The Evolution of Human Societies: From Foraging Group to Agrarian State, Second Edition 9780804764513

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THE EVOLUTION OF HUMAN SOCIETIES

Allen W. Johnson & Timothy Earle

The Evolution of Huinan Societies From Foraging Group to Agrarian State Second Edition

Stanford University Press, Stanford, California

Stanford University Press Stanford, California ©2000 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Johnson, Allen W. The evolution of human societies : from foraging group to agrarian state I Allen W. Johnson & Timothy Earle. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN o-8047-4031-3 (alk. paper)ISBN o-8047-4032-1 (paper : alk. paper) 1. Social evolution. 2. Ethnology. I. Earle, Timothy K. I. Title. GN360.J65 303·4-dC21

2000 00-041329

This book is printed on acid-free, archival-quality paper.

Original printing 2000

Typeset in 10/12 Palatino

Dedicated to Marvin Harris and Marshall Sahlins For their inspiration and disputation

Preface to the Second Edition

In the first edition of this work we attempted to synthesize the current understanding of the processes whereby human societies grew (or did not grow) in scale and complexity under a broad range of environmental circumstances. Our joint experience of teaching courses in economic anthropology and cultural ecology showed us the advantages of combining the perspectives of ethnology and archaeology for a comprehensive theory integrating both subjects. In order to do so, we had instinctively organized the case materials in our course from small-scale mobile foragers to agrarian states, as do many of our colleagues. We decided to make explicit the implicit evolutionary theory in such an ordering from simple to complex, and this work was born. For this second edition, we have taken advantage of more than a decade teaching with the first edition. Through their bold questioning and insights drawn from their own learning and experience, our students have shown us many ways to improve on the original, and for this we owe them a profound debt of gratitude. As a result of their comments, and those of many of our colleagues, we have completely rewritten the theoretical chapters, to strengthen and improve the flow and clarity of the argument. We have also reviewed all the cases and where possible, in consultation with experts, have corrected errors and brought the cases up to date, often illuminating the ways in which the basic processes of social evolution continue to operate to the present time. We have also added a new ending chapter that links our evolutionary argument to an account of how and why traditional societies like those we discuss transform in our world of today. In our preface to the first edition we noted a certain turning away from social evolutionism in the anthropology of the time. The situation today is different. A great many excellent works have been published dealing with warfare, leadership, intensification, trust and cooperation,

viii

Preface to the Second Edition

and many other topics in ways that either are frankly evolutionist or at least are framed to be of use to the evolutionist. In addition to this general climate of theoretical debate, we have benefited from careful specific comments on parts or all of this work by Jeanne Arnold, Robert Bettinger, Ben Campbell, Napoleon Chagnon, Myron Cohen, Sam Coleman, Terence D' Altroy, Norma Diamond, Rada Dyson-Hudson, Paul Ehrlich, Walter Goldschmidt, Daniel Gross, Raymond Hames, William Irons, Patrick Kirch, Richard Lee, Sibel Kusimba, Cherry Lowman, Mervin Meggitt, Mark Moberg, Philip Newman, John Olmsted, Wendell Oswalt, Melanie Renfrew, Tawnya Sesi, Nazi£ Shahrani, Mariko Tamanoi, David Hurst Thomas, Jan Weinpahl, Lynn White, Jr., Johannes Wilbert, and Yun-xiang Yan. Amalie Orme drew the settlement pattern figures and they reflect her creative input. Valued colleagues Roy Rappaport and Annette Weiner, whose works have influenced our own, have died. We mourn their passing and miss their thoughtful advice. In preparing this revision we rediscovered the stimulation and new thinking that comes with a collaboration across the subdisciplines. Archaeologists and ethnologists, although they work with such different empirical materials, share great areas of common interest when it comes to the evolution of human societies, and each has much to gain from a thorough understanding of the other.

