Urbanity as social practice

I would like to thank the commenters for spending their time on critical and constructive responses to my paper ‘Performing towns’. The comments add valuable insights, knowledge, viewpoints and ideas, which significantly elucidate the possibilities as well as the limitations of approaching medieval urban communities from a social-practice theoretical perspective (SPT). The commenters have pointed at theoretical questions too superficially treated, the need for a more extensive knowledge base and, most importantly, the need for a broader discussion of the methodological and empirical consequences of an SPT approach in analysing everyday life in a Scandinavian urban community based on archaeological empirical data. Rather than giving individual feedback, I instead centre my reply around four topics that the commenters have raised and which relate closely to the paper's paramount issue and development potential.

Town, urbanization and urbanity

The concept of ‘town’ and of its derivations ‘urbanization’ and ‘urbanity’ is essential and, as sharply pointed out by Monica Smith and Sven Kalmring, my superficial treatment obviously requires clarification. My point of departure is Kalmring's assertion that I also omit ‘the classic discussion . . . on the designation and character of the earliest towns in the north’ (p. 137). That is true, but this discussion is very well known and for that reason I found it more appropriate to put effort into advocating new trajectories that could take us away from the (seemingly) perpetual discussion of ‘what is a town’. That discussion, which I have taken part in from the late 1970s (e.g. Christophersen 1980; 1989; 1994a; 1999b), is, in my opinion, locked in an overall ‘criteria-fixed’ position with an urge to classify, organize, structure and hierarchize history after a priori scheduled and selected criteria and definitions. I am well aware of the importance of clear criteria and definitions. But, as Monica Smith points out, ‘People are made urbanites not only en masse, but also through individual actions’ (p. 147). This obvious, but nevertheless important, observation does not sit well with the mainstream processual discussion about what a town is (or should be), where ‘people’ are classified and grouped in categories according to their role and function in production, exchange or the exercise of political or religious power (or both). At this point it is well worth drawing on the statement by Jeffrey Fleisher that ‘Rather than enforcing a strict distinction between processual and practice approaches, such studies work productively between them, exploring relationships between different levels within urban settings’ (p. 134). This Giddens-inspired statement is, of course, very true, and it mediates the difference in opinion about what and how new trajectories in archaeological research in preindustrial Scandinavian urbanization processes should (or could) follow in the future. For that matter, my use of the notion of ‘urbanity’, conceived as a particular way of life structurally related to urban landscapes and population density, should not be taken, as Kalmring suggests, as an attempt to supersede ‘the perception of “urbanization” as a conscious process’ (p. 138). I fully agree with Kalmring in this. Rather, the purpose was, helped by this term, to introduce the possibilities of an SPT approach and draw attention to issues and topics seldom discussed in archaeology within the traditional understandings of ‘medieval urbanization’ in Scandinavia. Ulrich Müller also advertises the need for more focus on what ‘urbanity’ is about in an SPT framework:

precisely because this term is central for urban archaeology, I would have liked to see a more detailed analysis. There exist very different attribution practices, for example in sociology and urban geography. Therefore ‘urbanity’ in the praxeological sense can also be further expanded, since an urban culture can purport both an ‘objective’ context and the subjective meaning of the agents (p. 143).

To me urbanity is still intentions and experiences realized within an urban landscape, performed as human interrelations.

How can SPT be a theoretical resource for urban archaeology?

Ulrich Müller's insightful comments map out a solid ground for applying SPT in archaeological research. SPT, he points out, is not a coherent theory of practice but instead a bundle of theoretical approaches frequently applied in material-culture studies today. Owing to this fact, it is important to further develop some of SPT's essential concepts and coherence according to the needs and possibilities offered by present archaeological research practice and empiricism. One conceptual notion of paramount interest to archaeology is that of ‘material resources’ in the broadest sense (i.e. time, space, material objects and arrangements). While Schatzki argues that ‘understanding specific practices always involves apprehending material configurations’ (Schatzki, Knorr Cetina and von Savigny 2001, 3; after Shove, Pantzar and Watson 2012, 9), Shove, Pantzar and Watson emphasize, like Reckwitz, the presence of material resources in social-practice development (ibid., 9). In my opinion, this understanding invites archaeology to explore and refine its theoretical starting point. Müller, though, referring to Schatzki's use of the intriguing concept of ‘teleoaffective structures’, seems to be undecided whether it is at all possible to successfully apply more complex and sophisticated versions of SPT without at the same time being reductionistic. Müller's restraint is clearly expressed in his comment on my tentative introduction of a set of archaeological criteria (proto-, stabilized and ex-) to identify different stages in the development of practice patterns, which he finds ‘somewhat simplified’ (p. 144), and which, if applied reductively, may cause pure functionalistic explanations. In general, I do not disagree with his argumentation. The dangers for a ‘reductive understanding’ of social-practice formation processes are obvious. Archaeological records alone are not capable of penetrating deep into the interactions between the intentional, the knowledge-related and the teleoaffective elements in practice-pattern processes. But what we definitely are capable of doing, and therefore should do, is to examine the physical remains that have been involved and look for the physical traces of interaction. The implication of such an aim is demonstrated by LuAnn Wandsnider's interesting comments on the role of architecture in urban settlements in Roman Asia compared with the province of Rough Cilicia. Architecture seems to have been used to facilitate communication and to create mutual understandings in urban societies with different scalar linguistic environments, population densities, political settings and available resources. Monica Smith advocates a similar approach when she argues for analyses which work within an understanding of the importance of the ‘intermediate’ size of towns as decisive for ‘residents to participate in the economic, social and political activities of urbanizing environments in specific ways’ (p. 148). Size/scale and population density have, indeed, for long been important matters within Scandinavian urban archaeology. Yet again, the importance of such elements is principally measured against their usefulness as quantitative criteria for urbanization rather than as material resources actively involved in social-practice patterns as actants, which I sense is what Monica Smith is hinting at.

