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Collective Action In The Formation Of Pre Modern States
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Book Synopsis Collective Action in the Formation of Pre-Modern States by : Richard Blanton
Download or read book Collective Action in the Formation of Pre-Modern States written by Richard Blanton and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anthropological archaeology and other disciplines concerned with the formation of early complex societies are undergoing a theoretical shift. Given the need for new directions in theory, the book proposes that anthropologists look to political science, especially the rational choice theory of collective action. The authors subject collective action theory to a methodologically rigorous evaluation using systematic cross-cultural analysis based on a world-wide sample of societies.
Book Synopsis Power from Below in Premodern Societies by : T. L. Thurston
Download or read book Power from Below in Premodern Societies written by T. L. Thurston and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-21 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume challenges previous views of social organization focused on elites by offering innovative perspectives on 'power from below.' Using a variety of archaeological, anthropological, and historical data to question traditional narratives of complexity as inextricably linked to top-down power structures, it exemplifies how commoners have developed strategies to sustain non-hierarchical networks and contest the rise of inequalities. Through case studies from around the world – ranging from Europe to New Guinea, and from Mesoamerica to China – an international team of contributors explores the diverse and dynamic nature of power relations in premodern societies. The theoretical models discussed throughout the volume include a reassessment of key concepts such as heterarchy, collective action, and resistance. Thus, the book adds considerable nuance to our understanding of power in the past, and also opens new avenues of reflection that can help inform discussions about our collective present and future.
Book Synopsis The Neighborhood as a Social and Spatial Unit in Mesoamerican Cities by : M. Charlotte Arnauld
Download or read book The Neighborhood as a Social and Spatial Unit in Mesoamerican Cities written by M. Charlotte Arnauld and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2012-12-01 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent realizations that prehispanic cities in Mesoamerica were fundamentally different from western cities of the same period have led to increasing examination of the neighborhood as an intermediate unit at the heart of prehispanic urbanization. This book addresses the subject of neighborhoods in archaeology as analytical units between households and whole settlements. The contributions gathered here provide fieldwork data to document the existence of sociopolitically distinct neighborhoods within ancient Mesoamerican settlements, building upon recent advances in multi-scale archaeological studies of these communities. Chapters illustrate the cultural variation across Mesoamerica, including data and interpretations on several different cities with a thematic focus on regional contrasts. This topic is relatively new and complex, and this book is a strong contribution for three interwoven reasons. First, the long history of research on the “Teotihuacan barrios” is scrutinized and withstands the test of new evidence and comparison with other Mesoamerican cities. Second, Maya studies of dense settlement patterns are now mature enough to provide substantial case studies. Third, theoretical investigation of ancient urbanization all over the world is now more complex and open than it was before, giving relevance to Mesoamerican perspectives on ancient and modern societies in time and space. This volume will be of interest not only to scholars and student specialists of the Mesoamerican past but also to social scientists and urbanists looking to contrast ancient cultures worldwide.
Book Synopsis Historical Ecologies, Heterarchies and Transtemporal Landscapes by : Celeste Ray
Download or read book Historical Ecologies, Heterarchies and Transtemporal Landscapes written by Celeste Ray and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-04-23 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interlacing varied approaches within Historical Ecology, this volume offers new routes to researching and understanding human–environmental interactions and the heterarchical power relations that shape both socioecological change and resilience over time. Historical Ecology draws from archaeology, archival research, ethnography, the humanities and the biophysical sciences to merge the history of the Earth’s biophysical system with the history of humanity. Considering landscape as the spatial manifestation of the relations between humans and their environments through time, the authors in this volume examine the multi-directional power dynamics that have shaped settlement, agrarian, monumental and ritual landscapes through the long-term field projects they have pursued around the globe. Examining both biocultural stability and change through the longue durée in different regions, these essays highlight intersectionality and counterpoised power flows to demonstrate that alongside and in spite of hierarchical ideologies, the daily life of power is heterarchical. Knowledge of transtemporal human–environmental relationships is necessary for strategizing socioecological resilience. Historical Ecology shows how the past can be useful to the future.
Book Synopsis Prestate Societies of the North Central European Plains by : Ludomir R Lozny
Download or read book Prestate Societies of the North Central European Plains written by Ludomir R Lozny and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-04-16 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers a new perspective on social dynamics and culture change in the North Central European Plains (NCEP) from 600 to 900 CE. It discusses long-term causal processes leading to the formation of state at the fringes of the Merovingian and Frankish Kingdoms, the Carolingian and the Holy Roman Empire, the Scandinavian Kingdoms, the Czech Kingdom, and the Kingdom of Rus. The central problem addressed is how to account for and explain the transition from noncomplex to supra-tribal polities between 600 and 900 CE. The examined evidence shows that a very basic community-level management of common pool resources seems a successful strategy to manage short term risk and may lead to sustainable higher level political organization. In conclusion it present a models of social dynamics of the NCEP, 600-900 CE that suggests that the state formation process was an outcome of spontaneous processes and deterministic factors occurring within a period of approximately 400 years, of which the last two hundred years (800-900 CE) were the most critical. In a broader context, the point discussed is that decisions with short-term goals have long-term consequences.
