Changing Patterns of Social Integration: A Prehistoric Example from the American Southwest1

Abstract

Social integration is a key concept to modern social anthropology. Furthermore, it is a concept of long standing concern in the field. The means by which individuals and social groups are integrated to form a cohesive whole must be understood if one is to understand the workings of the social system itself. Interest in the means by which societies achieve social integration, cohesion, or social solidarity extends deep into the historical roots of anthropology. During the time of the American Civil War, the French Sociological School was beginning to develop, and one of its first concerns was with the nature of social systems and means of social integration. This interest in social cohesion was transmitted from Fustel de Coulanges (1864), one of the first names associated with the rise of French Sociology, to one of his most famous students, Emile Durkheim. Durkheim devoted much of his intellectual energy to the investigation of social solidarity. His book, The Division of Labor in Society (1893), is a classic in the field, and in it, he explicitly raises the question of social integration in his discussion of Organic and Mechanical Solidarity. In a later work, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912), he concerns himself with religion as a basic means of social integration. Interest continued among the French sociologists from Durkheim's time to the present day as seen in the work of Marcel Mauss (1925) and Claude LeviStrauss (1949), to name only two. Concern with social integration is central to modern anthropology. This can be seen in the writings of such workers as Eggan (1950:43-44; 216ff; 303-304), Fortes (1936), Gluckman (1959), Service (1962), and Steward (1955:168-172). So central to the field is the concept of social integration, that Nadel (1951:165) was led to remark that it is the very essence of society itself. .. . The mechanisms of integration are extremely varied, including kinship, religion, prescriptive marriage, reciprocal exchange of goods and services, and many more. Regardless of the type of cohesion, it is an essential factor to the workings of a social system and, as such, it is adaptive in nature. Changes in the nature of social integration can be viewed in relation to alterations in other parts of the cultural system as an adaptive response to other factors, such as environmental change, or basic change in the technological order.