Social Institutions and the Differential Development of Northern Iroquoian Confederacies

Birch, Jennifer

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-51437-2_19

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 31 publications

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“…These were sizable groups, each with an estimated population of some 20,000-30,000 (Jones, 2008;Warrick, 2008). Although the basic social institutions in Huron-Wendat and Haudenosaunee societies were identical below the confederacy level, territorial considerations and the process by which each formed led to differences in their internal structure and functions (Birch, 2020).…”

Section: Northern Iroquoian Confederaciesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Premodern Confederacies: Balancing Strategic Collective Action and Local Autonomy

Birch

2022

Front. Polit. Sci.

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A confederacy is generally understood to be a formal, institutionalized alliance of peoples who act in mutual support to achieve common ends. While the emergence and maintenance of early and pre-modern states have received tremendous scholarly attention in the social sciences, the same cannot be said for confederations. This paper examines common features of premodern confederacies as an initial effort towards developing a body of theory aimed at exploring and explaining confederacies, leagues, and other modes of collective and regional governance. The central thesis posed is that confederation was an ongoing political process that provided a means for a diverse range of political formations to achieve collective strategic goals at a distance without sacrificing autonomy. Selected case studies ranging from Pre-Columbian North America to Medieval Europe are explored to evaluate this position. The case studies show that confederacies were capable of integrating a diverse range of political formations, from tribes to kingdoms. The question of whether or not confederacies constitute ‘good government’ is considered and since the objective of a confederacy is generally not to govern, the answer depends on the political organization of its constituent parts.

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Section: Northern Iroquoian Confederaciesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Premodern Confederacies: Balancing Strategic Collective Action and Local Autonomy

Birch

2022

Front. Polit. Sci.

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Considering Ideas of Collective Action, Institutions, and “Hunter-Gatherers” in the American Southeast

Thompson

2022

J Archaeol Res

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Broken Worlds: Towards an Archaeology of the Shatter Zone

Raffield

2021

J Archaeol Method Theory

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In recent years, archaeological studies of long-term change and transformation in the human past have often been dominated by the discussion of dichotomous processes of ‘collapse’ and ‘resilience’. These discussions are frequently framed in relatively narrow terms dictated by specialist interests that place an emphasis on the role of single ‘trigger’ factors as motors for historic change. In order to address this issue, in this article I propose that the study of the ‘shatter zone’—a term with origins in physical geography and geopolitics that has been more recently harnessed in anthropological research—has the potential to facilitate multi-scalar, interdisciplinary analyses of the ways in which major historical changes unfold across both space and time, at local, regional, and inter-regional levels. This article unpacks the concept of the shatter zone and aligns this with existing archaeological frameworks for the study of long-term adaptive change. I then situate these arguments within the context of recent studies of colonial interaction and conflict in the Eastern Woodlands of North America during the sixteenth to eighteenth century. The study demonstrates how a more regulated approach to the shatter zone has the potential to yield new insights on the ways in which populations mitigate and react to instability and change while also facilitating comparative studies of these processes on a broader, global scale.

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Social Institutions and the Differential Development of Northern Iroquoian Confederacies

Cited by 3 publications

References 31 publications

Premodern Confederacies: Balancing Strategic Collective Action and Local Autonomy

Premodern Confederacies: Balancing Strategic Collective Action and Local Autonomy

Considering Ideas of Collective Action, Institutions, and “Hunter-Gatherers” in the American Southeast

Broken Worlds: Towards an Archaeology of the Shatter Zone

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