Routledge Revivals

The Concept of Social Change

Anthony Smith’s important work on the concept of social change, first published in 1973,
puts forward the paradigm of historical change as an alternative to the functionalist theory
of evolutionary change. He shows that, in attempting to provide a theory of social change,
functionalism reveals itself as a species of ‘frozen’ evolutionism.

Functionalism, he argues, is unable to cope with the mechanisms of historical transitions or

account for novelty and emergence; it confuses classification of variations with explanation
of processes; and its endogenous view of change prevents it from coming to grips with the
real events and transformations of the historical record. In his assessment of functionalism,
Dr Smith traces its explanatory failures in its accounts of the developments of civilisation,
modernisation and revolution. He concludes that the study of ‘evolution’ is largely irrelevant
to the investigation of social change. He proposes instead an exogenous paradigm of social
change, which places the study of contingent historical events at its centre.
The Concept of Social Change
A critique of the functionalist theory of social change

Anthony D.Smith
 First published in 1973
by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd

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The concept of social change
 Monographs in Social Theory
Editor: Arthur Brittan, University of York

Titles in the Series

Zygmunt Bauman Culture as praxis

Keith Dixon Sociological theory
Antony D.Smith The concept of social change

A catalogue of the books in the other series of Social Science books published by Routledge
and Kegan Paul will be found at the end of this volume.
The concept of social change
A critique of the functionalist theory of social change

Anthony D.Smith

Routledge & Kegan Paul

London and Boston
 First published in 1973
by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd
Broadway House, 68–74 Carter Lane,
London EC4V 5EL and
9 Park Street,
Boston, Mass. 02108, U.S.A,

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010.

To purchase your own copy of this or any of

Taylor & Fra ncis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks
please go to www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk.

© Anthony D.Smith 1973

No part of this book may be reproduccd in
any form without permission from the
publisher, except for the quotation of brief
passages in criticism

ISBN 0-203-85167-6 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0 7100 7607 x (c)

0 7100 7697 5 (p)
Library of Congress Catalog Number 73–79114
 Contents

  Preface  x
 
1   Functionalism and social change  1
    The attack on functionalism (1) statics and dynamics  1
    The attack on functionalism (2) system and conflict  3
    The functionalist rejoinder: two strategies  5
An expansionist climate 6
     
2   The ‘neo-evolutionary’ revival 1  0
    Differentiation 1  0
    Reintegration 1  3
Adaptation 16
     
3   The stages of evolution 1  8
    The ‘logic’ of evolutionism 1  8
    The functionalist heir 2  0
    The stages of civilisation 2  1
    The problem of unilinearity 2  3
    Culture and structure 2  5
    The problem of transitions 2  9
The problem of endogenism 34
     
4   Modernism and modernisation 4  1
    Three types of modernisation 4  1
    1   Learning through experience 4  3
    Social maturity 4  4
    2   Differentiation-integration 4  6
    A superfluous model? 4  8
    3   Generating and absorbing change 5  4
 Contents  ix

    Managers of modernisation  57

    The critique of ‘modernism’  59
Accounting for novelty 64
     
  Revolution
5  65
    Disturbance and strain  65
    Collective behaviour  68
    ‘Value-added’: revolution in France and Holland  69
    ‘Central values’ and revolution  73
    Types of rebellion  75
    Asynchronous change  78
    The homeostatic model  80
    The problem of psychology  83
    Determinism in the revolution  85
    Conclusion  87
6   Equilibrium and change  88
    Dynamic equilibrium  88
    Cumulation and disintegration: neo-evolutionism vindicated  90
    Novelty and transformation: the critique of neo-evolutionism  92
7   Evolution and history  
101
    History and evolution  
102
    The roots of endogenism  
104
    Diffusion and the exogenous paradigm  
106
    Conclusion: the uses of the exogenous paradigm  
110
 
