Domination and Resistance

Daniel Miller, Michael Rowlands, Chris Tilley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• eBook ISBN: 9781134806713
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

The nature of power - one of the central concerns in social science - is the main theme of this wide-ranging book. Introducing a much broader historical and geographical comparative understanding of domination and resistance than is available elsewhere, the editors and contributors offer a wealth of perspectives and case studies. They illustrate the application of these ideas to issues as diverse as ritualized space, the nature of hierarchy in non-capitalist contexts and the production of archaeological discourse.
Drawing on considerable experience in promoting interaction between archaeology and other disciplines concerned with ideology, power and social transformation, the editors have brought together a stimulating book that will be of widespread interest amongst students of archaeology, ancient history, sociology, anthropology and human geography.

POLITICAL ECONOMY AND IDEOLOGY: HISTORICAL TRANSFORMATIONS

4
The roots of inequality

BARBARA BENDER

A major concern of this book is to elucidate the different ways in which the term ‘complexity’ has been constructed, and how these relate to specific historically and socially defined perceptions and preoccupations.

Other chapters discuss the intricacies of the lineal, ‘progressive’ notion of complexity that has been in vogue in Europe and America since at least the late 19th century. I want to focus on something that indirectly relates to this, which is the almost universally held and taken for granted assumption that the starting point for ‘complexity’ (however defined) was the development of farming. If gatherer-hunters are mentioned it is as a foil, a counterpoint, to the discussion. This way of dichotomizing things means that somehow the discussion and definition of ‘complexity’ make little reference to 2 or 3 million years of hominid evolution.

I want to analyse why it is that farming is construed as a necessary condition for the development of ‘complexity’, which, for my purposes here, I simply define as involving a degree of institutionalized social inequality—and why divisions in gatherer-hunter societies are desocialized and therefore ignored. I shall use an example taken from the south-west European Upper Palaeolithic to show how social inequality might be inaugurated and institutionalized within a gatherer-hunter milieu.

Farming as a precondition

What is it about farming that makes it appear to be both a precondition and an attribute of ‘complexity’? Food production per se is a technological innovation that lies at one end of a spectrum of plant and animal manipulation (Higgs 1972). It can be, and often has been, simply a minor element in an otherwise wild procurement existence. When, and if, it becomes a more significant subsistence strategy, it makes certain demands on social practice. It often requires a degree of sedentism; it requires labour inputs on which there are delayed returns; land clearance and agricultural practices mean that one generation quite literally feeds off the labour of an earlier generation, and this tends to reinforce generational bonds (Meillassoux 1972, Bender 1985). This generational debt becomes a potential source of inequality—junior service, senior authority. The fact that land takes on value and therefore becomes something material, something that can be possessed, something to which access can be restricted and the products of which can be controlled, again creates conditions for inequality. Moreover, farming permits a control over nature which, at the cost of high labour inputs, yields greater returns, and these are also open to manipulation. Thus, the assumption is that technology (farming) is the tail that wags the social dog (complexity). Such assumptions have been present across a wide spectrum of social theorizing for a long time. Engels (1972, p. 117) wrote: ‘the dominance of animals… developed a hitherto unsuspected source of wealth and created entirely new social relations’, and Morgan (1963, p. 19) pronounced: ‘It is accordingly probable that the great epochs of human progress have been identified more or less directly with the enlargement of the sources of subsistence’. In this century Childe continued to stress the significance of changes in the forces of production. The Neolithic Revolution permitted ‘the escape from the impasse of savagery’ (Childe 1942, p. 48), and the more ecologically minded ‘schools’ have been content to accept these readings. In recent years a slightly different version emerges. Woodburn (1980) contrasts the immediate return system of most gatherer-hunters, which is associated with egalitarian social relations, with the delayed returns of some gatherer-hunter groups that technically mimic farming practices and thus have similar social configurations.

This very widespread acceptance of a technological prime-mover or, at least, a technological precondition, must in some part relate to our own embeddedness within heavily industrialized societies in which the very process of industrialization seems to act as a significant force for change, and in which technological change and increased complexity become almost interchangeable concepts. This recourse to farming as prime-mover seems also to legitimate and naturalize concepts of property and control by relating them to the exigencies of subsistence practices. Social phenomena are brought into line with nature, creating a form of environmental legitimation of ‘the scheme of things’.

‘Natural’ divisions in gatherer-hunter societies

This ‘naturalization’ of social complexity created by tying it to subsistence requirements is echoed in the explanations offered for the development of gatherer-hunter societies. The lack of complexity, the supposedly egalitarian nature of gatherer-hunters, is linked to the inability to control resources, the inability to prevent access, etc. Social differentiation—as opposed to inequality— is acknowledged and linked to age and gender, both of which are then linked to the mode of subsistence. Elders have power because they have experience and are the repositories of knowledge on how to do things. To that extent they have some control over juniors. In many accounts this is adjudged to be only a temporary ‘inequality’, for juniors will eventually become seniors. As O’Laughlin (1977) pointed out, a wonderful myopia creeps in, for the seniors tend to be male, and the juniors on their way to becoming seniors are also male, so only one half of the population is involved in this inoffensive social progression.

