Political Organization and Social Control

Political Anthropology: Scope and Approach

Political anthropology is a late specialisation of anthropological research that treats man as homo politicus and seeks properties common to all political organisations across their historical and geographical diversity. The key argument in the study of political organisation is that politics cannot be isolated from other subsystems of a society kinship, economics, and religion all intersect with political life. Political systems encompass: law, political formations (stateless and state societies), conflict resolution, and social control mechanisms.

Elman Service classified most societies into four principal types of political organisation: bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states. Although Service's classification does not fit all societies, it provides a useful framework for understanding variation in how social order is created and maintained. With a handful of exceptions, politically autonomous bands, tribes, and chiefdoms have now been incorporated into larger state structures.

Non-Centralised Political Organisation

Band

The band is the form of political organisation found among foragers and hunters the oldest and most long-standing form of political organisation. Bands comprise anywhere from twenty to a few hundred people related through kinship. Band membership is flexible: a person with a serious disagreement may leave and join another band.

Leadership in bands is informal and situational. No one person is named as a permanent leader; depending on events organising a move, planning a hunt a respected individual may come to the fore temporarily. This person is the "first among equals" and has influence but no authority to enforce opinions. Social levelling mechanisms prevent anyone from accumulating much authority. Political activity centres on decisions about migration, food distribution, and resolution of interpersonal conflicts. External conflicts between bands are rare because territories are widely separated and population density is low.

Some anthropologists argue that "real" politics did not exist in undisturbed band societies. The band level barely qualifies as political organisation because groups are flexible, leadership is ephemeral, and there are no emblems or signs of political affiliation. Service distinguished three band subtypes: patrilocal bands (based on band exogamy, with wives moving to the husband's group the most widespread form, which Service regarded as "almost an inevitable kind of organization" because it ensures stability and wide-ranging alliances); composite bands (lacking both band exogamy and a marriage residence rule, viewed by Service as the result of depopulation through disease and war after contact with civilisation); and anomalous bands (such as the Basin Shoshone and Eskimo, whose social structures were so fragmented as to represent the family level of sociocultural integration).

Examples: Guayaki (Amazon basin), Semang (Malay Peninsula), Inuit Eskimo, !Kung (Africa), Cholanaikans (Kerala), Andamanese tribes.

Tribe

Tribal societies are equal to bands in being egalitarian and lacking fixed authority and hierarchy, but differ in being food producers horticulturalists or pastoralists. They are marked by larger populations and more sedentary life. Pan-tribal associations (sodalities) have the potential to unite all members together when a common threat arises; once the threat recedes, members break back into self-sufficient groups.

Clan-Based Political Organisation

In many tribal societies each clan serves as the seat of political authority. Clan elders may form a council that settles disputes or acts for the tribe in dealings with outsiders.

Lineage-Based Political Organisation (Segmentary Lineage)

Found among the horticultural Tiv of Nigeria and the pastoral Nuer of Sudan. Lineages are subdivided into smaller segments segmentary lineages. Among the Nuer, the maximal lineage is divided into many minimal lineages; the minimal lineage contains three to five generations, is the basic permanent descent group functioning in day-to-day life, and members live in the same village and treat each other as closest relatives. Minimal lineages are politically independent no formal or central leadership exists above this level. Lineage segmentation is particularly important as a structural principle where central authority is weak or absent, allowing lineage members to provide their own security against others of the same tribe and against outsiders. The Oraon's lineage is locally known as the Khunt; the Gond lineage observes rites in common and maintains a genealogy specialist.

Age-Grade-Based Political Organisation

Found in some tribal societies of Africa, the USA, and Oceania. An age grade is an organised group based on age: people of the same age across different villages and kin groups belong to the same age grade, cutting across kinship and territorial lines. Each tribe may be divided into two or more age grades, each associated with specific political functions. Among the Kipsigis of East Africa, males are divided into warriors (who defend the country and raid for cattle) and senior elders (who fight defensive battles, serve as chiefs of staff organising the army, preside in the council of elders to resolve disputes, and preside at initiation ceremonies).

