Aggregation, status competition and levelling mechanisms in prehistoric Chulmun, Korea

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Minkoo Kim
Keyword(s):  
Social Complexity ◽  
Social Hierarchy ◽  
Social Differentiation ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Group Fission ◽  
Status Competition ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Large Numbers

This article discusses the aggregation and dispersion of the Chulmun hunter-gatherers (c. 8000–1500 bce) in prehistoric Korea. The following observations are made from settlement datasets. First, large numbers of houses do not necessarily imply aggregation, as they can be palimpsests of dwelling structures from different phases. Second, aggregation settlements were segmented and contained multiple discrete subunits. Individual residential clusters typically had fewer than 60 inhabitants. Third, there are some indications of social hierarchy in nucleated settlements such as Unseo-dong. Fourth, despite some evidence of emergent elites and social differentiation, social complexity did not intensify over the long run. Levelling mechanisms (e.g. group fission) were in operation and they suppressed the institutionalization of social hierarchy.

Prison, Subordination, Inequality: Again on a Marxist Perspective

2021 ◽  
pp. 301-324
Author(s):  
Dario Melossi
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Social Hierarchy ◽  
Capitalist Development ◽  
Economic Cycles ◽  
Inequality Measures ◽  
Class Composition ◽  
Long Run ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Relationship

This Chapter advances two claims which are related and sustain each other. The first is that in the contemporary “post-Fordist” world, the coupling of imprisonment and production persists in a relationship, if not between “the prison” and “the factory” – as Dario Melossi and Massimo Pavarini wrote 40 years ago – rather between “the prison” and “subordination”, because what all the multiple forms of “labor” and “non-labor” have in common – and have in common with the origins of protoindustrial capitalism – is subordination. The second is that the traditional reading of the “Rusche and Kirchheimer hypothesis” on the relationship between economic cycles and imprisonment depends on the specific conjuncture and class composition of the capitalist social formation to which it is applied. One thing is economic development in the period of Fordist mass industry and another in the globalized and fragmented labor market of neo-liberalism. Often imprisonment promotes phases of capitalist development rather than crises and recessions. Furthermore, subordination and inequality are strictly linked and feed on each other. Inequality promotes subordination, by putting the squeeze on those who are at the bottom of the social hierarchy; but subordination at the same time promotes inequality, by making sure that those who occupy those bottom positions, stay there. One strong link in the chain of subordination to inequality is penality, because penality reinforces inequality by reaffirming subordination. Data about long-run empirical relationships between imprisonment rates and inequality measures for the US and Italy are discussed.

Memory as National Values

2021 ◽  
pp. 120-148
Author(s):  
Kathrin Bachleitner
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
National Values ◽  
Conscious Choice ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter places collective memory at the source of a country’s values. In that regard, it enquires into the nature of normative obligations arising from memory. Based on moral-philosophical considerations, it finds normativity in the ‘processes surrounding memory’ described in the temporal security concept. Over time, the relationship between collective memory, identity, and behaviour generates a ‘duty to act’ for countries in the sense of ‘ought’. This last and most diffuse impact of collective memory unfolds and persists into the long run. Through it, collective memory, entirely outside the realm of conscious choice, channels behaviour towards one good course of action. To illustrate this, the empirical study picks up the case countries, Germany and Austria, at a late point in time. In 2015, large numbers of refugees arrived at their borders during what became known as the ‘European refugee crisis’. In this ‘critical situation’, both countries were required to react and thus position themselves vis-à-vis the highly normative issue of asylum. With the help of a content analysis of official speeches, the case study demonstrates how German and Austrian politicians came to identify different versions of what a good response entails based on their country’s diverse collective memories.

Hierarchical or Egalitarian?

2019 ◽  
pp. 144-164
Author(s):  
D. W. Harding
Keyword(s):  
Social Development ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Social Complexity ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Social Hierarchy ◽  
Historic Archaeology ◽  
Economic Competition ◽  
Grave Goods

The model of social structure in British prehistory still owes much to the legacy of Gordon Childe, for whom economic competition was the catalyst of social inequalities. Even from the Neolithic, however, control of land or stock would have conveyed status, and the construction of major works such as tombs or henges implies authority over labour and resources, even if it was religious rather than temporal. Classical sources indicated that late pre-Roman Iron Age society was stratified, but recent opinion has questioned how far back this extended into earlier prehistory. Using grave goods as a proxy for social status may be simplistic, though whether explained as possessions of the dead, debts repaid by dependents, dedications to deities or ancestors, or displays of communal wealth consumption, they surely indicate social complexity. Settlements in British prehistory or early historic archaeology seldom display clear evidence of social hierarchy, since social status was evidently not expressed in the same terms as in contemporary materialistic and capitalistic societies. Anthropological models of social development from simple communities to chiefdoms and state societies can now be seen as neither consistent nor uniform in progression.

On the optimality of stationary replacement strategies

1980 ◽  
Vol 17 (01) ◽  
pp. 178-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bo Bergman
Keyword(s):  
Large Class ◽  
Law Of Large Numbers ◽  
Martingale Differences ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The Law

In this paper it is shown that for a large class of replacement problems the class of stationary replacement strategies is complete, i.e. in order to minimize the average long run cost per unit time it suffices to consider replacement rules which are equal for each new unit irrespectively of what has been observed from earlier units. The main result is based on a version of the law of large numbers for martingale differences proved in the appendix.

