The contribution by Axel Christophersen aims to present new perspectives for the archaeology of medieval and post-medieval towns. In enlisting ‘social-practice theory’, the author would like to view the town as a dynamic, ever-changing network of social and cultural practices which is registered in the archaeological data. This perspective on the town lies, therefore, somewhere between structure-centred and agent-centred approaches. As such, Axel Christophersen's contribution can be seen as more comprehensive. I assess the piece also as a programmatic contribution to the development of theory in the apparently long-term conflict between ‘processual and postprocessual archaeology’. It should be said in advance that he was successful in this. At the same time, however, his contribution makes it clear that it is not easy to transfer or apply current cultural-studies concepts to historical periods and the materiality of archaeological data.
The starting point for the author is the assumption of a strongly processual bent within (Scandinavian) town archaeology. Here, urbanization is still understood as functional, and the political, economic or other parts of the system are researched. A postprocessual approach, with its emphasis on the symbolic dimensions of human interactions, also offers only limited possibilities. At this point, a comment from the Continental point of view should be added: the acrimonious positions highlighted by the author may apply to Anglo-American and anglophone areas, or to ‘prehistoric archaeology’. The never-ending discourses about processual versus postprocessual do not, in my opinion, play a role in the ‘medieval and post-medieval archaeology’ of central Europe, due to its strong culture-historical character.
Axel Christophersen steers the view away from the individual and towards the agency of collectives and the interaction of human and non-human agents. One approach to identifying and evaluating these relationships is offered by ‘social-practice theory’ (SPT). Praxeological theories and perspectives have enjoyed great popularity in cultural studies over the last ten years, and they represent a certain break with agency-based approaches. Since they engage more strongly with the execution of motives, social norms and rules in concrete action, and therefore foreground their material and spatial orientation, they are very interesting for archaeologists. The praxeological approach conforms to concepts of grounded theories, which place neither structural deterministic explanations nor the individuality of agency in the foreground, which shuts out most archaeologists. The ‘practice turn’ was fine-tuned and made more comprehensive through the work of Theodore Schatzki, Karin Knorr-Cetina and Eike von Savigny. Andreas Reckwitz systematized the concept, especially in the German-speaking world, and made it a formidable social-theoretical concept for future research. Beyond these researchers, Axel Christophersen deals also with the ideas of Elizabeth Shove, Mika Pantzar and Matt Watson. Above all, in ‘The dynamics of social practice. Everyday life and how it changes’ (Reference Shove, Pantzar and Watson2012) they decisively expanded Reckwitz's concept and defined the ‘elements of practice’: ‘material’, ‘meaning’ and ‘knowledge’. They further distinguished between ‘practice as performance’ and ‘practice and entity’. They therefore offer a model in which different theoretical approaches are merged. Other central terms and concepts of SPT, such as ‘practices, rules and norms’, ‘bodily skills and disciplines’ or ‘language and tacit knowledge’, as well as the tension-laden relationship between ‘presuppositions and discursive practices’ and ‘social structure or culture with individual agency’, are placed somewhat in the background.
It is indisputable that the theory of social practice has its strengths. It highlights the ambivalence of agency logic in the area of conflict between cultural context and subjective execution. It also illustrates the routine nature and reproduction of agency knowledge as ‘unpredictability’. Societal practices are imprinted on subjects and internalized by them. They can, however, at the same time be changed by individual or collective execution. Routine practices and subjective perspective mean that the subjective forms of agency at any one time creep into the area of concrete actions. They imprint themselves, in the framework of the cultural context, in practical understanding, and have an enduring influence on practices. The other side, the logic of practice, emphasizes the subjective meaning of practices in applied understanding, in which the subject is created in the framework of their individual context through practices and their practical implementation. It is clear that presenting the discourses surrounding SPT is not the primary task for Christophersen. However, references to critiques of SPT, as well as the relationship between SPT and agency theories, would have made the theoretical foundation more transparent. It should also be pointed out that SPT meanwhile refers to a collection of very different approaches and, therefore, has to accept accusations of eclecticism.
The contribution by Axel Christophersen comprises three main sections. The author next explores the terms ‘urbanization’, ‘urbanism’ and ‘urbanity’ for the reader. The most substantial part of the study is represented by the presentation of the concepts from the text under discussion. In the concluding part, the author applies some of these concepts to archaeological data, drawing upon case studies from Trondheim.
