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 considers process that can lead to decreases in complexity or that can produce variation or proliferation without any significant changes in complexity. Sociocultural evolution is "the process by which structural reorganization is affected through time producing a form or structure, qualitatively different from the ancestral form". Most of the 19th-century and some 20th-century approaches to socioculture aimed to provide models for the evolution of humankind as a whole, arguing that different societies have reached different stages of social development; the most comprehensive attempt to develop a general theory of social evolution centering on the development of sociocultural systems, the work of Talcott Parsons, operated on a scale which included a theory of world history.

Another attempt, on a less systematic scale, originated from the 1970s with the world-systems approach of Immanuel Wallerstein and his followers. More recent approaches focus on changes specific to individual societies and reject the idea that cultures differ according to how far each one has moved along some presumed linear scale of social progress. Most modern archaeologists and cultural anthropologists work within the frameworks of neoevolutionism and modernization theory. Many different societies have existed in the course of human history, with estimates as high as a total of over one million separate societies. Anthropologists and sociologists assume that human beings have natural social tendencies and that particular human social behaviours have non-genetic causes and dynamics. Societies adapt themselves to these environments, it is thus inevitable. Specific theories of social or cultural evolution attempt to explain differences between coeval societies by positing that different societies have reached different stages of development.

Although such theories provide models for understanding the relationship between technologies, social structure or the values of a society, they vary as to the extent to which they describe specific mechanisms of variation and change. Early sociocultural evolution theories – the ideas of Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer and Lewis Henry Morgan – developed with, but independently of, Charles Darwin's works and were popular from the late 19th century to the end of World War I; these 19th-century unilineal evolution theories claimed that societies start out in a primitive state and become more civilized over time. Some forms of early sociocultural evolution theories have led to much-criticised theories like social Darwinism and scientific racism, sometimes used in the past to justify existing policies of colonialism and slavery and to justify new policies such as eugenics. Most 19th-century and some 20th-century approaches aimed to provide models for the evolution of humankind as a single entity.

However, most 20th-century approaches, such as multilineal evolution, focused on changes specific to individual societies. Moreover, they rejected directional change. Most archaeologists work within the framework of multilineal evolution. Other contemporary approaches to social change include neoevolutionism, dual inheritance theory, modernisation theory and postindustrial theory. In his seminal 1976 book The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins wrote that "there are some examples of cultural evolution in birds and monkeys, but... it is our own species that shows what cultural evolution can do". Enlightenment and thinkers speculated that societies progressed through stages: in other words, they saw history as stadial. While expecting humankind to show increasing development, theorists looked for what determined the course of human history. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, for example, saw social development as an inevitable process, it was assumed that societies start out primitive in a state of nature, could progress toward something resembling industrial Europe.

While earlier authors such as Michel de Montaigne had discussed how societies change through time, the Scottish Enlightenment of the 18th century proved key in the development of the idea of sociocultural evolution. In relation to Scotland's union with England in 1707, several Scottish thinkers pondered the relationship between progress and the affluence brought about by increased trade with England, they understood the changes Scotland was undergoing as involving transition from an agricultural to a mercantile society. In "conjectural histories", authors such as Adam Ferguson, John Millar and Adam Smith argued that societies all pass through a series of four stages: hunting and gathering and nomadism, a stage of commerce. Philosophical concepts of progress, such as that of Hegel, developed as well during this period. In France, authors such as Claude Adrien Helvétius and other philosophes were influenced by the Scottish tradition

Filemon Lagman, popularly known as Ka Popoy was a revolutionary socialist and workers' leader in the Philippines. He shares the ideology of Marxism-Leninism, he split with the Communist Party of the Philippines in 1991 to form Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino and the multi-sectoral group Sanlakas. From the split, he led the formation of the Partido ng Manggagawang Pilipino, an underground revolutionary socialist party, after his death, merged with the Sosyalistang Partido ng Paggawa and the Partido para sa Proletaryong Demokrasya. During the First Quarter Storm, he was a member of Samahang Demokratiko ng Kabataan in the 1970s. After only a year in college at the University of the Philippines, he decided to go underground and do full-time organizing work in the factories and urban poor communities in the northern sector of Metro Manila. Ka Popoy was elected Secretary of the Manila-Rizal Regional Party Committee of the CPP in the mid-70's and spearheaded the broad formation which challenged the Marcos dictatorship in 1978 Batasan Pambansa elections.

