Problems with Bourdieu? We can help! Call now.

I find that I am not the only one puzzling over the infatuation of archaeologists with the work of Pierre Broudieu and other incomprehensible French social philosophers. Here are some suggestions about what an archaeoalogist can do:


(1) Steve Lekson: Use other theorists who are more grounded and make sense.

Steven Lekson has an amusing post, "La Maladie Française" on his blog, The Southwest in the World. This blog is fascinating - it consists of chapters and parts of chapters of a book that Lekson is in the process of writing. Readers can follow his book as it is constructed, quite an innovative process. This particular post is about the convoluted prose of Bourdieu, de Certeau, et al. Lekson says:

"I have from time to time disparaged French social philosophy.  It’s not so much the content (it’s that too), but rather the language.  To paraphrase Professor Higgins, the French don’t care what they say actually, so long as they write it properly.  Which, for French social philosophers, means convoluted, obtuse, ambiguous, impenetrable — well-known hallmarks of French philosophy, generally."

After posting several choice uncomprehensible quotes., Lekson lists some archaeological theoreticians. who write clearly and comprehensibly. He says:

"Theory does not require Delphic obscurantism.  Many useful thinkers think clearly and write clearly.  I list several below – a quick, short list with only a few works for each.  Some are old and some not so old.  You must judge if their thinking is useful (I find it so).   But – and this is key – you can judge their thinking directly on its merits, and not as faith that something useful lies buried in the verbiage."

(2) Robert Rosenswig: Why cite Bourdieu and Giddens when Marx said it better?

In an interesting paper, Robert Rosenswig notes that many archaeologists cite Bourdieu and Giddens without engaging with their work. He compares their perspective on agency and practice to the ideas of Marx. But whereas Marx presented a materialist theory of agency, these scholars promote an idealist version. Rosenswig advocates a return to Marx's materialist theory of modes of production and social change.

Rosenswig, Robert
2011    Materialism, Mode of Production, and a Millennium of Change in Southern Mexico. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 18:(in press).


(3) Andrew Abbott: Bourdieu contributes nothing new; avoid abstract social theory.

I've raved about Andrew Abbott's (2004) very useful book several times in this blog, here, here, and here.  Abbott is not a big fan of high-level abstract social theory:

·         “A good idea, then, ought to have some referent in the real world. This is not to deny the utility of pure social theory, but the vast majority of social theory consists of relabeling. All real theory arises in empirical world, in the attempt to make sense of the social world, no matter how abstractly construed. A student is well advised to stay clear of writing pure theory. It’s an open invitation to vacuity .... Relabeling is a general activity in social science because it’s a way of appearing novel without having to do much.” (p. 218).

In another passage, Abbott explicitly calls Bourdieu's concept of habitus as a simple relabeling of concepts long used in sociology.

Abbott, Andrew
2004    Methods of Discovery: Heuristics for the Social Sciences. Norton, New York.

Other prominent sociologists who have little use for Bourdieu include Jon Elster, Raymond Boudon, Peter Hedström, Robert Sampson, and Charles Tilly. Also check out philosopher of science  Mario Bunge (1995).

Bunge, Mario
1995    In Praise of Intolerance to Charlatanism in Academia. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 775:96-115.


(4) Yours truly: You can do rigorous theoretically-informed research without bothering with Bourdieu et al.

As detailed in my paper on urban theory (Smitih 2011), archaeologists interested in causality and explanation can conduct their research and engage with theory on an epistemological level below that of high-level, philosophical, social theory (I wrote that paper before reading Abbott). I call such theory "empirical theory." In the social sciences (outside of archaeology) such theory is labeled "middle-range theory," drawing on the concept by Robert K. Merton (which has nothing to do with Lewis Binford's idiosyncratic concept of the same name). I got tired of grant proposals and articles by archaeologists (students and professionals) in which the authors spend a lot of time waxing poetic about Giddens and Bourdieu, and then go on to describe their research in rather pedestrian terms that ignore the theory entirely. If you are not going to USE theory, then don't waste your time talking about it. Better still, find empirical theory that you CAN use to plan and carry out your fieldwork and to analyze your data.

