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Theoretical Sociology: A Concise Introduction to Twelve Sociological Theories

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1. On the origins of evolutionary
analysis in biology and sociology
By the early 1800s, the sciences had developed much of their
modern character, although physics and biology had not yet been
firmly established as distinct disciplines, even in their current
names. And so, when French philosopher and mathematician
Auguste Comte sought to establish a science of society with
the creation of a new field of study—social physics (la physique
sociale)—the discipline of “physics” had not yet entirely usurped
this name for itself.1 Comte described la physique sociale as “that
science which occupies itself with social phenomena, considered
in the same light as astronomical, physical, chemical, and physi-
ological phenomena, that is to say as being subject to natural and
invariable Laws the discovery of which is the special object of
its researches” (quoted in Iggers 1959: 434). Grudgingly, Comte
abandoned his eye-catching dictum when he discovered that
Adolphe Quetelet, a well-known social statistician, had “stolen”
it from Comte’s early work. But, wanting to avoid a battle,
Comte changed the name for his new science of society to the
Latin–Greek hybrid sociology (Pickering 1993: 605).
Similarly, the study of evolution was also not entirely usurped by
what became biology—especially evolutionary biology. Early social
science, indeed even the tentative efforts by philosophers and his-
torians, was as distinctly evolutionary as biology, at least before
1 The term physics denotes “the study of the nature of matter,” and
in 1800 this included both the social and biological universe—that is, all-
natural science. Especially significant for sociology is that early sociologists
often viewed Newtonian equations on gravity as the model for developing
theories not just of the physical universe but also of the biological and socio-
logical universes (along with other social sciences that were also beginning
to emerge).
Origins of evolutionary analysis in biology and sociology
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2 Biosocial evolutionary analysis
Darwin’s discoveries. In fact, early sociologists such as Auguste
Comte, Herbert Spencer, and Émile Durkheim were all seeking a
science with precision and abstract theory like that of physics, with
Sir Isaac Newton’s “laws of gravity” being the ideal for social science,
and theorizing on the evolution of socio-cultural formations from
simple to more complex forms.
For the next two centuries, the natural and social sciences devel-
oped into their current profiles. Still, it is often forgotten that early
sociology was heavily influenced not just by physics and biology
but also by the emerging science of ecology and population analysis
in the late 18th Century. Today, there are again serious efforts to
integrate the natural and social sciences with evolutionary analysis.
Unfortunately, these more recent efforts have not fully appreciated
that evolutionary analysis of human patterns of social organization
will be somewhat different from analysis in biology. There cannot
be a perfect integration of biology and sociology, but we can disen-
tangle their relevance to understanding the evolution of humans as
biological organisms and as creators of patterns of socio-cultural
organization. Indeed, this book lays out a theoretical research
program that employs evolutionary analysis from both biology and
sociology.
The differences between these approaches ensure that biologi-
cal and sociological theorizing about evolution cannot be fully
reconciled, and our goal is to isolate where both approaches can
be used simultaneously and where one or the other is superior.
Our objective in this chapter, however, is to examine why the first
sociologists were drawn to evolutionary theory in the first place
and why many came to believe that there had to be a distinctive
field to study the evolution of super-organic systems, such as human
societies. By outlining these early views we can then put them into
the larger context of many current debates on how evolutionary
analysis in the social sciences can be conducted and integrated with,
and distinguished from, analysis in biology and, more recently,
evolutionary psychology.
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Origins of evolutionary analysis in biology and sociology 3
BEFORE AND AFTER DARWIN
Auguste Comte (1798–1857)
Most early sociologists were committed to making sociology a sci-
ence. Given this intent, they adopted methods of physics and biology,
in somewhat more metaphorical than scientific ways, to study human
behavior and patterns of social organization. Comte in 1830, and
later, Herbert Spencer (in First Principles, 1862), viewed the emerging
science of physics as the ultimate paradigm for developing theoretical
explanations revolving around highly abstract statements or “laws”
about the relationships among the fundamental forces driving these
“universes”—the social, biological, and physical. They often viewed
these laws as explaining the forces and, hence, as explaining the
evolution of human formations, particularly social evolution from
simple to more complex societies. Just as species of organisms evolve,
so do forms of societies and their constituent parts, with the object
of sociology being the development of laws on the growth and
development of what Spencer would term super-organisms, or “the
organization of organisms,” into a unique property of the universe:
human society.
As Spencer emphasized, some super-organisms are biologically
controlled (as we know today, under high genetic control), as is the
case with social insects; and, for both Comte (1830) and Spencer
(1874), such super-organisms in the biotic universe offered a fruitful
line of comparison with human socio-cultural evolution that was
to drive human agency in the construction of social structures and
their cultures. While the dynamics of both human and non-human
societies, like those among insects, reveal somewhat similar dynam-
ics, such as increased differentiation of members as a population
grows, the operative dynamics of human societies are different than
those operating in insect societies and, thus, require their own laws
in explaining key dynamics. Therefore, from the very beginning,
evolutionary analysis of organisms and super-organisms involved
theorizing dedicated to explaining the emergence, growth, and
differentiation of forms of organic life—whether individual organ-
isms or the organization of individual organisms into societies of
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4 Biosocial evolutionary analysis
varying degrees of complexity. Comte’s famous hierarchy of the
sciences—with sociology as the “queen of sciences,” arising out
of biology and built on the base made possible by mathematics
and physics—emphasizes the parallel nature of organic and super-
organic evolution.
