4 Neo-Evolutionism

Vineet Kumar Verma

Table of Contents

Introduction

1.      Early anthropological theory

2.      History of nineteenth-century classical evolutionists

3.      Neo-evolutionist

4.      Neo-evolutionists Scholars

• V. Gordon Childe (England)
• Julian Steward (U.S.A)
• Leslie White (U.S.A) Summary

Learning Objective

• To introduce history of anthropological thought by tracing its historical development
• To classify the course of historical development, academic, and Anthropological importance in terms of its development
• An attempt to look Methodological approaches to the origin of culture

Introduction

A theoretical orientation is usually a general attitude about how cultural phenomena are to be explained. A number of thinkers during this period began to discuss evolution and how it might occur. The prevailing theoretical orientation in anthropology during the 19th century was based on a belief that culture generally evolves in a uniform and progressive manner; that is, most societies were believed to pass through the same series of stages, to arrive ultimately at a common end. Neo-evolutionism, school of anthropology concerned with long-term culture change and with the similar patterns of development that may be seen in unrelated, widely separated cultures. It arose in the mid-20th century, and it addresses the relation between the long-term changes that are characteristic of human culture in general and the short-term, localized social and ecological adjustments that cause specific cultures to differ from one another as they adapt to their own unique environments.

1.   Early anthropological theory

In anthropology, as in any discipline, there is a continual ebb and flow of ideas. One theoretical orientation will arise and may grow in popularity until another is proposed in opposition to it. Often, one orientation will capitalize on those aspects of a problem that a previous orientation ignored or played down. Evolutionism was a common 19th century belief that organisms inherently improve themselves through progressive inherited change over time, and increase in complexity through evolution. The belief went on to include cultural evolution and social evolution. In the 1970s the term Neo-Evolutionism was used to describe the idea “that human beings sought to preserve a familiar style of life unless change was forced on them by factors that were beyond their control”. It refers to theories of change in which development is seen to go through stages of increasing complexity and diversification. It is closely related to the idea of progress and technology, which is most prevalent in capitalist society. In the 1940s, Leslie A. White revived the evolutionary approach to cultural development. White believed that technological development, or the amount of energy harnessed per capita, was the main driving force creating cultural evolution; Anthropologists such as Julian H. Steward, Marshall Sahlins, and Elman Service have also presented evolutionary viewpoints.

2.    History of Nineteenth-Century Classical Evolutionists

Neo-evolutionism is a social theory that tries to explain the evolution of societies by drawing on Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and discarding some dogmas of the previous social evolutionism. Neo-evolutionism is concerned with long-term, directional, evolutionary social change and with the regular patterns of development that may be seen in unrelated, widely separated cultures. Neo-evolutionism emerged in the 1930s. It developed extensively in the period after the Second World War and was incorporated into anthropology as well as sociology in the 1960s. Its theories are based on empirical evidence from fields such as archaeology, palaeontology, and historiography. Proponents say neo-evolutionism is objective and simply descriptive, eliminating any references to a moral or cultural system of values. While the 19th century evolutionism explained how culture develops by giving general principles of its evolutionary process, it was dismissed by Historical Particularism as unscientific in the early 20th century. It was the neo-evolutionary thinkers who brought back evolutionary thought and developed it to be acceptable to contemporary anthropology. The neo-evolutionism discards many ideas of classical social evolutionism, namely that of social progress, so dominant in previous sociology evolution-related theories. The neo-evolutionism stresses the importance of empirical evidence. While 19th century evolutionism used value judgment and assumptions for interpreting data, the neo-evolutionism relied on measurable information for analyzing the process of cultural evolution

3.    Neo-evolutionist

Neo-evolutionary anthropological thought emerged in the 1940s, in the work of the American anthropologists Leslie A. White and Julian H. Steward and others. White hypothesized that cultures became more advanced as they became more efficient at harnessing energy and that technology and social organization were both influential in instigating such efficiencies. Steward, inspired by classifying the native cultures of North and South America, focused on the parallel developments of unrelated groups in similar environments; he discussed evolutionary change in terms of what he called ―levels of sociocultural integration‖ and ―Multilinear evolution,‖ terms he used to distinguish neo-evolution from earlier, Unilinear theories of cultural evolution; In the years since White’s and Steward’s seminal work, neo-evolutionary approaches have been variously accepted, challenged, rejected, and revised, and they continue to generate a lively controversy among those interested in long-term cultural and social change.

