Sociocultural evolution,
sociocultural evolutionism or
cultural evolution are theories of cultural and
social evolution that describe how
cultures and
societies change over time. Whereas sociocultural development traces processes that tend to increase the
complexity of a society or culture, sociocultural evolution also considers process that can lead to decreases in complexity (
degeneration) or that can produce variation or proliferation without any seemingly significant changes in complexity (
cladogenesis). Sociocultural evolution is "the process by which structural reorganization is affected through time, eventually producing a form or structure which is qualitatively different from the ancestral form".