Political Anthropology: Bands to States
Key concepts on leadership, law, and legitimacy from egalitarian bands to bureaucratic states.
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Questions Covered in This Set
12 cards to master
How do anthropologists define politics?
The process by which people make collective decisions, manage conflict, and distribute power — present in every human group, with or without government.
Elman Service's four-part typology
Band, tribe, chiefdom, state — useful as ideal types, not a ladder every society must climb.
What characterizes a band?
Small (25–100), mobile, kin-based foraging group; egalitarian, with situational, non-coercive leadership based on persuasion and example.
'Insulting the meat' among the Ju/'hoansi
A leveling mechanism described by Richard Lee: a hunter's kill is mocked as thin and worthless, preventing arrogance and inequality.
What is fissioning?
Conflict resolution by walking away — a group splits or individuals leave rather than submit to coercion.
Who is a 'big man'?
A tribal leader (e.g., Highland New Guinea) whose achieved, personal, perishable power comes from accumulating and then giving away pigs and shells in feasts.
How does chiefdom leadership differ from a big man's?
Chiefly leadership is an office that outlives the holder, usually inherited in a ranked lineage; rank is ascribed at birth rather than achieved.
Weber's definition of the state
A centralized, class-stratified polity with bureaucracy, legal codes, taxation, and a claimed monopoly on the legitimate use of force.
The Nuer leopard-skin chief
Described by Evans-Pritchard: a ritual mediator with no enforcement power who shames feuding parties into accepting cattle compensation.
Negotiated vs. adjudicated law
Negotiated law aims to restore relationships through compensation and mediation; adjudicated law determines guilt and applies a penalty.
Power, authority, legitimacy
Power = ability to produce an outcome even against resistance; authority = power recognized as rightful; legitimacy = the story converting power into authority.
Anderson's 'imagined communities'
Nations held together not by face-to-face kinship but by print, maps, censuses, and shared narratives.