Auguste Comte’s vision of socio-cultural evolution, as outlined
in Figure 1.1, first illustrated this theme and contained an implicit
“selectionist argument” long before Darwin. There are parallels to
Darwin because Comte and other early sociologists were all reading
the works of 18th- and early 19th-Century scholars—in particular
Thomas Malthus (1766–1834), the British economist, who, in a
famous essay of June 1798, wrote:
It is an obvious truth … that population must always be kept down to the level
of the means of subsistence; but no writer … has inquired particularly into the
means by which this level is effected … Population, when unchecked, increases
in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio … the
effects of these two unequal powers must be kept equal. This implies a strong
and constantly operating check on population from the difficulty of subsistence.
(Malthus 1798: vii, 4, 5)
Malthus wrote of “a struggle for existence” in his essay (p. 14). This
was also the core of Darwin’s evolutionary theory as well as the
evolutionary models of both Spencer (1862, 1874–96) and Durkheim
(1893, 1912), which, in essence, argued that population growth gener-
ates integrative problems of coordination, control, and reproduction
of social units. Such problems can be viewed as “selection pressures”
on a population to develop new mechanisms for coordination, con-
trol, and reproduction to stave off the disintegrative consequences of
larger, poorly organized human populations.
For Comte and those who followed him, selection pressures arising
from population growth generate differentiation and elaboration
of social structure and culture, especially economic and political
structures, and their respective cultures. If adaptive, differentiation
sustains a population unless other selection pressures emerge—such
as warfare with other populations, ecological decline in habitats,
renewed growth within a population, or encroachment on a popula-
tion’s neighbors. Thus, even though both Comte and Spencer were
advocating a more “physics vision” of explanation—that is, abstract
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5
Note: Here and in Figures 1.2–1.5, the signs on the arrows denote the following: + a positive effect on (increasing); − a negative effect (decreasing);
+/− a positive curvilinear effect (increasing and at higher values decreasing); −/+ a negative curvilineal effect decreasing and then turning positive and
increasing; =/+ a lagged positive effect with little movement until higher values are reached and then turning positive; +/= a positive effect that levels
off at higher values; =/− a lagged negative effect, turning negative; and −/= a negative effect leveling off as its values increase.
Figure 1.1 Comte’s implicit model of selection forces driving societal evolution
Level of
social
differentiation
Level of
integrative
problems in
societies over
coordination and
control
Level of selection
pressures for new
mechanisms of
integration
Potential for
social
pathologies
_
++
+
_
++
_
Population
size/growth
+
Level of structural
interdependencies
Level of
consolidated power
Level of common
culture
+
+
_
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6 Biosocial evolutionary analysis
theoretical statements or “laws” specifying the dynamics among
elements of socio-cultural organization—the underlying model was
evolutionary and seen as parallel to explanations of the growth
of organisms (not yet articulated by Darwin). Moreover, Comte,
Spencer, and Durkheim all had an ecological view of human popula-
tions as adapting to ecological niches, which paralleled Darwin’s
emphasis on “selection” pressures generating a “natural selection”
of species. Thus, the underlying image of Darwinian theory was
anticipated by Comte’s 1830 vision of societal evolution, as outlined
in Figure 1.1.
Herbert Spencer (1820–1903)
English polymath Herbert Spencer was a self-taught philoso-
pher whose works dominated much intellectual discourse in the
19thCentury. Spencer’s aim was to develop a general theory explain-
ing the physical, psychological, biological, and socio-cultural dimen-
sions of the universe. Like Comte, the underlying “law” was that
differentiation of “matter” in the human social universe—physical,
psychological, biological, socio-cultural, ethical—was a function of
the size and rate of population growth, with such growth generating
selection pressures for physical, psychological, biological, socio-
cultural, and ethical structures and formations.2 The general theory is
borrowed from the physics of Spencer’s time (1862) and then applied
in multi-volume series of books on the principles of psychology, biol-
ogy, sociology, and ethics.3 Spencer’s general model of socio-cultural
evolution is outlined in Figure 1.2.
Comte and Spencer developed what is known as the “organis-
mic analogy,” which compared the structure of organisms to the
2 Spencer threw in “ethics” as a domain of the universe created by
human super-organisms, or societies, as subject to the general laws of evolu-
tion that he specified in 1862.
3 The Principles of Psychology (1864, 1867), The Principles of Biology
(1864–67), The Principles of Sociology (1874–96), and The Principles of
Ethics (1894–98). Again, the general theoretical argument, borrowed from
metaphors of mid-19th-Century physics, appears in First Principles.