Association-Based Political Organisation

Common interest associations secret societies, tribal fraternities, military clubs form the base for political organisation in some tribal societies. Among the Cheyenne of North America, seven warrior societies existed. A boy was invited to join one on achieving warrior status, learning its insignia, songs, and rituals. Warrior societies oversaw village activities, protected families on the move, and enforced buffalo hunting rules, while also having ceremonial and social functions. Because each Cheyenne band had identical warrior societies bearing identical names, the societies integrated the entire tribe for military and political purposes across band boundaries.

Melanesian Big Man

Throughout Melanesia, the Big Man combines limited interest in tribal welfare with self-interested calculation for personal gain. His authority is personal and non-heritable; he holds no office and is not elected. His status rests on acts that have raised him above others and attracted a band of loyal followers. He accumulates goods through strategic exchange, redistribution, and feast-giving to build a following, but if he fails to maintain generosity, his followers disperse. Unlike a chief, when a Big Man dies his political position does not automatically pass to anyone else.

Centralised Political Organisation

Chiefdom

A chiefdom is a centralised political system with authority vested in formal, usually hereditary offices or titles. It transcends the tribal level in two major respects: it is more populous (often thousands of people) and more socially complex, with hereditary social ranking and economic stratification. Chiefly lineages are considered superior to commoners; intermarriage between the two strata is typically forbidden. The chieftainship as an "office" must be filled at all times unlike a band leader or Big Man, the chief is replaced when he or she dies or retires.

Chiefs regulate production and redistribution, resolve internal conflicts, and plan and lead raids and warfare. A recognised hierarchy of major and minor authorities forms a chain of command binding peripheral groups to the chief's headquarters. Chiefdoms have existed on all inhabited continents. Several political strategies support their expansion: controlling internal and external wealth and creating debt ties through feasts and gift exchanges; improving local production systems; applying internal force; forging wider external alliances; and controlling ideological legitimacy. Among prehistoric southeastern Spain, control of irrigation systems was the key factor in chiefdom emergence; in the prehistoric Aegean, control of external trade was more important.

State

A state is a form of political organisation with a bureaucracy and diversified governmental institutions with varying degrees of centralised control. It is now the form of political organisation within which all people live bands, tribes, and chiefdoms persist but within state structures. States have enhanced power over their domain compared to other forms of political organisation, including a monopoly on the legitimate use of force.

States use symbols to reinforce power: religious beliefs and symbols may link the ruler to divinity or to the priesthood; architecture and urban planning remind populations of state power. In pre-Hispanic Mexico, the central plaza of city-states like Tenochtitlán was symbolically equivalent to the centre of the cosmos; the most important temples and the head of state's residence surrounded it; houses in decreasing order of status were placed in decreasing proximity to the centre.

Concepts of Power, Authority, and Legitimacy

Power

Power is the capacity of a person or group to influence others or to achieve desired ends, with or without their consent. It is a universal aspect of social interaction and plays a fundamental role in shaping relationships within social groups. Power continues once established because of habit, inertia, indoctrination, and propaganda in both democratic and authoritarian systems.

Types of power:

• Positional (structural) power:: Power exercised by virtue of one's position in the social structure; closely related to the distribution of statuses. This form is equivalent to authority.
• Non-positional power:: Power exercised independently of one's formal position, through personal qualities, charisma, or informal influence.

By legitimacy:

• Legitimate power:: Power recognised and accepted by society. Three subtypes: legal power (given by law); traditional power (drawn from customs and traditions); charismatic power (rooted in the exceptional personal qualities of the individual).
• Illegitimate power:: Power not accepted by society; coercive rather than consensual.

Authority

Authority is institutionalised or legitimate power the right to take certain actions, issue commands, and have those commands obeyed. It represents the set of rules, procedures, traditions, and norms regarded as binding within a social unit. A leader of a military coup may have power but little authority; an elected leader has authority and may have considerable power.

Characteristics of authority:

• Legitimacy:: The hallmark of authority. As Dahl formulated: "A commands B and B feels A has the perfect right to do so and that B has the complete obligation to obey."
• Dominance:: Authority enables its holder to exercise dominance over others.
• Rationality:: According to Friedrich, "the man who has authority possesses the capacity for reasoned elaboration for giving convincing reasons for what he does."
• Accountability:: Authority holders are responsible to some higher authority.

