6Political Economy and the Routinization of Religious Movements: A View from the Eastern Woodlands

Max Weber’s concept of routinization offers a useful framework for understanding the relationship between political economy and the organization of religious movements. Here, we apply this concept to a comparison of Hopewell and Mississippian, two of the most important religious movements in the precolonial Eastern Woodlands. We focus on two archaeological contexts in particular—Mound 25 at the Hopewell site and Mound C at Etowah— to illustrate how Weber’s concept allows for a more nuanced comparison than concepts associated with a more traditional neoevolutionary logic. [political economy, routinization, Mississippian, Hopewell] Hopewell and Mississippian were two of the major cultural horizons of the precolonial Eastern Woodlands, each incorporating nearly half a continent. Each was distinguished by monumental earthwork constructions and spectacular mortuary practices; by cosmologically potent sacra and regalia expertly crafted from exotic raw materials such as marine shell, copper, and mica; and by large-scale networks of interaction and exchange. Attention to these monuments and preciosities drove the agenda for much of the first century of American archaeology, such that Hopewell and Mississippian have been subjects of archaeological inquiry for more than 200 years. For the past half century, Mississippian society has usually received more attention from anthropological archaeologists than Hopewell. In part, this is because a range of ethnohistorical documents by Spanish and French explorers offer direct observations of some late Mississippian societies and their immediate descendants. Moreover, many Mississippian peoples lived in large towns and villages, such that the footprints of their everyday lives are more accessible to modern archaeologists. Hopewell people, on the other hand, spent much of their daily lives in dispersed homesteads and hamlets that have left but a relatively ephemeral material signature. Finally, the concept of the chiefdom, often uncritically linked with neoevolutionary models, has proved to be quite resilient (if also limiting) in developing an anthropological understanding of leadership and polity in Mississippian society. It is with Hopewell society, however, that the potential pitfalls of neoevolutionary logic become apparent. There is little evidence of Hopewell centralization since clear-cut polities are difficult to discern, and the Hopewell phenomenon is recognized as a broad entity first and foremost by its mortuary signature. Yet the craft specialization that is evinced by some of its ritual objects does indicate some form of complexity. Hopewell societies—according to the strict neoevolutionary logic—should therefore be ARCHEOLOGICAL PAPERS OF THE AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION, Vol. 21, Issue 1, pp. 72–88, ISSN 1551-823X, online ISSN 1551-8248. C © 2012 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/j.1551-8248.2012.01038.x. Political Economy and Routinization 73 understood as complex tribes or as simple incipient chiefdoms, evolutionary precursors of their Mississippian counterparts. We are certainly not the first to suggest that neither of these options is acceptable, at least without selectively reworking the square Hopewell peg to make it fit the round, neoevolutionary hole. Here, we approach the problem of comparing Hopewell and Mississippian from a different perspective, one that departs from the usual point of view of political leadership. We will instead treat these entities as religious movements, and we will aim to articulate their differences through the organization of ritual life, specifically drawing upon Max Weber’s routinization concept. Let us emphasize at the outset: we do not assume that Hopewell and Mississippian were homogenous phenomena. Ohio Hopewell culture differed from Hopewell manifestations in the Lower Illinois Valley, in southern Indiana, and across the Appalachian Summit. Likewise, Mississippian polities such as Cahokia, Moundville, and Etowah were more than geographically distinct reiterations of the same religious blueprint. This said, the goal of this chapter is to compare the broader cultural patterns of Hopewell and Mississippian, but to do so in a chapter-length undertaking we need to limit our discussion to a more manageable scope. We have therefore selected two particularly iconic cases through which to compare these religious movements: Mound 25 at the Hopewell site in Ohio and Mound C at the Etowah site in Georgia. Similar kinds of ritual practices were enacted at each of these places: earth moving, funerary rites, and the deposition of special objects, many of which were crafted of the same materials and even shared thematic content. But key distinctions in how these practices were locally organized, as viewed through the lens of routinization, illustrate the broader cultural distinctions between Hopewell and Mississippian ritual. Before turning to these particular cases, we need to outline the concept of routinization and suggest an analytical framework for linking it to different forms of political economy. Routinization and Political Economy Following Max Weber, we may refer to religion and cult as “the relationships of humans to supernatural powers which take the forms of prayer, sacrifice, and worship” (Weber 1993:28). Novel religious or charismatic movements often achieve traction during moments of social crisis, when existing ideals and ideologies fail to make sense of the world as it is experienced. William Sewell (2005) refers to such moments as structural disjunctions. Social structures, as defined in his model of social change, consist of virtual rules (schemas) and actual material resources, each of which ideally validates and recursively sustains the other. During episodes of crisis, however, resources and schemas that mutually constitute structures are temporarily disjoined. Disjunction cannot be socially tolerated for long stretches of time, such that a creative solution to the crisis—a method for restoring resources to schemas—can secure broad acceptance rather quickly, even had it seemed an unthinkable outcome just prior to the rupture. Sewell (2005:248–257) suggests that these episodes of cultural dislocation and creative rearticulation, which he refers to as events, are marked by a heightening of emotion and an