Kinship, Friendship, and Patron-Client Relations in Complex Societies
University Press Scholarship Online
California Scholarship Online
Pathways of Power: Building an Anthropology of
the Modern World
Eric Wolf
Print publication date: 2001
Print ISBN-13: 9780520223332
Published to California Scholarship Online: May 2012
DOI: 10.1525/california/9780520223332.001.0001
Kinship, Friendship, and Patron-Client Relations in Complex Societies
Eric R. Wolf
DOI:10.1525/california/9780520223332.003.0013
The anthropologist's study of complex societies receives its major justification from the fact that
such societies are not as well organized and tightly knit. There are political resources that are
essential to the operation of the system. This chapter explores in detail the dialectical interplay
between formal structures and the different kinds of informal associations among persons
operating within the structures of structural-functionalist titleholders. The formal framework of
economic and political power exists alongside or intermingled with various other kinds of
informal structures that are interstitial, supplementary, or parallel to it. This study presents a
great deal of information about the hidden mechanisms of complex societies. Tracing the origin
and circulation of the models of etiquette structuring these sets would also reveal much of the
social dynamic, of the changing distribution of forces in the social body.
Keywords: formal structures, informal associations, structural-functionalist titleholders, complex societies, social
body
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PRINTED FROM CALIFORNIA SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.california.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright University of
California Press, 2014. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single
chapter of a monograph in CALSO for personal use (for details see http://california.universitypressscholarship.com/page/535/privacypolicy-and-legal-notice). Subscriber: Cornell University; date: 12 September 2016