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7
Figure 1.2 Spencer’s model of selection pressures driving societal evolution
Size of
population
and rate of
growth
Level of selection
pressures on a
population
Intensity of effort
to respond to
selection
pressures
Level of
differentiation
of society
organizing the
population
Likelihood of
societal collapse
internally, or of
conquest by
another society
/+
++++
+
+
+
+Level of adaptive
problems from:
production
regulation
reproduction
distribution
+
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8 Biosocial evolutionary analysis
structure of societies. Spencer emphasized that it was only an analogy
that reveals parallel evolutionary developments revolving around
growth in the size of organic or socio-cultural “matter,” leading
to differentiation of structures and their functioning that, in turn,
generates selection pressures for sustaining larger and more complex
systems. Spencer did not use Darwin’s notion of natural selection
because, in his mind, he had already formed this idea in philosophi-
cal works a decade before Darwin’s publication of On the Origin of
Species by Means of Natural Selection in 1859. Indeed, Spencer’s
famous phrase—“survival of the fittest”—was his early version of
a selectionist argument which, as we will see, came to stigmatize the
sociological analysis of evolution (see Chapter 4).
Spencer expanded this analogy by introducing what became known
as “functionalism,” which also created problems in sociology through-
out the 20th and into the 21st Century. For Spencer, populations of
humans are just like organisms in response to selection pressures,
either from their environments or internal structures; moreover,
these selection pressures revolve around fundamental problems of
adaptation, which Spencer described as production, distribution,
reproduction, and regulation.4
1. Production is the problem of securing sufficient resources to
sustain the structure and operation of socio-cultural formations.
2. Distribution is the problem of creating structures for moving
resources, individuals, and cultural ideas among members of a
population.
3. Reproduction is the problem of replacing social structures
and their incumbents needed to sustain a society organizing a
population.
4. Regulation is the dual problem of: (a) social control of members
of a population; and (b) the units organizing their activities
through the consolidating of power and authority as well as cul-
tural symbol systems (e.g., ideologies, values, beliefs, norms, etc.).
4 We have slightly altered Spencer’s labels to communicate in more
modern terms the problems of adaptation.
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Origins of evolutionary analysis in biology and sociology 9
This kind of functional analysis was one of the dominant forms of
explanation in both early sociology and anthropology (e.g., Turner
and Maryanski 1979). Functional analysis in sociology reached its
peak in the 1940s and 1950s, and then rapidly declined and died
out. Indeed, any approach to using biologically inspired ideas was
rejected by sociologists, only to be resurrected in the second half
of that century. In fact, there may also now be another revival of
functional ideas if and when sociology can fully establish its branch
of evolutionary analysis in the 21st Century. In many ways, this book
outlines one such path for creating a viable evolutionary sociology.
In Figure 1.2, much like Comte’s analysis outlined in Figure 1.1,
Spencer sees population growth per se as generating selection pres-
sures for new social structures and cultural systems under conditions
of population growth, as well as under conditions such as ecological
changes in the bio-ecology and/or social-ecology of a population
or the growth in neighboring societies. Moreover, depending on the
sources of such pressures, selection will occur along one or more of
the four fundamental adaptive problems listed above. Spencer did
not draw explicitly from Darwin because, as noted, he had earlier
advanced his ideas on survival of the fittest; but, after On the Origin
of Species was published, Darwins work was increasingly incorpo-
rated into sociological analysis.
The best example of this trend was the work of Durkheim, who
drew heavily from Spencer (often masked by critiques of Spencer)5
but, at the same time, tended to employ Darwin’s terminology.
However, Durkheim’s analysis was simply a variation of Comte and
Spencer’s works, which emphasized that societies can be understood
by the selection pressures that they are under. Efforts to mitigate
5 Although Durkheim was critical of Spencer in his books, he was highly
complementary in many articles and essays. For example, in his “Cours de
science sociale: leçon d’ouverture,” published in 1888, he praised Spencer
for consolidating and integrating sociology by including it in his analysis
of biology, psychology, and physics. Despite his criticisms, Durkheim obvi-
ously took from Comte; but he also took as much from Spencer. Indeed, as a
young lycée instructor in 1882, the works of Spencer and not Comte topped
the list of books and articles that Durkheim borrowed from the library
(Fournier 2013: 46).
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10 Biosocial evolutionary analysis
these pressures through changes in social structures and their cultures
would, it was hoped, enhance the “fitness” of a society in a given
environment.
Hence, for Spencer, population growth immediately begins to gen-
erate adaptive problems—in production, regulation, reproduction,
and distribution. And, as the intensity of selection increases, the size,
number, and level of differentiation increase among the corporate
units organizing members of a population with respect to the prob-
lems of adaptation—that is, production, regulation, reproduction, and
distribution. If differentiation within and among these domains of
adaption can be integrated, then the population is fitter in its environ-
ment and can potentially grow in the future. If, however, differen-
tiation and integration do not occur, societal fitness declines and the
population is more likely to: (a) disintegrate and break up into smaller
populations; (b) die off; or (c) be conquered by a fitter population.
