Settlement Structure and Social Space

Author(s):  
Helena Hamerow

The way in which a community arranges its living space is only partly due to technical considerations: social relations also play a major role in determining the layout of settlements, as we can see from cross-cultural studies (Rapoport 1980, 9). A correlation exists, for example, between increased economic complexity and complexity and regularity in settlement structure. Thus, while hunter-gatherer settlements tend to have a fairly flexible structure, societies which emphasize concepts of property and territory are more likely to develop fixed ‘rules’ regarding settlement layout (Fraser 1968). The early Middle Ages saw profound changes in socio-political structures as early states were formed, as well as major developments in food-production strategies and technology. We should, therefore, expect to see these changes reflected, at least indirectly, in the layouts of settlements. Spatial order in a settlement both reflects and helps to regulate social order and social relations; it provides, quite literally, ‘a framework for living’ (Chapman 1989; Giddens 1979, 207; Leach 1976, 10). This presents the archaeologist with a daunting prospect, for it is far easier to explain the arrangement of early medieval settlements in terms of function or geometry than in terms of kinship structure, household composition, marriage patterns, and so on, factors which we can at best only glimpse through documentary sources. If, for example, we are to interpret the significance of an exceptionally large house or farmstead accurately, we first need to know whether power was vested in the heads of households or lineages, a council of elders, or in some form of paramount chiefdom. Despite these limitations, settlement layout is an important source of evidence for the social and economic structures of early medieval communities. The individual household appears to have been the basic unit of agricultural production in northwest Europe from the Roman Iron Age to the Carolingian/Viking periods. The economic importance and, to some degree, independence of the household is underscored by the fact that in most cases each lay within its own enclosure and had its own storage facilities (in contrast, for example, to the shared compounds of the earlier Iron Age, as seen, for example, at Hodde in Denmark: Hvass 1985).

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-8
Author(s):  
Yuriі Boreiko

The article analyzes the sociocultural basis of constituting the symbolic space, the content of the symbolic violence phenomenon, the cultural and symbolic potential of the toponymics objects. It is established that practices of symbolic violence consist in constructing a system of subjective coordinates by imposing rules, senses, meanings, values that become self-evident. Symbolic space encompasses the collective consciousness of the socio-cultural community and has the ability to form a system of subjective coordinates where the individual's life activity unfolds. The intelligibility of symbolic space is conventionally established, which is provided by the process of socialization. Pursuing the goal of domination, hegemony, coercion, symbolic violence moves the real confrontation into a symbolic environment, directing the influence on the mental structures of the social subject. Giving to senses and meanings a legitimate character is a way to explain and substantiate social relations, their cognitive and normative interpretation. Accumulating the experience of community coexistence throughout its history, habitus is a set of dispositions that motivate an individual to a certain reaction or behavior. Habitus, which generates and structures practices, combines the individual tendency of the actor to act adequately to the situation, the interaction of actors in the community, and the interaction of the community and each of its members with reality. As a historically changing phenomenon, habitus determines the nature of interactions between individuals whose communication skills are consistent with the functioning of social institutions. An important component of the symbolic space and part of the cultural and historical discourse are the objects of toponymics, which explains the constant ideological and political interest in this segment of socio-cultural life. Objects of toponymics act as a marker of ordering social space, a tool for including the subject in socio-spatial landscapes. The renaming of toponyms demonstrates the connection between the social conditions in which it takes place and the reaction of the social relations entity to changes in the toponymic space.


