   #copyright

Sociocultural evolution

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Culture and Diversity

   In the unilineal evolution model at left, all cultures progress through
   set stages, while in the multilineal evolution model at right,
   distinctive culture histories are emphasized.
   Enlarge
   In the unilineal evolution model at left, all cultures progress through
   set stages, while in the multilineal evolution model at right,
   distinctive culture histories are emphasized.

   Sociocultural evolution(ism) is an umbrella term for theories of
   cultural evolution and social evolution, describing how cultures and
   societies have developed over time. Although such theories typically
   provide models for understanding the relationship between technologies,
   social structure, the values of a society, and how and why they change
   with time, they vary as to the extent to which they describe specific
   mechanisms of variation and social change.

   Most 19th century and some 20th century approaches aimed to provide
   models for the evolution of humankind as a whole, arguing that
   different societies are at different stages of social development. At
   present this thread is continued to some extent within the World System
   approach (especially within its version produced by Andre Gunder
   Frank). Many of the more recent 20th-century approaches focus on
   changes specific to individual societies and reject the idea of
   directional change, or social progress. Most archaeologists and
   cultural anthropologists work within the framework of modern theories
   of sociocultural evolution. Modern approaches to sociocultural
   evolution include neoevolutionism, sociobiology, theory of
   modernization and theory of postindustrial society.

Introduction

   Virtually all anthropologists and sociologists assume that human beings
   have natural social tendencies and that particular human social
   behaviors have non-genetic causes and dynamics (i.e. they are learned
   in a social environment and through social interaction). Societies
   exist in complex social (i.e. interacting with other societies) and
   biotic (i.e. interacting with natural resources and constraints)
   environments, and adapt themselves to these environments. It is thus
   inevitable that all societies change.

   Specific theories of social or cultural evolution are usually meant to
   explain differences between coeval societies, by positing that
   different societies are at different stages of development. Although
   such theories typically provide models for understanding the
   relationship between technologies, social structure, or values of a
   society, they vary as to the extent to which they describe specific
   mechanisms of variation and change.

   Early sociocultural evolution theories—the theories of August Comte,
   Herbert Spencer and Lewis Henry Morgan—developed simultaneously but
   independently of Charles Darwin's works and were popular from the late
   19th century to the end of World War I. These 19th-century unilineal
   evolution theories claimed that societies start out in a primitive
   state and gradually become more civilised over time, and equated the
   culture and technology of Western civilisation with progress. Some
   forms of early sociocultural evolution theories (mainly unilineal ones)
   have led to much criticised theories like social Darwinism, and
   scientific racism, used in the past to justify existing policies of
   colonialism and slavery, and to justify new policies such as eugenics.

   Most 19th-century and some 20th-century approaches aimed to provide
   models for the evolution of humankind as a single entity. Most
   20th-century approaches, such as multilineal evolution, however, focus
   on changes specific to individual societies. Moreover, they reject
   directional change (i.e. orthogenetic, teleological or progressive
   change). Most archaeologists work within the framework of multilineal
   evolution. Other contemporary approaches to social change include
   neoevolutionism, sociobiology, theory of modernisation and theory of
   postindustrial society.

Classical social evolutionism

Development

   The 14th century Islamic scholar Ibn Khaldun, considered by some to be
   the father of sociology, concluded that societies are living organisms
   that experience cyclic birth, growth, maturity, decline, and ultimately
   death due to universal causes several centuries before the Western
   civilisation developed the science of sociology. Nonetheless, theories
   of social and cultural evolution were common in modern European
   thought. Prior to the 18th century, Europeans predominantly believed
   that societies on Earth were in a state of decline. European society
   held up the world of antiquity as a standard to aspire to, and Ancient
   Greece and Ancient Rome produced levels of technical accomplishment
   which Europeans of the Middle Ages sought to emulate. At the same time,
   Christianity taught that people lived in a debased world fundamentally
   inferior to the Garden of Eden and Heaven. During The Age of
   Enlightenment, however, European self-confidence grew and the notion of
   progress became increasingly popular. It was during this period that
   what would later become known as "sociological and cultural evolution"
   would have its roots.

   The Enlightenment thinkers often speculated that societies progressed
   through stages of increasing development and looked for the logic,
   order and the set of scientific truths that determined the course of
   human history. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, for example, argued that
   social development was an inevitable and determined process, similar to
   an acorn which has no choice but to become an oak tree. Likewise, it
   was assumed that societies start out primitive, perhaps in a Hobbesian
   state of nature, and naturally progress toward something resembling
   industrial Europe.

   While earlier authors such as Michel de Montaigne discussed how
   societies change through time, it was truly the Scottish Enlightenment
   which proved key in the development of sociocultural evolution. After
   Scotland's union with England in 1707, several Scottish thinkers
   pondered what the relationship between progress and the 'decadence'
   brought about by increased trade with England and the affluence it
   produced. The result was a series of " conjectural histories". Authors
   such as Adam Ferguson, John Millar, and Adam Smith argued that all
   societies pass through a series of four stages: hunting and gathering,
   pastoralism and nomadism, agricultural, and finally a stage of
   commerce. These thinkers thus understood the changes Scotland was
   undergoing as a transition from an agricultural to a mercantile
   society.

