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SOCIOPOLITICAL ORGANIZATION: A PRIMER
Excerpted from Kottak (1997) Footnoted Comments by Beverly R. Ortiz, Ph.D. Kottak, Conrad Phillip 1997 Cultural Anthropology: An Exploration of Human Diversity. New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., pp. 216-217, 218-222, 238-243, 258- CHAPTER 11 ADAPTIVE STRATEGIES AND ECONOMIC SYSTEMS FORAGING Until 10,000 years ago all humans were foragers. However, environmental specifics created contrasts among foraging populations. Some were big game hunters; others hunted and collected a wider range of animals and plants. Nevertheless, ancient foraging economies shared one essential feature: People relied on nature for food and other necessities… The Western Hemisphere also had recent foragers. The Eskimos, or Inuit, of Alaska and Canada are well-known hunters. These (and other) northern foragers now use modern technology, including rifles and snowmobilies, in their subsistence activities (Pelto 1973). The native populations of California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia were all foragers, as were those of inland subarctic Canada and the Great Lakes.^1 For many Native Americans fishing, hunting, and gathering remain important subsistence (and sometimes commercial) activities…. Correlates of Foraging Typologies, such as Cohen’s adaptive strategies, are useful because they suggest correlations --that is, association or covariation between two or more variables. (Correlated variables are factors that are linked and interrelated, such as food intake and body weight, such that when one increase or decreases. The other tends to change, too.) Ethnographic studies in hundreds of cultures have revealed many correlations between the economy and social life. Associated (correlated) with each adaptive strategy is a bundle of particular cultural features. Correlations, however, are rarely perfect. Some foragers lack cultural features usually associated with foraging, and some of those features are found in groups with other adaptive strategies. (^1) The difficulty with this statement is that Native California did not simply hunt animals, fish, and gather plant foods. Rather (to quote from an article I published in the January-March issue of Bay Nature ), “Local tribal peoples had an intimate connection to the land, living with it rather than on it. They consciously and conscientiously reshaped it through the use of such horticultural techniques as burning, pruning, and digging, enhancing many species while suppressing others. These methods resulted in a world well suited to plants and animals upon which people relied for food and objects that blended utility and beauty… “For the people who fostered this fertile landscape, a diverse set of laws and spiritual practices underpinned the more practical aspects of day-to-day land management. These practices codified one important tenet of daily life—that humans must always give back for what they take and use, or, as Julia Parker (Coast Miwok/Kashaya Pomo) puts it, ‘We take from the earth and say please. We give back to the earth and say thank you.’”
What, then, are the usual correlates of foraging? People who subsist by hunting, gathering, and fishing often live in band-organized societies.^2 Their basic social unit, the band , is a small group of fewer than a hundred people, all related by kinship or marriage. Band size varies between cultures and often from one season to the next in a given culture. In some foraging societies, band size stays about the same year-round. In others, the band splits up for part of the year. Families leave to gather resources that are better exploited by just a few people. Later, they regroup for cooperative work and ceremonies…. CULTIVATION The three adaptive strategies based on food production in nonindustrial societies are horticulture, agriculture, and pastoralism. In non-Western cultures, as in the United States and Canada, people carry out a variety of economic activities. Each adaptive strategy refers to the main economic activity. Pastoralists (herders), for example, consume milk, butter, blood, and meat from their animals as mainstays of their diet. However, they also add grain to the diet by doing some cultivating or by trading with neighbors. Food producers may also hunt or gather to supplement a diet based on domesticated species. Horticulture Horticulture and agriculture are two types of cultivation found in nonindustrial societies. Both differ from the farming systems of industrial nations like the United States and Canada, which use large land areas, machinery, and petrochemicals. Horticulture makes intensive use of none of the factors of production: land, labor, capital, and machinery. Horticulturalists use simple tools such as hoes and digging sticks to grow their crops. Their fields are not permanent property and lie fallow for varying lengths of time. Horticulture is also known as slash-and-burn cultivation. Each year horticulturalists clear land by cutting down (slashing) and burning forest or bush or by setting fire to the grass covering the plot. The vegetation is broken down, pests are killed, and the ashes remain to fertilize the soil. Crops are then sown, tended, and harvested. Use of the plot is not continuous. Often it is cultivated for only a year. This depends, however, on soil fertility and weeds, which compete with cultivated plants for nutrients. 