improvisation of ritual. Heightened emotions add to the instability of events and explain in part why they usually unfold in unpredictable ways. Such heightened emotional states may also compel people to embrace radically novel ideas during the rearticulation of resources and schemas; new ritual practices, in turn, may be invoked to sanction and formalize the new order during its coalescence (Beck et al. 2007:835). In some cases, a charismatic leader may step into this disjunction to provide a charter for revitalizing the existing ideology or to propose a new movement altogether. For any charismatic authority to effect a durable transformation, however, the movement must undergo a process that Max Weber (1947:364) refers to as routinization, the process by which a charismatic authority is institutionalized. Weber argues that the motive for routinization is to create a stable social order, ideally and materially, in which the disciples of an original charismatic leader and their followers can ensure “the continuation and continual reactivation of the community” (Weber 1947:364). We may suggest, then, that a charismatic movement effects this transformation and is routinized or fails to do so and is quickly exhausted. Weber insists that charismatic authority—in its original state—is outside the provenance of “everyday routine and the profane sphere” (Weber 1947:361). Such authority represents a revolutionary repudiation of and break with rational and traditional forms of authority, which are legitimized in rules, routines, and precedents; it is thus that a charismatic authority achieves traction in times of crisis, when the traditional forms of authority fail to make sense of practical everyday experience (i.e., when the existing schemas cannot accommodate their respective structural resources). Such charismatic authority tends to be ephemeral, however, since the only basis of its legitimacy is the personal charisma of its leader, which itself may last “only as long as the belief in its charismatic inspiration remains” (Weber 1947:362). Routinization thus involves a transformation in the character of the movement, from the initial basis in charisma to a subsequent grounding in rules, routines, and precedents 74 Robin A. Beck Jr. and James A. Brown (i.e., to a rearticulation of structural resources and schemas). Moreover: For charisma to be transformed into a permanent routine structure, it is necessary that its anti-economic character should be altered. It must be adapted to some form of fiscal organization to provide for the needs of the group and hence to the economic conditions necessary for raising taxes and contributions. [Weber 1947:369] A routinized movement requires the creation of novel symbols, rituals, and paraphernalia, as well as support for its practitioners. Weber refers to these practitioners as “priests,” a role that he contrasts with those of “prophets” and “magicians” (Weber 1993:47). We may perhaps read the term shaman for magician, and Augusto Oyuela-Caycedo has defined routinization as “the critical threshold practice of the change from shamanism to priesthood” (Oyuela-Caycedo 2001:6). We want to be careful in using the term priest, however, since it can also imply a kind of functionary or an occupational specialization that formally separates one class of people from their neighbors in everyday life as well as in matters of religion, ritual, and cult. It is preferable, then, to treat Weber’s “priests” in a more general sense, as Talcott Parsons suggests: Weber’s distinction is that the magician’s function copes with relatively ad hoc interests and tensions, while the priestly function is organized into a systematic and stabilized cult, which is to a significant extent independent of the ad hoc exigencies which impinge upon the ordinary population of the society. [Parsons 1993:xl] Oyuela-Caycedo is also careful to point out that the rise of such a cult (i.e., the routinization of a charismatic movement) need not imply the end of shamanic practices. Rather, “shamanism [i.e., Weber’s magic] will always be present as an alternative form to the establishment and may even coexist in the religious sphere” (Oyuela-Caycedo 2001:6). Weber also offers that priesthoods should be manifested “by the presence of certain fixed cultic centers associated with some actual cultic apparatus” (Weber 1993:28–29). Such centers are often conceived by their builders and users as imago mundis, as images or replicas of the cosmos, or as axis mundis, the cosmic center (e.g., Eliade 1959; but see Jones’ [2000:37–39] caution against the uncritical application of these general homologies to any specific case). In fact, Oyuela-Caycedo (2001:6) views the construction of a cultic center as the key attribute of routinization. The center thus becomes a durable place situated within the cultural landscape where cultic practitioners and their observers enact routinized rituals and manipulate associated paraphernalia. Harvey Whitehouse (2004) explores routinization in his theory of modes of religiosity, in which he contrasts “doctriFigure 6.1. Modes of religiosity. nal” and “imagistic” religious modes. The ritual actions that constitute his doctrinal mode are highly routinized and characterized by frequent repetition; while these are effective qualities for memorization, they may also result in rote performance and lower levels of personal motivation—what he calls the “tedium effect” (Whitehouse 2004:66). Those practices that constitute the imagistic mode are not routinized and are only enacted infrequently, making them difficult to bring under institutional controls; at the same time, however, they are characterized by very high levels of emotional arousal (Whitehouse 2004:70). The doctrinal and imagistic modes are, like the categories proposed by Weber, ideal types, and Whitehouse recognizes that in actual practice any particular cult or religious performance may combine qualities of both modes. Thus, while the Whitehouse model might appear to favor a more restrictive use of the routinization concept than Weber’s, we believe that these perspectives are reconciled quite easily, as indicated in Figure 6.1. As Weber notes, the routinization of any religious movement is tied to an economic basis or fiscal organization, and this requires surplus generated through political economy. Any group that elects to support the movement—e.g., families, kin groups, sodalities—must contribute