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

Blute, Marion

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521745950 ISBN 13: 9780521745956

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2010

Synopsis

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.
Please visit Marion Blute's blog at http://bluteblog.com

About this title

Book Description:

Across numerous disciplines, including biology, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, archaeology, linguistics, economics and political science, some theorists are proposing the existence of a Darwinian social learning-based inheritance and evolutionary theory. This multi-disciplinary paradigm is presented here along with how it can be used to address major theoretical dilemmas in social science.

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0521745950
• ISBN 13: 9780521745956
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 250