Social Inequality (Anthropology)

Societies are systems composed of a great number of various social institutions that interact and change, which results in that the whole structure of societies changes. This is what social evolution is – the process of structural change. Evolution does not have any particular
direction: any significant, that is, transforming change is evolutionary. Along with complexity measured in levels of political integration, societies as systems of social institutions have yet another fundamental characteristic that can be called a ‘basic principle of societal organization’. The principle of organization a society embodies depends on the way its institutions relate to one another. Specifically, two basic principles can be distinguished here: heterarchy, whereby elements are unranked or can be ranked in different ways, and its opposite – homoarchy, whereby elements in most contexts are ordered mainly according to one principal hierarchical relationship. Homoarchy and heterarchy represent most universal, ‘pure’ (generalized) principles and basic trajectories of socio-cultural organization. There are no universal evolutionary stages: cultures can be (generally) heterarchical or homoarchical and have an equal level of complexity. A culture can change its basic organizational principle without changing its current complexity level. There also exist alternatives within each of the two types. The heterarchy – homoarchy dichotomy runs throughout the whole of human history: it is observable on all levels of social complexity in all historical periods and culture areas, including the globalized world of our time. Transformations in the ways social institutions and complexes thereof, that is, societal subsystems, are ranked (either homoarchically or hetrarchically), on the one hand, and changes in culture complexity overall, on the other, are two different, largely unrelated processes. The heterarchy – homoarchy dichotomy has, to a
considerable degree, predetermined the non-linear and non-fixed nature of the global sociocultural process. An adequate understanding of human socio-cultural history does not appear possible unless one takes into consideration the possibility of alternative basic principles of
societal organization, their complementary and competitive co-existence, and their interrelated dynamics throughout human history. Also, considering this possibility enables discussion of the future of the present-day globalized world as not fixed but variable, where homoarchical and heterarchical principles may intersect in various ways and at different levels – national, international, and transnational.

Общества представляют собой системы, состоящие из большого
числа разнообразных взаимодействующих и изменяющихся социальных институтов. В результате их взаимодействия и трансформации происходит изменение структуры обществ в целом. Это и есть социальная эволюция – процесс структурного изменения. Эволюция не имеет определенного направления:  любое значимое, т.е. трансформирующее общественную структуру в любом направлении, изменение является эволюционным. Помимо степени сложности, определяемой количеством уровней политической интеграции, общества как системы социальных институтов имеют еще одну фундаментальную характеристику, которую можно назвать базовым принципом организации. То, какой принцип воплощает общество, зависит от характера взаимоотношения социальных институтов в нем. Можно выделить два базовых принципа организации обществ: гетерархический (взаимоотношение институтов, при котором они неранжированы
или обладают потенциалом для того, чтобы быть ранжированными различными способами) и гомоархический (взаимоотношение институтов, при котором они жестко ранжированы единственным образом и не обладают значительным потенциалом для того, чтобы стать неранжированными или ранжированными другими способами, по крайней мере, без кардинального изменения всего общественно-политического устройства). Гомоархия и гетерархия представляют собой наиболее универсальные «идеальные» (обобщенные) принципы и базовые траектории социокультурной организации. Не существует универсальных эволюционных стадий: общества могут быть (преимущественно) гетерархическими или гомоархическими, имея одинаковый уровень сложности. Общество может изменить базовый принцип своей организации, не переходя на иной уровень сложности. Альтернативность существует и внутри каждого из двух типов обществ. Дихотомия гетерархии и гомоархии проходит через всю историю человечества: ее можно наблюдать на всех уровнях социальной сложности во все исторические периоды и во всех географических регионах, включая глoбальный мир нашего времени. Трансформации способов ранжирования социальных институтов и их комплексов – подсистем общественной организации (гомоархического или гетерархического), с одной стороны, и изменения общего уровня социокультурной сложности – с другой, – есть два разных, в целом не связанных друг с другом процесса. Дихотомия гетерархии и гомоархии в значительной степени обусловила неоднолинейную и альтернативную сущность глобального социокультурного процесса. Адекватное понимание социокультурной истории не представляется возможным без учета альтернативности базовых принципов организации обществ, их взаимодополняющего и конкурентного существования и их взаимной динамики на всем протяжении истории человечества. Учет этого также позволяет рассматривать будущее современного глобального мира как не предопределенное, но имеющее несколько возможных сценариев, в которых гомоархический и гетерархический принципы могут по-разному соотноситься на
различных уровнях – национальном, международном и транснациональном.

