Heterarchy: A Valuable Category for the Study of Urban Religion

Transferred from neurophysiology and cybernetics to the humanities and the social sciences by settlement archeologist Carole L. Crumley, the notion of heterarchy, in particular, and heterarchical thinking, in general, have contributed to changing the way in which power structures other than hierarchies are seen as patterns for order in complex societies. The very idea of social complexity has been transformed by challenging the conflation of order with ranked order. New models for cultural evolution also appear when hierarchy is uncoupled from complexity and heterarchical relations are observable all the way to the historical development of a society as well as at different levels of a system. Opening the special issue, this article aims to introduce the concept of heterarchy to specialists of religion by showing benefits and drawbacks of its application to the study of urban religion. Eventually, the purpose of the selected articles is to leverage this promising category to explore and deepen understanding of the millennia-long coevolution of religion and urbanity.