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Identity, Power, and Prestige

in the Current Middle Ages:

An Anthropological Sketch

A paper presented at the

Midwest Communication Association Convention

Oklahoma City, OK.

Spring, 1994

(c) John Staeck, do not distribute or cite without permission of author

John P. Staeck

Assistant Professor of Anthropology

College of DuPage

22^nd St.

Glen Ellyn, IL 60137

staeck@cdnet.cod.edu

Introduction

This paper focuses on the activities and attitudes of modern people who, for a variety of reasons, participate in medieval recreation. In particular, the construction of self-identity, power, and prestige within the confines of one particular organization dedicated to medieval recreation, the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), is examined.

The Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) is an international, not-for-profit organization that seeks to recreate the lifestyles and pageantry of the upper classes of European society during the Middle Ages, defined by the SCA as the period between 600 A.D. and 1600 A.D. The members of the society seek to achieve the aforementioned goals by adopting a persona, which is a fictional alter-ego who would have lived in some range of space and time covered within the SCA's broadly defined temporal and geographic boundaries. Although the SCA centers its reconstruction on medieval Europe, the culture area best known to modern Americans through means such as history books, television, novels, and films, personas often extend beyond Europe, with a large concentration of Asian, in particular Japanese, personas present throughout the society

Society Structure and Peerages

The structure of the Society for Creative Anachronism more closely resembles the marketing territories of a multi-national corporation (which, in fact, the SCA is) than it does a medieval political system. A corporate body composed of a Board of Directors and a variety of staff positions oversees the overall activities of the society. These groups are particularly involved in managing the society's finances, producing its newsletters and correspondences, and addressing legal and insurance-related issues.

Beneath the corporate level lies a variety of regionally defined administrative units called "kingdoms." Each kingdom maintains a slate of officers whose positions are defined by the Board. Officers usually serve for two-year terms although in many cases individuals are allowed to continue in their respective offices for consecutive terms. Kingdom offices are unpaid positions that are both time-consuming and often tedious. In most cases, however, there are several qualified individuals in any given kingdom who volunteer to occupy offices as they become vacant. In some kingdoms the competition to succeed to an office can be fierce and marked by sometimes venomous verbal conflict. In addition to the kingdom offices, each local branch of the SCA maintains its own set of officers who see to the day-to-day operations of these smaller cells of the society.

More visible than the various officers at the kingdom level are the members of a second set of officers and socially influential leaders, the royalty and peers. Each kingdom selects a king either two or three times per year, depending upon kingdom law and tradition, through a martial tournament. These tournaments use the society's version of knightly combat, which is a full contact martial art carried out with real armor and mock rattan weapons, whose winners earn the right to "rule" the kingdom for a period of time, usually between 4 and 6 months. Royalty has the right to present awards to any member of the society, although such presentations are commonly made by royalty only to people living within the geographic confines of the kingdom the royalty presides over. In a practical sense, kingdoms can be equated with chiefdoms with their associated royalty occupying positions as Big-Men, chiefs, and the immediate kin-groups related to chiefs. In this sense royalty compose a group of people collectively envisioned as a chiefly elite by members of a given kingdom (see Earle 1989 for a discussion of chiefdoms and associated elite culture; see also Steward 1955).

Peers are individuals who have been granted the highest level of awards the society as a whole can present. Such awards are categorized as follows:

The Pelican ..... for extraordinary service to the SCA

The Laurel ...... for mastery in some form of art or science that is appropriate to the SCA's charter.

The Chivalry .... for mastery of martial combat as practiced in the society.

Members who have been elevated to one or more of these levels in the SCA are granted permission to wear the regalia unique to each order and to use the title Master or Mistress. The exception to this is the order of chivalry in which an individual may elect to use the title of Knight or Dame in place of Master or Mistress. Part of the reason for this distinction in titles is historic, knights perhaps being the most widely recognized portion of medieval society known to modern people, while another significant reason is associated with the important position martial combat holds in defining polities within the SCA. Finally, combat is also one of the most dramatic events in the society and tends to draw to it the largest number of spectators, hence it also serves as an important recruiting tool for the SCA. It is difficult to miss 50 or more armored adults swinging mock weapons at one another, especially when some of these blows strike metallic armor causing a ringing din vaguely reminiscent of an automobile collision.⁽¹⁾

The Construction of Power, Prestige and Identity

Against this background a number of concerns pertinent to members of the SCA can be identified. I wish to focus on two fundamental concerns in particular, phrasing these concerns from the perspective of the individuals involved.

First, how can I (the participant in the SCA) mark my own individuality within the society?

