> Basically, my question is this: if you (Arval or anyone
> interested) were to structure the Society and its relationship to the
> mundane world in the manner you would most like, what would you do?
> Gwion ap Owen
If I were starting out afresh, I would make the basic unit the Barony. Countieswould be confederations of baronies, kingdoms confederations of counties. Thecorporation, if it existed, would be a service organization, selling insurancecoverage and other services to those baronies or groups of baronies that wantedto buy it, on the model of the Living History Association.
There would be no one to produce Society-level rules, hence no such rules.There would be a Society-wide culture and some widely followed customs (such asthe meaning of "barony," "kingdom," etc.). Basically, a Baron would be someonewith lots of people in garb who thought he was their baron--internalorganization up to the barony. No geographical exclusiveness--giving a veryperiod patchwork.
Peerages would be self chosen orders, typically kingdom or interkingdom--theprestige of a particular order, say "the knights of the Silver Spur" woulddepend on how selective it was in choosing members. The College of Heraldswould exist as a Society-wide organization, as it now does, with no power toenforce rules but considerable status. Individual kingdoms might, or might not,have rules about what titles they recognized, how many people it took to make abarony, etc. T.I., C.A., etc. would have to survive on their merits assubscription publications.
The result would be a much more feudal structure, a lot less paperwork, morediversity, and (I think) a more attractive Society. -- David/CariadocDDF2@Cornell.Edu
---
Gwion ap Owen courteously raises some questions about my response to thisquery on how the society ought to be structured.
> How would such a culture come to be if there was no Society-wide
> structure to begin with?
Through people doing something, others imitating, and the pattern spreading.Precisely the way our culture did. Do you think the Board sent out hiredmissionaries?
Consider the early history of the SCA. When I and a few other people startedthe Middle Kingdom, we were not acting on orders from the Board. We had heardabout the SCA through people who knew people in it (mainly through SF fandom)and seen a copy of a publication (Handbook of the Current Middle Ages). Thatpublication could easily enough have been produced by an individual in a singleactive barony--it was, as I recall, a lot smaller than the Miscellany that Iproduce. Nothing we did depended on the existence of a nationalorganization--merely on communication, most of which did and does happenoutside the formal structure.
Almost from the beginning, people in the Middle found the formal nationalorganization to be a hindrance. The first person they appointed to be ourseneschal was a lady who never did anything and who we never saw--I think shehad written to the national SCA expressing her interest in starting something.Our second (or possibly third?) seneschal, Roland de Tour Gris (Roland Green),expressed his views, as I recall, with the remark that "A Board is long andnarrow and made out of wood."
I know less about the very early history of the East, but my impression is thatthere was even more conflict with the national organization. I do remember,some years later when I was king of the East, receiving a letter from someonein the national organization suggesting a new EK seneschal. I wrote backtelling him that if I decided I needed a new seneschal I would be sure to lethim know.
I again offer the example of international folk dancing, where there is nonational organization, or at least none that most people in local groups haveany dealing with. Nonetheless, it has spread, and is a reasonably homogeneousculture.
It is, of course, useful for people starting in new areas to have availableresources from old areas--mostly publications, but also experienced members whomove, access to buying armor, etc. But none of that requires a nationalorganization.
> Would this not make baronies very elite, and hard to crack if you are
> new to the area?
I don't see why. Nothing in the current structure forces groups to be friendlyto new people. Some are, some are not.
There are two features in the system I describe which should make it somewhatmore open than what we now have. One is that, since there is no nationalorganization defining the status of groups, it will be even more obvious thanit now is that real status depends on size, activity, quality of events, andthe like. So a group that wants to be admired by its neighbors has an incentiveto welcome people, in order to grow.
The second is that groups are no longer territorial monopolies, so competitionbecomes possible. If Barony A consistently ignores its new people, they can gettogether to form Shire (later barony) B in the same city--and very likely will.Some of that happens now, in the form of households, or of people playing withthe next group over. But it is discouraged by the fact that they are told "A isyour official group." That gives A an element of monopoly power it would nolonger have. That power makes it easier for it to ignore new people--or anyoneelse.