This Eurocentric (indeed more widespread) bias which only discusses ‘power’, or lack of it, in terms of male activities, also permeates the discussion on gender division. It has become much clearer in recent years how, unconsciously, the reconstruction of early hominid societies has been used to naturalize gender divisions within our own societies (Conkey & Spector 1983). For example, it is assumed that a characteristic of early hominids, something that set them apart from other primates, was a division of labour. A division in which the male, endowed with greater strength and unencumbered with infants, was the hunter, taking on the dangerous ‘outside’ world, and woman was the child-rearer and localized plant gatherer, centred on the domestic sphere. A ‘macho’ version of this scenario in which the men got credit for inventing tools and weapons, and for promoting the complex sharing strategies that put a premium on intellectual development, was set out by Washburn & Lancaster (1968); a more gentle-manly version by Isaac (1978) still maintained the division of labour, but gave full credit to the women for being the more reliable foragers and for being the probable inventors of carrying equipment. Feminist protestations notwithstanding, this insistence on the naturalness of the division of labour was iterated in a recent article which was presumably meant to be taken seriously (Quiatt & Kelso 1985). The authors insisted that the early hominid division of labour was the most ‘natural’ way of going about things, since the women would be ‘housebound’ (3 million years ago, in the middle of the African savannah!). There would be pair-bonding because it made food-sharing easier, the family would be nuclear—‘child serving and child centred’—and the juveniles would baby-sit and run errands and, in the process, would learn ‘the complex routines of bulk food collecting, transporting and processing’ (clearly such juveniles would do as well, if not better, in the jungles of New York or London).

Interestingly, the feminist critiques written in the 1970s by Slocum (1975), Tanner (1971) and Zihlman (1981) did little more than reverse the scenario —‘Man the Hunter’ (the title of the 1968 symposium) is replaced by ‘Woman the Gatherer’ (Dahlberg’s symposium, 1981). They stress that gathering is more important than hunting in the early time ranges and, while both males and females gathered, it was the females that began the process of sharing, for they would have shared food with their increasingly dependent offspring. Moreover, sharing required collecting as opposed to gathering, and this too, with its associated technology, would have been inaugurated by women. In this scenario the division of labour remains intact and, moreover, current notions of childrearing are accepted as the norm—that women succour, carry, and provide for their own infants. Indeed, it reads like a legitimation of the one-parent family.

In reality none of these divisions or obligations is written into nature. There are plenty of societies where women succour babies that are not their own, or where child-rearing is communal. There is recent evidence from the Philippines of Agta women who hunt large game on a regular basis, who stop hunting for a couple of weeks prior to giving birth, and take it up again a month later, leaving their infants to be suckled by other women at the camp (Estioko-Griffen & Griffen 1981). It may be that males do have some advantages over females as hunters, in terms of size and body weight and because of their more extensive foraging range, but these are not sufficient advantages to enforce a sexual division of labour; that division, when it occurs, has much more to do with social distinctions and social taboos. On quite pragmatic grounds it seems most likely that early hominids—small and highly vulnerable, in no position to hold onto game in the face of determined opposition from carnivores—would have been opportunistic scavengers, and the sharing would have been equally opportunistic. Shipman (1986) notes that the African savannah of 3 million years ago would have had more game—both prey and predator—than today, and that the form of cut-and gnawmarks on animal bones found in the early deposits suggests a ‘cut-and- run’ strategy, possibly linked with a retreat to the treetops, rather than a hunting-home base existence. Hamilton (1984) points out that the strong sexual dimorphism found in early hominid populations may not only indicate the polygynous nature of the males, but a female adaptation which permitted a reduced calory intake and thus a reduced foraging range. The need for such a physiological adaptation would suggest that females were not significantly dependent upon the males for food. It seems probable that, rather than divisions of labour, flexibility would have been the key to survival. The increase in types of foods consumed, the volatility and complexity of relationships among these ranging, foraging, scavenging, vulnerable groupings, with dependent offspring, with rudimentary technological skills to be passed on, would from the outset accentuate the need for social interaction and communication.

There have been some moves towards the scavenging model for early hominids (Leakey 1981), but this has simply meant that the introduction of a’natural’ division of labour and of ensuing changes in social organization are pushed forward in time. The Mark II version of Man the Hunter moves on to the Middle Palaeolithic, around 200 000 years ago, and the emergence of Homo sapiens,or even the Upper Palaeolithic (c. 35 000 years ago) and sapiens sapiens.In this version it is suggested that groups adapting to the rigours of the European climate under extreme glacial conditions had to depend upon big-game hunting. This required skill and co-operative action by unencumbered males. Increased co-operation required a more systematic network of contacts which ran counter to an earlier pattern of open breeding networks and forced a degree of social closure. A precondition for such closure was a reasonable density of population, which was not attainable until the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic. Social closure created tensions, since those on the periphery of the network were at a disadvantage compared with those at the centre, and these would be relieved by increased ritual, emphasizing social solidarity between and within groups (Wobst 1976). Social closure and ritual are the hallmarks of culture, so, once again, men, because they are the big-game hunters, set the evolutionary process in motion.

