XP1422 Politics, Law and Power Anthropologists and political scientists alike affirm the precept that all societies must maintain social order and control over time if they are to remain viable and continuous. All cieties have developed a means for making and enforcing decisions, resolving disputes, regulating the behavior of persons within its political and geographic jurisdiction, defending its boundaries, and resolving conflicts with other communities or nations. These topics generally are discussed under the headings of political organization, law, power, authority, social control, and conflict resolution Europeans assume politics and political processes to include: 1) political leaders such as presidents, governors, mayors, or commissioners; 2) complex bureaucracies and regulations; 3)legislative and administrative agencies; 4)formal judicial proceedings involving municipal, state and federal courts; 5) law enforcement bodies such as police, national guard and the armed forces, etc. We are familiar with all of these institutions as means of political control and power. However, many societies in the world maintain none of these offices and agencies as part of their political organization. However, political organization -defined as a set of customary procedures that accomplish decision making, conflict resolution, and social control are found in varying forms among different peoples Social action involving dimensions of power and law always involve the question of"what is politics? Is law synonymous with politics, and can you have law without establishing the legal precedent common to North American and European courts? Does politics al ways evolve the use of power? How and when is power legitimized, and is it always sanctioned by the state? Politics and power are often considered synonymous; but are they always one and the same thing? Can you have one without the other? Power has been defined as the ability to coerce or persuade someone else to do what you want them to do, such as Marlon Brandos famous phrase in the Godfather, "Make him an offer he can't refuse "And are rituals ever political? Indeed, because ritual is usually identified with religion and, since modern Western societies have presumably separated political affairs from religious life, there is an assumption that ritual remains politically significant only in less"advanced "societies. In fact, Thomas Hobbes stated that order life can only exist where there is central government, or within the state ithout the state, he proclaimed, life is carnal, short, and brutish. Politics is concerned with the aking of policy and decisions which affect how people order their affairs and control their resources. How are such decisions arrived at and by whom; how are those who make these decisions appointed, controlled and replaced; what are the limits to their actions? In this unit, I will try and coax you to believe that political actions and symbolism are often laden with religious content and meaning, and are expressed through ritual and rites Types of political Organization Band organization This is the simplest of social and political organizations. Band societies are hunting and gathering societies that come together annually to carry out joint ritual and economic activities
The Ojibwa of the forests of the eastern subarctic in Canada had this type of political organization. Throughout most of the year, families and small groups roamed from one hunting region to another. During summer months, the entire band came together on the shores of a lake and there performed various ritual feasts, and they also hunted as a larger group for the summer During this time, several men had influence and were political decision makers for the group as a hole. A number of other societies operate at this level, between having no identifiable political organization much of the time-and having political organization within the lineage Australian aborigines Australia is the only continent in the modern world to have been occupied exclusively by tribal foragers. Archaeologists have obtained absolute dates of 50,000-60,000 BP for human occupation in northern Australia using thermoluminescence Genetic evidence suggests that the ancestors of Australian aborigines must have come from S.E. Asia, but it will never be known precisely how they crossed the 44 mile stretch of open waterway that separated the closest Asian islands from Australia. This crossing likely occurred during the Ice Age when Australia and New Guinea were connected by the Sahul Shelf. Any evidence of migration there has been removed by rising waters Australia is the size of the U.S., but lacks any major rivers and mountains. It has been called the driest continent in the world. It is situated in the dry latitudes between the temperate and tropical zones, and rainfall is low and extremely variable. Aridity is the principal factor limiting the density and diversity of organisms, including foraging humans, throughout the continent. In the desert center, scarcity of water limits both plant and animal foods, and it determines human population movements and density. However, conditions are most extreme in the Western Desert, where there is no real seasonality or predictability in rainfall. Here, drought conditions may continue for years. People watch the clouds and rely on their detailed knowledge of the locations of specific rock holes and basins as they plan their nomadic movements. richard Gould states that population densities there are