Resources and Transformation in Pre-Modern Societies
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International Conference Resources and Transformation in Pre-modern Societies 19–21 November 2020 11 December 2020 15 January 2021 Bochum Extended Abstracts Curated by Maja Gori Edited by the ReSoc Resources in Societies Project Members “Resources in Societies” (ReSoc). An Introduction to the Leibniz Post-doctoral School in Bochum Thomas Stöllner Keywords Resources, Premodern Economies, Social Transformation, Practice Theory In today's political debate, raw materials and important desideratum of theoretical resources play an increasingly important approaches (see for archaeology e.g. Hodder, role. It is a mostly highly economized debate 2013; for anthropology: Ingold, 2000). that is conducted with regard to the ReSoc investigates such resource-based accessibility and safeguarding of raw change processes on a theoretical and materials as well as the shareholder value of empirical basis. The Leibniz PostDoc School deposit assessments. This debate obscures has proceeded from a practice-theoretical the view that raw materials and resources approach (based on the approaches of A. deeply are thought in cultural categories. Giddens and P. Bourdieu: Giddens, 1984; Their “use” results from needs and technical Bourdieu, 1977). This should help to analyse knowledge that people have acquired in the embedding of social institutions and dealing with their environment. Resources their resource-controlled behaviour. In are therefore much more than useful raw addition, current references to the materials; they reflect the social and cultural materiality discourse in the social sciences practice of people and are thus an expression and humanities are taken into account. Our of a multi-layered process of appropriation, approach aims at a multivocal perspective, in which as such is embedded in various which the entanglement of humans with changes. These changes in the handling of their materialized environment becomes resources and the changes that this handling apparent through various practices. This has triggered in societies are an essential part also includes how social institutions arise of the “Resources in Societies” (ReSoc) and change through such processes. project. ReSoc is a cooperation project Humans’ involvement in transformative between the Deutsches Bergbau-Museum processes is one of the most crucial aspects Bochum (DBM), the Ruhr University of to our understanding of past and Bochum (RUB) and the FernUniversität in contemporary societies and their life-worlds Hagen (FUH). (Husserl, 1913; Schütz and Luckmann, 1988; In particular, the “entanglement” of Habermas, 1981): transformations are people with their environment and omnipresent in history and the adaptation of resources and the relationship between this peoples to and their impact on these “entanglement” and social change are still an processes is among the most relevant driving Metalla Sonderheft 10 / 2020, 1-7 │ 1 forces of human affairs. It is obvious that for “homo oeconomicus” abstracts away the many decisions we take as individuals, as embedding of social actors into institutional, societal groups, whole societies or political political, and cultural contexts and has been entities it is indispensable to understand criticized for quite some time not only by an- these transformations. Within these thropologist, philosophers and sociologists, processes resources play a decisive role: but also by behavioral economists, institu- entangled in manifold ways in the practical tional economists, and others. The recent fi- and cognitive constructions of societies, they nancial crisis made the short-comings of ne- have to be regarded as important oclassical economics with its rather mecha- motivation. To put it in other terms: re- nistic idea of the human actor apparent and sources, their acquisition and social led to some rethinking of economics (Holt et appropriation keep societies in action, no al., 2011) and our widely economic view of matter whether we consider them as the world. For a better understanding of all preconditions like a “leaven in the dough” reasons behind transformations we evi- (Latour, 2005), in a broader sense as dently need to draw our attention to the affordances (Gibson, 1977) within human multi-variable entanglement of the human practices, or as a projection screen for our subject which requires a human-centred desires and ideologies. Despite the topic’s perspective on economy and social transfor- importance, it is surprising that these mations and the way individuals and groups resources-related social transformations conceptualize and appropriate environmen- have rarely been considered within a broader tal and material factors. theoretical approach that helps to It is interesting that economic growth and understand these steadily ongoing processes. decline debates often result from a specific argumentative angle of World-System theo- Hence, the way resources are handled can ries that came into discussion during the be regarded as a vehicle to describe and 1970s (Wallerstein, 1974; Costanza et al., study the manifold forms of transfor- 2007). The question of centres and periphery mations. It was therefore a broad element of strongly influence structural concepts of the scientific research within the last decades: various branches in archaeology, technical however, to assess their role as social and and environmental history or economic the- cognitive constructions or as things interwo- ory since the 1940s (e.g. Polanyi, 1978). It ven with human practices, a reconsideration was renewed and conventionalized in a of the theoretical and methodological ap- broadened evolutionary concept of “adap- proach is necessary to frame the intended tive systems” (Holling et al., 2002) and in empirical studies. We often use resource- structural actor-space concepts of macro-, based supply and demand mechanisms in a meso- and micro-levels (König, 2009). It is very simplistic way to describe or explain so- therefore necessary to debate on their nowa- cial and economic changes: expressions like days influential role in interpreting our data. “structural change” or “transformation of The complexity of such a discussion de- structure” (“Strukturwandel”) and their eco- mands not only an interdisciplinary, but a nomic implications for societies and regions transdisciplinary approach by a diverse asso- are widely accepted terms to describe a ciation of scholars. Understanding humans transformational process (Giddens, 1984). within their social and environmental con- The political discussion of these develop- texts, how they are embedded in social prac- ments has been simplified and not only ex- tices and landscapes, can be neither exclu- pressed in economic vocabulary, but even sively addressed by a positivistic method reduced to its economic arguments. Main- based on experiments and analyses nor by a stream economic theory that rests on the solely constructivist approach. Rather, we model of the perfectly rational and selfish 2 │ Metalla Sonderheft 10 / 2020, 1-7 have to act upon the assumption that hu- 2. Spacing, making knowledge and inno- mans are both committed to their individual vation through resources and as resources and their society’s conditionality, not only as 3. Transforming societies: actors in mate- objects of study. But also as researchers we rialized asymmetries. have to reflect upon our own biases (Latour, 2005); a philosophical gap that is difficult to As part of the project, five postdoc be overcome by different disciplines in their projects in the fields of archaeology, specific perspective. Humanities and social economics, archaeometallurgy and mining science have started to bridge these discipli- archaeology were funded. As part of the nary gaps by describing new fields of com- project, the postdocs were able to choose mon approaches for example by involving different career paths and deepen them aspects of space and materiality in their stud- through their work at the DBM and the ies. This “Practice Turn” (De Certeau, 1988, partner institutes. Many have chosen a Schatzki et al., 2001) in social theory, which career path in science. Following several includes a turn to the space, the material Postdoc-positions (Mainz, Amsterdam, things, and the human body, led to new lev- Heidelberg, Naples) during which she els of common understanding within the hu- worked on different aspects of Balkan manities and social sciences but also the nat- archaeology, Dr. Maja Gori started in ural sciences: It has opened common ap- Bochum her project on mobility and proaches to new horizons of understanding connectivity in the Central Mediterranean and discussion. Humanities and social sci- during the Early Bronze Age (Gori et al., ences on the one hand and natural sciences 2018). In particular, she focused on the role on the other therefore need a holistic ap- of the Adriatic-Ionian region and the proach to gap this contraction, a chance that Balkans in the wide mobility pattern that can can only be achieved by transdisciplinary ap- be traced in Europe during the 3rd proaches which try to conflate the construc- millennium BC (Gori, 2020). In order to tivist and positivist views in research. understand mechanisms behind migration, Different transformation processes are together with Dr. Frederik Schaff she applied examined from different scale perspectives. Agent-based Modelling to the study of How did small-scale action processes of raw migration in the Adriatic Cetina material appropriation initially develop into phenomenon (Gori and Schaff, cultural constructs (e.g.