The theory of Neo-evolutionism explained how culture develops by giving general principles of its evolutionary process. The theory of cultural evolution was originally established in the 19th century. However, this Nineteenth-century Evolutionism was dismissed by the Historical Particularists as unscientific in the early 20th century. Therefore, the topic of cultural evolution had been avoided by many anthropologists until Neo-evolutionism emerged in the 1930s. In other words, it was the Neo-evolutionary thinkers who brought back evolutionary thought and developed it to be acceptable to contemporary anthropology. The main difference between Neo-evolutionism and Nineteenth-century Evolutionism is whether they are empirical or not. While Nineteenth-century evolutionism used value judgment and assumptions for interpreting data, the new one relied on measurable information for analyzing the process of cultural evolution. The Neo-evolutionary thoughts also gave some kind of common ground for cross-cultural analysis. Largely through their efforts, evolutionary theory was again generally accepted among anthropologists by the late 1960s.

4.    Neo-evolutionists Scholars

The nineteenth-century classical evolutionists mainly talked about the cultural evolution with a view to find out cultural regularities or laws, but their findings and approaches were modified by the evolutionists of the twentieth-century in the light of their new researches and methodological approaches to the origin of culture and, hence they are known as neo-evolutionists.

V. Gordon Childe (England)

V. Gorden Childe described evolution in terms of three major events viz. the invention of food production, urbanisation and industrialisation. Thus, analysing the transitions that took place under the impact of these ―revolution‖, Childe presented an overall view of the evolutionary process of delineated its common factors.

V. Gorden Childe classified the stages of cultural developments in terms of, thus, archaeological findings, which are as follows:

Sr.	Archaeological	Cultural Development
No.	Period
1	Palaeolithic	Savagery
2	Neolithic	Barbarism
3	Copper Age	Higher Barbarism
4	Early Bronze Age	Civilization

Thus, on the basis of the excavation of tools, pottery, invention of agriculture etc., Childe established his theory of neo-evolution. He was of opinion that even during the pre-historic period, migration took place and cultural traits diffused from one place to another. Thus, to some extent Childe also believed in the principle of diffusion.

Culture was of opinion that human societies have passed through different stages and therefore, he argued that the nineteenth-century unilinear evolutionists were very much dogmatic in their approach.

Elaborating his concept of unilinear development of culture, Childe writes ―all societies have lived in different historical environments and have passed through different vicissitude, their traditions have diverged, and so ethnography reveals a multiplicity of cultures, just as does archaeology‖. Childe finds that consideration of the particular is a ―serious handicaps of our objective is to establish general stages in the evolution of culture‖, and therefore, in order to ―discover general laws descriptive of the evolution of all societies, abstract the peculiarities due to difference of habitat‖.

It is important to note that the evolutionism of childe yields substantive results of a very different order from those of nineteenth century evolutionists. For instance, no one disputes that hunting and food-gathering, which is Childe’s diagnostic of ―Savagery‖, preceded plant and animal domestication, which is his criterion of ― Barbarism‖ and that the latter was a pre-condition of large population, cities, internal social differentiation and specialisation, as well as the development of writing and mathematics, which are characteristics of ―Civilization‖.

V. Gorden Childe attempted to apply the Darwinian formula to cultural evolution and said ―variation is seen as invention, hereditary as learning and diffusion, and adaptation and selection as cultural adaptation and choice‖. It was certainly a worthy objective to seek universal laws of culture change, and it must be stressed, however that all universal laws do change in course of history.

In addition to his significant contributions in the field of neoevolution, V. Gorden Childe has also been criticised for his weekness, which are reflected in his scheme of neo-evolution.

• Firstly, he did not differentiate between the old hunters and the hunters and food gatherers of today, although there is significant difference between them at least in the possession and application of hunting tools and implements.
• Secondly, he relied upon too much on the archaeological data to explain the cultural evolution.
• Thirdly, he categorically rejected the idea of universal precedence of matriarcy, sexual communism etc., as argued by the classical evolutionists, without giving much details.

However, instead of these weaknesses, it was Childe who for the first time talked about the technological determinism in the study of cultural evolution.

Julian Steward (U.S.A)

Julian Steward’s contribution to the study of cultural evolution is unique, for it was he, who for the first time gave a broad typology of evolutionists on the basis of his methodological study of different culture areas of the world. Steward said that cultural evolution may be defined broadly as a quest for cutural regularities or laws and futher pointed out that there are three distinctive ways in which evolutionary data may be handled.

Firstly, the Unilinear Evolution:

The classical evolutionists of the nineteenth – century developed a formulaton, which dealt with particular culture rather than with cultures.

Secondly, the Universal Evolution:

An arbitrary label to designate the modern revamping of the Unilinear evolution, where universal evolutionists are concerned with culture rather than with cultures.

Thirdly, Multilinear Evolution:

Those who believed in multiple developmental sequences, a somewhat less ambitious approach than the other two.