Download or read book Diverging Paths? written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2014-09-04 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Diverging Paths? investigates an important question, to which the answers must be very complex: “why did certain sorts of institutionalisation and institutional continuity characterise government and society in Christendom by the later Middle Ages, but not the Islamic world, whereas the reverse end-point might have been predicted from the early medieval situation?” This core question lies within classic historiographical debates, to which the essays in the volume, written by leading medievalists, make significant contributions. The papers, drawing on a wide range of evidence and methodologies, span the middle ages, chronologically and geographically. At the same time, the core question relates to matters of strong contemporary interest, notably the perceived characteristics of power exercised within Islamic Middle Eastern regimes. Contributors are Stuart Airlie, Gadi Algazi, Sandro Carocci, Simone Collavini, Emanuele Conte, Nadia El Cheikh, Maribel Fierro, John Hudson, Caroline Humfress, Michel Kaplan, Hugh Kennedy, Simon MacLean, Eduardo Manzano, Susana Naroztky, Annliese Nef, Vivien Prigent, Ana Rodríguez, Magnus Ryan and Bernard Stolte.
Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of Mesoamerican Archaeology by : Deborah L. Nichols
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Mesoamerican Archaeology written by Deborah L. Nichols and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-09-24 with total page 996 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Mesoamerican Archaeology provides a current and comprehensive guide to the recent and on-going archaeology of Mesoamerica. Though the emphasis is on prehispanic societies, this Handbook also includes coverage of important new work by archaeologists on the Colonial and Republican periods. Unique among recent works, the text brings together in a single volume article-length regional syntheses and topical overviews written by active scholars in the field of Mesoamerican archaeology. The first section of the Handbook provides an overview of recent history and trends of Mesoamerica and articles on national archaeology programs and practice in Central America and Mexico written by archaeologists from these countries. These are followed by regional syntheses organized by time period, beginning with early hunter-gatherer societies and the first farmers of Mesoamerica and concluding with a discussion of the Spanish Conquest and frontiers and peripheries of Mesoamerica. Topical and comparative articles comprise the remainder of Handbook. They cover important dimensions of prehispanic societies--from ecology, economy, and environment to social and political relations--and discuss significant methodological contributions, such as geo-chemical source studies, as well as new theories and diverse theoretical perspectives. The Handbook concludes with a section on the archaeology of the Spanish conquest and the Colonial and Republican periods to connect the prehispanic, proto-historic, and historic periods. This volume will be a must-read for students and professional archaeologists, as well as other scholars including historians, art historians, geographers, and ethnographers with an interest in Mesoamerica.
Book Synopsis Origins, Foundations, Sustainability and Trip Lines of Good Governance: Archaeological and Historical Considerations by : Gary M. Feinman
Download or read book Origins, Foundations, Sustainability and Trip Lines of Good Governance: Archaeological and Historical Considerations written by Gary M. Feinman and published by Frontiers Media SA. This book was released on 2022-10-05 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Until recently, scholarly consensus across the social sciences and history adhered to the view that the incorporation of citizen voice in governance (e.g., democracy) was an entirely Western phenomenon that mostly is a product of the emergence of rational thought and the modern world. These views are now empirically questioned and subject to serious reconsideration. Yet, even researchers who recognize a broader temporal span for democratic or “good” governance draw fundamental distinctions between these political forms in the past and present. Building on the collective action theories, in particular those focused on fiscal financing, the editors of this Research Topic outline fundamental characteristics (internal financing, equitable taxation, checks on power, and a functioning bureaucracy) at the core of good governance, which are neither the sole project of the contemporary West, nor tied to any specific ideological construct or form of leadership. Even elections can no longer be conceived as assurance of good governance. At this time of global challenges to democracy, understanding the comparative history of good governments, their core institutions, how they worked, their foundations, what led to their downfalls, and the factors that prompted their sustenance or their collapses are extremely important to document. The historical trends and coactive processes that underpinned those human cooperative arrangements, which fostered growth and general well-being, require comparative focus if we are to draw on the wealth of human history to help craft better governance in the future and forestall the tripwires that lead to its failures. We welcome contributions which focus on; • Diachronic examinations of changes in the fiscal foundations of governance and their impacts on governance. • Comparative analysis of governmental variability and its relationship to collective action and its fiscal financing. • Cross-temporal studies of shifts in the degree of good governance and relations to inequality, sustainability, bureaucracy, public goods and services, and fiscal financing. • The importance of social compacts and contracts in representative government and how these are sustained and break down. • Alternatives and supplements to elections as means of assessing subaltern voices. • The relationship between governance and inequality over time and across space. • Differences in modes of political collapse and their relationship to governance, fiscal financing, and responses of principals. • The role of public ritual in good versus autocratic governments. • Variance in communication and computation in good versus autocratic governments. • The relationship between comparative governance and the uses and spatial distributions of community/urban space, residential and non-residential architecture, sprawl versus compact settlement. • The relationship between comparative governance and neighborhood organization. • Was there one or many episodes of enlightenment? • The relationship between governance and coactive processes including considerations of demographic growth, patterns of migration, well-being, economic growth. • The relationship between slave labor and governance, spot resources and governance. • Non-hierarchical and egalitarian forms of governance in non-state societies. • Indigenous inspirations and influences on the Constitution of the United States. • Collective action and establishment of early cities. Our aim for this Research Topic is to compile a series of research essays drawn from a broad cross-regional and cross-temporal sample of historical settings to explore issues and themes relevant to the history and processes that have been at the heart of good governance.
