The human experience of social transformation: Insights from comparative archaeology

Archaeologists and other scholars have long studied the causes of collapse and other major social transformations and debated how they can be understood. This article instead focuses on the human experience of living through those transformations, analyzing 18 transformation cases from the US Southw...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2018-11, Vol.13 (11), p.e0208060
Main Authors: Hegmon, Michelle, Peeples, Matthew A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptation
Adaptation, Psychological
Analysis
Archaeology
Archaeology - methods
Civilization
Climate Change
Collaboration
Community
Comparative analysis
Complex variables
Current events
Data processing
Diamond, Jared
Disaster recovery
Earth Sciences
Environmental aspects
Environmental policy
Food security
Genetic transformation
Global temperature changes
History, Ancient
History, Medieval
Human security
Humans
Medicine and Health Sciences
Native peoples
People and Places
Problem Solving
Qualitative analysis
Quality of life
Securities
Security
Social capital
Social change
Social Change - history
Social Sciences
Social Sciences - methods
Society
Transformation
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Summary:Archaeologists and other scholars have long studied the causes of collapse and other major social transformations and debated how they can be understood. This article instead focuses on the human experience of living through those transformations, analyzing 18 transformation cases from the US Southwest and the North Atlantic. The transformations, including changes in human securities, were coded based on expert knowledge and data analyzed using Qualitative Comparative Analysis techniques. Results point to the following conclusions: Major transformations, including collapses, generally have a strong and negative impact on human security; flexible strategies that facilitate smaller scale changes may ameliorate those difficulties. Community security is strongly implicated in these changes; strong community security may minimize other negative changes. The relationships among the variables are complex and multi-causal; while social transformation may lead to declines in human securities, declining conditions of life can also push people to transform their societies in negative ways. Results show that some societies are better able to deal with difficulties than others. One important policy implication is that community security and local conditions can be instrumental both in helping people to cope with difficulties and in staving off some of those difficulties. A multi-scalar approach is essential as we face the increasing problems of climate change in the decades ahead.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0208060