Sociocultural Evolution - Introduction

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 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 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, theory of modernisation and theory of postindustrial society.

Richard Dawkins wrote in The Selfish Gene in 1976 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".