This book provides a unique insight into negotiations around language investment for employability in the context of public employment services. Drawing on extensive ethnographical research carried out in Regional Employment Offices in Switzerland, the authors follow the stories of various job seekers. In doing so, they challenge the currently dominant assumption that investment in language competences leads to better employability. Arguing for a political economic perspective on these issues, this book will be of interest to anyone concerned with the connections between language and social inequality, as well as students and scholars of sociolinguistics and applied linguistics.

David Graeber and David Wengrow's new book The Dawn of Everything is energetic, committed and kaleidoscopic, but also flawed. We suggest an alternative way of understanding the emergence of equality in social evolution, and the emergence of gendered inequality in class societies.

The debate below, on the role of women in the Islamic Republic of Iran, prompted by William O. Beeman's 2001 article, "Iranian Women's Situation has Improved under the Islamic Republic" was conducted in 2001 as part of the Gulf12000 project at Columbia University, directed by Gary Sick. Normally, these on-line discussions are reserved for members, but
this topic is of such general interest and aroused such intense emotions, that Keddie and Karimkhany asked permission of the participants to edit and reproduce the discussion for a wider audience. The final version was edited by Nikki R. Keddie, Professor Emerita of History at the University of California, Los Angeles, based on the selection and organization of the texts by co-editor Azita Karimkhany, alumna of Columbia University and researcher in Middle Eastern studies. For additional information on Gulf/2000, see the project website
at http://gu]f2000.coJumbia.edu/.

This article analyses the Gini coefficient and its alternative, the Palma index, to unpack patterns and trends of inequality in South Africa. This study is based on a continuous series of secondary data sourced from the United Nations University Wider from 1960 to 2015. Data was only available on an annual basis for this period. No new primary data was collected for this study. Exploratory graphs were used to understand the behavioural patterns in the trends of the indices. The overall simple linear regression was fitted for the Gini coefficient and was found to be significant. However, there was a notable change in the Gini coefficient trend after 1988, calling for segmented regression with 1988 as the break-point. The results show that for the entire period from 1960 to 2015, the Gini coefficient for South Africa has been significantly increasing on average by 0.35 units per year (p<0.001). However, pre-1988, the Gini coefficient was declining at 0.39 units (p=0.012) per year, the period during which it averaged 50.1±4.56. Post-1988, the Gini coefficient increased to an average of 63.7±4.65, the period during which there was no statistically significant change per year despite the upward direction of 0.27 units. The study also shows that the poor share, as a proportion of the rich share, in the gross national income is declining over time. The article suggests that policy action needs to be taken to tackle the increasing Gini coefficient involving redistributive measures in the interest of justice and fairness. Inequalities take various forms, and reinforce each other as they all matter.

Using Sri Lanka’s iconic presidential elections of January 2015 as a backdrop, we engage with how elite patrimonial politics and everyday moralities around grain access and distributive justice come to intersect with one another. With a focus on mainstream media, campaign speeches, and political propaganda discourses, we begin by exploring how rice was initially politicized during the highly charged presidential campaign, and why it subsequently disappeared from public gaze as the electoral media wars drew to a close. In particular, we analyse how the president incumbent – Maithripala Sirisena’s campaign mythologies continued to draw on the symbolic and historicised image of the Rajarata paddy cultivator, particularly at a time when a vastly different reality was being purported, entailing localised paddy mill-owning oligarchies implicating close family members.

