Questioning the Capitalist Lens: Anarchism as a Critical Theory for Assessing Sociopolitical Dynamics in the Past

Summary

Archaeologists can view the societies of the archaeological record through the lens of their contemporary experience. I will explore how archaeologists have viewed past societies in terms of their experience within states based in capitalism. Some identify "rational economic actors" primarily as pursuing individual gain, or others find "aggrandizers" as the active, entrepreneurial agents of change in past societies. These arguments propound the socioeconomic dynamics of capitalist societies as if state-market actions were cultural "laws" applicable to most societies, rather than reflections of their own socioeconomy. It’s worth questioning the applicability of Western modes of interaction to non-state societies. I will explore examples with cases from the Northwest past, wherein the capitalist-influenced arguments offered are often in marked contrast with indigenous descriptions and oral histories about their own modes of interaction politically and economically. Anarchism, with its theories explicitly concerning modes of interaction in small-scale or non-state societies, can provide a critical perspective for archaeologists, presenting analytical tools to think about the dynamics of anarchic societies in the archaeological record. For one, it can help us shift from considering historical processes that are individually pushed (centralized and capitalist) to those that are collectively driven (decentralized and communitarian).

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Anarchy and Archaeology: Contesting Hierarchy, Power, and Authority in the Past and Today

Keywords

Spatial Coverage