THEORIES OF SOCIAL CHANGE

EVOLUTIONARY THEORIES

• Evolutionary theories assume that societies gradually change from simple beginnings to more complex forms.
• Early sociologists, starting with Auguste Comte, believed that societies evolve in a unilinear way, progressing toward something better. They viewed social change as positive and beneficial, with societies necessarily reaching new and higher levels of civilization.
• During the 19th century, colonial expansion exposed Europeans to new peoples, often described as primitives. Missionaries, soldiers, merchants, and adventurers came into contact with them.
• Early anthropologists made attempts to study these primitive societies, often using limited, inaccurate, and unverified information. They argued that all societies passed through a universal evolutionary process, starting from primitive origins and culminating in Western civilization.
• L.H. Morgan identified three basic stages in the evolutionary process: savagery, barbarism, and civilization.
• Auguste Comte also proposed a three-stage model of human thought and society: theological, metaphysical, and positive stages, representing the process of social change.
• The evolutionary view of social change was influenced by Charles Darwin’s theory of Organic Evolution.
• Proponents of social evolution, inspired by Darwin, argued that societies evolved from simple and primitive forms to more complex and advanced ones, such as Western society.
• Herbert Spencer extended this analogy and argued that society itself is an organism. He applied Darwin’s principle of “survival of the fittest” to human societies, claiming that Western races, classes, or societies survived because they were better adapted to life conditions.
• This view, called Social Darwinism, gained widespread popularity in the late 19th century and continued into the early 20th century.
• Emile Durkheim identified the cause of societal evolution as increasing moral density.
• Durkheim believed that societies evolve from a relatively undifferentiated structure with minimal division of laborand mechanical solidarity to a more differentiated structure with a maximum division of labor and organic solidarity.

Evaluation of The Evolutionary Theory

• Early evolutionary doctrines were accepted because they served colonial interests of Europeans, justifying colonial rule over primitive peoples.
• The theory of the “white man’s burden” was used to justify the enforced spread of Western culture, seen as a noble task of bringing higher forms of civilization to what were considered inferior peoples.
• Supporters of this theory lacked a concept of cultural relativity, judging other cultures solely based on their own cultural standards.
• Unilinear evolutionary theories described social change but did not explain how or why societies should evolve toward the Western pattern.
• These theories were based on faulty interpretations of data. Different theorists grouped diverse cultures into misleading categories to fit them into evolutionary stages.
• The theorists took an ethnocentric approach, treating Western civilization’s trends as progress, focusing mostly on economic and technological changes while neglecting other cultural aspects.
• Non-Western societies may see Western cultures as technologically advanced but morally backward.
• Recent ethnographic data from primitive societies have shown that societies do not always follow the same step-by-step evolutionary sequence. Societies often develop by borrowing ideas and innovations from others.
• Example: Bushmen of the Kalahari and Aborigines of Australia are being directly introduced to industrial society, skipping stages theorized by earlier scholars.
• Modern anthropologists tend to support multilinear evolution rather than unilinear evolution. They believe that the evolutionary process can occur in many different ways, and change does not have to follow the same pattern everywhere.
• Modern anthropologists reject the analogy between societies and living organisms, and do not equate change with progress or assume that greater social complexity leads to greater human happiness.
• The theory of multilinear evolution is becoming more popular in social anthropology today.