A Modification of the Modified Stollsteimer Location Moled

1975 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 159-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Fuller
Keyword(s):  
Cost Function ◽  
Optimal Solution ◽  
Computer Time ◽  
Solution Procedure ◽  
Plant Location ◽  
Model Parameters ◽  
Basic Model ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Cost Parameters

The Stollsteimer plant location model is a normative tool appropriate for deterrmning least-cost number, size and location of a subindustry's marketing facilities. Several modification and extensions of the basic model have increased its value to the applied economist. Ladd and Halvorson developed a procedure to determine sensitivity of the optimal solution to variation in model parameters, i.e., the researcher may resolve how magnitude cost parameters are altered before the solution becomes non-optimal. The basic model's solution procedure prevented application where large numbers of potential plant sites were involved. A recent modification by Warrack and Fletcher effects a reduction in required computer time by approximating optimization, thus increasing size of plant location problems investigated. Polopolus extended the basic model to encompass multiple product plants and, in collaboration with Chern, modified the basic Stollsteimer model to permit substitution of a discontinuous, long-run plant cost function for the strategically assumed continuous linear form. Prior to the latter modification, the basic model accommodated only a long-run total plant cost function which was linear with a positive intercept.

scholarly journals Religion and Mendicity in Seventeenth-Century France

1962 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 400-425 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emanuel Chill
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Social Bonds ◽  
Religious Conflict ◽  
Hundred Years War ◽  
Religious Attitudes ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
Systematic Program

From the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries, as absolutism emerged in its classic development, the lower classes of western Europe experienced great insecurity and hardship. The Hundred Years' War, the end of serfdom, the quickening of economic activity, the secular price advance, and the explosion of religious conflict shattered traditional social bonds, produced widespread destitution, and uprooted large numbers of peasants who took to the roads in a desperate nomadism. These vagrant populations, existing on theft, brigandage and, mainly, begging, evoked severe governmental repression which was to prove generally unpopular and, in the long run, ineffective. In seventeenth-century France certain private groups also were to take up the cause of repressing vagabondage through a systematic program of confinement in workhouses – a program which, while complementing royal policy, would draw its main inspiration from the ascetic spirituality of the French Counter Reformation. These hôpitaux généraux are of interest as concrete expressions of the convergence of social problems, absolutist political tendencies, and religious attitudes.

Skeletal Morphology and Social Structure in Ancient Egypt

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonia Zakrzewski
Keyword(s):  
Human Growth ◽  
Social Hierarchy ◽  
Skeletal Remains ◽  
Ancient Egypt ◽  
Social Differentiation ◽  
Middle Kingdom ◽  
Human Skeletal Remains ◽  
Skeletal Morphology ◽  
Social Divisions ◽  
Limb Proportions

The study of human skeletal remains from ancient Egypt helps understand effects of emergent and entrenched differences in social differentiation and hierarchy between 5500 and 1785 B.C. This work focuses on diachronic patterns of terminal adult stature and limb proportions in Egyptian samples from the relatively egalitarian Badarian peoples through the highly complex and stratified Middle Kingdom. This diachronic approach suggests a number of complex outcomes, including that adult mean statures increased from Badarian to Late Predynastic times but declined into the Middle Kingdom. Increasing degrees of sexual dimorphism and changing limb proportions also speak to the intertwined effects of social hierarchy, gendered social divisions, and the plasticity of human growth in ancient Egypt.

Rice and Social Differentiation on a Volcanic Island: An Archaeobotanical Investigation of Yerae-dong, Korea

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 475-491 ◽  
Author(s):  
Minkoo Kim ◽  
Ranyeong Oh ◽  
Moonbae Bang ◽  
Jeong-Wook Rha ◽  
Youjin Jeong
Keyword(s):  
Korean Peninsula ◽  
Social Hierarchy ◽  
Rice Cultivation ◽  
Social Differentiation ◽  
Volcanic Island ◽  
Exchange Networks ◽  
Local Elites ◽  
Foreign Objects ◽  
The People ◽  
Ancient States

This article presents evidence for prehistoric rice cultivation on the island of Jeju (Jejudo), Korea. It also discusses sociopolitical contexts in which the people of this island decided to incorporate rice into their lifeways. Although Jejudo is culturally closely related to the southern region of the Korean peninsula, the nearest landmass to the island, their environmental conditions are radically different. Jejudo is not suitable for intensive rice cultivation. Archaeobotanical research at Yerae-dong nonetheless confirmed that rice was consumed earlier than the emergence of institutionalized social hierarchy on the island. The evidence for status competition and exchange networks contemporaneous with rice remains raises the suggestion that rice was initially incorporated as an exotic and luxurious food, rather than a daily necessity. The earliest rice on Jejudo is unlikely to have been transferred to the island as a result of tributary trade between ancient states. Rather, this study demonstrated that the main agents of rice cultivation were the emergent local elites who attempted to express status and consolidate hierarchy with foreign objects.

CONSUMPTION CONSUMES: CIRCULATION, EXCHANGE, AND VALUE OF SAN PEDRO DE ATACAMA BLACK POLISHED CERAMICS

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 252-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco Gallardo ◽  
Itací Correa ◽  
Gonzalo Pimentel ◽  
José Francisco Blanco
Keyword(s):  
Identity Construction ◽  
Social Complexity ◽  
Pacific Coast ◽  
Northern Chile ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Prestige Goods ◽  
San Pedro ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Pastoral Communities

Exchange goods contribute to social complexity and identity construction, but our knowledge of past practices associated with the circulation and consumption of such goods is limited. We explore the polished black ceramics of the San Pedro de Atacama oasis in northern Chile, which were widely traded during the first seven centuries A.D. In particular, we consider the relationships established between the agricultural and pastoral communities of the highland oases and the marine hunter-gatherers who inhabited the Pacific coast in order to examine the circulation and consumption of exotics as prestige goods.

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