Social Being and Time.

Social Being and Time. Strange. Two books that re-present the past in similar ways, cull cullthe act of culling. Called also cast. many of the same theoretical sources, focus on the same case-studies,yet evoke quite different responses.Gosden goes for the broad sweep. He discusses 19th- and 20th-centurywriters whose work addresses questions of social time and social being.In a single well-informed chapter he considers early hominid hominidAny member of the zoological family Hominidae (order Primates), which consists of the great apes (orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos) as well as human beings. developments. And he presents quite detailed case-studies, mainlyconcerned with long-term prehistoric developments in southern Britain,but also, occasionally, touching on the Pacific. After a while thechapters have a certain predictability: a quick critical look at GreatMen and their contributions (Hegel, Marx, Dilthey, Heidegger, LeviStrauss This article is about the clothing manufacturer. For the anthropologist, see Claude L��vi-Strauss and for the company of the same name, see: Levi Strauss & Co..Levi Strauss, born L?b Strau? , Ricoeur, Gadamer, Derrida...), followed by Gosden's owntheoretical positioning and its application to a case-study. The grandsweep leads to a certain thinness. The sections on the Great Men beginto sound like encyclopedic en��cy��clo��pe��dic?adj.1. Of, relating to, or characteristic of an encyclopedia.2. Embracing many subjects; comprehensive: "an ignorance almost as encyclopedic as his erudition"glosses. Gosden's own positioning andhis reworking of Heidegger, Giddens and Bourdieu deserve moreprominence, as do the case-studies.The English case-studies suffer from being read alongsideBarrett's book. They are not based on first-hand research, indeed -somewhat ironically - they are often based on Barrett's work. Thusthe passion and the grasp of detail that informs Barrett's bookescape Gosden.Nonetheless the concerns of Gosden's book are of primeimportance. We have, through the 19th and 20th centuries, constructed aparticular notion of time. It appears objective, abstract, outside humanaction and thought. It can be measured - by 14C dating for example. Timeappears to be no more than 'the medium through which humanrelations human relationsnpl → relaciones fpl humanasunfold' (p. 165). But, of course, this is just our sortof time, closely related to a world of commodities and alienated labour,which collapses all the different sorts of time created by people'sactions into a uniform 'logical time' (p. 121).We need, therefore, to envisage many sorts of time. Gosden, rejectingBraudel's three levels of time, proposes a dialectical movementbetween 'habitual time', 'public time' and'sedimented time'.In the course of this reworking, Gosden questions the dualities foundin most of the philosophical writings on time. He is particularlyresistant to the Post-Structural privileging of mind over matter: the'knowing' subject: the passive object, the emphasis on imageswhich distance us from the material world. Instead he follows Heideggerand concentrates on 'being-in-the-world' (dasein) - life fromwithin the flow of life...But dualities come unbidden un��bid��den? also un��bidadj.Not invited, asked, or requested; unasked: unbidden guests; comments unbid and unwelcome. , and, despite his best attempts, Gosdencreates his own: between, for example, conscious and unconsciousthought, or between 'mutuality' and 'materiality'.Let me attempt to outline his argument. Habitual time and practiceconstitute the everyday world of unconscious thought and action in whichlittle seems to change. This is, therefore, 'harmonious time'.But habitual practice creates its own problems ('disjoint' or'cacophonic' times), which require conscious thought andaction. These conscious 'coping mechanism(s)' (p. 89), part ofwhat Gosden calls 'public time', are created out of every-daypractice and eventually get re-incorporated back into habitual,unconscious practice - until further problems emerge. Public time mayinvolve ritual, ceremonial and monumentality, but it need not. InGosden's case-studies, the habitual practices involving thefar-flung colonization of the Pacific c. 3500 BP, or the extensivesocial interactions in the early Neolithic of Southern England, broughtproblems which were then consciously resolved, on the one hand throughthe creation of a unified Lapita pottery repertoire which built up linksbetween distant Pacific communities, and on the other by the developmentof ritual places and spaces in southern England, with much the sameeffect.To 'habitual time' and 'public time' Gosden adds'sedimented time'. Over time (the longue duree), themateriality MATERIALITY. That which is important; that which is not merely of form but of substance. 2. When a bill for discovery has been filed, for example, the defendant must answer every material fact which is charged in the bill, and the test in these cases seems to of lived lives sediments into the landscape and affectspresent and future practice. Habits, Gosden suggests, may change slowly,and some elements of public time may move quickly (i.e. their originalmeanings. and usage may lapse), but these same elements also lastmillennia 'structuring activity all around them' (p. 161).The idea of different but interdependent temporal rhythms and therecursive See recursion. recursive - recursion materiality of lived life are thought-provoking andliberating, yet the dichotomy between 'unconscious' habitualtime and 'conscious' public time seems overdone o��ver��done?v.Past participle of overdo.Adj. 1. overdone - represented as greater than is true or reasonable; "an exaggerated opinion of oneself"exaggerated, overstated . 