Suchergebnisse

Polycentricity is a normative approach to governance. It stresses the degree to which higher levels of formal governance should not crowd out self-organization at lower levels. As central government ruling may limit individual access to shared resources, participatory polycentric governance seems a feasible alternative. Under such a scheme, varied strategies combine local political segments into larger administrative systems. They help manage public goods, solve cooperator problems, and combine direct (and costly) administration with the creation of locally managed para-governmental organizations and spheres of authority to achieve cooperation goals. A federation of independent governing bodies, organized as a set of nested institutions focused on a common goal, contributes to effective, beneficial to all parties involved, sustainable well-being. Thus, I challenge the conventional wisdom that common property is poorly managed and should be regulated by central authorities or privatized. Employing the data for user-managed land, fish stocks, pastures, woods, and (ground) water, I argue that participatory polycentric governance improves communal resilience and stability. Participants became interdependent, willing, and capable of designing and following communication networks to create sustainable well-being. I conclude that the outcomes of such arrangements are often better than predicted by standard economic models.

Supra-tribal polities have been confirmed archaeologically, and by historic sources, in the northern part of the Central European Plains for the tenth century CE. However there is no archaeological evidence from the 600 early 800s CE of socioeconomic conditions suitable to support complex political systems. I suggest that in the apparent absence of critical internal economic and political stimuli, societies of the Northern Central European Plains showed emergent capacity to organize spontaneously in the context of outside socioeconomic pressure and the multi-agent polities of the 800-900s CE are examples of transient political dissipative structures. I discuss both, how multi-agent, short-lived, intermediate forms of sociopolitical organization emerge in a nonequilibrium context, and the rise of social complexity as a multilineal mixture of randomness and regularity caused by a combination of spontaneous processes and deterministic patterns. Elements of systems theory and control theory are used to explain dissipative structures in reference to human societal capacity for self-organization.

I apply collective action theory here to examine empirical data on social dynamics in prestate societies of Central European Plains between 500 and 1000 CE. The proposition is that under certain socioeconomic conditions, levels of political formations reflect rational agreement and consent between the rulers and the ruled. This addresses the dilemma whereby self-interest behavior of social actors would seemingly limit the potential for collective action and group cohesion. The theory employed here, which derives from game theory assumptions, integrates political science and anthropological perspectives. The examined empirical evidence shows that a very basic community-level management of common pool resources seems a successful strategy to manage a short term risk, secure economic benefits and ultimately leads to sustainable higher level political organization.

Preface -- Contents -- Contributors -- Chapter 1: Introduction to Archaeology of the Communist Era -- Introduction -- Chapter 2: Sickle, Hammer, and Trowel: Theory and Practice of Archaeology Under Communism -- Introduction -- Archaeology and Ideology -- Archaeology and Political Change -- "Communist Archaeology" Data and Methods -- The Stalinist Era -- The Thaw -- Socialism with a Human Face -- 1980s and Perestroika -- Discussion -- Archaeology as History-with-Spade -- Exploratory Thoughts on Archaeological Theory Under Communism: Historical and Dialectical Materialism -- Dialectical and Materialistic Approach to the Past -- University Teaching 1945-1956 (Stalinist Era) -- University Teaching in the 1960s (The Thaw) -- Socialism with the Human Face and Perestroika (the 1970s and 1980s) -- Publications with No Theoretical Content -- Publications with Historical Materialism as Methodology -- Publications with Historical Materialism as Theory -- Publications with Marxist-Inspired Theoretical Trends -- Comparative Data on Publications -- Marxist Thoughts in Archaeologies Outside of the Warsaw Pact -- The "Red Tail" Tactic -- State Control and National Archaeologies -- State Sponsoring: Centralization of Funding -- Hierarchal Structure of Archaeological Institutions -- Archaeology as State Propaganda: National Archaeologies -- Cuba and the Caribbean Region -- Former Yugoslavia -- Communist China -- Archaeology and the Public -- Marxist-Inspired Archaeology and Postcolonial Context -- Conclusions -- References -- Chapter 3: Archaeology in Soviet Russia -- Preamble -- Marxism in My Biography -- Archaeology in the Revolution and Revolution in Archaeology -- Catastrophe and Innovations -- Moscow Dash -- Leningrad Breakthrough -- Summing up the Revolutionary Period -- Archaeology and the Process of Stalinization

This volume offers a new perspective on social dynamics and culture change in the North Central European Plains (NCEP) from 600 to 900 CE. Using archaeological evidence, this volume follows and analyzes the rise of social complexity in this region. 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 accounting for and explaining 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 societal decisions with short-term goals have long-term consequences

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.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- List of Boxes -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- 1 Evolution and the Study of Human Origins and Behavior -- Part One: The Study of Human Origins -- The Human Evolutionary Legacy -- The Nature of Scientific Inquiry -- Part Two: Anthropology, Science, and the Study of Culture -- Holism -- Cultural Relativism -- The Role of Theory -- Aspects of Culture -- Culture Gives Meaning to Reality -- Culture Creates Gender -- Gender Socialization -- Gender and Work -- Gender and Power -- Culture Is Integrated -- Culture Is Adaptive -- Behavior and Learning -- Language, Biology, and Culture -- The Science of Anthropology -- Studying Cultural Behavior: Fieldwork, Data Collection, and Analysis -- Surviving in the Field -- Objectivity and Science in the Study of Behavior -- Summary -- Key Terms -- Notes -- Suggested Readings -- Bibliography -- 2 Anthropology, Human Ecology, and Politics -- Human Ecology -- The Nature of Ecological Systems -- The Components of the Ecosystem -- Population Ecology -- The Human Ecological Context -- Politics and Ecology -- Ecosystems and Adaptation -- Variation: Human Decisions and the Environment -- Adapting Through Innovation -- The Evolution of Procurement Systems -- Adapting to Environmental Challenges -- Adapting to Available Resources -- Adapting to Resource Fluctuation -- Political Ecology -- Access to Resources: Cooperation and Competition -- Environmental Uncertainty -- Politics and Access to Resources -- Gender, Politics, and Property -- Whose Cows Are They, Anyway? -- Summary -- Key Terms -- Notes -- Suggested Readings -- Bibliography -- 3 Foraging -- The Organization of Energy -- Managing Resources -- Food as Energy -- Social Organization -- Economic Exchange: Reciprocity -- Power, Influence, and Social Control.

Foreword -- Introduction -- The Tragedy of the Commons: A Theoretical Update -- Who is in the Commons? Defining Community and Management Practices in Long Term Natural Resource Management -- Managing risk through cooperation: Need-based transfers and risk pooling among the societies of the Human Generosity Project -- Trolls, Water, Time, and Community: Resource Management in the Mývatn District of Northeast Iceland -- Organization of high-altitude summer pastures: the dialectics of conflict and cooperation -- Large-Scale Land Acquisition as Commons Grabbing: A comparative analysis of six African case studies -- Open Access, Open Systems: Pastoral Resource Management in the Chad Basin -- Mollusk Harvesting in the Pre-European Contact Pacific Islands: investigating Resilience and Sustainability -- Environment and Landscapes of Latin America's Past -- Collaborative and Competitive Strategies in the Variability and Resiliency of Early Complex Societies in Mesoamerica -- The Native California Commons: Ethnographic and Archaeological Perspectives on Land Control, Resource Use, and Management -- Identifying Common Pool Resources in the Archaeological Record: A Case Study of Water Commons from the North American Southwest