‘Urbanization’, ‘urbanism’ and ‘urbanity’ are conceptualized very heterogeneously in the research traditions of different disciplines, as well as generally in the history of science. With reference to the greats, such as Georg Simmel and Louis Wirth, Christophersen understands ‘urbanization’ more as a spatial and/or temporal process of aggregation, whereas ‘urbanism’ indicates a way of life or lifestyle which develops in urban societies. This is not so new, at least from a central European perspective. The primarily historical discussion of ‘town landscapes’ or ‘town foundation’ exhaustively broached this topic and was also adopted by urban archaeology. ‘Urbanization’ and ‘urbanism’ describe processes of reciprocal structuration. ‘Urbanity’ forms the connective element, for the author. ‘Urbanity’ is not taken just to mean an ideological or political concept, as is the case for Blomkvist (Reference Blomkvist and Auns2001) or Anglert. Christophersen uses the term more comprehensively; it is a ‘shared horizon of understanding . . . for the development of practice’ (p. 113). 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.
With regard to a structure-oriented consideration (‘being a town’), Christophersen refers to ‘dynamic practices’. ‘Performing a town’ places the agents in a central position, and their agency is expressed through routine social practices. The agents are thereby not slaves to the structure, but rather their experience and knowledge have a structuring effect. With this the author returns to the topic of agency, which he nonetheless does not wish to justify with agency theory. ‘Performativity’ is the keyword. Christophersen understands it in the sense of praxeological discourse as ‘doing’. This agency knowledge generates practice. I can accept this view, although a clear delimitation to action-theory (agency-based) approaches would have been desirable (Schulz-Schaeffer Reference Schulz-Schaeffer2010). Furthermore, how ‘performance’ is different does not seem clear to me. This concept also views performative processes as transformation processes. Performance theory (Judith Butler, Erika Fischer-Lichte, Jörg Volbers; see Volbers Reference Volbers2014) highlights that performative acts are, as a matter of principle, not completely subject to being planned, controlled and available. They provide leeway and freedom and in this space the unplanned and unforeseeable appears again and again, which is essentially codetermined by the process of transformation. Concepts of ‘corporeality’, ‘perception’, ‘orchestration’ and ‘performance’ are therefore central categories, which can also be found in similar forms in praxeological approaches.
For many social-practice theorists, the materiality of the social and the cultural is a central category. The important material entities are therefore the body and ‘artefacts’. Practices are, above all, ‘embodied’. Bodies are ‘competent’ – subjects equipped with knowledge relating to rules and norms, setting intentions and know-how. At the same time, practices are temporally and spatially bound. Conversely, time, space and material are furnished with meaning through practices and in turn provide order, settings and tools to carry out practices. This is balsam for the soul; especially for the souls of historical archaeologists, who often have to justify themselves in the face of the power of written sources. Against this background it is understandable that the author deals with materiality with particular reference to Schatzki (Reference Schatzki1996; Reference Schatzki, Shove, Trentmann and Wiik2009), as well as to Shove, Pantzar and Watson (Reference Shove, Pantzar and Watson2012). In any case, Christophersen is working here with a series of standards and presuppositions which are not always in accordance with SPT. Above all, it should be noted that materiality within SPT is always viewed in connection with acts of agency, acts of speech and human behaviour, and the prefigurative role of artefacts is judged quite controversial. Therefore it must be questioned, with reference to Schatzki and others, how far the concept of ‘teleoaffective structures’ can be condensed materially or inferred from materiality. Teleoaffective means that with the collection of activities, or the combination of activities with a practice, particular motives and also affective conditions can be connected. These can in turn have quite different culturally specific ‘loading’. Particularly in view of the harbour case study, these concepts can be profitably investigated. Culture as practice connects the social with the cultural and thereby delivers analyses not only within one and the same group, but also, for example, alongside or between groups. More concretely put, the ‘foreigners’ in the town, cultural contact etc.