'Life ismore about habits created in the body than about consciousness andstructures of meaning' (p. 36). More? How much more? In what waymore? 'I prefer to emphasise forms of involvement with the worldwhich are not directly meaningful' (p. 86) - but surely all life,habitual or not, is structured by conscious and unconscious meanings.Gosden suggests that, at Cranbourne Chase in the earlier Neolithic,habitual life was concentrated mainly in the lowlands, while the ritualsettings were on the higher lands, and concludes that 'the mainfocus of the referential system of activities would have been thelowlands'. Why? Even if, which seems very unlikely, there was sucha lowland/highland dichotomy, habitual life would have been intimatelybound up in the world view, 'right' ways of doing andthinking, formulated in the ritual and ceremonial contexts.The bracketing of habitual with harmonic time, and public withdisjoint dis��jointv.To put out of joint; dislocate. time is also questionable. It seems to re-introduce a ratherdated plateau:step sequence. And why should we assume that there'ssomething intrinsically more problematic about the extensive socialnetworks of the earlier Neolithic than the grounded practices of theBronze Age Bronze Age,period in the development of technology when metals were first used regularly in the manufacture of tools and weapons. Pure copper and bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, were used indiscriminately at first; this early period is sometimes called the ?Which brings me to another opposition: 'mutuality' versus'materiality'. Gosden defines 'mutuality' as humaninter-relations and things used to set up and maintain relations betweenpeople; 'materiality' as human relations with the materialworld. As we have seen, he stresses mutuality - extensive networks ofsocial relations - in the Early Neolithic, and contrasts this with themateriality - the more grounded productive practices - of the BronzeAge. But people are not more or less related to their material worlds,they are only differently related. The Bronze Age practice may be more'grounded', even, probably, more productive, but Neolithicpractice is equally 'material' even if it leaves fewerarchaeological traces and is further removed from our sense ofproductivity. Gosden gives the game away when he says that in theearlier Neolithic 'we are dealing with a complex world of referenceand restriction, little of which has to do with productivity as we wouldunderstand it' (p. 95, my italics).In the end, although I found this book full of interesting ideas, Iwas puzzled by its abstraction. Ironically, despite the insistence onbodily experience, there are no bodies. Despite the insistence onsocialization socialization/so��cial��iza��tion/ (so?shal-i-za��shun) the process by which society integrates the individual and the individual learns to behave in socially acceptable ways. so��cial��i��za��tionn. , there is no sense of people experiencing their worlds,doing things, meeting each other. 'Sets of connections betweenpeople which covered many areas of Britain ... were brought about bywidely moving elements of material culture' (p. 98). Who movesthem? Why? Under what conditions? It is an interesting idea that therewas no social hierarchy Social hierarchyA fundamental aspect of social organization that is established by fighting or display behavior and results in a ranking of the animals in a group. at Avebury, that people simply had a 'morestrongly developed form of group time' (p. 152), but what does thatmean in terms of their relationships? Sometimes there is a glimpse - the'tethered mobility' of the earlier Neolithic - but it is onlya glimpse.Barrett has people. They move along paths, and in and out of places.Some get to look, some get to act. They also, though it's a whilebefore we hear about it - and the evidence is scant - follow herds, tillground, build retaining walls. They do not, rather curiously, make manysmall objects: there is not much talk of technology or manufacture.Barrett's book is a fine-grained re-working of a fewwell-documented areas of southern Britain over a period of less than2000 years (2900-1200 BC). There are theoretical exegeses, but mostlythe theory is wound into the interpretion of the archaeological data andthe sources are relegated to end of chapter footnotes.He and Gosden make many similar points, but Barrett gives himselfmore room to elaborate. He allows us to understand the differencebetween habitual and discursive practice by contrasting the visitor to amonument and the archaeologist. The visitors create their ownunderstandings as they move around, partly corralled by the'sedimented' past, partly engaging with the past out of theirown experiences, only occasionally making contact with the abstract plancreated by the archaeologist. A plan in which, echoing Gosden,'(lived) time is collapsed' (p. 12).Like Gosden, Barrett talks of 'habitual' time or practiceand 'sedimented time'. But 'public time' becomes'discursive time', associated with institutional practices,and is not so much a question of unconscious or conscious thought oraction, as of different sorts of knowledge practised in differentarenas. He follows Bloch in contrasting habitual day-to-day andface-to-face 'talk' with the discursive, more distant'text' brought into being through ritual and ceremony.Barrett has chosen case-studies which are strongly orientated to theworld of ritual and ceremony. It is a grounded world of buildings,places, pathways which constrain - or enable - where different peoplecan go and what they can do and say. He emphasizes the