9. Politics & Power Flashcards
Political organization?
The way a society maintains order internally and managers affairs externally
How does politics relate to a wide range of actions and relationships that has to do with power?
Individuals, parent &kid, teacher & student
Larger groups, communities, nations
What do cultural anthologies look at when examining politics and power?
How power is distributed and used within a society
How societies regulate the power relations between their own and other groups
Power?
The ability to compel another person to do something that he or she would not do otherwise
Threat of punishment
Promise of reward
What does the use or misuse of power lead to?
Unequal social status and distribution of resources
What are the two main ways of power?
Coercively, physical force or threat
Persuasively, changing someone’s behavior through argumentation using religious or cultural beliefs
Authority?
The use of legitimate power
Prestige?
A type of social reward that can only be given to a person bt others, Positive reputation or high regard
Internalized control?
Impulses that guide a person towards the right behavior based on a moral system
Cultural/religious norms
External controls?
Rules that regulate behavior by encouraging conformity to social norms; negative (punishments) or positive (rewards) imposed from outside the social group
Sanctions?
Punishments that results from breaking rules, informal or formal
Gossip?
Effective informal social sanction
Two types of political systems?
Make decisions collectively - uncentralized
Concentrated power - centralized
Uncentralized power + what society?
A political system with no centralized governing body and in which decisions are made by the community
Smaller, more homogeneous societies: Band and tribes
How are rights and responsibilities organized in decentralized political systems?
Along family lines
Centralized system + what society
A political system with a centralized governing body that has the power to use authority
Larger more complex, heterogeneous societies: States and chiefdoms
Cultural materialism?
An anthropological theory-guided by the idea that the external pressures of the environment dictate cultural practices.
And if adaptations are neccessart for the society’s organization to survive in its environment
Four different kinds of societies?
Bands
Tribes
Chiefdom
State
Band?
Small egalitarian society of food foragers who live and travel together
Decentralized power, enforced by social sanctions -> informal community control
Tribes?
Higher population density, living in separate villages spread out over a wide area
Decentralized power, horticulturalists or pastoralists
What is it that ties villages together by real or fictive kinship and language?
Clan membership to a common ancestor, real or mythical
Who has the power in a decentralized system?
Can be egalitarian or have a ranked system
Leaders based on skills, experience or being born in a high-status clan
Ranked system?
Hereditary positions of status and prestige are passed down family lines.
Equal access to resources but more effort = elevated social position
Age sets?
Groups that bring people together based on age and common concerns