   Philosophical concepts of progress (such as those expounded by the
   German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel) developed as well during this period.
   In France authors such as Claude Adrien Helvétius and other philosophes
   were influenced by this Scottish tradition. Later thinkers such as
   Comte de Saint-Simon developed these ideas. August Comte in particular
   presented a coherent view of social progress and a new discipline to
   study it—sociology. The founders of sociology spent decades attempting
   to define their new discipline. In the course of this effort they tried
   several highly divergent pathways, some suggested by methods and
   contents of other sciences, others invented outright by the imagination
   of the scholar.

   These developments took place in a wider context. The first process was
   colonialism. Although imperial powers settled most differences of
   opinion with their colonial subjects with force, increased awareness of
   non-Western peoples raised new questions for European scholars about
   the nature of society and culture. Similarly, effective administration
   required some degree of understanding of other cultures. Emerging
   theories of sociocultural evolution allowed Europeans to organise their
   new knowledge in a way that reflected and justified their increasing
   political and economic domination of others: colonised people were less
   evolved, colonising people were more evolved. When the 17th-century
   English philosopher Thomas Hobbes described primeval man as living in
   conditions in which there are "no arts, no letters, no society" and his
   life as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short", he was very much
   proclaiming a popular conception of the " savage." Everything that was
   good and civilised resulted from the slow development out of this lowly
   state. Even rationalistic philosophers like Voltaire implicitly assumed
   that enlightenment gradually resulted in the upward progress of
   humankind.

   The second process was the Industrial Revolution and the rise of
   capitalism which allowed and promoted continual revolutions in the
   means of production. Emerging theories of sociocultural evolution
   reflected a belief that the changes in Europe wrought by the Industrial
   Revolution and capitalism were obvious improvements. Industrialisation,
   combined with the intense political change brought about by the French
   Revolution, U.S. Constitution and Polish Constitution of May 3, 1791,
   which were paving the way for the dominance of democracy, forced
   European thinkers to reconsider some of their assumptions about how
   society was organised.

   Eventually, in the 19th century three great classical theories of
   social and historical change were created: the sociocultural
   evolutionism, the social cycle theory and the Marxist historical
   materialism theory. Those theories had one common factor: they all
   agreed that the history of humanity is pursuing a certain fixed path,
   most likely that of the social progress. Thus, each past event is not
   only chronologically, but causally tied to the present and future
   events. Those theories postulated that by recreating the sequence of
   those events, sociology could discover the laws of history.

Sociocultural evolutionism and the idea of progress

   While sociocultural evolutionists agree that the evolution-like process
   leads to social progress, classical social evolutionists have developed
   many different theories, known as theories of unilineal evolution.
   Sociocultural evolutionism was the prevailing theory of early
   sociocultural anthropology and social commentary, and is associated
   with scholars like August Comte, Edward Burnett Tylor, Lewis Henry
   Morgan, Benjamin Kidd, L.T. Hobhouse and Herbert Spencer. Sociocultural
   evolutionism represented an attempt to formalise social thinking along
   scientific lines, later influenced by the biological theory of
   evolution. If organisms could develop over time according to
   discernable, deterministic laws, then it seemed reasonable that
   societies could as well. They developed analogies between human society
   and the biological organism and introduced into sociological theory
   such biological concepts as variation, natural selection, and
   inheritance—evolutionary factors resulting in the progress of societies
   through stages of savagery and barbarism to civilisation, by virtue of
   the survival of the fittest. Together with the idea of progress there
   grew the notion of fixed "stages" through which human societies
   progress, usually numbering three—savagery, barbarism, and
   civilisation—but sometimes many more. The Marquis de Condorcet listed
   10 stages, or "epochs", the final one having started with the French
   Revolution, which was destined, in his eyes, to usher in the rights of
   man and the perfection of the human race. Some writers also perceived
   in the growth stages of each individual a recapitulation of these
   stages of society. Strange customs were thus accounted for on the
   assumption that they were throwbacks to earlier useful practices. This
   also marked the beginning of anthropology as a scientific discipline
   and a departure from traditional religious views of "primitive"
   cultures.
   Herbert Spencer.
   Enlarge
   Herbert Spencer.

   The term "Classical Social Evolutionism" is most closely associated
   with the 19th-century writings of Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer (who
   coined the phrase " survival of the fittest") and William Graham
   Sumner. In many ways Spencer's theory of " cosmic evolution" has much
   more in common with the works of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and August Comte
   than with contemporary works of Charles Darwin. Spencer also developed
   and published his theories several years earlier than Darwin. In regard
   to social institutions, however, there is a good case that Spencer's
   writings might be classified as 'Social Evolutionism'. Although he
   wrote that societies over time progressed, and that progress was
   accomplished through competition, he stressed that the individual
   (rather than the collectivity) is the unit of analysis that evolves,
   that evolution takes place through natural selection and that it
   affects social as well as biological phenomenon. Nonetheless, the
   publication of Darwin's works proved a boon to the proponents of
   sociocultural evolution. The world of social science took the ideas of
   biological evolution as an attractive solution to similar questions
   regarding the origins and development of social behaviour and the idea
   of a society as an evolving organism was a biological analogy that is
   taken up by many anthropologists and sociologists even today.

