Week 10: Political Organization Flashcards
Political Anthropology
- Political anthropologists study political systems and social control.
- There are different types of political organizations, including bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states.
- In polytechnic state societies, multicultural policies aim for an inclusive society.
Political organization is the way a society maintains order internally and manages affairs externally
The external affairs are like trade, international trades
How is power distributed and used within a society?
The authority to make someone do something illegal, like steal
How do societies regulate the power relations between their own and other groups?
Manipulate, persuade someone to do things
Power
- The ability to compel another person to do something that they would not do otherwise
- Coercive power
- Persuasive power
Authority
The use of legitimate or sanctioned power
Prestige
A social reward given to a person by others in the society
Function of political systems: All societies must maintain social order
Not an achieved status, deciding
All societies must develop a set of customs and procedures for enforcing decisions and resolving disputes.
How we all compete against each other, everything we do and have comes through cooperation with others
All societies must make collective decisions about the environment and its relations with other societies.
- Maintain social order
- Ways to make collective decisions, though voting
Internalized controls
Those values that guide our behaviour based on cultural or religious norms
Externalized controls
Threats that shape our behaviour from external sources
Sanctions
Punishments imposed on people
Political Organization
- 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
Types of Political Organization
- Uncentralized
- Centralized
Uncentralized
Systems have no central governing body; they rely on informal leaders or the group to solve problems
- Bands
- Tribes
Centralized
Systems have a ruling body that has obtained the authority to govern
- Chiefdoms
- States
Bands
- 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
Tribes
- 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.
Chiefdoms
- 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
States
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.
State societies
- 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)
Origin of the State
Domestication of plants and animals, shift to food production
Reliance on land, increased sedentary lifestyle
Discovery or accident?
Pressure for land
warfare
Increase in population density
vulnerability, social division and unrest
Increasing division of labour
Specialization
Pressure for water
ability to organize a large workforce (irrigation)
Social Inequality
- 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
Raid
When members of a group steal or recover items, animals, or people from another group in the same society
Feud
Ongoing violent relations between two groups in the same society
Warfare
Large-scale violent conflict
