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Smith, Michael E., and José Lobo, 2016 Comment on Jennings and Earle, "Urbanization, State Formation, and Cooperation: A Reappraisal". Current Anthropology 57(5):485-486.
Since at least the Enlightenment, scholars have linked urbanization to state formation in the evolution of complex societies. We challenge this assertion, suggesting that the cooperative units that came together in the earliest cities were premised on limiting outside domination and thus usually acted to impede efforts to create more centralized structures of control. Although cities often became the capitals of states, state formation was quicker and more effective where environments kept people more dispersed. Data from the Andes and Polynesia are used to support this argument. In the Lake Titicaca Basin, household-and lineage-based groups living in the city of Tiahuanaco structured urban dynamics without the state for the settlement's first 300 years, while similarly organized Hawaiian groups that were isolated in farmsteads were quickly realigned into a state structure. By decoupling urbanization from state formation , we can better understand the interactions that created the world's first cities.
Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social Theory
Urbanization [in The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social Theory]2017 •
2001 •
For 99 percent of the history of humans on earth, there were no cities. Our ancestors lived for thousands of years in temporary campsites or small villages. These communities were well suited to the small-scale, simple societies of ancient times, and most people who lived in them probably could not have imagined what a city was. During the past five thousand years, however, cities have become important parts of the social landscape in many parts of the world. Once complex societies evolved in a region, the appearance of cities was inevitable. The emergence of state-level societies out of the simple farming societies known as tribes and chiefdoms was one of the most fundamental and far-reaching social transformations of the human path, and the rise of the earliest cities was a crucial part of this process. Tribal society operated on a small scale. Everyone knew one another, and no single family stood out as more wealthy or powerful than the others. The economy was simple and very gen...
Urbanities
Prato & Pardo - Urban Anthropology2013 •
Established academic disciplinary distinctions led early anthropologists to study tribal societies, or village communities, while ignoring the city as a field of research. Thus, urban research became established in some academic disciplines, particularly sociology, but struggled to achieve such a status in anthropology. Over the years, historical events and geo-political changes have stimulated anthropologists to address processes of urbanization in developing countries; yet, urban research in western industrial societies continued to be left out of the mainstream disciplinary agenda. In this chapter we examine major debates in the development of this sub-discipline and discuss the complex methodological and theoretical challenges posed by field-research in urban settings, clearly identifying the significance of the anthropological paradigm in urban research and its centrality both to mainstream academic debates and to the broader society. Today an increasing number of anthropologists carry out research in cities. With half of humanity already living in towns and cities, growing to two-thirds in the next 50 years, there is no denying that research in urban settings is topical and needed as western and non-western society is fast becoming urban or mega-urban. Having outlined the background to current trends in this field of research, the discussion builds towards an assessment of the contribution that empirically-based anthropological analysis can make to our understanding of our increasingly urban world. Introduction: Urban Anthropology in the Disciplinary Tradition Since the 1990s an increasing number of academic events have focused on urban issues and publications have flourished in this field, its worldwide critical importance unmistakably testified by the establishment of the permanent UN-World Urban Forum. In part due to the rapid growth of cities in the twentieth century, such interest in urban research has included significant contributions from anthropologists and yet, for a long time, mainstream anthropologists, especially in the British tradition of social anthropology, had been reluctant to recognize urban settings, particularly in industrialized countries, as legitimate fields of enquiry. Urban anthropology is a relatively recent new field of study within socio-cultural anthropology. While twentieth-century sociologists paid great attention to the study of cities and urban phenomena, social and cultural anthropologists stayed largely away from this important field of research. One reason for such a choice was rooted in late-nineteenth century disciplinary divisions, identifying social and cultural anthropology as principally concerned with the comparative study on non-Western societies and cultures. To simplify, until relatively recently, following academic classification, anthropology focused on so-called 'primitive' societies (otherwise described as 'tribal', 'exotic', or 'folk'), whereas Western industrial societies were the designated realm of sociological enquiry. Thus, until the 1970s, urban research remained associated mainly with sociology.
Journal of Urban Archaeology
"Why Archaeology is Necessary for a Theory of Urbanization" (2020)2020 •
In recent decades researchers in several disciplines have promoted 'urban science' to acknowledge the advantages of multidisciplinary approaches and the expanding ability to collect data for contemporary cities. Although practitioners tend to treat the city as the object of study, in our view the more appropriate focus is the process of urbanization. When framed this way, the archaeological record becomes central to a robust theory of urbanization, and even helps to clarify aspects of urbanization that are difficult to study in a present-day context. In this paper, we illustrate this point by discussing examples where archaeological evidence has clarified and expanded aspects of settlement scaling theory, an approach that was initially developed in the context of contemporary cities but which applies to settlements of all shapes, sizes, and periods.
2013 •
In this chapter, we explore the historical dimension of urbanization and why the ecology of urbanization has, until recently, been missing. We discuss the consequences of this for our perceptions of urbanization throughout history and also discuss the emerging reintroduction of ecology and the concept of natural capital into the global discourse on urbanization and sustainability. Humans and the institutions they devise for their governance are often successful at self-organizing to promote their survival in the face of virtually any environment challenge. However, from history we learn that there may often be unanticipated costs to many of these solutions with long-term implications on future societies. For example, increased specialization has led to increased surplus of food and made continuing urban growth possible. But an increased urban rural disconnection has also led to an alienation of food production from the carrying capacity of the land. While connections and feedbacks w...
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