As the bottom box in Figure 1.2 highlights, Spencer emphasized
that warfare is a driving force of societal evolution. Large, populous
societies with superior technologies generally win wars; they then
create a new kind of inter-societal formation to sustain control and
access to the resources of conquered populations. Thus, warfare (the
ultimate game of “survival of the fittest”) is a powerful evolution-
ary force because it leads to increases in production, distribution,
reproduction, and regulation as societies engage in conflict until,
eventually, some form of inter-societal system is created that man-
ages, at least for a time, relations among populations that have been
at war. Indeed, the evolution of scale, scope, and differentiation in
human societies has, to a large extent, been an outcome of societies
going to war, competing for resources, and, in the end, becoming
integrated into larger socio-cultural formations that elaborate social
structures and cultures with respect to the production, distribution,
reproduction, and regulation of new relational patterns. While these
inter-societal formations often collapse because of failure to resolve
long-term selection pressures, the important point is that Spencer
recognized that societal (and inter-societal) evolution is often an
outcome of conflict over resources.
Late in Spencer’s career he realized that, although much societal
evolution is driven by warfare, a more viable adaptive strategy is
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Origins of evolutionary analysis in biology and sociology 11
economic development (of production and distribution), creating
market exchanges within and between societies that, even when
competitive, lead to even more adaptive or fit societal systems. He
increasingly saw that consolidation and centralization of institutional
systems like polity around its coercive base of power were, in the
long run, maladaptive because they generated inequalities in the
distribution of resources that would pose increasing regulatory and
integrative problems.
Émile Durkheim (1858–1917)
Durkheim’s 1893 analysis of societal evolution is outlined in
Figure 1.3, with some modest relabeling to highlight that he was
indeed developing the first sociological theory that carried a signifi-
cant ecological element and application of Darwinian ideas. Still, we
should remember that, even though Comte and Spencer were not
employing a Darwinian vocabulary, they were applying evolution-
ary theory to analyze socio-cultural formations. In line with Comte
and Spencer, Durkheim saw the fundamental force driving socio-
cultural evolution as revolving around increases in population size.
Population growth generates selection pressures for new kinds of
social structures and symbol systems (culture) if a population is to
sustain itself in a given environment. Like Spencer, Durkheim saw
a foundational relationship between growth, increasing selection
pressures, and the evolution of more complex social structures and
cultures to resolve the adaptive problems generated by selection
pressures. Socio-cultural differentiation is, therefore, a simple func-
tion of population size and rate of growth in a population, often
coupled with other adaptive problems related to environments and
ecologies.
In The Division of Labor in Society (1893 [1972]), Durkheim
focused on solidarity, or the forces holding societies together and
keeping them from breaking apart. He wrote earlier that we need to
know “what bonds unite [humans] to one another or, in other words,
what determines the formation of social aggregates” (1888b [1978]:
205). In tackling this problem, Durkheim painted himself into a
corner by positing two distinctive types of solidarity along two poles
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12 Biosocial evolutionary analysis
of society. He said that traditional or undifferentiated populations
are integrated by a mechanical solidarity whereby all members experi-
ence the world similarly because the division of labor is minimal (sex
and age) and the technologies of mechanical societies are similar.
Hence, in a cognitive sense, when humans experience a common “col-
lective conscience,” they create, in essence, like-minded individuals
who thereby experience high solidarity.
However, when populations increase in size and when their mem-
bers experience socio-cultural differentiation in diverse occupational
niches, they face the adaptive problem of controlling and coordinat-
ing the expanding personal autonomy of members who no longer
experience the world in the same way. Durkheim posited that, as
the networks of interdependent tasks increase, the rigid mechanical
solidarity would be supplanted by organic solidarity which would,
it seems, magically evolve over time. However, once he realized that
his two types of solidarity were so incompatible and, hence, could
not explain the evolution shift from mechanical to organic solidar-
ity, Durkheim proposed the emergence of “a transition period” in
which pathologies would be evident—his famous statements on
“anomie,” “the forced division of labor” (arising from inequalities),
and “poor coordination” among diverse members of a population.
While Durkheim at first saw these pathologies as only lasting until
mechanical solidarity disappeared and organic solidarity took root,
he was never content with this notion of one form of solidarity
for simple societies and another for complex societies.6 Thus, after
1895, aside from in The Division of Labor, he never again applied
the mechanical–organic distinction as types of solidarity. Durkheim
even wrote to a colleague that he considered the book passé and
“of interest only to beginners” (quoted in Fournier 2013: 378; see
also Maryanski 2018). In fact, the rest of his career was devoted
to developing a general theory on societal integration in terms of
common and universal processes. The solution he developed was
built gradually in a series of early essays and reviews (with some still
6 It appears that Durkheim did not fully recognize that the “patholo-
gies” of societies evolving from mechanical to organic solidarity are, in
essence, selection pressures on a population driving evolution.
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Origins of evolutionary analysis in biology and sociology 13
lacking English translations), culminating in The Elementary Forms
of the Religious Life in 1912.
