ABSTRACT
This chapter a new theoretical framework is constructed which may be used to explain how some settlements were resilient and other settlements were vulnerable to decline or crisis in the pre-industrial period. It argues that these distinctive 'types of society' each led to very particular strategies for managing and exploiting their resources, in the face of a number of pressures such as commercialisation and ecological degradation, some favourable and others unfavourable. These strategies and institutions for managing resources ultimately determined the path in which settlements would develop. The theoretical framework is that the essential characteristics of each pre-industrial society were forged through the arrangement of both property at the user level, social distribution of property at the owner level, and the balance of power between social interest groups. Egalitarian-dynamic societies used the market in a flexible manner. The egalitarian distributions of power and property, egalitarian marketing frameworks for commodities logically emerged which were not dominated by powerful interest groups.