cumulative,piece-meal processes of material construction (Avebury: 'theoutcome of a number of abandoned projects', p. 13), and theireffect on future actions and thought. Again, Gosden also makes thesepoints. But Barrett fleshes them out. Where Gosden simply mentions theway in which 'the monuments guided conscious acts, but alsohabitual patterns such as the knapping of flint or the movement ofanimals' (p. 99), Barrett (following Ingold) discusses attitudes tothe land and places within the land in a world of movement and pathwaysassociated with pastoralism PastoralismArcadiamountainous region of ancient Greece; legendary for pastoral innocence of people. [Gk. Hist.: NCE, 136; Rom. Lit.: Eclogues; Span. Lit. or long fallow fallowa pale cream, light fawn, or pale yellow coat color in dogs. , and connects these withEarly Neolithic monumentality. And when Gosden suggests that 'thefact that people become attuned at��tune?tr.v. at��tuned, at��tun��ing, at��tunes1. To bring into a harmonious or responsive relationship: an industry that is not attuned to market demands.2. to spatial restriction leads to thelandscape gradually being set out in more restricted fashion, and thisin itself encourages a greater directedness towards the local materialworld' (p. 99), Barrett details the move from enclosed ritualplaces and spaces to enclosed fields and farmsteads. There is certainlyno economic prioritization in Barrett's interpretation, butneither, unlike recent writings by Thomas (1991) or Tilley (1994), isthere a reticence ret��i��cence?n.1. The state or quality of being reticent; reserve.2. The state or quality of being reluctant; unwillingness.3. An instance of being reticent.Noun 1. to discuss the recursive and on-going relationshipbetween economic productivity and all other aspects of people'slives.I have (of course!) some reservations about aspects of Barrett'sinterpretation. He is very strong on habitus habitus/hab��i��tus/ (hab��i-tus) [L.]1. attitude (2).2. physique.hab��i��tusn. pl. , on how people learned howto act - through practical experience, memory, expectation, and throughthe constraints and possibilities offered by architecture. He mentionstopography, but the landscape remains inert, a backdrop. It too wouldhave been replete with meanings, it too would have been intimately boundinto everyday life. Then again, the heavy emphasis on socializationseems to dilute any discussion of how people might negotiate or evenresist. Nor do we get a great sense of alternative strategies. While hedoes allow that a particular Beaker burial might indicate 'a formof social identity, marginal to more dominant forms of socialcontrol' (p. 63), he is more generally disposed to see Beaker usageas part of the gradual emergence of a ritual elite responding to andresponsible for increased monumental closure. A certain historical andmaterial inevitability creeps in.There is also a very determined focus on the local, Barrett insiststhat in the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age most encounters wereface-to-face. But of course there would have been more distantencounters. Not for everyone, but for some. What of the people whobrought the stones to Stonehenge, what of congregations of people fromquite distant places at certain moments and places? And beyond thephysical encounters, what of the tales told Tales Told is British singer/songwriter Ian Broudie's debut release, staging a return to his roots with traditional instruments - real drums, acoustic guitars and fiddles with no studio trickery. and the histories of theobjects that passed from hand to hand? And while he is probably right tosuggest that there is little point in talking about the Beaker Complex,only about local practices in which Beakers take on different meaningsand usages, that does not invalidate thinking about the significance ofcontacts and exchanges between groups using Beaker paraphernalia.For me, one of the most interesting parts of Barrett's book isthe detailed consideration of the actions that must have encompassed theburials below round mounds - the transformation wrought not just on thedead but on the living. But in terms of the interactions between theliving and the dead we need to move beyond the individual mounds to therelationship of mounds within a cemetery, and beyond the cemetery to achoreography of death that moved between the settlement and thesurrounding landscape and the cemetery and back again (Kuchler 1993).And the detailed description of the women, men and children that wereburied, could have allowed us to ponder on how gender and age were beingconstructed. Barrett says, in passing, that 'the differencesbetween people's perceptions of the landscape were the practicalrealizations of labour which defined what it was to be young or to beold, to be male or to be female' (p. 145). But there's more togender than labour conditions.Not light reading, these two books. But much food for thought. Maketime for them!ReferencesKUCHLER, S. 1993. Landscape as memory: the mapping of process add itsrepresentation in a Melanesian society, in B. Bender (ed.), Landscape:politics and perspectives: 85-106. Oxford: Berg.THOMAS, J. 1991. Rethinking the Neolithic. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press Cambridge University Press (known colloquially as CUP) is a publisher given a Royal Charter by Henry VIII in 1534, and one of the two privileged presses (the other being Oxford University Press). .TILLEY, C, 1994. The phenomenology phenomenology,modern school of philosophy founded by Edmund Husserl. Its influence extended throughout Europe and was particularly important to the early development of existentialism. of landscape. Oxford: Berg.