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In my last post I began to outline a line of reasoning about
how shifts in fundamental social organization are related to intensive
conditions such as population size and density. I’m going to follow this line
of reasoning through four main stages: early humans & hunter-gathering;
agricultural; industrial and a projection into the emerging digital
environment.
The argument thus far makes a case that the fundamental social
fabric of small hunter-gatherer groups was shaped by an attractor that both
constrains and is constrained by population size and density; basic bio-socio
parameters of social structure and cognitive capacity such as the ‘Dunbar
number’; and developments of some key technologies.
Group size in early hunter-gather conditions was limited by
the cognitive capacity required to ‘compute’ social organizational parameters (e.g.
pecking order, status and role structures, divisions-of-labor, kinship networks,
and territorial embeddedness). Group size was also limited by the mechanism
that enabled the memory of all individual exchanges and other forms of ‘moral’ accounting
history essential to maintaining group cohesiveness.
What this meant was that individual identity was constrained
within a group defined ‘public’ role, status and character that were bound to
group dynamics and history. In this context there could be no sense of the
‘private’ self, no one could have their identity stolen, no one had to have
their identity ‘verified’ (identity was self-evident – pun indented) and
certainly no concept or experience of anonymity. Anyone who tried to step out
of their status/role/character/kinship-network/link-to-their-territory would be
seriously challenged and face significant sanctions – or cause significant
perturbation to the group. A person was who the group agreed they were.
The constraints that kept a group member within their role/character/network
also enabled a social fabric sustained by the warp and weft of
moral/social/exchange accounting. An accounting process that was built upon the
social structures and increasingly social processes and could also be maintained
through group and individual memory. Many activities became increasingly social
processes – as hunting, cooking, material productions of clothing & shelter
all replaced the primate activities of ‘grooming’ as means of social cohesion
that also required forms of constraining moral/social accounting to maintain
social fabric. These mutual constraints seem to illuminate a fundamental
attractor forming the boundaries and processes of group size, structure and
individual identity.
Breaking free of the attractor constraining the gatherer
groups required a key technology, one that extended human memory and enable
human groups to undergo a phase transition into a new attractor inherent in an
agricultural mode of social organization. The capacity to externalize memory
via symbolic forms of accounting (which eventually formed foundation of writing
about 5,000 years ago) enabled human to manage orders of magnitude of quantitative
and qualitative increases in complicated types of surpluses, of new products,
and new exchanges extended through longer periods of time.
It was agricultural surpluses and other related conditions
that enabled significant changes in intensive conditions such as increases in
population and population density, as well as in food and other forms of
surpluses. These changes in conditions of intensive variables inevitably produced
a proliferation of bifurcations in roles, statuses, divisions-of-labor, specializations,
ways of being, domains of knowledge and correspondingly complex forms of
exchange. The proliferation of bifurcation represented a phase transition into
a radically different form of society. New institutions emerged as various means
and mechanisms to handle the ever greater complexity of exchanges necessary to
do the work of enabling social fabric.
New institutions included more formal religious processes and
organizations, forms of local markets for exchange, collective infrastructures
such as granaries and commons, village networks, occupational domains with
master-apprentice knowledge transfer and knowledge control, and more. The social
organizational parameters of gatherers (e.g. pecking order, status and role structures,
divisions-of-labor, kinship networks) became the content that helped shaped
class-like social and institutional stratifications.
While most people still lived in relatively small local
village-groups – the villages tended to be connected via trails, roads and/or
waterways. Therefore, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of people
never ventured outside of a very local territory, the encounter with ‘stranger’
became a more familiar experience. In these situations identity remained
largely constrained within a now larger range of roles, status structures,
occupational and kinship networks. There still wasn’t a private self or
anonymity. But encounters with strangers were mediated through markets where
trust was established through extended personalized networks (cousin of a
cousin, etc.) and/or through arrangements from local forms of governance. There
was no need for external sources of accreditation or validating identity. Although
the possibility that a stranger could now claim another identity arose, the
possibility of being trusted remained based on establishing known personalized
networks.
During this time the first civilizations arose creating
unprecedented social conditions in a few larger trade centers. These were the
first social laboratories for enabling experiments in new institutions and
social customs that would serve as ‘seeds’ for later development. This is a
topic that is much too extensive for me to discuss at this point (even if I knew
the requisite history). What is important for this discussion is the shift in
attractor – a new condition with related constraints to fundamentally change
identity.
Graeber (2012) argues that currency arose as a consequence
the increased violence during the Axial Age. In essence, currency was necessary
when violence required impersonal exchange because of the lack or destruction of
the social fabric that enabled systems of more personalized accounting and corresponding
exchange. For example, when an invading or occupying military force needed to
obtain supplies, coins enabled soldiers to purchase these supplies, and then
these coins-as-currency could be taxed back by invaders. What is important with
the development of currency is that social fabric was no longer necessary as
the fundamental system of accounting. In essence, what currency enabled was
exchange that was ‘stripped’ of social fabric, but required a larger context of
social organization – such as a kingdom or (city)state. The currency became a
means of impersonal exchange – a concrete means of circulating trustworthy
(enough) IOU’s from unknown (anonymous?) debtors/creditors – but guaranteed by the
(at least partially) inherent value of the currency plus the promise of the
currency issuer.
