This book addresses the problem of the transition to new forms of social order in the global
world. As a haunting sense of historical discontinuity pervades Western societies it offers a
fresh perspective on the issue focusing on two basic coordinates to pinpoint the developmental
path of rapidly changing societies: one is the mechanism of unfettered social morphogenesis and
the other is the specific kind of societal unification brought about by globalization with the
related closure of the world. The book draws on the theoretical work produced in the five
volumes of the Springer series ¿¿Social Morphogenesis¿¿ and applies it in a sustained and
concerted approach to the empirical examination of macro-social change. The first part of the
book presents the social ontology of the morphogenetic approach and discusses its capacity to
interpret macrosocial transitions. The second part then draws a prospective outline of the
social formation known as the ¿morphogenic society ¿ showing how unbound morphogenesis in a
globalized world shapes such crucial phenomena as social norms war and violence openness and
closure as adaptive responses from social organizations. Lastly the third part examines the
anthropological consequences of these societal trends focusing on self and character as well
as on human fulfillment and the ¿good life¿.
