ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a fundamental question: Is the basic unit of social evolution the individual society or some sort of world-system? Evolutionary theories of human social life continue to be much debated in modern social science. There were precapitalist world-systems, and the understanding of world history must focus on the operation of these systems rather than on individual societies. Many world-system enthusiasts see their work as antievolutionary, or at least nonevolutionary, in nature. The chapter argues that Wright has come closer than anyone else to pinpointing the genuinely irreducible features of an evolutionary theory. The enormous success of Immanuel Wallerstein's world-system model quickly led some social scientists to ask whether it might have more general applicability. In the case of stateless societies, most social evolution is internal to societies themselves, the most important stimuli to evolutionary change being population pressure and environmental degradation.