The development of currency was an extension of social
exchange accounting systems that externalized human memory in a manner that no
longer required the constraints of personalized networks. In essence, currency
is anonymous debt-as-IOU – the first emergence of a social acceptance (if not
yet comfort) with some form of anonymity.
Along with the rise of currency and the requisite increase
in size and density of population came the rise of the hierarchy as the
attractor that shaped the most efficient means of organization large collective
efforts. The ‘hierarchy in forest’ (Boehm, 2001) a social fabric sustained and
sustaining anarchist self-governance was not scale-able to incorporate larger
levels of population and social complexity. It was Ronald Coase, who in 1930
developed the economic understanding of hierarchy as a fundamentally efficient means
of organizing social endeavors. And in this way the transaction costs arising
with increased population and density – shift social organization to a new
attractor of effective efficiency – the hierarchy – who’s content remained the
social status structures of inherent in the pecking order.
The constraints of hierarchy and extended personalized
networks arose due to ever increasing new forms of complicated social exchange occurring
over longer time periods. These constraints also now required currency in order
to do the work of resource allocation, since the trust founded on small group social
fabric was increasingly inadequate to the work necessary to maintain ever
larger societies. With entrenched hierarchy and currency came greater inequity.
The whole story is of course far, far more complicated and
extensive that I can possibly recount in this blog. Hopefully a fuller version
will come later. However, I hope that the basic idea of a shift in attractor
based on intensive aspects of the human condition is clear enough to
understand. The next blog post will explore further the shift in attractors of
efficiency with the coming of the industrial age. After that we will be better
able to explore the emerging further shift in the attractors of efficiency
inherent in the evolving digital environment and the corresponding plausible constraints
on identity and social structures.
References
Boehm, Christopher. 2001. Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior.
Harvard University Press. http://www.amazon.com/Hierarchy-Forest-Evolution-Egalitarian-Behavior/dp/0674006917/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1420701789&sr=1-1&keywords=hierarchy+in+the+forest
Coase, Ronald, 1990. The
Firm, the Market, and the Law. University Of Chicago Press; Reprint edition.
http://www.amazon.com/Firm-Market-Law-R-Coase/dp/0226111016/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1422945063&sr=8-2&keywords=ronald+coase
Deacon, Terrance, W. 2011. Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged From Matter. WW Norton. http://www.amazon.com/Incomplete-Nature-Emerged-Terrence-Hardcover/dp/B00C7F1AYG/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1420701672&sr=1-2&keywords=incomplete+nature+how+mind+emerged+from+matter
Dunbar, Robin. 2014. Human
Evolution: A Pelican Introduction. Pelican. http://www.amazon.com/Human-Evolution-Pelican-Introduction-Books-ebook/dp/B00I9PVKM0/ref=sr_1_10?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1420701508&sr=1-10
Graeber, David. 2012. Debt:
The First 5000 Years. Melville House. http://www.amazon.com/Debt-Updated-Expanded-First-Years-ebook/dp/B00Q1HZMCW/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1420701712&sr=1-1&keywords=Debt%3A+The+First+5000+Years
Graeber, David. 2004. Fragments
of an Anarchist Anthropology. Prickly Paradigm Press. http://www.amazon.com/Fragments-Anarchist-Anthropology-Paradigm-Graeber/dp/0972819649/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1420793988&sr=1-1&keywords=Fragments+of+an+Anarchist+Anthropology
Ingold, Tim. 2011. The
Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. Routledge;
Reissue edition. http://www.amazon.com/Perception-Environment-Essays-Livelihood-Dwelling/dp/0415617472/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1420971819&sr=1-3&keywords=tim+ingold
Lakoff, George. 1995. Metaphor, Morality, and Politics. http://www.wwcd.org/issues/Lakoff.html
McLuhan, Marshall; McLuhan, Eric. 1989. Laws of Media: The New Science. University of Toronto Press. http://www.amazon.com/Laws-Media-Science-Marshall-McLuhan/dp/0802077153/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1420701746&sr=1-1&keywords=Laws+of+Media%3A+The+New+Science
Schmandt-Besserat, Denise. 2010. How Writing Came About. University
of Texas Press. http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Came-About-Denise-Schmandt-Besserat-ebook/dp/B008YXIOVC/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1420701237&sr=1-1&keywords=how+writing+came+about
Tudge, Colin. 1999. Neanderthals,
Bandits and Farmers: How Agriculture Really Began. Yale University Press. http://www.amazon.com/Neanderthals-Bandits-Farmers-Agriculture-Darwinism/dp/0300080247/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1420701184&sr=8-1&keywords=Neanderthals%2C+Bandits+and+Farmers%3A+How+Agriculture+Really+Began
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