Page 245 - DSOC201_SOCIAL_STRUCTURE_AND_SOCIAL_CHANGE_ENGLISH

Social Structure and Social Change

Notes August Comte (1798-1857), a French scholar, and founder of Sociology, propounded that all
societies passed through three stages of growth: (i) the theological stage (dominated by the
guidance and principles of spiritual wisdom); (ii) the metaphysical stage (a transitional stage
where supernatural beliefs are replaced by abstract principles as socio-cultural guidelines), and
(iii) the positive, or scientific stage (in which society is governed mainly by scientific laws).
Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), an English scholar, inspired by Darwin’s theories of organic evolution,
opined that human societies moved through a series of social evolutionary stages from smaller
and simpler structures to larger and more complex structures. This theory was later known as
‘Social Darwinism’. The idea of social evolution was well received and popular among the 19 th
century anthropological and sociological thinkers.
At about the same time, Lewis Henry Morgan a contemporary of E.B.Tylor, made great impact in
America by contributing to the evolutionary schemes of thinking and research by engaging on
the origin and development of family, marriage and kinship systems. He saw the development of
human society in three broad stages based mainly on technological innovations: savagery,
barbarism and civilization. The first two stages were divided into sub-stages which were denoted
Lower, Middle and Upper. The last stage was marked by the emergence of invention of phonetic
alphabet and writing.
2. Neo-evolutionary School
Evolutionary theories were revived in the 20 century by V.Gordon Childe, Julian Steward and
th
Leslie White. Their formulations of evolutionary theories are characterized by careful scrutiny of
evidence, systematic analysis, and rigorous reasoning. To distinguish them from the classical
evolutionary theorists, they have also been labeled as neo-evolutionists.
Marshall D. Sahlins and Elman Service attempted a synthesis of the theories of evolution
(particularly the theories of Julian Steward and Leslie White’s) by developing the concept of
‘specific’ and ‘general’ evolution. The main claim of these theories was that evolution moved
simultaneously in two directions in both the biological and cultural aspects. This evolutionary
process then led to progress and made new ones emerge out of the old ones. They considered
these two processes as interconnected in its totality. Thus, in the former stage, it took ‘specific’
biological and cultural processes and then continued to give effect in the progress of successive
forms of evolution which were ‘general’ in nature for both the resultant aspects of evolution.
While the former was classified in terms of the order of descent, the latter was done in terms of the
levels of development or stages. For instance, specific evolution would imply development in
local cultures and its sub-units or groups of cultures in a relatively shorter period while the general
cultural evolution would mean the processes of successive forms of development such as the
stages of hunting and gathering, agriculture, industrial revolution, atomic age, nuclear age, etcetera.
This principle could be applied to other spheres of evolution such as religion, kinship structure
and so on.
11.2 Cyclical Theories

Cyclical theories have been concerned with the repetitious change of conditions, events, forms and/
or fashions over a long period of time, although the period of recurrent phases (cycles) of change
would vary. The cyclical theorists believe that societies pass through a series of stages. However,
they do not consider the notion of ending in a stage of perfection but see them as a return to the stage
where it began for further round in a cyclical manner.
A.L.Kroeber (1876-1960), a well-known American anthropologist, provides classical analysis of cyclical
patterns of clothing-style changes of Western women. Kroeber found that clothing styles in Western
societies followed certain patterns over long periods of time, and even within these patterns were
observed changes in more or less regular cycles. Kroeber also discovered that the basic pattern of
Western women’s dress in the medieval and modem ages spanning about a thousand years has gone
through a constant remodeling without any fundamental change. Kroeber found that the general
pattern included a long skirt, a narrow waist, and a top with arms and breasts partially exposed.
Periodically, within this general form, there is a cyclical change. Hemlines rise and fall, the waistline

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