Smith, Michael E.
2011    Empirical Urban Theory for Archaeologists. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 18:167-192.

For further clarification of different kinds of theory (and how high-level theory relates to middle-range causal theory), see also my earlier post "Theory, theory theory: What do we mean by theory?"

“Social Archaeology”: A good thing or a bad thing?

            I am revising my textbook, The Aztecs, for a third edition. In the previous editions (1996 and 2003), I used the phrase “social archaeology” as a contrast with “monumental archaeology” to illustrate the dominant approaches to the archaeology of ancient civilizations. But now I am having trouble deciding whether to continue to use the phrase in this sense, because it was hijacked by the postmodernists to refer to something very different from the kind of archaeology that I do. For me, work under the banner of “social archaeology” has changed from a good thing to a bad thing.

            “Social archaeology” was first used as a label for research on social topics by processual archaeologists. The phrase was used as the title of Colin Renfrew’s Inaugural Lecture at the University of Southampton in 1973, and then in titles of books in the 1970s and 1980s (Redman 1978; Renfrew 1984). In my own case, I cited Renfrew as exemplifying the kind of social archaeology that I do and that I advocated in my textbook and elsewhere.

            In the late 1980s, “social archaeology” was taken up by the postprocessualists initially as a way to describe what was wrong with processualist thinking. Chapter 2 of Shanks and Tilley (1987), titled “Social Archaeology,” was a critique of Renfrew and other processualist thinkers. But Shanks and Tilley go on to outline their program of postprocessual theory, which they called “critical social archaeology” (p.60). At about the same time, Barrett (1988) called for “reconstituting a social archaeology” with an emphasis on discourse and the practice theory of Giddens. Soon after, Blackwell initiated a book series called “Social Archaeology” with Ian Hodder as the editor.

            Through the 1990s some archaeologists continued to use the phrase “social archaeology” in Renfrew’s sense (Patterson 1994; Smith 1996:5; Webster 1996). By the turn of the millennium, however, it was spreading fast as a new name for postprocessual archaeology. The Journal of Social Archaeology began publishing in 2001, and the Blackwell Companion to Social Archaeology appeared in 2004 (Preucel and Meskell 2004).

            As an old-fashioned materialist with a scientific epistemology, I have little use for the “new social archaeology,” or postprocessual archaeology, or whatever you want to call it. I still find the concepts “social archaeology” and “monumental archaeology” useful in lectures to the public to explain how archaeologists approach the study of ancient states and empires. But can I continue to use this dichotomy in a new edition of my textbook (with caveats, or course)? Or should I just give up and accept the victory of the postprocessualists in hijacking the phrase social archaeology?

            This kind of thing is one reason why I often feel out of synch with much contemporary thought in archaeology and anthropology. In an upcoming book on social science methods, political scientist John Gerring (2011) suggests that the interpretivist orientation of modern cultural anthropology puts it outside of the main methodological and theoretical currents in the social sciences. And I find myself increasingly drawn to theory and concepts in sociology, political science, geography, and other fields in place of what passes for theory in archaeology and anthropology (Smith 2011). I’m sad to see social archaeology disappear as a concept that I can relate to.

References

Barrett, John C.

1988  Fields of Discourse: Reconstituting a Social Archaeology. Critique of Anthropology 7(3):5-16.

Gerring, John

2011  Social Science Methodology: A Unified Framework. Cambridge University Press, New York.

Patterson, Thomas C.

1994          Social Archaeology in Latin America: An Appreciation. American Antiquity 59(3):531-537.

Preucel, Robert W. and Lynn Meskell (editors)

2004  Blackwell Companion to Social Archaeology. Blackwell, Oxford.

Redman, Charles L. (editor)

1978  Social Archaeology: Beyond Subsistence and Dating. Academic Press, New York.

Renfrew, Colin

1984  Approaches to Social Archaeology. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

Shanks, Michael and Christopher Tilley

1987  Social Theory and Archaeology. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.

Smith, Michael E.