In the end, Durkheim incorporated more of Comte and Spencer
in his thinking, while expanding his conception of culture and the
mechanisms—rituals, for example—by which individuals occupying
diverse positions in the structure of society and revealing somewhat
different cultures could nonetheless still become integrated as socie-
ties move from simple to ever larger and more differentiated socio-
cultural formations. The temporary pathologies were repositioned
and, in essence, represented selection pressures on growing popula-
tions to develop: (1) highly abstract systems of cultural beliefs that
could apply to all members of a population; (2) emotion-arousing
rituals to affirm these cultural beliefs, thereby giving all members
and corporate units in a society at least some common culture;
(3) reliable power/authority, exchanges in markets, and collective
rituals directed at societies (rather than gods) to promote solidarity;
and (4) divisions of labor in the structure and culture of corporate
units in various sectors of differentiating institutional domains (e.g.,
economy, polity, religion, family, education, science, etc.) with both
idiosyncratic cultures and, at the same time, more abstract common
cultures with other institutional sectors, animated by collective
rituals.
Beginning in the late 19th Century and then advancing during the
early decades of the 20th Century and into the present, sociologists’
have had an interest in developing a science of human ecology (Irwin
2015). Some of these scholars (e.g., Haeckel 1866; Warming 1895;
Cowles 1899; Wheeler 1910) had a rather grandiose view of the “web
of life.” More importantly, both sociologists and bio-ecologists (e.g.,
Clements 1916; Thomson 1906; Geddes and Thomson 1911) were
borrowing from Spencer’s Principles of Biology but downplaying the
notion of competition among organisms and emphasizing coopera-
tion as an adaptation to ecological niches. Eventually, human ecology
emerged with an emphasis on the importance of “communities”
organizing different species as important units of analysis, with such
communities composed of individual and collective actors competing
for resources. One way to visualize Durkheim’s use of ecological met-
aphors as critical to early ecological analysis in sociology is through
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14 Biosocial evolutionary analysis
the Chicago School’s early emphasis on community as an ecosystem
revealing niches to which actors adapted, with differentiation of
actors or sectors of actors adapting to diverse niches driving the
organization of communities as one form of super-organism which,
among humans, was built by acts of agency creating social structures
and culture in particular niches.
In Figure 1.3, we expand Durkheim’s model in order to underscore
the basic theme of this chapter: the early development of a model
of socio-cultural evolution as an ecological process in which selec-
tion pressures on social actors—persons, groups, organizations, and
communities—organize societies, creating Scottish naturalist J. Arthur
Thomson’s (1906) analysis of Darwin’s notion of the “web of life.”
With the emergence of organizational ecology, Durkheim’s conceptu-
alization was given even more Darwinian trappings (e.g., Hannan and
Freeman 1977). His implicit model thus emphasized that corporate
units (such as organizations and groups organizing subpopulations)
seek resources in environments and often compete with other corpo-
rate units. Those able to secure resources out-compete those that are
less successful or efficient, forcing them into new resource niches or,
potentially, causing their “death” if they cannot find a resource niche.
We have added a bit more modern terminology than Durkheim, but
the model in Figure 1.3 draws out the implications of his very early
arguments in The Division of Labor that parallel those of Spencer in
The Principles of Biology and The Principles of Sociology.
In Durkheim’s (and Spencer’s) view, societies are ultimately super-
organisms built from humans organized into the building blocks of
super-organisms—such as groups, communities, and organizations—
and they are under “selection” in that they compete for resources.
However, the dynamics are less Darwinian because such units have
emergent qualities, such as agency, with the capacity to formulate
goals and strategies for self-reorganization in order to become fitter
in the available resource niches within a differentiating society. These
and other differences to be outlined are critical for understanding
how much of evolutionary biology can or should be adopted in
sociological (and social science, more generally) analyses of social
evolution. Although the strategy we have developed over the last
decades draws extensively on the synthetic theory of evolution, or
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15
Figure 1.3 Durkheim’s implicit model of societal evolution
Level of
material
density
Level of
cultural/
moral density
Level of
competition for
resources
Level of
specialization
(division of
labor)
New
forms of
solidarity
Level of
communications
and transportation
technologies
Level of ecological
constraints
Net rate of
immigration/
emigration
Birth rates
Temporary pathologies:
anomie
forced division of labor
poor coordination
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+/
=/–
=/
/+
=/+
+
=
/
+
+
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16 Biosocial evolutionary analysis
what Julian Huxley termed the Modern Synthesis (1942),7 it also
stresses that socio-cultural evolution has unique elements that must be
understood in their own terms.