Max Weber identified three sources of political authority:

• Traditional authority:: Rests on established belief in the sanctity of immemorial traditions; obedience to leaders who exercise authority according to tradition (monarchies, tribal chiefs).
• Charismatic authority:: Rests on devotion to the extraordinary sanctity, heroism, or exemplary character of an individual person. Unstable because it depends on the personal qualities of the leader and cannot be routinely transferred.
• Legal-rational authority:: Rests on belief in the legality of enacted rules and in the right of those elevated to authority to issue commands under such rules. The basis of authority in modern states, bureaucracies, and formal organisations.

Legitimacy

Legitimacy derives from the Latin legitimas (lawful). It is the quality of rightness, propriety, or moral goodness attributed to a power system, making it acceptable and binding to those subject to it. The de facto government becomes de jure on acquiring legitimacy. Without legitimacy, even powerful governments require constant coercion.

• S.M. Lipset: Legitimacy involves the capacity of the system to engender and maintain the belief that existing political institutions are the most appropriate for society.
• J.N. Beandel: Legitimacy can be defined as the extent to which the population accepts naturally, without questioning, the organisation to which it belongs.

Weber's three sources of legitimacy correspond to his three authority types: tradition, exceptional personal qualities (charisma), and legality.

David Easton describes three types of legitimacy:

• Ideological legitimacy:: The political system is accepted because of an ideology prevailing in society an articulated set of ideals, ends, and purposes that portray the system's aims and justify it.
• Structural legitimacy:: Members accept the regime's structures and norms as legitimate, contributing to the validation of those structures.
• Personal legitimacy:: Members regard those in authority as trustworthy and dominant based on their individual behaviour and personality.

Social Control

Nature and Need for Social Control

Social control is any influence exerted by a society or its members on the behaviour of individuals to promote conformity, solidarity, and the continuity of the group. It may be exercised through public opinion, coercion, social suggestion, religion, law, or any other method. The aim is always the welfare of the whole to bring conformity and solidarity when individuals' divergent interests and cultural differences threaten social disorder. Social control and socialisation are inseparable: through socialisation, individuals internalise norms and values, making social control effective from within rather than requiring external force.

Means of Social Control

Karl Mannheim distinguished direct (face-to-face) from indirect (institutional) means. Kimball Young classified means into positive (rewards) and negative (punishments). L.L. Bernard distinguished conscious means (law, education, public opinion, coercion) from unconscious means (custom, tradition, convention), and destructive means (punishment, intimidation, repression) from constructive means (revolution, education, reform, non-violent coercion). Most sociologists classify means as informal or formal.

Informal Means

Informal means of social control grow naturally within a society without any special agency to create them. They are especially powerful in primary groups.

• Belief:: Convictions that particular things are true govern behaviour. Belief in sin, karma, or supernatural punishment controls conduct. Belief in witchcraft acts as social control in societies with or without centralised political systems an individual will think twice before offending a neighbour if convinced the neighbour can retaliate through sorcery, and people avoid being accused of witchcraft.
• Folkways:: Recognised modes of behaviour arising automatically in a group the habits of everyday life, socially approved, with some degree of traditional sanction.
• Mores:: Those folkways considered by the group to be of great significance, indispensable to its welfare. They express the group's sense of what is right and conducive to social welfare, directly relating to fundamental social needs.
• Customs:: Long-established habits and usages passed from one generation to another. They arise spontaneously, are accepted by society, and are followed because they have been followed in the past, without any constituted authority to declare, apply, or safeguard them.
• Ideology:: A theory of social life that interprets social realities from the point of view of ideals to prove their correctness. Leninism, Gandhism, and Fascism are ideologies that have analysed social realities and laid down ideals for people.
• Social suggestion:: Communication through the life examples of great men, monuments, literature, books, education, and advertising.
• Art and literature:: Both influence the imagination and exert control on human behaviour. Martial music arouses determination; classical dance creates cultural appreciation; statues teach values. Literature shapes attitudes religious literature inspires virtue, detective literature may influence crime attitudes, Rousseau hastened the French Revolution, Dickens changed the British school system through his novels.
• Humour and satire:: Humour relieves tension and controls by supporting sanctioned values. Satire employs wit and scorn as indirect criticism of vicious or socially harmful actions, exposing their falsity through ridicule.
• Public opinion:: Especially powerful in simple, face-to-face societies. People act to win public praise and avoid public ridicule the desire for recognition is a natural human motive.

