Evolutionary Sociology

Abstract

The emergence of sociology in the nineteenth century was predicated, in part, on evolutionary principles. The effort to make sense of the various societies Europeans had come into contact with through colonization accelerated the effort to establish a science of societies. Though crudely Eurocentric and rooted on poorly conceived ideas about progressive evolutionism, the idea that selection might work on culture and culture might be adaptive for individuals and/or groups remained a part of sociology; even after evolution was marginalized because of its association with social Darwinism and, worse, eugenics. Following the 1960s, evolutionary sociology began a slow but steady resurgence. Though evolutionary sociology remains an eclectic subfield, many of the threads have eschewed the questionable assumptions of nineteenth‐century paradigms and offer promising new directions for the merger of sociology and biology.