Myths of the Archaic State: Evolution of the Earliest Cities, States, and Civilizations, by Norman Yoffee. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-521-81837-0 hardback £45 & US$75; ISBN 0-521-52156-4 paperback £19.99 & US$34.99, 291 pp.

2005 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norman Yoffee ◽  
Roger Matthews ◽  
Bruce G, Trigger ◽  
Philip L. Kohl ◽  
David Webster ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
The State ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Early States ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
State Evolution ◽  
Specialist Knowledge ◽  
City State ◽  
Past Half

For more than a century, archaeologists have frequently been drawn to understand the human past in broadly evolutionary terms, applying Darwinian thinking to the development of human societies. The unilinear models of human development that often result typically regard the state as the culmination of human progress, the end-point of a journey through intervening stages of bands, tribes and chiefdoms. Neo-evolutionary thinking was especially prevalent from the 1940s onwards, in the work of Julian Steward and others writing on the origins of the state. In the volume reviewed, Norman Yoffee challenges the former dominance of the neo-evolutionary approach, arguing that over the past half century it has stifled rather than stimulated our understanding of early state development.Yoffee contests the idea that states develop through a series of programmatic stages from less complex kinds of society. Instead, he stresses the diversity of the archaic state, drawing heavily on his specialist knowledge (drawn from texts as well as archaeology) of early Mesopotamia. Here we see city-state societies in which heterarchies play a role alongside hierarchies, and in which the varieties of lived experience varied considerably from place to place, even though all may at some level be considered to have been part of a shared Mesopotamian civilization.Yoffee's book is not, however, concerned solely with Mesopotamia; far from it, he draws comparative evidence from Egypt, South and East Asia and Central and South America to demonstrate the diversity and fluidity of the entities he is describing. Few of them conform to models that might be drawn from ethnography, and each state may in many ways be considered unique. Yet in a broader perspective, all states arise through a widespread pattern of change that has taken place in human society since the end of the Pleistocene in which individuals and groups have competed for control of resources.Yoffee concludes that ‘The central myth about the study of the earliest states ... is that there was something that could be called the archaic state, and that all of the earliest states were simply variations on this model’. The methodological alternative is to consider each society (of whatever type) as individual and unique, and constantly in a state of flux. In this review feature we invite a series of archaeologists specializing in the study of early states to address this and other issues raised by this important book. We begin, however, with an opening statement from the author himself.

FUNDAMENTALISM, BUREAUCRATIZATION, AND THE STATE'S CO-OPTATION OF RELIGION: A JORDANIAN CASE STUDY

2006 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 369-393 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard T. Antoun
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Middle East ◽  
The State ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Half Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Equal Duration ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Past Half

In the Middle East over the past half-century, three religious processes have grown together. One, the growth of fundamentalism, has received worldwide attention both by academics and journalists. The others, the bureaucratization of religion and the state co-optation of religion, of equal duration but no less importance, have received much less attention. The bureaucratization of religion focuses on the hierarchicalization of religious specialists and state co-optation of religion focuses on their neutralization as political opponents. Few commentators link the three processes. In Jordan, fundamentalism, the bureaucratization of religion (BOR), and state co-optation of religion (SCR) have become entwined sometimes in mutually supportive and sometimes in antagonistic relations. The following case study will describe and analyze the implications of this mutual entanglement for the relations of state and civil society and for the human beings simultaneously bureaucratized and “fundamentalized.”

A Reckoning with Depth

2021 ◽  
pp. 193-204
Author(s):  
Stephen Skowronek ◽  
John A. Dearborn ◽  
Desmond King
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
American Government ◽  
Half Century ◽  
Vital Importance ◽  
The Past ◽  
Administrative Power ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Deep State ◽  
Effective Operation ◽  
Past Half

The Deep State versus the unitary executive has been a spectacle too vivid to ignore. It should impress us all with the unsettled place of administration in contemporary American government. One might have thought that a matter of such vital importance to the effective operation of the state would have been resolved long ago. But over the past half century, questions surrounding administrative power and its political control have been growing more, not less, contentious. Trump’s presidency forces a reckoning that is long overdue. In the Epilogue, we evaluate the lessons of this clash between unity and depth. The problem is not that the president can’t find evidence to hang on his frame: the problem is the solution intrinsic to the frame. The state Trump would have us embrace is every bit as menacing as the state he would have us abandon.

