Kravets S. The Theory of Evolution in British-American cultural anthropology.

The dissertation is dedicated to the analysis of the problem of the theory of evolution development in British-American cultural anthropology that was not studied in the post-USSR. The correct usage of the notions of "social anthropology" and "cultural anthropology" was proved, the ideas of classical evolutionists of the 19-th century and neoevolutionists of the 20-th century about the concept of "cultural evolution" were more precisely defined. Ideological sources of evolutionism were revealed, the main theoretical trends of British-American evolutionism were analyzed and the place of the theory of evolution in modern cultural anthropology was defined. In the thesis three main stages of the theory of evolution development in British-American cultural anthropology were defined: classical evolutionism (H. Spencer, L. Morgan, E. Tylor), neoevolutionism (L. White, G. Childe, J. Steward), revived evolutionism (E. Service, M. Sahlins, R. Carneiro, M. Harris). The comparative analysis of theoretical approaches of the classical evolutionists, the neoevolutionists and the representatives of the second wave of evolutional revival to cultural evolution was made. The peculiarities of unilinear, universal and multililinear evolution were investigated. The principles of parallel evolution, evolutional potential, cultural ecology and political evolution were examined. The causes of rise and fall of evolutionism were determined, the main causes of the theory of evolution revival in the 20-th century were revealed, and the prospects of its development were predicted. It was proved that the crisis of the evolutionism and its replacement by the other paradigms (diffusionism, structuralism, functionalism etc.) by the end of the 19-th. century and on the beginning of the 20-th. century was not in the result of depletion or cognitive weakness of the ideas of evolution but because of the imperfection of the whole paradigm, that was showed in the new historical conditions and was expressed in terms of the absence of the link between theoretical generalization and empirical facts, too abstract theoretical generalization and the logical imperfection of the methods.