   Both Spencer and Comte view the society as a kind of organism subject
   to the process of growth—from simplicity to complexity, from chaos to
   order, from generalisation to specialisation, from flexibility to
   organisation. They agreed that the process of societies growth can be
   divided into certain stages, have their beginning and eventual end, and
   that this growth is in fact social progress—each newer, more evolved
   society is better. Thus progressivism became one of the basic ideas
   underlying the theory of sociocultural evolutionism.

   August Comte, known as father of sociology, formulated the law of three
   stages: human development progresses from the theological stage, in
   which nature was mythically conceived and man sought the explanation of
   natural phenomena from supernatural beings, through metaphysical stage
   in which nature was conceived of as a result of obscure forces and man
   sought the explanation of natural phenomena from them until the final
   positive stage in which all abstract and obscure forces are discarded,
   and natural phenomena are explained by their constant relationship.
   This progress is forced through the development of human mind, and
   increasing application of thought, reasoning and logic to the
   understanding of the world.

   Herbert Spencer, who believed that society was evolving toward
   increasing freedom for individuals; and so held that government
   intervention ought to be minimal in social and political life,
   differentiated between two phases of development, focusing is on the
   type of internal regulation within societies. Thus he differentiated
   between military and industrial societies. The earlier, more primitive
   military society has a goal of conquest and defence, is centralised,
   economically self-sufficient, collectivistic, puts the good of a group
   over the good of an individual, uses compulsion, force and repression,
   rewards loyalty, obedience and discipline. The industrial society has a
   goal of production and trade, is decentralised, interconnected with
   other societies via economic relations, achieves its goals through
   voluntary cooperation and individual self-restraint, treats the good of
   individual as the highest value, regulates the social life via
   voluntary relations, values initiative, independence and innovation.

   Regardless of how scholars of Spencer interpret his relation to Darwin,
   Spencer proved to be an incredibly popular figure in the 1870s,
   particularly in the United States. Authors such as Edward Youmans,
   William Graham Sumner, John Fiske, John W. Burgess, Lester Frank Ward,
   Lewis H. Morgan and other thinkers of the gilded age all developed
   similar theories of social evolutionism as a result of their exposure
   to Spencer as well as Darwin.
   Lewis H. Morgan
   Lewis H. Morgan

   Lewis H. Morgan, an anthropologist whose ideas have had much impact on
   sociology, in his 1877 classic Ancient Societies differentiated between
   three eras: savagery, barbarism and civilisation, which are divided by
   technological inventions, like fire, bow, pottery in savage era,
   domestication of animals, agriculture, metalworking in barbarian era
   and alphabet and writing in civilisation era. Thus Morgan introduced a
   link between the social progress and technological progress. Morgan
   viewed the technological progress as a force behind the social
   progress, and any social change—in social institutions, organisations
   or ideologies have their beginning in the change of technology.
   Morgan's theories were popularised by Friedrich Engels, who based his
   famous work The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State on
   it. For Engels and other Marxists, this theory was important as it
   supported their conviction that materialistic factors—economical and
   technological—are decisive in shaping the fate of humanity.

   Emile Durkheim, another of the "fathers" of sociology, has developed a
   similar, dichotomal view of social progress. His key concept was social
   solidarity, as he defined the social evolution in terms of progressing
   from mechanical solidarity to organic solidarity. In mechanical
   solidarity, people are self-sufficient, there is little integration and
   thus there is the need for use of force and repression to keep society
   together. In organic solidarity, people are much more integrated and
   interdependent and specialisation and cooperation is extensive.
   Progress from mechanical to organic solidarity is based first on
   population growth and increasing population density, second on
   increasing "morality density" (development of more complex social
   interactions) and thirdly, on the increasing specialisation in
   workplace. To Durkheim, the most important factor in the social
   progress is the division of labour.
   Emile Durkheim
   Enlarge
   Emile Durkheim

   Anthropologists Sir E.B. Tylor in England and Lewis Henry Morgan in the
   United States worked with data from indigenous people, whom they
   claimed represented earlier stages of cultural evolution that gave
   insight into the process and progression of evolution of culture.
   Morgan would later have a significant influence on Karl Marx and
   Friedrich Engels, who developed a theory of sociocultural evolution in
   which the internal contradictions in society created a series of
   escalating stages that ended in a socialist society (see Marxism).
   Tylor and Morgan elaborated the theory of unilinear evolution,
   specifying criteria for categorising cultures according to their
   standing within a fixed system of growth of humanity as a whole and
   examining the modes and mechanisms of this growth. Theirs was often a
   concern with culture in general, not with individual cultures.

   Their analysis of cross-cultural data was based on three assumptions:
    1. contemporary societies may be classified and ranked as more
       "primitive" or more "civilised";
    2. There are a determinate number of stages between "primitive" and
       "civilised" (e.g. band, tribe, chiefdom, and state),
    3. All societies progress through these stages in the same sequence,
       but at different rates.

   Theorists usually measured progression (that is, the difference between
   one stage and the next) in terms of increasing social complexity
   (including class differentiation and a complex division of labour), or
   an increase in intellectual, theological, and aesthetic sophistication.
   These 19th-century ethnologists used these principles primarily to
   explain differences in religious beliefs and kinship terminologies
   among various societies.

