution, historical macrosociology, economic history and cliometrics, mathematical modeling of long-term social processes, and the construction and analysis of historical databases. Currently he investigates a set of broad and interrelated questions. How do human societies evolve? In particular, what processes explain the evolution of ultrasociality—our capacity to cooperate in huge anonymous societies of millions? Why do we see such a staggering degree of inequality in economic performance and effectiveness of governance among nations? Turchin uses the theoretical framework of cultural multilevel selection to address these questions. Currently his main research effort is directed at coordinating the Seshat Databank project, which builds a massive historical database of cultural evolution that will enable us to empirically test theoretical predictions coming from various social evolution theories.

Turchin has published 200 articles in peer-reviewed journals, including a dozen in Nature, Science, and PNAS. His publications are frequently cited and in 2004 he was designated as “Highly cited researcher” by ISIHighlyCited.com. Turchin has authored seven books. His most recent book is Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth (Beresta Books, 2016).

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