Week 10: Political Organization

Question 1

Political Anthropology

Answer 1

1. Political anthropologists study political systems and social control.
2. There are different types of political organizations, including bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states.
3. In polytechnic state societies, multicultural policies aim for an inclusive society.

Question 2

Political organization is the way a society maintains order internally and manages affairs externally

Answer 2

The external affairs are like trade, international trades

Question 3

How is power distributed and used within a society?

Answer 3

The authority to make someone do something illegal, like steal

Question 4

How do societies regulate the power relations between their own and other groups?

Answer 4

Manipulate, persuade someone to do things

Question 5

Power

Answer 5

• The ability to compel another person to do something that they would not do otherwise
• Coercive power
• Persuasive power

Question 6

Authority

Answer 6

The use of legitimate or sanctioned power

Question 7

Prestige

Answer 7

A social reward given to a person by others in the society

Question 8

Function of political systems: All societies must maintain social order

Answer 8

Not an achieved status, deciding

Question 9

All societies must develop a set of customs and procedures for enforcing decisions and resolving disputes.

Answer 9

How we all compete against each other, everything we do and have comes through cooperation with others

Question 10

All societies must make collective decisions about the environment and its relations with other societies.

Answer 10

• Maintain social order
• Ways to make collective decisions, though voting

Question 11

Internalized controls

Answer 11

Those values that guide our behaviour based on cultural or religious norms

Question 12

Externalized controls

Answer 12

Threats that shape our behaviour from external sources

Question 13

Sanctions

Answer 13

Punishments imposed on people

Question 14

Political Organization

Answer 14

• The ways in which public decision-making, leadership, maintenance of social cohesion and order, protection of group rights, and safety from external threats are handled.
• Anthropologists identify these as political systems or political organizations.
• Sociologists, Political Scientists, Archaeologists and other scholars also examine questions related to political systems and the ways that human groups arrange these spheres of shared existence

Question 15

Types of Political Organization

Answer 15

• Uncentralized
• Centralized

Question 16

Uncentralized

Answer 16

Systems have no central governing body; they rely on informal leaders or the group to solve problems
- Bands
- Tribes

Question 17

Centralized

Answer 17

Systems have a ruling body that has obtained the authority to govern
- Chiefdoms
- States

Question 18

Bands

Answer 18

• Political integration is based on kinship and friendship, that is, members are connected by marriage, descent, friendship, and common interest.
• Membership is flexible, there are mechanisms for people to live with a different band among their general group

Question 19

Tribes

Answer 19

• A more complex type of acephalous society than a band.
  Population size increases with a shift in subsistence pattern from foraging to horticulture or pastoralism
  Kinship ties and friendship are no longer sufficient to hold society together.
• New forms of societal integration and social control emerge to settle disputes and hold the growing population together.

Question 20

Chiefdoms

Answer 20

• Ranked societies.
• Have a permanent, full-time leader with real authority to make major decisions for their societies.
• Increased ability to accumulate surplus
• Larger population and geographical area

Question 21

States

Answer 21

State-level political systems first appeared in societies with large-scale intensive agriculture. They began as chiefdoms and then evolved into more centralized, authoritarian kingdoms when their populations grew into tens of thousands of people. While chiefdoms are societies in which everyone is ranked relative to the chief, states are socially stratified into largely distinct classes in terms of wealth, power, and prestige.

Question 22

State societies

Answer 22

• Stratified with pronounced social, economic, and political divisions
• Membership is based on citizenship and territory
• Ethnic and cultural diversity
  (Genocide, Segregation, Assimilation, Integration, and Cultural Pluralism)

Question 23

Origin of the State

Answer 23

Domestication of plants and animals, shift to food production

Question 24

Reliance on land, increased sedentary lifestyle

Answer 24

Discovery or accident?

Question 25

Pressure for land

Answer 25

warfare

Question 25

Increase in population density

Answer 25

vulnerability, social division and unrest

Question 26

Increasing division of labour

Answer 26

Specialization

Question 26

Pressure for water

Answer 26

ability to organize a large workforce (irrigation)

Question 27

Social Inequality

Answer 27

• Social stratification is the ranking of members of society into a hierarchy
• Class systems allow for social mobility
• Caste systems ascribe status at birth
• Water is a human right that is becoming increasingly controlled by powerful corporations

Question 28

Raid

Answer 28

When members of a group steal or recover items, animals, or people from another group in the same society

Question 29

Feud

Answer 29

Ongoing violent relations between two groups in the same society

Question 30

Warfare

Answer 30

Large-scale violent conflict