Neoevolutionism

Neoevolutionism is a social theory that tries to explain the evolution of societies by drawing on Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and discarding some dogmas of the previous social evolutionism. Neoevolutionism is concerned with long-term, directional, evolutionary social change and with the regular patterns of development that may be seen in unrelated, widely separated cultures.

Neoevolutionism emerged in the 1930s. It developed extensively in the period after the Second World War -- and was incorporated into anthropology as well as sociology in the 1960s.

Its theories are based on empirical evidence from fields such as archeology, paleontology, and historiography. Proponents say neoevolutionism is objective and simply descriptive, eliminating any references to a moral or cultural system of values.

While the 19th century evolutionism explained how culture develops by giving general principles of its evolutionary process, it was dismissed by Historical Particularism as unscientific in the early 20th century. It was the neoevolutionary thinkers who brought back evolutionary thought and developed it to be acceptable to contemporary anthropology.

The neoevolutionism discards many ideas of classical social evolutionism, namely that of social progress, so dominant in previous sociology evolution-related theories. Then neoevolutionism discards the determinism argument and introduces probability, arguing that accidents and free will have much impact on the process of social evolution. It also supports the counterfactual history - asking 'what if' and considering different possible paths that social evolution may (or might have) taken, and thus allows for the fact that various cultures may develop in different ways, some skipping entire stages others have passed through. The neoevolutionism stresses the importance of empirical evidence. While 19th century evolutionism used value judgment and assumptions for interpreting data, the neoevolutionism relied on measurable information for analyzing the process of cultural evolution.

Neoevolutionism important thinkers include:

See also


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