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Eörs Szathmáry and John Maynard Smith famously argued that the evolution of life on earth has been marked by a series of transitions to greater complexity, the last being from primate to human societies. I argue that this last transition, covering all of human evolutionary history, in turn comprises two phases: the first defined by increases in the capacity of the human brain/mind to structurally integrate causal inferences and selectively apply them to construct increasingly sophisticated sociocultural niches; the second defined by manipulation of the universal Darwinian mechanisms driving sociocultural evolution. During the first phase, hominin cognitive structure passed through three key transitions to produce the brain/mind of archaic Homo sapiens. The fourth transition, to fully modern Homo sapiens sapiens equipped with symbolic cognition and language, marks the fulcrum that leveraged the second phase in which changes in the scope and rate of niche construction were primarily driven by manipulation of sociocultural evolutionary mechanisms. The fifth transition to sedentary living enabled new selection pressures to be exerted through the concentration and application of social power, while the sixth transition multiplied the cognitive variation available to construct more elaborate sociocultural niches. Finally I note that decreasing intervals between transitions creates a pattern of accelerating sociocultural change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few academic historians take an evolutionary perspective on the past, but this outcome was not inevitable. Leading eighteenth-century intellectuals often took evolutionary perspectives, but particularists largely discredited them in and after the 1780s. By the time Spencer and Darwin revived evolutionism in the 1850s, distinctive historical questions and methods were very well-established. Public intellectuals regularly called for Darwinian history, but almost no academics saw much to gain in it. Most twentieth-century social scientists became generalizers but not evolutionists, while most historians not only refused to engage in generalization of any kind but also criticized divisions of labor in which evolutionists would test theories against data generated by historians. Possibilities remain open for a properly evolutionary history, in which scholars trained as historians but asking evolutionary questions would work alongside those trained as evolutionists but analyzing historical data, but currently, this field's prospects depend too much on individual personalities and even luck. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociology can no longer avoid engagement with biological ideas, but it can incorporate them where they are useful. Most biologically inspired explanations of sociological processes from outside the discipline are simple and, moreover, too reliant on biological rather than sociological models of social processes. Yet, it is possible to engage these efforts by developing sociological concepts and theories that meet those using evolutionary theory from biology. This paper argues that the heavy reliance on Darwinian natural selection limits sociological explanations, although this approach can help sociologists understand the evolved behavioral propensities of humans as evolved apes. These behavioral propensities cannot, however, explain the evolution and dynamics of the layers of sociocultural phenomena studied by sociologists, and efforts to do so with Darwinian notions of natural selection on individual organisms will always be inadequate. As an alternative, we propose that there are other types of natural selection inherent in the organization of what Herbert Spencer termed superorganisms. We label these Durkheimian, Spencerian, and Marxian selection, and they explain what Darwinian selection cannot: the dynamics and evolution of sociocultural phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eisenstadt’s most well-known contributions come primarily from his research on “multiple modernities.” Less appreciated has been his evolutionary theory of cultural change. In this article, we revisit Eisenstadt’s evolutionary theory in order to make explicit his potential contributions to the neo-evolutionary tradition and demonstrate where his contribution can be further appreciated. In short, Eisenstadt’s theory supplements macro-level materialist and micro-level bio-psychological theories by (1) offering a group-level theory that takes agency and historicity seriously by calling attention to the role of institutional entrepreneurs and their projects for cultural change; (2) formulating a multi-linear, multi-directional theory of evolution that avoids determinist traps; (3) highlighting non-materialist crises such as the widespread breakdown in trust, the discontents of centralized and consolidated power, and the collapse of a shared sense of meaning; and (4) accounting for the possible conditions of success or failure. Historical examples are used to illustrate Eisenstadt’s model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evolutionary concepts have a rich history in sociological theory, from Spencer to Durkheim, Marx to Weber. Recently, a neo-evolutionary revival has occurred in the social sciences, (1) bringing neuroscience into dialogue with age old sociological questions of origins; (2) considering the gene-culture relationship; and (3) constructing sweeping general theories of sociocultural evolution. Generally, the role collective actors play in the evolutionary process is taken for granted, as is the contingent, multi-directional, and multi-linear paths evolution takes when we focus on specific cases. The paper below examines the evolution of the ancient Israelites from