   Lester Frank Ward developed Spencer's theory but unlike Spencer, who
   considered the evolution to be general process applicable to the entire
   world, physical and sociological, Ward differentiated sociological
   evolution from biological evolution. He stressed that humans create
   goals for themselves and strive to realise them, whereas there is no
   such intelligence and awareness guiding the non-human world, which
   develops more or less at random. He created a hierarchy of evolution
   processes. First, there is cosmogenesis, creation and evolution of the
   world. Then, after life develops, there is biogenesis. Development of
   humanity leads to anthropogenesis, which is influenced by the human
   mind. Finally, when society develops, so does sociogenesis, which is
   the science of shaping the society to fit with various political,
   cultural and ideological goals.
   Edward Burnett Tylor
   Enlarge
   Edward Burnett Tylor

   Edward Burnett Tylor, pioneer of anthropology, focused on the evolution
   of culture worldwide, noting that culture is an important part of every
   society and that it is also subject to the process of evolution. He
   believed that societies were at different stages of cultural
   development and that the purpose of anthropology was to reconstruct the
   evolution of culture, from primitive beginnings to the modern state.

   Ferdinand Tönnies describes the evolution as the development from
   informal society, where people have many liberties and there are few
   laws and obligations, to modern, formal rational society, dominated by
   traditions and laws and are restricted from acting as they wish. He
   also notes that there is a tendency of standardisation and unification,
   when all smaller societies are absorbed into the single, large, modern
   society. Thus Tönnies can be said to describe part of the process known
   today as the globalisation. Tönnies was also one of the first
   sociologists to claim that the evolution of society is not necessarily
   going in the right direction, that the social progress is not perfect,
   and it can even be called a regress as the newer, more evolved
   societies are obtained only after paying a high cost, resulting in
   decreasing satisfaction of individuals making up that society. Tönnies'
   work became the foundation of neoevolutionism.
   Max Weber
   Enlarge
   Max Weber

   Although not usually counted as a sociocultural evolutionist, Max
   Weber's theory of tripartite classification of authority can be viewed
   as an evolutionary theory as well. Weber distinguishes three ideal
   types of political leadership, domination and authority: charismatic
   domination (familial and religious), traditional domination
   (patriarchs, patrimonalism, feudalism) and legal (rational) domination
   (modern law and state, bureaucracy). He also notes that legal
   domination is the most advanced, and that societies evolve from having
   mostly traditional and charismatic authorities to mostly rational and
   legal ones.

Critique and impact on modern theories

   The early 20th century inaugurated a period of systematic critical
   examination, and rejection of the sweeping generalisations of the
   unilineal theories of sociocultural evolution. Cultural anthropologists
   such as Franz Boas, and his students like Ruth Benedict and Margaret
   Mead, typically regarded as the leader of anthropology's rejection of
   classical social evolutionism, used sophisticated ethnography and more
   rigorous empirical methods to argue that Spencer, Tylor, and Morgan's
   theories were speculative and systematically misrepresented
   ethnographic data. Theories regarding "stages" of evolution were
   especially criticised as illusions. Additionally, they rejected the
   distinction between "primitive" and "civilised" (or "modern"), pointing
   out that so-called primitive contemporary societies have just as much
   history, and were just as evolved, as so-called civilised societies.
   They therefore argued that any attempt to use this theory to
   reconstruct the histories of non-literate (i.e. leaving no historical
   documents) peoples is entirely speculative and unscientific. They
   observed that the postulated progression, which typically ended with a
   stage of civilisation identical to that of modern Europe, is
   ethnocentric. They also pointed out that the theory assumes that
   societies are clearly bounded and distinct, when in fact cultural
   traits and forms often cross social boundaries and diffuse among many
   different societies (and is thus an important mechanism of change).
   Boas introduced the culture history approach, which concentrated on
   fieldwork among native peoples to identify actual cultural and
   historical processes rather than speculative stages of growth. This
   "culture history" approach dominated American anthropology for the
   first half of the 20th century and so influenced anthropology elsewhere
   that high-level generalisation and "systems building" became far less
   common than in the past.

   Later critics observed that this assumption of firmly bounded societies
   was proposed precisely at the time when European powers were colonising
   non-Western societies, and was thus self-serving. Many anthropologists
   and social theorists now consider unilineal cultural and social
   evolution a Western myth seldom based on solid empirical grounds.
   Critical theorists argue that notions of social evolution are simply
   justifications for power by the elites of society. Finally, the
   devastating World Wars that occurred between 1914 and 1945 crippled
   Europe's self-confidence. After millions of deaths, genocide, and the
   destruction of Europe's industrial infrastructure, the idea of progress
   seemed dubious at best.

   Thus modern sociocultural evolutionism rejects most of classical social
   evolutionism due to various theoretical problems:
    1. The theory was deeply ethnocentric—it makes heavy value judgements
       on different societies; with Western civilisation seen as the most
       valuable.
    2. It assumed all cultures follow the same path or progression and
       have the same goals.
    3. It equated civilisation with material culture (technology, cities,
       etc.)
    4. It equated evolution with progress or fitness, based on deep
       misunderstandings of evolutionary theory.
    5. It is greatly contradicted by evidence. Many (but not all)
       supposedly primitive societies are arguably more peaceful and
       equitable/democratic than many modern societies, and tend to be
       healthier with regard to diet and ecology.