Les pauvres suscitent-ils aujourd’hui, chez les riches, une répulsion similaire à celle que le peuple inspirait aux bourgeois au xixe siècle ? Autrement dit, les démunis sont-ils encore considérés comme une classe dangereuse, immorale et répugnante ? En interrogeant le refus de la mixité résidentielle manifesté par les catégories supérieures, telle est la question frontale que pose cet ouvrage, issu d’une grande enquête comparative sur les perceptions de la pauvreté et des inégalités dans les beaux quartiers de trois métropoles : Paris, São Paulo et Delhi. À partir d’entretiens approfondis, il montre que la quête d’entre-soi des habitants des ghettos dorés n’est pas seulement motivée par une recherche de prestige et de qualité de vie, mais également par des représentations des pauvres qui les incitent à s’en protéger. Comment parviennent-ils à justifier leurs stratégies d’évitement et de relégation des catégories défavorisées, ainsi qu’à légitimer l’ordre local qu’ils s’efforcent de perpétuer ? Au-delà de la peur de la criminalité et de l’insalubrité apparaît la crainte des élites d’être en quelque sorte contaminées par des modes de vie jugés culturellement indésirables ou moralement nuisibles. À travers les mécanismes du séparatisme social, ce sont les conditions de possibilité de la solidarité que cet essai explore.

The task of studying the impact of social class on physical and mental health involves, among other things, the use of a conceptual toolbox that defines what social class is, establishes how to measure it, and sets criteria that help distinguish it from closely related concepts. One field that has recently witnessed a wealth of theoretical and conceptual research on social class is psychology, but geographers' and sociologists' attitude of diffidence toward this " positivistic " discipline has prevented them from taking advantage of this body of scholarship. This paper aims to highlight some of the most important developments in the psychological study of social class and social mobility that speak to the long-standing concerns of health geographers and sociologists with how social position, perceptions, social comparisons, and class-based identities impact health and well-being.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.11.037

Against the backdrop of China's dynamic social development, this chapter adopts the research perspective of intersectionality to study institutions and discourses that create, sustain and legitimise social inequalities. A special focus is placed on the social categories of class, citizenship and ethnicity and the role of the party-state in their definition and use as markers of difference and identification. Comparing the Mao era to the post-1978 reform period, the chapter brings out the salient role played by the party-state, but also the increased spaces for meaning-making available to social actors in the recent years.

This paper sets out to develop two related ideas. First, it seeks to identify how both violence and neoliberalism can be considered as moments. From this shared conceptualisation of process and fluidity, I argue that it becomes easier to recognise how these two phenomena actually converge. Building upon this conceived coalescence of neoliberalism and violence, the second aim is to recognise how the hegemony of neoliberalism positions it as an abuser, which facilitates the abandonment of those ‘Others’ who fall outside of neoliberal normativity. I argue that the widespread banishment of ‘Others’ under neoliberalism produces a ‘state of exception’, wherein because of its inherently dialectic nature, exceptional violence is transformed into exemplary violence. This metamorphosis occurs as aversion for alterity intensifies under neoliberalism and its associated violence against ‘Others’ comes to form the rule.

In this introductory essay to our special issue on elites, we outline some of the major challenges to research in this area and propose a series of theoretical and methodological pathways to address them. Theoretically we make four recommendations: (a) greater attentiveness to and specificity about the relationship between elites and power; (b) a clearer articulation of the relationships between elites and the varieties of capitalism; (c) far more attention to diversity within elites and the use of elites to understand forms of domination like white supremacy and masculine domination and (d) expanding beyond the orthodox form of Bourdieusian theoretical frameworks. Methodologically we outline how research using survey instruments, social network analysis (SNA) (and multiple correspondence analysis), interviews, ethnographic observation, experiments, archival research, administrative data and content analysis can each be deployed, built upon or redirected to help bring elites into greater focus.

