EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL STRUCTURES 



BY LESTER FRANK WARD 



[Lester Frank Ward, Paleontologist, United States Geological Survey, b. Joliet, 

 Illinois, June 18, 1841. A.B. Columbian (now George Washington) University, 

 1869; L.B. ibid. 1871; A.M. ibid. 1872; LL.D. ibid. 1897. Officier d'Instruction 

 Publique de France, 1903; United States Treasury Department, 1865-1872; 

 Geologist, 1881; Professor of Sociology, Brown University, 1906. Member of the 

 American Association for the Advancement of Science; Washington Academy 

 of Sciences; American Philosophical Society; American Economic Association; 

 American Academy of Political and Social Science; Institut International de 

 Sociologie; American Sociological Society; and various Washington societies. 

 Author of Dynamic Sociology; The Psychic Factors of Civilization; Outlines of 

 Sociology; Pure Sociology; Applied Sociology; eight illustrated memoirs in the 

 publications of the United States Geological Survey.] 



IT is not my intention to attempt any general treatment of social 

 structures. That subject would be altogether too large for a single 

 paper. But, aside from that, there is no need of any such treatment. 

 Probably nine tenths of all the work done in sociology thus far is 

 of that kind. It consists chiefly in the description of social struc- 

 tures or in discussions of different aspects which they present. 

 But thus far I have met with no work dealing with the evolution 

 of social structures. By this I mean that sociologists have been 

 content to take up the social structures which they find actually 

 in existence, and to consider and examine them, often going into 

 the minutest details and exhaustively describing everything in any 

 way relating to them as finished products; but no one has as yet 

 attempted to explain what social structure is, or how these various 

 products have been formed. 



As a general proposition, social structures may be said to be 

 human institutions, using both terms in the broadest sense. In all 

 grades and kinds of society there are human institutions, and, 

 indeed, society may be said to consist of them. If we examine any 

 one of them, we find that it possesses a certain permanence and 

 stability. It is not a vague, intangible thing that will vanish at a 

 touch, but something fixed and durable. This is because it possesses 

 a structure. A structure is something that has been constructed, 

 and a study of social structure is the study of a process and not of 

 a product. Our task, therefore, is not to examine the various pro- 

 ducts of social construction, but to inquire into the methods of social 

 construction. 



Our language, like our ideas, is more or less anthropomorphic. 

 Man constructs, and the products are called structures. He takes 

 the materials that nature provides, and with them he builds what- 

 ever he needs houses, vehicles, boats, cities. Each of these pro- 

 ducts is a structure, but it is an artificial structure. The human 



