A Place for Everyone. The Structure of Arroyo Culebro D Cemetery and The Social Organization in the Middle Tagus Valley Iron Age (Spain)

The relationship between agriculture, sedentarization and the emergence of inequality has been a common subject when analysing the transition between egalitarian and non‐egalitarian societies. However, the strategies used during that process and their archaeological expressions are difficult to detect and interpret. The aim of this paper is to provide an example – the emergence of Early Iron Age cremation cemeteries in the Middle Tagus valley – of how this transformation could have been materially expressed. Through the study of Arroyo Culebro D and other cremation cemeteries, we will analyse the crucial moment when the structural changes that sedentarization carries started to be ideologically assumed, expressed and (or) repressed.     

HIERARCHY AND ‘HEROIC SOCIETY‘: MANAM VARIATIONS IN SEPIK SOCIAL STRUCTURE

Anthropologists have come to recognize that in addition to the prevalence of egalitarian relations, many New Guinea societies also exhibit elements of hierarchy as well. This article discusses the nature of hierarchy in some Sepik societies through the comparative analysis of the social structure of four Sepik area societies on the northeast coast of Papua New Guinea. Using Sahlins' definition of ‘heroic societies’ based upon a principle of ‘hierarchical solidarity’, the article argues that the form of hierarchy found in Manam Island society is different in type from that of the neighboring societies of Boroi, Murik and Wogeo. An additional diagnostic feature of heroic societies is what Sahlins refers to as ‘heroic history. In Manam the cultural form this takes is a ‘heroic’ variation of the myth of two brothers common throughout the area.     

Land and society in early Canada and South Africa

The rural societies of early Canada and South Africa overwhelmingly comprised independent families on their own land and, in comparison with their European antecedents, were strikingly egalitarian and homogeneous. The transformation and simplification of European society in early Canada and South Africa was not the result of fragmentation—the isolation of particular elements of the European whole in remote new settings. Rather, these two colonial societies were common products of the introduction of European assumptions about family and land into settings where land was cheap and markets for farm produce were poor. Taken together these factors are sufficient to explain the general character of rural society in early Canada and most of early South Africa.     

Unlikely amazons: Brazilian indigenous gender constructs in a modern context

Feminist theory predicts that when traditional societies with egalitarian gender relations contact European state societies in which gender stratification exists, the traditional society will adopt the European gender construct. This rule may be modified in cases where the relations between the two types of society are modulated by interpretive processes which allow the state society to appropriate symbols of the indigenous culture for their own purposes, and the indigenous society to shape contact and change as they occur. This article describes how European contact transformed gender constructs among the Bakairí Indians of central Brazil, while accounting for the presence of an anomalous group of women who behave differently to the typical Indian woman. It explains how individual Bakairí, along with the support of key Brazilian institutions, have employed interpretively the early-contact indigenous version of the female gender role to authenticate the indigenous identity.     

‘The Bashful and the Boastful’

The creation and maintenance of influential leaders and authorities is one of the key themes of archaeological and historical enquiry. However, the social dynamics of authorities and leaders in the Mesolithic remains a largely unexplored area of study. The role and influence of authorities can vary remarkably in different situations, yet they exist in all societies and in almost all social contexts from playgrounds to parliaments. Here we explore the literature on the dynamics of authority creation, maintenance and contestation in egalitarian societies, and discuss the implications for our interpretation and understanding of the formation of authorities and leaders and changing social relationships in the Mesolithic.     

部落联盟模式与希腊罗马早期社会权力结构

近年来,谢维扬教授的国家起源理论在史学界产生了广泛影响。它的基本框架是,在人类社会早期国家的产生道路上,有部落联盟和酋邦两种模式。由前一模式产生出来的国家,政治制度具有民主的性质,如雅典和罗马。由后一模式产生出来的国家,政治制度则是专制性质的,如中国、阿兹特克、印加和祖鲁。     

In permanent transition: Multiple temporalities of communitas in the Enawenê-nawê ritual everyday

This article extends Turner’s central idea about the dialectic between communitas and structure, which he understood to generate social and historical dynamics across cultures. For Turner, this tended to be a story of temporal alternation and the constitutive instability of social structures which are always being potentially undone by communitas. In this article, the author starts from the premise that Enawenê-nawê society is hyperstructured – like other central Brazilian societies made famous by Lévi-Strauss and others – and that as such, it also needs a heavy dose of communitas. The article is about the nested temporal scales at which communitas interacts with structure. It argues that the Enawenê-nawê have achieved permanent communitas – an egalitarian social structure – by living in a permanent state of transition.     