the 8th-6th centuries BCE, teasing out a theory that supplements these other important areas. Specifically, it is argued that (a) institutional entrepreneurs are the collectives that drive sociocultural selection processes by innovating organizationally, normatively, and symbolically; (b) their cultural assemblages are sources of variation upon which sociocultural forms of selection, like Spencerian or Marxian, can work; and, (c) institutional spheres evolve and become "survivor machines" for the entrepreneur's assemblage, imposing it on a significant proportion of the population and reproducing it across time and space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In light of contemporary advances and in an effort to supplement and add to the vibrant discourse surrounding the evolution of religion, a distinctly sociological theory that returns to and pushes forward the insights of Durkheim and Weber is offered. The unit of evolution is the institutional sphere, or the macro-level structural and cultural sphere of religious action, exchange, and communication; and evolution is the process by which religious entrepreneurs are able to secure material and symbolic independence vis-à-vis other strata and, thereby, carve out an autonomous religious institution to reproduce their symbolic, normative, and organizational innovations. To illustrate the way this sociological theory of institutional evolution works, and how it accounts for multi-linear evolutionary paths, while considering contingencies, the evolution of the Ancient Israelite religion from the late 8th century BCE to the end of the Exile in the late 6th century BCE is examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inspired by Weber’s charismatic carrier groups, Eisenstadt coined the term institutional entrepreneur to capture the rare but epochal collective capable of reorienting a group’s value-orientations and transferring charisma, while making them an evolutionary force of structural and cultural change. As a corrective to Parsons’ abstract, ‘top-down’ theory of change, Eisenstadt’s theory provided historical context and agency to moments in which societies experienced qualitative transformation. The concept has become central to new institutionalism, neo-functionalism, and evolutionary-institutionalism. Drawing from the former two, a more robust theory of institutional entrepreneurship from an evolutionary-institutionalist’s perspective is posited. In essence, entrepreneurs formulate institutional projects with dual logic: a collective side focused on innovation where efforts are directed towards organizational symbolic mechanisms of integration and a self-interested side directed towards resource independence, monopolization, mobility, and power-dependence. While outcomes vary based on numerous environmental factors, success leads to (1) greater structural/symbolic independence and (2) ability to reconfigure physical-temporal-social-symbolic space. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Two recent attempts to clarify misunderstandings about the nature of cultural evolution (Henrich et al., 2008; Gabora, 2011) came to very different conclusions, based on very different understandings of what evolves and how. This paper begins by examining these two 'clarifications' in order to reveal their key differences, and goes on to rethink how culture evolves by focussing on the role of cognitive structure, or worldview. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Macro-institutional analysis was once central to sociological inquiry, such that Durkheim saw it as synonymous with sociology. With the failure of Parsonsian grand macro theory, sociology shifted its lens to the organization, or meso-level of analysis. While producing key insights into the dynamics of corporate units, the macro-environment has become ambiguously theorized. In the paper below, the emergent properties and dynamics of the religious institution--an important sphere of human action central to classical sociology and currently a vibrant subfield --are elucidated. It is argued an analysis at the macro-institution can produce a more robust understanding of social organization and action, which supplements the important meso-level models by more precisely defining and delineating the contours of the macro-level. The paper below achieves this goal by (a) explicating the generic qualities of all religious institutions and (b) positing the key intra- and inter-institutional dynamics affecting various levels of society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Campbell's “evolutionary epistemology” is used more frequently to refer to extensions of Darwinism than other phrases, and his description of it as “variation and selective retention” is highly cited. However, we can still ask whether it is sufficient. The evidence from his classic essay is that he understood it to include somatic maintenance and reproductive growth, but omitted somatic growth and reproductive maintenance. We describe some of the complexity of the evolutionary ecology of life histories, including ecological and ecological versus social density-dependence and scale-dependence, and find that, interestingly, understood as a distinction between spending and investing, the traditional r versus K density-dependence distinction yields the same pattern of expected life history traits as does scale-dependence (although there should be other ways of distinguishing them). We then use this to fill in the missing somatic growth and offspring maintenance of Campbell's model of sociocultural evolution. In concluding, we emphasize the degree to which not only the evolutionary ecology of life histories but also the logic of population genetics and tree-building have been found relevant to the social sciences. Donald