  Notes  
112
  Bibliography  
122
  Index  
129
 Preface

My purpose in this book is to evaluate a recent attempt to achieve an overall sociological

theory of social change. This is not, therefore, yet another general work on ‘social change’,
but a study of one perspective on change. For this reason, I have made scant reference
to other rival approaches like Marxism or ‘conflict theory’. My reasons for choosing the
particular perspective known as ‘neo-evolutionism’ are twofold: if America remains the
most dynamic and influential centre of sociological activity, neo-evolutionism, or the
functionalist theory of social change, represents the single most pervasive and dominant
approach to change in America today. Secondly, neo-evolutionism expresses in modern
terms and contemporary idiom a long tradition which lays emphasis upon the immanence
of change in social life, a tradition by no means unchallenged, yet still vital. By analysing
neo-evolutionism, I hope therefore to illuminate the nature and difficulties of this wider
tradition, to which the functionalist theory of change is heir.
The emphasis throughout this work is on the validity and usefulness of the neo-
evolutionary perspective for the understanding of problems of social change. Accordingly, I
have tried to avoid the temptation to write a treatise on the sociology of knowledge, despite
some suggestions about the backgrounds of recent functionalist concerns in the first chapter.
Nor have I attempted to be comprehensive in my treatment. I have concentrated instead
upon those theorists and works which seemed most ‘paradigmatic’ for an understanding
of the basic logic of neo-evolutionism. This explains why I have largely neglected all
those political scientists who have adopted in one or other measure the neo-evolutionary
framework, and have omitted all reference to the purely political ramifications of the
outlook. From the standpoint of neo-evolutionism conceived as a theoretical framework,
their task of application appears essentially derivative.
Nor am I concerned to offer an alternative ‘theory of social change’ to that which I
criticise, again despite some suggestions to that effect in the final chapter. I do not believe
a meaningful ‘theory of change’ in the sense of that term which has summed up a long-
standing goal of sociology, to be either desirable or feasible. The dimensions and types
of historical change are so various, that any overall theory must become too generalised
to be relevant for the explanation of more specific changes. This is not, of course, to say
that all general approaches are therefore equally valueless. On the contrary, I advance here
some arguments on behalf of one such very general approach, insisting strongly upon the
essentially historical, i.e. temporal, nature of social change, and on the role of patterns of
events in initiating processes of change. At the same time, I regard such an approach as
providing merely a methodological framework, no more; and certainly not as a general
‘theory of social change’.
The plan of my argument is tripartite. Section one (chapters 1 and 2) is expository:
it depicts the background and outlines the main principles of neo-evolutionism, or the
functionalist theory of change. Section three (chapters 6 and 7) balances this exposition
 Preface  xi
by providing an assessment and evaluation of this whole perspective, in the light of the
preceding criticisms; it also suggests some arguments in favour of an alternative perspective.
Section two (chapters 3, 4 and 5) is the main part, and also the longest, being devoted
to a critical analysis of neo-evolutionist theories of three problems—civilisatioin and its
development, modernisation, and revolution. Modernisation in many ways is the pivot of
the whole work, as its central position in the text (flanked by the two chapters on evolution
and revolution) indicates. The reason is that as concept and process ‘modernisation’ has
become the central neo-evolutionist empirical concern, and provides so effective a test of
the validity and utility of this perspective.
Throughout I am deeply indebted to the work of Professor Nisbet, particularly on the
wider historical tradition of social growth, even where I do not share his opinions. His
work is one of the few in recent sociology (Teggart, Boas and others belong to an older
school of thought) to accept the need for an exogenous approach to social change—even
though others have stressed the fact of exogeneity. I am also grateful for the stimulation
provided by my colleagues in the Sociology Department of Reading University, as well as
by the graduate seminar. I should like to record an especial debt of gratitude to Mr Arthur
Brittan, both for asking me to write on this subject, and for his help and encouragement
Responsibility for errors and omissions, as well as for the views expressed, is of course
mine alone.
 chapter 1
Functionalism and social change

To succeed where historians have failed and provide a theory of social change, has long
been an overriding ambition of sociologists. Ever since Comte divided the field into social
statics and social dynamics, we find a long line of social theorists who advanced schemes
purporting to account for the varied phenomena of social change and history. However
much a particular theorist may have avoided or neglected social change, each and every
one was conscious that no theory of society could claim to be adequate if it failed to explain
movement, variation, transformation and change in social life. It is as if the theory of social
change appears as the crown and ultimate justification of all social theory.
Along with this tacit importance assigned to the fact of change, went a deep conviction
that it was possible to order the kaleidoscope of observable changes in history into a single,
coherent framework; and more, to provide a unified theory of all social change. Of course,
this belief was central to the various schemes of world-evolution proposed in the late
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In less obvious forms, however, this belief reappears
also in Durkheim, among the diffusionists, among the later Marxists (as well as Marx), in
the cyclical schemes of historians and elite theorists; and even Weber did not altogether
escape its influence.
The latest and most influential of the theoretical schools to manifest this deep-seated
conviction in the possibility and desirability of a single theory of change, is functionalism.
In this respect, as in many others, functionalism is the heir of a long tradition of perspectives
on social change. As the approach of functionalists has broadened and developed, it has
revealed with growing clarity its real intent: to provide a unified theory of change and order,
which will encompass in one framework the varied and changing structures of history.

