| Abstract: |
Historical studies have tended to follow a path predicated on the assumption that individual units (polities, cultures, societies, ethnic groups) can best be understood as firmly bounded units relatively isolated from one another, that change within them was mainly driven by internal factors, that these units only interacted weakly with each other (except in wartime, and warfare was viewed as a zero-sum game: the winner survived and the loser vanished). Beginning in the 1980s, an expanding group of scholars has explored alternatives to this paradigm based on the idea that this assumption is incorrect, and that interaction between human groups has played a consistently important role in socio-cultural evolution.
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