Service’s fourfold typography of
political systems: Bands
Anthropology at UWC
Costa Rica
Sociopolitical Typology
developed by Service
These types (e.g Band,
Tribe etc.) are correlated
with the adaptive
strategies
(economic typology)
Economic Type
Sociopolitical Type
Foragers
Band
Horticulturalists and
Pastoralists
Tribe
Farming and Herding
Chiefdom
Agricultural Base
Non-Industrial State
Industrial Base
Industrial State
Foraging Bands
• Modern hunter-gather societies are remnants of
foraging band societies
• Key difference: strong ties they maintain with
sociopolitical groups outside the band make them
markedly different from Stone Age huntergatherers
• Modern foragers live in interlinked world and
nation states e.g. Pygmies of E Congo share
social world and economic exchanges with
cultivating neighbours
Case Study: Basarwa San
(Botswana)
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•
•
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The Basarwa San are an example of
foraging bands whose lives have been
impacted significantly by outside groups.
Basarwa San are affected by policies of
the government of Botswana, which
relocated them after converting their
ancestral lands into a wildlife reserve
(Motseta 2006).
The government of Botswana is not the
first to implement policies and systems
that affect the Basarwa San.
San speakers (“Bushmen”) of southern
Africa have been influenced by Bantu
speakers (farmers and herders) for 2,000
years and by Europeans for centuries.
Edward Wilmsen 1989
• Many San descend from herders who were pushed
into the desert by poverty or oppression.
• San today are a rural underclass in a larger
political and economic system dominated by
Europeans and Bantu food producers.
• As a result of this system, many San now tend
cattle for wealthier Bantu rather than foraging
independently. They also have domesticated
animals, indicating their movement away from
their foraging lifestyle.
Susan Kent (1992, 1996)
• Tendency to stereotype foragers, to treat them
all as alike.
• They used to be stereotyped as isolated,
primitive survivors of the Stone Age. A new
stereotype sees them as culturally deprived
people forced by states, colonialism, or world
events into marginal environments.
• Which view is most accurate?
• Although latter view often is exaggerated, it
probably is more accurate than the former one.
Variations in time and space
• Kent (1996) stresses variation among foragers, focusing on diversity
in time and space among the San. The nature of San life has
changed considerably since the 1950s and 1960s (Lee and Harvard
School)
• Most important contrasts between settled (sedentary) and nomadic
groups (Kent and Vierich 1989). Although sedentism has increased
substantially in recent years, some San groups (along rivers) have
been sedentary for generations.
• Others, including the Dobe Ju/’hoansi San (Lee 1984, 2003) and the
Kutse San (Kent 1996), retain more of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
Contemporary and recent hunter-gatherers like the San illustrate links
between foraging economy and other aspects of band society and
culture
• San groups that still are mobile emphasize social,
political and gender equality (traditional band
characteristics)
• A social system based on kinship, reciprocity, and
sharing is appropriate for an economy with few people
and limited resources.
• The nomadic pursuit of wild plants and animals
discourages permanent settlement, wealth
accumulation, and status distinctions. (Families and
bands have been adaptive social units e.g people have
to share meat when they get it otherwise it rots)
Conflict resolution in stateless
societies: Case Study - Inuit
• All societies have ways of settling disputes (of
variable effectiveness) along with cultural rules or
norms about proper and improper behavior.
• Norms are cultural standards or guidelines that
enable individuals to distinguish between
appropriate and inappropriate behavior in a given
society.
• While rules and norms are cultural universals, only
state societies, those with established
governments, have formal laws that are
formulated, proclaimed, and enforced.
Hoebel (1954): Conflict Resolution amongst
the Inuit
• Sparse population of some 20,000 Inuit
spanned 6,000 miles (9,500 kilometers) of
the Arctic region.
• The most significant social groups were
the nuclear family and the band.
• Personal relationships linked the families
and bands. Some bands had headmen
and/or shamans
• These positions conferred little power on
those who occupied them.
Role of gender in conflict
• Hunting and fishing by men were the primary subsistence
activities.
• The diverse and abundant plant foods available in warmer
areas, where female labor in gathering is important, were
absent in the Arctic.
• Traveling on land and sea in a bitter environment, Inuit men
faced more dangers than women did.
• The traditional male role took its toll in lives, so that adult
women outnumbered men.
• This permitted some men to have two or three wives. Ability to
support more than one wife conferred a certain amount of
prestige, but it also encouraged envy.
• If a man seemed to be taking additional wives just to enhance
his reputation, a rival was likely to steal one of them. Most
disputes were between men and originated over women,
caused by wife stealing or adultery.
What could a jilted husband do?
• He could try to kill the wife stealer.
• However, if he succeeded, one of his
rival’s kinsmen would try to kill him in
retaliation.
• One dispute could escalate into several
deaths as relatives avenged a succession
of murders.
• No government existed to intervene and
stop a blood feud
A better alternative…
• Could challenge a rival to a song battle. In a
public setting, contestants made up insulting
songs about each other.
• At the end of the match, the audience
proclaimed the winner.
• However, if a man whose wife had been
stolen won, there was no guarantee she
would return (often she stayed with her
abductor)
The problem of theft
• Thefts are common in societies with marked property
differentials, but thefts are uncommon among foragers.
•
Each Inuit had access to the resources needed to sustain life.
Every man could hunt, fish, and make the tools necessary for
subsistence.
• Every woman could obtain the materials needed to make
clothing, prepare food, and do domestic work. Inuit men could
even hunt and fish in the territories of other local groups.
• There was no notion of private ownership of territory or
animals.