Political Systems Chapter 8 of your book Dr. Md. Harisur Rahman Assistant Professor Dept. of Political Science and Sociology OBJECTIVES OF THIS LECTURE What kinds of political systems have existed worldwide? How does the state differ from other forms of political organization? What is social control, and how is it established and maintained in various societies? WHAT IS ‘‘THE POLITICAL’’? Anthropological approach towards political system is global and comparative, and includes nonstates as well as the states and nation-states usually studied by political scientists. Mahatma Gandhi, who fought for freedom from British colonial rule in India, and Martin Luther King, Jr., who fought for African American civil rights in the United States, were leaders with great authority who did not hold formal political office. Both men depended on persuasion and nonviolent methods of civil disobedience to achieve their political goals. Recognizing that political organization is sometimes just an aspect of social organization, Morton Fried offered this definition: Political Organization comprises those portions of social organization that specifically relate to the individuals or groups that manage the affairs of public policy or seek to control the appointment or activities of those individuals or groups. (Fried 1967, pp. 20–21) TYPES OF POLITICAL SYSTEMS The anthropologist Elman Service (1962) listed four types, or levels, of political organization: Band, Tribe Chiefdom and State. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=petJRCbi_QQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X8SESdMoXo COMPARATIVE TABLE OF VARIOUS ORGANIZATIONS POLITICAL BAND A band refers to a small kin-based group (all the members are related to each other by kinship or marriage ties) found among foragers. Foraging bands, small, nomadic or seminomadic social units, formed seasonally when component nuclear families got together. The particular families in a band varied from year to year. Marriage and kinship created ties between members of different bands. Trade and visiting also linked them. Band leaders were leaders in name only. In such an egalitarian society, they were first among equals. Sometimes they gave advice or made decisions, but they had no way to enforce their decisions. BAND Band sometimes may have structured systems of dealing with various political issues in the community: Conflict resolution among the Inuit: Methods of settling disputes. However, All societies have ways of settling disputes (of variable effectiveness) along with cultural rules or norms about proper and improper behavior. Lack of formal legal system in the sense of legal code with trial and enforcement. The absence of law did not entail total anarchy. Some bands had headmen. There were also shamans (parttime religious specialists). However, these positions conferred little power on those who occupied them. BAND Challenge for song battle: Insulting song Stealing wife Can have more than a wife The case of Inuit: Read the book for this case. P 187188. TRIBES Tribes had economies based on non-intensive food production (horticulture and pastoralism). Living in villages and organized into kin groups based on common descent (clans and lineages), tribes lacked a formal government and had no reliable means of enforcing political decisions. Tribes have organized by village life and/or membership in descent groups (kin groups whose members trace descent from a common ancestor). Tribes lack socioeconomic stratification (i.e., a class structure) and a formal government of their own. A few tribes still conduct small-scale warfare, in the form of inter-village raiding. TRIBES Tribes have more effective regulatory mechanisms than foragers do, but tribal societies have no sure means of enforcing political decisions. The main regulatory officials are village heads, “big men,” descent-group leaders, village councils, and leaders of pantribal associations. All these figures and groups have limited authority. Egalitarian society like foragers (Band societies), although some have marked gender stratification: an unequal distribution of resources, power, prestige, and personal freedom between men and women. TRIBES Horticultural villages are usually small, with low population density and open access to strategic resources. Age, gender, and personal traits determine how much respect people receive and how much support they get from others. Egalitarianism diminishes, however, as village size and population density increase. Horticultural villages usually have headmen—rarely, if ever, headwomen. TRIBES – VILLAGE HEAD Local tribal leader with limited authority. Among the Yanomami is that of village head (always a man). His authority, like that of a foraging band’s leader, is severely limited. If a headman wants something done, he must lead by example and persuasion. The headman lacks the right to issue orders. He can only persuade, harangue, and try to influence public opinion. He has no power to back his decisions and no way to impose punishments A headman sometimes can prevent a specific violent act, but there is no government to maintain order. TRIBES – VILLAGE HEAD Generosity: A Yanomami village headman also must lead in generosity. Because he must be more generous than any other villager, he cultivates more land. His garden provides much of the food consumed when his village holds a feast for another village. The headman represents the village in its dealings with outsiders. Sometimes he visits other villages to invite people to a feast. The way a person acts as headman depends on his personal traits and the number of supporters he can muster TRIBES – THE BIG MAN Generous tribal entrepreneur with multi-village support is known as the Big Man. The big man (almost always a male) was an elaborate version of the village head, but with one significant difference. The village head’s leadership is within one village; the big man had supporters in several villages. The big man therefore was a regulator of regional political organization. THE CASE OF A TONOWI (BIGMAN) FROM THE KAPAUKU PAPUANS LIVE IN IRIAN JAYA, INDONESIA. A tonowi achieved his status through hard work, amassing wealth in the form of pigs and other native riches. Characteristics that distinguished a big man from his fellows included wealth, generosity, eloquence, physical fitness, bravery, and supernatural powers. Men became big men because they had certain personalities. A man who was determined enough could become a big man, creating wealth through hard work and good judgment. His supporters, recognizing his past favors and anticipating future rewards, recognized him as a leader and accepted his decisions as binding. The “big man” persuades people to organize feasts, which distribute pork and wealth. Shown here is such a regional event, drawing on several villages, in Papua New Guinea. The bigman is an informal leader in many Melanesian cultures. Much of his influence is based on his ability to distribute resources, among which pigs are most important. 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 Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937; Book: Prison Notebooks” written between 1929 and 1935) Gramsci’s Hegemony and Control Hegemony implies the process of attaining consent via internalization, integration and co-optation rather than coercion. Hegemony is a control over various modes of symbolic production, which includes educational and ritual processes, patterns of socialization, political and legal procedures, canons of style and self-representation, public communication, health and bodily discipline, and so on. This control is not visible as it becomes part of every practice and convention. The ruling class becomes hegemonic through achieving both material “domination” and “intellectual and moral leadership”. Any kind of change in domination and moral leadership puts its hegemony at risk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMSlgrgmmTs MICHEL FOUCAULT’S POWER AND DOCILE BODY (BOOKS: DISCIPLINE AND PUNISH: THE BIRTH OF THE PRISON [1975]; THE BIRTH OF THE CLINIC: AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF MEDICAL PERCEPTION [1963]) Foucault’s three types of power: Sovereign, Disciplinary and Biopower The way state’s disciplinary power controls us SOCIAL CONTROL IN SIMPLE SOCIETIES Imagined social 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.
