Social and Cultural Evolution

Social and Cultural Evolution

Social and Cultural Evolution

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World history reveals social transformations and directional trends of sufficient generality such that typologies of social forms can be fruitfully constructed. These directional sequences of change constitute the bulk of what is known as social evolution. . . . However, social evolutionists show due respect for the unique and nonrecurrent in world history. The unique and nonrecurrent may [also] be legitimately called social evolution. (Sanderson 2007, 282)

he concept of evolution has had a unique and profound impact on the development of social science. For over one hundred years, it helped define the field’s focus on historical events and trends that most directly affect survival and prosperity: agricultural

revolution, industrialization, and urban growth. In fact,

the disciplines of sociology and anthropology were virtually born evolutionary, for most of the leading founders of these field[s] embraced evolutionism of one type or another, some of them strongly so. The person who is usually credited with being the “father” of sociology, Auguste Comte, had a thoroughly evolutionary conception of the development of modern industrial society, one based on a view of the expansion of the powers of the human mind. Emile Durkheim carried on some of Comte’s basic evolutionary ideas. . . . Even markedly different thinkers like Karl Marx and Herbert Spencer were very much evolutionists. (Sanderson 2007, 1)

Beginning in the early 1900s, sociologists and anthropologists began to question the assumptions of the classical writers. Of special concern was the central thesis that human societies and cultures develop according to the same principles that apply to plant and animal species—varying over time as they struggle to adapt to their respective habitats. By the mid- 1950s, the debate between evolutionists and their critics had led to a thorough reexamination of all social theory, reflecting how important the concept has been to our understanding of the human prospect (Cerroni-Long 1994; Flynn 1994; Sanderson 1990).

This chapter summarizes the classic position and various extensions, critiques, and revisions of it. Our aim is to assess the strengths and limitations of evolutionism today. To what extent does evolutionary theory help us understand the massive sociocultural transformations our species is now undergoing? Is humanity entering a new stage of a long- term evolutionary process? Is it a higher stage, and, if so, in what sense does it represent an advance over the past?

Classic Evolutionism As noted, the concept of evolution was employed in the very first theories of social science in

Weinstein, Jay. Social Change, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/capella/detail.action?docID=616416. Created from capella on 2018-10-07 17:39:50.

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the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries by Adam Smith, Henri Saint-Simon, Auguste Comte, and especially Herbert Spencer. Charles Darwin was strongly influenced by Spencer’s social scientific accounts, including the latter’s notion of the survival of the fittest, acknowledging this in print (Darwin [1859] 2008; Spencer 1862; Turner 1993, 65n3). From this association, the ideology of social Darwinism, the literal application of certain biological principles to human relations, was developed.

The foundations of evolutionary thought extend back to ancient times, to the work of Aristotle, Plato, and even earlier philosophers, but by the mid-nineteenth century it was the idea whose time had come. During this period, it radically transformed natural science and the way we think about the world in general (Barzun 1981).

Organic Evolution and Ecological Systems Evolution is a process involving the mutual and cumulative changes that occur as parts of a system interact with each other. Darwin’s formulation focuses on variations in biological traits that eventuate in the creation of new species and the extinction of others. Over the course of time, organisms adapt with varying degrees of success to changes in their habitats, which include geophysical elements such as landforms, water resources, and climate, as well as other species. Those that do succeed can survive, breed, and thus continue the existence of their species; failure to keep up with environmental change leads to the end of reproduction and ultimately of the species itself.

Contemporary biologists now understand that new species most typically emerge when random genetic processes (mutations) create radically different organisms (mutants). The traits of the mutants vary so much from their parents’ that it is impossible for them to produce viable, fertile offspring with normal members of their generation. If such mutants are able to survive and reproduce, a new species is created.

Some years after Darwin’s death, the influential (and controversial) evolutionary biologist Ernst Haëckel coined the now-familiar term ecological to refer to this organism-environment system (Haëckel 1917). The word has the same Greek root, oikos, as in “economics,” meaning “household.” Haëckel used it to stress that nature is like a household: it has an orderly character, consisting of different “rooms” or niches, each of which is reserved for certain functions (as real households have rooms for sleeping, eating, and so on) that contribute to the maintenance of the whole. Each niche has a population of occupants that must adapt to the overall functioning of the ecosystem. Otherwise, better-adapted species with different traits will take their place.

As this pattern of niche occupants changes, the habitat is affected because of variations in the use of landforms and water resources and because of climatic effects (Huxley 1953). This continual alteration of organisms and environment as they adapt to one another creates a long- term process in which the surviving species of a given period are the ones best suited to the environment and the habitat is the one best adapted to its occupants. Thus, evolution reflects the “survival of the fittest.”

The connection between the survival of populations, environmental change, and adaptation

Weinstein, Jay. Social Change, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/capella/detail.action?docID=616416. Created from capella on 2018-10-07 17:39:50.