to the process of its financing. All of the different practices and actions that constitute the religious or ritual circuit—constructing a center; feasting; acquiring exotics; crafting preciosities, costumes, regalia, and paraphernalia—require contributions from the participants, and this can ultimately be conceived as physical labor. We suggest that different modes of social organization may emerge through routinization, depending upon the kind of political economy that finances the process. A political economy based upon surplus production, especially on production of one or more staple cereal crops, supports quite different social processes than those economies based upon ad hoc or opportunistic surplus procurement. Let us briefly elaborate these conditions. If a political economy is based upon the production of a staple cereal crop, then surpluses are generally dependable and predictable (barring agricultural catastrophes like droughts, blights, flooding, etc.). This means that wellsituated constituencies, particularly those with access to the best agricultural land, can consistently and predictably outproduce their less fortunate neighbors from one year to the next. As this production is what finances the routinization Political Economy and Routinization 75 process, affluent constituencies enjoy a greater capacity to determine the nature and direction of the movement, or to wield what Eric Wolf has referred to as structural power— the power to set the agenda: By this I mean the power manifest in relationships that not only operates within settings and domains but also organizes and orchestrates the settings themselves, and that specifies the direction and distribution of energy flows. In Marxian terms, this refers to the power to deploy and allocate social labor. [Wolf 1999:5] Where rules of reciprocity are in effect, less productive constituencies might exchange their labor for rights to participate in the ritual circuit. If disparities in structural power and affluence can be sustained across generations, then routinization may sanction hereditary inequalities. If a political economy is based upon hunting, gathering, and small-scale cultivation, then the process of routinization is financed by an opportunistic or ad hoc surplus procurement. This mode of political economy is unpredictable, in that while surpluses may be consistently available to ensure the movement’s long-term viability, it is difficult to predict which constituencies can or will procure more surplus annually. In part, this is because the sources of most wild food surplus are usually more dispersed—and thus more difficult to control—than the sources of an agricultural surplus. Power and affluence are less heritable under such conditions, and economic imbalances relative to the financing of the ritual circuit tend to be temporary and situational. Here, structural power is maintained by clans, sodalities, and other constituencies that cross-cut genealogical ties and that emphasize personal prestige and achievement. Having briefly detailed this link between routinization and political economy, we can turn to our study of Hopewell and Mississippian and to the specific cases of the Hopewell and Etowah sites. Mortuary Ritual at Hopewell Mound 25 and Etowah Mound C The routinization concept should be especially appealing to archaeologists, as its basis in the political economy explicitly binds it to material experience; that is, we should see evidence of routinization processes manifested in the material of the archaeological record. The construction of new cultic centers, changes in ritual practice—especially in mortuary ritual—and the crafting of new styles of regalia and other accoutrements are all amenable to archaeological analysis. When we identify formal and patterned changes across such domains, we may infer the routinization of a religious movement. Oyuela-Caycedo argues persuasively that archaeologists already have a terminology for this process in concepts like culture area and culture period. He observes that the artifact distributions indicated by these terms represent “the temporal and spatial reach of religious cults” (Oyuela-Caycedo 2001:6). In place of these terms he offers religious complex, meaning the system of shared cosmological views that are expressed in low statistical variation in the religious material artifacts and religious architecture. This religious complex usually operates above the level of political units, languages, and economic units . . . . [and] can expand and contract in space, depending on the rise of new crises and the success of the process of routinization in the landscape. [Oyuela-Caycedo 2001:6] While this concept has much to recommend it, we must include a caveat as regards our particular study: neither Hopewell nor Mississippian was ever a homogenous religious complex. Rather, as we have already stated, these concepts subsume a range of historically interrelated but culturally and linguistically diverse cases. It is these cases, we suggest, that represent the relevant religious complexes. However, in selecting for our comparison the particular cases of Hopewell’s Mound 25 and Etowah’s Mound C, we do assume that each can broadly represent its respective religious movement; that is, we assume that the different religious complexes that constitute Hopewell and Mississippian share broadly patterned similarities. In describing Hopewell and Mississippian as religious movements, we acknowledge that there are many distinct ways of theoretically situating these phenomena. Hopewell, for example, has also been identified as a long-distance exchange network (Struever 1964), an artistic style (Prufer 1968), an interaction sphere (Caldwell 1964), a peer polity network (Braun 1986), a kind of mortuary cult (Prufer 1964), and a religion (Caldwell 1964; see also Carr 2005b:576–577 for a broader discussion of the history of these perspectives). Mississippian too has been defined by qualities other than its ideational or religious aspects, including its material culture attributes (see Griffin 1985 for a summary), its reliance on agriculture (Griffin 1967), and its cultural adaptation to a particular habitat (Smith 1978) or set of organizational challenges (Muller 1997). Again, the aim of this brief summary is not to impress an overly simplistic homogeneity on either Hopewell or Mississippian but to establish a context for comparing broad cultural patterns.