Klaus E. Müller
Die Siedlungsgemeinschaft
Grundriß der essentialistischen Ethnologie
1. Edition 2010
633 pages
ISBN 978-3-89971-572-9
V&R unipress
plus S&H
Book
The starting point of this portrayal of settlement communities are village communities as they existed for at least 10,000 years before advanced civilisation. Given their cultural similarities they are suitable as model groups, as they also allow us to draw conclusions about earlier and later, more complex or advanced models of societies. With its manual-style layout, the volume takes into account all areas of cultural expression. The key approaches are ethnocentricism and, ensuing from that, a dualistic world view. For the first time in cultural sciences, the general principles of group behaviour and conceptual formations are named and sets of rules derived from them. The fundamental hypothesis is that development is subject to an irreversible process of differentiation, setting out from a close bond between humans and their environment, then moving progressively through differentiation, dissociation, alienation, growing complexity and, finally, to uncontrollability, which then leads to downfall.