3 (^2) The operative word in this sentence is “often.” (^3) In Northwestern California, among Shastan peoples and others, including the Yurok and Karuk ( aka Karok), slash and burn cultivation of tobacco occurred. As described by Shirley Silver in 1978, in Volume 8 of the Handbook of North American Indians , “Shasta land management involved burning for better wild seed and tobacco crops; the Shasta Valley Shasta also scattered wild seed to produce a better crop. [….] Tobacco was cultivated; every spring after burning logs and brush, wild tobacco was planted. There was a tobacco garden at Butler Flat and others elsewhere” (217, 222). When adaptive strategy typologies were developed, the land management techniques of so- called “nonindustrial societies” had not been systematically studied. In this course, I am suggesting that these techniques comprised a form of horticulture. First, they share the attribute of burning (without the perquisite slashing and subsequent planting). Second, when properly employed, fire (and certain tools) caused a form of cutting down after the fact--pruning and coppicing. Third, land management techniques involved cultivation with digging sticks, such as for digging bulbs, without the need to replant afterwards. As I wrote in Bay Nature , “Fire often promotes the health of seed-bearing grasses and forbs, including those used in pinole. Fires set annually by local tribal peoples moved slowly across the
Domesticated Animals Many agriculturalists use animals as means of production--for transport, as cultivating machines, and for their manure…. Irrigation While horticulturalists must await the rainy season, agriculturalists can schedule their planting in advance, because they control water…. An irrigated field is a capital investment that usually increases in value. It takes time for a field to start yielding; it reaches full productivity only after several years of cultivation…. Costs and Benefits of Agriculture Agriculture requires human labor to build and maintain irrigation systems, terraces, and other works. People must feed, water, and care for their animals. Given sufficient labor input and management, agricultural land can yield one or two crops annually for years or even generations. An agricultural field does not necessarily produce a higher single-year yield than does a horticultural plot. The first crop grown by horticulturalists on long-idle land may be larger than that from an agricultural plot of the same size. Furthermore, because agriculturalists work harder than horticulturalist do, agriculture‘s yield relative to labor is also lower. Agricultures’ main advantage is that the long-term yield per area is far greater and more dependable. Because a single field sustains its owners year after year, there is no need to maintain a reserve of uncultivated land as horticulturalists do. This is why agricultural societies are more densely populated that are horticultural one. planted and tended themselves was safe to smoke. The reason was the possibility that the wild tobacco might have grown in the disturbed earth of a grave, and since corpses were highly contaminated, impure, and dangerous, it would have been dangerous to smoke tobacco that came from a plant growing on a grave.” Also in the same volume, under the section heading, “Horticulture,” Katherine Luomala (1978:600) described Tipai-Ipai ( aka Kumeyaay) planting techniques as follows: “Desultory imitators of River Yuman farmers, Imperial Valley Tipais planted maize, beans, teparies, and melons in newly flooded land. When upland kinsmen visited them, they gave them seed to plant (Drucker 1937:5). However, hosts and guests readily abandoned the chance to harvest if news came of plentiful wild plants and game. “Women transplanted wild onions and tobacco to more convenient locations and planted wild tobacco seeds for a better product. (Only men smoked, using a clay pipe distinctively angled with a flange under the bowl for ease in holding.) Grasslands were deliberately fired to improve the seed yield. Despite this marginal interest, horticulture was not seriously undertaken until Europeans disrupted the traditional economy. By the 1850s, some remote nonmissionized bands had peach trees and patches of maize, melons, and pumpkins; but they left gardens unattended to continue their seasonal round. Missionized Ipais developed good ranches with gardens, orchards, and livestock.”
