Unilineaire

Unilineaire, or unilinear in English, describes a development model that proceeds along a single line or direction. In anthropology, unilinear evolution posits that all human societies pass through a fixed sequence of stages on a single ladder from “savagery” to “civilization.” The stages are often arranged in a universal order, with societies judged by their stage. The tradition draws on 19th-century scholars like Lewis Henry Morgan and Edward Burnett Tylor, who used comparative data to outline a shared progression.

The theory was influential but controversial, implying ethnocentric judgments and cultural superiority. It faced criticism from Franz Boas and other early 20th-century anthropologists, who argued that cultures develop along multiple, divergent paths shaped by environment, history, contact, and internal dynamics. This led to the rise of multilinear evolution and cultural relativism, which reject a single universal timeline.

Today, the term unilinear is mostly used in historical discussions of the discipline to describe this legacy; it is not widely applied as a descriptive model for contemporary ethnography. In other fields, unilinear may appear as a generic descriptor for processes believed to follow a single directional progression, but it is less common in formal theory.