2007 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Alzaga

Cristina Alzaga: Indoor Prostitution: The Parlour as a Social Space This article presents a sociological hermeneutic analysis of the lived everyday working world of Danish indoor prostitutes. It draws upon observations and interviews, as well as documentary and experiential data, produced during a six-month period of ethnographic fieldwork at a Copenhagen massage parlour, where the author served as “telephone lady“. The article uncovers the social order (nomos) of this life world, its social relations and shared interpretations as well as organizational traits and practical-corporeal terms. It also discusses the variety and multidimensionality of the relations between prostitutes and clients. The article seeks to uncover the meanings of the distinct experiential dynamics and work experiences that take form within this particular working universe, and examines their contradictory relations to the dominant views and accounts of prostitution in the outside world, including the views pre¬sented by mainstream research on prostitution.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 129
Author(s):  
Nicky Garland ◽  
Barney Harris ◽  
Tom Moore ◽  
Andrew Reynolds

Linear earthworks of a monumental character are an enigmatic part of the British landscape. Research in Britain suggests that such features range in date from the early 1st millennium BC to the Early Middle Ages. While the  roles of these monuments in past societies cannot be understated, they remain a relatively under-researched phenomenon. This article introduces the Leverhulme Trust-funded ‘Monumentality and Landscape: Linear Earthworks in Britain’ project, which aims to provide a comparative study of linear earthworks focusing on those dating to the Iron Age and early medieval period. This contribution reviews our approach and shares preliminary results from the project’s first year, identifying wider implications for the study of linear earthworks.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 252-262
Author(s):  
A. A. Sanzhenakov

The article aims at presenting theoretical difficulties of sociology of morality and possible ways to overcome them. The importance of this issue is determined by the necessity of the scientific study of moral elements of the contemporary society in order to prevent its dehumanization. Sociology of morality focuses on the empirical study of various moral phenomena (justice, duty, conscience) in the social space. At the first stage of such a study, sociologists conduct observations and collect data, and at the second stage, they generalize moral facts to identify moral patterns. In sociology, morality is considered as an element of society; therefore, it is not analyzed by itself but within a system of social relations. One of the difficulties of such studies is the ambivalent nature of morality, i.e. its existence in both public and individual consciousness: if sociologists ignore the individual mode of morality, they misrepresent the content of moral facts. Another reason for theoretical difficulties in the study of morality is that sociologists use outdated ideas about the nature of moral truths and researchers impartiality - moral judgments are considered as not being true or false, and the researcher should ignore his value attitudes when collecting and analyzing data. The elimination of these difficulties can lead to the loss of the sociological research specifics and to the merger of sociology and moral philosophy. Representatives of the new sociology of morality have to reform this field but ensure its status of an independent scientific discipline. One of the ways to solve this task is to use ideas of analytic philosophy, in particular, of moral realism that defines moral qualities as qualities of real things, and moral truths as having the same status as scientific truths.


2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-83
Author(s):  
Matthew Susnow ◽  
Nimrod Marom ◽  
Ariel Shatil ◽  
Nava Panitz-Cohen ◽  
Robert Mullins ◽  
...  

Astragali, the knuckle or ankle bones of mammals, have been collected, used and modified by humans in different parts of the world for millennia. Large hoards dating from Iron Age IIA (tenth–ninth centuries BC) are attested at a number of sites in the southern Levant, and a recently discovered hoard of 406 astragali at Tel Abel Beth Maacah in northern Israel presents an opportunity to investigate this phenomenon, shedding light on the function of these bones and why they bore special status and meaning that crossed cultural and temporal boundaries. In this study, the zooarchaeological analysis of the astragali provides the basis for an extensive discussion of the hoard’s formation process and function that explores ethnographic literature, archaeological data and ancient Near Eastern and classical documentary sources. The findings of this study demonstrate that while the individual bones had many different functions, once deposited together the astragali took on a new meaning, possibly related to divinatory practices.