THE ATTACK ON FUNCTIONALISM (1)

STATICS AND DYNAMICS
To argue that functionalism is fundamentally a theory of change, is to challenge a very
common opinion among sociologists: namely, that functionalism is a perspective on
society which is unable to cope with social change. In certain quarters, indeed, this view
is simply doctrinal; but we find it repeated even by writers who are in sympathy with the
functionalist approach. Perhaps this opinion is less common among the noncommitted and
the sympathisers today, but throughout the 1940s and 1950s, the idea that functionalism
was a theory of social stability and not change, was accepted by the majority of sociologists.
Roughly, their argument ran as follows: functionalism cannot come to grips with ‘the
problem of social change’, because it is a doctrine of normative consensus. But normative
consensus is a state of affairs which rarely obtains in the world of concrete, historical
phenomena; hence as a model of society, it is singularly inapposite for illuminating
2  The Concept of Social Change
empirical processes of change. Furthermore, the history and inner structure of functionalism
preclude it from any concern with, or utility for, the construction of a theory of change. A
doctrine built on the assumption that the parts of a system are interdependent and mutually
compatible, or at least in continual process of readjustment to each other, leaves little room
for the incorporation of just those historical and structural forces to which a plausible
theory of change must address itself. Of course, individual functionalists may well adduce
explanations of particular changes; but these remain ad hoc explanations, unrelated to the
functionalist conceptual framework, whose overall static bias and generality prevents it
from making any lasting contribution to the study of social change, beyond a few very
high-level platitudes.1
More specifically, this argument was supported by a number of objections to the adequacy
and objectivity of the whole functionalist framework. Since these critiques contributed to
the subsequent reorientation of functionalist interests and methods, I think it useful to set
out the major lines of attack, whether they originated within the functionalist camp or from
critics outside its orbit.

