Darwinian sociocultural evolution : solutions to dilemmas in cultural and social theory /
Marion Blute.
- Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2010.
- 1 online resource (ix, 239 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).
Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).
History : where did something come from? -- Necessity : why did it evolve? -- Competition, conflict and cooperation : why and how do they interact socially? -- Ideal and the material : the role of memes in evolutionary social science -- Micro and macro I : the problem of agency -- Micro and macro II : the problem of subjectivity -- Micro and macro III : the evolution of complexity and the problem of social structure -- Evolutionism and the future of the social sciences.
Social scientists can learn a lot from evolutionary biology - from systematics and principles of evolutionary ecology to theories of social interaction including competition, conflict and cooperation, as well as niche construction, complexity, eco-evo-devo, and the role of the individual in evolutionary processes. Darwinian sociocultural evolutionary theory applies the logic of Darwinism to social-learning based cultural and social change. With a multidisciplinary approach for graduate biologists, philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists, social psychologists, archaeologists, linguists, economists, political scientists and science and technology specialists, the author presents this model of evolution drawing on a number of sophisticated aspects of biological evolutionary theory. The approach brings together a broad and inclusive theoretical framework for understanding the social sciences which addresses many of the dilemmas at their forefront - the relationship between history and necessity, conflict and cooperation, the ideal and the material and the problems of agency, subjectivity and the nature of social structure.