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

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

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

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

by Marion Blute

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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.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781139035729
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication date: 01/14/2010
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
File size: 1 MB

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

1. Introduction; 2. History: where did something come from?; 3. Necessity: why did it evolve?; 4. Competition, conflict and cooperation: why and how do they interact socially?; 5. The ideal and the material: the role of memes in evolutionary social science; 6. Micro and macro I: the problem of agency; 7. Micro and macro II: the problem of subjectivity; 8. Micro and macro III: the evolution of complexity and the problem of social structure; 9. Evolutionism: the old, the new and the future of the social sciences.
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