The Evolutionary Social Theories ( Teggart ) Essay

Since the inception of human civilization there have been countless cultures and societies which have helped shape the current world today as we know it. The modern human race dates back more than 200,000 years and in that time frame many cultures have risen to great virtue and success only to deteriorate or cease to exist altogether. First before examining one of these cultures we must know what culture truly means. The Army’s Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) Culture Center defines culture as a “dynamic social system,” containing the beliefs, behaviors, values and norms of a “specific organization, group, society or other collectivity” learned, shared, internalized, and changeable by all members of the society (Watson, 2010). In

2. Using the evidence left from early human burial grounds and stone tools, anthropologists were able to infer that early human societies were egalitarian, hunter-gatherers, nomadic, easily adaptable, and developed sophisticated technologies.

European nations along the west coast of Africa for 300 years have traded slaves, gold, and ivory. During the 1500-1800 Europeans in Africa would mostly buy and sell slaves. Europeans started to gain interest in the continent and shifted to imperialism, and started seizing colonies. What was the rationale behind strong European countries conquering weaker European countries. I believe the three main reasons were Social Darwinism, Economics, and Nationalism.

The aftermath of the Industrial Revolution left America’s economy and cities in a prosperous state. Immigrants flocked to the United States in search of the American Dream, and rising cities like Chicago thrived off of the meat packing and steel industries. However, the American Dream for many newcomers wasn’t all that it seemed; corrupt political bosses and machines ruled major city politics, making the working and living conditions of immigrants employed for these corporations unsubstantial. After going undercover in a meat packing plant, muckraker Upton Sinclair published The Jungle in 1906 to expose the repulsive conditions that the lower class worked in. An initial reading of this piece focuses strongly on the ideas of a capitalistic society

Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection, a scientific theory that supported the belief of evolution, was manipulated and applied to different areas of life, and thus it became the shaping force in European thought in the last half of the nineteenth century. Darwin, through observation of organisms, determined that a system of natural selection controlled the evolution of species. He found that the organisms that were most fit and assimilated to the environment would survive. They would also reproduce so that over time they would eventually dominate in numbers over the organisms with weaker characteristics. This new theory was radical and interesting to the scientific world but its effects reach far beyond this small institution of

Many individuals with disabilities, including physical disabilities, have been treated harshly throughout history. Physical disabilities were thought about and viewed differently in history than they are viewed today. Many things that people do not see as a physical disability, today, were seen as a physical disability in the past. These people were discriminated, murdered, and even experimented on.

The concept of Social Darwinism was a widely accepted theory in the nineteenth-century. Various intellectual, and political figures from each side of the political spectrum grasped the theory and interpreted it in various ways. In this paper, we will discuss three different nineteenth-century thinkers and their conception of Social Darwinism. The conservative, Heinrich von Treitschke, and liberal Herbert Spencer both gave arguments on the usefulness of competition between people on a global scale. The anarchist, Peter Kropotkin, refuted the belief of constant competition among members of the same species and emphasized mutual aid.

A civilization refers to “a particular and distinctive type of human society” (Strayer, pg. 90). Civilizations aren’t always different from one another nor are they the exact same. Each civilization has some form of a unique characteristic that differentiates itself from the rest. For example, the Ancient Egyptians and the Hindus from Ancient India. They both have a permanent arrangement of societal roles, yet they aren’t constructed or operated in the same manner. These two locations are the main topics of this discussion/comparison.

    The ways in which a society might define itself are almost always negative ways. "We are not X." A society cannot exist in a vacuum; for it to be distinct it must be able to define itself in terms of the other groups around it. These definitions must necessarily take place at points of cultural contact, the places at which two societies come together and arrive at some stalemate of coexistence. For European culture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries this place of contact—this new culture by which to define itself—came from Africa, from those "primitive" cultures whose society was being studied and in some ways appreciated

Human cultures and societies have developed at various rates and achieved different levels of progress over thousands of years, resulting in some societies being labeled as more advanced than others. More advanced societies experienced complex technologies, evident in their tools and innovations, and more refined cultural structures such as social class and government systems. Other societies experienced slower rates of development as they maintained rudimentary lifestyles with simple technologies and social structures. Examining and comparing the varying levels of progress and development achieved by different human societies across the world raises the question of how certain societies developed at a higher rate than others. Jared Diamond, an evolutionary biologist, and William McNeill, a historian, seek to explain this variation in development with each offering different perspectives. In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond chronicles the history of human development through a biogeographical lens and proposes that environmental and biological factors are the main influences on the development of human societies. Diamond’s ideas, however, do not go unchallenged as McNeill presents in his article “History Upside Down”, that anthropological factors pertaining to human cognition are also crucial in explaining how human societies have developed. Although both authors examine human societal development through different lenses, Diamond’s ideas on geographic location and

In this essay I will be considering only but one of the many questions that archaeologists analyse when researching the human past. As the title suggests, did civilization, or, a term preferably used by scholars; social complexity, arise from a conflicted band of nomadic people or from a mutual consensus among them? As well as my own thought’s, I will be discussing the ideologies of a number of professionals, both in archaeology and social anthropology, focusing mainly on the early development of the archaic Mesopotamian and Mesoamerican civilisations.

“As a world view, Darwinism cannot of course be refuted, since Faith is, always has been, and always will be, stronger than facts. “ - Francis P. Yockey

Darwin and Evolution are inextricably linked in the minds of most people who have had the opportunity to study them in basic biology. However, Darwin's theories of selection and survival of the fittest have been applied to moral, economic, political, and other cultural aspects of society. Dennett briefly touched on some of the political and social ramifications of Darwin's theories in the final chapter of Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Other philosophers and thinkers have also adapted Darwin's evolutionary ideas, in order to apply them in a societal or cultural context. One great example of this adaptation of the biological concept of evolution, is the appearance of Social Darwinism during the 19th century.

We begin with the earliest form of society. Hunter-gatherer societies which were organised on the basis of kinship and lived in collectives of clans or tribes.

can go only from simple to complex. The only time a society could go from complex to simple