1996  The Aztecs. Blackwell Publishers, Oxford.

2011  Empirical Urban Theory for Archaeologists. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 18:(in press).

Webster, Gary S.

1996  Social Archaeology and the Irrational. Current Anthropology 37(4):609-627.

Middle-range theory: sloppy citations or epistemological confusion?

I’m finishing up details for a paper on “empirical urban theory” that will be published in the Journal of Archaeological and Theory. Among other things, I advocate the usefulness of “middle-range theory” as defined in sociology (something quite different from the concept of the same name used by Lewis Binford). Here is how Robert Merton, who coined the term in the 1940s, defined middle-range theory:

• “Middle-range theory … is intermediate to general theories of social systems … and to those detailed orderly descriptions of particulars that are not generalized at all” (Merton 1968:39-40).

This seems pretty clear to me: MRT is intermediate between high-level theory and empirical reality. I have found five archaeological discussions of this concept (Merton’s concept, NOT Binford’s). Two get it right, and three describe it incorrectly. First, the good news. Schiffer (1988) has a nice discussion of the importance of middle-level theory and concepts in archaeology, and Shott (1998) provides an excellent analysis of Merton’s ideas.

Now the bad news. In an early study comparing the concept of Binford and Merton, Raab and Goodyear mischaracterized Merton’s views:

• “middle-range theory is seen as providing a logical link between relatively low-order empirical generalizations and comparatively high-order theories.”(Raab, and Goodyear 1984)

This is something quite different: empirical generalizations are NOT what Merton was taking about at all; he was referring to the empirical record, to “detailed orderly descriptions of particulars.” This is not a mere difference in words; it is a difference in epistemology. On the one hand (Raab and Goodyear) is a view that there is only a single level of theory. Empirical generalizations and high-level theory are epistemologically equivalent (both are explanatory frameworks), and middle-range theory is up there with them. On the other hand is Merton’s view that there are distinct levels of theory that vary in abstraction and generality, which is the contemporary consensus in the other social sciences

Now check out two later descriptions of Merton’s middle-range theory (NOT Binford’s) by archaeologists:

• Middle range theory is: “a logical link between relatively low-level, empiristic generalizations and comparatively high-level theories.” (Forslund 2004). He cites Raab and Goodyear for this concept.

• Middle-range theories are “theories that fell in the range between empirical generalizations and ‘grand theory’ ” (Johnson 2010:53). He does not cite Raab and Goodyear.

So what is the source of Johnson’s error in characterizing Merton’s concept? Did he rely on Raab and Goodyear (which seems to be the case with Forslund)? Was this a simple error in the interpretation of Merton? (I find that hard to believe; Merton seems pretty clear). Or perhaps the error is related to the fact that (Mertonian) middle-range theory does not exist in the epistemology of Johnson’s postprocessual archaeology. Hodder, for example, argues in many publications that all theories exist at the same epistemological level (Hodder 1982; Hodder 1986; Hodder 1999:60-65).

Well, my head is starting to hurt with all this talk of epistemology. I’m more of an empirical than a theoretical thinker, and maybe I’m way off base here. But to me, Merton’s concept seems extremely important for a scientific archaeology. I resent Binford for hijacking the term middle-range theory and I resent Raab and Goodyear for mischaracterizing Merton’s ideas. These two developments have slowed the adoption of contemporary social science explanatory frameworks by archaeologists. These frameworks rely on Merton’s middle-range theory. Check them out:

• (Bates, et al. 1998; Bunge 2004; Hedström 2005; Hedström, and Ylikoski 2010; Mayntz 2004; Pawson 2000; Tilly 2001)

REFERENCES

Bates, Robert H., Avner Greif, Margaret Levi, Jean-Laurent Rosenthal and Barry Weingast  (1998)  Analytic Narratives. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.

Bunge, Mario  (2004)  How Does It Work?: The Search for Explanatory Mechanisms. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 34(2):182-210.