Static bias
First, it was claimed that functionalism was necessarily static. Its origins and development
precluded it from offering a ‘dynamic analysis’. Because of its original polemic against the
classical evolutionists, functionalism had to emphasise integration and stability. After all,
the early functionalism of the anthropologists like Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown had
been developed because of opposition to the sweeping claims of the nineteenth-century
evolutionists, with their laws of the various stages of civilisation through which, it was
thought, every society must pass. There was also a second functionalist polemic against the
rival diffusionists, who sought to explain the various similarities in the cultural make-up of
primitive societies as a product of cultural borrowings from neighbouring societies. Both
polemics turned the analysis of the functionalist inward, to the institutional workings and
relations of single societies—especially primitive ones.2
Against the evolutionists, the functionalists held that we must first discover the network
of relations which sustain the institutions of a given social system, before we can be in a
position to ascertain the laws by which one state of the social system succeeds another.
In addition, we need to know much more about the institutional functioning of single
cultures than the evolutionists allow; and this knowledge will prevent us from abusing
the comparative method, through disregard of the cultural context of a given trait. As
against the diffusionists, Malinowski and his followers rejected their explanation of the
coexistence of similar cultural elements in different primitive societies, and stressed
instead the contribution or function performed by each item for the maintenance of the
cultural ensemble. The upshot of both polemics, therefore, was to underline the equal
interdependence and mutual reinforcement of all the parts, however curious at first sight,
of a system.3
Anthropological functionalism of the 1920s and 1930s was succeeded by what we
may term ‘normative functionalism’. This was largely an American phenomenon, and its
underlying aim was to harmonise the structural-functional approach of the anthropologists
with (a) Durkheim’s notion of normative integration of societies, and (b) an action frame
 Functionalism and social change  3
of reference which was derived from Weber. Normative functionalism accomplished this
difficult feat of synthesis, by putting the main emphasis on the stabilising effect of norms
(and institutions) which in an action frame of reference are held to govern role-expectations
between interacting individuals. A society in which norms produced this stability and
equilibrium, was one able to fulfil its major functional imperatives—socialisation,
reproduction, education, integration and so on. But norms in turn ‘specify’ more basic
symbols, attitudes and beliefs; and this central system of ‘values’ (as these attitudes, etc.,
were termed) is a prerequisite of any ongoing social system. A central ‘value system’
underlies the norms of each institutional sphere into which all societies are divided, and it
unites each of these spheres or sectors, enabling each of them to reinforce the others.
Critics were not slow to point out that a model of normative integration of societies,
which this type of functionalism was propounding, was inevitably static. A theorist whose
self-appointed task is to reveal the way in which each institutional sector reinforces all the
others, and contributes to the maintenance of the whole system, is likely to neglect those
factors or forces which prevent a sector or part from performing its allotted role. Likewise,
a theory which builds up a model of the social system from that of the stable interaction of
individuals in their role-relationships, by emphasising the binding and stabilising effect of
the norms governing roles, is prevented from grasping the way in which time alters role-
relationships and erodes norms, so changing the nature of all social systems.
But even more important than this was the methodological criticism. This was quite
simply that to stress functions or consequences was to deflect analysis from causes and
initiating factors; and since the burden of functionalist analysis was, by its very history and
development, bound to the study of the contribution or function of parts to the relevant whole,
it was inevitable that a diachronic investigation demanding a study of processes and causes
over time would be passed over. What really interested functionalists was how societies
survive and cohere in the face of external pressure and internal strain, not how they change.
This is perhaps the most forceful and convincing of the many criticisms of functionalism
in the form which it assumed in mid-century America, because it argued the case for
functionalism’s static bias from the very structure of its assumptions as these developed
out of its original polemics. This ‘historical’ argument, in other words, claimed that
functionalism by its origins and development was condemned to neglect change and
confine itself to the explanation of stability.4

THE ATTACK ON FUNCTIONALISM (2)

SYSTEM AND CONFLICT
Interdependence
A second group of criticisms emanated from those who were not completely unsympathetic
to the functionalist cause. These attacks concentrated on such central functionalist
assumptions as the normative integration of the system and the interdependence of
parts. Gouldner, for example, attacked the validity and utility of the idea of an equal
interdependence of parts, developing further Merton’s notion of the dysfunction of certain
items or institutions for a given system. A scheme of perfect functional harmony cannot
be found anywhere, even in approximation. On the contrary, social systems are normally
characterised by a high degree of institutional autonomy; and the parts of a system do not
4  The Concept of Social Change
necessarily have a reciprocal effect upon each other. Furthermore, one does not have to
assume that institutions react upon one another with equal effect, nor that they are mutually
reinforcing or even interrelated, in order to explain the system’s survival.5
A parallel argument can be found in an article by Cancian. We need not accept the
functionalist claim that concrete societies should be tested against a model of perfect
system integration around a common set of values. Few societies have in fact exhibited
anything like this degree of integration. An integration model may explain some changes
or deviations from a postulated normal state of integration, but it cannot account for the
much more common (and interesting) cases of change in the majority of systems which
lack anything resembling this integrative norm. Besides, the difficulties of ascertaining this
norm in concrete instances make it often irrelevant.6
Sophisticated criticisms like these in fact concede the uses of a systemic analysis, but
wish to strip it of some of its more unrealistic and untenable assumptions—in the manner
of Merton’s well-known critique.7