Rural Housing and Village Transformation in Taiwan and Fujian

1996 ◽  
Vol 147 ◽  
pp. 779-794 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald G. Knapp
Keyword(s):  
Agricultural Development ◽  
The State ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Economic Systems ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Rural Settlements ◽  
Half Century ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Political Decisions ◽  
Past Half

Population growth, small-scale agricultural development and popular beliefs concerning fengshui guided the evolution of the areal form and content of Chinese rural settlements during the imperial past. Over the last half century, on the other hand, more formal planning, top-down political decisions and the broad economic policies of the state have altered the Chinese countryside. Since 1949, on both Taiwan and the coastal mainland, quite different political and economic systems influenced the geometry and morphology of villages, affecting their inherited appearances and functions. The hybrid rural settlements that have emerged, while echoing traditional village forms, are often neither rural, urban nor suburban settlements. This article examines and compares the reshaping of village settlements in Taiwan and Fujian over the past half century and probes the role played by the state in guiding such transformations. In both Taiwa

On Categories and Configurations: Further Remarks on Rebuilding the American state

1995 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 213-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ira Katznelson ◽  
Bruce Pietrykowski
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
American Political Development ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
The New Deal ◽  
Past Half ◽  
American State

“Rebuilding the American State” was written in the manner of a bozzetto: it is a sketch drawn to reshape interlocking analytical and historiographical conversations and to suggest pathways joining the era of Roosevelt to the qualities and conundrums of postwar Democratic party liberalism. We underscored the key role of what might be called the long 1940s, stretching from the economic and political crisis faced by the New Deal in 1937–38 to the election in 1952 of the first Republican president since Hoover. We claimed that institutional and policy decisions taken across a number of domains in this period coherently recast the state and, in so doing, the contours and possibilities of American politics. We argued as well that old and new institutionalist approaches to state capacity have shared an unfortunate propensity to inventory organizational resources without regard to the normative and practical policy visions that define the content of what it is the state actually is meant to accomplish. In this light, simple dichotomous distinctions between weak and strong states appear as too blunt to sharply etch our understanding of the past half-century of American political development.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 217-224
Author(s):  
Jeremy Prestholdt
Keyword(s):  
Political Party ◽  
Social Roles ◽  
The State ◽  
Half Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Per Se ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Past Half

Why do particular figures appeal to diverse audiences at specific historical moments? What social roles do icons play in an interfaced world? Tracing the history of global icons over the past half-century demonstrates that the answers to these questions lie not only in the form and connotations of icons, but also in their significant malleability across space and time. Global icons crystallize thought, channel ideas, foster real or imagined linkages, and focus communal energies. They represent imagination beyond the state, political party, or movement. In short, audiences transform iconic figures into the dynamic products of the transnational imagination and collective interpretation. Seemingly timeless, iconic figures symbolize transcendence and communal ideals while remaining malleable. Thus, attraction to icons is not the idolization of the individual per se. Rather, it is the idolization of possibility, of the visions and values that audiences imagine iconic figures to represent.

Rethinking the State Secrets Privilege

2010 ◽  
pp. 656-672
Author(s):  
Louis Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
The State ◽  
Playing Field ◽  
Federal Judiciary ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Government ◽  
Federal Judges ◽  
State Secrets ◽  
Past Half

This article discusses the concept of state secrets privilege which is designed to prevent private litigants from gaining access to agency documents sought in cases involving National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance, extraordinary rendition, and other intelligence programs. Before the Reynolds case, the Supreme Court recognized the state secrets privilege. Over the past half century, federal judges gave “deference” to the executive claims on sensitivity and confidentiality of agency records without ever looking at the disputed document. However in 1953, the Supreme Court was misled by the government. Since then, there has been an interest in having Congress enact legislation to assure greater independence for the federal judiciary and provide a more even playing field for private litigants.

scholarly journals “Spend your spoons wisely”: Conceptualizations of time, energy and aging invisibly with Crohn’s Disease

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 603-603
Author(s):  
Ginny Natale ◽  
Manacy Pai
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Elderly Population ◽  
Functional Limitations ◽  
Direct Consequence ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Graduate Degrees ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Relapsing Remitting ◽  
Physical Limitations ◽  
Past Half