Julian Steward elaborated his theory of neo-evolution in his famous book ―Theory of Cuture Change‖, published in 1955 from the university of Illinois, Urbana. Julian H. Steward (1902–1972), another later evolutionist, divided evolutionary thought into three schools: unilinear, universal, and multilinear. Steward believed that Morgan and Tylor’s theories exemplified the unilinear approach to cultural evolution, the classical 19thcentury orientation that attempted to place particular cultures on the rungs of a sort of evolutionary ladder. Julian Steward is Neo-evolutionist who focused on relationships between cultures and the natural environment. He argued that different cultures do have similar features in their evolution and that these features could be explained as parallel adaptations to similar natural environments.

Unilinear Evolution

According to steward, those evolutionists, who talked about the cultural evolution in terms of three stages viz. savagery, barbarism and civilization, may be designated as Unilinear evolutionists. Among these Unilinear evolutionists, special mention may be made of Tylor, Morgan etc., who were really the champions of this scheme of cultural evolution. Steward further argues that, although no effort has been made to revive these schemes in the light of new empirical ethnographic and archeological data concerning the history of individual culture which it self is a some remarkable fact it does not necessarily follow that the Unilinear evolutionists failed completely to recognise significant patterns and processes of change in particular cases. However, the inadequacy of Unilinear evolution lies largely in the postulated priority of matriarchal effort to force the data of all precivilized groups of mankind in to the categories of ―savagery‖ and ―barbarism‖.

Universal Evolution

Julian steward has pointed out (1955) that universal evolution is presentaly represented by V. Gordon Childe and Leslie White. He argues that universal evolution is the heritage of the nineteenth century evolution. White and Childe, according to Steward, endeavour to keep the evolutionary concept of cutural stages alive by relating these stages to the culture of mankind as a whole. The distinctive cutural traditions and the local variations the culture areas and sub areas which have developed as the result of special environments are excluded as irrelevant.

Multilinear Evolution

The theory of “Multilinear” evolution which examined the way in which societies adapted to their environment; this approach was more nuanced than White’s theory of “Unilinear evolution.” Steward questioned the possibility of creation of a social theory encompassing the entire evolution of humanity, however argued that anthropologists are not limited to descriptions of specific, existing cultures. Steward believed it is possible to create theories analysing typical, common culture, representative of specific eras or regions. As the decisive factors determining the development of given culture Steward pointed to technology and economics, and noted there are secondary factors, like political systems, ideologies and religion. All those factors push the evolution of a given society in several directions at the same time, thus this is the multilinearity of his theory of evolution.

Steward’s evolutionary theory, cultural ecology, is based on the idea that a social system is determined by its environmental resources. Steward outlined three basic steps for a cultural-ecological investigation.

• First, the relationship between subsistence strategies and natural resources must be analyzed.
• Second, the behaviour patterns involved in a particular subsistence strategy must be analyzed
• The third step is to determine how these behaviour patterns affect other aspects of the society.

This strategy showed that environment determines the forms of labour in a society, which affects the entire culture of the group. The principal concern of cultural ecology is to determine whether cultural adaptations toward the natural environment initiate social transformations of evolutionary change. Although Steward did not believe in one universal path of cultural evolution; he argued that different societies can independently develop parallel features. By applying cultural ecology, he identified several common features of cultural evolution which are seen in different societies in similar environments. He avoided sweeping statements about culture in general; instead, he dealt with parallels in limited numbers of cultures and gave specific explanations for the causes of such parallels. Steward’s evolutionary theory is called multilinear evolution because the theory is based on the idea that there are several different patterns of progress toward cultural complexity. In other words, Steward did not assume universal evolutionary stages that apply to all societies.

Leslie White (U.S.A) Theory of Cultural Evolution

Leslie White developed the theory of cultural evolution; which was ignored by most anthropologists at that time. White’s attempts to restore the evolutionary topic started in the 1920s, when he was impressed by Morgan’s model and logic of his evolutionary theory. White decided that whatever problems the theory had, it could not be dismissed. His main contribution was that he provided scientific insights to the evolution of culture. He created a formula that measures the degree of cultural development. According to his ―basic law‖ of cultural evolution, ―other factors remaining constant, culture evolves as the amount of energy harnessed per capita per year is increased or as the efficiency of the instrumental means of putting the energy to work is increased.‖ In other words, a more advanced technology gives humans control over more energy (human, animal, solar, and so on), and cultures expand and change as a result. White’s orientation has been criticized for the same reasons that the ideas of Tylor and Morgan were. In describing what has happened in the evolution of human culture, he assumed that cultural evolution is determined strictly by conditions (pre eminently technological ones) inside the culture. That is, he explicitly denied the possibility of environmental, historical, or psychological influences on cultural evolution. The main problem with such an orientation is that it cannot explain why some cultures evolve whereas others either do not evolve or become extinct. White’s theory of energy capture sidesteps the question of why only some cultures are able to increase their energy capture.