Book Synopsis From House Societies to States by : Juan Carlos Moreno Garcia
Download or read book From House Societies to States written by Juan Carlos Moreno Garcia and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2022-10-21 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The organization and characteristics of early and ancient states have become the focus of a renewed interest from archaeologists, ancient historians and anthropologists in recent years. On the one hand, neo-evolutionary schemas of political transformation find it difficult to define some of their most basic concepts, such as ‘chiefdom’, ‘complex chiefdom’ and ‘state’, not to mention the transition between them. On the other hand, teleological interpretations based on linear dynamics, from less to increasingly more complex political structures, in successive steps, impose biased and too rigid views on the available evidence. In fact, recent research stresses the existence of other forms of socio-political organization, less vertically integrated and more heterarchical, that proved highly successful and resilient in the long term in tying together social groups. What is more, such forms quite often represented the basic blocks on which states were built and that managed to survive once states collapsed. Finally, nomadic, maritime and mountain populations provide fascinating examples of societies that experienced alternative forms of political organization, sometimes on a seasonal basis. In other cases, their consideration as ‘marginal’ populations that cultivated specialized skills ensured them a certain degree of autonomy when living either within or at the borders of states. This book explores such small-scale socio-political organizations, their potential and the historical trajectories they stimulated. A selection of historical case studies from different regions of the world may help rethink current concepts and views about the emergence and organization of political complexity and the mechanisms that prevented, occasionally, the emergence of solid polities. They may also cast some light over trajectories of historical transformation, still poorly understood as are the limits of effective state power. This book explores the importance of comparative research and long-term historical perspectives to avoid simplistic interpretations, based on the characteristics of modern Western states abusively used retrospectively.
Book Synopsis The Evolution of Social Institutions by : Dmitri M. Bondarenko
Download or read book The Evolution of Social Institutions written by Dmitri M. Bondarenko and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-09-12 with total page 662 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a novel and innovative approach to the study of social evolution using case studies from the Old and the New World, from prehistory to the present. This approach is based on examining social evolution through the evolution of social institutions. Evolution is defined as the process of structural change. Within this framework the society, or culture, is seen as a system composed of a vast number of social institutions that are constantly interacting and changing. As a result, the structure of society as a whole is also evolving and changing. The authors posit that the combination of evolving social institutions explains the non-linear character of social evolution and that every society develops along its own pathway and pace. Within this framework, society should be seen as the result of the compound effect of the interactions of social institutions specific to it. Further, the transformation of social institutions and relations between them is taking place not only within individual societies but also globally, as institutions may be trans-societal, and even institutions that operate in one society can arise as a reaction to trans-societal trends and demands. The book argues that it may be more productive to look at institutions even within a given society as being parts of trans-societal systems of institutions since, despite their interconnectedness, societies still have boundaries, which their members usually know and respect. Accordingly, the book is a must-read for researchers and scholars in various disciplines who are interested in a better understanding of the origins, history, successes and failures of social institutions.
Book Synopsis State Formations by : John L. Brooke
Download or read book State Formations written by John L. Brooke and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-29 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uses modernist and postmodernist theoretical perspectives to examine the formation and reformation of states throughout history and around the globe.
