Bondarenko Dmitri M. Homoarchy

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compatibility of the social sciences (not inevitable but at the present state of
the art) and complexity studies persists: for the former the global (comparative)
aspect of the overall complexity level traditionally dominates the research,
while for the complexity studies it turns out generally insignificant, the
students’ attention concentrated on the internal organization as its components’
sustained non-equilibrium and the way it is provided.
Indeed, the present chapter is generally typological and its main task is
just introductory. It is about the very fact of the phenomenon of homoarchy’s
existence that demands a proper term for its designation rather than about the
preconditions of, and pathways to and of homoarchy (or heterarchy), although
the reader can find some ideas on the point in the chapter’s different sections as
well as in the subsequent chapters. The concept of homoarchy might be useful
(and the respective term might be theoretically informative) for better
understanding of the temporally and spatially universal basic principles of
social organization that underlie the myriad of its specific forms throughout
history, and I believe that the first step was to be just the one made in this
chapter, notwithstanding the actual impossibility to make the examples given in
it not only much more abundant but also less cryptic and linked to the
theoretical points in a more forceful manner. In case the very phenomenon is
recognized and the term accepted by the interested part of the anthropological
academic community, the problems of conditions for homoarchy’s appearance
and historical transformations, of its measuring and scaling, of interrelations
between the homoarchic and heterarchic principles of social organization and
the network and corporate strategies, as well as many, many others, will
definitely become worth putting on agenda. The necessity of detailed case
studies produced in respective theoretical light will also come to the fore, and
the present book can be regarded as the first step in this direction (see also
Bondarenko 2005a; 2006). The Benin evidence will definitely shed light on the
problems of preconditions for, and terms of the homoarchic societies’ nature,
appearance, and dynamics, too.