Lecture 15: Politics Flashcards
Power
The ability to exercise one’s will over others
Authority
The formal, socially approved use of power
To engage in politics people must do two things at once
- Contain, channel, exploit, and resolve conflict
- Limit, encourage, exploit, and regulate cooperation
Why? •must cooperate to produce (and reproduce) and all modes of production are based on divisions of labor and forms of inequality that lead to conflict
•Politics is the means through which conflict and cooperation are regulated as part of a larger context of social (re)production
Max Weber
distinguished three dimensions of stratification
• Wealth => economic status
• Power => political status
• Prestige => social status
Elman Service
4 types/levels of political organization
- Bands
- Tribes
- Chiefdoms
- States
- see Table 17.2
Caveats and Disclaimers: not the same at all times and places
this typology has correlations that are often interlinked, including Cohen’s typology of adaptive strategies
Bands
-mode of production/adaptive strategy: foraging
-leadership: N/A “leader amongst equals”
-small, kin-based groups
-Commonly found among foragers, e.g. the !Kung
-Division of Labor based on differences in age and sex
-Division of Labor based on differences in age and sex
•Have flexible membership and egalitarian, informal relations among members
•Social system is based on kinship, reciprocity, and sharing
-resolving conflict: bands lack a formalized system of law, but all societies have NORMS that enable individuals to distinguish appropriate behavior
Inuit
- bands example
- hunting and fishing are the primary subsistence activities commonly done by men
- egalitarian
- most important social units are the nuclear family
- women outnumber men
- Men permitted to have multiple wives (polygyny)
- most disputes are b/w men and women
- men abduct women, but the wronged man has options
- murder (brings retaliation, negative reciprocity)
- song battle (insulting) but wife might not return**
tribes
- horticulturalists and pastoralists
- division of labor and forms of inequality are based on differences in age and sex (like among bands), but new ways of defining difference emerge
- Kinship is increasingly lineal (and less flexible) in orientation
- Live in villages and are organized into descent groups
- No formal government and no reliable means of enforcing political decisions
- No clearly defined social classes
- The main regulatory officials are village heads, “big men,” descent-group leaders, village councils, and leaders of pantribal associations
- Officials have limited authority and lead through persuasion and by example, not through coercion
- Tribal leadership is an ACHIEVED STATUS rather than an ascribed status
tribal leaders
- Village Head (Yanomamo, PNG Big Man Ongka: encourages gift(moka) giving/shames people into giving more)
- The “Big Man”: larger scale village head, represents multiple villages, sometimes claims supernatural power
- Pantribal Sodalities (e.g. Mendeand Maasai)
chiefdoms
-Sociopolitical organization intermediate between the tribe and the state
-Like bands and tribes, social relations in chiefdoms are based mainly on kinship, marriage, descent, age, generation, and gender
-Unlike bands and tribes, chiefdoms have differential access to resources (i.e. social stratification), and a permanent political structure
-More pronounced forms of inequality, and a more elaborate division of labor
-Some families and lineages are considered superior to others
•Chiefs regulate a regional economy through CHIEFLY REDISTRIBUTION
•The division of society into higher and lower “ranks” is still accomplished using an idiom of kinship, but the stage is set for more radical forms of inequality
-The position of chief was a permanent position (i.e. an OFFICE) that must be refilled when it is vacated due to death or retirement
-Social status in chiefdoms was based on seniority of descent
-Primogeniture
-Endogamy(marrying within the group)
FEW if ANY chiefdoms remaining. US destroyed Hawaii’s in late 19th century
states
Autonomous political units with social strata and a formal government
•In agricultural and industrial societies, the elite can dispense with the idea that they are related genealogically to subordinate social groups
•Power, Wealth, and Prestige are monopolized by the ruling elites and by functionaries who depend on elites for support
•Superordinate vs. Subordinate
•Social Stratification is codified in law
The state is driven (and sustained) by four practical activities:
- POPULATION CONTROL: borders, census
- JUDICIAL POLICY
- ENFORCEMENT
- FISCAL SUPPORT: printing money
Band-Tribe-Chiefdom-State Continuum
Movement along the band-tribe-chiefdom-state continuum is related to several shifts:
- The growing complexity of food production and the size of production surpluses
- The growth of political associations that are larger than kinship and are defined in ways that transcend (or limit) kinship
- The emergence of permanent offices as opposed to personality-based leadership roles
- The development of “politics” as a specialized activity as opposed to one dimension of more general forms of social interaction
- The establishment of larger, more densely concentrated human populations
- Increasing levels of social inequality
Paradoxes
- We live in a society marked by radical, permanent inequality sanctioned by law, yet most Americans are convinced that we live in a “free society”
- We are obsessed with ideas of equality, personal autonomy, universal human rights, and choice
Why do we think this way, when most of us control very little of the political world in which we live? (top 1-5%)
•Are we simply deluding ourselves?
•Alternatively, is it a mistake to describe bands, tribes, and chiefdoms as societies in which people have greater control over the political world in which they live?
•Is an Inuit person any more “free” than you are? A Yanomamo person? Maasai? Mende? !Kung?