On a slight tangent, you might want to look at Adam Smith's argument with DavidHume on the case for and against an established church (_Wealth of Nations_ BkV, Ch1, Pt iii, art iii). Hume argued for an established church as a way of"bribing the indolence of the clergy" in order to reduce religious enthusiasmand related problems. Smith argued against, on the grounds that a system ofmany small sects competing for members and reputation would produce a much moreattractive outcome. One can view the past two hundred years as evidence for thesuccess of both Hume's strategy (England) and Smith's (the U.S.). That assumes,of course, that Hume was, as widely believed at the time, an atheist, and Smithwas not.
> >Peerages would be self chosen orders, typically kingdom or
> >interkingdom--the prestige of a particular order, say "the knights ofthe
> >Silver Spur" would depend on how selective it was in choosing members.(me)
> Would these not be rather exclusive, then? Again, hard to crack?(Gwion)
The present peerages are rather exclusive. The most obvious difference is that,at present, the royalty can occasionally overrule the preferences of themembership--in either direction. I am not sure that is an improvement.
Under my system, if you think the existing orders are too exclusive, orexcluding on the wrong characteristics, you start your own order. If you areright, people want to join and other people admire what you are doing, givingyour order status. If you are wrong, you have an order which nobody else caresanything about.
For a real world example of this in our Society, consider the Dark Horde. I canassure you that Yang did not have a charter from either the Board of Directorsor the King of the Middle to start it.
> How would a member from Connecticut have any affinity with (or perhaps
> even means of knowing, let alone playing with) members in California?
There are at least three ways of finding people:
1. Someone (or several someones) maintains a national group directory, eitheras a public service or as part of a national magazine--a feature making peoplemore inclined to subscribe.
2. There will certainly be national magazines, whether broad based orspecialized--the latter exist now independent of the Corporation. So you callthe editor of "New Member Times" or "Early Period" or "Chronique" and ask if hehas any subscribers in the area you are moving to. He gives you a name andaddress, you write or call that person, who tells you who the local contactperson is.
3. You know someone in your group who knows someone who plays in California(because one of them moved, or they share a common interest, or they met atPennsic--not a function produced by the Corporation, incidentally). You call upthe person in California, who makes a few phone calls and calls you back with acontact person in the area you are moving to.
Earlier I mentioned international folk dancing, which is my wife's other hobby.My other "hobby" is libertarianism--a policial movement that you may know of.I have been an active part of it for thirty years or so. There is a nationalLibertarian Party (although it was established well after I became active), butonly a small fraction of libertarians belong. There are also a few other,smaller, national organizations, as well as at least two national magazines atleast as professional as T.I.
Last week I made a trip to L.A., on fairly short notice. Before going, I calleda libertarian friend in the area to ask him about arranging a talk for locallibertarians. He got in touch with someone who organizes two libertarian supperclubs. I ended up speaking to an audience of sixty or seventy people, at anout-of-schedule meeting of a libertarian supper club. No national organizationinvolved. If I had tried to do the equivalent in the SCA through the nationalorganization, I would still be waiting for a reply.
Note, by the way, that an informal process for solving such problems is goingon continually on this newsgroup. The Corporation did not create theRialto--indeed, it seems to be mildly hostile to it. Yet every week people postto the Rialto, asking either for general SCA information or contacts in somearea--and they get the information.
So far as "affinity with," I think this point has been discussed before in thecontext of decentralization proposals. To the extent that the SCA currently hasa common culture, it has very little to do with the Corporation. TheCorporation does not make very many rules defining our culture--more than theyshould, but not very many.
For instance, there is no rule to prevent one kingdom from having vastly lowerstandards for knighthood or the laurel than another. There was nothing toprevent a kingdom from giving a Laurel for photography. Such consistency as wehave is almost entirely due to common culture, maintained by interkingdomevents, individual mobility, forums like the Rialto, publications both officialand unofficial, ... . All of that (except the official publications) wouldstill exist.
I hope this answers some of your questions. -- DDF2@Cornell.Edu
---
Jester and Fiacha comment on my proposal, and raise several issues:
1. Are kingdoms desirable? Are they possible under my system?
Yes and yes. In the system I describe, kingdoms are voluntary associations ofBaronies. They could take at least two forms.
A. The kingdom has no mundane existence. It is simply defined by an agreementamong a group of baronies, which agreement includes the procedures for choosinga king. Baronies can drop out of, or join, the kingdom.