First, White divided culture into three components:

• Technological,
• Sociological and
• Ideological,

White argued that the technological aspect is the basis of cultural evolution; technological aspect is composed of material, mechanical, physical and chemical instruments, as well as the way people use these techniques. White’s argument on the importance of technology goes as follows:

1.      Technology is an attempt to solve the problems of survival.

2.      This attempt ultimately means capturing enough energy and diverting it for human needs.

3.      Societies that capture more energy and use it more efficiently have an advantage over other societies.

4.      Therefore, these different societies are more advanced in an evolutionary sense.

Based on the logics above, White expressed the degree of cultural development by the formula: E x T=  C. In this method, E is the amount of energy harnessed per capita per year, T shows the efficiency of the tools used for exploiting the energy, and C represents the degree of cultural development. Presenting this measurement, White asserted that developing effective control over energy is the prime cause of cultural evolution.

In his theory of cultural evolution; White believed that culture has general laws of its own. Based on these universal principles, culture evolves by itself. Therefore, an anthropologist’s task is to discover those principles and explain the particular phenomena of culture. He called this approach culturology, which attempts to define and predict cultural phenomena by understanding general patterns of culture.

White attempted to create a theory explaining the entire history of humanity. The most important factor in his theory is technology: Social systems are determined by technological systems, wrote White in his book, echoing the earlier theory of Lewis Henry Morgan. As a measure of society advancement he proposed the measure energy consumption of given society (thus his theory is known as the energy theory of cultural evolution). The evolutionary approach to cultural variation did not die with the 19th century. Beginning in the 1940s, Leslie A. White attacked the Boasian emphasis on historical particularism and championed the evolutionist orientation. Though quickly labelled a neoevolutionist, White rejected the term, insisting that his approach did not depart significantly from the theories adopted in the 19th century.

He differentiates between five stages of human development.

• In the first, people use energy of their own muscles.
• In the second, they use energy of domesticated animals.
• In the third, they use the energy of plants (so White refers to agricultural revolution here).
• In the fourth, they learn to use the energy of natural resources: coal, oil, gas.
• In the fifth, they harness the nuclear energy.

White introduced a formula C=E*T, where E is a measure of energy consumed, and T is the measure of efficiency of technical factors utilising the energy. Universal evolutionists such as Leslie White were concerned with culture in the broad sense, rather than with individual cultures. Steward classified himself as a multilinear evolutionist: one who deals with the evolution of particular cultures and only with demonstrated sequences of parallel culture change in different areas. Steward was concerned with explaining specific cultural differences and similarities. Consequently, he was critical of White’s vague generalities and his disregard of environmental influences. White, on the other hand, asserted that Steward fell into the historical-particularist trap of paying too much attention to particular cases. Marshall Sahlins (born 1930) and Elman Service (1915–1996), who were students and colleagues of both White and Steward, combined the views of those two individuals by recognizing two kinds of evolution— specific and general. Specific evolution refers to the particular sequence of change and adaptation of a particular society in a given environment. General evolution refers to a general progress of human society, in which higher forms (having higher-energy capture) arise from and surpass lower forms.

Thus, specific evolution is similar to Steward’s multilinear evolution, and general evolution resembles White’s universal evolution. Although this synthesis does serve to integrate the two points of view, it does not give us a way of explaining why general evolutionary progress has occurred. But, unlike the early evolutionists, some of the later evolutionists did suggest a mechanism to account for the evolution of particular cultures—namely, adaptation to particular environments.

Summary

Ideas about evolution took a long time to take hold because they contradicted the biblical view of events; species were viewed as fixed in their form by the creator. But in the 18th and early 19th centuries, increasing evidence suggested that evolution was a viable theory. Neo-evolutionism, school of anthropology concerned with long-term culture change and with the similar patterns of development that may be seen in unrelated, widely separated cultures. It arose in the mid-20th century, and it addresses the relation between the long-term changes that are characteristic of human culture in general and the short-term, localized social and ecological adjustments that cause specific cultures to differ from one another as they adapt to their own unique environments. Further, neo-evolutionists investigate the ways in which different cultures adapt to similar environments and examine the similarities and differences in the long-term historical trajectories of such groups. Because most neo-evolutionists are interested in the environmental and technological adjustments of the groups they study, many are identified with the cultural ecological approach to ethnography, with the culture process approach to archaeology, and with the study of early and proto-humans in biological anthropology.

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