Inequality refers to the phenomenon of unequal and/or unjust distribution of resources and opportunities among members of a given society. The term inequality may mean different things to different people and in different contexts. Moreover, inequality encompasses distinct yet overlapping economic, social, and spatial dimensions. Debates about inequality are further complicated by the disjuncture between the moral ethics of equity and social justice, on the one hand, and the normative idea of “deservingness,” on the other hand. In recent years, there has been increasing awareness of inequalities that are observable within social groups, in addition to those across social groups. This awareness has led to an increasing realization that inequality is systemic and entrenched in various socio-economic and political structures. Geographers' contributions toward the topic of inequality in this regard include highlighting the persistence of unequal and differentiated rights, interrogating global and extreme inequality, and analyzing the manifestations and causes of urban inequalities.

This paper describes the cultural semantics of internet courses in American accent. Such courses are offered by corporate providers to specific groups of customers: people in search of success in the globalized business environment. The core of such courses is an order of indexicality which stresses uniformity and homogeneity, producing an invisible accent that replaces existing 'foreign' (i.e. authentic, biographic) accents. It is a new form of commodified dialectology, which differs quite substantially from common state and academic attitudes towards dialects and accents. The procedures used by such private providers are instances of language policing aimed at the infinitely small stuff of language: pronunciation. They show the interplay of different institutional actors in producing language norms within a globalized environment, and they raise issues of subjectivity and agency.

The Family 100 Research Project is a collaborative study undertaken by the Auckland City Mission in conjunction with researchers, Professor Kerry Chamberlain (Massey University), Professor Darrin Hodgetts (University of Waikato), Dr Shiloh Groot (University of Auckland) and Yardena Tankel (Auckland City Mission). It was born out of the belief that a more constructive dialogue about the plight of people living in poverty can be achieved by hearing directly from the people who live in those circumstances.

To that end, the Family 100 Research Project engaged 100 families living in poverty in Auckland and, over the course of a year, documented and explored their experiences of everyday life including their joys, achievements, frustrations and dilemmas. All Family 100 Research Project participants were long-term users (two to five years) of the Auckland City Mission’s food bank and were selected to be representative of those who regularly access the service (40% Maori, 25% Pacific Islander, 22% European, and 13% Asian and other minority groups, approximately 80% female).

Families were matched with social workers so they could develop a long-term relationship. Fortnightly interviews involving a range of mapping and drawing techniques documented and deepened the conversations between families and social workers. These interviews sought to gain a comprehensive understanding of the ways in which these people dealt with the issues relating to poverty, and how these issues often work in concert to limit and constrain their lives. The project involved a total of 1,400 interactions during which the Family 100 participants were interviewed, over 390 hours of which were recorded and transcribed. This report provides some of the stories that we heard across the course of the project, in the voices of the participants.

This paper discusses modernist reactions to postmodern realities. Asylum seekers in Western Europepeople typically inserted into postmodern processes of globalization-are routinely subjected to identification analyses that emphasize the national order. The paper documents the case of a Rwandan refugee in the United Kingdom whose nationality was disputed by the Home Office because of his "abnormal" linguistic repertoire. An analysis of that repertoire, however, supports the applicant's credibility. The theoretical problematic opposes two versions of sociolinguistics: a sociolinguistics of languages, used by the Home Office, and a sociolinguistics of speech and repertoires, used in this paper. The realities of modern reactions to postmodern phenomena must be taken into account as part of the postmodern phenomenology of language in society.

"The megalithic tomb at Montelirio is off the scale in more ways than one. As well as being the largest example of its type known in Spain, the burial goods secreted in its subterranean chambers are unsurpassed in both quantity and quality. Leonardo García Sanjuán reveals what the dead of Montelirio can tell us about Copper Age society."

This research, conducted by the author when a Senior Researcher at Newcastle University, UK, was funded by a UK governance organisation to help them assess, integrate and improve their understanding of the governed population.

ABSTRACT: Governance organisations have been urged to develop more holistic evidence-based approaches with partners to better deal with issues affecting the governed population. This presupposes an understanding of the population, yet there has been little research work addressing how governance organisations come to understand their governed population, nor how this understanding can be improved upon within such organisations.

