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Ant 101: Introduction To Anthropology

The document discusses different types of political systems including bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states. It focuses on describing chiefdoms, noting that they had a permanent political structure with chiefs and assistants who regulated production, distribution, and consumption. The document also compares social control and stratification in simple societies like tribes versus more complex chiefdoms and states.

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Amina Matin
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30 views

Ant 101: Introduction To Anthropology

The document discusses different types of political systems including bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states. It focuses on describing chiefdoms, noting that they had a permanent political structure with chiefs and assistants who regulated production, distribution, and consumption. The document also compares social control and stratification in simple societies like tribes versus more complex chiefdoms and states.

Uploaded by

Amina Matin
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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ANT 101: INTRODUCTION TO ANTHROPOLOGY

Lecture 13: Political Systems


Chapter 8: Political Systems

Dr. Bulbul Ashraf Siddiqi


Assistant Professor
Dept. of Political Science and Sociology
TYPES OF POLITICAL SYSTEMS
 The anthropologist Elman Service (1962) listed
four types, or levels, of political organization:
 Band,
 Tribe
 Chiefdom and
 State.
Stonehenge, England, and an educational display designed for tourists and visitors.
Chiefdoms created the megalithic cultures
of Europe, such as the one that built Stonehenge over 5,000 years ago. Between the
emergence and spread of food production and
the expansion of the Roman empire, much of Europe was organized at the chiefdom
level, to which it reverted after the fall of Rome.
CHIEFDOM
 Chiefdom refers to a form of socio-political organization
intermediate between the tribe and the state. In chiefdoms,
social relations were based mainly on kinship, marriage,
descent, age, generation, and gender—just as they were in
bands and tribes. Although chiefdoms were kin-based, they
featured differential access to resources (some people had more
wealth, prestige, and power than others) and a permanent
political structure.

 Chiefdom is more complex forms of socio-political


organization
CHIEFDOM
 The first chiefdoms developed perhaps a thousand years earlier,
but few survive today.

 In many parts of the world the chiefdom was a transitional form


of organization that emerged during the evolution of tribes into
states.

 Some advanced chiefdoms have many attributes of archaic


states and thus are difficult to assign to either category.
Recognizing this “continuous change” (Johnson and Earle, eds.
2000), some anthropologists speak of “complex chiefdoms”
(Earle 1987), which are almost states.
POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC SYSTEMS IN CHIEFDOMS
 Much of our ethnographic knowledge about chiefdoms comes
from Polynesia (Kirch 2000), where they were common at the
time of European exploration.

 Combination of many villages with thousands of people.

 In chiefdoms, social relations are mainly based on kinship,


marriage, descent, age, generation, and gender—as they are in
bands and tribes.

 Permanent Political Regulation: Chiefdom has defined


territory and structure of regulation and ruling the tribe.
POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC SYSTEMS IN CHIEFDOMS
 Permanent Political Office
 An office is a permanent position, which must be refilled when it is
vacated by death or retirement.
 Regulation was carried out by the chief and his or her
assistants, who occupied political offices.
 Regulating the economy—production, distribution, and
consumption.
 They regulated production by commanding or prohibiting
(using religious taboos) the cultivation of certain lands and
crops. Chiefs also regulated distribution and consumption.
 First-fruit Ceremony—people would offer part of their harvest
to the chief through his or her representatives.
 Polynesian chiefs relied on religion to buttress their authority
POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC SYSTEMS IN CHIEFDOMS
 Central Storehouse and Redistribution:

 Products moved up the hierarchy, eventually reaching the chief.


Conversely, illustrating obligatory sharing with kin, chiefs sponsored
feasts at which they gave back much of what they had received.

 Such a flow of resources to and then from a central office is known


as chiefly redistribution.

 Chiefly redistribution also played a role in risk management. People


can access this storehouse through the chief during the scarcity of
food.
SOCIAL STATUS IN CHIEFDOMS
 Power and Status based on seniority of descent. Because rank, power,
prestige, and resources came through kinship and descent, Polynesian
chiefs kept extremely long genealogies.