   Because social evolution was posited as a scientific theory, it was
   often used to support unjust and often racist social
   practices—particularly colonialism, slavery, and the unequal economic
   conditions present within industrialised Europe. Social Darwinism is
   especially criticised, as it led to some philosophies used by the
   Nazis.

Modern theories

   Composite image of the Earth at night, created by NASA and NOAA. The
   brightest areas of the Earth are the most urbanized, but not
   necessarily the most populated. Even more than 100 years after the
   invention of the electric light, some regions remain thinly populated
   or unlit.
   Enlarge
   Composite image of the Earth at night, created by NASA and NOAA. The
   brightest areas of the Earth are the most urbanized, but not
   necessarily the most populated. Even more than 100 years after the
   invention of the electric light, some regions remain thinly populated
   or unlit.

   When the critique of classical social evolutionism became widely
   accepted, modern anthropological and sociological approaches changed to
   reflect their responses to the critique of their predecessor. Modern
   theories are careful to avoid unsourced, ethnocentric speculation,
   comparisons, or value judgements; more or less regarding individual
   societies as existing within their own historical contexts. These
   conditions provided the context for new theories such as cultural
   relativism and multilineal evolution.

   In 1941 anthropologist Robert Redfield wrote about a shift from 'folk
   society' to 'urban society'. By the 1940s cultural anthropologists such
   as Leslie White and Julian Steward sought to revive an evolutionary
   model on a more scientific basis, and succeeded in establishing an
   approach known as the neoevolutionism. White rejected the opposition
   between "primitive" and "modern" societies but did argue that societies
   could be distinguished based on the amount of energy they harnessed,
   and that increased energy allowed for greater social differentiation (
   White's law). Steward on the other hand rejected the 19th-century
   notion of progress, and instead called attention to the Darwinian
   notion of "adaptation", arguing that all societies had to adapt to
   their environment in some way.

   The anthropologists Marshall Sahlins and Elman Service wrote a book,
   Evolution and Culture, in which they attempted to synthesise White's
   and Steward's approaches. Other anthropologists, building on or
   responding to work by White and Steward, developed theories of cultural
   ecology and ecological anthropology. The most prominent examples are
   Peter Vayda and Roy Rappaport. By the late 1950s, students of Steward
   such as Eric Wolf and Sidney Mintz turned away from cultural ecology to
   Marxism, World Systems Theory, Dependency theory and Marvin Harris's
   Cultural materialism.

   Today most anthropologists continue to reject 19th-century notions of
   progress and the three original assumptions of unilineal evolution.
   Following Steward, they take seriously the relationship between a
   culture and its environment in attempts to explain different aspects of
   a culture. But most modern cultural anthropologists have adopted a
   general systems approach, examining cultures as emergent systems and
   argue that one must consider the whole social environment, which
   includes political and economic relations among cultures. There are
   still others who continue to reject the entirety of the evolutionary
   thinking and look instead at historical contingencies, contacts with
   other cultures, and the operation of cultural symbol systems. As a
   result, the simplistic notion of "cultural evolution" has grown less
   useful and given way to an entire series of more nuanced approaches to
   the relationship of culture and environment. In the area of development
   studies, authors such as Amartya Sen have developed an understanding of
   "development" and 'human flourishing' that also question more
   simplistic notions of progress, while retaining much of their original
   inspiration.

Neoevolutionism

   Neoevolutionism is the first theory of the series of modern multilineal
   evolution theories. It emerged in 1930s and extensively developed in
   the period following the Second World War and was incorporated into
   both anthropology and sociology in the 1960s. It bases its theories on
   the empirical evidences from areas of archaeology, palaeontology and
   historiography and tries to eliminate any references to system of
   values, be it moral or cultural, instead trying to remain objective and
   simply descriptive.

   While 19th-century evolutionism explained how culture develops by
   giving general principles of its evolutionary process, it was dismissed
   by the Historical Particularists as unscientific in the early 20th
   century. It was the neoevolutionary thinkers who brought back
   evolutionary thought and developed it to be acceptable to contemporary
   anthropology.

   The neoevolutionism discards many ideas of classical social
   evolutionism, namely that of social progress, so dominant in previous
   sociology evolution-related theories. Then neoevolutionism discards the
   determinism argument and introduces probability, arguing that accidents
   and free will have much impact on the process of social evolution. It
   also supports the counterfactual history—asking "what if" and
   considering different possible path that social evolution may (or might
   have) taken, and thus allows for the fact that various cultures may
   develop in different ways, some skipping entire stages others have
   passed through. The neoevolutionism stresses the importance of
   empirical evidence. While 19th-century evolutionism used value judgment
   and assumptions for interpreting data, neoevolutionism relied on
   measurable information for analysing the process of sociocultural
   evolution.