Book Synopsis Of Odysseys and Oddities by : Barry Molloy
Download or read book Of Odysseys and Oddities written by Barry Molloy and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2016-08-31 with total page 746 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Of Odysseys and Oddities is about scales and modes of interaction in prehistory, specifically between societies on both sides of the Aegean and with their nearest neighbors overland to the north and east. The 17 contributions reflect on tensions at the core of how we consider interaction in archaeology, particularly the motivations and mechanisms leading to social and material encounters or displacements. Linked to this are the ways we conceptualize spatial and social entities in past societies (scales) and how we learn about who was actively engaged in interaction and how and why they were (modes). The papers provide a broad chronological, spatial and material range but, taken together, they critically address many of the ways that scales and modes of interaction are considered in archaeological discourse. Ultimately, the intention is to foreground material culture analysis in the development of the arguments presented within this volume, informed, but not driven, by theoretical positions.
Book Synopsis Feast, Famine or Fighting? by : Richard J. Chacon
Download or read book Feast, Famine or Fighting? written by Richard J. Chacon and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-01-20 with total page 510 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The advent of social complexity has been a longstanding debate among social scientists. Existing theories and approaches involving the origins of social complexity include environmental circumscription, population growth, technology transfers, prestige-based and interpersonal-group competition, organized conflict, perennial wartime leadership, wealth finance, opportunistic leadership, climatological change, transport and trade monopolies, resource circumscription, surplus and redistribution, ideological imperialism, and the consideration of individual agency. However, recent approaches such as the inclusion of bioarchaeological perspectives, prospection methods, systematically-investigated archaeological sites along with emerging technologies are necessarily transforming our understanding of socio-cultural evolutionary processes. In short, many pre-existing ways of explaining the origins and development of social complexity are being reassessed. Ultimately, the contributors to this edited volume challenge the status quo regarding how and why social complexity arose by providing revolutionary new understandings of social inequality and socio-political evolution.
Book Synopsis Violence and Inequality by : Thomas P. Leppard
Download or read book Violence and Inequality written by Thomas P. Leppard and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2024-02-01 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Violence and Inequality explores the deep-time archaeological relationship between violence and inequality, focusing on prehistoric archaeology’s contribution to the understanding of the human dynamics among coercive force, aggression, and the state. Detailed archaeological case studies within a strong theoretical framework built from historical studies consider the role of coercive violence in trajectories toward complexity, how levels and types of violence can be traced alongside emerging wealth disparities, and the social role of violence. The assumption that violence and its threat buttressed elite social control is now challenged from various perspectives. This volume incorporates new models of the relationship between violence and social inequalities into the archaeology of social complexity, building more complicated and nuanced understandings of how different modes of social violence can militate different types of social constitution. Contributions from a variety of methodological angles—such as the bioarchaeology of health and trauma and radiogenic isotope studies and the aesthetics of violence—use a comparative perspective, drawing on data from the Southwestern US, Bronze Age China, early dynastic Egypt, ancient Mesopotamia, Roman Britain, and the Andes. Violence and Inequality offers an original and deep history of violence and inequality. Understanding the long-term intersection of violence and inequality and how they support or erode one another is of intrinsic importance, making this work significant to the study of archaeology, economic history, and collective action.
Book Synopsis The Economic Integration of Roman Italy by : Tymon C.A. de Haas
Download or read book The Economic Integration of Roman Italy written by Tymon C.A. de Haas and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-08-10 with total page 531 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past decades, archaeological field surveys and excavations have greatly enriched our knowledge of the Roman countryside Drawing on such new data, the volume The Economic Integration of Roman Italy, edited by Tymon de Haas and Gijs Tol, presents a series of papers that explore the changes Rome’s territorial and economic expansion brought about in the countryside of the Italian peninsula. By drawing on a variety of source materials (e.g. pottery, settlement patterns, environmental data), they shed light on the complexity of rural settlement and economies on the local, regional and supra-regional scales. As such, the volume contributes to a re-assessment of Roman economic history in light of concepts such as globalisation, integration, economic performance and growth.
Book Synopsis Landscape Archaeology in the Near East by : Bülent Arıkan
Download or read book Landscape Archaeology in the Near East written by Bülent Arıkan and published by Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2023-01-12 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collected papers from the 3rd symposium of the the Society for Near Eastern Landscape Archaeology. Ranging from the Palaeolithic to the classical Near East, papers consider settlement and movement for trade with an overarching theme around the conservation of important archaeological landscapes and developing technology for the study of landscapes.
Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of the State in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean by : Peter Fibiger Bang
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the State in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean written by Peter Fibiger Bang and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2013-01-31 with total page 568 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tracing the evolution of the state from its beginnings to the early Middle Ages, this comprehensive handbook focuses on key institutions and dynamics while providing accessible accounts of states and empires in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean.