Abstract An increasing number of people with chronic medical disabilities are living longer and into old age due to the growing medical and technological advancements over the past half century. We used grounded theory to examine the lived experience of aging “with” a disability in a non-elderly population. On average, participants were 37 years of age at the time of interview. The average time since diagnosis was 17 years and ranged from 3 to 34 years. Many worked full-time outside of the home and some held advanced or graduate degrees. Of the 35 participants interviewed, three-quarters expressed worries about the future and aging, specifically related to physical limitations of having CD. The other 25% talked about learning to accept the diagnosis and ‘moving forward’ with their life as they age. All participants described the difficulties of fatigue and energy limitations. Planning of life was limited to 24 hours — a direct consequence of functional limitations of a relapsing-remitting disease. The most prominent theme that emerged from participants’ narratives to explain aging invisibly with a chronic illness was quantifying energy into ‘spoons’, a way of measuring the stock of their energy on any given day. These findings translate into important insights into the process of aging for those who live and age “with” Crohn’s as their everyday lives are immersed in managing the varying whims of this illness.

The Legacy of Racial Caste

2012 ◽  
Vol 642 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elijah Anderson ◽  
Duke W. Austin ◽  
Craig Lapriece Holloway ◽  
Vani S. Kulkarni
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Race Relations ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
The United States ◽  
Color Line ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Black President ◽  
Racial Progress ◽  
Past Half

With the racial progress the nation has made over the past half century, including the growth of the black middle class and the election of a black president, many are now prepared to proclaim the United States a postracial society, where egalitarian values most often prevail; race is no longer a significant barrier to power, privilege, and prestige; and racial prejudice is mostly a thing of the past. When observed ethnographically, the lived experience of race relations suggests a different view and conceptual framework. As the legacy of racial caste, the color line persists in social interaction and is evident in racially determined perspectives and local working conceptions that order race relations and contribute to persistent racial inequality. Indeed, the claim of a postracial society is an ideological discourse that denies continuing patterns of race relations.

Political Science at the Crossroads

1927 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 773-791 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Deborah Ellis
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
Legal Analysis ◽  
The Past ◽  
Metaphysical Theory ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Political Character ◽  
Past Half

Political science is at the parting of the ways. Its foundations have been undermined by the claims of law and jurisprudence, into whose hands it has been deliberately surrendering itself for the past half-century or more, and now its chief strongholds are under fire from the neighboring fields of sociology, economics, and ethics. So severe and so persistent have these attacks become that the time has arrived when the political scientist must decide whether he will allow his subject to be absorbed in any one or all of these various fields, or will attempt to reëstablish it as a distinctive discipline.The reasons for this state of things are not difficult to discover. They quite obviously lie in the fact that in the pursuit of their basic problem—the search, namely, for the nature and source of sovereignty—political philosophers have so generally followed two equally futile and fruitless paths: either the path of pure speculation leading to a supernatural or metaphysical theory, or the path of legal analysis, leading ultimately to the juristic theory of the state. Indeed, during these recent years political theory has been so increasingly “under bondage to the lawyers” that it is little wonder that a reaction has come, and that thinkers in their determination to find the reality behind the formal juristic conception, are now repudiating not only the legal, but even the political, character of the state.

scholarly journals Dissipative distinctions

2015 ◽  
Vol 788 ◽  
pp. 1-4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian P. Castro
Keyword(s):  
Scaling Laws ◽  
Turbulent Shear ◽  
Turbulent Shear Flow ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Self Similar ◽  
Local Reynolds Number ◽  
Past Half

There have been numerous studies concerning the possibility of self-similar scaling laws in fully developed turbulent shear flows, driven over the past half-century or so by the early seminal work of Townsend (1956, The Structure of Turbulent Shear Flow. Cambridge University Press). His and nearly all subsequent analyses depend crucially on a hypothesis about the nature of the dissipation, ${\it\epsilon}$, of turbulence kinetic energy, $k$. It has usually been assumed (sometimes implicitly) that this is governed by the famous Kolmogorov relation ${\it\epsilon}=C_{{\it\epsilon}}k^{3/2}/L$, where $L$ is a length scale of the energy-containing eddies and $C_{{\it\epsilon}}$ is a constant. The paper by Dairay et al. (J. Fluid Mech. vol. 781, 2015, pp. 166–195) demonstrates, however, that, in the specific context of an axisymmetric wake, there can be regions where ${\it\epsilon}$ has a different behaviour, characterised by a $C_{{\it\epsilon}}$ that is not constant but depends on a varying local Reynolds number (despite the existence of a $-5/3$ region in the spectra). This leads to fundamentally different scaling laws for the wake.

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