among the lowest for foragers in the world, verging less than 0.01 person per square kilometer. Joseph Birdsell has asserted that soon after immigration aborigines reached the maximum potential population that could be supported by their foraging technology throughout Australia and then maintained a constant balance between population and resources. Others say this balance was obtained more gradually Whatever the rate, it is accurate to say that human population densities varied directly with rainfall and were greatest in the biologically rich coastal regions, especially in the tropical north and east. Population densities remained quite low in the dry interior and in the west Because of the ratios of people to land, Australian aboriginal society offers a test case for the proposition that foraging peoples are(or were)more"in balance "with the environment than village farmers or large-scale societies. This adds to the thesis that the foraging way of life has existed much longer than any other Some scholars have noted the presence of infanticide among Australians, claiming that it was the
means of birth control under which a woman often limited the number of children she had under the age of four in order to allow for migration Tribal, or Lineage Based Societies: "Ordered Anarchy:" ribes are one step up from bands in their complexity. a tribe is a political group that comprises several bands or lineage groups, which occupy a distinct territory. These groups may be united through a clan structure in which most people claim descent from a common ancestor although a precise genealogy to that ancestor is not always possible. Tribal organization developed about 12,000 years ago; and they are found in the Middle East, South Asia, S.E. Asia, the Pacific, Africa, and in North and South america A tribal headman -most of whom are men -is more effective than a band leader a headman coordinates times of hunting, moving herds, and planting and harvesting crops, as well as establishing the time of seasonal feasts and rituals. the headman generally relies on political persuasion rather than physical force Horticultural tribes rarely join forces in any sort of struggle; however, this move is quite common for pastoral tribes- who link into a confederacy, with local units or segments which will maintain political autonomy. In cases of external threat, the confederacy gathers together. Once the threat dissipates, the confederacy disunites into its more common tribal groups. The overall equality and autonomy of each unit in relation to the others, along with their ability to unite and then disunite, is referred to as a segmentary model of political organization. In a segmentary system, individuals belong to a series of different descent units. These units correspond to different genealogical levels and function in different social contexts. The most basic level is the minimal lineage, comprising three to five generations. Members at this level generally live together, consider themselves to be close kin, and cooperate on a daily basis. They also form the basis of an alliance network which is activated under only rare circumstances of feud, warfare and broad social disruption. Minimal lineages are the bottom level of this hierarchy, which then builds into minor lineages, major lineages, and then maximal lineages. When disputes occur between individuals of different segments, people are expected to side with the disputant to whom they are most closely related. Thus, those who are on opposite ends of a contest or struggle at the level of minimal lineage may be united in contests at the level of minor or major lineage Growth of the mafia The growth, expansion and membership in the mafia may be understood only within the cultural economic and historic circumstances of W. Sicily in the latter half of the nineteenth cent Briefly, the relevant cultural criteria relevant to mafiosi include cleverness, honor and friendship The clever man, especially in business, is cunning; he uses his astuteness to serve his own interests, to manipulate others-if possible without alienating them in the process. The clever man,or furbo, requires a fess, or fool, one who is gullible and naive, or taken advantage of Parents reward this quality in their children; and later in life, a shrewd and clever man is one with
whom many business deal can be made. Indeed, the Schneiders suggest that it often contradicts notions of public welfare and legal norms. Thus, it was part of model of broker capitalists who remained economically active and influential in W. Sicily through the expanding modern world system and the influence of Spanish occupation. Colonies of the Spanish Empire were governed by a weak and ineffective central government whose interests were often at odds with the rising trends of a capitalist world system. Many times private and state interests were in stark contrast in terms of wealth and power. Government interests were constantly circumvented by individual fraud, deceit, cunning, and self-interest. Second, honor refers to the worth of someone as judged by others. One's virtue, dignity, morality, and status constitute the honor of that person. Honor is linked to prestige and to inequality. Rural entrepreneurs were specialists in honor. They were upwardly mobile, striving for wealth, power and position, and thus aware of the etiquettes of proper behavior. However, mafiosi were also men of power with more than the usual access to violent means. Thus, their reaction to the problem of