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ARCH-THEORY  October 2003

ARCH-THEORY October 2003

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Subject:

Re: Time session at TAG

From:

John Robb <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Archaeological theory and associated fields of interest list <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Wed, 1 Oct 2003 08:29:20 +0100

Content-Type:

text/plain

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text/plain (160 lines)

Dear Andrew,
        thanks for the notice about TAG -- I think I will not be going this year
due to a combination of conference fatigue and visiting relatives at Xmas,
but I hope your time session goes well.
        In answer to your other query, I believe the print run for Marcia-Anne and
my agency book was around a couple of thousand -- usual academic book print
run. Routledge were very good about getting it out right away in a
moderately priced paperback.
        I hope teaching at Reading and Leicester goes well. They are both
excellent departments and good to be associated with. Are you interested at
all in looking for post-docs too or is the life of the supply teacher your
road ahead at the moment?
        john

--On 24 September 2003 15:55 +0000 Andrew Gardner <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Dear all,
> If you are planning to go to TAG 03 in Lampeter (17-19 December), would
> you be so kind as to consider taking part in the session on time
> described below. Among other things we hope to reopen some issues posed
> by archaeological discussions of time several years ago, in light of
> subsequent developments, and to consider implications for such
> theoretical and methodological questions as:
>
> - What enables us to isolate the unities (epistemic entities) with which
> our research deals?  - How do we decide on appropriate analytic scales,
> or attribute causality to successive events?   - Can we investigate
> historical thresholds, ruptures, and transformations without resorting to
> meta-narratives concerning social progress or notions of teleological
> purpose in general?
>
> I look forward to hearing from you and being in touch about the session
> and related projects.
>
> With all best regards, Andrew and Stephanie
>
>
>
> Time, Ethics, and the Historicity of Human Life-worlds
>
> Organizers:
> Andrew Gardner (School of Archaeology & Ancient History, University of
> Leicester [email currently still: [log in to unmask]]) Stephanie Koerner
> (University of Manchester; [log in to unmask])
>
> In his "Theses on the Philosophy of History" ([1940] 1992), Walter
> Benjamin argued for change in relations between academia and human
> affairs centering on critiques of historical meta-narratives, which
> render invisible violence done to the variability of human conditions of
> possibility. In Benjamin's ([1940] 1992: 252-253) view, the most
> difficult challenge was the notion of homogeneous empty time. There are
> good reasons to hold this view. This notion is crucial for (a) the
> equation of reality with epistemic necessity, (b) dualist paradigms for
> socio-cultural change, and (c) the division of all spatio-temporal scales
> between categories that conform with its modes of dichotomising
> universals and particulars. In these connections, it underwrites, for
> instance, (a) the reduction of cultural variability to imaginary measures
> of evolutionary progress, (b) a number of problematical current
> core-periphery models of globalization, and (c) the reduction of human
> agency to images of "timeless, featureless, interchangeable and atomistic
> individuals, untethered to time or space" (cf. Gero 2000: 38).
>
> Time is a fundamental ontic construct. Ontologies concern 'being', how
> the sorts of things that exist came to be, and why these rather than
> other sorts of things exist. Since antiquity, the most influential
> ontologies have stretched between two opposing poles, with absolute unity
> and permanence on one side, and disunity (pure flux) on the other.
> Questions about change (in particular, historical change) are rendered
> problematical by this dichotomy. The most influential approach has been
> that put forward by Aristotle [384-322 BC] in the Metaphysics ([1908]
> 1960), which centers on the question: If something can be said to be
> subject to change, what is the essence of that something?  He offered
> three alternative answers: (1) the unchanging aspect, (2) the changing
> aspect, and (3) both, that is, the interaction of changing and unchanging
> aspects. In essentialist ontologies the important answer is (1), and the
> others have to be reducible to it.
>
> Focusing on the unchanging essence of things leads to the disregard of
> questions about how things come into being, and the reduction of
> ontology's task to classification. It means that ontology is supposed to
> focus on questions like: What (underlying substances) makes particular
> items what they are? What distinguishes them from one another? What
> timeless substances distinguish different categories of entities?  It
> demands that answers to these questions add up to universally valid
> generalizations about the range of categories in terms of which all
> things existing at all times can be classified (McGuire and Tushanska
> 2001: 45-47). And it demands the division of all spatial and temporal
> scales into categories that conform with its modes of dichotomising
> universals and particulars.
>
> These modes of reasoning have underwritten the most influential 19th and
> 20th century theories about the conditions of historical (and
> archaeological) knowledge and related paradigms for human agency and
> historical change. In these connections they impact upon an extraordinary
> range of approaches to the question: 'If agency is important for
> understanding particular human activities, must it be included
> explanations of long-term socio-cultural change?'.
>
> In the 1980's archaeologists began to engage in discussions of the
> relevance of contemporary social constructionist perspectives on time to
> the field. Since then an extraordinary range of changes have taken place,
> for instance, in (a) approaches to the conditions of archaeological
> knowledge; (b) the use of analogy; (c) the impacts of practice on theory;
> (d) interpretive categories relating, especially, to the critique of
> subject-object, nature-culture, individual-society, mind-body,
> Western-Non-Western, science-values, epistemology-ontology; (e) spatial
> and temporal analytic scales; (f) human agency and historical processes;
> (g) the status of ethics in archaeological epistemic and ontic premises;
> and (h) the public roles of archaeology (Koerner 2003).  Importantly,
> there is now considerable agreement that archaeological treatments of
> time are not simply an academic matter, but pose complex sociopolitical
> and ethical issues.  Perhaps not surprisingly a number of researchers
> have taken up serious discussion of the fields relevance to the
> challenges the critique of meta-narrative face in an 'age of
> globalization'.
>
> This session aims to provide a context for reopening discussion of
> approaches to time in light of the above mentioned (and other suggested)
> developments and issues. It may provide a context for re-evaluating
> archaeology's commitment to exploiting 'time-depth' by exploring the
> range of 'times' humans construct, and the social, political and ethical
> implications of their use. We hope that the session will initiate lively
> discussion, for instance, of change in perspectives on the ontic and
> epistemic significance of field practice; a range of current sources of
> theoretical insights; and the changing public roles of archaeology.
>
>
> References
>
> Aristotle 1941 The Basic Works of Aristotle, trans. by B. Jowett and R.
> McKeon (ed). London: Oxford University Press.
>
> Benjamin, W. Theses on the Philosophy of History, in the collection
> edited by H. Arendt, Illuminations. London: Fontana Press, 245-255.
>
> Gero, J. 2000. Troubled Travels in Agency and Feminism, in Dobres, M.A.
> and Robb, J. (eds.), Agency in Archaeology. London: Routledge, 34-39.
>
> Koerner, S. forthcoming 2003. Agency and Views Beyond Meta-Narratives
> that Privatise Ethics and Globalize Indifference, in Gardner, A. (ed.)
> Agency Uncovered: archaeological perspectives on social agency, power and
> being human. London.
>
> McGuire, J. E. and Tuchanska, B. 2001. Science Unfettered. A
> Philosophical Study in Sociohistorical Ontology. Athens: Ohio University
> Press.
>



Dr John Robb
University Lecturer
Department of Archaeology
Cambridge University
Downing Street
Cambridge  CB2 3DZ  UK
tel. 01223-339004
fax 01223-333503
email [log in to unmask]

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