The Cultivation Continuum Because nonindustrial economies can have features of both horticulture and agriculture, it is useful to discuss cultivators as being arranged along a cultivation continuum. Horticultural systems stand at one end--the “low-labor, shifting-plot” end. Agriculturalists are at the other--the “labor-intensive, permanent-plot” end. We speak of a continuum because there are today intermediate economies, combining horticultural and agricultural features--more intensive than annually shifting horticulture but less intensive than agriculture. These recall the intermediate economies revealed by archaeological sequences leading from horticulture to agriculture in the Middle East, Mexico, and other areas of early food production. Unlike nonintensive horticulturalists, who farm a plot just once before fallowing it, the South American Kuikuru grow two or three crops of manioc , or cassava--an edible tuber--before abandoning their plots. Cultivation is even more intense in certain densely populated areas of Papua-New Guinea, where plots are planted for two or three years, allowed to rest for three to five, and then recultivated. After several of these cycles the plots are abandoned for a longer fallow period. Such a pattern is called sectorial fallowing (Wolf 1966). Besides Papua- New Guinea, such systems occur in places as distant as West Africa and highland Mexico. Sectorial fallowing is associated with denser populations than is simple horticulture. The simpler system is the norm in tropical forests, where weed invasion and delicate soils prevent more intensive cultivation. The key difference between horticulture and agriculture is that horticulture always uses a fallow period whereas agriculture does not. The earliest cultivators in the Middle East and in Mexico were rainfall-dependent horticulturalists. Until recently, horticulture was the main form of cultivation in several areas, including parts of Africa, Southeast Asia, Indonesia, the Philippines, the Pacific islands, Mexico, Central America, and the South American tropical forest. CHAPTER 12 POLITICAL SYSTEMS OF BANDS AND TRIBES Anthropologists and political scientists share an interest in political systems and organization, but the anthropological approach is global and comparative. Anthropological data reveal substantial variations in power, authority, and legal systems in different cultures. ( Power is the ability to exercise one’s will over others; authority is the socially approved use of power.) Several years ago the anthropologist Elman Service (1962) listed four types, or levels, of political organization: Band, tribe, chiefdom, and state. Bands, as we have seen, are small kin-based groups (all members of the group are related to each other by kinship or marriage ties) found among foragers. Tribes , which are associated with nonintensive food production (horticulture and pastoralism), have village and/or descent groups but lack a formal government and social classes (socioeconomic stratification). In a tribe, there is no reliable means of enforcing political decisions. The chiefdom , a form of sociopolitical organization that is intermediate between the tribe and the state, is kin- based, but it has differential access to resources (some people have more wealth, prestige, and power than do others) and a permanent political structure. The state is a form of sociopolitical organization based on a formal government structure and socioeconomic stratification. Many anthropologists have criticized Service’s typology as being too simple. However, it does offer a handy set of labels for highlighting cross-cultural similarities and differences in social and political organization. For example, in bands and tribes, the
FORAGING BANDS
In most foraging societies only two kinds of groups are significant: the nuclear family and the band.^6 Unlike sedentary villages (which appear in tribal societies), bands are impermanent.^7 They form seasonally as component nuclear families assemble. The particular combination of families in a band may vary from year to year. In such settings the main social building blocks (linking principles) are the personal relationships of individuals. For example, marriage and kinship create ties between members of different bands. Because one’s parents and grandparents come from different bands, a person has relatives in several of these groups. Trade and visiting also link local groups, as does fictive kinship, such as the San namesake system described in the last chapter. Similarly, Eskimo men traditionally had trade partners, whom they treated almost like brothers, in different bands. In a foraging band, there is very little differential authority and no differential power, although particular talents lead to special respect. For example, someone can sing or dance well, is an especially good storyteller, or can go into a trance and communicate with spirits. Band leaders are leaders in name only. They are first among equals. Sometimes they give advice or make decisions, but they have no means of enforcing their decisions. Although foragers lack formal law in the sense of a legal code that includes trial and enforcement, they do have methods of social control and dispute settlement. The absence of law does not mean total anarchy. The aboriginal Eskimos (Hoebel 1954, 1968), or Inuit, as they are called in Canada, provide a good example of methods of settling disputes in stateless societies. As described by E. A. Hoebel (1954) in a study of Eskimo conflict resolution, a sparse population of some 20,000 Eskimos spanned 9, kilometers (6,000 miles) of the Arctic region. The most significant Eskimo social groups were the nuclear family and the band. Personal relationships linked the families and bands. Some bands had headmen. There were also shamans (part-time religious specialists). However, these positions conferred little power on those who occupied them…. TRIBAL CULTIVATORS Tribes usually have a horticultural or pastoral economy and are organized by village life and/or descent-group membership. Socioeconomic stratification (i.e., a class structure) and a formal government are absent.^8 Many tribes have small-scale warfare, often in the form of intervillage raiding. Tribes have more effective regulatory mechanisms than do foragers, but tribalists have no sure means of enforcing political decisions. The main regulatory officials are village heads, “big men,” descent-group leaders, village councils, and leaders of pantribal associations. All these figures and groups have limited authority. Like foragers, horticulturalists tend to be egalitarian, although some have marked gender stratification--an unequal distribution of resources, power, prestige, and personal (^6) California Indians generally had descent groups (lineages and clans), although some nuclear systems existed. (^7) Sedentary villages and seasonal camps are the norm in Native California. (^8) In parts of California there were commoners. As Bean (1978:680) explains, “The category of commoner or ordinary person refers to those without rank, who are not conspicuously important in terms of wealth, talent, or other positions.” Bean goes on to state about classes, “The presence of lower classes has been generally unrecognized except in the literature on northwest California, where Kroeber (1925) and others detailed very precisely the dynamics of social mobility.”
