A Dual-Processual Perspective on the Power and Inequality in the Contemporary United States: Framing Political Economy for the Present and the Past

Feinman, Gary M.

doi:10.1007/978-1-4419-6300-0_9

Cited by 10 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 77 publications

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“…Furthermore, neither environmental setting nor any uniform trajectory of change can explain the noted variation. In key ways, the continuous axis of observed collective-autocratic variability broadly parallels what has been reported for global historical contexts (e.g., Fargher 2008, 2016; see also Acemoglu and Robinson 2012;Feinman 2010;Turchin 2016). For ancient Mesoamerica, we are beginning to define and recognize the polar ends of this continuum, but much more work is required to understand the cases and contexts in the middle, the ones where the funding of power was a combination of internal and external revenues.…”

Section: Concluding Thoughtssupporting

confidence: 72%

“…Undoubtedly, the past differs from the present in key areas of technology, transport, communication, and more. But the different arrangements in which we cooperate and organize ourselves appear to have key cross-time parallels (Feinman 2010(Feinman , 2011(Feinman , 2012b(Feinman , 2013aFreeman et al 2018). Recognition of these correspondences opens new potential lessons concerning sustainability (Feinman and Carballo 2018;Peregrine 2017) and how different human cooperative formations and modes respond to distinct challenges and disasters (e.g., Middleton 2012, 2017) over long temporal sequences.…”

Section: Figure 2 Financial Underpinnings Of Governmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Governance and Leadership of Prehispanic Mesoamerican Polities: New Perspectives and Comparative Implications

Feinman¹

2018

CDN

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The principal conceptual axes for explaining variation in prehispanic Mesoamerican political organization (states and empires) have shifted over time. Current perspectives build on and extend beyond the important dimensions of scale and hierarchical complexity and have begun to probe variation in the nature of leadership and governance, drawing on collective action theory and incorporating recent findings that challenge long-held statist vantages on preindustrial economies. Recent results from and archaeological correlates for the application of this approach are outlined, offering opportunities for more comparative analyses of variation and change in the practice of governance within the prehispanic Mesoamerican world and more globally. Consideration of this variability is critical for understanding change and the sustainability of different governmental formations.

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Section: Concluding Thoughtssupporting

confidence: 72%

Section: Figure 2 Financial Underpinnings Of Governmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Governance and Leadership of Prehispanic Mesoamerican Polities: New Perspectives and Comparative Implications

Feinman¹

2018

CDN

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“…Decades ago, in an effort to compare ancient Mesoamerican civilizations diachronically, the senior author and colleagues (Blanton et al ; Feinman , ) advanced a conceptual frame that considered variability along an axis of political strategy within hierarchical societies termed “corporate” and “network.” Newer work has more explicitly connected this frame with collective‐action theory to consider a broader spectrum of individual and group interests undergirding variability in social organization and to connect archaeological concerns with a broader literature in the social and behavioral sciences (Blanton ; Blanton and Fargher , ; Carballo and Feinman ; Carballo, Roscoe, and Feinman ; Fargher, Heredia Espinoza, and Blanton 2011; Feinman ; Feinman and Nicholas ). In outlining characteristics, such as the uses of urban space (Blanton and Fargher ; Carballo ; Castells , 15–21; Wade ), indicative of what we consider more or less collective forms of organization in past large‐scale societies (Table ), we understand that all variables are gradated spectra with differing levels of visibility in the archaeological record.…”

Section: Collectivity In Large‐scale Premodern Societiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Collaborative and competitive strategies in the variability and resiliency of large‐scale societies in Mesoamerica

