The Power of Scale: A Global History Approach

Bodley, John H.

doi:10.4324/9781315699233

Cited by 19 publications

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“…The scale‐is‐neutral paradigm goes against a long history of theoretical work in anthropology that shows how population and organizational size influence decision‐making power and social equality (Bentley and Maschner ; Bodley ; Carneiro ; Johnson and Earle ). Much of this research quantifies elite power in human societies as functionally related to the absolute scale of material resources and population in a given society (Bodley ; Pareto ). Essentially a formalization of the maxim “the rich get richer,” this systems‐based argument implies that as the socio‐cultural system grows, each agent acquires additional attributes at a rate proportional to what it already has.…”

Section: Illusions Growth and Conceiving Of Scale In Food Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Bodley (, ) suggests that scale itself, not a failure of human intention, may be the primary cause of system dysfunction. Because individuals tend to act in their own self‐interest and much of their decision‐making focuses on short‐term personal goals (Flinn, Geary, and Ward ), it makes sense that as hierarchies grow in scale and complexity, higher level human decision‐makers become increasingly insensitive to their impacts at lower levels (Bodley ; Rappaport ). In this sense, scale matters because growth in effect shrinks the social brain by placing decision‐making in proportionately fewer hands.…”

Section: Illusions Growth and Conceiving Of Scale In Food Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…With Palouse soils being mined for grains and profits, the social and ecological landscape was irrevocably altered. The most alarming ecological change was soil erosion, resulting from a steady dose of plowing steep slopes with heavy machinery combined with summer fallow (Bodley ).…”

Section: The Palouse: a Historical Context Of Agriculture And Foodmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The structural transformation of Palouse agriculture has contributed to current demographic and social‐ecological challenges facing the region. By 1910, Whitman and Latah Counties totaled 42,000 residents, there were some 3,000 farms averaging 383 acres, over 70 percent of the cash value in farm production was in grain, and nearly 38,000 locally grown horses and mules worked in the fields (Bodley ). When Palouse farmers shifted to fossil‐fuel‐based industrial technology, many villages declined as displaced farmers moved to bigger towns and cities.…”

Section: The Palouse: a Historical Context Of Agriculture And Foodmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Alongside the Grain: Conceptualizing Scale and the Upper Threshold of Local in the Agro‐industrial Palouse

Wilson¹

2018

Culture Agric Food & Envi

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This paper uses a case study of local food system development in the agro-industrial Palouse region of the northwestern United States to examine how communities negotiate the boundaries of local. Farmer-vendor participation in the region's largest farmers market shows that localscale boundaries are porous and sometimes problematic, particularly when considering producers on the "upper threshold of local"-the boundary between local and middle socio-spatial scales. Examining how farmer-vendor strategies, farmers market politics, and organizational engagement in Palouse civic agriculture relate to a contested upper threshold boundary provides insights on how distancedependent notions of local may be challenged, how operation size can be stretched, and how this blurry and porous boundary presents problems for mid-sized operations hoping to engage or broker multiple locales or scales. [local, scale, food systems, civic agriculture, Palouse] Culture, Agriculture, Food and Environment Vol. 40, Issue 2 pp. 85-95, ISSN 2153-9553, eISSN 2153-9561.

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Section: Illusions Growth and Conceiving Of Scale In Food Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Illusions Growth and Conceiving Of Scale In Food Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Palouse: a Historical Context Of Agriculture And Foodmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Palouse: a Historical Context Of Agriculture And Foodmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Alongside the Grain: Conceptualizing Scale and the Upper Threshold of Local in the Agro‐industrial Palouse

Wilson¹

2018

Culture Agric Food & Envi

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“…[M]odernity…established the ideas and the realities of nation-states [and] created the new regime of capitalism. Yannis Hamiliakis There are political consequences to modernization (Bodley 2003(Bodley , 2014Giddens 1990;Kautsky 1980;Maybury-Lewis 2002), and archaeology is one of them (Hamilakis 2007;Thomas 2004;Trigger 2006). While archaeology is assuredly a product of modernity, the practice's post-1950 configuration suggests something entirely new-or at least significantly different-than what came before (e.g.…”