This case study examined in-depth how understanding of a governed population was developed within one UK local governance organisation and it explored how such understanding might be developed and improved through more holistic and evidence-based organisational learning within the organisation and its governance partnerships.

The research methodology involved placement within the governance organisation, participant observations on several projects and innovative initiatives, observations within, across, and outside the organisation, and also interviews with varied key stakeholders.

The study examined:

- stakeholder engagement and networks
- current and varied understandings of the population
- mechanisms actually used for developing understandings
- the influence of context on organisational learning

and analysed these to arrive at a recommendations to improve organisational understanding of the governed population.

In the case studied, significant strengths were found: including innovative past learning trials for development, extensive ongoing networking activities, and many varied and accumulating quantitative datasets available across partnerships.

However, entrenched organisational approaches and practices constrained the development of holistic evidence-based understanding, for instance: the absence of systematic maintained collective learning processes; weak recording and forgetting of understandings; methodological exclusion of stakeholders from the development of understanding; the relative neglect of qualitative data, explanations, investigations, interpretations, and reflexivity; and also implicit organisational acceptance of such limitations and low aspirations.

Nonetheless, untapped opportunities existed to enable change including: latent practitioner knowledge and innovative management champions, the desire for improvement and raised aspirations within learning networks, and the development potential of alterative learning approaches.

It was concluded that more holistic evidence-based understanding was possible, but required new learning approaches beyond those then in use in both local government or academia.   

Recommendations are made to utilise and develop improved organisational learning approaches trialed and reported in the case study.

It is argued that the case study findings, conclusions, and recommendations may be applicable to other similar local governance organisations and partnerships that seek to better understand local populations, services and interventions.

The work was also submitted for, and awarded, an MPhil (at Newcastle University, supervised by Prof. Patsy Healy)

The Truth About Hillary Clinton (And Many Other High-Profile Individuals)

Virtually no one today realizes the link between various individuals who are in powerful positions today. It is up to those of us who have done our homework to expose the truth of “old money” and those who are either of the 1%, the Oligarchy and/or who have carved out their position in life at the expense of everyone else, by helping the Oligarchy.

Many people today are “Woke” to the reality of the situation that the 99% had been born into. And that is that the world that we were born into had been rigged to work against us and to benefit the few who were born into the 1% and the Oligarchy. It is going to be a monumental task to change this. But it can and must be done. And that must begin by educating more people to this reality.

Somalia is generally thought of as a homogenous society, with a common Arabic ancestry, a shared culture of nomadism and one Somali mother tongue. This study challenges this myth. Using the Jareer/Bantu as a case study, the book shows how the Negroid physical features of this ethnic group has become the basis for ethnic marginalization, stigma, social exclusion and apartheid in Somalia. The book is another contribution to the recent deconstruction of the perceived Somali homogeneity and self-same assertions. It argues that the Somalis, just like most societies, employ multiple levels of social and ethnic distinctions, one of which is the Jareer versus Jileec divide. Dr. Eno successfully portrays another Somalia, in which a mythical homogeneity masks the oppression and social exclusion suffered by some ethnic groups in the country

English abstract: Since the discovery in 1860 of La Pastora, one of the most beautiful and outstanding megalithic constructions of Iberia, the Copper Age and Bronze Age site of Valencina de la Concepción – Castilleja de Guzmán has provided an unceasing series of archaeological finds of the utmost significance. Today, a hundred and fifty years after the earliest discoveries, this volume offers an up-to-date and comprehensive review of the research carried out at this site, which underlines, first and foremost, its importance as a scientific and cultural resource. Among the contributions to this volume the reader will find some of the keys to the human occupation of the lower Guadalquivir basin 5000 years ago, the process of social aggregation that gave way to the formation of the city of Seville itself. In addition, this book reflects some of the current discussions that dominate today’s scientific agenda on Iberian Copper Age (c. 3200-2200 cal BC), a period of fascinating social and cultural dynamism that laid the basis for the consolidation of social ranking, long-distance contact and exchange, as well as metallurgy and productive specialization.

