ABSTRACT
In the recent past, evolutionism has undergone a brief revival within the social sciences themselves. But this ‘neo-evolutionism’ reverted to the older Spencerian idea that variations in culture can be explained by processes of superorganic adaptation-that society as a whole evolves. Largely confined to the USA, the revival first became prominent in anthropology (for example, White 1959; Steward 1955; Sahlins and Service 1960) but in the late 1950s and 1960s it spread to sociology and even to economics (Rostow 1960). Whereas the anthropologists concentrated on cultural evolution, sociologists were primarily interested in economic and social modernization. All approaches, however, placed a heavy emphasis upon technology as a determinant of social institutions and culture.