honor was more aggressive and less defensive and passive. Third is friendship. Until the late 19 century, the interior of w. Sicily was severely underdeveloped. Roads between towns were scarce. Police and government limited their influence to urban areas. Markets and commercial centers were also restricted to urban areas. In order to do business, friendship was necessary to create ties between the farmers of large estates, the latifundists, and their administrative counterparts in the massaria. Friendship thus defined commercial connections and networks of exchange in western Sicily. Chiefdoms: According to Robert Carneiro, chiefdoms are a critically import cultural type, representing multi community political units. They are the first step in political organization beyond the village or single community, the first transcending of local autonomy in human history, " which occurred in the past 7500 years. This was the beginning of the process political development and evolution that produced states and empires In 1970, Irving Goldman compared a number of Polynesian societies in order to understand the role of political elites and aristocracies in the development of civilization. He concluded that aristocracies were a fundamental theme in Polynesian political culture. He concluded from his study that aristocracies represented a fundamental building block of all of the worlds great complex societies, including states and empires. In Goldman's view, the underlying principle of aristocracy is a recognition in the "inherent superiority of a line of descent. Societies with chiefdoms were preeminently kinship societies because they used genealogical principles to any of the domestic-scale societies identified as tribes or even the more simple band cally than determine personal rank, prestige, and political leadership far most often and systematically than Making a comparison between leadership based on pragmatic, utilitarian, and ad hoc principles -as is the case in aboriginal Australia, in Amazonia, and among East African cattle peoples and Pacific Islander leadership based on aristocracy, Goldman found that utilitarian leadership lacks continuity because it is limited to the personal qualities of individuals and specific crisis situations. The aristocratic approach, on the other hand, bases its position on genealogy and religious authority and does not need to prove himself.(Religion and mythology play supporting
roles in these other societies but the chief and this office of the chief are not inherently created supported and sustained by religion and mythology in and on-going and perpetual basis. At the same time the chief will be supported by a group of close but lower-ranked kinsmen, and he wi be succeeded by his descendants Aristocracies are created in both religion and history in a manner that differs sharply from domestic-type tribal societies. Whereas Australian aborigines used totemism and The Dreaming to create loosely based territorial and kin groups and their leaders, Pacific Islanders used religious precepts and myth to identify and expand the political community and to support the superiority of individual chiefs and their aristocratic descent groups Goldman thus argues that the Polynesian chiefdom is best understood not in relation to political or economic processes per se. They are not just the result of the needs of a large or dense population for political administration to organize production and solve problems. Rather, chiefdoms are fundamentally a system of social status, a permanent office, that has economic and political consequences. Goldman define status system as The principles that define worth and more specifically honor, that establish the scales of personal and group value, that relate position or role to privileges and obligations, that Status is equal to honor. Status systems are found in all societies but where age, gender and personal qualities are the main criteria- as in domestic-scale societies--relative equality are likely to prevail. Emphasis on hereditary rank creates a different situation. This system is based on ascribed status. rather than achieved status The state States are the most formal and complex form of government. A state can be defined as a hierarchical form of political organization that governs many communities within a large geographic area. State systems first appeared about 3500 B. C, and are associated with civilizations. They are thus usually part of a complex network of socioeconomic complexity For example, we often think of the civilizations of the fertile crescent of present date Iraq as having the first advanced system of agriculture for feeding large numbers of people. This system required a state system of government and regulation to keep it functioning. Such system have given rise to cities, a complex division of labor, a system for distributing of goods, social stratification and inequality of persons, and foreign trade least a self-imposed right to use force in order to protect themselves. They are often, but mo 9 Generally, states maintain the authority to collect taxes, recruit soldiers for armies, and hold always, bureaucratic organizations composed of legislative, administrative, and judicial functions although these are sometimes held not with bureaucratic bodies but within a single person or group of elite persons. Personal affiliation within the state may be either by ethnic affiliation such as in some traditional African states-or by geographic residence within particular