Robert L. Carneiro

Robert L. Carneiro, "Successive Reequilibrations as the Mechanism of Cultural Evolution", Self-Organization and Dissipative Structures, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1982.

The most salient feature of human history, then is not stasis, but evolution. To account for evolution we must leave equilibrium theory behind and enter the realm of disequilibrium theory. We must learn by equilibria are overthrown, how they are reestablished, and what effect this has on the structure of societies. [111]

Every social system has a margin of elasticity. It can be subjected to certain forces - wars, floods, famines, riots, plagues, strikes, inflation, unemployment - and, as long as the magnitude of these forces is not excessive, the system will essentially return to its original conditions once the impinging forces abate. If it is not pressed beyond this margin, the society will be able to reestablish its old equilibrium. Thus, a functionalist studying a society within this range of perturbing forces is justified in applying a homeostatic model to it and in considering it to be a system in stable equilibrium. But if the society is subjected to forces that exceed this margin of elasticity, its existing institutions will not be able to cope with these forces. Under heavy stress, the society will be permanently deformed, that is, it will be forced to change its structure. [112]

Indeed, much New Deal legislation can be seen as an attempt by a badly disequilibrated society to reequalibrate itself by undergoing certain structural transformations. [114]

How does the process of serious perturbation followed by reequilibration, so often manifested by societies, relate to cultural evolution? Evolution is this process writ large. As we have seen, the successful reequilibration of a society often requires the elaboration of its parts. Successive reequilibrations would thus serve to increase a society's structural complexity. If we follow Herbert Spencer in regarding increased complexity as the hallmark of evolution in general, we can say that sociocultural evolution is the natural outcome of societies undergoing successive reequilibrations as they seek to adapt to the changing conditions of existence. [114]