Dr. Stephen K. Sanderson is an American sociologist. He was a professor of sociology at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Since 2007 he has been a visiting scholar at the Institute for Research on World-Systems at the University of California, Riverside. His areas of focus include comparative sociology, historical sociology, sociological theory and sociocultural evolution. He is a specialist in sociological theory and comparative and historical sociology and is one of the leading sociologists to develop a Darwinian understanding of human society. He has written or edited ten books, including “The Evolution of Human Sociality: A Darwinian Conflict Perspective”, “Evolutionism and Its Critics”, “Human Nature and the Evolution of Society”, and “Religious Evolution and the Axial Age”.

In this episode, we cover a lot of ground in Sociology and the Social Sciences. We start by talking about traditional approaches to sociology, the limitations of sociocultural accounts of human behavior, the importance of fields like sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, and the criteria to determine that a behavioral trait has a biological basis. We also discuss how to think about culture, and the relationship between culture and biology, and then Dr. Sanderson gives an overview of his Darwinian conflict theory, that tries to integrate evolutionary theory with Weberian conflict theory (with bits of Marx in there). Finally, we talk about Dr. Sanderson’s work on religion, and three different types of religion – shamanic, polytheistic (pagan), and monotheistic (world transcendent).

Follow Dr. Sanderson’s work:

Personal website: https://bit.ly/2H0NLie

Some articles on Researchgate: https://bit.ly/2vI0NvN

Amazon page: https://amzn.to/2VTsQXI

Relevant books/articles:

Human Nature and the Evolution of Society: https://amzn.to/2DQtXNK

Religious Evolution and the Axial Age: https://amzn.to/2UD7NFh

A HUGE THANK YOU TO MY PATRONS: KARIN LIETZCKE, ANN BLANCHETTE, SCIMED, PER HELGE HAAKSTD LARSEN, LAU GUERREIRO, RUI BELEZA, MIGUEL ESTRADA, ANTÓNIO CUNHA, CHANTEL GELINAS, JIM FRANK, JERRY MULLER, FRANCIS FORD, HANS FREDRIK SUNDE, BRIAN RIVERA, ADRIANO ANDRADE, YEVHEN BODRENKO, SERGIU CODREANU, ADAM BJERRE, ŁUKASZ STAFINIAK, AIRES ALMEIDA, BERNARDO SEIXAS, AND HERBERT GINTIS!

A SPECIAL THANKS TO MY PRODUCERS, YZAR WEHBE and ROSEY!

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