A comment should also be made in order to further reinforce the importance of the issue of ‘unintended consequences and unanticipated activities’. This is a profoundly theoretical topic closely related to our comprehension of the uncontrollable dynamic in practice-pattern bundles/practice complexes and the equally important dynamic forces unfolding in leaking zones. I would have expected more focus on this issue because of its interest for the question of how these dynamic and transformative forces influenced the development of social-practice formation in particular, and thus historical development in general. While ‘history’ was created from a starting point in the past, we utilize its narrative potential from the opposite end, from the present, where the loose ends are no longer loose, but tethered and structured in sequences of logical and consecutive incidents, accidents, events and happenings. History is about an infinite number of loose ends that have influenced the past, but who has cared about the loose ends? Ulrich Müller makes an interesting but cryptic and dense comment when he states that social-practice theory has ‘indisputable’ strength, because it shed lights on ‘the routine nature and reproduction of agency knowledge as “unpredictability”’ (p. 142). Jeffrey Fleisher is even more specific when commenting upon the issue of contact zones and unanticipated activities and how they possibly are important for the formation of urban life in the Middle Ages, while Sven Kalmring exposes little interest in this matter, asking, ‘have we not already identified our spaces and areas of leaking zones of contact in the quite physical medieval towns themselves?’ (p. 140). Yes, indeed, but the question is whether or not we fully understand the transformative forces and mechanisms that derive from such meetings. Kalmring's statement illustrates in a striking way the importance of further refining the matter of leaking zones and loose ends, both theoretically and empirically.

SPT and archaeological records: possibility, limitations and challenges

Theory formulation is important in many ways, not least for the art of asking questions that open unknown landscapes of knowledge and track the ‘six walks in the fictional woods’, as Umberto Eco describes the presence of the reader in the (hi)story (Eco 1998). The archaeologist is the reader and the records are access to the (hi)story. This access goes through the questions we ask and the (hi)story is constructed in our interpretations. Knowledge formation thus is just as much dependent on the creativity and quality of the objectives set – formulated as concrete questions – as on the sources and methods that are available. But this does not at all exclude us from pointing out the methodological and empirical challenges faced by an SPT approach to archaeological records. The commenters have all in different ways questioned the methodological and empirical implications – positive and negative – that derive from an SPT approach: Monica Smith reminds us wisely that when texts are not available or are limited, archaeology offers alternative ways of gaining access to past realities. Kalmring, on the other hand, expresses doubt whether an SPT approach to urban archaeology can contribute with new evidence and ‘digestible hard facts’ (p. 140). Kalmring is even uncertain whether knowledge about the ‘smallest units’ in urban societies is fully feasible from archaeological records, but if so, what can such knowledge contribute to an understanding of the ‘main lines’ in medieval urban development? The ‘main lines’ in science are matters of discursive formation, and so also is the question of what is feasible in archaeology. My simple point is that empirical feasibility in most cases is about discovering new ways of utilizing old records – discovering new sources and developing new methodological tools to penetrate the material remains, and thus we start chasing embedded historical data along new paths and from new heights in the landscape. Müller points correctly to the fact that I have not provided any proposal as to which methodological tools to apply in this regard. Wandsnider and Smith provide us with some concrete examples of that, based on reinterpretations of architecture and the use of size equivalents. Wandsnider urges us to be aware of the need for a better grip on the synchronous interaction between people's social practice and material, which in research practice means advancing stratigraphic and/or chronological ‘resolving power’, a methodological challenge comprehensively dealt with by e.g. Stefan Larsson (2000; 2006). Also, Jeffrey Fleisher's comment on the possibilities of improving our knowledge about urban practice complexes based on material remains was positive and constructive, first because he supports his reasoning with the need to include new advances in archaeological technique, besides already known excavation and documentation practices, and second because he provides practical examples and results rich in perspective from his own research at Songo Mnara. Thanks, Jeffrey!

A final, summarizing reflection: Monica Smith urges me to read James Deetz's book In small things forgotten, which for many years has been a great inspiration even in my research. In Lisa Falk's edited volume Historical archaeology in global perspective (1991), James Deetz writes an introduction in which he makes a statement of the utmost relevance to the discussion of SPT's practical feasibility: ‘Historical archaeology deals with the unintended, the subconscious, the worldview, and mind-set of an individual. It provides access to the ways all people, not just a small group of literate people, organize their physical lives’ (cited in Little 2007, 60). If this is so, then SPT has in the future the possibility to lead open-minded archaeologists by Eco's six, or even more, paths into a landscape of hitherto unknown past social practices, and the traditional discussion of the urbanization process will never be the same.