Abstract
One of the more conspicuous features of neo-evolutionism, the observant reader may have noticed, is the almost total lack of concern with causal explanations of social change. Indeed, as a proper theory of social change, neo-evolutionism has an appalling record, as many of its critics have, often angrily, pointed out.1
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Notes and References
Cf. Sorokin, Sociological Theories of Today p. 605; and C. C. Zimmerman, ‘Contemporary Trends in Sociology’, in Readings in Contemporary American Society, ed. J. Roucek (New York: Paterson, 1962) pp. 3–29.
Ibid. p. 177. Note that Parsons uses only four of the five pattern variables to characterise the modern economic system. A sharp critique of the empirical reliability of these pattern variables has been made by A. G. Frank, The Sociology of Development and the Underdevelopment of Sociology (London: Pluto Press, 1971).
W. E. Moore, ‘The Social Framework of Economic Development’, in Tradition, Values and Socio-Economic Development, ed. R. Braibanti and J. J. Spengler (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1961).
Cf. W. J. Goode, ‘Industrialisation and Family Change’, inIndustrialisation and Society, ed. Hoselitz and Moore, pp. 237 ff. See also his introductory text The Family (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1964).
See, for instance, C. E. Black The Dynamics of Modernisation (New York: Harper & Row, 1967) for whom the creation of the national state is the essential feature of modernisation.
D. S. Landes, ‘Industrialisation and the Development of Industrial Societies’, in Industrial Man, ed. T. Burns (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969) p. 78.
R. Firth, Elements of Social Organisation, London: Watts, 1951), p. 143.
For comparative evidence on this backward-sloping supply curve see W. E. Moore, Industrialisation and Labor (Cornell University Press, 1951) pp. 35–7.
Cf. R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, 2nd edn (London: Murray, 1964) pp. 269–70.
See G. Balandier, ‘Comparative Study of Economic Motivations and Incentives in a Traditional and in a Modern Environment’, General Report on the Round Table Conference organised by the International Research Office on the Social Implications of Technological Change (Paris, Mar 1954) in J. Meynaud (ed.), Social Change and Economic Development (UNESCO, 1963) pp. 29 ff.
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© 1978 Ankie M. M. Hoogvelt
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Hoogvelt, A.M.M. (1978). Neo-evolutionary Theory, Structural Functionalism and Modernisation Theories. In: The Sociology of Developing Societies. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-04190-9_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-04190-9_4
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