Social Evolution by Mark Pluciennik

[Cross-posted to Revise & Dissent]

I think one of the most depressing seminars I ever had on my Master’s course was one on Evolutionary Archaeology. My introduction to evolution was generally through books like those of Richard Dawkins. So what I was expecting was a discussion of how simple rules could produce the emergence of complex and diverse societies. In contrast what evolutionary archaeology was often discredited ideas dressed up in pseudo-scientific language. Had I been able to read Mark Pluciennik’s book Social Evolution beforehand then I would have been prepared for what was largely a crushing disappointment.

Pluciennik starts by looking at the sources for the concept of evolution. While there isn’t a clear start event as there is for Natural Selection he does find that social evolution is expounded in the eighteenth century in the works of Smith and Turgot. This is in part due to the early anthropology of the Americas where natives were seen as man in his primitive state. This laid the foundations for the more racist expositions of evolution in later years where the purpose of evolution is to develop into European society. This may come as a surprise to some readers who may think of evolution as starting with Darwin, but this is evolution. It’s Lamarckian evolution. It is odd to think of this as evolution in the modern sense of the term, but in this case the modern sense is more or less in opposition the original use of the word. For Darwin no species alive today was ‘higher’ or ‘lower’ – apparently he went through his Origin of Species to make sure this didn’t happen. Evolution today is seen as the action of natural selection acting on inherited traits with occasional random innovation, so additionally there is no inevitability about humanity. In contrast the earlier meaning of evolution is deterministic progression from one stage to another. Hence terms like ‘stellar evolution’ in astronomy. This explains why the first edition of Origin of Species does not describe natural selection as evolution.

Pluciennik tackles how ‘evolution’ came to be conflated with natural selection when he discusses Spencer. Spencer is an easy figure to demonise as the leading light of social Darwinism. His phrase “Survival of the fittest” is close enough to the idea of natural selection to stick, but at the same time glib enough to lose some of the elegance of the Darwinian selection. As well as being the person who put the name Evolution to Darwin’s theory he was also one of the early sociologists and in some ways laid out the foundations of how we think about societies. Spencer’s achievement seems to have been in taking the accepted idea of Social Evolution and successfully grafting the language of Darwin onto the idea. His success is that a common reason for rejecting the application of evolutionary theory to society is that it is deterministic.

Pluciennik goes on to describe how the idea of social evolution persisted in the twentieth century, despite the rejection of the idea by influential anthropologists such as Boas. To some extent the desire to categorise sets up a basic state for the return of social evolution. Childe, who revolutionised the study of prehistoric Europe, attempted to write a history of prehistoric times. He was explicitly Marxist in his approach, but his careful chronologies could be read as genealogies of peoples, which offer an invitation for others to connect them through a process of social evolution.

Pluciennik closes by examining the frameworks of social evolution. Part of the problem he concludes is that social evolution exists to explain complexity. As historians this is a problem that needs explaining. How do we get from foragers to complex civilisations. Yet there is a danger that any explanation which can work will have the creation of civilisations as an inevitable outcome, because this is what the theory is explaining. A Darwinian or neo-Darwinian explanation would not necessarily lead to this, and so may be less attractive.

The introduction and conclusion are particularly good sections of the book, because they explain why the ‘social evolution’ is a problem. This is essential to understand the concerns of historians and archaeologists if you are interested in a Darwinian or neo-Darwinian theory of culture like memes or cultural virus theory. Pluciennik is clear that he doesn’t discuss these and isn’t comparing them to the teleological approach, but given that they frequently use the same language it is helpful to know how you may be misunderstood.

However it’s especially important if you don’t think you’re practicing it. Indeed Pluciennik notes that the prehistorian Tilley says: “Probably no other concept has wreaked such damage within the social and historical sciences as the notion of social evolution”. Yet Pluciennik adds in his introduction: “For the obsession with the distinctions made between foragers and farmers, I can only apologise. I have often felt frustrated at the ways that research into these periods is so heavily structured by existing traditions of thought, yet criticism seems mostly to enable reproduction of those same categories. I have not yet found a satisfactory solution, but clarifying some of the issues may help suggest other ways of writing histories.”

Social Evolution isn’t so much about social evolution, rather it’s a history of the development of the concept and it is an affordable, accessible and intelligent analysis.