Forslund, Pontus  (2004)  MRT Confidential. In Material Culture and other Things - Post-disciplinary Studies in the 21st century, edited by Frekrik Fahlander and Terje Oestigaard, pp. 213-258. Gotarc Series C. vol. 61. University of Gothenburg, Gothengurg.

Hedström, Peter  (2005)  Dissecting the Social: On the Principles of Analytical Sociology. Cambridge University Press, New York.

Hedström, Peter and Petri Ylikoski  (2010)  Causal Mechanisms in the Social Sciences. Annual Review of Sociology 36:49-67.

Hodder, Ian  (1982)  Theoretical Archaeology: A Reactionary View. In Symbolic and Structural Archaeology, edited by Ian Hodder, pp. 1-16. Cambridge University Press, New York.

Hodder, Ian  (1986)  Reading the Past: Current Approaches to Interpretation in Archaeology. Cambridge University Press, New York.

Hodder, Ian  (1999)  The Archaeological Process: An Introduction. Blackwell, Oxford.

Johnson, Matthew  (2010)  Archaeological Theory: An Introduction. 2nd ed. Blackwell, Oxford.

Mayntz, Renate  (2004)  Mechanisms in the Analysis of Social Macro-Phenomena. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 34:237-259.

Merton, Robert K.  (1968)  Social Theory and Social Structure. 3rd ed. Free Press, New York.

Pawson, Ray  (2000)  Middle-Range Realism. European Journal of Sociology 41:283-325.

Raab, L. Mark and Albert C. Goodyear  (1984)  Middle-Range Theory in Archaeology: A Critical Review of Origins and Applications. American Antiquity 49:255-268.

Schiffer, Michael B.  (1988)  The Structure of Archaeological Theory. American Antiquity 53:461-485.

Shott, Michael J.  (1998)  Status and Role of Formation Theory in Contemporary Archaeological Practice. Journal of Archaeological Research 6:299-330.

Tilly, Charles  (2001)  Mechanisms in Political Processes. Annual Review of Political Science 4:21-41.

A “new” kind of agency theory, and perils of disciplinary isolation

I have recently come across a new perspective on “agency theory” that makes lots of sense and has nothing to do with the “agency” literature in archaeology. My lack of enthusiasm for that literature is public knowledge (Smith, and Schreiber 2005); I have always found archaeological agency theory to be either obvious and trivial (the actions of people make a difference in the world! Leapin’ lizards!), or else so ethereal and philosophical that I lose interest. (Yes, I am a materialist and a skeptic, and I’m sure that any sophisticated archaeological theorists who read this will snigger at my simplistic views).

Over the past year, in exploring some areas of scholarship outside of anthropology, I have learned that the term “agency” has a very different meaning in political science and economics. I am now reading on comparative taxation systems (in preparation for a conference where I will have to put the data on Aztec taxation into a comparative framework, using terms and concepts from political science and economic history). It turns out that there is a body of scholarship focused on “agency theory,” and it has nothing to do with Bourdieu or Giddens or hand-wringing over whether the actions of people make a difference in society.

Agency theory in political science and economics is about the delegation of power and authority by rulers and governments. It concerns the ways in which “principals” (those in charge of some domain) ensure (or fail to ensure) that their wishes and orders get carried out by their delegates or “agents.” How does the king make sure that his tax collectors are doing their job and not ripping off the crown? Is it better to have a staff of salaried officials collecting taxes, or will tax-farming produce more revenue? How does President Obama know whether federal bureaucrats are carrying out his plans and not backsliding or subverting his orders?

According to agency theory, principals do better at getting their agents to do their bidding faithfully and efficiently when two conditions are met: (1) when the principal and agents share common interests, and thus desire the same outcomes; and (2) when the principal is knowledgeable about the agent’s activities. This approach was pioneered by Max Weber (1978); here are some modern studies I have found useful: (Cosgel, and Miceli 2009; Kiser 1999; Levi 1988; Lupia 2001; Swedberg 2003).