 Some chiefs (without writing) managed to trace their ancestry back 50


generations. All the people in the chiefdom were thought be related to each
other. Presumably, all were descended from a group founding ancestors.

 The status of chief ascribed, based on seniority of descent.

 The Chief would be the oldest child (usually son) of the oldest child of the
oldest child, and so on.

 Differential access to resources also play a role of defining status.


STRATIFICATION IN CHIEFDOMS
 Mainly based on status.

 But that did not last too long. Chief soon after Chiefs would
start acting like kings and try to erode the kinship basis of the
chiefdom. In Madagascar, they would do this by demoting their
more distant relatives to commoner status and banning
marriage between nobles and commoners (Kottak 1980). Such
moves, if accepted by the society, created separate social strata
—unrelated groups that differ in their access to wealth, prestige,
and power.

 The creation of separate social strata is called stratification, and


its emergence signified the transition from chiefdom to state.
STRATIFICATION IN CHIEFDOMS
 Max Weber (1922/ 1968) defined three related dimensions of
social stratification:

 (1) Economic status, or wealth, encompasses all a person’s


material assets, including income, land, and other types of
property.

 (2) Power, the ability to exercise one’s will over others—to do


what one wants—is the basis of political status.

 (3) Prestige—the basis of social status—refers to esteem,


respect, or approval for acts, deeds, or qualities considered
exemplary. Prestige, or “cultural capital” (Bourdieu 1984),
STATE
 The state is a form of socio-political organization based on a
formal government structure and socioeconomic stratification.

 Definition of State:
 Robert Carneiro defines the state as “an autonomous political
unit encompassing many communities within its territory,
having a centralized government with the power to collect
taxes, draft men for work or war, and decree and enforce laws”
(Carneiro 1970, p. 733).

 The first states emerged in the Old World about 5,500 years
ago.
STATE
 State formation began in Mesopotamia (currently Iran and
Iraq). It next occurred in Egypt, the Indus Valley of Pakistan
and India, and northern China.

 A few thousand years later, states also arose in two parts of the
Western Hemisphere: Mesoamerica (Mexico, Guatemala,
Belize) and the central Andes (Peru and Bolivia).

 Early states are known as archaic states, or nonindustrial


states, in contrast to modern industrial nation-states.
SPECIALISED FUNCTION OF STATE
 Population control: fixing of boundaries,
establishment of citizenship categories, and the
taking of a census.

 Judiciary: laws, legal procedure, and judges.

 Enforcement: permanent military and police forces.

 Fiscal: taxation- Pertaining to finances and taxation.


SOCIAL CONTROL IN COMPLEX SOCIETIES
 those fields of the social system (beliefs, practices, and
institutions) that are most actively involved in the
maintenance of any norms and the regulation of any
conflict” (N. Kottak 2002, p. 290)

 The idea of Hegemony by Antonio Gramschi


a stratified social order in which subordinates comply with
domination by internalizing their rulers’ values and accepting the
“naturalness” of domination (this is the way things were meant to be)

 Both Bourdieu (1977) and Michel Foucault (1979) argue that it is


easier and more effective to dominate people in their minds than to
try to control their bodies
SOCIAL CONTROL IN COMPLEX SOCIETIES

Weapons of the Weak:


 James Scott (1990) uses
 “public transcript” to describe the open, public interactions
between superordinates and subordinates—the outer shell of power
relations.

 He uses “hidden transcript” to describe the critique of power that


goes on offstage, where the power holders can’t see it. In public, the
elites and the oppressed observe the etiquette of power relations.
SOCIAL CONTROL IN SIMPLE SOCIETIES
 Imaginedsocial script (Makua of Northern
Mozambique)

 Shame
Powerful social sanction. The case of Trobriand
Islander – incest
 Sorcery
Fear about death and attack
 Jail (punishment)
Punishment of certain activities.

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