B. The kingdom is a corporation, probably but not necessarily non-profit,selling services to baronies. These might include insurance, newsletter, etc.Such a corporation would not have to call itself a kingdom and have a king, ofcourse. You might have both A for medieval purposes and B for mundane purposes,with no requirement that all the baronies in one were in another.
Note that in neither case would the kingdom have a monopoly of a compactterritory, as they do now. They would thus correspond to the holdings of agreat lord, such as Henry II, in period--a patchwork. In practice, you mighthave areas where all groups were in the kingdom, and others where severaldifferent kingdoms competed for groups.
"A Kingdom-sized organization will have the pool of talent and population toensure that the hobby grows and remains interesting." (Jester)
This part of the argument I do not understand. Even if there were no kingdoms,we still could and would have a common culture. The people I play with wouldnot be limited to the people in my barony, any more than they are now. The poolof talent relevant to how good fighting is, or cooking, or whatever will be thepeople doing it, not the people in a single barony.
2. "I do not see how to cope with a barony that disolves into chaos due toproblems with its Baron or Baroness." (Fiacha)
I am told that there is a part of Africa, with lots of jungle and not too manypeople, which has evolved a simple solution to bad rulers. When a chief becomesmore trouble than he is worth, the rest of the village picks up and moves,leaving him "chief of the frogs."
Under my system, the situation you describe would result in many or most of themembers creating a new barony without the problem people. Baronies have nogeographical monopoly--any more than folk dance groups do now. Shortlythereafter, people in other groups would note that the Baron no longer had asubstantial number of people at his back, and would stop treating him as animportant leader.
3. "Unfortunately, I do not see how to ... handle the creation of new branches"(Fiacha)
You create a new branch by creating it. Someone interested in what the Societydoes gets together with other people, throws a party in garb, has some picnics,and pretty soon there are fifteen people who want to play SCA. They decide on aname, go to events of local groups, and introduce themselves as "the shire of___;" maybe the leader calls himself the sherrif or Shire reeve. After a whilethey get big enough so they don't think they will be laughed at if they callthemselves a barony. If there is no local kingdom they start describingthemselves as a barony. If there is a local kingdom they go to the king and askhim to create their lord a baron (or they don't--depending on local custom andwhether they want to be part of the kingdom).
What happens if a group of three people call themselves a Barony? Nobody elsetakes them very seriously. Why do you think there have to be rules for thesethings?
"On Earth, they have rules for everything. They even have rules for privatecontracts. Why would you sign a contract with someone if you couldn't trust hisword?" (Manny--I may not have the quote exact).
4. "Unfortunately, I do not see how to get there from here ... " (Fiacha)
I was considering how we would do it if we were starting over right. The mostlikely way of getting there now is through growth of the Society population. Asthings get bigger and less tightly organized, you develop a fringe of peoplewho want to do SCA but have various ideas of how it should be done. Some decideto start households and have household events (as now happens). Some householdsare made up mainly of non-members and go mainly to unofficial events--their ownand others. Eventually the sort of system I describe grows up, interpenetratingthe present system--with some people playing in both. If it works well, itgrows relative to the present system. Every time the Board messes up badlyenough, more people divert their energies away from things the Corporation cancontrol. -- David/Cariadoc DDF2@Cornell.Edu
----
Gwion wrote, about my suggestion for how the Society could have developed:
> My greatest fear about this structure is that gives an even greater
> power of shunning unwanted people than is now available.
The crucial difference is that, now, a barony that shuns unwanted people isdoing so on behalf of the whole Society, since people are only supposed to playwith the particular barony within whose geographical limits they live. That iswhy being closed or narrow is much worse in a barony than in a household--youcan always play in a different household or none. In my system, you are free tostart your own group.
> A bit of "political theory":
> > I believe, however, that the Corporation has had a role in the >sustenance of the Society culture, in that it has helped maintain the
> Society as an on-going entity. Each of the steps taken by the
> Corporation has in some way been due to the growth of the Society as a
> whole. In the early stages of the Society history, there was no need
> for a corporate body; a group of friends playing at being medieval
> didn't need one. Even as the group spread into the East, a formal
> structure wasn't so necessary.
But was present, and apparently causing problems.