Conflict
By far the most popular objection to functionalism in the 1950s and early 1960s was its
neglect of conflict and coercion.
There were two lines of attack here. The ‘moderates’ like Coser and Gluckman were
worried by the lack of reference in functionalist analyses of the period to any type of
competitive and conflict processes. They argued that conflict was a necessary element in the
maintenance of social cohesion, and that many kinds of ‘conflict’ were in fact eufunctional
for the effectiveness and growth of a social system. Without conflict, no creativity; without
innovation, no movement Stagnation spelt dissolution, A pure integration model turned out
to be an empirical contradiction.8
Of course, there was also the ‘disruptive’ kind of conflict. This was the type stressed
by the radicals. Lockwood, for example, felt that functionalists placed too much emphasis
on the role of norms and values in ensuring stability, at the expense of group interests and
the material substratum. But the neglected factors were just those which could furnish
explanations of change and conflict in society, and no theory which omitted the impact
of the struggle for scarce resources could stake out a claim to provide a comprehensive
account of social processes.9
From these suggestions, Rex and Dahrendorf (and later Lenski) evolved a ‘conflict
model of society. Rex concentrated upon the structuring of economic interests as the bases
of class formation to explain social conflict as well as social regulation; while Dahrendorf
sought to explain both conflict and material interests in terms of overriding authority
relations within the several organisations which compose a society. Not culture, therefore,
but politics and economics were the key sectors which determined what men valued and
why they behaved according to certain standards. Integration and consensus were functions
of conflict and coercion.10

Ideology
Finally, and arising out of the last group of arguments, came the charge of ideological
bias: that, despite Merton’s demonstration that functionalism did not necessarily entail
 Functionalism and social change  5
an ideology of political quietism and conservatism, in practice functionalists were firm
supporters of the status quo. Such was the array of concepts utilised by functionalism,
that the conservative values of persistence, stability and orderly growth were inevitably
stressed at the expense of more radical and egalitarian values. Translated into the terms of
American social and political life, this bias led its practitioners, whatever their personal
reservations, towards some version of the ‘conservative-liberal’ consensus which Mills so
berated. Which in turn implied their support for the dominant values of the capitalist order
and its ruling elites; and ample evidence of the ease with which functionalist postulates
could be translated into this political position, was to be found in the work of its leading
exponents.11

THE FUNCTIONALIST REJOINDER:

TWO STRATEGIES
These then, were the routes by which the critics of functionalism reached their unanimous
verdict: its underlying assumptions debarred the approach from handling social change.
Functionalism suffered from a self-inflicted handicap; having nothing to say about social
dynamics, its claim to present a total theory of social life collapsed.
Faced with this indictment, a functionalist had two options. He could accept the burden
of the attack and drop functionalism’s claim to provide an overall theory of social life.
Or he could develop the positions of functionalism so as to envelop and neutralise the
charges against his perspective. The first is a strategy of consolidation, the second one of
expansion.
A strategy of consolidation implies the acceptance of a sharp division between ‘structure’
and ‘change’. No theory can hope to account for these two aspects of social affairs; hence
functionalism should renounce all aspiration to deal with that aspect for which it was
patently unsuited. A theory of social persistence cannot, by the very terms of its reference,
act simultaneously as a theory of social change. Functionalism has shown itself capable
of refined analysis of the continuities of role-expectations and normative patterns which
together compose social structure; let it therefore develop further this crucial area of
social life, and exercise self-denial as far as an overall theory of society is concerned.
By consolidating its ‘territory’, functional analysis can set an example to other would-be
‘imperialist’ theories of the totality of social experience.12
Actually, this strategy was not quite as modest as it appeared. After all, the argument
ran, societies require stability for self-maintenance. History, as we know it, is the history of
‘societies’. It follows that the functionalist would receive the lion’s share of social analysis,
leaving mere interstices of intersocietal anarchy to theorists of other persuasions. It was a
small price in comparison with the gain.
And yet most of the major functionalists rejected this strategy of consolidation for one
of expansion. True, they continue to accept the Comtean division of sociology into social
statics and dynamics, predicating the former of ‘structure’ and the latter of ‘change’. As
we shall see also, the static model of a stable integration of systemic parts continues to
pervade their analyses of social processes in subtle guises. At the same time, consolidation
and retrenchment is a strategy which can exercise little attraction for those whose aim
remains an understanding and explanation of the totality of social life. Self-denial in such
6  The Concept of Social Change
a view must appear defeatist; an overall science of human action cannot arbitrarily restrict
its insights to one portion of social processes, however vital.
Most functionalists, therefore, found it necessary to build up from their basic assumptions
a new set of principles which would encompass the phenomenon of social change. As we
shall see, this meant a gradual return to elements within functionalism which its polemical
origins and subsequent development had largely obscured. Yet it was only by elaborating
these categories out of the fundamental assumptions behind the functionalist framework that
the expansionists could achieve their end. With the aid of these categories, it was possible
to overcome the sharp distinction between statics and dynamics, structure and change.