I have not seen any references in this literature to the divergent use of the concept of “agency” in other branches of the social sciences (including anthropology and archaeology), nor do I recall seeing any mention of the sociology/political science usage in the archaeological literature. It seems that two very different bodies of scholarship have been chugging along for more than a decade, using the same phrase—as a major concept—in very different ways. If I see the term “agency” in the contents of an archaeology journal, my eyes glaze over and I skip to the next paper, but now if I see it in a journal in comparative political science, economic history, or sociology, I stop and take a look.

That this kind of disciplinary isolation is not a good thing has been pointed out by many observers (Wallerstein 2003), including archaeologists (Butzer 2008). I know that my own graduate training emphasized that the only disciplines that matter for archaeologists—apart from technical fields like ethnobotany or geology—are anthropological archaeology and cultural anthropology. Today, I feel quite differently. The kind of archaeology I pursue is more usefully viewed as a comparative social/historical science than as a branch of anthropology. (I have nothing against anthropology. Some of my best friends are anthropologists. But as an intellectual context for archaeology, anthropology is incredibly confining and limiting).

I don’t have any recommendations about resolving the conflicting definitions of “agency” in different fields. But it is definitely the case that attention to broader realms of scholarship can be enriching for archaeologists. The only archaeologists I know who pay any attention to issues of agency theory (the kind I like, that is) are Richard Blanton and Lane Fargher, whose work I highly recommend (Blanton, and Fargher 2008; Fargher, and Blanton 2007).

References

Blanton, Richard E. and Lane F. Fargher (2008) Collective Action in the Formation of Pre-Modern States. Springer, New York.

Butzer, Karl W. (2008) Other Perspectives on Urbanism: Beyond the Disciplinary Boundaries. In The Ancient City: New Perspectives on Urbanism in the Old and New World, edited by Joyce Marcus and Jeremy Sabloff, pp. 77-94. SAR Press, Santa Fe.

Cosgel, Metin M. and Thomas J. Miceli (2009) Tax Collection in History. Public Finance Review 37:399-420.

Fargher, Lane F. and Richard E. Blanton (2007) Revenue, Voice, and Public Goods in three Pre-Modern States. Comparative Studies in Society and History 49:848-882.

Kiser, Edgar (1999) Comparing Varieties of Agency Theory in Economics, Political Science, and Sociology: An Illustration from State Policy Implementation. Sociological Theory 17:146-170.

Levi, Margaret (1988) Of Rule and Revenue. University of California Press, Berkeley.

Lupia, Arthur (2001) Delegation of Power: Agency Theory. In International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, edited by Neil J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes, pp. 3375-3377. Pergamon, Oxford.

Smith, Michael E. and Katharina J. Schreiber (2005) New World States and Empires: Economic and Social Organization. Journal of Archaeological Research 13:189-229.

Swedberg, Richard (2003) Principles of Economic Sociology. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.

Wallerstein, Immanuel (2003) Anthropology, Sociology, and Other Dubious Disciplines. Current Anthropology 44:453-465.

Weber, Max (1978) Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. 2 vols. University of California Press, Berkeley.

BELOW: "Agency" (an agent at work). The guy at the right is a labor boss in charge or organizing corvée labor for an Aztec king. Each face with a flag symbolizes 20 workers, and the face with the feather stands for 400 more workers. From the San Andrés Codex (Galarza, Joaquín, 1963 , Codex San Andrés (juridiction de Cuautitlan): Manuscrit Pictographique du Musée de l'Homme de Paris (II). Journal de la Société des Amréicanistes 52:61-90. For some more cases of Aztec labor taxation, see two posts on my Calixtlahuaca project blog (post 1) (post 2).

The Maya collapse: When theoretical preconceptions get in the way of understanding

I just read a very nice summary of some of the current debates over the role of droughts in the collapse of Classic Maya civilization:

Pringle, Heather (2009) A New Look at the Mayas' End. Science 324:454-456.

