Craft and Local Power: Embedded Specialization in Tiwanaku Cities

1999 ◽  
Vol 10 (02) ◽  
pp. 107-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Wayne Janusek
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Craft Production ◽  
Musical Instruments ◽  
Political Integration ◽  
Craft Specialization ◽  
Local Power ◽  
Corporate Strategies ◽  
Ceramic Vessels ◽  
Organization Of Production ◽  
New Evidence

Proponents of many comparative models of craft specialization explain variability in the organization of production according to the nature of elite interest and economic demand. To this end, many propose a basic dichotomy between independent and attached specialization, whereby valued goods are produced for elites in controlled, nondomestic workshops. I examine new evidence for craft production in the prehispanic Andean polity of Tiwanaku (A. D. 500-1150). I outline expectations for these two forms of specialization and, based on ethnohistorical research in the Tiwanaku region, propose a third form, termed embedded specialization. I appraise primary evidence for the production of ceramic vessels at the site of Tiwanaku and the production of musical instruments at the nearby regional site of Lukurmata. Weighing expectations against evidence, I argue that in Tiwanaku centers many goods were produced by kin-based groups residing in large residential compounds. Skilled production served the overarching political economy and the demands of nonspecialists, but it was neither strictly independent of nor directly attached to elite interests. Craft was rooted in segmentary principles of sociopolitical order, and so was local but not wholly autonomous. On a comparative scale, I suggest that embedded production characterized some states emphasizing corporate strategies of political integration.

Picturing Commerce in and from the East Asian Maritime Circuits, 1550-1800

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
East Asia ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Musical Instruments ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
East And Southeast Asia ◽  
Ceramic Vessels ◽  
The Look ◽  
Visual Cultures

Combining strikingly new scholarship by art historians, historians, and ethnomusicologists, this interdisciplinary volume illuminates trade ties within East Asia, and from East Asia outwards, in the years 1550 to 1800. While not encyclopedic, the selected topics greatly advance our sense of this trade picture. Throughout the book, multi-part trade structures are excavated; the presence of European powers within the Asian trade nexus features as part of this narrative. Visual goods are highlighted, including lacquerwares, paintings, prints, musical instruments, textiles, ivory sculptures, unfired ceramic portrait figurines, and Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Southeast Asian ceramic vessels. These essays underscore the significance of Asian industries producing multiples, and the rhetorical charge of these goods, shifting in meaning as they move. Everyday commodities are treated as well; for example, the trans-Pacific trade in contraband mercury, used in silver refinement, is spelled out in detail. Building reverberations between merchant networks, trade goods, and the look of the objects themselves, this richly-illustrated book brings to light the Asian trade engine powering the early modern visual cultures of East and Southeast Asia, the American colonies, and Europe.

Protohistoric Marine Shell Working: New Evidence from Northern Illinois

2019 ◽  
Vol 84 (3) ◽  
pp. 549-558 ◽  
Author(s):  
Madeleine McLeester ◽  
Mark R. Schurr ◽  
Katherine M. Sterner ◽  
Robert E. Ahlrichs
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Craft Specialization ◽  
Trade Networks ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Midwest ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Marine Shell

In the US Midwest, the working of marine shell procured through vast trade networks has typically been associated with elite prestige economies and craft specialization at major Mississippian centers. Outside of these contexts, marine shell goods are often assumed to have been brought into communities as completed goods. A recent finding suggests that local, small-scale marine shell working occurred at an early seventeenth-century village in northern Illinois, Middle Grant Creek (11Wi2739). This finding represents the first probable evidence of marine shell working in the Midwest outside of large, Mississippian contexts. Consequently, this practice may be much more geographically and temporally expansive than previously thought. This evidence encourages a rethinking of marine shell finds whenever they are assumed to be imported as finished goods.

Gender and Status in Inca Textile and Ceramic Craft Production

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cathy Costin
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Craft Production ◽  
Prestige Goods ◽  
Production And Distribution ◽  
Labor Service ◽  
Labor Patterns

Inca imperial rule depended on the production and distribution of cloth and pottery of different qualities. These were produced by specialists, such as the acllacona and cumbicamayos, and were used in performances of state hospitality that reciprocated the labor service (mit’a) of Inca subjects, and given as rewards. Production of these prestige goods indicates hybrid practices across the empire, as well as the role of gender and class in the labor patterns sustaining the empire. In addition to specialist by Inca artisans, the evidence from archaeology and the colonial chronicles indicates widespread participation in craft production in the Inca political economy.