Formal Means

When societies grow in size and complexity, informal means become insufficient and formal, codified rules become necessary.

• Law:: The most important formal means of social control. Anthropologists recognise three basic functions of law: (1) it defines relationships among members and marks out proper behaviour under specified circumstances; (2) it allocates the authority to employ coercion in enforcing sanctions in centralised societies this authority is vested in government and judiciary; in decentralised societies it may reside directly in the injured party; (3) it redefines social relations and ensures social flexibility as new situations arise.
• Education:: A process of socialisation that prepares children for social living, reforms wrongly formed attitudes, teaches the value of discipline, social cooperation, tolerance and sacrifice, and instils honesty and a sense of right and wrong.
• Coercion:: The use of force to achieve desired ends the ultimate means when all other means fail. Physical coercion includes bodily injury, imprisonment, and the death penalty. A society that depends heavily on external force shows weakness rather than strength in social control.

Social Sanctions

According to Radcliffe-Brown, a sanction is a reaction on the part of society or of a considerable number of its members to a mode of behaviour which is thereby approved or disapproved. Sanctions serve as externalised social controls designed to encourage conformity to social norms the "carrot and stick principle."

Classification of sanctions:

• Positive sanctions:: Incentives to conformity awards, titles, recognition, cheering, clapping.
• Negative sanctions:: Threats for violation abuse, mockery, imprisonment, fines, corporal punishment, ostracism, bodily mutilation, death.
• Diffuse sanctions:: Spontaneous responses by a part of society disapproving glances, ridicule, gossip.
• Organised sanctions:: Responses by society as a whole through formal institutions courts, prisons, military decorations.
• Formal sanctions:: Always organised; involve legal statute; attempt to precisely and explicitly regulate behaviour.
• Informal sanctions:: Cultural controls, diffuse in nature; spontaneous expressions of approval or disapproval by community members. Effective for regulating seemingly unimportant customs dress, eating, conversation without actual laws.

For sanctions to be effective they must be applied consistently and be generally known among members of society. C.W. Mills (1951): "The mere anticipation of probable sanctions (ranging from embarrassment to imprisonment) is often sufficient to restrain the behaviour in question."

The most common and widespread sanction in simple societies is the threat of withdrawal of reciprocity. In societies where generalised reciprocity is the rule, this threat is a powerful social control mechanism.

Sanctions also serve an integrative function: when a norm is breached and a sanction is applied, the community reaffirms the validity of the social belief that was violated.

Law and Justice in Simple Societies

Definitions of Law

• Malinowski: Law is the obligation of one person and the rightful claim of another, sanctioned not by mere psychological motive but by a definite social machinery of binding force based upon mutual dependence.
• Majumdar and Madan: Law consists of a set of principles which permit the use of force to maintain political and social organisation within a territory.
• Hoebel: Law is merely one aspect of culture the aspect which employs the force of organised society to regulate individual and group conduct and to prevent, redress, or punish deviations from prescribed social norms.

Nature of Primitive Law

• Based on kinship bonds; clan elders play important roles.
• Backed by public opinion and morality.
• Does not distinguish between public and private wrongs a private wrong may bring calamity for the entire community, so collective responsibility is central.
• Breach of public opinion and moral laws amounts to sin; the sinner also faces supernatural punishment.
• Limited civil law and more criminal law because of less pressure on land; customs are clear.
• Intention has no importance because of the concept of sin act and consequence matter more than motive.