The Stalk that Supports the Flower: Orang Rimba Kinship,Marriage and Gender in Jambi Sumatra

This article examines Orang Rimba kinship, marriage and gender relations in the Bukit Duabelas region of Jambi, Sumatra. Orang Rimba social organization, its terms and concepts, primary kinship relations, use of botanic metaphor and key structural contrasts demonstrate their ties to Malay and Austronesian‐speaking peoples throughout the region. The manner in which these concepts are applied is very different, and is arranged in a way to fit their unique way of life in the forests. Some of the broader differences relate to their mobile economy, small and dispersed camps, and asymmetrical relations of affinity, which take place in the context of egalitarian social relations. This results in a set of social relationships not unlike many of the bride service societies throughout the world. Orang Rimba women have great rights over forest resources, yet are restrained in their interactions with men and outsiders by rigid gender relations.     

Identifying high-status foods in the archeological record

More than providing simply nutritive value, food in human societies can be endowed with great social weight. Aspects of any given food system inform, and are informed by, a variety of social, economic, religious, historical, ecological, cultural, and political processes. Moreover, food systems are often intentionally designed and executed to communicate key aspects of a consumer’s identity including class or social status. The manipulation of food systems on the part of socio-political elites or high status individuals is but one example of this phenomenon, the appearance of which is a correlate of increased socio-political hierarchy. As food can come to be used by elites as a socio-political tool in stratified societies, the temptation to use archeologically recognizable differences in foodways as a means of understanding the origin, nature, and functioning of processes of stratification is strong. The obvious difficulty lies in developing theoretically informed methods that reckon food system differences in ways that enable scholars to identify those foods that may have been particularly imbued with social meaning. In this paper, we propose a metric for the identification of elite foods (or, indeed, socially valued foods) using the types of data typically available to archeologists. Based on these proposed criteria, we attempt to unravel the complex and politically charged food system of the stratified societies of the pre-Columbian Greater Antilles with an eye towards refining our understanding of the development and maintenance of prestige and institutionalized power therein.     

Jatanā: A Peasant Woman’s Ballad from Haryana in North India

Women’s private folk songs in male-dominated societies often keep a fascinating record of their critique of the patriarchy’s hegemonic tendencies. These folk songs reveal the women’s sense of resentment against their subordinated position in a patriarchal system, and also their desire to live in an egalitarian world. This article analyses a North Indian Haryanvi peasant women’s folk ballad called Jatanā as a site of both resentment against masculinist culture and imaginative and defiant escape from its bounds.     

The Archaeology of Food and Social Inequality in the Andes

A comparative examination of food practices is useful for assessing the nature of diverse forms of social inequality. This article examines three key contexts in which to evaluate the relationship between social differentiation and food practices in the Andes: early complex societies, pre-Columbian states and nonstate complex societies, and colonial societies. A review of these distinct contexts suggests that social and subsistence change may follow different rhythms and that food-related differentiation, just like other forms of social differentiation, is neither consistently augmented in a scalar fashion in relation to “degrees” of social complexity, nor is it in all cases a direct indicator of economic inequality.     

The Archaeology of the Plateau of Northwestern North America During the Late Prehistoric Period (3500–200 <Emphasis Type="SmallCaps">B.P.</Emphasis>): Evolution of Hunting and Gathering Societies

The Plateau of northwestern North America offers one of the world's most important records of hunter–gatherer cultural diversity and evolutionary process. During the late prehistoric period, Plateau hunter–gatherers participated in a wide variety of mobile and sedentary mobility regimes, maintained diets emphasizing anadromous fish, roots, and larger game animals, and held patterns of social organization spanning egalitarian through ranked societies. In this paper, we provide a broad overview of the final 3500 years of human occupation on the Plateau that includes two primary goals. First, we provide a new chronology of late prehistoric cultural change and stability that integrates data from the Northern or Canadian Plateau and the Southern or Columbia Plateau. Second, we offer new ideas concerning the emergence, dispersal, and diversification of Plateau hunting and gathering societies. We close with recommendations for Plateau archaeology in the 21st century.     

Food and complex societies

In complex societies individuals from distinct social, economic, gender, or age groups often consume different foods because of various economic, political, and ideological factors. The food system not only involves what is consumed but includes the labor and technology that goes into the production and preparation of food as well as how certain foods are distributed and eventually discarded. Food systems within and among complex societies are thus tightly intertwined with social differentiation and the political economy and participate in defining and maintaining differential social relations.     

