Some people make a career of politics, also known as "leadership"
or "public service." Holding office, our politicians lead and manage
affairs of public policy. They make decisions and try to implement them. Anthropologists
have wondered whether societies with neither politicans nor permanent political
offices can have politics. Political anthropology is the cross-cultural study of political systems, of
formal and informal political institutions. A related field is legal anthropology,
the comparative study of legal systems or law. Although not all societies have
law, in the sense of a formal legal code, judiciary, and enforcement, all societies
do have some means of social control. Their members don't live in total anarchy.
Surveying many societies, we see a range of political systems. Some have informal
or temporary leaders with limited authority, exercised only at the local level.
Others have strong and permanent political institutions that prevail over entire
regions. The terms band, tribe, chiefdom, and state describe different forms of social
and political organization, with different degrees of political authority and
power. Bands are small, mobile, kin-based groups with little differential power.
Tribes have villages and/or descent groups but lack a formal government. Chiefdoms,
intermediate between tribes and states, are kin-based, but they have differential
access to resources and a permanent political structure. The state is an autonomous
political unit encompassing many communities. Its government has the power to
collect taxes, to draft people for work or war, and to decree and enforce laws.
The state is defined as a form of political organization based on central government
and socioeconomic stratification--a division of society into classes. |
2002 McGraw-Hill Higher Education