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Anarchistic actions. Reply by Trine Borake

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 December 2019

Trine Louise Borake
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Archaeological Dialogues , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , December 2019, pp. 80 - 86
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© Cambridge University Press 2019 

I wish to thank the commentators for taking time to carefully, constructively and critically comment on my work. They have provided a range of new and valuable insights, perspectives and ideas, for which I am grateful. Their comments illustrate the potential and value of anarchistic perspectives but likewise point to concerns and limitations. In the article, I have far from exhausted the topic, and, as is pointed out in the comments, like Marxism, anarchism offers multiple embedded approaches that could successfully be investigated in the future.

The comments fall in two groups: on theoretical and empirical aspects. I will address them in turn.

The need for an anarchistic perspective

In this article I did not aim to raise the black flag, a relevant concern raised by Rathbone. I do not agitate for an anarchistic perspective in its own right. Neither would I prefer to see all troublemakers throughout history as anarchist. I do not even seek a bottom-up approach or a ‘people’s archaeology’, however relevant, that does not recognize inequality and inegalitarianism and does not allow for hierarchies. That would be mistaken, perhaps scientifically manipulative and definitely naive. We do find hierarchies in social organization, past and present, close and far away. We do see accumulations of wealth and resources and individuals who seek dominion over others. The existence of hierarchies can therefore not be ignored. But we cannot ignore either that we also find decentralization, evasion, resistance and collective actions, network organization and mutual aid. Traditional interpretations with a one-sided focus on hierarchies are insufficient to explain these complex actions and dynamics and often do not recognize human agency. Anarchism, however, offers a range of multifaceted perspectives that frame mechanisms of social organization and dynamics – hierarchical as well as communal. Nevertheless, the need for an anarchistic perspective in archaeology can be questioned since anthropology for long has studied societies of these kinds, as Grier points out, and offers both extensive data and ideas. It is irrelevant, though, to separate archaeology and anthropology since they feed on each other and draw on mutual knowledge and ideas. However, the development of an anarchistic perspective has some advantage. First of all, archaeology will benefit from developing its own theories and perspectives with a strong and complex focus on material culture instead of merely adapting ideas from anthropology. Anarchism is a new perspective in archaeological research design and its application may point in other, new and thought-provoking directions instead of reproducing anthropological theories. Only in this way can we expand our capabilities to understand social organization. Second, an anthropological approach is often based on small-scale societies different to those found in, e.g., European proto-historical times and settings. Anarchistic principles can be applied to all societies, not only small-scale ones. Finally, an anarchistic approach is highly operational, often in contrast to anthropological approaches, which are generally braided from complex perspectives and challenging to apply to material culture. The three core principles (extracted from Angelbeck and Grier’s (Reference Angelbeck and Grier2012) five principles) make anarchism applicable to material-cultural interpretations.

The principles, however, may be constraining, suggesting an undesired universalism, as Grier puts forward. This is a just concern. The principles, however, or the idea of how humans act and dynamics evolve, are not constricting but engage with a number of elements, encounters and tensions. Likewise, there is no blueprint or detailed outline as to how it plays out, as Angelbeck notes. Wealth, access to resources and know-how do not inevitably and solely come from or lead to oppression, exploitation or coercion. The need for network organization, the effectiveness of justified leaders and the use of decentralization are evoked by multiple desires or tensions.

As is illustratively suggested by Rathbone, anarchism offers perhaps more than anything the reflection of the warped glass of a fun-house mirror. But do not all theories and perspectives, applied to a prehistoric or historical context, do just that? Would it not be bold, perhaps even naive, to imagine that we can get a straight, true reflection of the dynamics and mechanisms in any society? I find that an anarchistic perspective offers the most nuanced and comprehensive approach, allowing a wide and hitherto unnoticed range of warped reflections in the fun-house mirror. Clearly it must be combined, tested and supported by empirical data, just like any other theory and perspective.