According to the opinions of many social-practice theorists, social practices are composed of an organized bundle of activities, both ‘implicit’ and ‘explicit’. They form a connection with the activities in the sense of ‘betwixt and between’. Contents-based expressions are thereby always also mediated through the body, so that bodily practices play a substantial role. Here, through the connection to the term ‘performance’, reference to materiality discourse would have surely been fruitful. With the differentiation between ‘proto-practices’, ‘stabilized practices’ and ‘ex-practices’, Christophersen introduces terms which originate from the concepts of philosopher Theodore Schatzki. He appears particularly through his work on the relationship between behaviour and knowledge. Given how important the works of Schatzki are, and how they have fertilized STP in particular, I have to wonder whether these extensive social-philosophical constructions are not too powerful for archaeological data. The ‘proto’, ‘stabilized’ and ‘ex’ triad, as imparted in a somewhat simplified manner by Christophersen, is not without merit in connection to materiality discourse. It not only leads to the considerations of one Bruno Latour (see Schäfer Reference Schäfer2013, 251–303), but also requires dealing with concepts from Clifford Geertz (Geertz Reference Geertz, Moore and Sanders2014; Springs Reference Springs2008) or Michel Foucault (see Wolf Reference Wolf2003; Schäfer Reference Schäfer2013, 121–86). Both have occupied themselves in different ways with the reconstruction of behavioural norms (‘mental collective phenomena’). They attribute supra-subjective knowledge systems (behavioural norms) to discursive practices (Foucault) and to public symbols and social practices in general (Geertz). Applied in a reductionist way to stratigraphic units, the danger arises that functionalist explanations can sneak in through the back door.
To the specific context of an interaction belongs a concrete space, with its temporally determined material arrangement, which is enabled by a cultural and historical localization. In his concluding considerations, Axel Christophersen cites certain ‘case studies’. Their selection is convenient for the discussion. ‘Craft quarters’ and ‘ports’ are areas of highly agglomerated social interaction, upon which the theses formulated at the outset can surely be tested. The concepts ‘cooperation, competition, selection and integration’, introduced from Shove, Pantzar and Watson, allow Christophersen to go on to explain agency options. Agency situations and agency spaces are defined by ‘bundle and complex’, terms likewise adopted from the three authors. We are dealing here, therefore, with a complex model which can be represented by a dynamic network. Using the example of Trondheim, Christophersen draws on a town that has been comprehensively researched. This also makes it possible for him to test the presented considerations in practice. The ‘craft quarters’, with their temporal and spatial distribution, enable the author to discuss ‘practice bundles’, such as the ‘port’ as an example of a ‘practice complex’. The author does not pale before this, however. Christophersen regards the open areas in the town almost as an opposing model to the highly agglomerated interaction networks. Spaces between, in both a literal and a metaphorical sense, offer space and place for innovation and creativity, perhaps even for non-compliant behaviour. The model of a town with concentrated building development may be valid for modern towns, but is not suitable for the Middle Ages. Whether waste plots in medieval towns such as in Bern, Switzerland, or large unbuilt areas in early Lübeck, Germany: these spaces have hardly entered the focus of research until now. Christophersen's view here is fruitful and it remains worthwhile to question the archaeological and written sources.
Christophersen subtitled his essay ‘steps towards an understanding of medieval urban communities as social practice’. With his consideration of the application of SPT, he provides a concept which I would like to follow in several points. At the same time, we should not forget that we cannot talk of ‘the SPT’ in the singular. Theories about social practice are thought about praxeologically, and as such connect many concepts and perspectives through their pragmatism, which occasionally bestows a certain arbitrariness upon the critique. Christophersen can, with the approach which he has chosen, form completely coherent new interpretations. He does not, however, provide any answers regarding which ‘tools’ were applied in order to reach this new approach. Does SPT only form an umbrella term which encompasses the many diverse processes of archaeological knowledge production? This would not be fair to the subject or to SPT. The explanations of Christophersen highlight social practice as a field-specific dynamic network. Does (social) network analysis therefore offer a powerful and suitable tool for this purpose?
Purists may accuse Christophersen of a certain amount of eclecticism. At first glance, certain propositions appear not to have been dealt with. To these belong the coupling of practices, different temporalities of actors, the meaning of social order or the vagueness of actions for the construction of social events. The discourse about ‘power and social chance/transformation’, which is surely of central importance for medieval societies, is also hardly touched upon. However, I consider this kind of objection rather unhelpful. The essay raises neither the requirement to justify a comprehensive archaeological theory of social practice, nor that of verifying theories of social practice based on historical reality. It is a known problem that cultural-studies theories are only partly applicable to historical, especially premodern, societies if we choose not to argue using cultural anthropology. A reconstruction of social practices always means that the complexity of actions and activities, and their multiple entanglement with other activities, motives, supply systems, social and societal structures and processes, and so on, must also be considered. Practice-theory approaches have, therefore, a great advantage, especially compared to pure agency-theory approaches: they can incorporate individual activities, both agent-specific and social-structural. However, not all actions or activities are necessarily part of some social practice, even when they are carried out within the scope of one. The challenge, therefore, is to determine and weigh the multidimensionality of practices.