Spanish abstract: Desde que en 1860 se produjera el descubrimiento de La Pastora, una de las construcciones megalíticas más bellas y singulares de España, el yacimiento de la Edad del Cobre y de la Edad del Bronce de Valencina de la Concepción – Castilleja de Guzmán no ha cesado de deparar hallazgos arqueológicos de la mayor significación. Hoy, 150 años después de los primeros descubrimientos, este volumen ofrece una puesta al día de las investigaciones que están revelando la extraordinaria importancia de este yacimiento como recurso científico y patrimonial. Entre las colaboraciones de esta obra el lector encontrará algunas de las claves de la ocupación de la desembocadura del río Guadalquivir hace 5000 años: el proceso de agregación humana que representa el origen de la misma ciudad de Sevilla. Igualmente, en las páginas de este libro encuentra reflejo el debate que en la actualidad preside el estudio de la Edad del Cobre (c. 3200-2200 antes de nuestra era), un periodo de apasionante dinamismo social y cultural en el que se consolidaron las bases de la jerarquización social, las relaciones comerciales a larga distancia, la metalurgia y la especialización productiva.

The author argues that first-generation college students (FGS) have compounded challenges when they pursue graduate education. As a first-generation college student, he was not able to gather advice from family or his job supervisor, who had no experience with graduate school. Drawing from his experience and the existing FGS-related research, the author details practical advice for making a successful transition from college to graduate school. He concludes with a list of essential questions that prospective graduate students should ask themselves and their mentors when considering graduate study.

This dissertation investigates how people in the northern US Southwest used clothing and representations of clothing in other media to signal aspects of social identities in the Chaco and post-Chaco eras (AD 850–1300). This was a time when communities were first organized into a large regional system and later fractured into smaller organizational entities focused at the site cluster and village levels. In the aftermath of the Chaco reorganization, social inequalities appear to have burgeoned across the greater San Juan River drainage, and not long after these developments, the entire region was depopulated. Understanding the development and transformation of identity during this pivotal period is critical for explaining the social mechanisms that contributed to the major reorganization of communities in the post-Chaco era.
To better understand identity expression during these tumultuous times, I perform technological and stylistic design analyses of attributes used to create and decorate ornately woven, twined yucca sandals, in addition to cross-media and proxemic analyses of sandal representations in building murals, rock art, and portable media. Technological and stylistic analyses show that some communities consistently made and used sandals with specific sets of attributes that expressed shared village-level identities. At the same time, other communities favored more diverse repertoires of design attributes that signaled aspects of identities shared across a much larger area. During the Chaco era, twined-sandal styles became highly variable and appear to have indicated positions in social hierarchies. During the following post-Chaco era, the stylistic variability of the sandals declined across the region and may have come to signal a leveling of the social hierarchies. In both time periods, ornate geometric designs woven into the soles of the sandals indicated the home communities or sodality groups to which their wearers belonged. Sandal imagery in rock art was placed to mark major travel routes and boundaries
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between communities that expressed shared identities. Depictions of sandals in other media closely matched their woven counterparts and show that these images were potent symbols of group affiliations and identity politics in the post-Chaco era. Although this research focuses on clothing, it also addresses broader issues of adaptation and identity, providing new information about societal disruption and reformation in the ancient US Southwest.

Charles Tilly proposed a model of durable social inequality that is potentially applicable to a wide range of societies. I demonstrate this potential by examining his causal mechanisms of inequality-exploitation, opportunity hoarding, emulation, and adaptation-as they apply to Aztec society immediately prior to the Spanish conquest of 1521. Tilly's model helps resolve key issues in the analysis of Aztec inequality and class structure. This application exemplifies the utility of Tilly's model in explaining social inequality in Aztec society and in unraveling causal relationships characteristic of ancient complex societies generally.

