Darwinism (and Social Darwinism)

Abstract

From the 1830s, doctrines of creationism were increasingly challenged, initially by geological discoveries and then by evolutionary theories, which were first applied to animal and plant species, and later extended to humanity. Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, introduced in 1859 in The Origin of Species, led to the emergence of the term Darwinism, which was applied to an array of biological theories. Similarly, the label Social Darwinism incorporated a number of socio-cultural evolutionary theories, which were often non-Darwinian in outlook. The application of bio-evolutionary theories to the social realm naturalized the social order, legitimizing European imperialism and reinforcing class and racial hierarchies as demonstrated through the work of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century geographers and other theorists. The metaphor of society as organism was central to the work of Herbert Spencer, Freidrich Ratzel, and Halford Mackinder, and influenced the later development of urban ecology, while racial hierarchies were reinforced through cartographic representation in the work of William Zebina Ripley, Ellsworth Huntington, and Griffith Taylor. The negative associations of Social Darwinism with imperialism, Nazism, and eugenics meant that critical engagement with evolutionary theories was absent from human geography in the latter part of the 20th century – an absence which has begun to receive renewed, but limited, attention since the 1990s. Setting aside the negative misinterpretations of Darwin’s work there is space for a fuller engagement with Darwinian themes within contemporary human geography in relation to issues such as climate change and challenges to species diversity, critiques of the nature/ culture divide and more than human geographies, and wider ethical concerns.