Conflict, ‘Cohesion’
and Change
Gluckman and Leach
Max Gluckman
• Taught and influenced by RB and EP
• Grew up in South Africa; concerned about the system
of apartheid that had emerged there.
• First analysis was of Zulu society:
• Saw it as being shaped overall by colonial relations.
Introduced a concern with power and oppression.
• Also interested in segmentary opposition within Zulu
society.
• Ruled by a king, but periodic rebellions against the
king:
• “They were not revolutions, but rebellions against the
king in the name of the king.” Ultimately reinforced the
office itself.
• Social cohesion is not always present: Zulu kingdoms
characterized by periods of stability and periods of
conflict
Victor Turner: Social
Dramas and ‘Performance’
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Study of Ndembu society in central Africa.
Structural tensions in Ndembu society:
Matrilineal and patrilocal.
Contradiction in the roles of men as:
– Members of a matrilineage.
– Women married out.
– Fathers, brothers, sons.
• Ambitious men tried to bring both their own sons and their
nephews into their own residences.
• Used extended case studies of tensions, quarrels, and their
reconciliation to illustrate how these contradictions were
resolved.
• Saw ‘social cohesion’ or ‘social order’ as an emergent property
from the reconciliation of social dramas.
Edmund Leach and
Social Change
• Studied under Malinowski.
• Major study was in the mountains of
Burma, today known as Kampuchea.
Also did fieldwork in Sri Lanka.
• Strongly criticized equilibrium models
of RB and EP.
• Saw anthropological models as ideal
models of other people’s ideal models
of their social system
Models of Political
Organization in the
Kachin Hills
• Political/Social Organization: Within the Kachin Hill
Area, there are three distinct ‘models’ of society:
• I. The egalitarian gumlao
• II. The Shan feudal Autocracy
• III. Intermediate: the gumsa
• Ecological differences between the Shan and the
Kachin
• Shan were involved in irrigated rice agriculture: had
centralized states, Buddhism, literacy.
• Kachin practised shifting agriculture: no centralized
states, little surplus production, organized through
patrilineages.
Not equilibrium, but
change characterized
their interrelations
• Kachin Hill area characterized not by equilibrium, but by an
‘unstable equilibirum’ in continual oscillation:
• Between Gumsa and Gumlao, between social hierarchies and
radical egalitarianism.
• I. Gumlao: all are of the same status, no village or domain chiefs,
social and linguistic factionalism.
• II. Gumsa: ideal model is a feudal state, ranked hierarchy in status
and politics. Languages ranked in a status hierarchy, with
Jinghpaw being the language of the aristocracy.
• Both Gumlao and Gumsa communities are unstable, because they
contain elements in tension with each other, I.e. internal
contradictions
Contradictions in the
Kachin Hills
• Status relationship between those lineages who
gave brides and those who received them; wifegivers were of higher status and treated wife-giving
lineages as vassals.
• At a certain point the wife-giving lineages rebelled
and set up egalitarian villages.
• However, the kinship terminology continued to
differentiate between wife-givers and wifereceivers.
• Slowly, a ranked and status-based society emerged
again over several generations.
• Continual oscillation between these two models.
Leach and Descent
Groups in Pul Eliya, Sri
Lanka
• Irrigated rice agriculture; the land-possessing group
was the variga, or sub-caste, that consisted of a
number of patrilineages.
• Kinship rule was that all land should remain within the
possession of the variga and not be sold or inherited
outside it.
• Yet, in quite a few cases, men moved into Pul Eliya to
live with their wives’ fathers if they did not have land
themselves.
• In these cases, the man would be adopted into the
variga, so that by a ‘legal’ fiction the system worked.
• Leach saw descent groups in Pul Eliya as
epiphenomenal, i.e. as emerging out of decisions made
by individuals regarding residence after marriage.
Conclusions
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Emphasis here is on points of conflict and tension, as well as cohesion, in
society; and how this promoted either:
1. Long-term equilibrium, e.g. in rituals of rebellion against the Zulu king.
2. Long-term structural change, e.g. in the oscillating structures of Kachin
political organization.
Change also results from powerful external influences, such as colonialism.
a. Although the source of change might be external, the final result was
influenced by the social structures and patterns found in a local society.
b. Emphasis on individuals and their actions, and how this produced and
reproduced social institutions or led to social change.
c. Individuals are seen not merely as embodiments of set social roles, but as
creative and manipulative, using social norms to their own advantage and in
the process, creating social change.
d. Often, the social structures that emerged through individual actions were
unconsciously produced.