It looks to me like the field may be moving toward a more reasonable explanation of the Maya collapse. Nevertheless, reading the remarks from Pringle's interviews with some of the scholars involved shows that an old problem still has a major effect on the issue. That problem is when one's theoretical perspective (or preconceptions) largely determine one's understanding of a phenomenon, with only tenuous connections to the data. There have long been two polar positions on drought and the Maya collapse:

(1) Many climatologists tend to think that a serious drought will cause a society to collapse. When they identify drought conditions close in time to the Maya collapse, then the issue is resolved. The drought caused the collapse. Period. End of story. Maya society must have been sufficiently fragile to be knocked out by an environmental disater, so why waste time with special pleading. Scholars with this perspective have a rather narrow, deterministic view of causality and social change.

(2) Many archaeologists tend to think that people are creative and can find solutions to environmental and social problems. Perceptions and impacts of the environment are culturally constructed and culturally mediated. The Maya people were were creative and their society was resilient, and thus environmental problems or disasters could never cause a collapse by themselves. Scholars with this perspective often have a narrow, non-materialistic view of causality and social change.

Now almost everyone will immediately claim that the best explanation is somewhere in between these two extreme views, but just where will it lie along the continuum? Read Pringle's report and see what you think. I am not going to take sides or point fingers here (mainly because I don't have time right now; it would be fun to take an skeptical outsider's perspective on the Maya collapse). If you are interested, I list below a few of the relevant publications.

Oh, one more thing. There is now a revisionist claim that the Maya didn't really collapse (e.g., Aimers 2007). Well, what happened to the millions of people? Why were scores of cities abandoned? Why did much of elite culture disappear? To me, this is an absurd claim, analogous to the claim that Rome didn't really collapse (see Ward-Perkins 2006 for the archaeological evidence againts revisionist claims about the lack of a Roman collapse). But I guess if the Maya didn't collapse, then we don't have to worry about the cause of that non-collapse.

So, what does this have to do with archaeological publishing? Although there is some overlap, scholars promoting the two views outlined above tend to publish in different journals and volumes. They tend to write for different audiences, and they generally employ different kinds of data and distinct style of argument. Many writers seem more interested in defending a position than in an open exploration of the issues. For this reason I suspect that advances will come from new kinds of data ("Ultralocal paleoclimate indicators" in Pringle's report), and from young or outside scholars who are not yet firmly entrenched in the debates.


Aimers, James J. (2007) What Maya Collapse? Terminal Classic Variation in the Maya Lowlands. Journal of Archaeological Research 15:329-377.

Demarest, Arthur A. (2001) Climatic Change and the Classic Maya Collapse: The Return of Catastrophism (review of The Great Maya Droughts by Richardson B. Gill). Latin American Antiquity 12:105-107.

Diamond, Jared (2004) The Maya Collapses. In Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, edited by Jared Diamond. Viking, New York.

Gill, Richardson B. (2000) The Great Maya Droughts: Water, Life, and Death. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.

Gill, Richardson B., Paul A. Mayewski, Johan Nyberg, Gerald H. Haug and Larry C. Peterson (2007) Drought and the Maya Collapse. Ancient Mesoamerica 18:283-302.

Manahan, T. Kam (2004) The Way Things Fall Apart: Social Organization and the Classic Maya Collapse of Copan. Ancient Mesoamerica 15:107-126.

Peterson, Larry C. and Gerald H. Haug (2005) Climate and the Collapse of Maya Civilization. American Scientist 93:322-329.

Rice, Prudence M. (2007) The Classic Maya 'Collapse' and its Causes. In Gordon R. Willey and American Archaeology: Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Jeremy A. Sabloff and William L. Fash, pp. 141-186. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.

Scarborough, Vernon L. (2007) The Rise and Fall of the Ancient Maya: A Case Study in Poliltical Ecology. In Sustainability or Collapse? An Integrated History and Future of People on Earth, edited by Robert Costanza, Lisa J. Graumlich and Will Steffen, pp. 51-60. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Webster, David (2002) The Fall of the Ancient Maya: Solving the Mystery of the Maya Collapse. Thames and Hudson, New York.

Ward-Perkins, Bryan (2006) The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization. Oxford University Press, New York.