The Central Committee of the CPP admonished Ka Popoy and the whole regional committee for advocating participation in 1978 Batasan Pambansa elections because it ran counter to the CC call to head to the counryside to wage armed struggle against the dictatorship. Ka Popoy was only to return at the helm of the Manila-Rizal Regional Party Committee after the EDSA uprising of 1986. In spite of the differences with the central leadership, Ka Popoy strived harder to strengthen revolutionary work in the capital city. Ka Popoy is known to be the only Party leader that during the struggles with the CPP that put forward the most comprehensive and in-depth critique against the basic Party documents of CPP-NPA which are now popularly known as Counter-Thesis 1 and Counter-Thesis 2, he was the first prominent victim of a political assassination under the presidency of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, carried out in Bahay ng Alumni, University of the Philippines Diliman in Quezon City on February 8, 2001. His assassination is speculated to have been carried out by his former associates in the Communist Party.

The assassins and the culprits have not yet been apprehended as of 2008. On July 2007, the Quezon City Prosecutor’s Office decided to drop the case on eight suspected communist assassins since the witnesses were unable to attend the preliminary investigations. Filemon grew up in Caloocan City, he was a field athlete of Caloocan High School. He was of short stature, his belligerence started to manifest during his early high school days whenever he voices out his communistic beliefs by being argumentative against a few teachers that contradicted his ideologies. Superintendent of City Schools, Mrs. Modesta G. Boquiren "played politics" and heeded his voice on occasions by not contradicting him. Lagman found friendship with Mrs. Boquiren's nephew Florante "Randy" Deguzman as his temporary running mate in high school. Filemon graduated in 1970 while Florante in 1971. They've lost contact in College days. Filemon's first wife was Dodi Garduce, his brother is current Albay congressman Edcel Lagman. When Martial Law was declared on 21 September 1972, Lagman established the first network of the underground revolutionary movement in Navotas.

He organized, along with his comrades, the labor unions in factories and other work sites, launched mass mobilizations, developed a political mass base among workers and recruited more party members for the CPP. At the height of the CPP split, Lagman wrote the biggest critique on CPP founding chair Jose Maria Sison's book Philippine Society and Revolution--the Counter-thesis. Lagman argued in his critique that Philippine society was capitalist in a backward and underdeveloped way, rather than being semi-feudal and semi-colonial. Lagman thus posited that a workers-led revolution must be waged to dismantle capitalism, instead of a protracted people's war from the countryside. Lagman was ambushed and shot to death by two unknown assassins on the afternoon of 6 February 2001, at the east-side steps of the University of the Philippines Bahay ng Alumni in Diliman, Quezon City. At the time of his death, Ka Popoy was working on the launch of the Partido ng Manggagawa, the workers' political party that would participate in the 2001 mid-term elections, among other revolutionary tasks for the Filipino working class.

Filemon'Ka Popoy' Lagman Archive at Marxists Internet Archive Who is Ka Popoy Lagman? Popoy Lagman assassinated

FC Oshmyany is a Belarusian football club based in Oshmyany, Grodno Oblast. The club was founded in 2012 as Slavyanin Minsk and was based in Minsk. Slavyanin participated in Minsk-based amateur leagues in 2012–2013 and joined Belarusian Second League in 2014. In spring 2015 it was decided by team management to relocate the club to the town of Oshmyany and rename it accordingly. In 2016 FC Oshmyany, who finished 5th in last year's Second League season, were promoted to Belarusian First League as a replacement for a few withdrawn clubs; as of August 2019 Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality