Politics, Power, and
Violence
Part III
Political Organization and the
Maintenance of Order:
Political organization always includes means
of maintaining order that ensure people
behave in acceptable ways and define what
action will be taken when they do not.
 In chiefdoms and states, some sort of
authority has the power to regulate the
affairs of society.
 In bands and tribes, however, people behave
generally as they are expected to, without
the direct intervention of any centralized
political authority.

Wape of Papua New Guinea

Among the Wape people of Papua New Guinea,
they believe that spirits of deceased ancestors
roam lineage lands, protecting them from
trespassers and helping their hunting
descendants by driving game their way
– For the Wape, successful hunting depends upon
avoiding quarrels and maintaining tranquility within
the community so as not to antagonize anybody’s
deceased ancestor
Internalized Controls:

The Wape concern about ancestral spirits is a
good example of internalized, or cultural,
controls
– Cultural controls: control through beliefs and
values deeply internalized in the minds of
individuals.
– Social control: external control through open
coercion.
Internalized Controls
Cultural controls are embedded in our
consciousness and may rely on deterrents
such as fear of supernatural punishment,
ancestral spirits sabotaging the hunting for
example, and magical retaliation.
 Cultural controls can also be framed in
positive terms, with customary ways and
means that encourage individual sacrifice
for the common good.

Externalized Controls

Sanction: an externalized social control
designed to encourage conformity to
social norms.
– These are designed to encourage conformity
to social norms.

For sanctions to be effective, they cannot
be arbitrary.
– They bust be applied consistently

They must be generally known among
members of the society
Externalized Controls
Positive sanctions consist of incentives to
conformity such as awards, titles, and
recognition by one’s neighbors.
 Negative sanctions consist of threats such as
imprisonment, fines, corporal punishment, or
ostracism from the community for violation of
social norms.
 Sanctions may also be categorized as either
formal or informal, depending on whether or
not a legal statute is involved.

Social Control through Witchcraft:

In societies with or without centralized
political systems, witchcraft sometimes
functions as an agent of social control and
involves both internal and external controls.
– An individual will think twice before offending a
neighbor if convinced that the neighbor could
retaliate by resorting to black magic.
– Similarly, individuals may not wish to be accused
of practicing witchcraft, and so they behave with
greater circumspection.
Song Duels
Having a song duel is the traditional approach to
dispute resolution among the Inuit of northern
Canada.
 The goal is for social harmony to be restored
rather than assigning and punishing guilt.

Social Control through Law:

In Western society, by contrast, someone
who commits an offense against another
person may become subject to a series of
complex legal proceedings.
– In criminal cases the primary concern is to
assign and punish guilt rather than to help out
the victim
Definition of Law:
If every law is a sanction but not every sanction is
a law, how are we to distinguish between social
sanctions in general and those to which we apply
the label “law”?
 The definition of law has been a lively point of
contention among anthropologists.
 In 1926, Bronislaw Malinowski argued that the
rules of law are distinguished from the rules of
custom

– his failure to distinguish adequately between legal and
nonlegal sanctions left the problem of formulating a
workable definition of law in the hands of later
anthropologists.
Definition of Law:

Ultimately, it is always of greatest value to
consider each case within its cultural
context.
– After all, law reflects a society’s basic
postulates, so to understand any society’s
laws; one must understand the underlying
values and assumptions.

Law is adequately characterized as formal
rules of conduct that, when violated, lead
to negative sanctions.
Functions of Law

There are three basic functions of law.
– First, it defines relationships among society’s
members and marks out proper behavior under
specified circumstances.
– Second, law allocates the authority to employ
coercion in the enforcement of sanctions.
– Third, law functions to redefine social relations and
toe ensure social flexibility.
Functions of Law
Law, if it is to operate efficiently, must
allow room for change.
 In practice, law is never as neat as a
written description about it.

– In any given society, people are usually
members of various subgroups, and fall under
the varied dictates of these diverse groups.
Crime:
In Western societies a clear distinction is
made between offenses against the state
and offenses against the individual.
 In non-state societies such as bands and
tribes, all offenses are viewed as
transgressions against individuals of kingroups.
 The goal of judicial proceedings in such
instances is restoring social harmony
rather than punishing an offender

Settling Disputes

First, disputing parties may, through
argument and compromise, voluntarily arrive
at a mutually satisfactory agreement.
– Negotiation: the use of direct argument and
compromise by the parties to a dispute to arrive
voluntarily at a mutually satisfactory agreement
– Mediation: settlement of a dispute through
negotiation assisted by an unbiased third party
Settling Disputes

Second, in chiefdoms and states, an
authorized third party may issue a binding
decision that the disputing parties will be
compelled to respect.
– Adjudication: mediation with an unbiased
third party making the ultimate decision.