Contents

1

Introduction

1

Theorizing Sociocultural Evolution, 2 • Theories of Economic Motivation, 16 • The Evolutionary Process, 29 • The Evolutionary Typology, 32 · The Plan of the Book, 36

Part I: The Family-Level Group 2

The Family Level

41

In Search of Undomesticated Humans, 45 • Theorizing the Family-Level Society, 46 · The Primary Dynamics of the Family-Level Economy and Society, 52

3 Family-Level Foragers

54

Case 1. The Shoshone of the Great Basin, 58 • Case 2. The !Kung of the Kalahari, 65 · Prehistoric Foraging Societies, 82 · Conclusions, 87

4 Families with Domestication

go

Case 3· The Machiguenga of the Peruvian Amazon, 93 Case 4· The Nganasan of Northern Siberia, 112 • Conclusions, 120

Part II: The Local Group 5 The Local Group The Domestication of the Human Species, 127 • Theorizing the Local Group, 129 • The Primary Dynamics of Local Group Economy and Society, 136

123

Contents

X

6 The Family and the Village Case 5· The Yanomamo of the Venezuelan Highlands, 142

141

171 7 The Village and the Clan Case 6. The Eskimos of the North Slope of Alaska, 172 · Case 7· The Tsembaga Maring of New Guinea, 179 • Case 8. The Turkana of Kenya, 194 • Conclusions, 200 8 The Corporate Group and the Big Man Collectivity Case 9· Indian Fishermen of the Northwest Coast, 204 • Case 10. The Central Enga of Highland New Guinea, 217 • Case 11. The Kirghiz of Northeastern Afghanistan, 233 Conclusions, 239

203

Part III: The Regional Polity 9 The Regional Polity

245

The Political Revolution: The Origins of Civilizations, 251 Theorizing the Regional Polity, 254 • The Primary Dynamics of the Regional Polity, 260 10 The Simple Chiefdom Case 12. The Trobriand Islanders, 267 · Conclusions, 279 11

265

281 The Complex Chiefdom Case 13. The Hawaiian Islanders, 284 • Case 14. The Basseri of Iran, 294 • Conclusions, 301

12 The Archaic State Case 15. France and Japan in the Middle Ages, 306 • Case 16. The Inka: An Andean Empire, 315 · Conclusions, 328

304

13 The Peasant Economy in the Agrarian State Case 17. The Brazilian Sharecroppers of Boa Ventura, 334 · Case 18. The Chinese Villagers of Taitou, 345 • Case 19. The Javanese Villagers of Kali Loro, 356

330

14 The Evolution of Global Society Theorizing Contemporary Change, 371 • Social Evolution and the Free Market, 386

367

Bibliography 393 Index 425

Tables and Figures

Tables Cases Examined in the Book !Kung Seasons Developmental Trends in the Tehuacan Valley Machiguenga Soil Constituents by Age of Garden Machiguenga Time Allocation North Slope Eskimo Trade Kapanara (Papua New Guinea) Time Allocation The Size of Communities and Polities in Evolutionary Perspective 9· Kali Loro Time Allocation (Hours per day)

1. 2. 3· 4· 5· 6. 7· 8.

Figures 1. Two Kinds of Population Growth: Nature vs. Culture? 2. World Population and the Doomsday Equation since 1960 3· A Model for the Evolution of Human Societies 4· Reciprocity and Social Distance 5· Settlement Pattern of the !Kung 6. Settlement Pattern of the Machiguenga 7· Settlement Pattern of the Highland Yanomamo 8. Settlement Pattern of the Maring 9· Settlement Pattern of the Central Enga 10. Relationships among the Different Sources of Power in Chiefly Power Strategies 11. Settlement Pattern of the Trobriand Islanders 12. Conical Clan Structure of a Polynesian Chiefdom 13. Settlement Pattern of Rural China