Second, how can I (the participant in the SCA) let other people know that I am an important person and have worth?

Neither question is trivial to the people who ask them. In fact, the questions are fundamental issues that are confronted everyday by people across the world, perhaps most especially those in western, industrialized societies which have come to emphasize achieved personal worth and status (Gluckman 1962; Goffman 1956, 1963). For participants in the SCA, then, creating an identity within the confines of the society becomes an issue of principal concern.

The strategies people adopt for attaining these goals produce different salient identities for individual members of the SCA and, by extension, generates small-scale group identities as collections of individuals with common interests and attitudes congregate. For the purposes of this paper a salient identity refers to the identity an individual or group of individuals assume when encountering a particular stimuli. By definition salient identity as employed here is fluid and allows for the adoption of a variety of individual and group responses to a broad range of social scenarios.

At the broadest level the persona adopted by a member of the SCA defines a salient identity through dress and other outward signs (see Firth 1973 for a comparison of signs and symbols). This identity may be modified in a variety of fashions, however, depending upon the social surroundings in which an SCA member finds herself. For practical purposes the selection of a persona and associated outward signs is less significant in terms of social identity than is personal interaction between members, regardless of persona.

An interesting avenue for the display of personal identity within the SCA exists through the registration of arms. By arms the society means a heraldic device that follows established rules of European, in particular English, heraldry which is unique both within the society and throughout the world. An entire branch of the society's corporate body and its various local manifestations is dedicated to the maintenance of this system, a fact that reflects how important it is to members of all cultures, including our own, to establish a personal identity and to project that identity to others (Staeck 1993; Wobst 1977). Any member of the SCA may register a coat of arms that is then reserved throughout the society for the registrant's personal use. The rules of the society prevent other people from registering a device that is too similar to any other and there are a series of social and corporate sanctions that are enforced against people who display arms registered to another individual. Such sanctions can include ostracization of the offender by friends and colleagues or revocation of society membership.

In an anthropological sense, the display of arms, especially if done in an elaborate fashion, is a display of wealth and status. Status displays are a common means through which status is achieved and transmitted to others in societies throughout the world (see, for example, Malinowski 1984; Weiner 1976; Wobst 1977; Staeck 1993) and an important avenue through which all members of the SCA may define and express identity.

Group Identity

Well-entrenched social networks define another level of identity, that of a group. In the SCA group identity can be achieved by or ascribed to a collection of friends who commonly interact and establish formal criteria for membership, such as groups known as households, or may be the result of the award structure of the society. Higher level awards within the society often carry with them membership in an order, that is it facilitates interaction between recipients of the award. Perhaps the best example of how this award structure can define identity and construct power and prestige within the SCA centers on the peerages. It is here that I wish to focus for the remainder of this discussion.

The primary distinctions between peers and non-peers develop from the prestige assigned to and limited power wielded by the peers. As noted previously, peers are allowed to wear distinctive sets of regalia that distinguish their rank and achievements. Among peers the regalia of the members of the chivalry are most easily recognized and arguably confer the greatest amount of social prestige to the wearers. The regalia consists of spurs, often golden, and either a white belt (in the case of a knight) or a white baldric (in the case of a master). Lastly, a golden chain can also be worn to denote whether or not that particular individual has formally offered her or his services to the ruling royalty.

The social impetus placed behind the chivalry stems from the prominence attached to martial combat within the society and through the manipulation of the symbols associated with this combat. As discussed under the structure of the SCA only a proficient warrior can ascend to the throne by her or his own actions. With a victory in a crown tournament the combatant and a consort win the right to rule a kingdom, dispensing awards as they see fit within the guidelines of the SCA. In no other fashion can this level of power and prestige be achieved. Further, once having stepped down as monarchs the warrior and her/his consort are awarded permanent titles to signify that they have been monarchs. These titles carry with them a distinctive set of regalia including coronets and establish the former royalty within an elite polity, that of former rulers. At the investiture of new royalty the names of all preceding kings and queens are read or otherwise displayed (via portraits or scroll lists) to the membership attending the event. This reinforces the prestige maintained by former monarchs and, in turn, confers the prestige of the position, vis-ŕ-vis all of the people who have held it before, to the incoming royalty. Similar systems have been employed by the Maya dynasty of Copán (Webster et. al. 1993) and the pharoanic Egyptians (Clark 1983) among many others.