Campbell and David Hull, both now deceased, will be remembered as early modern pioneers of the theory of Darwinian sociocultural evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Many archaeologists have used world-systems analysis in precapitalist settings. Some have criticized it; others have dismissed it out of hand. Critiques include that it was developed for the 'modern' world, that it is overly economistic, that it neglects individual actors, and that it inappropriately uses modern analyses in ancient settings. Although there is some validity to these charges when applied to Wallerstein's original formulation, most are misdirected. The critiques are rooted in inattention to the last three decades of work on world-systems, especially modifications made with the explicit intention to make world-systems analysis useful in precapitalist settings. Newer comparative versions of world-systems analysis were initially developed to better understand the evolution of world-systems that gave rise to the modern world-system. These new advances are useful for the study of interregional interactions and long-term development. Archaeologists are well placed to contribute to the further development of world-systems analysis; they can shed light on ancient world-systemic processes and the origins of the modern world-system, provide empirical backing for hypotheses, and raise new theoretical and empirical questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article suggests that 'evolutionary vision,' the unifying paradigm of physical, biological, and sociocultural evolution, needs to be fully embodied and deeply experienced in the human being, and that this can be effected by the experience at the heart of the 'perennial wisdom tradition,'1 that is, that of 'non-dual perception.' The article suggests an 'action-based' experiment paralleling the method of a 'thought experiment,' based on the assumption that one way that one can experience this embodiment is by 'trying on' the lens of non-dual perception, as practiced by the many traditions of perennial wisdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

World society has been emerging on a global scale, but the old world-system of multiple cultures continues to exist at the same time that a global culture is in formation. In this article the author discusses the relations among these forms of integration in the contemporary system, the coming dark age of deglobalization, and the potential for the eventual emergence of a collectively rational and democratic global commonwealth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the study of memetics. Memetics is the scientific study of memes. The memplexes that characterize membership in sects or cults, often ruthlessly exploit the biology of their members, convincing them with mythical appeals to family to isolate themselves from their real families and dedicate their all to the survival and spread of the social identity of cult membership. The virus-like view suggests the application of basic principles of the epidemiology of infectious diseases to culture to predict the conditions under which it will evolve to be benign or virulent relative to genes.

Though there are a lot of approaches to the problem of sociocultural evolution most of them are only one-sided, i.e., they deal only with either social or cultural processes. With few exceptions they are also only informal theories with no formal rigour. In this article we propose a theoretical model which considers both sides of the problem, that is the mutual interdependence of the evolution of social structures and of the culture of a society. A mathematical model, the socioculturat algorithm (SCA), based on these theoretical considerations maps several of the dynamic characteristics of sociocultural evolution, suggesting that universal principles underlie the dynamics of historical evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Earlier work formulated an evolutionary theory of the formation, alteration and transformation of social rule systems such as normative orders and institutional arrangements. The theory specifies processes of the generation of variety in social rules, retention and transmission of rules, and the selection of rules. It stresses the role of human agents in generating variety and change, in structuring and manipulating selective processes and in the diffusion and transmission of new systems. This article applies the theory to problems of conceptualizing and analysing revolution, that is, major transformations of social orders. The authors focus on cases of agential driven processes of transformation. Three general types of agent-generated change are identified and illustrated. (1) A dominant elite changes its paradigm of social order and uses its power to bring about transformation of the existing order. (2) Through a power shift, an established elite is replaced by an elite or coalition of elites with a different paradigm of social order which frames and guides the establishment of new institutional arrangements. These two types of transformation typically entail decisive events and actions, carried out by identifiable agents engaged in relatively well-defined 'founding moments'. They are 'legislative' in character. (3) 'Organic' transformation entails the accumulative and aggregate effect of 'small' actions and developments that add up to a major macro-transformation. The three types of transformation entail directed problem-solving and adaptation - such as the development of new theories or paradigms, new technologies and institutional reforms. Variety is generated in a way very different from undirected forms envisioned in biological evolutionary theory. Also different are key concepts such as. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]