36 67 92 99 104 175 193 246 359

10 13 31 49 72 94 152 182 218 253 270 283 346

THE EVOLUTION OF HUMAN SOCIETIES

ONE

Introduction

OuR PURPOSE IN this book is to describe and explain the evolution of human societies. Some societies are of small scale and flexible; others are large and highly structured; and still others fall in between those extremes. A central question of anthropology is how to understand the variability in human societies across space and time. But can the historical processes of human social evolution be explained? In some sense each society is unique, a product of its own history in a distinct environment, with its own characteristic technologies, economies, and cultural values. Yet this cultural relativism-anthropology's effort to recognize and respect cultural integrity-must coexist in a dynamic tension with the effort to identify and explain cross-cultural patterns in the development and operation of human societies. Our emphasis here is on the causes, mechanisms, and patterns of social evolution, which, despite taking many divergent paths, is explainable in terms of a coherent theory. As teachers of cross-cultural economics and as field anthropologists-one author being an ethnographer, the other an archaeologist-we have sought a theoretical framework to help make sense both of the long-term prehistoric cultural sequences now available to us and of the diversity of present-day societies. The Khoisan foragers of southern Africa produce abundant food with a few hours' work per day-are they the "original affluent society"? The Yanomamo of South America fight one another with peculiar ferocity-is this the unrestrained expression of innate human aggressiveness? In the striking North American Potlatch and Melanesian kula ring, "men of renown" publicly compete to gain prestige at others' expense-is this the human hunger for fame in a primitive manifestation? These comparative questions are of interest, alike to the anthropologist, economist, geographer, historian, political scientist, and sociologist, for

Introduction

2

they are ultimately questions about human nature-the common heritage of humankind as a species-and its expression in diverse environments, mediated by diverse cultural traditions. In this book we provide a systematic theoretical approach for answering these and similar questions in a broad, cross-cultural frame of reference. Our theory pays particular attention to the causes and consequences of population growth. Although we will see that its precise role is hotly contested, population growth is undeniably central to the process of sociocultural evolution, because of its clear consequences for how people meet their basic needs. In any environment, population growth creates problems in technology, the social organization of production, and political regulation that must be solved. We will show how the solutions to these problems bring about the changes we know as sociocultural evolution.

Theorizing Sociocultural Evolution Whether or not sociocultural evolution has taken place is no longer an issue. Archaeological work from all continents documents changes from early small-scale societies to later complex ones. Although there is no intrinsic necessity for every society to evolve in the way we describe here, the three interlocked evolutionary processes of subsistence intensification, political integration, and social stratification have been observed again and again in historically unrelated cases. Foragers diversify and adopt agriculture; villages form and integrate into regional polities; leaders come to dominate and transform social relations. How does this orderly and widespread pattern come to be?

Progress Over the years, many answers have been proposed, each raising new questions in a series of debates that continues to the present day. In the nineteenth century, social evolutionists tended toward the optimistic view that human societies were evolving from an inferior to a superior condition. Morgan's scheme of stages (1877), from Savagery to Barbarism to Civilization, described improvements in all aspects of life from technology to morality. Maine (1870) saw new public law ("Contract") liberating the individual from the tyranny of kinship and rank ("Status"). Even Engels (1972 [1884]), who with Marx focused on the exploitation and suffering of the industrial working class, believed that history was driven by an irrepressible burgeoning of human mastery over nature, propelled by improvements in science and technology.

Introduction

3

The problem that these social theories posed for anthropologists was their implicit embrace of a culture-bound concept of progress-that history is a sequence of changes leading inevitably in the general direction of the lifestyle and values of the intellectual elites of Europe and Euroamerica. This deeply ethnocentric belief-amounting to a kind of faith-had two components that came under attack separately at widely different periods in the history of evolutionist thought. The first component was a racist assumption that progress in science, technology, law-indeed all knowledge and morality-was intrinsically linked to race: inferior races could not aspire to the higher levels of achievement because they were incapable of it. The second component was the nature of progress itself, the question of who, if anyone, benefits from the changes we call sociocultural evolution.

Relativism Turning to the first component, the link between race and progress came under devastating criticism from Boas (1949 [1920]), who made the separation of race and culture the centerpiece of his vision for American anthropology: individuals, he said, take on the cultural characteristics of the communities in which they are raised, whatever their racial backgrounds. Committed to a thoroughgoing cultural relativism, Boas and his most famous students, Robert Lowie, Alfred Kroeber, Ruth Benedict, and Margaret Mead, rejected cultural evolutionism. Each culture is unique and equally to be valued; if it changes, it does so in ways unique to itself, and no general upward trajectory can be discerned. The Boasian attack was largely persuasive, in part because it was linked to new, higher standards of ethnographic field research and data collection. As a result, in the first generation of American anthropology, ideas of progress and sociocultural evolution were effectively submerged. Like many "solutions" to tough theoretical issues, however, the Boasian attack went too far: even as it correctly eliminated race from the equation, it inappropriately denied the existence of any kind of social evolution. The skepticism regarding nineteenth-century bias and data was broadened into an attack on the search for patterns in human social life generally, and a pervasive suspicion of all explanations for such patterns. Like the Boasian particularists, many anthropologists simply do not find any explanation interesting or appealing-but that is not acceptable to those wanting to account for patterned similarities and· differences among societies (Carneiro 1982: 418).

