دانلود کتاب تکامل فرهنگی – چشم انداز تجربی و نظری

Since the dawn of social science, theorists have debated how and why societies appear to change, develop, and evolve. Today, this question is pursued by scholars across many different disciplines, and our understanding of these dynamics has grown markedly. Yet there remain important areas of disagreement and debate: what is the difference between societal change, development, and evolution? What specific aspects of cultures change, develop, or evolve, and why? Do societies change, develop, or evolve in particular ways, perhaps according to cycles, or stages or in response to survival necessities? How do different disciplines—from sociology to anthropology to psychology and economics—approach these questions? This book provides complex and nuanced answers to these and many other questions. First, the book invites readers to consider the broad landscape of societal dynamics across human history, beginning with humanity’s origins in small nomadic bands of hunter gatherers through to the emergence of postindustrial democracies. The book then provides a tour of several prominent existing theories of cultural change, development, and evolution. Approaches to explaining cultural dynamics will be discussed across disciplines and schools of thought, from “meme” theories to established cumulative cultural evolutionary theories to newly emerging theories on cultural tightnesslooseness. The book concludes with a call for theoretical integration and a frank discussion of some of the most unexamined structures that drive cultural dynamics across schools of thought.