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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. Overview 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. 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
Critique and impact on modern theories
Modern theories 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 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 behavioral 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: 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
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. 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 both 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. See also Notes Further reading Modern Evolutionists Herbert Spencer | |||||||||||||
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