Introduction

4

Unilinear Evolution Systemic change toward complexity was clearly evident in the archaeological record and could not simply be denied or wished away. In the second quarter of the twentieth century an influential new generation sought to reinstate the idea of progress but without racist baggage, in the scientific language of "unilinear evolution" (White 1959; d. Childe 1936, 1942, 1951). In this theory, cultural evolution is potentially the property of all human communities, the cumulative growth in mastery over nature by means of culture (technological knowledge). For Leslie White, the scientific foundation of his theory lay in the link between cultural evolution and energy capture: whereas small-scale hunter-gatherer economies were based on harvesting of the energy provided by nature (in the form of game, roots, seeds, etc.), more advanced agriculturalists had succeeded in harnessing energy through the domestication of plants and animals. The grand course of human history was one of harnessing increasing amounts of energy-from crops to draft animals to steam engines and on through internal combustion to presumably endless future mastery. White (1959) tried to lay a scientific basis for his arguments in formulas like the following: ExT->P

(1)

where E is energy, Tis technology, and Pis the production that results. White and Childe were obviously right in many respects. Archaeology, for example, can document hundreds of thousands of years of increasing technological mastery in the manufacture of stone tools, ceramics, metals, and the like. Contemporary ethnographers can document that communities at greater levels of technological and social complexity do indeed control greater-sometimes vastly greaterquantities of energy (Harris and Johnson 2000: 69). The problems raised by the theory of unilinear evolution, however, are serious, if somewhat subtle. Two emphases in particular required fundamental revision. The first was the theory's high degree of abstraction. Abstraction itself is not a fault; the strongest scientific theories are admired for their abstraction. But White's theory, reducing sociocultural evolution to calculations of energy capture, was too removed from empirical data. It harkened back to older typologies-such as Stone Age/Bronze Age/Iron Age-which worked for describing tool traditions but did not begin to account for the remarkable diversity of societies within each type: for example, that some Stone Age communities were larger and more complex than some Bronze Age communities. White (1959: 241) was also sometimes guilty of overlooking

Introduction

5

the broader importance of social activities that he could not link directly to energy capture, as when he dismissed the dramatic selfaggrandizing public displays of wealth found in the "prestige economies" (see chapter 7) as "social games" irrelevant to economic process.

Multilinear Evolution One solution to White's excessive abstraction, and critical for the further development of social evolutionism, was Steward's theory (1955) of "multilinear evolution." Steward did not deny outright the theoretical value of a general scheme of social evolution from smallscale to complex. In fact, his empirical work on native South American cultures made extensive use of a unilinear typology: nomadic huntergatherers I village farmers I theocratic-militaristic chiefdoms I civilizations (Steward and Faron 1959: 13). But as Kroeber's student, Steward sought to restore the Boasian grounding of theory in local details: how did real people in their own communities obtain energy, indeed, the whole range of needed goods? Furthermore, how did they organize their labor, their property, their interactions with other individuals and social groups, their knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs, in order to meet their needs? If, as the adage has it, all politics is local, then for Steward all evolution is local, since it is people actively solving the problems of daily life, changing their behavior or refusing to change it, that constitutes the process of social evolution. This local process he termed adaptation, and it was through adaptation that Steward forged a connection to a vast body of theory and knowledge in economic anthropology that had hitherto developed on a parallel, largely independent track. We will explore this crucial linkage below in the discussion of economic motivation. At the same time that Steward was writing, Barth (1956) showed how adaptation to local conditions must also implicate broader regional and interregional relationships of competition and exchange. In the region of Swat, northern Pakistan, three different ethnic groups with separate histories and economies existed together, exploiting different environmental zones and exchanging specialized products with each other: irrigation farmers living in densely populated areas, scattered pastoralists, and mixed herder-farmers. The high-density social groups with the most intensive economy excluded all others from the prime valley lands, while the pastoralists remained only in the uplands, where farming was impracticable. The pastoralists could then exchange their animals for the farmers' cereals. Each society had to adapt not only to local geography but also to the political and economic realities of neighboring societies.