Karl Marx (1818–1883)
Karl Marx was not a sociologist, but within the social sciences
he is most central to sociology by theorizing the dynamics of
stratification. Yet, he had a theory of history drawn primarily from
philosophy, but with insights into the evolution of societies. Neither
Comte nor Durkheim focused on the dynamics of inequality; but it
is clearly evident that, as societies grow and diversify, one dimension
of this diversity is the unequal distribution of valued resources
within the corporate units of all institutional domains. Inequality
always generates tension between those garnering resources and
those unable to do so, thereby increasing the potential for conflicts
within and between societies. When social structures systematically
generate inequalities, and when these inequalities are legitimated
by ideologies, the conflict potential of a society increases. This
potential or reality of class conflict, or conflict based on other
criteria affecting inequalities (such as religion or ethnicity), can be
viewed as a selection pressure. Divisions within a society generate
instabilities that force efforts to reduce the conflict potential but that
often aggravate these inequalities in the long run. And so, as Marx
recognized, all societies at varying stages of social evolution (except
for nomadic food collectors) systematically generate tension and
conflict over the distribution of valued resources, with the pattern of
distribution related to the structure and culture of corporate units
within institutional domains. When individuals mobilize against the
existing institutional structure(s), and the ideologies legitimating
these structures, they inevitably cause changes in societal structure
and culture of a society. And, from Marx’s perspective, mobilization
7 The cornerstone of the synthetic theory of evolution is, of course,
the recognition that Darwinian natural selection (with ongoing phenotypic
diversity in natural populations) is compatible with Mendelian principles of
inheritance.
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Origins of evolutionary analysis in biology and sociology 17
against existing institutional systems and their cultures causes a
society to evolve, eventually leading to a communist utopia—which,
as is obvious, never occurred.
Thus, what Marx brings to evolutionary analysis is that stratifica-
tion and conflict increase with population growth and the emergence
of diverse institutional domains distributing valued resources of
many kinds, ranging from money, power, authority, prestige, honor,
or even positive emotions. Then, as these inequalities fester and
eventually lead to mobilization to redress them, they change the
structure and culture of societies. Indeed, inequalities arising from
individual and family locations in the stratification system represent
a constant selection pressure, which periodically leads to discord
among sub-sectors of a society that, in turn, causes a society to
change and evolve. Just as inter-societal conflicts change societies
(depending on which society is dominant), so intra-societal conflicts
change societies; and, indeed, these are among the most persistent
selection pressures on human societies—at least since human soci-
ety evolved beyond nomadic hunting and gathering. As societies
evolved and became larger and more diverse, inequality increased
dramatically through the agrarian era, but only by degrees in the
industrial and post-industrial eras (Lenski 1964; Turner 1984). This
constant pressure has forced continual efforts at institutional reor-
ganization which, at best, are only partially successful. Figure 1.4
abstracts Marx’s categories to outline the basic selection dynamics
involved.
Figure 1.4 is drawn to emphasize that change, per se, is the out-
come of conflict over inequalities and stratification. If subordinate
categories win the conflict, change will generally be more pro-
nounced as some institutional domains will be changed dramatically.
Even when dominant sectors win in conflict, they typically change
institutional systems to gain greater control. However there are
limits to this tactic, given that it previously generated revolt and,
over time, will do so again. Thus, as discussed in later chapters, intra-
societal conflict becomes a driving force for societal development
and change.
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18
Figure 1.4 Inequality as a force of selection in human societies
Level and rate
of population
growth
Level of
production
Volume of
distribution of
resources
Level of inequality
in resource
distribution
Level of formation of
differentiated strata
and categories
receiving varying
levels of resources
Level of
mobilization for
conflict over shares
of resources
Intensity of
intra-
societal
conflict
Level of change
in structural and
cultural
phenotypes
Intensity of
ideologies
=/+
=/+
+
+
+/= ++++
++
+/=
+
+/–
+
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Origins of evolutionary analysis in biology and sociology 19
IMPLICATIONS FOR EVOLUTIONARY SOCIOLOGY
Let us begin here by summarizing some of Charles Darwin’s early
assumptions in his monumental On the Origin of Species by Means of
Natural Selection:8
1. Members of a species exhibit variations in their physical and
behavioral traits.
2. Species tend to produce more offspring than can be supported by
the environment.
3. Members of a species (conspecifics) must then compete with one
another or with other species in a given environment.
4. Conspecics with traits that enable them to better compete and
secure resources are more likely to survive and produce ospring,
whereas conspecics with traits that are less suited or less “t” in
a given environment will, on average, lose out in the competition
for resources.
Thus, in place of “God’s design”—the notion of fixed species, or the
intervention of a creator—Darwin proposed a less divine interven-
tion in the physical world. Selection, then, is a natural tendency (unless
blocked by other factors). It is a mechanism for generational change
(or what Darwin called “descent with modification”) because it is
driven by a natural check on the number of individuals who pass on
their characteristics to the next generation. In other words, Darwin
connected differential variation in species with differential survival
8 Of course, the British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913)
also brought to light a similar concept of evolution by natural selection; but
sadly, he only gets a footnote here, even though both theories were presented
together at a meeting of the Linnean Society of London, an association of
naturalists, in July 1858. Darwin, however, had carefully documented his
insights and findings extensively in leather-bound notebooks, sketches (e.g.,
the 1837 iconic “Tree of Life”), and draft manuscripts. These provided the
crucial evidence that he had, for at least two decades, conceptualized natural
selection as a plausible mechanism for evolution. These abundant materials
were also used to quickly publish On the Origin of Species in 1859 (which
sold out in one day) and many other books.