   Leslie White, author of The Evolution of Culture: The Development of
   Civilization to the Fall of Rome (1959), attempted to create a theory
   explaining the entire history of humanity. The most important factor in
   his theory is technology: Social systems are determined by
   technological systems, wrote White in his book , echoing the earlier
   theory of Lewis Henry Morgan. As measure of society advancement, he
   proposed the measure of a society's energy consumption. He
   differentiates between five stages of human development. In first,
   people use energy of their own muscles. In second, they use energy of
   domesticated animals. In third, they use the energy of plants (so White
   refers to agricultural revolution here). In fourth, they learn to use
   the energy of natural resources: coal, oil, gas. In fifth, they harness
   the nuclear energy. White introduced a formulae, P=E*T, where E is a
   measure of energy consumed, and T is the measure of efficiency of
   technical factors utilising the energy. This theory is similar to
   Russian astronomer Nikolai Kardashev's later theory of the Kardashev
   scale.

   Julian Steward, author of Theory of Culture Change: The Methodology of
   Multilinear Evolution (1955, reprinted 1979), created the theory of
   "multilinear" evolution which examined the way in which societies
   adapted to their environment. This approach was more nuanced than
   White's theory of "unilinear evolution." Steward on the other hand
   rejected the 19th-century notion of progress, and instead called
   attention to the Darwinian notion of "adaptation", arguing that all
   societies had to adapt to their environment in some way. He argued that
   different adaptations could be studied through the examination of the
   specific resources a society exploited, the technology the society
   relied on to exploit these resources, and the organisation of human
   labour. He further argued that different environments and technologies
   would require different kinds of adaptations, and that as the resource
   base or technology changed, so too would a culture. In other words,
   cultures do not change according to some inner logic, but rather in
   terms of a changing relationship with a changing environment. Cultures
   would therefore not pass through the same stages in the same order as
   they changed—rather, they would change in varying ways and directions.
   He called his theory "multilineal evolution". He questioned the
   possibility of creation of a social theory encompassing the entire
   evolution of humanity; however, he argued that anthropologists are not
   limited to description of specific existing cultures. He believed it is
   possible to create theories analysing typical common culture,
   representative of specific eras or regions. As the decisive factors
   determining the development of given culture he pointed to technology
   and economics, and noted there are secondary factors, like political
   system, ideologies and religion. All those factors push the evolution
   of given society in several directions at the same time; thus, this is
   the multilinearity of his theory of evolution.

   Marshall Sahlins, author of Evolution and Culture (1960), divided the
   evolution of societies into 'general' and 'specific'. General evolution
   is the tendency of cultural and social systems to increase in
   complexity, organisation and adaptiveness to environment. However, as
   the various cultures are not isolated, there is interaction and a
   diffusion of their qualities (like technological inventions). This
   leads cultures to develop in different ways (specific evolution), as
   various elements are introduced to them in different combinations and
   on different stages of evolution.

   Gerhard Lenski in his Power and Prestige (1966) and Human Societies: An
   Introduction to Macrosociology (1974) he expands on the works of Leslie
   White and Lewis Henry Morgan. He views the technological progress as
   the most basic factor in the evolution of societies and cultures.
   Unlike White, who defined technology as the ability to create and
   utilise energy, Lenski focuses on information—its amount and uses. The
   more information and knowledge (especially allowing the shaping of
   natural environment) a given society has, the more advanced it is. He
   distinguished four stages of human development, based on the advances
   in the history of communication. In the first stage, information is
   passed by genes. In the second, when humans gain sentience, they can
   learn and pass information through by experience. In the third, the
   humans start using signs and develop logic. In the fourth, they can
   create symbols, develop language and writing. Advancements in the
   technology of communication translates into advancements in the
   economic system and political system, distribution of goods, social
   inequality and other spheres of social life. He also differentiates
   societies based on their level of technology, communication and
   economy: (1) hunters and gatherers, (2) simple agricultural, (3)
   advanced agricultural, (4) industrial (5) special (like fishing
   societies).

   Talcott Parsons, author of Societies: Evolutionary and Comparative
   Perspectives (1966) and The System of Modern Societies (1971) divided
   evolution into four subprocesses: (1) division, which creates
   functional subsystems from the main system; (2) adaptation, where those
   systems evolve into more efficient versions; (3) inclusion of elements
   previously excluded from the given systems; and (4) generalisation of
   values, increasing the legitimisation of the ever more complex system.
   He shows those processes on 3 stages of evolution: (1) primitive, (2)
   archaic and (3) modern. Archaic societies have the knowledge of
   writing, while modern have the knowledge of law. Parsons viewed the
   Western civilisation as the pinnacle of modern societies, and out of
   all western cultures he declared United States as the most dynamic
   developed.

Sociobiology

   Sociobiology departs perhaps the furthest from the classical social
   evolutionism. It was introduced by Edward Wilson in his 1975 book
   Sociobiology: The New Synthesis and followed his adaptation of
   biological theory neo-Darwinism to the field of social sciences. Wilson
   pioneered the attempt to explain the evolutionary mechanics behind
   social behaviours such as altruism, aggression, and nurturance. In
   doing so, Wilson sparked one of the greatest scientific controversies
   of the 20th century.

