Hopefully it is OK to contribute to this www-page from outside Standford?

My details:

Clive Jonathon Bond Department of Archaeology School of Social Sciences The University of Winchester Winchester UK

Comment: I really like the www-page and the idea of a forum. One question which has made me think, the social context of archaeological/anthropological theory in the present.

Why is agency theory and personhood so focused on the individual? Perhaps it may have something to do with the socio-economic, and political context for the gestation period of both approaches. What I mean here is that both theories emerge at a time when in the Anglo-American context the 'cult of the individual' was prevalent. This fits with the main movements in society in the late 1980s and 1990s.

Why then is there little discussion on other scales of analysis - social groups, communities and societies. Have we lost the interest, or resolve to address these levels of social/cultural analysis? If this is the case, then to paraphrase Margaret Thatcher's comments, then only the 'individual' existed/exists, not society!

I will be interested to here of your comments. I am specifically concerned with how to reconstruct past societies in a landscape context. There appears no theoretical framework in which to move from individual to group and society...

With good wishes - a most interesting ww-page!

Clive Jonathon Bond

clivejbond@aol.com

This area is totally open .....

I think the initial idea was for people to post topics for discussion and see what happens.....

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