Section: The Late Modern Statementioning

confidence: 99%

Archaeology and the Late Modern State: Introduction to the Special Issue

Hutchings

Dent

2017

Arch

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________________________________________________________________While archaeologists have always shown great interest in the rise and fall of premodern states, they perennially show little interest in their own. This is particularly troubling because the state is the nexus of power in archaeology. In practice, virtually all archaeology is state archaeology, imbued with and emboldened by state power. It is in this light that contributors to this Special Issue of Archaeologies grapple with the archaeology-state nexus, addressing such timely issues as colonialism, capitalism, and cultural resource or heritage management (CRM/CHM). We outline here the archaeology-state nexus concept and introduce the Special Issue. ________________________________________________________________Résumé: Tandis que les archéologues ont toujours fait preuve d'un intérêt marqué pour l'ascension et la chute des États prémodernes, ils n'en démontrent que rarement envers le leur. Cet état des choses est particulièrement troublant, car l'État est le lieu de convergence des pouvoirs en archéologie. Dans la pratique, presque toute l'archéologie est une archéologie d'État, imprégnée et enhardie par le pouvoir étatique. C'est donc dans cet état d'esprit que les contributeurs de ce numéro spécial d'Archaeologies débattent de la connexion entre l'État et l'archéologie en traitant d'enjeux opportuns, notamment le colonialisme, le capitalisme et la gestion des ressources ou du patrimoine culturels. Nous définissons ici le concept de la connexion entre l'État et l'archéologie et présentons le numéro spécial. incesantemente poco interés en sus propios estados. Esto es particularmente molesto porque el estado es el nexo de poder en la arqueología. En la práctica, virtualmente cualquier arqueología es arqueología del estado, imbuida con e incentivada por el poder estatal. Los que han contribuido a este Nú mero Especial de Archaeologies tratan, desde este punto de vista, del nexo arqueología-estado, abordando temas tan oportunos como el colonialismo, el capitalismo y la gestió n del patrimonio o de los recursos culturales (CRM/CHM, por sus siglas en inglés). Esbozamos aquí el concepto de nexo arqueología-estado y presentamos el Nú mero Especial.

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Settlement Scaling in Middle-Range Societies

Ortman

Coffey

2017

Am. Antiq.

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The contemporary relevance of archaeology would be greatly enhanced if archaeologists could develop theory that frames human societies of all scales in the same terms. We present evidence that an approach known as settlement scaling theory can contribute to such a framework. The theory proposes that a variety of aggregate socioeconomic properties of human networks emerge from individuals arranging themselves in space so as to balance the costs of movement with the benefits of social interactions. This balancing leads to settlements that concentrate human interactions and their products in space and time in an open-ended way. The parameters and processes embedded in settlement scaling models are very basic, and this suggests that scaling phenomena should be observable in the archaeological record of middle-range societies just as readily as they have been observed in contemporary first-world nations. In this paper, we show that quantitative scaling relationships observed for modern urban systems, and more recently for early civilizations, are also apparent in settlement data from the Central Mesa Verde and northern Middle Missouri regions of North America. These findings suggest that settlement scaling theory may help increase the practical relevance of archaeology for present-day concerns.

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The Power of Scale: A Global History Approach

Cited by 19 publications

References 0 publications

Alongside the Grain: Conceptualizing Scale and the Upper Threshold of Local in the Agro‐industrial Palouse

Alongside the Grain: Conceptualizing Scale and the Upper Threshold of Local in the Agro‐industrial Palouse

Archaeology and the Late Modern State: Introduction to the Special Issue

Settlement Scaling in Middle-Range Societies

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