Ecological-evolutionary theory

Ecological-evolutionary theory (EET) is a sociological theory of sociocultural evolution that attempts to explain the origin and changes of society and culture. Key elements focus on the importance of natural environment and technological change. EET has been described as a theory of social stratification, as it analyzes how stratification has changed through time across different societies. It also has been viewed as a synthesis of the structural functionalism and conflict theory. Proposed by Gerhard Lenski, the theory perhaps is best articulated in his book, Ecological-Evolutionary Theory: Principles and Applications (2005). His major collaborators, Jean Lenski and Patrick Nolan, also are said to have contributed to EET.

Lenski notes that society and culture evolve through symbols, which makes this process much more rapid, deliberative, and purposeful, compared to biological evolution. However, just like in the biological survival of the fittest, in sociocultural evolution there is a process of intersocietal selection, where less fit sociocultural systems became extinct, replaced by more efficient ones. In another analogy to biological evolution, Lenski argues that the sociocultural systems that survive do so primarily on the virtue of their level of technological advancement, which otherwise is "blind and purposeless as the outcome of the biological process of natural selection and just as indifferent to humans beliefs and values". Thus, Lenski does not argue that societies that survive are morally superior to those that are defeated—simply that they were more efficient at technological progress. This, in turn, helps those societies survive and grow. Technologies can thus be compared to genes of a society, providing it with new abilities, as new technologies allow it to do things that it could not have done before.

...
Wikipedia