Social evolutionism:

Social evolutionism is the off spring of many ideas and theories that were created during the 18^th and the 19^th century. These ideas were reworked in the 19^th century.  This social evolution is considered as the sub-discipline of evolutionary biology. There are many social behaviors that are concerned in this social evolution which gave much emphasize on the fitness consequences for individuals. In social evolution the social behaviours are categorized into four different categories.

The mutually beneficial approach which concentrates on the behavior that increases the direct fitness of both the actor and the recipient

• The other category deals with a behavior where the fitness of the actor is increased but the recipient is left to suffer a loss.
• The next category is named Altruistic category where the actors suffers a loss and there the direct fitness of the recipient is increased.
• The final category is Spiteful which is a behavior in which the direct fitness of both the actor and the recipient is increased.

W.D. Hamilton who proposed this classification commented that natural selection would favour selfish or beneficial behavior. Bejamin Kidd titled his major work as social evolution which is the considered as the key for the evolution of social systems and structures.

As a whole, the social evolutionists hoped that the progression of a civilization is a one way street which should be followed by every group of people. Starting from hunter-gatherer groups up to the mid-nineteenth century England every group had to concentrate on these ideologies. On the other hand the anthropologists and the archaeologists sliced the progress of the civilization into various steps using cross cultural research. They compared many cultures across space and time in this process. Lewis Henry Morgan’s plan has brought forth the step which included savagery, barbarism and civilization subdividing savagery and barbarism in the social evolution.

Later in the 21^st century research by the comparative cultural studies has concluded that the lowest steps people were the best people. The hunter-gatherers looked after each other with more love and affection than the so called civilized world. The civilized world was characterized by inequalities in race and gender.

The unilineal evolution of the 19^th century stated that the societies usually begin in a primitive state and they gradually grow into a civilized society over a certain period of time. This has been proved in the western civilization with the development in the culture and technology of the civilization.

Questions:

• What are the different categories of social behaviors in social evolutionism?
• What is the conclusion of the comparative cultural studies in 21^st century?