CALICHEFORNIA
En octubre de 1876 se constituye en Antofagasta la Sociedad de Socorros Mutuos “La Patria” como reacción a la situación social y económica imperante en Bolivia bajo la dictadura de Hilarión Daza, especialmente difícil para los colonos asentados en la costa árida del Departamento litoral de Atacama y en el pujante mineral de plata de Caracoles, en su mayoría chilenos. La Patria reunió a la casi totalidad de los patrones y obreros residentes extranjeros y algunos bolivianos y llevó adelante un movimiento regional independentista y federalista inspirado en el ejemplo californiano. Los aprestos revolucionarios fueron momentáneamente interrumpidos por la rebelión del coronel boliviano Rufino Carrasco y luego, definitivamente, con el terremoto y maremoto de 9 de Mayo de 1877, y no se retomaron hasta el estallido de la guerra. El análisis del papel que jugó La Patria y la gravitación del mineral de Caracoles en el imaginario proto-nacional, así como del rol logístico de la Compañía de Salitres y Ferrocarriles de Antofagasta en la guerra, demuestran la equivalencia estructural entre el imperialismo europeo decimonónico, la expansión colonial chilena y otras guerras internacionales americanas de la época, pero ante todo, la importancia de los incipientes sentimientos regionalistas y xenófobos alimentados por el capitalismo de imprenta. Este artículo propone una re-lectura de la guerra, informada por hechos que la historiografía nacional suele relegar a un segundo plano. La industrialización acelerada, la colonización masiva en tierras con débil presencia estatal y el nuevo giro colonial de la mentalidad europea y estadunidense, se tradujeron en Chile en un regionalismo criollo afín a los sucesos de California. La conclusión analiza el rol estructurante del discurso racial entre los beligerantes y en los escritos e imaginarios de la guerra.

English
The “Homeland Friendly Society” was formed in Antofagasta in October 1876, in reaction to the social and economic situation prevailing under Hilarion Daza’s military dictatorship, which was especially hard to the Chilean workers who settled in Bolivia’s arid Littoral Department of Atacama and on the inland town of Caracoles with its booming silver placers. The Homeland League virtually brought together the totality of foreign residents, patrons and workers, and a few Bolivians, into a federalist regional independence movement inspired by California’s previous decades’ Bear-Flag independence from
Mexico. Revolutionary preparations were momentarily interrupted by Bolivian Colonel Rufino Carrasco’s rebellion and altogether stopped with the advent of the major earthquake and tsunami of 9 may 1877. The analysis of the role played by the League, the importance of Caracoles’ silver in the proto-national imaginations, and the crucial logistic support that the Antofagasta Nitrate and Railway Company gave to Chile during the war, help to highlight the structural equivalence between nineteenth century European imperialism, Chile’s own colonial expansion, and other interamerican wars of the time, but foremost, the importance of early xenophobe sentiments spurred by racialized print-capitalism. The conclusion re-reads the American Southern Cone’s War of the Pacific, as informed through facts that Chile’s national militaristic historiography usually relegates to a second plane. Accelerated industrialization, massive colonization in lands with weak Bolivian presence and the new colonial turn undertaken by Europe and the USA, show how such regionalist feelings rose alongside racialized discourses between the warring parties, in the writings and imaginaries that prefaced the war.

Guerra del Pacífico. Bolivia. Antofagasta. Desierto de Atacama

Developmental schemes since the 18th century have proposed a sequence from the individual to the formation of increasingly stratified, numerous and cohesive groups. In the main, increasing inequality was closely linked to the concept of progress. Ethnicity and finally nationhood were depicted as the goal of human history, and teleological narrative leading to that goal have influenced archaeological discourse to that very day, even if the concept itself has been repudiated. In contrast, I argue that through most of human history and prehistory, active ethnicity was the exception rather than the rule and argue for a changed master narrative based the values of modern democratic society.

