Editor's note

The pieces in this section trace the unfolding of a debate that began with David Wengrow and David Graeber's redeployment of Gregory Bateson's concept of schismogenesis to explain cultural differentiation among Indigenous societies of the Pacific Coast of North America: the possibility that neighbouring societies may develop distinctive political, ethical, and social forms partly through processes of interaction, differentiation, and rejection. Eric Alden Smith and Brian F. Codding challenge this interpretation, foregrounding instead ecological variation, resource distribution, and patron–client dynamics; David Wengrow responds in defence of the schismogenetic argument, while Anna Marie Prentiss and Bill Angelbeck develop, from different perspectives, arguments that lend weight to the respective sides of the debate. The exchange takes place productively at the intersection of archaeology and social anthropology and forms part of JRAI's continuing effort to strengthen the conversation between them. From a theoretical and methodological perspective, what is particularly instructive is not the prospect of resolving the disagreement, but of seeing what happens when different explanatory orientations are brought to bear on the same ethnographic and archaeological record: ecological constraints and resource relations on the one hand, intercultural interaction, ethical differentiation, and political agency on the other. The resulting disagreement illustrates how productive scholarly argument can make visible the assumptions and interpretative possibilities of competing approaches – and, I hope, offers students and established scholars alike an invitation to think across the boundaries between archaeological and social anthropological explanation.