Enlightenment social science staged history as four subsistence modes each generating its own institutions

Evidence

In its most specific form, the theory was that society had “naturally” or “normally” progressed over time through four more or less distinct and consecutive stages, each corresponding to a different mode of subsistence, these stages being defined as hunting, pasturage, agriculture and commerce. To each of these modes of subsistence … there corresponded different sets of ideas and institutions relating to law, property, and government and also different sets of customs, manners and morals. (Meek 1976, 2) Here, then, is a surprising twist. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 669

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the four-stage theory of social evolution (hunting, pasturage, agriculture, commerce) and its materialist architecture — a core scaffolding concept for how race-thinking and the ‘Other’ get anchored in a progress narrative.
• XREF: This stadial theory of history is the direct ancestor of the modernist staging that postcolonial theory and Saidian Orientalism critique — connects to the linear-progress teleology Islamophobia readings will inherit.