Heterarchy

Abstract

Transferred from neurophysiology and cybernetics to the humanities and the social sciences by settlement archeologist Carole L. Crumley, the notion of heterarchy, in particular, and heterarchical thinking, in general, have contributed to changing the way in which power structures other than hierarchies are seen as patterns for order in complex societies. The very idea of social complexity has been transformed by challenging the conflation of order with ranked order. New models for cultural evolution also appear when hierarchy is uncoupled from complexity and heterarchical relations are observable all the way to the historical development of a society as well as at different levels of a system. Opening the special issue, this article aims to introduce the concept of heterarchy to specialists of religion by showing benefits and drawbacks of its application to the study of urban religion. Eventually, the purpose of the selected articles is to leverage this promising category to explore and deepen understanding of the millennia-long coevolution of religion and urbanity.

Entangling Urban and Religious History: A New Methodology

“…Migration to and between cities is a main driving factor of urban diversification. In our view, understanding this key aspect of urbanity -together with its sibling processes co-spatialization and differentiation -is advanced by analyzing moments of change to the heterachical system which orders relations between (diverse types of) individual actors and actors groups/organizations in cities (Urciuoli 2022). The evolving nature of such heterarchies translates into the necessity of narrating stories of how a city came to be, always adapting to the current socio-political and religious demands at the time of (re-)telling, as the plurality of Roman foundation myths show .…”

“…We suggest that the economic landscape thus created is a relevant factor in processes that often claim to be entirely driven by ideological factors, that is, religious ideas (see below). The heterarchy enabled and furthered by the tensions and diversity of urban society is quickly reflected in the rise and internal structuring of religious organizations (Urciuoli 2022). We have shown this for the relationship of market organization and religious administration in East-Central Europe's late medieval sees (Szende 2022) or the development of religious roles in old centers of Western Europe (Rau 2022a) as much as for the diversity of priesthoods and small religious groups in ancient Rome (Rüpke 2018c, Rüpke 2022a).…”