Author(s):  
Stephen Rippon

In the past the study of early medieval kingdoms has mostly been a singledisciplinary activity based upon the extremely limited documentary sources, with boundaries back-projected from much later evidence (e.g. Bailey 1989, fig. 8.1). What is presented in this study, in contrast, is an attempt to have a more archaeologically and landscape-based discussion that includes using the distributions of cultural indicators such as artefact types, architectural forms, burial practices, and the locations of particular sites that appear to have been positioned in liminal locations. Three phases in the development of these kingdoms can be distinguished: • The fifth to sixth centuries (emergent kingdoms): the period of Grubenhäuser and Anglo-Saxon burials associated with a suite of material culture showing marked regional affinities. Anglo-Saxon kingdoms existed by the end of this period, and a broad consensus has emerged that they were formed through the amalgamation of a series of smaller regiones (e.g. Arnold 1988; Bassett 1989a; Yorke 1990; Scull 1993; 1999; Harrington and Welch 2014). This model—which Bassett (1989b) has compared to a football knock-out competition—is, however, based largely upon the fragmentary and very partial documentary record (see Chapter 7), and it does not explain the close correspondence of the boundaries between the fifth- to sixth-century socio-economic zones spheres identified here and those of the Iron Age and Roman periods. • The seventh and eighth centuries (mature kingdoms): a new suite of material culture (e.g. East Anglian and East Saxon coinage, and Ipswich Ware) whose circulation in part appears to have been restricted to the polities within which they were produced. The authority of the East Saxon kings had started to decline during the latter part of this period, although East Anglia survived. • The ninth century (the declining kingdoms): the East Saxon kingdom virtually disappeared and become a territory within Wessex. The distributions of later eighth- and ninth-century inscribed coinage, and distinctive artefact types such as silver wire inlaid strap ends, suggest that the East Anglian socio-economic sphere, and the kingdom that was based upon it, survived within the same boundaries that had emerged by the fifth and sixth centuries until it was overrun by the Danes in the 870s.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 44
Author(s):  
Qingyuan Fang

Since 1960s, with the rise of phenomenology and hermeneutics, structural sociology has been impacted to some extent. In Giddens’ opinion, the structural sociology represented by Parsons greatly belittles the influence of individual's subjective initiative and cognitive ability on the society, and overemphasizes the dominant role of the society on the individual. However, interpretive sociology regards the material world such as society as the object world which is opposite to human existence and suspends the restriction of structure on individuals. According to Giddens, the problem of social theory is actually the problem of social order, that is, to explain how people transcend time and space and transcend the limitation of individual presence by means of social relations. Based on Giddens' social construction theory, this paper tries to explain the influence of communication behavior in school education on individual socialization of students.


Author(s):  
Constance Classen

This chapter embarks on a tactile history of the Middle Ages. It considers the sensory effects of different areas in the medieval milieu: the social body, heat, city walls, work routines, and bodily comforts. Alongside the strength of the social body (the identification of the individual within the group), the chapter also explores the ways in which the common touch can uphold or destroy the medieval social order. Next, the chapter turns to the role of heat and warmth in intimate domestic spaces before moving on to the larger domain of city life as well as the rigors of farm work and agricultural cycles. Capping off this discussion of daily medieval life, the chapter delves into the rites of pleasure, where the hardness of work is contrasted with the softness of comfort.