freedom between men and women.^9 Horticultural villages are usually small, with low population density and open access to strategic resources.^10 Age, gender, and personal traits determine how much respect people receive and how much support they get from others. Egalitarianism diminishes, however, as village size and population density increase.^11 Horticultural villages usually have headmen--rarely, if ever, headwomen…. Descent-Group Organization Kin-based bands are basic social units among foragers. An analogous group among food producers is the descent group. A descent group is a permanent social unit whose members claim common ancestry. The group endures even though its membership changes as members are born and die, move in and move out. Often, descent-group membership is determined at birth and is lifelong. Descent groups frequently are exogamous (members must seek their mates from other descent groups). Two common rules serve to admit certain people as descent- group members while excluding others [matrilineal descent and patrilineal descent]…. Descent groups may be lineages or clans. Common to both is the belief that members descend from the same apical ancestor. This person stands at the apex, or top, of the common genealogy. How do lineages and clans differ? A lineage uses demonstrated descent. Members can recite the names of their forebears in each generation from the apical ancestor through the present. (This doesn’t mean that their recitations are accurate, only that lineage members think they are.) Clans use stipulated descent. Clan members merely say they descend form the apical ancestor. They don’t try to trace the actual genealogical links between themselves and that ancestor. Some societies have both lineages and clans. In this case, clans have more members and cover a larger geographical area than lineages do. Sometimes a clan’s apical ancestor is not a human at all but an animal or plant (called a totem). Whether human or not, the ancestor symbolizes the social unity and identity of the members distinguishing them from other groups. A tribal society normally contains several descent groups. Any one of them may be confined to a single village, but they usually span more than one village. Any branch of a descent group that lives in one place is a local descent group. Two or more local branches of different descent groups may live in the same village. Descent groups in the same village or different villages may establish alliances through frequent intermarriage…. (^9) Among California Indians, differential gender roles did not generally translate into differential access to resources or less personal freedom in any marked sense. (^10) Among California Indians, particular resources, such as a good producing oak tree, could be “owned” by certain individuals or families. (^11) In parts of the California Culture Area, in particular the Northwest Coast, a system of debt peonage existed, as well as, in other isolated parts of the culture area, a form of slavery, usually of people taken in raids, sometimes of people traded. In such cases, the position generally wasn’t inherited, although the children (sons) of slaves had a lower status. Slaves were sometimes returned by negotiation, and escape was apparently relatively common.