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implies the principle of balance, or equilibrium. The various interrelationships among the parts of a system, along with the various impacts of the whole on each of its parts, make the system extremely interdependent. The slightest change in the activities of a niche occupant or in geophysical characteristics (such as the availability of water resources) could set off a long and cumulative chain of causes and effects, resulting in imbalance, or disequilibrium. The extinction of populations and species, as well as profound geophysical changes, can result from nearly any source. An especially graphic version of this process is the extinction and ecosystem degradation now occurring in the world’s rain forest regions, which is mainly the effect of human activity.

Evolutionary Theory and Human Populations The changing rain forest illustrates how people can dramatically affect the evolution of other species and their habitats. But human populations, too, have become extinct on many occasions or are in the process of becoming extinct today. Some have been the victims of natural disasters and loss of habitat, such as the population of Pompeii. Some have been victims of genocide, intended or otherwise, including several populations of native North American people. And others have blended or assimilated into larger populations under conditions of sociocultural diversity, such as the Normans and Saxons who, together with the native Celts, became the English.

We also know that there have been other species of Homo on Earth that are now extinct and that ours, Homo sapiens, evolved about 250,000 years ago. In this sense, human development is very much part of the evolutionary process.

Yet there is another way in which evolutionary principles might apply to human beings, that is, to long-range trends in society and culture. In fact, many social scientists have sought to describe and explain such processes using an evolutionary metaphor, as if they were biological evolution (Nisbet 1969). This is a very powerful association, for there are many interesting similarities between the evolution of species/habitats and the way in which aspects of human society and culture vary over time (see “Relevant Websites,” chapter 1; see also Hawley 1968; Lenski and Lenski 1987; Parsons 1951, 1964; White 1949).

Box 2.1 LANDMARKS IN HUMAN BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION

Thousands of Years Ago

2,500: The genus Homo appears, evolving from australopithecines ancestors. The development of the Homo genus coincides with the appearance of tools in the fossil record.

1, 800: The evolution of Homo erectus, in Africa. This species resembles modern humans and is thought to be an ancestor. 700: A common genetic ancestor of Neanderthals and humans is thought to have lived at this time.

Weinstein, Jay. Social Change, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/capella/detail.action?docID=616416. Created from capella on 2018-10-07 17:39:50.

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355: Homo heidelbergensis, common ancestor of humans and Neanderthals, leaves footprints in a layer of volcanic ash in Italy. The species was similar to Homo erectus but had a larger braincase. 195: Omo I and Omo II, two fossil specimens discovered in Ethiopia, lived at this time. They are the earliest discovered fossil evidence for ancient Homo sapiens. 160: Homo sapiens living in Ethiopia near the Awash River are known to have practiced mortuary rituals. 150: The woman known as “Mitochondrial Eve” lived at this time, in East Africa. This fossil is the most recent common ancestor of human females. 70: The development of genes associated with speech. The development of “behavioral modernity,” a set of behaviors and traits associated with modern humans. At around this time, the development of modern human culture began to accelerate rapidly. 60: The “Y Chromosomal Adam” lived in Africa. This fossil is the most recent common ancestor of human males. 50: Humans begin to migrate to South Asia. 40: Humans begin migrating to Europe and Australia. 25: The Neanderthals die out. 12: With the extinction of Homo floresiensis, Homo sapiens becomes the only living species of Homo. The Roots of Human Civilization: Sociocultural Evolution of H. Sapiens sapiens

10,000 BCE: Humans begin to develop farming in the “Fertile Crescent,” a highly fertile crescent-shaped region in the Middle East that includes Ancient Egypt, Ancient Mesopotamia, and the Levant.

Source: Emma Lloyd, “A Human Evolution Timeline,” Bright Hub Inc., July 2, 2009, www.brighthub.com/science/medical/articles/6040.aspx.

It is also important to remember that the evolution of species per se is an organic, not a superorganic, process. Mutation and other crucial biological principles, such as recombination, natural selection, and reproductive isolation, have no counterparts in the realm of sociocultural dynamics. They “cannot be compared; not in any way that has operational, as opposed to metaphorical, meaning for those whose primary concern is change in institutions, groups, traditions, and life styles” (Nisbet 1967, 234).

Organic evolution has produced Homo sapiens, a single, viable species that is currently growing in size (at near-record rates) and whose many still-surviving populations add up to a grand total of approximately 6.5 billion members, which is also an all-time high. In addition, we can be fairly sure that no new species of Homo has evolved lately (but see Teilhard de Chardin 1969). In this respect, human nature as a whole is the outcome of the same processes

Weinstein, Jay. Social Change, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/capella/detail.action?docID=616416. Created from capella on 2018-10-07 17:39:50.