The main problem associated with the idea of different societies has been the establishment of historical and morphological types of society, and the ways in which one type relates to another. The distinction between social types has a long...

The first professional studies of political organization were carried out among Native American peoples by the Smithsonian Institution’s †Bureau of American Ethnology, established in 1879. By this time the reservation system was in place...

Evolutionism is the label now commonly used for a current of thought which was strongly represented in the anthropology and sociology of the nineteenth century. Although it fed on biological analogies, it must be clearly distinguished from Darwinian...

The process of enriching the cultural context within which an activity...

Sociocultural evolution(ism) is an umbrella term for theories of cultural evolution and social evolution, describing how cultures and societies have developed over time. Although such theories typically provide models for understanding the relationship...