Due to the recent controversy and arguments surrounding social and religious cultural evolution. Especially the cross cultural data not available to provide ascending and descending evolutionary directions that effect the speed and condition of the historical times. The fallowing research by Korotayev is a part of the intro including the link And may provide some intimating angles eclectic.ss.uci.edu/~drwhite/AnthroSci/koro/!2004KorotayevBook.doc. At the meantime it is quite clear that all the possible types of social change cannot be reduced to the progress, regress and one-level changes perceived this way. It is not difficult to find in history (as well as in the present-day world) such social changes forward, from the old to the new which are characterized by the worsening of the situation according to any proposed criteria of social progress. A classical example here could be the formation of the 20th century totalitarian regimes. Thus, nobody (except, naturally, the Nazis) seems to be able to designate as a progressive social transformation the establishment of the Nazi regime in Germany. However, this, of course, was not a regress, a step backward to something which existed before that. No doubt, the totalitarianism was an invention of the 20th century. Just a few preindustrial societies (first of all, the Qin/Chin Empire) came more or less close to this model; but it was the 20th century when this model found its full-fledged realization. The 20th century totalitarian regimes left any preindustrial prototalitarian or total political systems far behind them according to many important characteristics. Their formation in no way can be considered as a repetition of something which existed before. For example, before the 20th century no societies knew such developed and effective repressive apparatuses etc. Thus the movement forward towards something new which never happened before is evident here. Thus, we are dealing here with a type of sociocultural evolution which cannot be denoted either as a progress, or a regress, or a same-level transformation. But how to denote this? Or, consider the 20th century environmental pollution. Here we are dealing again with something which cannot be denoted either as a progress, or a regress, a movement backwards, to something which already existed before. Or consider the growth the suicide rate in some industrial societies to the levels never evidenced before (which was already noticed by Durkheim [1952/1897]). And again we confront the same questions. One may also recollect such correlates of industrialization as the growing alienation of labor, the impoverishment of folk art and many other social transformations which cannot be named either as progress, or regress, or self-level transformations. At the meantime it seems to be clear that such social transformations are not rare in the human history. What is more, such transformations are very important and definitely deserve a special name for their designation. I suggest to denote social change of this type (social movement forward, towards new forms and structures involving worsening of the human situation according to any significant progress criteria) as antiprogress. This is how they are denoted in this book. Part 2. SOCIAL EVOLUTIONISM: IDEALISM VS. MATERIALISM It seems reasonable to draw the readers attention to the following phenomenon noticed by Sanderson (1990:103–68): among the neoevolutionist anthropologists one observes the dominant positions belonging to the materialist theories of sociocultural evolution which consider it as virtually a process of natural history developing under the influence of almost only objective factors (demographic, ecological etc.), according to objective evolutionary laws. At the meantime among the neoevolutionists-sociologists we rather observe the dominance of essentially idealist theories of sociocultural evolution (Parsons 1966, 1971; Eisenstadt 1964, 1970, 1978, 1982, 1986, 1993; Habermas 1979, 1984; Luhmann 1982; Alexander 1983. Vol. 4). It appears difficult not to connect this point with the fact that the former construct their evolutionary models mainly on the basis of the pre-Axial primitive and archaic cultures, whereas the latter rely predominantly on the materials of the Axial cultures. No doubt, the idealist tradition in sociological neoevolutionism ascends to its founder, Talcott Parsons. It seems necessary to stress that his evolutionary models have an emphatically idealist character. Parsons ... [says] that to favor a causal pluralism does not prevent one from establishing a hierarchical ordering of the relative importance of various causal factors. All are important, but some may be more important than others. And what kind of rank ordering does Parsons create? In fact he produces one that elevates human ideas and values and their associated moral rules to supreme importance. As he puts it, I am a cultural determinist, rather than a social determinist. Similarly, I believe that, within the social system, the normative elements are more important for social change than the ... (Parsons 1966:113). It would definitely appear, however, that Parsons gives considerably more weight to ideational factors than he would have us believe. They are much more than simply at the top of a causal hierarchy. Indeed, the simple fact of the matter is that Parsons preferred explanations in his pair of books on sociocultural evolution almost always give pride of place to symbolic codes, legal norms, religious or philosophical systems, or some other phenomenon that is primarily mental or ideational... The great evolutionary significance of the historic empires involves their philosophical breakthroughs. In two cases (India and Islam) these breakthroughs center on religio-philosophical systems, whereas in another (Rome) the great breakthrough is said to involve a system of legal norms... Israels greatest evolutionary contribution is its universalistic religion, while Greeces involves a more secularized philosophical system... Judaism led into Christianity, which is of enormous evolutionary significance for Parsons because of its universalizing and individualizing qualities. In fact, it is Christianity that prevented medieval society from regressing even further than it did. When we get to modernity, we find that the influence of Protestantism is very great, as is especially the democratic revolution. And what is the substance of the democratic revolution? Parsons tells us that it is essentially an upheaval in values... Thus it is not difficult to make a case for Parsons ordinary causal explanations being primarily idealist ones. It is clear that Parsons regards the most important achievements in long-term sociocultural evolution as being in the area of symbolic codes, values, and norms, and that these achievements, once they arise, contribute crucially to yet further achievements [Sanderson 1990:113–114]. It seems evident that the idealism of Talcott Parsons ascends to a considerable extent to Max Weber who influenced greatly Parsons (see e.g.: Parsons 1970]). An especially strong influence in this respect was made on Parsons (according to his direct confession [1997:208]) by the Protestant Ethic (Weber 1930). It seems necessary not to forget that in this study Weber does not maintain that the formation of the protestant ethic was the main factor of the origins of capitalism. However, Max Weber did manage to show in quite a rigorous way for one concrete example that the change in religious consciousness which is not a result of any socio-economic processes (but stemming entirely from the development logic of the religious consciousness itself) may produce a significant factor of influence on the socio-economic development (or, employing the terminology of mathematical statistics, that the religious consciousness variables may be not only dependent / resultant [as is implied by the materialist understanding of sociocultural evolution], but also independent / factor (even in the final consideration). In this book I shall try to follow this tradition and to trace some other influences produced by the functioning of the world religions communicative networks on the social evolution of the Old World Oikumene civilizations. However, in the concluding chapter I shall also study the issue if this tradition is really irreconcilable with the materialist approach prevalent in the anthropological evolutionism.
Posted on: Tue, 05 Aug 2014 09:50:16 +0000
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