Stone Age Sociology? Historical Perspective and the Selectionist Paradigm in the Theory of W. G. Runciman

In his scrutiny about What is worth defending in sociology today (2013) David Inglis condemns the most fashionable contemporary social theorists who, lacking deeper historical knowledge, reduce the discipline to a mere collection of shallow platitudes wrapped in catchy phrases. According to Inglis, historical perspective (longue durée) is present only in the works of a small group of “sociological aristocracy”, while fashionable authors such as Giddens or Bauman render sociology, in the longer run, irrelevant with their narrow horizon.

The paper discusses the work of WG Runciman, a member of such an “aristocracy”, whose approach, according to Inglis, is exemplary in that it successfully merges sociological inquiry with an understanding and explanation of long-term historical processes. After a short overview of his main ideas, I will focus on the conceptual elements in Runciman’s work that serve to link sociological analysis with a historical view. Since he was arguably one of the most important and most persistent apologists of neo-evolutionist theories among contemporary sociologists, the question addressed is not just about the ways of integrating historical perspective into sociology, but also about the possibility evolutionary paradigm specifically offers for this. To answer this question, I review a couple of Runciman’s historical studies where he applies the conceptual framework of evolutionary paradigm: that of the diffusion of early Christianity, the spreading of the Weberian this-worldly asceticism and capitalist spirit, and the characteristics of stone-age social organization.

The paper ultimately raises issues that stretch beyond Runciman’s work: what does the application of the evolutionary paradigm in such an historical approach mean; is it, at all, possible to build a historically oriented and informed sociology on an evolutionary conceptual basis that, according to many critics, is inherently ahistorical?