The New Evolutionary Sociology ― Recent and Revitalized Theoretical Approaches

For decades, evolutionary analysis was overlooked or altogether ignored by sociologists. Fears and biases persisted nearly a century after Comte Auguste gave the discipline its name, as did concerns that its effect would only reduce sociology to another discipline – whether biology, psychology, or economics. Worse, apprehension that the application of evolutionary theory would encourage heightened perceptions of racism, sexism, ethnocentrism and reductionism pervaded.

Turner and Machalek argue instead for a new embrace of biology and evolutionary analysis. Sociology, from its very beginnings in the early 19^th century, has always been concerned with the study of evolution, particularly the transformation of societies from simple to ever-more complex forms. By comprehensively reviewing the original ways that sociologists applied evolutionary theory and examining the recent renewal and expansion of these early approaches, the authors confront the challenges posed by biology, neuroscience, and psychology to distinct evolutionary approaches within sociology. They emerge with key theoretical and methodological discoveries that demonstrate the critical – and compelling – case for a dramatically enriched sociology that incorporates all forms of comparative evolutionary analysis to its canon and study of sociocultural phenomena.

Jonathan H. Turner is 38th University Professor, University of California System, Research Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara, and Distinguished Professor of the Graduate Division, University of California, Riverside. He is also Director of the Institute for Theoretical Social Science, Santa Barbara, CA, USA.

Richard Machalek is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Wyoming. His work addresses the evolution of social behavior among both human and non-human species. He analyzes phenomena such as the evolution of societal complexity among both humans and the eusocial insects, the evolution of expropriative social behaviors across species lines, emergent properties of both human and nonhuman societies, the evolved human psychology implicated in reciprocity and exchange, and theoretical points of convergence and divergence between sociology and sociobiology. His publications have appeared in venues such as Sociological Theory, the American Journal of Sociology, Advances in Group Processes, Rationality and Society, Advances in Human Ecology and various encyclopedias, handbooks, and other edited volumes. He is co-editor (with Jonathan H. Turner and Alexandra Maryanski) of Handbook on Evolution and Society: Toward an Evolutionary Social Science (Routledge).