Feinman

Carballo

2018

Economic Anthropology

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Examinations of the variation and duration of past large-scale societies have long involved a conceptual struggle between efforts at generalization and the unraveling of specific trajectories. Although historical particulars are critical to understanding individual cases, there exist both scientific and policy rationales for drawing broader implications regarding the growing corpus of cross-cultural data germane to understanding variability in the constitution of human societies, past and present. Archaeologists have recently paid increased attention to successes and failures in communal-resource management over the long term, as articulated by the transdisciplinary theory on cooperation and collective action. In this article, we consider frameworks that have been traditionally employed in studies of the rise, diversity, and fall of large-scale preindustrial aggregations. We suggest that a comparative theoretical perspective that foregrounds collective-action problems, unaligned individual and group interests, and the social mechanisms that promote or hamper cooperation advances our understanding of variability in these early cooperative arrangements. We apply such a perspective to an examination of cities from pre-Columbian Mesoamerica to demonstrate tendencies for more collective systems to be larger and longer lasting than less collective ones, likely reflecting greater resiliency in the face of the ecological and cultural perturbations specific to the region and era.Keywords Collective Action; Resource Management; Population; Political Economy; Mesoamerica Cooperation and competition have long been recognized as fundamental characteristics of the human career (Mead 1937). Anthropologists have had sustained interest in evaluating how variability in this axis of behavior relates to the emergence, durability, and diversity of large-scale societies (Carballo, Roscoe, and Feinman 2014;Fuentes 2004). Still, as Trigger (2003, 3) remarked, researchers continue to work for an appropriate balance between general and specific factors (or processes and history) in developing frameworks for understanding cultural and behavioral variability viewed in deep, temporal perspective through the archaeological record. We address these issues through a comparative analysis of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican urban centers that focally examines differences in the ways that they were governed and how organizational variation relates to their size and longevity. Framing urbanism in pre-Columbian MesoamericaPre-Columbian Mesoamerica has long been recognized as a cultural region where early cities and large-scale polities arose autochthonously (e.g., Adams 1966;Steward 1949). Given the impediments to communication and resource extraction relative to ancient Eurasia (e.g., the lack of beasts of burden and wheeled transport and the markedly limited and relatively late use of metal implements), the significant size and durability of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican urban centers has raised special interest (Wright 1989, 99). How were these preindus...

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“…Others have successfully produced detailed, controlled comparisons with statistical analyses of similar cases (Blanton and Fargher ; Fargher and Blanton ). It is less common to use insights from contemporary cases to illuminate the past, but there are some that provide both depth and detail (Bang, Ikeguchi, and Ziche ; Blanton and Fargher ; Cameron ; Fargher and Blanton ; Feinman ; Ortman and Cameron ; Smith ).…”

Section: Affect and Experiencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Others have successfully produced detailed, controlled comparisons with statistical analyses of similar cases (Blanton and Fargher 2008;Fargher and Blanton 2007). It is less common to use insights from contemporary cases to illuminate the past, but there are some that provide both depth and detail (Bang, Ikeguchi, and Ziche 2006;Blanton and Fargher 2008;Cameron 2013;Fargher and Blanton 2007;Feinman 2010;Ortman and Cameron 2011;Smith 2009). This analysis is best viewed in light of collective action theory as specifically adapted for archaeological studies Fargher 2007, 2009;Fargher and Blanton 2007), which incorporates the earlier dual processual theory, often referred to as corporate/network theory (Blanton et al 1996).…”

Section: Affect and Experiencementioning

confidence: 99%

6 There is No Means by Which I Live: Livelihood and Power at the Margins of the State

Thurston

2018

Archaeological Papers of the American

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The social and political power of marginal highland dwellers is examined through comparison of historical and archaeological data in early Sweden and modern Lesotho, southern Africa. Upland dwellers negotiated political and environmental challenges while struggling to establish community in the face of high taxation, uprooting, and violence. Current understandings of the medical and psychosocial impacts of such challenges indicate that individuals experience severe stress, but also intense attachment to their environment, even when living in highly marginal places with tenuous livelihoods. This nexus may help clarify similar archaeological cases.

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A Dual-Processual Perspective on the Power and Inequality in the Contemporary United States: Framing Political Economy for the Present and the Past

Cited by 10 publications

References 77 publications

The Governance and Leadership of Prehispanic Mesoamerican Polities: New Perspectives and Comparative Implications

The Governance and Leadership of Prehispanic Mesoamerican Polities: New Perspectives and Comparative Implications

Collaborative and competitive strategies in the variability and resiliency of large‐scale societies in Mesoamerica

6 There is No Means by Which I Live: Livelihood and Power at the Margins of the State

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