The Gift Economy and State Power in China

1989 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mayfair Mei-Hui Yang
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
The State ◽  
Power Relationships ◽  
Gift Economy ◽  
State Apparatus ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Organization Of Production ◽  
China Today ◽  
And Control

The state apparatus in China today has taken upon itself almost total responsibility for administering the social and economic domain. The welfare and control of the population, the organization of production, planning all social activities, and the distribution of the means of subsistence have become primary concerns of organs of the state. The types of power relationships and their social and symbolic expressions, which have crystallized around the distribution and circulation of desirables in such a political economy, are the subject of the present study. The study will also examine how certain counter-techniques of power deviate from the larger strategy of power exercised through the state socialist political economy, forming pockets of intransigence from within.

Local and imported pottery in the Neolithic Gulf: a new perspective from the site of Bahra 1 in Kuwait

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 595-617 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Smogorzewska
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Neolithic Period ◽  
Economic Context ◽  
Ceramic Vessels ◽  
The Cross ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
New Evidence

The paper presents a new perspective on pottery traditions in the Gulf during the Neolithic period, based on new data from the Ubaid-related site of Bahra 1 in Kuwait. The site yielded an assemblage containing several different pottery types, classified as Ubaid Ware and Coarse Red Ware. These pottery groups were varied in many aspects: morphological types, technology, and provenance. Their main characteristics and cultural context are discussed, as well as the cross--pottery connections. The significance of these ceramic vessels for the Gulf population and their socio-economic context are also considered in this paper, given the new evidence from Bahra 1

Political Economy of the Crisis in Post-Colonial Zimbabwe

2008 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Smart E. Otu
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Organization ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Short Circuit ◽  
Basic Material ◽  
Complex Nature ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Milieu ◽  
Organization Of Production

Conventional western social science scholars hold the view that the current crisis in Zimbabwe is but the consequence of misgovernance by President Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF led government. This paper debunks this viewpoint and considers it a short-circuit analysis of the complex nature of Zimbabwe’s crisis. Instead, the political economy approach is adopted which is considered more far-reaching, holistic, historic, dialectic, and more empirically-scientific-based. The critical analysis of the crisis reveals that the key to the current socio-economic and political impasse in Zimbabwe lies in the nature of the social organization of production and the class character of both colonial and postcolonial Zimbabwe’s social system which are strongly tied to the land issue. To this end, the paper confirms that Zimbabwe’s economy, polity and social relations are organized in a manner that many Zimbabweans are at the fringe of the social structure. The main argument of this paper is that social organization of production in Zimbabwe is such that does not guarantee ordinary Zimbabweans access to land to produce their basic material needs, and to participate in making decision about how this major means of production is organized for production, distribution and consumption. This paper concludes by noting that the way out of the current crisis in Zimbabwe lies in a radical overhauling of the feeble social organization of production while not undermining the importance of a congenial political milieu in Zimbabwe

The Political Economy of Population Counts in Ottoman Palestine: Nablus, circa 1850

1994 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beshara B. Doumani
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Advisory Council ◽  
The Political ◽  
Demographic Development ◽  
Population Count ◽  
Dark Ages ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Population Counts ◽  
New Evidence

New evidence, culled from the Nablus advisory council (majlis al-shūrā) records and based on an actual Ottoman population count taken in December 1849, indicates that the city's population at that time numbered at least 20,000 people, more than twice the frequently cited figure of 8,000–9,000. This revision raises serious doubts about the veracity of hitherto commonly accepted population figures, most of them based on contemporary estimates by Western observers, for the various regions of Palestine during the first three-quarters of the 19th century. Moreover, when compared to available data for Nablus from the 16th and the late 19th centuries, it seems that the pattern of Nablus's demographic development differs from what the proponents of Ottoman decline and modernization theses have argued.2 Instead of decreasing during the so-called dark ages of Ottoman decline in the 17th and 18th centuries, Nablus's population increased significantly; and instead of growing robustly during the so-called period of modernization in the second half of the 19th century, it appears to have leveled off.

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