Agency and Archaeology: Past, Present, and Future Directions

In light of the growing social scientific interest in agency theory, this paper sets out to examine and critically evaluate recent approaches to agency within archaeology. To this end, the paper briefly outlines the foundational theories of Pierre Bourdieu and Anthony Giddens before turning to discuss the central themes and issues that emerge from some of the more influential contemporary approaches to agency within archaeology. Drawing from these differing approaches, this paper seeks to establish conceptual clarity in archaeological thinking about agency through a discussion of the importance of distinguishing between intentions, consequences, meanings, and motives when seeking to understand the situated subjectivities of historical actors.     

Linking Theory and Evidence in an Archaeology of Human Agency: Iconography,Style, and Theories of Embodiment

Many of the theories that inspire agency approaches in archaeology identify deep philosophical problems with other lines of thought. This creates challenges for identifying methods: do radical theories require radical methods? Choosing as a case study one of agency’s interpretive frameworks (embodiment) and, further, a single class of evidence (anthropomorphic imagery), I argue that the answer is “no.” In this case, familiar art historical methods, deliberately played off one against the other, provide a middle range framework for linking theory and evidence.     

Doing Archaeology as a Feminist: Introduction

Gender research archaeology has made significant contributions, but its dissociation from the resources of feminist scholarship and feminist activism is a significantly limiting factor in its development. The essays that make up this special issue illustrate what is to be gained by making systematic use of these resources. Their distinctively feminist contributions are characterized in terms of the recommendations for “doing science as a feminist” that have taken shape in the context of the long running “feminist method debate” in the social sciences.     

Doing Archaeology in a Turbulent Time

African Archaeological Review -     

Agents in Inter-Action: Bruno Latour and Agency

This paper aims to describe Bruno Latour's contributions to the theory and methodology of agency in the Philosophy of Science and to apply them to the study of agency in archaeology. These contributions include an understanding of how artifacts or representations of the world emerge, what the best conditions to study them under are and how to understand the process of change they undergo. A case study using the Hopewell burial mounds of the Lower Illinois Valley will serve to demonstrate the application of this methodology.     

Painting as Agency,Style as Structure: Innovations in Mimbres Pottery Designs From Southwest New Mexico

The act of painting a design is a form of agency, and the overall style of that design in part can be conceptualized as a kind of structure. This perspective is used as a basis for analyzing chronological changes in designs on Mimbres Black-on-white pottery (ca. AD 750–1150) from Southwest New Mexico. Specific focus is on a methodology that can be used to detect innovations, that is, the introduction of novel designs that are incorporated into the design corpus and thus transform the structure. The conceptualization of a particular tradition (in this instance, pottery painting) as a form of structure analogous to general structure in Giddens' sense thus provides important insights into the recursive relationship between agency and structure.     

The Old Kinchega Homestead: Doing Household Archaeology in Outback New South Wales, Australia

The Kinchega Pastoral Station in western New South Wales, Australia, was one of the earliest and largest in the area. A study of one of the station's homestead is demonstrating how the integration and negotiation of material and documentary evidence produces information on domestic behavior in rural Australia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and highlights the activities of women and children in an environment whose history has been dominated by the exploits of men.     

大型旅行社空间扩张的区位选择--"上海春秋"案例

旅行社是介于旅游吸引物与旅游者之间的组织者,它对地理区位的选择是本文的探讨重点。本文以上海春秋国际旅行社为例,归纳它在国内宏、微观选址的经验,得到其以省会城市、著名旅游城市、新兴经济发达城市为节点的宏观网络和以中心门市及社区门市为节点的微观网络;根据区位因素理论,初步分析了与旅行社空间区位选择有关的一些因素,包括对市场、成本等一般性因素的分析和对行为等特殊性因素的分析;最后,提出旅行社的区位扩张不仅要重视物理空间,也要重视网络信息空间。     

Sorcery and Negotiating Economic Agency: A Critical Observation from Solomon Islands

In this paper, my aim is to add to the discussions of sorcery in Melanesia by focussing on its relation to economic agency in the context of a case example from Malaita, Solomon Islands. Using Taylor's (2015) categories of ‘distributive’ and ‘possessive’ agency as a critical point of departure, I illustrate how sorcery can be considered as an outcome when people are perceived not to be balancing these forms of economic agency. By drawing on the example of an entrepreneur from Malaita, I highlight the complexity of the negotiations between possessive and distributive agencies and show how critically investigating these negotiations is important for understanding why sorcery may happen but also how to limit the chances of it happening. Furthermore, I also illustrate how critical investigations of accounts of sorcery can reveal complexities of socio‐economic and political life in changing economic and social circumstances.     

