Darwinian Sociocultural Evolution: Solutions to Dilemmas in Cultural and Social Theory

by Marion Blute

Overview

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.
Please visit Marion Blute's blog at http://bluteblog.com

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521745956
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	01/14/2010
Pages:	250
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Marion Blute is Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto at Mississauga where she teaches classical and contemporary theory and gene-culture coevolution to undergraduates. She also teaches contemporary theory in the university-wide graduate sociology programme. She has published in a wide variety of life and social science journals on evolutionary topics and has related interests in the philosophy and sociology of science. She is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Biological Theory and of the Editorial Board of Spontaneous Generations: A Journal for the History and Philosophy of Science.

Table of Contents

Preface: a postmodern metanarrative vii

Aclcnowledgments ix

1 Introduction 1

2 History: where did something come from? 23

3 Necessity: why did it evolve? 51

4 Competition, conflict and cooperation: why and how do they interact socially? 80

5 The ideal and the material: the role of memes in evolutionary social science 113

6 Micro and macro I: the problem of agency 138

7 Micro and macro II: the problem of subjectivity 162

8 Micro and macro III: the evolution of complexity and the problem of social structure 182

9 Evolutionism and the future of the social sciences 199

References 209

Index 233