In stateless societies, social sanctions serve in place of formal legal institutions. Radcliffe-Brown: a sanction is a reaction on the part of society to a mode of behaviour which is thereby approved or disapproved. In societies without courts, sanctions are often imposed directly by the wronged individual or group ridiculing, duelling, seizing property, or killing the offender or a member of his group in a socially approved, proportional manner. Among the Eskimo, the appropriate response to wife-stealing is a nasty song ridiculing the thief, composed and performed by the injured husband.

Law vs. Custom

Though closely related and mutually reinforcing, law and custom differ in important ways:

• Law is made; custom is a growth law is explicitly and deliberately created by state power; custom emerges spontaneously without any constituted authority.
• Law needs a special agency for enforcement; custom is enforced by spontaneous social action without physical penalty for violation.
• Law is specific and clear; custom is not codified and may be difficult to identify precisely.
• Law is more flexible and adaptable; customs are relatively fixed and permanent and resist rapid change.
• Customs fade and disappear without formal abolition; laws disappear only when abolished by authority.
• Law is more idealistic it aims above actual social practice and can reform outdated customs; custom is the product of experience and the routine of daily life.
• Law generally deals with vital matters; the subject matter of custom is more ordinary and familiar.

Despite these differences, law and custom complement and supplement each other. As Maine observed, there is always a necessity for law to adjust itself to social needs and social opinion. Customs consolidate law and facilitate its practice; a law cannot succeed permanently if opposed by custom. As one formulation holds: "Law touches us but here and there; customs are what vex or sooth, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us by constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation."

Conflict Resolution

Political life involves not only policy formulation, administration, and enforcement, but also the resolution of conflict. Peaceful resolution may be achieved through avoidance, community action, negotiation, mediation, ritual reconciliation, oaths and ordeals, or adjudication. Third-party decisions are more likely in hierarchical societies. When violence does occur: within a political unit it is crime; between separate political units without dispute-resolution procedures it is warfare; between subunits of a previously unified polity it is civil war.

Peaceful Resolution

Avoidance:: The parties voluntarily avoid each other or are separated until emotions cool. Foragers are particularly likely to use this technique people may move to other bands or shift dwellings to opposite ends of camp. Shifting horticulturalists may split up when conflicts intensify. Avoidance is easiest in nomadic or semi-nomadic societies with temporary dwellings.

Community action:: In simple societies lacking powerful authoritarian leaders, the community as a whole resolves disputes. Among the Inuit, individuals live within a complex system of taboos governed by beliefs about spirits. Failure to heed a taboo or follow a shaman's suggestions can lead to expulsion from the group, because the community cannot accept a risk to its livelihood.

Negotiation:: The parties to a dispute settle it themselves without any rules, with any solution accepted as long as it restores peace.

Mediation:: An outside third party helps bring about a settlement but does not have formal authority to impose one. Common in relatively egalitarian societies. Among the Nuer of East Africa, disputes within the community are settled with the help of an informal mediator called the "leopard-skin chief."

Ritual reconciliation (apology):: Ceremonial apologies occur particularly in chiefdoms. Among Fijians, when a person of lower status offends a person of higher status, the community begins to avoid and gossip about the offender. The offender may perform a ceremony called soro ("surrender"): head bowed and silent while an intermediary speaks, presents a token gift, and asks the offended party for forgiveness.

Oaths and ordeals:: Appeals to supernatural power to resolve disputes; accepted outcomes are treated as divine judgment.

Violent Resolution

Feuding:: Recurring hostilities between families or kin groups, motivated by the desire to avenge an offence insult, injury, deprivation, or death against a member of the group. The entire kin group of the offender is considered responsible; killing any member is regarded as appropriate revenge. Feuds may last decades. Found in societies at all levels of political organisation, not just simple societies.

Raiding:: A short-term, planned and organised use of force to acquire goods, animals, or persons from another community. Prevalent in pastoral societies, where herds can be augmented by theft. Raids are often organised by temporary leaders. Raiding may also aim to capture slaves: slavery has been practiced in approximately 33% of the world's known societies.

Large-scale warfare:: Involves large numbers of people and planning by both sides. Generally practiced only among societies with intensive agriculture or industrialisation, which alone can support specialised armies, military leaders, and complex logistics.