   Sociobiologists have argued for a dual inheritance theory, which posits
   that humans are products of both biological evolution and sociocultural
   evolution, each subject to their own selective mechanisms and forms of
   transmission (i.e. in the case of biology, genes, and for culture
   possibly memes). This approach focuses on both the mechanisms of
   cultural transmission and the selective pressures that influence
   cultural change. This version of sociocultural evolution shares little
   in common with the stadial evolutionary models of the early and
   mid-20th century. This approach has been embraced by many psychologists
   and some cultural anthropologists, but very few physical
   anthropologists.

   Neo-Darwinism, also known as the modern evolutionary synthesis,
   generally denotes the combination of Charles Darwin's theory of the
   evolution of species by natural selection, Gregor Mendel's theory of
   genetics as the basis for biological inheritance and mathematical
   population genetics. Essentially, the modern synthesis (or
   neo-Darwinism) introduced the connection between two important
   discoveries; the units of evolution ( genes) with the mechanism of
   evolution (selection).

   Due to its close reliance on biology, sociobiology is often considered
   a branch of the biology and sociology disciplines, although it uses
   techniques from a plethora of sciences, including ethology, evolution,
   zoology, archaeology, population genetics, and many others. Within the
   study of human societies, sociobiology is closely related to the fields
   of human behavioural ecology and evolutionary psychology.

   Sociobiology has remained highly controversial as it contends genes
   play a role in human behaviour, although sociobiologists describe this
   role as a very complex and often unpredictable interaction between
   nature and nurture. The most notable critics of the view that genes
   play a direct role in human behaviour have been Franz Boas, Richard
   Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould.

Theory of modernisation

   Theories of modernisation have been developed and popularised in 1950s
   and 1960s and is closely related to the dependency theory and
   development theory. It combines the previous theories of sociocultural
   evolution with practical experiences and empirical research, especially
   those from the era of decolonisation. The theory states that:
     * Western countries are the most developed, and rest of the world
       (mostly former colonies) are on the earlier stages of development,
       and will eventually reach the same level as the Western world
     * Development stages go from the traditional societies to developed
       ones
     * Third World countries have fallen behind with their social progress
       and need to be directed on their way to becoming more advanced

   Developing from classical social evolutionism theories, theory of
   modernisation stresses the modernisation factor: many societies are
   simply trying (or need to) emulate the most successful societies and
   cultures. It also states that it is possible to do so, thus supporting
   the concepts of social engineering and that the developed countries can
   and should help those less developed, directly or indirectly.

   Among the scientists who contributed much to this theory are Walt
   Rostow, who in his The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist
   Manifesto (1960) concentrates on the economic system side of the
   modernisation, trying to show factors needed for a country to reach the
   path to modernisation in his Rostovian take-off model. David Apter
   concentrated on the political system and history of democracy,
   researching the connection between democracy, good governance and
   efficiency and modernisation. David McClelland (The Achieving Society,
   1967) approached this subject from the psychological perspective , with
   his motivations theory, arguing that modernisation cannot happen until
   given society values innovation, success and free enterprise. Alex
   Inkeles (Becoming Modern, 1974) similarly creates a model of modern
   personality, which needs to be independent, active, interested in
   public policies and cultural matters, open for new experiences,
   rational and being able to create long-term plans for the future. Some
   works of Jürgen Habermas are also connected with this subfield.

   Theory of modernisation has been subject to some criticism similar to
   that levied on classical social evolutionism, especially for being too
   ethnocentric, one-sided and focused on the Western world and culture.

Theory of postindustrial society

   The very concept of evolution has made some scientists try to analyse
   various trends and predict the future development of societies. have
   created the theories of postindustrial societies, arguing that the
   current era of industrial society is coming to an end, and services and
   information are becoming more important than industry and goods.

   In 1974 Daniel Bell, author of The Coming of Post-Industrial Society,
   introduced the concept of postindustrial society. Like many more
   classical evolutionists, he divided the history of humanity into three
   eras: pre-industrial, industrial and postindustrial. He predicted that
   by the end of the 20th century, United States, Japan and Western Europe
   would reach the postindustrial stage. This would be visible by:
     * domination of the service sector (administration, banking, trade,
       transport, healthcare, education, science, mass media, culture)
       over the traditional industry sector (manufacturing industries,
       which have surpassed the more traditional, agriculture and mining
       sector after the 19th-century Industrial Revolution);
     * growing importance of information technologies;
     * increased role of long-term planning, modelling future trends;
     * domination of technocracy and pragmatism over traditional ethics
       and ideologies;
     * increasing importance and use of technology and intellect;
     * changes in the traditional hierarchy of social classes, with highly
       educated specialists and scientists overtaking the traditional
       bourgeois;

   From the 1970s many other sociologist and anthropologists, like Alvin
   Toffler ( Future Shock, 1970), and John Naisbitt (Megatrends 2000: The
   New Directions for the 1990's, 1982) have followed in Bell's footsteps
   and created similar theories. John Naisbitt introduced the concept of
   megatrends: a powerful, global trends that are changing societies on
   the worldwide scale. Among those megatrends he mentions the process of
   globalisation. Another important megatrend was the increase in
   performance of computers and the development of the World Wide Web.
   Marshall McLuhan introduced the concept of global village (The
   Gutenberg Galaxy, 1962), and this term was soon adapted by the
   researchers of globalisation and the Internet. Naisbitt and many other
   proponents of the theory of postindustrial societies argues that those
   megatrends lead to decentralisation, weakening of the central
   government, increasing importance of local initiatives and direct
   democracy, changes in the hierarchy of the traditional social classes,
   development of new social movements and increased powers of consumers
   and number of choices available to them (Toffler even used the term
   "overchoice").
   Logarithmic plot showing exponential shortening trend in evolution of
   humanity, basis for the technological singularity theory.
   Enlarge
   Logarithmic plot showing exponential shortening trend in evolution of
   humanity, basis for the technological singularity theory.