旅行社产品需求个性化和网络采购

本从旅行社产品原材料的特点和旅游需求个性化趋势对旅游产品的影响的角度,分析了利用网络技术进行旅行社产品生产的必要性,并探讨了旅行社网上采购的B2B模式。     

旅行社产品的双重属性及最优广告策略

旅行社产品具有搜寻品与经验品的双重属性,其旅游线路属于搜寻品,其服务属于经验品。信息性广告适用于搜寻品,劝说性广告适用于经验品。由于旅行社产品中的服务是不确定和不可观测的,用劝说性广告来显示其质量是不可置信的。再加上旅行社广告在旅游产业链上的纵向外部性,旅行社的最优广告策略是对旅游线路提供基本信息的信息性广告。     

我国旅行社业挂靠经营现象的市场监管博弈分析

我国旅行社行业的挂靠经营现象屡禁不止,成为危害旅行社经营环境和损害旅游者合法权益的一大顽症。本文从博弈论的角度出发,建立起挂靠经营现象博弈模型和挂靠经营监管博弈模型,并运用这些模型对旅行社和挂靠者在挂靠经营合作中的策略选择、政府部门与旅行社及其合作伙伴的期望收益、旅游市场监管效果等进行了深入的分析,并在此基础上提出了政策建议。     

社区考古学:文化遗产管理还是考古学研究

社区考古学反映了一种全新的文化遗产管理和考古学研究的思路,其实践仍然具有草创性、不平衡性和多元性。社区考古学是作为让本土社会获得考古学权力的工作方式,以权力让渡为核心,主要涉及发掘权、阐释权、教育权和商业开发权。社区考古学理念确立了社区在文化遗产管理的主体观念,廓清了中国的生态博物馆运动对生态观念和文化保护与经济发展的关系的误解。在考古学研究上,社区考古学是情境考古学的表现形式,将通过采取不同的视角揭示传统考古学研究所无法触及的问题。     

Agency Evolution, New Institutionalism, and 'Hybrid' Policy Domains: Lessons from the 'Greening' of the U.S. Military

Neoinstitutionalists applying the logic of rational choice institutionalism have leavened our understanding of public agency design and evolution in the domestic and national security policy domains. This paper seeks to advance theory building in empirically grounded ways by assessing the explanatory power of an important theoretical perspective (rational choice institutionalism), in an understudied "hybrid" policy domain where domestic and national security aims interact (domestic environmental policy and national security policy), and in an organizational type (the U.S. military) that has drawn scant attention from students of bureaucracy in political science, public administration, or public management. Analysis of three major efforts to green the U.S. military suggests that the patterns of politics accompanying agency evolution involving hybrid policy domains differ from domestic and national security domains in ways that limit the generalizability of rational choice institutionalism.     

Building Power in Rural Hinterlands: An Ethnoarchaeological Study of Vernacular Architecture in Tigray,Ethiopia

In Tigray, Ethiopia highland farmers and noblemen used a common vernacular architecture to build places of political authority and power during the last century of Ethiopia's feudal economy. This study contributes to the perspective that domestic houses are active political locales integrated into the larger political landscape. In addition, it is argued that vernacular architectural style generates hierarchical power in part by manipulating building strategies usually attributed to monumental construction. The study concludes that vernacular architecture is actively engaged in rendering a political aesthetic that reproduces state authority in rural hinterlands.     

Community Archaeology in Proto-Historical Tel Bareqet,Israel: School Children and Agency for Active Public Engagement in Cultural Heritage Projects

Abstract

Community archaeology has become very popular over the past decade, and community archaeology projects are yielding interesting results in many regions around the globe (Merriman, 2004). These projects seem to be gaining academic importance as well, and are considered by some people to be vital to the survival of archaeology as a whole (Marshall, 2002: 218).

Still, community archaeology projects often stir debate regarding their importance, role, and existence. A major theme of these discussions is the role played by the community. In particular, the question is often raised of what role, if any, should be given to non-professional local populations in a project's scientific decision-making.

The current article aims to present the controversy between two types of archaeological practices, 'archaeology from above' and 'archaeology from below' (Faulkner, 2000) through the examination of a community archaeological project in which schoolchildren constitute the community participants. The site of the excavation is Tel Bareqet, a 5000-year-old (Early Bronze Age II, c. 3050–2700 BCE) urban settlement located in central Israel. On the one hand, the excavation strives to maintain the highest scientific standard; on the other hand, it depends upon the participation of unskilled young people in the excavation process.

This article presents obstacles that have been encountered in this excavation, and describes the methodological framework that has been developed in order to overcome these obstacles and continue carrying out a successful community archaeology project.     

Discursive Agency: (Re‐)Conceptualizing Actors and Practices in the Analysis of Discursive Policymaking

Interpretive discourse analysis commonly claims to address the interrelation between actors and discourses. However, the analytical focus of most approaches is on structures (discourses) while much less attention is paid to agency. This paper explicitly addresses discursive agency in two steps. First, we systematically review theoretical and analytical dimensions of agency in existing interpretive discourse analysis approaches. This review reveals a set of shared assumptions; most notably a concept of “trialectic” agency emphasizing the constitution of agency among the individual, the (discursive) structures, and the researcher's interpretation. Second, we propose an analytical heuristic, the Discursive Agency Approach, which is developed on the basis of the review and own empirical data. The proposed approach consists of four elements: (1) policy discourses, (2) political institutions, (3) agents defined via a set of characteristics, and (4) strategic practices. This approach is meant to facilitate a systematic exploration of agency under a discourse perspective, tackling the question of how a policy is constituted through the agency ascribed to its proponents in dynamic discursive processes, and how actors acquire political relevance through discursive means. To enable this goal, we propose distinct research steps and associated methods that link the approach to existing means of analysis.