> However, as more and more people became
> interested, it behooved the organization as a whole to help coordinate
> efforts through the installment of a corporate body--helping with
> insurance, communications, and the like--mundane considerations which
> detracted from the game.
To the best of my memory, corporate insurance was simply not an issue in theearly years--by which I mean at least through the point when there were fourkingdoms, and probably a good deal later than that. So far as communications,T.I. has been of some use--but so has Raymond's Quiet Press, and "EarlyPeriod," and ... .
So far as the formal structure of communication--the local mistress of artsreports to the kingdom reports to the corporate--that, so far as I can tell,has always been a net waste of time. I practice a number of period arts, suchas cooking. I cannot recall a single instance in twenty-five years wheresomeone called me up or wrote something equivalent to "my MOA found out fromthe kingdom MOA who found out from the Corporate MOA who found out from yourkingdom MOA who found out from your local MOA that you were doing medievalcooking, and I was wondering if you could answer a few questions." That issimply not how the real lines of communication run, at least in myexperience.
> What it boils down to is that I think the
> corporate body exists/has existed for a reason, and that
> reason has to do with helping people play the game as their numbers grew
> too unwieldy for a national culture to be sustained.
That is your conclusion--on what evidence is it based? If anything, I wouldhave thought that maintaining a culture becomes easier as number grow--thereare more people close to you to interact with.
Let me offer some contrary evidence. The Corporation had nothing to do withstarting Pennsic--that was an MK/EK initiative. I believe it had nothing to dowith starting the various chivalric companies which are now trying to introducesome historical accuracy into the pattern of our fighting. It had nothing todo, in my experience, with the spread of information on period cooking--indeed,its own publications (T.I. and the Handbook) have frequently been veryunreliable sources for information in that field. It does not seem to haveplayed much of a role in the spread of heraldry, which seems to be done mostlyby the College without much involvement of the corporation.
> Now, the next question: What, since (for good or for bad) we aren't
> starting the Society afresh, would you (Folo, Cariadoc, anyone)
> recommend we do now to "fix" the Society? What would the Society look
> like after all this is over, if you could have your druthers?
I see two attractive options--depending on whether the changes are being madewith or without the support of the Board.
With the Board, I would like to see a general retreat from the long policy ofincreasing Society-wide requirements--for membership and other things. Further,I would like to see serious organizational decentralization. The simplest wayto do this would be to offer kingdoms and baronies the option of "groupmembership." Such a group would itself be an incorporated or unincorporatednon-profit association, although not necessarily a 501(c)3. Its finances,choice of officers, etc. would not be under the Corporation, any more than myprivate finances are. The Corporation would make some reasonably simple list ofrequirements for a group to be accepted as a member (roughly, the minimumcommon elements of the Society as they now exist).
This change has several consequences. One, assuming a significant number ofgroups accepted the offer, would be to greatly simplify corporate accounting.The Corporation would no longer have to know how much the barony of UpperTidmarsh took in on its feast, or paid for its cabbages--that money would nolonger be legally flowing through the Corporation. Another would be to cut downpaperwork. The Society could not require regular reports from everyone insight.
My impression is that a lot of hobbies are run this way--with both group andindividual members. It is how our hobby actually runs--nobody in a local groupthinks of their feast receipts as belonging to the Corporation, and theCorporation would be astonished to be presented with the local group's bills topay. It is one respect in which our formal organization is out of sync with ourreal organization, and I think the latter makes more sense.
Note that, under this system, no group is being forced to be independent. Theyare merely given the option.
If the Board tries to oppose decentralization, the way it could happen would beby continuation and expansion of the present pattern of people in the Societydoing things outside of Corporate sponsorship. That includes unofficialpublications, books such as the _Miscellany_, unofficial events, ... . As theSociety grows, that becomes more of a viable option.
Alternatively, of course, it could happen as a result of the kingdoms secedingin response to unreasonable behavior by the Board. It sounds, judging by thenews from the meeting, as though that is not likely to happen anytime soon.Pushing kingdoms into seceding is fairly hard, and the Board has apparentlybacked off from the policy that might have done so. Pushing individuals into"seceding"--putting their effort into things outside of Corporate control--ismuch easier. -- DDF2@Cornell.Edu