Stephen K. Sanderson. 1999. Social Transformations. New York: Rowman & Littlefield.
Preface
I have dedicated this book to Gerhard Lenski, Marvin Harris, and Immanuel Wallerstein,
because they are the scholars who have influenced my thinking the most. Lenski first
pointed me in the direction of doing sociology in comparative, evolutionary, and
materialist terms. Harris then showed how such and approach could be developed in a
very elaborate and detailed way. Finally, Wallerstein added a critically important
dimension necessary to understanding the development of the modern world, that of the
world-system as a single evolving unit (1999, p. xi).
Evolutionary Materialism
The main parent theoretical tradition of evolutionary materialism is Harris’s cultural
materialism. However, evolutionary materialism also borrows extensively from various
currents of contemporary Marxism, especially world-system theory, and blends in certain
features of Weberian historical sociology, interpreted as a version of conflict theory a la
Randall Collins (1975, 1986a, 1986b). A few other theoretical notions also go into the
attempted synthesis. Evolutionary materialism is highly compatible with cultural
materialism and in no way is intended as any sort of refutation, or even partial rejection
of it, Evolutionary materialism is essentially an extension of cultural materialism’s
theoretical logic, especially with respect to the analysis of complex agrarian and
industrial societies (1999, p. 2).