Strong empirical support

Rathbone notes how the application of anarchistic principles to the archaeological record is an easy task. The difficulties occur when making such strong arguments that the explanations would find wide acceptance at the expense of traditional hierarchic explanations. I acknowledge the concern. Empirical data can most often be fitted to any preferred theory or perspective; an ever-present scientific pitfall. However, eventually theories will be questioned when the incongruence becomes too obvious; for example, hierarchically based theories are now under siege. Strong and comprehensive arguments clearly must be an aim, but is it an aim to seek acceptance at the expense of traditional hierarchical explanations? From that viewpoint, academic discussions seem more like a theoretical competition rather than a scientific dialectic.

Either way, the strong argument of anarchistic principles from empirical data is admittedly not easily established. It can be argued that making the connection between theory and data in general is problematic, and theory-driven studies are thus traditionally too infrequent, at least in a Scandinavian context. Hierarchically based ideas can be argued to have a protagonist in research history and structurally informed data. This is what Angelbeck see as a fourth way of anarchistic endeavours; history was traditionally conducted and written by white males, to put it sharply.

My argumentation built on three examples: thing sites, Danevirke and migration. I chose examples based on both archaeology and history to illustrate that anarchistic perspectives are independent of methodology and of temporal setting. I did not in this work describe the pig-tusk ceremony from Vanuatu, Polynesia, which put chiefs in power but consequently limited their economic advantages (Earl and Spriggs 2015, 522–25). Neither did I touch upon studies from the prehistoric Southwest, where elites were subsumed to the commune limited by kin and civil obligations (McGuire and Saitta 1996, 202; Saitta Reference Saitta and Wills1994). I did not go into the numerous examples of rebellions; in 841–42 Saxon slaves rose against their lords in the Stellinga uprising (Goldberg Reference Goldberg1995); in 1086 the Danish king Canut was killed as a result of a peasant riot; the Engelbrekt rebellion in Sweden launched in 1434 led to long-lasting effects of tax reduction and the peasants finally became included in the Swedish parliament alongside the nobility, the clergy and the burghers (Myrdal Reference Myrdal, Myrdal and Morell2011, 98–99). We find long periods with civil war in early medieval Scandinavia, and looking further we find extensive Chinese peasant rebellions, the French Revolution and the Spanish Civil War. I did not in this study include examples of different social organizations like Old Saxony, where social organization was based not around a king but in districts led by elected chiefs (their ancient laws aimed to prevent the rise of a monarchy) nor upon regulated common farming in early Middle Ages Scandinavia lasting 500 years, reassuring mutual aid and collective action and limiting the economic advantages of individuals. Examples from archaeology, history and ethnography could preferably be offered, strengthening the argument and reassuring us that it is not constricted by research design, methodology or the nature of the empirical data. Likewise, studies on macro and micro scales could be conducted testing the anarchistic arguments on different levels. Truly, an extensive study of data, examples and cases that support the argument would be welcome, leading to more thorough discussions on intentionality and human agency. I hope this article will inspire such work in a European context in the future.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful for wise comments on this paper from Professor MSO Søren Sindbæk, Associate Professor Tim Flohr Sørensen, Professor Lotte Hedeager and Ph.D. Anna Severine Beck. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for relevant and constructive comments. Furthermore, I am grateful for good and productive discussions on the content with colleagues.

Trine Louise Borake is a Curator and Archaeologist employed at the Museum of Western Zealand who is currently affiliated with Aarhus University conducting a Ph.D. project on Scandinavian central places. Her primary interest concerns social organization and dynamics, with a primary focus on the Iron Age to the Middle Ages. She is interested in human agency and interactions and in how social interplay and influence are manifested and negotiated. She has initiated and conducted fieldwork and research on Iron Age and medieval farmsteads in Zealand, Denmark. Recently, she has engaged in studies on detector material – a rapidly accumulating body of material in Scandinavian archaeology with potential to challenge and add nuance to ideas on social organization.

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