33 Chapter 9: Political Anthropology: A Cross-Cultural Comparison (31/27) -- Cultural Anthropology

33 Chapter 9: Political Anthropology: A Cross-Cultural Comparison Learning Objectives • Identify the four levels of socio-cultural integration (band, tribe, chiefdom, and state) and describe their characteristics. • Compare systems of leadership in egalitarian and non-egalitarian societies. • Describe systems used in tribes and chiefdoms to achieve social integration and encourage connections between people. • Assess the benefits and problems associated with state-level political organizations. • Evaluate the extent to which the Islamic State meets the formal criteria for a state-level political organization. Click here to view the full text and images for Chapter 9: Political Anthropology: A Cross-Cultural Comparison. All cultures have one element in common: they some-how exercise social control over their own members. Even small foraging societies such as the Ju/’hoansi or !Kung, the Inuit (or “Eskimo”) of the Arctic north, and aboriginal Australians experience disputes that must be contained if inter-personal conflicts are to be reduced or eliminated. As societies become more complex, means of control increase accordingly. The study of these means of control are the subject of political anthropology. BASIC CONCEPTS IN POLITICAL ANTHROPOLOGY Like the “invisible hand” of the market to which Adam Smith refers in analyzing the workings of capitalism, two forces govern the workings of politics: power—the ability to induce behavior of others in specified ways by means of coercion or use or threat of physical force—and author-ity—the ability to induce behavior of others by persua-sion.1 Extreme examples of the exercise of power are the gulags (prison camps) in Stalinist Russia, the death camps in Nazi-ruled Germany and Eastern Europe, and so-called Su-permax prisons such as Pelican Bay in California and the prison for “enemy combatants” in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by the United States. In all of these settings, prisoners com-ply or are punished or executed. At the other extreme are most forager societies, which typically exercise authority more often than power. Groups in those societies comply with the wishes of their most persuasive members. In actuality, power and authority are points on a contin-uum and both are present in every society to some degree. Even Hitler, who exercised absolute power in many ways, had to hold the Nuremberg rallies to generate popular sup-port for his regime and persuade the German population that his leadership was the way to national salvation. In the Soviet Union, leaders had a great deal of coercive and physical power but still felt the need to hold parades and mass rallies on May Day every year to persuade people to remain attached to their vision of a communal society. At the other end of the political spectrum, societies that tend to use persuasion through authority also have some forms of coercive power. Among the Inuit, for example, individuals who flagrantly violated group norms could be punished, including by hom