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20 Biosocial evolutionary analysis
and reproductive success in an environment. Natural selection is
not random or governed by chance, but a directional force as it is all
about favoring hereditary traits that are better suited (or adapted)
in a given environment. If the environment changes, it may modify
or shift to a new spectrum of traits. For Darwin, then, evolution
is about adaptation, with natural selection the deterministic force
directing this process by favoring phenotypes (i.e., individual observ-
able characteristics) that are better able to survive and reproduce in a
given environment. Selection thus imposes a direction for evolution-
ary change and is, therefore, the key force increasing species’ adapta-
tion to the environment. But it is important to re-emphasize that
selection is a directive but mindless force because it does not involve
mind-conscious altering decisions.
Three more evolutionary agents were later added to the Modern
Synthesis—mutation, gene flow, and genetic drift—because they also
contribute to evolutionary change, albeit less directly (see Figure 4.1):
Mutation is the biological creative agent, and it is undirected
and occurs by chance.
Gene flow is the movement of genes and subsequent inbreed-
ing between sub-populations of any species. It is undirected,
happens by chance, and serves to prevent speciation. For
humans, the movement of genes by migration is also a source
of new socio-cultural variation.
Genetic drift is random and the result of the drifting of gene
frequencies (or the frequency of a gene in a population). The
founder effect is a distinctive type of genetic drift where a
loss of genetic variation occurs when a small subpopulation
migrates from a mother population to form a new colony.
In Figure 1.5, we array Darwin’s insights as a process without the
additions of the Modern Synthesis briefly described above.9 Like the
other figures in this chapter and throughout the book, the dynamics
9 See Figure 4.1, which includes other forces posited by the Modern
Synthesis of evolution added to the classic model of Darwinian evolution
presented in Figure 1.5.
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Origins of evolutionary analysis in biology and sociology 21
flow from left to right, with the arrows going in the opposite direc-
tion representing reverse causal effects. Thus, population growth
and changes in habitats and niches will increase competition for
resources, generating selection pressures. The more intense these
selection pressures, the more likely some species will decline and even
go extinct. Extinction of one species in competition with another
species reduces the intensity of selection pressures and, by extension,
the rate of speciation.
Gregor Mendel (1822–84)
While Darwinian selection accounted for the “survival of the fit,” it
did not account for the “arrival of the fit” or how hereditary varia-
tions are repeatedly generated and passed on from parent to offspring.
It was left to the Austrian monk and polymath Gregor Mendel to
unlock this mystery. And Mendel did his best to publicize his findings
in lectures at the Natural Science Society in 1865 in Brünn, Austria,
and in a journal article, “Experiments on Plant Hybridization,”
published a year later. At least 40 reprints of Mendel’s paper were
sent out to learned societies (including the Linnean Society, where
Figure 1.5 Summary of Darwinian natural selection
Level of
selection
pressures on
species
Level of
intensity of
selection on
variations in
phenotypes of
species
Level of
competition
for resources
species
Rate of ecological
change in habitats
and niches within
habitats
Relative rates of
population
growth among
diverse species
Rate of
speciation
+
+
++
Probability
of species
extinction
+
+++
+
_
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22 Biosocial evolutionary analysis
Darwin and Wallace’s selectionist theory was first presented), public
libraries, and to individual scholars (supposedly including Darwin).
However Mendel’s revolutionary discovery was not recognized for its
importance, and initially ignored (Galton 2009). It took many years
to “rediscover” Mendel’s Laws of Heredity. It took decades before
Darwinism and Mendelism were unified to form the paradigm of
the synthetic theory of evolution, or the Modern Synthesis, as it was
built up over the first four decades of the 20th Century (see the classic
works of Fisher 1918; Haldane 1932; and Wright 1968–78). Today,
the Modern Synthesis or modern evolutionary theory has expanded
to explain findings from various disciplines, including primatology,
sociology, archaeology, ecology, psychology, anthropology, genetics,
paleontology, zoology, and systematics.
As the importance of the genetic element in the creation of phe-
notypical variability and inheritance became understood—with the
term “genes” coined in 1906 (Mendel had called them merkmals)—it
somewhat ironically highlighted the differences between (1) natu-
ral selection at the biotic level and (2) selection working on the
socio-cultural super-organisms that organize humans. Variation and
selection in Darwin’s scheme were, of course, evident in the schemes
of some of sociology’s first masters. However, the sources and
dynamics of variation and the nature of selection are both different in
socio-cultural evolution compared to biological evolution, although
this difference did not immediately get sorted out; nor has it been
fully acknowledged by many of those seeking to apply the Modern
Synthesis to social science models of human behavior and social
organization.
