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Socio Cultural
Evolution
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Sociocultural evolution, sociocultural evolutionism or cultural evolution are
theories of cultural and social evolution that describe how cultures and societies
change over time. Whereas sociocultural development traces processes that tend
to increase the complexity of a society or culture, sociocultural evolution also
considers process that can lead to decreases in complexity (degeneration) or that
can produce variation or proliferation without any seemingly significant
changes in complexity (cladogenesis). Sociocultural evolution is "the process
by which structural reorganization is affected through time, eventually
producing a form or structure which is qualitatively different from the ancestral
form".
(Note, this article focusses on that use of the term 'socio-cultural evolution' to
refer to work that is not in line with contemporary understandings of the word
'evolution'. There is a separate body of academic work which uses the term
'cultural evolution' using a more consensus Darwinian understanding of the term
'evolution'. For a description of this work, based in the foundational work of DT
Campbell in the 1960s and followed up by Boyd, Richerson, Cvalli-Sforza, and
Feldman in the 1980s, go to Cultural evolution or Dual inheritance theory.)
Most 19th-century and some 20th-century approaches to socioculture aimed to
provide models for the evolution of humankind as a whole, arguing that
different societies have reached different stages of social development. The
most comprehensive attempt to develop a general theory of social evolution
centering on the development of socio-cultural systems, the work of Talcott
Parsons (1902-1979), operated on a scale which included a theory of world
history. Another attempt, on a less systematic scale, originated with the worldsystems approach.
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More recent approaches focus on changes specific to individual societies and
reject the idea that cultures differ primarily according to how far each one is on
the linear scale of social progress. Most modern archaeologists and cultural
anthropologists work within the frameworks of neoevolutionism, sociobiology
and modernization theory.
Many different societies have existed in the course of human history, with
estimates as high as over one million separate societies; however, as of 2013,
only about two hundred or so different societies survive.
Introduction
Anthropologists and sociologists often assume that human beings have natural
social tendencies and that particular human social behaviours have non-genetic
causes and dynamics (i.e. they are learned in a social environment and through
social interaction). Societies exist in complex social environments (i.e. with
natural resources and constraints) and adapt themselves to these environments.
It is thus inevitable that all societies change.
Specific theories of social or cultural evolution often attempt to explain
differences between coeval societies, by positing that different societies have
reached different stages of development. Although such theories typically
provide models for understanding the relationship between technologies, social
structure or the values of a society, they vary as to the extent to which they
describe specific mechanisms of variation and change.
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Early sociocultural evolution theories – the theories of Auguste Comte, Herbert
Spencer and Lewis Henry Morgan – developed simultaneously with, 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 civilized over time, and equated the culture and technology of
Western civilization 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. However, most 20th-century
approaches, such as multilineal evolution, focused on changes specific to
individual societies. Moreover, they rejected 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, dual inheritance theory,
modernisation theory and postindustrial theory.
In his seminal 1976 book The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins wrote that "there
are some examples of cultural evolution in birds and monkeys, but ... it is our
own species that really shows what cultural evolution can do".
Early views of society
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In the unilineal-evolution model at left, all cultures progress through set stages,
while the multilineal-evolution model at right emphasizes distinctive culture
histories
Organic society
Several centuries before sociology developed as a widespread discipline, the
14th-century Islamic scholar Ibn Khaldun viewed societies as living organisms
that, due to universal causes, experience cyclic birth, growth, maturity, decline
and inevitable death.
Decline and fall
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 the standard to which to aspire; and Ancient Greece and Ancient
Rome produced levels of technical accomplishment which Europeans of the
Middle Ages sought to emulate. In religious terms, Christianity taught that
people lived in a debased world fundamentally inferior to the Garden of Eden
and to Heaven.
The idea of progress
During the Age of Enlightenment European self-confidence grew and the notion
of progress became increasingly popular. During this period what would later
become known as "sociological and cultural evolution" had its roots.
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Stadial theory
Enlightenment and later thinkers often speculated that societies progressed
through stages: in other words, they saw history as stadial. While expecting
humankind to show increasing development, theorists looked for what
determined the course of human history. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (17701831), for example, saw social development as an inevitable process. It was
assumed that societies start out primitive, perhaps in a state of nature, and could
progress toward something resembling industrial Europe.
While earlier authors such as Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) had discussed
how societies change through time, the Scottish Enlightenment of the 18th
century proved key in the development of the idea of sociocultural
evolution.[citation needed] In relation to Scotland's union with England in 1707,
several[quantify] Scottish thinkers pondered the relationship between progress
and the affluence brought about by increased trade with England. They
understood the changes Scotland was undergoing as involving transition from
an agricultural to a mercantile society. In "conjectural histories", authors such as
Adam Ferguson (1723-1816), John Millar (1735-1801) and Adam Smith (17231790) argued that societies all pass through a series of four stages: hunting and
gathering, pastoralism and nomadism, agriculture, and finally a stage of
commerce.
Auguste Comte (1798-1857)
Philosophical concepts of progress, such as that of Hegel, developed as well
during this period. In France, authors such as Claude Adrien Helvétius (1715www.AssignmentPoint.com
1771) and other philosophes were influenced by the Scottish tradition. Later
thinkers such as Comte de Saint-Simon (1760-1825) developed these
ideas.[citation needed] Auguste Comte (1798-1857) in particular presented a
coherent view of social progress and a new discipline to study it: sociology.
These developments took place in a context of wider processes. The first
process was colonialism. Although imperial powers settled most differences of
opinion with their colonial subjects through force, increased awareness of nonWestern peoples raised new questions for European scholars about the nature of
society and of culture. Similarly, effective colonial 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: such systems saw colonised people as less evolved, and
colonising people as more evolved. Modern civilization (understood as the
Western civilization), appeared the result of steady progress from a state of
barbarism, and such a notion was common to many thinkers of the
Enlightenment, including Voltaire (1694-1778).
The second process was the Industrial Revolution and the rise of capitalism,
which together 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
improvements. Industrialisation, combined with the intense political change
brought about by the French Revolution of 1789 and the U.S. Constitution,
which paved the way for the dominance of democracy, forced European
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thinkers to reconsider some of their assumptions about how society was
organised.
Eventually, in the 19th century three major classical theories of social and
historical change emerged:
 sociocultural evolutionism
 the social cycle theory
 the Marxist theory of historical materialism.
These theories had a common factor: they all agreed that the history of
humanity is pursuing a certain fixed path, most likely that of social progress.
Thus, each past event is not only chronologically, but causally tied to present
and future events. The theories postulated that by recreating the sequence of
those events, sociology could discover the "laws" of history.
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