Often negotiation acts as a prerequisite or
an alternative to adjudication.
Settling Disputes

Among the Kpelle of Liberia, for example,
when guilt is in doubt an “ordeal operator”
licensed by the government may apply a
hot knife to a suspect’s leg.
– As the knife is applied, once a judgment has
been made, it is manipulated to either burn or
not burn the suspect.

This is similar to the use of lie detectors in
the United States.
Restorative Justice and Conflict
Resolution:
Native communities have pressed especially for
restorative justice techniques such as the Talking
Circle, traditionally used by Native American
groups.
 In the United States, over the past three
decades there has been significant movement
away from courts in favor of outside negotiation
and mediation to resolve a wide variety of
disputes.

Restorative Justice and Conflict
Resolution:
In tribal and band societies, agreement is
less likely to be coercive because all
concerned individuals can negotiate and
mediate on relatively equal terms.
 The United States, by contrast, has great
disparities in power, and evidence
indicates that it is the stronger parties that
prefer mediation and negotiation.

Question

A method of resolving disputes in which
the disputing parties voluntarily arrive at
a mutually satisfactory agreement is
called
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
negotiation.
mediation.
adjudication.
use of sanctions.
law.
Answer: A

A method of resolving disputes in which
the disputing parties voluntarily arrive at a
mutually satisfactory agreement is called
negotiation.
Question

In _____________, two parties present
their grievances, but do not take part in
the resolution of the dispute.
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
deception.
the development of a court system.
negotiation.
mediation.
adjudication.
Answer: E

In adjudication, two parties present
their grievances, but do not take part in
the resolution of the dispute.
Violent Conflict and Warfare:
Although the regulation of internal affairs is an
important function of any political system, it is
by no means the sole function.
 Another is the management of external affairs,
relations not just among different states but
among different bands, lineages, clans, or
whatever the largest autonomous political unit
may be.
 And just as the threatened or actual use of force
may be used to maintain order within a society,
it also may be used in the conduct of external
affairs

Violent Conflict and Warfare:
Organized violence in the form or war is
responsible for enormous suffering and
deliberate destruction of life and property.
 In the past 5,000 years or so, some
14,000 wars have been fought, resulting
in many hundreds of millions of
causalities.

Violent Conflict and Warfare:

Generally, we may distinguish among
different motives, objectives, methods,
and scales or warfare as organized
violence.
– Some societies engage in defensive wars only
and avoid armed confrontations.
– Others initiate aggressive wars to pursue
particulate strategic objectives.
– In some cultures, aggressive wars are waged
for ideological reasons.
Why do wars occur?

Some argue that males of the human
species are naturally aggressive.

Others believe that warfare among
humans, as well as aggressive group
behavior among apes, may be situation
specific rather than an unavoidable
expression of biological predispositions
Why do wars occur?
We have ample reason to suppose that war has
become a problem only in the last 10,000 years,
since the invention of food-production
techniques and especially since the formation of
centralized states 5,000 years ago.
 It has reached crisis proportions in the past 200
years, with the invention of modern weaponry
and increased direction of violence against
civilian populations.

Warfare was all but unknown until
recent times.

There are several reasons for this
– territorial boundaries and membership among
food-foraging bands are usually fluid and
loosely defined
– systematic exchange of marriage partners
among food-foraging groups
– absence of food surplus among foragers
makes prolonged combat difficult
– worldview in which people perceive
themselves as part of the natural world rather
than superior to it
Warfare was all but unknown until
recent times.

It is among farmers and pastoralists that
warfare becomes prominent.
– more exploitative worldview that do food foragers
– more prone to population growth than are food
foragers
– Population growth can lead to resource depletion,
one solution to which may be seizure of some
other people’s resources
– commitment to a fixed piece of land inherent in
farming makes such societies somewhat less fluid
Violent Conflict and Warfare:

Much (but not all) of the warfare that has
been observed in recent stateless societies
(so-called tribe warfare) has been induced by
states as a reaction to colonial expansion.
– With the emergence of states has come a
dramatic increase in the scale of warfare.
– Many contemporary wars are not between states
but often occur within countries where the
government is either corrupt, ineffective, or
without popular support.
Child Soldiers

Today, there are more than 250,000 child
soldiers, many as young as 12 years old.
Among them are these boys training to be
guerrillas in Sahel, Eritrea.
Violent Conflict and Warfare:

The following examples offer some
specific data:
– Between 1975 and 1979, Khmer Rouge
soldiers in Cambodia murdered 1.7 million
fellow citizens, or 20% of that country’s
population.
– In the 1990s, between 2 and 3 million died
due to warfare in the southern Sudan.
– Between 1998 and 2003 5 million died in the
war in Congo.