This latter point is the reason for this book. The human pheno-
types and behavioral propensities in biological analysis are seen
as the result of a mechanical process in which those variations in
phenotypes (and underlying genotypes) promoting fitness in a
given environment are retained, while those that do not promote
fitness are selected out. This thereby alters the gene pool of
a population that evolved through a combination of a genetic
code and environmental challenges. In contrast, the socio-cultural
phenotypes that differentiate humans are the result of creative
conscious minds and acts as an agency that change behaviors and
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Origins of evolutionary analysis in biology and sociology 23
the socio-cultural phenotypes organizing human behaviors. Hence,
the Modern Synthesis cannot fully explain what humans create
and build: socio-cultural formations. There is no equivalent of the
genome in the evolution of human socio-cultural formations; and
social evolution is not “mechanical” like biotic evolution. In fact, in
socio-cultural evolution, (a) the units that are evolving, (b) the forces
that are generating variations in their respective phenotypes of social
structure and culture, and (c) the nature of selection operating are
not the same as the mechanisms operating in biotic evolution. The
early sociologists working with evolutionary ideas in the mid- and
late 19th Century understood this simple fact. This book therefore
represents an effort to carry forward and elaborate upon this
fundamental insight while, at the same time, seeking to demonstrate
where ideas from the Modern Synthesis can be used and reconciled
with the points (a), (b), and (c) above—and, where they cannot be
used in the analysis of socio-cultural evolution.
As we begin to outline our approach to evolutionary analysis in the
following two chapters, it will become clear that there are approaches
(rarely used by social scientists or even biologists) that can help us
understand how natural selection changed the biology of an evolving
primate line—termed hominins—that led to the origin of early Homo
sapiens about 500,000 to 400,000 years ago. These two methodologies
provide powerful tools for understanding the biological evolution
of humans and the socio-cultural evolution of humans and their
differences.
This book will emphasize the above for an understanding of the
biological basis of humans and their nature and, to a degree, the
biological basis of society. But, as the models of the early sociologists
outlined in this chapter suggest, other evolutionary forces are operat-
ing in the evolution of human societies that also need to be highlighted,
as we do in Chapters 6 and 7.
The four models discussed in this chapter are essential in reconcil-
ing the evolutionary approaches within the social sciences (anthro-
pology, economics, political science, psychology, and sociology). We
use the word “reconcile” in the subtitle of this book, but we do not
mean this label to suggest that the study of socio-cultural evolution
can, in any tight way, be fully integrated into the Modern Synthesis.
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24 Biosocial evolutionary analysis
Thenature of biological life forms and the nature of the forces out-
lined in biological theories are very useful in explaining those aspects
of human behavior that have a genetic basis; but the incorporation of
genetics into Darwinian theory ensured that sociological and social
science theorizing about humans and societal evolution would not be
fully isomorphic with biological evolutionary dynamics.
To be sure, the exceptional features of humans—high emotional-
ity, vast cognitive abilities, the capacity for language, and the ability
to develop and use symbolic culture—can indeed be understood,
to some degree, at the biological level because they explain the
evolution of the cognitive and neurological capacities of humans (see
Chapter3). However, human socio-cultural organization as super-
organisms have now reached enormous scales and, as a result, cannot
be explained mainly by reference to human biology. There is, of
course, a biology to humans as organisms; but it is a unique biology
because of the dynamics to be analyzed in the next two chapters
that make the evolution of human super-organisms very different
than those of other life forms on earth. This is because every unit
of organization—namely, persons, corporate units (e.g., groups,
organizations, communities), categoric units (ethnicity, strata, class,
gender, age), institutional domains (economy, kinship, polity, reli-
gion, education, science, etc.), stratification systems, societies as a
whole, or inter-societal systems—are capable of purpose and choice,
from the production and distribution of resources to the foresight
of learning from experience for future situations. Certainly, natural
selection is also directed and non-random; but, as noted earlier, it
is “a mindless force” that does not involve mind-conscious altering
decisions. It acts without foresight, forward planning, or concern for
future consequences.
We can, at times, examine humans using the Modern Synthesis
because they are like any other animal with a genome. Biologically
based behaviors can certainly impose limitations on what humans can
do or want to do. Nevertheless, the human genome allows for a direct
response by an autonomous agent to react to selection pressures by
constructing and reconstructing the socio-cultural phenotypes that
organize humans into societies. And the more scholars try to push
and shove the sociological laws governing human social organization
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Origins of evolutionary analysis in biology and sociology 25
into the Modern Synthesis, the more they obscure the evolution of
the socio-cultural universe. The approach we have developed over the
years can hopefully provide guidelines for researchers and theorists
to develop an evolutionary sociology (more broadly, evolutionary
social science) that can stand as a distinctive form of evolutionary
analysis, just as the Modern Synthesis does in biology.
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... George Herbert Mead menjelaskan bahwa sosialisasi terjadi melalui tahap play stage, game stage, dan generalized other (Turner, 2016). Dalam konteks pengajaran motif dan filosofi batik di sekolah, pendekatan edukatif dapat difokuskan pada tiga tahap perkembangan yang dikemukakan Mead: ...
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