I ask whether social evolutionary theories found in sociology, archaeology, and anthropology are useful in explaining human development from the Stone Age to the present-day. My data are partly derived from the four volumes of The Sources of Social Power, but I add statistical data on the growth of complexity and power in human groups. I distinguish three levels of evolutionary theory. The first level offers a minimalist definition of evolution in terms of social groups responding and adapting to changes (...) in their social and natural environment. This is acceptable but trivial. The hard part is to elucidate what kinds of response are drawn from what changes, and all sociology shares in this difficulty. This model also tends to over-emphasize external pressures and neglect human inventiveness. The second level of theory is “multilineal” evolution in which various paths of endogenous development, aided by diffusion of practices between societies, dominate the historical and pre-historical record. This is acceptable as a model applied to some times, places, and practices, but when applied more generally it slides into a multi-causal analysis that is also conventional in the social sciences. The third level is a theory of general evolution for the entire human experience. Here materialist theories are dominant but they are stymied by their neglect of ideological, military, and political power relations. There is no acceptable theory of general social evolution. Thus the contribution of social evolutionary theory to the social sciences has been limited. (shrink)

Jairus Banaji’s collection of essays is a stimulating and provocative assessment of recent Marxist history-writing on issues of social theory and historical development in both ancient as well as modern societies. It challenges the overly simplistic application of Marx’s categories of analysis, arguing for both complexity and a clearer theorisation of fundamental terminology and analytical tropes, including labour-process and mode of production. This review article suggests that, while the basic arguments represent a welcome corrective to some Marxist historical work, and (...) at the same time address in an accessible way non-Marxist historians, there remain some problematic issues, in particular in respect of the criteria for differentiating between different types of mode of production, the level at which this concept has heuristic application, and the distinction between the political/institutional and the modal instances of theorisations of social-economic relations. Some of these issues are exemplified by reference to particular historical cases. (shrink)

So-called grand or paradigmatic theories—structural functionalism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, rational-choice theory—provide their proponents with a conceptual vocabulary and syntax that allows for the classification and configuring of wide ranges of phenomena. Advocates for any particular “analytical grammar” are accordingly prone to conflating the internal coherence of their paradigm—its integrated complex of definitions, axioms, and inferences—with a corresponding capacity for representational verisimilitude. The distinction between Theory-as-heuristic and Theory-as-imposition is of course difficult to negotiate in practice, given that empirical observation and measurement are (...) not entirely “theory neutral” or independent of prior analytical conceptualization. Nonetheless, the scientific cogency of any theory is ultimately evaluated by the substantive realism of its foundational assumptions and categorical designations; that is, the accuracy with which it identifies and tracks the determinant properties and processes of the phenomena to be explicated. The paradigm of sociocultural evolutionism—despite extensive revamping by contemporary proponents—does not carry warrant in this regard, as its recourse to an analytical grammar fashioned and derived from another discipline raises doubts about its empirical veridicality. This article revisits the contentious issue of remodeling social phenomena in accordance with biological categories and offers both a theoretical and a substantive critique of the “selectionist” paradigm. The transdisciplinary program of historical social science is affirmed by way of counterpoint. (shrink)