Synopsis
How do societies evolve? This is one of the central problems of social anthropology, and in this book C.R. Hallpike proposes an entirely novel solution which no anthropologist can afford to ignore. Current theories all assume that institutions survive and spread because of their adaptive advantages. A wide variety of forms may survive, however, because of a lack of effective competition in an undemanding social environment. Their real evolutionary significance lies in their latent structural properties, which may have great developmental potential. This is particularly true of religious and military institutions and kinship structures; when these are combined in the right way significant new forms, such as the state, may emerge. In his study Professor Hallpike compares in detail the core principles of Chinese and Indo-European society, arguing that a limited number of social and cosmological principles guide the evolution of each society. The traditional concepts of adaptive advantage, random variation, and environmental determinism are significantly challenged. Anthropologists; historians; sociologists.
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The Principles of Social Evolution
Published by
Clarendon Press, Oxford UK, 1986
ISBN 10: 0198272650
ISBN 13: 9780198272656
Used
Hardcover
Seller: Browsing Is Arousing, Middlebury, VT, U.S.A.
Seller rating 4 out of 5 stars
Condition: Very Good. Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 412 pages including index. Dispelling the general assumption that social institutions survive because of their sophisticated adaptive advantages, this ground-breaking work asserts that the commonest customs and institutions may endure because of their very simplicity or as a result of simple human proclivity. Usingreligious, military, and kinship institutions to illustrate this argument, the author shows that a precise combination of these factors may lead to the emergence of new forms of social evolution. Clean copy. Record # 378335. Seller Inventory # 378335