My wife is taking a class on World Civ at SNHU and her final paper is based on comparing and contrasting the creation of three complex societies. She is an online student and one of the first discussion boards says that "historians use seven different structural filters (economic, gender, governmental/political, ideological, physical, social, and technological) to analyze complex societies." The question for the discussion board is "identify which of the seven structures of complex societies you think was most important in the development of these early societies."

I'm not asking for an answer. We already BS'd an answer. What we would like to know is a little more information into what these "filters" have to do with the creation of complex societies. These seven filters were not discussed in any of the chapters she has had to read so far (three weeks in to an eight week course) and when she asked for more guidance from the instructor, his response was "Much of the discussion about the seven modules is meant to be a reflection of your interpretation of the earliest societies-- that you select how you interpret the role of any of the structures in societies such as in the city of Jericho, the Sumerians, the Harappans, early China, or similar society of your choice." That sounds to us a lot like make it up yourself.

Our question is does anyone have any idea where she could find a resource that discusses what these filters mean to the study of the creation of complex societies? Or should she, in fact, be happy with trying to identify those sorts of large concepts on her own in an initial World Civilization course? Some of them are self explanatory like the physical filter which uses the physical boundaries of the fertile area surrounding the Nile river and the cataracts, the Red Sea and the Sahara desert to explain why the Egyptians were able to create such an empire with almost no outside interference for such a long period of time, but gender and social filters are so ambiguous that searching for secondary sources to explain such an idea for a beginning student seems like a big lift.