How this work came about

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We authors, Lenore Monello Schloming and Skip Schloming, are trained sociologists. This work is based on our doctoral dissertations, written over 45 years ago when we were both graduate students in sociology at Brandeis University. We met, married, discussed (and fought over) our developing ideas, researched our ideas, and created the linked dissertations that lie behind this work. 

 

We are independent scholars. We wanted to work together, and while we taught at the college level for several years, we did not pursue academic careers further. Our subsequent lives after graduate school, however, exposed us to many experiences that informed our ideas:  homesteading in rural Maine where we operated a small private elementary school, managing and owning rental property near Boston, and heading a group of small landlords concerned with landlord-tenant law and the multifamily housing market in Massachusetts and across America.

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Now late in our years and with some urgency, we are updating and rewriting our doctoral dissertations.  Lenore's typology of movement patterns was virtually new as an approach or methodology when she first developed it and, after reviewing recent literature, it is still very little known or discussed. Skip's analysis of the three basic divisions of labor tied in well, and intentionally, with Lenore's typology. The division of labor, while a classic topic (Emile Durkheim, "The Division of Labor in Society," 1893), has scarcely been studied since Durkheim and certainly not from the perspective of movement patterns. 

 

We feel strongly that looking at movement patterns is a unique, powerful, and scientific way to analyze human society and human history. We hope, dear reader, that you will enjoy this unusual retelling of our social and economic history as humans and pre-humans.

Lenore Monello Schloming

Skip Schloming

March 2022

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Acknowledgements

           

The works of many renowned scholars have contributed greatly to this work, including: Konrad Lorenz, Niko Tinbergen, and others in the field of animal behavior in natural habitats; Karl Marx, Max Weber, Georg Simmel, Emile Durkheim, Norbert Elias, Marc Bloch, Robert Nisbet, Lewis Coser, and others in the field of sociology and social history; and many other authors as well.

         

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Questions or comments:  schlomings@gmail.com.