AN EXPANSIONIST CLIMATE
If we ask why this expansionist strategy proved so popular among functionalists, we
have to seek the causes in the social and intellectual climate of America in the late 1950s
and early 1960s. Undoubtedly the most important reason for rejecting the strategy of
consolidation lay in the rise of new sociological concerns in response, chiefly, to changes
in the position of America itself. These changes affected America’s image in two ways.
Internally, the interethnic fabric of American society was undermined, particularly with the
Negro revolution. After all, one of the attractions claimed for a ‘normative functionalist’
model was that it could illuminate the way in which a large, heterogeneous and mobile
society like that of the United States, an ethnic patchwork, could yet hold together as a
single national unit with a common system of values and division of labour. But as the
reality of interdependence on which that model had been constructed was suddenly seen
to collapse, the model itself lost its appeal. Although some elements of the model might
be salvaged, key assumptions clearly required modification or even rejection. The Black
challenge to a conception of society able to overarch its immigrant community patchwork
was too powerful and suggestive to be dismissed as a case of mere collective deviance; but
was gradually perceived as the harbinger of wider protests against the whole structure of
American liberal-capitalism.13
Other external changes also transformed the American image. The late 1950s saw
a relaxation of the Cold War international blocs, with their rival capitalist and socialist
doctrines, and its replacement by a more fluid, competitive system. The two great camps were
no longer able to ensure internal allegiance by appeals to partisan self-interest in the face of
external threats. Instead, rival contenders (China, Japan, Europe) appeared in the wings to
compete for the loyalty of an emergent grouping of uncommitted nation-states. Indeed, the
rise of the new states quite transformed the terms of great power rivalries. Instead of military
confrontation in Europe and the Far East, interest switched to channelling aid, ideology and
technology to the underdeveloped nations so as to claim their political gratitude in return
for fostering their economic development In this atmosphere of East-West stalemate and
detente, when the great powers were adopting new ‘suitor’ roles around the globe, there was
considerable official encouragement of research and theory into the position of the various
underdeveloped areas with which American interests were increasingly involved. Area
specialists and political scientists and anthropologists received financial and governmental
aid in their investigations into problems of comparative ‘development’ of the new states;
and this social and political stimulus demanded a reorientation of current sociological, and
more especially the dominant functionalist, interests and perspectives.
 Functionalism and social change  7
Apart from these social and political changes, intellectual developments also contributed
to the expansion of the functionalist perspective. To take methodological developments first.
The continuous refinement of statistical (multivariate) techniques, and the growing appeal of
cybernetic models, both stimulated renewed interest in the problems of comparing cultures
and institutions, which the revulsion against evolutionist methods had brought into disrepute.
In the fields of race, stratification, religion, and economic and political development,
sociologists became increasingly aware of the unique features of American society, and the
danger of implicit generalisation of concepts and hypotheses derived from the American
experience to that of other Western, let alone non-Western, cultures. For a theory to prove
its claim to provide an overall framework of human action, required now much greater
attention to the specific differences between societies and cultures, and to the problems of
classifying these differences. Although its origins in the study of primitive societies had
for long caused functionalism to turn its back on the whole issue of valid comparisons,
its present position as the dominant sociological perspective of the dominant state in the
world forced it to drop its ethnocentric reserve and adopt a more comparative approach.
Along with comparison came a renewed interest in history. Despite the individual
researches of men like Wirth and Thomas, a genuine historical sociology had become
almost forgotten terrain in America; and functionalists in particular, with a few exceptions,
were profoundly ahistorical in their approach. Most adhered closely to Radcliffe-Brown’s
sharp distinction betwen synchronic and diachronic investigations and followed the early
Malinowskian prescription that social structure ought to be explained in terms of the
ensemble of existing elements and relations, not from inferences about antecedents. It
followed that the historical record played no part in functionalist research. But with the rise
of the new states, the visible changes within America, and the new possibilities of valid
comparisons, this ahistorical approach became a liability. To understand the roots of ‘colour
caste’ in America, or outflank a threatened communist insurrection abroad, one needed a
thorough empirical acquaintance, in depth, with different cultures and their economic and
political backgrounds. Besides, a theory with universalist claims could not long afford
to ignore the vast stores of comparative and historical information which the various
cross-cultural files and surveys were amassing. Comparison and history alike beckoned
