Intermediate Scale Socio-Spatial Units, Collective Action, and the State in Cross-Cultural Perspective

Summary

Collective Action Theory posits that states are the outcome of bargaining among the individuals, groups, and factions that make up the political community. Thus, the nature of intermediate scale socio-spatial units or social organizations that exist hierarchically between individual households and the state (e.g., corporate groups, clans, neighborhoods, communities, patron-client networks, etc.) plays a key role in determining the political-economic strategies employed by the architects of the state. Because the social construction of and the relationship between these units and states take myriad forms across space and through time, we draw on systematic cross-cultural research based on archaeology, history, and ethnography from around the world to elucidate the forms that these units take and the ways that they pressure, resist, work with, or ignore the political agents of the state. We place special emphasis on illustrating how these units are physical materialized on the landscapes of states and cities and how these structures or spatial organizations shape larger patterns in settlements, production strategies, and monumental construction, and, thus, the materialization of power in premodern states.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Theorizing and Excavating Neighborhoods

Keywords

Spatial Coverage