With the recent development of the Occupy Movement, public criticism of neoliberalism has climaxed since the onset of a global financial crisis in late 2008. The mobilization of protesters in cities throughout the world was preceded by much speculation in the media and blogosphere over the past few years, where commentators have been quick to suggest that the end of neoliberalism is upon us. The validity of postneoliberalism, however, remains tenuous, as its advocates continue to treat neoliberalism as a monolithic, static, and undifferentiated end-state. Despite the desire to move beyond neoliberal strictures, there is an undeniable continuity to neoliberalism that must be appreciated if we ever hope to leave this unforgiving version of capitalism truly in the past.

This paper presents a general overview of the current state of the art of archaeological research at the Valencina de la Concepción Copper Age site. The main aim is to put the contributions presented in this volume within a general perspective, with special reference to ongoing debates and promising avenues of research. First, a review is made of the research history of this site, assessing the general conditions of the currently available empirical evidence. Second, a series of topics are discussed, including the spatial organisation of the settlement, its chronology, subsistence economy, metallurgy, exchange and social complexity.

In recent years an extensive social gradient in cancer outcome has attracted much attention, with late diagnosis proposed as one important reason for this. Whereas earlier research has investigated health care seeking among cancer patients, these social differences may be better understood by looking at health care seeking practices among people who are not diagnosed with cancer. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork among two different social classes in Denmark, our aim in this article is to explore the relevance of class to health care seeking practices and illness concerns. In the higher middle class, we predominantly encountered health care seeking resembling notions of health consumerism, practices sanctioned and encouraged by the health care system. However, among people in the lower working class, health care seeking was often shaped by the inseparability of physical, political, and social dimensions of discomfort, making these practices difficult for the health care system to accommodate.

Although scholars of Somali Studies have engaged themselves in examining the Somali society from several perspectives, colonial and early Somali writers mainly observed the Somali people as homogenous, egalitarian and nomadic pastoral. Themes on multi-ethnicity, multiculturalism, and linguistic diversity were ignored as topics that sully the myth of the selfsame ideology colorfully embroidered in the official historiography. The notion also deluded pioneering Somali scholars from critically studying their people and analyzing colonial writing; at least not beyond the western scholars' knowledge boundary. Accordingly, the Horn of Africa was exemplified as a unique African nation where citizens enjoy equality and share an all-in-one identity: culturally, ethnically, historically, and linguistically. Contrary to that notion, though, the everyday social situation makes the primordial ideology of selfsameness unsustainable. To establish the evidence, this essay discusses about how the Bantu Jareer agrarian community, a section among the different groups of subalterns in the country, views its environment and social space within the boundary of deeply offensive segregation by an extremely suppressive Somali society.

Through imaginative geographies that erase the interconnectedness of the places where violence occurs, the notion that violence is 'irrational' marks particular cultures as ‘other’. Neoliberalism exploits such imaginative geographies in constructing itself as the sole providence of nonviolence and the lone bearer of reason. Proceeding as a ‘civilizing’ project, neoliberalism positions the market as salvationary to putatively ‘irrational’ and ‘violent’ peoples. This theology of neoliberalism produces a discourse that binds violence in place. But while violence sits in places in terms of the way in which we perceive its manifestation as a localized and embodied experience, this very idea is challenged when place is reconsidered as a relational assemblage. What this re-theorization does is open up the supposed fixity, separation, and immutability of place to instead recognize it as always co-constituted by, mediated through, and integrated within the wider experiences of space. Such a radical rethinking of place fundamentally transforms the way we understand violence. No longer confined to its material expression as an isolated and localized event, violence can more appropriately be understood as an unfolding process, derived from the broader geographical phenomena and temporal patterns of the social world.

Brings together archaeologists, art historians, sociologists, and classicists to explore the origins and development of unequal relationships in ancient societies.
The Archaeology of Inequality explores the different aspects of social boundaries and articulation by comparing several interdisciplinary approaches for the analysis of the archaeological data, as well as actual case studies from the Prehistory to the Classical world. The book explores slavery, gender, ethnicity and economy as intersecting areas of study within the larger framework of inequality and exemplifies to what degree archaeologists can identify and analyze different patterns of inequality.