From Social Darwinism to Self‐Organization: Implications for Social Change Theory

Abstract

This article reviews the impact of evolutionary thought on social change theory. It argues that social Darwinist assumptions underlie many of the efforts to understand social change. Partly for this reason, social change theory has languished in recent years. Recently, however, nonequilibrium theories have generated a new interest in the notion of emergence, specifically, self‐organization. Theories of self‐organization are now being used by post‐Darwinian evolutionary theorists, and they provide a promising alternative to the traditional view that social change arises primarily through external conflict and selection.