Feeding fears: competing discourses of interdependency,sovereignty, and China's food security

Following the release of the 1994 report ‘Who will feed China?’ by the Worldwatch Institute, there has been much debate over the implications of China's growing demand for grain. The question of China's food production has elicited a variety of responses. While for some it raises the specter of regional and global instability as China becomes an environmental threat, for others the entrance of China into the world market promises increased trade and profits. In this paper I explore the responses in China and the US to the different notions of interdependence which have shaped the debate. I first turn to how concerns over China's food supply have, despite appeals to the concepts of global environmental and economic interdependence, become linked to classical state-centered geopolitical concerns such as ‘sovereignty’ and ‘containment.’ I then look at how the debate has also been actively distanced from national security concerns through the invocation of an alternative interdependence founded on the logic of commerce. I conclude by arguing for the need within critical geopolitics to further examine the circulation of strategic texts between and within states, particularly in the analysis of texts that map worlds beyond the boundaries of North America and Europe.     

Production risk,inter-annual food storage by households and population-level consequences in seasonal prehistoric agrarian societies

Abstract

Using complementary behavioural and population ecological models, we explore the role of production risk, normal surplus and inter-annual food storage in the adaptations of societies dependent on seasonal agriculture. We find that (a) household-level, risk-sensitive adaption to unpredictable environmental variation in annual agricultural yields is a sufficient explanation for the origins of normal agrarian surplus and, consequently, of household-level incentives for inter-annual food storage; and, (b) at the population level, density-dependent Malthusian processes tightly constrain the circumstances under which this same mechanism can be effective in smoothing inter-annual fluctuations in household food availability. Greater environmental variation and higher levels of fixed set-asides such as seed requirements or transfer obligations to political authorities lead to more severe, periodic famines; however, outside of famine events, these same factors improve average population welfare by suppressing population density to levels at which Malthusian constraints have lessened impact. The combination of behavioural and population ecological modelling methods has broad and complementary potential for illustrating the dynamic properties of complex, coupled human–natural systems.     

Emancipatory or Neoliberal Food Politics? Exploring the “Politics of Collectivity” of Buying Groups in the Search for Egalitarian Food Democracies

In the context of apolitical tendencies in food studies, this paper explores how alternative food networks can contribute to developing emancipatory food politics rather than constitute a tool to reproduce neoliberal subjectivities. For this purpose, I contend that the post‐political literature offers a useful approach to examining the concept of food politics by developing a more robust theoretical framework, permitting the establishment of linkages with broader contemporary processes of social change. The analysis of an action‐research process with buying groups in Spain is used to examine the “politics of collectivity” at play, that is, how these initiatives institutionalise “the political”. Specifically I explore the motivations mobilised to construct place‐based ethical repertoires and unveil how these groups govern the relationality of consumption practices in the pursuit of broader processes of change. I conclude by discussing the contribution of these initiatives to building egalitarian food democracies.     

Eros and Modernity,or Sympathy and Nihilism

Chantal Delsol's work is distinguished by its articulation of the interdependence of an effective defense of human rights with a truthful understanding of the dignified responsibility of the human person. Most of the experience of the modern world, however, has called into question the sustainability of the experience of the person, while also making it clear that human beings do not have the option of returning to some more holistic world. Delsol reflects on the emptiness of the experience of the modern individual, the inability of modern societies to accord proper dignity to caregiving, and the continuing need for a personal theology.     

Bakhtin,Boredom, and the ‘Democratization of Skepticism’

This article examines recent scholarly work on boredom by drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin’s account of modernity, irony, and mass skepticism. In The Arcades Project, Walter Benjamin noted that, beginning in the 1840s, Western societies had been gripped by an “epidemic of boredom.” He was referring to a peculiarly modern form of mass boredom, associated with the “atrophy of experience” in a mechanized and urbanized social life—a boredom Elizabeth S. Goodstein has characterized as the “democratization of skepticism.” Although Bakhtin says little about “boredom” directly, he probes the sociocultural conditions that give rise to it. Bakhtin, for example, celebrates the liberatory and egalitarian promise of modern vernacular speech, which displays a healthy suspicion of “monotonic” qualities of elite genres, and which springs not from the pulpit or the palace, but from the street, the marketplace and the public square. Bakhtin is concerned about the nihilistic implications of this disenchantment of the world and the threats it poses—indifference, reification and alienation—to the “participative” mode of social life he favours.     

Economic Integration and the Politics of Independence

Abstract. Are nationalism and international economic integration irreconcilable? This paper explores the theoretical connections between these two phenomena and develops a framework to assess the implications of international economic integration for nationalist movements in the developed West. We focus upon the structural context of nationalism in democratic societies, emphasising the impact of changes in the international political economy and the influence of domestic institutions. Although the demand for secession may not stem from economic calculations, the expected costs and benefits of independence are constraints to nationalist mobilisation and are conditioned by the structure of the international political economy. We identify three ideal types of international structures and discuss how the strategies and prospects of nationalist movements are shaped within each of them. We find that a structure of ‘institutionalised interdependence’ is most conducive to nationalist mobilisation in a liberal democratic context, but the impact of economic integration depends largely upon conditions defined by domestic institutional structures.