In a similar fashion the display of the regalia of prestigious orders, such as the peerages, confers status on those who are allowed to make such displays. In the eyes of the members of the SCA anyone who is allowed to bear the accouterments of an order has the status of that order ascribed to her. Consequently, the control over who may and may not display such symbols is a key element to all orders of awards within the society. By denying access to certain symbols and by excluding some people from participating in the activities associated with those symbols (closed-door meetings, the ability to influence inclusion in the various orders etc.), the prestige of the order and its members is enhanced (Durkheim and Mauss 1963; Firth 1973; Barthes 1982).

Additional measures of political and social power are also embedded in membership in the chivalry, and indeed through membership in all orders of peerage. Members of the chivalry, for example, are considered marshals within the society. That is, members of the chivalry are empowered to control society martial combat, enforce safety rules, and authorize members to participat e in martial c om bat . Although members of the SCA other than chivalry are often warranted to do this , such individuals are considered by the general populace of the SCA to be part of the infrastructure of the society and, in effect, to hold low-level administrative offices. Despite the previously noted, sometimes fierce competition for positions as officers, corporate offices are held by volunteers (unlike peers, who are invited into orders by the perceived elite members of the society) and confer less prestige on office-holders than does membership in an order of peerage.

Likewise, they lack access to the most recognizable and prestigious symbols within the SCA, that of peers. Hence, even though unbelted marshals (e.g., marshals who are not knights or masters) are usually very good at their jobs they are sometimes looked upon as less effective marshals than members of the chivalry. The key difference in perceived effectiveness is tied directly to the perception of knights and masters as elite members of the SCA.

Perhaps the greatest perceived power of the various peers is the ability to recommend that the current royalty "elevate" someone from the populace to membership in one of the orders. In practice peers usually have a large amount of influence on who is inducted into their orders. However, administratively they have no real power over the decisions of the current monarchs. The monarchs may, at their discretion, disregard the advice of the peers of a kingdom and bestow or not bestow a peerage as they like. Similarly, any member of the SCA can recommend that a member of the society be made a peer. The right to recommend someone for any award, including the highest awards in the SCA, is open to everyone within the society.

The perception of such power being wielded primarily by peers derives in part from the closed-door meetings the various orders hold and in part from the prestige of the orders themselves. It is in such meetings that the peers discuss their opinions on the merits of various people who might be asked to join the order. Coupled with the prestige associated with the orders of peerage and the limited powers their members wield, most members of the SCA assume it is within the powers of the members of these peerage orders to have someone invited to join their ranks. As pointed out previously, however, the peers who can attend these meetings have no more real authority to do this than do other members of the SCA. As a result of their awards, however, peers within the society have established, and have had established for them, salient identities as groups which promote prestige, power, and distinctive group identities.

Discussion

To return to the basic concerns of individuals within the society as set forth previously, namely to concerns over how identity and perceived worth can be established, membership in the orders of peerage becomes an obvious and commonly attempted strategy. It is assumed, and clearly appropriately so, that membership in an order of peerage will bring with it some measure of social identity and a clear mark of worth. To be a peer is to be recognized by other members of the society as one of the elite within the society, to be, in effect, someone important to the entire society.

Along the path to such an end, however, a series of changes tend to occur in people who are eventually made peers. Although we do not have time to delve into the intricacies of these changes it is clear that they can be identified as part of the general trend of most members to better define their own identity within the society and to establish their importance to other society members. First, as time progresses those individuals who seek to strongly define their identity and importance tend to be recognized as good for whatever it is they do (fight, arts, sciences, etc.) long before, perhaps many years before, they are considered for membership in an order of peerage. Second, because of this recognition they have achieved a measure of respect approaching or equaling that with which peers are treated by most members of the society. It is important to note, however, that this behavior is generally restricted to people who know the individual in question and are familiar with her work. As a consequence of these two points, even though a person has not been made a peer, that individual is well known and may be thought of as highly as any member of the orders of peerage. In effect, without having been made a peer an individual can and often does carve out a distinct identity that is more personal and more long-lasting than an identity that is primarily based on membership in an order of peerage.

Summary

This paper has attempted to briefly sketch some of the avenues through which identity, prestige, and power are constructed by members of the Society for Creative Anachronism. The construction of identity and the manipulation of socially powerful symbols has been emphasized as primary means for achieving these goals. Numerous other strategies may exist in addition to, or in competition with, those outlined above. Such strategies are worthy of study but are beyond the scope and limitations of the current discussion.

Bibliography

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The Politics of Elite Culture. University of California Press, Berkeley.

Cohen, R.

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Durkheim, E. and M. Mauss

1. Indeed, this is precisely how one onlooker described a single tournament bout (one fighter vs. one other) at a major SCA event in Pennsylvania in May of 1992.