The resilience of the Man the Hunter-Woman the Home-maker model is really quite remarkable, yet, again on pragmatic grounds, it has little to recommend it. Europe, during parts of the Upper Palaeolithic, undoubtedly suffered severe climatic conditions, but big-game hunting was by no means the only response. For example, in Cantabria in the earlier Upper Palaeolithic, base-camps in the upland areas exploited a range of animals including red deer, roe deer, ibex, chamois and horse. In the later Upper Palaeolithic a dispersed pattern of small sites is associated with a greater reliance on red deer and on a wider range of resources, including shellfish and small game (Freeman 1973). As Gilman (1984) points out, Upper Palaeolithic techniques were so advanced that groups could and would either exploit a wider range of species or specialize in a single species ‘as conditions rendered either strategy more cost effective’. Many of these strategies would not have required co-operative tactics. Undermining the big-game hunting hypothesis still further are the findings that in other parts of the Old World, unaffected by the glacial advances, and with varied subsistence strategies, there is again evidence of social closure and ritual in the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic.

The purpose of this long exegesis is to demonstrate how the explanation of social phenomena, be it the division of labour, age-sets or potential inequalities in both gatherer-hunter and early farming societies, have tended to be naturalized and made law-like by stressing the dominance of techno-environmental/alias subsistence forces. We legitimize the divisions and inequalities in our own societies by making them the inevitable outcome of inevitable forces. This use of history is part of our dominant ideology, just as alternative ‘histories’ are often part of an attempt to undermine or demote aspects of contemporary social relations. If we want to understand the roots of social differentiation and social inequality, we will have to look at quite specific prehistoric and historic social configurations and see how it is that in some societies ideology and practice— including, no doubt, past history—was used to create, maintain or subvert sets of social relations that are by no means written into nature or subsistence. I am not suggesting that the level of technology does not impose constraints upon forms of social relations, but it does not explain change or variability. Farming of itself does not create the necessary surplus to underwrite more hierarchized positions; surplus is relative and is initiated by society: ‘There are always and everywhere potential surpluses available. What counts is the institutionalised means of bringing them to life’ (ParkerPearson 1984). I want to consider the way in which such ‘institutionalization’ might occur and social differences and inequalities might be promoted in the context of certain prehistoric gatherer-hunter societies living in south-west Europe towards the end of the Ice Age. It is, at most, a partial analysis concentrating only on a limited aspect of social relations.

An example from the Upper Palaeolithic of south-west France

The cave and mobile art of north-west Spain and south-west France have been extensively analysed and explained. Leaving to one side the structural analyses of Leroi-Gourhan and Laming, much recent theorizing emphasizes that this art must be seen as an aspect of social action. Both Conkey (1978) and Gamble (1982) equate art with ‘style’, and ‘style’ with the signalling of social identity. Conkey recognizes that style is not simply a ‘reflection’ of social action and ritual, but rather ‘it IS ritual communication’ (Rowntree & Conkey 1980). Nevertheless she views it as reflexive in an adaptive sense. It is ‘an information regulator’, a ‘parsimonious response to stress’ (Conkey 1978). Conkey has undertaken an interesting analysis of stylistic variation in the portable art at the great cave of Altamira in northern Spain, and has quite convincingly demonstrated that a number of local groups must have come together at the site and that it was the locus of regional interaction. She suggests, following Johnson (1982), that such aggregation creates scalar stress which has to be met with shifts in social organization towards a sequential hierarchy, shifts which are formalized and negotiated through ritual. The explanation for both aggregation and ritual remains, again, techno-environmental. In earlier writings Conkey tended to view aggregation as a response either to the need to congregate in order to pool information about the environment, or as a response to demographic circumscription. More recently she seems to see it as a response to subsistence needs—the salmon are running, the deer congregating (Conkey 1985). The resultant stress is dealt with by a temporary shift in social strategy, mediated by ritual. When the groups disaggregate, the ritual goes away. Whereas Conkey’s recent writings shade off towards less adaptive modelling, Gamble continues to provide a more straightforwardly environmental-demographic explanation (Gamble 1982, Champion et al.1984, pp. 84–7). He ties ‘style’ to alliance networks, and alliance networks to problems of resource predictability. Jochim, too, proposes a stress model. He suggests that extreme glacial conditions between 25 000 and 17 000 years ago led to the abandonment of northern and much of central Europe, and the consequent r...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of contributors
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
• Domination and Resistance
• Political Economy and Ideology: Historical Transformations
• European Expansion, Colonialism and Resistance