Author(s):  
Viktoriia Leonidivna Pohribna ◽  
Olena Mykolaivna Sakhan

Problem setting. Human actions and deeds that tend to deviate from institutionalized expectations are becoming less predictable, contrary to existing cultural and moral norms, social rules and responsibilities in a given society, and can be seen as a potential threat to the social order. That is why the need to analyze the problem of the nature of mass deviations is relevant. Recent research and publications analysis. The results of scientific investigations of deviant behavior as a social phenomenon have found theoretical justification in the numerous works of sociologists, conflictologists, philosophers, culturologists, psychologists, jurists: I. Bakum, K. Bartol, G. Becker, R. Blackborn, T. Garasimov, J. D. Downs, P. Rock and Y. McLaughlin, I. Zhdanova, T. Zelinskaya, M. Inderbitsin, K. A. Bates, R. R. Heine, N. Kivenko, Z. Kisil, R.-V.Kisil, J. Kleiberg, L. Kozer, L. Kotlyarova, A. Crossman, C. Lombroso, E. Manuilov, Y. Kalinovsky, N. Martyniuk, V. Mendelevich, T. Parsons, B. Tkach, K. Horne, E. Erickson and many others. Paper objective ‑ disclosure of the functional conditionality of the objective nature of deviation as a social phenomenon inherent in any society. Paper main body. A methodological distinction between deviance as a system of certain individual and social anti-values has been made. The methodological basis of this distinction was the comparative analysis of nonconformist (“fundamental deviation”) and aberrant (“appropriate deviation”) behavior proposed by R. Merton. It is shown how the morphogenesis of aberrant behavior forms the mechanism of transition of individual anti-values into social ones. Initially, aberrations remain in the private sphere and have no social consequences, but over time, deviations spread, especially when most people see that violators thrive and become a “role model” (according to R. Merton), and the deviation becomes regular. The next step ‑ common in society aberrant behavior seeks to weaken or even destroy the legitimacy of institutional norms in force in the system, resulting in the institutionalization of deviations. This is due, firstly, to the regular nature of aberrations, secondly, the transition of deviations from the private to the public, thirdly, the well-established “social mechanics” of deviations and, finally, the rarity of penalties for aberrant behavior or its symbolic sanctions. As a result, three variants of institutionalized deviations are formed: “normative erosion”, which is associated with the slow liberalization of certain norms; "Resistance to norms", when new norms are introduced by order “from above”; “Substitution of norms”, when the current norms are not refuted, but common deviations seem to become legal due to the scale and duration of their application. Regardless of which option is implemented, it is through aberrations that the transition of individual anti-values into social ones is completed. The objective nature of social deviations has a functional conditionality. First, society's desire for development requires a change in the usual ways of acting, which, in turn, involve deviations from social norms. The destruction of the standards of action proposed by the norms, due to mass repetitive deviations, performs a signal function of the obsolescence of those existing norms and values that inhibit social progress. Secondly, the increase in the number of interactions and, consequently, social roles that are simultaneously performed by a socially active person in the development of society, leads to the fact that within the system of social norms governing social interactions, contradictions arise when compliance with one rule effective need to violate another. Therefore, there are forced deviations. Based on this, a classification of deviant behavior is proposed, where the criterion for typology is the rationality / irrationality of the choice of actions: unconscious (is the result of mental disorders that lead to violations of human adaptation to social norms, when deviations from officially established or actually existing standards in society have no rational explanation) and conscious, which is divided intovoluntary (is a form of disorganization of human social behavior, which on the basis of their own rational moral choice consciously demonstrates inconsistencies with expectations and/or requirements of society) and forced (is a kind of behavior influence of objective external factors, characterized by the inevitability of violation of one rule in favor of another due to the presence of logical contradictions in the system of norms governing a certain type of social relations). Conclusions of the research. Violation by the individual of the internalization process of social experience can lead to impoverishment of the role repertoire, its deformation, entry into the antisocial plane and, as a consequence, the emergence of various manifestations of personality antisocialization, its desocialization, and subsequent social maladaptation. At the same time, the transfer of emphasis in the value orientations of people from spiritual priorities to material ones intensifies the emergence of zones with a high level of social entropy in the social space. Social entropy provokes the spread of aberrant behavior - actions associated with a conscious hidden violation of social norms by the individual, when he is clearly aware of the asociality of their actions, creating a system of individual anti-values. Unlike nonconformist (“fundamental deviation”), which usually initiates normative innovation, aberrant behavior (“appropriate deviation”) produces normative deviations. The lack of choice in the dilemma “to violate - not to violate the norm” leads to forced deviations, the analysis of the possible consequences of which requires further study.


Author(s):  
Jón Viðar Sigurðsson

This introductory chapter provides an overview of friendship. Friendship exists in a state of constant flux, being shaped by and shaping other personal relationships. Thus, it cannot be studied in isolation of other social relations. Until about 1970, the idea of a strong kin group was central to the discussion of Norwegian and Icelandic society in the Viking Age and the high Middle Ages. The view was that a patriarchal kin-based organization united the social, judicial, political, and religious facets of society. The kin group possessed land in common and probably took care of the “individual kin-group member's need for protection, his lawful rights and his religious needs.” Over time there has been a shift in the debate in Iceland and Norway, from a focus on the kin-based society and the political institutions described in the law codes, toward the political culture and the role friendship played.


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