functionalists towards a bolder and outward-looking perspective, capable of accounting
also for social change.14
There were also more substantive reasons for adopting a new expansionist strategy. I
mean by this that functionalists felt they had exhausted the potentialities of the normative
approach as applied to the study of single societies; the onslaught of the critics, especially
as regards the charge of employing a static bias, served to reinforce their unease. Beneath
this unease lay a deep apprehension of the change wrought within functionalism itself.
Functionalism, after all, had arisen out of method; that of analysing the objective
consequences of given cultural items, and their role in a total set of such items. In other
words, functionalism had begun simply as functional analysis. But with its later refinement
into a functionalist theory had come the temptation to apply it to contexts which the original
functional analysis had avoided. In the succeeding stage, functionalism was united with other
theoretical elements to produce a synthetic account of all human action. It followed that
new, higher-level propositions about human behaviour had to be evolved, and that theorists
had now to provide a serviceable conceptual armoury for future use by those aiming at a
8  The Concept of Social Change
more propositional sociology. So at every step in its development, functionalism became
more general in its aims and categories. By this time it had acquired its own momentum in
the direction of yet further expansion, and found a method of accomplishing this aim—the
development of yet more general or basic categories. Just these categories, it was felt,
would encompass the one set of phenomena, i.e. social change, which had till now eluded
the functionalist net. These categories and postulates will be examined in the next chapter.
It remains to consider an allied intellectual reason for adopting an expansionist
strategy, this time in the realm of ideology. I refer of course to the relative ‘liberalisation’
of American intellectual life after the Cold War repressions. Some of the more liberal
functionalists became increasingly sensitive to charges of political conservatism and
neglect of social issues, such as the Black problem. Liberalisation, therefore, as it applied
to sociological theorising in America at this period, inevitably entailed a broadening of
the scope and flexibility of functionalism to incorporate phenomena previously ignored
or underemphasised. More attention was now paid to the dysfunctions and autonomy of
different social institutions within a given entity, Once again, the functionalist framework
was being applied to problems for which its originators had neither intended it nor heard of.15
The upshot of all these social and intellectual changes for the development of functionalism
was clear. First, a new model of the global situation, and not just the societal, i.e. American,
one, had to be drawn out of the old assumptions. In particular, the new model would have
to be able to handle the problems of the new states, in which so much of America’s political
future was at stake. Second, the model would have to be ‘dynamic’: it must deal with the
interrelationships between many social processes, and cope with both internal challenges
and external competition. Third, it could no longer afford to ignore conflict. So patent was
the fact of conflict, both within America and internationally, that to ignore it, would merely
widen the ‘credibility gap’ between theory and empirical research. Which in turn implied
much closer cooperation between sociology and other disciplines, like political science and
international relations, which dealt specifically with social conflict and power relations.
Running right through this reorientation of functionalism to the changing realities of
politics and society and intellectual life, is a new sense of the American position in the
world. One might indeed interpret the change in functionalism during this period as largely
an intellectual expression of a new American self-consciousness and sense of global role,
summed up in slogans like the New Frontier and the Great Society and in activities like the
Peace Corps, civil rights legislation and intervention in Vietnam. In this work, however, I
am concerned, not with the social background of the new functionalism, but with its validity
and utility; and this brief excursus into the new concerns which generated its reorientation
is included only because it is so germane to my central theme, the examination of the
principles and schemes which constitute the ‘neo-evolutionary’ revival.

Neo-evolutionism, or the neo-evolutionary revival, is the form taken by functionalism in

its attempt to meet the charge that it cannot cope with social change. It is the functionalist
theory of change, par excellence. This is true, even though there have been other trends
within or overlapping with the general functionalist orbit. I refer in particular to the use of
cybernetic models for systems analysis. We shall encounter this development from time to
time in our examination of neo-evolutionist schemes; but on the whole this remains a less
influential and relevant trend than the so-called return to the evolutionary perspective. In
 Functionalism and social change  9
the field of social change, neo-evolutionism represents the dominant American theoretical
framework, and the main functionalist effort lies in this direction throughout the 1960s.16
In the next chapter, then, I consider the postulates of this ‘neoevolutionary’ revival;
thereafter I shall examine in more detail some applications of this scheme to major large-
scale problems of social change.
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