In the Polynesian chiefdoms, the chiefs were fulltime political specialists in charge of regulating production, distribution, and consumption. Polynesian chiefs relied on religion to buttress their authority. They regulated production by commanding or prohibiting (using religious taboos) the cultivation of certain lands and crops. Chiefs also regulated distribution and consumption. At certain seasons--often on a ritual occasion such as a first-fruit ceremony--people would offer part of their harvest to the chief through his or her representatives. Products moved up the hierarchy, eventually reaching the chief. Conversely, illustrating obligatory sharing with kin, chiefs sponsored feasts at which they gave back much of what they received. Such a flow of resources to and then from a central office is known as chiefly redistribution. 13 Redistribution offers economic advantages. If the different areas specialized in particular crops, goods, or services, chiefly redistribution made those products available to the whole society. Chiefly redistribution also played a role in risk management. It stimulated production beyond the immediate subsistence level and provided a central storehouse of goods that might become scarce at times of famine (Earle 1987, 1991). Chiefdoms and archaic states had similar economies, often based on intensive cultivation, and both administered systems of regional trade or exchange. SOCIAL STATUS IN CHIEFDOMS Social status in chiefdoms was based on seniority of descent. Because rank, power, prestige, and resources came through kinship and descent. Polynesian chiefs kept extremely long genealogies. Some chiefs (with writing) managed to trace their ancestry back fifty generations. All the people in the chiefdom were thought to be related to each other. Presumably, all were descended from a group of founding ancestors. The chief (usually a man) had to demonstrate seniority in descent. Degrees of seniority were calculated so intricately on some islands that there were as many ranks as people… However, even the lowest-ranking person in a chiefdom was still the chief’s relative. In such a kin-based context, everyone, even a chief, had to share with his or her relatives…. STATUS SYSTEMS IN CHIEFDOMS AND STATES The status systems of chiefdoms and states are similar in that both are based on differential access to resources. This means that some men and women had privileged access to power, prestige, and wealth. They controlled strategic resources such as land, water, and other means of production. Earle characterizes chiefs as “an incipient aristocracy with advantages in wealth and lifestyle” (1987, p. 290). Nevertheless, differential access in chiefdoms was still very much tied to kinship. The people with privileged access were generally chiefs and their nearest relatives and assistants. Compared with chiefdoms, archaic states drew a much firmer line between elites and masses, distinguishing at least between nobles and commoners. Kinship ties did not extend from the nobles to the commoners because of stratum endogamy --marriage within one’s own group. Commoners married commoners; elites married elites. Such a division of society into socioeconomic strata contrasts strongly with the status systems of bands and tribes, which are based on prestige, not resources. The prestige differentials that do exist in bands reflect special qualities, and abilities. Good hunters get respect (^13) In Native California the system was one of reciprocity, rather than chiefly redistribution.
from their fellows as long as they are generous. So does a skilled curer, dancer, storyteller--or anyone else with a talent or skill that others appreciate. In tribes, some prestige goes to descent-group leaders, to village heads, and especially to the big man, a regional figure who commands the loyalty and labor of others. However, all these figures must be generous. If they accumulate more resources--i.e., property or food--than others in the village, they must share them with the others. Since strategic resources are available to everyone, social classes based on the possession of unequal amounts of resources can never exist…. In many tribes, particularly those with patrilineal descent, men have much greater prestige and power than women do. The gender contrast in rights may diminish in chiefdoms, where prestige and access to resources are based on seniority of descent, so that some women are senior to some men. Unlike big men, chiefs are exempt from ordinary work and have rights and privileges that are unavailable to the masses. However, like big men, they still return much of the wealth they take in. The status system in chiefdoms, although based on differential access, differed from the status system in states because the privileged few were always relatives and assistants of the chief…. …The creation of separate social strata is called stratification , and its emergence signified the transition from chiefdom to state. The presence and acceptance of stratification is one of the key distinguishing features of a state. Influential sociologist Max Weber (1968/1922) defined three related dimensions of social stratification: (1) Economic status, or wealth , encompasses all a person’s material assets, including income, land, and other types of property (Schaefer and Lamm 1992). (2) Power , the ability to exercise one’s will over others--to do what one wants--is the basis of political status. (3) Prestige --the basis of social status--refers to esteem, respect, or approval for acts, deeds, or qualities considered exemplary. Prestige, or “cultural capital” (Bourdieu 1984), provides people with a sense of worth and respect, which they may often convert into economic advantage (Table 13.1). These Weberian dimensions of stratification are present to varying degrees in chiefdoms. However, chiefdoms lack the sharp division into classes that characterized states. Wealth, power, and prestige in chiefdoms are all tied to kinship factors. In archaic states--for the first time in human evolution--there were contrasts in wealth, power, and prestige between entire groups (social strata) of men and women. Each stratum included people of both sexes and all ages. The superordinate (the higher or elite) stratum had privileged access to wealth, power, and other valued resources. Access to resources by members of the subordinate (lower or underprivileged) stratum was limited by the privileged group….