   Some of the more extreme visions of the postindustrial society are
   those related to the theory of the technological singularity. This
   theory refers to a predicted point or period in the development of a
   civilisation at which due to the acceleration of technological
   progress, the societal, scientific and economic change is so rapid that
   nothing beyond that time can be reliably comprehended, understood or
   predicted by the pre-Singularity humans. Such a singularity was first
   discussed in the 1950s, and vastly popularised in the 1980s by Vernor
   Vinge. Nonetheless, this extreme view is treated with much scepticism
   by many more conservative social scientists.

   Critics of the postindustrial society theory point out that it is very
   vague and as any prediction, there is no guarantee that any of the
   trends visible today will in fact exist in the future or develop in the
   directions predicted by contemporary researchers. However, no serious
   sociologist would argue it is possible to predict the future, but only
   that such theories allow us to gain a better understanding of the
   changes taking place in the modern world.

Contemporary moral and political debates over sociocultural evolution

   The Cold War period was marked by rivalry between two superpowers, both
   of which considered themselves to be the most highly evolved cultures
   on the planet. The USSR painted itself as a socialist society which
   emerged out of class struggle, destined to reach the state of
   communism, while sociologists in the United States (such as Talcott
   Parsons) argued that the freedom and prosperity of the United States
   were a proof of a higher level of sociocultural evolution of its
   culture and society. At the same time, decolonisation created newly
   independent countries who sought to become more developed—a model of
   progress and industrialisation which was itself a form of sociocultural
   evolution.

   There is, however, a tradition in European social theory from Rousseau
   to Max Weber that argues that this progression coincides with a loss of
   human freedom and dignity. At the height of the Cold War, this
   tradition merged with an interest in ecology to influence an activist
   culture in the 1960s. This movement produced a variety of political and
   philosophical programs which emphasised the importance of bringing
   society and the environment into harmony. Current political theories of
   the new tribalists consciously mimic ecology and the life-ways of
   indigenous peoples, augmenting them with modern sciences. Ecoregional
   Democracy attempts to confine the " shifting groups", or tribes, within
   "more or less clear boundaries" that a society inherits from the
   surrounding ecology, to the borders of a naturally occurring ecoregion.
   Progress can proceed by competition between but not within tribes, and
   it is limited by ecological borders or by Natural Capitalism incentives
   which attempt to mimic the pressure of natural selection on a human
   society by forcing it to adapt consciously to scarce energy or
   materials. Gaians argue that societies evolve deterministically to play
   a role in the ecology of their biosphere, or else die off as failures
   due to competition from more efficient societies exploiting nature's
   leverage.

   Thus, some have appealed to theories of sociocultural evolution to
   assert that optimising the ecology and the social harmony of closely
   knit groups is more desirable or necessary than the progression to
   "civilisation." A 2002 poll of experts on Nearctic and Neotropic
   indigenous peoples (reported in Harper's magazine) revealed that all of
   them would have preferred to be a typical New World person in the year
   1491, prior to any European contact, rather than a typical European of
   that time.

   This approach has been criticised by pointing out that there are a
   number of historical examples of indigenous peoples doing severe
   environmental damage (such as the deforestation of Easter Island and
   the extinction of mammoths in North America) and that proponents of the
   goal have been trapped by the European stereotype of the noble savage.

   Today, postmodernists question whether the notions of evolution or
   society have inherent meaning and whether they reveal more about the
   person doing the description than the thing being described. Observing
   and observed cultures may lack sufficient cultural similarities (such
   as a common foundation ontology) to be able to communicate their
   respective priorities easily. Or, one may impose such a system of
   belief and judgment upon another, via conquest or colonisation. For
   instance, observation of very different ideas of mathematics and
   physics in indigenous peoples led indirectly to ideas such as George
   Lakoff's " cognitive science of mathematics", which asks if measurement
   systems themselves can be objective.

Modern Evolutionists

     * Homepage of Robert L. Carneiro, American Museum of Natural History
     * Homepage of Robert B. Graber, Truman State University
     * Homepage of Khaled Hakami, University of Vienna

Herbert Spencer

     * First Principles Herbert's 'First Principles' online
     * Excerpts from Progress: Its Law and Cause available from the
       Internet Modern History Sourcebook
     * Modern History Sourcebook: Herbert Spencer: Social Darwinism, 1857
     * Spencer's ideas


   This is a featured article. Click here for more information.
   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociocultural_evolution"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
   of authors and sources) and is available under the GNU Free
   Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.
