Socialising Complexity: Approaches to Power and Interaction in the Archaeological Record by Sheila Kohring & Stephanie Wynne-Jones

Author:Sheila Kohring & Stephanie Wynne-Jones [Kohring, Sheila]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Oxbow Books
Published: 2007-11-30T05:00:00+00:00

Heterarchy models, agency and complexity

Researchers increasingly accept that understanding the nuances of complexity requires attention to distinct forms of power relations (e.g., shared, consensus-based, communal, corporate, exclusionary, or coercive) (Blanton et al. 1996; Foucault 1984; Saitta and Keene 1990). Social institutions and leadership strategies are shaped by the goals and aims of individuals; these agents are seldom, if ever, passive recipients of culture (Paynter 1989). Daily life in the past was comprised of ongoing practices (subsistence activities, work parties, and rituals, among others) and social institutions were reproduced through as part of an ongoing process of compromise between the interests of individuals and the needs of the collective. Eric Wolf envisions these disparate elements of human social life achieving a synthesis in the ‘social ensemble’ (Wolf 1999, 280), a concept that encompasses power relations (not necessarily hierarchically structured) expressed through cultural forms (e.g., ideology, ritual, and community layouts) that influence resource flows and are in turn embedded in organisational arrangements that agents continually work to create, maintain, or transform. The concept captures the dualism of structure and agency as well as the cultural logic of particular social forms.

Building agent-centred perspectives into thinking about complexity is not without its challenges, as the former entails a focus on individuals (or factions) while the latter involves a wider view of a society. During discussions at the conference, most delegates expressed optimism that models of heterarchy could encompass these dual aims. Yet such a view is not universal; Saitta and McGuire (1998) object to use of the term heterarchy because, it like heirachy, retains an association with processual approaches that emphasise change in response to external stress. Many archaeologists (McGuire and Saitta 1996; Mills 2000; Nelson 1995; Rautman 1998; Saitta 1999; Saitta and McGuire 1998) prefer to explain change primarily in terms of internal dynamics (emphasising power struggles or conflicts over meaning that unfold over shorter time spans following unpredictable pathways).

My own view is that heterarchy models need not be overly encumbered with processual baggage, but that our attempts to characterise complexity must take account of power struggles and social negotiation, without ignoring either external influences or the conservative tendencies inherent in rituals and the dispositions of habitus that limit an agent’s range of potential actions (Bourdieu 1990). However, precisely because archaeologists need to think more creatively about organisational variation, heterarchy is valuable because it provides a wider range of possibilities to help us to conceptualise inter-relationships. A heterarchy perspective allows for the possibility that economic, political, and social activities may operate more or less independently of one other (Brumfiel 1995, 125; Rautman 1998, 328, cited in Graves and Spielmann 2000, 48), with the result that the daily lives of individuals in a heterarchical system may in fact be more complex and varied than they would be within a hierarchically-ordered society.

More specifically, the task of disentangling and analysing complexity in smallerscale societies where social differentiation and hierarchy are not well-developed involves identifying the alternative social divisions that shaped the social fields within which agents

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