6

Introduction

The concept of multilinear evolution offers greater theoretical flexibility than does unilinear evolution. The idea that social evolution can follow different courses depending on local history and ecology readily embraces the possibility that particular communities, having achieved a working solution to the problems posed by population and environment, need not evolve at all if conditions do not significantly change. No intrinsic perfecting tendency drives technology to ever-increasing levels of energy efficiency. Hunter-gatherers can remain huntergatherers indefinitely; horticulturalists and pastoralists, though having harnessed energy, can remain small scale and egalitarian. In a further advance over unilinear evolution, anthropologists after Steward turned away from the technological reductionism of using tools, energy, or mode of production to typologize levels of sociocultural complexity, moving instead toward typologies focusing on broad patterns of social organization. Service (1962) proposed a typology of bands/tribes/chiefdoms/states, and Fried (1967) followed with a three-stage typology focused on political organization: egalitarian society /rank society I stratified society. Both Service's and Fried's terminologies are widely employed in contemporary discussions of sociocultural evolution and are closely reflected in our own choices. In light of multilinear evolution, such broad organizational typologies recognize that each kind of adaptive solution contains its own possibilities for evolution. The common textbook typology (based largely on Service) that even today begins with hunter-gatherer camps or bands and proceeds through horticultural villagers to agricultural states (with pastoralists somehow appended) can be replaced by evolutionary lines that have hunter-gatherers ranging all the way from camps to chiefdoms (Arnold 1996a), with similar ranges for pastoral peoples and agriculturalists. Multilinearity is abundantly evident in the cases we have selected for analysis in this book. Although our cases fall into the familiar categories of forager, herder, and farmer, these are crosscut by our unilinear scheme of social scale: family level society, local group, and regional polity. Hence, in multilinear fashion, foragers may be found at the family level (e.g., Shoshone, Case 1), but also in local groups, including quite complex Big Man systems, possibly chiefdoms (e.g., Northwest Coast, Case 9). Farmers are found across the whole range of levels of social complexity, from family level (e.g., Machiguenga, Case 3) to regional polity (e.g., Kali Lora, Case 19). Herders may also be found at quite different social scales. Why one group of herders is barely different from familistic foragers (e.g., Nganasan, Case 4), while other herders live in chiefdoms embedded in agrarian states (e.g.,

Introduction

7

Basseri, Case 14) may be understood only by careful analysis of local geography, history, and social environment. We outline our evolutionary typology in greater depth later in this chapter. Although Service and Fried agreed on a similar typology, their contrasting explanations for the emergence of greater political control and social stratification in the course of social evolution exposed an old theoretical fault line. Fried followed Marx and Engels in seeing the emergence of stratification as essentially political, the result of ambitious and greedy individuals-sometimes called "aggrandizers" (Hayden 1995: 16-21)-who take advantage of abundant production (see the discussion of surplus, Chapter 9) to satisfy their excessive need for dominance. In a multilinear frame of reference, an aggrandizer's success would depend on local opportunities to seize control of surplus production and tum it to his own profit. Service, on the other hand, took a more ecological perspective. He did not see how leaders could dominate the political process unless they provided real value to their followers and subjects. Uncontrollably greedy and aggressive individuals, after all, are often killed off in egalitarian societies. Leaders organize war parties and defenses, build and maintain irrigation systems, store food as famine relief, and manage intergroup trade. People allow them a greater share of community wealth precisely because they are necessary to the well-being of community members. In this version of multilinear evolutionism, a leader's success would vary depending on local need for the organization of labor and the control and development of resources. This old debate, which is essentially about whether leaders take power from or are given power by the community, continues to energize theories of the evolution of complexity (see Chapter 9). Our take will be that these are two aspects of the same process, artificially separated in theoretical debates but inextricably linked in practice.

