Collective Action and Adaptive Socioecological Cycles in Premodern States

Blanton, Richard E.

doi:10.1177/1069397109351684

Cited by 28 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…The examination of urban collapse and transformation requires multiscalar approaches (Blanton ). These should probe the “black‐boxes” of human social dynamics and organization, which in a basic sense entails the consideration of the shifting relations between followers and leaders (e.g., Blanton ), while also taking into account networks and relations that extend beyond regions and political boundaries (e.g., Wolf ). No longer can we restrict considerations of individual agency solely to small elite subsets of populations (see Nassaney and Sassaman , xxi–xxii).…”

Section: Collectivity In Large‐scale Premodern Societiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This relational aspect of leadership is a particular consideration for ancient cities and states, where the frictions of population and governance at a distance placed real constraints on degrees of control, the maintenance of boundaries, and a reliance on force and power alone (Smith ). Instead, following broader social science literature on collective action (Adger ; Blanton , ; Blanton and Fargher , ; Carballo ; Levi ), we frame our consideration of past large‐scale societies using a comparative perspective, one that recognizes institutional variation and the resultant responses to challenges and perturbations.…”

Section: Collectivity In Large‐scale Premodern Societiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Collaborative and competitive strategies in the variability and resiliency of large‐scale societies in Mesoamerica

Feinman

Carballo

2018

Economic Anthropology

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Examinations of the variation and duration of past large-scale societies have long involved a conceptual struggle between efforts at generalization and the unraveling of specific trajectories. Although historical particulars are critical to understanding individual cases, there exist both scientific and policy rationales for drawing broader implications regarding the growing corpus of cross-cultural data germane to understanding variability in the constitution of human societies, past and present. Archaeologists have recently paid increased attention to successes and failures in communal-resource management over the long term, as articulated by the transdisciplinary theory on cooperation and collective action. In this article, we consider frameworks that have been traditionally employed in studies of the rise, diversity, and fall of large-scale preindustrial aggregations. We suggest that a comparative theoretical perspective that foregrounds collective-action problems, unaligned individual and group interests, and the social mechanisms that promote or hamper cooperation advances our understanding of variability in these early cooperative arrangements. We apply such a perspective to an examination of cities from pre-Columbian Mesoamerica to demonstrate tendencies for more collective systems to be larger and longer lasting than less collective ones, likely reflecting greater resiliency in the face of the ecological and cultural perturbations specific to the region and era.Keywords Collective Action; Resource Management; Population; Political Economy; Mesoamerica Cooperation and competition have long been recognized as fundamental characteristics of the human career (Mead 1937). Anthropologists have had sustained interest in evaluating how variability in this axis of behavior relates to the emergence, durability, and diversity of large-scale societies (Carballo, Roscoe, and Feinman 2014;Fuentes 2004). Still, as Trigger (2003, 3) remarked, researchers continue to work for an appropriate balance between general and specific factors (or processes and history) in developing frameworks for understanding cultural and behavioral variability viewed in deep, temporal perspective through the archaeological record. We address these issues through a comparative analysis of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican urban centers that focally examines differences in the ways that they were governed and how organizational variation relates to their size and longevity. Framing urbanism in pre-Columbian MesoamericaPre-Columbian Mesoamerica has long been recognized as a cultural region where early cities and large-scale polities arose autochthonously (e.g., Adams 1966;Steward 1949). Given the impediments to communication and resource extraction relative to ancient Eurasia (e.g., the lack of beasts of burden and wheeled transport and the markedly limited and relatively late use of metal implements), the significant size and durability of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican urban centers has raised special interest (Wright 1989, 99). How were these preindus...

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Section: Collectivity In Large‐scale Premodern Societiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Collectivity In Large‐scale Premodern Societiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Collaborative and competitive strategies in the variability and resiliency of large‐scale societies in Mesoamerica

Feinman

Carballo

2018

Economic Anthropology

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“…The relationships farmers forged to manage their landscape were affected by the ways producers were simultaneously incorporated into the local political economy and the body politic . The loss of Xaltocan's political independence disrupted the social, administrative and probably moral structures governing the sustainability and resilience of this socio-ecological system (see Blanton 2010). That chinampa farming did not resume when the area was incorporated into the Aztec Empire also can be explained organisationally.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The chronology and collapse of pre-Aztec raised field (chinampa) agriculture in the northern Basin of Mexico

Morehart¹,

Frederick

2014

Antiquity

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Xaltocan Mexico City 0 km 1000 N Raised field agriculture in the Basin of Mexico was a highly sustainable farming method that did not depend upon centralised political control. Study of the chinampa system around the Early and Middle Postclassic city of Xaltocan through a combination of remote sensing, GIS, targeted excavation and AMS dating has revealed an extensive area of raised fields that was abandoned when Xaltocan was conquered by an alliance of powerful neighbours during the fourteenth century AD. The rise and abandonment of the chinampa system were thus directly linked to the political economy of the city-state. The failure to revive the raised field systems in the following Aztec period can also be attributed to the impact of political, economic and ecological factors.

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“…I found little evidence for comparable problems in the context of those states possessing the institutional capacity to realize collective benefits (39). These polities implemented equitable tax-collection policies, provided public goods such as public security and effective judicial systems across the realm, accommodated taxpayer voice, and maintained effective institutional controls over the agency of governing principals and administrative cadre.…”

Section: Ethnicity Within the Fabric Of A Complex Societymentioning

confidence: 97%

Theories of ethnicity and the dynamics of ethnic change in multiethnic societies

Blanton

2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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I modify Fredrik Barth’s approach, which sees ethnic group building as a signaling system, to place it within a framework that draws from collective action and costly signaling theories. From these perspectives, ethnic signaling, although representing a costly penalty to group members, is one effective form of communication that facilitates collective management of resources. I then identify three contexts in which the benefits of ethnic group building are likely to outweigh its signaling costs: in politically chaotic refuge and periphery zones; in the context of long-distance specialist trading groups; and within the territorial scope of failed states. I point to selected data from the Mughal and Aztec polities to illustrate how a combination of effective public goods management, in highly collective states, and the growth of highly integrated commercial economies will render ethnic group building superfluous.

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Collective Action and Adaptive Socioecological Cycles in Premodern States

Cited by 28 publications

References 21 publications

Collaborative and competitive strategies in the variability and resiliency of large‐scale societies in Mesoamerica

Collaborative and competitive strategies in the variability and resiliency of large‐scale societies in Mesoamerica

The chronology and collapse of pre-Aztec raised field (chinampa) agriculture in the northern Basin of Mexico

Theories of ethnicity and the dynamics of ethnic change in multiethnic societies

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