The Ohio Hopewell Episode: Paradigm Lost and Paradigm Gained

5. Critique of the World Renewal Model

Name /uap04/22015_u05 04/28/04 01:49PM Plate # 0-Composite pg 105 # 1 ⫺1 0 ⫹1 105 Chapter 5 C R I T I Q U E O F T H E W O R L D R E N E W A L M O D E L The World Renewal Model was presented in the previous chapter to initiate a symbolic pragmatic account of the Newark embankment earthworks and, by extension, of the embankment earthwork traditions of the Early and Middle Woodland periods of the Central Ohio Valley. However, the findings of this model account for the earthworks only in terms of the immediate purposes they served. Of course, this is important since it reveals the core cosmology implicated by the ideology that it expresses. Furthermore, symbolic pragmatics argue that the intentionality manifested by the earthworks entails a social and material environment that made it possible to have and exercise that intentionality. Therefore, the findings of the World Renewal Model can be used to launch an exploration that might quite adequately characterize both this social world and its relations with its natural environment in terms that would account for the earthworks as critical constitutive media of these relations. These findings are ideal for this purpose since the Sacred Earth Principle implicates cosmology , ideology, society, and the environment in a systematic manner . This means, however, that new models must be presented that directly address the social organizational and ecological dimensions that correspond to the premises of the World Renewal Model. Of course, this also means expanding the theory into the social and ecological Name /uap04/22015_u05 04/28/04 01:49PM Plate # 0-Composite pg 106 # 2 106 t h e w o r l d e m b o d i e d ⫺1 0 ⫹1 spheres and expanding the relevant empirical bases to support this elaboration. Because of the importance of the claims of the World Renewal Model, they must be assessed and tested. The method that will be used here will be both critical and developmental. It has already been applied in a limited manner in the presentation and critical assessment of alternative construction scenarios and in reconstructing the Hopewell and Mound City/Hopeton earthworks. The same critical method will be applied to the social and ecological models that are presented to expand our understanding of the world of the earthwork builders. Following the presentation of a model and its application to the relevant empirical data, the conclusions are critically assessed through comparison with alternative accounts and their theoretical frameworks. In short, the process of model construction is also a process of model modification and confirmation through interpretive feedback in a process of producing, testing, and rejecting or modifying alternative models. This method is sometimes referred to as the hermeneutic circle, or the circling of meaningful interpretation and explanation. However, since the process is, in principle, knowledge building and enhancing, it might be better to use the analogy of the spiral, calling it the hermeneutic spiral method.1 As a mode of knowledge construction, the hermeneutic spiral promotes the critical and reasoned challenging of knowledge claims. The efficacy of a challenge entails participating in the spiral process so that a challenge results in enhancing rather than denying knowledge. This enhancement can be achieved in different ways. It can be a matter of showing that some of the analytical steps of a knowledge claim do not accord with the logic of the model or its theoretical background. That is, the interpreter is at fault and the correction improves the initial interpretation and enhances the model. Or, at the other extreme, it can be a matter of presenting a radically different theoretical model that contrasts with the original model on several and possibly all major point, establishing the two models as alternative paradigms that address the same empirical data. Name /uap04/22015_u05 04/28/04 01:49PM Plate # 0-Composite pg 107 # 3 w o r l d r e n e w a l m o d e l 107 ⫺1 0 ⫹1 For a model to be considered a paradigm, it requires a broad and deep scope, and this means that its universe of study requires multiple supporting models to address different aspects of the complex reality being explored. It is appropriate to treat the paradigm as the global model of the complex reality and the supporting models that address...