Knowra Leslie White Leslie White Leslie White was an American anthropologist who developed a theory of cultural evolution centered on societies’ ability to harness energy and use technology.
Cultural evolution : The long-term transformation of cultures through processes such as innovation, transmission, and selection. White argued that cultures evolve in general patterns rather than only through unique local histories.
White's law : Leslie White’s proposed relation between cultural development, energy use per capita, and the efficiency of energy capture. This formula states most directly how White linked energy harnessing to cultural evolution.
Multilinear evolution : An approach that explains cultural change through multiple trajectories shaped by distinct environments and histories. Julian Steward’s approach opposed a single general sequence of cultural development.
University of Chicago : A private research university in Chicago, Illinois, founded in 1890. White studied anthropology there and encountered approaches that shaped his intellectual development.
Neoevolutionism : A mid-twentieth-century revival of evolutionary explanations in anthropology, distinct from nineteenth-century unilineal schemes. White became one of the leading figures in this renewed anthropological interest in evolution.
Culture : Learned and shared patterns of meaning, behavior, institutions, and material life. White treated culture as a system that could be studied apart from individual psychology.
Energy capture : The harnessing of energy sources for human purposes through tools, institutions, and technical systems. White treated the amount of energy harnessed per person as a driver of cultural development.
Historical particularism : An anthropological approach that explains cultures through their distinct histories rather than universal evolutionary stages. Franz Boas’s school rejected broad evolutionary schemes of the kind White advanced.
University of Michigan : A public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, founded in 1817. White built his long academic career in anthropology at this university.
Cultural ecology : The study of how cultural practices interact with environmental conditions and resource use. White’s focus on energy use helped foreground material and ecological factors in cultural change.
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