The New Evolutionary Sociology

The New Evolutionary Sociology is the most recent and comprehensive treatment of the bridge between evolutionary biology and the principles of sociology.Edward O. Wilson, University Research Professor Emeritus, Harvard University This volume is on the cutting edge in the effort to develop explanations of human sociocultural evolution within a comparative framework that includes biology, neuroscience, non-human sociology as well as anthropology, sociology and the comparative world-systems perspective. The chapters on the emergence of non-human social complexity are original contributions that should be of interest to all scholars and students in the comparative social sciences. Christopher Chase-Dunn, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, University of California-Riverside Turner and Machalek offer insightful assessments of several distinctive approaches to what they call the new evolutionary sociology. These perspectives are compatible only in varying degrees, and some of them certainly have generated more coherent explanations of human social behavior. All told the volume has great merit, especially if it encourages readers to shed the blinders of disciplinary chauvinism, to pursue a serious rapprochement with relevant aspects of evolutionary biology, and to begin to realize the promise of a genuinely scientific sociology.Timothy Crippen, Professor of Sociology, University of Mary Washington The New Evolutionary Sociology by Turner and Machalek is clearly the best treatment available about the important and exceedingly relevant topic of human sociocultural evolution. The authors discuss in detail how sociologists have used evolutionary paradigms in a variety of different investigations. In addition, they discuss many of the challenges posed by biology and sociobiology and other disciplines. They also introduce several examples of special utility they have used in their studies of evolutionary patterns and social phenomena. Turner and Machalek are clearly the experts in evolutionary sociology. Their new book is written lucidly and authoritatively. I recommend this important book with the greatest enthusiasm.Dudley L. Poston, Jr., Professor of Sociology, Texas A&M University