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Unilineal evolution, also referred to as classical social evolution, is a 19th-century social theory about the evolution of societies and cultures. It was composed of many competing theories by various anthropologists and sociologists, who believed that Western culture is the contemporary pinnacle of social evolution. Different social status is ...
Eventually, in the 19th century three major classical theories of social and historical change emerged: sociocultural evolutionism; the social cycle theory; the Marxist theory of historical materialism. These theories had a common factor: they all agreed that the history of humanity is pursuing a certain fixed path, most likely that of social ...
The sociological theory of diffusion is the study of the diffusion of innovations throughout social groups and organizations. The topic has seen rapid growth since the 1990s, reflecting curiosity about the process of social change and "fueled by interest in institutional arguments and in network and dynamic analysis."
The circulation of elites is a theory of regime change described by Italian sociologist Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923). Changes of regime, revolutions, and so on occur not when rulers are overthrown from below, but when one elite replaces another. The role of ordinary people in such transformation is not that of initiators or principal actors ...
World-systems theory (also known as world-systems analysis or the world-systems perspective) [3] is a multidisciplinary approach to world history and social change which emphasizes the world-system (and not nation states) as the primary (but not exclusive) unit of social analysis. [3]
Social cycle theories are among the earliest social theories in sociology. Unlike the theory of social evolutionism , which views the evolution of society and human history as progressing in some new, unique direction(s), sociological cycle theory argues that events and stages of society and history generally repeat themselves in cycles.
In international relations (IR), constructivism is a social theory that asserts that significant aspects of international relations are shaped by ideational factors. [1] [2] [3] The most important ideational factors are those that are collectively held; these collectively held beliefs construct the interests and identities of actors.
Neoevolutionism as a social theory attempts to explain the evolution of societies by drawing on Charles Darwin's theory of evolution while discarding some dogmas of the previous theories of social evolutionism.