Antiprogress: Population and Diminishing Returns The second major shortcoming of nineteenth-century evolutionism, after racism/ ethnocentrism, was an uncritical belief in the inevitability of progress. In the first half of the twentieth century, neither unilinear nor multilinear evolutionism fully confronted this deficiency. Stripped of racist (and imperialist) biases, the notion that sociocultural evolution represents progress has a powerful appeal, both as description and as explanation. To many theorists it has seemed evident that technological progress is the cause of population growth, and hence of growth in social and political complexity. Why did populations grow? Because new sources of food were discovered and made available by technological

8

Introduction

improvements. Why did village life replace mobile foraging? Because gardening is more secure and less arduous than constantly moving about. Why did iron tools replace stone? Because iron is more malleable, can hold a sharper edge, and can sustain more rough use. Why did paddy fields replace slash-and-bum cultivation of rice? Because irrigated paddy is more productive. Why did regional governments integrate politically autonomous villages? Because central government provides services (security, infrastructure, coordination) beyond the means of a single village to provide for itself. The association between economic activities and scale of society has seemed self-evident to many observers and has recently been confirmed in careful studies of how people spend time in different societies: The time allocation study reassuringly confirms what we thought we already knew: the smallest-scale societies (as revealed by settlement size, population density, isolation from urban centers, and other social and ecological indicators) tend to spend the bulk of their production time foraging for wild plants and animals. As settlements grow and become more complex, foraging is increasingly supplemented by-and then replaced by-agricultural production. With further increases in scale agricultural production tends to be combined with commercial activities like cash cropping and wage laboring. In industrialized societies almost all production time is spent in commercial activities; even food production comes to be an occupational specialization for which workers obtain a wage. (Sackett 1996: 337)

Even in our age, far more skeptical about progress than a halfcentury ago, we often speak of technological and social change as making life better. Indeed, if the changes were not for the better, why would people accept them? The theory of technological progress has the virtue of providing a direct and plausible explanation for economic change: people invent new techniques, some of which are found acceptable and are therefore copied and shared, remaining in use until yet more desirable inventions displace them. In this quasi-Darwinian logic, people accept changes in the way that they do things because they recognize the benefits of doing so. In Childe's hopeful phrase (1936), "Man makes himself." Opposing the optimism of the progress theorists, however, have been a series of more pessimistic views. Even before the nineteenth century, Malthus (1798) had proposed the view that population growth leads not to progress but to scarcity and misery. And at least one nineteenth-century evolutionist, Herbert Spencer (Carneiro 1967), saw social evolution as driven not by progress but by war: with the need for

Introduction

9

increasingly organized defense against enemies, society was becoming more complex on the rebound, so to speak, and people's lives were not necessarily improving as a result. In these views of history, it was not progress but the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse-War, Famine, Disease, and Death-that held sway. After Steward, theorists became increasingly skeptical of the assumption that sociocultural evolution improves a people's standard of living. Perhaps most influential was Boserup's use (1965) of the economic Law of Diminishing Returns, arguing that many so-called technological improvements are actually less efficient than what preceded them; they are adopted out of desperation, as growing populations are forced into ever more labor-intensive techniques if starvation is to be avoided. Long workdays in advanced modem economies and a growing sense of "time famine" fed doubts about whether progress is really occurring (Linder 1970; Scitovsky 1976). In the 1970's, the pessimistic view of human history was part of a growing environmentalism, a widespread political consciousness that environments are not infinitely productive and resilient. Intensive use of the environment comes at a cost, as people exhaust nonrenewable resources and degrade renewable ones. Vivid news media images of forest loss, soil erosion, and desertification drove home the message that intensification can destroy resources. Restoring and sustaining productivity in damaged landscapes require investments of labor and management, and these are practicable only where there is the political will to pay the costs. The "population bomb" (Ehrlich 1968) was seen as a looming threat to the human condition and not an indicator of progress. The Doomsday Equation. As a way of illuminating a number of relevant theoretical points, we may look at the peculiar history of the mathematical formula that came to be known as The Doomsday Equation (Umpleby 1987). About the time that the pessimistic, antiprogress view was emerging in anthropology, Foerster et al. (tg6o) published an equation that represented a best estimate of the curve of human population growth since the time of Christ: 1.79X to'' Population= - - - - - - (2026.87- timet· 99

(2)

Equation (2) describes an exponentially growing population that theoretically reaches infinity on Friday, November 13, in A.D. 2026. Despite whimsically setting this "interesting singularity" (doomsday) on a Friday the thirteenth, the authors had a serious message: the outcome of

Asymptote = 1,035

1,000 900 ::2: 800 "''